Cuck a space cowboy?

Callisto Station glowed against Jupiter's dark flank like a casino chip dropped on velvet—neon and hologram light painting the thin atmosphere in shades of rose and gold. From the upper observation deck of the docking ring, the station spread out below in calculated excess: imported palm trees lining artificial canals, pleasure barges drifting through water that had been shipped in from Ganymede at ridiculous expense, rooftop infinity pools reflecting the gas giant's swirling storms in their still surfaces. The air recyclers pumped in something tropical—coconut and salt and warmth that didn't belong on an ice moon—and the whole effect was designed to make you forget where you actually were. Somewhere cold and far from home.

The Bebop was three docking bays back, tucked between a luxury yacht and a cargo hauler. Inside, Spike was probably playing cards with himself. Jet was probably pacing. Ed was probably doing something unspeakable to the ship's systems. None of them could leave. Spike's face was still circulating from his Red Dragon days—old syndicate grudges ran long and bitter on Callisto. Jet had ISSP warrants the station had suddenly decided to honor after years of looking the other way. Ed had once hacked the transit grid to steal a cargo shuttle full of exotic fish, and the station had a long memory for that kind of insult. Ein was technically clean but went where Ed went, which meant the dog was grounded too.

So it was just you and Faye.

You stood near the glass railing of the Galilean Grand's rooftop bar, forty-two floors above the pleasure district, nursing something the bartender had called a Stardust Sour that tasted mostly like sugar and regret. The bar was sparse—a few couples murmuring over dessert wines, a businessman staring at his own reflection in the dark glass. The dome overhead displayed a fake star field, constellations rearranged into patterns more photogenic than real. The manufactured breeze carried jasmine and champagne and the distant throb of bass from the dance floors below.

You checked your wrist comm. She was four minutes late, which by Faye's standards meant she was arriving exactly when she intended to.

The bar's entrance chimed softly and the door slid open.

Faye Valentine walked through it and the entire room recalibrated around her presence like a compass needle swinging north.

She had abandoned her usual yellow entirely. Tonight she wore a dress the color of dark wine—thin fabric that followed every curve of her body like it had been poured on, the neckline plunging deep enough to expose the full, generous swell of her bust, the hemline ending well above mid-thigh so that her long legs—toned from years of running from people she owed money to—caught every shift of light as she moved. A pair of black heels added three inches to her height and she walked in them with the easy confidence of someone who had weaponized the effect long ago, each step deliberate, hips swaying in a rhythm that suggested she was very aware of who was watching. Her dark violet hair had been swept to one side, falling in loose waves over her left shoulder, and in place of her usual headband she wore a thin gold chain threaded through the locks that caught the ambient neon and scattered it like scattered coin. Her green eyes moved across the bar once—quick, sharp, cataloguing exits and faces and potential threats in the span of a single breath—before finding you.

And then she smiled. Not her usual smirk. Not the sarcastic, keep-your-distance expression she wore like armor. This one was slower. Warmer. It started at the corner of her full lips and spread until it reached her eyes, and for just a moment she looked genuinely happy to see you standing there, which was unexpected enough to make your chest do something complicated.

She crossed the bar toward you, weaving between cocktail tables without breaking stride, heels clicking softly against the polished floor. She stopped in front of you—close, closer than she normally stood, close enough that you could smell her perfume, something dark and smoky like bourbon and cedar with a sweet edge underneath that you couldn't quite name. The manufactured breeze caught her loose hair and pulled a few strands across her face. She didn't brush them away.

"Hey, handsome," she murmured, her voice pitched low enough that only you could hear it. Her fingers found your collar, smoothing the fabric with an idle, proprietary gesture that served no practical purpose except to let her hand rest against your chest for a moment longer than necessary. "You clean up okay."

She tilted her head and studied you, green eyes moving over your face with that assessing look she usually reserved for poker hands—calculating odds, reading tells, deciding whether you were bluffing or worth the bet.

"Ground rules," she said, quieter now. Her hand slid from your collar to your shoulder, fingers curling lightly against the fabric. "We have to sell this. I mean actually sell it. The people in that baccarat room aren't tourists—they're paranoid and rich and they spend all their time watching each other for cracks. They notice body language. They notice when you flinch at a touch or stand too far away or look at your partner like they're a stranger."

