#hortrix

So here's the inciting incident. She's fifteen and has shelves filled with romance novels and watches One Tree Hill and Gilmore Girls religiously and doodles her crushes names on her binder and she's just fifteen.

Tedros was supposed to be her soulmate. It just made sense to her. Their parents were friends and they’ve known each other forever and childhood friends always fall in love. Right?

She stands in her mother's heels that she stole and a dress that cost far too much just for a dance. Beatrix knows she's beautiful, she's always known she's beautiful, but at this moment she doesn't feel like it, because what is beauty if no ones there to admire it?

It's nothing, she realises an hour into the night.

The punch in her hands is cool but so is her heart, so maybe that's a good thing. She is fifteen and has never really felt this feeling before, she has never felt the sight of Tedros dancing with Agatha, Tedros laughing with Agatha, Tedros looking at Agatha like that, she has never felt this kind of . . . betrayal.

Beatrix feels the knife in her heart, a merciless cold blade that seems to leave a gaping hole in her chest. She is bleeding out while drinking Hawaiian Punch, and perhaps that isn't the worst way to die, but at this moment it sure feels like it. Tears prick her eyes, and she hopes she will turn invisible because at this moment Beatrix isn't the most beautiful girl in the room, she's the most heartbroken.

People can see it because people always see the things you don't want them too.

"Bee," a voice says carefully, a hand slowly being stuck out in front of her. "Do you wanna dance."

She turns her head to Chaddick. Chaddick who has always teased her and never really cared for her, with this crooked smile and messy amber hair and his eyes that are the ocean during a storm. Yet at this moment he looks small and awkward, and very much a teenage boy filled with too many emotions and not enough words.

She gives him her hand. "Okay."

That's the start of them, and you see she hears years later about what would've happened if she'd have said no to him, but that's a story for another time.

-

Millie makes her a cake because that's what she does.

It's a chocolate cake, and it tastes so fucking good, and Beatrix doesn't care it'll take her hours of pilates to work off the calories, because this makes her feel good.

God knows that she deserves to indulge at least a bit.

"Did you know twenty-eight is the prime age of women," Millie says, while they all sit on the couch drinking some hundred dollar wine she got for an anniversary. "You’re super fertile and attractive and funny and smart and like look at your body man, it's bangin'."

It makes her cry, and the fact she's on her period makes her hormones go crazy. "Then, god, why'd he leave."

"He was pretty dumb," Millie mumbles.

"I know," she says. "But he tried, he made me laugh, sometimes made smoothies, and treated me so nicely, and well, his abs were really nice."

Reena rubs her arm. "It's gonna be ok. We'll get through this, we always do." She believes Reena, not only because she's really smart and is married and has kids, but also because Reena is her best friend. "What're you in the mood for Bee," she asks, she flips through movies, thousands of them from her and Chaddicks daily movie nights. It's a collection of them from the past five years, like a mixtape of them living together. "I'm kinda leaning on something Disney."

Her eyes pick something in the sea of thousands, it's a movie that wasn't apart of the mixtape, it's apart of something completely different.

"Put on, The Fantastic Mr. Fox."

-

Beatrix is nineteen, and she's freshly single, and very much ready to mingle.

Her and Chaddick’s long distant relationship ends, and for some strange reason, she isn't upset. But of course she doesn't tell anyone, because that would make her a horrible person, and for some reason, though popularity was left in high school she still puts far too much effort in putting up appearances.

Going into university, Beatrix is alone for the first time. It's her fault for choosing one where none of her friends are going, but for some strange reason, she doesn't mind. She's been surrounded by people her whole life, but now she's free, and it feels good, well until it doesn't.

It's a Friday night and instead of partying she's in the library studying, and it sounds sad and terrible and it is but she's not even that upset.

Ok, that's a lie.

She's a tiny bit upset.

But doesn't try to tell anyone that.

(Even if she wanted to she couldn’t because Reena and Millie are building schools in Asia, and they have no service for the next two weeks)

She stares at her textbook, Policy In The New Age, trying to get all the knowledge to somehow magically go into her brain (it hasn't worked for the last 20 minutes but who knows, maybe that'll change).

"Beatrix," a voice suddenly says to her out of nowhere, she turns her head and is greeted by two long legs and she has to look up and god it's Hort, but it's not him at all. He's so tall, and tan, and almost muscular in some areas, yet still gangly, and his smile is the same because she recognizes those dimples, and god he got hot. "Haven't seen you in such a long time."

Her mouth has forgotten to talk because human interaction has become rare for her, and she feels so dumb, but all she can do is stare at him.

He frowns. "Something wrong?"

Then her brain finally starts to work. "No," she croaks out. "I'm just tired and very bored."

"That's great," he says, and lord she regrets thinking he was hot this is-- "Oh, fuck, that's not actually great it's just I'm very tired and bored too, so . . . like, I don't know, but would you-well, like to go to this new Chinese place around the block."

She has to blink a few times before she can comprehend what he just said, and then, she smiles. "Yes please, anything than this."

He smiles and it's familiar and comforting, and she likes it.

(Hort tells her while they're walking to the restaurant about a film that includes foxes. He tells her it's his favorite movie in the whole world when she says she's never watched it, he seems appalled and invites her over to his dorm to watch it. That where it starts, the movie that is them.)

-

Beatrix is drunk by eight.

(She also has always believed alcohol makes her spontaneous, not dumb. So that's why she emails him.)

Hey Hort!!

What's up.

From Beatrix.