speaking my truth: generally speaking, for me to personally enjoy jaynesimon as a concept (and certainly if i ever write it myself; i don’t know that i will? i might at some point just to see what it would even look like), i need it to be super unhealthy on both sides. jayne enjoying trying to get the upper hand and having power over simon as a representative of the social class that’s always oppressed people like him, now on a ship where jayne himself nominally has more power/authority/history/only for simon to drug him against his will to incapacitate him is the literal juiciest thing about this dynamic to me and i think if i were to write anything for them it would need to build off that.

simon using the ariel stuff as (very subtle understated only-jayne-can-hear-it) blackmail to get them on more even footing! jayne trying to get the upper hand once again by taking any small signal of attraction or desire to to stake a claim on him bc mal treats simon so differently (whether mal actually has any interest or not is irrelevant. the point is jayne thinks it’ll bother him and doesn’t outright tell mal but keeps dropping hints even though he and simon have Sort Of agreed not to do that.) simon hating himself for going along with it (but hey, not a lot of options out here on the black, and it’s not like he’s concerned about hurting jayne’s feelings in using him for sex when he barely tolerates him.) simon insulting him, jayne being a little too rough.

and like frankly i can’t see it as a ***super fluffy ship where either of them is In Love (esp. pre-any jayne development and especially if jayne is still actively antagonistic to river), but i can see simon having (what he feels is) dirtybadwrong sex with him as a form of self-harm and jayne using it as a way to feel powerful and neither of them being at all sure who’s actually in control by the end.

This, too, is a trashed bathroom; young queer people living through hell and having precious little control over their circumstances or the world in which they exist can affect something by using the language of social justice as a cudgel on their would-be allies, as well as getting a brief feeling of power over someone else by doing it.