(A/N) I went out and bought an entire bag of Reese's mini pb cups in order to get that one scene right. I hope y'all appreciate the sacrifice I made. Also, since this is a W/Z courtship story, most of our beloved crew is missing.

Sweet Tooth

Wash knew what the package was even before he turned it address-side up. "Hooo doggie," he crooned, grinning widely at the postmark from Cuchulainn. "Happy birthday to me."

"Whatcha got there, Wash?" Mal asked.

"Total tooth destruction," he told his captain, going to the counter and taking the butcher knife to the seals. "Take a good look."

Mal whistled. "Hwai leh! That all candy?"

Wash stuck his hand in to the wrist and wiggled his fingers. "Nothin’ but sugar, all the way down. Birthday present from my best friend back home."

"Damn good friend. Best be sharin’ that, son."

"Believe I will." He got down the biggest bowl in the cupboard. Plastic wrappers rustled and hard candies clanged against the side of the bowl as he upended the box.

"Shiny!" Bester, never one to suppress his appetites, dug in. "What’re these?" he asked, holding up a silver-wrapped candy.

"Ah," Wash said in tones of greatest reverence. "That, my son, is the jewel of our collection. Note the symmetry of form, the delicate colors--"

Bester ripped it open. "It’s a peanut butter cup," he said.

"Not any ol’ peanut butter cup, grasshopper. Just you pop that in your mouth."

Bester took him at his word and shoved it in whole. He munched for a moment, then swallowed. "It’s a good peanut butter cup," he acknowledged. "But I like these better." He unwrapped a marshmallow-filled sherbet ball the size of a man’s fist. "Remind me of titties."

"Barbarian," Wash said, and held the bowl out to Zoe as she came down the steps. "Want something?"

She didn’t even glance at the selection, but shook her head. "I’m fine. Sir, you got a wave."

"Who is it?" Mal asked through a mouthful of grape gummy.

"Mongelli."

A look passed between them. Mal swallowed his candy, swore, and went to answer the wave.

"Should I be prepping for takeoff?" Wash asked.

She looked at him coolly. "You haven’t been here long enough, if you had to ask."

He made a show of furrowing his brow. "So that’s a--"

"That’s a yes," she snapped.

He grinned at her. "Right." He scooped up a handful of candy to take with him to the cockpit. Munching as he prepped, Wash reflected on the baby-new instinct, hatched in the three weeks since signing on, that had prompted him to leave everything almost ready to go. No doubt about it, Serenity sure did come in for her fair share of excitement.

When the engines were murmuring to themselves, just waiting for him to flip the right switch, he kicked back in his chair, bit into a peanut butter cup and sighed. The taste brought back a lifetime of memories, both on and off Cuchulainn. Nine years old, skidding into the parking lot of the candy store in CoMayo, turning just before he ran himself and his bike into the hedge because he’d been pedaling too fast as usual. Twelve years old with his best friend, fighting themselves bloody-nosed and split-lipped over the last one in the bag and finally breaking it in democratic half. Sixteen, buying his first case of beer with a fake ID and throwing in a bag of candy because he had just enough money left over. Eighteen, buying an entire box to take with him to flight school ‘cause he’d heard (unbelievable!) that you just couldn’t get ‘em in the Core.

Twenty-three, hoarding them like gold in the first weeks of his exile, eating one every night, almost physically ill with a combination of missing-home and can’t-ever-go-back.

The speaker crackled into life. "Wash!"

He took his boots off the console and reached up to hit the reply switch. "Problem, cap’n?"

"Are we breaking atmo?" Mal snapped.

"Gosh, I hope not." But he leaned over and shoved a few levers, smiling at the joyous noise of the released engines. "We will in about ten minutes."

"Make it seven."

"Out of curiosity, where we headed?"

"Away!" The speaker went silent.

"Why, you’re welcome, cap’n," he said to the cockpit and the tilting horizon. "What’s that? A raise? For being the only person who could get our tails out of here in seven minutes?" He twirled the ship lightly around an incoming freighter and hit the accelerator. Candy slid to the floor, bouncing across the metal with light clangs. "Pshaw. Now you’re just embarrassing me." With the exactitude of the true daredevil, he twitched a set of levers a few notches higher, grinning as the G’s pressed him into his seat. "So sorry to leave the party," he catcalled at the retreating planet. He checked his gauges and found them hovering nicely on the edge of the red. You couldn’t dance on the edge unless you knew, within millimeters, where the edge was. He had a feeling that this boat had an edge far beyond the one marked on the gauges, but he didn’t want to find out where it was today.

