She catches him by surprise – snaring his hand as he tries to pass by her to… wherever it is he goes at night, disappearing for a few hours after dinner and only dragging himself back as the sun hid behind the horizon line. It had been his nightly ritual for some time now; Anders was too consumed with plans and reports and Justice to notice, and Nathaniel is grateful for silence however it comes to him.
“What’s going on, Inara?” Shane almost seems nervous when she pulls him into her “bedroom” (or what passes for one, now. It’s a room, and she sleeps in it, though a ‘bed’ is not involved, a pile of furs in the corner giving enough cushion for what little sleep she gets on the run.) “Hey, is everything okay? Did I do something–?”
Before he can finish the question, she’s got her fingers in her hair, her body pressed to his for a long, slow kiss. It takes all of a half-second for him to get into it, his arms circling around her, pulling her closer despite the stiff heat that surrounds them. He’s used to this – sex is as welcome a distraction as any while they twiddle their thumbs and hide from the Templars. But she stops him when he tries to slip his hands beneath her shirt, and leaves him puzzled.
“How are you?” she asks him then, her lips grazing his as she looks up into his eyes. “You’ve been quiet. How are you doing?”
“Fantastic,” he answers, capturing her lips again just after with an eager little smirk twisting them beneath hers.
But she stops him again, and he looks confused again. There’s a pause, then – it must be the angle, because for a moment, the two manage to see each other’s faces beneath those masks they wear – him tired, sad, and a little bit broken, and her concerned, caring. It only lasted a moment, but that moment was enough. She’d had her suspicions, but now she knew.
She doesn’t ask him again how he is; he’ll only lie. Instead, she pulls him close and whispers, “I want to play a game with you. For every nice thing you say about yourself, I’ll give you a kiss. Okay?”
He tries it once, twice. “I have nice hair. I’m hilarious.” She kisses his lips. “I look great naked.” This time, she kisses his chin. “You missed,” he says.
“Oh, the kisses go down as you get nicer,” Inara answered, and for a moment,
Shane looked too surprised and… excited. He tried it a few more times. “I can jump really high. I’m flexible. I give good head. I’m gentle!” The kisses trailed down his chin, his neck, lingered on his collar bone, and she could feel that he approved of this plan. But then he said, “What happens when I run out of good stuff?”
“You won’t run out of stuff,” Inara told him, pushing her fingers through that ridiculous tangle of too-long red hair as she regarded him with a more serious tone. Again, she saw that flicker in his eyes – a crack in the veneer, a little plea for anyone to notice the shadows that passed over his face. Then, softer, she said, “If you forget… I’ll help you.”
“Okay,” he said. “I’ll try.”
“Okay,” she smiled. And kissed him.
“No fair! I already got past my lips!” he objected; she only groaned.