Friday. Yeah Friday.

[itsallovernow]

I wish they hadn't taken away the Hooray for Beer signs on Sunset. On the other hand, there seems to be a trend for naked asses on billboards on Sunset. Still, I think I'd rather have beer.

Am very, very tired of being the girl who works.

I am not at all tired of S3 Slings & Arrows. Not tired at all.

I... okay, the second episode just made me sob like a child. Charles Kingman looking at Geoffrey and asking, begging him to allow him this chance. This cranky, mean, dying drug-addicted man asking for these last moments of grace. It just killed me. His gentleness with Geoffrey and his cruelty to the faults and foibles of the others just kills me.

But then, nothing breaks my heart like Lear, so there you go.

I love that Richard is having a relationship with his car. I love even more his participation in the musical that can only end badly (and am trying to decide, at this point in the season, whether it's a truth or a slight to talk about the musical having "too much theater" in it.

I am finally sympathizing with Ellen. I don't like her much (despite thinking she really is a good match for Geoffrey) but I'm sympathizing, so that's good.

I love Sarah Polley, and I'm so excited to see what she does with this role. I like that she comes in as an ingenue, that she can play with her own image here. It's hard to imagine her in that place between child and adult actress, but I suppose she still really is.

But mostly, I just love Geoffrey. I love how these seasons are tracing his own relationship with art, with theater, with life - Hamlet, Macbeth, and Lear. Youth and impulse, middle age and ambition, old age and death. I love his crying, his struggle to understand work and life, art and life, art and work. To know who he is. I love his ratty sweaters and the absolutely wonderfully human way he has of reacting to his own insanity, and the more controlled insanity of the theater. Gah, it's just so amazingly rich. I so love this show. So, so much.

I am beyond bored at work. So drabble prompts are up for grabs. Give me a character, pairing, adjective or phrase. Oh, I should make this Shakespearean. Give me a fandom and a line of Shakespeare. I'll do any show I watch and pay attention to, except for Heroes because I just don't think I can think on that level. So: Farscape, SG-1, Rome, Gilmore Girls, Veronica Mars, Slings & Arrows, Firefly, X-Files, West Wing, My Name is Earl, etc.

Comments

whee! TGIDrabbleDay!

[raithen.livejournal.com]

West Wing, and my Grampa's favorite Shakespearean quote: "All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players." ;)

Re: whee! TGIDrabbleDay!

[thassalia.livejournal.com]

He finds, some time around the sixth month of his banishment (because that's what he thinks of it as. It adds a touch of whimsy to the otherwise grim reality), that what he misses isn't the politics but the people.

It's a tough realization for a bitter old political wonk, but he trades in politics for poultry and learns a new skill. Toby always thought he was too old, too cranky, too deeply, deeply himself to learn new things, but it's not the first surprise he's had at being a product of the Bartlett administration, and disgrace or not, he suspects it won't be the last.

Eventually, he even stops picking up the phone every time there's a press conference, ready to tell anyone on the other end what they're doing wrong. It isn't that he stopped caring, he just… stopped.

Andy says he's almost a pleasure now, but she says it with that tone in her voice that means it's true, but maybe not as welcome as she would have thought. The twins on the other hand seem to genuinely like him, and he takes them to a Yankees game and they don't even squirm, just eat hot dogs until they're ready to puke and fall asleep in the taxi, smeared with cotton candy and popcorn bits. He looks at them, tucked up into him on either side like bookends and wonders when he fell in love with them, when they replaced politics and policy and that place where he used to feel at home.

It's a worthy trade off and one he would never have expected. And this Toby, this man, can even say it out loud.

When he sees the President on television, he looks tired. More than anything, more than policy advice or speech writing or any of those things that Bartlett has well in hand without any input from Toby, what he'd like to offer the man is just a chair in his kitchen, and the twins with hands sticky from batter, or t-ball, or plant dirt. He'd like to offer the president a glass of wine, and some peace and quiet. And somewhere in there an apology. Not for what he did, or for doing it, but for harms rendered and trust broken, and families that fall apart when no one tends to them.

