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Fic: Advances in Thermodynamics (4/6)
Title: Advances in Thermodynamics (4/6)
Fandom: Firefly/Iron Man (movie)
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Tony Stark/Kaylee Frye
Summary: Kaylee is settling in on Osiris.
Necessary explanation: I asked for prompts, and![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
agonistes told me to write Tony/Kaylee. I said 'MWAHAHA' at the time and happily started writing in things designed to make Sweeney twitch, but I think that she officially gets the last laugh, because this is eating my brain alive. Part 1 can be found here, Part 2 here, and Part 3 here.
Two months.
When Kaylee steps into the workshop for the first time, she’s blinded by the sheer size of it; the cathedral ceilings, the half-finished mules and small craft and speeders lying gutted across the racks, the screens scrolling technical readouts, the worktables covered in sensitive parts and the finest equipment she’s ever seen scattered across the entire room. Stark gives her the grand tour. She thinks he gets a kick out of her awe.
He introduces her to the artificial intelligence running the mansion, and he says within five minutes that he regrets it, because Kaylee and Jarvis are talking a mile a minute, about technical specs and embarrassing stories (stories that’d be embarrassing if Tony Stark had anything approaching a sense of shame, anyway). For an A.I., Jarvis has got a pretty okay sense of humor. Kaylee likes him already.
So she gets the house access codes and the grand tour, and she appreciates the fountains and the vidscreens and the ocean view through the bank of windows, but where she really falls in love is the garage.
She gets several workshop tables to call her own. Within a day, they’re hopelessly cluttered, but she knows exactly where everything is; she can pick a catalytic converter out of a pile of joint plugs like it’s nothing. She puts up a couple strings of brightly colored beads that her sister sent; arranges still captures of her family under a paper lantern.
Stark comes and goes, after that first day; she never can tell when he’s going to be in the mansion and when he isn’t. But she always knows, for sure, that he isn’t gonna be in the workshop when she gets in at eight every morning. It’s a little nice. Just Kaylee, Jarvis, the robots, and whatever the day’s project is; squinting at the image projector as she tries to work out the kinks in the airlock’s holding mechanism, taking apart an engine. She puts on music and hums along when the rest of the band kicks in a minute and a half into the song (feels it rattle her ribcage).
She meets a lot of women. It startles her some, the first time she lets herself in the front door and there’s a brunette in the living room wearing a man’s shirt and not much else, but after a while, Kaylee’s an old hand. They’re always confused and looking for their clothes (and Tony), and the presence of a bright-eyed, chipper girl with a Rim accent, walking around in stained coveralls like she owns the place, doesn’t help that none.
Most of ‘em, Kaylee can’t figure what Stark sees in them, besides, well. What he sees. A couple are real sweet, though, especially the one or two she meets more than once. There’s a blonde woman who laughs, after the third time Kaylee finds her in the kitchen, when Kaylee asks hesitantly if she’s seeing Mr. Stark; she says that Tony’s a dear friend, but she couldn’t imagine making things official. Kaylee doesn’t get that, but that doesn’t make Rae any less of a pleasant breakfast companion.
Colonel Rhodes comes by sometimes, usually trying to track down Stark when it’s during the day, or out of uniform and a lot more easy-going at night. Kaylee’s never met an Alliance man before, but she definitely never figured they’d be so – friendly isn’t the right word for what Rhodes is, but kind and generally well-meaning, and pretty warm. He’s a slice of normalcy in long hours spent in a cliff-side techno-mansion, surrounded by all kinds of stuff Kaylee never even knew existed. Mr. Stark may only drink fancy whiskey, but Rhodes can tell her where all the best hole-in-the-wall takeout places are in the city.
As for Mr. Stark himself – he’s erratic and Kaylee sometimes thinks he’s a little crazy, but when you put him in that workshop, there’s no denying he’s an honest-to-God genius. Rhodes may get frustrated trying to get him places, but Kaylee’s never got that problem; he’ll sit in his workshop for hours, trying to get a transmitter to spark just right. He’s a perfectionist, and he’s not bad to work with (besides those days when he’s being a pain and she wants to throw a spanner at his head and be done with it), and he still has a real nice pìgu.
Kaylee doesn’t notice when Mr. Stark becomes Tony.
Eight months.
“Kaylee!” shouts Tony Stark, and he shuts off the welder and ratchets his faceplate up. “Kaylee, where in the guĭ is the—”
“Station array’s on the table,” says Kaylee from behind, setting a mug down on the table and coming up beside. “I’m right here; you don’t gotta yell, you know.”
“I did, in fact, gotta yell, because I didn’t know you were there.” He spins on the stool. “Where have you been? Shirking your duties, taking over the universe?”
“Yep,” says Kaylee cheerfully. “An’ makin’ tea. Brought you one.” She wiggles her mug illustratively. Tony reaches for it and she swats his hand away, sashaying out of reach in stompy boots. “Nope. Yours is on the table.”
