Last night something had changed and Kate couldn't delude herself about the connection that was building between them. She hadn't realised how well controlled her feelings had been behind the barriers she had built. It had been too easy, too quick for her to want him, to enjoy having him in her life and in her home for these feelings to be new and yet had you asked her a week earlier she would have said that the only feelings she had for him were friendship.

"Good morning, Kate." He handed her the mug of coffee but his deliberate use of her name was a declaration, an opening.

"Good morning, Pete." His hand stilled for just a moment as he pulled it back and she hid her face in the first sips of coffee.

He was sipping his own coffee when she looked back up but he was smiling.

"Have they talked about the Hammersley sailing anytime soon?" Buffer asked after a long moment of comfortable silence.

Kate shook her head. "We seem set for clean up duty for a while." She took another sip of her coffee before realising the question for the opening it was.

"Are you sailing soon?" She wasn't sure how she felt about it. It was the reality of their jobs but it pained her to imagine her house empty again.

"Tomorrow, they're sending us up the coast to help with the damage in some of the communities where the roads have been damaged."

"Oh." She felt like an idiot, to have become so attached after less than a week.

"We'll be back in a week." He told her but he wasn't meeting her eyes. "I want to thank you for giving me somewhere to stay…" He took a long swallow and Kate's heart sank. She'd been so focused on herself and what she felt, had she misread him? "...but I wouldn't want to overstay my welcome." He still wasn't meeting her eyes, he was looking towards her but never quite at her.

The silence stretched and she pushed down the hurt she felt to watch him, to see the way his jaw twitched and he held himself stiff. Kate cursed herself and stepped towards him.

Buffer's eyes shot up to her as she lay her hand on his arm.

"Do you want to leave?"

He looked caught but after a long moment shook his head.

"No."

"Then come back." She told him.

"Kate," he finally said after a long silence, "I don't want to push."

"You're not." She protested but he held up his hands.

"We were never that close and I don't want you to feel like you have to have me here.."

Kate finally, abruptly, realised the problem. She had thought they had both understood the subtle glances and unspoken words but she had never doubted that she would be wanted. Buffer had.

She took his hands from where they'd been clenching around his mug and held them in her own.

"I learnt never to notice the sailors I served with." She told him. "And I know it made me seem distant. But I liked you then." She looked up and met his eyes. "And I do now." She smiled ruefully. "I thought we were on the same page. I thought you understood."

"Kate…"

"You're not just welcome here. I want you here." She told him.

He reached out a hand and touched her shoulder.

"Okay."

"You're in a good mood." Dutchy was leaning against a wall, conveniently out of sight of anyone who might put him back to work, and drinking from a bottle of water.

"Am I?" She asked back, dunking another item in the tub of water in front of her and settling it in the sun to dry.

"Suspiciously good mood for someone who is doing a boring, mundane task in the middle of a disaster." His voice was amused and he wandered closer, picking up a china horse she had already cleaned and turning it around in his hands. "One might wonder whether it had anything to do with the nice Chief Petty Officer you turned up with again this morning."

Kate forced down a blush. "Oh, might one?" She returned, her voice arch.

"Oh, come on X, he's a nice looking fella. What's going on there?"

Kate considered ignoring him but subordinate or not, he was a friend.

"He's staying with me since his house was flooded and we're…" She considered how to word it. They weren't dating, weren't lovers, but they were certainly something. "Seeing how things go." She winced a little at the wording.

Dutchy sat down on the curb next to her, his face suddenly more serious.

"Are you being careful about it because you're worried about how it will look, him having been a subordinate?"

"It's been over a year." She shook her head and considered how much to say. "I never thought about him like that when he was on board…" She bit her lip. "I never let myself."

"But you are now."

"I am."

"And I could tell just from looking at the two of you together that you might have managed to avoid noticing him but he sure as hell didn't."

Kate flushed, she could not forget the softness of his voice as he declared his feelings for her purely professional, words she had actively chosen to believe despite all the evidence of her own observation.

"Then what are you worried about?" And that was a refreshing way to look at it.

"Nothing, I suppose." She said after a long moment.

Dutchy smiled at her and pushed himself back to his feet.

"I'm happy for you then."

Kate smiled at his easy acceptance. It seemed so simple from his point of view and she wondered if all her worries were just her placing complications where they needn't be.

Buffer beat her back to the car that afternoon. He was leaning on the passenger side, face tipped up into the last rays of the sun. She watched him, letting herself notice all the things she never allowed herself to before.

She watched him open his eyes and notice her looking.

"What are you looking at?" He asked, straightening and turning towards her.

"You." She told him honestly while unlocking the car.

She enjoyed the way he flushed and slipped into the car with a smile.