Aubrey Posen is out of her element.
She'd spent four years as the Queen Bee of the Andrean High School in Gary, Indiana's Class of 2010. And three years as Lake Ridge Middle School's. And most of her five years at Daniel Hale Williams Elementary School.
But at Barden University, she is a big fish in an even bigger pond. Here, she is surrounded by sharks. Tigers. Bulls. Great Whites.
She clings to the one thing she loves more than anything - singing. And despite the mega attitude the brunette known as Alice gave her at a booth at the activities fair, she took a flyer containing audition information for the Barden Bellas to add to the other two she'd picked up from other groups.
Which is how she finds herself standing on a stage in a tiny auditorium with a group of eerily similar girls glowering up at her from their seats as she sings sixteen bars from her favorite song, Alicia Keys' solo version of "Empire State of Mind." They scowl at her the entire time, whispering harshly when she finishes, but not quite loud enough for her to hear. She's dismissed with a wave of a hand and returns to Baker Hall to give herself time to sulk before settling in to come up with a plan to establish her dominance within this new society.
It's after her Composition 101 class that she's accosted in the hallway, a bag thrown over her head and arms held behind her back as she's forced to walk. She screams, knowing there were hundreds of people around, but no one helps her.
It is, without a doubt, the most terrifying moment of her life.
She eventually gives up trying to get anyone's attention, resigned to her kidnapping fate, and after walking what feels like miles she is finally released and made to stand in place, and her shoulder bumps something next to her. It bumps her back a second later, and she realizes it's a person. Just standing next to her. And she finds solace in that, that in that terrifying moment, she isn't alone. Even if that person is her captor.
Without warning, the bag is whipped off her head, and it takes a few seconds for her eyes to adjust, confused by the dark room filled with...candles?
"Aubrey. Soprano."
Her vision clears and she sees the army of clones from the audition standing in a line in front of her, every one of them appraising her.
"Chloe. Soprano."
She sees a quick movement to her left and she turns to see a redhead looking as startled and scared as she feels.
It's only then that she realizes what is actually happening.
She hasn't been kidnapped. She isn't about to be tortured and murdered.
She's being initiated into the Barden Bellas.
"Hi, I'm Chloe," the redhead says with a brilliant smile on the walk to the outdoor amphitheatre for a party, after they've sworn their loyalty and drunk 'the blood of the sisters.'
"Aubrey."
"Are you a Freshman?"
"I am."
"Awes. Me, too! Looks like we're the new kids. Come on, let's go get a beer."
For some reason, she lets this Chloe take her hand and run her down the stone steps toward a keg and spends most of the night talking to her and avoiding the looks that Alice continues to throw her way.
Her second year at Barden is better.
She has friends. Friends that, for the most part, let her assume her natural position as dominant leader.
One of those friends is Chloe.
As the only two initiates their Freshman year, they've grown close, suffering through the insanity of Alice's cardio which was more like Army bootcamp. Chloe's there for her when she loses her voice in the middle of the year, the result of the three straight hours of scales Alice demanded she sing after she missed a note at regionals. She speaks for Aubrey, able to easily translate her gestures, looks, and mood.
"You don't have to yell," Chloe says to the waitress at the diner they're at after practice, after explaining that Aubrey can't speak. "She's not deaf. She lost her voice."
Aubrey laughs, best she can. She points at the menu and Chloe orders the Caesar salad for her. She'd really rather have a bacon cheeseburger, but Alice would have her throat for it. More so than she already does, anyway.
Dinner turns into movie night in Chloe's dorm room, because her roommate is crashing at her boyfriend's and Aubrey's roommate is a homebody. Chloe lets her pick the movie, citing her temporary disability as being worthy of having the choice, and despite the frustratingly overwhelming lack of desirable options on Netflix, she decides to go with Bridesmaids, because there's really no way you can see that movie too many times.
It's during the uproarious food poisoning scene that she and Chloe are laughing so hysterically - she's actually wheezing more than laughing - that Chloe's tipped sideways, across Aubrey's lap as she laughs hard enough to cry. When the scene finally passes, Chloe rights herself, her hand on Aubrey's thigh for leverage, and they end up face to face, frozen for a moment. Aubrey can feel it, a weird shift in the mood of the room and in her stomach when Chloe's eyes drop to her lips for a fraction of a second.
And then Chloe's laughing again and settling back into her spot next to Aubrey, leaving Aubrey's heart pounding and mind spinning, trying to make heads or tails out of what that was.
