Fic: But she was small, and dark, and hurt all over (Firefly-- Jayne Cobb, River Tam)
Title: But she was small, and dark, and hurt all over
Author:
clockwork_jo
Word Count: 4480 approx.
Pairing/Character: River Tam, Jayne Cobb; River/Jayne (if you choose to see the events as something more)
Genre: angst, gen/romance (depending on how you read it)
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: potentially dark themes; spoilers throughout the series and for the film 'Serenity' ("deleted" scene from 'War Stories', elaboration of a scene from 'Objects in Space' and the rest are from my imagination; two set in between the series and the film, and one set after).
Fandom: Firefly/Serenity
Summary: Five times River touches Jayne's gun (or how could-be euphamisms ruin lives); "Her arm’s outstretched and she’s holding his gun towards him, lazily between her thumb and forefinger like she doesn’t know how to."
Disclaimer:All television shows, movies, books, and other copyrighted material referred to in this work, and the characters, settings, and events thereof, are the properties of their respective owners. As this work is an interpretation of the original material and not for-profit, it constitutes fair use. Reference to real persons, places, or events are made in a fictional context, and are not intended to be libellous, defamatory, or in any way factual. All song-lyrics mentioned belong to their respective owners, not to me.
Author's Note: Written for Round #18 at prompt_in_a_box Prompt #5: I'm trying to put this as delicately as I can... How do I know you won't kill me in my sleep? (Simon, Ep. 01 - "Serenity")
He stabs a knife into the bowl of apples, tossing an old, gnawed-on core to the side at the same time, saves time really- he‘s always been practical when it comes to things like that. He puts his feet up on the table, and watches Kaylee take reluctant steps out of the kitchen, following Wash and Zoe. “You’re really not gonna come?”
“I’m really not.” he takes a loud bite out of his apple for effect. She nods anxiously and makes her way out of the room.
River’s voice comes from nowhere, “Captain needs you.”
He jumps in his chair, feet landing on the floor heavily, “Jeez. You always sneak up out of nowhere?!” she pads her way off of the sofa and over to the kitchen table. He takes another bite, “Captain don’t need me. He‘s got a boatload of people suicidal enough to not need me.”
“You don’t wanna save him?”
“Seems to me, no one’s gonna be savin’ him.”
Her stare is absent, “Lost cause.”
“Somethin’ like that.” another violent swallow of apple, she leans forward and puts her hand around it, her eyes never leaving his, “Wha- what are you doin‘?” he lets go, and she catches it and takes a bite, slumping down in the chair and leaning her chin on her hand, her elbow resting on the table in front of them.
“You won’t be the hero?”
He shakes his head and shrugs, “I always been better at bein’ the bad guy anyway.”
She doesn’t say much, just a mm… sound and another bite. They look at each other, and his brow furrows as he tries to read her expression. Girl’s never been very good at keeping tight lipped and she‘s staring back at him like she knows what he‘s been trying not to think of for days. He ain’t rightly sure if she can read minds or tell the future, but he’s not about to test that theory with thinking things she doesn’t need to know- if he can help it. Particular smile on her that usually means she’s got something on that moon brain she ain’t saying makes him all manner of uncomfortable.
He leans forward, “You so concerned, why don’t you go out there?”
“Simon wants me to stay on the boat.”
He smirks, “You know, you ain’t never seemed like the type to follow orders.” She finishes the apple, and he looks on in shocked amusement as she throws it over her shoulder and it lands in the bin, without even looking. Girl’s so out of it, it was probably a fluke, “You wanna save the day, get on it. But it ain’t my problem.” He smiles, “Someone else’ll pay my wage eventually.”
“You might be right.” She says, getting up and walking out of the kitchen, “Although…” She looks back over her shoulder, “The devil you know is apparently very forgiving.” she turns the corner and he spends a little time looking out into the dark of the hall.
“Gorram it.” He mutters, slamming his hands down on the table and pushing up. When he reaches the doorway, her hand’s in front of his face and he stumbles back. Her arm’s outstretched and she’s holding his gun towards him, lazily between her thumb and forefinger like she doesn’t know how to, he rolls his eyes, and she tries to hide her smile when he takes the gun off of her and walks out.
---
She considers what it means to just hold it.
If it doesn’t shoot, or wound, or kill then maybe it’s nothing but particles. Dense and forged and potential but only that. Stuck in the somewhere between it’s definition, and its being. Same as breath, same as blood, same as paper. It can all mean something else. Be a little more, or a little less than what it started out as.
Everything’s the same. Like holding a blanket in different place or different lights.
“Like me.” She thinks, or says, she’s not quite sure anymore. And it doesn’t make much difference really. Her finger strokes over the trigger.
When the screams finally subside, and someone takes it off of her, she realises she’s holding a gun in broad daylight.
---
They’re in no particular order to anyone but him. Chronological, size- maybe he’s just playing favourites, he lays them out and polishes them with the affection he’d show a woman, more even. Girls have a habit of walking out (or worse, sticking around when they ain’t necessary); guns, you pick and choose. Guns wait patiently in their holster till you’ve got a call to use them and don’t fuss when it’s been a while.
His eyes dart up over his most treasured possessions (hell, the only things on this damn boat he can call his own) and onto her, she’s sat next to him at the kitchen table and looking with an intensity that’d make you think they were talking to her. And it’s River, so there’s every chance that that’s happening.
“Ain’t it past your bedtime?”
