So the war was over, lost and won and both sides weren't sure which they were and Mal had to start every day remembering how to breath in and then breath out, how to put one foot in front of the other, how to talk and eat and drink just enough that things stopped stinging.
There were things that he forgot and never realised and things he never tried to relearn, things that as he stood on some backwater, godforsaken planet with nothing but his clothes and Zoe to his name, he didn't think he needed to relearn. Things like love and faith, things like patience and laughing. He was a solider unsure even, how to be a human being.
The first night, after the war was really over, Malcolm Reynolds stared at the stars and marvelled at just how empty they seemed. So distant and cold, he wondered if there was anyway things could get worse. Abandoned by his heroes, his commanders, his God.
The first time he sleeps with someone after the war it comes a bit of a shock that he's not as experienced as he'd like. But then, it shouldn't be that much of a surprise, barely nineteen when he signed up for the brown coats there wasn't all that much time for sex, let alone love. And he'd always been told that God wanted him to wait and when he did it should be for love and marriage and when he realised that it weren't so much women he was leanin' to he was too ashamed to act for a while. Yes there had been drunken, youthful gropes of girls and boys behind barns and in back alleys but he'd never gotten further than a pretty girls mouth wrapped round his dick and the guilty knowledge that he was imagining it was someone more... male. He had been pushed to his knees a few times and enjoyed every moment of it but it never really progressed much further.
So the first time, after Hera, that he finds himself in a room, above a bar, Zoe in the room next door and this acre of naked chest laid out on the bed before him Mal learns about lust. The purity of it hits Mal in the gut and remembers all of a sudden exactly what it is to be human. It's the first thing other than pain and fear he's felt in a long while. He wastes no time stripping down and climbing on top of this man, fulfilling the need to run his tongue over flesh, closing his eyes and breathing in the scent of another human being not mixed with gunpowder or dirt or death. He abandons himself to the sins of the flesh, hands and tongues and dicks and every other body part he can reach and then he's fucking and being fucked and the acute knowledge that this is not love, this is not what they told you about in church and school and fairy tales.
In the morning he's not sure if should pay or get paid or just sneak away with his head hung low. The question is answered when the man (whose name he's never sure he knew) leaves silently before sunrise. Zoe says nothing the following morning of what she's heard and they sit, forcing down protein paste both away in their own universes.
Smiling is the next lesson. He remembers the first time after Serenity Valley, the first time the corners of his mouth twisted upwards of their own accord, the sun half blinding him as he turned and saw her. Some things just can't be taken from you, even in the darkest, hardest, coldest moments of your life when you think you'll never be human again, when you lay battered and bruised and crying some things remain.
Three years later and they're in the sky and Zoe is in love and Mal is jealous. He's shared his bed with a few more folk, got himself some experience but still no experience of love and he watches Zoe sometimes wondering if maybe she has to work hard to make it look so easy. Mal doubts it's real and nearly chokes on his coffee when she tells him Wash has proposed. Mal has to admit, with little Kaylee and Wash the joker around he smiles a little more these days. Not often mind, but it's not something he thought he'd ever do again, so when he sits down to a meal with his three man crew and laughs at Wash's dino stories and Kaylee's tales of home, something in him settles. Something comes alive that he thought long dead.
He can do this, hardly ever has to remind himself to breath in and out, eats when he's hungry, drinks not just to take away the pain. He can do this. Some things, it's seems, come back to us without us even having to try.
When they take on Jayne the dynamics of their little crew shifts somewhat, while there's a few fireworks Jayne and Mal hit it off, and Mal realises it's been a good long while since he had a male friend around, coz yeah Wash is a buddy but he's Zoe's man and that just makes it weird. Mal likes having Jayne around even if he can be a little... challenging at times.
The first night they kiss is different from other kisses Mal's had, different from many Jayne's had not that he'd admit it. It's not urgent or angry, it's not even coz he's been drinking. It's slow for one thing, no agenda behind this kiss, there is no race to get from here to something else. It's deeper too, Mal feels Jayne's tongue tracing along his palate and across his own tongue, feels their lips brushing together, Jayne's hand snaking round Mal's neck and brushing his fingers through the hair he finds there.
And then his mouth is moving, Jayne's mouth is sliding down Mal's neck and up one side and, oh God just there , makes Mal whine a little. There's another hand at his hip now, pulling him close as Jayne's tongue dips into his ear and he's whispering something so hot Mal's afraid his bones'll melt. And the kisses go on, up and along Mal's cheekbone, a chaste little kiss against his eyelid, down the side of his nose before it's tongue to tongue and - God they never talked about this in church. Mal wishes he could describe it, thinks of all sorts of words he's known but never felt; passion, fire, rapture, yearning...
Though this began in the cargo bay they end up in someone's bunk and Mal can't work out how they got here but it's not high on his list of things he's got to find out. There are more pressing matters like what does Jayne look like naked and has he got skins and what does his collar bone taste like?
"Tzao gao!" Mal's never heard a curse sound so much like a prayer in all his life. He licks the long line of Jayne's collar bone again and again just to hear the big man whisper like that. Like he was praying. It's a sound Mal misses, something he might dwell on in other circumstances. As it is he just trips Jayne backwards towards the bed as he's pulling his faded red T-shirt up and off. As Jayne lays back Mal is once again confronted with an acre of naked chest. Mal smiles and once again he succumbs to the lust, to the desire to taste .
This lack of haste, the feeling as though this could last all night and all tomorrow and they have all the time in the worlds is new, something that Mal has never felt before and wants to keep forever. So he takes his time, tracing the out line of each muscle with a sharp pointed tongue, every scar, every pore, every inch under his tongue tasting like man and men and Jayne and lust and Mal's ripping Jayne's pants off just to get at some more skin.
He has no idea when he lost his clothes but suspects it's got a lot to do with Jayne's clever hands and clever fingers that are now winding through his hair and running patterns over his shoulders as he descends, always tasting. A hip, a thigh, the crease behind Jayne's knee, before trailing upwards and in one artful swallow a respectable part of that slightly obscenely proportioned cock is in his mouth and down his throat. Jayne arches up off the bunk and Mal can't help but stare at that look on Jayne's face, all those words come flooding back to him; rapture, fire...
Mal is pretty skilled at this now, a few years of practise and he can make a man come in a few minutes. But this? This is not about speed or pay back or returning a favour, this is something Mal wants to draw out, he wants Jayne to arch up like that again, over and over, he wants to hear more of those whispered prayers, he finds that his own pleasure can be suspended, that in fact this is part of it. He is shocked to find that he relearns patience, right there in that bunk, four and half years after Serenity Valley, half way between some moon and the stars and even more surprised that it is Jayne that teaches him.