Fairytale
Disclaimer: Joss Whedon created it, I just enjoy it.
My first Firefly fanfic! Story ideas really need to stop ambushing me at 2 in the morning. This is from Mal's perspective.
Out loud, he calls her less than flattering names. But no matter how harsh he makes his words, his stubborn mind won't listen.
She's the finest thing he'll ever encounter. Glitters like jewelry, and everything around him seems poorer, less vibrant in her absence. She's smoke floating up from incense, whispering with bells and silks, and her perfume lingers sweetly like a caress when she passes by. Her hair and eyes are dark, but even in his dingy cargo hold she shines like a candle. Even at a distance she burns him.
Shame he's not quite dumb enough to think her perfected exterior is all that she is, worse the thrill he feels at every unguarded glimpse of playful humour or pensive wisdom. She glows even more, he can't help but notice, on the rare occasion she approves of him, when he can afford to be decent. The angry flush of her cheeks, her sincere anguish shout the loudest chastisement when he can't.
She's a fairytale princess, and he can never tell her that. She'd find it just as offensive as the other endearments he yells during their many arguments.
Inara Serra is not a stupid woman, not airheaded or whimsical or childish. Makes him feel foolish regular, and he'd be long dead if he really were. With all her elegance and training, she probably can hold a sword better than most of her suitors, and her wit's even sharper. A business woman, she can talk a mean-hearted old freighter captain down to a fourth off her shuttle lease.
But her life is all pretend, all strange men and flowery words and doting with only one goal in mind. She deserves better than that. It's her choice, she claims, but she's selling herself when she's priceless, and it's a choice she should never have to have made.
There's a funny disconnect in her mind, only it's not funny at all, between the time she enjoys with her clients and the swelling in her accounts afterward. She doesn't think of the payoff when she's with them. She doesn't think of them later, when she hands over the pretty envelope with her rent money that he hates collecting.
Maybe that's why out of all the insults he flings at her, nothing riles her more than when he brings up the business aspect of her profession. She's always defensive, and maybe she doesn't want to remember, maybe some small part of her that's buried deep recognizes something deceitful and false in what she's doing, what she's been taught.
She is not cruel, she is troubled by suffering, so she must be aware of the pain and jealousy she courts from men who are rich and powerful and consider themselves entitled. He's definitely not one of her clients, but he knows jealousy and he knows aching. He knows it when every time she comes back there's a sadness behind her mask of proper and respectable, and she feels a need to cleanse herself that she can't explain.
He wishes he could offer her something real. He's too proud to ask, and he's not good enough for her, and he'd be ashes in that fire anyway. But he's no coward. So instead, he decides he'll be the dragon that guards her in her story, that the questing knights have to test themselves against before they reach her. He'll fight for her and with her, any day. Protect her whether she wants him to or not, especially with the scorn to hide the feelings that can't ever be.
And someday, if it ever looks like he's picking up a lance for her, well, maybe she'll let him.