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Beatrice thought this was going to be the best Halloween ever . She had gotten her parents to let Mrs. Wilson, her nanny, take her out trick-or-treating. She was dressed as Princess Elsa, of course, and couldn’t wait to show all her new friends from first grade. They had only just started at the public school, because Beatrice’s daddy wanted to make sure he made a good impression for the politics, and because Beatrice would have the best tutors to teach her anything the public school didn’t, but Beatrice had already made so many new friends. The houses were too far apart for trick-or-treating where Beatrice lived, so Mrs. Wilson was going to take her to a part of town where the houses were close enough together to walk between them, and where more of her classmates were.
She was extra excited when she got to the third house, because the nice lady there was handing out toothbrushes and toothpaste, and Beatrice got a toothbrush with Anna and Elsa and Olaf on it, and she was so excited to brush with it when she got home.
When she got back to the sidewalk, she was so excited that she told her new classmate, Ava Silva, that she had to go to this house, they had the best stuff. Normally, Beatrice might not have bothered. The truth was, she didn’t really like Ava Silva. Ava was always hogging the swings, and taking extra turns, and being loud in class when it was reading time, and she and Beatrice had yelled at each other more than once on the playground so far. But Beatrice was practicing kindness, like Mrs. Hoffstein told her about, and she felt pretty good about it too.
At least, until something hit her in the back of the head.
“Ow!!!!” She spun around and saw an angry Ava stomping down the block towards her, and a Moana toothbrush on the ground by her feet. “Did you throw that at me!?”
“Yeah, because you tricked me into getting toothpaste! I hate toothpaste!” Ava’s mom seemed to not have heard her, and was still at the woman’s door, chatting.
“Toothpaste is important! And if you don’t like it, that’s probably why your teeth are falling out, because they’re rotting!!!”
Ava shrieked. “My tooth fell out because it’s a baby tooth and I’m getting a grown-up tooth, and you would know that if you weren’t such a baby!”
“I know all about grown-up teeth, because my dentist said I don’t need to worry about that yet. Maybe you should get a dentist so you could know why you need to brush your teeth everyday so your breath isn’t gross.” By now Mrs. Wilson seemed to have turned around to intervene, and was saying something to Ava’s mother, who was just running up, but Beatrice didn’t care what they had to say.
Ava narrowed her eyes and pointed at Beatrice dramatically, which wasn’t very nice. The school had a “no pointing” rule for a reason. “I’m gonna put a curse on you, Beatrice.”
“That’s not real, you can’t do that!”
“I curse you to have nightmares every night until you say sorry for being mean to me!!!!”
Beatrice knew that curses weren’t real, but she thought she should do one too, just in case. “Well I curse you to have nightmares until you say sorry for throwing toothpaste at me!!!”
“Oh yeah?!?”
“Yeah!”
“Well tonight, you’re gonna dream that a scary clown is coming in your window.”
“Well tonight you’ll dream that a monster is under your bed and you can never leave your bed again or the monster will eat you!!!”
By now they were pretty far apart and had to shout really loud, because Ava’s mom and Mrs. Wilson were dragging Ava and Beatrice in opposite directions. Still, Beatrice thought she saw Ava start to cry, and she felt bad the rest of the night. Then she had a dream about a scary clown like Ava had said, and then she didn’t feel bad anymore, she just felt like she needed to give Ava another nightmare.
Beatrice hated Halloween.
****
Beatrice was scared of dying.
Her parents always told her that it was really important to mind her manners and say her prayers and do what they said always because if she didn’t, then God would be angry and she would go to hell and it would hurt forever. That made Beatrice feel anxious, because her second grade teacher, Mr. Simcox, had told her parents that she was doing bad at “social emotional” and she needed to make more friends, which meant if she died she was going to hell. Beatrice was already working really hard to make more friends, and it turned out all the kids on the playground were really excited to come over and play her Nintendo, so she thought she was going to get all As in social emotional. But still. What if she made a mistake?
