"Black and Gold" A/N: Now that the goofiness is out of the way, I can go back to doing what I do best. Spike's characterization in this section comes mostly from "Brain Scratch" and "The Real Folk Blues," particularly the way he looks and touches Faye in those episodes.
Post-writing-it A/N: Huh. Go figure. I really wasn't planning on the turn this section took at the end. Interesting...
KARMA: Black and Gold
"Good job, Spike. Really great. You're a genius at getting arrested." Her jibes are the last thing he wants to hear as he enters the Bebop's living room.
He lights a cigarette and walks down the stairs, his hands in his pockets. "I can say the same for you," he says. "If you tried harder, you probably could've screwed that up even more."
"Losing that bounty was a team effort." She reclines on the couch; all he can see are her spike-heeled boots dangling off the edge of the far arm. Black patent leather. They reflect the overhead light in streaks of gold.
"I'll say. Between your carelessness and Jet's incompetence, I'm surprised we don't starve to death." He flops down in the chair and flinches. It hurts, but he doesn't think the bouncer reopened anything. Just a bruise on top of everything else.
"I'm careless? You're the one who picked a fight while you're still held together with three miles of catgut." This isn't a catfight, not yet; this is the growling prelude to a full-blown caterwauling session. Her voice is lazy, but laced with sarcasm like strychnine in coffee.
She struggles to sit up, still trussed up in her undercover outfit. Corset, check; lace-up leather pants, check; knee-high boots, check. She looks like she can barely breathe, let alone run. Her breathlessness over the communicator makes sense now.
Her cat eyes are even more catlike surrounded by black eyeliner and gun-metal gray shadow, her mouth slick with lipstick and gloss. Her cheeks glow red with blusher. Spike tries to look at her as a stranger would, but he can't separate what he knows of her from her appearance; knowing what he does, she looks more silly than sexy, a little girl playing dress-up.
Someone with Faye's looks doesn't need all the leather and hard-edged makeup. The get-up was Jet's idea. He probably really enjoyed lacing her into it, too. Strip club, his ass: the old man's gotten too used to using Faye as bait, and Faye's gotten too used to following Jet's orders without thinking them through for herself.
Spike's voice is edgy. "No wonder you couldn't keep up with him in that rig. This keeps up, one day Jet's gonna send you in somewhere buck naked. Or maybe he'll wrap some bandages around you, make you a fetishist's dream girl."
"Look, if it's Jet you're mad at, take it up with him. Don't take it out on me." She sounds tired. She pushes her disheveled hair out of her eyes. What he first mistook for blush on her cheekbone is actually a fresh bruise. Now the signs of a lost fight are all over her: the left shoulder strap of her corset is broken; it dangles loosely along the line of her breast. There are marks on her shoulders, scratches or other bruises; he can't easily tell.
Somebody clocked her pretty good. Suddenly he doesn't feel so much like having the fight that's brewing. "What happened?" he asks.
There's a long pause before she answers. "There was some nasty with Haber," she says finally. "I didn't take him down."
Spike smokes and thinks about that. Faye's hand-to-hand skills are good but not unbelievably so, and he can't imagine what kind of stance she'd be able to manage on those wobbly little heels. All the more reason why Jet should have sent both of them in.
Stop blaming Jet. He was the one who got all distracted with that Dobsky woman. He was the one who should have been there and wasn't, and now here's Faye, busted up because of it. The anger in him twists inwards.
He doesn't like the way she sits, her back stiff, shoulders pulled back, her face blank and expressionless and her eyes all unfocused. Steeled for his next sarcastic comment. He tries to make peace.
"I've got some medicine for that bruise on your face. Probably help the swelling."
"Don't trouble yourself on my account," she says.
He rises from the chair. "I was going to get it anyway. That bouncer got lucky and nailed me once."
"Once? You're losing your edge," she says.
"You didn't see the guy. It was like taking on Mount Rushmore," Spike says.
This wins a smile from her and he relaxes. He isn't going to apologize to her—hell, no—but it seems as though he's managed to avert a full scale war. He gets the medicine chest from his room.
X
His fingers on her face are gentle, and his face near hers is intent, concentrating on his work.
The balm he spreads over the bruise has a sharp, medicinal smell, so heavy she can taste its bitterness on her tongue, and it tingles as it sinks into her flesh. "What is this stuff?" she asks.
"Aloe, mint, some other things," he says. "I don't know what all, but it's good for bruises."
"Why are you doing this?"
"Huh? You wanna do it?" He takes his fingers away from her cheekbone. "If you do, use a mirror. It'll sting like a mad bastard if you get it in your eye."
"No—I mean, go ahead." She can't ask again. Why are you doing this? Because the answer she wants to hear is, he wants to because it's her, because he's sorry, and the answer she's likely to get is because it's easier to slather her face up with expensive medicine himself than to trust her with it.
Spike dips his fingers back into the little pot of medicine sitting on the coffee table. The air is filled with the pungency of herbs. He moves on from her face to her shoulders, drawing his fingers down the bruises where the straps cut in; Haber had yanked her around by them. Her skin quivers in the wake of his fingers. She imagines gold phospherescence trailing over her collarbone, and she hopes he doesn't notice her reaction.
He finishes. His face is still very near hers, and her breath catches. He puts his fingers under her chin and tips her face upwards, staring down at her for moment that stretches like warm taffy in the silence of the living room. The gold overhead light dazzles her eyes, throws his face into shadow. Her world is Spike, looming over her, light streaming over his shoulders.
She detects his scent beneath the heavy, minty odor of the balm. Woodchips and salt, smoke and coffee. She breathes it in. Even if she never has more of him than this, there's a part of her that thinks it could possibly be enough.