Sweety Charity Fic!
Auction: Sweet Charity benefiting RAINN
Donor: dancinbutterfly
Fandoms: Firefly/The O.C.
Pairing: Capt. Malcolm Reynolds/Seth Cohen
Rating: R/FRM for adult situations
Setting: An AU for the last episode of season 1 of The O.C.
Word Count: 5,892
Disclaimer: I own nothing, and intend no correlation to actual real life situations, nor am I endorsing any of the behavior therein.
Summary: Seth gets a one-way ticket to space. Along the way he figures out that he might actually like to go back to Newport.
A/N: strangecreature rocks. She saw this thing through many incarnations, and I don’t think it would have gotten here without her brainstorming and encouragement (and nit-picking!). Any remaining mistakes are totally mine.
Out of the Blue
Is it ready?
Nearly, sir. It must be handled carefully. If it doesn’t go directly to the girl, we may not be able to reverse the situation as planned.
This has gotten too far out of control. We need to act quickly before the girl displays her abilities. Blue Sun cannot afford what’s to come.
Of course, sir.
- - -
Seth stared up at the darkened, rough steel of his bunk. If he looked at it just right, he could see all the swirls of grease, smoke, the tool marks that had made the steel. Sometimes, when he didn’t keep track of what time it was on Serenity and he couldn’t sleep, he listened to the haphazard groans of the big ship and stared at those gashes and swirls. They made pretty good substitutes for clouds - okay they were more like constellations, but he was trying not to think about how he didn’t recognize anything in the real stars outside - and tried to find shapes in them.
“That one...is Ryan’s forehead. And that one over there is you with your suspender straps twisted.”
“I do not walk around-“
“Sure you do. When it’s early, and you’re stumbling back from the ‘head,’” Seth made his signature quote marks with his fingers, a habit Mal hated, of course, “sometimes you pull them up and they twist... Kind of like our legs are doing now,” Seth murmured quietly and a little sheepishly as he looked over at Mal.
“Suppose they do,” Mal murmured back, heel rubbing against Seth’s foot. “So, this is it, huh?”
- - -
Some people lived in the outside world; some people lived outside of the outside world.
So Seth wasn’t so surprised when he woke up with his cheek to cold metal. Metal not of the California beach variety. If there was such a variety.
The last thing he remembered was mulling around the beach getting ready to soar out to Tahiti. Ryan was gone, what was Seth supposed to do?
The water had been this glistening gray-orange as the sun went down and there was this stone that stood out like a beacon. Neon blue with some kind of Asian character on it, he noticed as he bent to pick it up. He remembered cool water, a pang in his gut for Ryan’s broody silence, the sharp cut of electricity and then...
He was here. Wherever here was.
As far as graphic novels went, this plotline was a gorram feng le one, Seth thought. Damn, he’d been out here a long time if he was using words like feng le. ...Though, gorram should have been more troubling, shouldn’t it have? What with Chinese being an actual language and all...? Anyway...
As near as he could figure it there must have been some wormhole, because he was really more in favor of something scientific (even theoretically scientific) than mystical. Mystical never turned out well, for anybody in fiction - hello, Mordor anyone? - and he really didn’t have it in him to go hunting for some ring before he got to go home.
His fingers had rubbed over the shiny, smooth, blue stone a thousand times that night hoping to unlock whatever it was that had sent him here. Here where there weren’t any cell phones and nobody, nobody had an infinity pool.
It should have been heaven, right?
- - -
There was this one night when he and Ryan were playing Gran Turismo III and Seth had just beat the pants off Ryan and they were laughing and joking with each other, and there had been this moment where their eyes had met, and Seth knew. He knew there was more. It was a simple little moment but it had been clear, crisp.
Things weren’t like that with Malcolm Reynolds.
- - -
His first few days trying to get his...space legs, there was this guy Ben that had helped Seth out. Okay, first few weeks. A month or two... until Seth was a bona fide pickpocket and could give head better than he could play chess. Alright, he was never that great a chess player, but still. It was a new skill.
One that in the back of his mind Seth wished he could have tried out on Ryan first, but... Ben was kind of like Ryan in a way. Muscled, but small, kind of feisty. Only Ben was a little...crazy. He took risks, risks Seth wasn’t willing to take even on a planet he didn’t know, so they called it quits (read: Seth hightailed it out of there when Ben was out one night and Seth heard pulse fires and a voice that sounded far too much like a cry he knew too well by now), and went off on his own).
Sure, there were times he wished he could phone home, and there were some unmanly times when he woke up with salt stains all over the folded piece of cloth he called a pillow, but he was here, and he wasn’t going to let any new water polo players piss in his non-Earth shoes.
- - -
Eavesdown Docks. Eaves down docks. Seth always rolled that one over his tongue every morning before he’d set up shop. It made him think of Watership Down for some reason. Just the name. And books made him think of home. Of school. Of Ryan.
But he’d shrug it off, pee in his pee corner, and start folding out his wares for all the new travelers that day. Most of it was what he could ‘nick’ from the day before, but he started to be able to spot the carrier guys that were the ones stupid enough to transport valuables on them, and he went for those instead of wasting his time on every posh ‘fraidy-cat looking for transport.
Seth couldn’t afford not to be choosy these days. He’d started to get a rep, his buyers knew he went for the high-end things. He had to eye his mark, and make the play just to have something to sell the next day. He kept shooting for that bigger whale, just like in Vegas, he’d tell himself, because he had to find someone with connections. Someone who could tell him about this stone and get him home.
- - -
Sir, sir, there’ve been some...complications with the device.
Complications?
Yes. It was... mishandled. It didn’t... get to its destination.
So the girl hasn’t been sent back before her escape?
No, sir. It never reached her.
Then you’d better get it back. I don’t think you want to be responsible for time collapsing and your existence disappearing. Especially not due to a pulse rifle.
- - -
It just so happened that Seth then had to go and piss off one of his so-called whales with connections. Of course he did. As usual, he didn’t have to do anything. It wasn’t even that he stole from the guy. It was those words that just somehow...fell out of his mouth.
Yeah.
So he ran. Yup, ran like a big cowardly wimp saving his neck. Grabbed his bundle he was planning on hocking that day and ran.
Happened that he bumped into Soldier Guy on the way back to his ship. Browncoat. He’d been by two weeks back, Seth’s little cataloguing brain supplied. Seth didn’t know much about the war, but he knew about this guy. One of his regular buyers, Mr. Badger, had mentioned him once or twice, and then it was all Seth had to do to mention his name to the right folks, and he practically knew Malcolm Reynolds’ life story. It didn’t hurt that Captain Reynolds had been browsing with the sweetest girl, that Seth distinctly remembered him. And, you know, Seth knew where they were docked.
Mal didn’t take to kindly to him stowing away. Had to give Mal at least a days’ hard earned cash before Mal’d stop threatening to shove him out the airlock.
Sometimes, even after the first few months, Seth still called him Soldier Guy in his head. Suited Mal. Took him even longer to be able to call him Mal to his face. Mal was more uptight than any of the WASPy McWASPs of Newport. And serious to boot. He really didn’t seem to find Seth funny. Which was definitely unfortunate. For both of them.
Yeah, things were a lot more pleasant on Serenity though than they had been in his little shack on Persephone. They had at least a way to bathe, and the pee corner was more of a toilet.
