Firefly ficathon finally finished. Few!

[amand_r]

Title: Long Time
Rating: PG
Characters: Simon, River, Kaylee, Inara
Disclaimer: I do not own any of Joss's characters from Firefly, nor do I make any money from this fic. This was originally for the Firefly ficathon that was due April 27th, but for reasons beyond my control I have just finished. Gah.
Written for: sathinks, if she could ever forgive me.
Timeline: Post "War Stories", pre "Trash."



Wait Long
by Amand-r

It is the longest time ever, this time in the infirmary, River's limbs splayed like a marionette's -spindly wicked things-out on the table and dangling down over the edge to swing back and forth; she is trying not to think about the needles, he is sure, but for River, trying not to is pretty much the same as doing it anyway.

And so here they are, in this long time as she waits for him to prep the medicine and he waits day by day for her to finally wake up and see the world for what it is, and for her to proclaim its complex systems in a verbal diorama, a gift to them all.

Simon has always been good at waiting. Growing up was waiting for body to catch up to brain. Medical school was waiting for his peers to catch up to him, waiting to get his hands on actual patients, theoretical made tangible. Even residency was waiting in spurts, sleeping in darkened staff rooms until the next bout began and he was called to duty.

That actually was the worst waiting ever, really, exhausted in the dark, fingers itching to assess, to move over ill flesh and divine secrets of human frailty. Simon would lay on the sterile cot, eyes closed tightly, seeing in his mind's eye heart rhythms and med charts until his pager would go off and he'd rise, a revived corpse himself sometimes, and hurtle out of the darkness like a Shinto priest running out of a cave, recreating his own birth. This was what he was born to do, after all.

Everything on Serenity goes quickly, and so it is maddening that this one thing, the only thing he really wants (except for maybe a safe place for him and River that doesn't move through space) should go so slowly. He doesn't even bother to think about the unfairness of it all, as he has long ago abandoned the mere concept of such a thing. Instead, he plots and charts, taking meticulous notes in an old leather bound journal that his father had given him. Once he used it for special case studies; now he uses it for only one.

River blows hair from her face, turning her head so that she can see him. He pulls down the plunger so slowly, measuring milligrams, not thinking about anything at all but how the seratonin might work with the increased levels of epinephrine in her brain.

"I don't want to do this," River says to him. "It won't work. You're using Orion instead of Ursa Minor."

He glances at her. "I'm using milligrams, River," he tells her, knowing that somewhere in there is buried a thought whose weight he doesn't understand. But that is the way that it is with River, really. She sees something on a cosmic scale that he has no idea how to adjust his scale to find.

"The Big Dipper is an asterism. A distinctive group of stars." She turns her head away when he sets the bottle down and walks towards her, shooting the excess into the air. "Not a constellation at all. It's a big lie."

So she lets him inject her, her arm limp on the table after he places it there. When he is finished, he turns back to the counter, writing down the dosage in his journal. Behind him, River gets off the chair and moves around the lab. He can hear the padding of her bare feet on the synth-tile.

"They say that space is cold, but space contains the hottest blood of all," she murmurs softly, but when he turns around to ask her about it, she's gone.

***

Now that River spends a great deal of time in their quarters, he likes to sit in the cargo bay to work. Jayne and Shepherd come in occasionally to work out, spotting each other. Their conversation is always the same: Jayne asks about sex in the Order, and Shepherd tells him that under no certain terms are members of his Order permitted to engage in the act, with others or by themselves. Then Jayne makes a lewd remark, and Shepherd fails to support the spot, letting the weights crash down towards Jayne's chest.

This strikes Simon with petty but satisfying amusement.

Generally, everyone leaves him alone, really. Kaylee has her own reasons for stopping by him; sometimes she tinkers with a part in her hands, applying impossibly small tools to bit of it, not looking at him as they converse.

This too, is slow and very difficult to decipher.

When he's not in the cargo bay, when it gets too crowded, or Mal goes on one of his "that there's precious cargo and it'll be none too good for you to be in there with it" modes, Simon defects to the mess hall, especially after hours, as much as there are hours on board.

Sometimes he writes down observations about River, and sometimes he reads from the electronic book, whatever new volumes or texts he manages to get on the brief forays on world. Most of the time they're garbage-romantic trash, westerns, and the occasional thriller-murder mystery.

