AN: This part is rated M for sexual imagery toward the end.
Part Two
The flustered look on his face was so un-Jayne, and that was reflected in his mind. The pages - big, bold, messy ink- were slowly flipping as she poked and prodded.
As long as she kept him busy, and he kept her mind busy, she wouldn't need to go back there, to that place.
-
"And?"
Jayne's grin faltered.
"Uh?"
"You have a shipload of reasons why you'd never sex me." Her voice was calm, even, curious. "Go down the list."
He paused, frowning, actually trying to dig up one of the reasons he knew he had, and she smiled.
"Jayne's brain isn't as organized as his gun rack," she remarked, and he grunted.
"Okay, fine, crazy, I'll start off with the obvious one." He grinned and pointed at her, as if he'd already won. "I don't like you."
There was a long moment of silence, before River laid back in her chair, rolling her eyes and sighing.
"Givin' up already?" he asked, and she turned her head back toward him, narrowing her eyes. The girl stood up, pursing her lips, and then shook her head.
"Best hand you've got, fold," she mused, and started walking around him. Jayne turned slowly, not liking the idea of her circlin' him. Reminded him of stories of huntin' cats and the like. And the way those legs of hers moved she did seem like a cat . . . .
"Shooting down your own point before I even start," she added. "Better aim with your gun than your brain."
"What are you talkin' at?" Jayne asked as she came back around in front of him.
"Jayne already likes me," she replied, stopping before him, and then took a step closer. Her hand rose up and touched his chin, and her eyes probed his features as her fingers brushed his beard again. "Already said so before he even started playing the game." He was about to protest when her eyes suddenly focused, brown orbs boring into his own face for a single intense second.
-
She saw Dobson. She smiled, holding the knife in her hand, imagined how best to cut his face up to pay him back for what he did to Kaylee. She remembered the form crawling out of the box, the girl, naked and screaming and wide-eyed with terror.
-
"Its a girl," she said, her voice distant, but the gentle, soft words were tinged with a bit of an imitation of his own gruff accent. "She's cute, too. Don't think she's all there, though. 'Course, not all of her has to be." Her eyes shifted, and she gave him a knowing look, even as Jayne took a step back, mouth working in surprise and confusion.
He remembered them words plain as day.
"Girl, you are gettin' more and more creepifyin' by the second," Jayne finally said. "How didja-"
"Looked for thoughts tied to his pecker," she replied, and walked back toward the chair. "Little threads in the brain, leading wandering eyes through glass houses." Her words sent a shiver up his spine. Girl was a gorram twig compared to him and had somehow taken complete control of this in a few sentences.
"Okay, okay, fine," he said. "I'll admit it, you got a nice ass. Little small in the frontal department, skinny as you are, though." His hand waved in front of his chest, indicating what he meant.
"Better reason?" she asked, cocking her head to the side. He paused, thinking, and looked back to her.
"Quit lookin' in my head, ain't makin' this fair." She murmured something indignant, and looked away, crossing her arms over her chest.
Jayne took a good long minute to think about all the reasons why it didn't work, and it couldn't work, and finally, he scratched his chin, straightened his shoulders, and stared right at her. When River's eyes drifted back toward him, he frowned.
"Ariel."
-
She remembered. She knew, even before her brother had. Suspected it even before Jayne had. She'd tasted his greed, rotten and rancid, hanging about him like stale milk.
But one page wasn't a whole book.
-
Once again, there was silence, though now it was heavy.
"Probably figured it out already," he muttered. "Know your brother has, and hell, you said you'd kill me with your brain about it, but gotta take that into consideration." He paused. "I sold you out, girl. Gave you to the feds for nothin' but cash."
She stared at him, her expression betraying nothing, blank eyes waiting for him to continue, and somehow that was aggravating him more.
"Come on, stupid little genius moon-brained . . . ." he said, waving his hands in the air as he paced around. He stopped, looking at her, and shook his head. "I betrayed you! I turned you over to the feds! Treachery, treason, backstabbing. Got a million words for it, an' all of 'em's true for what I did!"
She kept staring, waiting for something, and he sat down in a chair, growling.
