On the Subject of Morals

Title: On the Subject of Morals
Author: Uris
Pairing: Jayne/Book, Zoe/Wash Simon/Kaylee ,other relationships implied
Rating: Nc17
Disclaimer: I'm not Joss.
Summary: River wants to dance.
Beta: Athena
Feedback: uris@fateordestiny.com
Dancing

I run down the corridor after seeing Kaylee, moaning, lying in bed beside Simon. I could feel Kaylee feeling Simon. I had Simon's baby inside me. I didn't need him touching me, but I wanted someone to touch me. I felt lonely and out of place feeling Kaylee and Simon doing it while I was supposed to be across the hall.. I could remember his hands on me while Kaylee is touching him.

Zoe and Wash are having sex in their cabin. Jayne Cobb and John Book are touching their boy parts in Book's cabin. I want to flee the ship and go outside.

I put my hands on my pussy. Simon's baby is growing inside me. Mal isn't having sex with anyone, not even himself. He is sleeping through this orgy. I walk to the captain's quarters.

Mal is dreaming about having sex with Kaylee and saying that he shouldn't because he thinks about her as his little sister. In his dream, Kaylee is saying that River is Simon's little sister and that doesn't stop them. Kaylee, in Mal's dream, wonders if Simon and I were doing it before I started at the Academy. Mal is as perverted as the rest of us when sleeping.

I knock on his door wondering if my soft knock would even wake him. His hatch isn't locked, but I wouldn't walk into his room uninvited, although Mal walked into cabins uninvited; he figures he's the captain and he may go wherever he pleases.

Mal opens the door. "Am I needed on the bridge? Is communication down?"

"We're landslide," I explain. Captain isn't full awake yet. He figures if he's woken there must be an emergency.

"River, what a nice surprise," Mal says while rubbing the sleep out of his eyes.

Zoe and Wash had fallen back to sleep; the sexual energy on the ship is going down. Kaylee and Simon are snuggling; Simon was spent, at least for the next five minutes. "I just needed to talk to someone and Inara left."

Mal is rather uncomfortable. When I'm upset, Kaylee and Simon talk to me. Inara only talked to me when no one else was available. I never saw the captain as a person I could consult. He told my brother a number of times to control me. I'm an annoyance; I'm not part of his crew. He sees me as a problem to be dealt with. "Come in. Sit."

I feel less horny then I did a few moments before. Now that I'm looking at him, it doesn't feel right asking the captain for sex although he's still hard from the dream he just had. "It's nothing. I wanted to talk to someone, but the moment passed."

"River, it must be hard for you with your brother being married. I told him to watch you all the time and now he has a wife to consider." The captain sits on the bed and pats the side next to him.

"I'm sorry I disturbed you," I mumble.

"If you need to talk, talk," the captain states.

I left the cabin. He doesn't think of me that way. I don't want him to change his opinion of me. I like that he thinks that I'm innocent. If I used my feminine wiles to seduce him, he never would forgive me or himself. He would picture me like Saffron and I don't want him to despise me.

Simon had recovered and I could hear Kaylee soft moaning as I approach their cabin. I can't sleep in my cabin across the passageway as my brother fucks his new wife.

I run in the passageway covering my ears wanting not to hear my brother's thoughts as limited as they are. Men during sex do think with their penises. I collapse in front of Book's cabin as I feel Kaylee's and Simon's orgasms.

Hurrying into his clothes, Jayne thinks, "Left shoe on. Right shoe on." He is stupid all the way down. His thoughts are so dumb that they're annoying to listen to. "John, if that is your name, dress. River is having another one of her tantrums."

After Book has on his pants, Jayne steps out of the room. "River, do you need help back to your cabin?"

"I'm as right as rain," I insist.

Kaylee, barefoot wearing one of my sundresses, runs down the passageway to join us. "River, Simon and I heard you run pass our cabin. We didn't mean to ignore you."

"I'm fine." I hug Kaylee. She looks cute with her hair a mess in a red and brown pleated dress.

Kaylee wraps her arms around me. "You must hate me for taking your lover away."

"Incest isn't socially acceptable. I understand." I bury my head into her shoulder.

"I can hold you at night after your brother falls asleep. You can always sit in the engine room with me. You don't need to feel alone." Kaylee kisses my face and touches my hand before pulling away.

"I'm your sister now." I take her hand and thread my fingers between her fingers.

Kaylee looks at our hands as she squeezes my hand gently. "I'm here for you."

"Thanks, Kaylee. I'll assist you with your work so I'm not in the way." I didn't want the captain to see me as a burden. I want to contribute and the captain didn't want me to shoot people. He likes me to appear sweet and innocent. Kaylee would need help making old vehicles appear new. I could forge documents, vehicle numbers and paint them to look like geniune. I would show the captain that I'm an asset.

