Old War Horses
Rated ADULT
Warnings: Dom/sub, sexual confusion

Chapter Six

"You alive?"

Jim opened his eyes to see Mal in the doorway. "I figure it'll take a whole lot more than that to end me." Jim looked around. "Where's Blair?"

Mal's expression twisted, and Jim could feel fear rip through him. He forced himself to sit up even though his whole body was still weak. Clearly the doctor had given him something. "He's fine. He threatened all kinds of bodily harm if I so much as upset you. He's a mouthy little shit," Mal said with a pained expression, so Jim figured that Blair had really gotten his mouth running but good.

"He really is a good man," Jim said.

With a frown, Mal leaned against the wall and studied Jim in a way that made him mighty uncomfortable. "He spends a whole lot of time saying the same about you. He spends enough time saying it that about all I want right now is a little peace where someone isn't chasing after me listing all your positive attributes." That made Jim smile. Blair pretty much won arguments by wearing people down with talk instead of throwing a punch the way most men did. Mal shrugged, which did seem to suggest he was as helpless against Blair's unconventional attacks as most men. "How about we call a truce and just don't go talking on certain subjects?"

"Like the war?" Jim guessed.

Mal looked around at all the doctor's equipment. "Might be we should leave the subject alone."

Jim nodded. "It's not a subject I really want to discuss, so that seems fair. At least as long as not talking about it means you don't plan to throw both of us out an airlock." A little part of Jim wanted him to just drop the subject, but until he had this man's word that they were safe, Jim wasn't feeling safe.

"I reckon I can live with that so long as you aren't walking around here talking about your glory days."

A dark laugh slipped out of Jim. "Trust me, I remember those days as anything but glorious. I generally spend reunification day getting so drunk I can't stand up. At least I did until the Institute left me like this." Jim held up his bandaged hands. They itched. "So, as just one more passenger you're hauling around, I'm wondering if you've figured out the radiation leak."

"I ain't so sure we have one," Mal shook his head. "I know River's a reader, and a gorram good one, but Kaylee knows this ship, and she's been all over it three times and claims there ain't a thing wrong with her."

"The cargo?" Jim guessed. The captain would have to be an idiot to have not checked, but with this crew, Jim couldn't take that risk.

"Nope. What I got is a whole lot of worthless data disks with three year old racing stats sitting on top of a whole heaping pile of Darga root."

Jim cringed. Aiya. He wasn't sure what was worse, the fact that he was traveling with a drug smuggler or the fact that Mal was a drug smuggler by accident. This ship sure wasn't run the way he was used to a ship running. Jim sighed. Then again, the way he was used to things running, no one had any say or any right to speak up. That kind of blind obedience hadn't exactly worked out real well for him either.

"No smart comments?" Mal asked, clearly surprised.

With a shrug, Jim shifted around. His hands were still giant, useless cotton balls, and the annoyance of that was far greater than his annoyance with Mal. "Don't suppose it's any of my business what cargo you run. Not anymore. There was a day that I worked enforcement out here, and I will say that your story would not have been real convincing."

Mal scratched his cheek for a second. "Don't exactly look good for us, but now that we know what we're carrying, we can secure it. Honestly, I wouldn't believe that story myself if someone else were the one telling it." He scratched again. "Of course, if'n the Alliance boards, the cargo ain't going to be their first priority."

"True." Jim closed his eyes.

"Your little friend seems to think we're all at the end of a gun here, that whatever River has bouncing around in her head, it's as deadly as she seems to think."

Jim opened his eyes and looked at Mal. The man was studying the wall most carefully.

"I never knew one of the Institute's projects to be wrong about something like that," Jim said slowly. "The scientists didn't really know my range, so my cell's soundproofing was inadequate, and I can tell you that at least three of them starting making a fuss the night before one of them went missing. I guess that was River. The scientists never did figure out how they knew, but they did. They always knew when something big was coming, even if the scientists couldn't decipher their warnings until after it happened. That's how Blair got me out. He started planning the escape, and when the readers started in with their crazy metaphors and the place went into lockdown, he grabbed me during a transfer. If River says there's danger, I'm willing to put my money on it. More than that, I'm willing to put my freedom on the line for it."

Mal wandered over to the counter and picked up a cylinder of something. "Last time she started her crazy talk, the Alliance sent the Operative after us and we ended up having to run for Miranda just to get the ammunition to get them to back off. She ain't been near as much with the crazy since. In fact, she's been downright sane ever since. So that leaves me to ask whether the danger isn't something you're bringing on my ship."

"Might be." Jim could hardly deny that the Alliance wanted him back pretty badly. If Mal wanted to drop them on the nearest planet, Jim couldn't complain. "When you say they sent the Operative, are you using that word to mean agent, or did this man actually call himself the Operative?"

"Seems like you might know something about him." The thing in Mal's hand clattered as he tossed it back onto the counter.

"I heard a lot in there. The scientists stopped thinking about me as a prisoner and I was one more piece of furniture." Jim grimaced. That had been one of the worst parts, but Jim had fought to keep quiet and foster that disrespect. Oh, he could have tried to get them to identify with him and develop sympathy, but he had chosen to gather information and endure the process of dehumanization. Only Blair had cut through his façade to see how much he was hurting.

"Man makes mistakes when he underestimates his enemy." From the tone, Mal was making it pretty clear that he still considered Jim an enemy, even if he was willing to call a truce.

"He does," Jim agreed. "River and the other students were version 2.0 of their project. The Operative was the original. He doesn't have the physical abilities and he has limited access to the sort of mind-power they have, but he can read people and make almost impossible predictions. Blair always wondered why they weren't sending him after us, and I guess now we know. Is he dead?" Jim prayed to the universe that they would give him just one gift.

"Still up and kicking last I knew. Whoever holds his leash pulled him back after we got the message out. I guess we aren't that important anymore. We already told about their dirty little secret."

"And I still have all my secrets." Jim let his head fall back against the examination table. That had been their only advantage. They didn't know why the Operative wasn't on their trail, but he wasn't, and that had allowed them to slip through the noose over and over. Jim didn't have a lot of illusions about their chances if the man was now available to track them. Cao. It would explain why they'd been run so hard to ground in the last week. The man was hunting them and just keeping in the shadows so they didn't know the game had changed. "He's going to know we've taken up with you," Jim confessed. He didn't have a right to pull these people into his mess—not after they'd just crawled out of their own.

"How you figure that?" Mal was sounding surprisingly reasonable for a man who had just learned he was in the crosshairs again.

"The Operative is a reader. Readers create a sort of dead zone around them. River can't see him directly, and he can't see her. If we've dropped off his radar, he's going to know that could only mean one of two things—I'm back in the Institute and the other readers are shielding me or I'm with River."

At first, Mal didn't react. Jim tipped his head up in time to see Mal close his eyes and mutter something physically impossible about elephant diarrhea in Chinese. It was amazing how much more obscene anything became when muttered in Chinese.

"If I can get Blair to agree to it..." Jim sighed at the difficulty of that task... "will you take him on as crew if I move on? The Operative is sure to come after me." Jim figured he could run long enough and hard enough to give the Institute hunters a challenge, and then he could end it hard and fast. If he could take a couple of them with him, well that would be all the better.

Mal crossed his arms and just frowned at Jim in a way that made it pretty clear Jim wasn't going to like whatever he was about to say. Jim nodded. He'd try and find some other haven for Blair, then.

"Seems like you're mighty set on getting yourself killed there, Jimmy."

Jim narrowed his eyes at the captain, but then considered he was nearly unarmed and physically injured, Jim didn't figure his glare would go far. "Let's just say I'm realistic."

"And you're realistically talking yourself into an early grave. You mind explaining that to me because I never thought you'd be a coward. I expected an Alliance-loving back-stabbing, honorless son of a whoring turtle, sure, but not a coward."

"Son of a turtle works a lot better in Chinese. In English, it just sounds like you ran out of insults and reached a little too far to make one up," Jim pointed out.

"And if I tell that little sly friend of yourn that you're slightly on the suicidal side, he'll make your life so close to a living hell you really will welcome death," Mal counterattacked, and Jim had to admit that the captain had him there. If Blair heard any of this, Jim was going to get lecture on enlightenment until the rest of his hair fell out.

"You want the cards on the table?" Jim asked. It wasn't like he had anything left to lose. "Fine. The long and short of it is that we're out of money, out of planets, and out of time. I had a dozen false identities and bolt holes when I worked undercover, and my boss didn't know about most of them. Banks is a good man, but systems get hacked and waves get intercepted, so I took care of myself. But every bolthole that I ran for, the Institute flushed us out of. We're out of money, stowing away on ships and eating stolen food, and still on every planet they get closer. This last time... they were two rows over. If your pilot hadn't taken off as fast as she did, they would have gotten close enough to disable me, and then I would have been back in that cell and Blair would have been in the cell next to me. My time's up. I've come to accept that the same way you just sometimes know when you're losing the battle. It doesn't mean you stop fighting, but it means you change your expectations about how it's going to end up. And if I die, that's still a better future than I was looking at a year ago. Blair gave me back my freedom and a chance to die on my feet. I just refuse to pull Blair down with me."

Mal's eyes had gotten all big. "So you really were trying to get me to help you with a bit of suicide? Cao. I thought he were making that up."

"Who?"

"Your Blair. He were the one who asked me to come in and poke about to see if you were losing your mind or just really set on getting yourself dead."

"He... but. Cao." Jim let his head thunk back against the exam table. "I'm never hearing the end of this."

"Oh man, never is a long time, but you aren't hearing the end of this for at least three lifetimes," a familiar voice told him. Jim could hear as Blair's feet scuffed against the floor as he hurried past Mal.

"I should have heard you out there," Jim said peevishly, but he already had a pretty good idea what happened.