"Don't that mean nothin' to you?" he asked, and her mouth slowly closed. Once again, she stood, crossing the little room and standing over him. Her movements were different from before. There was no grace here - beyond her usual surety of footing. Instead, it was hesitant, observant, her head shifting back and forth as if looking at Jayne from multiple angles.
She leaned over as she stood before him, her hair hanging down and their eyes meeting.
"It means something to you, doesn't it?" she asked, and he blinked. "Jayne who sells out people he isn't friends with isn't the same Jayne sitting here."
Those eyes focused like laser bolts, and he leaned back into the chair. Gorram it, she was doing it again-
-
She saw the airlock, heard the rushing wind, held the radio in her hands, and remembered his worst moment, the moment he'd broken.
"Turn on any of my crew, you turn on me!"
-
"What are you gonna tell the others?" she asked, her eyes turning away, looking over his shoulder. Her voice's pitch changed a hair, accent sliding away toward an eerie similarity of Mal's.
"About what?" Her voice lowered, back to that imitation of Jayne's own. "About why I'm dead." Back to Mal's. "I hadn't thought about it." Her eyes turned, focusing directly on Jayne's once more.
"Make somethin' up. Don't tell 'em what I did."
Jayne was silent as she straightened, and looked down at him. After a second, River turned away, one arm rising up to rub the other.
"Shows shame, shows honesty, shows he knows he was wrong," she whispered, and then turned back toward him, smiling. "Shows he's a better man than he thinks he is."
"I . . . got stupid." Jayne muttered, looking down. "Money was too good."
"I know," she replied, and turned her head to the side, questioningly.
"Better reason?"
Jayne mulled over it for a bit, and sighed.
"I wanted you gone, girl," he said. "Hell, tried to get you off the ship myself after Beaumonte until you kicked me in the brain. Nothin' but trouble."
"Always trouble," she agreed, nodding. "But you were scared."
"No!" Jayne said, sitting up, reaffirming his masculine pride. "No, not like that at all."
"Didn't want the happy sack crushed again," she added. "Scared of her, scared of the Alliance. Scared of the Reavers, but not afraid to let everyone know."
"Reavers is different," he replied, shaking his head. "Not like . . . . like you."
Silence, and then he shook his head again.
"Stupid reason anyway. But got a better one now: Mal would kill me, if your brother didn't beat me to it." She smiled.
"Grown-up," she replied. "Eighteen last month. Simon can't say anything about it."
"Don't change fact that Captain and your brother would skin me alive, takin' advantage of you like that," he said, and fervently wished he had his bottle of whiskey.
"Simon's a boob, Mal is stupid," she replied, that smile of her never faltering. "I'm not a child anymore."
"Ain't right," he said quietly. "Ain't the right man to take advantage of you."
"Why?" she asked, and he paused.
"My gut."
"Not true," she replied, and her eyes narrowed again.
-
She sat on the catwalk, looking over the empty bay, despondent and confused, remembering the boy and the shotgun blast that should have taken her in her worthless thieving, backstabbing heart.
-
"Shame and confusion," she whispered. "Mudders thought you were a hero, and when they bled for you, you felt wrong."
"I-" Jayne stopped, his face screwing up as he remembered his own feelings after that kid had saved his life.
"The man you think you are wouldn't think that," she added. He was about to stand, but then River put a hand on his chest. He looked up, met her eyes again, and saw a difference in her stance, her approach, and her demeanor.
Somewhere in there, Jayne realized, they'd stopped talking about simple sexin'.
"Better man than he considers himself," she said. "Like Mal. Tries to act like a big, tough bad man, but bad men don't respect the dead. Bad men don't send money home to the family. Bad men don't do what's right instead of what's smart. Bad men don't know shame when they do bad things." She leaned down again, her eyes low and wandering over his shoulders and neck, before rising back to meet his. "Bad men don't see other men jump in the way of a bullet, and hate themselves for it. Jayne is all of this."
There was a long moment of silence, tension in the air, two people hovering apart, not certain what the other was all about.
Jayne broke the silence.
"Outta reasons," he muttered. The single most crushing defeat he'd ever suffered in his whole life, felt like. After a second, he managed a weak smile.
