Work Text:
I will not play tug o' war.
I'd rather play hug o' war,
Where everyone hugs
Instead of tugs
Where everyone giggles
And rolls on the rug,
Where everyone kisses
And everyone grins,
And everyone cuddles,
And everyone wins.
- Shel Silverstein
*
Chloe has always been a touchy-feely person.
She thinks it’s because her house was just full of that kind of attitude. A hug for every good grade, a squeeze of her hand to catch her attention, a kiss on the forehead every time her dad left the room. She grew up in a household where personal boundaries were practically nonexistent, and it never bothered her. In fact, she craved it. It’s something she’s always craved, that closeness to a person, platonic or not.
She loved lying in the grass with her best friend, Molly, their foreheads pressed close as they whispered secrets to each other long after the streetlights came on. She loved movie nights with her older brothers, pushed into the far corner of the couch, two long, muscle-heavy boys stretched out across her legs. Her first relationship was made up of long goodnight hugs and holding hands during recess because that closeness was the part she liked best.
It doesn’t fade in high school, either, though the ‘no boundaries’ thing gets her in trouble a few times. As her parents pull up to her assigned dorm at Barden University, Chloe closes her eyes tightly and hopes, wishes, prays, that her roommate isn’t a personal space freak like Molly ended up being, freshman year of high school.
(“This is my space,” Molly illustrated, putting at least five feet between them. “And that’s your space.”
Chloe’s eyes lit up. “Like in ‘Dirty Dancing,’ right?”
Molly frowned at her, adding a foot of cushion distance. “Yeah, but you’re not Patrick Swayze, so don’t go getting any ideas.”)
But Aubrey, hair brighter and softer than Chloe has ever seen before in her life, hugs Chloe as soon as she walks in the door and her hands flutter around Chloe’s shoulders the whole time they move Chloe’s things in. Aubrey instantly suggests piling their comforters on the floor and spending the night there and Chloe laughs until her parents hug her goodbye, vanishing with a kiss to Chloe’s temple.
(That changes, obviously, especially after October of their freshman year, when Aubrey’s dad visits and tells Aubrey to buckle down on her work or she’s moving back home. Aubrey becomes more reserved and more determined and it leaves less time for squishing into the same bed and watching reruns of America’s Next Top Model.
Every once in a while, though, and especially their senior year, right after they lose to the baby-faced kid and his baby-blue shoes, Aubrey actively seeks out a friendly hand on her shoulder or Chloe’s arm wrapped around hers.)
Chloe has always been a touchy-feely person, though, and she’s always just considered it something about herself that people either love or don’t, like her sense of humor or her hair or her laugh.
*
Beca Mitchell is the opposite of that.
It’s not that Beca never had the same thing Chloe did. Sure, she didn’t have brothers like Chloe, but her dad always hugged her and her mother always kissed her goodnight. It’s just that one day, it stopped. The more they argued, the less time they spent around her, to make sure she never heard them shouting. And the less time they spent around her, the more time she spent waiting for them to show up.
(“My psych book says that your absence in my formative years severely impacted my emotional growth,” Beca tells her father.
He looks up from where he’s cutting vegetables and snorts. “Dr. Loomis pick that book out?”
Beca shrugs. “It doesn’t matter who picked the book. That’s what it says.”
Her dad mirrors her shrug and as he leaves the kitchen, he stops in front of her and pointedly kisses the very top of her forehead. “I think you made it through okay.”)
She put up walls in her parents’ place. When they came to see if she was sleeping and they leaned in too close, she would roll away from them. If they tried to hug her goodbye, she ducked their arms and nodded instead. Her first relationship was just a front to have somewhere to practice smoking cigarettes, a habit that never stuck.
Her walls are pretty fortified, thanks to years of practice. They’re sturdy and immovable and the scowl she perfected is an alligator-filled moat that everyone stopped trying to cross.
Everyone except Chloe Beale, that is.
She heard once, that if you have an immovable force (her) and an unstoppable object (Chloe) that…
Well, she’s not a physics major, but even Beca knows that something’s got to give.
*
The second time Chloe invades her personal space, Beca blames it on the alcohol.
(She blames the first time on… something else. She’s not sure what. Beca is actually trying really hard to forget about the first time. Ever since then, she checks all the stalls in the bathroom before she turns on the water, and she’s figured out how to loop a cut hair tie through the curtain and the stall wall, which is probably a fire hazard.
She’s willing to risk it right now.)
