Beca doesn't really do bars. Or pubs, nightclubs, or any other setting that could be considered similar to any of those places. There are always too many people and the music is always too loud, and the deejays are always awful. She can sometimes stomach two out of three of those, but the latter is honestly one of her top five pet peeves. It makes her crabby and irritated, things further exacerbated by the aforementioned people and music.
She had hoped, at one point, that the Bellas would take the hint and stop insisting she go out with them. That she'd act miserable enough to put them off.
This did not happen. If anything, it just made them more determined.
Which is why she's out, once again, for the third Saturday in a row, sitting alone at their booth inside The Crown - Barden's resident bar-nightclub hybrid - watching bodies mash together on the dance floor with a look of disdain clouding her features.
"Aw, Beca, are you not dancing? What?" Fat Amy asks as she steps away from the dancefloor, voice entirely monotone and her face lacking any semblance of surprise. "Shocked." She drops down heavily at the end of the booth and carefully guides her drink towards her. It's an exorbitantly overpriced cocktail in what has to be the largest martini glass Beca has ever seen and bright pink in colour. It matches the tracksuit Amy is wearing.
"It's been three years," Beca's pretty sure that's all that need be said on that topic.
"Three painful years of watching you awkwardly sit alone, looking like someone who gets off by watching people dance. It's weird." Amy takes a healthy sip from her giant glass.
"Why would anyone think that?" Beca challenges, eyebrow raised.
"Why else would you spend the entire night sitting here like a creeper?" Amy shrugs.
"Hey, I dance sometimes!" Though somewhat rare, Beca has been dragged to the floor a few times. Usually by Chloe.
"Uh, yeah, once you're three sheets to the wind and completely bladdered." Amy snorts a laugh.
"How is it that I still barely understand eighty percent of the things you say after three years?" Beca shakes her head, staring at her roommate.
"I'm a mystery." Amy takes another swig and stands. "I'm also going to rejoin the writhing bodies." She says it with a lecherous grin on her face, but the very idea of it makes Beca want to visibly shudder.
Amy disappears into the mob and leaves Beca alone again. Which is more than fine, in Beca's opinion. She sips on her jack and coke, her eyes idly surveying her surroundings.
She catches sight of Stacie's grinning face in the gaps between bobbing heads. She's got dancers on all sides of her, of course. Male and female, working every one of them up into a frenzy, and that makes Beca smile a little. Stacie definitely knows how to work what she's got.
She knows Jessica and Ashley are somewhere in there too, dancing together, and she spots Flo and Cynthia Rose at the bar. It takes her a while to find Lilly and when she does, she wishes she hadn't. She's on the dance floor as well, but it looks like she's smelling people rather than dancing with them.
It doesn't take her very long at all to find Chloe, once she decides to look. Her red hair is easy to spot and Beca's sure she can hear her laughter over the blaring music.
Chloe is in a similar position as Stacie, albeit slightly more subdued. She's dancing and there are people dancing around her, but she isn't really dancing with any of them. She's just feeling the beat, giving herself over to the rhythm and the pull of the melody. Her fingers disappear into fiery tresses, gathering them up and moving them without purpose. Her eyes are closed and so she moves instinctively, never once so much as brushing any of the people around her. She's just enjoying herself.
Beca's smile has worked its way towards wide and warm before she even realises her mouth has shifted at all.
And yeah, so. That's a thing.
She isn't exactly sure when it started. It's hard to gauge a change in something when Chloe is already the most touchy-feely person Beca knows. Still, it is different now. Sometimes Chloe's touches are hesitant, which they never were before, and sometimes they linger.
Sometimes Beca leans into them.
They don't talk about it, but it's there. Sitting unspoken, vibrating, charged and ready to go. Though there are moments where Beca wonders if it's all in her head.
Until she finds Chloe's eyes. Twin pools of blue so crystal clear that it's impossible for anything to hide in them. And then Beca knows it's not just her imagination. Because Chloe's eyes, Beca has found, are so often watching her these days. Which, Beca knows, means that hers are watching Chloe just as frequently.
Chloe looks at her differently now, too. There's something new glittering alongside the stars in her eyes and Beca's heart races whenever she sees it.
Which explains its current speed; Chloe's suddenly looking right back at her. Staring as she dances, smiling as she moves, eyes hooded and filled to their brims with that new 'something'. It burns a hole right through Beca's chest and so she looks away, grabbing her glass and throwing back the last of her Jack to chase the flames away.
