Feedback is like Christmas morning. Please do it to me, Baby.

Gratitude galore to jing zi Betas including Jacqui, Belasera and Venamoon. I have been blessed by their knowledge and suggestions. Any and all existing errors are purely due to my own stubbornness.

Disclaimer: I don’t own nothin’ to do with Firefly. Joss is omniscient and his is the head from which my idols sprang, fully grown, muscles-flexin’. I just make them strike a pose and vogue some. God, I'm scared since this is my first fic. Wonder if Joss ever feels these jitters...

The Measure of a Jayne

Preface:

There’d been thoughts. No reason to say any different. Thoughts sprung from the way she smells, hot sweat, engine grease all girl moist. The way she walks, rolling ship in a gale hips all unconscious grace. Kaylee was, Kaylee is…all things Woman heat to Jayne. He’s been from the corest of the worlds to the blackest black and put tab A into slot B (or into C or D) at a lot of stops in between so it ain’t as if he’s had trifling few to compare her to. But the softness, the Woman that the merc sees on the outside of this girl and on the inside too calls to the hardness of the man.

He’s afeared that… no, he knows the winsome mechanic’s always leaned toward the doc with the purty mouth, but that man’s leanin’s were all toward doctorin’ his crazy brain sister. Avoiding playin’ doctor with a more than willing lil’ Kaylee was something Serenity’s resident physician was too shee-niou stupid to realize weren’t no kind of smart. But Jayne. Jayne’s got a fever, one the doctor don’t have no meds for.

And the only prescription is more Kaylee.

Present day:

He’s gotta have him some Kaylee, can’t let nothing stop him and that surely means puzzling out gorram fecking soon how to get her to see how a muscley henchman is a remedy she has a like-need for. How he’s gonna do that while simultaneously bandaged and bleeding and too slowly recoverin’ in his least favorite ship environs (the medlab), well, that’s the damn rub.

Time was, laid up in previous injurious-like conditions, he’d a-wanted, above all things, to be in his bunk surrounded by his things. That was back when his onlyest thoughts of Kaylee were obscenity-wrapped prayers enjoining a mere scruffy girl to keep this piece of fei oo bird flying.

Since she weren’t but a half-growed farmgirl, Zoe was married and the Companion’s fees were far beyond his even darin’ to ask, it had appeared there weren’t no available females on board nor any likelihood of ‘em joining. The result was Jayne’d slammed a hatch tight over his need for woman-flesh, woman-heat.

He weren’t averse to openin’ up that place in him whenever they touched dirt-down, never havin’ a lick of trouble finding a willing woman dirt-side to wrap his needful self around like a quilt. Once the ol’ in and out’n was done and the boat grabbed sky again toward the next heist, his lair was a right perfect place to be, a sure-fire cure, no need for anything else in creation.

Cloth covered the only faithful women in his life, rough upper edge of muslin pulled down so’s he could be voyeur to his own weapons cache. The hard reassuring diamond gleam of Vera and the lesser concubines smiled and beckoned to him from an oil perfumed nest.

‘Long as he took perfect care of them and they were near to his hand, god was on his throne and Jayne was pert near body-able to fetch any one of ‘em up and rain down hell well-heeled if the need arose or if he just plain felt like it, gorramit.

Okay, so that image of RoboJayne could right now be more than a tetch of wishful-thinking, seein’ as how he’s been fed nothin’ but pap and clear broth for days and ain’t been able to take a piss on account of throwin’ up that go se they shoved down him, nothin’ left to pee out. Jayne don’t ken science much, but he knows ain’t no piss if they ain’t no water done stayed in. He knew about the upchucking from flashes of wakefulness that included Simon reporting to the captain on the patient’s condition.

