Disclaimer: all things Firefly/Serenity are the property of Whedon et al. I'm not making any money off this, just playing with the toys.

He couldn’t really understand the fascination with the room. It was loud, suffocatingly hot and dangerous. A person could so easily lose a finger or an eye with all the moving parts and equipment. He didn’t want to think on Kaylee suffering because she inadvertently placed her hand somewhere she shouldn’t have.

He could never say these things to her, of course. She would become indignant and accuse of him of thinking that she weren’t anything but a ditzy space vixen who didn’t know right end of a spanner. She would stomp off and not see her for the rest of the day, leaving him alone again. No, those thoughts needed to be kept to himself.

That was mostly why he didn’t venture into the room. A small slip of the tongue and he would evoke her anger. And in the engine room, that could be very serious. Thankfully, Kaylee wasn’t always in there. Sometimes she ventured to the bridge to work on the console (or whatever the technical term for it was that he did not care to learn) or went into the kitchen to try to fix a meal into something edible. He grinned on thinking of his birthday cake all those months ago. She had tried so hard to impress him when she needn’t have bothered.

He may not have liked the engine room, but secretly in his dreams, he envisioned himself in there, with her, doing things that would have made him stutter and seek the haven of his medlab if he thought on them while awake. He could see her body glistening with a light sheen of moisture from the heat of the engine. The low lights would make her glow. She would give him that cute wink and he would stride to her, his hands reaching for her cheeks. Her lips would be strawberry sweet and his tongue would be forceful.

The thrum of Serenity’s engine would become their own. The ship’s heat would be theirs.

Maybe the engine room wasn’t such a bad place after all...

“Simon?”

He slowly blinked.

“Hey, Doc!”

He lifted his head from the infirmary table and felt his body shudder as though a warm blanket had been taken from him and cold air assaulted his skin.

Mal stepped into the infirmary with a frown. “You still with us?”

Simon bolted upright, wincing a little at the quick movement of blood from his brain. “What? Yes.” He blinked again then stood. “What seems to be the problem?”

Mal narrowed his eyes, but made no comment. “Only problem as such seems to be our meal.”

“Shuh muh?”

“You’re on dinner rotation and you best get on that.” He turned to leave the room. “Little Kaylee’s been working hard in the engine room and is like to have a good appetite brewing so you best not disappoint her.”

Mal did not see the doctor cover his gaping mouth with a refined hand.

A/N: Holy smokes! No Jayne anywhere in sight? I must be sick... Written for the livejournal Friday fic challenge "engine room".