With the unerring instincts of a tracker, Jayne made his way from the cargo bay to his new cabin. It really wasn't too hard. He just followed the smell of spices and baking bread until he got to the mess. That little girl Kaylee must have spent the whole afternoon cooking for their supper. As he negotiated Serenity's staircases and catwalks and gangways, Jayne figured that he should find some way to exercise if he was going to be eating regular. Wouldn't do to get all fat and contented.

When he got to the galley, he was met by the sight of Kaylee, a light dusting of flour clinging to some engine grease smears on her face, humming happily as she plucked pieces of fresh xiăoyuán miànbāo from a tray and arranged them in a large wicker basket.

"Oh, hey, Jayne! How did the crime go?" she called out from behind the counter.

"Okay," he grunted in return, continuing on his way.

Out of the corner of his eye, Jayne thought he saw Kaylee's face drop when he didn't pause to chat, and that was fine by him. A man should always reel the good ones in slow, boy, his pa used to tell him, and that goes fer fish too, he'd add, reaching down to ruffle Jayne's hair.

Jayne smiled at the memory and his pa's good advice and opened up the hatch to his cabin, dropping quickly down the ladder and throwing the light switch. Just after his boots hit the metal sheeting, he felt the Firefly shudder and lift off. He looked warily in the direction of the cockpit and paused for a couple of minutes, listening for any sounds that maybe shouldn't be there.

It was a smooth takeoff and acceleration. The vessel didn't even shake much after she left the ground, and when they broke the pull of gravity and got into space, the small noises of their atmospheric ascent disappeared entirely leaving only the faint sound of the churning engine. That was some nice flyin', he thought with a smile.

Jayne picked up his duffel bag and backpack from the floor and laid them down on the bed. Must have been the pilot, Wash, who had brought them up, along with all his weapons. They had been carefully placed on the bunk, which looked like it had clean sheets and a warm blanket on it, and Jayne smiled to think he had landed in the middle of a crew that knew the value of good hardware.

Day just keeps gettin' better an' better, he thought happily as he spilled the contents of his bags onto the bed and started stowing his stuff away in drawers and cabinets. There wasn't much in the way of personal belongings, though, which served to underline for Jayne just how badly he had been doing with Marco.

For some reason, while he was putting his clothes away, he noticed as if for the first time that everything had holes, and some of his shirts, even though he had washed them recently and hadn't worn them yet, looked like they were filthy. Jayne didn't mind a bit of dirt, but in Marco's gang, he was considered a mite fussy. They had called him "sir" to rib him sometimes because he actually did wash his clothes when he got the chance and he liked to keep his hair and beard trimmed and made a point of taking a real bath in a tub of hot water at least twice a month. With soap.

Jayne had put on his newest tee shirt and changed his underwear and found the pants with the fewest holes before he had finished packing up that morning, so he really had nothing to be ashamed about, but with the generous share that Mal had promised him from this haul, he should be able to buy a couple of new things when they were planetside and he'd start tossing the worst of his old clothes as he got replacements.

Finishing up his domestic arrangements to his satisfaction, Jayne climbed the ladder again, and when he got back to the mess, Kaylee was gone but Mal was sitting at the table, a mug of steaming coffee in front of him. He looked up when Jayne came down the staircase.

"Coffee?" the captain asked, eyebrows raised.

"Don't mind if I do," Jayne replied, and when Mal got up to get a mug and poured from the percolator on the stove, bringing it back to set on the table, Jayne sat in the chair opposite and took a sip.

"That there's real good coffee," Jayne observed, smacking his lips.

"It's good real coffee," Mal told him, a note of pride in his voice. "We get it as often as we can. It's my view that a good brew runs a ship better than a good engine."

"Don't let Miss Kaylee hear you say that," Jayne chuckled, and he drank again, noticing Mal's amusement over the rim of his cup.

The captain's face took on a faraway look for a moment, then he shifted in his seat to square his body to the table and leaned his forearms on the surface, lacing his fingers together. The atmosphere in the room had suddenly become a little more serious, and when Mal was sure he had Jayne's undivided attention, he spoke.

"I bet you're wonderin' why I didn't let you have your guns and such today."

"It crossed my mind," Jayne said, cautiously.

"Well," Mal said, leaning back and tipping onto the hind legs of his chair a bit as he folded his arms over his chest, "it's because I figured your old gang might try to come and get the loot, and I didn't want to give you the wherewithal to be turnin' on me."

"Oh, hey, Mal," Jayne protested.

"No, no, it's okay," the captain said. "You was real smart, knockin' him out like that. He musta found out where the stuff was and got there before us, though. I admit, I'm more than a little embarrassed that me and Zoë didn't spot him first."

"Weren't hard," Jayne said. "He were makin' enough noise to rouse the dead."

"Anyways, thanks, I'm grateful. And you take your guns and stuff along from now on. It'll feel real secure knowin' I have you and Zoë watchin' my back."

It was a good thing that the captain didn't expect an answer because, at that moment, Jayne was speechless. To cover his awkwardness, he took too large a mouthful of the hot coffee and puffed out his cheeks as it burned his tongue and the insides of his mouth while he waited for it to cool a bit before swallowing. He could feel his face turning red, but whether it was from the coffee or from the heat that had suddenly raced up his neck, he couldn't tell.

Nobody besides his ma had ever given Jayne credit for anything other than his physical size. One look at him and folk automatically assumed that he was just a big, stupid ape. Now, Jayne was the first to admit that he had never had an overabundance of schooling, but there were different kinds of schools in the 'verse, and his was out in the woods or on the plains or even in a whorehouse or a smoky bar on a rim world. He pretty much had a doctorate in survival. All he lacked was a diploma for it.

So Jayne wasn't used to hearing the words "thank you" or having the boss of a gang admit that he had messed up and Jayne had saved his bacon by being smart, no less. And that on the first day, too! Jayne might have thought Mal was a bit of a pansy if he hadn't recognized the steel in his eye and seen the way his crew looked to him. And here the man was saying thank you to Jayne Cobb and trusting him almost right off.

And the surprises weren't over yet. Zoë came into the room and nodded briefly at the men before going to get herself a cup of coffee. She sat down beside Mal, all serious-like again.

Mal turned his head in her direction and said, "Jayne goes armed."

Zoë merely nodded once more, accepting the captain's directive.

"So when we get to Laredo to drop off the goods, I thought we should have some kind of plan in place, because the contact seemed a mite on the slippery side to me and I want this to go smooth."

Then he looked Jayne straight in the eye and asked, "Do you have any suggestions?"

xiăoyuán miànbāo - breadroll