"A Moon with a View"
Summary: Simon and Kaylee have an argument that threatens their relationship, and Simon gets advice from the women of Serenity. More Kaylee/Simon fluffiness. References the movie and Leaves on the Wind.
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Simon was trying to concentrate in his infirmary, but the distractions were mounting.
"Crew's away!" River's voice chirped over the ship's comms, but Simon hardly needed the announcement. The distinctive whining buzz of the hover-mule had already told him that the captain, Zoe, and Jayne were on their way to pick up the latest cargo. He ran a quick eye over his domain to confirm that everything was prepared in the eventuality – however unlikely, or so Mal claimed this time – that the crew would need his professional services upon their return, and then returned his attention to the medical journal he was reading on the Cortex. He flicked the screen idly to scan the next article, but his gaze wandered to the flexipage that lay on the counter nearby.
His hand reached for it without his thinking, but he pulled his fingers back at the last moment as if it might bite him. He did not need to read the news story again; he had nearly memorized it already. He shook his head. "Doesn't matter," he muttered and tried to focus back on the journal.
He read the next abstract and decided that although the study clearly did not offer any solutions to River's occasional paranoid episodes, there was enough symptomatic crossover he should scan the paper. Scanning, however, did not provide enough focus to quiet the continuing chatter in his brain, and his attention drifted once again to the flexipage on the counter.
Simon sighed inwardly and gave in, reaching over and picking up the page. He pondered the familiar face at the top of the article and was about to plunge into the text for the umpteenth time, when "Hey, sweetie!" rung in the air. He looked up to see his beloved Kaylee framed in the infirmary hatchway. She was wearing her rose-colored dress that just teased a view of her knees, and her hair was down, framing her grinning face. His heart thumped as he beheld her, and he smiled back.
"Nĭ hào, băo bèi," he said as he dropped the page on the counter and shoved it away.
He and Kaylee had got together just over eighteen months ago, after several months of denial on his part, and he still thanked the Verse that she had not given up on him. Lately, she had even been hinting about maybe making things between them legal, but he was not quite there. Still, as Kaylee crossed the medbay, slid her arms around his waist, and greeted him with a warm kiss, he admitted there were moments when he considered hers an excellent idea.
"So," she said in a tone that told him she was starting a plan.
"Hmmm?" He continued kissing her, moving up to her cheek.
"Mal, Zoe, and Jayne are off."
"So I heard," he murmured against her ear.
"Gone at least two hours, they figured. And Mal said they don't expect trouble."
"Best case, I presume." He nipped playfully at her earlobe, and Kaylee made an appreciative squeak.
"Inara's in the shuttle with Emma."
"Okay." He kissed the back of her jaw.
"River's on the bridge, running a diagnostic."
"That's good." He feathered kisses down her neck to her collar bone.
"And I can't do nothin' on the engine 'til she's done."
She did not sound particularly concerned, but he paused a moment to look at her. "Is there a problem?"
"Nope. Just routine." This time, she kissed him, quickly. "Got any work today?"
His mind flicked back to the news story, but he shook his head and refocused on Kaylee. "Nothing pressing," he said. He pulled her closer and deepened the kiss, gently teasing her mouth open with his tongue.
She responded enthusiastically for a long minute, but she finally drew breath and said, "Then how about going for a walk?"
He had been about to resume the kiss but stopped. "A walk...?"
She giggled. "Yes, a walk. River said there's a nice beauty spot just a bit over the next rise. Saw it as we was landing."
Simon blinked a couple times. Not at all what he had expected her to suggest under the circumstances, but he had learned a long time ago to follow her lead on such matters. He took a couple deep breaths to calm his racing pulse, and smiled. "Of course. A walk sounds delightful." He straightened the few items on the countertop – taking one last rueful look at the news story on the flexipage – and then turned off the lights in the infirmary and offered Kaylee his arm.
A satisfied smile dimpled her cheeks as Kaylee wrapped both her hands around his elbow, and they strolled in companionable silence through the cargo bay and out the forward airlock door. Warm fresh air with a slight tang of sagebrush greeted them as they exited. The outer ramp was down, and they left the inner door open to air out the hold. Kaylee led Simon several steps away from Serenity's nose and up a steep incline, scaling the slope of the dry creek bed in which the ship was parked.
