SushiFic Challenge Completed!

[homespunfic]

I finished my sushific challenge! Just, ya know, a couple of months late. terimaru assigned me to write a Mal & Zoe story, including the words "bathtub" and "contraceptive". Yeah, I know.

So here it is. This takes place during the wonderful "Just Another Day in the Black" by the lovely and talented isha_libran


“Sir?”

Mal blinked and his eyes refocused on the two gold rings that rested, one slightly overlapping the other, in his palm.

“You want to remember to breathe, sir. Helps a body get through the day.”

Mal closed his fingers over the rings, shooting Zoe his best scowl. “I am breathing,” he grumbled. “Was just re-examining the merchandise, here in the natural light. And, they… look fine,” he nodded. “Fine pieces of workmanship.”

“Glad to hear it, sir, seeing as they’re the only wedding rings to be had this corner of the moon.”

Mal looked back at the peeling wood structure they’d been directed to: Quinn’s Mercantile, Feed and Emporium. The wizened clerk within had grinned at Mal’s dry-throated inquiry, leapt down from his stool and headed straight to a sack of feed, plunging his arm in and fishing around til he pulled out first one ring, then the next, shining them on his smock and making chuckling noises and winks that had set Mal all sorts of uncomfortable...

“Cap’n…”

“Yeah!” he turned back to Zoe with a jerk. Tzao gao, he’done it again. What was wrong with him, losing track of his thoughts out on the main street on a strange moon. “Yeah,” he smiled brightly, “makes for a quick shopping trip, just the way I like it. S’ppose we should head on back to the ship.” He started in the direction of the docks.

“Captain.” Zoe’s tone carried a hint of reprimand and a wallop of listen up that made Mal check his stride. “No need to hurry back just so you can wear a path pacin’ the cargo bay. Others are still shopping for frippery, I wager. You got some time. Just maybe enough for you to relax a piece.”

“Relax a…” Oh. That would be…not good. Mal grinned appreciatively at Zoe’s offer to kill time in their customary fashion, and felt more than a little proud of himself for the fortitude he was about to show. He hoped Inara would appreciate it.

“Zoe,” he smiled, “nine times out of ten, you and me in town with no one to avoid and a free hour or so ahead of us, I’d let you buy me a drink. Maybe even be magnanimous enough to take your money in a game of checkers. But today---”

“Cap’n.” Her voice was dead serious. “You even try to get yourself a drink before meeting Inara at that chapel this evening, I’ll have to hurt you.”

Oh.

Then… what…?

“Then what…?”

“I have an idea of another stop might do you some good.”

Three blocks later, Mal was balking on the doorstep of an establishment calling itself the Chun Tian lu Ye, looking dubiously at the squat two-story façade that had nothing remotely green or spring like about it. Gaudily painted storefront windows proclaimed “Clean for Cheap!” A young Chinese woman perched on a tall chair by the saloon style doors, fanning herself in the late afternoon heat.

“Zoe, what the gui is this?”

“This is a bath house, sir. I know you ain’t on everyday terms, but a man of your insight and experience certainly is familiar with the concept?”

“A bath - Zoe, you sayin’ I don’t smell pretty?”

“Ain’t gonna say anything at all goin’ in that direction, Cap’n. Just...it ain’t every day a man gets married. You get yourself a shave, get cleaned up nice…” she looked at him appraisingly. “I conjure you can skip the haircut.” She laughed as he felt his face reddened, and took advantage of his speechlessness to push him ahead of her up the steps. “Step inside. Ain’t no one gonna bite you.”

“Zoe, you think I’m goin for a bath, you soaked up too much water on that Training House sojourn. It’s all very well for you and ‘Nara…” He twisted his head to look at her over his shoulder. “She put you up to this, didn’t she? You two planned it.”

Zoe didn’t answer, and he let her lead him inside. Sure, Inara would want him cleaned up. He’d no doubt she would look, well, perfect beyond words when he saw her later. Least he could be was clean. He was tossing about these thoughts as Zoe spoke with a neatly dressed man behind a surprisingly ornate counter; only half listening as she ordered him a shave and a bath, when with a shock some long-dormant connection in his brain sparked to life, replaying with perfect recall the last time he’d her mention those words, and to whom.

