Fic: The Tianjin Job (Firefly: Wash/Zoe: PG13)
Title: The Tianjin Job
Fandom: Firefly
Rating: PG13
Genre: Caper!fic with romance
Pairing/Characters: Wash/Zoe
Disclaimer: All this belongs to Joss et al... I'm just borrowing it.
Beta: parenthetical is the best beta in the world. In the case of this fic she gave me so much help I almost feel she should be classed as a co-author: she encouraged me and suggested a million edits that made this much better than it would have been.
Summary: I always figured the day I entered into a life of crime it would involve high-speed flying, beautiful women, feats of derring-do...
Notes: Written for the Wash/Zoe Valentine's ficathon: fishphile asked for 'wooing of some sort; criminal undertakings' and I've tried to oblige, although I make no promises as to how well I've succeeded. I hope you enjoy, fishphile! Many thanks to stormkpr for organising the ficathon.
'Shén me? You want me to sully the name of pilot by flying that?' Wash grimaced at the flyer currently lying half-assembled in the hold: a tinpot heap of junk with all the shiny on the hull and nothing but clunky, dī liè parts underneath.
'I surely do. Didn't figure as that would be a problem for a fine flying man such as yourself,' Mal said pointedly. 'Not fixin' to make it one, are you?'
Wash cast his hands up in defeat. 'No, no. Just... I always figured the day I entered into a life of crime it would involve high-speed flying, beautiful women, feats of derring-do... not masquerading as a second-rate chauffeur in some flashy piece of go se.' Kaylee giggled, and he grinned at her, tugging at his forelock in exaggerated imitation of a sī jī looking for a tip from over-credulous tourists.
'Well, business the way it is, I'm more interested in the payoff than the derring-do.' Mal was trying not to look amused, but it was clear the joke had dissipated his rising ill-temper. 'Just make sure everything's ready. Kaylee?' He jerked his head at the door.
'Coming, Cap'n,' Kaylee said brightly, like she couldn't wait to spend the afternoon digging around a dump trying to find parts for something that was never meant to work for more than six months in the first place. She and Mal headed on outside, leaving Wash alone with Zoe.
'Didn't figure you as worrying about your pride,' she said quietly.
'No,' he admitted. It figured that Zoe would call him on his niou-she - mighty inconvenient at times, but it wasn't as if he'd married her for her shy demeanour and winsome ways.
'Then what?'
His hand drifted unconsciously up to his top lip to tug at the ghost of his moustache. 'I don't know, Zoe. This is a little more serious than a few smuggling runs.'
'Moral scruples?' Zoe's voice was even, her face unreadable, and he couldn't tell whether she thought moral scruples would be ridiculous, or harboured some of her own.
'Not so much. More scruples of the "wanting to enjoy my new bride in one piece and not in jail" kind.'
Zoe laughed. 'You get to worrying about that, husband, and next thing you'll be wanting to carry me off to some backwater planet and keep me busy making babies.'
'What, and leave off flying? No fear of that, dear, even if you wouldn't kill me for trying to keep you in the kitchen.'
She pulled him towards her for a kiss. 'Wouldn't mind practising the making babies part, though.'
Wash kissed her back, breathing in the smell of her and feeling himself start to swell at the thought. It was tempting just to let the conversation drop there, but Zoe had asked and now he wanted to answer. 'Seriously, Zoe, smuggling's risky enough. Are you sure Mal hasn't bitten off more than he can chew?'
'Captain thinks we can do this job easy, should bring us a bit more than the usual.' That was that, for Zoe, and mention of Mal and the job had only served to recall her to what she was supposed to be doing. She gave Wash a reassuring pat and headed off to gear up for the evening's job. Sighing, Wash followed her, wondering if the fact he was actually reassured showed that he trusted his wife, or just that his lǎo lǎo had known what she was talking about when she said newly-weds had no more sense than children. Knowing Malcolm Reynolds as he did, he was inclined towards the latter explanation.
Zoe held a dress up for Wash's inspection. 'What do you think, dear?''
Wash nearly choked on his tea at the sight of the lurid, flowery print. 'You're planning to blind the security?'
Zoe's lips quirked. 'I borrowed it from Kaylee,' she said with a hint of reproof, and slipped the dress on over her head.
