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Critical Role Holiday Exchange 2018
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2019-01-02
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let me fall

Summary:

It's dark and stormy night when Beau hears Yasha get up to leave.

Spoilers up to and including campaign 2, episode 46.

Notes:

For the prompt:

Anything where they have some meaningful interaction & growth would be lovely. late-night conversations while on watch are great, I'm also very down for anything recent, like since they met back up with Yasha in Nicodranas, (as Ashley hasn't been there to provide us with quality Yasha content). Anything with Beau just being a disaster at flirting with Yasha is always a joy.

(See the end of the work for other works inspired by this one.)

Work Text:

Beau has missed a lot of things about being on dry land, but being crammed into Caleb’s hut spell for a night is definitely not one of them.

Jester snores next to her, and Caleb mutters in his sleep, and Nott wriggles again and kicks Beau in the leg and Beau thinks of her cramped cabin on the Squall/Ball-Eater with a rose-tinted fondness she didn’t know she had.

Yasha’s awake too.

Beau knows she is - she can tell by now what Yasha’s breathing sounds like when she’s actually asleep. So she’s not surprised when she hears Yasha scramble to her feet, clearly aiming for stealth but that’s really fucking hard in this small space even when you’re not nearly as tall as she is. Beau cracks her eyes open and watches Yasha pick her way to the edge of the hut and slip past the barrier, murmuring something to Cad as she passes. He says something back, too low for Beau to make out, then settles back to his watch.

Beau waits.

It doesn’t get easier to do, waiting, but she does it. She waits, and she considers, and she decides. And after a moment, she gets up, as silent and light on her feet as Frumpkin, and she follows Yasha outside, nodding to Cad, who nods back in turn and doesn’t give her away.

She gets her bearings and the first thing she notices is that she can smell rain on the air. It’s not here yet, but it smells fresh and green and imminent, and it solidifies her resolve. She slips through the night after Yasha, keeping to the darkest shadows, minding her footsteps.

After a little distance, Yasha leaves the surrounding woods, emerging on a grassy cliff top that Beau knows in daylight would overlook sweeping plains and distant mountains. Beau hangs back at the edge of the undergrowth, unsure of her next move.

“I know you’re there, Beau.”

Yasha’s voice is clear in the quiet. Clear, and kind of annoyed. Shit.

Beau steps out into the open and waves awkwardly. “Uh. Hey.”

Yasha sits on the edge of a hulking rock outcrop, where she has an unobstructed view into the reaching darkness, and doesn’t look at Beau. Faint, on the edge of the horizon, a flicker of lightning forks through the sky, and the dull roll of thunder follows.

“So, uh, you leaving then?” is what Beau says eventually, when the weight of silence becomes unbearable. Damn it, she was hoping she could find a better way to come at it than that, something a bit less blunt at least.

Yasha breathes deeply, a gulp of storm-scented air, but she doesn’t reply.

“‘K. I mean, ‘s cool if you need to leave. I get it.” Beau finds herself filling in the gaps and she hates the way her voice almost shakes. “You’ve got your duty or whatever. When you gotta go, you gotta.” She knows she’s not first mate anymore. You can’t be first mate on a ship you don’t have. She knows it’s not her job to take care of everyone. Like she’d even fucking want that job. Like she’d be anything other than terrible at it if she had it.

She would be terrible at it, wouldn’t she? Had she been terrible at it? The crew hadn’t fucking killed them in their sleep or anything. That had to count for something.

So whether or not she’s first mate, whether or not it’s her fucking responsibility, she’s the one who’s fucking here, and damned if she’s going to let Yasha take off into the night without saying goodbye. Without knowing whether the Mighty Nein care about what happens to her. Without knowing whether Beau cares what happens to her.

She could say that to Yasha. She could. Or she could just as easily set herself on fire and learn to raise the goddamn dead. So, instead, Beau gauges the distance between herself and the rock. “Hey Yasha, watch this!”

