A/N: Inspired by a midnight conversation with a certain someone over Tumblr and me being a Bechloe fanatic that I could apparently not have a simple conversation without turning it into a fic idea.
Disclaimer: I don't own the Pitch Perfect universe.
As Beca stood outside Chloe's room, the carpet just beyond the threshold elevating her toes above the wooden panels of the hallway, the sounds of the rest of the Bellas mingling and conversing in various places throughout the house fading into background noise, she doesn't believe that she could feel any more useless than she is feeling right that very moment.
It's been five minutes. Beca had been standing there, in that exact spot, for five whole minutes and with each passing second, her heart squeezes just a tad bit tighter into itself.
Chloe is crying.
Beca had never seen Chloe cry before. Sure, in the two and a half years that they have known each other, Beca has seen more than her fair share of Chloe tearing up and blubbering over—what she deemed—minuscule events, but that had just been her best friend getting emotional over a puppy commercial or Titanic or Aubrey moving on. Never before had Beca seen her cry, never like this: silent and gasping and quivering, her body curled up into a protective ball, her heels rocking back and forth atop her pristinely made sheets.
Never before had she seen Chloe have a mental breakdown.
A particularly painful gasp permeates the air, and Beca swallows with difficulty, her breath sticking tremulously in her throat and her lungs struggling to expand as if she is physically sharing the struggle as the crying redhead in the room to breathe.
She should do something. Anything. Anything besides just stand there and stare and be useless in her second-hand suffocation amongst the thick distress in the room.
A distress that's not even hers but she feels like is—wishes like is—if that means that Chloe would not have to go through whatever it is that she is going through all by herself. If she could just share some of it, Chloe would not have felt the need to isolate herself to the confines of her room while everyone else chatters outside, leaving Beca to notice her absence and go snoop around for her and her endearing and cheerful optimism.
She had been curious as to why Chloe's door was closed (it's either wide open or locked tight, never in between) and she had opted to not knock as she swung it open, about to ask if she was okay and if she would be joining them for dinner when her eyes caught sight of her vulnerable and rocking form and oh, Chloe is not okay and she should better not say anything lest she bursts her bubble.
But the longer she stood there, frozen in place and afraid to make a sound or move or sign of any kind to indicate her presence, the more anxious she gets, and the more useless she feels in the realization that she couldn't just leave Chloe to her sorrows, that she should do something to alleviate the pain radiating off her best friend and hopeless crush's body, but that she doesn't know what.
But it's been five minutes and Chloe is showing no sign of stopping, and Beca is on the verge of an imitation of an asthma attack with her difficulty to breathe, and suddenly it doesn't matter anymore that she has no experience in comforting someone down from a mental and emotional high (low?) and she's stumbling forward into the room. She trips, slams her hip bone into the corner of Chloe's dresser, quietly curses, and is momentarily grateful for the fact that Chloe is too immersed in her troubling thoughts to notice because wow, as if it wasn't bad enough that she is no help and has no idea what she's doing, she is breaking herself on Chloe's furniture and grumbling about how she wishes to take a chainsaw and saw off the offending chip?
Way to go, Mitchell.
Beca rubs at the already bruising spot with her left hand and hobbles forward, making her way to the side of Chloe's full size bed and gingerly setting herself at the edge of the mattress. She folds her leg into a triangle and tucks her left foot in the back crook of her right knee, and hesitates before gently reaching a hand out to lay on Chloe's trembling shoulder.
"Hey." It is a whisper, because she doesn't want to startle her. Chloe is shaken enough as is. "What's wrong?"
"Are you okay?" is a dumb question because as established, Chloe is most definitely not okay and if you think she is, you seriously need to get your eyes checked out. Like asap.
Chloe lifts her head from the sleeve of her pajama top, and the sight that greets her is enough to make Beca release the skin of the inside of her cheek because if she didn't, she would've likely bit through the skin and drawn blood.
Her red rimmed blue eyes are literally sparkling with tears—both unshed and otherwise, her cute pink nose is scrunching into itself with sniffles, her soft expressive lips are downturned at the sides into an unhappy frown, and her naturally shaped auburn brows are knitted at the ends with concentrated distress.
