Old War Horses

[lit_gal]

Malcolm Reynolds fought for the Browncoat rebels. They wanted their freedom. They lost. James Joseph Womak was a commander for the Alliance, determined to bring justice to the common people. His side won, but he still lost.

Old War Horses

Fandoms: Firefly x Sentinel.
Slash: Jim/Blair, Mal/Jayne
Rated ADULT
Prompt: Taming the Muse:

STOP!!  Two chapters today.  That's right, folks--twice the cranky Mal for the price of one.  Go read 17 if you haven't read a chapter yet today.

( Part one ) ( Part two ) ( Part Three )  (Part Twelve)  ( Part Thirteen)



18.

“Morning!” Blair practically sang as they walked into the galley.

“Mornin’ Blair!” Kaylee answered with equal enthusiasm. Jim offered a polite nod to the assembled group, but he didn’t plan to push things with any of these people. Simon Tam was still giving him a worshipful look that made Jim about as uncomfortable as Mal’s hate. Only Jim noted that Mal was more interested in poking at eggs than glaring this morning.

“Whoa, eggs. Who do I have to kill to earn some of those?” Despite the suggestion that he’d have to earn breakfast, Blair walked over to the kitchen and grabbed a plate to serve himself, and no one objected. Kaylee went back to loudly telling a story about some trader the crew knew with a forced attempt at humor, Simon kept watching Jim, River watched Blair, and Mal sat at the table with an expression like someone had shot his dog. Only Zoe looked unaffected by whatever foul mood had settled over the crew today. Jim felt like he was in one of those fictional vids where it turned out some virus was slowly turning everyone into a Reaver, emotions were just that unbalanced. Even the smell had a jagged edge to it that made Jim uncomfortable.

“Here you go,” Blair said, handing Jim a plate loaded with food. Even though Jim accepted it, he kept his eyes on Mal, watching to see if the captain would object to the sheer volume of food Blair had brought him. Jim knew that if he were still an Alliance captain with a core-deep belief in the cause and he’d been forced to take on a Browncoat passenger, Jim would have set a few rules. He sure wouldn’t have wanted the Browncoat eating all the fresh protein. However, when Mal looked up, his glare focused on Blair. While Blair blithely sauntered back to the kitchen for more food, Mal followed him with a sullen glare.

“Captain,” Jim greeted him, feeling a need to distract Mal from whatever unhappiness was making him take such a sudden dislike to Blair. “Any word from Beaumonde?”

Kaylee fell silent and everyone waited for Mal to answer, but he didn’t. Zoe picked up the slack. “No word yet, but as long as no one is shooting at us, that’s generally a good sign.”

Jim frowned. “Where’s Jayne?” It made him nervous, not knowing where Jayne was. These people might be uneasy allies against the Institute, but they were still enemy. Jim couldn’t shake that feeling. And the fact was, he always wanted to have his enemy where he could see them. However, the second Jayne’s name left his mouth, Jim had a good idea what bug had crawled up Mal’s ass. Despite the fact that last night had gone well enough, something had soured.

“Working. At least one person on this gorram crew knows how to get his work done.” Mal slammed his fork down on the table, and everyone except Zoe sort of froze in place. Zoe kept on eating her breakfast, and Jim tried to take his cues from her. She’d clearly been with the captain long enough to read him, so despite the sour fear that settled in his stomach, Jim started eating. He didn’t lie to himself about this attack in two or three days. Mal would put him in the most vulnerable, most dangerous position, and Jim needed to make sure he was strong enough to hold his own. He couldn’t afford to pass up fresh, unprocessed protein.

Eventually the others started moving. Kaylee stayed silent, her story abandoned.

“Seriously cranky vibes,” Blair whispered as he sat next to Jim on side away from Mal. Jim’s stomach unknotted a little having Blair close enough to grab up if the situation turned more inhospitable than normal. From the mingled scents of frustration and anger and confusion, it might turn ugly any second.

River shifted in her chair, stood and then put her knees in it before settling down like an overgrown five-year-old. “Medial orbitofrontal cortex failure hurts,” she offered with a sympathetic look in Mal’s direction. Jim took a slow deep breath through his nose, sorting through various smells to see if she was describing some illness, but Mal smelled fine. He smelled aggravated, with stress hormones leeching out his skin, but that wasn’t a surprise.