She stepped even closer, her body almost flush against yours, and tilted her chin up so her lips were near your ear. Her breath was warm against your neck.

"I'm going to touch you a lot tonight. Hold your hand. Lean on you. Whisper things that'll make your face turn red." A pause. The ghost of a smile against your skin. "And you're going to act like the luckiest person in the solar system. Because honestly? For tonight, you might be."

She pulled back just enough to meet your eyes again. Something flickered behind the playfulness—vulnerability, maybe, or the fear of it—before she buried it under practiced confidence.

"Think you can handle being my boyfriend for one night?"

She held your gaze and waited, lips slightly parted, daring you to answer.

The bullet had grazed your side during a bounty chase on Ganymede twelve hours ago. Not deep—skin and top muscle above your left hip. Bled enough to soak your shirt and pool in your boot before Jet got to you. The stitching was clean. The gauze was tight. The antiseptic had dulled from sharp fire to a warm persistent sting that pulsed with every heartbeat.

Ed had come by first. Appeared in your doorway with Ein trotting at her heels and wide brown eyes locked onto your bandaged side with unfiltered fascination. She held up a drawing of a cat wearing a top hat standing on a misshapen rainbow and placed it on your nightstand adjusting it twice until it was perfectly parallel with the edge. She patted Ein twice and bounced away humming. Ein jumped onto your bed circled three times and settled on your feet where he stayed for two hours providing a warm weight that made the pain tolerable and your need to use the bathroom complicated.

Jet had come by twice. First time with his medical kit already open mechanical arm clicking as he cleaned the wound with antiseptic that burned like a live wire pressed to raw skin. He wrapped fresh gauze in clean efficient layers while explaining infection risks and fever signs and the importance of staying horizontal which he repeated three times. He left painkillers and water and a note that said DO NOT GET UP with two underlines. Second time he stood in your doorway with his arms crossed and his jaw set looking at you and then the note and then you again.

"You read the note," he said. It was not a question. He grunted and walked toward the engine room.

Spike had come by once. He wandered in sideways the way Spike wandered into everything—lazily committed to nothing. His hands were in his jacket pockets and his dark eyes moved to your bandage first then to the cat drawing on your nightstand which he picked up and examined.

"Ed drew you a cat," he observed. He set it back exactly where Ed had left it and leaned against your desk crossing one ankle over the other.

"Jet says a week. Maybe ten days if you actually rest which you won't so let's say a week."

He pushed off the desk and paused in the doorway half in half out.

"Don't die," he said over his shoulder. "Jet's cooking is bad enough without him crying into it."

His footsteps faded toward the common room where his jazz records waited.

That was four hours ago. The ship had settled into night cycle. Corridor lights dimmed to blue-gray. Atmospheric regulators humming. The water recycler clunking every forty seconds which you knew because you had been counting. Through the porthole Titan's atmosphere had darkened to deep burnt amber the warm heavy light pressing against the glass like a sunset that would never actually set.

The door slid open without a knock.

Faye Valentine walked in carrying a metal tray. The smell hit first—warm broth layered over vanilla lotion and the faint chemical bite of recently applied nail polish. She was barefoot. Her yellow boots were somewhere else. Her dark violet hair was loose and slightly tangled on one side like she had been lying on it. No headband tonight. No makeup which made her look younger and sharper her green eyes more vivid against bare skin her lips their natural muted pink. Her cropped yellow top was thin and soft from repeated washing clinging to her frame revealing the full generous curve of her bust the narrow line of her waist the bare strip of stomach above the high waistband of her red shorts. Her legs were completely bare from hip to ankle smooth and toned in the warm lamplight.

She set the tray on the desk. Glass of water. Painkillers. Steaming broth. Damp cloth folded into a neat square. She arranged them with an efficiency that suggested forethought and pulled the desk chair to your bedside dropping into it with one bare foot tucked beneath her.

