Chapter Text
It started, as many situations did on the Bebop, with a bad bounty.
They weren’t even on a case when it happened. They were on their way to Mars to pick up a minor part that the Bebop needed, and anyways, it was about time they had a chance to dock and stretch their legs. But just when they left hyperspace with the red planet in their sights, they were attacked. By pirates with a fat bounty on their heads, no less. The ship was so black it nearly blended with the endless background of space, and it would have been unrecognizable if it weren’t for the giant mural on one side of a woman dressed as a pirate, ass on display as she bent over a treasure chest. The name of the ship, Pirate’s Booty, glared mockingly in bright white letters.
In the past few months, they’d all seen the ship several times on TV, whether they were watching the news or Big Shot. The five-person crew, who had earned the moniker Booty Looters, were one of ISSP’s most wanted for murder, robbery, and transportation of drugs and weapons. The price tag certainly piqued Faye’s interest when she’d first heard about them, but in the end, nobody on the Bebop wanted to pursue it. Difficult bounties hadn’t quite regained their previous appeal ever since Spike’s stint with the Red Dragons. Although he’d recovered physically, the crew had come to an unspoken agreement that they should lay low until they got their bearings back. For months, it had been small fry after small fry, enough to keep everyone fed and entertained. Mostly.
Trouble always had a way of finding its way to them. So it goes.
Faye had no clue what the pirates thought they would gain from robbing a rusty old ship like the Bebop, but it was either fight, or blow up. So she, Jet, and Spike deployed on their zipcrafts while Ed stayed on the Bebop to steer it out of harm’s way and hack her way into the pirate ship. As the battle ensued, their little pocket of space erupted in complete chaos. The Booty Looters used the explosives they were carrying, managing to do some heavy damage to the Bebop and zipcrafts. But between Jet barking orders through the comm, Ed’s hacking, Faye’s missiles, and a well-aimed blast from the Swordfish’s plasma cannon, they had the Pirate’s Booty out of commission.
The easy part was storming the ship and detaining the five members of the crew. All of them were dazed or battered from the explosions, and in no time they had them cuffed and tied together in a pile; they weren’t going anywhere. Figuring out how to transport them was a different story.
“The Swordfish is busted,” Spike said, meeting Jet’s eyes through their helmets.
“So is the Red Tail,” Faye whined. She stomped on a nearby foot in the pile of pirates. The man groaned in pain.
Jet growled. “Damn it. You’re lucky we’ll get enough woos for these guys to fix them.”
Spike raised his hands in the air in a placating gesture. “Hey, this time it wasn’t our fault.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Jet said, switching on the comm link for his suit. “Ed, can you hear me?”
All three adults winced when Ed’s loud voice crackled through their comms. “Sure can, Jet person. Did you catch the bad guys?”
“Yep. What’s the damage to the Bebop?”
“Uhhh…” Ed hesitated, and Jet closed his eyes as he waited for the bad news. “If it weren’t for Mars's orbit, Bebop Bebop would be floating far, far away into space. Ed has no control anymore. ”
“Shit.”
“Shit.” Ed agreed.
Jet thought for a moment, then nodded. “Okay, here’s what we’re gonna do…”
Since the Hammer Head was still operational, Jet would tow the Pirate’s Booty down to the nearest ISSP station on Mars with the bounty heads still inside. Ed would go with him to keep an eye on the pirates using Tomato, with Ein tagging along because the two were inseparable. Faye and Spike were tasked with staying behind to pilot the Bebop until Jet and Ed got back, which really meant making sure it didn’t drift out of Mars’ orbit into the oblivion of space. No big deal.
Faye flew the Red Tail back to the Bebop, barely making it inside the hangar before the engine completely quit. Spike seemed to be in the same predicament, the Swordfish parking ungracefully next to her. They both got out and stared glumly at their ships.
“Fucking pirates,” Spike muttered. For once, she agreed with him.
