"Well it's not like you can plan for that, Becs."
Beca sighed.
No, she couldn't have planned any of this.
She couldn't have predicted the way American Idol would turn her life upside-down.
And she definitely couldn't plan for how Aubrey Posen had asked her to help save this stupid-ass, life-upending show.
She hoped, in some world, that being out in LA and being on TV might help her (nonexistent) career.
That seemed reasonable, almost.
But her sworn nemesis asking her to help save the future of a reality TV show?
One she had openly despised and only recently began to tolerate?
No, she certainly couldn't plan for that.
Beca angled the phone against the faucet of the sink, spinning back around to the stove and the pans that sat atop it. One was sizzling, and one was simmering, and the last one was just heating up.
"Well I didn't 'plan' to have fantastic sex with a hot redhead either, but that seemed to work out for me," Beca said carelessly over her shoulder, attempting to shift the conversation away from the heavy topic.
And it seemed to work, because Beca heard Chloe snort in response.
"Yeah, well, you could have," Chloe sighed. "I was trying to tap that since day one."
Beca rolled her eyes as she turned back to the phone.
"You, Chloe Beale, are trouble," she said directly to the camera. She tried to sound menacing, but her scowl kept slipping into a smile, and she knew her tone matched.
"You were trouble at the beginning, and you're trouble now."
"Oh, am I supposed to take offense to that?" Chloe quipped, voice dropping to a familiar, teasing tone. "Big bad Beca Effin' Mitchell can't handle the heat?"
Beca felt herself flush, and it had nothing to do with the rising heat from her food on the stove.
She couldn't give Chloe the satisfaction of knowing she made her blush, though, so she gave the camera a quick glare before turning back to her stovetop.
She was trying her hand at a teriyaki salmon and stir-fry vegetable recipe. Since Chloe had sent it to her, she'd let the redhead sit in on meal prep, and so far it was going pretty well. Beca threw the fish in the hot oil to get the skin nice and crispy.
As it sizzled loudly and started to smoke, Beca was once again thankful that no one else was around to critique or criticize her cooking techniques.
Or ask for their own serving.
The house was empty save her. The show called it a "dead week," something about not wanting to compete with The Voice or The Sing-off or some other god-awful singing-adjacent show that was premiering this week.
Everybody else had gone home, but Beca decided to stay.
Mostly because she couldn't afford the quick turn-around flights, even with the extra check the show gave her for being in the Top 5.
And really, she'd only be going back to see Chloe.
Chloe, who would be back soon - on Friday, actually - with the rest of the women, so they could all start working on the finale number.
(The finale number Beca told Posen she'd compose.)
But it was only Monday now, so Beca had to settle for FaceTime to see her girlfriend.
(And she had more time to pretend like she wasn't totally fucking stumped over the finale mash-ups she was supposed to write.)
She heard Chloe yawn on the phone behind her, and she laughed as she put the salmon in the oven before resettling against the counter, elbows down, and chin in her hands.
Chloe was in bed already, with a ridiculous amount of pastel pillows piled around and under her head. Beca could see she was cuddling some kind of stuffed monkey, eyes closed.
"Isn't it, like, 10 there?" Beca asked. "Shouldn't you be asleep?"
Chloe peeked an eye open to see that Beca had caught her drifting off. She stuffed an arm under her head as she huffed.
"I like watching you cook," Chloe pouted. "I like feeling like I'm there with you."
And wasn't that the truth?
Because as much as Beca wanted to make fun of Chloe for being so adorably codependent, she knew what the redhead meant. They'd been apart for nearly three weeks at this point.
And it wasn't like that was a long time or anything, but they had basically been living together up until Chloe left.
Living together, having only dated for like a week.
U-haul lesbians to the extreme.
So really, every benchmark for a "normal relationship" had to be thrown out the window.
Which meant Beca shouldn't make fun of the whole "obsessive girlfriend" thing.
