Rated M for some content and language.
On Thursday, in the middle of a random April, Beca got more phone calls in a single day than she had in months.
Without counting Chloe's, of course.
At 7 AM sharp, Posen called.
Beca groaned and clicked the phone, turning off the sound of the vibration from the incoming call.
And in lieu of leaving a voicemail, the judge followed up with a text.
"Confirming our 10 o'clock meeting," it read.
Beca groaned again, but this time, it had nothing to do with what she was reading on her phone.
Because Chloe had slipped down the bed, between the brunette's legs.
And the redhead's tongue was doing everything in its power to keep Beca prone.
Dual moans filled the room as Beca writhed underneath her girlfriend, twisting and thrusting against Chloe's hold on her until she realized that she was hearing another noise.
Bzzz. Bzzz. Bzzz.
Because Posen called again at 7:02.
Beca ignored it as Chloe slowed to a maddeningly irregular lick.
Posen called again at 7:06.
Beca slammed her hand against the bedside table, desperately reaching for a button, any button, one hand flailing as the other tightened on Chloe's hair.
So when Posen called at 7:08, and Beca knew she wouldn't get rid of her, Beca picked up.
"We're meeting at 10!" she shouted breathily. She hoped the judge didn't catch her little gasp that followed when Chloe slipped two fingers into her.
"Are you working out?" Posen asked over the phone. "You don't want to exhaust yourself. I know you and Chloe were up late because of your little stunt at the club last night."
"WE'LL SEE YOU AT TEN!" Beca shouted as Chloe wrapped her lips around Beca's clit and sucked, hard. She pressed blearily in the direction of the "End Call" button as she fought back a scream.
Then, after some equally tortuous reciprocation and a sinfully hot shower, Sammy's assistant called around 9:45.
Beca winced when she saw the familiar number pop up on her phone as it sat next to her laptop on the desk.
She'd dodged their calls yesterday while she worked on mixes, so when she saw Sammy at the club last night, it made everything a little awkward.
"Reggie!" Sammy greeted her in the VIP section. Chloe stopped whispering dirty things in Beca's ear, unfurling herself from the DJ's side with a skeptical smile.
Beca shook Sammy's hand.
"Snoop liked you," Sammy said offhandedly. "I know your schedule's tight for the next few weeks, but we have Chance The Rapper coming in Monday, can you swing by?"
Beca felt Chloe's grip tighten on her arm. She'd told Chloe about the intense "interview" she'd undergone on Tuesday, but she hadn't told her girlfriend that Sammy's team had reached out.
"Uh, maybe," Beca hedged. "I haven't gotten my schedule yet."
The buzzing of the phone brought Beca out of the memory, and she let the phone ring three times before she picked it up. She grimaced as she reiterated what she'd told Sammy last night, that she'd touch base on Friday after she got her schedule.
Then she hung up.
She stared at the mirror next to her desk, eyes unfocussing on her reflection until she heard Chloe squeal from the living room.
From the sounds of it, Posen was here.
They made it an hour into the meeting before Beca's phone went off again.
Because at 11, her dad called.
Beca clicked the button on the side of her phone to silence the call as she looked up at Posen.
"So we're good?" Beca asked. "We have the mixes?"
Posen sighed.
"I want something more in the Price Tag mix," she said. "Anything we can bring back from the earlier shows? What about that list I gave you?"
Beca nodded, scrolling through her notes on her phone to get to the email Posen had sent her.
"I think I could do that," Beca replied, eyes darting over her phone screen as she read.
Her dad called again at 11:02.
She flat-out declined the call this time.
"Looking at it and making a quick judgment, maybe Party in the USA?" Beca offered. "I don't love it, but I think the BPM could match."
A look of consternation passed over Posen's face, then one of true frustration, and Chloe reached out to squeeze her friend's leg supportively. Posen glanced at her, and her expression softened. The judge took a deep breath then nodded.
"Can you keep it under fifteen seconds?" she asked. "Or thirty? I think there's some fair use, copyright laws we could use to avoid a huge cost. I'll need to follow up with legal, but that would be our best bet."
Beca agreed to the terms, and Chloe shot her a huge smile.
Not for the first time since the start of this meeting, Beca was relieved that Chloe had insisted to sit in.
And that's not the only thing she convinced me to do in the past 24 hours.
