"Like Describing the Alphabet": Part One
See this post for headers and other information. The short version thereof: this is a complete, novel-length piece that I am posting in sections. It's Firefly, Mal/Jayne with many secondary pairings. Most of the sections, including this one, are NC-17.
Mal had known that it would happen someday: enough time spent moving cargo through the ass end of nowhere, enough alcohol in his blood, and he'd forget the name of the moon he was on. The old man sitting next to him was droning on, and Mal was trying to think where he was. The brain cells were dead. There was no turning back from here.
Most of his crew was missing. Setting aside the ones he wasn't strictly responsible for, it was a shameful tally. It'd been hours since he'd seen Wash or Zoe or Kaylee. And there was Jayne, last of the breed, making for the door of the tavern.
"Just heading home, captain," Jayne shouted.
Mal beckoned him with a glare. "I've known you long enough to be skeptical of that," he said when Jayne was close enough to hear a whisper.
"Turning in early," Jayne said. "Don't wanna miss the show."
"There's a show?" Mal said. "There's a show on *my boat*?"
"I take it back. Turning in early. Is all."
"Tell me more about this show," Mal said. He marched Jayne back to Serenity and stopped short in the cargo bay to look around like he was searching for a stage.
Jayne sighed and muttered, "Come to my bunk."
"What was that?"
"My bunk," Jayne said. "Show's in my bunk."
"Now, you know I don't go in for any of that luen stuff."
"Ain't like *that*," Jayne said, a little too defensively. The first thing he did when they got to his bunk was pull out a jug of homemade hooch from under the bed. Across the widest part, Jayne had written in large block letters, "FOR AMERJENSES ONLY."
"You're gonna need some of this," Jayne said, taking a less-than-reassuring swig for himself. "Don't worry, I'm not the one brewed it."
The stuff tasted like medical-grade gin, but it was warm going down. "Now, listen," Jayne said. "May be a while, but it always happens sooner or later."
So they sat stone quiet, passing the jug back and forth, waiting for a show the nature of which was growing more and more dubious.
When Mal finally heard something, he thought it was the drink playing tricks on him. One set of footsteps down a metal ladder, in heavy shoes, and another, lighter set following behind. Talking, laughing-- two women. One had to be Kaylee, because she lived next door, and who could she be rutting often enough for Jayne to look forward to it? The other voice was low and soft, so much so that he'd have to work by process of elimination.
River would be a shriek and a gale of laughter. Zoe was loyal as anything, and he'd overheard her and Wash more than a few times, through the walls. Besides, she knew that if Wash didn't get around to killing her for cheating, Mal would take care of it himself.
That was four women on his boat, three accounted for. Unless he had himself a stowaway, that left one terribly arrogant whore doing unimaginable things to his sweet little engineer. "This doesn't fly," Mal said, hitting his head on a low swoop of ceiling as he stood up.
Jayne grabbed his arm. "Don't you go interfering with that," he said.
"Don't want me spoiling your fun?"
"Don't want you spoiling any of ours," Jayne said. "We got a pretty good situation on this ship-- awfully few brawls for nine people."
"How long's this been going on?"
"Dunno," Jayne said. "Couple months."
"It stops tonight," Mal said. He made for the door, but Jayne grabbed a fistful of his shirt and stared at him with a feline intensity that Mal had only ever seen before when Jayne was about to get violent.
"You ain't going up there," Jayne said. "It just ain't happening." He leaned back into his bed. "You *know* how little it would pain me to tie you to that chair to make sure of it."
"You do, and your ass is off this boat so fast--"
"Sit down," Jayne said. "Enjoy the show."
There was a whole lot of silence before the first moan, but they began to rise up like popcorn exploding in the pan, until the air was thick with muffled feminine cries. It was a pretty good show, as these things went-- hard to fire up a man's imagination without any visuals, but those two were doing a fine job. Unhappy with it as Mal was, they were planting some gorram pretty pictures in his mind.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Jayne scoot to the far corner of his bed and turn his back. And unzip himself, which was plain inconsiderate. "Gotta take care of something," Jayne said. "Can't let you leave, neither, so I guess you'll just have to look the other way."
"Fine," Mal said, thinking how completely it wasn't, and how completely he lacked power to express that.
"If there's something you need taking care of, now might be a good time," Jayne said, his voice beginning to strain.
