He purely hated to see them off to bed; there was never enough time to weary of their laughter, their climbing on him, their stories about all the new things he had missed. So Jayne moved from doorway to doorway like a ghost and watched them sleep.
Shy came for him after a while, and wrapped her arms around his waist. He laid an arm around her shoulders and drew her even closer and neither of them spoke for the longest time, watching their children sail the skies of whatever dreams piloted them through this cool autumn night.
Finally Jayne broke the quiet, "Jak's a head taller since spring. How'd that happen?"
"Fresh air and clean living, pirate." He heard the bantering smile in her voice without needing to turn and see it there on her face, "Besides. I hear his daddy wasn't exactly the runt of his litter." He heard it grow sober. "They sure do grow up fast."
He couldn't go there, couldn't contemplate all the irrevocable truth in that single statement. Jayne turned to face her, frowning, instead. "And I can't believe you bought my little girl a gorram pony."
Shy laughed, low and quiet. "I can't believe she named it Inara."
"Ta ma de. Is she still fetched with meeting Inara all that while ago?" Jayne shook his head. "I'd a thought her too young to even remember that."
"No, she's still enamored. Hell, pirate-the way she talks, you and I might have a daughter in a Training House before too long."
Jayne snorted. "Oh, hell no. Over my gorram stiff ice-cold dead bod-"
Shy cut him off with a kiss, which was just fine with Jayne until he opened his eyes again and saw tears caught in her eyelashes, gleaming like tiny stars.
"Don't you finish it," Shy whispered fiercely. "Don't you dare."
Instead of answering Jayne reached to draw the pins that held her hair coiled upon her head-that uncommon blood-colored hair falling unbound in smooth waves so long it hung almost to her knees. There were strands of silver among the red now, long glittering tracks of starlight. Jayne figured it likely a fair number had his name on them and the thought made an old familiar pain flare up in the space between his heartbeats. The strands matched the ones striping his beard, brightening his own hair and who'd've ever thought Ma Cobb's son Jayne might live long enough to see his very own grey? It surely surprised the hell out of him. Burying his hands in Shy's hair Jayne raised her face to his and kissed her.
And before Jayne knew how it had happened, they were in the hallway mouth to mouth, painted silver by the moon spilling in through the hall window.
At last Shy raised her head and smiled that way she had at him, "Hey, pirate-want to arm wrestle?"
"Race you," Jayne growled back.
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Of course Jayne won; they reached Shy's bedroom doorway at the same time, and Jayne was just that much harder to shove out of the way. But by the time they fell into bed they were both giggling like idiots too hard for it to matter much.
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"Holy bleeding Jesu," Shy breathed, her eyes wide and dark, examining Jayne's newest scar—running like pale rope down the left side of his chest-in the moonlight pouring through the front window of her bedroom, touching the edges with light fingertips as though she might make it bleed again after all this time if she was careless.
He supposed it was a pretty good one as far as scars go. It remodeled the look of him there, that's for sure, making the one left by River's Tam's butcher's knife all those years ago look like nothing at all.
When she prodded him gently, Jayne obliged, rolling up onto his right shoulder so Shy could look at his back and trace the skin there with those light fingers moving slowly around, around. He knew what she was looking for even before she wondered aloud, "Where did it come out?"
Jayne relaxed onto his back again, put his arm around her. "Same place it went in, more or less. Doc had to fish for it a while."
"How'd your lung fare?" Shy raised her head the better to look at the scar.
He shrugged. "Didn't get blown out a hole in my back. Good enough for me."
"And your heart..." It wasn't a question and the quiet way she said didn't seem to be looking for an answer, but Jayne gave her one anyway.
"Doc said lucky it's such a small target. The hwundan." He rolled back onto his back and yawned.
He could've told her more. He could have told her about how that shot should have killed him, to rights; how the slug shattered parts of three different ribs as it bounced back and forth cutting through his ruined lung but somehow missed turning his heart into hash. He could've told her how it still hurt like a bitch on that side to breathe when he moved too far too fast or when the air got damp and cold, and always would.
And he could've told her what he hadn't told anyone: how many times Jayne saw both Wash and Shepherd Book clear as daytime standing beside his infirmary bed looking down on him, no matter how dead they were.
He could have told Shy a whole lot of things. But in the end keeping his mouth shut about that seemed the best course for a while yet.
She raised her head higher to look him in the eye. By the set of her jaw, the narrowing of her eyes Jayne could tell she didn't buy the matter so easily passed off, not for a moment. Hell, she never did and never had; truth told, he'd come to count on it. But in the end she just nodded to herself and laid her head down on his shoulder. "Gotta take better care of yourself, pirate," she said softly.
And because it was about as truthful a statement as any, and no easy answer to it, they both lie there in silence a while.
Then Jayne noticed something and lifted his head. "That a new one?" When she looked at him questioningly, he nodded at the arm she'd thrown over him. Shy grinned.
"You noticed. Thought maybe you'd miss it this time." She turned her arm over so he could see it better in the diffuse moonlight, a small image of a small brown bird with blushing cheeks laid into her skin with colored inks and fitted tightly between the others already patterned there. "It's a shy wren.'"
It made him smile. "Shy Ren-that's your name. That's some mighty cunning work." Jayne ran his fingers over it, felt the raised black outlines around the color. "What's the occasion?" It was like a treasure hunt, really, scanning her body for a picture he didn't recognize, and he still looked forward to the challenge.
"Wasn't one, unless you count a new ink shop opening up in town. Thought I'd give 'em some business is all." She kissed his chest. "Besides—didn't want to disappoint you."
In the silver light, wearing her long hair around her naked self like a shining cloak of her spendiest dress-cloth, Shy was about the prettiest, welcomest thing he'd ever laid eyes on, and he craved her skin against his own like a junk-head craves drops. "Aw, now, disappoint me?" He said, low and rough in his throat, "You know that ain't likely."
And then they were kissing again, quicksilver, fluid, molten.