The Ladies Love Wash, and Wash Loves the Ladies
His best friend on the ship (well, okay, his best friend is Zoe, but otherwise) is Kaylee. Has been since a few days after she came on board, when he'd wandered into a kitchen he'd expected to find deserted to see her sitting there by her lonesome, looking miserable.
"Didn't expect to see anyone awake, this hour," he says, making up his usual tea to get him through another late-night bit of piloting. "Can't sleep?"
"Yeah. I guess it's just...it's awful quiet up here, ain't it? Kinda missin' my folks 'n my sisters, I suppose."
"Ah. Now, me, I was an only child. Gave me one hell of an imagination, though. Which was a good thing, since I had to imagine the stars. And the sky. And anything more than a few hundred yards up, actually. Pollution," he explains, off her what-the-hell-is-he-talking-about look. He gets that look a lot. "You wanna see how I keep myself company, stuck sitting here while Captain and Zoe go out and, you know, do crime?"
He takes her up to the bridge then, shows her his dinosaur figures, tells her their stories, and she's laughing so hard in the end she complains her stomach's gonna ache for days.
After their next stop, a new dinosaur mysteriously joins the others. There's more after that, and bits of scenery too, till he's got enough to lay out epic battles in his downtime. More often than not she's got her own work to get done, but every once in a while, she'll come up and sit with him, listen to his new tales and laugh till she cries.
She's his partner, too, in the same way that Mal and Zoe make a pair. Takes both of them to get Serenity performing at her peak; pilot and engineer, two halves of a scale, balancing the ship between them. So it helps that they're both full of determination not to let the other one down, and if nobody else ever really gets how much of Serenity's smooth flying isn't exactly an inherent characteristic of the firefly class, it doesn't so much matter when he's got her in the engine room at his back, and she's got him putting all her hard work into play up front.
She appreciates him, and he likes that.
He's already married to Zoe by the time Inara comes on board, so even though she's the most beautiful woman he's ever seen (well, okay, the most beautiful except for Zoe), he's way too much in the honeymoon zone to even think about looking at her the way pretty much every other man does.
Not that Mal means to look at her the way he does, Wash is pretty sure – cause it's not like Mal ever does much of anything that even hints at revealing a weakness if he can help it – but he doesn't think he's imagining the way Inara's warmer and softer somehow when she's talking to him than she is with Mal.
Might help that all he wants to talk about in those days is Zoe, anyhow, and Inara's nothing if not helpful when it comes to his many dilemmas on that subject, like what kind of gifts to get her, and how to not go insane with worry while she's off getting herself shot at for money. If Inara happens to be around when they're out on the job, she brings tea up to the bridge and they sit and discuss the finer points of shuttle flying and maintenance, or the delicate arts of marriage, until the com crackles to life and the voice on the other end lets Wash know he can swallow his heart again, for this job at least. The more time that goes by, he suspects Inara's doing some swallowing of her own at that point, but he never comments on it, figuring she'll bring it up on her own if and when she wants.
They never demand anything of each other, and he likes that.
River's the smartest woman he's ever met (well, okay, smartest except for – actually, he's pretty sure River is smarter than Zoe, but he isn't about to admit that out loud), even if she does remind him more of a kid than a woman, most days.
She's also one of the creepiest people he's ever met, but he tries not to let that bother him. Not as though she can do much about it, after all.
He thinks maybe she can sense that, cause she spends a lot of time coming up behind him on the bridge with her sneaky little silent feet, scaring the crap out of him. Then again, maybe she just likes his dinosaurs, or Serenity's controls, or the color of his hair, since she seems fascinated by all three, at varying times.
"I like it here," she says one day, surprising him, cause she doesn't usually talk, and when she does it doesn't tend to have that much clarity. "All full of love and happiness."
"The bridge is?" he asks, looking around at the grit that never does seem to come off the controls, the cracked and patched up seat underneath him. "Are you absolutely sure?"
"Yes," she says, twirling back and forth in the co-pilot's chair, making him dizzy just to watch her. "You love her, all the metal and switches. You dance with her." Her hands move around in the air, doing a fairly credible impersonation of flight. "And you love everyone on board."
"Hey, hey, hey," he says, holding up a hand in protest, because this cannot be allowed to stand, "I do not love Jayne. No way."
"Everyone else then," she says, and smiles at him, looking sweet and pretty and safe for that moment. "Even me. Open mind, great heart."
He doesn't know what to say to that, exactly, but he realizes he does kinda love her; not like a sister, exactly, but maybe like the highly skittish and dangerous niece he never had.
He teaches her lots of things, in the long hours when she can't sleep and there's nobody else awake; everything from the basics of navigation to the art of shadow puppets, and she never laughs, but throws her whole heart into every lesson for as long as her mind lasts.
She takes him very seriously, and he likes that.
Zoe is the best thing that's ever happened to him, or ever will (yes, even better than learning to fly), and he's known that since the first time he saw her. Call it a cliché, but he fell in love at first sight twice that day, first with the ship and then with her first mate.
It isn't that they get along perfectly – hell, they'd had a fight during their wedding, right there in front of the preacher man, owing to Zoe's need to wait til Mal got his grouchy ass there – but to his mind, that just adds a little spice. Not as though he's ever been the sort to like life bland; wouldn't have been likely to take up flying if he were.
Nope, the level of spice they've got going on is mostly just right, especially down in their bunk. Or up on the bridge, or wherever else the urge takes them and there's the faintest hope of privacy, for that matter.
Of course, some days he's still surprised she ever married him, like those times he catches her in action and remembers just how much of a warrior woman she really is.
"It was the mustache, wasn't it?" he asks one night, after he's watched her shoot down three guys, saving Mal's ass and their cargo in the process. "That made me irresistible to you, I mean."
"Oh yeah," she says, and snorts. He likes that too, that she always laughs at his jokes, even if he's pretty sure that sometimes it's pity laughter. "Ain't nothing I like more'n a man with a big old fuzzy caterpillar perched on his lip."
"I could always grow it back, if you want," he offers, dodging her halfhearted smack. She's so damn beautiful lying there next to him, so smart and capable and just plain perfect, it sorta makes his heart ache. "Seriously though," he says. "What was it?"
She watches him, and he's gotta say, he likes what he sees reflected in her eyes, in the little grin tugging at the edges of her lips. "Just something about you, I guess. You weren't like any other man I'd ever known, right from the start. Didn't try to impress me or make yourself seem bigger than me. You just...sat there and tried to charm me."
"You bet I did," he says. "Charmed the pants right off you." And with that, he's gotta vanish under their blankets, find the proof of that statement.
She loves him, and he loves that.