blah blah gaia blah blah moon
Since I just spent my lunch break typing it all up...
gwyddfid's unfinished Inara/Kaylee fic
“River? River!” Inara’s voice echoed around the largely empty cargo hold. Hearing a giggle and the scuffling of feet on the metal grid floor, she hitched up her skirts and raced as best she could down the stairs.
“You know you’ll never find me!” River’s voice, laced with laughter, came from everywhere and nowhere. Inara halted her step and rested against a balustrade to look out over the vast chamber. Shielding her eyes from the glare of the halogen above her she peered out over the hold, watching for any movement.
“River?” she called uncertainly after a few uneasy moment filled with only stillness and silence. After debating momentarily whether or not to disturb Simon, she made her way to search the other areas of the ship.
Humming quietly to herself, Zoe poured the boiling water into the mug, inhaling the damp scent of the steam. Stirring the liquid, she crossed the room to sit at the table, the central light throwing up large shadows on the walls behind her. Lost in thought and sighing quietly to herself she sniffed the aromatic tea and held the warm cup to her cheek, but did not take a mouthful.
“River, are you in here?” Inara, startling the tall woman out of her reverie, entered the room. “I’m sorry…”
“No, don’t worry about it,” Zoe parted her lips, revealing her teeth in a warm smile that Inara returned. “I’ve always liked the idea of tea,” Zoe began, rising from her seat. “But the actual drinking just never lives up to the expectation.” She shrugged, and a small vaguely bemused smile crossed her face. Inara couldn’t help but laugh.
“Like so much in life,” she returned, coming to lean against the galley bench.
Zoe poured the untasted drink down the sink and rinsed out her mug. “The water is still hot, if you were in the mood for a cup.”
Inara shook her head. “No, I was actually looking for River; I think she has my…” she paused for a moment. “Something of mine,” she finished weakly, but comfortably, knowing that Zoe wouldn’t bother her with questions. If it had been someone else she had walked in on…
“Kaylee was looking for her too, but she didn’t say why,” Zoe yawned and turned to head down to her room. “Perhaps she found her?”
Bidding each other goodnight, they parted, Inara hovering momentarily by the dining table. She rarely came through here when there was nobody else around. The contrast between here and her shuttle was so startling as to make her somewhat uncomfortable. It wasn’t the general lack of decoration or beauty that discomforted her, but the lack of emotion and passion. She wondered briefly at the mind of a man who could care so much about something to put so little effort into it, to make it feel special. Perhaps he didn’t feel that it needed to be made any more special than it already was.
Sighing and turning, she stepped up into the corridor and headed towards Kaylee’s room.
Lying feet-to-pillow on her bed, she was looking up at the imposing pinkness that dominated the back wall of her room. The rest of the below-deck chamber was a comfortable chaos of items, objects overlapping without order - but that didn’t matter. If she wanted to find something, she could. What disturbed and annoyed her was that River had managed to decipher what Kaylee herself would admit to being consciously undecipherable strata of clothing, trinkets and tools.
“Kaylee?” Inara’s warm rounded tones filled the room as she called down the latter. “Are you awake?”
“Sure, come on down,” Kaylee swung her legs around as she sat up and watched the companion’s slippered feet precede her body down the latter to her room. “You couldn’t sleep either?”
“I prefer to sleep when I need to, not according to whatever day cycle Mal thinks we should be working to.” Stepping over the accumulated debris, she made her way over to Kaylee, sitting her self on the bed. “And it’s not as if night and day make any real difference in the time between planets. We’re all just…here.”
Looking concerned, Kaylee shifted herself around, her back up against her dress, so that she was facing Inara. “That’s half the fun of it, just travelling place to place, not really caring where you end up, or what time it is…” An excited smile crossed her face, lighting up her eyes, and Inara found it impossible to resist the infectious joy that the ship’s mechanic radiated.
“That’s easy to say when you’re the only getting paid to keep the ship moving. I just…” she sighed. “Mal seels to take delight in stopping me from getting any work. Backwater moons, no clientele able to afford my services. It’s becoming difficult out here, that’s all.”
