A/N: Thanks to all of you. Every single one of you reading this right now. And, as always, to my beta for being awesome.
Beca's never been a fan of too much colour. She finds most brighter shades garish and sticks fairly close to the darker colours. She's been known to mix it up a bit in recent years, some vibrant red here, a little glittery gold tracksuit there. She blames the Bellas, and Aubrey, and Beca's own desperate need to get as far away from those flight attendant outfits as possible. Not that any of them looked particularly awful in them, Beca had just felt more awkward than usual in hers. Like she was wearing someone else's skin.
It had, at the time, felt just as disturbing as it sounds. Winning over her former captain and getting her to agree to the wardrobe change had been a relief on a number of different levels.
Green hasn't ever really been her thing – with the exception of a brief period when she was about eight and mildly obsessed with Kermit the Frog – and that coupled with her extreme lack of school spirit means she's never had much of a reason to don Barden's colours.
It's not the most awful shade of green on the spectrum, she'll give it that much. It's still not to her personal taste, and it's still probably going to make her look like a badly dressed bridesmaid, but whatever. It's a few hours out of her life, she's sure she'll manage.
"How many people are going to go naked under these do you think?" Chloe doesn't look away from the full length mirror hanging from her perpetually open closet door and Beca watches the redhead's reflection from her position on the bed. Chloe's lifted one corner of her gown and is manipulating it so that it dances, rippling like waves of green wannabe-silk. It's the kind of thing that would seem childish from anyone else, but from Chloe it's nothing but endearing. Something that Beca fondly rolls her eyes at.
And at least the gown looks good on Chloe. They shouldn't all have to suffer.
"Yeah, that's not something I want to think about?" She replies, squinting one eye and lifting her tone at the end to make her statement sound like a question. "Hard pass." Beca shakes her head and Chloe tuts loudly, drawing Beca's eyes to hers in the mirror. There's a beat as Chloe's lips curve into a cheeky smile and Beca tries to ready herself for whatever is coming.
"Even if it's me?" Chloe practically purrs the query, hiking the gown higher to expose more of the bare legs on show beyond the pair of boyshorts she's wearing. Beca's gaze shoots back up like there's a rocket attached to it.
"Dude, no," is her strangled, squeaky response, and it's not at all how she wants to sound but her throat doesn't feel like cooperating.
"You are no fun whatsoever." Chloe drops her arm and turns around with a pout. Beca shrugs at the accusation, unharmed by what she figures are Chloe's version of 'sharp words', and she waits until the redhead's back is to her again before letting go with the smart remark that's begging to be freed.
"We've both had hickeys that would suggest otherwise, so..." she quips, smirk suppressed between pursed lips, and she's examining her nails with an absurd amount of nonchalance but is still able to see the way red hair twirls as Chloe's head snaps back in her direction, mouth open in surprise. Beca absently runs the tip of her thumb over the end of her middle finger. "I'm just saying."
And it is fun, Beca thinks. Playing like this.
When it's not scary.
Somehow, even after her near-miss with a panic attack earlier, Chloe's able to make her feel that much more calm. Just by being Chloe. Beca shifts atop the bed at the thought and turns her mind back to the immediate reality taking place around her.
"Well, they were a lot of fun," Chloe considers, and Beca feels the redhead's gaze burn hotly against the side of her face. "Giving and receiving." Chloe's baiting her, trying for an outburst or reaction, and Beca knows it so she holds her ground. It trembles in her grasp, but she holds it. Almost as quickly as it had swept in, that stifling heat starts to dissipate as Chloe turns her attention back to the mirror. Beca twists her still pursed lips to the side.