“No…” Her eyes flicker up onto his, and she mimics him perfectly, “Ain’t it past yours?” It’s not that it’s particularly clever, or really means anything, it’s just basic enough to leave Jayne without a response, and she smirks at the way his lips are half-forming words. “If you can’t shoot it, mock it, or sell it, you don’t have an answer.” She rests her elbow on the table, “Where’s Vera?”
He looks up at her, a little confused, considering for a brief moment whether he’s mentioned Vera to her, or she’s been reading his thoughts sometime or another, or the usually more likely scenario (although not when River’s the case in point) that she could be just eavesdropping. “Here.” He reaches down, and picks it (her) up from the space between his legs and the table leg, a gentleness about the way he does it that makes River smile, and her eyes stay fixed on it after he’s taken his hand off.
She mutters, running a steady hand over it, “That I could be that loved.”
“Huh?” He’s licking a dishrag and rubbing at the latest in the catalogue of weaponry, “What you goin’ on about?” He places it down with the rest of them, and waits a second before picking up the next for her to answer, when she doesn’t, he continues, hocking back and spitting- safe in the knowledge that he won’t be able to understand whether he’s giving his full attention or not.
She brings her hand back into her lap, “Nothing.” (It’s the kind of answer Jayne can get behind.) She leans forward so her chin is now on the table, the wood pattern embedding itself into her skin, her eyes still taking the journey over and into each nook and cranny of his collection. Her pale fingers walk the table in front of her and over a new gun, smaller, and onto the next. It takes him a couple of seconds to realise he’s been watching her (or more specifically, her hands) with a little more intent than he meant to. “What?” She says, before looking at him.
It catches him off guard, and if there weren’t a back to the chair, he’d be on the floor. “I was just thinking’ ‘bout what’s going on in that head of yours.” It’s true; true enough that if she’s reading his mind right now, he’s got nothing to hide. He smirks, like he’s finally got something on her, “Didn’t Mal say somethin’ about you and guns anyway?”
Her face drops, “No touching guns.”
“Mm, I thought so.” She stares up at him, a look of defiance that he has to take a second look at, he shrugs, “I ain’t gonna stop you. But Mal or your hwoon dahn brother comes in here, and I at least tried to.” He picks up Vera and sets her down by his legs again, “A little insurance, case you go all shiong-mung duh kwong-run again.”
She smiles, closing her eyes and breathing deep, her hands still skimming over the equipment like she’s looking over a diagram in her mind. She opens one eye and looks at him, his hard face and the way his tongue pokes out the side of his mouth at a particularly tricky bit.
She rests her arms on the table, and leans down on them, whispering, “No touching guns…”
---
He’s a little bleary-eyed, amount of liquor in him enough to make the world just that mite fuzzier and the women in that bar a little easier on the eyes and ears. He still smells of them, of cheap perfume and sweat, advances he’s considering going back to and taking up even though it’s against the captain’s wishes. Something about everyone around him being in some kind of pair and making the quiet trip to his bunk every night gets him thinking about womenfolk and their, albeit limited but always very much appreciated, uses.
He makes the uncoordinated journey back to his room (they‘ll be plenty of women on plenty of other planets at times when he doesn’t have to wake up in the morning), takes a moment to rest against one of the walls while his vision stops doubling everything. He sees her feet first, as he always does, she ain’t the kind of girl that needs to look in and check the area over, what with that brain of hers pretty fine-tuned for danger. He tilts his head and tries to look around the door, “River?”
She doesn’t say anything, he sees her hand slide down the length of the wall, and then her body follows- now in plain sight. She’s wearing the kind of dress you can see everything through, black shorts, and he finds himself slamming his eyes shut just so he can’t look at things he shouldn’t be looking at, and things she’ll know he’s thinking about. He gets up to walk away, pushing his back off of the wall, and his boots plod across the hall till he’s on the other side to her- because at least then he won‘t have to press against her as he‘s walking past.
He murmurs something like, “I guess I’ll see you in the mornin’” and goes to walk away. Quicker than he can see (or maybe he’s just more drunk than he thought), he finds her hands on his shoulders and the rest of her pushed up against him, her hand reaches out and braces against the wall before he lands there, something to silence what would have been a crash loud enough to wake someone up. His hands spread out against the wall like he’s trying to work out how he got there, and how she got on top of him- what exactly he missed between the trying to sell her and her brother and now that’s got him in this kind of situation, sandwiched between the ship and her body and not really sure how to react to the whole thing. She groans softly, her lips parting for a second before she looks up and they make eye contact for the first time; what was confusion in his face slowly alleviates when he sees the glazed look in her eyes and remembers that sleepwalking’s her latest bit of crazy. “Okay… Let’s get you to bed.” She smiles, “Not-- Not like that. Just-- Away from me.”
Her eyes seem to trace over every part of him all at once, concern fades over her, “You’re unclean.”
He shakes his head, taking a hold of her by her arms and murmuring through gritted teeth, “Yeah, I’m dirty alright.” She smoothes a hand over his arm and pushes the sleeve of his t-shirt up slightly, revealing his tattoo; she tilts her head and her fingers dance over the colours and lines till she covers it with her palm. “River… You sleepin’?”
“I was. Then I was in between. And now I’m awake. I think.”