Mal couldn't deny that the moans in the next room were putting him in need of relief. He unbuttoned, pulled it out, stroked to the rhythm of those women, closed his eyes to shut everything else out but the way he pictured the two of them naked. But he felt Jayne nearby and couldn't shut him out completely. Mal found himself stuck at half-mast, and all his feverish work couldn't get him any closer.
When he was about to call it quits and skulk to his bunk, he felt a second hand on his ji ba, working around his own hand at first, teasing the tip, squeezing his balls. And finally pushing his own hand aside, harder and faster until he came.
It didn't occur to him until he opened his eyes that it had to have been Jayne's hand. Mal didn't say anything after, either, just wiped himself off with the handkerchief in his pocket and buttoned back up. He stayed to listen until the girls got tired and there was no reason for him to be there anymore. "Thanks for the show," he said. "Was enlightening."
He went back to his bunk half in a daze, more drunk than he'd reckoned. Drunk enough to prove the weakness of one lie: none of that luen stuff anymore.
*****
Jayne knew the captain was avoiding him. Mal wouldn't look at him, let alone speak to him, and he always found something more pressing to do the moment Jayne walked into the room. Jayne knew he pretty well deserved it-- emergency gin or no, there wasn't no excuse for touching a man without his permission. He was trying to think of excuses anyway, but he wasn't coming up with much.
Still, when Mal brushed past him wordlessly for the million and third time, in the cargo bay, Jayne couldn't help muttering, "This is the most qing wa cao de thing..."
"What'd you think it was?" Mal said.
"Dunno," Jayne said.
"Let me tell you," Mal said. "It was one very manly hand job on one very strange night, and that's all it will ever be."
"'S all I expected," Jayne said.
"'Sides," Mal said. "It don't count. We were both thinking about women."
"Yeah," Jayne said, "women." He hadn't been thinking about women. Not very much, anyway. He'd known early on-- from when they were on opposite ends of a loaded gun-- that the captain fell in the category of people he'd fuck if he was to get the opportunity. In a way that he let that be and got on with his life. He started towards his bunk, to not think about Mal, and Mal's hard dick in his hand. The skin soft like peaches.
"We could... go back to my bunk," Mal said. "If you ain't doing nothing else."
"Yeah," Jayne said, "yeah." He followed Mal there. The room was more spacious than Jayne's bunk, and the bed was bigger, though not any softer. Mal undid his belt, pushed his pants down to his knees. Jayne had been too drunk the first time to recall much of his original technique now, but it was that same soft skin. Same swell of appreciation when Jayne ran his thumb up the underside or played with his balls. Same way of coming like he was pretending not to come.
Mal turned away like he expected Jayne to get the hell out, but Jayne folded his arms and sat deeper on the bed, resolute as he could muster. He lowered his own trousers and waited to win the battle of wills.
Not more than a minute went by before Mal made a very tentative fist around Jayne's cock and shuddered dryly upward. Jayne began to wonder whether it was worth demanding this. "Hold on," Mal said. Mal opened a drawer in his bedside table and pulled out a jar of what every man in the 'verse had in his bedside drawer. Dr. Foster's Famous Miracle Hand Cream, famous mostly for not being used by anyone as hand cream. It tingled.
What followed was not the most inspired hand job in the 'verse, but it was effective enough. The pride of winning and the fresh memory in his fingertips was plenty to get Jayne there. Not that it hurt to have, for the first time since that brothel on that moon, the rough, practiced grip of someone other than himself.
Afterwards, he wiped off the hand cream and the jing ye and walked off before he'd be forced to find something clever to say.
*****
It was three days later when Mal was at the door to Jayne's bunk again, and he didn't have to ask. It was quicker this time, and not so awkward. "Thanks," Mal said, as he left.
Things went on more or less that way, long enough that Jayne began to think it would get to be one of those facts of life on Serenity, like the family suppers with the whole crew. He got an itch he didn't want to scratch himself, he went to Mal and got it taken care of. It was better if it was someone else touching him, even if that person didn't particularly want to look at him. Especially if so.
They were sitting on the edge of Mal's bed one night, both of them tired after a job that would have been uncomplicated if it hadn't been for all the shooting. Usually, one or the other of them would get things started. But that night they'd sat since forever ago, waiting for someone to decide, without taking the trouble of speaking, who was gonna go first. "This is bullshit," Jayne said, getting up.
