Inara comes up so quiet he hardly hears her, but she ain't exactly made for subterfuge, so he catches the scuff of her slipper and the rustle of her dress as she climbs through the doorframe. Silk's noisy. One reason he likes cotton, but 'Nara's too delicate for anything so plain. A real jing mei fu ren humpin' through the 'verse with his ruffians, aloof and warm by turns faster than he can follow, and then she appears like he conjured her. She always was an unexpected pleasure. Even more so now, back on Serenity with a real sense of fight in her.
"Gonna take me out?" he asks without turning. "Knife to the throat? Provoke my crew to mutiny? Ain't you got a ship already? I swear, Inara, you are one ambitious lady."
"Just wanted to live the dream for a moment," she says, and puts a hand on the back of his chair, which is something new, but he don't mention it: for a woman trained in the seductive arts, Inara's awful skittish. "Anyway," she continues, "I don't think I'd ever talk Zoe around."
"That's a fact," he says, unfolding himself and standing to face her. "But where are my manners?" He gestures her toward the chair.
"Oh, it's not necessary," she says, but sits herself down anyway. She's wearing that robe thing that drops from her throat, covers her arms, and leaves her back bare.
"Don't do it 'cause it's necessary," he says, and smiles at her. "Do it 'cause it pleases me. Now what brings you up to the bridge on a night like this?"
"Something special about this night?" she asks, looking up at him, all doe eyes. Hard to see if she's wearing her face paint in the dim. Her skin fair glows in the faint greeny light from the instrument panels. She ought to look sallow and strange; 'stead she looks like a thing made of glass, more than he can afford. "I didn't mean to intrude."
He eases down, half sitting on the armrest, hoping she won't spook. "Night pretty much like every other night. Dark. Not that it's ever light in the black. Need a planet for days and nights to mean a thing, sunrise, sunset. 'S why it's hard to find lovers out in space. No romance."
"The stars are lovely," she says, turning her face to the window.
"Sure," he says. "They're real shiny and all." He looks at the line of her neck: the way her throat cants into her collarbone minds him of calligraphy lessons in school when he was young on Shadow. He never had the patience to learn it true. Too finicky, all those lines just to say tree or ship. Speaking's been enough communication for him, and the weight of a pistol. Around Inara he sometimes wishes he had more art in him, but he ain't much of a mind to turn into one of them hua qiao hun dan what frequent her. "What's on your mind, Inara? You don't usually come up around here."
"I need a reason?" she says, that lilt in her voice like she's mockin' him. "Maybe I just like the view." She looks up at him and he can't help his mouth smilin', not with a woman like that and her shoulders so smooth and close.
"Inara, you know I'm not one to pussyfoot around a thing. To my mind, you come lookin' for me when every sane soul is sleepin' wearing all your pretty silks, there's something that ain't sittin' right with you, and that is a thought that troubles. If you're plannin' on leavin' again, well, I'd rather hear it first and talk astronomy later." There's an ache in him he can't place as he says the words. He don't even want to think about her leaving, let alone hear her say it, but better to get the job done.
"I'm not leaving, Mal," she says, her voice low like music. "To be honest, nothing could be further from my mind. I love Serenity and I want to stay." She gives him one of those looks must melt every gorram dandy at the ball. He's glad he ain't tryin' to stand against the force of that look. All his insides have gone soft and warm. She's a woman to be reckoned with and that's certain. "I hope that won't cause problems for you," she says.
"Weeeelll," he drawls, shifting a little closer on the chair arm. "I had thought on lettin' out your shuttle, given that you swore up and down you weren't going to grace us with your presence, but I s'pose if you keep the rent paid up, we can work out an arrangement to everyone's satisfaction. I know Kaylee'd be sore to see you gone again."
"Just Kaylee?" She sounds like she's got something in her throat to stop her breath.
"Doc missed you some. None of us got class enough for conversin' with, I guess. And Jayne, he near enough pined away. But Kaylee never let me hear the end of it. Like as not she'd kill me if I let you go again."
"And you, Mal?" There's a rattle in her voice like an engine needs maintenance, and it's a pity he ain't a genius like Kaylee.
"Well now, there's a question." He tries not to look down at her and makes a miserable failure of it. Her pretty mouth is on the edge of quivering. He can see the pulse in her throat if he stares. This must be what dyin' is like: same as the times he got shot, all he can see is the details of her. Her hair pinned up just the way he likes it. The beauty mark on her jaw just beggin' to be kissed. She ain't breathin' much and there's not a noise from her fussy silks. Serenity's holding her breath too: the engine hums in his bones like a warning. He wonders if Inara feels it. But things are changin' and they have been since the day they picked up a passel of raw troublesome tourists on Persephone. He ain't the man to stop it. "I reckon I missed you some. Hard to find a good fight. Wash ain't got - didn't have - quite your touch with that old coffee pot. And none of 'em smell so good as you do."
"Don't get too sentimental, Mal," she says.
He shrugs. "Truth be told, I tried not to think on it much."
"I see." She turns away, not fast enough for him not to see the hurt in her eyes. He catches her wrist as she rises.
"Now hold on, before you get all chang bing xi and skitter away. I came for you, Inara. That's got to mean something to you."
"I can't wager my life on half a something, Malcolm, fang xia."
