Firefly Fic: SEA KITTEN (PG-13) Simon/Minor Canon Character (M)
Title: Sea Kitten
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Simon/Minor Canon Character (M)m bonus Kaylee/OMC
Length: About 2,000 words
Warnings: Alcohol Abuse. Bad Judgment. Meanness to Landladies.
Notes: Written for inlovewithnight's Valentine's Day One-Night Stand Ficathon. For harmonyangel, who asked for Simon/Fess Higgins; when Fess runs into the Serenity crew for a second time, a certain doctor catches his eye. Pre- or post-Serenity "but I'd rather not see Simon cheat on Kaylee without her permission."
1.
"It's not a Companion house," Inara said, a little dubiously. "Of course, dancers is a euphemism, although I believe that a number of actors and corps members from the New Melbourne Civic Ballet have worked there between professional engagements. As far as I can tell, it's clean and well-run and safe. If you think it would be fun, there's no reason not to go."
"A girl's gotta have some kind of natural outlet," Kaylee said. "I mean, if she spends all her time either workin' or associatin' with cold fish." She dunked an almond cookie into the dregs of green tea .
"Conjure you'd best take Zoe along, just in case," Mal said over his shoulder as he scrubbed a pot. "The pair of you could use some R&R. I mean, I'm sure Zoe won't do nothin' but look…"
"Placin' a tip in a well-filled g-string ain't out of the question," Zoe deadpanned.
"…and I wouldn't let you go if I thought there was any danger, but still and all…"
Jayne tilted up two legs of his chair and chewed a toothpick. "Beats me why you're lettin' your wife go."
Wash, frequently having failed to convey to Jayne that motivations far more noble than physical terror prevented him from attempting to control Zoe's movements, just rolled his eyes and said, "'Cause I'm the one who's gonna get the benefit."
"I think it's a wonderful idea," Simon said, his head buried in one of the more obscure supply cabinets in the medbay. "You and Zoe can spend some time together, have a few drinks, see the show, and, ummm, relax." There was already a pile of condom packets on the counter. "I'm sure they'll have a good stock there, all kinds of formulas and colors and flavors, but just in case…" He found what he was looking for, neatened the shelf, and closed the cabinet. "Dental dams!" he said happily. "I knew they were in there somewhere!"
Kaylee, glaring blue death, jammed the latex novelties into the side pocket of her coveralls, and left. If no one was going to stop her, she was going to go through with it, but they couldn't make her enjoy it.
2.
At each table, there was a touch-screen with previews of the various performances. (Zoe had already purchased a swipe card for Kaylee, in the modest amount approved by the Captain, while retaining a few colorful items of local currency to be used in tribute to the artistry of the dancers.)
Kaylee scrolled back and forth through the menus several times, grinning at the variety of choices before her eyes. She put a few items in her Shopping Cart. "Better wait till you see 'em movin'," Zoe said. She raised her hand to summon the waiter (clad in black latex lederhosen and a sequined bowtie) and ordered two pints of beer and two orders of fish and chips.
After the first set, Kaylee clicked on the touchscreen, and booked an hour with the redhead who had the act where he started out pretending to ice-skate (on a slick plastic "pond" beneath the spotlights on the tiny stage), concluding his performance when he was more or less down to his ice skates.
"Hey, I like that embroidery," Kaylee said, as she headed toward the staircase.
"Codpiece is in the details," Zoe said. Zoe ordered another pint, and propped her copy of "Love's Frantic Retrojets" under the oval of light cast by the tiny lamp with its beaded lampshade.
3.
"Captain Reynolds?" asked the gangling young man, His sleeves were actually long enough for his raw-boned wrists, they just didn't look that way. He batted at a lock of light hair until it was dammed up by his wire-framed glasses. He clapped his hands twice, brusquely, to summon the office boy to bring tea.
He was a little surprised by the man who had arrived to negotiate the shipping arrangements for the mixed shipment of dried cod, smoked salmon, and frozen haddock moving from New Melbourne to Lilac. Inara had described the Captain as "not entirely unhandsome, in a brutish Neanderthal sort of way." The man in the dark suit was, Fess thought, extremely good-looking, but his every lineament bespoke civilization. And there had been something in Inara's tone that conjured up the image of a taller man.
