Tuesday
Simon looks away when he spots the flash of metal, braces himself for the
scream but it’s too late anyway, the confusion--alarm--fear in the young
woman’s face already bleached under his eyelids. His heart already beating
up in his throat.
“Get!”
His head snaps back up. “Are you--?”
“I said get!”
Jayne drops the girl’s body roughly, and charges, pushing Simon so hard out the door that he’s almost tripping into the hallway. It’s dark there, like the rest of the place is, and Simon tries to ask which way to go when Jayne grabs the back of his collar and pulls him roughly to their left, making the decision for him. They move swiftly, somewhere in-between jogging and running. Simon can barely breathe, not even from the pace, but from the air. Down here it's thick and acrid, burning his lungs, making his eyes water; as though it’s some kind of gas they pump into the space, for occasions exactly like this.
He keeps up with Jayne in spite of it, the adrenaline pushes him on, the thoughts of what they’ll do if they find them even further so. Jayne has the knife, but that’s it, even the orderly hadn’t been carrying, she'd had nothing to defend herself with. He wipes the sweat out of his eyes and concentrates on keeping his feet pounding into the ground, on breathing.
Blaring, high pitched squeals make his heart jump, twitch and miss a beat. Jayne curses in front of him, and speeds up. It’s the alarm. They know. They know.
Simon rounds a corner to collide with Jayne. Pulling back, he looks around him, and his heart lifts, there’s a door, an open door. Sunlight. Air. Freedom. Jayne moves forward, and Simon stumbles, as he moves too eagerly, falling onto his knees, and jarring his arm. He’s getting up when he hears the clicks, one right after the other. He starts to yell out, to tell Jayne to keep going but he’s already at his side pulling him up, again, by the scruff of his shirt yelling at him in mandarin he doesn’t, that he can’t make himself understand. He’s pushed ahead further when the guns start firing and he runs as fast as he can, blindly, cowering behind a wall --he doesn’t know where they are, they don’t have anywhere to go, they can’t--won’t make it.
Jayne hits the wall beside him with a sickening thud, and Simon thinks it’s because he’s running so fast, but there’s blood coming from Jayne’s stomach, his chest, his arm. And he can’t stay up, he’s sliding down the wall, choking. Simon rushes back to Jayne, he reaches over, trying to apply weight, but Jayne hits his hand away from the wounds.
“Gorramit Simon, I said get.” Jayne gasps the words, and the knife --now covered in more than one type of blood-- he presses against Simon’s throat. The steel hot, stinging the skin.
“I won’t say it a fourth. If you don’t start runnin', I’ll kill you myself.”
Monday
“Where is she?”
Simon doesn’t reply. He won’t. Whatever they do to him. He won’t even yell out. The pain’s not so bad now anyway, just a dull ache, a prickle. A fast sting sometimes. It doesn’t make a difference anymore, it all blurs together at the edges. Sticky. He feels sticky.
“Do you know where you are?”
He smiles at them. They think he’s losing the game, going crazy. That he doesn’t remember the setup. They think that he doesn’t know how they got played.
You don’t play a player. Inara, she said it...
They think he doesn’t remember what happened with others. It feels like it was longer away than it was when it happened, but he remembers fine. He knows who they didn’t get, who they won’t ever get, and he knows the other one --he mustn’t have told yet, so he‘s just smiling.
The man in the suit doesn’t like that, and hits him again. His eyes swim, and dive, and he tastes blood and it tastes like salt, and he thinks that’s funny because he always liked the taste of salty things. The smell too, was nice --fresh like the sea water, and he‘d been to oceans a few times, at a few different places where the water was dark and the sand had turned into flint coloured mush. Even when he knew what salt could do to a man; how it dried him up inside, he never really stopped liking it.
He tells the man in the suit he likes salt and the man takes a scalpel and cuts through his skin. He knows its gone right through because it clangs, makes a squeaking noise against the metal, but he only feels it in waves, thick and hot. Simon bites down, claps his lips together so he won’t scream or be sick. Because that’s what they want, and he won’t give them anything they want.
The man in the suit circles around him, and he can’t quite keep up.
Mal calls a meeting. They all gather around the table, mostly quiet, except
for Kaylee’s semi-regular sniffling --she has a cold, and River, who
raps her fingers loudly, impatiently on the polished wood. Simon takes a seat
next to Zoë.
“We’ve got a job, on Bernadette.” Mal says.
“'Bout damn time.”
Simon bites back a grin when Mal looks at Jayne and silences him, in a way that no one else in history has ever been able to, then continues.
