Fic: Something Like a Wife (Whedonverse)
I keep forgetting to post this!!!! This is the Marriage Fic that I wrote nearly a month ago that won FIRST PLACE at the_browncoats! I'm very partial to Kaylee and I like the thought of her getting a REAL MAN instead of some swishy sort of doctor fellow.
Title: Something Like a Wife
Fandom: Whedonverse (Firefly)
Pairing: Mal/Kaylee
Word Count: 4848
Rating: PG-13
Prompt: take two people that are not in love, put them in an arranged marriage and have them end up falling in love
Warnings: some swearing in Chinese, some delicate situations
“I’m just saying you ain’t a man to do such rash things as you’ve done in the last couple of weeks. I’m worried about you, sir.” Zoe sat in the co-pilot chair, something she’d done from time to time when River wasn’t around. Her hand absent-mindedly caressed the arm of the chair as if she might have been touching her husband’s arm. It bothered Mal but not as much as being lectured about life from a woman who was only just barely holding her own together. Only because he respected her did he sit and listen.
But that didn’t mean he needed to accept what she was saying. “Rash? Hardly. I did what was needed in the situation.”
“Did you? We weren’t in dire straits. Could have waited for the doctor to come back. He’s due any day now.”
Mal was tired of hearing about Simon. He was the gorram reason they were in this mess in the first place. If he hadn’t gotten it into his head to go to the Symposium on (one of the main planets) they never would have docked and definitely wouldn’t have been boarded by an Alliance agent looking for trouble. The uneasy truce with the government had seemed to be at an end.
“I did what I saw needed doing,” he mumbled, pretending that a button needed to be toggled back and forth. “And I don’t see her up here complaining.”
“Course she’s not going to complain. The woman worships you. Thought I made that clear already. She thinks you did this for love.” Mal looked up as Zoe hit the instrument panel. That last word didn’t come easily to her lips these days. Not when the ache was still evident on her face. “Damn it, Mal. She thinks you’ve loved her for years. Just haven’t said anything to her.”
“I do love her.” He was taken aback by the savage beauty of Zoe’s sneer. The woman scared him at times, that was for certain. “In my own way, I love her very much.”
“Like a sister, perhaps. I’ve never seen your eyes flash with passion like they did with In-“
“Don’t say her name.”
Mal felt the bile at the back of his throat. They still ran with only one shuttle because he hadn’t the heart the replace the one they’d lost the day Inara had decided the sickness had spread too much and it was time to end it all. He himself had died the day they’d found the wreckage. Every day after was like a thousand small deaths. It bothered him a great deal that she hadn’t wanted to hold on to life. The doctor had assured her that she still had at least a good year ahead of her but she hadn’t wanted to be a burden. He wondered if she’d ever realized that her abrupt death would be more a burden than any gradual wasting away. There might have been time to find the right words to express what he was feeling. She’d never given him a chance.
“Mal, you have to deal with this or it’s going to eat you alive.”
It was exactly these types of conversations that made him resent that there weren’t many places to hide on Serenity. He loved her as he always had but she’d grown small in the past months. Stomping off to his bunk was not an option as he was expecting a message from Badger and had let River have the evening off. Putting food on the table was more important than being alone, no matter how much he hated being lectured by a dead-eyed widow on what he should or should not be doing to heal his heart. Like she would know!
“Zoe, I will not discuss this here and now. The two things have nothing to do with each other and I don’t need to deal with anything but getting us this job. You can stay and wait to see what Badger has for us or you can go, leaving me in peace. Right now, I would rather you left. “
“Fine.” She stood, accentuating the thin frame that had dwindled down to only a fraction of the weight she normally carried. He’d noticed she was eating again but he did have to wonder if it was going to be enough or if it was a case of too little, too late. “But you need to be thinking on this, Mal. Simon will be back on board soon and I think he’s going to notice that Kaylee is sporting a ring on her left hand. That may not sit right with him.”
“What shouldn’t sit right with him,” he yelled after her, “is the fact that he had his chance and he was too scared to take it.” He was yelling at nothing, though. Zoe never seemed to stick around long enough for him to find the right words for his parting shot.
~~~
The uneasy peace lasted for five days more, shattering to fine dust as soon as the bay doors opened and Simon walked on to the ship as if nothing had changed since he’d last been on board.
“I thought you were going to be docked for the duration of my absence.” Simon dropped his pack and looked around. “Where’s everyone else?”
Mal had asked for this time alone with Simon. It would be easier to explain things now rather than waiting for him to find out everything in pieces. “We had some trouble, had to take to the sky to get rid of it. There was the matter of Kaylee’s papers that had to be ironed out so we had to find a place-“
But Simon wasn’t listening. He’d heard the one word that could stop him in his tracks. “What was wrong with Kaylee’s papers?”
“They were discovered to be falsified.” Mal used the same wording that the Alliance agent had used, even though he knew for a fact that it had been a false statement. “The man was angry at Kaylee and tried force. When that didn’t work, he started trying other means of discrediting her so he could haul her off to jail.”
“Force? Jail?” His mouth was hanging open in a typical Simon gesture. As always, Mal wanted to put his fist through the opening. “What did you do?”
“What any man would do in the situation. I-“
“Simon!” Even though it was against his direct orders, River burst through the door and came running to greet her brother. “I’ve missed you!”
“I got you the present you asked about.”
Mal was forgotten for the moment as brother and sister greeted each other. He didn’t mind so much but he hadn’t been able to alert Simon to the changes in what last names people were going by. Now that they’d started, there was no way he’d be able to stop them until they got all this out of their system.
