We’re Not Friends 17
Are They More?
“Leave her alone, Beth. She’s going through enough,” Rick said.
Beth glared at him and smiled, saying through her teeth, “I was just trying to be nice.”
“She asked you not to bother her and you did anyway. So, instead of trying to be nice, why don’t you try not to be annoying, for once?”
“Okay. I’m going. Enjoy your lunch. I’m sorry I bothered you and it will never happen again.”
Since when did Rick Harris take up for people? He never took up for her, and she’s been sitting next to him for a year! Did he LIKE Yolanda? And why did that matter? Did she care about Rick liking Yolanda? God, did she LIKE Rick??
When Rick finally realized that Yolanda was being bullied, he protected Yolanda from Beth’s prying, but he had also explained to Beth why she needed to back off… “People don’t like uninvited guests seeing their dirty laundry,” Rick had told her.
At the time, Beth had realized that maybe Rick and Yolanda were more alike than she had known. Shortly after, she’d noticed Rick glaring at Henry on Yolanda’s behalf. Warding him away from the table with his threatening expression. All the while, choosing not to be friends with Beth. It had bothered her, even then. It was definitely bothering her now. She didn’t need an ally to be accepted onto the team, but she had gotten very comfortable with the idea of her team being her friends; Of Rick being her friend. Would she and Rick have a chance to be friends if he was into Yolanda? Of course, people could manage both, but she didn’t know if she believed Rick was emotionally evolved enough to do that…
He noticed her staring! She turned her head back towards her book, but she could still feel his eyes on her. She looked at him again. He looked… pensive and slightly confused. She offered a smile. He didn’t return it, but he wasn’t glaring, at least. “What are you thinking about?” He asked. It wasn’t like him to wonder about such things, but their dynamic had been gradually changing.
“Just… how sweet it is, how supportive of Yolanda you are. She really deserves it, and I’m glad that she has somebody like you in her corner. I tried to support her before and boy did she not want that.” She laughed awkwardly and returned her eyes to her book.
Rick furrowed his eyebrows, unsure if Beth was suggesting what it sounded like she was suggesting. Did… she think that he liked Yolanda? Should he correct her? Did it matter? “This is a little different. You were trying to get her to deal with feelings she wasn’t ready to face. I’m trying to keep a literal sexual predator away from my friends-”
Beth looked up, her face beaming, and her eyes wide. Rick froze, even though every part of him was warm, seeing her light up that way. He had never used the word “friend” for her before and she hadn’t even known if he truly considered her one. In fact, she was convinced that despite him being on this team and talking to them everyday that they still weren’t friends. Now, his eyes narrowed and she felt herself darken in his stare. He must’ve just realized that he’d made that mistake. “Henry doesn’t belong on this team, Beth.” He finalized. She sighed and nodded. They were in two completely different head spaces.
But then again… Rick had been protective of Beth at times, too. It was sort of his thing, at the moment. Maybe, hopefully, Yolanda was just his current focus. She reminded herself that not too long ago, she was convinced that he had feelings for Courtney because of how upset he was about her being hurt. It didn’t help that she knew Courtney had followed him to West Farms trying to get him on the team either. What if they’d liked each other and she hadn’t known? But, it turned out that she was wrong about that. He’d been a little bit preoccupied with Beth being left alone, worried that she might get hurt, and that was when she knew that Rick simply was a protector.
So, there was no reason for Beth to believe that the wall that he was creating for Yolanda wasn’t just Rick being the defender that they were discovering that he was.
It still made her feel bad to have to witness, and she was going to have to figure out why she was allowing Rick to make her feel this way, whether or not he meant to.
.
Rick had gotten pretty tired of all of it. Courtney and Beth seemed committed to the idea of letting Henry on the team. Yolanda was feeling so terrible that the two of them had been talking, instead of her and Courtney, and Beth was acting… he was frustrated with Beth. Trying to explain to everyone how everyone else was feeling was not supposed to be his role on this team, but he found himself doing just that.
Mainly, he absolutely agreed with Yolanda and wanted the others to understand why. But, whenever he spoke with Yolanda and the subject came up, he accidentally became defensive, because he knew Beth didn’t realize how difficult this was and she was just trying to do what she thought was best for everyone. Courtney could be a lot, but she didn’t need anybody to defend her. Beth did, and he knew that Yolanda was more angry at Courtney than he was at Beth for supporting Courtney’s idea.
