Like Blood in the Rayne Chapter 8
Title: Like Blood in the Rayne
Author: elsibet34
Fandom: Firefly
Pairings: Jayne/River with hints at Mal/Inara and Simon/Kaylee
Rating: R
Disclaimers: Joss is the Master of the Firefly ‘Verse. Subspecies is the product of Charles Band’s beautiful mind. It’s all theirs.
Summary: Serenity takes on more than its’ crew bargained for when they transport an ancient artifact.
Notes: This takes place after the BDM and all the Subspecies films. Everything is fair play. Also, I reserve the right to change pov at scene changes. I like to. :P
Chapter 8 - Things aren't always what they seem.
Mal concluded that given their present circumstances, Serenity would have to go on a round the clock active schedule, everyone with pilot skills taking their turn manning the cockpit, Simon and Kaylee helping out with whatever they could. So he, Zoe, River, Inara and even Jayne, since Mal had gathered from the best forgotten story the mercenary had told after Canton that Jayne could at least man the cockpit if truly needed, would run a rotation of six hour shifts. He knew that not a single member of his crew could boast anywhere near a full night of sleep from the previous cycle but hadn’t expected everyone to take his plan wherein he took the first watch nearly as easily as they did.
The expected resistance, for when did they ever just do what he said without question, came instead to his next set of orders. Really, he supposed he should have expected it. Telling Simon to move his things up to Kaylee’s bunk, well, nobody flinched at that one too awful much, just looked surprised he’d allow it, let alone suggest it. Inara. Now, she put up a bit more of a fuss, wanted to stay in her shuttle. He gave a second’s thought to the possibility that had he told her to move her things to his own bunk rather than to Zoe’s Inara would have acquiesced quietly but didn’t think he ought to be making that sort of a display in front of the rest of the crew just yet and wanted the both of them, Zoe and Inara, to have a roommate for the time being.
If that had been the only problem, Mal wouldn’t have really felt there was a problem, more like normalcy. Inara being mad at him, now, that was a daily occurrence at the best of times. Counted on it. No, problem was the doc’s brain done got ahead of Mal’s ability to get the words out. If nobody was staying on the lower level, River had to stay somewhere in the crew quarters as well. Simon wrapped his head all too quickly around where that meant she’d be sleeping. He would never have thought Simon could yell so deafeningly, the painful volume not helped by the whining pitch that man’s voice got when he was upset by something.
River, matter of course, pitched herself a right fine fit about it in return until Simon eventually tired and let her have her way like they all knew he would. He was starting to think that girl wasn’t half as crazy anymore as she let her brother think sometimes. Looked more to him like she just enjoyed giving Simon problems. Mal smiled. Couldn’t blame the girl too much for that. Doc was awful funny when he got riled up.
Thinking about that recent round of everyone’s favorite game, ‘Rile up the Doc,’ Mal rubbed briskly against his right ear with his knuckles. Yep, still ringing. He almost didn’t hear Inara come up behind him and made a snap decision to go with pretending he hadn’t. Like a lot of his plans, it didn’t work. “Mal, could we talk for a moment?”
She still had her mad voice, beautiful start to the night. Might as well get geared up for a nice argument, he thought, sighed, and spun around in the chair to face her. “We can if you’re coming here to let me know you dropped off your stuff with Zoe like I done asked you to.”
The famous Inara eye roll answered the first volley. “You didn’t request. You ordered. How many times have we discussed how I don’t take orders?” She asked.
“So, stuff’s not in Zoe’s bunk, then?” The woman was trying to kill him with worry, no doubt in his mind. “Damn it all, Inara, I can’t have you staying back in your shuttle by yourself. It ain’t safe. Won’t let you do it. Yes, let. My boat. My rules. Surely you can understand my feelings on this.”
Inara looked pensive and at last nodded understandingly. “Which is precisely why I moved some of my things into your quarters.”