[rydra_wong]

Ooh. SG-1, "Glory is like a circle in the water,/Which never ceaseth to enlarge itself/Till by broad spreading it disperse to naught."

[thassalia.livejournal.com]

She's the last person that Mitchell would have expected to question a celebration. Vala's always the first to order, the first to put forth thoughts of revelry, of mirth. But when he raises his beer to clink with hers, to toast to a victory, she pulls away her pink martini and looks at him with wide, startled eyes.

"You'll jinx it," she says, voice soft so as not to carry. The others are standing closer to the bar, but she'd convinced Cam briefly to dance with her and when the song ended, they'd settled closer to a table with an eye towards the room.

"I'm not toasting the war," he says, gently as he can. He's found, somewhere along the way, the patience to be gentle with her. She's more than Jackson's shadow, more than a liar, more than the sum of her parts, and he's discovered more than a few of his own virtues in her presence.

Still, Vala shakes her head and Cam nods. He can respect a superstition. He's a pilot, he's flown every combat mission wearing the same pair of socks. But, still, this is her fight as much as anyone's, and it's not a victory if she's not part of it.

"I don't think I'm tempting fate," he says slowly. "None of that win the battle lose the war crap." He pauses as she tilts her head, plays with the plastic monkey clinging to the edge of her glass. Sam has a tiny plastic elephant but the monkey suits Vala and her pigtails and her pink drink and her worldly eyes. He looks and looks, and finally knows what to say.

"I don't think much about us losing," he says, and God, he so does not want to be the leader of this fight, but he is. And she's a lieutenant, and god that thought makes him laugh and laugh. Wonders if he can reinstate the merit badge, reward them all their strengths and weaknesses, sum them all up in a circle of cloth the same way his wings do, the same way the SG-1 badge does, pressed against their arm like a smallpox shot.

"Go on," she says, tilting her head forward, taking a sip of her drink. The monkey slides around along the outer edge and Cam thinks of the Wizard of Oz. Kansas is a distant memory.

"I don't think about losing," he says again, "but if we do, I want to remember the things we did right. The people we were with. The victories we had. I want that to hold onto."

It sounds ridiculous, both trite and sentimental and disingenuous, but Vala smiles her wide, wide smile, and clinks her glass against his bottle.

"Alright, darling," she says. "That I can drink to."

[pdxscaper.livejournal.com]

Gilmore Girls:
Assume a virtue, if you have it not.
[Hamlet, Act 3. Scene IV]

or

Farscape:
Action is eloquence, and the eyes of th’ ignorant More learned than the ears.
[Coriolanus, Act 3. Scene II]

[thassalia.livejournal.com]

Farscape, S1.

"You're smarter than that," he says to Aeryn, finds that he means it. "Following blindly. Doing what you're told." It's an old argument, but they'd been talking battles.

Normally she'd take offense, take that offense out on him, fists against his body, but she's got him covered in an alley, her gun out like an extension of breath and hope. She's beautiful in her violence, and he watches her instead of watching the way that pulse blasts dance sand around their feet.

"And I suppose that your earth soldiers are so ill-trained that they disobey direct orders," she says, but she sounds amused, barely out of breath as she ducks back behind the pillar, raises her eyebrow at him where he's crouched behind a barrel.

"No," he says and scowls and she grins, makes him feel… inevitable. And safe. A pulse blast hits the barrel and he scratches safe, but keeps the frantic edge of giddy.

It's easy to be fearless with Aeryn. It's when he's alone that the fear comes rushing back, twisting in his guts and his bowels. The rusty, ragged bilish fear that reminds him, "You almost died today."

"Shoot with your left hand," she says as she turns back to the fight, instead of commenting further on his accusation, his insinuation that he wants her to take as encouragement.

"Not ambidextrous," he mutters.

"Shouldn't have hit him, then," she says, and finally ends the gun play, nailing the last person with a hard on for their asses with a clean shot between the eyes.

When they get back to Moya, ragged and cranky and tired, she insists that they train. All John wants is his shower and his bed. He tells her to frell off, and when she grabs his arm, there in the hallway of this ship that lives and breathes and freaks the fuck out, she's gentler than he has any right to expect.