"I," she pauses, touching the tip of her tongue to the underside of her teeth in a moment's consideration, "am glad we're in agreement." It's an admission, Beca knows, and a chance glance at the mirror tells her that Chloe knows that as well. She manages to keep up her end of their shared gaze without blinking, right up until Chloe reaches around to grip the collar of the gown and whips it forward over her head. Only then does Beca blink, but she does it a lot. "So," she shoots for a distraction under the guise of a topic change and only has to clear her throat once in between words. "Does it meet your standards?" She gestures to the gown that Chloe is slipping back into the clothing equivalent of a bodybag and the redhead throws a smile over her shoulder.
"You tell me, Becs." Chloe finishes zipping up the bag and then strolls over to her bed, climbing onto it to put herself almost right between Beca's bent legs. Beca's sitting more or less slumped back against the wall that the bed is pressed against, legs tucked up toward her chest in a manner that apparently provides Chloe with the perfect resting place, because she crossed her arms over Beca's knees and then props her chin on the bridge she's created. "Did it look... satisfactory?" With her lips still firmly closed, Beca licks along the roof of her mouth in an effort to gain a measure of reaction time.
"I don't know," she sighs, blinking up at Chloe with a deceptively squinched nose. She lifts a hand to idly wag a finger up and down in the redhead's direction, and tries not to actively look at the way Chloe's tank kind of clings to her upper body in what Beca would be forced to admit are all the right places. "This 'bedroom chic' thing you've got going on might be more... satisfactory." Her inflection is light and airy, and it lifts Chloe's eyebrows like a gentle but heavily innuendo-driven breeze. Chloe beams and straightens. Lifting her head from Beca's knees, she presses both her palms against the curve of the caps instead.
"Like what you see?" There's a false innocence to the question that Beca isn't buying into for even a second as Chloe's hands squeeze and Beca shrugs a shoulder with an amount of equally false disinterest.
Because yeah, she kind of does. It's not as though this is the first time she's admired some aspect of Chloe's body and it probably won't be the last. The fact that Beca is beginning to see certain assets in a new light is beside the point. At least, that's what she tells herself. It's always been okay to look, Chloe herself has been quite outspoken on how "looking doesn't hurt" many, many times in the past and so Beca shouldn't feel any differently.
But she's starting to.
"Just so you know," Chloe goes on, leading Beca away from too much introspection, "this isn't my bedroom look." And right into the deep end of a small lake of sudden uncertainty, as she uses her hands to part Beca's legs and promptly flips over and down into the newly vacant space. Which isn't really vacant at all, because Beca's already kind of there. Or parts of her are. Parts of her are really already there and Chloe just settles right in with a contented sigh and not a second thought. She settles back with her shoulders to Beca's chest and lifts her hands so that they're both touching the tops of the brunette's legs in a manner that makes Beca wonder if she isn't searching for some strange and sudden sense of reassurance. "You've probably already guessed that though." Fingers brush with absent purpose and Beca's jaw clenches involuntarily at the abrupt rush of memories that give more than a little credence to Chloe's suspicions. She doesn't have to come right out and admit to that though.
"Uh..." or say anything at all. She can't remember the last time she'd spent any time with Chloe where her brain hadn't been the victim of a mental spit-take. She'd like to be able to say she's getting used it it. She'd like to be able to say a lot of things. Right now, with Chloe's eyes grazing hers over top of a head tilted back and straining to find Beca, she'd settle for being able to say anything at all.
But there's nothing in that moment beyond the startling blue of Chloe's eyes and the curvature of her mouth as it transforms into the kind of smirk that's started to make Beca's insides twist.
Sure it started a while ago, but whatever.
"You're adorable when you're flustered." Chloe's voice is teasing and tinkling, and it sinks into Beca's skin like a salve. Like always, though it would annoy her coming from anyone else, from Chloe all it makes Beca do is bite the inside of her cheek to try and stop herself from smiling. Something which she mostly fails at.
"And you take entirely too much pleasure in making me squirm." She also fails at keeping her foot out of her mouth a lot of the time, which also may or may not have something to do with Chloe. Chloe, who twists around between Beca's legs until she can prop herself up with a hand on either side of the brunette and somehow manages to make the awkward movement sensual. Chloe, who just smirks and sparkles like the ginger tom who finally has the poor, frightened canary right where he wants it.
