Disclaimer: Firefly and all related media belong to Joss Whedon.

A companion piece to What Defines Him, for which the link to can be found in my story listing.

Simon smiles softly, subtly as he works, bustling around the infirmary. He’s thinking about Kaylee again. She’s been overwhelming all of his thoughts as of late, always slipping into his mind when he’s least expecting it. Thoughts of her always bring smiles to his face. He likes thinking about her; it relaxes him and makes him feel like there’s more to life than the tragedy that seems to follow him like some dark cloud.

When he thinks of her, he thinks of a million different things. A number of different words, phrases, pictures, sounds and scents. The words are the first and foremost, though. Despite his never being able to say the right thing, in his mind when he thinks of her the words always flow flawlessly, he always thinks exactly what he wants to think, he doesn’t worry about thinking the wrong thing. All of the words he uses to describe her to himself make up a definition for her of his own that no dictionary in the universe can mimic.

Lover.

It hasn’t always been the first word to come to mind when Simon thought of Kaylee. No, there were a number of words that would have preceded it in the past, but now it’s always the first to enter his thoughts. She’s a lover in every way. He loves her smile, her eyes, her kind heart, her spirit of adventure and all those little things that make her the Kaylee that she is, and he knows that she loves him in return for who he is. It’s a perfect, unconditional love.

Simon thinks of when they’re together, how the love is almost palpable between them as they lay tangled in each other’s arms, reveling in a post-coital bliss. He loves her touch and he loves to touch her, feeling their love spark between them as his fingertips connect with her delicate, warm flesh. He loves the glimmer in her eyes when she looks at him, content and spent after a long lovemaking session.

The young doctor thinks back to the gestures of affection he and Kaylee share at every possible moment. A quick squeeze of her hand here, a kiss on the cheek there. They all mean so much more than one would think. They are all brimming with the love and passion that only two lovers can share and they mean the world to Simon.

Friend.

The word seems so juvenile, but at the same time has a very spiritual meaning. To some degree, Kaylee is already described as a friend under the lover clause, but being a friend to Simon is also different than being a lover. There are things that friends have that lovers sometimes take for granted, and Simon doesn’t take a single moment or aspect of his relationship with Kaylee for granted.

Kaylee is always there for him, with him, no matter what. She’s by his side when something wonderful happens, when something terrible happens. She cries with him, as seldom as he does cry, and she doesn’t judge him. It’s the friendship between them that is a strong foundation for their love.

They share many things in their friendship. They exchange glances and understand each other perfectly. They share secretive smiles, jokes, anecdotes and other things that only friends can share. It’s a full, whole, solid relationship and Simon wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world.

Patient.

Simon recalls numerous situations where he’d wound up tending to Kaylee after some kind of an injury, and a few other situations where they’d decided it was better to be safe than to be sorry which had culminated in Kaylee at Simon’s mercy. He remembers how her heart always races when he’s touching her, professionally, personally or otherwise. It isn’t something most people pay attention to, one’s heartbeat, but it’s what Simon has been trained to do and sometimes he can’t help it, can’t help but be in tune with it.

Simon has each and every curve of her body, each and every line, memorized. His skilled fingertips have examined Kaylee so many times that he could paint a picture of her in his sleep. He smiles as he thinks of her lying prone, completely trusting of him to hold her life in his hands, to examine her with all the propriety a world class physician should have. Only he’d much rather not have to hold her life in his hands. He’s happy just holding her in his arms, whole and unhurt.

Inamorata.

He figures it means pretty much exactly the same thing as lover does, but he likes to use it to describe her regardless. It sounds so much racier, so forbidden, so foreign. It sounds so… Kaylee. Simon smiles as he thinks back to a few of the more exotic things they’ve done in the past, and thinks of the many more they’ll likely do in the future.

He thinks about Kaylee and how exotically beautiful she is in her own way. She’s unlike the women he’s used to. He’s used to fake, dolled-up, high-class debutantes, and Kaylee is none of those things. She’s all natural, she’s never anything but herself, and it just makes her all that much more beautiful.

