fic for v-day. n'aww.
I was bound to actually write a Firefly fic sooner or later, I guess.
Solar Cycle
by kaydee falls
Zoe/Wash, PG-13
written for rivendellrose in the Zoe/Wash ficathon
Day is a vestigial mode of time measurement based on solar cycles. It's not applicable. (beat) I didn't get you anything. -River, "Out of Gas"
In retrospect, Zoe figured it stood to reason she'd be the one to forget their anniversary. It fit the whole role-reversing upside-down ass-backwards marriage thing they had going.
Didn't really seem to help fix things none, though.
*
She'd never been much good at the whole feminine thing. Weren't to say she didn't think of herself as female; she had all the proper girly bits, and quite liked having 'em, truth be told. Never wanted to be anything but female, to be sure; Zoe'd been watching men make a right mess of things all her life, from her good-for-nothing drifter daddy on up, and she had little enough tolerance for them as a whole. Raised on a vessel crewed mostly by women, she certainly had an appreciation for the female sex; just weren't exactly a traditional sort of appreciation. Women in Zoe's life were of the strong, independent-minded sort, who could lift heavier and shoot straighter than hardly anyone else in the 'verse. Had no interest in useless fripperies and the sort of empty-headed flirting that so many planetside girls aimed for. Zoe had a strong disliking for those prairie harpies and their so-called feminine wiles.
Sure could use one or two of them wiles now, she tried not to think.
"It's not that I forgot about it, exactly."
Wash crossed his arms in front of his chest and glared at her. "No, you just didn't remember, which is something else entirely."
Zoe tried to reach out and touch his arm; he pulled away. He'd never done that before. She felt a coldness settling over her, a hardness, all stone and ice. "Didn't not-remember on purpose, husband. Time runs away from you out in the black, and this job's going sour, and it just went clear outta my head. Don't you think it was my intention to ignore it."
He had a stubborn streak to rival her own. Mostly she cherished that. Not today. "Anniversaries are important," he insisted. "They mean-"
"-that a planet has spun 'round a sun one full loop since the last time you checked?" Zoe cut in. "Assuming that you're on a planet, that is, which we're not."
Wash's face was looking on the pinkish side. "It's a milestone," he said. "It matters."
"What difference does it make, anyway?" Zoe demanded, knowing she was in the wrong and all the more fired up because of it. "We were married yesterday and we're lookin' to still be married tomorrow, and that's what's important. No sense keepin' count of something like that, when it only reminds you how much longer it might or might not last."
It was out of her mouth before her brain had a chance to catch up, and no way to stuff it back in now. Zoe'd never learned the fine art of a graceful surrender, so she did the only thing she knew how, and stood her lost ground as she watched him turn on his heel and march away.
*
Wasn't often that Zoe needed sulking time, but she'd had just about enough of humanity today. Bad enough she still apparently harbored convictions that her exactly one-year-old marriage to a quirky, goofy, Hawaiian-shirt-wearing pilot wasn't fated to last; she'd also more or less told him as much to his face. Wash was just too much of an innocent to understand - it wasn't that she didn't love him, or thought he didn't love her. Just that good things, in Zoe's experience, never lasted. Couldn't he understand that?
But that's part of why she'd fallen for him in the first place, that naivety. Wash was stranger to darkness, untouched by shadow. He'd never seen friends tortured and killed, never had a gun pressed to his temple, never shot a stranger and then coolly looked for his next target. He was a relic of a better time or place.
No wonder they were probably doomed for failure.
She'd forgotten that her favorite solitary brooding place on the ship wasn't so solitary these days. Used to be the engine room guaranteed privacy; God knows Bester never set foot in there if he could help it.
Not so much anymore.
The new mechanic (who was finally starting to become "Kaylee" in Zoe's head instead of "thank-God-not-Bester") was engaged in an exercise in futility, although she seemingly hadn't realized it yet. She was trying to argue Mal into buying new engine parts, with much flailing of the hands and something close to a complete deconstruction of the engine in question.
