FicWad

Title: Lost in the Woods
Author: seldra
Fandoms: House M.D., Firefly
Pairings: Mal/Chase (explicit), with hints of Kaylee/Cameron and Foreman/Inara
Rating: NC-17
Disclaimer: House belongs to David Shore, Firefly belongs to Joss Whedon, and nothing belongs to me :(
Notes: Takes place pre-series in the Firefly universe and in the House universe anytime before "Insensitive," there are no spoilers for anything.



The three doctors didn't know how they had travelled half way across the galaxy and several hundred years into the future. How they had been transported from their office in Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital to the Firefly-class starship Serenity was anyone's guess.

It had all started as a normal day at work, with Cameron, Chase and Foreman arriving on time to find that their taciturn boss, Doctor House had not yet bothered to show up. The three young doctors sat in the office, the blond Australian Robert Chase scratching away at a crossword puzzle, while Allison Cameron poked nosily through their boss's mail and Eric Foreman sat in silent thought, a permanent expression of exasperation etched on his face from having to deal with House on a daily basis.

And then the walls had begun shaking, a bright light had engulfed them, and there they were, onboard a Firefly-class starship with a ragtag crew of outlaws flying along in the dead of space where people knew of planet Earth only in ancient legends and everyone spoke a mixture of English and Mandarin.

They had arrived in the ship's cargo hold. Chase had begun to chew on his pencil out of habit, Cameron hugged her arms tightly around her body and shivered, and Foreman just shook his head in mute disbelief.

There weren't any portals in the cargo hold and so they didn't realize they were in a spaceship, hurtling millions of light-years through intergalactic quadrants of space. But Chase was the first to guess it.

"Alien abduction!" he said, snapping his fingers.

Cameron and Foreman both came out of their stupor to glare at him. "It's not an alien abduction," Foreman said matter-of-factly. "I don't know what it /is/, but there has got to be a logical explanation - "

"A logical explanation for disappearing from our office and winding up - here?"Cameron asked, craning her neck and surveying their surroundings. It was a wide and spacious hold, with metal platforms, ladders and a set of stairs leading up to other, hidden compartments.

There was a man on the stairs. He was tall, and rather handsome, wearing a long brown duster with a leather holster fastened to his side. The man stopped when he saw them and stared.

"You're three doctors," he said, staring at their identical crisp white lab coats. "What the hell are three doctors doing on my ship?"






Captain Malcolm Reynolds wondered why it could never just be an easy, straight forwards job. Now he had three young doctors appear out of thin air on his ship, and there was nothing easy or straight forwards about a thing like that.

"/Ta ma de/..." he cursed under his breath and drew his gun. "Don't move," the three doctors stood still, eyeing each other worriedly and slowly raised their hands. He continued down the stairs and hit the button for the intercom. "Zoë, Jayne, get down here,” he ordered, “we’ve got stowaways.”

Mal looked back at them, and scowled. “Jen dao mei!”

He took a moment to study the unexpected guests. The girl was really a pretty young thing, with shiny brown hair tied back and a small heart-shaped face. The two men with her were on the young side as well, especially the blond who was equally pretty, with wavy golden hair, pink lips, and wide blue eyes.

The other man, who seemed the most collected of the bunch, said “listen, we don’t want any trouble, we just – ”

“Broke into my boat,” Mal interrupted. “That puts you three in a whole heap of trouble, far as I’m concerned.”

“We – we didn’t mean to,” the girl said.

“Right,” he said. “And I’m the king of Londinum.”

“Trouble, sir?” asked Zoë, coming down the stairs, her gun clutched in front of her.

Jayne came after her, looking ready for a fight, which Jayne always did.

Mal crossed the hold, standing next to the stowaways. “I’m Captain Malcolm Reynolds, and this here’s my first mate, Zoë, and the really ticked off man with the gun, that’s Jayne. Now you are going to give me three very good reasons why I should not let Jayne throw you out the airlock or that is exactly what I’m gonna do.”

A moment passed.

The blond doctor said: “…airlock…?”

“Yeah, you know, the thing that will jettison you into space if I think you’re Alliance feds.”

“Sir, you can’t murder three Alliance feds,” Zoë whispered in his ear.

“Nah, I can scare ‘em, though,” he whispered back.

“You know what’s real scary?” said Jayne. “Pain. So let’s say we ditch this yappin’ and teach these gorram idiots not to mess with our ship.”

Mal chose to ignore him, and turned back to the stowaways. “Now how is it a group of smartly dressed Alliance-educated rich kids like yourselves don’t know what an airlock is? Cause that just don’t seem right. And if you’re trying to play dumb with me, then I really gotta ask you something, son: /Nee TZAO ss-MA? Nee-YOW wuh-KAI CHANG?/”

The blond doctor just stared back at him blankly for several seconds.