Simon glanced back at the freighter and stopped to marvel at the neat fit his sister had managed with Serenity in the creek bed. Mal preferred to land in wide flat spaces, but River delighted in tucking the old Firefly into just-so spaces like a jigsaw puzzle piece. "River's getting quite good at that, isn't she?" he said.
"She's a natural," Kaylee agreed. "Like everything she does, right?"
"That has always been true." Although they were nearly level with Serenity's bridge, the angle of sunlight darkened the glass and obscured the interior. He imagined, however, his sister working at the console, and waved at her, unseeing. "If only the Alliance would see fit to leave her alone, she could make an amazing life for herself anywhere she wanted to be."
Kaylee's hand tightened on his elbow. "Seems to me she's pretty happy on Serenity."
"Oh, she is. She loves this ship, and she loves piloting – which has done wonders for her mental state. But she always used to focus on one thing at a time, mastering it fully, before dropping it and moving on to the next challenge. I often wondered if she would ever find one thing that would keep her interest for the rest of her life."
"Maybe she has, with the flying," Kaylee said, optimism clear in her voice.
Simon glanced back at her, and met her hopeful smile with his own. "Maybe so," he said.
Kaylee's hand slid down his arm and clasped his palm. She started over the lip of the decline, and tugged him to follow. "This way. River said the view was just over the next rise."
He tagged along after her until they came to the edge of a cliff. The view was indeed grand. The cliff dropped steeply down to a canyon floor covered for endless miles with bulbous rock formations. Walls of smooth sandstone folded back on each other in labyrinthine patterns. The rock colors ranged from the shade of peaches to a deep blood red. "Impressive," he said.
Kaylee's face was rapt with awe, her jaw literally dropped. Simon smiled at her reaction, enjoying her delight in the view more than the view itself. He suppressed an urge to kiss her. Instead, he watched her enjoying the vista until she turned her shining eyes back towards him. "Amazin', ain't it?" she gushed.
He nodded and grinned. "Yes, quite amazing." He could hold back no longer and pulled her into a kiss, careful to keep back from the cliff edge. "And even more amazing is how much it thrills you."
She beamed. She stepped right up to the cliff edge, and after a moment's hesitation, he followed behind. He wrapped his arms around hers and carefully pulled her close.
Kaylee snuggled against him. "You think the terraforming did that?"
"Doubtful," he said. "Terraforming aims to make a planet habitable for humans: breathable air, regular day cycles, moderate temperatures, arable soil, and so forth. It wouldn't bother with changing the landscape, at least not to that extent." Simon considered the acres of sandstone formations and tried to remember the small bit of geology he had encountered in pre-MedAcad schooling. "Those formations are natural, created over millions of years, and the presence of sandstone indicates there was water on this moon before the terraformers came."
"Huh," Kaylee said. "Makes it even more amazin' to think 'twas nature made that."
"I suppose it does."
Kaylee was quiet a while, and Simon's mind wandered, meandering from his school days through his MedAcad time, and from there back to the infirmary and the article he had left on the counter.
When Kaylee spoke again, he was a bit startled. "This might be the most beautiful spot I've seen, well..." She gave a contented sigh. "Maybe ever."
"Mmm," Simon agreed absently.
"It's kinda romantic, ain't it?"
"Romantic?" he wondered aloud. His tone must have been more skeptical than he had intended because Kaylee tilted her head back and gave him a side-eyed look. "Romantic because you're here, băo bèi," he quickly amended and squeezed her arms.
"Nice save, Casanova," Kaylee said with a smirk and turned her attention back to the view.
Simon touched a light kiss to the back of her neck. He hoped he was getting better at this relationship. He wanted Kaylee to know how much she meant to him, but heart-to-heart communication was never his strong suit. Put him in a surgery suite and he was Master of the Verse, but relationships, particularly the romantic kind, edged outside his realm of competence. Again, his mind jumped back to the irksome news he had read. Doug was certainly competent, but did he really deserve – ?
