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Title: Cut Away
Author: Lemon Lashes
Author Email: lemonlashes@yahoo.com
Author Webpage: www.geocities.com/lemonlashes
Category: Angst and smut
Archive: anywhere you like, just let me know
Spoilers For: Season One, including the pilot, up to and including "Out of Gas"
Rating: R
Pairing: Wash/Simon, Inara/Zoe, River/Kaylee
Note: another entry in The Filament series. Also, Te wanted Zoe smut for Remember Us
Characters: They all belong to Joss. They're in good hands.
Summary: A little scenelet snugged into the main "Out of Gas" storyline.Cut Away
By LemonlashesFour of them in the shuttle tonight, heading away from Serenity. Into the black, into the cold.
Parked at the controls, Wash can hear his wife's every inhalation. He only allows himself to look at her every hundred breaths, and he's no doctor but those breaths are too fucking far apart. When he does turn to see if there's a change, Simon's sitting there beside her, trying to look like everything's all right. When nothing is and they both know it.
They've been in here just long enough that Wash can smell each of them. Zoe has blood on her breath, while Simon is dusted with chocolate and sweat. River... strangely, River smells like Kaylee--engine grease and Chinese green tea. Three distinct scents, overlaid over his own--the sterile interior of the suit he wore when he went extra-vehic a couple hours ago. He'd been boosting the distress signal. Standing out on Serenity's skin knowing, absolutely knowing, that if Zoe went into a tailspin while he was out there Mal wouldn't even let him know.
"Is this punishment?" River whispers, just as Wash counts one hundred breaths and allows himself another glance at his unmoving wife. Both men flinch slightly at her words.
Simon takes his sister's hands, an expression of puzzled patience taking hold. "Punishment? River, no..."
"Catalyzer, catalyze, cause and effect. Fire given voice, explosion, Kaylee...." Her face contorts. "Kaylee. KayBoom."
None of which makes sense to Wash. What he sees, clear as stars, is Simon's helplessness--he's no more able to comfort his sister, to relieve her--than Wash is to awaken his wounded wife. River's helpless too but responsible for nobody but herself. She struggles, clawing at the doctor's vest.
"It's not your fault," Simon says, pulling her against him and Wash sees her face clear. She's comforted for now--at least until her demons come back and Simon has to start again from zero. Wash turns back to the shuttle controls. They're still cutting smoothly through the nothingness, straight on the course he's programmed to nowhere.
Zoe breathes in, laboring for air, for the seven hundred and eighth time since they launched.
Simon is thinking about the last time he made love to Wash.
Part of him has been waiting to die--to be killed, really--ever since he left home to rescue River. Now that it is finally going to happen, he feels strangely free, as if he's had barbed wire wrapped around his lungs all this time and now can breathe again. The fear has come and passed on and he is ... waiting.
He holds his sister and lets himself replay the memory. What can it hurt now? It had been just after Canton, and Simon had been injured. He'd lured Wash into the medical shower, kissed and licked and petted him, watching him closely the whole while. After a time he saw a resistance in Wash drop away. What happened afterward was, simply, the only time in his life that Simon had seduced someone completely. Had had his way with someone in the fullest sense of that tired phrase.
He'd come into a new sense of sexual confidence then, right in the instant when he flicked his thumbs over Wash's wet nipples, knowing before it happened that the pilot's mouth would fall open with a groan. Then, drawing a thumb down his chest, he'd savored the quake in Wash's knees.
Moving in synch they'd turned, bent, knelt. Spooned together in an artificial rain. He'd lubed up, briefly mesmerized by the sight of water beading and falling off his own erection before need pressed him forward, against Wash and finally into him. There'd been a sustained hiss of breath from them both and Wash's head had arched back, his hair against Simon's cheek, his back pushing against Simon's chest. He'd been surprised by the sensation--the all-round press on his cock, the tight enclosure Wash made. It was a feeling distinct from the women he'd been with, and in that first moment Simon wasn't even sure if the difference was physical or simply generated by his own deepening and self-destructive emotional attachment to Wash.