"You can't ever," Chloe's voice drops to a murmur and her breath whispers over Beca's neck as she feels the redhead's mouth loom nearer, "have too," feels the sharp contours of Chloe's hipbones pressing into the inside of her thighs, "much," and the stark confirmation that Chloe isn't wearing a bra, "pleasure." The last word ripples across Beca's skin a second before lips land against a patch of skin beside the hollow of her throat. She feels her breath hitch at the contact, hears it, and the next ripple is caused by Chloe's low laughter. It pulls at the hair on Beca's arms and makes her skin prickle.
"Those are probably someone's last words, you know." She doesn't know when exactly her hands found the curves of Chloe's ribs, but she becomes aware of their placement a moment later when Chloe's tongue darts out to tease Beca's pulse point. Her fingers clench reflexively as her whole body jumps and roars at the contact. All at once, her skin is too hot, too tight, and Chloe's proximity acts as the fuel for the fire suddenly raging through her. She tips her head back to put distance between herself and the flames, but Chloe takes that as an invitation and once her mouth finds firmer purchase, Beca can't be sure that it wasn't.
Somehow, in a misplaced pocket of time that finds Beca lost in things she probably shouldn't be, they end up spread lengthways across the bed, heads and feet pointing in the right direction now. They trade a handful of kisses, soft and slow, and when Chloe pulls back, Beca blinks heavy lids open to watch her absently tuck red strands behind her ear.
And deep inside her chest, something clenches. Hard enough to nearly make her gasp, but she bites back on it and immediately chastises herself for such an adolescent reflex. But then Chloe opens her eyes and smiles down at her, bashful, like she's embarrassed, and the clench eases into a flutter that carries through Beca as the redhead drops down to lie beside her. Next to her, against her. She lifts her head and nestles it in the spot where Beca's shoulder meets her collarbone, then bends her leg to hook a knee over Beca's as well. A hand flattens atop Beca's stomach, circling twice over the fabric before slipping under without a word. Beca curls her toes against the mattress, but doesn't say anything. She stares up at the ceiling and for some reason, as her arm automatically winds around the other woman, she counts.
"Are we always going to be this close?" It's quiet, unexpectedly uncertain and completely out of nowhere. So much so that Beca actually stops breathing for a few seconds. The sudden silence hits her like a slightly spongy brick wall and she strains her hearing, wondering if maybe the non-existent tree against Chloe's window is playing some kind of trick with its branches. "Sometimes," but Chloe speaks again and Beca jerks, surprised, pulling a chuckle from the redhead. She strokes her hand over Beca's stomach in the same manner as someone trying to sooth a startled cat. Fleetingly, Beca wonders if Chloe can hear how hard her heart is pounding. "Sometimes I worry."
"We went over this," Beca says gently, after a moment's pause. "We're not just going to stop being friends the second we throw our caps in the air." She hears Chloe inhale and feels her shift slightly, changing the angle of her head so that it touches the bottom of Beca's chin.
"No, I know that." Chloe seems to believe her own words, but they make Beca's brow furrow regardless.
"Well, if you know that then why-"
"I like this." To emphasize her point, Chloe slides her hand around Beca's ribs and hugs her tightly. The action seems to reach inside Beca's chest to squeeze her lungs. "And I know I've sort of forced myself on you in the cuddle department," Beca quirks the left side of her mouth up at that, "but we haven't always done this." Another squeeze. "I like being this close to you. And I guess I don't want this to go away. Even after we're done..." Chloe trails off, unsure, and Beca gives it a few seconds before jumping in.
"Fulfilling your experimental regrets?" She offers and the question jostles Chloe's frame with another small laugh. She hums her agreement and adjusts the leg she has slung over Beca, who absently rubs her chin across the top of Chloe's forehead before giving voice to her thoughts. "What if I promise to let you practise your," she pauses, searching for the most accurate description, "cute, cuddly, koala act whenever we hang out? Will you stop being weird and worrying?"