She didn’t really understand what it meant to die until the principal told the school that Ava Silva’s mom died in a car crash over the summer while they were on vacation, and that Ava was hurt so bad she couldn’t move her body or even feel anything. That made Beatrice feel sad. She hadn’t seen Ava all summer, so she hadn’t sent her any nightmares for a while or gotten any from Ava. She still didn’t like Ava, but she knew Ava liked to run and jump and dance and play, even lots of times when the teacher told her it was calm time, and Beatrice thought it was really sad that Ava might not get to do those things any more, and that Ava's mom wouldn't get to do anything anymore.
All the kids talked about visiting Ava in the hospital, but Beatrice never did, and when she told her parents about it in October that made them angry. They said a lot of words about “keeping up appearances” and not “getting painted as heartless,” and then they decided that Beatrice had to share her Halloween candy with Ava that year. Beatrice didn’t like that, but then she thought about the fact that Ava probably couldn’t go trick or treating, so maybe it was OK to share.
The hospital was ugly, all white walls and white coats and sick people on rolly beds with bags of water hanging over their heads. When they got to Ava’s room, her parents sent her in while they put on their pretend faces and talked to the doctor about how sad it was that Ava got hurt. Beatrice was wearing an angel costume that year, even though she really wanted to be an astronaut, but she hoped Ava wouldn’t make fun of her for it.
“Ava?”
Ava was lying in one of the rolly beds, but this one didn’t look like it moved. She had a big yellow mark on her face and a few small cuts and a plastic tube in her nose. She didn’t have a costume or anything, but it looked like someone had put up some bats and pumpkins around the room. She looked really sad, until she turned her head and saw Beatrice. Then she looked angry.
“What do you want.”
“I heard you couldn’t go trick or treating, so I thought I could share.” Beatrice lifted up her Halloween bag to show Ava.
Ava frowned at her. “I don’t want anything from you.”
Beatrice didn’t know what to say. She was just trying to help, and she couldn’t understand why Ava was being mean to her. “I just thought that–”
"I don't want any stupid toothpaste, Beatrice! I can't move my hands, so I can't brush my teeth! I can't have any candy to eat because I’m not allowed to eat anything by myself because I might choke, and my whole life is a nightmare already, so GO AWAY !!!"
Then Ava started to cry, big loud sobs where she couldn’t even catch her breath, like Beatrice had cried when she told her daddy that she wanted to have a playdate with Melanie Cooper because she was pretty and her daddy yelled at her and said that Beatrice was a sinner and the Devil was going to burn her forever because it was bad for her to think girls were pretty. He had yelled so loud it hurt Beatrice’s ears and made her really scared, more scared than she had ever been of anything before. But she hadn’t yelled at Ava at all.
The doctor and a nurse came in to try to calm Ava down, and her parents said she did a bad job so she had to leave her whole Halloween bag for Ava, even though Ava couldn’t use any of it.
Beatrice thought that was the worst Halloween ever.
****
Ava Silva was the worst. Beatrice was completely, entirely, 100% certain that Ava was dressed as Adora because she heard that Beatrice was going to. JC said Ava didn’t even have streaming at her foster mom’s house (Miss Suzanne, who Beatrice always thought was a little scary), so why would she even want to dress up as Adora?
But here they were, at the Halloween parade for the whole elementary school, and Ava was just sitting there in her wheelchair, smug as could be, wearing an Adora outfit. The exact same outfit Beatrice was wearing, and the worst part was, she looked better than Beatrice did.
Beatrice couldn’t figure out why so many things seemed so easy for Ava. Beatrice worked constantly, stayed up late, studied extra on the weekends to earn straight As. Ava seemed to get them just by rolling out of bed in the morning and bragging to anyone who would listen how she didn’t study, she just played with Miss Suzanne’s dogs all weekend. Beatrice tried so hard to be popular, learning about all the girls in school, figuring out how to say the right things to make them happy, make them want to hang out with her. And when they started ignoring Ava because Beatrice didn’t like her? Ava just started hanging out with the boys and letting them race her wheelchair at recess. Ava even was starting puberty earlier than Beatrice, and was bragging to anyone who would listen that she was old enough to wear a training bra. Now she was wearing Beatrice’s costume better than Beatrice could, and everyone was going to see.
