Chapter Text
“I don’t get why we’re doing this,” Beca muttered under her breath, just loud enough for Chloe to hear. Turning down the radio, Chloe kept one hand on the wheel as the other reached to pry open Beca’s arms, which had been crossed.
“Becaauuuse,” Chloe sang, tugging at Beca’s arms harder when the girl resisted. The car swerved slightly, but she managed to turn into Professor Mitchell’s cul-de-sac. “The Bellas need some extra cash if we want to get that house, and I’m good with kids.” She parked on the curb outside of a red-brick house, the car beeping with the keys still in the ignition. She’d succeeded in getting Beca’s hand freed, and was wrapping her fingers around the other girl’s.
“And I’m here because…?” Beca hit her hand against Chloe’s a few times, sighing. Ever since Chloe burst through their dorm room with the “good news” of this babysitting night earlier that week, she’d been irritated at the slightest things. As the week progressed, the nausea in her stomach increased, until she was nothing but a surly ball of bad attitude. Now, the house was within eyesight from every direction she glanced, standing taller than anything Beca’s mom could afford. A minivan sat in the driveway, with the white stick-figure stickers to represent each member of the family. She couldn’t tell if her groan was audible or not.
“Because she’s your half-sister,” Chloe reminded Beca, unbuckling her seatbelt but not separating her hand from Beca’s. “And because we’re missing date night for this.”
“Ah, yes, nothing says romance like dirty diapers and family photos I’m not in,” Beca said, though she squeezed Chloe’s hand harder. Chloe used the squeeze for leverage, pulling Beca closer to her face. “That’s the spirit,” she chirped, placing a kiss on Beca’s nose. “You don’t even have to hold her, Becs. I’ve got this.”
Beca smirked, then, as if she’d heard an inside joke. “Right,” she said, nodding once. Chloe would have pressed her more on the reaction, but before she could, she heard her English professor’s voice shouting from the front door, and then a very strangled groan from his daughter.
--
The interactions between Beca and her father were strained, to say the least. Chloe gave her credit, though, as Beca treated the woman she privately called “step-monster” with relative politeness. Having the redhead by her side helped Beca immensely, as the granite countertops felt less cold with Chloe’s hand to hold, and the walls felt less empty with Chloe’s natural ability to converse. Together, they kept a safe distance from the baby, Rose, as a means of maintaining balance between the adults’ instructions and their actual duty. As the parents left, Rose was left in Chloe’s arms, squirming uncomfortably. Biting down any appeals for help, Chloe fumbled with the child, trying to act calm. The final slam of the door pushed Rose to tears, which erupted into wails, which could only be described as a sound meant to drown out siren’s songs.
Beca watched Chloe’s face turn from discomfort to total panic, the bounce of her hips becoming unsteady and hurried. As the baby still squirmed, the redhead held her with arms outstretched, Lion King style. Which, naturally, only made the baby cry worse.
“It’s fine,” Chloe said, shouting over the screams, “Go see how many channels they have on the TV. She’ll…ow!” The small baby had gotten a hold of Chloe’s curls and tugged, “She’ll calm down in no time.”
Beca, who started the night standing awkwardly at the kitchen counter, had migrated to Chloe’s side, sitting on the couch’s edge. She sighed, watching Chloe with a pained and pitying smile on her face, before tapping Chloe on the shoulder. When Chloe turned around, her eyes alight with uncertainty and panic - no matter how hard she tried to quell it. She was shocked to find Beca standing with her arms out, eyes expectant.
“You…?” Chloe looked down at the baby, whose cries were only getting louder, and back up to Beca with a confused look. Beca rolled her eyes. Her arms were still open, and she was getting impatient.
“Just trust me,” she said, pushing her hands closer to Rose. Carefully, Chloe moved to put Rose in her arms.
“Okay, you want to make sure that her head is suppo–” Chloe stopped giving instructions when Rose slipped easily into Beca’s arms. Bundled into the space under Beca’s chin, she stopped crying immediately, letting a heavy silence press down on the house. On instinct, Beca started swaying, easing into the smooth rhythm that Chloe knew flowed through her veins. She pressed her nose down into the small tuft of brown hair on Rose’s head, inhaling. It was like she had taken a whiff of floating gas, the way she seemed to lift off the ground.
“Chloe came in here thinking she was all that, didn’t she?” Beca said to Rose, squeezing the words in the small space between her mouth and the baby’s head.
