My first Zoe/Wash fic evah!
Title: Gun Oil (1/?)
Author: tahie
Rating: PG-13
Pairings: Wash/Zoe
Setting: Pre-series
Disclaimer: Not mine
Summery: Wash/Zoe relationship fluff attempting to disguise itself in plot.
Author’s notes: Back in the day I was an X-Phile and an avid Mulder/Scully shipper (and still am of course). So I am a lover of long, drawn out, angsty relationships chocked full of tons of UST. I decided to write a story for my new favorite Sci-fi couple that contained all those delicious elements. So here is my attempt. I hope you enjoy!
Zoë’s well trained eyes slid carefully over the pieces of her pistol spread out in front of, her taking in every minute detail. The pieces lay silently on the soft cloth she had set down for them on the galley table. The order that they lay in was exact, precise, purposeful the way she had always laid them. They lay in readiness… the base, the barrel, the slide… waiting for her to clean them in her delicate way. She sat quietly a minute more finishing her survey, then she moved to begin. The frame of the gun came first; she held it lightly in her hands eyes and fingers running over the smooth surfaces of the barrel support and the rough surfaces of the grips, checking for scratches, signs of wear, or fissures. Satisfied that there were none she took a clean dry cloth added cleaning solvent and buffed away her fingerprints, the grime, and on many occasions the blood until the surface. Setting down the frame she reached to the side picking up her bore brush. She put a little solvent on the brush and then ran the brush through the barrel with slow and even strokes making sure to remove all the grit from the smooth hallowed metal that made sure her bullets flew true. Lastly the slide, and once again she runs the clean cloth and solvent over the reflective metal.
Her favorite part comes at the end after all the pieces are clean. Onto an unused cloth she applies gun oil, breathing in the familiar and comforting smell. The smell reminds her of battles and gun play, but not the actual fighting, always the moments after when she knows she is safe and she is laying on the ground, or on a gurney, or leaning against an object her gun clutched close to her, the smell of gun oil strong in her nostrils. She goes over each piece with the oil from top to bottom with what some might call a lovers touch, polishing so the metal shines, making sure to properly oil any and all moving parts, testing each one twice. Finally through she reassembles the gun, making sure each piece goes back in its right place so the gun will be sure to function flawlessly when she needs it to most, when either her life or the life of someone she cares about depends on it.
This routine is second nature to her. One time during the war she won a lot of money for Mal and herself doing it blindfolded. Like brushing her teeth, combing her hair, breathing, it is part of her. As she sets her gun parts on the table in order, and then works to clean them the whole process seems to have a similar effect on her. Her thoughts have a way of falling into a place as each piece of her gun falls into place. Her emotions that have a tendency to muck up the works, (anxiety, or confusion) get wiped away just as the dirt wipes away from the steel. So she has a tendency to clean her guns more often when her emotions need her too.
Mal knows this even though she has never told him out right. He’s seen how she would always clean her guns the night before a particularly risky battle. He saw how the night after she heard that her family’s transport vessel had been reduced to nothingness by the Alliance she had laid out her guns, carefully, methodically, slowly cleaning each piece until there was no possibility any dirt remained on a single solid surface. Even on those occasions after the war when they had been struggling to make money, going from one job to another, anytime he would see worry slip into her brown eyes, like clockwork that night out came the guns and the solvent and the gun oil and by the next morning the worry would be gone, replaced by renewed determination.
So he had noticed when her guns had begun receiving executive treatment as of late. In the past month he had come into the galley on more than one occasion to find Zoe scrubbing away at one or another of her firearms. He was beginning to get concerned. Things were just starting to look up for them; Serenity was finally out of the world and flying through the black. They had just successfully completed their third job with very few hitches, and were now headed to their fourth. So he racked his brain trying to think of something that could be causing her unease. Sure she had stated that the new pilot bothered her when Mal first hired him, but since then he hadn’t heard her complain about him and Wash had yet to do anything that should send up warning signals for either of them. He had contemplated asking her, even though he had learned long ago she would come right out and tell him anything she deemed he needed to know. He had even started to approach her one late night when she had been cleaning her mare’s leg, but the look she had shot him told him very clearly that he should do no such thing. So he let her clean because during the day she did the job just as she always had, and he left her to her own thoughts at night.
