any favorite established relationship malsimon headcanons? 👀
So I think it takes them a While to get there but once they do their pda is Off the Charts. They're not all over each other but if Simon's been in range for more than 30 minutes and Mal hasn't been physically affectionate in some way he will start biting people. This is because he has abandonment issues (not sure if that's the right term but you get the idea) due to all his friends dying in the war + its aftermath and needs to make sure Simon is still there. Simon is the same because he needs to make sure that Other People don't feel abandoned by him, so it works out.
Mal also probably has some lingering guilt over Safe (imagine getting pissed off by a guy and sending him off and him saying "probably best we stay close" and you going "no. But we won't leave without you." and then BECAUSE he didn't stay close he gets kidnapped and you're forced to leave without him. But he doesn't know you've been forced!!) and Simon probably has some issues from that + his parents disowning him and his sister getting kidnapped, so basically what i'm saying is they swap roles occasionally but it still balances out.
Similarly, they're both vers.
Both of them will also fuss over the other at the slightest injury and have nearly resorted to manhandling/hidden sedatives because they're not resting enough.
Mal regularly uses the excuse of "doctor's orders" to spend time with Simon instead of listening to the crew's complaints. Frequently this just brings the complaints to the infirmary, which leads to Simon kicking everyone out.
River has given Mal the shovel talk (a term coined by Buffy so of course I had to include it). It worked embarrassingly well.
Zoë and Wash gave Simon the shovel talk. The moment was somewhat undercut by Wash's jokes, but Simon got the message. This played out similarly Simon and Zoë's deleted scene from the first episode (found here) ft. Wash's interruptions.
Prior to them getting together, they were pissing EVERYONE off. Much like Jeff and Britta's plotline in season 1 episode 23 of Community (Modern Warfare) where the study group was just fed up with their bickering (notably, Britta also made a joke about how she'd "repaired [Jeff's] overworked torso with [her] trembling feminine fingers" so they were moments from doing it, before they actually did it. This also happened to Mal and Simon).
They hid their relationship for the first couple of months from everyone except River, because they figured out that the rest of the crew had a betting pool on when they'd get together, and they wanted to mess with that and see who noticed first. River had been banned from the betting pool due to her abilities and being Simon's sister, so, being the person who knows Mal best, Zoë decided to sit out as well in fairness. Wash promised to spend his earnings on a slinky dress if he won.
Kaylee picked it first, because she was scheming on how to fake Serenity's temperature control being stuck on freezing and oh nooooo, everyone would have to pair up for warmth, and when she was about to enact her plan she turned the temperature up first to make it more believably on the fritz, which meant Simon borrowed one of Wash's button ups and kept it unbuttoned, and she noticed he had a hickey. She then helped him cover it before anyone else noticed because she thought the bit was funny. But Inara's bet was the most accurate, of course. Seeing as she doesn't really need the money, she donated her earnings to an emergency fund for the next time a part busts.
River keeps a WIDE berth of Mal's bunk whenever she knows something's going on in there. She's usually found at the other end of the ship, as out of range as possible, and/or really tuned into Book's mind, since he's the only one who's reliably not doing anything sexual. Due to this and the thin walls Simon is adamant that they don't do anything in the passenger dorms, even when no one else is on board.
River stays in the passenger dorms, because she's recovered quite a bit by the time they get together and Simon worries about the ladders in the crew bunks, but they keep Simon's room made up and he sleeps there when it's likely she'll have a bad night. They connect a comms system specifically from River's room to Mal's so she can wake Simon if she has a nightmare, but I do also think she subconsciously sends him a little spike of adrenaline whenever she wakes up from one (judging by his reaction time in Bushwhacked compared to the amount of noise she made).
In order to accommodate a bigger bed in Mal's bunk, they removed the wall between his and the empty one (disclaimer: I don't actually know if Mal's is next to the empty one, but I like the headcanon that the bunks are somewhat modular so I don't really care. I think this is what they did with Zoë and Wash's too)
If they get married (not legally, of course, but if they have the ceremony), Mal is adamant that if Simon wants religion involved then religion will be involved, his own feelings be damned, but Simon really just wants the nice outfits. They do get Book to officiate, but he keeps it secular. Their "wedding rings" are jade pendants, since they both work with their hands too much and on too short notice for rings to be practical. Their plan was to make them the colour of their homes, so Mal's is orange, like Shadow's deserts, but Simon's is grey, like Serenity, because he decides Osiris is too tainted by everything he knows now about high society + the Alliance + his parents + etc. His has a little blue vein in it, like a river (disclaimer again: I don't actually know if that's possible with jade, but if it's lab grown maybe anything is possible! I'm not a geologist).
Thank you for the ask! I meant to be more focused on Mal and Simon specifically rather than the whole crew, and I didn't mean for it to be like, 50% established, 40% getting together, and 10% marriage but here we are. Something tells me you're not too fussed lmao.
