Chapter Text
A mocking electronic marimba jolts a weary Beca Mitchell into reluctant consciousness. She fumbles her way out from the center of the mattress, swatting blindly at the touchscreen until the incessant noise of her phone alarm finally ceases. With a petulant sigh, she squints at the display to see a bleary 6:30 AM bathing her in harsh white light. It’s a full hour earlier than she would normally be getting up on a Friday, but the artist she’s collaborating with is on a tight schedule, which means Beca’s typical 9-to-5 work day is shifting up an hour.
6:30 AM. That makes it ten weeks, five days, eighteen hours, and thirty minutes since Beca was bid a dramatic farewell with a cinematic liplock in the middle of an airport lobby. Ten weeks, five days, eighteen hours, and twenty-four minutes since Beca froze mid-stride in the parking lot of said airport because her perpetually delayed heart clenched in a way that could only mean one thing: she was falling in love with her best friend, Chloe Beale. Mentally chastising her traitorous brain for cataloguing every moment to the minute, Beca rolls back into a vast desert of sheets and blankets -- ten weeks, five days, six hours, and zero minutes since her queen-sized bed suddenly became far too large for one person. Dammit. She squeezes her eyes shut in a vain attempt to actually snooze for the next nine minutes, but her meandering thoughts inevitably stray to a vivid memory of the only morning this bed could claim two occupants.
A tickling sensation low across her abdomen coaxes Beca out of a dreamless slumber. Eyes still closed, she tries to place the source of the feeling. A finger traces the waistband of her underwear, drawing lazy lines back and forth. A palm ghosts closely behind, leaving goosebumps in its wake. A thumb shallowly dips into her belly button, causing a reflexive quiver of abdominal muscles. With that last reaction, Beca knows there’s no use in pretending to be asleep anymore, so she peeks an eye open and glances to her left.
Her gaze is first drawn to shiny blue eyes, clear and more awake than they have any right to be after the evening their owner just had. Chloe’s head is propped up by her right arm, bent at the elbow with her fingers loosely woven into her hair. There’s a soft, closed-lipped smile adorning her face, and Beca allows the corners of her own lips to curl up in return. Chloe doesn’t say anything, just smiles a little wider, left hand never stopping its repetitive path across Beca’s skin. Beca readjusts to her side, fully facing Chloe, whose fingers trail over Beca’s hipbone and around her side, stroking their way back and forth over new territory.
Beca blinks open her other eye, now noticing how the sunlight filtering through the cracks in the blinds makes Chloe’s eyes not merely shine, but sparkle. Being only a half foot away, Beca can pick out individual shades of blue in a mosaic of light and dark, each fleck of color reflecting the sunlight more brilliantly back regardless of hue, reminding her of calm crystal waters off the shore of some fictional remote island, pure and untainted by civilization. Beca realizes her inner thoughts must have crept onto her features when Chloe’s eyes crinkle at the corners with her growing smile, white teeth flashing as she sucks a breath in between them. With playfulness dancing amongst the sparkles, Chloe breaks their early morning serenity.
“You’re so cute when you’re sleeping. How did I not know this?”
Beca withdraws from her reverie with a roll of her eyes, huffing, “Shut up, Beale,” before stretching her neck across the space between them to silence Chloe’s giggles with a kiss.
It’s a simple, solid press of the lips, and even though Beca’s eyelids flutter closed again, she can feel the impact of Chloe’s response against her mouth as the girl moves her lips ever-so-slightly against Beca’s, exhaling a contented sigh through her nose.
After a long moment, Beca pulls away from the kiss, returning her head to the pillow only a few inches away from Chloe’s. Her throat is dry and cottony; she swallows in an attempt to moisten it, but her voice comes out as a raspy croak when she greets, “Morning.”
“Good morning to you, too,” Chloe chirps, way too chipper, cheerful, and cohesive for someone who spent more of the night getting laid than getting sleep.
Beca’s eyelids are still laden with fatigue, but she summons the strength to crack the left one open again, mumbling, “What time is it?”
“Doesn’t matter. Early-ish.”
Except that it does matter, because Chloe has to catch a flight at two, so they have be at the airport by noon, and the way Chloe is now sweeping her fingers below Beca’s waistband, digits drifting lower with each swipe under the elastic, is definitely not going to help them get there on time. And as much as Beca wants more than anything for Chloe to stay here in bed with her indefinitely, she is not going to be the one responsible for Chloe missing her flight.
“Ungh, Chloeee,” she groans, dragging out the last vowel as she rolls herself completely atop the girl.