"The thermal regulator's on the fritz, and you shoulda replaced the compression coil months ago!" Kaylee half-shouted, waving her arms about in exasperation. "We need to buy-"
Mal looked more amused than anything else. "Where exactly are you suggesting we find the money for this venture?"
"This job-"
"This job's lookin' worse every day, and even assuming we manage to get the goods out from under the noses of the local scavengers - who, by the way, are meaner and more to the point smarter than your usual vultures, and we've got maybe three more hours' grace period before the odds go from mighty slim to not ruttin' happening - and transport them to Badger under the noses of local law enforcement, which on Persephone probably means feds, and even convince our contact to pay us our fair share…then we'll be spending our payoff on necessities like fuel, or food. Don't got the extra cash to spend on frivolities, Kaylee."
Kaylee actually looked close to tears. Yeah, she hadn't been aboard for anywhere near long enough yet, Zoe though with some amusement. At least this drama was more entertaining than her marital strife.
"They ain't frivolities, Cap'n."
"No?" Mal leaned in closer. "These parts, they broke yet?"
"Well, not exactly, but-"
"If they break, can you fix 'em?"
"It's possible, but-"
"Frivolities," Mal pronounced, well satisfied. He glanced to the doorway and caught sight of Zoe. "Right, Zo'?"
She was in no mood to support any man just then. "We'd have the cash if you agreed to rent out the shuttles, sir."
Mal blinked at her, not anticipating at an assault from this particular front. Zoe smiled grimly. He should've learned by now to expect the unexpected. "If I told you once, I told you a thousand times," he said, visibly regrouping. "We need those shuttles."
"Never needed both at the same time. Could still rent out one."
"Folk from all sorts of places stop on Persephone," Kaylee put in eagerly. "Could meet some real interesting people."
Mal threw his hands in the air. "Save me from the machinations of money-grubbin' women. If we actually manage to get these goods off this godforsaken rock, and that's a big if, I'll consider looking for a renter. All right? Zoe, we're headin' out in ten minutes." He pushed past Zoe and stalked off.
Zoe frowned, watching him go. If he was actually considering a renter, they must be much worse off financially than she'd realized. This day was just getting better and better.
"Thanks," Kaylee said with a shy smile. "For takin' my side."
Zoe shrugged, uncomfortable. She'd never had much to say to the girl. "You were in the right. Can't keep flying if Serenity's falling apart, no matter how much Mal might wish it so."
"Still," Kaylee said. "Don't think I ever heard you argue with the Cap'n before."
"Just an arguin' sort of day, I s'pose," Zoe sighed. She leaned back against the doorway, closing her eyes.
After a moment, she heard the girl clearing her throat. "Everything all right?" Kaylee asked hesitantly. "Don't mean to pry, only you never really come in here. You were lookin' for Mal?"
Zoe opened her eyes. "No. Found him, though, apparently."
Kaylee grinned. "Yeah. Lookin' for me, then?"
"Looking for quiet," Zoe said without thinking, then winced. "I didn't mean it like that."
"S'alright," Kaylee said, waving her hand dismissively. "I know what you mean. Sometimes a person just needs a bit of space and something to tinker with for a while."
Zoe almost smiled. "I don't really tinker."
"Could if you wanted to. Betcha have a gun to clean, at least."
"Yeah," Zoe said. "That I do." Go se, she and Mal had a job to finish in ten minutes, she'd probably need that gun. Or several.
Kaylee was looking at her contemplatively. "What sent you lookin' for quiet, then?"
Right on cue, Mal's voice blared over the ship's intercom. "Wash, you wanna tell me where my pilot's run off to when he needs to be prepping this ship for a potentially imminent emergency take-off for when this job we're pulling in eight minutes inevitably goes sour?"
Zoe winced.