"You fight with your fists," she says, and takes hold of his forearm, balls up his hand, wraps cool fingers against the damaged muscles. His hand feels like the whole of the bones are now lodge permanently into his wrist. He tries to shrug out of her grasp, but she holds him tight.

"Yeah, well," he says, looking at her like of course I do? What should I be using, my dick? My charm? My very fine ass? He doesn't say any of that. 6 months out here has taught him that brain rarely wins to brawn.

"Hit me," she says, but he's trapped in her hands.

"No." He hates when she gets like this, bullish, brutish, determined.

She squeezes his damaged fingers and he sees red – pain, rage, doesn't matter. All he sees is how much it hurts. He takes a wild swing at her with his other hand, a round house that should have knocked her down, but she ducks, shoulders him in the stomach.

"Fuck, Aeryn," he says. "I'm tired, I don't wanna do this right now."

"So you can accuse me of ignorance, and do nothing to remedy it in yourself?"

Her voice is edged. Sharp as the knife in her boot.

"Yeah," he says, "I can do exactly that."

"You're hurt because you used your fist, didn't follow through with your body," she says quietly and lets him go. "You can't separate the weapon from the bearer of arms."

He thinks about it, the way her gun is an extension of her arm, the way the prowler is an extension of her body. The way he can be fearless when he's next to her.

"Okay," he says, "you win. But I don't want to fight in the hallway. When you kick my ass, I want something soft to land on."

[thassalia.livejournal.com]

Gilmore Girls - Through S6.
***
"You're the bravest person I know," Chris says to her, when they're 15 and drunk on Amaretto.

Lorelai scoffs. "I can't kill spiders and I fall asleep to Barry Gibb. That's not all that brave."

"You stand up," Chris thinks, and kisses her cheek, which turns into a sloppy session of making out on her mothers sitting room couch. "When everyone else sits down, you stand up."

That's not when she gets pregnant. He puts his hand high up on her thigh, underneath her skirt and it's innocent and feels so dirty that she blushes. She knows then that she'll sleep with him some day and that she won't have any regrets.

*
"I still don't kill spiders," she says to Chris in a bar in New York City. Rory is eight and staying overnight with Lorelai's parents, which is a concession she didn't want to make but Emily is persuasive. Lorelai didn't have plans, but she just couldn't stay in the same state where her daughter, her small perfect daughter slept alone in her parents' house.

Chris is home on vacation, looks sheepish and young, barely old enough to drink and he buys them beers and dances with her to Lou Reed and the Sex Pistols and kisses her goodnight.

She goes home at 2:00 a.m. and calls Emily to see if her daughter is sleeping. Emily's furious, and Lorelai doesn't care, buzzed up on cheap beer and good music and the idea that she's never leaving her kid behind again.

*

He traps a daddy long legs with the glass from the bathroom, covers it up with a piece of paper and takes it outside while she pulls the covers up to her chin.

"My hero," she says, and he brings her coffee and kisses her. "But don't touch me until you wash off the spider."

"Lor," he says, like he wants to laugh at her, but she's just seen him naked, again, and it never gets less funny and sweet and good. He goes to wash his hands.

When he leaves her later that day, leaves her for Sherry and a kid that he's going to raise from the start, she thinks of him with that spider in the glass and she doesn't cry until much, much later.

*
"You're a coward," she says to Chris a million times in a million different ways, and means them all but forgives him anyway.

He means well. But he's still a coward, even when he's doing the right thing and she forgives him all his trespasses against her and never forgives him for the harms he does to Rory.

He's ready to give up on them, thwarted at the first sign of a challenge, of trouble. And that's Chris, knight in shining armor turning tail fast as he can when things get hard.

Later, it's the way that she figures out why she has to leave. Chris sits down on the couch like he's ready to strip away armor and fight with his fists. Like he's ready to kill spiders for her, and follow maps for her, and stay whenever and wherever she needs him to. And when she sees him like that, all stripped down and brave, she knows it's not going to be enough.

She knows that she's not brave. Has never been brave for herself, but she's been brave for her kid. It's always been easy to be strong for someone else.

