Warning: This story has absolutely no relation whatsoever to its original prompt.
I have no idea how it happened. I wanted to make a Valentine's Day story because I usually don't get to make occasion-themed stories. I was going to relate it to the prompt by having Jesse give her a charm bracelet or something, but it seemed to decided by itself that it liked cake more than bracelets.
I'm happy with how this turned out, though. And I hope you guys are too :)
Silver (more appropriately Red Velvet)
Beca has not celebrated her birthday in years. Naturally, since the deterioration of her parents' marriage and the development of her I-hate-the-world attitude, she has cared very little about occasions such as holidays and birthdays, specifically her own.
Because god knows why, of all the days, she just had to be born on the fourteenth of February.
The day Jesse finds this out about her, he actually laughs—because, really. Here is Beca Mitchell, the girl with the black eye shadow and the scary ear spike, the kind of girl who you're sure loathes all roses and cupids and heart-shaped boxes of chocolate; and her birthday is on Valentine's Day.
She throws a CD at him from the second floor of the radio station, and Jesse's lucky to have the sense to dodge it.
"Why the hell is that funny?" she hisses.
"Come on, Beca," he manages, still in a fit. "Do you not see the irony in this?"
She's very well aware of it, but she doesn't appreciate this kind of easy-going reaction coming from a guy she's only known for about five months. Most people would be careful and would keep their thoughts to themselves, but Jesse never seems to care about trivial things like pointing out the jokes in her life or provoking her enough for her to actually throw music at him.
That year, her birthday is spent in the radio station, with Jesse willingly changing his plans so he could work alongside her. They banter like any other day, but upon leaving, Beca finds a small box next to her backpack with a note attached.
Happy Birthday Ear Spike
Your weirdo, Jesse
P.S. Don't kill me. It's impossible to find any other kind of topping this time of year.
Inside is a red velvet cupcake with a heart resting on top of the cream cheese frosting. "What an idiot." She rolls her eyes but smiles to herself anyway.
The next year, Jesse insists on taking her out. He reasons that as it is the first birthday and Valentine's that they celebrate as a couple (with hopefully many more to come), it should be the big and cheesily romantic kind of scenario that he's been playing in his mind, probably even before they'd met. And though Beca is afraid of a catastrophe that is a candlelit dinner at some overpriced restaurant with a stuffy ambiance that neither of them will enjoy, she agrees to let him do the planning.
Instead, when Jesse unties the annoyingly itchy blindfold from her eyes, she finds herself in the middle of the dark radio station, one of her more romantic mixes is playing softly in the background, and on their desk (which he assures her has been sterilized, but is covered with red tablecloth for good measure) are two paper plates, wine glasses and plastic sets of dinnerware. It's a candlelit dinner all right—as punctuated by the bazillion candles providing the only light available (she's kind of worried that one of the rarer records will catch fire)—but it's definitely not stuffy or overpriced in any way.
"I tried to smuggle out silverware from the faculty lounge," he says nonchalantly, "but I figured that if your dad caught me I'd lose both his approval and my street cred."
Beca rolls her eyes at this, as he expects he would, and he grins at her in return. "So what do you think?"
She thinks that all she wants to do right now is to kiss him and do things they've explicitly been told not to do on that particular desk, but instead she smirks in true Beca fashion, and says, "I'll tell you once I've had cake."
They eat pizza from their favourite hole-in-the-wall just outside campus with all her favourite toppings. And for dessert, Jesse brings out a heart-shaped red velvet cake with Happy Birthday my Valentine written on it in chocolate. She has to smack him in the back of his head to make up for the laughter she can't control pouring out of her.
There are candles of course, and while she would normally object, Jesse's eager beam is impossible to resist. Beca's not a believer in wishes, but before she blows the flames out, she closes her eyes and asks to maybe spend the rest of her life like this, with Jesse doing ridiculous gestures and the Bellas waiting back at her dorm room for all the details. For once she has something she believes is worth wishing for.
After they each have a slice, they clear the table and break that one rule Luke had given them on their first day of work.
In junior year, Beca surprises Jesse by having the Bellas help her sing My Funny Valentine to him outside his dorm room window (she's getting so sappy and she wants to hate herself for it), and he retaliates by personally delivering a bouquet of roses, a giant heart-shaped card, and a red velvet cake in the middle of her Music Theory class.
But when senior year comes around, they're not speaking to each other.
Their busy schedules have been keeping them apart and when they are together, Beca is wound up and Jesse just wants to sleep. One day it just became too much for them and what their argument was about, they can't even remember.
But that was two weeks ago.
Two weeks of hell, they've been enduring. His pride is too high and her walls are too strong, so they ignore each other for two whole weeks, and everyone can see how much it's been killing them.
Beca's gotten so used to enjoying her birthday-slash-Valentine's-Day that the dread she feels today is a hundred times worse than what she used to feel before Jesse had come into her life.
Despite everything, they haven't been able to let go of the radio station, so she's more than disappointed when she walks in and finds that he's skipped his shift for the day.
But then she walks into the booth and finds a red velvet cupcake sitting atop her keyboard with a sticky-note beneath it.
Happy Valentine's Day, Birthday girl.
Love you.
(hopefully still) Your Nerd
She smiles to herself and half-hopes that he's standing behind her. When she turns around, he's not there. But she's okay with that because later that night she finds him alone in his dorm room and literally jumps him before he even fully opens the door.
It's a good thing she's tiny, because he's pretty sure that the impact of her attack should have had his back hitting the floor.
They stay like that for a good two minutes, her legs wrapped around him, his strong arms carrying her and swaying them, their lips attached, afraid to move at all, much less away from each other.
Eventually, she whispers into his mouth, "Happy Valentine's Day, dork."
They're both smiling into the kiss as he whispers back, "Happy birthday, weirdo."
My inspiration tank has been running low, so if you guys have any suggestions, I'd love to know :)
I think I already have an idea of what I'm gonna do with day 11, but when you leave a review, feel free to drop a suggestion for what I should write for day 12. The prompt is: Knowledge
Thank you & remember to leave those reviews :)