Title: Love and Baseball (Baseball and Love)
Pairing: Tom (shower guy)/Chloe FWB brotp type thing, Beca/Chloe, Tom/it's a surprise, but you can probably guess at least a quarter ways into the story.
Rating: T
Summary: Tom doesn't sing. Chloe doesn't like baseball. It's doomed from the beginning.
A/N: What the heck did I just write? I don't even know—Somebody help me?
I.
They meet at a frat house party freshman year.
They're both drunk and horny.
Tom doesn't sing.
Chloe doesn't like baseball.
It's doomed from the beginning.
They're not dating or anything so it's ok.
II.
Chloe likes a guy. (He's a senior and Barden's star wide receiver. He has a girlfriend.)
Tom is trying really hard not to like a girl. (He's not over the double play that was the end of high school when his girlfriend cheated on him with his best friend and he called them both out.)
He wants to tell Chloe that it's stupid to give her heart to someone who doesn't deserve it.
He doesn't have to; Chloe shrugs and tells him she'll get over it and then she kisses him under Phi Gamma Delta's beer can arch.
Chloe has a killer body and Tom doesn't mind that she calls a homerun a touchdown or that she sings like all the time.
They start hanging out outside of random hookups at random parties.
Chloe likes to call them Friends with Benefits.
The sex is good so whatever.
III.
Tom likes a girl.
Chloe still likes the same guy.
Tom's girl is a pitchout so he doesn't even try to reach for her.
Chloe's guy still has a girlfriend.
It's ok.
Except when it's not because the tool sleeps with Chloe anyway and then promptly kicks her out, and Chloe ends up at his dorm room soaking tears into his Marlins jersey.
It's not the first time he's had a friend who's a girl.
It is the first time he's had a friend who's a girl like Chloe.
Because Tom doesn't sing.
And Chloe doesn't like baseball.
And he really doesn't know what to do but when Chloe's hand reaches to unfasten his belt, he know this isn't it (it's really hard to get it up when a chick is crying her eyes out anyway).
He wraps her up in his MLB fleece blanket, plays Snow Patrol on his cell phone and holds her until she stops crying.
She calls him her best friend.
Best friends with benefits then. Whatever.
IV.
Chloe has another best friend named Aubrey.
She's in Chloe's singing group (they were the only two freshmen to make the Barden Bellas which Tom gets because he was the only freshman to make the Barden baseball team) and apparently, she's not a "mega aca-bitch" like the rest of the girls Chloe always complains about (Tom doesn't get why she stays; Barden has other singing groups—ones with people who won't call her fat every time she eats a burger—but Chloe, for some reason, likes the Bellas.)
He's never met Aubrey but he's seen her and Chloe together around campus.
She always looks so tense with her shoulders drawn back so tightly that her shoulder blades poke through her Autumn Cashmere sweaters (yeah, he's been hanging with Chloe a bit too much).
Tom honestly really doesn't get it.
It's ok though, Chloe tells him, because Aubrey wouldn't get their friendship either.
Whatever. (He let Chloe give him a manicure once and he's never doing that again so he's happy that Chloe's got someone else to torture.)
V.
By sophomore year, Chloe likes a girl.
Tom's not all that surprised. (They had that threesome once at that party with that hot Delta Zeta girl and Tom was pretty much treated like a closer once Chloe's arms and mouth got tired.)
Tom likes a girl too. A new one who wears a vintage Hammerin' Hank Braves jersey to the gym and spends an extra half hour on the treadmill because she thinks it's fun and not because someone thinks she's fat.
Chloe's girl is a junior who has played the lead in every Barden Theatre Department musical since her freshman year.
Tom thinks this is it for them.
(Not their friendship because he's grown used to Chloe cheering for him at his games and belting out top 40 hits from the passenger side of his car, but he thinks it's it for their (BF4L) FWB thing).
It's not.
Chloe's girl is not gay like at all and Tom's girl is.
Chloe falls against his inflatable baseball mitt chair, shoulders shaking with giggles that turn into sobs. Tom makes inappropriate jokes about how his dick is better than a strap-on anyways. Chloe laughs and punches him in his chest, telling him that she has a glittery blue dildo double the size of his dick (really, what does she even need him for?)
