Fanfic: If She Hadn't Been...
Title: If She Hadn't Been...
Rating: R, for lots of language and implied sex.
Fandom: Firefly. Mal/Inara.
Synopsis: All the reasons Mal knows he'll never have Inara. Written for closer2myself in the first Valentine's round of Iron Author.
*
It wouldn't have been so bad if she hadn't been a whore.
Other women, there were always good reasons to say that it wasn't something in the possible, other barriers just as solid and inarguable as a bullet in the brain. Zoe was a subordinate officer when they fought together, and while he'd known more than a few officers as were willing to take a little comfort from the troops when nothing else was at hand, Malcolm Reynolds was not that kind of man. Never would be, either. There were lines he'd cross if the need presented itself, but no man with five fingers and a hand that worked ever had to cross that one. When the war was over, and Zoe wasn't beneath him anymore -- but still looked at him with that quiet brand of devotion in her eyes, that look that said she'd follow him past the gates of Hell itself to steal the trousers off the Devil -- he saw her married off just as fast as circumstance and luck allowed, and if he'd still been a praying man, he would've thanked God it happened fast enough to keep her from ending up beneath him in a different sense of the words. Some lines don't get crossed. Some lines matter too much for that.
Kaylee wasn't his type, so there was no danger there, and besides, she'd found her true love a good quarter hour before he met her, making love with her eyes while her body went through the motions of banging the ju hai of a mechanic he'd had before her. Weren't no danger from Kaylee, not while she had Serenity to set her hands upon, all that smooth metal and aching engine to distract her. Might have been a danger down the line, when she came to realize that a girl can love a ship, but there are needs it won't quite manage to meet -- although he'd come to wonder a time or two about certain vibrating parts of that engine, much as he tried to keep those thoughts completely out of his gorram head -- but Simon Tam's arrival had put paid to that. She only had eyes for the idiot doctor, just like Zoe only had eyes for her pilot. No danger there. And River...
A man that won't let his subordinate officers get beneath him in any sense outside the chain of command isn't the kind of man to touch a broken child. Shepherd Book's special Hell was well reserved for whatever pok gai was bastard enough for that.
No, the trouble, the danger, the disaster in scented silk and sweet smiles and constant, supple motion, was Inara. She was where all the safeties failed.
It wouldn't have been so bad, all told, if she hadn't been a whore.
Thing about whores was that anyone could have 'em. Their time was for sale. Put down the coin and take yourself a tumble in a prairie made of satin sheets so fine that they felt like they were barely there at all, and afterwards, pull your trousers back up, hitch your belt, and get out before you're fool enough to care. Call them 'Companions', build rituals and nonsense around what they did for a man, or for a woman, if she leaned that way, but the basics of the profession didn't change; you put down your coin, you pulled out your prick, and you did what's best kept in private with the human equivalent of the town square. There's a time and a place for that. When the nights are long and your hands are cold and you just need another body pressed hard and hot against yours, when you have to taste someone else's sweat and feel someone else's pulse and remember that life is more than just waiting for the hammer to come down. Those times, doesn't matter how you got to a woman's bed, or how quickly she'll forget your name. Just matters that she smells like freedom and that her heart beats under your hands, and that there are mysteries it takes two people to unweave. Just matters that she's alive, and so are you, and there's nothing in the world but skin and sweat and the sky on the inside of your eyelids...
Anyone could have 'em. Even him. Every port they touched down in, he could have a dozen of 'em, easy as breathing, without even walking far enough to raise a thirst. Short, tall, fat, thin, experienced, or green as a cadet just signed into the army, every shape and size and flavour of a woman, he could have 'em, and all for the price of a little coin. Wasn't a matter of pride that he didn't cross that line, because he knew it was there. Knew that Jayne had walked across it more than once since he first signed on, and didn't much care, for all that he'd have mocked the man merciless if he'd been open about it. A man has needs, and not every man could be Wash, with a willing woman to go back to every night, or Shepherd Book, with his Bible full of denials of the flesh and easy answers for the way the sky burned black. A woman has needs, too, and he never once asked Zoe where she went when her business was her own, back before she found a husband to keep her ledgers balanced.
All the other women, he could put walls around. Kaylee was too innocent, for all that she was a woman, and a damn fine engineer. Zoe was his subordinate, and a married woman all beside -- another uncrossable line. River was too broken. His accidental 'bride' almost had him, by dint of seeming old enough to know what she wanted, but still too young to care that he wasn't ever going to be it, and in the end, even she hadn't managed it. Not quite, anyway. The walls were built too well. They'd best be, because they'd taken the better part of forever to construct, stone by stone, line by line, until there they were, and there he was, and the danger was kept safely at its distance.
