At Serenity's Beck and Call

Title: Serenity’s Beck and Call
Series: A Carpenter and a Mechanic…
Author: Jinni (jinni@tthfanfic.com)
Rated: FR15
Disclaimer: All things BtVS and Firefly belong to Joss Whedon, et al. Nice how that works out. All hail the mighty Joss.
Prompt: Serenity at joss100
Claim: Kaylee/Xander
Wordcount: 438

~*~*~

She led him through the streets of Persephone, aware and amused that he wasn’t really paying no attention to her or anything else. Her Xander was still all caught up in what that vampire had told him.

Yep.

Kaylee shook her head, as if to clear the cobwebs that had invaded – the ones that were telling her it won’t right to think of vampires in the here and now, like they was real beings. They were supposed to be the stuff of stories. Not people that you met when you were out running errands and spending some downtime waiting for your next job.

Hard to discount it, though, given that she’d met Spike and he was a vampire. He’d done that vampire face thing and it was ten kinds of creepifying.

“You still with me?” she teased playfully, bumping her shoulder into Xander’s. He turned and gave her a half-cocked smile.

“Yeah, sorry.”

”Don’t be,” Kaylee shrugged. “I suppose I’d be a bit addled myself if I found out friends I had hundreds of years ago were still alive. If I had friends from hundreds of years ago, that is.”

The half-smile turned to a full-out smile and Kaylee felt her tummy do that little flutter-thing it always did around Xander. She liked that flutter, she really did.

Just like she really liked Xander.

Which led her to the one worry she’d had since they left Spike’s place.

“You’re still okay with traveling with us, right?” she asked hurriedly. “I mean, now that you know that you have friends out there in the ‘verse somewhere? You do want to go back to Serenity, right?”

He stopped, dead in the middle of the street, mindless of the people that nearly bumped into them both because of it, and tugged her flush against him in a way that sent those fluttery things in her tummy scattering to be replaced by absolute warmth and tinglyness.

“Okay – first of all, I don’t know where any of them are. I mean, I could get Anya to appear if I really wanted to, I’m sure, but that’s beside the point,” he pressed his lips together, looking down at her. “But more importantly, you and Serenity are my home now.”

The warmth turned to a hot rush as Xander pressed his lips gently to her forehead. Kaylee let him snuggle her close to his body for a few long seconds before pulling back, turning before he could see how much his words had meant to her.

“Come on, then – ‘fore the Captain gets mad at us both and we have to find a new home.”

~*~End Ficlet~*~