Beca and Chloe go to National Pumpkin Destruction Day.
The month of October had just ended, and Beca was ready for a break from both school and people in general. Chloe had gone all out during Halloweekend, dragging Beca to different parties on Thursday, Friday and Saturday night. Beca thought she'd be done after that, but Chloe had other ideas. As co-captain, Chloe had taken the liberty of signing the two of them up to perform some spooky Halloween themed tunes along with the rest of the Bellas at a family friendly event for kids and their parents on Sunday afternoon.
"Chloe, Sunday is the Lords day, and God is all about resting. We need to observe this holy day." Beca had pleaded that Sunday morning, after waking up with her 3rd hangover. 'Is it possible to get a hangover when you're still kind of drunk from the night before?' she thought to herself.
"Oh just get up Becs," was the response, as Chloe pulled open the curtains and let the sun shine through the window. "You don't even go to church, so you can't use that as an excuse."
Beca just rolled over and covered her head with a pillow. She was still trying to think of ways to get out of singing 'Monster Mash' and 'Ghostbusters' when the covers suddenly got yanked off and was forcefully pulled out of bed.
"You've got 1 hour. Use it wisely," Chloe stated firmly. And that was the end of the discussion.
Thankfully, Beca got Monday off because Chloe had to go to a study group that evening, but it wasn't really much of a reprieve, because it was still a Monday after all. By the time actual Halloween rolled around on Tuesday, Beca was definitely over the whole holiday. Chloe demanded that Beca help pass out candy to the trick-or-treaters, in yet another costume, and scolded her every time she caught Beca trying to sneak some candy. At least Beca was able to convince Chloe they didn't need to be in a couple's costume in order to dole out the sweets that she wasn't allowed to consume.
Beca's could tolerate costumes to an extent, but her least favorite thing about Halloween, was being scared all the time. Sure, she loved pulling pranks herself, but Beca wasn't a fan of being pranked in return. Beca was not particular keen on never knowing when or where something would pop out at her, and felt like she was set on high alert for the entire month of October. It also probably didn't help that Jesse had made her watch thriller movies at every chance he got.
The Bellas residence had been decked out in its usual skeletons, bats, fake cobwebs and black cats, like every year, but it was slowly getting taken down in pieces, making room for the more universal festive fall items that would soon be taking its place. There was still a witch hat on the coat tree, and a giant wooden candy corn hanging on the front door of the house, but for the most part they were moving on, just like the days of the year themselves.
To be honest, the whole 'changing décor with the seasons' routine was almost comforting to Beca, but if you asked her, she'd deny it. As much as she complained about the sometimes-tacky appearance of her home due to her roommates' exuberance, it was kind of fun. The change of scenery helped Beca stay in the present while also giving her a bit of variety at the same time. Beca was a creature of habit, and would get so invested with various projects and lost in her own world, that she would sometimes lose touch with current events and keeping up with her friends and relationships. Beca's scheduled routine wasn't that difficult, but that didn't mean she was okay with someone just coming through and changing things up or telling her what to do.
Bellas. School. Work at the station. Internship. Socialize as necessary. Eat. Sleep. Repeat.
Chloe, on the other hand, was the queen of unpredictability. Dating Chloe meant that every day was a different wild adventure, but somehow Beca was okay with that. Chloe was the one exception to almost all her rules. Even before they started dating, Chloe was very persistent and determined to get to know the brunette. Once the walls came down, Chloe began working on helping Beca experience things that normal contributing members of society had been doing their whole lives. That being said, Beca never knew what kind of spontaneity to expect, especially around the holidays.
There were exactly 39 days between Thanksgiving 2017 and January 1st, but Beca knew better than to only anticipate one month of madness. Chloe bounced from each holiday to the next with the energy of a 5-year-old hopped up on candy, but without the inevitable sugar crash. The second they shut the door and turned off their porch light, having run out of the mountain of candy Chloe bought, the redhead's infamous Christmas music playlist was blaring around the living room. Beca almost wished they had gotten a few more kids to postpone the cheery tunes.
Needless to say, Beca was exhausted, and wanted nothing more than a short period to recover before Chloe went into mega holiday mode for Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's. Alas, there was no time to unwind at all. As soon as Beca walked in to the house after her Wednesday classes, she almost wanted to turn around and walk right back out. The Bellas house looked like it had transformed into an autumn wonderland. There were gold leaves and fake pumpkins scattered all over on the floor. There was even a small stuffed scarecrow and fake food in a cornucopia by the corner of the living room. If Beca was being completely honest, she would describe it as 'HGTV on steroids' meets 'Pinterest come to life'.
