I think this is E/T but honestly I have no idea. There's nothing bad, I just can't remember if I used any bad words.
They spent all Tuesday and Wednesday in the studio.
(The one with the bean bag chair.)
Chloe fell back onto the couch, exhausted. They'd spent the two days reworking the six songs they came in with, using the tactics Beca prescribed. All a cappella, much to CR's chagrin. Ashley helped with their pitch late Wednesday, but mostly it was just them. The five women (minus Aubrey) who had started all this.
Now it was Thursday, and Beca would be there any minute.
Chloe looked up at her friends, heart full. It seemed like only yesterday that she'd brought them all together, but it was nearly two years ago.
Chloe laughed when she remembered the look on Aubrey's face when Chloe had told her that she didn't want to pursue a solo career, but a group act, one that included one of the younger students for whom Aubrey was currently teaching. Only as a teacher's assistant, but still - Chloe thought the blonde was going to nervous puke all over her.
But Aubrey held it together, and, in a surprising move, was able to shift gears.
But only on the condition that she see these supposed "superstars" that Chloe had found in her elective choir course.
A few nights later, Chloe got them all together at the bar - the three of the others being only nineteen at the time, so they had to do a little coercion - and then she got them onstage with her for karaoke. Aubrey was skeptical but intrigued, so Chloe pushed. She had them start practicing, and Fat Amy was able to get them gigs all around campus.
It was CR who put them on the map with TikTok, as she already had a successful personal account.
(She wouldn't let Chloe follow her, but Chloe was pretty sure it was a sexy account.)
One of their songs went viral when Flo had put together a dance routine for it. Then another. Then their single. All of the sudden, they were getting studio time to record, making merch, and recording video after video after video. They made some money off it, too. Not enough to support them 100%, but it was encouraging to say the least.
But still, they all had to have other sources of income.
They moved in together six months ago, but it was starting to become impossible to keep up with online demand and the three undergrads' coursework while they were all working different jobs.
Chloe had finished school and was a vet tech, so she was able to work with Aubrey when she wasn't busy with her last semester at the university's law school. Stacie was ahead in classes and only had a semester left, but she had a part-time job that nobody could track. CR and Fat Amy were willing to drop out, but only if The Bellas really went for it; if they moved out of Georgia, moved to LA, went all in.
Chloe said yes.
Stacie said she'd do it at the end of the year, as long as there was a record deal on the line.
And to no one's surprise, Aubrey said no.
They weren't ready, they needed to finish school in case this didn't work, et cetera, et cetera.
She sounded more like their mom than their manager.
However, not all of them were ready to give up.
So the rest of the women cleared out to let the law school student and her pre-law undergrad Stacie duke it out.
Stacie never told Chloe how she was able to convince Aubrey. When they left, the two were screaming at each other, nose to nose, gesticulating wildly. Chloe was sure Stacie wouldn't get through to her.
But when the three of them snuck back into the apartment in the wee hours of the morning, the house was quiet. Eerily quiet, as if the two were sleeping soundly.
(And Chloe never told anyone that she slept in Stacie's room that night, because the one that she and Aubrey shared had the door closed. That she put her headphones on around five because somebody, somewhere was rattling a bed against the wall. She loudly slammed the bathroom door, and the noises stopped, so she let it , it never came up.)
After that, it was a real plan. Aubrey set up the preliminary meetings with a few studios. Phone first, then visits between Christmas and New Years. Their leases started in December, so they were already moved in apartments, including all of their support personnel.
Before the students got their final grades for the fall semester, they were fully moved to LA.
And, crazy enough, nobody even considered the other studios after they visited Residual Heat. Especially since Chloe had started everything and could not be convinced otherwise.
Which made it even more frustrating that Beca Mitchell was a total tool!
Chloe sighed heavily, pulling her notebook towards her navy blazer. She cracked it open for the umpteenth time that afternoon.
"Uhh, guys, I think the ginger is broken," Amy said warily.
"She's not broken, she's breaking, slowly," Stacie said sagely. "Chloe, write that one down."
Chloe's brows arched skeptically.
"You can write your own songs, you know. Or poems, whatever."
"You're better at it," Stacie replied, flopping next to her on the couch. She grabbed for Chloe's notebook, but the redhead yanked it away.
"Let me see!"
"They're not- hey! Stop! They're not ready!"
She had been writing a lot in the last two days, and her friends had absolutely taken notice. The whole experience - the move, the career change, the friends she had by her side - all of it made Chloe want to write. She wanted to sort through everything that she was feeling, to try to make sense of it all. She was reflecting hard, on all that they'd been through and everything in front of them.
