FIC: Unrequited (Angel/Firefly, Cordelia/Kaylee, PG)
TITLE: Unrequited
RATING: PG
FANDOMS: Angel/Firefly
PAIRING: Cordelia/Kaylee
SUMMARY: Kaylee’s got a crush.
AUTHOR’S NOTES: Written for femslash_minis Cordelia round for brutti_ma_buoni who wanted strawberries, coveralls, and mean girls without fluff or Kaylee bashing.
Travel the 'verse long enough, and you'll see everything. I haven't seen everything, but I've seen enough.
Lately, I'm seeing Cordelia. We picked her up on Osiris, after a job Mal had went a little sideways. We needed the extra cash because one day Mal is going to replace this ol' compression coil, but in the meantime we have to eat, and as I said, the job in Osiris didn't exactly blow up in his face, as Inara suggested, but more went off track a little. Anyways, we didn't get paid, so we took on an extra passenger, filling the empty room we've had since that nice man turned out to be a not-so-nice officer of the law who shot me a little. Y'ever been shot? I don't recommend it, even if you can get patched up by a nice-looking doctor, you won't be awake to remember it. Kind of unfair; you're half-naked with a handsome man like that, and you can't even enjoy it.
Anyway, Cordelia's the reason I'm telling this story, and I best get back to the point. We picked Cordelia up in Osiris, a classy lady like Inara, all dressed nice and beautiful and smelling so good. Not that she's always like that. I mean, yeah, she always smells good, like strawberries and bubble wine and a little like summer back where I'm from-just fresh and full of possibilities. She doesn't always have the fancy clothes, is what I'm saying. Right now, she's dressed in a pair of my coveralls while her fancy things are drip-drying, and they don't exactly fit right. I mean, they fit perfect far as I'm concerned, but a seamstress might have a fit if they saw her, 'cuz she's too tall for them and she's bigger than me in the chest and so she's kind of busting out the front. But, like I said, as far as I'm concerned, she looks perfect.
Cordelia sits on my bunk and teases the lace of my party dress between her fingers, feeling the fabric like I like to when there's nothing finer in my little cabin ... only right now there is, because Cordelia's there, so I focus on that instead. But boy, I'd've loved to've took Cordelia to that dance; she would have given those mean girls a what for. She's sharp like that, sharp-witted, sharp-tongued, where I just normally don't understand people are being mean until it's pointed out to me. I guess I'm simple like that.
"Pretty," Cordelia says when she finds my eyes on her, and for a moment I pretend she's talking about me.
"Where'd you wear it?" she asks, breaking me out of my spell.
"Oh ... just ... to a party."
Cordelia sighs. She drops the ruffled hem of my dress. "I haven't been to a party in ages," and the way she says it makes it sound like she's not talking a week or a month, but maybe a hundred years.
I would take you, I think. I think of walking into a fancy party with Cordelia, in one of her pretty dresses, on my arm. I think of twirling her around the dance floor and knowing that everyone else wished she was with them. It's so real I can almost feel it: Cordelia's warm, soft skin against mine, the smell of strawberries and bubble wine and summer making me dizzy.