#first time writing beau and aaaah i'm nervous

[mnemememory]

blue-grey silhouettes 

Yasha comes back, and Beau can’t believe how sappy she is about it.

(a 2k monologue about nothing much, really). 

 “So,” Beau says, leaning back in her seat and taking a long gulp of ale. “Where were you this time?”

Yasha’s grin is small and unexpectedly shy, thick makeup smeared in a way that suggests long hours on the road a little chance of a touch-up. Beau can’t even remember the last time she bothered with anything much, though Jester seemed to enjoy the morning routine.

Of course, after almost three weeks on the road with little respite, they hadn’t exactly bothered with what Beau considered “useless gunk that gummed up an otherwise pleasant day” and other people considered “good manners” and “proper form” and whatever. Example a) makeup.

Beau has dust imbedded into the whorls of her fingertips. She’s never going to get it out of the creases in her boots, no matter the fervency with which she scrubs the leather, so she isn’t even going to try. Beau has scrubbed a lot of boots in her lifetime, and no longer has the appetite for it.

“Here and there,” Yasha says, ducking her head and taking a mouthful of her own drink. Beau still can’t figure out if Yasha is being deadly serious or teasing – there’s such a fine line, and Yasha has the kind of awkward poker face that feels easy to offend. I know I’m not great with people, she had stumbled out, once, and Beau can’t forget the way her shoulders had hunched over until she’d appeared almost as small as Nott. Beau wonders about that, sometimes; about the weight of Yasha’s shoulders, the sculpted lines of her cheeks. She wears so much makeup. That’s an awful thick mask you have there, she wants to say.

But Beau has never been a hypocrite (well, never intentionally, shut up Xanoth), and she can’t bare the thought of Yasha turning her piercing grey eyes onto Beau and saying, Not as thick as yours.

There’s a sex joke in there, but the thought process is far too convoluted to even bother trying to explain.

Beside her, Nott makes a sound of absolute fury and stands up on her chair, waving around her knife with the fractured madness of a crazy person. Caleb reaches up to grab her, but Nott is too fast. She jumps up onto the table and points the knife to Yasha’s throat. “You always do this!” she says. “No! No! You’re so mysterious! Tell us where you were!”

Yasha blinks up at Nott – well, no, that’s a lie. She blinks straight ahead at Nott, because even standing on a table, Nott is barely eye-level. “Oh,” she says, face blank. “Around.”

At this point, six months into their acquaintanceship (and maybe five and a half months into actual friendship, though Beau isn’t holding her breath for anyone other than Jester admitting to it), Beau is half convinced that Yasha is doing this whole “oblivious” routine just to fuck with Nott. Wouldn’t surprise her if that was the case, especially when Yasha sometimes disappears without even a storm to herald her absence. One day, they’re going to take another detour to a bathhouse and find Yasha relaxing there, soaking in their absence and laughing at Nott’s fury.

Nott snarls at her, and then pulls grumpily away. She flings herself violently back into her chair, tipping it backwards. Jester barely catches it in time to keep Nott from rolling neck-first onto the ground.

“It is good to see you again, Yasha,” Jester says, steadying Nott’s chair and then turning her guileless eyes onto Yasha. Beau grins into her flagon. Out of all of them, Yasha seems most off-guard with the blue Tiefling. “You have been gone for longer than usual.”

“Yes, we were starting to worry,” Molly says, tipping his chair back irritatingly against the wall. He has more makeup on than Yasha, shirt open and hair swept back in a way that he obviously thought made him look good. Beau kind of wants to kick the chair-leg and send him tumbling to the ground, but she curbs the impulse with another swallow. Manners, she thinks in Fjord’s voice, uncharitably. “You were gone for longer than usual.”

“Oh, you know,” Yasha says, shifting in her chair and crossing her arms underneath her chest. Beau sets her teeth and keeps her eyes dead centre of Yasha’s forehead. Don’t be so obvious about checking people out, Fjord had advised in the Weekly Tips section of their apprenticeship. Go slow, talk to them first, and then –

Beau is going so, so slow with Yasha, because Yasha is equal parts awkward and terrifying, and also because it would be so, so easy for Yasha to just disappear and never come back. Sometimes, Beau wonders if it’s just an inevitability, and they’ll be living with the ghost of Yasha’s presence for however long they stay together. One day, Beau is going to turn and say, Yasha, stay with us, we need you, and Yasha is going to leave anyway.

