If she was honest with herself, Chloe had made the decision to give Beca her notebook before she left Residual Heat on Thursday.

If she was honest, she would say that as soon as she got on that elevator, she knew she was going to go back.

She could be honest about a lot of other things, too.

Like the fact that she wanted Beca to be different. She didn't want her to be a shallow womanizer, and she didn't want her to have a boring office that was a mausoleum of music - not forgotten, but certainly dead.

She wanted her to be more than that.

She wanted Beca to be the virtuoso that continually inspired Chloe to create, one that could make Chloe move in ways that no one else could, just with her music.

And, in the spirit of honesty, maybe Chloe wouldn't care about all of that stuff if Beca tried to come onto her just one more time.

Because just the thought that any of that was true was enough to get her riled up.

But Chloe wasn't feeling particularly honest on Friday, so she lied about going to the bathroom before The Bellas' 2 PM recording session. She sprinted across the building, around the corner of the producer's space, and down towards the closed door. She stopped on a dime and caught her breath before knocking.

"Jesus, Swanson, I'll be there in a minute! Calm your tits!"

Chloe rolled her eyes before pushing the door open. Beca was standing, leaning over her desk, with her hand holding a headphone over her ear. She was about to shout at her intrusive visitor but, realizing it was Chloe, she gave a little shocked smile instead. Her gaze narrowed as she took in Chloe's form - accentuated in today's patterned blue dress - and she dropped her headphones against her neck.

"Chloe Beale," Beca sighed. "You couldn't stay away?"

Heat bloomed in Chloe's stomach, and she tried to shove it down.

Great. Now even Cocky Beca gets me going.

"Can it, Mitchell," she replied. She walked over as casually as she could, then tossed her notebook on the desk. The producer raised her eyebrows and reached for it slowly. Chloe stepped back, crossing her arms over her chest.

"Keep it. Over the weekend."

Eyes flashed between the book and Chloe's stern demeanor. Chloe waited for Beca to say something, and she took the time to assess the young producer today.

She was back in her typical cool clothes. Flannel, Docs, skinny jeans.

But this time, Chloe noticed, she wore blue.

A blue tank-top, under a navy and white flannel. Blue jeans. Cerulean ear spike.

The end result being, they matched today.

Coincidence. Definitely a coincidence.

… except that spiral gauge looks exactly like my eyes.

"Why?" Beca asked suddenly, without preamble. "Why are you letting me have this?"

Honestly?

Chloe didn't know.

She had been a mess all night, barking at the other Bellas whenever they asked her about the one-on-one writing session. She barely ate. She put her headphones on and sulked in her room until Aubrey turned off the main light, and then she fell into a fitful sleep.

At four, she was up and couldn't fall back asleep.

So she got up and did the only thing she could think to.

She wrote.

She went back and read everything that she'd written since they arrived in LA, finishing off a few broken thoughts that she hadn't completed the first time.

And then she wrote more.

It started slowly, like a leaky faucet. Simple words trickling out about her girls, and how far The Bellas had come in only a few days. She was proud of them, proud of herself, and intoxicated by their progress.

It morphed, then, to Beca. An authority figure to The Bellas, and one that Chloe found herself becoming addicted to pleasing. A shadowy Yes/No machine that gave out little pellets of approval when she worked hard.

Please, she wrote. Give me more.

Tell me yes.

Haven't I been a good girl?

The words splintered from there. They followed Beca into a deep, dark blue bass that twisted tendrils through Chloe's psyche.

But they also swirled in cornflower blue and white eddies - flashes of young and hurt and trying so hard, can't anyone else see that? See how much you've given? What have you lost, and was it worth it?

Beca Mitchell, a dissonant mosaic.

Of blues, coincidentally enough.

And when it was time to head to the studio, all Chloe could tell herself was that she was going to give the notebook to Beca. She didn't know why.

Because you wanted it.

The errant thought flew through her mind too fast for her to catch it.

Because you asked to see.

I want you to see it.

"Didn't anybody ever tell you: 'don't look a gift horse in the mouth'?" Chloe said instead, then she shook her head. "Whatevs. Read it if you want."

Beca was already flipping through the pages when her computer chimed. She glanced at it, then at her phone.

"We should head over," she said tentatively, and Chloe could see that she was struggling against the idea of sitting down and diving into the notebook right then and there.

She felt a smirk of her own rising.