'Kaylee... And she advised that you accessorise with guns?' Wash said weakly, watching his wife strap a holster to her thigh. Somehow the dress looked quite different when it was actually on Zoe, what with the... bosoms and the knowing about leather and firearms under the frilly skirt, and oh dear god, Zoe's legs were a lot longer than Kaylee's.
'Picture of a country belle,' Mal said with approval - and against all the evidence - when he saw Zoe in the dress. 'Kaylee, I'm hoping I'm not wrong to say our carriage awaits?'
'Ready and waitin', Cap'n!' Kaylee said, looking as cheery and excited as if Mal and Zoe really were the country couple they were masquerading as, and she was waving them off on their honeymoon instead of fitting them out to engage in criminal activities of the scruple-y variety.
The fact that this crime was shaping up to be more like a honeymoon than anything he and Zoe had gotten so far wasn't an aspect that bothered Wash at all, gorram it.
The job was simple enough, in theory. It wasn't even that scruple-y, as crimes went. Their client wanted them to steal some kind of an ornament from the house of a distant relative. Apparently he had been left it in a will, or should have been, or some such, so technically it could be seen as just moving some property to its rightful place. All right, the current owner was unlikely to share this philanthropic view, but since this wasn't a heist in the usual sense, Mal wasn't anticipating any resistance. All they had to do was drive up to the house, Zoe and Mal playing up the 'yokels in the big city' look for all they were worth, then slip past the minimal security and pocket what they'd come for. It would be easy enough for Wash to keep cruising the local area, playing the part of a hired driver looking for more fares. Simple.
Wash brought the flyer to a halt a few doors down from their mark's house and stepped out to open the door for his passengers like a real sī jī. Mal solicitously took Zoe's arm to help her down, playing the role of countrified newly-wed so convincingly that Wash could hardly credit it. Which was good, Wash reminded himself, being that the plan relied on Mal and Zoe appearing that convincing to the security guards. So he certainly didn't spend the first ten minutes after Mal and Zoe disappeared into the house brooding over Mal's newly-discovered acting ability. Lao tian no; no brooding at all.
Fifteen minutes into waiting and on his fourth circuit of the neighbourhood, questions of marital propriety started to seem fairly insignificant compared to the question of whether he'd actually get to see his wife again. Mal and Zoe had been twice as long as expected, and Wash was finding it increasingly difficult to pretend that he hadn't noticed tourists' attempts to flag him down.
Twenty minutes after they had gone in, Mal and Zoe came pelting out of a side alley, guns drawn, blood streaming down the side of Mal's face. They were in the flyer before Wash knew what was happening, and he wasn't about to start asking questions, given that a burly, mean-looking hundan of a security guard was only a couple of metres behind them. Muttering curses at the flyer's cotton-wool controls, Wash forced something resembling actual power from the engine and sped off down the street, dodging pedestrians, street hawkers and assorted livestock. When they made it back to Serenity he pulled the fastest take-off he'd made since pilot school.
Once they had cleared atmo and shifted to auto-pilot, Wash fixed Zoe with a pointed glare. 'Captain thinks we can do this job easy?'
She had the grace to look slightly embarrassed. 'For a given definition of easy?'
Mal stomped onto the bridge, still holding a cloth to his face where a bullet had grazed it. 'Got the goods, Wash; got out in one piece, thanks to your driving. Once you and Zoe get your share of the payoff, I'm thinking you'll be sharing my definition of easy.'
Wash looked at him incredulously. 'Mal, you were shot at by a pair of burly thugs. In what dictionary does the definition of 'easy' involve getting to practise amateur surgery after the event?'
Mal stared at him, puzzled for a moment, until Wash's pointed look at his cheek - where blood was now seeping through the washcloth - recalled him to his injury. 'This? Ain't nothing but a scratch.'
Hmmmm. Wash raised an eyebrow, but kept his mouth shut. Maybe he'd accept that definition for as long as it was only Mal's blood getting spilled. If it came to Zoe coming home wounded, though, even just a 'scratch', well... it was a definition he'd definitely be revisiting.