"I could... suck it if you wanted me to," Mal said.
Jayne sat back down. "You know how?" he said.
Mal shot him a look that either meant, "of course," or meant he didn't realize there was skill involved. It seemed to be the first one, though, because he got to it with a kind of intense concentration, like he was remembering something from a while back. Jayne liked getting his cock sucked, liked it maybe best of anything. He didn't mind it from women, but liked men better for the purpose. Men knew what it felt like from the other end, knew to do that thing with the flat of their tongue on the tip and it was okay to just hold the base, just keep going.
Jayne got off, and Mal got up to spit. He was hard enough that Jayne could see. Good to know it hadn't been a chore.
Mal finished rinsing his mouth out and stretched himself face up on his bed with his legs hanging over the side, feet just touching the floor. Jayne went right away for Mal's fly, but Mal said, "No, give it a minute." Jayne sat, facing the other wall.
"All right," Mal said, sitting up. Which made for an easier angle, anyway. As much as Jayne had been pretending not to pay attention, he knew Mal's dick pretty gorram well: about the usual thickness, maybe a little longer than most, tending to purple at the tip when he was hard. Jayne had it pretty well memorized, at least by sight.
Jayne realized that he'd wanted to know what it tasted like for a while now. He had to always be touching things and putting things in his mouth. His mama had scolded him for that all his life. Mal tasted pretty much like he'd guessed: like male sweat and oatmealy soap, like salt and anxiousness. He groaned when Jayne took him deep in his mouth. (A man spent a few nights in jail and learned that there were more important things than a gag reflex.) Jayne was proud of himself, of what he could do with his tongue and what it did to Mal. He could even be proud of liking it. There was something magic about getting a man hard in his mouth. It tasted good to have Mal grabbing the hair at the back of his head and making noises low in his throat. And he came like he needed it so gorram bad.
Jayne spit in the sink, and he thought about how it was always the same way. Wanting to have something to say and coming up without any words, not wanting to leave but not feeling welcome. He sat back down on the edge of the bed and thought of laying his head on Mal's shoulder, showing some kind of appreciation. But he couldn't bring himself to do it, so he put on his shoes and went back to his bunk.
Mal had known that it would happen someday: enough time spent moving cargo through the ass end of nowhere, enough alcohol in his blood, and he'd forget the name of the moon he was on. The old man sitting next to him was droning on, and Mal was trying to think where he was. The brain cells were dead. There was no turning back from here.
Most of his crew was missing. Setting aside the ones he wasn't strictly responsible for, it was a shameful tally. It'd been hours since he'd seen Wash or Zoe or Kaylee. And there was Jayne, last of the breed, making for the door of the tavern.
"Just heading home, captain," Jayne shouted.
Mal beckoned him with a glare. "I've known you long enough to be skeptical of that," he said when Jayne was close enough to hear a whisper.
"Turning in early," Jayne said. "Don't wanna miss the show."
"There's a show?" Mal said. "There's a show on *my boat*?"
"I take it back. Turning in early. Is all."
"Tell me more about this show," Mal said. He marched Jayne back to Serenity and stopped short in the cargo bay to look around like he was searching for a stage.
Jayne sighed and muttered, "Come to my bunk."
"What was that?"
"My bunk," Jayne said. "Show's in my bunk."
"Now, you know I don't go in for any of that luen stuff."
"Ain't like *that*," Jayne said, a little too defensively. The first thing he did when they got to his bunk was pull out a jug of homemade hooch from under the bed. Across the widest part, Jayne had written in large block letters, "FOR AMERJENSES ONLY."
"You're gonna need some of this," Jayne said, taking a less-than-reassuring swig for himself. "Don't worry, I'm not the one brewed it."
The stuff tasted like medical-grade gin, but it was warm going down. "Now, listen," Jayne said. "May be a while, but it always happens sooner or later."
So they sat stone quiet, passing the jug back and forth, waiting for a show the nature of which was growing more and more dubious.
When Mal finally heard something, he thought it was the drink playing tricks on him. One set of footsteps down a metal ladder, in heavy shoes, and another, lighter set following behind. Talking, laughing-- two women. One had to be Kaylee, because she lived next door, and who could she be rutting often enough for Jayne to look forward to it? The other voice was low and soft, so much so that he'd have to work by process of elimination.