Zoë’s thoughts disturbed her. Not in a reaver attack kind of disturb, but in a, they were out of her control disturb. She had always had superb control of her thoughts, her actions, her emotions, and that had all recently seemed to crumble away leaving her feeling…..vulnerable. She was frustrated to the point of distraction that she was allowing one very goofy but oh so endearing man to cause all amounts of chaos within her. Hoban “Wash” Washburn, the intrepid pilot had her all twisted about. She hated the way he would smile with that half cocked sweetly sincere grin because she hated the way her insides always, gorramit, always responded to that smile. She hated the way he would look at her and seem in wonder. Her entire life men had ogled her, stared at parts of her inappropriately, her legs, her ass, the nice ones would stare at her face, but Wash was different. He seemed to see the entirety of her, and not ogle her, see her and marvel at what he saw. Not just out of sexual desire, because oh was it ever obvious that he desired her, but also out of respect and that was the part that troubled her the most. It troubled her because she responded to it, because she was pretty sure it was about fifty percent of the reason that she kept finding herself wandering onto the bridge. The other fifty percent was because for some enigmatic reason she seemed to desire him as well.
She felt like a gorram teenage girl all over again when she was around him, and she hated the loss of control that he caused in her. Her control was one of her weapons; she had sharpened and honed it over her many hard years of life. It had saved her on more than one occasion when everything around her was falling apart and her control was the only thing that kept her from losing her mind. Then here comes this irreverent, mustache wearing pilot who breaches it in the span of a few days. He had walked onto the ruttin’ ship and immediately her body had practically pulled her toward him. She had even frisked the man even though there was no way in the ‘verse he was a threat, and she had to keep telling herself it wasn’t just because she wanted to touch him.
She had tried to convince Mal to not hire him. He bothered her, she had said, but Mal would never give up such a highly recommended pilot because he “bothered” her and if she couldn’t provide a more compelling argument than that, there was no reason why he should. So the pilot had stayed, and despite all her best efforts, so had her feelings. In fact they only seemed to be intensifying. If only he would stop looking at her with those beautiful blue eyes that made her entire body flush with heat, if only he hadn’t decided to shave off that silly mustache that had at least hidden his handsome face. Yes she hated Wash for chipping away at so many of her carefully built walls, hated him with more emotion than she’d felt towards any one person since Mal had entered her life. But a wise woman had once told her that you could only hate someone who you also in fact cared deeply for because only out of one such intense emotion could be born the other. And wasn’t that what she was truly afraid of in the end? Could it be true that she didn’t just want to take this man to her bunk, that it wasn’t just that he made her feel shinier than she had in a long while, but that her emotions ran far deeper than that? She closed her eyes tightly sitting up straighter in her chair and took a deep breath; she decided that she was not nearly ready for that train of thought tonight. Opening her eyes she stared down at her gun that was now reassembled, and more than ready for combat. She placed her hands on either side of the gun stretching out each of her fingers and gently pushed herself up from the table. To bed, she thought, she’d go to bed and deal with this tomorrow. She was getting sick of telling herself that, getting sick and tired of lying to herself.
Wash leaned back in the pilot’s chair, stretching his arms far out behind his head loosening all the muscles in his back that had tensed up after the many hours he had spent steering the ship. Their fuel cells were dangerously low and it had taken some pretty implausible piloting to get them to Harvest. He’d had to sling shot Serenity around more than one rock in the past forty-eight hours. He was exhausted but happy; flying like that was what he lived for. Setting a ships course in a straight line, pushing a few buttons and then twittering your thumbs while the ship flew without you was no fun at all. Doing advanced calculations in your head, working everything out to the smallest decimal until you were sure that the ship was not going to crash into some moon. Then taking those calculations and gently but firmly steering the ship to ride that fine line of numbers until you felt the gravity of the planet throwing the ship forward and you knew that you just saved another unit of fuel, now that was fun. So he was tired, and his shoulders and arms were sore from holding Serenity exactly on track, but he was happy. The rough stuff was over and they should be reaching Harvest in the next hour and a half, so he had time to just unwind until he had to glide Serenity into atmo. He relaxed into his pilots chair the soothing hum of Serenity and the soft glow of the bridge lights easing him into thinking on his favorite subject. She was beautiful, that much was obvious, even a blind man could see that Zoë Alleyne was possibly the most beautiful woman in the ‘verse. With those eyes, and that hair, and that body, and ai ya he never knew the arching of an eyebrow could be so arousing.
