Author's note: Thank you to partygirl98, NotMarge, NicoleR85, KEZZ 1, ZabuzasGirl, Luna von Rae (you have no idea how much I smiled when I read your review, aw!), and kmj1989 for the reviews! So now that the wedding and honeymoon are over, we're going to have a few chapters of Hank and Zoey just growing together as a married couple before things heat up. I'm really hoping I can pull this off! Hopefully nothing's too boring in the meantime.

Today's chapter is dedicated to Torchwhovian, who wanted to see some cooking lessons. All food facts in here are correct, courtesy of Alton Brown's show Good Eats!

Cooking Lessons

"Zoey, I'm home," I called out as I walked through the door of our apartment one day, carrying the bouquet of flowers I'd cut from Moira's greenhouse.

"Hello," Zoey replied from somewhere within the apartment. "Hold on one second!"

I heard a crash come from the kitchen, followed by a muttered expletive.

Uh oh.

"You ok?"

"I'm awesome," she answered sourly.

The light scent of the primroses in my hand couldn't mask the stench coming from the slight cloud of smoke in the air. I took a hesitant sniff as I slipped off my shoes and socks one-handed. My feet immediately stretched out in relief.

Ah, freedom.

"I smell something burning. Are you trying to cook again?"

A disgruntled huff of annoyance- and guilt- drifted to me from the kitchen.

I laughed as I made my way further into the apartment. No other reply seemed to be forthcoming, probably from sheer embarrassment.

Sure enough, Zoey was standing in front of the messy stove, looking utterly defeated and quite sheepish. A pan of... I-couldn't-even-tell-what was smoking in the sink.

Yup. My wife's horrible cooking skills had struck again.

I had to fight back an exasperated sigh because I knew it would be counter-productive in this situation. How could you tell the person you love to stop trying to do something they were so obviously bad at, without sounding like you had no faith in them ever getting better? I didn't want to imply to Zoey that there was no hope for her, but... Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

"Hello, my love," I said blithely. I held out the flowers. "These are for you."

It instantly brightened her mood. Zoey's face lit up like a Christmas tree as she came over and buried her face in the blooms. I couldn't blame her for doing so- actually, I was almost tempted to snatch the flowers back so I could block out the burning smell in the air that was stinging my nose.

"Thank you," she told me, with a thorough kiss that left me a little dazed. "What's the occasion?"

I shrugged. "Just because."

So you would smile and kiss me like that. Is my timing awesome or what?

"What's the occasion for all of this?" I asked, gesturing to the disaster area that used to be our kitchen.

I'd basically taken over cooking detail in the four months since we got married. Zoey's culinary skills just seemed to get worse and worse the more I tried to teach her, so it was just-

Less stressful. Easier. Less likely to cause property damage.

-If I cooked. Obviously, Zoey wasn't stupid, so it was hard to understand why she was having such a hard time learning. My only guesses were a lack of motivation (making sweets was still no issue for her, but everything else was a disaster), or a very poor teacher (that would be me). Or maybe it was a combination of both.

She shrugged in answer to my question, putting her bouquet in a vase on the bar area. "I got home before you and thought I would try to make you dinner," she explained mournfully. "It... didn't go so well."

"I can see that."

Zoey pouted.

I sighed and pulled her in for a hug. Thankfully, she snuggled into the embrace without protest. "It's ok, sweetheart. Thank you for trying."

She let out a heavy exhale. "I hate doing the dishes all the time," she blurted out.

That was the deal- whoever didn't cook, had to do dishes and clean the kitchen. So naturally, Zoey got stuck doing that almost all the time. She also did laundry and had to vacuum and dust basically every day because between three cats, her long curls, and my fur there was a lot of hair rolling around the apartment.

And before anyone complains about inequality, I had to clean the bathrooms and scoop up litter boxes. Everything besides the kitchen chores had been divided up when we picked assignments out of a hat. We thought it was fair since we both worked full time and neither of us wanted to stick the other with all the housework.

My lovely wife had also requested that I take care of general handyman issues around the building, of which she was the landlord. She asked me to do this right before- ahem-going to bed with me, while wearing absolutely nothing.

I think I have a valid defense in court for getting out of this. She was naked. I was under the influence, Your Honor. Any deals I made then were null and void.

