francisco javier es una (pesadilla) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2013-02-24 15:56:00 |
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Entry tags: | hoban washburne, plot: switch, zoe washburne |
Who: Zoe & Wash (Washburne...)
What: A sexy dress, some drinks, and a few words
Where: Dingy bar in Vegas
When: A few days post-switcheroo
Warnings/Rating: Zoe in a li'l slink.
Tacky, bright lights, casinos, women in costumes with more feathers than a bird, cracked concrete, throngs of hurried, drunken people that threatened to pull the unsuspecting under - none of these things were new to Wash. He had been to both rich Alliance planets, the ones that were clean and prim with real, living hedges dividing the yards, and to the piss-poor rocks on the outer rim that were a lot like this... city. The word that sprang to mind was seedy. But that wasn’t a bad thing. Seedy could be good. The man smiled from his spot on the sidewalk, where his feet seemed to have frozen to the ground, as he stared up at the flashing lights on the sign of a bar. A martini glass was being filled and emptied, over and over, in greens and reds. Shiny. Zoe was inside. Wash felt like a boy again - and not just because he was wearing one of Lin’s (far too small) t-shirts with some picture on it he didn’t recognize (it was a little man with a visor and a rainbow fanning out behind him...?), but because of the way his heart leapt into his throat the thought of seeing his wife. Lin had explained to him how Serenity (the movie) had played out - how he, Wash, had been killed, and how, later, it had been confirmed that Zoe was pregnant, and it was all just a little much to handle. It made everything feel so fragile. With abrupt, hasty steps, Wash pushed into the little bar in Las Vegas on Earth-that-was and squinted in the sudden darkness and smoke, until he found what he was looking for. Bars in all places - all ‘verses, nigh enough - looked the same, save this one had glass in the windows, ‘stead of holograms. That had been cause for admiration, just a speck because glass showed up not just what was inside but how you looked yourself and that was just fine. It weren’t leather and it weren’t tight - the woman she headshared with, she didn’t know how to dress at the best of times given the content of her wardrobe and what looked worn - but it was bright and it had some slink to it, clinging red to her hips. Bars looked the same but they didn’t gorram smell the same; Earth-that-was smelled like sweat and people, hops-alcohol and no dust at all to cling in the back of the throat and make even a temperance type want to drink. She’d swung herself right up onto a stool at the bar, placed two elbows on the bar-top and she’d sat laughing herself at her lost Capt’n and crew right around the time she realized they weren’t going to fall to pieces if they took a break in history. Weren’t nothing wrong with a little downtime - technicalities said if they weren’t flying the ship, they weren’t the crew but she’d never had no mind for technicalities. If Mal said ‘back to it’, that was how it would be but he wasn’t here and he hadn’t found the bar yet, despite his nose for a brawl and a bar. Still, sitting around, it was pretty as a picture, everything old-fangled and the like. She had a glass of something cold and hard enough sitting in front of her and a pleasant burning in her throat and the dress ended higher than most folks thought decent but not a one amongst this crowd batted an eye - unless they were taking a good long look. She had no gun, and that was right disconcerting, nothing heavy and warm on her hip like reassurance but the woman - Olivia, had a driver’s license that looked right enough like her that the bartender didn’t say a thing - hadn’t a piece in the place. She sipped her drink and she let the man trying to idle by her talk his sweet-talk and chatter and Zoe laughed, ripe and warm and head-thrown-back gale because this was Earth-that-was and it was supposed to be legend. There certainly wasn't a thing wrong with a little downtime. Wash had been pushing for some vacation - or, more truthfully, pushing Zoe to ask for some - for what seemed like an eternity. But there was always another job to do, some heist to pull or some Alliance ship to circumvent. Wash wasn't complaining about it. He liked adventure as much as the next man (or woman). But, relaxing with Zoe on a warm planet somewhere with nothing to bother them outside of what drinks they wanted to order - well, he liked that as much as the next man (or woman) too. For now, Earth-that-was would have to do. It was cold and concrete, and the bar smelled like too many people in one room, but it wasn't work, and Wash could appreciate that. His eyes moved from face to face with a strange sort of curiosity. He was fascinated by the fact that he was in the past. But not just the past - in an alternate reality. And if he remembered any Chinese, he would have had a phrase to bandy about about it too. (The only phrase that came to mind was something along the lines of "totes awesome!" and he assumed that was Lin's influence and chose not to succumb to it.) The