Zoe/Wash. Fluffy. Not particular deep. Those two are hard for me, and I went for cutesy instead. *g* Free for all the ages in the 'verse. Set pre-series.

-------------------- Mark The Day ---------------------

He wasn't built like a hero.

That was something no amount of calcium-enriched Banana Stripe ice cream or wishing on invisible stars had ever managed to accomplish for him.

And perhaps the banana stripe had actually managed to work against that, he could admit, but life had been kind to him anyway. That height and muscle thing, it became irrelevant when questions of altitude and speed and - for variety - world domination beckoned.

He wasn't built like a hero, which was mostly okay, because he was a lover. Not a fighter.

Where he found himself bravest, that wasn't force. It was the view from so far up you couldn't even see the ground anymore. It was the maddening exhileration of turning up and down into a tunnel. It was the inherent beauty of being able to move from one place to the next, physically, mentally, pre-historically.

It was what being in love felt like and Wash knew that feeling like others knew how to run for more than two minutes without needing to stop for air and sarcasm.

And all that familiarity was so important because maybe he wouldn't have recognized that fizzle-frizzle-nausea she brought out in him, and maybe he would have mistaken it for the flu or terror or something entirely wrong.

Terror, of course, was a big part of it. Lucky for him, he knew how to navigate it.

He looked a long time, in his repertoire of archetypes and superheroes, for a likeness to guide him.

"Nola - Amazon Princess" proved very little help, even though it carried a certain nostalgic value. He'd been ten and his first kiss with Natasha Miller on the monkeybars had been over a compliment involving Nola's athletic feet.

Anyway, Zoe... She wasn't the Nola type. Or the Natasha type for that matter. Or any type he had ever encountered.

A war vet, maybe, came close. Tough (check), buff (check), emotionally wounded (...check?) and less than enthusiastic.

But he was Wash.

He jumped off ledges into the invisible. The metaphorical invisible, of course. But the invisible, the mythical, the magical, the chance.

He was a vagabond. Drifting from job to job on the wild edge of civilization, otherwise known as Persephone. Unafraid.

Brave.

Brave in this particular time and place meant sticking close to Zoe while she strode - there was no other word - through a carnival. An opportunity provided by fate and careful planning and three packages of Snacky's Snacky Bubblegum Sticks to little Kaylee to drag Mal off for part-shopping.

"So, do you think that maybe we could stop at one of these booths, or did I miss the moment where you declared that this is a recon mission?"

The expected and only somewhat discouraging response was a very slight alteration of expressionless #3 to expressionless #17, the one where her left eyebrows did that short twitch, and he was glad she had stopped and turned around long enough for him to catch it.

She'd warmed up to him slowly in the weeks since he'd accepted the job, going from Scary to Intimidatingly Terse to Occasionally Friendly, the greatest of which he credited to the loss of his long-lasting mustache.

And the flying.

And possibly the sex.

Yes.

Sex had started up at some point right after he shaved and she'd just grabbed him by the collar one day and dragged him into her bunk and there had been warrior woman and pilot sex.

It was probably a soldier thing, that sort of forwardness, or maybe a small crew thing.

But it was of the incredible, spine-bending sort, and he wasn't about to let it slip away from him for Mal to step in. The man had been scowling about it for a while now and their initial bantering friendship had taken a turn for the cold and snappy.

Sacrifices on the road to the sunset.

Meanwhile, Zoe was staring him down and using her very calm and reasonable voice that really meant she was trying to wiggle her way out of his plan.

"Was there anywhere in particular you wanted to stop?"

And it was moments like these where he sometimes wished he had that hero build, the kind where squaring his shoulders would actually look manly and determined rather than a little helpless. But his spine was straight. His path was clear.

"The cotton candy stand."

She bit back a smile, using #5, the slow blink, and then she turned and it was time to follow her again but this time she strode a little less and approximated a stroll that he found easier to catch up with.

A body like hers, he sometimes supposed, maybe couldn't handle slow very well. Or maybe she just needed to learn slow. All that tragic wounded soul soldier load of issues probably didn't leave much room for slow, and he felt pretty good about being able to show her the ways of Banana Stripe once they got these initial hurdles out of the way.

The cotton candy stand looked refreshingly clean and he chose pink. Not because he was a girly man, but because he felt confident in his masculinity and pink was the yummiest.

"And you?"

He felt that her choice of color might be useful information for future flower moments.

But she wasn't even looking at him. "None for me."

Admittedly, the hard shell thing could get frustrating, even for someone as determined and deviously resourceful as him.

"You know, Zoe," The baby blue puppy frown had been his saving grace many times in the past. "If I have to do all the work this won't be a very good first date."

Her eyes widened in a way that was a little beyond #8 and that told him he was stepping on new and undiscovered territory, a break-through, a huge leap in their relationship.

"Date?"

Huge leap, perhaps defined as a moment of sharing.

"Yes?"

She crossed her arms. Moment of sharing, perhaps defined as stand-off.

"And when did we start dating, if I may ask?"

He was a lover, not a fighter, but even a lover knew when there was a moment that the hero of the tale had to stand his ground and weather the crucial moment that decided between tragedy and happy ending.

"You see, I asked you to come to this little fair with me and you nodded in that infinitely wordless-yet-sexy way of yours. That's how we started dating." ´

He held his breath watching her not react.

And he grabbed a piece of cotton candy.

And ate it.

She hadn't smacked him down yet.

So, laughing danger in the face, he smiled with a question mark in his eyes before turning to the cotton candy man.

"Another one for my girlfriend."

This would have been a good moment for her to spin and stride away and leave him in the shards of his daring plan. Or possible kill him with her pinky.

But she didn't do that.

She gave him an all new expression to file away. A big blinding smile.

The kind of smile that could be counted equal to defeating Rex or Nola's final victory over Hagar the Scandinavian Emperor or maybe even the moment where he first went up in a shuttle and had his nose pressued to the window and muttered "Wow. Stars." That sort of important a smile it was.

"Make it blue."

Blue. Like violets.

History in the making.

So maybe he didn't have the height and muscle thing going for him, but he had the guts and the skill and the sex and now he had a Zoe. Hurdles were swept away.

Heroism was so not a visual thing.

She got her sugary treat and he very subtly and sneakily took her hand. Maybe he'd be able to drag her into one of those capture booths, to immortalize this day for their grandkids.

"So, what ride is up first? The world is ours, sweetcakes."

And she miraculously kept smiling.

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END.