(Accidentally) Taking Aim
Title: (Accidentally) Taking Aim
Pairing: Beca Mitchell/Chloe
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: Nothing owned, no profit gained.
Spoilers: Through the majority of Pitch Perfect, though AU in places.
Summary: For Kay’s prompt: "At Barden, the acapella groups are naturally drawn to understanding the world through music. It's the language they speak, from toners to aca-children, but most of all in the harmonies they make with their mouths. So is it really any wonder that Chloe is falling so hard when Beca is wooing her with her music, even if it's completely by accident?"
Chloe thinks every girl-who-likes-girls has her requisite straight crush: the one that does you in utterly, carving out a space in the back of your heart and curling up there for better or for worse. There is always that one girl to whom you give a piece of yourself-a piece she never wanted, or asked for, or even knows about, maybe-and that piece is, for ever after and always, done for. She’s got it, whether she’s aware or not, even though it was probably the biggest accident ever, and you can never, ever get it back.
It’s a seduction thing, something too simple and instinctual for words. Seduction shouldn’t be like that, shouldn’t be so easy, but where straight girls are concerned…
Every girl-who-likes-girls has a girl like that. It’s just a fact of life. For the longest time, Chloe was sure hers was Aubrey: the best friend she’s ever had in her life, the one with a frazzled smile like mad sunshine and thick blonde hair that always seems to smell of coconut and stress. Aubrey is exactly the kind of straight girl girls like Chloe are endlessly falling for: smart, and driven, and a right turn past crazy. Aubrey is beautiful. Aubrey is her accidental person. The unintentional seduction that struck between the eyes and left her tied for life to a person who could never love her back.
Aubrey is her person. Was her person. Until Beca Mitchell strolled into her life.
Beca Mitchell sort of undid absolutely everything. And she did it by way of the strangest seduction ever.
***
The problem with seduction, Chloe believes, is it seems at first to be an easy-going, straightforward sort of issue. Seduction is an art form, planned to the letter, and even when it’s spontaneous, those doing the seducing should be poignantly aware of what they are achieving. Seduction is not, she thinks, something to be taken lightly. Or by complete accident.
That’s the way it should be, but the thing about seduction, she is realizing-and not particularly loving the realizing, by the by-is that it actually is that simple. Simple enough to be tripped over and fallen into. Simple enough that a girl like Aubrey-or, God help her, Beca-has absolutely clue she’s doing it at all. It should require thought, and planning, and actual effort, and sometimes it does-but not always. Not when it comes to smirky little girls with oversized headphones. Not when it comes to the casual music taste of someone she shouldn’t even want to get to know, by Aubrey’s very specific standards.
When those are the cards on the table-heady blue eyes, coal-black lashes, indie-punk-Nirvana-whatever dress sense-the act of seduction somehow becomes a very big, very accidental problem.
Because, when you see someone seducing you on purpose, whether you want to succumb or not, you can do something about it. You can respond in kind, or ignore them entirely, and make a choice as to which step to take next. When you see that penny in the air, when you can call the shots before they fire, everything becomes easier. It’s manageable.
But when it’s someone like Beca, who clearly has no earthly idea what she’s doing-or how damn hard she’s managing to push Chloe’s buttons-the whole game finds itself turned upside down. She can’t call the shots with Beca; by the time the gun is going off, she’s already bleeding. She can’t see anything coming, because Beca-
Beca is so plainly one of those straight girls: the most dangerous sort, with her mock-bashful smile and the razorblade sarcasm that irrationally sets Chloe’s skin tingling. She is plainly one of those girls who has no idea the effect she can have on men, much less on other women, and when it comes to someone like Chloe-who is wide open, beaming and vulnerable, and who can’t resist an enigma like the girl wrapped protectively around her MacBook-
It takes all of a week for her to realize that maybe, just maybe, she kind of jumped the gun on assigning Aubrey as her token straight travesty.
***
The thing that’s most bizarre about Beca’s unintentional seduction techniques is that it has absolutely nothing to do with seduction itself. Or lust. Or sex. Beca isn’t flashing sweetly-dirty little smiles across the quad, or running beside her at the gym in a sports bra, or doing any of the things girls do when they can’t resist a little casual flirtation. Beca isn’t behaving like a girl at all so much as an extremely pretty lawn chair, and yet, somehow, she’s got Chloe by the throat.
It’s the headphones that get it all started, Chloe is positive. Headphones are mysterious and clever. Headphones reel you in. You see a good pair of headphones, and instantly, you have to know what’s blaring through them. Is it an embarrassing round of 90s pop ballads? A playlist composed entirely of Broadway showtunes? Metallica? You see a good pair of headphones like the ones wrapped around Beca’s neck, and you can’t forget them for even a second. It’s impossible to put a question like this one out of your head.
Just what kind of music does a beautiful loner get off on, anyway?
Chloe understands, intellectually, that music isn’t a desperately sensual topic for most people. Music gets under a person’s skin, does things to their head and their heart, and makes a difference-but on a purely instinctual level. Most people don’t think twice about it; they just carry on as they are, listening, belting in the comfort of their cars, not paying a scrap of attention to why they feel the way they do with their speakers pumping. For most people, music is one of those things that gets taken for granted-like drawing breath, or functioning without swallowing one’s own tongue.
Here at Barden, in the acapella circuit, things are different. She didn’t even realize how different, until the day she met Aubrey, because until that moment, she was sure it was just her. That she was the only human being to respond to music this way, as if it were a lover, and a great book, and a sheer necessity all rolled into one purely gorgeous concept. She was sure, until Aubrey bumped into her at the Bellas’ booth on that first day, that she was just a little bit crazy-and nothing more.
But Aubrey felt it too, that powerful pull toward the melody in her head, and that’s part of what Chloe loved her so much from the very start. Aubrey introduced her to understanding why she feels the way she does, instead of just accepting it. Aubrey took her by the arm and led her to the Bellas, and through everything that followed-the abuse from snippy captains, the laughter from less-educated peers, the raging failures at competition level-she couldn’t shake the feeling that this was absolutely where she belonged. In the arms of music. Allowing it to wrap around her head and her heart, tugging at her, guiding her to new heights.
Music is the ultimate accidental seduction; you don’t choose it, or call it in the air, or walk toward it willingly. It just takes you over, and when that’s done-
Music, she thinks with a wistful little sigh, is a little too like a beautiful straight girl, in that way.
***
Beca’s taste in music is raw, and, at the same time, startlingly familiar. Chloe expects something different, when their eyes first lock on the warm September day. She expects Beca to be one of those indie-punk girls, the ones who bask in the hipster limelight of artists no one else has ever heard of. When she asks-after Beca shoots them down and slips quietly away to be by herself, and Chloe can’t resist following-what the new girl’s favorite band is, she half-expects her to flip back her hair, roll her eyes, and list off a whole sheaf of Life-Changing Artists Chloe doesn’t have the patience to YouTube. She doesn’t expect Beca to look her over once, uneasily, and tip her a lopsided smile.
“Y’know. Little bit of this, little bit of that.”
She walks away without saying much more, which blows Chloe’s mind. Who doesn’t love talking about music? Here she is, flat-out wondering about Beca’s iPod, and the girl can’t even bother giving her a single song title. That’s unnatural. Even people who don’t feel the beat the way she and Aubrey do can’t help gushing about their powerful adoration for Adele.
That’s what really gets the ball rolling on this heart-shattering crush thing she shouldn’t be nursing. It’s not the way Beca’s smile tilts just a little too far to the left, or the haphazard way she blows flyaway strands of hair off her forehead, or even the thrumming tap-tap-tap of her fingertips against her thigh as she walks. It’s the fact that she wears those damn expensive headphones-which means she cares, far more than she seems to want Chloe to realize-and still doesn’t see the point in flatly stating whether she prefers Sara Bareilles or Ace of Base.
It’s staggering.
***
She doesn’t get a chance to learn how familiar Beca’s musical stylings can be until one night in-of all places-the shower. She’s been running late all day long, what with Aubrey’s carefully-calculated plans for semi-hostile musical takeover (not to mention a Trig study session that makes her brain feel like leaking from her ears) eating up her time, and she doesn’t make it to the bathroom until almost eleven. It’s not great for the Make A System plan she drafted for senior year, but it turns out to be awesome for her Nursing a Straight Crush issue.
Beca, unsurprisingly, is not a people person-so much so that she showers in the dead of night, when everyone else is busy pouring over last-minute homework struggles. And Beca, apparently, doesn’t realize the hazards of a public bathroom system.
Namely, that when she sings softly along to the song in her head, absolutely anyone can hear.
And listen.
And be astounded.
It’s that accidental seduction thing in full-force, and Chloe’s falling faster than is intellectually sound. Beca’s voice is excellent-incredible, she’s inclined to say, leaning with her head against the wall of her shower stall-and even if she doesn’t know it, it’s the kind of voice that could bring them straight to the finals. More than that, it’s the kind of voice that sends shivers rippling under Chloe’s bare skin, urging her eyes shut and her ears to prick.
