Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Bea stumbled back upstairs, not at all certain of what she’d just heard. Her head was spinning, there was a distinct buzzing noise coming from somewhere and she was starting to think she’d imagined all this. Nothing felt real.

What was happening? What had Hero said? Benedick couldn’t be in love with her. No way, that was out of the question. She’d been watching that boy carefully for years now and she’d been wrong the first time, she wasn’t prepared to be wrong again.

Bea remembered it like yesterday. Another summer in Auckland with Hero, an entire summer free from everything! Finally starting to grow up a little, away from home. 

Fourteen’s a weird age, Bea thought. I don’t think fourteen year old me knew much. 

She remembered meeting Benedick for the first time. The first impression stuck in her memory like the pages of an old textbook. He had the exact same messy dark hair and piercing eyes, she remembered thinking that his eyes had a fire of their own as she watched them dart up and down. Bea would never admit it to anyone, but her first impression of Ben was that he was cute. And surprisingly, that was the one opinion of him that had never changed. Even when Bea hated Benedick with the fire of a thousand suns, she still noticed the little things. The way the corner of his lip went up when he smiled. The way he smirked at her in physics. Those things hadn’t ever gone away.

Now here she was, running upstairs as quietly as she could and sliding down against the back of her bedroom door. Could it be possible that the feelings fourteen year old Bea had were right all along? Could there be something there after all?

You can’t think that, Bea told herself. Don’t put yourself through that again. Surely Hero was mistaken. Surely Ursula and Meg were just joining in on the gossip. Surely none of that could actually be true.

But…it made sense. Suddenly, completely, everything made sense. Bea thought back to the pizza party, when Ben had called her ‘love’.

Love.

At the time, she’d dismissed it as one of his weird, British quirks that she’d never picked up before. But now it was clear, he had meant it that way. 

Oh God, Bea thought. Benedick loves me.

Oh God, what do I do?

She got up from the door and fell down onto her bed. Ah bed, she thought. You understand me.

Chapter Text

A few hours later, Bea woke up with a start. She hadn’t realised she’d even fallen asleep. She looked up to find a note tucked underneath the door.

“Hey Bea, came to fetch you for dinner but didn’t want to wake you up. You looked so peaceful! Leo and I went out for Chinese but there are leftovers in the fridge - Hero xx”

Aw, that girl. Bea loved living with her so much, even if she had just gone out for Chinese without her. Peaceful? Please, Bea was sure she’d never looked peaceful in her life. And certainly not when she was sprawled out face down across her bed.

Bea went down to the kitchen and took pretty much all the food she could find back to her room. She’d probably spill something but hell, she’d clean it up later when she could think properly.

What would Hero tell her to do? If she knew how confused Bea was feeling?

The answer came quickly. In fact, the answer stared at both of them from the matching posters they each had on their walls.

Benedict Cumberbatch.

Four interviews and three funny moments videos later, Bea was feeling better. Her laptop balanced on her bed and another slice of pizza about to be eaten, she moved the cursor to click through to more British adorableness when she spotted something.

It was a recommended video, a stupid feature that Youtube had dreamt up for God knows what reason.

It was titled “TRUTH” and it came from Ben’s channel.

Why wasn’t she watching those again? Bea laughed to herself as she remembered his birds video. Because he’s a twat, she thought. A complete and utter twat.

But the truth about what? She knew she’d vowed never to watch his channel but she was so curious now. The video wasn’t even two minutes long. If it turned out to be just as ridiculous as the birds one, she could always just go back to the glorious Cumberbatch.

Bea shouldn’t. She said she wouldn’t.

Yet for a reason she couldn’t explain, she clicked it and watched it load.

She smiled at his posters. She laughed about how he’d just put up the Deathly Hallow Part 1 poster but then stopped as she noticed her own poster lying on the floor on the other side of the room.

Wait a minute. What was Ben talking about? He’d overheard what?

Oh my God. Bea started freaking out. What the hell was going on? How had everything got so complicated in the last couple of hours?

Bea’s heart started sinking. She felt so pathetic. “Why not someone who likes her back?” Didn’t he know? Couldn’t he remember uttering those same words four years ago, another time when he didn’t think Bea would ever hear him?

“Why has Beatrice been acting so weird lately?” she remembered him asking Hero. Bea wasn’t supposed to be home yet, but somehow no one had heard her enter the house.

“I don’t know,” Hero said. “What have you noticed about her?”

“She’s just more flustered than usual,” Ben said. “And her arguments are so flimsy. I win most of them now and it isn’t fun anymore.” Hero gasped.

“I think she likes you,” Hero said and Bea had smiled.

“Oh, God,” Ben said. “Why not someone who likes her back?”

Flash forward to now, four years later, and Bea was going through it all again. This was stupid. Why was she watching this? Why had she let herself fall all over again?

You are a self-centred, proud, arrogant, unheroic douchebag, Bea thought. And you’ll never be anything else.

But what was all this about Claudio, Pedro and Leo? Ben had overheard all of this? That was exactly what had happened to Bea…

By the time Bea reached the end of the video, she was sure of two things: that she had definitely not texted Ben and that Hero was up to something. So where had that text come from? Bea knew these things had to be related.

After a quick search in Hero’s room, Bea found her phone underneath the pillow. Aha!

She scrolled through her messages from the last few days, and there was her conversation with Ben.

I would never call Claudio C-dog, Bea thought, reading through everything. 

Wait, it looked like Ben had replied to that text.

“Sounds great, Bea. See you then.”