They stay up all night, squished into his mitt chair, watching a marathon of movies with hot women. It's weird how Chloe changes her mind on whether she thinks Angelina Jolie is hotter than Megan Fox depending on the movie, but Chloe has tits and likes tits and Tom likes tits and really likes Chloe's tits.
It works.
(Chloe's been spending a lot of time with Aubrey lately but when Chloe declares that she'd do Angelina doggy because she has a better ass and Megan missionary because she has the better tits, Tom feels like he finally has a one up on Aubrey with something. Also, he totally agrees.)
VI.
Threesomes start happening more often.
It should be weird but it's not really.
They like having sex with each other (there's none of that awkward getting to know each other fumbling between strangers).
They also like having sex with other girls (they kinda have the same type).
Doing it at the same time only makes sense.
VII.
Over the summer between sophomore and junior year, he loses Chloe for a couple of month to this guy who dances.
He goes home for the summer anyway and makes the mistake of drunkenly falling into the clutches of his ex-girlfriend.
He texts Chloe about it and she calls him immediately.
She doesn't chastise him or pity him or yell at him (and she doesn't congratulate him either like most of his baseball buddies would); instead, she sings Maneater until he hangs up on her, annoyed.
The next time he sees his ex, the song rings in his head like a warning. He doesn't sleep with her again and when he tells Chloe, she laughs.
Chloe's kinda weird like that.
Also, she's the best friend he's ever had.
VIII.
The semester starts on a low.
Prick dance dude cheats on Chloe with some chick in his ballroom class and Chloe slides between his MLB ALL-Star Game bed sheets and declares that relationships suck.
Tom agrees and they decide to go to a club instead of mope around his room.
They dance. Or Chloe dances and he kinda just lets her do whatever she wants to him.
There's a blonde girl who's attracted to the sway of Chloe's hips like anyone who even remotely thinks girls are hot should be.
She's totally the type that he and Chloe would usually go for but Chloe's not really in the mood and Tom's kinda not either.
They end up at the bar with an assortment of shots and two years of drinking games they've acquired during their college careers between them.
Chloe raises a shot glass brimming with spiced rum and says "never have I ever given my heart to someone I knew would break it."
Tom downs a shot with her and lines up a couple shots of vodka next.
"Truth or dare?" He asks, switching the game effortlessly, like they've been doing since they sat at the bar.
"Dare," Chloe says around her girly drink chaser.
He slings an arm around her shoulders, tugging her into a side hug.
"I dare you to stop doing this to yourself, Chlo."
It's a drunken pact but a genuine one.
They're both done giving their hearts to people who won't keep them.
IX.
The rest of junior year is a blur.
He has baseball practice every day and she has Bellas rehearsals like every second!
They fit tension releasing quickies into their busy schedules but neither of them really have the time to break their pact.
The Bellas make it to the finals of mouth made music and his team makes it to the Playoffs.
Aubrey blows chunks over the Bellas' chance of winning (Tom laughs until Chloe glares at him; it's funny but he knows guys who can pitch perfect games up until they really need to, so he gets it).
His team loses in the ninth (see thing about guys who can pitch perfect games up until the Playoffs).
The resulting sex between them is supposed to be self-pitying or something but they both just end up cracking up at their bad fortune.
X.
Senior year kicks into gear with Chloe in full on panic mode.
(Bologna Barb apparently won't even join the Bellas so maybe there is reason to panic but he doesn't say it aloud because he knows Chloe will come up with something. Eventually.)
For now, he drags her to the shower to stop her from pacing into all of his furniture and she at least starts to relax when he massages her shoulders.
Someone starts singing and Chloe stops breathing.
Music is Chloe's thing. She would fall off the side of a cliff following a pretty voice so Tom's not at all surprised when she leaves the warmth of their shower to follow the strains of song to its source.
He finishes his own shower, listening to and laughing at the bits of the exchange he hears from the stall Chloe's invaded.
It doesn't sound like the stranger is going to shank her for the invasion or anything so he doesn't intervene; at least not until Chloe's gotten the girl to sing with her and the water's gotten cold and standing alone in a shower stall is becoming boring and awkward.
The girl, he finds, is not at all what he expects.