“…oooh, a real shave? With hot towels and all? Do I get to pick my barber - or… barberette?”

“I’ll pick your barber. Want to make sure he can get you a nice, close shave…”

“That’s fine. But the bath? Alone? I’ll be lonely …”

“You won’t have time to be lonely, you’ll have time to get clean. If you’re late, then you’ll have time to think about lonely--- for the rest of your days…”

“Could you two kindly have this conversation elsewhere? I got a ship to run.”

Mal stared at Zoe as she finished the transaction. It was so easy for him to forget - aw hell, forget nothing, he’d perfected the art of ignoring the idea entirely - that Zoe was a woman who’d had a wedding day. Had a husband. Been part of a couple. Felt like…the way he felt now. And he’d been selfish enough to make it less than easy on her. Making a stink about shipboard relationships, taking perverse pleasure in making her choose between husband and captain, putting the job first, never once considering things from her perspective. Never once considering the pain this day might bring to her. And here she was, handing him a ritual, a gift. Doing for him what she’d done for her own husband. And he was too dumbstruck to speak. She read him, as always, and saved him the effort.

“Inara deserves it, Sir. And it’s possible you might, too.”

“Zoe…”

Chun Li here is gonna give you a shave.” She waved in the direction of a beefy man standing beside his barber chair. The pretty woman from the front porch hovered nearby. “Oh, and Jade wonders if you’d like a manicure…”

“What --- that’s not even funny.”

Judging by Zoe’s smile, she surely thought it was.

* * *

She’d stayed while he’d had a shave, keeping a watch over things if only to get him to stop fussing and shifting, lifting up the hot towels the butcher kept putting on his face, trying to keep an eye on the door and the clientele until the frustrated barber threw up his hands in frustration, claiming he could not sacrifice his record of never drawing blood because the nan zi bu ke neng would not stop moving.

“Zoe, I can’t just lay here like a trussed goose, with anyone…” he glanced around the mostly empty room, which was frustratingly lacking in threatening types, and finally settled on pointing at the manicure girl, “anyone walking around where I can’t see ‘em.”

“I understand the peril, Sir,” she crossed her arms as she looked down at him, “but the point is to relax. I got your back in the event that polish- wielding assassins want to rip off your boots and give you a pedicure.”

Suitably chastened, Mal had complied, had even felt something akin to relaxed, as long as he could hear Zoe chatting with the idle Jade. Once smooth-faced, he’d agreed, taking into account a door that closed and no towels blocking his view, that he could manage a half hour bath on his own.

The water was scalding, but he winced only a moment before he immersed himself, emitting a sigh he was glad none of his crew could hear. Didn’t need to know the captain was a sucker for a long soak. Didn’t play well with his image. Well, he wouldn’t mind lettin’ Inara know. Course she’d be used to someplace nicer - perfume, fountains, marble or somesuch - not a room for rent on some dusty main drag. Still, going by what he’d seen from the street, he hadn’t expected to find the room nice as it was. Polished floorboards. Big bathtub of smooth copper. Plumbing that worked. Plenty of hot water, enough to steam up the mirror on the far wall. Hell, he hadn’t expected to find himself here at all…not on this moon, not in this tub, not about to get married. Married. His momma would’ve been pleased. Real pleased. Would’ve seen Inara’s strength right off. Woulda known she was the woman could handle her son.

He amused himself wondering if she’d have dragged him off to a bath, same way she used to when he was a kid. Was this a standard thing, something grooms all did before the wedding? He had no idea. Wash and Zoe were the only couple he knew in his adult life as had got married, and he’d paid as little attention as possible to the event. Not that there had been a ceremony or planning or parties or other folderol. She and Wash had simply waltzed off the ship the day he’d heard them talking about baths and barbers, Mal figuring they were planning a planetside rendezvous and he closed his ears, not needing to hear any more details than had already burned into his brain. When they’d returned that night and casually informed him that they were husband and wife, he’d reacted - Mal wanted to sink under the water as he remembered - “reacted poorly” was putting it mildly. He’d been petty. Annoyed. Cruel, even. He’d cut them off with a sarcastic congratulations and moved on to detailing the latest job. Certainly hadn’t thrown them a party. Hadn’t paid chapel fees or gone ring shopping or booked a bath.