Beca felt her face flush as she refocused on the meeting at hand.
She was glad Chloe was here because, while Beca and Posen had agreed to a tentative truce to work together, their partnership hadn't gone without conflict.
Including an all-out yelling match last week when Beca had insisted on bringing in songs by male vocalists.
Thankfully, with Chloe there, they kept everything relatively civil.
It was just easier to remember that they were on the same team when they had a neutral party.
"So a capella on the Season 15 mash-up for the finale on the 20th, and the finalist's show intro, but we'll do piano for the finalist mash-up, on the show next Wednesday?" Beca confirmed, and Posen nodded.
"And you have the song options for everyone?" Posen asked. "Including the Perry numbers?"
Beca grinned.
"Especially the Perry numbers."
Posen tentatively mirrored the smile, then sighed, setting her shoulders back as she stood up from the dining room table.
"If you can get me the new mix by 3, I'll play it for Gail and John," she said. Beca and Chloe stood up too. "I think we're in a good place."
Beca felt herself nod, and Chloe rushed from her side, around the short end of the table, pulling Posen into a huge hug.
"Bree, this is going to be totes amazing," Beca heard Chloe say. "You'll totally save the show."
Beca sighed, pushing her hair off her forehead as the two embraced.
She'd done okay on the mixes - they were probably some of the best she'd done, thanks to Chloe's help - but saving the show?
Were the mixes going to be enough?
Beca collected her equipment and quick-stepped back towards her bedroom.
"Wait, Mitchell."
Beca swung her head back around the corner of the wall separating the hallway from the dining room. Posen was looking at her, turning away from but not completely out of Chloe's hug.
"Maybe lay off Twitter for a day or two," the blonde smirked.
Beca heard Chloe gasp indignantly, and she must've tightened her grip in the hug, because Posen turned back to her.
"She can't stop now!" the redhead cried. "We have momentum! If anything, we need something more salacious! I have some very tasteful, semi-nude-"
"No!"
Posen spun back to Beca, and the pair made incredulous eye contact as Chloe giggled.
"I'm always shocked when we agree," Beca sneered as she narrowed her eyes at Posen playfully.
Posen took the bait, rolling her eyes at the brunette.
"It's like hell froze over," she spat back, but there was a smile tugging at the corners of her lips. Beca returned the eye roll before responding.
"She made the account, Posen, so she knows the password," she sighed as she turned down the hall. "She's your problem now!"
Beca heard her girlfriend squeal as she closed her bedroom door softly, setting her laptop on the desk and booting it back up.
Back to work.
But the phone calls didn't stop.
At 12:30, Beca's brother called.
Beca blinked out of her concentration on the editing software. She thought she was almost done getting the song to fit, although it was hard to work out all the parts of an a capella piece.
She used a piano tone to build the harmonies, but the composition really only worked if she sang all the parts, so she could figure out which noises everyone should make.
She'd finished the melody.
But she still had to make the background sound good.
Which was proving incredibly tedious.
So the unexpected distraction of her brother's FaceTime call was a welcome one.
"So you're on Twitter now?" he greeted her, and Beca immediately flushed.
"Hey, dork," she returned sarcastically, rubbing her eye. "What happened to 'hello,' and 'how are you,' and 'good to see you after disappearing for three months on a top-secret deployment'?"
Mike's warm laugh rang tinnily through the phone's small speaker. He looked good; tan, with minimal bags under his eyes, and he was smiling. Beca returned the smile softly.
It really was good to see him.
"Hey loser," he replied. "So you're on Twitter now?"
Beca laughed loudly enough to wake Chloe up on the bed behind her. She turned as the redhead lifted her head sleepily, and Beca winked at her.
"If you can believe it, it wasn't my idea," she said when she turned back to the phone. "Chloe made the account and posted first. That's where the deejaying video came from."
"Who is it?" Chloe murmured quietly.
But it wasn't quiet enough, because as Beca turned around to respond, she heard her brother gasp.
"Is she there?!" Mike said excitedly. "I gotta meet this famous girlfriend of yours!"
Beca's eyes darted back to the screen as she glared, but she responded to Chloe first.
"It's my brother," Beca said to Chloe, and the redhead cooed appreciatively.
"Can I meet him?" she asked, folding the comforter back as she swung her legs over the side of the bed.