"Promise?" Chloe manages to make it sound vulnerable and vaguely threatening all at once. Beca smiles even though Chloe can't see and the bottom of her chin taps the top of Chloe's head as Beca nods.
"Yeah, of course. Either you'll come visit me in L.A. and I'll hop on my private plane and fly to wherever your stripper-teacher career takes you, and we'll get our cuddle on." The expected chuckle doesn't come and it takes Beca a few seconds to realise Chloe's waiting for something. "I promise." There is, Beca finds, just the right amount of vehemence in her statement, because Chloe's hand sneaks out to awkwardly loop her pinky over Beca's and lock them together. It's with a barely audible "kay" that Chloe concedes and for a long moment, everything is quiet.
"You think I'm cute and cuddly." Chloe's words stir the silence and Beca has to make a conscious effort to steady her own heartbeat at the accusation, since her heart seems ready to leap up through her throat and out of her mouth at Chloe's playful tone. She shifts without reason against the mattress.
"I also kind of suggested that you look like a koala, so..." Beca trails off as Chloe's giggles rumble against her chest.
"They're cute though," Chloe points out and Beca scrunches her face into an expression of mild disdain.
"And, like, super hairy." She pauses as she feels Chloe's finger tap reprovingly against her side, then adds, "They also just like, pee, on everything." This time, Chloe digs a fingertip between Beca ribs and pulls a startled yelp from the brunette, who immediately tries to grab the offending appendage, but it's like whatever lotion Chloe uses makes her hands unbearably soft and impossible to actually hold onto.
"That's another thing I regret," Chloe says, breathless after a minute of almost solid laughter and playful struggling. "Not finding out about that sooner." Beca lets out a grunt of discontent, but it's all for show.
"You're one of an elite few," she mutters, aiming for gloom and failing mostly due to the way Chloe turns her head to nuzzle the curve of her neck mid-sentence. Beca's throat bobs as swallowing becomes momentarily difficult and Chloe's low hum sounds pleased.
"Well, that makes me feel extra special." And she is, Beca thinks. And that makes her stomach flip right below where Chloe's hand has come to rest. She stares at the wall over top of red hair and absently worries her bottom lip as her vision blurs. Thinking too much about nothing in particular.
"So," Beca begins after taking a deep breath, lifting a hand to scratch at the end of her nose before dropping it to Chloe's arm where she taps her fingers a few times before continuing on. "I got an email this morning that's, like, kind of been freaking me out." Chloe shifts beside her, tilting her head back until her bright eyes find Beca's. Her stare is punctuated by a furrowed brow and a worried curve of pink lips.
"A bad email?" Chloe sounds so concerned and it immediately makes Beca feel silly, because no, not bad. She purses her lips, eyes squinting, and inhales through her nose; all things, she knows, will forewarn Chloe of her current and impending silliness.
"Not exactly?"
"Explain." Chloe's demands have never needed to be barked or spat in order to be carried out. In order for the person on the receiving end to know she means business and that, yeah, okay, they maybe better do whatever it is she's telling them because 'The Ginger Wrath' is kind of terrifying. Like now, her voice is quiet and calm, but there's an underlying edge to it that makes Beca want to explain. Usually because she's terrified of what might happen otherwise, or, as is the case this time, the demand is soft enough that Beca feels she'll be safe no matter what she says right now.
She could tell Chloe she'd accidentally murdered Aubrey during her freshman year and that the thing walking around, masquerading as her is actually a startlingly life-like robot she had Benji build in the Trebles' basement shortly after, and Beca might just be okay.
"Okay, so, it was kind of from my boss." She pauses, subconsciously holding her breath between statements. "And it was kind of about the demo. And how he'd kind of heard back from his dude in L.A. and that the dude, kind of, maybe liked it? And that it was early days but-" she's cut off by abrupt, angry movement, as Chloe shoves herself up on one hand to hover over Beca and glare down at her accusingly.
