Chapter Two:
Terror at 30,000 Feet
(Amy's Midnight Special)
The journey home was painfully uneventful. Aside from becoming suspicious of Amy and her near-unending lineup of cautionary glances cycling back and forth between the aisles of the plane -which was starting to really fucking creep her out- Beca found herself admittedly grateful, and a little at ease, that their extremely melodramatic tour was finally at its end.
Not to say that she's isn't sad either. Because she is. A little sad. Regretful, even. Time spent with the Bellas is time treasured, and the tour had been a delightful rendition of everything she cherished the most. An inspiring raiment of music, travelling, and performing? Hell yeah. A goofy ensemble of kickass women with ridiculously beautiful pipes to boot? Uh, hard-core dancing yeah. For sure. There's a certain time-tested sturdiness to interpretive wit and laughter, and when you add that to the gusto of being with the people you love the most in this world, well, who could resist?
It'd been an obvious yet welcomed excuse to revisit old roots, but it's not a definitive scenario that colours her mind when she imagines The Bellas singing together again anytime soon. Of course, if the opportunity ever presented itself, she imagines everyone quickly jumping onto the aca-bandwagon, headfirst, without question. She's known for a while that their inevitable divergence from one another needed to be accepted. A point of inescapable change, and all that. It's just paradoxical, she thinks, how quickly and certainly she clings to things like that now. To people. Girls, even.
Though cycling back, it'd taken them three years to arrange this, the tour, and it'd been an impulsive decision at that. A decision fuelled by bitterness, beers and Lilly's wicked firewater. With the added weight of their morbidly unsatisfying lives, failed jobs and crushed dreams alike, it was probably not a great mix to stir into the already gigantic weeping pot on indecision. Neither were Lilly's cocktails, but like their quickly slumping lives, it was a thing. A shit thing; that they consumed with little to no regard. Hallmarks of a signalling train wreck, with a sticker screaming QUARTER-LIFE CRISIS stapled to the forefront.
If Aubrey's father had been anything but a military man with connections, then they all might as well have just settled for their usual periodic and short-lived reunions. Which wasn't a bad thing. God, no. They were just… fleeting, unfortunately. A tiny bleep in an otherwise flat line.
Touring with the other bands had been a genuinely enjoyable and amusing experience. Their slight debacle involving one crazily coy yet psychotic Australian –who'd proceeded to kidnap and ransom the girls off to his equally unhinged daughter- had not been. Yeah, that was probably overstepping something. It'd been a total fucking fanfare of, unsurprisingly, wacky proportions, and the guy, Fergus, had been literally blown away in the end like some sort of real-life Wile E. Coyote. Though thankfully, the poptart had been dutifully locked up and sidelined. No doubt settling in to be extradited back to Australia, where some magistrate was just itching to throw the book at him. Amy didn't seem fazed though, like, at all. Which was probably odd. Or not. Maybe. Who could know with that one? What happened, happened. Strangely enough. With a little meaty finesse from the French authorities and overseeing MP's, they could now, mercifully, wash themselves clean of one Fergus Hobart.
Anyway.
They were flying coach. The plane was typically divided into three sections with the Bellas seated among the afforded rows. Though Beca had been initially allocated to the window seat, Emily had, unfortunately, been dumped into the middle, with sweet ol' Amy in the aisle. In what had likely been one of her most ill-thought out ideas since knowing her; before Worlds, Emily once fumblingly admitted to a noxious fear of flying. It'd been the result of some prior negative flying-related experience. Anyway, she was perpetually shook. She often suffered crippling bouts of anxiety as a consequence, and while mostly everyone had sympathetically shared a collective "Aw," for their teetering Legacy, a short few were less than considerate. Some more deliberate than others.
Amy, foam at the mouth, was adamant about listing IMDB's top ten films involving horrific plane crashes, and point-of-fact Flo was then only too happy to identify the statistical likelihoods of seven out of ten of those aforementioned movies in a way that was somehow, typically, both breezy and dire. Naturally, the poor girl had been mopey grape and a wreck travelling to Copenhagen for Worlds, and to top it all off, she'd been seated next to Lilly. Who had, according to her, inaudibly muttered, "Belphegor tells me you look like the girl from Lost,"
Yes. Fucking, what.
And before, when they'd optimistically boarded this flight, Aubrey's unhelpful input of, "You should really choose not to be anxious," was, of course, good for nothing and no one. Despite her slightly skewed perception of things, at least the ex-captain, turned drill Sargent, meant well. Counterproductive advice aside.
So between Beca, Chloe, Cynthia Rose, Stacie, Jessica and Ashley, they'd each made it their sworn mission to keep the girl as far away from the others as possible whenever flying was involved. Having her sit next to the Australian now would be downright contrary to reason. On any scale. With Amy being Amy and Beca knowing all too well just how ridiculously outrageous the woman's antics could be given the opportunity, she'd swiftly opted for Emily to take the window seat, with her taking the middle.