"Jet says you need to eat before you take another pill," she said. Her green eyes swept your bandaged side once quick clinical with something extra underneath she buried fast. "So here I am. Your personal servant. Don't tell anyone or I'll smother you with the pillow."

She picked up the broth bowl and tested the temperature with her fingertip then held the spoon out toward you. Three seconds. Five.

"Oh for God's sake," she muttered leaning forward guiding the spoon toward your lips with firm unyielding patience. "Open. I didn't walk across the entire ship carrying hot soup to negotiate with you."

She held the bowl while you ate watching every spoonful with her lips pressed thin. When you took it from her hands she let go slowly her finger trailing against your knuckle as the weight transferred. She didn't acknowledge it. When you finished she took the empty bowl back and held out the painkillers and water with the same uncompromising authority.

You swallowed the pills. She watched your throat confirm they were down and then reached for the damp cloth and pressed it against your forehead. Cool and lavender-scented. Not a smell the Bebop ever produced organically. She moved it in slow deliberate strokes her fingers warm at your temples.

"You're running a little warm," she murmured. Her voice was lower than usual. Quieter. "Jet said that's normal. Said if it goes above a hundred and one to tell him so he can check for infection."

Her eyes flickered to the first aid manual on your desk. Pages dog-eared. Notes in the margins in her handwriting—tight slanted script that leaned right. She saw you looking and set the cloth on the tray and leaned back crossing her bare legs.

"I was bored," she said before you could ask. Too fast. Too defensive. The ghost of a blush on her cheekbones she would deny under oath. "There's nothing else to do on this stupid ship at night. Ed's asleep. Spike's listening to his records. The common room smells like Jet's curry experiment."

She paused. Her green eyes moved over your face in the low light—cataloguing the dark circles the tension in your jaw the way you held yourself still to avoid pulling the wound. Her expression did something complicated before settling back into practiced indifference.

"I'm staying tonight," she said. Firm. Not soft. Just Faye making a decision and daring someone to challenge it. "In the chair. Don't argue. You'll lose."

The Bebop had been docked at Meridian Station orbiting outside Mars for three days waiting for a part Jet needed for the port maneuvering thruster which had been making a sound like a dying animal every time the ship tried to rotate left. The station itself was a half-finished construction project suspended in orbit like a concrete skeleton someone had forgotten to finish—the exposed sections wrapped in flimsy barriers that kept the vacuum out and nothing else and the enclosed sections smelling like welding fumes and wet concrete and the particular musty stagnation of a place that circulated air but never quite refreshed it.

The rain here wasn't real rain. It was condensation from overworked atmospheric processors dripping from exposed ceiling pipes in a constant irregular patter that echoed through the Bebop's corridors like fingers drumming on a table. The sound was maddening in the way that repetitive unpredictable sounds always were—not loud enough to drown out but not quiet enough to ignore.

Spike and Jet had left four hours ago. Spike had declared that three days of sitting on a dead ship in a dead station was going to kill him before any bounty ever did and had dragged Jet to a bar three blocks down the docking road that served cheap whiskey and played old Earth jazz through a speaker system held together with electrical tape and optimism. Jet had protested once and then put on his coat because that was how Jet operated—one objection performed for the record and then compliance followed by hours of quiet resentment he would express later by cooking something terrible for dinner.

Ed had fallen asleep in the common room with Ein curled on her stomach. They were snoring in alternating rhythms that created a broken metronome effect—Ed's high and whistling through her nose and Ein's low and rumbling from somewhere deep in his canine chest. The television was playing static because Ed had bricked the signal receiver two days ago attempting to reroute it through a Phobos relay to pick up cartoon channels and had somehow corrupted the entire system in the process.

Which left you on the couch with a datapad you were not reading and the knowledge that Faye was in her quarters awake because her light was on and had been on for two hours.

Her door slid open at eleven forty-seven.