“Well, that don’t so much clear things up as make them all the more confusin’” he mumbles, a weak smile donning his lips, “But I appreciate the effort.” pushing her off of him slightly, her hand stays on his skin, her fingers still moving slowly- with the kind of care that’d make you think she was drawing it herself. He feels his arm twitch underneath her touch, “River…” she ignores him, her thoughts made up of skin and smell and colour, “River…” He shakes her a little in his hands, “River!” He bites down on his lip when he realises he might have said that a little too loud and they both scan the hallway for a sign that someone’s coming. She shakes her head, and he hushes his tone, “River, you need to step away, turn around, and get back to your bunk before your brother comes lookin’ for you.”
“Simon’s entered the N3 stage of sleep-- his delta waves should be between 0.5 and 4 hertz.”
“What the--?”
“He’s not waking up.”
His eyebrows raise, “He’s not?” She smiles and leans in a little, taking her hand off of his arm and putting it on his chest, “That… That ain’t the point.” He clears his throat, “The point is you… can’t be this close to me. ’Side from the fact it’s just unsettling’--”
She holds a finger up, “Bizui.” He’s slapped women (and been slapped by women) for less, but there’s something about the way she says it, all close and quiet, and the feel of her finger against his lips makes him rethink and just ignore that particular part of this whole interaction. Her lips are still kind of stained from the strawberries her and Kaylee were eating earlier, her hair smells just-washed and it’s been an awful long time since he didn’t have to beg a woman to be this close to him. She runs a hand over the gun in his holster and then tilts her head and smiles at him from underneath long eyelashes he’s never really noticed before.
“Girl, I’m probably-- almost certainly-- really gonna regret this later on…” He clears his throat, “In my bunk.” lets out a deep breath he’s been holding onto for longer than he realised, and his face drops at the next word, “Alone.” She smiles, and stands up on her tip-toes, gently touching her lips with his like she just wanted to see what it felt like, she licks her lips and tastes the alcohol on them, laughing quietly. His eyelids close against his will and shoot back open when he feels her tongue slip against his lips. He mumbles, shaking his head, “But your brother’d kill me faster than you can say ‘let’s go again’ and I ain’t dying tomorrow just ‘cause I can’t keep it in my pants.”
She cups a hand around his mouth and closes her eyes, breathing in deeply, he mumbles something into her hand and feels it tighten slightly, “You have a way with words, Jayne Cobb.” He hears the smirk in her voice, the humour in this otherwise-unfunny event, she leans her forehead into his chest and sighs, “But people listen more when you don‘t talk…”
He rolls his eyes, tries desperately not to inhale the smell of her skin, “That a fact?”
“A theory.” Her deft hands move up to his face, and she lays them flat on either cheek, just beside his mouth; he pushes himself even further into the wall, it ain’t that she don’t feel nice up against him, just that she ain’t meant to, “Like a photograph.” She laughs at his confused face, and says the next part like it should clear everything up, “In a frame.” She stares at his lips for a while, biting down on her own, and then takes a step back, bringing her hands to her side, and balling them into pale, loose fists. Her eyes go back to glazed, “Maybe I am dreaming…”
He slides out past her, “I think it’s for the best that you are.” an awkward smile when he realises he has to pass her again, “Not that I’m tellin’ anyone. Not that there’s anything to tell. I just--”
She smiles innocently, “Let’s not remember.”
“Now that is the kind of thinkin’ I can get behind.” his motions are a little more frantic than he’s used to, he raises a hand to squeeze her shoulder slightly, the same way he would with any co-conspirator before thinking against it (hell, they’ve had enough body contact this evening to last a lifetime) and skulking off to bed.
---
You can call Jayne a lot of things, unobservant, dumb, a right hwoon dahn when it comes down to it, and he’s more than likely to agree with you. Hell, he’s the first person to mention it if it gets him out of something he doesn’t want to do. And he ain’t about to make more work for himself by mentioning talents that could just as easily remain hidden.
The thing is, he’s smart enough to know when something isn’t right, and the way River stayed in the shadows all evening and didn’t speak (he‘d take her crazy ranting over this silence any day) made him even more uncomfortable than she has done in the past- which is pretty big, given the amount of talk that girl can spout off about everything and nothing. He’s considerate enough to ask her why she’s acting “weirder than usual.” when he leaves the kitchen, and even more so when he doesn’t push the issue. Or maybe he just doesn’t care enough to ask around.
And he’s the first one to know when one of his guns has gone missing, and guess with any kind of conviction the person who’d have it. Maybe that makes him pretty observant, pretty smart, but he’s not going to bring it up over breakfast or gunfire.
His first stop is the infirmary, just because he’d feel like an idiot if she was in there the whole time, but the blue room is dark and she doesn’t really go in there when it’s daytime, let alone with the lights off and without her brother. When he sees her bedroom door ajar, untouched sheets lying within, he gets a little angrier; this wasn’t meant to cut into his sleep by that much, and the girl’s been more of an inconvenience than he’s able to ignore as of late. He wants to stomp and kick the door open to her brother’s room, ask him where the hell his little sister is, and what part of her thinks it’s okay to go into a man’s bedroom and take his stuff. Truth is, he just doesn’t want to talk to Simon, and he ain’t entirely sure how much good he’d be in this situation. Whatever the situation is.
The next stop is the cargo bay, girl’s always hanging off of or laying across something in here. She likes to see the world from upside down, like maybe it matches how she’s looking at the rest of it- River’s got enough quirks to fill this place and all it‘s corners and boxes and he don‘t have the time to sort through it. Instead he makes the (potentially stupid) decision to just walk around this place till he finds her, take back his gun, and maybe tell Simon in the morning to lock up his sister somewhere when he can’t watch over her. He ain’t in the mood to make polite conversation with her, and that becomes more and more the case every minute he’s not in his bed.
