Disclaimer: Characters you know don't belong to me. The title comes from the song "Los Angeles I'm Yours" by The Decemberists and the title for this section comes from the song "I and Love and You" by the Avett Brothers.
A/N: So I pretty much started writing this story as a way to get out the thoughts swirling around in my head and what was originally intended to be a one shot sort of grew into this. There will be four sections all together (in theory) and I hope that you enjoy!
"So I Cut the Ties and I Jumped the Track For Never to Return"
There are three weeks left in Beca's senior year when she decides that she's had enough of Barden and is ready for the West Coast. That was always the plan after graduation anyway and as Beca hurries back to her dorm from her father's, fighting back angry and embarrassed tears, she's mad at herself for putting it off for this long. Because, honestly, this whole trying thing sucks. Sure the past four years haven't been all bad. She has friends she loves and Jesse is worth every pointless and dull hour she had to sit through in class. But now Beca knows that, in the end, no amount of trying is ever going to fix her relationship with her father. Having him tell her to her face that he still thinks producing music is a pipe dream and he'll only support her if she has a "real job" pretty much cemented her feelings toward him. And, more than anything, it just makes Beca want to prove him wrong.
And yeah, Beca knows that she could stick it out for three weeks. Three weeks of bullshit music theory classes and then she has a diploma. But the whole college thing was never her dream anyway. It was his. And she's done with his dreams.
Beca throws all the clothes that will fit into her duffle and crams in a few pictures, books and records too. Her equipment is packed with much more care and Beca feels like she did her first day at Barden: angry and ready to be somewhere else. Only now she's not afraid to put herself out there and has framed pictures of herself and the Bellas and Jesse to prove it.
Beca gives her room one last glance and sees how much of herself is still being left behind. But it's not the stuff she's leaving behind that makes her feel like crying again.
She lugs her stuff across campus and goes up to Jesse's floor, knocking on his door. It's barely past eleven but the floor is silent and she can't hear noise from the other side of his door. When Jesse opens the door, she can tell that he was already asleep and Beca has always loved the way that he looks after he wakes up, when his hair gets all crazy and his smile is slow and genuine.
Jesse starts to smile at her now but stops when he sees her duffle and the case that holds her computer and the rest of her equipment. "Beca…" Somehow he manages to put so much emotion into just that one word. It's a question and a plea rolled into one. It says please don't leave.
Beca's chin quivers despite her best efforts to keep her composure. "I have to go."
"What about graduation? And what we planned?" Jesse questions and he really wants to take her bags and make her stay.
Beca knows their plans so well she can recite them like a rosary. It's a year's worth of conversations rolled into one simple plan. She's lucky that she's found someone who will run away with her, who shares her dream of leaving everything behind for something bigger. But Jesse has never felt the desperation clawing at him the way that she has and Beca already knows that she will leave here alone tonight.
"Come with me." Beca says, trying to make it sound logical and simple. "Let's just go now."
"Beca…I need to graduate." Jesse says. He steps into the hallway, easing the door closed behind him. "I have to stay. You should stay too. You almost made it." He says this like part of him has always known that this conversation would come: the moment when she would leave.
Beca shakes her head. "I can't stay. I have to leave."
"What happened?" But Beca just shakes her head again and Jesse doesn't press. "Okay. So you'll go. It's only three weeks right? I mean, we've been apart longer than that before."
The way Beca feels right now is the reason she never wanted to be close to anyone. Because this hurts so badly that she almost can't breath and she doesn't want to go without him. But she can't stay and lose herself either. "Three weeks." She confirms.
Jesse steps forward and Beca goes to him, putting her face against his chest. It took a long time for her to get to the point where she would let him hold her when she needed it, when she finally decided that needing him didn't make her weak.
Jesse kisses the top of her head and holds her tight against him. "You can do this."
Beca can't believe how good it feels to have someone else believe in her.
