Work Text:
To question the reason why things go wrong isn’t something Beca usually does. She doesn’t get home after a stressful day and throws herself on her bed, angry puffs of air leaving her mouth as she replays the movie of her day again and again inside her mind, wondering the words she could have said differently or the risks she could have taken. Beca does throw herself on her bed, but only to put her headphones on and let her brain create beats that will distract her from everything around her, exactly as she’s doing right now.
Except Beca’s not lying on her bed and one of her ears is uncovered to pay attention just in case a sweet voice calls for her from the living room.
Not even half an hour later, Beca feels tiny fingers taking her headphones away from her ear.
“Mama, dance with me!”
The four-year-old boy jumps up and down in front of his mother, shaking his little body in the rhythm of the song coming from the TV.
What makes Beca mad isn’t the fact Santi has clearly been playing with the remote of their Smart TV and choosing random music videos on YouTube, or that he took her attention away from her work. The problem is the song her son picked, a song Beca hasn’t listened to in years for the memories they bring her.
All the life that could have been if things were different years ago.
“Santi, mama is working,” Beca extends her hands towards the headphones still on her son’s hand, but Santi is faster and pulls his arm away, placing it on the table and stepping onto it.
“Come on, mama! This song is so good, let’s dance!”
Santi starts dancing again, sometimes twirling dangerously close to edge of the table and if Beca wasn’t living in the music so intensely, her motherly instincts would make her pick her son up and twirl with him in her hips around their living room, just like they’ve done many times before.
But the song carries Beca away from the present, to a night where it was coming from a phone instead of a fancy TV in a living room.
Chloe squeaked loudly when Titanium started to play on the phone. She stopped the car in the street they used to live with Amy in New York, whispering a excited little “come on!” to Beca as she opened the door and left the car, taking her phone with her.
“Dude, what the fuck!” Beca said in surprise, walking out of the car in the minute Chloe stepped onto the hood of the car. She laughed in disbelief, watching Chloe as she danced to Titanium under the stars.
Asking Chloe to get out of the hood was the first thing Beca did, the concern high in her head when she thought about what could happen if Chloe suddenly slips and falls to the floor. But Chloe just shook her hips more to the beat, hands flew to her own hair to hold red curls at the top of her head and then Beca fell hypnotized. By Chloe’s movements, Chloe’s voice as she murmured the lyrics low enough so only they both could hear and Chloe’s expressions, the way her eyes closed as if she was a hundred percent focused on living in that moment, giving everything of herself.
The song reached its chorus and Chloe twirled, a hand traveling through her upper body to rest on her waist, as she tilted one of her knees to grind her hips in the air. And Beca couldn’t take her eyes off her best friend. She stared and stared hard, trying to warn her mind this moment should be safely put into the never-forget folder inside her brain.
Somehow the atmosphere took her back to the day they sang that very same song in the shower. Beca remembers vividly the way she wanted to peek at the redhead’s body (which she actually did) and how, weirdly enough, that stranger’s lack of boundaries only freaked her out of a minute or two. The stranger who Beca had no idea would become her best friend and have her wishing they could be more .
“Do you... do you remember when we told the Bellas about the shower day and then Emily thought we were dating?”
Chloe’s eyes opened. Intense, beautiful and glowing. She laughed. “Everybody thinks I date Stacie, too.”
Beca shrugged, lifting a hand to place a curl behind her ear. Chloe never stops dancing. “Well, that’s different,” Beca said. “You’ve kissed her.”
Chloe then stopped her dancing. She kneeled on the hood of the car and took one of Beca’s hand. “Do you want me to kiss you, too?”
Beca considered the question for a moment, but then Chloe used her hold on her hand to tug her forwards, their lips meeting in a rush.
And she was so surprised she stayed still for a few heartbeats, until Chloe started to pull away. Beca fell forward once more, this time capturing Chloe’s lips and tilting her head to side for a better angle. She felt Chloe’s tongue against her lower lip and opened her mouth, allowing her in, her own tongue meeting Chloe’s in the middle, their heads tilting and pushing.
Beca felt hands on her hair as she lifted her own to grab Chloe’s waist the best way she could, given her position on the hood. She nipped at Chloe’s lower lip, making her gasp and licked into her mouth again. Beca tugged at the hem of Chloe’s shirt, letting her hand travel through the soft warm skin she found beneath it.
It was hard, but Beca tried to show in that kiss everything she had been trying to tell Chloe. The small acts of love that were reciprocal (or at least Beca thought so) and lived in the late nights, when her feet reached out to grab Chloe’s between hers as they watched a movie. Or an arm finding its way to a warm middle, their bodies pressed together and heavy with sleep, a hand traveling midair to catch the other.
If only Beca had never left to L.A. If only she had talked to Chloe about her feelings the night her best friend arrived to their tiny apartment to tell her she was dating.
All the I love you‘s that could have been.
But maybe Chloe was as scared as she was and the fact they never talked about that one kiss was a product of the insecurity they both had inside their hearts, an unspoken promise to not mess up the beautiful friendship they had.
After Beca moved away, their texts got spaced with each passing week and someday they just disappeared. Beca had no choice but to trust the way life happens and things change. She was just a girl with a dream, carrying fears in her head and doubts in her heart.
She doesn’t regret meeting Paul and deciding to marry him. Santi wouldn’t exist if things had happened other way. But sometimes the “what if” knocks on the door and makes itself a permanent visitor inside Beca’s heart, even though she’d never allowed the feeling it.
What would it be like to love someone so deeply and act on it? Was it better to spend years loving Chloe in silence than to never have met her at all?
She felt the redhead’s nails lightly scratching her lower back, pulling a groan from her throat and Beca pulled back. Their breaths mixed together in the silent street. The song comes to an end.
Beca opens her eyes.
And the ones staring back at her look just like hers.
“Mama, are you okay?”
She blinks a couple times, her son taking form in front of her. Beca forces an smile.
“Yes, baby. I’m fine.”