Disclaimer: Joss's, not mine Spoilers: series, BDM AN: You'll notice I took some license and decided that the Operative completely cleaned up the Tams' records. Hence Simon can scrub in on a surgery on an unknown world, with no difficulty over the fact that he's been a fugitive. _____________________________

Better in Red

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“Get over it.” River firmed her lips together and lifted her chin out and away from the man who lay on the recovery room cart.

“Scuse me?” Jayne responded querulously. “I’ve just had the inside of my nose ripped apart an’ put back t’gether. Not a lot of fun. I’ll have my moment of sympathy, thanks.” One could be excused for thinking he had a severe cold, listening to him speak. He did sound rather pitiful, in fact.

But the girl at his side wasn’t swayed. River sighed long-sufferingly and shook her head.

“You’ve had your moment five times, now. I’m having difficulty comprehending the cause of this whining. You’ve endured bullet wounds, knife stabbings, broken bones, numerous surgeries … your suffering now is of less magnitude than many of those instances.”

Jayne tried to glare at her, and it hurt, which only made his need to glare that much worse. He was in a bad gorram mood, and couldn’t show it the way he usually would. So, maybe he’d given into a few gripes. He hadn’t whined, exactly …

“Yes, you did.” River ran assessing eyes over the packing that filled Jayne’s nose. There was also a small clear tube inserted into the packing of each nare to allow him to breathe, and eat more easily. It didn’t actually look very comfortable. In fact, he looked rather like an extinct Earth-That-Was animal, a walrus. Capitulating somewhat, she laid her hand on his and gave it a few pats, while restraining her smile at the inner image she had of a walrusy Jayne. Maybe she could talk him into growing a mustache, to help the impression along.

Jayne curled his fingers up to grab hers and not let go.

“If I gotta wear this damn stuff for three days, it’s a good thing we don’t got a job planned. No way am I showing up in public like this. There are gorram straws up my nose!”

River snugged the arm belonging to the hand he held in along his side, while leaning so he could see her out of both eyes without turning his head.

“Why, Jayne, you’re – vain!”

“Ha ha, vain Jayne, very funny,” he growled. He didn’t deny the accusation, though. He’d seen what he looked like, just after he came out of anesthesia. If there was a nice bandage, that mighta been all right. He could mebbe have passed it off as a wound, dutifully earned. But wads of gauze stuffed up his nose, and these yuchun* straws --the fewer people saw him like this, the happier he’d be.

River giggled, and the lightness of the sound made him feel better, which he’d recently noticed was becoming habit. He’d be moody, she’d laugh, he’d feel better. Might be somethin’ wrong with that picture, but since he was feelin’ better he didn’t guess he’d fight it.

Simon brushed the privacy curtain aside at that moment, still dressed in his surgical scrubs. He’d been allowed to scrub in as an assist after the surgeon they’d decided on had checked his credentials and the outpatient ENT clinic had cleared his presence. Jayne hadn’t really wanted him in the OR, but River had, and he’d allowed it for her sake. In fact, he’d done all of this for her, and felt it was high time he got a little appreciation for it.

“So I’m stuck here for a bit?” He asked the doc.

Simon nodded. “One or two hours, anyway. If there are no complications seen by then, you can leave.” He skimmed his gaze across the pair’s entwined hands, but it had been a common sight aboard the ship lately, and only the left cheek twitch that he feared was becoming a tic betrayed his feelings. He was trying, for his sister’s sake, to adjust to this new and disconcerting reality.

Jayne nodded at what he’d been told. To Simon’s surprise, he didn’t complain about having to stay.

“You’re gonna have to keep me entertained,” he said to River, and Simon took that as his cue to leave. Before he was out of the room, though, River had crossed to him to touch his arm.

“Thank you, Simon,” she said quietly. He cocked his head and for once caught the deeper meaning beneath her words. He did let himself sigh, and shook his head, but then smiled at her before slipping away. Kaylee was waiting for him, they had dinner reservations. And he didn’t really care to find out what it was that Jayne was calling ‘entertainment’.

Jayne was ready when River came back to his bedside. She raised curious eyebrows at him.

“Entertainment?”

“Yep. I’ve held up my end of the bargain, now you gotta hold up yours.” She better, he vowed, after all he’d gone through for her. There were straws. Up his gorram nose.

River sighed. “This will keep you from whining until you’re discharged?”

Jayne shrugged. “Can’t hurt.” He grinned at her as wide as he could without it hurting. She shook her head but he saw he had her.

“I’ve come up with a few. See what you think.”

River dragged the curtained cubicle’s only chair over to the cart and sat down, leaning her elbows on the thin mattress. Jayne directed her attention to the small screen he held.

“This one’s very popular. Don’t understand the name, but it’s an ancient design, from Earth-What-Were. It’s called a mud flapper.”

River regarded the silhouette of a seated naked female, and rolled her eyes. “Entirely inappropriate. Women do not appeal to me sexually. I like men, Jayne.”

Jayne tried to school his expression, but his smirk escaped anyway. “Ya do, huh? Now how could I have missed that? Think I might be in need of a demonstration, like, to convince me.”

