A/N: It's been a little while since I've written fic for this fandom, but part of this story has been sitting on my computer since I wrote Rain Check, and it was about time that I turned it into a legitimate fic. I hope you like it, and please do review if you feel so inclined!
Disclaimer: Yeah, Pitch Perfect is still not mine, and the lyrics in the title come from Darren Criss and Charlene Kaye's "Dress and Tie", so those are obviously not mine either.
A D+.
He had scored a D+.
On a film studies paper.
About scoring.
It was a fairly basic assignment- "Write an analysis of a film with respect to the musical choices made by the director"- but Jesse had been certain that he'd kicked its ass. He'd spent a solid month researching and doing background reading to accompany his primary analysis. He'd learned how to play the theme on the piano just so he could get a better feel for the music. He watched pivotal scenes from the movie so many times that he was reciting the dialogue in his sleep. (Seriously, it was a problem. Beca had kicked him out of bed. Twice.)
The final product had been nothing short of a work of art; he was sure of it. And yet here he was, staring in disbelief at the email sent out by his professor, where a D+ glared at him from next to his ID number. (To add insult to injury, it was in Comic Sans. He wasn't exactly a typography snob, but really? Comic Sans?)
Jesse had been intent on wallowing for at least another hour when there was a knock at his door. He contemplated not opening it, but then Beca's voice sounded from the other side. "Jesse, I know you're in there. You can't hide forever."
He sighed and rolled off the bed, pulling the door open to reveal his girlfriend grinning up at him expectantly.
"Come on, weirdo," she said. "Grab your jacket; we're going out."
"Actually, Bec, I've got a lot of stuff to get done today, and I don't know if-"
"Nope," said Beca. "Don't try to pull that crap with me, because if you want to appeal that film studies grade, you'll have to wait until Monday, and the only other thing you have due is a paper for my dad's class, which you turned in two days ago because you're a nerd."
"You know it's kind of creepy that you know that, right?"
Beca shook her head. "No. You know what's really creepy? What's really creepy is that you're such a good student in class and such a suck-up out of class that you and my dad are actually bros now. So are you coming or am I gonna have to kidnap you?"
Jesse snorted. "I'd like to see you try."
"Hey, nerd, don't make me go all Hilary Swank on you just to prove a point. Now come on; I'm not letting you mope all day like some character in a chick flick."
He barely had time to grab a hoodie before Beca pulled him out the door.
As they got into Beca's car, Jesse instinctively hit play on the stereo. Beca, who was focused on backing out of the Treble house's driveway without hitting a unicycle, would have stopped him if she'd noticed. As it was, they were a minute into the first track before she saw the growing smirk on Jesse's face and realized what was going on. She all but lunged for the eject button, but he stopped her and she couldn't exactly wrestle with him while driving.
Jesse turned to Beca and saw that she was definitely blushing, though her face was inscrutable.
"Beca?"
"Yes?"
"This is the love theme from The Godfather."
"It is."
"You're willingly listening to the love theme from The Godfather."
"I am."
"Beca, you're willingly listening to one of my all time favorite scores."
"Yup."
"I'm not going to get anything else out of- holy crap, this is The Avengers!" He looked at her in blatant disbelief as the track changed to yet another of his favorite pieces.
"Are you always this observant, Sherlock?"
But Jesse was now repeatedly hitting the skip button, waiting a few moments, and excitedly identifying each piece as it began to play. ("The Imperial Death March! Thunderball! He's a Pirate! Concerning Hobbits!") If she wasn't mistaken, "I Am the Doctor" was the name of the song that was playing when he finally stopped, slumping back in his seat and throwing up his hands. "That's it. It's official. You are literally the best girlfriend ever."
Beca bit back a grin. "It's just a CD, Jesse. Maybe I never actually listen to it."
"Oh, is that why you're drumming on the steering wheel in time with the song?"
She looked down to realize that she was doing exactly that and the drumming stopped. "Shut up," Beca said.
"I didn't say anything!"
"Like that was going to last."
And it did last, actually, for approximately three minutes- long enough for the Eleventh Doctor's theme to finish playing as Jesse did that subconscious thing where he moved his hands like he was conducting an orchestra through the piece. (No, shut up, she wasn't watching him out of the corner of her eye and she certainly was not thinking to herself that it was kind of adorable when he geeked out like this.)
"So, are you going to tell me why you have this CD of ridiculously excellent score pieces, or will I have to do some…creative interrogating?" he asked, waggling his eyebrows.
"Yeah, I'm gonna say no to both of those," Beca said, trying not to laugh at the pout she received in response.
"Fine," said Jesse, "then I'm just going to bug you for the entire rest of this car ride."
Beca snorted as she turned into a parking lot. "Good luck with that."
Jesse furrowed his eyebrows, trying to figure out exactly where Beca had taken them. It was an empty lot: there was a normal flea market on one side, but the other side just had lots of tables with cardboard boxes on them, and there were too many people moving around for him to see what exactly was in those boxes and crates.
"Beca, where are we?" he asked as they got out of the car.
"It's a records fair- well, that and a flea market, where you'll probably buy some weird, demonic looking cat thing that we'll eventually have to dump in a river somewhere so it doesn't kill us in our sleep."
"Oh, you know me so well," Jesse said, fluttering his eyelashes at Beca. His only response to her inevitable eyeroll was to put an arm around her as they made their way over to the lot. "So a records fair, huh? How'd you find out about this?"
"From Luke, actually. He tried to get me to go with him once." He had, of course, failed, but Beca had stopped by the next month and checked it out on her own.
