Gift for alsunwunderland
To: alsunwunderland
From: an_ardent_rain
I'm so, so sorry this is so late! D: I hope you like it! It's just a one-shot now, but if you like it, I have more planned out so I can flesh it out further into a story!
Early Risers: a River/Jayne one-shot
Jayne stumbled up out of his bunk, his head aching from whatever cheap go se he'd guzzled down the night before. He blinked back the spots in front of his eyes as one single prominent thought made itself known.
He wanted coffee.
No one else was up. He fumbled around the tiny kitchen area, opening compartment after compartment looking for something that could serve as a suitable drink. Even something remotely similar - hot and caffeinated. They didn’t have good coffee in the best of times and unfortunately that time was one of the good ones. It had been optimistic to assume he’d have been successful so instead he grabbed a glass and ran himself a full cup of cool water. It felt good; he hadn't realized his throat was parched and the water felt like heaven as he gulped it down.
"You are not looking well."
He started, spattering the rest of his water over the front of his shirt. "Gorrammit," he mumbled angrily, wiping what liquid he could away with the palm of a large hand. He looked up, scowl at the ready - and was surprised to see River Tam staring at him thoughtfully, her eyes clear and her manner calm. Ever since they'd gotten Serenity completely sky-worthy again, he'd been avoiding her, unsure of how to approach the girl lest her disconcertingly confirmed skills be unleashed. She'd been magnificent. And, used to thinking of her as a nuisance, as a pest, as something unworthy of his time or even his thoughts, he did not know just how to see her now that he suddenly knew she was so much more. "What're you doin', moonbrain? Sneakin' up on folks a new hobby?"
"You are not looking well," she said again. She nimbly snatched his glass away, twirling over to refill it. He watched with some measure of alarm as she offered the glass back to him, reaching into a pocket of her dress and pulling out two small, white pills. "Pain relief," she explained when she saw where his eyes had gone. "You are hungover. Your head hurts." She stuck her hand out further. "I offer you the remedy."
He took the cup full of water, but shook his head at the medicine. "Don't take no meds from crazy persons," he told her. "More'n likely t'make my head explode."
"I do not wish for you to explode. There would be too many Jayne-bits to clean up afterwards. No need to create unneccessary mess."
"Yeah, well..." He took a drink of water, keeping his eyes trained on her.
River sighed. "None of this, please. Have become fully capable member of your crew. There is no need for the trepidation."
"Treppy what?" Jayne wiped the stray drops of water off his mouth, setting the cup down onto the table.
She blinked, looking down at her hands folded in front of her.
Jayne cleared his throat, feeling more and more uncomfortable the longer the moment stretched on. "So... I'm gonna..." He scowled. "Git out o' my way."
"No." She straightened up and he recognized unconsciously that she was ready to fight if she had to.
Jayne's jaw tightened and he glared at the little girl before him with all the fierceness he could muster. "I said git out o' my way."
"And I, foolish ape, said no." She gave him a clear look of challenge. "Civility would be preferred, but if violence is all you understand I am not opposed to treading that path."
"What do you ruttin' want you scrawny-ass little moonbrain?"
River gave him a curt nod and held out her hand. "You are in pain."
"I done told you already, I - "
"Do not take meds from crazy persons. Yes.” She gave him a significant look. It made her already big eyes even larger. “But the girl is no longer classified as crazy."
Jayne snorted, rolling his eyes. River let out an impatient noise and rattled the pills. "Hell, you're crazier'n anything I ever seen."
"Then you have not seen enough." She sniffed primly. "If you do not want my assisstance, ape-man, then I will no longer offer."
"Good." He sneered. "I don't need nothin' from you, anyways."
She slammed the two little pills down onto the table, and Jayne didn't need to be a Reader to know that he'd made her angry. Mumbling something to herself in Chinese - and if it was what Jayne thought it was, even he was impressed - she stormed out of the mess, going off to do who-knew-what who-knew-where.
Jayne stared down at the table. That was the sanest he'd ever seen her. They didn't interact, generally, so it had been a bit of a surprise that she'd been interested in helping him at all. More than a surprise, actually... Even though there was no reason to suspect she'd been up to something, he couldn't help but be suspicious. She'd never really gotten him back for Ariel, and though what had happened in the Maidenhead was unquestionably a point for her, it had only been because of that Fruity Oaty go se that she'd gone woolly. It was only a matter of time before she realized that she'd never really returned the favor.