Jayne turned his head infinitesimally toward the sound of the capn’s voice to peer at Mal’s frame leaning up one side of the medlab doorway, arms crossed, visage lined with concern when the doc explained that dehydration was stripping away Jayne’s strength and any hope of a speedy recovery. The downed merc was touched by Mal’s concerned look, until the capn’s next words explained it away. “Jen dao mei. Just when that big hulk of a walking liability can’t walk is when I find a gorram need for him to get vertical!”

Simon’s brilliant mind reached for alternative strategies to help get Serenity’s crew to the pot of gold at the end of the captain’s latest planned caper, but Mal knew that nothing would work for this part of the plan ‘cept Jayne’s particular brand of intimidation backed up by the big man’s mostly-restored fierce strength.

The gig might could be put off as much as a week though, so Mal’s desperation came up with an idea to help speed things along. The merc’d had his eye on lil’ Kaylee. Seemed the girl couldn’t walk or move or have her being ‘thout Jayne’s eyes attached to her as if she needed his eyeballing her to help hold her up.

A body’d have to be blind—no stone dead, not to see it, unless of course it was the object of Jayne’s affections herself. Kaylee’s vision was sharp on turning metal parts, but she hadn’t a clue as to the state of Jayne’s mind and body parts orbiting around the petite mechanic’s every move. But Mal didn’t think the resident bruin of Serenity’s crew’d have the nerve to direct Kaylee’s gaze to where and how his heart lived.

Mal told the doc he’d go talk to Kaylee, making it an order if need be, send her to come visit the patient. Talk to him, she could, and attempt to get some food into his banged-up self. Could only be a notion of the good since Jayne’s road to recovery needed to move from the entrance ramp to the speedway, right quick-like.

Jayne wanted to shout a hearty amen to the idea of Kaylee put to nursin’ him but nothing more issued from him stronger than a pitiful moue just before Mal walked on out, a man with a burning purpose.

The doc left him alone and Jayne filled whatever minutes of consciousness he had this go-round with formulatin’ a Kaylee-siege. Far as he could figure, the main thing keepin’ him from hauling in lil’ Kaylee pronto is the gunshot wound in his right thigh. But while in the mood to be honest with hisself, might as well mention the cracked and bloody skull he got dealt right after the bullet sang through his leg.

The filthy ching-wah tsao duh liou mahng’d rang his noggin for what felt like a month o’ Sundays, kicking it with feet clad in shoes that felt like hammers. Kicked him while he was dust-down, him takin’ the hard way dirtward when the gunshot knocked his leg out from under him. Only left off the kicking cause he held his breath long enough to convince them he was dead.

'T’aint right, the head-kicking, anybody’d havta agree.' Well, the bullet he figured he deserved, smiling wryly, but the beating they’d dealt him afterward oughta be pictured in a ‘cyclopedia somewhere next to the phrase, “Adding insult to injury.”

If they well and truly owed him the bullet after what he’d done in their barn, the rest of the drubbing was writ large on a debt ledger that throbbed and glimmered in the big merc’s skull like the pain they’d left him to die with. He let go and allowed himself to remember exactly how he’d acquired the newest dents to his frame, just then, since Kaylee factored high in all the good parts and Kaylee was good to think on any time.

By the time the only people in this part of the black having a reason to need Jayne breathing found him laying face-down in the dust and weeds and scorpions, he was in full-on happy crappy hallucination mode. Kaylee and he’d been engaged in all fashion o’ carnal knowledge, some barely knowable to him or any other human afore now.

It’s amazing what the febrile mind that’s lost all hope for the future can conjure up to comfort a fella afore he dies. In the middle of the best fornicatin’ since earth that was, Kaylee’s voice rang out in a shriek heaven-found, calling his name like nothing else in the ‘verse was important ‘cept his ownself.

That was just before the pain in his head and leg and sunburnt neck screamed louder still as somebody turned him over. It was Kaylee in the flesh, doing the turning, saying his name again a little less loud, but a little more sad, arms straight out grasping his side just before the dead weight that’d been Jayne for the past days unknown caused him to plop over frontwise in the newly swirling dust.