What? He stood up simply so he could tower over her, made him feel like he had an advantage. Woman could push him over the edge faster than anyone he’d ever known. “Ni juede wo hen ben ma?”
She shushed him. “Please, be quiet. It’s logical. You moved Simon in with Kaylee. You even allowed River to stay with Jayne, which I’m still having some degree of difficulty fathoming, by the way. Why should this be any different?”
“Because I have two people I’m worried about, all right?” He shouted. Mal tried to think calm thoughts when she waved her hands for him to lower his voice and his volume was almost normal when he continued. “Yes, I want to make sure you’re not alone but I can’t just leave Zoe alone either.” He suddenly realized how hard it must have been for Zoe whenever he and Wash had forced her to take sides between them. Ought to apologize for that at some point. “Me sleeping alone, risk I’m all willing to take.”
Inara replied with equal calm. “She doesn’t want me in her bunk, Mal. I don’t expect you to understand it, the sanctuary she’s created for herself within those little walls. It would be a grievous error to invade it. Haven’t you noticed that she’s never moved anything of his out of there?”
He hadn’t. Ai ya. “She hasn’t said anything to you has she?” For some reason, the thought of Zoe going to Inara rather than himself was bothersome.
“No. I merely understand what I see her doing.” Inara answered. “For Zoe, there’s one place in the universe where her husband is still by her side, where she can still be happy. That room is their room, not just hers.” Inara pinned him with her dark eyes, “I’m curious. Do you think if Zoe could go back in time, she would still resist starting things with him? Or would she try to make the time count?” They just looked at each other, a thousand things to say but nothing being said.
Really, the silence was because Mal had no idea what to say in response to that. Luckily for him, Inara chose that second to awkwardly change the subject. “I really came up here to talk to you about Michelle Morgan.”
Mal was grateful for the diversion. He seriously was in need of a delay in their talk, however brief it might be. “What about her?”
“Something didn’t sit right with me after that wave.” Inara paced about the bridge, tidying things. She found River’s sketchbook and flipped it closed, placing it on the co-pilot’s console. “Body language. Outwardly, she voiced fear that Radu was still alive but something else is going on there.” She stopped pacing, glancing up at Mal. “She says she hates him. I believe that’s true, in a way. I also think she’s somewhat in love with him.”
He chuckled a little bit, caught off guard by how ridiculous what she had said seemed to him. “Loves the guy that killed her and turned her into a vampire? Gotta say, ‘Nara. That don’t make a lot of sense.”
“Does love ever make sense? Think about it, the poetry of it, now that I know you occasionally read some. They’ve been in an epic struggle as adversaries for centuries. I should think that would breed a certain level of respect, a degree of affection, wouldn’t you?” Like a cat moving at a leisurely pace she moved closer to him, making Mal decidedly nervous.
He thought she’d been changing the subject but she’d come at him sideways. Damn woman. He understood all too well what her meaning was. “You’re saying it’s like what River was going on about earlier? Fighting might mean something else?” Bad news where this Bloodstone business was concerned, sure, but just maybe there was something good in what she’d said. He took her hand lightly in his, afraid she might still hold enough residual anger to pull away. She didn’t move away from him, her hand instead clasping back at his immediately. He said, “I think I get it.”
She graced him with a smile, the one he loved to see because it came up looking more natural than it ever did when anyone but the two of them could see it, a smile just for their own little world. “Am I to infer by this that you wouldn’t mind if my things were to stay in your bunk after all?”
Not mind? He was suddenly all for it. He went with not answering her directly. It was a thing they did, which he was starting to realize he liked. “You try to get some sleep for a bit. I’ll be on down soon as the shift’s over.”
Inara’s smile was the sunshine. She kissed him on the cheek, then softly and lingeringly on the lips, something she’d never done outside the confines of her shuttle and even then only a recent occurrence at all. Mal figured that meant he’d made the right choice in her eyes. “Wake me when you do.” She left the bridge as quietly as she had entered it, passing a bemused looking mercenary in the doorway.