"You can help us load the savage and make the repairs," Kaylee says.

"Captain doesn't see me as a member of his crew. He sees Simon as important. I'm just taking up space and using the doctor's precious time." I don't mean to tell Kaylee what Mal thinks of me. "He thinks very highly of you. You're worth a dozen of ordinary engineers and Serenity doesn't have the space."

"Thanks, River." Kaylee kisses my forehead. "Why don't we grab Simon and the five of us hit the town for lunch?"

"Sounds good," Book says, trying to sound dignified.

"Your hair." I point at Book. His hair is wild, but I don't scream this time because it's only hair. His mind is far scarier than his hair. Jayne's twenty questions had brought Book's darker thoughts to the surface.

The old man brushes it and pulls it back. "Better."

I nod.

Book is thinking about Jayne and it isn't the usual thoughts of how to kill him quickly, yet painfully. He's thinking about sticking a hot spike up Jayne's anus, but not the usual iron one. I didn't like seeing this side of Book. His thoughts run more to torture than love.

The shepherd had more evil thoughts than the simple gunfighter. Jayne doesn't mix love with pain. He compartmentalizes things: killing is one thing and love is another. I can't see into the future, but if Book goes over Jayne's safe zones, Jayne would deal with the situation by breaking his neck or another quick manner. Jayne has Vera. Book equates love with pain and Jayne doesn't.

Simon catches up to us. He has one shoe and two socks on. Simon puts on the other shoe as he catches his breath. "Kaylee, I'm sorry."

"I don't mind helping you look after her. I married you and that includes helping you with your sister," Kaylee says.

"I don't like being talked about in the third person," I state.

"Do you think the captain could start paying me?" Book asks.

"Ask him," Kaylee says.

"Taking part of my cut."ne lne laughs.

"I'll put most of it away so we can save up for a little house somewhere." Book squeezes Jayne's hand. "I need some clothes that don't say religion."

"What happening?" Simon asks.

"Jayne and I talked. I'm not going back," Book says. "Thou shall not steal, thou shall not murder, and thou shall bear false witness are three of the Ten Commandments."

"I still have some of my share." Kaylee is thinking about her share of the take from the sale of the gun. "I'll buy you something to wear around town. I'm sorry you needed to come to that decision."

"It was weighing on my mind for a while. I left the abbey because it wasn't fulfilling my needs," Book explains.

"And we're fulfilling your needs?" Kaylee asks.

Book nods.

"Jayne is fulfilling his needs." I laugh. Seeing two old men make love isn't my cup of tea.

Jayne smiles too brightly. "You can borrow one of my shirts." His shirts are rather worn and more than a few had bullet holes. Most of them had sayings on them that a former shepherd wouldn't be comfortable wearing. .

They step into cargo hold. The captain is sitting on a lawn chair at the end of the cargo hold wearing only boxer shorts.

"We aren't taking passengers again," Kaylee teases. "For a moment, I thought you were naked." Kaylee has seen the captain naked many times and can easily imagine him naked, but doesn't bother to do so. It isn't a location to pick up passengers. It seems like a strange location for Inara to find another ship to rent a shuttle, but that is her business.

"No, Ma'am. I'm just getting some rays," the captain says. "Enjoy your lunch."

"Shepherd had decided to stay on," Simon says. He thinks that Book is easily swayed after years of obedience. He wonders how a church can approve of torture and disapprove of sex; then, my brother has never been much for Christian religion.

Our parents were Taoists; at least, they tried to be Taoist under the constraints of the Alliance. I try not to think about our parents; they didn't support Simon in getting my release. Now that we're fugitives, our parents are in danger and likely imprisoned. I wonder if they were tortured about our location. Did the Alliance have mercy and kill them when they didn't know where we were or do they keep them imprisoned so they can breed another me from their tissues?

"It's John unless you want me calling you Doc." Book claims to be a shepherd, but he has been party to torture. His mind is so full of excuses that I can't tell the truth about his life from the lies that he tells himself. John is his birth name. His original last name isn't important since it's as meaningless as Chang or Patel. It's sad that I couldn't tell the lies from the truth inside Book's head.

Everyone else's minds are easy to read. They don't pretend to be other people. John Book wants to believe the lies he creates for himself. He wants to see himself as a simple shepherd, not a man who was involved with the highest level of government, a man who controlled the lives of billions. He can't run from himself. Serenity is only a name of a ship to him.

"John, it is," says Simon.

The captain stands up. "You made a vow."

"Which I break on the daily basis around here. I have to live with that. Jayne and I talked about carpe a diem," Book says.

"Folks call that talking now," the captain says.

