I’m not Joss, please don’t sue me.

Ok, I know I said y’all were gonna get the longer fic first, but that one’s still undergoing renovations. Here’s a silly little ficlet I came up with awhile back. Please tell me what ya think, and enjoy!

Fightin’ Dirty

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She caught him just outside of the common area.

Rusty, winding pipes with fading green vines painted on them snaked from the ceiling and twisted into the wall behind her, disappearing into the innards of the boat. Something clicked and whirred in the floor vent on her left, and she smiled at him.

All normal. He saw her everyday; saw these pipes and heard the engine thrumming. It was all perfectly normal… but it wasn’t. Something about the way she was looking at him.

“Hey there, little Kaylee,” he greeted.

“Hey, cap’n,” she said, still smiling. Normal.

He stepped past her, and she stayed where she was, but watched as he started down the hall.

“Wash says we’re gonna set down in ‘bout an hour.”

Reynolds hesitated, and turned to face her. She was still staring at him like that. “That somehow a bad thing?”

She leaned against the bulkhead in front of him, and her tone was indifferent, almost as if she was casually reminding him of a past conversation. “She’s runnin’ dry.”

That was it. That was why she was looking at him like that. He knew what she was about to say, having heard it from her almost every time they refueled the ship. He had a reply all mapped out.

“Mid-grade cells, Kaylee. Same stuff we always get.”

She finally stopped with the look. Kaylee cocked her head to one side and regarded him with hopeful eyes in the dimly lit hallway. “Oh, come on, captain. You never buy the chroma blend; we can’t try it just this once?” she asked, now sounding far from indifferent.

She was still smiling.

Rut. He couldn’t say no to her, not now. If he denied her request for that high-dollar fuel she was always begging him for, she would stop smiling.

And that would screw up his whole gorram day.

He tried it indirectly, s