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Beca's life sort of falls apart at the end of the tour, the second tour; the one where she actually opens for DJ Khaled, well opens for his opener. And, okay, maybe 'falls apart' is a bit dramatic. Objectively things are going awesome for her, she has an actual recording contract and a suddenly a lot more extra cash on hand because of it.
It just feels like things are falling apart because she's basically alone. Like, literally alone.
Fat Amy took her sudden wealth and fucked off to who knows where. Every couple of weeks Beca gets a video or a picture from her in some unidentified tropical location and there are sporadic, and very confusing, texts that show up at all hours. It's honestly only half as confusing and mind boggling as actually living with her.
If it were just Amy that would be one thing, but Chloe moved out like a week after she came back.
Now she's living with Chicago three states away and Beca misses her. Like her own left hand she misses her. And it was too hard to stay in the same tiny apartment they'd moved in to together, plus she has money now to afford a better place, so Beca moved out within the same month. But her new place is too big . She has basically nothing to fill it up with and without Chloe and Amy and the rest of the Bella her life is nothing but an endless rotation between the studio and her empty lost apartment.
So, yeah, Beca was lonely as shit. Was. Turned out Emily was moving into the area and the place she'd been all set to move into had fallen through. Apparently she hadn't realized it was less a 'roommate' situation and more a relationship one; how Emily had managed to get herself into a polyamorous quadrange accidentally baffles Beca.
But as a consequence of discovering and subsequently breaking up with her romantic partners, she needed a place to live. Fast. And since she now had more money than she really needed, not technically true but it was definitely more money than she was used to having, Beca offered a spare room.
She might not have if she'd known what it would lead to. Because inviting Emily to live with her had turned out to ruin her life in an entirely different way.
Fundamentally the problem is that Emily's just, too goddamn adorable. Hot. Affectionate. Really, a lot of different things. All of them of course positive attributes, perfectly wonderful things for a person to be, but not things Beca is prepared to find herself obsessing over like… like…
Like she's Jesse and it's their freshman year! Ugh.
It's unfair is what it is.
Unfair that seeing Emily in nothing but a towel, draped down her back, fresh out of the shower all of sudden sets her heart racing like she's back in high school and being forced to run the mile.
"Jesus fuck, dude!" Beca shouts after doing a double take.
Emily glances down, "What, what?" checks that the fluffy white towel wrapped around her body hasn't come loose.
Looks back to see if she's dripping water on the floor, she is but not enough for Beca to freak out, then scans her surroundings in search of, like, some giant spider or something. Frowns when she sees nothing. Grabs a lock of her still wet hair and examines it. Maybe wondering if she accidentally dyed her hair. Again.
Beca knows she did it once when she was sixteen.
It's not any of that, it's just the sudden sight of her, walking so casually through the loft in nothing but a towel with her hair hanging wetly down top quarter of her naked back has Beca feeling uncomfortably… well, uncomfortable. Which makes zero sense.
She's seen girls naked before. The second time she ever even met Chloe she basically got a free softcore porno. Living with the Bellas for three years Beca ended up seeing nearly every last one of them in just about the same state.
But there's something different with Emily, now.
First Beca tries to memorize the other girl's routine, if she avoids being out in the main part of the loft when Emily takes her showers it won't be a problem, right? Wrong. As it happens, it only means that Beca then has to fight the temptation to arrange her own life around those same casual glimpses. And it isn't just physical either.
If she wanted to experiment Beca would have jumped Chloe when she and Jesse had broken up. There had been a drunken, okay so maybe not so drunken, offer, but mixing sex and friendship and the Bellas had seemed a dangerous idea.
Little things get her.
Emily humming as she makes herself breakfast or dinner. Not even a real song, just snippets of errant melodies that Beca then finds working themselves into her own songs over and over again. How her voice crests and dips in and out of hearing. Suddenly she is obsessed with Emily's voice, wants to hear it all the time, sometimes asks her questions just so she can.
Asks if there's anything Emily needs from the store even though she knows they have her favorite chocolates and the coconut waters she insists she needs. Just to be able to hear her hum in thought and then say no.
Finds herself perversely enjoying the days when some one of the other assholes in Emily's graduate program pisses her off just for the rise and fall of her voice as she rants about it. Beca likes swear words, but they've never actually sounded sexy until she hears Emily letting loose a string of the absolute vilest language because one of the guys in her program made one too many jokes about her name. The bottom drops out of her stomach and her mouth instantly goes dry.
She imagines the way her lips and tongue curls around the sounds later. It's intense. It's humiliating. Beca can't stop.
The way she chews on the end of her pen when she's writing. And the little growls Emily lets out when she's frustrated by a line or verse or trying to fit complicated technical jargon to plain english meaning. How her brow furroughs when she's reading an article she disagrees with, or the pink tip of her tongue poking out from between her Lips when it's one Emily really likes.
Sometimes Beca watches her nap, curled up in a sunny spot. Mesmerized by the way sunlight streams through her hair, forms a halo around her head.
When it starts to rain and Emily runs, head down and arm held over it, for shelter one sunday afternoon laughing the entire way. She basically lives for that laugh, echoing through the loft at night as she scrolls through her phone or heard from across a crowded cafe. It cracks something open in Beca. A part of her that had reverted to the guarded, emotionally walled off place she'd lived in been before Jesse and Barden and the Bellas.
She hadn't even realized it had happened and suddenly Beca wants to reach out and intertwine their fingers when they take walks on the weekends. Wants to settle in beside her on the little bed twin Emily refuses to let Beca pay to replace with something bigger and watch stupid youtube clips and cheesy romcoms. Text her 'love yous' from the studio. Kiss slow and lazy in the morning and stay wrapped in a warm cocoon of love and care and long limbs wrapped around her skin.
It's stupid. Beca is fantasizing like she's in fucking highschool. Like she's going to pass Emily a note with checkboxes that say 'yes' and 'no,' asking her to prom or something. Like it's not a ridiculous crush on her roommate and friend and former teammate brought on by loneliness and disconnection. She tells no one. She wants to shout it from the rooftops, scream it into a microphone and sell it as a single. Pour out all her love and throw it at Emily's feet.
Beca feels reckless. Which she knows is dangerous. She doesn't know how to make it stop. Doesn't even know if she really wants to.