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Plenty of things had remained the same once Inara and Kaylee started saying girlfriend alongside best friend. They still spent time playing checkers or mahjong in the common area with River and occasionally with Wash. They still had outings during the time they were planetside with Simon. They still did cooking prep with Book.
Plenty had also changed. Most of that was the kissing and sex, of course, but it was also the stronger bond they’d been developing. The secrets about her life back on Sihnon that Inara shared with Kaylee, and the new level of honesty Kaylee felt she’d reached when it came to talking about intimacy with Inara.
Kaylee also now had to make sure she balanced spending time with her girlfriend without sidelining her friends, and tried not to leap to Inara’s defense in every single situation (sometimes Inara was the first one to pick a fight with the Captain—not often, but sometimes), and she tried to make sure she had a bit of extra cash squirreled away just in case she found something that was particularly good as a gift. She’d seen plenty of little trinkets and charms and scarves throughout the time she’d known Inara that reminded her of her friend but it had always seemed wrong to buy her little presents if she wasn’t also buying something for everyone else on the crew or if it wasn’t Inara’s birthday.
Now she could; a little cherry blossom shaped charm here or a taro pastry there, a packet of special incense or a little decorative box. She had the budget for it. Of course, Inara had a bit more spending money on her. Though she hadn't outright said it, Kaylee knew that as soon as they'd started dating, Inara had worked a five credit allowance into her budget only for flowers.
The first time Inara had had a bouquet for Kaylee delivered to Serenity at the docks, it had felt like a whole spectacle. They'd been on Persephone, and Inara had pulled out all the stops. The courier had ridden up in a green uniform on a white bicycle with a big wood panel container on the front. Wash had been on barker duty and he'd called Kaylee down over the intercom. While the courier handed over the massive bouquet, Jayne and Simon had both poked their heads out into the cargo bay, and while Jayne didn't have much to say about the whole thing, Simon had grinned at her and mouthed a very exaggerated wow, which Kaylee took to mean that the flower arrangement was just as impressive for Core folks as it was to her.
She'd kept those flowers in her bunk for two days, just to enjoy them on her own, before putting them on the galley table. After they'd started to wilt, she'd made a day of carefully tying them all up individually with twine and hanging them upside down to dry on one of the catwalks in the cargo bay with River's help.
She'd only done that with the first bouquet. There was only so much room for dried flowers in her bunk and Inara bought her flowers on nearly every planet they stopped on. A huge elegant arrangement in shades of orange delivered in a ceramic vase on Rubicon, a little miniature bunch of blues accentuated with tiny fake pearls on clear wires that was tied to a hairclip on Eris, a single variegated tulip on Clawthorn. Every single time Kaylee found the flowers nestled in one of the rungs of her bunk ladder door or met the courier at the docks to receive them or Inara herself carried them on board with a wide grin, she felt that warm bubble in her chest.
Sometimes Kaylee bought flowers for Inara, too. A garland of marigolds for Inara's little altar table on holidays that Kaylee was trying her very best to learn more about, or once an arrangement of lotuses that Kaylee just couldn't leave market without. It wasn't her gift of choice; Inara had the budget for constant flowers but Kaylee liked to see her gifts stick around a little more in Inara's shuttle.
She expressed this, more or less, to Book during a slow day planetside on Kerry. They didn't come to Kerry often, but every time they did, it was a slow day. Zoe and the Captain were off the ship, working out some sort of cargo transport deal, Simon and River had dragged two chairs out into the grass beside Serenity's landing spot to cloud gaze, and Inara was taking some time to herself before she and Kaylee had evening plans to download a movie on Inara's Cortex screen.
"I know Inara has the privilege of giving me things that don't need to be anything but pretty," Kaylee said as she did a bit of tidying up in the galley. "And I think I'm getting better at accepting that. But sometimes I think she'd like some flowers more often, too…but it's hard for me, because I really need to stretch my coin and I think to me that means finding something that has a lot of weight to it, you know?"
"Have you ever heard of flower language?" Shepherd Book asked, closing his bible and setting it to the side from where he'd been spending his own afternoon with some tea and quiet reflection.
"Can't say I have," Kaylee admitted.
"I don't know very much about it," Book told her. "But I'm sure we could find some information if we go poking around on the Cortex a bit." He stood and gestured towards the bridge. "I'm sure Wash would let us have research time."
"Sure," Kaylee said. "What sort of language…what do you mean by flower language?" She wondered as she followed Shepherd out of the galley.
"It's a symbolic language," he said. "Different flowers represent different emotions, and there was a period of time when it was taken very seriously, and lovers used to send each other messages just by using flowers."
"It sounds like you do know a lot," Kaylee said as they went up the steps to Wash at the pilot's seat. Book laughed.
"I meant that I don't know which flowers mean what," he said.
"Well hey, you two," Wash said as they approached, putting down a plastic dino. "What can I do for you?"
"Can we borrow a Cortex screen for a minute?" Book wondered.
After they'd spent a while copying down values and virtues and the flowers that represented them that they were certain they could find on Kerry, Book drove them out on the mule to a spot that they were fairly certain wasn't someone's private field and Kaylee set about her task, checking and double checking on the flowers and the symbolism and the colors, then tucking them carefully into a shoebox she'd hastily emptied of old electric cords. Book did a bit of his own foraging, and Kaylee helped him load his harvest into the fabric bags he'd brought along.
When they returned, Kaylee settled herself into a chair at the dining table and started arranging the flowers she'd picked. She was vaguely aware that she shouldn't expect it to be perfect—these were wildflowers after all, and people took whole certification classes to learn how to make bouquets. She just put them together in a way that looked good to her and then took the bundle to Inara's shuttle before she could talk herself into thinking it looked terrible.
Inara peeked out playfully when Kaylee knocked on the door, holding the flowers out of sight to the side of the shuttle airlock.
"Hey, you. Having a good quiet day?" Inara asked.
"I am. I got you something," Kaylee said.
"Really? On Kerry?" Inara was halfway to a laugh.
"Well, it wasn't easy, but…" She revealed the bouquet from behind the door frame and presented it to Inara.
"Oh…Kaylee…they're lovely."
"I picked 'em," Kaylee told her. "And…do you know about flower language?" She wondered. Inara shook her head, her eyes still fixed on the flowers as she turned the bouquet slowly in her hands. "Shepherd Book told me about it and we did some research before he took me to find wildflowers."
"Is that right?"
"I didn't take up too much of his time, I promise," Kaylee said with a laugh. "But uh…yeah. Flower language. They all have meanings that people came up with centuries ago, and I tried to pick the ones that fit…us." She pointed to a purple bloom. "So, that one is aster, and it's a symbol of love, and so are the red one here and the ivy, too. The ivy represents fidelity and love and friendship," Kaylee said giddily. "So I figured it was perfect for us. Then the heather there is for protection and admiration. The dandelion is for faithfulness. Oh, and I also picked a whole bunch of them that I'm gonna pluck the petals off of and make as much wine of it as I can, which I think everyone will really like. The leaves around the outside represent affection, and also you can eat 'em! Shepherd Book and I picked a lot of those too, and he's making a soup with them and some potatoes."
Kaylee gave her handiwork one last smile and looked up to see that Inara was crying.
"Oh! Inara—"
"I love it. Kaylee, I love it. This is the sweetest thing anyone's given me."