Hoban Petherton Bough-Washburn--Wash for short, and, with a name like his, for damn good reason--surveyed the scene in front of him dubiously. He fingered his moustache, taking in the inadequacy of the ship's steering, the antiquity of the nonfunctioning dials and lights scattered across the indicator panel, the stripped, fraying wires hanging like wilted garlands from the cockpit cieling... Wash couldn't even identify what some of the stuff on the board was there for--the big red button, for instance. Was it the panic button? Did it activate the ejector seat, or was it just there for beaming up crewmembers? Tugging slightly on his moustache now, his mouth twitching, he poked his head under the controls. The first thought that crossed his mind was that he was not taking this job. Words could not describe the disaster that met his gaze in the under-panel gloom. It looked like someone had bought an Assemble Your Own Nav Con set, and then lost the directions. Nope. This Reynolds--Captain Reynolds--had that Browncoat veteran look to him, sorta angular and tetchy, but he seemed like a nice enough guy, if one got past the whole "criminal" aspect of his lifestyle, and he was sailing a Firefly--or would be, if the ship wasn't in such disastrous repair--a fact which, before Wash had seen the situation in the cockpit, had been enough of a recommendation to get him as excited as a little school girl preparing for her first date with the captain of the rugby team. A schoolgirl with a penis, in his case. And a mustache. Truth be told, Wash just wanted out of New Calcutta. His boss, Sondra Tanaka, was...well, things had gotten complicated. Not to mention that after a colorful incident he'd happened to witness during a recent cargo drop on Balboa, Wash just didn't feel as comfortable around her incredibly violent yakuza underlings as he had in the old days. Sondra wasn't about to hurt him...or, well, that was a bit complicated too. It wasn't, he decided on saying to himself, as though he were in danger. It was just that the situation wasn't going to get any less messy if he stuck around. And rebuilding this Firefly from the ground up could turn out to be slightly time-consuming. As Wash saw it, he could either decline the job, or take it and find himself still working on rewiring the gen nav well into his nineties. Which wouldn't get him out of New Calcutta in an acceptable timeframe. It was unfortunate, but there it was. The response that the situation called for, in short, was a polite, "This is the most inept criminal operation I've ever had the misfortune to witness, and you're never going to escape the long arm of the Alliance in this piece of gossa deathtrap." Wash stroked his chin, ducking out from under the controls, and arranged a regretful smile on his face. He pushed away from the board, noticing, offhand, that Captain Reynolds had accrued a companion from somewhere, a companion who was standing silently behind him. "Yep," his mouth said easily. He garnered from the person behind Reynolds' shoulder a fleeting impression of implacable dark brown eyes and a mass of hair. He rubbed his palms down his thighs comfortably. "Definitely doable. Put in a few improvements, get some reeal maneuverability out of this bird." He nodded speculatively around the cabin, mentally listing: he'd need to bring his tools back with him if he wanted to start on that instruments panel--he could put in a special semiterminus and forestall any mainline tacking in the rpm regulator once and for all if he called in his marker from Thessala at the body shop... First thing's first, Wash, his brain told him. Don't jump straight to semitermini before you figure out--what the HELL are you DOING? Wash realized that his brain had a point. What the Hell WAS he doing? Reynolds--Captain Reynolds, he reminded himself automatically--was talking, with a sort of grateful look on his face. Wash continued nodding and gazing at various parts of the cieling, as if he had everything under control, as if he understood every word. His glance settled on Reynolds' companion a second time, just briefly--it was a she, Wash realized, and there was a lot of hair, and a hard, icy stare, and a hard, angry jaw. Wash continued his professional-style nodding, his glance bouncing around the cockpit like a tiny rubber ball, and with a final comment of some sort Reynolds left Wash to himself. The woman followed him, arms crossed over her chests. Chest. Wash stared blankly at the broken indicator lights. They stared fixedly back, like fifty or sixty red and green and yellow eyes, and all he could see was that hard gaze, the color of strong dark chocolate, not the everyday simulated crap but the real good stuff Santa Claus used to leave in shoes at Christmas when Wash was growing up. He remembered something about lips, too. She had lips on her, that woman. And the pants she was wearing--Ai-yah. Skin the color of translucent autumn leaves, that...clavicle, he thought, savoring the word, that hair... She was his type, Wash realized. She obviously despised him; she could obviously crack his spine with a leisurely wave of her hand. He sighed, relieved. It was just sex. Sex was all that was making him do this. He could handle it. He could do this job, no problem. Anyway, the situation with Tanaka wasn't so grim. And he'd always wanted to sail in a Firefly.