#bechloe week 2019 | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

lets-talk-appella · 5 years

Text

Roman Holiday

Bechloe Week 2019 -- Soulmates

Summary: Three years after the events of Pitch Perfect 3, Beca and Chloe meet again on a long-haul flight to Rome.

Word Count: 9k

Rating: G

AO3 and FFN

For @acabellas, who read it first.

Beca shoves her bag into the overhead with a muffled curse. She’d told herself to pack light, but apparently, she hadn’t listened.

“Do you need help with that, ma’am?”

Beca glances over, making quick eye contact with the overly-perky blonde flight attendant (really, just that simple sentence had been coated with enough false sugar to rot Beca’s teeth) before returning her attention to stowing her carry-on.

“No, I’m good, thanks,” she grumbles, then puffs out a breath when her bag finally slides into place and stays.

The attendant walks away, and Beca plops down into her first-class seat, barely taking the time to appreciate the enormous, clearly-able-to-turn-into-a-somewhat-comfortable-bed window seat and the large TV screen in front of her as she reaches for her headphones. She settles back into the cushy seat, places the headphones over her ears, starts the first track, and closes her eyes with a sigh. She’s looking forward to listening to some demos and then maybe watching a movie before passing out on the overnight flight to Rome.

On second thought, Beca thinks as she starts to doze off almost as soon as her eyes are closed, maybe she’ll skip the movie and just sleep. Sleep would be good.

And, who knows, if the seat to her right remains empty, maybe she can stretch out even more on that.

With that hope in mind, Beca lets herself drift off to the sound of her music, which perfectly muffles the commotion of hordes of other people—vacationers, mostly—boarding the flight.

Unfortunately, not ten minutes later, she’s pulled back to consciousness by that same annoying, overly-sweet voice that somehow manages to pierce through her otherwise relatively sound-proof headphones. Rather than opening her eyes to acknowledge the annoyance, she keeps them closed and hopes the flight attendant will leave soon.

However, that isn’t the case.

“I’m sorry, but as the plane is at capacity, we can’t move your seat,” the attendant apologizes extremely loudly, apparently speaking to another passenger. “The best we could do is move you to business class, but as you paid for first class—”

“No, it’s—it’s fine,” comes a softer, almost contrite voice that Beca finds herself straining her ears to listen to. “Thanks for trying.”

Someone has kicked Beca in the stomach. That’s the only explanation for the horrible pang that rocks her gut at the sound of that voice.

Before she can stop herself—she realizes too late that she should feign sleep for the entire flight—her eyes open, first finding the irksome flight attendant, then sliding past her and onto the person she’d been speaking to.

And she looks directly into Chloe Beale’s face for the first time in three years.

There’s a moment, a single half-second, where Beca thinks—hopes—that this is some kind of fever dream brought on by exhaustion, years of failed repression, and expired turkey in her airport sandwich. But her hope is almost immediately crushed, demolished, absolutely obliterated by the simple fact that she can see the trace of laugh lines that had formed around Chloe’s eyes and maybe the slightest hint of lighter streaking in her hair, pulled up into a messy bun. Beca knows herself well enough to know that she isn’t dreaming; she doesn’t dream in that much detail.

She can see a similar struggle of some kind going on behind Chloe’s eyes, can tell by the way her brows furrow just slightly and lips part only a hair in surprise; to anyone else, the signs might not have been noticeable, but Beca can tell. Chloe isn’t happy to see her.

Time resumes in the next beat of Beca’s heart—though for a moment, she’d thought it might have stopped—and Chloe’s face pales. “H—” she starts, then has to pause and clear her throat. “Hi, Bec.”

It’s automatic and so, so easy for Beca to say, “Hey, Chlo,” as if it’s been mere hours since they’ve seen each other.

Then, Beca stares at Chloe and Chloe stares at Beca and no one makes the first move until the sugary flight attendant (Beca had almost forgotten she was even there) clears her throat pointedly. “Yes, well, seeing as you have elected to keep your seat, I suggest you take it,” she says, gesturing to the seat to Beca’s immediate right even as she starts walking away. “We will be taking off shortly.”

Chloe’s eyes slide closed and her lips tighten, but then she nods and lifts a large pink duffle to hoist up to the overhead. Beca’s ears ring as Chloe gets settled, and she takes off her headphones automatically even though she knows they aren’t the cause. Her mind races, full of panic and guilt and disbelief and anger—because what are the odds of this happening now, today, when she’s had no time to prepare the words she knows she needs to say but were never intended to leave her lips.

She’s startled when Chloe’s knee bumps hers as she sits. She thinks Chloe even apologizes for the minimal contact but Beca doesn’t hear her, too busy shifting away and doing her very best to make herself small while also fighting back the torrent of memories threatening to overtake her.

Chloe looks a little older, a little more strained (which is probably to be expected after three years—Beca knows she’s certainly looked better), but still so familiar, still so Chloe that being this close to her pierces Beca like a knife.

God, the last time she and Chloe touched—Christ, even the last time she saw Chloe in person…

It’s unfortunate and a shame and absolutely beyond painful that one of Beca’s freshest, most recent memories of Chloe is how gorgeous she looked while kissing Chicago Walp.

Beca puts her headphones back on.

Leaning against the wall of the plane, she pretends to be staring out the window while in fact seeing nothing and doing her best to think of nothing. A feat in which she is only semi-successful.

Their flight is going to last nearly nine hours; it seems like it takes even longer than that for the plane to finally leave the gate and begin its roll down the tarmac. Even then, it’s almost twenty minutes before the real takeoff begins and the plane, along with its 375 passengers, hurls itself forward with a roar.

The takeoff—and the ten minutes immediately following as the plane builds altitude—isn’t smooth.

It’s pretty much the exact opposite of smooth.

Beca doesn’t mind a little turbulence, but she has to admit this seems excessive for a plane of this size. She can hear her bag and Chloe’s sliding around in the overhead, and a particularly hard jump of the plane almost makes her smack her head against the window. After that, she takes her headphones off so they don’t become damaged.

At the next heavy jostle, Chloe lets out a sharp gasp and Beca reflexively glances over. Chloe’s knuckles are white from her grip on the armrests and she’s tense as a board, ramrod straight in her seat. Her jaw is clenched, chin tilted down, and her eyes are squeezed tightly closed.

Beca grimaces; she remembers holding Chloe’s hand during the rocky sections of their flights as Bellas. Or, more specifically, she remembers Chloe’s grip nearly shattering all the delicate bones in her own hand. Beca hadn’t minded, though. Not really. All that mattered was that it made Chloe feel better.

She knows it isn’t her place anymore.

She wonders if Chloe has ever flown with Chicago, and if he ever let Chloe squeeze his hand to death.

Beca clears her throat. “So. Rome, huh?”

Chloe’s eyes fly open and she glances over sharply but doesn’t reply. If anything, she seems to draw in on herself even more, looking away just as quickly.

It’s a clear signal for Beca to stop talking now, please. And maybe she really should. Maybe she should stick with her original plan of music, movies, sleep, and—most importantly—seclusion, because there’s a reason they haven’t seen each other in three years and, going into the flight, Beca had had no intention of changing that. She had no real reason to.

But she can’t just sit in silence when Chloe is right there and is obviously terrified. She just can’t. So, with a promise to herself to cease any and all conversation once the turbulence has passed, Beca leans in.

“I’m not gonna bite, you know,” she shrugs, hoping she seems more relaxed than she really is. “And it’s a long flight, so…”

Chloe glances over again, but this time, she doesn’t look away. Her posture doesn’t budge—Beca wouldn’t be surprised if there were finger indents left on Chloe’s armrest—but she does seem to at least consider the fact that Beca is talking to her.

“Yeah,” she eventually says, her voice clipped. “Rome.”

“No layover?” Beca prods, for no reason at all other than she’s worried about potential damage to Chloe’s spine from being that wound up.

“Nope, just—just Rome.”

“Oh, nice. Uh, me too. Rome.”

And then Beca’s completely out of ideas for conversation topics. She settles for bobbing her head, a move that, in accordance with a poorly-timed jostle of the plane, actually does cause her to whack her head against the window. Despite the sharp pain, she pretends not to notice in the hopes that Chloe didn’t, either. It doesn’t quite seem to work, though, because a corner of Chloe’s mouth quirks up and—thankfully—her posture seems to relax just slightly.

“You’re not too busy being a superstar?” Chloe asks, only the barest hint of teasing leaking into her tone.

Beca’s brain stalls for an instant as she processes the fact that Chloe’s actually engaging in conversation. “Superstars get vacations, too,” she shrugs once her brain defrosts.

Chloe’s hands relax on the armrests, color flooding her knuckles again. “I suppose. They don’t get private jets?”

Beca can’t stop herself from smiling just a little, thinking about how incredulous Theo had been when she’d turned down his offer for just that. “I wanted something more low profile.”

As soon as she finishes her sentence, the flight levels, reaching an altitude that doesn’t attempt to knock Beca’s teeth out. The noise level of the engine drops as Beca pops her ears, and she realizes she had basically been shouting at Chloe to be heard.

The turbulence (hopefully) finished for the moment, Beca settles back into her seat as Chloe moves her hands to her own lap, folding them with a soft sigh. If Beca kept the promise she’d made to herself, she would put on her headphones again and block out Chloe for the rest of the flight. It would maybe be for the best, thinking long-term.

But, as in the case of her overpacking, Beca doesn’t listen to herself.

“So—”

“Um—”

They start speaking in unison, and it’s so awkward and this entire situation is so uncomfortable and unexpected that it makes Beca laugh, and just like that, she can’t quite remember why it was she’d made an internal vow of silence to begin with.

After all, it is going to be a long flight.

“You go first,” Beca suggests.

“Oh, okay,” Chloe says, pushing a strand of hair that had escaped from her bun behind her ear. “H—How have you been?” she asks, her voice light and casual.

“Uh, good. Yeah. Busy.” Beca winces, slightly irritated by her own urge to stop talking. She’s given countless interviews on national television—it should be the easiest thing in the world to talk to Chloe. (She knows why it isn’t.) “The last few years were crazy, uh, tours and albums, and… well, we wrapped up this tour last week, and, you know, I’m taking some rest now before I start on the next album. Theo has been kinda… he’s fine, really, but. A vacation would be good,” she finishes with a huff.

She thinks that’s a decent amount of information, a coverage of the surface-level details Chloe should be privy to. It answers Chloe’s question, in a way, without detailing how truly exhausted she has been, how much this latest tour drained her of energy and happiness and how uncertain she is about her future with the label because she had never really wanted to sing, only produce, and her answer doesn’t even hint—doesn’t reveal so much as a single trace—of how honest-to-God lonely she is and how she puts out so much music in such a short time simply because she never wants to go home to her huge, magnificent, outstandingly empty house at the end of the day.

Chloe doesn’t need to know about any of that.

Chloe smiles. “That’s your third album?”

“Yep, third,” Beca nods. “It’s kinda crazy actually. Three albums in three years is kinda a lot.”

Oops. She wasn’t supposed to let that slip. She shifts in her seat, but if Chloe picks up on anything strange (Beca’s glaring need for rest, for instance), she doesn’t say. No; instead, she leans forward, all huge eyes and excited smile and practically oozes enthusiasm as she assures Beca, “They’re really good though! You’re doing amazing.”

Thrown by the sincerity shining from Chloe’s eyes, Beca stammers, “Th—thanks, that’s really—you listened to my albums?”

“Of course I did,” Chloe shakes her head, as though shocked that Beca would question that. “We all did.”

She’s telling the truth. Beca knows because Chloe’s tells—eyes begging Beca to believe her, lips parted and ready to fling another compliment, her upper body leaned toward Beca in earnest—are all in place. Chloe doesn’t lie about music, and certainly not about Beca’s. She never has.

Beca has to look away; her eyes drop to her hands, which fiddle with one another in her lap. “Yeah, I… thanks.”

She doesn’t need to clarify the “we all” part of Chloe’s statement. Beca has been better about keeping in contact with some of the Bellas than she was with Chloe, but still. She hasn’t seen most of them in quite some time. The most recent was Amy, and that had been before her five-month world tour.

Saving Beca from further awkwardness, the drink cart prattles up the aisle ahead of them, stopping first next to a businessman in a full suit. Unfortunately, the same sickly sweet flight attendant from before is one of the women distributing the drinks.

Beca groans softly in annoyance.

“Problem?” Chloe asks, following her line of sight.

“Just. That flight attendant is so fake-nice. You know?”

Chloe grins back at her playfully. “Maybe you’re too real-grumpy.”

“Whatever,” Beca huffs. “She’s paid to be nice to us. I want to know what she’s really thinking.”

“Well, Bec, she does have to deal with a ton of rude, smelly strangers on a flight.”

“Speak for yourself. I showered this morning.”

Looking surprised by Beca’s teasing, Chloe opens her mouth to fire right back, only for the drink cart to pull up next to her. The sugar-soaked voice asks for her drink order, and Beca’s.

They both come away from the encounter with glasses of white wine, complementary for first-class passengers. Beca sips hers, savoring the flavor as well as the feeling of it starting to roll through her limbs, calming her, and overall doing her best to avoid accidentally spilling it anywhere.

“So, how are you?” she asks after a moment, glancing over at Chloe. She isn’t sure how much she wants to hear, in all honesty, but it seems rude not to ask, and for whatever reason, she desperately wants the conversation to keep going.

“Oh, good, yeah,” Chloe replies, then stops.

It’s weird. Beca vaguely wonders if this is an episode of The Twilight Zone and they’d somehow flown into another dimension where Chloe stops speaking after only three relatively useless words.

So, Beca prods. “Vet school is still…?”

“Yeah, I graduate in December. A semester early, actually,” Chloe admits with a shrug and a pleased-looking smile.

“Dude, congrats! That’s a huge deal!”

“Thanks! It was because I did that internship, actually. I had a lot of the hours required, so. Early graduation.”

“Nice, nice, that’s… yeah. Great job.”

“Thanks,” Chloe repeats, then looks down with what might be a little shyness, or simply a desire to end the conversation.

Once again, Beca isn’t sure what to say. She knows she should ask more, like about Chloe’s classes, or maybe even use Chloe’s old internship as some kind of conversational spring-board to jump into reminiscing about the years spent living together in New York, but she doesn’t quite want to take a stroll down memory lane after all this time.

And Beca can’t ask about Chicago. She can’t.

So, she pretends to look out the window for several minutes, the silence hanging between them becoming steadily more uncomfortable as time passes. Beca has no idea if Chloe has dozed off or has started reading or what because she doesn’t want to look away from all the interesting… shapeless white mist outside, which is growing steadily darker as the plane carries them toward Europe and a different time zone.

It gets to the point where Beca is relieved to hear that increasingly-familiar-and-annoyingly sweet voice of the flight attendant, accompanied by the rattle of a rapidly approaching food cart.

“Sushi, chicken, or pasta?” the woman asks. “We also have a menu if you would prefer something else.”

“Uh, sushi’s fine,” Beca mumbles, accepting the tray of it from the attendant.

Chloe orders pasta, and takes the tray with a “Thank you.” She stares down at the plate for a moment as Beca eats, long enough that Beca starts to become concerned that there’s something wrong with it—maybe it’s grotesquely overcooked or contains an errant used Band-Aid—but then Chloe looks over at her, surprise written across her face.

“So… this is really nice, wow.”

Beca stops chewing. “Hmm?”

“The food. The wine. The… everything,” Chloe says with a grand gesture around the first-class cabin.

“Oh.” Beca swallows the bite of sushi and glances around the cabin. It is certainly nice, though nothing that she hasn’t experienced before. Her (Theo’s) private jet is really much nicer, excessively so. “Yeah, I suppose it is,” she says slowly, wondering for the first time why it’s Chloe sitting next to her rather than some snobby, stiff CEO with money to toss out the window. “Hey, why are you flying—”

“Are these mushrooms any good, you think?” Chloe muses as she peers suspiciously down at her pasta, poking her fork at the limp gray fungus mixed into the sauce.

Beca looks over her shoulder at the mushrooms. “They look okay,” she says with a shrug. “Gotta be safer than anything I’d make.”

Chloe pauses her prodding to grin at Beca. “You were a decent chef,” she says, the pitch of her voice raising rather obviously. Her eyes flick away and she takes a massive bite of her pasta. She always has been a bad liar.

Beca raises an eyebrow and tilts her head skeptically. She had tried cooking for Chloe and Amy a few times when they’d lived together in New York, yielding less than ideal results.

Chloe’s nose wrinkles guilty. “Okay, you weren’t great.”

“Chloe.” Beca stares. “I had the fire department come twice!”

“Yeah, okay, but the little sad face you made after was so cute.”

“Mmph.” Beca rolls her eyes, trying to ignore the tingling heat rising in her neck at Chloe calling her “cute.” She highly doubts that anyone at the fire department would have called her “cute” after almost burning down the apartment complex twice. “Still not as bad as the time Amy almost got arrested for assault when she punched the mailman.”

Chloe laughs, a real, full laugh that makes her eyes shine and brightens the air around her. At the sight of it—of Chloe’s sincere happiness—something trickles within Beca’s chest and clicks in her mind and it’s suddenly so wonderfully, unexpectedly, stupidly easy to sit next to Chloe again.

“God, what was it?” Chloe asks, her lips still twitching in amusement even as she continued eating her dinner. “He surprised her or something?”

Beca shakes her head with a smile she knows is bigger than the situation really warrants. “No, remember, she thought he was Bumper in disguise and she was mad at him.”

“Right, yeah. Those two were really… something.”

“May I take your trash?”

Beca looks up and directly into the eyes of her least favorite flight attendant. She’s steering a cart full of dirty dishes and trash and looking pointedly at their empty dinner plates.

“Uh…”

“Totes!” Chloe says happily, reaching for Beca’s plate to stack it on top of her own and hand them to the flight attendant. “Thanks!”

A moment later, the cart rattles away, and Beca’s eyes flick to the TV screen in front of her seat as she considers what to say now. The interruption had thrown off the progress they’d made—despite the ease with which she and Chloe seem to be able to fall into conversation again, three years is still a long time.

She glances at Chloe from the corner of her eye; she’s examining her nails, something she only does when she doesn’t know what to do or say next.

It’s probably a bad idea, but… “So, do you want to watch a movie or something?” Beca asks.

Chloe looks up, eyebrows lifted. “Beca Mitchell wants to watch a movie?”

“Shut up,” Beca groans. She thought she’d heard the last of that a long time ago, but apparently not. “You know I like movies. Just not boring ones.”

Chloe bumps her shoulder against Beca’s teasingly. “Okay, well, you pick a non-boring movie and we can watch it together.”

“Uh… right,” Beca mumbles, trying to scoot farther away from Chloe without her noticing. Yeah, the movie thing was her idea, but Chloe touching her brought back too many memories of Hood Nights and choreography and competition celebrations and—Beca swallows.

Chicago, Chicago, Chicago. She can’t forget that large, camouflage-wearing detail.

She taps the screen in front of her, waking it and wincing at its brightness. She turns it down, noticing that around them, several people have closed their window shades and have reclined, likely preparing to sleep for the majority of the rest of the flight.

Chloe, though, doesn’t look tired. And Beca is far too wound up to do anything other than search for the movie she had in mind. She makes the selection, ignoring Chloe’s look of deep skepticism, and pulls out a pair of earbuds, giving the left to Chloe and keeping the right for herself. Before Chloe has a chance to protest at her movie choice, Beca starts Booksmart, one of her favorites.

Less than two hours later, as the end credits roll, Chloe takes out her earbud with an expression that Beca can only describe as a mix of pity and regret.

“Good, huh?” she asks quietly, mindful of the few people dozing around them.

“Why is that on here?” Chloe replies after a moment.

Beca rolls her eyes. “It’s a cinematic masterpiece, Chloe.”

Chloe wrinkles her nose and lifts her shoulders. “I… it’s kinda lame.”

“What?” Beca gasps, deadly serious. “You’re kinda lame. You laughed during it!”

“Yeah, I did…” Chloe says carefully. “Some parts were good, and I liked, uh, the crazy girl.”

“Gigi.”

“Her,” Chloe nods. “But... the whole thing with the strawberries and the—the dolls? I dunno, that was kinda unnecessary.”

“Okay, yeah,” Beca admits. “But—”

“And that girl in the bathroom was so rude to Amy, like really, I didn’t like her at all.”

“I mean, fine, but the rest of it—”

“Was lame?”

“Was hilarious.”

