Jayne walked down Serenity's cargo hold ramp, pulling his hat up from his back where he had slung it around his neck and fixing it on his head. He walked over to where Reynolds and the first mate were standing next to his stuff. It was placed neatly on the ground, neater than he had left it, actually.
Looked like the captain had finished his inspection and put everything back into the duffel, going so far as to lay his smaller guns and unsheathed knives along the top of the bag so they wouldn't pick up any moisture from the ground. Right thoughtful, that.
Jayne bent over to start re-concealing the knives on his person when the captain stopped him with a light hand on the arm.
"You won't be needin' those just yet, I'm thinkin'," he said, a neutral look on his face.
"Why not? Ain't we goin' on a kinda job? Might need 'em." Jayne was puzzled. This didn't make no sense at all.
"Well, see, that's the thing," Reynolds replied, warming up to his explanation. "You're on probation."
"Probation? What's that?" Jayne asked, his brow furrowing now.
"It means for the first little while you do everything I say when I say it and don't give us any trouble until we see what you can do for us and whether you get to stay on my crew. And right now, we just need you for liftin'."
The captain turned away towards the old beat-up ground mule and flatbed trailer that somebody had brought out while Jayne had been inside the ship, leaving Zoë standing there giving the big man a doubtful look.
Jayne stood with his arms hanging limply at his sides thinking this development through. Zoë, watching his face contort in concentration as though the process of working out what the captain had said was somehow painful, rolled her eyes and turned away to go to the mule when Jayne opened his mouth again and asked, "This probation here, until you make up your mind, do I still get ta eat?"
Over her shoulder, using the kind of voice that someone might when explaining something to a particularly slow three-year-old, Zoë called out, "Yes, Jayne, you still get to eat."
Just then, a man he hadn't met yet came out of the Firefly and walked towards the mule, looking Jayne over with open curiosity in a not-unfriendly way. Can't be the pilot, Jayne thought, too scrawny.
He was taken aback, however, when the man approached Zoë, slipped an arm around her waist from behind and kissed her soundly when she whirled around at his touch. Jayne figured he was even more surprised that she had a look of unfettered sensual delight on her face that made him feel a bit like he was intruding on a very private moment. And also made his pants suddenly feel about a size too small.
Jayne looked at the ground until they had finished, raising his eyes when the pair approached and Zoë started the introductions.
"Husband," she said in a very proprietary way, "this is our new crewman, Jayne Cobb. Jayne, this is our pilot, Hoban Washburne."
As the two men shook hands, Jayne revised his estimation a bit. The pilot was a little on the small side and nowhere near intimidating, not in those stupid-looking clothes, anyway, but he had a firm grip and he looked Jayne straight in the eye, saying, "People usually call me Wash. Welcome aboard, Jayne."
He wasn't really that interested in Jayne, though. He turned right back to his wife, eager to embrace her again, and whispered into her ear. Jayne could just catch that he was telling her to be careful and come back safely and so on. Must be newlyweds, Jayne thought. Elsewise why would any self-respecting man act like that towards his woman? Oh, well, takes all kinds to make a 'verse.
When the two lovebirds had finished their little tête-à-tête, the captain instructed Jayne to get into the front passenger seat of the mule, "So's we can keep an eye on you," he said, with Zoë sitting in the back to cover him, if necessary, and providing the usual tail guard. Reynolds was going to drive.
They got underway and, after about fifteen minutes, veered off into a trail that would have been impossible to see if you didn't know what to look for. They came upon a small clearing where Jayne could make out a bit of a disturbance in the landscape which, again, if he hadn't been looking for it he probably would have missed it.
They got out of the mule and uncovered the goods, and the captain and Zoë stood to one side while Jayne hauled several small crates onto the mule's trailer. Seemed they really were going to make him work for his room and board after all.
Just as Jayne was putting the last crate onto the pile and securing it in place, he heard a faint rustle in the underbrush. He glanced around and noticed that Zoë and the captain were quietly conversing and hadn't picked up that anything was wrong. Casually turning and stooping to grab a large rock, which he then concealed behind himself, Jayne sauntered around the back of the mule and over in the direction of the noise to find his old bunkmate, name of Mackie, crouched down training a rifle on the pair of unsuspecting smugglers.
The ugly little man put a finger to his lips and whispered, "Cobb, help me out and we'll split it. Marco don't know I'm here."
Jayne nodded his assent and came closer, but as Mackie turned and raised himself up to begin his assault, Jayne produced the rock from behind his back and brought it down hard on the man's head, knocking him out cold.
When Reynolds and Zoë had rushed over to see what was happening, Jayne tossed the rock to one side, blood and bits of hair sticking to it, and commented to nobody in particular, "He never were too smart, that one. Ready to go?" then turned and headed towards the mule, leaving the captain and Zoë to gape at each other, completely dumbfounded.
Back at the ship, after Jayne had moved the crates off of the mule and stowed them in the corner the way the captain told him to, he turned to face his new boss and waited to see what was going to happen next.
Hitching his thumbs into his suspenders, the captain gave Jayne a different kind of appraising look this time and said, "You did a good job back there. I believe you just cut a few days off o' your probation," and he actually smiled, causing Jayne to look down at the decking, confused by the unaccustomed praise.
Turning to leave the cargo bay, the captain took a few steps, paused, and turned back towards his newest crew member.
"Oh, and, by the way, I'm still the captain, but if you like, you can call me Mal," and he spun around and continued on his way, leaving Jayne standing in the cargo bay trying to cope with what was for him a completely new kind of strange behavior: an offer of friendship.