Kaylee's eyes went wide. "Are you and Wash having a fight?"
"This too shall pass," Zoe sighed.
"What happened?"
Zoe pressed her fingers to her temple. "Forgot something I shouldn't have. It's nothing."
"Right." Kaylee tilted her head to one side, considering. "Just wear a slinky dress tonight or something. He'll get over whatever it is real quick. Boys will be boys, y'know? A tight bodice or transparent skirt will make 'em forget their own names." She grinned impishly.
Zoe just blinked at her, slack-jawed. Then she remembered how they'd picked Kaylee up in the first place. God save Zoe from well-meaning prairie harpies and their feminine wiles.
The intercom crackled to life again. "Zoe, you wanna tell me where my pilot's run off to when-"
She reached over and gave the comm link a good whack. "He'll do his job, sir, so give it a rest."
*
She found Mal in the cockpit, along with her very sulky husband. From the unsmiling concentration Wash was giving his equipment check, she could tell he and the Captain had already had words. That, or he was deliberately ignoring her. Or both.
Given the charming scowl on Mal's face, probably both.
"Zoe," Mal said ominously. "There something goin' on here I should maybe know about?"
She pursed her lips. "Just a bit of a misunderstanding, sir. It'll clear up soon enough." She turned away before she could catch the hurt in Wash's eyes, praying her words hadn't been a lie. She felt as though something had shifted off course, her personal orbit disrupted, unnatural and uncomfortable. "Gotta job to do, don't we?"
Mal, never one to pry into relationship troubles when he could turn a blind eye, just muttered something about shipboard romances under his breath and followed her down to the cargo bay.
"Get the stuff and hurry back, darlings," Wash called after them abruptly, and the bitterness in his voice made her own throat burn.
*
In the cargo bay, Mal apparently changed his mind about prying. "What is with you two, anyway?" he demanded, making a show of checking the mule's fuel levels. "Coulda cut the tension back there with a butter knife."
"Marital spat," she replied shortly, checking her pistol for ammo. "Nothing you'd have any experience with."
"And I think I'm well justified," he shot back. "I told you not to marry him. Didn't I tell you that? Why does no one listen to me around here?"
She'd had just about enough. "Well, I did, and I'm not about to un-marry him, so unless you have any useful advice, sir, I'd thank you not to interfere."
He blinked at her. "That time of the month, too, huh?"
Zoe re-holstered her pistol as violently as possible. He might've been trying to help lighten her mood. Or he might've just had a death wish. "Let's go get the stuff and get off this planet."
Of course, her day just got better, and they opened the hatch to find themselves staring down the barrels of three particularly ugly guns. The men holding the guns were even uglier. Seemed like the scavengers around these parts really were smarter than your average vulture.
But mercenaries will be mercenaries, and you could always raise the going rate. Took them a bit longer than planned to actually go find the stuff, seeing as Zoe and Mal had slightly differing opinions as to how far the new hire could be trusted. But once they got there, Cobb was more than willing to do his share of the heavy lifting, and the booty was loaded onto the mule and hauled back to Serenity a lot more easily than Zoe'd expected.
*
They took long enough for her husband's worry to temporarily overcome his anger, though. At least, that was what Zoe surmised from the fact that he appeared on the catwalk as soon as the mule started puttering back into the cargo bay.
"Did you get the stuff?" Wash demanded, clattering down the stairs to meet them. "Is anyone following you? What's-" Wash broke off abruptly, noticing the new recruit. "Dear god, it's ugly. Do we have to keep it, or can we give it back?"
"This is Mr. Cobb," Mal said shortly, dumping the load into the middle of the cargo bay. "And more importantly, this is the stuff, so let's get it the hell out of here before any more of Cobb's former associates take a disliking to us."
"There's more of those?" Wash gaped.
"Loads," Mal replied. "Cobb, help Zoe unload the goods. I'll go air out your new bunk." He brushed past Wash and headed up to the living area, disappearing through a hatch.
