a/n: The title comes from the Coltrane song by the same name. :) Enjoy and thanks for reading! Holla if you see any typos.
Every light that wasn't the tiny, glowing byproduct of some distant 'on' switch that kept the Bebop aloft had been turned off. The only noises were the soft purrs of machinery preventing the spacecraft from plummeting to the surface of some moon between Venus and Jupiter. During typical sleeping hours, the only sign of life in the common room would be Ed, curled or sprawled in front of her powered off computer, perhaps accompanied by a similarly postured Ein. But tonight was different. Spike was still missing.
Jet recrossed his arms and let his eyes rest on the shadowy expanse of floor between his feet. Well, missing was a strong word. It wasn't like he was MIA somewhere in the great, wide galaxy. They'd been off and on over communications almost all day trying to pin down the most recent bounty. 7 million woolongs - could be better, could be worse. Good guy gone bad, abusing convicts, dealing a whole cornucopia of pharmaceuticals on the interplanetary no-no list that he had access to through his ISSP status.
Ex-ISSP status.
It was a pretty predictable back story for a frustratingly unpredictable chase. Cowardice could sometimes turn a tough job into a cake walk, but when the afflicted individual had friends in high places willing to cover his sorry tracks it made catching the bastard a real headache. This particular eel was so slippery even the Bebop's resident Material Girl had folded on the venture citing "bad business" as her reasoning. For Spike, on the other hand, it had become less and less about the money and more and more an issue of pride. The fox couldn't stand to be outfoxed, and if all it cost Jet was fuel that would have been spent meandering aimlessly anyways, he was willing to let them play cat and mouse games all day and all night- or at least until a better deal showed up.
This was what he told himself. If honesty was necessary, he'd admit that something felt terribly, terribly wrong about not having the whole brood present and accounted for at the end of the day. He'd put off dinner until the girls were practically crying, paced the docks until Ein's whining became too loud to ignore, and waited to shut down for power saving until Ed tried to shove herself under the couch in order to find a quiet, dark place to sleep. To make matters worse, he hadn't even been half an hour in on his night time vigil when Faye had reemerged from the depths of the ship and taken a seat on the couch without a word. In almost any other circumstance, Jet might have welcomed this potentially comforting, remarkably quiet and pacifistic presence, but as things stood, he consistently felt unnerved rather than soothed when his eyes happened to wander from the hole they were boring in the floor.
The fact that even their most unreliable team member was so bothered by this absence she was willing to give up hours of precious beauty sleep simply reminded him of the burning sense of incompletion tight on his chest. More than that, a disturbing parallel had been forming in the potent turbulence of Jet's thoughts and he - admittedly unfairly, but nonetheless strongly - imagined that Faye was intruding on these acutely private reflections. Maybe it was just the irritability of sleeplessness or maybe the subconscious fears of feminine intuition, but he was certainly feeling territorial. Why did she think she needed to sit up for Spike? That was his job, right? All of this seemed painfully obvious to Jet - but, apparently, either he or Faye were making false assumptions.
"Pumpkin head, pumpkin head, don't eat the asparagus! It's mine, miiiine!" Over by the computer, Ed rolled back and forth, mumbling emotionally in her sleep and making about as much sense as she did when she was awake. He glanced briefly at Faye, but it seemed she had ignored the outburst in favor of keeping her eyes glued on one of the fathomless corners of the common room ceiling.
It's mine, miiiine!
With a deep breath, Jet recrossed his arms, letting the metal wrist take a break from flexing as he brought the human arm out and around to rest on top.
Waiting. This was just how Alisa had spent almost all of her evenings when they had lived together on Ganymede. No wonder she'd given up one day. That's where the comparison began to fall apart though. Even if Spike did make a habit out of coming in late, Jet would never lose the stand off with waiting. Not that it had anything to do with him though. There were just some people who would always be worth waiting for. He wasn't, Spike was. Plus, his partner had a way with things like this; he just knew how to do it and how to do it well.
