#bebop crew

Despite Jet not being as prickly about kids as Spike pretends to be, fatherhood rarely comes up as something he’s ever earnestly considered nor aspired to seemingly even during his relationship with Alisa long ago. Even from what we hear about their disillusionment, the subject of family-building isn’t highlighted as being related in any way to the friction between them when they were together or if it was it was negligible.

So even though Jet drifts into a pseudo-paternal role from a few times pre-Edward, I still grin at the moments he straight up kinda just acts like a dad when Edward finally does enter the picture. From listening to (& forgetting) Ed’s requests for souvenirs, to telling her myths & fairy tales including going so far as adopting a slightly whimsical vocal cadence similar to what teachers & librarians often use when they read aloud to children, to letting Ed cling to his shoulders when the Bebop’s internal gravity is off so she can get pulled along while floating behind him.

Heck, due to certain events in one of the last few episodes, Faye & Ed both return to the Bebop in a noticeably uncharacteristic mood and Jet pulls the classic clueless but loving dad move of cooking for his daughters for them believing their sourness is the result of hunger 😂

Also one the best & very hilarious bits of the episode: Brain Scratch has Jet & Edward posing as father & daughter, both dressed to the nines & spinning a BS sob story all in an effort to get access to a hospital room for an investigation.

***

"Whatcha doing, Faye-Faye?" Ed queried as she scampered over the dunes to where the older woman was using a stick to swiftly write words onto the wet sand before the surf washed up to erase it all away.

Faye glanced at the girl as she paused, stick held slightly aloft, and then looked at the others. Spike sat on the beach nearby with his feet soaking in the salty water, occasionally picking up small pebbles to skip across the surface of the ocean. Jet was stretched out on a sheet they had brought from the ship, Ein dozing at his side while he tanned. Neither seemed to be paying any mind to the girls.

"Writing messages to be washed away." She replied. "You can do it too. Purge out all the sad and the bad and what makes you mad. Release the negativity. It's not healthy to keep stuff bottled up inside... Here at the beach you can just... Let it all go..."

"Hmmm." Ed nodded thoughtfully. "This is true. It isn't good to hold onto things that hurt. Buuuuuuut... Hmmm.... Faye-Faye, are you open to change?"

Faye's brow wrinkled into a frown. She cast another glance at the guys. Jet was snoring in tandem with Ein but Spike was now watching her and Ed. He raised his brows at her as if curious about her answer as well.

Biting her lower lip, Faye decided to be bold. Spike's interest was hardly something to spook her. Rather, it seemed like an opportunity to impart some much-needed wisdom on the fool.

"You have to change in life, kid." She said to Ed. "If you can't adapt then you won't survive. Everything changes and we gotta roll with the punches too."

Ed beamed at her and held out her hands for the stick. "Very good!" She cheered, sounding like a school teacher impressed with a student. "Ed suggests we write good things in the sand instead! Optimistic things! Hopes and dreams! We can put that energy out into the universe so the tide can bring back all the hopes in whatever beautiful form we need."

The teen immediately set to scratching letters into the sand with a giddy laugh. Faye watched with a bemused smile and tried to ignore the butterflies that began to dance in her stomach when Spike rose from his lounge position to stand at her side.

Woolongs

Piyoko

Feast!

Engine parts

Ammo!

Adventure!

Love!

Spike chuckled. "Well, she has some good ideas there. We could use all those things, I'd say."

Blushing, Faye gave him a considering look out of the corner of her eye. "Is that so?"

He flashed her a confident grin. "I know so. Ed, lemme see that stick."

"Yo-kay doe-kay!" She grinned, sized up the space between them, and hurled it at him like a javelin.

"Whoa!" Spike yelped as he snatched the projectile. "Thanks." He told her with sarcasm heavy in his tone.

Ed chortled. She gave a salute before dashing out into the waves to kick at the water as if to send it back out to sea.

Spike looked at Faye again before setting the stick into motion in the sand.

Thanks to @bebopcrew for the prompt list! This one takes place about ten years before the events of the series, and slightly before Spike joined the Syndicate—I used this timeline from The Cowboy Bebop Attic, which places Spike’s Syndicate years at about 2061-62 to 2068. This fic turned out WAY longer than I planned, and I stayed up WAY later to write it than I'd hoped, so apologies if some of it makes no sense at all, but I had fun with it!

