Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The latest act had just ended and the room was buzzing. Maybe Beauregard was buzzing. She wiped the back of her hand across her mouth, tasting the sting of tequila as a remnant of the liquor touched her tongue and an alcoholic electric current twisted around her spine and settled in her stomach. She exhaled and set the shot glass down on the bar. She looked across the room of The Stir, an unassuming dive bar that was Jester’s favorite.

Dim bodies painted in a warm, low light mingled in the room in clusters. Beau thought better of seeking out her friends, feeling unprepared to rejoin complicated conversations with strangers without a little more to drink, a little more buzzing in her head. She turned and leaned over the bar, trying to get the bartender’s attention with a stare. The bartender noticed her and nodded, dropping off a drink to someone else as he moved behind the counter. He turned his ear towards her and leaned in.

“Jack and coke,” the woman next to her said before Beau could speak.

Beau narrowed her eyes. “Hey--”

The woman turned. She was pale with heavy black eye makeup that made her look a little like if Alice Cooper was a tall woman with impressive biceps and magnificent hair. The woman blinked a long, slow blink. “Sorry, I didn’t see you.” Her voice was softer than Beau imagined it would be.

“No, it’s fine, um--” Beau cleared her throat. “My name’s Beauregard.”

The woman tilted her head a little, reminding Beau of a puppy. “Beauregard?” She said it loudly, looking up into the space above Beau’s head, making sure all of the syllables came out clearly.

“Yeah. My parents really wanted a boy.”

“Yasha,” the woman said, leaning in to be heard over the crowd.

“Yasha. Nice to meet you, Yasha,” Beau said, holding her hand out in front of her.

Yasha smiled a little. “Are we shaking hands?” She asked, but took Beau’s hand and shook it with an over-practiced formality.

The bartender appeared again and left the jack and coke by Yasha. Beau twitched, unsuccessfully trying once more to get the bartender’s attention before he floated away, lured by the whim of someone else, someone perhaps with a less severe face and a more palatable personality, someone who sailed through life getting their drinks promptly and never knew the shame of being ignored by the one who controls the flow of alcohol. Beau sighed.

Yasha took a sip from her glass. Beau thought she heard the fizz of the coke near Yasha’s lips.

“You don’t have a lot of luck with bartenders, do you, Beauregard?”

“No, but I have other very impressive skills. I can do a backflip. Twelve-year-olds think it’s very cool.”

Yasha laughed into her drink and turned her gaze out to the room. “Maybe you should try the backflip with the bartender. You never know.”

Beau rested her elbow on the bar and looked at the floor. It was heavily scuffed black and white tile, a clear sign of a bar that never did well enough to redecorate but never badly enough to close down. Soft music thrummed under the crowd’s collective voices, reminding everyone to continue to have fun while the next act prepared, building tension, filling in the silences. “Show me how you do it, then.”

The woman turned back to Beau, setting her glass on the bar and licking her lips. “I’m not sure you are prepared for such high level tactics.”

“Try me,” Beau said. She told herself to suppress the growing fluttering in her chest.

“Ok,” Yasha said. “Um, you just have to be direct.” She closed her eyes, drawing her brows together as she made a comically sharp movement of her hand and her eyelids snapped open. “Hey, you… bartender,” She said firmly. She held her hand out with her palm facing forward for a second before dropping it. “Like this,” she said, the corner of her mouth twitching up.

Beau’s chest filled with warmth as a genuine laugh bubbled up in her throat and floated past her lips. This was what she imagined Odysseus’ crew felt when they first ate a lotus in the land of the lotus-eaters: free, dizzy, charmed, and a bit drunk. Ready to leave their world behind for more of it, more of this special thing that drowned rationality. Beau bit her lip.

Yasha picked her glass back up and swirled the brown liquid, the cubes of ice tinkling as they clattered together, the coke fizzing again. She watched the glass and ran her forefinger along the side of it, leaving a line in the condensation.

Beau inhaled. She said, “So, do you know someone performing tonight?”

It was then that the women were accosted by a purple tiefling adorned in so much metallic jewelry he seemed to provide his own light. Like an anglerfish, Beau thought. He wrapped his arms around their shoulders and pulled them towards him. “I see you two have met!”