Chloe purses her lips. “Mmm…”

Beca slaps her hand down on the wide armrest between herself and Chloe. “That’s it!” she says forcefully, and is rewarded with wide blue eyes and a slackened jaw. “Get off this plane!” She lets the corner of her mouth quirk upward just enough for Chloe’s expression to relax and a soft smile to light her face.

“What, am I supposed to just jump out?” Chloe fires back.

“Yep. See ya!” Beca gives a mock wave. “Don’t forget a parachute.”

“Shush,” Chloe says, and then time slows down. Beca can see it coming as if in slow motion, can track the exact movement of Chloe’s hand as it rises from her lap, arching through the air, then falling, falling to rest perfectly on top of her own. Chloe’s skin is soft and warm, but Beca feels as though she’s just plunged her entire arm into a bucket of ice water. It shocks her enough that she pulls away before her brain catches up, her body’s reflexive protective mechanisms taking over.

Hurt flares across Chloe’s face for an instant before her expression goes blank, but it still hits Beca like a truck when she snatches her own hand back as well. Shame rises in Beca’s neck—which is stupid because she has no reason to feel bad about this, about needing space, about protecting herself from the unexpected and… not entirely unwelcome touch. (She wants more than anything to put her hand back under Chloe’s.) But still.

At this point, she’s sitting next to a stranger, and her body knows that even if her brain refuses to believe it.

Which...

“So, you tried to change seats.” The words that leave Beca’s mouth surprise her just as much as they surprise Chloe, who pales and doesn’t quite meet Beca’s eyes.

“What?”

Beca half wants to take it back, but she knows Chloe heard her the first time. “Earlier,” she forces out. “When you got on. You... tried to change seats.” It comes out as more of a question, made worse by the way she lifts one shoulder.

Chloe’s eyebrows draw together and she looks down at her lap, twirling her thumb ring. Beca notices for the first time that there’s no wedding ring (the thought that she could have been sitting next to Chloe Walp rather than Chloe Beale turns her stomach), but before that information really sinks in, Chloe whispers, “Yeah, I… I did.”

Beca nods, lets that sit in the air before taking a breath. “I don’t blame you, you know. I probably would have done the same thing.”

“Beca…”

“I get it. Three years—”

“Three years...” Chloe cuts her off with a shaky breath. “Three years is a really long time. You just—you vanished. You know?” One of Chloe’s hands runs through her hair roughly. “After we knew you for seven years, Bec, you just—you signed with Khaled, and then you vanished.”

“Not completely,” Beca shrugs uncomfortably.

“No, not completely,” Chloe concedes with a single nod. “We got your cards, and Amy and Aubrey and Stacie always said you’d talked to them, but… you didn’t call me.”

“I did once.”

She did, about two months after she and the Bellas had their huge hug-a-thon on stage in front of hundreds of members of the U.S. Armed Forces. She’d called Chloe from her contemporary, freshly-painted, excessively huge studio office in L.A. She called because Chloe was still in New York but living alone since Amy and her newfound millions had moved out of that cramped apartment three days after Beca had, and Beca had known how lonely Chloe would be. So, shoving aside thoughts of a certain soldier with a stupid name, Beca had called. Only for Chloe to talk all about Chicago, telling her all the dates he’d taken her on when she’d stayed in Europe an extra two weeks to be with him, and how he calls as often as he can and how he writes to her and how it’s just like old time love stories and how he did this and that and on and on and on.

Beca hadn’t really felt the need to call after that.

“Yeah,” Chloe says, likely remembering that call. Her eyebrows draw together, but she doesn’t say anything else.

“I mean… you didn’t call me, either,” Beca mutters, glancing out her window at the now black sky.

“I… no. I didn’t.”

“It’s both of us, Chlo.”

“What happened?” Chloe asks, looking for all the world as if she has no possible clue as to why they’d let their friendship grow stale.

Beca almost wants to laugh at her. Or maybe scream. Instead, she says, “We got busy. Things just changed. It happens.”

“But we always said—”

“What can I get you ladies to drink?”

Beca could hug the flight attendant. Neither she nor Chloe orders anything to drink, but the interruption still ends the line of conversation that Beca had been trying so hard to avoid for the past three years.

Deciding that an uncomfortable silence is the best option at the moment, Beca uses her screen to check how much time remains in their flight: about four hours. Unease rolls through her stomach. She just isn’t sure if it’s because the number is too big or too small. She reaches to close the tab on the screen, wanting to power it off.

“I missed you, you know.”

It’s soft, barely a whisper, and clearly said so that Beca could easily ignore it if she wanted to. Beca pauses, her hand hovering in front of the screen. Slowly, her fingers curl, rolling inward to her palm, forming a tight fist that she lets fall to her lap. She really shouldn’t—but then she looks over and Chloe’s watching her, her face open and honest and so unassuming that Beca knows she could never say another word back in response and Chloe wouldn’t blame her.

“I missed you, too,” she says instead, and Chloe swallows.

“Don’t… let’s not do that again. Promise?”

“I…” Beca doesn’t want to make a promise that she’ll inevitably have to break (she can’t bear seeing Chloe with anyone that isn’t her) and she knows how selfish that makes her, but she also can’t bear finding out whether Chloe’s disappointment looks the same as it had years ago. She clears her throat. “Promise,” she says, and if Chloe knows she’s lying, it doesn’t show.

Instead, Chloe smiles and takes a breath. “So, what are these other people doing in first class? Are they all famous singers, too?”

“Oh, um,” Beca has to take a moment to catch up to the change in topic.

“That guy is a master animal trainer,” Chloe whispers with conviction, pointing subtly to the man seated in front of Beca, wearing a suit. “He’s headed to Rome to meet a caravan of lions being transported to a nearby zoo, where they’ll perform tricks for the kids.”

“Mmm.”

“And the woman in the gray sweater? You see her?”

Beca follows Chloe’s gaze diagonally across the aisle to a row ahead of them, where an older woman wearing a gray turtleneck leans heavily against her window, mouth hanging wide as she sleeps through the duration of their flight. She looks so peaceful that Beca’s actually mildly concerned until she sees the steady movement of the woman’s shoulders as she breathes.

“She’s an assassin.”

Beca snorts loudly enough to make the man in front of her jolt in his sleep.

“Quiet!” Chloe chastises, though her own twitching lips betray her. “She’s only stopping in Rome for five hours, during which she has to arrange the deaths of three high-profile members of the French government.”

Across the aisle, the woman twitches and begins to snore softly.

Beca hums and plays along. “Why are three high-profile members of the French government in Rome?”

“Because they thought they’d be safe there. Little did they know that The Black Widow—”

“Is that her?”

“Yes. Little did they know that The Black Widow has been tracking their every movement and is going to take them down.”

“Clearly they were wrong about the safety thing.”

Chloe nods seriously.

Beca makes a show of looking over at the snoring woman. “Well, someone should tell The Black Widow that the guy in front of her was once a knife-thrower in a circus.”

The beaming smile of delighted surprise that Chloe sends her more than makes up for any residual awkwardness from their earlier conversation.

It’s easy. It’s so easy for Beca to lose herself talking to Chloe like this. In fact, she’s 98.3% positive that even if it had been more than three years since they’d seen one another—if it had been five, ten, twenty, even fifty years—they’d still be able to talk like this. Because it’s Chloe. She’s always been able to be like this with Chloe. She could talk like this with Chloe all night.

But. Maybe it’s not a good idea.

Next to her, Chloe stifles a yawn into the back of her hand, but seems to shake herself out of it, trying to stay awake, presumably to continue talking. And if Chloe wants to stay up, that’s fine with Beca.

In search of their next conversation topic, Beca reaches for one of the magazines in front of her, hoping to find some article in there they can talk about or make fun of. She pulls one out of the slot and is horrified to see her own face—in a somewhat unflattering photo—gracing the cover of one of those trashy tabloids.

“Oh god,” she mutters, trying to shove away the magazine before Chloe can see it, but before she can, it’s snatched out of her hand.

“Did you plant this?” Chloe asks as she scrutinizes the cover and headline, which Beca hadn’t had a chance to read.

“I didn’t, I swear!”

Chloe only grins in that teasing way she has. Her eyes drop to the cover and she reads aloud, “‘Pop star Beca Mitchell seen leaving grocery store in a rage: Her secret war with record label over diet.’”

Beca huffs and rolls her eyes. “That’s the best they could do?”

Chloe gasps sharply and she clutches the tabloid to her chest in mock scandal. “You mean these rags don’t always report the truth? No. Way.”

With another eye roll, Beca plucks the magazine from Chloe’s hands and stuffs it back in the slot it came from. “Honestly, I’m still amazed that they can get away with this. It’s false reporting.”

“Come on, at least some have to be true,” Chloe insists, batting her eyes (rather unnecessarily, in Beca’s opinion).

“Well…”

“I mean, not all of the ones about you dating having to be true, but some, right?”

Beca shrugs, trying to look as unassuming as she can while wondering why, of all the ridiculous things the tabloids had written about her, Chloe would choose to ask about that.

“Oh come on, there’s no way you’re single,” Chloe insists with maybe too much enthusiasm, her voice a tad brighter, somehow, than it is normally. “There’s no way!”

“I—uh… first of all, I am single,” Beca says slowly, her eyes flicking to the back of the seat in front of her even as her neck warms. “But not all of the rumors were false, no.”

“Which ones?”

“Um—did you know these seats, like, recline into beds?” Beca asks quickly. “Here, let me…” she fumbles for the button on the side of her seat, pushing back with enough enthusiasm she’s surprised she doesn’t launch herself to the back of the plane. Her seat smoothly reclines into what is basically a soft, slightly-smaller-than-twin-sized bed, and she lies back, staring at the ceiling of the cabin.

Of course, she should have known better—maybe should have faked a bathroom emergency or something instead—because approximately one-sixteenth of a second later, Chloe is reclining in her own seat-bed right next to her and poking her in the shoulder.

“Which rumors are true, then?” Chloe asks persistently. “I’m not leaving until you tell me, so.”

And that doesn’t help anything at all because Beca’s traitorous mind immediately flings itself to a dorm shower, bright eyes, perfect pitch, and rising steam. She shuts that down as well as she can, turning her neck to meet those same bright eyes, sparkling with amusement and maybe something else that Beca can’t identify.

Beca sighs dramatically and flops her arm over her eyes. “Um… I’m definitely not having an affair with Liam Hemsworth,” she says, sliding her arm to her forehead to peek at Chloe.

“Oh, I knew that one was fake,” Chloe dismisses with a wave. “You wouldn’t do that to Miley.”

Beca pauses. “Right.”

“But other ones?”

Beca really doesn’t know why Chloe’s so invested in this.

“I… fine,” she mutters, flopping her hands down to her stomach and lacing her fingers together. “I did go on a date with Kristen Stewart.” She looks sideways, trying to gauge Chloe’s reaction.

Chloe’s eyebrows raise, but she doesn’t look nearly as surprised as Beca had expected. Maybe a slight downturn of the mouth, but that could mean anything; maybe she just doesn’t like supernatural romance movies or something. Before Beca has a chance to decipher the look, Chloe’s plowing on.

“How was that?” she asks, fully rolling to her side facing Beca and sliding a hand under her head to act as a cushion.

Mirroring her, Beca also rolls to her side. “It was good! She’s really great.”

“And pretty.”

“Yeah, and pretty. But I think we were better as friends, you know?”

“Yeah, I… that’s a trend.”

“Hm?”

“Any other girls?”

“Um, not really.” Beca raises a hand to her nose, rubbing it absentmindedly. “With the albums, you know, my label kinda… Well, Theo thought it might be better for my ‘image’—she uses her hands to make air quotes—“or whatever to not really date until I’m more established. And to date more guys than girls,” she adds.

Chloe frowns. “That’s not… it’s your life.”

Beca can’t stop herself from laughing. “Not really. Not when I’m signed to a label.”

Chloe’s frown deepens, but she doesn’t say anything. Beca could kick herself; she really hadn’t meant to say anything like that. Before she can make up for it, though, Chloe leans forward.

“So, do you… prefer girls?” she asks, her eyes flicking away and back. “You never really said.”

Beca swallows. “Oh, I… is it a problem?”

Chloe’s eyes fly wide and her hand flutters toward Beca as if to rest on her arm. “Bec, of course not! I mean, you know I dabble in the lady pond.” She says this at normal volume and with no trace of shyness. Beca kind of admires her for it. “Come on, it’s totally fine.”

Beca nods, smiling to herself a little. “I tried telling you guys first, you know.”

“Hm?”

Beca lets herself smile properly now as she remembers a European stage filled with all of her best friends. “Come on, Chlo,” she urges gently. “I sang ‘Freedom ‘90.’”

“Oh, right...” Chloe breathes, her eyes again flicking away as she bites her lower lip.

Beca’s stomach drops as she remembers what else happened that night. She thinks Chloe might be remembering, too, now, as her eyes take on some faraway place and time. Beca blinks and behind her eyelids she sees it all again, the way Chloe had strutted to Chicago, pulled him into a kiss that had made the earth crumble from beneath Beca’s feet.

She knows Chloe’s thinking of that, too. She can see it in the way she won’t make eye contact and her teeth toy with her lip.

Reality crashes into Beca, stealing the breath from her lungs and making her feel like the biggest idiot on the face of the planet. She knew this was a bad idea, knew she should never have talked to Chloe like this, because when they leave this plane, it’s going to hurt more than ever.

She might as well kick-start the ending now.

“So,” she starts, not recognizing the sound of her own voice. “How’s, um, Chicago? Are—-are you meeting him in Rome, or…”

A shadow crosses Chloe’s face and she shifts, rolling onto her back again to stare at the ceiling. When she still doesn’t answer, Beca begins to worry that she’d somehow put her foot in her mouth.

“Chlo, I—”

“Do you believe in soulmates?” Chloe breathes, still watching the ceiling.

Oh.

Beca rolls to her back as well, unable to look at Chloe directly. She doesn’t want to hear about how Chicago is Chloe’s “soulmate” or whatever is about to happen. She doesn’t want to hear about the white picket fence house and their eventual two-point-five kids or how they’ll renew their wedding vows every ten years or something ridiculously cheesy like that. She doesn’t want to hear how Chloe is going to dedicate her life to a man who absolutely does not deserve her—though, Beca can’t be sure because she never really even talked to him—and doesn’t want to hear how he’s her “better half” or whatever the hell goes with having a soulmate.

Beca wants to throw herself out of the plane, sans parachute, for being the one to even ask about Chicago in the first place.

“I… don’t know,” she says eventually, risking a glance over.

Chloe’s lips press together and she takes a deep breath through her nose. Beca looks back at the ceiling, unable to face Chloe’s disappointment.

“Well, I do,” Chloe says. “I think there can be different kinds of soulmates.” She pushes herself back on her side facing Beca, but Beca doesn’t move. “I think anyone you connect with—boyfriend, girlfriend, family, friends—anyone who just gets you, and you get them, I think that’s a soulmate. And I think you can have more than one soulmate.”

“You think so? More than one?” Beca asks, feeling Chloe’s eyes on the side of her face.

“I hope so. Not sure though. Maybe you only get one soulmate of each kind, you know? But you can have multiple kinds.”

Beca tries her hardest to control her expression. She clears her suddenly dry throat and asks the ceiling, “What... happens if you think someone is your soulmate, like you really, really think so, and then… they’re not?”

Chloe takes another deep breath, one that Beca can hear is jagged around the edges. “Which kind of soulmate are we talking? Because maybe they’re just—maybe they’re just not the kind you thought they were.”

Beca can’t find her voice. She must have lost it somewhere along the line, it having fallen from her throat to bounce around the inside of the plane and slip out a crack in a door seal to disperse among the clouds.

It’s so quiet in the plane, save for the humming white noise of the engine, that Beca’s sure Chloe could hear how hard her heart was beating if only she listened closely enough.

“You know?” Chloe prompts, sounding so small and needy that it snatches Beca’s voice right out of the air to shove it back into place in her throat.

“So, Chicago is your… soulmate.”

Even as Beca’s heart clenches around the word, Chloe starts to laugh, a surprised bubbling noise that makes Beca finally turn to her in shock.

Chloe shakes her head and stops laughing, though a smile still graces her face. “Oh, sorry, I didn’t mean to… no. Chicago isn’t my soulmate. We broke up eight months ago.”

Oh.

“Oh.”

“Yeah,” Chloe sighs. “To answer your question, I’m going to Rome, alone, on a first-class plane ticket because I’m treating myself, Beca. I… this was a long time coming.”

Beca’s heart is in her throat now, she’s sure. She knows she’s probably supposed to say something like, “I’m sorry,” in response to the news about Chicago, but she can’t quite manage to lie to Chloe yet again.

Chloe’s eyes drop. “I thought Chicago was my soulmate. I told myself he was. I needed him to be.”

Beca wants to ask the question that dangles there on the tip of her tongue, but she’s too afraid. Afraid of the answer, afraid she knows what Chloe is going to say, afraid that it’s too late. Afraid that she’s wrong.

She feels the moment fading, knows that with every passing second the window gets smaller and smaller, until before long, it’s going to close entirely and she’ll spend the rest of her life wishing she’d said something, wishing she’d had the courage to ask the question and hear the answer that will change everything.

She knows she’ll never forgive herself if she doesn’t say something, so she takes a breath that churns her stomach and opens her mouth.

Chloe snores softly, nothing more than a nasally inhale, but her eyes are closed and she looks more relaxed in sleep than Beca can remember her looking in a long time.

Her window of opportunity closes with a bang and Beca settles back and closes her eyes, mentally berating herself, hoping against hope that all of this had just been a horrible nightmare from which she won’t ever recover.

She is so, so stupid for doing this to herself.

*****************

The next time Beca opens her eyes, the cabin is brightly lit, a result of both the interior lights and unfiltered sunlight streaming through the one or two windows with shades lifted partway. A blueberry muffin, a slice of banana bread, and a Styrofoam cup of black coffee rest on her tray, the airplane’s offered breakfast.

Frowning at the items, she wonders if the flight attendant had just placed them there or if someone had ordered—Beca whips her face to the side so quickly it makes her neck crack. The seat next to her is upright and empty.

Beca fumbles for the lever on the side of her own seat, sitting up and pushing the recliner back to seat form. Her eyes roam the cabin, searching, both hoping and dreading that everything had actually been a result of her imagination. Then, at the front of the cabin, a light near the ceiling flickers off, and Chloe steps out of the restroom, looking exhausted.

Relief tinged with pain rolls through Beca; trying to hide her reaction, she rubs her eyes then focuses on unwrapping the muffin.

“Morning,” Chloe says lightly as she sits down. “So those restrooms are still really tiny.”

“They are,” Beca agrees around a yawn. She hates changing time zones like this. A glance at her watch tells her she got about two hours of sleep. “Did you order this stuff for me?” she asks, gesturing to her breakfast.

Chloe nods. “I hope that’s okay? The cart went by and I didn’t want you to miss the breakfast.”

“It’s good. Thanks.”

“Totes. Um, I think they said before I went to the bathroom that we would be landing in, like, twenty minutes or so, so…”

“Right.” The breakfast on her tray doesn’t seem so appealing anymore. Still, she picks at it, even if it’s just something to do with her hands. Chloe reaches for one of the magazines in front of them and starts to read. Thankfully, Beca isn’t on the cover of this one.

Beca takes a sip of her coffee. Chloe turns a page. Beca finishes off the muffin and starts on the bread. Chloe raises a hand to rub at her cheek as she reads.

Beca’s mind races, but is simultaneously quiet. It’s a weird state, and she blames it on the lack of sleep, time change, and the presence of Chloe. She knows she could—maybe should—say something about Chloe’s whole “soulmate” thing, but now in the relative daylight, it seems too far away to bring up again.

So, they sit in silence, listening to the engine noises grow louder as their altitude drops. Beca pops her ears several times, the plane rocks back and forth unsteadily (Chloe takes several deep breaths and grips the armrests), and, after only a few moments where Beca is positive the plane is going to crash, they touch down on the tarmac with a small bump and the sudden slowing brought on by strong brakes.

Next to her, Chloe relaxes with a sigh.

Beca pushes her window shade up and looks out at what she can see of the Leonardo da Vinci International Airport, trying to shove down the rising unease in her stomach.

She knew this would happen. She did this to herself, which probably makes her some sort of sick masochist who gets off on things like falling in love for the second time with the same person only to have her walk away without a backward glance. Again, for the second time.

