Title: Poke or A Short, Utterly Spoilerific Serenity Fic.

Thursday evening, probably. The Kitchen.

Poke.

Poke.

‘Stop that!’ Mal spun round. Jayne had the decency to look ashamed, but poked him in the small of the back again anyway as soon as he turned back to the kitchen counter.

‘But Cap’n,’ Kaylee said sweetly, ‘you never said.’

‘You never asked,’ said Mal. ‘And anyhow, it ain’t fair using a man’s glorious tale of heroic battle and triumph over evil as an excuse to poke him in the back all day long!’

‘How d’you know you’re bein’ poked if you got no feeling there?’ Jayne gave Mal his cunningest look.

‘You keep missing,’ Mal growled.

Poke.

‘Hey! Ow!’ Mal spun round again. ‘Nails, Inara!’

‘Oh. Sorry,’ she said. Mal didn’t think she looked very sorry.

‘I gotta go… Captain. You all stay here,’ Mal said, and backed out, bumping into Zoe on the way.

‘Hey, Zoe,’ Jayne said, ‘You know about this numb spot of the Captain’s?’

‘Sure I did,’ said Zoe.

‘And you didn’t think to tell us?’ Jayne demanded, looking genuinely hurt.

‘Where’d the fun be in everyone knowing? Anyway, I’m not gonna train you all to find it. Not a one of you’d be as good at it as my man.’ There was a pause.

‘Wash knew?’ It was Inara who finally asked.

‘My baby was the master of Captain-poking,’ Zoe said, tilting her chin proudly. ‘Mal never felt a thing. You’re all just pale imitators.’

‘But, we wanna learn!’ said Jayne eagerly.

‘No,’ Zoe said, giving them all and-that’s-my-last-word-on-the-subject looks.

Friday morning, possibly. The Infirmary.

‘Graaaaaahhh!’

Simon jumped, dropping half a tray of needles across the floor. What the hell…?

His question was answered when Mal stormed past the window. He had clearly just got out of his bunk – he was wearing only a pair of trousers, and his hair was standing up on end. Peering after him, Simon had to bite his tongue to stop himself bursting into laughter. On the right side of Mal’s back, neatly outlining the place where they had just discovered that Mal had no working nerves, someone had drawn a smiley face in thick black marker. Simon sniggered and turned back to the infirmary, only to drop the last of the needles when he came face to face with River.

‘Shhhh! I’m on the run!’ she said, covering his lips with two fingers of a hand that was holding a thick black marker, and then diving under the bed as Mal stomped back past the infirmary, looking even madder, followed by Jayne and Kaylee who were leaning on each other in fits of near-hysterical laughter.