Slim as Dimes

By belasera

NC-17…ish

Oh, the things you hear in a cracked spaceship…I’m going back to my first love, Jayne/Kaylee, with a smattering of Simon for good luck.

A vague disclaimer is nobody's friend, all recognisable characters belong not to me, but to Joss Whedon and the darlings over at Universal. No money made, no harm meant.

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The bulkheads were thick, solid like everything else on Serenity. They didn’t wear or crack on their own, took some sort of damage to breech ‘em. Kaylee thought it musta happened before Mal’d bought her, maybe even while she sat derelict. It was nothin’ Mal woulda noticed, took Kaylee a bit to notice it, and she knew Serenity like she knew her own face.

Was when Jayne came she noticed. He’d settled in to the bunk next to hers, and she was glad of it truth be told, felt good to know she had a neighbor, even one the Cap’n had thrown her a few warning words about. ‘Fore he’d strolled in Mal had said to her, not lookin’ in her eyes,

“Know you like to be friendly, lil Kaylee, and it ain’t on my mind to know nothin’ about that, but this one coming? He ain’t for you.”

Kaylee had just shook her head like she couldn’t fathom his meaning, but his warning was more an advertisement to her, made her wonder what about this new recruit he thought she might like. Maybe he was swai, tall and blond, or maybe lookin’ all like smooth chocolate…

Jayne wasn’t what she imagined, and she thought maybe Mal didn’t know the first thing about girlfolk when she spied him, draggin’ his duffle and lookin more’n a bit like a bag of dirty laundry himself. Wasn’t ‘til he dropped that bag, wiped his brow and stretched out his shoulders that she’d smiled at him.

She’d mind the Captain, sure, as much as she’d ever minded her pa and that was most of the time. She’d mind him on this, even if it was more’n a little lonesome on this boat. When she’d signed on she thought maybe she’d be getting’ to know more people, and much as she loved the one’s she ha