Title: Primary Expedition Pt 3 Author: GoddessofBirth Pairing: Rayne Disclaimer: I really, really don't own it.

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Within two seconds he was fully awake and aware of where he was, who he was next to, and the implications of the early morning sunshine streaming through the window. Judging by the look on River's face, he wasn't going to be pleased by the identity of the person hammering at the door.

'It's Simon. He's worried.'

Ta made! He'd known something like this would happen, but as hard as he tried, he couldn't muster up his usual regret for decisions made in haste. He turned from glaring at the door to look at the girl, but all he caught was a flash of her hair as she slid behind the side of the bed, clothes and gun in hand. A second later, a little hand popped up and gestured toward the door.

He paused to pull on his pants and then stomped over, yanked the door open and stuck his head out. He snarled into Simon's face. 'What?'

Simon actually did look apologetic. 'I'm sorry to interrupt your leave, but River didn't come back to the ship last night. Have you seen her?'

Jayne sneered. 'Doc, I'm in a whorehouse. Why in seven hells would I see your crazy sister here?' Then, he leered. ''Less of course she's taken up a new side job I don't know about.'

Simon shook his head. 'Ugh. Could you be any more disgusting?'

Jayne crossed his arms and smirked. 'I don't know. Give me a minute to work on it.'

Simon dropped the argument as quickly as he had brought it up. 'Look, I'm worried. I've searched everywhere and can't find her. What if she got taken again?'

Jayne rolled his eyes, seizing the opportunity to get rid of him. 'Give me a second to get dressed, dong ma? I'll meet you downstairs an' help you look.'

Simon was turning to go when he caught sight of the bed over Jayne's shoulder. 'Where's the whore?'

Jayne froze and then forced himself to relax. There weren't too many spots he couldn't prevaricate his way out of, and this one wasn't even a lie 'Ain't got a whore.'

Simon looked him up and down. 'Well you look like you 'got' a whore - ' Jayne silently cursed his decision not to put on a shirt. '- and the owner said she sent you up here with...a....young...' His eyes narrowed and Jayne saw the instant suspicion set in.

'You know, Jayne, why don't I just come in and wait?'

Jayne put his arm across the opening of the door. 'No.'

Simon's mouth hardened. 'Why not?'

'Cause it's my room, you zheng qi de gou-shi dui. Get your own if you wanna sit your ass down.'

In a sudden movement that caught Jayne off guard, Simon ducked under his arm and began looking wildly around the room.

'Where's the whore? You obviously had one, you're marked like a dog in heat.'

Jayne opened his mouth to retort when he realized Simon was stalking over to the other side of the bed. They were totally sunk. But Simon glanced over the edge and then moved on to pull open the closet door. Jayne followed behind him, and saw that the girl had disappeared. He growled when he saw Simon actually get down on his hands and knees and look under the bed. Girl was small, but she wasn't that small.

Simon zeroed in on the only spot in the room he hadn't searched, the small bath area. He glared at Jayne. 'What? Is she in there?' Jayne mentally tried out several stories that would excuse River's presence in his room, but quickly discarded them all as entirely unbelievable. He held his breath as Simon ripped open the bathroom door and then let it out when it, too, was empty.

Where had she gotten to? He knew the windows there didn't open. Then, he got a funny feeling and glanced up at the ceiling. He made a small choking noise and looked determinedly down at his hands. River was up there, all right, spread eagled in the corner like she had been when she'd tried to remove his head with a can of peaches. Only this time she was clutching her clothes and holster between one hand and the wall, with the rest of her completely naked. It was, at once, the most arousing and most terrifying sight he had seen.

He tried to blink past the image seared on his eyes. When he was certain he could speak without stuttering he walked up to where Simon was standing, staring into space, and spun him around.

'You finished, you ruttin' idjit? I had a whore; sent her away when we was done. You know full well I don't sleep with 'em, same as I don't kiss 'em. Happy?'

Simon's shoulders slumped and Jayne might have felt the slightest bit guilty if he wasn't just one upward glance away from being completely humped.

'I – I'm sorry. I don't know what...crazy ideas...not like she'd ever... I'm going to check a few more places. I'll meet you downstairs in ten minutes.'

Simon practically ran out the door and Jayne closed it behind him. He waited a few seconds and then crooked his head up to look at her, 'You comin' down or you gonna hang out there all day?'

She grinned and then dropped, landing gracefully on all fours like some kind of feline. She hurriedly drew up her panties and threw her clothes on her body. Jayne felt a small pout form on his face and quickly wiped it off. Clutching her holster in one hand, she covered the few feet that separated them and stared at him in silence. He knew he should say something, anything, but there was an odd lump in his throat that kept the words from escaping.

