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Hey. This is my first-ever fanfic all posted as one l-o-n-g story. If you've read it as Parts 1-5, this here won't be a new read for ya. Will be posting a new part to The Way of Jayne soon, though. Thanks for reading me, and for being patient with my long absence from posting new goods.

Feedback? Do that and I'll dance and sing as pretty as River. :0)

Disclaimer: I don’t own nothin’ to do with Firefly. Joss is omniscient and his is the head from which my idols sprang, fully grown, muscles-flexin’. I just make them strike a pose and vogue some.

The Measure of a Jayne

Preface: There’d been thoughts. No reason to say any different. Thoughts sprung from the way she smells, hot sweat, engine grease all girl moist. The way she walks, rolling ship in a gale hips all unconscious grace. Kaylee was, Kaylee is…all things Woman heat to Jayne.

He’s been from the corest of the worlds to the blackest black and put tab A into slot B (or into C or D) at a lot of stops in between so it ain’t as if he’s had trifling few to compare her to. But the softness, the Woman that the merc sees on the outside of this girl and on the inside too calls to the hardness of the man. He’s afeared that… no, he knows the winsome mechanic’s always leaned toward the doc with the purty mouth, but that man’s leanin’s were all toward doctorin’ his crazy brain sister.

Avoiding playin’ doctor with a more than willing lil’ Kaylee was something Serenity’s resident physician was too shee-niou stupid to realize weren’t no kind of smart. But Jayne. Jayne’s got a fever, one the doctor don’t have no meds for. And the only prescription is more Kaylee.

Present day: He’s gotta have him some Kaylee, can’t let nothing stop him and that surely means puzzling out gorram fecking soon how to get her to see how a muscley henchman is a remedy she has a like-need for. How he’s gonna do that while simultaneously bandaged and bleeding and too slowly recoverin’ in his least favorite ship environs (the medlab), well, that’s the damn rub.

Time was, laid up in previous injurious-like conditions, he’d a-wanted, above all things, to be in his bunk surrounded by his things. That was back when his onlyest thoughts of Kaylee were obscenity-wrapped prayers enjoining a mere scruffy girl to keep this piece of fei oo bird flying.

Since she weren’t but a half-growed farmgirl, Zoe was married and the Companion’s fees were far beyond his even darin’ to ask, it had appeared there weren’t no available females on board nor any likelihood of ‘em joining. The result was Jayne’d slammed a hatch tight over his need for woman-flesh, woman-heat.

He weren’t averse to openin’ up that place in him whenever they touched dirt-down, never havin’ a lick of trouble finding a willing woman dirt-side to wrap his needful self around like a quilt. Once the ol’ in and out’n was done and the boat grabbed sky again toward the next heist, his lair was a right perfect place to be, a sure-fire cure, no need for anything else in creation.

Cloth covered the only faithful women in his life, rough upper edge of muslin pulled down so’s he could be voyeur to his own weapons cache. The hard reassuring diamond gleam of Vera and the lesser concubines smiled and beckoned to him from an oil perfumed nest.

‘Long as he took perfect care of them and they were near to his hand, god was on his throne and Jayne was pert near body-able to fetch any one of ‘em up and rain down hell well-heeled if the need arose or if he just plain felt like it, gorramit.

Okay, so that image of RoboJayne could right now be more than a tetch of wishful-thinking, seein’ as how he’s been fed nothin’ but pap and clear broth for days and ain’t been able to take a piss on account of throwin’ up that go se they shoved down him, nothin’ left to pee out. Jayne don’t ken science much, but he knows ain’t no piss if they ain’t no water done stayed in. He knew about the upchucking from flashes of wakefulness that included Simon reporting to the captain on the patient’s condition.

Jayne turned his head infinitesimally toward the sound of the capn’s voice to peer at Mal’s frame leaning up one side of the medlab doorway, arms crossed, visage lined with concern when the doc explained that dehydration was stripping away Jayne’s strength and any hope of a speedy recovery. The downed merc was touched my Mal’s concerned look, until the capn’s next words explained it away. “Jen dao mei. Just when that big hulk of a walking liability can’t walk is when I find a gorram need for him to get vertical!”

Simon’s brilliant mind reached for alternative strategies to help get Serenity’s crew to the pot of gold at the end of the captain’s latest planned caper, but Mal knew that nothing would work for this part of the plan ‘cept Jayne’s particular brand of intimidation backed up by the big man’s mostly-restored fierce strength. The gig might could be put off as much as a week though, so Mal’s desperation came up with an idea to help speed things along. The merc’d had his eye on lil’ Kaylee. Seemed the girl couldn’t walk or move or have her being ‘thout Jayne’s eyes attached to her as if she needed his eyeballing her to help hold her up.

A body’d have to be blind—no stone dead, not to see it, unless of course it was the object of Jayne’s affections herself. Kaylee’s vision was sharp on turning metal parts, but she hadn’t a clue as to the state of Jayne’s mind and body parts orbiting around the petite mechanic’s every move. But Mal didn’t think the resident bruin of Serenity’s crew’d have the nerve to direct Kaylee’s gaze to where and how his heart lived.

Mal told the doc he’d go talk to Kaylee, making it an order if need be, send her to come visit the patient. Talk to him, she could, and attempt to get some food into his banged-up self. Could only be a notion of the good since Jayne’s road to recovery needed to move from the entrance ramp to the speedway, right quick-like.

Jayne wanted to shout a hearty amen to the idea of Kaylee put to nursin’ him but nothing more issued from him stronger than a pitiful moue just before Mal walked on out, a man with a burning purpose.

The doc left him alone and Jayne filled whatever minutes of consciousness he had this go-round with formulatin’ a Kaylee-siege. Far as he could figure, the main thing keepin’ him from hauling in lil’ Kaylee pronto is the gunshot wound in his right thigh. But while in the mood to be honest with hisself, might as well mention the cracked and bloody skull he got dealt right after the bullet sang through his leg.

The filthy ching-wah tsao duh liou mahng’d rang his noggin for what felt like a month o’ Sundays, kicking it with feet clad in shoes that felt like hammers. Kicked him while he was dust-down, him takin’ the hard way dirtward when the gunshot knocked his leg out from under him. Only left off the kicking cause he held his breath long enough to convince them he was dead.

'T’aint right, the head-kicking, anybody’d havta agree.' Well, the bullet he figured he deserved, smiling wryly, but the beating they’d dealt him afterward oughta be pictured in a ‘cyclopedia somewhere next to the phrase, “Adding insult to injury.”

If they well and truly owed him the bullet after what he’d done in their barn, the rest of the drubbing was writ large on a debt ledger that throbbed and glimmered in the big merc’s skull like the pain they’d left him to die with. He let go and allowed himself to remember exactly how he’d acquired the newest dents to his frame, just then, since Kaylee factored high in all the good parts and Kaylee was good to think on any time.

By the time the only people in this part of the black having a reason to need Jayne breathing found him laying face-down in the dust and weeds and scorpions, he was in full-on happy crappy hallucination mode. Kaylee and he’d been engaged in all fashion o’ carnal knowledge, some barely knowable to him or any other human afore now. It’s amazing what the febrile mind that’s lost all hope for the future can conjure up to comfort a fella afore he dies. In the middle of the best fornicatin’ since earth that was, Kaylee’s voice rang out in a shriek heaven-found, calling his name like nothing else in the ‘verse was important ‘cept his ownself. That was just before the pain in his head and leg and sunburnt neck screamed louder still as somebody turned him over.

It was Kaylee in the flesh, doing the turning, saying his name again a little less loud, but a little more sad, arms straight out grasping his side just before the dead weight that’d been Jayne for the past days unknown caused him to plop over frontwise in the newly swirling dust.

His first real-time sight was the halo of her face surrounded by rumpled-soft honey brown hair mercifully blocking out the double sun’s glare. Her face twisted in worry bent near his own, her hands running near but not quite daring to touch the very wrong and bloody slight openness that decorated his cranial vault.

His fissure-cracked lips and parched throat hurt then, as he tried to talk, tried to smile at her and say her name, but nothing. Nothing to be said when moisture is just a body’s memory. Naught wrong with his nose though, far as he could tell, since it was in hyperdrive full of Kaylee sweat, Kaylee heat, Kaylee fear and a little engine grease just for GP.

When the rest of them: Mal and Zoe and the doc stormed to Jayne’s current resting place having heard and tracked Kaylee’s call, Jayne let go of the sex-crazed fantasies he’d been living off for the past 2 days and surrendered his last grasp of consciousness with a big gorram smile on his face. Weren’t naught on him that didn’t scream hurt as everything faded to black, but hell, he knew they’d do for him if they could, and if not, he was in for an eternal dirt nap rife with Kaylee all around him, her scent filling his head, filling him up and carrying him over. Sure enough reason for a loveless criminal to smile his way into unconsciousness.

~~~

Next time Jayne was aware of time, he was back on the boat, prone on the medlab bed. And he found the cap’n had made good his promise to send Kaylee along to keep him supplied with company and nursin’.

Before he even opened his eyes to prove his other senses correct, he registered Kaylee smell and, best of all, Kaylee touch. Her hand held a cold wet cloth in place over his forehead and her arm was under his healing sunburnt neck as Simon slid a pillow neath his head, mindful of the bandage Jayne could now feel tight-wrapped round his cranium.

Kaylee’s proximity and the change in position caused Jayne to move his injured leg and brought a hiss from the big man. Kaylee “Sorried!” over and over, but the doctor smiled, said it was a good sign, Jayne moving his leg since there had been a chance nerve damage might have rendered it useless.

Kaylee’s being there was like the cavalry to Simon; it allowed the doc to go for awhile, his every thought worrying after River since he’d unforgivably neglected her care for Jayne’s. With barely a word to Serenity’s resident engineer, he hurried out the door and away toward the faint sound of River’s laughing girlish songs.

After rolling a table near the stool Kaylee rested on one-cheeked, other foot flat on the floor, Kaylee positioned the table so she could lean toward the soup bowl there and back to Jayne’s mouth region.

“How’s our boy today?,” asked the Way to Jayne’s Nethers. Okay, so he warn’t all that happy to have Kaylee refer to him as a male under 12 years old now or any other day, but hell, he was about as helpless as one, so figured on ignorin’it.

He couldn’t debate the matter with her right now anyhow, so he settled on closing his eyes hard and re-opening them the better to focus on her gamine face. Opened his sore lips and got out a gravel “hmmm” for his trouble.

“Don’t try to talk then. Dunno why I asked you a question since it ain’t likely you can hold up your end of a conversation anyhow. Sorry.” He was that anxious to stop the sorries so he made an effort to turn his head infinitesimally from side to side signaling apologies weren’t needed or wanted.

Kaylee lifted the now warming cloth from his head and got it ready to go back in place dipped in icy water so as to be all cool and wet and soothing again. He closed his eyes, lulled as much by her being the one ministering to him as by the cool touch of damp cloth.

She wanted to ask if he was hungry, but stopped herself from sailing the question out just in time. Started a running commentary instead on how long he’d been out (3 days), and how the head-wound was mos’ likely the cause of his napping.

Next running line involved dangling the carrot such that if he was able to keep enough goodies down, they might could shuffle him off to his bunk where he was sure to be more comf’table. Guess she thought the bunk’d act as incentive to get him to cooperate in downing the comestibles. He wondered what she’d think if she knew it was her spending time with him that was most likely what was fixin’ to do the trick.

She brought a warm smelling bowl close to his chin then, and moved the half-full spoon toward his lips. The prior propping up helped, and he did too, opening up enough mouth and throat to swallow. Gave another mmmmm then and tried a smile that he was surely gratified to see rewarded with a beam from Kaylee, made him choke in sudden knife-like longing.

She grabbed for a cloth, wiping at a drop of soup he felt sliding toward his right ear. One full perfect breast slung forward, brushed against his cheek. Okay. Lust and lunch ain’t good bed partners, but hell, it weren’t his fault. Somehow finding a way to slow his breathing down, he nodded slightly, signaled for her to have another go.

She did, and although he couldn’t get the workings right to see that more soup slid down the correct side of his mouth to encourage the warm softy agin’ him again, the whole half cup or so of fluids stayed down by fits and starts. And that was of the good. Pushing away the bed table, Kaylee held his hand till he fell asleep due to a distinct low gauge of energy and the fullest stomach he’d had in days. Strange how injury robs even the strongest body of resources, she thought. She remembered when he’d stay up night and day, thumb rubbin’ along whatever favorite weapon or grenade he was packing at the time waiting on an unsavory client or standing/sitting guard for the health, welfare and continued breathing of Serenity’s crew.

Night or day watch didn’t seem to even graze the canyons of resolve in the man. He was weak as a kitten now, though, with just she and him in the room, no sounds but his basso breathing and her own quiet-like, no light but the dimmed medlights to help him rest.

The door to the lab was open a bare foot or so, and Kaylee would surely hear if someone approached to disturb him. This thought came on the heels of the realization that she wanted to do some exploring. Nothing graphic, nothing dangerous to the patient, but it’d been a long time since she’d had a glimpse of his hurts out there in the dust, and then there was a blood coating at the time. Blood, gore, drippage. Nasty.

Now with him cleaned up and bandaged, she wanted to be sure for herself that he was gonna be okay. Gonna be back vertical to stand watch over her and the others after a time, gonna laugh and reach pointing at her with his fork at the dinner table joking with his mouth full of merriment and protein grindage, about something she’d said or done.

Kaylee walked around the medbed then, and lifted up the thin sheet on his right leg, folding it back onto his left to fully uncover the thigh. He was bare, she oughta known but hadn’t thought of that.

Her attention focused on the bandage loosened on his thigh, she peered up under the edge to see that the wound was clean, clotted and healing well—no red warnings running any which way. She left the leg uncovered, moving to her left toward the bed’s head now, back of her hand feeling his forehead under the cloth. No fever. Turned the wet cloth onto its cooler side, replaced it on his forehead, felt around the bandage for swelling. None that she could feel. The doc was a good ‘un. She knew it from superior work on her own person. At healing arts patching-up Serenity’s crew, he was downright magic. She smiled then, thinking of Simon. Thinking consummating thoughts of Simon. Still smiling, almost dancing, she curved back around the bed toward the exposed leg.

As she lifted the sheet preparatory to covering him back up, the middle part pulled up and she let out an involuntary squeak. The middle part of him was hooked on a fold of the sheet. Couldn't be enough blood or energy in the man to enable his hydraulics to do their work down there so it had ta be the fold of sheet that got caught on him.

She knew this to be the only explanation and gently laid the sheet down over his leg, pulling the fabric smooth. But that only further delineated what was covered at the juncture of the big man’s thighs.

Lil’ Kaylee’d seen her share of manstaffs covered and un, but the flash she’d just given herself defied nature. Standing statue, only her eyes moving toward the barely open door and ears twitching for any sound, Kaylee assured herself it was just her and the patient in the room or in the foreseeable forehearable vicinity. She moved a guilty step toward her left then, reached out a hand spread-fingered on top of the sheet covering Jayne Cobb’s package. When neither the edge of her hand closest to her body nor the same fingertips reaching toward the base of his manhood could reach the other side, she slid her palm’s edge down toward his right hip, then wrist-up curled her fingertips over to reach the other hip.

Ai ya, but he was hung. Or else he was swathed in some kinda bandage under that sheet due to an injury the doc hadn’t felt like broadcasting to the feminine crew contingent.

Kaylee worried about the injury-potential to Jayne’s hydraulics more than she wanted to question right here and now, and partially to aid her policy of not taking useless time in self-doubt, she whipped back the sheet like a matador on earth-that-was and saw Jayne in ALL his glory, glorious for true.

Wu de tyen ah, what must he be like hard? The shaft laid slightly to the left, leading edge from his body flared and wide and ridged and perfect, the length dangling down toward a dusky pink and circumcised head whose slit was like an apostrophe.

His balls were big, egg-like, nesting one atop the other between legs a bit paled from too long without sun. Sweet Buddha, but he was hung and hung spectacular, and if anybody on this bird ‘sides Inara would know, Kaylee would sure-nuff be the one to be able to testify.

The hair that peppered him was coarse and black and felt like—Kaylee jerked her hand away from his pubic area just short of touching her flesh to his without the bed sheet’s insulation between them. Short. Not an adjective worth applying to Jayne anywhere.

What in the tyen shuh duh was she doing, first clinically categorizing Jayne’s manhood and now figurin’ on touchin’ besides lookin’? She belonged heart and soul to Simon. Well, okay, her crucial “body” wasn’t wrapped up in that equation of belonging yet, but certainly not due to any lack of pinin’ and tryin’ on her part. It was Simon’s fault, that’s what it was. If she’d ever had some regular bouts of Simon’s parts clenching and twining her nethers, she’d not be here right now lusting after, wanting to paw over Jayne’s southern landscape. Hell with it.

Her hand stretched right back where it wanted to be, reaching his abdomen’s hairtips, surprisingly soft for all their coarse appearance, surprising too, to find anything soft on such a ship’s bulkhead hard man. But the Jayne she knew was nothing if not a walking contradiction so why not find out he’s soft as well as hard. Slightly more pressure and a slow lateral handsweep over pubic hair affirmed the finding but the fun in the hair-feelin’ department quickly paled next to the better territory beckoning a few scant centimeters straight down from there.

Warmth was what she felt. And a kidskin softness over giving flesh. He was bigger around than her thumb and longest finger could circle. Ai ya, she thought again, how wide would he be if he were…hard?

Which was what she realized he was beginning to be, a result of the ol’ clever finger-measure testing his girth. She dropped him, no she thrust him back down, backed away a step from the bed and raked her eyes straight up to his face, mouth open to try for an explanation, please sweet Buddha: one that he’d buy.

His face was slack, though, dry cracked lips parted and regular breathing eking, even a light snore ratcheting out. Kaylee’s fight or flight impulses loosened then, muscles relaxed, and she carefully reached back out over the bed, pulling the sheet safely back down and over the big man’s lower half.

The best mechanic and now the horniest woman in the known ‘verse sidled out of the room, flitting away like a namesake of the class of her ship, and back to the safety of her engines. As she crossed the medlab threshold, Jayne turned his head quickly to enjoy the view of her overalls-clad and shapely rump, one hand reaching down to soothe his manhandled—make that Kaylee-handled (cause he wern’t sly) “Jayne” Thomas.

