So there I was taking a break from making my Inara costume for Dragon*Con, chatting with AgentOmega, when I made the mistake of asking “What should I do next?” Now, anyone who knows AgentOmega knows he has an insatiable desire for Mal/Inara fics, so his natural suggestion was that I write a nice bit of Mal/Inara fluff occurring after they get together. And although I’ve taken a long break from Firefly fic to work on an original story, I decided to oblige. So here it is.

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Forever’s First Kiss

“One, two, rock step,” Mal counted the rhythm as he practiced the dance in his bunk. The music was solely in his head, lest he be overheard by someone above deck. He pretzeled his arms around his imaginary partner, spun her out, then brought her in for a dip. It was all in the legs – a stripper back on Beaumonde taught him that just last night. Mal wasn’t really the bachelor party type, but Simon had insisted and Jayne wasn’t about to turn down a trip involving alcohol – especially since Simon had offered to pick up the tab. So the three of them had headed to town for a bachelor party of sorts, and Mal ended up spending half the night getting dance lessons from a stripper – a rather short, spindly lady with more knowledge of ballroom and court dancing than one would expect from a woman in her profession. Mal wasn’t accustomed to underestimating people like that.

He reached for his capture and replayed the dance lesson, watching his arms, wishing he had someone to practice with who wouldn’t spill the beans to Inara. Four days from the wedding, and he intended to spin her and dip her at every conceivable opportunity from the first kiss to the first dance. He only wished he could practice with her once or twice so they were in agreement on where her arms went…

As of last week he’d been adamant that they wouldn’t have a formal first dance because it was a silly tradition and he only knew a few different court dances and didn’t like any of them. Inara had shrugged her agreement, probably grateful that he’d