WHAT THE BRAIN FORGOT

Everyone was in their bunks asleep when Jayne stuck his head up out of his hatch. He was supposed to be resting but something was keeping him distinctly restless. Unwilling to continue tossing and turning, he stole quietly up his ladder and began to prowl the darkened ship.

The hold was silent and empty when he walked in. It was disconcerting to see it bereft of cargo when last he remembered, it was full to busting with crates and he was ignoring the crazy girl’s directions on how to do his job. The next thing he knew, he was lying in the chair in the infirmary, staring up at ‘ole Moonybrains. “Jayne!” she exclaimed, as though she hadn’t been the one prodding him awake. “You woke up!”

“’parently.” He muttered, wincing at the brightness of the overhead light. Before he could say anything though, she reached up and flipped it off, bathing them in the room’s ambient blue light. “Where’s the doc?”

“Helping Kaylee.”

“Oh.” He really didn’t want to know.

The crazy girl held up her finger in front of his face and said, “Follow the finger with your eyes.”

“Why for?”

“I’m testing for lingering symptoms of concussion.”

He grudgingly followed her finger back and forth, up and down, closer and closer until he was cross eyed and she poked him in the nose with a giggle.

“You playin’ games with me, moon brain?” he growled, not at all amused. “You best get yer brother in here ‘fore my head ‘splodes.”

The smile slowly fell off her face and something in his chest twinged.

“Do you not remember your golden days next to the river?” she asked eyes wide.

He glared at her. “You been diggin’ round in my head again?”

She shook her head. “Your brain has forgotten. I’m going to get Simon.”

“My brain ain’t forgotten nuthin’!” he yelled after her, wincing at the sudden spike of pain in his head.

That had been two days ago, the last time he’d gotten a decent night’s sleep. Apparently, during their last job gone wrong, the buyer and his henchmen had gotten it into their heads to take over the ship. In the ensuing gunfight, he’d gotten himself kicked off a catwalk. He had landed pretty hard on the grating in the cargo bay. The resulting head injury gave him something Simon had called amnesia, fancified word for memory loss. He couldn’t remember anything from the last two months, not that he’d really missed anything particularly interesting, going on what Mal and Kaylee had told him and Simon had said that he’d probably remember it all again anyway. Jayne actually believed Simon for once or at least he did when he started getting flashes of memory at the most inopportune moments.

But that didn’t explain the odd feeling that kept waking him up when normal folks were tucked up in bed and telling him he had some where to be. Never mind that it was the middle of the night on a spaceship in the middle of outer space. A little voice was telling him he had to go somewheres and it was getting mighty irritating. Especially since it kept niggling at him whenever he snapped at the crazy girl who seemed to be like an Alliance Express card, everywhere he didn’t want to be. He had considered for a moment, that he was going space crazy but discarded that thought when he hadn’t felt so much as a twinge of embarrassment when he yelled at the doc to stop poking and prodding him.

“Heart knows what the brain forgot.”

Jayne’s head jerked up to see that he had somehow wandered from the cargo bay up to the cockpit. River was sitting on a small crate down in the storage well in front of the consoles.

“What the hell ya doin’?” he demanded, surprised that he hadn’t gone for his gun. “I coulda shot ya.”

“Wouldn’t have let you.”

“What makes you so sure?” he asked, moving to lean his hip against the consoles.

“Heart knows but will the brain listen?” She looked up at him over her shoulder. Her eyes seemed impossibly large in the silver starlight filtering through the front windows. His heart thumped in his chest and he had an inexplicable urge to kiss her.

“Why do ya keep sayin’ that?” he asked, irritably. She had repeated some variation of the line like a broken record the every time he’d been in the same room as her for the past two days.

“Because it’s true.”

He jumped down into the well and pulled her to her feet to face him completely. He opened his mouth to yell at her when he was struck by a sudden feeling of having been there before, staring down into her warm brown eyes. He snapped his mouth shut with a click. She smiled.

“Do you want to remember?” she asked. Her smile wobbled almost imperceptibly, in a way that made him want to gather her up in his arms and hold her tight against his chest. He got the feeling that was something he’d done before too.