Besides, they were out of atmo and he still had thirty seconds.

Once they were deep in space and probably safe, Wash set Serenity on autopilot and went back into the galley. From the smell, it was Bester’s turn to cook again. Wash made a face behind the mechanic’s back--not only because the stench of burning food was stinging his nose, but because that meant it was his turn to do dishes.

Zoe and Mal were holding a tense, low-voiced conference that broke off when Wash came over. "You know," he said mildly, offering the bowl of candy he held, "it occurs to me that we might be better off without so many people trying to kill you."

Mal looked at him for several seconds, then cracked a grin and took a blob of sour. "Occurs to me you might be right," he drawled.

Wash grinned back. He didn’t do all his daredevil edge-dancing in the cockpit.

Zoe didn’t smile. She just looked at him, her eyes flat and unreadable. He lifted the bowl slightly. "Sure you don’t want one?"

"No," she said.

Wash considered her for a moment, wondering if she would ever smile around him. He shrugged. Eventually. Probably. He was a damn funny man. Until then, he wasn’t going to worry about it.

Bester’s cooking was about up to standard, meaning they ate more of Wash’s candy than the actual food. Even Zoe gave in and had some. Wash happened to turn around right when she bit into a peanut butter cup, and saw the look of surprised pleasure that darted into her eyes.

For a moment, she wasn’t a beautiful, terrifying warrior. She was a woman enjoying something

Then she looked up and caught him watching her, and the mask fell down over her face so fast he wondered if he’d imagined that flicker of chocolate ecstasy.

He kept a fascinated eye on her after that. He could actually be sneaky sometimes. When she sat down to meals, or walked by the table, she would pause and take a peanut butter cup out of the bowl. All very casual, of course. Nothing to it, just having herself a little snack. But she never took a gummy or a marshmallow ball or a blob of sour or a piece of hard candy. Always the peanut butter cups. And sometimes she didn't seem to have any business in the galley except getting that little snack that didn't mean nothing.

Wash thought about that, sitting with his dinosaurs in the cockpit. He'd never have picked Zoe to have a sweet tooth--although really she didn't, because if it was just a case of sweet tooth, anything cavity-causing would have done. And even if he had ever thought she'd have a chocolate fixation, it sure wouldn't have been the milk chocolate in peanut butter cups. He would have imagined her eating tiny pieces of bitter chocolate, dark as space, that took weeks to eat because it was so strong.

Wash didn't go in for dark chocolate much.

The conundrum fascinated him. It didn't fit. He felt like he knew a secret about her, and fell to wondering what other not-fitting secrets she had. What was her middle name? Had she ever bitten her nails? Who was the first boy she'd kissed? Was she afraid of clowns? (Which was a perfectly rational fear and nothing to be ashamed of at all, because those things were just plain freaky.) Did she ever laugh in bed? Could she, with that strong loose-hipped walk of hers, dance a tango? (Would she?)

He started watching her other places. He didn't follow her around. He did have some sense of the line where fascinated became stalker. But when she was in the room, he would look at her, just because it started to be far more interesting than anything else there was to look at.

She caught him a few times, and raised her eyebrows--what? He would grin easily back--don't mind me--and look away.

But when she didn't catch him, he saw things he'd never noticed about her before. Unlike most people, who telegraphed moods with their whole faces--grins, lowering brows, scrunched noses--it was her eyes. Her mouth and chin and brows could all be as still as if she were carved out of wax, but the slightest flicker of an eyelid told a smart man that something was going on.

What exactly was going on . . . that was another mystery.

And he slowly realized that she became the Woman of Wax when she was her most tense. He got babblesome and jumpy when he was nervous, but when they were in a situation, she went as still as stone.

Which brought up another conundrum.

Why was she the Woman of Wax around him so much?

A week and a half after his birthday present had come, Wash found Zoe on her lonesome in the kitchen, frowning over a data pad. At the first clunk of his boots on the steps, her wandering hand casually reversed direction, away from the candy bowl.

