Out Of Curiosity [Prologue – Part 1]

Summary: The prescience gives Phoebe a name… A name linked to Beckett’s past.

A/N: This is the Part 1 of the prologue of my mini-series, “Watch The Wind”. This idea came to my mind thinking about the debate “Beckett is experienced or not?”. I thought about a headcanon that later evolved into a mini-series! I hope you like it, good reading!

 

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The Sun-Att classroom shines brightly, colored by the rays of the crystal on the pedestal, that reflects the sunlight throughout the room. Phoebe, stimulated by all that light and the quiet morning, is sitting on the ground with her legs crossed, intent on meditating and concentrating her energy inside her.

After months of practice, she now manages to control the energy of the Sun without any effort, allowing it to enter in every fiber of her skin. Inhaling and exhaling slowly, she whispers her mantra to help focus.

“Resilience”

The warmth takes shape and expands from her magickal core until it comes out and fills her with pure light and peace. After a few seconds, images are projected onto her closed eyelids.

A nervous Beckett sat in front of her. Too much nervous. And an unknown name pops into her head.

Erika.

The vision goes away and Phoebe, without losing her calm or opening her eyes, raises an eyebrow.

“Erika? Who might that be? And why did I hear it?”

As soon as she thinks that, Phoebe is taken by a sense of strange tranquility. As if her energy was telling her that there’s nothing to worry about. She breathes a sigh of relief.

“At least, nothing dangerous”

After a few seconds, Phoebe opens her eyes slowly and they adjust to the strong sunlight. Leaving a breath, she lies down on the marble floor, totally relaxed. But that name that she felt remains in her thoughts. She mumbles to herself.

“I saw Beckett freaked out, along with that name… Maybe he knows something about it”

As soon as she says his name, she hears a knock on the door of the classroom. She doesn’t look, thinking it’s Professor Swan.

“Come in!”

Still lying on the floor, she hears the door open and an unexpected voice make her raise up with her back.

“What are you doing?”

As she rises, Phoebe sees Beckett in front of her, his head tilted to one side and a confused look. On his shoulder, he carries the bag with his books, while in his hand he has a satchel. She looks at him surprised.

“Hey! I didn’t expect to be you! I had just finished meditating and I was resting”. Her gaze drops on the satchel in his hand. “What’s that?”

“Oh! Ahem…”

He scraps the back of his neck, slightly blushed, and lifting the satchel. “I… I knew you were here practicing, I saw the time and I supposed you were hungry, so I… I carried you some things from the dining hall”

Phoebe cocks her head and looks at him with a sly expression. “Aww, you’re worried about my stomach, how sweet!”

He rolls his eyes. “Are you done or I must go away?”

She chuckles. “I’m joking, dummy! Come here!”

Beckett sits in front of her and hands her the satchel. Inside it, there are a thermos, some wrapped sandwiches, a box with two dragon links and a smaller, closed and decorated box. She takes it and looks at it confused.

“What’s this?”

“Oh… That is a surprise. Don’t open it right now”

She shrugs and replaces the little box in the satchel, then she takes a sandwich and unwraps it. As soon as she smells the strange purple sauce spread inside, she feels her stomach bubbling louder than usual. At the sensation, Phoebe’s eyes widen between the embarrassed and the concerned, rubbing a hand on her belly.

“Okay… I don’t know if I was so hungry and I hadn’t noticed or if there’s something wrong with this sandwich…”

Beckett laughs. “Actually, you guessed it. That sauce is made with Ember Fish eggs”

“Ember Fish?”

“Exactly, a very rare species that lives only in the warmer waters. Its eggs are very valuable because they stimulate appetite. Indeed, they are used a lot in medicine to fight inappetence”

“Yeah, I think I guessed that… Now I’m terribly starving”

So, unable to wait, Phoebe takes an eager bite to the sandwich. The sauce has a roasted taste and reminds her of the pulled pork.

“Wow… It’s delicious…”

Beckett chuckles, amused to see her so hungry. In a few minutes, the sandwich disappeared and she started attacking the dragon links.

“Do not you want to finish the sandwiches? I noticed that you enjoyed it very much”

“I want to keep them for later. These are so spicy, but with the hunger I have now, I would be able to eat twenty without blinking an eye”

In fact, Phoebe finishes the two dragon links without problems or accusing the burning in the mouth. After a while, she begins to slow down, feeling she’s been satiating.

“Whoa… That was really good, now I’m stuffed”

As she pours some juice into the thermos glass, she leans toward him to leave a soft kiss on the cheek, looking at him softly. “Thank you… That was really nice, I mean it”

Beckett blushes and smiles. “Glad I could help”

Then, the two of them begin to chat about this and that, about how the morning went and what they studied. After Beckett has finished telling his day, he addresses her.