Which would be fine, all things considered, if Amy wasn't skating her eyes fanatically all over the compartment still while simultaneously looking Houdini-shit crazy all at once. It'd been slowly chipping away at her ever-tested patience when first she'd noticed it, and the look that was no doubt plastered all over her face screamed all the tightly-woven profanities necessary. She can feel a muscle in her face twitch somewhere involuntarily and her mouth forms into a rigid grimace, considering. When she finally caves and flings her head to the side, it's with a renewed determination. "What… the hell are you doing, dude?"
It's the wrong thing to start with, apparently. "Quiet!" Amy flails and moves almost too quickly, which is a brief shock. Beca feels then, to her horror, a clammy palm smack her squarely in the jaw in what, naturally, seems to be a crude effort to silence her. Before she can protest, and recoil, Amy is mumbling into her ear, "Sssssh. Are you insane?"
"What the fuck?!" She pushes against her palm and elicits an embarrassingly loud and droning sound, which then quickly punctures the mundane thrum and lulling of the plane. It's all she can do, really, as she begins to mutter uselessly against the hand. She doesn't have the fortitude to put up with this right now. Silenced without relent for reasons unknown, Beca is saddled with her only option; to glare with what she hoped were two frigid, soul-shaking daggers tipped with acid. Her fingers are pulling at Amy's sleeve like a maniac when she wales uselessly against the larger woman. Yet nothing. Amy's looking around still, seemingly non-fazed and decidedly all sixes and sevens about whatever. She considers chewing threw the hand, a momentary shock but not entirely illogical given the sheer ludicrousness of the situation. Whatever she hoped to convey with heated words, however, had been promptly muffled.
It's at that point when Emily resolves to spin around in her seat. Her eyes widen guardedly like a gazelle and they zoom in suddenly on Beca's. They both share a startled look of encyclopedia proportions before she throws a timid glance around both of the struggling girls and shifts to remove her headphones. She hesitantly opens her mouth. "Guys?"
All four pairs of eyes suddenly fall to the younger Bella, as both Amy and Beca stop short and stiffen, seized. "Oh, hello, you. Emily… yeah. How are you?" Amy asks, all too quickly and far, far too casually to be considered even partially sincere. She watches as Emily regards her carefully. Looking and opening her mouth, closing it, then skating her eyes over at Amy. A mad frown sports across Beca's forehead as she resigns herself to defeat, and watches as it succeeds in deepening the debate currently flashing like a warning in the younger girl's eyes.
"I'm… fine?" she stammers.
Beca mutters darkly against her restraint as Amy's face morphs into a strikingly doubtful grin. "Excellent. Nice talking. Turn around please?"
Her eyes narrow as Beca's nearly rolled in disdain. There's a cautionary swivel of curiosity and hesitation before something else begins to shadow Emily's glare. Mute consideration, perhaps? Whatever the girl appeared to contemplate, it looked like she'd already decided to pay no attention and forget whatever was currently happening. "Oookay. Yeah. Sure… thing." She turns, still a little perplexed, and then fastens her headphones back in place. She says nothing else.
As soon as Amy brings her hand back, Beca moves. She vaguely considers the five finger death punch, which is, probably, almost as terrifying as her actually remembering something of note from Kill Bill V2. Instead, and just as Amy is lifting her hand once more, as though to taunt, she smacks it away, shooing. "Are you serious right now? What the hell is wrong with you? Get a grip!"
There's a heady chuckle in the other woman's voice when she replies, though looking once more toward an oblivious Emily. "I'm always serious, Beca. I'm a very serious person. Don't be so hurtful." Typically evasive. Clockwork evasive. "It hurts," she finishes.
She's groaning before she can stop herself and pinching the bridge of her nose. "Literally everything you just said then is a complete lie."
Amy rolls her eyes, but whenever Amy does anything ever, it's always with a flair for being overly dramatic. She should have expected this. Yet for whatever obtuse reason beyond that of rational thinking, Beca had thought that, maybe, the Australian would stick like a barnacle to her assigned seat and just stay put. She'd been far too quiet since they'd left France. It'd been as weird as the odd part of YouTube and more than a little nerve-wracking at best. So when Amy does roll her eyes, of course she crowns her head back like seagull, into the headrest, and groans a little too loudly for Beca's emotional tandem. It was not that dissimilar from a wild animal, either, which was infinitely worse. And… weird. Beca just watches her oddly, eyes wide and flickering doubtfully up and over the aisle to scout for any possible wondering eyes. Though, to her relief, Amy settles after audibly running out of breath, but not before breathing in once again and blowing her hair back with an abrasive rush of air. She sniffs, begrudgingly begins to pout, of course, and Beca can't help but seethe at the psychobiblical bullshit. "Stop it." She says. Simple. To the point.
Amy acts oblivious. The whole thing is on purpose, she knows, a ruse. But it's becoming far too exasperating to handle. "Stop what?"
"Don't. You know, so stop it."
"How can I stop, I don't know what to stop. Should I stop breathing? Eating?" Her eyes draw thin, souring. "You monster."
"That," she summons an accusing finger and points at the woman's moping face. Of course, said face is in its fourth degree of Kubler-Ross's stages of grieving, and also trying very, very earnestly not to break the bogus façade. "This! Whatever it is you're planning… just stop."
"… Planning?"