"Hey," he said.

"Mmnh," she answered, which he chose to believe was an acknowledgement of his presence. He sat down across from her and looked down into the bowl. There was one solitary peanut butter cup left. A handful of other sweeties, but just one peanut butter cup. He glanced across the table. She was just closing her free hand around a little pile of crumpled-up silver wrappers.

She was good, he had to admit. If he hadn't been watching her for the past several days, he never would have noticed. But he did. "Paperwork, huh," he said commiseratingly.

"Mhm." She didn't look up.

He folded his arms on the table. "Y'know, I've never been able to figure out why we still call it paperwork. It's not even on papers anymore. Shouldn't it be screenwork, or datawork?"

"Couldn't say."

He dipped his hand in the candy bowl, stirring it around so the last few sweets clanged against the metal sides. "Guess humans just get in the habit. Glad I don't have to do it. Paperwork. When I'm out of the cockpit, man, my job is done."

She looked through her lashes at his hand, groping among the candy, and looked back down at her screen when he pulled out a marshmallow ball. "Aren't you lucky."

"I am," he said with great satisfaction, biting into the marshmallow ball. Bester was right; it was sort of like breasts. Of course, since he wasn't twelve, he knew the real thing was better. Still, the candy brought to mind certain fantasies having to do with sticky sugar fluff and general nekkidity. "I am a lucky, lucky man. Now that's not to say you're unlucky. You've got the temperament. But me, hell no."

He chattered on about inconsequentials, plowing his way through the candies. She pretended to ignore him, and if he hadn’t seen her eating those peanut butter cups over the past few days, he would have been fooled. But every so often, her eyes would flicker away from her page to check on the status of that lone silver-wrapped candy. As its companions disappeared, her shoulders got subtly more and more tense.

"Look at that," he said finally. "Last one." He heaved a sigh. "Every year, I tell myself I’m gonna make ‘em last, y’know? And every year, they’re gone in a week." He shook his head. "I tell ya, my teeth are just gonna fall out some day, and I’m not even gonna mind."

She made an absent noise of assent.

He sighed again, a deep, homesick noise. "Real live Cuchulainn PBCs," he said, picking up the candy and turning it over in his fingers. "Jeez. Now, these, these I only get once a year. Well, I mean--there’s other brands. But they don’t even compare." He poked a finger at the silver wrapper. "You can only find ‘em in a couple of places in the ‘verse. Can’t even get ‘em shipped. They just don’t sell elsewhere. Don’t know why. Good, ain’t they?"

She broke her silence for just a moment. "Couldn’t say."

"Mazzer sent me a whole bunch of ‘em. Guess Bester ate ‘em all. Shoulda kept some back. Didn’t get more’n two this year." He slid a fingernail under one edge of silver foil and lifted it up.

She let out an almost inaudible sigh.

The only other sound in the silent galley was the soft tinny crinkle of foil, and then the crackle of wax paper as he denuded that final peanut butter cup. She watched him through her lashes, seeming not to notice at all, and he thought that if she’d been one iota less controlled, he could have seen her quiver.

He closed his eyes, lifted it to his nose, and inhaled like a connoisseur. "Damn," he said. "Last one. For a year." He opened his eyes suddenly, and she almost didn’t look down in time. He smiled to himself, then reached across the table and set the peanut butter cup right in front of her.

Her eyes widened just a fraction. She looked up at him. He gave her a little smile and got up from the table. "Better go check her course."

He didn’t look back. Wanted to, but didn’t. He headed up the stairs at a steady, casual pace. Strolling. Not a care in the world. Just like nothing’d happened. He turned the corner, climbed up the stairs to the cockpit, and shut the door behind him.

He almost collapsed into the pilot’s chair and for a moment, stared out at the stars. Then he lifted his hand and spread it over the left side of his chest, right where his heart would’ve been if he hadn’t just lost it over peanut butter cups, in a woman's stunned milk-chocolate eyes.

He swiveled once or twice in the chair, then with a sudden wild rush of glee, kicked so he spun all the way around three times. When it creaked to rest, he leaned back as far as he could and stared at the ceiling.

"Gorram," he breathed. "I’m gonna marry that woman."

FINIS