~~~

The Measure of a Jayne, Part 2 Kaylee fumbled her cabin door open, flew into sanctuary, stripped her outer clothes off and dove into bed, flushed face down. No use. No hope for it. She tried to tell herself that nothing happened. Nothing. She’d held his hand till he fell asleep and that was all she’d held. Absolutely.

But the charged up clockspring tightness below her navel said she’d better quit lying. Although Kaylee wasn’t beyond obfuscating to others when telling the truth would only hurt ‘em terrible bad, she always spoke truth to herself, even if she was the only one she was talking to.

So Jayne’s nurse rolled over onto her back and let her train of thought steam on through, engine fully stoked from the way he’d looked, innocent strong big fully equipped blameless male parts laid out, then levitatin’ in her hand’s grasp.

That same hand that’d so recently held his cock now streaked down inside her plain white panties, touching what her nethers already told her brain was furious moisture. Getting wet and wetter just from recollecting Jayne’s own.

Might could have saved herself this particular horizontal exercise, mighta done without the need to stroke and fondle her body toward completion using this mind-fecking Jayne imagery, if not for the fact that she’d involved two senses in her explorin’ when just one woulda likely done. A quick visual and then a quicker exit mighta left no brain-scarring at all. Nope, she couldn’t have left it to one sense. Weren’t enough for her to look, she’d gorram-well had to touch, had to take exactin’ engineerin’ measurements as if to sculpt him from memory outta cold engine grease later on. Two senses were all she’d used for explorin’ Jayne’s terrain? Was a sheep-humpin’ wonder she hadn’t tilted her damn head down a few inches more, far enough to inhale his smell and further still to have a taste.

That woulda been just about complete sensory overload. But the last sense, hearing, couldn’t have added to the fun ‘less she had him on top of her, heard him on top of her. His voice lost somewhere, part inside him and part inside her, moaning her name as he came…

Body near-sunfishing, fetal positioned around her hand clenched inside her, Kaylee shuddered gut-hard, drenched in sweat and woman wet. Had time to enjoy the cascading clatter and fall of relentless orgasm, a four-banger, tick, tick, tick, tick-- before sad guilt dragged her back. Not guilt at rubbin’ one out. Hell no. She’d been doin’ that since she was four and her ma found her spread-thighed and friction-moving on the corner of her bed, ma closing the door on her way out. Nah, that had ever been a non-guilty pleasure, no denying!

Not sadness at not havin’ Jayne here to do her hand’s work (Simon. Make that Simon. The young doctor was who she wanted here, who she always wanted here. Not Jayne. Never Jayne.) The bad feelings chasing the pleasure were at taking advantage of a sick man, a man she didn’t even want. Yeah, that was it.

And she made herself believe it, that the masturbatin’ didn’t have a tinker’s damn to do with Jayne or Jayne’s equipment, sufficient at least for her to get some rest that night. So much for utter honesty with herself. Truthsomeness could apparently be adjusted to suit the need at hand. Right now, said need owed adjustment due as much to the lateness of the hour as what quantity of truth her mind was up to swallowing. A small voice gave her that grace this time as she drifted away.

~~~

Next morning the doc woke Jayne up with the stab of a syringe full of meds from one long-fingered hand and a fingering of the head wound’s bandaging from the other.

Jayne shot to consciousness with the energy to slap the head-handling appendage away while simultaneously keeping his hip still, which Simon took to be a good sign. Jayne’s senses being alive enough to make him annoying while also showing mind-sense such that Simon’s needlework went unmolested meant the patient’s reactions were approaching normal.

All senses “go” meant the big troglodyte could get the hell out of the only place on the ship Simon could call his sanctum that much sooner. The doctor finished the injection and turned to make notes with an almost undetectable smile. Kaylee walked in as the doc left his notes to peel back Jayne’s head dressing while reaching for fresh gauze and antiseptic.

The little mechanic rushed over to help, upsetting the bottle of wound cleanser but neatly catching it between a hip and the counter. The doc smiled and wedged the bottle from Kaylee’s body’s grasp, nodding at the bandages by way of asking her to hold them until needed.

Armed with nursing supplies, Kaylee stood by and took a look at Jayne’s head, careful not to meet his eyes just yet. The wound looked queasifyin’ but she breathed deep and stood tall so as to be of the best assistance.

When an uncomfortable silence filled the room after Simon cleaned, rebandaged the patient and then turned away to the sink, she finally swept her vantage point from Jayne’s plastered-down head of hair to his open eyes and noticed for the first time how ever-so soft and deep blue they were.

Never gave a thought to his eyes before, wondered what her fixatin’ on them now was about. Might be they weren’t normally that fetching, could be bright now due to fever or on account of the drugs.

She felt a twinge of concern, a yen for him to heal up right as rain and she felt glad of Simon being there to help Jayne heal. And to help her keep her mind on her future beau and off the one her hand had found all unconscious the night before.

O’ course she could light shrine-incense forever in prayer and still not have Simon ever notice her the way she noticed him. Just how long was a girl supposed to use all her best wiles with nary a result to encourage her? The choice of beaus on this boat was mighty minimal, there was only Simon and Jayne, really. And Jayne was out of the question.

Jayne was… Oh hell. Jayne was swai. Not almost pretty swai like the doctor. No, Simon was softly handsome, lithesome. Graceful-walking, graceful talking.

The doctor was what Kaylee was not, and as a consequence, perhaps, he was what her girlish dreams had long insisted on in a prince to carry her away.

Jayne was more like her. Similar raisings, near enough double to her way of talkin’, devilish sense of humor and even sexual experience, if his rambling and shameless boasting was to be believed.

Jayne had begun to carry her away, lately, in a whole different direction she wanted Simon on a white stallion to gallop her to. The merc was sharp-planed hardness everywhere. Well, everywhere Kaylee’d had time to inspect. She owed all manner of burnin’ fragrance in penance after that fong luh act of hers the night before, fondling Jayne’s bits as if she’d had a right to ‘em. That thought was a mistake since it led her right back to the aforesaid night and the attached revelations she’d sorta successfully crowded from her memory in the wee hours.

There was today to get through, and after today, tonight. She hoped it’d just be her and fatigue in her bunk, or failing that, a visionary Simon covering her and pushing inside her since the flesh and blood version weren’t interested and would likely always be disinclined.

She looked at Simon’s back, slim and tall, regal even, near the counter, then looked back at Jayne. Even poorly and prone, the big merc made the room fairly bulge with his strength’s potential. It seemed to radiate off the man like gentility did offa Simon.

If Simon stepped outta the room, Jayne would still make the room seem full of men. Kaylee wondered at that, then derailed that particular train of thought when Simon handed her a heated bowl of soup for the patient’s nourishing breakfast.

Kaylee tucked a cloth around Jayne’s neck, mindful of the drips into his ear the day before. Jayne surprised his little nurse when his hand reached up to help her tuck the cloth edge beneath his neck, smiling up at her, enjoying the view of her tee-shirt covered bosom a scant inch from his shoulder’s edge. “He’s better this morning. Grabbed my arm when I began an injection into his hip.” “That’s great,” murmured Kaylee, who thought to wonder how he went from near-coma last night to miraculous strength this very next morning. Any way he coulda…

“…shoulda known you and Kaylee takin’ such good care a’ me made all the difference,” said Jayne in a dim imitation of his bullhorn voice’s former bluster. “I ‘preciate it and all, is what I’m sayin’. That and the soup. Th’ soup’s good. You make it, Kaylee?”

“Yeah. Got some mushrooms and greens to add to the chicken fat we liberated on our last stop. Book thought the vegetables and the fat’d give you strength. Guess it worked, huh?”

She spooned some broth into his mouth, saving him the need to reply while she used the brief respite to spin her thoughts into comforting patterns. Conjuring self-assuring thoughts such that he didn’t know, couldn’t know, wouldn’t have no way of knowing...

He knew.

He laid there swallowing steadily, and he knew. Even when the full spoon piston'd liquid nutrition into him faster between swallows, almost as if to keep him from thinking on anything else, he knew. And he knew she knew he knew.

Easy though. The ticket was to go easy. Go gentle and slow. Didn’t want to spook her. She was a prize horse to be broke. But broke right. If you rush things, riding’s impossible. And he wanted to ride. She did too, he knew it now. Hwoon dahn, she’d come to the knowing without him doing a dadburn thing. He felt like Sleeping Beauty on earth that was, she who had come alive to love’s kiss. All he’d had to do was get grievous hurt, fall asleep and wake up to her touch. Felt a rise at the memory and repositioned his good leg to mask it.

What happened to “easy now?” He had time. Healing takes time and he weren’t going nowhere. She weren’t going nowhere neither. Only so far a little girl could go when her house’s fencing was all solid bulkhead.

Her eyes’d been on him almost the whole time since she walked into the medlab this morning. Eyes full of Jayne, not the prissy doctor. Jayne was keeping score and it was looking good. Damn good.

Kaylee stayed with him till the soup bowl got bare, then she hurried away, looking puzzled, thoughts all turned inward. Jayne leaned up from the pillows, propping himself on his elbows and got out a, “Bye Kaylee,” as she turned to leave, not turning back around or acknowledging his speakin’ farewell.

Simon took Jayne’s vitals while Jayne took out his frustration amusing himself by swatting at either one of the young doctor’s girly-man hands that came within reach.

Patience incarnate, the doctor went about his duties toward this most difficult of patients, carefully reciting under his breath the beginning of the sacred Hippocratic oath, “First, do no harm.” He’d found it was the best, most reliable way to endure the Neanderthal’s fong luh antics. It was that or finish the job the ranchers did, ma-shong. Most assuredly a tempting thought, no denying, but sadly, not an option. Blasted Hippocratic oath left no room for mercy-killing.