Jayne’s face lost its smirk when he saw Mal had noticed it. Stony, he looked around for a second until his eyes fell on the sketchbook Inara had just set out so neatly. He went to grab it quickly, making like he meant to leave before Mal could talk to him. Mal wasn’t letting him off that easy now he finally caught Jayne alone since figuring out what was going on. “Got a minute?”
Jayne flinched when Mal spoke. This was clearly not a talk he was thinking was going to be fun times. “Just getting River’s notebook for her, thought she left it here.” He picked it up and went to leave.
Mal was so shocked he almost couldn’t get words out fast enough to stop Jayne’s leaving. “Hold up a minute. You just say River?” he asked. Mal’s mind rewound to what he and Inara had discussed. Fighting. Huh. Made a funny kind of sense.
Jayne held up, tense and obviously ready to argue if that’s what Mal had on his agenda. “This the part where you threaten to put me in the airlock again?”
It wasn’t. Mal shrugged, “Crossed my mind. Gotta admit.”
“And?” Jayne prompted. “Not the airlock? Hmm. How ‘bout the speech about how I hurt her you’ll kick my pigu?”
Mal laughed, image of Jayne flopped out on the ground popping into his head. “Don’t see the need, seeing as how she’s kicked it already, in public to boot.”
Jayne seemed confused by Mal’s sudden mirth. “You ain’t gonna yell? And you’re laughing?”
Mal, still laughing, answered with another question, “You see the look on Simon’s face?”
"Right. I'm just gonna..." Jayne, looking wary, gestured toward his bunk with the book and started walking.
Mal corked down the almost fatherly protective instinct that made him start to call to Jayne to stop again. Maybe everybody should make the most of their time, seeing as how they might not have much of it left.
*************************************
Help with the Chinese, just in case:
Ni juede wo hen ben ma? - Do you think I’m an idiot?
Ai ya - Damn
Pigu - Bottom
Author: elsibet34
Fandom: Firefly
Pairings: Jayne/River with hints at Mal/Inara and Simon/Kaylee
Rating: R
Disclaimers: Joss is the Master of the Firefly ‘Verse. Subspecies is the product of Charles Band’s beautiful mind. It’s all theirs.
Summary: Serenity takes on more than its’ crew bargained for when they transport an ancient artifact.
Notes: This takes place after the BDM and all the Subspecies films. Everything is fair play. Also, I reserve the right to change pov at scene changes. I like to. :P
Chapter 8 - Things aren't always what they seem.
Mal concluded that given their present circumstances, Serenity would have to go on a round the clock active schedule, everyone with pilot skills taking their turn manning the cockpit, Simon and Kaylee helping out with whatever they could. So he, Zoe, River, Inara and even Jayne, since Mal had gathered from the best forgotten story the mercenary had told after Canton that Jayne could at least man the cockpit if truly needed, would run a rotation of six hour shifts. He knew that not a single member of his crew could boast anywhere near a full night of sleep from the previous cycle but hadn’t expected everyone to take his plan wherein he took the first watch nearly as easily as they did.
The expected resistance, for when did they ever just do what he said without question, came instead to his next set of orders. Really, he supposed he should have expected it. Telling Simon to move his things up to Kaylee’s bunk, well, nobody flinched at that one too awful much, just looked surprised he’d allow it, let alone suggest it. Inara. Now, she put up a bit more of a fuss, wanted to stay in her shuttle. He gave a second’s thought to the possibility that had he told her to move her things to his own bunk rather than to Zoe’s Inara would have acquiesced quietly but didn’t think he ought to be making that sort of a display in front of the rest of the crew just yet and wanted the both of them, Zoe and Inara, to have a roommate for the time being.
