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Beca has never been in love before.
Coming from a home as fucked up as hers had been in a kid, she didn’t even know if she knew what love actually looked like. Sure, she loves lots of things. She loves the Bellas, loves how it felt when they won the ICCAs a few months ago, loves that moment where gets a mix just right, but she’d never been in love before.
She thinks she might be in love.
It’s an unusually cool start to the school year in Georgia, the fall weather settling in for the season by mid-September. The trees have already started shedding yellow and red leaves onto the campus sidewalks, crunching under shoes as people head to their early morning classes, coffee in hand. One of the Bellas (Cynthia Rose) has bought a life-sized skeleton from Target and has it sitting in a camp chair on the house porch. Chloe bundled him up in a beanie, mittens, and a Bella scarf tied around his wrist, “so he doesn’t get too chilly.” Overall, the start of the semester and living with the Bellas is pretty much exactly what Beca expected.
The Bella house (which is a very nice perk of being international collegiate a cappella champions, thank you very much), has been in full swing getting everything they need ready for auditions; arguing over song selection and rewriting oaths that don’t exactly hold up anymore. She loves the girls, and she’s so happy to be back with them, but sometimes they can be a little overwhelming. So, when Jesse texts her at 11:30 at night, asking if she wants to go get something to eat, she doesn’t hesitate to say yes.
Even though they’re only a few weeks into the semester and he lives literally next door, it already feels like they don’t see enough of each other. Beca knew that being the co-captain of the Bellas was going to come with its own set of challenges (though she really didn’t anticipate one of those challenges being Fat Amy letting herself into the bathroom while Beca is in the shower to pitch song ideas for their mixer set. She really needs to contact someone about getting the bathroom lock changed), and who knew her second year classes were going to have midterms before it even felt like the semester had started. Summer break obviously didn’t help things much, since they’d just officially gotten together after the ICCAs then had to go home by May. Beca’s pretty sure her FaceTime app has never gotten as much use as it did in the 12 weeks between semesters. So, they find time where they can, even if it’s nearly midnight on a Thursday night.
“Hey,” Beca greets when she steps out her front door. Jesse’s already waiting for her on the lawn, having made the thirty second trek from the Trebles’ front door to hers.
“What’s up, weirdo?” Jesse grins, swooping to press a kiss to the side of her head. His car is already running next door so it’s nice and warm when they get in.
They make idle chatter on the way to this diner they’ve been frequenting after finding it last spring, Jesse telling her how the Trebles are doing and trying to get the upcoming auditions song out of her. She tells him about the mixes she’s working on and they compare their radio station schedules for the upcoming week, thankful to find that a few of their shifts overlap.
Once at the diner, they settle into their regular booth in the corner. It’s a rundown place, with cracked red vinyl covering all the seats and tables that are never not waxy from crayons, but it’s a little piece of Georgia that feels like theirs. It’s far enough from Barden that it feels like they put in effort to come here, even if it’s only a 20-minute drive.
They order decaf coffees because they don’t really want to be up all night when they have shit to do in the morning and a stack of chocolate chip pancakes to split between the two of them. Beca watches as Jesse smiles brightly at their waitress, an older lady named Jan who often works the night shifts they come in, thanking her for their coffees as he unbuttons his corduroy chore jacket, revealing a thermal 2012 ICCAs long sleeve underneath. When he looks back at her with soft, tired eyes, she feels a distinct clench in her stomach and chest, reaching across the table for his hand and nudging his Conversed foot with her boot under the table.
This should be scary, she thinks. Feeling like this.
It’s not. Being with him makes more sense than most things in her life seem to. He is comfortable and safe and nothing that she’s ever let herself get used to before. She didn’t know it was possible to like someone this much.
A few hours later, Beca’s lying awake in Jesse’s bed. He has his own room in the Treble house until at least auditions, since so many of the boys graduated in the spring, making it the designated sleepover spot for the time being.
She knows she’d fallen asleep at some point, because it’s much later than she last remembers it being, and like half of her upper body is sprawled across Jesse’s bare chest which is definitely not how she would have comfortably fallen asleep.
Still, when he shifts in his sleep and his arm wraps around her a little tighter, tugging her a little closer, she just closes and eyes and slots her calf between his beneath the sheets.
The next time she wakes up, the early autumn sun is streaming through Jesse’s blinds and she’s alone. She pulls her phone off his desk where it’s charging to check the time, then rolls out of bed, rummaging through the pile of clothes on the floor for last night’s jeans, leaving on Jesse’s shirt that she slept in. She’s just buttoning them up when Jesse slips back through the door, shutting it quietly behind him. He has a plate and mug in his hand.
“Sorry the toast is burnt,” he says in lieu of a proper greeting. “Benji used the toaster for some magic trick gone awry last week and now the only setting is scorched.”
“No this is good, thank you,” she hums, taking the plate and mug from him gratefully. “I have to be back at the house in, like, five minutes for a Bellas meeting or I’m pretty sure Amy is going to make the auditions song SexyBack.”
