Yet again, OOJ Commentary
In which comical errors of judgment are made by all concerned:
It didn’t take long for the Doctor to begin to regret listening to Inara Serra the next morning.
The last words of the previous chapter, of course, being the Doctor mulling over what a good idea it was to listen to her.
He actually slept very well, and for much longer than he usually did. That wasn’t really a surprise, when he thought about it; between repairing the TARDIS, watching over Rose and investigating this new mystery, he’d been pushing himself hard and not sleeping at all. While he could go much longer without sleep than a human, it did catch up with him after a while. Still, he rarely slept quite that well. Rose’s warmth and the gentle rhythms of her mind and body in sleep had been incredibly soothing.
True enough, but . . .
Unfortunately, that same warmth, coupled with her scent and the softness of her body against his, had another, entirely different effect on him as well. Being, as he was, a Time Lord, master of his own body and mind, controlling that reaction once he awakened hadn’t been, well, too hard--and by the Other, when had he started thinking in Jack-esque innuendo?
Tell me there was any way to avoid that one. Incidentally, I've noted that Rassilon's name is taken in vain quite a bit in fanfic, so I decided to branch out to the other members of the triumvirate. Omega and the Other get name-checked in a few of my stories.
Still, it was disturbing. He didn’t think of Rose like that, didn’t want to think of her like that, yet that was exactly where his subconscious had happily gone.
Methinks the Time Lord doth protest too much.
The dream he’d had with Rose cuddled against him . . . suffice to say, he hoped she never knew.
It wouldn't surprise many, I'm sure, to know that Rose was having a similar dream about him.
She was still deeply asleep, so he carefully disentangled himself from her, ignoring the part of him that really, really wanted to stay just where he was,
That would be the Tiemcock!
and picked up his shoes on his way out of her room. As he exited, closing the door as quietly as he could, he made three resolutions: first, to never again take the advice of a professional sex worker; second, to never sleep in Rose’s bed again, regardless of how good it sounded at the time; and third and most importantly--
“Whoa! Look who had a good night!”
--keep Captain Jack Harkness from ever knowing where the Doctor had just spent the night.
Too late! I couldn't resist Jack's appearance here. The Doctor's dignity just took another hit.
The Doctor winced and cursed to himself as Jack, managing to maintain his sex appeal even with a severe case of bed-head, unexpectedly popped around the corner.
“God bless the two of you,” said Jack, smiling ear-to-ear and clasping the Doctor’s shoulders warmly. “I am so happy for you both. ‘Bout time you did something about all the sexual tension on this ship! So, did you seduce her, did she seduce you, or was it more of a,” he made a slightly-obscene gesture with his hands, “meet-in-the-middle kind of thing?”
I'll leave it up to you to decide just what that "slightly-obscene gesture" looked like.
The Doctor rolled his eyes, groaning inwardly, and gave Jack a baleful look. He knew he shouldn’t leave Rose to deal with this on her own, should disabuse Jack of any and all lascivious mental images he might have pertaining to the previous night, but even the thought of such a conversation left him craving another few hours’ sleep. So he did the cowardly thing and brushed past Jack on the way to the control room, leaving the other man with only a muttered “None of your business.”
*tsk* For shame, Doc! Needless to say, Rose will be having a very interesting conversation over breakfast.
Upon reaching the control room, he breathed a quiet sigh of relief. Working on the console--it was solid, it was concrete, it was something he could focus on that didn’t involve, in any way, shape or form, soft and warm little blondes with beautiful smiles.
A soft sound caught his attention, and he turned to discover that River had again curled up under his jacket to sleep on the jumpseat. She was just stirring. He smiled.
For some reason, someone unfamiliar with DW and FF read this portion and thought River was a talking cat. *Shrug*
“Good morning,” he said softly.
She smiled back at him. “Good morning. Did you like sleeping with Rose last night?”
Innocent question that just happens to sound very, very bad under the circumstances.
A sharp clanking sound and a muffled curse drew the Doctor’s attention. Much to his dismay, a pair of big brown eyes, followed by Kaylee’s bright smile, appeared across the console.
