He is no longer sure who he is, wrenched so out of context. He has gone beyond colluding with criminal activities to actively planning them, and he can only guess what else he might be capable of.

He misses the comfort of the ground beneath him and the sky safely arching over his head, the casual glory of sunrise and sunset glimpsed in neat slices between the tall walls of glass-faced buildings as he hurried from work to home or home to work. Now he savours planetfalls the way that Kaylee savours strawberries. Granted, he spends most of their landbound time worrying about River and the Alliance, but beneath it all there is always a visceral sense of relief to be back on dry land and breathing a limitless supply of fresh air, with the stars safely tucked away where they belong.

He would live alone in a space station orbiting a sulphur-mining moon if it would keep his sister safe.

"I love you," he says out loud, and River smiles.

* * *

"Don't you like me?"

And of course he likes her, because only a monster could dislike Kaylee. He more than likes her, truth to tell, and he thought she knew this, even though he isn’t very good at saying so. Simon stares helplessly into her hurt eyes. Every time they've had a moment like this, with skin tingling from an accidental touch and her breath still warming his ear, it's all gone horribly wrong. He's paralysed now, trying not to wreck it and knowing that he's wrecking it anyway.

The seconds slip by as his fingers tighten around the mug and he knows that every moment is making it worse, but he still doesn't know where to begin, or what he wants. Jayne will probably come blundering down the corridor into the Engine room any minute now and say something spectacularly crass.

She's waiting. There's grease on her exposed collarbone and on the back of her wrist, and her hair is falling out of a ponytail already, although she tied it up barely five minutes ago. He wants to tell her that he likes her top, which is cheap and flowery and worn thin in places, and still prettier than all the brocade gowns he has seen in his life because it's hers. She's wearing a bracelet of synthetic jade and artificial ivory that he hasn't seen before. It's cheap and trashy and kitsch, and he's quite sure that her affection for it is unironic. It makes him want to kiss her.

If he were good with girls he would be able to explain it all. If he were good with girls he could say something witty and sexy, and then she would be laughing and leaning towards him with that fascinating light in her eyes and her smile so open and honest that everything in the 'verse seems hopeful.

Simon isn't good with girls.

And, honestly, she isn't the sort of girl he would have noticed, before. (Not that Simon had ever noticed girls very often, even before he realised there was something wrong with River.) It wasn't as if he'd have been rude to her, but – well. Kaylee doesn't know the right kind of clothes to wear or the right wines to serve. She doesn't look or act or think like the girls Simon is supposed to desire, the appropriate girls. She's common. Which, Simon has come to realise, doesn't mean what he once thought it meant. And he realises that people like Kaylee are rarer than hen's teeth, now that he knows her. Kaylee is anything but common; Kaylee is a pearl beyond price, a gem of the first water, a startlingly genuine and generous soul. She is also, he realises now, quite beautiful, because in addition to being a pretty girl she is Kaylee, and so she is unspeakably precious.

But before all this – well it simply wouldn't have occurred to him to get to know her in the first place, any more than it had occurred to him to become pally with his chauffeur, so he would never have known she was precious. His life had a place for everything, and everything in its place, and Simon had never questioned that. It's still difficult to make the adjustments.

"Of course I do," he manages at last, but the moment has gone and her smile has dimmed. He kicks himself. He wants her. He watches her turn away and before he is aware of his own intention he feels his fingers clasping her arm, soft and firm through the thin fabric, and pulling her back towards him. Kaylee makes a small, interrogative noise as she swings around to face him and then he is kissing her up against the wall and she is kissing him right back. He can feel her smile curve into his face.

She feels entirely wonderful against him.

* * *

• * *

"Do you think you love her? Or is she spinach?"

Simon pauses, the sliver of metal a scant millimetre away from penetrating her skin. He knows that she hates this and dreads it and that she will lash out in any way she can, desperate for distraction. He thought he was used to it.

"I'm not – I mean, I've never, I'm not sure what – of course she isn't spinach." He swallows, suddenly dry mouthed, and steps away from her. River is trembling, and he doesn't know whether this is a physiological or psychological symptom. She looks paler than usual. She looks nothing at all like Kaylee, and for the tiniest fragment of a moment he wishes that she did not exist at all, and that he could simply lose himself in Kaylee's warm curves and not spend his life worrying about his crazy-brilliant baby sister. He is instantly ashamed of the thought. And if not for River, he would not know Kaylee, or want to know her. And anyway, he cannot conceive of a life without River, even this River. "We aren't talking about this. It's really none of your business." She stares at him, and he doesn't know how to interpret her expression at all. "Now please, River, just stay still for me. Please stay still. I need to do your blood work to see whether the new meds – no, don't do that." The patience in his voice is cracking. River's knuckles are white where she clasps his wrist. She's hurting him.

"Because I like her. I don't think you should hurt her, Simon." He stumbles as he steps away, shaking his arm so violently to free it that she is almost pulled off the bed. He is breathing too fast.

"I'm not! I don't – what – I have no intention of discussing my love life with you. If I had a love life, which I still really don't, beyond a few kisses, because when the (need appropriate Chinese) would I have time for a love life, when I can't leave you alone for more than five minutes without you trying to cut of Jayne's head or opening an air lock, but if I ever were to have such a thing then it's not the sort of thing I'd want to discuss with my baby sister." He stops, startled by the tumble of words, and there is a little pause before he continues more calmly. "Really. This is almost as embarrassing as it is disturbing, which makes it about normal for my family right now. We're not talking about this, River."

"I've ruined everything," River whispers, pulling her knees up under her chin with a grace that is wholly out of place here. She wraps thin arms around her knees and hugs herself hard, staring at Simon accusingly through hair like straggled sea wrack. They have had this conversation before, too many times, and it hurts. "You shouldn't be here, learning to like mush. I've ruined everything for you."

