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Author's Note: The following snippets were written for Firefly Friday fic challenges #9 and #10.

Love
by Tara LJC O'Shea

She wasn't sure when she realised it, exactly. When it stopped being about frantic groping in his bunk, or hers—hoping Mal couldn't hear them. Knowing he had, and not caring. When it became more than making sure there was a plate of dinner left for him, when it looked like Jayne would go for thirds before he even got to the table. When she stopped being embarrassed when she woke with tears still wet on her cheeks, and instead welcomed his arms around her, his whispered assurances against his neck.

It happened slow. Gradually. Until she couldn't imagine a day going by when he didn't make her laugh. When the petty spats hurt more because she was gripped by the fear that maybe this one would be the last one. Maybe she would drive him away. Maybe this relationship came with an expiration date, and she should just enjoy it while it lasted because all good things end. When she realised she dreaded the ending so much that in-between fighting dirty, their love-making acquired a frantic edge. Like she had to store up on all those smiles, and sunlight, and laughter while she could.

Once she knew, then there was that free-fall feeling, deep in the pit of her stomach, as she wondered if maybe it was all her. She was living a fantasy in her own mind, and maybe something broke in her during the war that couldn't ever be fixed and she was a fool for trying. For using him. For letting him use her. Fooling herself into believing that she could be so lucky. That the gods of fortune could smile on her after all she'd done. After all she'd killed. After all that time she'd wasted.

Once she knew, it was like slow agony. Everything he said suddenly had double, even triple meanings. She drove herself to distraction, trying to sort it all out. Suss out how to be the sort of woman a man like him would want for more than just the night, or to watch his back in a fight, should it come to that. Days and weeks and months of feeling like a child again, uncertain of everything, the constant highs and lows that she hid behind a cold exterior because she was afraid that weakness would drive him away. That he could see how much she needed. How needy she had become.

She finally told him—as casual as she could make it sound, couching the shattering confession in a kiss against his neck and murmured words as they rolled away from one another in the darkness. Told him and waited, trying to pretend what he did next didn't matter. That it wouldn't change how she felt about him. That life would go on just like it had before she'd let the genie out of the bottle.

She hadn't been prepared for what happened next. The girl who was always prepared for any eventuality. Always wore the vest to stop the bullet. Always had the knife and boot gun in case the sawed-off jammed. Always knew what the Captain was gonna say before he said it. It had taken her completely by surprise.

When Wash kissed her like it was the first time, and told him he loved her a thousand times in the space of a minute and meant it every single breath, the clock had started ticking again and life hadn't gone on just the way it had before.

And that was the best part.

Trust
by Tara LJC O'Shea

He trusts her.

He probably shouldn't, but he does anyway, almost out of pure contrariness as is his way. He never questions. He lavishes her with affection and sweet words. She's always steadfast and true, unlike the other who abandoned him so long ago that he abandoned right back out of sheer spite.

He trusts her, and it's a child's trust, simple. Blind, almost. But complete. So it hurts all the more when she betrays him not out of anger or bitterness or any kind of malicious intent—merely by being exactly who and what she is when he needs her to be more. Be his everything. Be more than logic or even the good sense sheep are born with would dictate.

He trusts her, even if his trust is a burden he inflicts on her, it can't change the hurt that flares to life inside him and demands with a child's voice that trust be restored. He tucks the hurt and betrayal deep inside him, tries to pretend it's less than nothing to him. But the child still screams, as the blood flows down his side and his vision swims before him with pain, the air so thin it's like being up in the mountains again, only there's no clear blue sky above him. Just a yawning blackness ready to swallow them both whole. Hungry for the both of them.

He trusts her, and, he supposes, she trusts him too. Trusts him to do what's right for her—put her first, ahead of himself, ahead of everyone. She's demanding in a quiet way—marked by absences rather than outbursts. She had her moods, her habits they'd all grown so used to that they'd sit and laughed around the dinner table about them. Because they all trusted her, in their own ways. Trusted her to keep them safe, and until today, that trust had never proved unfounded.

Maybe that's why he was so quick to put all his faith in her. He'd had a surplus of it, once, and it all needed to go someplace. It's not her fault really that he built her a pedestal so high that to come crashing down off it would have destroyed damn near anyone. Not her fault that he'd let himself believe she was something she wasn't. Made her into a symbol. Made her into the home he'd never even had but mourned as lost. Made her into an ideal that only existed in the mind, when it all came down to it.

He should listen, next time, she tells him through her silence. He promises he will, as his hands are slick with his own blood as he fumbles with the catalyser. As he tries to align it correctly in the compression coil while the edges of his vision grows dark, he thinks of all the instances he'd been told time and time again that she had needs, and those needs weren't just whims, and he'd promised next port. Next planet. Next take. Next month. Begged her to hold out just a bit longer, and took it for granted that she would. His fingers clumsy as he tries to tighten the seals, and promised he'd never take her for granted again if he made it out of this still breathing.

As he falls heavily on the crank and her heart begins to beat again, and warmth and light and colour returns to her world just as his life continues to slip out of his through the hole in his side, he promises. Promises to listen next time. Before it gets this far. Before it gets this bad. Promises to never take her for granted again. Mal trusts Serenity with his life, just as she trusts him with hers. And if that trust is misplaced, well... That's something they'll just both have to work on. Work through. Work around. There'll be plenty of time later to sort through his unrealistic expectations and strike some kind of bargain.

As the deckplates rush up to meet him, he pushes the hurt away again one last time, and clings to his child-like belief in the damsel he once rescued from distress, as she rocks him to sleep again.