He makes his way to the cock pit, the light of the controls making a silhouette of her up against the stars; and in the black of the room, he sees the gun in her hand. She’s been a little less crazy ever since Miranda, but that don’t stop times like these when she’s worried or stressed; girl can have a fit over nothing and kill a hundred reavers dead without batting an eyelid. Something of a contradiction, Mal once said and when she‘s wearing float-y dresses, thick combat boots and holding a gun like a doll, Jayne’s inclined to agree.
He opens his mouth to speak and she turns, (God bless those psychic powers sometimes, means he don’t have to speak half as much as with other people) “Ship’s on autopilot.” He steps a little closer, “No pilot with a face. No smile or wit to see us through. Just a box that gets the job done so no one else gets hurt.” Yep, Miranda hasn’t taken away times like these. His necessity to take the gun off of her has changed purpose, he notices her finger trace over the trigger and she looks jittery enough to blow her foot off or part of the ship or whatever else takes her fancy. “You wouldn’t have known until the shot went off.” She takes a step back, “It echoes through the ship like a final scream and everyone comes running.” She shrugs, “You’re the last to know.”
He takes a step forward, “What are you talking about?”
“The funeral’s beautiful. Better than I deserve.” He hears her smile in the dark, “You line me up next to Book and Wash. The casket’s cold with just me to fill it.” They make eye contact, his eyebrows crease together and she finishes with, “No one will have to see my face again.”
“Yeah, ‘cause it’ll be smeared over the wall.” Her eyes dart to the wall, and she imagines herself across it, a bright red streak of something that was better off that way. “River… People don’t want--”
“It’s my- It’s my fault.” She mumbles out, smacks a clammy palm to her forehead, “People- people- they need answers. They needed answers.” She looks up, tears streaking over her pale face, “I got them. But there was too much blood then. Too much-- Wash’s-- No one cares. All over my papers, and my workings. No one wants to read them. Now Zoe’s made of stone and- and Book’s bible is ruined. And it‘s all my fault.”
He walks closer, raising his hands, despite that he knows with some certainty that she could guess where a gun was and blow his hand off before he could reach for it. His boots make the steps heavier and slower and trying to be all stealthy has been made infinitely harder.
“River, you wanna give me the gun?”
She shakes her head and bites down on her lip, “I’m made to kill. These things-- in my… head… they’re all made to kill.” She laughs, and places the gun at her temple, rolling it along her skin; it’s colder than she expected, takes a minute to feel right before it fits perfectly, “Maybe this is where I’m supposed to be.”
“That’s right. On the ship. Ain’t no point blowin’ your brains out when you‘re right where you‘re meant to be.” The way she looks at him tells him he probably didn’t understand what she was talking about, but he‘s always good for that kind of consistency, “Hey, what’s your brother gonna do without you to take care of?”
“He’s got someone to fix him. New parts to play with.” She looks down at her bare feet, thinks of the blood spattered on them and the pictures they’ll make. “He’s got a home now.” She looks up at Jayne, a foot between them now, and she can feel the warmth of him, “I kick up the dirt and tear down the fences. The roses won’t grow while I’m here.” For the first time in a while, Jayne understands what she’s talking about, girl may be more poetical than he cares for at times like these, but she gets her point across- in an eventual kind of way. He swears he feels her heartbeat through the room, loud in his ears, racing quicker and quicker till it’s a hum. She runs her fingers along the cold walls, before flattening out her palm against them, “I’ll just be a part of this.” She smiles, her lips creaking over her teeth, “A stain to remember me by.”
The gun is still at her head, the metal feels like part of her by this point. She feels her other hand grow warmer and opens her eyes to see Jayne’s over it. His fingers between hers and braced on the wall and then wrapped around her wrist and bringing it closer to the two of them. Their bodies inches apart, she feels his breath in her hair, and loosens her grip on the gun when he takes a hold of it, turns the safety on, and places it in the back of his trousers.
Maybe it’s because he’s big and warm, or because he’s there, (or because he’s Jayne) but she finds herself burying her head into his chest. Her tears soak through to his skin, he ignores it (remembers it later when he peels it off of his body and throws it to one side), and snakes an arm around the base of her spine, pulling her closer. It’s uncharacteristic, but he wouldn’t want to be the person that pushed her away. He swoops an arm around the back of her knees and feels her fold into herself as he picks her up, tries not to think about how tiny she feels. Her slim arms around his neck, she sobs into the crook, and lets him take her back to her room. He considers waking up Simon to tell him, thinks about the good it’d do really, boy would only fuss and she doesn’t look like she needs that right now. (Not that he’s in any position to even guess what she might need.)
She sniffs when he lays her down onto her blanket, curling her arm around the pillow and holding it tight. “Am I gonna find you with another gun or a kitchen knife or somethin’ later on or can I sleep easy?”
She smiles quietly into her blanket, before shaking her head, “Kaylee’s making breakfast tomorrow.”
“That your way of tellin’ me you’ll be here in the mornin’?
She nods and watches him walk towards the door, “Jayne?”
He turns back, “Huh?”
She says it like a fact, “Maybe I’m broken.”
He finds her eyes in the dark, laughs quietly, and as the slit of light from the door disappears, he mumbles, “No more than the rest of us.”
The next day over breakfast he doesn’t mention how observant he was, or how much they all owe him. And she doesn’t talk about what happened, or how she knows Jayne didn’t go to sleep last night. They just eat pancakes and try to pretend they ain’t the pair they’ve turned out to be.