"You needed to turn the senses off for a while. How long has it been since you really slept? You just doze. Doze and let your senses constantly check the surroundings. Man, the brain needs rest." Jim glared at his partner. "And when it comes to understanding the senses and how far you can't push the human brain without sleep, I'm actually the expert. I have three degrees to prove it." Blair softened his words by coming close and trailing his fingers down Jim's arm. His eyes were dangerously bright, and as much as Blair hated crying in public, he looked pretty close to doing just that.

"I'll forgive you for slipping me the gorram drugs if you forgive me for pulling you into all this," Jim said softly.

Blair shook his head. "No way. Wait. That sounds like I'm not forgiving you. No, I mean that I got myself into this because I was so gorram curious and so gorram caught up in the possibilities that I didn't stop and do a morality check until way too late. Way too late. So I got myself into this. You and River just gave me a chance to do something good after putting myself into a big steaming pile of bad."

"You two are almost annoying in your mutual supportiveness," Mal commented. "I ain't sure whether you've gone and drunk some sort of happy water or if you're both a little touched in the head."

"He's touched in the head," Jim quickly answered, bringing a bandaged hand up to brush over Blair's cheek. "However, when it comes to strategy, I'm running the show, right?" Jim demanded. He knew the logical way out of this, but Blair was going to kick and scream the whole way. Even now he was fighting against answering, biting his lip and just looking at Jim.

"Show me a flaw in my logic, Chief. Show me one card we haven't played, and I'll change my mind. But I'm not taking any of this lightly, and I just don't see any way out unless you stay here where River can shield you."

"They want me, too," Blair said, and that was his stubborn expression.

"Yes," Jim said slowly, "they want you if they can get you, but they've already discredited your work and thrown up so much mud that you'll never convince anyone to listen to your stories about some grand conspiracy. I'm the one they need dead. I'm the one that keeps them up at night worrying, both about the contacts I might use and the information I might have overheard."

"We could go to Naomi," Blair blurted out. This was another old argument, and Jim didn't even bother answering; he just looked at his partner.

"If anyone could talk an evil government conspiracy out of being evil just through the sheer power of guilt, it would be Naomi." Blair gave a little laugh, but Jim noticed he wasn't making any attempt to actually argue the point. Jim's guts tightened. A little part of him had hoped that Blair would have a good counter-argument, that he could pull just one more rabbit out of his hat. Jim had already given up on living once, and Blair had given him back his life, but Blair didn't have anything left to give.

"How about I give the ship a good searching and see if I can't find this danger River is talking about," Jim suggested. A job would be better than sitting around waiting for planetfall so he could start his final run. Even though he should be making plans and gathering information on which planet they were heading for, Jim didn't ask. He didn't want to know whether he had days or just hours left with Blair.

"You think you can find what Kaylee couldn't?" Mal asked. He had spent the entire conversation studying them, but Jim was too tired to hide his feelings, and he didn't think it mattered much anymore.

"Yep," Jim said. He started swinging his legs around. The world warbled in and out of focus, straight lines warping into curves.

"Oh man, you can do that after the last of the drugs wears off."

"God, Sandburg, how much did you use?" Jim blinked to try and clear his vision.

"About a fourth of what I usually use." Blair did not sound amused. "You were about ready to pass out on your own. I just helped a little. Actually, that should not have put you down at all, so there is no way you can afford to focus your senses for a full search of the ship. No way. Priority one is to get a little lunch in you, and then we can check the hands, and then you need more sleep."

"We have time for that?" Jim asked, looking over toward Mal.

"Ain't like I'm in a hurry to get anywhere in particular," Mal shrugged and then headed for the door. "River opened every can of peaches we got, so we're having a peach-themed lunch before they can go bad. I swear, I miss her saner days already." With that, Mal was gone.

Jim sighed. He'd wanted time to plan his conversation with Blair—time to gather his arguments and put up sandbags around his failing emotional walls. He never meant for Blair to hear him talk about their failures to someone else, but it didn't change the fact that they had failed. No matter how hard they ran and no matter how many tricks Jim used, they couldn't break free of the Institute and the leash was still around their necks. Blair stood beside Jim's bed, and his silence did tend to suggest that he had pretty much reached the same conclusions. "How about we check the hands now, Chief? I don't really want you feeding me in front of the crew." Jim lifted his mummified hands. He was guessing Blair was responsible for the bandage overkill.

Blair rolled his eyes. "Manhood does not require you to ignore injuries."

"No, but male ego does. Besides, if the doc knows his stuff, they'll be healed enough for light use," Jim said. "I need to get the muscles loosened up, and I don't have a lot of time to spare."

That was the wrong thing to say. Blair's breath caught in his chest and then Jim could smell the salt of Blair's tears. Wiping angrily at his eyes with the back of his hand, Blair reached out and started unwinding the gauze.

"Chief," Jim whispered.

"No. Don't go there. Man, I am not prepared to talk about this right now. Later, okay?" Blair looked up, his eyes so red that Jim could trace the veins as they lazily wandered through the white. "Later," Blair whispered, brushing his eyes again. Jim nodded. Blair deserved a little time to get himself together. Jim just hoped Mal wasn't planning on setting down too soon; this wasn't how Jim wanted to leave it with Blair.

Once Blair got Jim's hand unwrapped, Jim could see the skin red and dried from the healer. Blair sandwiched Jim's hand between his two palms, the warmth making Jim's skin itch even more, but he wasn't about to say that, not when every moment of contact had become so important.

"I love you," Jim said softly. He wanted to add more, but anything he might say would just hurt Blair more. Blair wanted to force the universe to be fair. If Blair was right about them having other lives after this one, Jim could only hope that they found peace in some distant future because he didn't expect to ever have it in this lifetime. In this lifetime he was simply grateful beyond belief that he was going to die fighting; he was going to die knowing he had found a safe haven for Blair. It was enough.

Taking a deep breath, Blair let Jim's hand go like it was the most difficult thing in the world. Jim brought his hand up and cupped Blair's cheek, resting his thumb against his lower lip. "I will always love you." Jim stopped, not trusting his own voice to stay steady.

Time shuddered and stopped, and Jim just stared at Blair, memorizing every inch. Then something beeped, and time caught up with itself, and Blair reached for the bandages still wrapped around his second hand.

"Man, do not count us out yet. The universe has a way of surprising us. There are more things in heaven and hell than are dreamt of in your pessimistic philosophy, James Joseph Womak," he said firmly. Jim smiled. Maybe. He allowed himself to feel just a little spec of irrational hope as Blair undid the bandages on his second hand. Maybe, but probably not.

Chapter Seven

Jim was still flexing his hands, trying to get feeling back into the stiff muscles as they walked the corridors. "No guard?" Jim asked suspiciously. His mind went to the possibility of sealing off a section and flushing it to space.

It was an easy way to get rid of someone. Jim had done it himself when he'd been second in command on Captain Taggard's ship before transferring over to Captain Banks. Pirates had gotten on board, which had been part of the plan when they'd flown a decoy into pirate-held space. The part that hadn't gone according to plan was where the pirates had used an electrical disruptor cannon. Two guards died when their control panels exploded in their faces. Three more were flat-out electrocuted and most of the crew, including Captain Taggard, had been knocked out cold. Jim had been the first one to wake up, and with no ability to control the situation or arrest the pirates who had taken the bait, he had locked down crew quarters and flushed the corridors to space. Men died silently and quickly once you took their air away.

"Man, turn off your natural pessimism." Blair slipped his arm around Jim's waist.

"Says the man who's running from an entire government," Jim pointed out. Both of them had some cause for pessimism.

"Yep, but think about this... the universe landed us in the one place where the Operative can't actually see us."

"Which is how he's going to know exactly where we are," Jim countered.

"Okay, I'm trying to give the universe some room to work here. You might try a little positive thinking." Blair gave Jim a disgusted look before darting ahead and practically running down the stairs toward the hall that led to the galley.

"Anything fall off?" Jayne stepped out of the shadows where the deck walls met at an odd angle that created dead space. Firefly class ships were like that... funny little corners and odd angles.

"Nope," Jim answered. Jayne didn't have his big gun, but he was still carrying enough weaponry to set Jim's arm hairs on end. Jim expected some sort of smug reaction or maybe outright sadism, but instead, Jayne looked almost relieved. Could be the captain had given him grief because Mal did not seem like the sort to torture a man. He was more the sort to just shoot them.

Jayne fell in beside Jim, and Blair looked over his shoulder with a Cheshire grin that made Jim even more suspicious.

"You want something?" Jim just came right out and asked. He didn't know what Jayne was playing at, but he was not in the mood, and the last of the drugs was still pulling at him, preventing him from using his senses as easily as he had come to expect.

"Nope." Jayne walked a little faster so that he hit the door to the galley before Jim. For a second, Jim got a crawling feeling of dread as the large man came between him and Blair, and Jim stomped down on that dark instinct. He was planning on leaving Blair with these people, so he couldn't exactly go setting rules about them not getting too physically close to him.

Inside, Mal was already seated at the table with a bowl and Kaylee was hovering in the kitchen. "We got us peach cobbler... or something that comes close anyway and soup and biscuits.

Jayne walked over and nearly stuck his head in the soup pot. "Smells ripe."

Kaylee got an almost hurt look on her face. "It's just chicken and some peaches." From the look Jayne was giving her, that did not reassure him.

"Really?" Blair hurried over and sort of jostled Jayne to the side. Jim tensed up as Jayne's hands clenched, ready to follow up by throwing some fists, but Blair was totally engrossed in the pot. "My mother used to make this baked chicken and peach dish with a little clove and a little ginger. Wow. That brings back memories of home." Kaylee's smile lit up the room.

"We ain't got no clove or ginger, but I used cinnamon and something called allspice. I figured if it was called 'all' that must mean it's good for most anything."

"Good choices."

"Long as it don't poison us all, I reckon it's better than some would do," Mal said with a significant look in Jayne's direction. Jayne's body tensed up, but he didn't comment on Mal's criticism. He just grabbed a biscuit, walked over to the table and dropped down. Jim walked cautiously over toward Kaylee, not sure what the rules were now. Mal looked easy enough about having Jim walking around, but that look was deceptive. Even without using all his senses, Jim could see the tension in the captain.

