[for Rogue]

[dreaming_cowboy]

A space station falls from the sky, and then Faye Valentine falls back into his life. If she can be qualified as being in it now; Spike, frankly, has no idea where to place her in whatever loose mental schema he applies to his life, with no Bebop. They're still stuck in the same place, he supposes, it's just a little bigger, and it's a different

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[un_gloved]

She'd been looking for him with the intention of finding him, which was just about the opposite of what had been true for longer than she probably realized. Didn't make her feel good to realize it, but there it was, and it didn't serve anyone to ignore it.

It wasn't exactly the picture she'd had in her head, once she actually found him, though.

"Do cowboys make good sailors?" she asked as she approached, stopping a few meters from where he stood, behind him, kicking one foot behind the ankle of the other and hitching her thumbs into the belt loops of her cutoffs.

She'd consciously reintroduced herself to the sun and, now that she had a schedule, and even though McCoy wasn't necessarily sure the exertion was good, had started running and doing yoga again. The fact that she could look in the mirror every day and see herself, and be reasonably sure of who that was, meant that the cumulative months of not knowing, and not sleeping, and just curling up in quiet places hoping to stay lucid and in control had become glaringly apparent in

[un_gloved]

She felt frozen in place. She'd been tactile again, recently- with Bones, with Brodie, with Des, even. There was no hesitancy there. But the gulf between her and Spike seemed a lot wider now that they were standing so close. Probably it was her own nervousness, her fear of screwing it up again, and worse. It didn't matter what it was, she still felt it there. It was like all the words that they couldn't say, before, for one reason or another had piled up and spilled over and turned into a sea she didn't know how to cross

[dreaming_cowboy]

Spike stares at her for a long moment. At her, and past her, with the other eye.

(It wasn't Julia he saw, strangely, but Electra and Vincent, facing off that last time, the one lost in his own mind until the very second came to pull the trigger. Some part always remembered.)

"I never used to get scared, you know," he says. He had this conversation with Electra, too. A version of it. "Not of getting hurt, not of dying. Never get scared for me." He gives her an honest, open look. He doesn't do a lot of them. "You, I get scared for."

There's a folk story about the Boy Who Didn't Know Fear. A couple of varieties, actually. Neither of them quite apply, though; one fits part of his life, but not this part. Maybe it's no one's story but his own, in the details.

Maybe he just hasn't heard that one yet.

[un_gloved]

She pressed her lips together and glanced at the ground, shrugging slightly.

"Guess it's warranted," she said lamely, gaze darting back up to him, to that rare expression. It meant something, what he was saying. She understood that. She even sort of understood what that was.

"...I'm sorry, Spike. For everything." She hesitated, then smiled the tiniest bit.

"Well. Maybe not everything."

[dreaming_cowboy]

"It's warranted," Spike agrees, frowning a little since he doesn't exactly say things like this. Some might say it's the circumstance when it's called for most, but that's the problem, isn't it? "Who isn't afraid for the people they love?"

That's circuitous enough to live with.

[un_gloved]

Rogue started a little, eyes flying wide with surprise and gaze ratcheting straight to his face. He was still being sincere. Now she was bewildered.

"...Ah didn't tell you so you'd-" she started, carefully picking through the words, but cut herself off.

"You don't have to," she began again, looking deeply flustered and more hopeful than she ever would have intended.

[dreaming_cowboy]

"Don't have to what?" Spike says, eyes flicking upwards. "Just saying a thing."

[un_gloved]

She stared at him for a moment, quietly marveling at the nature of the men she ended up helpless for. It was unbelievable. She took a few steps to close most of the space between them, and lifted a hand just enough to skirt her fingertips along the back of his wrist, to his knuckles, to his fingers. It was the first time she'd touched him in ages, and even something so small felt a little like coming home, so she did it slowly.

[dreaming_cowboy]

"Been a while," he says, letting her take her time with the brush of her hand, mostly just watching her, studying what was going on behind her face.

[un_gloved]

She curled her fingers around his hand and lifted it, guiding it with both hands to her cheek which she pressed against his palm. She nodded a little.

[dreaming_cowboy]

"How slow were you planning on taking things?" he says, since she's easing herself back into... life, in a way. Into a less fractured world, if this treatment works out.

He wonders what that's like. But then, it never got as bad for him as it has for her. He can get by. And he's never been one for the slow approach, but this isn't on him.

[un_gloved]

"Is that a line, cowboy?" she asked, looking up at him through her lashes and tracing her fingertips down the line of his wrist and forearm.

[dreaming_cowboy]

"It's a question," he protests, but not particularly vehemently, hand stroking across the side of her face along to the back of her neck. "...most lines are."

[un_gloved]

She closed her eyes, taking in a soft, steady breath at the touch, then opened them again and stepped a little closer.

"Truth? Ah dunno. Slow."

[dreaming_cowboy]

"Let me know when to brake," Spike says, leaning in to brush his lips against hers.

And he will. He's a gentleman.

Well, sometimes. On occasion.

Once or twice a year.

[un_gloved]

Her breath felt suddenly heavy in her lungs while at the same time the laws of physics seemed to no longer have any effect whatsoever on her center of gravity. It was a wonderfully disconcerting sensation. She tilted her face up, returning the kiss with no hesitation but some care, eyes slipped shut and hands coming to rest rest, one at his elbow and the other on his shoulder.