Beca’s forearms pin Chloe’s to her sides, effectively trapping the wandering hand in Beca’s panties before it can creep any further south. She frames her knees to either side of Chloe’s thighs and drops her torso down, perfectly molding with the silhouette below. Aside from panties, both girls are clad only in loose flannels from Beca’s extensive collection; upon their naked retreat to the bedroom for some shut-eye, Chloe had immediately claimed Beca’s favorite purple-and-blue plaid button-down, leaving Beca with her trusty old red-and-black one. The lower buttons on Chloe’s had been left undone in her early morning laziness, so Beca can feel the rippling skin of Chloe’s abs, twitching with anticipation as Beca ducks her head to engage Chloe in a lingering, languid kiss.
She allows her full weight to settle onto Chloe when she lifts her forearms, freeing both sets of hands to roam without restriction. Chloe’s immediately seek Beca’s waistband again, this time slipping fingers under the elastic around Beca’s backside, groping wantonly. Beca’s fingers do work of their own, splaying out beneath the open fabric along the sides of Chloe’s rib cage, gliding over peaks and dipping into grooves between the bones as they embark on their journey north. When they reach the soft underside of Chloe’s breasts, they detour, pinkies skimming the curve as Beca pushes herself up slightly. Her palms converge in the valley between Chloe’s breasts, and Beca can feel the thump of Chloe’s heartbeat as its pace quickens from the continued stimulation. Beca momentarily draws back, voice husky as she speaks.
“You.”
Kiss.
“Are.”
Nibble.
“Insatiable.”
Beca punctuates her declaration by crashing her mouth forcefully into Chloe’s, teeth clacking with the collision before Beca seizes a plump lower lip with an unyielding bite. Chloe squirms at the action, so Beca skirts her hands up and across Chloe’s clavicle to hold the girl’s shoulders down before gently pulling the ensnared flesh out and away, dragging it between her teeth until it trembles with Chloe’s whimper. When Beca disengages, Chloe expresses her disapproval with a buck of her hips and a whine; Beca presses her palms down more firmly, but hovers her body close enough that the swell of their breasts brush together with each of Chloe’s ragged inhales.
“And I.”
Nip.
“Have.”
Peck.
“To pee.”
With a short, saccharine smooch, she pushes off Chloe’s shoulders to dismount her, landing on her feet rather gracefully and strutting toward the bathroom. Before exiting the room, she pauses briefly in the doorway, turning back to admire the labored rise and fall of Chloe’s barely-covered chest. The girl has an arm thrown over her flushed face, the dark plaid of the sleeve contrasting with the bright pink of Chloe’s skin, but complementing the small, purpling bruises visible along the column of Chloe’s throat.
With a smirk, Beca turns from the doorway, continuing her trek to the bathroom. When she hears Chloe calling out from the bedroom, her smirk only grows.
“Beca Effin’ Mitchell, you are a goddamn tease!”
Any further reminiscence is interrupted by her forever-taunting snooze alarm. This time Beca sits up, turns the alarm off, and runs a hand through an unruly mane. Cracking her neck, she catches a glimpse of herself in the mirror; she’s wearing an old Barden t-shirt from Chloe’s freshman year. The heathered gray cotton is soft and well-worn, and she can tell it’s one of Chloe’s favorites not only by the cracked green screen-print of the giant Barden ‘B’, but also because Chloe would wear it regularly around the Bellas house even in her seventh year. Beca can’t help but think Chloe left it here on purpose, especially since Chloe’s visit is the last time Beca remembers seeing her own favorite shirt, that purple-and-blue plaid flannel now permanently etched in her brain as an unbuttoned accoutrement to tousled red hair and pale, marked skin.
Beca reaches over to detach her phone from its charger, making note of the time before punching in her lock code. 6:40 AM: Ten weeks, five days, eighteen hours, and forty minutes since she last tasted the lips she can now only feel in her dreams. A familiar tightness in her chest tugs, as it does every time she mentally tallies their separation. How is it that the absurdly prolonged absence of physical contact between last summer and Spring Break could pass by with almost zero recognition from Beca, but now she is acutely aware, down to the exact minute, of how long she’s been deprived of Chloe’s touch? When Chloe had left, she’d promised she would visit L.A. as soon as school was out, but that was well before she found out in early June that the school was slashing funds from the arts budget and Chloe’s position was getting cut. So rather than rushing out to L.A. to spend time with Beca when school ended two weeks ago, Chloe has been dedicating her days to applying for teaching jobs and attending interviews.
It’s now the first of July, and Beca knows it wouldn’t be fair of her to press her friend on when she’ll be making her way out here, but Beca’s desire for Chloe’s company is manifesting itself as a physical ailment, to the point that she thinks a piece of her heart might have torn itself from her chest, abandoning her in favor of Chloe, leaving Beca’s insides jagged and incomplete. She flips through icons on her phone, checking her messages, her SnapChat, her Instagram, anything she can think of to help dull the ache in her chest because it is way too early to be feeling like this. But there’s nothing new from Chloe; in fact, Chloe’s social media has been unusually quiet since school let out. Rationally, Beca knows that things are different now that it’s summer, with Chloe no longer getting ready for school while uploading pictures of outfits or breakfast or coffee, but that doesn’t mean Beca is any less eager to live these moments with her best friend vicariously through words and images.
