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Notes: I tried to fit this fic as much as possible into the style of the series, making it kind of like one of their adventures. I am alternately very happy with this fic and absolutely loathe it, so you guys will have to tell me which you think the correct response is. It's supposed to be a humor kind of story, even though it's not like my usual humor pieces. At any rate, no matter what you think of the story, Firefly does not belong to me. It belongs to Joss Whedon, and to Fox, and they are more talented and richer (respectively) than I could ever hope to be. Thank you.
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"I don't know," said Wash skeptically. "It seems dangerous. Unnecessarily dangerous, I mean. I mean, it's risky to even enter the atmosphere this close to a meteor storm, let alone try to finish all our business and then leave before it hits. Why can't we just stay until it's over?"
"Trust me," said Mal, "we'll want to be off this rock as fast as possible. The meteor storm gives me a perfect excuse to get out of there."
"Is the Madame really that dangerous?" Wash looked surprised.
From the doorway to the bridge came a cynical snort. Inara pushed off from where she had been leaning against the frame. "He just doesn't want to stay because she's been trying desperately to get into his pants ever since they met."
Wash snickered and Mal glared at him. "Hey, you wouldn't laugh if you had met her before. I honestly swore that I would never come back here after the last time. But desperate times and all that."
Wash raised an eyebrow. "Why? What happened last time?"
Mal shuddered. "I made the mistake of staying overnight and woke up chained to my bed, that's what. I'm telling you, the woman is insane."
"So why don't you just sleep with her and get it overwith?" Wash asked. He glanced through the thick glass down at the little moon they were about to land on. "Seems like it would be a lot easier."
"Frankly," admitted Mal, "she is one scary bitch. Not exactly my type. Plus I'm willing to bet she's more disease-ridden that a sewer rat. Anyway, the bottom line is this: we go in, we give her the goods, she gives us the money, and then we get the hell out as fast as possible. Got it?"
Wash grinned. "You're the captain."
Jayne cast a calculating eye around Madame Photina's boudoir. Sunlight from the enormous skylight overhead cast its rays down onto an inordinate amount of pink. Everything seemed to be some shade of the color: the carpet, the plush, comfortable-looking furniture, the curtained bed in the corner. Even the low round table set just underneath the skylight was a very pale pink. A woman sat on one side of it, looking like a bloated spider sitting in the middle of a web.
Madame Photina was wearing nearly enough makeup to conceal the fact that she was getting on in years, and far too much of it to be considered tasteful. Her predatory eyes looked out from deep pits created by the huge pools of dark purple eyeshadow and the thick black lines of eyeliner. Her skin had been powdered pale, then rouged to what was apparently supposed to be a youthful blush.
Volumes of pink and purple gauzy fabric drowned her form, so that it was nearly impossible to see what shape her body was. 'She could even be a man for all we know,' Jayne thought. But he knew it couldn't be true. An air of calculating femininity surrounded the woman so thickly that it was practically a visible cloud.
The woman shook her hands, as if limbering them up to play some instrument. Half a dozen bangles on her wrists jingled.
"Oh Mal, dear," she gushed. Her voice was like a thick syrup. "Do sit down." One hand with deep purple fingernails gestured to the other side of the table she was sitting at, while the other hand pushed a strange of dark black hair back up into the diabolically complex bun on her head.
Jayne continued to stand at the door next to Wash and Simon as the captain moved forward and sat across from her at the table. "Madame," he said politely.
Jayne looked around the room again. It was difficult to tell if there might be trouble. They hadn't seen any bodyguards or anything around the place, just a lot of women in alluring outfits. There weren't any men in the room either, but more of the girls lounged on the satin-covered furniture, or leaned against the pink walls. They seemed to blend into their surroundings; Jayne hadn't even noticed them at first. But as he looked closer at their eyes, he saw that each and every one of them was watching the proceedings intently.
'Are these her bodyguards, then?' he wondered. The glint of sunlight off of what looked suspiciously like a concealed knife in one girl's waistband supported his theory. He turned his attention back to the captain.
