One more story to come before all the angst starts....

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“A Companion, huh?” It was their last day of freedom and Kaylee was leaning back against Simon as they sat in the garden, clad in nothing but their robes. As she thought about it, she couldn’t remember them even bothering to get dressed the entire time they’d been in the secluded little cottage. “You paid a –“

“It was a long time ago and it wasn’t like that,” Simon said, not looking at her. His eyes were focused on the fountain and the sunlight reflecting off the water within.

Kaylee rolled her eyes at him. “You ain’t that old, Simon.”

“That life – it doesn’t seem like I lived it anymore.” Everything was so different now. He had found a more rewarding life, laughter and love between the metal hull of Serenity, than he ever did in all the years he lived and worked on Osiris.

“How’d ya meet her then?”

Simon sighed. “She was another man’s escort to an event I attended.”

Kaylee’s eyes widened and Simon shook his head to clear up her already false perception of what had happened.

“We danced once and talked. I was – well, drawn to her. I suppose that isn’t uncommon. I – wanted to know more. I’d met Companions before, of course, they are everywhere on the Core worlds. But she had some otherworldly quality to her. She was very down to earth – homely even. She had this – magnetism that drew me to her.” Simon inhaled slowly.

It wasn’t a world she was intimately familiar with even though she had known Inara for a few years now. But Kaylee couldn’t help but feel a little jealous as she noticed the warm tone in his voice. “But she was taken.”

Simon nodded. “For that night, yes.”

“So you – hired her – later?” There was a somewhat astonished tone to Kaylee’s voice.

Simon felt instantly defensive, though he knew he shouldn’t. “I never paid her for sex if that’s what you’re asking.”

“That came later though?”

“Yes.”

“What was she like?”

Simon glanced down at Kaylee, wondering why she was so curious. H