Please, read and review ^_^
Author:
clockwork_jo
Word Count: 4480 approx.
Pairing/Character: River Tam, Jayne Cobb; River/Jayne (if you choose to see the events as something more)
Genre: angst, gen/romance (depending on how you read it)
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: potentially dark themes; spoilers throughout the series and for the film 'Serenity' ("deleted" scene from 'War Stories', elaboration of a scene from 'Objects in Space' and the rest are from my imagination; two set in between the series and the film, and one set after).
Fandom: Firefly/Serenity
Summary: Five times River touches Jayne's gun (or how could-be euphamisms ruin lives); "Her arm’s outstretched and she’s holding his gun towards him, lazily between her thumb and forefinger like she doesn’t know how to."
Disclaimer:All television shows, movies, books, and other copyrighted material referred to in this work, and the characters, settings, and events thereof, are the properties of their respective owners. As this work is an interpretation of the original material and not for-profit, it constitutes fair use. Reference to real persons, places, or events are made in a fictional context, and are not intended to be libellous, defamatory, or in any way factual. All song-lyrics mentioned belong to their respective owners, not to me.
Author's Note: Written for Round #18 at prompt_in_a_box Prompt #5: I'm trying to put this as delicately as I can... How do I know you won't kill me in my sleep? (Simon, Ep. 01 - "Serenity")
He stabs a knife into the bowl of apples, tossing an old, gnawed-on core to the side at the same time, saves time really- he‘s always been practical when it comes to things like that. He puts his feet up on the table, and watches Kaylee take reluctant steps out of the kitchen, following Wash and Zoe. “You’re really not gonna come?”
“I’m really not.” he takes a loud bite out of his apple for effect. She nods anxiously and makes her way out of the room.
River’s voice comes from nowhere, “Captain needs you.”
He jumps in his chair, feet landing on the floor heavily, “Jeez. You always sneak up out of nowhere?!” she pads her way off of the sofa and over to the kitchen table. He takes another bite, “Captain don’t need me. He‘s got a boatload of people suicidal enough to not need me.”
“You don’t wanna save him?”
“Seems to me, no one’s gonna be savin’ him.”
Her stare is absent, “Lost cause.”
“Somethin’ like that.” another violent swallow of apple, she leans forward and puts her hand around it, her eyes never leaving his, “Wha- what are you doin‘?” he lets go, and she catches it and takes a bite, slumping down in the chair and leaning her chin on her hand, her elbow resting on the table in front of them.
“You won’t be the hero?”
He shakes his head and shrugs, “I always been better at bein’ the bad guy anyway.”
She doesn’t say much, just a mm… sound and another bite. They look at each other, and his brow furrows as he tries to read her expression. Girl’s never been very good at keeping tight lipped and she‘s staring back at him like she knows what he‘s been trying not to think of for days. He ain’t rightly sure if she can read minds or tell the future, but he’s not about to test that theory with thinking things she doesn’t need to know- if he can help it. Particular smile on her that usually means she’s got something on that moon brain she ain’t saying makes him all manner of uncomfortable.
He leans forward, “You so concerned, why don’t you go out there?”
“Simon wants me to stay on the boat.”
He smirks, “You know, you ain’t never seemed like the type to follow orders.” She finishes the apple, and he looks on in shocked amusement as she throws it over her shoulder and it lands in the bin, without even looking. Girl’s so out of it, it was probably a fluke, “You wanna save the day, get on it. But it ain’t my problem.” He smiles, “Someone else’ll pay my wage eventually.”
“You might be right.” She says, getting up and walking out of the kitchen, “Although…” She looks back over her shoulder, “The devil you know is apparently very forgiving.” she turns the corner and he spends a little time looking out into the dark of the hall.
“Gorram it.” He mutters, slamming his hands down on the table and pushing up. When he reaches the doorway, her hand’s in front of his face and he stumbles back. Her arm’s outstretched and she’s holding his gun towards him, lazily between her thumb and forefinger like she doesn’t know how to, he rolls his eyes, and she tries to hide her smile when he takes the gun off of her and walks out.
---
She considers what it means to just hold it.
If it doesn’t shoot, or wound, or kill then maybe it’s nothing but particles. Dense and forged and potential but only that. Stuck in the somewhere between it’s definition, and its being. Same as breath, same as blood, same as paper. It can all mean something else. Be a little more, or a little less than what it started out as.
Everything’s the same. Like holding a blanket in different place or different lights.
“Like me.” She thinks, or says, she’s not quite sure anymore. And it doesn’t make much difference really. Her finger strokes over the trigger.
When the screams finally subside, and someone takes it off of her, she realises she’s holding a gun in broad daylight.
---
They’re in no particular order to anyone but him. Chronological, size- maybe he’s just playing favourites, he lays them out and polishes them with the affection he’d show a woman, more even. Girls have a habit of walking out (or worse, sticking around when they ain’t necessary); guns, you pick and choose. Guns wait patiently in their holster till you’ve got a call to use them and don’t fuss when it’s been a while.
His eyes dart up over his most treasured possessions (hell, the only things on this damn boat he can call his own) and onto her, she’s sat next to him at the kitchen table and looking with an intensity that’d make you think they were talking to her. And it’s River, so there’s every chance that that’s happening.
“Ain’t it past your bedtime?”