See, they’ve known each other for all of ten minutes, but she can already tell that Chloe is a girl’s girl. She probably really enjoys putting on dresses just to see what they look like and giggling at boys standing across the room and sleepovers, the ‘painting nails and discussing dream weddings’ kind of sleepovers.
Girls like that can never handle their alcohol.
Chloe fills the space Jesse left quickly, breaking the barrier Jesse respected as if it’s not even there. She’s so close and there so quickly that it actually takes Beca a few seconds to process the sudden shift. Instead of mid-September night air, Beca is breathing in the taste of secondhand jungle juice. It feels heavy on her tongue, like when she would sit next to her grandfather at Christmas and he would put so much pepper on his food, she could taste it in every bite. Chloe’s eyes are wide and even at night, they’re so blue that the faintest sliver of light from overhead makes them stand out.
Chloe’s hands are on her wrists, her thumbs pressing against Beca’s pulse points. She wonders if Chloe can feel the way her heart is starting to race violently, like she’s running a 100-yard dash. Beca hopes not, because she can’t explain the reason behind it.
All she knows is that Chloe is too close and Beca needs to get away. This touching thing, this being close thing, it’s not for her.
“I think we’re gonna be really fast friends,” Chloe says, exhaling, her grip tightening, her whole body moving in closer to Beca.
Beca can’t see past Chloe, past those eyes and that hair surrounding them, shrouding them from the party.
“Well, you saw me naked so…” Beca trails off, winking a bit. She winks and hopes to God that Chloe takes a freaking step back already or she just might start hyperventilating.
But Chloe doesn’t move away yet, and Beca starts to wonder just when, exactly, was the last time she was physically this close to someone.
(She comes up with an answer:
Connor Therrien, her high school boyfriend, who threw his arm across her shoulder at graduation so his parents could take a quick picture. Connor knew that mostly-unspoken rule, though, and let go as soon as the flash went off.
He broke up with her that night for a last chance shot at Courtney Dougherty, who never wore underwear, and Beca never looked back.)
Chloe starts speaking again, her toes pressing against Beca’s. “I think I’m going to go dance.”
For one terrifying moment, Beca thinks that Chloe is going to ask her to tag along, to go dance it out with a bunch of boys who haven’t experienced puberty and Amy, who looks like she’s single-handedly trying to make it rain. Chloe doesn’t, though. She does lean in even closer, if that’s possible, and repeats herself as she slowly lets go of Beca’s wrists.
Beca’s sigh of relief is caught in her windpipe as Chloe wraps her arms around Beca’s shoulder’s, burying her face in Beca’s neck. She goes as stiff as a board in the embrace. Years of this as a kid means that she knows what’s going on, but years of pushing those early years down means that she’s completely unsure of how to return a hug like that. She feels Chloe take a deep breath and Beca tries to kick her body into action. Her hands, awkwardly spread, mid-air, turn in at the wrists, like she’s going to touch Chloe’s back, like she’s going to maybe, possibly, return the hug.
Before she can, though, Chloe is letting her go, smiling widely the whole time. She takes a few steps way, enough so that Beca can breathe in something other than fruit punch and cheap vodka.
Chloe turns on her heel and throws the same arms that were just wrapped around Beca into the air, shaking her behind suggestively.
Beca isn’t sure what to do with that.
So she quickly says something stupid like, “make good choices,” and when Jesse hands her the cup of punch he promised he’d get, she drinks it so fast she feels the world spin.
*
Beca gets a little bit better at the personal space thing, mostly because she doesn’t have a choice. Amy makes herself laugh so hard that she has to steady herself with a hand on Beca’s shoulder. Stacie gropes anything and everything that moves. Chloe finds in necessary to teach Beca the choreography by using her as a ragdoll.
She knows she’s got the moves down. Seriously, it’s a square. She can make a square with her hands. If Aubrey can do it, she sure as hell can.
She tries to tell Chloe that, but Chloe doesn’t seem to hear her.
The redhead steps up behind her and reaches around her, her hands falling into a familiar holding pattern against her pulse. “Seriously, Beca. Just relax.”
“This is ridiculous,” Beca breathes out.
Beca feels Chloe laugh but she doesn’t actually hear it.
“This is going to win us Regionals,” Chloe says into her ear.
Beca snorts, eyes alert and focused in on Aubrey making the rounds. “It’s square dancing. With our hands. I’ve seen the stuff the Treblema-“
Chloe’s grip tightens just a little bit. “Don’t swear.”
“That’s not a-” She jerks when Chloe’s grip tightens again. “Okay, okay.”
