Mal huffed from where he sat on the kitchen table, flinching as Simon drew another suture through his skin.

"Hold still," the doctor commanded, frowning at him.

"Be easier to do if you weren't so gleeful 'bout stickin' me with that thing," Mal groused, shivering in the open air of the galley.

"And I wouldn't need to – again," Simon punctuated, "if you weren't so cursed stubborn. I told you not to climb down into your bunk yet!" he chastised, angry with Mal and himself both.

After leaving Inara in the infirmary, Simon had retreated to his bunk and had collapsed on his mattress, asleep within seconds of his head touching the pillow. He awoke several hours later, only realizing after he'd gone to check on Inara in her shuttle that Mal had missed his last meds. It wasn’t until he'd searched the rest of the ship that he decided to check the Captain's bunk and found the man running a fever with several stitches popped and bleeding through their bandages from his ill treatment of himself. It had taken Jayne's help just to get him back up out of his bunk.

"I didn't put you back together so you could undo all my work by being a jué jiàng de dāi zi," Simon continued in annoyance.

Mal