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Title: Mal/Inara Drabbles
Fandom: Firefly
Characters:Mal and Inara
Prompt: Teammates, Sunrise, Smell, Shapes, Star
Word Count: 100 a piece
Rating: R
Author's Notes: Set post my fic Down Time. All drabbles set post-Serenity (Big Damn Movie), may feature spoilers. Previous drabbles here.
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fanfic100 mal_inara
Teammates
They never played basketball in the cargo hold anymore—the teams were uneven. They never played any games anymore. Mal pretended it didn’t bother him. He had lost men before—countless numbers of his fellow soldiers died in the battle at Serenity—so he pretended his latest lost didn’t bother him. They didn’t joke around anymore either. Inara often wondered if the air on Serenity would ever feel the same. The teams were uneven, and Inara began to understand as the days slipped by and they all fell into a new routine that the teams would remain uneven, and basketball would be pushed into a distant memory of a lost time.
Sunrise
Inara navigated her shuttle back to the ship by moonlight, careful not to wake anybody as she returned. Mal surprised her by opening the shuttle door as soon as she was docked. She braced herself, expecting a snide comment about her latest client, but he didn’t speak. He simply took her by the hand—sending a surprised thrill down her spine—and led her out of Serenity. She didn’t ask any questions, just followed him up a steep, rocky hill.
“I wanted to show you something,” he said, his voice reserved. Inara didn’t have to be trained to recognize the nerves in his words.
“What?” She asked.
Mal pointed to the east, while wrapping his other arm around her waist, pulling her against his chest. “Wait for it,” he murmured.
The sky turned red, then golden, around them. Light crawled across the ground, inching towards their feet. The air against her skin seemed to jump ten degrees, chasing the chill away—though she still had goosebumps on her arm. She was about to ask Mal what they were waiting for when it happened.
The fluffy clouds hovering in the sky seemed to quiver, then explode with golden light, as the sun crested the distant mountains. Mal tightened his grip, resting his chin on the top of her head, as the sun ate the sky, overtook the clouds.
Smell
Mal stole a small handkerchief from Inara—a rather fine, lacy slip of cloth that seemed altogether useless—that smelled richly of her. Not of her perfume—though he generally thought that was nice—but of her. Of her skin. Of her hair. Her sweat, and the general must that coated her skin when she stretched out beside him, sleepy, satisfied. He kept it in his bunk, hidden, and he thought of it every time she was gone…somewhere else…doing things he didn’t want to imagine. He knew he could pull this lacy little rag out its secret spot, inhale deeply, and for a moment, she’d be with him again. He never touched it.
Shapes
A knife wielded in anger could cut a horrible shape in a person, tearing the skin, destroying the flesh, making everything crimson, dark. Inara thought Mal would never stop bleeding. Simon never lost his cool. He led Mal into the infirmary, studied the wound, gathered his tools--his own weapons. Mal cracked a joke around a sharp intake of breath, flashing Inara a secret, assuring smile. Zoë silently watched Simon work from the door, Jayne scrounged in the kitchen for food…it was just another day on the job, another job on the Serenity.
Star
Inara collected myths. Each planet had its own intricate belief system, a marriage of religion and science, of his
tory and progress. No two cultures were quite alike, even though they all featured prominent similarities. She especially liked the myths of the stars—the tales of Gods, the tales of creation. Everybody found meaningful shapes in the meaningless patterns of the galaxies—she marveled at the way a thousand pairs of eyes could see the same handful of stars and record a thousand different stories about the warriors, the queens, the animals they saw there.
Mal, she realized, had his own myth, his own secret story for the stars. Did somebody teach it to him, or did he create it? Did he feel it in his blood, or did it come from a long tradition of story-tellers and soothsayers?
How did Mal Reynolds know that the real story of the stars was freedom?
Fandom: Firefly
Characters:Mal and Inara
Prompt: Teammates, Sunrise, Smell, Shapes, Star
Word Count: 100 a piece
Rating: R
Author's Notes: Set post my fic Down Time. All drabbles set post-Serenity (Big Damn Movie), may feature spoilers. Previous drabbles here.
Crossposted to
pepperlandgirl4,fanfic100 mal_inaraTeammates
They never played basketball in the cargo hold anymore—the teams were uneven. They never played any games anymore. Mal pretended it didn’t bother him. He had lost men before—countless numbers of his fellow soldiers died in the battle at Serenity—so he pretended his latest lost didn’t bother him. They didn’t joke around anymore either. Inara often wondered if the air on Serenity would ever feel the same. The teams were uneven, and Inara began to understand as the days slipped by and they all fell into a new routine that the teams would remain uneven, and basketball would be pushed into a distant memory of a lost time.
Sunrise
Inara navigated her shuttle back to the ship by moonlight, careful not to wake anybody as she returned. Mal surprised her by opening the shuttle door as soon as she was docked. She braced herself, expecting a snide comment about her latest client, but he didn’t speak. He simply took her by the hand—sending a surprised thrill down her spine—and led her out of Serenity. She didn’t ask any questions, just followed him up a steep, rocky hill.
“I wanted to show you something,” he said, his voice reserved. Inara didn’t have to be trained to recognize the nerves in his words.
“What?” She asked.
Mal pointed to the east, while wrapping his other arm around her waist, pulling her against his chest. “Wait for it,” he murmured.
The sky turned red, then golden, around them. Light crawled across the ground, inching towards their feet. The air against her skin seemed to jump ten degrees, chasing the chill away—though she still had goosebumps on her arm. She was about to ask Mal what they were waiting for when it happened.
The fluffy clouds hovering in the sky seemed to quiver, then explode with golden light, as the sun crested the distant mountains. Mal tightened his grip, resting his chin on the top of her head, as the sun ate the sky, overtook the clouds.
Smell
Mal stole a small handkerchief from Inara—a rather fine, lacy slip of cloth that seemed altogether useless—that smelled richly of her. Not of her perfume—though he generally thought that was nice—but of her. Of her skin. Of her hair. Her sweat, and the general must that coated her skin when she stretched out beside him, sleepy, satisfied. He kept it in his bunk, hidden, and he thought of it every time she was gone…somewhere else…doing things he didn’t want to imagine. He knew he could pull this lacy little rag out its secret spot, inhale deeply, and for a moment, she’d be with him again. He never touched it.
Shapes
A knife wielded in anger could cut a horrible shape in a person, tearing the skin, destroying the flesh, making everything crimson, dark. Inara thought Mal would never stop bleeding. Simon never lost his cool. He led Mal into the infirmary, studied the wound, gathered his tools--his own weapons. Mal cracked a joke around a sharp intake of breath, flashing Inara a secret, assuring smile. Zoë silently watched Simon work from the door, Jayne scrounged in the kitchen for food…it was just another day on the job, another job on the Serenity.
Star
Inara collected myths. Each planet had its own intricate belief system, a marriage of religion and science, of his
tory and progress. No two cultures were quite alike, even though they all featured prominent similarities. She especially liked the myths of the stars—the tales of Gods, the tales of creation. Everybody found meaningful shapes in the meaningless patterns of the galaxies—she marveled at the way a thousand pairs of eyes could see the same handful of stars and record a thousand different stories about the warriors, the queens, the animals they saw there.
Mal, she realized, had his own myth, his own secret story for the stars. Did somebody teach it to him, or did he create it? Did he feel it in his blood, or did it come from a long tradition of story-tellers and soothsayers?
How did Mal Reynolds know that the real story of the stars was freedom?