Hey everyone. Thankyou to all who have reviewed and hey look. Another post this year!

The thing about this project is that occasionally we are going to have places where characters who DO have plenty of screen-time bump into each other. This chapter is one of those instances and I think it just goes to show why the writers of firefly are geniuses. When it's two characters who don't converse all that often I have a little leeway to be a little OC but when it's say... Mal and Kaylee for instance, there are fewer places for my writing flaws to hide. Then again isn't that what fanfiction is all about? To put writing with familiar characters out there into the internet so people can compare it with the actual fandom and give you advice as how to make your version better?

Oh yes and make perfectly straight characters have gay sex of course.

What I'm trying to say is that the following scene is okay but it isn't Firefly standard. I don't want to be one of those people who go "Oh I know this sucks" just to get sympathy reviews, because those tend to make me want to stab someone in the eye. Constructive criticism, however, is greatly appreciated and guidance is always welcome. I can take it. I'm a big girl.

Also if you have a suggestion for a double act, please feel free to ask about it in your review. Next chapter will feature Inara who is the only character that has been neglected so far, but who will she be paired up against? What hijinks will ensue? Well, my friends, that's up to you.

Anyway on with the show!

FOUR

Kaylee was used to noise.

No, in truth she was more than "used to it". Saying Kaylee was used to noise was like saying fish tolerated water. Noise was her element. Noise was a constant comforting presence that was there to remind her that the 'verse was still moving. When you were off world, with no sun, no moons, no sky line to signal whether it was night or day, it got harder and harder to remember that time even existed. But as long as Serenity hummed, whirred, choked and spluttered, Kaylee could ground herself in something real and present, which kept her mind off the fact she was nothing more than a fleck floating in a billion mile long vacuum. Even when it was the wrong sort of noise it was the right sort of noise, because at least Serenity was still talking to her...

'Kaylee can you stop that contraption from making so much gorram noise for two minutes!' Mal's voice bellowed from the other side of the machine. 'It seems to be hampering those thinking abilities I am so widely renowned for.'

Kaylee tilted her head around the engine to get a clear view of her captain. His back was lent against the wall next to the doorframe, which was useful seeing as he needed something to bang his head against every five minutes.

'I may be wrong here, Captain, but I pretty sure that the constant noise is the reason why engine rooms aren't the place where most folk head for a spell of brain-storming.' Kaylee licked her top lip in concentration. 'Maybe you would prefer to do your thinking somewhere else?'

Mal pinned down his mechanic with a steely glare that he had sharpened to perfection during the Unification Wars.

'This ship is everything to me, Kaylee. It is my home, my transport, my source of income and the only way I can be sure of living semi-free from the Alliance. And seeing as the engine room would be considered the heart of the ship but those who are soft-of-soul and addled-of-brain, wouldn't the logical conclusion be that I do all my scheming here?'

'You've never do ne it before?'

'I thought I might start. Call me sentimental. '

'I would call it cowardly actually.' Kaylee mumbled. Not particularly well, mind because Mal still managed to hear her over the engine.

'I beg your pardon?' said Mal. 'Did we just fly through a black hole into an alternative universe where I am not the handsome man who pays your wages?'

'No. You're still that man in this universe too.' Kaylee didn't drag her eyes from the fuel lines she was priming but Mal could just see from his position her left cheek lift, obviously making room for her smile. Obviously the steely glare was a little rusty. Mal fought to maintain his indignation but Kaylee was so irritatingly difficult to stay indignant at. But Mal was a soldier and as such he soldiered on.

'I am not a coward.' he said. Kaylee plugged in the last cable and began to wipe her hands on her overalls as she walked to Mal's side of the room.

'Course not.' Mal noticed her tone was that forced kind of casual. 'I'm sure that hiding in the engine room to avoid Inara and the latest of her rich and charming clients would be considered the height of manliness on some worlds.'

'I'm not hiding.' Mal's voice was half an octave too high. 'Inara doesn't like it when I go prying into her business affairs for some unfathomable reason and so I'm being chivalrous and giving her some privacy.'

Kaylee almost snorted. 'Privacy? She'll be in her shuttle the whole time. Or did you think she was going to grab him on the cargo-bay floor and just rip...'

'I do not need for you to paint me that wonderful mental picture, Kaywinnit Lee Frye.' said Mal raising his arm as though to block her words. 'Besides that's not the problem... Or at least until a few seconds ago it wasn't.'

'Really.' Kaylee sounded genuinely surprised. 'Then what is.'

'I don't know.' Mal scratched the corner of his mouth with his thumb nail. 'I was trying to figure out a plan about how we'd go about this bank heist. Everyone was off doing their own thing. It was just too quiet out there or something.'

'So it was too quiet out there, too loud in here? Have you tried you're thinking in the Three Bears' house, Captain?'

Mal lifted his chin. 'Boy, aren't we just full of opinions today.' Kaylee looked unperturbed. The Captain lent his head against the wall.

'Never used to have this problem Kaylee.' Even though he said her name he sounded like he was talking for his own benefit. 'During in the war it was decisions and plans and choices all the time. Half of them were complete gossa of course but at least I wasn't sitting around waiting for the alliance to do something. As soon as we were done with one plan we were on the move to the next. It was all noise then all the time and I never had to "mull things over" as it were. I'd hate to think this whole brain stagnation phase was to become a regular occurrence.'

Kaylee didn't know what to do with her hands for a moment. She knelt down near Mal. 'Well, maybe you're just looking at this from the wrong angle, Captain.'

'How you figure?'

The mechanic shrugged. 'Maybe it wasn't the noise or the action that made you think. Maybe it was something else?'

'Such as?'

'I dunno I wasn't there. How did go about scheming back then.'

'I didn't.' Mal gave a half-chuckle 'I just barked orders at people and they did as they were told. Have I ever told you how much I miss those days?' He gave Kaylee a pointed look.

'What happened if your plans were awful?'

'Why would you just assume they would be awful? Do you really have so little faith in my plans, Kaylee?' There was a pause as Kaylee didn't reply. Mal sighed. 'If you must know occasionally –very very rarely when you look at the whole scheme of things – if I made a bad order, Zoe would tell me I was a moron and I'd take that advice into consideration and come up with something else.'

'So it wasn't the noise that had any effect on your thinking. It was the barking.

'What?'

'Well think about it.' Kaylee straighten herself. 'The only difference between then and now is that you're trying to keep all your working out inside your head, when before you had to talk it out with someone else. Your brain only works when it's going through your mouth, is all. '

Mal's brain began to tick over properly for the first time this week.

'That makes sense. That makes a whole lot of sense. So what you reckon I need is a co-conspirator, or some description.'

'Yep.'

'Someone who I can bounce off.'

'A huh.'

'Someone who can help me run through things and knows my process.'

'You're calling it your process now?'

Mal got on his feet and straightened his back, looking at the young woman who stood before him.

'Kaylee, can I ask you something.'

Kaylee pulled back her shoulders. 'Yes Captain?'

He paused slightly embarrassed. 'Would you know where Zoe is?'