For the past three years, Beca has waited tables three days a week to save money for this moment. The moment when she would buy her one-way ticket to L.A. and say goodbye to the old life she never wanted. The fact that there are things she wants back at Barden complicates the way that she feels and Beca thinks, not for the first time, that things aren't simple anymore. Before there was just her music. It was all she needed to keep herself from feeling lonely. Now she wishes Jesse was sitting beside her, waiting to board. She wishes the Bellas had been there to see them off and even though the airport is bustling with people, she feels alone.
Her phone vibrates and Beca opens the text from Jesse. I miss you already.
Dork Beca types back but she's got a little smile on her face. She looks at her fellow passengers and figures that she's not so alone after all because everyone here is heading toward something or running away. She can't decide which one she's doing.
Beca takes the free soda and cookies offered by the flight attendant and wraps the complimentary blanket around her shoulders. They're showing some Woody Allen film as the in-flight movie and she knows Jesse would be beside himself at the thought of watching it but she falls asleep twenty minutes in.
When she wakes up again, she's in L.A. and Beca finally feels a surge of joy bloom in her chest. This is where she belongs, this is where she needs to be. It's almost strange, in a way, to be one of thousands, just one more person driven here by her dreams. Beca knows she's not the first person to stand outside LAX and swear that she's going to do exactly what she came here to do and she won't be the last either. That thought is oddly comforting.
Beca takes a taxi to a cheap motel and pays with cash, peeling more bills out of the envelope that she's been filling for three years. She and Jesse had planned to stay in a motel while apartment hunting and it had sounded much more glamorous when they planned it out together. The reality is a queen-sized bed in a small room with a small color TV, microwave and a dirty bathroom.
She puts down her suitcase and equipment and stands in the center of the room, staring at the off color walls. She doesn't know what to do now. The sounds of the city drift in through the dirty window but Beca can't hear anything past the rush of blood in her ears and the steady thump of her heart convincing her that she's made a mistake.
Beca knows it's ridiculous but she feels pissed at her dad all over again. If he hadn't kept her at Barden, she would already have her roots planted firmly in the ground. She wouldn't be second guessing herself. She'd be home.
She grabs her duffle and starts unpacking in a frenzy, suddenly desperate to inject herself into these four drab walls. Beca hangs her clothes in the closet and stacks her books and records on the small table holding the TV. When she picks up a picture of herself and Jesse taken last year after the ICCA championship, Beca finds her anger start to dissipate. The girl in the picture looks so sublimely happy, happier than Beca at eighteen ever would have imagined being. And Jesse looks happy too and even four years later, Beca can't get over the idea that she's the one that makes him happy.
Beca props the picture up against the lamp beside the bed and picks up her phone. Jesse answers after the first ring. "Hey Bec." He doesn't sound groggy at all.
She does a mental calculation in her head. "It's like five in the morning." She lays down on the bed, propping herself against the headboard. "You sound wide awake."
"I couldn't sleep until I knew that you weren't sold into slavery or something." Jesse tells her. "I've been marathoning Christopher Nolan movies."
Beca smiles into the empty room. "What a weirdo." She teases. "Well, you can rest easy. I'm living the dream in a seedy motel."
"Are there lots of truckers? Please tell me you witnessed a drug bust."
"I hate to burst your bubble but I've only been here for like thirty minutes." Beca tells him. "I haven't had time to investigate the seedy underbelly of the city."
Jesse clucks his tongue at her. "That's not the Beca Mitchell I know."
They make small talk for a while before Beca starts yawning and Jesse teases her for falling asleep on him. Beca promises to call later in the day, when the sun has risen on the City of Angels and she's had a chance to see more than just her cheap motel room. They both hesitate before hanging up and the room is filled with silence once more. Beca has always been the type of person who values her independence and has never been the type to always long for company. But that doesn't mean she doesn't miss Jesse. Four years is a long time to see someone on an almost daily basis and it's just a lot of change all at once. Beca rolls onto her side and stares at the wall, trying to remain confident and positive. Not lonely and scared. She falls asleep before she can convince herself to go back home.
