"Then you know why I am here," she said.

"I know why you are here," he agreed.

She crossed the room.

She crossed it the way she navigated difficult approaches, with precision and without hesitation and without making it into something larger than it was, and she put her hand against his chest the way it had assembled itself in the meditation mat images on the nights when the practice was going well and the thing in the drawer had decided to show itself regardless, and she looked up at him with her brown eyes and he looked down at her and the distance between them was no longer a navigation problem.

He kissed her and she kissed him back and his hand came up into her hair and her hand was still against his chest feeling the warmth of him through the dark fabric and the ship hummed around them with its new frequency and New Ferenginar kept its slow indifferent orbit and the evening became exactly what it had been trying to become since the Rusty Lobe Cantina.

---

Later they were on the low leather seating area beneath the viewport, his arm around her shoulders and her feet tucked up beneath her and the cream fabric of her clothes soft against the dark leather and the candle on the table burning lower than it had been and the planet still turning slowly below them. She had her head against his shoulder and his hand was moving through her hair in the absent way of someone who had stopped thinking about whether to put it there and the room had the particular warmth of a space that had been something and was now something else and was not going back.

They had been talking for a long time, the way she had imagined talking to him on the nights she was being honest with herself about what she wanted, without the professional frame around it, just two people in a warm room with the galaxy outside the viewport and nowhere else to be. He had told her things she had not expected him to tell her and she had told him things she had not planned to say and the night had gotten later and neither of them had been tracking it.

Now the conversation had found its natural end and the room was quiet in the good way and the candle threw its warm low light across the dark floor and the planet turned outside and she was heavy with the weight of the evening in a way that was entirely comfortable and entirely right.

She turned her face slightly into his shoulder and his arm tightened around her and she felt the rhythm of his breathing slow and steady and the ship hum through the walls around them and she thought that this was what the drawer had been holding and that it had been worth holding carefully for ten days because this was worth being careful about.

Her eyes were closing.

"Zedd," she said, quietly, not quite drowsy but close to it.

"Mm," he said, into her hair.

"Take me to bed," she said. "I want to fall asleep with you holding me."

There was a beat of stillness and then he shifted beneath her and stood, unhurried and easy, and lifted her from the leather seating with a particular steadiness, one arm under her knees and one at her back and she let herself be carried without any of the composure she brought to most things, her head against his shoulder and the cream fabric of her clothes soft against his dark shirt and her hair falling loose across his arm.

He carried her through the room in the low warm light and the candle on the table caught them in its glow as they passed and New Ferenginar turned in the viewport below and she thought that she had navigated a great many things in her career and that none of them had required less effort than this.

He set her down in the center of the king sized bunk with a gentleness that did not require explanation, the wide expanse of it making the gesture feel less like being accommodated and more like being placed somewhere that had room for her specifically, and lay down beside her and drew her in and his arm came around her in the way she had asked for and she settled into it and the space between them closed entirely and the ship hummed around them in the dark.

She was asleep before she finished thinking about how right it felt.

Outside the viewport the planet kept its slow orbit, green and gold in the dark, and the Dutchman held its position above New Ferenginar and the night cycle ran its quiet course and in the captain's quarters on deck two the candle burned down and the stars were very bright through the viewport and two people who had been pointed at each other since day two had finally stopped navigating and simply arrived.