Seth Cohen was moving up in the world. And further and further away from home, little blue stone or not.
- - -
Things with Mal were more like Julie Cooper. Sharp, dangerous, and definitely hazardous to your health.
But somehow the guy drew you in.
And dear god, so frickin’ hot. Not that Marissa’s mom was hot because so not going there. That was Luke’s job. Seth was totally hands off on the Julie Cooper front. But if one were to find Mrs. Cooper-Nichol hot, then Mal might be considered of that caliber of hotness.
Even in the brief glimpse of Mal Seth had gotten the day he snuck on Serenity with Mal eyeing Simon all over, Seth knew that things with this guy were never easy, and there was always going to be something dark underneath that gruff, but still pretty exterior. Something dark, but good like Ryan Atwood, and like all good comic book superheroes. Mal may not have known it, but he really did have all the makings for your angsty, but save the world driven superhero. And he had a space ship. Dude, that had to count for something.
And Seth Cohen was going to do his best to live up to that superhero standard. Maybe a little less Dick Grayson and more Bobby Drake though.
- - -
Seth had heard the purple bellies (purple bellies? That made them sound like jelly beans to Seth. Not exactly threatening for arch nemeses. The Alliance? Much scarier and ominous. He wished someone had introduced them to him properly instead of as jelly beans, because holy hell they were worth the heart thumping and sweaty sweating palms) before anyone else on the crew.
Kaylee and River were playing in cargo bay, and Seth heard the gasp of the airlock losing pressure and just knew. Dashing over the open stairs, the rough metal biting into his stupidly bare feet. If he could just get to them in time. He ripped his hand open, tripping down the last section of stairs. His eyes were darting everywhere and he ignored Kaylee’s look of confusion; he had to clap hands over the girls mouths before they could ask him what was wrong, before they could reveal themselves. He had to.
Pushing them both in the tight, hidden compartment for not-so-legal cargo, and following them in, they all cringed when the airlock was pried open at the same moment Seth shoved their tiny door closed.
Hours, and hours after Mal had sweet-talked the Alliance away, and long, long, too long after Seth had needed to relieve his bladder properly, there was a knock on his bunk. Seth was staring in dazed relief at the ceiling, but he told whomever it was that they could come in, expecting Kaylee or maybe Simon.
“Nice thing you did today, son.” Mal slouched against Seth’s ladder.
“I like River.”
“Who doesn’t? A little crazy does a ship good.” Mal didn’t even really seem to hear Seth as he ambled and drawled across the tiny metal capsule of a place Seth was starting to call home.
“Shoulda dropped you out a long time ago, son. Don’t really take too kindly to stowaways.” Was Mal prowling? Was that what it was? Because he kind of looked like he was.
Mal’s eyes flashed to Seth’s. “But you’re good folk, Cohen. And you might even find a place for yourself if you keep doing things like you did today.” Mal’s eyes flicked to Seth’s hands and feet. “You alright? Lemme get the doc-”
“No, no. You don’t need to bother Simon.” Seth looked down at his hands and gave Mal a small, strange look. “Battle scars, right?”
“Not a bother for Simon. That’s what he’s here for,” Mal said gruffly, the mood somehow turning faster than Seth could have expected. “I’ll send him your way,” Mal said, his voice disappearing up the ladder.
There was something Seth had thought was happening...but wasn’t apparently.
Seth’s eyes followed the echo of Mal’s voice, confused, and then finally lied back on the bed, smearing his thumb through the blood still caked on his hand. He still hadn’t washed it off.
- - -
Ryan Atwood had been kind of like meeting a cat for the first time. You had to move slowly. Let him sniff you out.
Seth didn’t do that.
It made Ryan blink, confused, and Seth liked to think that made Ryan take to him faster than everyone else. Seth had never been - seemed - scared of Ryan, and that seemed to make all the difference.
Things with Mal were the same. Only Mal was a bigger cat. A much bigger, grumpier tiger type of cat. Yeah. Seth would be the tiny kitten pouncing and trying to play, and Mal could just bat him away with one big paw.
But for some reason he didn’t.
- - -
The months were just flying by...
He was getting thinner. Seth knew it. Knew it wasn’t healthy. Knew something was wrong. But he couldn’t tell Mal. He didn’t want Mal to drop him somewhere for being useless and sick, even if he had put himself on the line for River.
There was the not-stone thing too. What if no one knew what it was? What if he was stuck out in space for eternity and he never got to see his parents, Ryan, Summer, anyone he knew ever again? It was...troublesome. This sidekick was plain out of ideas.
But he also found himself staring out different ports around the ship more often. Sometimes he saw Ryan’s face out there. Sometimes he saw his mother’s.
One night off the port side - he so knew the sides now, thank you Wash, and no thanks to Mal - there was a hand. His dad’s hand. Seth recognized the dark hair on his knuckles. That same thick dark hair that plagued the Cohen men and drove the women crazy as his dad liked to think. The great Sanford Cohen. In space. Who would have thought?
Seth looked at him when he appeared on the other side of the porthole.
“Come on, Sethela. Come on out, the water’s fine,” his dad coaxed.
Seth put his hand up to the thick, heavy plastic. Home. The beach. He wanted that.
“Sethela. Don’t be scared. It’s all over. Come on home. Your mother and I miss you. Ryan’s here.”
“He’s home?” Seth said curiously, fingernails grating lightly against the small round window.
“He’s home. Where you should be. Come on, Seth. Come on out. Take a swim. It’s all just a bad dream. You know this could never happen. You’re in space. Astronauts these days can’t even last a few months let alone years like these folks. Listen to that brain of yours. You know it’s right. None of this exists.”
His dad’s hand was so close. He put his on top of it. “Dad?”
The smile was so familiar.
“Dad... wait!” He was fading. Disappearing. The black swallowed him up. Seth turned abruptly to get to the airlock. He had to get to his dad. But there was a very solid chest in his way.
“Seth, woah there. Where you going in such a hurry?” Mal’s hands were big on Seth’s now very slender shoulders. No one had touched him in weeks. They wouldn’t have known how easily his bones would have broken in a fight.
“Mal, move. I need to get out. My dad’s out there. I have to help him. Please, get out of my way. The airlock,” Seth said quietly, desperately, looking completely through Mal.
“Cohen, are you high? Did Jayne give you some of his moonshine?” Mal’s eyes were careful on Seth’s face. He didn’t like the scrutiny, and he had to get to his dad.
So he was very stupid and struck out at Mal. It was like glass hitting steel. Seth crumpled in pain, landing squarely against Mal’s chest. “Get out of my way,” Seth tried not to plead.
“Not going anywhere, soldier,” Mal said quietly, holding Seth still.
“Let me go, stop it, stop it! He’s going to die; you’re going to kill him! I shouldn’t be here! You did this! Stop keeping me here, let me go!” Seth’s voice alternated between gasping and yelling as he pushed against Mal’s solid chest. “Let me go...” Seth whimpered as he slipped to the floor, unconscious.
- - -
He woke three days later, his body slick with sweat and a warm dry hand holding his.
“The Black Sickness. You’re a real dumb one Cohen, you know that?” Mal sounded harsh, but Seth could blearily tell there was a look of relief on Mal’s face.