Beca chuckled and shook her head.
"Not til you put pants on."
The three of them talked for a few minutes before Chloe claimed she was starving, pressing a kiss into Beca's cheek before padding into the kitchen. Beca took every ounce of teasing her brother gave her, and she was about to ask about him when something pulled his attention away.
It was a call of some kind, maybe over a walkie-talkie radio, and Beca knew their time together was over. Mike promised they'd catch up soon, in earnest, even going so far as to say he'd try to get back to Atlanta to see her once he was back in the states.
Beca smiled, saying that that'd be great, but she wasn't going to hold her breath.
Mike was never back for long.
(And who knew where she would be?)
She hung up as Chloe came back into the room with a plate of veggies and dip, and only then did Beca realize she hadn't eaten yet either.
Beca kissed Chloe soundly.
After thanking her for the snack, turned back to her laptop.
Almost done.
But she still wasn't done at 1:38, when Chloe called Beca's phone.
Beca stared at it for a moment, glancing behind her to see the redhead grinning at her mischievously from the bed.
Chloe stretched in a beam of sunlight, and Beca followed the glow up and down the taut muscles of Chloe's toned body, partially obscured by one of Beca's flannels.
"Five more minutes," Beca begged.
"Do you know how hard it is to have to listen to you sing?" Chloe whined, flipping onto her side. She pulled the unbuttoned flannel off her hip, exposing the whole of her panty-clad hip. "Do you know what that does to me?"
"Well you're really going to hate this part, then," Beca shot back. "I have to re-record the Give Me Everything Tonight melody."
She finished the mix and began to set up the program to export the song.
She was about to turn back to Chloe on the bed, but the redhead had already snuck up behind her.
Beca felt sure fingertips slide under her collar, and her hair was brushed away from her neck, replaced with Chloe's warm lips.
"I need to send this to her," Beca huffed, but it broke into a moan as Chloe nipped at her earlobe. "Do you want to be the one to explain to her why she didn't get this in time?"
"Mmm, no," Chloe replied, but she didn't let up her assault on Beca's neck. "Go ahead and send it to her."
The file had another minute of compressing, and Beca groaned.
"You're distracting me," she mumbled. She felt Chloe giggle against her neck.
"So don't get distracted."
But Beca only choked out a laugh as Chloe continued to kiss down her neck.
Because when had that ever worked before?
At 3:45, Posen called for the fifth time that day, interrupting a wonderful, post-coital nap.
Beca let it go to a voicemail, as she felt Chloe snuggle closer.
She drifted back to sleep, only to be awoken by another phone call at 5.
Stacie was calling from the back porch.
"Oh lovebirds!" she sang into the phone. "You locked me out! I'm gone for a week, and you already forgot about me?"
Beca laughed as she got up to let her back in.
And she thought she was in the clear, but Posen called again at 6:34.
Beca excused herself from the mini-reunion happening in the living room to take the call.
It was so strange; they'd only left a week, and yet, as the finalists came back to the Idol house, they acted like they'd been separated for months.
"Your voicemail is full," Posen said without preamble.
"Whose fault is that?" Beca deadpanned back.
"They like the group mash-up," Posen said. "They want to hear the finalist mash-up. Tonight."
Beca blanched.
"I don't have it done yet," she said. "And everybody just got back-"
"So have them help," Posen said. "I'll come over. We can try to run it live; you can play piano."
"But-"
But nothing, it turned out, because Posen had already hung up.
Beca trodded back into the main room. Katherine and Emily were at the counter with Chloe, and Stacie and CR stood across from them.
"Woah, who died?" Stacie asked as she looked at Beca, and CR laughed gruffly.
"Are you guys up for some work?"
"Not really," CR shot back. "But that didn't really sound like a question."
Beca explained the situation, and thankfully the rest of the women were excited to hear all the mixes involved.
The first of which was the one the four of them would sing together at the end of next week's episode.
The four finalists, Katherine, and Chloe relocated to the piano upstairs as Beca started to explain the mix.
"It's Raining Men into Bang Bang? And thenFleetwood Mac?" CR laughed. "What are you smoking?"
"It works, I swear," Beca said as she sat down at the piano. She played around before she settled in F, at least to start.
She played the harmonic scale bass notes of It's Raining Men, flushing them out into chords as she reached the top of the phrase.
