Chapter Text
Beca shivers in the wake of emerging from her bathroom stall.
She goes to the sink, putting her hands on opposite sides of the ceramic and leans over the edge. She breathes in, out, heavily.
Fuck. She’s still turned on.
Beca didn’t want to take care of it in the cramped space in the back of the strip club (probably feet away from the woman who made her like this, too, with walls that probably echo and a door that can open at any minute, easily infiltrating her privacy), but she is still frustrated with the idea that she would have to deal with it until she gets home.
The way Jewel had touched her had left an imprint on the skin of her neck and cheeks. Beca still feels the shadows of her fingers brushing the ink of her flower tattoo, her thumb pressing softly into her cheekbones. The brief hook of an index and middle finger under Beca’s chin.
(In the second of that last action happening and Beca gazing helplessly into Jewel’s hooded blue eyes, Beca had wildly wished to kiss her. A stripper. In a club. In front of dozens of people watching who are also most likely aroused for the redhead. What the hell was wrong with her?)
(She honestly still wants to, though. Desperately.)
Beca groans. Removes her hands from the edges of the sink to twist on the faucet and splash the water collected in her palms under the stream onto her face. Thank god that she was smart enough to use her waterproof makeup that evening, or it would have been ruined. Beca gasps at the instant shock of cold, but is overall thankful that it provided a necessary distraction from the buzz in her nerve endings.
Ripping a towel from the dispenser, she gently and carefully pats away the water before tossing it in the trash.
Phew.
Taking a glance in the mirror, Beca cringes at her reflection. Her flannel is rumpled and bunched at the elbows, her hair loosened from their meticulous curls and flipped on to one side. Her eyes are dark and wide and pupils blown, a flush coloring her face and the tips of her ears.
Beca rubs them. Yep. Warm and toasty.
She sighs.
(Hopefully the multicolored lights from the club on the other side of the bathroom door would be able to hide her disheveled state.)
Deciding that there isn’t much Beca could do besides like, straight up leaving (which she doesn’t feel like doing because it’s impolite especially considering that she’s barely been here for half an hour and Amy would be devastated), she puckers her lips, applies a layer of chapstick smoothly, and makes her way back to Amy.
She has a feeling that this will be a long night.
*****
Chloe’s nervouscited.
Nervous and excited, because she wants to do a good job, for several reasons. Nervous since despite her confidence, she wants to perform well: do a superb lap dance so that Beca (she’d recently learned her favorite clubgoer’s name from her friend) can be impressed with her and maybe, potentially, return for another.
(And if she allows herself to hope, Beca would be open to taking the… connection outside of her place of work as well.)
Chloe’s excited though, too, because she is eager to see Beca again. She knows that Beca also felt the spark that she herself felt back on the dance floor, when she caressed Beca’s skin and whispered in her ear and complimented on her tattoos. She can tell that the attraction was mutual when Beca fumbled in tucking her cash in the waistband of her lingerie, made all the more prominent in the way Beca’s touch had lingered a moment longer than necessary on Chloe’s waist. She’s just. Enthusiastic and curious to find out if Beca is willing to act on it.
(God, Chloe wishes, prays so that she would. So much.)
It’s been a while since she had yearned for someone’s attention like she does Beca’s that evening. It is uncommon for a woman like Beca to come along who is both titillated and respectful but also somehow flustered to see her work.
(Normally, it’s men, and while Chloe may be pansexual, men are just not cutting it these days. And when the occasional woman does appear in the Nightingale who is brave enough to put their money in her underwear, it’s with a broad grin and a loud commentary about it to their friends.)
Beca’s reaction was different.
Like she’s shy and embarrassed to see a stranger in public in such a state of undress put on a show specifically for her. Like she hates being the center of attention. Like she feels like she doesn't deserve it, or believe that it is happening to her. Even when she explicitly signed up for it the second she stepped foot into the Nightingale.
It’s honestly sort of cute. For a stripper like Chloe who deals with arrogant, self-centered, and expectant clients all the time, it’s a nice refreshing change of pace for someone like Beca to have that kind of response.