Beca spends the next three weeks trying to make L.A. her city. After nearly four years in a small college town, the crush of the crowds and the noise of the city are like a breath of fresh air. She finds several old record stores and pours over the vinyl selections for hours. She tries to weasel her way into meetings with night club managers during the day and goes to the clubs at night, listening to the DJs and trying to find someone who knows anything about hiring a DJ. Spending her nights in a club isn't awful and she even lets a few guys buy her drinks but she never dances with them and gives them fake names to call her by.
She gets a job at a coffee shop a few blocks from her seedy motel. The assistant manager, a young woman named Regina, seems relieved when she learns that Beca has experience and can start right away. During her breaks or lulls in customers, Beca flips through the apartment listings in the local paper and gets a thrill when she thinks about living in one of these places with Jesse.
Beca spends most of her free time working on new tracks to send to different labels, clubs and radio stations. She sends a post card to Fat Amy and the rest of the Bellas back at Barden. She manages to avoid apologizing for leaving without saying goodbye, instead keeping her sentences short and generic. She also sends a postcard to Chloe, who's still living in Atlanta and Aubrey, who runs her own dance studio in Charleston. And, of course, she sends postcards to Jesse and Benji. The messages are short and a little impersonal but their daily phone conversations are not. Beca never knew you could waste so much time just laughing with someone and talking about nothing.
Beca tells Jesse about her job at the coffee shop and sends him tracks off her new mixes. Jesse tells Beca about his upcoming finals and the aca-amazing goodbye seniors parties that the various a capella groups are throwing. Jesse agrees to pack up the rest of her stuff and either bring it to L.A. or ship it back to her mom. Beca agrees to call her dad and attempt to make amends just because Jesse suggests it but they both know that she won't actually make the call. And she doesn't. She's too busy staying busy so she won't miss Barden.
On the day Jesse texts her a picture of him posing in his graduation gown with his diploma, Beca is so happy she nearly cries. And not because she's proud of him, even though she is, of course, but because three long weeks are finally over and L.A. can finally, finally feel like home.
It takes another week for Jesse to actually make it to L.A. He loads his stuff and Beca's into his car and heads across the country, sending her funny pictures along his way.
When he finally makes it to Beca's sleazy home-away-from-home, she flies into his arms and he holds onto her like he fears the second he lets go he'll lose her again. It scares Beca how happy she is to see him because she knows the danger of wanting something or someone too badly. But she doesn't think about that as they undress each other and fall into bed in a tangle of limbs. Later, Beca curls herself against Jesse as he sleeps and his arm slides around her on reflex. She thinks that Jesse is the type of person who doesn't know how to hurt someone and she prays that she's right.
They spend most of that first day in bed and Beca can't complain. Jesse cards his fingers through her hair and she gets reacquainted with the feel of his skin and the sensation of not being alone anymore. It's strange to hear her voice spoken aloud in this dingy room.
As the sun starts to set, they finally get dressed and walk hand-in-hand to a twenty-four hour diner down the street. Beca points out various places as they go, showing Jesse the L.A. that she has discovered: the coffee shop where she works, the record store where she found an Of Monsters and Men vinyl, a night club where she actually managed to talk to a manager for five seconds. The energy of the city hums around them and Beca feels like her limbo state is over and she can finally begin.
"I ran into your dad when I was packing your room." Jesse begins casually over his plate of scrambled eggs. Beca makes a noncommittal noise as she pops a fry into her mouth. "He seemed shocked to find me putting your stuff in boxes."
Beca reaches for the catsup and Jesse reaches out to stop her. "Bec," he says gently when she looks at him in surprise, "you never talked to him, did you? He had no idea that you were on the complete opposite side of the country for the past three weeks."
"No, I didn't talk to him." Beca retorts, pulling her hand away. "I didn't think he needed to know."
Jesse gives her a slightly disappointed look but if he's learned one thing during his relationship with her it's that talking about her father can turn her into someone that he's never seen before. He knows it's cowardly, but he still feels like the best thing to do in these situations is avoid them.
"Did you tell him where I was?" Beca questions after a minute, reaching for the catsup bottle again. Jesse nods and she gives him a little smile. "Good." She might not have done much during the time that she's been here, but at least she's here and she's happy that her dad knows that.