"Beca!" The admonishment is punctuated by a slap to Beca's thigh. She winces and rubs the spot, and Chloe steadfastly ignores her. "Why didn't you say something earlier?!" Beca shrugs as best she can while reclined and offers up a rueful, but coy raise of her eyebrow.
"Because I didn't want to think about it," she breathes out, then lifts the corners of her mouth in a smile that could be best described as 'sarcastically blasé'. "And as it turns out, you're actually a pretty decent distraction."
"I can't decide if that's a compliment or not." Chloe narrows her eyes and Beca just grins in response. Cheesy, all teeth. There's a moment then, before Chloe speaks again, one in which Beca can watch the way the redhead shifts from teasing to serious. See it play out in the slight shifting features of her face. "If it's all nice things, then why is it freaking you out so much?" With that, Chloe actually sits back up and in the silence that immediately follows her question, Beca feels herself miss the closeness. But then she's forcing herself to follow and tucking her legs up to her chin so she can wrap her arms around them and make herself appear even smaller than she is.
"I don't know..." Chloe scoots back into Beca's earlier position against the wall, stretching her legs out and bumping Beca with the side of one along the way. "It's just like, it makes everything seem so much more real. Achievable, you know?" Chloe bobs her head, but her eyebrows knit together.
"I still don't see how that's a bad thing though."
"Well, I don't know if you know this about me," Beca wrinkles up her nose and drops her voice to an exaggerated whisper, "but I'm kind of all about self-sabotage." Surprisingly, Chloe snorts a laugh and rolls her eyes.
"No you're not," she says, and from her tone there's no denying the fact that she's utterly convinced of her opinion. Of course, it's one that Beca doesn't share, and so the brunette's gut instinct is to argue it.
"Uh, yeah, dude. I kind of am." But Chloe only shakes her head, reaches out to pry one of Beca's hands from where it's locked around the other, holding her legs close.
"No, Beca. You're not." All it takes is a gentle tug for Beca to come unfolded again, to urge her over to Chloe's side, where she sits with still only one hand in her possession. "You like to think you are, and maybe you've even more or succeeded once or twice, but you've always managed to fix it in the end." Chloe is tracing the lines in Beca's palm with a finger, slow and tickling, but nice. "Self-sabotage is all about decimating every good thing in your life. Destroying it so that there's no chance of coming back. But you've managed to. You're really more of a self-disrupting kind of girl."
And Beca isn't sure what to say to that. Never knows what to say whenever anyone shows more than an ounce of belief in her and her ability to do anything. It makes her feel weird and warm and uncomfortable, like she's about to develop a rash.
"Yeah, well, you're like, biased or something. You have to say that stuff." Chloe responds with a very deep, eerily calm-sounding sigh, and then everything is painfully silent for a few seconds.
"Why do you have such a hard on for thinking of yourself as less than you are?" Chloe actually sounds irritated and Beca almost visibly baulks at the question, jerking her head back a ways.
"What?" She gasps, wide-eyed and open-mouthed.
"You heard me."
"Did you just say 'hard on'?" Beca screws up her face in amusement and Chloe rolls her eyes, letting go of her friend's hand only to use her own to half-heartedly shove Beca's shoulder.
"Don't try to change the subject."
"I'm literally asking about something you just said."
"You're insufferable." There's no bite to Chloe's bark though and so Beca sighs, heavy and mocking, and bats her eyelashes up at the other woman.
"You love me anyway."
"Darn your surly charm and grumpy good looks."
"Oh, a backhanded compliment!" Beca grins. "Is that what we're doing now?"
"Well, we could be doing something else..." Chloe trails off and Beca's stomach dips and rolls in the sudden silence that follows. Silence that's bookended by a flirtatious smirk and an all too interested once over. Baby-blues seem to singe every inch of skin they flicker over and nothing about the flirtation itself is really very new.