Even cracked, the beauty and delicacy that is the glass of Chloe Beale never ceases to shine through, its glass shards piercing through the layers of steel and nonchalance surrounding Beca's heart to cut into the organ of emotion beneath.
She is so beautiful.
Chloe blinks, having to take a second or two to recognize who she is, and glances to the open bedroom door, her eyebrows now bunching together for a different reason. Beca makes to get off the bed and close it, but Chloe stops her with a hand on her arm.
"No, it's fine." Her voice is small and hoarse and Beca feels guilty for not having the courage to do something sooner. "Leave it open. It's getting pretty suffocating in here anyway."
You don't say.
Beca settles back down onto the bed and nods, retrieving both of her hands to tuck them neatly on top of one another under the bend of her thigh. She looks down, finding it distinctly heartbreaking to look into her sparkling blue eyes. "Yeah, okay."
Chloe sighs, faint but loaded, the sound more of a way to have something to fill up the space between than an act of relief, and Beca grimaces at the uncharacteristicality of it all. She opens her mouth—still not looking at her—about to repeat her earlier question over Chloe's state of un-well being, when Chloe deems it unnecessary by willingly volunteering the information.
"It's the stress. I'm just so stressed, Beca." It's the rare use of her full name after Chloe had found out that she could get away with "Bec" and "Becs" (of course Beca would let her get away with it; her heart legitimately feels like it's too big for her chest whenever one of those nicknames floats into her ears) that makes Beca look up from where she's playing with the skin of her thigh. Chloe's running both hands through frazzled hair, her turquoise and pink pajamas falling loose around the curve of her elbows. Her nose scrunches cutely, again. "ICCAs are coming up again and I just don't know if we can still make it to the top what with everyone else trying so hard to regain first place and Aubrey is not here to help us and exams are right around the corner and the Bellas are leaving for the holidays and I have no idea what to do with my life and career or whether or not I'm going to graduate this year and my parents are just being so ambiguous over their feelings of me already being here two years longer than necessary and everyone's just expecting me to act a certain way and be a certain leader and god," Chloe hiccups and slaps her fingers over her eyes, a dry sob escaping her lips once more, "It's just so much, you know?" Her words are now warbled and clumped together, "Everything is just hitting me at once with nowhere to vent and nobody to talk to and I just feel like it wouldn't be fair to unload my crap on you, especially when it involves the Bellas and our ICCA music set—which I'm sure will be phenomenal, by the way, because it's you and your sets are always phenomenal—and especially when I feel like most of my worries are stupid and baseless-"
"It's not stupid, Chloe." Beca immediately feels self-conscious for cutting off Chloe's rant. She ducks her head when Chloe whirls her somber gaze over; gulps. "Your worries and stress and mental breakdown is completely understandable and justified."
Especially when I am part of that group of people looking to you to be your kind and empathetic self and lead us—lead me—to acapella perfection.
Beca doesn't mean to, but it's true. She looks to Chloe to be the light of her life and the person to come home to everyday after a long shift at the station. She relies on her to be the glue to stick the Bellas together when Aubrey had been in charge, and the net to catch them when they fall apart when Aubrey had not. She goes to her to whine and vent about her music, to be the reason she smiles everyday and wants to be social instead of locking herself in someplace seclusive and be a hermit for the rest of her college years.
In retrospect, it had been a shitty thing to do, the calamitous result being a crying redhead too stressed and overwhelmed to do anything else besides give in and break down and suffocate herself in her relatively spacious but roommate-less room.
Beca inwardly cringes in throat clogging guilt. She didn't realize that looking to Chloe, relying on her, loving on her, can be such a burden. She wants to help her, share some of her stress, be there for her, but she has never had much experience—any experience—in that field—department—of comfort, so she just sits and fidgets and blurts that Chloe's breakdown is valid, feeling more like a useless idiot by the second.