“Mrs. Aldritch? Can you please ask Ava to change her costume?” Beatrice figured it couldn’t hurt to ask, even if their teacher would probably say no, since they were already lined up for the parade and everything.
Mrs. Aldritch looked confused. “I’m sorry dear, why would Ava need to change her costume? I think you two make quite the pair.”
“Because she’s only wearing it to copy me, and it’s not nice to copy people to tease, that’s one of the class rules.”
Beatrice thought she must not have been quiet enough, because just then Ava rolled up to them in her wheelchair. “No, I didn’t, you’re the one who’s copying, you probably don’t even like cartoons.”
Beatrice rolled her eyes. “You don’t even have streaming, everyone knows that.”
Ava’s face turned bright red and she rolled up even closer to Beatrice. “It’s none of your business, but I actually watched with Chanel!!! ” It could be true. Chanel was the only girl in class who really still spoke to Ava more than she spoke to Beatrice. Beatrice thought that was because Chanel used to be a boy, and her parents said that made her bad, and God would smite her, but that hadn’t happened, even though Beatrice had taken to avoiding her a lot of the time. “In fact, you should have to change costumes. You’d be on the side of the Horde.”
That made Beatrice really angry. She was so good, tried so hard to be so good, all the time, just for Ava Silva to say she was one of the bad guys?!? “You’re so selfish . Why don’t you think about someone else for a change?”
“Why don’t you, you jerk?!?” And with that, Ava pushed herself out of the chair and threw herself at Beatrice. Beatrice had heard that Ava could walk sometimes now without the wheelchair, but she was still surprised by it. She was so surprised she even forgot all her aikido moves, and ended up rolling around and swinging her fists in big hammer blows while Ava hit and kicked and bit. Beatrice wasn’t sure which of them gave the assistant principal a black eye when he tried to separate them, but Beatrice was sure it was Ava’s fault. Her parents were going to be so mad, but that wasn’t even the worst part.
The worst part was when, just before they got pulled apart, Ava looked her right in the eye said “You’re gonna dream that you forgot to wear your costume at all and had to do the whole Halloween parade naked.”
And that was how Beatrice started thinking about nightmares for Ava again.
****
Ava knew this was going to be the worst Halloween ever. Well, maybe not worse than the one she spent paralyzed from the neck down, before her spine healed enough to do physical therapy. But the worst since then.
Ava couldn't think of a good nightmare, and it was killing her. Here she was, at a literal Halloween party, and she couldn't think of anything scary to haunt Beatrice's dreams.
“Losing your touch?”
“Shut up JC.”
She didn't say it angry or anything. Ava and JC broke up over the summer, but they were still cool. Ava probably wouldn't have gotten an invite otherwise. JC, like Beatrice, was popular. Ava, the kid with the dead mom and the runaway dad, Ava who sometimes needed a wheelchair and dropped stuff a lot, was not popular, except by transitive property of popularity. If that was even a thing. And unpopular juniors in high school who couldn't drive and weren't popular didn't get invited to Deanna Black's Halloween party.
“Aren't you two a little old for this?” JC was buzzing over Ava's shoulder. She thought about swatting him. “Like, neither one of you is … you're both really into science, you don't actually believe you can send someone else nightmares, right?”
Ava liked JC, but she deeply regretted telling him about her little ritual with Beatrice. And she hated that he was kind of right. It was ridiculous to try to send nightmares every night to the girl you've had a hate/hate relationship with since 1st grade. Stupid rich stuck up little Miss-Perfect-Goodie-Two-Shoes-with-a-side-of-condescension-and-pity Beatrice.
But JC was also wrong, because, for whatever reason, it worked. She was still mad at him for revealing to Beatrice that she was super scared of the girl from The Ring, just because Beatrice was his “best friend” or whatever. Beatrice had gotten a whole week of nightmares out of that one, and Ava had suffered through every one. Ava figured it was the power of suggestion.