More than that, her song choice is utterly unexpected, because Chloe actually knows it. “Titanium” isn’t a top-40 hit, exactly, but it’s been a not-so-guilty pleasure of hers for months, strapped to the top of her favorite playlist. The fact that Beca knows it is surprising enough; the fact that it seems to be her go-to shower song…
She waits a while to be certain. The lucky thing about Beca is that her lack of people-person tendencies makes her a habitual night showerer; the lucky thing about Chloe is that her focus is unwavering when she wants something. It makes it shockingly-perhaps problematically-easy to sync up their nighttime routines without Beca ever noticing. And every night, like clockwork, it’s a song like this that rings from Beca’s lips: if not the same song, then at least pieces stripped from similar puzzles. Lady jams that make Chloe’s heart race, because she spends most of her time basking in them herself. Songs that would make the trip to the Lincoln Center a breeze.
If only she could convince Aubrey of that, they would have a perfect shot at success.
But this is about one problem at a time, and her head is far too full of Beca to focus on the Bellas right now. Beca is so much better than she realizes (or, Chloe thinks shrewdly, than she wanted them to realize), and in the shower, there’s something relaxed about her. Chloe can hear it in the timbre of her voice, in the space between breaths when she simply rests there beneath the water, letting herself go still. She wonders what Beca looks like on these nights, whether or not the tension slides from her shoulder blades and the crease melts from her brow. Something tells her the picture is beautiful.
(Something also tells her this is Beca’s unwitting seduction talking, and that she should go far, far away until it shuts up. Somehow, after years of craving Aubrey, she doesn’t think that’s going to work out as it should.)
***
She waits a whole week (which, for her, is a feat of patience never before noted) before actively walking in on Beca and her private song. She might have even waited longer, if not for the fact that Beca seems only to have so many shower-worthy pieces in her repertoire, and cycles back pretty quickly to David Guetta numbers. And Chloe can only listen to the soft strains of “Titanium” so many times before her senses perk up on red alert.
Lady jams are like that, crawling under her skin and resting comfortably there until she addresses them head-on. Lady jams, in a way, are dangerously like lady crushes.
She almost feels bad about pushing through the curtain, half because Beca looks like she’s going to have an honest-to-God heart attack, and half because she’s leaving a perfectly nice, perfectly attractive guy behind to stage her little assault. A guy who should be able to take her mind off of even wanting to crash in on someone like Beca, whose eyes go dinner-plate-sized as she tries desperately to shrink into the tile wall. He should, because he’s been working on his own little seduction for a couple of weeks now, and his is the kind of seduction she doesn’t mind. She knows where it comes from, and where he intends it to lead, and the fact that she’s showering with him at all suggests he’s well on his way, but-
Beca just has to pick a song like “Titanium.” A song like that is enough to throw all the cards off the table. And then push the table down a flight of stairs. And then blow those stairs to rubble.
It just isn’t fair, when music gets involved.
She thinks Beca might well stroke out in the middle of their admittedly-naked conversation (and how cute, the way Beca indignantly whispers, “I’m nude,” as if Chloe can be startled by minor details like that), but she manages to hold it together. There’s a spark there, under layers of crooked smirks and shifty glances, and if Chloe isn’t mistaken, it’s the mark of a winner. Beca is stronger than her slight frame would suggest.
And far, far sexier than she realizes, clearly; she meets Chloe’s gaze dead-on, her jaw tightening with a certain uncomfortable determination, and though she’s clutching the shower curtain to her chest, she turns out one hell of a private performance. It sends Chloe’s stomach into instant knots, her toes curling against the uneven tile floor, and she thinks this is more than a simple seduction. This is a hopeless case, bounding off the walls and coming back to land squarely between them.
The poor guy in the stall behind her doesn’t have a chance in hell.
Beca peers up at her from under a mop of bedraggled hair, her eyes huge and warm and kind of pleasantly surprised at what they’ve just created together. For half a heartbeat, Chloe is sure this will take a turn she was previously unprepared for-a turn that a straight girl like Beca couldn’t possibly expect, or want, or aim toward-and then Beca is angling away, her smile darting skittishly off the wall over Chloe’s shoulder. She releases the breath lodged in her chest and smiles, feigning abject confidence as she stretches to hand a towel over.
When Beca smiles, all teeth and stressed-out jaw clench, and says she’ll be sure to pencil the auditions in, it takes all her willpower not to reach out and hug her in a flare of excitement.
When Beca’s eyes flicker hesitantly down her body and her lips form a steady, “You should be” in response to her confidence, it takes all her willpower not to surge forward and pin her against the shower wall.
When Beca turns back toward the faucet and shakes her head, it takes all of her willpower to edge back out the way she came, wondering how in all the holy musical hells she’s going to make it through this alive.
Aubrey wasn’t half this confounding.
***
The next time Beca turns out one of her favorite songs, they’re at initiation night, and surrounded by other students, and terribly drunk. Or, at least, Chloe is drunk. Drunk enough to have made out for half an hour with Shower Guy, who doesn’t have a prayer of skipping past first base, but doesn’t seem to realize it just yet. Not drunk enough to have missed the way Beca’s glance keeps tilting her way, as if watching to make sure she really does “make good choices.”
Why Beca would care, she has no idea-and probably shouldn’t focus too heavily on finding out.
Any way it’s spun, Beca must have at least a few drinks in her, because she’s actually involving herself-actively, without being dragged-in the karaoke event being held in the middle of the party. And the song she picks is that old Proclaimers ballad, the one that insists upon walking 500 miles, and then 500 more. It’s a song very few people can stand anymore, but Chloe loves it; it tends to get lodged right in the center of her brain for weeks, prompting all sorts of fantasies of the person whose door she would happily trek all the miles in the world to fall in front of.
That person used to be Aubrey, who, at last glance, was twisting her mangled straw between her teeth and talking in a very loud, very slurred voice to anyone who would listen about her plans for the year.
That person, now, looks just a little different.
Beca hikes herself up on a chair, red plastic cup dangling loosely from her fingers as she sings in a clean, sweet voice. She still looks delightfully awkward around the edges, her eyes sweeping the crowd sporadically before fixing on the pregnant moon above them, but her smile is sleepy, and her hair is coming down from its messy ponytail, and there’s something gorgeous about the way she closes her eyes and sinks into the lyrics she’s singing. Chloe leans back against the stadium seating and gives in to just listening, swaying with the beat. It’s probably a bad idea-the worst, maybe-to let it wash over her this way, the poignant, unintentional seduction that’s been spinning her head this way and that, but Beca catches her gaze and holds to it, lips quirking. And when Beca smiles, it turns out Chloe can’t even begin to think straight.
Thank God Aubrey’s too drunk to notice tonight.
When the song is over, it seems still to resonate through her bones, leading her fingertips to twitch against the side of her cup. She hums gracelessly along, even as she watches Beca hop down from her makeshift stage and make her way over, fumbling here and there with simple steps.
“And I would walk five hundred miles,” she greets, just the slightest bit off-tune. Beca grins, not quite sloppy, but getting there.
“And I would walk five hundred more,” she replies, halting about a foot away and pushing her hands into her jacket pockets. Her hips sway from side to side, her lips pursed. “What happened to your friend?”
Chloe neither knows where her make-out buddy sauntered off to, nor cares. Not with Beca smiling at her this way, like they’re friends, or like they could be someday soon. It’s the closest she’ll ever get to a straight girl like this, no matter how in love she falls, and it’s going to have to be enough. She’s just glad Beca doesn’t seem adamant in her desire to avoid the crazy chick who stalked her in the shower.
“I love that song,” she says instead of answering the question, only vaguely aware that she’s yelling a bit unnecessarily. This party was a lot crazier a few hours ago; by now, it’s died down to the last dregs, with people lounging, half-asleep, on each other’s laps. Those still conscious have greedily swept up Beca’s place on the chair, and are beginning a rousingly off-kilter performance of “Bohemian Rhapsody.” Beca smiles lazily in their direction.
“Queen rocks,” is all she says, and Chloe would take that as yet another Accidental Music Seduction tactic, except everybody likes Queen. Beca gets a pass, for now.
On the music, at least, if not for the way she’s leaning subtly forward. Her hands push deeper into her pockets, her eyes all but crossing as she strains to blow a raggedy lock of hair out of her face. Chloe reaches clumsily forward without thinking and swipes it behind her ear for her, cheeks pinkening when Beca says simply, “Thanks.”
She’s cute this way, all relaxed and weary. Cuter, somehow, than the tight-fisted sarcasm machine from the beginning of the night, the one who seemed reluctant to take even one swig of beer. Chloe wonders where that guy ran off to, the one who pressed the cup into her hand in the first place.
When she works up the nerve to ask, Beca’s forehead wrinkles adorably, her shoulders shrugging the question off. “Who, Jesse? Beats me. Dude’s all over the place.”
