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She’s worn out all the others, and booed the ones who begged off dancing, and has almost given up hope when she spies Beau returning to the tavern.
‘Beau! Beau! And Caleb,’ she adds, seeing their friend standing at her side. He must have been there the whole time, they must have returned from the library together. He must have been standing behind her—that’s why Beau is the only one Jester saw. ‘Come dance with me!’
‘Oh, I am not one for—ah, you meant Beau,’ Caleb mutters, words trailing quieter as Jester grabs her friend and whisks her away.
‘I think you’re supposed to ask people to dance,’ Beau says. She has to lean close to speak over the music; even so, her voice is pitched loud, and Jester has to pull back to check to see if she’s actually upset. Beau just grins.
‘You might’ve said no,’ Jester tells her.
Beau just shakes her head, and follows her around the room.
She’s surprised to find that Beau is surprisingly good at dancing, and also that she doesn’t seem to give a shit and is perfectly content to gallivant around the room with Jester heedless of what anyone else might think. And she hasn’t even had a single drink! She lets Jester spin her, and duck and dive amongst the lively crowd, and Jester spins away to new partners in the mass but always finds her way back, back to Beau’s wide, easy grin and the hand she always offers when Jester comes close.
‘You’re good at this!’
‘What?’ Beau shouts back, swearing when a dwarf stops hard on her toe.
Jester yanks her close, arm around her waist. Pulls her out of the line of attack for a second stomp. ‘I said,’ she yells, tilting her head up to Beau’s ear, laughing when her cheek knocks Beau’s chin, ‘you’re good at this! Dancing!’
Blue eyes flicker away from Jester, only for a moment, before she returns with a smile. ‘Well, duh! I’m a monk! We’re fast.’
Jester accepts that answer with a laugh, a nod. There are unsaid words clenched in Beau’s tight jaw—it tells Jester that isn’t all the reason, and in the same moment tells her to leave it. Don’t press.
So she doesn’t.
She grasps Beau’s hands and leads her in a gallop around the room, clasped hands leading the way, the drums and jaunty strings urging them on and faster and faster and everyone else in the cleared space here on the tavern floor seems to have had the same idea because all around her people are spinning and running with their partners and it’s a blur of colour and sound. Jester’s heart is racing and her cheeks hurt from laughing, and laughing as Beau calls out to the slower couples in front of them to either jump out of the way or get trampled, motherfuckers! And then the great final blast of horn comes and Jester spins Beau out, dips her. Neither of them quite expect it and it’s far from perfect, but Beau surprises her by kicking her head back and laughing.
Jester surprises herself. Sees firelight play over the dark brown of Beau’s skin. Sees the sweat pouring off her, dotting on her skin. Jester licks her lips and tastes the salt there.
‘Pull me up, Jes,’ Beau laughs. ‘Next time, I’m dipping you, okay?’
The music kicks up again. Beau takes her hand.
//
Eventually, they stagger up to their rooms, exhausted. The faint strains of music continue, reaching them even on the third floor behind closed doors, though it is muffled.
Beau returns from the washroom second, already dressed in her soft pyjamas and a towel draped around her shoulders. Little wisps of dark hair are plastered to her forehead, her neck, and Jester can’t look away. Beau so rarely wears her hair down; she looks strange, but no less lovely. Just…different.
Jester realises that Beau is watching her as much as she is watching Beau when the other girl speaks.
‘I took lessons,’ Beau says into the quiet of their room, rubbing at her hair with the end of her towel. ‘I dunno why I didn’t say that downstairs. Didn’t mean to lie.’
‘That’s okay,’
‘No, I’m - it’s not, but I’m working on it. Just didn’t wanna ruin the mood, that’s all. I was having fun,’ she tells Jester. Smiles that gentle smile that she reserves, just for her. Jester knows it because Beau isn’t known for her gentle nature. Not that she’s cruel or anything, it’s just not something that seems to come naturally, so every time she smiles at her like that Jester knows. It’s on purpose. It’s for her. ‘Didn’t want to think about it, that’s all.’
It’s hard to tell sometimes with Beau if she wants to be asked a question, or if she wants the subject dropped. Sometimes, if Jester is careful, she can do both—make it so Beau can take or leave the conversation.
She turns on her bed, onto her belly, kicks her feet up behind her like they’re gossiping. Blinks at Beau with a wide grin.
‘I bet you were so cute. Did you have to wear dresses when you danced? Did you have someone playing music? Can you play an instrument? Was your teacher very strict? Was she hot?’ Jester waggles her brows.
‘He,’ Beau tells her, ‘was, like, a two hundred year old halfling with bad breath and a bad attitude. He loved dancing and hated kids, especially kids who couldn’t dance. And I was,’ Jester is fascinated to see Beau flush, cheeks darkening. ‘I was a clumsy kid.’
