A Man Who Stands in the Rain Hoping to be Struck by Lightning
By Nefertiri's Handmaiden
Disclaimer: If I owned Firefly, it would still be on TV. But I don't, and we have all reaped the consequences.
Note: Jayne kept his distance from River. He didn't deserve her. He was nothing but a mean old merc who thought of rain on good days.
-serenity-
River is like a thunderstorm.
Jayne ain't one to wax all poetical-like. He's not one for words - don't use 'em much, and he's even more short with compliments. He ain't gonna go all sissified and speechify purdy for no woman - not even if she's a damn fine xìnggǎn feng le woman who's been in his bunk sexin' him up right and good near every night goin' on a year now. Not even if he's fixin' on findin' hisself an' her a preacherman next time they're dirtside. So he keeps his thoughts his own - though knowing her wupo-woman self, she prob'ly already knows everything he thinks about her. Maybe it's why she don't dump him like last week's trash.
She smells like rain. Kind of tastes like it, too.
-serenity-
His home - or his mother and father's home, if he's bein' more realistic 'bout it - is a dustbowl.
Most of the whole damn planet is, anyways, and Jayne's not from no fancified ocean-view mansion family. No, the homestead where he growed up is in the middle of a desert. It's a wide, flat crust of hard earth. The only thing that grows out there is cacti and a sharp desert grass with roots so deep that they reach right down into the earth so deep that they touch the deep-flowing water. It's a miracle, his pa always did say, conjuring images for Jayne of Earth-That-Was and prairies that stretched for miles and miles and miles. To survive in the desert, they harvested the cactus-grass as good as they could to feed to their few measly cows what kept them fed.
Then they mined good 'n' deep for the natural gas that flowed even further down than the water that fed the grass. The drills ran hot at near 600 degrees and it was Jayne's job to make 'em keep runnin' since he was old enough to pull the heavy, clanky levers that directed the machine's movement - and he'd been big enough by the time he was thirteen to run a drill all by his lonesome. By that time, he could also drop a calf, strip a shotgun, and hit a cactus-lizard at 20 yards with the pistol strapped to his thigh.
It was not an easy life.
It don't rain much out there. It's a desert, after all.
Sometimes, sweatin' and dry-mouthed from his work on the drills, Jayne would look out over the flat desert to where the New Rockies stood far on the horizon, powerful high. He'd see a flash of lightning over them once in a while and know that it was rainin' above them and down the other side, out toward the sea that was hundreds - thousands, maybe - of miles away. Once in a while, Jayne and his pa would sit on the porch and stare out at the mountains. Jayne would feel his feet itch as he sat there, watchin' that lightning flash and, if he stopped his breath for a moment, a faint, faint rumble of thunder that could almost have been mistaken for the blood rushing through his veins. Jayne's pa never felt no such thing.
It rains in the desert sometimes. 'Bout once a year - maybe a little less or more than that - the storm would get good and strong enough to push itself over the mountains and ride the hot desert wind in over the homestead. The sky would get dark in a hurry and they'd watch and listen as the lightning and thunder came closer and closer.
Then the sky would open up and it would rain.
God above, would it rain.
It would pour. Torrentially. The water would fall so hard that it stung his skin. Jayne and his brothers - he had five, though Lord knows that his pa couldn't really afford to feed so many - would run out of the house, hootin' an' hollerin' at the water. They'd whoop in delight. They'd roll in the mud and sling it at each other until they couldn't tell which brother was which but for height and voice. Then, when there were about finished, filthy, and their ma'd be shoutin' at them from the porch to get themselves in the house and get outta them wet clothes because they'd catch their deaths, Jayne would hang back a second. He'd tip his head back and let the water wash the mud from his face. He'd take a deep breath and smell how clean the rain made everything. He'd open his mouth and catch the water on his tongue. It was fresh and cold and wonderful. Then he'd turn to the house and trudge in behind his brothers, heavy boots thudding and leavin' a big mess for Ma to clean up.
