Carrie is put about something fierce. Be a shame to her if you couldn’t eat your dinner off the stoop in the normal run of things, mind, but a body would like some warning for company. ‘Stead of which, she’s in her apron, and the best china is still in store. Sets off up the path at a clip, to at least get another place laid.

Ray falls in step with Jayne, murmurs,

“Now, don’t you pay no mind to your mother. She’s just fussin’, ‘cos you sprung it on us like you did.” A sharp look. “She ain’t expecting, is she?”

“No!” Jayne yelps with embarrassment. “We’re being careful.”

“Glad to be hearin’ it.”

“It happened all sudden like.” Jayne gives a reminiscent grin. “We met, and it was fireworks all the way. Couldn’t let her get away.”

“Romantic foolin’. I courted your mother for near two years.”

“Well, I ain’t in a line of work offers time to spare.” They don’t talk about what he does; they suspect, and they don’t approve, but ‘Security Officer’ sounds respectable. (It’s on the ship’s papers - Mal’s wedding present.)

Behind them, Ilargia loses the struggle to carry her own bag. Mattie is determined.

“I’m real glad to meet ya, honest. An’ I din’t mean it about bein’ crazy an’ all. Jayne’s the best brother.”

“Well, I’m fond of him, too.”

He grins at her, an expression she knows well on a different face. Only a few years between the brothers, but these blue eyes are far more innocent.

“Lemme show you where to get washed up...”

Up wooden stairs, the treads worn by generations of feet, the carpet runner faded by time and traffic. Of course, the little bathroom is spotless, too. Ilargia washes her hands in the basin, eyes her reflection in the mirror.

Flashback to another spotless house - never a home - and a cool voice saying, “Esteban tells me you studied history? Isn’t that a rather...esoteric subject for the Service?” Shakes herself. No reason to think on that.

Jayne looks around, at a place at once strange and familiar. Feels large and out of place in it. Like he’s going to leave dirt and blood on the surfaces. Kitbag looks even bigger in the corner of the hallway. Looks up the stairs, and smiles at his wife.

“Ma’s fretting some about eating in the kitchen...told her you weren’t one for side.”

She takes the big hand held out to her, and he pulls her in for a sudden quick kiss.

“They ain’t gonna eat you. Don’t look so tragic.”

“I just want them to like me.”

“They will. I like you just fine.”

Down the hall, and into the kitchen. Table set out with dinner, an’ that was his mother’s chicken he could smell. Nearly trips, by reachin’ for a dish before grace, but catches himself when Ma raps his knuckles with a spoon.

Kitchen reminds Ilargia quite painfully of her lost home on Hecate. Same kind of stove. Table has a cloth on it, but she expects that it is well scrubbed beneath. Smell makes her mouth water. Fried chicken and cornbread. They haven’t had real meat on board the ship since the illicit doves. Tastes as good as it smells, too.

“This is wonderful, Mrs Cobb.”

A sharp look, to gauge sincerity.

“T’ain’t much. Just fried chicken, is all.”

“Mm. But there’s...cinnamon in the flour? And rosemary?”

“Larji’s the ship’s cook, Ma.” Jayne says, off her startled look. His father laughs, claps him on the shoulder.

“Gorram, boy! You sure know how to get your feet under the table.”

“Ray!” Carrie is flustered. But Ilargia just smiles, says simply,

“He does take a lot of feeding.”

“You eat well on your ship?” Mebbe she don’t eat out of packets, then. ‘Cos Jayne has always liked his food.

“Try to. Protein packs are all very well, but they don’t compare to the real thing.” She smiles. “Jayne hunts when he can.”

“He was always a one for keeping the pot full.” Carrie finds a smile back. “And emptying it, too.”

“Oh, yes. One last bao zi on a plate, and he’ll all but wrestle the Captain for it.”

“His manners is improving, then.”

They both look at Jayne, who has his mouth full and a dawning expression of worry in his eyes. Mebbe letting his Ma and Larji talk weren’t such a hot idea. Mattie snorts.

“He done stuck a fork in me over the last potato, one time.”

“It was my potato.”

“Weren’t.”

“This was near thirty years ago.” Ray says dryly to Ilargia. “Cobbs ain’t ones for layin’ a grudge down easy. Can I help you to some more cornbread, there, afore they get at it?”

Carrie peers at Ilargia’s hand as she reaches to take the plate.

“That‘s an interesting ring you got.” A narrow band of copper, that catches the light in odd twists of blue and green. (The ‘ring’ had started life as something quite different, somewhere in the depths of Serenity’s workings. But Jayne had polished it up, and Ilargia wouldn’t change it for diamonds.) “Where’d you get married?”

“On the ship.” Jayne knows his Ma is brewing, seeks to assure her. “We done it legal and proper. Captain checked.”

Carrie rounds on Mattie, cuffs his ear.

