.

.

.

“I just direct my energy elsewhere.”

“You mean like masturbating?” – ‘Objects in Space’

~

~

It was a whole day after the kitchen talk before Jayne found him alone, reading at the dining table.

“So, Preacher, you never really did say. Not even …” Jayne’s voice trailed off as his right hand curled around an imaginary cylinder and started making suggestive motions below his stomach.

Book sighed, having lost a bit of his hard-won patience with this topic now that it came up a second time. “No, Jayne. Not even … that.”

“Huh.” The hand drifted upwards to scratch at Jayne’s belly, and the big man wandered off, a look of perplexity ridging the skin between his brows.

~

Two days later, they were doing some lifting in the cargo bay.

Book finished his last set of bench presses, his triceps twanging with the strain, and sat up to run a towel over his sweaty face and neck.

Piling more weight onto the bar for his own turn, Jayne said, “So’s supposing you’re in the shower, and you’re just washing, nothing else. But your hand’s all soapy and slick like, and your John Thomas can’t help but take an interest. Not even then?”

Book silently contemplated Jayne asking this just before Book was about to spot him and decided it was probably more a sign of the larger man’s faith in his own strength than trust in Book not to let the bar fall on his windpipe. They were friends, but he wasn’t sure how much that meant ‘trust’ to Jayne like it would most folks.

“Jayne.” He put a note of warning into his voice.

“Alright.” Jayne laid back on the bench, grumbling a bit, a gorramit slipping out. “Just trying to make sense of it is all.”

Moving to stand over Jayne’s head, Book saw how the other man’s face lacked that sneaky squint of eye he got whenever he purposefully teased Simon, and Book considered another idea – that Jayne might not even realize the topic was annoying to bring up over and over again.

~

A handful of days further on, Jayne bounded into the