Title: My Only

Summary: Post BDM Post Stages of Love. Mal and Inara had (pre the break up part of this series) a full blown relationship. Sharing isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

Author: Bashipforever

Rated: PG

Prompt: Stages of Love: Trouble in Paradise: Reconciliation

Word Count: It’s over…by quite a bit. I’m sorry. I’ve cut down and they wouldn’t resolve things easily because they don’t ever do anything easy. (741 words)

 

 

 

They spent weeks that stretched into months avoiding each other. To Mal’s credit he was better about allowing her to keep a schedule then he’d ever been. They landed when scheduled on the planets they were scheduled to land on and they never took off early unless her shuttle was already in dock.

 

But Mal didn’t stop by the shuttle anymore to give her the itinerary that he’d already posted.

 

Their relationship for the first time since they’d met had become strictly business. It wasn’t even friendly business. It was tense, awkward and filled with anger.

 

She hated every single moment of it.  She knew that had been reflected in her work. It wasn’t that she’d had any complaints. It was something inside of her that was dissatisfied. Clients that at one time she had taken joy in just seemed like a job, one she couldn’t wait to end.

+

She docked her shuttle after every job and struggled against her own need to see Mal, to touch him, hold him, and just breathe in the scent of him. He’d made himself clear though. She couldn’t be a companion and his lover. He wasn’t willing to share her.

 

As the weeks turned into months, she was less willing to be shared.

 

The turning point wasn’t any kind of revelation or epiphany. The client wasn’t a monster or anything less than a perfect, handsome gentleman, but in the middle of having sex with him she’d realized she didn’t want to do this anymore. She realized that at some point during these months she’d begun to fantasize that her clients were Mal. She’d committed the cardinal guild sin and fallen in love.

 

Which was why she stood on the threshold of the bridge, watching him brood, lit only by the glow from the instrument panels.

 

“Not keepin’ you on schedule?” Mal interrupted her thoughts. She expected him to be harsher, instead he just sounded tired, weary.

 

“That’s not what I came to talk to you about…not exactly,” she half whispered as she stepped over the threshold onto the bridge. She didn’t look at him. She knew she couldn’t if she wanted to get her words out. Instead she focused on the black beyond the view port.  “This arrangement isn’t working out for me.”

 

“Gorramit, Inara. I’m doin’ my best. I’m gittin’ you where you need to go an’ I’m gittin’ you there on time. What in blue hell else do you want from me?” he snapped but it still carried a weariness about it that made his words seem as if they were too heavy.

 

“I know. Business wise, the arrangement is perfect. Which is why I’d like to sunder it.”

 

“You’d like to what?” Mal asked.

 

“Sunder…it means-“

 

“I know what it means,” Mal barked. “I went to gorram school. So you leaving ‘gain? ‘Pose it was jus’ a matter a time.” His expression went hard and cold at those words.

 

“Mal...no. You don’t understand,” Inara said, half turning toward him. “I-I love you and I’m tired of the way things are between us. I want them the way they were.”

 

Mal’s head snapped up and his eyes fixed on hers. He looked for all the things she’d never say in her eyes and ended up confused. “You’re gonna have to be a lil more straight then that, ‘Nara.”

 

Her name the way he said it from his lips made her ache. It’d been a long time since he’d called her ‘Nara. She bit her bottom lip and took a deep breath to keep herself from flying into his arms.

 

“I-I don’t want to be shared anymore. I want…I just want you, Mal.”

 

“Only me?” he asked and she cursed him for making this so hard.

 

“Only you,” she promised him.

 

“Well…now…think I can handle that.” A slow, lazy smile spread across his face. “Needin’ you closer…why in the blue hell ain’t you over here kissing me?”

 

“You know, Mr. Reynolds…I don’t have a good answer for that,” she half laughed and closed the distance between them. Her arms went around his neck and her lips met his.  She could get used to not being shared.