Madame Photina snapped her lacquered fingers and a door in the side of the room opened. A young girl with soft blond hair and a supple body flowed into the room, a tea tray easily balanced on one small hand. When she bent over to place the settings on the table, the men in the room were given an un-impeded view of her ripe, well-proportioned bosom. She looked up at the three in the doorway through her eyelashes, flashed them a lascivious smile, and winked. Then, wordlessly, she rose and sauntered back to the door from whence she had come, shutting it behind her.
Smiling, Madame Photina poured two cups of tea into the finely-detailed white cups. "How do you like your tea, Mal?" she asked.
"I'm fine, thanks," said the captain. "If we could just get down to business?"
"Nonsense!" said the Madame dismissively, waving a hand and causing the bracelets to jangle once again. "These things cannot be rushed. The tea is soothing, and you look positively haggard. As your host, it is my responsibility to see that you are taken care of."
'Obviously that doesn't apply to all her guests,' Jayne thought with a mixture of annoyance and amusement. Madame Photina was obviously going to do whatever it took to get Mal to stay as long as possible. And judging by the fawning way she was doing so, that was only phase one of her plan.
Mal seemed to deliberate for a moment over which course of action would get them out of there the fastest. In the end, he opted for politeness. "One sugar then, if you please."
Madame Photina smiled and spooned the requested amount into his cup, before passing it to him. She waited until he took a sip, then smiled and sipped at her own. "Now my dear, I assume that since you have returned, you have the items I requested?"
Mal nodded and turned his head back over his shoulder, throwing a nod to the men at the door. Simon stepped forward, a briefcase in hand. He looked a little bit nervous, and Jayne cursed silently in his mind. Nervousness at a time like this was a definite sign of weakness, not just in him but in all of them. He had been against bringing the rookie from the start. But Mal had argued that the more manpower the better (and it was literally manpower; Photina had specifically requested that only men come to meet her), and that Simon needed to learn sometime, right? He had wanted Book to come along as well, but the Shepherd had politely declined.
Simon placed the briefcase next to Mal, nodded politely to Madame Photina, and returned to his post at the door. At least he had manners, Jayne admitted grudgingly. That was the sort of thing that would really go over well with the Madame. Mal knew that, and had specifically ordered Jayne not to speak. Jayne still felt a little miffed about that. He could be classy when he wanted to! It wasn't like he didn't have any self-restraint or anything.
Mal unlatched the briefcase and turned it towards Madame Photina so that she could see its contents. She smiled coldly when she saw them and reached forward to take the top document off of the pile of papers within. Jayne watched as she read it over eagerly, chewing on her raspberry red lips as she did so. Finally she nodded as though something had been decided and placed the paper back on top of the pile. Mal shut the briefcase.
"I take it the contents are satisfactory?" Mal asked.
Madame Photina nodded and shook her hands out again - Jayne realized that the action must be a nervous habit - before nodding to one of the women in the corner of the room.
This woman moved to one corner of the room, traced some pattern on the wall that Jayne didn't catch, and removed a nearly identical briefcase from the compartment in the wall behind the panel that had just slid open. She took it over to the Madame and placed it, as Simon had for Mal, on the table next to her. The Madame slid the briefcase over to Mal.
Mal opened it, and over his shoulder Jayne saw the stacks of bills that were inside. He breathed a silent sigh of relief. They had been really hurting for jobs lately, and they needed this money.
Mal leafed through the piles, then closed the briefcase, nodding. "All there," he said unnecessarily.
"Of course it is," Madame Photina said sweetly. "I would never cheat such a sweetheart as yourself."
Mal inclined his head politely to her. "Well then, I thank you very much. No if you'll excuse me, my crew and I need to get going."
Madame Photina's look of politeness slipped, revealing startlement. "What? But... There is going to be a meteor storm. It isn't safe. Do stay the night. The storm is sure to be quite the spectacle from down here. I had hoped that you and I could watch it together."
Mal stood, his new briefcase in hand. "Sorry Madame, but we have places to go. And we really do have to be moving if we want to make it out before the meteors hit."
"No!" said the Madame, her voice changing instantly from sweet sap to hard iron. "You will stay."
Mal grinned at her. "Sorry Ma'am. But that's just not in the plan."
The Madame's face flushed a furious scarlet and she stood up, rising to her full, intimidating height. She clapped her hands twice. "Girls! Please make these gentlemen... comfortable."