“And you? How was practice going?”

Suddenly, Phoebe remembers the vision she had during her meditation. And suddenly, she seems to see in front of her the same image that popped in her mind and freezes.

“…Phoebe? Is everything okay?”

She slightly shakes her head. “Ehm… Yeah, I think… I had a vision before, about this moment…”

“Really? Your prescience told you that I would come here?”

“Not exactly… It showed me you and, strangely, I feel like I’ve heard a name…”

He raises an eyebrow. “What name?”

“…Erika”

As soon as he hears that name, Beckett stiffens suddenly, his eyes widen and a raging blush appears on his face. Phoebe startles at his reaction.

“Beckett? You okay? You know that name?”

Beckett quickly shakes hands, in full embarrassment. “What? No, never heard of it, I swear!”

The vision in Phoebe’s mind becomes clearer and she looks at him questioningly. “Beckett, I saw you agitated in the vision and I don’t think it’s a coincidence… Tell me, what’s up? Should I be worried?”

“No!! I mean– I don’t know, I never heard of any Erika in my life–”

Beckett stops, covering his face with his hands. Phoebe sighs, not knowing what to do.

“Beckett, listen… If you don’t want to talk about it, it’s okay… Just tell me if it’s something serious…”

Inhaling hard to calm down, Beckett rubs his face and looks at Phoebe. “Not at all, it’s nothing serious, you can relax… it’s just… A long story… A long and embarrassing story”

She takes his hand from his face and rubs her thumb on his knuckles. “And you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to… Really”

She kisses him, resting just a little longer her lips on his. When she pulls apart, he seems to relax and manages a little smile, placing a hand on her cheek.

“Are you sure?”

“Of course I’m sure… It’s up to you”

She puts her other hand on his red face, caressing him. After a while, he sighs, with an ounce of resignation. “…No, I’ll tell you. In one way or another, you would have known it anyway, so I think the time has come…”

“Beckett, really…”

“It’s okay, Phoebe” she reassures her. He moves slightly away from her, returning straight with his back. He raises his head to take a breath.

“…Erika was a classmate of mine in high school. She came to our class during our senior year. Her family traveled a lot for work, so she changed school almost every year… But she was an Air-Att, so that changes don’t bother her at all, on the contrary…”

Phoebe listens intently, as he stops just for a moment to look up, starting to feel embarrassed. “…She was a strange girl. She wasn’t very intelligent, but she was smart and had a curiosity out of the ordinary, she wanted to know everything about us, sometimes seeming even intrusive… But despite this, she was a loner, in fact, she didn’t make many friends during that year…”

“…Except you, I guess”

He shakes his head slightly. “I would not say friends, we were almost opponents. She knew that I was ambitious, so she provoked me a lot… And I fell in her traps every time”

Phoebe chuckles. “I know what it feels like”

He smiles. “Oh no, believe me, You are a puppy in comparison. She was a dragon, she touched my nerves all the time… I remember that once we quarreled in class and she laughed and laughed in front of my face, and this thing made me go crazy…”

He stops and the smile disappears from his face. “But despite this, I could not help but feel… Intrigued by her. I was not interested in her romantically, I didn’t want distractions and the idea made me a headache… And yet, I felt something that attracted me to her…”

Phoebe squints curiously, while he continues to talk.

“But… We went on a school trip during the winter. They took us to this village above the mountains, to take us to see the ancient caves of the giants… In the evening, everyone went around the village and I stayed in the room alone, to read…”

She smiles. “I’m not surprised at all”

He shakes his head, puffing with a smile. “Anyway, one night, I hear a knock on my door. I opened it, thinking it was my roommate who had forgotten spell to open the door, but instead… It was Erika”

Beckett huffs, beginning to blush, having trouble to continuing the story. She squeezes his hand.

“Beckett…”

“No, I’m fine… I was saying, Erika knocked in my room and entered without even asking permission and this thing already irritated me, but I asked her why she had not gone out with the others… And strangely, that evening she opened up with me a little, saying that the others bored her, making her compliments continuously about how interesting and pretty she was… While I showed her all her defects and that thing amused her… And…”

Unable to face Phoebe’s gaze, she closes his eyes. “S-She kissed me… And I… I was scared because I felt that I had to move her away, but… I didn’t… And then… The rest of the story… I-I think it’s understandable”

Pursuing his lip, he opens slowly one eye, afraid of Phoebe’s judgment. But surprisingly, Phoebe is looking at him calmly, only with a slightly raised eyebrow, but without any discomfort in her eyes.

Beckett opens his eyes, incredulous. “…Are you not mad at me?”

“Well… This is… Something, definitely… But no, I’m not mad”

He widens his eyes, surprised. “Really?!”

