The first night they spent together was nothing particularly epic. I mean- for them it was a milestone because they were who they were.
But it wasn't particularly fiery or passionate. They were in mourning and needed someone to hold onto… the inordinate amount of Kaylee's homemade wine both had imbibed didn't exactly slow things either.
In the morning she realizes he's not a client. And then, staring at his sleeping face beside her, the rough and tumble so strange against the silk and "civilized" she wishes he was.
He mumbles in his sleep, at once painful and yearning. It's her name, and she knows it.
But he's not a client.
It starts out with mostly sex and arguments. Not necessarily in that order, and very occasionally at the same time. Though usually one sparks the other. It shouldn't amuse her, but it does.
She never asks for any remuneration. Somehow he makes up for any amounts of credits she could ask for.
It's in his touch and half-smile and the way the calluses on his fingers feel against her too soft skin. In all the times they wake up together after Miranda- with him curled around her like a shield, protecting her from whatever the 'verse might send after them.
He's safety and warmth and all those things she associates with home. Almost an addiction, and something in her that is even stronger than her training cannot- no- will not give him up.
It was before the first time, and after Miranda.
Miranda. It was like a new form of measuring time- it's how they referred to things-
"Oh that was two weeks before Miranda-" Or "That was seven months after Miranda-"
The only one who never said the word Miranda was Zoe.
She had been living in a state of numb denial since those fated days aboard their Serenity.
Kaylee had asked Inara if this was what Zoe had been like during the war.
Mal, who had been sitting somewhere nearabouts- as he always was lately- answered softly, in a voice that Inara recognized from anytime he spoke to their oddly naïve mechanic.
"She's a bit worse this time around. But close enough."
Kaylee shifted and played with her hair, the thoughts in her mind clear as day on her face.
"When do we get our Zoe back?" She asks innocently.
"We may not Meimei. When you lose something that 'cha love. It hurts deep. Makes everything feel cold and lost and adrift."
"Like you… when Inara left?" Kaylee's face is completely oblivious to the discomfort she's just caused on both her Captain and Inara's part continuing to tinker with a part of the engine that had fallen apart again. Or perhaps she does notice their half-glances and awkward fiddling with whatever's close- perhaps that was exactly what she had intended in the first place.
Mal manages to get a hold of himself first, passing a half glance to the Companion who is pointedly ignoring him. Yet acknowledging the fact that he had passed a glance.
Something is said there, merely by the way that they react together.
He's blushing because he feels like she found out something she didn't already know.
She always knew. This was just confirmation, as if she needed confirmation.
Kaylee gleefully announces that she's going to go have sex with Simon.
Mal winces, and Inara feels for both men and their puritan sensibilities when it comes to this subject.
If Simon were here himself, he would have blushed scarlet then looked a mix between excited and apologetic.
Then she's gone. Leaving the two jaded individuals with their wires exposed.
"Is she going to be okay?" Inara asks, because she cares and because she wants to talk about someone who's not in the room right now.
Mal doesn't even react. No sparkle, no witty comment. Only defeat. And she's astonished to find that he is showing a side that he hides so carefully behind supposedly unbeatable optimism.
Showing to the whore that which he cannot show the rest.
It terrifies her and exhilarates her to see him so broken.
"I don't know." He replies, and drops one head to his hand and the other scratches at the edge of a worn suspender. "All we had t'protect last time was each other, and we didn't lose that. Even when lost all the other stuff…"
Inara suddenly wonders when Malcolm Reynolds got old? If he had had those wrinkles- ever since the battle of Serenity Valley? These seemed new though, since she left a little over six months ago.
He's finishing his thought now, and she forces her contemplative thoughts back to him.
"The more I see of the verse…" He says to the floor. "The more I wish I never left Shadow."
But then again, there was very little of Shadow left inhabitable- which is where it started in the first place. Jayne hadn't been far off when he'd pointed out Mal's madness.
Speak of the devil- the giant and his newest groupie- namely River Tam stomped and bounced into the common area outside the infirmary.
Mal's face brightened falsely, once again becoming the captain.
It hurts her for him. He is perhaps the only person in the 'verse that is able to stir such intense feelings in a heart that was locked so pleasantly away years ago.
"Persephone, after we finish this gig on Beaumonde." He responds when they ask where to next. "Badger says he's got a job for us."
The entire crew grumbled about this turn of events, ranging from the irritation of working with a man like Badger to the extreme amount of Alliance troops that would be snooping around for them.
The only ones that didn't say anything were Zoe and Inara.
His mate was steely eyed and silent. Inara watched him with something like worry.
In the end though, his word was law; River was sent to the front to pilot the ship.
It was only when she had her hands on the workings of the ship that she seemed completely lucid, and though they would never say such things in front of Zoe but she was turning out to be nearly as good as Wash had been.
A leaf on the wind