"Amy!" Beca breathes in an abating breath to steady herself. They'd been flying for an insurmountable number of hours. Which was an overt exaggeration of time, yes, but time painstakingly ceased to make any cognitive sense when seconds seem like minutes. No matter how many times Beca cast a disinterested glance at her phone, thirty-fucking-seconds later, the hand had barely inched to the next stupid decimal. The point being; she was hardly in any mood to deal with Amy and her mischief right now. "And, also…" she leans in close, whispering irritably and willing for the other woman to listen as she stared, and she, her. "Leave that poor, defenseless girl alone." She tries to point her thumb inconspicuously toward Emily, who thankfully, in Beca's peripherals, was looking out the compartment window. Blissfully, stupidly unaware.
"Beca," Amusement hustles her words. Her stare is a little too blasé for the smaller woman's quickly dissipating tolerance, but then she continues and her next words make Beca absolutely livid. "I don't have the time, patience, or the crayons to explain to you… just how wrong that assumption is."
"I swear to-…"
"You two!"
For the second time in what was, likely, only a miniscule amount of minutes, both girls swiftly ceased all verbal fencing. The sound of another voice suddenly pervading the air towers above them makes them stop. Searching out, Beca looks up, same as Amy. They seemed impishly in-sync as both of their eyes promptly connected with red hair and a sure-enough puzzling look that spoke definitive volumes in the following silence. Chloe stood behind them, blue eyes boring down and waiting. Her perfectly manicured brow rose slightly, if not a little tantalizingly, and Beca suddenly feels her lips start to curve into a slightly inelegant smile at the familiar sight.
She breathes a wispy, "Hi!" before freezing in her seat. Amy looks at her pointedly just as she clears her throat. She can feel the thudding of her pulse beneath her temples as she takes a moment to rehearse just how utterly ridiculous that sounded. What the hell. "We're being loud," she says finally, decidedly. It's hardly a revelation. It's true, she knows, but Beca can't seem to find a plausible reason to care anymore. If she were being honest with herself, she's still thinking about how neurotic her greeting had been. It felt she'd just wilfully aged a decade.
For a brief moment, all she can quietly discern is the distant, yet not far-off, humming vibrations of the engines pulsing over the wings of the plane as she just stares, bug-eyed.
Chloe cocks her head a little haphazardly, eyes slipping squarely onto Beca for a moment. There's a peculiar glint sharpening her stare. The scrutinizing of which temporally causes Beca to feel slightly uncomfortable, only because she feels like a petulant child who's about to receive scornful lecture for being too loud. But the redhead is cautioning a glance toward Amy too, yet not before quickly, fluidly, cycling back to an unmoving brunette. She's holding out her IPod, Beca realizes, and now she's slowly sashaying it between them, "I can overhear you through Shania," she says a little accusingly, though not without a sly hint of something else. Laughter, Beca thinks. She grins.
The kick of gravity dampens her chest.
A probable cause of being suspended at an altitude of 30,000 feet in the air, no doubt. Yeah. That was it.
"I'm sorry." She looks at Amy then, "We're both sorry."
She observes them comically from behind the seats, smirking, ever so slightly, with some sparkling secret that eludes Beca and, possibly, all formation of coherent thought. "Is that so?" Her curls bob freely as her head ganders between one woman to the other. "Should I call for an air marshal before you two have a rom-com beat down in the middle of the plane?"
"That's not…-"
"Chloe!" Amy is punctual, without delay, all sunshine and sickening light-heartedness wrapped in a piece shiny aluminum foil. As quick as a wink, she's smiling, and Beca wants to strangle her. "You beautiful tropical fish. Relax. Woosaa! Ms. Killjoy here and I were just discussing the philosophical merits of being kind to one another. We've made progress." She fights the urge to slap her, and scowl. Or both. Yes. Though, strangling her still seems like the more suitable choice at this moment.
"Oh," The look she gives is one of pure dubiousness. She's tapping her fingers thoughtfully over the headrest and actually considering, in a way that's almost adorable, and it takes everything within Beca not to laugh at it. "Well, thankfully that's a topic you're well versed in."
Amy strikes Beca lightly over the shoulder, "See?" and then sprouts a thankful nod toward the slowly waning redhead. She hasn't stopped smiling. "Da, darling."
"Sarcasm was never a part of the school's itinerary where you hail from. Huh, Amy?" Beca quips suddenly.
"Mm, nah. Although," she clicks her tongue, "on a slightly unrelated and monotone note; chap your crusty lips, bitch, and kiss my ass."
A laugh suddenly rolls out like a piece of lost music, lovely and choral-like. Chloe is smiling broadly with a slightly guilty look, and Beca can't help it. She concedes to the sound, to the silliness of it all and joins in, because the blank face Amy is making begins to slip at the seams. Not before long, all three of them are sputtering in cohesion, between laughing and grinning incessantly like a bunch of hearty old women. It's within small moments such as these that Beca can't help but imagine being someone else for a moment, if only for a couple of minutes. Just to observe. To be a furtive stranger looking up, jolted by the sound of crowding laughter and seeing, for the first time, a bunch of artlessly grinning girls like them carrying on like they do. She wonders what goes through their mind. Thinks, maybe, that she doesn't want to know, but then considers it a cause for flattery, to be even noticed at all.