"Looks good," Jim offered the engineer. Engineer. If she was a real engineer, she wouldn't be cooking or acting as the barker planetside. This whole ship ran like it was short crew, and Jim wondered how many they had lost during their little adventure at Miranda. Kaylee turned her smile toward him.

"Thank you kindly." She poured the thick soup into a bowl and handed it to him with a plate of cobbler and biscuit and something that might be a peach cookie or just a really flat piece of bread. It didn't matter to Jim as long as it was edible and had a lot of calories. They'd missed more than a few meals and even Blair was starting to look a little gaunt.

"Here you go," she said, offering the same to Blair.

"This smells really good. Doesn't it?" Blair asked. At first, Jim thought Blair was talking to him, but then Blair put the plate and bowl in front of Jayne before heading back for another plate for himself.

"Um... yeah. Ain't too bad," Jayne said, clearly confused. Jim sat across from Jayne and just enjoyed watching Blair turn that oversized brain to manipulating someone else for a change. Jim still wasn't sure if it was Naomi's training from the time Blair was a child or his psychology degrees, but the man could talk a settler out of his last horse and then make the settler thank him for the right to be swindled.

"So, it looks like Dr. Sandburg might be joining us for a more long-term stay," Mal commented just as Dr. Tam came in. The doctor's eyes went big.

"Truly?" he asked, and Jim wondered how the man managed to hold on to so many core mannerisms out here on the edge of nowhere. He sounded just like a cadet straight out of Alliance training. When Blair didn't answer, Jim looked over to see him just on the verge of sitting, his face stony and frozen.

"Yes, he is," Jim answered for him. That not only got Blair moving, but it earned him another glare from Blair as he sat.

Mal stopped eating for a second. "I suppose that means that we'll need to figure out what he's going to do."

"He's a doctor," Simon said as if that explained everything.

"Ain't seeing a need to have more than one of those on board," Mal said. If Jim were Simon Tam, he would have taken that as a warning. Simon, however, looked ready to argue.

Blair stopped that by holding up a hand. "Hey! I am not a medical doctor. I mean, I can take out a splinter and figure out which antibiotic to give, but my specialty is psychology. I haven't done actual medical practicing in a good long time because I focused my work on persistent, reoccurring psychotic episodes. My hypothesis is that psychotic episodes are actually periods of other-awareness rather than dysfunctions in and of themselves."

"You studied at Sihnon," Simon said with the sort of dry disgust Jim used to use to describe cadets coming out of Persephone's military academy. The place was little more than a warehouse of adolescents with attitudes.

"And you," Blair poked his spoon in Simon's direction, "studied at either Bellerophon or Osiris to get an attitude like that going. Did you know that on Earth-that-was, there were entire cultures that revered schizophrenics because of their ability to see the world through a different lens? Entire cultures. Our assumptions are just that... assumptions. We think they're processing information incorrectly only because they're doing it differently that we would."

"And they're unable to care for themselves or form coherent memories during the events."

"Define coherent." Blair's hands were dancing in the air now, and both Mal and Jayne were looking on like they weren't sure what was going on. Kaylee just started eating and Jim followed suit. "You're defining that term based on your own perceptions, just like you interpret River's behavior based on what you think a young woman should do. Norm-referenced behaviors are not, by default, correct."

"So, how would you handle it? Should we leave schizophrenics to..."

Mal whistled loudly, cutting the conversation short, and Blair looked over with the sort of happy curiosity he always showed. One day the man might figure out that most men didn't like getting interrupted in the middle of a fight, but today was not going to be the day.

"I ain't following any of this, because I'm still back on pondering what Blair is going to do with us if he takes a job as crew."

Blair dropped his gaze down to his plate, and his whole body just stilled. Jim could tell he was trying to come up with some argument for staying with Jim, but the time for that was past. If the Operative was coming after them, their time was up.

"You'd be a good barker, Chief," Jim commented. "That would free up Kaylee to scrounge for engine parts because it can't be easy to keep a ship this old flying the black."

"Amen," Kaylee said softly. "What are you going to sign on as?" Kaylee asked Jim with this guileless expression that stopped the words in Jim's throat. He looked over toward Mal, but the man's face was blank.

"I'm not," Jim said quietly. "And Blair is good with food. In the war, he learned to make most things palatable, even when he was cooking with tumbleweeds. However, if he tries to get you to eat his pickled tumbleweed recipe, I would suggest that you pass."

"It made the supplies last. The soldiers didn't complain," Blair said softly.

"Wait. You ain't happy about staying behind, but you are anyway?" Jayne asked, staring at Blair in a way that made all Jim's protective instincts come roaring to the forefront. Jayne might not be the simple mercenary he'd assumed when he'd first seen the man, but that didn't mean he had a right to go questioning Blair.

"Blair is in charge of anything touching on psychology, which is why I'm not yelling about him using drugs on me when I really didn't want them used," Jim said firmly. "However, I'm the one trained in strategy, and if I tell him that the only feasible strategy is for us to split up, then I would expect my partner to listen."

Jayne looked at Jim, and now he looked even more confused. Jim looked from Jayne to Blair, hoping that Blair could somehow explain whatever weirdness the mercenary had going on in his head, but Blair looked just as confused as Jim.

"I thought you were the manish one," Jayne finally told Blair. Jim might have taken offense at that, but Jayne was pretty clearly confused rather than just trying to be offensive.

"What?" Now Blair had turned all his attention to Jayne, which was good because it meant he wasn't thinking about the future that was rushing toward them faster than Jim liked.

"Him letting you do the fucking..." Jayne poked a thumb in Jim's direction. "I thought that made you the one who were a man."

"Oh good lord," Simon said quietly, his face getting quite pink.

"I am a man," Blair said. "I even have testicles to prove it, although I would really rather not provide visual evidence of that right now."

"Huh?" Jayne tilted his head, and Jim took a bite of peach soup just to keep from laughing. Yeah, insulting Blair's manhood was not healthy for anyone, and more than one person had learned that the hard way. Blair could be downright hard on a person's ego.

"I have balls; therefore, I am a man."

"But yer crying."

Jim's head came up, and he was surprised to see Blair wipe at the corner of his eye. Kaylee's overspiced soup and the drugs were clearly still interfering, but Blair wasn't apologizing for his tears at all. "I'm a man with balls who was crying," he said harshly.

"Oh, Blair," Kaylee breathed. That was one who Jim could trust to look after his partner.

"Okay, do you have a point here or did the universe just put you here to test my patience or perform penance?" Blair demanded of Jayne. Now Jayne was looking around the table like he expected one of them to back him up. Mal was looking very interested in the corner of the table, Simon was slowly reddening and Kaylee had her face scrunched up with sympathy for Blair.

"Cao. Ain't like I'm the one breaking all the rules here," Jayne said defensively. Maybe he realized that no one was on his side in this odd conversation.

Mal sighed. "You'd be best to ignore Jayne. He can say some mighty stupid things sometimes."

"Ain't like you aren't thinking the same thing." Jayne set both his elbows on the table.

"I really doubt I'm thinking anything nears to what you're thinking," Mal's tone of voice made it very clear that he expected there was a huge gulf between the thoughts of the two men.

Despite the frustration and danger clear in Mal's tone, Jayne kept right on trying to talk his way out of the mess he'd gotten himself into. Jim had a feeling it wasn't going to work, but he gave Jayne credit for being a gorram stubborn man who didn't give up easily. "I'm thinking that if'n the big one is the woman in the relationship, then the little one shouldn't be so girly."

"Yep, that is just about the most horrifying thing you could say, so naturally you go saying it."

Jim raised his spoon. "And can I add that I have testicles just as large as Blair's."

"Bigger even," Blair added. He speared two peaches out of his cobbler with his fork and then shoved both in his mouth at once so that Jim was reminded of growing up on Osiris and watching the chipmunks.

"And you're admitting that?" Jayne asked Blair. Now Jayne was confused and horrified.

Blair swallowed. "Did you know that in the animal kingdom, the species with the males who are least likely to get cheated on have the smallest testicles? The testicles of gorillas are like totally tiny." Blair held up two fingers to demonstrate just how small they were. "But rats. Whoa. Man, they have huge testicles. If our testicles were proportionally just as large as a rat's, then we'd have basketballs between our legs. But the rat gets cheated on way more than a gorilla, so it has to make up for that cheating in volume. It's all about the volume."

Mal was looking at Blair in dismay. "Surprised as I am to say this, I finally found someone whose conversating is even less appropriate than Jayne's. Rat testicles?"

"I think it's real interesting," Kaylee blurted out. Mal just looked at her with the same dismay he'd been using on Blair just a second ago.

"Exactly," Blair said smugly. "So you would think men would brag about having small balls. You know, more of a 'I don't need any more than this because my partner is faithful' kind of thing."

Jayne reached down and made a show out of grabbing his crotch. "I got two that are plenty big right here."

"And Jayne has reclaimed the title of most creepifying," Mal said wearily. "As the captain, I ain't interested in hearing any more on any part of anyone's sex life... or anything's sex life," he modified himself, pointing a finger at Blair.

Jim stirred his soup, and a lot of the little fears that had been squeezing his heart like tendrils started to loosen up. If Mal liked Blair enough to include him in the group teasing, then there was a good chance Blair had a place here long term. Given a choice, Jim wouldn't pick a captain crazy enough to make a run into Reaver space, but he had survived it. The fact that any of his crew made it out alive did suggest that the man might have some sort of brain.

"You know," Blair said, stirring the soup and wrinkling his nose so that he got wrinkles just at the bridge of it where his glasses rested. "We keep looking for radiation."

Mal looked downright relieved at the change of topics. "Seeing as how that's what River said were going to kill us, seemed reasonable."

Stirring his soup, Blair got that distant, dreamy tone to his voice that usually meant he was thinking about something too hard. "But what she said was that there was nuclear fusion in the peaches, and that's where the radiation was coming from."

