rivendellrose | firefly fic

Fandom: Firefly
Title: "Checking the Damage"
Characters: Zoe and Wash
Prompt:

100_women - "Skin"
Summary and Warnings: An evening ritual takes on new significance. Set during the series, no movie spoilers.
Rating: About PG-13.
Disclaimer: Joss owns them, I just play with his toys. No money involved, no intended infringement.

They have a little ritual of sorts - after every job, Wash reacquaints himself with his wife’s body. Sometimes there’s frenzied rutting before, sometimes it’s a slow, gentle process that leads up to making love, a way of comforting and reassuring each other. But always, at some point in the hours after Zoe returns, they find the time.

First the boots come off, then socks, vest if she’s wearing it, tunic, and trousers. She smiles and remembers the first time they slept together, and the way he’d been more than a little perplexed by the buckles at the side of her leather vest, then stymied even further by her armor. He hadn’t known about it back then. Now he touches it almost as reverently as her skin, and she watches his eyes trace every dent. His feelings are always right there on the surface, a constant wonder to Zoe, who has only recently learned to let her professional walls fall down more than on occasion.

Once it’s been properly appreciated, Wash wastes little time in setting the armor aside. Here in their bunk, it’s just another shield Zoe doesn’t need, and an unwanted barrier between them.

When all the layers have been peeled away and tossed aside, a strangely intent expression passes over Wash’s face. It never fails - the same puckering between his brows, the same slightly frowning quirk to his lips as his fingers follow his eyes over her bared skin. The first time it happened, she remembers laughing, surprised and uncomfortable with the way he seemed to be examining every inch of her.

”Looking for something specific, pilot?”

He brushed his fingers over a fist-sized new bruise that was rising on her ribs, where a customer’s thug had lodged his complaint against Mal and Zoe’s refusal to accept less than the agreed-upon cash. “This one’s new.”

“It’s nothing. There’s always a new one. That’s part of the job description, out here.” She shifted awkwardly under his solemn attention. “If this is a problem for you, we can always call it off.”

“It’s not nothing. But it’s not a problem, either.” He bent his head and kissed the bruise tenderly, warm breath caressing tender skin before he slid up and brushed his thumb over her lips and pressed another kiss to her forehead. “Just checking the damage.”

Zoe has had more bruises, carries more scars than she cares to notice or recall, and most of her lovers before Wash had accepted them without a moment’s concern. It’s only one way in which Wash is different from the rest, but it was the first thing that made her wonder if he wasn’t maybe worth more attention than a few nights of passion would warrant. Looking back, she sees it as the first step in realizing that she didn’t ever want to come back from a job without Wash there to care about those stupid little bruises. If it doesn’t mean a trip to the infirmary, Zoe doesn’t think about it. For Wash, even the slightest injury to Zoe’s body is a cause for reflection and concern, and she’s found that she likes that.

Wash, for his part, has always been pretty much smooth and unmarked. He tried at first to point out scars, relics of childhood mischief or flight school horseplay, but found that they were so minimal as to be more or less invisible to anybody but him, particularly on his strikingly pale skin. Zoe teases him sometimes that they only show when he’s flushed, turning his sun-deprived skin patchy pink all over, and every now and then he’ll make her laugh by making up absurdly over-dramatic stories about the tiny scratches that show up white and shiny against skin brightened by heightened capillary flow.

Zoe doesn’t expect a lot of stories tonight, although there might well be jokes. Wash makes a habit of using humor to mask his more serious thoughts, she knows, and tonight he looks pretty damned serious as he settles awkwardly on their bed. She scoots over to him and gently unbuttons his shirt. He looks almost confused as she pushes the fabric away from his shoulders.

“Zo, I’m not really...”

“Baby.” She stops him with a glance, forcing her eyes away from livid burns left by electric connectors to meet his eyes.

He tries to smile, but he has to know how weak it looks, and he swallows almost convulsively. “Not bad, right? Compared to what you’ve seen, this is just knocks and bruises. Nothing.” He chuckles awkwardly, and her fists clench at the way he winces when the movement irritates his wounds.

With careful fingers she’s grateful to have trained in the days when she was as close as they’d had to a medic, Zoe touches each angry red circle and brushes lightly over each bruise. “This ain’t nothing, baby.” She scoots a bit closer and runs her fingers along the worst of the bruises, the one that’d made Simon worry Wash’s jaw might be fractured, and leans forward to kiss it tenderly. “But it’s not going to be a problem, either.” She looks him in the eyes, determined to see that he gets her meaning. He looks relieved, maybe even a bit dazed, and she takes a moment for relief that this is the first time, hopefully the last in a long time, that she’s had to do this.

For the first time, Zoe really understands why he insists on their ritual every time. Every one of these green-purple bruises and foul burn-marks, next to nothing when taken individually, stands for how close she came to losing him. She kisses him, eager but careful not to push too hard against him, and sighs, resting her forehead against his to take a slow, steadying breath of his nearness.

“Just checking the damage.”

Current Mood: cold
Current Music: Guster - Demon