She was better at hiding her grin than he, and pushed playfully at his elbow with a mock-scowl. He laughed, and reached an arm out to wrap her shoulders and pull her close. She took in his light-hearted expression and something twisted startlingly in her chest. His sea-blue gaze lapped at her own and she felt as though he was filling in all the empty holes of her rocky shore. She swallowed a few times around the sudden lump that rose at the back of her throat. When he sat the pad down in his lap to tenderly tuck her hair behind her ear, she gave in to what her heart had been trying to tell her.

She was in love with this man, and there would never be another for her.

“Hey, River, you OK?” His question broke through to her and she roused herself back to consciousness of their surroundings. It was a realization she would keep to herself for now, she decided, as she relaxed into his arm.

“I am well. Next image, please.” It wouldn’t hurt to see everything he’d prepared. Straws, after all.

________________________________________

Jayne didn’t come up with an acceptable design by the end of that day, or even by the time his packing was removed and he went back to work. A week went by, with the rest of the crew gradually becoming adjusted to the new relationship and in which Simon restrained himself from voicing his opinion about River spending nights in Jayne’s bunk. At least, he consoled himself, all her things were still in her own. She hadn’t moved in with him.

Yet.

He winced and thought about something else, with Kaylee’s assistance.

Simon may or may not have been a bit relieved to know that at least part of the time the two spent behind closed doors was expended in going over dozens of tattoo designs. In the company of others, there was much chuckling, giggling, and swearing to be observed, accompanied by secretive glances, which in an established relationship would have struck Simon as odd. But despite his best efforts, he still found the whole thing an anomalous mistake, and he wasn’t inclined to mark any of it as significant.

So on it went, weeks passing with River rejecting one after another of Jayne’s choices. He began to amuse himself by throwing in things he knew she’d never go for, such as the first one she’d seen. It became rather an art to him, to dig up the tackiest or most licentious pictures he could fine, just to see her reaction. But as they passed a month’s mark since his nasal surgery, with no decision in view, he found his patience waning.

He proposed a rose. “Clichéd,” was her response. After she’d explained the word to him, he had trouble understanding how a flower’s simple beauty could ever be considered hackneyed. But she firmly rejected it, so on to the next option.

He tried a variety of graphic designs. “Too abstract.”

Any number of axioms, witticisms, and proverbs. “Tacky.”

A carefully stylized side-view of a gun superimposed on a wickedly curved knife. “On me, redundant.” But she had assessed the workmanship carefully, and turned widened eyes to him.

“You designed this?”

He admitted rather sheepishly that it was so, and she’d made a hard copy of it and hung it in her room. He felt a ridiculous spurt of pride whenever he was in there and saw it.

Portrayals of mythical, extinct, and exotic animals, various nature scenes, and myriad cosmic structures all met with rejection. As a rule Jayne spent very little time on the cortex, and as the number of hours he took up flicking through screen after screen grew, he hoped no one noticed this, yet another deviation from his normal behaviour. River was determined her brother not know about the tat until there was nothing he could do except gripe about it.

Jayne was in the cockpit doing research yet again when River entered and came up behind his chair, working her fingers around it while leaning in over him. Jayne let his head settle back against her. There were some things changing about him, he found, and it showed at times like this. For a moment he just savored her being there. It was something he’d never had before. One woman around to touch, the same woman everyday, who touched him too with her eyes and smile and arms. He knew her family (the ones that counted, not her hundun parents) and her history and her quirks and tastes and loyalties.

It astounded and, if he’d been the type to admit it, humbled him. He was allowed so many things to which he was unaccustomed on any long-term basis. He could slide his hand down the fall of her hair when she stood near him, and it was so much better than any whore’s ever had been. He could wrap his arm around her shoulder while they sat at table in the galley. He’d be walking down the corridor and pass her, and could pull her into his arms and kiss her softly -- or not-so-softly. Maybe best of all, he could glare off any encroacher on any planet, with a look that said “Mine. Hands off.” He’d never had these rights before, with anyone. It frightened and exhilarated him.

‘Course, she had those rights too. And that was just as strangely comforting and scary and thrilling.

So he rubbed his hands gently up her bare arms and only half-tried to hide his smile at the kiss he felt her drop into his hair. He was consciously facing up to the fact that this wasn’t going away, and he didn’t want it to.

Ever.

He’d never been an ‘always’ kind of man, but she was turning him into one. He stared unseeingly at the screen and decided he needed to be figuring out how she felt about that. The whole forever thing.

“Definitely not.” River’s voice was severe over the top of his head. He jerked upright, fear spiking through him that she’d read his mind and rejected his wishes before they’d been fully birthed. But she was pointing at the cortex. He focused on it, then grinned in relief. She was rejecting the tattoo shown there, of an astonishingly endowed woman obscenely entwined with an equally ridiculously gifted male.

“Knew that without you tellin’ me,” he said gruffly, “just got a little … off-track, lookin’ for somethin’ for you.”

River puffed dismissively.

