A companion piece to The Musical Strings of Fate in the Soulmate Verse

They called her lucky throughout frosh week. It was a name that stuck in her group and haunted her sometimes in the hallways now. Lucky Beca Mitchell. It was often whispered enviously by her acquaintances and her dorm mates. She was lucky for finding her soulmate at the beginning of University; everyone wanted to find their soulmate before the golden ages were over. After twenty-two, it was rumoured the percentage of finding your soulmate dropped down to 45%. Beca didn't really believe that nonsense.

It wasn't that she hated her soulmate or didn't want to be with him. Jesse Swanson was a dork, but she had come to think of him as her dork. He was the optimism and the kindness that she lacked. So yeah, she fell in love with him rather quickly for someone as cynical and messed up as she was. Her parents' divorce had ruined any hopes of her really thinking the soulmate theory worked. They were supposed to be soulmates, but they couldn't be together after twenty years. Jesse gave her hope that they wouldn't turn into her parents.

But she wasn't lucky because she was born with two soulmate marks. And Jesse only had one.

It haunted her in the beginning of their relationship as she wondered if he really needed to know so soon; they had only just found each other after all. And though Beca was many things - sarcastic, noncommittal, cynical, stubborn - she refused to lie to Jesse. She wouldn't keep him in the dark until his inevitable discovery when they had sex. It was a few days after frosh week when she told him. It was that day that she thought she could actually fall in love with him.

"So you have two soulmates?" He couldn't tear his eyes away from the curve of her neck, the dip of her collarbone that led to her second soulmate mark on her shoulder blade.

Beca shrugged, casual and lazy as if his response didn't matter to her, and tugged her shirt back up, "I guess? Someone all-powerful clearly thought it'd be fun to fuck with me."

Jesse stretched his arms over his head and grinned widely at her, "Well then, we'd better start looking for her or him." He tapped his chin with a mischievous glint, "Are you open to online dating?"

"What?"

"You know that app that people swipe left or right and judge you for your looks?"

Beca scoffed with a look that expressed how deranged she thought he was, "You must be fucking joking."

"Sorta, but not really." He replied with a shrug as he leaned his elbows on his leg.

"Why would we look for my second soulmate? And I doubt they're on a dating app."

He chuckled and leaned over to kiss her on the cheek, she had yet to get used to his constant touches, "You think I didn't try to look for you? Went on every dating site in hopes." A thoughtful look crossed his face, "Figures I would get the soulmate who thinks dating sites are stupid. All that time wasted when I could have been watching movies."

It was the mournful look on his face that triggered the thought in her head. It was the obvious regret for something so ridiculous that tugged at the defences around her heart. It was the acceptance that he had for information that would have sent anyone else running that Beca realised she could fall in love with this dork, her dork.

Barely a week since she had found him and Beca couldn't bear the thought of losing him. So when she kissed him, lips pressed roughly against his swallowing his sentence, she wrote it off as simply lust. Not a need to remind herself that he's real, he's here, he hadn't abandoned her.

It was as she suspected: soulmates weren't guaranteed a happy ending. Though she wasn't sure she believed in happy endings, Jesse did, but that was only because he watched too many movies. He even believed in them despite her doubt and her endless attempts to push him away. So her happy ending wasn't guaranteed, nor was it easy and simple. It was fucking difficult.

They fought over almost everything: movies, tv shows, music, people, food, even sleeping arrangements. It was normal for Beca who'd grown up with a need to push people to their limits. And it became her default setting when she had a bad day or she couldn't find the energy to be interested in his movie commentary or she believed she didn't deserve to be happy.

But she learned why the universe had chosen Jesse with his patience and his freely giving heart and his determination to be happy with her, to remind her that it was okay to be happy.

Her close (maybe even best) friend Donald, they'd met in a mutual music class where he'd offered his own snarky comment about the TA and cemented their friendship, never let her forget that she had turned into a disturbing love sick puppy when she was around Jesse. But even he, when they managed to stop arguing or judging others, admitted that her soulmate was good for her. So Beca tried her best not to destroy something good in her life for once.

But despite how much she loved Jesse, the three little words were never said.

He, on the other hand, told her whenever he got the chance - before they fell asleep, in the middle of the day when they were stuck in the library studying, whispered in her ear when she was cooking dinner because Donald and Unicycle were out - and without an expectation to hear it back. Because he didn't need to be told she loved him, he just knew that she did and it was why she thought she could be happy with just him.

It was mid-way through their second year when that nagging thought slipped into her mind. The thought of where her other soulmate might be. But Beca didn't bring it up, not wanting Jesse to think she wasn't happy with him, even if she sometimes dreamt of this other person who she was also meant to be with. It seemed greedy to want both of them.

But then one night when she arrived home in a bad mood and Jesse refused to stop asking what was wrong, Beca broke one of their ground rules.

"I don't fucking need you to nag me. I should just go find my other soulmate, maybe they'd understand when I need fucking space." Beca sneered, lashing out in anger and bitterness that she had stored inside, without thinking.