Beca’s problem isn’t that she never loved Chloe back (she likes to think Chloe was in love with her, too, once). Her problem is that she absolutely, totally, utterly sucks at the timing of these things.

The plane comes to a stop that jerks Beca to the present. The stale air fills with the metallic clink of unbuckling seat belts and melodic chimes as people check their phones and take them off airplane mode.

Beside her, Chloe unbuckles and stands with a stretch, reaching into the overhead bin.

Panic rises inside Beca’s chest, making her fumble with her own seat belt before finally undoing and standing with screaming, sore muscles, having to bend her neck awkwardly to avoid bumping her head on the overhead.

“Well, uh, have fun in Rome,” she says, rubbing at the back of her neck.

“Thanks, you too.” Chloe gets her bag down and rests it on the seat, sparing Beca a smile that doesn’t quite reach her eyes. “Stay in touch?”

“For sure.” Liar.

The falsely-sugary flight attendant opens the door, and immediately passengers in first-class begin to walk out. Chloe’s eyes flick to the queue, then back to Beca.

“Bye, then,” she says, too brightly.

“Bye.”

With only a second’s hesitation—one that might even have been a figment of Beca’s hopeful imagination—Chloe picks up her duffle bag and takes her place in line. She takes a step forward, and Beca reaches out to catch her shoulder.

“Wait, Chlo—” Chloe stops instantly, her eyes wide and maybe a little hopeful. Behind her, the line stalls. “Why were you talking about soulmates?” Beca asks in a rush, desperation driving her voice to a higher pitch than normal.

Chloe’s eyes flick to the growing line behind her, many heads peering around to see what the hold-up is. Her mouth opens, then closes again.

“Please,” Beca whispers, her grip on Chloe’s arm never loosening. “Please.”

Chloe’s eyes finally meet hers. Beca’s stunned to see they’re swimming. “I was trying to tell you,” Chloe breathes. “Chicago wasn’t my soulmate because I’d already found mine wandering around an Activities Fair.”

Surely, the plane can’t have landed. It was impossible for the plane to have landed, because Beca’s still 30,000 feet in the air and falling, falling fast, the floor having dropped out from under her feet.

She recoils, reclaiming her arm, shaking her head, because she’d heard wrong, she had to have, or she’d misunderstood, because there’s no possible way Chloe had said those words.

Beca doesn’t get a chance to ask her to repeat it, though, because as soon as she takes her hand from Chloe’s arm, Chloe’s moving, walking down the aisle to exit the plane and leave Beca behind. Immediately, the passengers that had formed a line behind her press forward, filling the aisle and lengthening the distance between her and Beca by the second.

Beca doesn’t blame her one bit. If their positions were reversed and she had been the one to drop a confession like that, she’d be running away as fast as she could, too.

She has to catch up.

“Chloe, wait!” she calls, but either Chloe doesn’t hear her or purposefully ignores her, because Beca is forced to watch the back of her head as she rounds the corner of the aisle ahead to step out of the plane.

“Shit, shit, shit, shit…” Beca chants under her breath. She shoves her way into the aisle, ignoring the sounds of protest emitted by the passengers that had technically been in line—which, they’d totally butted in front of her to begin with, rude—and whirls, snatching her back from the overhead. It takes everything in her not to rush forward and send people stumbling, shoving her way out of the plane, but she knows that would more than likely just get her in trouble with customs or something.

So she’s forced to wait, to inch her way forward with the rest of them, while knowing that with every moment that passes, Chloe is only getting farther and farther away.

“Come on, come on, come on…”

With one last parting wave and a “Thank you for choosing us,” from Beca’s least-favorite flight attendant, Beca’s free, bursting forward from the plane with so much enthusiasm she almost topples over and into the tunnel connecting the plane and their gate.

“Chloe!” she calls out desperately, but there’s no sign of her.

Beca hates cardio.

She might make an exception, though, just this once. With more agility than she knew she still had in her exhausted body, Beca surges forward, her bag clutched close to her chest, and ducks and weaves around other passengers, trying desperately to get to the end of the tunnel and to Chloe. She’d chase her through the entire airport and across all of Rome if she had to.

She stalls behind a slow-moving couple, tottering along as if this connecting tunnel is their favorite place on earth. “Move!” she shouts at the back of their heads, and the man starts and flings himself to the side, creating enough space for Beca to squeeze through and then she’s running again and there’s the end of the tunnel and now she’s at the gate and—and there’s the red hair.

“CHLOE!” she nearly screams it, and by some miracle, Chloe stops and whirls, her eyes flying wide when Beca doesn’t stop, only runs to her and throws her bag to the ground and reaches forward, her hands cupping Chloe’s cheeks and pulling her into a kiss that Beca knows will change everything.

There’s a beat where Chloe doesn’t respond and fear explodes in Beca’s mind.

But then Chloe’s arms wrap around her waist and the lips under Beca’s soften until Chloe’s kissing her back, and the fear is replaced by exaltation so strong that Beca can’t be sure it doesn’t lift her off her feet.

Minutes, hours, days later, they finally separate, and Beca’s eyes flutter open to take in Chloe’s flushed cheeks, swollen lips, and gleaming eyes.

“I…” Beca has to take a deep breath. “Is that what you meant?”

Chloe’s face breaks into a huge smile and she nods frantically. “Yes, I—yes, I meant you.”

“Good,” Beca smiles. She doesn’t think she’ll ever stop smiling now. “Because I—you—the whole thing—you’re my, uh, you know—”

Chloe stops her babbling by pressing a quick kiss to her lips, one that still makes Beca’s knees weaken. “I know,” she says, then laughs. “So, you ran up that tunnel, huh?”

“Yep, and I’d do it again,” Beca says proudly, standing as tall as she can.

Chloe’s eyes sparkle. “You know you would have caught up with me at customs, right? Or baggage claim? You didn’t have to run.”

Beca blinks. “Uh.”

“It’s okay,” Chloe grins, lacing their fingers together. “I’m glad you did.”

#bechloe #bechloe fic #my writing #beca mitchell #chloe beale #bechloe week 2019 #i'd suggest reading on ao3 or ffn cuz formatting

185 notes · View notes

beca-mitchell · 5 years

Text

dj, turn the radio up (1/1)

Entry for @bechloe-week Day 2: Coworkers.

Summary: PP1 AU. Beca never joins the Bellas. Chloe and Luke are good friends, which leads to Chloe occasionally working at the radio station. Shenanigans of the FWB kind ensue.

Rated M/E because of sexual encounters. Huge shout outs: @zentamaus, @chloes-yellow-cup, @the-orange-orange, @cotebdepablo, @shadowsinwinter, @snowbritt, and @myhatsbeonbackwards (and a few others) who read over my work and assured me it wasn’t completely crazy while also catching as many blips and errors as they could. 💕

Word count: 11,572

Read on AO3 or below.

It’s not that Chloe’s annoying. In fact, she’s quite the opposite. She’s probably the most caring person Beca has ever encountered in her life. She’s attentive and intelligent about things that Beca can barely bring herself to care about. Things like ensuring everybody’s tea is an appropriate temperature. Or that everybody is appropriately bundled for a chillier mid-winter evening.

And somehow, Chloe manages to do it all without coming off as a mother figure – or in Aubrey’s case, a dictator, from what Beca can tell. Chloe is friends with everybody. Beca thinks that she can’t go anywhere with Chloe on campus because people are always stopping her to say hello or worse – to flirt with her.

Beca’s not jealous, not at all.

It’s just kind of an inconvenience, especially when Beca suddenly has to push through no less than two broad-shouldered seniors who are just dying to hang out with Chloe.

“I’m going to class,” Beca tosses over her shoulder, not caring to see if Chloe responds.

-----

How they become friends is kind of an accident.

Friends is probably a strange way of putting it.

-----

Beca has been vying for the coveted evening supervisor position for the school radio station and she thinks she’s busted her ass enough to deserve it over the course of the semester.

So it’s kind of a surprise to her when Luke greets her one evening with a very happy Chloe Beale standing by his side.

Beca vaguely recognizes her as the girl who interrupted her shower and tried to make her sing an impromptu duet.

And further tried to make her join an acapella group.

Beca dodged a bullet there, but she must have really pissed off somebody in the past because Chloe is standing in front of her, looking entirely too pleased with herself.

“Chloe’s going to be taking over for me tonight.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Beca says angrily.

Chloe looks startled at Beca’s sudden burst of anger, but collects herself quickly enough. Luke looks unphased. Beca almost wishes Jesse were there to look appropriately scared.

“Chloe’s a good friend of mine,” Luke says lightly. “She–”

“I’m sure she is,” Beca mumbles. She’s mostly grumpy that Luke obviously still doesn’t trust her enough to let her oversee the radio station by herself. Granted, it has only been a few weeks. She doesn’t care that Chloe is ridiculously pretty or that her eyes are somehow the clearest possible shade of blue. It is just incredibly annoying that Luke refuses to let her take the reins, even just for a little bit–

“I know you,” Chloe says, interrupting Beca’s inner tirade. She clearly decided to weather the storm of Beca’s personality. “We sang in the shower together.” Chloe’s brow furrows then. “You didn’t show up for auditions.”

Luke splutters incoherently. Beca’s blush rises up to her cheeks and possibly her forehead. Chloe grins.

Bitch, Beca thinks, without any real bite.

-----

Maybe in another life, she would have been given the opportunity to get to know Chloe the old-fashioned way. Beca’s favorite way: where her walls are sky high and people struggle to climb over them.

Maybe in another life, Chloe would have been her friend first. A leader of sorts, maybe.

Maybe.

Beca’s just counting her lucky stars that she didn’t join that acapella group. That would have been as lame as she originally suspected.

Lame, mostly because what woman bursts into another woman’s shower only to ask about her singing?

The memory of Chloe’s voice still rings through her mind.

“How high does your belt go?” Chloe had asked, too focused and too serious for Beca to think of this situation as anything other than a literal recruitment attempt. Beca had stifled the disappointment, then subsequently the confusion that followed.

Mostly though, Beca had barely remembered to respond because she was too busy trying to focus on not letting her eyes wander inappropriately, though the time for inappropriateness had long passed. “My what ? Oh my God.”

So maybe in another life, she and Chloe would have come together in more ways than one.

-----

Okay, Chloe’s attractive. Like almost unfairly so. She’s all unrestrained smiles, blue eyes, and gentle waves of the prettiest shade of red Beca has seen in her life.

Beca has eyes and enough of a grip on her own sexual preferences to acknowledge that she’d probably flirt hard with Chloe (maybe awkwardly) if Chloe weren’t so damn happy all the time. Or so into acapella.

She’s not against sleeping with Chloe, she thinks. That alone is enough to startle her out of her reverie and she quickly stacks the remaining CDs before Chloe can catch her staring at her from behind the shelf. That would be–

Too late.

Beca narrows her eyes at Chloe who is smirking at her from behind the glass of the booth, oversized, worn-out headphones on her head.

She shouldn’t look that good, considering she’s hellbent on ruining Beca’s life.

She makes sure Chloe can see her eye roll.

-----

Chloe Beale is most annoying whenever she brushes past Beca to grab a CD off the stack or shelf, clearly intent on messing up Beca’s hard work.

It has nothing to do with the way Chloe’s breath ghosts hot and sure against her ear. Or the way Chloe’s breasts feel pressed against her arm or back, even for the briefest of moments.

It’s incredibly annoying. Frustrating, maybe.

(And to be fair, Beca plays dirty when she needs to. She knows what she’s doing when she’s bending over in full view of the booth. She knows what she’s doing when she takes off her plaid shirt and ties it around her waist, leaving her shoulders bare and her neckline more visible.

Her father would be devastated to know that student funds are going into this decrepit radio station so Beca can shamelessly rile up her supervisor.

Oh. Is that what she’s doing?)

-----

“Beca, come here.”

“Freshmen aren’t allowed in the booth,” Beca parrots back at Chloe, crossing her arms. Chloe leans against the doorway, an eyebrow raising in a somewhat challenging manner. Still, Chloe somehow manages to make it look pleasant.

As Beca nears, she wills her heart to stop beating so quickly and finds herself wondering if Chloe is doing the same. If Chloe is struggling with her own internal turmoil.

It’s subtle, but Beca catches the way Chloe’s gaze drifts to her chest.

Checkmate.

She only barely resists smugly pushing up her breasts higher by tightening her arms, but she figures Chloe actually does have something she needs to talk about and she’s not about to risk getting into Chloe’s good graces if it means Chloe will eventually talk to Luke for her.

Beca can be rational. Beca can be focused enough on her career.

Her ‘career’, she repeats in her mind, her father’s disdain in his voice filling the empty spaces where her own voice fails.

“Beca, ” Chloe says, voice sharp with something akin to warning.

Beca obeys, walking into the booth.

“I get the feeling that you’re…” Chloe twists in her chair, facing Beca. “Annoyed or upset about something.” She fixes Beca with a sincere, concerned expression, which is surprising enough that tension flows out of Beca in response. “And that something might be me, So I just wanted to...apologize,” she continues, in the same genuine tone. “I wanted to also apologize if I made you uncomfortable back when...you know. Shower.” She gestures vaguely and openly.

Beca swallows hard.

Chloe makes her anything but uncomfortable.

(Okay, maybe a little uncomfortable, but it’s Pleasant.)

Chloe stands from her perch, with enviable poise. “Friends?” she asks, extending a hand, though that’s hardly necessary with how little space there is between them.

Surrounded by stacks of CDs and cassettes, Chloe seems to glow.

A strange, sad thought flits through Beca’s mind: you don’t belong, she thinks. Chloe could never belong here - alongside the dust and the outdated music. Chloe is the kind of person who shines beyond reason. This much, Beca knows. She knows it to be true, as true as her instinct allows her to believe.

So, Beca opens her mouth and for once, honesty slips out. “We can’t be friends,” she says, noting the sudden spike in temperature. Was the booth always abnormally warm? Beca wonders.

Chloe raises an eyebrow, the motion slicing right through her thoughts. “Why not?” she inquires with a hint of confusion and a dash of sadness, like the thought of Beca not being her friend will plague her for the rest of her days.

Because I’m insanely attracted to you and I haven’t stopped thinking about you since that day.

She kisses her instead.

-----

“Fuck, fuck, shit–” Beca scrambles to find her footing because Chloe is suddenly lifting her onto a tiny desk in the corner of the booth. Beca’s hands spread out on the hard wooden surface, knocking pens and papers to the ground as Chloe’s tongue pushes into her mouth.

“Language,” Chloe murmurs, leaning back an inch or so. The way her eyes just about gleam in Beca’s direction is almost enough to send Beca over the edge.

“Shut up,” Beca retorts, but she doesn't mean it and Chloe knows. She pulls Chloe in for a harsh kiss that almost immediately softens the moment their lips touch.

Chloe is all about soft curves and gentle caresses, despite the very obvious strength she has over Beca. Beca is a mess of hard edges and roughly drawn lines. She barely has time to process it all, but she’ll start with the way her breast fits neatly into Chloe’s hand, her nipple hard and insistent against Chloe’s palm.

Or maybe she’ll start with how eager Chloe is to feel Beca’s hand beneath her dress and how easily Chloe’s thighs part for her.

There are too many beginnings and not enough rope for Beca to fully immerse herself in each one, so settles on how well they fit.

But, the fact is, they fit.

-----

That’s the first night.

Well, the first night they kiss and touch and do other things–

It’s probably about a week into Chloe supervising Beca, and all things considered, Beca thinks that it’s probably surprising that they don’t jump each other sooner than that.

Chloe gets a call soon after their heavy-handed make-out and they basically spend the rest of the night clearing their throats from opposite ends of the booth.

Beca tries not to think about how Chloe’s lip gloss tasted like mangoes. And how her tongue tasted like peach.

So she thinks instead of how damp Chloe’s underwear had been – like she too had been waiting for this for a long time.

-----

“What the hell?” Luke asks, seeing a mess of pens and papers on the floor that they had forgotten to clean up.

“Oh, you know how Chloe is,” Beca responds after a moment. She shrugs and turns around so he can’t see the blush spread across her cheeks.

“Unbelievable.”

“I know, right.”

-----

Beca’s not sure when she’ll see Chloe again when Luke returns from his mini-break.

She’s almost relieved, but realizes that she’ll miss her. How unfortunate.

She catches glimpses of red hair on campus sometimes, but she never quite makes out the face properly. She doesn’t know that much about Chloe in all honesty. Just based on snippets of various conversations at the radio station, she knows that Chloe is the youngest of four siblings, that Chloe is majoring in Philosophy but wishes she had studied Literature instead, that Chloe ties her hair back into a ponytail when she’s stressed, that Chloe hums when she thinks nobody’s listening, that Chloe’s smiles are all different somehow–

Shut up, Beca tells herself.

It’s not that she’s looking for Chloe Beale, Beca just hates unfinished business.

She doesn’t have to wait long however, because Chloe is grinning at her from across the room at a house party Luke invited her to and God, Beca’s drawn in immediately. She had hoped Chloe would be there, hoped against hope, but something tells her to bottle that sentiment up and keep it close to her chest.

“Hey you,” Chloe greets happily. Beca notes that she’s alone. “Didn’t expect you to be the fraternity party type.”

“Same could be said about you,” Beca shoots back. She takes in Chloe’s surprisingly appropriate attire that isn’t a cheerfully bright shirt or a sundress. It is instead an appealing combination, most pleasing to Beca: black jeans and a snug, well-fitting tank top. “Don’t you have some acapella performances to arrange?” she asks, pulling her eyes up from Chloe’s chest. “Or whatever it is you do,” she amends quickly when Chloe’s eyebrow rises. “I don’t care.”

Chloe clicks her tongue and pours two cups of beer from the keg nearby. She peers at Beca. “How old are you?” she asks, ignoring Beca’s mild snark.

Beca shakes her head. “Nineteen, but I don’t like drinking anyway.” She says this oddly – at least to her – like she feels the words don’t quite fit. She’s nervous, somehow. Does Chloe think she’s young ? Does Chloe think she’s too inexperienced? Questions drift in and out of Beca’s mind while she watches Chloe’s expression with rapt attention.

Chloe looks oddly pleased to hear that and not at all judgmental, though Beca can’t imagine Chloe judging her for anything. Or anybody for that matter. It’s refreshing. “Good to know,” Chloe states, shoving the cups of beer away to a passing boy. “I don’t need to drink either. Want to dance then, Bec?”

“Not really,” Beca says. Chloe bats her eyes. “Okay, fine.”

Chloe pulls her close and for a second Beca thinks she’s about to kiss her. Instead, Chloe is pulling her, pulling her, pulling her until they’re in a space that Beca assumes used to be a living room. There’s a broken, but still brightly lit disco ball above their heads. The music is loud and reverberates through the floors. People are faceless and numerous. Beca can’t imagine looking at anybody else, not at this moment when the light catches on Chloe’s face at random intervals.

Chloe is serious about dancing apparently. She pulls Beca close by the belt loops on her jeans, stepping into her orbit again.

Beca never really got the appeal of dancing on makeshift dancefloors. Of being in such close proximity to various drunken bodies.

It makes her shudder at the thought. Recoil in disgust.

Usually.

Now, however, Chloe’s breath is hot against her face - so similar to how Chloe had felt brushing up against her at the radio station.

“How’s it feel?” Chloe asks, leaning in so her lips graze Beca’s ear. “Dancing with your boss.” She hisses on the last word, like it’s a private little inside joke.

Beca shivers. Chloe’s hips are tantalizing and graceful and rhythmic all at once. Beca finds herself enraptured by the beat of the music and the sway of Chloe’s body against hers. She imagines, for a split second, Chloe teaching her how to dance. She imagines that Chloe would be a good teacher, attentive and responsible.

She strikes that thought immediately because she can’t imagine Chloe being her teacher.

“Could be better,” she finally manages to say, quiet enough that she’s surprised Chloe catches it over all the noise. "Since you're not my boss."

Chloe’s raised eyebrow - that damnable eyebrow - spurs Beca into action.

She presses one hand against the small of Chloe’s back, bringing her closer than before. The slow movement of Chloe’s hips shifts so it matches Beca’s. Chloe’s legs brush her own and almost immediately, Chloe’s thigh slips between her own, solid and firm unlike anything Beca has felt before. She suddenly craves that skin-on-skin contact. She wants to feel exactly what Chloe’s thigh feels between her own thighs. Exactly how soft Chloe’s skin must be.