"No, I'm not. I'm a member of Serenity's crew, though. Captain Reynolds sent me to arrange the details. Here's a schematic of our cargo hold, with details of the refrigeration system. Here is our standard contract of carriage. Here are our insurance certificates…" (very acceptable prentice work of River's, although she admitted that she had a lot to learn from Jayne as a forger).
"There was a reason I picked your ship," said the clerk (Simon read "Fess Higgins" off the nicely polished brass nameplate on his stand-up desk) darkly.
"I'm sure Serenity's professional reputation proceeds us, and we were the low bidder…"
"By no means," Fess said.
"Ah. Well, although it will cut into…or even eliminate…our profits for this job," Simon lied, "I'm sure that it would be only fair to offer a finder's fee." Mal said he wasn't to go over ten percent, and if he could get it down below five percent, Simon could keep the difference. "And perhaps that was the reason for your choice. Well, I'm grateful…"
"So, you remember Jiangyin, don't you?" Fess asked.
Simon nodded. Even on recent form, it was a memorable stop in terms of injury to his face, reputation, self-esteem, and suit coat.
"My father is the Magistrate there. And you remember that there was a landlock on your ship, and then all of a sudden there wasn't?"
Simon continued nodding, wondering exactly why it was that people loved those little dolls.
"That was me. My father, well, he hired Miss Inara for me. And…well, not that it was that special, it would have to be special in the sense of having nothing to compare it with, but it made me want to stand up for myself, you know? To assert myself. To be a man."
"I'm glad that contact with our crew was helpful to you…"
"Helpful? HELPFUL? Do you know what happened when my father found out? Of course not, you were long gone by then. Well, not only did he throw me out of the house, he had my bank account confiscated, and got my Aunt Eugenia to make a new will and break the trust she set up for me. So it took months of hacking around what seemed like half the Rim, and I was pretty much down on my luck before the Cheeryble Brothers gave me this job. I mean, not that you'd know anything about that, in your comfy little job in your smuggling boat."
"Well, sometimes it's exciting to be able to make a fresh start," Simon said. "And in many ways, New Melbourne is a pleasant planet, and this isn't a bad job, you can do it sitting down…"
"If you knew sushi, like I knew sushi," Fess said.
"Oh. Oh, OH," Simon said sympathetically.
Chains clanked and there was a crash as, outside the many-paned, wood-framed window, a Cheeryble supervised the hoisting of the new sign ("Green and Purple Dragon Sea Kitten Brokers.")
"That was my idea," Fess said. "I mean, everybody here is utterly sick and tired of fish. But 'sea kittens'-well, that's new. It makes them sound all warm and cute not, you know, like a bunch of slimy dead fish."
"Fess, I'm not sure that's such a good idea," testified Simon as an expert witness on Bad Ideas. The young man looked so crestfallen that Simon said, "When do you finish work? Why don't I buy you a drink, perhaps dinner, and we can talk about…that other matter," because he wasn't sure whether the bribe was going to go entirely into official or unofficial channels or whether it would be split.
After dinner (one filet of mahi-mahi, that day's catch, one chicken kebab), and one trip to the State store later (which, as Simon surmised, sold weird little things that River would enjoy as well as bad wine and prophylactic supplies), Fess and Simon sneaked up the creaking back stairs to avoid shocking Fess' landlady.
Fess didn't own a corkscrew but Simon had one on his pocketknife. The room was small and simply furnished, but clean, decorated with Mrs. O'Hanrahan's samplers ("Be certain your sins will find you out," with violets, "Work when it is still day, for no man can work when the night has fallen," with roses, and "Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord," with daisies). There was also a chromolithograph of Jesus turning water into wine. The Feeding of the Five Thousand was not a popular trope in New Melbourne, where production of any additional fish was not viewed with favor.
There was one chair, with a rush seat, which was ceremoniously offered to the guest long enough to drink the wine out of small, cracked Blue Willow teacups, as Fess sat on the narrow, swaybacked brass bed. Soon they were beneath the candlewick counterpane, and Simon happily recollected that, compared to, say, mediocre twenty-third century novels, mediocre sex was actually pretty good.
"Well, as we said at the hospital, 'see one, do one, teach one,'" Simon said.
"Hospital?" Fess said faintly, floundering around beneath a tent of blankets.
