WARNING Spoilers for 'Objects in Space'.

Another warning Mal and Simon have been falling in love. With each other. They decide to do something about it.

RATING NC-17 lite seems to sum it up nicely.

Thanks to the scrupulous and conscientious wedjat without whose beta-ing skills this might well have been unintelligible. And you should know she writes fabulous stuff herself. Seek it out.

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TRAUMA MEDICINE: Chapter 18.

Darkness.

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Previously, in Trauma Medicine :

“There's something that ... that I should have done a long time ago and I'm sorry – for both of us - that it's taken me this long ...”

For an agonizingly hopeful moment Mal thinks Inara might reach out for him. There ain't nothin' hurts worse than hope.

“I'm leaving.”

He watches her go. Numb. Mute. Then he turns in silence and walks down the empty corridor to his bunk. The bed is cold and hard.

He wa'n't broken before. Else now there wou'n't be this splinterin' inside him. Wou'n't be this black despair nor the crumblin' of half-repaired dreams. Somethin' deep in him snaps an' his gut twists like somethin' savage is tryin' to claw its way out. Somethin' ugly an' savage he can't fight. Or don't want to no more.

His back straightens an' he makes up his mind.

“Where the hell is that boy?”

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Half way down the staircase it occurs to Mal he ain't so much lookin' for his medic as huntin' him down. An' that his intentions ain't exactly honourable.

Oh, he don't feel guilty about it. Why should he, when the boy's been makin' it clear he wants beddin' for months? No – all Mal's doin' is takin' advantage of what's on offer. An' if the boy wants any more than that, if he ends up gettin' hurt, then that ain't hardly Mal's fault, is it? Only a ruttin' backbirth would imagine there could ever be anythin' more than a quick grapple between the two of them. The Doc can't ... surely? Ain't he supposed to be in the Top Three Percent?

Mal shrugs, dism