While Chloe spent the earlier moments speaking to Rose in the highest pitched baby-voice she could muster, Beca spoke slowly and clearly - the same way she did with regular-sized humans. It was softer around the edges, though, a voice Chloe only heard Beca use when it was so late it was early, stroking circles on Chloe’s back in a steady pattern.
She threw Chloe a wink, satisfied at the look of shock on the redhead’s face, and used the steady sway of her hips to bounce into the nursery room. Along the way, she held her hand out for the baby to clasp, and Chloe heard a sniffling Rose giggle at the contact. Without moving, she could see into the doorway, watching Rose stick her hand into Beca’s mouth. The woman munched on the hand briefly before pulling away and sputtering, “You know, kid, cannibal isn’t my thing.”
Though Chloe knew the baby was incapable of understanding the joke, she swore she heard Rose squeal, clapping. As Beca easily threw the baby up in the air and caught it without hesitation, Chloe’s jaw nearly dropped. At the sound of the baby’s bubbling giggle, Beca squealed, and that was the point at which Chloe nearly forgot how to breathe. With Rose positioned like a football in her arms, Beca looked up, a strand of hair hanging over her face. She had a grin plastered on her face. “You coming over here, Chlo, or are you gonna continue standing there like you’ve just heard that Aubrey fucked a Treble?”
Chloe’s gasp snapped her out of the daydream-state she was floating in, and she blinked a few times before moving towards the room. “Beca, language. Please.”
Beca threw a glance at her, snorting while she bounced the baby up and down. “This kid doesn’t give a fuck. She’s a tiny human without any comprehension of language.”
“Yeah, for now,” Chloe cautioned, leaning against the doorway, “But when that’s her first word…”
“Then her asshole father will blame me, as per usual,” Beca said, delivering the biting words with a smirk to the baby in her arms. “He’ll get a baby with the mouth of a truck-driver, and a DJ drop-out who sucked so hard she failed at actually dropping out in the first place.”
Lifting the baby up to her face, Beca pressed a tickling kiss to Rose’s protruding belly. The baby squealed. “We’re just wonderful failures, aren’t we, babe?” Her voice reached the highest level of “coo” that Beca Mitchell’s angsty self could manage, and Chloe was hypnotized. While she should’ve been taking notes for the purpose of mocking Beca later, Chloe couldn’t help but pass the night watching the woman in awe. She would’ve interrupted, jumping between Beca and the baby for her own miniature human time, but she found herself resisting, not wanting to break the spell that was ‘Beca Mitchell with Baby’. She wanted to memorize every change the small bundle made in Beca’s features, from the smoothing of her forehead when Rose burrowed her face into Beca’s chest to the breathless, victorious smile she got when Rose clapped to the beat of the music that her phone was blasting.
Beca Mitchell was always beautiful (though, whenever Chloe told her this, she would scoff, roll her eyes, and say, “Stop trying to get in my pants all the time, Beale”). It became one of her favorite things to uncover the different brands of beautiful Beca had within her. There was the out-of-her-element Beca, for example, who bit her lip until it was cherry red and had fingers bouncing on the hem on her shirt constantly. Then, there was the in-her-very-personal-element Beca, the Beca that Chloe still couldn’t believe she got to see, who was flushed and tired with ruffled hair and electric eyes. This Beca, though, the Beca that Chloe didn’t ever dream existed, was an entire discovery in and of itself. There was a glow around her, like the beat that was always flooding through her veins finally found it’s pace. It was mesmerizing.
The sun set quickly, and the house – which was almost completely open, mostly walled in by windows – started to get dark. That wasn’t their indication that night-time was near, though, as Rose had started to ball up her tiny fists and rub at her eyes violently. She yawned periodically, her mouth forming an ‘O’ that was too big for her face before she settled, squinty-eyed, onto Beca’s bosom. Despite the obvious weight that was added to her eyelids, she tried her best to keep them open. In the back of her mind, Chloe noted how many traits the baby shared with her older half-sister.
Beca moved Rose to her other arm, pressing her cheek to the top of her head. “You shout it out, but I can’t hear a word you say.”
The tune slipped out softly, as if Beca had been singing it all night but only now turned the volume up enough for the rest of the house to hear it. “You’re talking loud, not saying much.” The baby’s hand rested on Beca’s shoulder, and Chloe stopped herself from touching the dimples that were her knuckles. “I’m criticized but all your bullets ricocheted. You shoot me down, but I get up.”
