The familiar, stuttering hum of the ship was his favorite lullaby.
Deep in the infinite dark, Serenity shifted. In zero gravity there was no forwards or backwards, only onwards. Zoe manned the helm above them. Above was a relative term, he thought drowsily. If his bunk was in the belly of the beast, Zoe held the reins.
Zoe's eyes were dry and scratchy since she'd shed her meager reservoir of tears. She kept a vial of saline in her brassiere now, cold chemical comfort on those long lonely nights when relief didn't come and she stared at the bulkhead until her corneas felt like sandpaper. Malcolm didn't ask her about these things, and she didn't tell him. He just knew. They'd weathered it all before.
His own physical injuries were fading. The sickly bruises over his torso, washing out to a mottled green. Abrasions, torn ligaments, the burst capillary in his right eye. He felt them only when he looked in the mirror. Their recent rip across the galaxy seemed like a fever dream when he lay back and closed his eyes. Everything the same but everything changed. His head pounded dully, a roaring in his ears.
The overhead panel snicked open. He snapped awake. Thin bare feet padding silently down the ladder. A rope of tangled hair. "Little death-dealer," he rasped. "Is it my time already?"
She cocked her head, peering at him with one bright uncovered eye. He slid his revolver back beneath the mattress. "Bad dreams," she muttered at last.
He sat up, his body creaking and popping. "Where's Doc?" he asked, rubbing a hand over his wild hair.
"With Kaylee."
She had slipped into that unconscious stillness that so unnerved everyone. Mal noted it, saw by it how deeply upset she was. He waited for the moment to pass.
"Can I stay?" she asked softly, motionless.
He sighed, too tired to process and express all the reasons why she shouldn't be here. He snagged his ragged covers from where they huddled at the bottom of the bed and patted the lumpy futon. She waded over and he brushed the soaked hair away from her clammy forehead. "Just for tonight," he warned. He lay down again, waited for her to curl up warm against his back, and they slept.
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In the artificial morning, as the ship's biorhythms were bringing up the lights, he wandered up to the cockpit to relieve Zoe. He yawned into his tin cup of coffee, rubbed a speck of sleep from his eye with one callused digit. Zoe dozed deceptively, her brown hand steady on the till. "Morning, sunshine," he offered cheerfully enough. She cracked open one bloodshot, beautiful eye.
"I know it ain't my place, sir, but you could use a washing something fierce," she remarked. "Smelt you coming." He waved her off. "Healthy coat of dirt never did harm," he said.
"Just try not to attract any scavengers," she said with a wrinkled nose, and made her way down. He slowly felt over the system with one hand, slurping his black brew with the other.
A patter of dancing feet below in the mess. River naturally moved in silence, so the noise was her way of showing consideration. Feeling happy today, he gathered.
"How do you take it?" she chirped to someone, glass and metal clinking.
"Where'd you get that sugar?" Jayne demanded. Irritable and suspicious.
"Thank you, I don't care for sweets," said Zoe politely.
"Well I'll have some. Ain't like I'm going to get more any time soon," gruffed Jayne. Mal heard the smacking sound of someone blowing a kiss.
"Sugar!" sang River, and dissolved into giggles.
"Gorramit…" The sound of someone picking up a coffee cup. A momentary lull.
"Mmmmmm," said Zoe exaggeratedly, and River laughed some more. Mal grinned and leaned back in his seat.
Maybe today was going to be a good day.
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She liked to sneak up behind him. Creep like a thief, swim like a shark, float like a ghost. She liked the way the artery in his neck jumped when she startled him. The quick sharp smell of his adrenaline spiking, subsiding. The bared teeth smile disguised as a snarl. Some days she snapped her teeth back at him, playing wolf games.
She liked the way his broad hand rested easy on the switchboard, like a man resting his hand on a lover's thigh. She liked him best of all in this still state, the shape of his mind relaxed, all his feelers stretched out and dozing on the structures of reality. She thought of Book, a warrior with a priest's facade. Malcolm Reynolds was Shepherd Book's negative. He covered his outsides with dirt and violence to disguise the peace within. She floated in the borrowed stillness of his mind, soothed and gentled like a child in a tide-pool.
She leapt over the cockpit onto him, jamming the coffee spoon against his jugular and growling into his face. His fingers were on the trigger of his gun and away again before she hit his lap. O this glorious lightning game! His heart pounded against her body and her brain like waves crashing and she shrieked with laughter and delight. He tipped his angular face back, eyebrows up, and waited in silence for her hysteria to gust through.
"Ready to fly, darlin'?" he drawled at last, and she wriggled around to perch on his knee, her body a tremolo of nerves and joy. He leaned into the controls. His collarbone rested flush against the blades of her back. O, this cleansing ache.
He placed her hand on an instrument like an old-fashioned joystick, but infinitely more sensitive. She'd done this before, so many times, so many! But connected to him, by touch and breath, she felt the roll of the ship through her fingertips, the dark threads of space in which they lay suspended, the desperate drag of the stars, the tiny flames of life housed like tender embryos in the fragile shell of Serenity's hull.
A crackle on the closed intercom broke their delicate dance. Inara. She knew it even before the voice hit her ear. She knew it through the roil of Mal's mind.
"Captain Reynolds, may I speak with you?"
"Sure thing, Inara," he said easily. His brain was a hurricane, whirling, whirling. "What can I do you for?"
"I'd appreciate it if we could speak face to face, Captain."
"Well then." He laughed lightly, finger hard on the transmit button, and River cringed away from the bitter blackness beneath. "I'll be down directly."