Origin of the Remix: This story takes place post-Big Damn Movie, and will follow the overall plot arc of "You Hold" by inalasahl (at compromisingpositions dot net), and its rewrite "and When You Can't Crawl" by Lyrastar (on our own fanfiction dot net). Their overall plot arc is remixed here with their permission, and thanks from me. Edit: both authors have now given permission. :-D

Author's Note: This story is an over-arching porn with plot, about life going on after the movie, specifically the lives in this particular 'verse that we care about most. For now, the featured characters are listed as Mal and Zoe because they'll be the big two in the early portion. If I manage to keep going awhile (and I really plan to, I'm in love with this story), everyone else will get the screen time they deserve.

Grand, High Spoilerish Pairing List for the Paranoid and Judgmental, skip if you prefer surprises:
These fully canon relationships will be maintained: Zoe/Wash, Kaylee/Simon, awkward Mal/Inara angst. Edit: also Jayne/Vera.
These vaguely canon-compatible pairings will occur in some form, with supporting context to make it all plausible: Mal/Zoe, Mal/Zoe/Wash, Jayne/River/Vera, Book/Inara. (I don't believe in leaving folks lonely out in the black.)


After the burial, Zoe was silent. Sure, sounds came out of her, 'yessirs' and 'nosirs' and boot clicks in the corridors. She sounded like herself, if you weren't paying attention. The trouble was that Mal was paying attention. The pauses between the sounds spoke louder than the noises themselves. He sometimes imagined that he could actually hear the emptiness rattling around inside her. Wash's chatter had completed her, and his death left a cavern behind.

One day, the silence got so loud that Mal heard it clear across Serenity. He was in the engine room, just watching Kaylee at work in hopes of bottling a little of her sunlight for himself, when he heard it. Sure, the thrumming of the ship in his ears had not really changed, but he knew. He up and made for their bunk, half expecting to find her dead down there. He wasn't sure whether to be relieved or terrified at what he saw instead.

There she was, sitting in the middle of their big bed and looking like a damn goddess, her shorn hair strewn everywhere. The blade was still in her hand. Mal snatched the knife and tossed it away.

After that, it was all he could do to reach for her and not the fallen tresses. It was a struggle to grab her shoulder and not run his fingers through the centimeters that remained. She froze at his touch but the tears did not fall. Mal sat beside her on the bed and pulled her top half into his lap, and tried not to dwell on how her ribs were poking him.

It was a little death, hacking away her hair like this. Mal had seen it before, both in the war and after. It was a way of hanging on and giving up in the same gesture, and it turned his stomach.

Years ago, Mal had watched Zoe the soldier break. He had heard her wail in fury and despair amid the gunfire. He had seen her punch her futile rage into sandbags. He had done it himself. The war had shattered something in both of them, and they had kept on going because they were in it together-- but this? This was something new. Zoe the wife and lover was broken now, in places Mal couldn't reach.

"Zoe," he whispered, and it was like she couldn't hear him. She just laid there like he had never spoken. "Zoe," he said again, "Oh, Zoe." He finally gave in and ran his hands through what was left of her hair, and felt something give. When he stroked her face he touched tears. Even though it destroyed something inside him to watch her silently weeping, he didn't let on. He just kept petting her face, her jaw, her neck. He massaged her temples and stroked her eyelids and prayed to the god who had forgotten them that she would be all right.

The sobs finally subsided, only to be replaced by shivering. Mal laid them both down properly and pulled a quilt over top, and if he kissed her forehead as she shook in the crook of his arm he didn't dwell on it. He couldn't leave her alone like this, not after the stunt she had pulled, and there was nothing in the 'verse he could say that would help. He tried to sleep, but her silence preyed on him and cloyed at him and tugged his eyes open. If he couldn't neither speak nor sleep, Mal wasn't sure what was left... until he heard it.

One of his fingers had been tracing her collarbones, while paying them about as much mind as the ceiling grates he was staring at, when he heard her breathing hitch. It was not a hiccup of sorrow or a gulp of pain. It was the old-fashioned gasp of a woman being touched by a man, and it unhinged something in Mal to hear it from Zoe. Technically he'd heard it before through thin bulkeds, but it felt new and painfully normal for her to do it now, for him.

Holding his own breath, he went on stroking her throat, and was shocked and relieved to hear it again. It was just a little intake of breath, but it was real and it sounded like Zoe, and he couldn't help but value it. So he kept petting her, and she kept breathing shakily, but not from pain.

He didn't rightly know what he was doing, though he suspected that if he stopped and thought on the matter he'd be wracked with guilt-- but this wasn't a scholarly matter, and datapads on philosophy couldn't know a thing about right and wrong out on the rim. This was Zoe in his arms, his first mate and his best friend, sounding close to whole for the first time in weeks, and at his hands. He let himself dwell on kissing her forehead this time.

Mal gave all his attention to Zoe's breathing, even as his hands roamed across her body. It was like he had never touched a woman before and his only cues were her hiccups and sighs. When a few fingers brushed her face, she leaned into his hand and nuzzled it. His other hand brushed her spine and she pressed up into the touch. Suddenly she was writhing in his arms, and they were both breathing harder than they would in a firefight, and then her hands found his chest. Calloused fingers groped at Mal's ribs and stomach through his shirt. She tugged hard at his hips and flipped him on top of her.

"Zoe," he whispered, without knowing whether he was warning her or encouraging her. Either way, she cut him off by smashing her lips into his.

Mal's fingers tangled into Zoe's roughly cropped hair, and her fingers ran up to his collar and began fussing at his buttons. Clothing was discarded with military precision, and there was an obvious moment to pause as they lay sprawled side by side in the dark, with nothing but stale air between them. The pause stretched and warped till it started to feel like space. The emptiness was just big enough for Wash's memory to crawl in between them, and Zoe started shaking again.

"Yeh soo," Mal muttered, and the words were heavy with awkward feelings. Palms up like he was trying not to spook a horse, he reached for her. She didn't stop him, and so flesh met flesh in their big bed after all. Zoe kept shaking, and Mal kept pretending she was a nervous steed. He tried to soothe her by speaking nonsense in a gentle voice, and if it didn't really work it it at least knocked her out after awhile. This left a wide-awake Mal tangled up in warm and wiry limbs, with no recourse but to contemplate what little he remembered of datapads on philosophy.