Jesse wished that last Tuesday, instead of studying for his Biology test in the library, he'd gone back to his dorm and watched Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon like he wanted. Maybe then he'd be able to walk by the H section without feeling nauseous and scarred at the same time.

How was he supposed to know what lurked between the stacks? He'd been an innocent at the time.

But then he'd turned a corner and-like Harry when Cedric had died in his arms-all innocence he'd been clinging to was wrenched away from him.

At first he hadn't been able to process what he was seeing. Why was Fat Amy rubbing up against the bookshelves like that? She couldn't possibly be able to reach any of the books at that angle and her arms weren't even stretched out, they were wrapped around something, or, wait, who was that?

"Unnggh, god your tits are magnificent."

That voice. Jesse knew that voice. He heard that voice every day—hell he heard it every night, yelling at him to go lower, dance smoother, be better—and he definitely, definitely didn't need to hear what it sounded like when it's owner's hands were cupping Fat Amy's chest.

Fat Amy turned and then Jesse had a full view. The two of them were pressing against each other, mashing their mouths together almost angrily.

He had to get out of there. Quickly, before either of them turned and noticed he was there. He was pretty sure his mouth was open; neither of them would believe this was an accident, he'd look perverted for standing and gaping at them. Even if what he really wanted to be doing was sitting at his desk back in his dorm, trying to figure out a way to safely pour bleach down his ears.

Slowly, reaching up on his tiptoes like he'd seen the marching band do in Drumline, he started to eek backward. His legs were a little wobbly. 'Reach out a hand, Jesse', he thought to himself, 'feel for a corner. Easy, easy, you're almost there…'

Except dancing doesn't make you always coordinated. And caution doesn't mean your elbow never smacked into a bookshelf so loudly it jostled three books out of place.

'Screw it. Run, Jesse, RUN!'

babababababababab

He turned the corner and flew out of the library so fast he never noticed his IPod drop out of his pocket.

Trebles practice was brutal, as always. Jesse kept glancing over at Bumper, looking for some sort of sign that he was in a relationship, some extra softness around his edges or something. But Bumper was just the same as always, yelling at everyone to "Go go go!" and telling Hat to "Step it up, please, before you ruin everything."

At the end of rehearsal Bumper gathered everyone to the side.

"All right, guys, good practice. We just need to hit a few more things next time and from there, we are ready to roll! Nobody's gonna touch us. Now get out of here."

When Jesse turned to go he felt a hand wrap around his bicep.

"Hang on, newbie. I've got something for you."

Bumper reached into his back pocket and pulled Jesse's IPod out by the headphones.

"Here."

"Oh…umm…" Jesse loved his IPod. He loved it. It was his baby. But he liked where this conversation was going much, much less. "I don't know if…I don't think that's…"

"Oh, whatever. I know it's yours. No one else on the team has this many movie soundtracks."

"It may be someone-"

"Even if The Tigger Movie soundtrack wasn't on the iPod—which you spent like, twenty minutes last practice trying to convince everyone to see—when I plug it in to my computer "Jesse Swanson's IPod" pops up.

Jesse closed his mouth. He couldn't think of anything to say (given an hour he didn't think he could think of anything to say). Bumper just stared at him, one eyebrow raised.

"Oh. Thanks, man. That's, uh, weird; I don't know where I left it…"

"I've got an idea."

Jesse really needed to put Lying on his list of things to Never Ever Do Again. Honestly. He wasn't even good at it.

"Uh…"

"Look, I don't know how much you saw and I don't care. I just want to get a few things straight."

Before Jesse could say anything (like "I don't need to know, no really, please don't tell me") Bumper was talking again. Maybe that was better. Sometimes if you didn't talk, Bumper just carried on the conversation by himself.

"You can't tell anyone. I've got too much riding on this competition, I can't let it get out that I'm fraternizing with the enemy."

"Oh, uh, dude. Hey. I'm sure if you're dating Fat Amy no one's gonna care—"

"What? Dating? Who said, who said anything about dating, man? I'm not dating her. She's gross. Literally the grossest human being I have ever seen. And you know what? The only reason I'm even hanging out with her at all is because the Bellas have some dumb, archaic rule that if you mess around with a Treble than you get kicked out. And so all I'm doing is waiting for the perfect moment and then—bam!—I spill the news to Aubrey, she loses yet another team member and we're sold for internationals. So just keep your enormous mouth shut, okay? Because if you ruin my plan I swear on my vocal chords that I will take away all hope you ever had of a solo."

