Title : Sin and Punishment

Author : Goldy

Disclaimer : Joss is boss. Special thanks to Shakespeare, for letting me pull all kinds of his canon out of thin air.

Pairing : Mal/Inara

Summary : They read each other Shakespeare on the second Sunday of every month. Potentially confusing and angsty.

Rating : PG-13

Words : 1, 793

Author’s Notes : Originally written for the livejournal Mal/Inara ficathon, for the prompt "flowers" and "sarcasm." I'm pretty sure the Shakespeare has something to do with agentrouka , but I can't for the life of me remember what.

***

They read each other Shakespeare on the second Sunday of every month. Usually they managed an act, more or less. Inara suspected it would take them decades to complete Shakespeare’s entire canon, the rate they were going.

“It’s cause we got all the time in the ’verse, darlin,’ ” Mal claimed. The “one act” rule was really for his benefit, anyway, as Inara suspected he had the attention span of a five-year-old. Two pages in and he’d start poking at her stuff or trying to kiss her neck.

Of course, there were also the days when Inara wondered if “all the time in the ’verse” was too optimistic. Mal lived in a dangerous line of work, and he seemed to attract bullets in the same way a Companion attracted clients—frequently and easily.

In her darkest moments, Inara couldn’t stop the niggling doubt that insisted this was but a snapshot of her life. What place did she truly have, on this ship, tied to one man? One day it would be too much—too many arguments, too much constraint. And she’d have to leave Mal behind again—shattered faith and broken heart.

Inara loved Mal. Maybe too much. Maybe enough to be content for the moment—to give up her clients and to accept that he could never understand the part of her that remained Inara Serra: Companion.

“What the hell kind of insult is ‘I bite my thumb at you’? Lacks punch.”

“Mal, there is really no need for running commentary.”

But Mal