They sat in silence for a moment, Inara still pondering her problems, Kaylee trying to think of a way to help her.
“If its money that’s a problem you could help us out some whenever there’s a job to do.” Warming to the idea of having someone less aggressive in demeanour to work with, she continued. “I mean you helped out great when we had the job on Bellerophon - I ain’t even sure we could have managed it without you. And having a companion on board does get us to meed more high-up types who can easily pay us more money.”
“I don’t know if white collar crime is really Mal’s kind of thing,” Inara laughed in reply. “But I couldn’t actually work on the jobs. I help out when I can because I care about you all, but actually doing the work isn’t something I feel quite comfortable about.”
[there may be more to come, but what I've written is incredibly fragmented and needs to be properly stitched together. don't hold your breath :)]
Random Buffy the Vampire Slayer drabble-ish piece, ftg Jonathan, Warren with Andrew expounding upon the nature of storytelling
“Have you seen my magic bone?” Jonathan’s reedy voice boomed around the closet where the front half of his body was engaged in the search. All he heard in reply was a mess of giggles and snickering over the rustle of beanbags as the other two rolled around with laughter. “Geez, how old are you guys?” he murmured to himself. Straightening up he whacked his head hard on one of the shelves. “Argh!” he wailed, backing out clutching my head, then tripping over the X-Box that Andrew had left lying on the ground.
“So how does it feel to be finally coming out of the closet?” Warren asked, trying (but failing) to keep a straight face. Andrew once again rolled around in paroxysms of laughter.
“Bone...closet...” he gasped, tears running down his cheeks and the rest of what he had to say was lost in a fit of hysterical heaving and sobbing.
“Now look what you’ve made him do,” Warren said to Jonathan who was sitting where he had landed, a concerned look on his face.
“Thut up you guyth, I think I bit my tongue,” he gripped the tip of his tongue and tried to pull it forwards into view.
“Nice one, Sparky,” said Warren. “If you pull it out far enough we mightn’t have to listen to your whining ever again.”
Shooting him a nasty look, Jonathan picked himself up off the floor and went to find a mirror. Andrew rolled his head back over the beanbag and watched Jonathan leave. “You know, this is exactly the kind of problem TV shows have when there are too many characters around. Somebody always ends up unconscious, or kidnapped by aliens, or just floating around in the background, obviously having nothing to say or do, but just being there because they have to be.”
“You’ve been watching season nineteen Doctor Who again, haven’t you?” Warren dug a videotape out from under the beanbag and looked at the title. “Earthshock? Why not just stoop all the way down and just watch Alien 3?” he snickered.
“What?” Andrew was aghast. “Are you dissing Alien 3? That’s the one where the whole Bishop thing is blown wide open!”
“Yeah, at the end of the film. First you’ve got to sit through endless hours of insane criminals gibbering and watching Ripley be all angsty. And the whole dog - death - rebirth thing? Please…One day somebody who knows how to actually tell a story is going to wrap up the whole saga.” Warren snorted and flicked channels on the TV at random.
Andrew sat back on a beanbag looking thoughtful. “Stories are good,” he announced for no apparent reason.
“Yeah, they’re great, everybody loves a good story,” Warren answered absently without turning away from the TV. “Grab me a soda would you?”
Andrew got up and headed towards the bar fridge. “Life is so easy in stories. Everybody has a specific job to do, knows when to come in, and when to go out. Well, most of the time. The evil ones always seem to refuse to go. I don’t know why, they always end up with most of the screen time anyway, it’s not like they’re an extra who keeps walking into shot just so that they can score their fifteen frames of glory.”
He stood at the fridge, idly opening and closing the door, whilst Warren sat flicking through channels.
The apparently more finished than I thought Firefly Simon/Mal piece I was writing
It was what passed for late - most everyone was in bed. Simon had checked in on River some time ago. Her room had been empty, causing a mild panic, but he discovered her dozing, sprawled on a couch in the passenger lounge. Smiling to himself he retrieved a thin blanket from his room and gently draped it over her. Wishing that he too could sleep he headed up the stairs towards the kitchen area in search of something with which to pass the time.