Beca resolves to not let it get her down as she shuffles her way up the hall to the bathroom while flicking through her Chloe-less Instagram feed, feeling her mood start to lift as she scrolls through posts from her other friends. She rolls her eyes affectionately at Emily’s artsy photo of her and Benji’s feet side-by-side on some beach, allows a fond smile at Cynthia Rose’s unfiltered snapshot of a spectacular Maine sunrise, and then snorts loudly at Amy’s picture of Bumper drenched in llama spit at a Tasmanian zoo. While it’s still a little strange to see nothing from Chloe on there for the past week, it’s even stranger not to see something, anything, from the self-appointed Social Media Queen, Stacie Conrad. This piques Beca’s curiosity, but when she’s talked to her recently, Stacie hasn’t mentioned anything being out of the ordinary, so Beca shrugs it off and figures it’s none of her business anyway as she places her phone on the bathroom sink.
Of course it’s in the middle of taking care of business that a notification flashes across her lock screen. She reaches out to see it’s a SnapChat from Chloe, and quickly swipes into the app. A smile breaks free when she reads Chloe’s ‘I woke up like this’ caption, and it grows as she takes in the red waves splayed out in every direction, framing an adorable furrow of Chloe’s brow from eyes squinted shut. In this moment, she desperately wishes the embodiment of that image had been filling the emptiness of her too-large mattress instead of her phone screen, but at this point, she will take any version of Chloe she can get, even if it’s a single motionless snap. Flimsy band-aids as they were, video chats had been daily occurrences up until Chloe’s school year ended; ever since then, FaceTiming and Skyping have been reduced to messaging and phone calls, so having this actual image of Chloe makes Beca’s heart beat more wildly in her chest as she hastily screencaps the shot before the timer runs out.
Beca finishes up in the bathroom and, at the cue of her rumbling stomach, trudges to the kitchen to make some breakfast. She clicks on the front burner, locating her frying pan in the bottom cabinet and placing it atop the stove to warm. From the fridge, she fishes out two eggs and some butter. The butter seasons the interior of the pan while Beca cracks open the two eggs, dropping them expertly onto heated cast iron. After disposing of the shells, Beca returns to the stove with a spatula and begins mindlessly stirring the contents, thoughts lost in a daydream about a very specific breakfast incident.
“Hey, Chloe? You still packing? Breakfast is almost ready,” Beca calls out, scraping the spatula along the bottom of the pan to flip the scrambling eggs.
Beca is met with silence; no acknowledgement of anything she’s said.
“Chlo?” she tries again, turning to face the doorway.
And she’s greeted across the kitchen by her best friend leaning on the doorframe, worrying her lower lip between her teeth and fidgeting aimlessly with the hem of the borrowed button-down, only a pair of black-and-blue striped panties to accessorize the outfit. Taking in the sight of her favorite purple-and-blue plaid flannel billowing off the gorgeous frame of Chloe Beale in all her sexy nonchalance, Beca thinks she may have to enshrine the garment in some sort of reverent dedication to the goddess standing in her doorway.
Beca blinks once, and again, to compose herself, then addresses Chloe with a forced-casual tone.
“Oh hey, you hungry at all?”
A pause.
A smirk.
A response.
“Starving.”
Beca is not entirely sure what to make of Chloe’s inflection, or of the wink that follows, but it has her throat constricting in an alarming way. Chloe approaches as if she’s on the prowl, and Beca shuts off the burner just in case she actually is. As the girl nears, Beca notices her half-lidded eyes, vibrant but dark, and yep, Chloe is definitely sizing up Beca like a predator stalking its prey.
Chloe continues to advance, and Beca looks away to needlessly stir the congealed yellow mass in the pan.
“You want some eggs?” Beca offers, impressed with how steady she’s managed to keep her voice under the threat of Chloe’s looming presence.
After a moment passes with no verbal reply, Beca glances up to find Chloe a mere three feet away, smirk stretched more widely across her face, declining the food with a barely perceptible shake of her head.
Eyes still affixed to Chloe’s, Beca blindly places the spatula down in the pan behind her and moves a half step away from the heated stove top. Straining to swallow, she clears her throat before speaking again.
“Something else you want to eat?”
And apparently that was the cue Chloe was waiting for, because she swoops in, securing her forearms around the bare flesh below Beca’s cotton panties, and lifts. Beca instinctively wraps her arms around Chloe’s neck and her legs around Chloe’s waist, locking her ankles while her fit friend carries her the few paces to the countertop. The granite is cold against the backs of her thighs, but it’s the heat of Chloe’s front between Beca’s parted legs, pushing up against the rapidly dampening seat of her underwear, that sends shivers up Beca’s spine.