“That didn’t go quite like you’d planned, I bet.”
Mal glanced up, not at all surprised to see Kaylee’s legs hanging over the edge of the walkway. Instead of anger that she’d also disobeyed an order, he was relieved that she’d been here to witness it for herself. He hadn’t wanted to explain himself. “He didn’t give me much of a chance to finish my explanations.”
Her legs kicked out like she was waiting excitedly for a parade to start. Knowing Kaylee, he wouldn’t have been surprised if there was a parade somewhere. The girl had the damnedest way of making nice things just materialize, as if they appeared because she’d been thinking about them.
Because he discovered that he wanted nothing more than to sit and watch the deck below with her, Mal climbed the stairs and sank down beside Kaylee, his own legs stretching out much further than hers. It was peaceful here, listening to the sounds of Serenity at ease. He leaned his forehead against the railing, letting the cool of the metal seep into his overheated face.
“I will be the first to admit that I was expecting to at least get in one good punch before he walked away.”
“So you think you’ll need to fight him?” Kaylee sounded more confused than angry. “How come?”
“I figured he’d want to at least try to put in a claim for you. A man sometimes likes to do that with his fists. It makes him feel more manly.”
Kaylee bit her lower lip, a habit Mal had never noticed until lately. But then she’d spent a lot more time being confused than she normally did. “A claim? For me? Why would he want to do that?”
“I thought the good doctor carried a flame for you?” Now it was his turn to be confused. “Weren’t you and he… well… on your way to being a couple?”
“Oh, Captain, just because a man looks twice at a girl don’t mean he wants to be her one and only. Me and the doctor? I don’t think so. He’s got much higher aspirations than to carry on very long with a ship’s mechanic.”
He frowned at her, not liking how she was degrading herself for something she was gifted at. “Hey now, you’re talking about the very thing that makes you more special than any of the other crew members. Without a gifted mechanic, Serenity would long ago have given up. I don’t like to dwell on such things so you’ll need to get that kind of thinking out of your head.”
“Serenity wouldn’t have given up.” Her long fingers caressed the railing as if she was petting a kitten. “She’s got too much integrity to just lay down and die. This girl is a fighter.”
Mal watched them closely, mesmerized by their light touch against the cold steel. She’d used to touch him now and again, he remembered suddenly. Just a hand on his arm or on his back, friendly like. But then she’d stopped. He reached over to pick up one of her hands, ignoring her sudden stillness and round eyes. They weren’t full of fear, he told himself because that’s what he wanted to believe.
“So are you,” he reminded her, wishing he hadn’t touched her. It had made her stop. Just like how his harebrained scheme to marry her had made her stop laughing. Zoe was right. He’d done this all wrong. “I want you to remember that because we’re going to make this right. You’ll have your chance with the doctor once again.”
“The doctor,” she echoed, her voice small and lost in the large open room.
Mal nodded, wishing it didn’t hurt to see her pining so. He gave her back her hand and stood up, wishing he could sit with her for awhile but his presence would only remind her of what she was missing out on. “Right. The marriage only has to last for a year and then you’ll be free. I’ll just explain that to Simon and-“
“No!” Her eyes were wide again, full of fear and embarrassment. “No, please don’t.”
“He needs to understand this, don’t he?” It came out much harsher than he intended but he wanted to make this right by her. Talking to Simon was the least he could do for her.
“I’ll talk to Simon.” She offered him a smile, nearly like the one she would have flashed a year ago when things were happier and no one was dead or gone. “Explain how things are now.”
“And you’ll tell him you’ll be free? Make him understand he should wait? That you aren’t hitched for real?”
She flinched but he figured it was because he couldn’t seem to make his voice sound happy. It made him angry that she even had to go through this when she’d never been in the wrong in the first place. If the doctor hadn’t felt he needed to get more learning, this wouldn’t have happened.
“I’ll let him know how things are.” She sounded out of breath, like she’d run from one side of the ship to the other. “Don’t worry, Captain. I’ll tell him everything.”
~~~
For the next two days, Mal stayed away from Simon. He had no intention of actually fighting for Kaylee’s honor although the thought wasn’t a bad one, per se. It would have felt good to bloody the younger man’s nose in an attempt to… to what? Win Kaylee for himself? He laughed out loud whenever he thought about that. Kaylee wouldn’t want him fighting for her honor, let along claiming her for any purpose. He’d helped her out like any man worth his salt would have, even if thinking of it like that did make him feel like her father. Maybe thinking of himself as her big brother would make it less uncomfortable.
The one person he couldn’t pull himself away from was Kaylee. It was his duty, after all, to make sure the engines were running correctly. He’d long since given up trying to come up with fictitious reasons to visit her area of the ship. It made her jumpy if she thought he was checking up on her. On the other hand, she didn’t seem to mind at all if he just came by for a visit.
It amused him to see her scuttle over to the sink to wash the grease off her hands so that she could slide the ring onto her left hand. Now he understood why Zoe had never worn a ring, saying it was more likely to get in the way at an inopportune time. He could see that now but Kaylee didn’t seem to mind. She was forever cleaning and buffing the small sapphire and diamond as if they were the most precious of jewels and would only wear it when her hands were devoid of all dirt, even if her face was still streaked with grease.
“What can I do for you, Captain?” she asked as he entered the small space. There was a far-away look to her eyes that he assumed meant she’d been daydreaming. The thought that Simon was taking up time she should be spending thinking about his engines riled Mal up so that his words were abrupt.
“Came to see if we were clear to use the portside burner.”
