Okay, something happy and fluffy! A spoonful of sugar! (or something.)


--------------
"I'll tell you why you should go out with me."

Without raising her head or her gaze as she cleaned her gun, Zoe replied, "It ain't happening."

"Several reasons, in fact. First, you'll win every fight because I'm afraid of you. Second--"

"Wash," she said, more harshly than she had intended in her effort to stifle a laugh. "I just said it's not happening." She tossed her rag on the table and slid the bullets into her gun.

"Second, you'll never have to worry about me cheating on you, 'cause you're... well, you're the hottest thing in the 'Verse, and also because of reason number one. Third, I'm a very good kisser. I don't like to brag, but I'm just stating facts. Fourth--" He paused for a moment. "Why haven't you interrupted yet?"

She holstered the gun at her waist and crossed her arms. "I'm waiting for the fourth reason."

Wash grinned and raked a hand through his short, orange hair. "Fourth, because you want to." He was wearing a green and yellow flowered shirt, a vintage "Hawaiian" print, as it was known in Earth That Was. No question he was funny-looking, and no question he should be afraid of her. She conjured that one good fist in the jaw could bring him down.

Still, he had done something that no man had ever dared: he had asked her out. Most of her life, she'd been surrounded by men who could charge the army of the Alliance or fight with Reavers or otherwise cause mayhem and death wherever they pleased. But it took this silly man - this silly man who wore the ugliest shirts in the solar system and played with toy dinosaurs - to have the guts to ask her out. She remembered what one of her friends had told her wryly, quite a few years back. Any man can fight an Amazon. Takes a real man to kiss her. That woman had died in Serenity Valley, single.

"I want to?" Zoe repeated, raising an eyebrow.

Wash grinned. "Yeah, you do."

He moved toward her, but she left her chair and met him halfway, clutching his ridiculous flowery shirt in her hands and kissing him fiercely. Wash was solid and surprisingly strong, and when their mouths parted, Zoe was breathless. Her lips curved into a smile, and Wash grinned.

"Told ya," he said. He reached up and touched the stray curls that framed her face. "You have the most gorram beautiful mouth. You don't even want to know the things I imagine--"

Zoe rested her hand on her gun. "And you don't want to say those things while I'm armed."

"Are you going to be armed when I ask you, very politely and with the utmost respect, to visit my bunk?"

She narrowed her eyes. "I'm always armed."

Wash slid his hand down her waist and grasped the fingers that lay on her gun. "Then no point putting it off." He leaned closer, and Zoe was able to see every freckle that dotted his face. "Would you be so very, very kind as to visit my bunk?"

She took a few steps back from him and lifted her chin. "Takes more than one battle to win a war, soldier," she said. She turned and walked away without looking back at him, but she knew she had signed up for a war she wanted to lose.
---------


First Firefly fanfic written, check.