Meanwhile, the rest of the crew – their pilot and Zoë’s husband, Wash, the fine lady Inara, a companion, or whore as Mal liked to put it, and their eternally cheerful mechanic, Kaylee – had appeared in the cargo hold.

He tightened his grip on his gun. He wasn’t actually planning on shooting any of them. Yet. But it never hurt to be on the safe side. “/Well?/”

“Well, I’m sorry,” the blond doctor said, “but I don’t speak Chinese.”

There was something like a collective gasp from the crew. Even Mal faltered. “/What?/”

“Mal, there’s something about these people,” Inara said, floating down the stairs with her easy grace, her long silk robes of crimson and violet floating out in the air behind her.

She touched the young man’s shoulder gently. “You don’t belong here, do you?”

“I think they’re awful cute,” said Kaylee, beaming her usual 1000 watt smile and skipping down to them. “Come on, Captain you wouldn’t throw out these poor folks, would you?”

“Kaylee, what have I told you about being cheerful when I’m trying to be all manly and glowersome?”

“You said no power in the ‘verse could stop me so you might as well quit tryin’,” she replied brightly, turning back to their guests/prisoners. “Now then, my name’s Kaylee, and this here’s Inara. Welcome to /Serenity/.”






After introductions and cursory explanations had been made it was a bit harder to convince the captain they weren’t escaped mental patients. – “I’m not running a mobile therapy office and I’m thinkin they need a very special kinda help that I ain’t exactly qualified to give ‘em!” he said to Inara when she tried to convince him to let them stay.

In turn, it was difficult for the three doctors from Earth-that-was to believe that they were on a spaceship travelling in the far reaches of the universe. However, upon being taken up to the bridge, where they could see the universe stretched out before them, the rich blackness of space, scattered with the lights of small hard stars, they eventually had to admit that it was the truth.






Mal had no choice but to drag them along on the crew’s latest job.

“Are you sure you want to do this now?” Wash asked, setting the co-ordinates for Whitefall, a small moon on the Rim. “I mean we are sort of preoccupied, what with mysteriously appearing doctors from the past and all.”

“Just set the course, Wash. We need all the work we can get, more if we got three extra mouths to feed.”

“Ah, so I take it you’re not throwing them out the airlock then? That was a nice speech, though…very Jayne.”

Mal gave him a sour look. “Just take us in, Wash.”

They had a job smuggling goods for a lady by the name of Patience, a white-haired old crone who was mean as anything and never spent a coin she didn’t need to. Things went sour, and it came down to a dozen armed men firing on the crew of Serenity after forcing their way in through the hatch.

One of the gunmen grabbed Cameron, screaming all manner of curses and holding a gun to her head. Mal shot him in the face without even blinking, splattered the back of his brains all out across /Serenity/’s polished floor, while an unharmed Cameron collapsed.

“Easy as lyin’” Mal breathed.

“That was my best man,” snarled Patience. She shot him in the arm.






“It’s just so violent here,” said Cameron. She sat in the engine room with Kaylee, because the engine room was Kaylee’s domain. It was quiet except for the ever-present whirr and buzz of the great machines and she could avoid Jayne’s lewd gazes.

“It ain’t so bad,” Kaylee told her, smiling as brightly as always despite the fact that they’d been getting shot at only a few short hours ago. She had a streak of grease running down the side of her face that was quite endearing. “The Captain takes care of us. He wouldn’t let anything bad happen,” she said with absolute certainty.

“It’s just — ” Cameron stopped, she brought her knees up to her chest and buried her face in her hands. “Do you live this way? With this danger? All the time?”

“Well…” Kaylee plopped down on the engine room floor opposite Cameron. She bit her lip, hating to see someone as pretty as Doctor Cameron so sad. Cameron reminded her of the graceful, alluring Inara, someone she had always secretly wished to emulate despite her oil-smeared jumpsuit.

“Why don’t you tell me what it’s like back on Earth of old?” she asked after a moment. “That’s gotta be somethin’ else!”

It worked, and in a matter of moments Cameron was talking animatedly about her job at the hospital, even confiding in Kaylee in a sort of blushing school-girl way her unrequited crush on her boss. Time flew by and they got to playing Chinese checkers, and Cameron didn’t mind that Kaylee occasionally rested her hand on her knee.

“So what were you doing when I interrupted?” Cameron eventually asked. Her gaze travelled to the overwhelming engines and messes of wire and opened tool kits scattered the filled the room. Despite all this, the engine room had a warm glow, a comforting atmosphere, and if room’s could have a personality, then the engine room’s would have been very much like Kaylee’s.

“Oh, I was just tryin’ to patch up the compression coil for the steamer – we really need to get a new one,” Kaylee laughed, a bit nervously.