“So you always hang around the sick people on your boat? Some kind of captain-y thing?” Seth tried to tease, his mouth feeling full of cotton.
“Hang around my crew,” Mal said quietly, but Seth felt the thumb brushing over the back of his hand.
“So you’re trying to tell me my chores aren’t getting done?” Seth gave his best attempt at a smile while his head was still throbbing. Didn’t seem so bad though when he thought he glimpsed an upturn of Mal’s mouth too.
“No, they ain’t. So you best get on your legs soon.”
“Mal, what I said...”
“Don’t bear repeatin’.”
“Mal I-“
“Cohen, drop it. You were out of your mind. Sick as death, and homesick too,” Mal said, slipping that in a little too easily for Seth’s comfort. “A body’s liable to say just about anything in that state. Don’t worry your head about it, Seth. Get better, Captain’s orders,” Mal murmured, bending to kiss Seth’s forehead. It wasn’t so much the kiss to his forehead as it was the use of his first name that left Seth open-mouthed looking at Mal’s back.
- - -
Seth wasn’t even sure he was better, but Mal jumped right in and started showing Seth the ropes. His version of doctoring, Seth supposed, since Mal seemed to leave his bunk quicker and quicker while Seth was recuperating. The chores gave Seth a chance to talk to the taciturn solider, and you know, have something to do all day beside stare up at his bunk ceiling like he was in quarantine. Didn’t hurt that he got some exercise in and ate more due it either.
“So, you and Inara...”
“Ain’t none of your business, Cohen, and you might want to listen so you don’t lose your hand when you close the engine hatch, dong ma?”
It went like that most days. Mal worked him until he was bone tired and then worked some more after sending Seth off to bed. His own bed. Alone.
Sometimes, he caught Simon looking at him curiously, and hey, he could probably get himself a piece of that action, but he missed Ryan. And... Seth thought it might have something to do with all the time he was spending with Mal. The guy shouldn’t be leading Kaylee on like that
Kaylee, now she was pretty. Actually laughed at some of his jokes, even when he was pretty sure she didn’t get the references. If he even thought he had a chance with Kaylee and that Summer wouldn’t string him up by his shoelaces, Seth would totally...you know, strike out big time with Kaylee.
And really, he was never sure which Tam she had her heart set on. Huh. Kaylee and River. That would be hot. Maybe throw in a little Inara, even some Zoe love. That would be one pretty foursome. He didn’t know how anyone got any work done on this boat. ...And he could feel Summer thwapping him on the head right now for even imagining joining that foursome.
But Seth was definitely staying out of whatever was happening with anybody, especially Simon and Kaylee. Mal would probably think it was his fault if something bad happened to disrupt his ship, and dump on the next planet anyway.
Mal...Mal on the other hand. Mal he didn’t see in a foursome. Mal actually reminded him more of Ryan the better he got to know him, but then he also reminded him less of Ryan the more he got to know him. Mal was different. Didn’t look like Ryan, but somewhere in Seth’s gut he felt like Ryan, and that was what had Seth laying awake after he’d check the Cortex every night for possible leads on his little stone.
- - -
Mal wasn’t all bad. Gruff and not one for mincing words, but he stepped up to the plate just like Ryan and his poorly timed fist fights when one of his own was in trouble. Seth like that about him. Had always liked that about Ryan.
It was good to know when someone had your back even when they didn’t have two cents or credits of their own to rub together.
That time on the beach at Holly’s party... Seth wasn’t going to forget that any time soon, no matter how far he got from Newport. Ryan had fought for him. Seth had the feeling for some reason that Mal would be the same way if things ever got ugly for him.
- - -
“That your good luck charm, son?” Mal asked as he strolled into the galley one night. Seth sat at one of the long benches flipping the small, flat stone around in his fingers, munching on the last of the guilt apples Jayne had bought.
“Oh, ah, no. No. Definitely not good luck,” Seth said glancing over his shoulder.
Mal sat down next to him straddling the bench with what Seth now could recognize as the sad equivalent of coffee. “Sure carry it around a lot,” Mal observed, peering over the rim of his cup. “Reckon the doc might know what it was if you’re curious,” Mal said, his timing making his words creepily insightful to Seth.
Seth kept staring at it, wondering if it was even from this time and place. It might not even work anymore; could have just been a one-time deal. He tilted the apple towards Mal forgetting that it wasn’t a bagel and Ryan wouldn’t be taking it from his hand.
By the time that he registered that those were Mal’s lips against his finger and that Mal had just taken a bite, well, Mal was already up and out the door, glancing back and saying, “Awful nice of you to share your apple, Cohen. Doc’s in the ‘firmary if you decide you need him.” Huh.
- - -
“Huh.” Simon turned the little stone over and over. “Well, I’m pretty sure it’s not a stone - it’s got to be some sort of polymer, and this character looks practically ancient - but other than that, I don’t know what it is,” Simon said, looking up at Seth apologetically. Well, at least he hadn’t told Simon why he had the stone. Seth figured it was better that Simon didn’t think he was crazy by telling him some tall tale about Seth being from a land, a galaxy, a time far, far away.
“We could put it on the Cortex, see if anything comes up,” Simon offered with a smile. “Maybe someone will know what it is and send us a wave.”
“Okay, let’s do that.”
- - -
“So, Shadow, huh? Sounds grim. Now, you wouldn’t know it but Newport? Where I’m from? Even more grim.” Seth nodded as he slathered another coat of some kind of protective paint on Serenity’s hull. The whole crew was helping and each pair of them had a section to do.
“So, a Core boy, huh? You, Seth Cohen, ain’t gonna convince me that some rich boy from the Core had a hard life.”
So he wasn’t exactly from the Core planets, but so what? Newport Beach and Southern California were the same idea, right? Rich, wealthy playground for the clans with the cash.
“Well, I didn’t brand any cattle, but we had water polo players, and let me tell you, you don’t want them anywhere near your shoes unattended.” Seth rolled out another stripe, dripping some on Mal’s shoulder as he dropped the roller in the bucket for more paint.
“Thanks, Cohen,” Mal rolled his eyes and wiped it off.
“What, you always need thicker skin, right?” Seth joked.
“Tryna say something, boy?”
“No, no, Mal,” Seth reached across with his roller to get a spot Mal missed putting his nose inches from Mal’s. “You just might want to...” Was he really doing this? This was so a romantic comedy from the eighties. “You might want to take down a few fences, you know what I mean?” Seth’s mouth brushed Mal’s with little warning and even less finesse, but the guy was kissing back and that was something for his first boy kiss.
“Umm...” Was he doing something? He really could not remember as he stood there and stared at Mal opened-mouthed. “Did that just-?”
“You were trying to tell me something about fencing?” Mal supplied, easily going back to his section of painting, faint, faint smile lingering on his lips as his hand slipped from Seth’s waist where Seth again had not realized it had been.
---
“You know I think shipboard romances go and complicate things, right?”
“Oh, believe you me, I know,” Seth replied, hands on Mal’s shoulders, feeling those muscles and bone that had just saved his ass. Looked like he was right about Mal fighting for him. He shouldn’t have gone on that job in the first place. Either of them.
“So it’s more than likely just going to be this once,” Mal justified, fingers sliding up under Seth’s shirt.
