DS/Firefly fic: "Take Me Out To The Black (Tell Me When I Can Come Back)" (Part 1)
So I’m in chat with pipsqueaky one day and we get to talking about Due South crossed over with shows like Angel and Farscape and one thing leads to another and we talk about Ray V and Fraser exploring the good ship Serenity and we come up with all kinds of little scenes between the characters and she dares me to write it and I agree.
And then I completely fail at writing anything for this fic for months after getting down a page and a half, because I think it needs a whole plot and a true beginning and middle and an end. But I finally realized that what I really wanted to write were just snippets of their time on the ship. So I am. Here's the first part, unbeta’d, but written with love for Pips, because not only has she beta’d tirelessly for me, she has borne the brunt of my Fraser/Vecchio obsession, and she’s done it with grace and even enthusiasm.
Title: Take Me Out To The Black (Tell Me When I Can Come Back) - Part 1: When you call your ship your home, do you deduct for travel expenses on your tax report?
Author: SDWolfpup
Fandom(s): Due South/Firefly crossover (no spoilers for either show)
Rating: D for Dorky; oh, ok, PG, I guess.
Pairing(s): None. All. I leave it up to you, the reader.
Summary: Fraser has to make a trip for work. Ray goes with him and Frannie tags along. Wackiness ensues, as it so often does.
Website link: Here
"This is the spaceship?" Ray Vecchio stared, his eyes tracking the curve of the ship's interior, disappointment thick in his voice. He nudged something - what the hell was that, anyway? - to the side with the toe of his very expensive, now very dusty, loafers. "It's so dirty."
"They're just simple traders, Ray. I have it on good authority that this is one of the finest ships around." Fraser strode up next to him, a pleased smile on his face. He moved over to the side of the bay and laid his palm against the hull. "03 Firefly class transport. Eccentric but durable."
"Much like yourself."
Fraser lifted an eyebrow in his general direction. "Her name is Serenity."
"Serenity? What kind of a ship is called Serenity? It sounds like a woman's perfume or something." Ray moved further inside the cargo bay, grateful for the shade from the sun beating down outside. He touched the top of his balding head gingerly, afraid it had gotten sunburned on the short walk from the bar to the ship. It felt normal, but he wasn't sure how alien sunburns worked. Dief trotted inside and headed straight for a pile of boxes, sniffing curiously around them, his tail wagging gently. "I don't think they trade donuts, Dief."
"Geeze you guys, you think you could wait for a girl?"
"I'm sorry Francesca, I thought you were right behind us."
Ray rolled his eyes. "She was, she's just loaded down with half of what she owns," he gestured behind him without turning around, to where they'd left their luggage at the base of the ramp into the ship, "while we carry the other half."
"Yeah, like most of your bags don't belong to you." There was a loud thud behind him, and then he saw Frannie sidle up next to Fraser, pushing her sunglasses up on her forehead. "Would you look at this!" She mimicked Fraser, placing her hand so close to his on the hull that their fingers touched. Fraser started going through his spiel again for her, so Ray looked around for the captain or commander or whatever you called the person in charge of a spaceship that looked like it had been pieced together from a bunch of different Lego sets. He carefully placed his feet somewhere covered with just dirt and peered into the shadows of the hallway at the other end of the cargo bay.
"Hello? Is anybody, uh, home?"
"Yeah, one minute!" The response floated down from the catwalks above, and Ray looked up, but saw no movement.
"You're sure about this, Benny?"
"Absolutely, Ray. An old colleague of mine directed us here."
"A Mountie directed you to a spaceship?"
"Well actually Ray-"
"Hold on! I'm coming, I'm-" there was a crash and an "Ouch" and a bunch of Chinese words that Ray didn’t understand. The foursome turned as one to stare up at the man who had just fallen into view.
"Are you all right, sir?"
"Yeah, I'm fine," he laughed nervously and hopped to his feet, taking the steps down two at a time. He had red hair that almost looked orange in the light and was wearing a brightly patterned shirt that showed just how pale his skin was. "I was, uh, busy doing," he gestured vaguely behind him, "pilot stuff. You must be Fraser!" He landed in front of them, grinning widely. "We've heard all about you. I'm Wash. Welcome aboard Serenity." They exchanged introductions and handshakes.
"Thank you for having us on your ship."