She rolled her eyes. “Told you three days ago it was in working order. If you’d quit scowling and actually listen to me, you could have saved yourself some time and-“
There was barely enough time for him to realize he’d moved forward to wrap his arms around her before he was kissing her. The good kind of kiss, too. He was aware of his hands on her lower back, hers on his shoulders, the heat of her skin penetrating through her shirt… her lips. So soft. So very soft. Her hand at the nape of his neck, stroking his hair as if she was playing with a kitten. Kissing him back. Pressing against him even as he was wondering how he might move closer to her.
As she made a sound, he pulled away from her completely as if she’d punched him in the stomach. He hadn’t asked permission, he reminded himself. That might have been a protest of his actions instead of the whimper of passion he heard. Or wished he heard. It was all muddled in his head now.
“What did you do that for?” she asked, her eyes sharpening now that she’d had a moment to think. He fully expected to be slapped but her fingers came up to play over her lips, exploring their puffy borders for the answers to her questions. He watched in fascination as her tongue followed her fingers, darting out on its own investigation.
“Thought I’d kiss my wife, is all.” His voice was defensive, matching the sudden crossing of his arms to keep from reaching out for her again. “I hear it’s what husbands do from time to time.”
“I didn’t mean the kiss. I meant, why did you stop?”
Mal blinked. Kaylee was grinning at him as if he’d offered her a bowl of strawberries. If his eyes were to be believed, she didn’t mind that he’d kissed her in such an aggressive way. Instead of running away now that she had the chance, she was inching forward so that they were only inches apart yet again. In his experience, if a woman didn’t run away or scream bloody murder, it was acceptable to kiss them again. But Mal wasn’t sure he could stop at just one more kiss. His hand itched to reach out and touch her face or run through her smooth-as-silk hair. From there, he’d want to touch other places. If he didn’t stop this now, they’d never get about their work.
He cleared his throat. “There is not the time to be lollygagging about. Glad to know I can use the portside burners whenever I want. Best you go back to,” he waved his hand to indicate the room in general, “whatever it was that you were doing before I interrupted.”
The dazed smile on her face drooped into a confused frown even as she nodded and put the engine between them. “Sure, Captain. I’ll go back to what I was doing. No problem.” Before he could come up with an apology that didn’t sound worse than what he’d just said, she disappeared behind the machinery.
~~~
“I’m wondering if there isn’t a virus going around the ship,” Simon mused at dinner the next night. “Everyone looks so tired and disgruntled. Wouldn’t you say they looked tired and disgruntled, Jayne?”
The other man visible started as he realized he was being drawn into the conversation. “Uh huh,” he grunted, not exactly sure how he was supposed to answer. He went back to consuming the meal in front of him, irritated that it wasn’t a steak. He liked steak. He didn’t like it when they tried to make him think they were having steak when instead they were having yet another round of protein globules smothered in gravy.
“Do you feel as if you might have come down with something recently?” Simon asked Kaylee, his grin letting her know he was joking.
She wasn’t paying much attention to him, though. “I’m fine,” she whispered toward her plate. It was where she’d been staring all night.
Zoe cleared her throat. “I think we’re all a bit tired. I know I haven’t been sleeping well. Solar flares, I believe. Right, Jayne.”
“Solar flares,” he grunted, not understanding Zoe but it was always wish to agree with her. “It’s definitely solar flares.”
The young doctor gave everyone a quizzical look before finally dropping down to his own plate. The only one who met his eyes was Mal, who had come to dinner but hadn’t even picked up a fork. His arms had stayed crossed over his chest the entire meal to this point. As Simon had talked, his eyes had narrowed but he hadn’t said anything. Now, in the silence that followed the awkward conversation, he uncrossed his arms and put his hands on either side of his plate. Well away from his gun if anyone later accused him of trying to do something stupid.
“Simon, I don’t think you heard of all the doings on the ship while you were gone this trip.”
Every pair of eyes was now trained on the captain. Simone looked questioning, for it was easy to see that he had thought it odd that not even his sister would answer his questions. The rest of the crew, for the most part, looked shocked and fearful as if they anticipated trouble.
“No one’s said anything. Not even River. I almost believe they’re under orders not to say anything to me.”
River looked crestfallen. Her promise had been the hardest to obtain, making it the hardest to break. Instead of putting herself in danger of saying something, she’d hidden away from her brother’s quarters and the infirmary after their initial greeting. The strain was evident in her face.
“Well, I’m going to tell you. It’s not fair to River to have us all under a secret you’ll soon figure out being as you’re a smart sort of fellow.”
Simon’s right hand curled around his dinner knife as he tried to read the emotion behind Mal’s words. “I would appreciate knowing what everyone else already knows. It makes me uncomfortable to be around secrets.”
Jayne snorted but had the good grace to look down at his plate and not up at his captain. They all lived with secrets that was for sure, including the doctor. It was the nature of the business they were in to have secrets.
“There was some trouble with Kaylee’s papers.”
“Yes.” Simon said the word with great deliberation. “You told me that already. “
Kaylee let out a low moan, full of frustration and pain. “Let me tell him, Mal.”
“No, Kaylee. This is something for me to tell him. Man to man.”
When he looked back at Simon, his eyes were round and he was still looking at Kaylee with shock. “You called him Mal. You only ever call him Captain.”
“Are you blind, man?” Jayne jumped to his feet. “You’re supposed to be smarter than all of us but you didn’t even see the ring. Show him the ring, Kaylee. She’s married, you idiot. Married to Mal.” He looked around the table, searching for someone who would applaud his sudden loss of control. When no one gave him the appreciation he felt he deserved for being man enough to tell the secret, he sank back down into his seat and began eating again as if he really enjoyed it.
