(no subject)
Title: Orbit
Word Count: 1053
Rating: 15
Summary: So many satellites in their universe. So many orbits, always crossing.
For seraphcelene, with much holiday sparklies and red nail polish.
When it's just the two of them steering through the late hour, Mal tells River stories. Old tales, tall tales, adventures of rim life with as colorful a cast as any outpost sideshow: grizzled ranch-hands, bootlicking lieutenants, romantic interests with suspect grooming habits and equally suspect virtues.
"Don't ever trust a woman you can smell comin' at fifteen paces," he tells her. She humors him with a grin and a nod, but he knows she's stashing the information in that muddled noggin of hers all the same. Those nights when he's talked himself self-conscious, he wonders how many of the rattlings up there are his; doesn't care to venture a guess at which ones.
She hardly utters a word on her own, which suits Mal fine. He spins yarns as much to fill silence as to distract her. But once in a while some shapeless recollection will blur at the corner of her eye and she'll cry behind her hair, slow and quiet, looking so very small.
"Past ain't nothin' but dust to kick off the boots, little one." He makes it sound like hard-earned wisdom, but he's coated brown head to toe -- courage or denial, depending on how the light hits him. Lying's the easiest balm he knows of, and easier still when mind-reading's taken into account.
River doesn't call him on his fei-hua. She curls into the co-pilot's chair, one leg stretching to hook her naked toes on the console's edge. "I'm not wearing any boots," she says, and wriggles her big toe to emphasize the fact. Musters a smile.
Doc keeps telling him she's just a girl, but that situation's bound to spin a different course soon. He doesn't need to be a reader to see how the light hits her. Can't use a lie to deny it.
Thirty, twenty-five, twenty, fifteen --
Inara descends the stairs, dark hair plaited and shining like the feathers of an exotic bird, and River breathes in. Smells nothing but her own skin and the warmth of old metal.
The pieces of her that are River Tam, the ones untouched by needles or Reaver blood, are sharp and clear as glass. She barely recognizes the other River, who pulls the thoughts of others from her hair like diamonds and lice and speaks in half-formed riddles. That's not the River who listens to her captain's voice more than his stories. Not the one who seeps tears when faced with the horizon of stars he shares with her night after night.
He doesn't hold her or stroke her hair like he does with Kaylee. But his hands have notions. He doesn't realize yet, so River realizes them for him. Lays each one carefully over every finger, pushes them under his nails, swirls them about in the palms of his hands and twists them around his wrists, over and over, knotting them tight so he doesn't lose them. So his hands won't forget.
She is no longer dust. She feels newly terraformed, bright and whole. Her surface craves exploration, validation. "Too much civilization," she tells Simon, who looks at her strangely, his hands distracted with notions of their own, nothing to do with her.
Sprawled on the catwalk, she is invisible. Her fingers weave in the grate, in her dress, in his guts.
"You've killed for her," Inara says as she lights two sticks of incense beneath the Buddha. Twin lines of fragrant smoke spin, rise, twine. "And she's killed for you. Most families are built on far less."
Mal sets down the cup of tea he's been clinging to since arriving in the shuttle. Tea, the last pretense still standing. "I got a decade's worth of knowin' on her," he says, rubbing at his knuckles. "And not a gorram thing to say."
"Maybe she doesn't need you to say anything."
He frowns. Inara's smile is a mite condescending, but gentle, as is her way. She turns her back and kneels, incense a halo about her head.
"You're not a mystery to her, Mal. But she'll always be a mystery to you."
That night he doesn't see River step into the bridge, but he feels her. Feels the near insignificant weight of her settle into the seat across from him, floating. Feels her hands close over the wheel as surely as if they are enclosing his own.
"I'm not quite right," she says. His words, spoken a lifetime and a half ago, but flipped to a sting. He turns to study her close. She is pulled tall, face eclipsed by the shadow of her hair. What weighs on her is anything but a secret to him, but he can't allow himself to help carry this burden, too.
"You're not a lot of things, albatross."
The reasons have always been there, River knows. More than obligations, or promises to be kept. She spells their names out on her palms, five letters on each hand. Twenty fingers, four eyes, two hungry hearts to feed.
So many satellites in their universe. So many orbits, always crossing.
After a job, when the cargo is seen to or the pay divvied, and the day wrings out a rare moment of solitary, Mal tucks into his bunk and takes stock. He stretches old aches from his limbs, worries from his neck, tallies the day's gains and losses into a balance that allows him -- and his crew -- sleep that night.
And when such ease is slow to come, he listens: to Serenity, his ship, his heart and breath kept afloat by half-blind luck and a will at full-burn. He's seen and done enough in his time to know luck's a flighty mistress to court, but the will is steadfast as he can manage. Will is what keeps him from the bridge, keeps his back to the wall, the hatch to his bunk shut tight; keeps him from acknowledging the muted click of the comm some ten minutes back, and the vaccuum of the open line since.
Doesn't matter. He's thrown back to Beaumonde: a face rising full and white as a moon, staring up at him through the cold, digital sheen of a video monitor, lips pressed to a softness: "M -- "
"Mal." His name a tinny wisp through the link, a gravity to pull him up from the bed.
"Tell me a story," she says.