“Molly!” Yasha said, grinning.

“You know this asshole?” Beau said nearly at the same time, catching herself worrying about how much jack and coke was spilling from Yasha’s glass as Molly shook their shoulders.

“Beauregard, I’m shocked,” Molly said with a wide smile. “I’ve done things to warrant such name calling, but never to you .”

Beau was about to protest before Yasha wrapped her arm around Molly and pulled him in for a kiss on his cheek, his red eyes crinkling as their faces pressed together. “Are you prepared to take the stage, Mollymauk?”

Molly rested his head on her shoulder. “Well, I ate a shitload of shrooms earlier so it’s going to be fun for me, at least.”

“You’ll do really well.”

Beau rolled her eyes and crossed her arms. She wished she had a drink in her hands. Mollymauk Tealeaf was the performer she had reluctantly agreed to see tonight, and if pressed she may admit that she was fond of him, but his characteristic teasing was not welcome when she was so vulnerably trying to impress a stranger. A beautiful stranger in a black t-shirt with ripped off sleeves.

Molly lifted his head. “Be nice to me, Beau, or Yasha will never go home with you tonight.” Ignoring Beau’s intense stare, he pulled away from them and cocked his head towards the front of the bar. “I gotta get back there. I’ll see you two after the show.”

He turned to leave, his heavily embroidered jacket fluttering behind him like a cape.

Yasha patted his ass as he left and said, “Good luck, Mollymauk.”

Beau had laid her hands on her face to hide what she assumed was a wicked blush painted across her cheeks. “He loves to embarrass me.”

“I can see why.”

Beau peeked out between her fingers, eyeing Yasha. “What does that mean?”

“You’re cute,” Yasha said. She raised her glass to her lips and turned her face away as she looked back out into the crowd.

Beau dropped her hands. “Oh.” If she hadn’t already developed a crush, she now gave herself permission to develop one in light of this outrageous flirting.

The lights in the room dropped and the shades of Yasha’s skin faded to grey in the reflection of distant stage lights. Yasha’s head turned back to Beau but her facial features were indistinguishable in the darkness. Just a sliver of her cheek was lit, like the moon days before it was new.

“How do you know Molly?” Beau said.

“He was my roommate when my wife and I first moved here.”

Beau opened her mouth to speak and a wordless bit of air fell out instead. Wife?

“How do you know him?” Yasha asked.

Beau blinked an above average amount of times per second and said, “He’s a friend of a friend.” A friend of a friend of a friend, really.

The light on Yasha’s face turned lavender and the music rose, the thrumming falling into sync with the tempo of Beau’s rapid pulse. She blinked a couple more times, and then turned to face the stage. Wife ?

Beau made another attempt to get a drink from the bartender.

It was three bottles of cheap beer and several acts later that Beau found herself alone with Yasha again. The crowd had thinned and the lights had come up, a warning to stragglers that they should get the hell out of there.

Fjord and Jester and Molly were in a tight circle, Jester holding onto Molly’s shoulders while she made fervent proclamations about Molly’s talent and charisma. Molly held onto a small bouquet of flowers as he laughed.

Yasha was collecting everyone’s things and Beau was helping. “So, what’d you think of the performances?” Beau asked as she looked for the match to Jester’s glove.

“Well, Molly was the best,” Yasha said. “Obviously.”

“Right, but the person in a baby doll mask really made an impression on me.”

“They… certainly made an impression,” Yasha said. She placed earmuffs on over her ears.

Wow, Yasha was an earmuff wearer. Cute. Beau found Jester’s glove on the floor pinned under the leg of a chair and pulled it out. Standing back up made it clear to her that she had definitely passed the threshold of tipsy and had just snuck her way into drunk.

Jester bounded over with the others in tow behind her. She took her gloves from Beau and began prepping for the winter wind that would surely greet them outside the bar. “Um, Beau,” Jester said as she pulled her hat down over her ears. “We’re going to go to that place a few blocks over. I wanna dance.”

“Sounds great, Jessie. Are you going, Yasha?”

“I’ll go where Mollymauk goes.”

Molly threaded his arm through Yasha’s and said, “We’re going!”

