A/N: Written for aliciameade as part of the Merry Pitchmas Gift Exchange on tumblr. She wanted to see "How about Competitive!Bechloe where they're locked in a battle of…Monopoly or Mario Kart or darts at a bar or Jenga or poker or something?"
Christmas Eve is usually a rather dull occasion at the Bella house, largely because the house's regular occupants always all go their own ways for the holidays. Back home to celebrate with families and friends, distant relatives whom you only see once a year and have to don ugly sweaters to greet because they made it for you when you were fourteen and if you don't wear it then "you'll hurt great-aunt Edna's feelings".
That fact that they're caught in the middle of a freak winter snowstorm that has roads and airports shut down all over the state is not any great loss on Beca's part. She could stand to miss a family Christmas or five, and with the exception of two or three, the rest of the Bellas seem to feel the same way.
"Am I going to miss spiking the eggnog to get my grandma wasted enough so that I can beat her at poker? Yes," Stacie had announced once news of the weather and closures had reached them. "But it's going to be so awesome getting to spend Christmas with my sisters." Those same sisters had stared at her, varying expressions of shock clouding their faces, until Stacie had rolled her eyes and waved a hand dismissively at them. "Oh, the spiking is tradition, she loves it."
"Okay," Beca had stood from her spot on the couch beside Chloe then, brushing her hands over her pants and hiking her eyebrows in Stacie's direction, "so no playing poker with Stacie."
"Please, I don't need to spike anything to get you guys drunk. Or to beat you at poker." Beca had looked like she'd wanted to argue at first, but quickly deflated upon realising that she couldn't actually play the aforementioned game, and so what Stacie was saying was probably fairly accurate.
"Yeah, well," she'd sniffed, stood a little straighter, then lifted one shoulder in a shrug, "I bet I'd kick your butt at Jenga." Stacie rolls her eyes with a smile and it she's about to brush off the comment with the reminder that "Jenga's not a real game" when someone else speaks up.
"I'll take that bet." Beca turns in the direction of the voice, although not to confirm the speaker – she already knows it's Chloe – and she finds the redhead regarding her with an expression that seems almost challenging. "I'm the undisputed Jenga Champion of my family. When it comes to Jenga, no one can even graze my butt." Her eyes are twinkling, lips curved around a cocky grin, and Beca feels the back of her neck warm at the way Chloe looks her over. A slow up-and-down that finishes with their gazes locked.
Afterwards, she'll wonder whether things would have turned out differently had she just omitted the "I bet" from her statement. Of course, by that time, it's far too late.
As it turns out, Chloe is pretty serious about Jenga and her Jenga game, Beca is forced to at least silently admit, is fairly strong. Before starting, they agree to play best out of three, and set everything up on the kitchen table before sitting on opposite sides. The rest of the girls hang close by, intrigued by this impromptu battle of their captains and curious to see who will, as Stacie so slyly put it, come out on top.
"I didn't have you pegged as this kind of girl, Becs," Chloe comments, as Beca's scrutinizing the tower of wooden blocks, trying to decide which one to pick next.
"No?" She pokes the end of one with her finger, pushing it slowly until it starts to emerge from the other side. "What kind of girl is that?"
"The kind that enjoys games often reserved for family fun nights." Beca snorts at that, reaching around to gently pull her chosen piece free and carefully setting it on the topmost level with a triumphant smirk. She sweeps her tongue across the front of her teeth and turns the smirk on Chloe.
"There's still a lot you don't know about me, Beale." Beca teases, her words a low rumble, and Chloe's response is one slow bat of her eyelashes. Around them, the Bellas shift under the sudden change in atmosphere. Like an electrical charge has been injected into the air around them.
"Is that so?" Chloe asks it like she's just been told it's going to rain later, in a tone that betrays nothing but a mild interest, but Beca knows. Beca can see the glint in her eyes; sunlight catching the metal of a gauntlet that's been tossed down into the dirt. "Well, maybe you want to make this interesting then." It's a suggestion that's said innocently enough, as Chloe liberates a block and places it carefully on the top of their little wooden tower, but Beca's eyebrows immediately rise.
"I am not playing strip Jenga with you," she insists, throwing Chloe a good-natured glare to emphasize her point, before deciding on the next piece to remove.
"Please," Chloe snorts, but Beca's too busy concentrating to lift her gaze, the tip of her tongue pressed against the inside of her cheek as she slowly pushes at her chosen piece. "If I wanted to see you naked," Beca's pinky finger twitches, "again," one of the Bellas gasps, "I wouldn't have to resort to games in order to get your clothes off." Beca's whole body jerks as she snaps her head up to look up at Chloe, slack-jawed and shocked, and the moved sends her hand a little forward and a little to the side, taking everything down.
