Bed and Wine: Part 9

By Kaynara

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Our lovable crews works through some “issues.” R-ish, as most of my chapters tend to be.

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There wasn’t a dawn, but in the hour dawn would have come, all tawny-eyed and gold-skinned and rose-lipped, River slid out from his arms, dressed quickly in the dark and crept from the room.

Was she changed? Was anything? Everything and nothing, Inara would say. Inara. Full of contradictions. Not like Kaylee. Sweet Kaylee, cozy in her idealism. River liked playing with Kaylee, laughing and chasing, cooking and sharing chores. Liked Inara too, but Inara made her brain hurt. Youth and old age. Faithful and faithless. Pain and pleasure. A flawless mess of hurt and hope. She tried to comfort--long comb strokes through knotted hair. But River felt her turmoil, felt it twist and tangle, tight as the knots in her hair. Inara had been with men, hundreds maybe. Old men and young. Good, bad and all shades of gray. But did she understand this? Did anyone?

She liked how he looked at her during. Not a crazy little girl--broken witch, little weapon, bird of charm--but a woman, whole and actual. Girl parts--lips, curves, places that molded, pieces that fit. A full, flesh-and-blood woman, and him a man, simple as that. Made her smile, made her happy, just like the calm after.

All the screams rendered silent, his body gone slack over hers. The quite lasted long hours--not long enough--as River lay still. She listened to nothing. In-and-out breath sounds, soul at ease. He’d wake soon, warrior-tense. All the things he dreamed: parents’ bodies, mangled and bloody and broken. Reavers snapping, little blond boy locked in a trunk. Daddy stuck him in tight, made him swallow the key.

Sometimes he dreamed about Zoe, her belly heavy with child. Sometimes he made love to her before the Reavers came. Sometimes Gideon was the Reaver, the one to kill Zoe, tear into her flesh.

Body hurt. Unfamiliar tingles, sore in strange places and alive in others. She expecte