"Chlo, we can talk tomorrow," Beca said gently. "I don't want to keep you up."
The time difference had been an absolute bitch to work around. Chloe had a real job, at a vet clinic. One that had real hours - reasonable ones, even - but Beca's schedule was all out of wack. She'd picked up a couple other DJ shifts at the club over the weekend, and without the show this week, she stayed up and slept in to her heart's desire.
Two of the last five nights, Chloe had texted her "good morning!" before Beca had even gone to bed.
"You just worry about yourself, Miss Mitchell. I'm not even tired," Chloe started to say, but another ferocious yawn broke over the last word.
"Okay, I'm hanging up-"
"Wait!"
Finger hovering over the "End Call" button, Beca glanced up. Shiny cerulean met her own steel blue-greys with a sort of sleepy desperation.
"You'll text me when you get up?"
Beca smiled and shook her head.
"Yeah, Chlo, you know I will," she said in reply.
Chloe smiled sweetly, and her eyes drifted closed again.
"Yeah," she echoed. She blinked slowly, like she was struggling to re-open her eyes again. "I love you."
"I love you too, now get some sleep."
"Mmm, yeah, sleep," Chloe hummed. "That sounds good."
"Night, babe," Beca whispered into the screen, hearing another appreciative hum as she ended the call.
She scrolled over on her apps to Spotify, picking her most recent playlist (Women Gym Workout, because maybe the show had gotten to her, just a little bit) and pressing shuffle.
Little Mix threatened to blow out the small phone speaker as it started to play.
But before she could adjust it too much, one of her timers went off behind her. Beca flipped around to check; veggies were done, and she stirred the sauce skeptically, deciding to add some more starch as she turned down the heat on the vegetables.
Cooking felt a lot like mixing to Beca.
The creation of a single dish, with every note just right; it gave her the same rush as a good mash-up or a nice remix. And genres, too, those were like cuisines. Those Southern style comfort foods or Indian curries felt just as specific as country music or Bollywood tracks.
Didn't mean she couldn't mix them up.
Ingredients were her instruments, in that way, and sometimes she'd pick and pull from different places to make something completely new. She'd add fresh, unsugared tomato sauce, like the Italians made it, to legit Candian poutine or their bastardization of perogies. She'd take alfredo pasta and add Nashville hot chicken, or a Mediterranian salad with sweet barbecued meats.
It was just fun, to make things work together that normally didn't.
Like her and Posen, she realized.
They were their own mash-up; aggressively inharmonious, like a melodic second, or most of the menu at Buffalo Wild Wings.
But there were chords and meals and songs that thrived in that kind of discordant conflict.
They just had to find them.
And Beca was lost at where to start. Posen wasn't much help, but she did send Beca some background along with a list of potential songs.
And while Posen's personal song list wasn't anything to write home about, she had given Beca some confidential data on which performances had done well over the course of the show.
She scoured it for information, not only to know what the audience liked and wanted to see more of, but also to learn about the show. Both Beca's and Chloe's Hollywood week solos were on there, the No Diggity rap and Edge of Seventeen, and Beca was surprised they had polling numbers from before America was even voting on performances.
But she was shocked again when she realized that the earliest performance that garnered serious attention was Emily's audition, when she sang her original song.
How they figured that out, Beca had no idea.
CR's Since U Been Gone had done pretty well, and her rendition of Jolene, and Ashley powering through Idina had tested well.
Stacie's Total Eclipse of the Heart was up there, as was Jessica's Material Girl.
Party in the USA, Flo had done that one early on.
For some reason, Amy's Cats song went over favorably.
Beca figured that was a fluke.
Or that was when her devoted army started to form.
It was cool to see all the numbers laid out. Everybody was on the chart somewhere, as Posen had given her the top fifty or so performances, but Beca decided to focus only on the top twenty songs.