Okay, so technically speaking, Spike didn’t have a real spaceship’s license yet. And technically speaking, this wasn’t even his ship. One could even say he’d stolen it. But did it really count when it was from the garage of one of those crazy Martian billionaires who probably had fifty identical, sleek and newly-purchased ships in their garage? They wouldn’t notice this one was missing at all.

Spike had engaged in petty thievery before, sure, but this was different. This was the big leagues. A ship of his very own—now that he’d wiped the tracking and identification as best he could with his shoddy, hodgepodge tech skills—opened up whole new worlds to him, literally. After seventeen years of being stuck on Mars, hopping ineffectually from city to city whenever he could hitch a ride, he’d crossed a Hyperspace Gate for the very first time and, after some annoying waiting, was by a whole new planet in a matter of minutes.

Once he arrived, it was an adventure in itself to try and navigate the overlarge ship past all the debris and space junk that circled Earth, almost like an old video game. And then he could see it, the pockmarked blue marble floating in space. A whole new planet. Although he was alone, he couldn’t help but give a low whistle at the sight. He wasn’t given to poetry, but he had to admit a sight like this would be breathtaking to anyone.

And the flying itself! Okay, so technically he’d never been in a ship’s cockpit before, but it wasn’t too hard to figure out the controls. He’d driven a car, and the mechanics of this weren’t too different. But flying? It was light-years away from driving.

He loved everything about it: the way the stars raced past him in the cockpit window, the whooshing sensation of freefall in his stomach as he dipped and glided and spun just for the hell of it, the way the ship responded beautifully to his every little touch to propel him faster and faster into the darkness as he whooped in delight. The way no one could find him or catch him way out here. It was freedom, so much more than he’d thought he’d had before on the streets, so much more than he’d even thought possible. It awakened dormant parts of him he didn’t even know existed.

It was bliss.

That is, until he pushed too hard and too fast—or maybe the dumb ship’s controls responded too well—and found he’d somehow fucked up. The ship was rapidly losing power and altitude, careening down towards Earth.

Shit, shit, shit! Spike wrenched at the controls and pushed frantically at all the buttons he could reach, pretty much at random, trying desperately to silence the beeping warnings that flashed all around him in the cockpit. And maybe it slowed down his entry speed a little. But it didn’t stop the warning signs from flashing faster and faster and more urgently, and for Earth’s surface to grow larger and larger below him. And eventually all Spike could do was curl up in the cushy pilot’s seat and brace for impact as best he could.

The ship crash-landed at what had to be a horrific angle, leaving a trail of cratered dirt and debris up until its final resting point. Rocks and detritus rained down, marring the ship’s perfect surface and adding another strain to the deafening noise. Airbags deployed all around Spike, burning against his skin. For the first few minutes, Spike wasn’t entirely certain he’d survived.

Figures. My first-ever real taste of freedom, and I almost die not even twenty-four hours in.

