Work Text:
The door won’t open.
Not by itself.
Beca knows the door is there. It’s always there.
She could be in a forest, waves of leaves around her, in the sea, whispering water-
Anywhere. Inside or outside. The door is there.
And the door won’t open.
Sometimes it’ll open a little. Just a crack, like when you check the weather, or to see who it is.
Never fully. But not closed.
Beca will want to, then, which she thinks might be the worst part. She thinks about opening it. Because there’s friends on the other side, there’s laughter, there’s trust.
There’s Chloe, who sometimes Beca thinks has been patiently, kindly waiting for Beca to open the door for years.
To let Chloe through the door, to fall into Beca’s arms, to actually believe it when Chloe says Beca is safe with her.
But maybe she hasn’t, Beca usually thinks, maybe it’s just Beca’s arrogance - to think Chloe’d feel that way about her. To actually care.
And - well, it doesn’t help that Beca has, over the time they’ve known each other, fallen quite completely for Chloe. For how friendly she is to everyone, for how much she cares - and how she cares for so much - how Beca, despite trying to remind herself not to believe it, feels she really can trust Chloe, for Chloe’s laugh, that’ll light up a room, for those days Chloe seems to always be smiling, and those days she isn’t at - Beca wants to do whatever is possible - and then whatever isn’t - to help Chloe feel better.
That’s why she thinks it’s the worst part. Because Beca wants to open that door. Almost forgets and does.
But she believes, even if she doesn’t think it in so many words:
An open door is just a faster way for people to leave.
(And of course they will, Beca thinks.)
And that’s probably what scares her the most.
So.
The door won’t open.
-
The door won’t open.
Chloe can’t force it open. She wouldn’t even want to try.
She has her own door - and she thinks, sometimes, she has the opposite problem: her door is open, and she’s completely herself, and that frightens people, makes them think her weird.
She’ll go quiet, at the party when someone asked why she’s smiling so much, when she notices the two other people in a conversation glancing at each other when Chloe talks, when the girl with the snarky smile, that she’s fallen in love with anyway because Chloe was happily doomed, seemed shocked that acapella was something Chloe did for fun -
(obviously, Beca’s opinion on that has changed, and she did apologise to Chloe.)
-For a while after moments like this.
The door won’t open.
But Chloe tries to open it again, and is glad when she does. For Aubrey, for the Bellas-
For Beca. Beca, who is way sweeter than she pretends, who has a slightly shy, honest smile she keeps for her friends (and Chloe delights that she can cause it so much), with lips Chloe can’t help but stare at, with talent Chloe adores.
But she doesn’t want to scare off Beca. Chloe loves her, and if the price of having Beca around is keeping that door closed, of just being friends, Chloe will pay it for eternity, and feel a liar the whole time.
Maybe she’s selfish, she thinks, but she loves Beca far too much to tell her that.
So maybe Chloe has another door. Just the one. For Beca. And in that case?
The door won’t open.
-
But.
(It takes a while.)
(They laugh about it later, a frustrated ‘why the hell did we wait so long?’ laugh, as they lie together on a blanket, only hands touching but closer than parts of a molecule)
The door opens.
Beca decides:
People leave through doors. Maybe people always leave. Maybe she is being arrogant, and whatever strange part of her that makes people decide they no longer want Beca in their lives is actually real.
But Beca is so sick of letting those maybes rule her life.
She’s replaced them with other maybes:
Maybe people will leave, but only for a bit. To go get ice cream or whatever, then come back.
Maybe there isn’t something broken about her that drives people away, maybe people are just people. Maybe Beca is too.
Maybe Chloe could love her back. And maybe even if she doesn’t, Chloe won’t hate Beca for loving her.
(Beca hopes it’s the first one. Doesn’t know quite what to do when it is. But…)
The door opens.
Chloe’s door had been closed a while. More than it usually was. She had decided:
This is okay. She can accept it. They are friends, and telling Beca she wants more will just weird her out.
But then Beca had told her otherwise, and oh, Chloe had never been so happen to open the door wide and pull Beca in.
They’re still Beca and Chloe. A lot doesn’t change. A lot of their days are similar to how they were a week ago: still constantly hanging out, still with those smiles just for each other.
Still in love.
But not hopelessly in love: hopefully in love. They open the door together and find how beautiful the world is.
(There’s also quite a lot of kissing. Chloe thinks that’s a lovely bonus, and is delighted to find that despite Beca’s self-deprication, Beca is actually quite a wonderful kisser.)
The door won’t open…
Because now it already is.