The group bundled up, closed their tabs, exited the bar and faced the February air with a justifiable amount of wincing and groaning. The sky was the black-blue-white glow reflecting from the remnants of snow that clung to sidewalks and rooftops throughout the city. Golden streetlight cut through the blue at scattered intervals. It was late enough that there was almost no one else outside.

Beau found herself drifting and weaving through the group, trying to make it seem natural when she ended up next to Yasha and several steps behind everyone else. They fell into step with each other. Yasha buried her chin in her scarf and dug her hands in her pockets.

“So, Yasha,” Beau started. Her breath was a crisp white cloud in the air. “You’re married?”

“Yes, but…” Yasha paused and blinked. “We’re… We’re open.”

“Oh.”

Yasha dug her face back into her scarf and Beau heard her breathe into the wool.

“How does that work?” Beau asked, shifting her gaze forward. Ahead of them, Jester hung on to both Fjord and Molly and skipped across the broken concrete sidewalk. Beau thought she heard Fjord warn her about ice.

“Well,” Yasha started, bringing her face out into the air, “we met when we were very young. And we left our hometown together. So, we never really knew anyone else except each other.” She paused as they reached an intersection and then hurried across the crosswalk, Beau following behind her. The crosswalk sign blinked to get their attention, warning of impending green lights, but no vehicles arrived to realize the threat. “We decided to give each other certain allowances… but there are rules,” Yasha said once they reached the other side.

“Rules?”

“Yes.” Yasha said, looking down at the broken concrete sidewalk.

“Like what kind of rules?”

“We tell eachother everything. Communication is very important.”

“Of course.”

“And if one of us decides to… to know someone else, it must be someone temporary.”

Ahead of them, Fjord and Molly had stopped walking so they could lift up Jester as she attempted to swing between them.  Both of them were noticeably struggling with effort.

Beau stopped a good distance behind the rest of the group and Yasha paused to stand next to her. Above them, a street light flickered just once. Beau said, “Well, that’s perfect!”

Yasha furrowed a brow.

Beau took her hands out of her pockets and folded her arms across her chest. “I don’t even live here, I’m just visiting a friend,” Beau said. “I’m temporary.”

Yasha’s lips parted a little into what could be interpreted as a smile. “Oh.”

Neither of them spoke for several seconds as pieces began to click together, forming a new picture of what the night could be. For what Beau realized was the first time that night, they looked each other in the eyes and held their gaze.

It was Beau who finally spoke. “Yasha, would you like to come home with me? For something temporary?”

Yasha exhaled and Beau watched the little white cloud of her breath dissipate into the air, trying to collect each particle in her memory as the silence drew out between them. “Yes,” said Yasha.

“Jester! I need your house keys!”

They held hands in the street, Beau pressed her lips to the bit of Yasha’s neck that was not covered by her scarf, Yasha pulled Beau in close to her as they walked, but it wasn’t until Beau opened the door to the house, dropping the keys only twice before successfully fitting the key in the lock, that they really touched.

At first it was frenetic and fumbling as they fit kisses in between pulling their winter layers off. Gloves and scarves and jackets were tossed to the floor. It slowed down for a moment while Yasha made a show of looking around Jester’s home, commenting on the number of dead plants. Beauregard picked up one of Jester’s hats, a straw sunhat with holes for her horns, and placed it on Yasha’s head. Yasha picked a dark green visor to put on Beau, and they laughed and kissed again, the brims of their hats knocking into each other and eventually falling off as they pulled each other closer.

They worked quickly to unfold the old blue futon that Beau had been using as a bed while visiting and they finally laid down together. Yasha threaded her fingers through Beau’s hair until the ribbon tied haphazardly around her bun came loose and her hair fell down around her face, catching the yellow street light that filtered in through the window above the futon.

Their bodies pressed together and their breath became warm and shallow. Beau pressed her lips to Yasha’s skin. She lifted her head and whispered, “You areso sexy.”

Yasha laughed and her back lifted away from the futon cushion as Beau began to kiss a line down her stomach. Beau pulled Yasha’s underwear down gradually, thinking that she didn’t expect Yasha to have such frilly undergarments. She lay her hands on Yasha’s stomach as she placed her mouth in between Yasha’s legs and Yasha sighed, a little dance of relief fluttering through her body.