Chloe fixes her hair in the mirror of the changing room. Beca’s friend had already handed over the thirty bucks (fifty, typically, so that would be forty percent off, a fair price Chloe charged simply because she herself desired to give Beca a lap dance), stashed in the money box in Chloe’s cubby. Now all she needs to do is get ready and saunter out there and actually do it.
Phew. Nervousciting.
She reapplies her eyeliner, dusts on more blush to compensate for the dim disco lighting, twirls on crimson lipstick. She sticks a finger in her mouth to make sure it’s not on her teeth and then reaches for her fragrance oil, dabbing a bit onto her left wrist, rubbing it with her right, and brushing it on the sides of her neck so that it amplifies with the heat from her pulse point.
She sniffs her hand, checking.
God, she smells good.
Chloe smiles.
She loves it when she knows that she’s hot and even more so when the person that she’s attracted to confirms it, in the jaw drop on Beca’s face when she laces their fingers together, tugging them to the leather seats in the corner of the club that is secluded from everything (and everyone) else so that they can garner their little privacy.
Beca is in for a long night for sure.
*****
“Where are we going?” Beca asks, breathlessly, to the back of Jewel’s head as she allows herself to be pulled along.
Her heart is pounding against her ribcage in anticipation, at a rate that is probably not healthy. She knew that something was up when Amy shot her a coy smirk when she returned from the restroom. Beca had tilted her head in curiosity (and a twinge of fear, if she was being honest), but Amy was very tight-lipped, merely offering her another drink, this time with no soda in it. Beca had shuddered at the raw bitterness as the whiskey burned her esophagus on its way down, swiping her tongue across the lingering taste on her lips. She’d wiped her mouth with a palm and proceeded to sit, only to shoot back up like a spring when Jewel appeared out of nowhere, with her perfect face and flirty smile and flowy fiery hair.
“Come with me, love,” she had said, reaching for Beca’s hand, and Beca was a goner. She took a moment to admire the way the cherry red, cool blue, and deep purplish luminescence danced across Jewel’s gaze, casting sharp triangular shadows on her face, making her cheekbones and jawline pop, and felt the logic in her brain turn to mush.
“Oh, um.” Beca risked a glance at Amy, to see if this was okay, only to gap at the wave of dismissal Amy provided like the cliche antagonist in a movie. You planned this? She silently communicated with a scrunch of her eyebrows and a side eye to Jewel, and Amy replied with a Just get laid, Mitchell.
Oh. Alright then.
And so now here they are, Beca being led through the Nightingale by a softly humming redhead clad in a cerulean camisole, the lace of her lingerie peeking through on her shoulders and hips. She’d noticeably pulled on stockings, Beca deeming it to be extremely distracting and attention grabbing as her focus is glued to the movement of her legs as they maneuver between many booths, tables, and chairs.
Her chest is tight with nerves of what’s in store, her pulse drowning out the thump of the music as people pass by in Beca’s peripheral. Her fingers are tightly intertwined with Jewel’s and she’s grateful for that because without it, Beca fears that her knees would just give out and she would embarrassingly sink to the floor. She thinks she sees the brunette that was on stage when she first entered the club fire them a wink and a playful salute, eliciting a bright giggle from the redhead, but she is not positive that it happened because it all feels like a dream, and then Beca is suddenly roughly pushed into a leather couch with a woman straddling her lap.
“Your friend told me your name is Beca,” she croons, voice low and teasing. Her thighs bracket Beca’s waist and Beca needs to remind herself to breathe. (Which proves a terrible idea because she smells so good, god. Like wildflowers in a green meadow and warm sunshine and that salty breeze that Beca adores so much when she was younger wafting off a beach.) “Mine is Chloe.”