"You should call him." Jesse suggests. "So he doesn't worry."
Beca rolls her eyes. "I doubt he thinks about me that much."
Jesse shrugs because talking to Beca about this sort of thing is like talking to a brick wall, only worse because the bricks will fall down before Beca will budge. He reaches across the table and steals one of the fries off her plate, popping it into his mouth while she protests.
"Get your own!" Beca shoos his hand away but he manages to grab another fry anyway. "If you wanted some, you should have ordered dinner like a normal person."
"Well, what would be the fun in that?" Jesse questions, giving her an innocent smile before snatching more food off her plate. Beca grabs a piece of bacon off his plate and they engage in all out warfare until they receive dirty looks from their waitress and the few diners seated around them.
Even though they napped through most of the day, Jesse is still dragging his feet on the walk back to the motel, trying not to yawn as Beca tells him about the few apartments she found in the classifieds.
Beca uses Jesse's chest as a pillow when she lays down in bed beside him and he lets out a contented hum. She listens to the sound of him breathing in the darkness for a few minutes before she softly says, "I'm really glad you're here." It's not like she needed him or anything, but that doesn't change how she feels now that he's there beside her.
Jesse smiles and rests his cheek against the top of her head. "Me too."
Beca has the following day off work as well and she suggests that they start looking at apartments, because she's really tired of wondering if it's safe to shower without flip flops on and trying to decide whether or not her neighbors are cooking meth in their own grimy tub. But Jesse insists that they do all the regular touristy things as well, things that Beca never would have done in a million years. Of course he wants to see the Walk of Fame and of course he's one of those people who has to take his picture in front of certain stars and Beca gives up making fun of him after the fifth picture because it doesn't seem to be getting through to him. She just follows him around as he geeks out over this star or that landmark, laughing at how adorable his obsession makes him.
As Jesse stares up at Grauman's Chinese Theatre, he gets this weirdly calm look on his face that Beca has never seen before. He gives her a little smile when he notices her watching him. "We made it. We're really going to do this."
Beca can't help but grin back at him. "Yeah, we are."
They spend the next two weeks looking for the perfect apartment and finally settle on a one bedroom barely bigger than the motel they've been living in but the carpet is new and the bathroom is clean and as far as Beca can tell, the neighbors aren't dealing meth at night, so she considers it a step up. Unfortunately, neither she nor Jesse have much by the way of furniture and they have to make do with using a few plastic crates for tables and shelves but it's still their place and Beca could care less if it takes them a year to buy a couch because she's here in L.A. with Jesse and she's twenty-two and not everything is supposed to be perfect right away.
Even though they don't have much furniture, they have a decent amount of personal items between the two of them and their apartment definitely feels homey, if a bit sparse. One morning when Beca goes into the kitchen to make coffee before work, she looks around at their small living room and smaller kitchen and smiles because there's no mistaking the two people who share this space. Jesse's DVD collection is stacked so high next to the TV (which is on the floor) that it's in danger of falling over and her records are being used for temporary tables and temporary housing for the plant that Jesse saw at the local market and decided that they needed to have. Beca feels that familiar flutter in her stomach when she thinks about Jesse and she leaves the brewing coffee to go snuggle next to him for a few more minutes.
Jesse manages to find one of the few remaining movie rental stores in the world and get a job there. They try to work their schedules so they have to same days off and work close to the same hours but whenever Beca has to go in for an early shift, Jesse makes sure to swing by to get coffee on his way to work and if Jesse has to work late, Beca gets takeout and stands by the counter and eats with him. The manager of the store never minds if she brings enough food for him as well. Beca never would have thought that she'd actually find it interesting to stand around and listen to nerds talk about movies for hours but she has to admit that it's adorable when Jesse really gets going on a particular topic and his knowledge is impressive, though a little bit frightening.
The downside of Jesse working at a place where he's surrounded by movies all the time is that he has unlimited access to almost every film ever made and Tuesdays and Thursdays become official Movication nights. Sometimes he lets Beca roam the store and pick something that looks halfway interesting to her and she always selects something filled with nonstop action or violence, so Jesse becomes very well versed in D horror movies and ridiculous action films. But he can't complain because Beca laughs more through those than she does through any of the comedies he insists they watch and he loves her laugh, regardless of the source.