'Shit!' Jayne thought, as over half a dozen women who were now sporting a variety of edged weapons began stalking towards them.
"Run!" Mal yelled. None of them needed to be told twice. In the blink of an eye, Jayne, Simon, and Wash were halfway down the hall, with Mal close on their heels.
Jayne could hear the angry yells of the women behind him, but he wasn't about to stop to look. He concentrated instead on his feet, pounding down the carpeted hallway. He knew that they were fast. They had outrun worse than a mob of scantily-clad female bodyguards. He grinned with the thrill of adrenaline coursing through his veins. He did love this job.
Suddenly he heard a yell from behind him that wasn't from one of the girls. Turning, he cursed. Simon had tripped, and the women were practically on top of him. Jayne cursed loudly and sprinted back, gesturing for Mal and Wash to continue on ahead.
When he reached Simon, the younger man was doing his best to scramble to his feet. But he seemed to be having an unusual amount of difficulty doing so. Jayne frowned, but then suddenly realized the problem. Simon hadn't tripped, after all. One of the women had thrown a small knife at him, and the blade was half-embedded in his leg.
Jayne cursed again. He knew it had been a bad idea not to bring a gun. It went against every fiber of his being. But Mal had told him not to bother; Madame Photina did not allow weapons to be brought into her house, and the women who checked them had been very... thorough.
He reached Simon just as the first of the girls did, and threw a punch at her jaw, snapping her head back. In a single swift motion he scooped up Simon and tossed the young man over his shoulder. A second woman had reached them as he straightened up, and he threw a kick at her knees, placing one hand on Simon to steady him as he fought.
The woman went down with a cry of agony, and Jayne took the time to punch one more girl in the breast before turning around and continuing his flight down the hallway.
It wasn't as easy to outrun the girls carrying such a heavy load, but luckily he didn't have much farther to go. He banged through the door at the end of the hall, sprinted through the spacious, rich-looking entryway, and rushed headlong out into the late afternoon sun. The light was directly in his eyes, and he resisted the urge to stop until his sight could adjust; he could still hear the sound of pursuit behind them.
But even as he ran, his vision was clearing. And there- yes! There was Serenity, powered up and waiting, the hatch already open. Mal and Wash were standing at the edge, urging him on. Zoe appeared at the door with a gun, aimed carefully, and shot a bullet right past Jayne. He heard the cry of pain behind him and put on a fresh burst of speed.
With a final lunge, he threw himself onto the gangway and felt it begin to rise immediately. He scrambled into the ship as the hatch closed and Zoe fired one final shot through the narrowing opening.
Jayne lay sprawled on the floor of the ship for a moment, panting heavily. As he stared at the ceiling, Mal moved into his field of vision. "You okay?" he asked.
"In the future," said Jayne between deep gasping breaths, "let's not do business deals with your old girlfriends, huh?"
Sonia knelt before the Madame, her olive skin glistening with sweat from the pursuit. She kept her head bowed, not wanting to have to meet the Madame's eyes.
"I'm sorry," she said softly. "We were unable to capture them."
She knew that the girls could be punished for this. With any other master, it would have been a certainty. But not with the Madame. Sonia counted her blessing for finding such a woman. Madame Photina had taken the girls off the street, given them a home and a life, had them trained to fight. The Madame was their savior; she would not hurt the girls for little reason.
Sure enough, the Madame seemed to take it all in stride. "A pity," she said, her mouth pursed in displeasure. "I had such plans, too."
Sonia looked up at her face. Madame Photina's eyes glinted darkly, and a shiver ran through Sonia's spine.
"Well," said the Madame, her mouth stretching into a cold smile, "at least I left them with a small present."
"I don't want to do this too often, if you don't mind," said Wash peevishly as he tapped the last few keys to set the ship on autopilot. "If that had taken five more minutes, we would have gotten caught in that storm."
Mal watched the planet shrink in the distance and felt a profound sense of relief. "Well, all's well that ends well, right?" he said. "At least we got out of there."
Mal turned to grin at Wash, who was rolling his eyes. "Any job where we walk away is a success, remember?"