“I let you take over one little universe and you grow a sense of entitlement,” he says, groping behind his back along the table and coming up with his mug of green tea.
“Well, how many ‘verses are you queen of?” She rests her free hand on her knee and bends to peer at the exposed circuit hub on the mule. The back of her neck starts to prickle; she stares at the tangle of wires for a moment longer then turns around, but Tony is studying his tea innocently, his eyes nowhere close to her rear.
“At last count, sixteen,” says Tony. “Or maybe seventeen; the jury’s still out on whether the one where I’m a princess counts.” He takes a drink and promptly spits it back out into the mug. “I thought you said this was tea!”
“It is tea!” Kaylee retorts, shooting him an indignant look.
“No, it is equal parts machine oil and sweat.”
“Hey!” She glares at him. “I didn’t let no sweat drip into my tea, Tony Stark; if it’s so lièzhì, I’ll just take it back.” So saying, she makes a grab for it, but he covers the top with his hand and yanks it away.
“It has caffeine; it’s either drink this or pipe it directly into my veins, and until I build a better hypodermic needle, I’ll drink this.” He takes a sip; manfully suppresses his wince. “Your sweat actually tastes like roses smell.”
Kaylee pokes at him with a rolled up coil of tubing, which he dodges easily. “It’s tea,” she insists, lying down on her back on the mechanic’s board, turning on its hover system, and pulling herself under the gutted mule. “Y’know, if you don’t like it, you should try—” she grunts as she wrenches a bolt loose, “makin’ your own sometime.”
“Clearly, you’ve never tasted anything I made with my own hand,” Tony says to her legs, which are the only visible part of her.
“Yeah, ‘cause I like breathin’,” says Kaylee, grinning into the alternator.
“I’m very close to the controls holding that thing up on the blocks, Frye.”
“You like my face too much to drop a mule on it,” she tells him cheerfully. “I could teach you, if you want.”
His expression screws up. “To like your face? Or to drop a mule on it. ‘Cause either way, I’m pretty sure I don’t need lessons.”
“No, yúbèn de.” She laughs, and nearly pulls out the wire she’s working with thanks to the sudden movement. “Cookin’. I’m sure it ain’t nothing fancy like you’re used to, and I ain’t as good as my mama, but – I can do simple pretty good.”
“Kaylee, why in the ‘verse would I learn to cook for myself when I can have the best chefs in the Core do it for me?”
“ ‘Cause you’re you.”
His eyebrows furrow. “What’s that, some homespun folksy Rim saying, what?”
Kaylee sticks her head out from under the mule long enough to glare at him. “You said you wasn’t gonna call me folksy anymore.”
“Ah, see, that’s where you’re wrong, actually. We had an agreement, one where I stopped calling you folksy if you stopped calling me uppity, and I seem to distinctly recall somebody calling me an uppity so-and-so this morning.”
“You were actin’ all high an’ mighty!”
“That may be, Frye, but if you get to call me on my gŏu pì, I get to occasionally call you on yours. That’s just the way the world works.”
She purses her lips. “Which world’s that?”
“Mine.”
“See? That’s what I’m talkin’ about, when I say you’re you.”
“You’ve lost me. Is this going to go into who I am and why I’m here? If so, I’m going to need something stronger than machine oil sweat tea.”
“You live in your own sorta ‘verse, where everything’s about you and everything comes natural to you.”
“I don’t know if I’d say everything,” he says, modestly. “Just most things.”
“You’re gonna learn to cook, ‘cause it’ll drive you kuángzhĕ de if you don’t,” Kaylee tells him, and her smile’s a little slow, and maybe a little evil.
Tony scowls at her.
Ten months
“So I pull to the left?” asks Kaylee, and she tugs the stick as she says it. The stars dimly visible through the red glow start to spin and her stomach lurches; Rhodes lunges and grabs the stick, and the freighter evens out.
“No,” he says, slowly letting go. “The right.”
Kaylee sucks her bottom lip between her teeth. “Sorry.”
Rhodey grins. “Kaylee, if you think you’re the scariest student I’ve ever had, you’re fēngle.”
“That’s ‘cause you train daredevils,” she says practically. “Fellas that wanna throw themselves around and such.”
“Hey,” he says, and she catches his faint, lopsided smile. “Some of us are pretty careful, you know. Even while we’re throwing ourselves around.”
“Nuh uh,” says Kaylee. “I flew with you, wánnào Rhodes. I thought I was gonna die.”
He looks bemused. “I was that bad of a pilot?” he asks.
“No,” she says. “You’re good. Too good. I’m hittin’ the—?” She raises a hand and holds her finger poised over the button, this time, instead of pressing it.
“The afterburners, yeah. Good.” He squints at her in an amused way, one where Kaylee doesn’t think he’d take as a compliment if she told him it reminded her of Tony (but it does). “What do you mean, too good?”