"Oh, hey, it wasn't me. Not that I'm not happy to have you here, I just don't really have much of a say in who we shuttle around. Wasn't Zoe, either. Or Mal, now that I think about it. Not really sure, actually, who made the decis-"
Ray cut in. "Listen, it's great to meet you, but it's 130 degrees out there and I could really use a bath and a place to change. I didn't exactly dress appropriately for this place." He gestured at his expensive - and, of course, dirty - slacks. Ray ignored Fraser frowning at him. The Mountie probably couldn't even feel the heat; he just meditated himself into an icebank or something to regulate his body temperature. Even in the red serge he showed no signs of sweating. Ray felt like he was sopping wet.
Wash nodded and strode towards their luggage, Fraser and Ray following. "You're not gonna help?" Ray asked Frannie, who stood there examining her nail polish.
"Don't worry about it, I've got it," Wash put in. Frannie stuck her tongue out at Ray. "So how was your trip?"
Ray exchanged a look with Fraser. Benny tilted his head to the side and said simply, "Fine." Ray snorted. If "fine" meant "felt like all of your molecules were engaged in a giant gang war, knifing each other with six-inch blades," then, yeah, that covered it.
They gathered up the luggage, juggling the multiple boxes Frannie had brought with her, and the boxes she'd bought while they were waiting in town for Serenity to land. Loaded down with his own two garment bags, large rolling suitcase, and smaller suitcase for shoes and other essentials, Ray had to admit he may have over packed a little. But how the hell did you pack for space? There weren't any Fodor's Guide to The Stars: What to Wear and the Key Words You Should Know. Although he bet Fraser would have one if there were.
Wash led them into the cool, dim hallway, rambling as they went. "The rest of the crew is out restocking or seeing clients or just getting their land legs back. You'll meet them all later. The captain likes to inspect everybody who comes on board. Don't worry about him, though, he's like a really noisy Rottweiler." Wash paused, head tilted a little to the side. "You know, maybe you should worry a little. Anyway," they started off again, "here are your rooms. We only have two free, we thought there'd only be the two of you."
"Yeah, so did we. Frannie, you can have my room, I'll bunk with Fraser."
Wash shrugged and slid open the door. "Here you go, then. Francesca, your luxurious abode awaits," he bowed with a flourish, stumbled to the side a bit under the weight of all her luggage, and grunted. "Er, could someone help me up?"
They got all of Frannie's luggage into the room, and Frannie as well, with only a little hassle. She directed them where to move items, and Ray put a stop to it when he realized that she kept making Fraser bend over to pick up things from the floor.
Shoving Fraser out of the room ahead of him, Ray glared back at his sister. "We'll see you at dinner." She closed the door after them.
"Nice lady. I can't wait to introduce her to Mal," Wash noted. "Your room is just down the hall a bit. There's only one bed, but we can pick up a mat or something from the town."
"That won't be necessary. I brought my bedroll." Fraser smiled and gestured for Ray to lead the way.
"A bedroll. I can't wait to introduce you to Mal, either. Listen, I have some last checks to make before we can head out, if you two are ok...?" They nodded and Wash grinned again. "Great! Then I'll comm you when the others get back. Should be an hour or two. We'll give you a tour of the ship then, if you could just, you know, stay here for now?"
"Of course. Thank you kindly."
"You're kindly welcome. Oh, the showers are a couple of doors down, you can't miss them." Wash gave them a little wave and trotted off further down the hall and up the stairs at the end of it, disappearing into the gloom.
"What a nice man."
"But did you see that shirt? Who wears shirts like that?"
Fraser stared pointedly at Ray before sliding open the door to their room and disappearing inside.
*****
An hour later, Ray had showered and changed, flushed Frannie out of the communal bathroom so Fraser could have his own shower in peace, and was determinedly ignoring the skinny white legs poking out of his shorts while he flipped through Fraser's Fodor's Guide to Space Travel.
There was a pop from the speaker on the wall and then Wash's voice filtered through. "Passengers, your presence is requested in the cargo bay. The captain's back." The door slid open and Fraser stepped through, his face shiny and scrubbed. He had the red serge on again.
"I thought you were gonna change?"
"I wanted to be dressed appropriately to meet the Captain." His eyes drifted down to Ray's legs and Ray dropped the book in front of his knobby knees. "I see."
"You see? What do you see, Fraser? It's hot out there, ok? We're on vacation."
