Title: Ain't Our Kind

Author: Sullen Siren (adena(at)direcway(dot)com)

Fandom: Firefly

Pairing/Characters: Kaylee, Mal mentions of Inara/Mal and Simon/Kaylee

Summary: "We're border-born. Grew up working ranches and engines. Wasn't about power or alliances or propriety – was just about surviving. All grew up knowin' if we lived a little better off than our ma and daddy did, we were doing pretty damn well."

Rating: PG

Disclaimer: I own nothing, sadly. I would really like my own personal Mal. But I don't. I'm just playing with Joss' babies and making no profit from it.

Feedback: Always adored!

Note: Spoilers through the Serenity movie! Thank you to musesfool for the Beta!

She was humming as she did the dishes, pulled back hair bouncing with her movements. It was irritating and it was endearing and that was more or less a constant state of being with Kaylee, Mal reflected. The table in front of him was dotted with gun parts and a battered hunting blade his mama had given him, before the cough and the medicine they didn't have any of took her down. They weren't none of them dirty, but he liked cleaning them. Gave him a calming effect.

When there wasn't humming, anyway. "Kaylee, I realize it's a bit like askin' a river not to run, but could you maybe, possibly, shut up?"

She grinned at him, cheerful as a gorram rainbow and sank into the chair opposite him. "Don't be so tetchy, Cap'n. What are you so grumpy about, anyway? 'Nara and you have another fight?"

"No. And what do you mean another?"

She smiled at him like he was the cutest, most adorable and clueless stray pup she'd ever seen. Which he wasn't. At all. He longed to roll his eyes. Wasn't anything least adorable about him. "Never mind Cap'n." She picked up the gun nearest her with the awkward touch of someone who knew guns, but still didn't like them. She studied the trigger. "Bet this catches," she told him, instinctively knowing what it needed, as she always d