New Americana

Beca works in a pretty popular club in LA. There's a group of regulars who always come down for karaoke night, she assumes they've all been friends for a while. A concept she's unfamiliar with. She's an elusive DJ and prefers to keep that secret close, to avoid recognition, and to avoid fuelling the group with anymore reason to talk to her. One night the group host a "Welcome Home" event for their friend who's just returned from filming in Hawaii.

Pairing: Beca M/ Chloe B. So AU it's not even funny. I don't own Pitch Perfect.
Disclaimer: I needed a DJ name, that wasn't Beca Mitchell, so her pseudonym is MÔHMΔ (MoMA) bc my AU Beca low-key likes art and rap, also I've had Childish Gambino stuck in my head all day. Sorry, not sorry.

Chapter 1

"Cigarettes and tiny liquor bottles, Just what you'd expect inside her new Balenciaga.
Vile romance, turned dreams into an empire,
Self-made success now she woes with Rockefellers"

BADLANDS

Chapter 1- Her alarm had gone off half an hour ago, blinking and rubbing her eyes, she stretched out in her queen bed. 9.30AM, it read. Beca huffed. She had gotten home from the bar at 3AM last night, and it was her day off, for once she'd like it if she could sleep in. She glanced up around her loft-style house. The sun streaming through her windows that made up the far right side of her bedroom. She hated closing her blinds, she loved to wake up to the sun blanketing her walls and the views of LA, from where her house stood on a hilltop in the pricey suburbs. She had gotten it after she had signed her contract with Residual Heat when she was 20, 3 years ago. She remembers signing the contract that launched her music career and the next day signing the papers for the house with her mom and step-dad, and their realtor at her family home in Calabasas.
It was her first little bit of freedom, she loved her mom and her step dad, but she was finally getting to where she wanted to be. She took the job at the studio, as one of their feature DJ's, but she didn't want all the fame and invasion that came with it. Beca loved her privacy and so the pseudonym she adopted when she had signed on was an extension of herself, wanting to keep her name out of the tabloids. MÔHMΔ was a pretty spur of the moment name, and it hadn't helped that she had lyrics trapped in her head all day.

"my father owned half the MoMA, did it on no diploma"

Every time she had to explain her choice she'd simply just refer people to the Museum of Modern Art and coupled it with a verse from Childish Gambino's track "IV. sweatpants". To be fair, as a child her step-dad would take Beca and her mother on trips to NYC whenever he was attending awards or dinners, and she would always visit the MoMa. Her mom, Karen Rose, formerly Karen Mitchell had re-married after a nasty divorce when Beca was 9 years old. Her step- dad, Dave Rose was a good man, he loved her mom and he loved Beca like his own, he had two sons, both older than Beca from a previous marriage. By the time Karen and Dave had married his sons were 18 and 21 respectively so Beca didn't really grow up resentfully sharing "borrowed parents". Her brothers were awesome, but they both lived in NYC, so she rarely saw them apart from mandatory family events. They were both 32 and 35 now, with their own families and standard 5-9 jobs.

Dave was a Hollywood director, he was nearing his mid-50's and for quite some time had always talked about retirement. But he loved his work too much, it was that passion that had helped Beca pursue her music career. As a child she had, had music lessons since the age of 5 and first started singing at 4 years old. Her parents had nurtured her talents, allowing her to hone them in whichever way she felt like. Beca had taken solo music lessons in guitar and piano until age 16, she had mastered both instruments to the best of her ability, but her true passion lay in mixing. She attended a music academy when she was 16 where she learnt how to cut tracks, and mix music. She would often sing her own verses in the studio, and when she was 19 she took an internship at Residual. Truth be told, her boss was a friend of her step-fathers, they'd worked together scoring a soundtrack for one of his feature films 10 years ago. Beca didn't like hand-outs, and her parents compromise to her finishing her schooling with a high school diploma, and not going through college, was to accept an internship so she could further understand the business she wanted to make a career in. It had worked, Beca spent that year working her ass off as a nobody, one of the 20 other interns in the room waiting for some recognition for an idea. She was never given any special treatment, after all she went by Mitchell. Choosing to keep her fathers last name, and not adopt Dave's last name when her mom has re-married when she was 12.