River would be a shriek and a gale of laughter. Zoe was loyal as anything, and he'd overheard her and Wash more than a few times, through the walls. Besides, she knew that if Wash didn't get around to killing her for cheating, Mal would take care of it himself.
That was four women on his boat, three accounted for. Unless he had himself a stowaway, that left one terribly arrogant whore doing unimaginable things to his sweet little engineer. "This doesn't fly," Mal said, hitting his head on a low swoop of ceiling as he stood up.
Jayne grabbed his arm. "Don't you go interfering with that," he said.
"Don't want me spoiling your fun?"
"Don't want you spoiling any of ours," Jayne said. "We got a pretty good situation on this ship-- awfully few brawls for nine people."
"How long's this been going on?"
"Dunno," Jayne said. "Couple months."
"It stops tonight," Mal said. He made for the door, but Jayne grabbed a fistful of his shirt and stared at him with a feline intensity that Mal had only ever seen before when Jayne was about to get violent.
"You ain't going up there," Jayne said. "It just ain't happening." He leaned back into his bed. "You *know* how little it would pain me to tie you to that chair to make sure of it."
"You do, and your ass is off this boat so fast--"
"Sit down," Jayne said. "Enjoy the show."
There was a whole lot of silence before the first moan, but they began to rise up like popcorn exploding in the pan, until the air was thick with muffled feminine cries. It was a pretty good show, as these things went-- hard to fire up a man's imagination without any visuals, but those two were doing a fine job. Unhappy with it as Mal was, they were planting some gorram pretty pictures in his mind.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Jayne scoot to the far corner of his bed and turn his back. And unzip himself, which was plain inconsiderate. "Gotta take care of something," Jayne said. "Can't let you leave, neither, so I guess you'll just have to look the other way."
"Fine," Mal said, thinking how completely it wasn't, and how completely he lacked power to express that.
"If there's something you need taking care of, now might be a good time," Jayne said, his voice beginning to strain.
Mal couldn't deny that the moans in the next room were putting him in need of relief. He unbuttoned, pulled it out, stroked to the rhythm of those women, closed his eyes to shut everything else out but the way he pictured the two of them naked. But he felt Jayne nearby and couldn't shut him out completely. Mal found himself stuck at half-mast, and all his feverish work couldn't get him any closer.
When he was about to call it quits and skulk to his bunk, he felt a second hand on his ji ba, working around his own hand at first, teasing the tip, squeezing his balls. And finally pushing his own hand aside, harder and faster until he came.
It didn't occur to him until he opened his eyes that it had to have been Jayne's hand. Mal didn't say anything after, either, just wiped himself off with the handkerchief in his pocket and buttoned back up. He stayed to listen until the girls got tired and there was no reason for him to be there anymore. "Thanks for the show," he said. "Was enlightening."
He went back to his bunk half in a daze, more drunk than he'd reckoned. Drunk enough to prove the weakness of one lie: none of that luen stuff anymore.
*****
Jayne knew the captain was avoiding him. Mal wouldn't look at him, let alone speak to him, and he always found something more pressing to do the moment Jayne walked into the room. Jayne knew he pretty well deserved it-- emergency gin or no, there wasn't no excuse for touching a man without his permission. He was trying to think of excuses anyway, but he wasn't coming up with much.
Still, when Mal brushed past him wordlessly for the million and third time, in the cargo bay, Jayne couldn't help muttering, "This is the most qing wa cao de thing..."
"What'd you think it was?" Mal said.
"Dunno," Jayne said.
"Let me tell you," Mal said. "It was one very manly hand job on one very strange night, and that's all it will ever be."
"'S all I expected," Jayne said.
"'Sides," Mal said. "It don't count. We were both thinking about women."
"Yeah," Jayne said, "women." He hadn't been thinking about women. Not very much, anyway. He'd known early on-- from when they were on opposite ends of a loaded gun-- that the captain fell in the category of people he'd fuck if he was to get the opportunity. In a way that he let that be and got on with his life. He started towards his bunk, to not think about Mal, and Mal's hard dick in his hand. The skin soft like peaches.
"We could... go back to my bunk," Mal said. "If you ain't doing nothing else."
