DISCLAIMER ALERT: Do not own Cowboy Bebop whatsoever…
BTW. Yeah, I'm pulling out chapters and pasting in new ones in its place… This unfinished story has been on my computer for WAY too long and I am determined to finish it.. GOOD LUCK TO ME. Hope you all like it. If not, then I sincerely apologize Take care.
When she had won the lottery, Jet was afraid she would blow it all at the Casino. She surprised him by taking him to a ritzy restaurant called "Black Jack" instead. He felt rather sheepish in his typical white suit since it felt tight in the wrong places. It felt conspicuously tighter when she stepped out into the sitting room in a gorgeous sparking gown and killer stiletto heels.
"What's up with you?" she asked him quizzically, watching him stretch his collar for the thousandth time that evening.
"Uh…" he looked up from his T-bone steak. "It's…" He hadn't realized how gorgeous she could look. Her hair was slicked up into a bun, her porcelain skin shone bright in the subdued lighting – and for once she didn't have the haunted/hunted look. She looked content as she intently studied her surroundings.
And why was she giving the manager such a hard time?
"You look beautiful." He said instead, a compliment she received with mixed feelings. There was only ONE man who called her that, and he had probably finished serving his time as a small fry in jail.
But then again, when had any of the men on the Bebop appreciated her? TRULY appreciated her after all the impromptu rescues, the touch of common sense and savvy she contributed to the crew… Ahhh, who am I kidding anyway?
"Thank you." She said instead, her eyes glowing softly. "You would look passably handsome too if you stopped fiddling with your tie." She added, reaching over to adjust it.
His breath caught in his throat when he realized how soft the skin on her inner arms looked, and liked how her eyes had gentled when she said 'Thank you.' He started wondering if he could see more of that Faye if…
"There." She said, patting his tie down. Was he imagining it, or was she letting her hand linger on his chest for a second?
When he looked up, her eyes shone up at him mischievously, implying YES.
Jet's mouth had gone dry. "Ahhh… What are you going to do with your money?"
"Hmm…" Withdrawing her hands, she continued to study the restaurant with a future proprietor's calculating gaze. "After I pay off my debts, I think I'll have enough cash to buy this place."
"If you want to become a restaurant owner, you'll have to be here for most of the time." Jet replied, dreading what that implied for the first time.
She nodded, agreeing. And then leaned forward and crossed her hands on the table in front of her oblivious to the fact that her breasts became more pronounced in her low-cut dress. "I think Alva City is where I'd like to make a new start. Buy an apartment, or a house…"
"Looking at a top-class place like this, I don't think the proprietor will give it away so easily."
"Then I'll make another place like this." She replied nonchalantly. "It doesn't matter, Jet. I've made the manager grovel so now I can move on."
"You seem very serious." He said, uneasy with the new Faye that emerged. Usually she was as transparent as day, but right now her thoughts were hidden in her narrowed eyes. An impulsive Faye with money (A LOT OF IT) was a scary concept.
"You don't believe I can do it." She commented, studying him from the corner of her eye.
"This is Alva City, Faye. It's not Ganymede or Earth where just having money can get you anywhere. It's being rich and having connections to the right people. Something you don't have."
She said nothing, but a beautiful smile wreathed her lips. It seemed to say We'll see about that.
"Besides that… the image of you as a hard-as-nails business woman…" he shook his head as the right words eluded him. "Keeping a business is a gamble, but it's not like the Bebop… You can't just leave whenever you feel like it, Faye."
"I don't want to die being nobody." She stated slowly. There was a tiny word in that sentence that held such a monstrous note of finality for her. The undisclosed part of her psyche missed the damned lunkhead, but no amount of misery and mourning could wipe out that self-absorbed voice in her head that screamed when she thought of it.
Animals did it, Humans did it. Fucking vegetables did it. Why couldn't she accept it?
D-I-E. It was a miniscule word. It could just mean one of a pair of dice, which just meant that it was a gambling implement. That stellar piece of logic she put together one very late insomniac night pacified her for half a day until her overworked imagination asked her – If DEATH is just a die, then what would you be betting with?
"Hell, we're all brought into this world screaming…" Jet replied after a significant pause, stirring the olive around his martini glass without really seeing it. "It's only human to go out screaming too. Life just seems like some horrible surprise party."
He chuckled at his astute observation of life, oblivious to Faye rolling her eyes.
"Je-sus…" she murmured, flipping her hair agitatedly to the side. "I wish you'd just learn a language instead of trimming those bonsais… It gives you too much time to think up horrible fortune cookie sayings…"
Their somewhat peaceful evening went downhill after that.
888
Much to Jet's surprise, the thought of opening a restaurant had stuck with Faye just as tenaciously as her immense debt had. After a mere week of doing basic research aboard the Bebop, she set out to look for an apartment. Faye being Faye, she couldn't just leave the Bebop without complaining about how the dismal poverty-stricken surroundings stifled her creative juices.
