Firefly Drabble - "Promises, Promises"
Author: esclaramonde
Title: Promises, Promises.
Characters: River, Simon, Mal
Pairing: none. Gen
Rating: G
Word Count: 424
Disclaimer: My voice isn't deep enough to be Joss Whedon, and he owns it all.
A/N: A drabble I've been carrying around in my notebook for longer than I care to mention... was probably originally meant to be part of a larger fic (probably something Rayney... but I honestly can't remember). Thought it best for it to see the light of day and let it go free.
River ran her hands over her head, smoothing down her hair. She seemed to be trying to capture her flittering, butterfly thoughts and press them into her skull, locking them in place.
“She will desist from imposing further myocardial infarctions upon the brother.” River took Simon’s hands in hers, her eyes locked with his, bright with a clarity he hadn’t seen in her for years. “But my ge ge must desist from arbitrarily imposing his will on the girl.” Simon opened his mouth to object, but River tightened her grasp on his hands and her look grew stern.
“Repeat after me, Simon! My mei-mei is a big girl.”
“My mei-mei is a big girl.”
“An adult.”
“An adult.” Simon smiled, echoing her inflection.
“She is capable of caring for herself; emotionally, mentally and physically.” Simon hesitated, but after a brief squeeze of the hands repeated her words, somewhat reluctantly. “If she needs my help, she will ask me. If she does not ask for help, I will trust that she knows herself best.”
Simon completed his recitation and River beamed at him. She tried to extricate her interlaced fingers from Simon’s but this time he tugged gently to keep them in place.
“Not so fast, mei mei. Now I want you to repeat after me. My brother loves me. If I do need his help, I will seek it out. If I need any help, I will seek it out. I will not seek out unnecessary danger.” River dutifully echoed him, repeating every word exactly.
“And,” Simon added playfully, “I will restrict my showing off to dancing around the ship, not dangling precariously from cat-walks and giving my brother a heart attack!” River raised an eyebrow at him and Simon gave a slight shrug. He had never actually expected to get that one past her.
“Pact?”
“Pact.”
And with that proclamation, each slipped their pinky fingers into their mouths, sucking on it briefly. They hooked their damp fingers together and pulled away sharply, creating a soft, fleshy sound.
Mal watched this byplay curiously. “Either one of you care to ‘xplain what in the verse that was all about?”
“Pinky Pact, Captain Mal,” said River blithely, and skipped out of the mess, past Mal, toward the bridge.
“Care to be a little more enlightenin’ than your sister, doc?” Simon stood up from the mess table with a slight smirk.
“Secret sibling business, Mal. I could tell you…” his smirk upgraded itself to Cheeky Grin, “but then River would have to kill you with her brain.”