“People like me, people who’re just learnin’, we fly straight, right? ‘Cause that’s all we can do.” She slaps the button. “But you experienced pilots – you give people like me a hell of a lot of work,” she says, cheerfully.
“You can start easing back on the ascent arc,” he says. “You’re gonna break atmo in a minute or two. People like you. Rookie pilots?”
“Mechanics,” she says wryly, trying to settle how skittish the ship’s shaking makes her stomach. Rhodey laughs, and she thinks that he oughta more often.
“Okay,” he says. “Okay, I’ll give you that.”
Suddenly, the red glow suffusing the front window’s gone; suddenly, it’s just the black staring back at Kaylee as far as the eye can see, and all the air leaves her lungs in one breath.
Rhodey glances at her; she doesn’t have to look away from the stars to hear the amusement in his voice. “Pretty nice, huh?”
“Shì a,” Kaylee agrees, unable to tear her eyes away. “I seen it before, but—”
“But it’s different when you’re the one doing the flying.”
She does look away at that, eyes flicking to Rhodes and his half-smile and his comfortable boot up on the control panel. “I was gonna say it’s shiny every time, but hăo, that works, too.”
He grins, rueful. “That’ll teach me to put words in somebody else’s mouth.”
“Darn right it will,” Kaylee tells him, grinning right back. “What’m I doin’ now?”
“You’ll want to stay on the same heading for the next five minutes,” he says, gesturing out at the black. “Then we’ll turn it around and start on a loop back.”
She salutes him cheerfully.
Thirty seconds of companionable silence later, Kaylee says hesitantly, “So, listen, I was wonderin’—”
“If this is about Tony, it’s like I’ve been telling people for years: I don’t know,” he says immediately, more weary than wary.
“It’s not,” she says. Immediately: “Well, maybe a little. Indirect-like.”
He looks at her for a minute, then crooks his fingers in a ‘come on, let’s go’ sort of motion. Kaylee brightens, just a little, but doesn’t respond right away; she takes a few seconds to put her thoughts in order.
“He’s got a still capture,” she says, slowly, “of a woman. It’s in his desk; I didn’t mean to look—”
Rhodey sighs, sharp and exasperated. “Man, I told him to put that stuff away before you went to work there.”
“What? No,” says Kaylee, and then she laughs, shaking her head. “Aiyā, no! Ain’t that kinda capture. She was mĕilì; tall, red hair, lookin’ down at something. Don’t know how she could walk anywhere in those shoes.”
“That’s Pepper,” says Rhodey, and the couple of seconds of silence before he says anything speaks volumes. He rests his arm on the little ledge in the bulkhead; glances at Kaylee. “She was Tony’s personal assistant for a long time.”
Cautious: “Yeah?”
“Yeah. She was from Regina; died of Bowden’s malady two years ago.” He shakes his head quietly. He looks troubled; all kinds of concerned. “I didn’t know he kept a capture of her.”
“Lăotiān, bù, that’s awful,” she says, quieter, and she means it; half-wishes she hadn’t brought it up but needing to see it all the way through now. “Were they – were they real close?”
“They were dysfunctional; that’s what they were,” Rhodey says, and it comes quick and easy enough that there’s no doubt it used to be a regular refrain. “They d—” He stops; looks straight at her. “I’m trusting that you’re gonna keep all this to yourself.”
She shoots him a frank look. “Who’m I gonna tell?”
Rhodes exhales; it’s not quite a laugh, but it’s a breath of amusement. “You know the nice thing about you? You really mean that.”
Kaylee isn’t entirely sure that’s a compliment. Her eyes flick down and away. After a second: “So. We turnin’ this boat around yet?”
“Another couple of minutes,” says Rhodey’s voice. She doesn’t look at him. “Neither of them had any family.”
Kaylee looks at him.
“Just – each other.” He’s staring out into space, a foot up on the edge of the control panel. “Except that would have been a pretty messed up family, if you know what I mean.”
“…No,” she says, carefully. “Ain’t sure I do.”
“She was good for him, you know? She had a backbone like you wouldn’t believe. She’s the only person I’ve ever seen come close to shame Tony into doing something.” Rhodey’s smiling a little; Kaylee thinks Tony wasn’t the only one who was fond of this woman. “ ‘Cept Tony’s – Tony, when it comes to women. And I don’t think Pepper was a hundred percent immune to it.”
Kaylee watches him. “An’ Tony?”
The question snaps him out of it; he gives her a steady look. “You’d have to ask him that yourself,” says Rhodey, and she thinks, Well, he’s got a picture of her in his desk.
“Hăo,” she says. She sneaks a glance at him. “Sorry for bein’ nosy. I don’t mean—”
“Yes, you do.” He’s almost smiling, so she figures he isn’t mad.
She shoots him a look, her eyes dancing. “You a reader now, Rhodey?”
“You saying I wasn’t one to begin with?” Rhodes counters, and Kaylee laughs.
Twelve months.
“I have to fit this conduit into the socket,” says Tony, without looking out of the panel he’s got his head half-in. “It’s a very delicate operation, and it’s not helped by all the staring you’re doing.”