"Ain't no radiation in those. I checked 'em before I started cooking," Kaylee offered.

"Yes, but we were assuming the peaches were the metaphor and the radiation was the part that was real. Let's turn that around. Assume that what she wanted us to look at was the peaches and radiation was a metaphor for..."

"For...?" Mal asked.

Blair shrugged. "I don't know, but that doesn't mean it's not a real danger. River's brain was rewired, particularly the language centers, but the information and memory is still intact."

"Ain't even going to go thinking too hard about how you know all this," Mal muttered, but then if he was muttering it, that meant he didn't plan to confront Blair about his bad choices in getting involved with the Institute.

"Where is River right now?" Blair stood up, his face lit with excitement, but before he could even turn around, River was there in the doorway, her bare feet and loose hair making her look much younger than she was.

"Listening to a brain that goes so fast it forgets where it's gone," River offered.

"Totally," Blair agreed amiably as he hurried to her side. "Talk to me about peaches, River."

River's eyes glazed. "It's always there, but no one sees it. Watching. Watching. No one watches the watcher."

"There she goes all crazy again," Jayne said in a voice that made it pretty clear he was feeling put upon. When Mal gave him a cold look, he grabbed a biscuit and shoved it in his mouth.

"The peaches are watching?" Blair asked.

River moved closer, and Jim stood up. He still had the slipwire in his belt if he needed it. That might be enough if she was distracted enough, but instead of attacking, she moved in and put her head down on Blair's shoulder. "In the corner. Look. No one looks. Not the peaches."

"Not the peaches?" Blair echoed, putting his arms around her. "It's the peaches, but it's not the peaches. And the thing watching us is in the corner."

Jayne snorted, but a look from Mal quieted him.

"Jim, any ideas?" Blair asked. Jim shrugged and looked into the kitchen. His vision zoomed in on a blue half-circle. The blue word "Blue" sat on top of the white word "Sun" inset into the half circle. Below it, the Chinese characters for blue and sun sat side by side.

"Um, Chief, could she be talking about the Blue Sun logo?" Jim asked. He was answered by a wild scream as River clung to Blair and caterwauled like an animal about to be taken for slaughter.

Chapter Eight

"That was unexpected," Zoe said as she stood in the hallway where Blair had exiled all of them. He'd ordered a very surprised Jayne to keep everyone out and then slammed the door. Jayne looked almost surprised to be following Blair's orders, but he was. He'd put himself in the middle of the door and kept Simon from following.

"I'm her brother," Simon said for about the thousandth time, but Mal didn't look impressed, and he didn't tell Jayne to let the man past. So Jayne kept guarding the door.

"Can you hear anything?" Mal demanded, stopping his pacing long enough to stop in front of Jim.

Jim cocked his head. River was saying a whole lot of things that didn't make any sense at all, and Blair was offering quiet reassurances while, at the same time, clicking away on something. If Jim had to guess, he'd say Blair was taking notes on River's ravings. "Yep," Jim admitted. He stopped there, and Mal's face slowly twisted with frustration.

"You plan to share?"

"Nope." Jim reached over and used one hand to rub the sore fingers of the other.

"You want I should shoot him in the kneecap?" Jayne asked in the sort of voice that made it clear he'd consider it a pleasure. Funny, Jim had just come to the conclusion that Jayne wasn't a sadist, and now he was going out of his way to prove Jim wrong.

Mal didn't answer right away, and Jim just watched him. These people had to know that Jim allegiance would always be with Blair. "No," Mal finally said. "Gorram trouble just always finds my ship," he muttered after a second.

"Does seem like it, sir," Zoe agreed. Jim studied her. She was calm, but the second Jim paid her some attention, she focused on him, her sharp gaze just daring him to make a move. She would have made a good officer. "Sir, how much do we trust River's word that Blue Sun is dangerous?" Zoe asked the captain without taking her eyes off Jim.

Jim was surprised when Mal turned and looked at him. "I reckon you know more about the Core than any of us." He crossed his arms and just looked at Jim like he was half expecting Jim to refuse to give them any information. The fact was that Jim didn't feel much loyalty to the Alliance or the Core, not anymore.

He shrugged. "My father is an Ellison. He always said that any company was fair game except Blue Sun. He said that business was so big that they could take a loss on any one division until they managed to drive the competition out of business, and they had more than once. When Blue Sun got into the business of distributing alcohol, that's when my father shifted his business over to ship fuel. He didn't even try to hold on to his old contracts. Food distribution, medical technology, alcohol and even canned and dried foods—my father considered them all bad business because you don't compete with Blue Sun."

"Ain't much there we don't already know," Mal pointed out.

"It's not like I'm involved with the business world." Jim crossed his own arms and dared Mal to make an issue out of it.

"Wait. So Crazy's all worked up because of some gorram fruit seller?" Jayne asked.

"I reckon they're a mite bit more than fruit sellers," Mal said. "Leastwise, I assume based on the fact that River thinks they're going to be the death of us."

Jayne's snort was the only answer he gave.

"Sir, we could ask our contacts on Whitefall..." Zoe started.

"No," Mal cut her off before she could finish. "We ain't pulling anyone into this. We got a job, so we're staying in the black until it's time to deliver."

Zoe nodded, and Jim thought there was probably a story there. God knows he'd arrested men who hadn't done anything other than make the wrong friends, and then held them until he could find his fugitive, so he suspected their friends had been harassed more than once in some attempt to get at them.

At the time, Jim had called his actions justified. He was a lone lawman in a very wild territory, and he'd been doing what he had to in order to get the job done. Now he wondered if that hadn't been how his brother had started... just bend a little law here and a little law there. Cao. Jim couldn't even find it in him to hate Charlie for being a dirty cop. On lots of worlds, a dirty cop still ranked above a fugitive, and that's was Jim was. The great hero of the Alliance was a deserter and a fugitive.

Jim wondered if the Alliance would go pick up Charlie now and pick up where they'd left off in their sentinel research. Jim's twin was the only other man in the whole gorram verse guaranteed to have the gene for these cursed senses.

The door opened, and River was standing there, her hair hanging limp and her fingers scrambling at the edge of the door. Jayne fell back as fast as he could, but Jim couldn't tell if the merc realized just how dangerous she was or if he didn't want a crying woman picking his shoulder to cry on. Tears slipped over her cheeks as her eyes found Jim.

Slowly, she walked toward him, and Jim kept himself carefully still. If her attention was on him, he would never be able to move fast enough to disarm or disable her. Instead, he made eye contact with Blair who was now in the open door, and he prayed that Blair could use the safe word fast enough if it came down to it. The doc opened his mouth, maybe even to say the safe word, but Mal reached over and pulled the man closer, whispering a warning for him to keep his mouth shut.

"Lime green, Kelly green, jade, viridian," she murmured, "all whispering back. Whispering."

Jim frowned at Blair. Blair could only shrug helplessly. River frowned and tried again. "viridian, emerald, chartreuse. Anger. Moss and emerald. Fear, teal and viridian and streaks of forest."

"Whoa." Blair stepped forward. "Those are multi-functional brain scan colors. She's describing the frontal cortex colors of a scan."

"Why?" The doctor asked.

"Good question." Blair shrugged. "I have no clue."

"They listen. Always. Little teeth." Reaching up, she tangled her fingers in her hair.

"Ain't like this makes much sense," Mal pointed out.

"It makes perfect sense if you're River," Blair argued. "Only I can't quite figure out what frame of reference she's using."

"Torture. Pleasure. Whispering always. Won't stop whispering."

Jim cringed at the pain in her voice. He knew what it was like to find yourself unable to shut out the whispers that slipped into your head. When the Institute played their games with people's lives, they never even considered that men and women would have to live within these drastically damaged and altered bodies. For the Institute, they were all just tools. Tools didn't give up because they were too goram tired of trying to relearn how to interact with the world.

River inched closer to Jim. Reaching out, her fingers searched for him as she moved like a blind woman feeling for the wall. She touched him, her fingers warm on his neck, and then, with a low cry, River took off down the hallway, her bare feet slapping against the floor and her tears still drying on her face.

"I'll—" Blair started to say.

"Chief, let me try," Jim asked. He figured he could understand her frustration. When his senses had first come online, the scientists were always asking him to describe things that he didn't have the words for. He could see a thousand shades of red in a fire, but he only had about a half-dozen words. They had rarely been patient with his attempts to cooperate—and eventually he had just stopped even trying.

Blair looked at him with concern. "I can be patient when I want to be," Jim said dryly.

"If'n he's the womanly one, shouldn't he be the one doing the comforting, anyway?" Jayne asked, poking his thumb toward Jim. Clearly the man had issues, and Jim was starting to think that a fist would be the fastest solution for it.

"I would appreciate it," Jim said slowly, "if you would quit trying to call me womanly. Not that I have anything against women," Jim said with a tight smile in Zoe's direction. "But as a man, my cock is starting to take offense."

Jayne opened his mouth, probably to say something even more disturbing, but Mal spoke up. "Could be that you should just try not talking for a bit," he suggested.

Surprisingly, Jayne shut his mouth. Leaning over, Jim touched Blair's arm. "I'll be right back. If you hear screaming, come and use that safeword of yours."

Blair grimaced. "If she decides to go after you, I doubt I'd hear a scream."

That was probably true, but Jim understood River, and he understood why she'd rushed away from Blair. Blair made a person want more and try harder and when they still failed, well that was a mighty bitter pill to swallow. Jim didn't think Blair ever understood that even though Jim had tried to explain. Jim gave Blair another pat on the arm and then turned around to follow River up to the bridge.

"Captain Jimmy," Mal called. Jim cringed at the name, but he turned around to look at the other man. Raising an eyebrow, he waited for whatever Mal had to say. "She's crew, Womak." Mal didn't have to say any more; Jim understood the threat. Nodding, Jim turned and followed River.