“Seems Badger had a shipment coming in that were intercepted up that way by a underground bunch of vigilante-type folk known as “Hickocks”.”
Simon rolls his eyes at the blatant misdirected homage, but remains quiet, he’s running low on drugs, on everything, they need this.
“Sir.” Zoë intervenes, “I don’t think--, that is we don’t want to get involved with the Hickocks, they’re loose cannons.”
“I’m aware of their reputation, but we’re going to go to them, polite and friendly-like and make them an offer to get it back.” Mal rubs the top of his lip with his finger. “Nothing wrong with that.”
Simon raises his hand, but Jayne speaks over him.
“But why is that skinflint Badger wanting to pay them to get his cargo back, why don’t he just get more?”
Zoë nods, “And Sir? What is it makes you think the Hickocks’ll hand it over for a price?”
“Oh they won’t,” Mal replies. “Which is why Badger’s got a man on the inside, and while a few of us are making nice with the negotiations, the rest of us will be getting the cargo back.”
“You mean steal it.”
Mal smiles at down at him. “I mean getting it back, Doc. And seeing as were talkin', I think I‘ll be having you all shiny and vested-up with me making negotiations while Jayne and Zoë get the loot”
“No,” River interrupts. “Implausible. Wo cao ni ba bei zi zu zong.”
Simon frowns, confused and embarrassed. There is a agonizingly tense silence and then Jayne snorts. “You know, for once she makes some ruttin' sense. Doc ain’t equipped for crime. Things go bad and he‘s dead weight.”
Something hot, and very angry explodes behind Simon’s eyes. He glares at Jayne, who doesn’t even look up.
“I’m not a child, I don’t need--”
“Ain’t nothing gonna go wrong.” The Captain cuts in, stern. “Doc’s just for show. We’ve got a guy on the inside with every access point covered. We have maps of the entire perimeter. This is kid stuff, and easy money to boot. Badger just doesn’t want to get his hands dirty.”
“I’d be happy to help,” Simon says, indignantly, the heat has moved into his face, smothering his skin. Inara puts a hand on his knee.
“Swell.” Mal nods. “We meet back here in three hours, dock in five.”
Simon rolls, sleep-addled, into an armful of Jayne, startling himself slightly.
That the man is so unbelievably naked. That’s the issue here. He slides
down the mattress so that he’s further under the wool blanket, as though
that will somehow make it less real, less stark. But the movement works against
him, makes Jayne open an eye and look down at him, wary. “What are you
doin'?”
“Thinking,” Simon replies, suddenly irrationally self-conscious --scared to touch Jayne, or even move.
“Do it help?”
Simon looks up. “Huh?”
“Bein' down there.” Jayne isn’t teasing him, he looks suspicious.
“Oh, no, not really,” Simon replies. “Though I have come to at least one definite conclusion.”
“What?”
“You’re something of a fire hazard.”
Jayne looks pleased. “You mean like, sexy?”
“I mean like, hairy.”
“Isn’t that the same thing?”
Simon grins despite himself, biting his lip. “Same thing.”
Jayne grins back, grabs him roughly under the arms, and pulls him --alarmingly easily-- back up to the pillow. He pushes some of the hair back from Simon’s forehead, and leans forward and quickly presses his wet, stubble lined lips against Simon’s. Just as abruptly, he pulls away and rolls over, taking most of the blanket with him.
Simon can’t really tell if it is cold or not.
Friday
Simon giggles -giggles for godssake, and places his mug back down on the
bench.
"You're out of your mind."
He jumps back two paces when Jayne gets up from his seat, the chair making a raw scrape against wood. Jayne’s actually grinning now. Leering actually. Simon considers that maybe he’s playing with him, that this is his and Mal's new joke, but this theory is quickly dissolved by Jayne’s hand on his hip, rubbing a thumb along the line of where the material meets his skin.
Simon jumps back another two paces.
“No, don’t.” He shakes his head at Jayne, who is still leering. “You’re crossing a line here. An extremely irrevocable line, and a line I have no intention of crossing, myself.”
Jayne steps in closer. “That’s an awful lot of syllables there, Doc”
Simon steps back again and slams his leg into the table. He curses and then takes a breath.
“The translation is ‘No. You Jayne bad. Me Simon, not. Don’t touch. No. Bad. Bad. No. No Bad-ah--damn.”
Jayne’s hands are at his waist again, and untucking his shirt.
Simon makes a slight noise of protest, almost, but it’s weak. The organized, coherent part of his mind is losing weight, rather quickly, to the rest of his body. His body which is responding rather emphatically and embarrassingly to the other man’s touch. It doesn’t escape Jayne’s notice either, and he bares his teeth before leaning in against Simon’s ear, breathing hot against his skin.