~~~

The Measure of a Jayne, Part 3 Simon finished recording his latest findings which, when compared with the past days’ figures charted on a graph indicated almost miraculous progress. He checked once again to be sure, and dared himself to hope that his latest doctor/patient ordeal might actually be nearing an end.

The signs led toward it being a good end indeed, better than he’d have dared hope when he first laid eyes on Jayne bled nearly dry into the desert dust, life slowly leaking from two grievous wounds, either of which could have been fatal. The copious but nearly sterile dust that caked him from head to toe was an aid in stanching the blood flow. It was likely part of what kept the burly merc's soul and body intact until Simon's superior services brought him back from near-dead status.

Yes, the results were all there on paper logged in Simon's precise and flowing script. Some combination of the excellent education his noble parents had provided and the grueling hours of emergency surgery he had successfully wrought during his spotless internship had brought him to this place and this patient.

Jayne reaped the benefit of Simon’s learning and experience. Hell, they all did on this boat. Not exactly the clientele he had envisioned when he was a star medical student and intern. In no way could the smooth promising path of his former life have prepared him for its current and frequent twist of healing gun shot/knife lacerated/poisoned/tortured/fractured thieves aboard a smuggling ship.

Would that eons younger and far happier Simon Tam striding along toward a secure future have believed it if told about the fodder that would provide him with his bread and butter some day? Never in a million years.

A pack of thieves to work on. A potpourri of options to work on at any given time, just to keep things interesting. There was the choice of a talented reckless pilot, mysterious minister, Guild-certified companion, girl mechanic, committed captain (yes, sometimes Simon would love to have him committed) and now the biggest dumbest mercenary ever to draw breath. River’s safety and his own depended on his work, of course. Depended on his performing triage and raising the dead back from near zombie status on a regular basis.

The sheer variety in choices of patients and eviscerations he was called upon to undo made for a lack of boredom. If nothing else could recommend the job, there was all the spice of variety to stave off any possible fits of ennui. In his spare time, there was River. Always River. She filled his thoughts and hopes no matter who he was working on, what body his hands were wrist deep in at the time. The time for even having to touch his current patient, much less probe any further than the upper dermal layer of his wounds, was thankfully coming to an end. A cursory inspection under the head and the thigh bandage showed him to be healing up nicely.

Yes, impossibly, Jayne would live to curse and spit and fight again. Maybe even to try once more to send Simon and River to their doom for the price of the sizeable reward offered by the Alliance. Or else maybe to return to this bed and make use of all Simon’s skills yet again. It made one wonder what use there was in repeatedly assisting the moron to heal.

It seemed the merc’s brain was back to as fully-functional as it ever possibly was prior to the violence he had somehow invited himself into at their last planetary stop. There was only so much even modern medicine supplied through the conduit of Serenity’s physician’s exceptionally skilled hands could cure, after all. Restoring normality, even the level that could be applied to Jayne’s mental faculties, was a miracle considering the fringe planet’s incensed ranchers’ rough and bloody treatment of the cranial vault that was home to Jayne’s brain. If sewing the lining back inside Jayne’s skull was delicate hazardous work, the bullet Simon had skillfully removed from within a nanometer of Jayne’s femoral artery was a double threat. It had been touch and go but the patient would probably not even have a limp as a result of the good doctor’s ministrations and he most definitely would never use his restored mental faculties to thank Simon for it.

His latest logged findings showed Simon the tunnel’s end limned with light, putting to rest his ruminations on the indignities visited on a doctor owned by an airborne den of smugglers. He smiled directly down at Jayne in realization. “You’re a free man, Jayne.”

“Hunh?”

“Your vitals are much improved. You will remain on bed rest, bunk rest, to be precise. Your cabin will do quite nicely as a locus for continued recuperation.”

‘And you’ll get your reeking carcass off my medlab bed,’ Simon left the thought unspoken. In truth, he wondered if there was enough disinfectant on all of Serenity to effectively swab the Jayne-smell away. Perhaps there was some leather-like material he could have Kaylee find on board to recover the bed with, should eau de Jayne prove indefatigable after repeated scrubbing.

The wounds’ surrounding fleshy areas were clean, Simon would in no wise endanger the merc’s susceptible opened skin without cleansing it fiercely of surrounding bacteria waiting to invade, but the rest of the man’s body had begun smelling strongly, distinctly strong of late. “Can I get a shower too, Doc?” Jayne was thinking of Kaylee’s nose, how close it’d been to his tallywhacker and other things the night before.

Hell, Kaylee’s attentions’d been the restorative to his body and spirit, no matter that he’d tried to sell ‘em his nourishin’ soup comments. “I’m a mite worse-smelling than them cows we had muckin’ up the bay.”

Jayne mighta been born yesterday, but it was yesterday morning, not last night. He knew that gaining permission to come courting involved scrubbing up some. Hopefully before he had another up-close and personal Kaylee experience. He smiled and clandestinely rubbed his crotch. “A sponge bath will have to do for now, but you can do it yourself in your bunk with a basin of water next to the bed. I’ll get it set up for you and,” that was the last Simon said to Jayne as Wash barked out a demand over the com for the doctor to report to the bridge pronto. Sounded like he said River fell down, just a minor bump, but the two men in the medlab could hear her sobs echoing through the com overhead.

That was all it took for Simon to lose all facial profusion. White-skinned and tight-lipped, he grabbed his blue bag, the closest to hand, and was out the door in two long strides, nearly levitating in his rush to be gone. Staring after the moonbrain’s departing brother, Jayne looked for him to shout back over his shoulder, to tell the patient anything else. Like what to do, like what he could do. Failing any answer, the big man slowly raised himself upright on the bed, both legs still stretched out in front, supported fully by the bed.

His head only swam a little at the change in position, so Jayne decided to push it some more. He slid the uninjured left leg off the bed, sliding the hurt right one along at a near right angle till the calf was half-dangling over the side. No signals issued from his bandaged right thigh more serious than a dull ache, mighta been a result of the needle stab the doc used to say good morning earlier. Jayne hoped it’d be enough to get him where he wanted to go.

With no hindrance of worsening pain, he slid the hurt leg over the bedside to hang near its mate. Jayne looked at the floor about 6 inches down. Gauging his chances, judging them to be close enough for gov’ment work he slid one butt cheek off the bed, grabbing the nearby counter for support.

He cursed the slowly spinning room in splendid Mandarin Chinese. When the merry-go-round slowed almost to a stop he moved hand over hand along the counter. When he ran out of counter, he grabbed the door handle as his next handhold and crossed the threshold that led toward the haven of his cabin and Vera.

On his way out, he never noticed that the sheet had slid off him to pool on the medlab floor, his body’s only covering abandoned.

Jayne woke up in his bunk, unsure how he got there but mighty grateful for it anyhow. He was mostly in his bunk, the upper half was, at least. That was the business half when it came to sleeping so he called it good. If it was the other way round he’d a’ been napping on the cold metal floor. As it was, even half aboard must have made for good log-sawin’ because he’d been asleep long enough to feel almost new. No way to tell how long he’d been out for sure though. It might not have been a long nap this time. It was likely nobody else had time to know about his relocation, seein’ as how he was stark naked and his door was wide open. Figured some passer-by woulda covered him up for decency’s sake if they had looked in.

Not out of respect for Jayne’s sense of decency, he didn’t reckon he’d ever had any to speak of, but on account of their own. Just about anybody else on the ship’s decency quotient had to be superior to Ma Cobb’s boy, Jayne’s.

Thinking on ma brought his knit cap to mind so he levered himself legs and all up onto the bunk and snatched down the cap he always kept hanging at arm’s length. He dragged its clean smell deep into his nostrils, fancying he kenned field hay and ma’s cooking odors lodged in the cunning intricate weave of fibers.

That’s how Kaylee found him, smile on his face, naked as the day he came out of the woman who’d made the cap, legs pulled up nearly to a muscular furred chest, 6 feet plus of breech-birthed man curled up on his bunk. Forcing her eyes offa what she could see all too well, she spied the misshapen little hat clutched to his nose.

Thought she heard him say, “Mama,” and took an involuntary step forward, girl-Woman wanting to comfort a vulnerable boy-Man.

“Jayne? You alright?” And the merc crammed the hat ‘neath his one pillow, straightening his length out into a less infantile pose. Immediately realized that left him showin’ off his equipment and grabbed the same pillow to cover up his mid-lower portion, hat flying off the bed to land at Kaylee’s feet.

“M’ fine, don’t need nothin’,” Jayne growled at her. “Gorram girl! Why dontcha warn a man you’re fixing to barge in? This ain’t no tea parlor, it’s the only piece of this boat I got any privacy at, and I don’t want no visitors ‘less I know they’re comin’first.”

Kaylee stood over him arms akimbo and wondered whether to thwap him a good one or smooth his hair, what of it she could see around the bandage. His thick hair stood out all over prickly like a thorn bush that grew back home. All chance of angry battery fled as she studied his hair and the comparison that’d come to her. “What?” grunted Jayne. “Nothin’. Your hair is all—bristly and porcupinish. You want I should help you with it? I could…”

“No, I don’t ruttin’need your prissing ways around my head, messing up what don’t need fixing anyhow. Girl, you hover me like a hungry tick, and I won’t stand for it!”

Jayne had a flash of a moment to wonder why he was scorning the object of his considerable affections, and attributed the outburst just as quickly to embarrassment at being caught unawares in a homely homesick moment.

He figured she’d understand so he ventured: “Kaylee, I don’t mean nothin’. The meds are befuddling and I don’t mean to sling out at ya.” He looked at the metal ceiling, the edge of the bed, anywhere but at any moisture his damn fool mouth might have brought to her eyes’ edge. Also took that convenient moment to use the toes on his good left foot to grip the cot’s sheet good and hard, cocking the leg to bring the material’s edge within hand’s reach. Covered, he ventured a peek in her direction as she spoke.

Couldn’t see her eyes at all, though, ‘cause she had half-turned away to pick up a bowl while walking to Jayne’s sink.

“Well, your hair ain’t near the worst thing on ya, Jayne, if you want to know the very truth. We need to getcha cleaned up some, starting with your toes and forgettin’ about the hair for now.”

“I can do..” “No you can’t,” she cut him off. “You can do lots of things, Jayne Cobb. Later. Right now you can just lay there and let somebody else do something that needs doing. I’ll just do what’s proper, won’t deal with your…ummmm…stuff, you can take care of that after I leave. We okay on them terms?”

The big man grunted and laid back easy on his pillow, watching and waiting in wonderment at what glories providence had seemed to suddenly gift him with.

Nurse Kaylee was fixing to give him a sponge bath. Yeah. He smiled big at the image, watching her movements to be sure to wipe it off faster than Serenity could move, if the erstwhile candy striper’s eyes moved to catch his. Hoped she’d not look too soon, because the happy was worth lingerin’ over.

She brought over the bowl and a cloth floating on the surface of water he could see a little steam coming off of. Knelt on the floor at the foot of Jayne’s bed, turned back the sheet to mid-calf with one hand, swabbing the cloth in the slightly soapy water with the other. Wringing it out she made short work of laving his feet clean.

He tried manfully to be still, but couldn’t help a flinch and a muffled chortle when she went betwixt his toes. Saw her shoulders quake at that, glad at the realization that they were mutually amused, figuring that was more progress in the direction of some closer contact in the foreseeable future. Right up his alley, part of the plan.

The laundress used another bigger cloth to dry off his feet, rubbing the soles briskly. He ouched when she roughly dried the right foot, since it jostled his thigh some. She made a little moue of apology and gently laid the injured leg’s foot down again.

The sheet got folded back to thigh height for the next stage in the ablutions. Jayne’s thoughts ran in a circular mold, mouse on a wheel, breathing amped way up. Last time she’d pulled a sheet back this far on him, she’d all but had her way with him, he remembered. How would he ever forget, who’d ever want to forget that?

But Kaylee simply hummed a little tune, sounded kinda like the song them Mudders’d sung for him. The Jayne national anthem. Yeah, it was the same song. He wondered if getting close and personal-like with his parts was putting her in the mind to sing his praises.

She wouldn’t be the first female to be charmed into full-throated appreciation at first sight of what his dropped trousers revealed. Yeah, he liked thinking on Kaylee’s explorations leading to singing, and singing leading to carnal pleasures long-denied.

Got dropped firmly back to earth by her next words.

“I made up new words to your song. Kinda got it suited to Simon instead…,” she dropped off. “Would you like to hear it?,” Looked up to see how her words were taken.

Yep. He wasn’t happy. And it couldn’t be pain from her cleaning him up, because she made sure to be swishing the cloth around in the water rather than swabbing him when she said it. “I was just kidding, Jayne. To be honest, when I looked at your legs I thought of that big ol’ statue the Mudders made and how long your real legs’d be if you were 15 feet tall like that. That’s what made me hum ‘The Hero of Canton.’” An honest grin on her heart-shaped face was what won him over. There was that sense of humor of hers, twin to his, companion to so many other things he liked about her.

She rubbed the still warm damp cloth up his good leg and started up the gunshot one, pausing at the bandaged area, moving up over it and around it. No need to clean under the bandage, leave that to the expert, she thought.

She knew Simon would likely refuse to re-dress the bandages if Jayne didn’t get some washing-up first, so she had gone looking for the patient with that in mind. Knew too, that Jayne still needed tending from Simon in the way of bandage checking and such afore he’d be ready to care for himself and the rest of them by riding shotgun on Mal’s mule.

