Ursa Major, Ursa Minor

Chapter Eighteen:

“Simon is napping in the guest room,” were River’s first words as she returned with Jayne wrapped around her.

Mal looked to his mercenary and grimaced.

Matty, despite being upset about his ge ge blurting out his Christian name for all these new people to hear, grinned at the sight of Jayne clomping down the hardwood steps with that slip of a girl hanging onto him. “Yah owe me fer that first feller, Jayne-pain.”

Jayne grinned widely. “That was you?”

“Yep. Blam, ‘is head looked like a watermelon explodin’.”

Kaylee and Inara winced.

Jayne’s grin slowly dissipated as his stomach complained again. He intended to let River lead him to the kitchen, but the sight of Mal holding the back of his head got him going.

“What happened to you, Mal?”

Mal met his merc’s eyes, winced at the bloody one, and sighed. “Yer ma. I was impolitely commentin’ on how you an’ yer brother share girl names.”

Jayne bit back the normal response of “Jayne ain’t a girl” and tilted his head at the captain. “Ma thought we was gonna be girls when we came into this world. Named us ‘fore the doc could tell her she were wrong. Too excited, I guess.”

Mal sobered up and nodded. “Makes a bit of sense now.”

“I’m hungry,” Jayne announced.

Ma Cobb peered out of the kitchen and smiled warmly at her boy. “Made yer favorite, son. And an apple pie fer dessert.”

Jayne made a happy noise in the back of his throat—the expression on his face reminded River of the one he got when she started kissing on him. She blushed.

“Steak an’ eggs…” he rumbled.

His mother nodded. “Table’s set. There’s an extra helpin’ fer Matty and River here. Don’t worry none about Carl’s rodeo ponies, neither. I made him go round ‘em up his own damn self.”

“Thanks, Ma,” Jayne smiled softly and kissed the top of her head on the way into the kitchen.

*

Ma Cobb made sure to have Katie go to market again for food. As her youngest left the house with Matty and Kaylee in tow, Ma Cobb grabbed her daughter’s hand and slipped a few extra bills into her hand with instructions to “buy somethin’ nice fer Jayne and River.”
She was loathe to see her son leave again. Sure, his work paid well enough to keep the ranch running smoothly enough that she and her youngest children didn’t have to work so hard, but she’d much rather have him close by.

She’d never say it out loud because she loved all her children, but Jayne was her best boy.
Ma Cobb walked back to the porch where Jayne sat with River and Bruce. “You’ll be leavin’ soon, then?” she asked.

Jayne looked up at his mother, the orange hat she’d knitted for him (what felt like) so long ago perched atop his head handsomely. His eye was healing nicely and he complained that his left ear was ringing “somethin’ fierce,” but he was looking better and better. The tension she’d seen in his shoulders was gone. He was smiling more.

Hell, he even shaved last night.

At her question, his smile left his face. “Yeah, Ma.”

She reached down and affectionately rubbed his cheek. After a moment, she looked at

River and smiled softly. “Honey, would you mind goin’ inside fer a minute or two while I chat with my boy here? You can pack up that afghan you’ve been usin’ and give Bruce his supper.”

River nodded and gracefully left Jayne’s side—clicking her fingers at Bruce to get him to follow her.. Ma Cobb plopped down in the empty space and wrapped an arm around her son’s relaxed shoulders.

“Well, you gotta promise me three things, son. One, stop sending so much money—you need some of that pay to get by yer own self and now that the ranch is doin’ so well we’re fine.”

Jayne bit his lip to stop the protest rising in his throat.

“Two, you take better care of yerself. Don’t think I didn’t notice all them new scars when you was gettin’ fixed up by the doc.”

Jayne nodded.

“And three, you watch after that woman,” Ma Cobb gestured toward River inside the house.

“Be good to her and do what’s right. I seen the way you been lookin’ at each other and I gotta say it sharply reminds me of how me an’ yer pa used to be,” she held up a finger, sensing the denial in his throat. “Don’t you dare tell me I ain’t seein’ what I’m seein’, ‘cause Jayne-boy I’m yer ma. I know everythin’ about you.”

“Yeah, Ma.”

“You tell her what’s goin’ on in yer heart, too. She may be able to read heads, but yer brain don’t rule yer heart. Not least in the emotional sense. I know it’s hard, seein’ how young she is, but yer pa was about yer age when he swept me off my feet. And I think I was only 19 when that happened.”

Jayne dropped his head against his mother’s and sighed. “I miss him,” he admitted.

She tilted and kissed his cheek. “I know, boy. I miss him, too.”

