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"I don't understand." River, with her bare feet tucked up underneath her in Serenity's ratty pilot's chair as the ship cuts a wake through the stars outside, turns her gaze only briefly to Inara. Then she looks back down at the controls and puts another fold in the sheet of paper spread out in front of her. Inara suppresses a sigh. Ever since Miranda, Inara hasn't been exactly sure just how much River really doesn't understand and how much of her persona is an act. But she remembers as well as anyone what River is capable of, and errs on the side of patience.
So Inara bites back any number of bitter potential comebacks and adopts the same firm but soothing tone she might use with a particularly nervous client. "River, we've spoken about this before. I don't like people entering the shuttle without my permission. And I certainly don't like them taking my possessions without asking."
River raises the folded paper to her lips, blows, and inflates it into a little white cube. She pulls a sewing needle out of the pilot's chair, which she has been using as a pincushion, and strings a thread through the paper cube. She stands up on the chair with casual grace and hangs the cube next to the various other papercrafts that now adorn the cockpit, surrounding the plastic dinosaurs that no one can bring themselves to throw away. Finally, still without looking at Inara, she speaks. "But you bought it with the ship's money."
"No, River, I bought that paper with my money, from my job."
"But you use your money to pay rent for the shuttle too. So the money for the paper could have been for the shuttle this month, or next, or the month after. So any of your money could really be the ship's money." River frowns and sits down in the chair again. "Of course, you don't spend all your money on rent, so any of your money could still be your money too. Capitalism is problematic."
The sound of Mal's heavy boots on the deck cuts off Inara's response. He must have heard them from outside, because he spreads his arms wide and says with mock outrage, "Come on, Inara, won't you stop picking on my pilot?"
Inara feels no need to moderate her tone here. "I'm not picking on her, Mal. That paper she's using belongs to me. She took it without asking."
"Aw, Inara, go easy on the kid." Of course he would take River's side – it's no fun for him if he agrees with Inara right away, after all. "We're not even two days out from Sihnon. We'll get you some more when we land, on my dime."
"It can't wait that long, Mal, and you know it."
"Your test?"
"Yes."
Mal looks back at River, who is now folding Inara's last piece of paper into a jaunty hat for the Triceratops. "Afraid it's a little late to get it back now. Once the dinos get involved it's a whole new can of worms I ain't a brave enough man to open."
Inara gathers up her skirts and glares at Mal as she brushes past him on her way out of the cockpit. "I'm hardly surprised."
"Might want to give Kaylee a try," he calls after her as she stalks down the corridor. "You know her and that artsy-craftsy stuff. Maybe she can help, huh? Or at least back you up if you decide to take on the fearsome T-Rex."
* * *
Sometimes Inara wonders why she came back to Serenity in the first place. On days like this, neither concern for her friends nor a sense of adventure seems like motive enough for leaving behind the peaceful discipline of the Companion academy. Yet when she enters Kaylee's engine room, any reason to return suddenly seems good enough. The small, cramped space is hot and dry and full of the comforting white-noise rattle and hum of Serenity. Even the clutter of tools covering the walls and floor, which would normally nag uncontrollably at Inara's ordered mind, seems somehow restful and right. Kaylee's in here, of course, but she's lying under the engine banging away at something with a wrench and hasn't heard Inara come in. It makes Inara think of the story Mal once told her after a few glasses of wine, about the first time he ever found Kaylee on her back under this engine, and Inara feels an unbidden flush that she tells herself is just the heat of the room.
Inara taps Kaylee's booted foot with her own silk slipper. Right away, Kaylee slides herself out in response to Inara's touch. Her teeth shine very white against the engine grease smudging her hands and face. "How's it going?" Kaylee shouts, barely audible over the engine.
Inara shrugs and gestures toward the door – she can't afford to strain her voice shouting right now, not when the Guild will doubtless want to hear her sing tomorrow. Kaylee responds with a nod and pulls herself to her feet, grabbing a rag and wiping her hands on the way out. "Haven't seen you down here in a while," she says once they're outside.
"I suppose I haven't had much reason to be here. I've been busy."
"Lots of clients, sure. Hope they're treating you right." Coming from Mal that would have been yet another viciously sarcastic manifestation of his disdain for Inara's chosen profession, but from Kaylee she hears nothing but genuine interest and affection. Inara doesn't know what to say to that.
There is a pause which feels interminable to Inara, but which Kaylee doesn't even seem to notice. "Kaylee, Mal told me that you might have some paper in your room. Could you loan me a few sheets?"
Kaylee frowns. "Would if I could, but I'm fresh out. Used the last bits making Simon an anniversary card. It was four months last week, you know." That brilliant grin splits Kaylee's face open again. Inara keeps her own very still. "What do you need paper for?"
