A/N: I don't have anything to say but I want to consistently have author's notes sooo...take this *thrusts Bechloe at you*
New year, new school. Beca was all too familiar with that way of life. She hadn't been registered at the same school for more than one year since she was eight years old. This was due to her father's job: he was an author. Writing is an occupation that doesn't, in fact, require you to move around that much, but it gave him an insatiable sense of wanderlust. With Beca and her dad being a family of their own, it was pretty easy to pick up everything and relocate to another city. So Beca found herself being dragged off on a "new adventure" with him come every August. It had never been hard for her to start anew.
New year, new school. Chloe had no concept of this at all. When she was five years old, her parents sent her to private school. She had attended that very school until her graduation that past June, with the same 70 kids she'd grown up with. Her parents had lived in the same house for 25 years now, and it was all she knew. She had never even been on vacation without them and her brother. Now, she was the first Beale child to leave the nest, and she had no idea what to expect. She was out there on her own, in Atlanta all alone. She had almost forgotten how to meet new people.
When Beca and Chloe came face to face in their dormitory, they didn't know what to make of each other.
"Hi," Chloe greeted the alternative-looking girl.
Beca squinted her heavily lined eyes at the brightness of the redhead's pearly white smile. Those blue eyes seemed too clear, too innocent to be real. What was this majestic creature standing in front of her? "Hi," Beca responded.
"You must be Beca," continued Chloe, setting down her duffel bag on the bed unclaimed by her new roommate. "I'm Chloe." She extended a manicured hand and Beca took it hesitantly.
"Pleasure," she said dryly.
Chloe felt her heartbeat quicken, and her palms started to sweat. She wiped them hastily on her blue dress. This was not going well. She'd practiced this conversation so many times in her head on the bus ride here, but this girl didn't seem to be receptive to anything she said. She searched for something she could use to connect them.
Then she noticed it. A small inscription on the inside of Beca's arm. "Oh my gosh, you have a bug tattoo? I have a bug tattoo!" Chloe squealed, flashing Beca her right wrist. Sure enough, there was a tiny red ladybug inked there, to complement Beca's grasshopper.
Beca raised an eyebrow, impressed that this girl, who looked so sheltered, was daring enough to go under the needle. "That's…pretty sweet," she admitted.
"Thanks!" Chloe grinned again, reassured that she and Beca would get along well. "I got it in July for my eighteenth birthday. How about you?"
"Same, actually, but in March," Beca said.
"Awesome." Chloe's phone started buzzing in her back pocket, and she jumped. She pulled it out and glanced at the number on the screen. "Oh, sorry about that," she said to Beca. "It's my dad making sure I got here all right; I should probably go take this." Beca nodded once. Chloe stepped out into the hallway, then peeked her head back into the room. "Do you wanna, uh, grab lunch later?"
"Sounds great," Beca said. When Chloe was once again out of view, Beca kicked her plaid clad legs up onto the mass of pillows she brought with her and lied back on her bed. Four years in a bed like this was something she could get used to.
"So, what classes are you taking?" Chloe asked Beca as they each grabbed a slice of pizza.
"Um, let's see…" Beca glanced down at her schedule. "English, Spanish, Multivariable Calculus, Theatre…yeah, that's it for this semester."
"OMG, you're a theatre girl?" Chloe exclaimed. Beca couldn't believe her roommate was someone who said "OMG" in a non-ironic way. "I am too!" continued Chloe. "I would never have pegged you for a theatre girl."
"Well…I am," Beca said with an awkward chuckle.
"You wouldn't happen to be taking the Full Production course, would you?"
Beca glanced down again. "It appears I am."
"Yay!" Chloe now glanced at Beca's schedule. "Looks like we're together."
Yay, Beca thought sarcastically. Because living with her would definitely not be enough time spent with her.
They sat down at table in the dining hall and each took first bites of their pizza. "Mmm!" Beca mumbled, surprised. "This is really good. The food at my school last year was total shit, though, so I guess it's not hard to beat."
Chloe laughed. "My school had pretty good food," she said with a shrug.
"You're kidding right?" Beca asked incredulously. "Public schools have good food, like, zero percent of the time."
"Didn't go to public school." Chloe smirked. The expression probably should've made her look like a smartass, but it actually just made her look really darling. And that was not a word Beca used to describe people. Ever. A strand of wavy red hair slipped from behind Chloe's ear, and she brushed it over to the other side of her head. She scrunched up her face cutely, and Beca suppressed an eye roll.
"Wow, a private school girl with a tattoo?" Beca said instead. "Impressive."
"Yeah, I guess. My parents wanted me to let go and be myself before I left for school, or something like that."
"Scandalous," Beca said, deadpanning like crazy. Would this be what she was like around Chloe all the time?
"I thought it was, at the time," Chloe said, ripping off another piece of pepperoni with her teeth. "Honestly, though, I've seen a lot more badass people since setting foot in Barden than I did for the last eighteen years." And that's, like, five, Chloe said in her head, not wanting to sound totally lame.