Simon cursed himself for his lack of discretion. "I was a billing clerk," he said.
Fess surfaced and said, "Oh. It sounds boring. No wonder you took to a life of crime."
Somewhat later, Fess reached for his glasses (Simon put them down in the palm of his hand, like a scalpel), put on his teddy-bear-colored dressing gown, and brewed some tea on a hot plate, although they had to use the same cups from the wine.
"Umm. That was nice. But I still don't feel different. Don't feel like a man."
Simon wanted to ask what Fess expected him to do about it. Yes, as a surgeon, he could, but he didn't want to even…"It's difficult," Simon said, "Especially when it isn't hard. But…well, nobody really feels secure. Not even the Hero of Canton," he lied. "I think I'd better head out…don't worry, I'll be quiet, and I remember that it's the fourth stair from the bottom the creaks…and let Captain Reynolds know that the deal went through."
"I'll try to send some more shipping contracts your way," Fess promised, although he wasn't besotted enough to offer to waive his commission.
"Thanks," Simon said, starting to tie his tie then deciding the hell with it and rolling it up in his jacket pocket.
"Hello, Simon," River said, as Simon tiptoed in at three a.m., drawling just enough to make him feel sock-eyed. He took the empty wine bottle (removed to avoid Mrs. O'Hanrahan finding evidence of the Demon Rum in her boardinghouse) out of his sleeve and put it in the rubbish bin.
"Where were you?" Mal asked. Mal and River were sitting at the kitchen table, playing klebschnock. "Expected you back hours ago."
"You shouldn't have waited up for me," Simon said.
"We didn't," Mal said. "We're waitin' up for Kaylee and Zoe."
"Especially after Kaylee wired back for more money. Zoe won four hundred credits at the pub quiz but she didn't want to lend it to Kaylee, she wanted to keep it and buy Wash a new pair of boots in the market tomorrow…later today." River finessed a card from the discard pile to the face-up cards, held it up, and said "Ladyfingers!" to Mal, who grimaced and pushed the pile of matchsticks over toward River.
"Still didn't answer my question," Mal said.
"He's been looking for love in all the wrong plaices," River said, pointing her chin over at Simon.
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Simon/Minor Canon Character (M)m bonus Kaylee/OMC
Length: About 2,000 words
Warnings: Alcohol Abuse. Bad Judgment. Meanness to Landladies.
Notes: Written for inlovewithnight's Valentine's Day One-Night Stand Ficathon. For harmonyangel, who asked for Simon/Fess Higgins; when Fess runs into the Serenity crew for a second time, a certain doctor catches his eye. Pre- or post-Serenity "but I'd rather not see Simon cheat on Kaylee without her permission."
1.
"It's not a Companion house," Inara said, a little dubiously. "Of course, dancers is a euphemism, although I believe that a number of actors and corps members from the New Melbourne Civic Ballet have worked there between professional engagements. As far as I can tell, it's clean and well-run and safe. If you think it would be fun, there's no reason not to go."
"A girl's gotta have some kind of natural outlet," Kaylee said. "I mean, if she spends all her time either workin' or associatin' with cold fish." She dunked an almond cookie into the dregs of green tea .
"Conjure you'd best take Zoe along, just in case," Mal said over his shoulder as he scrubbed a pot. "The pair of you could use some R&R. I mean, I'm sure Zoe won't do nothin' but look…"
"Placin' a tip in a well-filled g-string ain't out of the question," Zoe deadpanned.
"…and I wouldn't let you go if I thought there was any danger, but still and all…"
Jayne tilted up two legs of his chair and chewed a toothpick. "Beats me why you're lettin' your wife go."
Wash, frequently having failed to convey to Jayne that motivations far more noble than physical terror prevented him from attempting to control Zoe's movements, just rolled his eyes and said, "'Cause I'm the one who's gonna get the benefit."
"I think it's a wonderful idea," Simon said, his head buried in one of the more obscure supply cabinets in the medbay. "You and Zoe can spend some time together, have a few drinks, see the show, and, ummm, relax." There was already a pile of condom packets on the counter. "I'm sure they'll have a good stock there, all kinds of formulas and colors and flavors, but just in case…" He found what he was looking for, neatened the shelf, and closed the cabinet. "Dental dams!" he said happily. "I knew they were in there somewhere!"