Those little pills looked fine... And it wasn't like they kept anything too dangerous on the ship...
Glancing around to make sure he wasn't being watched, Jayne scooped the medicine and swallowed it down.
It took longer than he would have liked to admit, but Jayne soon realized that River meant him no harm. He’d watched her, tried to pinpoint the reason for her strange behavior, but the conclusions he came to weren’t what he’d initially surmised.
She hadn’t singled him out at all. In fact, she seemed to be going out of her way to help the entire crew.
If Kaylee ever needed a wrench, River was there to hand it to her. She was early for the flying shifts Mal arbitrarily assigned her, and though it was more than likely she knew more than the rest of the boat put together did about flying, she was attentive to Mal’s lessons and even seemed eager to learn more.
She was a doting - if admittedly still bizarre, creepifying, and liable to sneak up on a body while he was operating - little sister, and anything that Simon needed, River was happy to provide. In her own way, she helped him take inventory (though Simon was furious when it was written on the pages of worn out porn mags Jayne had piled up to be thrown away), she organized the infirmary (though no one had yet figured out her system), and she’d even bought Simon a new blanket to apologize for throwing up on his bed. She even went out of her way to do little things for Zoë; everyone could see the pain she was in still, but only River acted like it was a normal part of their lives. She seemed to catalog it, accept it, and instead of making halting, unsuccessful attempts to heal it - as everyone else had done -, she seemed to be perfectly fine with letting Zoë heal on her own. She acted normally, didn’t tread any more carefully than she could around anyone else. It helped. And it wasn’t long before those two familiar plastic dinosaurs were permanently attached to the console - in memoriam, River had informed them all, as well as for guidance.
That was all well and good and finally Mal seemed to be able to look at Zoë without something crawling up his pi gu, but Jayne was suspicious. Very suspicious.
Everyone was acting like it was normal for River to act like a human. For her speech to be understandable at least half the time. For her fits to settle down into only the occasional nightmare that Simon didn’t let anyone talk about. They even seemed to be okay with letting her walk around when she wasn’t drugged out of her mind. Simon kept her on some meds of course (and he’d explained what and why, once, but Jayne hadn’t really been listening), but for the most part she was just… herself.
Jayne finally got fed up one night at dinner time; Kaylee was raving again about her “handy li’l assistant,” calling her “mei mei” and giving River one of her strawberries. It wasn’t even about the girl, really, because with all the hints Kaylee had been dropping, Jayne was just ready for the doc to put a damn ring on her finger already. Everyone was acting like things were different; like what they’d been through had somehow made things different, had made them different. Well Jayne knew for sure he didn’t feel any differently at all - and seeing her sitting there primly and properly, using her chopsticks and only stealing from someone else’s plate once, made something in him flare up in anger.
He’d slammed down his cup and stood up, declaring angrily that he was done. And everyone else had looked up, surprised and in more than one case disapproving, but he wasn’t about to stand there and listen to Mal or anyone else preach about his table manners. And she had just looked at him like she could Read everything that was going on in his head, and he wanted to stomp and snarl and show everyone that she hadn’t changed at all! She was just the same as she ever was: just as crazy, just as unnatural.
He didn’t sleep well that night, plagued by frustration and dark thoughts he couldn’t shake. He’d taken to drinking more, going out for as long as he could whenever he had the chance, but he’d run out of the good whiskey and the cheap stuff, so he’d had nothing to take the edge off. It wore his patience ragged, and he let the little things start to get to him. River, though, despite her physical stature, was not a little thing.
Finally, after taking out his mother’s last letter and reading through it two or three times, he managed to fall into a fitful slumber.
It didn’t leave him rested at all and he woke up early the next morning in as black a mood as he’d been in the night before. Trying to go back to sleep didn’t seem at all productive, so he stretched quickly and dressed, stopping by the head before heading to the hold. He’d wait for breakfast, he figured, hoping that maybe someone with a little skill in the kitchen would be the next one awake.