Cameron smiled, a beautiful smile, even though it was clear she didn’t understand. Still, so beautiful…On impulse, Kaylee grabbed her hand. “Come on,” she said, “I’ve been wanting to paint somethin’ around the kitchen area, flowers maybe, you know, brighten everything up a bit. Wanna help?”

Cameron nodded. “Sure,” she said, her eyes on Kaylee, sparkling and blue, bright with unshed tears but lit with promises – promises for things Kaylee hardly dared to imagine.

They kissed slowly, their lips soft and sweet tasting. Kaylee couldn’t believe how soft Cameron’s hair was as she buried her hands in it. /Serenity/’s engines whirred in the background, and Cameron’s smooth hands held the sides of her face gently as the kiss deepened.

When they parted, Cameron blushed and look away. “I’m sorry – I don’t know what – I’ve never – ”

“Oh,” said Kaylee, trying to keep the disappointment out of her voice. “That’s alright. C’mon, let’s go do some painting.” She reached out and took Cameron’s hand again, and the pretty young doctor didn’t try to resist, in fact Kaylee felt her hold onto her tightly, like she was a lifeline.

“I’d like it,” said Cameron. “If we could be friends.”

Kaylee’s smile was beatific. “Of course!”






“Do you want to stay here?” Inara asked. She sat with Foreman in the kitchen.

He thought for a moment before nodding. “Yes – ” he said. “I won’t try to say that we don’t need help. We’re – ” he paused, searching for the right word. “—lost.”

She smiled gently. “Lost in the woods,” she whispered, nodding sagely. “Like us.” She gave him a sympathetic look. “Would you come to my shuttle?” she asked, “it’s nice to have someone to talk to…the captain is rather tight lipped at times.”

Foreman nodded. “You mean when he’s not threatening to kill people?”

“Mal is a complicated man,” Inara said. She felt weary, as though she should be more willing to defend the captain, but his seemingly wilful obliviousness to her feelings for him, and the habit he had developed over the past six months of referring to her as whore, were beginning to grate on her nerves. Doctor Foreman, at least, seemed like a man capable of carrying on an intelligent conversation. He also seemed like the sort of man you could go out with and not have to worry that he would start a brawl by robbing, insulting, or punching a random stranger.

“Please, won’t you join me for tea in my craft?”

At first he seemed surprised by the luxury of her living accommodations, but they gradually started conversation, and it was not long before she had described her occupation to the doctor.

“And you actually like this?” he asked her. He leaned forwards a little in his seat, hands clasped in front of him attentively. His gaze was on her, completely solid, like she was the entire world. Even a companion, highly respected as she was, was not used to a gaze quite like that.

She almost found herself blushing, which was not something Inara had done for a long time. She lowered her eyes demurely. “Of course…I can not believe you have no knowledge of companions on your world. It is a highly respected and not a bit envied position. My presence aboard /Serenity/, for example, allows the captain to dock at ports that would otherwise be more….wary of a man like Malcolm Reynolds.”

“I don’t mean to disrespect you, or your position in this world,” he said, and she noticed his eyes wandering over the extravagant oriental furnishings of her shuttle: the brightly coloured drapes and curtains, the silk cushions, the porcelain tea sets and incense. He also seemed to be thinking very hard about what he wished to say to her, and so she waited with the calm patience of one skilled in the arts of judging and complimenting an individual’s behaviour.

“I just don’t see how you can be very happy,” he said finally, meeting her gaze again. “I mean, can you really be comfortable – living that way from day to day – from man to man?”

“You’re as bad as Mal is,” she said softly, standing and wrapping a long silk robe of red and gold around her. “You see me as nothing more than a whore. I am sorry to disappoint you, Doctor Foreman, but I am a business woman, and a gentlewoman. Now if you will kindly excuse me…”

She maintained a light, almost musical tone. But she knew that she could not hide all of the anger, entirely, from her voice. The doctor looked at her for a moment with genuine regret. He seemed about to say something else, from the look in his deep brown eyes she thought it might be an apology, but then he stopped, as though at a loss, and merely turned away from her.

“This is a strange place,” he said. “Lost in the woods, huh?”

“It’s more about…compatibility of /spirit/,” she said softly. She didn’t know herself why she was trying so hard to bridge the gap between them, but it was something she wanted very much to do. To make him understand, and she saw him studying her intently, and knew that he was willing to try.






Foreman watched her ruby lips part into a smile.

“The joining of kindred souls is a beautiful moment. A sacred rite,” she told him.

It was hard to argue with that, especially when it was woman – a lady – as gorgeous as Inara saying it. She took his hands in hers, caressing them softly and any words he had been about to say died on his lips. He was mesmerized by the warm depths of her eyes, the perfect blending of intelligence and sensuality he saw within them.

“I still can’t believe this all isn’t some sort of crazy dream,” he said at last.

