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It’s not like Beca Mitchell has never seen Chloe Beale dance. Of course she has: with four years of Bellas practices and performances, plus living in the same house for three of those years, Beca has seen Chloe dance damn near every day of their friendship. Well, damn near every day until Beca moved to L.A. four weeks after Worlds to work in a more permanent capacity at Residual Heat’s West Coast headquarters. Even then, with FaceTime calls and Skype video chats, a standard conversation between the friends included Chloe flouncing around her Atlanta studio apartment in an uninhibited way that was so unabashedly Chloe; sometimes to music filtering through the background, other times to a mystery tune in her own head, all the while regaling an amused Beca with her adventurous tales of life as an elementary vocal performance coach for some raucous 7-to-10-year-olds. So, really, it’s not like Beca Mitchell has never seen Chloe Beale dance. It’s just that until tonight, she had never really… watched.
Not that she really should be watching, either. This Friday night DJing gig pays far too well for Beca to ever succumb to a distraction from the job at hand; she’s even put a moratorium on alcoholic beverages when spinning after a well-meaning but clumsy ‘fan’ nearly ruined several hundred dollars’ worth of equipment while trying to offer Beca a drink. Her weekly set is actually kind of a big deal: there are posters on every surface of the club promoting ‘Friday Night Flip-Off w/ Beca ‘Effin’ Mitchell’, complete with a giant still of Beca in action, side-eying the camera with a smirk and a pixelated middle finger while her free hand works the mixing board. And yes, Beca has her own hashtag now, courtesy of social media whore Stacie Conrad, whose cellphone had lit up right along with her face upon discovering the poster at the club’s inaugural Black Friday Bash. (“Of course I’m here, it’s your first night headlining, I can shop online in my underwear any day--um! Beca, look! It’s your face!” *click*) The Bellas use the hashtag to tease her with pride, but the club’s patrons use it to share video clips of Beca freestyling a mashup or to show off selfies with their favorite DJ. Beca wouldn’t go so far as to say she’s L.A. nightlife ‘famous’, and she certainly isn’t looking to turn DJing into a career, but being greeted on Instagram with the little ‘k’ next to her follower number reminds her that she’s having success out here and the hard work is paying off, both figuratively and literally.
The extra weekly income from the gig gives her just enough of a cushion to live reasonably in L.A., rather than scrape by paycheck-to-paycheck on her modest Residual Heat salary. So to focus herself on Friday nights, she just closes her eyes, slips on her favorite headphones, clears her head with a protracted inhale, and wakes to a state-of-the-art music mixing mecca, with its expanse of sleek knobs and slides awaiting its savior in Beca’s deft hands. Tonight had started out no differently, save for the minor detail that she knew there would be familiar faces amongst the usual sea of sweat-slicked bodies unburdening after a long week. Beca had felt a definitive twinge of guilt in having to ditch Chloe in favor of contractual obligation on her friend’s last night of ‘SPRING BREAK IN L.A., PITCHES!!! #becaeffinmitchell’. However, in true Bella fashion, Stacie came through in a pinch with a shift switch at her UCLA research lab and was more than willing to introduce Chloe to the dance floor while Beca worked her magic from the elevated platform up front.
From this height, Beca can see everything that happens below, and while normally she glances out and pays little attention to the crowd beyond if they’re feeling the beat, tonight her eyes keep straying to the mid-thigh hem of a certain vibrant patterned dress belonging to an equally vibrant person. Beca sweeps her gaze past a thin brown belt slung low at the waist and admires how the emerald hue of the dress brings out the fiery nature of the hair tumbling down its front. She starts to get lost in how the little green squares are softly outlined in a blue that flawlessly matches the wearer’s eye color, but then reality smacks her across the face, because what is she, a Harlequin romance novelist? Gross. But it doesn’t change the fact that she just caught herself checking out Chloe.
Beca knows, objectively, she has some damn attractive friends, but tonight, with Chloe in particular, she can’t stop looking. Watching. Currently, Chloe and Stacie are dancing back-to-back, feet bouncing and hips bumping to the upbeat track Beca’s spinning. From the angle of the DJ platform, Stacie’s face is obscured, but the wide carefree smile on Chloe’s shines like a lighthouse beacon cutting through the fog of the dance floor, if not through Beca’s murky thoughts. Both girls keep raising their hands above their heads, laughing as they flip long hair side-to-side, but it’s always Chloe she locks in on. In all the years she’s known her, Beca has never really taken a moment to appreciate the skill and elegance with which Chloe moves. She’s always thought that ‘poetry in motion’ was a cheap colloquialism, lacking in sufficient detail of description, but Beca is starting to see its value as the butterflies in her stomach pen an ode to her closest friend, writing new stanzas across her insides with every shake of Chloe’s hips and toss of Chloe’s hair. There’s a confidence and a sensuality to Chloe’s movements, along with something that Beca can’t quite find the words for, but it might be related to the way Beca can’t stop watching and, frankly, doesn’t want to stop watching.