Inara, though...with Inara, there were no walls. There should have been, but there weren't, because every time he tried to put them up, she kicked them down again, just like they weren't anything at all. She was a fine lady, untouchable, above him -- except that she was for sale, every inch of her available to a buyer's market, and there were ways to find the money. She was his crew, and some lines weren't meant for crossing -- except that she wasn't his, wasn't ever his at all. She was Serenity's, yes, but she wasn't Mal's, and the difference was a gulf as wide as that between those who called Serenity Valley a massacre and those who called it a glorious victory. She was just a whore, and if he wanted one of those, he didn't have to foul his own nest with the stink of it...
But he knew better than that, too, and that was the part that made it worst of all. For all that he called her whore whenever he had the breath to spit the word, he knew better.
She didn't think he did, but she was wrong in that, just like he knew she was wrong to travel with a crew like theirs, just like he knew one day, she'd see it clear as he did, and she'd leave them behind like the dirt from her shoes. If Inara'd ever asked him, he'd have told her that he knew the difference between a prairie harpy and a Companion, because he'd surrounded himself with Companions, found new angels when the old ones failed to come; he'd have said that the difference was as clear as the light in Kaylee's eyes when Serenity sang, or the little smile on Jayne's lips when he was rubbing oil down Vera's barrel, keeping her smooth and ready for fights that hadn't chanced to happen yet. Whores sold passion, but Companions were passion, living for it, knowing that it was always there, always a possibility waiting, burning, somewhere in the 'verse. A man's just a whore when he takes money for a job because he needs to feed his family. The nature of the job don't matter; it's the passion that counts. A man who takes money for a thing he does for love, a thing he'd do for free, why, that man, he's an angel, and that's what a Companion is. A thing of passion, worth a million whores, and so far beyond him that they aren't even in the same sky, and so close to his that he can taste her when he sleeps.
So she was a whore, and any man could have her, and she was a Companion, and all the coin in the 'verse wouldn't be enough to buy the water to wash him clean enough to touch her skin, much less match the cost of opening her arms. Where those lines met, that was where he'd find Inara, the most dangerous thing in the whole damn sky, with her little smiles and her little sighs and all the little signs he knew he didn't really see. He'd been in Serenity Valley. He knew the truth.
The angels make a lot of promises to a man with his feet planted on the ground, but in the end, they never really come.
It wouldn't have been so bad, if she hadn't been a whore.
Rating: R, for lots of language and implied sex.
Fandom: Firefly. Mal/Inara.
Synopsis: All the reasons Mal knows he'll never have Inara. Written for closer2myself in the first Valentine's round of Iron Author.
*
It wouldn't have been so bad if she hadn't been a whore.
Other women, there were always good reasons to say that it wasn't something in the possible, other barriers just as solid and inarguable as a bullet in the brain. Zoe was a subordinate officer when they fought together, and while he'd known more than a few officers as were willing to take a little comfort from the troops when nothing else was at hand, Malcolm Reynolds was not that kind of man. Never would be, either. There were lines he'd cross if the need presented itself, but no man with five fingers and a hand that worked ever had to cross that one. When the war was over, and Zoe wasn't beneath him anymore -- but still looked at him with that quiet brand of devotion in her eyes, that look that said she'd follow him past the gates of Hell itself to steal the trousers off the Devil -- he saw her married off just as fast as circumstance and luck allowed, and if he'd still been a praying man, he would've thanked God it happened fast enough to keep her from ending up beneath him in a different sense of the words. Some lines don't get crossed. Some lines matter too much for that.
Kaylee wasn't his type, so there was no danger there, and besides, she'd found her true love a good quarter hour before he met her, making love with her eyes while her body went through the motions of banging the ju hai of a mechanic he'd had before her. Weren't no danger from Kaylee, not while she had Serenity to set her hands upon, all that smooth metal and aching engine to distract her. Might have been a danger down the line, when she came to realize that a girl can love a ship, but there are needs it won't quite manage to meet -- although he'd come to wonder a time or two about certain vibrating parts of that engine, much as he tried to keep those thoughts completely out of his gorram head -- but Simon Tam's arrival had put paid to that. She only had eyes for the idiot doctor, just like Zoe only had eyes for her pilot. No danger there. And River...
A man that won't let his subordinate officers get beneath him in any sense outside the chain of command isn't the kind of man to touch a broken child. Shepherd Book's special Hell was well reserved for whatever pok gai was bastard enough for that.
No, the trouble, the danger, the disaster in scented silk and sweet smiles and constant, supple motion, was Inara. She was where all the safeties failed.
It wouldn't have been so bad, all told, if she hadn't been a whore.