“Sure,” Seth said, finally feeling like he had the go-ahead for their frenzied little tryst now. His hands cupped the sides of Mal’s face and he kissed him, kissed him desperately. God, he had thought he was going to die out there. Guns and bullets, it had actually been worse than Newport and Chino combined.
Their hands were rushed, their bodies needy, but Mal was gentle, and as rough around the edges as Seth expected him to be. It kept him riding wave after wave, body tingling wherever Mal touched, arching up for another spark of the want in Mal’s eyes. That connection Seth had lost.
- - -
Sir, we’ve intercepted a communication. Someone’s found the device. How should we proceed?
Discreetly. We want no suspicions aroused about it.
And what if they’ve already used it? If time has been altered, sir?
Un-alter it and get the device to the girl. I want no attention attracted. Just fix it.
- - -
Staring up at the ceiling in Mal’s bunk, feeling Mal’s chest move up and down, Seth was oddly glad they didn’t have Companions like Inara back on Earth yet. Hookers, yes, but they were totally socially unacceptable. Pariahs - man, that is such a great word, he thought, running his tongue over dry lips. Dry lips from...doing what Ben taught him to do best.
No, if there were hot Companions like Inara back home? Seth thought Ryan might be oddly good at it. That was a bad thing you see. A very bad thing...to be thinking while he was still in the same bed as someone completely dead sexy enough to be a Companion in their own right. But Malcolm Reynolds was too high and mighty for that kind of stooping. Mal certainly wasn’t perfect, but he seemed like a damn fine catch to Seth. Especially since it was probably going to be half past never before he ever saw Ryan again or Summer, much less Ryan-as-Companion.
- - -
“So someone knows what your rock is?”
Mal’s cup tapped lazily against the galley table. His body relaxed, and totally cat-like. Seth was so right about that big cat thing. Now, how to tell Mal...
“Yeah, and I think they could help me get back home...” Blurting things out worked too...
“To Persephone? Cohen if that’s what you need, Serenity can make a stop there in a few-“
“Mal...” Damn. Mal was going to make this hard. Jesus, Mary and Moses why did he have fall for the brooding silent types! “You know that’s not where I’m from.” Seth said quietly, looking Mal steadily in the eye, willing the guy to listen to his instincts. There was no way in hell Mal really thought he was from this ‘verse.
The cup stopped its gentle tapping and Mal coughed away from the table before looking back into the mystical depths of the mug. And oddly enough, Seth was now pretty damn sure anything could be mystical in whatever time and place he’d landed himself.
“Just thought maybe you were from the other end, some part of the ‘verse I hadn’t been.” Mal said after a few moments, still not looking at Seth, but not looking angry either.
“So what do you need?”
Always the can do attitude. Always helping someone even when he looked for all the world like he didn’t want to. Good guy, Malcolm Reynolds, good guy.
- - -
They want to know what it is, sir. It may have already been used...
Ask if they’d like instructions on how to reverse their situation... Say no more than that.
- - -
Mal and Seth read over the wave for the thousandth time one night, munching on an apple - Seth had persuaded Mal that the buying of apples over the buying of extra protein bars was a good thing - and passing it back to the other as they sat at the long galley table, knees touching beneath.
“I don’t know Cohen...” Mal said, rubbing a hand on his own thigh. “Could be risky.” This coming from the man who might actually be the definition of risk.
Seth laughed just as River danced in, toes always so light in such a heavy environment. She paused to smile at Seth and then peer over his shoulder, eyes widening.
“It won’t be like you planned,” River said softly, voice catching before drifting away from the two of them, absently grabbing her snack as she left.
“What was that all about?” Seth turned to Mal.
“Don’t rightly know, but something’s not right. Too risky, I’d say.” Mal said obviously trying intently not to overstep his bounds. “But it’s up to you,” Mal said, taking a last bite and getting up from the table, leaving Seth alone.
Great. Just when things were getting...okay.
- - -
They had to watch a certain timeline, the not-a-stone protocol said, and that timeline was getting nigh, Seth knew.
He mulled it over for weeks. He could go with Mal’s gut and not even try the thing - Mal could be right, it could be dangerous, could end up killing him.
Or he could get home.
Home with 200 thread count sheets. And his comics, and bagels with shmear. And Ryan, Summer, Marissa, his parents, and even, God forbid, Julie Cooper-Nichol. Oh, to be able to walk into the shower and feel cool tile under his feet before he stepped in.
Still, he was better than these creature comforts, wasn’t he? It wouldn’t do anyone any good if he ended up dead. But this was the only option he’d found, he thought despairingly, as he folded himself around Mal’s back and sighed softly against his skin.
It seemed the question was, was all that really worth going home for? And was it worth letting go of this, he wondered as he fell asleep to Mal’s even breathing.
- - -
“There could be another time you could do it, maybe,” Mal offered, shifting up on his side, probably of seeing Seth yet again thinking.
“They said this time though. Don’t you think if there were other options they would have given them? Like some kind of bus schedule or train table?”
Mal’s arm slipped around Seth’s waist, and Seth hoped he never forgot the large, safe feeling of Mal’s hand on his stomach.
“I think, Cohen, that you have to do what’s right for you.” Mal’s fingers stroked lightly over the non-existent muscles of Seth’s abs.
“Tell me what’s waiting for you,” Mal murmured, and if Seth had been listening, or facing Mal, he would have heard the hint of sadness, or possibly envy.
“Yeah, well, there’s this guy-“ Seth heard something that sounded like a growl but he continued anyway, “And my folks and some friends... plus - and I never thought I’d say this but - there’s something wrong with the world when there isn’t a Newport shindig going on. I’m going to have to stop saying shindig, aren’t I? Damn.”
Mal’s hand continued to stroke over Seth’s stomach, drifting from time to time into the wiry curls that went lower
“There’s sailing, real sailing, and I...actually miss school. Geez, I can’t believe I just said that. It’s kind of too bad Luke’s gone, I might have gotten some slack from the other water polo players. Which probably would have been a good thing, what with this new leaf I’ve turned-“
“Cohen?” Mal murmured against the back of Seth’s neck, teeth nipping lightly.
“Yeah?”
“Just say it.”
“I...think I have to go home, Mal.”
“Yeah, yeah you are. But not until after I’m finished here,” and this time, Seth did hear the smile just before his brain went hay-wire as Mal’s rough fingers slipped around his cock.
- - -
His breathing was finally starting to slow down after that third time. Thank god. Mal was a demon in the sack, that’s for sure. Inara was really missing out. Or Simon was. Anybody who wasn’t Seth was.
Seth took in a deep breath, eyes wandering over to the sheaf of files that held his instructions, where to go, when, what to do...
“You’re really going to go, aren’t you? Gonna find that boy of yours?”
“Yeah... Yeah, I think so.”
“Guess I shouldn’t stand in your way...”
“I wouldn’t hate it if you tried to though. You’ve got that big jungle cat, Jayne thing going on when you do-“
Mal growled and pinned Seth to the mattress with another hard kiss. How did the man still have so much stamina?
“Think you’ll be back?” Mal asked, a quietness to his voice that Seth wished he could hold onto. Wished he could draw into a comic and take with him.
“Well, I always wanted to sail to Tahiti...”
“Maybe I’ll see you there, sailor,” Mal murmured before kissing him again, softly. Seth’s smile found a matching one across from him when they came up for air, and he knew this would be right.