“I’m not starin’,” Kaylee says, grinning, leaning back in a workshop chair with her feet up on a gutted suspension cortex. She pops a bite of ginger in her mouth and takes another look at Tony’s rear, which is all she can currently see of Tony. “I’m appreciatin’ Scomparto di Cognoscenti’s shuài tiān cái of the year.” She tilts her head consideringly; grinning fit to beat the band and trying desperately not to laugh. “I never seen you in this light before.” She has a bag of candied ginger in hand, a stylus holding together her bun with another behind her ear, and several pronounced smears of paint and oil across her arms and face.
“As generous as that fine, fine pile of trash is with its compliments, you’re not appreciating. You’re ogling,” says Tony’s voice, and the irritated note in it confirms it: as much as he likes all the attention, he’s actually getting tired of people calling about the gossip magazine’s annual “Who’s Hot and Who’s Not” column. Will wonders never cease. “Ordinarily, I wouldn’t begrudge you a good ogle, but I need my concentration. I’d generally prefer not to blow up today.”
“Oglin’.” Kaylee considers this very seriously, eating another piece of ginger. She graciously lets him off the hook about the newsfeed capture still sitting on the table, blinking its sparkly text about BEAUTIFUL BILLIONAIRE BUSINESSMAN BACHELOR ANTHONY STARK. “That’s a funny word.”
“Yeah.” There’s a grunt and he starts wriggling backward out of the access panel. “I’ve always been partial to it myself.” She throws ginger at him and it bounces off his hip. He turns enough to shoot her a look. “I’m sorry, have I done something to displease you? Talked you through rebuilding an integrated circuit model, been a thoughtful coworker, signed your paycheck on time?”
“I was enjoyin’ that view, Mr. Tiān Cái” Kaylee says, and she might almost succeed in coming off petulant, if she wasn’t grinning so hard at him.
Tony stands up – Kaylee very kindly pretends she doesn’t hear his knee pop – and starts coming in her direction. “What,” he says, “is there something wrong with this one?” He gestures from his face to his chest. His eyes are unswervingly on hers. He’s wearing a tank top, his hair slicked back and his bare arms streaked with grease.
“No,” she says, watching that sauntering approach, and her resolve for teasing almost fails her, “I like it fine. Guess it’ll do in a pinch.”
“In a pinch, huh,” he says, his voice low, and he’s got one hand on the table to the side of her and the other on the back of her chair. He’s looming over her, leaning in, and Kaylee’s smirk drops away along with the piece of candied ginger in her hand. Tony takes the bag from her and puts it on the table. He smells like engines and paint thinner and sweat. “That’s it? Just a pinch.”
“A, a pull might do okay, too.” There’s heat crawling down the back of her neck and some horrified part of her is dimly aware of the fact that she’s babbling. “Or a push.” He lowers his chin, painfully slow; Kaylee raises her face and closes her eyes, sure this is finally gonna be it – and then the air is colder, and she opens her eyes to find that he has walked away.
Over his shoulder: “I don’t believe in perpetuating the cycle of violence against women.” He waves a hand. “It’s a thing. Pushing, pulling, pinching—” He shakes his head.
Kaylee stares after him for a long minute, and then her expression turns furious. “Oh yeah? Well maybe I don’t believe in associatin’ with men. ‘Specially the kind that’re shēng míng láng jí de.”
“Shēng míng láng jí de?” Tony repeats, turning as he wipes his hands clean. “You mispronounced, Frye; I’m surprised at you. Your diction is usually unparalleled. I think you mean shuài.”
“No,” says Kaylee, her mouth set stubborn and flat. “I truly don’t.”
“Oh, come on,” he says. “Come on, come here already.” He beckons to her. She resists for a minute, then gets up and walks across the workshop floor, shaking her head.
Unimpressed: “What you want?”
“Thought you’d want to be standing close enough to get your ribcage rattled when I open this baby up.” Tony grins at her; Kaylee’s mulishness is overtaken by surprise and some measure of anticipation.
“You mean to say it’s ready? It’s done?”
“I mean to say.”
Tony throws the switch. The engine purrs like some big cat from Earth-that-Was, all throaty roar, and Tony crows that crazy laugh of his and turns to Kaylee and offers his hand. She clasps it and gives a hard shake, and beams like New Year’s morning come early.
Chinese translations [from here]:
Pìgu - Ass
Guĭ - Hell
Lièzhì - Inferior; shoddy; trashy
Yúbèn de - Stupid
Gŏu pì - Bullshit
Kuángzhĕ de - Nuts; insane
Fēngle - Loopy in the head
Wánnào - Troublemaker; rascal
Shì a - Affirmative
Hăo - Okay; sure
āiyā! - Damn!