The next day, the desert would bloom in bright red and purple and yellow and orange. It would smell fresh in the morning, but by noon, the heavy scent of the flowers would have faded and they'd be in the desert again.
-serenity-
River is like that rain. She's like that bloom afterward.
She smells fresh and clear; pure; clean. She's wild and unpredictable and a little painful. She's the heavy scent of the flowers that were so rare on the cacti. She's like the mud from head to toe and the mountains and the rain and the desert.
When he looks at her, his feet don't itch. His mouth ain't dry. He ain't sweatin'.
She's his new homestead.
-serenity-
The others don't get it - not that Jayne blames 'em. Hell, he don't really get it his own self. All he knows is that he looks at her and feels peace, and it's been a damn long time since he's felt that.
Maybe he never felt it before her.
-serenity-
Weren't always that way. Back when she an' her brother first come on the ship, Jayne really did think they was bad news. They got Kaylee shot, and Jayne likes Kaylee. Ain't nobody don't like Kaylee. So Jayne ranked them numbers Two and Three on the "They's Trouble" list, number One bein' the low-down Alliance lawman who'd put the bullet in Kaylee in the first place.
When the lawman was dead, River and the Doc got promoted to numbers One and Two. River was number One. Jayne didn't understand her, but he damn well knew there was somethin' off there. He didn't mind the crazy so much - he was prolly a little crazy his own self if'n he was bein' honest. But she was somethin' else crazy. Somethin' unnatural crazy.
Weren't 'til later, when the girl weren't so much a girl no more and was more a woman, that Jayne started to think maybe she was his kind of trouble.
-serenity-
A Hell of a woman, Jayne noticed as the blast door opened and, hot damn, she weren't dead.
Jayne hated Reavers. Feared 'em. And Jayne wasn't afeared of nothin'. Couldn't think of nothin' sexier than a woman who could kill that many.
-serenity-
He told her this once and it made her hum thoughtfully as she stroked careful hands across his broad shoulders and chest a million miles wide.
-serenity-
He watched her dance, one night, in the cargo bay. Jayne didn't care much for dancin' and he didn't know nothin' 'bout ballet, but he wasn't stupid enough to think that was she was doin' weren't beautiful. His forearms rested on the railing of the catwalk and he leaned heavily against it as he looked down on her, raised high on her toes, carefully calculating and executing each step and leg lift and twirl and bend of her back.
She were like one of them desert flowers, he thought. She bloomed rarely, but when she did, she was a sight to behold.
He never did tell her that, though it prolly woulda been nice for her to hear it.
-serenity-
Jayne's mother was... well, she was a Hell of a woman. She was warm and furious and loving and a demon and completely committed and a ranging bull and a gentle breeze. Jayne's father would have told you that she was a succubus, too, like from the stories of old, but Jayne never knew this.
Jayne figured, when he was old enough to think about it, that as the mother of six boys like Jayne and the wife of a man like Jayne's father, she needed to be all those things to keep them all in check. And keep them in check she did.
She was a little crazy, too. Prolly they all were because of the heat of the desert. And, prolly, like Jayne said, 'cuz she needed to be.
They all loved her - Jayne and his brothers and his father. They loved her and doted on her and gave her anything she wanted that they could get for her. On the morning after a rain, they'd gather the flowers off the cacti carefully and they'd all carry huge armfuls in to her. She'd squeal and carry on in delight, blessing them all with kisses on cheeks and pet names though she'd spent the night mopping muddy boot prints from the kitchen floor, and they'd help her decorate the whole house with flowers in red and purple and orange.
"My boys," she'd say as she'd watch them all gather 'round the radio at night or argue about guns or the drills or the when the storm would come in the spring or who could kick who's ass. Jayne always pretended not to notice the wetness in her eyes as she said it. When he'd gotten big enough, he'd pick her right up off her feet and spin her around until she laughed to stop her hurt, though he hadn't realized that it was a good kind of hurt at the time.
Jayne's father would kiss her lovingly, look at her proudly and then turn to his sons. "I picked me a right good one, boys," he'd boast. "Y'all 'member now that there's not nobody in the 'verse as wonderful as your ma."