Wash and Cobb eyed each other for a second, Wash warily, Cobb with some disdain. Zoe snorted and started hauling the boxes of goods off the mule.
That made them both turn and watch her, instead. She wondered how the hell she could get rid of Cobb and talk to her husband. Not that she had the faintest notion what to say to him.
As it turned out, the hulking brute had a chivalrous streak, because after a bit more gawking, he actually did help her unload the rest. "I like a good, strong woman," Cobb said, with what he probably thought was an alluring grin.
She didn't deign to reply. A few feet away, Wash shifted his weight in awkward, resentful silence. But he hadn't left yet. That was a good sign.
"So where's your bunk?" Cobb tried.
"As far away from yours as I can make it," she replied calmly.
He laughed. Wash scowled ferociously. Zoe seriously considered shooting them both.
She set the last of the boxes down with a thump. "That's it for now," she told Cobb, and started to step past him.
Cobb gave her a good leer, then reached out and pinched her ass.
Zoe had a pretty damn good reaction time, but even she barely managed to just gape at the hwoon dahn before Wash had already taken three good strides across the cargo bay and punched Cobb in the face.
"Excuse me," Wash said in a too-calm voice, his face unnaturally tranquil, "but if you touch my wife again, I'll kill you."
Zoe instinctively reached for her gun. Stupid territorial idiot, didn't her husband know that you couldn't just punch overly muscled irritable small-brained sumbitches without immediate retribution?
Unless, of course, you were Wash. Cobb just stared at him for a second, then glanced over at Zoe appreciatively. "Can't blame you, little man," he grunted, and without another word stalked off in search of his new bunk.
If silence could reverberate, the cargo bay was positively humming with it.
"You know," Wash finally remarked conversationally, "I think I almost got myself killed."
Zoe exhaled and returned her gun to its holster. "I hadn't noticed."
He glanced over at her, eyes guarded. "It's not that I don't think you can take care of yourself," he said. "Or, you know, castrate him. Which I wouldn't necessarily object to. But it's just-"
"Yeah," she said. "I know."
There was maybe three feet between them. It may as well have been a chasm.
Zoe finally realized what she'd never said.
"I'm sorry," she told him.
He tried on a smile. "Happy anniversary, Zoe."
She stepped forward, touched his arm. "It's not that I'm planning on leaving," she said softly. "Because I'm not. It's just the life we lead. You don't know it like I do, not really. Nothing's permanent, Wash. Can't ever make it so. Everything changes."
"Everything changes," he agreed. She'd never seen him look so serious. Not angry; that she'd certainly seen her fill of and then some. Not sulky, not tense, not scared. Just serious. Intense. It was completely unlike him, as though a stranger looked out at her through those familiar blue eyes. "But I'm here to stay."
One full year of marriage, and she'd only barely begun to learn him. And it finally sunk in that she was looking forward to the education, however many more minutes or weeks or years it might take. She leaned in to kiss him, for starters.
"Gorram it, Wash, what part of getting the hell out of here didn't you understand?" Mal yelled from the catwalk. "Get us off this rock!"
Wash grinned, which made Zoe smile in return. She'd missed that. "You know," she commented, "Kaylee thought I shoulda bypassed the apology and just worn something nice and see-through to bed tonight."
"How dare she make such vile implications about my virtue!" Wash gasped, mock-appalled. "Shameless hussy, does she really think I'm that shallow?" He paused, considering it. "Actually, she's right. I am that shallow. Zoe, can you wear something completely transparent to bed tonight? Like nothing. Nothing totally works for me."
She gave him her best seductive smile, the only feminine wile she really had in her repertoire. Tried and true, it was. "Would get started right away, but seemingly we've got to break atmo first."
Wash had always loved flying, but still, Zoe had never seen him move up those stairs towards the cockpit so fast. She laughed, and imagined she could feel the planet making one more good loop around the sun, and another, and another.