He watched the flow of her dark curls over her bare shoulders. She had the mystery and the calm air of authority of queens out of legend. Cleopatra and Helen of Troy both sprang to mind.

Smiling, she said to him: “we are lost out here in the woods, Doctor Foreman, but at least we are lost together.”

Her kiss tasted of wine and spices, her skin felt incredibly smooth and warm beneath his fingers, and the smell of her exotic perfume filled his mind.






Meanwhile, Mal had decided the safest and easiest course of action would be simply to drop the doctors off at the next terra-formed world they past. They could find honest work, or hail a passing Alliance cruiser for assistance, whatever, it would be out of his hands. He ran the idea by Inara, something he did often, though he wasn’t exactly sure why. She was in her shuttle, with Kaylee. The two women were blushing and giggling about something, but he decided it would be safer not to ask what.

They turned out to be angry enough with him, as it was.

“You know they don’t belong on Persephone, Mal,” said Inara. “What will they do?”

“That ain’t really my concern now, is it?” he retorted, absently picking up and playing with one of her jewelled fans. “A man can find plenty of honest work there.”

She treated him to a dour expression, snatching the fan back from him. “You can’t just leave them there to die.”

“Die?” he said, looking up in genuine surprise this time. “I never said anything about killing them. And just why are you so keen to make me the bad guy in all this? I didn’t pull them out of the past —”

“So you admit they’re from the past?” she asked.

“No! I don’t know…and so what if they are? I ain’t got room on this boat for three doctors, time displaced or otherwise.”

“But – we could use a doctor on the ship, Captain,” Kaylee said, her wide eyes almost impossible to say no to, “and Allison sure is awful nice.”

Mal sighed. “We don’t need a doctor, little Kaylee. Okay, so a medic might be nice to have around – but not three/. What the hell am I gonna pay them with for God’s sake? We can barely keep /Serenity flying as it is!”

“But they seem so lost and confused,” she persisted, standing toe-to-toe with him, looking up at him imploringly. “Allison says they don’t know anybody. Even if you don’t believe ‘em when they say they’re from the past, maybe they have, I dunno, some kinda amnesia or somethin’."

“Great,” he replied, “amnesiac doctors, now that’s a real useful commodity.”

“C’mon Captain, they ain’t got no one else, the poor things – an – an from what Allison tells me, her an her friends would pro’lly be happy to work for food and board.”

“Yeah? An what happens when there’s not enough food to share? Am I supposed to let you, or Inara, or Wash and Zoë go hungry so we can feed some Alliance spies?”

For a moment, she looked taken aback, and the ever-shining light that was Kaylee dimmed slightly. She looked up at him with dark eyes swollen with tears, and said in a tiny voice: “I don’t think they’re spies, Captain.”

Inara stood defensively behind her, her hands on the girl’s shoulders, looking at Mal like he’d just kicked a puppy.

He scowled and turned from the shuttle, angry because he couldn’t help thinking, in the bottom of his soul, that he believed they were right.







Chase and Foreman sat in the kitchen. They’d left Cameron, asleep in one of the bunks Kaylee had told them they could use, but neither of the men felt very much like sleeping. They’d been discussing their recent remarkable predicament, and the people they were being made to endure it with, most particularly Captain Reynolds.

“I like him,” said Chase.

Foreman’s right eyebrow peaked quizzically. “You like him? The man’s psychotic. He’s a criminal – he killed a man in front of you.”

“He saved Cameron’s life,” Chase replied, shrugging. “And he seems to be a man of honour – I guess – ”

“No I ain’t,” came a voice from the doorway, both doctors turned to look at the captain in surprise. He leaned against the door frame, looking haggard and exhausted. “I’m a bad man, and you folks are gettin’ off my boat just as soon as –”

“Well, come on, you can’t –” Chase began, glancing at Foreman, “we keep telling you we’re not from around here. We might never get back – we might be —” he floundered.

Foreman took over, after giving Chase a tired look and shaking his head. “We don’t know the rules here,” he told Mal reasonably, “all we want is –”

“Is a free ride,” the captain snorted, “an’ it ain’t gonna happen.” He turned his attention to Chase. “Now you listen to me, son, you don’t know me too well, so I’m inclined to be a might charitable, but don’t you tell me what I can and can’t do on my ship. It just so happens, the three of you are more trouble than you’re worth an’ I’m mighty close to tossing you out the airlock well before we reach the next terra-formed world if you cross me.”

The captain’s irritation was more than evident. Chase paled. “Listen, you all just do what I say, and I’ll see to it that you’re dropped off at the nearest civilized world, where I’m sure you’ll be able to call on some of your rich Alliance buddies for help – after me and mine are back in the sky, of course.”