“No…” Her eyes flicker up onto his, and she mimics him perfectly, “Ain’t it past yours?” It’s not that it’s particularly clever, or really means anything, it’s just basic enough to leave Jayne without a response, and she smirks at the way his lips are half-forming words. “If you can’t shoot it, mock it, or sell it, you don’t have an answer.” She rests her elbow on the table, “Where’s Vera?”
He looks up at her, a little confused, considering for a brief moment whether he’s mentioned Vera to her, or she’s been reading his thoughts sometime or another, or the usually more likely scenario (although not when River’s the case in point) that she could be just eavesdropping. “Here.” He reaches down, and picks it (her) up from the space between his legs and the table leg, a gentleness about the way he does it that makes River smile, and her eyes stay fixed on it after he’s taken his hand off.
She mutters, running a steady hand over it, “That I could be that loved.”
“Huh?” He’s licking a dishrag and rubbing at the latest in the catalogue of weaponry, “What you goin’ on about?” He places it down with the rest of them, and waits a second before picking up the next for her to answer, when she doesn’t, he continues, hocking back and spitting- safe in the knowledge that he won’t be able to understand whether he’s giving his full attention or not.
She brings her hand back into her lap, “Nothing.” (It’s the kind of answer Jayne can get behind.) She leans forward so her chin is now on the table, the wood pattern embedding itself into her skin, her eyes still taking the journey over and into each nook and cranny of his collection. Her pale fingers walk the table in front of her and over a new gun, smaller, and onto the next. It takes him a couple of seconds to realise he’s been watching her (or more specifically, her hands) with a little more intent than he meant to. “What?” She says, before looking at him.
It catches him off guard, and if there weren’t a back to the chair, he’d be on the floor. “I was just thinking’ ‘bout what’s going on in that head of yours.” It’s true; true enough that if she’s reading his mind right now, he’s got nothing to hide. He smirks, like he’s finally got something on her, “Didn’t Mal say somethin’ about you and guns anyway?”
Her face drops, “No touching guns.”
“Mm, I thought so.” She stares up at him, a look of defiance that he has to take a second look at, he shrugs, “I ain’t gonna stop you. But Mal or your hwoon dahn brother comes in here, and I at least tried to.” He picks up Vera and sets her down by his legs again, “A little insurance, case you go all shiong-mung duh kwong-run again.”
She smiles, closing her eyes and breathing deep, her hands still skimming over the equipment like she’s looking over a diagram in her mind. She opens one eye and looks at him, his hard face and the way his tongue pokes out the side of his mouth at a particularly tricky bit.
She rests her arms on the table, and leans down on them, whispering, “No touching guns…”
---
He’s a little bleary-eyed, amount of liquor in him enough to make the world just that mite fuzzier and the women in that bar a little easier on the eyes and ears. He still smells of them, of cheap perfume and sweat, advances he’s considering going back to and taking up even though it’s against the captain’s wishes. Something about everyone around him being in some kind of pair and making the quiet trip to his bunk every night gets him thinking about womenfolk and their, albeit limited but always very much appreciated, uses.
He makes the uncoordinated journey back to his room (they‘ll be plenty of women on plenty of other planets at times when he doesn’t have to wake up in the morning), takes a moment to rest against one of the walls while his vision stops doubling everything. He sees her feet first, as he always does, she ain’t the kind of girl that needs to look in and check the area over, what with that brain of hers pretty fine-tuned for danger. He tilts his head and tries to look around the door, “River?”
She doesn’t say anything, he sees her hand slide down the length of the wall, and then her body follows- now in plain sight. She’s wearing the kind of dress you can see everything through, black shorts, and he finds himself slamming his eyes shut just so he can’t look at things he shouldn’t be looking at, and things she’ll know he’s thinking about. He gets up to walk away, pushing his back off of the wall, and his boots plod across the hall till he’s on the other side to her- because at least then he won‘t have to press against her as he‘s walking past.
He murmurs something like, “I guess I’ll see you in the mornin’” and goes to walk away. Quicker than he can see (or maybe he’s just more drunk than he thought), he finds her hands on his shoulders and the rest of her pushed up against him, her hand reaches out and braces against the wall before he lands there, something to silence what would have been a crash loud enough to wake someone up. His hands spread out against the wall like he’s trying to work out how he got there, and how she got on top of him- what exactly he missed between the trying to sell her and her brother and now that’s got him in this kind of situation, sandwiched between the ship and her body and not really sure how to react to the whole thing. She groans softly, her lips parting for a second before she looks up and they make eye contact for the first time; what was confusion in his face slowly alleviates when he sees the glazed look in her eyes and remembers that sleepwalking’s her latest bit of crazy. “Okay… Let’s get you to bed.” She smiles, “Not-- Not like that. Just-- Away from me.”
Her eyes seem to trace over every part of him all at once, concern fades over her, “You’re unclean.”
He shakes his head, taking a hold of her by her arms and murmuring through gritted teeth, “Yeah, I’m dirty alright.” She smoothes a hand over his arm and pushes the sleeve of his t-shirt up slightly, revealing his tattoo; she tilts her head and her fingers dance over the colours and lines till she covers it with her palm. “River… You sleepin’?”
“I was. Then I was in between. And now I’m awake. I think.”
“Well, that don’t so much clear things up as make them all the more confusin’” he mumbles, a weak smile donning his lips, “But I appreciate the effort.” pushing her off of him slightly, her hand stays on his skin, her fingers still moving slowly- with the kind of care that’d make you think she was drawing it herself. He feels his arm twitch underneath her touch, “River…” she ignores him, her thoughts made up of skin and smell and colour, “River…” He shakes her a little in his hands, “River!” He bites down on his lip when he realises he might have said that a little too loud and they both scan the hallway for a sign that someone’s coming. She shakes her head, and he hushes his tone, “River, you need to step away, turn around, and get back to your bunk before your brother comes lookin’ for you.”