Was she doing this for Simon’s sake, Jayne’s or her own? A mixture of all three? Simon’s well-being had been the focus of her energies almost since his fine clothes and finer smile had first decorated Serenity's open bay door as he walked in. But lately she found her mind befuddled and full as grandma’s tick mattress with a new object for her attention, one that crowded out thoughts of Simon, made her think her heart might not belong altogether to the young doctor. Said object was looking truly tense now, all muscles wracked vice-grip tight yet granite still as Kaylee, wet cloth gone to cool in hand, absent-mindedly pushed up Jayne’s thigh, dampening the edge of the sheet covering his-- 'Wuo de ma', thought Jayne, had she lost her mind, takin’ this sponge bath thing so far? Jayne about went berserk as a man can be while laying stock still, the warm glowing warming glow that hit his privates streaked up his face sending all the right signals to the rest of him.

All systems go, like Serenity at her high toned best and ready for action. “Juh jen sh guh kwai luh duh jean jan,” thought Jayne, yeah, definitely a good day. One of the best days he’d ever had, in fact. The problem, see, was that he could tell just by looking at her face that she didn’t know what the pee goo she was doing. More importantly, who she was doing it to. Hell, she wasn’t even paying attention to where her hand had traveled, what it was doing to a certain hard-up man’s state of mind and body.

While her mind was elsewhere, Serenity's resident brawn was wondering when in the gorramdamn world of Jayne he had developed a sexual conscience. Partic’ly one that insisted a person’s hand on his nethers should be there because they wanted it there as bad as he did. Only the god of fornicatin’ monkeys could know. Since no deities were present nor did it seem likely they’d help in his soul-searching, Jayne started to cool his jets, chiefly due to realizing that Kaylee’s heart weren’t traveling the same path her small hand was.

Ah well, as he’d become so very used to saying lately, there was time for her and him to connect the dots another time, another place. He could wait.

For right gorram here and now, this zombified torture session that she’d intended as batting clean-up would need to cease before she commenced to cleaning up his bat in earnest. He assisted the jets’ cooling process by assuring himself he wasn’t sure he wanted her to start something he couldn’t finish right now, resources bein’ low and all.

So he cleared his throat loud and sudden-like to bring her back to her senses, sadly knowing where her renewed attention would leave him. Someplace alone and lonely for her hand. The preoccupied attendant leaning over his upper thighs looked down at the goose bumps she’d raised on him. A fresh crop of miniscule fleshy mountains leaped up as a drop of very cold water from the lifted cloth pinged down onto the swai ridge of muscle that hailed from his pubis diagonally to up over his hip bone.

He shivered. She shivered for different reasons. She dropped the cold cloth smack dab down on the burgeoning rise the sheet's edge barely covered that was the gorram opposite of miniscule. Shit, girl, what the heck did you think you were doin’, she had to wonder. Thankful that he hadn’t asked that question of her yet, she rose up off her knees, turned her head away from him and backwards-grabbed the wet cloth off him on her way up. Bending back down to grab up the bowl of nearly icy water, she stomped to the sink to empty and refill with warm water and very little fresh soap.

More than thankful for the break in ministrations, Jayne took time to have a talk with his rearing manhood, reminding him that there was a time for such and this weren’t it. Bribed Jayne-Thomas with promises that the pay-off would be worth a bit of temporary deprivation. That got it beat down some, enough so he could rearrange some of the extra sheet to hide the worst evidence of a restored and functioning hydraulic system.

His restless libido, encouraged by southern developments Jayne wasn’t completely successful at dampening, hacked through to his brain with a suggestion. ‘Hey, maybe if she started somethin’ again and we could keep eye contact, the somethin’ she started’d be something he would be able to more than finish.’

It was all Jayne could do to resist the nagging temptation to sneak a hand downward to check for tensile strength of purpose enough, just enough to see if lil’ Kaylee’d not be let down if she showed herself ready to ride.

Good intentions on one shoulder, hormone driven devil on the other, Jayne wrestled with himself over the best course of action.

All unknowing, Kaylee was aiding Jayne’s good side, giving him time to seek tight rein over the needs of his body over the wants of his heart and mind. She had the faucet barely turned on so a thin trickle of warm water creeped rather than ran up the bowl’s sides. The slow filling process aimed to give her own self time to organize her thoughts, questioning angels and devils she was only just beginning to become better acquainted with.

By the time Kaylee came back armed with fresh warm soapy water and cloth, Jayne lay on his side facing her, sheet safely draped over his crotch, disguising what lay beneath it.

Kaylee knelt on the floor at his chest level. The water in the bowl pitched and yawed but didn’t spill over as she set it down by her legs and pushed the cloth up and down, round and round to get it good and wet and slightly soapy. She used her dry hand to pull the sheet covering his chest carefully down to hip-level, then used both hands to wring out the cloth.

Head cocked downward as she prepared the cloth with enough water to cleanse but not enough to soak his bunk mattress, she didn’t see Jayne lean his head forward and down to snatch the scent of her oatmeal and honey hair near the nape of her neck.

He was quick enough to get repositioned before she turned back to her task, quick enough to paste a look of unconcern on his face that held until she laid the warm cloth to his pecs. It wasn’t so much the touch of the cloth that did it to him. It was more her looking at him that way. The him she was looking at was his chest, and the look was close kin to how she’d looked at Simon when she saw him without his shirt on in the cargo bay, playing basketball with the boys awhile back.

Jayne remembered that look very well, because he’d been jealous nobody’d spared a glance for his own chest likewise bared. Okay, so he was sweat-streaked and grimed and the doctor never broke a sweat. But give a guy a break. The dignified doctor always looked like he wun gwo pee, and that just weren’t human.

It appeared to Jayne from the rapt expression on Kaylee’s face that she was ready to trade the worship of the otherwordly divine for flesh and blood man-pecs.

Kaylee swallowed and made herself attend to the task at hand. Under her hand, near her breast if she leaned forward to wash along his extremely well-defined ribcage. She did. And it was.

Turned back to re-moisten the washcloth, brought it back as much to get the washing done before the water cooled as to hurry up and get her vantage point back where she wanted it. On Jayne’s torso. On Jayne’s belly. Wasn’t his belly button cunning? And here was the twin to that diagonal ridged musculature her cold cloth had found not 5 minutes ago when she’d forgotten where she was until Jayne’s quiet cough had alerted her to the gooseflesh she’d raised there.

Lord, but he was as beautiful as could be. Who coulda known? He was just a big reliable safety net to her and everybody else on the ship. Strong like bull, big like mountain, nothing to see, move it along.

But closer inspection had proved he was something else. Jayne was turning out to be something akin to a magnet pulling hard on Kaylee, making her soft in a lot of places, including her brain.

He was big in all the right places. No, that wasn’t the way to say it. He was bigger than a man had any right to be. The body Kaylee washed was toned to an nth of a degree of perfection, looked exactly like the superhero who starred in the color comic book stashed in her clothes chest.

She’d seen him working out with the Shepherd in the cargo bay, but never gave any thought to the work that did on his physique, unless to be grateful for the increased strength he could use during the heists that kept Serenity afloat and their bellies full.

His belly was a marvelous landscape of hardened planes and deep ridges. The rise and fall of terrain as he breathed slowly, deeply in and out was hypnotic as a snake to Kaylee’s mongoose. She licked her lips as a zap of purified lust ricocheted from brain to groin and back again. In an all-out survival maneuver she dipped and wrung the cloth again, making short work of laving the man’s muscular arms over and under, thorough but necessarily rapid-fire. She brusquely ordered Jayne to turn over to his other side so she could finish her task without the chance of his seeing what he was doing to her.

The lip-licking was bad enough, but coupled with the near hyperventilating pant newly added to the Kaylee Show, she knew he’d be on to her current disturbed state if she didn’t get behind him quick-like.

When his back was presented to her, Kaylee swabbed it up and down, back and forth striving for a workman-like job and wondered what it would be like to have Jayne “on to her.” She liked it on top, truth be told, but against the wall, on the floor, in the shower, on the table, all of the above and below showed equal charm. The sponge bath was nearly complete, leaving only the back of Jayne’s neck and ears. She worked them clean, then when she said she was all done, he rolled over onto his back, head turned to face her with a relaxed expression on his dirty face.

Dang it, she’d forgotten to clean his face. She took to this last task slowly, working down around his strong jawline and over wide cheekbones to strong forehead. Wiped down his nose which caused her to spare a thought for how balanced his features were. Nothing out of proportion, all his features working together to give him a handsome aspect that wasn’t anything like Simon’s, borrowing nothing from the softer side. Her bare finger skimmed over his full bottom lip and she felt his warm breath tickle and begin to dry the wetness of her hand.

“All done!,” she chirruped, turning to rise up so fast that she bumped her head the shelf over the bunk, nearly inserting her foot in the water basin as she struggled to hold her head and regain her footing at the same time. Jayne’s hands reached out to steady her legs which likely prevented a tumble to the deck.

Kaylee recovered immediately and drew away from the hands helpfully pressing into her overall-clad flesh, picked up the basin and dumped it into the sink. She rinsed and dried it, hanging the cloth up to dry on its hook.

The newly clean patient didn’t bother to cover up his dang fool chest like Kaylee’d wished he’d have sense enough to do. Nah, he just laid there, looking at her with a careful, almost watchful expression like she was an animal that warranted careful inspection in case it was ready to rear and bolt.

Just as Kaylee had hit upon a handy excuse to get out of there, Jayne asked her if she thought there might be some soup and maybe some bread or something he could have before she left him. “Right! I’ll get you something, shoulda thought of that first. Be back before you know it,” she sailed the comment over her shoulder as she left the scene of her most recent crimes for the kitchen and food for Jayne. She felt like a miserable failure as a nurse, realizing that food shoulda come before cleaning in the preferred scheme of what the patient needed most.

Wondered if she was the one who’d really needed to admin’ster the cleaning job more than he needed to receive it, based on her body’s tchen wah-y reactions to the process. Honest self-examination could well-enough wait till she added to his food intake though.

The Measure of a Jayne, Part 4

Kaylee tore through the kitchen in search of a meal fit to make up for the gropage she’d dealt Jayne under the guise of a friendly (and necessary) sponge bath.

A warmed up soft protein pseudo-meatloaf and a ramekin of rice/bread pudding from last night’s meal would do nicely, shouldn’t cause him no worries of the digestion kind. She spied a handful of raisins in a twist of paper, cadged a handful to toss on top of the pudding. Found some canned milk too, and heated it up with a little sorghum sweetener stirred in to help the taste.

‘Give the big bull moose some moo-juice,’ she thought with a smile.

Walking back toward Jayne’s cabin with the hastily but thoughtfully prepared nutrition on a tray, she worked on settling her mind onto safe topics she could air during a one-sided conversation so’s he could just grunt while he ate the peace offering.

Her pace sped up when she heard raised male voices coming from Jayne’s cabin. The tray’s contents shifted, wet ingredients slopped over a little as she stopped short of beginning the awkward climb down into Jayne's place. Two paces inside stood Simon. Angry Simon, angrier Jayne.

Didn’t look to be room for all three of them and a dinner tray in the cramped quarters so she stayed where she was, staring in. Focused her concern from face to face depending on which heated hating voice had the floor. A’ course she’d come in mid-show, so she had a little catching up to do before she could log her own opinion or act as referee if the pissing contest would let up enough for her to try her hand.

At this point long into the 2nd quarter, Simon was busy haranguing Jayne for leaving the infirmary under his own steam when he should have at least had the modicum of intelligence necessary to realize he should have waited for help. He went on to accuse that such reckless behavior could have resulted in a spill, rupturing the work the doctor had wrought on the head and leg wounds.

Kaylee decided she'd best make her presence known fast, hoping the food on the tray might lend a calming effect on Jayne at least. She made her awkward way inside and ended up flush with the cabin wall across from his bunk, descent with tray in hand a marvel of legerdemain.

As Simon shook the length of his finger almost in Jayne’s face, righteous indignation incarnate, Jayne countered with a barely controlled sneer referencing Simon being no kinda decent sawbones, leaving a man to die alone just so’s he could go answer a gorram red alert call to put a band-aid on the shen jing bing murderin’ brat’s scraped knee.

Jayne had no way of knowing he was correct about River’s injury being all sound, no fury.

However, the locus of the small wound being her elbow, not her knee, killed any possibility of Simon giving Jayne points for psychic ability. Having had quite enough of the seemingly endless supply of both Mandarin and English words for “crazy” that Jayne pulled out of his rectum with ease and at a moment’s notice, River’s brother countered by calling Jayne an ungrateful zhu tu tah mah de, almost spitting the profanity at the prone mercenary.

The look of awe-inspired fury on his patient’s face caused Simon to back up a step nearly bumping into Kaylee’s tray as Jayne pulled himself half to his feet with difficulty, biceps straining with the effort.

Kaylee peered around Simon’s shoulders to see if Jayne was naked as he’d been under the sheet during the sponge bath just about 20 minutes ago, but was relieved to see he’d donned some kinda gray sleep shorts that rode low on his hips.

A standing but listing Jayne began mumbling something about Simon being a “ruttin’ bucket of shu ma nyaow,” but all Kaylee heard was a warning klaxon inside her pretty head at the sight of the two men facing off. She figured a weak but recovering Jayne was probably a pretty close match to a perfectly healthy well-fed and rested Simon Tam if it came down to real blows.

Might be sorta interesting to watch beauty and the beast here get it on if not for the very real danger to the weaker of the two. Yeah, Simon could get hurt. Bad. Even hampered by a gunshot leg and cracked bandaged skull, hell, even using only one hand, Jayne was likely able to take Simon’s talented finger (the one that’d so recently wagged with authority in the big man’s face) with enough force to snap the delicate aristocratic bones to splinters.

Kaylee paled at that image and put a stop to the escalating testosterone fest by yelling at them to shut it and shut it right now. The doctor-patient-nurse tableau froze, the only movement in the space the expressions on the two male faces as both men looked righteously indignant and shamefaced by turns.