Finally, she said, very gravely, 'Thank you.' Then she reached up and kissed him hard on the mouth, and in a flurry of hideous orange skirt she was gone. He looked around the room. Every trace of her had disappeared, and if it weren't for the feel of her on his hands, and the taste of her still lingering on his tongue, he might have thought the whole thing was a dream.

He walked slowly into the bath area, half of him reluctant to wash her off of his skin, the other half needing her smell gone to put the night in some kind of perspective. He bathed and redressed, put his gun in his holster and filled his lungs with a deep breath of air. He shook his head and walked out the door, mentally preparing himself to deal with the complications he knew were coming.

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Only...they didn't seem to exist. By the time he walked down the stairs, Simon had already returned, carrying the news that he had found River in the town commons, only just waking up underneath a tree. She told him she had fallen asleep there, listening to the ground breath. Only the girl could get away with something like that.

He didn't see her again until lunch time, when he walked into the mess and found her stirring a pot of protein. She glanced up at him and smiled before returning her attention to her task, but it was the same bright smile she gave everyone, no intimate curl to indicate he'd swallowed her screams into his mouth or that he carried deep half moons in his shoulders from her nails.

At dinner that night, she sat in the seat next to him, like she had for the last three years, and passed him the rolls when he asked. But when his hand jumbled against hers when he grabbed the basket, her hand didn't twitch, her cheeks didn't blush, and she never cast a sideway glance in his direction to let him know she was remembering other, less visible places his hands had touched.

The next day, she was cleaning her gun at the table and called him over to help her reassemble a particularly tricky piece that was giving her trouble. He snapped it into place and she'd absentmindedly thanked him before grabbing a rag and returning to polishing the muzzle. It had been nothing like the thank yous she'd uttered across the bed from him, the ones that had made him feel oddly warm and tumbly, like he'd done something heroic.

It was like the whole thing had never happened. She wasn't ignoring him, or treating him meanly. She still joked and laughed and teased just like she had every. damn. day. for the last three years. Like he'd never touched her, never kissed her, never held her as she'd writhed against his mouth. Like nothing important had ever happened at all.

The next morning he'd walked in for breakfast and seen her sitting at the table, smiling her bland little smile, and suddenly he was furious. And because he couldn't figure out why exactly he was angry, because she was doing exactly what he wanted her to do, he reacted in a very Jayne Cobb way and got angrier still. He turned on his heels and stalked out of the room, barely hearing Mal's 'Well, that was interesting,' trailing out behind him.

Two more days passed before they hit dirtside again. Two more days where he started to think that maybe he had imagined the whole thing, except that his imagination wasn't quite that good. Two days where he found himself watching the girl more than was healthy, trying to see any discernible difference in the way she acted, anything to indicate she even thought on that night at all.

On the second day, just as Bill had landed Serenity, he was loading Boo while walking down the corridor, when he overheard River and Simon talking around the corner.

'So what are your plans for when we finish the job, mei mei?'

River laughed a little. 'I had given thought to a secondary expedition.'

Simon returned her laughter in the way he did when he had absolutely no idea what she was talking about, but Jayne couldn't hear him over the pounding in his head. He thought his blood might be boiling out of his skin, and he struggled against the desire to shoot something, anything.

Gorram girl couldn't even wait one ruttin' week before moving from one bed to another. He was aware there was no reason for him to be so angry, after all, he had never wanted the girl clinging to him, but it didn't alter the fact that he was. He ground his teeth hard and stalked back to his bunk, reminding himself that it didn't matter, she could whore it up as much as she liked. Just like he could, and would, see about a piece of trim as long as everyone managed to stay bullet free during the job.

He was in his bunk, sightlessly rummaging through his drawers when he heard the hiss of his hatch opening and a soft thump. He turned around and gave a violent start when he saw River crouched at the bottom of his ladder.

'Jesus, girl, you wanna give me a heart attack? What're you doin' here?'

She rearranged herself to sit cross legged on the floor, ugly dress of the day draped over her knees.

'You are angry with me. I've felt it shooting daggers at me for days. I want to know why.'

He sat heavily on his bed and ran a hand through his hair. 'Fuck, River, I don't know.'

She tilted her head and stared intently at him, and he knew she was actively reading him. For once he didn't mind. He hadn't been able to put together what was wrong, so maybe she could explain to him why he now felt the urge to break something every time she walked in the room. But after a few minutes her eyes refocused and she looked as confused as he felt.