Wash suspected that Mal felt a little sheepish about how the job had gone down, because their share of the payoff was considerably larger than he'd been expecting. His suspicions were confirmed when he pushed for a day off planetside, and got it with only a few token comments from Mal about this being the reason he didn't hold with crew members fraternising (Mal's favourite word for a month before they married: he never mentioned his family much, but Wash hoped he didn't have any brothers). Wash used his cut to pay for the nicest lodging house he could find, one with a bath and a halfway decent bed. It was time he and Zoe got an actual honeymoon.
Zoe was maybe feeling the tiniest bit contrite as well, because when they got to the room she didn't make straight for the bath herself, just ran it and motioned for Wash to get in. He stretched out in the water with a sigh. 'Tian ar, that's nice. Did I do something good?'
Zoe ran her fingers through his hair, working soap into a lather. 'You did the job, dear.'
Wash shivered as she rubbed at the back of his neck, admiring the curve of her breast pressed forward against her arm. 'Mal's going to take more jobs like that, isn't he?'
She sat back on her heels, soapy hands resting on the edge of the bath. 'So I figure. It bother you?'
'A little.' Wash looked her in the eye. 'I'm not exactly dancing the wǔ lóng at the thought of more high-speed escapes from gun-toting maniacs.'
'You take care of the high-speed driving: leave the gun-toting maniacs to me.' Zoe's mouth quirked slightly. 'Anyway, husband, I thought you were hoping for a bit of derring-do?'
Wash pretended to consider. 'Well, if I'm always going to get the beautiful women... shiny.'
A wave of water washed up over the edge of the bath as he pulled Zoe forward for a kiss, but they were both laughing too hard to notice.
Chinese glossary
(Very possibly inaccurate, although I do try!)
'Shén me? - I'm sorry
dī liè - inferior quality
sī jī - chauffeur, driver. In my Fireflyverse it has come to mean the specific kind of driver Wash is impersonating: they drive flashy-looking vehicles which tourists can hire, rather in the manner that we might hire a horse and carriage today.
go se - junk
niou-she - bullshit
lǎo lǎo - maternal grandmother
Lao tian - oh god
hundan - bastard
Tian ar - oh god (a bit more positive than lao tian)
wǔ lóng - dragon dance. A dance of celebration.
Fandom: Firefly
Rating: PG13
Genre: Caper!fic with romance
Pairing/Characters: Wash/Zoe
Disclaimer: All this belongs to Joss et al... I'm just borrowing it.
Beta: parenthetical is the best beta in the world. In the case of this fic she gave me so much help I almost feel she should be classed as a co-author: she encouraged me and suggested a million edits that made this much better than it would have been.
Summary: I always figured the day I entered into a life of crime it would involve high-speed flying, beautiful women, feats of derring-do...
Notes: Written for the Wash/Zoe Valentine's ficathon: fishphile asked for 'wooing of some sort; criminal undertakings' and I've tried to oblige, although I make no promises as to how well I've succeeded. I hope you enjoy, fishphile! Many thanks to stormkpr for organising the ficathon.
'Shén me? You want me to sully the name of pilot by flying that?' Wash grimaced at the flyer currently lying half-assembled in the hold: a tinpot heap of junk with all the shiny on the hull and nothing but clunky, dī liè parts underneath.
'I surely do. Didn't figure as that would be a problem for a fine flying man such as yourself,' Mal said pointedly. 'Not fixin' to make it one, are you?'
Wash cast his hands up in defeat. 'No, no. Just... I always figured the day I entered into a life of crime it would involve high-speed flying, beautiful women, feats of derring-do... not masquerading as a second-rate chauffeur in some flashy piece of go se.' Kaylee giggled, and he grinned at her, tugging at his forelock in exaggerated imitation of a sī jī looking for a tip from over-credulous tourists.
'Well, business the way it is, I'm more interested in the payoff than the derring-do.' Mal was trying not to look amused, but it was clear the joke had dissipated his rising ill-temper. 'Just make sure everything's ready. Kaylee?' He jerked his head at the door.
'Coming, Cap'n,' Kaylee said brightly, like she couldn't wait to spend the afternoon digging around a dump trying to find parts for something that was never meant to work for more than six months in the first place. She and Mal headed on outside, leaving Wash alone with Zoe.
'Didn't figure you as worrying about your pride,' she said quietly.