"Humidity's rising, barometer's getting low," Beca tried to sing, but it was too low for her, and she heard her friends laugh.
To help, Katherine and CR both stepped in, starting to sing the lead.
According to all sources,
the street's the place to go!
"We better hurry up!" Stacie and Chloe added the adlib from the original song, and Beca laughed from the piano.
"How do you guys know this song?!" Emily whined. "It's so old!"
"Hush!" her mom chastised.
Beca kept playing, and they kept singing, sans Emily.
Cause tonight for the first time (first time),
just about half past ten (half past ten),
For the first time in history, it's gonna start raining men!
(Start raining men!)
Beca stopped at the harmonic chord, repeating it softly, then building it up with even more notes on the scale before taking a dramatic pause.
"Bang bang, into the room, I know you want it!" she sang as she hit the resounding chord. "Bang bang, all over you!"
"I'll let you have it!" Emily sang back.
"Wait a minute, let me take you there," Beca and CR sang, and again, Stacie took the adlib, singing the low "oh!" with Chloe.
"Okay, I get it now," Katherine said. "I don't know this one at all."
"Wait a minute til ya-"
"Ahhhhh!"
They sang through the rest of the chorus, and just before they went into Ariana's verse, Beca switched it up again.
"Girl, I swear," CR warned as Beca started to sing Go Your Own Way by Fleetwood Mac.
Tell me why
everything turned around.
Chloe jumped in with the harmonies.
Packing up,
shacking up is all you want to do.
Katherine was back too, with CR, and even Stacie and Emily added some low harmonies.
They didn't have the words down, but they didn't need to; the tones were enough.
If I could,
baby I'd give you my world.
Open up,
everything's waiting for you.
You can go your own way!
"Go your own way!" Chloe cried out over the melody, and Beca smiled broadly but slowly playing.
"Katherine, Chloe, love the enthusiasm, but..."
The group laughed as Beca trailed off.
Obviously, Katherine and Chloe couldn't do the song with them.
"Yeah, I get it," Katherine laughed as she winked at Chloe. "We'll go downstairs and print up the lyrics for everyone."
"Send them up with Posen when she gets here?"
The group turned to Beca, shocked to hear the brunette speak of the blonde judge so casually, but Beca just shrugged.
"She wants to help," she sighed. "She wants to send something to the producers tonight."
Worried looks flashed between the group standing around the piano, and Beca tried her best to look nonchalant.
It was a daunting task, sure, but she'd been up against worse.
Hell, remembering that awful 80s mash-up, Beca knew they'd all been up against worse.
"Anything's better than getting in a weird, sexual tweet sesh with Sophia Bush and Plaza, I guess," Stacie said.
Beca blanched.
Leave it to Stacie to call her out like that.
"Look, it wasn't- I didn't-" she stammered. "Chloe made the account!"
"Hey, you were the one who tweeted that picture of us," Chloe shot back. Everyone was laughing now except Beca.
"Besides, you got 8,000 followers out of it!"
They worked through most of the night. It was 8:30 before Posen decided to leave. They'd finished the rough, live recording and sent it off, and the judge was waiting to see if the producers would respond tonight.
When they didn't, she called a car, gently refusing Stacie's come-ons.
(Thankfully, the minor had retired from their presence a while ago.)
Stacie lost in the end, and looking dejected, the tall brunette went to bed.
Beca and Chloe went back downstairs to their room, and Beca was about to plug in her phone when it rang for the thirteenth time today.
"Hi, Beca?" a woman's voice came through the phone. "It's Gail Abernathy-McKadden."
"Oh," Beca replied. "Hi."
"I want a meeting tomorrow, with you, me, that musical director, and Aubrey Posen," she said. "How's 10 AM?"
Oh, Beca thought suddenly. So this is just never going to stop then.
The meeting went okay, though Beca felt pretty uncomfortable under the gaze of all three producers at once.
They liked the mixes and the songs that Beca picked out, but they said they'd have to wait for the votes to come in to know for sure.
They thanked the DJ for her help and encouraged her to work with Carl on putting the numbers together as early as possible.
Today, if possible.
But when Beca and Carl returned to the house some three hours later, they saw that that option would be distinctly impossible.
Because everybody was back.
In a very big way.
Beca experienced a sick feeling of deja vu as she stepped into the living room to a chorus of cheers.