Yasha’s face brightens, a subtle change in expression that lights up her eyes. “But I’m here, now. For a while, I think. He shouldn’t need me again for a bit after this last part.”

“Tell – us – what – you – do,” Nott hisses, gauging the knife deep into the tabletop. Caleb looks up from his book, looks at the table, and then goes back to his book. Beau thinks he takes some kind of sick pleasure in watching Nott break things. Not that she’s anyone to judge in terms of bad coping habits and inappropriate catharsis.

“Now, now,” Fjord says, coming back from the bar with another around. Beau grabs a flagon and shoves her empty one back at him, grinning low and wide. “No need to resort to violence. And Nott, that kind gentlemen over behind the counter asks that you stop destroying his tables.”

Nott gives him a dark look from behind her porcelain mask, teeth sticking out oddly from where the edge meets the skin of her cheek. Then she lets go of the knife and leans sulkily back into her chair. “Whatever you say, Fjord.”

Fjord’s face twitches slightly, the way it does whenever anyone insists on pronouncing his name correctly, but he covers it up well enough. “For the guest of honour,” he says, putting down another flagon in front of Yasha. “It’s certainly been a while.”

“Yes,” Yasha says, draining it dry in almost a single drink. “It has been.”

Yasha sleeps in Beau and Jester’s room, as always.

She takes the floor. No amount of insisting on either of their parts can convince her to swap out for one of their mattresses. She won’t even acquiesce to a bed, which Beau is only a little bitter about – she would be totally fine with sharing a bed with Yasha, no, really, you’re not too big, look at the size of this thing –

But alas, Yasha takes the floor, and Beau is left to grumpily settle down under the covers.

The rooms of the inn aren’t the best in the world – Beau has certainly slept in better. She has also, however, slept in far worse, so she isn’t going to be complaining. Especially not after three weeks on the road, with dust down her throat and rocks in her boots. And her pockets. Somehow, every time she had reached into her pockets, she had found them filled to bursting with rough sandstone pebbles that were hell on the inner lining. From the way Jester kept on laughing at her, and Molly had looked insufferably smug, she’s guessing that those two had had something to do with it.

Jester stays up well past midnight, sketching out something in that weird little book of hers. Occasionally, she glances up to where Beau is lying on her stomach, or where Yasha is sitting by the window sharpening her sword, and giggle. Beau doesn’t especially like that particular giggle, though she generally enjoyed Jester’s sense of humour.

“Hey,” Beau says, after the fifth time it happened. “What’cha drawing?”

“Oh,” Jester says, snapping her book closed with a flurry. “Just some pictures for the Traveller. I’m sure he will really like them.”

“Uh…huh,” Beau says, torn between general apathy and a vague sense of worry. After a few minutes, she decides that she’s probably better off not knowing. Yasha doesn’t even look up from her blade – at least, not that Beau can see. Not that she’s looking.

Jester just smiles happily and goes to bed. Kid can go out like a light. Beau finds herself once again envying her outwardly uncomplicated outlook on going to sleep – Jester’s head hits the pillow, and she’s gone. It’s been a long time since Beau’s been able to sleep without a good forty-five minutes of tossing and turning.

To pass the time, she glances sideways to where Yasha is leaning against the wall, eyes half-closed in meditation. Her breathing is even, synchronised with the soft shing of the whetstone as it glides along the edge. Beau finds herself dozing, blanket warm around her shoulders, watching Yasha’s powerful form illumined by the steel-grey streetlamps that brighten the dreary outside streets. The town isn’t a large one, but Molly had looked kind of desperate for a proper bath, and Jester had been so excited about getting a proper night’s sleep, you guys, that no one had really had the heart to say no. It wasn’t like they couldn’t afford it, at the moment – though Fjord always seemed to end up paying.