Solar Cycle
by kaydee falls
Zoe/Wash, PG-13
written for rivendellrose in the Zoe/Wash ficathon
Day is a vestigial mode of time measurement based on solar cycles. It's not applicable. (beat) I didn't get you anything. -River, "Out of Gas"
In retrospect, Zoe figured it stood to reason she'd be the one to forget their anniversary. It fit the whole role-reversing upside-down ass-backwards marriage thing they had going.
Didn't really seem to help fix things none, though.
*
She'd never been much good at the whole feminine thing. Weren't to say she didn't think of herself as female; she had all the proper girly bits, and quite liked having 'em, truth be told. Never wanted to be anything but female, to be sure; Zoe'd been watching men make a right mess of things all her life, from her good-for-nothing drifter daddy on up, and she had little enough tolerance for them as a whole. Raised on a vessel crewed mostly by women, she certainly had an appreciation for the female sex; just weren't exactly a traditional sort of appreciation. Women in Zoe's life were of the strong, independent-minded sort, who could lift heavier and shoot straighter than hardly anyone else in the 'verse. Had no interest in useless fripperies and the sort of empty-headed flirting that so many planetside girls aimed for. Zoe had a strong disliking for those prairie harpies and their so-called feminine wiles.
Sure could use one or two of them wiles now, she tried not to think.
"It's not that I forgot about it, exactly."
Wash crossed his arms in front of his chest and glared at her. "No, you just didn't remember, which is something else entirely."
Zoe tried to reach out and touch his arm; he pulled away. He'd never done that before. She felt a coldness settling over her, a hardness, all stone and ice. "Didn't not-remember on purpose, husband. Time runs away from you out in the black, and this job's going sour, and it just went clear outta my head. Don't you think it was my intention to ignore it."
He had a stubborn streak to rival her own. Mostly she cherished that. Not today. "Anniversaries are important," he insisted. "They mean-"
"-that a planet has spun 'round a sun one full loop since the last time you checked?" Zoe cut in. "Assuming that you're on a planet, that is, which we're not."
Wash's face was looking on the pinkish side. "It's a milestone," he said. "It matters."
"What difference does it make, anyway?" Zoe demanded, knowing she was in the wrong and all the more fired up because of it. "We were married yesterday and we're lookin' to still be married tomorrow, and that's what's important. No sense keepin' count of something like that, when it only reminds you how much longer it might or might not last."
It was out of her mouth before her brain had a chance to catch up, and no way to stuff it back in now. Zoe'd never learned the fine art of a graceful surrender, so she did the only thing she knew how, and stood her lost ground as she watched him turn on his heel and march away.
*
Wasn't often that Zoe needed sulking time, but she'd had just about enough of humanity today. Bad enough she still apparently harbored convictions that her exactly one-year-old marriage to a quirky, goofy, Hawaiian-shirt-wearing pilot wasn't fated to last; she'd also more or less told him as much to his face. Wash was just too much of an innocent to understand - it wasn't that she didn't love him, or thought he didn't love her. Just that good things, in Zoe's experience, never lasted. Couldn't he understand that?
But that's part of why she'd fallen for him in the first place, that naivety. Wash was stranger to darkness, untouched by shadow. He'd never seen friends tortured and killed, never had a gun pressed to his temple, never shot a stranger and then coolly looked for his next target. He was a relic of a better time or place.
No wonder they were probably doomed for failure.
She'd forgotten that her favorite solitary brooding place on the ship wasn't so solitary these days. Used to be the engine room guaranteed privacy; God knows Bester never set foot in there if he could help it.
Not so much anymore.
The new mechanic (who was finally starting to become "Kaylee" in Zoe's head instead of "thank-God-not-Bester") was engaged in an exercise in futility, although she seemingly hadn't realized it yet. She was trying to argue Mal into buying new engine parts, with much flailing of the hands and something close to a complete deconstruction of the engine in question.
