Skip the whiskey and pass the coffee

[roadhouse_mama]

Who; Ellen Harvelle & anyone. OPEN
What; Staying awake at the Roadhouse
Where; The Roadhouse
When; Very late evening June 10th
Rating; pg-13ish?
Status; Ongoing, open. Talk to Ellen, talk amongst yourselves

Comments

[loves_vera]

Finally.

Jayne had left Gabriel's place and been stalking through the market in a black mood. It weren't bad enough that he felt like Reavers and the rutting Alliance (not to mention every business partner he screwed over) were stalking him everywhere. The short guy, who reminded him of Badger, was good for ammunition and enough supplies to keep all of them happy for weeks.

Naturally some of the crew had to go and get lost in the middle of a gorram crisis.

But there was the Roadhouse. He hadn't found Inara or Wash. But he was stopping in. A familiar location would go mighty far towards easing his mind a bit.

[ofunquietwater]

The shadows held faces. Men with blue hands that never dripped with blood, no matter how much they killed. Bounty hunters with eyes burst and frozen to crystal in the bleak emptiness of space. Flayed skulls with maddened eyes and scraps of clothing that were oh, so familiar - here a mechanic's jumper, there an armoured vest and leather thong, there a trailing brown coat.

Go to the Roadhouse had been the last she'd heard by way of direction, and though her nerves screamed at her and the combined fear of the city pressed down like choking cloth forced into her throat, River went. There were monsters there, and she was always, always good at seeing monsters

[loves_vera]

"Tah ma duh*," he muttered. Weren't bad enough that the entire city couldn't sleep, or the Reavers lurking in every shadowy doorway. Now Mal had him out looking for the wayward members of the crew that weren't smart enough to be answering his call in the first place.

And he got lucky enough to get the Captain's little albatross. Who was looking a might less stable than usual.

"Ah, yeah. C'mon. Mal's lookin for you at the Roadhouse. Ain't nobody gettin buried anywhere." He was just going to put the unsettling idea of being buried well out of his head. He hoped.

[ofunquietwater]

River's head canted further, lank hair shifting back over her shoulder to bare, briefly, the smudges of dried blood smeared across her forehead. "Already buried," she replied, gliding closer in a line as straight as though it had been drawn on the ground with a ruler. "Can't you feel it? Sour earth at the back of your throat. Need to breathe, but it'll get in if you do."

Something shifted in the shadows, and she jerked back, gaze tracking a blue-gloved man who wasn't there. For a moment, she tasted antiseptic, sharp enough to slice clean through the haze of exhaustion and lingering remnants of lucidity both.

There was little outward warning - one moment, she was frightened but harmless, or as harmless as she was ever capable of being. In the next, she pivoted on the ball of one foot, sweeping the other in a sharp kick aimed square at Jayne's solar plexus. Adrenaline thrummed in her blood, soaking the world in shades of red and black and turning any living thing into a clear and obvious threat.