If that had been the only problem, Mal wouldn’t have really felt there was a problem, more like normalcy. Inara being mad at him, now, that was a daily occurrence at the best of times. Counted on it. No, problem was the doc’s brain done got ahead of Mal’s ability to get the words out. If nobody was staying on the lower level, River had to stay somewhere in the crew quarters as well. Simon wrapped his head all too quickly around where that meant she’d be sleeping. He would never have thought Simon could yell so deafeningly, the painful volume not helped by the whining pitch that man’s voice got when he was upset by something.
River, matter of course, pitched herself a right fine fit about it in return until Simon eventually tired and let her have her way like they all knew he would. He was starting to think that girl wasn’t half as crazy anymore as she let her brother think sometimes. Looked more to him like she just enjoyed giving Simon problems. Mal smiled. Couldn’t blame the girl too much for that. Doc was awful funny when he got riled up.
Thinking about that recent round of everyone’s favorite game, ‘Rile up the Doc,’ Mal rubbed briskly against his right ear with his knuckles. Yep, still ringing. He almost didn’t hear Inara come up behind him and made a snap decision to go with pretending he hadn’t. Like a lot of his plans, it didn’t work. “Mal, could we talk for a moment?”
She still had her mad voice, beautiful start to the night. Might as well get geared up for a nice argument, he thought, sighed, and spun around in the chair to face her. “We can if you’re coming here to let me know you dropped off your stuff with Zoe like I done asked you to.”
The famous Inara eye roll answered the first volley. “You didn’t request. You ordered. How many times have we discussed how I don’t take orders?” She asked.
“So, stuff’s not in Zoe’s bunk, then?” The woman was trying to kill him with worry, no doubt in his mind. “Damn it all, Inara, I can’t have you staying back in your shuttle by yourself. It ain’t safe. Won’t let you do it. Yes, let. My boat. My rules. Surely you can understand my feelings on this.”
Inara looked pensive and at last nodded understandingly. “Which is precisely why I moved some of my things into your quarters.”
What? He stood up simply so he could tower over her, made him feel like he had an advantage. Woman could push him over the edge faster than anyone he’d ever known. “Ni juede wo hen ben ma?”
She shushed him. “Please, be quiet. It’s logical. You moved Simon in with Kaylee. You even allowed River to stay with Jayne, which I’m still having some degree of difficulty fathoming, by the way. Why should this be any different?”
“Because I have two people I’m worried about, all right?” He shouted. Mal tried to think calm thoughts when she waved her hands for him to lower his voice and his volume was almost normal when he continued. “Yes, I want to make sure you’re not alone but I can’t just leave Zoe alone either.” He suddenly realized how hard it must have been for Zoe whenever he and Wash had forced her to take sides between them. Ought to apologize for that at some point. “Me sleeping alone, risk I’m all willing to take.”
Inara replied with equal calm. “She doesn’t want me in her bunk, Mal. I don’t expect you to understand it, the sanctuary she’s created for herself within those little walls. It would be a grievous error to invade it. Haven’t you noticed that she’s never moved anything of his out of there?”
He hadn’t. Ai ya. “She hasn’t said anything to you has she?” For some reason, the thought of Zoe going to Inara rather than himself was bothersome.
“No. I merely understand what I see her doing.” Inara answered. “For Zoe, there’s one place in the universe where her husband is still by her side, where she can still be happy. That room is their room, not just hers.” Inara pinned him with her dark eyes, “I’m curious. Do you think if Zoe could go back in time, she would still resist starting things with him? Or would she try to make the time count?” They just looked at each other, a thousand things to say but nothing being said.
Really, the silence was because Mal had no idea what to say in response to that. Luckily for him, Inara chose that second to awkwardly change the subject. “I really came up here to talk to you about Michelle Morgan.”
Mal was grateful for the diversion. He seriously was in need of a delay in their talk, however brief it might be. “What about her?”
