Mal has never been exactly what you'd call a proper gentleman, but 'Nara makes him feel like he's been rough-hewn out of some piece of drift not even a smuggler could find a use for. She looks up at him with those dark eyes and he wants to spit and polish himself into something worthy. He gets that schoolboy longing, not that he ever had much schooling. Makes him want to be good. Makes him want to swear and drink and find himself somebody else.

If she were anyone else, he wouldn't mind rubbing himself stupid in his bunk over her. If she were any poster girl, any moaning shamming actress on a screen, it wouldn't matter. But she ain't. She's part of his crew, for all her silks and airs. Many's the time he's yearned to knock on her door, but he knows if he comes to her, she'll turn him away. It ain't the money she wants from him. He's not sure what it is exactly, but he knows he ain't quite the man to suss it out. She's all subtlety and quiet graces despite that fire in her. Private when she wants to be, and he ain't found the seam to coax open. Inara's always seemed to know what she wants. She's drawn the lines between them, and though he makes a play of scuffing them out with the toe of his boots and barging in on her tea ceremonies, he lets her boundaries stand.

All the same he aches for her sometimes, and his bunk feels too small or too large, and he thinks of that heap of satin that she calls a bed, and imagines it's just right. Maybe she'd open the door with that smile that minds him of the sun spilling over the curve of a world. Oh, there's an appeal to the thought. She's got curves in plenty, and those breasts that are riper than any fruit he's seen. There's wiles and ways and an honest goodness to her. He has to sleep on his back for the heat she generates in him.

When he's honest with himself, he hates the whoring with a jealous rage. All those other men, and none of them know the steel that's in her, just the shiny exterior. He'd not mind setting a fist to the face of any of them hun dan what think they can pay for her body and get anything else in the bargain, any of them trying to know her by having knowledge of her. He may never have seen her in the flesh, as it were, but he's seen the throat of a man she put a knife to, and it weren't a half bad effort for a beginner. She's saved his sorry ass more than once, or at least done her best. When he spares a thought for her, out about her business, he thinks with pride that for all of her he ain't had, at least there's that. They've fought together. That's a tighter bond than any hour in a bunk.

All the same he thinks of her and something lonely cries out in his chest, makes him prowl along the corridors in the middle of the night. He's always been the kind of man needs space. He ain't picky: the wide open vistas of the ranch did fine, and now the infinite horizon of the black. She ain't one for the bridge, stays pretty close in her shuttle. She's safe and easy with her feet on the ground and he ain't, and ain't never likely to be, what with one thing and the other and what she might name his cordial disdain for the Alliance. She likes a steady stream of clients and a respectable business. He's never had that kind of guarantee. It ain't the work that matters so much as the ship and the company and the whole 'verse just there for the lookin' at, and the takin' if it comes to that. Companion's a lonely life too, but a different kind of lonely. Too much of a thing makes a lack somehow. That's trouble too: he can't ask her to stop being who she is, what she worked for, just because now and again when she leaves he wants to slam his fist through the bulkhead to quiet down his traitor mind giving him images of her baring all that lily skin for someone else. And how can he trust a woman like that? A woman gives herself up to any dandy who'll have her ain't never been his kind of woman, 'cept he knows Inara ain't that way (honor among thieves, honor among Companions) and he hates that he trusts her anyway, knowing all the guile learned into her.

He ain't certain, since Nandi, just what 'Nara thinks of him. He may not be fine or fancy, but he's sure not stupid. He knows when a woman's upset, even if 'Nara's version of pissy is to put just a little more porcelain into her china doll act. She was saying plenty when she told him about honor and ties and love and commitment and family for God's sake, and then said she was leaving. More than anything he wanted to catch that pretty wrist and kiss that perfect mouth. Nandi good as told him Inara wouldn't mind, but he couldn't be sure. Not then, all caught up in grief, and not now, flush with victory. It'll be another night where they break out the wine, and 'Nara will sit close to him and sip at her grog, and he'll wish he had something fine to offer her, and she'll look at him like she knows it.

And she ain't left yet. The little shuttle's still sitting pretty right where it belongs, with the smell of incense wafting out when she opens the door. Inside, 'Nara's still sitting pretty too, still pouring her tea and brushing her hair, and as far as he's concerned, that's right where she belongs. He can't stomach thinkin' on the day he has to rent that thing to someone else.

Some nights he thinks he'll go to her. One last stand.

"I ain't one for pretty words," he'll say, "but Inara, I can't stand to think of lettin' you go. I reckon living with that kind of honor, you get tied to a person. Least, I would, if you'll have me."

And maybe she'll close the door and seal it and stand with her slender shoulders pressed against it and her head tipped back to stop the tears from mussing her frippery, but maybe she'll let him in. Maybe he'll have his heart in his hand and she'll take it and smile, and he'll peel back all those layers of silk and lace and manners until he finds the woman underneath, smelling and tasting and feeling like women always have, like women always should. He'll do for her what her clients never do and tend to her pleasure. Maybe they'll both be able to get outside themselves a spell.

It's a nice dream. He just can't get past the next morning. He can't get past the next time he has a job she doesn't take a shine to, or the next time she has a client. She may be part of his crew, but she won't never be under his command, and she don't give half a hump for his fancy captainship when she's got her mind on business. He can't figure out what holds her. He's got an engine for Kaylee and a home for River, and for Zoe he's got the independence they could never win, but he just can't find his way straight to offering Inara any damn thing she can't earn herself. She can't bank sweet words and he ain't exactly a man for the declarations of love whatsoever he feels. So he holds his tongue and they move in their own orbits, colliding at times, waiting for the change that always comes.

