Beca and Chloe had talked a lot about love. Chloe seemed to have endless ideas and thoughts about the topic, and enjoyed bringing it up in conversation. Chloe was the epitome of love, since she spoke so passionately and was open and available to the people she met and later called her friends. It was mildly intimidating for Beca, who had never been in a relationship let alone have kissed anybody. Chloe wasn't exactly bounding from one man to the next either but she at least never judged, which allowed Beca to feel comfortable enough to be honest with her. Sometimes their other friends made jokes about Beca's love life, but Chloe never did, which is all that really mattered.
Chloe seemed to have all the answers for practically any subject relating to friendships, relationships, and even sex. People asked her for advice and confided in her — it was Chloe, how could you not? She respected people's privacy and answered in an honest way that wasn't harsh. The information also never went anywhere outside of who was asking. And after observing this kind of pattern repeatedly ensue with positive results, Beca began asking Chloe similar types of unconventional questions. Chloe was really the only one she got on that personal of a level. However, she had never asked about love. That was until one day she seemed to spit out the question, taking Chloe completely off guard.
"Have you ever been in love?" The brunette piped up from the silence that fell across Chloe's room as the two cuddled on her bed. Chloe shifted her head against the pillows, furrowing her eyebrows together.
Chloe never expected this kind of question from Beca. She knew she heard correctly what Beca said, but it was almost a little too incredulous. "What?" Chloe asked, prodding for clarification.
"Have you ever… been in love?" Beca sat up from her position against Chloe, gazing down at her housemate from above. "You seem to know enough about it." There was a weird hesitation around "it," as if the word was so foreign to her vocabulary.
"Well..." Chloe began, calculating her words carefully.
The truth was, she has been in love. She was still currently in love – in love with Beca. She had met her freshman year, but knew after a few short weeks that she felt something special for her. She didn't know how to label the attraction initially, just that it made her feel warm and validated in the way her other female friends described about being with their boyfriends. The potential of being into girls that way was also never previously in Chloe's radar. Even though it was becoming more and more acceptable in the 2010s, Chloe didn't know there were options other than heterosexual growing up. Although Beca certainly had changed her perspective on the matter, Chloe still stifled her feelings out of a combination of uncertainty and insecurity. Beca read as someone definitely not into girls, and Chloe knew enough stories where people got weirded out when someone of the same gender had feelings for them. In some instances, even finding out someone was gay caused their surrounding friends to act uneasy or just assume they were getting hit on all the time. It was a mess Chloe wanted to avoid at all costs. She would rather just maintain their insanely close level of friendship than lose Beca entirely, so she kept her seemingly ginormous secret from her for the better part of three years. Even now, it was almost confrontational that Beca now wanted to know about that intimate detail.
"I actually have." Chloe decided to finish, keeping her answer short.
Beca blinked slowly before following up a few moments later. "What's it like?"
Chloe looked away, trying to collect the essays of descriptions she had about love into a concise answer. How do you answer a question about love when the person you love is right in front of you?
"Love is... home. It's a bond that spans beyond comprehension. It's secure, it's... I just knew." Although the answer seemed vague, it was as much honesty as Chloe could muster.
And she really did just know after meeting Beca. Chloe did everything with her – they were inseparable. Every meal, moment between class, and weekend was spent with her feisty acapella companion. When they were together all those times they were cuddly, close, giggly, and just overall hanging on each other. Everyone else assumed they were dating except for the very two people the relationship regarded. When Chloe would sit on campus waiting for Beca, other friends walking nearby would ask: "where's your second half?" When Chloe spent an extended period of time without Beca, she would swirl into a recurrent depression that would rear its ugly head during holiday breaks and vacations. They were just meantto be with each other. Beca and Chloe. Chloe and Beca. It was a staple. It was natural. Everything they did together just screamed more than friends. So of course, Chloe could answer quite easily about love. She knew all the answers and could formulate the beginning of a reply, even without mentioning Beca's name.
"How did you just know?" Beca interrupted Chloe's inner monologue, sporting a sense of innocence that forced Chloe to ease her worries about giving herself away.
"I just... did. It all made sense, I don't know. A lot of people have different meanings of love. I just seemed to know mine when it happened. It was just like, a fact." Chloe met Beca's eyes again, trying to source the meaning of her curiosities.
"I just don't know what it's supposed to be like." Beca admitted in defeat, sinking her shoulders and averting her gaze downwards. "How do I know when I'm in love?"
