Disclaimer and Special Thanks: To Joss Whedon for making such a neat sandbox to play in - yours, not mine, never mine - and to mrscience for an incredibly helpful beta reading; your grasp of these characters astounds me. The Tam siblings would be all wrong without him.

As Constant As the Stars

They sat, waiting. Waiting for the inevitable.

Each of them tensed, sensing the electricity in the air as the voices progressed down the corridor.

"...and that is exactly the sort of pig-headed, low brow ignorance I've come to expect from you, Mal Reynolds!" the female voice exclaimed, only an air of dignity preventing it form being shrieking.

"You get what you expect, madam companion." The male voice loftily rejoined as its owner stepped backwards into the mess hall, jabbing a finger in the direction of the other voice.

"Not at all, because when I first met you, I expected far better! Goes to show you can't judge a book by it's cover!" the female voice countered, finally ascending to a crescendo as the second of the two figures strode into the mess hall, the very picture of antagonism.

"And does that mean you liked what you see?" Mal said, low, dangerously, and every observer held their breath, waiting. Would this be it?

"If I did once, it certainly doesn't matter now, you floundering ox!!" And that was that, as Inara turned on her head and strode sharply off back down the corridor to her quarters. The tension broke amongst the audience. No, not this time.

Mal seethed for a few seconds, then turned to the gathered observers. "What the Bai are you bunch looking at?" he snarled.

Seven faces all conveyed innocence and seven voices all mumbled something roughly approximating "nothing" and busied themselves with polishing their guns, reading their books, cooking supper, reviewing medical records, staring at their hands hypnotically and arm-wrestling their spouses.

"Well good," spat Mal, and stormed out, heading in the opposite direction from Inara.

Utter quiet reined in the Serenity's mess for five ticks of the ship's clock.

"Dammit to hell" Jayne snarled, breaking the silence. "This is just stupid. Can't they just hop in the damn bunk and get it over with?"

"Hey, Jayne, c'mon!" Kaylee said brightly. "I mean, we don't know for sure that..." She trailed off at the looks everyone else their was giving her. She chuckled nervously. "Well, I mean, they could just really hate each other, and..." She threw up her hands. "Yeah, I know, who'm I kidding?"

"Classic suppressed attraction masked as antagonism" Simon supplied in a bored tone. "They may never get over it..."

"Oh, I don't know about that," Wash grunted, gritting his teeth as he tried unsuccessfully to gain the upper hand over his wife. "Me and Zoë loathed each other at the start, right baby?"

"Mm-hmm, but the Captain's got a fair bit of pride in him. Besides, I'm not sure they're really all that compatible..." She was cut off by Wash's squawk as she slammed his hand into the table. Simon looked ever at it balefully for a moment before rolling his eyes and reluctantly walking over to Wash's arm and started probing it for broken bones with an annoyed "tsk".

"The Lord moves in mysterious ways, Zoë." the Shepherd intoned. This was met with general derision by nearly everyone except Kaylee, who was far too polite, Wash and Simon, who were busy, and River, who had been thoughtfully staring into space the entire time.

A few more seconds ticked by until they had nearly all dismissed the matter from their minds when River finally said "Fishes die. They float for a while, then get eaten by little fishes."

Everybody turned to stare at River, who seemed not to notice at first, and then blinked, and looked down confused. "Wait, no..." she muttered. "That's..." She shook her head. "Not now. Soon. Now is 'you never know who reads things wrapped in plain brown paper.'" She looked up at her brother, grinning from ear to ear. "Yes, that's it. Forget about the fishes," she said, and skipped lightly down the corridor to her quarters.

Simon looked after her, then around at the others. "I'd... better go after her, I think it's time for her medication."

"Yeah," Said Zoë, not taking her eyes off of the door River had skipped through, "you do that."

Jayne shook his head. "They ain't never gonna get it off their britches, and that girl ain't never gonna talk anything but gobbledy-gook." He held up the gun sight he'd been polishing. "Some things are as constant as the stars...."

Serenity journeyed on, carrying her crew through the constant stars.