"So, darlin', even though I lost, you wanna tell me why you're so interested in this sort of thinkin'?"
-
She couldn't tell him. Not with words he'd understand.
Tactile sensations to override neural synapses of accumulated experiences. No filter in her mind, so take advantage of that.
she feels everything. she can't not
Jayne Cobb wasn't good with words. She gave him actions instead.
-
She came forward, onto the couch, putting her knees on either side of his legs, her body close and warm and tight with his. Her hands rested on his shoulders as she set her weight on his lap, their hips meeting in a way he'd though about from time to time but wo de ma he'd never considered. Jayne's heartbeat picked up, his face inches from hers, his hands uncertain for once as to what they were supposed to be doing. Any other woman and he would have already had them exploring, but some part of his brain kept them off that girl's slender wisp of a body.
"Huh," he managed. A fragrance tickled his nose, like strawberries or apples or some other fruit his brain didn't have enough blood to identify. Everything was flowing downstairs.
And then she did put that tongue to use. Right where his neck met his jaw, and conscious thought vanished for several seconds as that curious little mouth went to work on him. The wet warmth finally got his hand moving, and they rose up, Jayne grabbing two armfuls of crazy little girl and pulling her tight. He began to kiss back, at the base of her own jaw, and within seconds they were in each other's faces, tight and intense and wet and River was-
Wo de ma Jayne Cobb you are sucking face with the doc's eighteen-year-old sister in full daylight, relatively.
Jayne broke free, leaning his head back, and she looked at him with a confused and frightened face, as if she was afraid she'd done something wrong, and that nearly broke his rock-hard throat-slittin' money-grubbin' mercenary heart.
"Ordinarily," he breathed. "Girl treatin' me like this wouldn't get a second's thought before we got rollin', but-"
"Afraid to make a scene," she whispered. That, and the way she suddenly threw herself at him, it just-
"Darlin', I don't get it," he said, shaking his head. "Why are you acting so hungry for lovin' all a sudden, and from me? Maybe the Captain, but Jayne Cobb ain't the man you want. Just showed that I ain't got a good reason not to, but there ain't no good reason you'd want me to-"
"Shh," she said, putting a finger over his lips, and she closed her eyes. Her head canted forward, her forehead touching his, and everything about her seemed to change, as if she was a completely different person all of a sudden. Tiny, vulnerable . . . scared.
"Wants to see why," she murmurs. "Can't see why. Own mind is a prison she can't claw her way out of."
This close, he saw one of the scars.
It was almost invisible, in her scalp, nestled inside her hair, and gorram it that one little mark on her head was all he needed to understand everything, even if she didn't tell him. It was a single rush of understanding clocking him on the side of the head and he was a moron for not having seen it beforehand. A perfectly damn good reason a girl like her would get so hungry.
She sniffed, and her saw the wetness rolling down from her eyes.
It wasn't lust, sexual hunger or any kind of base desire on her part. It was a need for something to wash it all away-
"Tomorrow was the first day, fours years ago" she said, her voice as clear and lucid and normal as he'd ever heard it. "Fourteen years old, and they took me inside." That wetness in her eyes intensified, and he realized that the more she thought about it the worse it would become. His hands gripped her shoulders more tightly, but-
"They were doing such good work," she said, and she shook, tears starting to emerge. "All their knives and saws and scalpels, all to help make a world without sin. And she didn't come out until Simon found her, and pulled the needles and the pain and the cutting away and-"
"Shh," Jayne said, closing his eyes and pulling her tight. Heartless bastard he was, he understood. Hell, he understood all too well why she'd started this. The Doc said they'd cut out the bits in her brain that kept her mind under control, and she couldn't think straight, or keep anything under control.
Only way to stop the pain was to drown it out.
"Bad memories," he muttered, and she nodded, the skin of her forehead rubbing up and down against his.
"Doesn't want to see that place again, but she knows what day it is. Can't unsee it."
Jayne thought on that for a good long while, mulling over whether he should do what she was asking him to with those tears and those sobs, and he nodded inside.
"Girl," he whispered. "You sure this is how you wanna forget it?" He inhaled. "How you want me to make you forget?" Jayne was scared.