It’s not the kind of thing a drunk girl with a crush would say. Chloe tries not to take that too sincerely to heart; just because Jesse is adorable, and has great arms, and that floppy puppy hair, and Beca still doesn’t find him enticing…
It means nothing. Just a girl without a love interest. So what?
“You should get solos this year,” she blurts, hoping in the next instant that she doesn’t sound completely pathetic. It’s not a concern she usually entertains-because, really, if someone doesn’t like her, what is worrying about it going to change?-but she’s drunk, and exhausted, and has the tiniest niggling thought at the back of her mind about where Aubrey might have scooted off to on a night like this. And Beca is beautiful, her make-up smudged around her eyes, her tongue ducking out to skirt across her bottom lip. It’s all doing wonders to distract from her usual optimism.
“I don’t know about that,” Beca laughs. Chloe smacks at her arm.
“You should! You’re really good, you know. Amazing.”
That just about screams I’m desperately in lady love with your face and your music taste, but Beca doesn’t seem bothered. She hunches into herself a little, the corners of her eyes crinkling.
“Thanks,” she says again. Chloe nods. She’s standing very close-closer, Chloe is pretty sure, than she was two minutes ago, though she doesn’t remember either of them moving-and it’s getting hard to breathe with the scent of alcohol and Beca’s shampoo clogging her nostrils. She swallows hard.
She could kiss her now, she thinks. Just a brief swipe of lips, barely any contact at all, and she would know for sure how this will all play out. Straight girl on bi girl. Drunk. Casual. No harm.
Except Beca, even drunk, is clearly still Beca. Maybe less so than usual, but Chloe is three-hundred percent sure a kiss at a time like this would send their budding friendship straight down the tubes. It’s not worth it. She’s almost positive.
But, damn, does Beca’s arm feel good winding around her middle as they fumble their way toward the rest of the Bellas. It almost doesn’t bother her, that it’s only happening because they’re both just a little too far gone to stand safely.
Almost.
***
Beca goes a good couple of weeks without singing a word to her-outside of their non-stop rehearsal schedule, at least-and Chloe does her best to minimize her feelings in that time. As long as Beca is keeping quiet, she reasons, she can do this. Tuck her desperate longing away somewhere. Replace it with friendly coaching and maybe slightly-more-than-friendly arms around Beca’s shoulders as she guides her through the choreography (which Beca grumbles at, but whatever, she really can use the dance help). Ignore everything that’s going on in her head.
The seduction carries on as she knows it must, building with every brush of Beca’s fingers against her skin and each hesitant smile Beca slips her way, but it’s not bad. No worse, anyway, than it used to be with Aubrey’s hugs and open-hearted monologues about her family. Those used to make Chloe feel so included, and needed, and like she could make a difference. Conversations like that used to be the crux of them.
Now Aubrey mostly just alternates between barking out orders and mumbling nervously about their chances, and it isn’t like Beca’s ever going to tell her about any family issues. Chloe settles for sinking back into the role of second-in-command, and hopes the swell of interest will, at some point, break.
And it might have, she thinks-if not for Beca’s heart-rendingly adorable decision to leap face-first into the riff-off.
With a Dr. Dre song.
That she can barely get out of her mouth without turning crimson.
Chloe’s mouth drops open when it begins, all in a rush of syllables that jam together and go dizzy in Beca’s sweetly not-gangster voice. She loves this song-and, honestly, kind of thought no one else remembered it. Aubrey doesn’t listen to anything penned after 1998 by women, and everyone else seems fixated on current radio hits. She doesn’t even try to educate them anymore on her iPod’s most golden tracks.
But Beca-five-foot-two, skinny, pale Beca-knows “No Diggity.” Knows it well enough to lunge recklessly into it in front of fifty strangers, and to stick with it despite her own team gaping at her, and damn, Chloe is in trouble. This is a real, true, painful situation she's got on her hands, and that situation is currently spinning in hopeful circles with her eyebrows raised, clearly praying for someone else to back her up.
Which they do, after an astonished beat, but all the while, the only thing Chloe can think is, how does Beca keep doing this? It’s as though she spends her downtime riffling through Chloe’s most private musical loves, picking out her favorites willy-nilly and using them against her. It’s as though she knows what she’s doing, with her brazen little smirk and those sharp eyes that bore right through Chloe’s.
Although how she could-how she could know what it would do to Chloe’s heart to watch her walk in a slow, languid circle, laughing around rap lyrics, gesticulating ridiculously-is beyond her. It’s just not possible. Not even Beca is that incredible.
When it’s over, and they lose on some bullshit ruling, she should go over to Aubrey. Talk it out, talk her down, try to pry loose some of the control Aubrey’s got gripped so firmly in hand. She should, but Beca’s arms are wrapped around herself, and her head is down, and she looks painfully embarrassed-and it’s impossible to walk away from that.
“You pick the best songs,” Chloe tells her, skipping to catch up and hooking an arm around one of Beca’s. She knocks their shoulders together, winking conspiratorially. “The best.”
Because, hey, if Beca doesn’t already know what she’s doing, there can’t be that much harm in pointing out the obvious.
“They’re just songs,” Beca mumbles from beneath her hair. “Dumb ones, half the time. Who even listens to Dr. Dre anymore?”
“You killed it,” Chloe admonishes, giving her arm a little shake. “That was some straight-up gangster shit.”
Beca snorts, glancing up from the corner of her periphery. “Sure it was.”
“It was.” Chloe knocks into her again, giggling when Beca trips. “Best white-girl rap I ever did see.”
This time, Beca laughs. Chloe pulls on her arm, easing her closer and resting her head against Beca’s shoulder.
“We should have won with that,” she says quietly, half-afraid Aubrey will choose this exact moment to eavesdrop. “You’re right, you know. About being different.”
The smile Beca gives her is worth all the painful butterflies in the world.
***
The problem is, even if Chloe sees the truth, Aubrey steadfastly refuses to jump on board. Which leaves them in the same place, sleepwalking through the same old steps in the same old uniforms, time and time again. And they lose-of course they do. In the end, that was the only way it was ever going to play out, and she knows it.
Not that Beca didn’t try. A forceful, last-ditch sort of attempt, with her teeth gritted and her whole body thrown into motions she usually acts numb to. She opens her mouth and belts-belts, for the whole semi-final auditorium to hear-“Bulletproof” until tingles race up and down Chloe’s spine, and still…
It wasn’t ever going to go another way, and she knows it, but Aubrey didn’t. Aubrey believed with her whole blessedly-manic heart that they would make it to the very end with the same old routine, and, consequently, when Beca pulls out that crazy maneuver, Aubrey is pissed. Royally pissed, shaking from the top of her head to the heels of her shoes, and it’s all Chloe can do to rein her in from out-and-out slapping Beca across the face.
Beca leaves, and Chloe is unsurprised by that, too. She runs, the way Beca has so clearly wanted to do so many times, and no amount of arm tugging or smiling can change that. Intellectually, Chloe is very, very aware of how this whole thing is playing out before her eyes.
It doesn’t stop her from running after her.
She catches hold of Beca’s blouse in the parking lot, one firm grab of cloth at the square center of her back, and tugs. Beca, still unaccustomed to heels, staggers and nearly brings them both tumbling down.
“What?” she snaps. Chloe sucks in a breath, steadying herself.
“That was-you were-“
“If you say ‘amazing’,” Beca warns. Chloe frowns.
“You were. You are. And if Aubrey can’t see that-“
“And you can’t tell her, right?” Beca snaps, months of frustration turning the words cold as steel. Chloe’s hands ball into fists at her sides.
“She doesn’t listen to me,” she replies evenly, annoyed when Beca rolls her eyes.
“So make her listen. You’re supposed to be her best friend.”
“And you’re supposed to be mine,” she snaps without thinking, because it’s true. They don’t know the first thing about each other, but between the long nights spent rehearsing, and the times she’s fallen asleep on Beca’s couch, and all of the damn times Beca has unwittingly drawn her in with another snarky comment, or undone ponytail, or song stripped from her private collection-
Beca shakes her head, exhaling noisily. “I don’t-I don’t know what else to-“
Neither does Chloe, though it gives her a violent pang to admit it to herself. She presses a palm to her forehead and closes her eyes.
“She’s out of control,” she whispers. Beca sighs.
“I can’t do this anymore. I’m not…I’m not good at this. I never was.”
She’s wrong, but Chloe seems to be the only one who can see it, and maybe that’s the worst part about a straight crush. They’re always so beautiful, and so wonderful, and so much better than they believe, and nothing she says will ever make it sink in. Beca will always be hugging the curve, tilted away from her, head lost in her own world. Beca will never see herself the way Chloe sees her. And Chloe can never, ever tell her.
She opens her eyes and jumps, because Beca is right there, with her scarf unwound around her neck and her eyes dark in the starlight. She stretches up on her toes, unsteady, and presses a quick, hot kiss to the corner of Chloe’s mouth before she’s ready for it.
“I’m sorry,” she murmurs, and truly sounds it. “I just can’t.”