Last night, Yolanda had ended their call with, “I’m going to just go, before I say something unfriendly about your girl.” She had made a few comments about how he ‘always took up for Beth,’ which… IF ONLY that were true, he and Beth wouldn’t be having the issues that they were having right now, which were that she was trying to “liaison” for Courtney, on behalf of Henry and all she was doing was upsetting Yolanda and Yolanda was coming to him, because in her mind, Rick somehow could handle talking to Beth straight up “without hurting her feelings…” EVERYONE knew that just was NOT the truth. He was THE person with the record of saying the worst things to Beth, followed by Yolanda, who had started later and stopped sooner than he had.
Now, Beth was being weird about him and Yolanda, and Yolanda was not getting the support she needed, so Rick found himself having to be her emotional support roughneck, Courtney’s common sense fairy and Beth’s… Well… he would always be whatever to Beth what he was, because he just couldn’t help himself. She was soft and sweet and smart, but she needed sharper social skills sometimes, and he knew that he had them, so why not help her out?
With Henry now having superpowers, all three of them needed protection, and Rick felt like he was the only person who could supply it for them.
.
Lunch Meeting. There was always a lunch meeting. It was the easiest place to have their talks. Whenever Beth sat down and Yolanda sat next to her, Beth and Rick exchanged glances before he sat next to Yolanda and Beth sighed. Rick was frustrated already when Courtney came to the table with Henry. Beth knew this would not go well. Henry had been living in Rick’s mind rent free ever since Courtney even had an inkling to bring him on board, and now, not only was he on board, but he appeared to know EVERYTHING.
And Yolanda and Rick were no closer to acknowledging peaceful solutions.
Beth did her best to be the peacemaker. To push aside the sinking feeling she got when she saw Henry knock Rick onto his back, when she noted the unspoken understanding between Rick and Yolanda, all of the stress of all of this, to just… PLEASE; let them listen to me.
“We need to do this. For Court…” Yolanda and Rick exchanged looks. A silent agreement. Beth and Rick had not had those since he became invested in being Yolanda’s protector. And now - Yolanda was cutting off her friendship with Courtney. Beth tried not to focus on how that might mean more Yolanda and Rick bonding, and if they all came out on the other side, Courtney had Henry (new family), to get to know. Court would have her family and she would have Henry become a part of that. Yolanda… would have Rick.. THAT WASN’T IMPORTANT! They were superheroes, and she didn’t need to make anything about her right now. They had a mission to accomplish.
.
Rick and Yolanda did NOT want to be there. They knew that they had to, but working with Henry was already a no go for them both and saving his dad was even less appealing. Add to that the fact that there was no cosmic staff, PLUS Chuck was out of order, and this mission was even more ill advised than the first one that they rushed into. At least Rick had acknowledged the fact that Chuck was useful, Beth thought… but then remembered that he had never thought that Chuck wasn’t useful. It was her that he seemed most unimpressed by. At least he didn’t groan whenever he was sent with her to do retcon.
That didn’t mean that it went well. In fact, it went as bad as Beth could have even guessed. Now… Beth was no coward, but what she was, was smart. She was smart and she was self aware. She knew that certain things could be dangerous and that she could not do everything. She knew that while she had a duty to perform, that some things were outside of her skill set and that to be successful, she needed to focus on the problem at hand and handle it in the most safe and effective way possible. Rick was not that type of person. Of all the hallways that they could have wound up going down, they had to go down the one that led to the thing that killed Rick’s parents?
The point of being here? He didn’t care. The fact that Beth needed him to finish the assignment? He didn’t care. The fact that more than likely, that thing would probably KILL THEM BOTH? He didn’t care. He saw the one responsible for the worst thing to ever happen to him, and the one that he had even put this suit on to go after in the first place. Nothing else mattered in that moment but getting to Solomon Grundy and getting his revenge..
Beth couldn’t physically pull him away, but fortunately, he came to his senses when henchmen arrived. Everything after that was… So… so BAD. Beth didn’t want to even think about it. But, it was yet another death she had to witness and she never knew that being a hero would mean seeing people die this way. Seeing people her age, seeing people she cared about, people on her team… die.
