Mal would never admit it, but he disliked the darkness.
He disliked the way that it clung to him in small swaths, dripping dully onto the floor like slime that oozed around in the dead of the night.
It wasn't that he was scared of it as such; it was far too familiar a friend for it to actually terrify him in the way that other, smaller things did, but he was scared of himself in the darkness.
Mal was by no means nocturnal, but he was…different in the night.
The parts of himself that he set aside during the day (the soldier; jaded and battle hardened, the scholar; pessimist and irrelevant, the philosopher; useless and depressing) came flooding back to him and he couldn't control it all as well.
Most days he was fine. In the night he joked aimlessly and laughed senselessly and everything was fine (even if it really wasn't and he was falling apart and it was days after the last battle- no, years).
When everyone went their separate ways, he sometimes would find extra jobs to do, but most days he would go straight back to his quarters and fall asleep as fast as humanly possible, knowing that he would be awake in an hour or so because of the nightmares.
He woke up sweating and shaking and sputtering at thin air and there's nothing there (of course not. It's all in his head).
"It's not a picture perfect life…not what I had in mind," Mal grinned humourlessly, it's all a common occurrence, his hand raised above him as it tried to grasp at something intangible there.
He let it fall down silently, ignoring the sweat beaded on his brow and closed his eyes, ready to go through the cycle again and again until morning.
Morning was the only thing to relieve the suffering, the only thing there for long years and nobody ever noticed, not until the doctor came along.
Simon took one look at his night self and knew, just somehow understood that the night was not the day and that he was not the same and dragged him out of company, and confronted him on the stairs.
Mal laughed at him, then laughed some more and Simon became a part of his nightly routine.
Everything that happens is locked tight in Mal's sleeping quarters. Simon doesn't sleep there, not with River to look after, but that's where they go in the evening and he's surprised that no other crew members mention it, no matter what they've noticed.
Zoe understands him. She's got someone. It's not his place.
"If you went to a therapist, you could sort this out," Simon suggested once, but Mal just stared and laughed, then laughed some more until the doctor sat up out of concern and he toned down the laughter, wiping his eyes and not bothering to respond.
He could see the dark stains where blood once was, but it was never really there (a strange impression in his head that was one amongst many) but he stepped around the puddles (all in his head; not real) until he told the doctor about them, the first time that the man entered his sleeping quarters and then suddenly there's two of them avoiding the patches.
The patches fade some days, non-existent on others and darker than ever the rest of the time.
"We were fighting someone else's war and never even noticed," he admitted one day. It was the first time that he'd said anything about his doubts on his position in that war. They take it in their stride and Mal forgives too easily.
"I just want to help you," the younger whispered, desperately earnest and Mal sighed, unable to resist the puppy naivety. Everything's okay again. Every time.
He let Simon help.
"I'm fine…but I hear voices at night," he admitted, and the younger doesn't move an inch, neither takes nor gives and somehow manages both at the same time.
The nights grew shorter and longer and waned with the moon (only they don't because the moon has a cycle and it makes sense and it always stays the same. Mal is irregular and unpredictable and a chaotic cyclone locked into human form that destroys everything unless reined in).
His day self is good at control. He lives through control. His night self lives for everything else.
The night person poured out tales of his war days to the willing listener over the evenings, and also refuses to say a word. He gabbles and babbles and grins and also glares and shoves. It doesn't stop until the night he runs out of stories that he wants to tell and is left with nothing to do.
Simon will leave now; he's sure of it.
He grabbed the doctor's head hard, tight grip and tensed muscles, and yanked him forward to kiss him briefly and harshly, then broke the other away again.
"What was that?" Simon sputtered, but he can't respond, so that's the end of discussion for the night.
The doctor returned the next day anyway and they get further than kisses, and it didn't stop there.
It's not a relationship; they both have things outside of it (whatever it is, it doesn't ever leave the room and has no correlation to their day lives as far as they are concerned. Day and night are always different) but they both feel things about it.
Everything keeps on spinning, but if it sorts out his night self, then he's happy to go with it (he started it anyway).
This is just a destructive cycle, for both of them, but Mal doesn't know how they're going to get out. It's going to obliterate him one day, and Simon will be worn down long before then and maybe they'll go out together but Simon's candle isn't pockmarked with battle, so the wick will burn more slowly.
Mal will go out in style, a bang and an explosion to show that he existed and then there will be nothing more but memories in the people left behind.
He doesn't know how to change that.
He's not sure he wants to.