Ten in Thirty
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firefly_fanfic
Title: Ten in Thirty
Author: Sarah-Beth (memorysdaughter)
Summary: Ten drabbles written to ten different songs with an iPod on shuffle, in the last 30 minutes of my workday. When the song ended, so did the ficlet.
Rating: G-PG-ish
Author's Note: I've been really struggling with writing lately, so today I gave myself an ultimatum - I'm going to just write. It took me a little bit to adjust to the timing, but that's the beauty - within two or three minutes it's over. Hope you like at least one or two. :)
Ten in Thirty
1.) “I’ve Got My Love to Keep Me Warm” – Kay Starr
What do I care how much it may storm?
I’ve got my love to keep me warm
They dance around the big room, as easily as if they’d been oiled, set on polished ball bearings, and let loose to wreak havoc. The smell of cinnamon is in the air, along with hair pomade and pine branches.
Kaylee’s cheeks are red with delight; they match the poinsettia in her hair and the red trim on her new dress. On Simon’s arm, twirling around the banquet, she could be flying.
In the corner, musicians play, red-faced with exertion and holiday cheer. One raises his trombone as another plucks away at the string bass – somehow they know exactly the tune to play to keep the diners’ hearts warm and their blood flowing until the dessert course is served.
No one asked River to dance, but she does so anyway, clutching a sprig of mistletoe in her hands, keeping a lookout for Jayne.
2.) “Our Song” – M2M
Something’s going on, what is wrong?
I want you to be here, why won’t you come?
Tears flow down her face as she contemplates the empty ship. Mal said he’d be back, said the job wouldn’t take much time.
She wonders when she became so possessive. They’ve lived together for years now and she never used to care when he came back from a job, or if he came back at all. Sometimes there were good stories to accompany his late homecoming, or the promise of fresh foods. And she never shed tears over an hour or two; she had things to keep her busy. She couldn’t waste precious time on the Captain.
But now she stands alone in the cargo bay, listening to whatever sounds silence creates in the empty ship.
What had Nandi said once? Smart women never cry over foolish men.
But it wasn’t true. Smart women cry over foolish men all the time.
The men are just too foolish to appreciate it.
3.) “All You Want” – Dido
I like to watch you sleep at night
To hear you breathe by my side
And although sleep leaves me behind
There’s nowhere else I’d rather be
Kaylee loves Simon’s lungs. She’s never seen them, of course, but that doesn’t stop her from imagining them, just below his pale chest, moving in and out like a lullaby at the seaside.
She lays with her ear pressed to his chest, her arms wrapped around him, wishing she could get inside him. Wishing she could become part of him. Wishing she could control his breathing. Wishing his sleep-filled inhales and exhales would whisk her off to dreamland.
If they lived anywhere besides Serenity, Kaylee would think she was jealous. She knows that her fierce desire to inhabit Simon’s space, waking and sleeping, is just her way of wanting nobody else but him. Wanting certainty, which is something they’ll never have as long as their home is a spaceship and their jobs involve a certain matter of illegality.
She gets jealous when Jayne needs stitches, or when River’s meds flood the girl’s brain in the wrong way, or even when Simon stops to debate the Bible with the Shepherd. She wants Simon for hers, for keeps, for ever and ever, without ceasing, until they become one-not-two, until there’s no more need for jealousy because he’s hers and she’s his.
It makes sense in her head, when they’re laying in the dark, when dreams elude Kaylee.
4.) “How Do You Like Me Now?” – Toby Keith
I couldn’t make you love me
But I always dreamed about
Living in your radio
How do you like me now?
“I ain’t seen her in ten years, Mal, how’m I s’posed t’ know what she looks like?”
“Y’ went t’ school with her. I’m assumin’ y’ saw her once ‘n awhile.”
“Primary school, Mal. And it ain’t like I spent my time moonin’ over girls.”
“Ape-man is correct. He did not moon any girls until he reached secondary school.”
“Crazy!”
“Still true.”
“For all I know she could be th’ Senator o’ Hasselbeck Ridge. She could be livin’ in a palace. She could be sellin’ strawberries by th’ side o’ th’ road fer all I know.”