"The thermal regulator's on the fritz, and you shoulda replaced the compression coil months ago!" Kaylee half-shouted, waving her arms about in exasperation. "We need to buy-"
Mal looked more amused than anything else. "Where exactly are you suggesting we find the money for this venture?"
"This job-"
"This job's lookin' worse every day, and even assuming we manage to get the goods out from under the noses of the local scavengers - who, by the way, are meaner and more to the point smarter than your usual vultures, and we've got maybe three more hours' grace period before the odds go from mighty slim to not ruttin' happening - and transport them to Badger under the noses of local law enforcement, which on Persephone probably means feds, and even convince our contact to pay us our fair share…then we'll be spending our payoff on necessities like fuel, or food. Don't got the extra cash to spend on frivolities, Kaylee."
Kaylee actually looked close to tears. Yeah, she hadn't been aboard for anywhere near long enough yet, Zoe though with some amusement. At least this drama was more entertaining than her marital strife.
"They ain't frivolities, Cap'n."
"No?" Mal leaned in closer. "These parts, they broke yet?"
"Well, not exactly, but-"
"If they break, can you fix 'em?"
"It's possible, but-"
"Frivolities," Mal pronounced, well satisfied. He glanced to the doorway and caught sight of Zoe. "Right, Zo'?"
She was in no mood to support any man just then. "We'd have the cash if you agreed to rent out the shuttles, sir."
Mal blinked at her, not anticipating at an assault from this particular front. Zoe smiled grimly. He should've learned by now to expect the unexpected. "If I told you once, I told you a thousand times," he said, visibly regrouping. "We need those shuttles."
"Never needed both at the same time. Could still rent out one."
"Folk from all sorts of places stop on Persephone," Kaylee put in eagerly. "Could meet some real interesting people."
Mal threw his hands in the air. "Save me from the machinations of money-grubbin' women. If we actually manage to get these goods off this godforsaken rock, and that's a big if, I'll consider looking for a renter. All right? Zoe, we're headin' out in ten minutes." He pushed past Zoe and stalked off.
Zoe frowned, watching him go. If he was actually considering a renter, they must be much worse off financially than she'd realized. This day was just getting better and better.
"Thanks," Kaylee said with a shy smile. "For takin' my side."
Zoe shrugged, uncomfortable. She'd never had much to say to the girl. "You were in the right. Can't keep flying if Serenity's falling apart, no matter how much Mal might wish it so."
"Still," Kaylee said. "Don't think I ever heard you argue with the Cap'n before."
"Just an arguin' sort of day, I s'pose," Zoe sighed. She leaned back against the doorway, closing her eyes.
After a moment, she heard the girl clearing her throat. "Everything all right?" Kaylee asked hesitantly. "Don't mean to pry, only you never really come in here. You were lookin' for Mal?"
Zoe opened her eyes. "No. Found him, though, apparently."
Kaylee grinned. "Yeah. Lookin' for me, then?"
"Looking for quiet," Zoe said without thinking, then winced. "I didn't mean it like that."
"S'alright," Kaylee said, waving her hand dismissively. "I know what you mean. Sometimes a person just needs a bit of space and something to tinker with for a while."
Zoe almost smiled. "I don't really tinker."
"Could if you wanted to. Betcha have a gun to clean, at least."
"Yeah," Zoe said. "That I do." Go se, she and Mal had a job to finish in ten minutes, she'd probably need that gun. Or several.
Kaylee was looking at her contemplatively. "What sent you lookin' for quiet, then?"
Right on cue, Mal's voice blared over the ship's intercom. "Wash, you wanna tell me where my pilot's run off to when he needs to be prepping this ship for a potentially imminent emergency take-off for when this job we're pulling in eight minutes inevitably goes sour?"
Zoe winced.
Kaylee's eyes went wide. "Are you and Wash having a fight?"