The wooden blocks topple, landing atop the kitchen table with a cacophony of sound that makes Beca wince and Chloe smile even wider. It's echoed by a litany of giggles from the girls and where Beca would usually throw them a dirty look, now her gaze remains fixed on Chloe. The redhead lifts her arm to press her elbow against the tabletop and drops her chin into her palm. Blinking innocently, she wrinkles her nose up until her expression is a mockery of disappointment.
"Too bad, Becs." She has the audacity to sigh. "That sucks." If looks could kill, Chloe would currently be six feet under. As it is, they do not, and so she doesn't so much as whither beneath Beca's glower. Which has never stopped being annoying in Beca's opinion; Chloe's ability to flourish where other people have shied away in fear for their lives. She clenches her jaw and sucks in a breath.
"You're going down." Chloe only waggles her eyebrows and, together, they start setting up the tower again.
At some point, one of the Bellas wanders past them and returns to the couch three and a half minutes later carrying a bowl of popcorn – Beca only notices because she can smell the butter – which is then passed around the room as they continue to remain riveted on the game.
"How many of you have placed bets?" Beca leans back as Chloe takes her turn, tilting her head towards the rest of them. Cynthia Rose holds up her hands, one fisted around a mouthful of kernels.
"You know I don't play that way anymore." Beca bobs her head from side to side, assenting to that and giving Cynthia Rose a pass. Stacie is smirking, because she can't help herself – she has the worst poker face outside of poker that Beca has ever seen and she doesn't understand how she can keep it together when she's playing – so she knows she has. Ashley and Jessica both sport guilty expressions, but Jessica's holds just a tinge of smugness, Flo looks mostly disinterested and Emily seems to be trying to bite a hole through her lip. Lilly's attention is fixated on them, has been the whole time, and there's something about her stare that makes Beca not want to question if she's placed a bet, or what exactly she might have placed that bet on.
"When I win, do I get a cut?" Beca asks and the question pulls a squeak of indignation from across the table.
"Excuse you," Chloe intercepts before anyone can answer, "I'm not the one who's currently one round down." Beca cocks her head, considering Chloe's words as she picks her block. Deliberately, she chooses one from near the bottom of the tower and glances up to catch Chloe's mildly anxious expression in between working it free.
"Well, what can I say?" With steady hands, she places the block atop the others and shoots Chloe a look of modest self-assurance. "I'm pretty confident," she gestures to the tower, "about all this." Chloe's face falls, drops right into a puddle of shock that makes her eyes shine, and Beca lets out a bark of laughter. "It's your turn, woman." There's silence for a minute, broken only by Amy's open-mouthed munching of popcorn, as Chloe takes her time selecting. Her attention keeps flicking towards Beca, suspicion colouring the movement, but the brunette only ever smiles in the face of it.
Until Chloe reaches towards the tower.
"Was that, like, a confession?" Beca inquires innocently, lips curling up at one corner when Chloe doesn't look over right away.
"Was what?" Brow furrowed in concentration, Chloe starts teasing one of the blocks free, and Beca idly watches the way the creases at her forehead alternate between easing and deepening as she works, tongue poking out between her teeth.
"You," biting back an anticipatory laugh, Beca shifts her leg beneath the table, "wanting to get me naked." And stretches it out until she can curl her foot around the back of Chloe's calf. "Because I'd maybe be up for that." She strokes her foot up and down in a slow line as she talks and her efforts are rewarded by Chloe's whip-like shifting of attention as she pulls her chosen piece out. Her eyes are wide, like she's be caught doing something she shouldn't, and Beca watches the redhead's hand move in slow motion.
"What?" Chloe gasps, her distraction serving as some sort of short in her higher motor functions, and it's like she completely forgets how to work her hand for a few seconds. Like the power to that part of her body has been unceremoniously shut down. It falls like a dead weight, the corner of the piece of wood she still has in her grasp clipping one on the level above it and sending blocks scattering all over the table. She doesn't decimate it quite as badly as Beca had, but it'll do.
"Damn, girl." Cynthia Rose croaks from somewhere to Beca's right. She can't quite tear her gaze away from Chloe to check precise positioning. "This is better than pay-per-view."
"You did that on purpose!" Chloe squeaks, wide-eyed and, to Beca's immense gratification, surprised. Her face is a shade of red that no one present is used to seeing, because it takes a lot to make Chloe blush. Usually. This, Beca notes, had taken very little effort at all.
