Seventh installment in the saga.

I had this part all planned out, there was going to be healthy healing and moving on and growing.

But then I sat down to type and this is what happened.

Yeah, it didn't work.

Disclaimer: Joss, I broke your pretty dolls. Don't yell, k?

Rating: This part? Hard R.

Feedback: Make me smile, c'mon, you know you want to. Comment here or email: wily_one24@yahoo.com.au

Comments: Italics and present tense are also, apparently, dream sequences as well as flashbacks. Who knew? (It's fragmenting their reality matrix).

***

1. Didn't Mean Nothin', 2. Nothin' At All, 3. No Harm No Foul, 4. Comfort, 5. Backlash and 6. Sleepless.

***

Ch 7. DOORS.

***

She’s stretched taut, teetering on the edge of a knife bade and waiting to fall.

Jayne is behind her, she can feel his large, naked chest holding her up, pressing in against her shoulder blades as his mouth works along her jaw. Kaylee leans her head back, lets it rest on his shoulder, opens her neck to him and groans when he sucks at her pulse.

His hands come up and around her, palming at her breasts, rough and insistent. Long fingers tweaking her nipples, stroking the rounded flesh, pulling and pushing and shaping, it makes her ache, makes her hungry, makes her open.

“Simon.” It comes out of her lips without notice.

“Right here.”

There are hands at her hips, wrapping down around her thighs and lifting them, dragging them up and apart. Then he’s there, hips bruising the delicate inner skin of her legs as he pushes right in. Her back arches, pushing her closer to Jayne even as she thrusts at Simon.

She can’t even see the ground, let alone feel it, they’ve got her strung between them.

They’re everywhere, too much, all at once. Hands and mouths and hips and legs and necks and eyes. Her arms come up, lift behind her head, and grab Jayne’s neck. Her fingers close around hot, heated skin and pull him closer, force him to bend down and it feels as if her body is going to bend so completely she’ll flip right over him.

“Jayne.” It’s a long, low moan.

“I got ya.”

Her throat is raw and scratched, heavy with it.

“I can’t…” She finally gasps out.

“Of course not.” Simon whispers to her.

“Not like this.” Jayne agrees.

Simon makes another thrust, deep and hard, his hands grip her waist, and then lowers her to the ground, steps forward while he’s still insider her. They’re all pressed together, closing in tight. There are hands at her back, stroking her spine, calming her shivers. There’s a mouth on hers, soft and full, carefully containing her moaning, the cries.

“You’re so beautiful.” Simon whispers over his tongue and onto hers.

“So gorram beautiful.” Jayne echoes as his hands slide over the flesh of her arms.

“Please.” It’s all she can say. “Please.”

Fingers close over her wrists and Jayne lifts her hands, places them up and around Simon’s neck. She gives into it, doesn’t have any choice as she falls forward and drapes her head into the crook of his shoulder. Her lips ghost over the pulse she finds.

“Right there.”

She can’t even tell who it is anymore as four hands slip around her breasts, slide over her ribcage and down into the curve of her waist. Four hands, twenty fingers, heat multiplying against heat, grind against grind, one to the other.

Energy is something foreign to her, she’s boneless and fluid and unable to hold herself up. Jayne grips her hips and suddenly lifts them up and backward and onto him. Her gasp is swallowed in the vast expanse that is Simon’s neck, Simon’s skin, as she’s impaled again.

They fall to their knees, the three of them, pushing and pulling and taking.

“Oh, god.” Words that rasp out of her mouth.

“God ain’t got nothin’ to do with it, babygirl.”

Simon falls back, or she pushes him, or it’s just inevitable, she can’t tell anymore. And she’s pulled on top of him, straddles the length of him, even as she’s crushed by Jayne at her back, on top of her. Her hand stretches out, reaches up and away from them, scrambles for purchase and nearly finds one.

It’s Simon that captures it and brings it back.

“I want…” She pants it. “I need…”

“We know.”

Jayne pulls out and Simon pushes in. Kaylee’s eyes roll back in her head. Over and over again.

“Please…” She manages, finally, with a violent shudder. “Please stop.”

They’re going to tear her apart.

***

“Kaylee?” Jayne ran a hand over her shoulder and down her back. “Kaylee, c’mon, wake up.”

He could tell the moment she drifted from sleep into wakefulness, felt it in the snap of her body, in the sudden stillness and the way she stopped moaning in that god awful way. The way that made him want to hurt someone real bad for whatever they’d done to make her sound like that. Even if he had a sneaking suspicion he was part of that.

“Jayne?”

It was wrong, just plain wrong for Kaylee’s voice to be so broken down.

“I’m here. I got ya.”

He thought, maybe, she’d settle back down, thought she’d lie there for a while until she could breathe without it hitching in her throat. He certainly wasn’t expecting her to bring her knees up to her chest and roll over, nestle down deep into his arms and bury her face into his neck. His hand came to rest gently on the curve of her back, rocking with her.