“Or she could be a single mother of twelve kids, livin’ in a shack.”
“Zoe.”
“Just sayin’, sir, anythin’s possible. This is Jayne’s past we’re talkin’ ‘bout.”
“Yeah, Jayne, why didn’t y’marry th’ girl?”
“She had her eye on some guy who joined th’ army.”
“Wonder what she’d think of y’ now.”
“Y’ mean bein’ all good-lookin’, livin’ on a space-ship, eatin’ my weight in credits, havin’ my pick o’ all th’ women in the ‘verse?”
“Yeah, Jayne, that’s exactly what I meant.”
5.) “Botany Bay” – Kate Rusby
Oh keep me child safe in your arms love
I need you like no words can tell
“When we’re old, will you forget me?”
“Of course not, mei-mei.”
“What if they make you?”
“Nobody could ever make me.”
“Don’t know that for sure.”
“Are you worried that I’ll forget you?”
“Facts come and go. Sometimes they’re not facts. When facts aren’t facts where do they go?” River pressed her hands to her forehead, as though trying to ward off a headache.
“How could I forget you?” Simon asks, brushing his sister’s hair back from her face. “You can’t forget the sun.”
“Can if it never shines.”
“You can’t forget your heartbeat.”
“Can if it stops.”
“You can’t forget your fingers and toes.”
“Can if they get chopped off.” River makes a dismissive noise. “Can forget all of these things, doctor brother.”
Simon takes one of her cold, pale hands, and holds it up to his mouth. “Do you think I could ever forget you? How could I – when I was the one who remembered you? Who fought for you?”
River considers this without opening her eyes. “Forgetting isn’t logical.”
“Nothing with you is.”
“Drew her out of the darkness. Made her exist.”
“Exactly.” He kisses her hand. “Mei-mei, would you ever forget me?”
She smiles wistfully. “Not if you never go away.”
He releases her hand, watches her unfold a little, like a bird finding its wings. “Then I guess I’ve got one more reason to stay.”
6.) “The Name of the Game” – The Crystal Method (“Tropic Thunder” version)
Can’t shake the dreams of
Fire inside your phonograph
Jayne sits atop a post in a field, like a sitting duck who hasn’t realized he’s a duck. Or sitting.
He aims his gun towards the front door of a farmhouse seventy yards away, down a small hill and past a pond and a cow pasture. He’s heard soldiers say they try to imagine the target, to create the target in their head, and they won’t quit shooting until they’re sure the target’s gone.
In Jayne’s case that’s unnecessary. He waits until he can see the target before goin’ all whack-job on it and wasting bullets. In most situations - though he’d never admit this to the Captain or Zoe – usually one bullet was sufficient. The rest of the bullets… and some of the time, the rest of the guns… were for show. Helped a man feel stronger, more killing-ish, if he was assured of an arsenal behind him.
And wasn’t that the truth. Things that went all boom or exploded were Jayne’s bread and butter. He tried to imagine what it would be like if he was into words, like the Shepherd, or men, like Inara, but he always comes up blank.
The door of the farmhouse opens, the mayor of Kesselring appears, and in that second Jayne’s finger brushes the trigger of the gun like he’s caressing a woman’s shoulder. And the mayor ceases to be the mayor, becomes the target, and then becomes an objective achieved.
And that’s all there is to it.
Boom.
Gone.
7.) “On the 4th of July” – James Taylor
And the tiny tin voice of the radio singing
“Love must stand
“Love forever and ever must stand”
Blue sky, summery day. Green grass beneath her bare feet, ribbons in the trees, children laughing. The taste of lemonade in her mouth, the smell of meat cooking over a fire, the feel of Wash’s hands on hers. Somewhere a radio’s playing music from the Cortex, tinny voices she feels like she’s heard before. A slow beat, nothing too extreme, perfect for holding close one’s loved ones and doing a few easy swaying circles in the meadow.
She leans into Wash; he smells like pine soap and smiles, warmed in the sunshine, wrapped up in a Hawaiian-shirt-wearing package for her.
