#002 React (Mal/Inara)
Title: React
Fandom: Firefly
Characters: Inara, mentions of Mal
Prompt: #002 Kiss
Word Count: 273
Rating: PG
Summary: Inara muses over her kiss for Mal. (Spoilers for Our Mrs Reynolds)
Notes: Written for coclaim100
It was just a kiss, Inara thought to herself. Human nature. Instinct. An impulse. There was nothing more to it than that. Anyone who had a connection to someone like she had with Mal would have done the same thing. Anyone would.
So why did she feel like she was lying to herself? Why did she feel like she was in denial?
She had seen Mal’s limp, unmoving body strewn clumsily across the floor of his bunk and had reacted. That was all. There wasn’t anything more serious behind her actions; there was nothing to read into. There couldn’t be. There wasn’t.
And there was definitely no reason for her to feel so…guilty.
She ran the memory through her head again for what seemed like the millionth time, the images so vivid that she feared they were burned into her mind for the rest of eternity.
She saw Mal again and again, looking as if someone had come along and sucked the life right out of him and left his body gracelessly on the floor, an empty shell of what he used to be. That, she imagined, was almost exactly what had happened. Metaphorically, of course.
She had entered his quarters to find him like that. The possibility that death had finally caught up with him had invaded her mind and clouded her senses. She’d kissed him and gone against everything that she’d ever believed in and sworn to herself.
But it changed nothing. She had kissed Malcolm Reynolds full on the lips - there was no denying that - but nothing would come of it. He didn’t know and she would never tell him.
Fandom: Firefly
Characters: Inara, mentions of Mal
Prompt: #002 Kiss
Word Count: 273
Rating: PG
Summary: Inara muses over her kiss for Mal. (Spoilers for Our Mrs Reynolds)
Notes: Written for coclaim100
It was just a kiss, Inara thought to herself. Human nature. Instinct. An impulse. There was nothing more to it than that. Anyone who had a connection to someone like she had with Mal would have done the same thing. Anyone would.
So why did she feel like she was lying to herself? Why did she feel like she was in denial?
She had seen Mal’s limp, unmoving body strewn clumsily across the floor of his bunk and had reacted. That was all. There wasn’t anything more serious behind her actions; there was nothing to read into. There couldn’t be. There wasn’t.
And there was definitely no reason for her to feel so…guilty.
She ran the memory through her head again for what seemed like the millionth time, the images so vivid that she feared they were burned into her mind for the rest of eternity.
She saw Mal again and again, looking as if someone had come along and sucked the life right out of him and left his body gracelessly on the floor, an empty shell of what he used to be. That, she imagined, was almost exactly what had happened. Metaphorically, of course.
She had entered his quarters to find him like that. The possibility that death had finally caught up with him had invaded her mind and clouded her senses. She’d kissed him and gone against everything that she’d ever believed in and sworn to herself.
But it changed nothing. She had kissed Malcolm Reynolds full on the lips - there was no denying that - but nothing would come of it. He didn’t know and she would never tell him.