I love this story! I love it soooo much! I like to write it and sit there singing little made up songs about how great it is. Yeah, not that I'm boastful or anything, but obviously I like it. I assume you guys must like it too. You do keep coming back for more, so yeah. Anyway…is it just me or are there like no jobs? I cannot find a job! My job is like, going out to apply for jobs and then getting depressed because no one calls me back! Whyyyyyyy? Oh well, if there was a way to make money writing fanfiction without breaking copyright laws, maybe then I could get some cash. Until I do get a job, I suppose I'm just a fanfiction writing…machine…or something. Yeah, I need to stop talking now.
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One More Try
Part 9
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After confessing the truth to Spike, I tried to pretend I couldn't feel the constant tension between us, but it wasn't very easy to act like I was blind to something so obvious. Soon after that morning, I had been making myself tea in my newest attempt to wean myself off of coffee, when Jet had entered the kitchen and dropped a book down right next to me, almost as though he was laying it there casually. I glanced at the title and noticed that it was a book on parenting, so of course I asked him why he'd have something like that lying around the Bebop. He said that he figured I deserved some sort of reward for being honest with Spike and not breaking anything in the process, and told me he'd just happened to see the book while he was out shopping for food. I almost made a smartass comment about how a parenting book was the perfect present for a stylish girl like myself, but instead I thanked him. I knew it was hard sometimes for Jet and I to talk to each other, and a lot of times I felt that I didn't know him as well as I should, so it was actually really nice of him to get the book for me.
It turned out to have a lot of pretty good stuff in it, but Spike hated it from the first moment he came into the living room to see me curled up with my tea, reading it. I had only just gotten the book, so I wasn't that far in, and a lot of it was boring doctor talk. You know the kind where they use big words not because they're trying to be informative, but because they want to show off their vocabulary to the public as if to say "look how much smarter I am." Anyway, I was kind of skimming through the beginning, and Spike comes in, fresh from his shower. Apparently, he has some stigma about wearing shirts first thing in the morning, and it was really starting to get on my nerves.
"What are you doing?" he asked, rubbing at the moisture in his hair with one hand as he paused on the way to his coffee.
"Reading a book." I responded, finding no end of satisfaction in the fact that if I just looked at the pages closely enough, I couldn't even catch a glimpse of Spike's chest. Maybe I should read more often.
"I didn't know you could read." He teased, moving on to get his coffee. I let out a loud sigh and turned the page.
"Just because you can't figure out what all those 'funny symbols' mean, that doesn't mean it's beyond an intelligent young woman like myself." I shot back in my most regal tone. Spike hated when I spoke to him in a condescending manner, which was why I loved doing it so much.
"I can read!" Spike called back at me from the kitchen. He was never good at verbal battles before he had his coffee. Not that I'd had my coffee in almost a week, but I was really starting to get used to functioning without as much caffeine. "What's that book about, anyway? How to sell your body on the streets?"
"Really clever, Spike." I sighed again. "It's about parenting. Jet gave it to me." Silence greeted my explanation. My theory was that Spike liked to pretend the pregnancy didn't really exist, so it really damaged his little fantasy world whenever I mentioned it.
"Faye-faye!" Ed came zooming into the room, Ein on her heels, managing to look about three hundred times more dignified than the boisterous young girl. "Oooh! Faye-faye's got a book! Let Ed see!" I held up the cover for her to read, not really minding an interruption from her. At least Ed didn't have the audacity to insult my intelligence just because I wasn't the most avid reader in the universe. "A baby book?"
"Yeah," I decided to elaborate when I saw Spike re-entering the room with a cup of coffee in his hand. "I'm pregnant." His reaction was priceless. He had been sipping the coffee, and he managed to trip and choke at the same moment, spilling it all down his chest so that he had to run back into the kitchen, muttering curses under his breath.
"Wow! With a baby?" Ed wanted to know. I momentarily thought of asking her what else she thought I could be pregnant with, but decided after a moment that I really didn't want to know. "Can Ed see?"
"Not yet. It's not due for another six months or so." I told her. It was somehow a lot easier to talk about this with Ed than it had been with anyone else so far. Maybe it was because she was a girl…technically. Maybe it was because everyone else already knew. Or maybe it was just seeing Spike spill coffee all over himself.
"Can Ed see the baby tummy?" Ed leaned far over the back of the couch, almost falling on top of me as she reached for the hem of my shirt. I pulled it up for her to see my stomach, and she made a disappointed noise. "It's not fat yet."