The ship's song shifted as she chose new coordinates, the smaller correction engines puffing their breath into the black. River was turning the ship. Jim shook his head at the lack of discipline on this ship. Of course, considering that she was one of the Institute's projects, it was probably good that no one tried to keep her on a leash. She'd cut their hand off.

Stepping through the last bulkhead, Jim looked around at the bridge controls. The Firefly class ships had a dizzying number of gauges and dials and buttons, and River sat in the pilot's chair with her fingers dancing between them all.

Walking over to the co-pilot's chair, Jim sat down. She looked at him sharply. "You think too loud."

"I'll work on that." Jim stared out at the planets and moons, each a slightly different shade. To any other human, they would all look like stars lying on a curtain of black, but Jim could see each planet and each star, some colors muted and others brilliant white. When he'd been a pilot, he'd never truly appreciated the black. Now that he could see the beauty in the dust that floated between worlds, he couldn't trust himself to pilot a ship.

"I don't get lost in it," River said.

Jim glanced over. "I do," he admitted softly.

"I get lost in myself. Can't think. Can think, can't explain."

Jim nodded. "Is this danger going to come after us?"

"Yes." River turned to look at him, and he could see in her face that she didn't have one second of doubt on that front.

"If I take off, leave and lead the hunters away from the ship, will Blair be safe here?" Jim supposed he should be asking about all of them, but he'd had his illusions of nobility stripped away a long time ago. He didn't care about the others; he cared about Blair.

River tilted her head. "Teal and viridian and streaks of forest." She grimaced. Jim wondered what it must be like to know that you're sane and to know that you sound so very insane. There were days when Jim had feared he was losing his mind, and there had been days he'd been trapped inside the pain or inside the beauty of a single flashing light through a prism, but he'd never been trapped the way she was.

"If I leave, there are brain scans?" he asked.

"Teal and viridian and streaks of forest."

"Fear." Jim said the word quickly. "You said those were the colors on a brain scan that indicated fear. Who would be afraid?"

"Sitting in a torture chair, teal and viridian..."

"And streaks of forest," Jim finished for her. "Would Blair be in that chair?"

She shook her head.

"Me?" Jim's heart pounded against his ribs.

She looked at him, her dark eyes shining with tears. She nodded. "Punish the misbehavior. Redirect with operant conditioning."

Leaning back, Jim closed his eyes and tried to control the fear that slammed into him. Redirection. That sounded like one of the Institute's nicely sanitized words for torture. "If I stay here, will the hunters find us?" She didn't answer, and Jim opened her eyes to find her studying him closely. After a second, she nodded.

Cao. So he was lost to the hunters either way. "If I leave, will the ship be safe?" Jim asked again. River caught her lower lip in her teeth like she was thinking on that real hard, and then she shook her head no.

"Gan ni niang," Jim cursed viciously. River looked over at him in amusement, and Jim could feel his face heat. He'd been out on the rim too long if he was cursing in front of girls barely old enough to be legal.

"Blue Sun is funding the hunters, aren't they?" Jim asked. It didn't make any sense. Blue Sun was a corporation with thousands if not millions of stock holders and a board of trustees and bank records and payrolls, and absolutely no reason for getting involved in the Institute and their sick research, but it was the only thing that made sense. River nodded.

"What does it feel like?" she suddenly blurted.

He looked at her. "What does what feel like?"

She wrapped her arms around herself. "To remember what it's like to be normal?"

Jim blew out a breath. Hellfire and Browncoat rebels. He'd never expected that question. Swallowing, he looked out at the beauty laid out in front of him in the black. Beaumonde was a slowly growing green glow, like a pinprick hole that let light leak in from some great distance. Jim knew he shouldn't be able to see it from here, but he could. It was so bright, even when it was just a pinpoint, that Jim could see the halo of light around it. Jim could hear each speck of dust as it slid over the ship's hull, each one a faint note that shuddered and failed when it touched glass which had no sound or echoed when it was caught in the giant chamber of their silent main thrusters. The ship was singing, a chorus of tiny notes all accompanying the gently thrumming engines that ran life support and gravity.

"It feels horrible," Jim confessed, his voice a whisper. "It's like remembering who you should be and knowing you'll never be that person again."

"I can't remember."

"Be glad," Jim said. He was probably being a real hwun dan because he had no right to suggest that he had a bigger burden than she did—that his suffering was somehow worse because he could still remember standing on the bridge of his ship or remember the feel of the engine controls under his hands. But there were days he wanted to rip out that part of himself that remembered. "I'm sitting outside, starving, looking into a window," Jim said, struggling to explain. "I used to be able to walk in and eat any time, and even now, there are people eating and happy and ignoring me. But I can't get in."

He looked over, and she had her head tilted. "Blair doesn't ignore you," she said softly.

Jim had to smile. "No, not Blair. He was a big enough idiot to come out and starve on the streets with me. But if you can't remember what life was like before all this, that's probably just as well."

"I remember Simon. He bought me an ugly shirt for my third birthday." She made a face like she was picturing the shirt right now. Jim laughed.

"That bad?"

"Yes." She smiled back. "But I can't remember it without still feeling like I can't find words, like I'm already broken even then. Everything's scrambled."

Jim turned his attention back out into the black. "You're doing okay now."

"Forming new neural connections, walking uncharted territories where I can put out word markers that we share," she said seriously, and suddenly she wasn't sounding quite as sane. Oh, Jim had followed most of it, but that definitely was sounding a little on the odd side. She sighed. "When it rains, all the old ruts come up."

Jim shifted around to look at her. "You said that before. You said that Mal and I were in the same ruts that had come up after a rain."

"Once a rut is there, it's hard to get the wheel out without whipping the horse."

That was true enough if you were on a border planet and traveling by wagon. The metal rimmed wagon wheels would cut into the ground and create deep tracks along the most common roads. As long as you wanted your wagon to follow the others, those ruts were handy. They kept your wagon out of any hidden dangers. But if you wanted to go off in a new direction, those same ruts became a trap that locked you into a path.

"Can you whip the horse that hard?" Jim asked.

"Don't know. I don't think so, and whipped horses scream in pain," she said. She turned back to the dials and let her fingers touch each one like some sort of rosary. Jim nodded. So she might be able to change the direction of her thoughts or her words, but not without a lot of pain. And if she tried and failed, then she would know for a fact that she was trapped instead of just suspecting it.

"The ship changed directions." Jim changed the topic. Just because he understood where River was coming from didn't mean that he wanted to contemplate any of this. He hated that the Institute had done this to him, but he was a soldier. A person could argue that he had signed his life over to serve his government, and his government had chosen a particularly offensive service, but it was a type of service. However, the idea that they had taken a child and warped her until she was afraid of trying to recover made Jim ill. He'd fought the gorram Browncoats to stop the abuse of those without the power to defend themselves, and then he'd found his side just as guilty as the other. He could taste the bile in his mouth.

"Beaumonde." She said only the name of the planet. It was an industrial world on the edge of the border.

"Can you tell me why we're going there?" Jim asked.

"No." River looked over to him. "Deep ruts in these thoughts. Screams of horses would drown all the words."

Jim nodded and stood up. "Then let the horses run where they will," he told her. For a second, he stood next to her, two broken souls escaped from hell. Reaching out, he let his hand rest on her shoulder. She didn't look at him, but a last tear slipped over her face before Jim headed out to tell the rest that River had picked a destination for them.

Chapter Nine

Ignoring the couch, Jim chose one of the chairs in the Firefly's lounge area. It wasn't much of a lounge, not even compared to the military ships Jim was used to, and the chair was too small for Blair to comfortable drape himself over the arm. For a second, hurt flashed across Blair's expression, and Jim pounded down the guilt that rose in response to it. If River found some moment in time when Jim could safely run and take the danger with him, he would. And that meant Blair had to be ready for the separation.

"So, no idea why she'd be interested in Beaumonde?" Mal asked. He was looking thoughtful instead of furious, so Jim wasn't quite sure what to think of him as a captain. It seemed like he should be more concerned with getting control of his ship back. Blair walked over and sat on the edge of a couch as near to Jim as he could get. Jayne followed Mal and spent a second looking from Jim to Blair and back before he claimed the chair opposite Jim.

Jim shrugged. "No idea. She said that the thoughts in that part of her brain were in such deep ruts that trying to change the way she thought or talked about it would cause pain."

"Oh man." Jim could hear the guilt in Blair's soft-spoken words.

"Not your fault, Chief. You were brought in to help the patients, and you did your best to do just that."

"I helped them to not go so totally insane that the Institute couldn't torture them more. So not the same thing," Blair blurted. Jim was glad that the doctor had wandered up to see his sister and the women folk had absented themselves. Jim had found that sometimes women weren't as forgiving when it came to torture. Zoe might see the necessity for it from time to time and even forgive Blair for his unwitting participation, but Kaylee struck Jim as the sort to get real melodramatic about something like that.

"You did your best. What they did wasn't your fault."

"I ain't so much interested in what happened in the past," Mal interrupted. "What's more interesting for me is how we can keep on not being dead. I reckon if River has us turned for Beaumonde, she's got something in her head."

Jayne's snort made his opinion gorram clear. "That ain't a place that's likely to welcome us," Jayne pointed out, ignoring any reference to River or her motives.

"Are there many places that do?" Mal countered.

Jayne shut up, a sour look on his face.

"It's a little too close to the core for comfort," Jim offered, but no one answered. He didn't figure his comfort added up to much with either of the Serenity crew.

Blair frowned. "Is there anything special on Beaumonde?"

Mal answered first. "Factories, ranches." Walking over, he sat on the couch next to Blair. "Rovu'uhl has a fair bit of underhanded business dealings. That's where we normally do our trading. Got two bars where you can buy and sell stolen gos-se easy and without getting a knife in the back for your trouble."

"The Green Knight?" Jim asked. He'd staked out that place a half-dozen times, but he'd only caught rumors of big deals going through there.

