On one occasion, Spike Spiegel walked into the meeting room, spread his arms, and proudly proclaimed, "I can't die." There was a calm smile on his face, and blood seeping out of a wound hidden under his pale yellow shirt. Jet barely had time to leap off of the sofa before Spike was tipping forward, eyelids listing, smile turning into something gentle as he fell.
Jet caught him, ran and got some medical supplies, patched him up in silence, and let him have the couch to rest. Just like he did every time. He sat and watched him with tired eyes for a while, chin in his hand. There wasn't much to be said to a man unconscious.
Jet had watched him smoke on many occasions. He smoked with him and felt something like nostalgia; he'd never had any kids of his own. Not that it was too late for all that, but he couldn't foresee himself settling down any time soon. The one woman he'd wanted to be with forever had vanished from his life in one abrupt moment. He'd wanted kids with her. He'd wanted a life with her. As far as he could see, there wasn't anybody else.
The age difference between he and Spike was wide enough that sometimes Jet looked at him like a son. He was only a few years shy of thirty now, and the age was just barely starting to show on his face. In certain lighting, he looked a little older than he was. In others, he looked younger. Sometimes Jet thought about what he might look like in his forties- or his fifties, even.
"You're the one giving me wrinkles," Spike muttered once with a chuckle when Jet said something along these lines. He'd closed his eyes and flicked some ashes off onto the breeze.
"Hey, I take offense to that," Jet replied with a quiet laugh from the deck of the Bebop, "You sure it's me and not our line of work?"
Spike said nothing for a moment, looking off at the horizon. Jet let him collect his thoughts, watched as he smirked and snickered.
"Nah," he said nonchalantly, "I've had worse."
"You were thinking about my cooking, right?" Jet laughed, and Spike laughed harder.
. . .
"What the hell was all that gunfire?!" Jet had blustered, limping down the hall towards Faye, who was still crouching in Spike's wake, "Faye? You alright?"
"I'm fine!" Faye had snapped, staggering to her feet. "It was me. I'm fine."
"Why were you shooting?" he barked, looking around like he might see some invisible threat, eyes lingering on the bullet holes in the ceiling and widening. "Dammit, Faye..."
"I just," she grimaced at the grating below her heeled boots, fresh tears welling up, frustration and anger blooming in her expression, "Spike just left. He's going on some suicide mission."
"He'll be back," Jet snapped, despite a growing dread that had opened up in his gut, "He's done shit like this before."
Faye just shook her head and shouldered past him, a high, hitching breathe her only response as she disappeared around the corner and into the dim halls of The Bebop. The lights overhead flickered for a moment, and Jet slowly turned from watching her exit to looking back up at the ceiling. Some of the cables had been damaged by Faye's gunfire. He watched the wires spark in time with the lights, then cursed.
"Something always has to be going wrong," he growled, tone a little strangled, then limped away to look for his toolkit.
As he went, he heard the sounds of the hangar door grinding open. The noise of the Swordfish's jet stream as it flew off would linger in his ears for weeks.
. . .
"What's a kid like you doing just floating out here?" Jet had said when they first met, voice even but booming in the hangar of the Bebop, and Spike's smile had twitched with irritation as he fell more than climbed out of the Swordfish and staggered to prop himself up against it. Jet kept his distance, arms crossed, gun in one hand, and he watched the other man pull a crumpled cigarette out from the inside of his trench coat. Some tobacco drifted down to the metal floor.
"Kid, huh?" he muttered, sticking it in his mouth and then fishing around in his pockets, presumably for a lighter. "Well, thanks for the pickup, anyway. Won't be here long, but I'll try to stay out of your hair."
The Bebop seemed to shake slightly at that moment from some small impact. It was a common occurrence, so Jet didn't flinch, accustomed to events like this and knowing the difference between the rumbles of an attacking ship and the rumbles of some mostly harmless rock. It seemed to scare Spike, however, who suddenly flinched, his expression turning tense and alert, his hand jerking upward and flinging his lighter from his pocket to the hard floor below. As Jet disregarded any thoughts of hull damage and made a mental note of this reaction, an overhead light swayed from side to side, and as it shook, it reflected off of his bald head, which he lowered, eyes closing, brow twitching.
"Heh. Alright, yeah, sure," he said, and then opened his eyes to see where Spike's lighter had landed. It was broken from the impact, or maybe it had been in bad shape to begin with. Lighter fluid was leaking out, and when he looked up again, Spike was also staring at it, expression unreadable, though lined with weariness and some unknown pain. "That lighter mean something to you?" he asked.
"Huh? Uh, no," Spike said, glancing up at him, then turning and leaning heavily against his ship, expression more controlled now. "I just... haven't had a smoke all day."
Jet watched him for a moment, then frowned up at the ceiling, where the lights were still swaying. He watched them start to slow, then holstered his gun at his hip.
"In any case, it's like I said," Spike was muttering as Jet approached him, reaching into his pocket, "I won't stay long- Uh-" Spike straightened against the Swordfish slightly, expression wary, but all Jet did was hold out a lighter, flicking it to let the small flame flare to life between them. Spike met his gaze, and Jet grinned.
