Chapter Text
some cupid kills with arrows (and others with traps)
some cupid kills with arrows (and others with traps)
(when they met)
(when they met)
Where are you?
Bea stuck her forkful of stir-fry - tangy chicken over mostly-cooked rice - into her mouth to free up both hands. On her phone she typed, In the back. I told you.
I don’t see you.
Bea rolled her eyes. The cheap pleather of the dining hall’s booth stuck to the back of her late-summer sweaty thighs and made an unflattering sound as she stood to look over the rows and rows of freshman heads eating dinner. Most groups were seated by floor, everyone still clinging to their new floor mates for dear life before they found their niches. All except Bea, who had gotten to the dining hall just a bit early after her mandatory science lab let out and grabbed a seat for her cousin.
They hadn’t seen each other since the first night of orientation a week ago, and that had been more of a family-reunion-child-send-off type deal at the overpriced steakhouse in the town. It wasn’t that Bea disliked her cousin, or wasn’t excited to be going to college together - but this was the first time in their lives they had been in the same time zone together for longer than a week, and it was an adjustment.
“Bea!”
And there Pedro was, cheerfully marching down the walkway, a plate in each hand (pizza in one, the same chicken-and-rice dish that Bea was eating in the other). He set them down across from Bea and wrapped her up in a hug. Bea had to take a quick inhale of breath, consciously force her muscles to relax and not stiffen reflexively at the contact. (Pedro is your cousin, Pedro is a good guy, the only time he’s ever raised his voice was when you run him off the road in Mario Kart -)
Pedro pulled back. Bits of curly dark hair were poking out from under his University of Messina ballcap. He was finally taller than Bea, beaming down at her with future laugh lines around his eyes. He was already scruffy over his chin and around his mouth, but maybe that was because he was establishing some kind of dominance over the rest of his all-male hall by showing them that he could grow real facial hair, if he wanted.
“It’s so good to see you! This is my cousin, Beatrice,” Pedro said. One of his arms was still wrapped around Bea’s shoulders as he whirled her around to face whoever he had brought to sit with them (he hadn’t said anyone was joining them). “Beatrice, this is my roommate, Benedick.”
Benedick was a half-head taller than Bea, skinny as a twig with gangly limbs like he hadn’t quite grown into them yet. He had a mop of dark hair on his head, brown eyes, an angular chin.
He looks sixteen, Bea thought, Baby-faced Benedick.
“Come off it, Pedro,” Benedick said. Bea blinked in surprise, not expecting the full brunt of a heavy accent - Irish? Welsh? He looked down at her. “It’s Ben, if you will. The accent’s Scottish.” He grinned. “I could tell you were trying to figure it out in yer head.”
She had been, but something about his grin that was too close to a smirk and his tone made Bea bristle. “Not really. You seemed like every other guy in here until you opened your mouth.”
Where had that come from? Bea almost opened her mouth to apologize, but before she could, Benedick - Ben - laughed.
“Met a lot of Scotsman so far, have you? Maybe you can introduce me to my fellow countrymen.” He stuck out a hand for her to shake. “Beatrice.”
“Bea,” She corrected him, and she shook his hand. He was warm, palms callused from some kind of summer job. His handshake was firm, and the way he held her gaze - there was a challenge, there, in his smirk and the clever glint in his eyes.
“Do you want me to, like, find a different table?” Pedro asked, interrupting their standoff. “Because I can leave.”
Bea dropped his hand like it had burned her and dropped back down into her seat. “Of course not, join us.” She picked a piece of pepperoni off of Pedro’s pizza just to distract him. Pedro and Ben slid into the booth across from her, and Bea resumed her cooled meal.
Pedro and Ben were random roommates, an assignment that seemed to be going well so far, at least as well as Bea and her selected roommate, Katherina. Which was all well and good, except Ben was annoying as hell.
Not in a bad way - he wasn’t being shitty or sexist or any of those things that would have made Bea just get up and leave (and she knew Pedro wouldn’t bring someone like that around to meet her, anyway. Probably. It’s not like he - knew. No one outside her parents and Hero knew, and that made college here so liberating and terrifying all at once. She missed home and her sister so much it hurt, some days).
But his jokes were goofy and he talked a lot about his and Pedro’s engineering classes in a way that made Bea think he was one of those STEM majors, the ones who thought a field being hard and making money was all that made life worthwhile. It wasn’t necessarily a fair thought, Bea knew, but she was on guard, just in case.
“What do you plan to study?” Ben asked around a mouthful of pizza after Pedro had gotten up to get seconds.
“Gender and Women’s Studies,” Bea said, mentally bracing herself for the inevitable follow-up.
“Oh, neat. I didn’t know we had one of those programs,” Ben said, “What d’you plan to do with that?”
For the love of - “It’s not as well advertised,” Bea said, “So lots of people are surprised Messina has one of those programs. And - I’m not sure yet, what I want to do.”
Bea gave him a look that dared him to judge her for that, for being unsure of her future when he had no idea about her past, what she had just finally, finally walked away from.
(He hadn’t wanted her to go to Messina, her dream school, hadn’t wanted to loosen the leash on her just that much. He told her she wasn’t built to be all alone out there, like college was this Wild West, told her she wasn’t smart enough or driven enough to succeed the way she thirsted for, and if she stayed close to home, lowered herself to his level, she could live the life she wanted, but on his terms.
It still made her sick, some days, realizations of oh, that was fucked up hitting her in the middle of conversations or late and night when she woke up thrashing and needed to go into the floor bathroom, that great, always-lit liminal space to breathe again).
But Ben just nodded. “Yeah, makes sense. Half my hall is undecided. We’re all just getting the pre-reqs out of the way, I s’pose.”
It’s not a race, Viola had told her in one of her final sessions before she left for school. You’ll get there in your own time.
Where is there? Bea had asked her. Viola had smiled in that enigmatic way of hers, replying:
That’s the beauty of life, Bea. You get to decide.
“Yeah,” Bea said. “I guess we are. At least we can all agree to hate business majors.”
Ben laughed aloud, echoing, dimples coming out on his cheeks. “Aye, that’s true enough. And Brits.”
“And Brits,” Bea agreed, and maybe she had misjudged Ben, and he wasn’t a terrible guy at all.
(And then he started talking about Star Wars, and Catcher in the Rye, and all of his opinions were rationally thought-out and decent interpretations but also wrong, and maybe Ben wasn’t a bad guy - he might just be good, and that might have been worse).