rivers_bend

Title: A First Time for Everything.
Author: River
Fandom: Firefly
Pairing: Kaylee/Inara
Words: 100 x 5
Rating: PG-13
Summary: A series of drabbles chronicling firsts between Kaylee and Inara.
Thank you: to skyblue_reverie and karaokegal for beta and suggestions.



meeting
Kaylee’s hair is stuck to her face with sweat and engine oil, her cheeks are dirty and her skin glows. She flings open the shuttle door expecting metal, rust and broken parts. The draped fabric and rich smell of incense brings her up short. The naked woman arched gracefully over a chest of drawers takes her breath away. Nothing takes away her voice though. Nothing ever could.

“The cap’n said… I’m sorry, I didn’t know anyone… He said the shuttle needed repairs… Are you? I’m… Kaylee. I’ll come back later.” She flees before she finds out the other woman’s name.

conversation
Inara is elegant, but nervous the first time she joins the crew for dinner. Perfectly at home at any society function, the Companion worries that these people won’t like her. The mechanic stands, pulls out a chair for her, sits next to her, asks her name.

Mal is glassily polite, Wash friendly, Zoe cool, but Kaylee talks to her as though Inara were a cousin she’d never met but had always held in awe. Inara relaxes almost completely in the wash of Kaylee’s words. They murmur back and forth and are friends by the time the last bite is eaten.

touch
Kaylee watches Inara’s fingers stroke and smooth the delicate fabrics of her gown. She wonders what it would feel like to have fingers made for silk rather than sturdy canvas overalls.

“Do you want me to brush your hair?” Inara’s words break Kaylee out of her daydream.

The fingers that slide along Kaylee’s neck, lifting her hair, are cool and gentle. They send shivers over her skin and warmth to her insides. She leans into the touch and the stroke of the brush, sighing aloud before she notices.

“Does that feel good?” Inara doesn’t sound like she minds Kaylee sighing.

kiss
Inara hates it when Kaylee goes on missions with the others. She’s a strong girl, and clever with her hands, but she still believes in the goodness of people and Inara is sure that someday she is going to be hurt in a way neither the new doctor they’ve found, nor Inara herself can fix.

She’d thought her heart might stop when that fei-fei de piyan agent shot Kaylee in the chest.

When Kaylee drives the mule up the cargo-bay ramp, Inara flies down the stairs and into Kaylee’s arms. She kisses Kaylee’s face and hair and finally her lips.

make love
Kaylee isn’t sure how to ask what she wants to know, but Inara’s never judged her so she jumps right in. “Do you ever -- can Companions go with someone who isn’t a client?”

Inara trails fingertips along Kaylee’s jaw and buries them in her hair. “There are rules about everything, but none that prevent me from doing this...” She pulls Kaylee forward into a kiss that leads to clothes being opened and dropped to the floor.

Kaylee finds her hands are good with more than engines, and that Serenity isn’t the only girl who tells her what she needs.