It takes a minute after she’s gone for Chloe’s heart to come down from its rat-a-tat panic and realize that a kiss like that from a girl like Beca can only ever mean goodbye.
***
She finds herself reliving that parking lot moment over and over again. A kiss from a straight girl means nothing, she knows. A kiss like that, quick and thoughtless, exhausted and out of patience, means nothing at all. It happens. It’s all just another part of the old accidental seduction, and she honestly needs to stop thinking about it.
Especially since Beca hasn’t said a word about it to her. She hasn't left in a physical sense, the way Chloe expected; they still see each other sometimes-more sporadically, now that the Bellas have fallen apart, and Beca has retreated largely back into her shell-but they haven’t exchanged a single sentence about that night. She doesn’t ask about Aubrey. Chloe doesn’t ask about her. They mostly just sit around and watch bad movies, which Beca is constantly dozing off in the middle of, trying their hardest not to think about…
In Chloe’s case, much of anything. She’s a senior, which means that competition was her last shot at really being someone here at Barden, and at giving herself over to the music’s call. After this, it’s graduation, and a real job, and being the kind of adult who doesn’t get hung up on nodes, and choreography, and pretty straight girls who paint their nails black. After this, it’s all over, and if she thinks on that too long, she’s pretty sure she’ll lose it completely, so she just…doesn’t. Doesn’t think about Aubrey, who won’t speak to her, or Beca’s lips on her skin, or the way it felt to stand under a spotlight for the last time.
She doesn’t invite Beca to the hospital when her surgery is scheduled, but Beca shows up anyway. They don’t talk about it-because Beca doesn’t really talk much at all these days, and because Chloe is medically forbidden from doing so-but Beca does push a fresh-looking flash drive across her dinner tray and smile faintly. It’s like there’s something she wants to say, but just can’t bring herself to spit out. Chloe’s honestly too exhausted and too cozy in the arms of her oh-so-splendid drugs to focus on it. She settles for squeezing Beca’s hand when it slips into her own, and dozing on and off against the pillows until she wakes at last to an empty room.
The flash drive is blue, and fits in the very middle of her palm, and looks nice with its masking-tape label. B for C. Her forehead creases, her teeth squeezing together until they scrape unpleasantly. Beca shouldn’t be giving her anything. Beca shouldn’t even have been here at all. If not for this very real, very solid reminder of her presence resting in her hand, Chloe would think Beca’s visit was nothing more than a spectral presentation of her ridiculous crush. Her imagination running circles around sanity. It wouldn’t be the first time.
But the kiss was real, she knows, and so is this strange, charming little gift. Whatever that means.
She waits until her mother is gone for the night to plug in her laptop and sift cautiously through the drive. A folder is all she finds, titled “For C,” containing one unmarked media file and a single text document that reads simply, “Play me.”
Her finger stills on the mousepad, her breath catching. Play me, the way Beca has been playing her heart for months now without ever noticing. At least, Chloe thinks she hasn’t noticed. That’s the name of the game, isn’t it? The straight girl doesn’t notice what she’s doing. Accidental seduction. Nothing planned, no penny in the air, just a seamless, habitual dance that leads nowhere at all-
The first strains of “Titanium” slink into her ears, soft and cool and so plainly in Beca’s voice that it hurts. She sounds nervous for a line or two, but the nerves smooth out sooner than Chloe’s expecting, and all that’s left is pure Beca: the same drawling, glorious tone from the bathroom that had her head spinning way back when.
There’s no music behind it, none of Beca’s usual synthesization or extraneous beats; it’s just her, clear and full of heart, and Chloe’s head pounds with love for the sound of it.
It transitions when she’s not expecting it, and suddenly, Beca’s voice is humming the chorus of that old batty Proclaimers song…and going raw and hot on the chords of “No Diggity”…only to race up into the heart of “Bulletproof,” and, oh, Chloe hurts. Her throat, and her head, and her chest, all pounding together with the pain of it, because Beca knows. Beca has taken every song, every moment she’s ever made Chloe fall in love with, and woven it all together like she wants it to mean something.
Straight girls don’t mean it. Straight girls don’t ever mean it.
But if Beca doesn’t mean this, Chloe’s not sure she’ll ever be able to look her in the eye again.
***
She waits until she’s out of the hospital, and she knows it must be killing Beca’s self-esteem inch by inch-knows how hard it must have been for Beca to put that track together in the first place, much less drive it over-but this just isn’t something she can do over text message. She can barely speak without going hoarse, so the phone is out, and, anyway, she needs to see Beca in person. Needs to take in the crook of her eyebrow and the slip of a smile on her lips, and know she isn’t imagining this.
Straight girls play the game without knowing there’s a game to be played. Straight girls draw you in without ever intending harm. Straight girls do that, time and time again-but Beca is-
She’s at the door, her hand raised and her heart thumping, when it swings open. For a desperate moment, she imagines the worst: that Jesse kid, standing with his crooked little grin and his big doe eyes, taking over where she should be. She imagines a misunderstanding so crushing, she can never come back from it. She imagines it all falling apart before it begins.
But the smile that reaches her looks a lot more like a grimace, and the tall, lanky young man a lot more like a petite Asian girl with a permanently irritated expression, and she has never in her life been so happy to see Kimmy Jin.
“Beca,” Kimmy Jin drones, her voice a dead monotone, and squeezes by Chloe without another syllable. A clatter comes from the far corner of the room where Beca must be holed up with her sound system; Chloe pokes her head in just in time to get a glimpse of her, propped on her desk chair with her headphones cinched around her neck and her hair a frazzled mess. She wonders when Beca last saw the backsides of her eyelids, and hopes against hope she hasn’t been skipping class again.
“We’ve got another shot,” Beca says without turning around. Her eyes are skimming an email on the screen, her tone coated with surprise. “Another shot at winning.”
It doesn’t register for a minute, because Beca just looks so wonderful with the laces of her sneakers untied and her sleeves pushed up to her elbows. Finally, Chloe blinks.
“Another shot at…?”
Beca swats the lid of her computer shut, swiveling in her chair with a grin Chloe has never seen before. “That was Aubrey. The kid who beat our asses was a kid. They disqualified him. We’re in.”
She says we’re, and she’s grinning, and Chloe wonders what she’s missed in the last three days of recuperating.
“That’s-that’s great,” she manages, stunned. Beca swings herself up from the chair, feet thumping against the carpet, and crosses the room in two leaping steps.
“We can do this,” she says, more excited than Chloe’s ever seen her, and yeah-there are three open cans of Red Bull on the desk, which sort of explains it. But there’s this light in her eyes, and a spark to her smile that’s almost eerily reminiscent of Aubrey, and-
“I listened to it,” she blurts, thick and raspy. Beca’s smile dims half a watt, her fingers twining together before her.
“Yeah?”
“It was-“ Beautiful. Excellent. The greatest gift she’s ever been given. She rubs at her cheek, reflexive and overwhelmed. “You’re-“ Perfect. Incredible. My person. “I thought you were straight.”
Beca’s gaze dips south, and an instantaneous horrible taste floods Chloe’s mouth. She’s misread it, the whole thing, and now they’re really going to botch the championship, because-
“You never asked,” Beca says, almost slyly, rubbing the back of her neck. Chloe swallows against the metallic panic on her tongue.
“You never said,” she argues, a smile tugging at her lips. “You could have.”
“I kissed you,” Beca points out. “And you ignored it.”
“You kissed me, and then ran away.” They’re dancing, she realizes, and it feels almost…fun. She’s never tangoed with a girl who knew they were dancing before. It’s always been straight girls, always been a questionable, mindless act, but this…
“I thought maybe you’d follow,” Beca says, quietly this time. Chloe bites her tongue. “You’re the one who’s all confident, remember? I just know music.”
Music, Chloe reasons, is the only thing Beca has ever needed to get at her. Music is the only thing she’s ever needed to know, from start to finish. Music is so much more than a just.
“You’re crazy,” she says, and laughs when Beca rolls her eyes.
“I don’t creep around in the showers waiting for people to sing my favorite song.”
“I didn’t creep,” Chloe responds indignantly, but Beca’s hand is zipping out to catch at the back of her neck, and her mouth is landing squarely against Chloe’s, drowning out her protest. She melts into her, fingertips spanning the breadth of Beca’s jaw, and thinks that maybe creeping isn’t the worst thing she’s ever done in her life.
She can feel the heat of Beca’s fingers sliding up her neck and into her hair, the rings on her fingers snagging in ginger waves, and the rock of Beca’s hips fitting snug against her own, and the warmth of Beca’s tongue sliding across her lips, and she knows there’s something else to be excited about-a reason to text Aubrey-something huge and important waiting to be handled-
But this is all she can want, and Beca’s nose is bumping her own, and the seduction is complete. The game is won. And, for once, she hasn’t come off the loser, with her knees trembling and her heart on the floor. For once, being undid feels crazily like hitting her stride at last.
Beca Mitchell is her person, her token straight travesty. And for once, that feels an awful lot like a win.
