”…It’s impossible to calculate how much that helps.” River said very softly. ”…I think I solved it. But you need to move a wire somewhere… I’m not sure which one.”

Kaylee moved out from behind River, who moved back a little so she could get in and see what she’d done. Kaylee scanned the code for a few long minutes; River hugging her silently from behind like Kaylee had been doing just before, which did seem to help her focus better, actually. ”Oh! I see it!” Kaylee twisted around and kissed River briefly. ”You’re brilliant, you know that?” She said happily, getting up to go retrieve the tool she’d need then hurrying back to open the cover plate again and make the modification River’s code-rewrites needed. It only took but a minute, and, sure enough, once she had, she reinitialized the system and the operating system resolved itself like it was supposed to.

A few commands, and there it was: Rough flight path information, and the topography photos Serenity had taken before breaking atmo and transferred automatically to the shuttle’s memory core. A few more quick commands and they had a course plotted. ”Shiny.” Kaylee said happily as she gazed at the results (the res wasn’t as good as some fancier spaceships might give you, but it was more than good enough in Kaylee’s opinion). ”We’re on our way.” She turned and hugged River happily. ”You’re so awesome.” She told her.

River was quiet though, and when Kaylee sat back, River just had a shy sort of confused smile on her face. But she looked doubtful too.

”What is it, what’s wrong?” Kaylee asked, touching River’s cheek with concern.

River shook her head just a little and closed her eyes a moment, then opened them and looked back up into Kaylee’s eyes. ”It’s too fast sometimes, I feel like I might float away.” She told her, moving forward and kissing Kaylee with something almost like reverence.

Kaylee felt sort of light-headed then too, but in a really nice way. She felt herself relax automatically and kiss River back. She loved this so much, kissing River.

The kissing ended after a while and River pulled away just a little with a soft, sweet smile. ”You’re so awesome.” She said, still a little shyly, but her eyes were clear and really here now, Kaylee could tell she was feeling a lot better.