Chase and Foreman exchanged a long glance with pained expressions the captain plainly had no desire to understand. “I’ve got enough problems of my own,” he muttered, “without adding yours.”






So it was with the not so joyous prospect of being abandoned on an alien world hanging over their heads that House’s team spent their night. Chase hadn’t really been in favour of sleeping in separate rooms. But Cameron was already asleep, and Foreman was his usual stoic self, handling the whole oh-my-God-we’ve-been-abducted-by-space-cowboys thing frighteningly well, so Chase kept his distress to himself. Lying in his bunk that night, though, he couldn’t help thinking: I knew/ we weren’t alone in the universe…although now I sort of wish I wasn’t./

Eventually, he had to give up the thought, roll over and go to sleep, praying that things would make more sense when he woke up. Which he had to admit, wasn’t very likely.

He woke up and there was still a field of stars outside his window, which was as disconcerting as it was cool. There was no day or night, he reminded himself. He put his lab coat back on, he wasn’t sure why, but it was something familiar in an unfamiliar reality. When he got to the kitchen, he saw that Foreman and Cameron had done the same. Cameron’s eyes were red and puffy, like she had been crying, but Foreman looked rather unperturbed and was speaking to her in a low whisper.

They sat at a long wooden table with Serenity’s crew, all sitting in mismatched chairs. It was all very homey, or Chase imagined that it was, since his own family growing up had been – well, drunk and absent were the two words that sprang immediately to mind.

He took a seat beside Cameron.

“So anyway,” Wash was saying, “this guy really liked juggling the geese, right? I know, I know, but it’s true – baby geese, goslings! So anyway, I said – ”

Chase noticed the captain studying them intently, and not participating in the crew’s banter. He turned his attention nervously to the food, but couldn’t help noticing the encouraging smile Kaylee beamed at them from across the table. It would have made snowmen melt.

“Don’t worry, guys,” she said. “The captain’s real nice once you get to know him.”

Foreman muttered a sarcastic “yeah, right,” under his breath, but Chase smiled back and had already decided to believe her.





Mal never made it a point to make a big speech about accepting them as part of /Serenity/’s crew, but when he failed to kick them off at Persephone everyone realized that this was indeed the case. He never tried to rationalize it to the others, because it was a decision he couldn’t rationalize for himself. Sure, he could say that they didn’t appear to be entirely useless: Chase had stitched him up after Patience had shot him, Foreman had turned out to have decent break-and-entering skills that came in useful pulling a couple of side-jobs on Persephone, and Cameron had managed to charm Badger into giving them a job he’d been holding for somebody else, but still all of that wasn’t it.

And of course, it had nothing to do with his fancy for a certain blond-haired blue-eyed doctor. No, he decided it was best not to contemplate /that/. The cargo was loaded and there was smuggling to be done. He made his way to the bridge.

“Alright, we got a job to do, is Inara’s shuttle back yet?”

“Inara never left, Captain,” Wash informed him.

Mal frowned. “Well that’s odd, isn’t it?” he asked, knowing the companion saw many clients regularly on Persephone. He shrugged it off. “Easier for us then, take us off world.”

Wash flicked a series of switches on the control panel. “Aye, aye, Captain.”

Truth be told, he’d seen the looks she’d been giving Foreman, and how she liked to draw him away to her shuttle under the pretext of talking about art, or music, or having deep philosophical discussions about the differences between their two realities, but he had no doubt they were screwing like rabbits. And even though he was normally mighty jealous of Inara’s liaisons with clients, this time he just couldn’t be bothered getting riled about it. Maybe it was because Foreman actually seemed to respect Inara, which was what to his mind mattered most, and they were friendly. Maybe it was because he hadn’t been thinking about Inara much lately at all. Lately, he’d been pestered at night by visions of tousled blond hair and his imaginings of what a certain Robert Chase would look like flushed, and naked and wanting him in his bed.

Of course, he didn’t know what Chase would think about that, but then it wasn’t as though Mal had any intention of acting on his fantasies. He had a strict policy against sleeping with the crew, it made things complicated. He gave himself a hundred reasons to forget about Robert Chase, beginning with ‘I thought you preferred the lady-folk, anyways,’ but ending with ‘but it has surely been a long time…’





“Kaylee’s right about you,” Chase said. He was standing a little ways behind the pilot seat.

They were the only ones on the bridge, Wash had retired for some well deserved rest with Zoë and, Kaylee was in the engine room – probably with Cameron … Mal let his thoughts wander to the rest of his crew, because the rest of his crew was a lot easier to deal with at the moment.

Chase just stood there until he sighed with resignation and gestured for him to come in – not that there was a whole lot of room on the bridge. There was one co-pilot chair that they never actually used beside him, and Chase sat in that.