Honest to all, he was scared that she had come to him for this. All the other times, it was something else. No girl ever came to him for something so honest and important.
She opened her eyes, and there was pain in them, pleading that even Jayne Cobb could see plain as day, and he had his answer.
"My bunk's too far away," he said, and he looked back, toward the room she kept.
"Simon's with Kaylee," she squeaked into his ear. His cheeks were now wet from the painful sobs, which he swore cut as deep into his hardened shell as they did her soft skin. "All quiet. All safe."
Jayne swept the bundle of broken little girl up into his arms and carried her down the hallway, shaking in his hands. Anger rolled off him at the people who did this to her, something he knew wasn't right. Jayne didn't consider himself a good man by any stretch of sanity, but he knew what was right and what was wrong, and this girl's treatment at the hands of those bastards was wrong. It was okay to kill a man, or cut him up if he was bad and knew something that needed out, or if he'd hurt someone like her. Like that sadistic sumbitch Dobson deserved, like those feds deserved, like all the gorram Alliance deserved for hurting her.
The door slid open, and then it slid closed, and he lowered her down on the bed. Every step of the way, he asked her that question, wanting to know if she was sure of it, and her eyes and her mouth said yes without even speaking any words. Never before had it mattered to him this much that she would want it, because this wasn't about him, or just hunger and lust. He told her it would hurt, and she said she didn't care by kissing him back, pulling him tight as he pulled off her nightie. His shirt fell to the floor, and her little fingers worked his pants as he moved up and down her body with his mouth and tongue, steady and careful. She needed him to take his time, to draw it out, to drown it all.
Time passed, and the sobs had long since faded, replaced by quiet gasps. The tears dried, replaced by sweat. The pain soon passed on, both physical and mental, replaced by a glow and a softness and a contentment that washed away the cold, the metal, and the madness.
Then she shook, and she moaned, and he held her tight. He didn't let her slip back to that place, and kept her there, with him, safe and warm.
-
"Couldn't sleep," she said a while later. His arms folded around her little body, holding her close, her head beneath his chin and face nuzzled in his chest. "Remembered. First day they took me there, after all the lies. Never got to dance except for songs with pain and guns." She wasn't crying, and she wasn't hurting anymore. Her voice told volumes. Even the agony of her past couldn't break through now.
"Came lookin' for me?" Jayne asked, and her head moved a tiny bit, the closest she could to a nod while being held so tightly. His fingers were aimlessly moving through that curly black tangle of hair, made ten times worse after they'd got done.
"Didn't want to remember," she said. "Jayne wanted her, but he didn't want her, so she had to play games with him to make him understand."
"You coulda just asked me," he muttered, but she shook her head.
"Jayne wouldn't." Her voice was just a tiny buzz now. "Jayne thought he didn't like her, buried himself under piles of lies and bluster. Had to break him out." He smiled.
"You did, moonbrain," he said. "You did that a damn sight well better'n I ever 'magined you could." Her body shook with quiet laughter, and he nuzzled her on the top of her head, a sentimental gesture that dashed any hope of him being the big bad burly mercenary he wished he was.
They laid there for a while, and he began to wonder what time it was, and whether anyone else would be getting up. He started to rise, thinking the girl asleep, but her hands tightened around his body, little fingers with terrible strength.
"Not yet," she murmured into his chest. "Keep the demons away a little longer. Safe here." He hesitated, and then pulled her back close.
"Right then, you little moonb-" He stopped. No. Couldn't call her that.
". . . . River."
-
AN: I was planning on waiting a few days after my posting of the first chapter, but I'm an impatient bugger, and I wrote this whole story out ahead of time. Third part will go up soon.
As you probably noticed in this chapter - I was beating you over the head with it, I suspect - the pairing here is not sparked by sexuality, but by an even more basic need: human comfort. I tried to portray Jayne as close to the canonical character as I could while using his sympathetic characteristics to build up to the moment where River reveals her reason. I hope I got it done right!
I think formatting plays a big role in helping to define River's personality, which is why I had all the bits where she was looking into his mind or thinking centered. Normally, I use line breaks to split up sections of narrative, but I didn't want to ruin the feeling of intimacy and closeness that was in this chapter with something so jarring, so I used centered dashes.