Blair made a sympathetic face, so clearly River’s comment meant something to him. “Oh man. Yeah, it would,” Blair agreed. “But letting the medial orbitofrontal cortex rule your life is not cool. And you are sounding better, far more coherent.”

“Head clearer,” she agreed with a not-subtle shit-look for her brother.

“I bet. Those were some heavy-duty meds you were on.” Blair nodded. “Seriously heavy.”

Simon stiffened under their implication that he’d overmedicated his sister. “They helped her with the panic attacks.”

“Well, yeah,” Blair agreed. “She was drugged to the gills. I’d have a hard time panicking too if I were that drugged up, but I wouldn’t recommend it. I mean, if I’m facing real danger, I prefer to do it with real fear on my side.”

“You can’t-” The doctor looked ready to make this an all-out medical war, but Mal cut him off.

“I ain’t interested in having you two ruin my breakfast,” he snapped. “Wuh de tyen, ah. God save me from core-bred gao yang jong duh goo yang. Not a one of you has the sense god gave a motherless whoring turtle.” Snatching his fork off the table, Mal started shoveling the food in like someone might try and take it away from him.

Jim might have worried some because he could smell the aggression and the need to fight rising from Mal’s skin like a fog, only Zoe kept right on eating breakfast with only a raised eyebrow to comment on Mal’s vivid use of profanity.

River made a face. “Hippocampus and anterior insula vie with amygdala for blood flow.”

“Okay,” Blair said, and he sounded a little distressed about that. Jim frowned. Normally he didn’t mind not understanding Blair’s conversations, but everyone at the table seemed to be getting more uncomfortable than was really safe considering he and Blair weren’t armed.

“Would either of you like to start clarifying what you’re talking about?” Mal demanded.

Blair didn’t answer, but River gave him a bright smile. “No,” she said, almost singing the word. “Captain needs more oxytocin.”

“Oxytocin?” Simon almost choked on a laugh. “The captain isn’t that bad.”

The captain turned a deadly cold look in Simon’s direction. “He might be if’n he gets aggravated enough,” Mal warned, and Jim could hear the dangerous edge of frustration in that voice.

“Blair, knock it off,” Jim warned softly.

“Old war horses,” River offered with a soft sigh.

“They are who they are,” Blair agreed with a shrug.

Mal leaned forward. “And I’m getting aggravated enough that you both ought to be a mite bit worried.”

It was Simon who stepped in. “Oxytocin is a hormone associated with socialization. Sometimes people with anti-social disorders are prescribed doses to improve their ability to interact with others.”

That made Mal’s face turn an unhealthy shade of gray. Whatever had gone wrong between Mal and Jayne, it had done so spectacularly, and Jim could just kill Blair for starting this whole mess.

“Are you calling me crazy?” Mal’s voice was dangerously calm.

“No way. That description is a total oversimplification,” Blair said with a dismissive snort. From the way Simon stiffened, he wasn’t used to having his doctoring questioned. “I will avoid doing surgery if you’ll avoid psychiatric diagnoses, because those are not in our mutually exclusive areas of expertise. Alpha-hypophamine oxytocin polypeptide is a neuromodulator. We all have it in our bodies. Yes, it affects a person’s feelings for his fellow humans, but it also prepares fetal neurons for delivery by changing the function of gamma-aminobutyric acids and causes spinal cord movement and is even involved in addiction.”

Blair slung the words out there, his hands gesturing in the air with enough vehemence that Jim could recognize the obfuscation from a mile away. If Simon’s explanation about anti-social disorder caused this much verbal flailing on Blair’s part, Jim was guessing it was pretty near the mark. He glanced over, and Mal just looked confused. Aggravated and confused.

“I’d like to check over… something not in this room.” Jim stood up, his food in one hand while he pulled at Blair’s arm with the other. “Come on, Mr.Know-it-all.”

“That’s Dr. Know-it-al,” Blair complained, but he scrambled to grab his fork and get up. Even he knew the room was turning dangerous for those who didn’t have the protection of being trusted crew. “And as a doctor, I’m supposed to know everything about my very narrow field of study. Totally narrow. And oxytocin is within my very narrow field.”

“Uh-huh.” Jim said as he herded Blair toward the exit.

Behind them, Kaylee was trying to soothe the others. “Really? They have something what can make unsociable types social? We should carry some of that, do y’all remember…” She launched into another story of some trader they knew who’d shot Mal. They were out in the hallway and halfway to the sleeping quarters when Blair stopped, his plate still clutched in hand.