Beca had never been a sharer, over feelings or otherwise, and so even when her mom was still alive she had never been one to open up about her thoughts or emotions that laid beyond her "tip of the iceberg" layer that she showed the world. She had initially not given it much thought—it's not like there had been anything emotionally touching in her life at the time besides music anyway—and so hadn't learned about what it is like to comfort and to be comforted. So when her mom passed away and her dad "took over", she is in even more of a flump in the inability to assuage over negative feelings—her dad is of no help—in either herself or other people, and so now—now that she needs that skill to calm her best friend down from her accumulation and explosion of stress—she is regretful and useless in her complete lack of compassionate knowledge.
She wants to help her though. So bad.
Chloe sniffles, rubbing her nose against a sleeve. "Really?"
Beca nods, peering through the strand of hair that has fallen from its place behind her ear to cover her eyes, "Yeah. I get why you are feeling overwhelmed right now. Trust me, I would be too, if I were in your position. But Chloe," she pushes that strand of hair back and rests a tentative hand on Chloe's knee, hoping against hope that that is something that she is allowed to do, "You don't ever have to feel like you don't have anybody to talk to. The Bellas will be more than willing to listen. I—" she blushes, dropping her eyes to follow the way her fingers are tracing indistinguishable patterns against the material of Chloe's pajama pants, "I will be more than willing to listen. Y'know? It's not not fair for you to unload your crap on me—it's not crap anyways—and even if it is—the fairness, not the crap—I would still be willing to put whatever I am doing aside to listen to what you have to say. It's the least I could do, Chlo, for all that you did for us. Y'know?"
God, her face feels like a furnace. Is it always this embarrassing to comfort someone?
Who says "y'know" so many times in as many sentences?
A warm hand lays on top of her wandering one and Beca looks up at the sudden gesture. Chloe's eyes are cerulean. Fluorescent. Her smile is watery but soft. Understanding. "Yeah. I know." She tangles their fingers together. Tightens. "Thank you, Becs."
Beca loves her. So much.
"And don't worry about your parents," she continues, feeling the need to address every single one of Chloe's concerns, "I'm sure they just want you to be happy and are just wondering whether or not that is with you deciding to continue to stay with us lame and boring nerds."
Chloe giggles, and Beca feels a hot bubble of pride settle lazily in her chest. "You're not lame, Beca." She raises their entwined fingers to her lips. "Or boring."
Beca skin twitches wherever her mouth touches. Her heart pushes against the hot bubble in her chest like an inflated balloon. She wouldn't mind if it bursts. Chloe just focused on her instead of the Bellas as a group on her un-lameness. "Yeah? Then I guess you would be staying then?"
Not graduating?
Please don't.
I need you.
Chloe's eyelashes flutter as she kisses between Beca's knuckles, the remaining teardrops clinging to the ends finally taking their fall, "Yeah. I'm staying."
The way she's slowly taking her time, as if she is reluctant to let her go, hints that there is a "for you" attached to that quiet admission, but Beca dares not to hope.
Beca forces out a laugh. It trembles. "Then what are you crying for? Everything will be okay. You will be here, I will be here, the Bellas will be here, and we'll all work together and sing together and dance together and win together and have fun together and that's all that matters right?"
Please say it does. I don't like it when you cry.
It hurts.
Chloe's lips brush over the last knuckle and quirk up at the corners. "I guess. I think I was just wanting to run away from my problems for a bit."
Beca doesn't know what came over her, but suddenly she's dead serious and the words are slipping out, "Run, Forrest, run."
Chloe laughs, dropping her hand in favor of reaching her own up to attempt to stifle her amusement. "Really, Bec? An iconic movie line at a time like this?"
"You know Forrest Gump?" She ignores the playful indignation tossed her way. She hasn't expected Chloe to be such a fan of such an "uneventful and sleepy" movie.
(Beca isn't; she just knows the line because her mother could not stop playing the thing over and over on the tv in the living room whenever she comes home from school. It's like she wants ten year old Beca to deter from movies,)
Some of her usual cheerfulness comes flashing back in Chloe's beam. "Are you kidding? What kind of human doesn't know Forrest Gump? You must have been an alien or something to not have seen that amazing and aca-awesome movie!"