But before he’d even finished putting the weights on the bar to lift, he heard quick, shuffling footsteps nearby. With a growl, he turned and saw River standing there, her head cocked to one side and her hands behind her back. “If you would prefer,” she said calmly, “I can kill you with my brain.”
Jayne glared darkly. “What?”
“You are unhappy. The girl is healing, but man with a girl’s name does not approve. The status quo - “
“Hey,” he barked, “I know what th’ status is, an’ it sure as hell ain’t quo.”
River looked at him a little dazedly and said, “That does not mean what you - “
“I don’t give a ruttin’ flip what it means, you little freak!”
Even in the face of his anger, she remained calm, and that only made him angrier. “There is turmoil,” she whispered, moving closer to him. “It will gobble you up, make you insides outside.”
“I’m fine,” he said, looking away from her. “There ain’t no turmoil or nothin’ like that. It’s you. You’re the problem. Actin’ all… different, makin’ everyone start to act like there’s somethin’ different here…” He grunted, suddenly shamed. “Well… ‘sides Wash bein’ dead and all.”
“Things are different,” River said, and again Jayne was unnerved by her surprising clarity. “The girl is not a monster. She is more than what they made her.”
He rolled his eyes, stubbornly refusing to hear any of what she had to say. He’d decided, and she wasn’t going to persuade him otherwise if he had any say in it.
“You do not have any say in it,” River informed him, stomping one bare, dainty foot. “Crazy, crazy… That is all you think, oozing out your ears like thick, wet fog.” She stood up on her tiptoes looking at him with a stern gaze. “Wrong. Girl is productive member of our society; will one day be appreciated. There is no danger to you from her anymore.” And, satisfied, she took two slow steps back, still looking up at him with an electrifyingly lucid gaze. “It is time,” she said slowly, “for the mourning to end.”
Jayne sneered, unsettled by her words, but finally feeling some small measure of satisfaction in getting what he thought to be a one-up on the girl. “Mornin’ ain’t even close to over, moonbrain. We ain’t even had breakfast yet.”
River didn’t even blink. “Then we are all waiting for you in the afternoon.”
~~~
From: an_ardent_rain
I'm so, so sorry this is so late! D: I hope you like it! It's just a one-shot now, but if you like it, I have more planned out so I can flesh it out further into a story!
Early Risers: a River/Jayne one-shot
Jayne stumbled up out of his bunk, his head aching from whatever cheap go se he'd guzzled down the night before. He blinked back the spots in front of his eyes as one single prominent thought made itself known.
He wanted coffee.
No one else was up. He fumbled around the tiny kitchen area, opening compartment after compartment looking for something that could serve as a suitable drink. Even something remotely similar - hot and caffeinated. They didn’t have good coffee in the best of times and unfortunately that time was one of the good ones. It had been optimistic to assume he’d have been successful so instead he grabbed a glass and ran himself a full cup of cool water. It felt good; he hadn't realized his throat was parched and the water felt like heaven as he gulped it down.
"You are not looking well."
He started, spattering the rest of his water over the front of his shirt. "Gorrammit," he mumbled angrily, wiping what liquid he could away with the palm of a large hand. He looked up, scowl at the ready - and was surprised to see River Tam staring at him thoughtfully, her eyes clear and her manner calm. Ever since they'd gotten Serenity completely sky-worthy again, he'd been avoiding her, unsure of how to approach the girl lest her disconcertingly confirmed skills be unleashed. She'd been magnificent. And, used to thinking of her as a nuisance, as a pest, as something unworthy of his time or even his thoughts, he did not know just how to see her now that he suddenly knew she was so much more. "What're you doin', moonbrain? Sneakin' up on folks a new hobby?"
"You are not looking well," she said again. She nimbly snatched his glass away, twirling over to refill it. He watched with some measure of alarm as she offered the glass back to him, reaching into a pocket of her dress and pulling out two small, white pills. "Pain relief," she explained when she saw where his eyes had gone. "You are hungover. Your head hurts." She stuck her hand out further. "I offer you the remedy."
He took the cup full of water, but shook his head at the medicine. "Don't take no meds from crazy persons," he told her. "More'n likely t'make my head explode."
