Title: Unintentional
Author: Angel
Summary: Jayne didn’t mean to.


Unintentional
2006 Angel

*****

‘Tweren’t that Jayne meant to be looking.  It just sort of happened that way.  He’d taken
dinner in his bunk, mad at Mal and cranky at everyone and generally not feeling like socializing. 
Then, he took his dishes back.  Kaylee had lost pretty bad at tall card and had everyone’s dish
duty for fourteen days.  Crazy River was sitting on the table, swinging her feet and singing something
Jayne didn’t care to hear.  Crazy was catching, especially in space.

But Kaylee talked to River like she was anybody and not plumb loco.  Jayne was about to open
the door, when he saw River hop off the table and come up behind Kaylee, wrapping her scrawny
 little arms around the mechanic and laying her head on Kaylee’s shoulder.  She put a secret little kiss
on Kaylee’s neck, before her eyes, those gorram all-seeing, scary eyes–glanced out the door’s
porthole at Jayne.

Jayne set his dishes outside the galley and slipped back to his bunk, thinking too much about that kiss. 
He went back to his bunk and lay down, still trying to be mad at Mal, but he kept getting distracted. 
River’s arms around Kaylee, just missing her goodies, kept distracting him.  River’s mouth.  Kaylee’s
neck.  And Kaylee not complaining none either.

He finally fell asleep, only one hand on Vera instead of both as was usual.

‘Tweren’t that Jayne meant to be listening.  But Serenity weren’t any too big and Kaylee’s bunk was
between his and everywhere else.

He heard Kaylee giggle.  She did that a lot and it was kinda cute, even if he’d never say so.  But River
speaking poetry made him stop in his tracks and hide the apple he’d pilfered in his shirtfront.

“Your seven strings are like the voice
Of a cold wind in the pines,
Singing old beloved songs
Which no one cares for any more.”

Kaylee giggled again.  “Do another one.  You’re too smart for me.”

Moonshine and madness, that was all there was to River.  Poetry was just girls being mushy.  Jayne tried to
slip past the open hatch.  He didn’t go much for mushy.  But he glanced in anyway.

Girls.  Being mushy.  And naked.  There was definitely nakedness in with the mushy.

He stole away just as quick and quiet as his bulk allowed.  But the images could not be stole away from him. 
Kaylee’s perky little titties rubbing against River’s tiny chest-bumps left him all dry-mouthed and thinking hard
enough to hurt.  ‘Tweren’t just his brain hurting, neither.  The whorehouse had been a long while back and
nothing but his own hand was keeping him company nights.

It didn’t help that River’s freaky eyes had found him again, sucking him in like a black hole, making him part of
the girls’ mushy nakedness.  His hand was aching a lot lately.

Jayne didn’t dream much, as a rule.   But lately, all he’d been seeing on the back side of his eyelids was River
and Kaylee.   He dreamed them apart.  He dreamed them together.  And he dreamed himself in the middle of them.

The last left him waking up sweating, shaking and hard.  Kaylee’s cute smile seemed cuter than usual.  River’s
hair prettier.  It was like she was doing something to him with those eyes.  Between them, they could eat him
alive and nobody’d know the difference.

‘Tweren’t that Jayne meant to be spying.  Mal had sent him down to the Engine room for some gorram reason
or other.  He’d been trying to avoid Kaylee and River, but his luck hadn’t been good on the tiny ship.  And going
in where one would be, well, it wasn’t his idea of an easy trip.

He listened, but didn’t hear anything.  That was good.  He didn’t want to be interrupting anything involving mushy
nakedness.  That’d be just plain embarrassing for everyone.

He rounded the corner of the engine and stopped dead.  He was about to be embarrassed.  River was pressing
against the bulkhead and Kaylee her back to him.  Not that Kaylee was going to be looking up from what she
was doing anytime real soon.  Her face between River’s spindly thighs, she wasn’t making no noise other than
quiet little sighs of contentment.

River saw him, and smiled, sending chills all over him like he’d been dumped in a lake.  So damn inviting, that
smile of hers.  And her eyes beckoned him in closer.  

Jayne walked, his feet moving like they weren’t even part of him.   He couldn’t get his eyes back from River. 
She pulled him like a tractor beam, like some old crazy witch in a story.

“I can kill you with my brain,” River whispered, “but not today.”  

Kaylee looked up and turned pink.  “Jayne!  I– She–“

“Shush,” River said and kissed her.  “He wants.  I hear it in his blood.”

“Crazy talk,” Jayne grumbled, with no conviction behind it.

Kaylee pulled her coveralls around into place.  “Well, if that’s how it is, maybe I’d better be going.”

She sounded awful hoity-toity and Jayne didn’t like seeing her mad.  He kissed Kaylee.  It felt safer than kissing
River.  She didn’t bite him or fight, but she looked at him like he’d hit her hard enough to stun when he stopped.

River nodded.  “There’s a sad sort of chiming from the clock in the parlor. Tick tick tick.”  

“Moonbrain,” Jayne said, without hostility.  “Ain’t no clocks and no parlors on Serenity.”

Kaylee, feeling bolder, kissed Jayne this time.  “Stop thinking.  That’s for the Captain and the smart folks.  She
means we have to hurry.  We been talking about you and I’m willin.”

“Oh.  Yeah.”  He moved in close and leaned to River.  She hadn’t closed her knees and her skirt was still rucked
up around her waist.  She pulled him down for a kiss.  “Yeah.  Mushy nakedness.”  He couldn’t get his mind around
much more than that.

“Took you long enough,” River said, and laughed like stardust hitting the hull.


(The poem is “Playing the Zither” by Liu Changqing, written about AD 750)