A/N: Ok, here is the penultimate part. I'm pretty fond of this chapter :) Comments, as always, are *cough*demanded*cough* welcome. This part references War stories and The Message, plus snaps to anyone who notices the lil R.Tam files reference. Ahem. What else. The last part is over double the length of any other chapter. It was originally two parts, but it went together so well as one big thing that I called it part Five A and Part Five B. In the end, the only place I could split it that was anywhere near the half way mark meant seperating two chapters that purposely flowed together, which would ruin the effect. So, you have a BIG juicy denoument to look forward to. :) *cough*comments*cough*

EDIT. IF WERE ONE OF THE FIRST 5 PEOPLE TO READ THIS THEN YOU PROBABLY MISSED THE ENDING FEW PARAGRAPHS, WHICH FOR SOME REASON DIDN'T POST. OOOPSIE.

Cup of Tea – Part Four

Kaylee’s hands shook as she poured the tea. She was listening carefully for his footsteps, so familiar to her after all these months. She was early, she knew, but she hadn’t been able to concentrate in the engine room all morning. She’d been able to hear River screaming and screaming all morning, and almost wished that Simon would be so preoccupied that he wouldn’t come today.

She hadn’t been able to face him or River that morning. No one knew that River had taken her gun and shot those men. No one had noticed anything amiss. But Kaylee couldn’t get the image of River face afterwards out of her head. And as much as she didn’t want to keep something like this from Simon, telling him that his sister was a killer, a methodical, deadly, killer, was even less appealing.

She heard his footsteps and her heart sank. Plastering a smile on her face, she placed the cups on the table and was taking her seat as he entered, looking exhausted. He fell on the tea wordlessly, drinking deeply from the mug. She watched him silently.

He sighed with satisfaction. “I needed that,” he told her, sounding, if possible, even more tired than he looked.

“Is River…?” she began.

“Sleeping,” he finished. “Finally.”

Kaylee pursed her lips, sympathetic. “She’ll be okay. Yesterday shook us all up.”

Simon nodded, apparently too tired to disagree.

They sat in silence, both immersed in their own thoughts. Kaylee wished that he would leave so she could cry.

“Kaylee,” he began after a moment, sounding nervous. “Can you… I mean, I wouldn’t ask, it’s just…”

“What?” she asked evenly.

He looked at her, and she saw desperation in his eyes.

“Could you go see her?”

She clenched her mug tightly. He rushed on.

“I know it’s asking a lot, it’s just, she really likes you, and you always seem to help her… I’ve tried everything, but I just can’t…” he trailed off, pressing his hands against his face.

“Simon, you should get some sleep,” Kaylee told him, worried.

“That isn’t an answer,” he calmly told the palms of his hands.

Kaylee gritted her teeth. “Of course I will. Anything I can do to help,”

There was a pause.

“No,” Simon said firmly, removing his hands but not looking at her. He got to his feet. “I retract the favour. She’s my responsibility, no one else’s”

She watched him leave, and ran to the engine room to cry.

*

Kaylee could feel River’s eyes on her as she worked. It had been two weeks since Kaylee had watched her friend shoot three men, and though she was less anxious around her and at ease with Simon once more, it was disconcerting to know she was watching.

“You can come in, River,” she called.

The girl entered the engine room, eyes fixed firmly on the engine. She looked simultaneously awed and confused. Kaylee noticed she was muttering to herself, her eyes darting over the machinery. Kaylee got the distinct, unsettling feeling that the girl was memorising where everything on the engine went.

“Be careful,” she warned her, not wanting to have to tell Simon that his sister got hurt under her watch.

River smiled serenely, not taking her eyes off the engine. “All working. You can go.”

Kaylee got to her feet and moved towards the girl. “I can what?”

River turned to look her straight in the eye, looking playful. “Don’t want to be late.”

Kaylee blushed, wondering just how much River knew about her developing feelings for her brother.

River’s smile grew as she tilted her head on its side. “He hates when I can tell.”

She offered no further explanation and drifted back out of the engine room, leaving Kaylee standing, utterly confused and inexplicably hopeful.

She almost skipped to the galley and beamed at Simon as she sat down in her usual seat.

“What are you so cheerful about?” he asked, and she could tell by his tone that he was in a good mood too. That was probably because River was wandering around and not sleeping.

