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The last thing Beca Mitchell would consider herself to be is nice.
Sure, she has quite a few close friends and is generally well-liked by her teachers, but she would never refer to herself as a kind and understanding human being. She’s the drum major of one of the most prestigious marching bands in the state, for fuck sake. There’s no way anyone can handle or achieve that position by being nice.
No, Beca is not the nicest person around. She’s tough on the performers, her temper is a short fuse, and the last time she smiled at anyone in the band is when the tuba player tripped over his shoelaces during a practice run and performed some form of acrobatics so he would land on his back instead of on his instrument. Even their band instructor fears her to some extent, but no one can deny that she’s a damn good drum major. Coincidentally or not, the football team hasn’t lost a single game since she had taken over the position.
Despite her tiny, tiny stature, Beca is sharp, loud, and commanding enough to whip even the most rebellious trumpet player into shape. Sure, she can be a normal — well, slightly more negative than normal — human being when she’s not leading the group, but when the band is on the field, she gives absolutely no mercy to anyone who steps out of line. Nobody, not even the football coaches want to approach her when their formation drifts into the team’s practice space.
Nobody, except for Emily Junk, captain of the cheerleading squad and president of the student council.
The first time she hops over to Beca, who’s in the middle of shouting at the snare line, everyone in the band things the cheerleader is dead meat. There’s no way their hard-edged no-nonsense leader would let this carefree idiot just tap her on the shoulder like that and ask her to shift their formation down ten yards so the cheer team can run through their full set. And to their astonishment, Beca Mitchell, iron-fisted dictator of the marching band, relents and shifts everyone over ten yards.
“If you have time to gape at me like that, I hope you can adjust your steps to the new lines without any problem!” she yells, and they all scramble to memorize their new markers. Only the few people near the front of the line can see that Beca is blushing a little, but even then, they can’t even prove that it’s even a blush.
It’s probably not too much to say that Beca has the hots for the cheerleading captain. Beautiful, tall, graceful, and intelligent, Emily carries her perfection with dignity and modesty. She accepts compliments but doesn’t bask in them, receives top marks but never flaunts them, and distributes generosity without expecting anything in return. Her kindness has no limits or judgement whatsoever, and there probably isn’t a single soul that hates her.
Except maybe Beca.
Not really.
She wishes she could hate Emily, see her as the popular mean girl in her clichéic chick flick of a life. She sometimes tries to imagine Emily as a cold-hearted bitch, fulfilling the role of a stereotypical cheerleader that looked down on the less popular kids and dominated the social ladder of the entire school.
But there’s no way anyone could hate her. Beca tries, tries to find even the smallest flaw in Emily that she can expand on and convince herself that she is not crushing on the cheer captain, but there isn’t a single thing Beca — immensely nitpicky and cynical Beca — can criticize. Oh, sure, Emily’s surprisingly clumsy off the field and pretty much a gigantic awkward nerd when it comes to socializing, but those traits only make Beca fall even harder.
She tries outrageously hard to ignore Emily as if that would lessen the crush, but when they share three classes and a whole afternoon on the field within each others’ views, it’s not exactly easy.
“Just ask her out on a date,” Chloe, her best friend and cheerleader, says one day after school when Emily passes them with a smile and a wave. “The way she gushes about your leadership skills at practice? She’d totally say yes.”
“What? Dude, no.”
“Why not?”
“She’ll see it as like, some kind of student leader ‘meeting of the minds’ or something. And she probably has like, twenty guys lined up. Plus, I’ve got a reputation to uphold.”
Chloe blows out a laugh. “A reputation?”
“Do you know how much respect the band’s going to lose if they find out I’m pining after a damn cheerleader?” Beca retorts indignantly. “They’ll never let it go.”
“Oh, my god. You are such a wannabe hardass.”
Beca just huffs out a breath and Chloe hums in thought.
“No. Chloe? What are you thinking? I don’t like it when you think.”
“Nothing,” the ginger says with a tone that clearly doesn’t reflect the word.
Beca doesn’t have to wait long to figure it out.
The next evening after band practice, while the rest of the performers are shuffling back to the school and Beca is looking over the formation charts on the 50 yard line, Emily skips over to the drum major with a huge smile. Unknown to her, Beca is blasting the marching band songs through her earbuds to follow along with the charts, so when Emily taps her on the shoulder, she jumps about a foot in the air.
“Ffffu — ck. Hi.”
“Oh, stars, I’m so sorry. I didn’t know you were —”
“It’s cool, I was just —”
“I just wanted to ask you something, but if you’re busy —”
“Oh, no, no. I can make time for—” Beca swallows her next word and goes for a smile. “What’s up?” she finishes instead.
Emily is beaming at her and she feels a little disoriented. “So, I was just talking to Chloe, one of the cheerleaders on the team,” Emily starts, and Beca can already feel the familiar damn it, Chloe eyeroll coming along. “And she had the greatest idea for this year’s pep rally! Instead of just the band and the cheer team doing their own things, she thought it’d be cool to combine our performance! So we would do a short song or something and mix in both aspects of marching band and cheerleading.”