Emily takes a moment of reprieve from her daydreaming, or whatever she'd been doing up until now. She notices Chloe above them. Once more though with a little leisure, she removes her headphones and looks up toward the bumbling redhead with a slightly baffled expression and pocket-sized smile, "Oh… hi, Chloe."
And Chloe is Chloe, all charming integrity and full of eloquence, who safeguards affections for her friends like a thief does with prized and priceless jewels. She quietens and beams down at the younger brunette with eyes like blue saucers. "Hi, sweetie, are you feeling alright? Do you need anything?"
The ever-watchful and youthful face of Barden Bella's current captain brightens, quickly to trust and doting. It's nice to see, Beca thinks, as she settles in to watch the exchange dotingly. With her suspicions seemingly eased by a few selectively sweet words, Emily is suddenly the epitome of what constitutes as a happy expression. Chloe outwardly has that effect. Effortless, in all her softly knitted candour. Like winking or blinking. The grass is green, clouds are pretty and Chloe is a natural, and it's easy to imagine her being from a magical land full of smiles and rainbows when, in actuality, someone like her can just… simply exist. It's something freshman Beca had once considered a fact, with abject horror, and being slightly helter-skelter about it, because who the hell acts like that? No one. Well, her. She does. Just her. Ah, fuck it.
Leave it to Chloe, of course, to barrel through a bunch of carefully constructed walls meant to stand forever.
She's mentally asphyxiating herself and bowing her head slightly. Her smile slipping but not entirely. Just, lingering. There's a discomfort like a bruise sparking in her chest somewhere, suddenly, and she shifts quietly in her seat. As quickly as the thought surfaces, it was gone.
"Yeah," The massed smile and laugh Emily emits isn't quite what both are really meant to articulate. A sullen mixture of nerves and turbulence, no doubt. "Yeah," she starts again, fumbling inadequately, "So, so totally fine. Um, I think we're supposed to be landing soon, or something, so the worst is over really. Right?"
Amy is already twisting her head before Beca can stop her, and makes a face, "Bless your heart, child. Without Jesus you'll never succeed."
Confused and wondering, Emily's eyes are darting between each girl like the ball from a pinball machine. "Ex-excuse me?"
"Oh no, you're mistaken. There's no excuse for you."
Something the equivalent of a twig snapping in her mind hits her just as awfully as a ball of hypothetical white lightening, and then no sooner the words leave Amy's mouth, an equally stunted and horrified Chloe gasps in realization at what they all just heard, "FAT AMY!" And Beca is sure that their collective voices can be heard. Which no doubt sound more like shouting than anything. She knows that they've probably prompted people to turn or double-back in their allocated seats with suspicion painted over their faces, as if they were all a part of some kind of ancient psychic tandem. Which is just unrealistic, but still. People are looking. People are gaping with startled faces and Emily is shrinking and fidgeting in her seat and quickly reattaching her headphones. Then bleakly, almost laughably, –but not really- she slams her forehead against the reinforced window with a punctured exhale of near-breathless dismay.
And Amy's chortling chuckle from the aisle seat is unnerving. She stands up, gaze seeking and locking over Emily, "Careful you don't break the window with a head like that, Legacy. You'll get sucked through the cracks like a meat and bone flavoured whirl-Slurpee." She makes a terrible sound, rolls her tongue deliberately under the hood of her mouth, and sloshes the accumulated salvia with a sickening sluuuurp.
Beca sees Chloe's hand quickly solidify itself over Emily's shoulder, before Beca herself is spinning in the middle of her seat and using her foot to kick out maddeningly at the still laughing Australian. She's now painfully aware that they still have an audience when she whispers, almost vehemently, "Get out of here, asshole! You. Are. The. Worst." Her words provoke nothing. Like, at all. The woman is an impenetrable stockade of mirthless laughter and electric relaxation, all cheek and carefully constructed ripostes. She's aware that Amy has made it her sole and ridiculously curt purpose to terrorize the poor Legacy. Who, really, wasn't even a Legacy anymore, but things had a tendency to stick with them if it suited, and Emily, being the youngest and most tenderfoot among them, had remained they're fumbling Legacy despite her current reign over the Barden Bella's. Because their horizontal reasoning dictated nothing else.
Unfortunately, that also meant the girl would be on the receiving end of Amy's often unprovoked clapbacks. Beca's never had an older sister. Not a blood relative, anyway. Bellas aside, but if she'd did, which she's thankful she doesn't, then she imagines them being exactly like Amy, and the thought doesn't exactly fill her with a pretty vote of confidence.
The woman's whisking away fake tears and scouting ahead now, before making it publically known that she was, in fact, heading to the restroom. "I shouldn't have guzzled down that curry before take-off. I'll see you guys at the terminal. I'll be prepped and clear for seconds."
Somewhere, wherever, in amongst the sea of tightly condensed seats, Beca can clearly make out a boisterous laugh belonging to an eavesdropping Cynthia Rose.