The blond looked at Wash’s toy dinosaurs scattered all over the controls for a moment, a faint smile on his lips, and then slowly, slowly let his gaze drift up to the stars, the depths of space, all laid out before them for eternity. “I can’t believe I’m really in a spaceship,” he said very quietly.

Mal flicked some dials that didn’t do anything, just for something to do, and for an excuse to quit staring at the pretty young doctor like he was the last soul in the ‘verse. “Don’t see what’s so hard to believe about that,” he said. “’specially for rich-lookin’ folk like you. Coulda come up into my space anytime you liked to.”

“No…” Chase said slowly, shaking his head. “We keep trying to explain to you – our world – the place where we’re from, we don’t have this kind of thing,” he paused, “and I’m not rich.”

“And I keep trying to explain to you that I just don’t believe you,” Mal replied, sitting back in his chair and swivelling it around so he was face-to-face with the young man. “Now, I ain’t callin’ you a liar – well, I am actually – but the point is, I don’t care about that anymore. If you were with the Alliance, or you weren’t – as far as I can see it, you’re all good hardworkin’ people and you deserve a chance, so I ain’t gonna prod into your pasts for reasons and such – that don’t concern me. Maybe the three of you are more than a little odd – but you’re not weak, son and you don’t seem too cowardly. I think you might have a place here, all three of you, if you want it.”

He swallowed. He didn’t know why. Chase also, had a strange, sad expression. As though he were oddly moved by the captain’s speech. “Now – I expect the lot of you to work,” he added, gesturing to the controls, “don’t need three doctors, Cameron seems to have taken an interest in Kaylee’s work, and Wash could use a co-pilot, maybe. I’m sure you could learn –”

“You are a good man,” Chase interrupted him. The look in his eyes was so honest, so yearning, Mal almost choked.

He told himself he didn’t want to have to deal with any embarrassing idealistic crushes later, so he told him the truth, flat out: “No, no I’m not. I’m a bad man – a mean – bad – man.”

Even as he said it, he could tell Chase didn’t believe him.







“You’ve been avoiding me,” Chase said.

Mal wasn’t entirely sure how this had happened, but he gave the young man one of his best don’t-cross-me glares. Even Zoë backed down a little under those glares, and she was the strongest person he knew. Chase, he was relieved to see, actually backed up several feet. “It’s hard to avoid someone when he’s cornered me in the hallway, blocking the hatch to my bunk.”

“It doesn’t have to be this way,” Chase said, blue eyes staring back at him defiantly. “You know we could – ”

“Nope,” said Mal, kicking open the hatch that led down to his room.







Cameron was on her way to Kaylee’s room when Chase interrupted her. “Hey,” he said.

“Hey,” she wasn’t wearing her lab coat anymore, it seemed a bit silly, after all, but Chase was still clinging to his like a security blanket.

“Are you spending time with Kaylee again?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said cautiously. “Why? We’re just…hanging out, you know — ”

“I was just wondering where you’ve been all the time,” Chase shrugged, “no need to get defensive – Foreman and I hardly seem to see you around, that’s all. And it’s not like /Serenity/’s a big place.”

“Well I haven’t seen much of Foreman lately,” she replied. “Why? Did you want something?”

“No, I just – we could have coffee together, or something — ”

“Oh right, we’ll just pop off to the nearest Starbucks,” she laughed.

“I meant in the kitchen,”

“Why?”

“What do you mean ‘why,’ it’s just coffee,” Chase said. She had to hand it to him, he actually did look genuinely confused.

“Sorry,” she smiled, “I promised Kaylee…she’s teaching me some Mandarin, you know.” She raised a hand to wave before he could say anything more. “See later, Chase.”

And left him standing in the hallway.







He couldn’t say what finally changed his mind in regards to Chase. At first he thought that the dreams, the quite unbidden fantasies that liked to sneak up on him in his bunk, had gotten to be too much. But he knew it wasn’t that, Mal was an expert on self-repression. He did what was best for his crew. And maybe that was it; the longer they stayed on board, the more Mal observed the young doctor, the more he got to thinking that perhaps keeping his distance was, in this case, doing more harm than good.

It was hot on board /Serenity/. He felt a thin line of sweat roll down the centre of his back as he knocked on the doctor’s door. He did his best to ignore it.

“Come in,” Chase said. He was obviously surprised to see him. Mal took a moment to quietly observe the young man who was sitting alone on the edge of his bed, scrolling through one of Inara’s encyclopaedias. His long golden bangs fell just over his eyes when he tilted his head down. He also looked thoroughly miserable. Lonely, and miserable.

“So, Doctor Chase I see you’re awful good at alienating people. You don’t even have your own colleagues for company.”

He didn’t know why he said it, but the depth of hurt in the eyes that looked up at him from under those golden bangs made him wish he hadn’t. He seemed to have hit a nerve. “Listen, you shouldn’t be sitting around here anyways, it’s Wash’s turn to cook dinner, but you could make yourself useful and help him.”