And he touches her the only way he knows how.
Word Count: 1053
Rating: 15
Summary: So many satellites in their universe. So many orbits, always crossing.
For seraphcelene, with much holiday sparklies and red nail polish.
When it's just the two of them steering through the late hour, Mal tells River stories. Old tales, tall tales, adventures of rim life with as colorful a cast as any outpost sideshow: grizzled ranch-hands, bootlicking lieutenants, romantic interests with suspect grooming habits and equally suspect virtues.
"Don't ever trust a woman you can smell comin' at fifteen paces," he tells her. She humors him with a grin and a nod, but he knows she's stashing the information in that muddled noggin of hers all the same. Those nights when he's talked himself self-conscious, he wonders how many of the rattlings up there are his; doesn't care to venture a guess at which ones.
She hardly utters a word on her own, which suits Mal fine. He spins yarns as much to fill silence as to distract her. But once in a while some shapeless recollection will blur at the corner of her eye and she'll cry behind her hair, slow and quiet, looking so very small.
"Past ain't nothin' but dust to kick off the boots, little one." He makes it sound like hard-earned wisdom, but he's coated brown head to toe -- courage or denial, depending on how the light hits him. Lying's the easiest balm he knows of, and easier still when mind-reading's taken into account.
River doesn't call him on his fei-hua. She curls into the co-pilot's chair, one leg stretching to hook her naked toes on the console's edge. "I'm not wearing any boots," she says, and wriggles her big toe to emphasize the fact. Musters a smile.
Doc keeps telling him she's just a girl, but that situation's bound to spin a different course soon. He doesn't need to be a reader to see how the light hits her. Can't use a lie to deny it.
Thirty, twenty-five, twenty, fifteen --
Inara descends the stairs, dark hair plaited and shining like the feathers of an exotic bird, and River breathes in. Smells nothing but her own skin and the warmth of old metal.
The pieces of her that are River Tam, the ones untouched by needles or Reaver blood, are sharp and clear as glass. She barely recognizes the other River, who pulls the thoughts of others from her hair like diamonds and lice and speaks in half-formed riddles. That's not the River who listens to her captain's voice more than his stories. Not the one who seeps tears when faced with the horizon of stars he shares with her night after night.
He doesn't hold her or stroke her hair like he does with Kaylee. But his hands have notions. He doesn't realize yet, so River realizes them for him. Lays each one carefully over every finger, pushes them under his nails, swirls them about in the palms of his hands and twists them around his wrists, over and over, knotting them tight so he doesn't lose them. So his hands won't forget.
She is no longer dust. She feels newly terraformed, bright and whole. Her surface craves exploration, validation. "Too much civilization," she tells Simon, who looks at her strangely, his hands distracted with notions of their own, nothing to do with her.
Sprawled on the catwalk, she is invisible. Her fingers weave in the grate, in her dress, in his guts.
"You've killed for her," Inara says as she lights two sticks of incense beneath the Buddha. Twin lines of fragrant smoke spin, rise, twine. "And she's killed for you. Most families are built on far less."
Mal sets down the cup of tea he's been clinging to since arriving in the shuttle. Tea, the last pretense still standing. "I got a decade's worth of knowin' on her," he says, rubbing at his knuckles. "And not a gorram thing to say."
"Maybe she doesn't need you to say anything."
He frowns. Inara's smile is a mite condescending, but gentle, as is her way. She turns her back and kneels, incense a halo about her head.
"You're not a mystery to her, Mal. But she'll always be a mystery to you."
That night he doesn't see River step into the bridge, but he feels her. Feels the near insignificant weight of her settle into the seat across from him, floating. Feels her hands close over the wheel as surely as if they are enclosing his own.
"I'm not quite right," she says. His words, spoken a lifetime and a half ago, but flipped to a sting. He turns to study her close. She is pulled tall, face eclipsed by the shadow of her hair. What weighs on her is anything but a secret to him, but he can't allow himself to help carry this burden, too.
"You're not a lot of things, albatross."
The reasons have always been there, River knows. More than obligations, or promises to be kept. She spells their names out on her palms, five letters on each hand. Twenty fingers, four eyes, two hungry hearts to feed.
So many satellites in their universe. So many orbits, always crossing.
After a job, when the cargo is seen to or the pay divvied, and the day wrings out a rare moment of solitary, Mal tucks into his bunk and takes stock. He stretches old aches from his limbs, worries from his neck, tallies the day's gains and losses into a balance that allows him -- and his crew -- sleep that night.
And when such ease is slow to come, he listens: to Serenity, his ship, his heart and breath kept afloat by half-blind luck and a will at full-burn. He's seen and done enough in his time to know luck's a flighty mistress to court, but the will is steadfast as he can manage. Will is what keeps him from the bridge, keeps his back to the wall, the hatch to his bunk shut tight; keeps him from acknowledging the muted click of the comm some ten minutes back, and the vaccuum of the open line since.
Doesn't matter. He's thrown back to Beaumonde: a face rising full and white as a moon, staring up at him through the cold, digital sheen of a video monitor, lips pressed to a softness: "M -- "
"Mal." His name a tinny wisp through the link, a gravity to pull him up from the bed.
"Tell me a story," she says.
And he touches her the only way he knows how.