Thinking that it would be at least entertaining if not actually edible he dug through the pile of utensils in search of a can opener. In front of him on the bench was a single unlabelled can that he dug from having been stashed at the back of the food stockpile. Cracking it open he sniffed tentatively at the orange mass within. It was just protein compound, colour and flavoured, but with what? As his nose tried to make sense of the synthetic scent he flicked the stove on and sat a pan on the heat. ‘Fruit’ was the best that his synapses could manage and he figured that heating it up would be harmless enough; he let the contents of the tin slide and fall into the pan with a wet slap.
“I can’t believe people actually live off this junk,” he mumbled to himself as he poked distastefully at the thickening goo. His stomach turning, he switched off the stove and made some tea. While the piping hot liquid cooled in his mug he circled the dining table, arms held theatrically up, humming and counting in time with his step. He continued this for a time, stopping and starting as the count fell out of time with his feet, or new steps occurred to him. His drink, now forgotten, sat cooling on the bench.
“I thought that kind of thing generally involved mirrors and somewhat less clothing.” The captain stood at the top of the stairs leading down into the room, an amused smile on his face. Simon spun to a halt, stumbling into the table with a clatter of furniture. He reached for his lukewarm tea, clutching at the mug for some sort of support.
“I was…er…practicing, you see,” he waved his arms around, pressing his free hand to his temple, splaying out his fingers as he strove to give what he hoped was a satisfactory reason for the impromptu performance. “Kaylee, she asked me if I could dance and, well, it’s been a while. Not that I’ve ever been much of a dancer, River’s always been more skilled with her feet than I have.” He gulped nervously at his tea, almost choking on the too-large mouthful.
“Well, that’s not entirely surprising seeing as traditionally a doctor’s more skilled with his hands, which is good enough for me.” He headed over to the stove, peering at the congealed mess that Simon had left sitting there. A sudden thought occurred to him as he turned to meet the doctor’s amused expression. “As captain of a ship, with a crew in often need of some medical attention.”
“Yes, of course, quite,” Simon replied dryly, sipping his tea more slowly. “You’re welcome to it,” he said, indicating the ooze on the stove. “I’ve lost my appetite somewhat.”
“Not really your think, is it? Living off vitamin compounds on a boat this far away from a civilised table with napkins and six kinds of cutlery.” Mal tentatively tasted the brightly coloured mixture and pulled a face. “Of course I ain’t saying I don’t miss the taste of real food from time to time.”
“Oh, it’s not the food…” (Mal raised an eyebrow) “Well, it’s sometimes the food. I just don’t fit in out here.”
“Your sister, she don’t seem to be having trouble fitting in out here - lifestyle-wise I mean.”
“But where I took her from, I’m certain that she’d be happy anywhere that people refrained from poking bits of metal into her mind.” Simon stared into the remains of his drink, watching the ripples on the surface bounce and twirl as he rotated the cup in his hands. “I don’t seem to have the ability to start again from first principles. Kaylee tries to understand, but I just don’t -“
“Well if little Kaylee expects her fancy pants doctor to be able to dance,” Mal interjected, anxious to cut off Simon’s self-pitying wallow. “I say we don’t disappoint the lady.”
He walked around the bench and, taking the mug from Simon’s hand, stood poised, arms akimbo.
“You dance?” asked a surprised Simon, his shocked limbs automatically rising to meet Mal’s.
“I only know the one. And a couple of jigs I was shown as a boy. Not a word to anyone, mind. Now,” He stepped forwards, one arm resting on the other man’s waist. “Count of four, spin around left…”
“Wouldn’t Inara be better suited to this kind of thing?” Simon asked as he stumbled around following Mal’s instructions.
“I’ve danced with her long enough as it is. Besides, you’re the one needing lessons, am I right?” He pulled away from his dance partner, raised his arms and directed Simon to do the same, whilst circling each other, Simon’s hesitant step falling behind Mal’s confident stride.
“That was kind of what I meant,” Simon said and began to pull away from the dance only to trip over a chair leg as Mal unexpectedly spun and dipped him. Mal leant in close, panting from the exertion, their noses pressed together.
“Now’s the part where you take her breath away...”