Amy throws out another shameless glance at Emily before attempting to subtly tap her nose. She winks as she leaves, and Beca takes the short juncture of silence as a soundless victory. Peace at the western front, for however long. It's enough. God, it's enough. At long last and not entirely restrained, a groan springs forth from her mouth. Loudly. She closes her eyes almost painfully. She can feel just how heavy they'd grown, in an attempt to block everything, anything. She's tired, she's hungry. She'd refused to sample the in-flight menus as a principal when the opportunity sprang by a billion minutes ago. The stuff they served and passed for food had looked unappetizing. It felt unappetizing when she'd poked Amy's. So it almost certainly tasted the same. She was eager to get her feet on solid ground. Furthermore, more than anything, Beca just wanted to arrive at their lonesome shack of an apartment, safely. She wanted to shower, and throw on a soft-peddled mix from her plugged in and recharged laptop. She wanted to wrap herself in a cocoon of seemingly unending blankets and just relax, with a hot chocolate. Definitely. Possibly for the ensuring 24 hours after said hot chocolate, and foodstuff. Yes, great plan.
She can feel the seat beside her dip without warning. Eyes still solemnly closed, she briefly marvels at the sheer impossibility of Amy relieving herself so quickly, before opening her eyes and realizing that, yes, it's impossible. Unquestionably, because Amy is still thankfully gone. Emily has calmed down and it's Chloe who is suddenly sitting beside her on the aisle seat.
Her eyes are so heavy with fatigue and she feels like utter shite, yet still she manages the smallest of smiles. She notices too, with an arching glance, that all of Amy's stuff has been removed. Chloe's small carryon is at her feet, along with her travel neck pillow and loafers, which she'd obviously taken off at some point. Her ripped denim pants are rolled up, just above her ankles. Evenly polished and manicured nails are on display, in a turquoise lacquer that looks unmistakably Chloe. There's something else there too, a hint of a fragrance or moisturizer. Lovely and light. Coconut. She recognizes it. Has, unashamedly, grown familiar with its perfume.
Beca cranes her head slightly, to peep through the open gap between their seats and is already grinning a little more. This time with half enchanted eyes before speaking up with a coy glance at the redhead's direction. "You sly Devil, you." Amy's personal effects; a blanket, carryon, her phone, a few packets of unopened chips, and a book on actually titled "Get Your Sh*t Together," by some chick. They've all been methodically relocated and organised onto the other seat, neatly. Of course.
Chloe appears a little affronted, with the merest inclination of her head as she replies lowly, with a tinge of mischief. "Well that's terribly endearing."
"Please," she counters with a small scoff, seeing through the bluff. She rests her head back against the headrest, though she achieves little comfort from it. "It's a point of fact that there have been correlations drawn between redheads, the devil and witchcraft. I was complimenting you on your whizical ways, Beale. I'm in awe."
A deep crease forms in the middle of her brow, and then her eyes are rolling with the barest iota of disbelief. "Are you even aware of what happened to people like me between the sixteenth and eighteenth century?"
She thinks briefly, "Uh, yeah," she decides. "Impassioned hypocrisy."
"Sure. We'll call it that."
She's biting her lip to contain her softly simmering laughter, bearing the emotion freely over her face before quickly casting a furtive glance up and toward the front of the plane. She murmurs quietly, "Do you think Amy will be impassioned when she comes back to a hijacked seat?"
"If she's not already impassioned defecating in the ladies room, then yeah. I imagine so."
Silence reigns for the briefest of moments, then Beca's nods curtly, once, with clouded eyes and images she'd rather not mentally check off. "That is… so, so gross, and weird. Jeez."
"You two were actively sending each other poop selfies at one point." There's a kernel of laughter underlining her voice.
"That… um." Poop selfies, as anointed by Fat Amy. Not as inherently disgusting as it sounded but rather a misunderstood practice and only superficially horrid. Simply put, it is a photograph typically taken with a phone much like a normal selfie. Only, in this scenario, said selfie is taken on the toilet. In the midst of business. "… was one time."
"You used the crying make-up smear as a filter, Beca," she deadpanned.
Her eyes move skyward to the roof as though searching for some far-seeing, ethereal guidance. "Purely to articulate just how oppressed I felt. Besides," she asserts, with raw confidence and not at all embarrassment, "it was conditional. She'd said she pitch in my half of the rental payment."
Laughter akin to mockery escapes her, and she looks at Beca, hard, "And if you can recall, her 'pitch in' was an uploaded screenshot to Facebook and a late payment of exactly $10.83."
She'd known that wouldn't stop her. Damnit. "Yeah. I recall. You pinned the eviction notice up on our fridge as a friendly keepsake."
Which, luckily, had been torn up when both Beca and Chloe made an instant, frenzied, New York minute beeline for the superintendent no sooner they'd found it, in a pile of Fat Amy Winehouse headshots.
"With," Chloe added brightly, flicking a doting index finger over Beca's nose, "your pretty little poopy face stapled above it."
She bristles and, more or less, feels herself turning a little red in the cheeks. "I wasn't making any sort of face, at all," Chloe is already laying it on her thick with the half-cocked nod and skepticism. Her groan of frustration is ignored, though she continues anyway, determined to validate her argument, "or trying to be anything. You hear me? I was consciously blank during the whole process. Fake make-up smear and all. Okay?"
