Title: The Lost Hat Tussle 1/1

Author: hisgoodgirl

Disclaimer: Joss’s toys, my imagination

Rating: PG-15 for strong language

Setting: During the series, after “The Message”

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Jayne Cobb was a collector.

The big mercenary had amassed a weapons cache impressive by almost any standards. Stored in the space behind his bed, his armory was protected from prying eyes by an embroidered hanging. On racks he’d welded to Serenity’s inner support frame and bulkhead, he’d hung pistols and rifles and shotguns, daggers and knives and even a short sword. In the center, most prized of all, hung a Callaghan full-bore autolock, ready for some serious action.

Tools of his trade, yes, but more. He’d chosen each one for it’s particular strengths: accuracy, silence, range, damage capacity, even how it felt in his big, callused hands or on his hip. Each he valued for specific and unique reasons, and to Jayne, each had a personality, distinct and individual.

He’d womanized his way through several quadrants of the galaxy, starting with his first fumbling attempts to woo Lucy McKenny while doing chores for her Pa as a youth back on Sunderland. The names he gave his weapons bore testimony to the most memorable of those women. There was Katie and Emma, Betsy and Cassie and Boo, along with many others. Vera, the name he’d given the big Callaghan, reminded him of the big-busted Amazon of a woman he met on Santo who won his admiration by stomping him in a cut-throat poker game and subsequently riding him into the ground over four exhausting but memorable days and nights.

Jayne never had a lot, had never been a wealthy man. The son of a hard-drinking factory worker, he left home young and made his way by his wits and talents: tracking, brawling and marksmanship. It was his rambling life that kept the collecting in check and limited it to a few special categories, like his t-shirts.

There were practical reasons for this. T-sh