Beca scoffed at this. "I've met a lot of people in my lifetime, and compared to most places I've lived, Georgia is pretty tame."
Chloe raised her eyebrows. "You've lived a lot of places, then?" she assumed.
Shit, Beca thought. So much for keeping that to myself. Smooth, Bec. "Something like that," she said cryptically.
Chloe frowned. "Why won't you tell me anything about yourself, Beca? We're gonna be living together for the next year at least, so we might as well get to know each other."
"All in good time," Beca replied. She went to pick up her pizza again, only to discover she had already taken the last bite without noticing.
Seeing this, Chloe ripped what was left of her slice in half. "Here, take it," she said, thrusting it at Beca.
Beca stared at it for a moment, unsure of how to react. But she took it, eventually. It was a nice gesture, and some damn good pizza. Beca wasn't so used to people being nice to her.
Chloe smiled to herself at the peaceful nomming sounds Beca was making over the slice. Maybe she hadn't forgotten how to meet people, after all.
After lunch, Chloe had of course wanted to go meet her fellow incoming freshman, true to her newly hatched social butterfly form. So Beca left her to mingle in the dining hall and walked back to her dorm alone. "Hey, gorgeous!" a random guy called. She tried to ignore him, but he jogged after her.
"I'm Jesse," he said to her back. She was having difficulty walking fast enough to shake him off. "Jesse Swanson."
"Uh-huh," Beca said, not slowing down.
Finally, he did catch up, latching onto her right shoulder to pull himself next to her. "You sure are a sight for sore eyes," he said. "Are you a freshman?"
"Uh-huh," Beca repeated.
"Sweet, me too. Those are some really nice ear spikes you have there."
"Thanks," Beca said, trying to convey without saying it that she really wanted him to fuck off.
"So, uh, how would you feel about going out sometime? I can give you my-"
Beca cut Jesse off. "Hey, so you seem to not be getting the message that I'm not interested, so I'll try to make it more clear: I'm not interested."
The Jesse guy nodded slowly, deterred. "Well, it was nice meeting you," he said. "Maybe I'll see you around." He jogged off to rejoin his jeering group of pals.
"Goddammit," Beca cursed under her breath. "Why do the guys have to hit on me?"
Beca had never come out as a lesbian to her dad, but she was pretty sure he knew. It was never something they had talked openly about – hell, they didn't really talk about anything these days, with his nose always in a manuscript – but she figured she had been pretty obvious about it. Although she didn't consider herself particularly attractive, she thought she probably would've been able to rein in some boys if she so chose. The fact that she never did said enough.
She figured now, going to college, would be a time where she was very likely to lose that side of herself, and she didn't want that to happen. It was all too easy for her, a girl who loved nothing more than acting, to put on a false persona and fake her way through the year with some sleazy guys by her side. But at Barden, she really wanted to be herself. And it was turning out to be really hard.
She could tell Chloe, of course. It wasn't too late to ditch the mysteriousness and be a real human being. But she didn't think she would. Throughout their conversations that day, Beca had found out that Chloe was Alabama born and raised. That was even worse than Georgia when it came to LGBT recognition. Beca decided to save herself and her new acquaintance from that discussion.
Upon arrival back at Baker Hall, where her dorm was (or at least she thought it was), Beca found herself completely disoriented and discombobulated. She stared at the door for a moment, thinking that it didn't look like the door she'd gone through when she got there that morning. She didn't really have a better idea than to walk through it, though, and she had already been making friends with this door for far longer than a normal person would. So she entered.
Beca stepped into a room that looked a whole lot like the common area near her dorm, but she was pretty sure it wasn't. She wasn't one for recognizing people, at least not yet, but she recognized the furniture. She'd definitely vegged out on a blue couch earlier. These couches were all green.
She then realized that all ten pairs of eyes occupying this common area were on her. Beca froze. She hated having groups of people focused on her and only her. This was why she always rigged her play auditions so she wouldn't end up with a role involving a solo. "Uhh," Beca said.
A blonde girl stood up from her seat on the couch. She seemed to be the main attraction of the group, or at least she presented herself that way. "Are you a freshman?" she asked kindly. Beca nodded nervously. "I'm Aubrey Posen, and I'm a junior. You are?"
"Beca," Beca replied. Goddammit, why does everyone want to meet me today?
"I'll help you find your dorm. Assuming that's what you're looking for," she said. Beca nodded again. "Back in a flash, guys," she said to the other girls gathered around her. They all looked pretty lost when she stepped out of the circle.
As Aubrey guided Beca back out of her favorite door, she inquired, "You wouldn't happen to be Beca Mitchell, would you?"
Beca was taken aback. "I might be," she replied. She was still trying to get over the overwhelming sense of authority the blonde exuded, so the words came out sounding less cocky than genuinely confused. The point got across, though.
"I think I saw your name on my class list. Full Prod?" Beca was once again reduced to nodding. "I'm the TA. Welcome! Also, no, I don't actually live in that dorm, I was just hanging out with some of my new students. They're all really cool, you'll meet them this week. The dorms are cool, too, but after last year I figured moving out and getting a place of my own was best for me."
