Spoilers for the movie!

Sometimes at ff_friday they issue a re-challenge: to pick a previous assigment you hadn't gotten to before. This is a longer-than-the-rules-there- allow response to the 2nd challenge: A first kiss.

Inara has to deal with a new version of Mal. Rated PG.

****** "Something New" by HawkMoth (10/8/2005) ******

What was that?

******

They couldn't risk re-entry into Persephone's atmo with the primary buffer panel gone again, so Mal instructed River to set course for the closest outbound fueling station. Serenity should be safer there and in space, they could hope, rather than back on the very ground the Operative might yet be prowling.

He sought Inara out straight off and told her the detour might set them back several days from delivering her to the Training House. And judging by the look on his face, her softly-spoken, "I don't mind" had been another good answer.

It was mostly true, although she hadn't quite reacquired her bearings, still feeling unanchored despite the sense that she had come back home. With Kaylee's help, her shuttle was slightly more habitable, if only a little less austere than one of the passenger rooms, with the aid of some of the "sundries" unearthed from the trunk she'd left behind.

But that night, as Serenity wove carefully through the black toward safe harbor, sleep eluded Inara, despite the comfort of a soft pillow, candlelight and lavender incense. An hour of meditation was of no help either, and in the end she gave up, wrapped a shawl around her shoulders and headed for the galley.

It wasn't a surprise to find Mal there, sitting half in shadow away from the soft glow of the table-lamp, although she tried to convince herself she hadn't been hoping he would be. He seemed just as unperturbed by her arrival, pushing out the chair near to his at the end of the table, with his foot, in wordless invitation.

"You all right?" he asked as she sat down

"Yes," she replied. "I was just feeling a little..."

"Unsettled?" he finished for her, a smile tugging at one end of his mouth. "I suspect we're all gonna be that way for a spell, 'til we find ourselves a proper path through the woods. There's a lot of uncharted territory ahead of us."

Inara nodded, wondering if he was speaking only of their diminished crew, or perhaps was including the uncertainty of what lay ahead for the two of them as well. She could hardly bear to think of how difficult the future would be for Zoe, and didn't yet dare speak of it to him. "Serenity will find a way for us, Mal," she said, trying to keep her tone neutral. "She always has."

"Yeah," he said, a word heavy with the weight of others unspoken, his gaze fixed on the mug in his hands. He took a swig, and then without looking up passed it along to her.

It was as shocking a gesture of familiarity as when he'd touched her bruised lip months ago outside the infirmary. Equally surprising was the calmness of her reaction this time as she took the mug, managing to avoid letting their fingers make contact. Mal seemed not to notice, even as a third shock came with the realization that the mug did not hold cheap whiskey as she had expected, but one of the fine, costly teas she had left behind with Kaylee.

Brewed just right, she noticed as she took another sip, savoring the warmth and delicate taste. But she handed it back to Mal without a word, favoring him with only a knowing smile when their eyes briefly met.

His response was a faint snort of amusement, and Inara had to bite her lips to keep from laughing.

"So," she said quickly, with a nod in the direction of the foredeck, "I hope you're not letting River stay up all night pil--at the helm."

Mal didn't seem to mind the slight slip. The transition was still too new. "I pried her eager little hands off the yoke, set the autopilot, and sent her to bed three hours ago," he said. "She's like...that bird in the old tales, the phoenix, born again out of the ashes of its own terrible fire, a new sort of person from what she was. Likely she could fly this boat for a year and day without rest. But I suspect Doc wouldn't take it too kindly if I overworked our little albatross."

Inara couldn't help but smile, remembering how he'd taken the Operative's threat and turned it about, confounding the man and herself. "I think River is far more graceful than an albatross ever was, Mal," she said.

He shrugged, draining the last of the tea. "Well, you would know, being the one with all the schoolin'," he drawled.

For once it came out sounding like a compliment rather than an insult, proving how far they'd come. "Yes, well...I often suspected you were far more educated than you ever let on, Captain Reynolds."

"That a fact?" Mal said, eyeing her curiously.

"Yes. And poetry from Earth-That-Was, of all things."

"Well," he went on, leaning back in the chair to stretch his shoulders, "I"ll tell you how it was. One year, back on Shadow, we had us a schoolteacher come out from the Core under some cloud or another. Pretty thing she was, but not, you know, weak with it--she could handle us border brats right well. Made us want to learn, set us these tasks where it was more like a game than school. And she had a thing for poetry, of all sorts, and got us to researchin' and recitin' and seeing how it was a part of the past what shouldn't be forgotten."

Inara was fascinated, by the story itself and by the fact he was sharing his own past with her so freely. "She sounds like a remarkable person."

Mal nodded, his eyes lit up by the memory. "That she was. But eventually, she had to move on, right about the time some of us come up to the age where school wasn't as important as work. Even so, a lot of what she taught us stuck, right through the years after--some of those poems would come to mind when I was out riding with the stock, or digging down in the mud with bullets flying overhead..."

His voice had dropped to a deep timbre that shook Inara to the depths of her soul. If she had been confused in the past by what kind of man he was, now she felt more lost than she had at the moment he'd left them to fight the Reavers, when the look they had shared might have been their last.

And he was still speaking, his blue eyes so intent upon her that she almost stopped breathing.

"...even now, from time to time I'll lay eyes on a sight that'll bring a verse or two to my mind..."

She had her hands clenched her lap to stop them from shaking. "Even now, Mal?" she whispered, her voice another casualty to whatever was happening between them.

"'Specially now," he said, leaning across the corner of the table, one hand splayed out in her direction. "You--"

His voice faltered, and he looked quickly away before he went on...

"You loved me for a little, Who--who could not love me long You gave me wings of gladness And...lent my spirit song."

He sounded nothing like himself, and one tiny part of her mind may have laughed at the absolute absurdity of Malcolm Reynolds reciting poetry to her. But then his voice grew stronger, and the rest of her thought she might die.

"You loved me for an hour But only with your eyes; Your lips I could not capture By storm or by surprise."

Finally he looked at her again, his eyes full of the hurts of the past, and she felt tears of regret stinging her own.

"Your mouth that I remember With rush of sudden pain As one remembers starlight Or roses after rain..."

He reached out with one hand, brushing the shawl off her shoulder so he could touch her bare skin. Inara began to tremble so hard she thought she might break apart.

"Out of a world of laughter Suddenly I am sad..."

But as Mal suddenly leaned even closer, the look on his face was far from sorrowful, and his voice took on a ring of near-triumph.

"Day and night it haunts me, The kiss I never had."

Something was roaring in her ears as he spoke the last words, and she didn't know if she had moved or he had pulled her to him, but their lips met for the first time by his doing, not hers as they once had.

His mouth was as perfect as she remembered from those stolen kisses, even more so moving over hers in eager exploration; not rough, not gentle, just perfect. Inara scarcely had time to react, to respond and show him just how perfect a kiss could be, and what she thought of a man who had poetry in his soul, before he broke it off, leaving her breathless and staring at him in shock.

Mal just smiled at her, pushed his chair back and stood up. "I know a lot of poems," he said smugly, pulling her out of her seat and into his arms. "Try not to faint," he added as he bent his head to kiss her again.

As she kissed him back, Inara did her best not to.

******

Notes:

The poem is called "Midsummer," by Sydney King Russell.

In the Serenity novelization, the funeral scene takes place on Haven, and Serenity is undergoing repairs at the Eavesdown Docks on Persephone.