Chapter Text
It started like ice. Pure ice, crawling up and twisting down from the pit of her stomach, was freezing her solid. She’d been so happy for her baby cousin, who was finally getting the right occasion to wear that stupid blue dress of hers and spend her birthday with her friends and her sickly sweet boyfriend, and then… this.
Though she hated it, all Beatrice could do was stare. These hateful, horrid, completely false words seemed foreign in the mouth of Hero’s puppy-dog boyfriend. Sleeping with someone else? Hero, a slut? He’d seen it? None of it made any sense.
Finally, she managed to turn her head to take a glance at Pedro. He’d been one of her best friends for years. He knew her, he knew Hero, he was her friend, surely he wouldn’t stand there and let this kid who idolized him destroy her baby cousin like that. But when she looked at him… he seemed pleased. Smug. As if this was right.
That was when the ice inside of her turned to fire.
Everyone was leaving, and all she could do was grab her baby cousin around the shoulders and steer her towards the couch. Hero was sobbing so hard; Bea started to worry that she might set off her lung condition.
In the corner of her mind she registered Ben’s voice shouting, “Turn that camera off!” He’s probably trying to keep his stupid little ‘bro’ from looking horrid. Though it’s a bit late for that.
“Hero, Hero, listen to me sweetheart. I need you to focus on me. Look at me,” Bea said quietly as she sat on the floor in front of her baby cousin, curled up on the couch. “Hero, pay attention. As I count to ten, you’re gonna breathe in. When I count down from ten, you’ll breathe out. Okay?” Hero gave a weak nod.
She counted to ten, and then down. Up to ten, and then back down. Bea noticed the counting calming her down too, and quickly began to re-stoke the fires of her anger. Hero needed to be calm, for her own sake. Bea needed to be angry. She needed to be angry so that she could protect her baby cousin. She needed to angry so that she could hate Pedro for that stupid look on his face and not collapse into the shock and hurt of her best friend hurting her baby cousin like that.
After a few minutes, Hero finally stopped shaking. Leo came over and picked her up, carrying her up to bed. All that talk about how she was all grown up, practically an adult, but Bea couldn’t help but see just how small she looked just then.
“Don’t you worry, Hero. I’ll kill him for you. I swear to God, I’ll kill them for this,” Bea muttered to herself.
She just stayed there, cross-legged on the floor, and finally let herself cry for herself. Her baby cousin was hurt and she couldn’t do anything. Her best friend had approved. She cried as quietly as she could, but then she heard someone clear their throat behind her.
“Bea?”
She whirled around to see none other than… Benedick. Shit. She’d been crying, she didn’t cry in front of people, why the hell was he still in the damn house anyway? Not bothering to get up, she hissed, “What do you want, you asshole? Because I have a hit list, and if you’re gonna defend your goddamn shit friends to me, I swear to God that you’re gonna be at the top.”
“No, I swear, Bea, I- I’m not. I can’t believe they did that. You have to believe me,” he said, a pleading tone to his voice. He took a few steps toward her, before sitting down in front of her. “She didn’t deserve that. No one deserves that. Regardless of whatever happened-“
“Whatever happened?!” Bea cut him off. “She didn’t do it! Hero would never do that! Did you not see her last video? She was in love with that jerk!”
He threw his hands up in surrender. “I know that Bea, I know. Remember, she may be your cousin, but I have been going to the same school as her for years now. That girl would never hurt a fly. In fact if she somehow did hurt one by accident, I’m sure she would make a microscopic splint for it and nurse it back to health before setting it free in a lovely all-organic compost heap.”
She let out a small laugh at this, but the effort also brought forth a few tears… and a little snot. She tried to discreetly wipe her face as she nodded.
“I just… They were my friends… and they just… one of my best friends, and he just- he approved. His face, he was all smug, he thought it was-“ and then she was crying again, and she didn’t have the energy to care that she was doing this in front of Benedick Hobbes, of all people. She just put her face in her hands and cried, because what else could she do?
“Hey, hey, hey, don’t- do that,” he said awkwardly, before pulling her forward into a hug. It felt weird, but a good weird. She buried her face in his shoulder (at least he couldn’t see her crying this way) and even found herself putting her arms around him, trying to disappear into the hug. Disappear and not deal with her problems.
After a few seconds, he spoke again. “They were being dicks. Total dicks. And this is coming from the guy whose name literally contains the word ‘dick,’” he muttered into her hair.
“They were my friends, Ben. How could they- how could I be friends with people who would do something like that? To someone like Hero? One of my best friends, since we were kids…”
“They were mine too, Bea. I know. People are shit.”
Another few seconds passed in silence, before Bea spoke up again.
“…I think I’m getting snot on your shirt.”
Ben pulled back, keeping his hands on her shoulders, glanced down at his shirt, and looked back up at her. “So you did. Luckily this is dry-clean-only, so I don’t have to touch your disgusting face slime.”
Bea laughed, a genuine laugh this time, and shoved him in the chest with both hands. “You stupid prick,” she laughed.
“Actually,” he quipped back, “it’s pronounced Ben-e-dick.”