FIC: Lessons, Mal/River, R
Title: Lessons
Author: frannie
Pairing: Mal/River
Rating: R
Summary: Inara suggests River goes to training school and Mal take it really well - or not.
Authors Note: For just_slummin because they asked all polite like, and also, because that is an awesome icon. :P
Not sure if I should continue with this - and the actual 'lessons' but I do like the concept.
After days like these he walks into her quarters to watch her sleep. He doesn’t touch her, because that would make him a monster.
A small hopeful part of his mind wonders if perhaps it would be alright to touch himself, and the sensations are always frighteningly real. Moments later he is calculating angles, and he would have the perfect view of her if he sat down right .... wrong! He forces his eyes closed against those thoughts - River is only for looking, the sick fuck that he is.
When he opens his eyes, the urge to touch is still there.
She sleeps like any grown woman, always tempting, with one bare thigh thrown over the covers and the curve of her arse naked to his gaze.
He is angry tonight. Furious with himself for coming here again despite swearing that he would have none of this. Furious with Inara for baiting him - furious with River for being just another woman, aware of her power and wiles and using them to get her way. The ball gown, the voice, the light touch may have not worked too well on Kaylee's kidnappers who had expected a Companion with experience, but it worked on Mal who let River go into that situation.
After Kaylee was safe and everyone else dead, she had walked back onto Serenity with that lost look in her eyes he had hoped to never see again. He had been yelling at Inara, yelling how wrong it was to send in a virgin pretending to be a Companion, since this had been her brilliant idea. When Inara suggested training school, he felt his blood boil. River was a child, he had said, more to himself than to anyone else. River had looked like he had slapped her. In moments she unhooked her gown, slipped out and threw it at his feet, then, naked as she had been the moment he laid his eyes on her, she left.
It’s sick, the way he wants her like this. Bare of makeup, bare except for the night dress that has already ridden up in her sleep. That part of his mind that thinks maybe he should embrace the Special Hell of his choosing has already noticed her panties - always notices them, whether its the outline against her clothing or an ill conceived manner of sitting and Mal wonders when he became the pervert so interested in woman's underwear.
Except, he knows, its not woman’s underwear that has him coming in here every other night, its River.
River, who today killed nineteen and now sleeps like a babe. A man for every candle on her birthday cake, had they been able to afford more than one this past couple of months. Despite his rage he knows she feels anguish at what she has had to do, at what they made her, and that she sleeps now because Simon had fussed until she succumbed to the medication. But Mal’s anger is grand tonight, the image of her, blood seeping into the ball gown Inara had lent her, a ruined Alliance princess, was horrifying. The blood he could live with, but River was meant to be his. Not some Alliance plaything. Not some whore.
Inara was wrong, he thinks, and clenches his hands into fists. River would not be going to no gorram training school. They had evidence enough of what happened last time someone had sent River off for educatin’ - evidence enough of what happened every time she was out of his gorram sight.
He is pinned against the wall before he is even aware she has woken. Even through the haze of sleep she only needs an instant to recognise him and then her hold on him slackens.
‘Oh, its you.’ She says and turns away from him, as if she doesn’t care that its him in her rooms at night. Like he doesn’t matter, and all of a sudden Mal is furious again.
‘You won’t be going with Inara to no training house. You will not be playing some high society prostitute!’
‘But a low society whore, like the one you bedded down? That’s alright?’
Mal can’t believe she would dare. He is shaking in his anger, hands clenching at his sides so he doesn’t reach and hit her - or worse, kiss her. River’s little hands are instantly cupping his face, gentling as she stands before him, not entirely unapologetic.
‘Now you know what it feels like for someone to belittle you for doing the right thing.’
He can’t look at her. Refuses to enjoy the feel of her pressed against him. Refuses to be soothed like some angry animal.
‘Mal’, she whispers, and pulls him by the hand towards the bed. ‘Sit’.
He sits, and resents her for it. Resents her for a lot of things in fact, least of which is the way she presses close against him - like she knows he is less likely to punch the walls if she’s in the way. Considering who she is, he supposes that it’s entirely possible.
‘No, River! No, you will not be going...’, he runs out of words, but he is sure, he is the Captain, so she can't go.