"C'mon, Becs," she scoffed. "It's just a notebook. You can read it later."

"Oh, it's 'Becs' now?"

Chloe didn't deign her with a response beyond a scoff as the pair made their way over to the far studio. They found it already bustling with people - Bellas, another producer, Aubrey, Jessica - and immediately Chloe felt the young producer tense up next to her. A surge of protectiveness shot through her, but she tried to suppress it.

She's a big girl, she can handle it. Get a grip.

Chloe shook off the thought and joined her friends across the room. Fat Amy munched loudly on bowl of popcorn as she addressed the approaching redhead.

"You found a hobbit on the way over, then?"

Chloe rolled her eyes as she reached for a handful from Amy's bowl.

"I swear, she's stalking me," she replied as she threw a few pieces of popcorn into her mouth. "It's, like, totes weird."

Stacie narrowed her eyes in Beca's direction, over Chloe's shoulder, and then Chloe saw them widen to an almost comical openness.

"Uh, Chlo- does Beca have the same notebook as you?"

Chloe flushed with panic.

She brought it here?! her mind raced. She brought the notebook with her!?

"Okay, Chloe, let's start with you in the booth," Beca said sharply. Chloe's notebook lay on the desk before her. "We'll start with Scared of Happy, I already have a base track for that one. Are you warmed up?"

Chloe could barely nod before her friends were ushering her towards the door - towards the sound-proofed room where I won't be able to hear them talking! - and though she protested, they shut the door behind her.

Chloe glowered through the sound-proofed glass. She could still hear them, but it was muffled, and she could already tell this was going to be torture. Beca was barking orders at the other producer, who was a short, dark haired man with a big mouth, who Chloe only recognized as "Allen." Her friends had split; Fat Amy was hovering around the male producer, and Jessica and CR were consulting Jessica's phone, looking like they were getting ready to film something. Aubrey was on the phone, but Stacie…

Stacie was sitting right behind Beca, ready to pounce.

And Chloe could see it was only a matter of time before she struck.

Chloe watched for a painful twenty minutes as Allen got her set up. She couldn't take her eyes off Beca as - much to her dismay - the young producer decided to forgo any kind of producer help and instead buried herself in Chloe's notebook. She watched Stacie watch Beca, then the leggy brunette met her eyes with a perverse grin.

She watched CR nudge Jessica and explain, causing the bubbly woman to giggle.

She watched Fat Amy loudly ask something, and then CR pointed to Beca, and then Fat Amy said something else. Beca sat up, tearing her eyes away from the pages to glance directly into Chloe's fiery gaze. She sighed, then she snapped the book shut.

She said something to everyone, and they all looked shocked and confused.

Chloe started to panic. Maybe she should just go out there, straighten it all out. Beca probably wasn't saying it right, wasn't telling them everything. She probably didn't explain that she had asked for Chloe's notebook yesterday, that they had worked on stuff together and so it made sense to give her the notebook.

Or maybe, she did explain that.

Chloe didn't know which one was worse.

Beca met Chloe's gaze again, and Chloe watched Beca's face transform - shock, mirth, a smug grin with heated eyes - and then, a mask.

It was intense to watch, especially when she knew her friends couldn't see it. That they could only see Chloe, as Beca was at the front of the room with no one but Chloe to witness the fleet of emotions. Chloe saw Beca bark something at the group, and she watched as their tempers flared, but none of them spoke up.

Then Aubrey was hanging up the phone and shouting something back, and Beca retorted.

God, this was worse than the root canal Chloe got when she was fifteen because she drank too many cokes. Watching this, and not being able to talk or hear, or defend herself, Chloe felt like she would do anything to make it stop.

So she started to move to the door to get out there, to go out there and explain, when a static-y voice cut through the speaker in the room.

"It's okay, Beale," Beca said into the mic. Her voice was intimate, but stern, and Chloe stopped before she got to the door.

Chloe looked up to see Allen escorting a furious Aubrey out of the room. The other women looked shaken, but they stayed put.

Again, Chloe flushed with anger. She felt like a helpless, caged animal. She began to move again, towards the door, and the voice came back.

"Put on the headphones, Chlo."

Pleading.

Desparate.

Intimate.

Commanding.

Chloe flushed with a completely different type of heat. She eyed the brunette warily as she grabbed the headphones, settling them over her ears.

But she kept her eyes trained on the door.

