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Kara's boots hit the ramp, followed by one matching set after another. She didn't need the aggressive buzz under her skin to tell her she was headed for the nearest bar, and she didn't look back to see if she was leaving them.
As there was only one bar in town, the rest of the crew followed her. Jayne straddled the bar stool beside her and his voice garnered more attention than hers. Kara cast him an irritated look, which he entirely missed. She stole his beer as it slid down the bar in their direction.
"Hey!" he protested. She was going to need something a lot stronger than this. He nearly shoved her off the stool reaching for the next glass before it slid into her grasp.
She rolled her eyes and stomped away from him. Mal and Zoe were waiting for their contact at the table booth. "Son, all that bob and weaving is like to knock your head right off your neck," Mal remarked to Simon. "Your sister can take care of herself. You, too, I reckon, it comes to that."
Simon subsided, drawing back into Kaylee's arms. Kara looked around; there was room at the table, but she didn't want to sit.
"You Reynold's pilot?"
Kara scanned the man: long coat, military boots, smelled like a spacer. Looked her in the eyes. "Could be." She tongued the last drop of her drink out of the glass.
"Hear tell you've some experience flying summat faster."
She shrugged. Every few bars or so, somebody always wanted the Colonial Fleet story. It was all frakking bullshit, and once in awhile she told it--some of it--but only if there was the potential to get laid. He wasn't bad looking, but his hand on her shoulder was heavy, and she shrugged it off.
"Can offer you a sight better position than the damn Browncoats. Legal trading, new craft, all on the up and up."
Her eyes narrowed. "Not interested."
He shook his head. "Workin' for a man known as a traitor's a fine way to find yourself in trouble."
"That so? Know that for a fact?" She carefully set her empty glass on a table and turned to face him, throwing her jacket behind her guns and resting her hands on her hips.
He raised his hands. "Whoa, blondie. Not lookin' for a fight."
"Blondie?" Mal's head ducked over her shoulder. He was smirking. "Did I just hear 'blondie' with my disbelieving ears? Must be a dear and fuzzy friend to be speaking to you that way."
The expression on the spacer's face hardened down into a look of distaste. "Stay out of this, Browncoat."
Kara laughed outright. "Seems he knows you even better."
"Think you'd know better than to show your face in a good, wholesome town like this on Unification Day."
"Wholesome!" Mal repeated. "That why the only friendly female-like company Jayne can find lives in a gorram box in the back alley? 'Cause your town's so proper with all its regulations and things."
Kara raised an eyebrow, finding herself in the middle of a slowly gathering group. "Frak," she said, interrupting. "Girl's gotta be a Browncoat just to start a fight around here."
Mal turned his back on the man, eying her chest. "I conjure your coat might pass for brown, in certain light." It was exactly the kind of inappropriate she'd come to expect from him.
"Just stand a little closer to him," River said softly. Her eyes gleamed dark on Mal's other side, looking as fist-crazy as the both of them. Behind Kara, chairs scraped and a glass overturned. Simon coming to protect baby sis.
He should know better by now; he'd wind up shielding Kaylee from flying bottles and drunken sprawls while River was in the thick of it. Again.
Mal blocked the first punch before Simon even got there.
Two hours later, back on the ship, Kara shed her jacket and her guns and her bloody bandages, and she leaned back on Mal's bed. "That was exactly like a 24-hour leave I had one time on Tauron during my first deep-space rotation."
"I s'pect you made quite a name for yourself, Major Thrace."
"Frakking knee gave out, I wound up sprawled under the bar waiting for the military police. Fortunately," she grinned, "one of them was real friendly." She rolled her head back to look at the ceiling, the same ceiling above every bunk on every spacecraft she's ever frakking seen. The buzz under her skin was familiar, but she enjoyed it. "Wouldn't work out so well with Alliance police."
"Don't reckon." Mal pulled her legs off the side of the bed and started unlacing her boots. She smirked. "Was a fine old-fashioned brawl. Rare enough when they come along these days."
Kara looped her foot around the back of his leg and tugged him closer, pressed up against her hips. "The day you can't start a fight is the day I give up easy."
"Oh, ain't no trouble startin', it's the leavin' in a manner that's timely." He nodded over at their coats, dangling from the corner of the closed commode. "With the offending item of clothing still intact, even."
"Didn't get thrown in the brig; didn't lose our clothes; made it out of atmo in plenty of time." Kara smiled lazily. "And I get laid."
"That a fact?" he demanded to be contrary, reeling back. She yanked his head down and his nose smashed into her stomach.
"Seem mighty content with yourself," he remarked, from somewhere below her breasts.
"Yeah," she stretched, all the restless feelings tamped down and giggly. "A good fight'll do that." She yanked up at his hair.
"Good fight," he agreed, hovering over her. "Good day."