"I do not wish for you to explode. There would be too many Jayne-bits to clean up afterwards. No need to create unneccessary mess."
"Yeah, well..." He took a drink of water, keeping his eyes trained on her.
River sighed. "None of this, please. Have become fully capable member of your crew. There is no need for the trepidation."
"Treppy what?" Jayne wiped the stray drops of water off his mouth, setting the cup down onto the table.
She blinked, looking down at her hands folded in front of her.
Jayne cleared his throat, feeling more and more uncomfortable the longer the moment stretched on. "So... I'm gonna..." He scowled. "Git out o' my way."
"No." She straightened up and he recognized unconsciously that she was ready to fight if she had to.
Jayne's jaw tightened and he glared at the little girl before him with all the fierceness he could muster. "I said git out o' my way."
"And I, foolish ape, said no." She gave him a clear look of challenge. "Civility would be preferred, but if violence is all you understand I am not opposed to treading that path."
"What do you ruttin' want you scrawny-ass little moonbrain?"
River gave him a curt nod and held out her hand. "You are in pain."
"I done told you already, I - "
"Do not take meds from crazy persons. Yes.” She gave him a significant look. It made her already big eyes even larger. “But the girl is no longer classified as crazy."
Jayne snorted, rolling his eyes. River let out an impatient noise and rattled the pills. "Hell, you're crazier'n anything I ever seen."
"Then you have not seen enough." She sniffed primly. "If you do not want my assisstance, ape-man, then I will no longer offer."
"Good." He sneered. "I don't need nothin' from you, anyways."
She slammed the two little pills down onto the table, and Jayne didn't need to be a Reader to know that he'd made her angry. Mumbling something to herself in Chinese - and if it was what Jayne thought it was, even he was impressed - she stormed out of the mess, going off to do who-knew-what who-knew-where.
Jayne stared down at the table. That was the sanest he'd ever seen her. They didn't interact, generally, so it had been a bit of a surprise that she'd been interested in helping him at all. More than a surprise, actually... Even though there was no reason to suspect she'd been up to something, he couldn't help but be suspicious. She'd never really gotten him back for Ariel, and though what had happened in the Maidenhead was unquestionably a point for her, it had only been because of that Fruity Oaty go se that she'd gone woolly. It was only a matter of time before she realized that she'd never really returned the favor.
Those little pills looked fine... And it wasn't like they kept anything too dangerous on the ship...
Glancing around to make sure he wasn't being watched, Jayne scooped the medicine and swallowed it down.
It took longer than he would have liked to admit, but Jayne soon realized that River meant him no harm. He’d watched her, tried to pinpoint the reason for her strange behavior, but the conclusions he came to weren’t what he’d initially surmised.
She hadn’t singled him out at all. In fact, she seemed to be going out of her way to help the entire crew.
If Kaylee ever needed a wrench, River was there to hand it to her. She was early for the flying shifts Mal arbitrarily assigned her, and though it was more than likely she knew more than the rest of the boat put together did about flying, she was attentive to Mal’s lessons and even seemed eager to learn more.
She was a doting - if admittedly still bizarre, creepifying, and liable to sneak up on a body while he was operating - little sister, and anything that Simon needed, River was happy to provide. In her own way, she helped him take inventory (though Simon was furious when it was written on the pages of worn out porn mags Jayne had piled up to be thrown away), she organized the infirmary (though no one had yet figured out her system), and she’d even bought Simon a new blanket to apologize for throwing up on his bed. She even went out of her way to do little things for Zoë; everyone could see the pain she was in still, but only River acted like it was a normal part of their lives. She seemed to catalog it, accept it, and instead of making halting, unsuccessful attempts to heal it - as everyone else had done -, she seemed to be perfectly fine with letting Zoë heal on her own. She acted normally, didn’t tread any more carefully than she could around anyone else. It helped. And it wasn’t long before those two familiar plastic dinosaurs were permanently attached to the console - in memoriam, River had informed them all, as well as for guidance.
That was all well and good and finally Mal seemed to be able to look at Zoë without something crawling up his pi gu, but Jayne was suspicious. Very suspicious.