Then Bumper jammed the IPod into Jesse's hand and stormed out of the rehearsal hall, pounding the door open with a dramatic thump.

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A week later, Jesse was still mad. Where did Bumper get off? Not only was it completely annoying that he could go on and on about how the Trebles were the best and the competition was in the bag and then go off and plot this behind their backs (what, he wasn't confident in the Trebles on their own, he had to plan some no-good thing like this for them to win?) but Jesse was

just so mad over how he was treating Fat Amy. Jesse liked Fat Amy. Yeah she was a little weird, but she was also pretty cool. She didn't deserve to be treated like some sort of Tonks, waiting for her guy to wake up and see what an awesome person she was.

But Bumper had never pretended he was super nice. If Fat Amy was messing around with him, she probably knew what she was doing. She wasn't stupid; she knew what Bumper was like.

All of this stuff was getting too complicated for Jesse and right now he was busy. He was walking over to the Treble house to watch some old movies on Bumper's TV. Bumper had the best TV out of all the Trebles (way better than Jesse's laptop) and Jesse thought watching it without Bumper's permission was a pretty good pay-off for making Jesse's life just a little more difficult. He only had time to watch one movie though, because Bumper's new Shakespeare class he'd been telling everyone about only lasted two and a half hours. All the other Trebles usually went out for hot wings on Tuesday nights so Jesse would have the Treble House to himself.

He opened up the front door and took the stairs two at a time. Then, as soon as he reached the top step, he stopped moving.

Bumper's door was open. Bumper never left his door open. Whenever he left the house, it was always shut. None of the guys ever went in there; Bumper was super OCD about his stuff and always noticed if something was moved around even slightly, but Jesse had been confident he could remember where everything was.

Or, well. He was. But now. The door was open.

He tiptoed quietly up to the door and peeked over the frame. He could just barely make out Bumper sitting on his couch watching The Sound of Music. And laying across the couch, with her upper half leaning against Bumper's chest and head nestled into his neck, was Fat Amy. Bumper was lightly stroking her shoulder and arm with his fingers.

"Hey. Hey. Wake up. This is the good part." He whispered.

"Unghmmm? Wot? Bumper? I'm tired."

"C'mon. They're just about to sing the good-bye song."

"Ungh. Okay. Good-bye, then. I'm going back to sleep."

"Hey! C'mon. This movie is a classic."

"It's like a billion hours long."

Bumper rolled his eyes and snorted. "Fine then. Go back to sleep."

"Mm. Thank you, short shit." She burrowed back into his side.

"I swear, no appreciation."

"Recognize."

His eyes seemed to freeze on her face for a bit after she closed her eyes, reaching out with his hand to push back her hair from her face. She sighed. Carefully, Bumper reached over the couch to pull up the blanket resting on top of it, opening it up before laying it across Fat Amy, arranging it perfectly across her. Then he lifted up one leg and nestled back into the couch. Fat Amy pushed herself even farther into him until they were both molded into each other comfortably. Then Bumper looked back up and continued to watch the movie, glancing down every now and then to look at her.

Jesse started to back slowly away from the door. He needed to get out of the house, soon, before he took a particularly deep breath and Bumper looked up and noticed him. Hell, he needed to leave before he breathed at all.

He shut the front door behind him as quietly as he could. And as he walked down the front walk, he had absolutely no id ea what to think. And for the first time, he was actually a little jealous of Bumper.

Five weeks later, even though Jesse knew that sectionals would have been the best time to out Fat Amy and get her kicked off the team before she could sing her solo, Bumper still hadn't said a word to Aubrey.

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(author's note)

Methinks the gentleman doth protest too much.

This is a story I had planned before I wrote my (very differently paced) story Beds, Burritos, and Bumper. I got a lot of requests for a sequel where they were in a real relationship. This isn't a sequel, but they are the same Bumper and Amy I set up in my previous story. Same characterization, anyway. So any opinions or theories or wonderings you thought up for that Bumper and Amy can still apply here.

There's a recurring thing in the movie Bumper says (or doesn't say) to Amy that is a big part of how I see them. It'll be brought up in another chapter. Though feel free to guess.