When they were finished and tired, the alcohol and the late hour coaxing them towards a long, deep sleep, Yasha and Beau took a moment to look into each other’s eyes. Yasha placed her hand on Beau’s neck, her thumb stroking the shaved edge of Beau’s hair, and she said, “Where are you from?”

“California,” said Beau. “Wine country.” She blinked and took her hand out from under the covers to rub her eye.

“This doesn’t happen to me often, Beau.”

“Oh,” replied Beau. She thought about lying and saying me neither, she thought about what the truth really was, because she did often find herself in bed with a new woman, but she also did not often feel this: a thrumming in her veins, a little flower blooming behind her eyes when she looked at the other woman’s face. Maybe that’s what Yasha meant. Maybe that’s not what she meant. Beau didn’t ask.

Yasha’s eyes were closing and staying closed, but she kept talking. “I want to know more about you, Beauregard. Tell me more about you.” She yawned. “What do you do?”

“I don’t do anything. I don’t know what I’m doing,” Beau said. Yasha was reminding her of a puppy again.

“Sure you do.”

“I don’t.”

“You’ll figure it out.”

“Thanks for the advice,” Beau said, but Yasha had already fallen asleep.

Yasha woke up the next morning with an ache in her head and a text on her phone.

Beauregard (stirred you at the stir) 6:21 am

i hope you don’t mind i put my number in your contacts. i had to leave to catch a flight this morning.

Beauregard (stirred you at the stir) 6:21 am

you should really put a lock on your phone

A man with red hair and a fraying green bathrobe was making pancakes in the kitchen. He noticed Yasha waking up and said, “Hello? Would you… do you want pancakes?” He waved his spatula in the general direction of the pancakes.

Yasha picked her shirt up from the floor and pulled it on over her head. She placed her phone back down and looked at the wood floor of Jester’s home, thought to herself that it could really use a wax, noted the pile of hats stacked up next to the futon, and looked back up to the man in the kitchen. “Sure,” she said.

Six months passed without a word. Fragmented images of the brown-skinned woman with a blue ribbon in her hair faded in and out of Yasha’s mind, but she chose not to grasp on to them. Temporary. It was all temporary. She pictured Beau standing in a vineyard in California, the sun shining so bright it was blinding, the greens and yellows and browns of rolling hills painting a backdrop behind a smiling Beauregard.

After six months, she felt she had finally moved on.

Yasha awoke in her bedroom in the light of an early morning August sun. Zuala slept next to her, her body still. Her eyelashes looked bleached white in the sun. It was a Monday. She’d have to get out of bed very soon.

Yasha rolled over and blinked slowly. Out of habit, her hand reached for her phone, tapping the screen until it came alive. The time was clear in rounded white numbers: 7:05am. Five more minutes before her alarm went off.

Below the time: new messages. The name made her heart jump.

Beauregard (stirred you at the stir) 1:05 am

hey, its beau. remember how i didnt know what i was doing last time we saw each other?

Beauregard (stirred you at the stir) 1:05 am

i moved. i’m living with jester.

Beauregard (stirred you at the stir) 1:06 am

would you want to see me?

Yasha pulled her olive colored comforter up over her head, pressed her face into the mattress and whispered, “Shit.” Outside, a bird started singing.

Chapter Text

“Twenty,” Yasha said as she handed a bouquet of flowers to the customer who had requested ‘something simple with yellow roses,’ which Yasha had, in her own estimation, adequately delivered on.

The white canopy above her stall did little to save her from the heat and humidity that crowded the air. A bead of sweat rolled down her forehead and into her eye. Blinking, Yasha took a wad of cash from the customer and tucked it into her apron.

The smells from the market (fresh waffles, homemade honey, her own flowers) were always strong, but the afternoon sun amplified it into a heady fog. It made the air feel thick and slow. She should go home soon, see Zuala. Feed the cat. Sit in front of the air conditioner.

“Did you hear me?”

Yasha blinked. The last customer, an androgynous dark skinned person with a shaved head and a cobalt blue turtleneck, was still standing in front of her stall. The sizzle of batter being poured onto a waffle iron crackled from one stall over.