She was also trying to sort through her feelings about Beca.
She couldn't help but bring the producer into her writing. She'd spent so long building her up in her head, so after meeting her, especially in light of how they met… it was a whirlwind. A tornado of torment.
Good torture.
Bad pleasure.
And Chloe wasn't one to try to suppress a feeling that big.
Unfortunately, her friends knew that, and so they'd been trying to see her notebook ever since Chloe picked it up over the weekend.
"C'mon, red," CR started to bargain. "We just want to help."
"You can help by getting out your own lyrics," Chloe shot back.
CR's eyes dropped to the floor, and Stacie suddenly became preoccupied with her cuticles. Fat Amy let out a non-committal, high-pitched hum.
"Wait, did you guys not-"
But even if Chloe had the opportunity to finish her question - even if Beca Mitchell didn't have impeccable musical and comedic timing, as she chose that moment to throw the door open - Chloe didn't need to hear the answers to know what was happening.
They hadn't written anything.
Please, Chloe pleaded to some unknown god.
Please don't let her ask if we have anything new.
Beca was scowling as she came through the door. Chloe would've rolled her eyes if she wasn't distracted, yet again, by the producer's good looks. She had on an oversized band hoodie and ripped skinny jeans, with Chucks and huge aviator sunglasses. Her hair was pilled on top of her head in a messy bun. For the first time, Chloe thought she actually looked her age of 21.
(Chloe wasn't obsessed enough to know her birthday, but she did see pictures from the 21st birthday blowout last year. There was bottle service, with the sparklers, and some crazy deejay in the booth. Kalina Val was there too, and the actress was hanging all over Beca. Six days ago, Chloe wouldn't have given it a second thought. Now the thought made her blood boil.)
"You guys better have something for me," the producer said, taking the glasses off and tucking them against her bun. She squinted against the dim light of the studio. "I woke up early for this."
"It's almost noon," Chloe seethed. "You're late."
Beca met her eye.
She blinked at her owlishly.
"Oh, hi Chloe," she replied, smiling. "Good to see you."
Chloe's jaw dropped, as did Stacie's. The other two Bellas went uncharacteristically still.
"Sorry, I didn't realize we were starting this early," Beca said quickly. She scrubbed her hands over her face, wiping the smile away, then paused, putting an ankle up on her knee. She tapped an idle finger on the elevated thigh.
"Well, what are you waiting for?" the young producer snapped. "Sing."
Chloe scoffed.
"Good to see you too," she grumbled sarcastically as she stood. She pulled Stacie off the couch before the taller woman went for Beca's throat, and the four singers stood with their backs against the mixer table.
Immediately, Chloe flashed back to the last time her back was against a mixing board. Her face flushed, and she tried to avoid looking at Beca. She swore she could see Beca's mouth twitch into a smile, so she looked up. The producer was smirking already, staring straight at her. She scowled in response.
God, what was it with her?
"So, we re-worked all of them," Fat Amy said slowly to break the long pause, and Chloe shook out of her stare down.
"Ginga ninja?"
"Right," Chloe responded. She turned to look at her group exclusively, completely shutting Beca out, as she instructed them to start at the beginning of the EP and sing all the way through.
She counted them in, and they were off.
Besides the lyrics, and some of the melodies, they'd gutted pretty much everything. Chloe had to admit that Beca was right to instruct them to work a cappella - it put all of their vocals under a microscope, in a way that the producer probably expected. Once they got down to the basics, Chloe could hear that they weren't taking advantage of their talents. The four amazing vocalists - that's what they should be showcasing.
And they did, in the beginning.
Somewhere along the way, they lost that.
Chloe figured that was why she was in such a reflective mood this week. They were back to their roots. They weren't posting or selling; they were just singing. It felt right. It felt good.
And they wrote it so they could just keep singing into the next song. Key changing, tempo changing - that'd been an exercise on Tuesday afternoon, when they were absolutely stuck. It got them moving and motivated again.
Plus, it was really fun.
As they made their way through the EP, Chloe watched Beca indirectly. The producer tried to keep her surly demeanor up, but Chloe saw through it. It was the eyes again. The way they glimmered when Stacie took the upper alternate in one of the last choruses, when Fat Amy matched her note for note in harmony.
The minute widening when CR added technically insane runs in the second repetition of a bridge.
