Archive of Our Own

Tetchy: (tèch¹ê) adjective Peevish; testy

*

It started small. Of course, Simon knew that almost every war started with something so insignificant it was only years later people were able to point back and say, "That's where it started." The imprisonment of a dissident here, an uprising there, an inflammatory speech somewhere else; those were the pebbles that preceded the avalanche.

Being that this was a small war, it only took Simon a matter of days to pick out the pebble that started this particular engagement of hostilities.

"Oh, yes. He's a real beast. It's a wonder you're still alive."

A small part of him, the part that remembered his mother's relentless etiquette lessons as gospel, had been appalled, but he'd been helpless to stop the snide words.

Besides, it felt good to get a little of his own back. And, he'd thought at the time, now they were even.

Jayne, apparently, didn't understand the concept of even. Simon discovered that when he sat at his desk, and after checking the Cortex, found himself unable to part company with the chair. After an hour of silent struggling, he finally had to comm Kaylee and ask for help.

"Epoxy," she said through lips trembling against a smile. "We use it for small hull patches where we can't weld. I have some solvent that should take care of it. Be right back."

The solvent ate through his pants and left his buttocks and the backs of his legs an angry red.

"It's Jayne's way," Kaylee said as he stood. She politely averted her eyes when he backed away and added, "He doesn't mean any harm. He was just raised by baboons and thinks stuff like this is...funny."

Funny. Simon felt a stiff, unnatural smile curl up the corners of his mouth. "Funny. I see."

*

Jayne smirked at Simon all through lunch and asked pointed questions about how he found his chair. Not too hard, was it, and did he need a cushion, and hey, was that epoxy he smelled?

He stopped smiling about four bites into his stew. He was mid fifth bite when his eyes rolled up in his head and he pitched face first into his plate.

Everyone at the table paused and stared, first at Jayne, then at Simon, who carefully set his fork down and dabbed at his mouth with his napkin. "Oh dear," he said casually. "Stew must be off."

Once Jayne regained consciousness, Simon anxiously waited for the other shoe to drop. But when nothing unusual happened for a few days, and he began to allow himself to relax. This, he realized, was a tactical error, when he found the door to the head in his berth had been welded shut while he'd been bathing.

"You shouldn't have drugged him," Kaylee told him through her welder's mask two hours later.

Barely covered by a towel and shivering, Simon brushed past her and grabbed a robe from his bed.

"No? Really?"

She must have missed the sarcasm, or else his teeth were chattering too much to make it comprehensible, because she nodded and added, "Too nice. Guys like Jayne need something a little stronger. You know, to make a point."

"Like a spanner to forehead?"

She tilted her head, then said, "That might do it."

And while this was a very satisfying scenario to contemplate, he couldn't quite bring himself to put it into practice. After all, he was a doctor and he'd taken an oath he was fairly certain excluded the forceful application of wrench to cranium, no matter how strong the provocation or temptation.

Besides, violence wasn't always the answer.

Jayne followed a fairly predictable routine. Every morning he entered the mess at 0800 hundred hours, ate a disgustingly unhealthy grease laden breakfast, perused the Cortex for an hour or so, then went to the lower decks and skulked about the cargo unless he was needed for either repairs or crime.

It was there Simon waited. And since Jayne was a predictable creature, he wandered into Simon's view at 0900 hours. Simon watched him kick a loose food container back into place, then flip open a weapon locker and desultorily examine the contents before making his move.

"Oh Jayne," he called as he stepped out from behind a bulkhead, "look what I found." He held up the large gun he'd taken from Jayne's quarters after breakfast.

He was so disconcerted when Jayne froze and yelled, "Vera!" that he actually started to turn around to look behind him, but then Jayne started toward him at a furious lope, eyes fixed firmly on the gun, face murderous.

Simon swallowed hard, but held his ground and waited until Jayne stepped on the little mark Simon had made on the floor. He pressed a button on the remote in his sweaty palm.