"Eh. Still super pretty though," the redhead says, with a playful wink. Completely, airily serious.
She stops short, caught off guard for some peculiar reason, but… not really. She just stares, unhelped.
And she can't be sure if she's hearing something, or seeing something. A hidden proclamation, maybe, or that she's just idiotically overthinking some piece of non-existent vibrancy that may or may not be there. Buried, perhaps, just below the surface. Probably the later. She's not sure what to make of it. What it means. Whether it was to say that Chloe knew what Beca was trying to authenticate, or that -despite the fact that Beca Mitchell in the aforementioned photo did indeed have a blank face, and that yes, she had actually been using the toilet, but never mind- that Chloe Beale, with little to no dilemma at all, thought she was pretty. Super pretty, as in attractive? Clichéd pretty as a flower pretty? As in, regardless of whatever cheap filter, action, or forced facial response she'd used?
And she knows it's pathetic. Cannot, for the life of her, believe that she's actually internalizing the credibility of something as stupid as that, because it is stupid. She's fully aware of how it all sounds. She's particularly conscious of the fact that she's orbiting around something that just… doesn't exist. She's looking a gift horse in the mouth and being incredibly dumb and short-sighted and it makes her feel a little slow on the uptake and somehow inelegant, because why? What for? She's locking herself in unnecessary details with the minute particulars of a figment. Of something that isn't there, that's wrong. It's just static.
Chloe has said that she's pretty before. Gosh, she's thrown that word out, more than once, whenever the redhead says or does something meriting a compliment. Jokingly. Endearingly? Fuck. It's disillusionment, at best. A far cry from anything even remotely significant, and it hurts.
"Yeah, well," Forget it, she thinks. Does, and knows, because it's for the best. To simply move on and pretend otherwise. Like it's all perfectly normal. "Treasure it, Beale. It'll be the only one in existence soon."
Chloe hasn't noticed anything, of course, because unlike Beca, she isn't turning over, examining, and deducing every possible line of reasoning behind a passing glance or word. \
"What do you mean?" she asks.
Her sight is trained on her as finitely as the wings lifting and keeping the plane aloft. "Theo suggested that I go through, like, every social media account that I own and sanitize them of any possible incriminating goods. You know, before I hit it up and stuff, with the celebrity bigwigs. I kinda agreed with him."
"Rebecca Ann Mitchell!" She chides, a sing-song tone giving leeway to a hint of a scold, but not entirely. A wry smile quirks at the corners of Beca's mouth then. Usage of her full name, though uncalled for, is quickly disregarded. Just as similarly as the other troublesome things plaguing her mind. "If you think, for one second," Chloe presses, halfway between amused and offended, and leaning closer, "that I'm going to just stand by and twiddle my fingers as you systematically eradicate years of precious, digital memories…-"
"Just the incriminating memories, you freakin' crazy train."
"Am not!" She looks torn, but Beca can feel the misfigured feelings and melancholy lighten within her chest at the entertaining sight. It's hard to stay dull and glum when those big, brilliant, electric eyes were simply wide with feeling and as insistent as they were blue. "And you know every single one us; the Bellas, I mean," she urges, "You know we all have that photo of you, right? Amy uploaded it to our group chat."
That women. She grimaces, "You're all signing non-disclosure agreements."
"Becaaa," the whine is nearly pathetic, but adorable. She sounds like a horrified puppy realizing that their owner has decided against walking them, after already promising to do so.
"I know where you sleep."
"That don't impress me much," she intonates, the musical lilt of the Shania Twain lyric rising and falling to the camber of her beautiful voice. "At least let me be there when you decide to go through them. Pretty please. Please."
"What? No, just. No, dude. You'll just dish out all these really profound reasons as to why I shouldn't, with all of them."
She's nodding fiercely, eyes alight with elation and clearly overjoyed at the prospect of them sifting through nostalgia-filled images, like it was the stupidest thing for Beca to assume any differently. "What are friends for, silly?" She smacks her knee lightly.
Beca swallows the lump in her throat. "You're setting me up for a loss. You know that right?" Right?
And then it's there again. She can see it, and feel it. The reel of imagery plays much like a movie in her head, almost immediately, like the combination of thoughts and feelings had always been there. Waiting, maybe, just beneath the surface. Not elusive but locked, loaded and ready to go at the mere push of a button. She can feel herself warming as she willingly presses play, becomes confused. Then accepting. Watches, as she sees herself lean over her laptop. It's night. She's sitting on her side of the pull-out in their unkempt apartment, legs crossed and frowning intently, with the only shade of light being from the bedside table. A soft, orange glow. Chloe's side. She's there too, imitating her, propped up and sitting and they're scrolling through unseen images and pointing, laughing, and just… existing, together. It shocks her at first because she doesn't quite know what to make of it, again. Doesn't really know how to feel, but she can see red hair like the sun. There are cerulean eyes as bright as wildfire. Always kind, open, with a beseeching smile that beams brighter then both, and they had all agreed, years ago; that Amy would have her own bed, and that they would manage together. Because it was easy, natural. Plutonic, and Amy was Amy. It hadn't bothered her in the slightest.
And it hits her then, quickly, and almost painfully; just as the reel of imagery fades away from her view, and darkens.
