Bandiagara, Part 4c
Go for a nice shuttle ride…
"Kaylee," Mal called, "You busy?"
"I'm always busy, this trip," Kaylee responded. She removed her goggles and carefully set down the soldering tool. She stretched her arms high above her head, lifting her light flowered shirt and exposing a wide expanse of tummy, causing Mal to turn modestly away. She smiled at him. "Whaddya need, Cap'n?"
"Time for you to take a break, 妹妹 mèimei. Come with me." He turned and led the way up the cargo bay stairs to Shuttle Two.
"Cap'n, I really oughtta be fixin' up that electric generator. All's it got is a few more connections need soldering and it's—"
"What you need is a break. You think I ain't seen how you fall face-first into your dinner plate every evening? I appreciate your workin' so hard, li'l Kaylee, but you won't do me no good if you wear yourself out and get laid up sick. So—"
"I ain't sick, Cap'n," Kaylee protested, thinking it was a good thing no one knew that she'd lost her lunch that day. Just a little tummy upset, really—not surprising, after all, it was Jayne's cook day, and it was a charitable description to call the glop that he'd made "stew." It would pass. "Just been a little tired, is all. I don't need a—"
"Captain's orders," Mal said, firmly. They'd reached the hatch to Shuttle Two, and he activated the door. "For the next half hour, you're to sit, relax, and go for a nice shuttle ride." He led her into the shuttle, right up to the seat, and it was only as she sat down that she saw past the Captain's form. Simon was sitting in the pilot's seat.
"Cap'n, I can't—"
"Sit, Kaylee. You need to get off your feet. Simon needs a passenger. 懂吗 Dǒng ma?" Mal gave them both a look that quelled any further protest, and turned away before Kaylee's sad puppy eyes could affect him. He left the shuttle, shutting the hatch behind him.
Kaylee's look hardened, and she stared out into the Black, huffing a bit and ignoring Simon. Simon glanced briefly at her, and said nothing. He pushed the initiator and flipped the three check switches, ran through his pre-flight and the start-up sequence. Then he lifted off softly, and the shuttle floated gently out into the Black before he banked it to make a beauty pass around Serenity.
He'd practiced several times daily since his first solo flight, and he soon found that the best way to avoid the sickening feeling he felt looking into the deep Black was to point the shuttle at something else. They were in interplanetary space, so the best option was Serenity herself, and he'd become quite adept at maneuvering around the ship.
This was the first time Mal had allowed Simon to fly anyone other than himself unsupervised. He didn't know whom to expect when Mal said he was bringing him his first passenger, but he was relieved it wasn't River or Zoe or even Inara, whose piloting skills would have made him nervous, and he was especially glad his passenger was not Jayne. That didn't leave many choices, so Kaylee's arrival shouldn't have surprised him as much as it did. Still, they had barely spoken since their blow-up at the dump, except when necessary for work purposes, and he felt awkward as he tried to come up with something appropriate to say. What was the proper greeting for one's estranged girlfriend towards whom one was feeling repentant and to whom one wished to apologize, yet to whom one felt it was undignified to grovel and who one felt shared the fault, perhaps equally with oneself? There were altogether too many 'ones' in that sentence for Simon to wrap his head around, and he shook himself.
"Did you see that?" Kaylee suddenly exclaimed, and Simon looked sharply at her.
"See what?"
"There's some sorta thing attached to the hull what shouldn't be there," she said. "A ways back from the starboard navsat." Simon gave her a blank look so she elaborated. "See the blue box thing with the phased array stickin' up outta it? That's the navsat. Back behind it, there's a round thing…back towards the burner."
He spotted what she was talking about, and nodded.
"Right behind it, or sorta next to it now—thanks, that's a better view," she said as Simon carefully pulsed the attitude jets to adjust the shuttle's position. "That disk with the big whip antenna—that don't belong there." She considered for a moment. "D'ya think Ip left one of his spectrum scanners outside from that time near Shadow?" She didn't have to explain any further. They both remembered how Ip's scientific investigation had ended abruptly when first a stealth ship, and then Reavers, had chased Serenity. "I woulda left everything hanging and run inside." She and Simon shared a look, remembering the tense work in the engine room while they labored with desperate energy to prepare Serenity for hard burn, hoping they could ready her before one or the other disaster struck. Blushes suffused their faces as they both came to the same point in the memory—
Serenity was safe. "We did it, Simon!"
"Kaylee, you're 聪明 cōngming." He was so happy to know they would not die as part of a Reaver banquet.
He dropped his tools and embraced Kaylee, giving her a life-affirming kiss. The wrench slipped out of her hand unnoticed as she worked her fingers under his shirt. Their kiss deepened and, not content with the barrier their clothing put between them, they reached for closer contact. Their hands strayed rapidly over each other's bodies. Simon pulled Kaylee's shirt over her head, barely breaking the kiss as he did so, while her hands made short work of the buttons on his shirt. Several of them went flying while Simon unhooked Kaylee's bra with a practiced hand. Her hand flew to his buckle, while his reached for her zipper…
"That was some hot sex we had in the engine room that time, weren't it Simon?"
"Yeah," he said, his voice husky with the recollection. He glanced at her. Was that all he could think of to say? Yeah? How had he come to be so inarticulate?
She loved it when he looked at her with those bedroom eyes. That look was better than a thousand words. It was lustful and loving, shy and inviting, and just so sexy. "You're really good."
His eyes widened.
"At the flyin', I mean." Tears welled up in her eyes, threatening to spill over. "You done learned this—" she gestured vaguely at the pilot's console "—just this last week or so, all 'cause I taunted you 'bout not knowin' how ta drive. I'm so sorry, Simon. I was bein' mean."
"Yeah, well I was being a 混蛋 húndàn," Simon admitted. "I lost my temper, and swore at you. I'm sorry, Kaylee. My only excuse is that I was hot and tired. I—I really need to fly the ship!" He veered away from a collision course with Serenity's dining room skylight. He focused his attention on the flying again.
"Sorry for distractin' ya, Simon."
"Kaylee, I love it when you distract me—when I'm not flying a shuttle I just learned how to turn on a few days ago. Can I take a raincheck?"
. . .
As the shuttle docked, Mal stood close enough to the hatch to intervene if things hadn't gone smooth, but far enough away to melt away into the background if all had gone according to plan. The hatch slid open, and Simon and Kaylee emerged from the shuttle hand in hand, exactly as he'd intended. They turned into one another's arms and began kissing one another with passionate zeal. Alright, he didn't need to see no more to understand just how successful his plan to reconcile them had been. He busied himself with assembling the air compressor parts he'd brought along as a cover job. "We have to tell the Captain," Kaylee said to Simon, and Mal mentally jumped out of his skin as his imagination leapt to announcements of engagements or the expectation of a bundle of joy. He hadn't intended for the reconciliation to go quite so far, so fast. His attempts to blend into the background were unsuccessful as both Simon and Kaylee spotted him immediately and hastened toward him, still holding hands. "Captain," Simon began, as Kaylee said, "Cap'n, there's something you need ta know."
. . .
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glossary
妹妹 mèimei [little sister]
懂吗 Dǒng ma? [Understand?]
聪明 cōngming [brilliant]
混蛋 húndàn [asshole]
What is that thing on the hull of the ship? :-)