Firefly weddingfic on demand!

[wisdomeagle]

Two hours and forty-five minutes until I won't see Serenity. In honor of the occasion, apparently I'm marrying off the entire crew. Here are the first three wedding ficlets, which all happened to be for Firefly pairings. I'm hard at work on the next one in the queue.

[Mal/Inara, a forced wedding, perhaps as part of a scam on a job? For seimaisin. 558 words. PG. No spoilers.]

A Traditional Bridal Flower

Mal stood up. "I won't go through with it." He tried for conviction, forthright truth. He wasn't marrying Inara and that was --

Book put his hands on Mal's shoulders and eased him back into his seat, and Wash said, "Marriage isn't so bad, Cap'n."

"It's not the marriage I'm worried about," Mal said, though that was a falsehood. "It's the marrying."

He thought he could hear Inara laughing at him from three rooms away.

"Think of the money," said Jayne, who stood guard and seldom thought of anything else. "You've made me do things a hell of a lot worse than marryin' so you can stay fed."

"That's true," Mal said. "How much would it take for you to marry Inara for me?"

Jayne was about to answer when Kaylee poked her pretty head through the curtain that separated the waiting chamber from the ceremonial hall. "It's time!" she said, and Mal couldn't tell if her cheeks were brighter from the paint she'd borrowed from Inara or from her excitement.

The hall was almost empty -- not too many townsfolk interested in seeing a stranger get married in order to win a bet. Mal eased between two tired old men and found himself face to face with Inara. If she was worried, it didn't show -- she looked just like usual, well-dressed and calm, any wayward emotions tucked into the bodice of her red-and-yellow gown. She raised an eyebrow at him. "Ready?"

"Surely am."

"Liar." She almost smiled, then they presented themselves to the town clerk. Book had smiled at their plans and wouldn't dissaude them, but he refused to participate in the sham wedding.

Mal tried to follow Jayne's advice and think only of the money he stood to win when he presented Shifty Jake with a valid marriage certificate that afternoon, but Inara, regal and unchanging, was too vivid not to focus on.

The ceremony ended and Mal wiped a pint of sweat from his forehead. Marrying was harder work than riding horses and more dangerous, he expected, if Inara got any funny ideas.

There wasn't much of a reception -- Mal and his license had to be at the saloon before sunset -- but Inara threw her bouquet to satisfy Kaylee, who had a spirited tug-of-war with River before finally relinquishing the flowers. "You'd better go," Inara said. No smiles.

"I better had, before they find out what you are."

"It's not entirely illegal for a Companion to marry," she reminded him. "We just need permission."

"Which I gather you were careful not to receive?"

She tilted her head. "Of course. I wouldn't want to stay married to a smuggler and a thief, would I?"

"You marry someone else besides me today?"

She almost laughed, then remembered herself. "Get going. You've got a fortune to earn, and I want to get back to the central planets before the week is out."

Mal walked away calmly, taking his cue from Inara, until River, who seemed to have more flowers than she'd started with despite distributing them to the crew, handed him a rose and said solemnly, "A white rose, symbol of virginity. Traditional bridal flower. Tonight you'll be traditional, won't you?" Mal hurried away with the flower. It didn't do to dwell too long on what the crazy girl said. Especially when she almost talked sense.


[Zoe + Wash's wedding for karabair. 341 words. No spoilers. G. This ficlet has been remixed. Tin Star (the Forsaking All Others remix) by 2ndary_author]

High Noon

On the morning before his wedding, Wash had a mind for details. The exact color of the sky, the precise feeling of queasiness when he left Serenity and found himself on a planet, nothing between him and the sky but a few thousand kilometers of oxygen and dust. He could taste the morning's coffee and protein bar churning from his stomach into his esophagus and into the back of his throat where his fear lived. When Kaylee appeared, dressed in the best dress her limited income could buy and white gloves that covered the broken-off fingernails and greasy hands, he saw her as a new creature. He'd never noticed Kaylee in particular, been too busy flying Serenity and courting Zoe, but Kaylee was beautiful.

"Hey Wash!" she called, and her voice echoed across the empty planet. "Zoe looks like an absolute vision, a dream, so perfect. When I get married," her eyes were dreamy; her chin tilted at a thoughtful angle; Wash was frozen in place, watching her, "I want it to be like this."

"Like what? Dusty, sandy, no one around for miles, no witnesses but your crewmates..."

"Exactly. And I'll be in love, just like you and Zoe." She took a step towards him, smiling almost sadly. "Think I'll find someone like that? Or is it another crazy dream?"

"Sometimes I think they're all crazy dreams, out here. Sane folk stay close to the center."

"I'd hate to. Wouldn't you hate to?" Wash closed his eyes against the brightness of the sun, almost at its noontime height. In space, everything was dark. Out here, every detail shone like polished metal. "Let me go show you how pretty Zoe looks, then we can start," Kaylee said. "It's high noon on the middle day of the common year. That's what you and Zoe picked, right?" She smiled to herself. "It's perfect, like everything you choose."