She tries not to let it show that Chloe is affecting her - that Chloe’s body is eliciting all kinds of responses in her own body.

But she’s sure it’s obvious enough. It's in the way Chloe’s hand comes up to the back of her neck to pull Beca in for a kiss.

-----

Beca gasps out a shuddering breath against Chloe’s neck, unable to help herself from coming alongside Chloe’s orgasm. Her fingers twitch and flex inside Chloe, snug and warm. She hesitates in pulling them out, determined to make Chloe feel every last movement until she tells Beca she’s had enough.

“God,” Chloe murmurs, lazily sliding a hand into Beca’s hair. She tugs and Beca moans immediately, lifting her head obediently to meet Chloe’s lips in an equally lazy kiss. Chloe’s thigh presses up against the seam of Beca’s jeans and she’s once again reminded by how wet she is. How wet her jeans must be – damp at least – considering her underwear is completely ruined. “I knew it would be like this with you.”

Beca doesn’t know what to say to that, but finally has the sense of mind to remove her fingers from Chloe.

She has the strongest desire to taste Chloe, so with her eyes fixated on Chloe’s half-lidded gaze, she lifts herself up on her elbow, just so she can hover above Chloe. Then, she brings her fingers to her mouth and does just that. She swirls her tongue repeatedly around wet fingers, cognizant of how hard her heart pounds in her chest.

Chloe’s gaze flashes with renewed desire. She sits up and pulls Beca close and astride her lap completely. Beca barely has time to remove her fingers from her mouth to grip tight to Chloe’s shoulders or to tangle her fingers in Chloe’s hair. The messy waves feel thicker somehow, easier to hold on to. The strong grip Chloe has on her back, paired with the sure hand creeping up her thigh. Heat spreads beneath her jeans. Chloe is quick in how fast her hand navigates beyond the waistband of Beca’s now-uncomfortable jeans, but her wrist twists and flexes and suddenly she’s so close to where Beca aches for her.

Beca moans - not caring how desperate she sounds anymore - into the kiss and her hips jolt forward of their own volition.

A sharp rap on the door startles them out of their moment ( their moment, Beca thinks gleefully), just as Chloe’s fingers are mere inches away from Beca’s aching clit. Her hips rock forward again, even more impatient and more eager than before, trying to speed Chloe along.

“Impatient,” Chloe rasps, voice low and strained. She doesn’t sound like she thinks that’s a problem at all. Beca grasps her jaw and tilts her head up for searing kiss, aiming to distract her. It works for a few moments and Chloe’s hand is almost there–

“Hey, who’s in there! This is my room.”

Chloe curses under her breath – Beca, loudly – and just like that, her hand is gone. Beca almost whines at the loss.

Suddenly, Chloe is helping her re-button her jeans and readjusting her own clothes and they’re slamming the door open. They lift their eyes to meet a surprised-looking frat boy with boring wind-swept hair and an equally boring polo.

“Were you guys…” He grins, though without much malice or leering. He mostly just looks amused. “In my room?”

Chloe rolls her eyes, pulling Beca behind her as they beeline their way out of the house. “None of your business, Brandon,” she calls over her shoulder.

(Because of course Chloe is on a first name basis with everybody at school. Friends with frat boys and acapella girls alike. Everywhere all at once. Perhaps it was inevitable that Beca got swept up in her orbit, helpless like the rest of them.)

Whether he makes a noise of derision or not like Beca expects him to, she finds that she doesn’t really care and the fleeting thought of what they just did in a random bedroom dissipates.

They can’t get out of there quick enough. After a brief stop in the bathroom to rinse her hands, her face, and to let Chloe’s lips trail up and down her neck lazily, Beca thinks she feels a million pair of eyes on her in the house. Almost like they can tell she’d just spent the past little while getting Chloe Beale off in a nondescript frat boy bedroom. She’s not upset about the fact, not at all. Just amazed that this is the turn her life took when she decided to acquiesce to her father’s request that she attend school for at least a year.

Chloe’s fingers twitch in hers and suddenly Beca is no longer present. The memory of Chloe coming apart beneath her fingers. Chloe’s hair sprawled in many directions across plain navy blue sheets, in every direction like the way Beca’s heart suddenly bled with unexpected desire and passion.

“Wait,” she calls, as they round the side of the house, the sounds of the party finally dying. Her fingers flex in Chloe’s hand.

“Are you okay?” Chloe asks, pausing. She isn’t ready for an armful of Beca - of the way Beca all but throws herself at her, lips and hands exploring desperately and suddenly. She moans, long and low, into Beca’s mouth, sure hands coming up to grip Beca’s hips.

How long they kiss like that, in the shadows next to a house party, is a mystery to Beca. She focuses on how soft Chloe’s lips are - how soft they had been when she had been buried in Chloe’s pussy, two fingers deep.

Chloe’s whispered “more” echoes in her head. Her underwear dampens more at the memory.

She’s drunk on Chloe, she’s sure. She’ll never be curious about alcohol again, not when Chloe satisfies her so wholly and fully in a comparable intoxicating manner.

“Your place,” Beca breathes. “P-Please.” She hates the stutter in her voice.

Chloe lifts her head from Beca’s neck, eyes dark beneath mild eyeliner and full lashes. “Yeah?” she asks, like she needs Beca to be certain.

Beca is half tempted to shove Chloe’s hand between her legs to just feel how certain Beca is.

“Yeah,” she chokes out instead. Chloe’s chest heaves against her own. “Yeah, please, Chloe.” Beca feels desperate enough - so close to combusting again - that she pulls Chloe in for a hard, fast kiss. Their teeth nearly clash, but Chloe props herself up against the side of the house - one hand on hard brick, the other tangled in Beca’s hair.

-----

Chloe’s apartment is cozy. Beca almost feels calm.

Almost.

Almost, because Chloe, at some point, decided that it was her mission to give Beca reasons to have consistent heart attacks. She exhales hard against Beca’s skin, all warm breath and barely-there touches. “Careful, don’t wake Aubrey,” Chloe mumbles, lips pressed tight against the curve of Beca’s jaw. She then lets her keys clatter against the bowl and Beca jumps, pressing herself tighter and closer against Chloe’s body on instinct. Chloe snickers. “Kidding, she’s away for the weekend. You’d like her,” she comments, like she’s not about to fuck Beca well into the night.

At least, Beca hopes that’s what is about to happen or she’s going to need to take a shower immediately.

By some great stroke of fortune that Beca does not at all anticipate or eagerly hope for, Chloe reads her mind. She tugs Beca towards the bathroom. It is small and cozy like the rest of the apartment, warm highlights and comfortable bath mats. If Beca is going to venture a guess, she’s going to assume that Aubrey – assuming that was the other young woman Chloe was with that day at the activities fair ( Why are these memories so vivid? ) – did not have a say in the decor.

Beca doesn’t have time to dwell because Chloe drops her hold on her wrist and works on shedding her jeans, then her underwear. Beca blinks, trying to let her brain catch up with her. “Are we taking a bath?” she blurts, a little slow from sudden fatigue, though perhaps more accurately stated, slow from the sight of new skin suddenly visible to her.

Chloe pulls her tank top over her head before responding. “I’m going to take a shower because I need to get that house off me.” She wrinkles her nose. “But you can feel free to use the shower after me.” She steps into the shower. “Or…” Chloe’s tone implies that Beca has some catching up to do.

Beca doesn’t need to be told twice.

When she steps in under the warm spray, she blinks up at Chloe taking in the sight of water dripping off her forehead and nose.

Chloe’s hands come up, surprisingly soft and intimate, to stroke her cheeks and her jaw, like she’s committing some part of Beca to memory. “Okay?” she asks, finally speaking after a long moment of staring at Beca with undisguised desire.

It sends the most pleasant thrill up Beca’s spine. Mine, she thinks abruptly and without warning.

Beca nods, swallowing back the heat that rises and threatens to escape in the form of something horribly cheesy, but words erupt before she can help herself. “This is familiar,” Beca comments, unable to help one last bite of snark before Chloe completely overwhelms her senses. She prides herself on waiting at least two seconds before her eyes drift below Chloe’s collarbones. “Are we going to sing now?”

“Are you ever not annoying?” Chloe asks. She presses Beca right up against the wall of the shower and kisses her hard and suddenly Beca can’t remember anything else.

Chloe’s tongue is deft and sure, pushing into her mouth to explore.

-----

They’re doing everything out of order, Beca thinks.

She was never one for order anyway.

There is no order, not when Chloe’s hands drift up her thighs, her lips following the same path. Not when Beca can only crumble against her touch, like the ruins of a fortress long gone.

-----

Texting enters the rotation of things they do together.

Wish you were here, Chloe texts from out of town.

She knows Chloe is at some acapella competition. Beca shudders. Lol where? Beca texts back.

here, Chloe replies. And Beca can almost hear her voice - the smooth timbre of it. Especially paired by the very vivid photos Chloe sends her.

-----

Luke’s rule is simple enough: no sex on the desks. He slaps a desk cheerfully sometimes whenever Beca is sitting, minding her own business (often trying not to think about what Chloe looked like the previous night, errant strands of hair plastered against her sweaty forehead. Sweaty perhaps because of the utmost concentration on her face, lips pulled between white, even teeth. Sweaty, most likely because of how hard her hips grind into Beca, their centers meeting repeatedly and deliciously and over and over again until Beca comes apart–). She fixes him with a reproachful expression and ignores Jesse’s delighted laugh.

None of that matters though.

It turns out that Chloe is the very reason for that rule from a time before Beca.

She smirks at Beca when Beca asks her about it. It is unfortunately the first question out of Beca’s mouth when she sees Chloe push through the glass door, before she is confused by Chloe’s presence.

“Are you jealous?” Chloe asks nonchalantly, dropping her bag next to Beca’s. Chloe is somehow at the radio station even though Luke is there and Beca is there and nobody told Beca that Chloe would be coming.

“No,” Beca replies immediately, frowning for good measure. “Gross.”

Chloe laughs.

Beca realizes she doesn’t want to know, not at all. Her stomach rolls unpleasantly.

“Get to work,” Chloe tosses over her shoulder, climbing up into the booth to greet Luke.

-----

Chloe’s radio style is all fun anecdotes and cheesy lines. Chloe speaks to everyone at once, inclusive and vibrant. It’s not that Beca wants to like them at all because Chloe’s anecdotes completely go against everything she thinks this station should be –

(“Beca, it’s just like five kids out there listening to this, and they’re all probably high.”

“So?” Beca grumbles back. “They deserve quality content.”

“Oh?” Chloe chirps with interest. “They do, do they? So you don’t think the story about how I got my scar is quality content? You were laughing about it last night.”

She tries not to completely melt at the affection in Chloe’s eyes.)

– it’s just that Chloe is annoyingly adorable sometimes and Beca hates that she wants to keep listening to Chloe’s voice whenever she can. Almost in a greedy, selfish way. She wants to hear Chloe’s voice directed at her more often than not.

-----

Sometimes Chloe sits on Beca’s tiny school-sanctioned bed and recites Russian Literature aloud while Beca fiddles with her latest mixes. Beca pretends not to care, until she realizes that she had been listening to dead air through her headphones for the past fifteen minutes, if the timer on her computer is anything to go by, just to listen to the sound of Chloe’s voice.

She glances at Chloe out of the corner of her eye, comfortable in her oversized sweater and gray leggings. Without looking, she knows Chloe is donning a pair of Beca’s cabin socks and for some reason that makes Beca shift in her seat uncomfortably and clear her throat.

Chloe’s reading doesn’t falter, but Beca finds herself wishing that Chloe would focus on her for just a moment.

-----

Car sex is somehow both terrible and fulfilling.

Beca feels various limbs nearing dangerous cramping territory, but she can’t bring herself to care at the moment. She can’t. Not when Chloe’s tongue is unforgiving between her legs, pushing through wet folds and pulling almost-foreign sounds from Beca’s chest.

“Say my name,” Chloe rasps suddenly, breath hot and heavy against Beca’s bare center. Her eyes glitter up at Beca from between her thighs. The sight alone is too much and Beca nearly concusses herself with how hard her head rocks back against the car door.

“No,” Beca grits out, simply because she can.

Chloe’s fingers are suddenly on her clit and she’s tugging at Beca’s hip with her other hand in a surprisingly strong grip. “Beca,” she whispers, now hovering over her. Chloe’s hair is curlier than before. Before, as in earlier in the evening when she had smiled at Beca from across the table in a charming old diner. Undeniably messier. Her lips are parted and glistening. Her tongue comes out to trace her lower lip, to catch some moisture and shine.

Beca thinks she looks beautiful, but somehow her eyes bely any trace of happiness.

She looks sad. Anxious.

Beca’s throat tightens in a way that has nothing to do with the way Chloe’s fingers slip down to her entrance, gently probing. Chloe leans into her, her hips pushing against her hand so her fingers slide into Beca with ease.

Beca gasps, words dying on the tip of her tongue. So many words, so many phrases. Chloe swallows them all in a deep kiss.

Chloe takes the opportunity to kiss her – a sweet, open-mouthed kiss, unlike any other kiss they’ve shared thus far – and Beca feels everything.

Heat.

Passion.

Desire.

Possession.

They rocket through her in quick succession or sometimes stacked atop each other. They send heat through her body – a thick coil – like how the first taste of herself from Chloe’s mouth feels. They settle somewhere in her chest, where the ruined fortress rests, a white flag waves and Beca grasps at it – grasps at Chloe’s back, really – in desperation.

She comes hard, devastatingly so, with Chloe’s name on her lips like a blessing and a curse all at once.

Chloe pants into her neck, fingers never quite stilling. Instead, her fingers coax Beca higher again, over the edge of a smaller cliff. It’s all Beca can do, really: she follows obligingly, chasing that explosive moment once more, just once more, Beca thinks–

“More,” she whispers. She imagines the stars beyond the roof of Chloe’s car and when she shuts her eyes once more, gripping hard at the back of Chloe’s head, Chloe’s fingers twist just right and Beca thinks of galaxies to call their own.

“Beca,” Chloe murmurs, thick against her neck like she might be crying. The moment disappears, however, because Chloe is kissing her again, murmuring thanks against her lips. There are no tears on Chloe’s face and she suddenly looks the same like she did when she let Beca lead her into the backseat of her car after a half-hearted attempt at stargazing. Bright-eyed and almost falsely curious, like she wants to know what new things Beca can show her. False, because Chloe knows all her tricks by now.

(But all the things they don’t know yet about each other – that’s what keeps Beca up at night sometimes.)

“Chloe,” Beca begins, blinking back the haze so she can focus on Chloe’s distress. “Chloe, what –” She accepts her jeans and underwear from Chloe’s outstretched hand. “Hey, no–” she stops, placing a hand on Chloe’s arm. “What’s going on with you?”

“It’s nothing,” Chloe says quickly. “Really nothing.”

“You’ve been off all night,” Beca points out.

“What do you call what I just did?” Chloe cuts back, nearly uncharacteristic bite in her tone.

Beca rolls her eyes. Snark and sarcasm and closed-off responses: she knows them like the back of her hand, so she ignores Chloe’s brief moment of lashing out and pats herself on the back for not feeling the immediate urge to close off and stop. “You can talk to me, I promise.” She swallows. “We’re...friends.”

Chloe’s shoulders pull up in a tense gesture, then and she pauses in rebuttoning her shirt. “We are?” she asks quietly. Timidly.

Beca bites her tongue because her first instinct is to correct Chloe and herself: no, they’re just coworkers who occasionally fuck in the back of dark cars in quiet areas of the local park.

But she knows they’re not just coworkers, well beyond that. She knows too much about Chloe. Every intimate detail and every funny story. They compete uncomfortably for dominance in Beca’s mind and her heart.

“We are,” Beca says softly, because she knows this to be true. “Just friends,” Beca continues because the urge to say that is too strong. She is unsure as to how to navigate this unfamiliar territory because Chloe’s display of emotions are new and unknown. It feels safe to clarify this, to draw boundaries since they eviscerated their previous boundary of mere coworkers.

Still the ache in her chest doesn’t quite ebb, even as she fully catches her breath and the lust and desire dwindle to nothing. She sits in the front again, next to Chloe who drives quietly. If Beca had to hazard a guess, she thinks Chloe is being pensive in fear of her own embarrassment, which is another thing Beca has learned about Chloe. Chloe is not somebody who is easily embarrassed. Many things roll off her back and she never seems to shy away from uncomfortable conversations.

But this is something new.

Beca could say many things.

You’re scaring me. Please talk to me.

You scare me in general, actually.

I’m here, I promise.

I want to listen to you.

But they’re just that: things she could say and words she has never said to somebody in any intimate way. She bottles these words up and keeps them almost selfishly in an attempt to protect her own heart.

Car sex might have left Beca with an uncomfortable lingering strain in her shoulder, but the car ride home is a little worse.

-----

Somehow things change and then they don’t.

They don’t talk about that strange night in the darkness of Chloe’s car and it hovers over Beca’s head with a whole host of other problems, like getting her mixes on the school’s airwaves and passing her classes. Her first semester was a surprise to both herself and her father, so she feels a renewed determination to finish off strong enough so she can go to L.A. in peace.

She and Chloe still sleep together regularly enough. Chloe still occasionally shows up at the radio station like she owns the place and chats with both Jesse and Luke amicably. Beca is suspicious that Chloe is gossiping about her, particularly when she sees Jesse and Chloe conspiring together between the stacks, but she figures that it’s probably mainly Jesse trying to pry her for information about Beca. Whenever they see Beca approaching, however, they brush off their conversation and lift their bent heads. Jesse busies himself with a heavy stack of records that he pretends he can carry without straining his back.

“What are you two weirdos up to?” Beca asks, trying to keep the demand out of her voice. Chloe simply smiles and shakes her head, then, she later teases Beca about Jesse’s ever-lingering crush on her.

“Jealous?” Beca asks, irritated mostly by the impossible passage she’s reading. Theory and never-ending sentences float through her mind. Even with all of that, her question still remains with a tinge of hopefulness because it wouldn’t be terrible if Chloe were a little jealous of a woefully incomparable competitor. The thought is a little savage and a little abrupt, but Beca lets it pass with a hint of comfort.

“No,” Chloe responds easily.

Right, because Chloe has no reason to be jealous of Jesse of all people.

Beca returns to her laptop and Chloe returns to her book.

-----

Sometimes they go on dates, though neither of them is willing to call it a date. Beca kind of wants Chloe to do it first – to ask her on an actual date – but she wonders if Chloe expects it of her.

Sometimes when Chloe introduces her to her friends on campus, she uses the word “friend” and it haunts Beca at night. She doesn’t necessarily disagree with the label, but she itches to figure out what they could be. It’s the oddest kind of of hunger, one that she hasn’t necessarily had before.

It’s not that Beca has never hooked up with somebody before in her life, but when she looks at Chloe, it’s hard to see her as just another faceless entity.

So Beca watches men and women alike flirt with Chloe like no tomorrow from the sidelines and waits for Chloe to return to her side. Back into their bubble.

Her favorite moments are when Chloe stares at her from across the table in a diner; when Chloe stares at her from across a candlelit dinner at a surprisingly upscale restaurant (and sometimes she’ll let Beca pay her half or pay the whole bill good-naturedly); when Chloe wrestles her mini-golf club from her in an attempt to stop Beca’s weirdly good putting skills; when Chloe sometimes just gazes at her for no reason.

(Or too many reasons.)

So there are a few changes, sometimes. Beca is still figuring them all out. She’s still figuring herself out.

-----

Something that never changes – hasn’t changed – over time is how often Chloe tries to convince her to attend Bellas meetings or rehearsals. Or that time Chloe tried to get her to attend a Riff-Off, whatever the hell that was. Beca had immediately declined, citing illness.

“You have to come at least once,” Chloe begs now.

“But why ?” Beca whines. “I think it’s kind of lame, you know this.” She doesn’t mean it in a bad way. It just...it is kind of lame. Beca had been mildly interested at the activities fair but only because Chloe had been so earnest and open and passionate. Looking back, Beca had thought at the time that it was only because Chloe and Aubrey were both attractive and innocent-looking enough that stopping by their booth would have been just a blip in Beca’s day. Nothing more than a moment.

But she sees now what moments spiral into and how they consume and consume until Beca gives in to the unforgiving nature of the laws of attraction.

It had been so much more then. She knows this now.

“Yes I know, but I promise you won’t think it’s that lame.” Chloe heaves a breath, tapping her fingers dramatically against Beca’s arm. “ And you get to see me in a sports bra.”