The sound of the door sliding open was remarkably quiet.
"Spike!"
But it was still enough to break the hold of silence on the long-motionless muscles that brought Jet to his feet.
"Eh?" He simply blinked to express his mild surprise, mouth preoccupied with a recently lit cigarette and hands either too busy managing the jacket tossed over one lax shoulder or too deeply buried in a pocket. "What, you guys decided to throw a party and didn't invite me?" He traipsed down the steps smoothly and took a few long strides into the room before coming to a stop a few paces from Jet and the chair. "I would have got back sooner if you'd bothered to tell me." A sidelong glance to the still stationary Faye interrupted the drop of his gaze to the cigarette. With deliberate slowness, he produced the pocketed hand and employed it in shaking off the ash.
"You're back," Jet managed after a prolonged silence.
At last, Spike brought his eyes up from the cig and fixed his fumbling partner with a curious look that made the slightly taller man suddenly self conscious about every detail of his posture. Should he sit down again? Just leave and go to bed? Tell him to go out and come back in again so he could get it right this time? The situation was unfixable. So Jet did what he always did when he was at a total loss and set a hand solidly on each hip.
After a brief pause (perhaps to ensure that Jet had really made up his mind on where to put his arms), Spike returned his gaze to the now replaced cigarette at the corner of his mouth.
"Well, how'd it go?" A decent question.
"Ahm." Pocket hand dug around briefly and then tunneled out, cash chip in hand. "7 million, as promised." Surprisingly even this revelation didn't seem to pique the still mute woman's interest. "Maybe there will be enough left over for some champagne for your little shindig here after we pay for repairs and damages."
A standard cool exit line if ever there was one, and yet, the latecomer didn't seem to have any standoff by the chair.
"You got him?" Even sleep-deprived Jet could tell this question was too obvious for the generally laconic cowboy to waste breath answering so he plowed on immediately, inquiring, "How'd you finally corner him?"
"Space chase then hand to hand on a shuttle." Spike scratched near the base of his gravity-defying fluff of hair and let his eyes wander to the ceiling as if struggling to recall the recently transpired events, let alone any descriptive detail. "I think he was running low on gas. Anyway, once I got him pinned down in one place it was easy. Hehheh!" An unexpected exhale of laughter and smoke broke off the business talk. Finally, he brought his permanently drowsy eyes up to meet their large, expressive (often- and this was certainly an excellent example- more expressive than their owner would prefer) counterpart and let them linger there, imparting just as much of a message as the deliberately intoned explanation, "We got pretty damn lucky actually. Couldn't have done it if I didn't have so much practice moving around a cop."
Before Jet had much time to interpret this statement, the gap between them had shortened considerably and he was - once again - the subject of the unreadable evaluatory expression that seemed to be demanding an answer without asking the question.
'''Moving around a cop, huh?'" The caustic repetition by the one and only Faye Valentine brought all attention to where she was standing from the couch. "What's that supposed to mean?"
"No one likes a secret, Mr. Cheetah! Hand over the sugar bunnies nicely or I shoot!"
This convenient interruption from the floor allowed Spike to break eye contact and leave Jet to deal with what wasn't really his question. The line became a triangle as Faye arrived at the addressed duo, pokerface firmly in place save for the interrogatively arched eyebrows.
Since the gaping cyborg was presenting himself as a target, the bounty huntress moved on, demanding silkily, "Was 7 million woolongs that will be gone by tomorrow morning all you were sitting up for?"
This was as good a chance as any to employ his favored deflection technique: turn confusion into aggression.
"And what about you then? Just wanted to make sure the only reliable lighter made it back on board?"
"I wanted to see what you were going to do," she mirrored his posture on her own more petite scale, "when he got back."
Spike flicked his eyes up under the sudden pressure of two charged glares and then quickly decided it was time to tap the ash again. The combatants turned back to each other, voices steadily becoming too loud.
"Frankly, I'm bored."
