Title: An Unusual Reaction
Fandom: Firefly/Serenity
Pairing: Gen
Rating: G
Word Count: 450
Summary: For the Firefly Prompt-a-thon. Prompt: Jayne, home
Jayne Cobb loved his mother. He loved getting post from her, and he proudly displayed anything and everything she sent to him in front of the crew. He was the kind of man who wrote home and sent money as often as they had work, which unfortunately hadn't been very often recently.
Jayne Cobb's loyalties lied only with himself and his family, which just recently began to include the crew of Serenity. He was fiercely loyal to that family, doing whatever it took to protect or help them. He may have missed his Ma and siblings, and especially Ma's home-cooked meals, but nothing was going to make him go back to that hunk of rock it took him seventeen years to escape from.
Nothing, that was, until the day Mal announced their next pick-up was on Aberdeen.
"No," Jayne replied to the news, glaring at Mal. "I ain't goin'."
Mal looked at Jayne, surprised to hear him turning down work after the lull they'd had in the six months following the Miranda wave. "Well we ain't stoppin' anywhere between here and there, so unless you're goin' out the airlock, you ain't got much of a choice," Mal informed him, more confusion in his voice than anger or annoyance.
He thought about it for a minute, clearly weighing the options of going out the airlock, stunning the rest of the crew who was gathered around the table.
"You aren't seriously considering the airlock," Simon asked, shocked to see Jayne's self-preservation take a backseat to his refusal to land on Aberdeen.
Jayne ignored Simon completely. "I ain't leavin' my bunk 'til we're off planet," he said after another tense minute. "If anyone asks, you ain't never heard o' me."
"…Alright," Mal reluctantly agreed. "This ain't another one o' those situations like we had on Higgin's moon, is it?"
"Nope," was the only word Jayne uttered when he stood suddenly and stalked out of the mess.
"What was that all about?" Mal asked curiously, hoping someone else had an answer for him. From the sea of blank faces looking back at him, it was a safe assumption no one did. Except for River.
River had a look close to shock on her face, and Mal took a minute to think how long it'd been there. She was in her normal seat next to Jayne's now-vacant one, but Mal honestly couldn't remember if he'd even looked at the girl during the course of the discussion.
"Albatross?" Mal asked her, in his captain-y voice. "You got something you want to tell me?"
"Nope," River echoed the mercenary, standing up abruptly and leaving the same way Jayne had.
"Anyone else find that a mite unusual?"