She knows, cannot think any other way now.
Because it's going to bother her now, because… it's different, for her. Altered, somehow.
It makes her heart sink, like stones beneath water.
How had it come to this?
Beside her, reality kicks back with a familiar voice. Chloe lightly clears her throat, before questioning, "Becs?"
She stops, breathes. The plane fades away from them to nothing as they stare at one another suddenly. "Uh, sorry," She angles her head slightly to the left and see's that Chloe is doing much the same. Greatly. "Um…" She's mirroring her, sticking her head out toward the brunette and gazing intently, waiting still. Worry is etched plainly over her carefully levelled brow, and all Beca wants to do, in that secular moment, is smooth it out with the pad of her thumb. Just to reassure her. Because she's fine, really. She has to be, because anything else would because to worry. Right? To question, and that was far, far from what she wanted. From what was needed, and what Chloe deserved. "I just, think, that I really want to be home already," she says finally.
Her ever-abiding smirk is like a prowling taunt she can't shake. Never of two minds, only clarity. "Well, we're landing soon," she coos, bringing her legs up and curling them snuggly into the seat and tucking them in against her. She rests her arm over her knees and curls the other into her body, "I can't wait to finally shower," she heaves out an ostentatious sigh. Beca can feel it ghost over her skin. "and sleep."
The enormity of that simple statement is dangerously close to overwhelming her. Beca bites down on the inside of her cheek as she takes another short breath and smiles impishly. "Isn't that, like, an extremely odd thing to say for a future veterinary physician?"
Chloe's grin turns distinctly pliant. "Future vet. Future. Strong emphasis on the word future, Mitchell." She watches the way the redhead shoulders shift, like her eyes, as something unseen briefly flickers over them, a passing afterthought, and Beca wants to ask her what it is that suddenly bothers her.
But the sound of heavy footfalls quickly disturbs their delirium, and Amy's voice punctures the air like a startling whip. "Well, well. I see how it is." She hears an unappreciative hum as Amy marches behind them and takes the only available seat. "You know, Chloe," she sighs, feigning sadness for dramatic effect, "I know your kind are, technically, one soul short from being an actual human being," Beca's eyes widen in horror, "but that in no way permits you to crush us poor cherubs, who do have souls."
Without looking up and otherwise unfretted by the insult, Chloe happily chimes, "I thought we were meeting you at the terminal, Fat Amy?"
"Oh, yeah. See," Amy pauses, and Beca can suddenly make out the undeniably loud and abrasive sound of her tearing open a chip packet, "the lighting was just right and the ambiance was comparable to that of a Matt Moran star restaurant, so it all came pillowing out in one fell swoop. Only had to wipe twice."
She's too tired for this. She vaguely hears Chloe whisper an "oh god," obviously just as mentally repulsed by what was, probably, an accurate representation of what constituted as the perfect scene for Amy and her movements. Beca shifts a little to peek a glance through the tiny gap behind them. Amy catches her. She holds up two fingers and murmurs, "Two times," as though more clarification was really needed on the subject. She shakes her head, giving up, completely disgusted but not at all surprised and turns back around. Chloe is starring at her, lips drawn thin and grinning, cheeks red. She looks as though she's refraining herself from laughing. Attempting to, anyway. It's clear to Beca that she knows, much like herself, that any sudden sound or indication of merriment would only encourage Amy. Her eyes are burning and her brows are pinched plainly in restraint, and it's not enough because in the end, watching Chloe struggle is enough to tip her over the edge, and then Beca's the first to break the silence with a sudden, riotous laugh.
And when Chloe finally joins her, it's like music.
JFK airport is a chaotic cesspit of people, intercoms, screens and action, even at one o'clock in the morning.
With agonizing defeat, each of the girls made it through the overcrowded terminal to the baggage carousel. After waiting in what was, most likely, a collective hive-mind comprised of fatigue, irritation and starving appetites, they each collected their bags and, finally, stumbled haphazardly out towards the commercial outlets.
It struck Beca as hilarious, really, because when they'd arrived firsthand in Spain, each of them had made a point to dress immaculately. Designer jackets, chic shoes, make-up utilized to perfection; just, ridiculously excessive in all but their fucking underwear, really. Except for Flo. Who, apparently, with a wink, had happily admitted to going commando, "For the occasion."
Everything had been one notch up from being glamorously on point and perhaps a little shy of luminary. Or as Aubrey had so eloquently asserted: a sophisticated show of empowerment, because, "I will not have us get off that plane looking like a bunch of flabby abbey's in wheat sacks." Which, you know, whatever.
The complete opposite could be said of them now.