She’s been deflecting her instinct to stare out at Chloe ever since the girls ditched their drinks two hours ago in favor of endless dancing, but Beca is growing tired of fighting a losing battle. She knows the only way to get over this irrepressible urge to watch Chloe dance is to just surrender and give those pesky butterflies what they want, but her set wraps soon, and she needs to get herself focused for her signature live-mixing of the night’s closing number. Usually she needs only one song to prep herself, but she strikes a compromise between her id and her ego, queuing up two pre-mixed mashups to lead into the last song. The first mashup serves a definitive purpose, and if all goes as planned, it should give her ample opportunity to indulge while still leaving time during the second mashup to prepare the final track.
Beca fades out the bassline of the current song to replace it with the similarly uptempo beat of the new mix, and since she chose a second track that seamlessly transitions from the first, Beca knows she has at least five or six uninterrupted minutes at her disposal before she has to get back to work. She lowers her headphones to rest around her neck, then presses her palms to the table as she scans across the club, a smile threatening when she takes in the mashup’s enthusiastic reception from the throng of dancers below. But of course, as they had been doing all night, her eyes stray to one dancer in particular, and that dancer’s face has lit up like a toddler with a brand new puppy because yeah, Beca just might have intentionally chosen to play her newest track: the one she created earlier in the week with Chloe’s input, the one she pretended wasn’t ready in the hopes of eliciting a response like the one she’s getting now.
Her best friend is beaming up at her, and Beca allows that smile she had been restraining to wrestle free before adopting a questioning expression, raising her eyebrows and tilting her head as if to ask Chloe why she’s not yet dancing it out to her mashup. Chloe’s grin grows impossibly wider before she finally whips around to face Stacie and lets everything loose: her hands, her hips, her inhibitions. Or maybe it’s Beca’s inhibitions letting loose, because she’s finally caving to her desire to stop everything -- mixing, thinking, resisting -- and drink in every last bit of Chloe Beale. Beca hasn’t had a drop of alcohol the entire night, but she feels herself getting drunker by the second with every intoxicating swirl of Chloe’s hips. Zeroing in on Chloe’s hand traveling upwards, Beca traces its path as it slides up her neck, fisting into ginger locks, and Beca can’t hold back the squeak that escapes.
She quickly dismisses the pitiful noise along with the cursory thought that a reaction like that is not normally associated with watching one’s best friend dance, but there’s still that nameless something about the way Chloe moves that’s doing things to Beca. The butterflies from earlier have been squeezed out by a tight coiling that twists through Beca’s stomach, and when the bass in the song suddenly drops lower, so does the sensation. The music’s tempo starts to slow, and so go Chloe’s hips. They never once lose time, now circling in a way that has her practically grinding on Stacie. Beca thinks she might have grossly miscalculated her ability to just casually observe Chloe’s dancing; the contorted coil sitting low in Beca’s gut compacts so densely that it collapses in on itself, leaving behind only a black hole of arousal, the gravity of which consumes her every coherent thought, save for one: when she gave in to the impulse of watching Chloe dance, she never expected to be turned on.
But that’s exactly what she is, how she’s feeling; it’s an innocent seduction, Chloe’s not even trying, yet Beca is finding it difficult to take a normal breath, and even more difficult to tear her eyes away from the swinging pendulum known as Chloe’s hips. Beca is captivated by them, their rhythmic rocking a metronome for the cadence of her heartbeat. They take over her senses until the pounding in her head is all she can hear, kaleidoscoping greens and blues all she can see. She doesn’t know how long she’s been hypnotized, but she snaps out of her trance when two well-manicured hands invade her line of sight, turning the very hips Beca had been fixated on. She blinks and recognizes that the hands belong to Stacie, who is dancing front-to-back with Chloe, palms resting at Chloe’s waistline. Beca was entranced for so long that the first mashup is transitioning into the second, the tempo further slowing, and when the heavy bass reverberates, Beca wonders why she did this to herself. Why she can’t drag her eyes away from the way her friends are dancing, toeing the line of indecency. She feels almost dirty, and at any second either girl could catch her pretty much perving on them, so she tries desperately to compose herself.
She’s in the process of pulling it together when Stacie makes eye contact, looking up at Beca with a scrutinizing expression. Beca tries to school her features, but Stacie has definitely noticed Beca staring because her friend quirks an eyebrow in a way Beca knows from experience means trouble. Beca chokes down a lump in her throat when she sees the smirk creep across Stacie’s face, and now Stacie is whispering something into Chloe’s ear, never breaking eye contact with an increasingly nervous Beca, who refuses to look away and tip her hand. Beca loses the staredown anyway when she’s intercepted by blue eyes sparkling with what Beca knows is mischief. This fact is confirmed when Chloe’s patented grin of false-innocence takes over nearly half of her face, and she gives a cutesy little hand wave, and she winks coyly, and crap crap crap, this is not good.