(Almost immediately, and accidentally, Beca could tell who was going to win, unless someone else did exceptionally well in the finale. One of the last four had five performances in the top twenty, beating everybody else out by at least two. It was obvious who the current crowd favorite was, and she wondered if Posen and the other judges or producers knew.)
(She was almost embarrassed that she knew before everybody else did, considering, but there were only two real shows left anyway.)
(She didn't know how she felt about who America picked.)
(So she decided not to dwell on it.)
(It did make her think about her meeting with Residual Heat, though. At Luke's encouragement, she'd finally scheduled the meeting, claiming the show had kept her too busy to respond earlier. She was going in tomorrow, unbeknownst to anybody, not even Chloe, and now, knowing the outcome of the show, she got nervous again. She was going to tell Residual that she couldn't work with them regardless, claiming that she was headed back to Atlanta after the show ended.)
(She'd say she needed to get home, that she missed it.)
(But really, it was just that Chloe had vet school.)
Beca scrolled through the top fifty songs again, then just the top twenty. It was a printed list that Posen had taken a picture of, with carefully crafted notes and markers on songs she felt were especially impactful. The 80s week ones were highlighted in yellow, and the number one song - Beca's remix of Fuck You - was crossed out mulitple times.
Obviously Posen had made her notes before the end of the Judge's Pick shows.
The two duets that made the top twenty - Take Me or Leave Me and Anything You Can Do - were circled in a very specific bubble, with a line connecting the two. There was a little "3" where the lines met.
Beca scrolled to the bottom of the page to the third note.
Only Posen would do footnotes on her fucking scratch sheet, Beca thought derisively.
"Conflictual undertones affect and effect participation," Posen had penned in red cursive next to the three. "See Heartbreaker, Fuck You."
Beca chuckled to herself. She could almost see the reluctance with which Posen acknowledged one of Beca's contributions to the show.
But that was all different now that Posen had asked Beca for her help.
Beca switched over to Posen's list to see what the blonde judge had proposed or hoped to use.
There wasn't much. Jessie's J Price Tag, which came out a couple years ago - along with a couple P!nk songs - were the only modern songs. Everything else, including Pat Benetar, Tina Turner, and The Weather Girls, was more reminiscent of the 80s and 90s that the competitors sang before.
The last of Beca's timers pulled her concentration away from her screen. The salmon was ready, and reluctantly, Beca clicked her phone off to resume cooking.
She'd work on her mash-ups later - one for everyone, and one for the four final competitors - when she had more time to focus, to think about what she wanted to say.
But for now, it was time to eat.
Beca sat stock still in the lobby of Residual Heat.
She'd been there for like thirty minutes, far past the time of her meeting.
It was Tuesday, right? 1 pm?
Beca checked her phone to confirm and stifled a groan.
Maybe she should just leave. It felt pathetic, just sitting there, waiting to go in to shoot down any kind of offer they might give her.
For good reason, of course.
But still.
"Reggie!"
Beca looked up to see Sammy himself approaching, and Beca was surprised. She expected to meet with someone else, maybe the whole meeting, honestly.
She definitely expected somebody else to come get her from the lobby.
She looked around to see that she was the only person in the lobby, so Sammy must have been referring to her, even though he got her name wrong.
"Oh, I guess that's me," she said as she started to collect her things.
"Come on back, let's go to the studio!"
That floored Beca too.
"What?" she shot back quickly. It was less of a question and more of a stunned exclamation, sputtering out with a laugh.
"I have Snoop in there," he said as he turned to walk back down the hallway.
Beca jumped up to follow him.
"I thought I'd be done by now," Sammy said over his shoulder. "It's bad. It's worse than bad; it's costing me time and money. I swear, I have the most worthless team…"
Taking two steps for each one of his, Beca did a little jog to keep up with Sammy as he wove through the open space and hallways. They made their way through a break room, and they passed a younger looking guy sitting in the corner, facing the corner.