Right now, they were probably something more akin to the Spice Girls after a solid hit of LSD, simultaneously easing down and recovering from a turbulent night of heavy drinking and electric Kool-Aid. They were an entourage of loosely fitting sweats, jumpers, old t-shirts and ripped jeans. All sported varying degrees of dishevelled, loosely tied hair with bulging buns carelessly sticking up, and with the occasional pair of shades thrown uselessly atop of their heads for good measure, or sitting at the bridge of their noses. They all looked fed up, and they no doubt oozed the founding principles of a bunch of certified coach potatoes. Flo had wrapped herself in a small blanket. Lilly was quiet, which was odd now. Cynthia Rose dragged herself like the weight of the world had been hoisted atop her shoulders. Aubrey had purchased and downed two bottles of water like a deprived elephant and Chloe, seemingly on alert to the wraithlike signs simmering within the blonde, had promptly flung a protective arm up and around her shoulders -just in case- because apparently she had been, "one accidental nudge away from dick-punching a slut." Emily looked like she was going to spill her guts everywhere –which she had, repetitively, into a complimentary spew bag when the plane had ploughed into the tarmac- and Amy clung to her chips like Jessica clung to Ashley. Only she was knowingly eating them in front of a very pale, very nauseated Emily.
From her pocket, Beca can feel her phone vibrate suddenly. Having little to no care if someone ran into her, she slips her fingers over the device, quickly pulls it out and stares dumbly at it for a second. Her eyes adjust to the bright hue of the mailbox application. It's from Theo. She fingers the unlock button and reads:
Hola, New Age Traveller. U arrived yet?
She scoffs. The subtle shake of her head causes a few loose strands to fall from her rookie bun as she quickly types a reply. Thankfully. You keeping tabs on me, creep?
The brits reply is instant. I may have set an alarm, yes.
Weird.
Gotta appraise & baby-sit the talent, B. All prt of the job. Enjoy the wk off. I'll be in touch mday 1pm. Tlk more thn.
Beca can't help the groan that pulls from her mouth. Looking forward to it.
Your sarcasm doesn't transl8 well thru txt, u no tht right?
IlLiTeRaTe bItCh.
There she is. Take care, Becs.
You too, man.
She slides the lock bar back into place just as Cynthia Rose tiredly, and mutely, pulls herself up outside of a communal lounge, and because everyone is apparently surgically attached at the hip, they all stop. Emily's crestfallen face mellows into one of pure relief when she notices, and is all too happy to lean gingerly against the wall. It's not just a lounge, Beca realizes, but as she casts an ambivalent glance around their surroundings, she discerns quite easily at the furthermost point of the lounge, the sparsely dimmed –and open- bar wreathed in smooth light and the laid-back atmosphere.
Cynthia Rose turns a sharp eye toward Emily, "You're over twenty-one, yeah?"
She shrugs a little non-committedly and seemingly unfazed, but Beca knows the answer, "Ye-yeah, I am. Twenty-one, I mean." she stammers. She makes no attempt to look at anyone but the ceiling, probably to stop herself from regretfully spilling more than just half-jumbled words. Beca suddenly has this overwhelming urge to just sweetly brush the ailing girls hair back and whisper nonsense into her ears, because she gets like that now. Emotional, and she's a fucking sucker for poutiness, even when it's hopelessly unintentional.
Cynthia is undeterred. There's a mission in her eyes. "What time's your flight?"
"Same as mine," Aubrey announces, with a downcast sigh as she removes her glasses and stares vacantly toward the rapper. She provides a thankful nod and delicate, not-all-there-but-there smile at Chloe, "It leaves for Atlanta in just under two hours."
She considers for a moment, clearly pondering something that was otherwise unseen to the rest of them. "And you two?" her eyes skate over toward Jessica and Ashely.
The girls look like two frightfully reminiscent fishes pulled out from the water. Startled rigid and wide-eyed at having being addressed so openly, in public too. They're markedly blinking like they've been given a life or death question, and it's so, so precious and unbelievably heartbreaking all at once. Eventually, Jessica is the one to speak up between the two, probably having telepathically convened with the immobile brunette holding her hand in, what appeared, to be a vice-like grip of ungodly proportions. "I-I think we're on the same flight as Emily and Aubrey."
"We are," say's Ashley, very quickly.
Jessica looks down at her, and then nods. "Yes. Yes."
Cynthia turns to Flo, already expecting an answer. The bassists tone is clipped and a little croaky when she gives a petulant sigh and starts slowly, "I live in Queens with my brother, culero."
And that seemed to be the golden answer, despite what was, probably, an insult in Spanish. The best, because CR claps her hands together in palpable glee and points towards the bar, hands still intertwined aside from the single guiding digit pointing ahead. "My flight is in three. I'll be over there, ladies, and ya'll need join me for one last hoorah before we all make a break for it. C'mon."
They're all tired, overwrought, and dreadfully sleep deprived, yet it washes away effortlessly just as Cynthia Rose strides into the bar without further regard. They're all dead to the ground for moment, undecided, but then a still enveloped Flo waddles after her with an ushered grin, who is soon followed by an oddly silent yet agreeable Amy. She lofts her chips into Emily's hand and moves along with a brusque wink and a completely disagreeable smirk. Beca snatches the packet out of the poor girl's hands. She tosses it into the nearest garbage can, and then interlopes her arm with the reluctant Legacy's and drags her along, smiling slightly, and then behind them; Aubrey and Chloe, a doe-eyed, and ever-oddly-amazed Lily, as well as Jessica and Ashley, all spring from their rooted spots in the airports floor and follow after them with a favoured look of newly discovered vibrancy. All agreeing.
Late hour be damned. She could use a drink.