Claire runs up to Spike as he walks off-stage. "I had no idea!"
"We all have our little secrets," he replies.
"I want you to meet my friends."
"I'd rather not. I'm not that good in groups. More of a loner."
"Stop hiding behind those vampire stereotypes."
"Stereotypes?" Spike's offended by this. "I'm one of a kind."
"I know! That's why I want them to meet you." She drags him to the table.
"This is Spike. He saved my life the other night." Spike fears she's showing him off like a side-show freak.
"You're such a drama queen," Edie jokes about Claire's ridiculous statement.
"When me met backstage, I thought I had seen you before. I wus right. You're all over Claire's wall."
"He's been in your bedroom?," an intrigued Anita asks.
"A poet and a muse," Spike adds. Edie appreciates the compliment.
"I'm a sculptor," Russell announces, standing up. "I work with the human form. My name's Russell." He holds out his hand. Spike pauses, then shakes it. "Ow! That's quite a grip you've got. Why is your hand so cold?"
"And this is my best friend Anita."
"Hey Spike," she causually says without getting out of her chair. "Is the coat a thing? Most people take those off indoors."
"I'm not most people."
"You want a beer?," Claire asks Spike.
"Would I be in a bar if I didn't?," he jokes. Russell's still staring at his face.
"You have a very angular bone structure." Anita feels relieved. Hopefully, Russell's interest in Spike is purely aesthetic.
"So Anita here's your best friend, pet. And Edie's your . . . special friend?" Anita snickers. She's been teasing Claire for a while now about her quasi-lesbian relationship that Claire refuses to admit is quasi-lesbian. Edie's pleased that Spike seems to recognize what she's going for with Claire. This indicates that he's not likely to hit on Claire. "So what's his story?," Spike asks dismissively about Russell.
"He's my fuck buddy," Anita blurts out. "He used to date Claire, until she found out - "
"He doesn't want a fucking synopsis of our lives," Claire interrupts, not wanting to relive that painful episode.
"You're forthright," Spike says to Anita. "I like that." She seems like a shorter, younger, raven-haired Anya. Anita smiles flirtatiously. The girl loves to flirt, especially with older, dangerous-looking men, such as Claire's brother Nate.
"Let's go get you that beer," Claire suggests to Spike. She stands up. "Come to think of it, let's all go get another round. Edie, Anita and Russell stand up. Spike wonders what's going on as Claire leads him towards the bar. And then he sees the mirror behind the bar, and stops cold.
"Oh no."
"Suddenly you don't like alcohol?"
"You know bloody well what I'm afraid of."
"You're afraid of them?," she asks with a laugh.
"I'm afraid of your friends finding out," he whispers.
"They won't kill you." Edie and company wonder what's up.
"Claire, did you get into my pot again before we left?," Russell asks.
"I'm not some attraction to be shown off and gaped at. This isn't the bloody circus."
"It's time you came out. No more hiding. I know it feels scary, but this can be very liberating." Claire's friends, off course, misinterpret this. "Come on!," she pleads, pulling him along.
"Oh, all right," he concedes, rolling his eyes.
"Stand behind him," she tells her friends.
"You got into more than just my pot, didn't you?"
"Just do it." She takes Edie's hand, gives her a come-hither look, and lures her towards Spike. "Look in the mirror."
Edie's jaw drops. She looks to her left, sees Spike, and looks straight ahead again. "Holy shit! You guys gotta see this."
"See what?," Russell asks. Anita runs over.
"Whoa!! That is a cool trick." She coaxes Russell into joining them.
"Oh my God." The four of them stand there, around Spike, and look at what's missing in the mirror. Spike groans and feels exploited, but not in a good, sex-slave way. Russ looks at his friends. "I'm not the only one who can't see his reflection, am I?," he asks nervously.
"Are you happy?," an annoyed Spike asks as he walks up to the bar.
"What's his secret?," Anita asks Claire.
"What do you think?"
"I think it's an optical illusion," Russell offers.
"That, or he's a vampire." Her three friends laugh. Anita's the first to come around.
"You're shitting me!"
"I saw him change. His teeth got bigger, his eyes went yellow, his face became all distorted - "
"And he had fangs?"
"Yeah!"
"But he didn't kill you?"
"No. He's different. He's good."
"Bullshit," Anita responds. "Vampires kill."
"Are you two being serious?," an alarmed Edie wonders.
"I should have never given you all those drugs," Russell says. "Some people's minds just can't handle certain chemicals."
Spike takes his beer and walks away. Anita stops him. "Show me."
"Show you what?"
"Change." Spike continues to walk away. She grabs him.
"I didn't say Eat Me.' Just pretend you want to." Russell misinterprets this in a most upsetting way. Claire comes over.