"You got any beauty spots you liked on Osiris?" Kaylee asked.
"On Osiris?" Simon echoed, a little confused as he brought his head back to the here and now.
"Yeah, any place you liked to go particular? Maybe took a special someone to see?" She looked over her shoulder at him again, this time with a mischievous grin. He returned her smile, but blanched inwardly. Thinking about his life on Osiris, in general, was not going to help with a romantic mood right then.
He decided not to indulge Kaylee's teasing, and just answered academically. "Osiris has several beauty spots my family visited when we were young. I remember in particular the Gardens of Thebes were most impressive. It had samples of every species of flower brought from Earth-That-Was, and a large lake with white sand beaches."
"Ooo, that sounds shiny. Didya ever swim in the lake?"
"Swim? Oh, no. The park did not allow swimming in the lake. That would have contaminated it."
Kaylee stared at him a long moment and then turned back to the view. "Too bad," she murmured.
They fell silent again, and although Simon was contentedly conscious of Kaylee's warm body pressed against his, his brain tickled uncomfortably. He had an inkling he was missing something important, and debated if he should ask her – but hung up on just how. He hated whenever he said the wrong thing. Kaylee had almost unlimited patience with him – she needed to, he knew that – but he wondered if a time might come when her patience ran out. He knew his own patience was situational. With River, he could have patience as infinite as Kaylee's. The crew got more forbearance from him than they probably realized – in particular, the captain and Jayne. Ironically, he had least patience in the setting where he felt most comfortable. When it came to the hospital, he did not suffer fools. Saving lives, he believed, required the very best from health care professionals. In contrast, he remembered his old friend and colleague, Doug Chien, had had Kaylee-levels of patience with everyone at the hospital, with his family, even with Simon when they locked horns on treatment strategies – and probably, it occurred to him, Doug had had patience with the hospital administrators who made appointment decisions. And there, Simon's mind fell back to that cursed news story again. Everything pulled him back to that story today. The news hardly bore the scrutiny he had devoted to it, but try as he might to ignore it, it continued to churn in his brain. So his brain churned on, now barely aware of the woman he was holding.
Simon was not sure how much time had passed, but it must have been several minutes. Kaylee exhaled deeply and then suddenly opened her arms, pushing him a few steps back from the ledge. She turned fully around and shot him a frustrated look. "Look, Simon. Your head's been somewhere else for near on a day now. What's wrong?"
"Nothing's –"
"Don't say nothin's wrong. You think after a year-and-a-half with you I don't know when you're broodin' on somethin'?"
"Brooding?"
"Oh, yeah. Broodin' like a teenager whose best girl just left him. Well, I'm still here, so tell me what's up."
He looked down. He knew where his brain had been, and he wasn't proud of it. "It's really not that important."
"Then tellin' me won't be hard, will it?"
He sighed and walked a few steps further from the ledge. "I found an article on the Cortex yesterday."
"That what I saw you frownin' over when I come in the infirmary just now?"
"Yes. A friend of mine from MedAcad, Doug Chien, got a posting as head of trauma surgery at Sihnon Medical."
"And?"
"Doug was a good man, and a fine doctor. He and his wife and I spent a fair amount of time together as students and interns, and after I made resident, we kept in touch."
"But?"
Simon shook his head. "Nothing. Just news about an old friend that got me thinking about those days. It's really not worth discussing." Simon turned away and started walking back towards Serenity.
Kaylee trotted after and grabbed his arm. "It's clearly worth discussin' if it's got you all this testy. Just tell me, Simon."
He objected to her characterizing him as "testy" and considered deferring her again, but he knew she would not let it go. He was foolish to have let the article get to him so much. He stopped and glared at the ship. "That was going to be my posting, Kaylee. Not long after I started at AMI, the director of Sihnon City Medical, a friend of my father's, told us the Trauma Department head there was planning to retire in a couple years, and he thought I'd be ready for it by then. He practically offered me the job on the spot. Me! I'd been a resident only six months at that time, and already, I was being considered for Trauma head at Sihnon Med." He shook his head. "It would have been perfect. Before the Academy, River had talked about going to university on Sihnon for graduate work, and I would have already moved there." He brought his voice back under control. "Not, of course, that any of that matters now."