Chloe’s arms release, freeing her hands to grab Beca’s face, pulling it down into a dominating kiss. Beca is helpless to do anything but battle back with lips and teeth and tongue, and when Chloe’s hands drop from her cheeks, she thinks maybe the tide is turning in her favor. But then the fingers of those hands are at Beca’s front, prying open the top button of her flannel and shoving the collar aside, partially negating Beca’s only substantial garment of dress. Beca’s lips chase empty space when Chloe rips her mouth away to devour the fresh skin at Beca’s shoulder, nibbling her way across each of the hours-old bruises along the expanse of Beca’s collarbone.
Beca clutches both hands into silky red hair when she feels Chloe’s tongue swirl into the hollow dip above her sternum, fingers deftly undoing another button to reveal the tight, pale skin that stretches between Beca’s breasts. The balmy tip of Chloe’s tongue drags down her breastbone at a torturously slow pace, warm puffs of breath against Beca’s chest igniting a familiar fire that spreads quickly to her groin. She feels Chloe’s fingers hesitate at the next button, where Beca had thought her breasts were completely covered by flannel, but that’s no longer the case when the left edge of the fabric is nudged aside by an insistent nose, sharp teeth nipping and a hot tongue tracing the contour of the curve. Then, in a contrast of sensations, soft lips press feather-light kisses along the fleshy border of exposed curvature, causing Beca’s breath to hitch audibly.
“Ohmygod, Chlo,” Beca gasps, chest heaving as those lips smirk against her before lavishing equal attention on the other side.
And then the button pops, and Chloe’s mouth is sucking wetly at the supple flesh below the arch of Beca’s rib cage, traveling down the subtly defined groove of her abs. Beca releases her hold from Chloe’s head to brace herself on the countertop, angling her body backwards to give Chloe better access to the flat plane of Beca’s stomach.
Another button goes, and the muscles there tense as Chloe’s talented tongue rejoins the action, tasting the saltiness of Beca’s overheating skin. An inferno of steamy breath and scorching lips singe a path downwards to kiss a tender spot directly below her navel, and Beca can’t suppress the contracting wave that crashes through her core. The final button is undone, greedy lips stake their claim, and her walls throb again when Chloe’s nose dips into her belly button, exhaling while kissing the patch of skin just above her underwear.
Beca feels Chloe press a smile into her skin at the cotton barrier, baring dangerously skillful teeth that bite down on the waistband of black panties. Those teeth tease the elastic outwards and release it with a snap, followed quickly by sure fingers sliding the fabric off Beca’s hips and out from under her rear, easing the garment down trembling legs to rest around Beca’s ankles. From her crouched position between Beca’s knees, Chloe skims her palms along the tops of Beca’s thighs, and Beca can’t help but stare down at the absolutely ravenous expression on Chloe’s face.
The hands on Beca’s thighs slip around to Beca’s backside, scooting her closer to the edge of the counter. Chloe’s tongue flicks out to wet her lips before tearing her eyes from Beca’s, leveling her gaze to focus on the slick heat straight ahead.
“I know exactly what I want for breakfast, Beca.”
Hearing Chloe’s voice in her head husking the word ‘breakfast’ jerks Beca back into the present. Cheeks blazing, she looks down at the frying pan in front of her to find that what were supposed to be scrambled eggs are now something of a single continuous egg patty, severely overcooked on one side. She sighs, lightly scolding herself for letting Chloe, or mere thoughts of Chloe, result in another breakfast failure, but she chuckles thinking about how her friend had happily scarfed down the cold, slightly watery scrambled eggs that morning while making thinly veiled comments regarding their kitchen encounter. (“I have to say, Becs, I’m pretty good at scrambling eggs myself, but I’m even better at scrambling other things, don’t you agree?” “I already did enjoy my breakfast, Beca. And now I’m enjoying my brunch.”) She checks the time on her phone and starts when she realizes she has to be out of the house in less than a half hour, so she shovels barely edible eggs down her throat while she sets the coffee to brew and makes a beeline for the bathroom to get ready for work.
Later that afternoon, a well-caffeinated and well-fed Beca Mitchell tosses the remains of her lunch into the wastebasket under the table and saves the progress on her latest remix for the club. Looking up at the wall clock, she sees it’s only 1:45 PM -- ten weeks, six days... STOP IT --, so Beca takes the final fifteen minutes of her lunch hour to relax, cracking her knuckles and dropping her head to rest on the leather back of her swivel chair. After having made quick work of some mac-and-cheese leftovers at the onset of her lunch break, she had spent a solid half hour making additional tweaks to a track she calls ‘Summer Paradise Anthem’, an ambitious three-song Lana Del Rey mashup that she’ll be harmonizing with when she spins it live at the club’s Independence Day event on the fourth.