“Is that true?” Simon asked Kaylee.
She rolled her eyes and lifted the hand that had spent the entire evening next to her plate. Mal had noticed that she never once tried to hide the piece of jewelry. “You really are dense sometimes, Simon.”
“To,” he tried to say Mal’s name but kept stuttering over the first letter so that finally he just said, “the captain?”
“My freedom was at stake,” she screeched. “Would you have had me wait for you?”
“I could have talked to them. Gotten them to give you an extension.”
“Wuh de ma! You would have had me wait so you could have talked them to death? I think I would have rather gone with Jayne’s suggestion that he slit my throat so at least they didn’t take me alive.” Jayne had the good sense to flush. “At least these people wanted to help me do something, Simon. An extension? You really are a tah mah duh hwoon dahn.”
Before anyone could say anything, she got up and left the room with more grace and dignity than Mal would have ever given her credit for.
Simon gave it some thought but finally started to get to his feet. “I should go-“
“Sit down.” Everyone turned to stare at River. Her face was twisted into a mask of grief. “Mal should go. She isn’t yours anymore, Simon. You had your chance and you didn’t take it. No more Kaylee and Simon. No more.”
But he didn’t sit down. Instead, he watched Mal carefully to see what he was going to do. With deliberate grace, Mal wiped his mouth with his previously unused napkin. It was a mimic of Simon’s unconscious gesture after every bite and as he was done with each meal. It was impossible not to see it as a mockery of the younger man. But he didn’t move until Mal was walking past him.
“You don’t deserve her. You know that, right?”
Mal thought about his words carefully. This wasn’t the declaration of war he’d been waiting for all day. He’d spent all these months thinking Simon cared for Kaylee far more deeper than just the feelings a man felt for a pretty woman but when push came to shove, he was no better than Jayne in the situation. They had both wanted to do anything but committing themselves fully to the situation.
It was this realization that made him smile as he passed by. “She’s not worthy of any of us. But I get to keep her forever.”
~~~
Kaylee wasn’t in her bunk or in the engine room. While he thought about wandering around Serenity to see if he could find her, Mal gave up easily now that he was away from the rest of the crew. If she didn’t want to be found, he wasn’t going to try to find her. Kaylee had a way of showing up when she wanted to be found.
Like on his bed. As he stood in the open doorway to his own bunk, he stared at the naked girl sitting self-consciously in the middle of his mattress.
“You get lost?” he asked quietly, not daring to move for fear of what he might do.
“I know you haven’t wanted to touch me ‘cause you thought Simon wanted me. Now, I figure, you’ve seen that it’s not true. It never was. And so I figure you might be willing to do more than just kiss me from time to time when you get the yin to make sure I’m still real.”
“I know you’re real.” A piece of her hair was stuck in her eyelashes so that she had to blink furiously to try to get it loose without using her hands which were protecting certain parts of her body. He wanted to smooth it back into place but still he stayed where he was. “You’re also naked.”
The blush creeped down her cheeks and neck to stain the very top of her shoulders. He wondered if he could blanch the color from her skin if he pushed on it with his fingers. If he could imprint his hand on her just by pressing it lightly to the stained skin.
“I thought… maybe… you’d like what you saw and you’d… but I’ll leave if you want me to.”
Neither of them moved. Mal wanted to tell her she could stay but found the words wouldn’t come out of his mouth. So he did the next best thing. Before she had time to look up and stop him with eyes full of fear, he was beside her, drawing her hands away from her body so that he could see everything.
“I don’t want you to leave.”
This time the kiss was her idea but he did nothing to stop her forward movement. When she had had her fill and moved away, he didn’t follow her back. Instead, he moved his lips to the skin of her shoulders as he began his quest to discover the parts of her he’d never seen before.
“I know you don’t love me-“
“I love you,” he interrupted. “I’ve always loved you.”
“Yes,” she consented, “like Kaylee. Not like… a wife.”
Mal gave that some thought as he moved further down the front of her to the parts her hands had hid. “And you love me like Mal What’s the problem with that.”
“Nothing. Only I was thinking that…”
He lifted his head so he could see why she’d stopped talking. There were tears at the edges of her eyes but she didn’t look like she even knew she was crying. There was a firmness to her chin that he saw when she was trying to make him understand something about the engines.
“What were you thinking, Kaylee?” His words were quiet as he watched a single drop of moisture make its way down her cheek. “Tell me.”
“Perhaps you could learn to love a Kaylee like you’d love wife,” she whispered. “So that this wouldn’t be so bad for you.”
Mal laid his forehead against her warm skin, trying to find the right words to say to her that wouldn’t ruin this moment. “Could you love Mal like a husband is loved?”
Her hands tangled in his hair, keeping her tight against her chest where he could suddenly hear her heart beating, strong and fast. “Yes. I could love Mal like that. It wouldn’t be hard for me at all.”
Hearing her declaration cleared everything up for Mal. He was no longer plagued by indecision or the fear that had haunted him since he’d opened his mouth and offered up his name as a way of getting out of this situation. It also cleared up the hurt he’d been carrying around at losing Inara. It hadn’t necessarily been about losing her so much as being abandoned by her. But now that didn’t matter because he had a wife.
“I have Kaylee,” he mumbled into the slick warmth of her skin.
“What?”
He looked up at her, a smile gracing lips that hadn’t seen the result of true happiness for a very long time. “I love you.”
