Chapter Text
Chapter 1
(Beca)
Beca lay in bed, staring at the ceiling. She hadn’t even bothered to change out of her performance outfit from the ICCAs. Because in the rush of adrenaline that had followed their championship set, she had made a huge mistake.
She had kissed Jesse.
Jesse wasn’t who she wanted to kiss tonight. But even in the afterglow of victory, Beca had been afraid to do what she really wanted.
Only when they had started rehearsing the new set had Beca realized it wasn’t Jesse she kept in the corner of her eye. It wasn’t Jesse who danced on stage in the darkness behind her eyelids when she closed them. It wasn’t Jesse’s voice that echoed in her mind even when no music was playing.
Instead, it was a tall, freckled ginger who occupied Beca’s thoughts, waking and sleeping.
It was Chloe Beale she should have kissed in celebration.
It was Chloe of whom Beca felt hyperaware, whose presence and even exact location Beca could identify without looking when they were in the same room. Regardless what part of a song they sang, Beca heard Chloe’s Aguilerian voice above them all. She heard it, not just with her ears, but her gut. Her heart.
Frustrated, the newly minted a cappella champ turned facedown in bed and dragged the pillow over her head. Just before boarding their respective busses, she and Jesse had agreed to grab coffee the following afternoon. Beca knew she had to tell him the kiss hadn’t meant anything. She had to tell him that she didn’t like him like that. What she couldn’t figure out was when. Should she text him first thing and cancel? Or should she show up and tell him in person.
She was vaguely glad that Kimmie Jin was already gone for the summer as she growled her frustration into the mattress. Beca needed help, but could she ask the person she trusted the most? The person who was, ultimately, the exact reason she needed advice?
----------
“Chloe, are you up?” Beca knocked on the door of her fellow Bella’s dorm room. “It’s important, c’mon!” Overnight, thinking instead of sleeping, Beca had decided to risk asking Chloe for advice because she simply didn’t think she had anyone else to ask. Fat Amy, while one of Beca’s favorite people, would likely go off on an unhelpful tangent about Australian wildlife or something. So Beca had gathered up her courage and marched across campus at 7 in the morning.
“Hold on, Beca, I’m naked!” Chloe called. There was a faint thud before the shuffling of fabric and, finally, the door opened to reveal a disheveled, yawning Chloe, wearing a silk bathrobe. “What’s up? Come in.” She stood to one side of the door.
Beca thought her gulp at the sight of Chloe Beale first thing in the morning must have been audible, but she stepped past her friend when invited and plopped down on the chair in front of the computer desk. “I kissed Jesse, last night,” she said, keeping her eyes on where she picked at her flaking black nail polish.
Chloe laughed. “I know. I was there. I think I cheered the loudest.”
“Well, it was in my ear, so I agree it was loud.” Beca dodged the throw pillow that Chloe tossed at her from the bed in mock protest.
“So? You kissed Jesse, I knew that. What’s got you up so early?” Chloe yawned again, but looked attentive enough, so Beca took a deep breath to begin.
“Actually, I’m up late. I haven’t slept yet.”
Chloe interrupted her before she could continue. “You’ve been up all night?!” she exclaimed, concerned. “What’s so wrong that you couldn’t sleep?”
“Before we got on the bus, Jesse and I agreed to get coffee today.” She paused, trying to find the right way to explain without tipping her hand. She didn’t think she was ready for the redhead to know about her feelings, yet. She felt bad for not giving her best friend the whole story, but these feelings were relatively new to the younger woman and she wasn’t sure what to do about them yet.
No, she had to deal with the Jesse issue and any potential fallout before she could think about showing Chloe how she had felt, she now realized, since the day they met and Beca had told Chloe and Aubrey that a cappella was kinda lame. Even then, she had felt drawn to Chloe and those big, sky blue eyes.
Realizing she had gotten lost in her thoughts about Chloe again, Beca resumed speaking, though Chloe was being uncharacteristically quiet and not rushing her. “The thing is, Chlo, I don’t wanna go. I don’t wanna get coffee with him.”
