Chapter Text
Beatrice is settling in her new office when she hears a loud laugh through her open door. She thinks, absently, as she unpacks her diplomas and the few personal items she keeps at work, that it’s lovely. It’s followed moments later by a knock, and Beatrice turns from placing a small prayer plant on one of the bookshelves lining the wall behind her desk to see Camila, smiling widely and holding two cups of coffee.
She’s not alone. That, in itself, is not a surprise. Camila had asked if it was okay for her to bring company when they made plans for lunch today. Beatrice had assumed she meant Lilith, because she always means Lilith. Or, she had before today. The woman behind Camila is possibly the most beautiful person Beatrice has ever seen, and Beatrice is not prone to hyperbole. She’s wearing a large tweed blazer over a white t-shirt tucked into high-waisted jeans, and her hair, cut above her shoulders, is a little bit wild as it largely escapes a bun. She’s grinning at Beatrice as though they’re close friends, genuine happiness in her expression and generally radiating from her, and she waves eagerly with the arm not holding a cup of iced coffee as she stops just short of Beatrice’s desk. It’s incredibly disarming. Beatrice blinks. Blinks again. When their eyes meet, her smile grows somehow bigger and she bounces on her toes for a moment, wincing a little when a small amount of her iced coffee lands on the sleeve of her blazer. The smile is back quickly, though, and she shrugs at Beatrice with one shoulder. Inexplicably, Beatrice’s stomach swoops.
“Beatrice!” Camila comes in for a hug, sitting one of the coffees on Beatrice’s desk and stepping around a box to wrap an arm around Beatrice’s waist. Beatrice reflexively does the same, grateful to find her limbs still work, and forces herself to look at her friend instead of continuing to stare. She’s wearing dark green pants and her ever-present converse, white today, with a color-blocked cardigan. Beatrice is glad she chose not to wear her full suit, feels overdressed enough in her navy dress pants and light blue button-down.
Her eyes drift back to the other woman as Camila says, “This is my friend, Ava. Ava, this is Beatrice, who as you can see is a real person.” She squeezes Beatrice’s waist. “Ava has had doubts about your existence given how much I talk about you and how little you actually appear.” It’s said without malice but Beatrice blanches anyway. She hates having been such an absent friend. Camila presses her head to Beatrice's shoulder briefly; she's known Beatrice long enough to know what she's thinking. “Of course, she wouldn’t have had to doubt if you hadn’t had to cancel on basically everything fun over the last year because your stupid bosses had no respect for your life. Have I mentioned today that I am very excited that you’ve left that disaster of a job? You can’t get away from me now, you know. I get to bother you at work and in the life you’ll be able to have outside of work, too. I’m starting now. Well, I’m starting in like 30 minutes. One of the developers is having an issue and wants to talk so I’ll have to step out for a few. Sorry, he texted literally as we got off of the elevator, and I’m managing the project, so I am on call for things like this. I swear I’ll be quick.” She pauses briefly to put her own coffee down next to the cup she’d already placed on the desk and wrap a second arm around Beatrice for a full side hug.
“Anyway, we brought coffee because we were thinking Vietnamese and it’s a bit of a walk, if that’s okay? Lil is going to meet us there. Oh, I’m so glad you’re here.” She presses back into Beatrice's shoulder and rocks their bodies side to side in a demonstration of enthusiasm. Beatrice catches her arm across the front of her body and holds it to her, familiar feelings of warmth toward her friend giving her a reprieve from her ridiculous reaction to Ava. Unfortunately, when she looks up, she finds Ava wearing a fond expression, the corners of her eyes crinkled slightly, and when she catches Beatrice’s eye, whatever normalcy she’d found in Camila’s affection flees at the force of the smile now being directed her. Her stomach clenches.
Beatrice knows that she has been given a cue to speak. Several, in fact. Camila has introduced her to someone and asked her a question about her preferences for lunch. She has also characterized herself as a bother, which Beatrice wants to correct, even if she’s aware it was a joke. Beatrice, as a functioning adult who has in fact had human conversation before, should be able to address all three of these things. She finds herself embarrassingly incapable of doing so.
The hand Camila still has around her squeezes gently at her waist in what Beatrice is sure is concern. She is not often flustered, and her failure to respond immediately to the introduction is a sure giveaway that she is not operating at full capacity. There are a few things from her upbringing that she willingly keeps with her, one of which is the importance of being respectful, of being, when possible, polite. Currently, she’s failing miserably for no real reason. It’s unacceptable.
She triages. Minimally, she can say hello. She wants to say hello. She lifts the hand not around Camila’s waist and mechanically raises it, holds it stiffly in the air next to her body, elbow at a right angle and fingers pressed together. Some part of her brain was surely attempting to mirror Ava’s enthusiastic greeting. What she has done instead could, generously, be considered a cousin to a wave, but Beatrice has never been generous with herself. She looks like she’s taking the oath of office. She looks like she’s directing traffic. She looks like an absolute idiot.
“Hi.”