She hasn’t heard Jayne say a cross word to anyone yet today; the Captain hasn’t complained about the time they’re wasting by having a picnic instead of getting to their next job. The doctor’s infirmary is empty, as is Inara’s schedule. River seems less crazy under the green open hands of the trees, and the Shepherd has a smile on his face to rival Kaylee’s.
Zoe knows it’s crazy, but she thinks she’d like to stay awhile. At least until the fireworks are over and the fireflies start shining.
8.) “Out Tonight” – “Rent” movie soundtrack
I’ve had a knack
From way back
At breaking the rules
Once I learn the game
Sometimes Kaylee wants to be slutty. Granted, her version of slutty is wearing a slightly-lower-cut camisole under her coveralls, but sometimes she wants that freedom.
She wonders what Simon would think if she came to dinner in the little black nightgown she hides in the back of her dresser. Likely Jayne would get more of a thrill out of it than the prudish doctor, and that’s not something Kaylee wants to encourage.
But she’s tired of the way Simon’s eyes seem to always skip over her, not on purpose, but because she’s plain. Like everything else around Serenity, gray and brown and gray-green, Kaylee is just one more plainly-colored thing.
It’s why she covets her pink dress, though it’s too fancy to wear for just a simple seduction. There’d be too many ruffles in the way of all the kisses, and it’d be too much work to get it off quickly… which Kaylee is hoping will be necessary.
Kaylee knows nothing of seduction techniques; she knows no particular dances or acrobatic moves or tricks, though she imagines Inara knows plenty. All Kaylee has is her smile, which has disarmed a few men, to be sure, and her willing attitude.
Still, she wishes her smile and her willingness came in prettier clothes. Something lacy and satiny, something that would make her really shine.
Something that would make her look on the outside the way she feels on the inside when Simon’s eyes find her, when she goes all hot and squirmy. Something exactly like that.
9.) “Voulez-Vous” – A*Teens
A sense of expectation hanging in the air
Giving out a spark
Across the room
Your eyes are glowing in the dark
Mal doesn’t like to let people down. His cocky attitude and at-all-costs demeanor tend to hide this fact from the ‘verse at large, but something in him dies a little when he can’t make things happen the way they’re supposed to.
It would probably help if he didn’t have a crew who were as headstrong and gutsy as he tries to be. Makes it much harder to give orders to people ain’t listenin’.
River, for instance, has nearly never done what the captain’s told her. The words stay down, don’t get up, get away from that!, and get your moon-brain hands off that! have been uttered so many times in her presence that they seem to bounce off her like water on a griddle. For all intents and purposes those words are not even directed at her.
And she knows it, Mal thinks as he watches her whack a man in the head with a serving tray. She exists in the same space as those words, operates on their level (most of the time), anyway – but they aren’t hers.
She isn’t in to letting people down, either.
10.) “Turn Off the Light” – Nelly Furtado
I pretend to be cool with me, want to believe
That I can do it on my own with my heart on my sleeve
I’m running, I’m running, catch up with me life
Where is the love I’m looking to find
It’s all in me, can’t you see, why can’t you, why can’t you see it’s all in me?
After Simon finishes administering River’s medication, he goes to turn the light off in her bunk. Her frightened voice stops him: “Leave it. Leave it.”
“You have to sleep,” he says, looking at her prone form on the bed. Her hands are clenched, as though she’s going to get up and start a fight. “You’re tired.”
“Not tired enough. Leave it.” She grits her teeth, a sound he can hear all the way in the hallway, a sound that discourages him.
“Teeth,” he says, trying to remind her, trying to snap her back to reality.
Paralyzed now by a multitude of factors that might include his drugs, fear, exhaustion, and any number of things in between, his sister manages to squeeze her eyes shut. She mumbles something at him.
“What?”
“She’ll be a good girl. Leave it.”
He turns to look at her. “Do you think you’re bad?”
“Won’t be bad. Won’t be bad. She’ll be a good girl.”
“You are not bad,” Simon says, coming to adjust her blankets. “You are tired.”
“She’ll be a good girl in the light.” River whimpers and rolls away from him. “It’s only in the dark she’s bad.”
