#Dib Jerb

[lyeekha]

just wanted to say i love the way you write beatrice and frank's interactions so much!!!! it's so, so THEM and the characterizations are so good. Her curiosity and teasing him and his annoyance and then panic and confessing to her and telling her what happened (some of it). And i love the line “Asking is not perceiving, that’s not being perceptive enough. I don’t owe you an answer and you owe me money.” (also i'm suddenly very intrigued by the idea of Frank's accurate post-game analysis haha)

wow, thank you!! im gonna really take that to heart i think because i really felt i was mostly thrashing around for words in this one and didnt expect anything like character voices to come out but in the end it did and i should trust that a little more maybe. i honestly wanted to leave it because im not very comfortable yet just writing down and going without hardly editing, but some phrases just kept. haunting me. and one of them was Dib Jerb so i didnt have much choice

[lyeekha]

“Well?” Beatrice demanded, wide-eyed. “Did you manage to mitigate things?”

“Sort of.”

Frank tossed a crumpled napkin across the desk to her, on which was scrawled on it, in nearly unintelligible pencil,

Dib Jerb,

dO Not mary ths woman also 

wadr,

J.

Beatrice snorted, then looked concerned.

“Is he angry at me? I didn’t get to see him at the ball, I was working too hard and then exhausted, should I have-”

“No it’s fine, he just needed to vent, all strategic motivations are understood. The primary layer of them, anyway. As it should be.”

She nodded, reassured. Beatrice had no trouble trusting Frank’s judgement on this, she’d been to his post-game analyses before and found them consistently remarkable.

“Ok. And? What else?”

“Else? I think that’s everything relevant to your scheme, thank you.”

Beatrice smirked, toying with her necklace. 

“I wanna know how you got on! Two of my friends who haven’t really talked before, I want to know your general impressions! Did the complaining really last all evening, or did you at least get to swap stories before getting,” she tapped the napkin, “this much black-out drunk?”

“General impressions?”

“Yes! I’m invested. In my friends. And I know you’ll be the horribly honest one, so.”

Jacques always looked at you like you were the most important thing in world. He looked at everyone that way, Frank knew, he had seen, but to actually have the full force of it turn on you was to be blinking under a hot spotlight, and oh how it reminded him how much he missed the spotlight,

“He’s very… genuine.”

Beatrice looked thoughtful. 

“Yes, I suppose so. In a way. I’d say more terribly dramatic but just about gets away with it.”

when he touched his knee it was with such extraordinary reverence, the small gesture transformed into something obscene by the intense sincerity of his attention,

Frank blinked. 

“You’d accuse him of being terribly dramatic?”

Beatrice pouted in a mock sulk. 

“Look, you don’t have to tell me if you hooked up or whatever, that’s none of my business-“

“That’s none of your- well, quite,”

“-but to be blunt, you do usually take such things in your stride. And yet I can’t shake this feeling that you’re somehow frazzled and I want to know what happened.”

“Beyond meddlesome. Intruding.”

“You don’t own being perceptive.”

“Asking is not perceiving, that’s not being perceptive enough. I don’t owe you an answer and you owe me funds.”

Beatrice held up her hands.

“Okay! Okay. Let the world know my crimes of caring too much.”

She stood up. 

“Good job to the both of us, probable crisis probably averted, and Jacques is bound to get over it with a new infatuation before long.”

the gentle touch at his knees slowly parting his thighs, eyes questioning but with no sign of doubt, the growing closeness, fingertips carefully trailing, ‘precious’, the touch said, ‘precious, perfect, unique in this world, so important to me-‘

Something inside Frank panicked, that a moment was passing that would never return even though he had the words for it, and he found himself saying quickly, before she reached the door,

“-it was different. He… adored me.”

