Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It’s been almost eight hours.

Was she about to vomit? She feels like she might.

This is a damn nightmare. This is so bad. She should have known it was a bad idea since she started drinking and thinking of her. Of course Beatrice wouldn’t encourage such behavior, especially because of her upbringing. Ava wanted to die.

It was bad enough that Mary told her it was a good idea, of course it wasn’t a good idea. Mary just wanted to fuck with her.

Ava didn’t even remember to actually send that text, but it had obviously been her, she remembered the conversation she had about it clearly enough to cringe. She had woken up and checked her phone, as usual, to find her text thread with Beatrice, where that last message sits read and ignored.

What the fuck was she supposed to do now? Run? Tell her it was a joke? There’s no way she was gonna believe it was a joke, Beatrice was not stupid.

She needed back up.

Across from town, exactly eight hours since the text:

Beatrice looked at her phone, like she has for the past forty minutes, and tried once again to decode Ava’s text.

She had no idea, no even one. She usually was smart enough to understand Ava’s just-emotion based messages. But this one eluded her, she couldn’t think of anything at all. Not anything logical at least.

Beatrice frowned at the cell phone, looking offended at it trying to decipher an impossible text. It came in the early hours of the night, right when Beatrice was deeply asleep, possibly since 10pm. She did stay up late reading a book and failed to go to sleep at her usual eight. She didn’t even hear her phone ringing, but when she woke up and grabbed her phone to check on the weather for her morning run she saw the confusing text in her inbox. What did it mean? She had absolutely no idea.

She had left it unread at the time and tried to think of the meaning while on her run, even after two hours nothing came up, she knew Ava was probably asleep so wouldn’t feel too displeased, but know, while she tried to actually reply, she realized she had no a single idea about what to say. And she refused to ask Ava what it meant, not after she complimented Beatrice’s brain and her capacity to understand her after she decoded an eleven-piece emoji code where it said that she received a kick in the mouth from Lilith and almost passed out, not a chance. If she could decode: 👿🦵👼👅✖🦷, 👁🥜🍂😃📤, she could decode two emojis.

“Okay, let’s see,” She murmured to herself.

She’s known Ava for quite a few years now, they work together at The brew box, Mary and Shannon’s little coffee shop downtown, and after some awkward first impressions they actually made it through and ended up with a good friendship, Beatrice was closer to Ava than any of her hometown friends.

“I am… a horn? leg?” she read outloud in the silence of the shared living room she had with her roommates, she kept reading as if it would magically make sense “Kicking… horns?” she frowned, as she whispered words “Horn… as in music? and a leg… as in walk?”

‘Did you join a marching band?’ she wrote, “No, no, that’s not it, she can't play any instrument” she bit her lip, deep in thought, wondering if she should google it.

No, that’s cheating. She felt tempted anyway, when three hours later she still couldn’t figure it out, she just couldn't phantom what a French horn and a disembodied leg meant.

She immediately threw to the bin the idea of Ava having her knee torn because of a french horn, Ava was careless but not that much.

What would she be doing at 2 in the morning with a horn, a french horn…

Wait.

Did Ava fight a French person and they kick her? It was possible that if the kick was amazing she would tell her about it, but at 2 a.m.? What would she be doing outside that late on a weekday?

She was growing frustrated and she was already late for work. Well, not late, but late to be early, and late to early is on time and on time is late, so yes, late.

Growling, with the phone still in hand, she walked the short distance from her apartment complex to the coffee shop. She had a short shift today, which meant she was about to see Ava for a short period of time only, maybe she should just ask.

No.

Over her dead body. Ava liked that she understood her. Keep thinking Beatrice.

When she arrived she saw Camila there, presumably for the end of her shift, no sight of
Ava, she was usually late, she would just wait, it was still early.

“Hey Bea, why the long face?” Camila asked, relaxed from behind the bar.

The older woman looked at her, considering if telling her would be cheating… fuck it, i need to know “Ava sent me a text message yesterday and i can’t figure out what it says” she said, blushing, as if Ava’s texting tendencies were in the normal english spectrum, and not understanding them wasn’t the default.

Camila took a sip of her coffee as she pointed to Beatrice's phone “I can take a look if you want, we all know how you refuse to learn any text abbreviations” Beatrice rolled her eyes but handed her the phone anyways.

“I don’t understand why any of you can’t just type like a normal person” Camila smiled as she grabbed the phone.

“Oh…” the smirk erased off her face; her brows high up, almost touching her hairline.

“What? What does it mean?” she worried it might mean she got kicked by a French person.

Camila looked at her, a strange glow in her eyes, amusement dancing along her face, it confused Beatrice even more. Was it not an emergency then?

“Maybe you should ask her… just to be sure” Camila said getting up from her seat.

“What do you think it means?” Beatrice asked again, conspiratorially.

“Maybe she just needs a hand… or two” she grinned, “Talk to her and tell me how it goes”

As Camila walked away with a smug grin, coffee still in hand, Beatrice wondered briefly if maybe it was like a joke? But what kind of joke?... This could take all day to figure it out, maybe she should just ask Ava.

A hand or two?

With a frown Beatrice read the text again, slowly.

