Chapter Text
Hero cheated.
Beatrice had been letting those word sink for a few days now. Pinky-in-the-air, tea-drinking, incapable-of-swearing Hero, her own cousin whom she thought she knew everything about had made a mistake - and not a small one at that.
Hero’s sweetness was one of the only constants in Beatrice’s life. Not that she wasn’t sweet anymore, but she was now a “cheater”. Beatrice could still remember the agony on Hero’s face at her birthday party a week ago. Her trembling hands, the fidgeting while she was defending herself. Her firm conviction, shouting that she had done nothing wrong, that she could have never cheated on Claudio. All of this was a lie.
Beatrice had spent hours reflecting on the situation. Whether or not there were any signs that Hero wasn’t happy with Claudio and that she wanted to get out of that relationship. Nobody suspected a thing, not even her, who knew her cousin better than anyone else. Or at least, that’s what she thought before. Beatrice’s ignorance was displayed on the internet for everyone to see and comment upon. She so ardently defended Hero – her loyalty and her sweetness – and it turns out that she was wrong and they were right. She really was the idiot. However, anyone would be wrong to assume she was angry at Hero for lying and cheating. She was his cousin and even if she lied, she did it out of the fear of retaliation, and history proved her right. Hero wasn’t a bad person, by far, and one mistake does not define a person. That, was Beatrice sure of.
Lying on her bed, a blue blanket covering her feet, Beatrice was still wondering what she had missed. Even Frankenstein, laying on her stomach, couldn’t help her take her mind off the path of the “what if.” She figured music could maybe help her understand. It had a way of putting everything in perspective, as if the harmonies and the words were a canvas on which everything could be explained. Unfortunately for her lazy self, her iPod was downstairs, on the kitchen counter where she left it this morning. Weighing the pros and cons of getting out of bed, she decided that it was worth it. She had – in addition to music – games and Wifi access on her iPod.
Left foot on the cold floor, the right one following soon after, and the lazy Beatrice was now sitting on the bed. Her hands pushing against the bed sheets, she jumped to her feet and slowly made her way toward the white door. As she was reaching for the knob, she heard three little knocks on her door.
“Bea?” a distinctive male voice said, “Leo told me you –“
Beatrice’s eyes opened and a rare smile bloomed on her face. She opened the door to find herself face to face with a skinny tall boy with brown hair who was defying gravity.
“-were in your room…” Benedick’s voice faded on the last part of his sentence, as he found himself face to face with Beatrice.
They stood there awkwardly. Ben, with his hand up in his hair and Beatrice, arms crossed, looking down on her feet.
“You’re early. I wasn’t expecting you, which explains the state I’m in”, remarked Beatrice.
Ben’s gaze went from her mismatched socks to her pajamas and then to the blond messy bun sitting on her head. He smirked.
“If you want, I can come back once you deem yourself worthy of my presence.”
Beatrice laughed a bit but Ben could tell that her heart wasn’t in it. It was their first time together since they had filmed the video – they had made the decision to cut their conversation at the end out of the video – and that he confessed that he liked her in a way that left out any ambiguous interpretation. They had discussed for hours after that – and maybe made out with each other a bit more – and decided, in light of recent events, to keep their newly formed relationship in the dark from everyone else.
Which was fortunate because if Leo had known, Ben wouldn’t be standing under the porch of her bedroom door.
Beatrice was the first the break the silence. It was an unusual situation for the both of them to be at a loss for words.
“Do you want to come in? Watch a movie, maybe?”
Both Beatrice and Ben were afraid that what was said and done between them the last time they saw each other was simply due to the vulnerability of the moment. That the feelings said out loud had been expressed out of loneliness and that they had come to regret them. After what happened with Hero, they had come to expect anything from anyone.
“I thought that maybe we could talk?” answered Benedick, “After everything that happened, with Hero and with the filming of the last video, I feel like we need to – “
“We need to clarify some things and communicate a little bit better? “ Interrupted a grinning Beatrice.
“Exactly.”
They sat down on the bed - the only available thing in the room to sit on with the exception of the floor, and nobody wants to sit on the floor when there is a comfortable bed available. Especially when you spent a considerable amount of time making out with the only other person in the room the last time you were both alone. Their back against the wall, they were close enough that anyone who’d enter the room would believe them to be more than just friends, but not close enough so that their hips and their legs were touching.
