Disclaimer: Firefly and all related elements, characters and indicia © Mutant Enemy Productions and 20th Century Fox Television, 2003. All Rights Reserved. All characters and situations—save those created by the authors for use solely on this website—are copyright Mutant Enemy Productions and 20th Century Fox Television.

Author's Note: For Pearl-o, because one good turn deserves another.

Eros and Agape
by Tara O'Shea

Simon doesn't touch her the way he touches Kaylee.

Hand at the small of her back, leading her to the dinner table, is chaste. He brushes her hair back from her face as he tucks her in for the night, long fingers cool against her forehead. His fingers still carry her scent. He swims in memories of her—he doesn't think she sees, but she does. Even when they are apart, they are together. They carry pieces of each other in their pockets.

Simon doesn't think she understands, but she does.

He is everything she has. And he found her broken. He needs someone whole, someone who looks at him and sees him and not everything he was, or everything he could be. Who he is, now. Who she makes him.

She was everything he had, but now he's taken more. Taken Kaylee to his bed. Taken her touch, her mouth, her heart, her soft cries in the night as he strokes her hair. Strokes her. Taken all the pieces and made them whole and stronger then they were before.

Simon doesn't treat her the way he treats Kaylee.

He's ice, and cool summer breezes as he rouses her from sleep, takes her blood and searches for her secrets. He's the smell of roses on the wind takes her hand and guides her down the stairs, not trusting her bare feet to know the way even though she could close her eyes and tell him the location of every rivet in the ship's deckplates. Every scuffed coupling or joining that keeps her flying.

He's fire that melts snow and burns when he touches Kaylee. Sweat slides down his neck as he braces her up against the wall,