“Simon’s entered the N3 stage of sleep-- his delta waves should be between 0.5 and 4 hertz.”
“What the--?”
“He’s not waking up.”
His eyebrows raise, “He’s not?” She smiles and leans in a little, taking her hand off of his arm and putting it on his chest, “That… That ain’t the point.” He clears his throat, “The point is you… can’t be this close to me. ’Side from the fact it’s just unsettling’--”
She holds a finger up, “Bizui.” He’s slapped women (and been slapped by women) for less, but there’s something about the way she says it, all close and quiet, and the feel of her finger against his lips makes him rethink and just ignore that particular part of this whole interaction. Her lips are still kind of stained from the strawberries her and Kaylee were eating earlier, her hair smells just-washed and it’s been an awful long time since he didn’t have to beg a woman to be this close to him. She runs a hand over the gun in his holster and then tilts her head and smiles at him from underneath long eyelashes he’s never really noticed before.
“Girl, I’m probably-- almost certainly-- really gonna regret this later on…” He clears his throat, “In my bunk.” lets out a deep breath he’s been holding onto for longer than he realised, and his face drops at the next word, “Alone.” She smiles, and stands up on her tip-toes, gently touching her lips with his like she just wanted to see what it felt like, she licks her lips and tastes the alcohol on them, laughing quietly. His eyelids close against his will and shoot back open when he feels her tongue slip against his lips. He mumbles, shaking his head, “But your brother’d kill me faster than you can say ‘let’s go again’ and I ain’t dying tomorrow just ‘cause I can’t keep it in my pants.”
She cups a hand around his mouth and closes her eyes, breathing in deeply, he mumbles something into her hand and feels it tighten slightly, “You have a way with words, Jayne Cobb.” He hears the smirk in her voice, the humour in this otherwise-unfunny event, she leans her forehead into his chest and sighs, “But people listen more when you don‘t talk…”
He rolls his eyes, tries desperately not to inhale the smell of her skin, “That a fact?”
“A theory.” Her deft hands move up to his face, and she lays them flat on either cheek, just beside his mouth; he pushes himself even further into the wall, it ain’t that she don’t feel nice up against him, just that she ain’t meant to, “Like a photograph.” She laughs at his confused face, and says the next part like it should clear everything up, “In a frame.” She stares at his lips for a while, biting down on her own, and then takes a step back, bringing her hands to her side, and balling them into pale, loose fists. Her eyes go back to glazed, “Maybe I am dreaming…”
He slides out past her, “I think it’s for the best that you are.” an awkward smile when he realises he has to pass her again, “Not that I’m tellin’ anyone. Not that there’s anything to tell. I just--”
She smiles innocently, “Let’s not remember.”
“Now that is the kind of thinkin’ I can get behind.” his motions are a little more frantic than he’s used to, he raises a hand to squeeze her shoulder slightly, the same way he would with any co-conspirator before thinking against it (hell, they’ve had enough body contact this evening to last a lifetime) and skulking off to bed.
---
You can call Jayne a lot of things, unobservant, dumb, a right hwoon dahn when it comes down to it, and he’s more than likely to agree with you. Hell, he’s the first person to mention it if it gets him out of something he doesn’t want to do. And he ain’t about to make more work for himself by mentioning talents that could just as easily remain hidden.
The thing is, he’s smart enough to know when something isn’t right, and the way River stayed in the shadows all evening and didn’t speak (he‘d take her crazy ranting over this silence any day) made him even more uncomfortable than she has done in the past- which is pretty big, given the amount of talk that girl can spout off about everything and nothing. He’s considerate enough to ask her why she’s acting “weirder than usual.” when he leaves the kitchen, and even more so when he doesn’t push the issue. Or maybe he just doesn’t care enough to ask around.
And he’s the first one to know when one of his guns has gone missing, and guess with any kind of conviction the person who’d have it. Maybe that makes him pretty observant, pretty smart, but he’s not going to bring it up over breakfast or gunfire.
His first stop is the infirmary, just because he’d feel like an idiot if she was in there the whole time, but the blue room is dark and she doesn’t really go in there when it’s daytime, let alone with the lights off and without her brother. When he sees her bedroom door ajar, untouched sheets lying within, he gets a little angrier; this wasn’t meant to cut into his sleep by that much, and the girl’s been more of an inconvenience than he’s able to ignore as of late. He wants to stomp and kick the door open to her brother’s room, ask him where the hell his little sister is, and what part of her thinks it’s okay to go into a man’s bedroom and take his stuff. Truth is, he just doesn’t want to talk to Simon, and he ain’t entirely sure how much good he’d be in this situation. Whatever the situation is.
The next stop is the cargo bay, girl’s always hanging off of or laying across something in here. She likes to see the world from upside down, like maybe it matches how she’s looking at the rest of it- River’s got enough quirks to fill this place and all it‘s corners and boxes and he don‘t have the time to sort through it. Instead he makes the (potentially stupid) decision to just walk around this place till he finds her, take back his gun, and maybe tell Simon in the morning to lock up his sister somewhere when he can’t watch over her. He ain’t in the mood to make polite conversation with her, and that becomes more and more the case every minute he’s not in his bed.
