Fic: it's not really an age-old rivalry (Pitch Perfect AU; Beca Mitchell/Chloe Beale; PG-13)
it's not really an age-old rivalry [ AO3 ]
Pitch Perfect/The Vampire Diaries Crossover - Beca Mitchell/Chloe Beale; PG-13. ~ 10,000 words.
This is a Vampire Diaries AU (or as I like to call it, the Mystic Falls AU). Though it would be helpful if you're familiar with the TVD universe, it's not a requirement.
You can thank sexonastick for this, since she got me into The Vampire Diaries in the first place. ;) On a more serious note, my many, many sincere thanks go to her, for the handholding and brainstorming and seeing this through. I can pretty safely say that this fic would have gone to die unfinished if not for her.
*
Life sucks, and then you die.
That’s what everyone signs up for, right?
Except that’s not really how her un-life works.
*
Beca doesn’t do drama.
The whole you stole my boyfriend, you bitch! and he liked me first, you slut! gets annoying fast, and she’s had enough of it. More than enough, actually. (And she’s in college - these sorts of things should not be allowed to happen once you’re out of high school. Seriously.)
It’s tiring, unnecessary, and boring.
Also, it’s messy.
Beca doesn’t do messy.
Runs as far away from it as possible, in fact. Wherever the opposite of messy is: that’s Beca’s haven. That’s where she lives, camps out, stakes her claim - no pun intended. The fact that she hasn’t been able to find this place yet is sort of depressing, but the world is her oyster or whatever. She’ll find it eventually.
Maybe.
*
She should probably explain.
She’s been twenty for the past two hundred and thirteen years; she’s had enough drama to last her four lifetimes, and then some.
What’s unfortunate is that drama always seems to find her.
*
She’s lived in many places.
New York, Mumbai, Cape Town.
You name it, she’s been there.
Mystic Falls is where she always returns.
*
If she were the sentimental sort - which she’s not by a stretch - she would call Mystic Falls her home.
She actually doesn’t even like the town that much, come to think of it.
The people are too friendly for their own good.
Like, if they actually knew what she was, they’d probably be chasing her across town with torches or whatever. She remembers the old days, knows what they used to do.
It’s ridiculous that they ever thought they could get rid of vampires.
If she wanted - if any vampire wanted - she could end them without a second thought.
She won’t, because she can’t be bothered.
But if she wanted to…
*
Also, weird shit goes on in that town; she doesn’t even know where to begin.
Werewolves, witches, the whole she-bang.
(And vampires, too - but seeing how she’s one herself, she doesn’t find that too weird. But werewolves are fucking crazy and there’s that whole thing about being able to kill her with one bite, so yeah. No thank you.
Witches she has less of a problem with, unless they get in her way.
But the werewolves? They need to go.)
*
She supposes that’s what draws her back this time.
The werewolves.
*
Okay, not really.
This is what actually happens:
“Aunt Beca?”
The voice on the other end of the line is shrill, and comes across loud and clear over the thump of the bass in this (crowded, sweaty) room. She ducks out the front door, clapping a hand to one ear and pressing the cell phone closer with her other. Not that that would actually help her hearing; she can hear pretty damn well, but she’s been around humans so long that… some habits are easily picked up.
“Aubrey.”
“You need to come back.”
“To Virginia? I don’t think so.”
“Beca.” Aubrey’s voice has dropped a note, and it sounds really serious. The kind of serious that Beca knows is futile to argue with. “You need to come back.”
It’s not a request, and Beca wonders when she started listening to her vampire niece, of all people.
(She’s older. Does that not mean anything to anyone anymore?)
*
Family is a pesky thing.
Beca has spent decades (centuries) avoiding any sort of a connection, and it’s worked out pretty well. More or less.
She remembers her first days as a vampire clearly. She remembers being drawn to blood: the smell of it, the taste of it, the feel of it. She couldn’t explain it then; she’d had no idea of what was happening to her. She only knew that there was this pull - this need to feed - and she remembers her first taste (no one forgets their first taste), remembers the sound of his heartbeat, steady and strong, how it ebbed away as the liquid flowed down her throat, pooling warm and thick in her belly.
She remembers being distinctly disgusted right after, and she remembers refusing to drink for days (weeks, months), subsisting on rats and other vermin.
“That’s disgusting, you know,” Jesse had said when he’d found her in an alley maybe two months after her transformation. “There are other ways to feed.”
Friendships and acquaintances are messy things, but sometimes, Beca makes allowances.
Jesse was her first concession. And now he’s family.
And somewhere along the line, Aubrey’s become family, too.
Maybe it’s strange, but she’d do anything for them.
*
So she comes back.
Home for summer break from NYU is the tagline - not that she actually needs one, since she hasn’t been to Mystic Falls since the early 1900s save for a short visit every now and then to the boarding house (and only the boarding house), and no one there right now would actually recognize her - but Aubrey is insistent, and Beca has learned in her fifty years with Aubrey that it’s best just to let her have her way.
She spends her first day at the Grill, and by the end of the day she’s pretty sure she’s met over half the town. And those she hasn’t met will have heard of her by nighttime.
(“That’s Aubrey’s cousin,” she hears them say, and if they weren’t so obvious about it she might even feel guilty about eavesdropping. “Visiting for the summer.” But on a list of bad things she’s done, eavesdropping ranks pretty low, so she shoots a few rounds of pool, throws back a couple of beers, and enjoys the day.)
Word travels fast in a small town like Mystic Falls, Virginia.
*
It turns out that there’s a bit of a vampire problem.
“And you want my help how, exactly?”
Aubrey huffs, folding her arms across her chest. She glances over at Jesse, who’s seated on the opposite end of the room, but he just shrugs at her. His eyes say, I told you she’d be like that, and he’s not wrong. Aubrey should have listened to him.
“Look, it’s nice you thought of me, but you two are perfectly capable of handling them on your own.” Beca knows she sounds flippant, and that’s because she is. They’re just vampires. “You round them up or hunt them down - whichever you prefer - and then you stake them.”
She stands to leave, but Aubrey is there in a flash. Though she’s much younger, she’s still strong, and she catches Beca off-guard when she shoves hard, sending the shorter woman back into the chair. (Out of the corner of her eye, she notes that Jesse starts to stand - but he immediately resettles when it becomes obvious that Beca intends his charge no harm.) The only reason Aubrey gets away with what she just did is because Beca lets her, and she’s pretty sure the younger vampire knows that already.
“The problem, Beca-”
“-I liked it much better when you called me Aunt Beca-”
“-is that there are twenty of them.”
“And now there are three of us,” Beca notes dryly. “How does that even the odds, exactly?”
*
The thing is, it doesn’t.
It doesn’t even the odds at all.
It’s her third day there and they’ve only staked their first vampire.
(“The other two got away,” Aubrey says, not meeting her eyes.
Beca knows from the sound of her voice that Aubrey is disappointed with herself, but these vampires - they’re not fledglings; if she had to guess based on fighting them alone, she would say that they probably were at least a hundred years old - making them a hell of a lot stronger than Aubrey.
And Aubrey’s a pain in the ass, but she’s Beca’s pain in the ass, and she’d rather have Aubrey be very much un-alive than dead-dead.)
“Nineteen to go,” Beca says, stepping back as the vampire underneath her turns grey, mouth stretched in a silent scream. She yanks out the stake unceremoniously and tosses it to Aubrey. “We need to find the nest. Wipe them out from there.”
*
They go for a beer at the Grill.
“To celebrate… what? Nineteen to go?”
Jesse shrugs, clinking his glass with Beca’s and then Aubrey’s. “There were twenty of them this morning. I’d say nineteen is a good start.”
“Yes, and I didn’t see you anywhere near-”
“Fine, fine,” Jesse holds up his hands. “I’ll get the next one.”
“And the next round,” Beca adds with a grin.
“And the next round,” Jesse agrees easily.
*
The next round turns into two, and then three, and on the fourth, Beca excuses herself to use the bathroom.
She’s on her way out when the door swings open suddenly and - just for the record, she blames the alcohol for her slow response to this - hits her in the face.
Her yelp of pain is certainly not befitting a vampire of her age, but at least it’s a normal reaction for a twenty-something year old girl to have, so there’s that. She gingerly presses a few fingers to her nose and frowns when it comes away covered in blood.
Great.
She adds a little bit more pressure and tries not to wince.
Definitely broken.
“Oh my god! I’m so sorry!”
Before she can say or do anything else, there’s a flurry of activity around her. Hands on her face, her shoulders - just everywhere. She backs up quickly, swatting away the extra help with her free hand and shaking her head. “I’m okay, it’s okay-” Just get away from me, is what she wants to say, but then there are tissues in front of her face and she takes them, covering her nose with them and hoping that her voice is loud enough, or that this girl is frantic enough, to cover the sound of her snapping her nose back into place.
All better.
She scrunches her nose just to check, and it still smarts, but she can feel it healing already.
“Are you okay?” the voice asks again, and it’s only now that Beca registers the red hair and very wide, blue eyes that accompany the question. “I really am-”
“-sorry, I know.” Beca pauses. She’s kind of pretty, this girl. “It’s really okay.”
“It’s not broken, is it? Can I take you to the hospital or something? I mean…”
The girl reaches out for her face again, and Beca leans away as subtly as she can. (Which is not very subtle at all. She’s an awkward vampire; it’s been said many times.) She’s big on personal space, and this girl very obviously isn’t. Seriously. She doesn’t understand what’s wrong with the people in this town. No wonder they get eaten alive by vampires.
“Uh. That’s nice of you, but. Um. I’m okay.”
“Really?”
And how is it possible for this girl to look as though Beca just kicked her puppy (or bit her puppy, or basically did anything unpleasant to a cute furry creature), when really Beca is the one who got her face smacked by a door and had her nose broken in the process? It’s just unfair.
But now the silence has stretched too long, and Beca suddenly realizes that the girl is probably still waiting for an answer. A grunt, or something. Beca clears her throat. “Really.”
*
She finds out a few days later (and with “fifteen to go,” which is what Jesse tells her after a day of hunting) that the girl’s name is Chloe.
“Chloe Beale,” she says sunnily.
“Uh,” is what Beca says in response, when really she wants to say something like, Please go away or why are you so happy or do you feed on the joy of woodland creatures. But Jesse has told her time and time again that if she can’t say anything nice, she probably shouldn’t say anything at all, so. This is her, listening to Jesse.
“You’re Beca,” Chloe says, when it’s obvious Beca isn’t going to put in the effort of having an actual conversation. “Beca Mitchell.”
Beca nods.
Chloe’s entire face lights up at the gesture - Beca might as well have told her she won the lottery, or maybe that she saved a baby panda just for her (Chloe looks like the sort of person who would appreciate the latter more) - and Beca feels something stir inside of her. An emotion, maybe, but aside from her best friends Sarcasm and Boredom, she hasn’t had much experience with those. So it could easily be something else. Like incredulity. Or annoyance.
“So what brings you to Mystic Falls, Beca?”
There’s no way that Chloe knows who Beca is but not why she’s here.
But Beca’s feeling charitable today, and Chloe doesn’t seem like awful company. Besides, she might be able to glean some information on this town from someone who isn’t Aubrey or Jesse. She might even be able to find out something new on the vampires, even if Chloe is the last person she’d think would be involved in that sort of thing.
So she orders a coke and settles more comfortably in her seat at the booth.
*
Beca knows she has company when she hears a heavy sigh from behind her - and judging by the disapproval she can feel in the release of that one small puff of air, she knows it’s Aubrey.
“Really, Beca? You’re no better than a teenager.”
And there it is; it’s official: She’s being judged by someone who is a hundred and sixty-three years younger than she is. She would tell her to suck it, but Aubrey’s always been a messy eater, and that’s just gross to see. Also, that would probably just get her another comment on how she really is being a child. She does not need to be doubly-judged on how she chooses to relax in her own home.
Because so what if she’s just sprawled out on the couch, sipping on a blood box (like juice boxes, only filled with bloody goodness - Jesse has a supplier, and Beca has never asked who it is, but she takes advantage of it every time she’s in town) with her feet in the air? She’s really careful with the blood box. She even makes sure it doesn’t drip onto the carpet. It’s not like she’s traipsing around the house in her shoes (something else that Aubrey disapproves of) or busy murdering innocent people in the front hall (which Aubrey mainly dislikes because of the cleanup involved afterwards).
Not that any of them murder innocent people.
(Um, okay. It might have happened once or twice, but they were far from innocent and also were trying to kill them. So Beca thinks it was justified.)
For the most part, they gave that up a long time ago.
*
Aubrey has killed a lot of vampires before, but none that have been older than she is.
Certainly none that are two hundred years older than her.
So when she stakes her first one, Beca can’t help but feel proud. She looks over at Jesse right then, and knows that the smile on his face is mirrored on her own.
