"Pas de Deux" (1/5): Firefly fic
Title: Pas de Deux
Author: sagedarkwoods
Rating: R
Pairing: Jayne/River
Disclaimer: Firefly and related characters are the property of Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy. This is a piece of fiction not intended for profit, only for entertainment.
Notes: Set a bit after Serenity.
Summary: Written for gilove2dance for 2008’s serenity_santa. River dances alone, until she persuades Jayne to join her. Based on the five parts of the traditional pas de deux in ballet, but that’s as far as traditional goes for these two.
She’s twirling again, in the cargo hold, arms out and high in angles that sorta remind him of them fancy Core dancers he saw on a data file once. Weren’t his decision to look; just happened to be there is all, and the whore he was with at the time wanted to be like the ballerinas. She was a bigger girl, busty, lots to hold onto, but she ain’t no ballerina. River… was little. Thin, but strong. Hell, he remembered how strong she was under that mop of stringy hair and shapeless dresses. He remembered - to each painfully detailed moment - how she’d grabbed his man-parts and held him there at Fanty and Mingo’s. She’d literally had him by the balls; usually he’d have to pay for that sort of service. The area in question twitched a might at the memory, and he suppressed a groan.
He leaned over the railing for a better look. She moved so smoothlike. She’d turned a bunch of times in a row and then stopped, reaching a hand out in front of her like she was looking to hold hands with someone not there, and she let it drop. She turned slowly to look up at the gangplank, looking straight at him. She tilted her head in that disturbing moon-brained way, like she was trying to read through a guy, then twirled quickly on her toes and mimed an exaggerated waltz.
He huffed, and stomped back to the kitchen, refusing to look back at her. Ain’t no way moonbrain were going to read him, not if he had anything to say about it. If she had, she’d see stuff that weren’t fit for “polite company” as Mal called it. The way she moved was like she didn’t need to walk on the ground; she glided. And everything was precise, like a sharpshooter, but flowed like water it was so easy-looking. That’s what was getting to him, and more importantly making other parts of his anatomy harder to ignore. He groaned, louder this time, and sat in one of the wooden chairs around the big table. He can’t be thinking of Crazy like that, no matter how her skirt showed more of them legs of hers when she twirled. He’ll just sit it out until this passes, and he’s no longer catching crazy from her.
“I give up,” he finally said, and walked quickly to his bunk.
***
‘He watches the girl with interest,’ she noted, while stretching calf muscles so as not to pull them. She knew he has paused to watch her dance, as she has taken to doing after lunch in the cargo hold. The dance held her in thrall; she missed the quick pirouettes, the jumps, the entrechats with feet crisscrossing in the air. She put her feet at almost a parallel and went into a grand plié, arms in a loose circle out in front of her. Another plié, this time sweeping one arm to the floor, then raising it in a wide circle to stretch toward the ceiling. River stretched up onto the balls of her feet, wishing she had her pointe shoes, but still happy to be barefoot, feeling the thrum of Serenity’s engines gently reverberating through the floor. ‘She shall give him something to watch,’ she thought, barely concealing a smile.
River moved her feet into fifth position, and pulled up from the ribcage onto demi-pointe. She traveled across the floor slowly, keeping her steps small and close. Then, back on flat feet, she extended her right leg up to hip height, then whipped it around, causing her to turn rapidly, and pulled her foot to her knee. She did three successive fouetté rond de jambe en tournant, then came down to rest again. She heard Jayne groan, though he tried to suppress it. He was certainly watching the girl, and his stray thoughts were starting to get loose.
Fixing her spot on the opposite wall, River pirouetted once, twice, three, four times, and extended her arm in a reach, fingers loose yet still retaining some tension. There was no one to reach for, no one to catch her were she to grand jeté in that direction. She had no prince; there was no partner. She dropped her arm, the feeling of the dance draining out of her through the cargo hold’s floorboards.
Turning her head, she regarded Jayne. His thoughts were leaping from his mind, as though they were performing their own grand pas. But his thoughts were not chaste; chased is closer. Those thoughts leapt at River and she twirled away quickly, going into a pantomime of a waltz with an invisible partner, a doll of her mind’s fabrication, as she had to conceal the blush spreading across her cheeks. She could not have the thoughts catch her; she would be lost in the woods, running from the wolf they had transformed into. The swan was out of the water in the night, and her prince was nowhere to be found. River paused in her pantomime, watching the retreating figure on the catwalk. Perhaps the swan could find her prince, after all.