“She already gave me hers for the night, JC. I need to respond. Otherwise she ends up on top.” JC snickered. “Shut up , JC.” It had been a bad one too. They had a Calculus test next week, and Beatrice had given her a slip of paper when the party started that said:
You wake up on the morning of the calculus test and realize you forgot to study. You try to run away, but the police catch you and bring you to school and everyone laughs at you while you sit at your desk the whole period and can't answer a single question and get a zero. Happy Halloween.
To be fair, that was probably because Ava had crossed a line with her last nightmare.
Your mom catches you with Deanna's hand down your pants.
JC had told her after that Beatrice’s parents were religious bigots, but how was Ava supposed to know that? Maybe she suspected, but that wasn't the same. And even if she had, she was just getting Beatrice back for the time before that when she….
So they had been escalating for a little while. So what.
Beatrice was over on the other side of the room in her Caitlyn outfit and her dyed blue hair in a long low ponytail, drinking some “punch” while trying her best not to stare down Deanna's ridiculously low-cut top. It made Ava smile, because it was the only justice in the world when it came to Beatrice. Ava thought it was incredibly unfair that someone so awful could grow up so beautiful, and popular, and smart, and talented, and rich, and awesome at everything she did. She even had both her parents still alive, and her arms and legs worked just fine all the time, which by itself proved that the universe loved Beatrice more than it loved Ava. But on the flip side, Beatrice couldn't flirt for shit.
Think of the devil and she appears, or however that went, because Beatrice chose that moment to look up and catch Ava's eye. She excused herself from her conversation with Deanna, who Ava was sure had mostly hosted this party to try to get into Beatrice’s pants, and walked over to Ava and JC. “JC.” Beatrice turned to look at Ava. “Loser.”
“Bitch.”
JC spoke up just as Beatrice’s eyes flashed, which was a shame, because Ava was feeling feisty and wished Beatrice would try her tonight. “Ava, Bea, let's all take it down a notch. Seriously, if you two would just give each other a chance, I think you'd actually like–”
“Shut up, JC,” they said in unison without taking their eyes off each other.
“So,” Beatrice continued, “what are you supposed to be anyway?”
Ava looked down at herself and then back up. “Ghost nun.”
Beatrice scoffed, then gestured at the paper in Ava's hand. “You going to spend your whole night scribbling that dream? What's the matter, can't you think of anything?”
Ava was about to make what was sure to be the most devastating comeback of her whole life, as soon as she figured out what she was going to say, when Deanna shouted to the room “who's ready for party games!?!?!”
****
Up first was “seven minutes in heaven.” Ava did her best to shrink into the background, given that there was no one here she wanted to kiss, much less make out with and grope in a closet for seven whole minutes. JC went first, and even though he would have been the least bad option for Ava, the bottle he spun landed on Zori. He came back looking bashful, and with her black lipstick all over his face.
Next was Chanel, who spun twice (because Chanel made her own rules) and ended up going with Naomi and Randall. Ava cheered as loudly as everyone else (Chanel was maybe her favorite person at school, even including JC), and the three of them came out looking like a tornado hit them. Chanel and Naomi had actually managed to switch costumes.
Next was Beatrice, who gave a quick glance to Deanna before she spun it just so, and Miss Perfect probably had practiced to get the bottle to point exactly where she wanted it to…except the bottle hit a patch of spilled punch that had dried sticky, and slowed, and landed on Ava. There were about three seconds of silence before the room erupted in laughter.
“Oh my God, can she please spin again?” asked Ava.
Chanel piped up before anyone else could agree to it. “Nope, no, no way, these are the rules. Seven minutes in hell for you, my dear!”
Ava rolled her eyes and trudged over to the closet, and the door closed, and there she was, alone with Beatrice. The door muffled the sounds of the cheers and catcalls of the others as Ava and Beatrice glared at each other.