“You have to find Jayne.” Blair looked up with wide, panicked eyes.

“Why?” Jim asked suspiciously.

“Because Mal totally fucked something up. Cao, if River’s even half-right, I do not want to think what shape Jayne’s in.”

“Hurt?” Jim’s gut soured at the idea of Mal doing damage to his lover, but Jim had been a cop long enough to know that people did that-they hurt those they were closest to. Before Blair, Jim had one short-lived marriage and three lovers who hadn’t even approached the stage in a relationship where you go leaving things in each other’s quarters. So he didn’t have a long list of lovers, but he couldn’t imagine hurting any of them. Even Caroline, who’d left him after one long screaming match about honor and duty and his choice to accept a promotion to front-line duty in the war, never inspired the sort of violence some men regularly took out on their lovers. Jim hadn’t pegged Mal as the sort to do that, either.

“No way.” Blair gave Jim a punch in the arm. “Stop assuming the worst about people.”

“I was a cop, Sandburg. It comes with the territory.”

Blair snorted. “I know plenty of cops who aren’t so… Wait… Actually, every cop I know is actually some variation on a dick.” Blair grinned at him. Jim gave his partner the sort of glare that had, once upon a time, made suspects confess and cry.

“River says that Mal’s emotions are all over the map, particularly his emotions concerning sexuality.”

“That’s what that brain talk was all about?”

“Yep.” Blair nodded. “River’s no more insane that you or me.”

“Sanity is a little questionable when it comes to all three of us,” Jim pointed out.

“Okay, that’s true. Everyone on this ship could use a little therapy. Or a lot of therapy.” Blair cringed. “Or huge shitloads of therapy with a side of psychotropic and antidepressant medication thrown in on the side, and I am not normally the one to go for prescribing medicine. But anyway, the medial orbitofrontal cortex functions to put heavy emotions in lockdown.”

“And with Mal, it just failed,” Jim finished, remembering River’s words.

“Exactly. So Mal can’t deal with all these emotions that are hitting him. Fear and lust and all these messy feelings are getting his brain… whoa.” Blair stopped, just out of words, but Jim remembered what it had been like. When he’d first seen Blair in a white lab coat and blue gloves, he’d nursed the same hate he felt for all the Institute doctors. Learning to see Blair the man had taken some uncomfortable mental shifting.

“And if he’s emotionally suffering and striking out….”

“Jayne would have been ground zero, this morning,” Blair said with a grimace. “Use your hearing to find him, Jim. No way can we just let him suffer while everyone sits in there with Mal like he’s in the right.”

Jim sighed. “We should go to our quarters and stay out of this,” he said, knowing before he started that he was going to lose this battle.

“No way. Look, maybe I shouldn’t have jumped in so fast, but I’m the one who pushed Mal in Jayne’s direction, so if he just emotionally or spiritually shredded Jayne, that is on me. I am not leaving him to suffer alone while everyone on this ship acts like he’s some soulless mercenary. I mean, they talk like he’s here for the money, but have you seen how he looks at this crew? Man, they’re his family, and they don’t respect him at all. No way am I turning my back on that.”

Yeah, Jim lost the battle the minute Blair brought in the idea of a man struggling with a family that didn’t respect him. Sometimes Jim wondered if Blair was intentionally manipulative or if his mother’s training had sunk in so deep that he simply instinctively coerced the whole ‘verse into doing what he wanted. Some days, Jim just didn’t know. However, he sent his hearing out, tracing the corridors and long runs of metals struts until he heard the clinking of heavy weights in the steady pattern of a man doing repetitions.

“This way,” Jim offered, gesturing down a corridor. Blair gave him a brilliant smile and a quick eyebrow wiggle before he turned and practically bounced down the way. "But not until we've both finished breakfast," Jim said.  "Tactically, you do not compromise yourself by missing a meal in enemy territory," Jim said firmly.

"Oh man, enough with the enemy stuff," Blair complained, but he did come back and retrieve the plate he'd casually shoved onto one of the steps leading up a level.  If he'd left it there, someone would have slipped and been hurt, no doubt.  Of course, the way Blair found trouble, he'd find a much better way to anger Mal.  After shoving a mouthful of food in, Blair waved his fork in the air.  "Watch, I can fix this."

With a sigh, Jim started in on his own breakfast despite his now-sour stomach. They were so going to end up getting spaced.