And Jayne...stopped. Or, more precisely, kept going, but in a different direction. He rose, arms and legs still pumping in mid run, as if his body hadn't quite caught up with the fact it was no longer in contact with the deck. By the time Jayne was just a few feet from the ceiling, he'd regained control over his limbs, folded his arms over his chest and glared down at Simon.

"What the hell is this?"

"Portable null-gravity system."

"Oh yeah? What's it for?"

"Moving heavy cargo, usually."

Jayne, unpredictably, stopped glaring long enough to say, "We had one of these? Shit, why didn't we use it before?"

"No. I, er, made it."

"Clever, ain't ya?"

"Top three percent of my class, actually."

Jayne acknowledged this bit of information with a derisive snort. "Well, Top Three Percent, what's the plan?"

"I beg your pardon?"

He spread his hands and with heavy sarcasm, said, "You went to all the effort to get me up here. What are you going to do with me?"

Cautiously, Simon said, "What do you think I'm going to do with you?"

"Well, I know damn well you're not going to shoot me."

"Why is that?"

"Because I know for a fact Vera isn't loaded."

Simon looked down at the heavy gun in his arms. "You named your gun Vera?"

"What's wrong with Vera?"

"Nothing. It was my grandmother's name."

They both paused to consider this and, upon reflection, made what Simon suspected were identical faces of repugnance.

"Jayne," he said calmly, trying to regain control of the conversation, "obviously I am not going to shoot you."

"Not with Vera, you're not."

"Would you shut up about the gun?" He set it down on the ground. "Happy now?"

"Peachy," Jayne growled.

"I just... Look, I don't like you."

"Stop, please, my feelings."

"And you don't like me." Jayne raised an eyebrow and gave him a half smile, which Simon grimly ignored. "Which is fine. However, we still have to work together and these petty games of one-upmanship are...are...well, they just have to stop."

"Why?"

"Because someone could get hurt."

"Nothing I did harmed one hair on your head."

"I wasn't talking about me," Simon said with what he hoped sounded like the utmost sincerity.

To his disappointment, but not surprise, Jayne laughed. "You wouldn't hurt a person anymore than...than Zoe would cook."

Simon held up the remote where Jayne could see it. "I could press this button and reintroduce your body to gravity in point two seconds."

"You wouldn't."

"I might."

Jayne looked down at the floor some twenty odd feet below him, then shrugged and gave Simon a grin. "That's nothing. I fell further than that out of my crib."

"They must have been highly evolved baboons," Simon muttered under his breath. "Fine," he said aloud. "You're right, I wouldn't." He pocketed the remote, then tried one last time. "Are you going to stop these childish pranks?"

With a shake of his head, Jayne said, "Nope. I'm still having too much fun."

Fun. Of course. Simon waved a hand in disgust and started to walk away.

"Hey! You're going to just leave me up here?"

Without breaking stride, Simon said over his shoulder, "Obviously. Have fun."

*

It was with weary resignation that Simon greeted Mal at the medlab a few hours later.

"I'll be the first to admit the welding you in the bathroom thing was maybe going a little too far," Mal said. "And I appreciate that Jayne can be a little--"

"Obnoxious? Loathsome? Morally bankrupt and boasting the turpitude of a five credit doxy?"

"Rough when he plays," Mal continued as if he hadn't said anything. "But this has got to stop."

"Tell that to him."

"I'm telling it to both of you. And as soon as Kaylee stops laughing and gets Jayne down, I'll tell him again, because, let's face it, sometimes it takes two or three tellings to get through Jayne's skull."

Simon was horrified to hear his own voice blurt out, "He started it."

"And I'm finishing it." Mal paused, and ran a hand through his hair. "I know things get dull between jobs, but Kaylee has better things to do than get your sorry butts out of jams. Understood?"

Not daring to trust his voice again, lest it say something sullen and sulky, Simon curtly nodded.

Mal turned to leave, then paused. "Hey. Nice work, by the way, on that null grav unit. I assume you've got no problem with us using it to actually move cargo. Right?" Without waiting for an answer, he continued, "Good. Oh, and Doc? Try not to drug my crew members again. I like them functional."