“Sure,” Chase said, putting down the electronic encyclopaedia and standing. “Fine. I’ll do that, then.”

“Tell me something, son,” Mal said, grabbing his arm. “Why exactly is it — ”

He cut off. Chase was so close to him now: those pink lips, the wide eyes, fair skin… He knew the doctor could feel it too. He heard both their hearts pounding, the sound of their breath, their eyes locked on one another…

And then Chase closed the space between them and pressed his lips to Mal’s. The kiss was tentative, sweet, but too brief, too light. Mal wanted too… God, he swallowed, trying not to think about all the things he wanted to do to Chase right then and there. He could feel himself growing hard. Chase bit hit lip nervously.

“/Swai/,” he said in a low, growl of a voice, pulling him closer into a proper kiss this time. He buried his hands in the thick blond hair, holding Chase firmly in place against him, sucking and biting his lips. Chase’s body twisted and writhed against his chest and he gasped a little when Mal released him.

Mal was also breathing heavily. Staring at him. Not sure what to do. Chase’s eyes were pleading, though. He pulled him into another kiss, this time allowing his hands to roam down the doctor’s back, combing the length of his slender body and squeezing his bottom. With a groan of pleasure, Chase nuzzled his neck, his slender fingers tugging Mal’s shirt loose and sliding beneath it.

“No,” he gasped, untangling Chase’s arms from around himself and pushing him away as gently as he could. “I shouldn’t do this, it’s not right, you’re on my crew – ” he paused for breath, trying to ignore how hurt the younger man looked. “You’re young – I ought to be looking out for you, not —”

Chase grabbed him by the shoulders and brought their mouths together in a bruising, furious kiss, their mouths meeting so hard their teeth clacked together painfully and Mal winced, trying to push Chase away, but the doctor went after him with such energy he pushed them both backwards and Mal nearly fell flat on his back. Stumbling, he hit the wall of Chase’s cabin and wrapped his arms around the blond’s waist as tightly as he could.

“You sure you wanna do this?” he muttered in his ear, but it seemed kind of pointless as Chase was nipping and licking at his throat and grinding their bodies together, nearly driving Mal mad with desire. He ran a hand through the wavy hair again, clenching a deep handful of it and giving a little pull, until Chase whimpered and stopped for a second. “You gotta tell me,” he growled, “now, if you really want this.”

He heard Chase swallow, and his breathing, he trembled against him. “Yes,” he murmured, unbuttoning Mal’s shirt. He didn’t seem inclined to say anything else, which was fine with the captain, who wasted no time stripping him of shirt and pants and pushing him back onto the bed.

“Are you…going to fuck me?” Chase asked, as Mal traced wet kisses down his chest and peeled his boxers off around his erection.

“That was the general idea, yeah,” Mal replied, brushing his cock, just lightly at first, with the tips of his fingers, teasing, just to see the blond doctor squirm and beg for more. Mal leaned over him pinning his arms above his head and breathing hot air against his throat and ear, kissing, whispering: “Is there any reason, in particular, you’re so eager to please me?”

Chase moaned and kissed his neck and his jaw murmuring something utterly unintelligible except for “…want you…” Mal kissed him full on the mouth before leaning back to pull of his belt and pants. He reached for his duster, where it had fallen in a crumpled heap on the floor and extracted a thin vial of lubrication from one of the pockets.

This was not missed by Chase, who grinned wickedly and said, “you planned this. I knew it.” His eyebrows arched in amusement like he was clearly enjoying himself. Mal smirked and climbed back on top of him, exploring every inch of that smooth, soft skin beneath him.

Mal slid one lube-coated finger inside him and Chase gasped and arched beneath his touch, breathing deeply as he pressed inside of him and stretched him with the fingers of one hand while the other roamed up and down the cool skin of his inner thigh. Mal was burning and on fire, and knew that he had to take Chase then.

Chase was smiling up at him, his head tilted back, flushed and dishevelled and beautiful. His eyes dark with lust. Mal’s touch was so warm and just a bit rough. He never wanted the friction to stop. The captain’s hands grabbed hold of his hips firmly, pinching and enjoying Chase’s desperate little gasps and cries.

“Should have brought you on my ship a lot sooner…”

“You – didn’t – remember?”

“Hush,” said Mal in a deep voice, “now ain’t the time to be contradicting your captain.”

“Mmmm,” Chase purred and groaned as Mal slid inside of him completely. And being inside Chase – so tight and hot – nearly drove Mal over the edge. He held onto him tightly as he began moving, pulling out and thrusting into him again and again.

