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-5:26 PM-
“Come on! Let’s get a fucking move on, people!”
Chloe giggles at Beca’s annoyance with the traffic in front of them. “I really don’t think that’s going to help this situation at all, babe.”
Beca honks the car’s horn and glares at the person in the car next to them when they glance over. “Well it should,” she stews. “This is fucking ridiculous. I hate LA traffic.”
When Beca had kissed Chloe on the USO tour, Chloe’s entire world had changed for the better. After years of dropping hints, Beca finally figured out that Chloe was in love with her and admitted that she was in love with her, too, after opening for DJ Khaled. Fast forward a few months to now where Chloe went to vet school in West Hollywood while Beca worked on her first album. They were both living their dreams, and Chloe was still pinching herself to make sure it was all real.
Right now, though, it didn’t really feel like a dream. They had gone out for a quick grocery run at around 4:00 and were now apparently stuck in rush hour traffic. In the past half hour they’d gone about one mile, much to Beca’s frustration.
“What’s even going on up there?” Beca asks. “Why the hell aren’t we moving?”
“You know how bad traffic can be here,” Chloe shrugs as she scrolls through her phone. “This is nothing new.”
“Yeah, but I feel like it isn’t usually this bad.” Beca honks the horn again, as if that will make the mile long traffic ahead of them move faster.
They sit in silence while Beca stews and grumbles, the sounds of cars honking and the radio playing softly filling up the space around them. Beca cranes her neck to try and see farther in front of her, but to no avail. Eventually, she slumps down in her seat in defeat.
“Well now we’re not even moving at all,” the grumpy brunette laments, putting the car in park. She crosses her arms angrily over her chest.
“Apparently there’s a huge crash like three miles ahead of us,” Chloe informs her, pulling up a news coverage clip from her Twitter feed and passing her phone over to show Beca. “A bunch of semis collided and spilled stuff all over the highway. It’s pretty bad.”
Beca scowls at the device and hands it back. “Great. GREAT. This is just perfect. I love this for us right now.”
“At least we didn’t have any plans for tonight,” Chloe says, trying to sound positive.
Beca just groans and hits her head against the steering wheel.
-5:45 PM-
“Ugh, can we skip this song?”
“Why? You don’t like it?”
“It’s fine, but it’s way too happy for this situation.”
“Well, in that case, I think I’ll keep it on. You need a little positivity right now, Bec.”
“You know, if I didn’t love you so much I’m positive that I would hate you.”
“That’s the spirit!”
-6:02 PM-
“Okay, that’s it, I’m turning the car off,” Beca announces after they haven’t moved in twenty minutes. She turns the key in the ignition, shutting the engine off but keeping the music on.
Chloe raises an eyebrow. “You know, now that you’ve turned the car off we’ll probably start moving soon. That’s usually how it goes.”
“All the more reason to turn it off, then,” Beca replies with a cheeky grin. She reaches down and unbuckles her seatbelt, and Chloe does the same. “You know,” Beca says a moment later, tearing her eyes away from the cars around them to look at Chloe. “If I have to get stuck in a giant traffic jam, I’m glad you’re stuck here with me.”
A grin spreads on Chloe’s face and she bites her bottom lip. “You’re such a sap, Mitchell,” she teases, reaching over to pinch at Beca’s cheek. Beca swats her hand away.
“You see, this is why I never use sincerity,” Beca complains with a glare. “I’m always made fun of whenever I do.”
Chloe softens slightly. “That’s only because I love it so much when you’re sincere,” she says sweetly, leaning in to kiss Beca’s cheek. She pulls back to see a slight blush on the other girl’s face. “And I’m really glad I’m here with you, too.”
Beca grins and looks away shyly, turning up the music’s volume instead of answering.
-6:19 PM-
Chloe huffs and slumps down in her seat. “I’m borrrred.”
Beca, who’s busy answering emails, glances over at her. “Yeah, I know. I heard you the first fifteen times you told me.”
“Well I’m bored because you’re not paying attention to me,” Chloe laments. She sticks her hand out the open window. “I thought we were in this together, but you’re off in superstar land.”
Beca winces and clicks off her phone, setting it in the cup holder. “Sorry, it’s just Theo asking about some stuff for the album.”
A car nearby starts blasting “Elmo’s World” from its speakers, and Chloe is momentarily distracted before responding to Beca. “What does he want this time?”
Beca starts shuffling between radio stations. “He doesn’t like some of the lyrics for the one we’re recording tomorrow, so he was sending over some revisions.”
Chloe hums. “Did you like them?”
“Eh,” Beca shrugs, apparently indifferent. “They were fine. I wasn’t too attached to the original lyrics anyways.”