“Something didn’t sit right with me after that wave.” Inara paced about the bridge, tidying things. She found River’s sketchbook and flipped it closed, placing it on the co-pilot’s console. “Body language. Outwardly, she voiced fear that Radu was still alive but something else is going on there.” She stopped pacing, glancing up at Mal. “She says she hates him. I believe that’s true, in a way. I also think she’s somewhat in love with him.”
He chuckled a little bit, caught off guard by how ridiculous what she had said seemed to him. “Loves the guy that killed her and turned her into a vampire? Gotta say, ‘Nara. That don’t make a lot of sense.”
“Does love ever make sense? Think about it, the poetry of it, now that I know you occasionally read some. They’ve been in an epic struggle as adversaries for centuries. I should think that would breed a certain level of respect, a degree of affection, wouldn’t you?” Like a cat moving at a leisurely pace she moved closer to him, making Mal decidedly nervous.
He thought she’d been changing the subject but she’d come at him sideways. Damn woman. He understood all too well what her meaning was. “You’re saying it’s like what River was going on about earlier? Fighting might mean something else?” Bad news where this Bloodstone business was concerned, sure, but just maybe there was something good in what she’d said. He took her hand lightly in his, afraid she might still hold enough residual anger to pull away. She didn’t move away from him, her hand instead clasping back at his immediately. He said, “I think I get it.”
She graced him with a smile, the one he loved to see because it came up looking more natural than it ever did when anyone but the two of them could see it, a smile just for their own little world. “Am I to infer by this that you wouldn’t mind if my things were to stay in your bunk after all?”
Not mind? He was suddenly all for it. He went with not answering her directly. It was a thing they did, which he was starting to realize he liked. “You try to get some sleep for a bit. I’ll be on down soon as the shift’s over.”
Inara’s smile was the sunshine. She kissed him on the cheek, then softly and lingeringly on the lips, something she’d never done outside the confines of her shuttle and even then only a recent occurrence at all. Mal figured that meant he’d made the right choice in her eyes. “Wake me when you do.” She left the bridge as quietly as she had entered it, passing a bemused looking mercenary in the doorway.
Jayne’s face lost its smirk when he saw Mal had noticed it. Stony, he looked around for a second until his eyes fell on the sketchbook Inara had just set out so neatly. He went to grab it quickly, making like he meant to leave before Mal could talk to him. Mal wasn’t letting him off that easy now he finally caught Jayne alone since figuring out what was going on. “Got a minute?”
Jayne flinched when Mal spoke. This was clearly not a talk he was thinking was going to be fun times. “Just getting River’s notebook for her, thought she left it here.” He picked it up and went to leave.
Mal was so shocked he almost couldn’t get words out fast enough to stop Jayne’s leaving. “Hold up a minute. You just say River?” he asked. Mal’s mind rewound to what he and Inara had discussed. Fighting. Huh. Made a funny kind of sense.
Jayne held up, tense and obviously ready to argue if that’s what Mal had on his agenda. “This the part where you threaten to put me in the airlock again?”
It wasn’t. Mal shrugged, “Crossed my mind. Gotta admit.”
“And?” Jayne prompted. “Not the airlock? Hmm. How ‘bout the speech about how I hurt her you’ll kick my pigu?”
Mal laughed, image of Jayne flopped out on the ground popping into his head. “Don’t see the need, seeing as how she’s kicked it already, in public to boot.”
Jayne seemed confused by Mal’s sudden mirth. “You ain’t gonna yell? And you’re laughing?”
Mal, still laughing, answered with another question, “You see the look on Simon’s face?”
"Right. I'm just gonna..." Jayne, looking wary, gestured toward his bunk with the book and started walking.
Mal corked down the almost fatherly protective instinct that made him start to call to Jayne to stop again. Maybe everybody should make the most of their time, seeing as how they might not have much of it left.
*************************************
Help with the Chinese, just in case:
Ni juede wo hen ben ma? - Do you think I’m an idiot?
Ai ya - Damn
Pigu - Bottom