“Ruttin’ liar. You want this too.”
It doesn’t need affirmation, but Simon nods wordlessly anyway, making Jayne’s stubble rub against his skin. Jayne turns his head sideways and ow--nips the side of Simon’s jaw before pushing him against the table with a sharp painful snap. Jayne makes up for it, hands sliding up under Simon’s shirt. Heat swells under Simon’s skin at the touch and moves through his body in waves. Simon responds slowly, pressing his lips against the oddly smooth skin between neck and shoulder. It’s taut and vibrates against his touch, and it smells salty, like sweat and dirt and--. Simon turns his head for a kiss, but Jayne pulls away, breathing hard, and shakes his head.
“No mouth kissin',” Jayne mutters, keeping his eyes on Simon as he pull at his vest. “Too Many --clothes. Need to get -- nekkid.”
“Now, let‘s not get overly sentimental,” Simon replies dryly, thumb restlessly brushing against hard muscle. He assumes he must be frowning or rolling his eyes or something, because Jayne smiles vindictively, and very abruptly Simon is pressed against the table again, large hands are fumbling with the button on his trousers, the absent mouth attacking his collarbone, and it‘s very, very ah- Simon arches his back involuntarily, and presses himself against Jayne, making funny noises in his throat, his own hands reaching for a zipper on khaki pants and-
“Jayne, what are you--” A woman’s voice “Whoa, Oh. Oh, I’m sorry.”
Thursday
“Zhu tou! Ni juede wo hen ben ma?!”
“Yes!” Simon snaps. “I do!”
Kaylee leaves the infirmary quickly.
Jayne frowns, his face turning a alarming shade of burgundy “You’re a ruttin' fool! I was just trying-- I was just--”
“What?” Simon yells back, angrily. “What was it you were trying to do Jayne?”
“I was asking her about it is all. I just, I didn’t do nothin’ she went gorram berserk---”
The anger burns in his chest , and he pushes Jayne back into the chair so he can look at the wound. “So you had to jump on her with your knife?”
“She jumped on me!” Jayne yells, “I didn’t do nothin!”
Simon dabs Jayne’s bloodied cheekbone with gauze, and doesn’t reply, not trusting himself.
“Doc, I never touched her, I just went to ask her if she knew about The Betsy, and she went crazy, leapt right up on myself and started saying that I was taking what weren’t mine and that I didn’t deserve and would be, -anyway she was babbling on saying how I was stealin'-”
Jayne stops very suddenly then and looks at his cut up hands. Simon’s interest is suddenly piqued.
“What did you steal Jayne?”
Jayne returns his gaze, eyes hard and angry.
Wednesday
Simon wrings his shirt over the basin, and then throws it into the basket.
He really ought to see if she needs some laundry done too, though he’s
sure that a government trained superbrain must be more than capable of doing
housework. He’ll ask later, he thinks, stepping out, misjudging the
gap and stumbling, falling face first into his wash basket. His shin stings
where it hit the stair, but supposes he ought to be grateful the laundry softened
the fall.
There is a loud chuckle beside him, and Simon removes his wet singlet from his face, irritated.
“You know, you could hel--”
Jayne grabs the back of Simon’s shirt and pulls him to his feet before he can so much as blink. Simon nods gratefully at Jayne, who’s chewing awkwardly on something, and, inexplicably, wearing a neck brace.
“You know, you’re awful clumsy for a doc, Doc.”
“And you know you haven’t actually needed to wear that thing for months now,” Simon says, pointing.
Jayne shrugs ineffectually.
“Yeah. Sometimes I just like wearin’ it. It feels nice.”
“Okay.“ Simon replies, picking up the basket yet again, and moving the makeshift clothesline. “You know it doesn’t actually prevent spine injuries don’t you?”
“I ain’t stupid.” Jayne looks almost offended. “And I don’t believe in people spending their whole lives trying to be preventing things that are going to happen neither.”
Simon fold his pants over the line. “That must be quite a popular view with the ladies”
Jayne smirks, and hands him a peg. It leaves a mark on his pants, and Simon, irritated again, orders him out of the laundry.
Tuesday
The cell is damp, and full with the smell of death, Simon thinks. He can’t
tell if Jayne notices too; he’s busy twirling the knife in his hands,
and it catches light occasionally, briefly. There is a long time in-between
words, but he picks the right ones.
“Could be it‘s time for some thrilling heroics.”
Simon closes his eyes, and laughs.
It surprises the young orderly to see it when she comes in, and caught off guard, she smiles back.
Feedback Claireweasley