Intimate with the Black
By Jessie
Summary: Jayne has a bit of trouble sleeping. The bit of trouble being River. Jayne/River. Sorta. POST SERENITY.
Spoilers. The movie and the series. You have been warned.
Pairing: Jayne/River.
Rating: PG-13 (for no good reason though)
Disclaimer: Not mine. Really.
Author's Note: I'm not promising anything special, seeing as I wrote this in about 15 minutes. But I hope you enjoy it. And feedback would be awesome. If you want to archive this, please just ask first.
Also, it was inspired by the first part of literarylemming's story "Problem Solving" so I hope she doesn't mind and takes it as the flattery it totally is. I'm betting she will, seeing as she's cool like that (and also has a mysterious talent for always popping up in the fandoms and with the pairings that I've gotten into myself. I'm half convinced she's stalking me and wouldn't that just be the coolest thing ever?)
Another note: I wanted to take a look at the possible relationship between crewmen (these two crewmen specifically) as more like family then I've seen in a lot of other fanfic. They've all been to hell and back together several times over, so it seems to me that no matter their differences, reservations or grudges, they might as well be blood. Ya know? The whole lot of them. And that's my take in this story. Hope it works.
The first time he'd woken up to find her in his bed, he'd yelled. Which had started her yelling, which had made him grab a gun from the wall behind him- because that was his first reaction to loud noises- which had sent her into weapon mode, and she jumped into a crouch on all fours and spiraled one leg out to kick the gun away.
This having all happened within about fifteen seconds, there was scarce room for contemplation or "what the gorram hell's?"
At losing his weapon and still being half asleep, his body acted before his brain could be bothered, and he reached out for another weapon with one hand and to clock the girl with the other. She was too fast for that of course, and so both of his hands were suddenly occupied with just trying to keep her from clocking him.
He grabbed both her wrists in one of his hands and she kicked his gut swiftly making him groan, but also making him snap out of his sleepiness and give her a good shake. "Would you quit it?" He said, annoyed.
At the sound of his voice she did.
Jayne and River sat there, in Jayne's bed, for a very long moment looking at each other and trying to get their bearings. Her wrists were still in his very firm grip. His first gun was still several feet away.
He was about to ask the obvious question, but then saw the dark look on her face and just sighed. "Shoulda kept you locked up." He grumbled, throwing her wrists away and grabbing for his t-shirt.
River shrugged and settled herself back down in a comfortable sitting position. "Just what father used to say."
Jayne smirked. The girl had a sense of humor, and it was coming out more and more of late.
Slightly more dressed, Jayne threw himself back down on the bed, making sure to face away from her and toward the wall, and closed his eyes. This wasn't normal, her showing up in his bed like this, but it wasn't abnormal either when you considered her existence on this boat so far. And the whole lot of them, Jayne included, had learned in the past year that the only way of dealing with this crazy girl was to take the crazy in stride, usually just ignoring it. Made for a sight fewer fistfights, yelling matches and knife wounds. "I don't wanna know what's brought you down here, I just wanna know when you're gone."
He couldn't see it, but River rolled her eyes. After a moment she lay down beside him.
"Girl." He said warning.
"Boy." She said, mocking.
"I don't particularly fancy gettin' intimate with the black just 'cause you've got a bout of nightmares and a crush." He mumbled.
Again he couldn't see it, but again she rolled her eyes.
"No crush. No nightmares. Just…" She tilted her head, figuring out her own words for a moment. She'd been sounding a bit more lucid in the past few days, but sometimes it took her a moment. "Just already intimate with the black. Miss being on a ship."
Jayne grunted but didn't open his eyes and didn't roll over. It was a small bunk and he could feel her body heat on his back. He didn't want to be feeling nothing else. "You are on a ship." He argued, already falling back to sleep, too tired and honestly not caring enough to deal with this right now in the very middle of the night.
"Yes." She agreed, congenially. "But miss feeling it."
And then he was snoring so there wasn't no need to argue her point further. She closed her own eyes and went back to sleep.
The next time he woke up to find her, he sat up so quickly and so startled that he knocked his head on the low ceiling above his bunk. He groaned. Shook off the momentary pain. Looked at her sitting up exactly as straight as he was, almost like she was making fun of him.
"You makin' fun of me?"
She shook her head.
"It looks to me like you are. It looks to me like you find the whole god damned idea of my balls in a jar on your brother's shelf funny. That's what it looks like to me."
"They say about looks." She replied. "You know. Deceiving."
When he spoke next he used his authoritative voice, making it clear that this argument was over and she should be heading for the door. "Ain't no 'they' on this ship, girl."
But she never was one for listening to his authoritative voice. They stared each other down for a very long time, each giving as good as they got. Until finally:
"If I set you outside, you'll just break your way back in, won't ya?" He didn't back down from the stare as he asked it.