As stunning as she was that was not even the tip of the iceberg when it came to why he was so enthralled by her. She was a warrior, an Amazon, a strong if sometimes intimidating woman. He had always been attracted to strong women so this one was driving him particularly mad. He just wished she would warm up to him a little more. Sure he figured that the initial cold reception came along with the strong independent thing, but that had to end at some point, right? His first day on the ship he had been convinced she loathed him. Hell, before even saying hello she had frisked him. In fact he didn’t think that a hello ever even followed that frisking, although he couldn’t say that it didn’t mean he hadn’t enjoyed the close bodily contact.
But since then she hadn’t been hostel towards him, she just hadn’t been inviting. Amicable, professional, cool, collected, curt, those were all words that he could use to describe the interactions that she engaged in with him. But what he wanted was warm, friendly, maybe even smiley on occasion. And he was trying quite hard for those kinds of interactions; working his pi gu off every time that she was in the room in fact. He never hit on her, because he was sure that would end with him horizontal more than likely with a broken nose. But he was slowly and surely trying to build a friendship, one witty and endearing brick at a time.
“You think the only reason that compression coil is still running is because it’s drawing energy from Besters marijuana smoke?” He’d whispered to her one evening after the mechanic had once again demonstrated his ineptitude by accidentally shutting down the main life support for three quarters of an hour. She had turned her head and looked at him, a beat longer than was comfortable.
“I don’t think compression coils can run on marijuana smoke, pilot.” The answer was so absurd he would have thought she was joking if it hadn’t been for the entirely serious look on her face. Still he almost convinced himself there had been a slight crinkle of amusement framing the corners of her eyes.
He knew there was a wit that could cut hidden somewhere under that warrior veneer. He had seen glimpses of it from time to time during Zoë’s conversations with Mal, when he could tell she thought Mall was being particularly thick.
“Yes Sir. And would you like me to do that before or after you’ll be gettin’ yourself killed?” Wash had almost lost it that time, but he was sure he Mal or Zoë or both would not have been pleased if he had burst out laughing.
So she was aloof right now, so what, he reassured himself. A wise man had once told him the only things in life worth having are the ones you have to fight for. So fight for Zoë he would. He wasn’t yet one hundred percent sure how that fighting would look, but once he came up with a plan he was sure that it would be brilliant.
“Wash.” Her voice came from directly behind him, a place he was sure had been empty. He was not proud to say that he did, in fact, visibly jump. Lao tyen yeh did that woman ever make any noise? He turned his chair around slowly to deliberately counter the effect of his embarrassingly skittish behavior.
“Yeah Zoë?” He said as coolly as possible throwing her one of his most winning smiles.
“Captain wants to know how much longer till we hit atmo.” She stood hands clasped behind her back straight and tall always the soldier, it was incredibly sexy. Wash spun his chair back around, touching a few dials here; flipping a few switches there and then looked through the window at the upcoming planet.
“Well Zoë, you’re in luck. We should be hitting atmo in the next five minutes, so you are presently in the perfect position to witness first hand my exemplary piloting skills. You see, atmo is my specialty. I touch it so gentle you won’t even know we’ve left the black.” She just arched an eye brow at him. “Wanna watch?” He said giving her a quick wink. Her eyebrow stayed up and she crossed her arms, but she didn’t say anything, and he soon noticed she also was not going anywhere. He realized that yes in fact she did want to watch, and was currently doing just that. He quickly turned back to the control panel and began checking trajectories and calculating entrance angles in his head. From what he could gather she had grown up on ships and he was sure she could tell the difference between a good and a bad entry into atmo so this needed to be a damn good one if he was going to impress her. He grinned smugly, he had no doubt he could pull it off. The edge of the planet began to widen in the window, the hazy layers of her atmosphere rising up to meet the ship. He steered Serenity smoothly in, cutting into the exosphere like a hot knife through butter. There was not a solitary jolt or shudder as Serenity slid through first the thermosphere and then the mesosphere. He turned his head to look at Zoë and caught what could be considered a look of admiration.