“You an’ Rose done sex?” Kaylee asked eagerly.
"And then they done sex" is a classic crackfic ender. Somehow, a variation of it fit perfectly in Kaylee's mouth. She's absolutely delighted for her new friend, of course, and doesn't notice that the Doctor's mortified.
The Doctor decided right then and there to give up on having a good day.
Because the author thinks it's funny when he's cranky.
***
It didn’t take much longer for Mal to follow suit.
Because the author thinks it's funny when he's cranky.
His first mistake had been invading Inara’s shuttle under some pretense or other. That normally would’ve turned into a nice bit of bickering before Inara summarily kicked him out, and honestly, Mal couldn’t say but that he liked it.
Tell me Mal doesn't get off on sniping with Inara.
Unfortunately, his visit happened to coincide with Captain Jack Harkness’. Mal got there just in time to see money changing hands. Ma Reynolds hadn’t raised a fool, and Mal recognized the transaction for what it was. Inara had given Jack a slight nod, and Jack had discreetly withdrawn before sparks could fly.
And oh, they had. Mal’s opening volley had been something degrading about servicing the guests. Things had gone downhill from there, finally bottoming out when Inara threw Nandi in Mal’s face. Mal stormed out of the shuttle before either of them started breaking things aside from each other.
These kinds of arguments, though, he doesn't like. Neither does Inara. Yet they keep doing it. I can't figure these people.
He paused a moment on the catwalk over the cargo bay, regaining control. There was a flurry of activity below. The Doctor was pulling miles of cable out of the TARDIS and passing it to Shepherd Book, who handed it up to Kaylee, perched on a mountain of crates. Kaylee then passed it up to Rose on the catwalk. The two girls were giggling about something.
“Seriously, nothing happened,” Rose insisted, blushing prettily. “We slept. That’s all, nothing else. Jack was very disappointed in us.”
So's Kaylee, for that matter.
Gorrammit, if hearing that name didn’t get Mal all het up again.
He passed Rose, ignoring her cheerful “Good morning,” and followed the cable already laid out leading to the cockpit. In the cockpit, halfway under the console alongside Wash, was the object of Mal’s ire. Zoe sat in the pilot’s chair, taking readings. She froze in mid-motion when she saw Mal.
It didn’t take but a moment for Jack to see Mal. His eyes narrowed briefly before he went back to what he’d been doing.
“Wash, would you mind going down and finding out what the Doctor wants us to do with the blue cable here?” Jack asked, voice carefully casual. “If he starts talking over your head, just make a few ‘ook-ook’ noises. Annoys him to death, but it gets him to slow down.”
Jack knows exactly what the blue cable is for. He also knows there's no way to avoid this confrontation, and the sooner they get it over with, the sooner they can get back to work. I can also totally see him using the monkey-noises technique on the Doctor on a regular basis.
“Sure.” Wash jumped up and brushed past Mal on his way out of the cockpit, giving no sign that he noticed the stormclouds building.
Wash is just too nice to pick up on the dynamic.
Zoë followed her husband, pausing just long enough to murmur to Mal, “Don’t do anything stupid, sir. You’ve got that look about you.”
Zoe's not. Nor is she too nice to warn her captain that he might just be headed into fool territory.
After she was gone, Jack pushed out from under the console and stood in one smooth motion. He said nothing, but looked at Mal, raising one eyebrow in a silent challenge.
Therefore, Mal hit him. Hard, right across his pretty jaw.
Ordinary men want to hit Jack on a regular basis, and Jack knows when to let them get a lick in (see: Rhys). Don't ever count on more than one freebie, though.
Jack took the punch like a man, reeling with it and then coming back upright, dabbing at a bit of blood at the edge of his mouth. He considered it a moment before looking at Mal again, eyes hard. “Feel better now?”
Mal swung again. This time, Jack almost casually batted his fist aside, but made no offensive moves.
That was a little demonstration of how easily Jack can defend himself. Mal sees it, but he's not quite ready to stop taking swings yet.
“You get one freebie, Captain,” said Jack. “If you’re really wanting to turn this into a brawl, though, I’d suggest we go somewhere with a bit more room and not as much breakable equipment.”
