I should tell you, I'm disaster.
This was written with the prompt "Get your head in the game" in mind, provided by Mia; this is part of my long overdue birthday gift for her. ;_; Oh, also: the title is taken from the 31 Days theme for June 12, 2008.
Inara has, of course, been on this ship long enough to know that once you set all that bullshit about him having his heart in his right place, Mal is an insufferably slow idiot when it comes to the things that really matter. He can shoot the wings off a fly with his eyes closed, out swear a dump ship driver and drink enough alcohol in a single night to give several hundred lightweights liver poisoning, but he could not, for the life of him, recognize what was good for him even as it's staring him in the face. It took her a while to fully accept this, and after she finally grew tired of being thwarted by his unintended denials (read: he's just that thick), Inara decided that it was time to take matters into her own hands.
Baiting is something that Companions are extremely good at – they've turned it into an art, with so and so many words and a million and one different but ultimately subtle gestures as their tools of trade. One fine day, when Mal barges into her pod in his usual, gruff fashion, Inara keeps these techniques in mind as she politely excuses herself from his tirade about funds and galactic routes and times her disappearance behind a screen at the precise moment when her robe slips, just so, from her shoulders, revealing the nape of her neck. She takes a perverse amount of pleasure in the realization that Mal has stumbled to a stop, but she is a Companion: Companions are in control in any time and any place. So, concealed by the screen, she takes her time in changing her robes, careful of every movement, every sway of her hips.
She steps out after what she has sure was an agonizingly long time for her honorable captain, feigning innocence, willfully oblivious to his discomfort. And when he stammers something about checking this ship's damned engine, she smiles, and tells herself that from here on, it's only a matter of time.