“I'm not kissing you without consent,” Ava announced with a smirk. Beatrice could be the one who chickened out of this, there was no way Beatrice would ever–
“Please, you wish.” The contempt in Beatrice's voice made Ava's jaw drop.
“Oh my God, you wish so bad it makes you look stupid.”
“What, so I should invite this so you can complain that I corrupted you? Poor little straight girl getting harassed by the evil lesbian?”
“Well I’m bi, so fuck you first of all, second of all just say the word, you’ll be begging for an extra minute with these lips.”
“You are such an arrogant little shit, alright, I consent, you can kiss me, grab my ass, whatever you want, so now what you pathetic–”
Ava was tired of Beatrice's smart mouth, so she took the invitation to shut her up. She tried to ignore how she felt when she stuck her tongue in Beatrice’s mouth and heard a muffled curse. And how it felt to grab Beatrice's ass. And how it felt when Beatrice pushed back, and grabbed Ava’s breast in one hand and neck in the other and pushed her against the wall.
Ava just focused on trying to stay dominant, to make Beatrice feel something, to get her to be the one who gasped or moaned or twitched forward because she couldn’t help herself, until she scratched her nails down Beatrice’s back and Beatrice actually whined and then shoved Ava against the wall and took a step back and just stared.
That was how the rest of the party found them when they opened the door. Ava and Beatrice, staring at each other a yard apart. Probably Deanna wouldn’t have even run away crying if not for the fact that Ava’s ghost makeup was basically gone everywhere below her eyes, and Beatrice’s mouth and cheeks were smeared with white face paint.
Before anyone else could comment, or run away, Beatrice snarled “I need some mouthwash,” then stormed out of the closet without a backward glance. Ava just smiled and went to get her pen and paper.
Ava couldn’t have cared less that she was interrupting Beatrice and Deanna’s make-out session later that night when she shoved the paper into Beatrice chest with a sing-song “Sweet dreaaaaams!”
We make out and you drink mouthwash after but it’s acid and it burns your whole jaw off and you wake up screaming. Happy Halloween, loser.
Ava loved Halloween.
****
Ava thought this was going to be the weirdest Halloween ever, and it was all Beatrice’s fault.
To be fair, things had been weird between them all of freshman year of college, when Beatrice just happened to end up at the same school as Ava after disappearing a week after Deanna’s Halloween party. And that was fine, at first. They hadn’t seen each other in two years, they didn’t really know each other any more, so they just sort of ignored each other. At least, until Mary and Ava met in Intro to Mechanical Engineering second semester, and Mary invited her out with Camila, and Lilith, and Yasmine, and Shannon, and all of a sudden Ava and Beatrice had all the same friends. And it was fine. The angry tension wasn’t something either of them had been able to keep going without the other one around. They would tease and poke at each other now, but it wasn’t like it used to be. Ava even DMed Beatrice a nightmare on Instagram, more as a joke than anything else.
Except then Beatrice sent one back. And they were back to it, pretty tame, nothing too bad, mostly just silly and over the top stuff. Until that week, when Ava took some inspiration from the jiu jitsu class she and Beatrice both attended and sent her a nightmare that, in retrospect, had some not-so-scary undertones. Arguably sexual (Mary was the one who had argued, and Shannon had agreed, loudly). And yes, Ava ultimately agreed that her particular fears about being unable to move weren’t necessarily universal, and that the idea of her, covered in sweat, pinning Beatrice to the ground with her hand around her throat was, at best, something that could easily be misinterpreted.
Ava was all ready to send an apology when Beatrice sent her own nightmare, which was extremely detailed about things that Ava really wanted to know more about, and so that was the night that Ava learned what “shibari” and “knife play” were. So really, it was Beatrice’s fault, and not at all Ava’s, that Ava had a sex dream about Beatrice the night before the Halloween party.
