Birds of a Feather

Lay, lady, lay, lay across my big brass bed
Stay, lady, stay, stay with your man awhile
Until the break of day, let me see you make him smile
- Lay Lady Lay; Bob Dylan

Spike x Julia; Pre-Bebop

"If I were a bird, I'd be a dove."

It was a ridiculous statement for an equally ridiculous situation. She was laying in the park, back pressed into the wet grass. Grey eyes fixed on a moving blue sky, lips turned to a soft smile. One bright red mouth that tasted like nicotine and chamomile tea, something that kills and something that heals.

He smiled, lap warmed as she laid a heavy head on his thigh. Fingers idly spun through golden threads.

"If you were a bird, you'd be a pigeon," Spike mocked, as he grinned with teeth overlapping his lower lip.

Julia scoffed, thigh slapped with her hand, "It's good to know one of us has a sense of humor." She settled back into her position, eye fixed on the clouds that turned above her, "... Maybe I would be a pigeon. Ordinary."

"... And eating off of other people's savings."

Another slap at his thigh forced both to laugh: Julia's warm, open, and inviting. Spike's outloud and energetic

A pair of warm pools veyed to catch his gaze, studying him from her topsy turvy position and smiling like a child, "I think you'd be a crow. Good luck to some, bad luck to others."

Spike grinned, both arms braced around and pulling her deeply into an embrace. "Glad to know we're both scavengers then," He murmured in her hair, the scent of oatmeal and sugar.

The following day, the crow asked the pigeon to fly away with him. Get away and never come back, start a new life, a good life, a fresh one. Meet me at the grave, he asked.

She never came.

The crow, the pigeon, and the heron may all be birds, Cowboy. But they know better than to flock together.