When she sits next to Christopher on the couch, and tells him the truth, that she loves him, that it's not right, not ever going to be right, she thinks of Rory, and thinks that sometimes, it's better to be a coward. Easier. Safer. She understands Chris in that moment like she hasn't in the decades that they've been friends, lovers, parents. How appealing it is – safety. How you can hide behind doing the right thing. And how awful, and lonely, it's going to be to be brave.

[monanotlisa.livejournal.com]

Ooh! SG-1, "There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so"

[thassalia.livejournal.com]

He frankly cannot remember a time when he hasn't walked with a weapon, whether it be his knowledge or his skill or a rifle in his hand. Cam doesn't think of himself as a violent man. Impulsive yes, that's sure been said. Impatient. A thrill seeker. Lots of adjectives, lots of verbiage addressed to adrenaline and the shadings of control.

But no one who knows him talks of his violence. He has killed men, he knows this. Combat pilot. It's a given, and if it's impersonal, it's never… cold, thoughtless. He's always encouraged his squads to remember that they control fate with the speed of their flight and the press of a button. He used to think of it as saving lives, not ending them.

Nowadays, he walks into other worlds with a gun in his hand. Protection, for himself, his world and his team. It's a cold necessity. The Gou'ald weren't squeamish about their violent impulses, and the Ori use weapons that can't even be seen. Cam's rifle is as much security blanket as act of security.

But sometimes, when he watches Jackson, with his hands on books, his gaze deep into words and history, he wonders what it would be like to go through the gate unarmed. He looks at Vala and her comfort with weaponry is personal, not professional. On the other side are warriors – Sam is carrier military, and Teal'c is… Teal'c. It makes him think.

Cam's a man who wanted to see the stars, who wanted flight, dreamed of it in classrooms and bedrooms and in soft, fragrant arms. He wanted that wonder, once upon a time. Now he's all wonder – when does it stop and are we enough? The first time he realized that there was more to the universe than stars, he felt frayed all around the edges, like all of his hems had suddenly unraveled.

The others tease him about counting his trips through the gate, and he pretends embarrassment, pretends bravado but he always, always counts. He is stepping onto the soil of a different world, and that has to be worth something. He carries the gun as a promise now: that he's keeping his home safe, that he's part of doing what he can. They walked through a wormhole and started a war.

But still, sometimes, he thinks of putting on regular clothes, old boots and a leather jacket and walking through that gate unarmed, wonders what difference it would make. He isn't that man, but he still wonders.

[redstarrobot.livejournal.com]

"Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war", and either Farscape (to make it a challenge, no humans involved) or West Wing.

Humans, yes. (Sorry). But also, in meter. End of Season 2.

[thassalia.livejournal.com]

Gun in hand, in place, back straight, eyes front. Breathe.

This isn't war, D'Argo says, but he's false

False friend, (unfair), false hope, and her mind rhymes

A child in the crèche, and John giggling at poems

Of soldiers when she tries to soothe:
Cartridge

Sight Trigger Grip Safety.
But they're not safe

He's not safe with madness riding slipstream

In his irises, rougher than combat.


He's seeing Scorpius, she says to D'Argo

Frustration hard and bloody in her throat

He wants to die.
Perhaps we should allow

No. That's not
If it were you

It's not.
You'd ask for swift mercy


That is the end of the discussion

Later, she finds Chiana with him, head

Cradled in her lap.
Sleep? Does he … dream?

The girl shakes her head, too vigorous

He wakes, eyes on her, on nothing. Blinks. Sighs.

Sweat damp temples, shifting like time like…
Babe?

Ignores his plea, looks at Chiana.

He's not safe.
What's safe? Her hands stay

On his forehead, his arm, as he sits up

Go, he says, and gives away his smile like

Currency.
Won't leave you alone, mumbled.

Not alone, he says, looking at her.
No.

I'll stay.
Promises, promises, he singsongs.

Jack and Jill went up the hill
And tumbled.

She remembers.
We all fall down, Aeryn.

I'll teach you my rhymes.
Sun, Gun, Fun?

I do not want them in a box, I do

Not want them from a fox. Or in Socks.


