Author's Note: Something I wrote for a friend ages ago and have just gotten around to putting on my profile. Enjoy. :)
His foot was stuck.
Something must have gotten lose during that chase with the gorram reavers. Wash probably didn't notice it, or his foot wasn't in the right place, or something, and Zoe had asked him to take over while married couples did what they did. And his foot was stuck. A line or a cord was wrapped around it, or somethin'.
It wasn't the worst mission they had been on, or would be on. After all, they had escaped from being inches away from reavers doing to them what reavers did which he didn't particularly want to think about it at the moment. But that ought to be counted as a success.
And they did get the money.
But even if it wasn't the worst, it had to be one of the most powerfully irratating missions. Right when the Alliance marked them when they took the cargo.
He had been prepared to let bygones be bygones, and just forget about the events of the past few days. But now his foot was stuck. They had reached space at least an hour ago, and once that happened, no special steering was needed, and Mal got antsy after sitting down too long and normally he would have walked around the cabin at least, until Wash came back and could set their course.
But his foot was stuck.
Normally after a while, he would have gotten impatient and ripped the wires out and would have gotten Kaylee to come and fix it, and she would have made angry Kaylee faces and make noises about how the next time they reached Persephone or some such she would need some part and how he can't be abusing the ship like that, and then she would fix it and forget it until the next time it needed to be fixed.
But who knew what those reavers would end up doing, and for all he knew, the Alliance could find them and start tracking them. Them wires could be important and slow them up if that were the case.
He was pondering the wires and trying to figure out if any of them seemed to lead to anything important when he became aware of a quiet shuffling noise coming toward the cabin. He looked around quickly to see if there was a way he could hide his foot under the dashboard without amputation.
Gorramit, why couldn't she stay in her own ship for just a while. If he knew that she would be poking around so much when he took her on...
He heard her coming up the steps, and he gave a last ditch effort to try and pull his leg out of the wires.
They don't make wires like they used to, it seems.
He casually glanced over at Inara through the red warning lights that seemed to be coming from every inch of the ship. He heard the doctor shouting about something from far off.
"Well," he said. "Did they have anything in your whore manual about wiring?"