She somersaults, head over heels, gives an extra flip and a kick that really wasn’t necessary but looks cool as hell, and makes perhaps the least graceful landing she’s ever managed on the rock next to Yasha. Pinwheeling her arms madly, she regains her balance and sends a quick thanks to whichever gods might be listening that she doesn’t actually fall.

She feels her cheeks burning. Maybe it won’t matter, surely Yasha won’t actually have looked at her.

She glances down. Yasha definitely looked. Yasha looked and Yasha… is she smiling? It’s hard to tell in the darkness, even with her goggles on, but Beau thinks Yasha might have been smiling at her, just a little bit. In her head she does a fist-pump of triumph, though outwardly she’s quite proud of how calmly she sits down beside Yasha.

There’s a long moment of continued silence that Beau doesn’t know how to break, but then Yasha takes an audible breath.

“I am not planning to leave tonight,” she says, quietly. “I came out here to… to watch the storm. To see if the Storm Lord chooses to send me another vision, I suppose.” Her cheeks are a bit pink, Beau notices. Or, like, a different shade of grey in the dark, but she’s going to assume it’s pink.

“Yeah, I heard a bit about the last one. Jester told me, uh, just a little.” Beau pauses, considers. “Sorry if it was, like, a secret or something.” She doesn’t think Jester would have told her, if it was a secret, but it occurs to her that she didn’t check, and she doesn’t want to fuck up Jester and Yasha’s friendship. That would be a low she hasn’t hit in a while.

Yasha looks at Beau, and then off into nothing again, just long enough that Beau thinks maybe she’s fucked up by even mentioning it, though Yasha mentioned it first, damn it. But then, “It’s not a secret,” Yasha says. “It is hard to talk about, but not a secret. Zuala is never a secret.” Her voice is wound as taut as one of Nott’s bowstrings in the moment before release.

Beau nods. “Yeah, I get it. There’s stuff I find hard to talk about too,” she offers. “It’s not secret either, but it hurts, you know?”

It’s Yasha’s turn to nod. If Beau didn’t know better, she’d think maybe Yasha was crying, just a little bit. If Beau didn’t know better, she’d think she wanted to cry herself maybe. Just a little bit. Fuck. She can’t go soft, not now. She gathers herself, shakes her head to clear it.

“Hey, uh,” she begins, without really knowing where she’s planning to end. “I won’t push, yeah? But if you do want to, like, talk about stuff, I’m here, and I know I’m not real good at knowing what to say, but I’m here, ok?”

She’s getting used to Yasha’s pauses. Maybe it doesn’t immediately mean that Beau has said something wrong. Maybe this is just how Yasha is, taking a moment to think before she speaks, so that her words, when they come, have weight behind them. It’s one of the things Beau’s trying to get better at herself.

“Thank you, Beauregard.”

Yasha sounds calm and clear, and not at all annoyed this time. She sounds like she might have meant it. Like Beau might have helped her. A shiver of something runs right down the back of Beau’s neck, through to the tips of her fingers.

Without a thought, Beau reaches out and puts her hand on Yasha’s arm, and for a moment it feels absolutely right, but then Yasha flinches. So slightly that another person might not have noticed at all, but one thing Beau is good at is keep tracking of all the tiny movements a body can make, whether hers or someone else’s.

Beau pulls her hand away as quick as lightning. “Sorry, sorry, sorry.” She’s stumbling over the word, drawing her body back as best she can without actually getting up and moving away. “Sorry.”

Yasha’s eyes are wide. “No! Beau, no, don’t be sorry, I…” She trails off, helpless, and Beau knows she somehow has to fix this tear before it rips too wide and destroys the fragile thing they’ve built here tonight.

“Look,” she says, launching into yet another sentence that she doesn’t know the end of until it comes out of her mouth. “Yasha. We both know I think you’re hot, I’m not real fucking subtle about it, and you’re so fucking hot, but I’d never, y’know. I’d never want anything from you that you didn’t want.”

