Beca Mitchell had never been a good kid. She'd had the occasional high grade in some obscure subject and even once a few-week-long brief flash of popularity in her second year of high school, but nothing better. No awards, or personal congratulations from teachers. No scholarship offers or awe-struck looks from fellow students when she excelled in every class. No recognition, or encouragement, or proud report cards to flaunt to her parents.
It wasn't because she was stupid though, no. It was because she didn't have the time to study, concentration to focus, or the support needed to motivate her. She'd spend most of the night looking and cleaning up after her mother, sometimes either adding to a mix or jotting down the occasional song lyric with it's accompanting chord progressions, and the rest trying to sleep at night while frequently checking her mother hadn't choked on her own vomit while she slept. She'd then skip her first period in the morning and nap in a park somewhere, then attend most of her other classes running on a maximum of five hours sleep. She was simply too tired or distracted to pay attention, always dreading going home to her self-absorbed mother, preparing herself to avoid her mother's asshole of a boyfriend, and constantly worrying about whether she'd have enough money to afford dinner that day or if her mother had blown it all on cheap spirits.
The stress had led to her not even turning up to most of her tests, never even considering doing homework, and being too anti-social and pressured to care for making friends with the other girls in her year who had a happy family that would greet them home every day and ask them how their day was; not whether they could go out and buy beer for them. And having poor grades, no friends and a lacking home life usually meant one thing for any moody teenager; rebellion.
And so, throughout most of her middle school experience and all of her high school life, Beca was branded a trouble maker. Prone to starting fights and likely to win them - which helped in some ways, actually; being short, distanced and having a pathetic excuse for a mother made her a target to bullies, but when everyone saw her deck a guy three years her senior unconscious with a single left hook halfway through her first year at high school? Yeah, that scared away any potential bullies.
Downside: it scared away all the nice possible-friends too.
Not that Beca needed them, yet she'll admit - never out loud - that having a voice of reason or a hand to hold throughout her teenaged years might have made it easier to cope, but she managed, and came out the other end safe in the knowledge that other people aren't necessary, nor wanted. She was branded both by herself and the public the definition of poor parenting, fine-lined with defense mechanisms, and so had come to accept - and even embrace - loneliness. She hadn't ever needed anyone or anything but herself and her music, and nothing could change that.
But then the notoriously isolated badass Beca Mitchell met Chloe Beale.
And everything went to shit.
Beca had met her at Barden University, the activity fair, actually, having been forced to attend by her father who had finally re-entered her life - along with his new perfect wife and polished, annoyingly smart son - taken one look at her low grades, poor reputation and excessive eye-liner, and had almost instantly enrolled her into college.
See, that was great and all, but Beca didn't actually want to go to college. The original plan was to save up enough money over the course of a few years, and then get the hell out and move to L.A. the second she had the cash for it. Sure, it would have been hard and stressful, and she'd have to leave her mother alone with that over-bearing asshole, but she'd be free, and God knew she'd done all she could for her mother. She would have found a steady minimum-wage job, then an internship, and eventually she'd be making a sustained amount while producing music. Far-fetched? Definitely. Possible? Fuck yes. She would do it, being the stubborn asshole she was, and maybe send her mother some cash every few months.
But then a few days after Beca's 18th birthday her mother attained severe alcohol poisoning that she left unattended until she passed out in a club bathroom, choked on her own vomit during a seizure and died alone in a puddle of her own bile in the early hours of Sunday morning with a bottle still clasped in her stiffening fingers. She was found hours after death by the cleaner who had been late to work and behind schedule. The neighbours sent flowers, the club owners posted a statement, her mother's boyfriend up and dissapeared, and all of a sudden Beca was homeless (the apartment had been months behind on rent), broke (her mother had nothing and Beca had lost her job a few weeks before) and with no one legally obligated - or willing - to take her in.