“Are you supposed to tell me that?” Beca couldn’t help but respond, surprising herself with her own coherency. Her hand is no longer being held hostage, her reaction to it in the form of carding through her hair. She clears her throat when her words come out hoarse, an intense blush blooming into her cheeks when Chloe chuckles. Chloe’s arms are thrown over Beca shoulders, linking at the nape of her neck and inducing a shiver up Beca’s spine at the tickle conducted there. The incessant and pleasurable buzz that Beca had been trying to smother ever since first catching sight of Chloe killing it on the dance floor returns in full force.
Wow, so that restroom break was useless. She’s more turned on than ever.
“Why? Did you not want me to?”
Chloe’s hips begin to move, lifting from Beca’s lap and slowly swaying in the air to the beat of the 2010 Rihanna song pumping from the club. A groan escapes Beca’s lips, her eyes heavy and drinking in the sight in front of her, the alcohol in her system helping her appreciate the flutter of Chloe’s lashes, the curve of her pale neck, the tantalizing removal of Chloe’s one piece of decent clothing, the soft rise and fall of her chest, the flex of her abs, the dip of her pelvis. Chloe’s perfume is intoxicating and Beca never wishes to be sober. “Answering a question with a question. Classic.”
“I am nothing if not classy, sweetheart,” Chloe says, her words punctuated by a mischievous glint in her crystal blue eyes followed by an undoing of Beca’s buttons on her flannel. Instinctively, Beca’s hands go to her hips to hold her in place, but Chloe’s gentle command of “No touching” roots her to the spot. “Only I get to touch.”
Beca swallows. She finds herself nodding even though she finds this unfair, how Chloe is able to do whatever she desires to stoke the fire inside her but Beca is not allowed to touch back. Her fingers dig into the cracks of the leather seat on either side of her body. She looks up. Right into a smile of approval. Her mouth runs dry at the power Chloe holds in this situation.
“Okay.”
“Good girl.”
And Beca moans, because what else was she supposed to say to that?? Holy fuck.
Her core aches. She clenches around something empty.
Beca longs for nothing more than to trail her mouth down Chloe’s neck. To scrape her teeth along her chest. To feel her skin beneath her fingertips.
The music stretches on.
Chloe finishes with Beca’s flannel, shoving it to the side. Her hands are now at Beca’s sports bra (because idiot Beca wasn’t aware that she would be whisked away into a fucking strip club that evening when she dressed for her birthday), tugging the straps in a teasing manner so that they snapped back against Beca’s skin, grazing ever so lightly on a curve of Beca’s breast. Beca’s breath catches in her throat, ears pink, face hot like a furnace as she bows her head. Strands of hair fall into her line of vision and Beca’s only able to bite her lip as Chloe tucks them behind an ear.
She hooks her hand under Beca’s chin much like how she did when Beca awkwardly gave her cash. “Hey. Look at me.”
Beca does, even though it’s almost painful to. Her gaze lands on Chloe’s mouth, noting how pretty her lipstick shade is. Her attention is quickly shifted however, when Chloe moves, standing to her feet, reaching behind her back and in one smooth motion, unclips the bralette covering her chest.
It drops to the floor.
“Shit.”
It’s not so much as a curse as an expel of air to relieve some of the tension building rapidly in her body. Chloe’s nipples are so beautiful and pink and Beca is now so so incredibly happy that she had decided to not show them off to all the assholes out there in the club when she was on stage. They were truly a sight to behold.
Beca’s hands twitch at her sides, still not daring to break the boundary of respect that Chloe has going on. This is the best lap dance of her life and she would really hate to ruin it.
Chloe sashays the couple steps to reach Beca, now clad in just her underwear and stockings, exaggerating the sway of her hips to the new song that came on and carefully placing one foot ahead of the other. She lifts one leg, bends it at the knee, and repeats with the other, so that she is once again sinking into Beca’s lap.
Her breath is warm and sweet and fruity when it puffs against Beca’s collarbones. Her touch returns to her tattoos, cupping Beca’s cheek, in a way that is too affectionate for a stranger that Beca would like to see again.
Their foreheads press together when Chloe continues her performance after that brief interruption with:
“Happy birthday, Bec.”