“You can stop sniggerin’. I know you bin out down the Painted Cat this month, so don’t you be so smart.”

Mattie’s grin drops, becomes a look of alarm. Jayne smirks at him. Ilargia assumes that the Painted Cat is a place of ill-repute (it is) and resolves to interrogate her husband later.

She watches him with his family. She knows that she sees a different side of him to most anyway, but it’s rather sweet to see him so happy.

A remorseless stream of family gossip washes over Jayne. He nods and grins and eats his dinner, and daren’t catch Mattie’s eye, though he can feel his brother ready to explode with laughter. Ma don’t change.

Eyes have watched them walk up that road, and the gossip will be out. The Cobbs’ eldest has come home. An’ with a woman, too. Carrie will have something to say about that (don’t she always?).

They make it halfway through the peach cobbler, before there is a knock at the screen door, and a neighbour, lookin’ to borrow a cup of sugar. That is most surely Jayne Cobb, large as life. An’ the little stranger, sittin’ at the table like kin. Quick eyes search for clues. Dressed quite plain, (trousers!) but lovely manners. The eldest son brung home a wife? Well, now, where’d he get her?

She hurries off into the evening, just remembering the sugar. Carrie sniffs.

“That Marion Pike. She got her nose in everywhere. Be all round town by mornin’ that we got company.”

Ray, who knows full well that Carrie and Marion will happily spend two hours tearing the rest of the neighbourhood to bits over the fence, ignores this. Anyone else had a guest, it would be Carrie trottin’ out with a jug and a beak on. She’s just put about ‘cos she wanted to be the one spreading the news.

0000

Carrie is putting the dishes in the sink, when Ray pulls Jayne’s elbow gently.

“C’mon, son.” Mattie’s peering over his shoulder. “Friday night. We’re goin’ to the other hope and mainstay of our existence.”

“Huh?”

“Down the bar, boy. Grab your coat. But quiet like, afore your mother remembers somethin‘ needs doing.”

Old times. Jayne grins, hooks up his boots. Gonna give Ma and Larji some time to get acquainted.

Carrie’s head snaps round when she hears the front door close, but they are already striding down the road apace. She fumes.

“That Ray! Runnin‘ out on company.”

“Not just Ray.” Ilargia is also cross. “It’s a family affair.”

They look at each other. And suddenly, it’s too funny. Grown men picking up their boots and sneaking out for beer.

“I hope he don’t just dump you down and go out and get sauced regular?”

“Oh no. He never drinks while he’s working.” This is true; for all his bluster, Jayne is cold sober when there is shooting to be done.

“Well, I’m thinking we’d best go sit in the parlour, and you can tell me all about yourself.”

This is very much the thing Ilargia has been dreading. And yet, it’s curiously comfortable to sit in the upright armchair, the scuffed leather warmed from unyielding polish to the softness as of old boots. Sipping a fragrant little bowl of tea, and talking about her favourite man with the other woman who loves him...

“So...you met him on the ship, this...Serenity?”

Ilargia blushes a little.

“He made rather an impression.”

“I hope he minded his manners?”

“He was a perfect gentleman.”

Carrie snorts.

“That’d be a first. He’s been a sore torment all his life. Playing hookey, and fightin’, even in kindergarten.”

Ilargia imagines a small Jayne, grins.

“But I expect he was adorable.”

“He was.” Carries sighs, grins back. “A limb of Satan, but he had such big blue eyes, and the sweetest curls...”

“Do you have any pictures?”

(Jayne, unaware that he has just been most dreadfully betrayed, carries a round of drinks back to the table.)

The scowl in the picture is very familiar, even on a nine-year old face. The bewildered bundle in his arms must be Jolene, and the toddler clutching his pants leg, Mattie.

“I was pregnant with Emmie-Lou then. She was a bit of a surprise, ’cos we’d reckoned on three being enough. He was always very good with his sisters, though. Tormented ‘em somethin’ fierce, but he wouldn’t let no-one else hurt ‘em.” Shakes her head. “Jolene went breakin’ her heart over some boy wouldn’t ask her to a dance, once, so Jayne went an’ got him with a shotgun.”

Ilargia smothers a smile. It’s all here, in this faded album. Jayne comes from a large and loving family, and he’s spent a long time coming back full circle to the same. And Carrie’s reaction to finding that her new daughter-in-law has a college education is simply one of ill-concealed glee. (Teach that Effie Hancock to go boasting about her daughter the nurse.) The mere mention of history, and there are more albums.

“Been six generations on Deadwood, now. Cobbs was one of the Breakpack families.” That’s a distinction, too. The first Settlers. “I was a Paulding afore I married, but a Cobb on my mother’s side. And Ray‘s mother, she was a Fulton. My sister Augusta, she’s married to a Bartow, and they’re kin from three generations back...”