'No,' he admitted. It figured that Zoe would call him on his niou-she - mighty inconvenient at times, but it wasn't as if he'd married her for her shy demeanour and winsome ways.
'Then what?'
His hand drifted unconsciously up to his top lip to tug at the ghost of his moustache. 'I don't know, Zoe. This is a little more serious than a few smuggling runs.'
'Moral scruples?' Zoe's voice was even, her face unreadable, and he couldn't tell whether she thought moral scruples would be ridiculous, or harboured some of her own.
'Not so much. More scruples of the "wanting to enjoy my new bride in one piece and not in jail" kind.'
Zoe laughed. 'You get to worrying about that, husband, and next thing you'll be wanting to carry me off to some backwater planet and keep me busy making babies.'
'What, and leave off flying? No fear of that, dear, even if you wouldn't kill me for trying to keep you in the kitchen.'
She pulled him towards her for a kiss. 'Wouldn't mind practising the making babies part, though.'
Wash kissed her back, breathing in the smell of her and feeling himself start to swell at the thought. It was tempting just to let the conversation drop there, but Zoe had asked and now he wanted to answer. 'Seriously, Zoe, smuggling's risky enough. Are you sure Mal hasn't bitten off more than he can chew?'
'Captain thinks we can do this job easy, should bring us a bit more than the usual.' That was that, for Zoe, and mention of Mal and the job had only served to recall her to what she was supposed to be doing. She gave Wash a reassuring pat and headed off to gear up for the evening's job. Sighing, Wash followed her, wondering if the fact he was actually reassured showed that he trusted his wife, or just that his lǎo lǎo had known what she was talking about when she said newly-weds had no more sense than children. Knowing Malcolm Reynolds as he did, he was inclined towards the latter explanation.
Zoe held a dress up for Wash's inspection. 'What do you think, dear?''
Wash nearly choked on his tea at the sight of the lurid, flowery print. 'You're planning to blind the security?'
Zoe's lips quirked. 'I borrowed it from Kaylee,' she said with a hint of reproof, and slipped the dress on over her head.
'Kaylee... And she advised that you accessorise with guns?' Wash said weakly, watching his wife strap a holster to her thigh. Somehow the dress looked quite different when it was actually on Zoe, what with the... bosoms and the knowing about leather and firearms under the frilly skirt, and oh dear god, Zoe's legs were a lot longer than Kaylee's.
'Picture of a country belle,' Mal said with approval - and against all the evidence - when he saw Zoe in the dress. 'Kaylee, I'm hoping I'm not wrong to say our carriage awaits?'
'Ready and waitin', Cap'n!' Kaylee said, looking as cheery and excited as if Mal and Zoe really were the country couple they were masquerading as, and she was waving them off on their honeymoon instead of fitting them out to engage in criminal activities of the scruple-y variety.
The fact that this crime was shaping up to be more like a honeymoon than anything he and Zoe had gotten so far wasn't an aspect that bothered Wash at all, gorram it.
The job was simple enough, in theory. It wasn't even that scruple-y, as crimes went. Their client wanted them to steal some kind of an ornament from the house of a distant relative. Apparently he had been left it in a will, or should have been, or some such, so technically it could be seen as just moving some property to its rightful place. All right, the current owner was unlikely to share this philanthropic view, but since this wasn't a heist in the usual sense, Mal wasn't anticipating any resistance. All they had to do was drive up to the house, Zoe and Mal playing up the 'yokels in the big city' look for all they were worth, then slip past the minimal security and pocket what they'd come for. It would be easy enough for Wash to keep cruising the local area, playing the part of a hired driver looking for more fares. Simple.
Wash brought the flyer to a halt a few doors down from their mark's house and stepped out to open the door for his passengers like a real sī jī. Mal solicitously took Zoe's arm to help her down, playing the role of countrified newly-wed so convincingly that Wash could hardly credit it. Which was good, Wash reminded himself, being that the plan relied on Mal and Zoe appearing that convincing to the security guards. So he certainly didn't spend the first ten minutes after Mal and Zoe disappeared into the house brooding over Mal's newly-discovered acting ability. Lao tian no; no brooding at all.
