Author’s Note: They’re not mine. Throwing them all together in one place, though…that was my idea. *g* Inspired, obviously, by being still awake but not lucid at midnight and contemplating all the fun Firefly-related AUs I could commit on other series’ characters. Oddly enough, there’s even one mentioned in here that I’ve never even seen, but have heard lots about from friends who have. 🙂

“Hey, watch where you’re puttin’ those things, mate.”

“Sorry.” Captain Malcolm Reynolds felt a little ridiculous apologizing for where he put his feet on his ship, but then this whole situation was just plain ludicrous, so what was a little more insanity?

He looked down at the scowling face as he stepped gingerly over it, letting out a sigh as he did so. Oh. Of course. The one who claimed he was a vampire. Or one of them, rather. Somehow they’d picked up two, and to make things even more fun, they seemed to know each other. And dislike each other for some reason. Something about a girl was all he could piece together. Or two girls, rather, unless this Drusilla had the unlikely nickname of Buffy.

Naturally, Zoe assigned the ‘vampires’ to the catwalk. Anyone else would’ve gotten a crick in their necks the size of Persephone.

Reaching the stairs, Mal peered down into the cargo bay. He snorted softly. Right–when was the last time they’d been able to find a place for cargo among all the bodies stretched out on sleeping mats on the floor? On the left were seven browncoats he and Zoe had fought with during the war, one of them with his arm slung over a blond woman who was apparently his wife, she in turn holding a small boy who apparently wasn’t his son.

On the other side were the four rogue Feds who insisted they’d been on the run since finding out the Alliance had lied to them. He didn’t trust them further than he could throw them, but the shorter woman, the redhead, had medical skills that almost put Simon to shame and it never hurt to have another doctor around. Plus, both the men had proved to be hard workers, especially the blue-eyed one, Doggett.

Now if he could just figure out why they kept giving Larabee’s wife suspicious looks out of the corner of their eyes when they thought no one was looking.

Next to the Feds were two men, the taller one built like Jayne and the shorter one with long brown curls that would’ve made Kaylee jealous if she’d been a normal girl. He wasn’t sure he quite bought into that ‘Sentinel’ business, but Ellison definitely did have a knack for helping get them out of a tight spot. And as long as Blair kept the bigger man from going into those weird fugue states he was prone too, they were both welcome on Serenity.

Still, Mal swore under his breath. Damn, he was glad he was the captain. Other than finding someone to marry or turning whore and needing a place for ‘business’ like Inara, there wasn’t much other way to keep his cabin to himself these days. River and Kaylee’d been bunking together ever since the Companion’s friend Richie’d moved in with Simon to make space for a few more–lucky for Kaylee, River was a little less crazy these days. The older guy, Mac, who liked to blow things up but hated guns was bunking with Book. Jayne had reluctantly agreed to share a cabin with the one-armed guy who also got suspicious looks from the four Feds and in turn tended to throw longing glances in Mrs. Larabee’s direction when her back was turned. The spare cabin had been appropriated by the couple in their fifties who said they were bionic, and in a fit of uncharacteristic maternalism, Inara and Kaylee had ganged up on him and insisted he give the remaining shuttle to the three junior “wizards,” and their brooding black-haired guardian.

The frustrating thing is there were three or four more fringe-dwellers wanting to board every time they landed on a planet to try to drum up a job they could do in less than a day, seeing as how they didn’t have any cargo space anymore unless everyone was standing.

Oh hell, at least the passengers paid.

Mal took one last look over the railing and gave up for the night. There was no way he’d be able to prowl his ship without stepping on someone until morning.

Speaking of morning…he’d have to have a nice long chat with Inara when everybody woke up. They never had this problem before she invited her Immortal buddy to join them, hinting that Serenity already had reasons to fly low under Alliance radar. He was not offering safe haven to every misfit man, woman, child, quasi-human whatever or other kind of fugitive in the galaxy.

He winced a little at that thought–though from the look of the ship these days, you sure couldn’t tell that.

“Bloody hell, I said watch it,” the blond vampire snapped. Obviously having a soul (which most vampires other than these two didn’t, he assumed due to the stink they made about it) did not necessarily bestow patience.

Forcing another insincere apology through his teeth, Mal decided it was time to go to bed.

He was getting a headache.