. . . “I just direct my energy elsewhere.”

“You mean like masturbating?” – ‘Objects in Space’

~ ~

It was a whole day after the kitchen talk before Jayne found him alone, reading at the dining table.

“So, Preacher, you never really did say. Not even …” Jayne’s voice trailed off as his right hand curled around an imaginary cylinder and started making suggestive motions below his stomach.

Book sighed, having lost a bit of his hard-won patience with this topic now that it came up a second time. “No, Jayne. Not even … that.”

“Huh.” The hand drifted upwards to scratch at Jayne’s belly, and the big man wandered off, a look of perplexity ridging the skin between his brows.

~

Two days later, they were doing some lifting in the cargo bay.

Book finished his last set of bench presses, his triceps twanging with the strain, and sat up to run a towel over his sweaty face and neck.

Piling more weight onto the bar for his own turn, Jayne said, “So’s supposing you’re in the shower, and you’re just washing, nothing else. But your hand’s all soapy and slick like, and your John Thomas can’t help but take an interest. Not even then?”

Book silently contemplated Jayne asking this just before Book was about to spot him and decided it was probably more a sign of the larger man’s faith in his own strength than trust in Book not to let the bar fall on his windpipe. They were friends, but he wasn’t sure how much that meant ‘trust’ to Jayne like it would most folks.

“Jayne.” He put a note of warning into his voice.

“Alright.” Jayne laid back on the bench, grumbling a bit, a gorramit slipping out. “Just trying to make sense of it is all.”

Moving to stand over Jayne’s head, Book saw how the other man’s face lacked that sneaky squint of eye he got whenever he purposefully teased Simon, and Book considered another idea – that Jayne might not even realize the topic was annoying to bring up over and over again. ~

A handful of days further on, Jayne bounded into the common room, eyes sparkling, voice excited. “How about a dirty dream, preacher? One that makes you pop? What if you have one of those? Not like you can stop ‘em or anything.”

“I think God would be understanding about a situation like that.”

“So’s that mean you have ‘em?”

Book’s smile felt a little strained as he looked back down to his Bible.

~

By the time their cooking rotation came around again, Jayne had been quiet for a few days, and Book thought the topic was done.

But no.

“I been thinking on it some more,” Jayne said as he moved the chopping board over beside Book to start cutting up vegetables for supper. “If God gave us parts,” he waved his hand – interestingly enough, the one holding the knife – around his lower-middle region, “then why don’t he want his preachers to use ‘em none? Don’t make no sense.”

Realization hit Book hard, rather like a fist to the side of the head, but then, consider the source. Jayne, who wouldn’t recognize crass if it stabbed him repeatedly in the kidney, wasn’t actually trying to be annoying. Jayne – Jayne – was trying to have something that vaguely resembled a philosophical discussion with him.

Stirring a bit more rosemary into the stew, Book felt the tension of the past week drain from his shoulders to leave the familiar movements of cooking easy and fluid. He smiled at the other man, all open and friendly feeling again. “Well, as I see it …”

Even as he continued his answer, Book couldn’t help but chuckle to himself. Leave it to Jayne to be spurred to deep thoughts about that particular piece of the male anatomy. . . .