Pairing: Beca Mitchell/Chloe
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: Nothing owned, no profit gained.
Spoilers: Through the majority of Pitch Perfect, though AU in places.
Summary: For Kay’s prompt: "At Barden, the acapella groups are naturally drawn to understanding the world through music. It's the language they speak, from toners to aca-children, but most of all in the harmonies they make with their mouths. So is it really any wonder that Chloe is falling so hard when Beca is wooing her with her music, even if it's completely by accident?"
Chloe thinks every girl-who-likes-girls has her requisite straight crush: the one that does you in utterly, carving out a space in the back of your heart and curling up there for better or for worse. There is always that one girl to whom you give a piece of yourself-a piece she never wanted, or asked for, or even knows about, maybe-and that piece is, for ever after and always, done for. She’s got it, whether she’s aware or not, even though it was probably the biggest accident ever, and you can never, ever get it back.
It’s a seduction thing, something too simple and instinctual for words. Seduction shouldn’t be like that, shouldn’t be so easy, but where straight girls are concerned…
Every girl-who-likes-girls has a girl like that. It’s just a fact of life. For the longest time, Chloe was sure hers was Aubrey: the best friend she’s ever had in her life, the one with a frazzled smile like mad sunshine and thick blonde hair that always seems to smell of coconut and stress. Aubrey is exactly the kind of straight girl girls like Chloe are endlessly falling for: smart, and driven, and a right turn past crazy. Aubrey is beautiful. Aubrey is her accidental person. The unintentional seduction that struck between the eyes and left her tied for life to a person who could never love her back.
Aubrey is her person. Was her person. Until Beca Mitchell strolled into her life.
Beca Mitchell sort of undid absolutely everything. And she did it by way of the strangest seduction ever.
***
The problem with seduction, Chloe believes, is it seems at first to be an easy-going, straightforward sort of issue. Seduction is an art form, planned to the letter, and even when it’s spontaneous, those doing the seducing should be poignantly aware of what they are achieving. Seduction is not, she thinks, something to be taken lightly. Or by complete accident.
That’s the way it should be, but the thing about seduction, she is realizing-and not particularly loving the realizing, by the by-is that it actually is that simple. Simple enough to be tripped over and fallen into. Simple enough that a girl like Aubrey-or, God help her, Beca-has absolutely clue she’s doing it at all. It should require thought, and planning, and actual effort, and sometimes it does-but not always. Not when it comes to smirky little girls with oversized headphones. Not when it comes to the casual music taste of someone she shouldn’t even want to get to know, by Aubrey’s very specific standards.
When those are the cards on the table-heady blue eyes, coal-black lashes, indie-punk-Nirvana-whatever dress sense-the act of seduction somehow becomes a very big, very accidental problem.
Because, when you see someone seducing you on purpose, whether you want to succumb or not, you can do something about it. You can respond in kind, or ignore them entirely, and make a choice as to which step to take next. When you see that penny in the air, when you can call the shots before they fire, everything becomes easier. It’s manageable.
But when it’s someone like Beca, who clearly has no earthly idea what she’s doing-or how damn hard she’s managing to push Chloe’s buttons-the whole game finds itself turned upside down. She can’t call the shots with Beca; by the time the gun is going off, she’s already bleeding. She can’t see anything coming, because Beca-
Beca is so plainly one of those straight girls: the most dangerous sort, with her mock-bashful smile and the razorblade sarcasm that irrationally sets Chloe’s skin tingling. She is plainly one of those girls who has no idea the effect she can have on men, much less on other women, and when it comes to someone like Chloe-who is wide open, beaming and vulnerable, and who can’t resist an enigma like the girl wrapped protectively around her MacBook-
It takes all of a week for her to realize that maybe, just maybe, she kind of jumped the gun on assigning Aubrey as her token straight travesty.
***
The thing that’s most bizarre about Beca’s unintentional seduction techniques is that it has absolutely nothing to do with seduction itself. Or lust. Or sex. Beca isn’t flashing sweetly-dirty little smiles across the quad, or running beside her at the gym in a sports bra, or doing any of the things girls do when they can’t resist a little casual flirtation. Beca isn’t behaving like a girl at all so much as an extremely pretty lawn chair, and yet, somehow, she’s got Chloe by the throat.
It’s the headphones that get it all started, Chloe is positive. Headphones are mysterious and clever. Headphones reel you in. You see a good pair of headphones, and instantly, you have to know what’s blaring through them. Is it an embarrassing round of 90s pop ballads? A playlist composed entirely of Broadway showtunes? Metallica? You see a good pair of headphones like the ones wrapped around Beca’s neck, and you can’t forget them for even a second. It’s impossible to put a question like this one out of your head.
Just what kind of music does a beautiful loner get off on, anyway?
Chloe understands, intellectually, that music isn’t a desperately sensual topic for most people. Music gets under a person’s skin, does things to their head and their heart, and makes a difference-but on a purely instinctual level. Most people don’t think twice about it; they just carry on as they are, listening, belting in the comfort of their cars, not paying a scrap of attention to why they feel the way they do with their speakers pumping. For most people, music is one of those things that gets taken for granted-like drawing breath, or functioning without swallowing one’s own tongue.
Here at Barden, in the acapella circuit, things are different. She didn’t even realize how different, until the day she met Aubrey, because until that moment, she was sure it was just her. That she was the only human being to respond to music this way, as if it were a lover, and a great book, and a sheer necessity all rolled into one purely gorgeous concept. She was sure, until Aubrey bumped into her at the Bellas’ booth on that first day, that she was just a little bit crazy-and nothing more.
But Aubrey felt it too, that powerful pull toward the melody in her head, and that’s part of what Chloe loved her so much from the very start. Aubrey introduced her to understanding why she feels the way she does, instead of just accepting it. Aubrey took her by the arm and led her to the Bellas, and through everything that followed-the abuse from snippy captains, the laughter from less-educated peers, the raging failures at competition level-she couldn’t shake the feeling that this was absolutely where she belonged. In the arms of music. Allowing it to wrap around her head and her heart, tugging at her, guiding her to new heights.
Music is the ultimate accidental seduction; you don’t choose it, or call it in the air, or walk toward it willingly. It just takes you over, and when that’s done-
Music, she thinks with a wistful little sigh, is a little too like a beautiful straight girl, in that way.
***
Beca’s taste in music is raw, and, at the same time, startlingly familiar. Chloe expects something different, when their eyes first lock on the warm September day. She expects Beca to be one of those indie-punk girls, the ones who bask in the hipster limelight of artists no one else has ever heard of. When she asks-after Beca shoots them down and slips quietly away to be by herself, and Chloe can’t resist following-what the new girl’s favorite band is, she half-expects her to flip back her hair, roll her eyes, and list off a whole sheaf of Life-Changing Artists Chloe doesn’t have the patience to YouTube. She doesn’t expect Beca to look her over once, uneasily, and tip her a lopsided smile.
“Y’know. Little bit of this, little bit of that.”
She walks away without saying much more, which blows Chloe’s mind. Who doesn’t love talking about music? Here she is, flat-out wondering about Beca’s iPod, and the girl can’t even bother giving her a single song title. That’s unnatural. Even people who don’t feel the beat the way she and Aubrey do can’t help gushing about their powerful adoration for Adele.
That’s what really gets the ball rolling on this heart-shattering crush thing she shouldn’t be nursing. It’s not the way Beca’s smile tilts just a little too far to the left, or the haphazard way she blows flyaway strands of hair off her forehead, or even the thrumming tap-tap-tap of her fingertips against her thigh as she walks. It’s the fact that she wears those damn expensive headphones-which means she cares, far more than she seems to want Chloe to realize-and still doesn’t see the point in flatly stating whether she prefers Sara Bareilles or Ace of Base.
It’s staggering.
***
She doesn’t get a chance to learn how familiar Beca’s musical stylings can be until one night in-of all places-the shower. She’s been running late all day long, what with Aubrey’s carefully-calculated plans for semi-hostile musical takeover (not to mention a Trig study session that makes her brain feel like leaking from her ears) eating up her time, and she doesn’t make it to the bathroom until almost eleven. It’s not great for the Make A System plan she drafted for senior year, but it turns out to be awesome for her Nursing a Straight Crush issue.
Beca, unsurprisingly, is not a people person-so much so that she showers in the dead of night, when everyone else is busy pouring over last-minute homework struggles. And Beca, apparently, doesn’t realize the hazards of a public bathroom system.
Namely, that when she sings softly along to the song in her head, absolutely anyone can hear.
And listen.
And be astounded.
It’s that accidental seduction thing in full-force, and Chloe’s falling faster than is intellectually sound. Beca’s voice is excellent-incredible, she’s inclined to say, leaning with her head against the wall of her shower stall-and even if she doesn’t know it, it’s the kind of voice that could bring them straight to the finals. More than that, it’s the kind of voice that sends shivers rippling under Chloe’s bare skin, urging her eyes shut and her ears to prick.