+

There are times Inara thinks that Mal's the only one who sees her true. He keeps his own counsel but she feels how he watches her. More than once she's caught herself slipping, thinking of a grime-smeared finger running down her cheek instead of the soft hands of the men she beds. More than once on lonely nights in the black she's waited for his knock, not certain what she'd do if she heard it. Once in a dream she licked the tattoo from his thigh as he laughed and shivered and there was the afterthought of anise in her mouth when she woke.

Then there are times she wants to shout at him for the way he treats her like some fragile trinket, just another bobble-headed geisha doll. Those are the worst days. It shouldn't matter what he thinks. It shouldn't matter that sometimes she is shamed when he calls her a whore and she slashes back with her words. She's been called a whore before. She's been slighted by clients and backwater folk, and she's been slighted by those who know better, people who mean a damn sight more than the captain of a smuggling ship. It's only that it hurts more when Mal does it. What right has a thief to call out a whore? She may not be quite a lady according to his old-fashioned fei hua morality, but he's not quite a gentleman, and at least she does deliver.

What would he say if he did knock? Something to the tune of "Honey darlin', be my bandit queen"? He's a dangerous man with a mind for thrill and cash, and more often than not, it costs more sweat and blood than he can rightly spare. That's not the life she worked for. She knows who she is: a fair pilot for small craft, light training in self-defense, and a thousand ways to bring a man to his knees. She likes that. She likes the power, likes the grace. She likes bringing pleasure and peace into lives that lack it. Her genius was always in the gentler things and keeping what's inside in. He presses up against all her barriers and puts her solid life into flux.

If she knows anything, she knows that she's trouble. Sure as sin, out of place trouble. She flummoxes him. She changes his perspective. And Malcolm Reynolds, he's trouble by profession. Trouble for her profession, certain, malingering out of reach of civilized worlds for his own Malish reasons. She finds that attractive despite her frustration with him. For all his ragged edges, Mal's got a heart sound as good wood, and she likes him. Feeling truthsome, as he'd say, she loves him. He'll put every last ounce of love into this beautiful heap of a ship and she can't take how that makes her feel, to know a man would treasure a thing that much. Walking the wild edge of the 'verse has brought out something fierce in her. Something true. She doesn't want to let go of that, though she used to know how.

Anyway, she can't find her way back to Companioning just yet. Not with all this wildness in her, and the thought of Mal in the back of her mind, and she can't forget how she wept over the thought of him being with Nandi. He's half-spoiled her for caring about small things and strangers and it will take some time. She'll go back to the training house, teach a new generation of girls to pour tea and soothe away the aches of the world. If she stays here on Serenity, she'll get ragged herself, fray at the edges with no comfort to keep away the cold of the black. She doesn't want to bring Mal to his knees. He's got enough trouble with the Tams and the ship and the spinning 'verse, and she's afraid that there's no comfort that she could give that would ease him. Too rutting honest, the captain, all that boneheaded nobility. Too busy trying to ease his crew through life.

But she loves this ship, brigands and all. This gorgeous piecemeal ship, near enough a relic as Mal's honor is, all held together by half-luck and will and a lot more love than she's ever touched before. Mal does well with them, judicious in his orders, making a family out of these disparate desperados with their reasons for staying. Zoe taught her how to shoot. Wash gave her tips on how to get a better response from her shuttle. Kaylee's been the sister she never had. Jayne, well, at least she never lacked an appreciative eye, and the Shepherd was a good man to talk to. Serenity is home and she wants to stay.

What she ought to do is go to him. Tap on his door, come into his space, because he's never going to actually come to her in her bed that's too large and too crowded with the afterthoughts of so many. She ought to pad along the corridors in her slippers and search him out with his frowsy hair and his bare chest and the trousers that fall off his hips. She wouldn't even have to say a thing. He'd look down at her with those serious eyes and she'd look back up at him and not drop her gaze away the way she always does, and he'd fold her up in his arms and kiss her. Captain's a man of action, after all. And it would be good. It would be wonderful, she imagines. She knows she's never shared her body with anyone who respects and cares as much as Mal does. He'd make room for her, and it would be the two of them inside the ship he loves, the ship she loves, a quiet instead of a silence. A gift instead of a service.

Now and again she does slip out late at night, one hand touching the wall just to remind herself that Serenity is there, but she always ends up in the mess with a cup of tea, only her longing eyes wandering down the hall to the niche of his cabin. She just can't see the dream past the next morning, waking up in his arms smiling and then turning out for the next crisis, or her next client. He hates her work. She still doesn't. It's a good living, bringing beauty into the 'verse. She's just got a head full of space right now, too many stars in her eyes for the business on her mind, and he can't command her out of that any more than she can gentle the memory of the war out of him. It isn't her place to change him. They've both made their choices. They are who they are and it's only scrapes they need rescuing from.

She never was a girl for dreams of saviors. As a woman, she wants it even less. All she has left is the graceful exit. She'll take it.

Inara lies in her bed in that vague place between sleep and dream and remembers dancing. She thinks of the paths of two bodies through space, their collisions, their rebounds. No such thing as perfect elasticity: every time he touches her, she absorbs a little more. In the morning she'll leave and there will be no more dancing. No more scrubbed-up Mal in his finery, holding himself like someone she could go home to, holding her like he wants to keep her by him. No more meeting of hands palm to palm, and him leaning in close enough that she can breathe the heat of his skin mingling with the nice cologne he dug up somewhere to please her. But this is a dance they've done before and they'll continue: circling, fingers grazing, circling, watching, always coming back. Partnered. Cleaving. The dizzy span of the 'verse between them won't matter until the music's over.

Just before she falls asleep, she remembers the bitter softness of his mouth and sighs.