Then somewhere towards the back of the ship came a loud thud followed by a bang. The ship began to quiver and then it took a suddenly dip in altitude that caused Wash’s stomach to feel like it had detached and flown into up into his mouth. Zoë grabbed onto the back of his pilots chair as he scrambled to regain control of the ship that had started to plunge and sway alarmingly through the sky of the planet. The nose of Serenity began to tremble furiously and Wash immediately pulled up on the throttle so that the nose wouldn’t fly into pieces.
“Wash! What are you doin’ to my boat?” Mal’s angry voice came over the comm unit but Wash pointedly ignored it.
“Hold this, exactly like this, keep it steady!” He shouted at Zoë as he jumped out of the seat passing the throttle to her. In the far back of his mind a little voice was absolutely appalled that he had shouted at her, but there was no time to think about that now, he had to concentrate on keeping Serenity in one piece. He dove under the control panel, furiously ripping at wires, reconnecting here and there to pull more control to the front of the ship, and away from parts in the engine that were obviously no longer working.
“Tell Bester to get his pi gu into the engine room, now!” He shouted. Again with the shouting! The little voice almost screamed in his head. He heard Zoë hit the comm unit and bark at Bester to get into the engine room and prevent them from dying. He connected one last wire and then sprung from under the instrument panel grabbing the controls from Zoë’s hands shoving her to the side so she slammed against the console to his right. She threw her hands up to brace herself against the ceiling. He was going to pay for that one for sure even without all the yelling before hand. Serenity had stopped the violent shaking that he was confident would have torn them apart, and instead had just remained swaying from side to side and occasionally making sickening plunges. He stood, his arms straining with the effort of keeping Serenity under some semblance of control. They slowly descended and after what seemed like forever he was finally able to push the button to unfurl the landing equipment. With a few final bumps he brought Serenity to rest on Harvest. He breathed in deep and let it out slowly trying to release some of his tension. It was then that he remembered that to his right Zoë was pressed up quite closely to his side. He turned to her and found her face barely inches from his own. No fainting now Hoban he said to himself very distracted by the places where her body touched his own.
“Sorry ‘bout that.” He breathed out in a whisper, one hand running along the back of his neck the other crammed deep into his pocket. Was it possible that she looked visibly shaken? Her eyes looked into his, and they almost seemed unguarded.
“No,” She said more softly than he had ever heard her say anything, “You did a fine job, Wash.” Then the most incredible thing happened, a slightly playful smile spread across her unbelievably full lips. “But if that’s what you call gently entering atmo, you might be in need of lesson on the meanin’ of the word.” Wash stood shocked for a moment and then began to laugh, and amazingly enough so did Zoë and the moment was pure perfection until Mal came storming onto the bridge, his face red with furry.
“What in the ruttin’ hell was that all about? And why are you two laughin’?” They turned to look at him and started laughing harder.
“Well?” He asked anger still boiling, “Did we, or did we not just ‘bout crash to our deaths? I don’t rightly see anything funny ‘bout that particular situation. Zoe?” He turned to her, seeming to be chiefly upset that his first mate was so amused. Zoë extracted herself from between Wash and the control panel and moved over to Mal. Wash almost frowned when her body left his.
“Sorry Sir, nothing’s funny really, but it ain’t the pilot you should be yellin’ at. If I know anything from my years growing up ship side somethin’ went wrong with our engine and Bester’s to blame for that. We actually owe our pilot here our lives.” Mal softened.
“Well now I’m glad to here that. Thank you Wash.” Mal said genuine gratitude showing on his face. “I knew I hired you for somethin’. Now if only I could say the same thing about our houzi de pigu of a mechanic. Zoë, would you care to join me in berating him?”
“More’n anything, Sir.” She said fallowing him out of the room. In the hallway Wash heard Mal say to Zoë.
“You know Zo, as of late I’m starting to think our mechanic isn’t such a genius after all.”
“What gave it away Sir? Was it the loss of life support a week ago, or maybe almost crashing us into the ground just now?” Zoë said with her beautifully dry humor.
“I don’t know, I’m thinkin’ it’s a partial combination of the both.”
“Ah…I see, Sir.” Their voices faded into the distance and Wash sat down in his pilot’s chair. What had just happened? Zoë had seemed to let her guard down, complimented him even. And that joke! That laughing! He clutched at his heart, ai ya! He just might be able to die a happy man.