"Yeah, but next time we might not walk away. Just keep that in mind."
Before Mal could reply, a sudden flash of pain in his head made him lean against the hull. His vision began to cloud over with red mist, and he was suddenly extremely dizzy. He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to control the throbbing in his skull.
"Hey," came Wash's voice, "you okay?"
"Nn," Mal managed, pressing his hands firmly against his temples. He felt as though his brain were going to leak out through his ears. And on top of that his body had begun to be affected as well; he was sweating profusely, and his skin itched all over. He wanted to scratch, but he didn't dare take the pressure away from his temples.
He opened his eyes again to find Wash's face right in front of his, looking concerned. With a dream-like surreality, he found himself fascinated by Wash's skin. This close, he could see individual pores. There was a smudge of dirt on Wash's cheekbone just below his right eye, and Mal had the sudden urge to reach over and wipe it away.
He took one hand away from his temple to do so and realized that his headache had changed; it was no longer a painful throb, but a warm, red fuzziness that seemed to suffuse his mind. It was getting difficult to think properly. Wash's lips were moving, and Mal's eyes moved to watch them, fascinated by the motion. Human lips were actually a rather beautiful feature, when you thought about it.
"Are you okay?" Wash was saying slowly, carefully enunciating each word. "Do you want me to go get Simon?"
Mal continued to stare at Wash's lips. They were really quite close, actually. In fact, if he just leaned forward a little bit...
Somewhere in the back of Mal's mind, alarm bells started going off. The sense was enough to drag him temporarily out of his euphoric little cloud, at least enough to realize what was going on.
'Oh no. Oh gorram, no!'
Shaking his head, trying to maintain lucidity as long as possible, Mal grabbed one of Wash's forearms in each hand. It took more than a little effort to ignore how warm and pleasant Wash's skin felt under his fingertips. He forced Wash to look into his eyes to impress the importance of what he was about to say.
"Go," he said. His voice felt thick, and it was difficult to make the sound move past his lips. "Find the girls. All of them, even River. Take them to Inara's shuttle. Lock yourselves in. Do NOT open the door until someone other than me tells you it's safe, okay?"
Wash looked confused. He was actually pretty handsome when he looked confused. Why hadn't Mal noticed that before?
"But, Mal, why-"
"Just GO!" Mal yelled, forcefully pushing him away. Bereft of the support, he slumped back against the hull.
One thing could definitely be said for Wash, he was a smart man. He didn't need to be told more than twice. He bounded out of the bridge, away towards the living quarters.
Mal sighed in relief. He knew he could count on Wash. Wash wouldn't let anything happen to the girls. The red mist was beginning to encroach on his vision once again.
'Infirmary,' he thought muzzily. 'We have to have some kind of antidote, or... or something.'
He stumbled away from the wall, nearly falling over, and moved towards the door to the bridge. It was an effort to concentrate enough to put one foot in front of the other.
'Step. Step. So far, so good. A few more paces to the door. I can do this. I can make it to the infirmary if I concentrate.' Even as he walked, he felt his balance returning. Momentum seemed to be carrying him along, almost inexorably now. He felt like he was floating, like he was being drawn along in the wake of his own motion. He smiled hazily. The warmth from his head was spreading throughout his entire body.
Shepherd Book, Simon had found, made quite a good medic if someone was telling him exactly what to do. His touch was gentle but firm, and all of his motions were very precise. He would have made a fine doctor, with some training.
Simon reached down to scratch at his new bandages. Already the wound had begun to itch. It was fine, Simon knew, that meant it was healing. But it was still very annoying.
"Thank you Shepherd," he said, looking up at Book.
Book just patted him on the shoulder. You just get some rest, give that leg time to heal. You should probably stay off it as much as possible.
Simon smiled and leaned back on the cold metal of the examining table. "I know. I am the doctor here."
Book opened his mouth to reply, but just at that moment they were interrupted as the captain came stumbling into the doorway, looking decidedly manic.
'He looks like a junkie,' Simon thought. Mal's face was heavily flushed, his hair was mussed, and his eyes had a crazed, unfocused look in them. He peered around the room, appearing not to take in his surroundings at first. It was as if he didn't quite realize how he had gotten there.