"Don't worry, it will be." I assured her. I couldn't imagine why she was so disappointed that I didn't have a "fat baby tummy" yet, but most of the time, I didn't ask Ed questions like that.
"Know what, Faye-faye?" Ed stood up straight, obviously not interested in my stomach since it wasn't fat enough for her yet. "You should name it…Watson Elmondium Rupert Spirufus Casadeo the…the Sixth!"
"Um…I'll think about that." I tried not to roll my eyes. If Ed ever had any children…I pitied the poor things the names she would bestow upon them. Turning my head back to my book, I ignored Ed's singing explanation of why six was a better number than five, but looked up long enough to quirk an eyebrow at Spike as he walked back through the room with a new cup of coffee and an obviously injured ego. I loved making that man uncomfortable. It was just too fun.
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I think that it was around six months in that things started to really get interesting. You see, at that point, I wasn't immensely huge, but it was clearly visible what sort of condition I was in, and it was a lot harder for Spike to pretend that the baby was all a figment of my imagination. Ed was constantly euphoric that I had such a wonderful "baby tummy" as she told me every time she got a chance, and I was starting to do a lot of work to ensure that my body would return to peak condition as fast as possible once the baby was born. I was using a special ointment on my stomach to prevent stretch marks, and I was eating as healthy as I could, following a strict work out schedule, and generally making sure there was no additional weight added during the pregnancy. Spike avoided me whenever possible, and he became extremely irritable whenever there was mention of the pregnancy in his presence, which was why things reached a breaking point one night as we were eating dinner and Jet started the conversation with a decree that I had known was coming for some time.
"Faye, you're getting pretty far along." He looked up from the strange salad he had made us all. At least he was attempting to make the menu more appropriate for a pregnant woman. "I think that you should stop doing missions for a while, until after the baby comes."
"I'm not that big." Just because I'd known it was coming didn't mean I'd go down without a fight. A little one, at least.
"You're fucking enormous." Spike snorted, looking unsure as to whether he really wanted to insult me if it meant he had to acknowledge my condition. "Look like a bloated stripper."
"A…what?" I wasn't sure whether I was upset or confused. "Spike, don't start with me. You're the one busy trying to pretend that this," I indicated my stomach with a sweeping gesture, "is excess water weight. It's a baby, and it's yours. Got it?" Spike dropped his fork, working his jaw for something good to say as the blood drained from his face. Three months he had known, and it still terrified him.
"Spike-person's a daddy now?" Ed perked up immediately. I would have assumed she would have figured it out by then, but I suppose she'd been waiting for verbal confirmation.
"No, no he's not." I assured her, "Just because you'll climb on top of a woman and impregnate her, that doesn't make you anything. Only real men are fathers. Ones who do things like…oh, I don't know, admit to the fact that the baby exists!"
"So now I'm not a real man? It's not my fault you got pregnant! I would've thought a whore like you'd be on ten different kinds of birth control!" Spike had regained the ability to speak, and he was using it to make me want to kill him. I tossed my fork down angrily at his words, rising to the bait more easily than I should have.
"Spike! Are you trying to tell me that this is none of your responsibility?" I gave him a challenging look, my eyes wide and angry. "Do you think I wanted this to happen? That I planned it? I can think of hundreds of men who would make a better father than you, but it was my bad luck that the one time something like this happens, it was with you!"
"Well I can think of thousands of women who would make a better mother than you!" he snapped back. We both rose at almost the same time, glaring across the table at each other. "I don't see why it should be my problem if I got drunk one night and couldn't fucking think straight!"
"Fine! It's not your problem! As far as I'm concerned, you don't exist to this baby! You're nothing, got it? I told you I didn't need your help raising it, and I meant it! I'd hate to think what kind of an influence you would be on my baby anyway!" I felt tears rising to my eyes, but I couldn't bear to let him see me cry, so I ran out of the room, back to my own quarters, where I slammed and locked the door shut, letting the tears roll down my face as I leaned against the door, my hands resting on my stomach as they often did when I was feeling particularly lonely or upset those days.
I shook with silent sobs, not knowing or caring why I was so upset to know that Spike wanted nothing to do with this baby when I'd suspected as much from the beginning. I could hear raised voices coming from the living room, and I knew that Spike and Jet were arguing, which was so rare that I might have taken note of it if I had found myself able to care at that moment. Maybe Spike didn't want me, and maybe he didn't want my baby, but I knew that I could be everything the baby needed, and that in the end, we'd love each other much more than we could have if that stupid man insisted in messing around with my plans. I didn't need him. We didn't need him.