“So, eleven left?” Aubrey asks later when they’re at the Grill, sipping her own lemon-lime beer carefully.
“Eleven,” Beca confirms.
“What will you do after?”
Beca hesitates to answer.
It’s been two weeks since she came back to Mystic Falls. Two weeks and nine vampires. If she plays her cards right (if they get rid of the rest of the vamps), she might be able to get out of here in another two weeks.
“You could stay, you know,” Aubrey murmurs, picking at the label on her bottle. “Would it really be so bad?”
It’s the first time she’s ever sounded so reserved, and Beca doesn’t know what to say to that.
*
She sees Chloe from time to time.
Not on purpose or anything. But they happen to be in the same place at the same time pretty often, and Beca finds that she doesn’t really mind sharing the same space with Chloe.
This is a Big Deal for Beca, because she usually hates breathing - well, sharing, since she doesn’t actually need to breathe - the same air as vapid high schoolers. Okay, technically Chloe is in college - she knows that. (UVA, she said the other day, and when did Beca start listening?) But Beca can’t stand college students either. Beca’s pretty sure she’s allergic to any and all forms of people. You name it, Beca can’t stand it.
Chloe’s an exception. The exception. Whatever that means.
For being a ball of fucking sunshine, she’s really not so bad.
*
Beca blames what happens next on the car.
Okay, whatever - she’s old enough to know that you can’t hold an inanimate object responsible for anything, but it’s Aubrey’s idea that she drive a car in the first place so she can fit in with the locals - so maybe this is really Aubrey’s fault.
Anyway, Beca is minding her own business and just about to get in her car when it happens.
One minute she’s alone, enjoying the peace and quiet and thinking about the relaxing bath she’s going to take when she gets back to the boarding house, and the next, she’s surrounded on all sides.
…And yes, that’s exactly as dramatic as it sounds. There are three girls, none of them who would be imposing on their own, but together, they’re sort of intimidating, and they’ve formed a semi-circle around Beca and her car.
She doesn’t have space issues (she totally has space issues), but it’s enough to make her feel claustrophobic.
“Stay away from Chloe, bloodsucker.”
“Uh.” Beca’s gaze snaps to the speaker - a girl with long, dark hair. Stacie, she remembers Aubrey saying to her once. Best friend of Chloe Beale. Even though she’s seen her with Chloe a lot, they’ve never actually been introduced, so Beca thinks she can get away with a simple, “Who are you?”
(And how do you know I’m a vampire would probably have been the better question to ask, but Beca has never been very good at conversation, so. She’ll just stick to whatever has already tumbled out of her mouth, thank you very much.)
“Your mom,” comes the instantaneous answer from another girl - blonde and with a slight accent.
“What??”
The third girl then adds (so quietly that Beca almost misses it, even with her super-hearing), “I feast on the joy of children in my sleep.”
“What is going on? Is that supposed to be a threat?”
Beca has no idea what to make of the situation. Maybe this is some kind of weird intervention and they have the wrong person. She doesn’t even know why she’s standing here listening to them. It would be so easy to snap their necks. To rip out their hearts. But her heart’s not really in it, and besides, having to dispose of the bodies would be much more trouble than it’s worth. She’d probably have to put up with an hour of Aubrey lecturing into her ear.
The thought is enough to make her cringe.
(Also, something tells her that Chloe would disapprove - but she doesn’t know when she started caring what Chloe Beale thought of anything, so she shoves that thought back into the recesses of her mind.)
Anyway, all in all? So not worth it.
Stacie’s following sigh is one that rivals Aubrey’s. “You have got to be the stupidest vampire I’ve ever met. Just back off of Chloe, okay? I don’t want to see you near her again.”
Beca is just about to protest that she’s not the one who constantly approaches Chloe, that she’s not the one all excited about making new friends-
And then Stacie literally growls. Beca has never heard a sound like that come out of a human mouth, and holy shit, what’s wrong with Stacie’s eyes?
*
Fucking werewolves.
*
They’re having a super-secret strategy session on how to get rid of the vampires in town when Beca brings it up.
“Why don’t we just involve the werewolves in this?”
Jesse raises an eyebrow, and the look Aubrey gives her is one of surprise.
“Yes, dear cousin,” she glares at Aubrey. “I know about the werewolves. Were you guys ever going to tell me?”
“Beca,” Jesse sighs, rubbing his face. “It’s not really relevant.”
“It kind of is,” Beca bites back, “when the whole pack decides it’s a good idea to chew me out in front of my car in broad daylight.”
Jesse laughs. “What did you do to piss them off?”
Beca gapes and hurls a throw pillow at him. “I didn’t do anything!”
“Guys,” Aubrey sighs, and she’s giving Beca a look. “Can we just get back to work?”
“You must have done something,” Jesse continues with a grin, though he acquiesces to Aubrey’s request by bending down over the town map again, carefully marking spots with a pencil. “They don’t usually go all alpha-wolf on someone without good reason.”
Beca rolls her eyes and tugs a book into her lap.
She can still feel the weight of Aubrey’s gaze on her but finds it easy enough to ignore. If her dear niece has a problem, she’ll hear about it - sooner rather than later, she’s sure. Until then… Well. These vampires certainly aren’t going to stake themselves.
*
So, apparently Aubrey and Chloe are friends.
And not just friends, but really good friends.
(The kind of friends that Beca has tried to avoid making her entire life.)
“The best,” Chloe affirms, beaming at the both of them.
“Um, great,” Beca replies, a little lamely. At least she’s moved from being monosyllabic to bi-syllabic. She’s growing as a person. Vampire. Whatever. “I’m going to let you guys catch up.”
She moves to leave, but then Chloe’s hand is warm on her arm, stopping her in her tracks.
“You just got here.”
Beca yanks her arm away quickly - or at least she tries to, but Chloe’s actually pretty strong. And now Chloe’s looking at her like she’s really hurt, like she can’t understand why anyone would try to leave when she’s right there.
Crap.
If she starts crying-well, there’s no reason for her to start.
Beca reallyhopes she doesn’t start crying.
“I have to go help Jesse with something,” Beca says, and the words sound empty, even to her.
“You’re a really bad liar,” Chloe states with a frown, before turning to Aubrey. “Your cousin is a really bad liar.”
“The worst,” Aubrey agrees gravely, and somehow Beca doesn’t think Aubrey and Chloe are talking about the same thing, if the look in Aubrey’s eye is anything to go by.
“You guys know I can hear you, right?”
Chloe and Aubrey exchange glances. It’s probably a best friend thing. Beca wouldn’t know.
“Can I have my arm back, please?”
“Oh!” Chloe blushes prettily, sounding almost embarrassed. “Right.” She relinquishes her grip, and Beca pulls her arm back instantly. “Sorry.”
Aubrey is watching them closely, and she has this look on her face - the look that says she’s figured something out, or is starting to. Beca can see the wheels turning in her head, and she doesn’t like where this is going. Not one bit.
*
“Look,” Jesse starts after they’ve all made their introductions, holding his hands up as he would in a peace offering. Or maybe a surrender. It certainly feels like the latter, even if they’re only here because she suggested it. (That was so one week ago, as the kids nowadays would say it, but who knew Jesse and Aubrey actually take her seriously from time to time? It’s a surprise to her, too.) It’s too late to retract her suggestion now, though, and anyway: this can only go faster with help.
Which brings them back to why they’re here.
Sitting uncomfortably in a room full of werewolves.
The tension is so thick, she’s pretty sure she could slice through it with a knife.
“Thank you for agreeing to meet with us,” Aubrey takes over for Jesse - which was unplanned, if the look on Jesse’s face is anything to go by, but she’s always been the better speaker. The better motivator. Well, maybe it’s not so much motivation as it is telling people what she expects of them, but the weird thing about Aubrey is that she never has to compel anyone to get things done. They just… sort of do it anyway.
It’s a useful skill, Beca will admit.
“Will you just cut to the chase?” Stacie interrupts, drumming her fingers against the tabletop.
Aubrey frowns at her. “I’m sure you’re aware of the vampire problem.”
“Uh, duh,” the girl with the accent - Beca squints at the nametag Aubrey made them all wear: Amy - intones. “Aren’t we looking at her?” She directs a particularly pointed gaze at Beca. Subtle, really.
Aubrey follows Amy’s gaze, and Beca didn’t think it was possible, but her frown actually deepens. Seriously. She doesn’t need this from any of them. She gets up to leave, but Aubrey places a firm hand on her shoulder and shoves.
Beca hears the wood crack a second too late, and suddenly she’s on the floor, surrounded by broken bits of chair. “Aubrey. Seriously?”
She thinks she hears a snort from the left side of the room, where the werewolves are sitting, but-
“Oh, grow up,” Aubrey says under her breath, too low for the others to hear. “You’re fine.”
There’s a brief pause in which Beca picks herself up and slouches her way to another chair, staring back at Amy, who looks like she’s about to crack up. (She doesn’t look at Jesse, who is not even bothering to hide his smile - which, that’s just rude, okay? At least put some effort into it.)
“Anyway,” Aubrey continues, addressing the group as though nothing’s just happened. “As I was saying: the vampire problem.”
Beca sighs.
This is going to be a long meeting.
*
In the end, they come up with a (shaky) plan:
1) The wolves will sniff out the vamps’ nest.
2) When they’ve located the nest, all of them will come up with a date and time to wipe it out.
“Adios motherfuckers,” Amy says, slapping her hand down on the table for effect. She pulls it back two seconds later, cradling it to her chest and muttering a quiet, “Ow.”
Beca doesn’t even try to hide her smirk.
*
As it turns out, their secret weapon is Chloe.
“I have the best nose,” Chloe explains with a bright smile, hand warm on Beca’s elbow. Then, as though to prove a point, she lifts her nose into the air and gives an experimental sniff.
Aubrey had figured, earlier that week at the top-secret werewolf/vampire meeting, that their best bet was to start at the Grill on the day of the full moon. Seeing as how the Grill was the hangout spot for the entire town, Beca had to admit that it wasn’t the worst idea she’d ever heard.
“This way,” Chloe says after a moment, tugging on Beca’s elbow. When Beca doesn’t budge, Chloe turns to look at her. “Come on,” she urges. “We only have a few hours till the full moon.”
Right.
She’s had a long life, but dying by way of wolf bite is not her idea of a fun death - not tonight (not ever) - so she grudgingly follows along.
*
To be honest, she doesn’t know how she got stuck with Chloe-duty.
Not that she minds; she actually kind of likes Chloe - welcome is a very strong word, but she more than tolerates Chloe’s company. But between Stacie and Aubrey, neither of whom she’s certain approves of this friendship, she doesn’t see how this is possible.
Either way, she’s not going to question it.
It’s kind of interesting, anyway, watching a wolf at work.
She’s lived for the better part of two centuries and hasn’t once befriended a werewolf, to say the least (but she’s run into a few here and there, and she’d rate those experiences anywhere between pesky and life-threatening) - and she’d had no idea until now that they could pick up vampire scent from quite a ways away.
“You knew,” Beca finds the words tumbling out of her mouth before she can think better of it. (She finds herself doing a lot of things she wouldn’t usually do when she’s around Chloe.) “You knew, didn’t you?”
Chloe pauses in her step. “What?”
“You knew that I was a vampire when you first met me,” Beca elaborates. (Another first for her, then.) “And again when you talked to me.”
Chloe smiles, but this time it’s a little uncertain.
Beca folds her arms across her chest, waiting for an answer.
“Not at first,” Chloe says slowly, as though trying to decide what words would be best. When Beca scoffs, she frowns. “Not at first,” she repeats. “I had just-you know, I had just hit you with a door. And it didn’t occur to me until you left that you-you know. Smell like Aubrey.”
“I smell like Aubrey?”
“No!” Chloe corrects. “I mean, yes. But also no.” She huffs. “I don’t know how to explain it.”
Beca furrows her brow. “Right. Okay.”
They don’t speak again after that, and Beca realizes that Chloe has picked up her pace when she starts having to take two steps for every one of Chloe’s. She’s never felt a silence so uncomfortable, but she’s not sure what she could even begin to say that would make it better.
Before she knows it, however, Chloe comes to a stop.
They must be halfway across town by now, Beca muses to herself as she looks at the dilapidated building in front of her.
“We’re here,” Chloe announces. She takes a deep breath and scrunches her nose, as though she’s just caught a whiff of something unpleasant. “We’re definitely here.”
*
When Beca returns to the boarding house later that evening, she finds Amy lounging on the sofa, some movie playing on the TV.
Beca flops down next to her with a sigh.
“Aren’t you supposed to be with your pack? Ripping out the hearts of vampires or whatever?”