Except the way it makes Beca feel, and even then.
"You're still so easy," Chloe purrs happily and Beca lets out a huff, perturbed by how right she is.
"You wish," she mutters, darkly.
Chloe's thoughtful hum reverberates inside her chest.
She spends another half an hour in Chloe's room. On Chloe's bed, with Chloe so close that she might as well have been lying on top of Beca. Again. And she'd left with an excuse too vague to not grab attention, so Chloe had been entirely unwilling to let her leave at first, intent on finding out what exactly Beca was leaving her for.
"You're up to something," she'd accused, squinting her eyes. "And I'm going to expose you." And Beca, in a moment of flirtatious bravery, had paused in the doorway to banter back.
"You'll have to buy me dinner first." She'd left Chloe sitting there, lips parted, slightly stunned, and disappeared around the side of the door.
Chloe's hastily called, "That's a deal, Mitchell!" had followed Beca all the way back up to her room.
It's not so much the thought of that which has her expelling the air from her lungs with the strength of a blacksmith's bellows as she drops into her chair. Not really. It's more a culminations of things, one of which that particular moment happens to be. And it's the feelings too; things Beca Mitchell has never been overly fantastic about dealing with.
But that's nothing new.
Instead of dwelling on any of it, as she has a tendency to do with things that try and make her think more than she'd like, she resolves to distract herself the best way she knows how. With music.
She nudges the screen of her laptop up with the stubby tip of her thumb, getting more and more frustrated with each consecutive jab until she gives in and grips the edge of the screen and straightens it.
While she waits for it to turn on and her mixing program to load, Worlds flickers through her mind for the first time that day. Because it's just about a week away and she knows from experience that once it's here it'll be done, and then everything will be over. All of this, the last four years of her life. Graduation is the beginning of the end and the rest of it is nipping at the heels of those awful green gowns. Beca can feel it. Threatening to trip her with every step she takes and it's as unsettling as the real world beyond college is suffocating, and she hasn't even gotten there yet.
Barden has been a strange kind of bubble for Beca – for all of them, probably – with its very own ecosystem and weather pattern, and she's already well aware that the air outside of that bubble is going to be something she has to get used to. There are far more toxins out in the real world. Out where Beca won't have a cappella, or the Bellas, or Chloe as her very own air purifier. She's pretty sure that kind of thing doesn't work so well long distance.
The mixing program is up and waiting for her when she comes back to herself and it's a few swipes and clicks before she has what she needs in front of her. And it's a bit daunting, she thinks, making a last mix for Chloe. And maybe it's not the last last, but it's a Barden last. Part of her wants this one to be special because of that – many parts, for more than that – so she's happy it's worked out like this, with tracks from Chloe's favourite movie up on the docket. Still, it makes her nervous. She inexplicably feels like there's a lot riding on this, even though she knows Chloe will love whatever Beca gives her.
It's Chloe; that's kind of what she does.
It doesn't take long for Beca to settle in, ten minutes or so, and then she's swaddled in the familiar warmth of base tracks and merge lines. Her brain effortlessly working overtime in a way it doesn't anywhere else, much to her Professor Father's dismay.
Their brains are built so differently, despite their similarities. Words and poignant phrases are his elixir, the soothing tonic that warms him when the rest of the world goes to hell. The only time Beca ever really cares about words is when there's a melody behind them. Something to really move her. Static words on an otherwise blank page have never really done much for her in that sense.
Music though, music transports her. Takes her away to a place where everything is more and she would have to fight to keep her feet on the ground, if she even wanted to. She never does; floating feels too damn good, like a high she never wants to come down from.
Those are the good days. There are bad ones too, of course. Days where the music won't flow and everything is wrong and scratched and repeating. Those are the days that find her grouchy and unruly, the days where the other Bellas avoid her at all costs, because being on the end of one of Beca's black moods is a sharp, painful experience that one never truly recovers from.