Thing about whores was that anyone could have 'em. Their time was for sale. Put down the coin and take yourself a tumble in a prairie made of satin sheets so fine that they felt like they were barely there at all, and afterwards, pull your trousers back up, hitch your belt, and get out before you're fool enough to care. Call them 'Companions', build rituals and nonsense around what they did for a man, or for a woman, if she leaned that way, but the basics of the profession didn't change; you put down your coin, you pulled out your prick, and you did what's best kept in private with the human equivalent of the town square. There's a time and a place for that. When the nights are long and your hands are cold and you just need another body pressed hard and hot against yours, when you have to taste someone else's sweat and feel someone else's pulse and remember that life is more than just waiting for the hammer to come down. Those times, doesn't matter how you got to a woman's bed, or how quickly she'll forget your name. Just matters that she smells like freedom and that her heart beats under your hands, and that there are mysteries it takes two people to unweave. Just matters that she's alive, and so are you, and there's nothing in the world but skin and sweat and the sky on the inside of your eyelids...
Anyone could have 'em. Even him. Every port they touched down in, he could have a dozen of 'em, easy as breathing, without even walking far enough to raise a thirst. Short, tall, fat, thin, experienced, or green as a cadet just signed into the army, every shape and size and flavour of a woman, he could have 'em, and all for the price of a little coin. Wasn't a matter of pride that he didn't cross that line, because he knew it was there. Knew that Jayne had walked across it more than once since he first signed on, and didn't much care, for all that he'd have mocked the man merciless if he'd been open about it. A man has needs, and not every man could be Wash, with a willing woman to go back to every night, or Shepherd Book, with his Bible full of denials of the flesh and easy answers for the way the sky burned black. A woman has needs, too, and he never once asked Zoe where she went when her business was her own, back before she found a husband to keep her ledgers balanced.
All the other women, he could put walls around. Kaylee was too innocent, for all that she was a woman, and a damn fine engineer. Zoe was his subordinate, and a married woman all beside -- another uncrossable line. River was too broken. His accidental 'bride' almost had him, by dint of seeming old enough to know what she wanted, but still too young to care that he wasn't ever going to be it, and in the end, even she hadn't managed it. Not quite, anyway. The walls were built too well. They'd best be, because they'd taken the better part of forever to construct, stone by stone, line by line, until there they were, and there he was, and the danger was kept safely at its distance.
Inara, though...with Inara, there were no walls. There should have been, but there weren't, because every time he tried to put them up, she kicked them down again, just like they weren't anything at all. She was a fine lady, untouchable, above him -- except that she was for sale, every inch of her available to a buyer's market, and there were ways to find the money. She was his crew, and some lines weren't meant for crossing -- except that she wasn't his, wasn't ever his at all. She was Serenity's, yes, but she wasn't Mal's, and the difference was a gulf as wide as that between those who called Serenity Valley a massacre and those who called it a glorious victory. She was just a whore, and if he wanted one of those, he didn't have to foul his own nest with the stink of it...
But he knew better than that, too, and that was the part that made it worst of all. For all that he called her whore whenever he had the breath to spit the word, he knew better.
She didn't think he did, but she was wrong in that, just like he knew she was wrong to travel with a crew like theirs, just like he knew one day, she'd see it clear as he did, and she'd leave them behind like the dirt from her shoes. If Inara'd ever asked him, he'd have told her that he knew the difference between a prairie harpy and a Companion, because he'd surrounded himself with Companions, found new angels when the old ones failed to come; he'd have said that the difference was as clear as the light in Kaylee's eyes when Serenity sang, or the little smile on Jayne's lips when he was rubbing oil down Vera's barrel, keeping her smooth and ready for fights that hadn't chanced to happen yet. Whores sold passion, but Companions were passion, living for it, knowing that it was always there, always a possibility waiting, burning, somewhere in the 'verse. A man's just a whore when he takes money for a job because he needs to feed his family. The nature of the job don't matter; it's the passion that counts. A man who takes money for a thing he does for love, a thing he'd do for free, why, that man, he's an angel, and that's what a Companion is. A thing of passion, worth a million whores, and so far beyond him that they aren't even in the same sky, and so close to his that he can taste her when he sleeps.
So she was a whore, and any man could have her, and she was a Companion, and all the coin in the 'verse wouldn't be enough to buy the water to wash him clean enough to touch her skin, much less match the cost of opening her arms. Where those lines met, that was where he'd find Inara, the most dangerous thing in the whole damn sky, with her little smiles and her little sighs and all the little signs he knew he didn't really see. He'd been in Serenity Valley. He knew the truth.
The angels make a lot of promises to a man with his feet planted on the ground, but in the end, they never really come.
It wouldn't have been so bad, if she hadn't been a whore.