Beca barely has time to process before Chloe busts out an absolutely filthy drop down Stacie’s front, dress riding high up Chloe’s thighs, exposing way too much skin, and Beca was not ready. Beca’s palms have balled into fists resting on the table top, and she digs her nails sharply into her own flesh when Chloe tosses her head and thrusts her ass backwards to slowly slink up Stacie’s long legs. When Chloe completes the maneuver with a playful wiggle, the two girls on the dance floor burst into giggles, and Beca releases the breath she didn’t know she was holding. She reaches into the depths of her social archives to produce what she prays is a convincing laugh, at least from afar, and she’s never been more grateful for the blue-ish hue of the stage lights than she is right now because she feels her entire body flushing fiercely. Thank god her friends can’t see it, or at least she hopes, but Stacie looks extra pleased with herself when she winks at Beca before returning her attention to dancing with Chloe, albeit in a much less vulgar fashion.
Her friends seem to be keeping things PG for the time being, which gives Beca the breather she needs to regroup. A few calming breaths kick her brain into high gear, a necessity now that she has just a few minutes until she has to address the crowd and live-mix the end-of-the-night jam. The remix is one she’d been working on in the studio for a while, and she could tell from the tingles that shot through her spine that after almost two weeks of honing it in, she’d finally found the right combination of beats and effects. It was a tall order trying to make a Lana Del Rey song less melancholy and more carpe diem, but Beca is so confident that her final product will melt minds that she decided earlier in the day, before she even set foot in the club, that it would be the night’s final selection.
She focuses, meticulously preparing every sample she needs. When she’s positive everything is ready to go, she chances a glimpse at the dance floor; the dance floor where her friends have upped the content rating again, closely gyrating their hips in low, wide stances. Beca quickly averts her eyes, not wanting to risk losing composure again, then straightens her spine in a way that would make Aubrey Posen proud. (“Stop slouching, you can’t take proper breaths with your shoulders hunched, Beca.”) She draws in a long inhale before gradually fading out the song until just the bassline is repeating. There’s a quiet static as she powers on the mixing board’s microphone, and she looks out to see all eyes in the building fixed on her, an anticipatory energy thrumming through the crowd. With a carefully crafted smirk, Beca leans into the mic.
“Heyyyy, Friday,” she croons, receiving enthusiastic whoops and cheers. “It’s just about midnight, which means it’s time to throw our middle fingers in the air, cuz fuck this workweek, it’s the freakin’ weekend!”
Beca feels, as she does every Friday, incredibly cheesy talking to hundreds of people like a total dude-bro, but she knows from the rowdy applause that they eat it up. Tonight it’s especially worth it to see an excitable Chloe jumping up and down like a cheerleader with two middle fingers for pom-poms, making what Beca assumes is the same high-pitched squeal that breaks her eardrums every goddamn time. (“Beca!!! *squee* My full range is back! *squeeeeeeee*” “Ouch, dude, seriously?! I can tell.”) She chuckles quietly at Chloe’s antics until the commotion dies down, then speaks again.
“Alright, alright, we’re gonna close it out with a Beca ‘Effin’ exclusive, and tonight’s remix is dropping fresh right here at Flip-Off!” Beca waits through the obligatory pause, letting the audience react, before continuing.
“Now this track says we’re born to die, and it’s not wrong, but we might as well live it up while we’re here, am I right?!”
Beca’s sentiment is greeted with a roar of assent, and as she waits for the din to simmer, she clicks off the mixing board’s microphone and lifts her headphones from her neck. Tapping a button on her laptop and covering one ear with its earphone, she hears the track’s intro sync with the steady bassline, then flips down the small microphone attached to the headset and switches it on.
“Okay, here we go, last song. DJ B.Mitch always bringing it to you live, this is ‘Born to Die’.”
Beca layers in a supplemental beat, bobbing her head to keep track of the new rhythm, and takes a deep breath as she keys up the sample for the first verse. Rich vocals blend with complementary effects, and Beca’s own voice hums in harmony through the headset’s microphone. She’s still building the mood of the song, so she casts a glance out to gauge the crowd response, but again, as was the case all night, all she can see is Chloe.
Chloe, standing stock still, mouth agape.
Chloe, looking up with eyes bulging, full of surprise.
Chloe, the best friend Beca may have forgotten to tell about ‘DJ B.Mitch’ and her notorious ‘live-mixes’.
It was an inadvertent omission on her part, and while normally an oversight like that would throw Beca off her game, she’s so dialed in that Chloe’s reaction doesn’t even faze her. She watches as Stacie prods Chloe back into action, admiring how easily Chloe’s hips resume rocking to the beat, and if Beca sings her next line of ‘ahh’s through a genuinely affectionate smile, well she’d deny that to the grave.
The last song on a Friday night is something Beca eagerly anticipates every week. Through four years with the Bellas, she kind of developed into a live performance junkie, and these live-mixes give her exactly the rush she’s looking for. She’s in her element when she’s multi-tasking; the musicality of beat matching, effect layering, and live harmonizing all at once comes as naturally to Beca as breathing, and she quickly carved out her niche in the L.A. club scene with her fresh take on mixing. Not so long ago, she felt wholly unoriginal, and now her ability to integrate four years of a cappella experience into her mixes is what makes her unique. She records samples of her own vocals in-studio, then harmonizes live throughout the song while working the turntables, and it’s an experience that can’t be replicated anywhere else. Beca’s greatest successes have always come when she has most dared to be different, and while she doesn’t aspire to become a famous DJ, her handiwork is helping get her name out in the music production world, so she pours everything she has into these live-mixes.