But those thoughts were quiet murmurs in his backmind, drowned by the shouting of his body. Cock burning, Simon spread his fingers wide, latching onto Wash's hips and locking their bodies together as he began to thrust slowly, steadily. Not too fast, not too hard. Wash shuddered and groaned, his hands scrabbling at the bench on the shower wall. Simon found a pace he could sustain and kept to it strictly, dragging it out. Riding in and out of Wash and floating on a sustained and apparently endless sea of pleasure.
Wash's body. Luxury, like sweet wine. He drank in the pliant need expressed by every sigh, every twitch. The rising excitement in Wash was going straight to his own cock and still he kept to the same glorious canter, barely in control as Wash lost himself, throwing his head further back on Simon's shoulder. Hard knock of skull against the bruises on Simon's face. His ass tightened deliciously, forcing Simon to push that much harder to maintain his rhythm, friction firing him up and then Wash was coming, panting openmouthed into Simon's ear as jizz spattered both their faces and the shower wall.
"God," Wash had said softly, "God." Simon had seen a tear slide down his cheek and vanish into the spray of water from above.
Finally he'd dropped his inner reins, driving himself in and out as forcefully as his aching body would allow. Which, after a few fiery pangs, was very. Wash dropped loosely forward, head bowed, gasping softly with each thrust but not trembling anymore. Hard, Simon was fucking him hard, harder than he'd ever dared fuck anyone and he buried his face in the soaked hollow of Wash's neck and overruled all his instincts, inborn and trained, to gentleness. He'd rammed his cock up and deep over and over again.
It was only just before his brain melted down that Simon remembered he had a plan, that there was a point in all this beyond the wondrous thing that it was.
He turned, riding his tongue around to the back of Wash's neck, and then biting down.
Beautiful fold of delicious flesh between his teeth and Wash went rigid as Simon came, exploding in Wash with a mixture of joy and pain and sadness, of want and loss and pleasure so keen he couldn't believe it wasn't enough to simply knock him unconscious.
"Teeth," Wash protested, voice strained and vulnerable. Simon let go but not immediately, not quite as fast as he should have. Holding Wash tightly around the chest he'd slid out of him, feeling his own jizz dribbling out of Wash's body and over the head of his cock. He kissed the bite mark, one slow silent press of goodbye and thank you and--maybe I could have loved you but...
Then he stood, reaching for the part of himself that sometimes had to tell family members their loved ones were going to die. He said what he had to say. He found he couldn't look at Wash, couldn't search the other man's face for the dent he'd hoped the bite would make in the trust between them. He talked to their feet, to Wash's cream-pink water-slicked cock. He said "get out." He said "don't come back," and tried to keep it all from sounding like "talk me out of this."
And Wash didn't--he didn't say a word. He just left.
Which was what Simon hadn't wanted, what he knew had to be.
Zoe is far away, close to Serenity Valley but indoors, in a bunker with walls of electrified teal velvet and a statue of Jayne that smells like sweaty chocolate cake. She's lying on her back on a hard bench. Her chest hurts. In Medical? She can't move.
Captured, then?
Then it occurs to her that the statue actually is Jayne, just as it turns and looks at her with licorice eyes. "You eat me, little girl, you'll feel powerful guilty."
"I eat you I'll feel sick," Zoe replies but the words feel garbled. Is she drugged? Truth serum? That would make this an interrogation.
"Did she say something?" Eager voice, only just familiar. Not Mal. Where is the Sergeant anyway?
"Zoe? Zoe?"
She can't see her interrogators, so she keeps her mouth shut. She's not giving her name and rank to a mere recording machine.
"Send in the fingernails," says one of the captors.
And Zoe's sure she knows what's going to happen now--they're going to wind her full of serpent thread to punish her for skipping out on ordnance inventory, for screwing up septic vac, for all the things she's forgotten and the people she's failed to protect.
Struggling to open her eyes she makes the teal curtains part for a second, revealing a shuttle behind them. Inara steps into her field of vision. She is wearing a moss-green nightgown and a battle helmet with a red cross on it. It's not an Independent helm. Zoe feels a flush of vindication. She's always known the Companions were working for Alliance intel.
Inara takes her wrist, feeling the bones there, and then presses something cold against Zoe's chest. "Pulse is stronger. I think she's out of the woods," she says in an oddly deep voice, and Zoe wants to laugh. She's told her: you never leave Serenity.
