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In the end it had been something mundane that had done it. Had broken his resolve and the cage around his heart.
She'd been sitting there, doing nothing but existing and Spike had been staring at her until he couldn't take it anymore.
He was terrified. Of his feelings. Of his wants. He'd been terrified since he woke up alive and she was there (always there) taking care of him and giving him the silent treatment and reprimanding him and just being there. He had been feeling this way for a long time now. For a long while he had wanted to pretend it was just a crush. A short infatuation. A temporary luster because she was playing nursemaid (and a damn good one at that considering she was angry at him for his recklessness and didn't hesitate to make her feelings known every second of every day). But that was a lie. He'd been feeling this way since before he left on that suicide mission. He'd felt it in the way his heart had clenched when she asked (begged) him not to go. He hadn't looked back because he knew that if he did he'd stay and that would get her killed. He'd been terrified of these feelings back then too but they had been easier to ignore in the rush and mess.
In truth, he'd first felt this strange terror when he had met Julia again at a place that should have held so much meaning for them both but had realized that instead of feeling angry or heartbroken, he was apathetic. He cared for Julia still but as one cared for any old flame, the way he expected Jet had felt for Alisa back when they went back to Ganymede. But he no longer loved Julia in that all encompassing way that had threatened to break him in the past. The loss of that emotion was liberating but it was also terrifying.
Julia had died in his arms and Spike felt the same despair he had felt moments earlier when they learnt of Annie's death. The loss was the same. Hollow, empty, accepted in a way a sudden shock always is. He had expected his world to cave in if he ever lost Julia. He had waited for it to cave in.
It hadn't caved in.
And then he'd gone back to the Bebop and his heart had leapt with life when Faye had followed him out the door to stop him. It was a truth he'd known since she'd come to rescue him from that madman Le Fou. A truth he'd done his best to ignore. A truth that he could no longer ignore after seeing Julia again. A truth that scared him not because it meant he had to go and face his past but because he didn't want her to die alongside him. A truth that gave him the strength to be stronger than his fear and the resolve to walk away.
The pain of his blood and guts trying to spill out of his abdomen couldn't mask the relief he had felt knowing Vicious was dead. That Ed and Ein would be safe. That Jet would be safe. That Faye would be safe. He had collapsed with a smile and waited to die.
But when he opened his eyes again she was there. She was singing to him in that voice of hers that wasn't off key in the slightest but shook with exhaustion and his heart clenched in his chest again and he had felt a new kind of terror. This terror wasn't for her like it had been when he was afraid the syndicate would come after the Bebop. No, this terror came from not knowing what to do about the emotions that came erupting to the surface as intensely as the searing burn from the wound in his gut. This terror came from knowing little else could distract him now from what he so intensely felt. He couldn’t live in ignorance any longer. And to someone who had spent the last three years running, it was terrifying.
At first he’d done what he did best. Denied the feelings. Pushed them down. Pretended everything was normal. He argued with her and teased her the way he always did, drinking in her expressions with a fear of never seeing her again but with the relief of knowing he would live to see them daily. He dismissed the stutter of his heart as low blood pressure from the blood loss and the flutter in his stomach as the nausea from the iron injections and countless medications.
But it all kept building up. And one day he couldn't take it anymore. Spike could be both reckless and patient in the most bizarre of ways. When his restraint snapped, nothing could hold him back.
He'd been up and about for a month now. He was still weak and couldn't do much, a fact that frustrated him to no end, but he could move about the ship which was better than nothing.
He had come and sat down in the common room for a while. Faye was already lounging on the couch so he sat across from her on the chair opposite. She was busy reading a book, smoking a cigarette, and didn't acknowledge him so he had the perfect opportunity to sit and zone out. He enjoyed doing that a lot these days without the weight of the grief that used to linger. (Truly he had expected there to be more grief. In reality, there was mostly relief.) Except he couldn't zone out when she was there, right in front of him: reading her book, nose scrunched in annoyance as the pages kept trying to fall shut from the way she was trying to keep them held open with a cigarette as a makeshift bookmark. The book was new and the binding tight and she had never been one for effort anyway even as little as exerting extra force to hold open a book.
Spike didn't know what came over him. By all means he should have been able to restrain himself like he had countless times before. He wasn't sure why it was then that the volcano he'd been suppressing chose to erupt at last. He wasn't sure why the wave of adoration for her washed over him simply because her cigarette fell out of the pages again. With a huff of annoyance she picked it up again, glaring at it as if it was somehow the little stick's fault she was having trouble reading, her hair falling in her face from having bent over. He didn’t know what broke that dam but what he did know was that in that moment she was beautiful and in the next moment he was kissing her.
His lips moved against hers in a way he'd been dreaming about kissing her for weeks. Heavy and intense but soft and sweet. He felt her confusion and surprise for a few seconds and she hesitated long enough for him to freeze and pull away but before he could get far she melted into him and he sighed into her mouth as her lips began moving against his in return. They tasted of tobacco but to him they were sweeter and more addicting than any cigarette.
(When did he fall in love again? How hadn't he noticed?)
When he pulled away, her lipstick was smudged and the waxy feeling on his own mouth told him some of it had rubbed off on his own lips. Her eyes were bright with delight and fear and hope and a question that she was too afraid to ask so for once she didn't say anything and waited with a face caught between neutrality and a scowl. She looked so innocent then. So scared. Like the little girl from the betamax tape all grown up but with the steel resolve of Valentine ready to jump to the front again if he made the wrong move. She was being vulnerable with him again. She had already been, more than he deserved from her, during his recovery and before he left to kill Vicious.
Right now, again, she was trusting him. With her heart instead of her life.
(Why did it feel so much more important?)
Spike wished he was a man of words. But the words he wanted to say felt too heavy, felt too soon. He had a feeling she wouldn't believe him if he said them now anyway. He hadn’t done rough to earn the right to them. So he'd wait.
She didn't know it but he'd confessed to her once before, right before he left to challenge death, in words she wouldn't realize were meant to serve that purpose. (He woke up from that endless dream that was perhaps a nightmare. She woke him up. When he awoke she was the one waiting and he wasn't alone anymore.) She didn't know yet that he had learnt how to live again because of her. And she wouldn't know for a while yet. That was fine with him. She'd find out eventually.
The budding feeling in his chest that had been there for months was like a cherry blossom finally forcing itself open in the spring despite the cold in the air. He was alive. He had time (so much time) all thanks to her. He'd wait to say them, those words that were important but so hard to say. He preferred action to verbosity anyway. After how cagey he'd been, he thinks she'd prefer action before words too. But for now he whispered something that maybe surprised her more than those other words would have, words she'd actually believe but would never think he'd set his pride aside for long enough to say. (That any of them on this godforsaken ship would set their pride aside long enough to say.) But she'd said sorry once when she hadn't needed to, her pride set on the ground at his feet. And he owed her more than just an apology.
In her wide-eyed shock, he captured her sweet mouth again, grinning the way he did whenever he teased her and managed to get a rise. She felt that tell-tale smirk on his mouth. Being unable to resist his challenge she kissed him back just as fiercely and it felt like their little back and forth game had taken on another meaning and a new dimension entirely.
("Thank you," he'd whispered.)
He'd spend every day proving he meant it.
("I didn't quite catch that. What did you say again?"
"Nice try, Romani. You heard me perfectly well the first time."
"I'm telling you I didn't!"
"And I know you well enough to know you did, Faye. Just take it and shut up!"
"Make me!")
And he did.