“You come on my ship, help yourself to my hospitality and my crew and now my gorram navigational system!” Mal raged. “And now you’re--”
Jack interrupted him. “If you’re going to even try to say something remotely possessive about Inara, I’m going to have to break your face. I get enough dog-in-manger crap from the Doctor.”
Jack doesn't have an awful lot of patience for these things. Doesn't see the point. IMHO, he's quite right not to.
“Least I’m not trying to buy her for a little coin,” said Mal contemptuously.
“And that makes you better than me, do you think?” asked Jack. “At least I respect Inara and what she does. You’re the one who treats her like trash for her chosen profession.”
This time, Mal found himself shoved up against the wall with his arm twisted behind his back before he could do much more than make a fist.
I adjusted this just a bit to make it more clear that Mal was going for another hit. Time for another demonstration by Jack.
“One freebie,” hissed Jack, breath warm in Mal’s ear. “Was I not clear on that? Now, you’re going to listen, and listen hard, because I’m not going to say this again: I like Inara, I respect her, and neither of us saw anything wrong with what passed between us the other night. You do, that’s your problem--not mine.”
Not incidentally, it's a bit homoerotic.
Jack released Mal as abruptly as he’d seized him. Mal stumbled a little, feeling the beginnings of a fine bruise on his cheekbone, possibly with an accompanying abrasion. It was at that point that his higher brain functions finally shouted down his temper,
Using, I'm sure, a full sound system with massive speakers turned up to 11.
informing him of three things: first, that given Jack’s level of training, this was a fight Mal might not be able to win; second, that no matter how a fight ended between himself and Jack, Mal would look like a right fool to Inara; and third, that no matter how the aforementioned fight went, the reason for said fight would make him look like a right fool to his crew.
Individually, none of those factors had ever stopped him before.
I speak only the truth.
Collectively, and added to the suspicion that Jack was entirely correct that the only person who had a problem with the situation was his very own self, they were enough to awaken the lick of sense his ma had always insisted he had.
Mal turned slowly, touching the sore spot on his cheek. Damn, but that would leave a mark.
Jack stood just across the cockpit from him, not obviously guarded, but Mal knew very well that only a fool would take him for being unprepared to fight. And Ma Reynolds claimed she hadn’t raised any fools, a point that Mal occasionally took issue with, but decided to concede today.
Ma Reynolds must've been quite the woman, considering Mal survived to adulthood. I have the strangest feeling he was a handful as a child.
Still, he had one thing to get off his chest.
“She’s worth more than coin can buy,” he told Jack.
“I’m not the one who needs to hear that from you,” Jack said.
Another point Mal was willing to concede.
As the Doctor would say, "Quite right, too."
Wash, thankfully, chose that moment to burst back into the cockpit, scattering the accumulated tension. “Hey, you were right about the monkey noises,” he told Jack. “Got the Doc right back on point, and . . .” The pilot trailed off as he spotted the rapidly-forming bruise on Jack’s jaw. “What happened?”
“Slipped,” said Jack.
Onto Mal's fist.
Wash looked over at Mal, eyes narrowing suspiciously at the wound on his cheekbone.
“Fell,” said Mal.
Into the wall. Hee!
He nodded tersely to Jack. “Captain.”
Jack nodded back. “Captain.”
Mal left the cockpit then, feeling he and Jack had reached a resolution. That was a good thing.
One of the most endearing things about the male of the species is how quickly they can go from beating each other's brains out to drinking a couple of beers together. Jack and Mal are at that stage now. Jack, of course, would prefer a nice make-up shag, but Mal don't swing that way.
He went down to the cargo bay, where the Doctor seemed to be a mite irked with Jayne over some cut cable.
“Dadgum fei-oo tripped me up!” Jayne was saying.
“So you cut it,” said the Doctor, sarcasm dripping from every syllable. “Congratulations. You got your revenge on an inanimate object. Must make you feel downright manly!”
“Jayne, you yu chun de da xing xing!” Mal snapped as he approached.
