Work Text:
As the sun was setting on the day before spring break officially began, Beca took to looking out the window and thinking off and on about how abjectly weird it was to see the campus gradually become so empty. How many students stay on campus during spring break, really?
She stops herself before she actually bothers to google what is, after all, a really inane question when you get down to it.
So why is she even on a nearly-empty college campus during spring break? Why wasn’t she on a beach in Florida or Atlantic City? Official reason given to all friends and family who offered alternative plans was that she had her night shift at the radio station to maintain and couldn’t possibly be torn away from it. Sure, that is true enough. After all, Beca Mitchell is a freshman, and freshman just aren’t allowed in the booth (as Luke had told her the very first day she walked in). It is a privilege to be allowed in the booth at all, let alone to take a whole shift where she can play whatever she wants for whoever is listening. What is also true is that she quite simply knew, even before spring break started, that she would need time: time to think, time to work, time to… figure out where she had absolutely fucked everything up. And maybe, just maybe, there is a healthy dose of insecurity, self-doubt, guilt, and assorted emotional baggage that is keeping her planted on the Barden campus, trying to pick up pieces she had really and truly tried to avoid spilling everywhere.
Two weeks of having her dorm to herself. Two weeks of nightly shifts at the radio station. Two weeks of a ghost-town campus. Two weeks of being rather alone.
In the past, two weeks of solitude would have mattered very little to her. Actually, she preferred it. College, however, had presented her with an almost constant cacophony of sounds round the clock and the sudden silence made it hard for her to sleep or concentrate on most things. There was a buzz… maybe a hum… that permeated the college campus on a daily basis. Ideas were taught, then exchanged and debated. It was as if those ideas flew through the air like radio waves did, of their own volition. Since she had spent months and months immersed in all that buzz and hum she suddenly found that she couldn’t do much of anything, especially work, without replacing the noise the campus would have if it were in session.
Three whole days later she admitted that she actually was missing the people and not just the noise. That vulnerability – that need -- startles her, unnerves her, makes her mad, and then makes her sad. In her mind, and sometimes out loud, the words “fucking pathetic” came out rather readily, like they were ever-present.
“Fucking pathetic,” she says to herself and the empty studio one night as she is looking at the dusty compact discs in their little wooden slots. Everything from ABBA to ZZ Top was somewhere in this building: she knows, because she can remember how many hours she and Jesse had spent sorting and filing away myriad vinyl albums, cassette tapes, and compact discs in the beginning weeks of the semester.
Jesse. One errant thought about him and she pauses. It happens all the time now that he’s away and she knows she’s fucked all of that up. She’d been out of line. She knows that now; but hindsight is fucking 20/20 for a reason and she can’t simply go back and fix everything she’s managed to ruin. Beca was smart, but also smart-mouthed, and ever since she’d been a child that had been the one thing to always get her into trouble.
Sometimes, Beca Mitchell simply didn’t know when to keep her mouth shut. Or maybe the real problem, she thinks as she plops into the studio chair, is that she doesn’t know when to listen. When to truly listen. When she dares to tell herself the truth, she knows that the problem is that she already has an answer or a defense for everything sitting just on the tip of her tongue even before someone is done expressing their thoughts, feelings, or concerns.
“Always on the defensive or offensive,” she mutters to the empty room, wood paneling surrounding her.
She never allows herself to simply shift into neutral and idle there, waiting for someone to say what they came to say: she always shifts into another gear without anyone putting on their seat belts.
Beca realizes, staring at the ceiling, that she hasn’t been fair to anyone. Not any of the Bellas, not her dad, and especially the one guy who deserved it the most. Jesse deserved that fairness; that grace. He deserves a lot more than she has ever given him. But if she wants to give him more, understand him more, know him more; then she’s going to have to do as the Romans do.
That’s the night she grabs “The Breakfast Club” soundtrack and rips it onto her laptop before she goes back to her empty dorm room. That night, she gets to work on trying to pick up pieces and solve puzzles. Suddenly, the spring break wasn’t about just having time: spring break was a time to work.
Beca hadn’t been lying when she’d told Jesse that she’d never really ever watched a movie all the way through. She really hadn’t. Now, though, it was a mission she had to accomplish. She stuns herself by sitting through “The Breakfast Club” all the way to the end, wiping unexpected tears away messily and frantically at the end. She can’t believe she’s fucking crying over this movie and yet she is… and maybe Jesse wasn’t wrong. Maybe movies really could move you.
On her night off from the station, she watches all three original Star Wars movies in a row, curled up with her favorite blanket. Without even trying, the movies sweep her up and away from Baker Hall and into this intergalactic world. She sees why billions of people love these movies, and wonders why the hell she’s always been so reticent to watch them.
She watches “Rocky” and hates Sylvester Stallone but loves the story and music. Actually, she amends her thoughts on the subject to include the fact that she really and truly thinks Sylvester Stallone is a horrible actor.
“E.T.” leaves her sobbing on her pillows.
“Jaws” fascinates her with its sinister subtlety.
After that, she just starts googling lists of the movies considered to have the best scores so she can watch more and learn more. Learning about movie scores is almost like learning a second musical language. Her music isn’t about making people feel – it’s about making them move and technical skill. Movie scores are about inspiring emotion – about putting emotion into the viewer via music instead of more words. Her favorite example during her own exploration becomes “Inception”, because the score is always the same song, simply played in different ways. The song itself, however, is simply about admitting that you don’t regret whatever’s happened in the past: it’s done and over and you are ready to start fresh and move on. Beca had never felt tension like she had felt during that movie. She felt like she had hardly taken a breath from the moment they entered the first level of the dream until the screen went black on that fucking spinning top!
Before Beca knows it, two weeks are up, and a Sunday morning dawns to students trickling back onto campus and back into their dorms. From their smiling faces and tan bodies, it looks like the majority of them had indeed taken a vacation. They had all taken a break. She realizes, looking back, that she had worked on herself and her situation the entire time. She finds she doesn’t envy the partiers and beach-goers one bit. If anything, she feels like she can stand a little bit more tall having taken the time to think and work and wonder. She hadn’t given herself a break, and for that she was quite proud.
Now, how does she make it right? How does she make it up to, well, everyone?
With words on her lips and thoughts in her mind, Beca leaves Baker Hall and decides that there is no time like the present to start fresh and move on – no matter the consequences. At least she can look at herself in the mirror and say that she tried. She tried to understand and she tried to make it right. She knew that she wouldn’t regret that, at least.