Well, cue her estranged father who hadn't attempted contact with her for nine years to swoop in to the rescue, offering a free college education (thanks to a ridiculously over-rated job) and a place to crash if it was necessary. Which, while it wasn't something Beca had ever originally planned on, was the only method she had of finding a place to stay that was surrounded by both coffee shops and clubs - let's be honest, it's a university, when the students aren't studying, they're either getting drunk or mastering the art of one-night stands - that would hopefully have some job vacancies given the new acedemic year. Beca could maintain a temporary dorm and a stable-ish job until she had enough money to leave for L.A. and never look back.
With the only downsides being attending school without any obligation to - most of the time - and occasionally having to sustain a somewhat pleasant conversation with her asshole of a father, his bitchy wife and his snobby kid.
Beca could just manage the whole 'pretend-to-be-a-family' thing, but the part that involved turning up to class everyday for at least a year?
No chance.
She had figured, 'hey, I just need to pretend to work and then I'll be out of here the second the opportunity arrives, no harm done, right?' and planned to barely scrape by every test yet still hold a place in the university just in case she had to stay longer than a year.
But her father - despite not knowing the first thing about her - wasn't entirely confused by Beca's pessimistic, sometimes sneaky way of thinking, and so realised almost instantly that the only way he could get her to graduate after she did all of her years was by getting her to enjoy it.
But then we remember that Arthur Mitchell is still mostly confused by Beca's moods and doesn't know the first thing about her when he demands that she join a club or he'll retract his last minute recommendation to his boss that allowed Beca entry in the first place.
Join a club.
Beca had laughed so much when he had said those three words to her the first time that she had briefly stopped breathing, and was thankful of her water-proof mascara when she started crying because - God - that was hilarious.
Beca Mitchell, Queen of attitude, isolation and quick sarcastic remarks, join a club? With other people? Heck, it was ridiculous, but her father, being the stubborn ass he was, just told her that 'that's the deal, take it or leave it'. She had shaken his hand with tears of amusement still streaking down her face.
But then a shower, an overly-confident redhead and an obnoxiously catchy song happened, and all of those 'I-don't-do-friendship-ever' morals flew right out the window.
Along with Beca's refusal to join a club.
XXXXXXXXXX
Chloe Beale was always a touchy person. From a young age, most of her communication revolved around physical contact, and it had helped create a fun-loving and considerate demeanor; one that she had become famous for amongst her friends. Everyone knew, if you had a problem; Chloe would understand. She was generous, understanding and comforting, yet never annoying or pressurizing. The definition of a good friend, and she had unwittingly earned every compliment she got by helping someone in their time of need. She didn't do it on purpose, she had just always been prone to supporting others.
She had been popular in high school - a cheerleader - but not in a bitchy, manipulative way; no, she was simply too likeable for people to stay away from her. She was smart too, passionate about every subject no matter it's importance, and had always been a hardworker with a tendency to overstress in exam week - not as much as her best-friend Aubrey though, just enough to be noticeablly slightly more jittery as she revised frequently. She got along with teachers and students alike, as well as having tight and unique bonds with each member of her closely-knit family, who had been reinforcing her compassion from birth.
Sure, sometimes her innocence made her vulnerable, and she'd had her fair share of heartbreak from both boys and girls alike, but her persistent optimism (and Aubrey hunting them down) always won out, and a smooth recovery was made over a few days of binge-watching Netflix and eating Ben and Jerry's with her previously mentioned best-friend.
Her kindness had quickly attracted a new horde of friends when she attended Barden, which was no suprise, and soon enough she had a stable relationship with a good guy - Tom - and a respected position in the Barden Bellas.
She was, to sum it up, the complete opposite of someone like Beca Mitchell, their only common interest really being music, and so almost no-one could even comprehend that the lazy alt-girl and the popular Bella's Captain would become friends.
And exactly zero percent of people (Beca and Chloe included) predicted any kind of non-platonic, slightly sexual, bordering on love feelings to spring to life amongst and between the unlikely pair.