Mal nodded. "And the Maidenhead. The Blue Anchor is harder to get into, but you get some of your best prices there. Leastwise if you ain't been unceremoniously escorted out and told to never come back." Mal's expression turned sour.

"I've been to all three when I was still working for the law, and I took down a pretty big trafficker right in the middle of the Maidenhead. Not safe places for me to show my face," Jim said.

"Shi." Jayne sat up. "Were you the gan ni niang who went and busted up the whole bar going after some hwun dan who'd been whoring out kids?"

"What about it?" Jim asked, his body stiff. He hated this. He hated living on the knife edge of always offending someone because he didn't know who these people called friends and because they sure as hell would rather see him dead than alive. At least Mal would. Jim could see that every time the man looked at him. Jim wasn't sure that Jayne actually cared one way or the other as long as Jim didn't inconvenience him personally.

"Arnaud." Mal said quietly, and Jim looked to him. If trouble was coming, Jayne might be the one dishing it, but Mal was going to be the one to turn the merc loose. Jayne didn't seem to do much without permission.

"Arnaud Thomas," Jim agreed.

Mal's face twisted into a sneer, and Jim could smell Blair's sudden distress. Blair was going to get an ulcer at this rate. "Gao yang jong duh goo yang," Mal cursed, but Jim wasn't exactly sure who Mal was calling a motherless goat. "That ching-wah tsao duh liou mahng should have been castrated and left out for the ants to eat. That inbred hwun dan got too good getting locked up for life."

Jim nodded, his tight muscles relaxing a fraction of an inch. "The Alliance doesn't believe in killing their criminals—only their own citizens."

Mal's gaze came up and settled on Jim for a long time. Jim just looked back at the captain. It wasn't like there was much else he could do.

"If'n you're the man who brought in Arnaud, they'll remember you," Mal said unhappily. "I hope River don't plan on putting us down in Rovu'uhl. Seems like between the fuss you made back before the war and the fuss we made last time we were passing through, people would likely remember us."

"We could ask River," Blair pointed out. Jim wasn't the only one who looked at Blair like he had just misplaced a few critical brain cells. "You three? Totally unenlightened," Blair announced grandly. "Yeah, River has her own vocabulary, but it's not like she's trying to keep information from us. So, we ask her why she's taking us there."

"Chief," Jim said slowly. He needed Blair to really hear him, and sometimes Blair got excited and darted off without thinking an idea through—like when he'd signed on with the Institute. "Whatever River thinking, this is an old rut for her, something she thought about a lot when her brain was...."

"Ripped up for reconstruction?" Blair supplied. "I get that. I'm not saying we interrogate her or ask her to change her language. I'm saying we should ask her and just have her describe the rut until one of us catches some clue. You know, you war horses may be used to beating people or intimidating them to get information out of them..."

"I never—" Mal snapped, but Blair just raised his voice and kept going.

"But when you're not quite as big and scary looking, you learn that you can totally learn more just by talking to people. Keep them talking, and they'll let one detail and then another slip. Pretty soon, you have the security codes for the interior locks to the Institute. Man, sometimes it takes some finesse, and if we just talk to River enough, she'll let details slip. She'll describe things until something makes sense."

Jim looked up as almost invisible footsteps padded down the hall just outside the lounge. He was still staring at the empty doorway when River slowly edged her way around and into the room.

Mal sighed. "Does anyone else find it a mite bit eerie how she goes appearin' any time we get to talking about her?"

River edged farther in. "You think loudly," she defended herself. "Zoe is pilot now."

Listening for the sound of the ship-song, Jim realized that Zoe was piloting, but she hadn't changed course. They were still heading for whatever destination River had chosen. He didn't quite understand this crew and their willingness to follow the lead of a girl who couldn't even explain where she was leading them. River cocked her head and looked at Jim for a second before turning her attention to Mal.

"A girl wanders through a ship. If she vanished, did she really exist, she wondered?"

Jim looked over to Blair, but he could only shrug. After giving a shrug, he pulled out his data recorder and started tapping in information. If River talked enough, Blair might find the key to her code, but Jim wasn't sure that would happen before all of them found themselves staring down an Alliance gun.

River frowned like she was trying to find new words. "If no one believed in her, was she actually here at all?"

Jayne answered that one. "I believe what I can gorram see," he blurted out. He then leaned back in the chair and propped his boots on the table.

Jim was shocked when River gave him a brilliant smile. Moving closer, River sat on the table right in front of Jayne. "The girl wanders, but who sees her?"

"Cao, go be crazy somewheres else," Jayne said pushing her with his boot on her hip. Jim held his breath, half expecting River to gut Jayne right there and then. Instead she let him push her away.

"Jayne, don't go kicking River," Mal said sharply. Jayne opened his mouth to protest, but closed it and just glowered at the whole room.

"We need to see someone?" Blair guessed.

Jim could immediately see in the tight line of River's mouth that Blair was wrong. He couldn't even imagine the frustration she was dealing with, but she moved closer to Blair, sitting on the table so that she was facing him and Mal. "See the ghosts whispering, always whispering."

"Whoa... I have 'whispering' in here already," Blair said, his voice tight with excitement as he clicked his data recorder. "Here. When she was talking about the brain scan colors, she said they were 'all whispering back'."

"Which means?" Mal prompted.

"No fucking clue," Blair said just as happy as ever. He'd found a corner of the puzzle, and Jim knew that his overactive brain was going to keep working this until he figured it out or until an Alliance soldier put a bullet through him. "Hey, I have another reference. 'Torture. Pleasure. Whispering always. Won't stop whispering.' So a ghost is whispering, and it has something to do with torture and pleasure. Man, the torture part would totally fit the Institute."

"River?"

She looked over at Jim.

"Can you find a way to keep the ship safe? Is there a world we could go to, somewhere that I could distract the hunters or strike at the heart of the Institute?" Jim asked. Her head tilted to the side and she frowned. Jim tried again. "You said if I stay here or if I leave, the ship is still in danger."

"Two by two, hands of blue," she muttered in a voice full of horror.

"Cao." Jayne put his feet on the deck and let his hand fall to his gun. The man might call himself a merc, and everyone on this ship might think of him that way, but he wasn't acting like any merc Jim knew. He was acting like a man who was pissed and ready to kill because something was after him and his.

"Is there a way for you to slip past them? It doesn't matter if I die, River. Is there a mission I can take to stop them, to give the ship a way out?" Jim willed her to give an answer he could understand. Instead she looked at him and slowly shook her head.

Blair's breath exploded in a huge sigh. "Thank god." Blair breathed the words like a prayer.

"Ain't liking the idea of anyone going on a suicide mission, anyway. If you're going to get killed, it only seems fair that I'm the one doing the killing," Mal said, but his tone of voice didn't match his words. Jim struggled to understand the emotions that he could hear in the subtle tones and see in the minute twitches of Mal's expression, but the captain was up and walking out of the room.

"Ghosts whisper in shades of green," River said gravely, and then she turned to follow the captain.

"Blair, I really hope you can figure something out," Jim said. Not only did they need the intel to survive whatever mission she'd chosen, but he could feel the frustration swirling around River every time she tried to explain this to them.

"Oh man, me too."

Jim looked over toward the other end of the room. Jayne's scent had inexplicably shifted. The man was leaning forward, his elbows braced on his knees as he studied Jim.

"Were you really willing to go on a suicide run, or were you just playing a sly trick and trying to impress your man?" Jayne poked a thumb in Blair's direction.

Jim crossed his arms.

"Back off," Blair jumped in. "He does not need to explain himself to you."

"Ain't talking to you little man. Not 'less you're saying you do all his talking for him?" This time Jayne looked at Blair and poked a thumb in Jim's direction. Blair opened his mouth, but Jim leaned over and put a hand on Blair's knee.

"You have something to say, you say it to me," Jim said firmly. Blair was brilliant and most times Jim didn't mind letting him take the lead. Blair talked them into and out of more trouble in a day than most men found in a lifetime, but Jim knew one thing for sure—the Alliance would have caught him within a week if it weren't for Blair's persuasive tongue. But Jayne was different. Jayne was a rough man, one likely to take things wrong and get physical and Blair wasn't the fighter.

"Ain't saying nothing," Jayne said, walking over to a compartment and rooting around for a bit before he came out with an apple. Fresh fruit was a special treat out here in the black, but Jayne made no move to offer either of them part of it. He sat down again and pulled out the biggest knife Jim had seen since his days of military training. He started slicing off a small bit. "I'm asking if you were serious."

"I was," Jim answered, not sure where this was going. For a second, Jayne just used his knife to carve out bits of apple that he ate from the edge of the blade. The crisp smell floated through the air, distracting Jim and making him hungry.

"Man, I would have waited until our next lifetime and kicked your ass," Blair said softly.

Jim smiled. "You would have calmed down by then." Jim wasn't sure he believed in reincarnation, and he knew he didn't share Blair's deep-set belief in it, but it was nice to think they'd have another shot at having a better life together.

"Don't bet on it."

"You gonna let him talk to you like that?" Jayne demanded of Jim, pointing his knife in Blair's general direction. Blair's eyes went big, and Jim shifted forward in his chair so he was in a better position to intercept Jayne if he started something. "If'n a man went talking to me like that..." Jayne started to say.

"Seems like Mal does," Blair cut him off. Jayne froze. With his knife stuck in the flesh of his apple, he just froze solid. Jim shifted a centimeter closer to the edge of the chair, watching Jayne for the first muscle twitch that preceded the attack. Jim would have one chance at disarming or killing Jayne, and he couldn't afford to lose, not with Blair in the middle.

"Ain't the same with Mal. I wouldn't never let a man mount me like I was some sort of ji nv," Jayne said with a look of disgust in Jim's direction. Jim probably should have taken offense at getting called a whore, but he'd been called a whole lot worse in his life.

"Man, you so totally have issues." Blair almost sounded amused.

"Watch your mouth, little man," Jayne warned. He pointed at Blair with the point of the knife.