Author: Sarah-Beth (memorysdaughter)
Summary: Ten drabbles written to ten different songs with an iPod on shuffle, in the last 30 minutes of my workday. When the song ended, so did the ficlet.
Rating: G-PG-ish
Author's Note: I've been really struggling with writing lately, so today I gave myself an ultimatum - I'm going to just write. It took me a little bit to adjust to the timing, but that's the beauty - within two or three minutes it's over. Hope you like at least one or two. :)
Ten in Thirty
1.) “I’ve Got My Love to Keep Me Warm” – Kay Starr
What do I care how much it may storm?
I’ve got my love to keep me warm
They dance around the big room, as easily as if they’d been oiled, set on polished ball bearings, and let loose to wreak havoc. The smell of cinnamon is in the air, along with hair pomade and pine branches.
Kaylee’s cheeks are red with delight; they match the poinsettia in her hair and the red trim on her new dress. On Simon’s arm, twirling around the banquet, she could be flying.
In the corner, musicians play, red-faced with exertion and holiday cheer. One raises his trombone as another plucks away at the string bass – somehow they know exactly the tune to play to keep the diners’ hearts warm and their blood flowing until the dessert course is served.
No one asked River to dance, but she does so anyway, clutching a sprig of mistletoe in her hands, keeping a lookout for Jayne.
2.) “Our Song” – M2M
Something’s going on, what is wrong?
I want you to be here, why won’t you come?
Tears flow down her face as she contemplates the empty ship. Mal said he’d be back, said the job wouldn’t take much time.
She wonders when she became so possessive. They’ve lived together for years now and she never used to care when he came back from a job, or if he came back at all. Sometimes there were good stories to accompany his late homecoming, or the promise of fresh foods. And she never shed tears over an hour or two; she had things to keep her busy. She couldn’t waste precious time on the Captain.
But now she stands alone in the cargo bay, listening to whatever sounds silence creates in the empty ship.
What had Nandi said once? Smart women never cry over foolish men.
But it wasn’t true. Smart women cry over foolish men all the time.
The men are just too foolish to appreciate it.
3.) “All You Want” – Dido
I like to watch you sleep at night
To hear you breathe by my side
And although sleep leaves me behind
There’s nowhere else I’d rather be
Kaylee loves Simon’s lungs. She’s never seen them, of course, but that doesn’t stop her from imagining them, just below his pale chest, moving in and out like a lullaby at the seaside.
She lays with her ear pressed to his chest, her arms wrapped around him, wishing she could get inside him. Wishing she could become part of him. Wishing she could control his breathing. Wishing his sleep-filled inhales and exhales would whisk her off to dreamland.
If they lived anywhere besides Serenity, Kaylee would think she was jealous. She knows that her fierce desire to inhabit Simon’s space, waking and sleeping, is just her way of wanting nobody else but him. Wanting certainty, which is something they’ll never have as long as their home is a spaceship and their jobs involve a certain matter of illegality.
She gets jealous when Jayne needs stitches, or when River’s meds flood the girl’s brain in the wrong way, or even when Simon stops to debate the Bible with the Shepherd. She wants Simon for hers, for keeps, for ever and ever, without ceasing, until they become one-not-two, until there’s no more need for jealousy because he’s hers and she’s his.
It makes sense in her head, when they’re laying in the dark, when dreams elude Kaylee.
4.) “How Do You Like Me Now?” – Toby Keith
I couldn’t make you love me
But I always dreamed about
Living in your radio
How do you like me now?
“I ain’t seen her in ten years, Mal, how’m I s’posed t’ know what she looks like?”
“Y’ went t’ school with her. I’m assumin’ y’ saw her once ‘n awhile.”
“Primary school, Mal. And it ain’t like I spent my time moonin’ over girls.”
“Ape-man is correct. He did not moon any girls until he reached secondary school.”
“Crazy!”
“Still true.”
“For all I know she could be th’ Senator o’ Hasselbeck Ridge. She could be livin’ in a palace. She could be sellin’ strawberries by th’ side o’ th’ road fer all I know.”