"You're here on vacation; I'm here on business for the Consulate. I do appreciate you coming with me, Ray."
"Are you kidding? Like I was gonna miss seeing a real, honest-to-God spaceship."
Frannie slid open the door and poked her head inside. "You guys coming, or what?"
"Don't you knock?" But Ray was already up and moving out the door before Benny could force him back into his suit using his Mountie mind-tricks. Ray figured he should be more resistant to guilt, what with his Italian Catholic mother, but Fraser could bring it on like a sledgehammer to the head. They trooped back out to the cargo bay, Dief in the lead. When the heat buffeted Ray back a step, he was grateful for his shorts.
There was a buzz of activity in the cargo bay now. Wash was helping a tall, imposing woman unload what looked like an ATV while he rambled on at her the whole time. She looked unamused, but Ray would have bet that, for her, that was amused. An equally tall and imposing thug was throwing boxes around like they were empty, but they were clanging to the ground like they weighed a lot more than Ray. He mentally marked that guy in the Avoid column. Surveying the process, arms crossed tightly across his chest and a frown etched strong on his features, was a man dressed in dirty browns. He turned when the group tromped into the bay, and Ray felt like a side of diseased meat under the visual inspection. Ray straightened, thinking he probably had an inch on the guy.
"You must be Fraser," the man said, not holding out his hand. "I'm Malcolm Reynolds, captain of Serenity."
"Captain, it's a pleasure to meet you.” Fraser stuck his hand out. “Thank you for having us onboard your ship." Oh God, Ray thought, just shake the man's hand, Reynolds. The captain was staring at Fraser with a bland expression on his face, and it was only a swift elbow to the stomach from the woman who bounced up to the group that had him extending his hand for a grudging shake. "Constable Benton Fraser, RCMP," Fraser continued, apparently oblivious to the near-slight. "This is my friend Ray Vecchio, and his sister Francesca Vecchio." Frannie was making doe eyes at the captain, so Ray nodded to the young woman. She had really pretty hair, Ray noted, and a bright, charming smile. He found himself grinning at her.
"Kaylee Frye," she chirped - honestly chirped - and shook his and Fraser's hands vigorously. Frannie's was still occupied with Reynolds. "Pleased to meet you." Her eyes trailed to Dief who was hiding behind Fraser like a coward. "What a nice puppy!"
"He's a wolf, actually. His name is Diefenbaker."
"A wolf, huh?" Kaylee knelt in front of Dief and rubbed his head with both hands. "Whose a little wolfy? Are you a wolfy? Yes you are!" Dief whined but put up with it. Ray couldn't blame him; he'd have put up with it from her, too.
“We’ve got one more passenger we’re picking up here before we lift off, then we’re headed to Oberon.”
“Is Constable Johnson aboard?”
“Constable J-“ Reynolds interrupted himself with laughter. “No, not yet son. He’s waiting for us on Oberon.”
Ray fanned his shirt out, trying to cool down. “Is every planet this hot or what?”
“Don’t seem to be bothering my crew none.”
“Yeah, well, it’s winter where we come from. Snow, ice, temperatures in the 20s. And it doesn’t get this hot anyway.”
“Actually, Ray, Chicago’s highest recorded temperature was 105 degrees Fahrenheit, in 1934, and the heat here can’t be more than 103 degrees Fahrenheit.”
Reynolds stared at Fraser and then turned his back on them both. “Kaylee’ll take you on a tour of the ship while we finish loading. Try not to break anything.” He nodded at Diefenbaker, who’d been unusually well-behaved. “And don’t let your dog crap on my ship. If he does, you best clean it up.” Fraser looked affronted at that, but Ray grabbed his arm and gestured for Kaylee to lead the way.
It wasn’t a big ship, or a particularly clean one, but the tour still took over an hour. Kaylee wouldn’t stop talking and Fraser wouldn’t stop asking questions to keep her talking and by the time they hit the cargo bay again, they had done the impossible and made Ray bored of spaceships.
“And then he wanted me to use a pneumatic thrust joint but I told him that weren’t no kind of sense. Can you imagine? A pneumatic thrust joint!” Kaylee and Fraser laughed together like she’d just told the funniest joke in the galaxy. Ray shared an aggrieved look with Frannie.
“End of the tour, huh?” Ray cut in before Fraser could ask about aerodynamic accelerators or what the speed of an unladen swallow was. “That’s too bad. When’s dinner?”