Enjoy! Let me know what you think of them :)
gwyddfid's unfinished Inara/Kaylee fic
“River? River!” Inara’s voice echoed around the largely empty cargo hold. Hearing a giggle and the scuffling of feet on the metal grid floor, she hitched up her skirts and raced as best she could down the stairs.
“You know you’ll never find me!” River’s voice, laced with laughter, came from everywhere and nowhere. Inara halted her step and rested against a balustrade to look out over the vast chamber. Shielding her eyes from the glare of the halogen above her she peered out over the hold, watching for any movement.
“River?” she called uncertainly after a few uneasy moment filled with only stillness and silence. After debating momentarily whether or not to disturb Simon, she made her way to search the other areas of the ship.
Humming quietly to herself, Zoe poured the boiling water into the mug, inhaling the damp scent of the steam. Stirring the liquid, she crossed the room to sit at the table, the central light throwing up large shadows on the walls behind her. Lost in thought and sighing quietly to herself she sniffed the aromatic tea and held the warm cup to her cheek, but did not take a mouthful.
“River, are you in here?” Inara, startling the tall woman out of her reverie, entered the room. “I’m sorry…”
“No, don’t worry about it,” Zoe parted her lips, revealing her teeth in a warm smile that Inara returned. “I’ve always liked the idea of tea,” Zoe began, rising from her seat. “But the actual drinking just never lives up to the expectation.” She shrugged, and a small vaguely bemused smile crossed her face. Inara couldn’t help but laugh.
“Like so much in life,” she returned, coming to lean against the galley bench.
Zoe poured the untasted drink down the sink and rinsed out her mug. “The water is still hot, if you were in the mood for a cup.”
Inara shook her head. “No, I was actually looking for River; I think she has my…” she paused for a moment. “Something of mine,” she finished weakly, but comfortably, knowing that Zoe wouldn’t bother her with questions. If it had been someone else she had walked in on…
“Kaylee was looking for her too, but she didn’t say why,” Zoe yawned and turned to head down to her room. “Perhaps she found her?”
Bidding each other goodnight, they parted, Inara hovering momentarily by the dining table. She rarely came through here when there was nobody else around. The contrast between here and her shuttle was so startling as to make her somewhat uncomfortable. It wasn’t the general lack of decoration or beauty that discomforted her, but the lack of emotion and passion. She wondered briefly at the mind of a man who could care so much about something to put so little effort into it, to make it feel special. Perhaps he didn’t feel that it needed to be made any more special than it already was.
Sighing and turning, she stepped up into the corridor and headed towards Kaylee’s room.
Lying feet-to-pillow on her bed, she was looking up at the imposing pinkness that dominated the back wall of her room. The rest of the below-deck chamber was a comfortable chaos of items, objects overlapping without order - but that didn’t matter. If she wanted to find something, she could. What disturbed and annoyed her was that River had managed to decipher what Kaylee herself would admit to being consciously undecipherable strata of clothing, trinkets and tools.
“Kaylee?” Inara’s warm rounded tones filled the room as she called down the latter. “Are you awake?”
“Sure, come on down,” Kaylee swung her legs around as she sat up and watched the companion’s slippered feet precede her body down the latter to her room. “You couldn’t sleep either?”
“I prefer to sleep when I need to, not according to whatever day cycle Mal thinks we should be working to.” Stepping over the accumulated debris, she made her way over to Kaylee, sitting her self on the bed. “And it’s not as if night and day make any real difference in the time between planets. We’re all just…here.”
Looking concerned, Kaylee shifted herself around, her back up against her dress, so that she was facing Inara. “That’s half the fun of it, just travelling place to place, not really caring where you end up, or what time it is…” An excited smile crossed her face, lighting up her eyes, and Inara found it impossible to resist the infectious joy that the ship’s mechanic radiated.
“That’s easy to say when you’re the only getting paid to keep the ship moving. I just…” she sighed. “Mal seels to take delight in stopping me from getting any work. Backwater moons, no clientele able to afford my services. It’s becoming difficult out here, that’s all.”
They sat in silence for a moment, Inara still pondering her problems, Kaylee trying to think of a way to help her.
