It was the quiet that drove her to seek him out, or at least that’s what she told herself. Without the noise of the group the ship moaned and creaked like a lonely old house. She wandered into the kitchen - galley - as Mal called it, to find him boiling water for tea. He leaned back against the counter with crossed arms and smiled warmly, if a little bashfully, at her. In the weeks since Miranda, their relationship had been quietly growing. They managed to spend some time together each day, but it was hard to have any privacy with the day-to-day activities of Serenity. “Hey there. Thought maybe you were sleepin’. Had a busy day.” She returned his shy smile. “We did; but I find I can’t sleep well unless I know everyone’s on board. It feels so quiet – strange really – without them here.” “Yeah, I know the feelin’, but they’ll be back soon enough. You’ll have noise aplenty when they board t’morrow. Kaylee’ll fill this whole room up with words ‘bout how shiny everything was, what she ate, and what the Doc said ‘bout every damn thing. Want my advice - enjoy the quiet.” The warm tone that he used when he spoke of Kaylee took the sting out of his mockery. She knew he’d be hanging on every word that came out of the young mechanic’s mouth along with the rest of them. Knew he’d enjoy her enchantment and excitement over the small town market and festival they’d all been visiting on their two-day layover. Inara placed a small, clear bowl on the table and sat down; looking over to see what tea Mal had laid out to brew. “Tea sounds wonderful. Would you mind if I have a cup?” “Not a bit.” He turned around, busying himself with water and the teapot and cups and tea, fumbling just a little under her gaze. “Would you like me to prepare it?” she asked, somewhat concerned with what he might do to innocent tea leaves. “No. No, I’m good. You just sit there and keep me comp’ny.” “I wasn’t sure you wanted company. If I’m interrupting…” Her voice trailed off as he brought the tea to the table and sat down at his customary seat at the head of the table. “Xie xie,” she murmured as he handed her a steaming cup. The tea was surprisingly good. He eyed the bowl doubtfully. “You aim to take that thing everywhere you go?” “Well, I didn’t want to leave him all alone in my shuttle. He’s only been here one night. He’s not quite settled in yet.” His response was a disdainful huff of air. “You hungry? I made supper; there’s some left.” “No, thank you. I…you cooked?” She tried to recall if she’d ever seen him cooking. “Woulda just held the others up, if I’d made ‘em eat here. ‘Sides, like I said, Kaylee’ll be stuffin’ herself with carnival food tonight. Girl’ll be sicker’n a dog tomorrow, just like last time I let her go off to a fair.” His gruff tone did nothing to hide his affection. "I’m sure she’ll be fine,” she soothed before going back to their previous subject. “I don’t think I knew that you could cook. Why don’t you ever take a turn cooking?” “Well, you see, I got all kinda captainy things to be done aboard my ship. And while I can cook, I don’t like to do it. Kaylee enjoys it; or says she does, and everyone takes a turn at cleaning up, so it all works out.” She mulled this information over a quiet moment, looking around at the empty table. “It was nice of you to give the crew the night off the ship, but I miss them” “Yeah, me too. Well, not Jayne, and prob’ly the Doc not so much, but everybody else – yeah. Was only right. They watched the ship last night. My momma always used to say you gotta give a cowboy a Saturday night off the ranch if you wanna keep him workin’ the rest o’ the week.” Inara smiled gently at him and placed her hand over his. The darkness of the galley with its low gas light and their closeness to each other provided a very intimate spot that soothed her. “That reminds me, I wanted to thank you again for last night. I enjoyed it. I don’t think I’ve ever been to anything like that before. I liked it – better than the pool hall, even.” He stared at her, trying to read her, trying to see if she was using her wiles on him. “Yeah?” he asked, defensive casualness draped all over him. “Yeah,” she mocked his country slang tenderly. “It was …quaint,” she teased, “and I love my prize.” She trailed a finger down the side of the bowl that she’d decorated by tying a dark purple ribbon around the top. His quiet, pleased smile made her insides quake. Sweet Yesu, what must this man have been like before the war, before he was broken into so many tiny pieces that she sometimes wondered if he could ever be put back together. “That what you wrote down in your diary? ‘Went to a fair with a cargo smuggler. It was quaint. Got a guppy.'”

His voice was full of gentle self-mockery and it charmed a grin out of her. He was so seldom like this, full of teasing and fun, that she was almost giddy with him. She wondered if this was what falling in love felt like. She wished that she’d met him earlier, when he was this charming and pleasant all the time, not just late at night, in the dark, when no one else could see him. But the war had made them all what they were; and realistically, she wouldn’t have looked twice at a backwater cowboy from a rim planet back then. “Well, that - and I wrote other things, too,” she teased, enjoying every minute of their stolen time together.