They stripped off their gear and watched from the bridge as Jet harpooned the Pirate’s Booty and headed for Mars. The sight of them became smaller and smaller until they were no longer visible.
While Spike played around with the main console in a futile effort to get things back online, Faye walked to the galley and grabbed them each a well-deserved beer. She straightened her sore body from the fridge with a can in each hand, and frowned when the ship groaned beneath her feet.
“That can’t be good,” she muttered, rushing back to the bridge.
“Did you feel that too?” Spike asked.
She handed him his beer. “Yeah. Do you know what it was?”
He shook his head, staring hard at the console. “No, nothing here seems…” he trailed off, and bent closer, eyebrows furrowing.
“What is it?”
He pointed to the oxygen gauge. “Look. The Bebop’s oxygen levels are decreasing, which means there’s a leak somewhere.”
“The leak could be anywhere,” Faye groaned. “Did you see how many places we got hit?"
Spike scowled. “Yeah. Maybe I can find it-”
A loud explosion cut him off, and they were both thrown to the floor as the Bebop shook violently. The rumbling lasted for several long, terrifying seconds until the ship settled. When Faye came back to herself, she noted that the room was washed in red from the emergency lights and the console was shrieking an alarm. The back of her head throbbed where it slammed into the metal floor when she fell.
Spike was already on his feet and staring at the console, face grim. Faye pulled herself up with a groan. Her eyes widened when she glanced out the window.
“One of the thrusters just exploded,” Spike informed her. “There must have been a fire from the missiles that hit earlier.”
“Spike, look,” Faye breathed, gesturing to the window.
The force of the explosion had sent the Bebop spinning in circles, away from Mars. Before, Mars was in constant view below them, but each rotation of the ship that granted them a glimpse of the red planet showed it shrinking from view outside the window. They were no longer in Mars’ orbit, and with the Bebop’s damage, they had no control over where they were going
They were drifting aimlessly into space with no way to stop it.
“Things just keep getting better and better, don’t they?” Spike said. He flicked a switch that would send out a distress signal and attempted to contact Jet. The only noise that came through the radio was a crackling static, even when he tried different frequencies.
“Now what?” Faye asked, unable to tear her eyes away from the window. Mars still seemed so close she could touch it, yet she knew they were getting further away with every second that passed. She watched until the spinning made her dizzy.
Spike pulled out his pack of cigarettes, lit one, and offered it to Faye after he took a drag. She inhaled shakily.
“Now we wait.”
That was all they could do, really. They had no equipment or parts to fix the Bebop, and neither of their zipcrafts were in any condition to fly. They just had to hope that their distress signal was received and help was on the way before they drifted too far off the radar, undetected. So they made themselves comfortable on the bridge, dread growing as the hours went by and there were no signs of emergency crews. Faye smoked all of her cigarettes and avoided looking out the window. Spike brooded in the captain’s chair, feet crossed at the ankles as they rested on the console.
Eventually, Faye stood and shoved her hands in the pockets of her loose jeans. She’d taken to wearing them with t-shirts after her memories started to trickle back, suddenly growing sick of the yellow vinyl that was impractical and left little to the imagination. Sometimes, she still wore that outfit if she could use it to her advantage when they were hunting a bounty, but her take-no-shit attitude usually did the trick these days with Spike and Jet backing her up.
“I don’t think anyone’s coming, Spike.”
“No shit,” he said.
Faye’s hands curled into fists in her pockets, and her next words were spoken through gritted teeth. “Okay, smartass. Got any ideas?”
He shook his head. “There’s nothing we can do, Faye. We have-” he paused, sitting up to glance at the console, “-four hours of oxygen left. If no one finds us before then, we’re dead.”
“Don’t we have oxygen tanks in the storage room?”
“That whole side of the ship is unstable. The storage room probably blew up with the thruster.”
Faye fought the growing panic that gripped her by the throat. “So that’s it, then?” she asked, voice tight.