“Captain always has dinner at eighteen hundred, ship’s time. That’s a couple of hours from now,” she explained when Ray stared at her blankly. “Y’all have plenty of time to prepare.”
“Do you dress for dinner?” Fraser asked.
“Oh no, we ain’t so formal as that. Though you do look mighty fine in your uniform, Benton.”
Ray watched that flip Frannie’s switch. “So what is there to do on a ship like this?” Frannie asked, linking her arm through Fraser’s. “I’m sure Benton and I can only spend so much time talking.”
Kaylee sort of grinned at that, and Ray had an image he wasn’t sure he liked in his head of her and Frannie and Fraser finding other things to do. “Might be I could find something else for us to do,” she was saying, which wasn’t helping Ray’s mental image at all.
“Like games or something? Board games,” he hastily added.
“Jayne and the Shepherd have a regular poker game going that we all rotate in and out of. And we have a horseshoe set here in the cargo bay, too. There’s plenty to do! You come on down to the engine room whenever you’re bored, I’d be happy to show you what my girl can do.”
“Thank you kindly, Kaywinnit.”
“Kaylee,” she reminded him for the eighth time. Ray had counted.
“Kaylee, of course, I’m sorry.”
“KAYLEE!” The bellow reverberated down the hallway to where they stood in the cargo bay. Ray thought he could feel it whoosh past him.
“Like that,” she said, grinning.
Footsteps as loud as gunshots echoed down the metal grating towards them. Reynolds’ face matched the crimson of his shirt. “What in the name of all that’s holy did you do to my ship?”
In the face of all that rage, Kaylee rolled her eyes. “Cap’n, Wash and I both told you we was going to fix up the cockpit.”
“Yeah, ‘fix up.’ As in, fix it. So it works.”
“And it does.”
“And it’s pink.”
“Cap’n,” Kaylee said, exasperated. “Just the pillow on the co-pilot’s chair.”
“There is no pink allowed in my cockpit. Ever. Unless it’s diluted blood, and even then it best be more of a rosy red.”
“Wash didn’t mind it,” she muttered, but she’d started heading towards the cockpit. “See y’all at dinner!” she called back over her shoulder, and gave a wave. Dief trotted after her.
“Well that was invigorating!” Fraser clapped his hands together and stared around the cargo bay. “Who’s up for a game of horseshoes before dinner?”
Ray and Frannie both groaned.
And then I completely fail at writing anything for this fic for months after getting down a page and a half, because I think it needs a whole plot and a true beginning and middle and an end. But I finally realized that what I really wanted to write were just snippets of their time on the ship. So I am. Here's the first part, unbeta’d, but written with love for Pips, because not only has she beta’d tirelessly for me, she has borne the brunt of my Fraser/Vecchio obsession, and she’s done it with grace and even enthusiasm.
Title: Take Me Out To The Black (Tell Me When I Can Come Back) - Part 1: When you call your ship your home, do you deduct for travel expenses on your tax report?
Author: SDWolfpup
Fandom(s): Due South/Firefly crossover (no spoilers for either show)
Rating: D for Dorky; oh, ok, PG, I guess.
Pairing(s): None. All. I leave it up to you, the reader.
Summary: Fraser has to make a trip for work. Ray goes with him and Frannie tags along. Wackiness ensues, as it so often does.
Website link: Here
"This is the spaceship?" Ray Vecchio stared, his eyes tracking the curve of the ship's interior, disappointment thick in his voice. He nudged something - what the hell was that, anyway? - to the side with the toe of his very expensive, now very dusty, loafers. "It's so dirty."
"They're just simple traders, Ray. I have it on good authority that this is one of the finest ships around." Fraser strode up next to him, a pleased smile on his face. He moved over to the side of the bay and laid his palm against the hull. "03 Firefly class transport. Eccentric but durable."
"Much like yourself."
Fraser lifted an eyebrow in his general direction. "Her name is Serenity."
"Serenity? What kind of a ship is called Serenity? It sounds like a woman's perfume or something." Ray moved further inside the cargo bay, grateful for the shade from the sun beating down outside. He touched the top of his balding head gingerly, afraid it had gotten sunburned on the short walk from the bar to the ship. It felt normal, but he wasn't sure how alien sunburns worked. Dief trotted inside and headed straight for a pile of boxes, sniffing curiously around them, his tail wagging gently. "I don't think they trade donuts, Dief."