Beca makes a choked noise of discontent. “That’s not interesting to me.”

“It is a little interesting,” Chloe assures her, like she needs to convince Beca that seeing her in less clothing is a hard and arduous task. “Come on. We’ll consider it like a little field trip. I swear to God, you’ve never been outside the four walls of that radio station on this campus.”

“That is not true,” Beca corrects immediately. She drops her book so she can shift Chloe’s legs off her lap. Chloe’s protests die in her mouth because Beca is all but crawling up her body, settling on straddling her hips. “I’m here, aren’t I?”

“This, uh, apartment isn’t technically on campus,” Chloe murmurs, distracted by the sliver of skin that shows beneath Beca’s shirt when she raises her hands to pull her hair behind her shoulders.

“I’ve been to my dorm,” Beca continues, ignoring Chloe’s statement. She leans forward over Chloe, so she is hovering over her face. She grins down at Chloe when she feels Chloe’s hand sliding up the backs of her thighs lightly at first, then firmly when she reaches Beca’s ass.

She leans down to kiss Chloe, enjoying the always-appealing ripple of pleasure and heat stemming from her chest and spreading to the rest of her body. She rests her hands on the armrest behind Chloe’s head, slowly lowering the rest of her body to spread out across Chloe’s, careful to distribute her weight evenly.

Slowly, Chloe’s hands move along her back, mapping new and old paths. She holds Beca to her and like that, they kiss gently and languidly. Chloe lifts a hand from Beca’s back to hold the back of Beca’s head to slowly increase the pressure and intensity of their kisses. Beca will never tire of the ways Chloe continues to show her intimacy and physical affection. Even the gentle drag of Chloe’s fingers through her hair, paired with the slow brush of Chloe’s tongue against her lower lip, has devastating effects on Beca’s peace of mind.

Beca doesn’t expect this kiss to go anywhere really and it’s that thought that she fixates on. It thrills her and makes her fingers curl into the fabric of the couch. The fact that Chloe would enjoy these moments of pure intimacy without sexuality makes something almost completely foreign settle in Beca’s body. She files it away for the future.

“I have something to tell you,” Chloe murmurs, when Beca finally draws back to take in deep breaths of air. “I’ve been meaning to tell you. It isn’t a big deal, I promise.”

Beca doesn’t trust herself to speak without her voice cracking at the moment, so she nods. She hates the fear that rises up in her.

“I...I’m going to get my nodes taken out in a few weeks and I’m a little scared of what it’ll mean for me and singing.”

“Nodes,” Beca repeats. “Are those–?” she lifts a hand to Chloe’s throat and runs a finger across soft skin gently. She looks at Chloe questioningly.

“Yeah, and I…” Chloe sighs and gestures for Beca to sit up. “I want to be able to sing and I want to be able to compete, but they’re getting bad and they hurt a lot sometimes.”

“When did you hear from your doctor?”

“I guess a few weeks ago. Maybe a month and a bit. I didn’t know what to do about it.”

“Does it hurt now?” Beca asks a little anxiously. She stares at Chloe’s neck, like she expects to see some kind of bulge or noticeable deformity.

“No, not really. Only when I sing a lot.”

“Then why do it?” Beca asks urgently. “Why do it if it hurts?”

“Because I love to sing,” Chloe says, looking at Beca so suddenly and deeply that Beca cannot bring herself to look away.

She swallows. “I know you do.”

“And I want you to be able to hear me do it before...I can’t do it anymore.”

Beca opens her mouth to tell Chloe how dramatic that sounds – that of course Chloe will still be able to sing – but she takes in the genuine apprehension on Chloe’s face and the sincerity of her tone. She processes all of that and feels herself relating to Chloe on deeper levels than before. She knows too well what these feelings are: they are too late and last chance and regret – so much regret – all rolled up in anxiety and sometimes indescribable sadness.

She wants to share in it with somebody, but it is difficult to know the repercussions of opening herself up to that kind of vulnerability.

But, sitting here, near Chloe, next to Chloe, she feels like she could do it. She feels like she could try.

“Okay,” Beca finally says. “I’ll come.”

-----

Beca vaguely recognizes some of the girls who make up the Bellas. She thinks Fat Amy (though her name is listed as Patricia in Beca’s email list) was who she met at the Activities Fair. A few others, she recognizes from orientation and her dorm.

Then her eyes zero in on Chloe, standing in the middle of the room with her blonde friend – Aubrey? – by her side. Aubrey unfortunately spots her first.

“This is a closed rehearsal,” Aubrey says immediately.

“No it’s not,” Chloe argues. “There isn’t a rule about that. Besides, I invited her.”

“Hello,” Beca says, waving awkwardly. She lets Chloe pull her towards the group. “I...told Chloe I’d come by and watch you guys.”

“Beca’s a really good musician! You should hear the kinds of remixes and melodies she comes up with. She can help us, maybe. Like a consult.”

Aubrey looks increasingly pale even as the other women all murmur with interest at Chloe’s words.

“Okay, she can stay,” Aubrey says when it’s clear that Beca has the support of the room. “We can talk later. I just wish you discussed this with me, Chloe.”

Chloe’s face falls a little. The sight makes Beca clench her fist and Aubrey’s tone really grates on her nerves. “Hey,” she starts. Both Aubrey and Chloe quickly glance at her. Chloe’s gaze is sharp and she shakes her head discreetly, while Aubrey eyes her challengingly. “Nevermind.”

The rehearsal ends up being surprisingly fun and lighthearted, despite the initial tension. Beca wonders why they’re singing songs that are twice as old as them, but she holds her tongue. Instead, she watches Chloe correct a few dance steps for a few of the members (she knew Chloe would be a good teacher) and listens to the smooth sound of Chloe’s voice. It washes over her during her solo, but listening carefully, Beca can hear the strain. Knowing about Chloe’s nodes, it makes Beca wince.

But Chloe’s voice is beautiful.

-----

Arguments come naturally enough. Beca’s personality, while not necessarily volatile, leans towards the side of bottling emotions until they burst from her like an overly-shaken bottle of soda. And not even the good kind. Probably a discount brand Dr. Pepper.

Chloe, on the other hand, is the most expressive person Beca has ever met, sometimes without even speaking. Her eyes shine like two luminous windows into Chloe’s exact emotions at any given time. It is absolutely terrifying.

Another thing about Chloe is that she pries. She pries at Beca’s boarded-up windows and tries to peer in. Beca half-heartedly bats her away and dodges other attempts, but it gets to a point when Beca realizes that she pretty much considers Chloe her best friend. It happens somewhere in between Kimmy Jin happily saying hello to Chloe as she lets her into their shared dorm room and Chloe holding out a hand to read Beca’s recently finished essay.

She watches Chloe’s eyes flit across the page as she reads carefully, nodding along.

“My dad called me again today,” Beca blurts just as Chloe flips a page.

Chloe looks at her with interest. “Oh? What did he want?”

“I let it go to voicemail. He probably just wants to make sure I haven’t joined a cult or done something else to give him a bad name.”

“I’ve always wanted to take a class with Professor Mitchell,” Chloe says lightly.

Beca flicks Chloe’s hand. “Hey.”

“What? He’s a good professor!”

“So?” Beca feels petulant.

Chloe sighs. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but honestly it sounds like your father is trying. And you have to admit that this ‘little college experiment’ as you would say hasn’t been a complete waste.”

Beca bristles. “Not you too.”

“What?” Chloe asks, a hint of exasperation slipping into her tone.

“Just...trying to get me to stay.”

“I’m not trying to get you to do anything, Beca,” Chloe says patiently. A little patronizingly. “You’re an adult.”

“But–”

“L.A. will still be there,” Chloe says quietly. “And you’re so talented. I mean it, Beca. You’re going to make it there. But honestly, I can tell you enjoy school. And you’ve enjoyed Barden.”

It’s difficult to admit how right Chloe is. She is right, though. Beca can’t bring herself to admit it because it means having to deal with the truth of it all.

The truth about how Beca feels herself changing and shifting into a new person. The growing pains of realizing what it means to be self-sufficient. Independent. Responsible.

In love.

“I don’t...I don’t enjoy Barden,” Beca finally says, lying through her teeth. “Stop saying that.” Stop saying things that make me think about how in love with you I am.

Chloe stares at her. “Look, I’m just saying–”

“Stop!”

Her outburst startles them both.

Embarrassed, Beca tugs the paper from Chloe’s grasp – gently enough as to not give Chloe a sudden papercut – and turns back to her computer. “I think you should go,” she says softly.

“Beca,” Chloe starts, then thinks better of it. She stands from Beca’s bed and leaves quietly.

The door clicks shut, echoing in the silence of Beca’s room.

-----

“Do you work here now?” Beca overhears Jesse asking somebody. “It’s cool to see another acapella friend.”

“An aca-friend,” Chloe’s voice replies, too cheerfully for Beca’s taste, especially considering she just created a portmanteau of acapella and friend. Beca almost shudders, but she finds herself slinking past the rows of records to step into the clearing between stacks. “And yes, just a part-time thing because Luke has been looking for some extra help managing you two while he figures out the rest of his life.”

“Beca has been wanting to get into that booth,” Jesse says helpfully. Beca feels affection rise in her. He was listening.

“I know,” Chloe replies. “I–” Her eyes flick up at that moment from where she’s thumbing through a folder. “Oh, look who it is.”

“Hi,” Jesse greets immediately. “You look like shit,” he says helpfully. Chloe cuts him a glance with an unreadable expression.

“You’re back,” Beca says to Chloe.

“Yeah, it was just a weeklong thing for school.”

“No,” Beca says haltingly, gesturing at Chloe. “You’re back here.”

She feels tired and frustrated. Her conversations with her father have been going nowhere. She and Chloe haven’t really talked over the past two weeks, which gives rise to feelings of anxiety and nervousness.

-----

“Hey,” Chloe greets cautiously. “Are you-?”

“I’m fine,” Beca says quickly. “Sorry, I’ll just.” She begins packing up her things. “I’ll just go. My shift ended a while ago.”

“You know, you don’t need to keep pushing me away,” Chloe says as gently as she can. “I won’t pry or anything, but I’m here for you. I care about you, Beca.”

“You don’t know anything about me,” Beca argues weakly.

Chloe’s hand drifts up to her shoulder, where she rests it. It feels heavy to Beca. “I know you and I want to continue knowing you. Getting to know you.”

Beca shifts. “I don’t know.”

“Bec.”

“Don’t call me that.”

Chloe murmurs an apology and looks so contrite that Beca immediately feels bad. She can’t continue hurting Chloe like this, not when Chloe hasn’t done anything wrong.

“I can’t keep doing this with you,” Beca says before she can stop herself. Now, she finds she cannot stop. It spills out of her like venom. “I can’t keep this up. It’s – it’s too confusing and too stressful. Going out and holding your hand. Sleeping together.” Beca blinks back tears of insecurity. “You...we haven’t even really talked in like two weeks.” Not that she had been counting.

“Are you breaking up with me?”

“I just need some space. And no, I can’t break up with a friend,” Beca corrects a little snidely. “You’re not my girlfriend.”

Chloe doesn’t gasp or cry or anything quite as dramatic. Instead, she just looks the saddest Beca has ever seen her.

That speaks more volumes than if Chloe had lost her temper. Beca's tired of people leaving (but she is even more tired of pushing people away).

-----

The silver lining comes soon enough: Luke raps sharply on the booth window and points at Beca when she turns. Come here, he mouths.

“Me?” Beca asks.

Luke merely stares at her with a tired expression. She flushes and immediately drops the album she had been holding and quickly makes her way into the booth.

He grins at her. “That was quick. I knew you had it in you.”

“Did you call me in here to make fun of me?”

“No, I called you in here to let you know that I have to go out of town for the weekend and you’re getting the Friday night shift.”

“I already work Friday nights,” Beca says, slow on the uptake.

“No, you work out there on Friday nights. This Friday night, I want you in here. Lining up songs. Your own, even.”

“You what ?” Beca blinks and shakes her head. “That – that’s amazing!” She exclaims, unable to hide the glee in her voice. “Seriously?” she asks quickly, just to be sure. “Like this is serious, right? You’re not fucking with me?”

“Yeah. You’ve been responsible and on-time for work. And I’ve seen you fiddling with your laptop from time to time. I’ve listened to your mixes. You’re ready.”

You’re ready.

Beca cannot express how not ready she feels, but she’s going to take the plunge. If only she felt ready in other aspects of her life.

It’s less of a silver lining and more of the barest hint of sunshine peeking through the ever-lingering storm clouds.

-----

The shifts get better and better. Beca tries to ignore the rolling in her stomach when she thinks about how sad and disappointed Chloe had looked.

It’s easy to ignore it when she can focus on being alone in the booth. Just her and music. Her previous radio shows were a success and her mixes were received well. For the first time, Beca feels the strangest wells of happiness and success fill her chest, though she tries not to think about how there are gaps now. Gaps being that she so desperately wants to share these thoughts with Chloe.

It ends up coming out to Luke of all people in a fit of emotional outpouring. Beca stares hard at her clenched fists and admits to Luke that while she did not Have Sex on the Desks, she and Chloe were definitely a thing and they had been for most of their time ‘working’ together in the radio station. Mostly, it’s just an attempt to glean how Chloe is doing from the one person that Beca knows well-enough as a mutual friend between them both.

Luke is surprisingly attentive and lets out a low whistle at the end of her story. “First, holy shit.”

“Shut up.”

“Didn’t peg you as Chloe’s type.”

“I’m not going to ask why you would even think about any of this, even abstractly.”

“This explains why Chloe hasn’t been around recently.”

“Yes, that’s what I just said.”

“You two had a good dynamic from what I saw. I mean, I now know that it was more than just good rapport, but Chloe deserves to be happy.” He squints at her. “Why are you two having issues?”

“I just. It’s too much,” Beca gestures vaguely. “I don’t let people in like that, I just don’t. I literally chose to work here because it has two people. Three, I guess. I like the quiet, I like my space, and I like not having to worry about whether people are going to get up and leave. And besides, we were just...friends anyway,” Beca finishes lamely. She hopes against hope that Luke didn’t catch the way her voice wavered.

Luke stares at her for a long moment.

Beca glances at him, nervous under his scrutiny. “Like, why didn’t she just ask me to be her girlfriend, then? Why dance around this? I’m not...good with this stuff. I don’t do relationships. She probably thinks I’m so fucking young and just not ready for her. But I am. I was. I think?” Beca frowns. “She just scared me a lot.”

Luke sighs. “Yeah, she can be like that. But she only ever cares too much for her own good. Thanks for telling me though.” He smiles. “You’re an interesting person, aren’t you?”

Before Beca can respond or process any of Luke’s cryptic words disguised as limited wisdom, Luke is leaving the keys on the table and leaving without another word.

-----

She thinks that’s the end of it.

She finally responds to a few texts from Chloe and does her best to not make them as lackluster as she initially wants them to. She berates herself a little for her insecurities and makes a note to herself to keep her chin up at work.

Speaking of work.

Luke looks down at Beca from his perch in the booth.

“No booth today?” Beca tries weakly.

“Beca,” he begins in a tone that she hates immediately.

“I just want to take my mind off things,” Beca interrupts. She doesn’t want to see sympathy or judgement in his face, though at this point, she’s not sure she can differentiate between the two. It’s all the same to her.

“Yeah, about that.”

And there it is. She regrets telling him anything. “Dude, no, I get it. Chloe’s your friend and I should have never-”

“You’re kind of thick, aren’t you?”

Beca is at a loss for words before she realizes exactly what Luke just said. “What?”

“Stupid. It means stupid.”

“I know what thick means,” she fires back.

“Did you know that Chloe hates the radio station?”

That’s not what she expects at all. “She what?”

“She really does. I mean, she used to work here with me on and off in our freshman and sophomore years, but then she pretty much threw herself into the Bellas and I didn’t see much of her after that. She hated the darkness, the smell, and our other coworker.”

“And now?” Beca asks, a little stupidly, she realizes too late. Luke is already rolling his eyes and brushing past her. She turns just in time to catch the keys he flings in her direction.

“Remember, no sex on the desks!”

He’s so fucking funny, Beca thinks.

-----

It’s not quite the greeting her father expects, but Beca thinks there are worse things to say than “I think I’m in love with a girl and it’s seriously messing me up.”

Her father takes it remarkably well. “Oh, do I know her?” he asks, pouring her a cup of tea.

Beca wonders if that’s his attempt at a joke, but he doesn’t seem to be amused or making light of the situation at all. It’s his attempt to let her know that he does want to know about her life and he wants her to open up.

It’s a pattern in Beca’s life, it seems. Like she’s constantly missing these opportunities to connect – or reconnect – with people every so often.

She knows she’s difficult and she knows she’s hard around the edges, but Chloe makes her want to be better. Her entire experience at Barden this past year has made her want to be better.

Not that her father needs to know, but as she watches him and observes the lines around his eyes and mouth, she sees so much pain and regret. It manifested in her own vulnerability and insecurity, especially around the time her parents split up. She had been so sure that it had been easy for her father to leave – to pack his bags and leave.

She sees now that it probably wasn’t easy. It didn’t excuse his actions – still doesn’t – that much Beca knows with one hundred percent certainty, but time really wears on people, especially those living with regrets. Chloe had always subtly tried to encourage her to talk to her father, or to at least agree to his attempts to meet up for coffee. Beca had brushed both of them off until eventually her father stopped asking and she had been pleased at the time. But she saw the same kind of familiar sadness in Chloe’s eyes whenever she contemplated Beca, like she knew Beca was lonely.

Like she knew Beca was sad.

Beca sighs, reaching out to stop her father from adding sugar.

“I’ve missed you, you know.”

He smiles, causing the crinkles around his eyes to turn up. “So tell me about this girl.”

-----

“Hey, you know good restaurants around here, right?” Beca asks, the moment Jesse picks up his phone. Her father’s advice had been surprisingly simple and sound: apologize and talk to Chloe. So that’s what she’s trying to do, but she’s going to do it with some nice take-out and a custom-created mix.

Something clatters in the background. “Beca, what ? Happy spring break to you too.”

“Around the school,” Beca continues a little impatiently. “Restaurants around the school.”

Jesse sighs. “Is this about Chloe?” he asks.

“Why would it be about Chloe?” is Beca’s defensive response. Jesse is silent. “Yes, this is about Chloe.”

“Are you going to take her out on a date ?” he asks, too happy for Beca’s liking. “Finally?” he continues. Beca can see his playful expression. She doesn’t hate it necessarily.

“I just want to do something nice for her,” she says.

Jesse laughs. “This is exactly the conversation I had with Chloe.”

“What? When?” This is news to Beca. She sits heavily, suddenly, already piecing things together despite Jesse’s loud guffaw right into her phone. “Shut up,” she insists. “When?”

“Oh man, it was right out of a movie. She always wanted to talk to me about the kinds of things she thought you would enjoy. And she used to ask me about my favorite places to hang on dates. I mean, I didn’t understand it at first, but I kind of saw you two making out when you both thought I had gone to get Luke a burger.”

Beca inhales indignantly. “And you didn’t say anything?”

“About your fraternizing with your coworker?” Jesse asks. Beca can hear the delight in his voice. “I mean, I always thought it’d be me, but the moment Chloe started working here, I knew I was finished.”

She can’t tell if he’s actually serious, but she’s suddenly laughing. Laughing like a purge of emotion because it makes complete sense. Chloe had been planning dates. So many dates and so many nights out. Never really just a casual, on-the-whim moment.

Chloe had always been laying down the foundation for them, always just waiting for Beca to catch up.

And now, to find Chloe.

-----

Aubrey looks at Beca like she thinks Beca is a particularly interesting piece of dust. She peers down at Beca and appears to delight in their (very slight) height difference.

“Chloe’s not here,” she says, her nose wrinkling. Beca privately thinks that she might be envisioning the last time she caught Beca and Chloe going at it on their living room couch. “You’re...Beca, right? Chloe talked about you a lot.” She narrows her eyes suspiciously, then, like perhaps Chloe hadn’t been talking about Beca a lot recently.

Beca tries to smile, but manages a grimace. “I...okay. I can wait until she gets back,” she offers.

“She’s not coming back.”

Beca’s eyes widen. “What?” she squeaks out, fear causing her tone to rise.

Aubrey’s eyes widen too. “No, no, I’m so sorry, I just meant that she won’t be back for a while.”