Simon isn't sure if he likes them, and that is more than unsettling. Years ago he wouldn't have given them a moment's glance-- common luh suh trash unworthy of his time. Now he reads them because they're all that is there. When Inara gets a new book of poetry or a novel, she passes it on, but Simon has long since been through her standard Companion library. Of course, Shepherd Book has books, but they're nothing that Simon is in the mood to read.

He turns off the romance-in-space in front of him and stares at the half-eaten apple in his hand. He looks forward to these texts, a new development that speaks something to him that he doesn't want to acknowledge.

River pokes her head in. "You're sneaking out again."

He takes a bite out of the apple. "There is no such thing as sneaking out here, River."

River wanders the room before flopping in a chair next to him. She has managed to unbraid her hair from the twist that Inara put it in earlier that night, and now it falls in big waves across her pink sweatered shoulders. "People who sneak are hiding something."

He stares at her face. "What could I be hiding?" He knows that to cover the pad readout would be incriminating.

River bends forward. "Bodies. Jewels, stolen property, illegal narcotics." She places her hand on his. "Wobbling headed dolls."

Simon smiles. "You're not supposed to know about those." He takes the moment to press the off button on his pad as he stands and gathers his things. "Let's go to sleep."

River lets him take her hands and lead her out of the room. Before he turns off the lights in their room, River mumbles something from under the covers of her bed.

"What?"

"She should dump him and marry the Ice Pirate. He knows which way the North Star moves."

"Who?"

"Kaywenyth, the girl in your book." River turns over and he can see one eye staring at him from over the pillow. "Girls like that don't ever pick the nice man. She'll go with the pirate." Simon rolls his eyes. "That's how they all end, you know," she continues. "With the pirate."

He knows she's right as always, but he has to argue anyway. "Which doesn't make any sense. The pirate has nothing to offer her. And he picks his teeth with a penknife."

River snorts at him. "Propagation of the species. If you cross the lines, you get better genetic mixing."

"Whatever you say."

"Humans fucking towards equanimity."

"Language."

You're no fun anymore."

He shrugs and straightens his bedsheets. He's washed them several times since River threw up on them, but he doesn't have the heart to tell her that he thinks he can still smell it.

"The pirate will turn out to be a good guy, you know." he says finally. "They'll get married and have lots of fat babies."

River sits up, her eyes wide in alarm, and he worries for a second that something has set her off and that she'll wake everyone by screaming, like she did two nights ago. Jayne had threatened to gag her.

"They'd better not; those ration bars don't have enough fat for proper myleinization. All their children will be morons before they hit the age of seven." Then she tilts her head. "But only if they're boys."

Simon snuffs the light and rolls over, now that he is sure she's just deep in her own thought process and not on the verge of a complete behavioral break down. "Perhaps you should have been the doctor."

River throws something at him, and he can tell by the way it lands on his feet that it is the book pad. "Who would put me back together then?"

***

Captain Mal has them unloading crates on Caliban, a small moon with an approximate population of fifteen, Simon is sure, but it's a good place to unload quasi-legal cargo, and for that they'd land on the nearby sun as long as it isn't populated with Alliance.

Jayne likes to carry the boxes two at a time, but Simon can see from the way he lifts with his back that he'll be treating a herniated disk sometimes in the man's future. Book is more conservative, while Kaylee and Wash simply drag their crates, with River standing behind them, one foot on each crate lid, trying to keep her balance while giggling like crazy. Simon doesn't think that River should be doing anything like crazy.

Simon hefts his one box and thumps it down in the steadily growing pile. There are a lot of boxes. What are these again? Oh, yes. Wobbly-headed geisha dolls.

"So, what do we do now?" he asks Mal when he walks by.

"We wait," the Captain tells him, but barely in passing. "It's best you finish and get back inside before our company arrives, seeing as how you're not supposed to be here." Mal is almost to the ramp before he turns around and starts up it backwards, still walking. "And I know I don't need to remind you that goes double for your sister."

Waiting is something Simon is good at, if he's good at anything at all besides medicine. He's not even a good brother. If he had been, he would have been able to get to River earlier, he would have noticed--

Simon squashes that thought, because it never leads to anything good. Instead, he sits down on his crate and mops his face with his handkerchief. The moon is badly terraformed and infernally hot in a Dantean way. Nothing grows. Caliban, Simon remembers, had been intended as a first-class sun spa and resort but had been too close to the sun. Plans had been abandoned ages ago. He remembered his father chuckling over the misfortune of several acquaintances who had helped to fund the first stages of development.