He makes his way to the cock pit, the light of the controls making a silhouette of her up against the stars; and in the black of the room, he sees the gun in her hand. She’s been a little less crazy ever since Miranda, but that don’t stop times like these when she’s worried or stressed; girl can have a fit over nothing and kill a hundred reavers dead without batting an eyelid. Something of a contradiction, Mal once said and when she‘s wearing float-y dresses, thick combat boots and holding a gun like a doll, Jayne’s inclined to agree.
He opens his mouth to speak and she turns, (God bless those psychic powers sometimes, means he don’t have to speak half as much as with other people) “Ship’s on autopilot.” He steps a little closer, “No pilot with a face. No smile or wit to see us through. Just a box that gets the job done so no one else gets hurt.” Yep, Miranda hasn’t taken away times like these. His necessity to take the gun off of her has changed purpose, he notices her finger trace over the trigger and she looks jittery enough to blow her foot off or part of the ship or whatever else takes her fancy. “You wouldn’t have known until the shot went off.” She takes a step back, “It echoes through the ship like a final scream and everyone comes running.” She shrugs, “You’re the last to know.”
He takes a step forward, “What are you talking about?”
“The funeral’s beautiful. Better than I deserve.” He hears her smile in the dark, “You line me up next to Book and Wash. The casket’s cold with just me to fill it.” They make eye contact, his eyebrows crease together and she finishes with, “No one will have to see my face again.”
“Yeah, ‘cause it’ll be smeared over the wall.” Her eyes dart to the wall, and she imagines herself across it, a bright red streak of something that was better off that way. “River… People don’t want--”
“It’s my- It’s my fault.” She mumbles out, smacks a clammy palm to her forehead, “People- people- they need answers. They needed answers.” She looks up, tears streaking over her pale face, “I got them. But there was too much blood then. Too much-- Wash’s-- No one cares. All over my papers, and my workings. No one wants to read them. Now Zoe’s made of stone and- and Book’s bible is ruined. And it‘s all my fault.”
He walks closer, raising his hands, despite that he knows with some certainty that she could guess where a gun was and blow his hand off before he could reach for it. His boots make the steps heavier and slower and trying to be all stealthy has been made infinitely harder.
“River, you wanna give me the gun?”
She shakes her head and bites down on her lip, “I’m made to kill. These things-- in my… head… they’re all made to kill.” She laughs, and places the gun at her temple, rolling it along her skin; it’s colder than she expected, takes a minute to feel right before it fits perfectly, “Maybe this is where I’m supposed to be.”
“That’s right. On the ship. Ain’t no point blowin’ your brains out when you‘re right where you‘re meant to be.” The way she looks at him tells him he probably didn’t understand what she was talking about, but he‘s always good for that kind of consistency, “Hey, what’s your brother gonna do without you to take care of?”
“He’s got someone to fix him. New parts to play with.” She looks down at her bare feet, thinks of the blood spattered on them and the pictures they’ll make. “He’s got a home now.” She looks up at Jayne, a foot between them now, and she can feel the warmth of him, “I kick up the dirt and tear down the fences. The roses won’t grow while I’m here.” For the first time in a while, Jayne understands what she’s talking about, girl may be more poetical than he cares for at times like these, but she gets her point across- in an eventual kind of way. He swears he feels her heartbeat through the room, loud in his ears, racing quicker and quicker till it’s a hum. She runs her fingers along the cold walls, before flattening out her palm against them, “I’ll just be a part of this.” She smiles, her lips creaking over her teeth, “A stain to remember me by.”
The gun is still at her head, the metal feels like part of her by this point. She feels her other hand grow warmer and opens her eyes to see Jayne’s over it. His fingers between hers and braced on the wall and then wrapped around her wrist and bringing it closer to the two of them. Their bodies inches apart, she feels his breath in her hair, and loosens her grip on the gun when he takes a hold of it, turns the safety on, and places it in the back of his trousers.
Maybe it’s because he’s big and warm, or because he’s there, (or because he’s Jayne) but she finds herself burying her head into his chest. Her tears soak through to his skin, he ignores it (remembers it later when he peels it off of his body and throws it to one side), and snakes an arm around the base of her spine, pulling her closer. It’s uncharacteristic, but he wouldn’t want to be the person that pushed her away. He swoops an arm around the back of her knees and feels her fold into herself as he picks her up, tries not to think about how tiny she feels. Her slim arms around his neck, she sobs into the crook, and lets him take her back to her room. He considers waking up Simon to tell him, thinks about the good it’d do really, boy would only fuss and she doesn’t look like she needs that right now. (Not that he’s in any position to even guess what she might need.)
She sniffs when he lays her down onto her blanket, curling her arm around the pillow and holding it tight. “Am I gonna find you with another gun or a kitchen knife or somethin’ later on or can I sleep easy?”
She smiles quietly into her blanket, before shaking her head, “Kaylee’s making breakfast tomorrow.”
“That your way of tellin’ me you’ll be here in the mornin’?
She nods and watches him walk towards the door, “Jayne?”
He turns back, “Huh?”
She says it like a fact, “Maybe I’m broken.”
He finds her eyes in the dark, laughs quietly, and as the slit of light from the door disappears, he mumbles, “No more than the rest of us.”
The next day over breakfast he doesn’t mention how observant he was, or how much they all owe him. And she doesn’t talk about what happened, or how she knows Jayne didn’t go to sleep last night. They just eat pancakes and try to pretend they ain’t the pair they’ve turned out to be.
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