This can take place whenever you damn well want. I wrote this after a marathon of the entire series + BDM, which took a total of 14 hours. Worth it? Very.
Ceiling!River watches you fornicate, then makes the situation uncomfortable by confronting you afterwards.
(I don't own Firefly, blah blah blah)
"Stealing is wrong," River said suddenly from the doorway. The immediate effect was that Kaylee was so startled she jolted and banged her head against the main rotor.
"Ta ma de!" she hissed, massaging the back of her skull. She turned to her intruder with a starry confusion. "What?" she asked.
"Stealing is wrong," she repeated, "punishable by law and for your theft you will be punished. By the law," she paused. "The law is me."
Kaylee shook her head; which in hindsight was a mistake as it only aggravated her enormous migraine. "Theft? I stole something? What'd I steal?"
River stared at the teddy bear on her thigh, as if she were speaking directly to it. "My brother," she explained simply, " you stole him."
Kaylee rose to her knees. Her eyes widened with understanding and she leaned back on her haunches. "Oh," she breathed lightly. "Oh." So this had finally happened. River had noticed she and Simon had been holed up in his room for the past few weeks (and her room. And the engine room. And on occasion the cargo hold). Had Kaylee been more occupied in reality and less busy reeling in her own mind with happiness, she probably could have prepared for this. She could have explained the situation eloquently instead of sitting like a child in front of a child at a loss for words.
"River," she tried to say slowly, but her voice came out garbled and flustered, "erm, maybe you should talk about this with, with Simon. Okay? H-He could probably explain better,"
"You took something that wasn't yours," River continued as if she hadn't heard her or even noticed the pause. "You took my brother. You made him love you more than me."
Oh.
Oh.
"River," Kaylee sighed with relief. Oh, well this was much easier then. She didn't have to explain what she and Simon were doing alone, just that… Oh, thank God.
The mechanic rose up off her knees (the room spun around her- she was still quite injured) and approached the young girl. "Oh River," she pulled an errant strand of hair behind her ear. "Simon could never love me more than you. Never ever. He just cares about me in a different way," Kaylee said.
River shook her head violently. "No, he loves you more," she replied. "He thinks about you all the time. He has dreams about you. Dreams you every night. You're naked a lot."
Kaylee kept her smile frozen on while she stroked River's hair with a greasy hand. "But you're his sister," she giggled. "His only sister. 'Course Simon loves you more than anything in the whole world. But you know, you can love more than one person at a time. And you can love 'em both very, very much."
River's widened eyes bore into her, trying to understand. "Then what are we?" she asked, more of a thought than a question. "If Simon loves both of us, does that mean we love each other too?"
Kaylee giggled and smiled at her, stroking her bare shoulder. "Well," she said, "if Simon and I get really, really close, I guess then we'd be sisters."
This changed River's demeanor completely. Suddenly she gazed up at her in wonder, her head tilted. "Sisters?" she repeated, forming the word with her mouth hundreds of times to get used to it. Kaylee nodded, beaming.
"Yep," she smiled. "Like, braidin' each other's hair, an'… stayin' up late talkin' 'bout boys… like that. I mean, I got lotsa sisters, but all of 'em are bigger 'en me and you'd be my first baby sister." She stroked River's hair some more, looking admiringly down on her with a sweet, vacant longing. "How's that sound?"
River took a few moments to process this new information, then turned on her heel and sprinted off, leaving Kaylee behind with her swollen head.
"Have sex with Kaylee," River demanded of her brother.
Simon choked on his own breath and struggled to hold on to his book and sit upright at the same time. Shock had forced all the color out of his face while his sister just stared at him. "W-What?" he stammered helplessly.
"Go have sex with Kaylee," she repeated. "Lots and lots of sex. Go now. And make sure you do it quickly, because my hair is becoming atrocious."