Warren Mitchell had left Karen and Beca when she was 9. Over a decade ago, Beca grew up for the first few years to resent the man who had ruined her family and left her mom for some step-monster named Sheila. It wasn't until after her mom had re-married that she realised that her mom and dad weren't happy. Sure her dad had broken her mom's heart, cheating on her. But Dave helped give Karen life again when they met. Beca was never fond of Sheila, she was overly controlling and way too uptight. But she and Warren worked together. Beca's dad lived in Baton Rogue as a Literature Professor, he had begged her to attend the college there but he couldn't persuade her. She was set on being a DJ, something Sheila hated, along with her growing disapproval for Beca's many tattoos and and piercings she'd collected since she was 16. But no matter how many jabs at Beca's appearance she would make, Beca just ignored her, not having spent time with her dad and Sheila throughout most of her teen years.

Beca stretched out in her bed and stifled a yawn, she was pretty tired, but the little sleep she had was as good as it was going to get. She rolled out of bed lazily, wearing only her Calvin Klein briefs and an oversized white shirt. Pulling the shirt off, she traded it for a black sports bra, and a pair of black Nike pros. The sun was pretty seasonal out in LA, and Beca decided to go on a morning hike before starting her day. She had always been up with her fitness, opting for her own exercise throughout most of her childhood. She hated team sports, or really any obnoxious girls on the high school teams who would pay more attention to their boyfriends in the stands, or their hair while they played. Her brothers had both played college football, being natural athletes, and being raised in a household where fitness came hand in hand with eating right and helping keep a natural balance, she'd always been fit. These days it was more of a stress relief and time waster. When she was worn out or stuck on a mix she would go on a run or use her home gym to work out her frustrations. She had ended up running the hiking trails behind her block, it was still quite suburban, but there were little creeks that ran through with steep inclines, she checked her phone in her armband, it was 11AM, wiping sweat off of her brow, she decided to finish up the trail and head back to shower and get ready for a day in the studio.

The bathroom mirrors were completely fogged, she'd forgotten to switch the fans on when she'd jumped in, wiping the mirror with her towel, she dried her hair and threw on some sweats and a shirt from one of her old festivals she played at. Going into her home studio; a makeshift soundproof room, with her laptop on the middle of the desk, three 24" computer monitors mounted side by side on the wall above, she pulled out her desk chair and slumped into place. In the room she had her Traktor Controller and MIDI Controller on the left hand side of her laptop, on the right was her keyboard hooked into her mac. On the far right corner of the room she had sectioned off the wall so that she could record her own music with the microphone standing in the corner. Further along the wall she had her first pressed vinyl hanging proudly, it was her first single that she had produced with Residual Heat, two years ago. Since then she hadn't worked on a solo album, instead putting out various mix tapes from her event sets and cutting tracks for other artists. On the other side of the room she had some filing cabinets for music she had written and compartments for USB's holding hundreds of different mixes, on top sat an organiser for her various headphones that she had collected over the years.

Reaching up and grabbing her Monster Beats by Dre, she plugged them into her laptop and began fixing her set for the upcoming weekend. She had basically finished the set list, it was for a home gig, she would be mixing on the strip at a club that was opening Saturday week. The VMA's had just been, and she wanted to add some sneaky tracks into her closing set, including Justin Bieber's new single that the world was going crazy over. Beca could feel her phone buzzing and reached for her phone in the back pocket. The screen flashed with "GAIL", sighing, she swiped the answer button. "It's my day off." Beca said shortly,
"I know, I know, but one of the hostess' has called in sick on the first floor, so we moved Luke from level 2 to cover her section, and we need you front of house on level 2 to cover Luke. Please, Beca? I'm kinda desperate and on the verge of replacing all the staff with robots who can't refuse me." Gail said "Well, what if I had plans?" Beca said "C'mon, I know you don't, besides Amy is working and she said that a certain short-ass had a free weekend with no excuses" "I need to stop speaking to her.."
"Beca, please?" There was a slight pause over the phone, Beca of course had nothing else to do, she just liked to make Gail squirm for a few minutes. Mentally checking that she had finished her set and errands, she sighed into the phone, "what time's the shift start again?"
She could hear the smile on the other end of the phone line, "oh it's 7PM until 2AM, so I'll see you at 6.30, we all know you have no life outside of the bar." Before Beca could hang up on the woman, she heard Gail say something about Amy wanting Beca to hang out after work, but Beca chose to ignore the last part, partly because she hated going out, and also because her liver seemed to be relentlessly unforgiving whenever she and Amy banded together.

