Prompt: Firefly, any/any, watching you sleep
Timeline: Pre-relationship
On My Mind When I Arise
Wasn't that he fell asleep on the bridge, even if night watch is the most boring thing he can conjure. He'd just been resting his eyes, that was all – and his ears too, apparently, since he'd had no notion of River being in the room too until he opened his eyes to find her face right in front of his.
"Um, River, darlin', that's just a mite creepifing."
"Why?" she asks, moving back just enough that he can take in her whole face at once, rather than just her great big brown eyes. "You do it all the time."
"What? Don't do any such thing!" he protests.
"You do so," she says, perfectly unruffled. "Every time someone's hurt. Kaylee, Zoe. Even Jayne. You sit, and wait, and watch. Try to hold them together with your will, make it so they won't dare slip away with you watching."
It's downright uncomfortable, way that girl sees into things, gets into places a man didn't even know were there. Also the way she's standing so close he couldn't get up if he wanted to, but that's not quite so bad.
"That ain't the same," he points out. "Folks are happy to see someone there for 'em when they're hurt, they expect it. Watching someone just plain sleeping is different. And creepy," he emphasizes once more, hoping she'll take the hint and get them both out of this situation.
River being River, she doesn't, or more likely, chooses not to. "You watched me sleep, before," she says, her voice soft in the dimness, swallowed up by all the black. "And I wasn't hurt then."
Mal's not quite sure sleep is the word for what she was doing then, lying cuffed to Serenity's floor, caged up like a wild thing. "Weren't hurt on the outside, maybe. You were hurting plenty on the inside, way I recall it. And how do you know what I was doing while you were out, anyhow?"
She looks at him for a long moment, still so close he can catch the scent of her hair when she shifts. "I know everything," she says finally, like she's stating the plainest of facts. "You watched, and you worried. Thought I was broken, that I'd break you too."
Maybe it's that he's just woken up, but something compels him to go and be honest when he shouldn't. "Still ain't sure you won't, darlin'." Moment it's out of his mouth, he knows it's the wrong thing to say, though he's less than certain which is worse, her thinking he still sees her as a threat or her taking it in regards to the lack of distance between them as of late, the way he meant it.
Way she smiles, quick and subtle, he knows full well which way she took it. "You won't break," she says firmly, and moves away, settling herself in the other chair, watching him from further away now. "I won't let you."
Funny, how he's finding he misses the heat of her close by; still, there's too many things to say just now, and they're all jumbled up in his brain 'til he can't possibly make sense of what's real and what's just in his head, and the possibility of something breaking – his sense of decency, her fragile peace, the rules that keep them both bound inches apart – seems more likely by the minute.
"It's alright," she says, smiling that secretive little smile again and shaking her head just a fraction, as if to say, I can wait, and so can you. "Go back to sleep. I'll watch."