And maybe that was fine too. A sex dream about a friend, or frenemy, whatever they were, no big deal. Except Beatrice was at the Halloween party too. And she looked good . Ava wasn’t sure if there was a specific reference Beatrice was going for, but to Ava it screamed “sexy librarian.” Glasses, white dress shirt tucked in under suspenders, sleeves rolled up to show off forearms that Ava had definitely never thought about while practicing their grapples, buttons undone down to her navel so that Ava (and everyone else) could see Beatrice’s bralette underneath, and Beatrice’s stomach which was soft, but also she could see the muscle underneath when Beatrice moved through her core. Probably Beatrice was wearing slacks or something, probably some dress shoes or loafers, but Ava hadn’t been able to get her eyes to go that low yet.
The fact that Ava couldn’t stop staring was a problem, because she was kind of sort of here with someone. Not with with someone. But she’d been flirting with a tall, gorgeous junior named Celeste recently, buff as hell, and they’d agreed to find each other at the party, and they had, and Celeste looked incredible in her Vi costume, and Ava just couldn’t stop staring at Beatrice.
Then there was the fact that Beatrice was clearly here with someone too, some skinny brunette named El or something who kept laughing too loud at everything Beatrice said on the other side of the room. Ava thought she could take her. She’d been working out a ton, trying to make up in muscle what she lacked in nerve stability, and the results were impressive if she did say so herself.
And then there was the fact that Beatrice hadn’t stopped looking at Ava the whole time either.
“Hey Ava?”
Ava felt someone touch her back. “Hmm?” Across the room, Beatrice was frowning for some reason.
“Ava?”
Now this El character was leaning in close to Beatrice’s face and rubbing her hand up and down Beatrice’s arm, and just who did this floozy think she was?
“AVA!!!”
“Oh shit , Celeste, you gave me a heart attack.”
Celeste looked confused. “I just wanted to know if you wanted another drink.”
Ava watched as this “El” walked off towards the bathroom and gestured for Beatrice to follow. Except Beatrice wasn’t looking at her, she was looking at Ava. Ava watched as Beatrice downed her drink and made her way towards the makeshift bar.
“Yeah, great idea Celeste, I’m super thirsty. I’ll catch up with you later, OK?”
“What?” But Ava was already halfway to the bar.
Ava stepped up next to Beatrice, and realized she had absolutely no idea what to say. “Hi.”
Beatrice looked at Ava and her eyes widened. She started staring at a spot on Ava's shoulder. “Ava, hi. You look, um…” She swallowed hard, but her eyes didn't move.
Ava felt a little flushed and looked away. Maybe this was a mistake. To be fair, she had felt pretty good about her outfit before that moment. She was going for Lara Croft, low-cut green top that showed off the work she'd been doing on her arms and sturdy dark cargo shorts and hair in a pony tail, but maybe she didn't look as good as she hoped…
“...really good.”
Oh.
Ava looked back up. Beatrice still wasn't looking right at her, still just staring at Ava's shoulder, she was so awkward, which is how Ava realized that Beatrice was trying really hard not to check out her breasts.
OH.
“Oh, thanks!” Ava grinned and leaned into Beatrice’s eye line with her arms behind her back and her chest out. “You too. You actually look amazing, you’d be an incredible librarian…” That wasn’t what she meant to say at all, and Beatrice didn’t take the bait, and actually looked up at something over Ava’s shoulder, this was going terribly. Ava turned and saw Camila and Lilith standing in a corner. Camila looked like she was angry for a second, but she smiled as soon as Ava finished turning around and waved at her.
Ava waved back, then turned back to Beatrice. “Sorry, not, I know you’re studying linguistics, I mean you could be a librarian or not, do you want to go say hi to Cam and Lilith, I didn’t realize they were–”
“It’s really boring here,” Beatrice said, although her eyes were wide, more like she was panicked than bored.
“Oh.” Ava shook her head. She must have misunderstood earlier, of course she did, no way Beatrice would actually be interested in… “Yeah, no, that’s, cool, I’m sure you have other stuff to do, probably some other more exciting party across campus, right?” Ava felt like she wasn’t doing a very good job of smiling.