Rolling her eyes, Beca moved a banner that said, 'Happy Fall Y'All!' so that she could plop down on the couch without squishing it, while giving a small sigh of annoyance at the sight of all the glitter left behind.
"Come help me decorate!" came Chloe's bubbly voice from somewhere in the storage closet. "I've got some fun new things for us to put up this year!"
"Hard pass," came Beca's response from the sparkly couch where she was currently laying upside down. "You'll just re-do everything I do anyway."
It was fairly difficult to motivate Beca to accomplish anything, especially if she didn't want to do it in the first place. Making her start a project was like pulling teeth, but getting her to finish it was even harder. Most of the time she half-assed it anyway, knowing that if she did a bad enough job, eventually people would just stop asking for her assistance to do things. Beca was a procrastinator through and through, but she was also just plain lazy, and those two things combined were not the most helpful qualities in the world.
Because Beca had been so preoccupied with all the Halloween chaos, November rolled around much faster than she had anticipated. The leaves were changing colors and some of them were even beginning to fall off the trees. The crisp fall air was a welcome change from the sweltering heat earlier on in the school year, and Beca appreciated not sweating her ass off all the time. She had totally forgotten that it was a new month until she wrote the date at the top of her paper, and had to try to change the number 10 into an 11.
It was a few days after all the madness, and things were finally starting to settle down and get back to normal, for which Beca couldn't be more grateful. Beca had woken up early, with some inspiration for a song, and after she laid down a preliminary track, she went outside to enjoy her coffee. She was currently relaxing in one of the hammocks that the girls had strung in the back yard of the house, taking advantage of the peaceful morning. Beca's eyes were closed, and the 2017 Grammy nominees' album played softly through her trusty headphones. She had been listening to it a lot recently, hoping to get even more ideas for future tunes and maybe even being on the album in the future. Beca was totally relaxed when suddenly, her hammock went swinging. Beca's eyes flew open and she yelped as she tried with all her might to not tip out. As she recovered, less gracefully than she had hoped, she caught sight of a giggling Chloe.
"BECA!" Chloe squealed. "LET'S GO TO NATIONAL PUMPKIN DESTRUCTION DAY!"
"Um. Come again?" Beca said, pulling off her headphones, and staring at her girlfriend.
"National. Pumpkin. Destruction. Day." Chloe repeated, annunciating each syllable slowly, as if Beca were stupid. "It's today only, and we should go!"
"What the hell is that?" Beca asked, very confused, and incredibly displeased at being interrupted from her almost-nap. "That sounds so stupid."
"But it's not, Becs. You'd probably really like it. It's a whole day where you get to destroy pumpkins left over from Halloween or whatever. Here, just look. If you don't think it sounds fun, we don't have to go, but I think you will," Chloe explained, handing her phone to Beca.
"Bash it, smash it, chunk it, drop it off a 40 foot lift…" Beca recited, interest peaking the more she read. "This actually sounds fun. Way better than the haunted house you made us go to the other week," Beca admitted.
The website she was reading from listed a bunch of ways to obliterate left over pumpkins. They had pumpkin-bombing airplanes, archery, pumpkin cannons, pumpkin bowling, hammers to smash them with and even monster truck demolition. By the time Beca got to the list of other attractions the ranch offered, she had made up her mind.
"Dude, Chlo, you can basically annihilate them any way you want. And they have a bunch of other stuff too. Let's do it."
Chloe looked quite pleased with herself, and she literally bounced back into the Bellas house, leaving an amused Beca behind her, trying to decide whether she should get out of the hammock and follow her girlfriend, or to lay back down and gather up enough energy to go be around people yet again.
"Babe, if you don't get your cute ass in the house right now, I'm going to destroy the Batman pumpkin you carved before we even get to the pumpkin patch," Chloe hollered from the house.
'Well, that settles that debate,' Beca thought, as she hauled herself out of the hammock to save her pumpkin. "Don't you dare touch Bruce," she threatened, "I'm coming."
A few hours later, Beca found herself surrounded by tiny humans running around, all wanting to destruct literally thousands of gourds at the Rock Ranch. She kind of wanted to smack the 2 children who just knocked into her, but she resisted the urge when she looked over at Chloe who was beaming, the soft Georgia sun hitting her just right. Beca subtly pulled out her phone and snapped a photo of Chloe, as she looked off into the distance. When Beca checked the result, she was quite pleased. It was a lovely candid shot Chloe who was surveying the whole ranch, with a lens flare halo around her. Beca quickly made it her new home screen, already knowing that she would be taking her phone out multiple times a day to stare at the picture. As she put her phone away, Chloe turned towards Beca, having decided where they should go first.