"This too shall pass," Zoe sighed.
"What happened?"
Zoe pressed her fingers to her temple. "Forgot something I shouldn't have. It's nothing."
"Right." Kaylee tilted her head to one side, considering. "Just wear a slinky dress tonight or something. He'll get over whatever it is real quick. Boys will be boys, y'know? A tight bodice or transparent skirt will make 'em forget their own names." She grinned impishly.
Zoe just blinked at her, slack-jawed. Then she remembered how they'd picked Kaylee up in the first place. God save Zoe from well-meaning prairie harpies and their feminine wiles.
The intercom crackled to life again. "Zoe, you wanna tell me where my pilot's run off to when-"
She reached over and gave the comm link a good whack. "He'll do his job, sir, so give it a rest."
*
She found Mal in the cockpit, along with her very sulky husband. From the unsmiling concentration Wash was giving his equipment check, she could tell he and the Captain had already had words. That, or he was deliberately ignoring her. Or both.
Given the charming scowl on Mal's face, probably both.
"Zoe," Mal said ominously. "There something goin' on here I should maybe know about?"
She pursed her lips. "Just a bit of a misunderstanding, sir. It'll clear up soon enough." She turned away before she could catch the hurt in Wash's eyes, praying her words hadn't been a lie. She felt as though something had shifted off course, her personal orbit disrupted, unnatural and uncomfortable. "Gotta job to do, don't we?"
Mal, never one to pry into relationship troubles when he could turn a blind eye, just muttered something about shipboard romances under his breath and followed her down to the cargo bay.
"Get the stuff and hurry back, darlings," Wash called after them abruptly, and the bitterness in his voice made her own throat burn.
*
In the cargo bay, Mal apparently changed his mind about prying. "What is with you two, anyway?" he demanded, making a show of checking the mule's fuel levels. "Coulda cut the tension back there with a butter knife."
"Marital spat," she replied shortly, checking her pistol for ammo. "Nothing you'd have any experience with."
"And I think I'm well justified," he shot back. "I told you not to marry him. Didn't I tell you that? Why does no one listen to me around here?"
She'd had just about enough. "Well, I did, and I'm not about to un-marry him, so unless you have any useful advice, sir, I'd thank you not to interfere."
He blinked at her. "That time of the month, too, huh?"
Zoe re-holstered her pistol as violently as possible. He might've been trying to help lighten her mood. Or he might've just had a death wish. "Let's go get the stuff and get off this planet."
Of course, her day just got better, and they opened the hatch to find themselves staring down the barrels of three particularly ugly guns. The men holding the guns were even uglier. Seemed like the scavengers around these parts really were smarter than your average vulture.
But mercenaries will be mercenaries, and you could always raise the going rate. Took them a bit longer than planned to actually go find the stuff, seeing as Zoe and Mal had slightly differing opinions as to how far the new hire could be trusted. But once they got there, Cobb was more than willing to do his share of the heavy lifting, and the booty was loaded onto the mule and hauled back to Serenity a lot more easily than Zoe'd expected.
*
They took long enough for her husband's worry to temporarily overcome his anger, though. At least, that was what Zoe surmised from the fact that he appeared on the catwalk as soon as the mule started puttering back into the cargo bay.
"Did you get the stuff?" Wash demanded, clattering down the stairs to meet them. "Is anyone following you? What's-" Wash broke off abruptly, noticing the new recruit. "Dear god, it's ugly. Do we have to keep it, or can we give it back?"
"This is Mr. Cobb," Mal said shortly, dumping the load into the middle of the cargo bay. "And more importantly, this is the stuff, so let's get it the hell out of here before any more of Cobb's former associates take a disliking to us."
"There's more of those?" Wash gaped.
"Loads," Mal replied. "Cobb, help Zoe unload the goods. I'll go air out your new bunk." He brushed past Wash and headed up to the living area, disappearing through a hatch.