Mĕilì - Beautiful; pretty
Lăotiān, bù - Oh God, no
Shuài - Cute/handsome
Tiān cái - Genius
Shēng míng láng jí de - Infamous; notorious
Part 5
Fandom: Firefly/Iron Man (movie)
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Tony Stark/Kaylee Frye
Summary: Kaylee is settling in on Osiris.
Necessary explanation: I asked for prompts, and
agonistes told me to write Tony/Kaylee. I said 'MWAHAHA' at the time and happily started writing in things designed to make Sweeney twitch, but I think that she officially gets the last laugh, because this is eating my brain alive. Part 1 can be found here, Part 2 here, and Part 3 here.Two months.
When Kaylee steps into the workshop for the first time, she’s blinded by the sheer size of it; the cathedral ceilings, the half-finished mules and small craft and speeders lying gutted across the racks, the screens scrolling technical readouts, the worktables covered in sensitive parts and the finest equipment she’s ever seen scattered across the entire room. Stark gives her the grand tour. She thinks he gets a kick out of her awe.
He introduces her to the artificial intelligence running the mansion, and he says within five minutes that he regrets it, because Kaylee and Jarvis are talking a mile a minute, about technical specs and embarrassing stories (stories that’d be embarrassing if Tony Stark had anything approaching a sense of shame, anyway). For an A.I., Jarvis has got a pretty okay sense of humor. Kaylee likes him already.
So she gets the house access codes and the grand tour, and she appreciates the fountains and the vidscreens and the ocean view through the bank of windows, but where she really falls in love is the garage.
She gets several workshop tables to call her own. Within a day, they’re hopelessly cluttered, but she knows exactly where everything is; she can pick a catalytic converter out of a pile of joint plugs like it’s nothing. She puts up a couple strings of brightly colored beads that her sister sent; arranges still captures of her family under a paper lantern.
Stark comes and goes, after that first day; she never can tell when he’s going to be in the mansion and when he isn’t. But she always knows, for sure, that he isn’t gonna be in the workshop when she gets in at eight every morning. It’s a little nice. Just Kaylee, Jarvis, the robots, and whatever the day’s project is; squinting at the image projector as she tries to work out the kinks in the airlock’s holding mechanism, taking apart an engine. She puts on music and hums along when the rest of the band kicks in a minute and a half into the song (feels it rattle her ribcage).
She meets a lot of women. It startles her some, the first time she lets herself in the front door and there’s a brunette in the living room wearing a man’s shirt and not much else, but after a while, Kaylee’s an old hand. They’re always confused and looking for their clothes (and Tony), and the presence of a bright-eyed, chipper girl with a Rim accent, walking around in stained coveralls like she owns the place, doesn’t help that none.
Most of ‘em, Kaylee can’t figure what Stark sees in them, besides, well. What he sees. A couple are real sweet, though, especially the one or two she meets more than once. There’s a blonde woman who laughs, after the third time Kaylee finds her in the kitchen, when Kaylee asks hesitantly if she’s seeing Mr. Stark; she says that Tony’s a dear friend, but she couldn’t imagine making things official. Kaylee doesn’t get that, but that doesn’t make Rae any less of a pleasant breakfast companion.
Colonel Rhodes comes by sometimes, usually trying to track down Stark when it’s during the day, or out of uniform and a lot more easy-going at night. Kaylee’s never met an Alliance man before, but she definitely never figured they’d be so – friendly isn’t the right word for what Rhodes is, but kind and generally well-meaning, and pretty warm. He’s a slice of normalcy in long hours spent in a cliff-side techno-mansion, surrounded by all kinds of stuff Kaylee never even knew existed. Mr. Stark may only drink fancy whiskey, but Rhodes can tell her where all the best hole-in-the-wall takeout places are in the city.
As for Mr. Stark himself – he’s erratic and Kaylee sometimes thinks he’s a little crazy, but when you put him in that workshop, there’s no denying he’s an honest-to-God genius. Rhodes may get frustrated trying to get him places, but Kaylee’s never got that problem; he’ll sit in his workshop for hours, trying to get a transmitter to spark just right. He’s a perfectionist, and he’s not bad to work with (besides those days when he’s being a pain and she wants to throw a spanner at his head and be done with it), and he still has a real nice pìgu.
Kaylee doesn’t notice when Mr. Stark becomes Tony.
Eight months.
“Kaylee!” shouts Tony Stark, and he shuts off the welder and ratchets his faceplate up. “Kaylee, where in the guĭ is the—”
“Station array’s on the table,” says Kaylee from behind, setting a mug down on the table and coming up beside. “I’m right here; you don’t gotta yell, you know.”
“I did, in fact, gotta yell, because I didn’t know you were there.” He spins on the stool. “Where have you been? Shirking your duties, taking over the universe?”
“Yep,” says Kaylee cheerfully. “An’ makin’ tea. Brought you one.” She wiggles her mug illustratively. Tony reaches for it and she swats his hand away, sashaying out of reach in stompy boots. “Nope. Yours is on the table.”