*

Jayne followed Mal's orders. Simon should have breathed a sigh of relief every day he wasn't welded into his head again, or barricaded in the medlab by falling crates, or accidentally ejected into space, but he still felt edgy. Wary.

Because, barred from making Simon's a life a torment with practical jokes, Jayne settled on watching him.

It seemed that every time he turned around or looked up, there was Jayne, eyes fixed firmly on Simon, mouth in a half smile that was almost, but not quite, a leer. It gave Simon the horrors. It was possible he could have ignored the silent, smiling menace that was Jayne, except that he followed Simon everywhere.

He started first thing in the mess, his eyes never moving off Simon as he tried to choke down breakfast. And then, instead of following his usual routine of checking the Cortex, he stalked after Simon to the medlab and stood outside the windows, looking at Simon as if he was a bug in a jar. Sometimes he would find an activity that seemingly justified his being in medlab's immediate vicinity. Usually this activity was meaningfully cleaning his guns. This made ignoring Jayne rather difficult.

Simon soon found there was no escape. When he went to the bridge, Jayne followed him. Since Wash was firmly ensconced in his seat at the helm, this should have been a comfort, as Simon was fairly confident Jayne wouldn't do anything in front of witnesses.

However, he discovered that while the bridge would normally comfortably accommodate nine people, Jayne could seem to find no other place to stand than a few millimeters directly behind wherever Simon happened to be. And after acknowledging Wash's greeting, he just stood there and breathed. It made the hairs on the back of Simon's neck stand up. It was, in fact, so distracting that Simon's ability to speak deserted him and he found himself making one syllable responses to Wash's ever more amused conversational overtures.

When Simon finally gave up and turned to leave, Jayne right at his heels, Wash called after him, "Hey, great to see you two kids getting along."

Mal tended to patrol the upper decks like he was just waiting for Alliance troopers to board and demand to see their current bill of lading, and any fool knew that were ever Mal was, Zoe couldn't be far off. So Simon veered toward that general direction, Jayne a silent, hulking shadow behind him.

He found them examining a screen and talking in a low voices, a conversation that broke off the second they registered his presence.

Mal frowned at them. "You need something, Doc?"

"No," Simon said, dismayed to find that Jayne was once more breathing on the back of his neck. "I just wanted to see how you...were." He shifted to the left and a moment later, Jayne shifted as well.

"We're busy," Mal said, then paused and added with a puzzled look at Simon's face, "Are you okay? You look a little flushed."

Jayne let out a soft laugh that landed on Simon's neck like a physical touch. He jumped, then whirled around, pointing directly at Jayne's innocently expressionless face. "No, I am not okay. He won't stop following me."

"Jayne?"

With a shrug, Jayne said, "You told me to be friendly. I'm being friendly."

"Stalking me is friendly? Dear god."

Mal rubbed the bridge of his nose, studied Simon for a moment, then sighed and looked at Jayne. "Don't you have something to do?"

"Am doing something," Jayne replied. "I'm being friendly."

"Go do it somewhere else."

"Can't."

"I see." Mal's gaze swung back to Simon. "Doc?"

"Yes?"

"Jayne is being friendly. I suggest you get used to it. Somewhere else. We're kind of busy here."

*

Simon stormed back to medlab, Jayne snickering as he followed.

"I'm so glad," Simon said as he went inside, "that you find this amusing."

Jayne leaned against a wall and folded his arms. "Well," he said, "it is kind of fun watching you get all tetchy."

"Tetchy. Tetchy is not the adjective I would use here, actually." He opened a drawer, glanced inside and closed it, then looked in another.

"Yeah, you like them big words, don't you? I looked up turpitude on the Cortex. That's a good word."

Simon went to a locker, opened that, and while studying the contents, snapped, "I'm glad you think so, since it utterly suits you."

"Although, the example they gave was kind of ..." Jayne frowned and half closed his eyes, obviously thinking, then added, "I've never done that to a sheep."

"Sheep of the universe, rejoice." Simon found what he was looking for and palmed it. He turned around and faced Jayne, who had somehow moved closer, once again invading his personal space.