"No civilized person would set foot on that rock," he had told Simon in the study one night as he deleted an advertising wave.

It occurs to him now that he has not one, but both feet on that rock, despite that he had agreed with his father at the time. According to syllogistic logic, as River would say, he is not, therefore, a civilized person. Or perhaps River would argue that civilization is something that must be changed to fit the individual.

Jayne drinks a long swallow of water, spits half of it on Kaylee and then lets out a long belch. She pelts him with a wrench from her coveralls. Simon watches Jayne scoop her up and swat her behind like a five-year-old and then carry her back on the ship and dump her in an empty crate. All the while Kaylee laughs and kicks her feet feverishly.

No, then, civilization has a limit. And if this has crossed it, Simon isn't sure whether or not he wants to try to make the arduous climb back to rational behavior that he once held to be the paragon of man's achievement. Or that he even could. For all that Mal and the others mock him for his gentlemanly attire and lack of cursing, he doesn't doubt for a second that the moment he were to step into a room full of people in formal dress they would notice his rough manners, the price he has personally paid for his tenure aboard Serenity.

Kaylee runs out of the cargo bay and down the ramp, River in hot pursuit. Kaylee jumps up and over the stacks of boxes and lets out a little shriek when she lands on the other side, while River circles the pile slowly, her feet impossibly dainty as her bare toes curl in the dirt.

"River, don't walk around out here in your bare feet," he says tiredly, but it's one of those admonishments that he says just so he can say that he told her so when he's taking a scorpion stinger from her foot or sewing up the torn pad of her heel. He is more and more aware of how a parent must feel at the end of a long day with active children.

Kaylee has taken off the top half of her coveralls and is stretching in the sun so that he can see the silhouette of her long torso in outline. Simon tries not to make it seem as if he's looking at the curve of her breasts in the sunlight, and he's grateful for the sunglasses on his face. It makes him seem less boorish than Jayne, who never notices that Kaylee's a girl until she peels off a layer of clothing.

He thinks to have words with Jayne about Kaylee, but then he remembers that the Captain would have Jayne's genitals in a jar if he ever so much as leered at Kaylee the wrong way. Simon knows he would be the first to volunteer the use of the infirmary for such a procedure.

River sits on one of the crates and swings her feet back into the steel wall of it, an apple in her mouth, like a roast pig on a table. Simon doesn't really want her eating more fructose, since the results of her consumption last time ended up on his bed, but whenever River decides to do anything remotely normal these days, he's so thrilled to see each little movement, decision, nuance of rationality that he can't find the heart to deny her. He decided then, to simply enjoy the sun, hot though it may be, and Kaylee's lean form sneaking up behind his sister, who is, today at least, as normal as they come.

River knows she has a stalker. She escapes Kaylee's lunge at the last minute and runs behind him, her hand grazing his shoulder.

"River, I'm not joking about your feet, we have no idea what's out here--" But Kaylee barrels half over him to get to River faster, and he is reminded of the way the Albertson's two Bull Mastiffs would fall all over each other to chase him and River from the property whenever they trespassed. He starts to stand up to avoid further run ins with their potential roughhousing, because no matter how much he is tempted to join in, something keeps him away. They're still girls, and he grew out of playing these types of games years ago.

River hides behind him again and Kaylee pounces on him, her arms reaching for both of his shoulders. His face connects with her breasts just barely when he falls backwards into his crate again, and he raises his arms to fend her off, desperately turning his face to the side.

There is a harsh sound and Simon freezes for a second, because he recognizes the noise of tearing cloth. He feels a breeze in his arm, and Kaylee stops laughing. Instead they both look at his outstretched arm and the torn sleeve in her hand, ripped away from his shirt in a jagged cut starting at his elbow. Her face is surprised, and he is sure that his matches it.

"Oh Simon, I'm sorry--" she begins, but he is too shocked to really react to it, to politely say that it's fine, that it's just a shirt.

***

The shirt is ruined.

No, not really. He knows enough needlework to patch it together, but he will never be able to mend it in a manner so that the tear doesn't show. He only has two of these garments, and the second one is already so worn at the elbows that they're ready to go any day. At this rate, he'll have to purchase some of the five credit homespun ones from a settler planet and blend in with everyone else.

