Distractions, a cowboy bebop fanfic

Even though she's not a Cowboy Bebop fan, this was inspired by the following post by my LJ friend MegTheLegend:

/users/megthelegend/96855.html

Quote:

What I'd like to see - fanfic or professional
I wanna see a lead character with a strikingly attractive feature that ISN'T hair or eyes.

"The Doctor's ears seemed unusually large and luminous. Anji watched as he spoke, fascinated, unable to decide what colour they were - pink? Salmon? Peach? She had never wanted him more."

This catalyzed an hour or two of insanity, and the following leaked out of my brain and dribbled out of my ear. A big thank you to Meg and Bakayaro Onna for reviewing and my coworkers for thinking this was good enough to post somewhere. I warn you now, I am not a fiction writer - I can't say I've never tried to write fanfics before, but this is the first one that ever arrived in a completed form - I have no idea if this will ever happen again.

Distractions

Faye lounged over the back of Jet's command console in the wheelhouse, lazily watching the balding man's efficient movements. His gray gaze was intent on his instruments as he simultaneously arranged for berthing, contacted leads on potential bounties, tapped out navigational calculations, and prepped his beloved Bebop for a water landing on Ganymede. The holographic view screen showed the face of someone who appeared to be in one of the enforcement branches; whether he was ISSP or local police, she couldn't tell. All Faye recognized was the law - to her, a barely tolerated ally at best. Jet seemed to have a friend in paramilitary circles wherever they wound up, in any case. One of the purely selfish reasons (among many) she had attached herself to the Bebop and this mismatched set of humans in the first place was she recognized Jet did the hard part of bounty hunting, the researching and digging and background, so she wouldn't have to do it herself. She much preferred the action side of it. It was the best relief for PMS symptoms she'd found, so far.

Ed and Ein drifted by, upside down, near the upper bulkhead, giggling and yelping as they wrestled with each other. Jet raised his eyes briefly and growled "There's actually going to be a down in a minute, people, so I'd suggest finding the deck." Faye smirked; her own white-booted feet drifted behind and below her, since the gravity in the wheelhouse was usually low unless they were planet-side. She anchored her elbows a little more firmly by wedging them between the cushions behind Jet's seat, took a slurp from her sipper, and wedged it there as well. Jet, busy as he was, didn't notice. This was her preferred vantage point; close enough to get the maximum benefit of any incoming information but also to needle Jet, should he require it.

"I really don't know why you bother, Jet," she drawled, glancing up at the skinny redheaded waif, still rolling around in mid-air with the Corgi, who was doing his best wolf impersonation. "The kid only needs a prehensile tail, and she'd be a spider monkey. And Ein's pretty good at landing on his feet - aren't they always supposed do that?"

"That's cats," Jet grunted, not turning his attention from his screens as the Bebop orbited. Faye rolled her eyes and shrugged - it wasn't as if she cared, and small mammalian predators were not her strong point, even if her long term memory were intact.

Spike was in his customary spot next to one of the ports, leaning on his forearms and gazing out at the approaching Jovian moon. He pulled out a smoke and lit it as he searched the tops of the clouds, his face and entire body an expression of his usual attitude - whatever happens, happens. Also as usual, he seemed totally indifferent to his surroundings, his legs flexed and slightly off the deck. He must have stationed himself under a vent - his mossy hair moved slightly in an air current, like the subtidal weed it sometimes resembled. With the bluish light coming through the ports surrounding them and the low gravity, the crew of the Bebop could have all been residents of a large aquarium.

Faye sighed, took a drag of her own cigarette, and looked over Jet's shoulder again. There was not much that attracted her interest on the screens, so she watched the cybernetic fingers of Bebop's master nimbly dancing over his keyboard. From a distance, one could not have told his left arm was artificial, except for the darker color.