“Yeah… Why should I be? It’s part of your past, neither can do anything to change it… And anyway I don’t even have the reason… Maybe it’s strange how it happened, but what happened it’s totally normal…”

He sighs, feeling a little relieved, but his face still solemn. “Anyway, It’s not over here, there’s more…”

“More?”

“Yes… After that night, I was seriously traumatized, I didn’t know what to do… On one hand, it seemed a big mistake and that it should never happen again, but on the other… I was… curious, I wanted to know more, I wanted to… Feel more. Erika understood that, so she proposed me a deal”

“A deal?”

“Yes, she… proposed me to continue that… Ahem… Kind of sessions, to take it as a sort of… research of human needs, of how body and magick react to certain stimuli… And I accepted”

Silence descends into the room. Phoebe looks at him with eyes wide open, his expression unreadable. Beckett looks at her with an edge of anxiety.

“…So what? Nothing to say?”

Phoebe opens her mouth to speak, but stops. Her eyes move in a circle, connecting the points of the story in her mind. Finally, she looks questioningly at Beckett, tilting her head.

“Are you telling me that… You became sex friends?”

Phoebe’s sentence makes him startle and his face reddens within a second. He looks away and waves his hands. “ Oh my good– I– No, I-I would not put it in these terms!”

She tries to hold back a laugh. “You can put all the vocabulary you want in the middle, basically the meaning is this”

“What– I said no!”

“Beckett, it doesn’t matter if it was for a scientific purpose… You had sex–”

“For the heaven’s sake, shut your mouth, please!!”

Beckett’s outburst silences her. Beckett is still turned to the side, unable to meet her gaze, but she clearly notices his red face, contracted by embarrassment…

No, not embarrassment. Almost shame.

Displeased and guilty, she approaches him and when she takes his hand, he stiffens but doesn’t move away.

“Beckett… I’m sorry, really, I was indelicate… Please look at me…”

Beckett, still a little hesitant, turns to her and finally looks at her. In her eyes, he can clearly read her sincere regret. He sighs, resigned.

“No, I must have the one to apologize… You’re right, It’s just… You are the first person who I talk about this, nobody knows… And I do not think I’ve ever been able to come to terms with this situation…”

She cocks her head. “Why?”

His expression falls even more. “Because… She used me… No, we used each other. She didn’t have any kind of affection towards me, as well as me towards her… She found me only attractive, I was just interested in the phenomenon… And I was attracted to her too, but, just physically… We were selfish, but we found ourselves… In our mutual selfishness…”

Sympathetically, she pulls him to herself. resting his head on her shoulder, while she strokes his hair to make him calm and whispers in his ear.

“Beckett, you can’t blame yourself for this… I know you don’t believe it, but you didn’t do anything wrong… It happens to everyone and most of the time out of selfishness or curiosity… So you did the most normal thing that a boy can do at that age…”

“But–”

“But nothing. Now relax”

It takes some time for Beckett to relax completely at Phoebe’s contact. Slowly and hesitantly, he wraps his arms around her waist and nuzzles even more in the crook of her neck. She gives him a sweet kiss on the cheek, while he feels his muscles loosen up as time passes.

“Better?” she murmurs. He nods and slowly rises from her. He straightens up with his back and takes a big breath, looking up. In the end, he manages a weak smile. She caresses her warm cheek, pinching it lightly.

“…Anyway, what happened after? If you want to tell me, of course”

“Of course I want… Not so much, anyway, we continued like this until the end of the school, without telling anyone. We saw each other twice a week, in her house. Her parents were never there, so… Let’s say we had our privacy. She wanted us to see each other more than that, but I was firm in my decision. First came the study, always”

She chuckles slightly. “Yeah, I can tell”

He manages a little laugh at her sentence, before continuing. “When the school was over, after the graduation ceremony, she left for England… We said goodbye on that occasion, we both knew we would never see each other again… But that was fine. As I said before, I’ve never felt anything for her, if not physical attraction… We didn’t give any emotional farewell…”

She sighs, thoughtful. “I see…”

“…You don’t seem convinced”

“Well… If I have to be honest, probably this is the saddest part…”

“Why?”

“Because, in any case, you had a bond… It doesn’t matter that there were no feelings behind it, you’ve been close for so long… Really there wasn’t a bit of sadness in separating?”

“…To be honest, when she moved away, I felt odd… It’s not that I missed her, it’s like I had a habit that I hadn’t anymore… It took me some time to recover, but then I came here in Penderghast for the summer, I dedicated my time to study and I didn’t think about it anymore. And anyway, she was not worth my thoughts…”

As he finishes to speak, his gaze falls on the satchel and smiles.

