"Mal? …Mal? …MAL?!?" Wash came barreling into the cargo bay looking slightly more frazzled than usual. Mal glanced over at him, then went back to checking the cargo manifest.

"Is that the 'something just blew up' intonation, or the 'generic panic' one?" He asked, marking off another box. Wash stood before him, panting.

"It's the 'there's a gorilla in with a gun in the kitchen eating peaches' intonation!" Wash told him. "Gorilla! Gun! PEACHES!" His voice soared to prepubescent heights.

"That'd be Jayne. He's new. Go introduce yourself." Mal moved over to the next set of boxes.

"It has a name? It understands human speech? Will the wonders ever cease?" Wash plopped down on a stack of boxes.

"And he's a damned good shot. Careful, those have got grenades in 'em." Wash popped up like a jack in the box as Mal continued. "Managed to lure him away from some bandits had us cornered back there. He didn't help us, you'd have been scrounging for coffin wood as they sailed off with Serenity."

Wash still didn't like it. "So…you bargained yourself out of the frying pan into the fire. Now we've got an outlaw on the ship!"

"We're all outlaws, Wash. Especially since that caper you pulled back on Osiris." Mal reminded him, flipping to a new page on the manifest.

"Kaylee ain't an outlaw!" Wash argued, pointedly ignoring the jab about the narrow escape back on the central planet.

"Because Kaylee ain't never been nowhere with a law before. Give her time." Mal said.

"I still don't understand why we need this Jayne person." Wash said, having calmed down slightly. "Or why he's eating my peaches."

"So it's about the peaches, is it?" Mal said, grinning as he finished checking the list and chucked it on top of the cargo.

"It's about the safety of the crew! Like me!" Wash said. "Guys like that eat guys like me for breakfast. And I can't outfly him if he's in the gorram cabin." Wash was starting to get frenzied again.

"Relax, he ain't gonna hurt you. Come down to a fight, I'll take your side. We need a pilot more than anything." He patted Wash on the head. "Go prep for takeoff. I'll see if I can salvage a peach or two."

Wash had just taken off when Jayne clomped into the cabin, picking his teeth. "Hey, Mister Pilot Man."

Wash regarded him warily as he guided Serenity through the atmospheric turbulence. "Hello there, …you." He said, attempting to stay focused on the task at hand.

"What's with all the plastic lizards?" Jayne asked, moving to pick up a tyrannosaurus.

"Don't touch them!" Wash fairly screamed, jerking his hands on the controls. Serenity bucked slightly. "…they are an experiment." He added, attempting to control himself. "Perhaps this little…chat could wait until we aren't in danger of exploding?"

"When would that be?" Jayne asked, moving away from the console to poke around in the storage locker.

"I…don't know." Wash confessed. "Just not right now." Jayne got the hint and lumbered off, grumbling something about the pilot being 'gorram twitchy'. Wash breathed a sigh of relief and turned his attention back on the console, just in time to avoid a belt of orbiting debris.

Wash tried to see the good side of Jayne, he really did. A few weeks later, Wash had to head through the dining area to head to the sick bay. His sinuses were stuffed up something awful, and he knew that had something that could possibly help. Jayne had spread most of his numerous firearms out across the table and was meticulously cleaning the largest of the lot.

"This one's Vera." He said, when he noticed Wash staring. He patted the muzzle of the gun fondly. "Best piece of steel money can buy. Don't think I bought her though, har."

"How…nice." Wash said, attempting to edge around the table and out of the line of fire as quickly as possible. He'd never been very comfortable around weapons, especially big weapons wielded by bigger men. "You named her?"

"Ain't as weird as namin' them dinosaurs of yours." Jayne retorted. Wash was amazed. How on earth did a brain that small know what to do with all those weapons. He was about to ask as much when Mal's voice crackled over the intercom. "Heads up, Wash, we've got a spot of trouble ahead."

Wash flashed a half-apologetic, half-relieved grin at Jayne and fled.