“Simon, since Jayne got himself to his own bunk without any help, do you think he’s okay to start walking some? Ready to get back on his feet a little? Cap’n wants his help on the caper pretty soon now, sooner’s better than later. Do ya think his making it all the way here is a good sign? Boss says this deal could have us eating good and livin’ high, maybe even get enough credits to buy some of that prognosticatin’ equipment you were tellin’ me you need in the lab.”

Simon took the bait from the agile fisherwoman, “Diagnostic equipment, Kaylee.” He looked thoughtful. “Yes, Mal did say Jayne’s assistance would be invaluable, something about brawn trumping brains when it comes to this latest greatest larcenous endeavor in particular.”

Jayne wasn’t sure, but he thought he just got insulted. Again.

His hormones began to factor toward overload when Kaylee diffused the situation by saying, “Jayne? I’ve got some goodies for you like you ain’t seen in forever.” She walked closer to him and sat on the edge of his bunk. The hungry man’s eyes fastened on the tray’s contents and he felt his body, obedient to rumbling belly, mindlessly fold itself down into a sitting position right next to the little nurse, now waitress. He grabbed sideways at the tray and Kaylee met him half-way, sliding the impromptu dinner table helpfully onto Jayne’s ready knees.

As the famished man dug into meatloaf, Simon took account of what was important and what was not. What was of paramount interest was Jayne’s continued improvement.

Toward that end, the doctor eyed the head bandage, noticing it was still securely fastened and there was no scarlet stain in view. Might be ready to remove the binding in the morning, he pondered.

Skimmed his educated gaze down to the thigh bandage, finding it also intact, no noticeable red streaks leading in any direction out from under the gauze. Checked the patient’s color next. Yes, facial profusion normal, no paleness, no flags of crimson in the cheeks.

Even at the moment he was most angry, Simon had taken time at the onset of this latest encounter with the bull-headed hired killer to notice that his pupils were equal and appeared to react normally to light when Simon had turned it to its brightest setting upon entering the room. Mollified at the educated realization that Jayne had not undone his work by the unaided and foolhardy stumble and stroll to his quarters, Simon backed down and sighed.

“Your odor has improved. Since you’re not only well enough to walk down here where you’re most comfortable but also to perform your own ablutions, I’ll inform the captain that the odds of pulling a successful thievery operation are being aided and abetted by your current progress.”

“You’ll do, Jayne, despite your being your own worst enemy when it comes to recovery. Kaylee is quite right; the well-being of everyone on the ship depends on your being in the peak of health. I won’t have you endangering the upcoming mission by any more nonsense, dong ma?” Not being in much of a position to argue with rice pudding stuffed in his mouth and a raisin on his chin, Jayne grunted and shoveled in another bite. He chewed with the beatific grin of a satyr given sustenance by an angel as Kaylee plucked the wet dried fruit off his face and popped it into her mouth. Jayne chuckled around his food and dug in with a will.

“Kaylee, since you seem to be invaluable as regards the man’s road to well-being, see that his intake of fluids is adequate. The food he’s wolfing down will undoubtedly have a positive effect, but dehydration is still a distinct danger. Keep him hydrated.”

Without waiting for any acknowledgment, indeed, without meeting anyone’s eyes, Simon turned to leave the little space straight-backed, dignity incarnate, no sound left behind his retreat but Jayne’s busily chomping jaws and murmur of satisfaction.

Kaylee watched Jayne as he ate, warmed by his enjoyment, feeding herself on the knowledge that she’d done good by him in this at least. The food she’d cobbled together was good and nourishing, just the thing to help keep her six feet something of newly owned responsibility progressing toward standin’ on his own two feet again soon.

He finished the meal in record time, belched fit to be heard on earth that was, and laid back on the bed with a hearty sigh of satisfaction. Kaylee, ever watchful, grabbed the tray before it crashed to the floor, sliding it deftly off him and onto a shelf near the wall.

“Hey, do ya think the doc’d be so proud of how good I smell now if he knew ‘zactly how that came about?”, he asked Kaylee, never taking his eyes off her face as he waited for her answer. “I know it, you know it, and that’s all that needs to know of it, even though he’d never care even a little bit if I'd swabbed your whole carcass down with nothing but my tongue.”

Jayne twitched about the corners of his eyelids, felt them narrowing down, his own tongue skimming the corner of his mouth at the visual. “Well, okay, he’d mind my tongue action, but only ‘cause of the risk of me gettin’ an infection from your dirty skin, is all,” she smiled ruefully.

Jayne swallowed hard, downing the fantasy in the process and said, “Well, I wanted to thank you for the bathin’. God knows I needed it. And the food too.” He looked at the tray, wondering if he mighta missed some crumbs of almost-meat near the empty pudding bowl.

“I’ll get you a good breakfast in the morning. Best you take it kinda easy on eating for now. No good to ya if it comes right back up from putting too much down you at once.” He nodded. While he searched for something else to say to keep her by his side, on his bunk, for a little longer, she stood up, slapped her overalls-clad thighs and said, “I’m gonna go put this stuff away and then go shower my own self.” He silently thanked Buddha and Kaylee for another visual. Hell, a man could do alright for fantasy fuel by just listenin’ to her talk for a while. She bent down and stroked his rumpled hair, smiled, and almost as an after thought, kissed him on the cheek.

“ ‘Night, Jayne. Sleep good.” And then she and the empty tray were gone.

~~~

After Kaylee left, he levered himself up off the bunk again and hobbled to the sink. Surprised and proud at how easy it was to make his way that short distance. He had to take it real careful, of course, but he made the trip 'thout toppling over and thought the face he saw in the mirror over the sink didn’t look all that done-in.

The hair, though, that was a caution. No wonder Kaylee’d laughed at him. The dark greasy hair stuck up all around the head bandage and spiked every which way. Supporting part of his weight with a hand on the wall, he took after the hair problem with a comb, but weren’t no good way to deal it since the bandage half-covered everything.

“Feng du,” he muttered. Only one thing to do. He moved closer to the sink, hip leaning up against the cold metal so he could use both hands to loosen and unravel the bandage on his head. When unwinding revealed the last square of gauze, he cautiously peeled that back and looked away from the mirror.

For a big stud, he was sometimes rendered a puling boy at the look of his own blood. Hardening his resolve and firming his stance to prepare for the worst, he forced his steely blue eyes to turn back to his image in the mirror. “Aww, it don’t even look bad.” The doctor’s labors had left the injury remarkably hard to even see. Jayne had been blissfully unconscious with no way to know it, but Simon had used his best new suture seals to knit the scalp whole again. The procedure was so well-received, there was not even a need to shave the hair around the wound.

Jayne cheerfully but carefully tamed down his unruly mop, finding its greasy status a help to keeping it in line some.

Mindful of Simon’s lecture on hydratin’, Jayne turned on the cool water at the sink, cupped one big handful after another and drank till he couldn’t.

Leaving the water running, he propped his dry hand and forearm on the wall by the mirror, and used the other hand to nudge down his shorts far enough to haul out his penis. Eyes focused on the ceiling overhead, Jayne urinated into the sink bowl, sighing in ragged bliss at a man’s universal right to pee on his own, wherever he ruttin’ wanted to point it.

Turning off the water and leaving the shorts riding the low edge of his hips, the satisfied man made his way back to the welcome of his hard bed.

Jayne lay in the bunk and considered his options. Assessed the day’s achievements and disappointments in the Jayne & Kaylee department.

The more he tried to think on helpful ideas for reeling her in, strapping a bridle on her and taking her for a long leisurely ride, the less he could concentrate on anything but his body’s reactions to the thought. The big clean man with the increasingly filthy thoughts let it ride over him.

Nobody was gonna disturb him, he wasn’t trussed up on the medlab bed anymore with lights on him day and night and a door wide open to anybody in tarnation who had a mind to snoop. His cabin door was closed solid. His bunk was warm and private.

Nobody here but him and no reason but fatigue to impair his wanting to be of some relief to his own self. Fuck fatigue. It’d been too long since he’d flogged the dolphin, gotten any kind of release. ‘High time,’ he thought, ‘Damn the torpedoes.’

Why over-think it? Disengaging brain, shelving fatigue, he slid his strong left hand snail- slow down over a chest thinned some from convalescing, but unfailingly strong with the layered muscle he’d piled on with Book’s help lifting weights so often.

Crisp chest hair lay in a fine mat on his pecs, twin nipples peaked up and calling for his fingers to touch, and right now, please. He used his finger to rub from one dusky male tip to the next, rubbed, then pinched first one, then its twin. Arched his back a little at the bite, strong neck bent and taut turned slightly to one side on his pillow.

Jayne deliberately left his cock to simmer, wonder when the first firm touch would move in a southerly direction, played with his own body telling himself he didn’t know for sure how long he’d string this out, knowing only that it was always better when the waiting dangled on, played out.

“Delayed satisfaction.” That’s what a learned kindly whore had called it, back when he was 14 and she took it upon herself and educated him on the ways of it.

Smiling and rumbling low and deep in his ribcage, he thought of long late lessons, long and short alliances reaping the benefits of his mentor’s experience through the years and through-and-through all his partners since her. Made him want to try the best parts of his education and internship out on lil’ Kaylee. Give her the benefits of his learnin’, not just for one night, please god, but a long season of sessions teachin’ her what he’d been acquiring. Part of the teaching was a quiet asking, not telling. He knew to touch her here and ask if it was good. Did she want it harder? Softer? More? Change the pattern, alter the brushstrokes. Yeah? Oh…yeah. Schooling her and him would involve the teacher becoming a student too, watch her face, listen to her breathing, her almost imperceptible sounds, flutters.

Did she draw her leg up a little when he touched her there? Did she turn her head to the side away from his gaze then, the feeling so strong that she couldn’t even look at him? Ahhhh, yeah. That’s it. Walk with me, Kaylee. Lemme turn you a little this way. Let’s move, darlin’, let’s glide.

Moving his hand down over the hard plane of his belly, he followed the dark arrow of belly hair from navel to pubis, rubbed hard then soft from one defined hipbone to the other. Thighs slid apart, making way, giving blatant demands for the cruel teasing to end, and now. Not yet though. Not yet.

There. Hand left his belly and circled wide of rearing cock, leaving it bereft of touch. As if it had a mind in its own head, the big curved phallus leaned hard and twitched toward the roaming hand as it veered to the side and down, searching out the heavy sack beneath.

God, the singing zapping up his body when his fingers finally cupped him, weighed him, carefully rolling each egg in its nest. Pinching the extra flesh between fingertips, he tugged gently. The pulling caused his scrotum to draw up tight, pruned wrinkles covering the balls beneath his touch.

Jayne smiled. He knew this dance so well. It was like cleaning Vera in the dark. Never needed any light at all, didn’t need to over think it. Pure pleasure without thinking. Sliding, oiling, renovating all the moving parts.

When his prick had begun to wilt just the tiniest bit disappointed from lack of any touch, Jayne’s hand quickly left his sac and plowed upwards, gripping the wide lonesome base that sprung from his pubic bone. Jayne cocked his weapon one-handed. “C’mere, you python.” Tight hold, hand still but ready. Waiting.

Rumbled a laugh when the hydraulic system silently but willingly screamed in alert readiness at the unexpected maneuver. Right as rain, taut as Vera’s barrel.

Cock locked and ready to rock.

Sweat rode his hand and eased his way. All pretense of teasing vanished now, Jayne rolled his fingers from the wide flared base in a slightly circular pull running a calloused thumb edge along the super sensitive underside, up over the head with an extra little tug on the way back down to the root.

Slamming his head back, hardly able to contain his own body’s excitement after the long lacking loneliness, his neck arched in a foreshadowing of what his seed’s stream would be like when he finally allowed this dance to end.

He led himself by his own dick, squeezing hard at the base, sliding up, slamming back down, sweat continuing to make admirable lubricant as he conducted the symphony of hormones, muscles, bones and blood that sang the tune.

One hand plyed his balls, two fingernails lightly raking along the taint of his scrotum, ratcheting ransomed pleasure up one notch higher. The small shadowed area where his balls attached to his body and the small opening to his arsehole got what it wanted too, as his fingers pressed in, branding the dime-sized surface with just enough pressure to soothe and torment all at once.

Hell yeah. He was good at this, nobody better. Who else knew Jayne’s measure better than him? Beating out this song’s cadence was an exercise that had been honed from awkward fumblings in adolescence to the current virtuoso level performance over years of practice, times that filled in the staccato pauses ‘tween paid or free willing women to sub for his hand’s expertise of tug and flow.

Kaylee sure had appeared gorram willin’ of late. He had to be sure though, he thought as her name burning in his brain caused a sudden pulverizing squeeze of hand on cock. Had to be certain of her motives afore he ever got what he now held in his hand sheathed even firmer than fist-on-cock could inside her woman's warmth, her heat, moisture as like to boil him hot as to wet his trail.

He was close now. Close to completion lying there in his bunk and close to having Kaylee there too with him atop, grammercy. Him under. Him solid sure. Next, her under him, pinned by the hardness of his Jayne-Thomas so gorram good that she’d never want to leave. Never leave his bunk, never want it to stop.

Never…….want…..to stop.

Jayne’s big long frame whipped wide, ankles leaving the bunk on either side of the bed’s bottom, one foot banging up, slamming hard against the cabin wall. He never felt any pain in the offended ankle, the rest of him bein’ so wrapped and warped strong and agile in the maddening pleasure leaving no room for singing nerve endings to register aught but his cock’s crescendo.

Both hands secure on his weapon, Jayne tugged upwards again, chin turned upwards and here it came. Arc of creamy spurting issuing forth at an amazing rate of speed and grabbing air something fierce before touching down on his heaving belly and chest.

He rubbed his own seed into the skin on his torso like lotion. Had learned the habit as a boy, best way to get rid of the evidence in case his sheet slipped down later when ma came in to check on her own big baby boy.

As his flattened palm and fingers circularly massaged in the erstwhile skin cream, the devastatedly tired but bone-deep satisfied man forced his muscles to hyper down, mind following along to assess his status. What next move of his would bring Kaylee around?

Assessment’d have to wait. He crashed suddenly into something more closely related to a coma then restful sleep, body’s store of healed reserves sapped by tonight’s onanistic command performance. Might not’ve been all that wise to expend energy startin’ up and then dousing a fire seein’ as how he was supposed to be healing up, not heatin’ up.

Both hands slid bonelessly down off his chest and cock to lie against his sweat-soaked mattress. More sweat trickled down his forehead, pooling where his recently combed, but now mussed hair met the pillowcase.

