"Shit, sorry." Beca tries to smile in apology for bumping into a girl standing in front of the entrance of the club, but the girl glares at her and shoulders her pointedly in retaliation.
Bitch, Beca thinks as she pushes past her and into the party.
It's the last place she wants to be: a party meant to celebrate her, Beca Mitchell.
It's a victory party. An afterparty. She'd won Khaled's contest with the full support of her Bellas and already has a week of legal meetings set up when she gets back to the States for her new solo recording contract and concert tour she'll be joining. It's a party for her and it's the last place she wants to be tonight. She'd much rather be in her hotel room moping.
Moping about her life changing. Moping about knowing her time as a Bella has technically ended. Definitely not moping about Chloe kissing their Army escort with such gusto that makes Beca a little nauseous to think about.
She weaves through the crowd to try to find any familiar face but it's nothing but a sea of strangers. She makes it to the bar after being stopped several times along the way to listen to the strangers gush over her and her performance. She usually liked positive feedback for a Bellas performance but when 100% of it is focused on her? Not so much.
"Tequila," she shouts at the bartender. "A double." She wants to get drunk quickly to make the event tolerable and to maybe drown her sorrows a bit.
She'd much rather down her liquor in solitude but tonight isn't the night for that. People start to notice her despite her best effort to blend in. She suspects her sparkly gold wardrobe in a sea of mostly black isn't helping her blend in very well.
Strangers keep demanding her attention–not asking, demanding–and she tries to be pleasant but it's difficult when they're all so self-serving in their commentary. It all feels fake. No one really looks her in the eye, too busy looking around the room for the next person they'll rush off to greet, to see how they can use them, network with them, capitalize upon them. She knows that's going to be a part of her life forever, now. She made a choice to step into the spotlight. She dug her grave.
She's good at faking it, too, though. She can wear a plastic smile and laugh and flirt even if it twists her up inside to be so disingenuous.
She asks for a margarita on the rocks (no salt) when she gets a break from being the center of attention and savors it–the break...and the margarita. She's still quick to drink it though, barely beginning to feel the fuzziness of the two shots she'd downed in succession, and orders another margarita while she finishes the one in her hand. She'll slow down, now. She doesn't need to get sloppy; she just needs to get drunk enough and then she's going to sneak out a back door and go back to the hotel. Maybe cry a bit. She could use a good cry.
She's nursing her second margarita, leaning against the bar and trying to become invisible, back to the crowd, when someone plucks her glass from her hand.
"Hey!" she says, offended, as she spins to steal it back, only to watch it be finished off by– "Oh, thank God." It's a relief that Chloe's found her. Other than Theo nodding at her now and then, everyone is a stranger.
"Dance with me," Chloe says with a wink as she sets Beca's empty glass on the bar and takes her hand. She doesn't ask, either, but unlike all the strangers, Beca doesn't mind when Chloe demands her attention.
Beca lets Chloe pull her out onto the dance floor; people try to talk to her again when they notice her but she ignores them, instead focusing on her hand in Chloe's as she follows until Chloe picks a spot, stops, turns, and drops Beca's hand to instead drape her arms over Beca's shoulders as she gives her own a quick shimmy before they fall into rhythm together.
This...this is easy. This, Beca can do. This feels like the innumerable nights in college, and even after, when they'd get bored of everyone else, or the guys hitting on them, and decide to pair up to be left alone. It's easy to let the anxieties and the general bad feelings go when Chloe's smiling at her, or winking at her, or making caricature-level sexy faces at Beca to get her to laugh.
Chloe makes it better, but then again, Chloe's always made everything better.
Beca sees Chloe's lips moving but it's so loud, she can't make it out. She tries to read them...grumpy? crappy? gumby? go pee? but she can't, and she's embarrassed when she realizes it's because she's too distracted thinking about how she'd rather be kissing Chloe's lips than reading them.
Instead, she leans to shout in Chloe's ear, "I don't fit in with these people!"
She closes her eyes at the touch of Chloe's fingers along her neck, pushing her hair out of the way so she can reply, "Who says we need to fit in?"