"Just for a second. So my friends don't think I'm nuts. I know you can. You did when you were hungry. And when you were mad. That's it!" She slaps Spike with her right hand. Other patrons hear the slap and look over.
"Claire, I'm not - "
She slaps him again, only harder. The place goes quiet as people turn to see what's going on. "Hey. Peeping Toms!," Edie calls out. "Mind your own fucking business." They do.
"Bloody hell." He changes for a second, then goes back. "Are you happy?" Russell and Edie just stare with their mouths agape. "I think these two need a few drinks."
Devlin puts on a clean shirt in the parking lot, since his other one was torn and shredded during the fight. "Why don't we get a room so we can clean up?," Debbie complains.
"Because we'd have to pay for it."
"You have money."
"They'll comp us the best room in the whole damn hotel once I blow twenty thousand dollars at the poker tables."
"They'll look at you funny once they notice you're bleeding." She takes off his shirt. "Let me get some bandages."
"That's why I'm wearing a red shirt. So they won't notice."
"You're talking to a girl who knows a thing or two about covering up cuts and bruises." She puts large bandages on two of the deeper wounds, and uses gauze to blot the blood coming from shallower cuts. All this touching and close proximity is, of course, alluring. She looks up at him. He slowly leans in to kiss her. She moves her head back.
"Why not?," he asks, flabbergasted.
"I start, I can't stop, and next thing I know, we're doing it in a parking lot."
"Wouldn't be the first time." She punches him on one of the deeper cuts. He grimaces, but manages a small, randy grin. When she walks away, he comes up from behind and puts his arms around her. She sighs. "You know how we are after a good fight. At that was a great fight." Debbie summons up the will to break free. She spins round, steps back and looks at Dev.
"It will be even better when we're all alone, in some luxurious suite." She tosses Dev his shirt and takes off her own torn shirt. He growls. "Sick, Dev." She quickly puts on a new shirt.
"That's what Buffy and Angel and all those people who don't understand us think. But you know better."
"Don't change the subject."
"I wasn't."
"Yes you were. Now keep your pants on and go lose your shirt. Figuratively." She looks through their bag of chips.
"Don't lose any more than ten thousand tonight." Debbie laughs. To hear such words, and to know that they are being said in all seriousness.
"Maybe I'm getting selfish. Maybe I'm setting myself up a fall. But I love this life."
"This is causing me to radically alter my view of the world," a still-shellshocked Russell declares. They're sitting around the small circular table, talking.
"So there a vampires," Anita responds. "It doesn't change the fundamental order of things."
"Dead people feeding off the living doesn't change the order of things? And why are you taking this so in stride?"
"I was wondering the same thing," Edie adds.
"I'm from Lompoc. It's up north, near this town called Sunnydale."
"That's where Spike's from!," Claire exclaims.
"No I'm not. But I lived there for a few years."
"Isn't Sunnydale the town that got swallowed?," Edie asks.
"Believe me, it was fucked up long before then," Anita responds. "When did you live in Sunnydale?"
"Until the bitter end. I moved there about four years before."
"So you were there when everyone got laryngitis. And when everyone was singing?"
"Everyone singing?," Claire asks. "You mean like on Ally McBeal?"
"No," a mortified Spike responds. "Nothing like Ally McBeal."
"Everyone knew crazy things happened in Sunnydale. You had to be real careful going there after dark."
"Like Watts," Russell guesses.
"Worse. Their murder rate was off the charts."
"Then why would anyone in their right mind go there?"
"They had this all ages club with great bands like five nights a week and a ten dollar cover charge. Why all those bands went there I'll never know. It's in the middle of fucking nowhere. But they did. Of course, sometimes things got out of control. My older sister went there to see K's Choice, and suddenly this female vampire with flaming red hair and a black leather bodysuit comes in, and she takes over the place."
"Black leather bodysuit?," Edie asks with a smile.
"You woulda loved her," Anita jokes. "Total lesbo. Feeling up girls left and right. And sucking the blood out of one of them, just to keep everyone terrified."
"Do you remember this?," Claire asks Spike.
"A little before my time. But I know the girl in question. And I think Edie really would go for her, and the feeling would probably be mutual." Edie smiles.
"Disgusting," Anita responds. "We're talking about a cold-blooded killer."
"So what happened next?," Russell wonders.
"Bondage girl and her gang of bloodsuckers hold everyone hostage, until some vigilantes bust in. They kill a few vampires, the rest run away, and everyone escapes. Except for that one girl, who was already dead. Carrie thinks. It got really confusing at the end. A girl walked in who looked just like bondage girl, but the other vampires thought she wasn't. And she said this other girl, some gymnast, started doing cartwheels and kicking all the vampires' asses. I think she was just in shock. I know I would have been."