Author: tahie
Rating: PG-13
Pairings: Wash/Zoe
Setting: Pre-series
Disclaimer: Not mine
Summery: Wash/Zoe relationship fluff attempting to disguise itself in plot.
Author’s notes: Back in the day I was an X-Phile and an avid Mulder/Scully shipper (and still am of course). So I am a lover of long, drawn out, angsty relationships chocked full of tons of UST. I decided to write a story for my new favorite Sci-fi couple that contained all those delicious elements. So here is my attempt. I hope you enjoy!
Zoë’s well trained eyes slid carefully over the pieces of her pistol spread out in front of, her taking in every minute detail. The pieces lay silently on the soft cloth she had set down for them on the galley table. The order that they lay in was exact, precise, purposeful the way she had always laid them. They lay in readiness… the base, the barrel, the slide… waiting for her to clean them in her delicate way. She sat quietly a minute more finishing her survey, then she moved to begin. The frame of the gun came first; she held it lightly in her hands eyes and fingers running over the smooth surfaces of the barrel support and the rough surfaces of the grips, checking for scratches, signs of wear, or fissures. Satisfied that there were none she took a clean dry cloth added cleaning solvent and buffed away her fingerprints, the grime, and on many occasions the blood until the surface. Setting down the frame she reached to the side picking up her bore brush. She put a little solvent on the brush and then ran the brush through the barrel with slow and even strokes making sure to remove all the grit from the smooth hallowed metal that made sure her bullets flew true. Lastly the slide, and once again she runs the clean cloth and solvent over the reflective metal.
Her favorite part comes at the end after all the pieces are clean. Onto an unused cloth she applies gun oil, breathing in the familiar and comforting smell. The smell reminds her of battles and gun play, but not the actual fighting, always the moments after when she knows she is safe and she is laying on the ground, or on a gurney, or leaning against an object her gun clutched close to her, the smell of gun oil strong in her nostrils. She goes over each piece with the oil from top to bottom with what some might call a lovers touch, polishing so the metal shines, making sure to properly oil any and all moving parts, testing each one twice. Finally through she reassembles the gun, making sure each piece goes back in its right place so the gun will be sure to function flawlessly when she needs it to most, when either her life or the life of someone she cares about depends on it.
This routine is second nature to her. One time during the war she won a lot of money for Mal and herself doing it blindfolded. Like brushing her teeth, combing her hair, breathing, it is part of her. As she sets her gun parts on the table in order, and then works to clean them the whole process seems to have a similar effect on her. Her thoughts have a way of falling into a place as each piece of her gun falls into place. Her emotions that have a tendency to muck up the works, (anxiety, or confusion) get wiped away just as the dirt wipes away from the steel. So she has a tendency to clean her guns more often when her emotions need her too.
Mal knows this even though she has never told him out right. He’s seen how she would always clean her guns the night before a particularly risky battle. He saw how the night after she heard that her family’s transport vessel had been reduced to nothingness by the Alliance she had laid out her guns, carefully, methodically, slowly cleaning each piece until there was no possibility any dirt remained on a single solid surface. Even on those occasions after the war when they had been struggling to make money, going from one job to another, anytime he would see worry slip into her brown eyes, like clockwork that night out came the guns and the solvent and the gun oil and by the next morning the worry would be gone, replaced by renewed determination.
So he had noticed when her guns had begun receiving executive treatment as of late. In the past month he had come into the galley on more than one occasion to find Zoe scrubbing away at one or another of her firearms. He was beginning to get concerned. Things were just starting to look up for them; Serenity was finally out of the world and flying through the black. They had just successfully completed their third job with very few hitches, and were now headed to their fourth. So he racked his brain trying to think of something that could be causing her unease. Sure she had stated that the new pilot bothered her when Mal first hired him, but since then he hadn’t heard her complain about him and Wash had yet to do anything that should send up warning signals for either of them. He had contemplated asking her, even though he had learned long ago she would come right out and tell him anything she deemed he needed to know. He had even started to approach her one late night when she had been cleaning her mare’s leg, but the look she had shot him told him very clearly that he should do no such thing. So he let her clean because during the day she did the job just as she always had, and he left her to her own thoughts at night.
