Simon looked across the dimly lit kitchen table at Mal, his dark eyes lidded and sleepy at the corners. He smiled, which was so completely unusual for the Doctor that Mal found himself grinning back at him.

"Ahh Simon, I'd go as far as to say you've drunk your fill for one evening." Even as he spoke, Mal's vision swam and lurched with inebriation, light and colors beginning to bleed into each other, the orange glow of the room and the yellow walls and the metal, the metal that cradled them and kept them safe all became one mess of life as Serenity crept through space with them in her arms.

Simon was slightly beyond having deep thoughts such as those. He tried to look incredulous but ended up looking ridiculous by mixing indignation with the red flush of his face.

"Mal, I'm a Doctor."

"Plenty of truth to that, don't make you any less drunk."

"Drunk?" Simon hiccuped, then smiled, laughed and hiccuped again. He stared off into space for the next few minutes, during which Mal suspected a blissful nothing flowed through his head. When he came to he stood up and moved to the chair next to the Captain, where he leered forward, smelling like citrus and gin.

"Its a good feeling, all-" he wiggled his arms and head furiously as demonstration "-yeah. Cuz its like time starts and stops but there's always plenty of it, enough of time, you know? Enough time to-" Simons smile faded and he stared down at his hands. Mal thought how at that moment he looked more like a little boy then he must have ever looked. Like the little lonely boys who the other children tease for being quiet and solemn. To quiet the silence, he tipped some more of the amber liquid into his throat, where in burned in a too-good kind of way.

He'd thought Simon had quieted for good, but he spoke up again after a time, softer, sweeter: "Time enough to be somebody else, with somebody elses life, with somebody elses...normal." he glanced up at Mal and sighed. "Ok, so maybe a little drunk."

Mal laughed so deeply he made himself cough