Well, if he really was dead, at least they couldn’t catch him for stealing that ship.

~~~~~

Midnight

Midnight aboard the Bebop is loud. Faye had figured that out shortly after she comes on board. Neither of the men sleep. Once Ed joins them, sleep schedules seem to be a thing of the past. Wandering through the Bebop after dark is another experience entirely. The ship seems louder in the quiet space that passes for evening on the ship.

In truth, their sleep schedules are so messed up that the clock striking twelve doesn’t mean much in reality. They hunt bounties when they’re available. Eat when there’s food and sleep where they drop more often than not. 

So to find Spike awake as the clock strikes midnight isn’t that unusual. Faye settles in to their usual routine when they both can’t sleep. She stares at the coffee in the pot as if it has all the answers to the universe. 

It stares back and says nothing.

It taunts her in its silence. 

Pouring the coffee into two cups, she throws a splash of milk into hers before she makes her way to the observation deck. When she sees Jet settled next to Spike she sighs.

Handing over both cups of coffee to the contemplative men, she returns to the kitchen to make her own cup.  When she joins them again, a soft jazz record is playing through the speakers and neither man looks like they’ve moved a muscle. 

Sighing, Faye plops down next to Spike and pulls out her cigarettes, lighting one before she inhales deeply. Spike pulls out his own pack and leans closer, using her cherry to light his own smoke. When he exhales it’s into her face and Faye inhales the smoke deeply before she coughs.

He’s not smoking a cigarette. 

She’d been so tired she hardly noticed.

But sleep doesn’t come easy. Not when the money’s not rolling in. Bounties have been hit or miss lately. They’re all tired and beyond ready for a large payday. 

She thinks of running. 

Running so far that nothing could stop her.

Not even Spike Spiegel. 

She wants to run. 

Something in the way Spike looks at her stops her train of thought in its tracks. 

“Running doesn’t solve anything, you know.” His words are spot on and she glares in his direction before she steals his coffee and nearly drains it.

A small price to pay for being so rude, all things considered. He seems nonplussed about it, simply stealing her coffee with that infuriating smirk on his face. 

“It gets me out of here.” Not a lie. Jet gives her a long, hard look before he laughs. 

“Yeah, but you’ll be back. You always come back.” He inhales on his own cigarette before giving her a pointed look. “Wonder why that is?” 

Faye can’t answer him.

That’s enough of an answer on its own. 

A watch ticks slowly. Counting down the minutes.

Time is meaningless of nights like these.

There’s nowhere to go.

Nothing to do. 

No money to do anything if they wanted to.

So they sit and they smoke. They watch the stars overhead. 

The Bebop Crew from Cowboy Bebop collectively shares one brain cell!

Jet tries to help

For the @bebopcrew birthday celebration and for @eclaire-and-pocky and any other JetxFaye fans here 😘

***

"You're too tense." Jet informed her, voice hushed to reflect the nighttime hours currently being observed on the ship. "If this isn't okay..."

Faye shook her head back and forth in the negative. "No! No, this is good!"

She tried to focus on the attentive blue eyes of the man holding himself poised above her with the strength of his arms, both metal and flesh. She was delightfully bracketed by those powerful limbs and it was both a turn on and a relief. To have someone so tough on her side, looking out for her, protecting her when need be - even when she protested or pretended to be fine on her own...

"Ya gotta hush your thoughts, Faye. Just concentrate on how I'm making you feel. This doesn't have to mean anything, just relax." Jet went on, clearly under some delusion about where her head was at and what her intentions were with him.

"It does though. You're long term. Commitment. Dedication." She tried to explain.

He was no one night stand and that terrified her. Despite how long she'd been aboard the ship, it was still nerve-wracking to consider staying indefinitely. Not because she had better prospects out there and not because she was bored here and not because she didn't find him incredibly attractive.

A man who could cook, and clean, and wage war on your behalf? A man who could sew, and do laundry, and take care of a pet and feral child? A man who could kill or coerce confessions or play whatever role might need to be played... Her mind jumped back to how good he looked in his white suit when she first saw him as they fled the casino and then jumped again to the masquerade ball where he'd dressed as a hippie and then jumped again to him all greased up in his flight suit while elbows deep in machinery to ensure they could fly and fight and survive in space.

He was it. The whole package. And who was she to deserve that?

She wore revealing clothes and smoked cigars and could blow through a pack of cigarettes in a day. She drank and cursed and lied and cheated and stole. She couldn't keep a dollar to save her own life. She literally took the dog's food and ate it in front of him. What kind of person behaved in such a way? What kind of person could devote themselves to this wonderful man when they were so awful themselves?

She couldn't trust herself not to cut and run. She wanted to think she could be better, especially now that she had unlocked the mysteries of her own mind and had memories of being a better person when she was who she was before. But could she ever truly reconcile that Faye with who she had become? Could she ever be good enough for this spectacular man?

"You're thinking too loud." Jet insisted, sidestepping her declaration.

"You're the safe bet. The one I'm most scared to make." She confided at last. "I just... Don't want to gamble with your heart." She made a scoffing sound that came off a little wet due to the emotions she was trying to conceal or at least control. "I'm so inconsistent. Unreliable. I'm not worth the risk."

There. She admitted it. A truly vile woman would have simply taken the pleasures he was offering and dipped out in the middle of the night. She had to give herself a little credit for being brave enough to call herself out. To remind him of the mistake he was about to make and to do so in time for him to save himself instead.

But Jet just stared down at her with those brilliant blue eyes. He let the silence stretch on as he fixed her under his gaze, scanning over her features with a solemn expression on his face. She could understand how criminals would balk in interrogations with him. Why bounties froze when he leveled his gun and that hard eyed stare at them.

She was pinned in place and sure that he could read her thoughts - maybe even catch a glimpse of her rotten soul.

And then his lips crooked up into a sort of half smile and he bowed his head down to press a kiss to the corner of her mouth.