“But now stop talking about that… You’re forgetting about something”

She turns to the satchel, confused, then understands. “Right, the surprise you told me about”

She takes the box from inside and opens it. As soon as she sees the content, her eyes shine. Inside the box, well packaged, there is a cupcake. The yellow frosting is embellished with translucent crystals that shine a thousand colors in the strong sunlight of the room.

“Oh my god, it’s beautiful…”

Beckett takes her hand, his cheeks flushed, and talk to her with a gentle voice.

“I didn’t think of anything I said before until some time ago… But then I met you and I understood, because… You’re not an experiment. I admit that with Erika, I was good but it’s nothing compared to how I’m with you…”

Phoebe looks up at him, meeting his gaze. His cheeks are pink and his gray eyes are full of affection in looking at her.

“You’re totally different. It’s not just out of curiosity that I’m with you… I really like you, I like anything about you. I like to see you smile, laugh, run through the forest, read in the library… I also like to see you eat, considering that I find disgusting staring someone chewing”

She chuckles, while her cheeks turn red and her eyes glassy.

“I’m not just good with you… When you’re here, everything makes sense… And I thank every day for had the good fortune to meet you… And thank you for going beyond all my hard edges…”

She cups his blushed cheek and closes the distance, kissing him slowly and tenderly. He returns instantly, hugging her form in a warm embrace. When they pull apart, she leaves a quick kiss on the tip of his nose.

“Thank you, Beckett… It wasn’t easy for you to tell me all of this… And I’m glad you wanted to talk to me about it…”

“Of course… I don’t want to keep secrets with you”

The two move away slightly so that Phoebe can take the cupcake from the box to eat it. Before giving a bite, she grins at Beckett.

“You can turn around if you want”

He rolls his eyes and she chuckles. Then, she takes a bite from the cupcake. The frosting has the flavor of exotic fruits and the small crystals become hot when they break under the teeth, giving the sweet a different taste each time. While Phoebe enjoys the dessert, notices that something is happening to her sight. When she realizes, she chuckles with her mouth shut. Beckett raises an eyebrow.

“What is wrong?”

She swallows, before speaking. “Your hair… They’ve become green!”

“Huh?”

Beckett touches his hair, letting a strand drop in front of his eyes to see their condition, but he sees them as normal. Then, he understands that it’s the effect of the dessert and puffs. She hands the cupcake to him.

“Please try it!”

Grinning, he takes a bite from the pastry. The more he chews, the more his vision changes and the more he starts to laugh too.

“Well, you should see yours… I don’t understand if they’re blue or purple!”

Laughing, the two finish the pastry together, bite after bite. Phoebe approaches and hugs him, nuzzling in the crook of his neck.

“Thank you, that was wonderful”

He wraps her waist and holds her close. In a quiet silence, the two of them remain embraced for a while, with their fingers intertwined. Then, Phoebe speaks.

“Can I ask you something?”

“Of course”

She chuckles, before asking. “…Did you take notes, after our intercourses?”

She burst out laughing, while he pushes her away, frowned. “Oh heavens, you’re incorrigible…”

She stops laughing, but a stupid smile remains on her face. “Come ooon, tell me!”

He shakes his head, but smiles. “…Yes, I did. I told you, for me, it was real research”

“Oh, I hadn’t doubt about you were serious”

They laugh together. When he found her continuing to staring, he huffs. “What?”

She grins. “Nothing, I want you to elaborate”

“My god, you’ve got to be jok–”

“Not the details, thank you!”

He rubs his face in frustration. “…Fine. There is not much to say. I went to her house, we did… What we had to do, and I took note of what we liked and what did not. I have also read books by the way, if you want to know”

“…There are books about magickal sex?”

He grimaces. “Do not be so vulgar. There are books about how the magick and human anatomy and its functions are connected… You can tease me as much as you want, but they are very interesting books”

“Oh, I believe you, I swear… But I think you liked the practical part more”

She giggles, while he snorts, flushed. “Phoebe, please…”

“Wait, I have one last question…”

She approaches his side mischievously. “…I bet she was good, right?”

He goes rigid and his blush deepens. “I-I can’t answer that!”

“I take it as a yes… And if you want an opinion…”

She brings her lips to his ear. “Your research has led to excellent results. I can tell for sure”

A breath escapes from his lips and she chuckles maliciously. Beckett turns to her, their faces inches apart, and he lifts a corner of his lips.

“Do not flatter me, it doesn’t suit you”

“I’m not flattering… Actually, I have an idea”

“Yes? What idea?”

She passes a hand on his chest, her fingers fidgeting with the top button of his shirt, while she breaths on his lips. “I think we should do another experiment… You know, for the sake of research…”

He smirks, his eyes half closed. “You read my mind”.

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Disclaimer: All characters and rights belong to Pixelberry Studios.