008: [location: serenity] & [accidental visual]

[skyfrome]

Here is Mal, thankfully not smashing things in a rage this time around, but instead absorbed in a much more sedate activity. Said activity involves the kitchen table on board Serenity, and a frankly bizarre array of ingredients spread out across it, with a mixing jug in the middle. He appears to be doing something ungodly involving high protein

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[location: Serenity]

[serene_grace]

"... what are you making?"

Inara has changed into a much more simple dress and shawl and has been wandering around the ship, reminding herself of all the nooks and crannies. And she's headed into the kitchen at just the right wrong moment.

"That looks positively vile, Mal."

[location: Serenity]

[skyfrome]

"Mudder's Milk." Mal answers, glancing up at Inara with a curious half smile/grimace combination, the former at seeing her, the latter at the taste in his mouth.

"And it tastes every bit as vile as it looks, so at least it don't disappoint. Care for a glass?" Yes, he's fully expecting an emphatic 'no' here.

[location: Serenity]

[serene_grace]

She laughs, shaking her head merrily at him. Dark curls tumble about her shoulders, loosened from the elaborate coif she had previously been wearing. "I think I'll pass on the cocktail."

However, something's caught Inara's eye -- beyond the rugged manliness of the Captain, of course. "But I might indulge in a little of your bourbon, if it's being offered up all on its own."

[location: Serenity]

[skyfrome]

"Well, I won't blame you for that." He grins, trying not to get all stupidly distracted by how pretty her hair looks today, like some kind of moonbrained chŭnrén. It's downright annoying that she has that effect on him.

"Please, be my guest." He gestures towards the table, inviting her to take a seat, before pulling a couple of untainted glasses from the nearest cupboard. "Reckon I'll join you, if you don't object. Ease the pain of my failure."

Re: [location: Serenity]

[serene_grace]

"Poor Mal," she laughs, sinking gracefully into one of the seats. She pulls the one next to her out, in case he had some silly idea about sitting across the table or something.

"Bourbon was, believe it or not, my drink of choice throughout the latter years of my companion training," Inara tells him, resting her elbow on the table and leaning her chin in her hand. "There's a delicious cocktail, extremely old fashioned, called a Manhattan. Bourbon, red vermouth, a dash of bitters and a little cocktail cherry."

A gentleman at one of her pre-debut parties had introduced Inara to them and she'd rather fallen in love with the beverage, especially upon being assured that it wasn't a silly, girly sort of a cocktail. Inara had had aspirations of being something of a broad as a young woman. She laughs ruefully at the memory. "I drank a fair number of those."

[skyfrome]

The chair pulling out was probably a good move, considering he's just stupid enough to consider doing something like that. In any case, he takes a seat next to her in the proffered chair (less gracefully, it should be noted), and sets the glasses down on the table.

"Is that so?" He asks, with an intrigued raised eyebrow, after listening to her anecdote. He sets about pouring the bourbon as he continues. "I wouldn'tve conjured that the training houses would allow much in the way of drinking-- alcohol not bein' too conducive to poise and decorum and such."

[serene_grace]

"There are a certain number of sanctioned parties that all young would-be companions attend before we're fully trained," she tells him. "Sort of like a meet-and-greet, getting to know the local elites, that sort of thing." Inara watches him pour the liquor with a thoughtful expression -- he's got a generous hand, she notes. Not that that's a bad thing.

"And then there were a certain number of... non-sanctioned parties." Her lips curved impishly at the admission, and she took one of the glasses. "Ganbei," she toasted him, taking a sip.

[skyfrome]

"Ganbei." He returned, taking a sip of his own. Now that Inara had explained, it didn't much surprise him that part of the Companion training involved parties, given the amount of socializing she was required to do, attending high-class balls and the like. The youthful rebellion, however, well. He gave her something of an amused look.

"Inara, do you mean to say you weren't always the very model of respectability?"

[serene_grace]

Inara laughs again, this time a full-throated sound the likes of which he's likely never heard from her. Part of Companion training was learning to put others at ease so that they might offer up their secrets and stories. Confession, she'd always been taught, was good for the soul. And so it seemed.