Meaning "stupid ape." The guy I got the translations from thought this was a bit odd and suggested other Mandarin insults, but I assured him that those were the exact words I needed.
Not that the Doctor wasn’t doing a fine job of verbally flaying Jayne himself, but after the scene in the cockpit, yelling at Jayne was downright therapeutic.
The Doctor grinned brightly. “I couldn’t have said it better myself.” He plopped down on the cargo bay floor, working on the cable with his sonic screwdriver. Jayne stomped away, muttering vile things under his breath.
Jayne's not having the best day, either. Because the author thinks he's funny when he's cranky.
“How’s it comin’?” Mal asked him. “Aside from the life-and-death struggle between your equipment and my merc, that is.”
“We should be ready any time,” said the Doctor. Mal watched in wonder as the sonic screwdriver repaired the cable in seconds, leaving no indication it had ever been cut. The Doctor glanced up, eyes immediately finding the mark on Mal’s cheek.
“Little disagreement between my face and a wall,” Mal explained,
True enough, even if he is leaving out the details, which the Doctor can very well guess for himself.
figuring Jack wouldn’t be one for talking big about a fight that was resolved. “Once you get this thing up and running, what can we expect here in the real world?”
“You shouldn’t have any interruptions in your systems. The TARDIS will be able to use Serenity’s navigational array to search for the source of the telepathic signal, only with a much greater range than Serenity alone would have.”
“Like how big?”
The Doctor finished reconnecting the last bit of cable and stood up. “Like the entire solar system with space to spare. Want a look?”
“Shiny.” Mal followed the Doctor into the TARDIS. He noticed River had pulled a crate up to the console and was sitting on it, staring in rapt fascination at the monitor that displayed what Jack had said was the Doctor’s own language. “You makin’ any sense out of that, little ‘un?”
“Not a word,” answered River, never taking her eyes off the display.
Another scene I had planned from the start. Just a little thing, but I could just see River, elbows on her knees, chin planted on her fists, totally absorbed in watching that monitor for hours. Doesn't understand a word of it, but she still finds it fascinating.
The Doctor didn’t seem worried about her, making his way around the other side of the console. Mal followed him and watched as the monitor lit up with, indeed, the entire solar system.
“Have you got visuals down there, Doc?” Jack’s voice asked from an intercom somewhere.
“I do,” said the Doctor. Rose and Kaylee entered the TARDIS and crowded around the Doctor and Mal to look at the display.
Unfortunately, I didn't get much of a chance to write scenes for these two, but I wanted to get across the idea that they were fast friends. Thus, I wrote them into group scenes together as much as I could.
A small display with a large solar system on it couldn’t display much detail, but the Doctor pointed out Serenity’s approximate position. And then, just outside of Angel’s orbit and well outside Serenity’s usual sensor range, there was a flash of light. The Doctor pounced on it.
“There you are,” he murmured, and the screen zoomed in on the flash. “What does that look like to you, Captain?”
“Looks to me like a ship,” said Mal.
“Exactly,” said the Doctor. He narrowed in on it, and information started coming up on the display.
“Looks like a Xanadu-class, Cap’n,” said Kaylee.
Very flashy, disco-themed ships where people do a lot of roller skating to the dulcet sounds of ELO.
“That it do,” said Mal. “Thought you said this was alien tech, Doctor.”
“It is. Alien tech being used by humans and apparently housed on a contemporary spacecraft. Were I to make a guess--and my guesses are brilliant, incidentally--
And humble.
the relay tower Charley Yang was killed for is now being used to augment the signal of the telepathic booster,” explained the Doctor.
Mal looked over at the Doctor, not liking the sound of that. “So it’ll have a wider range, you mean.”
“That’s exactly what I mean,” said the Doctor. “But at least now, we know where they are and what they’re flying.”
“What’re we going to do now?” Rose asked.
The Doctor looked over at Mal, eyes suddenly twinkling. “Captain Reynolds, how do you feel about picking a fight?”
Mal gave him a lazy grin. “Been known to do a bit of that in my time.”
Just a touch, yeah.