His first real-time sight was the halo of her face surrounded by rumpled-soft honey brown hair mercifully blocking out the double sun’s glare. Her face twisted in worry bent near his own, her hands running near but not quite daring to touch the very wrong and bloody slight openness that decorated his cranial vault.

His fissure-cracked lips and parched throat hurt then, as he tried to talk, tried to smile at her and say her name, but nothing. Nothing to be said when moisture is just a body’s memory.

Naught wrong with his nose though, far as he could tell, since it was in hyperdrive full of Kaylee sweat, Kaylee heat, Kaylee fear and a little engine grease just for GP.

When the rest of them: Mal and Zoe and the doc stormed to Jayne’s current resting place having heard and tracked Kaylee’s call, Jayne let go of the sex-crazed fantasies he’d been living off for the past 2 days and surrendered his last grasp of consciousness with a big gorram smile on his face. Weren’t naught on him that didn’t scream hurt as everything faded to black, but hell, he knew they’d do for him if they could, and if not, he was in for an eternal dirt nap rife with Kaylee all around him, her scent filling his head, filling him up and carrying him over. Sure enough reason for a loveless criminal to smile his way into unconsciousness.

---

Next time Jayne was aware of time, he was back on the boat, prone on the medlab bed. And he found the cap’n had made good his promise to send Kaylee along to keep him supplied with company and nursin’.

Before he even opened his eyes to prove his other senses correct, he registered Kaylee smell and, best of all, Kaylee touch. Her hand held a cold wet cloth in place over his forehead and her arm was under his healing sunburnt neck as Simon slid a pillow neath his head, mindful of the bandage Jayne could now feel tight-wrapped round his cranium.

Kaylee’s proximity and the change in position caused Jayne to move his injured leg and brought a hiss from the big man. Kaylee “Sorried!” over and over, but the doctor smiled, said it was a good sign, Jayne moving his leg since there had been a chance nerve damage might have rendered it useless.

Kaylee’s being there was like the cavalry to Simon; it allowed the doc to go for awhile, his every thought worrying after River since he’d unforgivably neglected her care for Jayne’s. With barely a word to Serenity’s resident engineer, he hurried out the door and away toward the faint sound of River’s laughing girlish songs.

After rolling a table near the stool Kaylee rested on one-cheeked, other foot flat on the floor, Kaylee positioned the table so she could lean toward the soup bowl there and back to Jayne’s mouth region.

“How’s our boy today?,” asked the Way to Jayne’s Nethers. Okay, so he warn’t all that happy to have Kaylee refer to him as a male under 12 years old now or any other day, but hell, he was about as helpless as one, so figured on ignorin’it.

He couldn’t debate the matter with her right now anyhow, so he settled on closing his eyes hard and re-opening them the better to focus on her gamine face. Opened his sore lips and got out a gravel “hmmm” for his trouble.

“Don’t try to talk then. Dunno why I asked you a question since it ain’t likely you can hold up your end of a conversation anyhow. Sorry.” He was that anxious to stop the sorries so he made an effort to turn his head infinitesimally from side to side signaling apologies weren’t needed or wanted.

Kaylee lifted the now warming cloth from his head and got it ready to go back in place dipped in icy water so as to be all cool and wet and soothing again. He closed his eyes, lulled as much by her being the one ministering to him as by the cool touch of damp cloth.

She wanted to ask if he was hungry, but stopped herself from sailing the question out just in time. Started a running commentary instead on how long he’d been out (3 days), and how the head-wound was mos’ likely the cause of his napping.

Next running line involved dangling the carrot such that if he was able to keep enough goodies down, they might could shuffle him off to his bunk where he was sure to be more comf’table. Guess she thought the bunk’d act as incentive to get him to cooperate in downing the comestibles. He wondered what she’d think if she knew it was her spending time with him that was most likely what was fixin’ to do the trick.