“Dear Diary,” she sing-songed, pretending to wield a pen, “Mal looked very swai tonight. He wore a blue shirt that matched his eyes. He bought me an apple on a stick, and shot some tin ducks to win a prize for me. I chose a goldfish. My heart beats faster every time I look at him; and I think he likes me, too. Oh yes, Mal was also a lot of fun. P.S. I hope he asks me out again soon. Maybe I can get another goldfish.” She made a moon-brained face that made him snort. The tops of his ears turned red and he cleared his throat, looking half fascinated and half panicked by the idea of dating. “Well…we can…you know…anytime. I am…I have been known to…what are you gonna name your fish?” he finally got out. If she could package him like this she would. Parcel him up and keep him in a box to take out and look at after the other Mal returned - the one that was arrogant and argumentative and very loud. “I haven’t named him yet. It’s going to be something royal I think; he’s so elegant with all his pretty, long fins. I’ll get on the Cortex tonight and do some research.” “Have you considered ‘sushi’?” he deadpanned. “Oh, Mal, don’t…ai ya! Now look what you’ve done. That name will stick, even if I give him a long, meaningful Chinese name.” "Really wa'n't talkin' about namin' him." At her astonished glare, he backpeddled.

“I think we can remember Sushi easier than a long name; but honestly, Inara, I’m not sure we can take a fish into space. I don’t know what it’ll do to him. And I sort a got that ‘no pets’ rule with Kaylee.”

“Well I’m not leaving him behind, so we’d better find out. I’ll share him with Kaylee. So are you?” “Am I what?” “Are you going to ask me out again?” “Are all ex-companions so pushy?” he grumbled good-naturedly. She smiled at that, refusing to let him ruin the moment. “Companion dating is… complicated; but I would think it’s perfectly acceptable for me to ask a man about his intentions. I would even feel completely comfortable asking you out. For instance, we’re here alone. Technically, this could be a date. Just another exciting Saturday night in the adventurous life of a cargo smuggler, his girl, and her goldfish.” “That’d make a good title for a book,” he mused, making no comment on the other. “So what would you like to do? We could play cards…or you could tell me audacious tales about you mysterious past and we’ll get to know each other better. And isn’t that what dating is anyway?” He looked somewhat bemused at the turn of events; but he didn’t seem to want to pull away from her, and that was encouraging. “Talkin’s nice,” he agreed, but made no move to further the conversation. She hadn’t expected him to ever be easy. “I’ll ask you a question, then.” She dipped the tip of her finger into the water and they both watched as Sushi came up to nibble on one delicate nail. “What did you do back home on nights like this? Saturday nights at the ranch or the…what is it called…a bunkhouse?” Zoe had mentioned once in a rare revelation that he’d been raised on a cattle ranch. “Oh, well, let’s see. That there’s been a while back.” He took a sip of his tea to give himself a minute. Wasn’t that he couldn’t talk about home, it just didn’t come up much; and the crew usually knew he didn’t like lookin’ back. Course he hadn’t been quite as personal with the crew as he’d become with the woman sitting so closely beside him. “Not that far back, surely,” her voice drew him to the present. “Not much to tell, really. We kept an Earth-that-was-solar-week on Shadow. It worked good for farmin’ and ranchin’ communities. My momma, about forty hands, and me worked ourselves to the bone all week. Lived in the house with my mother; the bunkhouse was for the workin’ men. The hands hit town on Friday nights, sometimes layed over ‘til Saturday night; but they had to back to the ranch by Sunday morning. Momma was a stickler for the men bein’ in church. Wa’n’t no excuse for missin’ except dyin’; and then you’d end up there anyways.” His voice had turned soft and gentle when he spoke of his mother, just as it did when he dealt with Kaylee and River. “Your mother ran the ranch? Where was your father?” She held her breath, but he didn’t seem offended by the question. “They parted ways before I was born. Never met the man. But then, never did need to, really. Had about forty uncles on that spread. Each and every one of ‘em felt the responsibility of moldin’ me into a fine, upstandin’, sensible young man – even if they had to beat the sense into me. Which they did, on numerous occasions.” “Let’s go back to the part where you went to town and got drunk every weekend. How old were you?” She tried to imagine a young Malcolm dancing with other young women and was amazed to feel a slight pang. “Whoa, now, I never said I got to go to town all them times. I said the hands got to take off. No, somebody still had to do the chores – feedin’ and milkin’ and such. I got to go plenty, though. There was always a barn dance or some kind of get-together bein’ thrown somewheres. And like I said, with all the hands around, I didn’t get into much trouble when they did let me tag along.” “So the hands went to town, and you did all the chores, and then you went in and what? Cleaned your pitch fork or hoe or whatever?” “Hey, now. Ain’t no call to be insultin’ here,” he teased back softly. “You’re confusin’ a rancher with a farmer, darlin’. I ain’t never used a hoe…well…except in the veg’table garden…but that ain’t farmin’. That’s eatin’.” “Oh, and you never used a pitch fork? Not even for dropping hay for the cows?” “That’d be pitchin’ or strewin’ hay. And yeah, I mighta done a little of that, too; but only in a ranchin’ capacity, you understand. And did some hayin’ cause the cattle had to eat. See, a farm has cows, bao bei, but a ranch has cattle.” When she laughed warmly at him, he squeezed her hand a little, and then threaded their fingers together. They watched Sushi nibble at a piece of floating food. “I like that.” “That a ranch has cattle?” “Well, that, too, but I like you calling me sweetheart -when you do it soft like that.” He cleared his throat. She rushed back in before the moment was spoiled. “Alright, so you cleaned your branding irons by the fire at home. And what did your mother do? Sit and watch old soap operas on the vid screen?” “Hardly. My momma never stopped workin’. After I got in, I’d wash up the dishes and she’d get our clothes ready for church. Make me clean up. Polish my boots. Do some readin’ for her; she was big on readin’. Sometimes she’d cut my hair. Just ord’nary stuff, Inara. Just everyday things a body does.” Things he missed sometimes ‘til it hurt, but things that were becomin’ good memories, things he could think about more often now without an agony inside him. “Reading. So that’s where the poetry came in? Did you mother like poetry or your teachers?” His laugh surprised her. “Weren’t no teachers. We had a school buildin’ but there never was enough money to pay anybody to come out that far. Once, we had a nice lady for about two weeks I guess. She left a cryin’ and a screechin’ about the dust and the heat and the wind. Reckon she covered all the deterrents in the one fit.” He didn’t notice her silence. “So my momma taught me and a few of the younger hands to read and do sums in our heads. She was a stickler about education, too. I surely am glad for that learnin’ now. Was lucky. It’s easy enough in this world to get cheated. It’s twice as bad for poor souls can’t read and figure.” “We grew up so differently,” she mused, almost to herself. No schools? No teachers? It sounded like something out of a book. How could people live in such deprived conditions? How could she have remained so ignorant of them? “So now it’s your turn. You have to tell me a story of your Saturday nights. Big shindigs with lotsa dancin’ in glass slippers and puffy dresses I’ll bet.” His tone was kind, but suddenly she wanted to stop. When she’d started this game, she’d thought he’d be the one to balk, but oddly enough, she was the one who didn’t want to share her background. It occurred to her that while she’d been given everything opportunity imaginable, he hadn’t even had a school. What would he think of the opulence that had accompanied her youth?