“If its money that’s a problem you could help us out some whenever there’s a job to do.” Warming to the idea of having someone less aggressive in demeanour to work with, she continued. “I mean you helped out great when we had the job on Bellerophon - I ain’t even sure we could have managed it without you. And having a companion on board does get us to meed more high-up types who can easily pay us more money.”
“I don’t know if white collar crime is really Mal’s kind of thing,” Inara laughed in reply. “But I couldn’t actually work on the jobs. I help out when I can because I care about you all, but actually doing the work isn’t something I feel quite comfortable about.”
[there may be more to come, but what I've written is incredibly fragmented and needs to be properly stitched together. don't hold your breath :)]
Random Buffy the Vampire Slayer drabble-ish piece, ftg Jonathan, Warren with Andrew expounding upon the nature of storytelling
“Have you seen my magic bone?” Jonathan’s reedy voice boomed around the closet where the front half of his body was engaged in the search. All he heard in reply was a mess of giggles and snickering over the rustle of beanbags as the other two rolled around with laughter. “Geez, how old are you guys?” he murmured to himself. Straightening up he whacked his head hard on one of the shelves. “Argh!” he wailed, backing out clutching my head, then tripping over the X-Box that Andrew had left lying on the ground.
“So how does it feel to be finally coming out of the closet?” Warren asked, trying (but failing) to keep a straight face. Andrew once again rolled around in paroxysms of laughter.
“Bone...closet...” he gasped, tears running down his cheeks and the rest of what he had to say was lost in a fit of hysterical heaving and sobbing.
“Now look what you’ve made him do,” Warren said to Jonathan who was sitting where he had landed, a concerned look on his face.
“Thut up you guyth, I think I bit my tongue,” he gripped the tip of his tongue and tried to pull it forwards into view.
“Nice one, Sparky,” said Warren. “If you pull it out far enough we mightn’t have to listen to your whining ever again.”
Shooting him a nasty look, Jonathan picked himself up off the floor and went to find a mirror. Andrew rolled his head back over the beanbag and watched Jonathan leave. “You know, this is exactly the kind of problem TV shows have when there are too many characters around. Somebody always ends up unconscious, or kidnapped by aliens, or just floating around in the background, obviously having nothing to say or do, but just being there because they have to be.”
“You’ve been watching season nineteen Doctor Who again, haven’t you?” Warren dug a videotape out from under the beanbag and looked at the title. “Earthshock? Why not just stoop all the way down and just watch Alien 3?” he snickered.
“What?” Andrew was aghast. “Are you dissing Alien 3? That’s the one where the whole Bishop thing is blown wide open!”
“Yeah, at the end of the film. First you’ve got to sit through endless hours of insane criminals gibbering and watching Ripley be all angsty. And the whole dog - death - rebirth thing? Please…One day somebody who knows how to actually tell a story is going to wrap up the whole saga.” Warren snorted and flicked channels on the TV at random.
Andrew sat back on a beanbag looking thoughtful. “Stories are good,” he announced for no apparent reason.
“Yeah, they’re great, everybody loves a good story,” Warren answered absently without turning away from the TV. “Grab me a soda would you?”
Andrew got up and headed towards the bar fridge. “Life is so easy in stories. Everybody has a specific job to do, knows when to come in, and when to go out. Well, most of the time. The evil ones always seem to refuse to go. I don’t know why, they always end up with most of the screen time anyway, it’s not like they’re an extra who keeps walking into shot just so that they can score their fifteen frames of glory.”
He stood at the fridge, idly opening and closing the door, whilst Warren sat flicking through channels.
The apparently more finished than I thought Firefly Simon/Mal piece I was writing
It was what passed for late - most everyone was in bed. Simon had checked in on River some time ago. Her room had been empty, causing a mild panic, but he discovered her dozing, sprawled on a couch in the passenger lounge. Smiling to himself he retrieved a thin blanket from his room and gently draped it over her. Wishing that he too could sleep he headed up the stairs towards the kitchen area in search of something with which to pass the time.