“I let you take over one little universe and you grow a sense of entitlement,” he says, groping behind his back along the table and coming up with his mug of green tea.
“Well, how many ‘verses are you queen of?” She rests her free hand on her knee and bends to peer at the exposed circuit hub on the mule. The back of her neck starts to prickle; she stares at the tangle of wires for a moment longer then turns around, but Tony is studying his tea innocently, his eyes nowhere close to her rear.
“At last count, sixteen,” says Tony. “Or maybe seventeen; the jury’s still out on whether the one where I’m a princess counts.” He takes a drink and promptly spits it back out into the mug. “I thought you said this was tea!”
“It is tea!” Kaylee retorts, shooting him an indignant look.
“No, it is equal parts machine oil and sweat.”
“Hey!” She glares at him. “I didn’t let no sweat drip into my tea, Tony Stark; if it’s so lièzhì, I’ll just take it back.” So saying, she makes a grab for it, but he covers the top with his hand and yanks it away.
“It has caffeine; it’s either drink this or pipe it directly into my veins, and until I build a better hypodermic needle, I’ll drink this.” He takes a sip; manfully suppresses his wince. “Your sweat actually tastes like roses smell.”
Kaylee pokes at him with a rolled up coil of tubing, which he dodges easily. “It’s tea,” she insists, lying down on her back on the mechanic’s board, turning on its hover system, and pulling herself under the gutted mule. “Y’know, if you don’t like it, you should try—” she grunts as she wrenches a bolt loose, “makin’ your own sometime.”
“Clearly, you’ve never tasted anything I made with my own hand,” Tony says to her legs, which are the only visible part of her.
“Yeah, ‘cause I like breathin’,” says Kaylee, grinning into the alternator.
“I’m very close to the controls holding that thing up on the blocks, Frye.”
“You like my face too much to drop a mule on it,” she tells him cheerfully. “I could teach you, if you want.”
His expression screws up. “To like your face? Or to drop a mule on it. ‘Cause either way, I’m pretty sure I don’t need lessons.”
“No, yúbèn de.” She laughs, and nearly pulls out the wire she’s working with thanks to the sudden movement. “Cookin’. I’m sure it ain’t nothing fancy like you’re used to, and I ain’t as good as my mama, but – I can do simple pretty good.”
“Kaylee, why in the ‘verse would I learn to cook for myself when I can have the best chefs in the Core do it for me?”
“ ‘Cause you’re you.”
His eyebrows furrow. “What’s that, some homespun folksy Rim saying, what?”
Kaylee sticks her head out from under the mule long enough to glare at him. “You said you wasn’t gonna call me folksy anymore.”
“Ah, see, that’s where you’re wrong, actually. We had an agreement, one where I stopped calling you folksy if you stopped calling me uppity, and I seem to distinctly recall somebody calling me an uppity so-and-so this morning.”
“You were actin’ all high an’ mighty!”
“That may be, Frye, but if you get to call me on my gŏu pì, I get to occasionally call you on yours. That’s just the way the world works.”
She purses her lips. “Which world’s that?”
“Mine.”
“See? That’s what I’m talkin’ about, when I say you’re you.”
“You’ve lost me. Is this going to go into who I am and why I’m here? If so, I’m going to need something stronger than machine oil sweat tea.”
“You live in your own sorta ‘verse, where everything’s about you and everything comes natural to you.”
“I don’t know if I’d say everything,” he says, modestly. “Just most things.”
“You’re gonna learn to cook, ‘cause it’ll drive you kuángzhĕ de if you don’t,” Kaylee tells him, and her smile’s a little slow, and maybe a little evil.
Tony scowls at her.
Ten months
“So I pull to the left?” asks Kaylee, and she tugs the stick as she says it. The stars dimly visible through the red glow start to spin and her stomach lurches; Rhodes lunges and grabs the stick, and the freighter evens out.
“No,” he says, slowly letting go. “The right.”
Kaylee sucks her bottom lip between her teeth. “Sorry.”
Rhodey grins. “Kaylee, if you think you’re the scariest student I’ve ever had, you’re fēngle.”
“That’s ‘cause you train daredevils,” she says practically. “Fellas that wanna throw themselves around and such.”
“Hey,” he says, and she catches his faint, lopsided smile. “Some of us are pretty careful, you know. Even while we’re throwing ourselves around.”
“Nuh uh,” says Kaylee. “I flew with you, wánnào Rhodes. I thought I was gonna die.”
He looks bemused. “I was that bad of a pilot?” he asks.
“No,” she says. “You’re good. Too good. I’m hittin’ the—?” She raises a hand and holds her finger poised over the button, this time, instead of pressing it.
“The afterburners, yeah. Good.” He squints at her in an amused way, one where Kaylee doesn’t think he’d take as a compliment if she told him it reminded her of Tony (but it does). “What do you mean, too good?”
“People like me, people who’re just learnin’, we fly straight, right? ‘Cause that’s all we can do.” She slaps the button. “But you experienced pilots – you give people like me a hell of a lot of work,” she says, cheerfully.