Chloe wished she had a more absolute answer for Beca, but all she could give was varying sentences that just said how she knew what love was when she came across it.
"You're never, like, taught these things." Beca started up again, fumbling over her thoughts. Chloe understood her confusion; Beca has had no previous relationships to give her any sense of judgment besides Jesse, who she dated for a few weeks before deciding she wanted to stay friends with him. As far as outside sources, television and media were often falsified and Beca's own parents had a messy divorce. None of it was exactly tangible to her.
"I feel like most of the battle is figuring out what it means to you. One day you may just come across it and everything will make sense. It's not something you can seek or define, you'll just realize you've found it." Chloe decided. She knew the fairly interpretive answer may not be freeing enough for Beca, but it was all she could give in words.
"Yeah." Beca finalized, eventually getting off the bed and moving towards the door. She forced a smile on her way out and Chloe let it settle at that, figuring the subject would get brought up again when it was needed.
It was never truly addressed again until a month or so later. The two were in the same cuddling position as they were for the previous conversation, except they were seated in the living room of an empty Bella house. The beginning of the talk mirrored the earlier one: comfortable silence fell across the two until Beca shattered the atmosphere with an interpretive comment.
"You confuse me." She said aloud, peering at the redhead who sat on top of her lap.
"I confuse you?" Chloe cocked her head slightly, trying to decode the crypt of Beca's seemingly random thought.
"Well, yeah," was all Beca could say, obvious that she regretted making her statement since she immediately went quiet and averted Chloe's eye line.
"What does that mean?" Chloe pressed, peering down at the brunette shifting uneasily in the seat.
"I don't know." Beca reported flatly, not contributing much to Chloe's interrogation.
"Beca." Chloe said gently, causing Beca to finally make eye contact. "How do I confuse you?"
Beca seemed to shrivel into herself, becoming a smaller core than her already petite frame. It was uncomfortable on her end, only because she was attempting to express something that made little sense to her.
Beca was able to muster meekly: "Well, when you were talking about love it got me thinking. I knew you were talking about me and you were so sure about it… and I think I feel the same way."
"Wait, seriously?" Chloe managed to squeak out those two words before getting stunned speechless. First, she was confused that Beca was able to figure out who Chloe was indirectly hinting at in their conversation. Beca was smart, but Chloe's answers shouldn't have tipped her off. Second, was this actually happening?
Chloe had dreamed of the day where she and Beca finally realized they had feelings for each other. She previously thought it was impossible, so she let her imagination rule her daydreams to craft an insurmountable count of scenarios where she and Beca started dating or even hooking up. They started once she realized she had feelings for Beca, and they'd occasionally creep from time to time. She originally imagined a wild proclamation in Beca's freshman year dorm, where they'd wildly start making out against the bed before ideas eventually moved to different places in the Bella house. It was entertaining; they were things that would never happen – fantasies by brute definition. She honestly never thought this day would fall into current history.
"Yeah." Beca reciprocated, flashing a timid smile. "I can't really explain it. You just make me feel… different? It's different than what I have with my other best friends."
"Oh." Chloe immediately lit up, beaming a sloppy grin. Everything was so surreal. "So would you… want to date then? Or what exactly do you want to do about it?"
"I guess so?" Beca suggested tenderly, unsure of how to proceed. She didn't even think she would get this far in the conversation. If Chloe didn't bother her for an explanation she easily would have ducked out. "I mean, I may want to talk to someone else about it. You know, talk it out. But yeah."
Chloe easily guessed that Beca was going to call her best friend from high school, seeing as that was Beca's only connect to a close friendship outside of the Bellas. Although the fact normally would make anyone nervous, Chloe didn't mind. In fact, she was actually elated that Beca was going to get a "second opinion." It almost verified their potential relationship. It also meant that Chloe wasn't forcing Beca into something she wasn't ready to start. And the two day time period between their conversation about dating and Beca's first phone call home was probably the best of Chloe's life. When they went shopping and held hands, it felt greater than when they held hands before. It had a sense or purpose to it. It wasn't platonic anymore; it was a profession of trust. Everything they did looked the same as it always did, but Chloe was shining with a different light and felt almost reborn on the inside.