Nimble fingers mix and match beats and effects, vocal acrobatics fill in the rest, and every time Beca peeks up at the crowd, they are absolutely thrashing, dancing like they feel the music in their bones. Stacie and Chloe are right there with them, the latter currently with her hands in her hair, flinging wild curls around with abandon. Beca is mindful not to watch Chloe for more than a second or two, knowing how easily her friend’s rocking hips can send her spiralling out of control, but when the song eventually reaches the subdued section before the final chorus, Beca dares to hold her gaze. Chloe is now swaying lightly, but her expression is heavy, flashing with more emotions than Beca is equipped to decipher. Among the many, she thinks she can pick out ‘awe’ and ‘pride’, and possibly ‘charmed’, because Chloe’s smile is easy, but her breathing is labored, so maybe ‘charmed’ isn’t quite the right word, but it makes Beca’s mouth twitch up at the corners anyway.
Beca’s favorite part of the whole mix, the part that never fails to flood her veins with ice, is about to hit, so she locks eyes with Chloe and readies her hands. With a flick of her wrist, the bass drops deep as the music crescendos, strings soaring high, and a gratifying chill courses through Beca’s body at the contrast. Fingers moving across the board on autopilot, Beca watches as Chloe screws her eyes shut, pausing to take in every sensation, lips parted slightly with wonder, palms open at her sides as if receiving the energy of the vibrations. Roaming lights reflect off Chloe’s glistening skin in just the right way, and Beca thinks she shimmers brighter than any star in the sky. If Chloe is a sun, then Beca’s her Earth, held in perfect orbit, gleaning life from her warmth.
As the chorus carries on, Beca sees the music move Chloe once more, her head and hips rocking gently with the beat. The ice in Beca’s blood starts to thaw, replaced by a familiar warmth the longer she watches Chloe dance through the song’s outro. The orchestra of sound in the background cuts out, leaving just a melodical repetition over a soft beat until the music fades. The crowd thunders its approval, but her eyes seek out the one opinion that truly matters. Chloe is ferociously clapping her hands with an awestruck smile, but her eyes shimmer proudly, and Beca feels the grin split across her face before she speaks into the mic a final time.
“B.Mitch out, good night!”
On a typical Friday, Beca would have stayed at the club after her set to grab a few drinks, maybe dance a little if Stacie was there, but they call it a night because Chloe has to re-pack the belongings she had scattered around Beca’s apartment throughout the week (“It’s called ‘making myself at home’, Becs.”), and Stacie had switched to the early shift in order to even come tonight (“The things I do for you, Mitchell…”). When their Uber driver arrives, she and Chloe part ways with Stacie and head back to Beca’s place. The ten minute ride is filled with Chloe’s animated chatter, alternating between gushing about Beca’s set and reminiscing about other memories from her visit. The conversation is ninety percent Chloe and ten percent Beca, but Beca is one hundred percent okay with this, soaking in every last ray of Chloe’s sunshine before she leaves tomorrow.
After tipping the driver, they enter Beca’s building, navigating the stairs to Beca’s second story apartment. As they climb, percussion fills the stairwell, the thump of Beca’s boots a bass drum to the clacking snare of Chloe’s heels. Beca smiles internally at the spontaneous beat, and her brain is already at work composing a simple corresponding melody. Beca fiddles for her key at the door, and before she can even get it to the keyhole, Chloe has her heels off, straps dangling on the tips of her fingers, bare feet bouncing lightly on the squishy rubber ‘Unwelcome’ mat Fat Amy had given Beca as a ‘housecooling’ gift. (“I don’t know why anyone in L.A. would want to warm their house, that’d be like a Tasmanian tree skink thinking, yeah, I’m pretty warm and could keep basking here on this rock, but that tree over there is on fire, soooo… anyways, here’s your present, ‘cause, ahh, you kind of don’t welcome people...”)
The lock finally clicks free, and Beca has barely cracked the door open when Chloe charges past her into the kitchen, proclaiming, “It’s time for a celebratory shot!”
Beca secures all the locks behind her, listening to the soles of Chloe’s feet slap across the tiled floor.
“And what exactly are we celebrating?” Beca inquires, turning to cautiously eyeball her friend opening the top cupboard where Beca keeps the good stuff.
Chloe produces the rather pricey bottle of whiskey Beca’s old boss had given her as a good luck present before she departed Residual Heat Atlanta. Beca has never opened the bottle, but the expectant grin on Chloe’s face tells her that that’s going to change.
“A successful Spring Break? Your aca-mazing DJ set?” Chloe suggests, pouring the golden brown liquid into Beca’s two tallest shot glasses until it bulges above the brim, threatening to spill over.
