Title: Counting the Days
Characters: Mostly Mal, snippets of the crew, Inara by implication.
Pairing: Mal/Inara

Words: 513
Rating: M for sexual imagery

Written for livejournal's ffFriday.

She'd been gone for thirty two days, and Mal would not go into her shuttle. He would write an advertisement for the Cortex – reasonable rates, privacy, couples welcomed – and he would leave it lie. Just to think about, mull over. Passengers usually proved to be more trouble than they were worth anyway. Didn't need more trouble right about now.

She'd been gone for sixteen days, and Mal would not think about her. He would deliberately fantasise about other women, just to spite her. He thought for a while about broad hipped women, with huge, veined breasts that spilled out of his hands, and wide pale arses he could bury himself in. He thought for a while about slender, clever women, with wide mouths and long legs, but they began to wear Nandi's face and scent, and so he stopped thinking about the slender ones. He'd think about easy women, with hard faces and businesslike fingers, and laughing women with whisky perfume who would disappear come morning. Once or twice he even thought about sunshine girls who'd crawl into his bunk and just hold him, soft and warm, like his mother might, and on those nights he'd cry out, but not with release.

She'd been gone for ten days, and Mal would smile at his crew and laugh at their jokes. He would seek them out, watch them talk, inhale their scents and memorise their motions. Zoe, all length and silences, moved sparingly, like greased ball bearings, but her fingers, just the top two joints, began to flutter when Wash was with her. Mal had never noticed that before, that tiny fidget. Zoe was not a fidgety woman and that tiny motion nearly capsized him for a while. Wash was one big fidget, and Mal figured he was catching. Jayne was smooth and heavy to the Shepherd's slightly shakier strength, but neither was less practiced than the other. Kaylee's movements were loose and easy, matching River's coltish grace as the two sprinted up the stairs in the cargo bay, making metallic thunder and laughing like lightning. Simon was spare and sure and surgical, even in his most casual of gestures. Mal tried not to move too much.

She'd been gone for forty six days, and Mal would flinch if he heard her talking to Kaylee and Book over the Cortex. They were careful to keep their voices down when they heard his distinctive gait along the passage, his fingers shushing over the bulkheads and drumming over the access panels. She had asked them not to tell him she called. They never asked why, because they already knew.

She'd been gone for two days, and Mal would look for signs of her all around the ship. Kaylee was packing the last of her things into boxes. The mechanic kept a length of creamy satin for herself. It had been left, hanging dustily from the shuttle's ceiling. Mal found a single long black hair on it as he was helping Kaylee fold it.

He had not known he was looking for it until he found it.