“I don’t do the whole-” Amy brings her fingers up to her mouth, imitating fangs, “-grrr thing.” She presses pause on the remote, and the screen is a motion blur. “But you probably knew that, because if I did, you’d be dead already.” The full moon. Of course. (Beca’s old, not wise, okay?)
Beca shifts on the couch, and Amy sends her a look.
“But don’t go getting any ideas,” Amy says, clapping a hand to her neck. “I know my blood is really tempting. And delicious.” She narrows her eyes. “Yum.”
Beca rolls her eyes. “I’ll try and restrain myself.”
“Good. Because I’m armed,” she indicates the stake in her hand - which, like, really? It has all the subtlety and politeness of inviting yourself in to someone’s place with a nuclear missile. “And dangerous.”
There’s a slight pause that Beca doesn’t feel particularly compelled to fill.
“What are we watching?” Beca asks instead, settling back into the couch and staring at the blob on screen
Amy must think her warning has been heeded, because she simply turns back to the TV and presses play. “The movie that taught me everything I needed to know about vampire-werewolf relations.”
*
(Beca thinks Underworld is an overly dramatic version of vampire-werewolf relations, and also grossly inaccurate, but what does she know?
“Still,” Amy says, “It’s better than Twilight.”
Beca has to agree.)
*
They hold the next strategy meeting two days later.
It’s not going very well - in the sense that there are a lot of opinions in the room, and all of them are trying to make themselves be heard at the same time.
Beca starts to feel a headache coming on, and wonders if she could sneak out of the room unnoticed. It’s not like they really need her here, anyway. Jesse can always fill her in on the plan later.
Aubrey is being pretty adamant that the werewolves should stay out of the rest of it.
“You guys have held up your end of the deal,” Aubrey is trying to explain, though by the looks on the werewolves’ faces, not a lot of it is getting through. She doesn’t blame the wolves, for once; Aubrey talks a lot. “Now Jesse, Beca, and I can hold up our end of it: We’ll take the rest of them out.”
“And let you have all the fun?” Amy asks, incredulous.
“Amy, stay out of it,” Stacie sighs, pressing a hand to her temple and applying pressure. She takes a deep breath, then continues, “But she has a point: There are eleven of them left and with the three of you, there will be six of us in total-”
“Seven,” Amy interrupts.
“-you’re not participating in this, Amy,” Stacie repeats firmly.
“But I could distract them,” Amy suggests. “With my fresh blood and-”
“-and nothing,” Stacie frowns. “I said no.”
“It’ll be easier if you just let us deal with it,” Aubrey says with a tone that implies that this is neither the time nor the place to be squabbling about pack matters. “We’re stronger than you - they’re stronger than you.”
“Not on a full moon,” Chloe argues, speaking for the first time at the meeting.
Beca shakes her head, “These are really old vampires.”
“And we can’t wait a whole month more to get rid of the other eleven,” Jesse points out. “They’ll have gone through half the town by then.”
“You can start taking them out one by one, if you want,” Stacie concedes. “But you need us. Besides,” she adds, and now her gaze is totally focused on Beca. Not. Creepy. At. All. “One bite from a werewolf…”
“…can kill a vampire,” Aubrey finishes, and now she’s creepily staring at Beca too.
Like she didn’t already know that.
Seriously.
What the fuck is wrong with everybody?
*
Maybe it’s not so much that drama follows Beca around.
Maybe it’s more that Beca knows how to make her own life difficult.
(It’s an art form, cultivated through many useless degrees and pointless classes.)
Or maybe it’s just that she has Aubrey Posen to insert drama where drama is not needed.
“You like her,” Aubrey states matter-of-factly, setting her drink down on the coffee table.
Apparently it’s girl-talk time. Beca hates girl-talk time, but Aubrey subjects her to it every now and then. It’s useless trying to get away; she’s tried. Many times, and to no avail.
“I don’t like anyone,” Beca snorts. “And do we have to talk about this right now? Can’t we reschedule this, for like, never o’clock?”
Aubrey frowns at her, clearly disappointed. “You’re not fooling anyone with your whole ‘I don’t give a crap’ act, Beca. Admit it: you do give a crap, and you give a crap about Chloe Beale.”
“Are you serious right now?” Beca laughs, tapping her fingers idly against her drink. She doesn’t know why she’s humoring this line of conversation right now, but it’s got to stop; she has a limit, and Aubrey is quickly approaching it. So she throws back the last of the liquid in her glass and stands.
“Where do you think you’re going?”
“To bed,” Beca says, as though it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “Good night, mom.”
Beca’s already halfway up the stairs when she hears Aubrey call out: “You know I’m right, Mitchell.”
“Bite me, Posen,” she sing-songs back.
*
Unfortunately for Beca, Aubrey has an annoying tendency to be right about a lot of things.
This is one of them
(maybe, probably)
but-
She doesn’t have feelings for Chloe.
That’s ridiculous, right?
Right.
*
They go hunting for the first time in a week the next evening.
It’s more like a training session: for all their dislike for vampires, none of them have actually staked one, so that’s what tonight’s for.
Learning to stake vampires.
“Any ideas on how to actually wipe them out?” Amy whispers.
“I like the smell of burning flesh,” Lilly offers.
“For the last time, Lilly, you cannot use your blowtorch,” comes Stacie’s exasperated sigh. She’s starting to sound more and more like Aubrey every day, Beca notes with bemusement. It’s probably a side effect of spending so much time together.
“It smells like bacon,” Lilly adds.
“Guys,” Chloe interrupts before Beca - or any of them, she supposes - has the chance to fully process Lilly’s statement. “Vampires at nine o’clock.”
Beca follows Chloe’s gaze to see three people - two guys, one girl - standing in the middle of the town square. Though they’re laughing, she can see their eyes scanning for a loner, a straggler of a group.
“They’re looking for dinner,” Aubrey murmurs from next to her, and Beca nods.
“Okay, guys,” Jesse starts. “Remember what we talked about. You know where the heart is. The stake goes right here.” He taps on his chest. “We just have to get them to someplace more isolated-”
“Where’s Amy?” Chloe sounds worried, and Beca feels herself reach for her to - actually, she has no idea what she intends to do - so she awkwardly shoves her offending hand back into her pocket.
“She’s right…” Stacie starts, and then a look of horror crosses her face. “…over there.”
Beca doesn’t know how Amy got so far without any of them noticing, but she just barely catches blonde hair ducking in between two buildings, no doubt following after one of the three vampires.
Then everything happens at once:
Stacie is taking off after Amy-
The girl vampire starts moving to where Amy and the other guy disappeared-
The other guy vampire starts to turn, but then Jesse is there, snapping his neck as Aubrey reaches into his chest and squeezes-
Chloe drives a stake through the girl vampire but misses. Lilly doesn’t.
By the time Beca catches up with Stacie, the other vampire is gone.
“He got away,” Stacie says-which, no duh, Beca can see that. “But Amy’s okay.”
“He didn’t bite her, did he?”
“He wishes he got a taste of this,” Amy answers with a laugh, but even Beca can tell she’s not yet over the shock of what just happened.
They part ways shortly after that. Beca allows herself a moment to watch the wolves trailing after Stacie - Chloe with her arm wrapped supportively around Amy’s waist, and Lilly bringing up the back - before she turns to leave herself.
All in all, she has to admit it’s not that big of a disaster: Two more down, nine to go.
*
In case it’s not already obvious: Beca’s not a team player.
But ever since she’s returned to Mystic Falls, she’s been making a lot of allowances.
This campfire is one of them.
“Everyone needs some fun,” Aubrey announces when they start the evening off with some s’mores around the flames, hands on her hips and smile so wide, it’s like she believes she can inject fun into their veins. (She probably thinks it’s possible; Beca just thinks it’s creepy.)
“Fun is lying on the beach,” Amy groans. “With my hot boyfriends massaging sunscreen into my back. Not… this.”
Beca snorts.
“I have a whole list of activities lined up,” Aubrey is saying, but Beca’s already tuned out.
How much effort would it take, she wonders, for her to whittle a stake from a branch and stab herself with it?
*
Predictably, they end up doing none of the things Aubrey has planned.
Surprisingly, Aubrey doesn’t seem to mind much - but that may just be because they’re bonding as a team anyway, which was kind of the (not-so) hidden agenda behind the whole camping thing.
Beca’s known Aubrey for long enough. She doesn’t just do things for fun.
And now they’re sharing feelings, which as far as Beca is concerned, is much worse than anything Aubrey could have ever planned.
(She’s immensely glad for Amy, who had the foresight to bring at least five different sorts of alcohol to this soiree.)
“What about you, Beca?”
Beca’s gaze snaps to Stacie, who’s fixing her with a particularly pointed stare. “Huh?”
“What are you going to do,” Aubrey fills in for Stacie, sounding very disappointed in Beca. Like she actually expected her to pay attention during Girl Talk, “for the rest of the summer?”
“Once we’ve gotten rid of the nest,” Stacie adds.
“Oh,” Beca mumbles, staring down at the vodka in her cup.
“I thought you were going back to New York,” Jesse says, shifting in his fold-out chair.
“You’re leaving?” Chloe asks, and Beca’s suddenly very aware of the look in her eyes - it’s not anything Beca can put a name to, but it’s as though Beca has let her down by even thinking of leaving so soon, or maybe because she never bothered to mention it. Which, it shouldn’t even matter what Beca does after this, because it’s Beca’s life and she’ll live it the way she wants, thanks.
Stacie looks disapproving, Aubrey looks disappointed, and Chloe…
Beca tries not to think about the way her heart squeezes painfully at the look in Chloe’s eyes, and instead finishes the last of the alcohol in her cup.
“I don’t know.”
*
Beca is entering the Grill when she hears it: A muffled squeak that, for some reason, reminds her of Chloe.
A double-take allows her to pinpoint the source of the sound to the dumpsters in the alley, and she’s there in a flash.
There’s a vampire standing over Amy, and he’s so focused on her that Beca finds it easy enough to toss him against the far wall. She turns to deal with the one that has Chloe in a vice-grip, and finds his face half-obscured in red hair, fangs extended and grazing Chloe’s skin.
It’s weird, the anger that surges up inside of her at the sight, white hot and ever so present.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” she says, and she’s surprised by how strange her voice sounds. Steady, but lower. Threatening, almost, but she’s not sure that’s right.
Chloe’s eyes are impossibly wide, and it pulls at something inside of her.
The vampire stops to look at her, sneering. “And what are you going to do about it, shortsta-?”
He doesn’t get to finish his question, because Beca is suddenly there, one arm around his throat and her other fist closed around his heart. She pulls, and he stills, body going slack. Beca steps away from him and allows the body to fall to the ground, turning away from the sneer still on his face.
“Wow,” she vaguely registers Amy’s voice over the blood rushing to her ears. “That was like this one time in Tanzania, when I ripped out the guts of a crocodile. With garden shears.”
She doesn’t even realize she’s still holding his heart in her hand until she feels a tug on her other arm, and suddenly she’s looking into blue eyes.
“Beca?” Chloe asks, and her hands are now on Beca’s face.
Beca takes a step back, dropping the heart with a squelch, and Chloe’s hands fall back to her sides. “Um.” She looks around for the other vampire, but sees only Amy. “I-are you guys okay?” she manages.
“Yeah,” Chloe glances over at Amy, who nods.
“You two should get back inside,” Beca murmurs, trying to shake herself out of this daze. Her heart still feels like it’s in her throat, and she feels… antsy. Unsettled. “I should-the other one can’t have gotten that far.”
She leaves before either one of them can say anything else.
*
It turns out that her super-speed is useless when pitted against Chloe’s sense of smell, because Chloe finds her five minutes later.
“I tracked you here,” Chloe is saying, but Beca is only half-listening. She’s still feeling a bit out of sorts from before, so it takes her a little while to come up with something halfway coherent.
“Oh,” is what she says.
There’s a pause as they walk along the sidewalk in silence. Beca has no idea where she’s going - she guesses the vampire must have headed for the nest, but has no definite idea of which path it could have taken to get there. If she could intercept him before he got there, she might have a chance of taking him down.
“Can’t you… use your nose to track that vampire?”
“It doesn’t work like that,” Chloe explains patiently.
“Oh.”
There’s another pause.
“Then how did you-”
“I don’t know,” Chloe says, and it sounds almost like a confession. She stops in her tracks, and Beca finds herself stopping alongside her. “I mean, there’s-vampires have this smell, and it’s hard to tell the scents apart when you don’t know them. It kind of bleeds together, like this mass of vampire-y smell.”
“Like how I smell like Aubrey,” Beca says, recalling their previous conversation.
“Not exactly,” Chloe is shaking her head now. “You… You’re different. You smell different from everyone else.”