To construct the piece, she had retained handpicked thematic lines from each song, like ‘Red, white, blue’s in the sky, summer’s in the air and baby, heaven’s in your eyes’ or ‘I’m lying in the ocean singing your song’, and then used bits and pieces from other sections to splice together new phrases like ‘I’m scared that / nothing scares me anymore’ or the titular ‘s-s-summertime / paradise / anthem’, to create a sultry summer jam about lust and longing. She tries not to think about the fact that the inspiration for this all-Lana mashup comes from a very distinct source, but only the essence of Chloe Beale, beacon of all hope and happiness, could have given Beca the vision to strip away the heavy, dark implications of the three original songs, select only the lightest of phrases to transcend the darkness, and elevate the new mix into a powerful anthem of sensuality.
Her eyes slip closed as her mind analyzes the careful crafting of her mashup. As she further dissects each lyrical selection, mulling over lines like ‘high heels off, I'm feeling alive’ or ‘there's no relief, I see you in my sleep’, it becomes increasingly apparent to Beca that the primary muse behind her most successful pieces is none other than Chloe, her best-- no, more-than-best friend, her… whatever they are. After their night together, they had never talked about it; not that morning in the apartment, not that afternoon at the airport, not ever. No defining what it meant to carry their activities from the center of the living room onto the couch and into the bedroom; no declarations, no speeches, no processing. When they awoke that morning, it was carefree and comfortable, all bright eyes and smiles and sex in the kitchen and not-sex in the shower and… ohh, the shower. As if Beca needed additional memories of Chloe and a shower.
As Beca walks her empty plate to the dishwasher, her inner thighs catch with each stride, a grippy, gummy feel to the skin between her legs. She tucks her dish away in the rack and pivots on one foot, kicking the door closed behind her with the other, only to look up and see Chloe eyeing her appreciatively with a victorious smirk. Running her fingers through disheveled locks, Beca follows Chloe’s gaze down her own body, scanning past a landscape of red-and-black plaid and over dark damp cotton to her bare thighs. Along their insides, fresh marks stamp a trail toward Beca’s center, the angry red of the bites already mellowing to a deep purple, coated in a sticky sheen that glistens in the glow of fluorescent light.
From what Beca can sense of her own appearance -- half-buttoned flannel askew on her shoulders exposing more chains of tiny bruises, panties dank in a way that has her subconsciously pressing her legs together -- she looks thoroughly ravished. The fingers raking through tangled brown strands snag on a particularly stubborn knot, and Beca realizes there’s no way she can leave the house looking this indecent, all clammy skin and greasy sex hair, smelling like some heady combination of arousal and sweat and eggs that Beca should probably find more off-putting than she does. The sexual tension permeating the air is starting to build again, and she’s got to get herself out of this kitchen and under control; it’s nearly quarter after ten.
“Uhh, yeah, I’m gonna take a shower while you finish your breakfast,” Beca says thickly, clearing her throat afterwards. “Or ‘brunch’, or whatever you’re calling it.”
This additional word vomit is not helping, so she high-tails it out of the kitchen before Chloe’s increasingly predatory smile lures her back in.
In the bathroom, Beca quickly sheds her scant clothing, turns on the fan, and slides open the shower curtain. She can’t decide if she needs a hot shower or a cold shower, so she settles on somewhere in between, then steps under the shower head, letting the droplets spatter across her chest and down her legs. She rotates under the stream, closing her eyes and tipping her head back to wet her hair before reaching for her shampoo bottle, pouring out a palmful of translucent green gel.
After working the shampoo into a lather atop her head, Beca softly sings the intro to one of the songs taking up residency in her brain.
“Kiss me hard before you go...”
Lana songs have been looping through her mind since the living room last night, where Chloe’s playlist was the backing track to a chorus of pants and gasps and sighs. And moans and grunts and screams, but Beca tries not to think about that any longer, before she totally defeats the purpose of this shower. ‘Summertime Sadness’ was here to stay though, aided by her obsession with the remix of it that came out a few years back.
She begins the first verse after squirting shower gel onto her sponge, singing through the remainder of the verse and the bridge while scrubbing away the sweaty remains of the last eight or so hours, beginning with the mess between her legs. At the pause before the chorus, she rinses the suds from her shins and thighs, raising the volume of her voice a bit as she turns her backside under the water. By the time her lower body is free of foam, she reaches the breakdown, which is pretty much her favorite, so she puts her washing on hold to belt it out, mentally blending the original song with the remix, shaking her hips to the dance beats in her head.
