prompt: fantasy
About every two or three jobs they pull, Kaylee gets her hooks into Mal and they get a couple of extra credits to spend on a matinee. Sometimes it takes longer, or they're running too fast all of a sudden to take the time for even a piss, and Kaylee pouts until Mal lets her shuffle through the Cortex for old vids she's seen a thousand times before. She really likes the ones with princesses and elegant fight scenes and kissing and dancing.
Jayne doesn't mind them much either. Most of the princesses sure do like to get caught out in their fancies and to swoon over any big strong man who gets in their way.
What he really likes, though, are the stories about monsters and aliens and shit. Sometimes they have princesses in 'em too. He saw this one once that was supposed to be like some old story from Earth-that-was, where everybody was secretly related to everybody else and also part-dragon. His favorite part was when the good guy and the bad guy started fighting and turned into dragons halfway through. They flew up into the sky and crashed into buildings, clawing and biting and flapping wings at each other.
Some of them he doesn't like so much. There's a series of vids that Zoe likes with creepy-crawlies and things that ain't Reavers but get close enough to the stories he's heard. She watches them with Wash, who pretends it don't bother him but always volunteers for the night watch afterward so he can sit up in the light with his eyes open.
Mal don't watch none of the vids and he always bitches up a storm whenever anyone else wants to. Jayne don't figure that whoever they're running from the most recent time is going to be able to track them by the Cortex credits they use, but he also figures that he'll let Mal have his little bitching sessions. He runs out of steam pretty fast and stomps down to his bunk to avoid them all for a couple of hours.
And it's easier than trying to explain why he wants to watch the dragon movie one more time.