Author's Note: Sorry it's been so long! I'm posting two new chapters tonight. I hope you like them!

Jesse was late. Jesse was never late. He was annoyingly punctual. He was always five minutes early, usually with coffee or a snack and an obnoxious saying from his platitude of the day calendar. Beca wondered if her watch was wrong.

Jesse sprints in the door. He looks like hell. His clothes are crumpled, there are bags under his eyes, and he's missing that sense of boundless energy and whimsy that usually makes Beca want to smack him.

"Rough night?" Beca asks staring at the clothes he was wearing. The same clothes as yesterday. "Or a really fun night?"

"I wish. The former, unfortunately." Jesse rubbed at his eyes.

"Homework?"

"Trebels," Jesse yawned.

"Rehearsal ran late?" Beca couldn't be mean to him. It would be like kicking a puppy.

"Nope," Jesse leaned against the doorframe, sliding down it into a sitting position.

"Then what?"

"Bumper kept me late and made me hand wash all of our outfits for competition." Jesse told her, eyes closed.

"He can do that?" Her heart sank.

"Not done," Jesse mumbled. "He made me polish all our trophies and update our highlight reel. I had to download editing software, figure out how to use it, and go through all of our performances from the past three years- which involved a lot of Bumper pelvic thrusting to Usher songs- and add them to an already existing video."

"Just you?"

He nodded.

"Oh, wait," he rummaged around in his backpack. "I'm supposed to give this to you."

He handed her a manila envelope.

"It's a CD with our newest tracks on it. Bumper was hoping you could play it."

Beca opened the envelope. It contained the CD Jesse was talking about. But the CD had a scrawled message on it: Give us the track or Jesse gets hazed.

Beca stares at the CD, incredulous. He can't be serious. He would torture Jesse just to win? There was no way Beca could help this jerk.

"You don't have to play it," Jesse told her, mistaking her silence for indecision about the CD.

Beca knelt down to talk to him at eye level. She took in the bags under his eyes and the way his head kept drooping.

"Maybe you should go home," she felt completely responsible for his exhaustion.

"But I have to work," he mumbled, voice thick with sleepiness.

"We can manage without you today," she told him, putting her hand on his shoulder. "It's the least I can do."

"Why?" he gave her a sleepy smile. "This isn't your fault."

Jesse went home. Beca sat at her desk staring at the CD. What was she going to do? Every bone in her body told her that she couldn't let Bumper have what he wanted. He was a dick and the Bellas, though intense, were nice enough. But on the other hand, she didn't owe them anything. If helping the Trebels meant Jesse wasn't going to be tortured anymore...

"Shit," she whispered to herself.