"I," Beca starts slowly, measuring her words, "was just letting you know. In the spirit of conversation." She picks up a block and begins twirling it on its end. "It's not my fault that the thought of me naked is enough to make you lose focus." Chloe squeaks again, though this time it's pushed out alongside an exhale, and without warning a block sails into her field of vision and clips the side of her hand. "Hey!" She glances up at Chloe, who's sitting back with her arms folded across her chest.
"You, Beca Mitchell, are a cheat." Beca throws the piece of wood back and Chloe, frustratingly, catches it.
"And you, Miss Beale, are no better than me at all," she counters, punctuating her sentence with a loud scoff that pulls Chloe's eyes wide with indignation. She carefully puts both her hands back against the table, lying them flat in a way that makes Beca instantly suspicious and consider, for an all too-real few seconds, whether or not Chloe's going to flip the entire kitchen table over. Because while she didn't get angry all that often, it's true what they say about redheads.
"How about we let the final game decide?" She's using that tone, the one she only ever uses when she's genuinely frustrated or thrown off by something, and Beca almost laughs in her face. But she does, actually, value her life and so manages to stop herself from doing that, twisting and tamping the laugh down until it's a small smirk against her mouth.
"How about that," she murmurs. "What do I get when I win?" It's odd that they didn't consider this before starting and Beca realises that they aren't actually playing for anything. She'd been too caught up in the competitive rush and bowled over by the way Chloe's expression hardens when she's being challenged. Not in a bad way though. It's actually, like, really good. It's a good look, one Beca thinks it wouldn't hurt her to wear more often. Everyone loves a girl in charge, right?
"Bragging rights aren't good enough?" It's a weak, unfeeling question and Beca knows Chloe has only asked to be a pain, but she goes through the motions of rolling her eyes anyway. "Fine, fine. If you win," Chloe hits the word hard, staring pointedly at Beca across the table, "I'll do your laundry for a week." Beca waves her hand, dismissing the idea almost before Chloe's finished speaking.
"If I wear the same shirt enough days in a row, you do that for me already." Chloe deflates a little at that, because it's true and she knows it. "Think bigger, Beale."
"How about whichever one of y'all loses, she has to mow the lawn. Front lawn." Cynthia Rose's raspy voice catches both Jenga players' attention and she flashes the two of them a smirk, wiggling her eyebrows. "Butt naked."
"Dude, no." Beca stares at her, horror covering every millimetre of her face as she shakes her head. "I said bigger, not like, crazy, insane levels of large." Cynthia Rose shrugs, obviously not sharing Beca's view on sizes.
"Loser has to cannonball into the Trebles pool?" Stacie offers, quickly adding, "also while naked."
"No one is going to be naked!" Beca puts her captain voice on for that one, shooting the Bella a glare, and Stacie has the good grace to look at least a little chastised.
"That's not what you were saying a minute ago." Chloe's edging towards cocky again and Beca knows that if she lets her get there, she's as good as lost already. So she tunes out whatever the other Bellas are saying or suggesting, and focuses in on Chloe.
"Is that what you want? As your prize?" She ducks her head and looks up at Chloe through her lashes. "Was this whole thing just one big ruse to see me in my birthday suit again?" She sees Chloe's surprise in the way she moves her mouth, the way she curls her lips and lifts a hand to brush a curl away from her face. But she also sees that same cockiness, brightening the glittering speckles of stardust in already brilliant eyes.
"Maybe." One of the girls – Beca's pretty sure it's Stacie – lets out a catcall, the sheer volume of which makes Beca cringe inwardly. Outward though, she's clinging to the last remaining vestiges of her cool, collected exterior and starts picking up the game pieces again, more to give herself a distraction than anything else.
"Okay, then I get anything I want," she says simply, flicking her attention towards Chloe before starting to stack the tower for the last time.
"What do you mean anything?" Chloe reaches for a piece at the same time as Beca and her fingers brush the back of the other girl's hand. Beca feels the touch like an electric shock, a current that sparks at her wrist and shoots up past her elbow and over her shoulder, burying itself inside her chest and spiking her heart rate.
"Like victor's choice, dude." Beca shrugs. "If you win, you get," she pauses, poking the tip of her tongue against the inside of her cheek as the idea of what she's about to say makes her flounder, "that." She decides to go with vague, in the interest of this whole thing not falling apart. "And if I win, I get whatever I want, no questions asked." A collective murmur rises up from the gathering of Bellas and in that moment they remind Beca of a pack of wild animals who have stumbled across something foreign and new, and thus have to decide what is the best course of action.