There were still a few topics to address, however, and Chloe brought them up sporadically across their shopping trip and over that weekend. For example, it felt a bit odd to have the sex talk, but it was kind of important to mention. Chloe had her suspicions that Beca was asexual, just from how Beca spoke about relationships. Beca was 21 and didn't care about not having her first kiss, didn't care about the status of her virginity, and didn't chase after any boys that Chloe could see. They had discussed the genre of the ace spectrum in the past, but Beca only ever settled on demisexuality. She was still too reserved to consider anything else, and was largely still attached to "normal" sexualities. Since dating was now on the table, Chloe was prompted to ask Beca the mechanisms of their potential relationship.
"So, would this be an asexual relationship?"
"I mean, I would try it for you." Beca decided after a moment of thinking, saying the word "it" rather than uttering a physical word relating to sex itself.
"I wouldn't want to force you to 'try it' if you didn't want to. We can keep it as an asexual relationship, it's basically what we've had for like three years already." Chloe added. The emotional fulfillment of her time with Beca was enough already, sex didn't have to be added for it to be meaningful.
"We weren't dating though." Beca continued on her same viewpoint on asexuality, framing it as a "term" people liked to use rather than a real identity. Despite the fact their lasting friendship wasn't as platonic as she was led to believe, she carried her stigma hard.
"I know," was all Chloe could say, slightly disappointed in Beca's narrowed thinking. Chloe wasn't going to attempt to have the same Tumblr-described sexuality talk again.
The conversation about dating halted until that evening, after Beca went to video call her friend back home. She took her laptop and charger to another room, and Chloe was left waiting with baited breath. Chloe had spoken with Beca's friend from home several times. She had jumped in on Beca's previous phone calls and she was even friends with her on social media. Her friend from home was nice, but opaque about supporting gay rights. When Beca came back from her call, she said her friend was "neutral, but she shipped it." Chloe took that as a good sign.
"I'm gonna call my dad next." Beca stated matter-of-factly, as if that was on the table the entire time.
Chloe had met Beca's dad a handful of times, but she did not make a good first impression. She was boisterous and loud, attempting to command the group of Bellas during a practice for their choreography. She was also seemingly distracted, but she at least managed to introduce herself. Each time after the first, Chloe's interactions with Mr. Mitchell were polite, but she often held herself back because she sensed an aura of judgment coming from him. She neutered her personality and tried to put on a soft persona, although she occasionally failed miserably. According to Beca, her dad also compared to Chloe to Beca's high school friends. to Beca, this was something of normalcy, but to Chloe it was rather offensive. In all honesty, Chloe was not a fan of him.
"Okay, yeah, go for it." Chloe managed to reply, knowing nothing she could say would change the situation otherwise.
"I don't have to tell him you reciprocated feelings, you know. Just what I feel." Beca added before walking out the door, realizing that Chloe's privacy would be just as broken as Beca's.
"Yeah, I mean, just talk about what you need." Chloe reassured her, even though she was secretly scared shitless.
Although a few hours passed between the first call and the second, Chloe was mainly in a positive mood. Passing your partner's best friend test used to be a huge measure of approval. Especially since Beca would be crossing two milestones, one dating and one dating another woman, Chloe was glad they had some outside support for her.
Whilst the call ensued, Chloe cooked dinner in the house's kitchen. She tried not to eye the clock as much and let time pass naturally. Soon after she finished eating, Beca returned from the other room and sat with her computer at the kitchen table. Her face wasn't the same as before she left, and it looked almost red and troubled.
"So?" Chloe decided to break the silence, hoping for good news.
"My dad doesn't think it's a good idea." Chloe heard, heart sinking into her chest and filling with the weight of a sunken ship. "He says I'm just confused. And that we just have a special friendship." Beca dared to continue, looking at Chloe with a flat expression.
"But… it's not up to him?" Chloe half questioned, sitting in disbelief. It was getting harder and harder to listen to Beca just spew out information, with little thought to her own autonomy. Why does she care about what her dad thinks?
"I don't want to regret not trying…" Beca finally answered, looking towards her feet. "But I don't want to ruin our friendship at all, either."
"Well, why don't we try?"
"Don't we have different needs? I won't be able to satisfy you sexually. You wouldn't be happy." What on earth happened on that phone call.
"Yeah, but I said we didn't have to have a sexual relationship, just a romantic one. Asexual was fine for me." Chloe sputtered, unable to grasp what was unfolding. It was like speaking to a different version of Beca.
"That's not, like, a thing." Beca continued to reiterate this flawed concept of heteronormativity, concentrating on the bizarre effort that atypical was somehow unacceptable. "I don't know, I just don't want to lose our friendship. Wouldn't it be better to keep it how it is now?"
