Hear me chirp.
"Holy shit!" Beca yelped when someone popped out of the bushes nearby. Thusfar, she'd been enjoying a rather nice vacation in the middle of nowhere all alone. The cabin in the woods her dad had built some years ago had become her favorite place to spend her off time because of that exact reason. There was no one else around.
"Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't realize-"
Still holding her sputtering heart, Beca saw recognition cross Chloe's face. Wait. "Chloe?"
And just like that, Chloe broke out in a bright smile. "Beca!" She bounded through the tall grass to approach the other woman. Beca didn't even have enough time to stand up from her comfy chair before Chloe had reached her and held her in a bonecrushing hug.
"What are you doing here?" Beca gasped into the hug, giving Chloe an awkward pat on the back. They soon turned into several awkward pats until she released her an inappropriate time later.
"My mom told me about this place," Chloe explained happily, standing so close that if Beca slouched some, their knees would be touching.
Whoa, Beca had forgotten how much positivity Chloe radiated from that proximity.
She shook the thought off.
"Wait, your mom?" she repeated incredulously. "Nobody knows about this place except me and my dad."
Chloe stopped shining brightly for a moment, her smile faltering, before her eyes widened in realization and an even bigger smile tugged at her lips. "Oh my God, you're a shifter, too!"
Beca opened her mouth to reply, except she was not prepared for that accusation. Like, at all. "What?" she asked, narrowing her eyes at Chloe. Then, in a show of superior wit, she said, "What?" again.
"My mom's been hanging out with other shifters, and one of them mentioned this place as a great retreat, so that must've been your dad, which means you're like us, too," she explained. Then, when Beca's only reaction was to blink slowly as her eyebrows steadily rose upwards, she continued. "What's your spirit animal?"
Beca blinked some more. "What?"
"The animal you change into seamlessly?" Chloe said, still excessivley enthusiastic about the prospect. "Your totem? Avatar? Reflection of your inner self?"
Finally, Beca managed to gather her wits from the floor. "Okay, yeah, no." She held up her hands and stood up, coming face to face with sparkling blue eyes. Well, standing up like that was a bad idea. Effortlessly, she moved around the other woman so she could stand a safe distance away. "I'm not going to play this game with you."
"What game?" Chloe asked, tilting her head.
"This." Beca pointed between the two of them. "No."
"Oh, come on." She slipped off her backpack and dumped it rather uncerimoniously on the grass next to the chair Beca had previously been occupying. "I'll show you mine if you show me yours?" She raised her eyebrows suggestively.
Beca shot her an incredulous look. "Really? That's what you're going with?"
"I bet it's something small and fluffy," Chloe continued on, ignoring Beca's not-really-protest. "Like a hamster."
Beca almost raised a hand to her mouth in search of nonexistent buck teeth. Almost. She shook her head roughly. "No, stop," she said warningly, raising a finger at Chloe.
"Or a racoon. A koala, maybe?"
Beca sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose momentarily, before her eyes snapped open to look at the hands at the top button of her flannel shirt. "What are you doing?!" she yelped, jumping back.
"You wouldn't want to ruin those clothes when you shift," Chloe said, hands still hovering around chest level.
"I'm glad to see you finally learned some boundaries," Beca quipped sarcastically.
"It's not like I'd see anything I haven't seen before." She shrugged. And then she did that thing where she tilted her head and smiled lazily while her eyes slipped down for a moment in a way that made shivers run down Beca's spine.
Beca supressed the oncomings of a visible shudder. "So not the point-what are you doing now?"
Chloe had started to unbutton her own shirt (Beca shuddered to think what she would've done if she were only wearing a t-shirt). "We gotta start somewhere, don't we?" she said, popping open the last button and revealing the tanktop underneath.
"Oh my God, I can't believe I'm-" The shirt dropped to the ground and Chloe gripped the edge of her tanktop. "Bear! A bear!"
Chloe instantly let her hands fall to her sides. "That's too cute!" she almost squealed.
Beca sighed as her shoulders slumped. Unmoving from her defeated position, she figured she might as well ask. "What's yours?"
"What's my what?" Chloe asked, picking up her pack and moving it inside. It was a very cozy, one room cabin with the main focus being the queen sized bed at the far end.
Beca wasn't even surprised Chloe continued to claim a spot and just let her. "Your spirit animal," Beca clarified, feeling dirty for even saying it in so much that she thought it was the suckiest way to label such a serious thing. And really, was Chloe fucking with her now?
Chloe turned from where she had dropped her pack and faced Beca. "You'll just have to wait and see," she said with an innocent smile, then continued to make her way outside again.
"What do you mean, 'wait and see'?" she asked, mockingly mimicking Chloe. "I just totally-oh, okay." Beca awkwardly averted her eyes and sort of shielded her eyes with a hand as Chloe proceeded to take off her top. "Taking off you clothes. That's cool, too."
There was some more rustling, intermitted by Chloe's giggle once she noticed how keen Beca was on averting her eyes. "Okay, I'm done," Chloe said.
For some reason, Beca forgot what Chloe had been doing in the first place, and lowered her hand to look at the other woman, then immediately trained her eyes on a spot over Chloe's shoulder. "I should not be able to picture my friends naked," Beca mentioned mostly to herself, eyes slightly wider after receiving such an eyefull.
Chloe's reaction was gleeful and immediate. "You picture me naked?"
"Yeah, it's kind of seared into my retinas now," Beca quipped, narrowing her eyes in mock pain as she kept staring into the open air.
Chloe breathed a laugh before deciding to give Beca a break and shifting into her spirit animal. It was as if Beca read her mind, however, and she was interrupted by the disgruntled woman. "Okay, if I think of the words 'spirit animal' one more time, I'm gonna go kick a puppy. From now on, it shall be... I don't know, Preferred Form." She threw up her hands in frustration for added effect.
Chloe just shot her a look. "Really?"
"Hey, I'm just looking out for them puppies," Beca said, appearing deadly serious.
Chloe smiled at the unintended pun, finally shifting into her Preferred Form.
When Beca saw the distinctly female shape change in the corner of her eyes, she dared to look in Chloe's direction, and was met with a russet colored wolf. It ran a short distance away from Beca, all the while looking back and begging with big blue eyes for Beca to follow her. Knowing Chloe, probably in her preferred form as well.
That was going to be a problem.
Not because she'd have to get naked, but because she'd kind of blurted the first thing that came to mind when Chloe had asked for her preferred form. She definitely was not a bear. God, she wished she was a bear.
Chloe barked once (well, that was something she did not think she'd ever see happening), and disappeared into the thicker shrubbery.
Beca thought about following her. She really did. For maybe 2.3 seconds. But eventually, she sat back down on the chair to enjoy the nice weather. It's not like Chloe had verbally invited her or anything.
BAM, FANDOM SWITCH.
Eh, this is more of a prologue than anything else. The plot will probably be something along the lines of "LOOKIT DIS KYOOTNESS" and attempted humor, so if you're into that kind of thing, continue on! If not, I warned you.
Also, I'm kinda hoping that people will swoon with me about the pairing that is Bechloe, because I don't have a shipping buddy right now /crycry.