More than that, her song choice is utterly unexpected, because Chloe actually knows it. “Titanium” isn’t a top-40 hit, exactly, but it’s been a not-so-guilty pleasure of hers for months, strapped to the top of her favorite playlist. The fact that Beca knows it is surprising enough; the fact that it seems to be her go-to shower song…
She waits a while to be certain. The lucky thing about Beca is that her lack of people-person tendencies makes her a habitual night showerer; the lucky thing about Chloe is that her focus is unwavering when she wants something. It makes it shockingly-perhaps problematically-easy to sync up their nighttime routines without Beca ever noticing. And every night, like clockwork, it’s a song like this that rings from Beca’s lips: if not the same song, then at least pieces stripped from similar puzzles. Lady jams that make Chloe’s heart race, because she spends most of her time basking in them herself. Songs that would make the trip to the Lincoln Center a breeze.
If only she could convince Aubrey of that, they would have a perfect shot at success.
But this is about one problem at a time, and her head is far too full of Beca to focus on the Bellas right now. Beca is so much better than she realizes (or, Chloe thinks shrewdly, than she wanted them to realize), and in the shower, there’s something relaxed about her. Chloe can hear it in the timbre of her voice, in the space between breaths when she simply rests there beneath the water, letting herself go still. She wonders what Beca looks like on these nights, whether or not the tension slides from her shoulder blades and the crease melts from her brow. Something tells her the picture is beautiful.
(Something also tells her this is Beca’s unwitting seduction talking, and that she should go far, far away until it shuts up. Somehow, after years of craving Aubrey, she doesn’t think that’s going to work out as it should.)
***
She waits a whole week (which, for her, is a feat of patience never before noted) before actively walking in on Beca and her private song. She might have even waited longer, if not for the fact that Beca seems only to have so many shower-worthy pieces in her repertoire, and cycles back pretty quickly to David Guetta numbers. And Chloe can only listen to the soft strains of “Titanium” so many times before her senses perk up on red alert.
Lady jams are like that, crawling under her skin and resting comfortably there until she addresses them head-on. Lady jams, in a way, are dangerously like lady crushes.
She almost feels bad about pushing through the curtain, half because Beca looks like she’s going to have an honest-to-God heart attack, and half because she’s leaving a perfectly nice, perfectly attractive guy behind to stage her little assault. A guy who should be able to take her mind off of even wanting to crash in on someone like Beca, whose eyes go dinner-plate-sized as she tries desperately to shrink into the tile wall. He should, because he’s been working on his own little seduction for a couple of weeks now, and his is the kind of seduction she doesn’t mind. She knows where it comes from, and where he intends it to lead, and the fact that she’s showering with him at all suggests he’s well on his way, but-
Beca just has to pick a song like “Titanium.” A song like that is enough to throw all the cards off the table. And then push the table down a flight of stairs. And then blow those stairs to rubble.
It just isn’t fair, when music gets involved.
She thinks Beca might well stroke out in the middle of their admittedly-naked conversation (and how cute, the way Beca indignantly whispers, “I’m nude,” as if Chloe can be startled by minor details like that), but she manages to hold it together. There’s a spark there, under layers of crooked smirks and shifty glances, and if Chloe isn’t mistaken, it’s the mark of a winner. Beca is stronger than her slight frame would suggest.
And far, far sexier than she realizes, clearly; she meets Chloe’s gaze dead-on, her jaw tightening with a certain uncomfortable determination, and though she’s clutching the shower curtain to her chest, she turns out one hell of a private performance. It sends Chloe’s stomach into instant knots, her toes curling against the uneven tile floor, and she thinks this is more than a simple seduction. This is a hopeless case, bounding off the walls and coming back to land squarely between them.
The poor guy in the stall behind her doesn’t have a chance in hell.
Beca peers up at her from under a mop of bedraggled hair, her eyes huge and warm and kind of pleasantly surprised at what they’ve just created together. For half a heartbeat, Chloe is sure this will take a turn she was previously unprepared for-a turn that a straight girl like Beca couldn’t possibly expect, or want, or aim toward-and then Beca is angling away, her smile darting skittishly off the wall over Chloe’s shoulder. She releases the breath lodged in her chest and smiles, feigning abject confidence as she stretches to hand a towel over.
When Beca smiles, all teeth and stressed-out jaw clench, and says she’ll be sure to pencil the auditions in, it takes all her willpower not to reach out and hug her in a flare of excitement.
When Beca’s eyes flicker hesitantly down her body and her lips form a steady, “You should be” in response to her confidence, it takes all her willpower not to surge forward and pin her against the shower wall.
When Beca turns back toward the faucet and shakes her head, it takes all of her willpower to edge back out the way she came, wondering how in all the holy musical hells she’s going to make it through this alive.
Aubrey wasn’t half this confounding.
***
The next time Beca turns out one of her favorite songs, they’re at initiation night, and surrounded by other students, and terribly drunk. Or, at least, Chloe is drunk. Drunk enough to have made out for half an hour with Shower Guy, who doesn’t have a prayer of skipping past first base, but doesn’t seem to realize it just yet. Not drunk enough to have missed the way Beca’s glance keeps tilting her way, as if watching to make sure she really does “make good choices.”
Why Beca would care, she has no idea-and probably shouldn’t focus too heavily on finding out.
Any way it’s spun, Beca must have at least a few drinks in her, because she’s actually involving herself-actively, without being dragged-in the karaoke event being held in the middle of the party. And the song she picks is that old Proclaimers ballad, the one that insists upon walking 500 miles, and then 500 more. It’s a song very few people can stand anymore, but Chloe loves it; it tends to get lodged right in the center of her brain for weeks, prompting all sorts of fantasies of the person whose door she would happily trek all the miles in the world to fall in front of.
That person used to be Aubrey, who, at last glance, was twisting her mangled straw between her teeth and talking in a very loud, very slurred voice to anyone who would listen about her plans for the year.
That person, now, looks just a little different.
Beca hikes herself up on a chair, red plastic cup dangling loosely from her fingers as she sings in a clean, sweet voice. She still looks delightfully awkward around the edges, her eyes sweeping the crowd sporadically before fixing on the pregnant moon above them, but her smile is sleepy, and her hair is coming down from its messy ponytail, and there’s something gorgeous about the way she closes her eyes and sinks into the lyrics she’s singing. Chloe leans back against the stadium seating and gives in to just listening, swaying with the beat. It’s probably a bad idea-the worst, maybe-to let it wash over her this way, the poignant, unintentional seduction that’s been spinning her head this way and that, but Beca catches her gaze and holds to it, lips quirking. And when Beca smiles, it turns out Chloe can’t even begin to think straight.
Thank God Aubrey’s too drunk to notice tonight.
When the song is over, it seems still to resonate through her bones, leading her fingertips to twitch against the side of her cup. She hums gracelessly along, even as she watches Beca hop down from her makeshift stage and make her way over, fumbling here and there with simple steps.
“And I would walk five hundred miles,” she greets, just the slightest bit off-tune. Beca grins, not quite sloppy, but getting there.
“And I would walk five hundred more,” she replies, halting about a foot away and pushing her hands into her jacket pockets. Her hips sway from side to side, her lips pursed. “What happened to your friend?”
Chloe neither knows where her make-out buddy sauntered off to, nor cares. Not with Beca smiling at her this way, like they’re friends, or like they could be someday soon. It’s the closest she’ll ever get to a straight girl like this, no matter how in love she falls, and it’s going to have to be enough. She’s just glad Beca doesn’t seem adamant in her desire to avoid the crazy chick who stalked her in the shower.
“I love that song,” she says instead of answering the question, only vaguely aware that she’s yelling a bit unnecessarily. This party was a lot crazier a few hours ago; by now, it’s died down to the last dregs, with people lounging, half-asleep, on each other’s laps. Those still conscious have greedily swept up Beca’s place on the chair, and are beginning a rousingly off-kilter performance of “Bohemian Rhapsody.” Beca smiles lazily in their direction.
“Queen rocks,” is all she says, and Chloe would take that as yet another Accidental Music Seduction tactic, except everybody likes Queen. Beca gets a pass, for now.
On the music, at least, if not for the way she’s leaning subtly forward. Her hands push deeper into her pockets, her eyes all but crossing as she strains to blow a raggedy lock of hair out of her face. Chloe reaches clumsily forward without thinking and swipes it behind her ear for her, cheeks pinkening when Beca says simply, “Thanks.”
She’s cute this way, all relaxed and weary. Cuter, somehow, than the tight-fisted sarcasm machine from the beginning of the night, the one who seemed reluctant to take even one swig of beer. Chloe wonders where that guy ran off to, the one who pressed the cup into her hand in the first place.
When she works up the nerve to ask, Beca’s forehead wrinkles adorably, her shoulders shrugging the question off. “Who, Jesse? Beats me. Dude’s all over the place.”