"Is your older sister a lesbian?," Edie asks.
"What the fuck?"
"A vampire dominatrix. A nubile, butt-kicking Xena. It sounds like one big lesbian fantasy."
"I think it's more of a juvenile male fantasy," Russell offers.
"Russell might be onto something," Anita argues. "I've heard about butt-kicking girl' from other people. They say they know a friend of a friend who swears to God he was rescued by this Mousey Valley Girl chick."
"Mousey?," Spike asks, offended by the pejorative description. "What the bloody hell does that mean?"
"It means people need to believe in heroes," Edie remarks. "It makes the world seem a lot simpler." Claire glances at Spike and cracks a tiny smile.
"What do you think of this?," Russell asks Spike. "You're the one who lived there."
"I think you can't disbelieve everything you hear."
"Speaking of which, did they really try to burn girls at the stake for witchcraft?"
"And the funny thing wus, only two out of the three girls were actually witches." They think he's being facetious. Edie laughs longer than the rest.
"Witchcraft. What bullshit. Girls getting together, lighting incense and holding hands because they're too scared to admit they're dikes. Blow out the candles and lick each other's pussies already."
Willow shoots out of bed and stands up. "What's wrong, sweetie?," Kennedy asks.
"A dark cloud gathering over the Hellmouth."
"The one in Cleveland. I know. Rona and Vi are taking care of it."
"No. Not the apocalypse. Something new."
"Then Buffy will send some more Slayers and take care of that, too."
"They're in danger."
"They're always in danger. We all are. It's part of the job description. Now get back to bed."
"Not now. Too much worry. I have to consult Giles, and read books, and perform an astral casting spell."
"Tomorrow. Until then, I know a way to make the worry go away." Kennedy puts in her tongue stud. Willow smiles and returns to bed.
"Nice car," Claire says as Spike drives her home.
"It's a loaner. Company car."
"Is three human kills a week normal for a vampire?"
"What was that, pet?"
"I know you don't kill anymore, but when you did, how many did you kill?"
"I was hardly a normal vampire."
"But three a week, that's not too much?"
"Barely enough, I suppose. Why do you ask?"
"At breakfast, George said that there are 18,000 murders in America every year. He pointed out that one vampire, killing three people a week, kills about 150 people a year. That means 120 vampires living in the U.S. would double our murder rate."
"I'll take your word for it. Or his."
"I'm just wondering how many vampires are out there."
"Don't think they've done a census."
"How many are in LA? What I'm asking is, what are my chances of running into - "
"Someone with fangs roaming the streets looking to kill you? It's a city of three million. Odds are on your side."
"Especially if you're by my side." She puts her left hand on his right leg. He looks nervous. She takes it off. "Something wrong?"
"No, love."
"Is it me?"
"No, no, no."
"You're gay."
"Now where the bloody hell did you get that!?"
"You are a vampire."
"Bloody Anne Rice," he fumes. "Anyway, you're the one with the special friend."
"Emphasis on friend. Look, Edie satisfies certain . . . needs of mine. But I do have other needs." She puts her hand back on his leg and slowly slides it up.
"There's a girl. We had a rather, intense, relationship. I loved her. I still love her."
"Finally, you throw me the tiniest scrap of personal information about yourself. I also had a painful breakup I'm still getting over. With Russell."
Spike laughs. "You've got to be bloody kidding."
"I think for a while there I actually loved him. Then there was my abortion – after we broke up."
"Because you broke up?"
"No. No! I didn't know I was pregnant when we broke up. I found out a couple weeks later, and took care of it. I didn't tell Russell for a few months. And I haven't told my family."
"Don't worry. Your secret's safe. One of the benefits of being prickly is that few people try to talk to you."
"So you had a bad breakup, I had a bad breakup."
"It wasn't bad. Physically painful, perhaps. But it wusn't even really a breakup. She never told me to get lost. I died."
"How long has it been since you saw her?"
"Nine months."
"That's pretty long to go without sex. Especially for a vampire. I'm guessing. Also, you're really good looking, and it's not like you'd have a hard time, if you wanted to - "
"It's been closer to two years."
"What? I thought you and this girl - "
"Were together."
"But not fucking? For a whole year?" This sounds disgusting. What if he's into really kinky shit?
"The sex was so good we had to take a break and cool down, in order to get to know each other."
"Bullshit."
"I'm bloody serious."
"No one's that . . . " she smiles. "Or maybe you can prove me wrong."
"I'm not ready for a relationship." Claire laughs.
"A relationship? I just wanna fuck."
Spike mulls this over as he approaches her home. "You're not in the main house."
"My bedroom's in the coach house."
"Good. I'd hate for your mum to overhear us. How sturdy are your walls and floors?"