“Easy there, dude,” Beca starts, quickly traversing the kitchen to rescue the bottle from over-eager hands. Beca twists the cap closed as Chloe carefully slides over one of the thin columns, filled precariously to the top. Beca accepts with a hint of a smile, but not before emphasizing, “One shot. This whiskey is for sipping, Beale.”
When Chloe acknowledges her with a smug wink, Beca just casts her eyes downward with a bark of laughter, shaking her head as her previous hint of a smile becomes a full-blown real one. She looks back up to see a playfulness in her friend’s eyes, and it tugs at something in her chest knowing that Chloe is flying back to Atlanta tomorrow. The sense of loss is real; prior to this week, she hadn’t seen Chloe in the flesh since moving to L.A., and there’s something to be said for how seamlessly Chloe integrated herself into Beca’s daily routine in the few days she spent here. Sure, there are SnapChats and video calls and they’ll keep up with each other’s daily lives with ease, but it’s only just now hitting Beca how much she’s missed Chloe’s physical presence. A pang of regret strikes as Beca briefly reflects on how she kind of sucks at this friendship thing; on how she should have invited Chloe to visit, or flown out to visit her, a whole lot sooner than over half a year after hugging goodbye at the airport. Recognizing her thoughts are taking way too wistful a turn in what should be a light-hearted affair, Beca does her best to mentally shake it off, curling her fingers around the glassware in front of her as if to steady herself.
“So really, what should we drink to? Your last night here in the City of Angels?” Oh well, she tried.
“I said celebratory shot, silly. Spring Break being over is nothing to celebrate,” Chloe retorts with a dismissive wave of her hand before jutting her lip out in an exaggerated fake pout.
Immediately Beca’s eyes are drawn to Chloe’s mouth, where her front teeth are now worrying her lower lip in thought, presumably trying to come up with a reason worthy of ‘celebrating’ with such a premium shot. Beca is still fixated on Chloe’s lips when they break free from their hold into an affectionate closed-mouth smile. Eyes at the same elevation for once, Beca levels her gaze to Chloe’s, which seems to carry a fond, almost nostalgic expression, and it prompts Beca into speaking.
“You got something?”
Chloe nods, expression unchanging as she raises her overfilled glass with care, Beca following suit.
“To the best friend I’ve ever had.”
With Chloe’s words, that previous pull in Beca’s chest redoubles, and while normally she would make fun of her friend for cheering to something so sappy, Beca finds reciprocating words tumbling out of her mouth.
“To the best friend I’ve ever had.”
They raise their glasses in unison, but Beca pauses because Chloe has done the same, rim resting lightly against her lower lip. She can read it in the fine lines written across Chloe’s forehead: there’s something else the girl wants to add.
“I really mean it, Beca.”
And Beca knows she really does, just as Beca really means it when she says it back.
“Me too, Chlo.”
She notices Chloe’s smile inch wider before red curls are thrown backwards to drain the shot, Beca taking hers not a moment later. The expensive alcohol burns her throat in an almost-pleasant way, and while swirling her tongue around the interior to ensure not a drop of quality goodness goes to waste, Beca hears the solid clunk of glass being placed on the counter with vigor. She returns her head to eye-level in time to catch the satisfied grin illuminating Chloe’s features, all traces of prior nostalgia washed away.
“And now that we did our shot,” Chloe declares, “it’s officially ‘potty’ time.”
She finishes with a loudly whispered cheer and a mock-jubilant pump of her fists, and Beca groans at Chloe’s pun, but chuckles internally as her giggling friend scurries out of the kitchen to the bathroom across the apartment. Beca’s been sober all night and Chloe hasn’t had a drink in hours, so she grabs two tumblers from the cabinet, filling each a little more than halfway with top-shelf liquor before returning the bottle to its rightful home.
Beca is still alone in the kitchen savoring her whiskey when she hears the crackle of speakers turning on in the living room. She takes a final sip, leisurely swishing it around in her mouth before abandoning the two drinks, Chloe’s untouched, to investigate the source of the noise.
She peers out the doorway, noting a crouched Chloe fiddling with the phone now docked in Beca’s sound system. Familiar strains ring out, and when the beat kicks in alongside the breathy “Why? Who me?”, an intrigued Beca rounds the corner, leaning her shoulder and temple on the doorframe while her arms fold loosely across her chest. Beca watches as Chloe rises to her feet, unaware of her observer, and starts moving her body to the music. Without warning, Beca is thrust back into the club with the same song and the same dancing and--
--Chloe’s eyes catch hers in the doorway, and Beca thinks that Chloe might be too focused on her own guilty face to notice Beca’s because the girl gives her a sheepish grin. Beca quickly takes the upper hand she’s been given, lifting her eyebrow in a questioning arch, to which a shrugging Chloe replies, “It’s been stuck in my head since the club, but I love this song.” Pausing her explanation for a breath, she continues, “I love what you did with it more, though,” before turning away, still dancing.