A while ago, maybe that would have bothered Beau – that she was bending herself to fit in with these people, that she was letting herself be taken care of. For so long, she’d insisted it to be unnecessary. Xanoth had been insufferable in his smothering. Every step Beau took behind those walls had been like lead, every breath in a binder. She went to bed and thought, I can’t live like this, I can’t. the walls are closing in, and someday I’ll be crushed.

Maybe it should have been harder to leave. Beau sometimes thinks – when she’s really tired, when she’s been talking to Fjord too much about “feels” and “empathy” and “having concern for other people’s wellbeing” and all that rot – Beau sometimes thinks that there’s something wrong with her. Because she had just gotten up one day and walked out.

Of course, it hadn’t been nearly that easy on the practical side of things. Dodging the search parties had been a pain and a half (looking back, stealing all that gold probably hadn’t helped her case of leave me the fuck alone) and sleeping outside after a lifetime of temperate-controlled environments had been…challenging.

Beau squirms a bit under the covers. Funny, that. After so long adapting to sleeping without walls, the presence of them was a jarring discomfort.

The first night, Beau had walked as far as her legs would take her. She collapsed onto the grass as night shaded everything dark, and then watched as the stars burned bright holes into the roof of the world.

“Can’t you sleep?”

Beau’s eyes snap open to stare at Yasha, who has put her broadsword and sharpening tools away, and is not leaning loosely against the wall. Her eyes flash in the background light.

“Huh?” Beau says, the culmination of years of better-than-average intelligence and expensive education.

Yasha’s lips twitch, though it’s hard to see in the dim light. “I can hear you. Shifting around.”

“Oh,” Beau says, clearing her throat. She sits up, stretching out her arms and trying for a grin. “Too buzzed, I guess. Sorry if, uh, I’m keeping you awake.”

“No, no,” Yasha says. “It’s fine.”

They fall into a light silence, Beau hyper-aware of the way Yasha’s head leans back to expose the pale length of her throat. Jester rolls onto her side and lets out a long, happy sigh. “Oh, Oskar.”

After a few minutes, Beau clears her throat self-consciously.

“It’s just weird, is all,” she says, picking at her fingernails. For years, she’d constantly worn bandages wrapped around the tips – a consequence of hundreds of tiny papercuts. Her tutors had been in a constant state of despair; How, Beauregard? they would ask. You’re not even supposed to open the books! Just place them in the correct position…

“What’s weird?” Yasha asks.

Beau swipes an uncomfortable tongue along her lips. “I dunno. Everything. I’ll be glad to be out on the road again tomorrow, that’s all.”

“You don’t like it here?”

Beau gives an awkward jerk of her shoulders. “We’re in the middle of nowhere. Too small. I prefer cities with real, uh, character to them. You know. Bigger.”

Yasha huffs out a quiet laugh. Beau hides her grin in her shoulder, leaning heavily on her knee to compensate. Please let me look natural, she thinks, internally cringing at her obviousness.

“I get it,” she says. “I think.”

Beau gives herself a small glance upwards. Yasha looks all kinds of unreal in the shadows, silhouette picked up by the window. Marble and untouchable. “I was in one place for so long,” she finally admits, letting out a long breath. “I don’t like stopping where I can’t see the stars.”

Yasha hmms. “Yeah,” she says, flexing her fingers like she’s trying to hold onto something that isn’t there. “I definitely get that.”

Jester’s voice floats across the room: “You know, you guys can just make out, if you want. No one if stopping you. I’ll even pretend to be more asleep than I am now, if that helps. Goodnight!”

Beau is half-convinced that she’s going to wake up with Yasha gone.

When she opens her eyes, they go directly underneath her window sill. At some point during the night, the large woman had foregone the inherent coolness associated with sleeping upright and instead curled up on her side, sword clutched in her arms like a very sharp teddy-bear. Beau should absolutely not find it as endearing as she does.

Sometimes, she thinks, hefting her pillow in one hand and eyeing Jester’s bed. Sometimes these kinds of things aren’t so bad.

(she totally wins the ensuing pillow fight).