Her eyes sparkled with a joy that had been missing lately. “Then kiss me, Mal. Never let me forget that you love me.”
Title: Something Like a Wife
Fandom: Whedonverse (Firefly)
Pairing: Mal/Kaylee
Word Count: 4848
Rating: PG-13
Prompt: take two people that are not in love, put them in an arranged marriage and have them end up falling in love
Warnings: some swearing in Chinese, some delicate situations
“I’m just saying you ain’t a man to do such rash things as you’ve done in the last couple of weeks. I’m worried about you, sir.” Zoe sat in the co-pilot chair, something she’d done from time to time when River wasn’t around. Her hand absent-mindedly caressed the arm of the chair as if she might have been touching her husband’s arm. It bothered Mal but not as much as being lectured about life from a woman who was only just barely holding her own together. Only because he respected her did he sit and listen.
But that didn’t mean he needed to accept what she was saying. “Rash? Hardly. I did what was needed in the situation.”
“Did you? We weren’t in dire straits. Could have waited for the doctor to come back. He’s due any day now.”
Mal was tired of hearing about Simon. He was the gorram reason they were in this mess in the first place. If he hadn’t gotten it into his head to go to the Symposium on (one of the main planets) they never would have docked and definitely wouldn’t have been boarded by an Alliance agent looking for trouble. The uneasy truce with the government had seemed to be at an end.
“I did what I saw needed doing,” he mumbled, pretending that a button needed to be toggled back and forth. “And I don’t see her up here complaining.”
“Course she’s not going to complain. The woman worships you. Thought I made that clear already. She thinks you did this for love.” Mal looked up as Zoe hit the instrument panel. That last word didn’t come easily to her lips these days. Not when the ache was still evident on her face. “Damn it, Mal. She thinks you’ve loved her for years. Just haven’t said anything to her.”
“I do love her.” He was taken aback by the savage beauty of Zoe’s sneer. The woman scared him at times, that was for certain. “In my own way, I love her very much.”
“Like a sister, perhaps. I’ve never seen your eyes flash with passion like they did with In-“
“Don’t say her name.”
Mal felt the bile at the back of his throat. They still ran with only one shuttle because he hadn’t the heart the replace the one they’d lost the day Inara had decided the sickness had spread too much and it was time to end it all. He himself had died the day they’d found the wreckage. Every day after was like a thousand small deaths. It bothered him a great deal that she hadn’t wanted to hold on to life. The doctor had assured her that she still had at least a good year ahead of her but she hadn’t wanted to be a burden. He wondered if she’d ever realized that her abrupt death would be more a burden than any gradual wasting away. There might have been time to find the right words to express what he was feeling. She’d never given him a chance.
“Mal, you have to deal with this or it’s going to eat you alive.”
It was exactly these types of conversations that made him resent that there weren’t many places to hide on Serenity. He loved her as he always had but she’d grown small in the past months. Stomping off to his bunk was not an option as he was expecting a message from Badger and had let River have the evening off. Putting food on the table was more important than being alone, no matter how much he hated being lectured by a dead-eyed widow on what he should or should not be doing to heal his heart. Like she would know!
“Zoe, I will not discuss this here and now. The two things have nothing to do with each other and I don’t need to deal with anything but getting us this job. You can stay and wait to see what Badger has for us or you can go, leaving me in peace. Right now, I would rather you left. “
“Fine.” She stood, accentuating the thin frame that had dwindled down to only a fraction of the weight she normally carried. He’d noticed she was eating again but he did have to wonder if it was going to be enough or if it was a case of too little, too late. “But you need to be thinking on this, Mal. Simon will be back on board soon and I think he’s going to notice that Kaylee is sporting a ring on her left hand. That may not sit right with him.”
“What shouldn’t sit right with him,” he yelled after her, “is the fact that he had his chance and he was too scared to take it.” He was yelling at nothing, though. Zoe never seemed to stick around long enough for him to find the right words for his parting shot.
~~~
The uneasy peace lasted for five days more, shattering to fine dust as soon as the bay doors opened and Simon walked on to the ship as if nothing had changed since he’d last been on board.
“I thought you were going to be docked for the duration of my absence.” Simon dropped his pack and looked around. “Where’s everyone else?”
Mal had asked for this time alone with Simon. It would be easier to explain things now rather than waiting for him to find out everything in pieces. “We had some trouble, had to take to the sky to get rid of it. There was the matter of Kaylee’s papers that had to be ironed out so we had to find a place-“
But Simon wasn’t listening. He’d heard the one word that could stop him in his tracks. “What was wrong with Kaylee’s papers?”
“They were discovered to be falsified.” Mal used the same wording that the Alliance agent had used, even though he knew for a fact that it had been a false statement. “The man was angry at Kaylee and tried force. When that didn’t work, he started trying other means of discrediting her so he could haul her off to jail.”
“Force? Jail?” His mouth was hanging open in a typical Simon gesture. As always, Mal wanted to put his fist through the opening. “What did you do?”
“What any man would do in the situation. I-“
“Simon!” Even though it was against his direct orders, River burst through the door and came running to greet her brother. “I’ve missed you!”
“I got you the present you asked about.”
Mal was forgotten for the moment as brother and sister greeted each other. He didn’t mind so much but he hadn’t been able to alert Simon to the changes in what last names people were going by. Now that they’d started, there was no way he’d be able to stop them until they got all this out of their system.
“That didn’t go quite like you’d planned, I bet.”