"I'm not sure if Mal mentioned it to you, but one of the reasons we're stopping on Sihnon tomorrow is so I can test to keep my Companions' Guild license. They're not just medical tests, though. You need to demonstrate that you've kept your skills up – music, dancing, poetry, the tea ceremony..."
"Origami?"
"Calligraphy, actually. And I'm terribly out of practice. Without paper, I'll just have to give it my best when I get to Sihnon, I suppose."
Kaylee is still beaming. "You don't need paper to write, you know." She scrubs at her left hand with the rag and holds it in front of Inara's face, revealing under the layer of grime a scrawled "to do" list of tasks to be completed on the engine. "You gotta learn these tricks real quick out here. Paper's hard to come by sometimes on the Rim, but a marker lasts a good long time."
"I'm not sure I have any calligraphy brushes that small, Kaylee."
"Plenty more skin on the body than just the hand. I just use that 'cause it's convenient. Legs, backs, stomachs. Lots of space to work with."
Inara feels frozen in place, as if Kaylee's broad smile is a magnifying glass she has suddenly found herself under. "That's a wonderful idea, Kaylee. Thank you, I'll try it." She turns, begins to leave.
"Wait." Inara looks over her shoulder just in time to see Kaylee toss the dirty rag to the floor and stride toward her. "I don't think it works too well trying to do calligraphy on your own back, does it?"
* * *
"You don't have to do this," Inara says as Kaylee kicks off her boots and closes the shuttle door behind her. "I'm sure you're very busy."
"Sure am, but so are you, and those engine seals will wait. You said yourself your test was tomorrow, and that won't wait, will it? Besides, I need a break anyhow."
"Then let me get my brushes and ink." Inara is smiling now too, but the words feel tight, forcing themselves out from between her teeth.
Inara has just pulled out the rosewood box containing her brushes and inkstick and inkstone when she hears her own name. She turns to see Kaylee stripped to the waist, the top of her coveralls hanging loose at her hips and her shirt discarded in a pink puddle on the floor. She gestures at her bare torso, which Inara sees is grimy with grease and sweat. "Got a washcloth or something? This engine gunk gets everywhere."
"Yes." Inara turns away more quickly than she would have liked, glad for the excuse of finding a bowl to fill with warm water and soap. This is ridiculous, she tells herself. You're being ridiculous. How many clients have you seen strip down without a care in the 'Verse in the last year alone? Kaylee is a friend, doing you a favor. Yet at the same time she realizes that's precisely why this is different, precisely why the soft curves of Kaylee's waist and hips and the shadows beneath her breasts burn behind Inara's now-closed eyes in a way that no paying customer's nakedness ever could.
Inara takes her time filling the bowl and picking out the biggest and cleanest sponge she can find so that she can wait to turn back until she's heard the faint creak and rustle of Kaylee sitting down on the edge of the bed. Fortunately, her back, which is still bare but much less distracting than her front, is turned. Inara passes the bowl and sponge around into Kaylee's waiting hands, fully aware of how much more natural it would be to simply walk around and look her in the eye and hand her the bowl, and hoping that Kaylee either won't notice or will be too polite to say anything. "Thanks, Inara." Kaylee dunks the sponge into the water and squeezes it out with a leisurely twist of both hands, inhaling the soap's scent deeply. "Smells good. Lavender?"
"Yes, and a little rosemary." Inara keeps watching as Kaylee passes the sponge over her hands, her arms, her neck, her shoulders, and the water in the bowl turns grimier. As Kaylee struggles to reach that tricky spot between her shoulder blades, Inara takes the sponge from Kaylee's hands before she can think about it enough to stop herself. "Here, let me help."
Kaylee lets out a positively lascivious sigh of delight as Inara scrubs her back, and Inara realizes two things at once: first, that she could do this all day, and second, that this is exactly why it's time for her to stop. She drops the sponge back into the bowl, splashing a little dirty water on Kaylee's rounded stomach, and hands her a towel. "We'd better get started – I don't want to keep you," Inara says, and knows it is a lie.
Inara distracts herself with rearranging the Four Treasures of the Study on a low table as Kaylee lies down on the bed. She is surprised by the way her muscle memory has maintained the motions of forming the brush into a point, of grinding down the inkstick on the stone and mixing it with the right amount of water, so she can look at Kaylee instead while she works. The skin of Kaylee's bare back is luminous in the warm light of the shuttle, tanned but still light enough to contrast well with the rich reds and golds and purples of the bedding. How did she get a tan anyway? I get so pale out here, and she's been on this ship even longer than me. Oh, right, she and Simon spent a day at the beach on Santo last month. Stop thinking about that! Kaylee's head is turned to one side and pillowed on her arms, with her hair fanned out around her and a slight smile still on her face. Inara doesn't realize she's been staring until Kaylee sighs again and says, "Hey, you ready over there?"