Chloe starts moving her hands in time to Aubrey’s count, pulling Beca around like a puppet. It’s easy and pointless, and Beca lets her mind wander, trying to remember if she has homework for that math class she ended up in.
Then Beca stops wondering about math and starts wondering about Chloe instead. Does Beca have a sign painted on her forehead that says, “please, be my friend and forget the words ‘personal’ and ‘boundary’ because they won’t apply to us” or is Chloe that oblivious?
(Amy thinks she’s making it up.
“She’s like that with everyone,” the blonde says, reading over the notes for their philosophy class. Amy raises an eyebrow in question. “Do you not want her to be like with everyone else?”
Beca rolls her eyes. “Oh, stop. Really? That’s ridiculous.”
Amy sits up. “Oh my god. You do want her to stop being like that with everyone else!”
Her face flushes red and suddenly, philosophy becomes a lot more interesting than she ever imagined it could be.)
There is something about Chloe and her total disregard of personal space that makes Beca stop and really think. It’s like, she knows Beca isn’t into it. She knows that where people go in for a hug, Beca hardly offers a handshake. They’ve tried the team bonding movie night and Beca always claims the chair that only sits one. Chloe, naturally, finds the corner of the couch and lets Aubrey use her as a pillow to lean back against. But Chloe seems to have taken that information and used it as a challenge. It’s almost like she’s purposely trying to test how much Beca can stand before she freaks out.
The longer Beca thinks about Chloe, the more hyperaware she becomes: Chloe’s whole body is pressed against hers. She’s pretty sure you couldn’t fit a piece of sheet music between them. The grip Chloe has on her wrists has become less leading and softer. She can feel Chloe’s chin resting just above her shoulder. At least, she thinks she feels it. It feels like a phantom weight, like it’s not there, but it might have been, once. Chloe’s breath skims across her ear, dislodging the hair Beca tucked around her earrings.
She’s not sure what this feeling is. It reminds her too much of hearing David Guetta for the first time, or kissing Connor on the mouth at the one high school party she went to. It feels strange, but she knows she wants to keep listening, to keep feeling it. She wants it to last all of the seven minutes she has to spend in the closet and she won’t even care if Connor touches her boob. She blinks rapidly, trying to clear her head, but she can’t shake the feeling in her gut. It’s twisting and lifting, like riding a rollercoaster on an empty stomach.
“I think I have it,” she says, her throat dry, despite the room-temperature water she’s been chugging, per Aubrey’s demand.
Chloe laughs again and Beca hears it this time, a loud breathy whisper in her ear. “I thought you said you didn’t need any help.”
“I didn’t,” Beca clarifies, her eyebrows knitted. “I don’t. I have it.”
Chloe lets her go and there’s a rush of cool air that hits the back of her neck. Beca turns and Chloe is smirking at her, her head tilted to one side. Her smirk grows and Chloe steps back, crossing her arms over her chest and rising up on her toes. Beca’s can feel that her face it flushed and she scowls, but it seems like it’s trying really hard to stay steady and Chloe starts grinning widely from ear to ear.
Beca finds it annoying.
“Okay,” Chloe says gracefully. “Good.” She reaches out and pulls Beca in, hugging her tightly the same way she did the first time.
Beca still isn’t sure what to do with her hands, but she figures it out quicker than the last time, patting Chloe awkwardly on the back until the redhead lets go. Chloe is back to smirking that maddening smirk and Beca huffs, tucking her hair back behind her ear where it belongs, and marches off to find Amy or they’re going to be late for class.
She looks over her shoulder to find Chloe still looking at her as she goes.
*
Just when Beca thinks she has a handle on this human interaction thing, she starts to lose the human part of it. She wants to help, she tries to help, but it’s hard when she’s got nothing to work with and hardly anyone who wants her help.
The people she’s surrounded herself with, the Bellas and Jesse and Luke at the radio station, feel foreign to her again. She doesn’t know how to say “hi” without completely ruining someone’s day. Every time she opens her mouth, she’s saying the wrong thing and she feels awkward with every breath she takes.
This is why she had her walls up. This is why she wore her headphones around, even if they weren’t playing anything. This is why she had no friends, why she liked the quiet of her dorm room and the back seat in class and not having her phone go off with ‘Bella updates’ or Amy wanting to copy homework or Chloe just texting her to say hi. This is why the walls were up and now that they’re down, in pieces she can’t put back together, she isn’t sure how to build them again. Each piece feels like it’s in the wrong place, and that anger and resentment, towards her father and Barden, are coming back too quickly for her to handle.
