"I want to live in a van," Chloe declared, sprawled on her back across Beca's bed, "and with you of course.". She tilted her head to the side to see Beca's reaction.

Beca, who had been glaring at the music program on her laptop for the past too many hours looked up at her with a small smile and simply said, "You're crazy," and turned back to her laptop.

Chloe rolled over to her front with her hands hand under her chin so she could properly look at Beca, "But doesn't it seem like a wonderful idea!" she said practically vibrating with excitement, "New York is great, but it's much too crowded and we pay too much to stay in this tiny place, I don't think I want to be a vet anymore because I get too sad when animals get hurt and you've been unable to create any mixes." Beca frowned at that, which Chloe immediately noticed, "not that you're not talented Becs, it's just that both of us are uninspired here, especially you. I think we need a break from it all."

Without waiting for Beca to comment she continued, "Amy is who knows where, so I doubt she'd care if we told her we're selling the apartment. I bet she's been living with Bumper, wherever he is, this entire time anyways."

"Selling the apartment?!"

Chloe ignored Beca, "And then we can buy a van and then we make it into a cozy little home, and we can travel the country."

Beca closed her laptop and rotated her chair to look at Chloe, "So skipping over the entire living in a literal van, are we just going to quit our jobs, where's the money going to come from?"

Chloe frowned at that, she hadn't quite thought that far yet. Not a second passed before Chloe brightened up again, "I have a bit of money saved up and we can post singing videos on YouTube. People make a living on that, so why can't we!"

"You're not going to get good music out of me," Beca grumbled.

Chloe immediately protested against that, "Just cause your dumb label makes you uninspired to make music doesn't mean that you don't make good music." Beca still looked hesitant, "You still have a beautiful voice Becs, and I still listen to the mixes you've given me since your freshman year."

"You're my best friend, you have to say that," and Chloe frowned. Beca hadn't always been the most confident person in the world, but she had always been confident about her music. To watch her slowly fall apart and start to dislike what she loved most made Chloe sad.

"I wish you'd believe in your abilities; you are brilliant even if the label doesn't utilize your talents properly," Chloe said hoping that her words would make Beca understand how amazing she was. "Let's give it a shot, we have a decent following on social media from our Bella days, we'll post one cover and if people like it, will you consider the idea?" Chloe looked at Beca with her most hopeful eyes, and internally cheered when Beca rolled her eyes before giving the slightest nod.

"But Chlo, how does anyone actually live in an actual van? How do two people live in a van? Vans are like small, I don't know if you've ever seen them, but vans are like actually small."

"First of all, you're also tiny so it doesn't matter," Chloe stuck her tongue Beca when she lifted her middle finger up at Chloe, "and have you not seen people converting their homes into vans? It's like an actual trend," she paused for a minute to pull out some pictures on her phone and held it out to Beca, "see?"

"Holy shit dude, that looks like a legit living space, and it's like the size isn't too different from some spaces around here," and Chloe smiled triumphantly at how amazed Beca looked.

"So now that's settled, why don't we try that YouTube singing thing?"

"If we must."

Chloe squealed, "I love you!" before dashing out of Beca's room. She came back five minutes later with Beca's guitar and a slightly old camera that Chloe had used back in the Bella days.

"Of course we're doing this right now," Beca sighed, but Chloe could see the small light of excitement in her eyes. It probably wasn't possible, but she couldn't help but be more excited at that, it was wonderful to see Beca be a little excited about music after so long.

"What are we singing?" Beca asked as she grabbed the guitar from Chloe's hand. Chloe set the camera on Beca's desk so it was facing Beca's bed.

"Billie Eilish?" Chloe asked, settling down next to Beca on the edge of her bed.

Beca nodded, "Lovely?" and Chloe just smiled, because they always seemed to be on the same brainwave when it came to music. Beca began to pluck a few strings when Chloe quickly exclaimed, "Wait, we need to record an introduction," placing her hands over the strings of Beca's guitar.

