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Lady Jaida Essence Hall has known many things in her time as Countess, but there is one undeniable truth she can’t run away from: she is hopelessly in love with her Jester.
Crystal doesn’t even have the decency to acknowledge what her mischievous smiles and big brown eyes and lilting voice are doing to her. Not even to tease, a blind spot she turns from that feels gaping when her job involves poking and prodding and teasing her all day. But she won’t say a thing, and Jaida won’t let her acknowledge it, acknowledge them, anyway.
So they don’t, despite the knowing glances they share when her husband returns home, despite the bond that’s grown between them through the years. Despite how Crystal keeps leaning close to her when she laughs, and when it’s just the two of them and she’s laughing hard enough she’ll even extend a hand as if to grab her and hold on. Despite the way that Jaida keeps watching her from across the room for as long as she’ll get away with it, hating every time she has to rip her eyes from her Fool to pay attention to some hardly-interesting conversation.
And they don’t say anything.
It doesn’t stop Crystal from inspecting Jaida’s face for any change after toeing the line between appreciation and admiration, perhaps edging on flirting. It’s stupid, a dangerous challenge for Jaida as she has to control every twitch of her lips and flex of her fingers to show nothing at her advances, but it doesn’t stop Crystal, because she’s a Fool.
She’s her Fool.
Her job is to make Jaida smile, and she does. God, she does, more than with her jingling and colorful outfits or the wit that got her the coveted position. Many tried to become her Jester, and many have questioned her choice, but no other Jester could make her as happy as Crystal.
And Crystal has power over her, an ability to sway her thoughts that she would never dare to admit to others. She has her ear, endlessly filling it with joy and jokes and gossip, with truths and whispers and rumors. She has her heart, though they don’t say it. They can’t say it, not when Jaida’s husband could be listening, not when word could get back to him and shatter the advantages their marriage had given both of them.
So Jaida doesn’t say anything, and Crystal dances around it deftly with the skill of a Fool in love.
The door to her sitting room opens. She already knows who it is before she even has the chance to look.
“My queen,” Crystal says easily with a deep bow, like it doesn’t send a bolt of heat through Jaida. She says my queen like she means it, somehow both deferential and possessive. She says it like it’s true, like Jaida was Queen, noble past her already-existing title. My queen, she says, and despite the lack of audience Jaida tries her best not to show even a hint of anything she feels about it.
“My favorite Fool,” she says warmly, “though you must stop calling me your queen when another already holds the title.”
Crystal just smiles, as always, as if she isn’t saying something that could so easily have her punished. “And where are my lady’s maids?” she says, looking around theatrically. “But how they perfect expectation and expect perfection, it’s good for them to go.”
“You still don’t care for them?” she asks, knowing the answer.
“Ah,” Crystal says, enigmatically. Her mouth stays open for a second too long as she thinks, but her eyes don’t leave Jaida. “They’re dutifully tolerated in service of you, my queen.”
Jaida has to laugh, and she feels some of her walls already slipping away. “You’re always honest, Crystal.”
“As ever,” Crystal beams, sitting on the far end of the couch before scooting up closer to her. “Your fool will just have to play all the parts, then. And what does my queen need?”
They’re close. They’re too close for her to fully hide the way her fingers flex against her skirts when Crystal says “your fool.” She knows Crystal sees it, and she trusts her companion’s intelligence enough for her to file it away with every other failure in her composure that she’s had.
Crystal is her fool, yet she has somehow become a fool for Crystal. Isn’t that ironic?
“I have no needs,” she waives the offer away, “but some company would be nice.”
She watches Crystal, and she can’t help but smile when she sees the dawning comprehension stifled behind a mask of Foolishness. “Your maids?”
“Away. When my husband is away I can barely do anything but seek the company of the Fool for some cheering up, you know.” A smirk accompanies her words, and it’s enough for Crystal. She tucks her legs up on the couch comfortably, scooting ever closer without a thought.
“If a Jester’s company is what you seek, a Jester’s company you shall get,” Crystal nods, then shakes her head a little. “And you look bothered. Particularly brooding, even.”
Jaida winces, but knows she’s right. “Still not one to mince words, though you never have been,” she says with a sigh, then tucks herself against the back of the couch to sit side-by-side with Crystal. “It’s just the social game that’s getting to me. Not all of us get to say what we really mean, and unfortunately I can’t tell you to say what I really feel to everyone who’s a pain.”
Crystal snorts. “Say the word and I’ll unleash my most fun rumors on all of them. I’ll do it for you, my queen.”
“I’m only a countess still,” she corrects gently, “My fool.”
Crystal sighs, but she’s smiling. “Not to me,” she says, and once again Jaida has to stifle the need to look around for anyone listening in. But she sent everyone away, and they’re talking quietly enough that they shouldn’t be heard through the closed door.
“You could get in trouble,” Jaida starts, but she doesn’t know what else to say. They both know how dangerous words against the Queen are, and they both know the Crystal keeps doing it. “I don’t want you to get hurt.”
Crystal cocks her head, and Jaida watches in real time as her carefully-constructed mask comes back into place. “Oh, My Sweet Lady Grace, I’m just a little Fool! No hide nor hair of what I’m saying makes it past the ears of those who don’t care to listen.” The smile looks stilted after spending time seeing her unguarded, and it’s almost unsettling to see her performing for her like this when it’s just the two of them.
So she takes her hand. She shouldn’t, she really shouldn’t, but it shatters the mask and leaves Crystal looking up at her like she did when they were younger, Crystal still an inexperienced Fool while she herself was still learning the rules she’d come to live by as Countess. “Please be careful, Crystal. Promise me you’ll be careful.”