She's not a conventional kind of hot but she is hot.
Chloe's stressing hardcore and they haven't picked up a chick in a while; it seems like the perfect opportunity.
He tells the girl that her voice is good because it is (it's is one of the things he's picked up from Chloe—he once even told a dude on his baseball team that he should audition for American Idol and that was totally awkward).
He expects Chloe to turn up the charm to try to seal the deal but Chloe doesn't even try.
She's tenser when she leaves the shower than she was when she went in.
It's weird.
"She was hot," he says when they get back to his dorm.
Chloe tenses to astronomical Aubrey type levels at his words.
"Nope." She doesn't even look at him when she says it.
He doesn't like that kind of avoidance.
That's the avoidance of a girl who is about to break a very important pact.
"Chloe—"
"I'm trying to recruit her for the Bellas, Tom. Bellas girls are off limits."
"That's all that was?"
She nods.
He puts Salt, Jonah Hex, Transformers and Changeling into his Netflix queue just in case.
XI.
Chloe texts him to come to the "aca-initiation" party. It's weird because Chloe's college partying has largely been split between two best friends: Aubrey for the singing stuff and him for anything else.
She's already drunk by the time he gets there, dancing wildly in the middle of a crowd of equally drunk, musical people.
She spots him and he knows immediately why he's been summoned. Chloe can't drunkenly make out with Aubrey in row 37B of the old Barden football stadium. (Actually, she probably could, but he doubts Aubrey and Chloe have the same kind of arrangement he and Chloe do.)
There's something different about the way Chloe kisses him. It's not sloppy drunk or anything but it is desperate. She's clinging to him, clutching his shirt in a way she only does when she's upset.
He realizes why a couple drinks later when he follows a forlorn gaze over his shoulder and finds the girl from the shower laughing as this guy sitting next to her tries to balance drunkenly on top of one of the bleacher seats.
"Jesus, Chlo," He groans. "You just met her."
"I—I don't—it's not," she rests her forehead on his chest, sighing deeply. "Why am I so hopeless, Tom?"
"You're not."
She's the opposite of hopeless; she's too hopeful, too willing to just throw her heart at people who never realize they have it.
He rubs her back and sways with her drunkenness.
"He's a Treble, you know?" she says. "And Aubrey's gonna be so pissed but girls like Beca don't care. I bet him and her will sound great together. Like Sonny and Cher. He'll get the girl and I'll get—"
"To come home with me and watch awful movies all night?" He nudges her hopefully and at least gets a bleary smile.
He thinks for a moment that maybe they should actually date.
Except he doesn't sing.
And Chloe doesn't like baseball.
And when he glances behind him, he catches the chick from the shower looking at them, and the way her eyes harden when he catches her eye is anything but pleasant.
XII.
He moves from Cobra back to Child's Pose, relaxing when his muscles finally release from their taut stretch.
He doesn't know why he agreed to do this with her (this has Aubrey activity written all over it but most Aubrey activities have turned into talk about Beca activities and since Aubrey apparently doesn't even want to hear the girl's name, those activities have become Tom activities).
"I think she likes you." He broaches because Chloe hasn't said her name in two whole minutes and it's bound to happen soon.
Chloe shakes her head, moving into the next position easily.
"She doesn't."
"She glared at me like I stole her base right as the ball was in fingertips' reach."
"Am I the ball or am I the base?"
Bad analogy, but he doesn't admit it.
"Does it matter?" he asks, instead.
Chloe scrunches her nose at him before apparently deciding that it doesn't matter all that much.
"Maybe she just doesn't like your face?"
"Maybe she just doesn't like that my face has been close to your face."
"Whatever." She says but she sighs so it sounds like the absolute opposite of whatever. "I mean, what are the chances of her even swinging that way anyway?"
"Swinging that way? Who knows? Swinging your way? Depends on if you throw the ball her way or not."
Chloe still calls a homerun a touchdown and most of his baseball analogies go right over her head but he has a feeling she gets this one.
XIII.
Chloe stops belting out Kelly Clarkson in his car and instead of laughing when he tries to croon like an emo rock star, she just frowns.
He keeps asking her what's wrong and it takes her a week before she breaks down, sniffling into his brand new Marlins jersey about how much her throat hurts.