But opposites attract, and that's how Chloe Beale found herself lying naked in Beca Mitchell's bed on a Saturday morning, unable to think straight through her horrific hangover and barely able to remember anything other than alcohol and partying alongside her super-hot friend the night before.
Yeah, she was fucked.
XXXXXXXXXX
Chloe had been awake for at least an hour now - she thinks - and has honestly no idea what to do.
She had woken up in a familiar bed, one that she had slept in before, but not when stark naked and too hungover to remember any of the events of the previous night. She had been able to recognise the room fairly quickly, what with the closet half open and recognisable shades of plaid escaping through the gap, the laptop and accompanying headphones resting superiorly on top of a wooden desk pushed against the wall to her left, and a worn acoustic guitar that Chloe was yet to hear Beca play, but knew was in good use due to the noticeable lack of dust and constant shine to the frame sidling up alongside the closed door. The band posters tacked messily to the walls, Beca's favourite leather jacket discarded on the floor, an endless array of CD's ranging from '90's rock to more modern punk to trending albums and even a few blank discs that Beca had to sometimes use to store mixes on whenever she - God forbid - lost her USBs lining the shelves, and even the small - but impressive - vinyl collection stacked against the end of her bed.
Beca's room.
And Beca's bed.
That Chloe had obviously had sex in the night before with Beca.
Crap.
Chloe Beale, was, as previously mentioned, a generously outspoken girl, and so when she thought something, she spoke her mind. And, had she known for sure that anything more than completely platonic, best-friend love was tensing the air around her and Beca, she would have confronted the issue head-on, sat down with the plaid wearing brunette and discussed at length her feelings.
However, Chloe's thoughts didn't always make sense, and trying to differ between the 'friend' vibes and the 'I-might-secretely-want-to-have-sex-with-you' vibes was harder than it sounded, and so she always stopped herself from confessing her attraction (love?) last minute, simply because she doubted herself and, more significantly, Beca's feelings.
Because, sure, it could be the start of their happily-ever-after like in Shrek only they would play less clichè music - Chloe knows 'I'm A Believer' still reigns as spot 4 of Beca's top 10 most hated songs - and they could graduate college and move in together and live beautiful lives together and be happy.
But Chloe could also be misinterpreting her purely friendship-related emotions and make a mess of their team by disrupting the Bellas with a poorly structured partnership built off of weak, unsure structures of half-hearted attraction.
And so the redhead had chosen to carefully analyse her reactions to the brunette and work out what the heck she was feeling everytime Beca bought that strange, obscure tea that only Chloe liked, or pretend she didn't notice when her best friend not so subtly stole her hoodies or let the older woman force her into watching Titanic for the millionth time just for the fun of it, with hopes that eventually she would come to a clear conclusion.
(Besides, even if it was a romantic attachment that had formed, her fore-mentioned best friend would never like her back, especially after having only broken of her relationship with Jesse four months ago for reasons Chloe still didn't know.)
But the curse of being a lightweight struck yet again, and so her mind couldn't stay on par with her intoxicated body and tell her to stop grinding on Beca in the middle of the dance floor and to not make-out with her on the way home. And now she was completely naked alongside Beca in her best-friend/possible love interest's bed.
She had to chill with the tequila next time.
Really, that stuff destroyed her thought process (see the week after freshman year finals for more specific references).
She also had to stop ogling her sleeping best friend, but subtly staring at Beca was nothing new, and so she wasn't stopoing anytime soon. Besides, Beca was adorable when she slept, and so no-one could blame her.
The DJ was sprawled on her back, the bed sheets dipping dangerously low down her chest and her hair mused in a similar fashion to Chloe's that seemed to blatantly scream 'Just Had Sex!'. She had slept on Chloe's right, with her left arm stretching under the pillow her head rested on and the other limb flung off of the edge of the bed, sustaining an awkward looking angle that would no doubt be stiffening her elbow from the moment she woke up. Her lips were parted slightly as she lightly hummed out deep breaths and, despite the absent-minded twitching of her eyebrows, it was probably the calmest she ever was.
