Two jobs. Same planet. Any other place, Mal might have counted them lucky.
But it was Grant Barlowe's town. And while he and Mal had been in the war together, they hadn't exactly ever agreed on anything else.
He was just glad that one of the jobs was Simon's usual gig, checkups and vaccinations for farm workers. That didn't necessarily mean it would go smooth, though.
Jayne had laid out his whole arsenal in the mess nook, carefully cleaning each piece of each gun or knife more thoroughly than he'd likely ever cleaned his own self. Mal sat at the head of the table, 'fixing' an old handgun he'd had tucked away, but far more focused on the jobs ahead.
Or...he wanted to be.
People filtered in and out of the mess, chattering about their roles in the plan (blow out the back of a poorly built and even more poorly guarded warehouse of valuable farming equipment destined for shipment and ship it somewhere else entirely), arguing about logistics, and ironing out the details. His crew knew what they were doing, and he trusted them to do it.
And then there was Simon.
Sitting at the table, yogurt cup in one hand and spoon in the other, hunched over a tablet as he read some medical journal or some such.
If only that was all he was doing.
The boy's brows rose as he lifted a spoonful to his lips. His pink tongue peeked out, lingering between soft parted lips, before it finally darted into the pale lump on his spoon, and retreated with only a small coating of his treat and no concept of how indecent the whole thing looked. Mal could only blink. He shifted now, scrolled a bit on the tablet, and then hunkered back down. He distractedly bumped the yogurt to his mouth, covering his lips in the sticky substance, and really that was too much. He had the audacity to look surprised, momentarily pulled from his reading, but he took his sweet time to carefully swipe his tongue over the swell of his lips, before licking at the edges of his spoon.
Mal suddenly realized he'd been holding the slide to his gun in one hand and a rag in the other for a good chunk of time, but hadn't done anything in particular with either item.
"He does that," River finally piped up, and Mal could've jumped out of his skin when he realized she was sitting right next to him. Simon's confused gaze just slowly drifted up to her, because of course he was used to it.
She knew what he'd been looking at, though, and the thought made Mal uncharacteristically sheepish.
"It's disgusting." With that, she left toward the engine room in a huff. Simon watched her go, brows furrowed, and Mal was thankful the boy was distracted enough not to notice how uncomfortable he'd grown. Or the flush he could feel creeping up from under his collar.
Mal silently scrubbed at imagined dirt and resolutely ignored everything else when Simon finally turned his confused gaze on the Captain. With a shake of his head he returned to his tablet and snack, and Mal pretended to keep his eyes on his gun.