It’s Beca’s turn to smile shyly, never good at accepting praise. Instead of responding she keeps watching Chloe move in time with the rhythm, full of the same grace and certainty and something that Beca couldn’t put her finger on at the club, and still can’t put her finger on now.
Beca is content to just watch her friend dance, but the warbling “sometimes love is not enough” from the speakers catches her off-guard, jarring her attention in a direction she is not prepared for. Maybe she’s still feeling the echoes of her prior melancholy because thoughts of her failed relationship with Jesse flood the forefront of her brain, amplifying the notion that she’s terrible at maintaining any type of relationship. The uneasiness must show on her face though, because Chloe has joined in singing with the lyrics, imploring her to “try to have fun in the meantime”, and the soothing tone of her friend’s voice pulls Beca out of her own head.
She makes eye contact across the room with Chloe, who sings louder with an encouraging smile, “Come and take a walk on the wild side,” then halts her sing-along to mouth, “Come on! Dance,” fingers waving almost frantically as she gestures for Beca to join her.
With a sly look, Beca picks up the lyrics, cheekily singing at her friend, “You like your girls insane,” before letting the beat carry her feet over toward a wildly grinning Chloe. Beca moves with just a touch of reservation though, and Chloe promptly calls her out on it.
“Stop thinking. Just dance.”
So she does, releasing any inhibitions and insecurities with each shake of her hips and nod of her head. Both girls resume their singing at the next verse, smiling at the unplanned duet and harmonizing their voices with practiced familiarity. And if they sing a little louder because of it, well, Beca thinks her neighbors can forgive her this one instance.
She stops singing once the chorus hits and just throws herself entirely into dancing; it’s liberating, finally washing away all the messy thoughts that clogged her head. She fills the empty space with music, mentally adding the extra beats and modifications from her remix as the bridge takes over. And Beca tries to not think about Chloe, tries to not watch Chloe dancing beside her, but her eyes are lured away by Chloe’s persistent hips, which are moving a lot faster than they should be for the laid-back tempo. It momentarily strikes Beca as odd; Chloe is never off-beat, yet somehow the movement is actually working. And that’s when Beca realizes it’s because Chloe is in time with the beat, just not the one from the speakers. Instead, Chloe’s hips seem to sync perfectly with the beat playing out in Beca’s head, the modified one from her remix. She wants to write it off as coincidence, but her skin prickles when she picks up on Chloe’s humming, because sure enough it’s one of Beca’s harmonies, one Chloe had never heard until tonight at the club.
Beca wills herself to keep dancing through her astonishment, but when the music slows, time slows with it. A handful of seconds stretch like an hour as Beca’s eyes linger on everything that makes Chloe Chloe: the ladybug tattoo on her inner wrist, cute and playful (like Chloe), the faint scar on her brow, slightly off-center (like Chloe); the red of her hair, loud and boisterous (like Chloe), the blue of her eyes, glittering bright (like Chloe). Every detail defines Chloe Beale, and Beca reverently commits each one to memory the way Chloe did Beca’s remix.
Beca is so enthralled she doesn’t initially notice she’s harmonizing out loud with Chloe again, and as the song swells into its final chorus, Beca gets swept up in it. She doesn’t mean to look Chloe in the eye when she sings “Let me kiss you hard in the pouring rain,” but she does, and she swears she sees Chloe’s pupils grow incrementally larger because Chloe is looking right back at her with a pensive expression. An electrified tension presides over the moment, but Chloe cuts it with a small smile, continuing on with “You like your girls insane” even though Beca has already stopped singing. Beca recovers, rejoining their voices for the remainder of the song as their movements reduce to gentle sways, tapering off with the music.
As the playlist takes a few seconds to shuffle, silence pervades the room, save for the subdued panting of each girl catching her breath. Eventually, bass tones with muted drumming hum from the speakers, soon accompanied by short, tinkling piano notes and ethereal background vocals. Beca doesn’t recognize the song, and is opening her mouth to comment on such when Chloe gasps.
“Oh! This is one of my… favorites,” she finishes with a weak smile, the word ‘favorites’ emerging a bit strangled as her cheeks flush.
Beca’s mind is piecing together Chloe’s strange inflection, coupling her intensifying blush with the building atmosphere of the song, and now her wide eyes are shifting away and she’s biting her lip and oh my god, this is one of her--
--Beca doesn’t have a chance to process further because Chloe is facing away from her, dancing again, the same slow and sensuous rocking of her hips that had transfixed Beca at the club. The train carrying Beca’s thoughts derails completely; she’s immobile, and she knows she must be staring because Chloe turns back around and dances closer. Curious eyebrows raise in a silent invitation before furrowing in concentration, lids fluttering shut. Husky vocals follow, expertly matching the pre-chorus melody.
Beca, too, closes her eyes and starts to feel for the vibe of the song, letting the heady beat guide her body’s motion while Chloe’s low lilt paints every corner of her subconscious. Her eyes snap open at sudden contact, and Chloe’s smooth palms are skimming down Beca’s forearms to the backs of her hands, directing them to settle just above the curve of Chloe’s hips. Some part of Beca fleetingly recognizes the lyrics befit the circumstances -- “Put your hands on my waist, do it softly” -- and she instinctively complies.
