#let bea be a prettyboy

[foulbearobservation]

hi good morning have we considered ava calling bea "pretty boy" as a joke once like "okay calm down," she says, running a hand absentmindedly through beatrice's hair where it's lose around her neck, "I'm still gonna think you're gorgeous if you cut your hair, prettyboy" before going back to reading her magazine and bea just like. straight up has three gender crisis in a row. and ava only looks up from her magazine after bea has been silent for a solid ten minutes. "you alright babe?"

"I—um. I don't know." beatrice says like it physically pains her. She doesn't like not knowing.

ava walks back through the conversation, carefully poking around for the trigger phrase. She hadn't really said anything interesting just—ah. "Did you not like it when I called you prettyboy? I wasn't thinking, I'm sorry."

beatrice chooses her words with a carefulness that most reserve for disarming bombs. "I... I enjoyed it."

Several things about bea come into starker focus now, things bea probabaly doesn't realize that she does. "Do you wanna talk about it? Or wait until you've gathered your thoughts a bit more?"

beatrice again takes one of those long silences where she searches through every language she knows for precisely the right word. "I don't want to be a man." She says, the little confused crease between her eyebrows making an appearance. "I don't... I want time I think?"

ava shrugs, thoroughly nonplussed, "no matter what's going on in that handsome head of yours, you're still my person."

beatrice takes a few weeks to gather her thoughts. ava sees her walking around with a veritable library's worth of lgbt literature.

"I've made up my mind on the prettyboy issue," she says one day in the most beatrice way possible.

"yeah?" ava tries to keep her face neutral as beatrice joins her on the couch.

beatrice takes out a notecard and ava falls in love all over again. "I would enjoy it if you called me prettyboy." she reads off her little card. "I've been doing some reading and have some other terms of endearment that I think I would like as well, if you want them."

love me, beatrice is saying without words, love me in the way I want to be loved. she offers up the notecard. ava ignores the way bea's hand shakes just a little bit as she takes the card.

ava scans the card quickly, "I love you so much," she says, because it's true.

bea lets out a breath she probably didn't even know she was holding and deflates back into the couch a bit. ava clambers onto her lap. "were you nervous? is that why you busted out the notecards?" ava smiles and pokes at bea's cheek.

"I didn't know how you would react to me wanting to be called," bea's voice lowers like it's a secret, like they're not the only two sitting in their apartment right now, "your boyfriend sometimes."

"babe, I mean this with nothing but love in my heart. I don't care. I can handle some gender fuckery," ava says, then, tilting her head to the side, adds "outside of my own gender fuckery, of course."

"I just," bea's head falls forward, tucking herself into ava's chest, "I love being a lesbian but then you called me prettyboy and..."

ava makes a soft soothing noise, trying to stave off beatrice's butch lesbian gender crisis part 2, if only because it really does seem to stress bea out. "baby you're mine, no matter what pronouns or terms of affection you want used." she kisses the top of bea's head. "plus, do you know how much fun I'm gonna have with this? Hans is gonna be SO confused when I start talking about my boyfriend, AND I get to call you prettyboy more often, so really just a win win for me."

they sit in silence for a while until ava starts playing with beatrice's hair, moving her head this way and that as she does.

"what are you doing?"

"I know you were thinking about just cutting a few inches off, but I really think you could kill that sort of floppy haired eboy look."

"none of those words are in the bible, ava."