"Yes you have," he snaps, because it has been months since he's had a good night's sleep, and because he misses his old life too, even though it makes him feel guilty as sin, even though he would do it all again without a second thought. Simon is only human, and there is a corner of his heart that feels nostalgic for the days when he believed everything was right with the world, that could almost wish he had never guessed something was wrong.

The shocked silence that follows is like a blow. Her eyes widen, suddenly gleaming with unshed tears, and he flinches at his own words. "No," he says, shaken. "No, I didn't mean – that's not – River, you know that it doesn't matter." He feels sick. He didn't mean it. She must know that. "None of it matters. Just you. Nothing matters but you, River. I love you." She shrinks away. He cannot bear it. "Look at me. Look at me, River!" His fingers close over her shoulders, but she is pressing her face into her knees and she will not look at him. "You know it doesn't matter," he tells her urgently, leaning close and whispering into her ear. Her hair brushes against his mouth. Simon is trembling. "Nothing matters, nobody matters – only you. Always you. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, mei-mei, River, darling, sweetheart." He is crying. There were long years when he had never cried at all, when he thought that he was too old for tears. He can't believe how stupid he once was. She still hasn't looked at him, and his fingers are digging too hard into her thin shoulders now but he simply can't stop himself. He is standing too close; her crossed arms and folded legs are hard against his chest, forcing a barrier between him and the fierce knot of her body. "Please talk to me." She has to understand. She mumbles something into her kneecaps, but he can't make it out. "What? What did you say?"

To his relief, she looks up at last. There is a trail of snot snaking towards her upper lip, and tears streaking her face. She looks, unexpectedly, quite livid.

"I said I know, you idiot. I know you love me, I know you're sorry, I know, I'm not stupid, you rube. But I ruined it all, and you miss it, clean shirts and clean conscience. You know you do. And I make you feel like a failure, and you're angry with that, aren't you? Because you can't fix me, you can't undo it ever, Humpty Dumpty fallen down the rabbit hole, looking glass all smashed, no way back now." He stares. Her face is very close to his now, and she doesn't look like a child at all. She looks like a stranger speaking a language he almost knows, the planes of her face pure and angry. "I know what you want. You want to escape into her, don't you? You want to pretend it isn't real, and play at being someone else. She makes you feel like someone else. She lets you forget. You want to forget. You still don't see her. You don't see me." Simon doesn't know what to say. "Some days I think I could hate you."

"I don't – I never meant," he stammers. "I just want to help. I love you."

"Not enough, though," River snarls, unfurling her limbs with a speed that leaves him breathless. Suddenly Simon is enfolded in her le

"Not enough, though," River snarls, unfurling her limbs with a speed that leaves him breathless. Suddenly Simon is enfolded in her legs and arms, an embrace that feels more like an attack. He laughs uncertainly, breathlessly, and she makes a frustrated noise almost like a growl. "Stupid. Stupid. Thicker than water. You're clinging to outdated paradigms, trying to hold on to the wrong thing. Spinach. Stupid." Her breath is hot on his neck. He wraps his arms around her uncertainly and pats her on the back like a colicky infant. "No! Not like that," she says, and her wet mouth closes shockingly over his earlobe. He jumps, and yelps, and she bites down hard.

"River! River, I – what do you think – stop it! Stop it right now!"

She pulls her head back far enough that she can look at him. His eyes meet hers, questions and protests bristling unspoken between them, things he doesn't know how to say (surely he has misunderstood this?), and then she darts forward and kisses his mouth in a way that will not allow any misunderstanding at all.

Desire uncurls somewhere inside, all the more tempting for being utterly forbidden. His body, he finds, really does not care what is acceptable.

He pushes her away. He is shaking.

"No," he says unevenly. Her fingers are still tangled in his hair. She is hurting him. "No. No. This is wrong." Simon's voice is stronger now. She snorts, looking at him with that same pitying look she would always use when he made some assertion that she, his precious, precocious pain of a sister knew to be nonsense – even though all the books confirmed his ideas – and it is all so familiar and so intimate, so hideously, impossibly right that he feels exhilarated and sick to his stomach.

"Stupid," she says, pulling away from him slowly. "You'll see. I know, you dummy. I'm right." She sits back on the table and cocks her head, studying him closely. He stares at her, lost for words. She smiles, and offers him her arm. He looks at it blankly, and against all expectation she laughs. "Blood," she says. "It's what you wanted."

You know, I'm completely Firefly-ignorant. Never watched it.

But the fic? Is lovely lovely lovely.

Thank you! ( Firefly broke my heart. Or rather, F*x did. Curse them.)

Hodgeberries!

That having been said, it's lovely.

Today's Open On Sunday challenge is books, any context. Here's my first one:

The Secret Garden

In her mind, poor fragmented missing thing, she is a child, but not the child she was.

Instead, her name is Mary, and she lived a long time ago. She lives with a distant, unhappy uncle in an enormous house in Yorkshire. Somewhere in the house, her spoiled frightened cousin Colin keeps to his bed, crying in the night.

In her mind, they find the door to a secret garden, and bring it to life, and the shuttered dead house comes to life with it.

Outside her mind, Willow cries over her, and swears to get her back from Glory.

OWCH.

Oh, owch. Go Deb.

Oh, dear. I have literally no clue where that one came from. It was one of the books that was read to me rather a lot when I was a child, sick in bed - but rather nice, I think, imagining that poor fuddled Tara was having a lovely wander with Dickon, feeding the robin, and not screaming hopelessly for Willow.

I love it Fay! But damn you for making me miss Firefly even more.