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Inara Serra has always been in control. There is a balance within her, radiating poise and calm. It is not a delicate thing, Inara's balance. It takes a lot to upset it.
Malcolm Reynolds is a lot.
He is the only man she has ever met that transforms the steady tide of inner into a cyclonic storm. He does it effortlessly, with a wink or a smirk or an action of stupidity or bravery or charm or daring.
"Ah, Inara" he'll say, and it's the same tone he uses when he calls her their Ambassador. She struggles to maintain a surface of cool while the currents turn vicious beneath the mirror of her façade. Since Miranda, he addresses her in that tone less and less, until finally she cannot remember the last time he said her name in that way.
"InARA!" he roars her name so that it rebounds off Serenity's walls and causes her to drop a very expensive bone china teacup. When he bawls out to her in this way, it is an indicator that he needs her to watch the ship, or coax Kaylee out from the unproductive mood their dear, clueless doctor had put her in. Sometimes it means he's lost River or gotten shot dirt-side and is convinced in some way that it is her doing. It infuriates her because she knows he only does it because there is never any good reason to be shouting like that.
"Nara!" Now when he shouts like that, her heart begins to pound so fast it is impossible to discern individual beats, flooding ice water through her veins. She feels cold like nothing can describe when she hears Mal call out to her in that tone, and she knows from experience that she won't feel warm until the night after whatever disaster has befallen them. On the night after, when the Captain is finally sleeping fitfully, she'll sneak down into his room and lay a hand on his frowning forehead. Sometimes, rarely, but sometimes she even summons the courage from the shattered pieces of her inner tranquillity to bestow a kiss to the corner of his mouth. She remembers the one time, the one and only time, that she kissed him full on the mouth. Mostly, she recalls the sensation after these secretive visits to Mal's beside.
She remembers the time his hand almost fell to her shoulder as he breathed her name pleadingly. There was danger and fear and she was scared half out of her mind for what was about to happen, but there was Mal.
"Inara" he'd said, like it was almost a prayer and she'd swallowed because she so wanted to kiss him in that moment. It was the one and the only time she'd ever heard him utter the two syllables in that breathy, half-whispered way. She doesn't know that sometimes he says it in his sleep, thinking of her eyes and her smile and her soft hands and the rare breed of her laughter that is pure and unbridled.