The fact that Chloe had been gazing at her for such a time that her breathing had subconsciously adjusted to parallel the sleeping woman's wasn't lost on her, and so, once she caught a glimpse of the retro-looking, digital clock beside the bed and gave her hungover brain a moment to do the mental maths, she forced herself to look away because, no. She was not going to stare for another whole 16 minutes at her unconscious best-friend.
And, just her luck, said best-friend chose that exact moment to open her eyes, do a double-take so comedically visible in the excessive blinking and slightly gaping mouth that in any other situation Chloe would have laughed, before pointedly staring the redhead dead in the eye.
"Dude. What the actual fuck?"
XXXXXXXXXX
Beca had woken up in weird situations before. Once in freshman year she awoke to find Kimmy-Jin burning origami paper dolls at 3 am angled so all the smoke would pass out through the open window while chanting inaudibly under her breath. Thrice last year she had been startled out of her sleep by Fat Amy, her roommate (at the time), engaging in noticeably sexual acts with at least one man. Another time she had slept overnight in her highschool bathroom, simply because she skipped last period to nap in a stall, and didn't wake up till about 4 am the next day (how the cleaners didn't find her she would never know). Heck, she'd even slept two nights in a row out on the street, sharing a sleeping bag with this random woman (who Beca's pretty sure groped her in her sleep), before returning home.
But she'd never woken up to a clearly naked (a sarcastic applause for the sheets that were way too far down the redhead's chest to cover what should be covered) Chloe Beale staring at her with an almost unnerving intensity and unfairly attractive bed-hair grazing the pillow her arms were elevating her away from.
And it was both a beautiful, serene sight to see first thing Saturday morning that perfectly aided the recovery of an atrocious hangover, the likes of which Beca was feeling in full force, and also a terrifying thing that made her heart perform a fully-fledged, gold-medal deserving, Olympic level gymnastic routine that triggered a wild chorus from the chrowd (also known as Beca's brain) that translated to:
'WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK HOLY SHIT FUCK FUCK MOTHER OF FUCK',
and repeated a healthy (not really) number of times in her pounding head.
"What the actual fuck?", was actually a pretty reasonable response (in Beca's opinion) to waking up to a gorgeous, nude redhead who happened to be both a best-friend and an unknowing victim of Beca's unrequited attraction.
(Not love, Beca hadn't let go of all of her self-control over the years by Chloe's side).
And for a few seconds Chloe appeared to freeze, and for a second Beca freakin' prayed that she was experiencing as much of a total mind-fuck as Beca was right now, but she probably wasn't because a moment later she grinned this smile and Beca was reminded that, 'hey, not everyone is as emotionally stunted as you', and so of course this was no issue for the goddess hovering beside her.
For Beca though, this was mind-fuck multiplied by a hundred. Thousand.
In fact, her current thought process revolved around the words 'Chloe', 'Bed' and, a favourite of Beca's, 'Fuck' - as in both 'Fuck, I may have drunkenly had sex with Chloe in my bed', and also in it's more common form 'FuCk FucK fUcK FuCK fUCk FUCKKK'.
But maybe Beca was just being stupid, right? Maybe she was over-reacting. She was a solitary person, remember? That meant she didn't understand the whole 'friendship' thing. Heck, maybe girls regularly had sex with their best-friends and laughed it off, even if they were desperately in love - no, desperately attracted to said best-friend.
Yeah, maybe Beca was being stupid. It was cool, right? Cool.
Cool.
"Mornin' Becs."
Holy fucking shit nothing was cool.
Chloe's voice was practically sex itself, and was all husky from the combination of sleep and, the elephant in the room here, other nightly activities, and Beca was totally glad no-one would ever know the affect of that tone on her. Craaaap, she was so whipped it wasn't even funny anymore.