"Hey Sammy I was thinking-"
"No!" Sammy snapped. "Dax, I swear to god. Time-out lasts until I say it's done."
They stepped out on the other side of the room into another long hallway, which terminated at a closed door. Sammy stopped short and spun around so quickly that Beca almost ran into him.
"Okay, so," he sighed, bringing his fingers to the bridge of his nose and closing his eyes tightly. "Listen. Get the vibe. We can talk about it after when we talk about signing you on."
"Wait-"
Begrudgingly, with his hand on the knob, Sammy turned back.
"I was going to tell you, later," Beca said, stuttering. "I"m going back to Atlanta. After the show, I mean."
"Yeah," the producer sighed dramatically. "I knew that."
"You did? I mean, you do? How?"
"We did our research, Reggie" he replied.
"It's Beca…"
He waved her off and continued, hand still on the door knob to the studio.
"You'd work in either studio," he said. "I'm actually headed back to Atlanta in May. Gambino wants to work on something political."
"In your- your Atlanta studio," Beca deadpanned.
She couldn't believe it. How had she missed that?! How had she not seen that Residual Heat had an Atlanta office when she did her research?!
"It's smaller, but it's busy," he sighed impatiently. "Can we go now?"
"Yeah, sure, of course," Beca rushed as she moved forward. Sammy did the same, and Beca felt like she just walked into a dream. Two huge soundboards are across from her, wider than the walls they stand in front of, along with plush leather couches.
The first was filled with three people who must've worked for Sammy; dark glasses, flannel shirts. Quintessential hipsters, who barely acknowledged Sammy before looking back at their phones.
On the other one were two guys who worked for Snoop. Beca could tell, because they were rolling what appeared to be the two biggest blunts Beca had ever seen. They nodded to Sammy as the pair entered, and only then did Beca look into the glass booth at the far end of the room.
Snoop was just, like, in there!
Well, Beca assumed it was Snoop.
There was a lot of smoke.
"Okay, did you get the chorus?" Beca heard Sammy ask. A technician spun around at the desk and nodded. "Did you use the new tempo?"
"Uhhh-"
"Wrong answer," Sammy shot back, and one of the guys on the couch snorted. Sammy leaned forward to press a button on the board.
"Snoop? You wanna run that first verse?"
"Groovy like a drive-in movie," the rapper replied, slipping his headphones over his ears.
Sammy pressed another button, and the backing track started up.
Groovy was the right word. The track started at the top of the chorus with a choppy melody over a vibey modded sound that reminded Beca of the 70s and the 90s simultaneously.
"Peaches and cream," Snoop said with the track, and then he started in on his verse.
Snoop was a good rapper, obviously. Beca didn't have any issue with the lyricism. But Sammy was right; the song didn't work. There was a ringing, modded guitar looped in the background that Beca figured wasn't actually a guitar but a sample, and the drums were pretty simple.
She could tell they were going for a summer hit, but they were falling drastically short.
Sammy heard it too, because he cut Snoop off.
"Hey, hold on, Snoop, I need to look at something," he said into the mic, then he spun on Beca and the other younger technician, along with the people on the couch.
"Jesus, is that the new tempo?" he groaned. "That guitar sounds like a hamster, dying from dehydration."
"This song, there's nothing special about it yet. Do you know what I mean? Any ideas, because I-"
"What was the original tempo?"
Sammy blinked wildly at her.
"The original tempo?" he parroted back, glancing around to no one. "You want me to work backwards?"
"No, I'm sorry, I just- I had a thought," she backpedalled. "We can talk about it later."
"No, no, by all means," Sammy said sarcastically. He scrolled through something on his computer and pressed play.
Slower, lower in pitch, and less of a bubble-gum pop attempt. Almost R&B, but not that slow, and Beca nodded along with it.
That's where I know that from!
"You're thinking," Sammy said, interrupting her thoughts. "Tell me."
"Right now?" she asked.