Stopping to catch her breath after slaying the breakdown, Beca realizes she’s squeezed all the soap out of the sponge while using it as a microphone, so she reaches to the far end of the tub for some more body wash. Singing the start of second verse a touch softer than the breakdown, she drizzles more gel onto her sponge. A cool breeze against her back sends an unexpected chill through her body, and figuring she must have been out of the water for too long, she turns around to step back into the warmth of--
--Chloe’s very toned, very naked arms, wrapping around to lace fingers low on Beca’s back, rendering Beca speechless as she’s tugged face-to-face with Chloe's serenading lips.
“Got my bad baby by my heavenly side, I know if I go, I’ll die happy tonight.”
Well.
Beca can play this game.
She drapes an arm over Chloe’s shoulder, cupping her palm at the nape of Chloe’s neck. And then, grabbing Chloe by the waist with her other hand, Beca slowly, gently rolls her hips forward in an understated, rhythmic motion as she harmonizes with Chloe’s melody.
“Oh, my god, I feel it in the air…”
And yes, Shower Duet: Part Deux has been given the green light, and the acoustics are just as good as the first time, but the circumstances are so much better. Beca inches closer, relishing the feel of Chloe’s nude form against hers. She leans her head around the side of Chloe’s to graze her lips against the shell of Chloe’s ear, voice dipping low to murmur "Telephone wires, above, are sizzling like a snare", punctuating the words with a nip to the earlobe.
Chloe’s singing is interrupted by an involuntary gasp, and the girl drops a sloppy kiss to Beca’s pulse point, just below the jawbone. Still rocking her hips to the seductive rhythm in her head, Beca continues the next line solo -- "Honey, I'm on fire, I feel it everywhere" -- while Chloe pants into her neck, and then pauses before the bridge’s final lyrics. Her hands lift Chloe’s face from where it's nuzzled against her, cradling flushed cheeks in her palms. Beca presses their foreheads together, thumbs idly stroking Chloe’s cheekbones while Chloe’s fingers trace patterns along Beca’s lower back. Blue eyes bore into one another, with Beca’s pleading for Chloe to understand how much she means the next words she whispers.
“Nothing scares me anymore.”
Because it’s true; Beca isn’t scared of this, this thing they have. Whatever this is, it’s something between them that had, for years, been building upon the solid foundation of their first shower duet, each new moment laying down the mortar, memory cementing another brick as the structure took shape. In Beca’s mind, this structure is finally complete, and it’s not just a house, but a home; Chloe is everything she could want, everything she needs, and even though Chloe is leaving for Atlanta in a few hours, Beca promises herself that she won’t let this get away from her despite the distance.
Beca searches Chloe’s eyes with her own, moved when she finds the comprehension she’s looking for. She draws in an affected breath that’s shakier than expected, then exhales the first line of the chorus.
“Kiss me hard before you g--”
The final word is cut off when Chloe slams her lips into Beca’s, hard as demanded, then pulls back after several heated seconds to whisper against them, “I just wanted you to know, that baby, you the best.”
And that’s enough to make Beca surge forward once again, reclaiming the lips in front of her, dropping her hands to grip tightly at Chloe’s hips and urge them toward her own. They kiss frantically at first, bordering on almost too much teeth and almost too much tongue, but the frenzy gradually gives way to a calmer, more sensuous sliding of lips. After letting their tongues meet lazily a few more times, Chloe pulls away to speak.
“I know we don’t have a lot of time to get ready,” she admits, eyelashes blinking away rogue drops of water, “but I couldn’t help myself.”
“Obviously I’m complaining here,” Beca replies with an affectionately wry smile. Chloe grins back.
“But, since I’m here, can I help?” Chloe asks in an adorably chaste way, briefly sucking her bottom lip beneath the top before offering, “Maybe rinse your hair for you?”
Beca’s smile is easy as she nods her assent, moving to change positions with Chloe, never breaking hold. She closes her eyes and reclines her head as the water rains down from above, sending clumps of lather slithering down her back. And then Chloe’s fingers comb lightly through her hair, delicately gliding through wet strands, blunt fingernails massaging Beca’s scalp with each pass. Chloe’s touch is so tender, so soothing, and Beca feels all her muscles relax as a comfortable warmth spreads through her body at the sensation. It’s not sexual, it’s not even suggestive, but it’s so caring, so sensual, that Beca thinks this may be the single most intimate thing she’s ever done with anybody. Ever.
Beca’s name, spoken like a question, floats to her ears in Chloe’s low timbre, quiet and gentle so as not to shatter the moment.
“Mmm?” Beca hums in response, eyes still shut.
“The rest of the song...” Chloe’s request is so soft, so earnest, that it fades to a near whisper. “Could you sing it for me?”
A grin spreads across Beca’s features -- a wide, full-toothed, genuine grin -- before opening her mouth to continue the song.
A static crackle startles Beca out of her thoughts.
“Miss Mitchell?” A metallic, disembodied voice rattles from the intercom. “Stacie Conrad is here to see you.”
