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“I’m just gonna—take some of this—”
“Beau, no! Get out of the kitchen, we’re not done !” Jester smacked her friend’s hand with a spoon.
Swiping her fingers through the icing, Beau smiled as innocently as she could—which, to be fair, was not particularly innocent, but still goddamn adorable, in Jester’s opinion.
“Okay, okay, Jes,” she conceded, still grinning like an absolute criminal while dodging out of the way of Jester’s spoon, “but if you don’t want Nott to eat her flower crown you guys are gonna need to hurry up with the dessert.”
She backed out of the kitchen, knocking into several of the many chairs and stools that filled it and swearing as she hipchecked a cabinet. A small ceramic—goat? cow? something—fell off one the higher shelves, and Jester heard Reani give a little “ ah —”, before Beau caught it, and placed it on the bench with a sheepish smile that show off her dimples. In the corner of her eye, Jester could see Reani looked as impressed as she felt. Biting her lip to keep from smiling too widely, she went back to stirring the white icing, beating in more of those little yellow flowers Reani had shown her to give it more of a cream colour.
From the living room, she could hear a shrill shrieking, “ so, no dessert?! ” from Nott, followed by the sound of a palm hitting a head, and, “ no, not yet, get off the couch! ” from Beau. My friends are idiots , Jester thought, giggling.
“What is it?” Reani asked, smiling, and picking up the other bowl of icing.
“They’re just silly,” Jester replied. “My momma told me last time I saw her that they kind of act like wild cats, and like, true.”
The druid nodded, not saying anything. There was something a little sad about her expression, though Jester wasn’t sure, exactly, what it meant. She thought she’d seen it on Essek Thelyss a few times when he’d been over at the house in Rosohna—whenever the rest of the group were being loud and a bit dumb. But Reani didn’t have that cold wall that Essek put up sometimes, or at least, she hadn’t shown it to the Nein yet—she was warm, and friendly, and kind to them, even inviting them into her cute little house and cooking them food.
And now, she was helping Jester bake —and, gods, Jester had forgotten how fun it was to have someone to cook with. Caduceus could make a great veggie kebab, sure, but he wasn’t really the swipe-icing-sugar-on-your-face-and-laugh type.
Beau had made an effort, a few times, when Jester had talked about missing baking with her mother, but Beau’s commitment to following instructions was… lax, maybe, is the right word. Nonexistent, technically. But Beau was so good at other things, so who cares if she sucks at separating eggs, right? And sometimes, she’d come into the kitchen and ask to try whatever Jester was cooking, even if she didn’t know what it was, and she’d sit on the counter and Jester got to feed her, and her cheeks would bunch up like the cutest chipmunk ever, and—
“—think it’s probably done now, Jester. Jester? Hey—” Reani snapped her fingers under Jester’s nose. “Jester? You okay?”
Jester blinked, looking down at her icing. It was now a very violent shade of yellow.
“Oh, yeah, I’m fine,” she said, shaking her head once and looking up at Reani. The other woman was watching her with a confused, slightly entertained smile on her face, eyebrows raised in question.
“Are you sure? You went kind of,” Reani gestured to the air around them, “distant, y’know?”
Jester nodded. “I’m fine,” she promised, “I just got distracted thinking.”
Reani sighed, taking Jester’s bowl off her and handing her a new white one, this time with a few pink blossoms sprinkled in. “Yeah, I do that a lot too. Fen gets annoyed sometimes because I’ll do it while she’s telling me something important, and, like, I love her, okay? But sometimes hearing about the new patrol shifts is super boring.”
Jester shrugged. “Look, that’s fair, I’d zone out too.”
“Is Beau like that as well?” Reani laughed, bending down to pull out one of the cakes being warmed in the oven. “I feel like she’d get annoyed by that kind of thing.”
“Um, not really.” Jester frowned. “Not with me, anyway. She’s like that with Caleb and Nott sometimes.”
Placing the cake as carefully as she could among the myriad bowls on the bench, Reani nodded, grinning. “Special treatment, huh? That’s always a perk.”
Was it special, the way Beau treated— okay , Jester could admit to herself, yeah, Beau treats me nicer than she treats the others sometimes.
But that’s just because we’re best friends. Obviously.
“Yeah, she’s a really good, uh, friend. And I think everyone else gets on her nerves sometimes.” Jester poured some of the plain white icing over the cake without looking at Reani, though she wasn’t exactly sure why she didn’t want to make eye contact.
“Just friends?” Reani said— asked , strangely.
Jester frowned. “Yeah? We’re like, best friends. And roommates.”
“Oh, I—never mind,” Reani laughed, though there wasn’t really any humour in it. “I shouldn’t have assumed, sorry.”
At that, Jester did straighten up and look at the druid, whose ears were bright red at the tips. Like Beau’s are when she’s around someone really pretty , Jester thought, refusing to dwell on why her thoughts kept drifting to Beau. It wasn’t a new thing, certainly, but recently they’d been drifting in her direction more often—but, obviously, it didn't mean anything. It could be anyone, right?
“What did you assume, sorry?” she asked, feeling her own ears heat up at the sudden awkward change in the atmosphere.
Reani shook her head, and said, “Oh, nothing, I just thought, like, from the way you were talking about Beau and how she was acting around you and everything, that you two were together. But it’s all good, don’t worry about it. Fen does say I need to stop projecting onto other people, actually, so I guess she’s right about that.”
Together—like— together, together?
"Well, yeah," Reani said, confused, and Jester felt her cheeks burn on realising she'd said that out loud. "You guys just seem like… that, you know? Like how you look at each other and everything. But yeah, I probably am just projecting again, so it's chill, so, um. Could you pass me the other spatula?"
She handed it over, mind spinning. Why would Reani—did she think that I was looking at Beau like—of course she was, it’s not like Beau would act like that to me , it was probably just me looking at her too long—but I don’t—do I? And then a small, soft voice in the back of her head, one that sounded like rain hitting the deck of a ship— Beau did say she loves me, didn’t she?
“Jester! Reani!” As if summoned by trickster magic, Beau’s head poked back into the kitchen. Her cheeks were faintly red, like she’d been laughing or shouting so hard she’d lost her breath—which, knowing Beau, was definitely a possibility.
Jester wasn’t sure if her smile actually did get a little brighter when she caught her eye, or if it was just an odd trick of the warm light in here, but she couldn’t help but beam back. “Yeah?”
“Nott and the boys are being irritating again, can I help with the cakes?” Beau batted her eyelashes—or, attempted to, though the effect was somewhat closer to involuntary twitching, and god, Jester felt so silly for finding it endearing.
Reani’s eyes flicked between them for barely a moment before throwing a tea-towel at Beau and instructing her, “I mean, if you want to help then you could get started on the washing up!”
Beau laughed, catching the towel easily and walking around to the sink just behind the island table, safe from any projectiles Nott might launch at her through the doorway. As she walked past, Jester felt a rough hand pat her shoulder, and when its warmth lingered on her skin, she thought, not totally unsurprised:
Maybe Reani isn’t wrong.