"Get out," he mumbled, stumbling into the room.
"Beg your pardon?" asked the Shepherd.
"GET OUT!" Mal yelled, motioning wildly with one flailing arm. Book looked surprised, but strode past him as ordered, moving in the direction of the living quarters.
Simon wondered if Mal's order had been directed at him as well, but Mal seemed to have forgotten his existence. He staggered over to the cabinets, pulling them open and rifling madly through bottles of pills, barely reading the labels before throwing them haphazardly behind him.
"Hey!" Simon protested. "What are you doing?"
Very suddenly, Mal's frantic motions stilled. Slowly, he turned his head to face Simon.
Simon gasped. There was nearly no sanity at all left in those eyes. Something powerful had a hold on him.
Before Simon could speak, Mal had crossed the distance between them and was standing by the side of the examining table, looming over him. Simon began to feel nervous.
"C-captain?" he asked. "Are you alright?"
Mal didn't reply. Instead, he swooped down in one swift motion and kissed Simon. And no mild kiss, either. Simon felt like Mal was trying to devour him. His head was spinning, trying to grasp how in the hell something like this could be happening, when suddenly he realized that Mal was moving.
Before Simon really even understood what was going on, Mal was on top of him, straddling his hips. Panicking, Simon thrashed, trying to shove Mal off of him, but the captain was stronger, pinning down his arms and using all of his weight to keep Simon in place.
Simon's eyes widened as Mal moved to kiss him again, then moved his lips to Simon's neck, kissing a line down his throat to where it joined his shoulder, then biting down, hard.
Simon cried out, and tried again to force the captain off him, but again he was unsuccessful. Simon decided to switch tactics.
"Mal," he said, fighting to keep the hysteria out of his voice. "Mal, snap out of it. Please, Mal! You have to stop this!"
Mal stilled for a moment, his breathing heavy. Simon noticed for the first time that his skin was burning hot, as though he had an intense fever. What the hell was wrong with him?
Suddenly, Mal thrust his hips against Simon's his breath leaving him in a shuddering exhale. Again he thrust, grinding their crotches together. Simon felt his face flush in embarrassment.
"Need," Mal mumbled, moving his head once again to kiss Simon's neck, so that the words were muffled against his skin. "Need. I need..." He continued the motion of his pelvis, much to Simon's embarrassment.
'Okay,' he thought, 'I'm obviously not going to be able to get him to stop. So the one course of action left is...'
"HELP! SOMEONE HELP!"
He thrashed again wildly, trying to dislodge Mal, but the frantic movements only seemed to encourage him. His hands wandered to Simon's chest, beginning to unbutton his shirt.
"DAMMIT! SOMEONE HELP ME!"
Over Mal's shoulder, Simon saw Jayne appear in the doorway. He had never been happier to see the man in his entire life. That is, until Jayne leaned casually up against the doorway, smirking.
"Sorry," he said, grinning, "am I interrupting something?"
Simon was sure he would be incredibly angry at the man once his panic subsided. "Just get him off me, would you?!" he screeched, the hysteria forcing his voice up an octave.
Thankfully, Jayne seemed to take pity on him. He stepped forward and grabbed the back of Mal's collar, hauling him off the distressed medic. "Come on, Captain," he said, amusement coloring his voice, "let's get you fixed up."
Simon was worried that Mal might try to fight Jayne, but his focus had changed completely the second Jayne ripped him off of Simon. Now he was leaning against Jayne, looking like he could barely support himself, playing with Jayne's hair with one hand.
Jayne threw a last condescending look at Simon before leading Mal out of the room.
Simon lay for a moment on the metal table, just trying to get his breath back. 'What the hell was that all about?' he thought. Something had obviously been seriously wrong with the captain. Well, thank goodness Jayne was taking care of it.
He paused in his thoughts as this sank in.
'Jayne has no medical expertise, at least not for something like this. So what on earth is he planning to do?'
Simon sat on the stairs outside Jayne's room and tried not to die from embarrassment.
He wanted more than anything to just leave, but there was a chance that the captain might need medical attention, and his guilt kept him rooted to the spot.