Only other weddings he’d been to were back on Shadow, and all he paid attention to was running with his friends, tormenting the groom, being sure to dance with the bride. Even when the weddings came fast and furious as the war closed in on them, Malcolm Reynolds gave little thought to wedding etiquette, for his friends or for himself. He had been confident, in the way that cocky young men are, that his wedding, whenever and to whomever, was a long way away.

He’d been right. He was a long way away from the boy on Shadow. The man he had been before the war. And he was getting married. He had a woman he loved, a woman far too good for him, who had somehow said yes, had somehow led him to this place, this path … Mal shook his head. Water was addlin’ his own brain now. He looked at his hands, the pads of his fingers wrinkling in the water. This is who he was, a long way away from Shadow. From Serenity Valley. From Miranda. The only name that mattered now was Inara.

He figured time was moving along and reluctantly heaved himself out of the still-warm water. Wrapping a towel around his waist, he rubbed another over his head, then stepped, dripping, across the floor to wipe the condensation off the mirror. He paused a moment. Mal was not given to looking much at his own reflection, but now he needed to see it with another’s eyes. He let his critical gaze wander from the pretty, professional shave to the toweled hair, still standing on end, to the parade of scars that marked his arms, shoulder, chest, belly, and he was seized by doubt. How could she want that? How could she want what it said about his life and all that came with it? About where he’d been and where he’d always be headed? How could he be selfish enough to ask her to share it? And how could she possibly want it?

“She does, Sir.”

He didn’t bother turning as Zoe closed the door behind her. Didn’t bother questioning how she knew his thoughts.

“She’s a smart woman, knows her own mind. And for whatever unfathomable reason, she’s got it set on you.”

She placed a bundle on a chair. “Went back to the ship, picked up some clean clothes to match your shiny self.”

Mal smiled, lifting up his white dress shirt and shindig-best trousers. “I appreciate it. Save me walkin’ my clean hide back through town in a towel.” He turned and was surprised to find her holding up his old patched coat, freshly cleaned and brushed.

“Oh. You know, that looks fine, but I can’t…I got that other coat…”

“Not today.” Zoe shook out the coat and draped it on the chairback. “Got direct orders from a woman, said the man she’s marrying wears a brown coat.”

Mal looked at Zoe and back to the coat, not trusting himself to find the right words.

“You gonna be all right?”

“Me? Yes, I’m…fine. I just, uh…”

“Then it seems you might want to consider gettin’ dressed.” Zoe patted the coat.

“Yeah. I should. I’ll do that.” He could do that. There was a shirt in his hands. A shirt he was going to wear to be married in.

Zoe leaned in, her face too amused for his comfort. “Cap’n? There maybe something makin’ you nervous? We need to have a talk about contraception, or the doc already go over that with you?”

“Zoe! You gotta go and--- you got a smutty mind.”

“I also gotta eat off that dining table every day.”

“Yeah, well. I had to walk onto that bridge. Puts us about even.”

Mal kicked himself. It put them nowhere near even. The past, the future… it wasn’t hardly even. Wasn’t at all fair. He thought of Wash, thought of Zoe in her white dress, setting light to the rocket.

“Don’t, Sir.” Her voice was firm. “There’s no need. This is your wedding day. You take it with both hands. Verse willing, you won’t never have need for another.”

He nodded, not quite able to meet her eye to eye. “I --- thank you, Zoe.”

“My pleasure, Sir.” She moved for the door. “You just do one thing for me.”

Mal lifted his head to her.

“You make this right. You make gorram sure you give it every chance, and you make it work out right.”

Mal nodded, “I aim to, Zoe.” He looked at the clothing in his hands, the rings resting on a side table. “I surely aim to.”