Her eyes almost involuntarily tracked up his bare metal arm to his shoulder, the way the eye will follow a tree branch or a river across a painting. They paused a moment at the boundary of metal bicep and red t-shirt sleeve, wandered the short distance to the ragged edge of his coverall (jeez, she thought absently, I know we don't make much with this bounty gig, but couldn't he afford a new one? The ship gets paid first, after all, and he's second...). Then, over the shoulder, where it appeared some kind of insignia had been removed, to the collar, where her eyes rested on the insignia that still remained. Two horizontal gold bars on a dark blue background. She snorted softly as she remembered an item she had read in some idle net-surfing (not usually her thing, but she had been bored). She was quite sure Jet's symbolized some kind of rank and she knew he was a former cop. However, the article she had seen referred to them as some kind of gay symbol as well. She wondered what he'd think of that, picturing one of his holier-than-thou, fatherly lectures. Thinking on it a bit more though, she decided she'd seen enough of him to know that despite all his complaining, he was above all else an accepting person. Why else would he have even allowed the four of them to join him? Most likely, his reaction would just be "Yeah? So?"

Around the high, heavy collar to the nape of the neck, and drifting up, the dimple at the base of the skull, and the close-cropped dark hair. It looked baby fine, what there was of it. Her gaze moved up a few inches and finally stopped at the topmost hairline, halfway up his scalp. There, centered on the back of his head, was a perfect little V, quite symmetrical in fact. To be honest, Faye had noticed this before and thought it slightly odd, but had neither inspiration nor the opportunity to investigate. Now that she had a closer view, she squinted a bit and tried to determine whether this was a naturally occurring feature or if he "encouraged" it somehow. She didn't know much about male pattern baldness, but it seemed an unlikely progression. Then again, how would you put something like that on the back of your skull by yourself? Not without a lot of effort and more mirrors than she remembered seeing the last time she had poked around in his private head, ostensibly looking for aspirin but really just being nosy. She couldn't imagine him succumbing to such vanity, especially when his usual attire was, well, a little shabby, although scrupulously neat and clean.

Faye could see no evidence of shaving or other forms of depilation. The contrast between his dark hair and his pale scalp was kind of hypnotizing; his skin had always reminded her of chocolate milk, and she entertained a mild curiosity about his ethnic background, which she then dismissed as unimportant. "Like any of this is important..." a tiny voice in the back of her head said, the same one that told her "Leave," when anyone in her life seemed to get too close, and "Stop," whenever she started to feel something herself. She ignored it for now, and focused on the V again, unconsciously entering an almost meditative state as she regarded it.

Jet shifted as he adjusted their orbit. She felt a small wave of body heat escape his collar and realized she was close enough to be enveloped by his scent; a not unpleasant combination of tobacco, garlic, ginger, and sesame oil from the lunch he'd cooked for them, soap, a tiny amount of sweat (landing a former space-going fishing vessel was not completely free of stress), and an element she couldn't describe but must have been purely him.

She leaned her head on her hand and let her eyes unfocus. The V seemed to dance within her vision; now 45 degrees from the vertical, now vertical, now leaning in the opposite direction. The cabin lights caught improbable highlights in the short dark hair, and Ganymede's muted watery light reflected off the left side of the hemisphere above it. Jet's pate could have been a world unto itself.

Faye experienced a sudden insane impulse that the rocking V had to be stopped, or it would take over her mind and then her body. Before she had any conscious awareness of moving a limb, a slow-moving digit appeared in front of her, a slim well-manicured index finger. She blinked, and to her horror, she realized it was her own. She had been about to trace the edge of that enticing V, that demarcation between textures of fuzzy and firm, light and dark, yin and yang, with her fingertip. As the gears in her brain screeched to a halt, she heard a voice in her ear.

"Whacha doin', Faye-Faye?"

Faye yanked her hand back as if she'd been about to absentmindedly stick it in the engine's reactor, turned her head, and stared into a pair of bright gold laughing eyes, above which was a matching inverted Chesire cat's grin. Edward Wong Hau Tivurusky Peppulu III was still upside down, arms folded, but now hanging from an upper bulkhead beam by her toes.

"Absolutely nothing. And I've told you before, it's just Faye. Once." said Faye, affecting a bored tone and following it with loud, elaborate yawn and pushing some imaginary violet hairs back away from her face. "Honestly, Ed. Pull your shirt down, it's about to fall off." In what she felt was a futile attempt at CYA, she eyed Ed acidly. Suddenly self-conscious, she set her boots on the deck and tugged at the rear hem of her bright yellow shorts. "Or up. Whichever," she snorted, louder than she meant to.

Jet felt the exhalation on the back of his neck and craned his head around. He lifted a bifurcated eyebrow and rumbled sarcastically, "Somethin' I can help you two with?"