He takes her to a doctor and holds her hand when the doctor makes his diagnosis.
He doesn't expect to feel so helpless but he can slowly see the music slipping out of her. She's not buzzing with energy after Bellas rehearsals and she doesn't fiddle with his car radio until she finds a song he absolutely hates.
He's getting busier and busier with baseball but he asks her to teach him how to play guitar to see if he can rekindle a spark. She laughs when he fucks up Twinkle Twinkle Little Star and massages his neck when he just wants to smash the acoustic piece of shit like a grade A rockstar.
He thinks it's helping her a little.
XIV.
Ultimately though, it isn't him that brings her love of music back.
She has Regional's.
He has a game.
He expects her to turn up at his dorm room after Regional's but she doesn't.
He expects her to be bummed about not having her solo but she isn't.
She text messages updates about other performances (sock puppet singing? Really?) and she texts that they make it through to Semis (Aubrey didn't puke. Cool!) and she keeps on sending random messages up until around midnight when she texts that she's planning on "cheering up a friend."
The next morning, when he comes back from the gym, she's already in his room jamming out to something she's playing on his Macbook. It's not her usual pop ballad but she's smiling and singing and he's happy that she's relatively back to normal.
When she goes to get them coffee, he sneaks a peek at the jump drive containing her sudden burst of musical clarity and finds "Beca M." etched into the middle.
He's not really surprised.
XV.
The Bellas don't advance to the Finals.
Tom doesn't know exactly what happened because Chloe won't tell him but not talking about it also equates to not talking about Beca (which is weird; he almost misses hearing about what "really cute" thing Beca did today).
She decides to do surgery on her throat because she has "nothing left to sing for." He thinks she's being overdramatic because she always has something to sing for (and he did some research and the chances of her completely losing her signing ability is really rare) but he promises to drive down to Miami with her during Spring Break so she can get the surgery done by some big shot doctor friend of her dad's.
The day before the surgery, he drags her to the Marlins stadium and then she drags him to the beach.
They pick up a chick for what feels like the first time in forever and Tom doesn't mention how much the girl looks like She Who Chloe Refuse to Mention. He also doesn't mention how not into it Chloe is or how it's the first time him and Chloe have been even remotely intimate since her Beca crush kicked into high gear.
He figures it isn't really a good time to mention how the way she kisses him feels like the last time either.
Now also probably isn't the best time to mention how much she seems changed by this girl she suddenly seems to be on the rocks with.
XVI.
The surgery goes well.
The doctor suggests there may only be a small amount of permanent damage to her upper register.
Chloe takes it pretty hard (Tom thinks those are notes people shouldn't be hitting like ever anyway but he doesn't say it aloud).
He blasts catchy pops song until the nurse complains and then he plays her all the songs he's learned on guitar.
On day three of Mopey Chloe, he comes back with her favorite iced latte and she's brandishing her cell phone in his face, signaling for him to read the displayed text message.
Apparently, the Bellas are back in the Finals and Chloe spends the next two hours turning the display on and off on her phone, reading over a text message she hasn't worked up the guts to send.
It's addressed to Beca.
Tom swipes her phone while the nurse is administering her medication and hits the send without apology.
She stares at him in disbelief for a second.
Then she glares at him.
For a moment, he thinks she's actually really pissed. Then she smiles and lets out a squeal he's pretty sure she shouldn't be making after her surgery.
XVII.
He goes to this singing Finals thing as an NCAA Division I World Series champion. Chloe was in the dugout for his win (she sweet-talked his coach) and he plans to be in one of the wings by the time she wins her first singing thingy.
Until then, he sits in row 10 (Chloe assures him there will be no Puke-Gate, but he's wearing one of his favorite jersey so…)
He can actually see what Chloe likes so much about Beca when the Bellas take the stage. She's taken the Bellas to a new place; they look better, they sound better. It's a fresher, more relaxed atmosphere—the kind of atmosphere Chloe thrives in.
And of course, they win.
Tom gets backstage with a lie about his girlfriend being one of the winning Bellas.
He's expecting Chloe to run into his arms in excitement.
He does not expect her to run into his arms crying. (His Marlins jerseys are becoming more of a curse than a blessing.)