“Yeah,” Spike replied. He sounded relatively unbothered, but she couldn’t find it in herself to be surprised at his aloofness. After all, this wasn’t the first time he’d faced death. He turned to her and tilted his head. “I guess there’s only one thing left to do.”
“What?”
He smirked. “Get drunk.”
Well, she wasn’t about to argue with that.
Minutes later, they were sitting next to each other on the ugly yellow couch in the living room, passing a bottle of Ganymede whiskey back and forth. Who needs cups when you’ll be dead in a few hours, anyway? Faye thought to herself as she took a long swig from the bottle, relishing the burn as it went down.
Before grabbing the booze, Spike set a timer on his comm to keep track of when their oxygen would run out. Every few minutes, Faye would pick it up and check it, until Spike finally ripped it out of her hands and tossed it across the room.
“Stop that. You’re just making it worse.”
“I don’t think I could make this situation any worse if I tried,” she retorted, snatching the bottle from him. Instead of drinking to her heart’s content, she studied the label. “God, this is so depressing. I could think of a million other things to do right now that would be better than this.”
“Like what?” Spike asked. “Cheating at strip-poker so you get to see me naked before we both croak?”
“Ha ha,” she snarked. “In case you forgot, I’ve seen you naked plenty of times from patching up all of your unnecessary injuries.”
“Touché.”
They lapsed back into a sullen silence, disrupted only by the swish of whiskey in the bottle as they drank. It barely did anything to help her relax. She wondered what asphyxiation would feel like in a few hours. Would it be like drowning? Would she feel the same way she did in her nightmares, when she woke up trapped in a cryo tank, unable to breathe? The thought made her shudder.
Spike felt it but said nothing, only shifted closer until their sides were pressed together on the couch. She was thankful for the contact and the small comfort it brought as her mind drifted to their earlier conversation. When he was cleared to leave the hospital and return to the Bebop after his attack on the Syndicate, he’d still been in rough shape. She and Jet took turns changing his numerous bandages when he was still too weak or in too much pain to do so himself, and half the time, he was so out of it from pain medication that he didn’t even know where he was. Yeah, she’d seen him naked enough to last a lifetime, but it wasn’t exactly under the most fun circumstances.
She sighed. All the effort that went into saving that bastard, and it was for nothing since they were both about to die.
“Maybe strip-poker isn’t such a bad idea,” she mused in an effort to escape from those unwanted thoughts.
“No thanks, Valentine. Like I said, you’ll just cheat.”
She pouted. “Aw, Spike, do you really think that lowly of me?”
“Yes,” he deadpanned. The twitch of his lips betrayed him, though, and a moment later they were both laughing quietly.
It was unusual for them to get along so well, to joke without bickering or jabbing insults. Suddenly she wanted to cry. She didn’t know what happened after death—had never really thought about it too much considering her past brushes with it—but she knew she would miss this. She would miss the Bebop, and Jet’s no-nonsense nagging that was reminiscent of an exhausted mother, Ed and Ein wreaking havoc together throughout the ship, and the insufferable man on the couch next to her.
Faye sucked in a wet breath and turned her head away so he couldn’t see what was happening to her. Hot tears rolled down her cheeks freely, and she was helpless to stop it, trying to hide the hitch in her chest as she swallowed.
“Faye?”
She ignored him, staring into a shadowed corner of the room that was barely illuminated by the red emergency lights.
“C’mon, Faye. Don’t cry.”
That pissed her off. Her head swiveled back to face him so fast that something in her neck clicked audibly. His eyes widened when he caught sight of her wet cheeks and angry expression.
“Sorry, not all of us are used to dying on a regular basis,” she snarled.
He sighed, and to her surprise, reached up to cradle her face and wipe her tears away with his thumbs instead of entertaining her with a response. They’d never been close like this, at least not when they were being kind to each other, and it threw her for a loop. The urge to cry faded and she was overcome with a foreign feeling as she stared into those dark, mismatched eyes of his. Was she imagining it, or did he seem just as lost in the moment as she was? Maybe she had brain damage from when she’d hit her head earlier.