"Okay," Chloe began, "I see the destruction zone, but I also a bunch of other activities and a bandshell." I think we should go to the destruction zone first, so they don't run out of pumpkins and then we can go listen to music while we get a snack and then decide if we want to do anything else…" Chloe had apparently picked up on some of her strategic planning tactics from Aubrey.
"Whatever you want Chlo," Beca said, slightly overwhelmed by all the activity around her.
"YAY! Let's go to the Aerial Bomb show first. Then we can just make our way around the demo zone. I really want to go to the bowling and darts area too. It looks like fun!" Chloe cheered. "Is there anywhere specifically that you want to go to?"
"All I really want to see is the Crusher and the Blaster," Beca admitted. "But the Drop of Doom also sounds fun," she said, referring to the monster truck demo, the cannon and dropping pumpkins off of a 40 foot high boom lift.
"Sounds good. Let's go!" she said, heading off towards the airplanes, with Beca scurrying after her.
After a long morning of destroying pumpkins, followed by a brief pumpkin gut throwing fight, the two girls sat at a picnic table, eating a late lunch and deciding if they wanted to do anything else or just go home.
"How about we just walk around and see if something catches our eye. If not, we can leave," Beca suggested, silently hoping nothing else caught Chloe's eye. She was tired and wanted to leave, but wasn't about to make her girlfriend leave just because she didn't want to be there anymore.
"I like that idea. Let's do it," Chloe replied, standing up and gathering their trash to throw away.
They had almost made it back to their car, when Beca was quite forcefully jerked back. "Beca," Chloe breathed. "Look." She pointed over to the right, and Beca grumbled internally. It was a petting zoo, and Chloe NEVER passes up an opportunity to see animals. Especially if they were baby animals. Beca felt incredibly awkward seeing as the small petting zoo was probably designed for people more than half her age, but Chloe seemed to be having the time of her life. An extra 45 minutes and about 100 photos later, they were finally in the car and headed back home.
When they arrived at the house, both girls took a shower to get all the pumpkin guts off of them, and were relaxing on the couch looking through the photos from the day's activities. They had just reached the end of the photos taken that day, and were both laughing at a photo of Beca. The brunette was making a very disgruntled face at a goat chewing the laces of her favorite black Converse shoes. The next photo they flipped to was of Chloe with a baby cow, smiling at the camera as she was getting her face licked. The very last photo was a selfie of the two of them, grinning brightly at the camera, as they sat on top of a hay bale near the exit of the ranch. All in all, it had been a pretty good day for both of them.
"Thanks for coming with me to the ranch," Chloe said, "And thanks for tolerating the petting zoo. I know it wasn't your favorite."
Beca just grinned and said, "Yeah, I actually had a lot of fun, and I really liked destroying things. Like, the petting zoo wasn't my favorite thing there, but it was cute watching you with all the baby animals." Chloe kissed the side of Beca's head as Beca continued, "Your ability to love at least something about everyone and everything, no matter how big or small, is one the main things that made me attracted me to you."
"Aww. Babe," Chloe cooed, as Beca blushed, wanting to take back her confession. "You had a crush on me? That's embarrassing."
"Well, obviously," Beca said with a slight smirk. "We're dating, aren't we?"
"Still…" Chloe said, with a smirk of her own. "But, for the record, I kinda, maybe have a teeny tiny crush on you too. I had to fight off both the boys and the girls to get you," she joked, miming some defensive karate looking moves.
"I can't help it that I'm popular," Beca sarcastically with a hair flip, quoting one of Chloe's favorite movies.
"Well, Miss. Popular, you're all mine, and you better not forget it," Chloe stated possessively.
"And if I do?" Beca countered.
"You know I would never let you," Chloe shot back.
"Yeah, no I get it. If we broke up, you would probably be about as 'crushed' as the pumpkins we destroyed today!" Beca teased.
Chloe groaned. "Why am I dating you again?"
A/N: Hello, it's one of your most inconsistent authors ever, but I'm back and hopefully have another fun story for you to read.
If you haven't checked out the other one-shots I've posted, I would love it if you did. Somehow my postings for chapters 5-10 got messed, and had to be re-uploaded. So if you missed them, check them out.
Also, if you like or don't like something that I've written, leave me a comment! I love receiving feedback, so I know what you guys want or don't want. As always, if you have an idea of a prompt for me to write, you can send me those too.
P.S. National Pumpkin Destruction Day is an actual thing, started in 2007 at The Rock Ranch, which is located just outside of Atlanta, Georgia. This year (2017) it is on November 4th.