As they approached the record-covered tables, Jesse looked duly impressed. He examined a yellowing Paul McCartney vinyl as he spoke. "You've known about this since freshman year? How come you never said anything?"
Beca suddenly appeared to be very interested in the Bob Dylan record in front of her. "I kind of liked having it to myself," she said with a shrug. "I'm not exactly a people person, you know? It was just a good place to clear my head or come cool off after Saturday brunches with Dad and Sheila."
Jesse couldn't quite keep the grin off of his face. His girlfriend was a really private person when she wanted to be (which was, frankly, ninety-eight percent of the time.) The fact that she was willing to share this with him after keeping it to herself for so long? That was big. He didn't have much time to ponder this, though, because as soon as she finished speaking, he realized something else.
"That's why I wasn't expecting to see you today! Aren't you supposed to be at brunch right now?"
"Oh, Dad had to leave early because he needed to, and I quote, 'stop a colleague from murdering an innocent TA in cold blood'- I swear, the only reason you two are such good friends is because you're complete dorks. Anyway, I wasn't exactly pumped to hang out with Sheila, so I left, too."
"Oh," said Jesse, mock offended, "so I was just your backup plan?"
Beca grinned. "Yup."
As Jesse clutched dramatically at his heart and accused Beca of inflicting emotional wounds from which he would never recover, she just laughed and pulled him further into the mess of people and records. Jesse, as was his wont whenever it came to Beca, willingly followed.
The plan that Beca had concocted earlier that morning ended up working perfectly. Distracted by the music and the bizarre things they found at the flea market, Jesse hadn't thought about his essay in hours- in fact, he'd almost totally forgotten about it when he got a text from Benji telling him to check his email as soon as possible.
He nearly dropped the tacky, feline-printed teapot that he'd been threatening to buy for Beca, his eyes going wide in apprehension. Beca apologized to the scandalized woman who was selling the teapot and pulled Jesse off to the side, asking him what was wrong. (If he'd bothered to look up from his phone, he might have noticed the knowing glint in Beca's eyes, but he hadn't and so he didn't.)
When Jesse finally managed to log into his account and saw the new email from his film studies professor, his phone barely escaped the same fate as the teapot. He wondered vaguely how bad it would be if he just pretended that he hadn't seen the message and ignored his phone for the rest of the day.
But Beca was apparently psychic today, because at that moment, she rolled her eyes and said, "Just open it, Jesse."
He did, skimming it once and then reading it aloud to make sure that he wasn't hallucinating. "'Students: it has come to my attention that my ex-TA made a clerical error while inputting the grades which led to a completely incorrect list being sent out this morning. Please find attached your correct grades for the latest assignment.'"
Jesse opened the PDF and waited impatiently for it to download before he searched for his ID number. He read the grade, blinked, read it again, and then handed Beca the phone. "Can you just read that to me? I don't actually trust myself right now."
"What? This? The highlighted part?"
"Yes, please."
"That would be the letter A," Beca said, before adding with a grin, "but if you're having trouble identifying it, maybe we should talk to someone."
"I got an A?"
"You got an A."
"Not a D+?"
"Not a D+."
Jesse let out an excited whoop and picked Beca up without warning, spinning her around before excitedly re-confirming that he had, indeed, received an A instead of a D+. He then proceeded to ask her about it every few minutes until Beca threatened to bribe his professor into actually making the grade a D+, which shut him up impressively fast.
It wasn't until they were driving back that Jesse realized something. "Wait, Bec- you said your dad left brunch today to stop a professor from killing a TA."
A small smile spread across Beca's face. "Mhmm."
"That professor was my film professor, wasn't it?"
"That is certainly a possibility."
"So you knew that I was going to get that email?" he asked.
Beca shrugged. "Maybe."
"And you didn't say anything because I would have just obsessively waited by the computer all day, waiting for the email to come in."
"Possibly."
"You are incredible, did you know tha- wait, where have I heard this song before?" Jesse abruptly broke off and looked inquisitively at Beca's car stereo, like it would be the one to answer him. Every other song on this CD had been from a movie- from his favorite movies, to be specific- but this one definitely wasn't. He just knew that he knew it.
Beca pulled up in front of the Treble house but didn't turn off the car, watching as Jesse tried to place the melody that was coming through the speakers. Just as she was about to ask if he'd given up, his face lit up with recognition. His grin was one that she'd come to associate with the urge punch him in the face, because it made her feel all…fluttery or whatever and that shit was just not acceptable.
For his part, Jesse was so touched that he was having trouble verbalizing his thoughts. "This- but this is- how- where did you even find this?"
(And even though she wasn't great with words and he was at a loss for them, they were both perfectly aware that they were thinking of the same day, when a dork in the backseat of his parents' car serenaded a girl in a taxi and set them both on the path to falling in love.)
"This- the CD and everything- is so I can get my head around this music before I turn it into a mix," Beca said, and the "for you" might have just been implied, but Jesse heard it loud and clear. "I sort of just found the song by accident. Someone on the internet turned it into a lullaby and I thought- I don't know. It just made sense to try and work it in."
The light outside was fading fast, but Jesse was ninety-nine percent sure that Beca was blushing- it was a mark of how well he understood her that he didn't say anything about it. The pair sat in silence for a moment or two, and then, as the last notes of the song faded out, Jesse finally spoke up.
"I love you."
(And Beca felt one of those big, stupid grins spread across her face, because this weirdo- with his movications and his juice pouches and his stupidly sincere way of making her feel like the most important person in the universe- was hers and damn if that didn't make her so happy that she was willing to reference nerdy movies on a regular basis if it meant that his smile was a regular fixture in her life.)
"I know."