Jet knowing Faye, she would have died if she had to stare at the Spike-shaped indentation on the yellow couch any longer. Either that or her feverish theatrical attempts at cleaning the Bebop was a subtle hint that she wanted him to move down to Alva City too.
She was such a kid sometimes.
She directed the construction of her restaurant with an iron fist. Everything had to be JUST SO. Thankfully the restaurant designer she'd hired, Marjorie, had been dying for a challenge. They're made for each other. Jet thought as he watched them flit from soulmates one moment to mortal enemies the next.
Faye rented an apartment, and Jet found himself hanging around Alva City more than he liked. He thought he'd be relieved to find himself alone again, but he found himself gravitating towards this competent woman. Even though she always bailed on him in the past, she did so with the clear desire that SOMEBODY should come and bail HER out. It was a selfish one-way street, but something that he'd become accustomed to. As he watched her pore over designs, chefs, uniforms… food… her independence became more and more pronounced and he felt more and more isolated.
It also didn't help when the bars and restaurants he had to accompany Marjorie and Faye to in the hayday of their 'brain-storming' period were all frequented by the Alva City populace that never ate or saw the light of day. Despite their brittle physique, the haughty demeanor of the spoilt upper class more than compensated for lack of food and water, and he fit in with them like a knuckle-dragging Neanderthal.
At least SHE looks happy. Jet thought as he hulked by the bar and gulped down his whiskey. He noticed with a grimace that it went down as smooth as velvet sunshine, and for a split-second he missed the battery-acid that passed for whiskey on Ganymede.
It seemed that she had become a skilled socialite overnight. Attending social functions by her side (thanks to Marjorie's extensive rollodeck of contacts), Jet couldn't help but compare her to a mob enforcer: she always knew who to hit and how hard.
"How do you do it?" he asked her later as they returned to her apartment. He threw himself on the couch she had just appropriated with a relieved grunt. He relished the new furniture smell. Perhaps he should dump that yellow couch….
"Do what?" she asked, taking off her earrings absently and dropping them on the counter. Her steps were still lively even when she'd been dancing all night in those damned stilettos.
"All of it… The smiling, the laughing, the witty comments…" he admired the arc of her arm as she lazily reached behind her to pull the pins from her hair. "It's like you were born for it."
She shook the silken mass around her head with a sigh, her mouth curved like a cat's.
Not for the first time, Jet found himself studying her… admiring how she wore her perfection and poise with a carelessness and ease rivaled only by Spike.
"It's something my parents were good at." she answered then, plopping herself exhaustedly on the seat opposite. She seemed so happy. "My father was the British ambassador in Singapore. It meant he had to attend a lot of social functions, and my mother had to learn to entertain as well. It's all in here." She tapped her head and winked as she kicked her heels off.
"I bet your father was better at it than me." Jet grunted, helping himself to some whiskey. He walked over to the sliding doors and stared out at the misty night. "So… when did you get your memories back?"
She stopped in her foot-rubbing, surprised that he had asked the question… and then chagrined when she remembered that she had told only one person about it.
A dead space had formed abruptly between them, and Jet was sorry for being the unknowing cause of it.
"Je-sus…"he rumbled suddenly, his voice an explosion in the awkward silence. "Everybody wants…" he groped for one of his wise sayings to make her feel better, but he felt like he was the one who had been offended. "You want to change and be a somebody, but sometimes you remind me so much of Spike. HE seemed like an open book compared to you."
He resisted smashing the glass down on the counter and yanked his boots on before she could actually read his face. "Since you're so eager to leave the Bebop behind, I'm just going to say Goodbye now."
"JET!" She called out, his outburst breaking her from her reverie as she threw herself over the armchair to bar the door. "What are you talking about?"
How did the look of genuine surprise on her face made him feel like an ass? "Just tired." He amended quickly, pasting a fake yawn on his face.
"I forgot to tell you, that's all!" she exclaimed loudly, partly angry that he was being melodramatic and totally scared that she would never see him again. "You don't have to get your panties in a twist about it!"
"And I told you: I'm just tired!" he yelled, scrunching his eyes and attempting to push her away from the door. It had been a long time since he'd overreacted over a woman, and he was damned if he wanted to make another blunder in front of Faye.
"Stop being so stoic, JET!" she screamed again, wrestling with him over the door handle. "Tell me what the hell's wrong!"
The question kept repeating itself as she followed him out into the corridor, demanding, cajoling.. trying to get him to turn around and face her. His silence irritated her so much she fell to hitting, biting and clawing at him. Nothing was ever said between them, between any of them… Why couldn't she make him stay?
"GET OFF ME!" he roared suddenly as the sting of her bite sunk into his neck. Instinctively, his prosthetic arm came sweeping out the side, catching her in the gut and flinging her back against the fire hose case.
Till the day he died, he would always recall the grey marble floors of the Riverside Suites were a blood red.