She presses further into him. ‘Mal, I have to go. I have to learn this. I can’t be like this forever.’
‘Like what? Normal? Not a whore? Innocent?’ he asks, eyes flashing.
She snorts at that. They both know she hasn’t been innocent for a long while. River looks down at her lap, where his hand has been resting against her thigh. He follows her gaze and before he can wrench his hand away, she snaps her legs shut and traps it there.
‘River!’ He exclaims, and tugs.
She moves her hands down to where his is now curving against the inside of naked right thigh. Naked, Mal thinks and feels like he actually may be blushing, like he is back on a ranch with a girl in the hayloft. He isn't, he shouldn't be doing this.
She holds his larger hand in both of her hands, opens her legs and shifts, until his hand is right there under her dress and he is cupping her.
‘I want to be touched, Captain. I need to be touched.’
Mal feels as if the heat of her is burning his fingers, the cotton soft and oh - oh - damp. River shifts a little towards him, pitches forward, and he isn’t sure what she’s doing until her forehead hits his shoulder and he realises that she’s angling herself better and now there is all this added pressure and warmth against his fingers.
She makes small rhythmic movements against his hand, clutching at it with both of hers, her wet mouth pressed against his neck, her breath ghosting along his jaw.
Mal closes his eyes and listens to her whimper, feels her tremble, and wonders if maybe it would be so bad to help.
‘Darlin’. No.’ Mal places his free hand against her shoulder and gently pushes. He looks at her face and can see that her eyes are filling up with tears. ‘No.’ He says, resolute. She opens her palms in defeat and now free, Mal moves both his hands to grip at her forearms.
‘You don’t want to touch me because no one’s touched me before.’
‘No! Darlin’... Well, well yes. But, gorram it. It aren’t the same, it's not because there is any wrong with you for it. I’m just an old man and you aren’t for like likes of me’.
‘Oh fuck off!’ And Mal is so surprised as to where she might have learnt that little tidbit of Old English from Earth-that-was he doesn’t even notice her crawling further against him. Until she is astride his lap and whispering in his ear: ‘Aren’t for the likes you, aren’t for the likes of those men today, aren’t for the likes of Jayne. No one wants someone whose no good. Inara’s got practice. Saffron’s got practice - its why you want them.’
‘Practice isn’t the issue, but darlin’ you’re a wee bit young.... wait, what? Did you go to Jayne with this? River!’
‘None of yours if I did.’ She says, and moves to get off him, but Mal is already grabbing her forearms again and pinning them to her sides.
‘River. Did. you. go. to. Jayne. like. this?’ he grits out through clenched teeth.
‘You’re hurting me!’ She says, but doesn’t try to move away.
‘Did you go to Janye like this?’ He asks again. She can see the whiteness of his knuckles where he has grabbed her - she is going to bruise. She can’t say she minds.
‘No, Captain.’
Mal’s body positively relaxes beneath her. It’s as if she can feel each muscle unwind. His hands are gentle against her forearms where he can already see bruises.
‘Oh, oh, darlin’ I didn’t mean to hurt you none.’
He looks wretched, and she knows he didn’t.
‘Mal, I was meant to be a great lady. Someone special, someone perfect. I am not any of that, just a weapon sometimes, but yours, a pilot, but yours, but I want to be a woman, actual and real, and to be that I have to be someone’s or everyone’s like Inara. I have to learn, so either make me yours or let me go training with Inara. Oh Captain, I didn’t have to kill those men today but they didn’t believe I was a Companion and they would have hurt Kaylee and so they had to die, they died because I’m not a real woman.’
At this point, River is crying into his neck, sobbing, and Mal feels like the worst kind of bastard.
‘Teach me, touch me, or let me go. I don’t care about riches, or money, or politeness, or playing lords and ladies. I’m Serenity’s princess, but someone’s gonna have to make me Queen and touch me or I’m going.’
And then ‘touch me, please’ when he brings his hand to tangle in her hair, and ‘touch me, Captain’ when his lips press against her tear stained eyelids.
He kisses her then, along her eyes, her cheeks, her jaw. Fleeting butterfly kisses and then, with both hands cupping her face, he kisses her mouth. Eyes closed, he thinks, open your mouth for me darlin’ and she does.