Undone
Fandom: Firefly
Ship: Wash/Zoe
Rating: PG-13
Summary: When she sort of knew, and when she really knew.
A/N: For
anjenue! Approx. 400 words.
Zoe sort of knew the moment she raised a leg to climb into the tub with Wash. She paused, a little puzzled by the realization that came to her flimsy and delicious as the steam that rose from the water. She frowned slightly, then shrugged. There were her clothes, lying in a grimy pile on the floor beside Wash's. There was Wash, in hot water to his waist, arms flung wide. His knees broke the water, and something about the fine yellow hairs undid her frown.
She slid in between his knees.
He soaped up her back, described with his callused fingertips the course he'd plotted for Serenity.
"We're here," he said, stroking her right shoulder blade. "We just left here." He nudged her damp hair aside to kiss her neck. "We drop the cargo…" His fingers wandered down to the small of her back. "…Here. And from there, I was thinking…." He cupped her breasts with his soapy palms.
She leaned against him, her lashes lowering. This is going to end in sex, Zoe thought. She remembered her half-thought from a few minutes earlier, but forgot it again when Wash tilted her head back for a clumsy upside-down kiss.
*
Zoe really knew a couple of weeks later when she, Wash, Mal, Jayne, and Kaylee found themselves in the middle of a barroom brawl on the Rim world of Qin.
"You were all paying attention? You all noticed how I didn't start it this time?" said Mal, sounding quite pleased with himself while using a broken chair to intercept a blow aimed at Kaylee.
"Don't care who started it," grunted Jayne, grabbing two men by their collars and slamming their foreheads together, "I like it!"
"Honey," Zoe called to Wash, who'd been tossed over the bar moments earlier, "you still conscious?"
She heard a reassuring groan, and aimed a kick at a would-be assailant's crotch. He crumpled. She knelt and helped herself to his bowie knife. "Thanks."
She heard a crash close by, and whirled to see another man, who'd come up behind her, fall to his knees, blood and beer dribbling down his forehead. She looked up, saw Wash standing behind the man, bruised, rumpled, and very, very dear, a broken bottle in his hand.
"Thanks," she said again.
"Semi-conscious," he said. "Still got your back."
That was when she really knew.
1/12/2008