DEFYING GRAVITY – JEN/ZOE

Volcanoes

sakuracorr

Title: Volcanoes

Fandom: Defying Gravity

Genre: Romance–ish gen?

Pairings/Characters: Jen/Zoe

Rating: PG–13

Warnings: Femmeslashy stuff. Unbeta’ed, so the mistakes are all mine. Could be very slight spoilers but not many.

Disclaimer: Characters don’t belong to me or… well this would be a different show.

Summary: Written for fallon_ash. Zoe finds it isn’t easy liking a straight woman. Based off of descriptions and such, so if it ends up being entirely OOC, well, it’s speculative, pre–show fanfic. This stuff happens.

Volcanoes

sakuracorr

Zoe is a geologist. She knows about that things can stay buried a long time, deeper than can be imagined, and then, with the right triggers, find their way to the surface. And she expects this to happen with Donner, mostly because of the dreams, but when she sees him it’s nothing. Sometimes things that once seemed bright and hot can become dormant. Zoe knows this too.

What she doesn’t expect is the smile Jen has when she’s said something she thinks is clever, or the way, when she throws out some random biology tidbit, Zoe finds herself wondering what else she knows. Of course, Jen is straight, so she suppresses those thoughts and enjoys the companionship instead. That’s what matters out here, and there’s nothing wrong with the waking up close to each other or being huddled together in the small shared bathroom. Nothing wrong with animated conversations about everything they can think of, sometimes with the odd intimate detail that slips out when she forgets herself or Jen forgets herself. They discover the universe together. It’s special. It’s extraordinary…

It’s excruciating to see her kiss another man, or just to know she’s done it by the tone her voice has taken on or the secretive smile on her mouth. That’s biology that Zoe knows, biology she doesn’t need a degree for. This particular time, she’d been eating, pulling her hair into a ponytail, and pondering the effects of low gravity on her posture when Jen came in with that look on her. Donner had just made a joke, and there were a few other people there. “This food tastes like shit,” he says, but he keeps on eating anyhow. They’re in outer space, Zoe figures that food is supposed to taste bad. Like food on an airplane, but much, much worse. Light–years worse, in fact.

Jen kind of nods towards Donner, like she’s pleased Zoe is starting to warm up to the idea. She doesn’t know how Jen got it in her head– that because she’d hooked up with him once, she’d do it again. Perhaps biologists got to combine ideas about destiny with the pheromones racing around in everyone’s brain. She doesn’t though. Zoe decides she’ll stop talking about the dreams, and maybe Jen will forget to bring any men into the conversation. There’s only four to think about, plus a few back home, but those are mostly family. Zoe wants to stop being trapped on a spaceship with her ex.

Later, it’s probably night, but Zoe doesn’t have a sun coming up and going down. She’s not spinning on the Earth anymore. Her days fade together, and she loves being here, she really does, but sometimes she has to remember why. She still gets an uneven feeling sometime, a constant hum in the back of her mind that says something isn’t quite right. She still can’t remember to remember being watched, and when she does, it’s like she feels eyes on her skin. She’s in one of those moods tonight.

“What’s wrong?” Jen asks. She’s getting ready to sleep, and Zoe closes her eyes, suddenly unwilling to look at her.

“It’s nothing,” she says. “Just the usual.” They did have psychological evaluations for a reason, and that reason is more often the equivalent of telling someone you feel fine when you mean I don’t want to talk right now.

But Jen nods like she catches the second meaning, the one that Zoe didn’t say. She comes closer, and she hits Zoe’s arm with her own. “Cheer up,” she tells her.

There are a thousand ways to respond, but none of them seem quite right. “I’m a serious person,” she says, and she means it, though she knows her smiles belay that. She smiles too much, for too many reasons.

“Okay.” Jen is watching her. She has that eyes on her feeling, but at least it isn’t a stranger. It still feels uncomfortable, and she edges away. “What’s up with you?”

“Nothing,” she repeats. “Just… space.”

“I’m talking about the space you’re putting between us,” she says, and it sounds so corny for a minute, before Zoe realizes it’s just an elaborate way to point out how much she’s backed up.

“I just need my space tonight,” she says, already sick of the word space. It doesn’t have the right meaning, not between people, not out here.

“Well deal with it for a minute,” Jen tells her, pulling her closer, and Zoe finds herself looking into Jen’s eyes. She doesn’t want to be here. It makes her feel trapped, like an animal maybe. “Relax,” Jen says, her voice firm, and Zoe tries to make her muscles go off defensive. “Arms too,” Jen adds, and Zoe realizes she’s curling her fingers into fists. She relaxes her hands, and Jen smiles. “Is it too private to say here?” she asks.

Zoe shakes her head. “I just don’t want to get into it.” This close though, she can see the slight chapping of Jen’s mouth, and her eyes trace the line of Jen’s lips. She licks her own without thinking about it, and then she swallows. It’s too close. Too intimate. “Do you want me to tell you about the rocks they first brought back from Mars?” she asks.

“Don’t try to change the subject,” Jen says sharply, and Zoe realizes that they are both very still, very concentrated on each other.

And she just moves. Maybe it’s gravity or some other force like gravity. Maybe it’s biology, but she finds her mouth against Jen’s, her hands drifting to tangle in her hair, and they are pressed against each other like two parts of a magnet. The taste of Jen’s mouth is bittersweet. Zoe knew the moment the kiss started this would all end soon, but that doesn’t stop her from trying to hold onto it. From trying to push all of that down so far that all she knows now is the warmth of Jen’s body, her mouth, her.

When they finally pull apart, Jen takes a few deep breaths before she says, “I wouldn’t want to see this place without the libido suppressors.”

Zoe laughs, because she knows she’s supposed to, but she doesn’t feel it. And the thing is she knows one day she’ll feel everything, all at once, like a bright explosion, and what she’s most afraid of, why she still feels like an animal primed for running, is the damage that could cause.

“Come on, let’s get some sleep,” Jen says, nodding her head towards the sleeping quarters. She starts to leave, then stops. “Are you alright?” she asks, like they hadn’t just kissed each other, like Zoe just looks tired. It hurts, but Zoe shoves that down.

“Yeah,” she says, puts on one of her smiles. “I’m fine.”

~ ~ ~