***
fei-oo = garbage
yu chun de da xing xing = stupid ape
It didn’t take long for the Doctor to begin to regret listening to Inara Serra the next morning.
The last words of the previous chapter, of course, being the Doctor mulling over what a good idea it was to listen to her.
He actually slept very well, and for much longer than he usually did. That wasn’t really a surprise, when he thought about it; between repairing the TARDIS, watching over Rose and investigating this new mystery, he’d been pushing himself hard and not sleeping at all. While he could go much longer without sleep than a human, it did catch up with him after a while. Still, he rarely slept quite that well. Rose’s warmth and the gentle rhythms of her mind and body in sleep had been incredibly soothing.
True enough, but . . .
Unfortunately, that same warmth, coupled with her scent and the softness of her body against his, had another, entirely different effect on him as well. Being, as he was, a Time Lord, master of his own body and mind, controlling that reaction once he awakened hadn’t been, well, too hard--and by the Other, when had he started thinking in Jack-esque innuendo?
Tell me there was any way to avoid that one. Incidentally, I've noted that Rassilon's name is taken in vain quite a bit in fanfic, so I decided to branch out to the other members of the triumvirate. Omega and the Other get name-checked in a few of my stories.
Still, it was disturbing. He didn’t think of Rose like that, didn’t want to think of her like that, yet that was exactly where his subconscious had happily gone.
Methinks the Time Lord doth protest too much.
The dream he’d had with Rose cuddled against him . . . suffice to say, he hoped she never knew.
It wouldn't surprise many, I'm sure, to know that Rose was having a similar dream about him.
She was still deeply asleep, so he carefully disentangled himself from her, ignoring the part of him that really, really wanted to stay just where he was,
That would be the Tiemcock!
and picked up his shoes on his way out of her room. As he exited, closing the door as quietly as he could, he made three resolutions: first, to never again take the advice of a professional sex worker; second, to never sleep in Rose’s bed again, regardless of how good it sounded at the time; and third and most importantly--
“Whoa! Look who had a good night!”
--keep Captain Jack Harkness from ever knowing where the Doctor had just spent the night.
Too late! I couldn't resist Jack's appearance here. The Doctor's dignity just took another hit.
The Doctor winced and cursed to himself as Jack, managing to maintain his sex appeal even with a severe case of bed-head, unexpectedly popped around the corner.
“God bless the two of you,” said Jack, smiling ear-to-ear and clasping the Doctor’s shoulders warmly. “I am so happy for you both. ‘Bout time you did something about all the sexual tension on this ship! So, did you seduce her, did she seduce you, or was it more of a,” he made a slightly-obscene gesture with his hands, “meet-in-the-middle kind of thing?”
I'll leave it up to you to decide just what that "slightly-obscene gesture" looked like.
The Doctor rolled his eyes, groaning inwardly, and gave Jack a baleful look. He knew he shouldn’t leave Rose to deal with this on her own, should disabuse Jack of any and all lascivious mental images he might have pertaining to the previous night, but even the thought of such a conversation left him craving another few hours’ sleep. So he did the cowardly thing and brushed past Jack on the way to the control room, leaving the other man with only a muttered “None of your business.”
*tsk* For shame, Doc! Needless to say, Rose will be having a very interesting conversation over breakfast.
Upon reaching the control room, he breathed a quiet sigh of relief. Working on the console--it was solid, it was concrete, it was something he could focus on that didn’t involve, in any way, shape or form, soft and warm little blondes with beautiful smiles.
A soft sound caught his attention, and he turned to discover that River had again curled up under his jacket to sleep on the jumpseat. She was just stirring. He smiled.
For some reason, someone unfamiliar with DW and FF read this portion and thought River was a talking cat. *Shrug*
“Good morning,” he said softly.
She smiled back at him. “Good morning. Did you like sleeping with Rose last night?”
Innocent question that just happens to sound very, very bad under the circumstances.
A sharp clanking sound and a muffled curse drew the Doctor’s attention. Much to his dismay, a pair of big brown eyes, followed by Kaylee’s bright smile, appeared across the console.
“You an’ Rose done sex?” Kaylee asked eagerly.