"Jayne," Simon said firmly, holding his ground.

"What?"

"This needs to stop. I don't know what kind of game you're playing, or what, exactly, you hope to accomplish, but this has to stop."

"Captain said to be friendly. You heard the man."

"Can't you be friendly from afar?"

"Nope. I'm more of an up close and personal kind of friend."

"Well, I don't want to be your friend."

"Why not?"

"Because you're a baboon. Go away."

"You calling me a monkey?"

"Yes."

"That's not very friendly."

"I don't want to-- Look. Just go way."

Jayne folded his arms over his chest and grinned. "What are you going to do if I don't?"

"This." Simon turned and in one smooth motion, depressed the hypo spray against Jayne's bicep.

As Jayne slowly fell to his knees, he got out, "Hey. Mal said you weren't supposed to drug me again."

"He said try not to. I slipped. Oops."

*

Simon hurried as casually as he could manage past the mess table where Book read his bible.

"Where's the fire?" he asked, without looking up.

"No fire," Simon said without pausing. "I just need to, er."

Book raised his head and gave Simon a piercing, yet sympathetic look. "Hide?"

"Yes. Please excuse me."

The trouble was, there really was no good place to hide on Serenity. He had about thirty minutes before Jayne would wake up, and then, he guessed, about ten more before he would be found and summarily ejected out of an airlock. With that in mind, he headed toward the suit locker.

Not, he thought, as he shut himself inside, that a suit would do him much good when his heart stopped once the airlock closed behind him.

And yes, perhaps going against the captain's orders had been a bad idea, but he'd been driven to it. Any sensible person would know that a man could only take so much stalking and being breathed on before he snapped. He irritably rubbed his still tingling neck and wondered how likely Mal might be to accept temporary insanity in a crew member. He'd hired Jayne, after all.

He waited. A half an hour passed. Then another. Then an hour. There was no ship wide announcement demanding he present himself to the captain for spacing. He could hear no sound of a search party in the room outside his dark little hiding place. Eventually, Simon's panic began to be worn down by sheer force of boredom. He might have even dozed a little.

When his stomach gurgled, insistently informing him it had been a long time since his half eaten breakfast, Simon dared to hope he was going to escape retaliation. Even someone of Jayne's limited faculties should have been able to find him by now.

After peeking through the cracked door and confirming no one was waiting to pounce, Simon slipped out of the locker and made his way to the ladder. Maybe he would stop at Inara's shuttle first and find out if she'd heard they were searching on the Cortex for a new ship's doctor. Or perhaps ask if she would be amenable to dropping him and River off on the nearest somewhat civilized, non Alliance friendly world. Or--

"Knew you were down here somewhere."

Simon froze, mouthed a curse, then lifted his chin and turned around to meet Jayne's satisfied smile.

Simon cautiously backed away until he bumped into a bulkhead. "Then why didn't you come get me?"

Jayne shrugged then stepped forward, blocking Simon's path to the ladder. "Didn't feel like playing hide and seek. You had to come out eventually."

"You just stood there-"

"Sat."

"Sat there and waited while I had visions of being thrown out of an airlock? You...you bastard."

"You're the one who drugged me. Seems that I'm the one who should be tetchy here." He paused, then added, "Although, I do have to say, you are pretty fetching when you're-"

Simon held up a hand and said, aghast, "If you finish that sentence, you will not wake up the next time I get my hands on a hypo."

Jayne gave him a speculative look. "You don't happen to have one on you now, do you?"

"No," Simon said bitterly, damning himself for not thinking of that before his flight from medlab.

"Well then." Jayne advanced another step forward.

Both hands came up, then met the solid wall of Jayne's chest. "I don't know what you think all of this was about-"

"Fun?"

"But I do not," Simon gamely continued, "consider a series of ever escalating practical jokes followed by menacing stalking to be foreplay."

"They do things differently where you come from?"

"Well, normally one of the parties doesn't fear for his life," Simon said sarcastically, and pushed. Jayne didn't budge. If anything, he seemed even closer.

