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Beau doesn’t know what to do with her feelings right now.
She has been flirting with Yasha. She is perfectly aware of it, but it was not―it was not intentional, not fully. She knew she was doing some degree of flirting and she was aware that Yasha was flirting back, and initiating it from time to time, but they’re the only two lesbians in the team. It’s bound to happen.
She didn’t think that anything was going to come out of it. It has happened before and it has always fizzled out eventually, but then they’d spend like five minutes alone together and it would start again. It had been a while, now, and Beau―she thought it was over it. She did.
She’s still dealing with her own feelings for Jester, that right now feel inconsequential, strangely unimportant in the light of the image of Yasha’s wings, making her brain empty like an upside down trash can. She doesn’t know if this means that she never liked Jester and was just using it as a way of distracting herself, or if she liked that she was cute and didn’t actually have any feelings of a romantic nature for her, or if she liked her but her feelings for Yasha are just more intense.
That is the truth she sees right now: her feelings for Yasha are intense. A big part of it might just be the trip, this angel of a woman grabbing her when she jumped and just taking her for a flight around the island for a minute. It’s not only that, though. If it was just a little bit of hero worship she’d be able to deal with that, but they’re all pretty heroic and she doesn’t want to kiss everyone in the Nein.
It was about the way they grabbed each other as they fell. It was about Yasha repeatedly making sure Beau was okay, it was about her awkward little laugh and her dry sense of humor Beau doesn’t catch half the time. Everything else was already hitting her, the wings were just the only parts that slapped her on the face.
Metaphorically, that is. Yasha controlled them really well.
She is not sleeping. She realises this slowly, the thoughts about yesterday the first thing that entered her mind when she woke up, before even the awareness that she was awake did. She opens her eyes, the dome still up around them. It’s been less than eight hours, then, but it’s late enough that the sun is up. She should go back to sleep―an entire week of dealing with Traveller followers who are not Jester is bound to be exhausting―but she realises that Caduceus is not here, which means that there is breakfast or that he has been abducted during the night, and either way she wants to be there.
She gets up, slips her leg as quickly as she can from under Jester’s, grabs her pillow and tosses it in Fjord’s direction, who seems to have lost his during the night, and walks toward the kitchen. Caduceus is sitting in the quiet of the kitchen, a cup of tea between his hands, and she realises she might be walking in to ruin the only calm he has on the day.
“Good morning,” he says, before she can even consider turning around. Fuck his high perception.
“Morning.” She points at the kettle, “Is that up for grabs?”
He makes an ‘it’s yours’ kind of gesture with his hand, so she takes a cup.
“It’s early for you,” he observes. It’s the thing he always does, inviting her to talk about things if she wants to, but not pressing her to do it. She considers shutting up.
“How do you even ask someone out?” Her mouth blurts out before she can control it. Before she has even made up her mind about whether or not she is going to dare ask Yasha out. “I have never asked someone out on, like, a date. Like what do I do? Get a gift? She likes flowers, but that’s a thing between her wife and her,” she says, giving up any pretenses. “I’m not intruding on that if she doesn’t ask me to.”
She waits for a second, then adds, “Forget I just told you this, please,” and chugs her cup of tea.
“Done,” Caduceus quips. “Though I don’t really have an answer, you know. You are the one who has to make those choices.”
“I know,” she groans miserably, hiding her face on her arms. “I just―Whenever we’re having a moment I stop controlling what comes out of my mouth and just blurt out whatever is on my mind at the moment, which is usually nothing. I just need to calm down―”
“Do you want me to make you a cup of tea before you ask her out?” Caduceus suggests. His face is completely straight as he says it, and Beau isn’t sure whether he’s fucking with her or not.
“Are you fucking with me?”
“Maybe a little,” he admits.
“Fuck you, man. I’m here all vulnerable and unguarded.”
“You haven’t been vulnerable and unguarded for a day of your life.” Caduceus grabs her empty cup. “Maybe five minutes at a time, on a bad day.”
“Tell me how you really feel, Cad,” she retorts, no heat behind it, because he is right.
“No, that’s my advice,” Caduceus says. “Just tell her how you feel. If you don’t and you try to be cold and detached about it, it’s going to do you more bad than good. Assume that neither of you know what you are doing and try to make things as clear as possible.”
He walks away, like his point was just that good. “Your advice sucks!” She whisper-yells at his retreating back so she won’t awake everyone. “Fuck you!”
She can see his shoulders shaking with laughter.
***
“Hey, Jes,” Beau whispers, the sun starting to heat up the sky, the others busy with the preparations by now. “I know you have big plans today, but do you mind if Yasha and I disappear this morning? I promise we’ll be back to help after lunch.”