It happens again a week later, when Chloe's just being Chloe and ends up sitting in Aubrey's lap during a Bellas meeting. She feels Alice's eyes on them like daggers, and it seems kind of awkward to have her friend in her lap, but it's also kind of nice. Comforting. She keeps her arm around Chloe's waist, and decides she kind of likes it.
Chloe looks flushed when she hops off her lap at the end of the meeting, and Aubrey feels like she might look the same way, and wonders what it means. But then Chloe's grabbing her hands and dragging her out of the meeting and through the quad for ice cream.
Their third year at Barden is pretty decent.
Aubrey has the respect of the younger Bellas, and a few of the Seniors, but Alice continues to despise her for reasons she cannot for the life of her figure out. Chloe always has her back though, almost literally, showing up behind her every time Alice lays into her about something. And Chloe defends her on her tiptoes over Aubrey's shoulder, brave but not quite brave enough to not use Aubrey as a human shield.
"You really don't have to do that," Aubrey says to her after a particularly brutal day that earned Chloe an earful of her own as well.
"You're my bestie, of course I do!" Chloe replies, like it's the most obvious thing in the world. "I'd do anything for you."
Aubrey smiles at that. "I'd do anything for you, too."
That seems to make Chloe happy, because suddenly she's in Aubrey's lap again, this time on Chloe's bed, and something about it makes Aubrey's heart pound.
"You know," Chloe starts, draping an arm around Aubrey's neck to pull herself close enough to whisper in Aubrey's ear. "I'm really glad we met."
Aubrey has to clear her throat to reply. "Me, too."
She feels Chloe kiss her cheek, and her lips seem to linger longer than they really should for a friend.
And then Chloe's off and flitting around chattering incessantly about something one of her professors said in class that morning, leaving Aubrey to wrestle with the butterflies Chloe seems to have a habit of stirring up in her.
It's at a Bellas slumber party that it happens.
It's less a slumber party and more like Chloe and Aubrey sharing a New York hotel room the night before the ICCAs.
It's your typical college girl sleepover, with whatever movies they can find on the shitty hotel TV and a pizza, the exception being a distinct lack of alcohol to preserve their vocal cords. Chloe's sitting behind her on the bed, practicing the Bellas' traditional up 'do mindlessly when Aubrey feels her fingers slow and come to rest along her shoulders, mostly bare under the straps of her camisole.
"Hey, Bree?" she hears Chloe say quietly, and her tone makes her stomach drop.
"Hmm?" she answers, not trusting her voice.
"This is pretty cool, being in New York City. I've never been here before."
She relaxes a little at the line of conversation. "Me neither."
"And our first ICCAs."
"Yeah! I can't believe we made it."
"I can." She feels Chloe squeeze her shoulders and then her fingers are moving, almost imperceptibly, drifting along the column of her neck. And it feels good. Really good. She shivers. "Maybe there's another first that we could experience. Here."
Aubrey can make out their reflection in the TV when it goes black for a commercial, and it makes her stomach flip even more, because Chloe's right behind her, and in the second of blackness she can see Chloe lean and turn to look at her from the side. She can feel it, whatever it is, coming.
"Bree, have you ever kissed another girl?"
Her mind races, because no, she definitely has not kissed a girl. And the way Chloe is asking it, is presenting it as a successor in a trio of firsts, suggests Chloe might want to change that.
She swallows hard, chancing a look to her left to see the edge of Chloe's profile. "Uh, no. Have...have you?"
Chloe's response is a two tone hum to the negative. She keeps talking. "We're friends, right?"
"Of course," she says feeling a little lightheaded.
"Best friends?"
"The best."
"Can I tell you something?"
Aubrey nods, having a pretty good idea of what it is Chloe wants to share.
"I've always wanted to. Kiss a girl, I mean."
She tries to keep her voice steady, but it comes out high pitched. "Oh?"
"Yeah, I mean, girls are so pretty. And soft."
She feels Chloe's hands move again, the slightest bit, like she wants to brush them over Aubrey's shoulders but stops herself.
"Don't you think?"
"I…" Aubrey doesn't know how to answer. Sure, she's a tiny bit curious if she's honest. Girls are pretty and girls are soft. But Chloe is her best friend.
"Can we maybe…"
Aubrey's stomach drops before Chloe's even finished the sentence, and she doesn't really know how or why she does it, but she turns her head and lifts her hand to guide Chloe toward her until their lips meet. The motion is quick, the kiss brief. And when they part, Chloe's eyes are wide and her cheeks are pink.