And that only seemed to make Beatrice more panicked. “No! No, I meant, um…” She looked over Ava’s shoulder again for a moment, then stared Ava dead in the eye. “We should leave. If you want to. Together, I mean. Um…I’m sorry, I can’t think of the phrase.” Beatrice closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “Would you like to go somewhere else? With me?”
“OH. Um, yeah, where, yes, where do you want to go?”
Beatrice was breathing really rapidly, which Ava thought was doing incredible things to the exposed skin on her chest and belly. “My dorm room? I have a single this year.”
“OH SHIT.”
For the first time since they started talking, Beatrice smiled. “Is that a yes?”
Ava nodded, probably too fast, too many nods, she should play it cool and this was not playing it cool. “Yes, yep, yeah, uh, yes, let’s do, yeah, that.”
They made it all the way to the elevator in Beatrice’s building before Ava realized she probably needed to confirm something. “So, um, when you said you wanted me to come back to your dorm room, was that for a specific reason, or–”
“Can I kiss you?”
Ava figured actions spoke louder than words, which is why, when the elevator finally arrived, she had Beatrice pushed up against the wall and was still fighting to push her tongue into Beatrice’s mouth. Actually, the only reason she even realized the elevator had arrived at all was the cheers and applause from a bunch of other students who had apparently been pregaming for half the night and were only now leaving the dorm. She threw a middle finger in their general direction and used her other hand to pull Beatrice into the elevator by the back of her neck. Things escalated pretty quickly once the elevator door closed.
****
“Wow.” It was the third time Ava had said it in the last couple of minutes, and she hadn’t managed to find the rest of her vocabulary yet. Probably it was buried under her clothes somewhere. She turned to look at Beatrice, who was flushed in a way that did adorable things to her freckles, and breathing heavily in a way that did incredible things to…other places.
Beatrice turned to meet Ava’s eyes and smiled. “Is this all it takes to render you speechless? We should have done this sooner.”
Ava shut her up with a kiss, and then another as she climbed half on top of Beatrice, then chuckled. “Deanna might have hired someone to kill me.”
Beatrice hummed. “Oh, she definitely would have. She hated you.”
“What, because of the seven minutes in hell?”
Beatrice laughed. “No, actually it was because I wouldn’t shut up about you. She always thought there was something more there. But yes, she hated you much more after we made out in her coat closet.”
Ava took Beatrice’s hand and laced their fingers together. She liked the way their hands looked like that. “So was there?”
“Was there what?”
“Something more? I always thought you hated me. Sorry I threw the toothbrush at you in first grade, by the way.”
Beatrice laughed at that, and Ava decided she wanted to hear that sound more often. “Apology accepted, but it was toothpaste. I’m sorry I sent you to get toothpaste and a toothbrush, I really thought you would like them.”
Ava chuckled. “I guess…wait, you avoided the question. Did you hate me or not?”
Beatrice frowned and played with Ava’s fingers. “I did, but…I also think I was jealous of you.”
That got Ava to sit up, or at least elevate herself to lean on her elbow. “Wait, what? Of me?”
Beatrice didn’t look up from Ava’s hand, which she was still holding in one of hers while she traced from one of Ava’s fingers to the next with her index finger. “You were always so … everything. It felt like you were brilliant without ever trying. You never seemed to study or worry about tests or quizzes. You’re the strongest person I know, you literally recovered mobility from a broken neck at the age of seven. And even though you had been through so much, Jesus, I always felt terrible about feeling sorry for myself because there you were, and you always seemed to find something beautiful in the world to smile about. And I was never very good at that. Plus, you’re the most beautiful person I’ve ever seen. Ava?”
Ava had shifted onto her shoulder to free up her hand to wipe away tears. “Yep, I’m good. That’s, um…shit. I know what you mean though.” She smiled wetly. “I know what you mean. I mean, you always seemed sooo perfect, star athlete, straight As, rich as fuck, popular, beautiful…yeah, I get it.” When Ava turned, she saw Beatrice lying on her side, looking at her with an expression she didn’t recognize. “So how long have you been secretly pining for me?”