Donor: dancinbutterfly
Fandoms: Firefly/The O.C.
Pairing: Capt. Malcolm Reynolds/Seth Cohen
Rating: R/FRM for adult situations
Setting: An AU for the last episode of season 1 of The O.C.
Word Count: 5,892
Disclaimer: I own nothing, and intend no correlation to actual real life situations, nor am I endorsing any of the behavior therein.
Summary: Seth gets a one-way ticket to space. Along the way he figures out that he might actually like to go back to Newport.
A/N: strangecreature rocks. She saw this thing through many incarnations, and I don’t think it would have gotten here without her brainstorming and encouragement (and nit-picking!). Any remaining mistakes are totally mine.
Out of the Blue
Is it ready?
Nearly, sir. It must be handled carefully. If it doesn’t go directly to the girl, we may not be able to reverse the situation as planned.
This has gotten too far out of control. We need to act quickly before the girl displays her abilities. Blue Sun cannot afford what’s to come.
Of course, sir.
- - -
Seth stared up at the darkened, rough steel of his bunk. If he looked at it just right, he could see all the swirls of grease, smoke, the tool marks that had made the steel. Sometimes, when he didn’t keep track of what time it was on Serenity and he couldn’t sleep, he listened to the haphazard groans of the big ship and stared at those gashes and swirls. They made pretty good substitutes for clouds - okay they were more like constellations, but he was trying not to think about how he didn’t recognize anything in the real stars outside - and tried to find shapes in them.
“That one...is Ryan’s forehead. And that one over there is you with your suspender straps twisted.”
“I do not walk around-“
“Sure you do. When it’s early, and you’re stumbling back from the ‘head,’” Seth made his signature quote marks with his fingers, a habit Mal hated, of course, “sometimes you pull them up and they twist... Kind of like our legs are doing now,” Seth murmured quietly and a little sheepishly as he looked over at Mal.
“Suppose they do,” Mal murmured back, heel rubbing against Seth’s foot. “So, this is it, huh?”
- - -
Some people lived in the outside world; some people lived outside of the outside world.
So Seth wasn’t so surprised when he woke up with his cheek to cold metal. Metal not of the California beach variety. If there was such a variety.
The last thing he remembered was mulling around the beach getting ready to soar out to Tahiti. Ryan was gone, what was Seth supposed to do?
The water had been this glistening gray-orange as the sun went down and there was this stone that stood out like a beacon. Neon blue with some kind of Asian character on it, he noticed as he bent to pick it up. He remembered cool water, a pang in his gut for Ryan’s broody silence, the sharp cut of electricity and then...
He was here. Wherever here was.
As far as graphic novels went, this plotline was a gorram feng le one, Seth thought. Damn, he’d been out here a long time if he was using words like feng le. ...Though, gorram should have been more troubling, shouldn’t it have? What with Chinese being an actual language and all...? Anyway...
As near as he could figure it there must have been some wormhole, because he was really more in favor of something scientific (even theoretically scientific) than mystical. Mystical never turned out well, for anybody in fiction - hello, Mordor anyone? - and he really didn’t have it in him to go hunting for some ring before he got to go home.
His fingers had rubbed over the shiny, smooth, blue stone a thousand times that night hoping to unlock whatever it was that had sent him here. Here where there weren’t any cell phones and nobody, nobody had an infinity pool.
It should have been heaven, right?
- - -
There was this one night when he and Ryan were playing Gran Turismo III and Seth had just beat the pants off Ryan and they were laughing and joking with each other, and there had been this moment where their eyes had met, and Seth knew. He knew there was more. It was a simple little moment but it had been clear, crisp.
Things weren’t like that with Malcolm Reynolds.
- - -
His first few days trying to get his...space legs, there was this guy Ben that had helped Seth out. Okay, first few weeks. A month or two... until Seth was a bona fide pickpocket and could give head better than he could play chess. Alright, he was never that great a chess player, but still. It was a new skill.
One that in the back of his mind Seth wished he could have tried out on Ryan first, but... Ben was kind of like Ryan in a way. Muscled, but small, kind of feisty. Only Ben was a little...crazy. He took risks, risks Seth wasn’t willing to take even on a planet he didn’t know, so they called it quits (read: Seth hightailed it out of there when Ben was out one night and Seth heard pulse fires and a voice that sounded far too much like a cry he knew too well by now), and went off on his own).
Sure, there were times he wished he could phone home, and there were some unmanly times when he woke up with salt stains all over the folded piece of cloth he called a pillow, but he was here, and he wasn’t going to let any new water polo players piss in his non-Earth shoes.
- - -
Eavesdown Docks. Eaves down docks. Seth always rolled that one over his tongue every morning before he’d set up shop. It made him think of Watership Down for some reason. Just the name. And books made him think of home. Of school. Of Ryan.
But he’d shrug it off, pee in his pee corner, and start folding out his wares for all the new travelers that day. Most of it was what he could ‘nick’ from the day before, but he started to be able to spot the carrier guys that were the ones stupid enough to transport valuables on them, and he went for those instead of wasting his time on every posh ‘fraidy-cat looking for transport.
Seth couldn’t afford not to be choosy these days. He’d started to get a rep, his buyers knew he went for the high-end things. He had to eye his mark, and make the play just to have something to sell the next day. He kept shooting for that bigger whale, just like in Vegas, he’d tell himself, because he had to find someone with connections. Someone who could tell him about this stone and get him home.
- - -
Sir, sir, there’ve been some...complications with the device.
Complications?
Yes. It was... mishandled. It didn’t... get to its destination.
So the girl hasn’t been sent back before her escape?
No, sir. It never reached her.
Then you’d better get it back. I don’t think you want to be responsible for time collapsing and your existence disappearing. Especially not due to a pulse rifle.
- - -
It just so happened that Seth then had to go and piss off one of his so-called whales with connections. Of course he did. As usual, he didn’t have to do anything. It wasn’t even that he stole from the guy. It was those words that just somehow...fell out of his mouth.
Yeah.
So he ran. Yup, ran like a big cowardly wimp saving his neck. Grabbed his bundle he was planning on hocking that day and ran.
Happened that he bumped into Soldier Guy on the way back to his ship. Browncoat. He’d been by two weeks back, Seth’s little cataloguing brain supplied. Seth didn’t know much about the war, but he knew about this guy. One of his regular buyers, Mr. Badger, had mentioned him once or twice, and then it was all Seth had to do to mention his name to the right folks, and he practically knew Malcolm Reynolds’ life story. It didn’t hurt that Captain Reynolds had been browsing with the sweetest girl, that Seth distinctly remembered him. And, you know, Seth knew where they were docked.
Mal didn’t take to kindly to him stowing away. Had to give Mal at least a days’ hard earned cash before Mal’d stop threatening to shove him out the airlock.
Sometimes, even after the first few months, Seth still called him Soldier Guy in his head. Suited Mal. Took him even longer to be able to call him Mal to his face. Mal was more uptight than any of the WASPy McWASPs of Newport. And serious to boot. He really didn’t seem to find Seth funny. Which was definitely unfortunate. For both of them.
Yeah, things were a lot more pleasant on Serenity though than they had been in his little shack on Persephone. They had at least a way to bathe, and the pee corner was more of a toilet.