“What’s there to remember?” he asked, crossing his arms defensively. He wasn’t sure he wanted to hear about himself going all soft and smushy.

Her smile widened like he’d just done something to make her real happy. “Defeat of common enemies, kidnap and intrigue, first kisses.”

For some reason, his mind latched on to that last item rather than any of the others. Surprisingly, the idea didn’t give him a heart attack or get his hackles up the way he would’ve expected it to. He leaned towards her, leering and crowding her space. “First kisses, huh? I kissed ya before?”

She nodded, not giving up an inch of ground.

“What was it like?”

“Which one?” Her smile turned humorous.

He looked down at her, brow knitting in confusion. “Whaddaya mean which one?”

“The first first kiss or the second first kiss? You were only conscious for part of the first first kiss.”

“Well tell me ‘bout that one then.” he said, sitting himself down on the crate River had previously occupied. She remained standing, putting her at eyelevel with him.

“It was U-day. Mal, Zoe, you and me went to an Alliance friendly bar. Words were exchanged, bad words, then punches. Big man with big fists, bigger than you in a horizontal direction, threw you over the bar but no one saw. Fight was over when I hit the big man over the head with a bottle.”

A flash of a dark shape and a bar in chaos flying away from him flickered past his eyes.

“We couldn’t find you because you landed too hard against the back wall, shelves and bottles and glasses falling on you knocked you out momentarily. Mal said you weren’t breathing so I commenced cardio-pulmonary resuscitation. Two breaths for every fifteen chest compressions, you opened your eyes and pushed me off before I could begin a second breath. Then you yelled at me for kissing you on the mouth.”

Apparently he hadn’t thought it a good idea then but now that he thought about it, River was welcome to rescue him anytime. “And the second first kiss?”

Instead of answering, she pulled him to his feet and drew his hands to her waist, surprising him with her familiarity and slid her own hands up his bare arms to rest on his shoulders. “We were dancing, to a slow little tune from Earth-that-was beaming over the Cortex.”

His feet began moving of their own accord, River flowing with him. They turned slowly, pivoting around an invisible spot in the metal decking to a song that tickled his eardrums.

“I looked up and asked you-“

“Would you kiss me on the mouth if I asked you to?” he finished for her.

“The heart knows what the brain begins to remember.” She smiled and Jayne found himself thinking on how lovely she looked in the cold light of space. It felt right, dancing with her in the nose of the ship.

“So would ya?” he asked, the words tumbling from his mouth before he could stop them. “Even though I gone and forgot ya?”

Instead of answering, she lifted up on the very tips of her toes and kissed him on the mouth. Her lips were petal soft, sliding against his in a smooth caress. Almost cautiously, her tongue slipped out, tracing the line of his lower lip. Having been momentarily frozen in surprise, he finally responded, mouth opening to welcome her in. She tasted better than anything he’d ever tasted, like mint and moonlight.

When she pulled back, he found that he had picked her up and was holding her tightly against his chest, her toes dangling at around mid-shin. With a wry grin, he released her, letting her slide deliciously down his body to rest on her own two feet again. Rather than stepping back, out of his arms like he expected, she leaned against him, her head tucked under his chin.

She fit so perfectly in his arms and standing there with her under a canopy of stars felt so good that even if she was making it up, pulling his leg, he didn’t want to let her go. For a moment the ship seemed to melt away and he could almost believe it was just the two of them floating there in the endlessness of space. With his heart in his throat, he pulled back slightly so he could look her in the eye.

“I’m sorry I been such a hou zi de pi gu the past few days.” he began. “Reckon I really am an ape, like yer brother always says. I ain’t sure what we was like before I forgot but ya seem ta think we had a good thing goin’ and I don’t think I’d be adverse to startin’ over again.”

His fingers tightened around her waist but River just watched him with a curious gaze.

“So ya think you could give me another chance?” he asked nervously.

She looked up at him with eyes that saw all his past and all his future. “The heart knows what the brain will remember.”

Translation: hou zi de pi gu – monkey’s ass