“You can start easing back on the ascent arc,” he says. “You’re gonna break atmo in a minute or two. People like you. Rookie pilots?”
“Mechanics,” she says wryly, trying to settle how skittish the ship’s shaking makes her stomach. Rhodey laughs, and she thinks that he oughta more often.
“Okay,” he says. “Okay, I’ll give you that.”
Suddenly, the red glow suffusing the front window’s gone; suddenly, it’s just the black staring back at Kaylee as far as the eye can see, and all the air leaves her lungs in one breath.
Rhodey glances at her; she doesn’t have to look away from the stars to hear the amusement in his voice. “Pretty nice, huh?”
“Shì a,” Kaylee agrees, unable to tear her eyes away. “I seen it before, but—”
“But it’s different when you’re the one doing the flying.”
She does look away at that, eyes flicking to Rhodes and his half-smile and his comfortable boot up on the control panel. “I was gonna say it’s shiny every time, but hăo, that works, too.”
He grins, rueful. “That’ll teach me to put words in somebody else’s mouth.”
“Darn right it will,” Kaylee tells him, grinning right back. “What’m I doin’ now?”
“You’ll want to stay on the same heading for the next five minutes,” he says, gesturing out at the black. “Then we’ll turn it around and start on a loop back.”
She salutes him cheerfully.
Thirty seconds of companionable silence later, Kaylee says hesitantly, “So, listen, I was wonderin’—”
“If this is about Tony, it’s like I’ve been telling people for years: I don’t know,” he says immediately, more weary than wary.
“It’s not,” she says. Immediately: “Well, maybe a little. Indirect-like.”
He looks at her for a minute, then crooks his fingers in a ‘come on, let’s go’ sort of motion. Kaylee brightens, just a little, but doesn’t respond right away; she takes a few seconds to put her thoughts in order.
“He’s got a still capture,” she says, slowly, “of a woman. It’s in his desk; I didn’t mean to look—”
Rhodey sighs, sharp and exasperated. “Man, I told him to put that stuff away before you went to work there.”
“What? No,” says Kaylee, and then she laughs, shaking her head. “Aiyā, no! Ain’t that kinda capture. She was mĕilì; tall, red hair, lookin’ down at something. Don’t know how she could walk anywhere in those shoes.”
“That’s Pepper,” says Rhodey, and the couple of seconds of silence before he says anything speaks volumes. He rests his arm on the little ledge in the bulkhead; glances at Kaylee. “She was Tony’s personal assistant for a long time.”
Cautious: “Yeah?”
“Yeah. She was from Regina; died of Bowden’s malady two years ago.” He shakes his head quietly. He looks troubled; all kinds of concerned. “I didn’t know he kept a capture of her.”
“Lăotiān, bù, that’s awful,” she says, quieter, and she means it; half-wishes she hadn’t brought it up but needing to see it all the way through now. “Were they – were they real close?”
“They were dysfunctional; that’s what they were,” Rhodey says, and it comes quick and easy enough that there’s no doubt it used to be a regular refrain. “They d—” He stops; looks straight at her. “I’m trusting that you’re gonna keep all this to yourself.”
She shoots him a frank look. “Who’m I gonna tell?”
Rhodes exhales; it’s not quite a laugh, but it’s a breath of amusement. “You know the nice thing about you? You really mean that.”
Kaylee isn’t entirely sure that’s a compliment. Her eyes flick down and away. After a second: “So. We turnin’ this boat around yet?”
“Another couple of minutes,” says Rhodey’s voice. She doesn’t look at him. “Neither of them had any family.”
Kaylee looks at him.
“Just – each other.” He’s staring out into space, a foot up on the edge of the control panel. “Except that would have been a pretty messed up family, if you know what I mean.”
“…No,” she says, carefully. “Ain’t sure I do.”
“She was good for him, you know? She had a backbone like you wouldn’t believe. She’s the only person I’ve ever seen come close to shame Tony into doing something.” Rhodey’s smiling a little; Kaylee thinks Tony wasn’t the only one who was fond of this woman. “ ‘Cept Tony’s – Tony, when it comes to women. And I don’t think Pepper was a hundred percent immune to it.”
Kaylee watches him. “An’ Tony?”
The question snaps him out of it; he gives her a steady look. “You’d have to ask him that yourself,” says Rhodey, and she thinks, Well, he’s got a picture of her in his desk.
“Hăo,” she says. She sneaks a glance at him. “Sorry for bein’ nosy. I don’t mean—”
“Yes, you do.” He’s almost smiling, so she figures he isn’t mad.
She shoots him a look, her eyes dancing. “You a reader now, Rhodey?”
“You saying I wasn’t one to begin with?” Rhodes counters, and Kaylee laughs.
Twelve months.
“I have to fit this conduit into the socket,” says Tony, without looking out of the panel he’s got his head half-in. “It’s a very delicate operation, and it’s not helped by all the staring you’re doing.”