Seth Cohen was moving up in the world. And further and further away from home, little blue stone or not.
- - -
Things with Mal were more like Julie Cooper. Sharp, dangerous, and definitely hazardous to your health.
But somehow the guy drew you in.
And dear god, so frickin’ hot. Not that Marissa’s mom was hot because so not going there. That was Luke’s job. Seth was totally hands off on the Julie Cooper front. But if one were to find Mrs. Cooper-Nichol hot, then Mal might be considered of that caliber of hotness.
Even in the brief glimpse of Mal Seth had gotten the day he snuck on Serenity with Mal eyeing Simon all over, Seth knew that things with this guy were never easy, and there was always going to be something dark underneath that gruff, but still pretty exterior. Something dark, but good like Ryan Atwood, and like all good comic book superheroes. Mal may not have known it, but he really did have all the makings for your angsty, but save the world driven superhero. And he had a space ship. Dude, that had to count for something.
And Seth Cohen was going to do his best to live up to that superhero standard. Maybe a little less Dick Grayson and more Bobby Drake though.
- - -
Seth had heard the purple bellies (purple bellies? That made them sound like jelly beans to Seth. Not exactly threatening for arch nemeses. The Alliance? Much scarier and ominous. He wished someone had introduced them to him properly instead of as jelly beans, because holy hell they were worth the heart thumping and sweaty sweating palms) before anyone else on the crew.
Kaylee and River were playing in cargo bay, and Seth heard the gasp of the airlock losing pressure and just knew. Dashing over the open stairs, the rough metal biting into his stupidly bare feet. If he could just get to them in time. He ripped his hand open, tripping down the last section of stairs. His eyes were darting everywhere and he ignored Kaylee’s look of confusion; he had to clap hands over the girls mouths before they could ask him what was wrong, before they could reveal themselves. He had to.
Pushing them both in the tight, hidden compartment for not-so-legal cargo, and following them in, they all cringed when the airlock was pried open at the same moment Seth shoved their tiny door closed.
Hours, and hours after Mal had sweet-talked the Alliance away, and long, long, too long after Seth had needed to relieve his bladder properly, there was a knock on his bunk. Seth was staring in dazed relief at the ceiling, but he told whomever it was that they could come in, expecting Kaylee or maybe Simon.
“Nice thing you did today, son.” Mal slouched against Seth’s ladder.
“I like River.”
“Who doesn’t? A little crazy does a ship good.” Mal didn’t even really seem to hear Seth as he ambled and drawled across the tiny metal capsule of a place Seth was starting to call home.
“Shoulda dropped you out a long time ago, son. Don’t really take too kindly to stowaways.” Was Mal prowling? Was that what it was? Because he kind of looked like he was.
Mal’s eyes flashed to Seth’s. “But you’re good folk, Cohen. And you might even find a place for yourself if you keep doing things like you did today.” Mal’s eyes flicked to Seth’s hands and feet. “You alright? Lemme get the doc-”
“No, no. You don’t need to bother Simon.” Seth looked down at his hands and gave Mal a small, strange look. “Battle scars, right?”
“Not a bother for Simon. That’s what he’s here for,” Mal said gruffly, the mood somehow turning faster than Seth could have expected. “I’ll send him your way,” Mal said, his voice disappearing up the ladder.
There was something Seth had thought was happening...but wasn’t apparently.
Seth’s eyes followed the echo of Mal’s voice, confused, and then finally lied back on the bed, smearing his thumb through the blood still caked on his hand. He still hadn’t washed it off.
- - -
Ryan Atwood had been kind of like meeting a cat for the first time. You had to move slowly. Let him sniff you out.
Seth didn’t do that.
It made Ryan blink, confused, and Seth liked to think that made Ryan take to him faster than everyone else. Seth had never been - seemed - scared of Ryan, and that seemed to make all the difference.
Things with Mal were the same. Only Mal was a bigger cat. A much bigger, grumpier tiger type of cat. Yeah. Seth would be the tiny kitten pouncing and trying to play, and Mal could just bat him away with one big paw.
But for some reason he didn’t.
- - -
The months were just flying by...
He was getting thinner. Seth knew it. Knew it wasn’t healthy. Knew something was wrong. But he couldn’t tell Mal. He didn’t want Mal to drop him somewhere for being useless and sick, even if he had put himself on the line for River.
There was the not-stone thing too. What if no one knew what it was? What if he was stuck out in space for eternity and he never got to see his parents, Ryan, Summer, anyone he knew ever again? It was...troublesome. This sidekick was plain out of ideas.
But he also found himself staring out different ports around the ship more often. Sometimes he saw Ryan’s face out there. Sometimes he saw his mother’s.
One night off the port side - he so knew the sides now, thank you Wash, and no thanks to Mal - there was a hand. His dad’s hand. Seth recognized the dark hair on his knuckles. That same thick dark hair that plagued the Cohen men and drove the women crazy as his dad liked to think. The great Sanford Cohen. In space. Who would have thought?
Seth looked at him when he appeared on the other side of the porthole.
“Come on, Sethela. Come on out, the water’s fine,” his dad coaxed.
Seth put his hand up to the thick, heavy plastic. Home. The beach. He wanted that.
“Sethela. Don’t be scared. It’s all over. Come on home. Your mother and I miss you. Ryan’s here.”
“He’s home?” Seth said curiously, fingernails grating lightly against the small round window.
“He’s home. Where you should be. Come on, Seth. Come on out. Take a swim. It’s all just a bad dream. You know this could never happen. You’re in space. Astronauts these days can’t even last a few months let alone years like these folks. Listen to that brain of yours. You know it’s right. None of this exists.”
His dad’s hand was so close. He put his on top of it. “Dad?”
The smile was so familiar.
“Dad... wait!” He was fading. Disappearing. The black swallowed him up. Seth turned abruptly to get to the airlock. He had to get to his dad. But there was a very solid chest in his way.
“Seth, woah there. Where you going in such a hurry?” Mal’s hands were big on Seth’s now very slender shoulders. No one had touched him in weeks. They wouldn’t have known how easily his bones would have broken in a fight.
“Mal, move. I need to get out. My dad’s out there. I have to help him. Please, get out of my way. The airlock,” Seth said quietly, desperately, looking completely through Mal.
“Cohen, are you high? Did Jayne give you some of his moonshine?” Mal’s eyes were careful on Seth’s face. He didn’t like the scrutiny, and he had to get to his dad.
So he was very stupid and struck out at Mal. It was like glass hitting steel. Seth crumpled in pain, landing squarely against Mal’s chest. “Get out of my way,” Seth tried not to plead.
“Not going anywhere, soldier,” Mal said quietly, holding Seth still.
“Let me go, stop it, stop it! He’s going to die; you’re going to kill him! I shouldn’t be here! You did this! Stop keeping me here, let me go!” Seth’s voice alternated between gasping and yelling as he pushed against Mal’s solid chest. “Let me go...” Seth whimpered as he slipped to the floor, unconscious.
- - -
He woke three days later, his body slick with sweat and a warm dry hand holding his.
“The Black Sickness. You’re a real dumb one Cohen, you know that?” Mal sounded harsh, but Seth could blearily tell there was a look of relief on Mal’s face.
“So you always hang around the sick people on your boat? Some kind of captain-y thing?” Seth tried to tease, his mouth feeling full of cotton.