Now Inara is standing behind her, at the head of this interrogation bench and Zoe still can't move. The Companion presses her face against Zoe's neck. "Zoe," she breathes. "You have to tell us where Captain Reynolds keeps his magic lemonade."
Zoe knows better than to talk about that. She braces herself for torture and soon enough she feels the Companion's hands on her, oiled up and rigid, pressing hard on her collarbones before working down to cup Zoe's breasts. Inara's helmet is askew and her curls shine in the light cast by Jayne's birthday candles as her fingers tug on first one breast and then the other, circling the nipples slowly.
You'll have to do better than that if you want me to talk, Zoe thinks, feeling shivery and defiant. Please, go on, do better than that. Dare you. Inara leans over her as if she heard the thought, her breasts falling tantalizingly close to Zoe's face in their thin green sheath. She works the nipple harder, twisting at first, then licking and biting it. Zoe feels her back arching slightly, and tries to relax. Inara pulls all of the nipple into her mouth, sucking hard. So much for resistance. And she can't push herself up into it either. Her involuntary nervous system is making all the decisions.
Inara pulls up, releasing her breast from suction so hard its absence hurts. "Answer me," she says, but Zoe can only wheeze and wish breathing didn't hurt so damned much as the hands roam down over her ribs and stomach, melting clothes away. They reach her belly, almost tickling, and Zoe tries again to go limp, to hide the fact that she's reacting at all and then they're in the hair below her navel, inching forward. Heat is burning up from there and Inara must see it. She is stretched right over her, thighs heavy on Zoe's straining chest, her skin strangely heatless as her fingers edge into the cleft of Zoe's sex, finding the wetness she would have wanted to hide and can't. A shiver drives itself through all of her body.
The exploring fingers slide in and down, all the way to the bottom of Zoe's cunt, and then push inward. One finger, then two, and meantime the other hand is furrowing into her clit, finding its way through the delicate folds to the very heart of her and part of Zoe registers the fact that this is a spooky-weird way to conduct an interrogation as Inara's hands start sliding in two different directions, the one moving in and out, the other going round and round the clit with mind-frying results.
And she wants to squirm but she can't move, and she wants to press her face upward into the mound where Inara's belly meets her cunt, soft swell of flesh which is pushing down so firmly on her nose and lips through the green fabric. Each stroke of invading fingers jibes precisely with a flick of thumb over the heart of her clit and Zoe decides what the hell, resistance is useless she'll talk already, just keep going and then realizes she doesn't remember what the fuck these people wanted from her anyway.
After a warm mindless build there's a rush of small contractions, unlike her usual thunderous orgasms but beautiful just the same. Zoe's body tightens around the fingers even as the feel of them slips away and the sense of weight on her body becomes just blankets and the constriction in her lungs. Zoe comes and wakes up from the dream simultaneously. She takes a long shuddering breath, forcing her eyes open.
Wash is right there, leaning over her, eyes wide with sudden happiness.
And then he's just surprised, as she finds she can move her arm again, and reaches up to grab the back of his head and kiss him for all she is worth.
Reality is an otter in a tank, slippery and dark with beady eyes and a rock in its front paw, hammering against the glass of the world.
Reality is out to get her.
River's every attempt at speech ends up like an attempt to key in a cortex command in a dreamed computer--the codes change before she gets to the end of the sequence. Words come out of her like seeds, shot from a spastic pod. Sometimes they seem perfectly reasonable, and then she finds she's wasted the effort on a shoe, on Book, on a dead plant. Or the door that opens and closes and opens again and when it's shut it's hiding all your things and when it's open you see they're pitiful anyway.
But Simon's clothes smell like home.
River keeps her face buried in the vest, breathing past the smoke and cake to her brother's bodyscent and aftershave ghosts, letting it ease her mind as nothing else can. She loves Serenity for its lack of bathtubs. Left on a civilized world, her fastidious brother would have washed himself clean of the past long ago.