“I’m not starin’,” Kaylee says, grinning, leaning back in a workshop chair with her feet up on a gutted suspension cortex. She pops a bite of ginger in her mouth and takes another look at Tony’s rear, which is all she can currently see of Tony. “I’m appreciatin’ Scomparto di Cognoscenti’s shuài tiān cái of the year.” She tilts her head consideringly; grinning fit to beat the band and trying desperately not to laugh. “I never seen you in this light before.” She has a bag of candied ginger in hand, a stylus holding together her bun with another behind her ear, and several pronounced smears of paint and oil across her arms and face.
“As generous as that fine, fine pile of trash is with its compliments, you’re not appreciating. You’re ogling,” says Tony’s voice, and the irritated note in it confirms it: as much as he likes all the attention, he’s actually getting tired of people calling about the gossip magazine’s annual “Who’s Hot and Who’s Not” column. Will wonders never cease. “Ordinarily, I wouldn’t begrudge you a good ogle, but I need my concentration. I’d generally prefer not to blow up today.”
“Oglin’.” Kaylee considers this very seriously, eating another piece of ginger. She graciously lets him off the hook about the newsfeed capture still sitting on the table, blinking its sparkly text about BEAUTIFUL BILLIONAIRE BUSINESSMAN BACHELOR ANTHONY STARK. “That’s a funny word.”
“Yeah.” There’s a grunt and he starts wriggling backward out of the access panel. “I’ve always been partial to it myself.” She throws ginger at him and it bounces off his hip. He turns enough to shoot her a look. “I’m sorry, have I done something to displease you? Talked you through rebuilding an integrated circuit model, been a thoughtful coworker, signed your paycheck on time?”
“I was enjoyin’ that view, Mr. Tiān Cái” Kaylee says, and she might almost succeed in coming off petulant, if she wasn’t grinning so hard at him.
Tony stands up – Kaylee very kindly pretends she doesn’t hear his knee pop – and starts coming in her direction. “What,” he says, “is there something wrong with this one?” He gestures from his face to his chest. His eyes are unswervingly on hers. He’s wearing a tank top, his hair slicked back and his bare arms streaked with grease.
“No,” she says, watching that sauntering approach, and her resolve for teasing almost fails her, “I like it fine. Guess it’ll do in a pinch.”
“In a pinch, huh,” he says, his voice low, and he’s got one hand on the table to the side of her and the other on the back of her chair. He’s looming over her, leaning in, and Kaylee’s smirk drops away along with the piece of candied ginger in her hand. Tony takes the bag from her and puts it on the table. He smells like engines and paint thinner and sweat. “That’s it? Just a pinch.”
“A, a pull might do okay, too.” There’s heat crawling down the back of her neck and some horrified part of her is dimly aware of the fact that she’s babbling. “Or a push.” He lowers his chin, painfully slow; Kaylee raises her face and closes her eyes, sure this is finally gonna be it – and then the air is colder, and she opens her eyes to find that he has walked away.
Over his shoulder: “I don’t believe in perpetuating the cycle of violence against women.” He waves a hand. “It’s a thing. Pushing, pulling, pinching—” He shakes his head.
Kaylee stares after him for a long minute, and then her expression turns furious. “Oh yeah? Well maybe I don’t believe in associatin’ with men. ‘Specially the kind that’re shēng míng láng jí de.”
“Shēng míng láng jí de?” Tony repeats, turning as he wipes his hands clean. “You mispronounced, Frye; I’m surprised at you. Your diction is usually unparalleled. I think you mean shuài.”
“No,” says Kaylee, her mouth set stubborn and flat. “I truly don’t.”
“Oh, come on,” he says. “Come on, come here already.” He beckons to her. She resists for a minute, then gets up and walks across the workshop floor, shaking her head.
Unimpressed: “What you want?”
“Thought you’d want to be standing close enough to get your ribcage rattled when I open this baby up.” Tony grins at her; Kaylee’s mulishness is overtaken by surprise and some measure of anticipation.
“You mean to say it’s ready? It’s done?”
“I mean to say.”
Tony throws the switch. The engine purrs like some big cat from Earth-that-Was, all throaty roar, and Tony crows that crazy laugh of his and turns to Kaylee and offers his hand. She clasps it and gives a hard shake, and beams like New Year’s morning come early.
Chinese translations [from here]:
Pìgu - Ass
Guĭ - Hell
Lièzhì - Inferior; shoddy; trashy
Yúbèn de - Stupid
Gŏu pì - Bullshit
Kuángzhĕ de - Nuts; insane
Fēngle - Loopy in the head
Wánnào - Troublemaker; rascal
Shì a - Affirmative
Hăo - Okay; sure
āiyā! - Damn!
Mĕilì - Beautiful; pretty
Lăotiān, bù - Oh God, no
Shuài - Cute/handsome
Tiān cái - Genius
Shēng míng láng jí de - Infamous; notorious
Part 5