To Jayne's father, Jayne's mother had been the rain.
-serenity-
Jayne saw lightning when she amazed them all with some new trick, heard thunder when she opened a can of whoop-ass on unsuspecting mooks in bars on dusty planets that were kinda like home.
Jayne knew you couldn't catch lightning in a bottle, no matter how hard you tried. You just saw it while it was there and knew it for what it was: powerful, beautiful, and deadly. And you stayed outta harm's way when it started rollin' through.
-serenity-
River approached him one night as he sat in the mess, sharpening knives with careful precision. She was barefoot as usual and moved with a swaying grace that was a mix of her own flow and Inara's careful instructions.
"Your mind is unusually quiet," she noted as she sat down on the other side of the table.
"Best keep outta there," he warned her, though he knew it was useless. Girl couldn't control it anyways, and she'd do whatever she pleased in any case.
True to form, she ignored him. "You think of a quiet night on a porch," she murmured. Then she smiled, radiant. "That is a lovely memory, Jayne."
He furrowed his brow, uncertain if he should say thanks or mind your own business.
She tilted her head at him, considering as she was wont to do. "Your mind is different."
"Than what?" he grunted, unable to help his curiosity.
"Different than the others' minds. Their thoughts are many. Plans and schemes and misconceptions and changing perceptions. You simply... are. Feel. Think. No swirling colors. One color at a time. Que sura, sura."
He stared at her. "Was a that a compliment or did you just call me simple?"
"Purple confusion. Both, Jayne. You are a simple man, and that is good. It has served you well," her voice drifted off, dreamy. "Yearn for little more than the sky and the heat and the rain." Her eyes snapped into focus. "You always belong."
He didn't know quite what she meant, but he got the distinct impression that she was trying to be nice. "Uh... thanks."
She smiled. "Much welcome," she said, and drifted off. Her footfall on the metal decking was like the distant roll of thunder.
-serenity-
Jayne's father had died when Jayne was 15, and Jayne was the oldest, and his youngest brother Matty was just 9.
It had been the consumption that had killed his father, and Jayne had realized too late what the problem was, but his father must have known, and must have realized that they didn't have the money to get the medicine he needed.
The light had gone out of his mother's eyes as Jayne and the next two-oldest boys - the 13-year-old twins Jessey and Sydney - had dug his father's grave beneath the blazing hot sun, shovels digging into the dry, cracked earth.
Jayne had wanted to pick her up and spin her around to make her laugh, but God, he hadn't been able to bring himself to do it.
Payton had made the wooden headstone and written his father's name on it carefully, since he had the best writing.
They all stood around the grave and stared down at the coffin Jayne had built himself while Quynn had sung because he had the best voice.
And then Jayne covered up that coffin all by his lonesome as his brothers helped his sobbing mother back into the house.
He'd stared up at the sky as night fell, the temperature dropping suddenly and severely, and couldn't believe that his father had left them.
-serenity-
Jayne and River made quite a pair when they went on a job. A scary, really bizarre pair.
Jayne would be there, armed to the teeth, bandoleers draped across his broad shoulders and long torso, pistols strapped to his thighs, his knife at the back of his belt, the butt of a shotgun rising up over his shoulder. And River in front of him, a single pistol in its holster, heavy, knee-high leather boots on her feet, a flowing green dress fluttering around her as she glided along. Jayne would stand two steps behind her, Vera in his hands, almost like he was her bodyguard.
They'd stare at the competition or the buyer or the seller, her eyes somehow clear and crazy, his sharp and dangerous, and damned if they weren't terrifying.
They started out just as a team, when Jayne decided that even though Lord knew she was right crazy, it weren't really her fault and she could also kick some ass, and he used her to make himself even more intimidatin'.
But, hell, they turned out to be a damned good team, which surprised Jayne as much as anyone else.
Hell if he didn't like having her around during a tussle.