Chiana slips out as they look at each other

There on the floor.
You should be clean.

He nods and she strips him of his bearings

His clothes in a pile on the floor, then water

Hot against his skin, diffused against her.

He leans against her, hands hot, desperate.

This is my gun, she thinks. This is my war.

[kernezelda]

"Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears!
I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him."

And for fandom, hmmmm... how about Rome? ;)

[thassalia.livejournal.com]

Gaul is … galling, to say the least. Cold, damp, smelly and savage. Antony feels right at home, or at least he would if it weren't so hard to get whores out to the Hinterlands. And since he became consul, he's had to be far more cautious about who he buggers. Bloody politics, it's cold, clawing arm reaches even into his sex life, wrapping around his cock and giving it a mocking tug.

At night, he dreams alternately of Caesar and Atia, sometimes even the two of them together which is somehow less perverse than the two of them were apart, separate yet scheming. He never wanted to fuck Caesar, but he did yearn for him – for the guidance and intelligence and sheer audacity that the man brought to the table. Antony has always had a soft spot for the audacious which is why he kept his heart, his head, his hands, and his prick firmly lodged within the bosom of the Julii.

That doesn't mean he won't strike down that little piss-ant upstart if it becomes possible though. Antony can ignore the recent defeat – luck, surprise, youth – Octavian's forces had all of that on their side, but Antony knows his men. Knows they are brutish and powerful, had been complacent and easily fooled, but that next time, they'll go straight for the blood.

He wonders, at times, throughout that winter - as his beard grows full and his wrists ache from mastering his own sex - what the senate is doing to itself. What they can possibly be thinking in the face of Octavian's brutally delicate demand for Consulship. He likes to speculate on Cicero's sickly smile of compliance as he finishes, hands stick from his sex, a wicked smile on his face. The old bastard will be eating his words, and someday, Antony will make that threat literal. And the boy has surprised him. He hasn't been truly surprised since Caesar's death, and there's a tiny voice that says he never wants to be surprised like that again. A larger, booming voice that sounds far more like his old friend than is quite comforting tells him not to count on such things for the gods have wicked, capricious senses of humor. After all, they've turned a mulish boy into a tangible threat.

If he had to, Antony would admit to a certain… admiration for the sheer bloody balls on the boy. A squirming, silent spoiled sheep turned into a boy king and not for the first time, Antony reminds himself that while Octavian is a Caesar more by decree and desire than be right, he is without a doubt a Julii.

He should not be underestimated. But then again, Antony thinks, fingers against his rough beard, eyes on maps and mind on rutting, on beer and bread and murder and meat, neither should he.

[lizlet.livejournal.com]

Are you sure -- are you REALLY REALLY SURE -- about Heroes? Because don't you want to write a few paragraphs about how much Claude likes punching people?

::goes to find Shakespeare quote about punching people::

[thassalia.livejournal.com]

Hee - you find me an appropriate punching people quote, and I'll do my very best for Claude.

[haphazardmethod.livejournal.com]

Slings & Arrows "For they are yet ear-kissing arguments." (King Lear)

I am so thoroughly there with you on the S&A squee. My mid-week mental health day consisted of lying on the couch watching my purloined season 3. *g*

[thassalia.livejournal.com]

I'm watching at night in bed, and it's sort of ridiculous - tears slipping down my face as I'm plugged into the laptop.

[thassalia.livejournal.com]

There are times when Geoffrey looks at his life, and sees only the perfect metaphor that surrounds him.

Jack Crew on one end – youth and love and success, and Charles on the other, dying in his dreams. Geoffrey in the middle, his current madness a smash hit in New York.

"We're the riddle of the Sphinx," he says to Oliver with a smile on his face, but Oliver just crosses his legs and waves his hand.

"I hate Aeschylus," he says. "Bloody damned Greeks with their incest and their tragedy."

"Sophocles," Geoffrey mutters, but it's a moot point.

"Do you think I'm a man full of sound and fury," he asks Oliver later, feeling whimsical.
Oliver snorts, indelicate even in death. "Isn't that a questions best left for therapy?" he says. "It's a lot to ask of Shakespeare to define you."