See, it was Beca's firm belief that at this time in the morning - probably 10-ish - it wasn't ethical to voluntarily speak unless it was with the sole intent of either swearing when banging a hip on the bed post (because shit does that hurt), or when ordering the most caffienated drink at the nearest coffee shop on campus, and - excusing her earlier outburst of rhetorically questioning the craziness of the situation or, as her father would say, an 'unwarrented profanity' - she intended to stick with her morals and respond with a grunt, a flap of the arm currently dangling off of the bed (how did she even sleep like that?!), and a nod of her head that lost it's consistency half-way through and became a simple swivel thanks to a mixture of confusion and fatigue that Beca had never felt before, and then she chose to enforce her appearance of a lazy, hungover idiot by collapsing back into the pillow, closing her eyes as she did so.
Maybe this was all a stupid dream brought on by both Amy's inhumane attempts at mixing her own cocktail that consisted of mainly tequila, rum and whisky, and Beca's pity for the Australian whose dejected drink would go unappreciated if it weren't for her (it wouldn't be the first time). Maybe she'd wake up alone in a bed that hadn't housed any sexual activity for months. Maybe Chloe would be on the opposite side of the second-floor hallway of the Bella house, in her own room, doing some stupid thing that anoyingly-happy people did when they regularly found themselves willingly waking up at 6 am - like trying to excersize through her hangover.
But then again, maybe that one USB from her second year would show up with the hundred or so mixes that she had collectively worked on for months still saved and magically in labelled files that Beca never bothered to arrange her mixes into but probably should.
It wouldn't though, and so, yeah, this was real.
And so Beca thought, 'Fuck it', and courageously opened her eyes, ready to confront the awkwardness head-on. But then she didn't say anything, just stared at the light dusting of freckles on Chloe's cheeks and noticed how her lashes were a lot lighter in the weak rays of light creeping in through the window behind her than they usually were and how her scar was actually really fucking adorable and how her faded lip-stick was slightly smudged and how her jaw was nicely (more than nicely) framed by her hair that looked God-damn gorgeous even in it's tangled 'just-woke-up' glory and how her eyes were freakin' insane and reminded Beca of that one time in high-school the principal picked an English class to spend the day by this lake really far away and just study their use of descriptive language techniques and shit, and how Beca was sure the entire day was a waste but now she knows it's not because fuck she's finally realised that metaphors are needed and how if Beca looks down any further -
Okay! Keep eyes up. Right up. Yup. Look at the face, nowhere else. Good job. Do that. Cool.
Beca kept her focus on that face, on the person who seemed to realise that her current lack of coverage that the bed sheets could so easily provide was bothering Beca and on the redhead who fell backwards into her pillow (which was way closer than Beca thought it was) and let an amused laugh escape at the clear expense of her friend.
But, laughter or not, she still sunk deep enough to hide her chest (barely, but Beca wouldn't let herself acknowledge that fact because she refused to admit that her gaze had wandered enough to notice), and turned her head to face Beca, who had been looking straight at the ceiling (for the most part) the entire time.
"Y'know, considering we just slept together, you should probably be less embarrased."
The playfully mocking under-tone was not lost on the defiant Beca, who shot back, "I'm being curteous."
She'd honestly never had to say that word in her life. She was pretty sure it did damage when it bounced off of her tongue. The redhead snorted, probably knowing just as well as Beca the lack of times that has ever been attributed with her best-friend, and said, "If you were really 'curteous', I don't think you're first words would have been," she exhagerrated a deep breath and teased in a deep voice, "'What the actual fuck'".
Crap. Was that a joke, or was there some passive-aggressive 'you're-really-bad-at-this' thrown in?
Hopefully a joke. But say something nice anyway. Like... compliment her hair or... nah, bad timing. Shit... the silence is getting awkward. Say something - now.
"Maybe I was more terrified by your creepy staring than bothered by you naked in my bed," Beca said, internally wincing at how much of a dick she sounded like.
But she saw Chloe shrug in the corner of her eye and heard her say nonchalantly, "It's hard not to stare when you make these adorable faces in your sleep. Like, your eyebrows do this thing where-"
"That's cool! I'm actually for real starting to get a little creeped out now." Lies, Mitchell, and you know it too.