A steady hand presses across to Beca’s collarbone, then glides upwards, leaving in its wake charged goosebumps along Beca’s neck. Beca’s hold is loose as Chloe turns her body around, hand reaching its final destination when it weaves through delicate hairs at the base of Beca’s skull. The soft junction between Beca’s neck and shoulder is covered in wavy auburn as Chloe’s head drops backwards, eyes closed, chin lifting toward the ceiling. Beca’s pulse skips erratically with the song’s staccato drumline when Chloe’s free hand slides around, digits descending into Beca’s back pocket. With her head growing foggier by the second, Beca’s fingers slip lower to grip at Chloe’s still-rocking hips in a desperate attempt to ground herself from the cloudiness permeating her consciousness.
This is Chloe, her co-captain, her best friend, yet Beca’s entire body is alight in rolling copper flames, the most scorching of which lick low in her gut.
The heat of Chloe’s body moving against her front is disorienting, so she digs her nails more roughly into Chloe’s hipbones, Beca’s only lifeline from the turbulence inside. Pressed so closely, Beca actually feels Chloe’s response to her grasp: Chloe’s muscles twitch in a shiver that runs the length of her spine, punctuated by clenching fingernails inside Beca’s pocket. The unexpected groping startles Beca’s own hips into a reflexive forward jerk, and the song appropriately echoes ‘innocence lost’. Beca would justify her actions as simply dancing with Chloe in the same suggestive manner Stacie did, except she can tell there’s something different about this because it’s them, Beca-and-Chloe, and they’ve always been different. At this point, Beca is pretty sure Chloe knows how affected she is, and she’d be embarrassed about being turned on by her best friend if she wasn’t fairly certain she wasn’t the only one feeling this way.
The hand at her rear encourages Beca’s rogue hips forward again, coaxing them into small movements against Chloe’s backside. ‘Fairly certain’ turns into ‘definitely certain’ when Chloe joins the motion, their hips gently circling as one to the beat pulsing in the background. Beca feels the heat of Chloe’s breath drift past her cheek as she starts faintly singing the second verse, something about gods and monsters and angels, and then without warning, that heat is brushing against the shell of her ear to growl “Looking to get fucked hard”. The words send an almost painful jolt to Beca’s core, her eyes slam shut, and she doesn’t know how much more dancing with Chloe she can take before she completely combusts. There’s an inferno raging inside Beca, spilling out to the surface and singeing her skin, and it’s too much and too little all at once.
Beca needs something to douse the flames, and Chloe seems to sense this because she lifts her head from Beca’s shoulder and withdraws her hand from Beca’s pocket. It’s a momentary reprieve though, because Chloe rotates in Beca’s grasp still murmuring song lyrics, still rocking her hips, still fingering strands of hair. The hand removed from Beca’s pocket joins the one already at the back of her head, Chloe’s arms draping over Beca’s shoulders, pulling her close until their foreheads touch. Whispered words wash over Beca’s face, telling her “You’ve got that medicine I need”, and Beca’s breath hitches at the implication. Beca tries to get her bearings, blinking open her eyes only to see stormy blue staring back. Chloe’s pupils are absolutely blown, an all-consuming black that grows darker as the lyrics beg “Straight to the heart, please”.
By some grace, Chloe’s eyelids seal off the darkness before Beca is absorbed completely. Beca’s eyes drop in relief, but are instantly captivated by Chloe’s lips, glossy and dexterous, precisely forming every softly sung syllable. Beca watches with rapt attention as they stretch around the e’s and curl around the o’s, but she loses focus when a pink tongue flashes from behind white teeth to affirm “Baby, that’s alright with me”. She shuts her eyes, unable to handle any more, and takes a shaky inhale. Chloe has stopped singing, chorus left hanging in the background, and warm exhales mix in the minute space between them. Chloe’s breaths are Beca’s breaths, and the haze builds with every puff, surrounding Beca’s senses. There’s haziness in how Chloe’s forehead leans against hers, there’s haziness in how Chloe’s elbows press down on her shoulders, there’s haziness in how Chloe’s hips move slowly with hers, never missing a beat.
Beca thinks she could float in this haze forever, but then singing lips graze her own, muttering “Fuck yeah, give it to me”, and her eyes go wide. Before Beca can even register what’s happening, Chloe’s eyes are there, half-lidded but full of meaning when she whispers “What I truly want”. And rather than losing herself to the haze, the opposite happens. It’s in the haziness of dancing like this with Chloe that Beca finally has a moment of clarity, realizing that she and her closest friend have been dancing around something for the last four-and-a-half years. And after watching Chloe all night, after wanting Chloe all night, she defines that something the only way she can.
