Magic Crazy As This

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by templemarker

Notes: Written in the Simon Tam ficathon for umbrae_lucis. She was pretty open to suggestions, and so I hope this works for her. No particular timeline.

***

It was hard to find a well-moneyed planet this far out from the Core. They just didn’t come along that often, when it was so hard to get by on planets that didn’t have some kind of commodity that wasn’t terraformed into it. But Leda was an exception: she was a planet full of adamantium, something scientists were eager to get their hands on. It was expensive to mine, expensive to protect, and expensive to ship. But then, the crew of the Serenity didn’t seem to do much that didn’t involve some sort of risk to themselves.

They had a few days leave when Wash discovered something wrong in the code for the piloting system, and while he was up to his neck in computers, everyone else took a bit of a stroll around the planet. They’d just gotten paid, too, for a deal that was past due and just got turnaround, so everybody was feeling good and fine about it too.

Just before Kaylee was about to step off the ship, she put her hands in her pocket and was surprised to find a note there. “Hernandez Park, dusk,” it said, and she mouthed the words out to herself with a little smile on her face. Nothing like a nice bit of shore leave to make a girl feel good.

She did herself up a little, nothing much; Kaylee had never needed cosmetics to make her attractive, and that made her all the more so. She put on a nice swishy skirt she’d gotten a few planets ago and hadn’t had the opportunity to wear, and headed out. Hernandez Park was easy to find, an oasis of green amidst the rising towers and busy traffic of Leda’s central city. There, waiting by the gazebo, was Simon.

Kaylee appreciated him for a few moments while she still could. His hair was still wet from the shower he must have taken, and he was bouncing slightly on the balls of his feet. He had that little confused look on his face that he got every so often when he wasn’t absolutely certain of the outcome of a situation, and Kaylee smiled. It had been a long time since she’d felt so girlish about a man, but she was liking it. She was liking it a whole lot.

He turned just as she came within a foot of him, and the smile he gave her was just beautiful. The coat he was wearing was a bit shiny in the moonlight, and she touched it lightly to see if the shininess would wear off on her. He looked down at her fingers, and she blushed, but didn’t move them.

They sat down to a picnic, talking about the run and their days spent wandering around the city; what Wash was doing with the computers and how River was faring. It was nice, and they finished leisurely, neither of them anxious to return to Serenity and the waiting looks.

Simon looked up at a crack of thunder, shock on his face as rain began to pour down. “I checked the forecast!” he shouted as the sound of the storm overtook his voice. “It was supposed to be clear!”

“It’s fine!” Kaylee yelled back, pulling him into the Gazebo. They were wet and close, her mouth so near to his that it only took one extra inch, and she murmured, “It’s fine,” before leaning in.

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