The usual rattle of voices in her mind is quieter now: Jayne and Inara and Preacherman are distant murmurs. The Captain is closer but chilled and half-conscious, free of thought, just a small note of sustained despair. Zoe is dreaming and dreams are an easy brisk whisk to the back of River's mind--doesn't listen, dreams never tell anything but truth and what good is that? Wash a messy hateful noise as always; she liked his thoughts when they first came on board Serenity but now he's all untuned violins and bongo drums and memories of pain and blood. Plus the onetwothreefourfiftysixtyone hundred breaths turn around and look at Zoe damn nothing's changed is getting very old. Can't he see she's coming around?
Only Simon is sweetly quiet; only Simon is closed to her.
Far away but clear as flutes, Kaylee is fiddling with Inara's shuttle, a beautiful hum like bees making honey as she tries to squeeze more air time, more heat. River is stealing Kaylee from Simon. That's why the ship caught fire. When you steal from the good you get punished. She thought it was okay because the hands of blue were spanking mad at Simon--they thought he was bad so couldn't she get away with taking just this one thing? He's got Wash anyway.
Should have known better. He's being punished, isn't he? For stealing her away from the blues.
Fire. Catalyzer. Far away, Mal is perking up. Distrusting but humbled. Begging for help. River twists in her brother's arms and breathes deep, trying to escape the Captain's memories of other times begging. Zoe near dead then too, and where are the medics and what the hell does he have to do to get his people seen to, who does he have to...
Just give him the catalyzer, she thinks, and it's a whole sentence--she wishes she'd said it aloud so Simon could smell relieved, like he does sometimes when she makes sense. Then suddenly she's too tired to hear any more war stories. She tunes herself to Wash. The one thing the stupid pilot is good for is drowning out everyone else.
It works--her head fills with dissonant clanging.
Better but not exactly comfortable. Closing her eyes, River concentrates on the idea of sliding her hand into Kaylee. It started as an exercise, but lately she's found the idea so powerful that it, like Wash, can mute the crowd rumbling in her head. No idea what Kaylee looks like under her clothes even though she grew up at a girl's school of sorts; Kaylee's a woman and all the ones River knows were like her--scared to eat in case the food came back to revenge itself by planting cutworms in your ear canals. Like it does. Something... Kaylee will look like something. Short brown curls, soft ones down between her legs and Kaylee likes fresh fruit and being fucked hard and the sound of metal on metal, working in harmony.
Sliding her hand in, her whole hand. Slick with oil not machine oil but still and River needs to be strong in that arm so she can go pump, pump, pump.
"Piston me," she says, and of course that's the thing that comes out of her mouth and Simon squeezes her and probably feels confused and lost but his mind doesn't force itself on her.
"Idiot child," she says by way of apology.
"Dummy," he replies.
And she's lost her protective fantasy about Kaylee and as she tries to rebuild it Wash and Zoe start kissing behind her and their song goes harmonic and lusty. With Wash calmed, the minds of the others crowd in again. Captain spiking up fearful as something goes wrong, goes wrong and "he's got the catalyzer" River tries to say but it comes out like the bullet doesn't, the bullet just goes in and burns and tears. She shrieks, falling and clutching her stomach and Simon tries to hold her but she twists away, away from comfort and home. Got to get the ship fixed. Bleeding, he's bleeding, he's bleeding and there's almost no air and it's cold-so-cold, and what does he have to do...
She's lost to the clash of voices. Once again it's happening just when River really needs to tell someone what she knows.
"Who do I fuck so my people are first for the medships?" she bellows. There's a silence, two mind-gasps and she thinks she's got it right, said what they need to hear. But Simon's face says it's the wrong thing, seriously the wrong thing again, and the others aren't listening.
Or are they? Behind her, Wash's thoughts break into surprised shards as Zoe pushes him away. Her cello-rich voice is strong as she comes fully awake and demands--without even knowing that they are going nowhere--that they go back to Serenity and make things right.
There's no discussion. Wash stabs at the controls, making the stars wheel into white lines as the shuttle does a one-eighty.
I did that, River thinks, even though she doesn't know why it worked. Doesn't want to. And she didn't show Simon it was her who did it, either, but she finds herself smiling, curling up her fist again and thinking about how punishment's maybe over now. They're all going back; she'll get that chance to make a machine of herself inside Kaylee.
"I made the stars move," she whispers.
Nobody hears her words. And far as River and the otter are concerned, that's just fine.
--end--
If you enjoyed this story, please send feedback to Lemon Lashes
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