The thought that he might have to ask the Captain for fashion advice chokes him a little. Or maybe he shouldn't have eaten any more of Zoe's cooking.

Simon pulls out all the money he has tucked away and shoves it into an embroidered silk purse he'd bought for River on Persephone, before they'd even boarded Serenity. He doesn't bother to count it or fold it neatly, instead drawing the strings taut before blindly stumbling out of his room, past River and Shepherd playing pick-up sticks in the cargo bay and up to the second shuttle.

His knock isn't the hesitant one he normally uses, and if he'd stopped to think about what he was doing, he would have taken that as a sign. He would have calmed down, had a cup of tea (from Shepherd Book's Imperial special stash) and then retired early to masturbate without River busting in. But in his mind's eye all he can see is the tear in his shirt, magnified a thousand fold, the ragged strings hanging from it, tentacles that are dragging him down into the foreign existence that strips him further and further until he cannot imagine what he will become.

When Inara opens the door the first thing to hit him is the smell of jasmine and honey, and for a second he is startled enough to blink confusedly.

"Simon," she says, smiling that pleasant look that she saves for everyone, no matter whether they're disturbing her or not. The look vanishes when he thrusts the bag at her, his hands shaking like a first year student about to open his first cadaver. He can't even bring any words up to the surface, as if his vocal folds are so constricted they can't vibrate enough to let loose a noise.

She doesn't take the bag but she allows him into the shuttle, which is a blessing, because Shepherd is watching, though why Simon can even bother to think of Shepherd at a time like this is beyond him. Instead, he stumbles into the shuttle, tripping on the Sihnon carpet, which was probably hand woven by Inara herself.

He turns back to face her, her face innocent and expectant. He thrusts the bag into her hands letting go as if it burns him -and it does, this soft silk scalding in his soft hands- and standing there because he is, despite his current state, acutely aware that she hasn't asked him to sit.

"I need- I mean, I want-"

She sees the credits poking out of the bag and her mouth forms a surprised o, eyes wide, though she manages to cover it quickly. He knows that she's going to tell him that she doesn't service the crew, and he most of him doesn't expect her to even deal with him, simply send for Mal to evict him from her quarters.

"Sit." Her voice is firm, and his body has no choice but to comply, perching on the edge of the curved sofa. He stares at the carpeted floor, with whorls that look like star clusters, one that resembles Orion particularly. He remembers that some constellations are asterisms, things that seem to be one thing but are just a big lie, much like his attempt to stay perfectly dressed, perfectly behaved, on this ship of fools that day by day makes him the kind of man who reads trash and ogles women.

He can hear Inara moving beside him, and her finger runs over the tear in his shirt, the tip of her finger grazing the skin of his bicep. "What happened?" she asks.

He doesn't have the words to say that he's falling apart, just like the shirt. That he's been reading space trash romances, and that he might maybe like them, or that he's afraid that the reason he doesn't understand River sometimes is that he's becoming dumber. "It tore," he answers. Inara sits down beside him and he looks at her for the first time since he's given her the bag. Her hair is loose about her face, making her seem younger, more fragile, but her expression is both cautious and patient.

"I see. Simon I can't--"

He buries his head in his hands. "I know, I know, I'm sorry, I know. I didn't think to ask. I'm sorry."

She gets up from the sofa and disappears into a curtained area of the shuttle. He can hear her tinkering with glass, the sound of water running, and the air starts to become humid with steam. He doesn't even feel embarrassed when she returns and tells him to undress; in Simon's head he is thinking of the Companions his father arranged for him to visit on his eighteenth and twentieth birthdays. Instead, he lowers his gaze and lets her slip his shirt from his shoulders. He removes his trousers himself, closing his eyes when for one split second Inara's hair brushes against his shoulder blades.

The curtain is pulled back on the far side of the room where Inara has been busy in the last few minutes. She leads him to the small copper tub with one hand, and lets him get into it him, sinking down into the water.

The bath is hot, and the tub is lined with cloth, like any of the settler tubs. Something in it smells vaguely of cinnamon. Once in, he lolls his head back against the rest and closes his eyes. He can feel her hands moving on his shoulders, but he doesn't really pay attention to them beyond their bare movements.

