"You cook this?"

Better men than this have caught her eye. She watches him, garish pink and mint green shirt, skin fair and freckled, watches the eager, open laughter in his eyes as he leans across the table. And wonders how she is ever going to live this one down.

She shakes her head, seeing, out of the corner of her eye, Mal shudder with barely suppressed laughter. No, she can't just see him--she can feel him, tricky bastard. Silently, beneath the table she lets her boot slide. Sharply.

"Aheh--" Mal jumps, blushes suddenly. "No. I'm the culprit. Zoe don't...work the kitchen."

Their new companion smiles. A grandly forgiving, sweetly intuitive smile. He twirls his fork, watching them carefully like a buyer surveying his wares. Quickly, a little shyly even, his eyes settle on Zoe. "Well." He gestures widely to the table at large. "Well, who cares on that, I say. We can't all be culinary masters."

Better men than this have flirted with her over a bowl of over-cooked noodles and broth. Men not inclined to grin so openly, talk around their food, or crack bad jokes throughout an entire meal. Men who don't sing to a brontosaurus and miniature palm tree while flying in the face of an Alliance boat more than five times their size and speed, and still manage to escape into the black.

"You're preachin' to the choir there," the captain says.

She ignores Mal, smiles back, thinking I could love him, and knowing, despite the anxious, whirring flux she can feel kicking inside her like a newborn calf, that somehow this is different.

The pilot chuckles, slurping up the last noodle with gusto. "I know. We're a rare breed, us revolutionaries. Our talents lie elsewhere."

"You must be some kind of hero," Mal replies dryly, grinning sideways at Zoe.

Washburne stands. His gaze sneaks to her hands. "I like to think so."

* *

It takes a while, before anything happens. She doesn't think on how serious this is, what it means, how she takes to the daily chore of tucking her emotions where neither of them can see. It is possible he already knows.

Fear is understandable. Fear of war, she holds no claim to, but fear of staking too much on one person, having her entire world given over to something she has never felt in this way--this is what keeps her up when she should be at rest. Why she avoids Mal when the two of them are alone because of what he might--or might not--say. Her fear is not only of possibility. It is of hope.

The catalyst turns out to be a brush with death. On the outskirts of Persephone Zoe only just avoids a bullet in the mouth, but Mal isn't so lucky and gets clipped on the leg. She holds a rag to his wound while somehow steering the shuttle back to Serenity, talking to Washburne--Wash, he said call him Wash--and all the while Mal has a peculiar look in his eyes, listening to Zoe murmur over the comm in a voice that has never been so unguarded.

"Warm her up, Wash," she says. "We're coming home."

She leaves the captain in the infirmary. He is conscious and alert and almost smiling, and his injury is entirely superficial. He orders he to go.

Wash is alone in the cockpit. She finds him turned away, reaching for something in one of the lockers, and Zoe has shut the door and he is looking up at the sound when she pushes him back softly, allowing her body and her actions to finally speak.

There are no fireworks, no visions or clichés. She knows this is real, that his response is real, that the anxiety, the flux, is real. But she is shocked at how suddenly she has accepted him, and thinks that sex is just a forgotten tease, stopped entirely by awareness, or a bullet to the heart. The rest she can live without, if all that remains is this man--foolish, brave, loving man. And that he ain't a hero whole, but some sort in between that belongs, and will always belong, to her.

"Captain was lying, right?" He speaks softly, kissing her in the gaps and pauses.

"'Bout what?"

"You not 'workin' the kitchen'."

She smiles. Yes, it will take something great and grand to suffer the teasing Mal will surely heap upon her. Yes, her now famous 'comments' regarding their new pilot will be quoted ad nauseam when he's looking to pick out a reaction. But Zoe doesn't care. Everything changes, and love changes everything. There is not reason why she can't as well.

She leans against him, folds her hands carefully in his shirt. "There's a story to that. I'll tell you about it. One day."

"One day," he murmurs back, understanding.

Better men, Zoe thinks at last, I ain't known.