pilot shouldered through the crowd. It was hot in here. A finger hooked around his collar let a little air in, but not enough. Wash was contemplating his next move when he heard her. He would have known that laugh, the lilt of it, the way her face kind of scrunched up when she did it, anywhere. The man turned on the spot, and followed the sound to its source. Zoe was at the darkly lit bar, elbows on the hard wood, a glass in front of her, wearing something Wash had never seen, but that he thought he could live with - a red number that sat like a second skin and only went down to there. Sweet Mother of Jesus. The man next to her was talking her up. (And Wash couldn't blame him for trying.) He came up to the bar on the other side of his wife and propped his own elbows there on the wood and flagged down the bartender. "I'll have what she's having," he said as he jerked a thumb in Zoe's direction. (Luckily, Wash was old enough now that he wasn't asked for his own ID. He and Lin weren't exactly twins.) "And you can put her drinks on my tab." The would-be paramour on his wife's opposite side gave Wash a long, possessive look and he just smiled in return. His arm wound around Zoe's waist and he planted a kiss on her cheek. "I think you have an admirer, dear." "Reckon I do," Zoe agreed, all warm voice and rich murk of laughter on the brink of being laughed. It felt right good to laugh deep from the belly, nothing set to kill them where they stood or rip ‘em apart, no one dying or half-way to dead and she reckoned there’d be a day, maybe three allowed without the Captain getting twitchy ‘bout it, but the Captain couldn’t do a damn thing. She looked at the man with his drink right snug up against hers like he was thinking about other things getting snug, and she patted his cheek - softly, with the flat of her hand, and she looked long and hard at her husband, a tall gorram drink of water in a desert heat. "Take your time, husband. Ain’t like all of history to catch up on," and she kissed him because he looked like Wash, like a bitty piece of home carried ‘round the Verse. She didn’t know nothing about after, not how things would unfold and not how they’d end but she kissed him like a woman denied a vacation and a good long stretch beyond metal walkways and cargo holds stuffed full of contraband. And when she had to come up for air, arms snaked around his neck and kept there for safe-keeping, in case he decided to go anywhere she didn’t think he ought, she smiled real long and real big, all joy. "What you going to do about it?" The arms around his neck weren't necessary, so to speak, as he was going absolutely nowhere for as long as he could manage it, but Wash wasn't complaining. It had been longer than he cared to remember since he had seen his wife. Or it felt like it. He wasn't yet clear on the timeline or how or why the "doors" worked, but he was as aware as ever of how he felt, and that was, in his opinion, just as important. Zoe was a pleasant weight on his shoulders. Wash took up the foggy glass the bartender placed in front of him, arms reaching around his wife. Liquid the color of bark swirled around inside and he could only shake his head. Of course Zoe would pick something that was more acid than anything else. Her and Mal both had a strange fondness for what was wholly unappealing to everyone else with a bit of sense. Turned a little to the side, he drank - lightly, sipping. He didn't toss his head back to down it. He couldn't. The glass met the bar's surface again, nearly full. "Once I finish this radioactive runoff, I'll get right on doin' somethin' very masculine about it," he replied with a laugh, tightening his grip around his wife's waist and brought her in closer. They were in a bar. There was nothing too untoward about what they were doing. Earth-that-Was didn’t think all that much of a man and a woman getting cosy in a bar and Zoe reckoned they had the right of it, that and the lack of dust. She admired her own skirts and the length of her own leg beneath it - nothing vain mind, but a healthy appreciation for being out of britches and boots, much as they were comfortable, practical kind of wear for running all about the place. Earth-that-Was didn’t have much in the way of bar-room brawling and cargo to shift and it weren’t much for intrusion. It seemed like a real soulless kind of place, all twitchy-bright light but in English rather than Mandarin and concrete that stretched up to the skyline, like an Alliance place gone to seed. Zoe didn’t want to give it much mind, not that they’d be here long. Captain had a job in mind and the cargo was packed away, but Wash’s hands bled heat through the thin jersey of the dress and she smiled, stretch of it on her skin a warm and pleasant kind of thing and she laughed like he’d tugged down the moon for her own special sake. "Ain’t nothing wrong with what I’m drinking," she said and she gave his shoulder a push, rough affection and happy. "You just never learned an appreciation for it." She picked up her own glass - weren’t hard stuff, not really, they’d had worse out there - and she swirled the dregs of it before she downed it, and she looked at