"Your boyfriend is so cute." Regina tells her one morning after Jesse leaves with his iced coffee and giant chocolate chip cookie. No matter how many times Beca teases him for eating that much sugar for breakfast, he still orders one every time he comes in to visit. "You're so lucky."
Normally that type of talk would have Beca gagging and rolling her eyes. But she does have to admit that, yeah, she is pretty lucky. She can't remember ever feeling so happy or content and even though she and Jesse have been dating for years, there's something different about sharing a space and waking up next to him in the morning and starting to learn some of the more secret sides to him. Not all of his habits are cute, but Beca's sure that Jesse can say the same about her so she tries to learn to live with them instead of letting them get under her skin.
One afternoon when Beca comes home from the coffee shop, Jesse surprises her with a real, honest to God table that she can put her equipment on and Beca wonders if it's weird to get so excited over a table. But it makes her look more official than just keeping her equipment on the kitchen counter did and Beca spends hours sitting on one of the overturned plastic crates mixing up different tracks.
She hasn't made as much headway with her career as she would have liked but she tells herself that that's to be expected to. She's had to get herself into a sort of routine and working as many hours as she can at the coffee shop is important because what good is having a table if there's no apartment to put it in? But Beca refuses to let herself believe that just because she's working in a coffee shop and not at a record studio or night club doesn't mean that she's never going to get the chance.
During one of her afternoons off, Beca spends hours putting together mixes to send out to various clubs and radio stations. She knows that she's not the only person out there doing this exact same thing, but she knows that if someone gives her music a chance and actually listens to her tracks that she'll stand out from the rest of the crowd. It's getting that chance that's the hard put.
Beca is still avoiding talking to her father, mainly because she doesn't have anything to say to him. The day that she gets a real job doing what she loves is the day that she returns his calls. If Jesse has anything to say about the way that she's continually sending her dad straight to voicemail, he doesn't voice his opinions, which Beca is grateful for. She knows that nothing she can say to him will make him understand how she feels toward her father. He talks to his parents at least once a week and as far as she can tell they're nothing but supportive of him and the fact that he's on the other side of the country trying to turn his dreams into a reality. Beca tries not to be jealous of Jesse's relationship with his parents, because she's never really had a great relationship with her mom or her dad but she can't help but wonder what it would feel like to be constantly getting those little pep talks.
Though Jesse definitely does not skimp when it comes to dishing out his own pep talks. One afternoon he comes home to find her sitting on the floor surrounded by several of the envelopes she had mailed out to various studios, all now marked return to sender and clearly unopened. He starts to offer up some sweet platitude but Beca gathers up the envelopes and unceremoniously dumps them in the trash. "It doesn't matter anyway." She says fiercely and goes into the bedroom before she does something stupid like start to cry.
Jesse follows her in and leans against the door frame, watching as she changes out of her work clothes and tosses her stained apron into the dirty clothes basket. She puts on a pair of his sweatpants and his old Barden sweatshirt, even though it's not exactly cold outside. Jesse knows her comfort clothes when he sees them.
"Am I making a big mistake?" Beca questions, turning to face him. "Am I just being an idiot? What if I really don't have what it takes?" Her father's words from months ago still echo loudly in her head.
Jesse scoffs and walks over toward her. "Are you kidding me? Beca Mitchell, you are by far the most talented person I know. You're amazing." He assures her, putting his arms around her waist. "And the Beca I know would never give up just because of one minor setback."
Beca bites her bottom lip and doesn't look convinced. "It's not exactly minor…"
"You're amazing." Jesse tells her again, even more forcefully than before. "You can do this. I know you can."
Somehow hearing those words from Jesse makes everything seem like a possibility again. And when she's taking her break at work the following day and pulls out the paperback she's been reading, she finds a note from Jesse tucked next to her bookmark, further words of encouragement scribbled in his messy boy handwriting. Beca doesn't even care if she's smiling like an idiot when she reads the note over and over again.