The next thing he knows she's bidding him to stand, murmuring something that must not be important because she doesn't protest when he obviously doesn't reply. He's past the stage when he can help her slide the lounging robe onto his shoulders, but as she ties the sash he brings the sleeves up and brushes them over his face; he'd long forgotten the feel of silk.

Inara offers him tea, but he declines. He's well aware that he can't very well stay, but he also can't go out into the cargo bay in the robe, which is a dead giveaway of what they've been, or rather haven't been, doing. Now that he's had a little while to think about what he's done, coming here, and he knows that Inara isn't going to sleep with him. He's not sure if he could at this moment, even if he wanted to. Simon imagines now that Inara will want to talk about this little breakdown and how to prevent it from happening again, except that he isn't sure if he can begin to dissect it even now. In fact, he feels a little like he did when he first saw the neural image of River's brain on Ariel: insurmountably overwhelmed.

Inara leads him to the bed, and for a second, he considers it. What would it be like, to have Inara naked beside him, under him, perhaps above him, slight perspiration on her brow, eyes half closed as he imagines she always keeps them in his fantasies? But that's just one of those generic fantasies all me have about every woman they see, regardless of whether or not they would ever follow through with any steps to ensure it.

Inara's sheets are cool, crisp cotton, not the satin or silk he has been anticipating. After she peels down the coverlet, he slides one foot in between the flat sheet and the covered mattress, thinking that these covers have never been exposed to apple bits and vomit. The silk robe hitches up as he climbs in, and he lets it. Inara climbs in behind him, smoothing the covers back like the last ripples behind a perfect dive. One arm snakes in over his belly, hand flat against his belly. Her forehead rests against the back of his shoulder blade.

The sheets are cold, but his skin is still hot from the bath. His breath is moist against the pillow when he breathes, and he can still smell the cloves from the bathwater on his upraised hand.

Simon closes his hand and his eyes, letting his breathing slow into a rhythm that welcomes unconsciousness. In his mind's eye, he can't see the shirt anymore, just a collection of stars that might be a constellation, might be an asterism, or could just be the lights of the room.

***

When he wakes up it's not Inara beside him in the bed. The waist is a little too hard, the hands a little too rough. Kaylee loosens her grip on him when he turns in her arms to watch her face. Her smile is sheepish and a little flushed. It's after she starts talking that he notices that she's still clothed.

"Inara said you might want company."

He reaches up to brush her hair from her cheek. It's freshly washed, so fresh that he can still feel the chill of the damp in it, and when it moves he can smell something like wisteria wafting from it.

"I'm going to buy you a new shirt when we get to a nice core planet," Kaylee says softly, and then she smiles. "That is, one where the Cap'n will let me off the ship. I was thinkin' maybe Persephone." Her hand smooths over the sleeve of the silk robe. "I'm not sure how long it'll take me to save up enough, but I can borrow some from Jayne and Zoe maybe--"

"No," he tells her, shaking his head. "It's fine." When she looks about to say something else, he runs a hand down her thigh and presses his head into her shoulder. "It's not me anymore. Not really."

She doesn't have anything to say to that, it seems, so instead her hand settles on the back of his neck before reaching forward to rake her fingers through his hair slowly, again and again. No one has done this to him since he was a child, but something inside him recognizes it immediately as one of the things that is always good and just.

Kaylee mumbles something else, but he doesn't hear it. Her hand slows in its movements and he can tell by her heartbeat that she's drifting off to sleep. Simon adjusts his head into the crook of her shoulder one more time, and slows his breathing a little, waiting to fall asleep.

He doesn't wait long at all.

END

Comments

[idyll.livejournal.com]

This is goddamn fucking fantabulous, babe. I love when you write shorter pieces, because you get more atmospheric than you do the longer ones. Great theme with the waiting, and I dig that Inara sent Kaylee in with Simon.

Yay! It fucking rocks. You should post it to Silverlake (multi-fandom list).

[amand-r.livejournal.com]

How would I post to silverlake?

[idyll.livejournal.com]

Yahoo group. Here: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/silverlake-f/

[amand-r.livejournal.com]

Thanks man.

[flyingtapes.livejournal.com]

Very nice. Thanks!

[curriejean.livejournal.com]

I LOVE YOU FIVE YEARS LATER.

[amand-r.livejournal.com]

Yeah? Thanks!