'I don't understand. This was what you wanted. You helped me, now I help you. No complications, no recriminations, no changes.'

He stood up and paced the few steps back and forth between the bed and the dresser. 'I know that.'

He kicked a drawer and a sharp crack filled the room. He felt minutely better now that he had managed to break something.

'I guess I just didn't expect you to act like it wasn't even worth makin' note of.'

She looked at him like he was the crazy one in the room. 'What? Jayne Cobb, you are not stupid, do not act like it. You felt me underneath your hands. You know what it meant to me.'

He felt his face curl up into a nasty sneer. 'Yeah, it meant so much you could barely wait til we touched ground to start findin' someone else to experience it with.' He heard his voice end on a snarl, but he couldn't help it.

He watched as her face smoothed out. She shook her head. 'You have been eavesdropping.'

His face grew warm but he refused to drop his scowl.

She suddenly sighed. 'Jayne. You were the Primary, both in virginity and experience. The virginity cannot be re-given, but any further initial encounters would still be primary. I am not interested in primary at the moment. I am looking for secondary.'

He stared at her blankly. She rolled her eyes at his lack of understanding. 'I was coming to find you.'

He froze. 'What?' He looked down at where she sat, one side of her mouth curled up.

'Why?'

She stood up, in one swift motion and smiled a small smile, one that finally spoke of heat and flesh and sighs. She put a hand on his cheek.

'I very much enjoyed the experiment. I would like to add other variables, test other portions of the equation. I thought you would be amenable to temporarily serving as the constant.'

Then, it was so much worse, because he suddenly felt dirty and used, and he hated it. He spat out angrily, 'I got no interest in bein' your boy whore, Crazy.'

Her smile disappeared as quickly as her hand from his face. She stumbled back, and as he watched, the color dropped from her skin and she seemed to have trouble breathing. His anger morphed into some kind of sinking feeling when he realized he hadn't called her that since that night at Martha's.

'I thought – .' She stopped and shook her head. 'She understands. She will go now.' She turned around and began scrambling up his ladder.

It hit him, then, why he had been so angry, and he knew he had to act fast before he did something even stupider than his actions over the last few days. Before she could open the hatch he caught her arm and pulled her down, trapping her back to his chest. Something in his whole body relaxed at the feel of her there.

'Gorramit, River, that ain't what I meant.'

She struggled against his arms. 'Would like you to let go now, please.'

He tightened his grip. 'Just stop for one ruttin' minute and listen to me.'

She went very still, almost limp against him. He splayed his hand across her stomach to hold her to him and he felt her shiver. His fingers slid in small circles in response.

'I don't wanna just be some toy you play with for awhile 'fore you get bored and chuck it aside.'

He loosened his arms slightly and she shifted until she was facing him again. He carefully lifted one hand to brush the remnants of something wet from the corner of her eye. She looked into his face and then let out a small gasp.

'You desire the complication. You want legitimacy, recognition. You want the right to stake a claim publicly.'

He swallowed hard, feeling far more exposed and raw than Jayne Cobb was ever comfortable being, and had, in fact, spent the vast majority of his life actively avoiding. His eyes darted around the room before settling back on hers. He nodded. 'Yeah.'

'This would be a change in precedent.'

He smirked. 'Well, you're a precedent changin' kind a girl.'

She didn't say anything for a very long while, and he had that same feeling he'd had at Martha's; the sense that she was measuring him, weighing his intentions. Then, the corners of her mouth curled up.

'The Alphas would make an excellent match.' She sobered and reached up, drawing one small finger down the side of his face, so softly he wanted to close his eyes to properly feel it.

'But have a care for your choices, Jayne. Alphas mate for life.'

He met her gaze squarely and smiled, hard and dangerous. 'Good. Then we won't have no misunderstandin's.'

Then his face gentled into something most of Serenity's crew would consider incredibly un-Jayne-like. He pulled her closer to him and rested his face in her hair, letting all of his anger from the past week simply drain out of him. They stood there, neither moving, until there was a loud pounding on the hatch, the first salvos fired in the coming battle.

Mal's voice floated down. 'Got a minute, Jayne?'

Jayne pulled his head back and raised an eyebrow. 'You ready for this?'

She smiled and shrugged carelessly. 'You and I were born to fight.'

He wondered, then, if this had been inevitable from the moment she had first marked him across his chest, and if maybe she had known all along. She laughed and shook her head.

'Not a clue.'

He grinned back at her before yelling upwards. 'Door's open Mal, come on down.

fin