“Oh. Uh.” Whatever Beca had suspected Chole of planning, it definitely wasn’t this. “That…yeah. That sounds pretty cool. I’m not sure what the color guard captain would think, though, since they’re already the flashy accent of the whole formation.”
“Oh, I already talked to Jessica! She was totally on board with it.”
Of course she is.
“All right, then. Yeah.” Beca tries to match Emily’s smile, but there’s no way anyone can look that happy over the prospect of planning a pep rally performance. “I’ll talk to the band about it tomorrow, and I’ll get back to you then?”
“Yes! Thank you so much, Beca.”
“Totally.”
(Beca would play that lame response over and over in her head all night, regretting everything about it)
It’s not until the next day that Beca tells Emily that the band is fully supportive of a collaboration with the cheerleading team that she sees what Chloe had in mind when she suggested this whole thing.
“Great! So how do you want to plan this? Should we meet at my house? Or yours? Or should we just go to the library?”
“Wait… what?”
“Well, this isn’t really something we can plan over a shared document or anything, right?” Emily asks, shrugging as if it’s the most obvious thing. And it is, but Beca is realizing just now that she’s right. “I don’t know much about marching band formations and charts, so I’ll probably need you to explain a lot,” the captain continues with a small and embarrassed laugh.
Holy crap.
Beca’s heart does backflips in her chest.
“Okay, yeah,” she says, hoping her voice doesn’t reflect her heartbeat. “I use a lot of equipment to score the music so maybe my place works better. Is that cool with you?”
“Sounds great!”
Holy double crap.
She just invited Emily Junk to her house.
She’s getting into her car and having Emily Junk follow behind to her house.
She’s walking up her driveway with Emily Junk.
She’s sitting on her bedroom floor handing her laptop to Emily Junk.
What the hell is happening.
“That’s amazing,” Emily says, scrolling through the pages and pages of scores that Beca had made. “I didn’t know drum majors composed the marching band songs.”
“They don’t. At least, that’s not really part of their jobs,” Beca admits. “The songs they had for us this year sucked and I didn’t want to subject my band or myself to performing them, so.”
“You just made your own? That’s so cool.” Emily’s bubbly enthusiasm is somewhat reminiscent of Chloe, and Beca slowly gains some footing on how to talk to this girl and not make a complete fool of herself.
“Sometimes, that’s just what you gotta do. Like for last year’s pep rally, our instructor wanted to do some dumb school spirit song. So me and the drum major last year totally went behind his back and secretly practiced a song and formation that I made up.”
Emily’s jaw drops open, and Beca can’t help but smile. “You composed that? That was the best performance ever!”
“I try,” Beca says with a smirk, pretending flip her hair back.
“But they didn’t even credit you or anything.”
“I didn’t do it for the credit, I did it because our school’s song choices suck balls.”
Emily is looking at her with so much admiration and respect that Beca feels her cheeks flush. God, what is wrong with her? Is it because she’s so used to fearful respect instead of genuine respect? Or is it simply because she’s weak for Emily?
“A-anyway. Did you have a song in mind? I can work out the score while you think of the combined formations we can do.”
“Yeah,” Emily responds happily. “I have a few songs in mind.”
They spend the next few weeks cooped up in Beca’s room after their respective practices, sometimes until well after midnight and sometimes with pizza and a Netflix break. Beca finishes the mix with the songs Emily had suggested and starts scoring them, throwing in verbal cheers for her band to chant with the cheer team. After learning basic marching band steps and turns, Emily maps out some formations that her girls could do, mixing in the rigidness of marching to the usual flips and cartwheels. They’re on their feet more often than not, trying to imagine the layout of the formations in the tiny space of Beca’s bedroom, marching in place to see if the step counts match the beats of the song.
There’s also plenty of time spent doing non-pep-rally stuff. Sometimes they grab ice cream before heading to Beca’s house. One weekend they catch a movie. Another Friday they go to the mall. There’s even a time when they just sit on Beca’s bed and talk about music and performing, barely bringing up the pep rally or their collaboration.
And Beca finds herself falling harder and harder for Emily every day they’re together. The way she crinkles her nose when she smiles too hard. The way she ties her hair up in a bun when they’re getting down to business. The ways she whines playfully when she wants something Beca doesn’t. The way she’s literally the most uncoordinated mess when she’s not practicing dance or acrobatic moves. The way she laughs at basically every joke Beca makes.
Beca can never get enough of Emily’s laugh.
“Man, you’ve got it bad,” Chloe laughs one day, watching Beca glance at Emily every few seconds across the cafeteria. “You’re like a lovesick puppy or something.”
“Shut up,” Beca says sharply. But there’s a small smile on her lips and Chloe smirks knowingly.