They pass the next several months in this way: spending their time largely with one another or Jesse's work friends or their downstairs neighbors, who came up one day to borrow a blender (which they didn't have) and ended up inviting them for homemade Mexican and non-blended margaritas. They don't have a lot of extra money to do stuff outside of pay bills and buy the necessities. There's a little flea market that's open on weekends and they slowly start adding to their furniture collection and finally have more than a few pieces of silverware. There's also a farmer's market that's open every day a block away from their apartment and Beca and Jesse take turns buying fresh food to cook dinner a few nights a week, when they don't just eat takeout or frozen pizza.
For Jesse's birthday, Beca surprises him with tickets to a John Hughes movie marathon at some retro theatre and she does her best to stay awake and interested through the whole thing. She takes him out to dinner afterwards and that night when they're lying in bed together, he tells her that this is probably the best birthday he's ever had, except for maybe the Star Wars themed party he'd had as a kid, which would be pretty hard to compete with.
Jesse starts trying to make connections with the studios in the area, trying to weasel his way into their good graces and start actually doing what he came out here to do. Sometimes Beca forgets that Jesse didn't just follow her out here and that his life's dream isn't to work at a video store, as enthusiastic as he is about it. Sometimes she worries that she's not as supportive of his goals as he is of hers, mostly because he doesn't seem to talk about them the way that she does. Not that that's an excuse and Beca knows it. She's made a lot of headway when it comes to her personal relationships, but she could definitely still be a more attentive girlfriend.
If they have the following day off, Beca and Jesse hop from night club to night club as Beca continues to try and gain herself an audience with at least one of the managers. Most of the time she can't even get a straight answer on who the manager is and when she can come back to talk to him, so the outings are mainly a bust but they still get to lose themselves in the crush of people and the thumping of the music and the bass lines. These evenings always leave her energized and she spends hours sitting at her computer and putting her own playlists together. Making the music is easy, proving that she's got what it takes to do it for a living is where it gets tricky.
Before they realize it, it's Thanksgiving and Beca's ignoring at least one call a day from her father and Jesse's parents are trying to guilt them into coming home for the holiday. Beca can tell that Jesse misses his family and that being away from home, especially now, is hard for him. She might not understand how he's feeling, but she can tell that it's bothering him and she wishes that they had the money to fly out there or even make the drive.
They try to have a traditional Thanksgiving dinner in their cramped apartment but neither of them really know the first thing about cooking a turkey so they end up down at their neighbor's apartment eating Chinese takeout and playing board games. That night, Beca apologizes to Jesse for their non-traditional holiday. "I know that you really miss your family."
Jesse gives her a smile and kisses the side of her neck. "I do. But I have you." He always makes it sound so simple when he says stuff like that.
Even with the approaching holiday season, the coffee shop starts cutting back on hours and for the first time, Beca starts to worry that they're not going to be able to pull enough money together for their apartment and the rest of their expenses. It's not exactly like L.A. is a cheap place to live and they're both still working minimum wage jobs instead of doing the type of work they'd come out here to do. Beca isn't sure where to direct the anger that she suddenly feels; if she should point it outward toward her shitty manager or the labels who won't give her a chance or direct it toward herself, for thinking that this whole thing would somehow be easy. Like she could just show up in L.A. and everyone would breathe a collective sigh of relief at her arrival. In a city of millions, no one cares that she's there at all. There's only one person who would notice if she just disappeared one day and Beca used to take a weird sort of comfort in the anonymity but now she finds it annoying and stifling. How is she supposed to make something of herself when no one cares?
Beca has never been a people person but she takes a job in retail to make up for the lack of shifts at the coffee shop. She's selling expensive lotions and expensive candles in one of the types of stores she never would have set foot in otherwise. Her manager is a short, permanently cheerful woman that reminds Beca a little of Aubrey because of her fierce, single-mindedness and her insistence that everything be done a specific way. Not surprisingly, Beca doesn't exactly follow the rules to a T but she knows how to efficiently use a register and can lift and carry boxes, so her manager keeps her around anyway. Beca hates coming home tired every day after dealing with asshole customers who get way too worked up over bottles of lotion but Jesse is always there to make her smile and help her relax. The fact that she now smells like so many different fragrances also seems to have made her even more desirable to him and Beca definitely has no complaints there.