“I love ya, Ma,” Jayne said in a rough voice.

“I love you too, Jayne-boy,” she hugged her big son and spoke into the earflap on his hat.

“One more promise, okay? Promise me you’ll kiss that girl when you and me walk back inside.”

“I promise, Ma.”

“Good boy.”

*

River sat on the floor beside Bruce’s food bowl—her back braced against the wall and her eyes trained raptly on the big Bullmastiff as he scarfed down his food like it was going out of style. Experimentally, she cleared her throat.

Bruce stopped eating and gave her two bleary, sorrowful eyes.

“Can he understand me?” she tried.

His ear flicked once and his tail began its near-endless wagging once again.

River smiled and rubbed him between the eyes with her knuckles. “I will miss you, Bruce.”

He leaned into her touch and puffed a happy sigh through his nose—spraying her blouse with dog slobber and dog snot. She laughed.

“Messy.”

Bruce went back to eating his supper.

The sound of bare feet reached River’s ears and she stood from her spot to greet Jayne and his mother. Jayne was looking more thoughtful than usual, but River vowed not to pry into his mind as he thought whatever her was thinking. It was one of the harder things she’d had to do as Jayne’s thoughts were usually loud, uncontrolled bursts that dripped into her head like water.

“Bruce is fed,” she announced.

Ma Cobb went to the fridge and pulled out three beers—her eye half on Jayne as she searched for a bottle opener.

Jayne gently took River’s face in his big hands and kissed her as gently as he could. When he pulled away and accepted two of the beers from his ma, River trailed two confused fingers across her lips. That had felt different than the others. More substantial—not that Jayne’s other kisses weren’t substantial…

Ma Cobb was slugging back her beer with a grin.

*

Matty helped Katie stock the pantry of the ship their brother had been working on for so long and couldn’t help but feel a twinge in his heart as they looked idly at their surroundings.

“’S warm feelin’ in here, huh Katie?”

She nodded lightly and let her twin braids trail along her flexed biceps as she lifted another three bags of flour onto a higher shelf. “Feels homey,” she admitted.

“Think we’ll see ‘’im again?”

Katie chewed on her lip and leaned against her brother for a moment. “Hope so.”

“Katie?”

“Yeah, Matty?”

“I don’t want ‘im to leave.”

She hugged him—careful of his injured arm. “Me neither, Waltzing Matilda.”

For once, he didn’t object to the use of his given name and that gorram Earth-That-Was song. “Kaylee fixed the wave in town, so we can talk to ‘im whenever we can.”

“Good.”

The siblings started unpacking canned items once again.

*

Zoë, having stowed the ammunition, set to work on getting the mule hoisted out of the way. It was a two man job, and the former soldier was trying to figure out how to engineer the dilemma when Mal joined her.

“This here is Jayne’s job, you know,” Mal snarked.

Zoë raised one thin eyebrow and tossed a line of cable at him. He linked it through the winch and tried hard to ignore her expression. “Jayne’s gotta give his family a proper goodbye, sir. Fella’s got a heap of folk gonna be missin’ his hide once we’re off this rock.”

Mal nodded quietly, his mind on his own family on Shadow.

“Where we headed, sir?”

A slick grin crooked Mal’s lips. “Back to Persephone. Gonna give Badger an earful, find his cousin, make sure she don’t work no more…”

“Any ideas on how to deal with the back-stabbing biao zi?”

“Mm,” Mal nodded and helped Zoë secure the front end of the mule. “I was kinda gonna go fer that fly by the seat of my pants kinda plan.”

Zoë crooked a grin at him and started the winches. “’Cause those always work so well, sir.”

Mal faked a pout.

“River on board yet?” Zoë asked.

Mal resumed his grin. “Yep. Little Albatross is settin’ our course into the nav sat as we speak. Only crew we’re missin’ is Jayne and—”

The heavy bulkhead door opened and the man in question set the locks on the ramp. He shut everything up behind him and hefted his duffle bag once Serenity was all closed up.

“We goin’?” he asked in passing.

“Back to Persephone,” Mal informed.

A frightening smile lit up the mercenary’s face. “Permission to scare the piss outta that Dyton-born hun dan?”

Mal snorted. “Permission granted. Sharp pointy objects would work best, I think.”

Jayne laughed a bit. “Good thing I got me an abundance of those.”

He tromped off to the bridge to bother River and left captain and first mate to their “duties.” Which, at the moment, consisted mostly of drinking the beer Matty stocked them with.


TBC

Translation:
Biao zi: whore