“Hang around my crew,” Mal said quietly, but Seth felt the thumb brushing over the back of his hand.
“So you’re trying to tell me my chores aren’t getting done?” Seth gave his best attempt at a smile while his head was still throbbing. Didn’t seem so bad though when he thought he glimpsed an upturn of Mal’s mouth too.
“No, they ain’t. So you best get on your legs soon.”
“Mal, what I said...”
“Don’t bear repeatin’.”
“Mal I-“
“Cohen, drop it. You were out of your mind. Sick as death, and homesick too,” Mal said, slipping that in a little too easily for Seth’s comfort. “A body’s liable to say just about anything in that state. Don’t worry your head about it, Seth. Get better, Captain’s orders,” Mal murmured, bending to kiss Seth’s forehead. It wasn’t so much the kiss to his forehead as it was the use of his first name that left Seth open-mouthed looking at Mal’s back.
- - -
Seth wasn’t even sure he was better, but Mal jumped right in and started showing Seth the ropes. His version of doctoring, Seth supposed, since Mal seemed to leave his bunk quicker and quicker while Seth was recuperating. The chores gave Seth a chance to talk to the taciturn solider, and you know, have something to do all day beside stare up at his bunk ceiling like he was in quarantine. Didn’t hurt that he got some exercise in and ate more due it either.
“So, you and Inara...”
“Ain’t none of your business, Cohen, and you might want to listen so you don’t lose your hand when you close the engine hatch, dong ma?”
It went like that most days. Mal worked him until he was bone tired and then worked some more after sending Seth off to bed. His own bed. Alone.
Sometimes, he caught Simon looking at him curiously, and hey, he could probably get himself a piece of that action, but he missed Ryan. And... Seth thought it might have something to do with all the time he was spending with Mal. The guy shouldn’t be leading Kaylee on like that
Kaylee, now she was pretty. Actually laughed at some of his jokes, even when he was pretty sure she didn’t get the references. If he even thought he had a chance with Kaylee and that Summer wouldn’t string him up by his shoelaces, Seth would totally...you know, strike out big time with Kaylee.
And really, he was never sure which Tam she had her heart set on. Huh. Kaylee and River. That would be hot. Maybe throw in a little Inara, even some Zoe love. That would be one pretty foursome. He didn’t know how anyone got any work done on this boat. ...And he could feel Summer thwapping him on the head right now for even imagining joining that foursome.
But Seth was definitely staying out of whatever was happening with anybody, especially Simon and Kaylee. Mal would probably think it was his fault if something bad happened to disrupt his ship, and dump on the next planet anyway.
Mal...Mal on the other hand. Mal he didn’t see in a foursome. Mal actually reminded him more of Ryan the better he got to know him, but then he also reminded him less of Ryan the more he got to know him. Mal was different. Didn’t look like Ryan, but somewhere in Seth’s gut he felt like Ryan, and that was what had Seth laying awake after he’d check the Cortex every night for possible leads on his little stone.
- - -
Mal wasn’t all bad. Gruff and not one for mincing words, but he stepped up to the plate just like Ryan and his poorly timed fist fights when one of his own was in trouble. Seth like that about him. Had always liked that about Ryan.
It was good to know when someone had your back even when they didn’t have two cents or credits of their own to rub together.
That time on the beach at Holly’s party... Seth wasn’t going to forget that any time soon, no matter how far he got from Newport. Ryan had fought for him. Seth had the feeling for some reason that Mal would be the same way if things ever got ugly for him.
- - -
“That your good luck charm, son?” Mal asked as he strolled into the galley one night. Seth sat at one of the long benches flipping the small, flat stone around in his fingers, munching on the last of the guilt apples Jayne had bought.
“Oh, ah, no. No. Definitely not good luck,” Seth said glancing over his shoulder.
Mal sat down next to him straddling the bench with what Seth now could recognize as the sad equivalent of coffee. “Sure carry it around a lot,” Mal observed, peering over the rim of his cup. “Reckon the doc might know what it was if you’re curious,” Mal said, his timing making his words creepily insightful to Seth.
Seth kept staring at it, wondering if it was even from this time and place. It might not even work anymore; could have just been a one-time deal. He tilted the apple towards Mal forgetting that it wasn’t a bagel and Ryan wouldn’t be taking it from his hand.
By the time that he registered that those were Mal’s lips against his finger and that Mal had just taken a bite, well, Mal was already up and out the door, glancing back and saying, “Awful nice of you to share your apple, Cohen. Doc’s in the ‘firmary if you decide you need him.” Huh.
- - -
“Huh.” Simon turned the little stone over and over. “Well, I’m pretty sure it’s not a stone - it’s got to be some sort of polymer, and this character looks practically ancient - but other than that, I don’t know what it is,” Simon said, looking up at Seth apologetically. Well, at least he hadn’t told Simon why he had the stone. Seth figured it was better that Simon didn’t think he was crazy by telling him some tall tale about Seth being from a land, a galaxy, a time far, far away.
“We could put it on the Cortex, see if anything comes up,” Simon offered with a smile. “Maybe someone will know what it is and send us a wave.”
“Okay, let’s do that.”
- - -
“So, Shadow, huh? Sounds grim. Now, you wouldn’t know it but Newport? Where I’m from? Even more grim.” Seth nodded as he slathered another coat of some kind of protective paint on Serenity’s hull. The whole crew was helping and each pair of them had a section to do.
“So, a Core boy, huh? You, Seth Cohen, ain’t gonna convince me that some rich boy from the Core had a hard life.”
So he wasn’t exactly from the Core planets, but so what? Newport Beach and Southern California were the same idea, right? Rich, wealthy playground for the clans with the cash.
“Well, I didn’t brand any cattle, but we had water polo players, and let me tell you, you don’t want them anywhere near your shoes unattended.” Seth rolled out another stripe, dripping some on Mal’s shoulder as he dropped the roller in the bucket for more paint.
“Thanks, Cohen,” Mal rolled his eyes and wiped it off.
“What, you always need thicker skin, right?” Seth joked.
“Tryna say something, boy?”
“No, no, Mal,” Seth reached across with his roller to get a spot Mal missed putting his nose inches from Mal’s. “You just might want to...” Was he really doing this? This was so a romantic comedy from the eighties. “You might want to take down a few fences, you know what I mean?” Seth’s mouth brushed Mal’s with little warning and even less finesse, but the guy was kissing back and that was something for his first boy kiss.
“Umm...” Was he doing something? He really could not remember as he stood there and stared at Mal opened-mouthed. “Did that just-?”
“You were trying to tell me something about fencing?” Mal supplied, easily going back to his section of painting, faint, faint smile lingering on his lips as his hand slipped from Seth’s waist where Seth again had not realized it had been.
---
“You know I think shipboard romances go and complicate things, right?”
“Oh, believe you me, I know,” Seth replied, hands on Mal’s shoulders, feeling those muscles and bone that had just saved his ass. Looked like he was right about Mal fighting for him. He shouldn’t have gone on that job in the first place. Either of them.
“So it’s more than likely just going to be this once,” Mal justified, fingers sliding up under Seth’s shirt.