Yolanda curled into Rick, and he comforted her. It was easy to comfort her. She needed it, and he guessed he did too. He had been wrong about Henry. Henry had done something awful, sure. But, Henry had also just had to find out that his father killed his mother. Rick wasn’t sure if the guy was lucky that he didn’t have to live with that knowledge, but having his last moments in life being his father murdering him - that just felt wrong. Henry had protected his girls when he couldn’t, and had died to do so. For nothing else, Rick felt that he owed him a portion of respect. And for Yolanda’s benefit, he would never soil the kid’s memory. What Henry did before that, Rick wasn’t going to continue judging him for. Not even Yolanda was doing that at this point.
She was grieving. Rick was checking on her and making sure that she was okay. All of them trying to get to Henry, to genuinely save him, and being unable to, having to watch him be murdered, to watch him know and have his last moments be to leave a good mark on the world? Only heroes did that.
.
Beth hadn’t been able to relax. She did everything that she could. Brought out candles she had not lit yet, ordered some outfits, cooked herself comfort food and escaped in a book. Chuck gave her some ambient music to try to get her calm. Her mom and Henry’s dad worked together for years. Dr. Henry King had always been cordial to her and from what she knew, he was one of the best doctors that her mother had ever worked with. He’d treated Dr. Chapel with respect and never made her feel devalued, even when she was focused on being a mother, he had seemed to always know what to say and how to treat her, unlike some other doctors at work places she had been a part of. It endeared Beth to him for a while. Once she realized his superpower, it made sense. He knew that her mom was a good person and a good doctor, and as long as she did her job and didn’t make things difficult, it was probably easy to be a nice colleague to her, even though he was a bad man.
A very bad man. Poor Henry. All Beth wanted was more heroes in the world. More friends. More good people. The JSA had been murdered by the ISA, and not even the children were safe. Joey. Henry. She had a certain level of care for both of them, and she had seen both of them die. She texted Yolanda to check on her and knew that the “Don’t worry,” she sent back was simply because she didn’t feel like talking to her, not because she was fine. Beth texted Rick to check up on her and he replied that he and Yolanda were on the phone and he’d try to get back to her tonight, but not to worry… Great. “Don’t worry” seemed like such an empty phrase, and had the opposite reaction.
.
“Isn’t she gonna be upset that you’re on the phone with me?” Yolanda asked. “Why would she be upset? She knows that you’re going through something,” Rick responded, then amended it with, “And, she’d have no right to be upset that you and I are friends.” Rick thought about earlier. He bent the bars open and made sure that Beth was out first. He owed her for almost getting her clobbered by henchmen in the tunnels while he let his vengeance fuel him at Solomon Grundy’s cell… and he also wanted her to be safe.
“She’s been acting a little bit jealous, hasn’t she?” Yolanda asked and Rick wanted to immediately say no and deny that he saw anything whatsoever to indicate that, but he definitely had noticed it and didn’t want to address it. That would be too much like trying to sort through feelings and he didn’t have time for that.
“She doesn’t have a lot of friends. Any time there is a mild disagreement, she’ll probably be jealous. This week it’s this, next week, it’ll be one of you, probably.”
Yolanda let out a joyless chuckle and sighed. “I’ll be sure to answer her inquiries, then.” Rick didn’t respond. “Are you there?” She heard a sharp intake of breath on the other line. “You’re falling asleep.”
“Sorry. I’m just…”
“Tired. Makes sense. Go get some rest, and… be nice to her. We never know how things will go and you don’t want to let the moments that you could have been nice to her become regrets that you weren’t.”
Rick furrowed his eyebrows, “What are we talking about?”
“Beth. You care about her. I know it and you know it. I don’t know if she knows it. I just… feel like I needed more time with Henry, and I didn’t get it. You have time with Beth. Make sure it’s well spent.”
“Those are two very different stories.”
“Yeah. In your story, you have no reason not to be nice to her.”
“I… am not mean to her. Not like I used to be. I just.. I’m tired. I’m going to hang up now.”
“I’m not going to come along with you and Beth to The Pit Stop. I’ll text her in the morning to let her know.”
“Oo.. kay. Is this your way of making us be alone?”
“No. But, that sounds like an added bonus.” He sucked his teeth and she explained, “I want to go to church. To… pray for Henry…” he heard a whimper and he almost offered to stay on the phone, but she managed to add, “Goodnight,” and hung up before he could protest.