Simon knows that she loves him, which is the true essence of the word inamorata. A woman who loves a man and who is loved in turn. Still, there is much more to their relationship than the word offers by way of description, Simon knows that. He feels it with every thought he has.

Confidante.

Simon can tell Kaylee absolutely everything without fear or judgment or reprisal. He knows that he can talk to her about any subject and that she will listen gladly. Talking to her is so easy, so natural, Simon wonders how it was that he hadn’t been able to do it from the get go. It had taken him some time but he’d finally let Kaylee break down some of his walls, and he’d never been happier.

He can always find her in the engine room, or her quarters, or the odd time she’ll find him in the infirmary, and they always have a good conversation. Simon can get some of the things holding him down off of his chest and they can move past those things, they can forget about them. Kaylee just has a way of making him feel perfectly at ease and he’s glad for it. She’s just what he needs to keep him sane.

Healer.

She has a way of always making things better. A single kiss can soothe his frayed nerves, relax him, make him forget the stresses of the day. Her touch siphons away the worry and the apprehension, making him feel as though there is hope for a brighter future. She’s often so enthralled by him, by the fact that he’s a healer, but what Simon feels she doesn’t realize is the fact that she’s a better healer than he could ever be, at least in his eyes.

Simon knows that Kaylee’s got her own manner of diagnostics, a manner that he can’t even begin to fathom. Whatever they are, however, he knows that now that he’s experienced them, he could never choose to live without them again. Just like he knows he could never live without Kaylee’s smile, which he realizes is another one of her healing qualities. Her million watt smile, the one that just takes all of the hurt away, be it physical or otherwise.

Joie de Vivre.

Simon used to think that the only reason he’d survived the guilt that weighed on his soul once he’d found out what had happened to River was because of River herself. The guilt of going about his daily life while his sister was being hurt and frightened immeasurably by government scientists. Once he’d let Kaylee in, however, Simon discovered that there was more to life than just River. He’d discovered that focusing a little of his attention on someone else for a change wasn’t going to make him feel worse. No, on the contrary, it made him feel better; made his mind clearer.

Kaylee quickly became his reason for living, the driving force behind almost everything he does. Now every morning Simon wakes up smiling, knowing that Kaylee is there and that she’ll always be there. He lives on and gets through the days, even when they’re long and hard, because he knows that he’s got what no other man can ever have, and that it makes him the luckiest person in all the Allied worlds.

Seductress.

Before Kaylee, Simon had been almost puritanical about sex. It was never hurried, never forceful, just loving. Kaylee helped him discover that it could be loving regardless of how it was done, or where. She’d given him his spirit of adventure, embodied him with a primal instinct, an animal magnetism. She taught him that sometimes hurried and forceful exemplifies the love, not stifles it.

Kaylee is the only one who can make Simon want to drop everything for her. She’s the only one who can send a pull of lust straight to his nethers with a single bat of her eyelashes. It amazes him, the power she has to do those kinds of things to him. He’s never felt the kinds of things that Kaylee makes him feel before, and sometimes it’s a little frightening, but at the same time it’s invigorating, enlivening.

Everything.

It’s the one word that Simon can always count on to be able to use to describe Kaylee. She’s everything to him, she’s his breath, his savior. She’s the one thing (besides River) that he knows he could never go without. It makes him smile to think of just how quickly she’d managed to find a place in his heart and how much she means to him already, despite how short a while ago they consummated their union.

Simon knows that no one will ever be able to replace Kaylee in his heart, as well as he knows that contrary to his apprehensions, Kaylee hasn’t replaced River. She’s made him realize that there’s more room in his heart than he’d thought there was and that he wasn’t being forced to choose between the two of them. It was that realization which was perhaps the most precious to him. Kaylee had taught him so many things, so many life lessons that he wasn’t sure he could have learned on his own, and for that he’s thankful.

As he thinks of her more still, he decides that it’s time to take action. He smiles as he turns away from where he had just put away some supplies and heads towards the infirmary doors.

Kaylee is all of those things to him, she’s more than she could ever know, and she’s his.

Let me know what you think!