She brought a warm smelling bowl close to his chin then, and moved the half-full spoon toward his lips. The prior propping up helped, and he did too, opening up enough mouth and throat to swallow. Gave another mmmmm then and tried a smile that he was surely gratified to see rewarded with a beam from Kaylee, made him choke in sudden knife-like longing.

She grabbed for a cloth, wiping at a drop of soup he felt sliding toward his right ear. One full perfect breast slung forward, brushed against his cheek. Okay. Lust and lunch ain’t good bed partners, but hell, it weren’t his fault. Somehow finding a way to slow his breathing down, he nodded slightly, signaled for her to have another go.

She did, and although he couldn’t get the workings right to see that more soup slid down the correct side of his mouth to encourage the warm softy agin’ him again, the whole half cup or so of fluids stayed down by fits and starts. And that was of the good. Pushing away the bed table, Kaylee held his hand till he fell asleep due to a distinct low gauge of energy and the fullest stomach he’d had in days.

Strange how injury robs even the strongest body of resources, she thought. She remembered when he’d stay up night and day, thumb rubbin’ along whatever favorite weapon or grenade he was packing at the time waiting on an unsavory client or standing/sitting guard for the health, welfare and continued breathing of Serenity’s crew.

Night or day watch didn’t seem to even graze the canyons of resolve in the man. He was weak as a kitten now, though, with just she and him in the room, no sounds but his basso breathing and her own quiet-like, no light but the dimmed medlights to help him rest.

The door to the lab was open a bare foot or so, and Kaylee would surely hear if someone approached to disturb him. This thought came on the heels of the realization that she wanted to do some exploring. Nothing graphic, nothing dangerous to the patient, but it’d been a long time since she’d had a glimpse of his hurts out there in the dust, and then there was a blood coating at the time. Blood, gore, drippage. Nasty.

Now with him cleaned up and bandaged, she wanted to be sure for herself that he was gonna be okay. Gonna be back vertical to stand watch over her and the others after a time, gonna laugh and reach pointing at her with his fork at the dinner table joking with his mouth full of merriment and protein grindage, about something she’d said or done.

Kaylee walked around the medbed then, and lifted up the thin sheet on his right leg, folding it back onto his left to fully uncover the thigh. He was bare, she oughta known but hadn’t thought of that.

Her attention focused on the bandage loosened on his thigh, she peered up under the edge to see that the wound was clean, clotted and healing well—no red warnings running any which way.

She left the leg uncovered, moving to her left toward the bed’s head now, back of her hand feeling his forehead under the cloth. No fever. Turned the wet cloth onto its cooler side, replaced it on his forehead, felt around the bandage for swelling. None that she could feel.

The doc was a good ‘un. She knew it from superior work on her own person. At healing arts patching-up Serenity’s crew, he was downright magic. She smiled then, thinking of Simon. Thinking consummating thoughts of Simon. Still smiling, almost dancing, she curved back around the bed toward the exposed leg.

As she lifted the sheet preparatory to covering him back up, the middle part pulled up and she let out an involuntary squeak. The middle part of him was hooked on a fold of the sheet. Couldn't be enough blood or energy in the man to enable his hydraulics to do their work down there so it had ta be the fold of sheet that got caught on him.

She knew this to be the only explanation and gently laid the sheet down over his leg, pulling the fabric smooth. But that only further delineated what was covered at the juncture of the big man’s thighs.

Lil’ Kaylee’d seen her share of manstaffs covered and un, but the flash she’d just given herself defied nature. Standing statue, only her eyes moving toward the barely open door and ears twitching for any sound, Kaylee assured herself it was just her and the patient in the room or in the foreseeable forehearable vicinity.

She moved a guilty step toward her left then, reached out a hand spread-fingered on top of the sheet covering Jayne Cobb’s package. When neither the edge of her hand closest to her body nor the same fingertips reaching toward the base of his manhood could reach the other side, she slid her palm’s edge down toward his right hip, then wrist-up curled her fingertips over to reach the other hip.