Wash and Cobb eyed each other for a second, Wash warily, Cobb with some disdain. Zoe snorted and started hauling the boxes of goods off the mule.
That made them both turn and watch her, instead. She wondered how the hell she could get rid of Cobb and talk to her husband. Not that she had the faintest notion what to say to him.
As it turned out, the hulking brute had a chivalrous streak, because after a bit more gawking, he actually did help her unload the rest. "I like a good, strong woman," Cobb said, with what he probably thought was an alluring grin.
She didn't deign to reply. A few feet away, Wash shifted his weight in awkward, resentful silence. But he hadn't left yet. That was a good sign.
"So where's your bunk?" Cobb tried.
"As far away from yours as I can make it," she replied calmly.
He laughed. Wash scowled ferociously. Zoe seriously considered shooting them both.
She set the last of the boxes down with a thump. "That's it for now," she told Cobb, and started to step past him.
Cobb gave her a good leer, then reached out and pinched her ass.
Zoe had a pretty damn good reaction time, but even she barely managed to just gape at the hwoon dahn before Wash had already taken three good strides across the cargo bay and punched Cobb in the face.
"Excuse me," Wash said in a too-calm voice, his face unnaturally tranquil, "but if you touch my wife again, I'll kill you."
Zoe instinctively reached for her gun. Stupid territorial idiot, didn't her husband know that you couldn't just punch overly muscled irritable small-brained sumbitches without immediate retribution?
Unless, of course, you were Wash. Cobb just stared at him for a second, then glanced over at Zoe appreciatively. "Can't blame you, little man," he grunted, and without another word stalked off in search of his new bunk.
If silence could reverberate, the cargo bay was positively humming with it.
"You know," Wash finally remarked conversationally, "I think I almost got myself killed."
Zoe exhaled and returned her gun to its holster. "I hadn't noticed."
He glanced over at her, eyes guarded. "It's not that I don't think you can take care of yourself," he said. "Or, you know, castrate him. Which I wouldn't necessarily object to. But it's just-"
"Yeah," she said. "I know."
There was maybe three feet between them. It may as well have been a chasm.
Zoe finally realized what she'd never said.
"I'm sorry," she told him.
He tried on a smile. "Happy anniversary, Zoe."
She stepped forward, touched his arm. "It's not that I'm planning on leaving," she said softly. "Because I'm not. It's just the life we lead. You don't know it like I do, not really. Nothing's permanent, Wash. Can't ever make it so. Everything changes."
"Everything changes," he agreed. She'd never seen him look so serious. Not angry; that she'd certainly seen her fill of and then some. Not sulky, not tense, not scared. Just serious. Intense. It was completely unlike him, as though a stranger looked out at her through those familiar blue eyes. "But I'm here to stay."
One full year of marriage, and she'd only barely begun to learn him. And it finally sunk in that she was looking forward to the education, however many more minutes or weeks or years it might take. She leaned in to kiss him, for starters.
"Gorram it, Wash, what part of getting the hell out of here didn't you understand?" Mal yelled from the catwalk. "Get us off this rock!"
Wash grinned, which made Zoe smile in return. She'd missed that. "You know," she commented, "Kaylee thought I shoulda bypassed the apology and just worn something nice and see-through to bed tonight."
"How dare she make such vile implications about my virtue!" Wash gasped, mock-appalled. "Shameless hussy, does she really think I'm that shallow?" He paused, considering it. "Actually, she's right. I am that shallow. Zoe, can you wear something completely transparent to bed tonight? Like nothing. Nothing totally works for me."
She gave him her best seductive smile, the only feminine wile she really had in her repertoire. Tried and true, it was. "Would get started right away, but seemingly we've got to break atmo first."
Wash had always loved flying, but still, Zoe had never seen him move up those stairs towards the cockpit so fast. She laughed, and imagined she could feel the planet making one more good loop around the sun, and another, and another.