~~~

The Measure of a Jayne, Part 5- Conclusion

Kaylee washed and dried the few dishes on the tray she’d just brought back up from Jayne’s lap. Smiled at remembering how the food put out his side of the heated argument with Simon she’d walked in on there in Jayne’s quarters. The good doctor might have come there spoiling for an unfair fight, harboring some misguided hope that since Jayne was still poorly this might be a grand time for Simon to sternly lecture the big mercenary, take him down a notch or two.

Simon was pursuing a potential beating just when his salvation walked up in the form of a shapely ace mechanic in overalls. Kaylee was witness to the fact that Jayne did not lack the strength to stand. Didn’t lack in nothin’ he needed to quell Simon's shouting, apparently. And stand he did, fury and caged strength flexing and toiling, ready to lay Simon out flat on the deck, in sudden dire need of a doctor himself.

But a heartbeat before it came to that, Kaylee the peacemaker had swooped down with her tray of good nourishing food like a boxed picnic on a summer’s day. Lured Jayne’s fists into going from coiled up and ready to rain down hell to simple appendages gripping a spoon and fork in the space of the time it took Kaylee to step forward and sit down on the big man’s bunk, patting the place at her side for him to sit down and eat.

As his raging appetite showed, Jayne clearly didn’t need as much help from her or Simon, not near’s much as before. Simon was lucky Kaylee was there to look out for his welfare, she figured. But hell, Jayne still needed Simon too; there was things Kaylee could not, would not do. The patient would do well to remember that fact and work harder at taking lip from the well-meaning doctor from time to time if need be. Kaylee was fine as a junior nurse in training, handing Simon a bandage, spooning soup into her charge when he was too weak to hold a spoon some days ago. But Simon needed to be the one to do what real doctorin’ was still needed.

The sight of blood and seepage had always had the potential to bring a roaring to her ears. Any quantity of gore within view meant that windy sound in her head and spots afore her eyes’d be the last things she’d see or hear before all her blood rushed to her vital organs and left her head as the deck rushed up to meet her.

Simon had thoroughly explained to her the body’s intelligent process of going from alert to unconscious when she was curious to know what could cause the sight of blood to drop a grown woman like a stone.

But to be honest, at the time she’d asked him for the scientific explanation she had been even more curious to get a close-up look at the flecks of sunlight that danced in the fine doctor’s eyes when there wasn’t even any sun out there for many parsecs around to explain their presence.

Her favorite doctor surely did love to talk about his craft and spent a pleasant hour rambling on about how shock to a body’s system caused lack of blood to the brain. That was because adren’line sent a good lot of it to protectin’ the heart, lungs and other vitals located mid-wise in the body. When the brain got to feeling suffocated out of blood, it sent signals so that the body would drop flat. And when a body’s lying down, it’s plain to see that blood can’t help but flow like a river back into the starving brain.

She seemed like a simple girl to a lot of folks, but they didn’t know nor never bothered to check the depth of imagination, the wealth of questions and answers she was like to hoard inside her head covered with soft and wavy –often messy or greasy- honey hair.

If folks spared a moment to think, they might smack their own heads and ask themselves just how much of an idjit could she be, seeing as how she’d proven time and again a master at keeping her only child healthy and thriving. Hell, a massive Firefly class ship and all her systems, running smoother than chicken fat on a glass doorknob weren’t no kind of small ‘complishment. Kaylee liked to ask questions. Back home her pa’d been drove to near despair at her endless supply. That was a long time ago, back when she thought there was nothin’ more like heaven than voodooing farm equipment and mules into submission.

Was before she’d ever boarded this ship of dreams and Serenity‘s soon-to-be-former mechanic in quick succession.

Using subterfuge she never knew she was capable of, she’d talked all manner of sweet to a studly but inept spaceship tinkerer docked on her homeworld’s port looking for supplies. For the wee cost of letting Bester think he’d seduced her with his manly charms, she’d gotten walked back with him to see his ride, a Firefly class ship. Small price to pay to get up inside one of those, she thought excitedly as the outside of the ship filled her eyes.

Shortly after Bester was done with their quick romp against the bulkhead of the engine room, she’d found that, rather than losing anything in the transaction, she’d gained the love of her life.

The process of payment began with considerable groping at her breasts and kisses sloppy enough to fill a teacup. Kaylee’d paid scant attention to the boy mechanic’s manly equipment exposed to light when he shimmied his pants down just enough to show her what he had.

She’d seen better.

She did make damn sure that when he took her to the wall and got it up into her she’d be maneuvered so as to face the biggest, most shiny thing she’d ever laid eyes on. The real pistoning action she cared about, the guts of the ship, were what she was there to see. Her first look at Serenity’s turning churning innards had been from a vantage point of four feet away as her head bobbed, pert chin knocking Bender’s clavicle on each short withdrawal, body rocking on the smallish axis of the man’s pride and joy.

What she saw over his shoulder was the most glorious vision, the best thing ever. Luckily the male half of the mediocre coupling was able to mistake the overwhelming enthusiasm in the pretty farm girl’s eyes for awe at his manly prowess. The flax-haired boy that had her propped and bouncing atop him had no idea he was just the means to an end, Kaylee’s fingers itching to leave his body and get on, get into, the real equipment. To that end, she took her talented tongue to the inside of his ear, breathing out words of admiration, utterances of bliss.

That was when the Captain walked in making Bester’s end into her beginning.

Bester was a buffoon, couldn’t handle the crucial job of keeping Serenity flying and Mal’d known it, was just waiting for the chance to prove it. Hopefully in port somewhere rather than out in the 'verse when it'd be a dangerous thing to find out for sure.

When the captain came in and caught them in the act, Kaylee slid down off the boy totally at ease, barely even needing to adjust her short skirt. Her shiny smile belied any guilt or guile. It was a genuine expression of goodness of spirit that the captain would grow to realize was a gift the whole crew would get to know on a daily basis. On all the days Mal knew her afterwards.

When Bester had no proper answer to Captain Reynolds’s question about Serenity’s readiness to fly, Kaylee’d instinctively known what to say, what to do. So she said it and did it, like she always did back home. The captain was no fool, could tell real gold from pyrite when he saw it, and made her an offer. She didn’t spare one thought for her eager recent lover, only reasoned as how she’d need to ask her pa.

So began the best day of her life, starting her life’s work as ship’s doctor—Serenity’s doctor, more important than even Simon Tam himself. Because when it came right down to it, Simon kept Serenity’s humanware servants firing on all cylinders, but when Miss Kaywinnit Lee Frye hung up her shingle, the hard skinned creature that cradled them all stayed in perfect running order.

After he came on board much later, and after it turned out he was staying put, Kaylee selected Simon to be her answer man as replacement for her pa. Truth to tell, Simon didn’t seem to mind the new job Kaylee set him to, and usually performed quite well. He had more and longer answers than pa’d ever had, but wasn’t necessarily better at making himself understood to the little student.

He made up in quantity what he lacked in clarity, ‘most any time she had a question. Whenever he wasn’t preoccupied with River. Which was often. Which was almost always. Kaylee’s trick was to be aware when River got involved on her own for a brief spell, then she’d hunt up Simon and patiently watch for the lines of concern around the man’s mouth to ease up some. Then she’d swoop in with her questions ready-made for asking. He’d begin talking, she’d sit with her elbow resting on the table or her knee or, oh, any convenient surface, chin cupped in hand, and she’d stare at him and listen.

The interested look she plastered on her face never changed while he talked to her. If she felt her eyes begin to glaze over as Simon waxed far too technical, she was too kind to let him see disinterest.

Her remedy was to jump up, let him know one Serenity system or another was wanting her brand of doctorin’ and she’d make her escape to the flawlessly thrumming heart of her big metal and wire baby. The walk to the engine room and the time she spent there right after their talks was tailor-made for reviewing the doctor’s flow and cadence as he spoke, the lovely line of his lips, the rise and fall of feather eyebrows over intelligent eyes.

Yeah, she asked Simon stuff so she could be near him, for the excuse to see him up close, hear his silky voice wend its way up and down her spine and think of parts of him twining around and in other things on her. But she couldn’t rightly detect how or why her formerly all-time favorite activity of wrangling for Simon-time had lately been replaced by a completely different male object to focus on.

She opened up his hatch and peered into gloom, waiting for her eyes to adjust to the shadows. Trusted her ears to catch any sign that he was awake and wouldn’t welcome her barging in. Faint sounds came and they didn’t sound to be of the good so Kaylee descended into Jayne’s lair quick enough to help him if he needed her.

Standing just a foot from the side of his bunk, she studied the bare back that was all she could see above the sheet draped over his hip. His breathing seemed steady, but the broad stretch of skin was shiny with sweat. She bent down using her other senses in the gloaming to examine the situation, see if Simon needed to be called in.

She knelt by the bed and touched Jayne’s wide back. No reaction. Nudged him gently with enough pressure to wake most anybody from sleep. Nothing. Bent close to make sure she was right about him still breathing. Yup. Good-to-go there.

She rose back up then and half-turned to leave and maybe think about getting Simon outta bed for a look-see when a sound from Jayne made her turn sharply about.

“Kaylee?” said his voice, made odd with an undertone she didn’t recognize. “Kaylee,” he said again softly.

“Yeah, Jayne?” she said helpfully. No answer. She bent at the waist, tips of soft hair waving and sweeping along his shoulder, “What, Jayne?” Nothing. Her eyes were fully adjusted to the low light by now, enough to notice that she could see his hair combed out but slightly mussed. In fact she could see all of his hair. So where was the head bandage he’d been wearing a couple hours ago? What the hell had he done? Fear pricked at her and she shook him hard. “Jayne. What’d you do to your head? Where’s the bandage, Jayne?” He moaned a little and it resolved into words sounding something like, “Rock me, Kaylee. Ride with me, mmmmmmm.” She drew back her hand as if she’d been scorched by an afterburner. Ride with him? Was he delirious? He’d been like that for days when they rescued him from near dying. But he was so much better. Was there something wrong with his head again?

She had a tiny flashlight in the pocket of her coveralls, always kept it handy in case an infrequent power outage left her blind and needing to find the smallest flaw in the engine. Fished it out, flicked it on and peered at Jayne’s skull. Drew back again just short of focusing her eye on what was previously covered by gauze.

What if she fell on him, passed out from the sight of the wound? Kaylee gingerly folded herself down to sit on the edge of Jayne’s bunk. Safely seated and guaranteed of a semi-soft place to fall if so needed, she directed the little light source to examine Jayne’s uncovered noggin. Sweet Buddha, Simon was good. No blood, almost no line to mark the path of the grievous head wound she knew he’d been dealt barely a week ago.

Why had Jayne risked taking off the wrapping? Maybe he couldn’t resist a look in the mirror? His hair being all combed down proper now spoke to the fact of his doing the job with a mirror to look into for aid. Oh no.

“Ni shi sha gua, Kaylee girl,” she said aloud, grimacing at the guilty feeling. She’d badgered him about his hair today, hadn’t she… Laughed at his crazy porcupine hair sticking up all over to the point that he’d barked out at her in anger. Her fault that he’d gone and shucked the bandage to pretty up his hair. For her. For the next time she would come to see him. He’d tried to look swai for her. She coulda told him his hair weren’t nothing but raisins on rice pudding to her, though. The whole package of the man weren’t detracted one bit from by a little messy hair.

She smiled down at him and stroked the side of her hand softly, slowly along his thick hair. Her fingers found that it was getting a little long, almost curling at the nape of his neck. While her hand played there, fingertips spread apart and lightly scoring the base of his neck so she could plow up into his soft hair, her gaze slid sultry slowly down between his shoulder blades and down, down to his low back. Her hand not trapped in his hair obediently followed her eyes to map the path from neck to back. Dared to slide just a little bit under the sheet’s edge looking for the waistband of the old shorts he was wearing last time she saw him. They were gone now.

She felt the swell of his abs a little further down. Jayne was still, an occasional unintelligible word or moan coming out, that’s all.

A wrack of shivers whanged through the man and the sound Kaylee heard turned out to be his teeth clattering lightly. She thought again of going for Simon, but armed with the newfound knowledge that her careless remarks had likely been the cause of the bandage removal kept her where she was to think on it further. What if Jayne told Simon he couldn’t tell him not to comb his own hair when it needed it? What if Jayne told Simon where he could go with his instructions?

Kaylee studied him anew. The shivering came and went, nothing steady. Maybe Jayne was just cold or maybe he was only a mite feverish. If the situation was as harmless as she thought it to be, rousing Simon from sleep for no good reason could turn into another shouting match like the one she’d broke up earlier. Simon didn’t take well to being waked from sleep. The closest thing to meanness that he’d ever shown to River was when her fitfulness roused him from night slumbers. He didn’t yell at her, he never did, but the whole ship would hear him stomping around gathering what arcane potions he needed for calming his sister.

Kaylee felt all alone suddenly, with nobody to care for her in the night. Jayne was the same, she realized. Everybody on Serenity had somebody, when you thought about it. Even Shepherd had his good book, said it was the only friend that counted when you came right down to it. Mal could have ‘Nara, that he didn’t was his own fault so he didn’t count.

It was Jayne and Kaylee, cold, lonely, wanting the warmth of a friendly body laid up against their own. Before she could think beyond that, she propped the little flashlight on the shelf that served has Jayne’s nightstand and unclipped the one clasp of her coveralls to reveal her cotton panties. She shimmied out of them and shucked the tank top over her head. Everything fell where it wanted, Kaylee unmindful of all but where she wanted to be right now, who she wanted to be with.