Wash took a last look at Serenity, then started towards Kaylee. "I think it's high time I got myself a bride."



[Kaylee/Fred with River in a bridesmaid's dress. For cadence_k. And for me. 'cos, Kaylee/FRED omg. 919 words. R. Spoilers for "Our Mrs. Reynolds."]

A Simple Thing On Midsummer's Day

Getting married is a simple thing. Choosing a wardrobe is the hardest part: clothes are very important; Kaylee was born knowing this and she's taught Fred what's important. They pick out clothes for more money than they should rightly be spending, acres of pretty smooth fabric that feels like the bare skin on the inside of Fred's thighs, long shawls that will be too hot for summer but that curl around Kaylee's neck and drape over her breasts, like Fred when she sneaks up behind her.

River comes with them to look for a bridesmaid dress. "Because I'm the only maid," she says, "the maid of honor. The dress will cover my maidenhood, hide my shame. It will be pink."

"Pink's pretty," Kaylee says. "We'll choose something real pretty for you, all right?" She retreats into Fred-space, then, just Fred-and-Kaylee and ruffled silk. River knows not to linger, escapes to her own corner to look at the dresses that she'd wear if she were getting married.

Kaylee and Fred are talking about her. They whisper apologies to themselves that should be hers. "I wish I could do more for her, but Simon won't let me in his lab."

"Simon's jealous," Kaylee says. "Man-like."

"But if I could help his sister, then maybe he could..." But she says no more for River to hear; she's run quietly out of the shop. If Simon fixes her, she'll be whole. She wants and doesn't want to be unbroken, but she doesn't want it to be Fred who fixes her. Fred should be a wild creature, mad like her, made like her, but when Kaylee touches Fred, her mind is healed and whole and she remembers how to laugh.

Fred hasn't been to a wedding in centuries, and Kaylee only the one -- Zoe and Wash. They're only other married folk on board, since you don't count Mal, who married a woman-who-wasn't. Wasn't free to be married, Mal says. She was a woman all right, all woman all over.

"Like Fred," Kaylee says. "Like Kaylee," Fred says, at the same time.

No one else understands them when they collapse into a sea of giggles, floating away on the happy wave that is shared laughter.

Zoe has lots to say, in her quiet way, about being a wife. She talks to them each in turn, stern kindness about obligation, commitment, the meaning of vows.

"Marriage ain't a burden if you don't let it be one," she tells them. They laugh at the idea that they would ever be burdened by being with each other, regardless of sickness, regardless of health. But Zoe looks at them like she knows something they don't, like she's got a secret they only let you in on once you're a married woman.

Wash tells them the secret, easy. "No one's perfect," he says. "Not even Zoe. And since she's the closest to perfect there is, you two will have a lot to learn about imperfection."

But as the days grow long and longer, closer to their wedding day, there's nothing but perfection in the engine room and Kaylee's quarters. The engine keeps on spinning and the world keeps on turning, which is almost incredible when you realize that Fred is getting married. Fred is getting married, and not to a skinny D+D nerd or to a lab assistant with funny teeth, but to a woman who's as strong as she is smart and gentle as she is wise, a girl who knows what the inside of an engine looks like, who's seen all of Fred, the inside parts and the outside parts, the babbling parts and the confused parts, the part of Fred that's still a little bit awed when she knows they're traveling through starspace. But the worlds keep on going, even though Earth's long gone.

They get married on the longest day of the year, two weeks before Zoe and Wash will celebrate their fifth anniversary. Springtime is over and summer is here. They land on an uninhabited planet and Book preaches about love to the willow trees and the river that runs beneath them, the Tara. The river was a brook all spring, dancing, laughing merrily, tricksy, topsy-turvey. They visited her while Mal made a trade here, two months back. But now the river's slow, sedate, joins the wedding march, with River in the lead, tossing flowers solemnly and letting her pink dress trail behind her in the grass, Fred and Kaylee next, on Simon's arm and on Mal's, because their fathers are far away and worrying about their little girls. Mal said yesterday to Kaylee, "I promised your pa I wouldn't interfere with the learning he gave you, nor trouble you to be married if it didn't suit you, but I see that Winifred suits you and won't try to dissuade you from this damn foolish marriage plan."

Kaylee told Fred later, "Mal's just ornery because we won't let him watch."

"I bet he'd be happier if he could see us now," Fred sighed, gently caressing Kaylee's breast. "I know I am."

Book marries them and the whole crew cheers when he says, "All right, go ahead and kiss. We all know you want to." Wash puts two fingers in his mouth and whistles; River, suddenly lucid, holds Simon's hand and beams at them; even Mal looks slightly less grumpy than usual.

But the sun is high and the summer long, and Fred and Kaylee each have eyes for no one but the other.

Comments

[wisdomeagle]

*g* Eee. The FF voices are *hard* -- I'm glad you liked them! Especially the one I wrote for you -- that was a great prompt, by the way. Very fun.

Thanks so much -- and thanks too for linking them in your journal. :)