Beca doesn’t know if this is a good or bad thing, but she’s suddenly aware of how close Chloe is to her. She can feel the warmth of her body in the space between them, the warmth of her breath against her cheek, can hear the pounding of her heart - or maybe that’s Beca’s, she can’t really tell -
- and then there are warm lips on her own, cool fingers in her hair.
It takes a full minute for Beca to process what’s going on, and by the time her brain catches up, Chloe is pulling back to look at her.
“Uh,” Beca starts.
Chloe smiles, hesitant.
Beca’s not sure what to say, and so she settles on the first thing she can come up with: “Thank you.”
*
As it so happens, thank you is exactly the wrong thing to say to a werewolf.
But they don’t get to talk about that.
*
It’s not really avoidance.
They literally train together all the time now.
(As with most other planned events in Beca’s life, this one is entirely Aubrey’s idea, though it’s not a completely terrible one.
If she has to raid a vampire nest with werewolves as her backup, she’d rather they not be incompetent werewolves.
“We’ll train until the day of the next full moon,” Aubrey explains on the first day with Stacie by her side, looking ready to tear into anyone who might voice their disapproval - or maybe she saves that look just for Beca. Beca wouldn’t put it past her.)
That first week, Jesse teaches the werewolves how to use seemingly innocuous objects as a stake.
Aubrey teaches them how to aim properly for the heart, how to put enough pressure to drive the stake home.
Beca teaches them hand-to-hand combat.
Amy attempts to teach them the art of seduction, but that lasts a total of five seconds before Aubrey tells Amy to join Beca’s group.
“But I haven’t even gotten to the good part yet,” Amy protests, though she obediently shuffles over to where Beca is standing.
“We only have a few weeks, ladies,” Aubrey claps her hands together. Jesse coughs, but Aubrey ignores him. “Learn what you can.”
*
There’s five days till the next full moon, and Beca thinks the training’s going pretty well.
And she’s managed to stop thinking about Chloe. Not that she thought a lot about her to begin with, but when someone kisses you out of the blue, it’s kind of… not normal. But Chloe has barely looked at her the past two weeks, so maybe she’s mad about something.
Beca doesn’t know. (Wouldn’t know. Refuses to know.)
So she’s surprised when Chloe ambushes her one evening when they’re done with practice.
“Can we talk?”
“Um,” Beca starts, glancing at Aubrey - who can’t possibly know about any of this (can she?) but is giving her the evil eye regardless. “Sure, I guess.”
*
She follows Chloe to the park across the street.
“So,” she mutters, scuffing the toe of her sneaker against the dirt. “What did you want to talk about?”
Chloe levels her with a glare. “Are you really going to pretend we didn’t kiss?”
“We didn’t kiss,” Beca points out as though it actually matters, perhaps a bit more petulantly than she’d like. “You kissed me.”
“Right, Beca, I kissed you.”
“What do you want me to say, Chloe?”
Chloe takes a step forward, her face now inches from Beca’s, and Beca can feel her heart speed up, pounding traitorously against her ribcage - and really, what is the point of being dead when her heart still beats?
“Forget it,” Chloe says, and the disappointment in her tone is palpable. “Just… never mind.”
*
I saved you, is what Beca wants to say. I saved you, and you kissed me, and aren’t we even?
*
Beca doesn’t see Chloe in the days leading up to the full moon.
(She supposes that’s a blessing in disguise, but it doesn’t feel like one.)
“Your redheaded lady lover,” Amy offers once, after catching Beca throw yet another glance towards the closed door for the umpteenth time, “is training with Aubrey and Stacie.”
Beca feels her cheeks heat up, but pretends not to have heard Amy as she turns back to the group and continues with the lesson.
One day to go.
*
They’re standing outside the old house with five hours until the full moon.
Beca can feel the energy in the air; she can see the tense set to Stacie’s shoulders, the frown in Chloe’s lips, the resolve in Aubrey’s eyes. She sees Amy fiddling with the grip on her bat, notices the (actually kind of scary) grin Lilly is wearing on her face, feels the calm emanating from Jesse.
Aubrey has a hand on the wrought iron fence, and there’s a brief moment when Aubrey turns back to regard the other six of them where Beca thinks she’s going to give them a second pep talk (the first one was given at the boarding house before they had all set off) but then she pushes, and the gate swings open with a loud creak.
Well.
If that didn’t give them away-
“AIEEEEEEEEEEE!”
-Amy’s war cry certainly would.
*
At first, nothing happens.
It’s eerily silent, so much so that she swears she can hear the crickets chirping.
(If she didn’t know any better, she’d guess that the vampires skipped town - but that seems about as likely to happen as Aubrey deciding not to make her life difficult, so in essence, not very likely at all.)
But then Lilly steps on a loose floorboard that seems to make the entire house groan, and at that very same moment, the front door slams shut.
And then all hell breaks loose.
*
The first three vampires are easy enough.
Aubrey holds a vampire back as Chloe stabs her in the chest, Jesse delivers a crushing blow to another’s head before driving a stake through his heart, while Stacie and Amy literally rip off the head of a third vampire.
But then five more show up at the same time, and before Beca knows it, one of them is charging at her, and wait a minute-
“Beca?”
Beca doesn’t bother to reply and lands a punch on his right side, sending him reeling back.
“Beca Mitchell,” the vampire says again, his laughter dissolving into a cough as he clutches his side. “I didn’t think I’d see you again.”
“Lucky you, James,” Beca grits out as she ducks a punch, only to have James catch her in the jaw with his other fist.
“I didn’t know you had friends, Beca,” James smiles as he steps just out of reach. "And that redhead is certainly-"
“-no one you should concern yourself with,” interrupts a voice - Stacie - from behind James, and she knocks him over the head with a bat. As he slumps to the floor, Stacie adds, “And we’re hardly her friends.”
“Gee,” Beca says sardonically, leaning over and driving the stake into his heart. “You sure know how to make a girl feel warm and fuzzy inside.”
“And you sure know how to leave a girl hanging,” comes the response, and-
“Really?” Beca sighs, frustrated. “Is there anyone in this god-forsaken town who doesn’t know?”
*
Everything falls into place quickly after that; it’s almost like a domino reaction.
Jesse punches anyone and everyone who gets within a two-foot radius. (Amy, Chloe, and Lilly then finish the job.) Aubrey and Stacie appear to have formed a pretty damned formidable team, with Stacie knocking the vampires out and Aubrey alternately ripping their hearts out or staking them in the chest.
When it appears one of the nest vampires has the upper hand, it’s not long before someone else comes to the rescue.
They’re pretty fucking awesome, is what they are.
*
Beca is pulling a vampire off of Chloe when it happens:
She hears the rush of air before she can really register what’s going on, and then there’s a burst of heat an inch from her ear, and she can smell the flames in the air.
When she turns around, it’s to see Lilly - of course it’s Lilly - with a large grin plastered on her face, a blowtorch in her hand as she aims it at the remaining vampires in the room.
(Questions that jump to the forefront of her mind include where the fuck did she pull that out of? and is that connected to a power supply? but nobody else seems terribly concerned, and Beca has long stopped trying to understand anything that Lilly does.
Sometimes, it’s best to just accept things and move on.)
She grips the vampire’s shirt a little more firmly, and tosses him into the stream of fire.
*
In the end, they barely escape with their lives.
This shouldn’t be news to anyone, but it turns out Lilly with a blowtorch is dangerous times infinity. After setting the last vampire on fire (courtesy of Aubrey and Stacie, who shoved it in front of the blowtorch and Lilly’s manic wrath), Lilly decided that she needed more mileage on her blowtorch - and set fire to half of the house before anyone could convince her otherwise.
“Well,” Beca says to Aubrey as she stares at the burning building in front of them. “You’d better call 911.”
*
The days that follow are monotonous.
She’s stuck in a cycle of waking and sleeping, punctuated with the occasional meal and alcoholic beverage.
It’s… fine. It’s almost peaceful.
And it’s exactly the sort of thing she’s tried (and failed) to achieve for months now, but now that she actually has it… well. It doesn’t feel like it used to, back in the day, but she’ll get used to it.
The thing about being old?
She knows it’s only a matter of time.
She gets used to everything, eventually.
*
Aubrey gives her six days of this.
On day seven, she wakes Beca up by pulling the covers off of her bed.
Beca shrinks into a ball the instant the cool air hits her exposed feet and arms, shying away from the morning light and muttering half-curses under her breath.
“You’re going to have to talk about it sometime,” Aubrey says, her voice far too loud for - Beca squints at the clock and frowns - eight in the morning. Seriously?
“Go away, Aubrey,” Beca mumbles, burying her face in her pillow.
“You can sleep when you’re dead,” Aubrey intones, pulling on the pillow and disrupting Beca’s rest. When it’s clear that Beca has no intention of budging, Aubrey sighs and settles onto the bed. “She’s a werewolf, Beca.” Her voice is stern, and Beca can tell that Aubrey’s only just getting started - and that Beca will have to listen to this whether she wants to or not. “What were you thinking?”
“I wasn’t,” Beca groans, sitting up and giving up all pretense of sleep. “I didn’t think anything-”
“-clearly-”
“-okay, did you come here just to insult me?”
Aubrey sighs, pressing down on the bridge of her nose. “You kissed Chloe.”
It sounds more like an accusation than a statement of fact, and Beca doesn’t even know where to begin with that. “Firstly,” she straightens, already on the defensive. “She kissed me, and secondly, there has been none of that since…”
She trails off, and she only realizes it when Aubrey speaks again a few moments later, her voice softer this time: “She’s a werewolf, and you’re a vampire.”
“You’ve said that,” Beca retorts, irritated. “What’s your point?”
“Figure it out, Beca.”
*
Amy visits later that day.
Beca doesn’t see her, but she can hear her laughter from her room.
*
She finds a voicemail from day three on her phone, when she finally bothers to look at it.
She presses the appropriate buttons on the number pad, and Chloe’s voice fills her ear.
“Beca, hi! I… haven’t seen you or Aubrey the past few days, so I guess you left town. Which is great, or not really great, but I know you’ve wanted to leave since you got here, so I hope you got to do it. … I… I just wanted to apologize, for before. It’s okay if you don’t feel the same way and… I hope we can still be friends. Okay, that’s it, I guess; have a great summer!”
*
Fine, she’ll admit it: She misses those damned werewolves.
Amy and her stupid jokes.
Lilly and her love for everything morbid.
Even Stacie, with her penchant for taking after Aubrey.
But most of all, she misses Chloe, but she doesn’t know if she simply misses her in the way friends miss other friends when they don’t see each other for a little while, or if she misses her in the way that means something a little more - that means she may, perhaps, want to kiss her again.
But that’s crazy-talk, right? Why would she want to kiss-
Chloe just gets under her skin, crosses her wires, messes with her head.
“It’s not healthy,” Beca states morosely.
“You’re an idiot,” Aubrey says, and then leaves the room.
Well. That was helpful.
She sinks back into her chair, groaning.
A few moments pass, and then: “It sounds a lot like-”
Beca fixes Jesse with a look so sharp, it could probably kill.
“I was just going to say you have it bad for her,” Jesse amends smoothly, sipping his blood box.
Beca doesn’t refute this, and this is how she knows she’s fucked.
*
She finally leaves the house on day ten.
The sun is shining and the birds are chirping and there’s probably a rainbow somewhere that Beca just can’t see because of the trees - it’s a fucking Disney movie, basically - when she bumps into Chloe by the lake.
It’s completely unexpected, and judging by the look on Chloe’s face, she’s not the only one who’s surprised.
“Oh,” Chloe says mid-jog, coming to a stop. “I thought you went back to New York.”
“Nah,” Beca replies with a shrug. “It’s not that easy to get rid of me.”
Chloe smiles, and Beca feels her heart clench.
“Besides,” Beca continues, shoving her hands into her pockets and fixing her eyes on a spot right by Chloe’s feet. Soil is really interesting, okay? “I thought I might stay a while.”
“Really?” Chloe sounds so pleased that Beca can’t help the small smile that worms its way onto her face.
“Yeah,” she says, lifting her gaze from the ground to meet Chloe’s. “Really.”
*
(This time, she’s the one who leans forward first; she’s the one who presses her lips to Chloe’s, who tangles her hand in Chloe’s hair. And when she pulls away, she sees her own smile mirrored in the curve of Chloe’s lips.
Chloe’s mock serious, “Thank you” is quickly replaced with peals of laughter when Beca tackles her to the ground and tickles her.
At one point, Beca finds herself staring down into Chloe’s eyes - but Chloe does something with her hips, and oh, okay, Beca now feels the earth beneath her, Chloe warm on top of her, and it’s something when their lips meet again, and-
Yeah, she’s more than okay with this.
*
Chloe’s lips are swollen when they break for air.)
*
“If she bites you and you die a painful death,” Aubrey says, weeks later when all of them are stretched out by the lakeside, “don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
Chloe laughs, and it’s the richest sound Beca’s ever heard.