It’s not the kind of thing a drunk girl with a crush would say. Chloe tries not to take that too sincerely to heart; just because Jesse is adorable, and has great arms, and that floppy puppy hair, and Beca still doesn’t find him enticing…
It means nothing. Just a girl without a love interest. So what?
“You should get solos this year,” she blurts, hoping in the next instant that she doesn’t sound completely pathetic. It’s not a concern she usually entertains-because, really, if someone doesn’t like her, what is worrying about it going to change?-but she’s drunk, and exhausted, and has the tiniest niggling thought at the back of her mind about where Aubrey might have scooted off to on a night like this. And Beca is beautiful, her make-up smudged around her eyes, her tongue ducking out to skirt across her bottom lip. It’s all doing wonders to distract from her usual optimism.
“I don’t know about that,” Beca laughs. Chloe smacks at her arm.
“You should! You’re really good, you know. Amazing.”
That just about screams I’m desperately in lady love with your face and your music taste, but Beca doesn’t seem bothered. She hunches into herself a little, the corners of her eyes crinkling.
“Thanks,” she says again. Chloe nods. She’s standing very close-closer, Chloe is pretty sure, than she was two minutes ago, though she doesn’t remember either of them moving-and it’s getting hard to breathe with the scent of alcohol and Beca’s shampoo clogging her nostrils. She swallows hard.
She could kiss her now, she thinks. Just a brief swipe of lips, barely any contact at all, and she would know for sure how this will all play out. Straight girl on bi girl. Drunk. Casual. No harm.
Except Beca, even drunk, is clearly still Beca. Maybe less so than usual, but Chloe is three-hundred percent sure a kiss at a time like this would send their budding friendship straight down the tubes. It’s not worth it. She’s almost positive.
But, damn, does Beca’s arm feel good winding around her middle as they fumble their way toward the rest of the Bellas. It almost doesn’t bother her, that it’s only happening because they’re both just a little too far gone to stand safely.
Almost.
***
Beca goes a good couple of weeks without singing a word to her-outside of their non-stop rehearsal schedule, at least-and Chloe does her best to minimize her feelings in that time. As long as Beca is keeping quiet, she reasons, she can do this. Tuck her desperate longing away somewhere. Replace it with friendly coaching and maybe slightly-more-than-friendly arms around Beca’s shoulders as she guides her through the choreography (which Beca grumbles at, but whatever, she really can use the dance help). Ignore everything that’s going on in her head.
The seduction carries on as she knows it must, building with every brush of Beca’s fingers against her skin and each hesitant smile Beca slips her way, but it’s not bad. No worse, anyway, than it used to be with Aubrey’s hugs and open-hearted monologues about her family. Those used to make Chloe feel so included, and needed, and like she could make a difference. Conversations like that used to be the crux of them.
Now Aubrey mostly just alternates between barking out orders and mumbling nervously about their chances, and it isn’t like Beca’s ever going to tell her about any family issues. Chloe settles for sinking back into the role of second-in-command, and hopes the swell of interest will, at some point, break.
And it might have, she thinks-if not for Beca’s heart-rendingly adorable decision to leap face-first into the riff-off.
With a Dr. Dre song.
That she can barely get out of her mouth without turning crimson.
Chloe’s mouth drops open when it begins, all in a rush of syllables that jam together and go dizzy in Beca’s sweetly not-gangster voice. She loves this song-and, honestly, kind of thought no one else remembered it. Aubrey doesn’t listen to anything penned after 1998 by women, and everyone else seems fixated on current radio hits. She doesn’t even try to educate them anymore on her iPod’s most golden tracks.
But Beca-five-foot-two, skinny, pale Beca-knows “No Diggity.” Knows it well enough to lunge recklessly into it in front of fifty strangers, and to stick with it despite her own team gaping at her, and damn, Chloe is in trouble. This is a real, true, painful situation she's got on her hands, and that situation is currently spinning in hopeful circles with her eyebrows raised, clearly praying for someone else to back her up.
Which they do, after an astonished beat, but all the while, the only thing Chloe can think is, how does Beca keep doing this? It’s as though she spends her downtime riffling through Chloe’s most private musical loves, picking out her favorites willy-nilly and using them against her. It’s as though she knows what she’s doing, with her brazen little smirk and those sharp eyes that bore right through Chloe’s.
Although how she could-how she could know what it would do to Chloe’s heart to watch her walk in a slow, languid circle, laughing around rap lyrics, gesticulating ridiculously-is beyond her. It’s just not possible. Not even Beca is that incredible.
When it’s over, and they lose on some bullshit ruling, she should go over to Aubrey. Talk it out, talk her down, try to pry loose some of the control Aubrey’s got gripped so firmly in hand. She should, but Beca’s arms are wrapped around herself, and her head is down, and she looks painfully embarrassed-and it’s impossible to walk away from that.
“You pick the best songs,” Chloe tells her, skipping to catch up and hooking an arm around one of Beca’s. She knocks their shoulders together, winking conspiratorially. “The best.”
Because, hey, if Beca doesn’t already know what she’s doing, there can’t be that much harm in pointing out the obvious.
“They’re just songs,” Beca mumbles from beneath her hair. “Dumb ones, half the time. Who even listens to Dr. Dre anymore?”
“You killed it,” Chloe admonishes, giving her arm a little shake. “That was some straight-up gangster shit.”
Beca snorts, glancing up from the corner of her periphery. “Sure it was.”
“It was.” Chloe knocks into her again, giggling when Beca trips. “Best white-girl rap I ever did see.”
This time, Beca laughs. Chloe pulls on her arm, easing her closer and resting her head against Beca’s shoulder.
“We should have won with that,” she says quietly, half-afraid Aubrey will choose this exact moment to eavesdrop. “You’re right, you know. About being different.”
The smile Beca gives her is worth all the painful butterflies in the world.
***
The problem is, even if Chloe sees the truth, Aubrey steadfastly refuses to jump on board. Which leaves them in the same place, sleepwalking through the same old steps in the same old uniforms, time and time again. And they lose-of course they do. In the end, that was the only way it was ever going to play out, and she knows it.
Not that Beca didn’t try. A forceful, last-ditch sort of attempt, with her teeth gritted and her whole body thrown into motions she usually acts numb to. She opens her mouth and belts-belts, for the whole semi-final auditorium to hear-“Bulletproof” until tingles race up and down Chloe’s spine, and still…
It wasn’t ever going to go another way, and she knows it, but Aubrey didn’t. Aubrey believed with her whole blessedly-manic heart that they would make it to the very end with the same old routine, and, consequently, when Beca pulls out that crazy maneuver, Aubrey is pissed. Royally pissed, shaking from the top of her head to the heels of her shoes, and it’s all Chloe can do to rein her in from out-and-out slapping Beca across the face.
Beca leaves, and Chloe is unsurprised by that, too. She runs, the way Beca has so clearly wanted to do so many times, and no amount of arm tugging or smiling can change that. Intellectually, Chloe is very, very aware of how this whole thing is playing out before her eyes.
It doesn’t stop her from running after her.
She catches hold of Beca’s blouse in the parking lot, one firm grab of cloth at the square center of her back, and tugs. Beca, still unaccustomed to heels, staggers and nearly brings them both tumbling down.
“What?” she snaps. Chloe sucks in a breath, steadying herself.
“That was-you were-“
“If you say ‘amazing’,” Beca warns. Chloe frowns.
“You were. You are. And if Aubrey can’t see that-“
“And you can’t tell her, right?” Beca snaps, months of frustration turning the words cold as steel. Chloe’s hands ball into fists at her sides.
“She doesn’t listen to me,” she replies evenly, annoyed when Beca rolls her eyes.
“So make her listen. You’re supposed to be her best friend.”
“And you’re supposed to be mine,” she snaps without thinking, because it’s true. They don’t know the first thing about each other, but between the long nights spent rehearsing, and the times she’s fallen asleep on Beca’s couch, and all of the damn times Beca has unwittingly drawn her in with another snarky comment, or undone ponytail, or song stripped from her private collection-
Beca shakes her head, exhaling noisily. “I don’t-I don’t know what else to-“
Neither does Chloe, though it gives her a violent pang to admit it to herself. She presses a palm to her forehead and closes her eyes.
“She’s out of control,” she whispers. Beca sighs.
“I can’t do this anymore. I’m not…I’m not good at this. I never was.”
She’s wrong, but Chloe seems to be the only one who can see it, and maybe that’s the worst part about a straight crush. They’re always so beautiful, and so wonderful, and so much better than they believe, and nothing she says will ever make it sink in. Beca will always be hugging the curve, tilted away from her, head lost in her own world. Beca will never see herself the way Chloe sees her. And Chloe can never, ever tell her.
She opens her eyes and jumps, because Beca is right there, with her scarf unwound around her neck and her eyes dark in the starlight. She stretches up on her toes, unsteady, and presses a quick, hot kiss to the corner of Chloe’s mouth before she’s ready for it.
“I’m sorry,” she murmurs, and truly sounds it. “I just can’t.”
