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Beau sees the exact moment when the giant decides it’s going to hit Jester. She’s a few steps away and the others are long gone and she just needs to get the fuck out of here, but out of the corner of her eye, she sees it shift its shoulders and her subconscious calculates the angle in less than an instant. It’s going to swing for Jester with that enormous fucking club, and it’s going to hit her.
And there’s no time. There’s no time to think, to figure out what to do, to scream Jester’s name and hope she gets it. Beau is moving before her brain has the chance to catch up, and there’ll be time later to thank all the gods that she’s fast and the giant is slow, because she throws herself at Jester and the force of her momentum sends them both tumbling to the ground just out of range of the incoming blow. The giant roars its fury as Beau takes in both her success and the wild, startled look in Jester’s eyes.
“Sorry…” she starts to say, but realises Jester isn’t looking at her any more, if she ever was. She’s looking over Beau’s shoulder and Beau whips her head around to see the giant gearing up for another strike, and she doesn’t think she can get them both out of the way in time, doesn’t know if she can take another hit, battered as she already is.
“Hold on to me, Beau!” Jester’s voice in her ear breaks, halfway between a whisper and a scream. Jester’s magic rises around them, pink smoke and a familiar, thick crackle in the air. A portal opens almost on top of them, and Jester lifts Beau practically off her feet to pull them both through it.
They land on grass, first Jester, then Beau, and Jester catches her as she stumbles, dizzy for a second. She fights to get her thoughts together. “Are we safe?”
“Yes, we’re safe,” Jester tells her. “We got away, Beau! All of us!”
Beau breathes, and then she grins, elation surging through her veins. “Hell yes we did! That was fucking awesome, Jes!”
Jester grins back at her. “Well, you know, you were pretty awesome too.” There’s a moment when something, some shadow, passes behind her eyes that Beau doesn’t quite understand. “Thank you for not leaving me alone.”
She’s very close, some part of Beau realises, she’s really very, very close, and she still has her arm around Beau’s waist, and Beau’s hands have somehow found their way to Jester’s back, and it would be so damn easy to kiss her right now.
Beau knows it’s a bad idea, but she wavers, just for a moment, just long enough to pretend that she might actually do it, and in that moment, Jester leans forward and kisses her. It’s not a tentative kiss, it’s not the kiss you might give your best friend if you were grateful they saved your life. Jester kisses Beau with all the enthusiasm and intensity that she gives to everything, and Beau finds herself opening up to her, and Jester, fuck, Jester responds in kind. Her lips are so soft, and her teeth are kind of sharp but Beau is into it and can give as good as she gets, the scent and taste and feel of Jester in her arms throwing her whole body for a loop.
By the time they come up for air, they’re both a little breathless, and Beau can’t stop looking at the way Jester’s eyes sparkle in so many endless shades of blue from this close up.
She knows they should find the others, make sure they’re all together and no one else got hurt. She knows they should talk about this… whatever this is. And they will. But not yet.
With her heart beating a fierce victory song in her chest, Beau kisses Jester again.