"And then they done sex" is a classic crackfic ender. Somehow, a variation of it fit perfectly in Kaylee's mouth. She's absolutely delighted for her new friend, of course, and doesn't notice that the Doctor's mortified.
The Doctor decided right then and there to give up on having a good day.
Because the author thinks it's funny when he's cranky.
***
It didn’t take much longer for Mal to follow suit.
Because the author thinks it's funny when he's cranky.
His first mistake had been invading Inara’s shuttle under some pretense or other. That normally would’ve turned into a nice bit of bickering before Inara summarily kicked him out, and honestly, Mal couldn’t say but that he liked it.
Tell me Mal doesn't get off on sniping with Inara.
Unfortunately, his visit happened to coincide with Captain Jack Harkness’. Mal got there just in time to see money changing hands. Ma Reynolds hadn’t raised a fool, and Mal recognized the transaction for what it was. Inara had given Jack a slight nod, and Jack had discreetly withdrawn before sparks could fly.
And oh, they had. Mal’s opening volley had been something degrading about servicing the guests. Things had gone downhill from there, finally bottoming out when Inara threw Nandi in Mal’s face. Mal stormed out of the shuttle before either of them started breaking things aside from each other.
These kinds of arguments, though, he doesn't like. Neither does Inara. Yet they keep doing it. I can't figure these people.
He paused a moment on the catwalk over the cargo bay, regaining control. There was a flurry of activity below. The Doctor was pulling miles of cable out of the TARDIS and passing it to Shepherd Book, who handed it up to Kaylee, perched on a mountain of crates. Kaylee then passed it up to Rose on the catwalk. The two girls were giggling about something.
“Seriously, nothing happened,” Rose insisted, blushing prettily. “We slept. That’s all, nothing else. Jack was very disappointed in us.”
So's Kaylee, for that matter.
Gorrammit, if hearing that name didn’t get Mal all het up again.
He passed Rose, ignoring her cheerful “Good morning,” and followed the cable already laid out leading to the cockpit. In the cockpit, halfway under the console alongside Wash, was the object of Mal’s ire. Zoe sat in the pilot’s chair, taking readings. She froze in mid-motion when she saw Mal.
It didn’t take but a moment for Jack to see Mal. His eyes narrowed briefly before he went back to what he’d been doing.
“Wash, would you mind going down and finding out what the Doctor wants us to do with the blue cable here?” Jack asked, voice carefully casual. “If he starts talking over your head, just make a few ‘ook-ook’ noises. Annoys him to death, but it gets him to slow down.”
Jack knows exactly what the blue cable is for. He also knows there's no way to avoid this confrontation, and the sooner they get it over with, the sooner they can get back to work. I can also totally see him using the monkey-noises technique on the Doctor on a regular basis.
“Sure.” Wash jumped up and brushed past Mal on his way out of the cockpit, giving no sign that he noticed the stormclouds building.
Wash is just too nice to pick up on the dynamic.
Zoë followed her husband, pausing just long enough to murmur to Mal, “Don’t do anything stupid, sir. You’ve got that look about you.”
Zoe's not. Nor is she too nice to warn her captain that he might just be headed into fool territory.
After she was gone, Jack pushed out from under the console and stood in one smooth motion. He said nothing, but looked at Mal, raising one eyebrow in a silent challenge.
Therefore, Mal hit him. Hard, right across his pretty jaw.
Ordinary men want to hit Jack on a regular basis, and Jack knows when to let them get a lick in (see: Rhys). Don't ever count on more than one freebie, though.
Jack took the punch like a man, reeling with it and then coming back upright, dabbing at a bit of blood at the edge of his mouth. He considered it a moment before looking at Mal again, eyes hard. “Feel better now?”
Mal swung again. This time, Jack almost casually batted his fist aside, but made no offensive moves.
That was a little demonstration of how easily Jack can defend himself. Mal sees it, but he's not quite ready to stop taking swings yet.
“You get one freebie, Captain,” said Jack. “If you’re really wanting to turn this into a brawl, though, I’d suggest we go somewhere with a bit more room and not as much breakable equipment.”