*
Pitch Perfect/The Vampire Diaries Crossover - Beca Mitchell/Chloe Beale; PG-13. ~ 10,000 words.
This is a Vampire Diaries AU (or as I like to call it, the Mystic Falls AU). Though it would be helpful if you're familiar with the TVD universe, it's not a requirement.
You can thank sexonastick for this, since she got me into The Vampire Diaries in the first place. ;) On a more serious note, my many, many sincere thanks go to her, for the handholding and brainstorming and seeing this through. I can pretty safely say that this fic would have gone to die unfinished if not for her.
*
Life sucks, and then you die.
That’s what everyone signs up for, right?
Except that’s not really how her un-life works.
*
Beca doesn’t do drama.
The whole you stole my boyfriend, you bitch! and he liked me first, you slut! gets annoying fast, and she’s had enough of it. More than enough, actually. (And she’s in college - these sorts of things should not be allowed to happen once you’re out of high school. Seriously.)
It’s tiring, unnecessary, and boring.
Also, it’s messy.
Beca doesn’t do messy.
Runs as far away from it as possible, in fact. Wherever the opposite of messy is: that’s Beca’s haven. That’s where she lives, camps out, stakes her claim - no pun intended. The fact that she hasn’t been able to find this place yet is sort of depressing, but the world is her oyster or whatever. She’ll find it eventually.
Maybe.
*
She should probably explain.
She’s been twenty for the past two hundred and thirteen years; she’s had enough drama to last her four lifetimes, and then some.
What’s unfortunate is that drama always seems to find her.
*
She’s lived in many places.
New York, Mumbai, Cape Town.
You name it, she’s been there.
Mystic Falls is where she always returns.
*
If she were the sentimental sort - which she’s not by a stretch - she would call Mystic Falls her home.
She actually doesn’t even like the town that much, come to think of it.
The people are too friendly for their own good.
Like, if they actually knew what she was, they’d probably be chasing her across town with torches or whatever. She remembers the old days, knows what they used to do.
It’s ridiculous that they ever thought they could get rid of vampires.
If she wanted - if any vampire wanted - she could end them without a second thought.
She won’t, because she can’t be bothered.
But if she wanted to…
*
Also, weird shit goes on in that town; she doesn’t even know where to begin.
Werewolves, witches, the whole she-bang.
(And vampires, too - but seeing how she’s one herself, she doesn’t find that too weird. But werewolves are fucking crazy and there’s that whole thing about being able to kill her with one bite, so yeah. No thank you.
Witches she has less of a problem with, unless they get in her way.
But the werewolves? They need to go.)
*
She supposes that’s what draws her back this time.
The werewolves.
*
Okay, not really.
This is what actually happens:
“Aunt Beca?”
The voice on the other end of the line is shrill, and comes across loud and clear over the thump of the bass in this (crowded, sweaty) room. She ducks out the front door, clapping a hand to one ear and pressing the cell phone closer with her other. Not that that would actually help her hearing; she can hear pretty damn well, but she’s been around humans so long that… some habits are easily picked up.
“Aubrey.”
“You need to come back.”
“To Virginia? I don’t think so.”
“Beca.” Aubrey’s voice has dropped a note, and it sounds really serious. The kind of serious that Beca knows is futile to argue with. “You need to come back.”
It’s not a request, and Beca wonders when she started listening to her vampire niece, of all people.
(She’s older. Does that not mean anything to anyone anymore?)
*
Family is a pesky thing.
Beca has spent decades (centuries) avoiding any sort of a connection, and it’s worked out pretty well. More or less.
She remembers her first days as a vampire clearly. She remembers being drawn to blood: the smell of it, the taste of it, the feel of it. She couldn’t explain it then; she’d had no idea of what was happening to her. She only knew that there was this pull - this need to feed - and she remembers her first taste (no one forgets their first taste), remembers the sound of his heartbeat, steady and strong, how it ebbed away as the liquid flowed down her throat, pooling warm and thick in her belly.
She remembers being distinctly disgusted right after, and she remembers refusing to drink for days (weeks, months), subsisting on rats and other vermin.
“That’s disgusting, you know,” Jesse had said when he’d found her in an alley maybe two months after her transformation. “There are other ways to feed.”
Friendships and acquaintances are messy things, but sometimes, Beca makes allowances.
Jesse was her first concession. And now he’s family.
And somewhere along the line, Aubrey’s become family, too.
Maybe it’s strange, but she’d do anything for them.
*
So she comes back.
Home for summer break from NYU is the tagline - not that she actually needs one, since she hasn’t been to Mystic Falls since the early 1900s save for a short visit every now and then to the boarding house (and only the boarding house), and no one there right now would actually recognize her - but Aubrey is insistent, and Beca has learned in her fifty years with Aubrey that it’s best just to let her have her way.
She spends her first day at the Grill, and by the end of the day she’s pretty sure she’s met over half the town. And those she hasn’t met will have heard of her by nighttime.
(“That’s Aubrey’s cousin,” she hears them say, and if they weren’t so obvious about it she might even feel guilty about eavesdropping. “Visiting for the summer.” But on a list of bad things she’s done, eavesdropping ranks pretty low, so she shoots a few rounds of pool, throws back a couple of beers, and enjoys the day.)
Word travels fast in a small town like Mystic Falls, Virginia.
*
It turns out that there’s a bit of a vampire problem.
“And you want my help how, exactly?”
Aubrey huffs, folding her arms across her chest. She glances over at Jesse, who’s seated on the opposite end of the room, but he just shrugs at her. His eyes say, I told you she’d be like that, and he’s not wrong. Aubrey should have listened to him.
“Look, it’s nice you thought of me, but you two are perfectly capable of handling them on your own.” Beca knows she sounds flippant, and that’s because she is. They’re just vampires. “You round them up or hunt them down - whichever you prefer - and then you stake them.”
She stands to leave, but Aubrey is there in a flash. Though she’s much younger, she’s still strong, and she catches Beca off-guard when she shoves hard, sending the shorter woman back into the chair. (Out of the corner of her eye, she notes that Jesse starts to stand - but he immediately resettles when it becomes obvious that Beca intends his charge no harm.) The only reason Aubrey gets away with what she just did is because Beca lets her, and she’s pretty sure the younger vampire knows that already.
“The problem, Beca-”
“-I liked it much better when you called me Aunt Beca-”
“-is that there are twenty of them.”
“And now there are three of us,” Beca notes dryly. “How does that even the odds, exactly?”
*
The thing is, it doesn’t.
It doesn’t even the odds at all.
It’s her third day there and they’ve only staked their first vampire.
(“The other two got away,” Aubrey says, not meeting her eyes.
Beca knows from the sound of her voice that Aubrey is disappointed with herself, but these vampires - they’re not fledglings; if she had to guess based on fighting them alone, she would say that they probably were at least a hundred years old - making them a hell of a lot stronger than Aubrey.
And Aubrey’s a pain in the ass, but she’s Beca’s pain in the ass, and she’d rather have Aubrey be very much un-alive than dead-dead.)
“Nineteen to go,” Beca says, stepping back as the vampire underneath her turns grey, mouth stretched in a silent scream. She yanks out the stake unceremoniously and tosses it to Aubrey. “We need to find the nest. Wipe them out from there.”
*
They go for a beer at the Grill.
“To celebrate… what? Nineteen to go?”
Jesse shrugs, clinking his glass with Beca’s and then Aubrey’s. “There were twenty of them this morning. I’d say nineteen is a good start.”
“Yes, and I didn’t see you anywhere near-”
“Fine, fine,” Jesse holds up his hands. “I’ll get the next one.”
“And the next round,” Beca adds with a grin.
“And the next round,” Jesse agrees easily.
*
The next round turns into two, and then three, and on the fourth, Beca excuses herself to use the bathroom.
She’s on her way out when the door swings open suddenly and - just for the record, she blames the alcohol for her slow response to this - hits her in the face.
Her yelp of pain is certainly not befitting a vampire of her age, but at least it’s a normal reaction for a twenty-something year old girl to have, so there’s that. She gingerly presses a few fingers to her nose and frowns when it comes away covered in blood.
Great.
She adds a little bit more pressure and tries not to wince.
Definitely broken.
“Oh my god! I’m so sorry!”
Before she can say or do anything else, there’s a flurry of activity around her. Hands on her face, her shoulders - just everywhere. She backs up quickly, swatting away the extra help with her free hand and shaking her head. “I’m okay, it’s okay-” Just get away from me, is what she wants to say, but then there are tissues in front of her face and she takes them, covering her nose with them and hoping that her voice is loud enough, or that this girl is frantic enough, to cover the sound of her snapping her nose back into place.
All better.
She scrunches her nose just to check, and it still smarts, but she can feel it healing already.
“Are you okay?” the voice asks again, and it’s only now that Beca registers the red hair and very wide, blue eyes that accompany the question. “I really am-”
“-sorry, I know.” Beca pauses. She’s kind of pretty, this girl. “It’s really okay.”
“It’s not broken, is it? Can I take you to the hospital or something? I mean…”
The girl reaches out for her face again, and Beca leans away as subtly as she can. (Which is not very subtle at all. She’s an awkward vampire; it’s been said many times.) She’s big on personal space, and this girl very obviously isn’t. Seriously. She doesn’t understand what’s wrong with the people in this town. No wonder they get eaten alive by vampires.
“Uh. That’s nice of you, but. Um. I’m okay.”
“Really?”
And how is it possible for this girl to look as though Beca just kicked her puppy (or bit her puppy, or basically did anything unpleasant to a cute furry creature), when really Beca is the one who got her face smacked by a door and had her nose broken in the process? It’s just unfair.
But now the silence has stretched too long, and Beca suddenly realizes that the girl is probably still waiting for an answer. A grunt, or something. Beca clears her throat. “Really.”
*
She finds out a few days later (and with “fifteen to go,” which is what Jesse tells her after a day of hunting) that the girl’s name is Chloe.
“Chloe Beale,” she says sunnily.
“Uh,” is what Beca says in response, when really she wants to say something like, Please go away or why are you so happy or do you feed on the joy of woodland creatures. But Jesse has told her time and time again that if she can’t say anything nice, she probably shouldn’t say anything at all, so. This is her, listening to Jesse.
“You’re Beca,” Chloe says, when it’s obvious Beca isn’t going to put in the effort of having an actual conversation. “Beca Mitchell.”
Beca nods.
Chloe’s entire face lights up at the gesture - Beca might as well have told her she won the lottery, or maybe that she saved a baby panda just for her (Chloe looks like the sort of person who would appreciate the latter more) - and Beca feels something stir inside of her. An emotion, maybe, but aside from her best friends Sarcasm and Boredom, she hasn’t had much experience with those. So it could easily be something else. Like incredulity. Or annoyance.
“So what brings you to Mystic Falls, Beca?”
There’s no way that Chloe knows who Beca is but not why she’s here.
But Beca’s feeling charitable today, and Chloe doesn’t seem like awful company. Besides, she might be able to glean some information on this town from someone who isn’t Aubrey or Jesse. She might even be able to find out something new on the vampires, even if Chloe is the last person she’d think would be involved in that sort of thing.
So she orders a coke and settles more comfortably in her seat at the booth.
*
Beca knows she has company when she hears a heavy sigh from behind her - and judging by the disapproval she can feel in the release of that one small puff of air, she knows it’s Aubrey.
“Really, Beca? You’re no better than a teenager.”
And there it is; it’s official: She’s being judged by someone who is a hundred and sixty-three years younger than she is. She would tell her to suck it, but Aubrey’s always been a messy eater, and that’s just gross to see. Also, that would probably just get her another comment on how she really is being a child. She does not need to be doubly-judged on how she chooses to relax in her own home.
Because so what if she’s just sprawled out on the couch, sipping on a blood box (like juice boxes, only filled with bloody goodness - Jesse has a supplier, and Beca has never asked who it is, but she takes advantage of it every time she’s in town) with her feet in the air? She’s really careful with the blood box. She even makes sure it doesn’t drip onto the carpet. It’s not like she’s traipsing around the house in her shoes (something else that Aubrey disapproves of) or busy murdering innocent people in the front hall (which Aubrey mainly dislikes because of the cleanup involved afterwards).
Not that any of them murder innocent people.
(Um, okay. It might have happened once or twice, but they were far from innocent and also were trying to kill them. So Beca thinks it was justified.)
For the most part, they gave that up a long time ago.
*
Aubrey has killed a lot of vampires before, but none that have been older than she is.
Certainly none that are two hundred years older than her.
So when she stakes her first one, Beca can’t help but feel proud. She looks over at Jesse right then, and knows that the smile on his face is mirrored on her own.