-serenity-
Jayne's fists are like two sledge hammers in a fight. He's a big man made of muscle (good genes and hard work), and he knows how to fight. Sure, he's quick for a guy his size, too, but he relies on muscle and experience in a tussle, not speed. He knows how to crush the delicate bones of a nose, the thin jaw, to crack the occipital bone and if he's feeling particularly strong and lucky, snap it into shards that press back into the brain.
She's not the same when she fights. She's not brute strength, though she certainly has some power behind her fist. She wins through smarts: when to strike, how fast, who's the biggest threat, how many can I take at once, do I need a weapon. She hits sensitive pressure points that send men to their knees with a swift kick or fist to the neck, finds nerves that make eyes cross with pain, uses platters to bash in a man's head and lay him down for the count.
Mal once observed them in a fight together, working as a team, back to back, fists and legs flying. It was like watching a rock and a wave do battle, he said to Inara later as he considered the speed of the fight; the swiftness of the victory. When it was over, Jayne's knuckles were bloody and River stood in absolute stillness, her breath coming slowly and controlled. They were a mighty force to be reckoned with.
Force equals mass times acceleration. Jayne is mass. River is acceleration.
-serenity-
Then, somewhere along the line and in between the fights and crimes, they became friends.
They'd sit side-by-side in the common room, Jayne's knives and guns spread out all over the table, cleaning and sharpening and polishing. Jayne would be quiet, but River would hum a song to the metronome of Jayne's knife against the whetstone.
They'd spar, her moving a little slower than usual because they both knew that she could take him in a fight, and she'd demonstrate the same movement over and over and over again patiently until he could do it, too. Not that'd they'd ever fight the same, but River had a lot of things in her head to teach, and Jayne was willing to listen.
He'd spot her as she lifted weights, slowly toning her arms, her core. She'd hang from the catwalk by her knees, counting as he did his reps.
She'd sit on top of the cargo as he pushed it around the bay, singing a lullaby his mother used to sing, and he didn't even complain that she'd obviously pulled the tune from his head.
She'd dance ballet in the cargo bay while he sat on the stairs and played his guitar.
He'd pick her up and throw over her shoulder and spin around to make her scream with laughter when he noticed that heaviness, fogginess, craziness creeping back into her eyes.
She'd hide in strange places, jump out at him unexpectedly and clutch his back like a monkey and he'd roar with laughter at the surprise of her.
She'd sit in front of him on the floor when the crew gathered in the common area to watch a movie, and he'd carefully braid her long dark hair like he used to do for his flaxen-haired mother, long ago, when he'd been just a boy.
When he realized that they were friends, his exact reaction was, "Huh."
-serenity-
Matty had collapsed in a fit, wheezing, gasping for breath one day after the rain, his eyes wide and wild, panicked.
Then his breathing had turned shallow and he'd had a dangerously high fever and been half-unconscious.
Jayne had run to the barn and saddled up his brown stallion and pulled Matty up on the saddle with him and had taken off, and that horse had barely stopped for three days when Matty and Jayne finally made it to the nearest town - the nearest doctor.
By that time, Matty had been nearly dead and Jayne was almost there, too, having not slept in three days and eaten almost nothing in that time.
He'd handed his little brother down to the town's men who converged on the ragged pair, croaked at them to take him to Dr. Mike, and then he'd wobbled, and the world had spun around him, and the sun had glared into his sight and then disappeared as his eyes rolled back in his head, and then he'd fallen hard from the horse, landing in the dusty road with a heavy thud.
When he'd awoken on a cot in the doctor's office, he'd felt much better, if raucously hungry.
"Matty?" he'd asked Dr. Mike as the older man, his eyebrows thick and grey, approached.
The damp lung. It would probably never go away, the doctor said. It could be medicated, but the medicine was expensive, especially so far out on the rim.
Jayne thought of his father, and he thought of the mountains and the rumbling thunder and the itch in his feet.
And he had an idea.
-serenity-
Jayne supposed he shouldn't have been surprised that his feelings for her continued to change and grow.
But Lord above, he certainly was.
He found himself watching her always out of the corner of his eye, taking note of her long, graceful neck and wild dark hair. He found himself appreciating the slimness of her waist and the strength of her legs when they sparred.