Closing her eyes, Beca slants her chin forward and presses ahead, stealing hushed lyrics off Chloe’s lips. There’s a momentary stillness, neither mouth moving against the other, reveling in the soft touch of feminine lips until Chloe presses back with everything she has: her lips, her forehead, her entire frame. Chloe’s response validates everything Beca’s been feeling; there’s a distinct intimacy to their actions, developed over years of closeness, a familiarity in their kisses, despite no previous history. Their lips part briefly before coming together over and over, slick and sweet and savory. Chloe kisses like she dances, the same sure sensuality in her movements, the same something that Beca’s grown addicted to. So the way Chloe slides her lips against Beca’s while sliding fingers through the length of Beca’s hair? It’s a natural choreography.
Beca is awash in sensation -- of Chloe’s lips upon hers, of Chloe’s hands in her hair, of Chloe’s body brushing against her -- and it would have been enough, except Chloe’s mouth parts a little wider. Beca feels the tip of Chloe’s tongue flick at her lower lip and almost snaps, but the weight of Chloe’s elbows atop her shoulders holds her steady, so Beca clutches her hands further up Chloe’s back to bring their chests closer. Chloe’s mouth opens again, but this time Beca’s ready; she darts her tongue forward to meet Chloe halfway, and she can feel her smile at the reciprocation. The tips of their tongues meet with every unhurried movement of their lips, and if Beca thought Chloe’s kisses were sensual before, well now they’re just downright sexy. A tiny part of Beca still can’t believe she’s thinking all these things about Chloe, having all these reactions to Chloe, but a much larger part is screaming at her to ‘GET IT, GIRL’, so she yields to the voice that sounds suspiciously like Stacie and pushes ahead.
Kiss after kiss, their tongues gently stroke, and Beca feels Chloe’s fingers doing the same through her hair, blunt nails soothing against her scalp. Beca is sinking solidly into their rhythm when Chloe detaches her lips and pulls away, but the fingers at the back of Beca’s head fist firmly into her hair. Before Beca can even open her eyes, those fingers yank, tilting her head back with authority, and Beca releases a guttural noise of approval. Balmy lips resume contact just beneath her chin, and Beca gasps, holding her breath while those lips slowly kiss their way up her jawline. Beca shudders as a nose brushes past her ear, and when sharp teeth nip at the sensitive spot behind her earlobe, she lets out a ragged exhale. Beca feels Chloe release her hair, and a warm gust is her only warning before Chloe’s lips reattach to her own, kissing her soundly with a new sense of urgency. Chloe’s fingertips skim down Beca’s front, stoking the embers, reigniting flames in Beca’s chest. The same bold fingers hook through Beca’s belt loops and tug her even closer, Chloe canting forward until their bodies are flush together.
Beca draws back from the kiss just a fraction, opening her eyes to search for some hint of where Chloe wants to take this. A low rush of arousal surges through when she sees the intensity with which Chloe is staring back, and then Chloe is very deliberately nudging a bare thigh between Beca’s legs, pressing hotly into her groin. Chloe has her in check, daring her to make the next move count, but every move Beca sees leads to checkmate, so she goes with her gut. The inevitability of the events about to unfold keeps her gaze steady; locked blue eyes never waver as Beca’s hands drop down Chloe’s back, ghosting along Chloe’s sides until the left is gripping the belt at her waist, the right continuing until it’s reached the hem of her dress.
Beca’s heart is hammering in her chest, but her hand is as steady as her gaze when she slips her palm under loose material and up the back of the thigh that’s so enticingly pressed to her center. Beca knows she’s prone to bouts of ill-advised overconfidence (see: ‘Bulletproof’, 2012), but in this moment, molded so intimately to the greatest friend she’s ever known, Beca has never been more sure of herself. Chloe Beale is the one person she can trust without hesitation; a girl who seeped in through the cracks and then burst through the holes of Beca’s porous defenses, only to replace them with the comfort and security of an impenetrable pillow fort. She realizes now she not only feels safe with Chloe and cared for with Chloe, but at home with Chloe, and she knows she’d be a fool to not follow the path that leads home. The long fingers flexing at Beca’s hips make it clear that Chloe is as invested in this as she is, wants this as badly as she does, so Beca bids farewell to the confines of a questionably platonic friendship and ventures toward something new.
Her forefinger strokes the curve of Chloe’s bottom before she palms the thigh below it with intent. Looking Chloe square in the eye, Beca gives her hips a slow, purposeful roll, dragging herself along firm muscle. The seam of her jeans creates a friction that has her core throbbing, and her eyelids fall closed unwittingly as she lets Chloe’s strong hands guide her down, and up, and down. Beca’s ability to function on her own crumbles when warm, wet lips attach to her neck, sucking feverishly at her pulse point to the cadence of up-and-down. One of them whimpers and the other groans, and Beca can’t even distinguish which sound came from whom because there’s a buzz in her ears growing louder with every pass of Chloe’s thigh. And as she gives herself over completely to Chloe’s teeth scraping against her skin, Beca concurs with the lyrics, that this is heaven, this is what she truly wants.
And yes, it’s also innocence lost, but what Beca found instead feels an awful lot like... love.