"There she is!" Amy called. "The slag who broke the internet!"
"I didn't break the internet, Amy," Beca grunted as Amy pulled her into a hug.
"They wrote a Buzzfeed article about it, Becs," Chloe called from the couch, and Jessica and Ashley laughed next to her. Flo nodded from her place at the dining table with Emily, and even Lilly was smiling from the corner.
"Stay out of this, red."
Chloe grinned and winked, and Beca rolled her eyes, smiling, but the moment was short lived.
Because as Beca stepped out of the hug, Amy forced a shot down her throat.
She choked down the tequila with a rough cough.
"I guess there's not going to be any rehearsing today," Carl grinned smugly as Beca wiped her mouth.
"I mean we can still-" Beca started to say, only to be cut off by Amy's hollering as she turned on some music.
"This playlist is called 'Sluts Gone Viral!'" the Australian called, and Beca sighed.
"Okay, maybe not."
The rest of the weekend consisted of equal parts copious alcohol and grueling rehearsal, and by the time Monday rolled around, Beca swore off liquor until after the week's show.
It was the last week of performances before the finale, and the last time that people could vote on the contestants, so she didn't want to screw up.
Plus, cameras were everywhere.
All the time.
At the rehearsals, and just around the house, getting b-roll of the finalists as they got ready for the penultimate show. It doubled her nerves to know that she'd be under the microscope yet again, especially now that she was online to see the fallout.
And since she was helping everybody with their songs, she knew that the producers would want to focus on that.
She knew that she was losing steam.
She didn't deejay at all over the weekend, and she didn't have time to go to Residual Heat on Monday.
Instead, she worked with CR on Long & Lost by Florence and the Machine.
And she taught Stacie some of the basic chords for If I Ain't Got You by Alicia Keys, so she could play it herself while she sang.
Almost every song that the finalists were going to sing came from Beca's recommendations, which was really cool, but it also meant that they wanted her to help them with their performances outside of rehearsal with Carl.
Just like Beca worried, there were no more long stretches of afternoon and morning to spend with Chloe, or late nights to work on mixes.
She wanted to be upset.
But honestly, it was really fun.
And it helped that Chloe was in her room at the end of the day.
Beca told her everything, like how Emily was killing it on Love Yourself, or how she was still having some trouble with St. Louis Blues. Chloe was busy too; she was teaching all the other women the parts of the a capella finale and working on some choreography.
On Wednesday, when it was time for the actual show, Beca was exhausted.
She was almost too tired to be nervous as she stood between her friends onstage, but she mustered a weak smile at all the prior season 15 contestants in the wings.
Carl ran by to make sure all the mics were in the right spot and turned on, throwing Beca a wink as he adjusted hers.
"Break a leg," he whispered. "You've done something incredible here."
Someone started counting down to live, and Beca closed her eyes.
The audience roared as the curtain rose.
She heard someone call out the first tone in her earpiece, and she took a deep breath.
In her room, when she'd written this, Beca didn't have a team.
Or a crowd.
Or a Twitter.
Beca had sat in her room last week, with a looping pedal and an idea, not sure where it would go.
But here, now, on live TV, it was all of them.
Together.
She wasn't alone.
Beca started them off with the first phrase of Freedom! '90.
Stacie layered higher.
Emily stacked even higher as the first two repeated their phrases, then CR took the low, repetitive notes.
They cut off sharply then resumed as Beca stepped forward, her spotlight hitting it, and she took the first line.
Heaven knows I was just a young boy,
didn't know what I wanted to be.
Next was CR, her light coming up on her next to Beca.
I was every little hungry school girls' pride and joy,
and I guess it was enough for me.
On Beca's other side, Emily's spotlight grew brighter as she stepped forward to sing the next stanza.
To win the race, a prettier face,
brand new clothes and a big fat place
on your rock 'n roll TV.
And finally, on the other side of CR, Stacie rounded them out before all their lights came up together.
But today the way I play the game is not the same,
no way.
I think I'm gonna get me some happy.
They continued to split the lyrics, and Beca tried to keep her grin from affecting her vocals as it grew.
"I think there's something you should know," Beca sang, and the rest of the group sang the next line.
"I think it's time I told you so."
"There's something deep inside of me," Emily picked up, and the three older women sang back to her.
"There's someone else I gotta be."
