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They’re refuelling on Mars in late November when Spike smacks a piece of paper down on the table in front of Jet.
Two or three items down what turns out to be a grocery list, Jet realizes what it’s for.
“Early this year, huh?”
Spike lights a cigarette and doesn’t say anything. There’s a tension in his frame—a slight, silent fear of judgement that rears his head around all of his holidays.
The way he managed to explain it, when Jet asked him, somewhere in the realm of a year ago—it had been Yom Kippur, which retroactively explained everything about Spike’s piss-poor mood—why he kept trying to bite Jet’s head off, was that it was genetic. The fear was an heirloom.
Hell of an inheritance, Jet had replied. It made him ache, a little; the hurt written into Spike’s heart, layered deeper than the scars he’d earned himself. Spike had just shrugged and said he was grateful he had an inheritance at all.
Jet can’t understand, not really, but it sounded to him a little like the reason he wore his arm—a double-edged blade of remembrance and haunting.
“Why don’t you go?” Jet says, when Spike just stands there, smoking.
A strained smile pulls at the corner of Spike’s mouth. “Because they’ll clock me, Jet,” he says. “Right away. And then it’ll be embarrassing and uncomfortable when it turns out I don’t talk the talk.” He chuckles under his breath. “They’ll just think you have a nice Jewish girl at home.”
Jet scoffs. “You’re not all that nice,” he says.
It does what he hoped it would—Spike tips his head back and laughs, and the tension snaps like a rubber band.
With mirth still glittering in Spike’s eyes, their gazes meet.
“Thanks,” Spike says.
And what the hell can Jet do in the face of that, other than anything Spike asked?
So he takes the list and goes out.
It’s not actually that difficult to find a Kosher market in Tharsis, and it’s not, as Jet feared from Spike’s muttering about having to talk the talk , mono- or even duo-lingual. For as insular as the various Jewish communities are, especially off of Earth, they’re perfectly warm and welcoming, especially once he mentions Spike. Jet leaves with everything on his list and more.
Spike is already waiting by the doors of the hangar when Jet lands the Hammerhead . He divests Jet of slightly less than half of the bags and hightails it to the kitchen, Jet following, as always, after.
It turns out that Spike can cook. He needs to be reminded to turn the heat down and not be impatient, but he isn’t entirely incapable of it—he just usually doesn’t care enough to bother.
He cares about this, though; he’s intent and bright-eyed as they work, transforming Jet’s acquisitions into a grand spread of food, arranged across the countertops. There wasn’t enough money for brisket or chicken, so dinner is nothing but side dishes—and a feast for kings all the same.
The latkes don’t last long—they get into a debate while the challah is rising about sour cream or applesauce, and endless taste-tests to prove one point or another deplete the plate entirely.
That’s fine, though—when they sit down to dinner there’s the right-from-the-oven-warm challah, and matzo ball soup, and roasted vegetables, and the little jelly donuts that almost didn’t last until dinner either, not when Spike was eating them as quickly as Jet could fill them with jelly, up until Jet smacked him and told him to go braid the bread and stop hogging the fried food.
They eat. There’s no money left, not after this, but Jet doesn’t give a damn, not when Spike is incandescent with being indulged. Not when they sit and play dreidel, trading gelt back and forth until sunset, at which point Spike drags Jet to the Bebop’s cockpit and shows him the menorah.
It’s all the more sentimental for being a scrap-heap of a thing, twisted together from old ship-parts and wires, welded almost-evenly, magnetized to the dashboard so that it’ll shine out the windscreen.
Jet hands Spike the pack of candles that had been the last item on his shopping list, underlined twice, and lets him light the first night’s candle, listening close to the mumbled, indistinct prayers.
It’s not his religion, not his story, but Jet still thrums brightly with it, as Spike pockets the lighter and takes a few steps back, straight into Jet’s arms, letting himself, for once, be held, as they stand in silence and watch the candles burn.
They’re alive. Alive, alive, alive.