the bartender meaningfully until he followed up with another. "Puts hair on your chest." His hair was on end, and she didn’t give a gorram for the shirt he was wearing, fished up off someone else’s floor. Zoe smoothed a hand across his head. "What happened to the Hawaiian?" "Never learned an appreciation for it," Wash echoed incredulously, his eyes holding on his wife as she tipped the glass back and emptied it like it was nothing more than harmless, well-treated water. He smiled and tapped himself on the chest, fingers on the primitive cotton-blend of the t-shirt, both eyebrows peaked. "Just what are you tryin' to say?" The hand on his forehead felt cool and familiar, and he just let it sit there for a moment before opening his eyes again. Wash smiled, reaching his arm around to fetch up the new glass the bartender had just placed on the bar and pulling it away from Zoe's grasp. She was still seated on her stool, and he was standing, leaning against her, one hand on the warm, bare skin of her thigh, just below the hem of her red dress. The other lifted the glass and he, with his eyes squeezed shut, tried to mimic the smooth movement of emptying the glass he'd just witnessed. It wasn't to be. It burnt his throat as it went down. The man replaced the glass and held the newly free hand to his mouth. "Jesus." That wasn't his curse. It was Lin's. But he didn't seem to notice. "Never mind. I'll leave the chest hair to you," said Wash when he could finally speak again. Her own laughter bounced off solid walls and weren’t that the oddest thing, sound from stone and brick and wood, nothing metal at all to warp it something fierce? When River set to hollering, it was sound all around you, the bird ringing with it til someone quieted her and even then the echoes that clung to the metal walls, the ship sailing on through like it was soundless. Here, it was a bigger sound, less thin for being snatched at and Zoe laughed because her man was ridiculous and hers, and she laughed because he couldn’t drink, and because they had time enough to laugh and his bare palm was flat on her thigh like friendly agreement that they were one another’s. (Zoe didn’t think much of ownership, lest it was shared). She picked up that glass with her fingertips, dainty-like, dancer’s own grace to the movement if she said so herself, and she swung it up to her mouth with a slant of her eyes toward the man she’d married, red and gasping like a fish thrown out of water. "Ain’t nothing to it," she said, nonchalance and ease and she finished it because they were getting looked at. "I’m trying to say you look like you’ve been shoppin’ someone else’s things. It makes me wonder what our good doctor is doing, with his predilection for fancy shirts and all." Once again, Wash just watched as Zoe downed her second glass. He'd finally finished spluttering enough to laugh at her, at the look in her eyes that told him he'd been bested (per usual). He liked hearing her laugh and seeing her smile, and if he could coax either one out of her, he felt accomplished for the evening. There was something very satisfying about making a woman famous for hardly cracking so much as a grin throw her head back and laugh. There was a cocky smile on his lips when he plucked the glass from his wife's grasp. He slid it onto the counter. "Show off," muttered the man with a mingling of amusement and admiration, blissfully unaware of the eyes of the other patrons. Wash glanced down at his shirt, at the way it stretched over his chest. "You can't be the only one who enjoys slink in this relationship." Truth be told, the shirt was a little uncomfortable. Wash was used to baggy with room to breathe. This was tight. He plucked at it, smiling at the thought of Simon. "Oh you can enjoy it," she got real reassuring, low voice, that smooth sort of note in it that held all kinds of promises that she wasn’t sure Earth-that-Was had for either of them to make. Weren’t the same as being two strides away from their bunk - the ship was small but it was home in a beneath-the-skin kind of way, every bolt and piece of it Zoe had got good and knowledgeable about. Olivia - the woman who looked too much like her for it to be right comfortable - had a place all big open spaces and a bedroom that looked like it didn’t see much in the way of activity. "Just saying, is all. Don’t look like you’re the same as your other one." What was the word for it? Alter? Head-person? Weren’t the same when they were voices, back of your brain as when you walked on into their world where it was plain as day they were the ones living. The drink burned pleasantly in her belly, warm fuzzy fire she’d be careful about stoking. Vacation from the ship this might be but it was enforced, if Mal decided to whistle, they had to be ready to hop to. Weren’t no arguing, not with Serenity unsafe and not stowed neatly in port like she should be. "You seen head nor tail of the others?" She had a palm laid against his neck and another in his hair, but she flickered into all-business, one minute of hard in all that soft mirth. Weren’t difficult, managing both - just required a hell of a lot of compartmentalizing and a man