He found himself smiling proudly when she put a drunk in a bar who was getting a little too fresh in his place or when she shooed off Simon's hovering with a glare.
He found himself thinking about her as he wandered marketplaces, taking note of dresses or fabrics or knives that she would like.
He found himself dreaming about her.
It took him a while to realize what all of that meant. And when he did: "Huh."
-serenity-
He kept up his distance after he started thinkin' 'bout her while he took care of himself.
'Cause she still weren't for him, even if'n she were a little less crazy now, a little less unnatural. Even if they were buddies, now. 'Cause she was the Cap's albatross, the Doc's mei mei, Inara and Kaylee's sweet little sister, now learning the ways of being a woman along with being the ways of a pilot.
He weren't nothin' but a mean old merc who thought of rain on good days.
-serenity-
Jayne's the thunder. He's the voice, the sound, the rumble that caused fear and the sound that shook the house.
River's the lightning. She's swift, brilliant, powerful and can't be harnessed.
Others watch the storm, but they don't understand how something so beautiful can be tied so irrevocably to something so blustery.
-serenity-
She came to him one evening as he sat at the table eating a late dinner. He'd missed the communal meal because he'd been stowing the last of the cargo after their latest hurried takeoff.
He was probably more surprised than anybody could have been when she plopped down in his lap in between him and his dinner, wrapped her arms around his neck, and kissed him on the lips.
For a second, he was too shocked to do anything but instinctively kiss her back. It was sloppy - it had been a long time since he'd kissed a woman on the mouth. But she was so small and disproportionately strong and she tasted so sweet and she fit him so good and she smelled like the rain.
Then he realized what was happening, and he jerked back so quickly and with such force that he very nearly knocked the chair back over on itself.
"What in the hell ya doing, girl?"
She gave him a look. "She thought that was rather obvious."
He scowled at her. "Gorramit, ya know what I'm sayin'."
She sighed. "She does. Are her advances unwanted? Are you displeased with her?"
"No! Yes! Gorram, girl, ya git me all turned around in my head. I mean, it ain't that simple and ya know it."
She lifted her head, composed and regal. "It is, in fact, quite that simple. If you do not want me, then I will not pursue. But if you do, I see no legitimate reason why we should not be together."
He stood up abruptly and she was jarred from his lap, but somehow she managed to land gracefully on her feet.
"You look at me and tell me if what ya see is something's right fer a woman like you. You know how many bad things I done? How many men I killed?"
She met his eyes, calm in the face of his anger.
"No one is perfect, Jayne. Least of all me. Did it ever cross your mind that perhaps we can be imperfect together?"
Jayne stared at her a minute. Then he stalked out of the room, leaving her alone.
That was what he was good at.
-serenity-
Jayne brought Matty back to the homestead once the attack passed. It had been nearly two weeks since he'd taken off for town on the stallion, his brother half-alive in front of him.
His ma ran from the house to meet them as they neared. "Matty," she shouted. "Jayne!"
Jayne dropped from the horse and aided his still-weak brother down. Then he turned to his ma. She rushed forward to wrap her arms around them both.
Jayne's hug back was half-desperate.
His ma looked at Matty, and then up into Jayne's face. Her face sobered at what she saw there.
Jayne packed his things. They weren't many - they fit in a single duffel that his mother said had once belonged to his father.
Jayne gave stern final orders to his brothers and clasped their wrists one by one. He looked down at the ground where their heavy work boots left prints in the dry, tan earth.
His mother hugged him goodbye, holding on for far too long.
"I'll send back everything I can for Matty's medicine."
She nodded up at him. "Jayne, you stay warm up there in the black."
He crooked a rare grin. "Ma, when I ain't been able to take care a' myself?"
-serenity-
Jayne could say that he'd done what he had to - and that was a truth.
But it would taste a lie to say leaving wasn't what he wanted. Jayne knew that was the bigger truth.