"Oh. Of course. I'm sorry, it takes some time to prepare the ink." Inara sits down on the edge of the bed at Kaylee's right side, feels Kaylee adjust her position as Inara's weight shifts the mattress's center of balance. "And I need to get your hair out of the way." She doesn't, not really, but it's nice to gather up the stray brunette strands and brush them all to one side, if only to cover the faint smile that she knows will only fluster her.
"I'm going to begin now. Try to hold still." Kaylee mumbles her assent into the crook of her own elbow. Inara wets the brush with ink, holds her sleeve out of the way of Kaylee's back with her free hand, and lowers the brush to Kaylee's right shoulder blade. As she's finishing the first character – cháng – Kaylee flinches. The final stroke wobbles and Inara lifts the brush, even though she knows that would count against her on the exam. "Kaylee? Are you all right?"
"Yeah. Just tickles. I'll get used to it. Don't stop."
So Inara doesn't. She lowers the brush to Kaylee's shoulder once more and picks up where she left off – xiāng sī – letting the characters flow into each other, down across Kaylee's shoulders and her waist and the small of her back, just brushing the barely exposed tops of her buttocks before returning to the nape of her neck, shifting to the left, descending in a new line of dark flowing characters all over again. The brush becomes an extension of Inara's arm, the cursive an expression of what she won't express. Eventually it becomes difficult to reach the unmarked left side of Kaylee's back and so Inara straddles her – měi rén rú huā gé yún duān - and the world contracts down to dim light and even breathing and the soft rasp of the brush along Kaylee's skin and the warm yielding solidness of her beneath Inara's thighs. But the poem runs out – cuī xīn gān - and so does Kaylee's bare skin, and Inara must pull herself away and clean her brush and think about what she's done.
Kaylee lets out another happy sigh. "Is the ink dry?"
"I think so."
Kaylee sits up, rolls her neck back and forth. "I wanna see." Inara can't blame her for that, so she finds a hand mirror and positions Kaylee in front of the full-length on the wall so she can gaze at her own back. Kaylee's grin has returned now. "It's beautiful! What's it say?"
Inara tries to hide her surprise – she'd thought everybody knew Long Yearning, but in this case, perhaps it's better that Kaylee doesn't. "You don't know?"
"I was never much good with the fancy cursive stuff, plus it's backwards. Is it a poem or something?"
"Yes. Something like that."
"It's so beautiful. Do you like how it came out?"
Inara feels a sudden flush of shame. She's just crossed a line she wasn't entirely sure existed, and now she's wishing she never had cause to find it in the first place. "Well, I'm less out of practice than I thought." She picks up the bowl of water, cooling now, from where Kaylee left it on the floor by the bed, and sets it on the table. "Thank you, Kaylee. I feel much more prepared now. Let me wash it off for you."
"No!" Kaylee whirls around, clutching the hand mirror to her chest, eyes sparkling. "I've got to show this to Simon tonight."
"Of course. I'm glad you like it." The words feel forced to Inara, but if Kaylee notices, she doesn't react. The calligraphy brush is clean already, but Inara pretends to clean it again while Kaylee retrieves her shirt from the floor and pulls the top of her coveralls back up and zips them. The poem on her back is completely hidden now. If not for the dirty water and the scent of herbs in the air and her own ragged breathing, Inara could never have believed that anything unusual had taken place in her shuttle today.
Kaylee crosses to Inara with a few bouncy strides and wraps her up in a firm hug before Inara can protest. "Thanks, Inara. This was lots of fun. If you ever want my help with your Companion stuff again, just ask. I'll be your guinea pig anytime." And then she's out the door and halfway down the steps with Inara staring again at her receding back, the only one who knows what is really written there:
Long yearning,
To be in Chang'an.
The grasshoppers weave their autumn song by the golden railing of the well;
Frost coalesces on my bamboo mat, changing its color with cold.
My lonely lamp is not bright, I’d like to end these thoughts;
I roll back the hanging, gaze at the moon, and long sigh in vain.
The beautiful person's like a flower beyond the edge of the clouds.
Above is the black night of heaven's height;
Below is the green water billowing on.
The sky is long, the road is far, bitter flies my spirit;
The spirit I dream can't get through, the mountain pass is hard.
Long yearning,
Breaks my heart.
Kaylee is meeting Simon in the cargo bay now, telling him excitedly about her fun afternoon helping Inara as though nothing untoward had happened – and how could she not, when the transgression was all in Inara's head? Inara strides over to the shuttle door and closes it – slams it, really – so she won't have to hear their cheerful voices. She grips the brush in her hand until her fingernails bite white crescent moons into her palm and wonders for the thousandth time what would happen if all of her secrets were written so clearly on her own alabaster skin.