Tussle by Emily Brunson (NC-17)

[eibii.livejournal.com]

*meepmeep* All a-bloody-board the Firefly van - regrettably tardy, due to some Unicode issues - the name is Eibii, and I'll be your driver for the month. (This is the part where you start screaming.) My tastes tend to fly all over the board (het, gen, slash, the works) with this particular fandom, so I'll be attempting for some sort of variety in my recs. To kick it all off... (Okay, you can stop screaming now...)

Fandom: FIREFLY
Pairing: Jayne/Mal
Author on LJ: janissa11
Author Website: Emland
Why this must be read: The author manages to make the roughness of Jayne's observations of both himself, and Mal's attitude toward him (after the events of Ariel, not the warmest or fuzziest of times), seem simultaneously gruff and poetic. Dark, raw, poigniant, and probably not everyone's cup of grog due to some action bordering on non-con - two grown men in a gritty sort of encounter, where you can nearly taste the dust.


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Only been a few men in Jayne's experience could figure things like Mal, and one of the things Mal doesn't know is that Jayne killed two of them for it. Or maybe Mal does know, not specifics but enough, and so it don't make sense that he's smiling, walking along like he don't mind the company, thinks of them as companions in arms or something.

Jayne can't figure Mal. Not after years of working with him. For him. Maybe that’s why he’s stuck around. Only after Ariel, that’s getting harder to do. He feels funny in his bones, restless and sour, and sometimes he thinks about that second man, Santos had been his name. He'd died hard, gargling with his own blood, and Jayne hadn't wanted that to be the case, quick and clean woulda been better, but things had been all funny by then. Funny like they are now.

Mal gives him a look, direct and flat, and Jayne feels like he's read his mind. Then Mal smiles again and says, "Wanna get a drink?"

Jayne doesn't. "All right," he says.


"Tussle", on LJ