Checking her watch, it was just past 5.30, she poured a cup of coffee and grabbed some random snack bar that was lying in her cupboard, she never had time to do groceries, and whenever she did she would buy stuff that wouldn't go off. Also Amy always talked about the Australian LCM bars so she had to keep them around whenever the loud Australian would drunkenly turn up at her door.

Checking over her sets, including a queue for a four hour long set for the next night, which she had agreed to making so that the house DJ at a new Vegas club could have her opening for him virtually instead of her having to catch a flight out. They were pretty big on some new age German-perfection theme, it wasn't her crowd, but the studio had found her the perfect loophole she couldn't refuse. She saved them to an external hard drive that she'd send by courier the next day. The company had their own private service to ensure that they could control hackers and copyright, Beca didn't ask questions really, most of the time she uploaded free mixes to her SoundCloud anyway. She packed away her studio and went up to her room. Her loft style bedroom was at the far end of the house, elevated a meter or so high, her closet and en-suite were behind doors in a corridor beside her room.

She pulled off her shirt and sweats and then rummaged through her drawers to pull out her work 'uniform', tonight she opted for her high waisted black ripped skinny jeans, cut off ankle boots with a heel, and one of her crew shirts. The bar, called "Badlands Emporium", had a simple but in trend design; a round emblem, on the top right side of her shirt, with a white outline of the badlands mountains and the insignia "badlands circa 1992". The team at the bar had three choices if they were one of the girls; a fitted tee shirt, a muscle shirt style tank top or a crop tee. All black, which Beca loved, she normally wore the fitted tee under a jacket but it was currently at the bottom of her laundry hamper. The male staff stUck to a tall tee with rolled up sleeves, black skinnys and all black converse or doc martens of their choice. In Beca's opinion, the bar staff did get the better uniform, she would hate to be a hostess, the mandatory dresses on a daily basis were too much for her to handle. Sure if she had an event she would wear a dress, but not everyday. She was comfortable in her dark makeup and skinny jeans. It projected a general vibe of being unapproachable and she liked that, especially when it came time to close and had to ward off the creeps lurking around the bar still.
Fixing her makeup and adjusting her lower liner and lip gloss, she leaned over the side of her bed to pull up her jacket. Thinking over her actions last night when she had returned home after having a few shots with Amy post-close, she had been a little tipsy, throng her clothiers all over her room.
Pulling the black leather moto jacket on and putting her house keys, wallet, headphones and laptop into her leather backpack, she slings it over her shoulder and grabbed her helmet matte black tinted helmet. Locking up, and setting her alarms beside her front door, Beca turned around after checking she hasn't forgotten anything, and moved automatically to her right, reaching for the handle to the door leading to her garage. Walking through whilst placing her helmet on, she pressed the button on her keychain, activating the switch for the automatic doors that rolled up instantaneously. Walking up to her all black Harley Davidson Street 500, she swings one leg over the body and straddles the bike, pushing the keys into the ignition and starting the engine. Quickly glancing at her phone, it's 6.10PM, she slips it easily into a pocket inside the jacket and kicks off the stand, making her way towards Badlands.

Hey pals, I got sick of having this sitting in my documents, this is 100% going to be Bechloe trash and a multi chapter fic. It's a slow start, but Chloe is in the next chapter, and the rest of the gang. Should I bother continuing with this? Please read and review? I have no idea where this is going but in my head its pretty thrilling.
- Rhi ( catrxonas . tumblr . com)