It happens in the middle of an argument.

They’re fighting about something stupidly mundane, too caught up in the screaming match to notice that the space between them – meters a moment ago – is now merely inches. Suddenly they’re almost touching, and then they are touching and he grabs her round her waist and she lets him pull her those few centimetres closer.

Whatever they were squabbling about is forgotten because now it’s all angry, feverish kisses and hands roaming everywhere and clothes irredeemably crumpled. They stumble backwards against the wall, a bronze coffeepot tumbling to the floor unheeded and unheard above their moans and all he can think through the fog is Damn the crumples - if she doesn’t get that sari off then he’s going to rip the gorram thing for her …..

***

It happens completely by accident.

It really isn’t his fault. Just a little lurch, well, quite big lurch really, of her shuttle and their hands are going everywhere trying to keep themselves upright. He’s thrown sideways and against her, grabbing for anything stable, and against all the odds he actually does fall onto her lips. It’s a total mistake. A lip-accident. One that would be easily fixed if it wasn’t for the other pair of lips, and in fact the other set of arms which seem to have wound themselves around his neck. All at once it’s not so much an accident, as a series of them, and the flight isn’t getting any less turbulent.

***

It’s so unprofessional.

In all her years as a companion – training and practicing – she’s never forgotten anything during a session with a client, but now, slipping away from the sleeping man, Inara is kicking herself for leaving the little bottle of scented oil on the cockpit console. Self-castigation quickly turns to horror though when she ducks behind the cockpit curtain to find Mal hunched over in the pilot seat, eyes screwed up and fingers in his ears.

Arguments are so much harder in mime, and there’s no time to decode his wild gestures, but when he mouths I’m Sorry she knows he truly m