“Oh, I thought she was staying here for spring break,” Beca murmurs. “She said she was,” she says, pulling out her phone to see her last brief message exchange with Chloe a few days ago.

“She didn’t tell you?” Aubrey asks, her entire stance softening. She looks at the take-out in Beca’s hands and then looks at Beca’s face, as if determining her true intentions.

For once, Beca doesn’t feel afraid. She lets Aubrey assess her and stare straight at her. She hopes Aubrey can see her honesty and sincerity and, if she dares, affection and care for Chloe Beale.

Aubrey seems to like what she sees, at least enough to inform Beca that Chloe is in the hospital, recovering from her nodes operation.

For some reason (many reasons), that makes Beca cry.

-----

Beca makes a soft sound upon seeing Chloe sound asleep in the pristine hospital bed. As uncomfortable as the bed itself looks, Chloe looks peaceful - content even.

Somehow making the worst things a little brighter, Beca muses. She gently places the roses down on the window ledge before moving closer to Chloe. As she nears, she becomes more aware of all the various instruments about: the complicated machinery, the wires, tubing both unused and used, the metal – so much metal – lining various aspects of the room. All together, it’s not a pretty sight, but Chloe is safe. Chloe is alive. The surgery was a success. Beca can breathe again.

The sheets rustle and Beca's eyes dart back to Chloe who is staring back at her. Chloe blinks slowly, like the last dredges of sleep are slowly fading away.

“Hi,” Beca says weakly. “Hi. Oh God, you’re awake. Okay, uh–” Chloe points at the rolling table Beca had pushed aside and Beca belatedly notices the whiteboard and marker. “Oh, okay. Sorry, I’ll just…” She quickly snatches it up and presses them into Chloe’s hands. Chloe fixes her with an amused expression. “I’m just nervous,” Beca explains.

Chloe is writing furiously on her whiteboard.

“I’m going to start with an apology because I’m probably the last person you want to see right now.”

Chloe glances up briefly to roll her eyes, shaking her head. You’re not, she mouths.

But she still writes.

“Uh, okay. I’ll make this quick, so you can...um, drink water or something. I just want you to know that I’m so fucking sorry about everything. I didn’t mean for any of this to happen the way it did, starting right from the beginning. When you started working at the station and then everything that happened right after.

“Honesty, the way you make me feel is probably just a combination of the happiest I’ve ever been and terrified. More terrified than I’ve ever been in my life. I’ve never had any real kind of close relationships and I never thought I’d be able to feel close to anybody, not when I spent so much time trying to figure out how to leave.

“But something occurred to me,” Beca continues, trying to will her voice from cracking. “And I’m not, like, talking about while we were sleeping together or anything. Though, that was nice.” Chloe flashes her teeth at her in what Beca assumes is a silent laugh. “I realized that I don’t want to leave. Not for the next year at least. And I don’t know what that means for us or anything, but I want you to know that I like you more than a friend and I have for a while. I was just too afraid of my own damn feelings.”

Chloe coughs a little, some sound escaping her and causing her to wince. She smiles at Beca gratefully when she immediately hands her a glass of water from the side table, then picks her board back up again.

“What are you writing?” Beca asks nervously. “You’ve been writing a lot.”

Chloe looks a little teary-eyed, but she slowly flips the board over.

The inscription is surrounded by dozens of hearts of varying sizes, finally underscored by a postscript.

Beca Mitchell, will you be my girlfriend (again)? Choose one. YES / NO p.s. you’re so cute when you’re nervous. And of course I forgive you, you dummy.

There is so much more Beca wants to say – so many more apologies and explanations. And she’s sure Chloe has more she wants to say as well.

So she leans in instead and moves closer for a quick kiss. At the last minute, she thinks better of the idea because she’s unsure if Chloe’s allowed to engage in kissing so soon after her surgery. She kisses Chloe’s cheek instead, letting her lips linger for as long as she dares. Chloe shivers a little when Beca pulls back and Beca is surprised to note that her eyes are wet.

“What?” Beca asks, nervous again.

Chloe taps the board impatiently.

“Oh. Duh, yes.” She quickly grabs the marker and circles the yes. Chloe grins at her, pulling her in for a kiss to Beca’s cheek of her own.

The touch is tender and gentle, a far cry from their very first kiss.

Beca has never felt anything better.

fin.

#bechloe #bechloe week #mine #my fanfic #beca mitchell #chloe beale #pitch perfect #text #pp #movies #fanfiction #bechloe week 2019

168 notes · View notes

aliciameade · 5 years

Text

Bechloe Week 2019: Day 2 - Coworkers

“In the Closet” - Rated T

Also on AO3

~ ~ ~

“Burning the midnight oil again?”

Chloe looks up and over her computer screen and smiles. “Always.”

“Why are you still here?” Beca leans against the empty desk across from Chloe’s and pockets her iPhone. Her clear intent to focus on their conversation makes the ever-present butterflies in Chloe’s stomach stir.

She uses the welcome interruption to stretch, arching her back as she lifts her arms. She knows it makes her shirt ride up; it’s why she does it. “I need to get my team’s budget for Q2 uploaded before midnight.”

“Procrastinate much?” Beca says with a smile. It isn’t lost on Chloe that her eyes seem to pointedly avoid Chloe’s once she’d finished stretching.

Chloe shrugs and rolls her chair back from her desk to twist absentmindedly back and forth. “I work better under pressure.”

“I feel that.” She watches as Beca pulls something out of a back pocket of her jeans: a keycard, which she waves conspiratorially. “I swiped Aubrey’s badge when she was in the bathroom and I’m going to raid the snack closet. Want something?”

Yeah. You. “I’m good, but thanks,” Chloe replies with a dismissive wave. Her long-standing crush on her coworker—or rather, her ability to control her crush—tended to wax and wane. Sometimes, Chloe feels a zing of happiness when she and Beca catch each other’s eye as one walks through the other’s area and it would keep her happy the rest of the week. Sometimes, Chloe walks past the copy room to find Beca on her hands and knees in front of the huge printer/copier trying to fix the paper jam and Chloe returns to her desk mind so full of fantasies that she would have to step into the restroom to touch herself.

It wasn’t that dating coworkers is disallowed. Neither is the other’s supervisor; they aren’t even in the same department. But Chloe had spent the first three months of Beca’s employment sure the woman was straight, or, at the very least, in a relationship with a man. Beca started to bring in personal items for her desk and Chloe loved the glimpses into her life until one of those items was a photo of Beca kissing the cheek of some guy in front of the entrance to The Wizarding World of Harry Potter.

“Some guy.” Chloe knows who it was: Jesse, Beca’s boyfriend.

Or, she assumes he’s Beca’s boyfriend. She was always meeting him for lunch, or he would stop by the office just to bring her a cup of her favorite coffee, or she’ll say, “Jesse,” when Chloe teasingly asks her who she’s texting when she notices her smiling at her phone.

That smile was something else. It did things to Chloe. Twisted her up inside. Made her second-guess her words from time to time which was a rarity for her when she had a crush. But “crush” seems an ill-fitting term for what she feels for Beca. Enamored. Bewitched. Besotted. Those are more apropos.

But hidden among all the photos and trinkets, Chloe had noticed one tiny flash of bright colors. A rainbow bracelet, one of those rubber ones that companies toss out at the Pride parade every year, wrapped around a cup on Beca’s desk. She’s thought a lot about that bracelet: if Beca just likes bright colors (that didn’t seem right). It doesn’t have to mean anything, of course; maybe Beca is a good ally.

Or maybe Beca’s something other than heterosexual and got the bracelet because she caught it at a Pride parade celebrating herself.

Chloe raps her nails on her keyboard a few times trying to remember what she was in the middle of doing before Beca interrupted her but her focus has shifted. She thinks about snacks, or, more accurately, the fact that Beca is in the snack closet. More than once over their few years working together, a fantasy has slipped through Chloe’s mind involving bumping into Beca somewhere in the office long after working hours—a conference room, the restroom, the break room, the snack closet—and making a suggestive comment to her, followed by a lengthy daydream of pinning her to a wall or sitting her on (or bending her over) the conference room table.

“Oh, my God, chill,” she says with a mind-clearing shake of the head. It does little to clear away the lust, though, and despite the nonstop argument happening in her brain, she rolls her chair back from her desk to stand.

She isn’t going to the snack closet. She just needs to take a lap, walk through the empty halls to give herself something else to think about.

Except in doing so, she finds herself stopped in front of the half-opened door of the snack closet watching Beca rifle through the cabinet that houses the company’s supply of chips, cookies, and crackers. There are already a few options on the nearby table, one of them being Chloe’s favorite (Oreos) and she can’t help but wonder if Beca had chosen it for her despite turning down her offer.

She sneaks up behind Beca until she’s inches away, then leans in with, “Boo!”

Beca’s reaction is a combination of a gasp and the word, “Shit!” as she tries to flee only to be trapped between the cabinet and Chloe. “Oh, it’s you,” she says after whipping her head around, eyes wide with surprise. “Jesus, don’t do that, dude.”

“Couldn’t help it,” she says with a shrug and doesn’t make an effort to move back and give Beca space. It was too nice to be so close to her. She smiles brightly when Beca turns around after finishing straightening out the bags of snacks she’d disrupted in her fright. “Find anything yummy?”

Beca seems taken aback by Chloe’s proximity but doesn’t comment on it. Instead, she swallows and tilts her head toward the choices on the counter. “Can’t go wrong with Cheetos.” Beca’s eyes are furtive; they refuse to hold Chloe’s gaze more than a second and in their nervous flitting, land on what seem to be Chloe’s mouth more than once.

The possibility thrills Chloe and she bites her lip as a test and it works; Beca’s eyes fall to her lips again. “So, I’ve been wondering,” she starts, “how long have you and your boyfriend been together?”

Beca’s brow furrows in confusion. “Boyfriend?”

“Yeah, you have pictures of him all over your desk. Jesse?”

A bark of laughter escapes Beca and she covers her mouth with a shake of her head. “Oh, my God,” she says with a small groan as she drops her hand. “Jesse is not my boyfriend.”

Chloe’s heart picks up pace. “No?”

“Best friend. Not boyfriend. Gross,” she adds under her breath.

“Any boyfriend?”

The corners of Beca’s mouth twitch. “No.”

“Girlfriend?” she hedges.

At that, Beca’s left brow arches. “No.”

“Partner of any kind?”

“Single and ready to mingle,” Beca says and then seems to regret it, grimacing. “I mean, uh, no.” She’s still thinking so Chloe waits for her to continue. “Um...you?” The question is forced and she can tell Beca feels awkward, but then again, Beca seems to feel awkward during most of their interactions.

The good news of Beca’s singledom makes it easy for Chloe to slip on a flirty smirk. “Oh, I’m very ready to mingle.”

“That’s nice,” Beca says with a tight jaw and a nod.

“Mm, it is.” Chloe lets her eyes slip to Beca’s lips and lingers there long enough that Beca’s blushing when she looks up again. “You know, Beca—”

She’s cut off by Beca darting forward to kiss her. It’s quick but there’s no doubt in Chloe’s mind that it was intentional and she smiles into it in the brief moment it lasts.

“I’m sorry,” Beca says the second their lips part. “I shouldn’t have just—”

“Ready to mingle, indeed,” Chloe interrupts with a wider smile as she steps further into Beca’s personal space to rest a hand on her shoulder, thumb grazing the curve of her neck. She hadn’t been expecting it to play out this way, with Beca kissing her first. She hadn’t been expecting it to play out at all; she’d really been more on a fact-finding mission of curiosity, to crank up the flirtation and see if Beca would bite or not.

Instead, she seems to be the one who got hooked.

“Don’t apologize,” she continues. “I liked it.”

Beca manages to blush even harder but her chin lifts and the uncertainty in her eyes begins to fade. “Well, I mean, you’ve been hitting on me pretty hard, so I figured I’d put you out of your misery.”

The direct, punchy flirtation rattles Chloe, unprepared for it as she is. She also hadn’t expected Beca to call her out on her past—and current—behavior. “Was I that obvious?”

Beca squints at her. “Painfully.” Then she smiles one of the genuine smiles that always ties Chloe up in knots. “Took you so long to make a move; you forced my hand.”

“Well, I do like a slow burn.” She’s not totally sure how she’s keeping her cool right now; her insides feel like they’re on the spin cycle.

“The snack closet though? Of all places.”

“I had a fantasy.” She says it before she thinks she should maybe censor herself and it’s her turn to cover her mouth and blush. “Shit, forget I said that.”

This time, she gets both eyebrows lifting, accompanied by what should be an illegal smirk of impressed surprise. “Seriously? In here?”

“Oh, my God.” She has to cover her face with both hands. She’s legitimately mortified; admitting to your crush seconds after learning it’s mutual that you’ve fantasized about having sex with her in a closet at the office is high on Chloe’s list of what not to do [in real life].

“Hey,” Beca’s saying as she drags Chloe’s hands away from her face. That’s all she says because she leans in to kiss Chloe again.

This time it’s not as shy and it’s definitely not as quick. It’s slow and gentle and does wonders to erase Chloe’s moment of oversharing. She sighs and puts her hand back where it was along Beca’s neck and likes that Beca tilts her head when she does it like she’s inviting her to it. She likes how soft Beca’s lips are and the way they retreat only to return at a different angle. They’re figuring out what works, that first kiss that is as unfamiliar as it is thrilling and she knows they find their rhythm and angles when she hears Beca exhale. It’s not a moan, not even close to one, but it’s definitely a sound of pleasure.

She feels Beca’s hand on her shoulder mirroring her own and that’s what does it. Finally flips that switch inside her that’s been holding her back. She sighs, then lets the tip of her tongue slip along Beca’s lower lip. A tease. A question.

Beca’s copies the motion along Chloe’s lip a few seconds later and her heart leaps.

She inches her hand higher along Beca’s neck until her fingertips are slipping up and into the hair at the nape of her neck. Beca shivers and Chloe does a poor job of hiding her amusement, earning a mumbled, “Shut up,” against her lips before Beca’s tongue slips past her smile.

Someone does moan, then, but Chloe’s not sure who. She doesn’t need to know. All that matters is that Beca is an amazing kisser and things are beginning to escalate. Beca’s hands are in Chloe’s hair and Chloe’s are splitting duty between cradling Beca’s head and holding her waist to keep her close.

When Beca twists away to take a gasping breath, Chloe gives her a minute, just long enough before she proves she’s as good a kisser as Beca, teasing and playing with her tongue in a way that draws out a moan that is distinctly Beca’s.

“Shit,” Beca breathes when she turns away again. She’s all but clinging to Chloe who gives her a reprieve and shifts attention to her neck, trading kisses with teasing licks along its length and when she lets her teeth scrape, more an absentminded accident than anything, Beca moans again and her hips roll up into Chloe’s. “Shit,” Beca repeats, “okay.” She’s winded and it’s obvious. “Okay.”

Chloe eases back to look at her but her head is turned and her eyes are closed. “Okay?”

Beca nods sharply.

“Do you want to stop?”

“Yeah. I mean, no!” Beca finally opens her eyes and faces her. She looks well-kissed. “Sorry, I—”

“You’re right; we should stop.” Chloe says it so Beca doesn’t have to.

Beca starts to smile. “I don’t mean to deprive you of your fantasy.”

“Oh, my God, shut up,” Chloe laughs, giving her a light shove.

“Ah, dude! The edge of this cabinet is digging into my back enough as it is.”

Chloe gasps; the thought of Beca being in any kind of discomfort is horrible. She takes a step back, not even having noticed she’d had Beca seriously pinned awkwardly against the counter and cabinet. “I’m so sorry!”

“It’s okay.” Beca rubs at a spot on her shoulder and Chloe wishes she could kiss it better, but it might be a little too soon for such affections. “For the record, I really didn’t want to stop.”

Chloe’s still turned on and that doesn’t help settle her any. “No?” She watches in disbelief as Beca takes a step to close the distance Chloe created when she moved back.

She watches in disbelief as Beca shakes her head while she leans in and kisses Chloe again, now so confident that Chloe’s not sure how to process it. She retreats after a few seconds, though, and smirks. “My fantasy is doing it on Aubrey’s desk.”

Chloe gapes.

“With you. To clarify.” Beca winks and leans to kiss her again, another thorough yet brief one. “But maybe not for our first time.”

“No, yeah. Right.” Chloe smiles, still spinning. “Totes.”

“So, are you going to ask me on a date sometime this century? Or…”

She finally feels her brain start working again and hops like she’s been zapped. “Yes! Oh, my God, yes. Dinner? Tomorrow?”

Beca nods. “7:00 pm. Pick me up after work?”

Chloe laughs and pulls Beca back in for one more kiss. One, she hopes, will be one of a million more to come.

#bechloe #bechloe week 2019 #bechloe fic #my one and only contribution this year #coworkers au

148 notes · View notes

redlance · 5 years

Text

Bechloe Week: Day 6 - Amnesia

Title: Forget Me Not

Disclaimer: Characters don’t belong to me. Sadly.

Rating: O for “Oh no you didn’t”

A/N: Well, there was never any chance I was going to get all these done on time, was there? Realistically speaking. But I do plan on filling all the prompts, regardless. I’m just back at work so, you know, I’m exhausted when I come home at night and my brain refuses to think beyond “food. Sleep.” Nevertheless, I didn’t forget about this prompt!! ...no? Why are you booing. How rude.

Read at ao3 or ff.net

#bechloe week 2019 #bechloe week #bechloe #fanfic

71 notes · View notes

bechloe-week · 5 years

Text

Voting for Bechloe Week is now open!

How to vote: Send me an ask with your top THREE choices for Bechloe Week. You must not be set to anon or your votes will not be counted. Only one vote per person, please!

Voting will close Sunday, June 16th, and the winning prompts will be announced on Monday, June 17th.

Your choices for Bechloe Week 2019 prompts are:

Softball

Soulmates (or soulmate tattoo)

Western

Proposal

Regret

20 questions

Wishful thinking

Amnesia

Study group

Bella’s reunion

Mixtape

Pregnant

Enemies

High school

Coworkers

Crime

Backstage

Books

Captain Marvel

The one that got away

Supernatural

Horror

Mattress

“Where the hell did you get a flamethrower?”

Five years

New roommate

Lightning

Dancing

Stars

Parents

“Why are you here?”

Sorry

Mask

Home

Soundtrack

Game night

Sports

When?

Rain

One year

Cook

Tinder

60’s

Vegas

Tattoo

Babysitting

Truth or dare

Our song

Fever

As you can see, there are a lot of options, the most submitted prompts in Bechloe Week history! Some prompts were not included in this list if they were too specific, innapropriate, or have been used previously.

Reminder, no votes will be counted if submitted anonymously!

Happy voting!

#bechloe #bechloe week #beca mitchell #chloe beale #pitch perfect #pp3 #bechloe week 2019

114 notes · View notes

charmingcentry · 5 years

Text

GSA

Entry for Day 4 - High School

Summary: Beca has had a big crush on Chloe Beale ever since freshman year and thinks she has no chance at all with her. That is until Fat Amy and Jesse swoop in to save the day.

AO3

There are officially 179 school days left until Beca is out of this shithole.

Don’t be fooled by the brunette’s high marks in classes or how she frequently participates in school events, Beca Mitchell can’t tolerate dozens of people on this campus. The awful stereotypes and insignificant drama is what ruined the whole “high school experience.” Not that she expected much when entering in as a freshman, but ever since then, she dreads her school. The maintained 4.2 GPA and involvement within the school community is only kept because unlike many people at her school, Beca actually wants to attend college.

She doesn’t talk to people much other than her best friends Fat Amy and Jesse Swanson, both from completely separate friend groups. Fat Amy, is apart of what is considered the “popular” group and Jesse is categorized into “geeks and nerds,” it was luck that pushed Beca towards the two drastically different people.

Beca preferred to seclude herself from friend groups, usually sitting on the field and listening to her music which apparently deems you as a “loner freak,” just another example of why the brunette hates this school. She could’ve chosen to partake in socializing with people but conversations weren’t her thing. Sure now she sits by Fat Amy’s table or Jesse’s but she doesn’t talk much, usually studying or on her phone.

After school, the brunette doesn’t go anywhere… she’d rather stay away from home. Even after dozens of offers from Amy and Jesse for a sleepover or just to hang out, Beca would rather stay within school property, typically finding herself on the bleachers at the baseball field. Maybe not the best decision, especially after many excruciatingly prolonged conversation with a redhead, Chloe Beale.