“Sure,” Seth said, finally feeling like he had the go-ahead for their frenzied little tryst now. His hands cupped the sides of Mal’s face and he kissed him, kissed him desperately. God, he had thought he was going to die out there. Guns and bullets, it had actually been worse than Newport and Chino combined.
Their hands were rushed, their bodies needy, but Mal was gentle, and as rough around the edges as Seth expected him to be. It kept him riding wave after wave, body tingling wherever Mal touched, arching up for another spark of the want in Mal’s eyes. That connection Seth had lost.
- - -
Sir, we’ve intercepted a communication. Someone’s found the device. How should we proceed?
Discreetly. We want no suspicions aroused about it.
And what if they’ve already used it? If time has been altered, sir?
Un-alter it and get the device to the girl. I want no attention attracted. Just fix it.
- - -
Staring up at the ceiling in Mal’s bunk, feeling Mal’s chest move up and down, Seth was oddly glad they didn’t have Companions like Inara back on Earth yet. Hookers, yes, but they were totally socially unacceptable. Pariahs - man, that is such a great word, he thought, running his tongue over dry lips. Dry lips from...doing what Ben taught him to do best.
No, if there were hot Companions like Inara back home? Seth thought Ryan might be oddly good at it. That was a bad thing you see. A very bad thing...to be thinking while he was still in the same bed as someone completely dead sexy enough to be a Companion in their own right. But Malcolm Reynolds was too high and mighty for that kind of stooping. Mal certainly wasn’t perfect, but he seemed like a damn fine catch to Seth. Especially since it was probably going to be half past never before he ever saw Ryan again or Summer, much less Ryan-as-Companion.
- - -
“So someone knows what your rock is?”
Mal’s cup tapped lazily against the galley table. His body relaxed, and totally cat-like. Seth was so right about that big cat thing. Now, how to tell Mal...
“Yeah, and I think they could help me get back home...” Blurting things out worked too...
“To Persephone? Cohen if that’s what you need, Serenity can make a stop there in a few-“
“Mal...” Damn. Mal was going to make this hard. Jesus, Mary and Moses why did he have fall for the brooding silent types! “You know that’s not where I’m from.” Seth said quietly, looking Mal steadily in the eye, willing the guy to listen to his instincts. There was no way in hell Mal really thought he was from this ‘verse.
The cup stopped its gentle tapping and Mal coughed away from the table before looking back into the mystical depths of the mug. And oddly enough, Seth was now pretty damn sure anything could be mystical in whatever time and place he’d landed himself.
“Just thought maybe you were from the other end, some part of the ‘verse I hadn’t been.” Mal said after a few moments, still not looking at Seth, but not looking angry either.
“So what do you need?”
Always the can do attitude. Always helping someone even when he looked for all the world like he didn’t want to. Good guy, Malcolm Reynolds, good guy.
- - -
They want to know what it is, sir. It may have already been used...
Ask if they’d like instructions on how to reverse their situation... Say no more than that.
- - -
Mal and Seth read over the wave for the thousandth time one night, munching on an apple - Seth had persuaded Mal that the buying of apples over the buying of extra protein bars was a good thing - and passing it back to the other as they sat at the long galley table, knees touching beneath.
“I don’t know Cohen...” Mal said, rubbing a hand on his own thigh. “Could be risky.” This coming from the man who might actually be the definition of risk.
Seth laughed just as River danced in, toes always so light in such a heavy environment. She paused to smile at Seth and then peer over his shoulder, eyes widening.
“It won’t be like you planned,” River said softly, voice catching before drifting away from the two of them, absently grabbing her snack as she left.
“What was that all about?” Seth turned to Mal.
“Don’t rightly know, but something’s not right. Too risky, I’d say.” Mal said obviously trying intently not to overstep his bounds. “But it’s up to you,” Mal said, taking a last bite and getting up from the table, leaving Seth alone.
Great. Just when things were getting...okay.
- - -
They had to watch a certain timeline, the not-a-stone protocol said, and that timeline was getting nigh, Seth knew.
He mulled it over for weeks. He could go with Mal’s gut and not even try the thing - Mal could be right, it could be dangerous, could end up killing him.
Or he could get home.
Home with 200 thread count sheets. And his comics, and bagels with shmear. And Ryan, Summer, Marissa, his parents, and even, God forbid, Julie Cooper-Nichol. Oh, to be able to walk into the shower and feel cool tile under his feet before he stepped in.
Still, he was better than these creature comforts, wasn’t he? It wouldn’t do anyone any good if he ended up dead. But this was the only option he’d found, he thought despairingly, as he folded himself around Mal’s back and sighed softly against his skin.
It seemed the question was, was all that really worth going home for? And was it worth letting go of this, he wondered as he fell asleep to Mal’s even breathing.
- - -
“There could be another time you could do it, maybe,” Mal offered, shifting up on his side, probably of seeing Seth yet again thinking.
“They said this time though. Don’t you think if there were other options they would have given them? Like some kind of bus schedule or train table?”
Mal’s arm slipped around Seth’s waist, and Seth hoped he never forgot the large, safe feeling of Mal’s hand on his stomach.
“I think, Cohen, that you have to do what’s right for you.” Mal’s fingers stroked lightly over the non-existent muscles of Seth’s abs.
“Tell me what’s waiting for you,” Mal murmured, and if Seth had been listening, or facing Mal, he would have heard the hint of sadness, or possibly envy.
“Yeah, well, there’s this guy-“ Seth heard something that sounded like a growl but he continued anyway, “And my folks and some friends... plus - and I never thought I’d say this but - there’s something wrong with the world when there isn’t a Newport shindig going on. I’m going to have to stop saying shindig, aren’t I? Damn.”
Mal’s hand continued to stroke over Seth’s stomach, drifting from time to time into the wiry curls that went lower
“There’s sailing, real sailing, and I...actually miss school. Geez, I can’t believe I just said that. It’s kind of too bad Luke’s gone, I might have gotten some slack from the other water polo players. Which probably would have been a good thing, what with this new leaf I’ve turned-“
“Cohen?” Mal murmured against the back of Seth’s neck, teeth nipping lightly.
“Yeah?”
“Just say it.”
“I...think I have to go home, Mal.”
“Yeah, yeah you are. But not until after I’m finished here,” and this time, Seth did hear the smile just before his brain went hay-wire as Mal’s rough fingers slipped around his cock.
- - -
His breathing was finally starting to slow down after that third time. Thank god. Mal was a demon in the sack, that’s for sure. Inara was really missing out. Or Simon was. Anybody who wasn’t Seth was.
Seth took in a deep breath, eyes wandering over to the sheaf of files that held his instructions, where to go, when, what to do...
“You’re really going to go, aren’t you? Gonna find that boy of yours?”
“Yeah... Yeah, I think so.”
“Guess I shouldn’t stand in your way...”
“I wouldn’t hate it if you tried to though. You’ve got that big jungle cat, Jayne thing going on when you do-“
Mal growled and pinned Seth to the mattress with another hard kiss. How did the man still have so much stamina?
“Think you’ll be back?” Mal asked, a quietness to his voice that Seth wished he could hold onto. Wished he could draw into a comic and take with him.
“Well, I always wanted to sail to Tahiti...”
“Maybe I’ll see you there, sailor,” Mal murmured before kissing him again, softly. Seth’s smile found a matching one across from him when they came up for air, and he knew this would be right.