Her voice was like a blanket, floating into the air and covering over their skin. Though it sent shivers down Chloe’s back, it also succeeded in making her feel warm - like she was bundled up or being clutched close. It sounded like the way an afternoon nap felt, rosey and comfortable and undeniably home. She continued to sing, running light circles over Rose’s back like she’d done to Chloe so many times before. The air had become molasses, as if Beca’s sways determined the speed of the universe. Slowly, Chloe reached out, resting her chin on Beca’s shoulder. For half of a second, Beca’s movements stilled. The world jolted. When she continued, Chloe could breathe again.
Reaching around Beca, Chloe ran a finger over the peach fuzz at the back of Rose’s head. Her eyes were shut, impossibly long eyelashes curling out at the crease. Beca’s hand moved to support Chloe’s as Rose’s head lolled, unable to hold it’s own weight. The baby’s lips were open, forming the perfect ‘O’. The divot between her nose and her mouth was that of a doll.
“She sleeps like you,” Chloe whispered, watching the miniature snores puff out of the baby’s mouth. Beca bit her cheek, never once looking away from the baby. They stood there by the windows for a moment in the last few seconds of the sunset, until Chloe backed away. “Bed time?”
Beca nodded, turning towards the nursery without quickening her pace. She emerged a few minutes later, a washcloth on her shoulder.
Running a hand through her hair, she sighed, perching on the armrest of the couch. For a few seconds, they watched the criminal law show that was playing in the background the entire night. Then, finally, Chloe broke the silence.
“So, um, what the hell was that?” she said, flipping off the TV. Beca, looking more tired now than before, stood up to clean the toys that were strewn over the floor.
“What was what?” she said, throwing a few toys into a basket. She kneeled, opening a diaper drawer in the dresser to put the washcloth away.
“Um, that sexy Mary Poppins shit you just pulled,” Chloe said, her voice raising.
“Language, Chlo,” Beca jokingly chastised, raising an eyebrow and throwing out a smirk. She saw quickly, though, that the other girl wouldn’t be deterred by mocking. Sighing, she stood up.
“My mom’s a preschool teacher,” she explained, “I picked up babysitting gigs from her students to help pay the bills.” Chloe nodded, fiddling with the tassels on the couch pillows.
“So then why were you so angry about coming tonight?”
Beca’s eyes bugged, her eyebrows furrowing obvious irritation. “Um, how ‘bout the fact that you invited yourself into Satan and his she-devil’s lair?” She took a quick breath, throwing herself onto the couch, with her arm over her face. “You didn’t exactly ask me before you started making business propositions with my dad, Chlo.”
Chloe, who had her head rested on her hand, scooted off the couch and onto the floor. Moving to be face to face with Beca, she put her chin in the edge of the couch and poked the girl.
“I’m sorry,” she said simply, pouting, “I didn’t really, like, think.”
It was true, she hadn’t thought, preferring to push aside the horror stories Beca shared about her father in favor of an A in her Comparative World Lit class. Which, yes, was insensitive, but also always understood by Beca, who would hold her hands up and say, “Whatever you have to do to pass” before wincing and throwing out a “Well, not, like whatever but, yunno”.
“S’fine,” Beca said, turning to her side to face Chloe. “It’s probably good that I’m seeing her anyway.”
Chloe grabbed some of the hair that was pooling around Beca’s face, drawing designs in the strands. She couldn’t seem to break her gaze from Beca’s though, watching over and over in her mind the way the girl looked with a baby in her arms, like Beca needed Rose as much as Rose needed her. After a few minutes of this, Beca shoved Chloe’s face.
"Stop looking at me like a serial killer. What’s your deal, Beale?”
Chloe pursed her lips to keep her smile from spreading, eventually realizing it was a futile task.
“You’re good,” she said, the words coming out in an excited breath, “Like crazy good.”
Beca blushed, pretending not to smile as she turned her face to the ceiling. She shoved Chloe’s face again, muttering, “Whatever. ‘Sexy Mary Poppins?’” The words were thrown back at her with a cheeky grin.
Chloe sat up on her knees, trailing a hand up Beca’s hip. “I make no apologies for that. That instinct is natural and evolutionary.”
Beca snorted. “You do know that this -” she pointed between the two of them, “Does not make babies, right?”
Chloe shrugged, her hand moving further up Beca’s hip. “Doesn’t mean I can’t try my best, though.”