Everyone was acting like it was normal for River to act like a human. For her speech to be understandable at least half the time. For her fits to settle down into only the occasional nightmare that Simon didn’t let anyone talk about. They even seemed to be okay with letting her walk around when she wasn’t drugged out of her mind. Simon kept her on some meds of course (and he’d explained what and why, once, but Jayne hadn’t really been listening), but for the most part she was just… herself.
Jayne finally got fed up one night at dinner time; Kaylee was raving again about her “handy li’l assistant,” calling her “mei mei” and giving River one of her strawberries. It wasn’t even about the girl, really, because with all the hints Kaylee had been dropping, Jayne was just ready for the doc to put a damn ring on her finger already. Everyone was acting like things were different; like what they’d been through had somehow made things different, had made them different. Well Jayne knew for sure he didn’t feel any differently at all - and seeing her sitting there primly and properly, using her chopsticks and only stealing from someone else’s plate once, made something in him flare up in anger.
He’d slammed down his cup and stood up, declaring angrily that he was done. And everyone else had looked up, surprised and in more than one case disapproving, but he wasn’t about to stand there and listen to Mal or anyone else preach about his table manners. And she had just looked at him like she could Read everything that was going on in his head, and he wanted to stomp and snarl and show everyone that she hadn’t changed at all! She was just the same as she ever was: just as crazy, just as unnatural.
He didn’t sleep well that night, plagued by frustration and dark thoughts he couldn’t shake. He’d taken to drinking more, going out for as long as he could whenever he had the chance, but he’d run out of the good whiskey and the cheap stuff, so he’d had nothing to take the edge off. It wore his patience ragged, and he let the little things start to get to him. River, though, despite her physical stature, was not a little thing.
Finally, after taking out his mother’s last letter and reading through it two or three times, he managed to fall into a fitful slumber.
It didn’t leave him rested at all and he woke up early the next morning in as black a mood as he’d been in the night before. Trying to go back to sleep didn’t seem at all productive, so he stretched quickly and dressed, stopping by the head before heading to the hold. He’d wait for breakfast, he figured, hoping that maybe someone with a little skill in the kitchen would be the next one awake.
But before he’d even finished putting the weights on the bar to lift, he heard quick, shuffling footsteps nearby. With a growl, he turned and saw River standing there, her head cocked to one side and her hands behind her back. “If you would prefer,” she said calmly, “I can kill you with my brain.”
Jayne glared darkly. “What?”
“You are unhappy. The girl is healing, but man with a girl’s name does not approve. The status quo - “
“Hey,” he barked, “I know what th’ status is, an’ it sure as hell ain’t quo.”
River looked at him a little dazedly and said, “That does not mean what you - “
“I don’t give a ruttin’ flip what it means, you little freak!”
Even in the face of his anger, she remained calm, and that only made him angrier. “There is turmoil,” she whispered, moving closer to him. “It will gobble you up, make you insides outside.”
“I’m fine,” he said, looking away from her. “There ain’t no turmoil or nothin’ like that. It’s you. You’re the problem. Actin’ all… different, makin’ everyone start to act like there’s somethin’ different here…” He grunted, suddenly shamed. “Well… ‘sides Wash bein’ dead and all.”
“Things are different,” River said, and again Jayne was unnerved by her surprising clarity. “The girl is not a monster. She is more than what they made her.”
He rolled his eyes, stubbornly refusing to hear any of what she had to say. He’d decided, and she wasn’t going to persuade him otherwise if he had any say in it.
“You do not have any say in it,” River informed him, stomping one bare, dainty foot. “Crazy, crazy… That is all you think, oozing out your ears like thick, wet fog.” She stood up on her tiptoes looking at him with a stern gaze. “Wrong. Girl is productive member of our society; will one day be appreciated. There is no danger to you from her anymore.” And, satisfied, she took two slow steps back, still looking up at him with an electrifyingly lucid gaze. “It is time,” she said slowly, “for the mourning to end.”
Jayne sneered, unsettled by her words, but finally feeling some small measure of satisfaction in getting what he thought to be a one-up on the girl. “Mornin’ ain’t even close to over, moonbrain. We ain’t even had breakfast yet.”
River didn’t even blink. “Then we are all waiting for you in the afternoon.”
~~~