"Okay, first of all," Beca says, lifting a finger in the air, the bubble in her chest now expanding to the tips of her toes, which are still dangling off the side of Chloe's bed, "You can't say 'aca-awesome' when it's got nothing to do with acapella." She ignores the pout Chloe gives her. "And secondly," she waves the accommodating number in Chloe's face, "Aliens can still be humans. Ever heard of E.T by Katy Perry?"
Beca knows she's made a grave mistake when Chloe tilts her head. "Actually no, I haven't. Is it a good song?"
Shit.
Beca couldn't even afford to be humiliated; her face is already burning like a furnace on fire, "How have you not heard of E.T?!" Her voice has reached the supersonic screech of bats, "You've heard of practically every other song out there that's even remotely resembling of girly pop!"
Chloe's eyes are wide, full of wonder and excitement over the discovery of a new song. "Ooh, it's pop? I want to listen to what it says!"
"Wait, no, no—" Beca scrambles onto the bed to confiscate Chloe's laptop but the redhead is faster, snatching the device up from its spot on her nightstand and opening its pink lid, her legs crossing into a pretzel as her tongue sticks out to fly her fingers over the laminated keys.
Beca panics, her gaze zooming in and out of focus as she watches Chloe open up Youtube and search up the lyrics. God, she is going to die.
Yep. She can definitely afford to be humiliated now. The furnace still needs to be crushed and melted into a slab of sizzling metal.
The opening notes of Katy Perry's years old song fills the room like the beeps to a bomb of Beca's dignity and her last fruitless attempt of getting Chloe to stay away from the ticking explosive falls on deaf ears. "Chloe, no! It's not a song about aliens, or humans, or anything else for that matter in which you would like to know! Stop, I'm sorry!"
"You're so hypnotizing,
Could you be the devil?
Could you be an angel?"
Ah, fuckkk. Beca covers her face in her hands, not daring to watch Chloe's frozen figure and shocked expression as the song plays on and the lyrics roll past on the screen. She can feel her ears steam as the sensuous words drift from the speakers into both of their heads and can feel the blood from every square inch of her body rush into her brain.
It's like lyrical porn.
She can see the descriptions that Katy Perry is crooning right at the forefront of her mind.
"They say be afraid,
You're not like the others
Futuristic lover,
Different D-NA,
They don't understand you…"
Beca knows that she is not particularly experienced in being comforting but surely this is not something that a comforting person would do to make a recently mentally and emotionally exhausted person feel better about herself?
This is the opposite of feeling better.
"You're from a whole other world,
A different dimension,
You open my eyes,
And I'm ready to go,
Lead me into the light…"
Beca couldn't even prepare herself for the chorus because it strings right along to the end of the last line and she could not live with herself if she had to hear it along with Chloe—the person with whom she gets soaked just thinking about the lyrics with—and so she withdrawals her shaky hands from her face and yanks a pillow off Chloe's bed and smothers her eyes and ears and mouth and nose with it, leaving just enough space for her to breathe because if the song wasn't bad enough, her choking to death certainly is.
But it's no use because she has heard of it so many times—as she said, she gets soaked just thinking about the association of the words to a certain redhead, so why not make the best of it?—that she doesn't even need to be auditory there for her to hear what Chloe's hearing:
"Kiss me, ki- ki- kiss me,
Infect me with your love and
Fill me with your poison…
Take me, ta- ta- take me,
Wanna be a victim,
Ready for abduction…"
She can feel herself buzzing and her spine shivering and her thighs clenching and fuck, she is never going to live this down…
It doesn't help that Chloe hasn't made a single comment either—she always always have something to say when listening to a new song, whether it be a "ew" or "this is so good" or even an excited squeal, and this is apparently something that she has never ever heard before—so it is not hard at all for Beca to pretend like she is alone and for her to slip into her "cosmic" imagination of talented lips and foreign touches…
"You're from a whole other world,
A different dimension,
You open my eyes,
And I'm ready to go,
Lead me into the light…"
Beca whines, the sound melting into the muffle of the pillow and she was just about to unbutton the seam of her shorts to offer some sort of semblance of relief when the material is ripped from her hands and chucked to the side and imagined red hair is tickling the sides of her face and desperate soft lips are hotly prying hers open…
Holy shit, she's kissing Chloe Beale.