"Nah, I know you love me really," the other woman said, before turning to roll out of bed - nakedness be damned - and stopping once she sat up on the edge of the mattress, her back to Beca and with the sheets berely hiding anything beneath her waist.
Beca looked back up at the ceiling, her mind whirring in a frenzy reminiscent to that of the blender downstairs used and cleaned by only Stacie and Chloe, despised for it's imposing healthiness by the rest of the Bellas, Beca included. She could hear, rather than see, Chloe pull on her jeans from the night before and slip on the creamy blouse, and knew that she wouldn't have put her bra back on because in less than half-an-hour she'd be back in her room where she'd shower and change properly.
The few moments it took the redhead to don a suitable amount of clothing and pick up what remained of the night before's clothes from where they were likely scattered across the floor (Beca didn't know for sure thanks to her newfound inability to remove her eyes from the ceiling that possessed a solitary crack in the far left corner) seemed to take longer than it should, but in reality probably only spanned a couple of minutes. The silence between them wasn't quite awkward - it never was - but seemed to gradually bend inwards slightly with the tension nurturing itself over the short time taken, and Beca found herself propping herself up on her elbows in a similar fashion to the way Chloe had been positioned when she had first woken.
She forced herself to watch the her best-friend move to leave the room, planning on nodding and telling her that there was 'no awkwardness or whatever', but then Chloe called a "see you at breakfast" over her shoulder in a frustratingly (beautiful) chipper voice as she reached for the handle, and Beca just spoke.
Because when Chloe flashed her that smile that never failed to both un-fuck and endlessly fuck-up Beca's brain all at once, she couldn't be held responsible for what came out of her mouth. "I do." Crap. No - a stronger word was needed. Fuck. She wasn't supposed to say that. And Chloe was clearly just as bemused as Beca was freakin' mortified, as was seen in the tilt to her head as she twisted her upper body to look back at Beca still propped up, barely covered by sheets, in the bed, her left eyebrow raising comically.
Beca stumbled over what to say, and ended up just hurriedly spitting out the truth, "Love you, I mean. Really," and then continued to stare at Chloe somewhat sheepishly, but with an unabashed honesty that suprised even Beca.
Chloe just stared, right hand still teasing the knuckle of the door knob, and her foot twisted to follow the pattern of her upper-body's staring back at Beca. Her head remained cocked, but that eyebrow had lowered into a considerate frown, and her lips were pursed in a manner Beca had never seen before.
Y'know how people can power a light or some shit by cycling on one of those machines that can store the kinetic energy? Well, if someone plugged Beca's heart into a socket, she sure as Hell could power a freakin' city for months what with the speed it was beating at.
And then, after what felt like a century but almost definitely (like, 90% sure) wasn't, Chloe's entire body twisted this time to fully face Beca, and her bare-feet padded over to the brunette, until she stood on Beca's side (since when was this her designated side?), looking down at her, somehow maintaining that whole contemplative look that was oddly attractive.
And then she leaned down and kissed her, a quick, few second long hold that lasted too long to be a friendly peck on the cheek but nowhere near enough to sate Beca, who was too dumbstruck to even react at that point. It was nothing when compared to the crazy, drunken sex that neither of them could properly remember, but still left both women a little breathless.
They spent a few more moments staring dead into each other's eyes, Beca fully supported by her arms now and Chloe bent over enough for their irregular breaths to mingle, before the redheaded angel straightened and simply walked out, swinging the door wide open and spinning slightly in the doorway to coo, "Love you too, Becs," and breeze down the corridor, letting the door sway slightly in her wake.
Beca remained propped upright on the bed, the bed sheets slipped down to her waist, lips still parted, and mind reeling as she replayed that flirtatious wink shot her way right before Chloe dissapeared on a loop in her brain, and a thorough 'what the fuck?' expression claimed it's reign over her face and refused to leave for hours.
Seriously though, what the actual fuck just happened?