"Geeze you guys, you think you could wait for a girl?"
"I'm sorry Francesca, I thought you were right behind us."
Ray rolled his eyes. "She was, she's just loaded down with half of what she owns," he gestured behind him without turning around, to where they'd left their luggage at the base of the ramp into the ship, "while we carry the other half."
"Yeah, like most of your bags don't belong to you." There was a loud thud behind him, and then he saw Frannie sidle up next to Fraser, pushing her sunglasses up on her forehead. "Would you look at this!" She mimicked Fraser, placing her hand so close to his on the hull that their fingers touched. Fraser started going through his spiel again for her, so Ray looked around for the captain or commander or whatever you called the person in charge of a spaceship that looked like it had been pieced together from a bunch of different Lego sets. He carefully placed his feet somewhere covered with just dirt and peered into the shadows of the hallway at the other end of the cargo bay.
"Hello? Is anybody, uh, home?"
"Yeah, one minute!" The response floated down from the catwalks above, and Ray looked up, but saw no movement.
"You're sure about this, Benny?"
"Absolutely, Ray. An old colleague of mine directed us here."
"A Mountie directed you to a spaceship?"
"Well actually Ray-"
"Hold on! I'm coming, I'm-" there was a crash and an "Ouch" and a bunch of Chinese words that Ray didn’t understand. The foursome turned as one to stare up at the man who had just fallen into view.
"Are you all right, sir?"
"Yeah, I'm fine," he laughed nervously and hopped to his feet, taking the steps down two at a time. He had red hair that almost looked orange in the light and was wearing a brightly patterned shirt that showed just how pale his skin was. "I was, uh, busy doing," he gestured vaguely behind him, "pilot stuff. You must be Fraser!" He landed in front of them, grinning widely. "We've heard all about you. I'm Wash. Welcome aboard Serenity." They exchanged introductions and handshakes.
"Thank you for having us on your ship."
"Oh, hey, it wasn't me. Not that I'm not happy to have you here, I just don't really have much of a say in who we shuttle around. Wasn't Zoe, either. Or Mal, now that I think about it. Not really sure, actually, who made the decis-"
Ray cut in. "Listen, it's great to meet you, but it's 130 degrees out there and I could really use a bath and a place to change. I didn't exactly dress appropriately for this place." He gestured at his expensive - and, of course, dirty - slacks. Ray ignored Fraser frowning at him. The Mountie probably couldn't even feel the heat; he just meditated himself into an icebank or something to regulate his body temperature. Even in the red serge he showed no signs of sweating. Ray felt like he was sopping wet.
Wash nodded and strode towards their luggage, Fraser and Ray following. "You're not gonna help?" Ray asked Frannie, who stood there examining her nail polish.
"Don't worry about it, I've got it," Wash put in. Frannie stuck her tongue out at Ray. "So how was your trip?"
Ray exchanged a look with Fraser. Benny tilted his head to the side and said simply, "Fine." Ray snorted. If "fine" meant "felt like all of your molecules were engaged in a giant gang war, knifing each other with six-inch blades," then, yeah, that covered it.
They gathered up the luggage, juggling the multiple boxes Frannie had brought with her, and the boxes she'd bought while they were waiting in town for Serenity to land. Loaded down with his own two garment bags, large rolling suitcase, and smaller suitcase for shoes and other essentials, Ray had to admit he may have over packed a little. But how the hell did you pack for space? There weren't any Fodor's Guide to The Stars: What to Wear and the Key Words You Should Know. Although he bet Fraser would have one if there were.
Wash led them into the cool, dim hallway, rambling as they went. "The rest of the crew is out restocking or seeing clients or just getting their land legs back. You'll meet them all later. The captain likes to inspect everybody who comes on board. Don't worry about him, though, he's like a really noisy Rottweiler." Wash paused, head tilted a little to the side. "You know, maybe you should worry a little. Anyway," they started off again, "here are your rooms. We only have two free, we thought there'd only be the two of you."
"Yeah, so did we. Frannie, you can have my room, I'll bunk with Fraser."
Wash shrugged and slid open the door. "Here you go, then. Francesca, your luxurious abode awaits," he bowed with a flourish, stumbled to the side a bit under the weight of all her luggage, and grunted. "Er, could someone help me up?"
