#leashedfury

     Inara cannot help but sigh. 

     “Are you rich enough to try?”

     “Okay. Or -- hear me out, now -- maybe an idea that isn’t dangerous could just help us all stay alive? You know, alive. Living in the present tense? The way that I like to stay?”

She’s been spending too much time around Alistair -- even talks like him, now. Not that she minds; he’s funny. Certainly funnier than Xander, at least. 

send me a ship and one of these and i’ll write a mini fic3. things you said too quietly

     “Right, well, that was fun.” Inara never quite knew what to say when they were done, gathering up what bits of her clothes weren’t ripped to inappropriate length and tying up her hair, breathing still shaky, sweat still glistening on her skin. 

     It used to be easy; he used to roll over when they were done, pretend to be asleep ‘til she slipped out the door. But he watched her now, watched her dress, watched her leave. Always lookin’ like he was about to speak, but always silent. 

     “You have a shirt I can borrow? Wouldn’t want to get the staff all up in a fuss.”

     “Whichever,” he answers, all short and gruff like he doesn’t know how very attractive he is in the half-light. He grumbles something next – she can’t quite make it out, but it might be, “Unless you want to stay.”

     She turns towards him, and he looks down. “Did you say something?” she asks, heart in her throat. 

     “I said whichever,” he clarifies, and rolls over. “Get your damn ears checked.”

//idr what prompt thing this was so have a random drabble instead

     “I want one,” Inara commented, eyebrows raised as she watched Shane finish prying open and climbing into the window he had just finished scaling a wall via a trash can, drain pipe, and assorted window ledges to get to. Her eyes were lit with the warm, still-smoldering ember-like glow Xander had grown all too accustomed to being warmed by late at night. 

     “Why?” Xander couldn’t have sounded more unimpressed if he’d tried -- mostly because he was already trying pretty incredibly hard. “You’ve had lovers like that.”

     “When?” If Inara noticed Xander’s irritation(she did), she paid it no mind, listening instead until, at length, the front door of the mansion they’d been attempting to... investigate rattled, and then popped open to reveal the redhead’s smiling face.

     “He’s just another rogue,” was Xander’s terse answer, staring even harder at Inara with disapproval every second she stubornly refused to look at him looking at her. 

     “Yeah, but... strawberry flavored. And flexible.”

     “So what.” Not a question; a challenge. Convince me. But there was no convincing Xander Cousland in the field; wearing armor on his body was like stuffing bricks in his ears and building a wall in front of his groin. She’d get to him later, in the dark, when his ego was tucked away beneath his pillow and the only thing he had to listen to was the soft sound of her voice. 

((Nathaniel x Xander x Inara nonsense I thought up in the shower for no reason.))

     “Why would you shave your body hair?!” Were Inara’s first words when Nathaniel came in the door, before the poor man could even peel off his rain-drenched coat and hang it carefully over the drip tray(after, of course, moving the bra that definitely did not need to be on the drip tray hooks and before moving the soaked jeans - he didn’t want to know - onto them). She was, unabashedly as ever, sprawled out on the PI’s couch, topless and wearing what could only be described as the absolute bare minimum requirements of Nathaniel’s “pants on on the couch” rule, holding a gaudy magazine.

     “You know I hate it when you accidentally teach me things about Orlais,” he told her, tone half-committal as he stripped off his socks, his shirt -- anything that was wet enough to cause discomfort. If he’d been present in the moment, he’d have taken a little bit of pleasure in the way his actions caught Inara’s attention so keenly, her gaze so intent you’d think he was the only thing in the room. But in his head, he was still in that office, watching Philip Coleman give his answers, over and over. Every time he lied, he’d tap twice on the table -- same as his poker tell, he’d learned from his “lenders”. 

     But how did he prove it?

     “Still. Who would let a person take a razor to their bits? Can you imagine when it starts growing back--” She’d gotten entirely too far into her tirade without so much as a disapproving glance from her partner. And she was talking about naughty bits. And Orlesians. “What’s wrong with you?”

     “The Coleman case. He’s lying. I can’t figure out how to prove it.” Deflecting would only make her questions come quicker; she didn’t let things go. And he was almost entirely certain that she read his case files when he wasn’t looking.

     “You want I should sleep with him? Ask him about it when he’s all up in there? Guys say all sorts of crazy shit when they’re ‘bout to pop. Last time it was just me and Xander, he told me--”

     “I will cut out your tongue, you brazen harpy!” Xander was home. 

     Anyway. “Excited utterances aren’t admissable in court,” Nathaniel reminded Inara for the unsettling-number-th time. 

     “What if I make him pay for it? The sex, I mean. Then you can threaten to either turn him in for prostitution if he won’t admit to... you know, whatever it is his wife or mistress or girlfriend is paying you to get him to admit to.” Her tone was dry; it was as close as Inara ever came to openly criticizing him, those bland statements and hard stares over the edge of a magazine. 

     Nathaniel would have defended the integrity of his profession if he wasn’t, in fact, working for the man’s wife. He frowned, and she smiled pleasantly. She was definitely reading his case files. 

     “And if he turned you in for being a prostitute?”

     “Like I’d tell him my name,” she snorted. She’d thought about this entirely too much. And somehow, Nathaniel felt... flattered?

     “No. Thank you,”  he answered, dumping her legs off the couch unceremoniously so he had a place to sit. Xander, fresh out of the shower, took the other side, and before long the three of them were settled down together on the couch, Inara sprawling herself across both their laps, head on Xander’s shoulders, legs over Nathaniel’s lap, the group of them watching Scrubs as if it was the most normal thing in the world. As if they were... happy.

     “If you change your mind...” Inara offered when Nathaniel had finally joined them in the present, as signaled by his criticism of the most recent jaw-dropping diagnosis.