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"I miss her," Beca stares up at the ceiling.
A ripple of laughter passes around the room, she frowns harder. Bunch of, of… pitches! The frown momentarily slides off her face as she giggles over that.
"Stop pouting, Beca."
She's not pouting, Beca Mitchell doesn't frown. What she does do is roll over and glare at Aubrey, currently picking at the remnants of cooling curly fries across the room from Beca.
" 'm not pouting," she says.
"Just esp- expressing my feelings."
More laughter. Next to Aubrey is Cynthia-Rose, nursing a glass of whiskey or rum or something Beca isn't sure what exactly except that she brought the bottle with her and won't let any of them have any. Says it's too good for any of them. Which hasn't stopped her from letting Stacie steal glasses all night.
Speaking of, Stacies says, "You are pouting, but it's okay. We know it's only 'cause you love Emily."
All of a sudden her heart is in her throat as Beca shoots up into a sitting position. Her head swirls but she manages not to throw up or fall over or anything else embarrassing.
"What?! No 'm not! Who told you that?"
Aubrey frowns at her like she's an idiot while Stacie rolls her eyes and Cynthia-Rose laughs so hard she almost spits out her drink. It's just the three of them in the house.
"Beca," Aubrey says slowly. "You guys are getting married in the morning. We know you love her."
Oh. Right. And suddenly she's laughing along with Cynthia-Rose, flopping back onto the bed because yeah she is and that thought makes her heart swell and her stomach go flippy floppy and her skin tingle and parts of her brain explode. It's all so much. She's not sure how she forgot, except it's been a long night and Beca is tired and drunker than she meant to be and she misses Emily so much.
They saw each other a few hours ago, when the whole group of them, all the Bellas and some of Emily's friends, were together but they hardly had a moment alone. It feels so far away now. Beca tries hard to remember why it was they decided to do things like this, the two of them spending the night away from each other when they could both be at home together.
Hardly anything else about their wedding is going to be 'traditional,' they're going straight to the courthouse around noon and the whole thing will be over in less than twenty minutes but this felt important for some reason. Emily had made several very persuasive arguments. Or had they just been suggestive? Beca is having trouble remembering.
A thought suddenly strikes her, "Dude. Tomorrow I'm going home with my wife ."
Stacie and Aubrey laugh, but Cynthia-Rose, who seems like she gets it, nods and smiles.
"Yeah you will."
They'll lay down in this bed and curl against each other, matching bands on their fingers, and lay together as wife and wife. Promised to each other for the rest of their lives. And a week Beca and Emily will get on a plane and fly off for their honeymoon. As married people.
When they get back, the next time someone at the radio station asks how Emily is doing they'll be asking about her wife who she will be married too. For the rest of her life.
"Guys…" Beca says tremulously.
"Oh no," Aubrey whispers, picking herself up from the floor to rush over.
"No, no, no. You cannot be having second thoughts."
What?
"I'm not, I can't- " now Aubrey's voice is shaky and there are tears threatening to fall from her eyes. "You can't break her heart. Not now. You guys were supposed to be it ."
Cynthia-Rose and Stacie are staring in confusion and honestly Beca understands even less what the fuck is going on. But she still sits up and pulls Aubrey in, folding her into a hug that neither of them would ever have imagined happening when they first met a decade ago at Barden.
"I wouldn't do that."
Then, "Bree," she uses Chloe's nickname, " 'm not having second thoughts. Is just I want things to hurry up, so I can get on with being married, not just getting."
"Oh."
Aubrey relaxes and laughs, softly and sadly, "I'm sorry."
"Honestly, it's a fair cop," Beca hasn't always been the greatest at dealing with emotions and commitment and stuff.
There were some bumpy moments in her and Emily's relationship. Probably there'll be more, but she's sure they can get through them. Together, as a married couple.
Cynthia-Rose snorts, "You're a long way from the sad white girl who's daddy had to force her to join a club, any club."
Maybe she is.
*
*
"Chloe, if you don't get your ass out my face, I'm going to slap the red out of your hair," Emily growls.
The girl in question raises one eyebrow.
"I'll ignore that," she says. "And remind you this was your idea."
"Nnnn," Emily growls. But she lets Chloe and Alexis, one of her Bellas, guide her back to the bed.
In the time it takes for her butt to hit the hotel bedspread she's already gone from feisty drunk Emily to weep drunk Emily. She sniffles. Chloe settles in beside her to rub soothing circles in her back while Alexis looks on wide eyed and petrified.
"I j-just wanted to s-see Beca," she says.
"I know babe, I know."
"Her c-cute little nose and her long s-soft hair."
She's not even sure if the others can understand her through the sniffles and muffling as she pressed her whole face in Chloe's shoulder.
"Guys… I just love Beca sooo much! Her smile and her laugh and her boobs!"
"Beca's aren't so great," Fat Amy cut in and in a characteristic display, cupped her own chest. "I reckon one of my boobs could eat both of hers."
This entire stupid idea was hers, Emily thought it would make their first night as a married couple more special. All that sort of 'absence makes the heart grow fonder' sort of stuff and obviously it's working because Emily doesn't want to do anything other than run home and crawl into bed with Beca. It's not even the separation, exactly.
During four and half years of couplehood they've been apart for weeks before. There's something different about being in the same city, barely a few miles apart, and choosing not to be with each other that makes it harder. And for some stupid reason they decided they couldn't even talk on the phone when they always called each other even when they were apart. Sometimes they missed each other, because one of them was exhausted or was just busy but they always called.
Always tried.