"I suppose you're used to things being all fancy and polite, and when you're done you don't have a hair out of place."

"That would be the civilized way, yes." He tried another shove, which proved just as ineffectual as the first.

"Well, as you may have noticed, we ain't very civilized out here."

"No? Really?"

"But we surely do understand sarcasm." Jayne grinned, leaned a little closer until they were almost bumping noses and said, "You know what I want to do every time something prissy and snippy comes out of your mouth?"

Simon was fairly confident he knew, but couldn't seem to stop his mouth from saying, "I am quite sure I couldn't care less."

Hard. Jayne kissed hard, like soft was a concept as foreign as flowers at the door and two orchestra pit tickets to the theater. He pressed Simon's back against the bulkhead, which was also hard, then stepped between Simon's inexplicably parted legs and gave a little push with his hips and... Simon gasped into Jayne's mouth, got an answering growl and another push, and for a moment Simon's brain shorted out and looped like a bad Cortex circuit that could only process the word hard.

His hands were still on Jayne's chest, but clinging to the material of his shirt now, and Jayne's hands landed on him, settled him more firmly into the cradle of Jayne's hips, then started pulling at his clothes.

Simon was dimly aware of buttons popping and the hiss of a zipper, but couldn't bother to worry about such things, because Jayne's hands, hands that looked callused and clumsy, traced over the shivering skin of his abdomen with a delicate, deft touch that would have made a surgeon weep with envy, had he not been previously occupied with whimpering in need.

Jayne pulled his mouth away just far enough to mutter, "Were you trying to say something?"

Simon processed this, considered for a moment, then licked his lips and managed, "I suppose this is your idea of romance."

He caught just a glimpse of a pleased smile before Jayne leaned forward to murmur in his ear, "Naw. The cuddling is for after you come."

Oh. "Oh," Simon said weakly. He was pretty sure that wasn't snippy or sarcastic at all, but Jayne kissed him again anyway.

His mouth was still hard, and his hand insistent as it slipped into his pants, and Simon gave a cry he was sure he'd remember later with mortification when it wrapped around his cock, then stroked.

"Thought you'd like that." Jayne's voice was dark with satisfaction as he stroked again and added, "That smart mouth of yours got anything to say?"

"Oh god," was pretty much all Simon could manage.

Making a low sound in the back of his throat, Jayne fumbled at his waist, pulled away slightly, then pressed back, lined their cocks up and took them both in his fist.

Simon gave that same, mortifying cry when the blunt head of Jayne's cock nudged at the underside of his. All it took was one more stroke, then he was shaking and moaning and covering Jayne's fist and cock with come.

Jayne hissed in a breath, stripped their cocks a little faster, wringing out another, weaker burst of fluid from Simon, then groaned and Simon felt a warm, wet splash on his belly.

He closed his eyes, let his head drop onto Jayne's shoulder and waited for the aftershocks to subside.

Jayne breathed hard against his ear for a bit, then pulled his head back. Simon felt him study his face. After a moment, Jayne said roughly, "Well. Ain't you a picture?"

And Simon couldn't help imagining exactly how he looked; hair falling in his face, his lips swollen, cheeks flushed and his belly covered in come. His lips twisted.

"Pretty as a picture," Jayne continued, his voice softer and a little lower.

Simon opened his eyes and saw no evidence of teasing in Jayne's eyes. He slowly let his face relax and said, "A picture. Really. You must show me your art collection sometime."

With a snort Jayne said, "I only collect guns. I figure you already saw them when you stole Vera."

"Well. Yes. Sorry about that."

Jayne made a dismissive gesture as if to say that was all in the past.

"So." Simon swiped at his belly and made a face. "What now?"

"May as well come back to my berth to get cleaned up."

"Okay," Simon said with what he recognized as uncharacteristic agreeableness. But. "Your berth? Why yours?"

Jayne shrugged and said, "Well, it's closer," then gave him a evil smile and added, "Plus, I was a might tetchy when I woke up, so yours is filled to the ceiling with fire retardant foam."