It takes a minute after she’s gone for Chloe’s heart to come down from its rat-a-tat panic and realize that a kiss like that from a girl like Beca can only ever mean goodbye.
***
She finds herself reliving that parking lot moment over and over again. A kiss from a straight girl means nothing, she knows. A kiss like that, quick and thoughtless, exhausted and out of patience, means nothing at all. It happens. It’s all just another part of the old accidental seduction, and she honestly needs to stop thinking about it.
Especially since Beca hasn’t said a word about it to her. She hasn't left in a physical sense, the way Chloe expected; they still see each other sometimes-more sporadically, now that the Bellas have fallen apart, and Beca has retreated largely back into her shell-but they haven’t exchanged a single sentence about that night. She doesn’t ask about Aubrey. Chloe doesn’t ask about her. They mostly just sit around and watch bad movies, which Beca is constantly dozing off in the middle of, trying their hardest not to think about…
In Chloe’s case, much of anything. She’s a senior, which means that competition was her last shot at really being someone here at Barden, and at giving herself over to the music’s call. After this, it’s graduation, and a real job, and being the kind of adult who doesn’t get hung up on nodes, and choreography, and pretty straight girls who paint their nails black. After this, it’s all over, and if she thinks on that too long, she’s pretty sure she’ll lose it completely, so she just…doesn’t. Doesn’t think about Aubrey, who won’t speak to her, or Beca’s lips on her skin, or the way it felt to stand under a spotlight for the last time.
She doesn’t invite Beca to the hospital when her surgery is scheduled, but Beca shows up anyway. They don’t talk about it-because Beca doesn’t really talk much at all these days, and because Chloe is medically forbidden from doing so-but Beca does push a fresh-looking flash drive across her dinner tray and smile faintly. It’s like there’s something she wants to say, but just can’t bring herself to spit out. Chloe’s honestly too exhausted and too cozy in the arms of her oh-so-splendid drugs to focus on it. She settles for squeezing Beca’s hand when it slips into her own, and dozing on and off against the pillows until she wakes at last to an empty room.
The flash drive is blue, and fits in the very middle of her palm, and looks nice with its masking-tape label. B for C. Her forehead creases, her teeth squeezing together until they scrape unpleasantly. Beca shouldn’t be giving her anything. Beca shouldn’t even have been here at all. If not for this very real, very solid reminder of her presence resting in her hand, Chloe would think Beca’s visit was nothing more than a spectral presentation of her ridiculous crush. Her imagination running circles around sanity. It wouldn’t be the first time.
But the kiss was real, she knows, and so is this strange, charming little gift. Whatever that means.
She waits until her mother is gone for the night to plug in her laptop and sift cautiously through the drive. A folder is all she finds, titled “For C,” containing one unmarked media file and a single text document that reads simply, “Play me.”
Her finger stills on the mousepad, her breath catching. Play me, the way Beca has been playing her heart for months now without ever noticing. At least, Chloe thinks she hasn’t noticed. That’s the name of the game, isn’t it? The straight girl doesn’t notice what she’s doing. Accidental seduction. Nothing planned, no penny in the air, just a seamless, habitual dance that leads nowhere at all-
The first strains of “Titanium” slink into her ears, soft and cool and so plainly in Beca’s voice that it hurts. She sounds nervous for a line or two, but the nerves smooth out sooner than Chloe’s expecting, and all that’s left is pure Beca: the same drawling, glorious tone from the bathroom that had her head spinning way back when.
There’s no music behind it, none of Beca’s usual synthesization or extraneous beats; it’s just her, clear and full of heart, and Chloe’s head pounds with love for the sound of it.
It transitions when she’s not expecting it, and suddenly, Beca’s voice is humming the chorus of that old batty Proclaimers song…and going raw and hot on the chords of “No Diggity”…only to race up into the heart of “Bulletproof,” and, oh, Chloe hurts. Her throat, and her head, and her chest, all pounding together with the pain of it, because Beca knows. Beca has taken every song, every moment she’s ever made Chloe fall in love with, and woven it all together like she wants it to mean something.
Straight girls don’t mean it. Straight girls don’t ever mean it.
But if Beca doesn’t mean this, Chloe’s not sure she’ll ever be able to look her in the eye again.
***
She waits until she’s out of the hospital, and she knows it must be killing Beca’s self-esteem inch by inch-knows how hard it must have been for Beca to put that track together in the first place, much less drive it over-but this just isn’t something she can do over text message. She can barely speak without going hoarse, so the phone is out, and, anyway, she needs to see Beca in person. Needs to take in the crook of her eyebrow and the slip of a smile on her lips, and know she isn’t imagining this.
Straight girls play the game without knowing there’s a game to be played. Straight girls draw you in without ever intending harm. Straight girls do that, time and time again-but Beca is-
She’s at the door, her hand raised and her heart thumping, when it swings open. For a desperate moment, she imagines the worst: that Jesse kid, standing with his crooked little grin and his big doe eyes, taking over where she should be. She imagines a misunderstanding so crushing, she can never come back from it. She imagines it all falling apart before it begins.
But the smile that reaches her looks a lot more like a grimace, and the tall, lanky young man a lot more like a petite Asian girl with a permanently irritated expression, and she has never in her life been so happy to see Kimmy Jin.
“Beca,” Kimmy Jin drones, her voice a dead monotone, and squeezes by Chloe without another syllable. A clatter comes from the far corner of the room where Beca must be holed up with her sound system; Chloe pokes her head in just in time to get a glimpse of her, propped on her desk chair with her headphones cinched around her neck and her hair a frazzled mess. She wonders when Beca last saw the backsides of her eyelids, and hopes against hope she hasn’t been skipping class again.
“We’ve got another shot,” Beca says without turning around. Her eyes are skimming an email on the screen, her tone coated with surprise. “Another shot at winning.”
It doesn’t register for a minute, because Beca just looks so wonderful with the laces of her sneakers untied and her sleeves pushed up to her elbows. Finally, Chloe blinks.
“Another shot at…?”
Beca swats the lid of her computer shut, swiveling in her chair with a grin Chloe has never seen before. “That was Aubrey. The kid who beat our asses was a kid. They disqualified him. We’re in.”
She says we’re, and she’s grinning, and Chloe wonders what she’s missed in the last three days of recuperating.
“That’s-that’s great,” she manages, stunned. Beca swings herself up from the chair, feet thumping against the carpet, and crosses the room in two leaping steps.
“We can do this,” she says, more excited than Chloe’s ever seen her, and yeah-there are three open cans of Red Bull on the desk, which sort of explains it. But there’s this light in her eyes, and a spark to her smile that’s almost eerily reminiscent of Aubrey, and-
“I listened to it,” she blurts, thick and raspy. Beca’s smile dims half a watt, her fingers twining together before her.
“Yeah?”
“It was-“ Beautiful. Excellent. The greatest gift she’s ever been given. She rubs at her cheek, reflexive and overwhelmed. “You’re-“ Perfect. Incredible. My person. “I thought you were straight.”
Beca’s gaze dips south, and an instantaneous horrible taste floods Chloe’s mouth. She’s misread it, the whole thing, and now they’re really going to botch the championship, because-
“You never asked,” Beca says, almost slyly, rubbing the back of her neck. Chloe swallows against the metallic panic on her tongue.
“You never said,” she argues, a smile tugging at her lips. “You could have.”
“I kissed you,” Beca points out. “And you ignored it.”
“You kissed me, and then ran away.” They’re dancing, she realizes, and it feels almost…fun. She’s never tangoed with a girl who knew they were dancing before. It’s always been straight girls, always been a questionable, mindless act, but this…
“I thought maybe you’d follow,” Beca says, quietly this time. Chloe bites her tongue. “You’re the one who’s all confident, remember? I just know music.”
Music, Chloe reasons, is the only thing Beca has ever needed to get at her. Music is the only thing she’s ever needed to know, from start to finish. Music is so much more than a just.
“You’re crazy,” she says, and laughs when Beca rolls her eyes.
“I don’t creep around in the showers waiting for people to sing my favorite song.”
“I didn’t creep,” Chloe responds indignantly, but Beca’s hand is zipping out to catch at the back of her neck, and her mouth is landing squarely against Chloe’s, drowning out her protest. She melts into her, fingertips spanning the breadth of Beca’s jaw, and thinks that maybe creeping isn’t the worst thing she’s ever done in her life.
She can feel the heat of Beca’s fingers sliding up her neck and into her hair, the rings on her fingers snagging in ginger waves, and the rock of Beca’s hips fitting snug against her own, and the warmth of Beca’s tongue sliding across her lips, and she knows there’s something else to be excited about-a reason to text Aubrey-something huge and important waiting to be handled-
But this is all she can want, and Beca’s nose is bumping her own, and the seduction is complete. The game is won. And, for once, she hasn’t come off the loser, with her knees trembling and her heart on the floor. For once, being undid feels crazily like hitting her stride at last.
Beca Mitchell is her person, her token straight travesty. And for once, that feels an awful lot like a win.