Zoë’s thoughts disturbed her. Not in a reaver attack kind of disturb, but in a, they were out of her control disturb. She had always had superb control of her thoughts, her actions, her emotions, and that had all recently seemed to crumble away leaving her feeling…..vulnerable. She was frustrated to the point of distraction that she was allowing one very goofy but oh so endearing man to cause all amounts of chaos within her. Hoban “Wash” Washburn, the intrepid pilot had her all twisted about. She hated the way he would smile with that half cocked sweetly sincere grin because she hated the way her insides always, gorramit, always responded to that smile. She hated the way he would look at her and seem in wonder. Her entire life men had ogled her, stared at parts of her inappropriately, her legs, her ass, the nice ones would stare at her face, but Wash was different. He seemed to see the entirety of her, and not ogle her, see her and marvel at what he saw. Not just out of sexual desire, because oh was it ever obvious that he desired her, but also out of respect and that was the part that troubled her the most. It troubled her because she responded to it, because she was pretty sure it was about fifty percent of the reason that she kept finding herself wandering onto the bridge. The other fifty percent was because for some enigmatic reason she seemed to desire him as well.
She felt like a gorram teenage girl all over again when she was around him, and she hated the loss of control that he caused in her. Her control was one of her weapons; she had sharpened and honed it over her many hard years of life. It had saved her on more than one occasion when everything around her was falling apart and her control was the only thing that kept her from losing her mind. Then here comes this irreverent, mustache wearing pilot who breaches it in the span of a few days. He had walked onto the ruttin’ ship and immediately her body had practically pulled her toward him. She had even frisked the man even though there was no way in the ‘verse he was a threat, and she had to keep telling herself it wasn’t just because she wanted to touch him.
She had tried to convince Mal to not hire him. He bothered her, she had said, but Mal would never give up such a highly recommended pilot because he “bothered” her and if she couldn’t provide a more compelling argument than that, there was no reason why he should. So the pilot had stayed, and despite all her best efforts, so had her feelings. In fact they only seemed to be intensifying. If only he would stop looking at her with those beautiful blue eyes that made her entire body flush with heat, if only he hadn’t decided to shave off that silly mustache that had at least hidden his handsome face. Yes she hated Wash for chipping away at so many of her carefully built walls, hated him with more emotion than she’d felt towards any one person since Mal had entered her life. But a wise woman had once told her that you could only hate someone who you also in fact cared deeply for because only out of one such intense emotion could be born the other. And wasn’t that what she was truly afraid of in the end? Could it be true that she didn’t just want to take this man to her bunk, that it wasn’t just that he made her feel shinier than she had in a long while, but that her emotions ran far deeper than that? She closed her eyes tightly sitting up straighter in her chair and took a deep breath; she decided that she was not nearly ready for that train of thought tonight. Opening her eyes she stared down at her gun that was now reassembled, and more than ready for combat. She placed her hands on either side of the gun stretching out each of her fingers and gently pushed herself up from the table. To bed, she thought, she’d go to bed and deal with this tomorrow. She was getting sick of telling herself that, getting sick and tired of lying to herself.
Wash leaned back in the pilot’s chair, stretching his arms far out behind his head loosening all the muscles in his back that had tensed up after the many hours he had spent steering the ship. Their fuel cells were dangerously low and it had taken some pretty implausible piloting to get them to Harvest. He’d had to sling shot Serenity around more than one rock in the past forty-eight hours. He was exhausted but happy; flying like that was what he lived for. Setting a ships course in a straight line, pushing a few buttons and then twittering your thumbs while the ship flew without you was no fun at all. Doing advanced calculations in your head, working everything out to the smallest decimal until you were sure that the ship was not going to crash into some moon. Then taking those calculations and gently but firmly steering the ship to ride that fine line of numbers until you felt the gravity of the planet throwing the ship forward and you knew that you just saved another unit of fuel, now that was fun. So he was tired, and his shoulders and arms were sore from holding Serenity exactly on track, but he was happy. The rough stuff was over and they should be reaching Harvest in the next hour and a half, so he had time to just unwind until he had to glide Serenity into atmo. He relaxed into his pilots chair the soothing hum of Serenity and the soft glow of the bridge lights easing him into thinking on his favorite subject. She was beautiful, that much was obvious, even a blind man could see that Zoë Alleyne was possibly the most beautiful woman in the ‘verse. With those eyes, and that hair, and that body, and ai ya he never knew the arching of an eyebrow could be so arousing.