His eyes pulled her in, and Faye didn’t know what she was doing when she leaned closer and tilted her chin up. There was a part of her, loud and desperate, that wanted to leave the reality they’d found themselves in, and would do so by any means. Even kissing Spike Spiegel. But he jerked his face away at the last second.
“What are you doing?” he asked, frowning down at her. “Are you drunk?”
She rolled her eyes, still slightly wet. “No!” she snapped. “I’m not drunk, I’m just…”
Terrified. Sad. Lonely.
“Never mind. Forget it,” she said, pulling away. But Spike’s hands still held her cheeks gently, and he wouldn’t let her go far. He slouched until their faces were level, nose to nose, his eyes boring into her with an intensity that she wanted to shy away from.
He kissed her.
It didn’t last long, a barely-there pressure on her mouth before he backed away to look at her again. She reached up to brush a finger over her own lips, hand clumsily knocking into Spike’s where they stayed on her face.
“Was that what you wanted?” he asked softly. He sounded genuinely curious, and she wasn’t sure what to do with that.
So Faye leaned forward for another kiss, and he didn’t stop her, and it escalated from there. She would never admit to anyone that she’d wondered about what it would be like to kiss or touch Spike like this, but it was always a thought she pushed away immediately. Besides, it didn’t seem like it was in the cards with the way he was so hung up on his past and their inability to go a day without fighting over something. It didn’t matter now. They only had one chance, and she was going to enjoy it. For a little while, she wanted to forget the world. How ironic.
She expected Spike to navigate sex with the same wreckless, single-minded intensity he went about nearly everything else in his life, but he surprised her. He got distracted easily, lingered on spots that he wanted to kiss and touch longer until she got impatient and yanked him somewhere else, which he let her do with quiet laughter. She could read him like a book with the way he opened up under her touch. It was almost addicting how responsive Spike was to her attention when he was usually so unfazed. Once, she brushed her hand over the long, raised scar on his torso and he flinched so hard that he almost toppled off the couch. She kissed her apology into his neck and moved her hand elsewhere.
It was good while it lasted. But when it was over, and the dwindling oxygen on the ship became more obvious as they breathed heavily in the aftermath, she was barely holding it together. She steadied herself with two hands on each of his broad shoulders, wanting to linger in the moment for as long as she could.
“I’m scared, Spike,” she finally admitted, refusing to look directly at him.
“I know,” he said. He held her tighter, and they didn’t speak again after that.
The ship was growing noticeably colder. Faye stayed tucked against Spike until she couldn’t stand it anymore, then got up to pull her clothes on. She left to go pee, since her body still demanded the bathroom even close to death, apparently, and grabbed a blanket on her way back to the living room. Spike was dressed when she returned, the abandoned bottle held in one of his hands. She sat down close to him and covered them both with the blanket as best as she could, settling in for the agonizing wait. They drank whiskey until they fell asleep, leaning against each other.
What must have been barely an hour later, they woke at the same time to a call coming through on the bridge and an alert that the hangar door was opening. Both of them scrambled to their feet just as heavy footsteps made their way up from the hangar. The air felt wrong, and Faye swayed in place as the living room door slid open and Jet stumbled through, geared up with an emergency crew right behind him.
Jet was speaking to them, but she didn’t register anything he said over the blood rushing in her ears as the realization that they were being rescued hit her. Her gaze drifted from the people rushing towards them with oxygen masks in hand, to the couch, and lastly, to Spike. His shocked expression must have reflected her own.
They were alive. (Or she was, at least. The verdict was still out on Spike).
She didn’t know if it was the lack of oxygen, the whiskey, or the mere sight of each other, but they both threw up the contents of their stomachs at the same time. Jet could be heard cursing at them in the background.
A silent agreement was made to never bring it up again. Like many other incidents, it was shoved into the overflowing box in Faye’s mind that was not-so-fondly labeled Things Spike and Faye Don’t Ever Talk About.