Wash had a feeling that the first mate of the Firefly he'd been hired to pilot didn't like him. It was just a hunch, but she was always there, dressed like a soldier, watching him with those dark, hard eyes.
Currently, she was glaring at him from the hatchway as he unpacked his dinosaur box. He'd been on a lot of ships over the years, and these guys had been his good luck charm since the beginning. …he could feel her eyes boring into the back of his head. He turned to face her, wondering in the small rational part of his brain if this was the impulse that would finally get him shot. But Wash had never been much for caution.
"Do you ever smile?" He asked, leaning back in his chair and attempting to adopt an air of nonchalance. Stony silence. Wash figured that meant no.
"It's the moustache, isn't it?" He said, trying another tactic.
"If I say yes, will you get off this ship?" She countered, her voice as warm as an iceberg.
"That's for your captain to decide." Wash replied. "I take it you didn't agree with him hiring me?"
"In all the years I've known Captain Reynolds, I've never questioned a single decision of his…until now."
This could not be good. This had bad written all over it. Somehow, Wash had made an enemy of a career soldier who could easily kill him with her pinkie. Fantastic.
She stood now, and moved to tower over him, her hand on resting meaningfully on the holster of her gun. "Look." She ordered. "Betray us, and I will fong you until your insides are out, your outsides are in, your entrails will become your extrails. I will rip-" she broke off and made a descriptive gesture with her hands. "All the p-" She cracked her knuckles. "Pain." She concluded. "Lots and lots of pain." She turned and stalked off the bridge. Wash let the breath he had been unconsciously holding. He worriedly looked over at his triceratops. "Irving, I think we're in trouble."
It had to be about six weeks later the first time Zoë actually used Wash's name. "Sir, will you please pass the tomatoes?" She asked, gesturing with a chopstick at the bowl next to Wash.
"I most certainly will not!" Mal said indignantly around a mouthful of pickled cabbage. "Them's too far. Play nice and ask Wash."
Zoë heaved a sigh that would have made the martyrs proud. Mal had given her an order, no matter how indirect. She looked over at Wash. "Pass the tomatoes…" She hesitated. "…Wash." She spit his name out like it was poison.
Wordlessly, Wash handed over the tomatoes. Mal helped himself to some more cabbage and smiled into his plate.
Three weeks later, Mal was out in the shuttle, trying to work out a job on Whitefall. He'd taken the new mechanic, Kaylee out with him to barter for a part she needed. Wash enjoyed having Kaylee around, she was friendly and made the ship slightly more livable. He enjoyed their conversations about Serenity (the ship and the crew).
Involved in a complex scenario involving a tyrannosaurus and a palm tree, Wash didn't hear Zoë until she leaned up against the storage locker right behind him. Startled, Wash fought the reflex to scream like a little girl.
"Where'd you learn to fly?" She asked, her voice as close to normal conversational tone as Wash had ever heard it. "Flight school? 'Cause them's some right fancy moves." Wash could only assume she was referring to a week ago, when he managed to scrape off a pursuing Reaver on a convenient asteroid.
Wash gave a nervous little laugh. "I lasted two and a half months in flight school on Ariel. They kicked me out for 'endangering' the instructor." He tried to relax, as it appeared she wasn't going to fong him…whatever that meant. "Mine uncle taught me. He ran a freighter that made the rounds from the Central Planets to the border territories twice a month."
Zoë smiled then, a sort of wicked half smile that left Wash feeling terrified and slightly giddy. "I says to the Captain 'That ain't no Alliance training.'" She looked over at him. "Guess I was right."
Wash never asked about the jobs they were getting, but he could tell by the amount of shooting that not all of them were legal. He'd almost become used to the sound of gunfire, and had figured out that it usually meant they needed to make a quick getaway.
When he heard the sound of bullets today, he prepped Serenity for takeoff, warned Kaylee down in the engine room, and trotted down to the cargo bay to make sure everything was fastened down. He expected to see the usual, a few dead or wounded bad guys, and Mal and Zoë taking care of the grisly details. What he didn't expect was Zoë, unconscious, slumped over the hood of the mule, bleeding from a wound in her torso, and Mal nowhere to be seen.
"Don't Panic, Don't Panic!" Wash told himself, as he rushed over and hoisted the unconscious Zoë into a fireman's carry. She was surprisingly light, Wash found, as he staggered his way back towards the medical bay. He ran through his rudimentary first aid checklist: Keep her breathing, stop the bleeding. He arrived at the bay and set her down on the table, surveying the damage. In order to stop the bleeding, he needed unobstructed access to the wound.
Unfortunately, Zoë woke up just as Wash had finished removing her shirt. A swift uppercut to his jaw had him sprawling on the floor.
"I knew I shouldn't trust you!" She shouted down at him, drawing her gun and fumbling for ammunition.
"You damn crazy Amazon, look at your stomach!" Wash shouted back, holding a hand to his jaw. Zoë glanced down at her stomach, over to Wash, and back down to her stomach. "You got gutshot, I was tryin' to stop the bleedin'." He explained, waiting for his racing heart to slow down. "Just tryin' to help." Zoë stared at him a moment longer, then set her gun aside.
"Get me a bandage."
By the time Mal returned, sweaty and swearing, from chasing down the buyers who had tried to run without paying, Zoë was bandaged and resting as comfortably as could be expected. Mal thought the story was great.
"You're powerful lucky, Wash." Mal told him. "Zoë usually shoots first and asks questions later."
"Tell that to my jaw." Wash replied, lifting the icepack to show the captain the large bruise blossoming across his face. "I think next time, I'll make Kaylee do the doctorin'."
When Zoë was up and around again, Wash pointed to his swollen jaw and asked "Is this what you call fonging?" Zoë smiled again, a predatory smile that made Wash's pulse do strange things. "No. But come closer, and I'll show you."
"What a story we'll have to tell our grandbabies." Zoë said one night, pulling off the last of her sweat-soaked clothes and sliding into bed next to her husband. Wash poked at the tiny scar on her belly as he asked. "The part where you thought I was an Alliance spy, or the part where you just about shot me in the face?"
Zoë laughed. "The part where I fell in love with a man who still plays with dinosaurs."
Wash propped himself upon one elbow. "What's wrong with my dinosaurs?" He asked, feigning hurt.
Zoë smiled. "Baby, you gotta admit, they are a mite strange." She burst into laughter. "But not nearly as bad as that gorram moustache!"