“I like your bracelet.” Chloe compliments, pointing at a black-beaded bracelet with the colors of the rainbow on six of the beads. Beca looks up from her Calculus textbook.

“Oh, thanks… “

“What are you doing here?” The redhead asks, sitting next to Beca as she notices what she’s reading. “I’ve always had trouble with limits… especially these ones.” Chloe points to a problem in the textbook.

Without thinking Beca goes through the problem in her head. “You just factor out the numerator then it’ll cancel out in the denominator. Then you plug in this number for x in the expression you’re left with.” Her mouth became dry and could feel her stomachs doing flips when Chloe grinned at her

“You’re smart… no wonder your mister’s favorite.”

Beca raises an eyebrow. “Sure…” “Anyway, you didn’t answer my question, what’re you doing here?” The redhead asks once again, moving in closer to Beca

The brunette swallows down a lump in her throat and stutters. “I- just, need some time for myself.”

“When the softball team is practicing?”

Beca notices the blue and white school jersey. “Oh… I mean, I don’t really pay attention so. I don’t mind.”

A whistle blows and Chloe shoots up. “Oop! There’s coach, I’ll see you around Bec!”

The redhead runs back onto the field as Beca looks back at the problem Chloe pointed out and swallows another lump in her throat.

It’s not that Beca doesn’t know the girl, she does… it’s just that Chloe may be the girl Beca has been pining on ever since freshman year, the only other girl in her grade that was nice to the brunette. She wasn’t the stereotypical popular girl nor was she a stereotype in general… Chloe was, Chloe. The redhead was honest, compassionate, intelligent, and extremely friendly… and kind of hot. But Beca knew she wasn’ t gay. Yet still, the brunette couldn’t get over her.

Fat Amy and Jesse are heavily aware of Beca’s crush on popular softball player Chloe Beale, the blonde being one of Chloe’s best friends. The brunette never discusses anything related to her romantic feelings, yet her attitude and demeanor towards the redhead clearly show how she feels for her. Fat Amy noticed when their Physics teacher had people go into partners for a project.

Beca was sitting at her desk, looking around to see who doesn’t have a partner, Fat Amy paired with this kid named Bumper so the brunette was left on her own. The teenager sighs and contemplates asking their teacher if they could be individual for this project too until someone pops up.

“Hi, Bec!” Fat Amy turns her attention to her two best friends

Beca’s cheeks go pink as she shuffles around in her seat. “Uh, hey Chloe.”

“You have a partner?” Chloe asks, sitting in the seat directly in front of Beca. The brunette shakes her head. “You wanna be mine?”

Beca readjusts her sitting position once more as she twirls her pencil in her left hand. “Y-yeah that’d be cool.”

The teacher calls time for partner search. “Well, text me to see when we can meet up okay?” Beca nods. “Awes.”

The redhead smiles and winks at Beca before returning to her original seat. “Yeah! Awes.”

Fat Amy chuckles at how the brunette places her head in her hands and mutters an incoherent phrase. The blonde returns her attention to Bumper who is staring very intensely at her…

Jesse noticed during an interesting interaction between the two during the passing period…

“Okay look, I’m just saying! You’re way too smart to be at this school Beca.” The brunette rolls her eyes as she walks down the hall to their next class, World History. “Like really? You’re always receiving A’s and shit, then you still stay here?”

“Yeah, Jess because it’s nearly end of the sophomore year where am I supposed to g-

A redhead walks past the two, she smiles at Beca, along with one of her signature winks. The brunette immediately shuts up and waves awkwardly at Chloe. Beca looks behind her to see Chloe still walking until she hears Jesse clear her throat.

“Sooo… Chloe?” The male teases, nudging Beca in the shoulder.

They stop in front of their designated classroom. “Shut up Jess, never speak about that again.”

Her friends are extremely supportive of Beca, Jesse even going as far to say “I’ll be the best lesbro you’ll ever have,” which the brunette finds slightly annoying. But Beca couldn’t believe how supportive her two friends are, she found that’s why she’s always stayed with them - no matter what happened, Amy and Jesse were and are always there behind the brunette.

“Hey, Jesse come here for a second.” Fat Amy says, waving her hand over to Jesse during a break they had during their Economics class. Jesse immediately comes on over like a puppy and sits next to the blonde.

“What’s up?”

“You tired of the sexual tension between ginger and Beca?” Jesse lets out a laugh and notices how serious Fat Amy sounds about this question.

He clears his throat. “Yeah, kind of. Like it’s obvious Chloe likes her back… all those winks and flirty moves and crap…” Fat Amy nods.

“So I have a plan to convince the little gremlin that Chloe likes her back.” Jesse leans in to listen more.

“What is it?”

“Drag Beca to GSA.”

Jesse widens his eyes. “She wouldn’t Amy, like never.”

“Whatever, we’re gonna do it, Swanson, whether Beca likes it or not. It’s for her own good”

The teacher calls their attention back to the board and the class resumes… the two are going to have to do a lot of dragging to get Beca into the GSA classroom.

The bell rings to dismiss the fifth-period classes, signifying that lunch is starting and it is now time to drag Beca into the Gay-Straight Alliance classroom. Fat Amy and Jesse walk out of their economics classroom quickly, on their way to find wherever Beca would be. Usually, the brunette alternates between the two’s friend groups, sitting at either table throughout the school week. Some days Beca goes to her usual alone spot, so it’s usually a challenging task to locate where the brunette may be.

“Is she supposed to hang out with me or you today?” Jesse asks, the two scanning the cafeteria room for a petite brunette with headphones around her neck. Amy looks around, their friend is nowhere to be seen.

“I think she’s on her own today, come on, let’s go find that gremlin.”

The two acquaintances walk out of the cafeteria towards the quad area of the school, their heads darting around every direction to find Beca. They walk near an area with a tree and find Beca laying down under the shade, headphones covering her ears and her eyes were closed. Fat Amy storms over to the serene brunette and pulls her up by the arm.

“Dude what the fuck!” The brunette yells, trying to resist Fat Amy’s grip around her arm as her headphones fall around her neck. Jesse leans down to gather Beca’s school belongings and holds Beca’s other arm down. “Jesse you too? Okay, what the hell is going on…”

They begin walking over to the GSA classroom and unbeknownst to Beca, Chloe will be attending the meeting as well. As the two friends begin dragging Beca to what seems her inevitable doom, the brunette tries to pull away. “Beca you’re going to a GSA meeting and that’s that.” Fat Amy declares, turning left around the corner of a school building.

“What! No! Why!” Beca says, still trying to plant herself to the ground

“For your… own… good!” Fat Amy says, opening the door to the GSA classroom and shoving the brunette inside. Of course, being the good samaritans they are, stick with Beca for the meeting to make sure she won’t run away. The teacher who supervises the club, waves over at the seemingly distressed friend group and hands the three a sign-in sheet.

“Amy, what’re you doing here?” A taller female brunette asks, walking over to the three, she notices Beca. “Hey, newcomer!”

Beca turns back around after frustratedly signing herself into the club. “Uh, hey.”

“I’m Stacie, you’re in my Chemistry class.” Beca raises an eyebrow. “Oh yeah, you know that you hang out with us sometimes…”

“Yeah… these two-” Beca points at Jesse and Fat Amy. “Dragged me in here and I have no clue why…” Stacie smirks. “What?”

“Nothing. Just our president is late so the meeting isn’t starting yet.”

The group of four took their seats at a table near the front of the classroom as the rest of the club talks amongst themselves. The main ones talking were Jesse, Fat Amy, and Stacie while Beca was sitting in her seat, pouting like a 5-year-old. Just as she’s about to drape her headphones back onto her head, the door opens and someone runs in.

“So sorry I’m late guys, let’s get started.” A familiar voice rings from the side of the room, Beca turns red the minute she hears the voice and her head subconsciously focuses on the president of the club… Chloe Beale. “How’s everyone’s first we-

“Chlo! We have a new member.” Stacie intervenes as she points at Beca who is sinking slowly in her seat. The redhead looks over at notices the brunette and gives Beca an endearing grin, the two of them both blushing crazily. Beca waves awkwardly as Chloe gestures her to stand up The brunette follows and hesitantly stands, waving at all the people within the club.

“Introduce yourself Bec! Don’t worry, we don’t bite.” Chloe winks, walking closer towards the brunette.

“Okay well… I’m Beca Mitchell and uh, yeah. That’s it.” The brunette immediately sits back down as the redhead lets out a giggle of her extremely awkward demeanor.

“She’s also candidate for valedictorian guys~” The brunette tries to hide her amused grin and playfully rolls her eyes. Fat Amy and Jesse high-five one another as Stacie gives a thumbs-up to Chloe. “Glad you joined us here today Bec… okay, the topic of today’s meeting, going to middle schools and promoting GSA and support!”

A smile slips onto Beca’s face as she admires how Chloe looks when she’s in charge and leading a group.

The lunch bell rings and everyone begins gathering their belongings, Beca especially as she doesn’t want to go through any more of the awkward tension surrounding her. Just as she’s about to walk out, she feels a soft grip wrap around her wrist. Beca turns around and notices Chloe, smiling softly at her.

“Hey, I’m glad you came today Beca.” The redhead says as Beca begins to walk closer to her crush. Fat Amy, Jesse, and Stacie walk past the two and smirk, walking out without their friend. “I’ll keep this short but I was wondering if you would be interested in coming to my softball game? Friday? First one of the season.” Chloe entices, still holding onto Beca’s wrist. The brunette is shocked by the invite and the corners of her lips perk up.

“I- yeah sure. I mean, yes. I know a lot about… softball. My favorite sport actually.” Beca blurts out, distracted by the smile Chloe gives off. The redhead’s grin becomes wider as she slowly lets go of her wrist.

“Great! See you then Bec.” Chloe leaves the classroom as Beca follows her out as well.

As Beca makes her way to the final period of the day, she realizes what she had just said about softball during their interaction. Her face scrunches up as she pounds her fist against the palm of her other hand, knowing damn well she had just lied to her crush.

Beca sure has a lot to learn about softball.

And that GSA meeting sure won’t be the last.

#bechloe week 2019 #bechloe #beca mitchell #chloe beale #enjoy

60 notes · View notes

yourknightingale · 5 years

Text

truth or truth: car edition

Probably my only contribution to this Bechloe week. Sorry for late post! I didn’t know I could make it. This is for the prompt TRUTH OR DARE.

Summary: Beca and Chloe take a short road trip. Car conversations can get a little out of hand sometimes.

———

An hour and a half into a 4-hour road trip, Beca had made herself comfortable and ready to nap in the passenger seat. A soft but weighty object flew to her shoulders with a pound.

“Beale! What?”, she jolted awake and turned to the driver side. She clutched the neck pillow that landed on her lap. “You know they fill this with beans, right? Dried beans! That kinda hurt, dude. What was that for?”

Chloe, who was firmly looking ahead and concentrating on the drive, replied with a scoff. “That’s not fair, Beca. You’re not allowed to sleep. It’s only 4 hours and you have to stay awake to keep ME awake. Passenger seat duty.”

Beca mumbled under her breath.

“Okay, if you keep doing that, I’ll have to pull over at the next gas station and we’ll switch. You drive. I sleep.”

The brunette straightened up right away. Shuffling a little in her seat so she can settle, she said, “Your driving skills are better than mine and you know it.”

Chloe lifted her right arm and made a thumb-up gesture without taking her eyes off the road to which the other girl just shook her head. Beca pulled out her phone from her pocket and plugged it in the car radio. It didn’t take long for the Corolla to be filled with music with just two people on their way to a wedding venue.

After 5 songs, Beca started skipping and reshuffling her playlist. “Sorry, Chlo. I’m not feeling my music today. You still good?”

“Yeah. Just actually getting bored. Highways aren’t really fun.”

“How about I turn this down and I just talk?”

Chloe raises an eyebrow. “You sure? I know I said I don’t want you to sleep but I don’t know about talking Beca.”

“Shut up, I ain’t telling you deep stuff. I don’t know. Car games?”

“Like what exactly? All of my senses are focused on this road.”

“I Spy?”

“I don’t want so much of a distraction while driving.”

“Guess what kind of fruit I am?”

“Really? No. Try again.”

“Truth or dare?”

“Unless you’re gonna dare me to switch driving, probably not a good idea. Truth or truth, yes.”

“Alright, truth or truth then. So it’s like truth or dare. Except it’s all truth. And you have to answer, no passes.”

“Cool, I guess. It’s like having a normal conversation.” She teased.

“That’s what you’d think. I go first. Truth: Why am I here with you?”

“Wow, starting off really strong there, Becs. First of all, you’re still a Bella. And this is a Bella wedding. Aren’t you excited to see Cynthia Rose? And her partner? And weddings? And free food.”

“Are those questions your truth?”

“No. Here’s truth for you: Are you still scared of showing you care for your friends even though this occasion can serve as our mini Bella reunion one long year after our graduation?”

Beca rolled her eyes. “No, it’s just that it’s in the middle of nowhere. And I’m too tired to drive. And that’s why you’re doing this which I appreciate, but it seemed a little unnecessary. My butt hurts.” She paused. “Beale, truth. Are you fond of weddings?”

“Yeah. What’s not to like? Friends are there. Free food. Love is everywhere. Your turn, Beca, truth. Why aren’t you?”

“Well, it’s not like I’m not fond of them. Weddings are okay. It’s just that it’s..” The brunette trailed off.

“You know it’s probably gonna be legalized in all states this year. We don’t have to drive 4 hours to be free.”

“You’re one hopeful beacon, Beale. I don’t know where you get it from. Truth: If the states don’t legalize anything this year, would you drive 4 hours to get married?”

“Oh, Beca. Is this your way of asking if I’m gay?” The brunette flushed red and stutters inaudibly. Chloe just laughed. “In 4 years that we’ve known each other, you can’t tell?”

“It’s not like you’re very obvious. I haven’t seen you with anyone since Turd from when we first met.”

“Tom.”

“Whatever.”

“And to answer your question, yes, I’ll probably have to drive to where it is legal. Canada, maybe.”

“Dude, you’d go that far?”

“Why, truth Beca, wouldn’t you?”

A brief hesitation from Beca gave this back-and-forth a short halt. “Maybe. I would.”

“Cool. Maybe we should go.” Chloe turned her head and gave Beca a wink.

“Dude!” The brunette gently pushed Chloe’s cheek so she’d face forward. “Look at where you’re driving!”

Chloe just smiled and teased again, saying, “For all I know, you’re just hiding a blush.”

“Dude, stop.” Beca didn’t want her to know she was right.

Half an hour of silence went by. Near empty roads still dominated their trip. Beca tried reshuffling her music, but decidedly turned the volume low after a while.

“Chlo,” Out of nowhere, she started, “can we pull over?”

“Do you need to go? There’s a gas station in about 3 minutes.”

“Not that. I just need you to not be driving while I say this. Beale, truth, do you think you can l-“

“Hold that thought, Beca Mitchell.” Chloe aggressively gassed it and sped up, they reached the station a minute and 15 seconds early. The car even made a squeaky sound as it stopped to park. Beca was sure she saw the back tires smoke.

Chloe unbuckled herself and turned to the passenger seat. “You were saying?”

Suddenly feeling indecisive, Beca tried to hold back what she was about to confess. “Uhm, I was gonna say, truth: Do you think you can stop for a bathroom break?”

“Mitchell, I swear that’s not what you were gonna say.” Chloe held Beca’s gaze until the other girl looked down on her phone. “Fine, no more truths. Dare. I pick dare.”

“Wait, we’re still playing?”

“Yes. Beca Mitchell, I dare you to ask what you were gonna ask.”

Beca furrowed her brows in slight confusion. “I don’t think you can change the rules.”

“I’m parked now.”

“Chlo, I think it’s best for both of us if I don’t.”

“Just continue, Becs. Do you think I can what?”

Beca sighed in defeat. In a low hushed voice, she uttered, “Do you think you can like me..back.. if I say I like you?”

“What do you mean? I already like you. Is that your truth? Cuz that makes it my turn now.”

“Chloe, I’m not playing anymore.”

“I say dare. I dare you.”

“Chloe, no. You’re misunderstanding me.”

“I dare you to love me.”

It was quiet for a few seconds. Beca could barely look at Chloe and she could tell that the redhead hadn’t looked away from her yet.

“I need some air.” She didn’t wait for a reply. Beca just opened the door and started walking towards the convenience store. Before she could go too far, she heard her name.

“Beca, wait.”

When she looked back, she could see Chloe half-sprinting towards her. “I didn’t mean to scare you with that. I meant it though. I guess I just wanted you to not just like me. I’ve been into you since day one, did you know that? I felt the rush when you asked me if I can ever like you back.”

Beca laughed a little. “Sorry, worst timing for a laugh ever. I just…” she started laughing a bit more, Chloe even joined her. “Did you really just dare me to love you?”

Chloe, in pure happy disbelief, replied, “You can be a little clueless sometimes.” She took a step closer to Beca and leaned in to give her forehead a little kiss. “Let’s get back in the car. We still have almost an hour to drive.”

Beca’s heart raced and with the adrenaline pumping (brought about by their conversation, absurd dare, and a tiny gesture of affection), she volunteered to drive the rest of the way. In one condition. That Chloe didn’t sleep and should talk to her about the possibility of their new relationship.

#bechloe #beca mitchell #pitch perfect #chloe beale #bechloe week 2019

48 notes · View notes

snowonebutyou · 5 years

Link

bechloe week 2019: day 4 - high school

Beca's sneak little actions grant her more than she was hoping to get.

#bechloe week 2019 #otp: fanfic #bechloe #beca mitchell #chloe beale #pitch perfect #my stories #what even is this #idk #and andy wouldn't tell me #so please read it and tell me

37 notes · View notes

aca-awesomenerd · 5 years

Text

Bechloe week 2019 - day 1

@bechloeislegit : link

@redlance : link

@i-own-your-wifi : link

@beyond-bechloe : link

@lets-talk-appella : link

@anotherbechloeshipper : link

@prettylittlesestras : link

@asweetmelodytrickling : link

@charmingcentry : link

#here is what i got so far #if there are some missing PLEASE tell me I won't bite #bechloe week #bechloe week 2019 #bechloe week day 1 #bechloe

36 notes · View notes

i-own-your-wifi · 5 years

Text

Bechloe Week Day 1 - Soulmates

[AO3]

“Do you believe in soulmates?”

Beca paused as she rinsed her plate. “Where is this coming from?”

Chloe shrugged, taking a sip of her water. “I’m curious. So, do you?”

“No.”

“No?” Chloe sounded heartbroken.

“No.” Beca said, “I don’t think there’s one person out there for you. There’s seven billion people in the world, do you really think that even if you had a soulmate, that you would find them?”

Chloe pouted. “Maybe.”

Beca sighed. “Look, Chlo, it’s not practical.”

“It’s not about practical!” Chloe exclaimed. Beca straightened up at Chloe’s outburst. “Sorry.” Chloe said quieter, “But, don’t you think it’s romantic? That there’s one person out there who gets you? Who’ll stay with you forever?”

“No offence, but love doesn’t always keep people together.” Beca said bitterly, “It doesn’t work like that.”

“Right.” Chloe whispered.

“It’s a nice thought, though.” Beca said, returning to her dishes. “But that’s all it is.”

“Well, if soulmates were real,” Chloe said, “Who would you like to be yours?”

“Are you asking me to name a person?” Beca asked amusedly.

“Fine.” Chloe conceded. “What would they be like?”

Beca contemplated for a moment. “I guess… they would be nice. I don’t want to be with someone mean. And… I want someone I can talk to but… someone who understands when I want to be alone. You know?”

Chloe nodded. “Do you care if they’re more outgoing than you?”

“I guess not. But I don’t want them to force me to do this I’m uncomfortable with.”

“Right.” Chloe barely contained her grin. “Well, I want someone who treats me right and who doesn’t make me feel like I’m too much. And I want someone who doesn’t need to go out all the time and is okay with staying home and spending time together, just the two of us.”

“I like spending time with you.” Beca said absently. Beca paused as she realized what she said then blushed deeply. “I-I mean, I… Someone… Spending time with you is… nice… and… good.” Beca grimaced, “And anyone would… should like spending time with you.”

“Thanks!” Chloe skipped over to Beca and kissed her on the cheek. “I have class. Love ya, bye!”

“Yeah, bye.” Beca said. She watched Chloe walk out the door. Once the door closed, Beca said to herself, “What just happened?”