Heat rushes to her face. She can feel Camila’s eyes boring into her but she will not look at her. She shifts her hand just slightly to Beatrice’s back and...pats it gently, reassuring Beatrice as someone might reassure a shy child meeting someone new. She finds it, despite herself, to be comforting and is grateful that Camila is gracious enough to have made the gesture subtly and out of Ava’s eyesight. She’s very glad Lilith is meeting them at the restaurant, can almost hear her, in derision and delight, assessing Beatrice: What the fuck is wrong with you?
It’s a fair question. She hasn’t felt this way since she was a teenager and Ali Brewer smiled at her for the first time. She had tripped on nothing in the hallway on the way to calculus. Even then, Beatrice was working on her second black belt and had already (begrudgingly) been in ballet for a decade. She did not trip. But she did for Ali, and now, it seems, she’s tripping for Ava as well. Beatrice quickly moves her hand back down, and Ava mercifully speaks, leaning a hip against the side of the desk and still grinning at Beatrice, something new—amusement?—dancing in her eyes.
“Hi." It's tinged with, yes, amusement, but she's kind and moves on quickly. "So great to finally meet you. And, yeah, to be totally transparent, I did tell Cam that I was skeptical but I also might have, a few times on our last project, suggested to Lilith that she made you up to make it seem like she had a friend who wasn’t her girlfriend and that poor Cam was going along with it out of love.” At the noise of protest Camila emits, she says easily, “You know you would. Plus, she deserved it, and it was a fun bit.”
Beatrice lets out a laugh, surprising herself and delighting Ava, based on the expression that spreads across her face. She feels Ava’s smile like a sense of pride, which is absurd. Recalling her Rosey the Robot impression of moments ago, Beatrice is reminded that absurd is a relative term, and she’ll take pride over idiocy any day. She flexes the fingers of her free hand to get rid of some of her nervous energy, relaxes her shoulders with an intentional deep breath. This is comfortable territory—making fun of Lilith has put her at ease for most of her life at this point. This, she knows how to do.
“Actually, maybe we could keep it going?” Her eyes glint and Beatrice admires the way the natural light in her office makes the brown of her irises even brighter. “I can pretend not to see you at the restaurant and act confused every time she speaks to you.”
“I’m in.” She says it without hesitation and she is relieved that she sounds like herself and not someone who had two minutes ago been totally uncertain of how to move her own arms.
Camila unwraps herself from Beatrice and flicks her shoulder before moving around the desk to do the same to Ava. “Hey. Be nice. Both of you.” She sighs a little and smiles. “The two of you are going to be a problem for her.”
“She shouldn’t dish it out if she can’t take it, Cam.” Ava waves her hands in the air carelessly as she teases. Well, she attempts to wave her hands in the air carelessly. What she actually does is wave one hand and spill coffee on her white shirt with the other. She groans at herself. “Well this is embarrassing. And cold. Karmic justice? Or, oh, did Lilith curse me?” She waggles her eyebrows at Beatrice and accepts another flick from Camila in penance. “Wait, no. I’ve always been like this.” She shrugs sheepishly and looks down at her shirt again. “I have a spare in my office. Black. Which is clearly what I should’ve started with but like, gotta stay optimistic, right? Anyway, hi, hello, real-person Beatrice. Very pumped for our future work together messing with Lilith. How’s your first day going?”
She’s genuine and self-deprecating, and Beatrice is…charmed. Ava is beautiful in a way that makes Beatrice behave like a teenager but she’s also incredibly likable. Dangerously likable, maybe, but Beatrice lets that thought fall away as she watches Ava pull slightly at the fabric of her shirt as if maybe that will fix the stain. Ava is a real person. Beatrice is a real person. Beatrice the real person can do this.
“Hello, also-real Ava. Always happy to have company in mocking Lilith. We can exchange notes—this has been a hobby of mine for nearly two decades now.” At this Ava moves her hands again, possibly to clap in excitement, but stops herself quickly, before the motion gets away from her. She puts her coffee down on Beatrice’s desk and darts her eyes between the coffee cup and Beatrice, eyebrows raised and face full of pride. Beatrice, who believes strongly in positive reinforcement, gives her a thumbs up. She barely has time to want to crawl under her desk (today maybe Beatrice is prone to hyperbole) before Ava laughs and claps, taking a half-bow. Beatrice has managed somehow to do exactly the right thing, and she smiles widely, does not bother to restrain herself the way she normally would around a relative stranger. “Thank you, thank you. I can learn.”
Camila is looking between them with interest, and Beatrice has no desire to let that continue uninterrupted, so she’s speaking again. “Very impressive. Well done you.” Ava’s smirk lets her know the sarcasm is fine. “And my first day is going well, thank you, although I haven’t done much more than meet with HR and sign paperwork and unpack a few things. They very kindly wanted to give me time to get settled.”
