And Then There Were Three. I suppose I really should get around to naming this series, just so it's easier to keep track of, huh. Ah well. In any case, contained within is more Spike/Vicious slashiness. This one's a bit weird I think, but I rather like the way it turned out. Nice and ambiguous. It might be helpful to go read before this, just so you know where I'm coming from, but it's up to you of course. And just so you know, I based this off of that scene in the green bird montage (episode five) where a nude-from-the-waist-up Vicious is in bed with Julia. I think it might have played out a little something like this...

And nope, no ownership of Bebop by me. None whatsoever.

~*~

Only once.

Of course, that's all it took, just once.

***

Spike stepped across the landing into the little hole-in-the-wall Julia called home, grateful as hell to be there however cramped and quiet the place so often was. Because while the dwelling tended a bit too far on the domestic side for his tastes, the whole fresh-flowers-and-ironed-linens vibe of it had grown inevitably synonymous in his mind with the promise of Julia's bright eyes and gentle curves, and the idea of the promise fulfilled was decidedly worth any sort of sacrifice he might be making.

The first hints of sun glinted brightly against the slick varnish of the kitchen table, blinding his tired, swollen eyes. As usual, he found himself here when the sun was coming *up* rather than the more standard alternative. Something about the idea of slinking in under the cover of night was just too cliched and unsettling for Spike to properly bear. And besides. Julia really was the sort of girl you just had to see in the daylight, if you didn't want to miss everything about her that was truly beautiful.

He smiled, shedding his dusty trench coat into a nearby chair and toeing off his shoes right foot first and then the left. Most men were drawn to her darker side, the skin tight vinyl and stale cigar smoke inside the club dulling the vibrance in her eyes until there was really nothing left to see but the body. He knew that's the way she wanted it, that it was the only way she would mentally survive her own life, but he had scarcely given a thought to her physical allure since the first morning he woke beside her.

There was something more, something he was amazed that no one else seemed to see, something that made his blood race and at the same time even its rhythm in his veins. He felt whole with Julia, or at least as close as he was beginning to think he would ever come. She was so safe, so gentle and comforting, and safety meant the world to him these days.

It was her eyes, he knew. Not the color or the shape or the sickly poetic sparkle of them, but just the way she peered out from behind that shining blue. The way she could just *see* him, and the way she forgave him for everything she saw.

The forgiveness, that was the thing he'd never known before Julia.

***

Her bedroom door opened smoothly beneath his hands, silent in the morning's haven-like quiet. He would slip into bed beside her, curling himself around the long, graceful line of her back, and he would just enjoy that moment, that distant pulse of electricity as bare skin met bare skin and his body ached with the need to both wake her and let himself drift into slumber.

It was delicious, suspended between the choices and unable to choose.

Inside the small, sunlit room motion caught his eyes and he stopped.

Not the grace of one smooth body before him, but two.

He blinked, long and slow, and he was taken back to a moment much like this one: the same anxious tang in the air, the same heavy thunder of a door closing forever. Cool lips on his and a blazing fire inside. The strange power he held then, in that blink of time that was to only happen once, was no longer his.

The broad plane of a powerful chest rose and fell in measured breaths. Julia slept, unaware. Spike gripped the brass of the doorknob, unwilling to look but unable to look away. Flawless skin, silken hair, pale eyes. It was his, it was all his, it was *only* his, it was only *him*. How had he suddenly lost so much?

To hear his name spoken in that low voice unraveled him inside.



The birds began to chirp more loudly outside, the sun wholly above the horizon and waking the world with its gentle heat. Spike shivered, chilled to the core. His mind raced, indulging and fighting a thousand different simultaneous thoughts, fantasies dripping with vengeance and blood and softness and sex. His life--everything he was and needed and wanted to be--was this moment.

Suspended between the choices.

The decision was at once his to make and already made for him.

He blinked again, finding the balance within, and took a solid step across the worn carpeting.

The room warm with daylight, Julia began to stir.

~*~