Sniffling, I took a deep breath and walked to my bed, sitting and then lying down slowly, stretching my legs out and letting my back pop several times, relieving some of the physical strain of the pregnancy and the rest of my life. I wouldn't be doing any missions for at least three months, so I supposed that I better get used to what it felt like to lie around, feeling fat and totally unloved.
"You love me, don't you?" I spoke softly, rubbing my stomach and closing my eyes. Yes, that was right. My baby would love me, because I would show it all I could. I would be the best mother I could be, and it would love me when no one else wanted to. I lie there for quite some time, breathing slowly and letting my tears dry on my cheeks, relaxing and feeling another bit of me become hard and numb. That man was so damaging…wasn't I worn out enough without his help?
"Faye?" the voice was easily recognizable as Jet's, and it was accompanied by a short knock. I decided to pretend that I was asleep. Maybe he'd go away. I wasn't mad at Jet, really, but I didn't feel like speaking to anyone right then, to tell the truth. "Faye, are you in there?" There was a long pause, and I assumed that he'd given up, but then he let out a long sigh and began speaking again. "Spike didn't mean all that." He told me, sounding rather apologetic. "I know that he didn't. He's just…confused right now. He'll come around, I know what kind of man he is, and he won't just ignore his responsibilities. He won't leave you alone to try and—"
"Why does everyone act like this baby's a burden?" I called out sharply. "It's mine, and I won't share it with Spike if he's doesn't want anything to do with it, if he's just going to resent it. It's mine."
"I know it is, Faye." Jet was trying to be helpful, but I was angry at him for trying to justify Spike's position. "But do you really want to just erase him from the kid's life?"
"That's the idea." I called. "You have too much faith in him, you know that? He's not sorry, and he doesn't want this baby at all. And I'm glad. I don't want some fucking idiot raising my baby." At that, there was a sharp rap on my wall, and I realized that Spike was in his room, right next door to me.
"I can hear you, fucking bitch!" he called out. "Keep your sob story down, no one wants to hear it."
"Don't get me started on sob stories, asshole!" I called out, reaching down and throwing a shoe at the wall. "I can think of a really pathetic one. It's about this guy who fell in love with his best friend's girlfriend."
"Faye!" Jet's voice was full of warning, but I ignored it.
"So they started fucking around behind the friend's back, and when he found out, the best friend got pretty pissed off and planned to take the guy out. So then the guy decided to be really honorable and run the hell away with the girl. Of course, she was too scared to leave, so she just stayed back with the friend, because hell, who's to say that she even loved the guy? She was one of those girls who had hordes of guys running around after her, but she could have given a shit about any of them. And this was just one more guy to her." I spoke loudly so that Spike could hear everything I said.
"You don't fucking know anything about that!" Spike pounded his fist against the wall, and I continued.
"So then the guy goes on with his life, meets new people, has a whole new life, but the second he hears that the girl is out looking for him, he drops it all to meet her so they can run away together just like in the fairy tales. But this isn't the fairy tales, so the girl ends up dying and the guy decides life's not worth living anymore so he goes and almost gets himself killed getting revenge." I finished. "And the really sad part is that he lived." There was a short scuffling noise and I recognized the sounds of Spike slamming his door and struggling with Jet who was saying something about me not meaning it and telling him to calm down. I felt a stab of sudden fear as I heard a slam against my door and realized that Spike was trying to break in and get to me.
"Open the fucking door!" he sounded so enraged that I shivered slightly, wondering if my door could hold up to him until Jet could stop him.
"No way! Go away, fucking baby!" I looked around for something to defend myself with in case he did break in. I didn't want to shoot him, so the gun was out of the question…maybe I could spray his eyes with perfume? "If you can't handle the truth, don't take it out on me!"
"Spike! Stop that!" Jet's voice was a bit muffled, as though he was struggling to hold Spike still and not doing a very good job of it. "She's just trying to piss you off!"
"Then she can come out here and say it to my face!" Spike was yelling.
"She's fucking pregnant Spike! Do you really want to fight with her?" Jet's tone was harsh, and his words had the desired affect, because the sounds of the struggle died almost immediately. "She's pregnant. With your kid. Think things through, Spike. Don't just go crazy. I'm not your damn father. Take care of yourself for once." Jet sounded more than a little angry, and I actually felt a bit guilty for provoking Spike, but I didn't put down the perfume bottle I was clutching tightly in my left hand as I moved forward, leaning against the door to speak to the man on the other side.