Mal glanced up, not at all surprised to see Kaylee’s legs hanging over the edge of the walkway. Instead of anger that she’d also disobeyed an order, he was relieved that she’d been here to witness it for herself. He hadn’t wanted to explain himself. “He didn’t give me much of a chance to finish my explanations.”
Her legs kicked out like she was waiting excitedly for a parade to start. Knowing Kaylee, he wouldn’t have been surprised if there was a parade somewhere. The girl had the damnedest way of making nice things just materialize, as if they appeared because she’d been thinking about them.
Because he discovered that he wanted nothing more than to sit and watch the deck below with her, Mal climbed the stairs and sank down beside Kaylee, his own legs stretching out much further than hers. It was peaceful here, listening to the sounds of Serenity at ease. He leaned his forehead against the railing, letting the cool of the metal seep into his overheated face.
“I will be the first to admit that I was expecting to at least get in one good punch before he walked away.”
“So you think you’ll need to fight him?” Kaylee sounded more confused than angry. “How come?”
“I figured he’d want to at least try to put in a claim for you. A man sometimes likes to do that with his fists. It makes him feel more manly.”
Kaylee bit her lower lip, a habit Mal had never noticed until lately. But then she’d spent a lot more time being confused than she normally did. “A claim? For me? Why would he want to do that?”
“I thought the good doctor carried a flame for you?” Now it was his turn to be confused. “Weren’t you and he… well… on your way to being a couple?”
“Oh, Captain, just because a man looks twice at a girl don’t mean he wants to be her one and only. Me and the doctor? I don’t think so. He’s got much higher aspirations than to carry on very long with a ship’s mechanic.”
He frowned at her, not liking how she was degrading herself for something she was gifted at. “Hey now, you’re talking about the very thing that makes you more special than any of the other crew members. Without a gifted mechanic, Serenity would long ago have given up. I don’t like to dwell on such things so you’ll need to get that kind of thinking out of your head.”
“Serenity wouldn’t have given up.” Her long fingers caressed the railing as if she was petting a kitten. “She’s got too much integrity to just lay down and die. This girl is a fighter.”
Mal watched them closely, mesmerized by their light touch against the cold steel. She’d used to touch him now and again, he remembered suddenly. Just a hand on his arm or on his back, friendly like. But then she’d stopped. He reached over to pick up one of her hands, ignoring her sudden stillness and round eyes. They weren’t full of fear, he told himself because that’s what he wanted to believe.
“So are you,” he reminded her, wishing he hadn’t touched her. It had made her stop. Just like how his harebrained scheme to marry her had made her stop laughing. Zoe was right. He’d done this all wrong. “I want you to remember that because we’re going to make this right. You’ll have your chance with the doctor once again.”
“The doctor,” she echoed, her voice small and lost in the large open room.
Mal nodded, wishing it didn’t hurt to see her pining so. He gave her back her hand and stood up, wishing he could sit with her for awhile but his presence would only remind her of what she was missing out on. “Right. The marriage only has to last for a year and then you’ll be free. I’ll just explain that to Simon and-“
“No!” Her eyes were wide again, full of fear and embarrassment. “No, please don’t.”
“He needs to understand this, don’t he?” It came out much harsher than he intended but he wanted to make this right by her. Talking to Simon was the least he could do for her.
“I’ll talk to Simon.” She offered him a smile, nearly like the one she would have flashed a year ago when things were happier and no one was dead or gone. “Explain how things are now.”
“And you’ll tell him you’ll be free? Make him understand he should wait? That you aren’t hitched for real?”
She flinched but he figured it was because he couldn’t seem to make his voice sound happy. It made him angry that she even had to go through this when she’d never been in the wrong in the first place. If the doctor hadn’t felt he needed to get more learning, this wouldn’t have happened.
“I’ll let him know how things are.” She sounded out of breath, like she’d run from one side of the ship to the other. “Don’t worry, Captain. I’ll tell him everything.”
~~~
For the next two days, Mal stayed away from Simon. He had no intention of actually fighting for Kaylee’s honor although the thought wasn’t a bad one, per se. It would have felt good to bloody the younger man’s nose in an attempt to… to what? Win Kaylee for himself? He laughed out loud whenever he thought about that. Kaylee wouldn’t want him fighting for her honor, let along claiming her for any purpose. He’d helped her out like any man worth his salt would have, even if thinking of it like that did make him feel like her father. Maybe thinking of himself as her big brother would make it less uncomfortable.
The one person he couldn’t pull himself away from was Kaylee. It was his duty, after all, to make sure the engines were running correctly. He’d long since given up trying to come up with fictitious reasons to visit her area of the ship. It made her jumpy if she thought he was checking up on her. On the other hand, she didn’t seem to mind at all if he just came by for a visit.
It amused him to see her scuttle over to the sink to wash the grease off her hands so that she could slide the ring onto her left hand. Now he understood why Zoe had never worn a ring, saying it was more likely to get in the way at an inopportune time. He could see that now but Kaylee didn’t seem to mind. She was forever cleaning and buffing the small sapphire and diamond as if they were the most precious of jewels and would only wear it when her hands were devoid of all dirt, even if her face was still streaked with grease.
“What can I do for you, Captain?” she asked as he entered the small space. There was a far-away look to her eyes that he assumed meant she’d been daydreaming. The thought that Simon was taking up time she should be spending thinking about his engines riled Mal up so that his words were abrupt.
“Came to see if we were clear to use the portside burner.”