"Well we're here, aren't we?" he shot back. He handed her a sample pad, and Beca tested the keys. She had the snare that was used in the song, as well as the hi-hat and bass drum, along with some low synth notes.
There were even a few dubstep sounds, which was interesting.
The song really didn't lend itself to that.
Unless...
"It'd work better with some other guitar notes, instead of just the one, but-" she started, then she looked up. "Can you have him do that again the same way?"
"Okay, okay sure," Sammy nodded as he scanned the couch behind Beca. "Nobody else has an idea."
He turned back to the booth and pressed the mic.
"Let's, uh, let's do it the exact same way again. Old tempo," he said emphatically into the mic.
"Will do, nephew."
The track started back up, and Beca set the sample pad down in front of her. She hit a few double beats so the backing actually sounded faster than it was, and tapping out a rough triple beat on the snare to close the chorus.
Beca let the verse start normally, but after the first stanza, she cut the backing completely, opting instead for the drums and snare on her pad. Snoop didn't hear that, though, so he kept up with the backing track as Beca played around on the pad.
It was tough, trying to pull the old song from her memory, but after a minute, she was able to add in the Peaches N' Cream melody from the early hit, in the 2000s.
She kept the dubstep note short so it sounded like the blown out note in the original song.
"Let me tell you what I wanna do, let me show you that I'm feelin' you," she sang as she tapped out the rhythm. "Peaches n' - peaches n' - peaches n' cream."
"Okay, girl, get it!" one of Snoop's guys cheered. The verse came to an end, and Sammy turned off the track.
"Or it can be something different, I can-"
But Sammy waved her off.
"Okay, I have to deal with this, we're doing something completely different, but we're getting there," he said. "Go get some water, get Dax to give you his computer, and come back here. You're working for me."
She finally arrived back at the house some two hours later, exhausted, head swimming with beats and ringing guitar.
Once she explained the American Idol contract a little further, after Snoop and his team had left, Sammy said they'd work something out. Consulting, maybe, instead of a full contract, at least until she was done with the show.
Whenever that may be.
But Sammy wouldn't let Beca leave without knowledge that the brunette would work with his team in some capacity. She didn't know how she would swing it, or pitch it to Posen and the American Idol legal team, but she agreed to take that burden upon herself to figure it out.
Headphones on, she stepped through the backdoor and into the sunlit house. She'd made a playlist with all the top twenty songs from the show, and in re-listening to the songs, she found she understood why these specific performances were so popular. Huge, powerful vocals by confident women, including herself, just dominating the stage and making it their own.
She floated through the kitchen as she hummed to herself.
Beca felt like she was on Cloud 9. She had so much to do, and so little time to do it, but at this very specific moment, she didn't care.
Her whole life, it felt like there was some ethereal motive playing with her fate, manipulating her this way and that, and right now, right here, it finally felt like she was pushed into the right spot.
She stepped into her room, singing Ariana's high runs on Bang Bang quietly to herself, not that she could hear herself over the music in her headphones.
As she moved, she felt the air shift, and suddenly she stopped.
Hands poised over her headphones, hovering, ready to take them off, she took a deep breath.
Chloe.
She looked up to the armchair and saw a bag, then to the bed, gaze landed on her beautiful, non-virtual girlfriend.
The redhead vaulted off the bed and threw herself into Beca's arms, jostling the headphones off in the process.
"-and then I was here and you walked in and you couldn't hear me, and you didn't see me, so then I didn't know what to do and I felt so creepy just sitting on your bed, but then you were singing and you sounded so hot doing those runs, and-"
Beca cut Chloe off with a bruising kiss.
"You're here! Early!"
"And you're clothed," Chloe shot back, pulling at the hem of Beca's shirt.
"Let's fix that."
Only new song should've been "Peaches N Cream," one by Snoop Dogg and one by 112. This was a fun lil romp. 2-3 more chapters, thanks for being so supportive, this has been fun.