You only hold me up like this Cause you don't know who I really am Sometimes I just want to know what it's like to be you

Inara stirred silently, casting sideways glances to Mal every so often. He sat at the table cleaning his guns with Jayne. Kaylee, River and Simon played some sort of card game on the floor as she cooked, but her attention wasn’t on them. It was all on Mal. There was something about him that fascinated her. They always fought. Always bantered, but neither of them truly knew the other. Inara wondered what went through his head. If he thought the same way about her as she did about him.

“I used to waste my time dreaming of being alive,” she thought to herself, “Now I only waste it dreaming of you...”

She looked down at the pot and looked out into the kitchen. “Dinner’s ready, everyone.”

Mal got up as she moved the pot to the counter. “It smells nice, Inara.”

Inara looked down and laughed a little. “New recipe. I hope you like it...”

He smirked and moved the pot towards the table. He looked over at Kaylee and said, “Kaylee, can you go get Zoe and tell her dinner's ready?”

Kaylee gave a fast, “Sure, Cap’n,” and started to move, but Inara raised her arm to stop her.

“I'll get Zoe. You just go ahead and set the table.”

Before anyone could say a word, Inara was already down the hallway. She took a breath and looked behind at Mal. He was just setting the table, but all that went through Inara’s head was a desire. To turn the lights off and dash away all the awkwardness and shyness between them.

That couldn’t happen though.

“I'll never be the same,” she thought as she shook her head and continued up the hall. If she ever tried to have a relationship with him, it would reach the Guild somehow, no matter how clandestine they tried to make it. Then what? Would she be willing to risk all she had worked for one man she had only known for more than a year?

And even if the Guild never found out, what if they never worked out? Nothing between them would ever be the same. Mal would stop coming to her shuttle. Friendship might as well cease to exist.

Inara had her complexities, but Mal’s burdened him more in his everyday life. There was no way those two, Mal and Inara, could be feasible.

Well, not right now...Fate has had stranger ways of working.

Inara laughed and walked up to the cockpit. “I've got headaches and bad luck, but they couldn't touch you, Malcolm Reynolds...”