“So, eleven left?” Aubrey asks later when they’re at the Grill, sipping her own lemon-lime beer carefully.
“Eleven,” Beca confirms.
“What will you do after?”
Beca hesitates to answer.
It’s been two weeks since she came back to Mystic Falls. Two weeks and nine vampires. If she plays her cards right (if they get rid of the rest of the vamps), she might be able to get out of here in another two weeks.
“You could stay, you know,” Aubrey murmurs, picking at the label on her bottle. “Would it really be so bad?”
It’s the first time she’s ever sounded so reserved, and Beca doesn’t know what to say to that.
*
She sees Chloe from time to time.
Not on purpose or anything. But they happen to be in the same place at the same time pretty often, and Beca finds that she doesn’t really mind sharing the same space with Chloe.
This is a Big Deal for Beca, because she usually hates breathing - well, sharing, since she doesn’t actually need to breathe - the same air as vapid high schoolers. Okay, technically Chloe is in college - she knows that. (UVA, she said the other day, and when did Beca start listening?) But Beca can’t stand college students either. Beca’s pretty sure she’s allergic to any and all forms of people. You name it, Beca can’t stand it.
Chloe’s an exception. The exception. Whatever that means.
For being a ball of fucking sunshine, she’s really not so bad.
*
Beca blames what happens next on the car.
Okay, whatever - she’s old enough to know that you can’t hold an inanimate object responsible for anything, but it’s Aubrey’s idea that she drive a car in the first place so she can fit in with the locals - so maybe this is really Aubrey’s fault.
Anyway, Beca is minding her own business and just about to get in her car when it happens.
One minute she’s alone, enjoying the peace and quiet and thinking about the relaxing bath she’s going to take when she gets back to the boarding house, and the next, she’s surrounded on all sides.
…And yes, that’s exactly as dramatic as it sounds. There are three girls, none of them who would be imposing on their own, but together, they’re sort of intimidating, and they’ve formed a semi-circle around Beca and her car.
She doesn’t have space issues (she totally has space issues), but it’s enough to make her feel claustrophobic.
“Stay away from Chloe, bloodsucker.”
“Uh.” Beca’s gaze snaps to the speaker - a girl with long, dark hair. Stacie, she remembers Aubrey saying to her once. Best friend of Chloe Beale. Even though she’s seen her with Chloe a lot, they’ve never actually been introduced, so Beca thinks she can get away with a simple, “Who are you?”
(And how do you know I’m a vampire would probably have been the better question to ask, but Beca has never been very good at conversation, so. She’ll just stick to whatever has already tumbled out of her mouth, thank you very much.)
“Your mom,” comes the instantaneous answer from another girl - blonde and with a slight accent.
“What??”
The third girl then adds (so quietly that Beca almost misses it, even with her super-hearing), “I feast on the joy of children in my sleep.”
“What is going on? Is that supposed to be a threat?”
Beca has no idea what to make of the situation. Maybe this is some kind of weird intervention and they have the wrong person. She doesn’t even know why she’s standing here listening to them. It would be so easy to snap their necks. To rip out their hearts. But her heart’s not really in it, and besides, having to dispose of the bodies would be much more trouble than it’s worth. She’d probably have to put up with an hour of Aubrey lecturing into her ear.
The thought is enough to make her cringe.
(Also, something tells her that Chloe would disapprove - but she doesn’t know when she started caring what Chloe Beale thought of anything, so she shoves that thought back into the recesses of her mind.)
Anyway, all in all? So not worth it.
Stacie’s following sigh is one that rivals Aubrey’s. “You have got to be the stupidest vampire I’ve ever met. Just back off of Chloe, okay? I don’t want to see you near her again.”
Beca is just about to protest that she’s not the one who constantly approaches Chloe, that she’s not the one all excited about making new friends-
And then Stacie literally growls. Beca has never heard a sound like that come out of a human mouth, and holy shit, what’s wrong with Stacie’s eyes?
*
Fucking werewolves.
*
They’re having a super-secret strategy session on how to get rid of the vampires in town when Beca brings it up.
“Why don’t we just involve the werewolves in this?”
Jesse raises an eyebrow, and the look Aubrey gives her is one of surprise.
“Yes, dear cousin,” she glares at Aubrey. “I know about the werewolves. Were you guys ever going to tell me?”
“Beca,” Jesse sighs, rubbing his face. “It’s not really relevant.”
“It kind of is,” Beca bites back, “when the whole pack decides it’s a good idea to chew me out in front of my car in broad daylight.”
Jesse laughs. “What did you do to piss them off?”
Beca gapes and hurls a throw pillow at him. “I didn’t do anything!”
“Guys,” Aubrey sighs, and she’s giving Beca a look. “Can we just get back to work?”
“You must have done something,” Jesse continues with a grin, though he acquiesces to Aubrey’s request by bending down over the town map again, carefully marking spots with a pencil. “They don’t usually go all alpha-wolf on someone without good reason.”
Beca rolls her eyes and tugs a book into her lap.
She can still feel the weight of Aubrey’s gaze on her but finds it easy enough to ignore. If her dear niece has a problem, she’ll hear about it - sooner rather than later, she’s sure. Until then… Well. These vampires certainly aren’t going to stake themselves.
*
So, apparently Aubrey and Chloe are friends.
And not just friends, but really good friends.
(The kind of friends that Beca has tried to avoid making her entire life.)
“The best,” Chloe affirms, beaming at the both of them.
“Um, great,” Beca replies, a little lamely. At least she’s moved from being monosyllabic to bi-syllabic. She’s growing as a person. Vampire. Whatever. “I’m going to let you guys catch up.”
She moves to leave, but then Chloe’s hand is warm on her arm, stopping her in her tracks.
“You just got here.”
Beca yanks her arm away quickly - or at least she tries to, but Chloe’s actually pretty strong. And now Chloe’s looking at her like she’s really hurt, like she can’t understand why anyone would try to leave when she’s right there.
Crap.
If she starts crying-well, there’s no reason for her to start.
Beca reallyhopes she doesn’t start crying.
“I have to go help Jesse with something,” Beca says, and the words sound empty, even to her.
“You’re a really bad liar,” Chloe states with a frown, before turning to Aubrey. “Your cousin is a really bad liar.”
“The worst,” Aubrey agrees gravely, and somehow Beca doesn’t think Aubrey and Chloe are talking about the same thing, if the look in Aubrey’s eye is anything to go by.
“You guys know I can hear you, right?”
Chloe and Aubrey exchange glances. It’s probably a best friend thing. Beca wouldn’t know.
“Can I have my arm back, please?”
“Oh!” Chloe blushes prettily, sounding almost embarrassed. “Right.” She relinquishes her grip, and Beca pulls her arm back instantly. “Sorry.”
Aubrey is watching them closely, and she has this look on her face - the look that says she’s figured something out, or is starting to. Beca can see the wheels turning in her head, and she doesn’t like where this is going. Not one bit.
*
“Look,” Jesse starts after they’ve all made their introductions, holding his hands up as he would in a peace offering. Or maybe a surrender. It certainly feels like the latter, even if they’re only here because she suggested it. (That was so one week ago, as the kids nowadays would say it, but who knew Jesse and Aubrey actually take her seriously from time to time? It’s a surprise to her, too.) It’s too late to retract her suggestion now, though, and anyway: this can only go faster with help.
Which brings them back to why they’re here.
Sitting uncomfortably in a room full of werewolves.
The tension is so thick, she’s pretty sure she could slice through it with a knife.
“Thank you for agreeing to meet with us,” Aubrey takes over for Jesse - which was unplanned, if the look on Jesse’s face is anything to go by, but she’s always been the better speaker. The better motivator. Well, maybe it’s not so much motivation as it is telling people what she expects of them, but the weird thing about Aubrey is that she never has to compel anyone to get things done. They just… sort of do it anyway.
It’s a useful skill, Beca will admit.
“Will you just cut to the chase?” Stacie interrupts, drumming her fingers against the tabletop.
Aubrey frowns at her. “I’m sure you’re aware of the vampire problem.”
“Uh, duh,” the girl with the accent - Beca squints at the nametag Aubrey made them all wear: Amy - intones. “Aren’t we looking at her?” She directs a particularly pointed gaze at Beca. Subtle, really.
Aubrey follows Amy’s gaze, and Beca didn’t think it was possible, but her frown actually deepens. Seriously. She doesn’t need this from any of them. She gets up to leave, but Aubrey places a firm hand on her shoulder and shoves.
Beca hears the wood crack a second too late, and suddenly she’s on the floor, surrounded by broken bits of chair. “Aubrey. Seriously?”
She thinks she hears a snort from the left side of the room, where the werewolves are sitting, but-
“Oh, grow up,” Aubrey says under her breath, too low for the others to hear. “You’re fine.”
There’s a brief pause in which Beca picks herself up and slouches her way to another chair, staring back at Amy, who looks like she’s about to crack up. (She doesn’t look at Jesse, who is not even bothering to hide his smile - which, that’s just rude, okay? At least put some effort into it.)
“Anyway,” Aubrey continues, addressing the group as though nothing’s just happened. “As I was saying: the vampire problem.”
Beca sighs.
This is going to be a long meeting.
*
In the end, they come up with a (shaky) plan:
1) The wolves will sniff out the vamps’ nest.
2) When they’ve located the nest, all of them will come up with a date and time to wipe it out.
“Adios motherfuckers,” Amy says, slapping her hand down on the table for effect. She pulls it back two seconds later, cradling it to her chest and muttering a quiet, “Ow.”
Beca doesn’t even try to hide her smirk.
*
As it turns out, their secret weapon is Chloe.
“I have the best nose,” Chloe explains with a bright smile, hand warm on Beca’s elbow. Then, as though to prove a point, she lifts her nose into the air and gives an experimental sniff.
Aubrey had figured, earlier that week at the top-secret werewolf/vampire meeting, that their best bet was to start at the Grill on the day of the full moon. Seeing as how the Grill was the hangout spot for the entire town, Beca had to admit that it wasn’t the worst idea she’d ever heard.
“This way,” Chloe says after a moment, tugging on Beca’s elbow. When Beca doesn’t budge, Chloe turns to look at her. “Come on,” she urges. “We only have a few hours till the full moon.”
Right.
She’s had a long life, but dying by way of wolf bite is not her idea of a fun death - not tonight (not ever) - so she grudgingly follows along.
*
To be honest, she doesn’t know how she got stuck with Chloe-duty.
Not that she minds; she actually kind of likes Chloe - welcome is a very strong word, but she more than tolerates Chloe’s company. But between Stacie and Aubrey, neither of whom she’s certain approves of this friendship, she doesn’t see how this is possible.
Either way, she’s not going to question it.
It’s kind of interesting, anyway, watching a wolf at work.
She’s lived for the better part of two centuries and hasn’t once befriended a werewolf, to say the least (but she’s run into a few here and there, and she’d rate those experiences anywhere between pesky and life-threatening) - and she’d had no idea until now that they could pick up vampire scent from quite a ways away.
“You knew,” Beca finds the words tumbling out of her mouth before she can think better of it. (She finds herself doing a lot of things she wouldn’t usually do when she’s around Chloe.) “You knew, didn’t you?”
Chloe pauses in her step. “What?”
“You knew that I was a vampire when you first met me,” Beca elaborates. (Another first for her, then.) “And again when you talked to me.”
Chloe smiles, but this time it’s a little uncertain.
Beca folds her arms across her chest, waiting for an answer.
“Not at first,” Chloe says slowly, as though trying to decide what words would be best. When Beca scoffs, she frowns. “Not at first,” she repeats. “I had just-you know, I had just hit you with a door. And it didn’t occur to me until you left that you-you know. Smell like Aubrey.”
“I smell like Aubrey?”
“No!” Chloe corrects. “I mean, yes. But also no.” She huffs. “I don’t know how to explain it.”
Beca furrows her brow. “Right. Okay.”
They don’t speak again after that, and Beca realizes that Chloe has picked up her pace when she starts having to take two steps for every one of Chloe’s. She’s never felt a silence so uncomfortable, but she’s not sure what she could even begin to say that would make it better.
Before she knows it, however, Chloe comes to a stop.
They must be halfway across town by now, Beca muses to herself as she looks at the dilapidated building in front of her.
“We’re here,” Chloe announces. She takes a deep breath and scrunches her nose, as though she’s just caught a whiff of something unpleasant. “We’re definitely here.”
*
When Beca returns to the boarding house later that evening, she finds Amy lounging on the sofa, some movie playing on the TV.
Beca flops down next to her with a sigh.
“Aren’t you supposed to be with your pack? Ripping out the hearts of vampires or whatever?”
“I don’t do the whole-” Amy brings her fingers up to her mouth, imitating fangs, “-grrr thing.” She presses pause on the remote, and the screen is a motion blur. “But you probably knew that, because if I did, you’d be dead already.” The full moon. Of course. (Beca’s old, not wise, okay?)