‘No!’
‘Yeah.’
‘I don’t - but you’re - you’re a monk,’ Jester tells her like she doesn’t know.
‘I know,’ Beau laughs. ‘But I had two left feet and I just - I hated dancing. Stand up straight, Beauregard. Don’t watch your feet, Beauregard. Don’t climb out the window and run away, Beauregard.’
Jester laughs, delighted by the impression and the image of tiny clumsy Beau throwing herself out the window and running into the fields. Or. The sands?
‘Sucks that he was such a jerk about it. I reckon I might’ve enjoyed it otherwise.’ Beau glances down at the floor, at her bare feet. Toes at a mark in the grain. With a forced laugh, she shrugs. ‘Then again, I was such a little shit, no wonder he was a jerk.’
Jester shakes her head. Beau avoids the soft look she sends her, so Jester doesn’t say anything about that. Instead, asks, ‘Did you have a favourite? Dance, I mean.’
Beau shrugs. Nods.
Jester jumps up onto her knees. Bounces her way to the edge of the bed and nearly toppled off it as she hurries to Beau, hands opening and closing, shoulders and tail wriggling with excitement. ‘Show me, show me, show me! Please, please, please?’
Beau groans. ‘We just danced for like, two hours,’
‘Please, Beau!’
She sighs. Jester knows she’s won, squeals.
Beau tosses her towel over to the end of her bed. Shakes her head, disbelieving. ‘Uh. Okay. Well. You hold your hands up like this,’ she begins, lifting both hands with her palms toward Jester. Jester copies her, presses her hands to Beau’s. ‘Um. It’s been a while, just, I have to remember,’
She closes her eyes, brows creasing over them heavily like she’s trying to squeeze the memory out from her mind. Beau’s lips move fast as she speaks quietly to herself, and Jester finds herself staring, fascinated. At Beau’s hair free around her shoulders. At the hard line of those shoulders, spilling into biceps tense with preparation. At the way Beau snarls the tiniest bit when she messes something up, shakes the thought away.
And then Beau steps toward her and Jester doesn’t move, wasn’t ready to move, and Beau has to catch herself and Jester to keep from falling, wrapping an arm around her waist and dancing into a quick side-step.
‘Sorry, sorry,’ she laughs, eyes open now. ‘You have to step back when I step forward. It’s basically a waltz.’
‘A waltz?’
‘Yeah. Three beats.’ Beau taps them out against Jester’s hip, her hand still resting warm on the curve of it. One two three, one two three, one two three. ‘Don’t bounce your head, Beauregard,’ she says in the same voice she had used earlier to mimic her teacher, ‘you’re not a chicken.’
‘You’d made such a cute chicken!’ Jester argues, even though the teacher isn’t here, even though her reply makes exactly zero sense.
Beau snorts. ‘Thanks?’
‘You’re welcome.’ Jester’s tail curls, nearly twisting into a knot, and she avoids Beau’s fond, searching look to glance down at their feet instead and ask, ‘So… I step back when you step forward?’
‘Yeah. And then we step to the side, that’s on the second beat, and then feet together. So the first foot slides over to meet the second.’ Beau demonstrates, stepping forward and sliding to the side. She stops. Frowns. ‘You’re left handed.’
‘Mhm yah.’
‘Okay. So we’ll go with your dominant side. I’ll step forward left foot and you step back on your right foot. And then when we get to the turn,’ she shows Jester a simple step and turn, slide, twist. ‘We’ll both go left. And I end up in your spot, and you end up in mine. And you just go around the circle like that, basically.’
‘Seems simple enough.’ Jester nods, determinedly. Looks expectantly at Beau.
‘Oh, you still want -‘
‘If you do,’
‘Sure, yeah, we can,’
‘I mean, I didn’t really get to finish the dance,’
‘Right, no, I guess not since we kinda fell over. Um.’ Beau steps in toward her, hands raised.
Jester wipes her hands down on her nightgown. Hopes they aren’t sweaty. Or too cold. Or worse—sweaty and cold. Clammy. It doesn’t help that Beau’s hands are perfect and dry and warm when she sets them against Jester’s.
It is awkward for a little while. They fumble the steps and Beau nearly steps on her feet a few times—and, okay, Jester nearly steps on her feet too—but finally Beau moves their hands out to the side and steps a little closer, brings her head down so she can see their feet and also murmur the count.
‘One two three. One two three. One - there you go, Jes, that’s it. Fuck you Mister Ordanzi, we can look at our feet if we want to.’
