Bodhi had come to the cafeteria because he was hungry.
He was, or so he'd always thought, always hungry - he ate too much and too fast and too often, upsetting the balance of the pantry or the people around him or his own stomach. He'd been told as much since childhood, and had found it to be true even through his stint in the fifth-rate academy and his job hauling crystals for the fleet. Whenever he ate, there was nothing left. Whenever he ate, it never took very long to finish. And whenever he ate, he would inevitably feel hungry a couple hours later.
Since coming here, and watching the plates people piled for themselves from the line, he'd realized: he'd simply never had very much food.
And so now he just tried to emulate the others with whom he sat to take his meals, a narrow but rotating band, some of whom he spoke to, others he merely observed, and all of whom he watched, trying not to be too conspicuous, for cues. This place was full of disparate swaths of etiquette and customs, which he ought to have found frustrating, as someone who was just trying to fit in - but it was fascinating enough that he'd discovered he didn't really mind. People did such curious and inexplicable things, and it was a rare point of secret superiority for him to sit by and marvel and wonder why anyone would adopt such a ridiculous habit.
A question which not infrequently came up when he encountered Cassian at tea-time. Cassian had terrified him, at first (well - he'd been scared out of his mind at everything, in that first phase of their acquaintance, his never-very-ordered brain a tangle of uninsulated wires sizzling against everything that so much as came within range of an arc); and then, Cassian had shamed him, as the depth of his anger became clear; finally, Cassian had come to stand in his mind in much the same place as had his academy instructors, the pilots sauntering down the corridors in their unattainable flight suits, and, most of all, Galen: he was an adult. He was a man driven by something, instead of chasing it. It granted him a maturity and an ease of existence that Bodhi had never possessed, and had always imagined he wanted. To have a reason for something, for anything, for everything, would fill the emptiness that slapped into the moments of his life that weren't spun away in the frantic quest to make ends meet. It would make everything easier. It would make everything matter.
Not that you could tell to look at him. Bodhi smiled over at him, and waved - and went to get his plate made before he came to take his seat, his eyes immediately falling to the state of Cassian's hands. "Didn't anyone ever tell you to wash before dinner?" He smiled, stretching legs out under the table - and immediately knocking into something. He shoved back to peer underneath, at the spreading puddle of thin, brownish liquid. "You're a mess."