AN: Post-BDM.

Mal had a distinct feeling his new pilot was going to be trouble from the moment she stepped foot on his boat. It wasn't that she was not all kinds of likeable and personable, cuz she was. Mal liked her from the instant he heard about her. After hiring her based solely on the recommendation of a friend of Monty's, Serenity landed on the backwater moon of Metadaniels where she was living. The crew took to her immediately. He didn't like the notion of throwing the count in the women's favor, but the hearsay surrounding this pilot was too good to pass up. She had been a pilot for the Browncoats, just barely old enough to be leaving home, and she was flying transport for them. She knew how to fly most things in the 'verse and rumored to be a match for Jayne when it came to gun play. And most importantly, she had a reputation of keeping her mouth shut when it was called of her, and even when it wasn't.

Mal was disquieted by how quickly the rest of the crew took to her. Normally he would have been all for them loving her on sight, but something about this unsettled him. Within three hours of being in the air, he found Kaylee giggling like a school girl on the bridge, at some off color joke the woman told, which Mal only caught the punch line of, instead of working on the engine.

Jayne's first reaction to the new pilot was the same as any new woman he met. He looked her up and down and sideways, thought a few dirty thoughts about her mouth, and grunted a half greeting. That didn't bother Mal. That was normal in his life. It was the fact that she had the same reaction to Jayne that was disconcerting.

Zoe was the slowest to warm up to her but that didn't surprise Mal any. This woman was the replacement for Wash, Zoe's beloved husband, Zoe's beloved dead husband. Mal didn't expect Zoe to welcome her with open arms. But Zoe didn't damper the mood or show any signs of ill will to the new recruit.

Mal gave the new girl the quarters to one side of Zoe's simply because she was crew and that was the last crew quarters available on the ship, not to mention she was the pilot and needed to be close to the bridge should something go amiss after they had all gone to bed. The first time it did go wrong was about four weeks into her employment. After Serenity let out a sizable hiccup, Mal came scrambling up his ladder and into the hallway to find his new pilot standing in the hallway dressed only in the shirt Jayne had been wearing at dinner, her pants in hand. She had her back to him as she closed the hatch to the merc's bunk. She smiled that not so sweet and innocent smile of hers at him as she turned and scampered barefoot up the stairs onto the bridge. Mal wasn't sure if he was shocked more by her attire, where she emerged from, or the vast tattoos that ran up and down her legs, disappearing under the procured shirt.

Tossing the pants to the floor, she slid herself into the chair and spun around, checking gauges, monitors and all the screens as she went. "Talk to me," Mal commanded.

"Unsure, Cap'n," she stated as she continued to scan what Serenity was telling her. "Might want to find Kaylee, regardless," she suggested.

Great, Mal thought. Just what I want to do. Try to flush her out. She and Simon could be anywhere on this gorram ship, doing god knows what.

"I'll get her," Zoe's voice said from behind them. "Probl'ly on her way to the engine room anyway."

Mal looked over his shoulder and nodded his thanks to his first mate before she headed down the stairs, still buttoning buttons as she went. "Might want to be donin your drawers," Mal stated to the only other person in the room once Zoe was out of ear shot. His voice was cold. "Don't need for my whole crew to get a good look at your parts."

She would have flinched if she was the flinching type. "Is there a problem, sir?" she asked, knowing exactly what his issue was.

"No, no problem," he began slowly, trying to keep his temper in check. "Except I 'member telling you the other crew were off limits."

Fiddling with three buttons over her right shoulder to make sense of what one of the gauges was trying to tell her, she nodded her head. "Seems that I hear tell the man who sat in this seat before me shared a bed with one of your crew. They even married if the rumor be true."

"Don't mean I liked it," Mal said through clenched teeth.

She stared at the screen in front of her, not moving to look at the captain. "Doesn't seem to me it is any of your business."

"This is my boat, which makes all that goes on here my business."

"Would it matter if I told you it will not interfere with my work?"

"How can I know that?"

"Because this has been going on since the first night I got here, and you didn't have any notion until tonight."

Mal paused. He had noticed a change in Jayne but chalked it up to him having a new woman to impress with his manliness. He never would have guessed Jayne was able to hide something like this from the rest of them. But he had managed.

The pitter patter of two pairs of feet brought the conversation to an end. "Kaylee's got it, sir," Zoe stated. "The spring thingy fell off the drive thing and she fixed it." Kaylee nodded along with Zoe's explicit explanation.

"Very good job, Kaylee," Mal commended. "You two head back to your bunks while we finish up here." Both women could tell something was up between the captain and the new pilot but didn't ask what it was. Knowing better than to press, they departed the bridge and headed back to their quarters.

As Mal watched Kaylee and Zoe head down their respective ladders, the pilot flipped the last switch for the auto pilot to kick in before swiveling her chair around, still dressed in only Jayne's shirt. "You have no problem with your doctor bedding your mechanic on a regular basis, but your merc and pilot is a problem? At least Jayne and I ain't falling in love."

"Kaylee and Simon's been a long time coming," he insisted.

"And you allowed the courtship on your boat, despite your supposed rules?" she asked. Before he could answer, she was on her feet reaching for her pants. She didn't give Mal a chance to respond. "Sir, are you upset Jayne and I are sleeping together due to some rule you think you have on your boat even though more'n half of the crew have broke it? Or are you simply jealous I'm not in your bed?"

Mal stood speechless, his mouth gaping. She came to stand in front of him. "Truth is, I thought of you first, sir." She emphasized the sir with a soft sigh, but quickly turned her voice back to the matter of fact manner the rest of the conversation had been in. "But figured you would turn me out quicker than a tick looking for a new dog." She looked down from his eyes to his lips and licked her own.

Swallowing hard, Mal watched her walk away, unsure what to say. All the blood had drained from his head and rushed south. She paused at the top of Jayne's hatch to smile back at him before popping it open.

"Shiny," was all Mal could muster as he watched her disappear. He wondered what other kinds of surprises she had up Jayne's sleeve.