Cowboy Bebop Fan Fiction ❯ Smoking Lessons ❯ Green all the way down ( Chapter 3 )

Smoking Lessons 4/? (six likely)

By Nix

Disclaimers… wah.. if I owned them Jet would be a demon and Spike an elf.. Faye a vampire.. *wicked laugh*

Warnings: Spike's thoughtful, stream of consciousness.. nudity, stolen bubble bath

Green All the Way Down

Julia held the stack of disks I her hand, thinking about them. A human life certainly took up a lot of space, she could still hold Spike in her hand. Almost everything that Spike was, was right there. "You're sure then that he hasn't died?"

It was a morbid question to ask. She didn't know that she wanted to know. Spike, the name brought back soft and gentle thoughts, but it wasn't practical.

"I am sure that as of thirty-five minutes ago, he lived. They are headed towards my sister's university." Chrysanthemum tried to keep all emotion from her face. "I believe she has agreed to assist them in restoring Patient Alpha's mental structures. I also believe that the nanites may be failing in the abdominal wound."

The risk was entirely too much. Debate flickered between their eyes silently. With a dismissive motion of her hand, she said, "Your loyalty is noted."

Chrysanthemum bowed politely, took three steps backwards, then turned and left. She still had her finger on ice. She had a plan. First, she had to email her twin. There was time for all things to end. The email she sent to her sister was very simple, "Run." And then she ripped her hard drives to removable media and followed her own advice.

On the Bebop ~

Jet had fallen asleep. Spike woke slowly, finding the room dark, the hum of the ship feeling like an island of life amidst the ocean of black that he imagined around them. They were in space, in flight. That made sense to him. He understood flight, in some way that made his blood feel faster, thinner. He rolled over onto his back, head still in Jet's lap. In the dark, eyes open, seeing nothing, not even shadows, he knew what Jet looked like, could see the outline in his mind. The confusion that rose up within him when he thought about Jet felt, he paused in his thoughts to try to identify the feeling and decided new was the best way to describe it. New. But New made it his feeling, his choice.

Even though it didn't really matter, he closed his eyes again, took a slow breath. It was frightening how much pain he could block out, he thought. If he thought about it, accessed his body, he hurt everywhere, hurt bad. It was easy to just shut off the pain though, and then it became some dull ache that told him he ought to … to what? Go home to Jet. Home. That was a thought he liked. Home was like, he sought for the right words to put this feeling into more solid concepts, home was like a place to start. So. Okay. He didn't have a fucking clue about a lot of things, but he was home, and that was more than a lot of people could say. Everyone here obviously cared for him. The woman and this man, Jet, her name… He sorted around in the few take out boxes of memories he had, Faye, Jet and Faye both seemed to have the hots for him, and really, he thought he might be okay with that. It brought a smirk to his lips to realize that he couldn't both get excited and block out the pain, it was one or the other and for right now, he thought he was doing good to lay here in the dark and think.

He didn't know where they were going, but the vibration of the ship, came up from the engines, through the floor, through the couch, and into his body like the subtle kind of endless roar. It said they were in motion to him. He liked that too, liked going away from where they were. Going forward, he thought, taking a deeper breath. Events had fallen over him in the last, what? Day? Had it been a day? Like a building coming down on his head, one floor dropping onto another, he hadn't been able to get a handle on what would come down next. He knew for a fact he didn't like living like that.

Trying not to wake up Jet, he lifted his shirt and explored his belly, slipping fingers under the gauze. The skin was open from his left side, just below the ribs, all the way across, until it went just a little deeper on his right side. He couldn't imagine anything that would make that kind of wound and to make it worse, he was pretty sure it had been about four cm deep all the way across. What the hell had done that? Done it with this little arch to it, like… like something swung right across the front of him? He lifted an arm and ran a hand through his hair, fingers going back all the way until they touched Jet's leg, then just paused. Whatever it was he'd done, it had hurt Jet a lot. Jet, Faye, and the kid.. uh, Edward, they'd all been acting like the world was ending, like someone had ripped their guts out. It had been something that he'd done that had done that to them, because they cared about him.

Too much thinking, he decided and sat up. The protest of his stomach made him close one eye and focus on his breathing for a few breaths. Jet spoke in his dream, nothing intelligible, just a mumble. Spike reached out, trusting himself to find the right distance, and traced his fingers down one bushy side burn, finding it much softer than he'd thought it would be.

"Spike?" Jet asked, waking enough to reach out for him.