“Or she could be a single mother of twelve kids, livin’ in a shack.”
“Zoe.”
“Just sayin’, sir, anythin’s possible. This is Jayne’s past we’re talkin’ ‘bout.”
“Yeah, Jayne, why didn’t y’marry th’ girl?”
“She had her eye on some guy who joined th’ army.”
“Wonder what she’d think of y’ now.”
“Y’ mean bein’ all good-lookin’, livin’ on a space-ship, eatin’ my weight in credits, havin’ my pick o’ all th’ women in the ‘verse?”
“Yeah, Jayne, that’s exactly what I meant.”
5.) “Botany Bay” – Kate Rusby
Oh keep me child safe in your arms love
I need you like no words can tell
“When we’re old, will you forget me?”
“Of course not, mei-mei.”
“What if they make you?”
“Nobody could ever make me.”
“Don’t know that for sure.”
“Are you worried that I’ll forget you?”
“Facts come and go. Sometimes they’re not facts. When facts aren’t facts where do they go?” River pressed her hands to her forehead, as though trying to ward off a headache.
“How could I forget you?” Simon asks, brushing his sister’s hair back from her face. “You can’t forget the sun.”
“Can if it never shines.”
“You can’t forget your heartbeat.”
“Can if it stops.”
“You can’t forget your fingers and toes.”
“Can if they get chopped off.” River makes a dismissive noise. “Can forget all of these things, doctor brother.”
Simon takes one of her cold, pale hands, and holds it up to his mouth. “Do you think I could ever forget you? How could I – when I was the one who remembered you? Who fought for you?”
River considers this without opening her eyes. “Forgetting isn’t logical.”
“Nothing with you is.”
“Drew her out of the darkness. Made her exist.”
“Exactly.” He kisses her hand. “Mei-mei, would you ever forget me?”
She smiles wistfully. “Not if you never go away.”
He releases her hand, watches her unfold a little, like a bird finding its wings. “Then I guess I’ve got one more reason to stay.”
6.) “The Name of the Game” – The Crystal Method (“Tropic Thunder” version)
Can’t shake the dreams of
Fire inside your phonograph
Jayne sits atop a post in a field, like a sitting duck who hasn’t realized he’s a duck. Or sitting.
He aims his gun towards the front door of a farmhouse seventy yards away, down a small hill and past a pond and a cow pasture. He’s heard soldiers say they try to imagine the target, to create the target in their head, and they won’t quit shooting until they’re sure the target’s gone.
In Jayne’s case that’s unnecessary. He waits until he can see the target before goin’ all whack-job on it and wasting bullets. In most situations - though he’d never admit this to the Captain or Zoe – usually one bullet was sufficient. The rest of the bullets… and some of the time, the rest of the guns… were for show. Helped a man feel stronger, more killing-ish, if he was assured of an arsenal behind him.
And wasn’t that the truth. Things that went all boom or exploded were Jayne’s bread and butter. He tried to imagine what it would be like if he was into words, like the Shepherd, or men, like Inara, but he always comes up blank.
The door of the farmhouse opens, the mayor of Kesselring appears, and in that second Jayne’s finger brushes the trigger of the gun like he’s caressing a woman’s shoulder. And the mayor ceases to be the mayor, becomes the target, and then becomes an objective achieved.
And that’s all there is to it.
Boom.
Gone.
7.) “On the 4th of July” – James Taylor
And the tiny tin voice of the radio singing
“Love must stand
“Love forever and ever must stand”
Blue sky, summery day. Green grass beneath her bare feet, ribbons in the trees, children laughing. The taste of lemonade in her mouth, the smell of meat cooking over a fire, the feel of Wash’s hands on hers. Somewhere a radio’s playing music from the Cortex, tinny voices she feels like she’s heard before. A slow beat, nothing too extreme, perfect for holding close one’s loved ones and doing a few easy swaying circles in the meadow.
She leans into Wash; he smells like pine soap and smiles, warmed in the sunshine, wrapped up in a Hawaiian-shirt-wearing package for her.