“Send her up!” she answers before adding, with barely concealed exasperation, “And I’ve told you, you can call me Beca.”
“Sorry Miss… Beca,” the tinny voice apologizes. “Sending her up now!”
Beca twists her chair almost parallel to the soundboard, reclining and propping her feet up, tilting her head towards the door. Within seconds, Stacie appears in the glass doorway, rotating the handle down to enter the room.
“Hey, what’s up, Stace?”
“Hey Mitchell where’s your key?” The words tumble out of Stacie’s mouth faster than usual, as if trying to say them all at once. Beca blinks dumbly.
“What?”
“Your spare key or whatever,” Stacie clarifies, slowing her speech only slightly. “We gotta drop something off.”
“We?” Beca teases. “You bringing one of your boy-toys to my apartment?”
The girl poses a well-manicured hand on her cocked hip in what Beca thinks is supposed to be an affronted display of confidence, but the way she stumbles over her words betrays her actions.
“What? No. No, just, like, ‘we’ as in ‘me’, or whatever.”
Beca’s lips quirk in amusement as Stacie growls impatiently and rolls her eyes.
“You know what I mean, you ass, give me your key.”
With an appreciative bark of laughter, Beca fishes her key ring from her pocket, removing the spare. She really doesn’t know what Stacie means, but stands up and walks the key over anyway.
“Will you at least tell me what you’re dropping off?” Beca asks, holding out the key in her palm.
“It’s a surprise,” Stacie replies, snatching up the proffered the key, prompting Beca to arch an eyebrow at her friend’s hastiness.
“A surprise of the edible variety?”
Beca knows Stacie can eat enough for two people but often cooks to feed four, which means Beca is the more-than-willing recipient of surprisingly gourmet leftovers at least once a week. She’d just housed the rest of Stacie’s homemade macaroni and cheese for lunch, so she wasn’t about to turn down another free meal, especially on a Friday when she usually needs to scrounge for something before heading to the club for her gig.
“Uhh, you could say that.”
For what should be a simple yes-or-no answer, Stacie’s response is anything but easy as her eyes shift around the room, looking anywhere but at Beca. Stacie is clearly hiding something, or at least not telling the full story, but she seems to be in a hurry, so Beca lets it slide.
“Anyways, I gotta go, see you later, B!” And with that, Stacie rushes out the door, only to reappear seconds later and pop her head back in.
“Oh and check your phone!”
Before Beca can even question the reason, Stacie is gone.
The recording session wraps up at four o’clock as planned, and after shutting down the equipment and gathering her belongings, Beca finally has a chance to turn on her phone to check for whatever Stacie had wanted her to look at two hours ago. She never had an earlier opportunity because Stacie had left at two o’clock on the dot, which of course was exactly when the recording artist walked back in to continue their session. Her phone takes a few seconds to locate service as Beca walks to the car, but once it does, a single chime sounds. She has only one message, and it’s from Chloe.
Chloe: call me when you see this, I GOT A JOB!!!
Beca must be absorbing some of Chloe’s excitement through the electronic device because her cheeks are already hurting from the stretch of the giant grin across her face. She switches screens to call Chloe as commanded, but then hesitates, finger hovering over the icon. She really, truly can’t wait to share this moment with her best friend, but that longing sensation from earlier in the day bubbles up, and suddenly it’s not enough to just hear Chloe, she wants to see Chloe, too. So instead of pressing the button to send the call through, Beca turns off her screen, resolving to wait until she gets home and can FaceTime Chloe instead. Besides, she can’t have a proper reaction to the news while driving, plus Chloe doesn’t know she got out of work early, so she thinks she should be able to hold off for another half hour. Probably.
To her fortune, she makes it home in less than the usual half hour, partially because there’s slightly less traffic at four than at five, partially because she took every shortcut she knew, and maybe, possibly, partially because she gunned it through a few yellows she normally wouldn’t have. Since Beca’s heart is already racing when she parks her car in an open spot half a block down from the building entrance, she can’t hold back from making the call any longer. She kills the engine, then fumbles for her phone while simultaneously removing her seatbelt. Still sitting in the car, she opens her FaceTime app and clicks on Chloe’s name, eager to see her best friend’s face light up her screen.
Except that it doesn’t. Instead, the request cuts out, and Beca can feel her heart sink, only to leap again when Chloe’s name appears across the screen. Beca feels a pang of disappointment that it’s just a regular call instead of a video call, but the feeling doesn’t last because with a press of her finger, she’s met with a very familiar squeal.
“Ohmygod! BECS!”
“Hey, Chlo! Why didn’t you--” Beca’s inquiry is cut off by a breathless rush of words.
“Becs I got a job! An aca-awesome job at an aca-awesome high school and everything is aca-awesome!”
Beca chuckles audibly at her friend’s excessive enthusiasm, but gamely plays along.