"I know what that's like," he said emphatically, and Spike leaned forward, brow creasing slightly as he lit his cigarette. "But you should know, I used to be a cop," he went on, and watched Spike flinch again and tense up, leaning back as he inhaled and Jet closed his lighter, "So if you've got a bounty on your head, or you're running from someone, you'd be better off letting me know now. I don't harbor criminals."
Spike blew out an irritated plume of smoke, almost glaring at him.
"An ex-cop turned bounty hunter, huh?" he said, then sighed and closed his eyes, took another drag and seemed to relax a little, "Well, I'm not running from anyone and there's no bounty on me," he said through the next breath of smoke, tone aggressive, "Alright?"
"Hey, calm down there," Jet said, putting his lighter away, "I might think you're lying to me."
"I've had a rough day," Spike replied instantly, "and this is the last thing I need right now. There's really no bounty on me, and I'm really not running from anyone. Not hiding, either."
"Alright," Jet said, "I wasn't trying to make you angry. I was just letting you know."
"Message received," Spike grumbled, and Jet stared at him quietly for a moment.
"What's your name, anyway?" Jet asked, putting his hands on his hips, "You can call me Jet. Jet Black."
"Spike," the other man responded without hesitation. "My name's Spike Spiegel."
"Well, Spike," Jet replied, turning slightly as if to leave. "I'll believe you for now, but if you're lying, it's like I said. I don't harbor criminals. No matter what your circumstances might be." Spike huffed.
"Guess what they say is true," he growled quietly, "A dog really is just a dog."
Jet boomed out laughing at this, which startled Spike again, but he didn't bother to explain. He turned and left him in the hangar with a wave over his shoulder.
"It's like you know me already!" he called back, and didn't look to see Spike's reaction.
. . .
Loud but silent at the same time, it really was like a scream in space, and it happened just like Bull said. He felt it, fought it, limped around for a week longer than he should have afterwards. It was the quietest loss he'd ever known, and he thought it might echo forever.
"Why didn't I go with him?" Faye was mumbling miserably from the yellow chair, outfit slightly askew, hair unkempt like she hadn't bothered to wash it in a while. She had her palms pressed against her eyes, and Jet was sat across from her, expression unreadable as a cigarette burned on his lip. "I could have... I wanted to... I just..."
"Don't beat yourself up," Jet said when she trailed off, voice low, monotone. His gaze was unblinking, and when she peeked at him, she flinched. "If I hadn't gotten myself hurt, I could have gone, too."
"But I was fine," she protested, "He told me you guys needed me, he told me you were injured, and you know what I did? I went home," she went on, voice raising, "Thinking that somehow, something would still be there. And what if it was?"
Jet stared at her, and she shook, expression crumbling, then buried her face in her hands again. He looked down, reached up to slowly take the cigarette out of his mouth and flick the ash on the tabletop.
"Sorry, Faye," he mumbled, watching the ashes float across the table while the fan turned overhead. "It's not your fault. He was going after the whole Syndicate. You know a guy like him wouldn't have let you come along... Hell, maybe you would've ended up just like him."
She kept crying anyway, until he eventually got up and convinced her to come outside with him. They were docked on Mars, waiting for the cops to have them ID Spike's body.
Should be sunset just about now. It looked beautiful over the water.
. . .
"Oh, I've had worse than your cooking, too," Spike was saying through a chuckle, crushing the butt of his cigarette between his fingers. He flicked it over the edge and watched it land in the bay below.
"Yeah, I bet," Jet replied, dropping his to crush under his boot. He left it where it lay.
"Haven't put much thought into what I'd be like when I'm older, anyway," Spike said, still looking down into the water, "not much to what I'd look like either."
"No, I get it," the passing breeze cooled Jet's skin. He looked out over the city skyline, the burning sun hanging low in the sky. "I didn't either, not until I looked in the mirror one day and- bam! Suddenly realized I wasn't the same as I used to be."
Spike hummed and put his hands in his pockets.
"Well, you appreciate those looks while you got 'em, at least," Jet went on, also watching the waves dashing against the port below. "Appreciate yourself too, yeah? You're really not invincible."
He got no response, and he tried not to think about it too hard. Spike was a quiet guy. He sometimes got like this on the regular, stopped talking and started brooding instead. If Jet had to put money on it, he'd bet it was about a woman, but he wasn't about to ask.
"Hey," he said after a moment, and Spike glanced at him. He lifted his prosthetic arm and showed off the robotics in the golden light. "Take my word for it, alright?"
Spike looked at his arm for a moment, expression blank, and then his face cracked into a grin. He snickered quietly, then started to walk away, and Jet turned.
"What's so funny?" Jet asked, voice wavering with a laugh. "This was really traumatic!"
"Don't act like you don't love that thing," was what Spike called over his shoulder.
"Hey, I'm serious here," Jet said, walking along after him and patting the prosthetic. "This arm is a reminder. Sometimes you lose something and you can't ever get it back, you know!"
Spike stopped dead in his tracks. Jet slowed to a stop behind him.
"Yeah," Spike said after a few beats, voice low. He glanced over his shoulder at Jet, expression drawn. "I'll keep that in mind."
They looked at each other in silence, and then Spike slowly left. Jet decided not to go after him. Sometimes a man needed to be alone.
He walked back over to the edge of the deck instead. Kicked his cigarette butt into the water.