Beca rolled her eyes again, "Take it away Chlo."

"Hi!" Chloe said to the camera, basically bouncing on the bed, "I'm Chloe," she then gestured towards Beca, "and this is my best friend Beca, some of you might know us from the Barden Bellas." From the corner of her eyes she could see Beca mouthing "Sorry," to the camera. She slapped Beca's arm before continuing, "We'll be singing Lovely by Billie Eilish and Khalid, we hope you like it!"

She turned to look at Beca, the brunette stared at her blankly for a few seconds before she realized what Chloe wanted finally getting the message when Chloe whispered "Like and subscribe."

"Oh yeah, like the video, share it or whatever, and subscribe?" she paused for a second and added, "we need money."

It was Chloe's turn to roll her eyes, "you can't just say that Beca."

Beca just shrugged, "It's the truth," and proceeded to start the song again.

"Thought I found a way…" Chloe smiled, she loved Beca's voice just as much as she had the first time she had heard Beca sing. She easily joined in "Oh I hope some day…"

The final notes rang out, and Beca smiled almost shyly at Chloe, "It's nice to sing with you properly like this, I'm starting to hope your entire plan works out in the end."

Chloe smiled widely, "we're both singing together, when has that ever gone wrong?"

"Um, maybe that one time you barged into my shower."

Chloe waved her off, "and now we're here together, so that definitely did not go wrong."

But Chloe understood what Beca really meant by that. Beca, like Chloe, hated her job. Chloe hating being a barista as she struggled to pay for vet school and pay for the apartment. Beca hated her job at the label, where she had basically no creative liberty. They had gone from a world filled with love, inspiration, and adventure with the Bellas. Now? Well now they both were pretty lost, with the only constants in their lives being the other. Contact with the other Bellas existed, but it wasn't quite the same as it used to be.

While Beca may have never said anything outwardly about wanting to quit her job, she was just as ready to leave this place as Chloe was. While Chloe was open and ready for a change and new challenges, Beca wasn't. Beca has experienced too much uncertainty in her life for her to be open to random ideas liking living in a van. It shows just how miserable Beca is at New York if she was entertaining the idea of them going along with Chloe's plan.

Chloe knew Beca well, more than anyone else did, so she rested her head on Beca's shoulder and tried to reassure any worries the brunette had. "I promise we won't do anything that's too drastic, but I think this will be good for us."

Beca's shoulders shook as she chuckled, "so is potentially putting our apartment up for sale, quitting our jobs, making money from YouTube of all places, and living in a van not drastic?"

"I mean that we won't do any of those things, until we're both perfectly okay with this." Then Chloe hesitated, hoping that what she was going to say next wouldn't make Beca uncomfortable.

Beca interrupted her, wrapping one arm around Chloe, "I'm ready for whatever crazy ideas you have planned for us, I trust you."

A few weeks later…

"Beca!"

Said brunette groaned and slowly opened her eyes, squinting at the bright light filling her room. As soon as Chloe noticed she was awake, she thrust her phone in Beca's face. It had been weeks of asking their fellow Bellas to share their music and YouTube channel, BCMusic. Beca only approved of the name, because it was much better than Chloe's other idea, "No Chlo, we aren't going to name the channel Bechloe music."

A few days ago they released a mashup of Titanium and Bulletproof, it had gathered views more quickly than any of their other covers.

"Beca, we have a half-million views!"

"You're joking," and Chloe just laughed as placed her phone in Beca's hand "you're not joking."

"We might actually be able to do this," Chloe said throwing herself against the still only half-awake Beca.

"Don't get ahead of yourself," Beca reminded, ever the optimist.

"Pretend to be excited," murmured Chloe against Beca's neck.

"I am excited; I just don't want you to get disappointed if it doesn't work out."

"I believe in us," and Chloe knew Beca couldn't argue against that.