Beca shifts on the couch, and Amy sends her a look.
“But don’t go getting any ideas,” Amy says, clapping a hand to her neck. “I know my blood is really tempting. And delicious.” She narrows her eyes. “Yum.”
Beca rolls her eyes. “I’ll try and restrain myself.”
“Good. Because I’m armed,” she indicates the stake in her hand - which, like, really? It has all the subtlety and politeness of inviting yourself in to someone’s place with a nuclear missile. “And dangerous.”
There’s a slight pause that Beca doesn’t feel particularly compelled to fill.
“What are we watching?” Beca asks instead, settling back into the couch and staring at the blob on screen
Amy must think her warning has been heeded, because she simply turns back to the TV and presses play. “The movie that taught me everything I needed to know about vampire-werewolf relations.”
*
(Beca thinks Underworld is an overly dramatic version of vampire-werewolf relations, and also grossly inaccurate, but what does she know?
“Still,” Amy says, “It’s better than Twilight.”
Beca has to agree.)
*
They hold the next strategy meeting two days later.
It’s not going very well - in the sense that there are a lot of opinions in the room, and all of them are trying to make themselves be heard at the same time.
Beca starts to feel a headache coming on, and wonders if she could sneak out of the room unnoticed. It’s not like they really need her here, anyway. Jesse can always fill her in on the plan later.
Aubrey is being pretty adamant that the werewolves should stay out of the rest of it.
“You guys have held up your end of the deal,” Aubrey is trying to explain, though by the looks on the werewolves’ faces, not a lot of it is getting through. She doesn’t blame the wolves, for once; Aubrey talks a lot. “Now Jesse, Beca, and I can hold up our end of it: We’ll take the rest of them out.”
“And let you have all the fun?” Amy asks, incredulous.
“Amy, stay out of it,” Stacie sighs, pressing a hand to her temple and applying pressure. She takes a deep breath, then continues, “But she has a point: There are eleven of them left and with the three of you, there will be six of us in total-”
“Seven,” Amy interrupts.
“-you’re not participating in this, Amy,” Stacie repeats firmly.
“But I could distract them,” Amy suggests. “With my fresh blood and-”
“-and nothing,” Stacie frowns. “I said no.”
“It’ll be easier if you just let us deal with it,” Aubrey says with a tone that implies that this is neither the time nor the place to be squabbling about pack matters. “We’re stronger than you - they’re stronger than you.”
“Not on a full moon,” Chloe argues, speaking for the first time at the meeting.
Beca shakes her head, “These are really old vampires.”
“And we can’t wait a whole month more to get rid of the other eleven,” Jesse points out. “They’ll have gone through half the town by then.”
“You can start taking them out one by one, if you want,” Stacie concedes. “But you need us. Besides,” she adds, and now her gaze is totally focused on Beca. Not. Creepy. At. All. “One bite from a werewolf…”
“…can kill a vampire,” Aubrey finishes, and now she’s creepily staring at Beca too.
Like she didn’t already know that.
Seriously.
What the fuck is wrong with everybody?
*
Maybe it’s not so much that drama follows Beca around.
Maybe it’s more that Beca knows how to make her own life difficult.
(It’s an art form, cultivated through many useless degrees and pointless classes.)
Or maybe it’s just that she has Aubrey Posen to insert drama where drama is not needed.
“You like her,” Aubrey states matter-of-factly, setting her drink down on the coffee table.
Apparently it’s girl-talk time. Beca hates girl-talk time, but Aubrey subjects her to it every now and then. It’s useless trying to get away; she’s tried. Many times, and to no avail.
“I don’t like anyone,” Beca snorts. “And do we have to talk about this right now? Can’t we reschedule this, for like, never o’clock?”
Aubrey frowns at her, clearly disappointed. “You’re not fooling anyone with your whole ‘I don’t give a crap’ act, Beca. Admit it: you do give a crap, and you give a crap about Chloe Beale.”
“Are you serious right now?” Beca laughs, tapping her fingers idly against her drink. She doesn’t know why she’s humoring this line of conversation right now, but it’s got to stop; she has a limit, and Aubrey is quickly approaching it. So she throws back the last of the liquid in her glass and stands.
“Where do you think you’re going?”
“To bed,” Beca says, as though it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “Good night, mom.”
Beca’s already halfway up the stairs when she hears Aubrey call out: “You know I’m right, Mitchell.”
“Bite me, Posen,” she sing-songs back.
*
Unfortunately for Beca, Aubrey has an annoying tendency to be right about a lot of things.
This is one of them
(maybe, probably)
but-
She doesn’t have feelings for Chloe.
That’s ridiculous, right?
Right.
*
They go hunting for the first time in a week the next evening.
It’s more like a training session: for all their dislike for vampires, none of them have actually staked one, so that’s what tonight’s for.
Learning to stake vampires.
“Any ideas on how to actually wipe them out?” Amy whispers.
“I like the smell of burning flesh,” Lilly offers.
“For the last time, Lilly, you cannot use your blowtorch,” comes Stacie’s exasperated sigh. She’s starting to sound more and more like Aubrey every day, Beca notes with bemusement. It’s probably a side effect of spending so much time together.
“It smells like bacon,” Lilly adds.
“Guys,” Chloe interrupts before Beca - or any of them, she supposes - has the chance to fully process Lilly’s statement. “Vampires at nine o’clock.”
Beca follows Chloe’s gaze to see three people - two guys, one girl - standing in the middle of the town square. Though they’re laughing, she can see their eyes scanning for a loner, a straggler of a group.
“They’re looking for dinner,” Aubrey murmurs from next to her, and Beca nods.
“Okay, guys,” Jesse starts. “Remember what we talked about. You know where the heart is. The stake goes right here.” He taps on his chest. “We just have to get them to someplace more isolated-”
“Where’s Amy?” Chloe sounds worried, and Beca feels herself reach for her to - actually, she has no idea what she intends to do - so she awkwardly shoves her offending hand back into her pocket.
“She’s right…” Stacie starts, and then a look of horror crosses her face. “…over there.”
Beca doesn’t know how Amy got so far without any of them noticing, but she just barely catches blonde hair ducking in between two buildings, no doubt following after one of the three vampires.
Then everything happens at once:
Stacie is taking off after Amy-
The girl vampire starts moving to where Amy and the other guy disappeared-
The other guy vampire starts to turn, but then Jesse is there, snapping his neck as Aubrey reaches into his chest and squeezes-
Chloe drives a stake through the girl vampire but misses. Lilly doesn’t.
By the time Beca catches up with Stacie, the other vampire is gone.
“He got away,” Stacie says-which, no duh, Beca can see that. “But Amy’s okay.”
“He didn’t bite her, did he?”
“He wishes he got a taste of this,” Amy answers with a laugh, but even Beca can tell she’s not yet over the shock of what just happened.
They part ways shortly after that. Beca allows herself a moment to watch the wolves trailing after Stacie - Chloe with her arm wrapped supportively around Amy’s waist, and Lilly bringing up the back - before she turns to leave herself.
All in all, she has to admit it’s not that big of a disaster: Two more down, nine to go.
*
In case it’s not already obvious: Beca’s not a team player.
But ever since she’s returned to Mystic Falls, she’s been making a lot of allowances.
This campfire is one of them.
“Everyone needs some fun,” Aubrey announces when they start the evening off with some s’mores around the flames, hands on her hips and smile so wide, it’s like she believes she can inject fun into their veins. (She probably thinks it’s possible; Beca just thinks it’s creepy.)
“Fun is lying on the beach,” Amy groans. “With my hot boyfriends massaging sunscreen into my back. Not… this.”
Beca snorts.
“I have a whole list of activities lined up,” Aubrey is saying, but Beca’s already tuned out.
How much effort would it take, she wonders, for her to whittle a stake from a branch and stab herself with it?
*
Predictably, they end up doing none of the things Aubrey has planned.
Surprisingly, Aubrey doesn’t seem to mind much - but that may just be because they’re bonding as a team anyway, which was kind of the (not-so) hidden agenda behind the whole camping thing.
Beca’s known Aubrey for long enough. She doesn’t just do things for fun.
And now they’re sharing feelings, which as far as Beca is concerned, is much worse than anything Aubrey could have ever planned.
(She’s immensely glad for Amy, who had the foresight to bring at least five different sorts of alcohol to this soiree.)
“What about you, Beca?”
Beca’s gaze snaps to Stacie, who’s fixing her with a particularly pointed stare. “Huh?”
“What are you going to do,” Aubrey fills in for Stacie, sounding very disappointed in Beca. Like she actually expected her to pay attention during Girl Talk, “for the rest of the summer?”
“Once we’ve gotten rid of the nest,” Stacie adds.
“Oh,” Beca mumbles, staring down at the vodka in her cup.
“I thought you were going back to New York,” Jesse says, shifting in his fold-out chair.
“You’re leaving?” Chloe asks, and Beca’s suddenly very aware of the look in her eyes - it’s not anything Beca can put a name to, but it’s as though Beca has let her down by even thinking of leaving so soon, or maybe because she never bothered to mention it. Which, it shouldn’t even matter what Beca does after this, because it’s Beca’s life and she’ll live it the way she wants, thanks.
Stacie looks disapproving, Aubrey looks disappointed, and Chloe…
Beca tries not to think about the way her heart squeezes painfully at the look in Chloe’s eyes, and instead finishes the last of the alcohol in her cup.
“I don’t know.”
*
Beca is entering the Grill when she hears it: A muffled squeak that, for some reason, reminds her of Chloe.
A double-take allows her to pinpoint the source of the sound to the dumpsters in the alley, and she’s there in a flash.
There’s a vampire standing over Amy, and he’s so focused on her that Beca finds it easy enough to toss him against the far wall. She turns to deal with the one that has Chloe in a vice-grip, and finds his face half-obscured in red hair, fangs extended and grazing Chloe’s skin.
It’s weird, the anger that surges up inside of her at the sight, white hot and ever so present.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” she says, and she’s surprised by how strange her voice sounds. Steady, but lower. Threatening, almost, but she’s not sure that’s right.
Chloe’s eyes are impossibly wide, and it pulls at something inside of her.
The vampire stops to look at her, sneering. “And what are you going to do about it, shortsta-?”
He doesn’t get to finish his question, because Beca is suddenly there, one arm around his throat and her other fist closed around his heart. She pulls, and he stills, body going slack. Beca steps away from him and allows the body to fall to the ground, turning away from the sneer still on his face.
“Wow,” she vaguely registers Amy’s voice over the blood rushing to her ears. “That was like this one time in Tanzania, when I ripped out the guts of a crocodile. With garden shears.”
She doesn’t even realize she’s still holding his heart in her hand until she feels a tug on her other arm, and suddenly she’s looking into blue eyes.
“Beca?” Chloe asks, and her hands are now on Beca’s face.
Beca takes a step back, dropping the heart with a squelch, and Chloe’s hands fall back to her sides. “Um.” She looks around for the other vampire, but sees only Amy. “I-are you guys okay?” she manages.
“Yeah,” Chloe glances over at Amy, who nods.
“You two should get back inside,” Beca murmurs, trying to shake herself out of this daze. Her heart still feels like it’s in her throat, and she feels… antsy. Unsettled. “I should-the other one can’t have gotten that far.”
She leaves before either one of them can say anything else.
*
It turns out that her super-speed is useless when pitted against Chloe’s sense of smell, because Chloe finds her five minutes later.
“I tracked you here,” Chloe is saying, but Beca is only half-listening. She’s still feeling a bit out of sorts from before, so it takes her a little while to come up with something halfway coherent.
“Oh,” is what she says.
There’s a pause as they walk along the sidewalk in silence. Beca has no idea where she’s going - she guesses the vampire must have headed for the nest, but has no definite idea of which path it could have taken to get there. If she could intercept him before he got there, she might have a chance of taking him down.
“Can’t you… use your nose to track that vampire?”
“It doesn’t work like that,” Chloe explains patiently.
“Oh.”
There’s another pause.
“Then how did you-”
“I don’t know,” Chloe says, and it sounds almost like a confession. She stops in her tracks, and Beca finds herself stopping alongside her. “I mean, there’s-vampires have this smell, and it’s hard to tell the scents apart when you don’t know them. It kind of bleeds together, like this mass of vampire-y smell.”
“Like how I smell like Aubrey,” Beca says, recalling their previous conversation.
“Not exactly,” Chloe is shaking her head now. “You… You’re different. You smell different from everyone else.”
Beca doesn’t know if this is a good or bad thing, but she’s suddenly aware of how close Chloe is to her. She can feel the warmth of her body in the space between them, the warmth of her breath against her cheek, can hear the pounding of her heart - or maybe that’s Beca’s, she can’t really tell -
- and then there are warm lips on her own, cool fingers in her hair.