"It doesn't, does it?"
"No, not at all. I'm happy for Doug, really. It's going to be hard for him at first, but probably he can manage it."
"Simon..." Kaylee sounded cautionary, but Simon barely noticed.
"No, really. I'm sure he'll do fine. Sihnon is not that far from Osiris, not that different. He'll have a full staff, the latest technology. He'll do just fine, even on his own. It's not like he'll be stuck out in the wilds of the Rim, right? Making do with primitive instruments and expired meds. Re-stitching wounds that re-open because his patients are too stubborn to listen to their doctor." He stalked on towards the ship, reaching the ramp before he noticed Kaylee was no longer following. He turned back to see her scowling at him.
"'Stuck'?" Kaylee repeated tensely. "You think you're 'stuck' here, Simon?"
"I wasn't talking about me."
"Do not you dare insult me, Simon Tam."
He started to deny it again but decided he was tired of pussyfooting about his feelings. "Okay, fine. I admit I sometimes resent the basic conditions under which I am forced to practice medicine out here. But that's just professional jealousy. That doesn't mean I resent being here."
"No, Simon, I think that is exactly what you mean."
"Really?" he snapped back before he could stop himself. "Please tell me what I mean, then, since you seem to think you have my sister's mind-reading abilities now."
Kaylee's eyes flashed, and she stood with her fists hard against her hips. "It means that even after over two years on board, after all we been through, all we've had together, you still don't wanna be on Serenity." She had started nearly shouting, but in the last words, her voice dropped out on the verge of a sob.
The hurt in that sound drove his heart beating in his ears. He knew he had gone too far – again – and dragged his voice back down in volume, but he could not keep the defensiveness from his tone. "Kaylee, that's not at all –"
"Just stop." She waved her hand to shut him up and turned away.
"Kaylee," he cajoled softly, "you know I love you."
She just shook her head, still turned away. "That ain't the point, Simon."
Eager to plead his case, he moved beside her and gently touched her elbow, but she shrugged it off. He realized she was in no mind to hear him. He dropped his hand, held his tongue, and waited anxiously.
After several moments, she continued in a hollow voice, "Simon, I am tired of havin' this same argument. It's gettin' real old." She took in a long breath and exhaled raggedly. Several more heartbeats passed, and Simon could see the the frustration tensing her neck. Then, she dropped her head and turned around to face him, still looking at the ground. "I need to know something, Simon, and I shoulda asked you a long while back." She grabbed both of his hands and looked straight into his eyes, her own wide and hard. "Tell me this – and honest."
He swallowed and nodded.
"If the warrants against you and River got dropped, no one hunting you no more, and no one trying to take River back to the Academy, would you want to go home back to Osiris?" Her voice shrank. "Leave Serenity?"
"Home?" he said in surprise. It had not been possible for so long, Simon had rarely allowed himself to think about going home since rescuing River. Going home was still not an option for him, but Kaylee's intense plea sent his mind reeling down that forbidden path. Go home someday? Really go home?
"Simon?" Kaylee's voice interrupted his thoughts. "Please answer me. Would you want to go home?"
He looked at their intertwined hands, and finally said, "I don't know."
Kaylee's fingers clutched his for a moment, then slowly slid out of his grip and moved tightly across her middle.
Simon looked up and saw a stricken look in her eyes. She said evenly and quietly, "Maybe you oughta know 'fore we go any further with this." At that, she turned, dashed through the open airlock door, and fled into Serenity's cargo bay.
"Băo bèi," he called out to her, and moved to follow.
"Leave me be, Simon!" she shouted from the dark interior, her voice thick with emotion but unmistakably clear that she did not want him to come after her.
He listened to the sound of her steps clanging against the deck-plating, receding until the ship swallowed all noise. He swore quietly, and sat down heavily next to the ramp, his back against Serenity's outer hull. He dropped his head into his hands and consciously breathed in and out, trying to understand how this conversation had spiraled downward so horribly.
She was right, though: at this point, he ought to know.
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