The way they flashed to Chloe when she ran all the way up at the end of a bridge, instead of bailing out for a comedic pull.
She held the high note as the other women started the chorus, and Beca stared her down. Chloe could feel her eyes on her as she belted.
She refused to meet the producer's eye.
She doesn't deserve it.
They wrapped their rewrite with a vocal torrent that rivaled Mariah Carey's best, with Chloe cutting them off. They were all breathing hard, after singing for nearly fifteen minutes straight, and Chloe finally looked at Beca straight on.
She was prepared for a scowl, or a smirk, or even an oft-absent smile.
But the producer's face was completely blank.
Beca stood, stalking directly for Chloe across the room, looking pensive. Chloe jumped, as did the other girls, but Chloe was on the end, and there really wasn't anywhere for her to go. She glanced around, trying to find some exit, but Beca was already there and-
-reaching past her.
Her body was close - really close - as she picked up the office phone that was on the desk next to the mixing board. She leaned closer to hit the intercom button, dropping the phone back to the receiver.
Chloe hoped that her gasp was concealed by the loud dial tone.
But judging by Beca's smirk, it wasn't.
She pressed an extension, and the phone rang for a moment before a male voice picked up.
"Yooooooo."
"Allen. It's Mitchell. We need a studio tomorrow," the producer said hurriedly. She bit the edge of her thumbnail as the person on the other end clicked through something.
Was she nervous?
"Yeee-up," the man replied. "I've got Popcorn for 2?"
Beca's eyes shot to Chloe's, asking her a silent question. But they were so close - Beca's elbow was basically resting against Chloe's stomach, and her arm, and she didn't know-
"What?" Chloe asked, breathless. "Am I- what do you-"
Beca rolled her eyes with a harsh sigh.
"Book it," she replied sharply. She picked up the phone and dropped it, stepping back to the couch.
Chloe felt her bandmates looking at her with varying degrees of amusement, but she ignored them.
It was easy to do, considering she was basically radioactive with embarrassment.
"Okay," Beca said as she fell back into the couch. "What else do you have? New stuff, what'd you work on?"
And there it was, the question Chloe had been dreaded since Beca walked in. Her face was already burning, but she felt another wave of heat.
Her friends had stopped smirking at her, though.
Unfortunately, she knew why.
"Uh, I wrote some stuff," she spoke up, and she watched Beca stare at the floor, worrying her thumb between her teeth again.
Better to rip off the bandaid, just get it over with.
"Anyone else?" the producer asked. The responses were, on the whole, negative, and the producer sighed loudly.
"Yeah, all right," she said, sitting up and turning to Chloe with a bored expression. "Let's hear it."
"Right- right now?" Chloe stuttered.
"Yeah," Beca replied impatiently. "What, do you want to hold hands and sing kumbaya first?"
Chloe was about to retort when there was a sharp rap at the door. The group turned to the large viewing window to see Jesse with a couple musicians holding instrument cases.
"Be-kaw!" came Jesse's voice through the glass. "Shift change!"
Beca glanced at a clock mounted on the wall and rolled her eyes.
"All right," she yelled back through the glass. She turned back to The Bellas with a shrug.
"2 PM, here, tomorrow," she barked. "And you three-"
She assessed the everyone but Chloe with a sharp glare.
"Write something. Anything. One rhyme, for chrissakes," she grumbled, then she settled her gaze back on Chloe.
"We're unfortunately not finished," the producer huffed, rubbing above her eyebrow. "We'll jump in somewhere else and get through what we can."
Chloe blanched.
Alone, with Beca, again?
So soon?
She looked to Stacie for help, but the busty brunette made a vulgar gesture when Beca moved to meet with Jesse in the hallway. Chloe flipped her off, and she could see the musicians still in the room, along with those in the hallway, struggling to cover their laughs.
"-Fancy has Doozie in there, and Toilet has that I-P-Vay client, remember?" Jesse was saying as The Bellas filed out.
"I've told you pig latin doesn't work for acronyms," Beca replied hotly, but she was distracted. "Get Sammy in here with these guys, tell him I need at least a half hour."
Jesse nodded before excusing himself, and the other band went into the studio, leaving The Bellas standing awkwardly in the hallway.
"Go home, you three," the producer said to CR, Amy, and Stacie.
An actually amused smile started to spread across her face, but she tamped it down so that only her twinkling eyes remained when she turned to Chloe.
Well, twinkling eyes and that smirk.
"And you, Chloe Beale," she smirked. "You can come with me."