Working in retail definitely does not put Beca in the Christmas spirit, not that she's ever gone crazy over the holidays anyway but this year she just wants it all to be over. Even the festive decorations that her neighbors have put up on their doors and balconies annoy her. She comes home one afternoon to find that Jesse has put a small, fake tree on their kitchen counter and hung a wreath on their door. She's only mildly annoyed by the fact that Christmas has snuck into her home in spite of her best efforts to keep it out because the gesture is just so Jesse that she honestly can't be that mad. And at least the tree isn't some giant monstrosity that will shed needles all over the carpet that they'll have to pick up by hand since they don't own a vacuum cleaner.
Since Beca has started working two jobs, their schedules are harder to match up so Jesse is used to closing up the shop by himself and walking home alone to find Beca already asleep, curled on his side of the bed. It's not ideal, but he tells himself it's just temporary. He's been looking for another job, one that has more solid hours and pays better so that they'll have more time together. He's also been sending what feels like a million e-mails a day, begging someone to take him on as an intern or minimum wage paid assistant so he can at least get his foot in the door of some studio. His luck hasn't been any better than Beca's so far, but that hasn't reduced his determination. Jesse keeps telling himself that things will be better as soon as one of them finally gets started down their career path.
While walking home one night, he gets a call from his mother, which is a surprise given the time difference. "Mom, is everything okay?"
"Yes, honey, of course." She says this like she can't imagine why he's concerned about the fact that she's calling at midnight her time. "Your father and I have just been doing a lot of talking and we'd really, really love it if you would come home for Christmas. It just won't be the same without you." Jesse starts to protest, feeling the guilt creeping in. "We'll pay for your ticket."
That takes him by surprise. "Really? You'd pay for Beca and I to-"
"Well, that's the thing, honey. The ticket isn't exactly cheap. We'd buy your ticket." His mother interrupts before Jesse can get his spirits too high.
"I can't do that, Mom." Jesse tells her. "I can't leave Beca alone on Christmas."
Even though his mom is thousands of miles away, Jesse can feel her disappointment. "I'm sure she'd understand." She assures him. "Beca has always been very independent."
Jesse hates this little moments, the simple sentences that somehow always manage to imply that Beca doesn't need him as much as he needs her. Even though he knows that his parents love Beca and are happy that he's happy, they never fail to insinuate that there's that distance between them, that little part of Beca that would enable her to be okay on her own. Jesse knows that his parents aren't even aware that they do this, but it still annoys him. Mostly because he can't help but worry if it's true.
"Thanks for the offer, Mom, but I really can't." Jesse tells her as he walks into the lobby of their complex. "It's our first Christmas in the city."
His mom sighs and Jesse feels guilty all over again. He's never been away from his parents for any major holidays, let alone two in one year. But he's growing up now and he's making his own family here with Beca in the city. "It won't be the same without you."
"We'll visit soon." Jesse assures her as he starts up the flight of stairs leading to his apartment on the fourth floor. Yeah, there's no elevator and every time he has to walk up the stairs he's glad they don't have any furniture to move. "I promise."
When he lets himself into the apartment, it's dark save for the lights glittering on the tiny tree. Beca is in fact sleeping on his side of the bed with her knees drawn up to her chest and a fist balled under her chin. He loves the crazy positions that she sleeps in because it makes it easy to imagine her as a kid, before she started closing herself off from the world.
Jesse changes and brushes his teeth and slips into bed behind her, putting his arms around her waist and drawing her to him. Normally he tries to avoid waking her up because he knows she has to get up early but tonight he wants to hear her voice and hold onto her. He wants to be reminded of why he's here, thousands of miles away from everything he's known for the majority of his life and telling his parents why he can't see them for Christmas.