"Do you live by yourself?" Beca asked. She was normally not one to inquire about anyone's personal business to any extent, but she wanted to keep the conversation off herself as much as possible.
"At the moment I do, but sooner or later I'll be drowning in rent, so I'm looking to find a roommate or two to share the load." Beca didn't know how to continue the conversation from there, but Aubrey saved her. "And you have a roommate, I assume?"
"Oh, yeah, yes," Beca jumped in. "Her name's Chloe. Chloe Beale, I think? She's in our class, too. Very…happy."
Aubrey looked amused, lifting her perfectly shaped eyebrows. "You say happy like it's a bad thing."
Beca only shrugged. "Sometimes. Sometimes not."
They had arrived at the correct dorm, which turned out to be a building around the corner from the one Beca had entered, and out of sight a little ways down the hill. Aubrey stood there looking at Beca, and Beca stood there looking at Aubrey. Aubrey pursed her perfect lips, which were painted hot pink to match her smart-looking collared dress, as if she were waiting for Beca to do something. Beca couldn't help but stare at them. Finally Aubrey gestured at the scanner to the right of Beca. "You need to swipe your key," she informed her.
"Ah." Beca nodded once, shaking herself out of her trance, dismayed that she once again looked like an idiot, and swished her key card by the sensor. The little machine let out one high pitched beep, and the light turned green. Upon hearing the door click unlocked, Aubrey opened it and allowed Beca inside.
"It was nice meeting you, Beca," Aubrey said, not following Beca through the door. "I'll see you on Wednesday, okay? And you're always welcome to come hang out with us theatre nerds in Flynn Hall."
Beca gave a little half smile at this. As much as she wanted to be aloof, it was always nice to be welcome. That had only happened on the first day at like…two out of the ten schools she had attended. "Thanks…Aubrey, was it?" she said.
"Mhmm. You can call me Bree, if you want, though."
"Cool," said Beca. "See you around, Bree."
"You too."
After an hour or two of Beca lying on her bed and messing around on her laptop, Chloe knocked on the door. Beca heard her say goodbye to a new friend outside. "Come in!" Beca shouted. Chloe came in.
"Hey, Becs," she greeted Beca.
"People don't c- oh, oh well."
"Whatcha been up to?" She plopped down on Beca's bed in front of her, legs crisscross applesauce, eyes earnestly wide. Beca was wary. This girl seemed genuinely interested on the nothing Beca had been doing for the afternoon. With a bite of her lip, she evaluated whether this was real, or really good acting.
"Nothing," she said at first.
"Oh, come on. You had to have been doing something."
This couldn't be acting, Beca thought. There's no sign of falsity in her eyes. I can't even do that, and I've been faking everything for the past ten years, practically. So she answered. "I got lost after lunch, and ended up at the wrong dorm, but I met our exceptionally beautiful drama TA, Aubrey." Exceptionally beautiful? Beca, what are you doing?
"That's cool. I like the name Aubrey." Beca nodded in agreement. Chloe continued, "I met a girl named Stacie, who's also in our drama class. She's, like, supermodel tall. It's funny, we keep running into people from theatre, but not any other class. We must be drawn to each other or something. Ha ha ha!"
"Ha ha ha," said Beca, wishing the redhead would relocate to anywhere besides her bed. But it just got worse.
Chloe scooted up and lied down beside Beca. They were both staring at the ceiling, which didn't make Beca too uncomfortable. Then Chloe turned her head so her mouth was fractions of an inch from Beca's face. "You know, I'm so glad we became roommates. I think that we're gonna be really fast friends."
"I'm sure," Beca said, scooting a few inches over until her body was flush with the wall. She could feel Chloe's silky hair brush her skin as she nodded enthusiastically. Today was a day of excessive nodding for everyone, so it appeared.
Just as fast as Chloe lied down, she sat back up again. She had as much energy as a six year old. "So what do you want to do now?" she asked.
Beca groaned. "Do we have to do something? I was thoroughly enjoying my time here on my bed."
"Well…do you want to stay here and bond?"
Beca scowled, but luckily Chloe couldn't see her, since her face was to the wall. She knew she couldn't hold back from Chloe forever. It was weird – she'd been able to avoid any of her past school friends knowing overly much about her for a whole school year. Chloe's vibe made it impossible to last more than a day. That was unsettling, to say the least.
Chloe wondered what Beca was thinking about after she asked the question. She herself wasn't sure what she could expecting from an evening of bonding with Beca. It could be a lot of her babbling and Beca giving one word responses, an awkward silence, and repeat. But she was intrigued by the dark and elusive girl. Maybe she wouldn't totally fill the hole left by her friends of 13 years from back home, but it wouldn't hurt to try.
Beca came to the same conclusion: it wouldn't hurt to try. "Sure," she responded, albeit indifferently. "Let's bond."
"Awesome!" said Chloe, bouncing up and down, again reminiscent of a six year old. Beca knew she was in for a long night, but she couldn't help but smile. Yes, she decided, she could get used to a place like this.