Beatrice could just, only just about make out that the tips of his ears were slightly pinker than usual. She stared in wonder, openly marvelling as if witnessing the aurora borealis or the first flight of a bat. Frank busied himself with papers, dismissing her as hard as he could without speaking or making eye contact. She didn’t move, perhaps stubborn, perhaps overstepping, but really, helpless against the need to not to break the spell of... whatever was happening here. 

Frank focused on an empty bit of wall and said, quietly and fervently as if only to himself, “I know that’s just what he’s like, and it's not even all real but… I’m not used to… I don’t get…"

He tore his gaze away from the wall and glared daggers at Beatrice. 

“Make sure this charitable donation is a weighty one, I’ve decided we’re going to need severe remodelling as well as new staff. That wallpaper is old fashioned now and wont stand up to modernisation. Now kindly get out of my office, and preferably also my hotel.”

And Beatrice did. 

“Who’s Jerome Squalor?” F asked, flipping through the stack of papers B just tossed onto the desk while doing a dramatic whirl.

“Organization sponsor,” B answered promptly, kicking off her glittering, shiny new boots as she climbed onto a cabinet.

“Organization sponsor, or your personal fashion sponsor?” F asked doubtfully.

“Those are not mutually exclusive,” B shrugged. “But the former is what I came to discuss about.”

“So, is he an unaware sponsor, or does he know about the organization?” F asked.

“Unaware,” B confirmed, “and we’re going to make sure the situation stays that way.”

F narrowed his eyes. “First of all, I hope you’re not including me when you said ‘we’ -”

“I am,” B interrupted cheerfully.

F glared at her. “Secondly, what makes you think it’s not going to stay that way? Has this Jerome Squalor been hanging out with the other side?”

“No,” B said, “but he and Jacques had, however, taken quite an interest in each other.”

Something flashed in F’s eyes, so fast that B almost didn’t catch it. “Be that as it may,” F pronounced. “I’m sure a volunteer like Jacques Snicket knows to put the organization first. You must’ve remembered what he’d said when he found out his sister was involved with that Feint lady.”

“People could be rather hypocritical sometimes,” B countered. “For example, once upon a time I used to have a friend who would complain about others using too many literary references in their scripts, but does the same thing when writing his own play.”

“Look, if we’re talking about someone else, I might agree that your concern is valid,” F said. “But I hardly think we need to worry about Jacques Snicket.”

B gave him a knowing look. “I understand it could be hard to accept the fact that Jacques could be so - affected - by someone.”

“Watch yourself,” F said sharply. “You’re treading a dangerous line here.”

“Don’t worry,” B assured him. “I have very good balance.”

F sighed heavily. “Let’s say hypothetically, hypothetically,” he emphasized, “that you are correct. What do you want to do about it? What do you want me to do about it?”

“Well, the obvious plan is of course for each of us to seduce one of them to prevent any information from being passed along,” B said, matter-of-fact.

“No,” F said flatly.

“I’ll take Jerome, since he’s already charmed by me and you know Jacques never really sees me as anything other than a little sister.”

“No.”

“Unless you want Jerome?”

“That’s not what I mean and you know it. I’m saying no to the whole plan.”

“Not even if it’s for the organization?” B asked.

“There are simpler solutions,” F said. “Things less likely to go wrong.”

“If you won’t help me,” B replied. “You know I could always just go to someone else, right? I’m very convincing, and there are people less stubborn than you.”

F raised an eyebrow, “Then why bother asking me at all?”

“Because I’m a good friend,” B said. “You’re welcome.”

F sighed. “You’re meddlesome is what you are.”

B shrugged. “It’s the meddlesome people that keep the world running,” she pointed out.

“You know, I’m a very busy person with a hotel to run.”

“Hire more concierges,” B suggested.

“No budget.”

“If you help me with this, I’ll ensure some of the donation from our generous sponsor goes to the hotel,” B promised.

F was silent for a moment, the said finally. “Fine, I’m in. I guess.”

B grinned, wide and sharp and brilliant. “Excellent! You won’t regret it.”

F wondered if that was true.