But I need to start writing again!

for [personal profile] jain

Pairing: Wash/Zoe
Prompt: resistance

The bed was always too small for them.

Zoe had bedded down in a thousand unlikely places, some of them crowded so that the fellow on the left had to wait to breathe out ‘til the fellow on the right was breathing in. Her quarters were so much larger by comparison that she’d no cause to feel boxed in. Even when Wash joined her (near to jumping up and down with the thrill of it, grinning so hard she could feel the sun’s heat on her skin even in deep space), by all sense she should’ve felt as free to move as any settler on the outer planets.

She’d slept inches from dying men. She’d slept in the same tents with men who’d have offered her insult if they could’ve gotten away with it, if they hadn’t feared her too much to leave her alive after and Mal too much to kill her. She’d slept with bombs going off like a thunderstorm full-out.

None of that had been as hard as falling asleep next to Wash. He was just so close, even after she’d carefully removed his hand from her hip and put it across his chest. Wash slept like a soldier while Zoe twitched and turned and scrunched herself to the very edge. Of a sudden, she’d wanted a bed like Inara had, all pillows and billowing curtains. Bed like that, you didn’t have to worry about rubbing elbows if you didn’t plan to do so.

Zoe was good at getting used to things, though, and after a while she’d mostly lost the sense of compression. Wash always did have a way of sliding around her, reconfiguring so that things that seemed hard turned easy as gravity. The bed still gave her a twitch now and then, when matters on the ship weren’t right, but Wash’s hand on her hip was a good way to forget all that. She’d even started to think about how they might hang a cradle in the corner. There’d still be plenty of room to move, if they moved careful.

Wash, for certain, had never felt cramped, crowing about the fine accommodations he had access to as the mate of the first mate. (She’d glared when he’d said so, of course, but he’d known enough by then to treat it as no more than an invitation to a kiss.)

The day he finally got rid of the little hammock Mal had assigned him, he’d capered around like the king of the world. Zoe her own self thought that the day he’d shaved off his mustache was a mite more important in the history of them, but she let him have his little victories.

Some days Zoe wondered if the bed would ever get small enough to sleep in again.
kass: Zoe is made of awesome. (zoe)

From: [personal profile] kass


Zoe was good at getting used to things, though, and after a while she’d mostly lost the sense of compression. Wash always did have a way of sliding around her, reconfiguring so that things that seemed hard turned easy as gravity. The bed still gave her a twitch now and then, when matters on the ship weren’t right, but Wash’s hand on her hip was a good way to forget all that. She’d even started to think about how they might hang a cradle in the corner. There’d still be plenty of room to move, if they moved careful.

Oh! and oh, that last line. Oh, Zoe. Oh, Wash.
meri_oddities: default - Woman looking out a window (Default)

From: [personal profile] meri_oddities


You had the Zoe feel down perfectly. And man, that last line was a killer. *snif*
copracat: Zoe nuzzling Wash's cheek with text 'OTP' (wash)

From: [personal profile] copracat


Aaargh! I was feeling so happy about the story. It was so very Wash and Zoe and then you made me cry with the last line.

I don't think I'm every going to get over it.
jain: (firefly)

From: [personal profile] jain


Oh, God. This whole story is an amazing blend of perfect characterization and romance and touches of humor and subtle moments of sadness (pretty much everything about the war, and Zoe thinking about making room for a cradle), and then the last line just gutted me. Such a painful yet lovely look at Zoe's and Wash's relationship. Thank you!
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