'Cause at the end of the day, Jayne had no problem takin' what wasn't his. He had no problem lyin' and drinkin' and fightin' and beddin' whores. He had no problem puttin' a bullet in another man.
He had no problem walkin' away.
-serenity-
Ain't far to run when you live on the same spaceship.
-serenity-
The next time she came to him, he was lifting. The weight was probably a little much, but he kept going despite the strain on his screaming muscles. Ease down. Push up. Ease down. Push up. He let the repetition fill his whole body until there was nothing else and he was sure every time he bent his elbows that he wouldn't be able to lift the bar off his chest.
Finally, he felt her eyes on him and set the bar on the rack. He sat up, muscles protesting. She sat on a crate across the room, watching him attentively.
"What d'ya want?"
She raised an imperious eyebrow. "What do you think she wants?"
"You ain't gonna start in on that 'imperfect together' nonsense again, are ya?"
"Why does the big man ask questions to which he already knows the answers?"
He stood in a huff and started jerking weights from the bar. When he turned around to stack them in their proper place, she was an inch away from him.
"Gorramit, woman!"
"What are you really afraid of, Jayne?"
"I ain't afraid of nothin'," he snarled.
"A lie. Is it loving a moonbrained girl, or is it something inside you?"
"I- I-" he paused. He set down the weights. "Thunder always follows lightnin', River. They ain't never together."
She tilted her head to the side and considered him. Then she nodded, seemingly satisfied. She stepped closer, pressing her lithe body against his huge one. "They are," she said matter-of-factly, "when they are in the same place. And as for the rest of the time…" She grinned suddenly. "I will slow down enough for you to catch me."
He stared at her a minute, thought about the look in her eyes and the smile on her lips. Then he started laughin', and he kissed her.
Weren't no tellin' lightnin' not to strike where it wanted, he figured.
-serenity-
Jayne gave Mal a gift. "This don't make a lick of sense," said Mal, taking the large stick that Jayne handed him. River's arms were wrapped around Jayne's torso, her head rested in his chest. She looked content in a way Mal hadn't seen in quite some time.
Jayne grinned, wild and crazy and dangerous as ever, but honest, now, too. "Now you got the dumb-ass stick sounds like it's rainin'. I got me a wife!"
-serenity-
Things changed again between them, and once again, Jayne was surprised by the ease of it.
She'd rest her head on his shoulder as they sat together in the back of the mule, speeding along across the latest backwoods rim planet, headed toward the next job.
He'd still watch her dance as he played his guitar in the cargo bay, but every once in a while, she'd dance toward him and drop a kiss on his jaw or neck or lips, and his playing stuttered and then picked up again as she danced away.
She'd sit cross-legged on his back as he did his push-ups and count for him, kiss the back of his neck when he was done, and then laugh as he dumped her off him and pulled her under him to kiss her enthusiastically.
He'd buy her that scrap of silk for a shawl or a pretty dress or a new, sharp knife, and present them to her gruffly and then smile at her delight.
She'd still sing him lullabies, but now she usually did it when they were alone together in their bunk and he couldn't sleep because he was too wired from a job.
He'd grab her around the waist and lift her off her feet when she started to panic and babble, and kiss her hard, and not stop kissing her until she relaxed into him and run her fingers through his hair and down his jaw and across his broad shoulders.
She'd rub his back and chest and shoulders and biceps when he was sore after a particularly hard fight, her smart fingers gentled with the aim of comfort rather than pain.
He'd throw her over his shoulder and take her to his bunk when he wanted her, and she would let her fingers slide under the back of his shirt and down the back of his pants as he hauled her away.
She'd stick close to him when they went out in public together, letting his hand rest on her waist or the small of her back or, when he was feeling particularly possessive, the curve of her ass, and she'd kiss him deeply on the mouth when other women noticed his big, strong frame.
He'd stare at her as she slept beside him and think about the rain and the thunder and the lightning, and he couldn't think of anywhere else he wanted to be.
~end~
And now, for a Chinese vocabulary lesson, courtesy of Google Translate:
xìnggǎn - sexy
wupo - witch
feng le - crazy