"Well, I'm sorry to fail your great expectations, Faye! Is your own business not entertaining enough to keep your own damn nose in?"
"I want to see, Spike." Still resisting being brought into the fray, Spike glanced at the stirring Ed. "'What's it look like when you 'move around a cop'?"
"You really want to see?"
"Spike!"
"Yes! Yes, I do!"
"Well, Jet," in an unforeseeable move, Spike put out his cigarette and focused his full attention on the man before him, serious bordering on grim. "She asked for it." He stepped even closer, closer.
Closer.
Whatever was on his unfathomable mind, Jet knew he wouldn't be guessing it any time soon. So, being a fundamentally emotional creature, he let his tired body do what it had wanted to do ever since the figure he was all too used to watching on the retreat had appeared in the doorway, crushing the broad shoulders in a half-metal, half-human, and all-encompassing hug. With the ease of natural born spontaneity, the slimmer version of well-muscled arms settled atop what there was of his non-descript hips. In the back of his mind Jet noted that this was where he'd messed up once before: he'd never thought to return the endless embraces just like this one. But the majority of his thoughts could care less about the past and were preoccupied with processing the sensations of the present.
Sharp nose found slight neck meeting shoulders, breaths began to synchronize.
"I'm really glad you got that guy, Spike. I hope you didn't blow anything up in the process."
Limp wrists curved into action, smooth cheek bent into rough jawline.
"I'm afraid I might have, Jet. I hope there's still something left from dinner. I'm starving."
"Don't worry- no one touched the crumpets. Bite them, it's great." The recommendation from ankle level seemed to indicate a good time to break it off. The two men slipped apart with an air of casualty that came entirely from Spike.
Faye squinted from one- defensive but blatantly pleased -to the other -mysterious and instantly aloof as ever as he relit the cigarette.
"Nice try, but I'm not sold. there wasn't a lot of movement," she glared Jet up and down, waving a hand as a visual aid , "and it certainly wasn't 'around' by any definition." She heaved a sigh - more disappointed than anything else - and crossed her arms in defeat. "So be on your guard," businesslike she twirled on the spot and fairly skipped up the stairs, stopping to turn and move two pointed fingers from her own eyes to the unmoved and unmoving duo. "I'll be watching you." The door to the ship's interior swooshed open.
"7 million."
This time the sum caught Lady Luck's attention. "What?"
Spike repeated himself around the cigarette, walking over to the railing, cash card extended. "7 million for a blind eye and a deaf ear."
"No deal! As if I'd let this go forever just for 7 mil-"
"All I want is a month. 30 days without any snooping."
The resolve weakened instantly. "Two weeks."
"20 days."
"Deal." The money changed hands then disappeared into the recesses of the bright yellow top. "Nice doing business with you, boys!" A wholly different woman swung through the doorway than the one who'd opened it mere seconds before.
After a few heartbeats admiring this monetary-based metamorphoses, Spike strode back to his still processing partner. At last he got an exasperated exhale.
"Spike! That was just too reckless! Are you trying to kill me?"
"Which part?" The nonplussed cowboy let his lecturer temporarily relieve him of the cigarette for a few desperately called for drags.
"What do you mean 'which part'? Every damned second of it!" The fleeting anger escaped with a final deep release of smoke. Job done, the cigarette made its way back to the quick hands to which it belonged. "And now I don't know how I'm going to cover the costs you ran up..."
"Well, think of the hush money as a form of 'damages' and we're ahead of the game already."
"Get in the car, Jumbo! Those cards weren't free!"
"Nothing ever is," lamented Jet, brow slanted in consternation. As he attempted to rub the worries away with a thumb and forefinger, the source of most of his problems took off at an eager stroll in the direction the source of all the rest of them had recently vanished.
"C'mon, officer."
"Never too late for dancing!" The latest addition to the conversation coaxed a smirk out of Spike as he went on with his invitation.
"I know I said nabbing that guy was easy, but I could have done a lot better. Seems like I need a little more practice moving around a cop."