“See? Better gig already. I’ll say it again—I could not be more relieved that you’re out of that place and I could not be happier that you’re here.” Camila’s phone sounds and she looks at the screen and sighs. “I have to run back to my office to take this call—I’m afraid he’ll need me to take a look at the code—but it won’t be more than twenty minutes, promise. Ava, I can stop by your office and grab your extra shirt so you don’t have to go back down. Unless you want to?”
“Nah, I’d rather stay and keep Beatrice company. If that’s okay?” Beatrice manages to nod and smile and maintains almost every bit of her composure at the look she receives in response. “Thanks, Cam. Bottom left drawer, where the Advil is.” With a wave at them both, Camila steps into the hallway, closing Beatrice’s door behind her.
Ava adjusts her body slightly where she has leaned back against the desk and Beatrice is reminded of the fact that both of the chairs in front of her are currently full of boxes of law books. She moves immediately to fix this.
“I’m so sorry. Let me move these. Please sit.”
She picks up one of the boxes and starts toward the small table that takes up the left side of her office but she doesn’t make it more than a step before Ava protests, “I’m totally fine. Promise. Want help unloading, or do you have a whole system?” Her smile is teasing, and she immediately answers her own question with a fond lilt, “You definitely have a system.”
The interaction is easier, maybe, than it should be given that they’ve only just met, but Beatrice is strangely pleased at the familiarity, even as she feels herself blush. Given that she’s likely been one shade of red or another for most of this encounter, she’s not certain if Ava will even notice. “Yes, I do. But…” Ava dips her head in encouragement. Beatrice sighs and puts the box back in the chair. “But I’ve already organized everything so that it can be unpacked easily. There are…small numbered post-it tabs on the spine of each one with backups on the inside cover.”
“Wow, yes, I love it.” She steps away from the desk and toward one of the boxes, bending slightly to look at the cover of a book and clasping her hands together in front of her as though she’s preparing to do something very interesting. She picks up one of the constitutional law texts and holds it with surprising care. “Put me to work, boss.”
They make their way through the boxes quickly, because Beatrice is exceptionally well-organized and efficient, and move to the chairs by Beatrice’s desk to talk. Ava is listening, brow furrowed and leg bouncing in what Beatrice is almost certain is a sign of a tendency toward kinesthetic learning rather than boredom, as Beatrice talks about the intersections of gender and the law. She’s been on a tangent, but Ava asked about the book from her class, and then about Beatrice’s favorite part of the class, and then kept asking thoughtful questions. Typically, Beatrice would be hesitant to take up this much time and space, but she finds it surprisingly easy to lose herself in conversation with Ava, even catching herself making emphatic hand motions that she would normally suppress on instinct. She’s comfortable, in large part due to Ava, who has over the last twenty minutes or so leaned the smallest amount into Beatrice’s space anytime she hesitated, afraid she was being too much or too boring, and looked at her like she was about to say the most interesting thing on earth.
She stops talking when she spots Camila in the doorway, and Ava frowns at the disruption. Ava does it so genuinely, is so clearly actually displeased that Beatrice has stopped her explanation of the notice and comment process and what it means for Title IX. Beatrice's chest tightens with affection and something else; gratitude, she thinks, though that's not quite it. She's watching Ava, who appears to be somewhat consoled when she sees it’s Camila. She hands Ava a black t-shirt and then comes to stand beside Beatrice. Beatrice, who, despite herself, despite Ava’s reassurances, despite that perfect frown, still feels the need to apologize. This uncertainty about her own value is one of the many things from her parents that she's working to leave behind. “I’m sorry. I feel like that was probably more than what you wanted to know about Title IX.”
Ava shakes her head and finds Beatrice’s eyes, keeps them as says with a surprisingly serious tone, “Nope. Definitely want to buy you a beer and make you tell me more about literally all of that. If you’re interested in talking about it, I mean. I know maybe it’s like work? I’d also like to talk to you about other things.” In a role reversal that has Beatrice feeling a small spark of hope, Ava turns very subtly pink.
“No, no. I’d love to talk more about it. And about other things.” She means it. She wants to keep talking to Ava, wants to create opportunities for Ava to speak about herself. She wants to know her, so she is brave for a moment and says so. “I’d like to hear more about you.” The pink becomes less subtle. She’s beautiful.
Camila, delighted, says, “Yay! I knew you would get along. Sorry again about the interruption but,” she eyes Beatrice’s bookshelves and then the two of them with about a teaspoon of subtlety, “it looks like you two were productive. Ready to eat? Ava, we can stop at the bathroom for you to change. I’ll text Lilith.” Ava is up and moving toward the door with an enthusiastic nod, pondering her options for lunch aloud and wondering, without any hint of shame in her voice, if she should “even bother changing my shirt before we eat because, y’know.”
As Beatrice moves to follow her, Camila squeezes her elbow. When Beatrice turns, both of her eyebrows are raised and her smile is all too knowing. Her cheeks flush, again, and she shakes her head lightly. She knows she’ll be hearing more about this later but for now, Camila accepts her silence, linking their arms together and moving them toward the door.