Crystal’s grip on her hand is sturdy, strong; she’s holding on like she may never get the chance again. Her eyes are wide and open, honest in a way she almost never lets herself be despite the pointed truths she weaponizes in her jests. “Anything you wish,” she agrees, “Jaida.”
Jaida freezes. “You haven’t called me that in years.”
Crystal doesn’t say anything in reply. She just keeps looking at her with those big open eyes while Jaida’s heart beats in double time.
“Call me by my name more often.” The request takes both of them by surprise, but she doubles down. “I like hearing you say my name. It’s been too long.”
“Neither of us are new anymore, my lady. A fool I may be, but to call Your Most Esteemed Lady Countess by her given name?”
“A fool you may very well be—I’m asking this of you.”
“Then who am I to ignore my lady?” Crystal asks, grin on her face as Jaida scrunches hers up.
“Jaida,” she reminds, “call me Jaida. While it’s the two of us, when we’re…” She doesn’t finish the thought, doesn't know how to. While we’re not dancing around it so much? While we’re ignoring our roles and our duties?
“Is it so bad to want to call you mine?” Crystal mutters, quieter than before, almost as if she didn’t intend Jaida to hear it despite the quiet room empty of all but them. It sends Jaida’s blood rushing in her ears, her gaze stuck on the pretty flush settled across Crystal’s cheeks.
“You ca—you still can,” Jaida stammers out, her mouth feeling dry.
“My Jaida,” Crystal compromises, and—
Oh.
“Say it again.”
“My Jaida,” Crystal repeats, and it’s the last thing she can say before Jaida captures her lips in a firm, decisive kiss. It isn’t long, just warmth and care and admiration and love that she can’t convey, she doesn’t know how to convey.
She pulls away before she can get carried away. She doesn’t even want to think about what could happen if they’re caught in such a compromising position because of a lapse in judgement like this, but it’s hard to keep herself from swooping back in at the almost disbelieving look in Crystal’s eyes.
“My lady,” Crystal breathes, her hand holding her tighter as if she’s fighting the same urges. She sits on her other hand, and it makes Jaida laugh gently in the space lingering between them at the sight. “My Jaida. I wish—”
Jaida lets go of her, standing up abruptly and pacing to the window. She can’t hold her so close yet so far, can’t keep looking at her without giving in and letting herself be selfish. “I really shouldn’t have done that. I'm sorry.”
Crystal stands, a shaky exhale audible in the quiet room. She stops behind her, at a respectful distance, a distance that only widens the gap between them. They’re the Countess and the Jester again, not Jaida and Crystal. “Jaida, it’s—” Crystal stops, breathes. “My lady. Any foolish decisions were mine to make, as I am your humble Fool. I am the one to blame.”
Jaida gazes out the window for another moment, steeling herself to turn around and face her Fool again. “Don't say that. I’m just afraid that if I keep looking at you like this I’ll hold onto you and never let go.”
“You wouldn’t even have to ask,” Crystal offers herself up like it’s nothing, her tone once again devoid of the joking lilt she puts on while performing. It’s low and quiet and real, completely and utterly breathtaking.
Jaida turns around. Crystal’s looking at her, the gap between them far enough that she’d have to walk forward to breach it—if someone happened upon them, they would simply think she was getting counsel from her trusted Fool. They would have no idea that Jaida was thinking about the collection of coins she has stashed in her memory box, about taking it and taking her Fool and running far away.
“I wouldn’t hurt either of us like that,” Jaida shakes her head, pushing the thought away. “We both have good positions where we want for almost nothing. I, we, can’t throw all of that away.”
“If that is what my lady wishes,” her loyal Fool acquiesces, straightening up and forcing a smile onto her face, “a resplendent tailor and lowly bar performer we may never be, but I will take anything I can get by your side, my queen.”
It hits her at that moment just how much Crystal is willing to give up for her. To hear her fantasies, of Jaida getting to use her knowledge of tailoring and dressmaking while Crystal performs, about being commoners dodging only the judging eyes of those who wouldn’t want two women living together—Crystal’s thought about this. She’s been thinking about this, perhaps even more than Jaida has.
Crystal offering to leave a coveted position working with nobility, one she had to work to get to. One she’d been trained for since she was young. All for her.
“You would really do all that…” Jaida wonders, closing the gap by one measly step. It’s not enough, still too much space between them, but she’s having such a hard time keeping herself away.
If she had even a little more of her mind focused on anything other than the rush of thoughts and half-baked plans and emotions, she might laugh at Crystal’s attempts at regaining her usual jesting ways. Her almost painted-on smile with eyes that don’t match, searching and full of questions that Jaida doesn't know if she has the answers to.
A beat passes, and Crystal’s gaze turns softer, her smile more genuine. “Anything you wish,” she says plainly, “remember, Jaida?”
It’s only been a few minutes since she said it last. While hearing her name out of Crystal's mouth still makes her heart skip a beat, it’s everything else about it that she focuses on this time.
Maybe she doesn’t need to have the answers right now. Maybe it’s okay if she takes some time to make up her mind.
“If I could keep being selfish..." she trails off, adjusting a cuff of her sleeve. "Would you even wait for me?”
Crystal beams, bouncing close. The broken mix of jester and Crystal from only a moment ago is replaced with a harmonious combination—playful and joyful and real and open. It steals her breath away, made even worse when Crystal pushes past everything either of them have learned about decorum to throw her arms around her.
Jaida feels her reply more than she hears it. It’s said quietly into her ear, the world effectively narrowing to encompassing only the two of them and nothing else. “As long as it takes. As long as you need.”