"Ain't nobody called me 'Malcolm' since Nandi did," he says, keeping hold of her.
"Now there's a thing you want to remind me of," she says, tipping her head back with a bitter laugh.
"You are one stubborn woman," he says, feeling her muscles flex. "You want me truthsome? I don't regret what happened with Nandi, except that I couldn't protect her. Maybe I would have wanted it to be you between the sheets with me, but I respect when you need to make things all professional. We ain't never been in agreement about the kind of work you do or the kind of work I do and maybe it's best to keep things business. I tried not to think on you gone because it pained me, Inara, and it's hard to captain when you want to just mope around in a shuttle full of leavin's that ain't even got the soul of the woman in 'em. Right now I hardly know up from down or if the Alliance is gonna change its mind and hunt us out of the sky. I got nothin' to offer you but trouble. How's a man supposed to declare his love in that kind of a situation? I don't suffer from the delusion that love can mend the 'verse. I can't bring back Wash or the Shepherd, and I can't bring back Nandi, and I can't even keep you from leavin' this bridge if you feel you got to go. All a man can do is stand up, show up."
"You're an idiot," she says, but her voice is awful gentle.
"More'n likely that's so," he says, leery of the sudden brightness of her eyes. "But like I told you, I can't abide all these ifs and maybes."
"You think if you wrap love up in a lot of words, I won't find it?" she says. "I think that's more of a piece than I've ever heard you speak."
"Used up a whole year's allowance of speechifying right there. You'd best hope there's nothing later as calls for wordiness or we might all be humped."
She sits back down, twisting her wrist so her hand is in his. A pretty piece of manipulatin' and he tries not to think of the practice she must have had. "Trouble's the best offer I've had lately. Might take you up on it."
"'Nara," he says. "I got no call to ask you not to do what you do, but I ain't much for sharin'. Don't know if I could stomach knowin' you were in someone else's bed."
"It isn't love, what I do with them."
He swallows. His mouth is drier than Isis Canyon at noon and his leg's clear asleep from being wedged up on the chair arm. "Sure. All business." He tries to shy away from the question but he's speakin' before he can shut himself up. "So when is it love?"
"Oh," she says. "They teach us all the signs. First, there have to be stars."
"Stars." He waves a hand at the window and shifts, his nethers all pins and needles. He leans toward her to get the blood flowing back to his legs. "Then?"
"You have to find yourself the most frustrating, exciting, stupidly noble shuai yao guai ban dan of a space captain and get him to make a dramatic declaration of his love for you."
"Done," he says. "I'm guessin'. Though I ain't exactly quite as shuai as some, and maybe less of a yao guai than others might say. Then?"
"Then...this," she says, and stretches up to kiss him. His eyes got closed somehow but he feels her breath and then her lips against his mouth, and he can't help sinkin' into her touch. She's familiar somehow and God help him, it's been too long that he's wanted this. Something shifts somewhere in the ship and the rumble of the engine sounds almost pleased. Kaylee tweaking something, maybe. He slips a hand into Inara's hair and holds her to him, breathing her in, her lips soft and sweet and the taste of tea on her tongue.
"No denyin' that your line of reasoning has something compellin' to it," he says when she sits back. "You'd have to swear good and all you'd never hoax me 'tween the sheets. I ain't one of your marks, lookin' to use you up."
"You think I'd hoax you, Malcolm Reynolds?" she says in that teasing voice that makes his chest tingle. "I want you to work for my pleasure."
"That sure sounds like a job I'm suited for. Only problem I see is how I'm gonna feel when you call up the next world's worth of clients, and how you're gonna feel when I go paradin' off to get myself filled with holes."
"I came back to you, Mal. That's got to mean something."
He nods. "It does. Little less, though, given that there were assassins on your heels and I fair dragged you out of that place." He takes her face in his palm. "Your turn for truthsome, Inara."
She blushes. "I came back, Mal, I fought and lied and did everything I thought I'd never do. I don't even know what the Guild will say. I hardly know if I care. I thought I had made my feelings clear."
"You had a lot of years of schoolin' in making dupes of better men than me," he says. "I want to hear you say it."
"It scares the hell out of me, loving you." She looks straight into his eyes. "But I do love you. That's the truth, Mal, and I'll swear to it in front of the whole crew."
"Well," he says. "Ain't that somethin'. Looks like we can find some lovers without a sunset." He leans in and kisses her again, his hand slipping from her chin to her shoulder. Damned if she doesn't feel like the best thing to happen in a long while. Inara in his arms and Serenity tickin' over smooth and no need to run. Not from the law, anyway, and he sure as hell ain't runnin' from Inara now that she's finished runnin' from him.
"So what do we do?"
"Don't rightly know," he admits. "Never been in a situation quite like this one. Seems to me the best we can do is take it a day at a time."
"And one night at a time?" Her smile is crooked and his feels like it must be too, under the weight of all that emotion. It's a frightenin' thing, starin' down that long stretch of potential hurt and strife and joy. The longer he keeps on holdin' her the worse it'll be. After this, thing's'll change, and he's never been one who could rightly predict the consequences. But he'll do what he can do: he'll show up and hope like hell his luck holds.
"Never a more certain thing in the 'verse," he says, and all the stars are in her pretty eyes.