People always assume wrongly that Simon is sly. He’s been approached all too many times in bars and because of this has always been quietly apprehensive around homosexual men. ‘Denial,’ ‘repressed,’ and ‘closeted’ are words that he hears whispered behind his back often and this annoys him because it’s not in the least part true. He finds women attractive; he admires their delicacy and poise and most of all their innate strength. Men are victim to their own urges and if he’s being brutally honest this repulses him.
The sly men Simon knew at med school were all effeminate in the extreme and, since then, he’s had a very clichéd picture in his mind. Because of this, when Mal and Jayne seek him out in a professional capacity, both of them asking to be tested for S.T.D.’s, he’s left gawping slightly and lost for words. Two such big brutal masculine men don’t fit his textbook image.
Simon hides his discomfort well and is relieved when the rest of the crew become aware of the changed nature of the captain’s relationship with his hired gun. It was an impossible secret to keep, not because the two men act sly, but there’s this constant undercurrent that lingers around them as if they’re connected.
Apprehension slowly seeps away and Simon finds himself listening and lurking. He’s not a voyeur, he’s just intrigued by the mechanics, and when he does happen upon Jayne and Mal in a private moment he watches fascinated. With them it's all hands, lips, cocks and moans. There’s nothing effeminate and nothing one sided about it. They pleasure each other turn and turnabout and Simon finds their urgent coupling bizarrely attractive.
He doesn’t want to join them, but at least now he understands better.
DONE