While the chorus singing exactly that plays in the fucking background.
Chloe moans into her mouth as she clambers into her lap, her previous breakdown and worries long forgotten as her tongue swipes across her front teeth and does its best to mimic the metaphorical actions of Katy Perry's provocative song.
"Infect me with your love and
Fill me with your poison…"
Chloe grinds down, hard, against Beca's hips, and Beca could do nothing more than gasp and curse and hold on as Chloe huffs and snags her lip between her teeth and tugs, her hands going to clamp around the ridges of her headboard as her breath flutters into Beca's throat and infects all that is logical in her brain.
But like poison, her body automatically reacts, and Beca pushes Chloe away, her eyes bugging out of her head and her veins running hot and cold, and she stares, confusedly, alarmingly, as Chloe flushes and blinks, her pupils dilated beyond belief and her chest heaving beyond possibility.
"Dude, what was that?" It comes out strangled and Beca seriously considers calling the FDA.
"Take me, ta- ta- take me,
Wanna be a victim,
Ready for abduction…"
Chloe's mouth parts, letting out a pained sob not unlike the one that had caused Beca to whip into action and slam her hip bone into the dresser, and Beca has never been turned on in her entire terrestrial life, "I don't know, Beca, I—" She licks her swollen lips. Beca's own goes dry at the familiar yet foreign sight. "Can I just kiss you again?"
"No." She sounds like a frog in outer space and she adheres to it, because it's either that or be whimpering for Chloe to do exactly what Perry is singing for them to do, and "No, Chloe, you can't. Because you've just had a mental breakdown and need to rest and it's not right for us to be making out right after you've had a good cry and draining day. I won't allow it."
Chloe's dilated dark gaze drops to her lips and fuck, she's shifting in a telling way against the flesh of her thighs and she's murmuring, "Please, Bec. Just one? I promise I'm better now; I don't need to rest. Aca-bellas honor."
"That's not even a— you know what, nevermind." Beca carefully slides Chloe off her lap and crawls over to the pink laptop, her legs slipping uncomfortably against each other at the slickless between them as she quickly hits the space bar and slams the lid closed. E.T pauses and Beca breathes a shaky but huge sigh of relief.
At least the stupid song won't be urging them on.
She sets the laptop back to its original—innocent—position and closes her eyes, her back to Chloe, counting to ten—mississippis and all—before opening them back up and turning around. Chloe is still blinking at her, still dazed and slightly unfocused, but her pupils have returned to its normal size and her chest doesn't look like there could be an organ jumping out at any second.
Beca takes that as a win. Progress.
But a loss as well, because that had been their first kiss and if it hadn't been for their previous situation, they would have locked the door and stumbled right back and fucked right there in the middle of Chloe's pristinely made bed, with E.T encouraging in the background.
She really does not want their first time to be a heat of the moment, a chalk up to mental degeneration, a nudge of a sexy song. She loves Chloe too much for that.
"I'm sorry, Chlo." She shakes her head. "I care about you too much to allow us to—"
"I love you."
Beca gapes, the remaining of her sentence evaporating into cosmic air. "You what?"
Chloe pulls at the hem of her pajama shirt, adjusting and straightening out the wrinkles, "I love you."
"You lo— why?"
Chloe's eyebrows knit together, this time in concentration over whether or not Beca is purposely being stupid (at least that's what she thinks they're concentrating for). "Because. You are always here for me and ready with a way to diffuse a laugh or break a tension into any situation, and I can always count on you to make sure that I don't overstep my bounds of overloading myself,"
"I—" Now it's Beca's turn to cry, her vision of Chloe getting swimmy and blurry as tears leak from her corners of her eyelids, "I love you too, Chloe. So much. I'll always be here for you, always. Even if it's just with me and my stupidity and inappropriate song lyrics."
Chloe's laugh bounces around the room, and it's the happiness and the relief in the sound that makes Beca feel like she could be useful after all.