Fifteen minutes into waiting and on his fourth circuit of the neighbourhood, questions of marital propriety started to seem fairly insignificant compared to the question of whether he'd actually get to see his wife again. Mal and Zoe had been twice as long as expected, and Wash was finding it increasingly difficult to pretend that he hadn't noticed tourists' attempts to flag him down.
Twenty minutes after they had gone in, Mal and Zoe came pelting out of a side alley, guns drawn, blood streaming down the side of Mal's face. They were in the flyer before Wash knew what was happening, and he wasn't about to start asking questions, given that a burly, mean-looking hundan of a security guard was only a couple of metres behind them. Muttering curses at the flyer's cotton-wool controls, Wash forced something resembling actual power from the engine and sped off down the street, dodging pedestrians, street hawkers and assorted livestock. When they made it back to Serenity he pulled the fastest take-off he'd made since pilot school.
Once they had cleared atmo and shifted to auto-pilot, Wash fixed Zoe with a pointed glare. 'Captain thinks we can do this job easy?'
She had the grace to look slightly embarrassed. 'For a given definition of easy?'
Mal stomped onto the bridge, still holding a cloth to his face where a bullet had grazed it. 'Got the goods, Wash; got out in one piece, thanks to your driving. Once you and Zoe get your share of the payoff, I'm thinking you'll be sharing my definition of easy.'
Wash looked at him incredulously. 'Mal, you were shot at by a pair of burly thugs. In what dictionary does the definition of 'easy' involve getting to practise amateur surgery after the event?'
Mal stared at him, puzzled for a moment, until Wash's pointed look at his cheek - where blood was now seeping through the washcloth - recalled him to his injury. 'This? Ain't nothing but a scratch.'
Hmmmm. Wash raised an eyebrow, but kept his mouth shut. Maybe he'd accept that definition for as long as it was only Mal's blood getting spilled. If it came to Zoe coming home wounded, though, even just a 'scratch', well... it was a definition he'd definitely be revisiting.
Wash suspected that Mal felt a little sheepish about how the job had gone down, because their share of the payoff was considerably larger than he'd been expecting. His suspicions were confirmed when he pushed for a day off planetside, and got it with only a few token comments from Mal about this being the reason he didn't hold with crew members fraternising (Mal's favourite word for a month before they married: he never mentioned his family much, but Wash hoped he didn't have any brothers). Wash used his cut to pay for the nicest lodging house he could find, one with a bath and a halfway decent bed. It was time he and Zoe got an actual honeymoon.
Zoe was maybe feeling the tiniest bit contrite as well, because when they got to the room she didn't make straight for the bath herself, just ran it and motioned for Wash to get in. He stretched out in the water with a sigh. 'Tian ar, that's nice. Did I do something good?'
Zoe ran her fingers through his hair, working soap into a lather. 'You did the job, dear.'
Wash shivered as she rubbed at the back of his neck, admiring the curve of her breast pressed forward against her arm. 'Mal's going to take more jobs like that, isn't he?'
She sat back on her heels, soapy hands resting on the edge of the bath. 'So I figure. It bother you?'
'A little.' Wash looked her in the eye. 'I'm not exactly dancing the wǔ lóng at the thought of more high-speed escapes from gun-toting maniacs.'
'You take care of the high-speed driving: leave the gun-toting maniacs to me.' Zoe's mouth quirked slightly. 'Anyway, husband, I thought you were hoping for a bit of derring-do?'
Wash pretended to consider. 'Well, if I'm always going to get the beautiful women... shiny.'
A wave of water washed up over the edge of the bath as he pulled Zoe forward for a kiss, but they were both laughing too hard to notice.
Chinese glossary
(Very possibly inaccurate, although I do try!)
'Shén me? - I'm sorry
dī liè - inferior quality
sī jī - chauffeur, driver. In my Fireflyverse it has come to mean the specific kind of driver Wash is impersonating: they drive flashy-looking vehicles which tourists can hire, rather in the manner that we might hire a horse and carriage today.
go se - junk
niou-she - bullshit
lǎo lǎo - maternal grandmother
Lao tian - oh god
hundan - bastard
Tian ar - oh god (a bit more positive than lao tian)
wǔ lóng - dragon dance. A dance of celebration.