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[misatherat]

Bumble Bea

It was late, late into the evening, when the echoes of Bea’s laughter entered Billy’s dreamscape. It appeared to him as a softness and guided him from the depths of his recurring nightmares of the workhouse. As he let her voice rouse him, he became aware that it was coming from the upper annex of their cellar. The comfort of her voice left him cold as he realised where it was coming from. She was with Leo.

It was so easy to hate him at first. Posh as they come, seeped in privilege to the collars. That much was obvious, from his pretentious attire to the utter ignorance of his status in a place like this, amongst people like him and Bea. Although Billy denied it, what Jessie said at the archives of the Marylebone Town Hall was true. He hated posh people. Leo was one, it was simple as that. In the days that followed, Billy’s distaste for him burned in his gut when he saw what had caught Leo’s attention to keep him in such an unseemly part of town: Bea. He had met enough of their sort to know how it would go before it even began. A typical dabbler; he’d pretend to be poor for a bit for the “real experience” of it all until the grime under his nails and the sewer stench became too entrenched to bear. All this, of course, for a little anecdote at a soirée. 

Why not play the game of love to draw a caricature of the poor? Here was a girl so destitute and so easily attained, all by a whiff of finery. Billy’s jaw tensed as he imagined how the story would be told after Leo had had his way with Bea. In that cavalier cadence of his sort, Leo would tell the soirée guests: what a misfortune it was, really, that she wasn’t born to a proper respectable family. Listeners would feign pity and say, how dreadful, what a waste, well there’s nothing you can do about it, dear -- all the while they held crystal glasses gleaming in liquid amber -- a drop of which cost more than Billy’s own life. 

Or, so Billy imagined things would go -- but that was before they became mates. Well, maybe that was putting it a bit far. At least, cracks to Billy’s contempt for Leo appeared during their second case for Watson. Leo showed him his bruises and told him he was broken. Who’d admit that to someone? Least of all, to him -- and on the streets? There was something wrong with Leo, that much was certain; bruises like that don’t appear out of little scuffles in the street. But it was the look of surrender in Leo’s gaze that took Billy by surprise. He suddenly felt a shyness to be confronted, no -- to be confided in, with a confession of weakness by someone he’d found so easy to despise. Hostility felt wrong and uncompassionate, when Leo was so vulnerable in his fear that Billy would tell the others -- and for what? That they would like him less? Billy didn’t like him to begin with anyway -- bruises weren’t going to change that.

All this time, Billy was well aware that he was being more of a bellend toward Leo because he was trying to work out his own feelings for Bea. Of course he cared for her; he had for all his life. While his memories of her are enmeshed with the terrors of the workhouse, she was the reason he came out of that hellhole as himself. She had always seen goodness in him, even in times he had been tempted to abandon it in order to live the life he had been dealt. So it was for Bumble that Billy wanted to be good, tough, and protective. He had spent so much of his youth trying to do so and failing. No matter how much he tried, Billy-boy was never big enough to stop Vic from hurting Bea. And these protective feelings grew as they left their childhood behind. Now that Billy was strong, he could be those things for Bea and, the most important person to her, Jessie.

But he hadn’t come to terms with how his feelings had matured over time. Not until they ran for their lives and hid in the shed to escape the barrage of those bloody ravens. In the few minutes of chaos, Billy realised that he would, without a doubt, offer himself to be scrapped to pieces by those damned birds and die protecting Bea. The hellish frenzy cleared his thoughts of her: he didn’t want to live in a world without Bumble. As the quiet settled around them still tense in each other’s arms, Billy realised that the love he had always felt for her had shifted. He became conscious of his nascent attraction, his need of her closeness in a way he hadn’t been aware before.

Their bond further entwined after their third case for Watson, when Bea had killed to save him. She had done what Billy could never have asked of her, even if it was to save his own neck. No mistake, he felt gratitude -- he owed her his life. But deep down, his feelings were seeped in guilt. When did their life become this? His thoughts found a stinging reflection in Leo’s observation after the night at the Hippodrome: she deserves better than this. What could the twat possibly know about what she wants or deserves, Billy’s defenses kicked in. You don’t know her, Leo. 

So Billy saw red when Leo called him a coward in the coal room of the Holmes Estate. The bastard knew Billy harboured feelings for her; he knew because they were akin in their love for Bea. It infuriated him because it was Leo that made him hesitate telling Bea in the first place. His presence in their lives, and by proxy -- a glimpse of another kind of life, had made Billy question, for the first time: what was best for her? And the answer so easily given by the hellscape all around them was: not this, anything but this shithole life of theirs. 

And he overheard Jessie giggling to Bea: I could get used to this, as they descended the staircase of the Estate. When he saw Bea in that dress -- looking so pretty, he was momentarily stilled by the weight and the knots of his feelings for her. Patriarchal standards be damned, Billy didn’t give a rat’s arse about that. Bea didn’t fancy dresses and jewels, and she could very well look out for herself. But Billy loved her, and loving someone meant you wanted them to live a life of comfort and safety. What would she get out of a life with him? More years in that shithole cellar of theirs? A constant reminder of their awful past and their ever impoverished present?

Billy wasn’t an idiot. He knew as much that this would be the life with him -- hell, this was their life together. And he didn’t have the means to change it for her. By simply appearing in their lives, Leo had awoken the insecurity in Billy that he would never be able to be with Bea in a life she deserved.