With a blush so deep Beau’s sure she’d be able to see it even without her goggles on, Yasha half-smiles, though she doesn’t quite meet Beau’s eyes when she answers. “I do know that. But thank you for saying it.” She takes a long breath and lets it out slowly. “I am not uninterested in, um, physical things, you know. But I do not want anything, anything more than that at the moment, not with anyone. I do not know if I ever will.”

Beau, who has always spoken better with her body than her words, thinks about Keg, and about the courtesan at The Landlocked Lady, and about all the women she’s known before that, and maybe even the women she suddenly suspects Yasha’s fucked along her road from there to here. She lets herself grin, flexes her arms as dramatically as she can. “I can do physical. I’m real good at physical.”

And Yasha laughs, a deep, bubbling sort of laugh that makes Beau laugh too, pride ringing through her head. She grabs onto that pride and uses it as the leverage she needs to push forward, with an eyebrow raised and her best smirk firmly in place. “Why don’t you find out? Come on, Yasha, want to spar?” She hops to her feet, dances into a fighting stance. “I bet I could take you.”

“Oh, you think so?” Yasha stands, slowly, unfolding her full height with the grace and power of a stalking tiger, each angle calculated to show off the lines of her muscles, and fuuuuck, Beau can’t take her eyes off her, thinks she could just watch Yasha move forever...

Yasha’s fist flashes out, any trace of her prior languor vanishing, and it tests Beau’s reflexes to their very limit not to let herself get punched in the shoulder. Instinct kicks in and Beau ducks to the side, the blow glancing off the edge of her arm, and she can feel the strength behind it. She lets out a wild sound halfway between a whoop and a laugh, and gets her head in the game.

Yasha is strong as hell, and Beau is quick as a cat, but Yasha isn’t slow and Beau isn’t weak, and they’re just as well-matched as Beau assumed they would be. She’s watched Yasha fight a hundred times by now, and fought alongside her, with moves that seem to gel so well together naturally that you’d think they practiced it or something, but she’s never fought against her before, though she’s pictured it. There’s a fierce joy in this, in how hard she has to work at this, in how well she trusts her body to know what to do - a joy that’s pure and all-encompassing.

Beau keeps her feet for a long time, using every bit of her speed to her advantage, but the goggles make it hard to see, and she’s tired, and if she’s honest, she can foresee how she wants this to end and she knows how to get to it. When Yasha takes her down, when she gets in past Beau’s guard and brings her to the ground, pinning her in place with hands and hips and delicious weight, it might have been because Beau let her, just a little bit. Beau really isn’t sure, and she doesn’t want to think about it too hard just now.

She wriggles against Yasha’s grip, panting, and is gratified to notice that Yasha’s breathing heavily too, beads of sweat visible along her hairline. She’s worked as hard as Beau to get to this. Beau makes herself fall still, with Yasha there above her. She wants to know what will happen, what Yasha wants to make happen.

Beau waits.

Again, she waits. Again, it doesn’t get easier, but perhaps, just perhaps, she gets a little better at it.

Yasha looks down at her, with a strange intensity that Beau can’t quite place, and then she leans in and kisses Beau on the mouth. It lasts a moment, her lips soft and hot against Beau’s, and it feels almost like a test, rather than a kiss. Like a question Yasha’s asking of Beau, and of herself.

Beau doesn’t know what answers she finds, but when she pulls away she’s still smiling, at least, and Beau can live with that.

They get to their feet, a few moments later, and untangling their limbs is awkward, but that’s ok too.

“I can go?” Beau asks. “Or, uh, I could stay? If you want? Watch the storm with you?” She doesn’t know if it’s too much, what she’s asking, if she’s too much, right here and now, so she braces herself for rejection.

“I would like that.”

Oh.

“Cool. Right, yeah, awesome.” Beau settles herself next to Yasha, facing the place where the dark sky is darker still, where lightning sparks and thunder rumbles, a little nearer than it was before.

Somewhere, far away and beyond the clouds, the sun begins to rise.

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