To anybody else, it might be tiresome. To a historian, it’s a homecoming.

0000

They have fetched up in the bar known as ‘Dooly’s’. The original Dooly is long since dead, but the name remains, and this is where the ‘Arcie’s’ drink. Look on most folk here, and there will be a dragon someplace. Jayne and Mattie sit in one of the old booths - same tattered vinyl on the chairs, and the same tinny radio, ignored behind the bar. Prob’ly the same initials carved in under the table, you know where to look.

“You still livin’ at home, then?”

“Yeah.” They both look to where Ray is getting the drinks in. “Pa still reckons on climbin’ the roof to fix the gutter, an’ he’s a stubborn ol’ buzzard.”

“I know it.” Jayne looks into his mug. “I...gorram, I din’t mean for you...”

“Oh, hey.” Mattie punches him. “I like it fine. I got my meals, my laundry...”

They both laugh. But Jayne has noted how much greyer, and somehow smaller, his folks are. Twists in him, a little.

“They...doing okay, though?”

“Yeah. Grumble somethin’ fierce about the wages of sin when your letters arrive, but they spend the credits.” He thumps his chest. “Means I got lungs that work again. I got a job lined up, too.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Security detail. They want a man as can take care of himself, an’ anyone else as wants a piece.”

“You’re gonna be a cop?” Jayne stares at him in horror. Mattie grins.

“’Bout time one of us got respectable.” A pause. “You could...”

“I couldn’t.” Stares down at his hands. “Never got my school cert, did I?”

“You kept us fed, though. Now, you gonna tell me the real story of how come you got a sweet woman like that?”

“Pure dumb luck.” Jayne grins at Mattie.

“Allus thought you’d be free and single. You never wanted to get wed afore.”

“Never met a woman as set me afire like her, that’s why.” He looks at his battered hands. “Bin a lot o’ women on a lot o’ worlds, and I won’t deny it. But ain’t ever bin one like my li’l peach. She...takes care of me, Mattie. Not just the sexin’, though she is something wild. Ain’t the cookin’, neither. She‘s just...mine, an‘ I‘m happy.”

“You gone soft.” Mattie smirks.

“Give you soft...” Jayne don’t want to be gushin’ his heart all over the place. Grabs his brother in a headlock. Ray steps back with the round of drinks.

“You go spillin’ this, you’re payin’, boy.”

“Oh, hey, beer.” Sparring forgotten, the brothers grab their mugs. Ray lifts his.

“To my boys.”

“Pa.” They chorus. Ray sets his mug down, fixes Jayne with his eye.

“Now, then. You tell us straight out how you met that girl, and that’s with the bits we ain’t gonna tell your ma...”

0000

The house is dark when they come creeping in. This don’t mean that trouble ain’t brewin’, mind, just that it’s turned the lights off, and is waiting to scold a man quietly and at leisure...

Ray sidesteps the lecture by saluting his wife good and hearty. She slaps at him, without conviction.

“Ray Cobb, if you think you’re gettin’ round me like that...”

“Bin workin’ for forty-five years, dear heart...now, what’d you make of the girlie?”

Carrie considers.

“She’ll do.” It’s the pronouncement of the Oracle. Ray chuckles.

“He’s fair mazed about her.”

“Leastways he had the wit to find one with some steel to her.”

Ray reckons she don’t know the half of it. But Carrie settles herself.

“Lost all she had in a fire, Ray. We gotta do something about that...”

“Tomorrow, darlin’. You sleep, now. G’night.”

“G’night. But don’t think I’m forgivin’ you for runnin’ out.”

“Go to sleep, Carrie.”

0000

Jayne grew up in this room. He shared it with Mattie for years, ‘til Emmie-Lou got wed, and the girls’ room was free. Gingham curtains, and the old brass bedsteads, still with the faded quilts.

Tries not to knock into nothin’, or drop his boots too heavy, but part of the quilt hunches up, and a small, sleepy voice says,

“Jayne?”

“Yeah, mi tao.” He gets under the covers, wraps himself round his nice, warm wife. Who squeaks. “Mmm.”

“You smell of beer. And smoke.” She wriggles ineffectually. “And your feet are cold.”

“Soon warm up.” Puts his nose into the curve of her neck. “You have a nice chat with Ma, then?”

“Oh yes.” A beat. “She showed me some lovely baby pictures.”

There is a strangled noise. Ilargia grins in the darkness.

Weirdest thing in the whole gorram ‘Verse, to be laying in his old bed, starin’ at the same marks on the ceiling (still got the crack as looks like the Belt, an’ a stain looks kinda like a face if you squint...), hearin’ the sounds of the town faint through the window, the night-train running up to the hills. But there’s a weight on his shoulder, and a fall of soft hair, that he can touch to his lips, he bends his head. In his parents’ house, with Larji in his arms.

~‘mi tao’ means ‘honey peach’~