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This sucked. Everything sucked, and Nott was absolutely not helping.
“I could talk to her, if you’d like,” the goblin kept offering, quietly and meekly, for the seventh time this day. She kept close to Beau all afternoon, and it was driving Beau crazy . “She probably doesn’t even like Fjord, really, and you are honestly so much better than him, in like, every way, and--”
But that was stupid, and wrong, because Jester really did like Fjord, and Fjord was a great guy, and Jester was like, super happy now. And it was just a stupid crush, so really, she had no reason to feel as upset as she did.
And she was upset about it. Upset enough that Caleb and Caduceus both picked up on it. It was a little surprising that Fjord and Jester didn’t pick up on it, honestly, but at the moment it seemed like they didn’t notice much of anything other than holding each other’s hands and sucking each other’s faces every chance they got.
(Yasha didn’t notice, either, but Yasha wasn’t the world’s most observant, most days, and anyway she had had a lot going on, recently, so Beau didn’t blame her.)
“If you want to talk about anything,” Caleb offered, as they stopped at a tavern for an evening’s rest. They weren’t quite in Rosohna--still about three days away-- so they couldn’t go to their house, but they were in a small Xhorasian town, which at least had an inn. If Caleb hadn’t been out of spell slots, they could have gone home, but the battle earlier had been rough. “Anything at all, I’m here for you.”
His eyes darted between her and Jester, and Beau felt like killing Nott once again for just another moment, but Caleb didn’t say anything else, and so she let it slide.
She didn’t want to talk about it; what she wanted to do was drink her weight in hard liquor and pass out alone in an empty bed, desperately trying not to think about how her favorite blue tiefling was staying the night with someone else.
Fjord and Jester had left earlier (gag); Caleb snuck away shortly after his conversation with Beau (most likely to talk to a certain dark elf Beau was supposed to pretend she didn’t know about). Nott was braiding flowers into Yasha’s hair, and soon had the good sense to notice that Beau wasn’t in the mood for company, and so had dragged Yasha upstairs to finish.
Which left her alone at the bar, with...Caduceus, it seemed.
He was drinking, and he kept scowling every time he took a sip of his shot. “That’s foul ,” he said, sipping it again, his face scrunched in agony over the taste.
“You aren’t supposed to sip it,” Beau laughed. “It’s a shot. It’s supposed to go down all at once.” She motioned for the barkeep to make her the same drink as Caduceus, and then downed it in one go. “See?”
“It doesn’t burn?” He asked, a genuine look of puzzlement on his face.
“Oh, no, it totally burns. But it’s a good burn, try it.” She watched, tickled, as he scrunched his face again to down the shot. “I thought you didn’t drink.”
He choked, a bit, wincing from the aftertaste. “I don’t,” he coughed, trying to hide his face with the cloth napkin, wiping his mouth. “But, uh, I was told it was the only cure.”
“Cure to what?”
“Heartache.”
“Who told you that?” Beau laughed, but didn’t disagree.
“Caleb. He seemed like the only one in the group who would know the answer.”
Cad looked up towards the stairs, where everyone else’s rooms were. Where, specifically, Fjord’s room was, where he currently was, with Jester , doing god-knows what, at the moment.
Oh.
She turned to face the bar fully, her elbows on the bar so she wasn’t looking at Caduceus’s face anymore. “You too, huh?”
He motioned for the barkeep to return, and asked for water instead. He took a long drink from his glass, then looked longingly up the stairs. "Me too," he confessed.
“Fjord, huh?” Beau asked softly. “Or do you like Jester, too?”
“Jester’s fine,” Caduceus explained, still not looking at her. “She’s pretty, I guess, but I never saw the appeal.”
Jester was gorgeous , thank you very much, but she supposed different strokes for different folks. “But Fjord?”
Caduceus looked down at his water glass for a quiet moment, then took another drink. “I’ve never been interested in, uh, kissing, before. Never wanted to, never saw the appeal. My sisters were obsessed with it, and my brothers tried to give me advice about it, but I just wasn’t interested. It seemed kind of weird and a little gross, you know? And my mother told me that I just hadn’t found the right person yet, which I thought was silly, but Fjord--” he stopped for a moment, looking down again, examining his hands as if they held the secrets of the universe. “He made me wonder what it would be like to try.”
Beau couldn’t relate: she’d always wanted to kiss girls, but she could imagine Caduceus, with his large family and his empty graveyard, feeling the way he did, and how different it must have felt to feel like that for the first time, ever, only to have the person he liked end up liking someone else. “Oh, Cad--”
“It’s fine. It’s stupid, actually, um,” he drank the rest of his glass of water and avoiding looking at her in the eye. “What about you, and uh, Jester?” He turned so that he was facing Beau again. “How are you feeling?”
“I feel like shit.” she grumbled, running her hands through her hair. She gestured to the barkeep that she needed another shot. “I knew she was straight. I knew it. And yet I let myself get attached anyway, and now here I am, feeling sorry for myself.” She groaned, laying her head down on the bar. “I feel so stupid. ”
“You aren’t stupid.” Caduceus said, placing a warm hand on her shoulder. “Nobody is stupid. The heart is--feelings are complicated, you know? You can’t control them,” he let go of her shoulder. “I know I didn’t intend to, uh, develop the feelings I have.”
“Hmph. At least I’m not the only one who’s miserable, at least.” She picked up her shot and swirled it around. “Think I can talk you into doing shots with me?”
Cad winced. “Do we have to?”
“It’s the only cure to heartache,” she repeated, handing her shot to him and gesturing the barkeep for another one.
He smirked at her, and took the drink. “Fine. But I reserve the right to get really petty later, and you are just gonna have to let me complain.”
“ Caduceus ,” Beau said with awed reverence. “Have I mentioned you are my favorite person ever?” Her eyes lit up. She clinked her glass against Cad’s, and then downed the shot. “I can’t believe she’d choose Fjord , of all people.”
Cad downed his shot, wincing the entire time. “If he liked Jester, why did he wait until now to do something about it?”
“ Ohmygod, I know , right???”
They might have had their hearts broken, but at least they weren’t alone.
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