She carefully and fully lifted up the sheet that covered Jayne, sliding herself tight up against him covering them both back up, breasts to low back, belly to his hard bottom, knees nestled against his thighs. Knew that before he’d gone abed he’d shed the well worn shorts he’d had on earlier. The skin of her own tummy registered that helpful detail.

As she settled in tight against the big merc, their breathing adjusted to the point that it was almost in unison. He still shook a little, causing Kaylee to try to gain a position even more flush against him to warm him, still him. She laid her face against his shoulder blade, turning her nose into his skin, inhaling deeply the clean leather and tobacco smell of the man. There was also, what? Maybe a touch of the scent of gun oil she’d often smelled when he sat at the kitchen table vivisecting Vera during her daily cleaning. Cleaned his weapons so often that the oil had become part of his scent’s signature.

Kaylee recalled hearing Zoe joke about her unintended play on words to Jayne when she’d ordered him to get his weapon in hand. She’d meant for him to get himself armed up, but since the order had been given shortly after the merc had announced, “I’ll be in my bunk,” it came out all manner of wrong. Zoe’d laughed hard along with everybody else recalling Jayne glimpsing Inara’s kissing a female client hello being the cause of his sudden need to go to his bunk. It was all smiles until Jayne had walked in packing Vera and carrying cleaning supplies. Everybody got quiet suddenlike, causing the big man to bark out, “What?,” for which nobody had an answer.

Jayne’s weapon. She’d never forget how he looked, how it felt when she took to exploring in the medlab when she was informally standing guard while he rested and had accidental-like found herself enjoying a little gropage. Not little. Big.

Little as in the amount of time she’d groped, big as pertained to everything else about the experience. The man still hadn’t stirred, but his breathing was regular. What if he woke while she was doing what she planned on? What of it? He was okay. He was getting so much better. She knew he wanted her, could tell by the way her being with him gentled him, improved his attitude, hell, she’d seen the growing results during the sponge bath in this bed. The signals he broadcasted in her direction seemed to have started when he got hurt and she turned to nursin’ him. Or else her nursin’ him had brought her close enough to the man for her to take in the signals.

Whichever, whatever the sequence, it was time to fish or cut bait. She wasn’t scared. Knew how to handle ‘most any bait and how to lure. She’d been around the block and back, probably near as many times as Jayne. Okay, not that many. But she knew things she might could teach the man, lessons he’d be glad of from the perspective of a young woman who knew her own body, wasn’t ashamed to tell her man where to put what, how to put it and how long to keep it there. She’d waited long enough to ride this stallion, and the time was now.

The first thing was to feel him out. Ummm, feel him up. Get him gentled, used to her touching him everywhere.

Jayne swam up out of fitful sleep to find something blessed warm strapped across his back. Not just his back, swamped around his butt and down past his knees. Breath on the nape of his neck, a tickle of spider webs across his naked shoulder. The violence of his shaking frame was invited to slow, stop to match the stillness of what, of the who that held him.

The question of who was enough to bring his brain back to puzzle on it some. Dragged into harness long enough to take inventory of his possessor. Softness. Warmth beyond belief. The spider webs of long hair, might mean a woman. Twin hard soft mounds abutting the small of his back confirmed it.

Yeah, woman. Kaylee. Either Kaylee for well and true or his mental health had gone all to go se impaired again worse’n ever, got itself dropped right back into the shitter of hurt that started on that dustbowled planet.

Took a wary breath and a nanosecond to pray to the god of Vera that his mind was alright and his body aware an’ in the now so’s both could benefit in the real world by what he felt gripping him. Wrapped around him. Holding him. Rubbing him. Fondling him. Fondling his, yeah. Ohhhh, sweet yesu. Yeah.

The him was his dick, and the her was definitely Kaylee.

His left hand reached up from where it lay on the mattress toward the slow firm gliding motion riding his prick. He moaned a little, couldn’t help it and heard a lovely sound that didn’t come from him follow right along with it.

Kaylee. Kaylee wrapped around him, lil’ Kaylee breathing short fast hot, moaning, stirring, rumpling his hair with each exhale. She surrounded him, body played all along him, eased the hurt and fever in him. She contrarily and inexorably instigated a different kind of fever in him. One that scorched from where her hand tugged sweetly like a piston lined in satin and fleece to where her legs had begun to rub slowly, oh surely silkily slowly up and down along his bent knees and hard buttocks. Her tits moved and swayed, walked like a massage along his back as her hand did its work. Oh yesu, Kaylee, oh. Don’t stop. For the love of all that’s holy and not, don’t stop it. If I’m dreaming or I’m gorram wide awake, it don’t matter. I’m a lucky man, luckier than I deserve to be.

If anything in Serenity’s hard-lived mercenary’s future was ever due to get any better than this, he’d likely never believe the prophet who told him so.

The big man surprised Kaylee mightily, proved his being awake by means of pulling himself toward the wall, away from her reaching hands, startling her into a little sound of frustration. His next move told her why, made things all better, as he made room on the small mattress for him to lie flat, then rolled onto his other side, turning the business end of him to face the business side of her. Much better, but not the best. The best was in his eyes.

His wide open gunmetal blue eyes didn’t meet hers, couldn’t do it just then. Not as he leaned back a little to get his first sight of a generously naked Kaylee swanned out on her side next to him. He’d seen her eyes lotsa times before, had studied them when her attention was focused elsewhere so’s she wouldn’t know she was being inspected.

Now when he had the time and opportunity, here in his quarters, in his bunk, with Vera unnoticed on her perch, he let the knowledge of Kaylee, that he was gonna know Kaylee in the sense they meant in Book’s bible, wash over him. Preamble to the knowin’ was looking his fill at what he hadn’t had exactly right when he’d mentally stripped off her gear so often in the past. Alone in his bed or with her standing right across the room from him in mixed company she’d never suspected he was stripping her bare to pass the time or pass the lust harder through his hand on cock.

Imagination hadn’t lied to him ‘bout her tits. The new little light coming from his bunk’s shelf clearly showed him the curve of full breasts, nipples positioned a trifle right of true center due to her laying on her side. Her position made her left titty the most easily visible of the two and he took in how the good weight of it rounded, made it pull the tightly wound nipple a bit mattressward, flesh full and full-on beauteous to his eye. Could just see the other dusky rose aureole and nipple half hidden by the weight of her other breast on the mattress.

Down her lithesome body from that vantage point was her ribcage, thin but meat covered enough. He could make out her ribs, wanted to touch where his eyes had just left and what they now saw oh, so bad, but not daring to yet. Don’t spook her.

If he took his time, his only contact being eye for skin for now, he’d have that at least if she flew off when he finally touched her. Gods, let this last. Let Serenity find a slow time warp right this second so the minutes could be drawn out to hours of time to do what he wanted to.

Kaylee was confused and a little scared when the man had pulled away from her embrace. She thought she was dead wrong about him wanting her, even though the signs had been so encouraging. But then he’d used the space she wasn’t occupying on the bunk to urge his big body onto his left side, to face her, and she’d found herself under close inspection.

He wouldn’t look at her. That wasn’t right. He looked at her breasts, her belly. She wanted him to do that, felt her skin glow all over from him doing that, but enough was enough. What did his eyes say? She couldn’t rightly have his eyes on her body and matched to her own hot gaze at the same time, so she called him back to her. “Jayne.” He didn’t come. “Jayne Cobb, you look at me.”

“Am looking at you. Now that I know you’re real, not some gorram vision I’m used to seein’”. “Jayne!”, louder now. His eye lashes lifted, steel blue eyes met hers at last. Both gazes naked, naked and hungry as their bodies were. She held on, her gaze shifting from his right eye to his left, finding them both so swai, frank with the knowledge of her, the knowing that she was his for the taking, and he was hers.

“Jaylee,” both voices blended as they spoke at the same time, anxious to get out of the way what had to be said before satisfaction could get started. Both smiled, and he lay silent, let her start again.

“Jayne, I want to be here, couldn’t stay away from here, from you. I know you don’t have any reason to care for me, and it ain’t fair o’ me to whang on in here and jump a sick man that don’t want what I’m offering, but hear me out, will ya?”

Did the corner of his mouth twitch? Was going to ask him what the hell that meant, but changed her mind when he nodded for her to go on with what she had to say.

“That first day Simon and Mal had me lookin’ out for you in the medlab, you were pretty much out of it. You weren’t keepin’ any food down, not much progress toward healin’ and Mal needed you healthy soon as possible for a gig he was planning. So I was in there, fed you some broth when you came to, held your hand while you fell asleep after that.

It was late, it was quiet and you were so still. I hadn’t seen much of your hurts since I found you nearly dead on that planet, so I walked around the bed an’ lifted the sheet to look at your shot up thigh and I didn’t think about how you’d be naked and it surprised me when I saw your… And.,”

“Kaylee?”, Jayne interrupted his nurse’s guilty announcement with a smile she could hear in his softened voice. The girl paused, took a breath, murmured the smallest possible “Yeah?” “I know all about it.”

“What? There wasn’t anybody else there to see.” “What you was doin’, I didn’t have to have my eyes open to feel it, lil’ Kaylee.”

“I’m sorry I took advantage of ya, Jayne, I beat myself up about it somethin’ terrible but it’s all I’ve been thinking ‘bout ever since and,” “Look,” he ordered, bringing her gaze back to him, not willing to let her eyes run away from him while he said what needed saying. “I’ve been wanting your hands on me, something besides a friendly whack upside my head when I joke at dinner or a sisterly pat on my shoulder as you walk by, forever, seems like. When I came to and found your hand was getting’ a rise outta me, the only thing that bothered me was I didn’t have the bad-boyin’ in me to do anything right by you.”

Kaylee colored at that, warmed all over again. Yeah, he had known, even though she’d tried to tell herself it was just her secret.

“You ran out of there like your ass was on fire, afore I could decide whether to open my eyes or just lay still hoping for more. I did care enough to watch your ass hurrying out the door, and not just to make sure there it wasn’t smokin’.”

They both chuckled at the bad joke, two sets of eyes crinkling at the corners.

“I want you, Jayne. It’s been worryin’ at me since you been hurt so bad, but the want’s been buildin’ so I can’t think anymore, can’t keep my mind on anything ‘cept finding out if you want me too.” She leaned in to kiss him only to meet his cheek pressing warm against her own. “Ummmmm,” the big man rumbled, chest softly vibrating against her own. “I ain’t hurt as bad as you think, not now, and we’re gonna do this my way.”

He went on, “That want you was talking about? I been carrying it my own self ever since I found out how you come to be on this boat. Before I ever knew how good you were inside, I wanted to get a piece of what Mal’s first mechanic got. Now don’t be mad at me for it, for the bare wanting without knowing who you were.” She shook her head shyly. “The wanting got to be needing once I talked to ya, pal’d around with ya some. I’m thinking I feel more for you than any woman ‘cept my ma.”

Kaylee was wise enough to take that for the compliment it was. He saw that he was making progress and took it upon himself to lean up over her, body making to take control of the situation. Her hand stopped his move and she shook her head.

“You’ve got some strength back, sure. But you ain’t ready to ride yet. I’m doing the riding here, dong ma?,” and she pushed him back down on the mattress, he let her do it. As he lay flat, Kaylee heard him say inquiringly, “We gonna get time to do it my way soon’s I get a clean bill o’ health from your boyfriend?”

“Look. He aint’ my boyfriend, never will be. The more I’ve been thinking about you, the more I come to know he ain’t like me. Can’t be like me, can’t really ever like me ‘cause of bein’ different. I don’t care anymore. I care about how you and me are the same. Neither one of us got anybody to care about us. Both got a lot of things in common, an’ most important right now is we got parts that wanna cooperate. I’m in large need of cooperation, here, Jayne.”

“But to answer the other question, yeah, if this turns out as good as I plan it to, I’d be fong luh to turn down a re-match once you’re able. No, lay back, you just think you’re able now, but I know better. You’ll drive next time. Let mama take you where we need to go tonight.”, she ended the sexy speech with a purr of a sigh and one leg looped over both of his thighs, carefully avoiding the bandaged area as she settled herself in.

“Oh, I’m able,” he teased the beauty astride his body, “I’ll show you in a minute.” “ It‘ll take longer than a minute, Jayne. I got ways to make you scream.” ‘Is the door closed?’ she wondered, and he answered her unspoken thought with, “Good thing I can see you closed the door then.”

Privacy needs assured, the woman on top of Jayne inched her way a little toward the bunk’s wall, not losing her seat atop him, but getting set secure so as to lean forward, arms straight out, hands smoothing the sides of his face. He was bristly, but she didn’t mind since she knew he probably wouldn’t kiss her anyhow.

“Jayne? I can’t kiss ya, huh?”

“I don’t never kiss, you know that Kaylee.” And he didn’t take the time to explain, just turned his mouth to her palm and kissed her that way in apology.

“That’s okay, there’s a lot to do besides kissin’. It’s just a shame to leave that out, it bein’ so shiny and all.”

She idly decided to try letting her body talk him into changing his mind, knowing that the menu was so full of treats even without a kiss, they were both like to be sated before tonight’s dinner party was done.

To that end, as appetizer, she bent down as if to kiss his mouth, turning away at the last instant to fasten her lips on the side of his neck. He turned his head slightly to clear the way. She brushed his jaw with her mouth, lightly so as not to abrade her lips too much, then sought softer territory at his ear.

He sighed in pleasure at the feel of warm woman all along his body then, as much as at the feel of her lips tugging on his earlobe, tongue hot wet facile at his ear. Used his hand to smooth up the side of her, gentling her, easing some of the tension he felt.

She left his ear and bent her head down to one male nipple, fastened to him tight, mouth to chest, teeth grazing his tip, mouth nursing a little there. The bud tightened as his chest rose to her, and she took that for reason to attend to its twin. His left nipple was a little recessed, taking her teasing it out from its nest of hair to get it peaked proper. She used her teeth on it a little harder than the other, causing Jayne to groan loud and grip her head in one big hand. She thought she’d hurt him, but knew better and smiled around his flesh when his fingers simply pressed her harder to him.

