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Beau never liked to dance. Well, she never liked to dance properly, and that was all that she had been allowed to do back when she lived with her parents. And then, with the monks- well, there hadn’t been much time for having fun at all, much as Beau kept trying to run away from it all.
If she looks back far enough, there’s a vague memory that could just as well be a dream: a tiny Beau and her mother (mom, back then) in the kitchen of their mansion, baking a cake for Beau’s birthday, something with lots and lots of chocolate! no, put even more! (Beau might be so endeared by Jester’s love of sweets because it also reminds her of her own) and, well, they ended up putting so much in that it was more chocolate than cake, but it was perfect.
But it wasn’t the baking of the cake that Beau imagines (remembers?) with secret longing and embarrassment at yearning for it at all. It’s the dancing and laughing and throwing flour around that the two of them did while making it, without a care in the world, even if it was a waste, even if it wasn’t ladylike or fancy or anything that the scion of the Lionettes could ever be caught doing.
Later, Beau’s mother had capitulated to Thoreau’s edicts, and he had thus monopolized the control over Beauregard’s life. Beau’s choices became his, and there was no more fooling around in the kitchen (that’s where the servants are supposed to be, Beauregard) and no more of the graceless flailing around of arms and legs that Beau called dancing (instead, she had been brought dance instructors and was forced to put on dresses and heels and follow the steps until her mind and feet became numb with repetition).
So when Jester takes her hand and starts to drag Beau away from their table at the tavern and towards the gaggle of people casually moving to the lull of the bards’ lutes because come on, Beau, dance with me!, Beau hesitates.
“I don’t-”
The words get stuck in her mouth as Jester looks over her shoulder at Beau like that, pouting and pleading and Beau can’t take being the source of Jester’s sadness even a little bit. She swallows the sentence down (I don’t dance. I don’t like it.), shakes her head to physically banish the sudden images of empty ballrooms and one-two-three, one-two-three, Beauregard, focus! and lets herself be in the moment instead.
She’s in a tavern with her friends (her family, goddamn it) and she’s had a couple of ales and she’s a little buzzed and Jester’s holding her hand (holy shit, Jester’s holding her hand, that feels so fucking nice) and what’s the harm in it? It’s not like any of her former professors will suddenly manifest in the middle of a dingy tavern filled with commoners just to criticize her form, and if they did, there’d be no one stopping Beau from punching their smug ass faces.
Jester must notice the tension in Beau’s body because she’s intuitive like that and suddenly changes course, and in a few quick footfalls they’re outside and Beau is suddenly grateful for the cool air hitting her heated cheeks. Under the dark, starry sky, she feels her muscles slowly relax until she’s holding on to Jester’s hand softly, the pressure barely there. Jester does her best to suppress a sigh of relief, but Beau is quick and observant enough to see it.
“Shit. I was crushing your hand. I’m so sorry, Jes, I-”
A blue finger brushes her lips and stops whatever self-deprecating comment Beau was about to make (if only Dairon had known that the secret to Beau’s compliance was a gentler touch, maybe Beau would have become an expositor much sooner. But then again, if someone other than Jester had tried to shush Beau… that wouldn’t have gone over so well).
“It’s okay, Beau,” Jester says softly, Beau’s name falling out of her mouth in that special way- no one’s ever said Beau’s name like that before, and oh, maybe that means something. But Beau can’t think about that right now, not when she’s kind of drunk, not when it’s just the two of them alone.
So she grabs both of Jester’s hands, raises them above their heads then lets them fall, and then starts swinging them from left to right between their bodies. There isn’t much space (Jester got very close when she shushed Beau) so it’s a bit awkward, but Jester throws her head back and laughs, then starts to wiggle her whole body ‘in time’ with Beau’s arm swinging, and… they’re dancing?
It’s not a proper dance by any means, the music of the tavern barely audible and too slow for their wild movements anyway, and they’re holding hands instead of someone leading and the other following, and they’re both laughing too hard to even be able to control what they’re doing, but. It’s wonderful, somehow. This strange, uncoordinated way they’ve tangled their limbs; the uncontrolled breaths that are fogging up the air around them; the warmth that fills Beau’s whole body even though it’s the middle of winter, because Jester has come outside with her in the freezing cold simply because she wanted to dance with Beau.
Beau never liked to dance. But like this, with Jester, who is staring at her with smiling eyes, with the lack of pressure to be anything other than who she is…
Beau thinks she might like to dance like this.