She emerged barefoot and the first thing you noticed was the shirt. Thin oversized cotton that hung off one shoulder exposing the strap of a black bra and a wide expanse of smooth skin along her collarbone that caught the common room's amber evening light and held it like warm honey on brown sugar. The shirt was clearly not hers—it was too large in the shoulders too long in the torso and hung to mid-thigh where it effectively consumed her shorts entirely creating the visual impression that she was wearing nothing underneath which was a thought your brain generated and then immediately tried to delete with limited success. Her violet hair was pulled into a loose bun held with a pencil that was already listing toward horizontal. Her face was bare. No makeup. No headband. No armor. Just sharp green eyes and full lips slightly chapped from the dry recycled air and the kind of bone-deep beauty that rewired your attention like a circuit breaker flipping.

She crossed the common room without speaking. Her bare feet were silent on the worn floor. The oversized shirt shifted with each step—fabric pulling tight across the full curve of her bust then releasing then catching again in a rhythm that was either accidental or engineered and knowing Faye it was probably both. She poured coffee from the pot. Leaned against the counter. Drank it black and watched the condensation drip from a cracked ceiling joint.

"Can't believe we're stuck here," she said without turning around. Her voice was low and slightly rough the way it got in the evenings when she had been quiet for too long. "Three days. Ship smells like wet concrete and Jet's feet."

She turned and looked at you over the rim of her cup. The steam between you softened her features for a moment and then cleared revealing the faintest curve at the corner of her mouth.

She carried her coffee to the couch and sat down. Not at the other end. Right beside you. Close enough that her bare thigh pressed against yours through the thin cotton and the heat from her skin was immediate and impossible to ignore. She tucked her feet up beneath her and leaned into the cushion and in doing so shifted closer until her entire side was pressed against yours from shoulder to hip. The scent of her—vanilla lotion and dark coffee and something underneath both that was just her—filled the space between you.

She reached behind you and pulled the blanket from the back of the couch and spread it across both your laps. Underneath it her hand found your thigh and rested there. Her palm flat against your leg. Fingers slightly spread. Not accidental. Not grazing. Claiming.

"You're cold," she murmured. Her eyes had already noted the goosebumps along your arm and filed the information away. "The heating on this ship is garbage."

Spike's communicator sat on the kitchen counter. Silent. Four hours and not a single buzz.

Her thumb moved on your thigh. Slow. A small circle beneath the blanket where Ed couldn't see if she woke. Where the cameras couldn't reach because they were all pointed at the airlocks.

"Don't," she whispered before any sound left your throat. Her hand slid higher. Her face was close. Her breath warm and coffee-scented against your mouth. "Don't ask me what I'm doing. You know what I'm doing."

She tilted her chin up and her lips hovered an inch from yours. Her green eyes held yours in the low amber light and there was no teasing. No armor. No deflection. Just want. Raw and undisguised and patient the way a cat is patient after it has already decided what it's going to pounce on.

"Spike's been gone four hours," she said. Her mouth so close the words ghosted across your lips. "He won't be back for at least two. Jet always lets him have one more drink."

She kissed the corner of your mouth. A brush of her full lips against the edge of yours that was technically not a kiss and absolutely a promise.

"We have time," she whispered. Her hand pressed harder against your chest. Under the blanket her fingers curled into the fabric of your pants and pulled you toward her with a gentle insistent tug. "And I don't want to spend it on the couch."

The Bebop sat docked at a refueling station clinging to Titan's upper atmosphere like a barnacle on a whale's back. The station was ugly and functional—exposed conduits running along ceilings, scratched metal floors, fluorescent tubes that buzzed at a frequency designed to slowly erode sanity. Through the portholes Titan hung enormous and orange, its methane clouds swirling in patterns that looked almost alive, swallowing every star behind a wall of amber haze. The docking bay smelled like fuel and recycled air and something vaguely chemical that nobody had ever been able to identify. It was the kind of place where nothing beautiful happened on purpose.

You were alone in the ship when it happened. Ed had disappeared into the station's ventilation system three hours ago with Ein trotting behind her like a loyal shadow. The common room was empty. The kitchen was dark. The corridor lights hummed their endless hum. You had been sitting on the couch in the common room trying to eat something Jet had left in the fridge that might have been curry or might have been a biohazard when the cargo bay door exploded open and Spike's boots hit the dock running.

