Disclaimer: I claim no ownership over the characters or lyrics used.
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As the cheers from the crowd died down after the last song and the guys in the band took a step back from their instruments, Beca's heart started to go into overdrive. 20 000 people in the audience hanging on her every word would usually do the trick, but right now the room could've been empty for all she knew. The sudden nervousness had nothing to do with the concert she was currently performing.
A sound guy came up to her and handed her an acoustic guitar instead of her trusted electric and she could hear the audience going quiet in anticipation. She glanced to the side of the stage, and there, in the wings, she met the eyes of the person she always seemed to be searching for in a crowd. Taking a deep breath and focusing back on the crowd, she grabbed the microphone in one hand.
"This next song is new, it's something I wrote for a very special person. I hope you like it." Becca said with a small smile before strumming the first few bars on her guitar. She closed her eyes as she began singing.
I will always remember
The day you kissed my lips
Light as a feather
And it went just like this
No, it's never been better
Than the summer of two thousand and two
Glancing back into the wings, Beca met Chloe's eyes again. She could see the second it dawned on Chloe what this song was about. Her expression was equal parts confusion and awe. They hadn't talked about that summer in a long time.
Chloe's family had moved into their sleepy little town from out of state when Beca was only ten, and somehow – they had ended up becoming friends. Even then, Beca was a moody and slightly precocious child, insisting on watching old black and white movies instead of the Disney channel; reading books in her treehouse instead of playing with the other children in the neighborhood. Her parents were told that she was acting up in school but that it was a natural reaction to the divorce. However, Chloe took one look at Beca on her first day at school and decided that she was the nicest girl she had ever met. Growing up among her parents' snobby friends and their obnoxious little children, she wanted to feel as free and independent as Becca seemed to be. Beca didn't care about getting her jeans dirty while climbing a tree or about bullies saying she was weird because she didn't want to play truth and dare with the boys behind the school like the other girls did. And so, Chloe decided that she wouldn't care either.
After a year in the same class, Chloe had managed to convince Beca that they would be the best of friends. They spent the afternoons in the treehouse together, and every once in a while, they would hang out at Chloe's house, playing pranks on her older brother and goofing around.
Slowly, they started to talk more about the future – what would the rest of junior high be like? Which of the boys had already begun to squeak a bit when they talked? Which of the girls where getting chased around the school yard more than the rest? They laughed at how silly the other girls were, sneaking round the bleachers to smoke for the first time in order to impress the older boys.
That summer, they found an old beat-up car, abandoned in the wooded area behind the local diner. They had snuck out from a sleepover at Chloe's house to meet up with some of the girls they had made friends with in choir practice that spring. They were pretty cool, a few of them where a year older and one of them had managed to steal some kind of fruit punch-drinks with alcohol from her aunt's house and insisted that they try some. Beca was kind of anxious about the whole thing, she wasn't in any hurry to start acting like a grown-up, but Chloe dragged her along, insisting it would be an adventure.
Setting up camp by the abandoned car, they wrapped themselves in the blankets they had brought and passed the cups of sweet alcohol around and played truth and dare. When one of the choir girls dared Chloe to kiss Beca, everyone giggled as if it was just a joke, but Chloe just leaned in and gave Beca a peck on the lips without hesitation. She giggled as she pulled back and Beca couldn't help but start giggling herself. Was it the drink? Could they even get drunk from three sips of fruit punch? Beca didn't know, but she knew that it was her first kiss – and that Chloe's lips was the softest thing she had ever felt. Even though all the other girls had been there, it still felt like a secret between the two of them. A secret first kiss that made Beca smile just before she went to sleep that night.
We were only eleven
But acting like grown-ups
Like we are in the present
Drinking from plastic cups
Singing "love is forever and ever"
Well, I guess that was true
By the time Beca and Chloe were in sophomore year of high school, the choir girls were all inseparable. They sat at the same table at lunch, all signed up for glee club, drama club, choir… everything and anything that meant they got to hang out and sing together. They weren't the "popular" crowd by any means, still ignored or occasionally ridiculed by the jocks and the cheerleaders – but they had each other. And while Beca had been cautious about having a large group of friends in the beginning, finding it hard to trust anyone but Chloe, she had come to see the strength in numbers.
Beca had taken up playing guitar, mostly to piss off her dad in the beginning. He had wanted her to focus more on something academic, like mathletes or the debate team. As she went about learning the guitar, she started to really love it and it wasn't long before she was bringing it everywhere. The abandoned car in the woods was still there, and they continued the tradition of going there at night to party. How the cops never found out about it, Chloe would never know. It seemed impossible, as pretty much everyone from school would come there on Friday nights to drink stolen beer and play music.
Their group of friends got there early on one Friday night, and none of them had speakers or a stereo with them, so they convinced Beca to play guitar. At first, she refused unless she could play Nirvana, but after a while she gave in and started playing some popular Britney Spears-song that Chloe had no idea Beca had learned the chords to. Chloe watched from her perch on the hood of the car and swayed a bit to the song. She didn't notice their friend Amy sitting next to her, watching the soft smile on Chloe's lips as Beca laughed and joined in on vocals.
"Have you told her you have a crush on her yet?" Amy asked gently.
Chloe startled. "What?!"
Amy held up her hands in surrender. "I'm sorry, I know it's none of my business. I just thought maybe you'd feel better if you told her. At least then you'd know if she feels the same."
"Who says I'm gay?" Chloe asked defensively. "You don't know what I like. Just because I've never had a boyfriend doesn't mean I'm gay."