It takes a full minute for Beca to process what’s going on, and by the time her brain catches up, Chloe is pulling back to look at her.
“Uh,” Beca starts.
Chloe smiles, hesitant.
Beca’s not sure what to say, and so she settles on the first thing she can come up with: “Thank you.”
*
As it so happens, thank you is exactly the wrong thing to say to a werewolf.
But they don’t get to talk about that.
*
It’s not really avoidance.
They literally train together all the time now.
(As with most other planned events in Beca’s life, this one is entirely Aubrey’s idea, though it’s not a completely terrible one.
If she has to raid a vampire nest with werewolves as her backup, she’d rather they not be incompetent werewolves.
“We’ll train until the day of the next full moon,” Aubrey explains on the first day with Stacie by her side, looking ready to tear into anyone who might voice their disapproval - or maybe she saves that look just for Beca. Beca wouldn’t put it past her.)
That first week, Jesse teaches the werewolves how to use seemingly innocuous objects as a stake.
Aubrey teaches them how to aim properly for the heart, how to put enough pressure to drive the stake home.
Beca teaches them hand-to-hand combat.
Amy attempts to teach them the art of seduction, but that lasts a total of five seconds before Aubrey tells Amy to join Beca’s group.
“But I haven’t even gotten to the good part yet,” Amy protests, though she obediently shuffles over to where Beca is standing.
“We only have a few weeks, ladies,” Aubrey claps her hands together. Jesse coughs, but Aubrey ignores him. “Learn what you can.”
*
There’s five days till the next full moon, and Beca thinks the training’s going pretty well.
And she’s managed to stop thinking about Chloe. Not that she thought a lot about her to begin with, but when someone kisses you out of the blue, it’s kind of… not normal. But Chloe has barely looked at her the past two weeks, so maybe she’s mad about something.
Beca doesn’t know. (Wouldn’t know. Refuses to know.)
So she’s surprised when Chloe ambushes her one evening when they’re done with practice.
“Can we talk?”
“Um,” Beca starts, glancing at Aubrey - who can’t possibly know about any of this (can she?) but is giving her the evil eye regardless. “Sure, I guess.”
*
She follows Chloe to the park across the street.
“So,” she mutters, scuffing the toe of her sneaker against the dirt. “What did you want to talk about?”
Chloe levels her with a glare. “Are you really going to pretend we didn’t kiss?”
“We didn’t kiss,” Beca points out as though it actually matters, perhaps a bit more petulantly than she’d like. “You kissed me.”
“Right, Beca, I kissed you.”
“What do you want me to say, Chloe?”
Chloe takes a step forward, her face now inches from Beca’s, and Beca can feel her heart speed up, pounding traitorously against her ribcage - and really, what is the point of being dead when her heart still beats?
“Forget it,” Chloe says, and the disappointment in her tone is palpable. “Just… never mind.”
*
I saved you, is what Beca wants to say. I saved you, and you kissed me, and aren’t we even?
*
Beca doesn’t see Chloe in the days leading up to the full moon.
(She supposes that’s a blessing in disguise, but it doesn’t feel like one.)
“Your redheaded lady lover,” Amy offers once, after catching Beca throw yet another glance towards the closed door for the umpteenth time, “is training with Aubrey and Stacie.”
Beca feels her cheeks heat up, but pretends not to have heard Amy as she turns back to the group and continues with the lesson.
One day to go.
*
They’re standing outside the old house with five hours until the full moon.
Beca can feel the energy in the air; she can see the tense set to Stacie’s shoulders, the frown in Chloe’s lips, the resolve in Aubrey’s eyes. She sees Amy fiddling with the grip on her bat, notices the (actually kind of scary) grin Lilly is wearing on her face, feels the calm emanating from Jesse.
Aubrey has a hand on the wrought iron fence, and there’s a brief moment when Aubrey turns back to regard the other six of them where Beca thinks she’s going to give them a second pep talk (the first one was given at the boarding house before they had all set off) but then she pushes, and the gate swings open with a loud creak.
Well.
If that didn’t give them away-
“AIEEEEEEEEEEE!”
-Amy’s war cry certainly would.
*
At first, nothing happens.
It’s eerily silent, so much so that she swears she can hear the crickets chirping.
(If she didn’t know any better, she’d guess that the vampires skipped town - but that seems about as likely to happen as Aubrey deciding not to make her life difficult, so in essence, not very likely at all.)
But then Lilly steps on a loose floorboard that seems to make the entire house groan, and at that very same moment, the front door slams shut.
And then all hell breaks loose.
*
The first three vampires are easy enough.
Aubrey holds a vampire back as Chloe stabs her in the chest, Jesse delivers a crushing blow to another’s head before driving a stake through his heart, while Stacie and Amy literally rip off the head of a third vampire.
But then five more show up at the same time, and before Beca knows it, one of them is charging at her, and wait a minute-
“Beca?”
Beca doesn’t bother to reply and lands a punch on his right side, sending him reeling back.
“Beca Mitchell,” the vampire says again, his laughter dissolving into a cough as he clutches his side. “I didn’t think I’d see you again.”
“Lucky you, James,” Beca grits out as she ducks a punch, only to have James catch her in the jaw with his other fist.
“I didn’t know you had friends, Beca,” James smiles as he steps just out of reach. "And that redhead is certainly-"
“-no one you should concern yourself with,” interrupts a voice - Stacie - from behind James, and she knocks him over the head with a bat. As he slumps to the floor, Stacie adds, “And we’re hardly her friends.”
“Gee,” Beca says sardonically, leaning over and driving the stake into his heart. “You sure know how to make a girl feel warm and fuzzy inside.”
“And you sure know how to leave a girl hanging,” comes the response, and-
“Really?” Beca sighs, frustrated. “Is there anyone in this god-forsaken town who doesn’t know?”
*
Everything falls into place quickly after that; it’s almost like a domino reaction.
Jesse punches anyone and everyone who gets within a two-foot radius. (Amy, Chloe, and Lilly then finish the job.) Aubrey and Stacie appear to have formed a pretty damned formidable team, with Stacie knocking the vampires out and Aubrey alternately ripping their hearts out or staking them in the chest.
When it appears one of the nest vampires has the upper hand, it’s not long before someone else comes to the rescue.
They’re pretty fucking awesome, is what they are.
*
Beca is pulling a vampire off of Chloe when it happens:
She hears the rush of air before she can really register what’s going on, and then there’s a burst of heat an inch from her ear, and she can smell the flames in the air.
When she turns around, it’s to see Lilly - of course it’s Lilly - with a large grin plastered on her face, a blowtorch in her hand as she aims it at the remaining vampires in the room.
(Questions that jump to the forefront of her mind include where the fuck did she pull that out of? and is that connected to a power supply? but nobody else seems terribly concerned, and Beca has long stopped trying to understand anything that Lilly does.
Sometimes, it’s best to just accept things and move on.)
She grips the vampire’s shirt a little more firmly, and tosses him into the stream of fire.
*
In the end, they barely escape with their lives.
This shouldn’t be news to anyone, but it turns out Lilly with a blowtorch is dangerous times infinity. After setting the last vampire on fire (courtesy of Aubrey and Stacie, who shoved it in front of the blowtorch and Lilly’s manic wrath), Lilly decided that she needed more mileage on her blowtorch - and set fire to half of the house before anyone could convince her otherwise.
“Well,” Beca says to Aubrey as she stares at the burning building in front of them. “You’d better call 911.”
*
The days that follow are monotonous.
She’s stuck in a cycle of waking and sleeping, punctuated with the occasional meal and alcoholic beverage.
It’s… fine. It’s almost peaceful.
And it’s exactly the sort of thing she’s tried (and failed) to achieve for months now, but now that she actually has it… well. It doesn’t feel like it used to, back in the day, but she’ll get used to it.
The thing about being old?
She knows it’s only a matter of time.
She gets used to everything, eventually.
*
Aubrey gives her six days of this.
On day seven, she wakes Beca up by pulling the covers off of her bed.
Beca shrinks into a ball the instant the cool air hits her exposed feet and arms, shying away from the morning light and muttering half-curses under her breath.
“You’re going to have to talk about it sometime,” Aubrey says, her voice far too loud for - Beca squints at the clock and frowns - eight in the morning. Seriously?
“Go away, Aubrey,” Beca mumbles, burying her face in her pillow.
“You can sleep when you’re dead,” Aubrey intones, pulling on the pillow and disrupting Beca’s rest. When it’s clear that Beca has no intention of budging, Aubrey sighs and settles onto the bed. “She’s a werewolf, Beca.” Her voice is stern, and Beca can tell that Aubrey’s only just getting started - and that Beca will have to listen to this whether she wants to or not. “What were you thinking?”
“I wasn’t,” Beca groans, sitting up and giving up all pretense of sleep. “I didn’t think anything-”
“-clearly-”
“-okay, did you come here just to insult me?”
Aubrey sighs, pressing down on the bridge of her nose. “You kissed Chloe.”
It sounds more like an accusation than a statement of fact, and Beca doesn’t even know where to begin with that. “Firstly,” she straightens, already on the defensive. “She kissed me, and secondly, there has been none of that since…”
She trails off, and she only realizes it when Aubrey speaks again a few moments later, her voice softer this time: “She’s a werewolf, and you’re a vampire.”
“You’ve said that,” Beca retorts, irritated. “What’s your point?”
“Figure it out, Beca.”
*
Amy visits later that day.
Beca doesn’t see her, but she can hear her laughter from her room.
*
She finds a voicemail from day three on her phone, when she finally bothers to look at it.
She presses the appropriate buttons on the number pad, and Chloe’s voice fills her ear.
“Beca, hi! I… haven’t seen you or Aubrey the past few days, so I guess you left town. Which is great, or not really great, but I know you’ve wanted to leave since you got here, so I hope you got to do it. … I… I just wanted to apologize, for before. It’s okay if you don’t feel the same way and… I hope we can still be friends. Okay, that’s it, I guess; have a great summer!”
*
Fine, she’ll admit it: She misses those damned werewolves.
Amy and her stupid jokes.
Lilly and her love for everything morbid.
Even Stacie, with her penchant for taking after Aubrey.
But most of all, she misses Chloe, but she doesn’t know if she simply misses her in the way friends miss other friends when they don’t see each other for a little while, or if she misses her in the way that means something a little more - that means she may, perhaps, want to kiss her again.
But that’s crazy-talk, right? Why would she want to kiss-
Chloe just gets under her skin, crosses her wires, messes with her head.
“It’s not healthy,” Beca states morosely.
“You’re an idiot,” Aubrey says, and then leaves the room.
Well. That was helpful.
She sinks back into her chair, groaning.
A few moments pass, and then: “It sounds a lot like-”
Beca fixes Jesse with a look so sharp, it could probably kill.
“I was just going to say you have it bad for her,” Jesse amends smoothly, sipping his blood box.
Beca doesn’t refute this, and this is how she knows she’s fucked.
*
She finally leaves the house on day ten.
The sun is shining and the birds are chirping and there’s probably a rainbow somewhere that Beca just can’t see because of the trees - it’s a fucking Disney movie, basically - when she bumps into Chloe by the lake.
It’s completely unexpected, and judging by the look on Chloe’s face, she’s not the only one who’s surprised.
“Oh,” Chloe says mid-jog, coming to a stop. “I thought you went back to New York.”
“Nah,” Beca replies with a shrug. “It’s not that easy to get rid of me.”
Chloe smiles, and Beca feels her heart clench.
“Besides,” Beca continues, shoving her hands into her pockets and fixing her eyes on a spot right by Chloe’s feet. Soil is really interesting, okay? “I thought I might stay a while.”
“Really?” Chloe sounds so pleased that Beca can’t help the small smile that worms its way onto her face.
“Yeah,” she says, lifting her gaze from the ground to meet Chloe’s. “Really.”
*
(This time, she’s the one who leans forward first; she’s the one who presses her lips to Chloe’s, who tangles her hand in Chloe’s hair. And when she pulls away, she sees her own smile mirrored in the curve of Chloe’s lips.
Chloe’s mock serious, “Thank you” is quickly replaced with peals of laughter when Beca tackles her to the ground and tickles her.
At one point, Beca finds herself staring down into Chloe’s eyes - but Chloe does something with her hips, and oh, okay, Beca now feels the earth beneath her, Chloe warm on top of her, and it’s something when their lips meet again, and-
Yeah, she’s more than okay with this.
*
Chloe’s lips are swollen when they break for air.)
*
“If she bites you and you die a painful death,” Aubrey says, weeks later when all of them are stretched out by the lakeside, “don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
Chloe laughs, and it’s the richest sound Beca’s ever heard.
*