Jesse froze and stared at her, the silence not bringing any relief but only furthering tension that seemed to crackle with every tick of the clock on the wall, before clambering to his feet, "Right. I see. If that's what you want."

It wasn't what she wanted, but she couldn't speak, she couldn't move, she could only watch as he grabbed his jacket and stalked out of the apartment with his teeth grinding down. Beca opened her mouth to apologise when the door slammed shut and she crumbled to the floor with a broken sob. What the fuck had she done?

Tears crept down her face in silent waves of regret as she clutched her knees to her body. The time blurred passed her, but she remained on the floor unable to find the will to do anything. It was exactly what she expected. She ruined every relationship; her distant mother, her estranged father, her forgotten high school friends and now Jesse, who never seemed to give up on her. Beca gnawed on her chapped lip in an effort to stop the tears and the sobs that were lodged in her throat.

A loud knock filled the dark apartment and Beca hoarsely called out, her eyes bloodshot but dry and her body shivering from the evening chill, "Who is it?"

"Open the fucking door, Mitchell."

She stumbled to her feet and unlocked the door for Donald, who stared at her with a mixture of empathy and frustration. Beca didn't want to deal with him right now and found enough energy to sneer, "You didn't have anything better to do so you came to stare at me?"

"You're in a shit mood," Donald deadpanned as he stepped around her and started rummaging through thei-her fridge, "And you're both idiots."

Beca closed the door and found her mind start to clear with Donald's blunt comments. She could work with this. He slid a simple sandwich to her and leaned against the counter-top with a beer, "You're a bitch."

This was Donald who never backed down no matter how foul or mean she got. So when he called her a bitch, Beca sighed and accepted his harsh judgement because it was true. She regretted it the moment the words left her mouth, but somewhere inside her twisted mind, she thought this might be better for him. Clearly she was a masochist. She nibbled on her sandwich and glanced over at the spot where Jesse's face had frozen in pain, "I hate that I hurt him, but I said it so why should he forgive me?"

"Because he's in love with you. For fuck's sake Mitchell, you know Jesse would jump off a cliff if you asked him. He'd do anything for you, so yeah, he shouldn't forgive your selfish broken ass. But he will." Donald fixed her with a look and stated, "You need to make the effort for once."

After that, Donald left the subject alone and forced her to watch the newest Daredevil episode on Netflix. But the only thing Beca kept thinking about was how she could get Jesse to forgive her, what she could do to be worth forgiveness.

When Donald left her an hour later, Beca waited for Jesse to return, her fingers hovering over her phone for the seventh time, huddled on the couch with only blanket for warmth. It was rare, even in their previous fights, for Jesse not to come home. It was a rule that he insisted on: never go to bed angry. And Beca did it out of her growing affection and respect for him, even if she could remember nights when her mom went to bed long before her dad got home after he had stormed out. Waiting for him in the early hours of the morning, Beca realized why he insisted on resolving fights before the next day. She wanted to be angry at him for not coming home, for not answering his phone to let her know he was safe, but Beca only felt guilt. He left because of her.

"Hey, you've reached Jesse Swanson. Leave a message and I'll get back to you."

"Jesse...I hope you're not lying in a ditch somewhere …" Beca cringed at her default sarcastic response even if her voice lacked any bite, "I j-just needed to t-tell you that I'm...I'm so sorry for w-what I said." Her voice cracked and she swallowed her tears as she tried to find the words, "I...I just …" There were not enough excuses to satisfy the pain she had inflicted on him. She doesn't know what she could possibly say to justify forgiveness. She just wanted him to come home, "I love you Jesse, please come home soon."

She ended the call and curled up beneath the blanket; there was nothing more that she could do. She hoped that this wasn't the end for them.

It took Jesse three days and two hours to forgive her. 74 hours that she spent filling his voicemail with little messages about her day, about what she was doing, about things that she wanted to tell him. Messages that she always ended with those three little words. Words that she hadn't said enough when he was around, words that she had taken for granted. And when he arrived home in time for dinner, he pressed a kiss to her forehead and whispered he loved her too. Beca wasn't naive enough to think that he had forgiven her, but it was the start of something, something stronger.

It took months before Jesse stopped doubting Beca's love for him, doubting the truth of their soulmate marks, doubting that he was worth it.

And despite the aggravation she felt when his insecurities came to light, Beca refused to let him believe that they were meant to be together. And it only took time, small moments during the day that might have seemed insignificant before, that mended the cracks between them.

Six months after she first began to want to find her second soulmate, Beca stumbled onto a young woman icing cupcakes on their kitchen table.

"Uh hey? What's going on here?"

Jesse grinned at her, specks of cupcake dusting his lips, and greeted her with a kiss, "This is Chloe Beale. She's our new neighbour and her plumbing is getting done so I offered her our kitchen to bake in."

She's got red hair and a beaming grin that made Beca a little speechless as she licked frosting off her finger, "You gotta try the chocolate one, it's my best yet.."

"You got to be fucking shitting me, our nextdoor neighbour, could you get more cliche."