“You guys ready for the pep rally tomorrow?”
“We better be,” Beca mumbles into her burger. “What about you guys?”
“I think we’re good.” Chloe radiates confidence on a daily basis, so Beca wouldn’t have been able to tell either way. “Everyone’s feeling better after the last few joint practices. It’s a break from our usual routines, so we’re all having a ton of fun with it. It’s great that we’re doing this,” she says genuinely. “I’m glad we get to do something together for our last pep rally.”
“And to think it all started out with you trying to hook me up with your captain.”
“Trying?” Chloe repeats, looking mildly offended. “What do you mean? I totally succeeded.”
Beca just scoffs, which she does often whenever she talks about Emily with Chloe, and bites angrily into her burger. “Whatever,” she says around her mouthful, drawing a disgusted but amused look from Chloe.
But she has to admit that Chloe is right. It’s their senior year and it seems fitting for Beca, who revolutionized the marching band sound, to go out with one of the most radical performances the school had ever seen. It’s special because it’s never been done before, she tells herself as she leads the band out to the field the next day for the pep rally. And totally not because you’re collaborating with Emily.
Definitely not because you’re in love with her. Right?
She steps up onto the pedestal as the entire school screams from the bleachers behind her, and waits for the rest of the band and the cheerleaders to fall into their places on the field. It had taken surprisingly little time to teach the cheerleaders the marching commands, but it’s still weird to see the usually laid-back and giggly cheerleaders to snap to attention with the rest of the band. It’s even more bizarre to see Chloe going along with it.
She raises her hands and she can practically feel her band inhale. And then she’s cuing in the drumline and everyone is springing to life and Beca loses herself in the music. Scratch that. Her music.
No, scratch that again.
Her and Emily’s music.
As if reading her mind, Emily shoots her a quick smile as she passes by and Beca almost loses her place. She feels her mouth automatically twitch up at the corners, as if the mere sight of Emily fills her with uncontainable happiness.
No, damn it. She’s not supposed to be smiling. She’s the drum major, for fuck’s sake. Why can’t she stop smiling?
Because it’s a damn pep rally and you’re supposed to be enjoying yourself, she tells herself firmly, watching Emily tumble all over the field with her team. And also because you’re definitely completely in love with her.
Beca feels high on the energy this whole performance is giving off. It’s one thing to conduct the routine at practices and another thing entirely to see it done with everyone in their uniforms under the blinding field lights, and Beca can see the exhilaration on the band member’s faces as they take in the deafening cheers of the crowd. They enthusiastically join the cheerleaders’ chants and break out of their strict marching steps to dance along.
The finale is coming up and Beca feels like she’s on top of the world. Emily works her cheerleading black magic and flips, tumbles and rolls towards the center of the field, and Beca watches, mesmerized, as she sticks the landing and turns to face the front.
Their eyes meet and Beca can’t help it; her mouth splits into the widest smile as she jumps off her pedestal and joins Emily at the 50 yard line. She twirls to face the audience and bumps her shoulder against Emily’s arm to show that she’s ready. She counts off in her head and they jump forward straight into the dance routine they had been practicing for the past few days.
It’s only a few moves and lasts maybe four measures at most, but the crowd goes absolutely nuts at the sight of Beca Mitchell, notorious badass and short-tempered drill sergeant, showing off her moves (and boy does she have moves) with Emily Junk, preppy sweetheart and patient teddy bear. With a flourish, Beca whips off her bucket hat and tosses it to the sideline before glancing at Emily. They exchange a nod and skip forward, perfectly in sync, into the only two gymnastics moves Beca can do: a cartwheel and a somersault. They had timed it so they would spring out of the somersault and onto their feet at the last note of the song, and they miss it by maybe an eighth of a beat, but Beca doesn’t give a flying shit because they nail the landing simultaneously and it looks and feels badass and she knows Emily thinks so too.
They hold the end pose for another five seconds while the crowd goes ballistic before Emily breaks and throws her arms around Beca, almost lifting her off the ground. “We did it!” she’s screaming in Beca’s ear. They break apart and and Emily laughs breathlessly, eyes bright and beautiful, and all Beca can look at is her radiant smile.
And she just fucking goes for it.
She grabs Emily by the collar of her uniform, pulls her down, and kisses her as hard as she can.
Right there in front of the entire school.
She can hear the roar of the audience and the astounded gasps from the band and cheer team, but Beca doesn’t give a shit. She feels Emily smile into the kiss and her heart practically melts until she’s also smiling, too wide for either of them to continue their very public liplock.
“Holy shit,” they both whisper at the same time, and over Emily’s shoulder, Beca sees Chloe losing her mind. They share a quiet laugh and Beca barely holds herself back from tackling Emily to the ground when she blushes under her gaze.
“We did it,” Beca echoes Emily, gesturing to the performers and everything they’d accomplished. But Emily’s eyes never leave Beca’s as she nods.
“Yeah. We did.”