He smoothed her hair, wordlessly crooning a little, a boy held up in the smooth and wracking arms of pleasure. The gorgeous dealer of passion atop him left his hands empty when she rose back up and stretched luxuriously, arms overhead. His heavy-lidded gaze shot to her tits, nipples pointed harder than his as her motion lifted them the tiniest bit, changing shape with it. She knew what she was doing to him, could feel his prick jump beneath her bottom, did it on purpose to see if he’d look.

“Easy, big boy. We’re taking this slow, you know? And don’t you forget that I’m leading this dance, don’t need no help from you.”

He put a lie to her words by jutting his pelvis straight up to her, giving her advance notice of what help he planned on giving, as if she didn’t already feel the package behind her, urging her on. She reached behind her to give it a welcome squeeze. Turned it into a firm stroke he was well-acquainted with, would never be able to forget.

“There’s slow dancing, and then there’s gorram torture, bao bei.” said the tormented man with an angel astride his lower body, cunt close to surging cock. She looked to his face to determine if he was indeed as hard up as what her hand told her, saw that he was.

Saw that it was time to begin for true. Kaylee rose up a little, then found she had to rise up quite high, weight supported on her kneecaps and one hand as she found the distance she needed to put his cockhead to her opening. He trembled at the slip of Kaylee moisture he felt drop onto him. Had time to wish he’d put his hands there, lamented the loss.

“I guess the first time oughta go fast,” she said, “Even though I wanted this to last for us, to go easy on you in your condition and all.” His answer was to push up hard, but she was ready for that, riding backwards the littlest bit so his cock would ride along her slit, head ending up almost at her belly button by the time her opening rested on his balls, tight against his body.

He groaned at the missed opportunity, but rested, slave to whatever fong luh plan she was bent on enacting on his poor, abused, long hungry body. Tallied up the teasing, though, to take out on her hide later, at the next promised horizontal (or upright or sideways or sink-wise shower-wet) mambo she’d promised to put on her dance card. He would do all the leading then, by god.

But damn, he had to give her credit. She not only knew about delayed satisfaction, she was as much a gorram master at it as his own generous older woman teacher had been to him back in the day. His brain near imploded at the thought of the deranged lengths his Kaylee and him could push each other to, given time, strength and opportunity.

“Kaylee, quit playing around. If you don’t let me get my cock up inside you, I’m gonna bust a stitch turning you around and ride you to glory like a grown man should.”

“I want you inside me,” said the engine angel, just about making him waste his load on his own stomach instead of where he wanted it to go, “but from what I’m feeling at my nethers, Jayne, I ain’t so sure that’s do-able.” At his quizzical look, Kaylee went on, “You’re huge, Jayne! I mean, I knew you were big, had you in my hand and all, but the likes of you is beyond anything I’ve ever taken before. Maybe the long while between screwings is making it like this?”

He reached around behind her and felt the base of his cock, then in front of her to feel the end. “Naw, it’s normal, Kaylee. And just because I ain’t had a woman in a long time don’t mean I don’t know how to take care of myself. Hell, I beat off thinking about you giving me a sponge bath not 10 minutes after you left here.” Well, damn. Kaylee was already hot, dampened a little at the feel of his impossibly large cock nudging her slit suggestively, but what he’d just said had worked mogambo enough to send her fears far away and ratchet her desires up to the fore.

“Cheeng jeen, then Jayne.” Kaylee slid forward just enough and, aided by her body’s moisture slid back down carrying the tip of Jayne’s manhood inside her body. Gasped at the feel of him, in love at the feel of him just where she wanted, just like she knew it would feel. Jayne found himself in similar straits, head of his prick nearly burned in her heat, her moistness, the rest of his cock temporarily soothed by the cleft of her buttocks. She didn’t move for what seemed like forever, but that was alright. It was too good to take it too fast after all. He decided to loose both his hands’ grip on the mattress to cup her breasts that hung within easy reach. He remembered to do it right, heard his kindly mentor’s voice in his head showing him, telling him, ‘Hold it like a woman’d hold it, never grab it like it’s a cow’s teat. I’m gonna learn you right, boy.” Kaylee benefited from the big man’s lessons learned as she felt both his hands hold her breasts from where they rose off her ribcage, testing their full weight in cupped palms, calloused thumbs reaching up to rub nipples threatening to catch fire from the soft abrading.

Ai ya, he held her just the way she’d do it to herself. Not one man in a thousand ever learned that particular easy lesson, and a man who was as happy shooting a woman as making love to her turned out to be the one. Lucky Kaylee.

The shooting she wanted from him was most likely to come if she got on with this. So she rose up off him the littlest bit and gave in to his insistent cock pushing up into her. Took him an inch at a time, intent on easing him in, ready to draw him out if she couldn’t take his size.

At her blessed motion, riding his cock straight into her a little more, Jayne gently let go of Kaylee’s breasts to slide his hands along her waist, lifting her slightly upwards so as to take the pressure off her lower body’s descent. Supporting herself on one hand on Jayne’s bunk mattress, the lovely woman used the other to take his hand from her waist press it back down on the bed. “Don’t, Jayne. You’re the horse, I’m the rider. The only work you need to do is lay back and enjoy it, remember? You can ride next time. There’ll be a next time.” she reminded him.

He lay quiescent, but when she slid down another inch letting him make further way into her velvet sheath, he used one hand to rub slow circles on her belly, enjoying the tumescence of her lower body.

“Jaaayne,” Kaylee groaned as she gained another three inches of him, “I can’t believe how hard, how good you feel.” She took him all the way, her opening flush with his flared base, balls tight up against her pubic hair. Threw her head back and grated down on him as if to pull his nuts inside where his cock was firmly seated.

Jayne was beyond words, all systems in overdrive, using every resource he had to keep from flipping her over and plowing her good and hard, like his body screamed he ought to do. Ruttin’ girl was gonna kill him, kill him good, ohhhhh, good. So gorram good that he’d go to his death happy as a kid at Christmas. He talked to her about it, told her how good, how fine, how ruttin’ amazin’ she felt to him. “Kaylee-girl, don’t stop. Ya love me so good, I want to take a week off, Kaylee don’t stop. Make me out of breath, make me red hot. Havin’ you alone is like living a dream.”

Kaylee finally rose off the axis inside her, the upslide feeling every bit as good as the filling her had. She showed him why they call it screwing by sliding just a bit to the side and back as she took him back inside her, back home. “Sweet Budha, Jayne, I can feel you getting bigger, how do ya do that?,” not really wanting an answer, not caring, only caring about the sweet pressure, the heave and flow between her legs, of her and the man held tight in her arms. If she’d known the way of Jayne, the lessons her body was learnin' and teachin' all at once tonight, she’d a’ never wasted any wanting on Simon, she realized it now.

Surprising her with the quickness of it, he exerted enough pressure to turn them both to their sides, quick but sure, not leaving the sheathing of himself in her in the process of changing position.

“Shhhh. Don’t fuss, Kaylee Frye. I’m not trying to drive, just think of it as a two-seater. One we can both operate at the same time.” He wrapped his arms around her, palms cupping the perfect plumpness of her ass and edged himself into her a little more.

The overstimulated woman held onto his shoulders and looked down to where their pubic hair merged, straining to see the place where they were joined into one body. The light wasn’t enough to see, though, a problem Kaylee promised herself she’d remedy the next go-round. Yeah, there’d be more of this, she swore. And next time she’d leave all the lights blazin’ so as to see clear what she could feel almost good enough to see right now.

“You sure you’re okay?,” she asked solicitously, ever mindful of her lover’s need to heal up right.

“The hurt leg’s on top, not rubbing on the mattress so we’re good. No worries. No time for worries, only for lovin’, Kaylee”. He said it as he pulled out half way, couldn’t quite bring himself to leave her warmth any more than half, and then countered it by grinding hard deep hot into her as slow as he could and still retain some sanity.

At his mention of love, even though she knew he meant it only as lovemaking, not the real thing, her hot chocolate eyes melted, lashes covering the expression so he wouldn’t see. That was what she was really looking for, but she’d never tell him.

Couldn’t ever tell him that she loved him already, had tripped into loving him sometime between desperately searching to find him almost dead to plucking a raisin off his chin at dinner this evening.

Kaylee placed both palms flat on his chest and pulled back, then let Jayne’s sure hands draw her lower body flush to him. The ebb and flow of the dance revved up several notches, neither set of nethers finding any patience left for a slow waltz anymore. They gasped each other’s breaths, moaned each other’s names and ran hell bent for leather toward culmination, not feeling any loss at the increased speed of it.

He put one hand between their bellies at her latest quick backswing, spreading her folds to find her clit awash in moisture but jutting hard and erect through her curls, a miniature copy of his own cock. Damn, she was fine. Everything just as he liked it, no woman put together as fine as she was had her name logged in the black book of partners he kept in his head.

At the circling of his fingers, then the pressure of his thumb and forefinger on the nerve bundle in her cul-de-sac, Kaylee quivered hard, flung by Jayne's touch careening, slamming into her climax. It hit her just like she most liked it to come, with her passage filled to overflowing with big hard cock. Jayne’s hard cock, none had ever filled her body better.

He was thoughtful enough to obey when she said, “Ahhhh, Jayne! I’m comin', comin' all over your cock. No! Don't. Don’t move.” Immediately understanding her need, recollecting his old teacher's pounding into him how some women needed time and stillness to hold to the moment, he complied.

His only movement was to tighten the hold of his hand on her bum, pressing her to him where their bodies were joined just the slightest bit more. Enjoyed the feel of her trembling, tightening on his pole, strained himself harder than she knew so as not to rip her hips back from him and slam solid back in again to seek his own release. Her engine tick, tick, ticked into a lower gear at last, he felt every throb as she shifted. When she started breathing again, he decided it was his turn.

Pulled out slowly, pushed back into her heat faster. Kept the pace up for as long as he could, urged on by her soft little cries muffled every in-stroke by the bulk of his chest. It was three more strokes and then he arced his lower body deep, waist and chest pulled back for extra leverage and let go with a groan deeper, louder, dwindling as his sperm shot slammed rolled deeper into Kaylee’s depths. She leaned into him, held him tight, head resting on the mattress and the big man’s shoulder.

They both took a minute of well-earned rest, bodies’ sweat mingling, nethers twined together, neither wanting separation. Nothing else mattered but their being together. When she had breath enough to speak Kaylee said, “You know, it was pretty jing zi of you to take care of yourself before I came in so’s we could take our time just now, you know?” He growled, smiling at her, manhood twitching as he pushed in as a show of appreciation at her powers of observation. “Care to see how quick I can be ready for round two?,” he asked her. “Much as I’d like to, much as I’m convinced I want to go all night with you, Jayne, it ain’t the right thing to do,” she groaned out, straining her mind for a way to stay despite what she'd said. Sadly, she decided they’d had all she could allow without being guilty of harming the mending patient.

Before he drew himself completely out of her body, Jayne cupped her head in his dry hand, “Bao bei, come back to me tomorrow, okay? I’ll letcha go now, but don’t leave me for too long. I’m a man in need of nursin’, don’t you forget it.”

She smiled and tucked her touseled head under his chin, loving the feel of his strong arms and hands tight around her slender shoulders.

“I’ll be back for more, Jayne. But when you’re done with me once you’re all mended up, I’m likely to be the one in need of nursing.” Their bodies shook with good clean laughter and Jayne reluctantly loosened his grip when Kaylee moved to pull back and get up.

He watched her dress in the dim light, one bicep bulging as he folded his corded arm under his head. “When you come back tomorrow, Kaylee, don’t wear any panties under them overalls.”

She paused in leaving and leered at him, nodding her head. The man thought just like she did, gorram it all to hell. She might just have found a soul mate in a man she used to think didn’t even have a soul.

He handed her the little flashlight which she pocketed.

“Bye Jayne. See you soon.”

“Kaylee,” his voice stopped her as she was pivoting to climb out of his cabin. “I’m glad you went exploring in the medlab. Glad it was you who found me out there kicked all to hell, too. When I first saw your face, saw the sun coming through your hair as ya blocked out the sun, I didn’t know it was real. Thought your bein' there was more hallucinatin’. I’d been having you six ways from Sunday out there while I was waiting to die or be rescued.”

She stared at him, stunned as he went on. “You were having sex with me as I layed out there alone and it was fine, so fine. Was what kept me alive, Kaylee.” He looked away in order to say the next part. "But tonight… Well, my mind couldn’t no way dream it up to be as good as it turned out to be."

She rushed back to his bunk, held his head tight but carefully between her soft hands and kissed him quick, even though she knew it was forbidden. As she climbed out of his cabin before he had a chance to protest the contact, she added deep, slow kisses that last for two days to the list of erotica she planned for their future together.

END of The Measure of a Jayne.

If you want more of Jayne and Kaylee, here's the link to my crib in the Blue Sun Room. http://www.fireflyfans.net/fulluserbluesunlist.asp?un=ItsaWash Try "The Pleasuring of Kaylee" on for size.

Thanks for reading! I gorram ruttin' LURVE all you readers, and want to write all the readers who actually leave feedback into my will!

jing zi: ingenious fei oo: junk ching-wah tsao duh liou: frog-riding bastard wu de tyen ah: dear god in heaven Ai ya: damn fong luh: crazy mah-shong: in a hurry. wuo de ma: mother of Jesus Juh jen sh guh kwai luh duh jean jan: This really is a happy day pee goo- rear end wun gwo pee: never smelled a fart tchen wah: slut shen jing bing: lunatic zhu tu: pig head tah mah de: mother fucker shu ma nyaow: stinking horse piss feng du: hell jing zi: ingenious hwoon dahn: son of a bitch dong ma?: Do you understand?