Chloe's eyes widened, mimicking the expression frozen on their faces, and dropped the icing pipe on the counter with a loud bang. Both of them had memorized the words inked on her shoulder blade, words that Jesse had wondered the backstory of, and Beca bit her lip in surprise. Their new neighbour was her other soulmate.

"You're my soulmate," Chloe stated with eyes that darted between Jesse and her. It's clear that she assumed Jesse was her soulmate; it's a situation none of them are prepared for.

Jesse recovered first with a quick cough as he rubbed the back of his head and said, "Well I guess we have lots to talk about … No better option than to discuss over cupcakes."

It broke Beca out of her frozen state and she nudged him in the stomach, their actions comfortable and familiar, "If you had your way, you'd live off cupcakes and popcorn."

"Obviously, the best movie snack and the best movie dessert." Jesse retorted looking vaguely affronted.

"Whatever, you say Swanson,"

It was only Chloe's subtle cough that reminded them of the situation they were in. Beca settled, with a mild bush on her cheeks, in the seat opposite Chloe, her blue eyes and red hair such a contrast to Jesse (she decided she liked them both), and tapped on her thigh anxiously. She wasn't sure they'd be able to find a solution and despite Beca's growing interest in Chloe, she wouldn't leave Jesse. Not after all they'd been through.

"So we're both Beca's soulmate?"

There's something lovely about Chloe, a genuine honesty about her that Beca liked a lot, and she reached over to grasp his hand. It grounded her.

Jesse nodded with a slight smile, "Yeah guess that's the case, Beca and I found each other at frosh week in our first year and well, we've been together ever since." He took a cupcake off the drying rack and peeled off the wrapping, "We sort looked for you on tinder, but with no success."

It's a bit of a joke even if they had spent a week on the stupid app. Of course they'd find her other soulmate when they were finally happy and content.

Chloe giggled, as the atmosphere settled into something less tense, and began piping the last few cupcakes, "I tried that for a bit, but it's kinda impossible. I mean from what I understand, the mark indicates the first spoken words said to you in person. So tinder kinda doesn't work."

"It's a stupid app anyway, most people are just looking to hook up." Beca stated with an eyeroll in memory of the idiots who kept messaging her pick up lines.

"But um, so does this mean we're going to try a relationship with the three of us?"

Chloe seemed shocked at the proposal, but Beca was glad Jesse cut right to the chase. They had talked about it before. Jesse only wanted Beca's happiness and if that meant adding another person, well he would be okay with that. But this would be embarking on something that rarely happened or at least what they've heard from the media or people.

Some people had two soulmates, sometimes more, but they rarely maintained a relationship with both. There were many stories that left one person heartbroken. Triads were not normal and they said happiness was possible without your soulmate. It just wasn't what people desired.

And Beca didn't want Chloe to be alone.

"Wow, I didn't expect that, but yes, I want to try."

Somehow the universe gave her two incredibly honest and expressive soulmates. Beca decided to count herself lucky. For the most part.

And that was that. The three of them entered a polyamorous relationship - a term Chloe had explained to them over Thai food and beer - with less strife than expected. It was difficult at first to navigate the relationship, but life kept them busy. Chloe was studying at a nearby culinary school, she wanted to be a baker (Beca would never admit it, but she really liked it when Chloe talked about baking. It really turned her on.), and didn't have much free time. But she came over for dinner every Friday night.

It was difficult for Beca to understand her attraction to Chloe stemmed from lust rather than appreciation for feminine beauty. It was a deep pitted lust that she had only really experienced with Jesse. There must be some truth to those rumours that sex was better with your soulmate. But it wasn't just her physical appearance.

It was the sweet giggle that burst from her lips when she had a little too much to drink, it was the contagious energy that spilled from her every word and her every action, it was the intense focus she had when she baked them something new. Beca had thought falling in love with Jesse was an once in a lifetime experience. But she soon learned that falling in love with Chloe was equally as unique.

The way she always woke up to a exuberant text message. The way she kissed her cheek casually and without a care of how Beca might react. The way she was confident and carefree no matter what she was doing. The way she got along with Jesse as if they had been friends for ages. The way she treated Donald and Unicycle with that same friendliness that Beca had immediately felt safe in. The way she curled around her when they watched a movie (Jesse, on her other side, with his arm around her shoulders) and made her feel safer than she thought possible. The way she planned for their future as if the three of them would always be together. The way she made Beca feel loved, the way she made Jesse feel loved.

And, although Jesse and Chloe weren't in love, they had become best friends by bonding over their love for her. It was more than Beca ever thought possible. And when Donald mocked her for looking like a love sick puppy, Beca simply told him to fuck off.

Happily ever after might never be truly possible for a cynic like her. But for once, Beca felt like she truly deserved to be called Lucky Beca Mitchell.

-The End-

AN: Thanks so much to ICanSeeYourFace for betaing this and betaing my Lilly x Donald stories. She keeps me inspired and always encourages me even when I doubt myself. I would suggest you check out her stories if you like Lilly and Donald, they're amazing. Thanks for reading, I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did writing it.