who didn’t care who wore the britches outside the bedroom. He knew well enough what that tone meant and it did exactly what it was intended to. It warmed him in a way the alcohol couldn't. Wash leaned in closer, though the top of his head was now only just above Zoe's shoulder. The bar stools were tall and they did him no service that way, but he didn't mind so much. Not one thought of Mal or the crew or Serenity was running through his mind, distracting him. That was all gone, locked behind the door. What was here was Zoe and her red dress. Wash pressed another kiss to his wife's warm cheek, listening to her and feeling her words move through her. He accepted the hand on his neck and the one in his hair and let out a slow breath. "No," he replied lazily. "Though my attention has been aimed elsewhere. Have you?" Opening his eyes, the man turned his eyes up to his wife. He saw the shadowy form of Zoe's admirer still sitting behind her, but he ignored him. Loyalty fought a lot of wars with a lot of feelings. Loyalty went deeper, beyond her marriage to the man who stood exactly right in front of her, Earth-that-Was or not. Loyalty won far too many of her own internal wars to provoke a lot of fights and the red dress swished against the top of Zoe’s knees as she slid down from the stool, taller in heels than her own husband, taller than regular ground and boots bought her. "Not a peep, beyond the Capt’n getting mighty twitchy over folks on his ship," she said and she heard the steel bite into her voice, all grave and solemn, like it weren’t a bar but talk over the table in the common space and a job gone near to wrong in a blink. "It ain’t right we’ve heard not a word from none of ‘em," her hand carded through his hair, fond, affectionate but there wasn’t a speck of intent there anymore, save bringing him on side. She’d sleep a might easier with the Capt’n and the rest save somewhere out of harm’s way, and that was without the want to close the bedroom door on trouble. "Jayne and Kaylee know to check in when there’s trouble and the doc and his sister, it’s worrisome they’re out there by their selves. Not heard a spit from Kaylee neither." Zoe frowned; the admirer had been forgotten. There was something soft gone from her, in the tilt of her chin. "Don’t feel right." "No," Wash agreed, standing up straight as Zoe slid off her stool. He released his grip on her and dropped his arms to his sides - a little uncomfortably, as the material from the too tight shirt bit into his skin. He paid it no mind, focused as he was on the change that had just transpired in his wife's demeanor. It was one he was all too familiar with. One he simultaneously despised and was resigned to. But to have it happen now? When they were far away from Mal - from anyone - in a pit of a bar, with her in that dress, doing that thing with the smiling and the laughing? That he just plain despised, no resignation about it. The man's normally smiling face grew more solemn the more words passed through Zoe's lips. He sighed, took one last look at the empty glasses, and set his mouth in a firm line. "It really don't feel right," he finally continued in what was obviously a sarcastic tone as he crossed his arms over his chest. He looked up at his wife. "Trust me, I know a thing or two about not feelin' right." At that present minute she didn’t give a damn whether the dress was clingy and soft or if she’d been walking through the cargo hold after they’d moved cattle, up to her knees in cow shit. Zoe recognized the look on her husband’s face, stubborn set to his jaw like someone had told him how to steer but that was ai-kong suo-yo duh shing-chiou sai-jin wuh duh pi-gu and she wasn’t giving him one inch. She got tall, went stiff and distant the way she knew drove him halfway to madness but was the only way she knew how to remember being soldier first and self second. "Oh really?" her voice got soft, got real pleasant. It was a danger sign, same as any flashing lights or sirens might be, back on the ship. "You want to tell me about it or you want to get hustling before we got no boat to go back to?" It weren’t a question really, same as they never were. Zoe only knew orders, color them any way you liked, they were still orders. She knew him too well. The sudden rigidity of Zoe’s spine and the stubborn, hard look in her dark eyes weren’t lost on Wash. In fact, he’d been expecting them. (Welcome!) They had the same effect on the man they always did. He dug his heels in all the more. If she wanted to pretend to be an unfeeling soldier cyborg that only listened to whatever transmissions sent to her by her captain, that was on her. Wash had feelings and he was going to feel them. He was a human being, actually. Surprise. Though, that said, he wasn’t an entirely stupid human being and the silky tone of his robot wife’s voice gave him a moment’s pause. His lips pressed together and he said nothing. Wash leveled Zoe with his own challenging look. "Really," assured the pilot with a frown. And though he didn’t want to, he broke eye contact and shrugged. Wash held a hand out toward the door. His tone was obviously unhappy. "Lead the way, corporal." |