She's up and moving then, towards the bar, where the alcohol lives. She orders a beer this time and immediately swallows a third of as soon as the bartender has snapped off the top and handed it to her.
"Looking thirsty, Mitchell." Amy reappears at Beca's side, glancing askance at her before motioning to the bartender.
"We're at a club," Beca drawls. "Isn't this when you usually make fun of me for not drinking?" The man behind the bar passes Amy her drink with a wink and a wave of his hand when she tries to pay him. Amy waggles her eyebrows suggestively and spends a moment making eyes at the man before turning to Beca.
"Not the kind of thirsty I meant." Amy pointedly glances across the room and, subconsciously at least, Beca knows where it's aimed before she follows it.
Chloe's still living it up on the dance floor, not a care in the world.
"Dude, no." Beca closes her lips around the mouth of her beer bottle and takes a long pull from it as Amy rolls her eyes as sips raspberry-coloured liquid through a straw.
"Uh, dude, yes," Amy shoots back, sarcastic and frustrated. "You can't just say no to something and expect that to make it somehow stop existing, Beca."
"Why are you even over here? You had half a fishbowl left like five minutes ago." Beca both sounds and feels desperate for Amy to leave. Leave her alone with her brooding thoughts and longing glances, and the pitiful fear and uncertainty that stops her from doing anything about the way Chloe's eyes shine when they look at her.
"Mister Mixer behind the bar has been making eyes at me all night," Amy announces, matter-of-factly. "And I'm not too scared to admit when I'm thirsty." Beca shoots her a dirty look and Amy raises her eyebrows in a way that conveys both innocence and an unspoken challenge as she sips her drink again.
Beca sighs.
"I can't just…" she lifts a hand, waving it uselessly in Chloe's general direction as she looks at Amy, "I'm not-"
"Okay, well if you can't," Amy quickly interrupts, brazenly pointing at Chloe now, "he can and is about to."
Beca's head snaps back towards the dancefloor and she watches as a very tall, very handsome, dark-haired man approaches Chloe from behind. He gets closer than all the others and Chloe doesn't seem to mind, she's just dancing. But then his arms are moving around her and his hands are touching her, and Chloe's turning to face him.
Beca's heard the term, "sees red" before. She's probably felt it once, or twice, or twelve times in her life. This isn't quite that, though. It's a different kind of seeing red, one that fills her vision with auburn hair and bright blue eyes - that aren't watching her anymore - and yes, there's a haze of jealous green.
"Hold my beer," Beca hears herself say and practically shoves her bottle into Amy's hand. Amy, for her part, seems only too willing to take it and she offers some words of encouragement that Beca can't make out. She's already walking towards the dance floor, the music and moving bodies swallowing her up.
Chloe's right where Beca last saw her, only now she seems to be making small talk with the guy. He's leaning in close to be heard over the music, his mouth far too close to Chloe's ear, and it's such a move that Beca feels personally offended on Chloe's behalf.
She stalks towards the pair, her mind filled with uncertain determination - because she doesn't know how this is going to go - and sees Chloe's attention slip away from the man talking to her and shift toward her approach. Beca's smile, she's sure, conveys more than a little satisfaction.
"Hey," she draws the word out, a little breathless, and her eyes flick to the guy for half a second. "Sorry." She doesn't really mean it. "This'll just take a minute." She looks away from him and forgets he exists the second Chloe is within her sight.
And Chloe fills her vision, like sunlight fills the day, and Beca's confidence waivers for a second.
But Chloe's eyes are so warm and inviting, beseeching almost, and Beca feels a little more certain.
Certain enough to curve her hand around Chloe's neck and pull her down into a kiss. And there's no resistance from Chloe, not even for a second. She falls into Beca and the kiss with an ease that makes it seem like she'd been expecting it.
Maybe she had been. Beca doesn't really care anymore.
She presses close and nips at Chloe's lower lip before soothing the bite with her tongue. It doesn't last long, Beca's brain catches up with her body and jerks her back away from Chloe and her lips. She rolls her own together and pops them, blinking up at Chloe who's looking down at her with wide, smiling eyes.
"Um," Beca clears her throat. "Thank you." Then she drags her hand down from Chloe's neck and backs away, her cheeks undoubtedly colouring.
Chloe's eyes never leave her and Beca is eventually forced to turn away, but she hears Chloe call after her.
"I'm going to need more than a minute!"
Beca's lips are tingling as they form a smile, a thrill of excitement trickling through her, and ahead of her, still standing at the bar, is Amy. Grinning and fist pumping, as she chugs the last of Beca's beer.