Geoffrey thinks why else do Shakespeare, but he knows better too.

When he goes home to Ellen, he wonders if she traces her own trajectory through her roles. If she mourned when she was too old to play Ophelia, Cordelia, Beatrice. He thinks Lady Macbeth and Reagan would be more satisfying, but then what does he know, he's not a woman.

He doesn't regret that he'll never again play Hamlet. He's starting to believe that he'll never want to play Lear.

"Next season, we should do one of the histories," he says to Ellen. She's sleeping on her side, just buries her face deeper into the pillow.

"Mrrmmy the mpph," she says, and he nods.

"True. They'll only come for Henry and for Caesar. And you're too old for Katherine…" she kicks him in the shin, but it's just because. No one really wants to be Katherine.

Ellen rolls her head until her mouth is unmuffled. "Titus Andronicus," she says. "It's meaty."

Great, Geoffrey thinks. I'm not sure I can survive meaty.

"Well," he says outloud. "Perhaps we'll look at one of the moderns. The Cherry Orchard. Or maybe some Ibsen."

"They're doing an Ibsen entirely with midgets in the States," Ellen says, and rolls towards him, her body warm and lithe and comfortable against him. "Oh, sorry. I think they prefer to be called little people."

Geoffrey rubs his forehead with the heel of his hand. " A comedy then," he murmurs, and has fevered Midsummer dreams. Ellen will make a beautiful Titania.

[jenlev.livejournal.com]

oh you're right about lear and the whole frelling season is just astounding. made me cry too. and i can't hear a good actor giving that "howl howl howl" speech without my hair standing on end.....olivier's pbs version is burned into my brain.

and oh yes to geoffrey. gods i love this show. i can't squee enough about it.

[thassalia.livejournal.com]

I was thinking of Olivier when Charles was doing the Howl speech, Olivier at the end of his reign, the end of his life, doing Lear for the BBC.

[simplystars.livejournal.com]

Slings & Arrows, definitely. And you're so gonna smack me, but I gotta:

The course of true love never did run smooth.
- A Midsummer Night's Dream, Act 1 Scene 1

*vbeg*

[thassalia.livejournal.com]

"Sometimes I think the whole world's falling in love."

It sounds more like a line reading than a statement of truth. Ellen flops down on the couch in suitably dramatic fashion and gives him a speculative look. Geoffrey feels like he's somehow missed his cue. That's the kind of statement that generally proceeds woes about the lack of love. But they, he and Ellen, they are supposed to be part of the few, the happy few. Or if she's right, the many.

"Do I want to know?" he asks, fairly certain that he doesn't really want either details or subtext but considering how badly Lear is going, maybe he'd be better off with details. A distraction if you will. No one falls in love in Lear, not with anything worth having at least.

Ellen shakes her head, which means subtext and Geoffrey feels the pounding in his temples.

"It's just… the junior company," she says, and now she's wistful and it's still acting but like all acting there's truth behind her words. "All full of hormones and lust. And glitter." She sighs again, "This year's apprentices seem to come with an awful lot of glitter."

He remembers her as an apprentice, remembers that she had her own indelible sheen – bright teeth and bright eyes and that rich voice in such a tiny body. He remembers the way that the stage makeup behind her ear would taste – cold cream and pancake flat and how the scent of her hair would make him dazed and dizzy. He feels sort of nostalgic and warm for the junior company. He feels awfully glad that they're not really his problem. The one's he deals with show up on time and leave when everyone is done and he just thinks of them as their characters and doesn't care who they fuck.

It's a good rule of thumb, because in the theater you're either fucking or being fucked by everyone. That sounds bad in his head, and he turns the verb to making love but still thinks fucking is more appropriate.

Ellen looks at him now with her real person eyes, the ones that say I love you but I'm still a little thrown and very clearly doesn't ask if he's talking to imaginary people or just to himself. Sometimes he wonders which bothers her more. At least talking to Oliver makes him certifiably crazy. Talking to himself just makes him sad, and sort of separate.

" She loved me for the dangers I had passed, And I loved her that she did pity them," he says softly, and Ellen sighs, puts her head on his shoulder.

