Disclaimer: Joss is God and I ain’t.

Feedback: Be nice… aw hell, be vicious. It’s my maiden voyage into Firefly fanficdom; I actually started another one first but this one’s shorter so logically it got done faster. Anyway, it’s the one y’all get first.

Dong Ma?

Mal hears everything she does. It’s muffled, hollow-sounding as it carries through the bulkhead separating his room from Kaylee’s, but he can still hear.

He doesn’t like to eavesdrop too much, so he doesn’t linger after he rises. Her voice disappears as he moves away from the bed.

It’s his only way of checking on her without being pushy.

At night he faces the wall, as if he can see her on the other side. Most nights everything on her end is fine; soft sleep-mumbles and rustling of the sheets. She hums to herself if she’s just had a nightmare. Sometimes she cries.

Kaylee cried as they broke atmo of her home planet. She watched the rear video screen up in the bridge, and Mal almost asked himself if he was right to bring her along. He would find that he was. Wash turned in his pilot’s chair and smiled at her, and his loud shirt and silly-looking mustache made her smile back.

She was homesick at first. She spent a damn lot of time in the engine room that first day, as if she was expected to sleep there. When Mal came in to check on her late that night, she looked up from the turbine and wiped her eyes sheepishly. Looked away.

“Autopilot,” she said.

It was all unidentifiable gears and switches to him. But he nodded because she was right. “Ain’t you goin’ to sleep? Seems like it’s been an exciting day for you, and the others are all bunked down for the night.”

Kaylee shrugged, met his eyes.

Hell, she couldn’t spend all night here. She was going to have her own bunk like the rest of them. He wasn’t a gorram slave-driver. Mal made her follow him to the empty room between his and the bridge, and disengaged the hatch. He wasn’t sure why he’d thought of this one right off