“You come on my ship, help yourself to my hospitality and my crew and now my gorram navigational system!” Mal raged. “And now you’re--”
Jack interrupted him. “If you’re going to even try to say something remotely possessive about Inara, I’m going to have to break your face. I get enough dog-in-manger crap from the Doctor.”
Jack doesn't have an awful lot of patience for these things. Doesn't see the point. IMHO, he's quite right not to.
“Least I’m not trying to buy her for a little coin,” said Mal contemptuously.
“And that makes you better than me, do you think?” asked Jack. “At least I respect Inara and what she does. You’re the one who treats her like trash for her chosen profession.”
This time, Mal found himself shoved up against the wall with his arm twisted behind his back before he could do much more than make a fist.
I adjusted this just a bit to make it more clear that Mal was going for another hit. Time for another demonstration by Jack.
“One freebie,” hissed Jack, breath warm in Mal’s ear. “Was I not clear on that? Now, you’re going to listen, and listen hard, because I’m not going to say this again: I like Inara, I respect her, and neither of us saw anything wrong with what passed between us the other night. You do, that’s your problem--not mine.”
Not incidentally, it's a bit homoerotic.
Jack released Mal as abruptly as he’d seized him. Mal stumbled a little, feeling the beginnings of a fine bruise on his cheekbone, possibly with an accompanying abrasion. It was at that point that his higher brain functions finally shouted down his temper,
Using, I'm sure, a full sound system with massive speakers turned up to 11.
informing him of three things: first, that given Jack’s level of training, this was a fight Mal might not be able to win; second, that no matter how a fight ended between himself and Jack, Mal would look like a right fool to Inara; and third, that no matter how the aforementioned fight went, the reason for said fight would make him look like a right fool to his crew.
Individually, none of those factors had ever stopped him before.
I speak only the truth.
Collectively, and added to the suspicion that Jack was entirely correct that the only person who had a problem with the situation was his very own self, they were enough to awaken the lick of sense his ma had always insisted he had.
Mal turned slowly, touching the sore spot on his cheek. Damn, but that would leave a mark.
Jack stood just across the cockpit from him, not obviously guarded, but Mal knew very well that only a fool would take him for being unprepared to fight. And Ma Reynolds claimed she hadn’t raised any fools, a point that Mal occasionally took issue with, but decided to concede today.
Ma Reynolds must've been quite the woman, considering Mal survived to adulthood. I have the strangest feeling he was a handful as a child.
Still, he had one thing to get off his chest.
“She’s worth more than coin can buy,” he told Jack.
“I’m not the one who needs to hear that from you,” Jack said.
Another point Mal was willing to concede.
As the Doctor would say, "Quite right, too."
Wash, thankfully, chose that moment to burst back into the cockpit, scattering the accumulated tension. “Hey, you were right about the monkey noises,” he told Jack. “Got the Doc right back on point, and . . .” The pilot trailed off as he spotted the rapidly-forming bruise on Jack’s jaw. “What happened?”
“Slipped,” said Jack.
Onto Mal's fist.
Wash looked over at Mal, eyes narrowing suspiciously at the wound on his cheekbone.
“Fell,” said Mal.
Into the wall. Hee!
He nodded tersely to Jack. “Captain.”
Jack nodded back. “Captain.”
Mal left the cockpit then, feeling he and Jack had reached a resolution. That was a good thing.
One of the most endearing things about the male of the species is how quickly they can go from beating each other's brains out to drinking a couple of beers together. Jack and Mal are at that stage now. Jack, of course, would prefer a nice make-up shag, but Mal don't swing that way.
He went down to the cargo bay, where the Doctor seemed to be a mite irked with Jayne over some cut cable.
“Dadgum fei-oo tripped me up!” Jayne was saying.
“So you cut it,” said the Doctor, sarcasm dripping from every syllable. “Congratulations. You got your revenge on an inanimate object. Must make you feel downright manly!”
“Jayne, you yu chun de da xing xing!” Mal snapped as he approached.