In the following weeks, River began to note that the tattoo choices Jayne offered her grew more . . . personal. She couldn’t use the word 'sentimental' in relation to her man, but there was definitely some thought being expended on what was shown her. She said nothing because he said nothing. But her heart felt the impacts.

There was a depiction of Serenity, an exterior view, in simple black adorned with a soft burnishment of gold. River paused, brushed her fingers over it, said ‘maybe’. When she discovered it was another of Jayne’s own designs, it joined that of the weapons on her wall. But no decision was reached.

One day he produced several renditions of his own name. River wrinkled her nose at all of them. “I have no wish to be branded,” she said brusquely. He shrugged. And that was that.

The next one was a female angel. River regarded the flow of brown hair and familiar face and found she had to swallow around a lump in her throat, before meeting Jayne’s expectant gaze. He seemed to be saying … something, but she couldn’t quite decipher the message. “Endearing,” she commented quietly, brushing a finger over wings that appeared to have an unusual strength. “But unrealistic, I think.” Jayne had just nodded and turned away. It was only after he was gone that she noticed the ballet slippers that clad the angel’s dainty feet.

There were no offerings after that, for a few days. Jayne was uncharacteristically quiet and River began to fret she’d hurt him. She thought about mentioning that she’d kept yet another print of his designs, just that her angel was hidden in a drawer, away from prying eyes, and taken out only for private viewings. But as he still pulled her near to his body every chance he got, and refused to sleep without her, she let it lie. She worked hard at staying out of Jayne’s private thoughts, and for the most part succeeded. She only caught glimpses of a heaviness in him that wasn’t sorrow, but tasted of examination, and perhaps growing self-awareness.

Jayne’s introspection ran the course of a week or so, and abruptly ended. The crew noticed he was back to his loud, blunt self after one of his typical run-ins with Mal over a job Jayne felt he could have handled better than the captain.

“Well,” Simon remarked as he watched Mal march off one direction and Jayne the other, “seems like we’re back to our annoying normalcy.”

They were dirtside, had just finished a decent job, and were experiencing some downtime awaiting cargo when Jayne approached River again. They were both in his bunk. Jayne set aside the brush he’d been sliding through the length of her hair and got up to retrieve the small pad he’d been using to display tattoos. He returned to crouch beside where River was seated on the floor with her legs crossed in front of her. He didn’t tilt the screen towards her immediately, though. He tapped it against a palm and frowned down at his girl thoughtfully.

“Got one more for y’ to see.”

River nodded hopefully. She’d half-decided to agree to whatever it was, just to make him happy. But another part of her had laden this event, this Getting a Tattoo for Jayne, with too much import to be taken so lightly.

“It’s the last I got. If ya decide ya don’ want this one, I won’t hold ya to yer promise.” He saw that this alarmed her in the quick, nervous upturning of her face. He hoped she knew he wasn’t angry about all the rejections she’d given him. He’d actually gotten glad she hadn’t settled for one of those, because it let him do this. He played his trump card. Pushed the screen toward her, then swallowed while he waited nervously.

River accepted the pad and stared at the image. She bowed her head for a moment, the hair he’d just tamed sweeping forward to hide her face. He settled down on his rump beside her and tried not to fidget. He cleared his throat once, trying to get her to look at him.

When she finally did, he relaxed. Her eyes shone, and not from tears. Funny how he’d sort of been expecting those.

“Well?” He prompted, unable to wait when she didn’t immediately speak. Her brilliant smile gave him permission to slide an arm around her shoulders and pull her into the cove of his shoulder.

“Yes, Jayne,” she nodded against his t-shirt. “I agree to this one. Happiness twice.” She ran her fingers over the character on the small screen, a Chinese double-happiness symbol. "Destiny. Love. In red, per tradition,” she murmured.

Jayne grinned, and gave her a squeeze.

“I think you’ll be the one looking better in red, this time.”

River wrapped her free arm around his back and caressed his side.

“Is this a proposal?” she wanted to know.

“Uh - not - exactly.” Jayne found a need to clear his throat again. “Mebbe more of a declaration sayin’ possibly, maybe, I’m thinkin’ about havin’ … intentions.”

River tilted her head up to reward his struggle with a kiss on the chin. He dipped his head down to make it a real kiss, and the pad fell from her hands to lay forgotten for quite awhile. When she had her sanity back, she leaned over the reclining masculinity she was cushioned against and retrieved it from where it had fallen. Contemplating it, she smiled again. There was a tender glow around her heart that she knew spilled over into her expression.

“Perhaps we should split it. You have half and I have half.”

Jayne turned his head on the blanket that had ended up beneath them on the floor, and considered it. “Mebbe,” he granted at last. “I was thinkin’ about that angel for me, actually. But sharing this one might make it harder for ya t’ ever leave me.”

“Don’t plan on the leaving,” River advised him from where she rested on his chest. Her tone and face were suddenly solemn.

Jayne nodded equally grave acceptance down at her.

“Good. Now.” His grin was pure leer. “About where, exactly, we’re gonna put these tattoos.”

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For a description of the lovely tradition behind the double happiness symbol: http://webpages.csus.edu/~sac79126/double_happiness.htm

*yuchun -- stupid