Excess Baggage
Rated: PG-13
Category: Mal/Inara UST, Angst, Wash/Zoe.
Spoilers: BDM. Inara Has Left Serenity. (Thus Post-Those Left Behind Comics and Pre-BDM.)
Summary: Mal Releases His Frustrations The Only Way He Knows How.
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He was at it again.
The sounds of his struggle were muted and muffled, but Zoë's trained ears picked them up easily.
She'd learned long ago to sleep lightly, and it usually paid off, but for just this once she wished she could shut out the world and sleep in peace.
Especially since she knew exactly what these noises meant.
She rolled over and sighed, trying her best to ignore them.
Wash noticed.
It wasn't his first time around this block, either.
"You gonna go settle him down?" he asked.
Zoë shook her head. "Nah. He'll tire himself out soon enough."
"Yeah," agreed Wash. "He probably doesn't need a drink with a buddy, anyway."
Zoë snorted a soft laugh. "No doubt. Probably more'n a few in him already."
"Yeah…" Wash's voice was soft and tinged with sadness and for once his jealousy of his captain's relationship with his wife was nowhere to be found. There was only a melancholy in its place.
Zoë smiled wickedly and rolled into Wash's embrace, knowing just how to banish that depression.
"Don't worry none about him. You know he wouldn't be happy unless he was miserable. But we don't have to join him."
Wash smiled back and by the time he and Zoë were done distracting one another from the strange noises coming from the cargo bay, Serenity was still again.
Neither the sounds of sex nor the sounds of struggle woke anyone else on board, but come morning, a certain trunk in the cargo bay bore witness to the fact that Malcolm Reynolds had had a bad night.
But it was a sturdy trunk, and it held up to this beating as it had all the others Mal's feet had bestowed upon it. And it would have to hold up to a whole lot more before its rightful owner reclaimed it.
After all, Inara wasn't returning to Serenity anytime soon.