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“I’m hungry,” Spike says. Petulant, a little whiny.
Jet offers him the joint. Instead of taking it, Spike leans forward and takes a hit from between his fingers. His eyes flutter closed as he breathes in, open again as he leans back and exhales.
“You’re always hungry,” Jet reminds him. “And you spent our food money on weed.”
Technically, it was a joint expenditure—ha, joint expenditure. They flipped a coin on it. Spike had been the one to do the spending because he’s good at finding dealers and even better at haggling. The fact that there was nothing left over afterwards wasn’t actually his fault.
But it’s easier to blame him. It always is.
Spike takes another hit, rising up on his knees and crawling towards Jet. Uncharacteristically graceless, his loose limbs topple him into Jet’s lap, although—maybe that’s what he wanted. Jet can never quite tell. It’s one of Spike’s favorite tricks, playacting incompetency.
Then Spike catches Jet by the chin and breathes smoke into his mouth, sharp and dizzying, and Jet stops wondering whether the warm body in his arms is there by any fault of its own and focuses on settling him there.
Jet’s whole world could be just this. Spike, his legs over Jet’s lap, his ass halfway on Jet’s thigh and halfway on the ragged old couch. Spike not even bothering to use his hands anymore, wrapping his fists into the fabric of Jet’s flightsuit and taking hits right from Jet’s hand, Spike’s hazy eyes, Spike’s slack mouth.
“Jet,” Spike says. “Hand?” He uncurls one hand from Jet’s flightsuit and holds it out, trembling just slightly, until Jet laces their fingers together and holds tight.
Spike tries to smile and doesn’t quite make it, leaning forward for the joint again. He grips Jet’s hand hard enough to ache.
They trade hits, ashing into an empty beer can, until there’s nothing left but the roach. Jet sets it down with the others, next to the stack of rolling papers and the almost-empty bag of weed that they bought—that Spike bought—that they bought—with the last of their money. They’ll have to work tomorrow, once they’ve slept this off.
Jet lets go of Spike’s hand, leaning forward to roll a new joint. The later ones are always harder than the first. Harder to roll, easier to take. Gentler. The layers of the high rushing over themselves like waves on a beach.
“Jet,” Spike says, with a distant note of panic in his voice. He clutches at Jet’s arm, jarring him enough that he fumbles with the joint and has to stop trying to roll it to neaten out the line of weed on the paper. The ship’s lowered gravity keeps trying to make it float out of arrangement. “Jet, wait, don’t leave me.”
Jet leans his weight forward and sideways, pressing against Spike’s shoulder. It’s much harder to roll with his head at an angle. “I’m right here.”
Spike’s fingers dig in. He’s trembling. “Don’t let go of me. I’ll get lost.”
Jet centers the paper mouthpiece and keeps rolling. It’s going to turn out crooked, he can already tell, and he can’t be bothered to fix it. “You’re holding me.”
Spike sighs mournfully, slumping against Jet. “It’s only real when you do it.”
Jet looks at him. Spike’s lashes are wet—he looks up at him through them, doe-eyed and so damnably sad. Jet takes his hand again, squeezing tight, and watches as the light spreads across Spike’s face, rises up under his skin, fills him up.
Jet lights up. He’s holding on to Spike, so neither of them will float too deep into the high.
Smoking in space is dangerous. They should know better. They should have stayed onplanet to do this. The Bebop’s artificial gravity is good, almost unnoticeable except when they’re both high, and feeling the way they aren’t entirely anchored to the ground.
Breathing smoke into clouds around their heads, Jet turns to offer Spike a drag of the joint and finds him with tears in his eyes all over again.
“What?” Jet asks.
Spike blinks. A tear spills over his lashline, streaks his cheek. Then another. His body is shuddering—he’s smaller than Jet, and he’s matched him puff for puff. He always does this. Always chases himself higher, like maybe this time he can make himself float past the disorientation and find some way to finally relax.
“I think you take up more space in my life than I do,” Spike says. His voice is utterly somber, shaking with tears.
Jet takes a hit and holds it, then holds the joint to Spike’s lips, fingertips brushing his tear-streaked skin. He watches Spike breathe in, and closes his eyes before he sees the exhale. For a moment they’re both held in suspension, lungs full of smoke.
Spike coughs, hard, as he breathes out. He buries his face in Jet’s shoulder and clings to his hand and his flightsuit and coughs, tears running down his cheeks.
When he’s breathing steadily again, he tilts his wet face up for a hit, and Jet still hasn’t learned how to tell him no, or even how not to do all the work when they do this.
It’s better, Spike tells him, when Jet asks why he likes this, when he never seems to get anywhere with it other than increasingly dissociative, uncertain of where his limbs end and Jet’s begin, rambling about the emptiness in his chest and the dream he’s waiting to wake up from. It’s better, he says, than being so afraid all the time.
Their lives are an endless series of gunfights waiting to break out, everywhere but now. Everywhen but here, with the smoke and the tears Spike never lets out of his chest while he’s sober.
Jet’s fingertips buzz.
I love you, he wants to say. I love you, I love you, I love you. You’re my entire world. Always wants to say. Can’t say—that would scare Spike away.
He just looks at Spike instead, smiles, takes a long hit off the joint and sets it to Spike’s lips.
Which is just the same as saying it, in the end.