Kaylee, glaring blue death, jammed the latex novelties into the side pocket of her coveralls, and left. If no one was going to stop her, she was going to go through with it, but they couldn't make her enjoy it.
2.
At each table, there was a touch-screen with previews of the various performances. (Zoe had already purchased a swipe card for Kaylee, in the modest amount approved by the Captain, while retaining a few colorful items of local currency to be used in tribute to the artistry of the dancers.)
Kaylee scrolled back and forth through the menus several times, grinning at the variety of choices before her eyes. She put a few items in her Shopping Cart. "Better wait till you see 'em movin'," Zoe said. She raised her hand to summon the waiter (clad in black latex lederhosen and a sequined bowtie) and ordered two pints of beer and two orders of fish and chips.
After the first set, Kaylee clicked on the touchscreen, and booked an hour with the redhead who had the act where he started out pretending to ice-skate (on a slick plastic "pond" beneath the spotlights on the tiny stage), concluding his performance when he was more or less down to his ice skates.
"Hey, I like that embroidery," Kaylee said, as she headed toward the staircase.
"Codpiece is in the details," Zoe said. Zoe ordered another pint, and propped her copy of "Love's Frantic Retrojets" under the oval of light cast by the tiny lamp with its beaded lampshade.
3.
"Captain Reynolds?" asked the gangling young man, His sleeves were actually long enough for his raw-boned wrists, they just didn't look that way. He batted at a lock of light hair until it was dammed up by his wire-framed glasses. He clapped his hands twice, brusquely, to summon the office boy to bring tea.
He was a little surprised by the man who had arrived to negotiate the shipping arrangements for the mixed shipment of dried cod, smoked salmon, and frozen haddock moving from New Melbourne to Lilac. Inara had described the Captain as "not entirely unhandsome, in a brutish Neanderthal sort of way." The man in the dark suit was, Fess thought, extremely good-looking, but his every lineament bespoke civilization. And there had been something in Inara's tone that conjured up the image of a taller man.
"No, I'm not. I'm a member of Serenity's crew, though. Captain Reynolds sent me to arrange the details. Here's a schematic of our cargo hold, with details of the refrigeration system. Here is our standard contract of carriage. Here are our insurance certificates…" (very acceptable prentice work of River's, although she admitted that she had a lot to learn from Jayne as a forger).
"There was a reason I picked your ship," said the clerk (Simon read "Fess Higgins" off the nicely polished brass nameplate on his stand-up desk) darkly.
"I'm sure Serenity's professional reputation proceeds us, and we were the low bidder…"
"By no means," Fess said.
"Ah. Well, although it will cut into…or even eliminate…our profits for this job," Simon lied, "I'm sure that it would be only fair to offer a finder's fee." Mal said he wasn't to go over ten percent, and if he could get it down below five percent, Simon could keep the difference. "And perhaps that was the reason for your choice. Well, I'm grateful…"
"So, you remember Jiangyin, don't you?" Fess asked.
Simon nodded. Even on recent form, it was a memorable stop in terms of injury to his face, reputation, self-esteem, and suit coat.
"My father is the Magistrate there. And you remember that there was a landlock on your ship, and then all of a sudden there wasn't?"
Simon continued nodding, wondering exactly why it was that people loved those little dolls.
"That was me. My father, well, he hired Miss Inara for me. And…well, not that it was that special, it would have to be special in the sense of having nothing to compare it with, but it made me want to stand up for myself, you know? To assert myself. To be a man."
"I'm glad that contact with our crew was helpful to you…"
"Helpful? HELPFUL? Do you know what happened when my father found out? Of course not, you were long gone by then. Well, not only did he throw me out of the house, he had my bank account confiscated, and got my Aunt Eugenia to make a new will and break the trust she set up for me. So it took months of hacking around what seemed like half the Rim, and I was pretty much down on my luck before the Cheeryble Brothers gave me this job. I mean, not that you'd know anything about that, in your comfy little job in your smuggling boat."
"Well, sometimes it's exciting to be able to make a fresh start," Simon said. "And in many ways, New Melbourne is a pleasant planet, and this isn't a bad job, you can do it sitting down…"
"If you knew sushi, like I knew sushi," Fess said.