So maybe he wasn’t disgusted by the idea of Bea liking him anymore. He’d definitely seemed pretty happy at the pizza party.

We need to talk about this, Bea decided.

She took a leap of faith and texted Ben. One word would do.

“Emergency.”

Chapter Text

“Where are you?”

“At home.”

“I’m coming.”

Bea hadn’t thought much of Ben coming over until she’d continued watching his videos. By the end of “PIZZA”, she was significantly scared.

He called her brilliant.

He called her gorgeous.

She’d called him dickface.

Fuck. Now the doorbell was ringing. He was here. That was fast, Bea thought. She took a deep breath and went down to answer the door. She could do this.

“Hey, Bea,” Ben said. “Is everything okay? Are you okay?”

He was wearing the exact same shirt he’d worn to the pizza party, like he hadn’t changed since, like he hadn’t stopped thinking about her. He was even wearing the same shorts as last time too, but looking at him now Bea felt a lot different.

“I’m fine,” Bea said, getting annoyed at how nice he was being. She was starting to miss hating Ben already. “I saw your videos.”

“Oh?” he said. “Wait. Which ones?”

“Just come inside,” Bea said. “Things are a little more complicated than you might think.”

“So you have been tearing yourself up over me?” There it was, his little smirk.

“Shut up.”

“I knew it. Hang on a second, are we going upstairs?”

“Have you never been in a girl’s bedroom before, Ben?”

“Of course I have. Just asking.” Bea moved all the stuff off her bed and opened her laptop to the footage she’d just gotten of Hero, Ursula and Meg’s conversation. She hit play and watched as Ben started to work out what was going on.

“But that’s exactly what happened to me,” he said.

“I know.”

“Are they playing us?” he asked. “What’s going on?”

“I don’t know. That’s the emergency.”

“I see. Wait, what’s that? Have you seen that one?” Ben pointed to the dreaded makeup bloopers video.

“Why on earth would you want to watch that? They’re so disgusting,” Bea said while Ben stared at her. “Oh,” she realised. “Good point.” She hit play. They both convulsed as Hero and Claudio kissed and then laughed as they realised they’d had the exact same reaction.

“Oh my God, there they all are,” Bea said. “They’re plotting about us.”

“I have never been more offended,” Ben said. “We’re clearly the best at that kind of thing.”

They kept watching.

“You talked about me for six hours?” Ben asked Bea.

“You wrote a song about me?” Bea asked back.

When the video finished there was a silence that neither of them knew exactly how to fill.

“Did you mean what you said in your videos?” Bea asked, afraid of the answer.

“Which one?” Ben said.

“PIZZA.”

“Oh, well, I do, I mean - I did, but I’m so confused now,” he rambled, moving his arms wildly as he talked. Bea stopped listening after a while. Every other thought in her head had been silenced now, all she could do was stare at those gorgeous eyes of his. Eventually her gaze drifted down to his lips and she was gone.

“Ben?” she said while he was still mid-sentence.

“Yeah?”

“Shut up.” Bea leaned forward and kissed him. She felt his mouth open against hers and the sparks that went up her spine made her feel like she was on fire. They leaned into each other and she felt his arm slip around the small of her back.

When they finally moved apart, his eyes were staring right back at her.

Really, they’d been looking at each other for the last four years but now they were finally both looking at the same time.

Chapter Text

Bea snuggled up against Ben on the couch as they watched TV.

“I can’t believe we’re watching Game of Thrones,” Ben said, pulling at a strand of Bea’s hair.

“Get used to it,” she said, looking up at him.

“I’ve got nothing against it,” he explained. “I just haven’t finished the books yet. They’ve been taking me ages.”

“Oh, relax,” Bea said. “This is just a rerun of the first season anyway.”

“I almost forgot,” Ben said. “I brought this back for you.” He pulled something out of his pocket and Bea moved back to see what it was.

It was the tiny, plastic pink flamingo she’d given him the first summer that they’d met.

“Oh my God,” she said. “How do you still have that?”

“You don’t remember?” he asked.

“What are you talking about? Of course I remember.” Bea was there now, in front of the store with her parents and laughing at the flamingo she’d spotted in the shop window.

“What’s so funny?” her mother asked.

“It’s that argument she and Benedick had yesterday,” her father had reminded her. “They were talking about birds and - what was it again, Bea?” Bea tried to talk in between breaths and laughter.

“He thinks - he really thinks - they’re the most majestic birds. He’s so wrong.” And somehow by the time she’d stopped laughing, she was walking out of the shop with the little flamingo in her hands.

“To remember this trip,” her parents had said, like they already knew how important it would be.

“Don’t you remember what you said when I gave it to you?” Bea asked Ben now.

“Here,” she’d said, giving the flamingo to him.

“What the hell is this?”

“It’s a flamingo. You know, most majestic creature ever?”

“Oh yeah.”

“I thought you might want it, seeing as I’m leaving tomorrow. You know. So you can remember me.”

“Why would I need to remember you?” Those words had cut through Bea like glass.

“Forget it,” she’d muttered, determined not to be upset.

“Yeah, I remember. That’s why I brought it,” Ben said.

“So you can hurt me all over again?” Bea said, hoping she hadn’t made the wrong decision about all of this.

“No,” Ben said. “Because I saw it sitting on my bedside table as I got your text and I figured I don’t need a way to remember you anymore.” He leaned in closer and brushed the hair off her face.

“You’re right here.”

For once, Bea didn’t want to disappear into the world of Game of Thrones. She wanted to disappear with Ben, to spend forever right here.