Title: The Sounds Of Space
Author: Vanilla Baby
Rating: PG
Characters: Wash. Minor Zoe.
Pairing: Slight Wash/Zoe
Spoilers/Timeline: Pre-BDM. Could be pre-series, or not. I mean it just depends on where you feel like putting it.
Disclaimer: Oh my god. I wish Firefly was mine. I wish I was as smart as Joss. Alas, I just revel in his brilliance, and borrow his awesomeness to try and make myself more awesome. In short: His not mine
Summary: Wash sits alone on the bridge and listens to his life pass him by.
Author's Note: Trying to make myself finish the stories I've started (taking Joss' advice). Trying to work around some of the ideas that I didn't really like, and am working towards making them better. This is my first time writing Wash in what I think his voice sounds like. I'm trying, but as I write, I gather that his voice is second to River is difficulty. So read, review. Concrit is love.
Click. Click. Clack. Fwwwit! (That last sound is only for the switch that regulates the starboard belt fan for the auto booster. Third switch in from the left, after hitting aa58-shift-q on the keyboard. It's second nature now.) Those are only a few of the noises the switches on the bridge make, and if he's lucky, those aren't the only voices he'll hear tonight.
Sure, he's gotten used to the "wheeeeee-fffsssstttt" the yoke makes as it's transitioned from auto-pilot to Wash-pilot, and the "beep bop boopy bee-boop" the cortex makes when he's surfing it, but none of the robotic noises really ever fill the void.
Then there are the dino voices, and those he is well aware he provides himself. So those voices, although somewhat foreign to his ears, never really offer any relief from the monotony of an eventless trip. Besides, the dino adventures are few and far between, and are more of a visual than oral pleasure.
Oral pleasure, he laughs, and thinks, and remembers ("my wife" he sighs). Then, he thinks better. "We'd veer off course and crash into a meteor, without me ever noticing…But then again….my wife….".
"Ship," he remembers. Piloting the ship, being the master of the ship. Must remember the crew, the ship, and all things about around and according to the ship. All systems are corrected, and all wires correctly connected to the…places where the wires go.
Not that he often forgets Serenity. She is his home, and his second wife. He reckons at times he spends more time navigating her controls than Zoë's. He suspects his wife does not mind.
He suspects a lot of things; he suspects that someday he will get to take that honeymoon Mal had promised him more than two years ago. He suspects that his chair is the most comfortable in the verse (he also suspects the alterations he made to said chair once signing aboard the rogue vessel account for most of that). Glancing down to the worn fabric on his knees, he suspects he needs to buy a new flight suit, and after going through a quick mental rundown of last job's payment, he suspects he can not afford one.
"Wash!" the crackle from the comm.-unit brings him back to full consciousness. "Dear, around what time should I be expecting your presence. I require your body for my sleeping" a brief pause, and a change of tone. "I miss you".
"My wife…" he thinks one more time as he briefly sinks deeper into his chair. Bliss. Happiness. An onslaught of exhaustion. A sudden discomfort of his body in his very old and worn flight suit.
His right hand unlatches the com-unit (crick!), and his hand presses the 8th button in and 6th one down on the left console ("chihh-chee!") He doesn't even need to look. It's second nature now.
"Soon enough, missus wife-lady. Just "Click", putting "Click!" the ship "clack!" into autopilot "fffffsssssssstttttttt wwwwwhhhhhhheeeeeeee…shoom". Be down in a bit".
"'Bout damn time." Crackle. Silence.
He does a double check on the clikkity-clakkity's, and the shwoomp-bloop-bleeping buttons…and then a triple check to be safe. Then a twice over the flight-plan in his head, quadruple checking the math. Enough fuel, enough power, enough number of compression coils…
Then the ship goes back to making usual shippy noise. Wash-less piloting. Wash-less control. That's when he can finally relinquish the small kingdom of worries he carries on his back every day; the worries no one else knows about. Who carries the burden of fuel-expense? Who bears the brunt of plotting a course that doesn't end with the ship parked on a meteor...as a fiery pancake? Who is responsible for keeping the crew safe the 95% of time they are not on a mission? That's right, he is, and he knows it. Wash does not leave the ship to auxiliary function without questioning that responsibility several times before he decides to relinquish it for the night.
The sound of his wife's voice, though, is enough to keep him from questioning a fifth time.
He resolves to go to bed