In the way of the best memories, they're just a little drunk. Molly's on his third cup, and technically so is Yasha. It's just that her cup might double as a helmet for him. They haven't tried. Yet.
"Okay okay," Molly says through fading giggles. "I'll help you get the charcoal off your chin tomorrow before anyone sees. But for what it's worth, you're startlingly handsome with a beard. It's your turn for an idea."
Yasha has had enough alcohol to afford herself a single dignified stroke of the results of Molly's handiwork, which has the rewarding effect of making him chuckle hard enough to get some ale up his nose. She rubs her sooty fingers on her knee and doesn't have to think long about what's next. "The thing you do," she begins, "with your sword and the -" she mimes cutting across her own chest, nodding to the billions of pale lines peeking from his between the lacing of his shirt. "I want to try."
Molly blinks at her. "Your accent is so much like this, love, did you know? I can't get enough of it. Anyway, as much as it pains me to say, I think power is something to do with me and my own freakish blood."
Yasha's already nodding. She's thought of this. "Maybe it just has to be you doing it."
Another blink. "You're asking me to cut you."
There's no condemnation, only comprehension. Yasha nods and takes another sip. There's something hungry stirring in her now, something she recognizes as not altogether good for her but which muzzes nicely under the influence of the ale into something that resembles pleasure. "It hurts you sometimes," she says. "It wouldn't hurt me. You could do more if it came from me."
He downs the rest of his cup. "Darling, I am more than enough as it is and we both know it. But." He points the cup at her. "I'm also terribly curious and I know you wouldn't feel anything I could do to you sober or no." He glances towards his swords where they lie nearby and scoffs when Yasha sits up a little. "You're actually wiggling with excitement, did you know? Precious."
Yasha's not sure she'd call it a wiggle, but then again the noise that comes out of her when Molly leans over to grasp a hilt and gracefully faceplants is definitely closer to the chuckling side of things than she's used to, so it's anyone's guess really. She reaches to pull him up by the back of his shirt with one hand and deposits him gently beside her, not exactly smiling when he looks up at her but knowing he sees one anyway.
"Okay." He straightens his rumpled shirt uselessly and clears his throat, lining the blade carefully along Yasha's bicep with hands that only just shake. His tongue actually pokes out, just a little. "Okay. I'm uh. I'm pulling it," he narrates, "and there's no blood happening because you are also apparently a passive badass, which is awesome but kind of ruining our fun right now."
Yasha's skin has prickled all around the blade; it actually takes effort not to shiver a little as she grasps Molly's wrist with a hand nearly twice the size of his. "You're being a baby," she tells him, but she only holds his arm and the blade steady - doesn't pull him in, just leans in until a familiar warmth wells up and runs a single drop down the edge of the sword. And then another.
Molly pulls it away and furrows his brow, concentrating, but they both know if it was going to happen it would've already.
"Huh," says Molly. "Guess it's something only in my blood." He considers, then wipes the blade across the inside of his black boot and offers it to Yasha. "I've been cut plenty and never got ice on anything, but I've never tried doing it on purpose. Your turn? Oh geez, hold that thought." He sets the sword down before Yasha even has time to hesitate - she hadn't considered the tales turning, isn't really sure she could bring herself to add to all the lines on someone like him - and rummages with zero hesitation inside a pouch on her hip for the roll of bandages. She'd taken to carrying them for him early on - someone should. Molly's fingers are impatient with alcohol but as gentle as they always are when he tugs Yasha's arm up to rest on his lap and gets to work bandaging what's turned out to be a fairly impressive scratch in the seconds since Yasha's looked. "Maybe we should've gotten you angry first," he comments.
"Hmm." Yasha uses her free hand to take another drink. "Maybe not."
Molly watches her chase that swallow with the rest of her cup and lifts his tail to flick a strand of hair out of her eyes. "Maybe not."
They sit for a moment in the quiet of the tent and the little lantern between their bed rolls, and then Molly pulls away abruptly to dump the last of their little keg into their cups. He says nothing, just crawls backwards to sit in the lap Yasha adjusts automatically for him and taps his cup lightly to hers. "I think you should get to go again since it didn't work," he offers.
"My other idea was bear hunting." Yasha perks up a bit and points out the tent flap. "I saw tracks earlier. Towards the river."
"That's one of the rules, remember?"
Yasha huffs and sags forward, chin resting between Molly's horns. "Right. Rules."
"It was your rule, love."
"Well, you were almost eaten," Yasha protests. "The rule sounded fine then, but you're not going to get better if we don't practice."
She says it maybe a little louder than she means to, but then Molly's tail winds over her forearm and just like that she's settled again. "Let's see how we're feeling tomorrow morning, how's that?"
"That's cheating," Yasha grumbles. "I hate morning."
"Same." Molly exaggerates the word before taking another swig. "So let's just sit right here and wait for it so we can tell it to fuck off."
"Mmm." Yasha's cheek can just barely rest on his head like this, like his horns were set just to accommodate her and nothing more. She can feel him start to purr against her chest as she tightens her arm around his waist, and the cut on her arm throbs pleasantly with the flex of her muscle. If she's lucky, maybe it'll scar. "That sounds like a good idea, yeah."
"Wow." Beau's voice brings Yasha back to the present, ratty tent fading into a soft bed and the pressure of his tail on her arm replaced by the feel of their fingers intertwined. "I thought it might've been from an arrow or something. Just cuz it's so straight."
"Nope." Yasha smiles at her girlfriend curled in beside her and kisses her forehead when she yawns loud and long like a huge, contented cat. "Just my favorite scar, as promised."
Beau smiles back and wiggles closer, the soft lights of the tower making a lovely show of the shadows and lines missing from her brow, highlighting the lack of that frown that so often lies in wait and turning the hard and beautiful planes of Beau's face into a smooth and equally stunning portrait of safety and warmth. "I'm glad you got to keep it," Beau mumbles. "It's kinda like my tattoo but way more personal and frankly? Hot as fuck."
Yasha chuckles and holds her closer for a moment, breathing her in and soaking up the feeling of their bodies pressed together. Home. She's finally found it. She just wishes Molly could be here to see it.
"I think it's your turn," she tells Beau, tracing an unhurried finger along the swirls and patterns of the tattoo sprawled over her shoulders and reveling in the way Beau relaxes.
"My favorite scar? Definitely the T-Rex holes. No question."
Yasha smiles into the dark and drifts her hand down to rub gently at the little puckered circle by her hip, the twin to the one in front and the only two to have lasted through the near-immediate healing she'd received. "You were right. They did leave cool marks. But I thought we were doing stories?"
"Yup." Beau yawns again in a final way, her voice on the other side of it growing creaky with exhaustion even as she keeps talking like she can't bear to waste a second. Yasha knows the feeling, a feeling that transforms into an unbearably bright light behind her ribs and falls out of her as an honest giggle when Beau continues, "So there was this really hot woman watching me fight a fucking dinosaur..."
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