A/N: just a cute lil thing for y'all to help along your quarantines and maybe distract you from all your end of the semester papers the way writing absolutely anything except my case study due on tuesday has been distracting me! hope you're all staying safe and healthy!
title & first line are from perfect places by lorde! (confession: hadn't actually listened to melodrama all the way through before writing this! also thought this line was from supercut but it's not! but anyway, on with the show!)
Beca is nineteen and she is on fire.
At least that's how it feels in the best way possible, here, in somebody's hotel suite in New York City after being crowned a collegiate a cappella champion for the first time. She's had her fair share of tequila shots and Jesse is dancing behind her with one hand pressed flat against her hip and Fat Amy is trying to turn this mostly normal (for a cappella people, anyways) party into a karaoke party and she didn't know she was capable of feeling like this. Like she's invincible.
Maybe it's the tequila. (It's definitely at least a little bit the tequila). It's partially adrenaline, she knows, from how insane the day has been. She's not quite drunk, but she's feeling loose and free and happier than she can remember being in too long. She knows it because of the girls around her, screaming Taylor Swift lyrics at the top of their lungs, and the boy behind her with the soft eyes and smiling mouth. These people really threw her a curve ball as soon as she got to Barden. She wanted to hate it, to stay detached from them, but they made it impossible. The Bellas with their absolute nonexistent concept of privacy, constantly oversharing and weaseling their way into her life and heart. The Bellas who trusted her enough to make their ICCA mix, trusted her to make them champions. The Bellas squishing her into the biggest group hug of her life with wet eyes and big hearts, loving her. She loves them, too.
And there's Jesse.
Jesse with the ever-present grin when he sees her, with the juice pouches, with the fun facts. Jesse who makes her laugh with his stupid jokes at the radio station, who makes her stomach feel weird and fluttery when he catches her eye during a movication, mouthing along to whatever scene is unfolding on his laptop screen. Jesse who was always there, always trying, even when she's an absolute dick to him, whose knee presses into hers when they're sitting too close on her bed, who brings her coffee before class when he knows she stayed up too late working on a mix. Jesse kissing her (probably on national television) after months and months of not letting him kiss her. Jesse who she really fucking likes.
Jesse who's grabbing her hand and pulling her out of the madness towards the kitchen. She hoists herself up onto the counter (big mistake, it's so sticky), watching as he refills their cups with tequila and orange juice easily, grinning at her as he hands her one and clinks them together. "So? How's it feel being an international a cappella champion?" Jesse asks, settling in front of her and resting a hand on her thigh. He looks good, in a navy t-shirt that's tight around his arms and jeans.
"Oh, you know. Trying not to let all the power go to my head."
"We definitely wouldn't want that," he hums, scooting himself between her legs. They're basically the same height this way.
"No, we wouldn't," she says, smiling as his mouth slants over hers.
If she's being honest, she's actually pretty impressed with herself. Not because of the ICCA thing (although definitely kind of that, too), but because this, kissing this boy that she likes in a kitchen at a party, is not something she would have done eight and half months ago. She wouldn't have ever let anybody in like this at the beginning of freshman year; she didn't even know she could let anybody in like this. But, Jesse broke down her walls because he was good to a fault and didn't give up on her and snuck her sneaky smiles when he waited for her after Bellas rehearsal with a DVD and juice pouch tucked in his backpack. She likes hanging out with him (obviously. Otherwise she wouldn't be making out with him on this counter) and she's so glad that she let herself feel like this. That she was able to move past all of her shit and sing that stupid song to him and let him know that she was sorry and that she really, really wanted to give this, give them, a chance.
"Do you want to get out of here?" Jesse hums against her mouth, tugging at one of her belt loops with a finger.
"What did you have in mind?" She breathes back as he kisses the corner of her jaw. "Are you going to try to make me watch a movie right now? Because I don't think I can do that, dude."
"No movies," he shakes his head, smiling. Always smiling. His eyes are shiny but not quite blurry (neither of them wanted to get to the point of blurriness. Making the 13 hour drive from New York back to Georgia tomorrow is going to be shit, even without a hangover).