“I’ll walk you out,” he says and grabs her bag and the clothes she’s not wearing.
“I’ll bring back your dishes,” Beca says through a mouthful of toast.
They slip out of the house, Beca waving and saying hi to the Trebles on the stairs and in the living room as best she can while eating, then are out on the sidewalk.
“You’re gonna have to leave me here,” she says, stopping short of the Bella house. “Top secret Bella business happening inside and there will be casualties if I let you infiltrate.”
“Which one of us is the casualty?” Jesse asks, grinning and tugging her towards him by the fabric of her stolen shirt.
“Don’t think you want to find out.”
“Beca!” Chloe’s emerged from the Bella house doorway and is shouting at her across the lawn. “As fun as watching your little love fest out here is, you need to get your ass inside now. Amy’s just pitched If U Seek Amy for the audition song and things are getting out of hand.”
“Duty calls,” Beca hums, tilting her head up to kiss Jesse quickly on the mouth, maneuvering her plate and mug around his body. “Got a Britney emergency.”
“Good luck,” he squeezes her side. “I’ll see you later.”
A couple of weeks later, they’re back in Jesse’s bed. They’d just stumbled in from an exceptionally rowdy hoodnight, drunk and immediately abandoning the Spielberg movie Jesse had playing on his laptop when Beca slipped onto his lap and pulled his shirt over his head.
Now, they can still hear the party going on in the Trebles’ backyard without them, knowing everybody was too far gone to notice the two captains slip away from the festivities. They’d been a few too many Jell-O shots in when Jesse had tugged her into the kitchen, fingers weaved in her belt loops, suggesting they disappear for a movication, while fully knowing there is no way they would be sitting through Jurassic Park tonight. Beca had of course agreed, snagging a bottle of cheap wine from the counter on the way up the stairs.
“You wanna go back out there?” Jesse asks, shifting so his body is facing hers on the tiny bed. It’s convenient that she’s small.
“Bad idea,” Beca groans, throwing her arm over her eyes. “Drank too much already.” She hears Jesse laugh quietly beside her, feels his eyes on her. “What?” she asks when he doesn’t say anything, turning her head to look at his face next to hers on the pillow.
“Nothing,” he shakes his head. “It’s just, you’re my best friend.”
This is unprompted. Beca feels the summersault her heart does in her chest.
“You’re drunk,” she says, but smiles softly. There’s something about the look on his face, the softness in his expression, that tugs at something inside her, fills her up from the inside out. She feels a shift, but can’t pinpoint what.
“So are you. Still mean it.”
Beca doesn’t say anything, doesn’t know what to say, but she’s pretty sure Jesse can feel how hard her heart is beating when she tugs him impossibly close on the small bed, hitches her leg around his hip, and slants her mouth over his again.
This is good, she thinks.
She realizes it in the middle of a Bellas performance.
It’s the day of the fall mixer, and they’re in the middle of a (pretty solid, if Beca does say so herself) arrangement of Katy Perry’s Teenage Dream and Last Friday Night when she spots him in But, there he is, smiling at her so brightly as she sings about hearts racing in skin tight jeans and getting kicked out of bars, and holy shit she loves him. She is in love with him.
Beca has to focus really hard on remembering her parts to the arrangement, on breathing enough to actually sing when she makes eye contact with Jesse. She knows he loves her, too; knows that he hasn’t directly said it yet for her sake but that that’s what he meant the other week, after hoodnight.
She somehow, fatefully, makes it through the set without a hitch and sticks around just long enough to tell the girls that she loves them and that was awesome and she’ll see them back at the house. She flips Amy off from behind her back as she walks away, fully aware of the overly suggestive wink Amy shot to the rest of the group when Beca said she was going to catch up with Jesse.
“That was insane,” he tells her the moment she’s within earshot. “Seriously, Bec.”
“Thank you,” she hums, letting herself be pulled into a tight hug, feeling Jesse press a kiss to the top of her hair. Her heart still feels like it’s going to beat out of her chest. “And thanks for coming.”
She’s not going to tell him here. Not in the backyard of a sweaty frat house surrounded by dudes who smell like beer and too much body spray and who have undoubtedly spent the last half hour talking about the girls’ bodies rather than their a capella performance and she wants to give him something better than that. He deserves something better than that. It’s not that she’s going to do some grand gesture or something, god knows she’s done enough grand gestures for her lifetime (one is her limit), but she wants it to be nicer than this.
“You ready to get out of here?”
“Very. But hey,” Beca says, grabbing his hand as he turns to go, tugging him back towards her. He starts to ask, “What?” but she’s got a hand in his hair, pulling his mouth down to hers before he has a chance to finish his question.
“What was that for?” Jesse asks, grinning when he pulls away. His eyes are all shiny and crinkled in the corners.
“Nothing,” Beca answers, but she’s grinning too. “I’ll tell you later. C’mon.”