Thinking that it would be at least entertaining if not actually edible he dug through the pile of utensils in search of a can opener. In front of him on the bench was a single unlabelled can that he dug from having been stashed at the back of the food stockpile. Cracking it open he sniffed tentatively at the orange mass within. It was just protein compound, colour and flavoured, but with what? As his nose tried to make sense of the synthetic scent he flicked the stove on and sat a pan on the heat. ‘Fruit’ was the best that his synapses could manage and he figured that heating it up would be harmless enough; he let the contents of the tin slide and fall into the pan with a wet slap.
“I can’t believe people actually live off this junk,” he mumbled to himself as he poked distastefully at the thickening goo. His stomach turning, he switched off the stove and made some tea. While the piping hot liquid cooled in his mug he circled the dining table, arms held theatrically up, humming and counting in time with his step. He continued this for a time, stopping and starting as the count fell out of time with his feet, or new steps occurred to him. His drink, now forgotten, sat cooling on the bench.
“I thought that kind of thing generally involved mirrors and somewhat less clothing.” The captain stood at the top of the stairs leading down into the room, an amused smile on his face. Simon spun to a halt, stumbling into the table with a clatter of furniture. He reached for his lukewarm tea, clutching at the mug for some sort of support.
“I was…er…practicing, you see,” he waved his arms around, pressing his free hand to his temple, splaying out his fingers as he strove to give what he hoped was a satisfactory reason for the impromptu performance. “Kaylee, she asked me if I could dance and, well, it’s been a while. Not that I’ve ever been much of a dancer, River’s always been more skilled with her feet than I have.” He gulped nervously at his tea, almost choking on the too-large mouthful.
“Well, that’s not entirely surprising seeing as traditionally a doctor’s more skilled with his hands, which is good enough for me.” He headed over to the stove, peering at the congealed mess that Simon had left sitting there. A sudden thought occurred to him as he turned to meet the doctor’s amused expression. “As captain of a ship, with a crew in often need of some medical attention.”
“Yes, of course, quite,” Simon replied dryly, sipping his tea more slowly. “You’re welcome to it,” he said, indicating the ooze on the stove. “I’ve lost my appetite somewhat.”
“Not really your think, is it? Living off vitamin compounds on a boat this far away from a civilised table with napkins and six kinds of cutlery.” Mal tentatively tasted the brightly coloured mixture and pulled a face. “Of course I ain’t saying I don’t miss the taste of real food from time to time.”
“Oh, it’s not the food…” (Mal raised an eyebrow) “Well, it’s sometimes the food. I just don’t fit in out here.”
“Your sister, she don’t seem to be having trouble fitting in out here - lifestyle-wise I mean.”
“But where I took her from, I’m certain that she’d be happy anywhere that people refrained from poking bits of metal into her mind.” Simon stared into the remains of his drink, watching the ripples on the surface bounce and twirl as he rotated the cup in his hands. “I don’t seem to have the ability to start again from first principles. Kaylee tries to understand, but I just don’t -“
“Well if little Kaylee expects her fancy pants doctor to be able to dance,” Mal interjected, anxious to cut off Simon’s self-pitying wallow. “I say we don’t disappoint the lady.”
He walked around the bench and, taking the mug from Simon’s hand, stood poised, arms akimbo.
“You dance?” asked a surprised Simon, his shocked limbs automatically rising to meet Mal’s.
“I only know the one. And a couple of jigs I was shown as a boy. Not a word to anyone, mind. Now,” He stepped forwards, one arm resting on the other man’s waist. “Count of four, spin around left…”
“Wouldn’t Inara be better suited to this kind of thing?” Simon asked as he stumbled around following Mal’s instructions.
“I’ve danced with her long enough as it is. Besides, you’re the one needing lessons, am I right?” He pulled away from his dance partner, raised his arms and directed Simon to do the same, whilst circling each other, Simon’s hesitant step falling behind Mal’s confident stride.
“That was kind of what I meant,” Simon said and began to pull away from the dance only to trip over a chair leg as Mal unexpectedly spun and dipped him. Mal leant in close, panting from the exertion, their noses pressed together.
“Now’s the part where you take her breath away...”
Enjoy! Let me know what you think of them :)