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Her laugh is a joy to witness, and he is glad merely to be near her when she does it. It doesn't matter that she's laughing at him. Or, rather, it does matter, but it's a good thing; if she's laughing at him, then she's not mad, and the single most important duty he has in these turbulent days is to be sure she's not mad at him. Kaylee is quick to every emotion: joy, sorrow, anger, grief, and he sees it as his job as the doctor to make sure she avoids the negative and finds the positive in their lives, as turbulent and terrible as they are.
This is the life he chose. River didn't get to choose; he chose for her. This is the life of Simon Tam, Frontier Medicine Man, and when looked at as a whole, with all the grief and the loss and the terror and the cosiderable pain (shot! twice!), it is a good life. If only because he has found people with whom he can trust his sister, and therefore can have some life of his own. By which he means Kaylee. And Kaylee is all worth it.
Her smile is joy incarnate. Watching her eat rice pilaf is sexier than any professional tittellation, and when she eats strawberries...there aren't words. There is no duplicity, no mask, in her face: her emotions are, if possible, even more obvious than River's, and thankfully what she shows most is contentment. Happiness, even, sometimes, if he's done the right thing, or managed to avoid saying the wrong thing.
There are some obvious Freudian implications with the fact that he allows himself to be fixated by women figures in his life, but since psychology is not, despite all his research, his primary area of expertise, he's decided to let it go. That's something that Kaylee has taught him, actually: the ability to let go, to surrender his sense of control as easily as he surrenders his actual control. The restraints were an interesting object lesson.
He still can't help but be fascinated with her lips, just watching them move and make words.
"Secondary Grav Boot has a flutter."
He blinks. "What?"
"The Secondary Grav Boot. It's got a bit of a flutter, sounds like the power's a bit wonky. Hafta check the wirin' 'tween frame thirty and the fore ladder."
"How can you tell?"
"Do you really want to know?" She's giving him a look, like no one ever asked that question before, and she's not sure she's being made fun of or not.
"Of course I want to know. I'm a complete neophyte when it comes to machinery, Kaylee; you know that. So I'm curious to know how you do whatever it is you do."
She purses her lips, and for a moment, he loses the thread of the conversation, remembering her uses for those amazing lips, but then she smiles and he's paying attention again.
"OK. First, scoot over closer to me. Not like that, Simon; just sit, lean back and put your palms down, like yer relaxin' on some shiny beach by the sea."
He moves his hands to the deck, and leans back, legs stretched out in front of him.
"Good. Now just listen for a second. What do you hear?"
He grins, and starts to say something, but then stops, and closes his eyes.
"Go ahead, tell me what you hear. Start with the easy stuff."
"Well, there's your breathing. And the fans in the air exchange above us; they've got a low period."
"That's 'cause the fans in here spin slower, on account of their being bigger than the fans in the galley or in the crew rooms. In here, there's the slow woosh-woosh sound; in the galley it's a thrum-thrum, and in the crew rooms it's a shush-shush."
"Huh. There's a...kind of a low throb." His eyes are squeezed shut, now, trying to concentrate on the sounds, on filtering them out. A moment ago he would have sworn it was quiet, but there's all kinds of noises making up that quiet.
Her voice is low and quiet, and it nearly startles him into falling when it slips into his ear from just a couple of inches away. "That's the heart; Serenity's engines are turning. She beats thirty-two times a minute, at rest like we are now."
"That's a pretty low resting pulse rate."
"Mean's she's healthy. If it're faster, means she don't got anyways to rev up if'n we need to get gone in a hurry."
"Athletes are the same way."
"What else do you hear?"
"I..." He hesitates. "It's not so much a hearing thing. There's sort of a buzzing, but it's very low, very quiet. It's almost not really a heard thing; I can feel it in my palms, I think."
"That's right. That buzzin' shoudn't oughta be here. And it's not everywhere, so it's not the primary grav boot. And it's not in the engine room, so it's forward of frame thirty, and it's not in the galley, so it's aft of the fore ladder. See? Simple."
He opens his eyes and turns to her voice, and they are so close that his eyes almost cross before he picks her right eye to focus on.
"That's amazing, Kaylee."
"Ah, it's nothin'. She just...talks to me. Not like your doctorin'."
"Actually, it's almost exactly like my diagnostics."
"Oh?"
"Sure. I'll show you. Lay down."
Her grin makes his pulse jump. "What, right here and now?"
He's embarrassed, but that's nothing new with Kaylee. "Yes, here and now."
She lays down on her back, and closes her eyes. "Now what?"
"OK, so lets say you have appendicitis. It's acute, so you're in a lot of pain, and that's really all you know, and really all you can tell me. Got it?"
"Yep. Aiya! It hurts! It hurts somethin' terrible, doc!"
He laughs. "OK, so first thing I do is look at the patient. They're sweating profusely, have a fever, and experiencing pain. So now: where do you hurt?"
"Oh! It's mah belly, doc! It's fierce!"
"OK, so now we've ruled out something like the wan things it could be, and we're focused on the abdomen." He slides his hand under her coverall and nudges up her shirt so his hand is resting against her ribcage, palm just to the right her belly button. For a moment, she stops breathing. "Is the pain rui, like a stab? Or ku, like a pressure? Is the abdomen rigid or soft? Does the patient react to pressure?" His finger trails just over her right hip, making her start; she's slightly ticklish there. "With the right answers, I can make a diagnosis, and then work to fix it."
"Like me and Serenity, eh?"
His hand slides a little lower, and her flush seems to mean that she's not objecting.
"Exactly. You're lucky; you have one patient. I have sev--six."
For a moment, they both stop, and there is sadness. But, like everything, it passes.
"So, doc...are we done with playin' doc?"
"We can be, if you'd like."
"Howabout we continue this exam somewhere other than the tai leng cargo hold?"
"That sounds like an excellent course of treatment."
The grin is back, and for a moment Simon Tam is lost in the world of Kaywinnet Lee Frye's lips.
"Race ya," she says, and is gone, but it's a small boat, and he knows pretty much where she's going. It's an excercise in mechanical diagnositcs, he supposes.
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Title: Diagnostics
Author: Heronymus [email]
Details: Standalone | PG | het | 6k | 01/10/06
Characters: Kaylee, Simon
Pairings: Simon/Kaylee
Summary: Simon and Kaylee are more similar than they think.
Notes: Spoilers for BDM, and pretty much all of the series.
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