‘Fuck him,’ Jester agrees, with gleeful vitriol. But she also doesn’t. Watch her feet, that is. She looks at the strand of hair that hangs, tickling at Beau’s cheek, which she tosses away from her face with small jerking movements now and again when she remembers it. If Jester had a free hand, she would help her. Tuck it behind her ear for her. The idea sparks and Jester moves their joined hands up to do it, curl it back behind the shell of Beau’s ear; she feels and sees Beau jerk in surprise at the touch, blue eyes darting up from the floor to Jester’s face.
‘You - your hair was - and I moved it.
‘Oh. Thanks.’
They’re still dancing. They haven’t attempted the turn yet, though, and Beau steps back, ostensibly to give them space to try it. Clears her throat.
‘Okay, so, this bit is kinda hard. You almost haveta hook your foot behind mine like you’re gonna trip me and then step around me. Like, um, hold still,’ Beau’s hands drop to her waist then pull away quickly, like she’s been burned. She doesn’t stop, or falter though. Her left foot steps forward on the one as usual, and then she keeps moving forward so that on two her leg is behind Jester’s. Her torso twists away and then on the three she is sliding past her and behind.
‘Um.’ Beau’s breath puffs against Jester’s neck. ‘You would obviously have done the same and,’ Gentle hands urge Jester around to face her. ‘We end up like this. Wanna try?’
She does. And after a few missteps and their giggling and Beau’s patient instruction, which grows more confident as she remembers how it is supposed to feel, how to properly set her feet, they fall into step. Beau no longer needs to count the beats for either of them, their feet moving together and tapping it out, and between each beat there is the swish of Jester’s dress and the slide of Beau’s hands as she twists her wrists, moving in a slow and twining fashion that, judging from her focused stare, is a part of the dance she’s remembering. Jester copies her and Beau grins, eyes meeting hers. Feet never falling out of step. Jester hums, delighted by the shifting shadows their arms throw onto the walls with the help of low lamplight, the thump of her heartbeat as Beau suddenly dips into the turnand steps past her. Jester copies her, twirls—and their hands meet again, like they couldn’t be anywhere else.
‘Not as simple as I remember it being,’ Beau says very quietly, not wanting to disturb the charged atmosphere
Jester nods. ‘It’s a lovely dance, Beau. How do you know when to do the turn? Is it in the music?’
‘It’s…supposed to be on every fifth triplet, I think.’ Beau’s fingers twist, graze over the sensitive skin of Jester’s wrists. She shivers. Beau’s eyes follow the movement of her fingers, and Jester shivers again, the weight of her eyes like a second touch. ‘There was a festival every year,’ Beau tells her. ‘In Kamordah. People would dance this later in the night. Married couples,’ she admits. ‘And the ones who’d just got married, y’know most of them did it every fifth like they were supposed to. But the really good partners or the ones who’d been married forever just seemed to know.’
Jester smiles. ‘That’s beautiful.’
‘Yeah. Yeah it is.’
Jester steps past her without warning, twists. Her tail flickers to tap Beau’s calf as the other girl spins, and Beau meets her neatly on the twist, hands touching to hers. She meets Jester’s eyes with a flash of challenge—maybe her own, maybe in response to Jester’s. She steps past Jester. Turns. Jester can feel it, something between them like a rope, a ribbon, and she can feel her own turn neatly mimicking Beau’s. Meets her on the turn, hands sliding together. She can’t resist the pull of that force, lets it pull her a steps closer to Beau so they aren’t the requisite foot apart. So close she has to turn her head a little, not wanting her horns to knock into Beau’s chin, only to find that Beau has already adjusted for it. Beau moves their hands outwards, just past their shoulders.
Fingers lace together.
One two three.
One two three.
Jester’s heart beat feels so loud, thumping in time to the beat. She senses, not really feeling, certainly not seeing, the shift in the dance. The challenge, the trick, the humour in it. The trust. Beau trying to step around her without letting her know. Jester grins, sees the answering smile on Beau’s lips as they part and step and turn and twist and meet again.
Jester stumbles when Beau stops.
‘I think -‘ Beau clears her throat. ‘I think you’ve got it,’ she says, voice hoarse. She hasn’t moved back yet, standing nearly chest to chest. Fingers intertwined. Even as Jester thinks it, she feels Beau step back. Draw back, away from Jester. Slip her fingers out from their laced hold.
Watches Beau take two shaky steps away, toward her bed, back turned.
Jester follows suit, matching Beau’s steps still. Lays down in her own bed and waits for sleep to take her, even if when she closes her eyes all she can see is Beau lit by lamplight, and hear the distant strains of music, and the constant hammering beat of her heart that, for a short while at least, moved to a three beat rhythm.