Considering the attitudes of the other tenants, handyman work was a rather thankless task. Last month old Ms. Peterson, the spinster and true crazy cat lady who lived downstairs, needed someone to rewire the circuit breaker for her apartment. She took the opportunity while I was there to innocently ask what exactly it was that Zoey and I were doing that caused all the banging and growling noises overhead at night.

I had wanted to die, right then and there. Since then I hadn't been able to look that woman in the face whenever I happened to pass her on the stairs.

"Dish duty? Is that what this is really about?" I teased now. "I thought you just wanted to make me dinner? Now I'm a little wounded."

Zoey rolled her eyes, and for a moment I thought she was going to laugh. But instead she sighed and confessed, "I hate being bad at stuff."

"I know."

Knowing her so well, I could imagine how much it irked her to have such a basic skill elude her understanding. It hurt her pride unbearably.

At least, I thought to myself, she's comfortable sharing this sort of thing with me now.

"What I don't understand is how you've gotten the hang of baking, but can't seem to do anything else," I noted, finally voicing my confusion aloud.

Zoey frowned up at me. "You explained baking like organic chemistry. Remember what you said about baking soda versus baking powder? Soda needs an acid to react and make the dough spread. Powder needs a liquid to release gas and-"

And then it clicked. I really had been teaching her incorrectly, showing Zoey all of these recipes and hoping she would grasp everything that way. I should've known better than that. There was a much easier way to go about this.

With science!

"Come with me, darling," I told her excitedly, pulling her towards the front door.

"What-?"

"We need more space, so we're going to the Institute and I'm going to teach you how to cook. It's all organic chemistry, Zoey. You'll see," I explained. I caught a glimpse of her expression and laughed. "Don't worry, I'll do the dishes when we get home."

Within half an hour we were settled in the huge kitchen at Xavier's. I had a portable white board in hand, ready to draw chemical structures, and we'd covered the counters in all sorts of food- potatoes and other various vegetables, meats, and a variety of seasonings.

"Dr. McCoy, what on earth have you done to my kitchen?" Mrs. Taylor, the school cook, cried out when she came back from serving dinner and saw what a mess we'd made. She looked like she was on the verge of an apoplectic fit.

"I'm sorry, ma'am. We'll clean up when we're done," I hurriedly assured her, while Zoey giggled.

Mrs. Taylor seemed rather disbelieving, but she gave me one more dirty look and left us to it.

"Ok, Zoey," I said, picking up a marker. I began to sketch out a chain of glucose molecules. "Tell me about starch."

Zoey rattled off a bunch of factoids about starch until she got to the most important one- how starch becomes soluble in water when heated.

"Knowing that, if I show you these two potatoes," I told her, pushing the vegetables forward. "And told you that the red potato is low in starch, and the Russet is high, which would you use for mashed potatoes, and which would you put in with a pot roast?"

Zoey blinked. And then it was like a light bulb went off in her head, and I knew in that moment that this was going to work. I'd finally found the way to teach her.

A dazzling smile crossed her face, leaving me breathless. "The Russet is for mashed potatoes. The starch gets too squishy to hold its shape."

"Exactly," I agreed, rewarding her with a kiss.

And we went on from there, getting down into the finite chemical reactions that occurred when cooking something. Breaking it down to the molecular level helped Zoey visualize what exactly was going on, what she needed to look for. Both of us were practically giddy that she was understanding it now.

We were in the middle of a steady dialogue of information exchange when I brought up barbecuing.

"And so this-" I explained, drawing out the chemical reaction while Zoey looked on. "Is what happens when the meat gets charred."

She frowned. "That's a heterocyclic amine."

I glanced at her, feeling confused. "Yes?"

"It's a really unstable molecule," Zoey pressed. "I wonder what kind of effects it has on the human body when ingested? I mean, oxygen free radicals react and cause all sort of issues like cell injury and DNA damage. What would HCAs do?"

You are so sexy when you talk nerdy to me.

The scientist in me sat up straighter, curiosity already sparking in my brain. An experimental protocol began to dance around the edges of my mind, unbidden. How easily distracted I was by the possibility of scientific discovery.

Forget cooking lessons. It's experiment time.

"Want to go find out?" I asked her eagerly.

Zoey looked at me like I was offering her the keys to a candy store. She was just as excited about new scientific research as I was.

She was everything to me, my match in every way. If there was such a thing as soul mates, she was mine.

"Let's go!" she cheered.