She rolled her eyes. “Told you three days ago it was in working order. If you’d quit scowling and actually listen to me, you could have saved yourself some time and-“
There was barely enough time for him to realize he’d moved forward to wrap his arms around her before he was kissing her. The good kind of kiss, too. He was aware of his hands on her lower back, hers on his shoulders, the heat of her skin penetrating through her shirt… her lips. So soft. So very soft. Her hand at the nape of his neck, stroking his hair as if she was playing with a kitten. Kissing him back. Pressing against him even as he was wondering how he might move closer to her.
As she made a sound, he pulled away from her completely as if she’d punched him in the stomach. He hadn’t asked permission, he reminded himself. That might have been a protest of his actions instead of the whimper of passion he heard. Or wished he heard. It was all muddled in his head now.
“What did you do that for?” she asked, her eyes sharpening now that she’d had a moment to think. He fully expected to be slapped but her fingers came up to play over her lips, exploring their puffy borders for the answers to her questions. He watched in fascination as her tongue followed her fingers, darting out on its own investigation.
“Thought I’d kiss my wife, is all.” His voice was defensive, matching the sudden crossing of his arms to keep from reaching out for her again. “I hear it’s what husbands do from time to time.”
“I didn’t mean the kiss. I meant, why did you stop?”
Mal blinked. Kaylee was grinning at him as if he’d offered her a bowl of strawberries. If his eyes were to be believed, she didn’t mind that he’d kissed her in such an aggressive way. Instead of running away now that she had the chance, she was inching forward so that they were only inches apart yet again. In his experience, if a woman didn’t run away or scream bloody murder, it was acceptable to kiss them again. But Mal wasn’t sure he could stop at just one more kiss. His hand itched to reach out and touch her face or run through her smooth-as-silk hair. From there, he’d want to touch other places. If he didn’t stop this now, they’d never get about their work.
He cleared his throat. “There is not the time to be lollygagging about. Glad to know I can use the portside burners whenever I want. Best you go back to,” he waved his hand to indicate the room in general, “whatever it was that you were doing before I interrupted.”
The dazed smile on her face drooped into a confused frown even as she nodded and put the engine between them. “Sure, Captain. I’ll go back to what I was doing. No problem.” Before he could come up with an apology that didn’t sound worse than what he’d just said, she disappeared behind the machinery.
~~~
“I’m wondering if there isn’t a virus going around the ship,” Simon mused at dinner the next night. “Everyone looks so tired and disgruntled. Wouldn’t you say they looked tired and disgruntled, Jayne?”
The other man visible started as he realized he was being drawn into the conversation. “Uh huh,” he grunted, not exactly sure how he was supposed to answer. He went back to consuming the meal in front of him, irritated that it wasn’t a steak. He liked steak. He didn’t like it when they tried to make him think they were having steak when instead they were having yet another round of protein globules smothered in gravy.
“Do you feel as if you might have come down with something recently?” Simon asked Kaylee, his grin letting her know he was joking.
She wasn’t paying much attention to him, though. “I’m fine,” she whispered toward her plate. It was where she’d been staring all night.
Zoe cleared her throat. “I think we’re all a bit tired. I know I haven’t been sleeping well. Solar flares, I believe. Right, Jayne.”
“Solar flares,” he grunted, not understanding Zoe but it was always wish to agree with her. “It’s definitely solar flares.”
The young doctor gave everyone a quizzical look before finally dropping down to his own plate. The only one who met his eyes was Mal, who had come to dinner but hadn’t even picked up a fork. His arms had stayed crossed over his chest the entire meal to this point. As Simon had talked, his eyes had narrowed but he hadn’t said anything. Now, in the silence that followed the awkward conversation, he uncrossed his arms and put his hands on either side of his plate. Well away from his gun if anyone later accused him of trying to do something stupid.
“Simon, I don’t think you heard of all the doings on the ship while you were gone this trip.”
Every pair of eyes was now trained on the captain. Simone looked questioning, for it was easy to see that he had thought it odd that not even his sister would answer his questions. The rest of the crew, for the most part, looked shocked and fearful as if they anticipated trouble.
“No one’s said anything. Not even River. I almost believe they’re under orders not to say anything to me.”
River looked crestfallen. Her promise had been the hardest to obtain, making it the hardest to break. Instead of putting herself in danger of saying something, she’d hidden away from her brother’s quarters and the infirmary after their initial greeting. The strain was evident in her face.
“Well, I’m going to tell you. It’s not fair to River to have us all under a secret you’ll soon figure out being as you’re a smart sort of fellow.”
Simon’s right hand curled around his dinner knife as he tried to read the emotion behind Mal’s words. “I would appreciate knowing what everyone else already knows. It makes me uncomfortable to be around secrets.”
Jayne snorted but had the good grace to look down at his plate and not up at his captain. They all lived with secrets that was for sure, including the doctor. It was the nature of the business they were in to have secrets.
“There was some trouble with Kaylee’s papers.”
“Yes.” Simon said the word with great deliberation. “You told me that already. “
Kaylee let out a low moan, full of frustration and pain. “Let me tell him, Mal.”
“No, Kaylee. This is something for me to tell him. Man to man.”
When he looked back at Simon, his eyes were round and he was still looking at Kaylee with shock. “You called him Mal. You only ever call him Captain.”
“Are you blind, man?” Jayne jumped to his feet. “You’re supposed to be smarter than all of us but you didn’t even see the ring. Show him the ring, Kaylee. She’s married, you idiot. Married to Mal.” He looked around the table, searching for someone who would applaud his sudden loss of control. When no one gave him the appreciation he felt he deserved for being man enough to tell the secret, he sank back down into his seat and began eating again as if he really enjoyed it.
