“Please, please tell me he didn’t slobber all over you or anything like that.”

Inara glanced at the ugly wool coat laying on the red velvet couch and shook her head. Great…now I’m going to have to disinfect everything that thing has touched! I swear if that thing has any sticky residue on it…Inara thought to her self.

“Inara…honestly…we had a lovely conversation this early morning…and it helped me get to sleep afterwards.” Sonja replied, giggling a bit.

“Neanderthals have conversation?” Inara retorted.

Picking up the silver hairbrush in front of her, Sonja started running it through her thick mane a few times, taking care to make sure the brush missed nothing.

“Besides duh…shoot gun…duh…woman…if he even knows how to say woman…Jayne’s vocabulary doesn’t extend much past that.” Inara added, breaking into her best impersonation of Jayne, deep husky voice and all.

Eyeing the coat with another disgusted look, Inara said, “You don’t even know where that coat has been…or the things he’s done while wearing it.”

“What about the captain and you? What is it that you see in him?” Sonja said suddenly.

“Mal is human…Jayne is a force of nature…there’s no comparing the two.” Inara shot back.

“Oh really?”

Fiddling with her fingers, touching her nails with her thumb, Inara replied, “Yes, really.”

It had been a long blessed friendship. Sonja had always thanked her lucky stars for having Inara. She was the sister she had never had. It was a bond between them both, a familiar strength that enclosed around them both…but sometimes Inara forgot…forgot that Sonja knew her well. Too well.

“Besides,” Inara quickly said, putting her hands behind her back. “We’re not talking about Mal and I.”

“How about I put the coat somewhere where you don’t have to see it, okay?” Sonja said.

“You mean in the trash?”

Hitting her playfully in the arm, Sonja let out another girlish giggle. “It’s not going in the trash.”

* * * * *

A hurried knock on his door.

“You alive down there?”

Snapping his eyes