Haven't spent a lot ot time prettying this part up so if you find fractures that need splinting, please let me know and I'll fix them. Hope it mostly follows okay. For those of you who asked for Jayne to hurry up and rise again, trust me a little longer. Delayed satisfaction makes the reaping more pleasurable, dontcha think? :0)

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.

End of Part 3

Author’s note: Feedback makes my head spin and my fingers type faster. Wish you could see the headspin thing.

Part 4 might just get us down and dirty with the newly clean Jayne and lil’ Kaylee.

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