Fragments (Spike/Julia)
A/N: Written for the prompt Cowboy Bebop, Spike/Julia, broken glass, broke and hungry, broken hearts, and broken bones at the The Doomed Ship Comment Ficathon. This is basically my first time writing this pairing. So. Prepare for epic fail? :/
A vase falls off the table while he’s helping her move something, sending shattering glass spewing everywhere.
He stops and looks down, wide-eyed. His demeanor shifts into something guilty, sheepish, in a way that would be more befitting of an awkward teenager than someone fast rising through the ranks of the Red Dragon syndicate.
Footsteps fill the quiet void, and then cease.
“It’s all right,” her voice comes from somewhere behind him. He turns to see that she’s smiling. “Don’t worry about it.” Amusement dances in her eyes, and he finds himself captivated by it.
She’s never been more beautiful.
He can’t stop his fingers from brushing lightly over her skin before slowly working their way into her hair and bringing her face closer to his own. A moment that passes in a flash yet extends into infinity of gazes locked and breaths mingled. Then they meet somewhere in the middle, and neither is sure where one ends and the other begins.
The dream blends with reality so completely that he’ll never again be able to tell the difference.
He doesn’t register the broken glass crunching under his boot.
*
Thin fragments of paper scatter by in the wind.
He stands with his back against the wall, hands shoved in his pockets in the best attempt he has at keeping them warm. Light drizzle extinguishes his cigarette (the awning does nothing), but he keeps it between his lips as his eyes remain permanently fixed on the alleyway.
And he waits.
The rain begins to intensify, obscuring his view and seeping into every pore. The cigarette grows soggy and limp, and he unceremoniously spits it onto the ground.
He still waits.
But she never comes.
The last vestiges of his shattered heart are washed away by the rain, scattered into oblivion. He never knew it was so fragile.
*
He’s covered in bandages from head to toe, and probably every bone in his body is broken. That part is familiar.
He can see her sitting there, absently flipping through the pages of a magazine. His ears are filled with the ethereal sound of her quiet humming. He could stay like this.
But it is an illusion, born out of delirium.
Instead, when he opens his eyes, he’s greeted by the same song hummed off-key and an existence carved out of absence. Absence of money. Absence of food. Absence of anything to do on most afternoons but sleep.
Absence of anything left in his mind but vague fragments of memories, ones he desperately wants to hold onto but isn’t sure really happened.
He closes his eyes once more, but the image has already faded.