“That’s good, I guess.”
They sit in silence for a while and Chloe turns her attention back to the car still playing Elmo’s theme song, intrigued.
“Okay, well now I’m bored.”
Chloe looks over at Beca. “Oh how the turntables,” she says, quoting The Office with a raised eyebrow.
Beca rolls her eyes. “I hate that show,” she claims.
“Sure you do,” Chloe says, nodding her head. “That’s why I caught you watching it when I got home the other day.”
“That means nothing,” Beca defends immediately, crossing her arms over her chest. “It just happened to be on when I turned on the TV.”
Chloe hums in disbelief. “If that’s what you’re going to stick with, then good for you.”
Beca huffs. “Well, it’s the truth, so,” she punctuates the unfinished thought with a tongue click.
“You want to watch it right now?”
“…well I guess it couldn’t hurt. Since we’re both bored and all.”
-6:51 PM-
“Babe, this is your song!”
“Okay, we’re changing it for sure this time. Ow! What was that for, dude?”
“Beca Mitchell, don’t you dare switch away from this song.”
“Okay, okay. Jesus, did you really have to hit me that hard?”
“It was a preventive strike.”
“It was mean.”
“Poor baby. Do you want me to kiss it better?”
“I mean… it might make me feel a little better. It’s worth a shot, at least.”
-7:08 PM-
Chloe stifles a grin as Beca slyly places a hand on her lower thigh. She continues to flip through the car manual she found in the glove box like she hasn’t noticed. “Hey, Bec, I think I finally know how to change the time on the clock. They have complete step-by-step instructions in here and everything.”
“That’s nice,” Beca says distractedly. Her fingers begin to draw lazy circles along the bare skin on the inside of her thigh, slowly making their way farther up Chloe’s leg. Chloe clears her throat to focus herself.
“We can also change the display to show what cardinal direction we’re going in, too.”
“Neat.”
“And if you hold down the hazard button for ten seconds, the car will self-destruct.”
“Awesome.”
Chloe snaps the booklet shut. “Beca, you know we can’t start something right now,” she lectures, gesturing down at her lap, and while Beca blushes and looks guilty, she doesn’t remove her hand. “There are literally people all around us.”
Beca shrugs. “I don’t think they’re paying attention,” she says lowly, lightly dragging her fingers along smooth skin. Chloe gulps and resists the urge to spread her legs further. “No one would notice if we just…”
She trails off as she leans forward to place a warm kiss on Chloe’s jawline. Chloe sighs and closes her eyes at the feeling of wet heat moving along her neck. She weaves a hand through Beca’s hair and tilts her head to allow her more access.
Chloe’s eyes lazily drift back open and she’s met with the sight of an old lady in the car next to theirs staring right at them. Embarrassment replaces the arousal in Chloe’s body, and she hastily pushes Beca off of her. Beca looks at her in confusion.
“Uh, people are paying attention, apparently,” Chloe explains, gesturing subtly to the old lady. Beca’s confusion is immediately overtaken by shock and a blush spreads across her cheeks. She waves awkwardly to the lady and pivots in her seat to stare look pointedly out the other window.
Okay, so they definitely needed to keep their hands to themselves in bumper-to-bumper traffic. Chloe files the information away for future reference.
-7:32 PM-
Beca groans and pushes her seat as far away from the steering wheel as she can, stretching out her legs. “It’s too damn hot in here.”
Chloe, who’s waving the car’s insurance papers in front of her face to cool off, nods in agreement. “It really is. Are you sure we can’t turn on the car for a little bit?”
“We’re pretty low on gas,” Beca says hesitantly. “I don’t want to risk running out as soon as we finally get out of this mess.”
Chloe pouts but doesn’t fight her on it. She looks out the window and sees some people ahead of them standing outside of their cars talking and gets an idea. Beca peers curiously over at her when Chloe opens her door.
“Dude, what are you doing?”
“I am getting some fresh air,” Chloe states as she gets out of the car. The blood starts rushing through her legs like normal again while a gentle breeze brushes against her sweaty forehead. Chloe lets out a sigh of relief. She closes the door behind her and rounds to the driver’s side of the car.
Beca squints up at her through her open window. “You’re really going to be one of those people that gets up and walks around during a traffic jam?”
Chloe leans down, resting her forearms on the window sill and sticking her head back in the car a bit. “I don’t see any other options. It’s better than sweating through our clothes in the hot car.”
Beca glances down at her slightly damp t-shirt and plucks at it with her fingers, frowning. “You may have a point.” She turns off the car all the way and pushes open her door, joining Chloe on the road. Chloe claps her hands in excitement.