As stunning as she was that was not even the tip of the iceberg when it came to why he was so enthralled by her. She was a warrior, an Amazon, a strong if sometimes intimidating woman. He had always been attracted to strong women so this one was driving him particularly mad. He just wished she would warm up to him a little more. Sure he figured that the initial cold reception came along with the strong independent thing, but that had to end at some point, right? His first day on the ship he had been convinced she loathed him. Hell, before even saying hello she had frisked him. In fact he didn’t think that a hello ever even followed that frisking, although he couldn’t say that it didn’t mean he hadn’t enjoyed the close bodily contact.
But since then she hadn’t been hostel towards him, she just hadn’t been inviting. Amicable, professional, cool, collected, curt, those were all words that he could use to describe the interactions that she engaged in with him. But what he wanted was warm, friendly, maybe even smiley on occasion. And he was trying quite hard for those kinds of interactions; working his pi gu off every time that she was in the room in fact. He never hit on her, because he was sure that would end with him horizontal more than likely with a broken nose. But he was slowly and surely trying to build a friendship, one witty and endearing brick at a time.
“You think the only reason that compression coil is still running is because it’s drawing energy from Besters marijuana smoke?” He’d whispered to her one evening after the mechanic had once again demonstrated his ineptitude by accidentally shutting down the main life support for three quarters of an hour. She had turned her head and looked at him, a beat longer than was comfortable.
“I don’t think compression coils can run on marijuana smoke, pilot.” The answer was so absurd he would have thought she was joking if it hadn’t been for the entirely serious look on her face. Still he almost convinced himself there had been a slight crinkle of amusement framing the corners of her eyes.
He knew there was a wit that could cut hidden somewhere under that warrior veneer. He had seen glimpses of it from time to time during Zoë’s conversations with Mal, when he could tell she thought Mall was being particularly thick.
“Yes Sir. And would you like me to do that before or after you’ll be gettin’ yourself killed?” Wash had almost lost it that time, but he was sure he Mal or Zoë or both would not have been pleased if he had burst out laughing.
So she was aloof right now, so what, he reassured himself. A wise man had once told him the only things in life worth having are the ones you have to fight for. So fight for Zoë he would. He wasn’t yet one hundred percent sure how that fighting would look, but once he came up with a plan he was sure that it would be brilliant.
“Wash.” Her voice came from directly behind him, a place he was sure had been empty. He was not proud to say that he did, in fact, visibly jump. Lao tyen yeh did that woman ever make any noise? He turned his chair around slowly to deliberately counter the effect of his embarrassingly skittish behavior.
“Yeah Zoë?” He said as coolly as possible throwing her one of his most winning smiles.
“Captain wants to know how much longer till we hit atmo.” She stood hands clasped behind her back straight and tall always the soldier, it was incredibly sexy. Wash spun his chair back around, touching a few dials here; flipping a few switches there and then looked through the window at the upcoming planet.
“Well Zoë, you’re in luck. We should be hitting atmo in the next five minutes, so you are presently in the perfect position to witness first hand my exemplary piloting skills. You see, atmo is my specialty. I touch it so gentle you won’t even know we’ve left the black.” She just arched an eye brow at him. “Wanna watch?” He said giving her a quick wink. Her eyebrow stayed up and she crossed her arms, but she didn’t say anything, and he soon noticed she also was not going anywhere. He realized that yes in fact she did want to watch, and was currently doing just that. He quickly turned back to the control panel and began checking trajectories and calculating entrance angles in his head. From what he could gather she had grown up on ships and he was sure she could tell the difference between a good and a bad entry into atmo so this needed to be a damn good one if he was going to impress her. He grinned smugly, he had no doubt he could pull it off. The edge of the planet began to widen in the window, the hazy layers of her atmosphere rising up to meet the ship. He steered Serenity smoothly in, cutting into the exosphere like a hot knife through butter. There was not a solitary jolt or shudder as Serenity slid through first the thermosphere and then the mesosphere. He turned his head to look at Zoë and caught what could be considered a look of admiration.