"Oh…" Chloe says, and doesn't say anything else. Her eyes slip to Aubrey's lips and it's like a match to gasoline. Aubrey pulls her in again, and they're moving, an uncoordinated locomotion until Chloe's on her back and Aubrey is above her, on her hands and knees, elbows bent to keep kissing Chloe. The only parts of them that touched. Just their lips. And tongues. And occasionally teeth.
But then something in her brain clicks, waking up after being lulled to sleep by Chloe's breathy sighs: she's making out with her best friend. In bed.
She pulls back abruptly, scrambling backwards, the back of her hand pressed to her mouth. "I...I'm sorry." She literally has no idea what just happened.
Chloe reacts on a delay, finally blinking and saying, "It's okay," while she stares up at the ceiling. "It's totally okay," she says again, slowly sitting up, smoothing her hair that's gotten tousled in the sudden frenzy. And then she's smiling. "Come on, let's go find ice cream."
Aubrey can't really put her finger on what it is that's happening between her and her best friend.
They're closer than ever, and boundary lines are starting to be smudged. When Chloe's bored or lonely, she seeks her out and they inevitably end up making out in a corner or in a chair or, most dangerously, in a bed.
It's the evening that Aubrey's bored, and lonely, and, admittedly, horny, that she's the one that goes looking for Chloe. And she finds her in her room like always, and they've gotten to a point where they don't actually talk about it anymore. It's just a thing they do sometimes.
And it's that evening that Chloe's hand drifts lower than it has before to tug on the button of Aubrey's jeans that the line snaps back into focus and yanks Aubrey onto the original side of it.
"I can't," she says as she pulls away from Chloe abruptly to kneel on the opposite side of the bed.
They stare at each other, both still breathing hard, a reminder of what they were just doing - what they were about to do.
"It's okay," Chloe says, because Chloe always says whatever Aubrey is feeling is okay. Because that's how Chloe is. The nicest and most understanding person Aubrey has ever met.
Aubrey Posen is in her element.
Three years of suffering in Alice's clutches paid off; Aubrey is the captain of her Bellas.
There's one catch - eight of them graduated and the Bellas presently consist of 1) Aubrey Posen and 2) Chloe Beale.
Recruitment sucks, and thanks to her "special moment" at the ICCAs, anyone who would be interested in joining the Bellas now laughs at them.
"This is a travesty!" Chloe sings, and Aubrey feels her frustration, on top of the pile of guilt that comes with it.
Crazily, she considers straying from tradition - out of desperation. At least the girl who self-identifies as Fat Amy can match pitch and has a good personality.
"Oh, what about her?"
Aubrey looks to see who Chloe's pointing to, to see a petite brunette with entirely too many ear piercings.
"I don't know, she looks a little too 'alternative' for us."
The thing is...it's not the ear piercings. Aubrey knows it in her gut. She knows that tone of Chloe's voice. She knows that sparkle in her eye that is only getting brighter by the second as this little gnome keeps talking smack about a cappella. Chloe likes the girl. It's not like Aubrey is blind. The girl is pretty, and even if every word out of her mouth is offending every one of Aubrey's sensibilities, she respects her tenacity. Which only makes the fact that she's….weirdly jealous that much worse.
Because Chloe carries on about this girl for a week after divulging that she literally showered with her because she overheard her singing and she was definitely Bellas material. But she doesn't just carry on about her voice - she carries on about her eyes, too, and after auditions and begrudgingly accepting this 'Beca' as a Bella because the girl can sing and she does fall on the higher end of the attractiveness scale, Chloe starts carrying on about her personality and her kindness and how no one understands Beca like she does.
It might be why, maybe, Aubrey can't stand the girl.
She respects her, but she can't stand her and her antics and her ideas that are really good ideas and no.
"Aubrey, you're too controlling! It's going to ruin all of us!"
She doesn't know how she got to this point. To the point of literally wrestling with her best friend for control that she knows, she knows, she should concede for the greater good. And she hates herself for it, for feeling that repeated sucker punch to the gut every time Chloe has defended Beca to her. Because it was she who put a stop to whatever "it" was that was happening with Chloe last year.
And she can see it happening again. She can recognize the bond that's growing between Chloe and Beca, because it was the same bond she had. Has. But she can see it. This one is different. She can see it in the way Chloe looks at Beca, in a way that suggests Beca's turned her whole world inside out and upside down.
And maybe, just maybe, she wishes Chloe would look at her that way.
But Chloe is her best friend. And she doesn't look at her that way. Because she looks at Beca that way now. And she knows Beca is worthy of it.
"Beca? What do we do?"