Disclaimer: See chapter one.
A/N: Again, this shoulda been up a while ago. Stupid ISP. Grumblemumble.
Brompton Cocktail
Chapter Twenty
Jayne woke with a headache that put the worst hangover he'd ever endured to shame. It was almost bad enough that he didn't notice how much his hands still ached – not just his fingertips, but the palms, too – or the faint twinge from his back, just under his ribs. He rolled out of his bunk, his knees colliding painfully with the deck plating of the floor and setting the artillery in his skull off on a particularly enthusiastic exercise. He crawled over to his desk and blindly groped for the satchel of promised relief.
Had he the ability to process coherent thought at the moment, he likely would have laughed at himself. At some point during the night, he'd lost one of his socks, and the other one was barely clinging around the arch of his left foot, leaving a trail stretching behind him back to the bed like a little kid's drawing of a snake. His cargo pants were wrinkled and twisted slightly askew, with the left leg rucked up past his knee. Had it been anybody else, the sight of it would have had Jayne chuckling for days.
He managed, though he was never altogether clear just how, to get the Opianax loaded into the hypospray. Once it's tingling warmth managed to push the pain away to something he could ignore, he finished his lately amended morning routine of medications, brushing the fuzz off his teeth, a shave, and clean clothes. The black hole he'd swallowed the night before grew in size, silencing tasks that, even just yesterday, had been completed with whistling or humming.
Dressed, he checked the chrono and found he still had about an hour before they were due to land on Greenleaf. Mal had said – well, shouted – that they'd have breakfast at a restaurant on the ground during supper the evening before, something to do with meeting the contact for their secondary cargo. Jayne didn't much care. It wasn't as though he was ever actually hungry anymore. He headed up to the galley, needing to pause twice as dizziness washed over him. Unlike before, he didn't even bother glancing around to see if anyone was looking as he laid a steadying hand against the bulkhead. He flat didn't care.
Jayne paused in the galley long enough to slice himself a piece of protein, knowing that if he didn't eat something, the side-effects were going to be bad enough for Mal to bench him. Despite it all, he was unwilling to allow himself to be benched. Not while he could still stand. Not while he knew he could still shoot straight. The fact that he was well and truly dying might have only just managed to sink into his thick head, but that didn't mean he had to quit doing everything else in the meantime.
Still chewing his 'meal', he headed to the bridge. Oriole was there already, confirming arrival-times with the ground crew on Greenleaf. She was wearing a peasant blouse that showed off her curves quite nicely, but Jayne couldn't even bring himself to leer. He ignored her and sat in the copilot's chair, focusing on the cortex connection.
Oriole finished the wave with ground control and glanced over to see who'd joined her. Having expected to see the captain, she was a little taken aback to see it was the mercenary. He rarely ventured onto the bridge, and usually when she happened across him elsewhere on the ship, he nailed her with a sleazy little smirk or greeted her with blatant invitations to 'see his guns'. If he'd been even just a touch less blatant about it, she might have given some serious thought to his invites – the man was extraordinarily easy on the eyes, after all. What's wrong with him? she wondered, troubled at his atypical behavior. She might only have been with the ship for a few short weeks, but the man sitting across from her bore little resemblance to the one she'd been living with. Then again, she reminded herself, this is more like how he was acting that first day. Something's on his mind, and it's not like he's got that much mind to spare. Though she was curious, she pushed it aside. Not my business. As long as he left her alone and didn't muck about with the controls, she decided to pay him no heed.
Once the cortex was booted up, the first thing Jayne did was switch the readout from English to Chinese. Granted, it meant having to use the stylus to 'type' instead of the keyboard, but it also meant he wouldn't have to read out loud. He pulled up ship records, then entered into the archive, looking for the report on the Xiao San. He found the record he was looking for and noticed it had already been salvaged. He opened the salvage report, knowing there would be photos if any bodies had been recovered. Jayne was in luck. The Xiao San had, as Pikerton claimed, suffered a catastrophic hull failure. Six of the nine crewmembers had died, either during the initial explosion or by not getting to the escape shuttle fast enough. There had only been four bodies recovered, though. He flipped through them quickly, dismissing the first as 'too old', the second as 'too fat', and the third as 'nope'. The last photo showed what remained of the man he clearly saw in his nightmares. Half his face was charred and blackened, but the other half looked just as it had that day on Silverhold. Liam Jones. Hope ya suffered. Jayne felt a fleeting satisfaction that was quickly sucked away by the black hole. He turned the machine off and returned the stylus to its clip above the screen. An' if ya didn't, guess I got somethin' worthwhile ta look forwards to after all.
The delivery of paper went well. Doubly-so, since the receiver brought their own men to see to the unloading of it. Breakfast was had at a little café by the name of Briscomb's. Zoë, Mal, and Jayne took one table, with Simon, Kaylee, Oriole, and River across the room enjoying eggs and bacon and honest-to-goodness orange juice. The contact for the medicinals turned out to be Wayne Petty himself – a man somewhat older than Jayne who shared Mal's love of 'sticking it to the Alliance' whenever possible. Delivery of 'assorted citrus' was arranged and it went unstated that each of the crates of fruit was going to have a small box of various and sundry medicines squirreled away within.
The arrival of Petty's 'produce' went as expected. Alliance officials did little more than open each crate during their inspection. On seeing nothing more taxable than simple lemons and oranges and grapefruit, the boxes were loaded into Serenity. Under the guise of arranging them, Jayne shifted the crates around while Kaylee surreptitiously removed the medicines and Simon tested them to make sure they were what Petty promised. Mal finished up the paperwork and the ship was back in the air before noon, the secondary cargo safely stowed out of sight. It was two days to Harvest.
A/N2: This is just to clarify something before it has a chance to become an issue: Jayne's headache is not a symptom of ruby fever. I don't know about anyone else, but any time I fall asleep right after crying, I always wake up with a bitch of a sinus headache. That's all it was meant to convey in the story, too. Just so we're all on the same page and all.
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