Baths and pampering, sensuous drapes of fabrics for clothing, casually discarded strands of jewels that would have fed his whole ranch family for a year, soft hands that had never held an iron nor cooked a meal, teachers for every subject under the suns, libraries that would fill his ship. What would his mother have thought of her? Beautiful? Indulged? Cosseted? She’d be right on all those counts. Useless? Insignificant? A waste of a rancher’s time? Probably. “Oh, you know, this and that - and training. Always training. Music, languages, history, art, you know, the usual.” She glanced up at him, noticing the way his bangs were flopping down in his face. She reached up to play with the soft, toffee-colored spikes. “I could cut your hair,” she offered. The words were out of her mouth before she could stop them. Where on Earth-that-was had that come from? What an idiotic thing to say, she scolded herself. Mal looked confused at the changed of subject, but just shook his head slightly. “No, I don’t need a haircut. Do I need a haircut? Cause Zoe usually…but I thank you kindly anyway,” Mal stuttered, pulling back without appearing to hurry. And suddenly what had started out as a frivolous offer became important; perhaps because Inara was still thinking of a stern Mrs. Reynolds looking her over with a sniff of dismissal. “I can cut your hair, Mal. It’s one of the few things I do for the crew, but I’m actually quite good at it. I’ve cut Kaylee’s hair and for your information, I’ve cut Zoe’s hair.” “Well, sure, and when I need a haircut you will be the first person-” he stopped, not really sure what had happened, but foggily realizing that somehow they’d gone from his life back on Shadow to Inara’s feeling like she needed to be pulling her weight on Serenity, like she need to belong.

“Okay, then.” He pulled away from her with a gentle smile, his eyes a clear and twinkling blue. “I’ll get a towel and you grab some scissors – but if you cut my ear off, darlin', I ain’t payin’ ya, dong ma?

“Mal! Don’t even joke about that. I keep telling you ear jokes are not funny!” she huffed as she took Sushi and moved gracefully off to find her scissors.