There is also the fact that neither Emily or Beca make a habit of getting drunk. It all combines to make it that much harder to keep her emotions in.
"Cap, hey, think about it this way," Alexis says, leaning in.
"After tomorrow, no matter what happens; you two will always be connected. Like a pair of entangled particles, not individuals, but an inseparable whole."
Emily likes the sound of that. Didn't really understand what it meant science wise, the human mind was her field, but she likes thinking of her and Beca as one thing that nothing can ever come between. She sniffles a bit more before raising her head off Chloe's shoulder and giving her and Alexis a genuine smile, Amy too even though the only reason she was with Emily instead of Beca was that they'd both been afraid of what the Australian would do in their house drunk.
"Thanks," Emily says. "Sorry for being a pain."
Alexis gives a shake, "It's your wedding, Cap."
"Bellas are for life, Legacy ," Chloe says the last with some bite. "Through your worst days and best."
It's always a bit weird, for what Emily still so often thinks of as the Bellas, whenever her Bellas call her 'cap.' Mostly they stay seperate worlds, but there's no avoiding it sometimes. Like the night before her wedding.
"Pfft, I'm only doing this 'cause Beca loves your dumb ass," it's such a Fat Amy comment.
But with the benefit of time Emily can tell Amy means it less, the insulting part, from the way she turns away to hide the shine around her eyes and fights against the smile threatening to spread across her lips. Emily decides there that she wouldn't change anything about tonight, even having Amy along.
*
*
"Pick up the pace, Ladies!"
They're running. Emily wants to kill Fat Amy and maybe the woman in question senses that because for once she isn't objecting to the cardio. Literally the only reason they're late is because Amy forgot to set the alarm with the front desk, somehow deleted the alarm on Chloe's phone last night and couldn't find her underwear for a good half an hour.
How exactly it ended up in the ice machine she doesn't understand.
Chloe charges ahead pushing aside the meager crowd of pedestrians ahead of the group with sheer intensity and Emily is thanking anything and everything listening for the redhead. Behind her trail Amy and Alexis, in that order, with the latter keeping a close eye on Emily herself.
Emily is of course bringing up the rear. She was first into the uber, so she had to circle around the entire car and Emily is also have a hard time running because of the stupid suit she's wearing. The pants are tight in different places, the shirt and jacket pinch her sides in ways that dresses and normal clothes don't so her entire rhythm is off. Also she's not going all out, because no way in Emily showing up to her own wedding sweaty and gross.
Ahead of her Chloe charges up the stairs with the others not far behind and by the time Emily herself is inside Chloe is halfway through the courthouse security. She barely pauses to call back once she makes it through.
"I'm telling them you're here."
Then, a second later, "Come through!"
Strands of her hair have come loose from the know they put it in earlier and she does a quickcheck to make sure she hasn't sweated through her shirt as Alexis fixes what she can. Honestly there probably isn't much to be done if any of her makeup has gotten smudged or started running or anything like that. And so long as they hurry they'll technically make it on time for the appointment, which is all that Emily really cares about at this point.
Everything else is just… well she's glad they chose not to go for a big thing.
Then they're through security and hurrying on. No more running, just a fast walk and a momentary hesitation as they try and decide between taking the elevator up or the stairs. Thankfully they're saved the choice by the coincidental arrival of an elevator car going up.
As the doors close, Emily's heart starts beating faster and her palms grow damp with sweat that has absolutely nothing to do with the fifteen seconds of running she just did. It's happening, really happening and for some reason the elevator seems to take forever. Do they usually take this long to come to a stop? Why aren't the doors open already?
She needs out. It's happened, it's happening. Emily practically shoves her way past the two people standing front of the elevator when the doors finally ping open, almost takes the wrong turn and whirls herself around to go in the right direction.
Chloe is waiting out in front of the room.
"Okay," the older woman grabs Emily by the shoulders, scans her from top to bottom. "Everyone else is inside. You ready?"
Her heart is slamming into her ribs and there's a fading stitch in her side and her palms are still sweaty, but Emily still beams. Yeah, she's ready. She's been ready for months and nothing short of… of… actually there's literally nothing that could ever make her not ready.
Chloe pushes the door open and Emily steps in. Immediately she grins back at her mom and dad, but it's only a brief thing because her eyes are already swinging around to find the only person who really matters in the room. She knows Beca's parents and step-mom are there too and all their friends, but Emily literally can't think of them. Her eyes slide to the center, where light streams in from some high windows and there-
Oh.
Oh.
Her dress is a slightly off white column thing, with pale bands of gold around the stomach and chest. Beca's hair is down in a long flow that literally shines as a sunbeam catches it, her hands are clutched together in front of her as she bites her bottom lip and looks back at Emily through slightly lowered eyelashes. She looks so soft in that moment.
Nothing like the hard, brash, tough woman she likes to present so often and every inch the loving, caring, tender woman Emily comes home to. Her heart literally breaks for a moment. She can feel it cracking, but it's a good sort of breaking.
Like suddenly all the love inside is getting released to pour out and fill the world.
She takes a step, and another, but honestly Emily hardly knows how she made it from the door to the front of the room. One second she's at one end and in the next she's standing there staring back at Beca from less than a foot away.
Her movements are almost mechanically, except that nothing about this is mechanical. Every moment leads into the next perfectly, like the whole of the universe has arranged for this one moment of absolute transcendently joyous providence. She listens and speaks. The worlds hardly matter but they come out anyways, because there literally isn't anything else she could say at this point. Well, besides two.
Emily says those too.
"I do," like a prayer.
"I do," Beca says a moment later. It's an answer.