Little Lepto Lost

A bit of light-heartedness, written to cheer up a friend.

I know and you know Joss owns all these characters.

~*~

The Outer Hebrides were a kinda tricky area to navigate. Longish stretches of pretty much nothing interspersed with uncharted swaths of tumbling ice and rocks which could chew a boat to pieces were she to stumble into them. Of course, Wash charted them when he ran across them, and shared those co-ordinates with other Rim-running pilots, just as they shared hazard warnings with him. And of course a ship could always go around the Hebrides, rather than through them, but that added days, even weeks, to a journey, depending on where exactly a ship was and when she was on the move. Orbits meant everything.

For Serenity, in this where and when, going through the Hebrides shaved five days off her travel time, so, to Mal's mind, it was a risk worth taking. And Wash was just fine with that, as it was his job to get Serenity where Mal wanted her as quickly and safely as he could. Did mean he was locked onto the helm for the ten hour stretch it would take him to steer her through.

Seven hours in, another three to go. He had the sensor gain tweaked up as high as he could get it, set to beep an alert at the slightest anomaly. The helm was free, not on autopilot, so he could respond instantly to any threats.

"Appalling, simply appalling," declared the triceratops, in his fruitiest Londinum accent.

"I can only agree, my dear friend," the stegosaurus replied in the gentle lilt of an upper crust Sihnonese gentleman. "The latest issue of the Dark Man graphic tales simply failed to meet any of the basic standards we've come to expect in-"

"Flee, flee, you effete members of the snobbish cognoscenti!" the T-Rex roared as he pounced upon them. "Arrrr! Arrrr! I will make trippa alla carbonara of your intestines! Arrrr!" He turned, calling back behind him. "Come along, my young herbivorous sidekick! Let me initiate you into the dark bacchanalian joys of carnivoriality!"

Wash reached toward the starboard side of his console, but his hand met nothing but helm. He groped blindly for a moment before shifting his eyes to look for what his hand could not find. And the leptoceratops was not where he had left him.

"Huh." His eyes swept the console, but the little beak-muzzled ceratop was nowhere to be seen. Maybe he'd been knocked to the deck. A quick scan didn't spot him. "Hang on, guys," he told the dinos as he slid out of his seat, ducking beneath the helm on his hands and knees. Was a little dark under there, so he felt around, patting the deck with his palms, as well as peering around intently. No sign. He was starting to worry, wondering if maybe River had borrowed him without telling him. The little lepto was her favorite, and he wouldn't have minded if she'd asked. But she hadn't, so if she did have him, that meant she'd been on the bridge when Wash wasn't, and that definitely wasn't supposed to happen.

"Wash?"

He'd gotten used to Zoe's sudden, silent appearances, so he startled only a little bit at the sound of her voice. He backed out from under the helm, and sat back on his heels. There he froze, missing dinosaur forgotten, distracted by the fact that Zoe was right there next to him, her long, slender thighs and the area just above them filling his visual field. And he found he was in no rush to get up off his knees, 'cause he was pretty much at eye level with one of his favorite localities in the entire 'verse. His mouth filled with liquid, and his tongue moved reflexively behind his teeth.

Zoe cleared her throat meaningfully, then said, "Lookin' for this?"

He lifted his gaze to hers, starting to smile, about to quip, Well, no, not exactly, but I'm so very happy to have stumbled across it, when he saw she held the leptoceratops between her thumb and forefinger.

"Oh. Him. Yeah. Where'd you find him?" Without rising, he reached up to take him.

"Don't matter where he's been, husband," she replied, ignoring his hand. "It's where he's goin'." She lifted the little dino and slipped him, not only under her vest, but through the unbuttoned V of her shirt, tucking him against her bare breast. Every move of which Wash watched with utter fascination. Then she abruptly turned, and he was treated to a close up view of her backside as she started sauntering toward the hatch. "And if you want 'im, you're gonna have to come get 'im."

"But, Zoe, I..." He looked to the helm, then back to her, his hands waving in broad, expository gestures toward the controls. "I can't leave... There's steering... Hours and hours before I can go on autopilot..."

"That's okay," she replied breezily as she stepped through the inner hatch. "I'm sure the little fella will have a grand time while we wait for you. Explorin' new territory. Climbin' over hill and down dale." She paused a moment in front of the outer hatch to glance over her shoulder, saying in a dark and sultry tone, "Browsin' on lush grasslands."

"Oh God," Wash whimpered. A mighty disturbance had arisen in his pants, one that, when he finally crawled up off his knees and into his seat, had him tugging at the crotch of his flightsuit to ease the pressure.

The three dinosaurs on the helm in front of Wash stood in gobsmacked silence for a long moment, clearly thinking about the leptoceratops, where he was and what exactly he might be up to at that very moment.

Eventually the stegosaurus sighed, "It's gonna be a long, hard three hours."

"That's not the only thing that's long and hard," the T-Rex snickered crudely.

"You are such an animal," the triceratops scolded.

"You say that like it's a bad thing," the T-Rex retorted. Then he mused speculatively, "Mmm, grasslands." He licked his chops. "Would seriously consider going vegetarian for a taste of that."

"This is not helping, guys," Wash protested, pushing the dinos away from him. They were supposed to help distract him, not stir things up even more. He slid back in his seat, crossing his arms over his chest, tucking his hands into his armpits, so that they couldn't wander lower on his body, called as they were to relieve a certain insistent tension.

'Cause he liked that tension.

And Zoe knew that he did, and had expertly gotten him all wound up, knowing that when he did eventually get down into their bunk, the results were gonna be explosive. For both of them.

The beep of the alarm signaling approaching rock and ice pulled him out of his wayward thoughts, his hands going automatically to his helm, his eyes to the sensor screen, the smile never leaving his lips.

First, of course, he had to get through the next three hours without crashing and killing them all.

~*~