She hasn’t heard Jayne say a cross word to anyone yet today; the Captain hasn’t complained about the time they’re wasting by having a picnic instead of getting to their next job. The doctor’s infirmary is empty, as is Inara’s schedule. River seems less crazy under the green open hands of the trees, and the Shepherd has a smile on his face to rival Kaylee’s.
Zoe knows it’s crazy, but she thinks she’d like to stay awhile. At least until the fireworks are over and the fireflies start shining.
8.) “Out Tonight” – “Rent” movie soundtrack
I’ve had a knack
From way back
At breaking the rules
Once I learn the game
Sometimes Kaylee wants to be slutty. Granted, her version of slutty is wearing a slightly-lower-cut camisole under her coveralls, but sometimes she wants that freedom.
She wonders what Simon would think if she came to dinner in the little black nightgown she hides in the back of her dresser. Likely Jayne would get more of a thrill out of it than the prudish doctor, and that’s not something Kaylee wants to encourage.
But she’s tired of the way Simon’s eyes seem to always skip over her, not on purpose, but because she’s plain. Like everything else around Serenity, gray and brown and gray-green, Kaylee is just one more plainly-colored thing.
It’s why she covets her pink dress, though it’s too fancy to wear for just a simple seduction. There’d be too many ruffles in the way of all the kisses, and it’d be too much work to get it off quickly… which Kaylee is hoping will be necessary.
Kaylee knows nothing of seduction techniques; she knows no particular dances or acrobatic moves or tricks, though she imagines Inara knows plenty. All Kaylee has is her smile, which has disarmed a few men, to be sure, and her willing attitude.
Still, she wishes her smile and her willingness came in prettier clothes. Something lacy and satiny, something that would make her really shine.
Something that would make her look on the outside the way she feels on the inside when Simon’s eyes find her, when she goes all hot and squirmy. Something exactly like that.
9.) “Voulez-Vous” – A*Teens
A sense of expectation hanging in the air
Giving out a spark
Across the room
Your eyes are glowing in the dark
Mal doesn’t like to let people down. His cocky attitude and at-all-costs demeanor tend to hide this fact from the ‘verse at large, but something in him dies a little when he can’t make things happen the way they’re supposed to.
It would probably help if he didn’t have a crew who were as headstrong and gutsy as he tries to be. Makes it much harder to give orders to people ain’t listenin’.
River, for instance, has nearly never done what the captain’s told her. The words stay down, don’t get up, get away from that!, and get your moon-brain hands off that! have been uttered so many times in her presence that they seem to bounce off her like water on a griddle. For all intents and purposes those words are not even directed at her.
And she knows it, Mal thinks as he watches her whack a man in the head with a serving tray. She exists in the same space as those words, operates on their level (most of the time), anyway – but they aren’t hers.
She isn’t in to letting people down, either.
10.) “Turn Off the Light” – Nelly Furtado
I pretend to be cool with me, want to believe
That I can do it on my own with my heart on my sleeve
I’m running, I’m running, catch up with me life
Where is the love I’m looking to find
It’s all in me, can’t you see, why can’t you, why can’t you see it’s all in me?
After Simon finishes administering River’s medication, he goes to turn the light off in her bunk. Her frightened voice stops him: “Leave it. Leave it.”
“You have to sleep,” he says, looking at her prone form on the bed. Her hands are clenched, as though she’s going to get up and start a fight. “You’re tired.”
“Not tired enough. Leave it.” She grits her teeth, a sound he can hear all the way in the hallway, a sound that discourages him.
“Teeth,” he says, trying to remind her, trying to snap her back to reality.
Paralyzed now by a multitude of factors that might include his drugs, fear, exhaustion, and any number of things in between, his sister manages to squeeze her eyes shut. She mumbles something at him.
“What?”
“She’ll be a good girl. Leave it.”
He turns to look at her. “Do you think you’re bad?”
“Won’t be bad. Won’t be bad. She’ll be a good girl.”
“You are not bad,” Simon says, coming to adjust her blankets. “You are tired.”
“She’ll be a good girl in the light.” River whimpers and rolls away from him. “It’s only in the dark she’s bad.”