She smirked a little, not backing down either. "Probably." She said.
Another few seconds passed, each of them proving to the other that they meant business and their business was usually violence, and then Jayne looked away. Fell back down on the bed and pulled the blanket up.
"Then I best not hear 'bout this in the mornin'." He grunted.
River lay back down as well. Jayne rolled over so he was facing the wall. "I..." She began.
But he cut her off quickly with a grunt. "Sleep."
"But I-"
"Sleep. I don't wanna know."
She sighed, nodded her head once as if agreeing to this, and closed her eyes.
She didn't try to talk about anything that meant anything for the next two nights. And like the two before, these next two nights were also spent slipping into his bunk, waking him up with a start some time in the wee hours when her body heat finally registered and made him jolt into a well-rehearsed grab for a gun.
On the third night, Jayne, for the first time, didn't wake with a start, but instead did it slowly and lazily, and when he was finally conscious he just opened his eyes and turned his head far enough over so's he could see her lying there beside him, eyes open. She always woke up when he did. Or else she was just always awake, but he'd bank on the former.
He looked at her for a moment, swallowing back the taste of sleep. "What you doin' here anyways, girl?"
She looked back at him for an equal amount of time, then pursed her lips, scrunched her features up as if she was thinking real hard on something, then said: "Not many of us left, are there?"
Jayne knew what she meant almost immediately, even though she was being a might vague and he suspected a might crazy. "No. There's not."
"I can tell without even opening my eyes. I can tell there's not enough of us. Won't ever be enough of us ever again."
Jayne furrowed his brow. "You shouldn't talk like that. It ain't the case; just feels like it. And that's normal."
She gave him a small smile. "An excellent show from an excellent player."
"I ain't playin'."
"But you don't mean it."
He was silent. This conversation wasn't any kind of conversation that he wanted or knew how to have, so she'd just have to settle for his silences occasionally as substitutes for prettier words.
That silence carried on for a while, long enough for Jayne to start feeling a might uncomfortable, until finally River closed her eyes and settled herself to going back to sleep.
"Now wait a gorram minute. That wasn't no answer."
But she ignored him and instead scooted closer to him and buried her head in the corner where his shoulder met the mattress.
Jayne tensed. His other hand went instinctually up to the wall, as situations that made him tense were almost always situations that required firearms. He had to consciously pull his hand back down to his side, unarmed, and sigh at the inconvenience of it all.
A very large part of him wanted to shove her out of the bed and onto the floor so he could relax and get a decent night's rest for the first time in awhile. But an equally large part of him knew she'd have him pinned and wishing he'd never been born before she reached that floor. So it was survival, really, that let her stay where she was.
The sixth night that he woke to find her in his bed, he didn't wake. That is, the night went the same as every other night she found her way into his bunk for reasons still mysterious to him and thankfully even more mysterious to the rest of the crew, but he didn't wake until morning. A first.
When morning did come, he groaned and stretched as he always did, only as he was doing so he was also noticing a small head on his arm as it was stretching, and a small body pressed into the tight fit between his own body and the sheet beneath it. And then it was all he could do to keep his head from hurting as he contemplated why the hell the girl hadn't woken him up in the middle of the night this time, and then that he didn't care to know what the answer was. Just as he didn't care to know what the answer was to the question of why she showed up in the first place.
He nudged her roughly. Rough enough so's when she woke she woke with a start and in near-battle mode. Somewhere in the back of his skull he realized that it was the first time she hadn't woken as soon as he had.
"Time to get out and be quiet about it." He growled.
She didn't say anything, but nodded and climbed the ladder up and out.
So there were a stack of obvious questions at this point, all with answers he didn't care to learn. But, all the same, the next night she snuck into his cabin it was to find him waiting up for her, idly reassembling a gun that should have been an antique for all its dirt and grime and use.
"Took you long enough." He said.
River smirked, because she knew it was a practiced line. "I only took what I needed."
He shook his head at her nonsense, then tossed aside the gun pieces, put a hand on each of his legs, and took a deep breath. Looked at her seriously. This was also practiced.
"I ain't good at this." He said.
She nodded. "I know."
"And I don't know why it is I think you don't already know exactly what words I'm about to say 'fore I say 'em."
"It's different when you say them yourself."
"And I won't even pretend to know what the hell that means." He took in another breath. Yes, he was big and bad and tough, and yes he was all of those things right now too, in this room, facing her and talking seriously. But he wasn't... adult. And trying to be adult right now was just about killing those things that he was.
