Title: Feast and Famine
Disclaimer: I don't own this universe or these characters.
A/N: This is really like Chapter 12b. Thanks for the quick reviews guys - it makes all the difference in getting me motivated to get the story out of my brain.
A rush of people followed in the newlywed's wake, forming a clog at the door leading to the banquet hall. The break in the formalities led to a muted roar as guests relaxed into conversation as they waited for the line to move.
River and Mal were not the only ones still sitting, several small groups huddled around each other choosing to wait until the first mass of people were well off to the banquet before following at their leisure. Still, despite the crowd milling around the pair, River and Mal were - for all intents and purposes - alone.
Mal cleared his throat.
River felt just as exposed, just as caught as he did. She could have stopped him, should have, once she realized where his thoughts had been heading, but ... the end result would have been the same. And she'd been compelled by him - so raw and unedited beside her.
Embarrassment seemed to choke her while echoes of what he had thought still tangled merciless with hope and doubt in her head. River gripped her hands together, "You're confused."
"Pardon?"
"You're just confused."
"Confused."
"You - were so invested in the performance - you - your emotions are all mixed up in loyalty and rescue and honor and..." River's heart seemed to be racing her words. She took a stuttering breath, "You don't have to say this."
Mal turned toward her, and she tried to hold her breath, to keep from showing him too much. He watched her for several seconds, River finally let out her breath, feeling foolish and felt the mild amusement in his voice, "I don't have to say what, exactly?"
"You don't know what you're feeling! It might not be true! It might all part of the... role you played. Of course you didn't like Warner. Of course you feel that now that Inara is married-"
Mal's brows snapped together, "Inara ain't got nothing to do with this."
River shrugged, much more comfortable with his anger than the sentiment that kept pushing at her brain, "Just - everything's mixed together. Inara and Warner and me and the Alliance. You feel responsible for me, you understand how alone, how I want... you and you think you should want me back."
"I do?"
River glanced at him, then away, and her heart sunk, he hadn't. Until she'd just told him. She finished weakly, "You'd regret it."
"Regret what?"
"Me. Because I'm not - you're trapped, you think you're trapped."
"No, I don't"
"You might... someday."
"It sounds like you're saying I don't know my own mind," Mal's voice was dangerously level, River turned her head to stare at him, "Like, maybe because you're psychic you know my thoughts better than I do?"
"I-"
"Right, you know this someday you're so worried about?" Mal stood up, "I'm looking forward to it - because maybe when we get there you'll figure out you don't know every gorram thing. I'm fit to starve. You coming?" Mal offered her his arm.
River stood, frustrated, "I never said that I knew every gorram thing."
"Yeah, well I never got a chance to say anything, did I?" He took her hand, not ungently and put it through his arm, "Maybe you should try listening a little deeper from here on out." Then, Mal led them forward to join the rest of the crew, effectively cutting off any further conversation.
River was not often rendered speechless. But for nearly the entire banquet she could barely put two words together. It was not making it any easier that Mal seemed perfectly fine, not only with her discomfort, but with the whole situation in general. He was making no effort to block his thoughts from her, in fact, he seemed to take pleasure in the freedom - as he himself had not allowed the feelings before and now he was savoring his own acknowledgment of them as well as the effect it was having on her.
When Inara and her husband shared their first dance he held nothing back in his mind. River saw the night they'd confronted Liu and how Inara had taken Mal aside and confronted him - had given him the ultimatum and had been gently denied. Mal's fondness for the Companion, his love for her was there for River to see and she could not be threatened by it... Because it was so different from what was there now for her; at her very fingertips there was a deep well of trust and desire and acceptance tempting her, taunting her.
But it was when he nodded toward the dance floor crowded with guests that River finally let go. If this man could invite her to publicly stand with him at this event in particular, she could rise to meet him. She dove into her own emotion for him, abandoned herself to it and mirrored it to him in her eyes, unsure of how to express her surrender.
It was a bit intoxicating, to have all the boundaries, all the reservations she'd carefully kept around her heart lifted all at once; and to have his heart there waiting for her when she did. The music lifted her, their hands joined, their bodies drew together near enough to brush as the dance dictated, and his eyes were on hers - avoiding nothing, hiding nothing, challenging everything. The intent was within him now and she lifted her face to meet him, lost, for once, in the present and thinking only of... "Jayne."
Mal stopped moving, his eyebrows raised, "I know you didn't just say -" But he was taller than River and he was already swearing when he saw Zoe weaving through the dancers towards them.
"Sorry to interrupt, Sir," Zoe looked apologetic, but unembarrassed, when she reported quietly, "Jayne's been arrested."
The evening after Simon's wedding:
The trek back to the ship was not exactly as mundane as it should have been. Mal's steps were heavy and his mind full of the last twenty four hours. Inara was ignoring him again, though he could tell her curiosity had only escalated. Though Kaylee was happily hanging onto Simon and giggling to Jayne over every possible detail of the wedding, Simon himself had dark circles under his eyes and a grim set to his jaw that mirrored Mal's sense of things.
There was a lot to do, even with the advantage that River's immunity to triggers gave them. How to prepare their own minds, what to tell the crew and what to keep hidden until the time came, how to keep working and still recognize the threat when it came - a hundred ways this could go wrong ricocheted around in his head.
And still he'd gone and managed to complicate the most complicated of situations. He had carefully been avoiding Simon's eye and sidestepping Inara's pointed looks and all the while he was focused on getting back to his ship, getting back to River. He wasn't totally sure he believed that there would be no consequences for his damn fool behavior this morning, and he wasn't sure he liked River's blase attitude about the whole thing. It made him feel... unsettled somehow. Like there was something still lurking around the corner. Mal squared his shoulders as he stood in Serenity's shadow. Whatever it was, whenever it came - he'd sure as hell be prepared for it. He looked up at his ship as River opened the hatch without needing to be hailed.