Unless you're Chloe. Who has somehow found a way to subvert Beca's dark clouds and avoid all those rough pot holes, and can even pull her out of that all-encompassing miserable mood. Can make Beca feel light again. Like she's floating.
Transported.
Do you ever wonder what would have happened if we hadn't met?
The text takes Beca off guard, not because she hasn't wondered that, but because it's never occurred to her that Chloe might have wondered if she had. She clicks the save icon and pulls down her headphones in order to concentrate better. She wouldn't be here, be a Bella, would never have met and befriended any of these girls. There would be a whole side of herself that didn't know what it was capable of, a treasure trove of memories lost with no other way of ever being found. She thinks she'd have maybe been less frustrated, but also definitely less fulfilled. Less happy.
I wouldn't have a fear of public showering.
Of course, she doesn't say that.
You have NOTHING to be afraid of, babe. ;) xxx
It's not what she meant and she knows that they both know that, but getting Chloe to stop teasing and or flirting is not unlike trying to get a happy dog to stop wagging it's tail. It doesn't know how.
I have freakishly chipper redheads with a predilection for stalking to be afraid of and you know it.
Not that she was ever really, truly afraid of Chloe. Even though she might have been justified once or twice.
Redheads? You have more than one? Did I start something? :P xxx
There's a connotation there that drops something like an anchor into the pit of Beca's stomach.
No but I'm not afraid to finish this conversation.
And she can practically hear the pout before the next message arrives.
You're no fun. XP xx
And she already knows what she's going to reply with before she types it.
We definitely covered that and how it's a total lie earlier.
Touché.
She feels oddly vindicated at that and scratches the bridge of her nose with a smile.
What time do you start today? xxx
For the first time since she sat down, Beca glances at the clock on her computer and cringes, twisting the chair from side to side as she thumbs the virtual keyboard.
Ugh, in like an hour and a half. Then I'm there til bossman lets me go or he gets so angry at Dax that he can't take looking at any of us anymore and just leaves.
Why?
There's a pause then, longer than those that have come before it, and when the text eventually lands, the tip of Beca's thumb turns white against the edge of the phone.
Just trying to decide if we have enough time to make out before you leave.
It hits Beca like one of those dense foam baseball bats to the gut. A solid punch that she feels, but that doesn't do too much physical damage. Just sends a shock wave rippling across her whole body, leaving her to shiver without consent and then bite down on the inside of her cheek in an attempt to chide herself.
And it's striking in it's undeniability, how much she wants to drop what she's doing and walk back down those stairs and right back into Chloe's room. Into her non-existent personal bubble and press herself so close that they fall back onto Chloe's bed in a pile of limbs and lips, and not move until Beca absolutely has to. Hell, maybe she'd even call in sick.
Some kind of sick.
She blinks hard to try and clear her thoughts, absently tapping the back of her phone against the edge of her desk in time with the bounce of her leg. All manner of responses run through her mind, sarcastic comments and flashes of possibilities that are more visual than verbal, but the latter is likely to only get her into more trouble than she's capable of handling right now.
With how you get carried away? Not likely.
She deletes the text and rewrites similar versions three times before finally sending one and wonders when exactly she started worrying about how they might come across to Chloe. Why that even matters at all.
Well if that isn't the pot calling the kettle black... ;)
Beca feels her cheeks flush with heat. She lifts a hand to press her knuckles against one as another text chimes in and teases her lips into a rueful smile.
Besides, I've yet to hear you complain. xxx
There's an open-mouthed lip-stick mark emoji finishing off the message and it makes Beca think of parked cars and broken passenger seats, which makes her cheeks burn even brighter. Makes her gut twitch and twist, and the back of her neck prickle like someone unseen is starting at her from the shadows. Makes all the words inside of her just vanish.
So, she doesn't respond.
It takes a little while longer for the music to distract her this time.
