makesmeatease | (no subject)

(no subject)

Inara had an itch to talk to her husband. This time, it had nothing to do with Kaylee or anyone else...it was just about her. About them.

Of course, she had issues with coming up with how to say it. Any of it. Especially without making him feel like she was unhappy. She wasn't.

Too much.

She found him in the cockpit, and after a moment's hesitation, she cleared her throat. "Can you leave the ship alone for a few minutes to talk?"

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'To talk' is husband code for 'uh-oh', but Mal keeps a patented smiles on his face. "Shi a," he offers, and the closest bar door seems to be hovering around Naomi's makeshift room fashioned out of a spare crew bunk. Mal climbs down first which gives him a feeling of vertigo when he essentially climbs into the Milliways door, and he turns to help Inara through.

"Anywhere particular?"

"Just...somewhere private." Inara moves to take his hand in a reassuring way. She can read him. She knows that smile.

"Private. Private, private, private..." Mal's fingers drum against his thigh as he walks.

Garage. Nope. Especially if this is about Kaylee and Simon.

Room upstairs. Seems safe. (Seems away from Ma.)

Mal stops at the bar to acquire a bottle of wine and a pair of glasses before digging out the key to the room they keep here.

She's quiet as they make their way upstairs...and when they're there, she takes the wine and glasses from him, busying herself with pouring out liberal amounts for the both of them.

Inara hands one to Mal and then sips at hers and sighs.

"I need something to do, Mal. I'm bored." She laughs, helplessly. "And...I need to broach a subject with you that...you don't want to talk about."

Bored.

Something Mal doesn't want to talk about.

He's learning. He doesn't go straight to what his fear is.

"What is it."

She freezes for a moment before just saying it. "I want a baby, Mal. I want to discuss us having a child. And...the boredom thing. That too."

"You want a baby so you won't be bored -- "

"They're not mutually exclusive, Malcolm!" Inara says sharply, setting her wineglass down. "I'm bored, so regardless, I'm going to find some sort of work or something to do to keep me busy."

She sighs. "And yes, a child would keep me busy but that isn't why I want one."

Well thank God for that at least! Mal is still looking a bit taken aback by the two facts side by side -

Inara wants a baby. He's known this.

Inara's bored. Mal's known this too, in some form or another.

The hand not clutching liquor is carding fingers through hair. "How long've you been thinkin' on all of this again?"

"A while." Her voice is softer this time. "Decided that...before wasn't the time to think too hard on it."

Kaylee and Simon took up a lot of her brainspace.

"It wouldn't be the end of the world." Either thing.

Immediately, Mal starts shaking his head.

"No. No." When he looks up, it is to watch Inara as Mal speaks. This is important and it feels so --

-- So too little too late.

"I need you to be happy."

It takes a minute, but this is followed by, "Think the boredom'll be the easier one to address though, don't you?"

"Mal, I'm not...I'm not unhappy with you." She steps forward, shaking her head. "It's not you."

She focuses on her feet for a moment. "I guess I could go and get that teaching job. Or...something. I just...I don't know. I just know I need something."

"I can't...I don't know what to suggest. All I can hope is that you're tellin' me if -- if I'm stopping you from doing things you want to be doing."

Kaylee followed Simon in the world, after all.

Inara did it first.

"You're not. I just wanted you to know that I may take a job that requires me to leave the ship sometimes. I'd rather not teach, it'd take me away far too long."

Mal nods, finishing his wine far too quickly and not caring when his sinuses complain about it.

"Was that the part you thought I wasn't going to like?"

"No, I figured it'd be the baby thing." Inara reaches for her wine glass again, sipping at it. "Or maybe you'd not like the whole of the conversation."

"No, I think 'the baby thing' -- "

And it's really time for a refill on that remark,

" -- is just going to make me into feeling like I should hide under the endtable in the corner."

She hands him the wine bottle, reading his look. "Why does it scare you so much?"

Mal just looks kind of incredulous at the question, filling his glass instead of looking at his wife.

Mumbling: "Can you guess?"

"I just want to hear what you have to say." So she can shoot it down.

"I would think you would know" comes out first, but he winces and studies the calluses on the pads of his thumbs around the wineglass.

"Ship ain't no place for a child. Not permanent. They deserve green; I can't give 'em that in the black. Not the security - they don't need security by barrel-end. I know Zoe and Wash have stayed, and Naomi's the most spoiled child in the quadrant, but even then she's going to need schooling coming up sooner rather than later.

"And if somethin' were to happen...almost killed two people we know. They're just barely back together."

"Security by gunpoint can be common even on planets. And they'd get a chance to see the galaxy, Mal. That's more than most children ever get. And I'm--"

She can't promise she'd be fine. But how can something she wants so desperately hurt her? A stupid question, she knows, so she doesn't voice it.

"A child needs love and happiness more than green yards to play in. And I did go through a lot of schooling, Mal. I could teach. You'd be a wonderful father."

Her voice breaks, slightly. She just...if she doesn't press this now, she'll never press it again and she'll...never get what she wants.

"You'd be a wonderful father."

"You don't know that."

"I do." She presses, nodding, her hair flying with the movement. Inara moves closer to him, to touch his arm, his face. "Mal, you'd be so scared of messing the child up that you'd be the perfect father no matter what you did. We both would be like that."

Having Inara closer helps. Mal's heartrate slows and he inhales for the first time in forever, but clearing his head just brings more things to ask.

"You need to tell me why. Why you want to raise a child. With me. Where we are."

She carefully leans her head against his. "Because I love you. And I know you love me. And that you're capable of showing a child just how much you'd love them. Because I want something of the two of us to survive after all we've done."

That's it. Right there.

"We survived. We aren't going anywhere."

"We're not going to live forever, Mal." Inara pulls back to look at him. "And mostly I want one because I want one. And there is no one else I'd raise it with."

Mal is horrible at wanting. He tends to a need - food, job, place to live, need to keep going - and moves on.

Before Tequila, when was the last time he did something more than buying another round of drinks that was simply because he wanted to?

"Because you want one."

"Because I want one." She repeats, nodding. "Because I see other women with their children and I want that. I want to know I created something and I want to hold it in my arms. I want to see you hold it. I want it."

"'Nara...

"I don't want to deny you anything."

Her heart nearly breaks. "I don't want...I know that I've pushed this today but I don't want you to just...unwillingly give me a child, Mal. We both have to be...okay with this. And I'm not saying that you have to get me pregnant right this minute. I just want to know that we can do this."

The only thing that is stopping them is Mal.

Slowly: "I ain't taken a real physical in a long time. Never really had a...[I don't know what to call them]. Test. To see if everything's in order."

Maybe I wouldn't even be able to, Mal thinks suddenly, to mixed reactions behind his own eyes. He should find out though.

"You should do that anyway." Inara scolds. "If you're going to drop dead one day, I'd like to know why."

She closes her eyes and steps up to him again, pressing herself into his arms. "We can do it here? Discreetly. Or go Coreward."

"Not here. Last thing I need is Ma to overhear somethin'."

"Coreward then." Inara says. She's not stopping at some back alley doctor on an outer planet and putting her husband in that person's hands. Especially after that weird dream.

She puts her hands on his face and kisses him softly. "I love you."

"I love you too, Inara."

It's the easiest declaration Mal's made all day. The one that never changes.

"Want to stay here for awhile?"

"Yeah. I have this glass of wine to finish, after all." She smiles at him and doesn't move to get the glass.

Just stays there with him, in his arms.

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