A/N: This one-shot was written for the-sun-still-shines on Tumblr as a part of the Merry Pitchmas Gift Exchange 2016.
Beca Mitchell wasn't quite sure exactly how she had gotten here. She'd spent the better part of her life believing that she'd never find love, would never find that person movies promised would somehow complete everything she was. That was actually what she hated most about movies. They were boring, and predictable, and Beca knew – she knew with absolute certainty – that they were not an accurate reflection of her own story.
Her relationship with Jesse in college had only confirmed that for her. She'd spent years with him and never felt, not even for a moment, that he would play that role in the movie version of her life. She liked him a lot, loved him even, and she enjoyed almost every moment she spent with him, but he wasn't her soul mate. He wasn't the love of her life. They didn't fit together like puzzle pieces. Not one of those pitiful platitudes fit. And none of this had given Beca any pause, because she assumed all of those expressions were, quite simply, lies. Her parents weren't those things to each other, and she was sure she'd never met any couple that was.
Sure, this grand societal scheme to make people believe that they were missing their other half was an elaborate one. Beca recognized that, but it didn't dissuade her. To her, the evidence was abundant.
To Jesse, it was not. Beca had rolled her eyes at his apparent shock when he fully realized – three and a half years into their relationship – she didn't believe in the kind of love his precious movies had always promised him, and that she certainly didn't feel that way about him, even if he felt that way about her. She was sad to lose him, devastated even. He was her best friend, and yet she had to agree that if he was fool enough to believe there was someone out there he was "meant to be" with, then he deserved to waste his life searching for her.
It was after their break-up that Chloe got on her case. She continually, and fervidly, insisted to Beca that there was someone out there for everyone. Jesse just wasn't that person for Beca, she'd said, but someone was.
Beca wasn't sure why this bothered Chloe so much. It seemed as though Chloe had made it her life's mission to prove this to Beca. And, of course, the more Chloe pushed, the more Beca resisted.
Then, about a year after graduation, at a semi-regular Bellas reunion party, something unexpected happened. After consuming far too much tequila, Chloe had kissed Beca. The memory was fuzzy now, the entire night tinged with the sort of haze and missing pieces that playing Kings with straight tequila was bound to provide, but the kiss had ignited something in Beca. At the time, she'd easily shaken off the feeling. Drunkenness had led to horniness, and it had been months since Beca had, as Fat Amy would say, "gotten any," and so that led to stupidity. The heat that had rushed through her and the tingling excitement of every nerve had only to do with her body's desperate need for attention. And the way Beca swooned at Chloe's comment that she had "always wanted to do that" was obviously due to the fact that Beca hadn't really eaten much that day, and had her last glass of water something like five shots ago.
But Beca had enjoyed it, that much she was willing to admit. She wanted to explore it more, and so she gladly and easily embarked on a casual sort of relationship with Chloe. They didn't put labels on it. They were friends. They enjoyed each other's company, and now they were enjoying each other sexually as well. It wasn't a big deal. It didn't seem illogical. It didn't feel worthy of much thought or consideration. The fact that they were clearly "dating," in the most traditional sense of the word, didn't occur to Beca until much, much later. It was almost embarrassing to admit that now.
At some point, Chloe did bring it up. She wanted to call Beca her girlfriend. Beca felt fine about this. It wasn't inaccurate. It seemed a natural urge. It wouldn't really change anything. Beca wanted to continue being with Chloe, so it made sense, as a sort of shorthand, for them both. Beca really hadn't thought much of it.
It wasn't until sometime later, when Chloe first told Beca that she loved her, that bells started to go off. Though alarm bells, as a metaphor, are perhaps too gentle a comparison. More accurately, Beca began to massively freak out. And in true Beca Mitchell style, she began to push away, hard. This wasn't how her life was going to go. This wasn't what she had expected, and it was never what she wanted.
She wasn't nice. She wasn't kind. She was rude and dismissive. She didn't break up with Chloe, no, instead she acted in such a way she felt certain it would be impossible for Chloe to continue to love her. It was ugly, and it was hurtful. Looking back on it now, Beca was still ashamed of how cruel she had been during this time.
But in spite of it all, Chloe loved her still, and maybe even loved her harder. She was patient, excessively so. It's true what they say about love. It blinds people to the often harsher realities of their partners. Sometimes that blindness lands a person in hot water, holding on to a person that doesn't treat them how they deserve to be treated. On Beca's darker days, she's not sure that this isn't exactly what happened to Chloe. It's entirely possible – likely even – that Chloe deserves someone so much better.
But on most days – including today, while she's staring down at the crying infant in her arms – Beca is grateful. She'll be forever indebted to Chloe for coming along and changing her story. She knows she'll never be able to repay that debt, but Beca vowed to spend the rest of her days trying, as Chloe's wife.
Of course Beca had thought through all of this before. At each and every milestone moment – and even just on the odd day it happened to occur to her – she had been continually forced to come to terms with all of it, with all the ways in which Chloe had reshaped her life. Today was different, though. As Beca held their son for the first time, it dawned on her rather abruptly: she was complicit. Chloe hadn't forced her way in; Beca had let her in. Beca had chosen this path for herself. Chloe Beale was not the best thing Beca never knew she needed. Somehow, Beca had known all along that that this moment, this place, this life was exactly what she wanted. This was where she was meant to be.
Tears welled in her eyes as their daughter finally settled and cooed. Beca looked toward Chloe and smiled, silently promising herself to never forget that she had gotten what she wanted. It wasn't sudden, and it wasn't surprising. She wrote this story herself. They wrote it together.
None of this changed Beca's opinion on movies, however. They all fell short of representing her own truth. This life that they had built together was so much better than any movie could have ever hoped to describe.