Am, that meant the morning, so it happened early in the day, it was clearly shortly before that text. A french horn… wait, that’s not a french horn, unless emojis have suddenly become less detailed, it was a circular hunting horn. Blood drained from her face, did she go hunting and something happened to her.

‘Did you hurt your leg hunting?’ she wrote. Just imagining Ava with a bullet hole in her leg was enough to upset her greatly.

And it was strange, it all fit, Ava didn’t seem to go more than three hours before she sent her something; lately it’s been mostly kitten videos and beef empanadas, Beatrice enjoyed the recipes well enough and the kittens were cute, she wasn’t complaining, not that anything Ava sent would ever bother her in any way.

But it’s been too many hours, if she went to the ER she would already be out.

She drew a breath, Ava was afraid of hospitals. What if she was asking for her help and Beatrice ignored her. What if she bled to death. Beatrice killed her.

Wait. Ava doesn’t own a gun, nobody they know does… well maybe Mary but she would not let Ava near a gun, not even in her sleep.

Maybe she didn’t go hunting, but something happened, Camila said Ava would need her two hands anyways… but she looked amused, not concerned.

“What did you do?” she wrote instead. Still not sending anything. Buffing she blocked her phone. Where was she? Their shift would start in fifteen minutes.

With a deep breath she walked to the staff room to put her stuff on her locker, maybe, if Ava was punctual today she could ask her about her text message, maybe she would have a good joke to tell on christmas eve at her parent’s for once.

But Ava didn’t come on time, or at all, and when Beatrice asked Shannon, their manager at the cafeteria, she told her Ava called in sick at seven. Which was a mystery on its own, Ava was never not even once on time, what was she doing awake at seven?. She decided to text her.

Beatrice decided that maybe she should humor her and just send a emoji like she does, to cheer her up.

She looked at the text for a few seconds, if Ava was sick she was probably feeling terrible, she decided maybe she should make the effort and be a little more expressive for her sake, ‘:(‘ she had written, just so Ava knew she felt for her situation. And then typed another character ‘>:(‘ in the sake of expressing how she felt.

Yes, that will tell her how bad I feel about her sickness. I’m totally getting the hang of it. She praised herself.

Beatrice supposed that it may be a while before she received a reply, even if most of the time the girl responded within five minutes time, sometimes even less, unless she was asleep.

Beatrice served coffee to just about everyone in town as she waited for the answer, hours passed by and nothing. She was starting to get worried again, should she maybe go over and check on her? Maybe after work. She did contact Shannon so she was alive, nothing to worry about, maybe she is just sick and not dying randomly on a wednesday.

It was almost time to go home and she still got no reply from Ava. She tried to push the jealousy that creeped behind her back as she thought about the fact that Ava did communicate with other people today.

What if the text meant she wasn’t putting up with Beatrice’s shit anymore. But what did she do? She looked at the clock wishing for it to move faster, she had to know now, and she was not gonna have that chat via phone.

“Hey, you good?” Shannon asked with a frown, she must have noticed how unsettled she was.

“I’m fine” she said, and then “What did Ava tell you specifically?”

Shannon looked at her amused “You worried?” and then her trademark calming smile “She is fine, she just partied too hard last night and asked to change her shift and i said yes”

Beatrice now looked at her untrusty “You said yes? You never say yes”

“She offered to do unpaid extra hours, and how could I refuse that?” she smirked “Plus Mary told me she was probably sick as hell so having her here would be like having a dead body serving coffee”

Beatrice noded, it was a known fact that Hung over Ava was as useful as a holeless strainer.

As soon as Beatrice’s shift was over and with a handful of Ava’s favorite pastries safely in her backpack, she walked all the way to her apartment, which was less than ten minutes short —One of the main reasons why Beatrice didn’t understand Ava’s tardiness, with such a short walk.

Supposing Ava was actually feeling terrible she used her emergency key, the one Ava gave her all those months ago. But, to her surprise Ava was not in bed, or alone, or actually ill. Beatrice looked at the scene with surprise and clear confusion.

In front of her, standing on the couch, with her hands in the air, was Ava, frozen in place looking at her with her big eyes full of panic, just as everyone else, —except Lilith who seemed to be the only one smiling/not confused at all/actually enjoying whatever was happening— Michael at her side, standing on the floor, looking at her as if Beatrice was the death itself, and then Hans who was pointing to the phone —Ava’s, Beatrice recognised—, and who seemed just as panicked as everyone else.

“I let myself in” Beatrice showed the keys, and for some reason that made Ava, still standing on the couch, beet red.

“This is gonna be so good,” Lilith said quietly with a big smile.

“I thought Shannon said you were sick?” Beatrcice said, feeling like an intruder.

Both of the boys looked at Ava in under a second after the words left her mouth, the room was filled with tension and Beatrice was confused as to why. But as has been happening the boys interrupted her before she could ask.

“We’re going to go,” Hans said, while Michael pushed Lilith out of the room, with a soft “You too”

“Good luck” Lilith let out with a bitchy smile to Ava before the boys closed the entry door behind them.

And then it was just them, looking at each other.

And then it was just Ava face-planting on the floor.