“Sorry, what did you say?”

“I asked if you did weddings.”

“Yes, I do.”

“It’s short notice, but I’m having a very small wedding in a month. Would you be able to provide flowers for that?”

Yasha pulled a business card from the card holder on her counter. The card holder was plain but finely carved cherry wood, a gift from Zuala when she had first opened the store. “Give me a call and we can talk, ok?”

They nodded. “Sure, sounds good.” The brown paper wrapped around the bouquet crinkled as they placed it and Yasha’s card into their canvas bag and drifted off into the tight market avenue.

Yasha sighed, leaned back against the table holding buckets of her flowers and looked out into the market’s maze of white awnings. Today had been long. Most Saturdays were so busy that she rarely stopped moving, but the crowds today had been thin and she had barely sold enough to make it even worth working. She thought perhaps the heat was keeping everyone indoors.

Twenty minutes passed slowly and without a single customer. Maybe she’d close up shop early. Yasha allowed herself to daydream again; this time, she thought about slicing a cucumber and some lemons and putting them in a pitcher of ice water. She thought about laying on the green couch in her living room and looking out an open window as a cold breeze poured into the room.

Yeah, alright. Maybe she really would close up shop early. She opened her eyes to look out at the market again to see if anybody else was packing up, to absolve herself of the guilt that came with quitting early, but instead she was greeted with the smile of a little blue tiefling.

“Yasha!”

“Jester!”

“We came to see you. I’m so glad we caught you before you left.”

We?

A woman stood behind Jester with her mouth slightly agape and eyebrows raised. Keen blue eyes. Warm brown skin. Beauregard.

Yasha felt her heart rise in her chest and push out the air in her lungs.

“Oh, uh. H-hello,” Yasha said.

Beau’s face seemed to draw together suddenly, her eyebrows furrowed and mouth turned down, her already sharp features somehow honed sharper. She turned her face away from Yasha and fixed her gaze at the black asphalt at her feet.

Jester was wearing one of the hats she had tried on that night she spent with Beau. The big straw sunhat. Whether it was intentional or natural obliviousness Yasha was unsure, but Jester seemed not to notice the tension that had bloomed in the air, now pulling tight around her head like it was sucking all the words from her brain.

“Beau said she’d never been to the market so I thought it was a good idea to go today and see you and buy cute stuff and things,” Jester said, though Beau looked like the ‘seeing Yasha’ part of the plan had not been previously discussed. Jester dug around in the bag she had slung around one of her shoulders. She pulled out a small painted figure and placed it on her palm. A little white unicorn, fat and round with an impossibly bright fuschia horn, sat there staring at Yasha with beady black eyes. “Isn’t it amazing?”

“It’s--it’s… It’s really great, Jester.”

“I know. Can I buy some flowers?”

“Sure, what do you want?” Yasha was grateful for an excuse to turn her back and not have Beau’s figure in her peripheral, though she still felt the woman’s presence like a sunburn on her neck.

Jester hummed. “Oh, I don’t know. Something really cute. Do you want anything, Beau?”

“No.”

“Isn’t Yasha’s stall so nice, Beau?”

“Yep.”

“She has the best flowers in the whole market. People are crazy about them. They’re like: ooh, Yasha’s flowers.. So pretty…”

Reading other people was not a talent Yasha possessed, but she didn’t need to be particularly observant to guess what Beau was thinking.

The texts. The lack of a response. The night on Jester’s futon.

A memory of kissing Beau’s collarbone flashed in her mind as a watercolor of golden streetlight soaked brown skin and Yasha inhaled sharply. Tucking a stray hair behind her ear, she wrapped the fresh bouquet up with twine and took a moment to look at the flowers she had chosen for Jester. Her head was so full that she had barely noticed which buckets she had pulled from, but it seemed like her instincts were good enough to steer the ship even if the captain wasn’t on deck. Blue hydrangea, lilac, baby’s breath, leatherleaf fern. She took in a deep breath before turning around to present the bouquet to Jester.

“Oh! That’s so pretty, Yasha, thank you. It’s going to look so cute in the kitchen.”

“I’m glad you like it, Jester. It’s on the house.”