He takes her outside, away from the cheering and singing, and gets hiccupped snippets of what has her so suddenly upset.
Beca. Kissing. Jesse.
He gets it.
He gets it and he holds her close.
"Chlo?"
The sudden interruption takes them both by surprise.
The blonde firecracker barreling towards them apparently only surprises him.
"What did you do?" Aubrey shrieks at him.
"Me?"
Chloe wipes desperately at her eyes, sobbing against a fresh wave of tears.
"It's not him, Bree."
The way Aubrey softens is probably even more surprising than the way she was coming at him. (It goes against everything he's ever heard or thought about Aubrey.)
"Beca then?" she asks. There's a soft understanding to her tone that apparently even takes Chloe by surprise because she gasps.
And then he realizes why.
Because he was the 'talk about Beca' best friend.
He was the one who sat through the rants and blurbs and weeks when she only played Beca mixes.
That was all him but Aubrey isn't just pulling a checked swing here. She knows and she accepts it and Tom gets it (this is how their friendship works). It should probably be one of those sweet girly moments or something (Chloe and Aubrey uniting over something that forced him to go to Advanced Yoga for weeks) but Chloe's still sobbing against his chest and he's taken right back to his dorm room that night with his Burnett Marlins jersey and Chloe crying hopelessly against his chest.
He still has no idea what to do but he holds her as close as he can and Aubrey hugs her from behind, running her fingers through her hair and singing softly about an everlasting flame or something.
Between them, she eventually stops crying.
"You have a lovely voice," he tells Aubrey because it's true and these Chloe things just kinda pour out of him sometimes (he can't help it).
Aubrey smile at him (he so didn't know she was even capable of smiling) and peels herself off of Chloe's back.
"Alright, let's go," she says, straightening her clothes. (There goes the drill-sergeant he's always pictured her to be.)
"Where are we going?" Chloe asks. He hasn't heard her sound this small since she first found out about her throat thing but Aubrey forges forward anyway.
"First to fix your make-up," she assesses, wiping at Chloe's strayed tears. (He guesses there is a good reason Aubrey stormed outside to almost maim him. He wouldn't have thought the make-up thing was even a priority. Girls.) "And then we're going to go get your girl."
"Bree—"
"Because she's so into you that it is actually kind of nauseating. Do you really think we're just gonna leave her in the hands of a Treble?"
"But I've practically thrown myself at her and she chose him."
"Because she's emotionally stunted, but it's like my dad always says…" she trails off like she's not quite sure where she was going with that thought. "You know what? It doesn't matter what he always says. When life throws you a curveball like Beca, you keep swinging until you hit it."
That's—that's actually a better baseball analogy than Tom could have come up with himself.
Chloe furrows her eyebrows anyway.
"So, Beca's the ball then?"
He nudges her with his shoulder.
"It doesn't matter, Chlo."
It really doesn't matter; he's totally down with helping Chloe get the girl.
XVIII.
Chloe texts him to come to the "aca-end of the year" party.
By the time he gets there, Chloe's already making out with Beca in row 25A of the old Barden football stadium.
He feels a pang of something watching Chloe like this.
It's not the usual Chloe's making out a chick, he's probably gonna get laid pang—not with this chick, or this Chloe (because she's changed in a way he can't quite explain except that she's different—a good different).
It's more of a he's really proud of her because she's hit a homerun with this one—knocked it right out of the park, given her heart to someone who was kinda slow on realizing that she had it but cherished it anyway—pang.
"It's kinda disgusting isn't it?"
He accepts the drink that's handed to him, chuckling at the assessment.
"A little bit," He admits because it is kinda disgusting in the way that neither him nor Aubrey really find it disgusting at all.
Because Chloe is happy.
And the thing is, him and Chloe? They were doomed from the start.
Because Tom doesn't sing.
But Beca does.
And Chloe doesn't understand baseball.
… Aubrey's a Yankees fan (but that's a particular indiscretion he can get past).
And when Aubrey leans her head on his shoulder (she's not particularly tense or cold), it's actually kinda nice having a girl who isn't crying leaning on him.
So, him and Chloe?
Maybe they weren't all that doomed after all.
-end-