That's how the next few months were spent, each video garnered more views and more subscribers. Chloe constantly interrupted Beca to inform her of the good news and Beca would tell her to not get too excited. Chloe would tell Beca to lighten up, because everything was finally making sense and coming together.

Until Beca came storming through the door while Chloe was in the kitchen preparing dinner.

"Hey Bec-" Chloe greeted cheerfully as she always does, only to stop halfway when Beca walked straight past the kitchen to her room, slamming the door behind her.

Chloe quickly turned off the stove and made her way in front of Beca's door. She gently knocked, when she didn't hear a protest from the other side she slowly turned the door knob and entered the room. Beca was in front of her laptop and other music equipment with headphones in her hand. The headphones in her hand were held in a vicelike grip, the knuckles on the back almost white.

"Let's buy a van Chloe," Beca said barely above a whisper.

Chloe came up behind her and wrapped her arms around her friend, "That's what I've been saying for a while," she said teasingly, in an attempt to lighten up the mood. "Do you want to tell me what's wrong?"

She felt Beca take a deep breath, "I got fired," she repeated the words again as if she couldn't believe it herself, "I got fired." Beca reached up to hold onto Chloe's arm that was wrapped around her, it didn't look like she noticed her own actions. "I was working with that stupid artist, and he's trash," Chloe nodded, even if Beca couldn't see her, "I want to make him good you know? So I gave him advice tried to point him to the right direction, but he wasn't into any of my suggestions, which is like whatever." Chloe could tell that it definitely wasn't "like whatever," but she didn't say anything and allowed for Beca to continue.

"The internet sucks, he posted something on one of his accounts about a shitty producer at the label," she gave a humorless laugh and placed her headphones down and pointed at herself, "Me. So the boss people called me up and told me that had to let go of me because of 'creative differences,' which we all know is code for 'we're a shitty label that doesn't need even more of a shitty reputation with you'."

Beca huffed, "I didn't need them anyways, I don't care."

"You care Becs," Chloe said, holding onto Beca a little tighter.

"I don't," was the stubborn reply.

"If you didn't care, you wouldn't have slammed the door or looked like you were going to break your precious headphones when I walked in," Chloe said before dropping a small kiss to the top of Beca's head. "I'm going to finish up dinner and after we eat you can help me narrow down the list I made of vans, are you going to be okay?"

"Do we have ice-cream?" Beca asked, gently prying Chloe's arms off of her to turn around and face the redhead.

"Cookie dough."

"I'll be fine," she said with a small smile. Chloe walked back into the kitchen, knowing that it was time for her to give Beca some space. She turned the stove back on, finishing up the meal that she had started. It was a bit of an awful thought to think, but she knew something like this would happen soon. Not necessarily Beca getting fired, but Beca blowing up.

She had known the brunette for over five years, and she had never seen her more burnt out than the past few months, even more so than when she was hiding her internship at residual heat. She'd first suggested the idea of living in a van as almost a joke, she had spent the entire day watching as many of those videos of people converting their vans into a livable space and felt inspired. But then the more she thought about it, the more she fell into the idea, and now she almost felt like the two of them needed it. Especially Beca.

They spent the night curled up on the couch with a pint of ice-cream between the two with national geographic playing in the background. Back when they first moved in together, Chloe had walked in on Beca watching the television with rapt attention. She was naturally extremely curious on what had captured the brunette's attention, imagine her surprise when she saw that it was national geographic, of all channels. The only explanation from Beca she got was, "Dude it's interesting shit."

The next few months were spent scouring the internet for an ideal van that wasn't too expensive and releasing more covers and mashups of songs to be able to afford it all. The views increased, the number of subscribers doubled, and eventually they had an old black Mercedes Sprinter parked out in front of their little apartment.

