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It’s distracting, is what it is. There’s a reason romance between co-workers is frowned upon, Beau thinks, and it’s because it’s absolute torture for the other employees who may also have had crushes on one of said co-workers.
“Beau!”
“Huh!? What!?”
Beau snaps her attention back to the other side of the counter, the side that doesn’t house Jester and Fjord skirting around each other with flirty giggles and shy blushes, the side that has Yasha staring at her in concern. Dear Yasha, who comes in every day, orders her coffee black, and gives the tiniest but purest smiles to Beau.
“Are you alright?”
Beau gives her a crooked smile. “Yeah, fine, sorry. Just haven’t been getting much sleep lately, ya know?”
Yasha narrows her eyes in suspicion briefly, glancing over Beau’s shoulders in the direction of Fjord and Jester before looking back at Beau skeptically. “Sure.”
“Anyway, I’ll get your coffee.”
The two of them don’t talk while Beau goes about pouring the beverage, which isn’t unheard of, but it feels heavier this time, like Yasha is examining Beau instead of just idly waiting. It causes a flush to creep up the back of Beau’s neck, and sure enough, when Beau turns back around, Yasha is indeed studying her intently.
“What?” she asks, bristling a little in her sudden self-consciousness.
Yasha, for her part, appears nonplussed. Instead, she says, “My band is playing tonight, if you’d like to come. I know you said you are tired but-”
Beau cuts her off. “I’d love to go!”
Yasha seems a bit surprised at the vehemence of her answer but smiles none the less, and butterflies erupt in Beau’s stomach.
“Great. I will text you the details?”
“Sounds great!”
Then Yasha pays for her coffee and leaves, but the interaction and the excitement for tonight are enough to carry Beau through the rest of her shift with Fjord and Jester.
~!@#$%^&*()_+
The show was…. interesting. Definitely not bad. Yasha and the Orphan Makers are definitely talented, they’re also just highly…. experimental? Beau says about as much when Yasha approaches her at the bar afterwards.
Yasha chuckles at that, though she doesn’t make eye contact, choosing instead to look at where her fingers are stroking the bar.
Talented fingers, Beau thinks, then immediately feels herself blush as the potential double entendre there. The warmth settles in the pit of her stomach though, simmering to a warm glow. She’s had these thoughts about Yasha before, back when they first met, and who could really blame her? Yasha’s damn attractive. However, then she got to know Yasha, and the lust settled into something more like friendship and respect, and maybe a little fear after she learned about Zuala. After all, who can hope to live up to the memory of a dead wife?
Then there’d been Jester - a nice escape from reality, what with her vibrancy and effervescent nature. However, staring at Yasha now, in the dim light of the bar, Beau realizes that maybe she’d let the fear overwhelm her a little. Her feelings for Jester had been real, but maybe they were also a bit of fantastical escapism. She’d known all along about Jester’s feelings for Fjord, had known anything beyond friendship with her was such a long shot, that maybe she’d used that hide away just a little. Yasha was real and Yasha flirted back and maybe Beau needed to stop being so afraid of measuring up to people who she would never meet.
“Was this a date?” she blurts out. She’s immediately horrified, but she does her best to cover it with bravado.
Yasha jerks her head up to look at her, clearly startled. “Well…. it would not have been a very good one, would it? We did not spend it together,” she says slowly, parsing out the words as they leave her mouth.
“We’re together now, though,” Beau insists.
Yasha blinks at her and then smiles. It isn’t one of her small smiles either; this one blossoms beautifully wide across her face, and even in the poor lighting, Beau can see Yasha’s pale skin turning pink or red.
“Would you like to go on a date with me, Beauregard?” Yasha asks slyly, making eye contact.
It’s Beau’s turn to blush, but she grins back. “Yeah. Yeah, actually, I think I would.”
“Then I will take you on a date,” Yasha says with an air of finality. “But this is not it, okay? It will be better, more intimate.”
Beau tries not to look too far into Yasha’s wording, though with Yasha it’s sometimes hard to tell if she intends the euphemism or not. “Deal! Now, how about you introduce me to your bandmates? It’s only right I meet them if I’m going to be a groupie, after all.”