Prompt #20- Why?
Breakfast on Serenity always happened in stages. The early risers, Mal and Zoë, sat silent and still as they all but inhaled their coffee waiting for the day to dawn and the night to wane.
Simon would putter in a few hours later, his hands automatically grasping for the coffee pot and adding a few extra shots of expresso to get it to the consistency of sludge, an addiction left over from medical school where he existed on more caffeine and less sleep than the human body could comfortably handle.
Inara would join them once she was perfectly made up and elegantly dressed. She would sit down and pour herself some green tea, sniffing distastefully at those who needed their shots of caffeine to greet the day. She'd smile a little smile and sit peacefully, welcoming the silence.
Kaylee would bound in, not long after Simon and Inara, a cheerful, chipper morning person who would start by welcoming the new day with a grin and a laugh, proclaiming her ship-mates to be grumpy hwoon-dahn when they throw pieces of balled up paper at her for being so gorram cheerful.
She'd make porridge and pour it out for everyone and the smell would bring Jayne out of his bunk in a surly growl and he'd swallow without chewing and take more coffee.
God help the verse if they ever ran out of coffee.
River was less predictable, sometimes she was there before Mal and Zoë, before the automatic lights came on and before the stars had finished singing. Sometimes she was there long after they had all left their breakfast things on the table.
Today she had snuck in before all of them and sat in a corner, nursing a cup of coffee that she wouldn't drink and watching as they staggered in, in various stages of awareness.
She smiled a greeting to her Captain and his second as they entered within moments of each other, their circadian rhythms as perfectly matched as they could be after so long an acquaintance.
She nodded to Simon who walked in with Kaylee, the blush staining his cheeks telling more than they really needed to know about Kaylee's enjoyment of mornings.
But, to everyone's surprise, Jayne was there before Inara, sliding into his chair with a short "mornin'" and staring into his coffee up like it held the answers to the verse's problems.
"Ain't used ta seeing you up so early, Jayne," Mal commented and got a grunt for his troubles.
Truth was, Jayne wasn't sure why he was up so early either. Wasn't like he hadn't been warm there in his bunk. Wasn't like he hadn't had plenty to think on, plenty to dream about and plenty to do.
He had Vera to clean and Betsy to overhaul and River to dream about but he had hauled his ass out of bed and ended up here, where he couldn't even talk to her for fear that someone would want to know why and he'd end up getting gorram air-locked.
Gorramit, he was worse than a boy with a crush and it was all kinds of embarrassing.
But when he looked up and caught the eye of the resident Crazy-genius and saw the light pink tint to her face, the gleam in her eye and the way she offered him the slightest of smiles he knew.
That's why.