Jim stood up. "Maybe you'd better watch your mouth." Jayne was on his feet in a flash.

"God save me from hun dan warrior-types," Blair sighed. "If you two want to piss on each other, I'm really not into that kind of thing."

"Seems like you're into all kinds of things." Jayne smirked down at him.

"Hey, raised by a companion here. Trust me, I'm totally into all kinds of things. Man, I know things to get into that most people haven't even heard of," Blair agreed. He gave Jim a smile, and Jim was slowly turning a subtle shade of red. Clearly Blair was not planning on following the traditional path of verbal escalation to the point of physical confrontation. "It's expensive, but if you have real ginger, you can do some really creative things. Shave the outer skin off, and then slip a finger of it up into the hole right before you give someone a blow job, and man, you would be amazed at the reaction you'll get." Blair whistled. "Oh man. Wow. Total wow."

Jayne looked at Blair almost alarmed, and then he looked over at Jim, equally alarmed. Obviously he had something rattling around in his brain, and just as obviously, Blair had decided to do a little poking around in that psyche.

"And you would be amazed what someone can do with rope. Did you know that on Earth-that-was, Samurais of ancient Japan would consider it a mark of pride when they could tie a prisoner up quickly? And hundreds of years before the first generation ships left Earth-that-was, hobaku-jutsu taught techniques for using rope for everything from disarming a swordsman to tying a partner up into aesthetically pleasing shapes."

Jayne's mouth came open. Eventually, he turned to look at Jim with horror. "You go lettin' him tie you up?"

"Can't say he's asked to," Jim said with a shrug. He didn't mention that Blair didn't actually need to. When Jim let himself truly sink into his senses and lose himself in his own sexual needs, he was fairly well helpless.

Jayne looked from one of them to the other, confusion and horror tangled in his expression.

"What a person does in the bedroom doesn't have anything to do with how they handle themselves outside the bedroom," Blair said softly. It was a tone of voice he normally used when Jim had zoned on something, and Jim could feel a little frisson of jealousy. "Jim is stronger than me. He knows more about the military and I will follow him when it comes to most things. If he follows me in the bedroom, it's because he chooses to and trusts me. It doesn't make him womanly or weak, and can I just say that your habit of associating womanly with weak is so going to get your ass kicked one day?" Blair asked, and the serious moment slipped away with that quick joke.

"Ain't a woman who can kick my ass," Jayne said defensively.

"Zoe might," Jim pointed out. "I sure wouldn't go up against her."

Jayne frowned for a second. "Ain't like I couldn't beat her if'n I put my mind to it."

"River could definitely kick your ass," Jim said, and this time he knew he was right. Jayne frowned for a second and then reached up and scratched the back of his head. Without answering, he turned around and walked out of the lounge.

"Chief, don't think it," Jim said, pointing a finger at his partner. The man had that look on his face—the one that suggested he felt a need to go meddling in someone's life for their own good.

"Man, he is tied up in emotional knots."

"Good for him."

"It would take one little push."

"Don't think it."

"One, and he would see things a little clearer."

Jim frowned down at Blair. Blair smiled up, his face so cherubic, far too cherubic for someone who had grand plans to upend someone's life.

"I think I'm going to go find Mal," Blair said, his smile widening. He stood up, and Jim caught him by the arm.

"Blair, don't do this," Jim almost begged. Almost.

"Man, when it comes to fighting, you can tell me what to do all you want. But this stuff?" Blair took a step back and slipped out of Jim's grip. Oh, Jim could hold him, but that's not how their relationship worked. "Man, I grew up watching Naomi forcibly remove heads from asses. I could probably pass the companion testing myself by now. No way am I walking away from this gorram mess." Blair's smile turned devilish, and he hurried out of the room.

Sinking back into the chair, Jim could only shake his head and hope Blair didn't get them tossed out an airlock. Jim's gut said that Mal was going to do exactly that, but Jim's gut was incredibly unreliable when it came to two things: Browncoats and love. He could only sigh and trust that Blair was going to avoid any particularly spectacular stupidity.

Chapter Ten

"Hey!" The call echoed down Serenity's corridors.

Mal sighed and stopped, crossing his arms to glare as Blair came running up to him. "Something I can do for you?" If the kid said one thing about respecting war criminals and killers, Mal was going to stuff him in an airlock because he had put up with just about enough of the kid's gou shi. He doubted that he'd actually flush him because Mal could appreciate loyalty, even when it was given foolishly, but he wouldn't feel bad at all about leaving Blair in an airlock for the night.

Blair shrugged and smiled warmly. "Just thought we might talk."

"If you're about to go singing Womak's praises, save it." Mal turned his back and started walking.

"Whoa, hey, we clearly got off to the wrong start here."

A hand caught at his arm, and Mal stopped and turned, his eyes lasering in on the spot where Blair had grabbed him. Clearly Blair wasn't all that bright because he didn't remove his hand from Mal's arm. "The first thing you might want to learn on this ship is to not go grabbing at people," Mal warned.

Blair still didn't pull his hand back. "And the second?" He asked the question as casually as someone else might ask about the weather.

"Know when the ship's captain don't want to talk." Mal pulled his arm away, but Blair just kept smiling like an idiot... or a man who knew something that Mal didn't, and this conversation were putting him in a worse and worse mood all the time.

"I hear you. I just thought that if I was going to work the ship, we might talk about what you needed done. I know you need a barker planet-side, but I am getting the feeling we aren't actually going to be on a planet all that much." Blair leaned against the wall, his hands tucked behind his back and his body vulnerable. It was a pose that made Mal uncomfortable.

"I tend to prefer the black. Seems like the docks just bring trouble."

Blair gave him a conspiratorial grin. "Like an ex-Alliance officer?"

"Are you damaged in the head?" Mal looked at Blair, trying to figure out what game the kid was playing. He talked Womak up—insisted the man was the greatest thing since grav-lock boots, but then he kept trying to put Womak in Mal's sights, and that were seeming a little unfriendly-like.

"That is so open for debate," Blair said, and his grin turned mocking. It took Mal a half-second to figure out he was mocking himself. "And Jim's a good man. Jim's the best of men. I didn't see it when I first got to the Institute because sometimes we all get too caught up in appearance, you know. I mean, Jim was all closed down and angry. They'd strap him down to a table, and other than the muscle in his jaw bulging and his chest moving with every breath, you'd think he was a cadaver. He wouldn't even talk to me, and being a psychologist, there wasn't much I could do until he talked. Of course, then he did talk, and I started figuring out that I was slightly, entirely damned for helping those sadistic sons-of-bitches, but that's another story."

"Which I don’t have time for the telling of." Mal started walking away, but Blair darted ahead of him, blocking the path. For a half second, Mal considered pushing past, but there was something that just didn't feel right about pushing a man a foot shorter, especially since you knew he wasn't likely to push back. That same sense of fair play had kept Mal from taking a punch at Simon for years, and it kept him from physically moving Blair out of his way.

"Okay, you are not much for subtle." Blair snorted. "You just don't want to feel anything for Captain James Womak. I mean, having sympathy for James Womak would be a total disruption of your entire self-image. You can't feel any honest human compassion because that would humanize the enemy, and I get the feeling you are still very much in this war."

Mal glared at him.

"I can respect that. Totally. So, if you can't feel anything for James Womak, how about the fugitive Jim Ellison?

"Ellison?" Mal frowned.

Blair verbally charged right ahead. "That was his father's name. So, Jim Ellison was raised with all this money, and his brother was an asshole pretty much from the word go, and since he and Jim were twins, Jim spent lots of time getting blamed for all this gou shi that his brother did. You see, his father only saw appearances. It appeared that Jim was the one stealing shuttles and burning through greenhouse covers while sneaking a smoke, so he blamed Jim. Appearance and reality. It's all appearance and perception that creates reality. If you perceive differently, then reality is different."

"Cain't say I care." Mal steeled himself against this newest attack on his righteous anger at Womak.

"But Jim Ellison turned his back on money, and he decided that if life was unjust for him, he was going to dedicate himself to bringing justice to everyone else. You could feel something for Jim Ellison, right?"

Rubbing a hand over his face, Mal sighed. Clearly he was not getting any rest until Blair had whatever he'd come for. "Are you looking for a signed contract that I ain't going to go killing Womak in his sleep?" Mal demanded.

"Ellison."

"What?"

Blair's smile widened. "Ellison. His name is Ellison just as much as Womak. You can't forgive Womak, and I respect that. Man, if Womak were here, all righteous indignation and Alliance uniform, I'd probably shoot him myself. I mean, if he were Captain Jimmy Womak, then that would mean the war was still going on, and we were definitely on opposite sides of the war, so I would have felt really shitty, but I would have killed Womak to save the fleet."

"You would?" Mal didn't even bother hiding the disbelief in his voice. He couldn't see the kid shooting Womak. Oh, the kid might talk him to death. When Jayne had first commented on how Blair were topping Womak, Mal thought he'd been tricked or just lost his mind. Now... now Mal was pretty sure Blair could talk his way out of or into anything, including his partner's ass. Mal smiled at that private bit of crudity. He might not say the things Jayne did with such horrifying regularity, but he did enjoy rolling them over in the privacy of his own mind. Womak rolled over for this odd, little man. "You'd kill Womak?"

The smile slipped and for a second, Blair really glared at him. "Hey, I am not as innocent as you seem to think. Yes, I would have. But I don't know Womak. I know Jim Ellison, a man who tried his damnest to do the right thing, fucked up, and now life is trying to fuck him over. People change. Are you the same man you were twenty years ago?"

"Yes."

This time he got a sigh and an eyeroll from Blair. "Okay," he said slowly, "so maybe you're the exception that proves the rule. I could see where that's possible because you sure as hell aren't good at letting go of things."

"Sandburg, is there a point to this conversatin' or is this just your way of torturing me and assuming that I won't strike back?"

The look of innocence on Blair's face surprised Mal. Either the kid was stupid or he was one hell of an actor. Mal was betting on the last one. "This is two crew talking to each other," Blair said, his voice carrying just a hint of hurt.