Beca feels lost and out of place and she hates that instead of scowling at everyone, she’s hoping they’ll let her apologize and take her back.
But so far, nothing, until Chloe knocks on her door one Friday night. And Beca just feels so out of sorts, she doesn’t answer at first.
“Beca, I know you’re in there,” Chloe says after a few knocks.
Beca doesn’t move, doesn’t blink, as if Chloe will know.
“I ran into Kimmy Jin on my over here. She says you haven’t left your room in a few days.” There’s another pause. “She wants you to shower.”
Beca pulls the door open, her protest and anger fading when she sees Chloe grinning.
“I was kidding,” Chloe says, her only apology. She muscles her way through the door. “I mean, I did see Kimmy Jin. But she didn’t say much to me. She’s not too friendly, is she?” Chloe doesn’t wait for an answer. “She makes you look friendly.”
Beca finds her voice. “Did you come here just to harass me?”
Chloe shrugs. “Kind of.” She makes herself at home, falling onto Beca’s sofa-bed with an “oomph.” She settles back into the furthest corner like she belongs there and the feelings Beca didn’t have – couldn’t have, since she couldn’t even look at Chloe without feeling like she let everyone down again, no matter how right she thought she was – surge back so quickly she feels like she needs to sit down.
“I missed you,” Chloe continues.
Beca sighs and tucks her hair behind her ear. “Chloe-“
“No,” Chloe says over her. “I get it now. You were right all along, and we should have pushed Aubrey harder to see it. I’m sorry.”
“God,” Beca breathes out. “Don’t apologize to me. I shouldn’t have done it without talking to you first.”
Chloe nods slowly. “You shouldn’t have,” she agrees. “But… It’s done, I guess. I just wanted to come and see you. Make sure you’re okay.”
Beca barks out a laugh that doesn’t sound like her own. “Me? I’m fine.”
Chloe raises her eyebrow slowly and looks around the room as if she doesn’t believe Beca for a moment.
Beca has the decency to look away sheepishly. She focuses on her computer, willing it awake with her mind. She tries to focus on everything but Chloe sitting on her bed, looking at her with those big blue eyes, sending her stomach into a flutter again.
“Beca,” Chloe breathes out. She stands up and before Beca can stop her, Chloe’s arms are wrapped around her in a hug Beca didn’t know she missed.
(She hasn’t missed things like this in years, since before her parents got divorced. Then, it was different. Then, she wanted her mother’s hugs when she was at her dad’s, and her dad’s kisses when she at her mom’s.
Now, though, she misses Chloe all the time and she understands what it feels like.
She just doesn’t want to know what it means.)
Chloe’s head fits in the nape of her neck and her hands are tight against Beca’s shoulders, holding her close. Beca breathes in deeply, inhaling Chloe’s shampoo and the taste of hairspray.
There’s nothing between them now, now that Beca’s walls have been completely demolished with bright smiles and harmonies she couldn’t even dream of mixing on her computer. She’s got foundation blocks and a whole lot of rubble and a scowl that doesn’t feel like it fits on her face anymore. But this, Chloe, hugging her, it feels like it fits.
She feels like she fits somewhere perfectly for the first time in her life.
The shock of it has her letting go of Chloe and stumbling back a few feet. She ducks her head and only catches the tail end of Chloe’s sigh, glancing up to see Chloe’s hands running through her hair.
Beca moves further away, looking out the window at the all the people packing their cars for Spring Break. She’s going to stay on campus, work the night shift – it’s all she has going for her now, she guesses, so she might as well make the best of it.
Beca stays there, looking out the window, until she hears Chloe start to move again, the change she always carries in her pocket jingling a little.
“I’ll see you after Spring Break?” Chloe asks.
Beca glances over her shoulder. Chloe is already at the door, her hand on the knob, the other hand in her pocket. “Yeah, sure.”
She doesn’t promise. She can’t. She doesn’t want to be that person (her father) who breaks her promises. Not to Chloe.
Chloe gives her a small smile and slips out of her room and except for the way her heart is pounding in her chest, Beca can almost pretend like she never slipped into the room at all.
*
Beca Mitchell is not a touchy-feely person.
