I write for a dead alive show that Joss Whedon owns and I do not. Nor do I own Annie Proulx's story "Brokeback Mountain," which everyone should read, from which I, er, borrowed certain concepts/lines. Anyway, I had the idea of presenting a look at two very different relationships that I have strong feelings about, especially as they both cross class lines in interesting ways, and as a way to write inside a certain character's head where some real insecurity that I can see in certain episodes (War Stories, Objects in Space) lies.

So, anyway... to Amelia, my dear friend. Hopefully she won't mind having this galumphing dirigible dedicated to her.

"Kaylee"

Kaylee liked to bury her face in Simon's back and breathe his flesh. He was soft, a little tougher now than he was, and smelled like soap and clean skin, the memory of antiseptic wash and good cologne from a fancy store on Osiris that stretched hundreds and hundreds of feet up like a big glass mountain that would light up against the night sky. Sometimes, even though she knew it was, his hands on hers, on her body, in her hair, didn't feel real, nor did their torsos touching, skin to skin, his smooth skin soft as sin under her fingers, tanged with a sweet, slight sweat smell after sex. It didn't seem real to her, nope, not at all. It couldn't be, could it? Kaylee smelled like engine grease, no matter how hard she scrubbed, was short and hippy, and the mirror didn't like her. Every morning when she looked into it the cloudy girl there would scrunch up her face and wonder at the weird teeth, small breasts, eyes too close set, and wonder how she could be silly enough to think that the young man on the bed would be hers forever. He was too handsome, too well bred, too... everything for the silly little mechanic's daughter from a rim planet who'd accidentally rutted her way onto a ship that threatened to fall out of the sky every time a pebble passed too close. Kaylee! she could hear Mal holler over the intercom, If you blow my gorram ship up, and we die, I am going to kill you! That made her smile in spite of herself. Mal pretended to be so fierce, Kaylee thought, but River was right when she called him Captain Daddy. There, she thought, when the cloudy girl smiled. I aint too bad looking, if I smile, and I smile a lot, so maybe he won't notice my little chicken pox scars and the gap between my front teeth. It was no use. She frowned again. Simon was for someone like Inara, someone classy, not just some little prairie bird that you could roll over on after a hard day and then fall asleep. Kaylee put the mirror girl out of her head. She had him right now, and that was all you could ask for, all you could hope for.

Kaylee slid under the covers and wrapped her arms--strong for a small woman, that was from working so hard--around his middle. He stirred and she kissed between his shoulders, getting a taste of him to last until the morning came. He tasted like so sweet. She sighed into him: "I sure wish I could quit you."