“Simon,” she said reproachfully, taking a biscuit. “When will you learn? I’m always cheerful!”

*

“Hold this,” Kaylee instructed, thrusting the end of a paper banner in to Simons hand. He obliged, watched as she clambered up on to the countertop to attach the other end to the wall. She wobbled precariously, and without thinking, he stepped closer, putting one hand on her waist to steady her. She stilled instantly at his touch, and smiled down at him.

“Streamers,” she ordered lightly. He passed a handful of the brightly coloured streamers to her.

As she moved along to fix the other end of the banner to the wall, he surveyed the room, taking in the bright decorations.

“Is it straight?” she called, and he moved to get a better look at the Happy Birthday banner.

“Further up,” he told her, and she adjusted it. “Perfect.”

She jumped down from the counter top and reached for a bag of balloons.

“Let’s get started on these then,” she said, handing him one.

“I can’t believe I let you talk me into this,” Simon said, moving back to his chair and stretching the balloon in his fingers.

Kaylee’s eyes flashed with knowing mischief.

“Oh, come on. We gotta celebrate Jayne’s birthday in style!”

* Simon watched as the bereaved family in front of him looked down at Tracey’s body. A trained doctor, Simon was managing to mostly ignore the little voice in his head telling him that he should have been able to save the man. He was struggling more with the idea that maybe he hadn’t wanted to.

Kaylee’s hand was cold and small in his own. She wasn’t looking at him and he wasn’t looking at her. He wondered at her compassion, at her sadness for the passing of a man who had held her at gunpoint. She had forgiven him instantly, Simon had watched her do it, watch her nod with a weak smile even as his blood stained her clothes.

Simon involuntarily gripped her hand a little tighter at the thought. He had heard her screams, had dashed from the infirmary in time to see Tracey holding her. Simon hadn’t even heard the words the captain had spoken; he’d been too preoccupied with the look of terror on Kaylee’s face.

He’d been glad when Mal shot Tracey. Hell, he’d wanted to shoot him himself.

Simon sneaked a tiny glance at Kaylee out of the corner of his eye. He watched a flake of snow melt on her eyelashes.

The expression on her face confirmed what he had feared. He was a terrible person.

Kaylee had felt his hand tighten around hers but hadn’t reacted. Her eyes were fixed ahead of her, she was trying with everything she had to concentrate on what was before her; a funeral. The dull feeling that she’d missed out on something, that Tracey had died before his time, was still very much present in her mind, but it was being overshadowed by another feeling she was pretty unfamiliar with. Guilt.

Simon’s grip on her hand was firm, solid, reassuring, but she couldn’t help but think that his unshakeable manners and impeccable upbringing were the only things that had stopped him from pushing her away. She shivered, only partially from the cold, thinking about the way she had spoken to him, cold-shouldered him, insulted him when he’d only been offering to help.

She blinked, not wanting him to see her cry. She was usually one to wear her heart on her sleeve, but she had been finding herself more and more reluctant to let Simon see her being weak. She tried to look at him without moving her head. His face was impassive.

And Kaylee had to bite back a sob. She was a terrible person.

* The next day, eleven o’ clock came and went. Simon sat on the catwalk, cleaning Tracey’s spilled blood from the rails. Kaylee sat in her hammock, tinkering with a grimy engine part in her hand.

River peered round the entrance to the galley, saw the empty room, and rolled her eyes.

* At eleven o’ clock the next day, Kaylee heard a noise outside the engine room. She clambered out from underneath the engine, wiped her hands, and moved towards the doorway to see who her visitor was. But no one was there. Only a tray on the floor, with a steaming cup of tea and a plate of her favourite biscuits.

* At eleven o’ clock the day after that, Simon looked up from the medical journal he was writing in, and thought he saw a flash of colour disappear round the corner. He glanced down at the doorway of the infirmary and smiled to himself.

River smiled at him serenely from her place on the bed. “Drink it while it’s still hot.”

*

A day later, Simon was dragged by an insistent River into the galley at quarter to eleven, where she set him to work with the kettle and turned to go and retrieve Kaylee.

She sighed to herself as she went. Big brothers were too much like hard work.

