keeper
Summary: Simon takes SO much looking after. Notes: No major warnings, though Simon's loopy from drugs and there are references to his being shot. Another Objects coda, whoo. I'll probably post to ao3 at some point soon but tumblr gets the early look. This was supposed to be longer and angstier but everyone was feeling snarky and Simon was high so he fell back asleep.
Simon blinks awake in a haze—he’d tried to tell Zoe he didn’t need to be doped, that they should save the painkillers for something more critical. The store from his medkit won’t last all that much longer and what they keep stocked on-hand in the infirmary isn’t half as potent. Simon’s never been more aware of how expensive the things that really matter are than the last several months, and at least one member of the crew ends up injured in some way or another every other week or so, living the lives they lead.
Zoe had just glared at him until he acquiesced. Funny how that trick always seems to work on people when it comes from her. Simon wonders if she’d ever consider giving lessons. It would come in handy, given how rarely people seem taken with the idea of listening to him.
Then, River flicks him on the ear, her expression seeming so much like the River from before, River as a child, that for a moment, he’s all but fourteen again.
“Ow!” he exhales. “Wha’ was that for?”
“The captain suggested a thrashing,” River notes mildly, brow raised. “Considering your condition, I calculated the move to make that would cause the minimum damage possible instead. Since you won’t do the same.” A beat. “You have a worrying lack of self-preservation.”
Simon’s almost forgotten how annoying his sister can be when she’s mostly lucid. Also, she’s one to talk.
“Seeing as you went and got yourself shot and all, I suppose that’s a bit mean-spirited on my end. Sorry, kid,” Mal smirks down at him, not looking all that sorry.
“Not a kid,” he murmurs, yawning.“ ‘m twenty-six.” Seriously, the ‘sons’ and ‘boys’ are starting to grate at him.
“Ah,” the Captain notes in a smiling tone that sounds suspiciously like he thinks of Simon as a kid. “That’ll be my mistake, then. Doctor.” If the last is said in a mock-serious voice, Simon chooses not to comment.
Actually, he opens his mouth to respond, but before he can, River’s grip tightens on his wrist and he turns, heart clenching a little as her lip quivers. “I had a plan. Worked the angles. Led him around the labyrinth.” She glares at him then. “You should have trusted in the plan.”
“In all fairn’ss, I didn’t know there was a plan,” Simon reminds her gently. “Bit lost in the labyrinth myself.” His eyes are growing heavy, but he manages to wink one back open in order to say: “At one point, you were the ship,” in a somewhat admonishing tone, even through what he recognizes are slurred words.
Mal snorts at this. At least someone understands the absurdity of the half hour or so that had Simon questioning everything he knew about the metaphysics of the universe.
“Only briefly,” she says, her hand gentle against his forehead as she seems to check his temperature.
“Well…” Simon smiles, just a little, as she brushes a stray hair back behind his ear. “’m not that smart.”
River smiles back. “You are, and you aren’t. He’s a mystery, this one,” River says, addressing the Captain.
“Figures. That’s what happens when I say I don’t want no surprises on my boat. One shows up and brings another one, complete with her own damn box a’Pandora.”
“Speaking of… surprises—” God, Zoe gave him a dose, he suspects in another few minutes he really won’t be able to keep his eyes open, but he struggles to now. “Any with my vitals?”
River tilts her head. “No. Your blood pressure’s high, but it usually is.”
Simon does not ask how she knows that. “Right. Good.” He would say more more, only his eyes are really closed now and already he’s starting to dream quietly, dream of darkness and ocean waves, like from the sea shore they used to visit on Osiris some long-forgotten summers back.
“Seems we maybe oughta let big brother here get some shut eye, River,” he hears a few moments later, but Simon squeezes the hand he can still feel wrapped around his. Suddenly, there’s something, something right on the tip of his tongue if he can only find it—it feels important that he says it to her.
“Don’t leave, mei mei.”
“I won’t,” she promises. He hears the scrape of a stool, as though she’s settling in for the night.
“‘S not what I mean. Don’t leave… don’t. It wouldn’t—it wouldn’t make things better for me. Don’t think that.” She squeezes his hand that much harder.
“Promise,” she whispers, and Simon hears himself hum as though underwater.
“It was a plan, Doc,” Mal reminds him. “No one’s leavin’ on my watch.”
“Or on this stuff,” Simon says, half-knowing it’s nonsensical. “‘S strong. Makes coordination - unfeasible. Zoe shouldn’t have adm'stred this much, need to show her…”
Before his last blip of consciousness fades, he swears the captain’s gruff laugh after his sister’s soft, melodic voice rings out, “Doctors really make the worst patients.”