Book turns slightly red. His warm brown complexion nearly hides his embarrassment.

"If we don't started walking, it will be suppertime before we arrive," Kaylee says.

"I think I lost you somewhere," Simon teases.

"I reconsidered my vow of celibacy considering that committing the three sins aforementioned weigh much higher on my conscious." Book swallows hard as if he is having trouble with his words, but the words fill his mind so fast that he can't decide which ones to use. "I toyed with idea of breaking my vow many times. It feels a bit different now it is a fait accompli."

"After sixty years," Simon says.

Kaylee gives Simon a look.

Simon takes Kaylee's hand. "We couldn't wait till the wedding night. Kaylee thinks I had all these socialites but with medical school, internship, then residency, I never had time to date."

"After hearing his school and hospital history, I started to realize that," Kaylee says.

"I understand the risks and why the Bible prohibits it. Those things don't apply today. During the writing of the New Testament, it was to keep the population under control. Many of the practices in the Old Testament are to prevent the spread of disease. Sex was a dangerous thing," Book says. Book's mind fills with the history of the Roman Empire and their population problems. His mind travels quickly from torture, to love, to his vows, to history; it's like his fifty-seven years of learning is trying to escape.

"You don't think about it until this beautiful woman sticks her feet in your face." Simon kisses Kaylee's cheek.

My brother lies. He thought about it as soon as I was awaking from stasis and naked in his arms. He did more for more than anyone could expect any family member to do. He spent many years learning to be the best in his field and gave it all up on the chance that I might be alive. There was no way I could ever repay his sacrifice, and yet he was so happy to see me alive after all he went through to find me.

"I don't know about sixty years. You don't want to know how young I was," Kaylee says.

"I was fifteen the first time," says Jayne. "Mind you. I did my share of experimenting before fifteen."

"I was younger," Kaylee says in a near whisper. She was twelve when she had sex behind the hovercraft and mules. The farmhand was older than twelve; from her memories I would take him to be in his early twenties, but her mind made him into an old man. She was only the mechanic's daughter to him and she wanted it that way.

"Girls mature earlier," Jayne says back. He doesn't want to tell Kaylee he would have done it earlier if he was physical able. He done it with a cousin and he calls Simon and I perverts because we have a bit more blood in common. "I don't remember the name of the girl I was with my first time." And he remembers her name, it was Daisy Cobb.

"Sex is something I've done at the drop of a hat," Kaylee says.

"Inara sees it as important," Simon says.

"The ritual is," Kaylee says. "She provides a service. Some of her clients don't request sex. She's a companion that means different things to different people."

"We've talked. We provide for similar needs in a different manner," Book said. "She's very spiritual."

I cling to Kaylee's arm. "It's so noisy." Sex talk makes everyone think loud thos. Js. Jayne was thinking about his cousin; she is married now. Simon has shame mixed in with his thoughts of me. Kaylee is thinking of boys and men, none very important to her. Simon didn't say yes right away that made him different. He gave her respect other men didn't. Marriage means something to Kaylee. She won't take her vows lightly. I shall live having her as a sister.

Kaylee puts her arms around me and strokes my hair. "There is going to be a lot of people in town. Perhaps, I should take her back."

Simon says, "She has to get used to it."

"Can you handle this? We're going to the general store then out to lunch," Kaylee says in a soft voice.

I nod.

"If you can't, Simon and I will walk you back," Kaylee says.

"I was fine at the funeral," I say. "I don't want to be like this. You might be speaking in quiet voices, but you are arguing in your minds. You all look down on Simon and I on the issue of incest. Bro-sis-sister incest isn't as harmful as father-daughter incest. In children of similar age, there are no issues of consent. The children go on to develop other relationships."

"Are you okay?" Jayne asks.

"I want dance," I say. I want to dance with Simon or Kaylee. Kaylee looks so young and adorable in my dress. Simon and I danced together many times when we were children. I also danced with my father. Papa was always so stiff. Being proper was everything to him. I wonder if he held onto being proper in prison or was his stoic manner the first to go. Mama and Papa wouldn't survive out in the frontier because they weren't colonists. I hated to think of them in the past tense, but if they were still alive, they aren't the people Simon and I knew. Alone in my mind, I danced. The music and the steps filled my head when the pain got too much.

Kaylee says, "We'll find some dancing. We need to find John a shirt that doesn't yell clergy."

Simon says, "I don't think a cleric should dance with another man even on a border world." He doesn’t mean it as an insult. Simon knows how to bow and greet people, but social interacts make him nervous and his words get tangled.

"I wasn't planning on dancing," Book states.

"John, you can dance with River or I," Kaylee says.

"I rather dance with you or my brother," I say. Book isn't pug thg those hands that worked for the men with the blue gloves near me.