#cr2e85

+ bonus

—

“why do you think beau likes yasha so much, anyway?”

jester’s trying to sound uninterested, she knows. just curious, like always; she’s swinging her legs off the side of nott’s bed, heels hitting dull against the underside, hands fisted a little too tight in the comforter.

“what do you mean?”

jester balks a little, pauses in her frenetic swinging. looks into her lap rather than nott’s eyes.

“just. what do you think she sees?”

her voice snags on that sentence, and nott decides in the moment against scrutinizing too much. jester’s so solid sometimes and so paper-thin other times, she thinks, and it’s the kind of conversation where too hard an exhale will make jester fold up, secret herself away like a letter too-full of quiet, curling thoughts.

“oh, i don’t know, she’s all tall and mysterious. what, you don’t find her interesting?”

“of course i do! i just mean—“ jester blushes this vague, confused purple, and nott thinks about the flowers climbing the walls in yasha’s room. “i don’t know.”

“maybe it’s the muscles,” nott pretends to muse. “beau always seems to like ladies that could kick her ass.”

she watches the thoughts flick behind jester’s eyes like book pages. keg first, short and lead-dense and loud and smoky-hoarse; dairon, and beau nursing a bleeding lip with a sort of dazed awe; yasha leaning over her after a fight, one eyebrow raised, casting beau in her amused shade. reani, breathing hard and half-dead after taking the full brunt of a white dragon’s breath, point blank.

then, finally, beau and jester in the gentleman’s bar, the frenzied sort of grin that split beau’s face when it got real fast, the way she kept tracing the veins in her forearms where the black of jester’s inflict wounds lingered, afterwards. beau startling when jester picks her up around the waist, cheeks dusting red and eyes wide and near-rolling.

nott sees jester’s eyes drift surreptitiously to her own arms, the meat of her thighs. it’s why she’d said it, after all.

it’s funny, she thinks. jester’s done so much growing since they left home, so fast, and still these little glimpses of a downright raw, downright new person peek through. she wonders how long it’ll really be until jester lets herself think about this. hopes that maybe she’s helped.

trusts in beau— has to— to be quieter and smarter, softer than they like to pretend she is. than beau likes to pretend she is.

“i miss her too,” nott says, like that’s what jester meant. “we’ll get her back.”

“yeah,” jester breathes, and nott has to school her face so carefully in that moment, wondering how selfish jester must feel, doing all that wishing in some dark corner of her mind for a little longer without yasha. a little more time without someone else to draw beau’s attention. without someone who doesn’t shut every door in their mind on the idea of finding beau pretty in a way that falls a little short of objective.

—