Title: Unbalanced

Summary: Post the BDM Heavy spoilers for Serenity. Mal made her throw all her companion training out the window.

Fandom: Serenity/Firefly Mal/Inara

Author: Bashipforever

Word Count: 495

 

 

 

Mal didn’t do big overtures. There would be no flowers, no chocolate…even if they’d been able to get chocolate out here. She wasn’t even sure when it started. Sometime after Wash’s death to be sure. There were little things, like a jug of apple cider at dinner, her favorite beverage. When she’d asked him why and how he’d gotten it, he’d just shrugged and given her that cocky little smile then he’d put his feet up on the table, provoking her into an irritation even the cider couldn’t soothe.

 

 Then there was a length of deep teal Oriental silk left on her bed, just enough to make a new dressing robe after Mal had inadvertently ruined hers by sitting on it in greasy pants during one of his many uninvited visits to her shuttle.

 

He never said anything to her, just left things where she would find them. Mal made her throw all her companion training out the window. It was one of the most appealing and scary aspects of him.

 

Her breaking point was that night at dinner. He wasn’t there but there was a bundle of incense in her favorite scent next to her plate. She’d mentioned only days before that she was running low on incense and she hoped they’d find a core planet soon.

 

“Kaylee…did you?” she asked, indicating the bundle of incense next to her plate.

 

“Nu uh, it was here when I walked in to make dinner. All the plates laid out pretty as you please, the incense next to your spot.”

 

She picked up the bundle, her fingers caressing the sticks and a smile leapt across her face. There was a smudge of grease across several of the sticks. It was a game of suggestions, flirtations and anonymous gifts. Mal was romancing her, she thought as she knocked on his door. She took the grumbled “go away” as invitation and stepped inside.

 

“Thank you for the incense and the silk…and the cider,” she started. Mal was sitting at his desk scribbling on a piece of paper, an activity he abandoned when she entered the room. He stood up brusquely, shoving his hands in his pockets.

 

“Wasn’t nothing,” he responded.

 

“It was…I know how difficult luxuries are to get right now and how little spare income you’ve got,” Inara continued. “Where did you get them?”

 

Mal struggled for a moment, trying to decide whether to continue the charade or let it drop. “Called in a few favors.”

“Thank you,” she said again, turning toward him with a carefully crafted smile. The raw, dark look in his eyes made the smile waver and finally fall.

 

“I’m not good at this kinda thing, ‘Nara. Probably never will be,” Mal confessed.

 

“I know,” she answered, the smile that spread across her face neither crafted or perfect but it lit her eyes in a way that made him ache. “I never said I minded,” she whispered as she slipped out of his room.