Chase cried and gasped and his nails dug sharply into his shoulders and raked down his back in burning lines, making him drive into Chase harder, faster and Chase screamed and groaned and made incredible sounds beneath him, his bangs plastered to his forehead with sweat, his hands digging into the bed sheets beneath him. Mal reached for Chase’s cock then and took it in one hand, working it as he continued to thrust inside of him.

They both came, and Mal collapsed on the narrow bed beside Chase, wrapping his arms around the younger man as the blond fell against him, his breath coming in sharp gasps like sobs, and shuddering. Mal ran his fingers through the boy’s sweat-drenched hair and stared at the ceiling.

“That was good,” he said after a long minute.

Chase mumbled something that sounded affirmative against his neck. He was heavy lying that way against him, and falling asleep. Mal didn’t mind. He just hoped the others wouldn’t come looking for them when they missed dinner.




The days went by, stretching into weeks. They delivered the smuggled goods on a Border planet and picked up a herd of cattle, those came and went, there were other brawls in taverns and gunfights in the plains. Mal somehow got a dagger flung deep in his shoulder and Chase repaired the wound. The captain couldn’t help noticing how inordinately pleased the blond seemed when he thanked him and told him he was doing good work.

That night Mal held Chase beneath him and covered him with relentless kisses. He wanted to tell him how special he was, but he couldn’t find the words. He tried to put the words into the kisses, the caresses, the touches that made them both gasp and moan and cry out. Chase seemed to understand and wrapped himself around him tightly as they both fell asleep.







The weeks went on. The team dealt with the possibility they might never get back to their own world.

“You miss /House/?” Foreman asked in disbelief.

Cameron frowned, her hands clasped around the mug of something made from water and one of the packets contained in the cupboards of /Serenity/’s kitchen. “Of course I miss him. I mean, everyone here is really nice. But I miss Princeton-Plainsboro. I miss the patients. Sometimes,” she said, looking down at the steaming contents of her mug sadly, “I can’t help thinking about him. I wonder what he thinks happened to us. I wonder if he’s worried, or…”

Foreman snorted. “House? Come on. If he was at all upset it would have been because he had to give interviews for a new staff.”

“A new team? I never thought about… Do you think they’d do that?” she asked.

“We’ve been missing for what? Two months now? Yeah, I think they’d do that,” Foreman said. “People don’t stop getting sick just because three doctors got abducted by a U.F.O.”

Cameron sighed. “You really don’t miss House at all?”

“No,” Foreman replied decidedly. “I miss my parents. I miss my family and friends. Maybe I miss the hospital, and the patients, and my regular life. But one thing I definitely do not miss is that arrogant, self-aggrandizing jerk.”

“Ah, you talkin’ about me in here?” Mal asked, striding over the kitchen floor and rifling through the cupboards.

“No,” Cameron answered, turning in her seat to look at him, “our old boss.”

Mal pulled a mug out of the cupboard and pulled open a packet of nutrition drink. “The infamous Doctor House, I take it?”

Cameron and Foreman exchanged a glance.

Mal shrugged. “Chase might have mentioned him once or twice.”

Cameron and Foreman exchanged a second glance, this time silently wondering exactly how close Chase and the captain had gotten. Chase had never been very forthcoming with the details about his personal life, and they really knew very little about him, so despite their curiosity, they didn’t ask.







It was three months and one week after they had found themselves transported to Serenity that House’s team found themselves transported back. It was just as quick, just as unexpected. They had been sitting at the kitchen table with the crew, which they were technically part of, by that point, laughing about one of Wash’s anecdotes (something about shadow puppets), when the walls of Serenity started shaking, except that they weren’t, not to anyone else. There was a bright light, filling everything.

The captain seemed to realize what was happening, because he stood up so fast he knocked his chair over, shouting something, and Chase had time to look back at him, before they vanished as easily as if they had never been there.

They appeared back in their office. Their clothes were rumpled and dirty, and none of them had enjoyed a proper shower in a long time, but in their world no time had changed. They were sitting in their chairs. Chase had a newspaper crossword spread out on the table beneath his hands. Cameron was holding onto a stack of House’s mail, and Foreman was staring at the clock, which was at exactly the same position…

He exhaled loudly. “This…” and stopped, looking from Cameron to Chase.

They all met each other’s gazes shakily. No one wanted to say anything. They were all quite pale.

Finally Cameron said one word: “/Serenity/.”

They all nodded.

“What was…” Foreman trailed off again. He couldn’t seem to be able to finish any of his sentences. He was in despair. His shoulders dropped.

Cameron looked like she was going to cry.

Chase stood up and walked away, shaking. He wondered if the memories would fade with time. (They wouldn’t.) It still felt too real. He ran a hand through his hair, and walked through the corridors of Princeton-Plainsboro. It was strange to be alone.





House arrived around noon, to learn with bemusement that every one of his ducklings had taken a sick day.






END.