AN: Hello all! This is my first ever Firefly fic, written for a winning bidder over at /, which is an AWESOME cause that I would suggest you all check out! I was asked to write a 2500 word Simon/Kaylee fic set early on in the series when they didn't know each other very well, and my prompt words were "peek" and "shirt." The story that resulted isn't really what I'd set out to write, but here it is just the same! Feel free to comment with loving correction, or just plain love. (:


Confusion with a 'K'

Chapter One

"Mamma! Just leave him alone." Casting a sidelong glance at Simon, Kaylee's breath caught at what she saw. A smile. A gorram smile playing his lips, and not the fake kind she'd seen him use so many times before either. It was a real smile; the kind that she wasn't even sure Simon himself knew existed. It was the one that slipped out when he and Mal temporarily lost their minds and began to genuinely joke with one another. It was the very same one he wore unknowingly when River successfully goaded their entire motley crew, even Jayne, into a game of hide and seek, and then found them all suspiciously quickly.

He was wearing a real smile, and damn it if it wasn't her very own mother who'd put it there.

Simon waved a hand at her in a friendly, dismissing way. "No worries, Kaylee. I enjoy your mother's questions. I haven't had a chance to exercise my mind like this since…well, since I was in school, I suppose. His smile grew, and how could she argue with that? "Go on, Mrs. Frye."

The older woman shot her daughter a triumphant look, eyebrows raised, radiating I told you so. By the time she turned back to Simon, all three of them were grinning like fools. "Okay then, Mister Smarty Pants."

"Doctor Smarty Pants," Simon corrected her playfully.

"Doctor! Forgive me!" Mock remorse. Laughter. "Well, Doctor Smarty Pants, tell me. What's four hundred and ninety three times one hundred and seventy two, divided by eighty three?"

Simon screwed up his face in concentration, tongue peeking out the side of his pursed lips as he ran the numbers though the calculator in his head. Kaylee felt her tummy flutter. A voice in her head began whispering sweet nothings in his voice, began pairing Kaylee with Tam. Shush, you, she commanded. It ignored her.

After a brief moment, his face lit up and he met Mrs. Frye's steady gaze. "One thousand and twenty one…point six, three, eight five…five."

Mrs. Frye glanced down at the small, old-fashioned calculator in her hand, and whistled. "Well I'll be, Doctor. That really is something else!"

"Anything else you want to try on me, Mrs. Frye?" Simon asked, smirking. "I'm sure I can handle it."

"No, I think Kaylee's right. Twenty straight questions—and twenty correct answers—is more than enough. I'll just get myself into the kitchen and fix us up some supper. That ke wu de lao bao jun of yours is going to let you stay for dinner, isn't he?" The last was directed at Kaylee.

She threw her mother a stern glare. "All night, Mamma. We leave tomorrow mornin', early. The Captain said it was okay." She nodded briskly at her daughter, and turned back to Simon.

"And you, Doctor? Will you be keepin' us company for dinner?" He looked at Kaylee nervously, waiting for…something.

"Well, I was thinking…I wouldn't mind…Kaylee said it would be…"

"Yes, you will. 'Course you will. It'd just be our pleasure to have you."

His shoulders sagged with the relief of having his babbling cut short, and responded with a simple, "Thank you."

"You said you were gonna start supper, didn't you Mamma?" Kaylee asked gently, easing her mother into an exit from the living room.

"Oh, yes! Yes, 'course I was. Now, you two just have yourselves a nice chat while I get things started." And then she was gone, off to the kitchen with remarkable speed for a woman her age.

"Well?" Kaylee asked, addressing Simon directly for the first time since they'd arrived. "What do you think?" She crossed the carpet quickly, moving from the armchair she'd been inhabiting to the love-seat Simon took up very little of.

"I think she's…well, she's definitely…now I know where you get it from," he finally chose. His cool, comfortable calm had fled the room with Mamma Frye.

"Get what from?" A look of concern crossed her face as she tried to decide whether she and her mother had just been insulted.

"Your…well, your charm, I suppose. Your easy way about you. Your heart for taking the utterly uncomfortable and making them comfortable without even trying, like your mother just did with me. Like you do with River." The words rained from his lips, a stream he was unprepared for but did not attempt to stem the flow of. He allowed the words to pour out, unfettered. When they stopped, leaving him silent again, he could practically feel the awkwardness, tangible, on his skin.

"You think I got charm?" She was looking at her hands, intently studying one smudge of oil more stubborn than the rest. "Nobody ever told me I got charm before."

"Then you have been sorely robbed," Simon assured her, delivering bold words with an unsure, wavering voice. His eyes stared at the spot as well, and she could feel his gaze even as it avoided her. "You should be told, Kaylee. You should be praised for your charm and your beauty, your individual grace, every day." The pause threatened to swallow them again, but he pushed onward. "You…well, I…I apologize. For never saying any of this before."

It was then that Kaylee lifted her eyes, looking at him openly now the way she had been looking at him secretly for months. She wasn't thinking about how Wash would tease, how Zoe would discourage, how Jayne would patronize, how Mal would forbid. She was thinking only about him, and how he thought she was beautiful.

"So whaddaya gonna do about it?" she asked quietly. Simon smiled. Even lovesick, she couldn't help being herself.

"I think," Simon replied, "that I'm probably going to kiss you. With your permission, of course." Kaylee blushed.

"You don't gotta ask my permission. It ain't exactly like I never been kissed before."

"Not by me," he reminded her, and the colour in her cheeks intensified. He had never seen her like this before, and he savored it. It was one more thing to learn about her, and he wanted to know everything. "I want to do this right."

"I feel like a schoolgirl," she admitted with a giggle. "Look at me, a grown woman, waitin' to get kissed by a boy on her Mamma's couch." She giggled again, sweetly, and Simon could only stare.

"This could be crazy, you know," he warned her. "No telling the reception we'll receive back home." Back home. The words, tried and true, sounded like song in Kaylee's ears. Her Serenity, their home. Not just 'hers' and 'his,' but 'theirs.' Maybe.

"I don't want to make things difficult for you, Kaylee. You know that I'm not exactly stable, and—"

"And I know," came a voice from the kitchen, "that if you don't give her that kiss you promised pretty soon, she's like to die from all your blabbin' on and on." Mrs. Frye peeked around the door frame, waving a spoon in their direction before darting quickly back into the kitchen, leaving it at that. Kaylee's face burned brighter than ever, but Simon only smiled. The worry melted from his face, however momentarily, as that strange but not unwelcome calm found its home in him once more.

"Yes ma'am!" he called into the kitchen, much to Kaylee's dismay. "I would never have imagined you as someone so easily embarrassed," he said, his voice low. His words were only for her now. "I've got so much to learn."

And then he kissed her.