You never saw him go. You just heard it—metal slamming, the cargo bay cycling, the distant sound of Jet shouting something that might have been a warning or a prayer. Then silence. The ship settled back into its usual groans and creaks and the quiet hiss of atmosphere regulators doing their best impression of breathing.

Five minutes passed. Maybe ten. You were standing in the corridor trying to decide whether to investigate or mind your own business when Faye's door opened.

She stepped out barefoot. Her yellow boots were somewhere in her room, abandoned like they usually were the moment she stopped pretending she might need to run from something. Her dark violet hair was loose and slightly tangled, falling around her sharp face in waves that caught the corridor's dim light. She wore her yellow top—the cropped one that ended well above her navel and did absolutely nothing to hide the full generous shape of her bust underneath the thin fabric. Her red shorts were high-cut enough to show the full length of her legs, smooth and toned, the kind of legs that made casino dealers forget how to count. A thin sheen of moisture on her collarbone suggested she had been lying in bed doing nothing, which for Faye meant thinking about things she would never admit to thinking about.

She saw you in the corridor and stopped. Her green eyes moved over you once—slow, deliberate, taking their time in a way that was not accidental. Then she walked toward you with that hip-swaying stride she used when she was either about to ask for a favor or about to cause problems, and with Faye those two things were usually the same.

"Spike's gone," she said. She stopped in front of you, close enough that you could smell her—vanilla and something warm underneath, skin lotion maybe, the kind she applied after showers when she thought no one was watching. "Vicious showed up on docking ring seven. Spike ran out like the suicidal idiot he is. Jet followed him because Jet can't help being the responsible one even when responsibility means getting shot."

She leaned against the corridor wall and crossed her arms beneath her bust, the movement pressing her chest up in a way that was either intentional or a geometric inevitability given the engineering of that particular top. Her expression was unreadable—not worried, not relieved, not angry. Just calm. The calm of someone who had made a decision and was waiting for the universe to catch up.

"I don't care," she said. The words were quiet and completely honest in a way that Faye almost never was. "I don't care what happens to Spike out there. I don't care what happens to Jet. I stopped caring a long time ago about men who choose death over staying alive and I'm not going to pretend otherwise tonight."

She uncrossed her arms. She pushed off the wall. She took one step toward you and then another until the space between you was measured in inches and you could feel the warmth radiating off her bare stomach where her top didn't reach.

"His quarters," she said, tilting her head toward the door behind you—Spike's door, the one with the peeling sticker he'd put there years ago that nobody had ever asked about. "Right now. While he's out there playing hero with Vicious and his ridiculous grudge."

Her hand came up and pressed flat against your chest. Her fingers were warm through the fabric of your shirt and they spread slightly like she was memorizing the shape of your ribs.

"I've wanted this," she said, and her voice dropped to something lower, something private, something she would deny ever saying if you brought it up tomorrow. "I've wanted you. For a while now. Longer than I should have. Every time I see you on this stupid ship I think about it and I hate myself for thinking about it and then I think about it again."

Her green eyes held yours. No teasing. No deflection. No witty comeback loaded and ready. Just Faye with her walls down for once, her lips slightly parted, her chest rising and falling faster than it had been a moment ago.

"So are you going to open that door and take me inside," she whispered, "or are you going to stand there and make me beg? Because I will. Tonight I will."

The Grand Celestine floated on Venus's upper atmosphere like a champagne bubble—three interconnected platforms held aloft by massive hydrogen bladders that bobbed gently in the sulfur-yellow clouds. The resort was the most exclusive gambling destination in the inner system. Entry cost more than the Bebop made in a year. The interior was all white marble and gold fixtures and waitstaff who moved like ghosts carrying trays of drinks that cost more than Jet's monthly grocery budget.

You should not have been there. Neither should Faye. But Faye had won two tickets in a poker game on Mercury from a man who had bet them against his car and lost and she had decided immediately that she was going and she had decided shortly after that she was going with you and not with Spike because Spike attracted trouble the way magnets attracted iron filings and this was the kind of place where one wrong move got you thrown off the platform and into the sulfur clouds below.