“Oh, is it related to her wings? Because I think we all wanted to ask but she looked kinda uncomfortable and I didn’t want to make her feel bad! Or is it something else? Why is it the two of you?”
“It’s kinda related to her wings,” Beau admits. “Will you mind? I thought today would be better because you would be brainstorming still, instead of full-on trying to get things done. I still want to support you on this.”
“You can leave, Beau!” Jester says, looking chirpy in the way that means she is a little disappointed. “I don’t wanna keep you here if you have other stuff to do! We’ll manage.”
She is perfectly aware of the fact that not a week ago she would have said ‘you know what? I’ll stay’ as she opens her mouth to say, “Thanks, Jester. I’ll promise we’ll work extra hard this afternoon to make up for it.”
***
“Yasha, do you have a minute? Or, like, ninety?” She asks. Yasha is standing next to Caleb, but ‘no shame’ is her motto for the day. He is going to know she’s about to ask Yasha out and Beau will not care.
“Ninety are a lot of minutes,” Yasha points out. “Is everything okay?”
She looks at her surroundings, like there might be a war breaking out and she had not realised. “Yes, I just―I got us a morning free of TravelerCon. Want to come with me?”
Yasha frowns a bit, obviously not following her point. “I don’t mind helping Jester with all this stuff, really.”
“Ah,” she stammers. Her motto is not working. Her cheeks are red and Caleb is walking away so he won’t hear the conversation, which she appreciates but taking into account that he only left when the trainwreck started, also resents a little. “I’m kind of asking you out on a date.”
“Oh.” Yasha mutters, her eyes getting bigger. It’s―she’s so cute. “Ah, yeah. Okay.”
“Yeah?” Beau smirks. Her confidence is back. No shame from this point on. Yasha nods and Beau makes a grab for her wrist, starts pulling her forward. “Good. Wanna take a walk?”
***
She doesn’t have a date plan. She realises this as they start walking around the woods and the conversation is nonexistent. They have an entire friend group in common, so one would think that she would at least be able to come up with some gossip, but she’s not sure that ‘so Caleb killed his parents, huh?’ is a good conversation starter.
“Can I ask you a question?” Yasha says before Beau blurts out that the weather is nice. She nods, frantic, so thankful that she spoke first. “Why now?”
That is a good question. “It seemed like a good moment,” she starts. She stops, then, realising that’s a lame answer. “Honestly? I don’t know. Yesterday was amazing and I―”
She takes a breath. It’s a little shaky, due to the fact that she is so nervous she might start crying or pass out, and neither is good. Caduceus was wrong when he said she can only be vulnerable five minutes at a time: it’s even less than that. Yasha reaches to her, puts a hand on her arm, comforting.
“I have always liked you a lot, but figured nothing would ever happen because it seemed like you constantly lost interest in me. I―You said yes to this date, so I want to imagine that it was more of a circumstances thing than a me thing.” Yasha is nodding, surprised, like that interpretation of her actions hadn’t even occurred to her. “In the interest of coming clean and not having secrets, I thought for a while that I liked Jester, but whenever you flirt with me for two seconds I forget about everything else in the world.
“I had a lot of fun yesterday. You always hold me like I’m special―and again, just to be completely honest, I will admit that I think it is incredibly hot that you can just carry me with one arm if you want to. Also I think I fell a little bit in love with you the first moment I saw you.”
She exhales. It comes out even shakier than before and she is already regretting half of what came out of her mouth. “Was that too much? I feel like it was too―”
“I like you a lot,” Yasha interrupts her. Her voice is so, so low. Beau actually has to strain her ears to hear her, and she doesn’t know if it’s to avoid attracting any monsters to them or if she’s simply embarrassed. “You’re just―I’ve been married and I lost her and relationships are scary. I was never sure that you actually flirted because you wanted to be with me. And that is kind of terrifying. Especially when―I don’t know almost anything about who I am and―you’re so great. You always know exactly what you want and the thought that you might actually want me was not really easy to believe and. I like you a lot.”
They both look at each other in the eye for a second, two, ten, in complete silence, before Beau bursts out laughing. “Oh, we’re both absolute messes.”
“I agree,” Yasha says, voice slightly than a whisper now, as amused as Beau but not as loud about it. “But I think we’re on the same page.”
Beau nods. “We both like each other and we can go from here?”
Yasha leans forward instead of answering, and Beau wraps her arms around her neck like she did yesterday during the flight, only that today instead of hiding her face on Yasha’s neck she brings their lips together.
It lasts for barely two seconds, but it’s so sweet that her teeth could rot as she shows them in an uncontrollable smile.
“Can I take you on another flight?” Yasha asks, and she is bringing the wings out before Beau can answer, scooping her up with one arm and taking off. She suddenly has wings on her face, and a soft laugh on her ear reacting to her noise of surprise.
They’ll be fine.