Beatrice wanted more than anything, in this instant, to feel that Ben had been sincere in his affection and that he would take her hand. And so here she was, both hands in her lap, her head tilted back and her legs crossed, waiting for Ben to start talking. They had both benn wrong, and Beatrice was afraid that he was maybe angry at her for making him stand against his best friends. She was observing Ben to try to gauge what he was feeling, and what he wanted to say to her that couldn’t wait. He was mimicking her position and all Beatrice was seeing was the rapidly shifting eyes, the fidgeting of the hands and his controlled breathing. She didn’t know what to make of that.
He finally broke the awkward silence. “How’s Hero?”
Beatrice’s eyebrows went up in surprise: this was not a question she expected.
She answered, unsure of what he wanted her to say. “She’s not doing that great. I mean, even if Claudio was indeed right, it excuses in no way his obnoxious douchebag attitude at the party. It was a private issue for a private conversation, not an occasion to air your dirty laundry for everyone to see.”
Ben kept looking in front of him and then asked Beatrice how she was feeling.
That was a question she expected and she replied. “I’m not sure. It’s been exhausting, trying to make sense of everything that has happened. I still don’t know why Hero would ever cheat on Claudio and if, somehow, I could’ve picked up on the signs that she wasn’t happy with him. I mean you saw the videos, the two of them together. The smiles, the laughs, the touching, there was nothing to indicate that she wasn’t infatuated with him. ”
At this point, Beatrice had difficulties holding back her tears and her fast breathing was shallow.
She continued. “I feel so guilty for pushing toward a relationship she clearly didn’t want. It’s all my fault and –“
Ben moved his hand toward the palm of her right hand, entwining her fingers with his and didn’t let go.
Beatrice was surprised at how open she’d been with Benedick. She usually never let her emotions get the best of her, but there they were, sitting next to each other, him listening to her pouring her heart out. It wasn’t supposed to be like that for them. They weren’t supposed to have fallen for each other.
“Hero never told you why she did it?” Inquired Ben.
Beatrice remembered clear as day how Hero confessed to her that she had lied to everyone at that party, including herself, and that she had kissed Robbie that night.
It wasn’t long after she had posted “Idiots” that her cousin had come into her bedroom, her face all red and tears streaming down her face. It all went down in five minutes where she explained that she couldn’t take it anymore, that she couldn’t let Beatrice and Benedick and everyone else make fools of themselves defending what she knew was not the truth.
“You should’ve seen her. She was trembling, stuttering and had to stop every few words to regain her breathing. She was clearly still shaken from everything that Claudio had said to her, the way he said it to her. I tried to get her to stay with me, but she wouldn’t let me. That was it,” she finished.
Ben took a deep breath and turned his head toward Beatrice, still holding her hand. He bit his lips and said “I still maintain that they were very much in the wrong just by the way Claudio decided to treat her. Everything we said in that video is still true. Hero is still one of the sweetest people I know and we were right to stand by her side even though we were in the wrong. And – and – “
Ben took a deep breath and by that silence Beatrice knew, hoped for, what he was about to say – or ask.
“and I hope you still mean what you said – what we discussed – after.”
Benedick moved his left hand, still intertwined with Beatrice’s, and added, with a grin on his face.
“Clearly you still mean some of what you’ve said or I would’ve ended up with a slap on the face and not my hand in yours,” he joked.
Beatrice promptly removed her hand and punched Ben’s shoulder, prompting a slight scream from him.
“Oh, it’s on, Beatrice,” said a suddenly not so quiet Benedick, emphasizing her name, “it is so on.”
Beatrice raised one her eyebrows, an invitation to act upon his words. As Ben was reaching to tickle a now giggling Beatrice, they heard a small knock on the door and quickly stepped away from each other and off the bed.
There was only one person Beatrice knew that knocked as shyly as this and it’s because of that fact that she almost tripped on her way to the door.
“Hero.”
It was indeed her cousin, standing in front of her, in her pajamas, a blanket on her shoulder. Her face was swollen red and her hair was up in a ponytail. Her eyes were locked on the floor and with a brittle voice she stuttered, “I can’t bear being alone with my thoughts, I need to – oh”, she stopped as she was looking up and noticing a very discreet Benedick, half-hiding near the sunny window, “I’ll – I’ll come back later, sorry. I thought I had heard voices, but I figured it was just Leo’s friend downstairs.”
“I was just leaving”, he stated. “Hero, I still mean everything I said in the video. I don’t hate you. At all. Bye.”
Head down, Ben started to make his way between the two cousins. As he passed Beatrice, he accidentally brushed her arm and neither of them could deny the shivers and the butterflies in their stomach at the contact they both craved.
As the last stomps of Ben’s descent on the stairs were heard, Beatrice hugged Hero and muttered into her ear, “All will be well.”