Getting Away

Warnings: A bit dark. More than a bit slashy.

Disclaimer: All hail Joss.

Getting Away

The hand on the back of his neck exerted steady pressure, pushing his face into the pillow until he was sure he’d suffocate. He arched a little, feeling the strain in his shoulders as the arm that was twisted behind his back got pulled a little higher and tighter. But he’d gotten enough slack to twist his head sideways, and ‘least now he could breathe.

His ma had said there’d be times like this, when all you could do was just hold on and bear it as long as you had to. Then, Jayne boy, she said, make damn sure you do unto the fucker that done unto you.

Not this time, Ma, Jayne thought, and tried to push up with his free hand. It was flat under him, though, and his own weight kept it pinned and useless. He stopped, grunting with pain, as his other arm got yanked nearly out of its socket.

“Told you, none of that.” Mal’s voice drifted out of the darkness at his back, and there was that edge to it, that bite of command that drove a shudder right down his spine. It made him want to…

Instead he thrashed again, managed throw Mal off just enough to get his knees under him and his pinned arm free. The hand on his neck immediately disappeared, but before he could even lift his head, that arm was caught, too, bent up behind him. Mal leaned forward, his front against Jayne’s ass, and now that was the pressure on his neck, his weight and Mal’s too. For a moment, he just panted into the pillow, hot rivers of pain traversing his shoulders.

“Don’t listen well, do you?” Mal grumbled, tightening his grip on Jayne’s wrists. “Gonna behave?”

Jayne didn’t respond, just lay trying to suck in enough air.

Arching over his back, Mal put his mouth so close to Jayne’s ear that Jayne could feel the warm puffs of breath as he spoke. “Don’t move again,” he whispered, low and cold and dark, “or you surely will regret it.”

Jayne twitched, a spasm he just couldn’t control, and was still.

Slowly, nearly finger by finger, Mal released him, just one wrist, still pressing his weight forward.

But somehow, the sound of Mal’s command overrode Jayne’s brain, and he didn’t move, didn’t dare. He had a dozen weapons right there, just behind that ratty old shawl that his ma had used to wrap up his first gun, and Mal had let go that hand, and it would be so easy to…

But that meant moving, and moving meant that he was trying to get away, and trying to get away meant that there would be a heap of hurt in his very near future.

Trying to get away meant that he thought there was somewhere to get away to.

So he didn’t do anything, just waited like Ma had always said to, and her voice was carrying on, over and over in his head, all those stupid homilies that he and Matty had laughed at out back of the house after stealing her moonshine.

Mal’s voice was the only thing that could drown out Ma’s, and every word – “spread” and “wider” and “relax” – plunged that knife-edge of command deeper into him.

The pain as Mal entered him made him forget for a second, as it always did, made his shoulders feel good as new by comparison. But then it felt good, and even though Mal had told him not to move, he couldn’t stop himself, hitching himself back and forth into Mal’s thrusts as much as his contorted position would allow.

His whole body trembled as he came, and he had enough slack to turn his face back into the pillow, muffling the noise that forced its way from his throat.

Above him, over the engine-racing sound of his own heart, he could hear Mal panting. Where their skin touched was slick with sweat, and even the image in his head of Mal slack and week after his own pleasure couldn’t burn out the memory of cool orders and icy-blue eyes.

Without a word, Mal withdrew, and Jayne took that as permission to collapse, groaning at the ache in his arms. Staring at his own eyelids, darker than Serenity’s night, he heard the rustle of Mal climbing back into his clothes, the hum of the ship a quiet counterpoint. The dim illumination from the corridor seared his eyes when he opened them to watch Mal climb out, and Jayne couldn’t help but wonder if he’d imagined that whisper-light touch against his shoulder or not.

His ma was still yapping inside his head. Do unto others, boy, as ye have been done unto.

“Go ‘way, Ma,” he muttered into the pillow. “Ain’t no way I can do unto Mal…”

Leave, Jayne, and that didn’t sound like Ma in his head anymore. It sounded like… him. Get your ass out of there.

Moving carefully, trying to contain his moan of pain, he shifted over onto his back. The spunk on his belly, exposed to the cool of the air, quickly became uncomfortable, but he didn’t feel like moving any more.

Don’t need this, he thought. His abused muscles ached, his ass burned, but all he had to do was recall the dark edge in Mal’s voice and little aftershocks of pleasure quivered through his body.

Slowly, even as he tried to soothe the pain with that thought, he realized that he did need this, that there was some shadowy, warped, perverted part of him that wanted this whenever he pushed Mal to the end of his rope. The sticky, sensitive mess of his groin reminded him in no uncertain terms that he got off on it.

Huh. Guess that’s why I don’t leave, he thought, and then tried not to think any more.

Because there was nowhere he could go that would let him get away from himself.