It made Spike smile. He reached out to the large hand searching for his head, scratched the back of it, and said, "I'm here. Just got to get up and go to the can, uh?"

"Need some help?"

"Hell no," Spike said, feeling a smirk slip over his face. And even if he did need help, he sure as hell wasn't going to ask from a guy he kinda liked, kinda felt his blood go fast for. "I'm fine."

"You sure?"

Spike realized that Jet was still sleeping, mostly. He stood up, yawned. "Yeah, I'm fine."

"That's good." Jet said, now finding more room on the couch and stretching out himself.

And so he stood there, in the dark, feeling something warm drip down under his waist band. He laced his fingers behind his head, lips formed together like he was going to.. what? Whistle, that's what it was. The past.. the past was gone. He turned, found he knew the exact number of steps to the stairs, and knew the direction to the can. There were two, he realized, as he paused at the top of the stairs in the dark. One that was just a can, with a door. The other had a bathtub. Remembering that, the tub, that was like smelling bacon and eggs, which he now knew he liked very well. A tub was almost as good as sucking on a cigarette, yeah. Which he wanted another one of, very much, but not enough to wake someone up and ask.

No, he wanted the tub, and to take a good look at himself. Down the ladder, through a corridor that he hoped didn't have anything that wasn't supposed to be there, and then, into the bathroom. It smelled like roses and soap, and laundry that wasn't quite dry. The light switch was… and he let his hand reach out, trusting his muscles to know, even if he didn't. He smiled as a warm yellow light filled the room, and shut the door with his foot.

A minute later he opened it again, and threw out three pair of underwear, a lacy bra, and a pair of yellow shorts. He smirked at himself in the mirror, felt guilty for throwing the clothes out, but not guilty enough to pick them up. She said he was an asshole, and he really didn't want to disappoint her. He hung his jacket up on the line where her panties had been, then his shirt too, after he washed as much of the blood as he could out of it.

It was a bit more serious, as he unwound the gauze, wanting to see this wound. It was going to scar, he though, dropping the bloody wrapping into a small pink plastic trash can. He still could not imagine what could do this kind of wound. He turned and examined his back in the mirror, looking for other scars, wounds. He supposed the little round puckery spots on his body had been bullet wounds. A talent for pissing people off, he wondered. There was a short narrow scar on his shoulder, both front and back. Something had gone clean through, he guessed. Something that he couldn't imagine.

Leaning close to the mirror, he searched his face, both eyes, which were different colors and seemed quite odd, quite the wrong color to him. The woman had suggested he colored his hair, but he couldn't find any roots. It was dark dark jade all the way down and so were his eyebrows. He didn't have much hair on his chest, just two little pink circles. One of those was messed up a bit by the short narrow scar, but really, he wanted to see if his hair was green elsewhere.

So off came the shoes and pants. Leaning his back against the sink, using the light to make sure, he decided he didn't color his hair. It was green all the way down and curly, disorderly, and a little matted around the edges with blood that didn't know where it belonged.

He had skinny legs, he decided, long skinny legs. At least the hair on them was paler, a softer green. Holding to the edge of the sink, he closed his eyes, drew one knee to his belly, then slowly extended it out, up higher than his head, foot angled so the impact would be at the very side of his foot. He held the kick until his stomach threatened dire revenge, then shook out the tension and did the same kick on the other side. Balance, he thought. Balanced was good.

The plug went into the tub and was quickly followed by hot water, and a generous splash of rose bubble bath, which he highly doubted was his. It stung too, which he supposed he deserved, as he sank down into the warm water and bubbles. Arms on the edge of the tub, feet hanging out the other end, and everything in between covered with pinkish rose colored bubbles, he felt damn happy and it would be perfect if he just had a cigarette!

Jet woke to find Spike gone and he refused to admit this feeling was panic. There was water running though and he stood outside the bathroom in the dark, listening to Spike hum and the panic faded away. Spike was Spike after all, and Jet smirked into the dark. There really wasn't much that could break Spike. So he walked off, leaving him to his bath. They'd be coming out of the gate in an hour anyway.

Faye was the next one to find her way to the bathroom. Barefooted, she also found her panties. Which she scooped up as she ground her teeth. Her room was close enough to the bathroom and had plenty of light to show the nice large dark footprints in the silk of her most intimate bits. "ACHHHHH!"

Jet instinctively looked innocent, even if he were in the kitchen and far away from anything that could have gone wrong. It made things sound pretty normal though, Faye's stream of cursing at them both. Normal was good.