Chloe can understand that. In a way, Beca reminds Chloe of Molly. Molly was never really touchy-feely and now, at 23, Chloe sees that she was the one always reaching, always touching. It might have been, for both of them, if their parents were those kind of people, but Chloe can’t pretend to know too much about either of them. There probably wasn’t a shortage of hugs and kisses growing up, but there probably wasn’t an abundance of them either. And unlike the Beale house, Chloe figures it must have just stopped, the goodbye hugs and the goodnight kisses.
(Senior year, Molly cornered her in the girl’s bathroom, her head hung and her hands twisting nervously together. “I’m sorry I pushed you away,” she said. “I just put up these walls…”
Chloe doesn’t really understand, but she nods like she does.
“It was easier that way,” Molly said. “I wouldn’t get hurt, I figured. I wouldn’t get attached, physically or emotionally.” Molly’s eyes were wet. “I’m sorry we wasted so much time.”
It was easier.
That, Chloe could understand.)
Maybe it was the same for Beca, too. Maybe it was easier until she met Chloe, who, admittedly, likes to take walls down. She likes to break people open until they smile and she does it simply, with a touch on the shoulder, a smile over Aubrey’s head and a tap of her foot against Beca’s.
So later, when Beca says that it’s Chloe’s fault, Chloe can’t argue too much.
Actually, when the rest of the Bellas leave the rehearsal space, high off their reinstatement into the Finals competition, and Beca launches herself at Chloe, hugging her tight, Chloe can’t argue anything, her words caught in her throat. It surprises Chloe, enough that it takes the redhead a moment before she catches up, wrapping her arms around Beca.
“Beca…”
It’s not unwelcome. In fact, she only says Beca’s name out of pure shock. Beca Mitchell is hugging her. Beca Mitchell made the first move and Chloe can only hug back and try to think complete thoughts.
“Just shut up,” Beca says, squeezing her eyes closed. “Don’t say anything.”
It soothes something in Chloe that she didn’t know was running rampant. Things fall back into place and she’s not surprised. It’s the power of hugs. It’s the best medicine she knows. And Beca, whether she thinks it or not, is a good hugger. Good hugger or not, Chloe knows Beca caught both of them off guard and that Beca will catch up eventually, pushing Chloe away. So she smiles against Beca’s neck, hugs her a little tighter and tries to hold on.
Slowly, after a while – though it’s not really long enough, Chloe thinks – Beca untangles herself from Chloe.
“You hugged me,” she breathes out, awed. She can’t believe it. She’s worked past it in her head and can think clearly, but Chloe can’t believe it.
Beca laughs, her hand pressed against her hammering chest. “Yes, I did. I did. Is that…” Chloe can hear the panic in her voice. “Can I do that?”
Chloe stares at her with a blank face before smiling widely and pulling Beca into another hug. “It’s okay, you dork. I like hugs. I thought you didn’t,” she says lightly.
“I don’t,” Beca admits. She works her bottom lip between her teeth before she adds, “unless they’re with you.”
Chloe pulls back a little and looks Beca in the eye before she smiles again, a little wider, a little more sure. “Then that’s okay.”
*
So Beca isn’t as touchy-feely as Chloe is and she’s sure she never will be. That’ll take time and tolerance of other people, and it’s a slow, uphill process she’s not feeling up to tackling if she doesn’t have to.
But Chloe is different and Beca likes her hugs, how they make Beca feel like she’s the only one who gets hugs like these. She likes the way Chloe tucks her head into Beca’s neck and how she completely dislodges Beca’s hair. She likes the way Chloe so clearly just wants to be near her, touching her somehow – Chloe’s hand on her wrist, or playing with the ends of Beca’s hair, or tapping her fingers on Beca’s knee while they watch Aubrey flirt awkwardly with Jesse who doesn’t seem to know what to do with himself.
Chloe’s touches and hugs ground her and make her feel sane.
(Chloe hugs her as soon as she walks into Beca’s room, completely ignoring the choked noise of surprise that comes out of Kimmy Jin’s mouth. Beca smirks, tilting her head to one side.
“Hey, listen. This is my dance space,” she says, quoting “Dirty Dancing” for the fifteenth time since they finished it last week. She’s working on this movie thing. Slowly. But Chloe is determined and Beca has found that she can’t fight off Jesse and Chloe. “And this is your dance space.”
“Which one of us is Patrick Swayze?”
Beca shrugs. “You can be. You’ve got that, ‘seduce the young, impressionable girl’ vibe.
Beca ducks the pillow that comes flying at her head.)
Amy tries to hug her one night after a weird round of ‘Never Have I Ever’ and Beca almost punches her in the mouth.
It’s a slow, slow process, but she’s working on it.