"So I uh went out to buy some power tools and stuff, according to all those YouTube videos you have to gut out the van," was Beca's reply to Chloe's questioning look when Chloe came home to see a bunch of bags from the local hardware store around her feet, "sounds a bit violent and dangerous if you ask me," she shrugged, "but I guess we'll have to figure it all as we go."

Chloe dropped her bags at the front door and wrapped Beca in a warm hug, there was nothing better than Beca willingly being involved in all this. The sun was beginning to set, but there was still the slightest glow from the sky and decent light emitting from the lamps lining the street. It was enough light for them to be able to see, and quite frankly Chloe didn't want to wait any longer to be able to be on the road, so she grabbed a drill and headed out to the parked van.

"Who needs food," grumbled Beca behind her, "dinner's for the weak anyways," but she followed Chloe out the door, so she obviously didn't really mind.

"She's beautiful," Chloe said in awe.

Beca laughed, "Weirdo, you've been saying that every time you've looked at the van."

Chloe just smiled widely, "It's all just so amazing."

"It's a van Chlo," Beca deadpanned.

Chloe gasped faking hurt, "it's our new home Becs, just wait till we finish it, you'll be in love with the van just as much as I am." Beca burst out laughing as soon as Chloe finished her short little speech. Chloe was actually a little hurt this time, because the van actually meant a lot. But Beca was still laughing, leaning onto the side of the van for support.

"You-" she let out another laugh, "you-you should have seen the faces of the couple that walked past us," she closed her eyes to compose herself, before opening them up again, Chloe had never seen them filled with so much happiness and life, "New York sees a lot of crazy shit, but they looked horrified when you talked about falling in love with the van and they actually sped up Chlo."

Beca was laughing again, "Of all the shady people you can see on the streets of New York and that you should actually quickly walk away from, they were scared of us because you talked about falling in love with a van, I can't wait to bring out the power tools."

Chloe couldn't stop the warmth rushing over her entire body even if she tried, it was a weird feeling to feel for a friend, but she couldn't help but be captivated with how alive Beca looked. The soft evening light coupled with the weak streetlights reflecting off of her face made her look so…free. Maybe free wasn't the right word, but Chloe couldn't really think of any one word to describe Beca looking so happy with her face and her eyes literally shining. Her eyes were like the galaxy, and it seemed like they also lacked oxygen, because wow, a truly happy Beca was breathtaking.

Beca's laughter died down and she she smiled softly at Chloe, "Why are you staring at me dude, you're the weird one, I should be staring at you," Beca widened her eyes and stared unblinkingly at Chloe to prove her point.

"You're an idiot," Chloe smiled, snapping out of whatever trance her best friend had cast on her, before holding up the drill, "and we have some work to do."

It was midnight before they decided to call it quits (it had been over four hours), but they got a sizeable portion of the van gutted out: the floor was taken out, and most of anything that was bolted in that didn't look important for the van to run. They had watched a few YouTube videos as they went, so they were obviously pros and had done everything right.

But Beca's stomach growled really loud, so they figured it was best to call it a day. They spent their time until four in the morning leaning against each other on the couch, eating leftover pizza and discussing future plans for the van. Chloe kept firing ideas from literally every corner possible while she frantically scribbled them down on a notepad. She looked up at Beca to see her smiling almost fondly at her, and she smiled back before asking for Beca's thoughts.

"As I said before Chlo, I trust that you've got the right idea, I'm pretty crappy with the entire designing thing anyways. Just tell me what to do," and Chloe, because she was easily swayed by any words that indicated the slightest affection (sue her), leaned over to kiss Beca on the cheek, lingering much longer than what was acceptable for a friendship. She blamed being half asleep.

A/N: I fell (very very very quickly) down the rabbit hold of videos of people converting vans into livable spaces (it's a problem), so I figured Beca and Chloe doing something like that would actually be pretty likely. Anyways, I have so many ideas for the story, and quite a lot written already. I hope you liked the first chapter, and that you'll stick around for future ones :)