They got all of Frannie's luggage into the room, and Frannie as well, with only a little hassle. She directed them where to move items, and Ray put a stop to it when he realized that she kept making Fraser bend over to pick up things from the floor.
Shoving Fraser out of the room ahead of him, Ray glared back at his sister. "We'll see you at dinner." She closed the door after them.
"Nice lady. I can't wait to introduce her to Mal," Wash noted. "Your room is just down the hall a bit. There's only one bed, but we can pick up a mat or something from the town."
"That won't be necessary. I brought my bedroll." Fraser smiled and gestured for Ray to lead the way.
"A bedroll. I can't wait to introduce you to Mal, either. Listen, I have some last checks to make before we can head out, if you two are ok...?" They nodded and Wash grinned again. "Great! Then I'll comm you when the others get back. Should be an hour or two. We'll give you a tour of the ship then, if you could just, you know, stay here for now?"
"Of course. Thank you kindly."
"You're kindly welcome. Oh, the showers are a couple of doors down, you can't miss them." Wash gave them a little wave and trotted off further down the hall and up the stairs at the end of it, disappearing into the gloom.
"What a nice man."
"But did you see that shirt? Who wears shirts like that?"
Fraser stared pointedly at Ray before sliding open the door to their room and disappearing inside.
*****
An hour later, Ray had showered and changed, flushed Frannie out of the communal bathroom so Fraser could have his own shower in peace, and was determinedly ignoring the skinny white legs poking out of his shorts while he flipped through Fraser's Fodor's Guide to Space Travel.
There was a pop from the speaker on the wall and then Wash's voice filtered through. "Passengers, your presence is requested in the cargo bay. The captain's back." The door slid open and Fraser stepped through, his face shiny and scrubbed. He had the red serge on again.
"I thought you were gonna change?"
"I wanted to be dressed appropriately to meet the Captain." His eyes drifted down to Ray's legs and Ray dropped the book in front of his knobby knees. "I see."
"You see? What do you see, Fraser? It's hot out there, ok? We're on vacation."
"You're here on vacation; I'm here on business for the Consulate. I do appreciate you coming with me, Ray."
"Are you kidding? Like I was gonna miss seeing a real, honest-to-God spaceship."
Frannie slid open the door and poked her head inside. "You guys coming, or what?"
"Don't you knock?" But Ray was already up and moving out the door before Benny could force him back into his suit using his Mountie mind-tricks. Ray figured he should be more resistant to guilt, what with his Italian Catholic mother, but Fraser could bring it on like a sledgehammer to the head. They trooped back out to the cargo bay, Dief in the lead. When the heat buffeted Ray back a step, he was grateful for his shorts.
There was a buzz of activity in the cargo bay now. Wash was helping a tall, imposing woman unload what looked like an ATV while he rambled on at her the whole time. She looked unamused, but Ray would have bet that, for her, that was amused. An equally tall and imposing thug was throwing boxes around like they were empty, but they were clanging to the ground like they weighed a lot more than Ray. He mentally marked that guy in the Avoid column. Surveying the process, arms crossed tightly across his chest and a frown etched strong on his features, was a man dressed in dirty browns. He turned when the group tromped into the bay, and Ray felt like a side of diseased meat under the visual inspection. Ray straightened, thinking he probably had an inch on the guy.
"You must be Fraser," the man said, not holding out his hand. "I'm Malcolm Reynolds, captain of Serenity."
"Captain, it's a pleasure to meet you.” Fraser stuck his hand out. “Thank you for having us onboard your ship." Oh God, Ray thought, just shake the man's hand, Reynolds. The captain was staring at Fraser with a bland expression on his face, and it was only a swift elbow to the stomach from the woman who bounced up to the group that had him extending his hand for a grudging shake. "Constable Benton Fraser, RCMP," Fraser continued, apparently oblivious to the near-slight. "This is my friend Ray Vecchio, and his sister Francesca Vecchio." Frannie was making doe eyes at the captain, so Ray nodded to the young woman. She had really pretty hair, Ray noted, and a bright, charming smile. He found himself grinning at her.
"Kaylee Frye," she chirped - honestly chirped - and shook his and Fraser's hands vigorously. Frannie's was still occupied with Reynolds. "Pleased to meet you." Her eyes trailed to Dief who was hiding behind Fraser like a coward. "What a nice puppy!"
"He's a wolf, actually. His name is Diefenbaker."
