Thank you faye-faye14! There will be the rest of this fic and the rest of my other one. :) DragonLady4, thank you! You helped me assure myself I wasn't completely off the board. authenticpoppy! It's set after the series, buuut…it can be whenever you want it to be. Thanks for the comments you helped me straighten out the last chapter a bit. :)  I love your fic, but I haven't reviewed it because I'm a spooty head.

All of the reviews made me so warm and squishy inside! Thank you everybody!

Wow, wow. I was so unprepared for such a response! Thank you so much! I am afraid to post this chapter because I'm afraid I'll disappoint all of you wonderful people! Edited the last chapter, just some little tweaks here and there.

Disclaimer: I do not own cowboy Bebop.

Thoughts are in italics.

Chapter Two:

Air

Spike watched Faye move across the control room. Without knowing it they had looked for each other, and finding nothing everywhere else, converged on the same room. She touched the glass with two fingertips of her right hand and watched as Mars moved slowly away.

It had been a relatively calm day. Jet was a grump, so they had banned together in search of cheap foods. Camaraderie. What a wonderful thing.

It wasn't supposed to be so easy, she thought. With their eyes, and words with thin veneer, he had given back her anger whole, and she had forgiven him. She had been prepared to fight him tooth and nail, to dig the hole deeper.

"You're still a jackass," she mumbled around the cigarette she had just placed between her lips. Cupping a hand around her cig and lighter she turned her head to watch him move from the shadows and the lighter flicked and her hand glowed briefly.

Like magic, he thought. Easy. Things that had been as big as what was between them weren't supposed to dissipate over cheap noodles. It was too easy. Too anticlimactic.

Ironically, he wondered if his entire life was one unsatisfying anticlimax.

He pulled out a cigarette of his own and bent forward slightly to light it off hers. They stood poised, their cigarettes the bridge between their worlds, as his cigarette flared and he straightened up slowly. They exhaled simultaneously. It felt as if that exhalation breathed out all of their doubts and the last edges of red anger seeped away.

All except one in his mind. Her. There was still one thing unresolved. Her feelings for him. He was fine with them being partners in crime, comrades, friends even. But not ready, probably never for feelings as deep as she felt for him. He didn't feel them back he supposed. He was still unbalanced and shaken a year and a half after. He was trying to adjust in his new situation, or lack of it. Still trying to find out how to feel.

"Do you love me?" he wanted to be sure.

"Does it matter?" she asked and his eyebrows moved a fraction up.

"No."

She winked at him. "Goodnight cowboy," and moved away down the stairs. He sighed and looked again at the receding red planet.  Receding, just like my troubles. Or were they just beginning?

NFA: struggles Auug, it sucked didn't it? Don't chop me into pieces!

More next Sunday if my teachers don't crush me under things to study for finals.

PLEASE REVIEW!