Beca stirs and stretches, languidly like a cat without moving out of his arms. Her feet are cold when they press against his calves. She twists so they're face to face and she has a sleepy smile on her face. "Hi. How was work?"
"Fine." Jesse assures her, kissing her forehead. "Sorry to wake you."
"No you're not." But she doesn't seem to mind. She looks at him for a moment before questioning, "What's the matter?"
Jesse knows that he must wear some of the residual guilt from his conversation with his mother on his face. But he just shakes his head and smiles at her. "Nothing." He assures her. It's these little things, the moments when she notices that something is bothering him that make Jesse think that maybe everyone is wrong, that they need each other equally and she cares about him more than her music or her ambitions. Jesse doesn't mind celebrating those little things.
Beca kisses him and slips her cold hands underneath his shirt and they make love lazily and quietly with the ever present sounds of the city providing the soundtrack. When she falls asleep again laying against his chest, Jesse decides not to tell her about his conversation with his mother. He knows that Beca would insist he take his parents up on their offer and a part of him even wants to hear those words, to have her tell him that it's okay to go. He's a little surprised to find that there's a part of him that wants to stay here, with her, more than it wants to go to his childhood home and enjoy the traditions of his youth.
Later in the week, his parents send them a Christmas card that comes with a picture of the family dogs all wearing Santa hats and a gift card to a local restaurant and a check that Jesse almost thinks about not cashing because it's way too much money but it's not exactly like they don't have stuff they could spend it on. Beca's been joking that they'll be celebrating Christmas just like Baby Jesus did: shivering in the night because they won't be able to pay their utilities bill. Now they can. God bless us everyone.
They also get a Christmas card from Aubrey; it's a generic Happy Holidays from the Aubrey Posen Dance Studio one but she's included a lengthy handwritten letter to both of them. Beca is a little surprised that Aubrey not only took the time to get their address from Chloe but also sat down and wrote a letter. It seems genuine when she tells Beca how proud she is that she's out in L.A., living her dreams and Beca is glad that Aubrey doesn't know that she's working two minimum wage jobs and hasn't had time to work on her music for the past few weeks.
Beca decides that she's going to make more of an effort keeping in touch with her old friends from Barden. It's like she's been living in a bubble that only consists of her and Jesse and while she doesn't have many complaints, it's still nice to be reminded that there are other people out there who care about her. As crazy as that thought is, since Beca has made her way through life by keeping everyone at a distance.
All Beca wants for Christmas is to sleep in and it's nice not to have to set an alarm or get up and rush somewhere. Jesse makes blueberry pancakes and they eat in bed, watching A Christmas Story on his laptop because "it's tradition, Bec, duh!" They don't exchange gifts that year because, short of pulling some sort of Gift of the Magi stunt, there was no money for gift-giving. But Beca doesn't mind because she's never cared about that sort of stuff anyway. She has Jesse and she has L.A. and honestly, that's enough. And for Jesse, just getting to spend the day with her without any interruptions is the perfect day in his opinion.
Around noon, Jesse's parents call and he spends almost half an hour talking to them while Beca sits at her laptop for the first time since she started working at the evil lotion store and loses herself in the music. She feels like herself when she has her headphones on, picking apart different songs and stitching them together to make something entirely different. At some point, Jesse taps her on the shoulder and when she turns to look at him, he holds up her phone and she sees her dad's number flashing on the caller ID. She declines the call and he gives her a slightly disappointed look that Beca pretends not to notice. Later when she listens to the voicemail that her father left, she deletes it shortly after he wishes her a Merry Christmas and asks her to call him back. She still has nothing to say to him and until she can prove him wrong she'll keep dodging his calls.
They spend New Year's Eve with their friends from several floors down and what starts out as an evening in eventually turns into hitting up a few local bars and counting down to midnight with about a hundred other Los Angeles inhabitants. Beca and Jesse stumble back to their apartment sometime around three in the morning and collapse in a heap on their bed. The following morning, Beca wakes up with the worst hangover she's had since her sophomore year of college and like many drinkers before her swears that she's never going to touch another sip of alcohol again. But even hung-over Beca knows that's a lie.
TBC