Yasha looked at Beau. Beau was looking at her. They both looked away. An uncomfortable chill wound its way around her heart.

Did Beau hate her?

“Oh my gosh, really?”

“Yeah, of course.”

“Thanks! Hey, Yasha, you’re coming to Fjord’s birthday party next week, right? It’s gonna be at my house.”

Yasha cleared her throat. “Um, sure. Yeah.” Was Beau going to be there? She wasn’t sure if that made it more or less likely she would go.

Jester smiled widely and clutched the bouquet to her chest. “Great! See you later!”

Yasha watched as Jester chased after Beau, the white fabric of her sundress billowing behind her. She exhaled while wiping the sweat from her forehead with the back of her hand and unscrewed the cap on her water bottle. She had earned an early closing time.

Taking down the tent and the tables and the buckets of flowers took time. Driving the equipment back to the warehouse took more time, and unloading it took some time, and driving home took some time, too. All of that time was taken alone. Her thoughts provided some company, though not the welcome kind of company.

Yasha’s fear that Beauregard resented her rode with her all the way home like an extra passenger in her van. Trying to pretend that it wasn’t there didn’t work; it just seemed to loom like a person-shaped shadow.

When she was finally home and slicing a cucumber on her bamboo cutting board, Yasha wondered if this was longing. Was that what she felt when she saw Beauregard? A deep pull in her soul, a desire to feel her lips again, to touch skin against skin? It wasn’t entirely unfamiliar, but she hadn’t felt it since high school. Not in the same way. Not for anyone except Zuala.

The knife in her hand cut easily through the soft flesh of the cucumber with a satisfying kch-shhnk as the metal of the knife hit wood. Kch-shhnk, kch-shhnk.

So if this was longing, if she was allowing herself to call it that, was it a betrayal? Was this outside the limits of the ‘open’ part of her relationship with Zuala? Would Zuala hate her, like Beauregard already did?

Yasha was mid-slice when she felt a hand on her shoulder and the knife went shhnk right into the tip of her index finger as Yasha twitched in surprise. A bit of crimson blood bloomed on her skin and dripped onto the cutting board. “Shit!”

“Oops!”

Zuala’s hand went for Yasha’s and guided it up to her mouth. Zuala kissed her finger and gently licked the blood from her skin.

Yasha felt her breath catch. “It’s fine. It was a small cut.”

Zuala let Yasha’s hand fall away from her mouth but held onto it, rubbing her index finger along a line in the skin of Yasha’s palm. “You’ve been so tense lately.”

Yasha inhaled and found herself unable to look away from the kitchen floor. Black and white tile. The air smelled like lemons and cucumbers.

“Tell me what’s wrong.”

Yasha didn’t immediately respond. Zuala pressed her finger to Yasha’s palm.

Yasha exhaled. “I’m afraid.”

“Of what?”

“That you won’t love me anymore.”

Zuala placed her hand on Yasha’s jawline, her fingers just grazing Yasha’s pale cheek. She lifted Yasha’s chin up until Yasha looked up and met Zuala’s gaze.

“Not possible,” said Zuala.

The tension seemed to slip from Yasha’s muscles and her shoulders fell away from her neck. For a moment she thought she might cry from relief, but she blinked the tears back and found comfort in the dark brown of Zuala’s eyes.

A few seconds passed before Yasha was able to get the words out. “Do you remember that girl I told you about? Beauregard, Jester’s friend?”

The words came easily after that, falling out of her mouth like water in a creek finding its way past fresh rockfall. Zuala listened. She asked questions. She ate a slice of cucumber.

When Yasha was finished, Zuala said, “I think you should explore this.”

Yasha raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”

Zuala took Yasha’s hand again, this time holding it firmly. “I think this could be really good for you. For us. If it’s what you want, I think it could be good.”

“You want me to--to date Beauregard?”

Zuala grinned. “Yes.”

“Would you be dating her, too?”

“Why don’t you see if she wants to date you, first?”

Yasha smiled and pulled Zuala into her chest and placed a kiss on her cheek. Evening sunlight from the bay window next to their kitchen table lit up Zuala’s dark hair and glowed around her like a halo. “I am so lucky to have you,” Yasha said.