"Yeah," Jayne said, "yeah." He followed Mal there. The room was more spacious than Jayne's bunk, and the bed was bigger, though not any softer. Mal undid his belt, pushed his pants down to his knees. Jayne had been too drunk the first time to recall much of his original technique now, but it was that same soft skin. Same swell of appreciation when Jayne ran his thumb up the underside or played with his balls. Same way of coming like he was pretending not to come.
Mal turned away like he expected Jayne to get the hell out, but Jayne folded his arms and sat deeper on the bed, resolute as he could muster. He lowered his own trousers and waited to win the battle of wills.
Not more than a minute went by before Mal made a very tentative fist around Jayne's cock and shuddered dryly upward. Jayne began to wonder whether it was worth demanding this. "Hold on," Mal said. Mal opened a drawer in his bedside table and pulled out a jar of what every man in the 'verse had in his bedside drawer. Dr. Foster's Famous Miracle Hand Cream, famous mostly for not being used by anyone as hand cream. It tingled.
What followed was not the most inspired hand job in the 'verse, but it was effective enough. The pride of winning and the fresh memory in his fingertips was plenty to get Jayne there. Not that it hurt to have, for the first time since that brothel on that moon, the rough, practiced grip of someone other than himself.
Afterwards, he wiped off the hand cream and the jing ye and walked off before he'd be forced to find something clever to say.
*****
It was three days later when Mal was at the door to Jayne's bunk again, and he didn't have to ask. It was quicker this time, and not so awkward. "Thanks," Mal said, as he left.
Things went on more or less that way, long enough that Jayne began to think it would get to be one of those facts of life on Serenity, like the family suppers with the whole crew. He got an itch he didn't want to scratch himself, he went to Mal and got it taken care of. It was better if it was someone else touching him, even if that person didn't particularly want to look at him. Especially if so.
They were sitting on the edge of Mal's bed one night, both of them tired after a job that would have been uncomplicated if it hadn't been for all the shooting. Usually, one or the other of them would get things started. But that night they'd sat since forever ago, waiting for someone to decide, without taking the trouble of speaking, who was gonna go first. "This is bullshit," Jayne said, getting up.
"I could... suck it if you wanted me to," Mal said.
Jayne sat back down. "You know how?" he said.
Mal shot him a look that either meant, "of course," or meant he didn't realize there was skill involved. It seemed to be the first one, though, because he got to it with a kind of intense concentration, like he was remembering something from a while back. Jayne liked getting his cock sucked, liked it maybe best of anything. He didn't mind it from women, but liked men better for the purpose. Men knew what it felt like from the other end, knew to do that thing with the flat of their tongue on the tip and it was okay to just hold the base, just keep going.
Jayne got off, and Mal got up to spit. He was hard enough that Jayne could see. Good to know it hadn't been a chore.
Mal finished rinsing his mouth out and stretched himself face up on his bed with his legs hanging over the side, feet just touching the floor. Jayne went right away for Mal's fly, but Mal said, "No, give it a minute." Jayne sat, facing the other wall.
"All right," Mal said, sitting up. Which made for an easier angle, anyway. As much as Jayne had been pretending not to pay attention, he knew Mal's dick pretty gorram well: about the usual thickness, maybe a little longer than most, tending to purple at the tip when he was hard. Jayne had it pretty well memorized, at least by sight.
Jayne realized that he'd wanted to know what it tasted like for a while now. He had to always be touching things and putting things in his mouth. His mama had scolded him for that all his life. Mal tasted pretty much like he'd guessed: like male sweat and oatmealy soap, like salt and anxiousness. He groaned when Jayne took him deep in his mouth. (A man spent a few nights in jail and learned that there were more important things than a gag reflex.) Jayne was proud of himself, of what he could do with his tongue and what it did to Mal. He could even be proud of liking it. There was something magic about getting a man hard in his mouth. It tasted good to have Mal grabbing the hair at the back of his head and making noises low in his throat. And he came like he needed it so gorram bad.
Jayne spit in the sink, and he thought about how it was always the same way. Wanting to have something to say and coming up without any words, not wanting to leave but not feeling welcome. He sat back down on the edge of the bed and thought of laying his head on Mal's shoulder, showing some kind of appreciation. But he couldn't bring himself to do it, so he put on his shoes and went back to his bunk.