"Why are you doin' this, girl? You said it wasn't nightmares, and I ain't so dumb as to think you're lyin' when it's obvious you ain't. And you ain't exactly tried nothin' funny- and neither have I for the record if'n any one ever finds out about this and asks- so I'm pretty sure it ain't no crush. So here I am sittin' here a might more puzzled than I like to be about things take place in my own bunk. Things that take place in my bunk are generally of the not-so-puzzlin' nature, you get me?" She nodded. It was the longest speech he'd made in a good while, and the thought tired him. "So out with it. It's late and I'm just this side of through with you."
River studied him a second. Then tilted her head to the side as if to see him in a different way and make things more clear for the both of them. Then frowned. "You forgot part of it."
"That part goes without sayin'."
She gave him a look.
"Fine. I don't like your answer and I run to Mal. Airlocks be damned, it's a small risk to take if it'll get you outa my hair."
Her frowned deepened. "I don't like threats."
"And I don't like nothin' 'bout this, so hurry up so's I can get some shut eye already."
River sighed heavily, then came over to the bed and sat down beside him. Looked down at her hands in her lap.
"No one else would put up with me."
She said it with so much certainty that it almost sounded like she was reading the label off a can of food stuffs. Like it was just a fact and there it was, not to be disputed.
"Well I ain't gonna argue with that." He said. She knew he wouldn't. "But I don't see how it is I put up with you any better. If I could be rid of you I would."
"No you wouldn't." She turned her head and looked up at him, large eyes suddenly narrowed in seriousness. "Because you notice it too. That we're too few now. The others get by and they think that because they're here then that must be enough. They think they're enough. You know better."
"You're gonna have to start makin' a sight more sense, girl, if'n you don't want the Cap'n in on this."
She gave him a look like he was being an idiot and he glared at her because she might be a genius but she was still soft in the head and he didn't need no person with damaged goods insultin' what was between his own ears.
"I just don't like being as alone as I feel."
Her words caught him off guard, they sounded so sane. She furrowed her brow thinking of her next ones as he stared at her wondering over the ones already in the air. It was the most sense he'd heard her make, well, ever, and he wasn't sure he much liked it.
"Before… There were enough of us." She continued. "I think that's what it was. Before, there were enough of us to make the alone parts feel less alone. But not anymore."
She stared up at him for a good long while as he stared back, trying to make himself smarter for the moment then he knew he probably was.
"And no one else would put up with me." She added.
"Well there's at least one thing that I can still agree with."
She gave him a look. He just shoved her a little playfully, shaking his head. Sighed. Not knowing what else to do now that he had an answer, he finally just kicked off his boots and lay down on the bunk, on his back, and stared up at the ceiling.
River lay herself down beside him, also on her back, though she kept glancing over at him, apparently not as content to just watch the metal above them as he was.
"You give me a sight more grief then I usually care to let come from one person." He said.
"And you're an idiot."
He gave her a quick, warning glare, then returned his gaze to overhead. "Yeah. Well. I reckon that fact'll be even more obvious come the day any one finds out you're down here."
There was quiet for a few moments. Jayne liked the quiet parts. Almost as good as the explosion parts of the day.
"And anyways." He finally went on. "I'm 'the idiot' who puts up with you. So don't push it, girl."
River smirked a little, and also smiled a little. She scooted closer to him, pressed her arms up into his side, between his ribcage and her chest, and nestled her face into the warm crook of his arm. His muscles still flexed and stiffened at this. He glanced down at the top of her head and thought he'd never get used to her enough not to tense. Like having a gorram cat. And the last cat he remembered seeing had been a meal during one of his less prosperous spells.
His eyes turned back upward and he grunted his disapproval at the whole situation. Even as his thoughts turned to how exactly he'd be waking up come the next night. And to how many parts of him were now agreeing with the girl in his side (thorn in his side was more like it) more than he wanted to admit.
He did feel it, sorta. They were too few right now. They'd been smaller in number at times, yes, but this was different. This was them not having the types of people they needed. This was them having holes in place of people. In place of a pilot, in place of a shepard, in place of a first mate even. Holes. And whether a body noticed it or not, holes tended to draw things in. Tended to attract black.
They were all gettin' intimate with the black now, weren't they?
River shifted a little against him, distracting Jayne from his thoughts. Which was good. He was in want of a distraction from them, and had been for a little while now.
He let his arm wander closer to River's other side and hold her against him, no closer then she already was which was a lot closer then he should've allowed, but steady and in place and like she couldn't get away now, even if he knew that she could.
But knowing and feeling were different enough. Hadn't the genius just said so? She knew she was alone, but she didn't feel that way down here in his bunk.
Well he knew she could knock him out cold and take over the ship before he had time to reach for the gun not two inches from his head. He knew that she could slip out of his grasp and out of his bunk as easily as she wanted and not even wake him up in the process. But he felt like he had a hold of her.
He felt like he might actually have a hold of a distraction from the black.
End.