A small, soft hand came up and landed on his chest, fingers curled into the hair there and it felt like she was trying to draw him closer.

She cried and he kissed the top of her head while her knees poked him in the belly.

***

Simon drew the sheet up, perfectly pin tight and stretched over the mattress.

It was strange how empty his bed, his whole room, seemed in just one week. He’d slept alone for the whole time he’d been on Serenity, had slept alone for a lot longer than that, and made a personal space out of the four walls.

He couldn’t quite forget the way she filled up a room, no matter how large it was, the way she always seemed to have to squish herself down just to be contained, like she’d just burst free if she was allowed. It made the lack of her all that larger.

“Simon! C’mon, there’s something you gotta see!”

The door bursts open and his heart jumps up, scared into his throat. He can’t help the rapid, thundering pulse in his ears. It startles him into a curtness he doesn’t mean, something he wants to push down and override, but he can’t seem to do it.

“Kaylee!” He can feel his voice go cold, just so that he control his nerves. “You should have knocked. You have no idea what I could have been doing in here, you…”

“Oh.” She breezes right over it. “I don’t care none about any of that.”

“Well I do.” It’s a little sparkle that goes out of her eyes. “And so should you.”

She’d only been in his bed once, just once, and nothing had even happened, not really. Yet it was big without her, too big, and he couldn’t help but think on what Inara had said. She’d tried so hard to get close to him and Simon knew that wasn’t an easy task. He knew that he’d built up boundaries and defenses.

It had taken him a long, long time to feel comfortable on the ship, to feel comfortable with the people on it and the work they did. Kaylee was the first thing he could remember actually liking about Serenity, the first thing that made him feel like they could all get out of this with some measure of life and hope. He couldn’t imagine the effort it took to keep that brightness, that determination against his shell. She’d finally broken him down, had gotten past all of it.

And now he couldn’t help but think about all the times she’d sat with him, joking and laughing, trying to make him smile. All that time, each and every time, she’d had it in the back of her head, in the feel of her skin, the knowledge of what she’d done.

He hadn’t thought she knew how to lie like that. Not Kaylee. She showed everything right there on her face, at least he’d thought so. Thought that if she looked at him with a sparkle in her eye, then that sparkle would be for him.

Now he couldn’t shake the feeling that he would always wonder.

She had asked him, once, not that long ago, if there was anything on board Serenity that he was glad of, not for River, but for himself. He’d wanted to say ‘you’, wanted to say her name, but something stopped him. He’d seen it in her eyes, he’d known for a fact that she’d wanted him to say it, too. It would have been so easy to let the words come, to give her what she wanted. But he hadn’t, he’d been too scared. That seemed almost laughable to him now, the thought that he could hurt her just by finally taking a step and reaching out for what he wanted.

He wondered if she asked the question again, he’d want to give the same answer.

His eyes strain hard at the screen. He’s been staring at it for so long that he’s getting a headache, a fully blown migraine surely isn’t far behind. There’s a vein that throbs just behind his right eye. If only he could see into the scan and find the answer, see it written somewhere in the broken, scattered patterns of River’s brain.

“Simon? You still in here?” He hears Kaylee behind him. “We’re gonna start a game of cards, wanna play?”

“I’m sorry.” He sighs it. “I’m busy right now.”

“Busy?” There’s a tone of disappointment in her voice that he tries so hard not to hear. “You been looking at the same thing for hours. If you haven’t found what you’re lookin’ for yet, you ain’t gonna find it. At least take a break.”

It sounds too much like a dismissal, like giving up on ever finding the proper help for River.

“Kaylee, please.” He won’t give up. “I don’t have time for games right now.”

Simon wasn’t fooling anyone. Of course he would, of course he’d want to give the same answer.

It would be hard, he knew, he wasn’t even going to try to pretend otherwise. It would be very hard to push past it, to look at her and not see Jayne lurking in the shadows, but it wouldn’t be impossible. She was worth it, if he could put in the effort, she was worth it.

He just had to pluck up enough courage to tell her that. It was still early, early enough for everyone to still be asleep. With any luck, he could catch her in her bunk, speak with her before anyone else interrupted. That’s the one thing they had precious little of on this boat. Privacy.

He hoped she was still there.

“You want some help?”

Simon bites on his bottom lip, trying to concentrate on getting the stitches just right. Not that Mal would mind, he’s sure, but he still takes an ungodly amount of pride in his work. As if he’s still got supervisors looking over his shoulders, clucking at the tiniest, minutest little detail gone wrong.

“Not now, Kaylee, I’m just finishing up here.”

“I could help.” There’s a bit of wounded pride in her voice. “I could at least hold something, if you wanted.”

“No.” He sighs it. “It’ll just go quicker if I do it myself.”

As he stood outside her bunk, looking at the absurdly bright nameplate, hand poised and ready to push the rung, Simon knew he was always closing doors on Kaylee.

He intended to start opening them. ***

end part seven.