"A wolf, huh?" Kaylee knelt in front of Dief and rubbed his head with both hands. "Whose a little wolfy? Are you a wolfy? Yes you are!" Dief whined but put up with it. Ray couldn't blame him; he'd have put up with it from her, too.
“We’ve got one more passenger we’re picking up here before we lift off, then we’re headed to Oberon.”
“Is Constable Johnson aboard?”
“Constable J-“ Reynolds interrupted himself with laughter. “No, not yet son. He’s waiting for us on Oberon.”
Ray fanned his shirt out, trying to cool down. “Is every planet this hot or what?”
“Don’t seem to be bothering my crew none.”
“Yeah, well, it’s winter where we come from. Snow, ice, temperatures in the 20s. And it doesn’t get this hot anyway.”
“Actually, Ray, Chicago’s highest recorded temperature was 105 degrees Fahrenheit, in 1934, and the heat here can’t be more than 103 degrees Fahrenheit.”
Reynolds stared at Fraser and then turned his back on them both. “Kaylee’ll take you on a tour of the ship while we finish loading. Try not to break anything.” He nodded at Diefenbaker, who’d been unusually well-behaved. “And don’t let your dog crap on my ship. If he does, you best clean it up.” Fraser looked affronted at that, but Ray grabbed his arm and gestured for Kaylee to lead the way.
It wasn’t a big ship, or a particularly clean one, but the tour still took over an hour. Kaylee wouldn’t stop talking and Fraser wouldn’t stop asking questions to keep her talking and by the time they hit the cargo bay again, they had done the impossible and made Ray bored of spaceships.
“And then he wanted me to use a pneumatic thrust joint but I told him that weren’t no kind of sense. Can you imagine? A pneumatic thrust joint!” Kaylee and Fraser laughed together like she’d just told the funniest joke in the galaxy. Ray shared an aggrieved look with Frannie.
“End of the tour, huh?” Ray cut in before Fraser could ask about aerodynamic accelerators or what the speed of an unladen swallow was. “That’s too bad. When’s dinner?”
“Captain always has dinner at eighteen hundred, ship’s time. That’s a couple of hours from now,” she explained when Ray stared at her blankly. “Y’all have plenty of time to prepare.”
“Do you dress for dinner?” Fraser asked.
“Oh no, we ain’t so formal as that. Though you do look mighty fine in your uniform, Benton.”
Ray watched that flip Frannie’s switch. “So what is there to do on a ship like this?” Frannie asked, linking her arm through Fraser’s. “I’m sure Benton and I can only spend so much time talking.”
Kaylee sort of grinned at that, and Ray had an image he wasn’t sure he liked in his head of her and Frannie and Fraser finding other things to do. “Might be I could find something else for us to do,” she was saying, which wasn’t helping Ray’s mental image at all.
“Like games or something? Board games,” he hastily added.
“Jayne and the Shepherd have a regular poker game going that we all rotate in and out of. And we have a horseshoe set here in the cargo bay, too. There’s plenty to do! You come on down to the engine room whenever you’re bored, I’d be happy to show you what my girl can do.”
“Thank you kindly, Kaywinnit.”
“Kaylee,” she reminded him for the eighth time. Ray had counted.
“Kaylee, of course, I’m sorry.”
“KAYLEE!” The bellow reverberated down the hallway to where they stood in the cargo bay. Ray thought he could feel it whoosh past him.
“Like that,” she said, grinning.
Footsteps as loud as gunshots echoed down the metal grating towards them. Reynolds’ face matched the crimson of his shirt. “What in the name of all that’s holy did you do to my ship?”
In the face of all that rage, Kaylee rolled her eyes. “Cap’n, Wash and I both told you we was going to fix up the cockpit.”
“Yeah, ‘fix up.’ As in, fix it. So it works.”
“And it does.”
“And it’s pink.”
“Cap’n,” Kaylee said, exasperated. “Just the pillow on the co-pilot’s chair.”
“There is no pink allowed in my cockpit. Ever. Unless it’s diluted blood, and even then it best be more of a rosy red.”
“Wash didn’t mind it,” she muttered, but she’d started heading towards the cockpit. “See y’all at dinner!” she called back over her shoulder, and gave a wave. Dief trotted after her.
“Well that was invigorating!” Fraser clapped his hands together and stared around the cargo bay. “Who’s up for a game of horseshoes before dinner?”
Ray and Frannie both groaned.