A/N: Just some random roughly-chronological scenes from daily life on the Serenity with Sam and Dean. They were fun to write, but I couldn't quite get them all to coalesce into a full-fledged story, sorry. Hope you enjoy anyway: reviews are love. Stay shiny!

"So, how do you take down a Reaver ship?" Mal took a seat next to Dean. It was ship's night, and Serenity was silent except for the low rumble of her pampered engines. The Captain had to admit that the eldest Winchester was a bang-up pilot. Not as good as Wash, of course, but no one could be that good.

"Carefully," the younger man said flatly. He reached forward to fiddle with a couple of knobs. It was clearly a delaying tactic, but Mal had all the time in the 'Verse.

"I would have the figuring of that," he drawled, spinning so his chair faced backwards and he was looking Dean head-on.

"You can't replicate it," the pilot stared through the window into the Black. "Not the way I do it, at least."

"Anything can be copied, son," Mal started.

"I ain't your son," Dean snapped back. "And no, it can't." His tone brooked no argument.

The captain drummed his fingers in frustration. "Your daddy could do it, you said. How'd he manage?"

Dean quirked a proud grin despite his earlier antagonism. "The same way you make anything stay dead. Iron and fire and silver and salt: lots of it. He was just better at killin' than most, and a clever hwen dan to boot."

Mal raised an eyebrow. "You can't be suggesting that he just waltzed into and out of the Reavers' loving arms? Fa feng!"

"I'm not suggesting, I'm telling," Dean smiled lazily. "Dad was something else."

Mal let that one go for a moment. He'd heard the stories during the War. John Winchester is a mean sonofabitch, so mean that demons run from him. John Winchester took down two transports with one faulty grenade and a gorram spear. John Winchester won against three-to-one odds at Columbiam. John Winchester can't be killed.

That last one was a lie, obviously. Dean had confirmed his father's death himself. The other stories were probably false too. But when a man with scars like Dean's started telling stories, well, Mal knew enough to listen.

"Well, if I can't do it like you do, then there's no harm in telling me how you go 'bout doing it," Mal reasoned. Dean looked at him out of the corner of his eye like he knew exactly what the Browncoat Sergeant was doing.

"You're a good man, Malcolm Reynolds," Dean said after a moment. He kept his eyes firmly on the stars ahead of them. The view from the cockpit was by far the best on the ship, Mal would readily admit, but it was clear it wasn't what the pilot was seeing right now. "You took on Simon and River when you had no good reason to, and plenty of reasons to leave them behind. Same with me and Sam. I see how you are around Kaylee. I'm not sure what your deal is with Inara, exactly, but she's a respectable Companion and that has to count for something. Zoë respects you, and earnin' and keepin' the trust of a woman like that ain't easy." Mal kept his mouth shut. He treated people right according to his code. If that matched up with Winchester's, then all the better. "Which is why I'm not going to lie, but I'm also not going to tell you the truth."

"Why not?" Mal felt his ire rising. What was this Winchester trying to hide?

"Would you tell Kaylee exactly what happened in Serenity Valley?" Dean asked abruptly. "Would you tell her what thousands of rotting corpses smell like, or how many men you put down so they didn't have to suffer no more because you knew the medicine wouldn't come in time to save them? No. Because you're a good man who protects a good crew, Malcolm Reynolds."

Mal started to get a sneaking suspicion of what Dean was driving at, and he didn't like it, not one bit.

"I'm not a good man, Captain. I've done things…" Dean's scarred fingers clenched into an unconscious fist around the yoke. "But I'm not so bad as to burden you with this. Suffice to say that when the Reavers come a-knockin', I'll gank the lot. You and your crew are safe with me; that I'll swear on Sam's life."

The pilot pulled a flask out from underneath the console and offered it to him. Mal drank deep, but Dean drank deeper.

"So I heard you were there when the Assurity went down," Dean abruptly changed the topic. Mal didn't like that the pilot hadn't answered his original question, but he couldn't make the man talk if he didn't want to. And honestly, he wasn't sure if he wanted to hear the answer anymore.

"I was," he answered proudly. "But the stories don't quite get it quite right…"