The ginger leaned forward, intrigued by this unexpected twist in the story of Beca and Jesse that had started the first day of fall semester. Jesse had been chasing Beca since he had seen her that day, from the radio station, to joining the Treblemakers, to seemingly appearing everywhere Beca was in trouble, trying to rescue her without her asking. She had listened to Beca complain about the attention before, but she had assumed that the kiss the night before meant that Beca no longer minded. “Why not?” she asked quizzically.
Beca sighed and gestured vaguely. “I just… I don’t like Jesse like that. Like, he’s cool, we can chill and be friends or whatever, but I don’t want to date him.”
“Okay,” Chloe shrugged. “So cancel. Text him now and say you’ve changed your mind, you don’t think it’s a good idea.”
“Yeah, but I kissed him, Chlo. Am I not, like, sending mixed signals or something? Did I lead him on?” Beca ran her hands through her brown hair roughly, growling quietly because she couldn’t tell Chloe the whole story and explain why it was more complicated for her than that.
Chloe crawled down the bed to its foot, only a couple feet from where Beca sat. Dangling her well-toned legs over the edge, she reached out and put a hand on Beca’s cheek.
This wasn’t the first time Chloe had comforted her this way, but this time was different. Beca wanted to lean into that soft hand, turn her head and kiss the redhead’s palm. She wanted Chloe to give her a hug and run her fingers through her brunette hair. It took all Beca had not to do anything. It wasn’t like her to yearn for a hug; sure, she hugged her friends all the time, in the brief manner that most people hugged. But Beca knew that if Chloe hugged her now, it just might destroy her resolve to face one thing at a time.
“Hey,” Chloe said softly, reeling Beca back to the conversation at hand. “What’s really bothering you?”
Beca shook her head. “Nothing. I just don’t know if I should text Jesse, like, now and cancel, or if I should show up to explain and apologize for leading him on.”
It was Chloe’s turn to shake her head. “You didn’t lead him on Bec.” She held up a hand to forestall the expected response. “Yes, you kissed him. When you were flooded with adrenaline from winning a national a cappella championship. After he chased you all year. One kiss isn’t a promise or an obligation.” Chloe dropped her hand and stood. “Gimme your phone.”
“Dude, no!”
“Then you text him and cancel. And don’t apologize! You didn’t do anything wrong!”
Beca sighed, dropping her face into her hands and wishing they were Chloe’s hands. “Fine.” She shifted to one side to pull her phone out of her pocket. With a few taps, she opened the text thread with Jesse. After a few false starts, beginning to type, then deleting it several times, she growled again and shoved the phone in Chloe’s direction. “Just don’t be mean about it.”
Chloe put on an offended expression. “As if I’d be mean about it!” Taking the phone, she read aloud as she typed to prove she was being nice. “Hey. I can’t get coffee with you. We should just stay friends.” She looked over at Beca and raised a brow. “That nice enough?”
Beca sighed heavily and nodded. “Yeah, go ahead.” She again dropped her face into her hands. The phone dinged after a minute or two with Jesse’s reply.
“Why?”
Beca stood with a groan and moved past Chloe to climb into the bed and curl up facing the wall. “God, I’ve fucked this up so bad,” she muttered, loud enough to be heard.
She felt the ginger sit down behind her, the bed dipping at the added weight. Again, Chloe read as she typed. “You’re a great guy. But I’m not interested in a relationship.” She hit send, not hearing Becca whisper, “With him….”
Beca gave a quick thumbs up before curling her arm back into her chest. She heard Chloe set the phone down. To Beca’s utter shock, Chloe laid down behind her and laid a hand lightly on her hip. That was their only point of contact, and Beca had jeans on, but the place where Chloe’s hand rested felt like it was burning her from the inside out.
Beca had never been so affected by someone before. She’d slept with a few people in high school, but nothing she’d ever done to this point compared to the sensation of Chloe Beale’s hand on her hip, lying just six inches from her back. The freshman could feel the heat coming off Chloe’s body, so close and yet so very far away, and she was suddenly too warm.
Sitting up abruptly, she raked a hand through her hair before looking behind her to see a baffled look on her best friend’s face. “I’m sorry, I just… I need to go. Thanks for your help. Really, you helped massively. I really appreciate it.” Before she could think, she leaned over and kissed Chloe’s cheek, then climbed out of the bed, grabbing her phone and heading out.