Anon prompted - sick Beca alternates between being grumpy and being a big needy baby. Chloe makes soup and takes care of her.
Beca Mitchell is the single most difficult person on the planet when she's ill. She's miserable and crabby, and wants nothing more than for you to leave her alone in her pile of Kleenex and cough syrup until she can breathe through her nose again.
She's also, often nearly simultaneously, needy and whiny, and wants nothing more than to be looked after. Not that she'll readily admit to that.
None of these things mesh though, because Chloe can't handle a cute needy Beca without smiling or giggling, and that only makes her pouty and grumpy again, which only endears her further to Chloe. It's like a vicious cycle. One Beca is content to cough at and then roll over.
This time, she doesn't even know Beca's sick until Jesse texts her.
Beca says she's dying and needs u
She stares at her phone for a good long minute, the spoon she's using to scoop cereal into her mouth still caught between closed lips, pressed against her top of her tongue where it's held in place, and she brings her other hand up to type a response.
What is it this time?
I'm not convinced it isn't manflu
She smiles so widely, the spoon almost falls out of her mouth and she pulls it free with a laugh, placing it back in the bowl.
She thinks it's malaria or ebola. I suggested swing flu. She was not pleased.
Jesse!
When I got here and asked her how she was feeling she threw her phone at me!
Chloe shakes her head and gets up, rinsing her bowl in the sink before placing it into the top rack of the dishwasher.
Which is why I'm the one txting u 2 tell u she's dying and she isn't
Chloe laughs again and opens the fridge before replying, eyes scanning the contents before she moves to the kitchen cupboard to repeat the action.
Tell her I'll be there in an hour
She's already got everything out and ready on the counter by the time the next message arrives.
She screamed, told me I was useless and that she'd be dead in an hr. ... good luck! ;)
I won't need luck. ;)
Because when a person has their mother's recipe for her famed chicken noodle soup, they do not require luck.
She raps quietly on the door when she arrives, then holds her breath and presses her ear against the surface, straining to detect even the faintest sounds of life coming from within. She thinks she hears the broken sound of a weak cough and finds that the doorknob turns easily in her grasp. She poked her head around the side and spots the Beca-sized lump of blankets piled on the side of the room that isn't a neat, pristine white, then slips the rest of the way inside and elbows the door closed behind her. The blankets stir, seem to ball in tighter on themselves, and Chloe can't quite keep the smile from her face as she places the plastic container she'd carried over down on Beca's desk, before moving towards the bed. She looms over the misshapen mass for a few seconds, trying to find her friend who she knows is hiding somewhere beneath it all, and eventually takes a seat on the very edge of the mattress.
The lump moves. Enough that Chloe spies a tangle of dark tresses peeking out from the duvet and, seeing her opening, she reaches across the bed to stroke her fingers over them. After a moment or two of petting, she feels Beca uncurl a little and watches as a hand emerges to brush dark hair away from, oh, there's her face. Sad blue eyes blink open, lids heavy and a little purplish in colour. Chloe feels her chest constrict at the sight. Be it animal or human, seeing them struggling and in pain is something that has the power to immediately devastate Chloe.
"Hey there, sleeping beauty." She brings her hand down to stroke the back of her knuckles across Beca's clammy cheek, only to yank it back when the brunette jerks away from the touch.
"No, don't look at me." Beca's voice is hoarse, words a little slurred, and absolutely fit to burst with self-pity as she pulls the duvet up so it coves her face. "I'm gross." Chloe's bites down on her lip to hold her laugh in and takes a few steadying breaths in through her nose before she speaks again.
"Beca." She curls her fingers around the edge of the blanket and tries to tug it down, but Beca remains surprisingly strong for someone so sick and she can't budge them. "Beeecaaa." She sing-songs. "I brought you soup." A few seconds tick by and then Beca's eyes appear over top of the duvet again.
"Soup?" She croaks and Chloe nods, tugging at the blanket again and this time, Beca lets her. Chloe takes in her pale, sweaty complexion, rumpled sleep shirt and bird's nest of a hair style, and a chuckle slips out.
"You look awful." Beca's face crumples into an angry frown and she rolls away to face the wall.
"I feel like shit." Her rasp is grouchy and Chloe winces at the pain she can hear lacing the words. "You still probably look like an angel when-" the rest of her grumbling tirade is buried in a wave of body-wracking coughs, the kind that rattle around inside a person's chest like a handful of ball-bearings through a metal tube. Chloe frowns and looks around, searching for a glass of water or something that Jesse might have brought her and left within arm's reach.
There's an opened bottle of Gatorade with a straw sticking out of the mouth on her desk and another one, still sealed, behind it, and Chloe gets up to fetch it. She brings it back and coerces Beca into rolling back over and craning her head just enough to slip the straw between her lips. She takes a few sputtering sips and then finally the coughing calms. Licking the bright red liquid from her lips, Beca closes her eyes and lets her head fall back to the pillow as Chloe put the bottle back. Then when she notices the bottle of cough syrup with the sticky spoon sitting beside it.
"Chlo," her eyes flit to the bed, where Beca has twisted around and is reaching for her hand, "Chlo, is my," which she lets her take and tug towards her forehead, "is my head hot?" It mostly just feels warm and tacky with sweat, but Chloe lets Beca keep her hand pressed flat there as she points to the glass bottle.
"Beca, how much cough syrup have you taken?" Rolling her head back and forth across Chloe's palm, Beca hums loudly and doesn't answer for a minute.
"Dunno." She mumbles, pressing Chloe's hand to her cheek now and trapping it between the pillow and her face. "How much is left in the bottle?"
"Like, a third?"
"Oh." Beca huffs a breath, eyes vanishing behind drooping lids. "Then two thirds." Chloe snatches her hand back, pulling a whine from the brunette.
"Beca!" She grabs the bottle and moves it out of reach, sighing exasperatedly.
"It wouldn't stop!" She sound so, so miserable, almost like she might be on the verge of tears. "I think I hacked up part of my lung last night and I couldn't sleep and all I want to do is sleep, Chloe." And when Chloe sits back on the edge of the bed, Beca is pouting. "And my throat hurts and my chest hurts and I think I'm dying." Actually pouting. Her hand snakes out from under the covers to fist at the hem of the redhead's shirt and watery eyes the colour of midnight shimmer as they stare up into caring sky-blue. "Chloe," the name warbles as it leaves her lips, "I'm sick." Sick, Chloe reasons, and a little bit high. There's no way sober Beca would be clinging to her like this. Like she might actually die if she were to leave. She stands, or tries to, but finds she has to disentangle Beca's fingers first. "No, no, stop." Beca's voice breaks, like shrieking steel, as she tries desperately to hold on. "Stop, please, don't go, don't go." With a disbelieving eye roll that Beca would, she's sure, be proud of under different circumstances, Chloe bends at the waist and gently shushes the other woman, stroking over her hair again.
"I'm just going to warm up the soup." She says quietly, but Beca whimpers and remains reluctant to release until she promises that she'll be right back, and that Beca will be able to see she isn't going anywhere.
"Will you stay with me?" Even with her back turned and over the whir of the microwave, Chloe hears it. She looks at Beca over her shoulder and feels her chest constrict again at the look on her face.
"Of course, Becs." Finally, Beca closes her eyes again.
"Chloe?"
"Yeah?"
"Will you sing to me?"
Yeah, Beca can be pretty damn difficult to deal with when she's sick.
Unless you're Chloe.