"If I were ever truly and thoroughly respectable, would I have found my way onto a pirate ship?" She cocks an eyebrow teasingly at him. "Let alone feel at home here? ... You'd despise some of the girls I grew up with. All the Companion training onto a blank slate. Nothing beneath the layers of frou-frou."

[skyfrome]

Mal has heard Inara laugh genuinely before, generally when Shepherd Book would tell his unfailingly hilarious monastic tales-- but the sound is so rare that it's all the more pleasing to hear, especially when he's the cause of it.

"While I object strongly to the term 'pirate', I take your point." He chuckles, privately delighted to hear her say she feels at home on his ship, though he won't acknowledge it out loud.

"...and I don't doubt it. Though presumably there was something beneath the layers. Ridiculously complicated undergarments, for example."

Well they are discussing Companions, after all. It wouldn't be right if he didn't make some kind of risqué comment.

[serene_grace]

"That depends on the Companion," Inara quips.

It's rare for her to let her guard down quite like this and she knows it, but something in her has relaxed a little in this strange place. There's no one to police her behavior, no one to ensure she's appropriate -- it's very, very odd.

But it's pleasant.

"Or, really, I suppose, the client. It varies a lot according to whatever is desired of us."

[skyfrome]

He would agree on the pleasantness, certainly. Perhaps the odd, too, because he's grown accustomed to her censuring glares and the boundaries of 'no-go' subjects-- ones he'd (mostly) learnt to respect. Except for when she called him 'petty', in any case.

"...and I assume some clients are more 'unconventional' than others." He observes wryly, taking another sip of his drink.

[serene_grace]

"You know what?" Inara decides, "let's talk about something else. If we keep on discussing the Guild, this is going to go downhill. You'll call me a whore or I'll clam up and we'll end up glaring and stalking off in opposite directions, and that--"

Cutting herself off abruptly, she looks away from him, taking in the pale yellow kitchen, the flowers Kaylee painted on the wall. Her voice is softer when she finds it again. "Everything is so different here. The borderlines are wavering and I don't even know how everything works yet. I--"

I need one steady thing here and right now that's you. I'm scared and confused and frightened and elated and I've never lived without the Guild constantly being a factor, she thinks, but finding the words is so very difficult. Inara drains her glass and pours herself another.

[skyfrome]

"I had no intentions of callin' you a whore." Mal states, firmly-- though in all honesty, he doesn't object to the change of subject. No matter how mature he tried to be about Inara's profession, he could never really divorce himself from his feelings, could never really stop himself from being jealous of every single one of the rich bastards who didn't think of her as anything other than a service or a pretty bauble to wear on their arm-- who weren't fit to talk to her, let alone touch her. He doesn't want to be thinking those bitter thoughts right now. "And I don't 'stalk'." He adds, a little less firmly, in an effort to take the edge off.

He watches her make short work of the bourbon, silent for a moment as he wrestles internally over whether he should just do what he'd like to, which is hug her. Eventually he settles for resting his hand gently on her arm.

"I know. 'Nara, I've been here for months and I still got no gorram clue what I'm doing. No Alliance, no work, no flyin' wherever the winds blow... I'm just as lost as you

[serene_grace]

Inara twists her arm just so, sliding his hand until it clasps her own. His hands are completely unlike any other man she's ever touched -- he has gun callouses and rough patches and dirt under his fingernails. They're, well, his description would be 'honest' hands. They're not pampered, smooth and white, capped off with manicured nails. For a moment, she stares, and wonders what those rough hands would feel like on her skin...

And then she looks up to acknowledge his confession.

"We'll have to figure it out among ourselves." She leans in a little closer, affectionate, unconscious of the fact she's doing it -- that, in and of itself is rare. "I don't imagine anyone else knows any better, either, and -- and all the rules are different, aren't they?"

[skyfrome]

That's the second time in not very many days that they've held hands-- if she isn't careful, he might just get used to it. Though, no, he wouldn't-- he probably wouldn't ever get used to Inara's uncanny ability to fog up his usually so pragmatic mind.

He leans in closer too, a sort of unconscious reciprication, and replies, with a little bit of a smile. "Seems to me that there aren't any."