“Wow, three ‘aca-awesomes’?” Beca says in a tone that almost sounds like a dog owner talking to her adorable puppy. “Tell me aca-everything.”
“Hey! Don’t you mock me, Beca Mitchell!” comes the retort, jovial in its false offense.
Laughing, Beca concedes, “I’m not, dude, I swear, I’m super excited for you. Now tell me more. A job doing what?”
Figuring there’s no exact reason for staying in the car, Beca places her phone on speaker in her lap to grab her bag from the passenger seat, looping it around her right arm while listening to Chloe’s response.
“Well, it’s a choir -- get this -- director position at a really prestigious performing arts high school!”
Beca picks up her phone from her lap with her right hand and opens the car door with the left, climbing out of the vehicle while continuing her conversation with Chloe.
“Whoa, choir director? That sounds pretty important. What school?” she asks as she checks the door firmly with her hip, satisfied with the slamming noise it makes.
“Wait, Beca, what are you doing? Aren’t you still at work? Where are you right now?”
Beca jumps a little at the onslaught of questions. Chloe’s voice is high in a way that it usually only gets when she’s nervous about something, so Beca proceeds carefully.
“Umm, I just closed my car door? I went into work early so I got out early? I just parked my car, and now I’m walking to my apartment,” she explains cautiously. “Why?”
“Listen, Becs, I gotta go real quick--”
“--Chloe, what’s going on, why are you acting so--”
“--just give me a few minutes, Beca, I’ll talk to you in a few minutes, I promise.”
Before Beca can even get all the words out of her mouth, the line goes dead. Her eyes bulge incredulously at the blank screen, jaw hanging open in exasperated disbelief. First the declined FaceTime, now this? The abrupt abandonment of their conversation is extremely unlike Chloe, who is even more into manners and etiquette than Aubrey Posen. Something has to be up, and Beca vows to get to the bottom of it as soon as Chloe calls her back. She opens the main door of the apartment building and heads toward the staircase, her boots clomping on each stair a little more loudly than they should. The sound takes her back to a time when the gaps between her bass drum boot steps were filled in by a clacking snare, and now each thud sounds so hollow without the accompaniment of Chloe’s heels. She and Chloe, Beca thinks, make beautiful music together, the kind where the contrasts blend just right to create a rich symphony. They’re a mashup where Chloe is the dynamic melody to Beca’s steady bassline; a thumping, repeating rhythm generated from a heart that beats a little harder with every thought of her best friend… but right now it’s beating erratically, which probably has something to do with why Beca feels so out of sorts.
She knows that sulking is seriously immature, but Chloe’s behavior is really bothering her. It’s almost like she’s avoiding telling Beca something, or hiding something from her… kind of like Stacie at the studio earlier. Beca comes to a halt on the top step as her eyes go wide at the realization. Now she knows something is definitely going on, and whether it’s with Chloe or with Stacie doesn’t matter to her; what does matter is the both of them are evidently privy to something that Beca is not, and now she is even more determined to find out what that something is. Striding down the hall with purpose, Beca resolves to call Chloe as soon as she gets inside and not wait for her flaky friend to get back to her. Jamming the key in her apartment lock and giving a vigorous twist, Beca flings the door open and kicks it shut behind her, dropping her bag in the middle of the floor as her fingers furiously swipe at her phone screen.
As the call rings, she can hear a faint buzzing, and she shakes her head in an attempt to clear the noise. The ringing through the phone’s speaker suddenly stops, and she glances at the screen to make sure the connection wasn’t dropped. Beca sees the call has been picked up, and as she listens closer, she can hear quiet breathing on the other end, but still gets no greeting. She holds the phone up to her ear as she walks toward the living room, trying to elicit a response from Chloe.
“Chlo? You there?”
She looks up as she enters the living room and freezes in her tracks.
There, surrounded by at least five different suitcases, sitting on Beca’s couch with a phone pressed to her ear, wearing that goddamn flannel she stole from Beca ten weeks, six days, who cares ago… is Chloe Beale.
Beca stands in a stupor, slack-jawed and staring. She’s frozen in place by blue eyes that glimmer like all the galaxies of the universe compacted into two perfect circles. She consciously wills her lungs to breathe -- in, out, in, out -- while her gaze is held captive by those piercing eyes, not straying even when Chloe’s mouth moves to speak.
“I’m here.”
The conviction in Chloe’s voice drifts over from a mere ten feet away, and when those same two words echo through the speaker of Beca’s phone a split second later, Beca finally registers that this is actually happening. Chloe drops her phone from her ear, eyes never once leaving Beca’s as she hangs up, and Beca mirrors both her actions and her words.
“You’re here,” Beca exhales, wonder apparent in her tone.
The corners of Chloe’s mouth curve up fondly before confirming.
“I’m home.”