"Hey, I never said you are gay. But it's pretty damn obvious to everyone that you have a crush on Beca. I mean you look like you want to kiss her like ninety percent of the time." Amy shrugged.
"What do you mean 'like I want to kiss her'?" Chloe furrowed her eyebrows.
"Ok, so you know I watch A LOT of romantic comedies, right? Well, there's always this moment when one of the characters does something unexpected of amazing, and the other one just has to kiss them or else they will explode or something. You have that look – like you'll explode or some shit." Amy said matter-of-factly.
Chloe gave her a look. "You know those movies are garbage, right?"
"Doesn't mean they're wrong, C." Amy gave her a pat on the knee and scampered off towards some unsuspecting jock she was going to con into giving her his beer. Chloe laughed, exasperated, and looked over at Beca. To her surprise, Beca was looking straight at her while singing and playing her guitar. They held eye contact as Beca switched to Chloe's favorite song at the moment – some trashy pop radio hit that was permanently stuck in her brain. Chloe didn't know Beca had learned to play that either.
Shaking all kinds of thoughts from her head, she grabbed her friend Stacie's hand and pulled her up to stand on the hood of the car, dancing as Beca played. The whole time, she kept her eyes closed – and the whole time, she could swear she felt Beca's eyes on her.
Dancing on the hood
In the middle of the woods
Of an old Mustang
Where we sang
Songs with all our childhood friends
And it went like this, say
Oops, I got 99 problems singing bye, bye, bye
Hold up, if you wanna go and take a ride with me
Better hit me, baby, one more time
Paint a picture for you and me
Of the days when we were young, uh
Singing at the top of both our lungs
Snapping out of her reverie, Chloe was brought back to the present, watching her girlfriend perform a song that was all about her. Sure, Beca had written songs about her before. After they had made out at a party senior year of high school and decided to finally be honest with each other. After they went off to college and Beca dropped out to get signed and go on tour with her new band. After they broke up because Beca came home from tour and found another girl in their bed. And even after Beca had screwed her way through countless of people, nameless men and women in bars and clubs, in order to forget her first love. But this song was the first one Beca had written for her since they got back together, three years ago. They had met at Amy's wedding and spent the night together, hashing things out in a New York hotel room. Even then, Chloe had known, she would never let go of Beca ever again.
It was no secret to her fans that Beca was bisexual, but as she and Chloe had found their way back to each other, Beca had been adamant that they keep their relationship low key and out of the tabloids as much as possible, to protect Chloe from the craziness of it all. She had agreed to letting Beca call the shots, even though she would've happily dealt with all the gossip and the scrutiny, just to be able to kiss and hold hands whenever they wanted. All she wanted was a normal, happy life. Well… as normal as it could get when your partner is a rockstar.
They had both come out a long time ago, sitting down hand-in-hand, first in front of Beca's parents, then in front of her own. While Beca's parents had been unsurprised and supportive but a bit unsure about how to speak about it, Chloe's parents had showed pretty much the same indifference about her sexual orientation as they had about her in general. "Well I guess that explains why you wouldn't go out with the Henderson boy when we introduced you this summer. Do you think you'll be alright in New York for Christmas this year? Your father and I are going to the Poconos…" was all she got.
Now we're under the covers
Fast forward to eighteen
We are more than lovers
Yeah, we are all we need
When we're holding each other
I'm taken back to two thousand and two
Chloe didn't really know whether to laugh or cry, but it seemed her body had settled on both. Beca had been distant the last couple of weeks, even though Chloe had decided to join her on tour this time. She'd been strumming her guitar and writing at odd hours of the night, refusing to show her work when asked about it and looking at her phone more than usual. Suspecting the worst, Chloe had confronted her about it, and Beca had reassured her that it was just the stress of the tour and that everything would be fine once they got to Minneapolis.
Minneapolis. The last show of the tour. The very stage she was standing on now, in some arena she couldn't remember the name of.
As she lost herself in the final chorus, Beca could still feel her heart beating as if to escape her chest and the rushing in her ears as she gave it everything she had. She had never sounded better in her entire life, she was sure of it.
Dancing on the hood
In the middle of the woods
Of an old Mustang
Where we sang
Songs with all our childhood friends
And it went like this, say
Oops, I got 99 problems singing bye, bye, bye
Hold up, if you wanna go and take a ride with me
Better hit me, baby, one more time
Paint a picture for you and me
Of the days when we were young
Singing at the top of both our lungs
On the day we fell in love
On the day we fell in love
The last few bars fell from her guitar as the crowd was once again cheering and clapping. Since it was a new song, they hadn't really been able to sing along, but the sound of their applause almost took her breath away. However, she soldiered through the adrenaline rush and grabbed the microphone with her left hand again. Her right hand was shaking, but she used it to search through the pocket of her jean shorts and grab the item that she hadn't been able to stop thinking about for weeks on end.
"Thank you so much everybody! As I said before, that song was written for someone really important in my life. Chloe, can you come out here for a minute?" she asked, her voice clear but unsteady. The crowd cheered louder as Chloe stepped out onto the stage and made her way over. She reached the center of the stage and the cheers became deafening as Beca dropped to one knee and spoke into the microphone.
"Chloe, you are the love of my life. Will you marry me?"
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Author's note: This is my first published fanfic. I'm not really a fan of songfics and not a Bechloe shipper but I couldn't resist running with this idea. I might post it on Ao3 under the name HeavenForTheWeather as well. English is not my first language and I have no beta, so please excuse any spelling or grammatical errors. If you wanna leave some feedback, I'd love to read it! Lots of love xx /LastDaysofDancing