Meaning "stupid ape." The guy I got the translations from thought this was a bit odd and suggested other Mandarin insults, but I assured him that those were the exact words I needed.
Not that the Doctor wasn’t doing a fine job of verbally flaying Jayne himself, but after the scene in the cockpit, yelling at Jayne was downright therapeutic.
The Doctor grinned brightly. “I couldn’t have said it better myself.” He plopped down on the cargo bay floor, working on the cable with his sonic screwdriver. Jayne stomped away, muttering vile things under his breath.
Jayne's not having the best day, either. Because the author thinks he's funny when he's cranky.
“How’s it comin’?” Mal asked him. “Aside from the life-and-death struggle between your equipment and my merc, that is.”
“We should be ready any time,” said the Doctor. Mal watched in wonder as the sonic screwdriver repaired the cable in seconds, leaving no indication it had ever been cut. The Doctor glanced up, eyes immediately finding the mark on Mal’s cheek.
“Little disagreement between my face and a wall,” Mal explained,
True enough, even if he is leaving out the details, which the Doctor can very well guess for himself.
figuring Jack wouldn’t be one for talking big about a fight that was resolved. “Once you get this thing up and running, what can we expect here in the real world?”
“You shouldn’t have any interruptions in your systems. The TARDIS will be able to use Serenity’s navigational array to search for the source of the telepathic signal, only with a much greater range than Serenity alone would have.”
“Like how big?”
The Doctor finished reconnecting the last bit of cable and stood up. “Like the entire solar system with space to spare. Want a look?”
“Shiny.” Mal followed the Doctor into the TARDIS. He noticed River had pulled a crate up to the console and was sitting on it, staring in rapt fascination at the monitor that displayed what Jack had said was the Doctor’s own language. “You makin’ any sense out of that, little ‘un?”
“Not a word,” answered River, never taking her eyes off the display.
Another scene I had planned from the start. Just a little thing, but I could just see River, elbows on her knees, chin planted on her fists, totally absorbed in watching that monitor for hours. Doesn't understand a word of it, but she still finds it fascinating.
The Doctor didn’t seem worried about her, making his way around the other side of the console. Mal followed him and watched as the monitor lit up with, indeed, the entire solar system.
“Have you got visuals down there, Doc?” Jack’s voice asked from an intercom somewhere.
“I do,” said the Doctor. Rose and Kaylee entered the TARDIS and crowded around the Doctor and Mal to look at the display.
Unfortunately, I didn't get much of a chance to write scenes for these two, but I wanted to get across the idea that they were fast friends. Thus, I wrote them into group scenes together as much as I could.
A small display with a large solar system on it couldn’t display much detail, but the Doctor pointed out Serenity’s approximate position. And then, just outside of Angel’s orbit and well outside Serenity’s usual sensor range, there was a flash of light. The Doctor pounced on it.
“There you are,” he murmured, and the screen zoomed in on the flash. “What does that look like to you, Captain?”
“Looks to me like a ship,” said Mal.
“Exactly,” said the Doctor. He narrowed in on it, and information started coming up on the display.
“Looks like a Xanadu-class, Cap’n,” said Kaylee.
Very flashy, disco-themed ships where people do a lot of roller skating to the dulcet sounds of ELO.
“That it do,” said Mal. “Thought you said this was alien tech, Doctor.”
“It is. Alien tech being used by humans and apparently housed on a contemporary spacecraft. Were I to make a guess--and my guesses are brilliant, incidentally--
And humble.
the relay tower Charley Yang was killed for is now being used to augment the signal of the telepathic booster,” explained the Doctor.
Mal looked over at the Doctor, not liking the sound of that. “So it’ll have a wider range, you mean.”
“That’s exactly what I mean,” said the Doctor. “But at least now, we know where they are and what they’re flying.”
“What’re we going to do now?” Rose asked.
The Doctor looked over at Mal, eyes suddenly twinkling. “Captain Reynolds, how do you feel about picking a fight?”
Mal gave him a lazy grin. “Been known to do a bit of that in my time.”
Just a touch, yeah.
***
fei-oo = garbage
yu chun de da xing xing = stupid ape