Chloe had nothing else to argue for, seeing that it was a losing battle. "Yeah, probably for the best." It would probably be worse to be in a relationship where someone was miserable or only staying in it out of guilt anyway.
Beca picked up on her melancholic tone and hesitantly asked: "Can we still be the same? Nothing would change?"
"No, yeah, we'll be fine." Chloe couldn't even convince herself otherwise, but it worked for Beca at the moment.
The last glimmer of hope Chloe had died in the kitchen that night, and she slowly started to accept the same odds she bargained for before there was the possibility that she and Beca could date. It only hurt more this time because there was a final answer to the question Chloe always played around with, and that Beca was increasingly more hyperaware of how the two looked like on the outside. The usual jokes Chloe or the other Bellas would crack about Chloe and Beca dating were quickly followed by a harsh "we're not dating," from Beca. Chloe knew they wouldn't date, and they obviously had several conversations about it. But the repetitive reminders hurt exponentially each time they were enforced, and Chloe started to pull back on her affectionate measures.
Chloe spent less time with Beca and instead delved her free time into her studies, since she was actually trying to graduate this year. She spent more time at the library and more time with her classmates doing group study dates and late nights on campus. She increasingly became close with a few students in her major, and quickly found herself hanging out at their house or going to parties with them. It was an escape, if anything, but Chloe couldn't bear to deal with the deafening loss she had been experiencing every time she went back to the Bella house. Chloe's plan was working well for her, but Beca quickly picked up on their lack of time together. It became a topic of frequent arguments, which usually resulted in Beca breaking down crying and Chloe having to reassure Beca that she didn't hate her.
"You don't even say 'I love you' anymore." Beca would sputter between sobbing gasps. Chloe knew she didn't say it, and she stopped on purpose. She wasn't going to live a stifling lie anymore. She couldn't.
"I know, and I'm sorry," was all Chloe could ever say. Beca's breakdowns would occur several times a week, and Chloe easily ran out of new things to say that wouldn't blatantly admit that she was pulling back.
"You don't even hug me anymore." Beca would also challenge, knowing that Chloe was the one who actually loved hugging and affection. Chloe pretty much converted Beca to be a hugger; Chloe was constantly infringing onto people's personal space, so it was inevitable that all of Chloe's friend's would have to be huggers too.
"I know, and I'm sorry," Chloe would repeat, unsure of what else to add to the conversation. She didn't want to say that she'd start doing it again because she honestly didn't want to get back into those old habits. She didn't want to be part of the dating façade that had consumed almost three years of her time and attention when she could have found someone who actually cared for her in the way that she cared for everyone else.
"Why? Why have you been doing this? You choose them over me now." Beca indirectly referred to the new friends Chloe had made from her classes; ones that Beca saw her texting or hanging out with constantly.
"It's not a matter of who I like more, it's not like that." Chloe tried to reassure Beca, since she still hung out with the small brunette at the house.
Beca's immaturity exponentially grew, as her reasons became more and more insecure and convoluted. "You don't even hang out with me anymore."
"Because I can't keep acting like your fake girlfriend!" Chloe lost it and spat out, sternly raising her voice over Beca's crying. "We've put on this charade for like, three years now! Everyone thought we were dating. We acted like we were dating. I can't keep pretending to do all that shit. It's wasted so much of those years. I can't keep pretending to be your girlfriend if you'll never grant me that title." She finished, finally stating all of her building thoughts across the last few weeks out loud. It almost felt like a purge, or an appendectomy. It fucking hurt, but it was out and gone now.
"Okay, fine." Beca almost whispered, moving to leave the room to which they were arguing. Chloe let her go without as much of a hindrance.
A month passed. Things weren't great, but they were still friends. At least, they were still talking. Living in the same house certainly enforced that, and having mutual friends brought them together during events. But it was not fine and dandy, and clearly a lot less gay. So when the semester ended and summer came around, everything ultimately came to a stand still. Chloe got an internship at an animal hospital, and Beca got an internship at a small music management firm. A couple of the Bellas also stayed around for summer, so the Bella house was still populated at times. Although Chloe's physical room and furniture were still in the house, she didn't sleep there. She ended up crashing on the pull-out couch of the living room that belonged to the friend she met in her major. Every now and then she would come home to do laundry and swap out clothes, but she'd always leave with a duffel bag full of stuff and not return for another week or two. Beca tried to reach out to her once, inviting her to come back home to hang out and bake. Chloe didn't answer. She was too busy sharing the pull-out couch with another girl, one who could actually tell the world that they were together.