Whatever the look was on Beatrice’s face went away, and she started glaring instead. “I wasn’t secretly pining. I was…fixated.”
“Oh my God, do you think that’s better?!?”
“No, shut up, shut up!” Ava giggled and squirmed as Beatrice wrestled with her to connect their lips again. Several kisses later, or several dozen, plus a nose nuzzle, Beatrice finally answered. “I think that seven minutes in hell left an impression, even if I wasn’t ready to process it yet. But I guess it stuck, because Camila saw it the first time she saw the two of us in the same room. She’s been quite vocal with me ever since that I needed to ‘make a move.’”
Ava furrowed her eyebrows. “Wait, but that’s…since February!? ”
Beatrice pulled the blanket over her head. “No, go away.”
“No, you're stuck with me now, I'm auditing all your classes and sitting in your lap until Lilith throws up, I'm gonna be super clingy.” Ava dove under the covers and wrapped herself around Beatrice to prove it.
“Joke's on you, that's exactly where I want you.”
Ava laughed. “Damn. There really is a thin line between love and hate, huh?”
Ava felt Beatrice get very, very still. She sat up and let the blanket fall off of her as she covered her face in her hands and felt the tension and panic rapidly building in her chest. “I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I didn’t mean to say that, I’m so sorry. Just, we can pretend I never said that, I didn't mean to–”
Ava stopped talking when she felt Beatrice's hands pulling on her wrists. When she felt Beatrice’s lips on hers, it was different. It wasn't hot and wild and rough like when they started, or the first time back in high school. It wasn't cute and playful either, like just now after they had sex. It was soft, and deep, and serious in ways that took her by surprise. Then there were Beatrice's hands, not grabbing and powerful, or teasing, but warm, and steady, and holding Ava close so that she couldn't imagine how she could get even one more inch of skin to touch Beatrice’s.
When Beatrice let Ava’s lips go, she didn't pull back much, just enough so that they could look into each other’s eyes. “You don't have to be ready to say that, or hear it. But I don't have any intention of letting you go until we're both ready.”
Ava felt like she couldn't catch her breath all of a sudden. “Why?”
Beatrice’s eyebrows pulled together, like when she was working on a particularly hard problem in a study session. “It's a little weird to say, but I feel like no one else knows me like you do. Sees me."
Ava hummed. "Yeah, I get that. Why do you think that is?"
"I…I don't know if it's the same for you, but I've spent a lot of time thinking about how your mind works, and what you're afraid of.”
Ava smiled in a way she hoped was teasing. “So what am I most afraid of?”
“Being alone.”
Ava sucked in a breath. “Damn.” She wiped a tear. “Why didn't you ever use that? You could have really messed me up, especially after mom died…”
Beatrice looked at her so softly it made Ava want to melt. “I didn't want to.”
Ava hugged her as tightly as she could and whispered in her ear. “Your parents are assholes. You do deserve to be loved, you know? Just give me, like, a day or two. Maybe buy a girl dinner first.”
Beatrice kissed her again, slow and soft and deep. “I hope you’re not thinking about leaving tonight. I promise, no nightmares.”
Ava smirked. “Well, I don’t know, I could do with the rope one again…”
Beatrice blushed bright red and buried her face in the crook of Ava’s neck. “Oh my God, that was so embarrassing, but Camila said–”
“WAIT. That was on purpose?!? ”
“Camila asked me about the nightmare thing after she caught me reading the choking one, and she suggested that I come up with something that would be scary if you weren’t interested and…arousing if you were.”
Ava pulled Beatrice in for another kiss and let her hands wander a bit. “Mmm, I’ll have to get her a gift basket or something. Because I am definitely interested.” Just then Beatrice’s eyes fluttered, and her lids closed for a moment before popping open again. She was too adorable. “Another time though, sleepy head. Happy Halloween, Bea.”
Beatrice smiled widely at the nickname, even as the faintness of her voice said she was seconds from sleep. “Happy Halloween, Ava.”
They both agreed it was the best Halloween ever.