"Aren't you too old to end an argument with Shakespeare?" she says. "And that one ends badly."

"I didn't know we were arguing," he says, and she sighs again, back to the play. "No," she says, as she puts her hand on his knee, gentle and platonic. "You never do."

possibly paraphrasing...

[rubberneck.livejournal.com]

*tapping on pda keyboard from bed*

"Of all things living a man's the worst. I'll see thee hanged on Sunday, first."

Firefly

Re: possibly paraphrasing...

[thassalia.livejournal.com]

When he brings her on full time, announcing to the crew that this smiley slip of a girl is going to be the ship's mechanic, Mal doesn't expect protest so much as surprise.

Instead he gets grunts and long quizzical looks and a shrug from his second who trusts his judgment when it comes to keeping Serenity herself safe, even if she thinks he's mad to love his girl so.

"This is Kaylee," he says, one hand gentle on her shoulder, a warning and commendation both and then he leaves her to fend for herself.

The first time Jayne propositions her, Mal wonders if he's gonna have to kill him. It's likely not personal, Jayne'll proposition most anything with two legs and no perceptible bulge between them, but still. Mal feels a might … protective of the girl. Possibly it's some of his love for his ship spilling over, but it could be Kaylee's genuine sweetness and the way she stays up night's talking to the engine, crooning and caring like she can hear the same steady pulses that Mal does.

Still, Jayne's cheap muscle. Not trustworthy, but steady as long as his grasp exceeds his reach, food on the table and cash for ammo and the threat of a good clot to the side of the head by a woman with a gun and Jayne mostly does what they ask.

He asks Zoe her opinion, and he sees her struggling not to laugh when she advises asking the girl first is she's harmed, offended.

When he goes to Kaylee, she just giggles. "Cap'n, when you met me I was rucked up against our girl gettin' …"

He interrupts her and blushes like a virgin and says, "Yeah, yeah, okay."

She gets even smilier and pats his arm with strong, greasy hands. "Ahhh, that's so sweet. Jayne didn't mean no harm, and he took no for an answer mostly because he's a might too interested in his guns. I told him I'd help him with the spring lock on the big one though."

Mal looks at her, all innocence and colonist sweet – the kind of girl you find in cornfields, on terraformed worlds with dirt under her nails and babies in her belly, and the smell of bread warm on her skin. And here she is in the engine room of a smuggling ship saying nice things about Mal's pet killer who just offered to fuck her in a highly indecent way, offering to fix his guns and meaning no pun or ill-intention by it.

"Kaylee," he says, because now's the time to be clear. "You know we're… criminals." They call themselves a lot of things – smugglers, space pirates, rebels, but the Alliance only calls them criminals and if they get arrested they aren't going to call her anything different.

She shrugs again, looks anxiously at the loopy rhythmic turn of the engine. "Cap'n, my dad's a dirt farmer, scrabbles every day of his life to take care of all of us. Smuggling ain't so bad. You're not hurtin' anyone, and there's a lot less dirt here than at home. Crime's sort of… subjective, ain't it?"
He feels like she's both holding him accountable and letting him off easy, and he just pats her shoulder again.

"Well," he says, "Just so's you know."

[lem0nb0mbs.livejournal.com]

"The robbed that smiles steals something from the thief". - Othello (Act I, Scene III).

Vala and just about anyone, SG1. Thank you!

[lomer.livejournal.com]

This looks like a fun prompt for drabbles. If I had more free time I would steal your idea. Shakespeare, fandom and drabbles are bound to be fun!

How about BSG and as for a quote...
"I must be cruel only to be kind;
Thus bad begins, and worse remains behind."
Hamlet (Act III, Scene IV - Hamlet)

[thassalia.livejournal.com]

Hi dear. I'm not watching BSG anymore. So, if you're okay with a S1 drabble, let me know.

[baranyandi.livejournal.com]

I'm soo enjoying this! Your Vala, your Gilmore Girls, and especially your Cam! I could read about his drive to work if it was written by you!

[thassalia.livejournal.com]

That's very sweet! Thank you! I'm looking forward to the rest of the challenges as well:)