"Let's go, then," she smiles back, pushing herself off the counter. Everyone else is too busy dancing and yelling and yelling and dancing to notice them disappear with a bottle of cheap vodka.
They end up alone in Jesse's hotel room, which he isn't sharing. Bumper had booked a room for himself so he didn't have to share with the boys (something about "picking up chicks after they get crowned ICCA champions"), but obviously didn't end up needing it. Since Jesse was more-or-less the new Treble captain, the other Trebles let him take the solo room. Beca's sharing with Amy, so hanging out in her room felt too risky. She knew that Amy would just let herself in no matter who was nude or what was going on because the Bellas had literally no concept of personal space. (Beca was pretty sure most of them had seen her naked by this point, and she had absolutely no idea how that had happened).
The Smirnoff is abandoned on the dresser almost immediately when Jesse tugs on her belt loops again, pulling her onto the bed with him. "Thanks for singing to me," he grins, pressing his hands into the skin beneath her top. They're warm.
"Sorry for being a dick," she says back, but it comes out all weird because his mouth is against the pulse point on her neck.
"Me, too," he mumbles into her skin and Beca thinks that she has more to apologize for than he does, but then she can't think anything at all as his mouth comes back to hers and his hands are hot on her back.
They don't talk a whole lot after that. Beca laughs when Jesse mouths a ticklish spot on her hip. He exhales through his nose when she tugs on his hair. They're panting and cursing into each other's mouths and whispering each other's names. There are other things, too. Jesse's biceps flexing next to her, the pink finding its way up her chest and neck, her fingernails dragging gently across his spine.
"Hey," he whispers after. "That was okay for you, right?"
Beca almost laughs at him.
"Jess. You've got nothing to worry about. That was great. Fantastic, even." She smiles at him in the dark, curling her leg around his shin between the sheets.
She can't get past how normal this feels, how comfortable she is, laying next to him like this. How not terrifying any of this is with him. She closes her eyes, feeling his thumb press soft circles into her hipbone.
"So what you're saying is that we can do this again?"
"Well if this," she gestures between the two of them, "is going to be a thing, then yeah, I'm pretty sure we can arrange for that."
"So this is a thing you want to happen?" He confirms, and Beca rolls over to look at him.
"Dude," she laughs, "I fucking sang to you earlier. Which is never going to happen ever again, by the way."
"I know, I know," he says, pressing a kiss to her hair. "I just wanted to make sure."
"I'm sure."
"So, Beca," Fat Amy starts at breakfast the next morning. "Where'd you disappear to last night?" The Bellas and Trebles have made an early morning pitstop at a diner in New Jersey to get something to eat before their hefty drive back to Barden.
"Uh, nowhere," Beca says. "I don't know what you're talking about."
"Really? Because you were, ahh, not in our room this morning. Your bed wasn't even mussed up or anything. I know you're tiny, but you would have wrinkled the sheets at least a little bit with your flat butt."
"She had sex," Stacie says, shrugging. "I have a sixth sense for that sort of thing. I knew as soon as she walked in. Jesse, too."
"Oh my god! You were Trebleboned!" Chloe exclaims way too loudly, definitely attracting the attention of the boys at the other end of the table. Beca refuses to look over, knowing that Jesse is grinning over at them.
"Dude! I am not talking to you about this!"
"I knew you had a toner for Jesse!" Aubrey says, smirking as she steals a cubed hash brown off of Chloe's plate.
"Was he good? I don't even like dudes but I feel like he would be good. You've seen the thing he does with his hips," Cynthia Rose chimes in.
"Hey, I have a fun idea. How about we talk about something else," Beca tries, glaring pointedly at Amy sitting across from her. "Like how we're going to properly celebrate this weekend."
"Oh, actually, I was thinking …" Beca tunes out as Aubrey starts going on about a party at the abandoned pool and the symbolism of how that's where the Bellas "found their sound" (thanks to Beca), finally letting herself look down the table to where Jesse's sitting. He's already looking back at her with crinkled eyes and soft smile.