* “Simon!” Kaylee gasped, feeling her eyes fill with water. She was laughing so hard it hurt, but she couldn’t stop and he clearly wasn’t going to let her.

He swung back a little on his chair; his feet up on another, looking more relaxed than she’d ever seen him. The grin on his face was also unusual, but not out of place. She loved it when his smile spread to his eyes, as it was doing now.

“It’s not that funny,” he told her, even as he suppressed his own mirth.

“Yes it is,” she said, breathless. She attempted to collect herself. “Okay, okay. I’m calm.”

His eyes twinkled. “You sure?”

She cracked up again. “Yes,” she lied.

He chuckled to himself and waited for her second wind to pass, watching her pensively.

“I’ve missed this,” he told her quietly, when her laughter had subsided.

She sobered slightly. “Me too.” She paused, then beamed at him. “If that’s what happened when you made doctor, I’d love to hear what you did when you made surgeon!”

Simon smiled, giving away nothing. “That’s a story for another day.”

Kaylee pouted, and without warning he felt a shock shoot down his spine. He barely heard her next words as he straightened up in his seat.

“Oh, come on, Simon, tell me.”

Only the pleading, teasing lilt to her voice registered, and he got to his feet. She watched him, puzzled.

“I have to go check on River,” he told her, cursing himself for sounding so breathless.

She nodded wordlessly, and he left, practically running to his bunk. He collapsed on his bed, his head spinning with confusion, with regret, with guilt, and with desire.

* “Kaylee.”

It did things to her, hearing him gasp her name against her ear as he moved above her. She moaned as their hips met, at the sensations thrumming through her body at his touch.

His hands were gliding up her sides, his thumbs gently massaging her skin as they moved together, faster. She felt herself begin to shake, felt her body slowly slip from her control, and knew she was completely at the mercy of the man above her, the man holding her firmly in place as he brought her to her fall. Only one word could travel from her clouded mind and form itself on her lips as they collapsed onto each other.

“Simon.”

Kaylee woke with a start, shaking and drenched in sweat. It didn’t take her long to realise she’d been dreaming, she was becoming accustomed to it after all. Still panting heavily, she lay back into her pillow. The memories of the dream were, for the moment, still very much alive, and she allowed herself to enjoy them as she drifted back to sleep.

* Simon turned over in his bed, trying in vain to get comfortable. His watch, glowing from where he’d dropped it on the shelf, told him it was nearing 3 am. Simon took several deep breaths.

Over the past few hours he’d been using every trick he knew to help himself sleep, but nothing was working. He suddenly empathised with the patients who’d had trouble sleeping back in his early days as a doctor. He understood perfectly their annoyed expression when he refused to give them sleeping tablets. Right now, the only thing stopping him from marching to the infirmary to dope himself was the knowledge that it probably wouldn’t wear off till about mid day.

The fact was he couldn’t sleep when he was thinking. And right now, his thoughts were stubbornly stuck on Kaylee. Too tired to continue forcing her out of his mind, he laid back and closed his eyes once more, allowing her image to fill his head.

He imagined her now, curled up in her bunk, and although he’d never seen the room, he could see her quite clearly. He could see the peaceful smile that never left her face, could see her tousled hair spread over her pillow.

Slowly, as Simon’s body began to relax and his conscious mind shut down, the image changed. Kaylee was curled up next to him, her hands resting on his chest, her skin smooth against his. A smile on his face, Simon allowed his dreams to take over.

Her hair was soft against his cheek, and he opened his eyes to look down at her, mesmerised by her. She shifted slightly against him in her sleep, and he smiled, pressing a kiss to her temple. She moaned softly and his smile grew wider, kissing her again as her eyes fluttered open.

“Simon,” she murmured.

Her lips found his and he drank in everything about her, her scent, her touch, her taste. He felt his body awaken as she moved, pressing herself against him, kissing him urgently.

“Did you want something?” she whispered against his lips, teasing him with her deft fingers as she spoke.

A soft groan escaped Simon’s lips. “You,” was all he could manage to say before pulling her to him. His head spinning, he felt her straddle him, and gasped, wondering how anything so simple could ever feel so good.

When Simon woke the next morning, he’d only had five hours sleep. But for some reason he couldn’t remember, he was feeling more relaxed than he had in weeks.