It wouldn't have been so bad if it weren't for the sounds. The whimpers and howls coming from the captain were positively animalistic, and the rhythmic grunting from Jayne's end left little to the imagination.
Simon buried his head in his hands. 'Why me?' he thought. 'I just wanted to help my sister. I just wanted both of us to be safe. Is that too much to ask?'
Apparently it wasn't, because just then there was a startlingly loud, passionate cry from the room, followed by silence. Simon spent a few minutes debating whether or not he should stick around, when the door opened and Jayne stepped out.
His clothes looked rather rumpled, and for a moment Simon glimpsed a look of concern on his face before he caught sight of Simon and it was replaced with his customary devilish grin.
"Now now," he chided, "it's not nice to eavesdrop."
"I-I was just waiting," Simon stuttered. "In case he needed a doctor. I mean- in case he needed medical attention! You know."
Jayne snorted. "He probably will, too, when he wakes up."
Simon blushed again and stared at the floor. "So you... I mean, you just..."
"Fucked his brains out? Pretty much. Is that gonna be a problem?"
"O-of course not. No! Definitely not. Not a problem at all. Nope. What problem? No problem here?" Simon shut his mouth, aware that he was babbling like an idiot.
"Listen," said Jayne quietly, and there was something the seriousness of his tone that made Simon look up at him. "Let me explain something to you, Kid. Out here in the black, you don't have a lot of resources. You only got what you can take with you. So when something happens, you do what you can to fix it. You use what you got. The captain was in trouble. I gave him what he needed. That's as far as it goes. Captain's saved my life dozens of times. I know if the situation was reversed, he woulda given me what I needed. Think about it, Kid. Because it's something that you gotta understand if you're gonna be with us very long."
Simon gaped, more from hearing such a long and actually profound speech from Jayne than from the actual content of the message. But he had heard and understood, and he knew he would remember it.
Jayne scratched at his head and turned to go. "The Captain's sleeping right now," he said. "But when he wakes up, you should take him over to the infirmary." He looked over his shoulder and grinned at Simon once more. "We were pretty rough."
Simon watched him go and wondered if all this blushing was going to make him bleed from the eyes.
"So she drugged you?" he asked Mal later in the infirmary as he put bandages on several deep scratches on Mal's shoulders.
"Seems like," Mal replied, sounding rather more tired than usual. "Probably it was in my cup before she even poured the tea. That's the only way that she could guarantee that I would get it and she wouldn't. Although who knows with her. She's just crazy enough to put some in her own cup too."
"So what was it, exactly?"
Mal shrugged, then winced as the motion pulled at his wounds. "Some kind of aphrodisiac, obviously. She must have planned for me to be under its influence while I was staying there, and then she would offer to "take care of me," or something like that. Damn, am I ever glad we got out of there in time."
Mal shifted his weight. Simon noticed that he was doing that a lot. Even though he had found the softest cushions he could for Mal to sit on, the captain still seemed to have trouble settling his weight without some pain. Simon was trying very very hard not to think about why.
He cleared his throat. "So, why did you send the girls away?"
Mal snorted. "Why do you think?"
"No, I mean, why did you send just the girls away? I mean, I'm sure Inara would have gladly, um... given you what you needed."
Mal chuckled. "That's a nice way of putting it. But no, I wouldn't do that to Inara. She and I have a screwed-up enough relationship as it is without going and adding sex to the mix. Nah, this was just as well. It would have been different, if I had ended up pushing myself onto one of the girls. Things would have been, well, awkward. I mean, can you imagine what might have happened if I had run into River in that state?"
Simon jumped. He hadn't. Suddenly he was very glad that Mal had made the decision he had.
"Besides," Mal continued, "think of the other possible consequences. What if I had gotten one of them pregnant?"
"And Wash?"
"He's married. There's the awkwardness thing again. Plus I wouldn't want to do that to Zoe."
Simon gave him an odd look. "So, all this basically came down to chivalry?"
Mal laughed. "I guess you could say that. But like I said, it all worked out. This way, no one is permanently psychologically affected. Including myself, which I would have been had we still been on that planet when the drug took hold. All's well that ends well, right?"
Simon sighed.
"Sure Captain, whatever you say."
or
Oh God, that was hideous. Let me complain to the author.