Ed merely giggled and scampered back to Ein, now relaxing comfortably in his dog bed, and Jet shifted his stern focus to Faye. The implant and the scar across his right eye formed a scowl on their own; the metal glinted turquoise in the glow from the Jovian satellite. From the looks of it, he was lucky to still have the use of that eye. His cheek whiskers bristled indignantly.

"Nah," she mumbled, and did a clumsy left face away from him, feeling her cheeks color and hoping the wheelhouse was too dim for anyone to see anything.

"Then I'd appreciate it if you kept it down. I'm trying to concentrate here. This ain't your little Redtail, you know, and I'd like get us there in one piece." He turned back to his controls in preparation for landing; even though the computer was now in charge, he was not one to relinquish supervision. He threw back, "Ya might wanta sit; the weather's rough, and it's gonna be bumpy down there."

Faye stared at the deck for few seconds, nonplused, then turned to head back to the galley. As she set her hand on the rail to descend the steps, she felt the pressure of another set of eyes. Dreading it, she raised her head. This pair was bicolored, and she had a fleeting non sequitur thought that you never noticed they were slightly different colors unless the light was at just the right angle. Spike, his ridiculous boots now settled on the deck, had reversed his position at the port and was leaning carelessly with his back against it and his hands in his pockets. He was the one smirking now. She felt herself color again, this time with irritation.

"Yeah, bumpy," Spike mouthed at her, too low for Jet to hear.

Faye growled to herself. Too bad something to throw at him wasn't handy. She straightened, tried to think of a smart retort, was completely unable to come up with one, and decided a cup of coffee was the best defense at the moment. She stalked down to the galley. She could always throttle him in his sleep later.

The clatter of boot heels down the companionway died away, and Jet shook his head.

"What the hell was that all about?" he asked of nobody in particular. He was somewhat relieved the minx was no longer breathing down the back of his neck, ready to make some belittling comment. If he heard one more cute remark about him and his ex, or whether his new flame was jail bait, somebody was going to get booted. Returning to his homeworld always put him on edge and he was in no mood for it. Still, he was a little surprised she hadn't said something. The damned woman bestowed smart remarks as easily and unthinkingly as other people breathed. If he didn't know better, he would have thought she looked the tiniest bit flustered. He snorted himself. Riiiiight. Calculating, collected Faye, flustered. As if. He went back to his chores.

Spike, still smirking, made no reply, but nodded slowly in thought as the Bebop continued her descent. This might be an interesting trip, after all.

Footnotes:

The symbol Faye is thinking of is here - - The Human Rights Campaign, / - a political action group for the rights of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people. Knowing the slow pace of civil rights changes, and this only being supposed to be 70 years in the future, I see no reason why it wouldn't still exist. I would hope things are better by then - Gren doesn't seem to be persecuted for his lifestyle, at least not in Blue Crow.

"The ship gets paid first" - in commercial fishing, the take for a haul is divided by shares, the ship itself having the largest portion, for maintenance, fuel, repairs, and such. The skipper usually gets the next largest share, and the crew gets the rest, which may be divided equally or by seniority. While they're not fishing for fish anymore, they might divvy up their bounties accordingly, unless they were acting completely on their own. Also, the Bebop used to be a fishing vessel; I'm familiar with commercial boats, so I used their terminology.

The visual phenomena affecting Faye is something that happens to me sometimes if I stare at something, usually a static surface, for too long. Things start rotating, stretching, all manner of weird things; just eye fatigue I guess.

I have never smoked in my life, (once or twice in college doesn't count), so habits of smokers are foreign to me. Forgive me if I got them wrong. I have, however, lived with a smoker, and I am ignoring the fact smoke makes your clothes reek like something died for story-telling purposes. Since all the adults on the Bebop smoke, they became inured to the stink long ago and they'd be unlikely to notice it anyway.

I picked the title because not only are Faye and Jet being distracted, but also because this whole thing was a major distraction when I was supposed to be doing something pretty important.

My mate thinks I should continue this, but frankly, I have no idea where it should go. Possibly, it's a precursor to Jet Black Gets What He Wants,which I think is somewhere on this site.

Final: October 17, 2004
(This was lost on my hard drive for awhile and I only recently stumbled across it again.)