Spike had stayed on the Bebop with Jet and Ed. Spike had not argued because Spike did not care about gambling resorts. Spike cared about Vicious and jazz and dying dramatically and not much else. Jet had not argued because Jet trusted Faye's survival instincts more than he trusted his own. Ed had cried for eleven minutes and then discovered a bug in the station's network and forgotten entirely.

So it was just you and Faye on a floating casino above Venus and she had been drinking champagne for two hours and winning at every table she touched.

You were standing at the bar watching her work the roulette table across the room. She wore a dress tonight—deep emerald green with a neckline that plunged to a point just below her sternum exposing the full dramatic swell of her bust and the warm brown expanse of her chest. The fabric was silk and it clung to her body like water poured over stone—following the narrow cut of her waist the flare of her hips the long bare line of her back where the dress scooped low enough to reveal the dimples at the base of her spine. Her violet hair was swept up in a loose twist held with gold pins and her green eyes were sharp and bright and absolutely lethal in the casino's warm lighting. She looked like she had been born in this place. She looked like she owned it.

She left the roulette table with a stack of chips and crossed the casino floor toward you. Her heels clicked on the marble and heads turned as she passed—not just men but everyone because Faye Valentine in a dress commanded attention the way a fire commands oxygen. She slid onto the bar stool beside you and set her chips on the counter and flagged the bartender with two fingers.

"I'm up forty thousand," she said. Her voice was low and warm and slightly loose from the champagne. She leaned toward you and her bare shoulder brushed yours. The dress shifted and you could see straight down the front of it if you looked which she knew because she positioned herself at an angle that made looking almost involuntary. "That's enough for new thrusters if Jet doesn't ask where it came from."

The bartender brought champagne. Faye took one glass and pushed the other toward you. She drank and watched you over the rim with those green eyes and the casino lights reflected in them like green fire.

"I want to dance," she announced. She said it the way she said everything—like a decision that had already been made and you were simply being informed. She stood and took your hand and pulled you off the bar stool before you could respond.

The dance floor was small and intimate—maybe ten couples swaying to a string quartet playing something old and slow and European. The lights were low. The air smelled like champagne and expensive perfume. Faye stepped into you and put one hand on your shoulder and the other in your hand and pulled your free arm around her waist. The silk of her dress was impossibly thin under your palm. You could feel the warmth of her skin through it. The curve of her waist. The firm swell of her hip where the fabric pulled tight.

She pressed close. Closer than the dance required. Her body was flush against yours and her thigh slid between your legs with each slow step. Her lips were near your ear and her breath was warm and champagne-scented.

"Spike's not here," she murmured. Her hand on your shoulder slid down to your chest and rested there. Her fingers curled into the fabric of your shirt. "Jet's not here. Ed's not here. There's no one from the Bebop within a hundred thousand miles of this place."

She pulled back just enough to look at you. Her green eyes were dark and certain. Her full lips were curved in that slow dangerous smile.

"I'm not dancing with you because I had no one else to dance with," she said. Her hips rolled against yours with the music. Her hand slid from your chest up to the back of your neck and her fingers threaded into your hair. "I could have danced with anyone in this room. Any man here would have bought me another drink and told me I was beautiful and I would have smiled and said thank you and walked away."

She pressed closer. Her lips brushed your jaw. Not a kiss—just contact. Just heat.

"But I didn't want any of them," she whispered. "I wanted you. On this stupid floating casino above Venus. Wearing this stupid dress. Drinking stupid champagne. I wanted to be here with you and nobody else."

Her mouth found the corner of yours. A brush of her full lips—soft warm deliberate. The string quartet played on. The other couples swayed around them. The champagne glasses sat forgotten on the bar.

"Tell me to stop," she breathed against your mouth. Her green eyes held yours from an inch away. Her fingers tightened in your hair. Her body pressed harder against yours and you could feel her heartbeat through the silk and it was fast. "Tell me to stop and I'll stop. I'll walk back to the bar and finish my champagne and we'll never talk about this again."*

She waited. Her lips hovered against yours. Her breathing was shallow. The casino hummed with quiet wealth around them—chips clinking and glasses clinking and the string quartet playing something that sounded like it had been written for exactly this moment.

She didn't pull away.

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