“Is that true?” Simon asked Kaylee.
She rolled her eyes and lifted the hand that had spent the entire evening next to her plate. Mal had noticed that she never once tried to hide the piece of jewelry. “You really are dense sometimes, Simon.”
“To,” he tried to say Mal’s name but kept stuttering over the first letter so that finally he just said, “the captain?”
“My freedom was at stake,” she screeched. “Would you have had me wait for you?”
“I could have talked to them. Gotten them to give you an extension.”
“Wuh de ma! You would have had me wait so you could have talked them to death? I think I would have rather gone with Jayne’s suggestion that he slit my throat so at least they didn’t take me alive.” Jayne had the good sense to flush. “At least these people wanted to help me do something, Simon. An extension? You really are a tah mah duh hwoon dahn.”
Before anyone could say anything, she got up and left the room with more grace and dignity than Mal would have ever given her credit for.
Simon gave it some thought but finally started to get to his feet. “I should go-“
“Sit down.” Everyone turned to stare at River. Her face was twisted into a mask of grief. “Mal should go. She isn’t yours anymore, Simon. You had your chance and you didn’t take it. No more Kaylee and Simon. No more.”
But he didn’t sit down. Instead, he watched Mal carefully to see what he was going to do. With deliberate grace, Mal wiped his mouth with his previously unused napkin. It was a mimic of Simon’s unconscious gesture after every bite and as he was done with each meal. It was impossible not to see it as a mockery of the younger man. But he didn’t move until Mal was walking past him.
“You don’t deserve her. You know that, right?”
Mal thought about his words carefully. This wasn’t the declaration of war he’d been waiting for all day. He’d spent all these months thinking Simon cared for Kaylee far more deeper than just the feelings a man felt for a pretty woman but when push came to shove, he was no better than Jayne in the situation. They had both wanted to do anything but committing themselves fully to the situation.
It was this realization that made him smile as he passed by. “She’s not worthy of any of us. But I get to keep her forever.”
~~~
Kaylee wasn’t in her bunk or in the engine room. While he thought about wandering around Serenity to see if he could find her, Mal gave up easily now that he was away from the rest of the crew. If she didn’t want to be found, he wasn’t going to try to find her. Kaylee had a way of showing up when she wanted to be found.
Like on his bed. As he stood in the open doorway to his own bunk, he stared at the naked girl sitting self-consciously in the middle of his mattress.
“You get lost?” he asked quietly, not daring to move for fear of what he might do.
“I know you haven’t wanted to touch me ‘cause you thought Simon wanted me. Now, I figure, you’ve seen that it’s not true. It never was. And so I figure you might be willing to do more than just kiss me from time to time when you get the yin to make sure I’m still real.”
“I know you’re real.” A piece of her hair was stuck in her eyelashes so that she had to blink furiously to try to get it loose without using her hands which were protecting certain parts of her body. He wanted to smooth it back into place but still he stayed where he was. “You’re also naked.”
The blush creeped down her cheeks and neck to stain the very top of her shoulders. He wondered if he could blanch the color from her skin if he pushed on it with his fingers. If he could imprint his hand on her just by pressing it lightly to the stained skin.
“I thought… maybe… you’d like what you saw and you’d… but I’ll leave if you want me to.”
Neither of them moved. Mal wanted to tell her she could stay but found the words wouldn’t come out of his mouth. So he did the next best thing. Before she had time to look up and stop him with eyes full of fear, he was beside her, drawing her hands away from her body so that he could see everything.
“I don’t want you to leave.”
This time the kiss was her idea but he did nothing to stop her forward movement. When she had had her fill and moved away, he didn’t follow her back. Instead, he moved his lips to the skin of her shoulders as he began his quest to discover the parts of her he’d never seen before.
“I know you don’t love me-“
“I love you,” he interrupted. “I’ve always loved you.”
“Yes,” she consented, “like Kaylee. Not like… a wife.”
Mal gave that some thought as he moved further down the front of her to the parts her hands had hid. “And you love me like Mal What’s the problem with that.”
“Nothing. Only I was thinking that…”
He lifted his head so he could see why she’d stopped talking. There were tears at the edges of her eyes but she didn’t look like she even knew she was crying. There was a firmness to her chin that he saw when she was trying to make him understand something about the engines.
“What were you thinking, Kaylee?” His words were quiet as he watched a single drop of moisture make its way down her cheek. “Tell me.”
“Perhaps you could learn to love a Kaylee like you’d love wife,” she whispered. “So that this wouldn’t be so bad for you.”
Mal laid his forehead against her warm skin, trying to find the right words to say to her that wouldn’t ruin this moment. “Could you love Mal like a husband is loved?”
Her hands tangled in his hair, keeping her tight against her chest where he could suddenly hear her heart beating, strong and fast. “Yes. I could love Mal like that. It wouldn’t be hard for me at all.”
Hearing her declaration cleared everything up for Mal. He was no longer plagued by indecision or the fear that had haunted him since he’d opened his mouth and offered up his name as a way of getting out of this situation. It also cleared up the hurt he’d been carrying around at losing Inara. It hadn’t necessarily been about losing her so much as being abandoned by her. But now that didn’t matter because he had a wife.
“I have Kaylee,” he mumbled into the slick warmth of her skin.
“What?”
He looked up at her, a smile gracing lips that hadn’t seen the result of true happiness for a very long time. “I love you.”
Her eyes sparkled with a joy that had been missing lately. “Then kiss me, Mal. Never let me forget that you love me.”