"Take back your picture if your frame," CR pointed herself at Stacie, and only the leggy brunette responded.
"Take back your singing in the rain!"
They turned back to the crowd.
"I just hope you understand," they all sang together. "Sometimes the clothes do not make the man!"
Beca got chills every time they sang it, but something was different this time.
The backing track was all hers, but the song became something different all together as they performed onstage.
Beca pulled her eyes off her friends onstage and turned to her friends backstage, beyond Emily.
Oh.
They were all singing, throwing in high harmonies and low, supportive notes, and she could just hear over the backing tracking and the cheers from the audience.
She couldn't help it.
She pulled the cordless mic off the stand and sprinted toward the edge of the stage, reaching out for her friends.
They came hesitantly, but Beca nodded, reaching for Chloe first, and soon they were almost running as the audience erupted into applause.
Beca nodded down the line, and she saw that Chloe understood. She grabbed Lilly and ran down to join Stacie at her mic, and Jessica and Flo joined Emily. Ashley jumped on with CR, and Amy joined Beca.
Beca looked towards Chloe, towards her other friends, then on to the far side of the stage.
Hidden partially in the darkness of the curtain, Beca saw Aubrey Posen.
The judge looked like she was about to cry, but for what reason, Beca couldn't tell.
They locked eyes, and Beca knew Posen understood.
They both knew she shouldn't have done that.
And they both knew she should focus on her performance.
But, in the end, they both knew she couldn't do it without her friends.
Without her family.
Without their family.
She touched her head in a little salute to Posen, and she saw the judge laugh as she returned the gesture.
It was a real truce now.
Posen trusted Beca to do the best for the show, and Beca trusted Posen to know what that was.
And that was enough.
After Beca's little stunt, Posen shooed everybody except the finalists out of the backstage area. Beca knew there was a fully edited show going on, with b-roll and the interviews that they'd done all week, but she couldn't watch it.
When they ran through rehearsal, she knew she wouldn't have time.
Between running to change, giving last minute advice to the other performers, or getting ready to perform herself, she wouldn't have much attention to spare.
After the medley, and after a commercial, Stacie donned a sharp, tight outfit to sing Love On Top.
It was followed quickly by Emily's cover of Love Yourself, during which she looked every bit of sixteen in her short, poofy skirt.
Next came Beca's St. Louis Blues as she came out in what she considered her most stylish outfit for the evening, even though it was denim on denim.
("We're running long," Hannah the PA told her. "Cut your second chorus, at the end.")
CR sang Long & Lost in a brilliant multi-colored dress, and even though it was different from the woman's normal hip-hop choices, Beca felt herself get lost in the song.
There was something about it that made Beca think that it fit with CR, and every time she heard the woman sing it, she believed it a little more.
Even with the commercials, the show went by quickly.
Soon each of the women were singing songs by their most glamorous judge, Katy Perry.
Much to said judge's surprise.
When the opening chords of Roar started up and Emily skipped onstage, wearing a similar animal print outfit that Perry wore in the video, Perry stood up and screamed.
They caught her completely off-guard, it seemed, and Perry forced herself onto the mic after Emily finished.
"This is amazing," she said. "I can't believe you did one of my songs!"
"Oh," the teen laughed. "They didn't tell you?"
The judge was about to speak again when I Kissed A Girl came on, and Emily grinned broadly.
Beca stalked onstage to thunderous applause, wearing jeans over a sharp, pastel corset that Chloe picked out, and Perry screamed again.
Beca threw in a few well-placed winks during the boyfriend lines for good measure, and the audience and Perry collectively lost their shit.
"You did this!" the judge shouted as Beca came to a close. "You and Posen!"
"Yeah, we did," Beca shrugged. "You really didn't know?"
"I would've sang with you if I knew!" Perry replied with a wink. "We could've done a duet."
"Back off!" Plaza jumped in. "Me, Chloe, and Sophia Bush are already in line."
The music started up quickly after that, as if the producers were trying to cut Plaza off, and CR came out singing Firework, donning an elegant white gown.
Again, not typical for CR, but it just felt right.
Stacie rounded out the Perry songs with Dark Horse, singing the original track without the rap in the middle. She was wearing something equally ridiculous to Perry's video outfit, a long-sleeved dark shirt with a bright blue, high-waisted bottom.