Beca's about to ask what she means when Chloe takes a step back and, much to her horror, launches into doing The Sprinkler, one hand behind her head as the other chk-chk-chks past Beca's face.
"Oh, my God, what are you doing?" Beca can't help but cover half her face in second-hand embarrassment (but not her whole face; then she wouldn't be able to watch Chloe shift into The Robot, arm rotating to bonk herself on the head and transfer the motion across her body). "You need to stop!"
She doesn't know if Chloe can even hear her, but she's pretty sure she at least gets the message because instead of stopping, she shakes her head, and subjects Beca to The Roger Rabbit, The Running Man, and by the time she gets to The Cabbage Patch, Beca's laughing too hard to be embarrassed.
"Come on!" Chloe says as she takes a couple of steps backward, grinning so widely Beca's sure it must hurt.
"No, no no," Beca says, waving her hands despite shifting her feet for what she knows is coming.
Chloe just nods and steps forward and Beca has no choice but to do the same; she can't leave Chloe hanging as one-half of the Kid 'n Play and taps her ankle with her own before stepping back to repeat it.
She's still laughing when Chloe hooks her ankle and forces them to hop in a circle until Beca loses her balance on her heels and falls into someone. She doesn't bother apologizing, too busy laughing and letting Chloe catch her.
Chloe always catches Beca when she falls, it seems.
"I didn't want to be here," she says, still laughing as she lets the levity and the tequila lower her inhibitions as she holds Chloe a little closer than she would if she was sober.
"We can go if you want to." They have to shout to be heard, despite being inches apart from one another.
She shakes her head, moving into a more modern and less attention-grabbing version of dancing and Chloe follows suit. She hated everything about this place when she arrived but now...now it's good. Now it's fun. "We can stay."
It's hard to think that this will be one of the last times she and Chloe dance together like this, travel together like this, have any time together at all, really, like this. Everything is going to change. Everything already has changed. She has to travel. Probably relocate. Leave Chloe on the other side of the country. Chloe's in school, it's not like she could or should uproot her life to try to transfer to a California university, and Beca would never ask her to. And now, apparently, Chloe has...well, a guy. A guy friend. A male companion whom she's drooled over this entire trip to the point Beca's considered taking a photo of his face just to put it on a dart board.
They have to grow up. Grow apart. It happens with all college friends. You can't stay close forever.
Her thoughts are interrupted by someone drunkenly slamming into her from behind; not a graze or a bump but full-on slamming into her to shove her into Chloe and Chloe into the person behind her like dominoes.
"Ugh, get off me, fucker!" she says as she tries to shove backward but the man is slow to move and, apparently, she and Chloe are the only thing keeping him from hitting the floor. "I hate everyone." She doesn't have to lean in to be heard; they're already cheek to cheek thanks to the drunkard.
"Everyone?"
She shivers because Chloe's lips brush her ear when she speaks. "Everyone but you."
She doesn't mean to be so honest; it's a disarming response and she knows it. She should have said, "Except you; you're cool," or any version of that, but "Everyone but you" has a very distinct connotation to it and she closes her eyes to not have to meet Chloe's when she's finally able to stand upright again, the man helped back to his feet.
"Then let's leave," Chloe says in her ear, taking Beca's hand to again lead her, this time out of the crowd, off the dance floor, and out the door and into a waiting car. There's no military escort this time; it's a hired car, the same one that had transported Beca to the party and she doesn't know how Chloe knows which car to take them to, but she does.
They're quiet for the first several minutes of the drive and Beca's grateful for it; her ears feel like they're full of cotton as they recover from the music of the club. She notices, pleasantly, that Chloe's hand hasn't left hers save for when they had to climb into the car.
"I'm so proud of you," Chloe says to break the silence.
Beca sniffs and shakes her head.
"I'm serious, Becs. You...what you did up there tonight...that was magic. I've never seen you like that, just...glowing. And it's not like I'm surprised, I knew you had that in you, you always glow when you're singing but tonight...that was...that was really something."
When Beca finally manages to lift her eyes, she finds Chloe already looking at her, smiling softly, eyes shining. "Thanks," she says shyly.