Ai ya, but he was hung. Or else he was swathed in some kinda bandage under that sheet due to an injury the doc hadn’t felt like broadcasting to the feminine crew contingent.

Kaylee worried about the injury-potential to Jayne’s hydraulics more than she wanted to question right here and now, and partially to aid her policy of not taking useless time in self-doubt, she whipped back the sheet like a matador on earth-that-was and saw Jayne in ALL his glory, glorious for true.

Wu de tyen ah, what must he be like hard?

The shaft laid slightly to the left, leading edge from his body flared and wide and ridged and perfect, the length dangling down toward a dusky pink and circumcised head whose slit was like an apostrophe.

His balls were big, egg-like, nesting one atop the other between legs a bit paled from too long without sun. Sweet Buddha, but he was hung and hung spectacular, and if anybody on this bird ‘sides Inara would know, Kaylee would sure-nuff be the one to be able to testify.

The hair that peppered him was coarse and black and felt like—Kaylee jerked her hand away from his pubic area just short of touching her flesh to his without the bed sheet’s insulation between them. Short. Not an adjective worth applying to Jayne anywhere.

What in the tyen shuh duh was she doing, first clinically categorizing Jayne’s manhood and now figurin’ on touchin’ besides lookin’? She belonged heart and soul to Simon. Well, okay, her crucial “body” wasn’t wrapped up in that equation of belonging yet, but certainly not due to any lack of pinin’ and tryin’ on her part.

It was Simon’s fault, that’s what it was. If she’d ever had some regular bouts of Simon’s parts clenching and twining her nethers, she’d not be here right now lusting after, wanting to paw over Jayne’s southern landscape. Hell with it.

Her hand stretched right back where it wanted to be, reaching his abdomen’s hairtips, surprisingly soft for all their coarse appearance, surprising too, to find anything soft on such a ship’s bulkhead hard man.

But the Jayne she knew was nothing if not a walking contradiction so why not find out he’s soft as well as hard. Slightly more pressure and a slow lateral handsweep over pubic hair affirmed the finding but the fun in the hair-feelin’ department quickly paled next to the better territory beckoning a few scant centimeters straight down from there.

Warmth was what she felt. And a kidskin softness over giving flesh. He was bigger around than her thumb and longest finger could circle. Ai ya, she thought again, how wide would he be if he were…hard?

Which was what she realized he was beginning to be, a result of the ol’ clever finger-measure testing his girth. She dropped him, no she thrust him back down, backed away a step from the bed and raked her eyes straight up to his face, mouth open to try for an explanation, please sweet Buddha: one that he’d buy.

His face was slack, though, dry cracked lips parted and regular breathing eking, even a light snore ratcheting out. Kaylee’s fight or flight impulses loosened then, muscles relaxed, and she carefully reached back out over the bed, pulling the sheet safely back down and over the big man’s lower half.

The best mechanic and now the horniest woman in the known ‘verse sidled out of the room, flitting away like a namesake of the class of her ship, and back to the safety of her engines.

As she crossed the medlab threshold, Jayne turned his head quickly to enjoy the view of her overalls-clad and shapely rump, one hand reaching down to soothe his manhandled—make that Kaylee-handled (cause he wern’t sly) “Jayne” Thomas.

End, Part 1

More to come, but please, feed me Seymour! I’m new and tender at this author business, (first ever fanfic) so please be gentle or I’ll crawl off somewhere quiet-like and duct tape my fingers so as to keep from using the keyboard again. And, dear readers, I need that keyboard to get help rassling Jayne up onto the monitor and outta my brain so he will lemme sleep un-molested. Slightly less molested. Okay, molested but bleary-eyed and too tired from so much typing.

jing zi: ingenious fei oo: junk ching-wah tsao duh liou: frog-riding bastard wu de tyen ah: dear god in heaven tyen shuh duh: god knows what Ai ya: damn fong luh: crazy