Although when Stacie turned around, Beca saw that her costume was a little, ahem, tighter.
That made sense, at least.
Jesse set up the last round of songs, and before Beca could blink, CR returned to the stage. She rocked a black suit for her Super Bass performance, keeping the rap, which she totally nailed.
But her talent really came through on the chorus.
It was crazy, because Beca swore that the backing vocals sounded like her.
The scene cut drastically to a surprisingly somber Stacie behind the piano, playing the simple arpeggios for If I Ain't Got You that Beca taught her, depressing the pedal in time under high black heels.
After the first chorus, she stepped away from the piano, strutting to the edge of the stage in a long, elegant blank pantsuit. It had wide, flowing legs and spaghetti straps, and while she sounded incredible, she looked unbelievable, and Beca couldn't help but think Stacie should be a legit model.
And she couldn't ignore the way the tall brunette seemed to serenade Posen.
A full band started up with the jazzy tones of Rihanna's Higher, and Beca stepped back onstage. She finally felt comfortable in her last outfit - black jeans with a black tank top - and she let herself sing the song all out.
She didn't even try to keep her eyes off Chloe.
Emily closed the last set of solos with Sit Still, Look Pretty, wearing a crazy bodysuit with huge, sharp shoulders, and then the rest of the finalists joined the teenager onstage to sing the It's Raining Men - Bang Bang - Go Your Own Way medley they rehearsed.
And there was something so final about all this, with the four of them onstage.
They'd sing together next week too, with all the other women from their season.
There would be a bunch of fanfare, too, as a lot of families and friends were flying out for the finale.
But this was the last time the show would only be about them.
And Beca felt like they actually got it right.
The show came to an end, and they met with a few enthusiastic fans. And after some world-class convincing, Katherine allowed Emily to go to the club with them.
No drinking, though.
But that didn't really matter, it turned out, because, as crazy as they got, Beca didn't really drink much.
Regardless, she posted a bunch of funny photos and videos on her Twitter, as did everybody else.
Apparently they posted so much that the club actually asked them to stop because the line of prospective club-goers was getting too long.
Beca laughed it off.
There was no way they had anything to do with that.
Right?
It was obvious, when Posen came by the house at noon the next day, and Chloe roused Beca from bed at the blonde judge's request, that Beca's suspicions were disproven.
"Our social media is blowing up," Posen said bashfully. "We got more votes last night than we got from the first three episodes combined."
"Woah," Beca sighed reverently. "What do you think did it?"
"It could've been the insane videos you ladies posted from the club last night," she chided, and Beca laughed.
"You were there too, Posen," she grinned.
"But I didn't post about it!"
The women shared a laugh, and a silence fell over them.
"I think it was you," Posen said quietly. "I think it was the songs and the antics. I think there was an energy last night that the show hasn't had for a very long time."
Beca nodded.
"It was both of us," she replied after a moment, after it seemed like Posen wouldn't say anything else.
Posen let the statement hang there, neither acknowledging it nor brushing it off.
"You know who the winner will be?"
Beca hesitated, then nodded.
"Is it-"
"Yeah," Posen sighed. "Yeah, it's the same person. The one from the list."
So she was right.
She knew who was going to win American Idol.
Beca breathed out a heavy breath.
"She deserves it," Beca said with a smile.
"Did you realize that you're the runner-up?"
Beca looked up, shocked.
Posen was grinning at her softly, tentatively, like she figured that Beca would be surprised, and Beca saw the smile transform into one of smugness when her suspicions were actually proven right.
"But I-"
"Beca, it's okay," Posen cut her off. "You don't have to do an album with us."
Beca let out a harsh sigh that she didn't know she'd been holding, but her fears weren't totally assuaged.
"But what about-"
Posen let an errant eye-roll slip as she sighed impatiently at the brunette in front of her.
"I'm obviously going to take care of it, Mitchell," she said.
"Actually," she said, and that same soft smile came back.
Although this time, it was accompanied with a kind of happy smirk that, before this moment, Beca was sure Posen wasn't capable of.
"I think I have an idea."
Wow. So many songs. So many. I might write them down. I might not.
Go watch Anna Kendrick sing "St. Louis Blues."
It's hot as fuck.
All of CR's songs were produced by Ester Dean and she definitely sings on "Super Bass."
Kthxbye