"Feel free to talk to someone who ain't me." Mal finally did push Blair to the side as carefully as he could. Blair didn't try and stop him, but as soon as Mal started walking, Blair was right there at his heels.

"The funny thing is that you're a whole lot like Jim with the not wanting to talk about things. Jim was the same way. Of course, in that analogy I guess I'd be Jayne, so maybe that doesn't fit."

"What?" Mal stopped and looked at Blair, who was suddenly not making any sense.

He shrugged. "If you and Jim were that much alike, you'd choose partners that were alike, but Jayne and I..." He made a face and gestured to make it pretty clear that he considered himself and Jayne about as different as night and day. Mal could agree with that much at least.

"Gorram right Womak and me aren't alike, no more than you and Jayne are," Mal said indignantly. He turned to continue down the hall when the second part of that hit him. "Wait. Are you saying that you think me and Jayne—"

"Totally," Blair nodded and got a disturbingly salacious look on his face. "I mean, the way he looks at you? Whoa. Seriously hot. There are lovers content with longing. I'm not one of them. If I tried to not touch Jim the way Jayne is always trying to not touch you, I'm pretty sure my brain would explode from all the repressed lust. I just hope you make up for all that frustration when you get some privacy." Blair nodded knowingly.

"Jayne?" Mal could hear his own voice, and it was on the verge of breaking like a teenaged boy.

"Well... yeah." Now Blair looked confused.

"Jayne?" Mal repeated it louder.

"Shiong mao niao," Blair cursed softly. "Oh man, I'm sorry. I just thought—"

"Thought? Thought what?" Mal took an aggressive step forward, and Blair held up his hands in surrender.

"I thought you and Jayne were a couple."

"Jayne Cobb?" Mal looked at Blair, wondering how a man who seemed so learned could suddenly turn up so stupid.

"Well, yeah. Totally." Blair gave Mal a look that made it perfectly clear that Blair thought he was being logical and the rest of the world had just slipped a gear.

Mal shook his head, not even sure where Blair would have come up with that tzao gao. "I ain't even going to go trying to follow that logic seeing as there's nothing logical in that."

"Are you kidding? I mean, you all talk about Jayne like he's a merc."

"Because he is," Mal said dryly.

"Man, you must pay him a shitload of money. I mean, he's going up against Reavers and the Alliance and the Operative. I so do not even want to think what that must cost." The grimace Blair made was almost comical.

"I..." Mal stopped, not sure what he was supposed to say. This conversation weren't what he'd been expecting.

"Sorry about the confusion." Blair reached over and slapped Mal's arms like they were old buddies. "It was just the way he looks at you—the way he listens to what you say, it's not what I normally expect from a merc, you know? Anyway, I guess we can talk about my ship duties later. You're looking a little pale. You should eat more." Blair patted his arm once more and then turned to head back the way he came.

Mal watched Blair walk away, an odd bounce in his step that weren't natural for a man being hunted by the Alliance. Then again, there weren't much normal about Dr. Blair Sandburg. He sure as hell didn't know much about men if he thought Jayne Cobb had his cap set for another man. Jayne were the very definition of heterosexual, even if he more than likely didn't know that particular word. If Wash were alive, Mal would go and have a good laugh with him at the idea. But Wash wasn't, and the preacher wasn't, and now they had more trouble coming down on their heads.

Feeling bone-deep weary, Mal headed up to the bridge looking for Zoe. She was about the only one he trusted to keep a calm head. Kaylee always looked for the best in people, Simon couldn't see past his core upbringing and his distaste for anyone who looked scruffy, and River... well she wasn't exactly much help in this kind of situation. But Zoe had always come through for him. Always. If he was feeling off-balance, it was Zoe's company he craved.

He walked in as quiet as he could, but the second he cleared the door, she greeted him.

"Sir," she offered.

"Zoe. We still on course?"

"Yep. Don't really know what course we're on, but she's flying straight."

"Good." Mal sat co-pilot and stared into the black. For long minutes, the room was silent. Zoe sent him several curious looks, but they'd been together for so long, working side by side in ditches and trenches and ships, that she knew that sometimes he just needed time to get a reasonable thought together.

"Is Jayne lusting after me?" Mal eventually blurted. He didn't care how much time he took, that thought weren't never going to sound reasonable.

"Is... Jayne?" Zoe turned all the way around to look at him.

"No, nevermind. I'm losing my mind for ever listening to that gou shi." Mal interrupted as he started getting up.

"Yes, sir. He is," Zoe added before Mal could stand all the way up. That knocked him back down into his seat.

"Cao. Really?"

Zoe sighed and looked at him. "I wasn't sure at first. I knew he respected you after Canton and all that talk of hero-worship." She made a face, and Mal's expression matched hers. The idea of people worshipping Jayne as a folk hero had been mighty disturbing.

"But lusting?"

"I didn't start suspecting that until he wanted to go back in for you after Niska took you. It wasn't a very Jayne thing for him to do. But then when we were helping that whorehouse and Jayne tried to take every woman in the place twice, I figured he was trying hard to forget something else. It seemed likely that he was ignoring feelings for you."

"Cao."

"Yes sir. If Jayne were to take a liking to me, I'm afraid I'd have to castrate him. On the good side, the chances are that he won't ever get out of line. He hasn't yet. Clearly, he's ready to just let that dog lie quietly ignored in the corner." With that, Zoe seemed to dismiss the matter. Swinging the pilot chair around, she turned back to the instruments. Mal opened his mouth, but honestly, there weren't much to say in the face of that sort of information. He was feeling a whole lot like he'd just stepped on a grizwald, and it was about to explode and rip him to shreds. Cao and cao again.

"I'm heading to my bunk."

"Yes, sir." Zoe didn't make any other comment, but she shot him another look, one that Mal couldn't quite understand, even if they had been together for the best part of twenty years. He didn't have the energy to worry about what she was thinking, though. He was suddenly too worried about what kind of gou shi Jayne were thinking up. In the name of all the gorram gods in the gorram universe, Mal could not figure why Jayne would go lusting after him. Jayne were not exactly the sort Mal would think of as sly. Not even close.

Then again, unless Jayne were lying, Captain Jimmy was the sly one in his relationship with Blair, and Mal didn't expect that. No, he figured someone like Captain Jimmy would want to be in control.

"Cap," a voice interrupted him. Mal looked up to see Jayne standing in the corridor outside crew quarters, watching him, his arms crossed as he leaned against the bulkhead.

"Ain't you supposed to be watching Womak?"

"Watch him do what?" Jayne straightened up, but the look on his face was pure and simple confusion.

Mal could feel the hot flash of anger. He didn't want things to change, and here Jayne was changing things. "If I knew, I would have told you," he snapped. "I don't want Womak running around my ship to do whatever he wants."

"So, you want I should follow him around?" Jayne was still looking confused.

"Yes. You're security, go secure something," Mal snapped. He stormed past Jayne waiting for the explosion. He was being unreasonable. One man couldn't watch two—not even Jayne who was rather talented at intimidating prisoners. One man sure as hell couldn't guard both Captain Womak who had a reputation as a down and dirty fighter and Dr. Sandburg who could clearly twist a man's mind near to inside out. And one man could never do all that without some rest, and Jayne hadn't seen his bunk since those two had come out of confinement almost a full day's cycle earlier. Cao. They all needed some sleep. Yeah, Jayne had good cause to explode.

The explosion never came. Mal got to the hatch to his quarters and unlocked it, turning to climb down the ladder. This was Jayne's last chance to say that Mal was being a bastard, that he was being totally unreasonable and asking crew to take on a job impossible enough to be downright dangerous if the prisoners decided to fight back. This was Jayne's last chance to prove that he was still looking out for himself and that he wasn't moon-eyed and following Mal's orders, even if they were totally wrong.

"Night, Mal," Jayne said stiffly as he walked down the corridor toward the quarters where Womak and Blair were billeted.

Cao.

Mal slammed the hatch and dropped down into his own room. Of all the gorram messes, he'd landed in, this were about the worst. He wasn't sly, and he didn't want some man mounting him, but he couldn't afford to lose crew. He couldn't afford to lose Jayne who was, without doubt, the sharpest shooter on Serenity.

Him and Jayne. That were just laughable. Mal yanked at his boots, throwing one when it didn't come off fast enough to please him. He'd been real up front about not being sly. He'd said that when they were visiting that whore house and seen those pretty sly boys. Part of him even felt betrayed because Jayne had done everything short of declaring that he wasn't sly. He'd slept with every woman he could get his big hands around.

Mal thought of those big hands touching him, and that was not desire creeping up on him. Not at all. He sure as hell didn't want to lay down for Jayne Cobb. He pictured Jayne's large and work-worn hands resting against his own bare hips, and he fed the tiny seed of fear and horror that appeared. He wasn't sly. He didn't want a man to touch him with rough and demanding hands. That were just about his worst nightmare, and as much as he respected them that were sly, he wasn't changing his opinion. Closing his eyes, he sat on the edge of his bunk and tried to imagine Jayne here.

No, that was not good. Jayne's hands resting on Mal's hips, strong thumbs pressing into the edge of Mal's hipbone. A new image flashed through Mal's mind. He remembered the desperate look as Jayne stared at him through the tiny window in the airlock. Jayne had been begging him, and his dark eyes had followed Mal's every move. Jayne had never complained about Mal hitting him or about the fact that Mal had been mighty close to killing him. No, Jayne had accepted Mal's judgment as final, and he had just begged for some small comfort.

Now the large hands Mal had imagined were joined by that dark, begging gaze—Jayne looking up at him. Jayne kneeling between his legs and watching him, silently begging for permission. Jayne accepting whatever decision Mal made, welcoming any order. Jayne's mouth slightly open, his tongue coming out to just touch his lower lip as he stared at Mal's cock with longing.

Mal gasped. Well damn. Maybe he were just a little bit sly.

TBC

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