"Oh. Oh, OH," Simon said sympathetically.
Chains clanked and there was a crash as, outside the many-paned, wood-framed window, a Cheeryble supervised the hoisting of the new sign ("Green and Purple Dragon Sea Kitten Brokers.")
"That was my idea," Fess said. "I mean, everybody here is utterly sick and tired of fish. But 'sea kittens'-well, that's new. It makes them sound all warm and cute not, you know, like a bunch of slimy dead fish."
"Fess, I'm not sure that's such a good idea," testified Simon as an expert witness on Bad Ideas. The young man looked so crestfallen that Simon said, "When do you finish work? Why don't I buy you a drink, perhaps dinner, and we can talk about…that other matter," because he wasn't sure whether the bribe was going to go entirely into official or unofficial channels or whether it would be split.
After dinner (one filet of mahi-mahi, that day's catch, one chicken kebab), and one trip to the State store later (which, as Simon surmised, sold weird little things that River would enjoy as well as bad wine and prophylactic supplies), Fess and Simon sneaked up the creaking back stairs to avoid shocking Fess' landlady.
Fess didn't own a corkscrew but Simon had one on his pocketknife. The room was small and simply furnished, but clean, decorated with Mrs. O'Hanrahan's samplers ("Be certain your sins will find you out," with violets, "Work when it is still day, for no man can work when the night has fallen," with roses, and "Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord," with daisies). There was also a chromolithograph of Jesus turning water into wine. The Feeding of the Five Thousand was not a popular trope in New Melbourne, where production of any additional fish was not viewed with favor.
There was one chair, with a rush seat, which was ceremoniously offered to the guest long enough to drink the wine out of small, cracked Blue Willow teacups, as Fess sat on the narrow, swaybacked brass bed. Soon they were beneath the candlewick counterpane, and Simon happily recollected that, compared to, say, mediocre twenty-third century novels, mediocre sex was actually pretty good.
"Well, as we said at the hospital, 'see one, do one, teach one,'" Simon said.
"Hospital?" Fess said faintly, floundering around beneath a tent of blankets.
Simon cursed himself for his lack of discretion. "I was a billing clerk," he said.
Fess surfaced and said, "Oh. It sounds boring. No wonder you took to a life of crime."
Somewhat later, Fess reached for his glasses (Simon put them down in the palm of his hand, like a scalpel), put on his teddy-bear-colored dressing gown, and brewed some tea on a hot plate, although they had to use the same cups from the wine.
"Umm. That was nice. But I still don't feel different. Don't feel like a man."
Simon wanted to ask what Fess expected him to do about it. Yes, as a surgeon, he could, but he didn't want to even…"It's difficult," Simon said, "Especially when it isn't hard. But…well, nobody really feels secure. Not even the Hero of Canton," he lied. "I think I'd better head out…don't worry, I'll be quiet, and I remember that it's the fourth stair from the bottom the creaks…and let Captain Reynolds know that the deal went through."
"I'll try to send some more shipping contracts your way," Fess promised, although he wasn't besotted enough to offer to waive his commission.
"Thanks," Simon said, starting to tie his tie then deciding the hell with it and rolling it up in his jacket pocket.
"Hello, Simon," River said, as Simon tiptoed in at three a.m., drawling just enough to make him feel sock-eyed. He took the empty wine bottle (removed to avoid Mrs. O'Hanrahan finding evidence of the Demon Rum in her boardinghouse) out of his sleeve and put it in the rubbish bin.
"Where were you?" Mal asked. Mal and River were sitting at the kitchen table, playing klebschnock. "Expected you back hours ago."
"You shouldn't have waited up for me," Simon said.
"We didn't," Mal said. "We're waitin' up for Kaylee and Zoe."
"Especially after Kaylee wired back for more money. Zoe won four hundred credits at the pub quiz but she didn't want to lend it to Kaylee, she wanted to keep it and buy Wash a new pair of boots in the market tomorrow…later today." River finessed a card from the discard pile to the face-up cards, held it up, and said "Ladyfingers!" to Mal, who grimaced and pushed the pile of matchsticks over toward River.
"Still didn't answer my question," Mal said.
"He's been looking for love in all the wrong plaices," River said, pointing her chin over at Simon.