"Sorry." I offered him, slightly upset at the tremble in my voice.
"Yeah." He sighed and I heard a noise as he slumped against the door. I let my eyes close as I pressed my cheek to the door. I could almost hear the noise of him breathing from where I was. "Yeah, me too." He sounded confused, defeated, and utterly deflated. "Can I come in now?" I paused then, looking at the perfume bottle for a few moments before tossing it aside and licking my lips. I unlocked the door and opened it cautiously. He was standing there, staring at me with sad eyes, and I moved back to let him in. He stepped inside and looked around while I closed the door, leaning back against it as he pretended to be fascinated with the bottles of make up on my dresser.
"I wouldn't have hurt you." He told me, his voice barely more than a whisper. "I swear."
"I know." I told him. "You don't hit women."
"You were scared, though." He picked up a bottle of mascara and twirled it slowly in between his fingers before setting it back down. "I could hear it in your voice. You thought I'd hit you."
"Not really." I wasn't lying. I might have been frightened, but I had never really thought that Spike would hit me in any of the times he was angry.
"I shouldn't have lost my temper." He set his palm down on the dresser, his eyes closing slightly.
"I shouldn't have said those things." I told him in return. "I…I didn't mean it. I was just mad. It's not like I can't defend myself if you ever did try to hit me, anyway."
"Yeah." He looked up at me with a sad smile. "Yeah. Faye…did I ever tell you about my parents?"
"Uh…no." I'd always kind of assumed that people like Spike didn't really have parents. Well, obviously he had to have them, but I thought that maybe he was an orphan or something like that. He just seemed so…aloof.
"My dad died before I could remember, so my mom raised me herself." He was picking up each bottle and jar in turn, fiddling with it momentarily, and then setting it down on the dresser. I'd rarely ever seen Spike fidgeting before. "She remarried though, when I was five. This big, burly kind of guy. His name was Roy." There was a long pause here and I wondered if that was all he was going to tell me, but then he continued, his eyes drifting to the ceiling as though he were reading the words from there.
"Roy was an okay guy most of the time, but sometimes…he got mean. Mom and him would get into fights all the time, and he'd hit her. She told me to stay away from him when he got like that, but I still saw what was going on. One day, things went too far. He hit her upside the head with an empty bottle. She didn't get up." Spike paused, and I wondered for a moment if he was going to cry. At that point, I wouldn't have been surprised. I'd never heard so much about Spike's past in one conversation before. Most of what I knew was based on the tidbits he'd dropped and things I'd figured out for myself. "That night, when he was sleeping, I shot him. First person I ever killed. I was eight." He turned then, and I knew that he had tears in his eyes, though whom they were for, I wasn't sure. "That's why I don't hit women. I never, ever…I never would." He was so desperate for me to believe him, and I felt like I was going to start crying. I couldn't believe that he'd told me something so private. I moved forward, and he captured me in a hug so tight that I was breathless for a few moments.
"I know it." I spoke softly, letting my hand tangle in his dark green curls, moving soothingly over his head and neck. "You're a good man, Spike. You are." I had never imagined Spike like this before, so broken and helpless. It was a side of him that I hadn't even imagined could exist. And somehow, the fact that he was human after all…that only made me love him more. We stood in silence for several moments, and then he mumbled against my neck.
"Feels different." His breath was hot, and his lips brushed against my throat enticingly, but I reminded myself that we were sharing a meaningful moment and it was not the time for thinking about sex.
"What?" I asked, not really sure what he was talking about.
"With this." One of his hands moved down from my back across to the swollen stomach that was pressed against him. "It feels different hugging you." I laughed then. I'm not sure why it struck me as funny, but it did.
"Wait a few months, it'll be even worse." I told him, still smiling slightly. There was another long pause, and finally I pulled away from him. "I don't want to fight with you, Spike."
"Me neither." He answered.
"Good." I didn't really know if we'd actually decided anything, but the atmosphere seemed lighter, that was for sure.
"Faye, I think you'll be a good mom." He told me, moving toward the door. "I didn't mean what I said."
"Yeah. Me neither." I answered. He nodded and left. After he was gone, I climbed into bed. That was way too much emotion for me for one day. I was going to bed.
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The End (Of Part 9, That Is)