Disclaimer: Joss Whedon owns Firefly and its characters; I'm not in it for the money, but for my own personal gratification. I'm selfish that way.
GETTIN' A FEEL
Wash whistled happily as he adjusted a screw in the underside of the navigational console. The little sucker was resisting his screwdriver with all its might, but he was Wash—pilot extraordinaire, pretty darn good mechanic, and a hit with the ladies! No miserable little screw could beat that. Aha! Gotcha! He grinned and, after a moment's consideration, stuck his tongue out at the conquered part. The plastic dinosaurs he'd unpacked from his duffel bag looked impressed, and he gave them a thumbs-up before returning his attention to the search for loose screws.
This was shaping up to be a real fine day. He hadn't expected to break his long unemployment streak at the spaceport; he was just going there to get a drink when he heard Mal Reynolds asking about a pilot. He hadn't even hoped to land himself a fixer-upper, a boat with real potential but in need of enough repairs that he could make it his own on the captain's budget. He sure as hell hadn't planned to meet quite possibly the most attractive woman he'd ever seen, but look how things were turning out!
Zoe. Nice name, easy to spell. A stressed syllable followed by an unstressed syllable—that was an iamb, right? Maybe some other kind of foot or whatever they called it. Wash never paid much attention in English when the teacher talked about poetry. His own tastes veered toward the mechanical rather than the literary, and he'd never needed it to get a girl before, though they were supposed to be real into that kind of thing.
Zoe, though, didn't really look like the type who could be won over by an impressive knowledge of poetic feet and a nice smile. She was—hell, she was like a superhero in some lame cartoon vid. Tall, muscular, carrying around a gun she obviously knew how to use, she was like the Ultimate Soldier. But much hotter. Soon as Captain Reynolds had walked him on the boat, Zoe'd patted him down for weapons. His chest sort of hurt from where she'd poked at him, but other parts of his anatomy remembered the experience more pleasantly. She was tough and strong and wasn't real big on smiling, far as Wash could tell. But oh how her backside moved when she walked—marched, really—alongside Reynolds, looking like she'd as soon shoot Wash as look at him. The mere thought of Zoe's backside was enough to make it a good day, not even counting the new job and the new ship.
"You just about done in there?"
Wash's head jerked up, meeting the console with a solid thunk. Swallowing a curse, he scooted back out and stood, surreptitiously wiping his greasy hands on his shirt. "Just about. What's up?"
"Captain wants everyone down in the cargo bay. Got a new job. Soon as Bester fixes the engine, we're in the sky." She gave the dinosaurs an unbelieving look, which Wash chose to ignore.
"Shiny." He suddenly felt the need for something to do with his hands, so he brought one up to scratch at his mustache. "Nice ship you got here. Think we're gonna be able to do some cool stuff with it once we got some new parts and we've done a little work." Gauging her reaction and finding it coolly neutral, he added, "What are you calling it?"
"Serenity," she said, pressing her lips together. Oh. Those were nice lips.
"Serenity, huh?" he said, grasping for something to talk about. "Like the battle? Or like, uh, peace and tranquility?"
Zoe gave him an appraising look, and Wash had the uncomfortable feeling that he was coming up short. "The battle," she said tersely, and she turned to leave.
Without even knowing why he said it, Wash asked, "You folks Independents?"
Slowly, she turned around, fixing him with another of those measuring glances. "Yeah. Any reason in particular you want to know?"
He shrugged. What the hell were you thinking, bringing up politics! he berated himself. Out loud, he said, "Just curious. Wasn't on either side myself, y'know. I just went with whoever paid me."
Zoe looked at him like he was some kind of insect with lots of hairy legs and seventy-six eyes, and Wash wished he'd just kept his mouth shut. "That so?" she said, her voice betraying just the tiniest bit of anger.
"Yeah." Eager to change the subject, he smoothed his somewhat bristling mustache and grinned brightly at Zoe. "So, job, yeah? What kind of job?"
Ignoring his question, Zoe stepped in and grabbed the front of his shirt. Caught somewhere between fear (She's gonna kill me!), irritation (This is my favorite shirt!), and excitement (She's touching me!), Wash gave her what he hoped was a placating smile and tried to remove her hands.
She was having none of it. "Let's get a couple of points straight right here and now. I don't trust you. You give me a bad feeling, and frankly I'd just as soon we tossed you off the boat from atmo. Captain says we need a pilot, so we hired you. But you stay the hell out of my way. I know fifty-five ways to kill a man with my bare hands, and I would be just fine with demonstrating them all on you. You betray us to the feds, you talk too loud, you fly the ship too fast, you ogle my backside again, there won't be enough of you left to bury. Dong ma?"
He pulled again at her hands, and this time she let him. Brushing off the front of his shirt, he offered her a trembling grin. Ooh. She's serious, ain't she? "Whoo-ee. Crazy ship. How much you paying me again? Whew!"
"You got me?" she asked, looking at him through narrowed eyes.
"Sure. I breathe the wrong way, you'll shove my head up my ass and throw me out the air lock. I think I got it." Running his hands through his hair, he took a deep breath, trying to regain his composure. "Just between you and me, though, tossin' me off the boat from atmo isn't the best idea. I get caught in the engines, you folks are gonna have a hell of a time scraping me out. You know how hard it is to get guts off your thrusters? Man, you gotta get out there with a toothbrush and a spray can of industrial strength cleanser. Takes a long time, 'specially if it starts getting crusty."
Zoe stood there a moment, just staring at him. Nice going, he thought. Now she probably thinks you're insane. She met his eyes for a moment, and Wash couldn't be a hundred percent sure, but it sure looked like a smile twitching at the corner of her lips. The moment passed, and she shook her head, all business again. "Captain's waiting," she said, striding confidently out of the bridge. Wash stood, dumbstruck.
Had she actually smiled at him, or was it just his panic-stricken brain making stuff up? Given Zoe's attitude towards him so far, Wash was leaning towards the latter. But if she had smiled at him…and she hadn't kicked the crap out of him…maybe there was hope! If she didn't kill him, maybe he'd have a chance with her. He breathed in and out a few times and straightened his collar. "What a woman," he muttered to himself. "Now, I just gotta concentrate on the not getting killed part," He grabbed a plastic dinosaur off the floor and shoved it in his pocket for moral support as he walked out towards the cargo bay.