"I can't believe that was our final performance together, though." Chloe's voice is watery and Beca already knows tears are imminent.
"No, hey," she rushes, "we're totally going to sing together again."
Chloe shakes her head and a tear escapes. "Not like that. Not like we used to. Everything's going to change."
Beca takes pause at hearing her own thoughts echoed back to her, spoken with the same type of...not regret, exactly, but true bittersweet sadness. And though she doesn't want to think it, to say it, one thing, one evil, green-eyed thing slithers into her brain and starts demanding her attention like everyone at the party. "Why did you kiss Chicago?"
Chloe blinks in genuine surprise. It's clear she'd expected probably any response but that. "What?"
"After everything, after our performance, our last one, you—you—I was waiting for you and you just, you just breezed right past me and kissed him."
"I...I was pumped from the performance and emotional and I wanted to kiss someone. Why are you asking me about it?"
"Why him?" The question shocks even Beca. She can't believe those words just left her mouth.
"What?"
"Why him? Why did you kiss him?" She can't believe they're still leaving her mouth.
Chloe stares at her, confusion and maybe hurt swirling in her eyes. "Well...he was there. Who'd you rather it have been?"
The rear passenger door opening next to Beca jolts her out of the moment; she hadn't even noticed they'd stopped in front of the hotel. She considers leaving, but Chloe hasn't flinched at the driver's expectation that they'd be departing.
"Who'd you rather it have been, Beca?" Chloe's jaw sets firmly this time and her eyes are unreadable. Not confused, not hurt, but...something.
Now or never. "Me. Okay? Me. You—you make me feel like I matter and you make all the shitty things in my life better and I don't know what I'm supposed to do without—"
She's cut off by lips on hers.
She gasps, shocked, and then it registers: Chloe is kissing her. She hadn't hesitated. Not five seconds had passed from Beca saying she wished it had been her before Chloe had done it.
Chloe hadn't second-guessed her words.
Chloe wanted to kiss her.
Beca lifts her hands quickly to frame Chloe's face, struggling to comprehend that this was real, that Chloe is kissing her. She can feel tears on Chloe's cheeks and she knows she's crying, too. She brushes one of Chloe's tears away and then Chloe pulls back with a quiet laugh.
"Now that we got that cleared up…" Chloe says with a gentle touch to Beca's forehead as though she's brushing a hair back into place. Then she looks over Beca's shoulder and lifts her eyebrows.
"Oh, right," she says, realizing they're still sitting in the back of a car and the driver is still waiting alongside it holding the door for them to leave. She twists in her seat and steps out, then turns and offers her hand to Chloe to help her out as well.
She intentionally tugs her a little too hard so she can use the momentum to pull her close. She doesn't kiss her, though. She just wants to look at her, at the eyes she's spent so many hours upon hours staring into over the years.
"Everything's going to change," she says.
Chloe's hands settle on her hips. "It already has."
Beca looks up at the night sky above them, then bites her lip and closes her eyes. Her knee would be bouncing if she was sitting. "Come to my room?"
"Really?" Chloe's response is almost laughter. "I mean, yes, but I gotta say, I'm honestly surprised, I didn't think you'd want to—"
"To sleep, Chlo," she interrupts, blushing furiously. "I didn't mean...I meant to sleep. Together. Not sleep together but, like, share my bed. With me. And sleep at the same time."
Chloe does laugh at that and Beca grimaces, only to feel Chloe tap the tip of her scrunched up nose to make her open her eyes. "I'd love to."
Beca exhales. "Okay. Cool."
"Just sleep, though?" Chloe doesn't give her a proper chance to respond; she kisses her before she can. Unlike the sudden reflex of a kiss in the car, this one is more measured, less panicked, and it instantly makes Beca lightheaded.
"Maybe," she mumbles against Chloe's lips, "more of this is okay."
Chloe's smile grows until they have to stop kissing. "Maybe?"
Beca can't help but smile, too. "Okay, yeah, definitely more of that." She laughs with Chloe as she takes a step back, grabbing her hand to take her best friend, her companion her friend who...is a girl...back to her room.
And she doesn't care that everything is going to change.