Then somewhere towards the back of the ship came a loud thud followed by a bang. The ship began to quiver and then it took a suddenly dip in altitude that caused Wash’s stomach to feel like it had detached and flown into up into his mouth. Zoë grabbed onto the back of his pilots chair as he scrambled to regain control of the ship that had started to plunge and sway alarmingly through the sky of the planet. The nose of Serenity began to tremble furiously and Wash immediately pulled up on the throttle so that the nose wouldn’t fly into pieces.
“Wash! What are you doin’ to my boat?” Mal’s angry voice came over the comm unit but Wash pointedly ignored it.
“Hold this, exactly like this, keep it steady!” He shouted at Zoë as he jumped out of the seat passing the throttle to her. In the far back of his mind a little voice was absolutely appalled that he had shouted at her, but there was no time to think about that now, he had to concentrate on keeping Serenity in one piece. He dove under the control panel, furiously ripping at wires, reconnecting here and there to pull more control to the front of the ship, and away from parts in the engine that were obviously no longer working.
“Tell Bester to get his pi gu into the engine room, now!” He shouted. Again with the shouting! The little voice almost screamed in his head. He heard Zoë hit the comm unit and bark at Bester to get into the engine room and prevent them from dying. He connected one last wire and then sprung from under the instrument panel grabbing the controls from Zoë’s hands shoving her to the side so she slammed against the console to his right. She threw her hands up to brace herself against the ceiling. He was going to pay for that one for sure even without all the yelling before hand. Serenity had stopped the violent shaking that he was confident would have torn them apart, and instead had just remained swaying from side to side and occasionally making sickening plunges. He stood, his arms straining with the effort of keeping Serenity under some semblance of control. They slowly descended and after what seemed like forever he was finally able to push the button to unfurl the landing equipment. With a few final bumps he brought Serenity to rest on Harvest. He breathed in deep and let it out slowly trying to release some of his tension. It was then that he remembered that to his right Zoë was pressed up quite closely to his side. He turned to her and found her face barely inches from his own. No fainting now Hoban he said to himself very distracted by the places where her body touched his own.
“Sorry ‘bout that.” He breathed out in a whisper, one hand running along the back of his neck the other crammed deep into his pocket. Was it possible that she looked visibly shaken? Her eyes looked into his, and they almost seemed unguarded.
“No,” She said more softly than he had ever heard her say anything, “You did a fine job, Wash.” Then the most incredible thing happened, a slightly playful smile spread across her unbelievably full lips. “But if that’s what you call gently entering atmo, you might be in need of lesson on the meanin’ of the word.” Wash stood shocked for a moment and then began to laugh, and amazingly enough so did Zoë and the moment was pure perfection until Mal came storming onto the bridge, his face red with furry.
“What in the ruttin’ hell was that all about? And why are you two laughin’?” They turned to look at him and started laughing harder.
“Well?” He asked anger still boiling, “Did we, or did we not just ‘bout crash to our deaths? I don’t rightly see anything funny ‘bout that particular situation. Zoe?” He turned to her, seeming to be chiefly upset that his first mate was so amused. Zoë extracted herself from between Wash and the control panel and moved over to Mal. Wash almost frowned when her body left his.
“Sorry Sir, nothing’s funny really, but it ain’t the pilot you should be yellin’ at. If I know anything from my years growing up ship side somethin’ went wrong with our engine and Bester’s to blame for that. We actually owe our pilot here our lives.” Mal softened.
“Well now I’m glad to here that. Thank you Wash.” Mal said genuine gratitude showing on his face. “I knew I hired you for somethin’. Now if only I could say the same thing about our houzi de pigu of a mechanic. Zoë, would you care to join me in berating him?”
“More’n anything, Sir.” She said fallowing him out of the room. In the hallway Wash heard Mal say to Zoë.
“You know Zo, as of late I’m starting to think our mechanic isn’t such a genius after all.”
“What gave it away Sir? Was it the loss of life support a week ago, or maybe almost crashing us into the ground just now?” Zoë said with her beautifully dry humor.
“I don’t know, I’m thinkin’ it’s a partial combination of the both.”
“Ah…I see, Sir.” Their voices faded into the distance and Wash sat down in his pilot’s chair. What had just happened? Zoë had seemed to let her guard down, complimented him even. And that joke! That laughing! He clutched at his heart, ai ya! He just might be able to die a happy man.