Author: Rawles {rawles [dot]marie [at]gmail [dot]com}

Type: Het

Genre: Drama/Romance

Characters: Simon. Kaylee.

Author’s Notes: riginally written for the Firefly Chronicles challenge. Subject: bacon and eggs. A whole AU romance story spun out of it. For better or worse, I haven't written the full story yet.

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Simon had been staring at the number on the door for an interminable amount of time. Three forty-seven. He knew it was the right one. Or at least, he knew that it was the one he thought it was. Something about this felt undeniably wrong, however. He still wondered exactly what he was doing here, in a dirty hallway, staring at a door covered in faded blue paint contemplating... well, he wasn’t even sure himself what he was contemplating. He raised his hand and only hesitated for thirty seconds more before he knocked.

No answer. He knocked again and waited. Still nothing. Simon felt like a balloon someone had abruptly popped. All of that indecision for nothing.

He had wasted time considering the truth of the fact that there were only two people he knew with whom he felt completely at ease. One of them wouldn’t be back from touring with her ballet company for another week. So, he had wasted time wondering at how morally wrong it was for that other person to be a beautiful woman to whom he was not, coincidentally, related. He had wasted time wondering how inappropriate it was for him to even consider being where he was instead of the more neutral territory where they normally interacted. All of that, and she wasn’t even home. He turned to leave, then reconsidered. He had come a long way, and it was not as though he had anywhere else to be. Simon knocked again, louder. He was rewarded with the sound of scuffling, then footsteps on the other side of door. Self-consciously, he brushed the front of his coat with his gloved hands, as though some of the grime of the hallway had gotten to him.

He heard the familiar whir of the electronic lock disengaging. Then th