Chapter 10: Picnic at the Quad
"Hey," Beca says. Her warm voice is the only thing on Jesse's mind right now.
"Umm, hey," Jesse replies. They are sitting on his bed, and he is only slightly aware of the fact that she is leaning in a little too close, her breath a little too warm on his lips, and her hands…
…are now riding up the hem of his shirt. What the—
He stands up from his bed.
"What are you doing, Beca?"
"What?"
Jesse's mind races to form an answer before his hormones take over. This isn't supposed to be like this, he thinks.
*clang*
Jesse wakes to the sound of clanging. His eyes blink for a while before he realizes that Benji is on the other side of the room, trying to dislodge a… sword. From the wall. With another sword.
Jesse doesn't blink twice. He's woken up to much stranger things with Benji around.
"You need help with that?" he offers, as he sits up on his bed, the thought of his dream lost.
Benji turns around, complete with cape and a saber tucked into his belt.
"Oh hey. You're awake."
"What can I say, I can't resist the sound of sharp metal in the morning."
After trying out several objects (leather, plastic, glass, etc.) to dislodge the hanging piece of metal, Jesse and Benji give up. They take a step back and try to find artistic meaning in the slight destruction of semi-public property that occurred while Benji was practicing a magic trick. How was he supposed to know that sword was actually sharp?
"I'm gonna lose my scholarship over this," Benji says.
"I won't tell if you won't," Jesse mentions. They stand back for a while, absorbing the artistic revelation emanating from the sword sticking out of their wall.
"So, what possessed you to do… whatever it is that caused this?" Jesse says, motioning to the over-all wall. He is genuinely curious about the exact kind of magic trick Benji was attempting while Jesse was asleep. They should probably have a talk about this…
Benji's face immediately flushes. "Oh, it's nothing."
"Hey, come on, man. Try me. I can take it."
"Okay," Benji says bashfully. "It's actually for a girl."
Jesse's eyebrows shoot up in a non-threatening way. This is really interesting.
"Oh? Good for you!" He slaps Benji on the back. Finally, he thinks, really happy for his friend.
"No, no, it's not like that. I haven't even gotten her to notice me," Benji mourns.
Welp. Jesse can't help but feel for him. They both sit on the edge of Benji's bed, thinking about their respective unrequited admirations.
Beca's amazing. She's raw, honest, she knows what she wants (in most everything, anyway). And Jesse can't help but think about whether or not she likes him. And whether or not she knows that he likes her. Like, a lot. So far, she hasn't exactly been extremely vocal (or even slightly vocal) about any possibility for mutualism. And as much as Jesse respects her for… whatever it is that she wants to see him as, he can't help but wish she would be slightly more… illuminating with her words and actions. Because right now, he's at a complete lost. And he doesn't want wake up one day to find out that someone had beaten him to confessing their undying love for the one girl he's set his eyes on since the first day.
"Hey," Jesse turns to Benji, "how do you think I should go about with this girl that I wanna impress?"
Benji looks lost as to why on earth someone would even ask him that, but he does have a few spare sheets and a candle.
Beca is staring at the blank screen of her computer. She's just finished a mix, which included her own singing voice. A mix that she was inspired to create after Jesse had asked her if he could listen to some of her work. She had convinced herself that it's not big deal, inspiration hits when it wants to hit. This is not for Jesse, this is because of Jesse. Nothing wrong with that, right?
"What's up, weirdo?" she hears, before she barely has time to reflexively catch a tossed juice pouch with an "okay".
Jesse lays down a blue blanket that he had quite literally been carrying around. She watches him settle beside her, while she opens her juice pouch. Even though it's unspoken between the two of them, juice pouches have, indeed, become their 'thing'.
"What's this?"
"As much as I love spending time with you stacking CDs—and I do, I love it, like, more than life—" he says, while taking out a huge-ass candle from his bag, "I figured we could do some other fun things that don't make us wanna kill ourselves, right? So, brought some movies…"
She watches him effortless glide into her present situation with such finesse that it seems as though he had been with her there, all along.
Probably a trick he picked up while being so in love with his girlfriend, a voice in her head said, sounding suspiciously like Fat Amy.
"…Best scored and sountracked movies of all time. That's what I wanna do when I grow up. I wanna score movies…"
She smiles at him, even though she's not really super familiar with any of the movies he just mentioned. Still, she notices that it's one more thing she knows about him, and she mentally files that little fact away.
For future reference, she justifies.
"…I feel like only music can do that."
Here's an opening. Take it.
"Yeah," she says, "you must really sweep your girlfriend off her feet." She really meant it as a sarcastic joke, doesn't even overthink it, but it's really her subconscious attempting to gauge her relationship with this guy who just set up a picnic for her.
"Oh, I don't have a girlfriend."
"What?"
"No."
"You have juice pouches and Rocky!" she doesn't even try to hide how it comes out as an insulting smirk. It is rather silly, she thinks, that this great guy, who is the embodiment of cheesy, would not have a girlfriend.
"Okay," he says, changing the subject, "what do you wanna watch first?"
"Can we do something else? We could relive my parents' divorce. Or visit a gynecologist."
"What, do you not like movies, or something?"
She sips her juice pouch in response.
"Like any movies?"
She gives this smile-laugh.
"What the hell is wrong with you? How do you not like movies? Not liking movies is like not liking… puppies."
Jesse could not have guessed this one quirk about Beca, but at the same time, he thinks this is great progress. He is visibly distressed by how she seems to have a distaste for endings, and how she just happens to know German ("'Vader' in German means father."), but all these things are what he really loves about her. She always manages to surprise him, and knowing this about her is something he really takes to heart.
"You know, you need a movie education," he resolves. "You need a movie-cation. And I'm gonna give it to you."
"Yeah, in between Bella rehearsals, which are always," she quips. Which reminds him…
"Are you guys getting ready for the Riff-Offs?"
"What the hell is a Riff-Off?"