#bechloe #Bechloe week #bechloe week 2019 #beca mitchell #chloe beale #Pitch Perfect #fics #my fic

33 notes · View notes

beca-mitchell · 5 years

Text

for you, i would fall from grace (1/1)

Written for @bechloe-week day 4: high school. Loosely. Super loosely.

Summary: Chloe Beale hasn’t played dodgeball since high school, but she’s pretty sure this isn’t supposed to be how it goes. Or maybe it is. Nothing feels more like high school than a game of dodgeball with your crush and your crush’s ex.

Word count: 3,744

A/N: I was rewatching Trampoline Dodgeball with Kevin Hart & Anna Kendrick and this idea came to me. Then it got me thinking about all my own personal feelings about dodgeball. Anyway, this was my attempt to capture all those messy high school feelings, those mushy romantic feelings, and everything in between...and wrap it up neatly to present as a semi-serious, semi-crack piece of fanfic.

Kind of beta'd, but mistakes are still my own because this was so last minute. Thanks to my irl loves @summersailedin and Jordan for helping me out. You tolerate everything I do and I APPRECIATE YOU.

Read on AO3 or below.

–x–

It is totally just a game to her at first.

First, because Chloe is a super-senior and she’s kind of over sweating unnecessarily, even if she can admit she sees the appeal in lighthearted exercise.

Two, because the Treblemakers and the Bellas have no more rivalry. All previous rules had up and left with Aubrey’s departure and Chloe sees no point in continuing the long-standing tradition of hating the Trebles. Benji is sweet, Jesse is Beca’s amicable ex-boyfriend, and the other young men are nice enough.

Three, because it is Beca’s idea and Chloe knows Beca could care less about sports generally, so if she’s suggesting this aloud to Chloe’s face, it must mean something. She figures it is more Jesse’s idea than anything and Beca is willing to go along for the ride.

Still, none of that matters and Chloe still giggles when Beca mentions it at their weekly co-captain meeting.

“You want to do what?”

“I want to play dodgeball.”

“Okay, but why? You hate anything that propels your heartrate above resting.”

Beca looks mildly offended. “That isn’t true.” She stares at Chloe for a long moment. “I’m not against all activities.”

Something in Beca's tone makes Chloe's breath catch. She wonders if Beca is thinking the same thing. Of the previous night. Soft lips and damp skin. Exploratory fingers. Beca’s name from Chloe’s mouth, breathless and wanting.

It becomes fairly obvious because the light catches in Beca's eyes and she looks a little distant. Gotcha, Chloe thinks. Beca’s momentary deer-in-the-headlights expression is too fun to pass up. “Oh,” Chloe says, mild amusement coloring her tone. “Sex aside, Bec.” She likes the way Beca’s nickname rolls off her tongue. She also likes the way Beca blushes from her forehead to her neck.

It's a little new, this dynamic. While Jesse is Beca’s ex-boyfriend turned acapella partner-in-crime, Chloe is Beca’s sometimes-bedmate. Sometimes-confidante. Sometimes more.

Always uncertain.

Beca recovers fairly quickly and clenches her fists in some form of personal restraint. “Come on, Jesse thinks it’s a good idea. And honestly, it’s for a good cause. We could also use some Bellas bonding time.” Beca doesn’t flinch once upon completing that sentence. Chloe considers applauding her. “We know we’ve got the semi-finals in the bag and it’ll be a good warm up for when we crush the boys later.”

Chloe has no idea what Beca’s idea of a good cause is, but playing a miniature dodgeball tournament at a local high school for the sole amusement of high-schoolers is not Chloe’s idea of a good time. She isn’t even certain what the cause is.

But Beca is being adorable and Beca is gazing at her so earnestly (a welcome departure from her usual complacent expression) that Chloe complies almost immediately.

And besides, Beca does have a point. The Bellas could always use some good team-bonding exercises. She wishes Aubrey were around to hear this all for herself. She’d be so proud.

So, yeah.

It's just a game or two anyway.

–x–

Wait, but–

Okay, so, maybe there is a little streak of competitiveness that almost instantly rises up in Chloe, she can admit that much. But she chalks it up to the inherent competition between the Bellas and the Trebles. It isn't anything personal. They've been rivals since the day the two groups were created on campus, so it’s out of Chloe’s control, really.

–x–

Beca ends up getting one detail wrong.

Okay, perhaps a few details. But it is totally Jesse’s fault. And maybe Chloe's. Chloe should have asked for all details before agreeing to this.

It’s just a small problem, really.

They all end up being registered to be on one team and it becomes the Barden Acapella Team against UGA’s Competitive Dodgeball Team. To clarify, UGA’s literal competitive team, with matching armbands and uniforms.

Chloe looks at their own assembled ragtag team composed of some Bellas, some Trebles, and all the off-color t-shirts and mismatched socks.

“What the fuck,” Beca whispers furiously to Jesse. “You said this was lowkey.”

“It is!” he insists. “It’ll be fun!’

“We’re going to die,” Beca says, so matter-of-factly that Chloe also believes that to be their ultimate fate. “I’m going to die in a high school gym class like I always thought I would.”

Chloe is distracted briefly, amused at Beca’s aversion to any physical activity. Then, Chloe gets a grip on reality. “Beca, shut up. We are not going to die. Jesse, this was quite the understatement, but I know we can do it. Right, everybody?”

The other Bellas hover with uncertainty. Chloe tries to smile reassuringly at Flo who is the newest member of their team and also a transfer student to Barden. “It’ll be okay,” Chloe says quickly. “This will be fun!”

Flo gives her an amused, slightly patronizing expression. “I know. This is nothing.”

The referee looks bored as he signals for the two teams to close in. “We’ve won an acapella championship before. This is fine,” Beca whispers. “We got this.”

Chloe doesn’t have the heart to tell her this will be quite different.

–x–

Chloe wanders to where Beca is standing in a corner, stretching.

“Need some help?”

Beca scoffs. “No.”

Chloe bumps Beca’s shoulder before she leans down to touch her toes. “Nervous?”

“Why would I be?”

Chloe observes the rest of the Bellas and notes that they’re likely not taking this seriously at all. “You know,” Chloe says. “I’m not sure.”

A series of sneaker squeaks echo suddenly throughout the gym. From the corner of her eye, Chloe can see the rest of the players filing in, like a mass of red and black. The striking colors of UGA. Chloe looks down at her cheerfully green Barden Athletics shirt, stolen from an ex a few years ago.

It appears that the other team already has a captain. He snaps his headband on his head and immediately gathers his team close to start giving orders.

Chloe has to ask herself for the umpteenth time why she's here again, because, really, it is a stupid idea and she’s had her fair share of dumb ideas.

Chloe glances at Beca who is lazily stretching.

Oh. Yeah.

Teamwork.

Aubrey would be so proud of her.

–x–

"Who's team captain?" Amy asks. “Ref wants to know.”

“Me,” Jesse says immediately.

“Um, you’re not my captain,” Amy points out, but otherwise, nobody disagrees.

“We’re all on the same team,” Beca points out. “Just figure it out. As long as it’s not me.”

Beca’s voice pulls Chloe back to the present. Suddenly, the urge to harness all of her competitiveness rises to new levels and she stands up straighter. “Wait,” she says before anybody can say anything else

She’s never had a problem with Jesse so she sees and understands the surprise in his eyes. But something clicks for Chloe then, when the surprise gives way to something else, almost foreign to Chloe.

Perhaps Jesse never really saw her as any real competition.

That feeling is very familiar.

In high school, it had been absurd, but Chloe had always envied the male jocks and their privileges. She hated the way they got to walk around the school with their lettermans and all the confidence in the world.

Chloe had her own share of athleticism and enjoyed modest-enough popularity. She participated in a couple of the women-only teams (volleyball and soccer), but she never got the recognition the boys did. Ultimately, she never wanted to be them, but she always hated the unfairness of it all.

It is also telling that one of her most vivid high school memories is making out with Grace Henderson underneath the bleachers only for Grace to be on Nick Randall’s arm the very next day, his letterman around her shoulders. Grace had shrugged apologetically at her, like it was nothing personal. It was just status.

Before she realizes what she wants to do, her body is acting ahead of itself and she’s suddenly standing next to Jesse, facing the rest of the team. “I’ll be team captain,” Chloe says, as confidently and surely as she can.

The surprise on both Jesse’s face and Beca’s face is enough to tide her over for a while, she thinks. It is Stacie who smirks at her, like she understands what this is all about (even though Chloe herself doesn't want to openly admit it).

Amy flashes her a thumbs up and heaves a sigh of relief. “No offense, Jesse,” she adds as an afterthought.

Beca, to Chloe’s pleasant surprise, looks relieved at the thought of Chloe leading them through this complete chaos.

"Are you joking?" Jesse asks, his eyes trained on Chloe’s chin. He can’t meet her eyes. “Why?” Chloe has the same question floating through her mind.

Benji hovers near Jesse’s shoulder suddenly. “Dude, it’s fine.”

Jesse shrugs in reaction to both Benji and Chloe’s non-response. "Sorry Chloe, but this was my idea.”

Chloe knows from there that she's got him scared. It just fuels her more and she feels an almost manic excitement rise up in her. "So?"

Jesse pounces on that. "Tell them, Bec.” The nickname rolls off his tongue easily and with familiarity.

“Tell us what?” Chloe asks.

Beca is quiet at first, clearly in deep thought. It is the most pensive Chloe has ever seen her and she would laugh at the absurdity of this entire situation if her heart were not threatening to beat right out of her chest.

For Beca, she stands between two very viable options (though not literally because both Chloe and Jesse are staring her intently and it's kind of freaking her out). Of course she means viable options for dodgeball captainship. It is currently the most important decision of Beca’s life. She is not thinking about kissing Chloe. Not at all.

Beca’s first instinct is to throw her hands up and question why they’re all freaking out over dodgeball of all things. Beca never liked dodgeball, not even in high school and it was seen as a free gym period whenever their teacher was too exhausted to actually teach them anything useful in physical education.

She had originally suggested it to Chloe and only Chloe because she heard about the tournament from Jesse. She wanted Chloe to agree to it so they could spend some time together. Yes, with the Bellas, but some time together in an environment outside of school and acapella.

She sighs.

“Sorry dude,” she says to Jesse. “Chloe survived being friends with Aubrey for years. And she can kind of run laps around everybody on our team, so I trust her.”

The tension kind of breaks after that and the Bellas erupt into giggles. Even Benji smiles. Jesse’s lips twitch but he does not look angry. He shrugs and hands the armband to Chloe.

Beca tries not to stare too hard at the way Chloe’s arm flexes beneath the fabric of the armband, visible even beneath the opaque fabric.

She looks away quickly.

Chloe busies herself with adjusting the armband. It’s a garish yellow color which really goes horribly with her shirt and her hair, but she doesn’t care about it. She doesn’t even feel smug about Beca choosing her over Jesse. She just feels the strangest sense of calm, paired with immense satisfaction.

Okay, maybe a little smug. She’s only human. Definitely only human. She couldn’t stop the way her heart skipped a beat or the heat that rushed through her body when Beca’s eyes tracked down her body slowly and surely.

Still, a part of her had expected Beca to support Jesse. Jesse was right, this was his idea, technically.

But God, for as long as Chloe can remember, even meeting Beca for the first time at the activities fair and the series of events that followed, it had been remarkable to have Beca take her side on anything at all.

It felt glorious.

Looking up finally, Chloe catches Jesse’s eyes. He doesn’t quite glare at her because he’s not a mean guy, but the look he gives her is wholly unfamiliar.

Chloe has to remind herself that Jesse’s on their team, so it isn't like she can tell him that he’s going down.

–x–

“What’s some good advice?” Cynthia-Rose asks.

“Don’t die,” Amy supplies helpfully.

Chloe privately agrees, but she figures she should tack on some actual helpful sentences. “Catch the ball when you can. Please don’t get hit by the ball. Look out for your teammates," she rattles off like a drill sergeant.

Men and women alike nod their heads at her.

"That's all?" Jesse asks a little skeptically.

Chloe narrows her gaze on him. "Yes, pretty much.” She channels some Aubrey Posen. “Or you will die."

Amy cheers. Jesse’s face goes white. Beca looks like she’s trying not to laugh.

Honestly, Chloe’s a little serious. If dodgeball is anything like she used to play it in high school, she hopes that she can make it through the game in its entirety.

(If this is a reflection of what her life was like in high school, she truly and desperately hopes she can make it through the year in one piece.)

–x–

Unfortunately for Beca, she is their weakest link. While she is small like Lilly and Flo, she doesn’t quite possess their athletic grace.

Beca’s determination is cute, though.

“Beca,” Chloe says immediately when she catches the other team whispering to each other and looking in Beca’s direction. “They know you suck.”

“How do they know that?” Beca fires back. “We haven’t done anything.”

Chloe bites back a laugh. She loves this woman. “Okay,” is all she says.

–x–

Beca nearly gets beaned in the face twice. Right off the bat. The sound she makes amuses Chloe to no end.

They’re two close calls and it appears that Beca knows when she’s pushing her own luck. Suddenly, she’s standing near Chloe, trying hard not to look like she's using Chloe as a human shield. Chloe feels her presence before she sees her.

“I’ll stop the ball from hitting you. All of them.” Chloe says, catching one deftly as it sails towards Beca’s face.

That catches Beca off guard more than the ball had. "You will?”

"Yeah," answers Chloe. "Of course."

And then Chloe smiles at her like she did on that very first day.

Beca can almost feel the sunshine beating down on her head and her shoulders. Nothing feels quite as warm as the hopeful expression Chloe fixes on her and the millions of unanswered questions that float above them like a blanket of uncertainty.

"Thank you."

Chloe keeps a pleasant-enough smile for only a few seconds more, then she grows serious. "Don't thank me yet. We've barely started."

–x–

Benji gets hit next, right after Chloe sees another Treble go down. It is a hard hit, right on his cheek. He’s pale enough that Chloe can clearly see a perfectly circular red mark.

Right. They’re up against a literal competitive dodgeball team.

She hopes she made it clear that they were going to barely make it out alive. She already feels sorry for Benji, but she can’t really dwell, not when Beca is–

“Beca?” she murmurs, taking a quick second to spin around.

Oh. There she is.

Beca is surprisingly holding her own. For somebody who barely knew how to punch as to not bruise and injure herself, she whips the ball with some ferocity.

–x–

It is not just a game to Chloe.

It stopped being a game when Beca chose her as team captain.

It stopped being a game at each moment the ball barely misses Beca by a hair and Chloe’s breath catches in her throat.

It stopped being a game a long time ago.

Maybe even from the moment Beca walked into Chloe’s line of sight. From the moment Beca opened her mouth and sang.

So it is not just a game. Not anymore.

Chloe is so over games.

–x–

It happens quickly - so quickly - that Chloe doesn’t even think about it. The ball sails towards her and she thinks quickly enough. If she moves in any direction, she leaves Beca unprotected, though Beca seems less and less concerned with protection and more concerned with whipping the ball as best as she can.

If Chloe ducks, she thinks Jesse is behind her somewhere, but she honestly figures that he’ll catch it.

She could catch the ball, she thinks as it sails towards her unforgivingly.

Beca sees it happen too.

She exclaims “Chlo, duck!”

So Chloe does.

–x–

Jesse curses as he’s hit right in the face with the ball. It causes him to stumble and nearly fall over. Chloe can hear the impact it makes. It sounds remarkably painful. When she turns, Jesse’s nose is completely red, but he isn’t bleeding. He swipes at his nose uncomfortably and looks betrayed for whatever reason.

Chloe’s apology dies in her throat, already half-hearted and ill-formed to begin with.

–x–

Jesse is clearly feeling better and Chloe already regrets getting him back in the game. He is unfortunately one of their more decent throwers and he dodges well enough. He looks less winded, but he looks at Chloe reproachfully.

“You could have caught that,” he hisses, within earshot of Beca.

“No, I couldn’t,” Chloe fires back, not even bothering to look at him.

“Guys, it’s just a game,” Beca’s voice comes from behind them. Between the two of them – Beca and Chloe – Chloe never expected Beca to be the one to play peacemaker in any situation. She is vaguely reminded of Beca breaking up her scuffle with Aubrey. Of Beca walking into a chaotic auditorium and using her voice to stop everybody in their tracks.

Beca has always had that effect on her. Chloe takes pause, momentarily forgetting the chaos around them.

Jesse’s voice cuts through again. “Yeah, Chloe!” He’s laughing, but Chloe hears no humor in his voice. Nor does she see any amusement in his eyes. It’s hollow, a little like how she feels right now. “Why are you taking this game so seriously?”

“Dude, shut up. Jesus,” Beca says quickly and quietly.

Chloe feels like she’s in high school again. Being made fun of for having a crush on the track star who would never give her the time of day. Being told again and again that her value was less than the star of the football team. Dating the second most popular boy in the class above her. Holding hands with the girl in her English class.

All of it is a mess.

She knows now that none of those callous words had been true. The stupidity of teenagers - children really - and the way they let societal perceptions mold them into monsters.

Something catches in her chest, like the last fleeting gasp of fresh air before she’s choking on her own self-hatred. It had been bottled up for so long.

I just want to fit in.

I just want to be chosen.

She looks at Beca.

I just want you to stay.

Something in Beca’s eyes shifts then. The change is so wondrous to Chloe that she almost forgets that she’s in a smelly high school gymnasium, surrounded by adolescents who honest-to-God paid actual cash to watch young adults make a fool of themselves.

It could be worse, Chloe thinks. Beca looks at her so softly and so lovingly that Chloe forgets about one-upping Jesse who maybe was never worth all that thought after all. Because, after all, Jesse is not mean or malicious. A little quick to assume, maybe, but they can be adults for a moment.

She is still watching Beca when Beca’s eyes suddenly widen followed by her lips parting in a surprised gasp.

It could be wors –

–x–

Stay.

That’s her last coherent thought.

–x–

“Chloe?”

Chloe wonders if the feeling ever goes away. The feeling that is wrapped up in the smell of dirty gyms and the sensation of being alone in a crowded room.

Suddenly, she’s in high school again, staring breathlessly up at the endless blue sky. She had been winded from a sharp jab from her own teammate’s elbow, which caused her to trip over her own feet.

She had only ever wanted to fit in. To be wanted.

To be loved.

“Chloe,” Beca’s voice comes again, disembodied. “Wake up.”

–x–

“You should probably see a doctor,” comes Beca’s faint voice as Chloe blinks awake slowly. “You went down hard, Chlo.”

It takes Chloe a second to respond. She finds that her shoulder hurts a little bit and the side of her head is a little sore. She’s sure she has a bruise or two, but otherwise, she is fairly unscathed.

“Chloe?” Beca asks again. “You’re like...awake right?” She looks a little frightened.

“I don't need the doctor," Chloe rasps finally. The hoarseness of her voice probably does not help, but she can’t help but offer Beca a reassuring smile. She hopes it does enough.

“That’s what everybody says before it turns out that they do, in fact, need a doctor,” Beca responds sharply. She sounds a little hysterical, in all honesty.

“I’m fine. It’s fine.”

Belatedly, Chloe realizes that she is staring up at a nondescript, sloping ceiling. Pale yellow walls around her.

“Am I in the nurse’s office?”

“Yeah, we helped carry you in here after the ball basically concussed you.” Beca finally relaxes before a smirk spreads across her lips. “I bribed one of the high schoolers to send me a video.”

Chloe feigns hurt, internally pleased when Beca flushes upon catching sight of the jut of Chloe’s lower lip. “Did we at least win?” Chloe asks. “Please tell me we won.”

“Well, I was kind of carrying you here with Cynthia-Rose and Benji.” Chloe tries to make her impatience known with just her eyes. “Okay, fine, we didn’t win.” Beca shrugs. “We were never even going to win.”

Chloe finds that she does not care about that. She finds it hard to care about anything else really because Beca looks so relieved to see her. So genuinely happy to see her.

Beca is there.

Chloe reaches out, pausing halfway in the air between her and Beca. With her hand extended, turned upwards, she waits. Beca slowly and gently places her hand in Chloe's.

"Chloe?" Beca questions.

"Just…" Chloe trails off into a pause, then, "stay, Bec." Her hold loosens, but the mere fact that it's there is enough for both of them. "Stay,” she repeats.

"Okay,” Beca murmurs, all games aside. “I will.”

And she does.

fin.

#bechloe #beca mitchell #chloe beale #dodgeball #mine #my fanfic #fanfiction #pitch perfect #bechloe week #bechloe week 2019

103 notes · View notes