"That puts naked lawn mowing back on the table," Cynthia Rose throws out and Beca shoots her a smirk.
"You're obsessed." The other Bella purses her lips and blows out a hissing breath of air.
"I just have very specific interests."
"I don't think you should be given this much power." Stacie's eyeing Beca with a worried expression. "I feel like it'll go to your head." Surprisingly, Chloe's the one who waves her away.
"It's not her head I'm interested in," the redhead muses and Beca nearly chokes on her laugh as Chloe reaches out across the table, offering her hand to Beca. "Deal." And honestly, Beca hadn't expected it to be this easy. She hadn't expected Chloe to go for it at all. There were too many variables, she was supposed to say no and let everyone off the hook.
"Deal?" Her eyebrows twitch upward.
"Deal," she repeats, wagging her fingers impatiently. "You in? Or are you too scared you'll lose?" And Beca really wishes she were above this kind of goading.
"Oh, I'm in." But she isn't, and the deal is sealed by a much too long handshake that actually stops being a handshake after the first second and quickly devolves into them just holding hands over the table until someone clears their throat. Beca's first to take her hand back. "Let's do this then."
As if by some unspoken, unanimous agreement, there's a decided lack of cheating this round. Beyond Chloe sending her flirtatious glances across the table and Beca's unconscious licking of her lips – which she really can't be blamed for if she doesn't a) notice she's doing it and b) know it has any kind of affect on Chloe – it's a clean game. Well, as clean as any of their games ever are.
So, when Beca comes out of their little Jenga war as the winner, Chloe has absolutely nothing to accuse her of except, as Amy puts it, being better at handling wood than she is. That comment goes ignored though, because as Beca is sweeping her arm across the table top, thereby chasing all of the pieces back into the box she's holding at the edge, Chloe stands and leans over the table towards her.
"So," she starts, waiting until Beca's looking at her to continue, "what prize are you going to claim as an early Christmas gift at my expense?" Beca blinks slowly at her, allowing her lips to curve into a small, knowing smile before turning her attention back to the game box.
"I have a few things in mind." She slides the lid back on and pushes the box into the middle of the table, squinting up at Chloe who lifts an eyebrow at the revelation.
"Is that right?" Beca hums her affirmation and there's a slant to her smile now that betrays some underlying level of nervousness that, honestly, throws Chloe a bit off balance. Because flustered Beca is one thing; nervous Beca is another beast entirely. She's about to say something, anything, to alleviate any mental strain when Beca stands. She swings one leg over the bench and then the other, headed for the small closet between the sitting area in the kitchen that she's sure is supposed to house tin cans or something, but is in all actuality used to store the games they like to play. Usually when drunk.
"Yeah, you know, I like to have options." She slides the game into the empty spot between Twister and Cards Against Humanity, closing the sliding door before turning back around. "Maybe we could like," she brushes the end of her nose with a hand and then slides both into her back pockets, rocking back and forth on the stop while the Bellas stare a hole through the back of her head, "talk about them." Chloe's eyebrows jump for her hairline again. "Sometime." Behind Beca, someone gasps. "Over dinner." The sound of skin meeting skin suggests that it's Emily, who's probably just slapped herself, or someone else, out of excitement. "Or something." She lets out an awkward laugh. "Just like, maybe not a movie?" It's supposed to be a joke but Chloe doesn't laugh, and Beca's starting to sweat under the heat of literally everyone's gaze. The Bellas are a quiet chorus of shallow breathing and intermittent squeaks.
"Are you asking me out?" Chloe asks, after what feels like a lifetime, quickly clarifying, "On a date?" Beca grimaces, pulling her hands free and reaching up with a one to comb her fingers through her hair.
"I mean, I'd have rather not asked in front of a pack of zoo animals," Stacie won't stop excitedly nudging Beca with her shoulder, "but... yes? Kind of?" Her eyes pop wide and then she's gesturing towards Chloe, waving a hand down at hip height like she's washing something away. "Unless that's totally weird and I've like, misinterpreted stuff-"
"My chosen prize was to get you naked," Chloe cuts in to remind her and Beca closes her mouth, a wry smile teasing the corners.
"Play your cards right," she says, idly walking back to the table and to Chloe, who tracks her movements right up until Beca stops in front of her, "and maybe we'll both get what we want." And her eyes remain glued to Beca as she flashes Chloe a smirk, before slinking out of the kitchen.
She's not even halfway up the stairs when she hears the room she'd just vacated all but explode with noise.
Something tells her that there aren't going to be many silent nights this holiday season.
At least there won't be, if she's lucky.