“It’s kind of neat just standing out on the highway like this, don’t you think?” she asks, turning around in place to take in her surroundings. Beca chuckles and lets her gaze drift to some cars off in the distance.
“It is a small sort of accomplishment, I suppose.”
Chloe takes one of Beca’s hands and tugs her to the trunk of their car. “I’m hungry. Didn’t we buy some granola bars or something?”
Beca opens the trunk and sifts through the grocery bags inside. “Doesn’t look like it, babe,” she says, but sticks her hand in a bag anyways. Her tongue pokes out in concentration as she tries to get a grip on something in the bag, and Chloe bites her lip at how cute the expression makes her girlfriend look. Then, a look of victory crosses Beca’s face. “Aha! I knew these were in there!” Beca pulls her hand out to produce a box of frosted sugar cookies.
She starts attempting to open them while Chloe wrinkles her nose in confusion. “I didn’t know you bought those,” she says, watching Beca fail to open the plastic packaging. “When did you add those to the cart?”
Beca doesn’t tear her eyes away from her challenge. “You were looking at that magazine cover I was on, and I snuck it on the belt,” she says, the struggle eminent in her voice.
Chloe watches her fight the box in amusement for a few more seconds before gently prying it away from Beca’s hands, opening it with ease. She hands it back to Beca with a sweet smile. Beca attempts to look unembarrassed. “Thanks,” she mutters before reaching in and taking a cookie out, shoving half of it in her mouth at once.
They munch on the box of cookies, sitting on the hood of the car. A few people come up to them to make small talk, mostly commenting on how sucky the situation is, though none of them stick around for very long. Soon the cookies are gone, leaving Chloe and Beca to sit in comfortable silence.
Beca reaches over and pulls Chloe’s left hand into her lap, playing with her fingers. Chloe smiles softly and looks over at the brunette, but Beca’s eyes are focused on their hands. Lithe fingers run along the tendons on the back of her hand, and up and down the veins lining the inside of her wrist. Beca delicately rubs her thumb over Chloe’s ring finger with a contemplative look on her face, then brings their hands up to press a kiss to her knuckles a moment later.
Chloe hums in contentment and leans against Beca’s side, watching people ahead of them walking around and conversing with one another. Beca squeezes her hand once, and Chloe’s smile grows even wider.
-8:14 PM-
“Chlo, am I crazy, or is that an ice cream truck?”
Chloe looks in the direction that Beca is pointing in to see that, yes indeed; there is an ice cream truck in the near distance. To make it even more bizarre, people seem to be buying ice cream from the truck.
Beca and Chloe look at each other. They come to a silent agreement and slide of the hood of the car. When they reach the truck, there’s only one other person in line, so they’re able to quickly purchase two cones – chocolate for Chloe, vanilla for Beca – and weave their way through the traffic back to their own car.
They lean against the passenger side door and watch the sun slowly start to sink in the sky as they eat their ice cream. Chloe steals licks from Beca’s cone every once in a while, which her girlfriend pretends to grumble about, but Chloe can tell she doesn’t actually mind.
The ice cream truck starts playing music in the distance, and Chloe smiles as Beca starts quietly harmonizing with it under her breath.
-8:24 PM-
“If I die in this traffic jam, will you tell Theo that I won’t be able to make it to our meeting on Wednesday?”
“You’re not going to die, Beca.”
“I’m starting to lose hope that we’ll ever get out of this.”
“You’re so overdramatic.”
“Oh yeah? Well you’re under dramatic.”
“That doesn’t make any sense.”
“I know. Give me a break, my brain’s fried from sitting here for three hours.”
“Fair enough.”
-8:47 PM-
Chloe glances up from her nearly dead phone and does a double take at what she sees. She slaps at Beca’s arm excitedly. “Bec, people are moving!”
Beca lurches up from her slumped position over the wheel. She rubs at her eyes and blinks groggily out the front windshield. “There is a God after all,” she murmurs in awe, starting up the car.
Chloe whoops loudly as they begin to drive, joining in with the cheers from the cars around them. Beca lets out a victory cry of her own that makes Chloe double over laughing in her seat. Chloe starts belting out “We Are the Champions” at the top of her lungs, and Beca doesn’t even try to protest before she starts to sing along.
When Beca steers the car onto the exit ramp to get off the highway, Chloe lets out a contemplative hum and says, “You know, that actually wasn’t too bad. I think that was a great way to spend our evening.”
“And I think that’s probably the craziest thing you’ve ever said.”
“Okay, rude.”
“It’s true, dude.”
“Hmm. Maybe, maybe not. Either way, I love you.”
Beca grins and reaches out to take Chloe’s hand. “Love you, too, weirdo.”