"I'm sorry," Beca said into the mic. "I've been unprofessional, and I've been disrespectful with your time. I'm ready to begin if you are."

Without looking at Beca, Chloe felt herself reel under the emotional whiplash. Her body swayed, and she felt lightheaded. She took a deep, stuttering breath, wondering what the other Bellas had thought of Beca's apology. But when she looked at them through the glass, they weren't even paying attention. She quickly realized that none of them had heard what Beca had said.

Beca was speaking directly into a mic, one that went directly into Chloe's ears.

She wondered what they would have seen, had they been looking at her.

What emotions she was wearing on her metaphorical sleeves today.

She took another stunted breath, and she felt her eyes flutter. And then - and only then - did she look at Beca.

No smirk, no glint of secrets. Beca looked at her earnestly, with an open expression that held no expectation in it. She stared straight on, as if she was asking for Chloe to hear her. And Chloe understood that she just heard a real, honest apology, and a promise to move forward.

So she nodded.

And they began.

Beca started the song and played it through, just letting Chloe run through her part before recording anything. It sounded pretty similar to their original track, so Chloe was able to pick up on it quickly enough. Beca took her headphones out of the board so that the rest of the room could hear as Chloe sang her part, and it took all of Chloe's will to shut them out and focus on the singing.

She tried to control her breath as she pushed through the lines, but even behind closed eyes, she saw Beca's face.

Studying her, appraising her.

She finally opened her eyes as the song finished, and all of her friends were all beaming at her. Fat Amy said something, and they all laughed - even Beca, Chloe saw out of the corner of her eye - and Jessica panned around the room as if she was filming a TikTok.

But then Beca slipped her headphones back into the jack and pressed a button, and suddenly her voice was back in Chloe's head.

"They can't hear you now. It's just me," she purred. Chloe rolled her tongue over her lips subconsciously, and she watched Beca track the movement.

"What did you think?"

Beca's eyebrows shot into her hairline as her gaze darkened.

"Don't ask me for my input," she murmured. "What did you think?"

Chloe thought back through her performance.

"It could've been better," she said softly. "I was nervous."

One side of Beca's mouth quirked up, and Chloe quelled a shudder as the producer smirked.

"Now, what could've made Chloe Beale nervous?" she asked slowly, fingers dancing towards the edge of Chloe's notebook, which still sat on the counter.

Chloe felt her stomach flip over itself.

"You've written some naughty things in here, Chloe Beale," Beca teased. A wave of pinpricks coursed through Chloe, and this time she couldn't suppress the shudder. "I liked what we sang yesterday, but this?"

Beca ran the pad of a finger in small, purposeful circles in the center of the notebook's cover. Chloe inhaled sharply, staring at the hand.

Nearly imperceptible but very, very specific circles, with her middle finger - barely any movement at all, as the producer's hand undulated subtly, her other fingers floating in rhythm.

She could feel the movement on her body.

Well, on one very specific place on her body.

Chloe tried to squeeze her thighs together, to feel any kind of pressure in the place she needed it most, but there was no relief from her attempt.

Beca glanced back suddenly, and Chloe remembered with a start that they were not alone, no matter what it sounded like in her ears. CR had said something, and she saw Stacie scoff.

"This is hell," Chloe whispered, and Beca's eyes shot back to her.

"It's certainly hot enough," Beca teased again as she glanced down Chloe's body again, dragging her eyes up slowly. That finger started up again, those maddeningly methodical circles, and Chloe snapped.

"Okay, seriously?" Chloe asked roughly. "I'm basically your captive in here. I can't hear anybody else, and you kicked Aubrey out, and you're- you- you're in my head! You did it, okay? You got me. You won. I'm attracted to you, and you're a pig. Is that what you want to hear?! God, if it's going to be like this every time, I don't even want to work with you!"

She was breathing hard into the mic, and she knew Beca could hear it. She didn't care anymore. She was so distraught, so frustrated but also hot under the collar with the way that Beca kept winding her up.

She couldn't deal with it anymore.

She didn't know what to do.

Beca let out a breathless laugh into the mic.

"Damn," she swore. "Wow. I, uh… I'm sorry, dude."

Chloe felt tears prickle behind her eyes, and she turned away from the glass.

"Look, I'm going to come in there in a second to give you some notes," Beca said to Chloe's back. "And I'm going to… yeah. I'll try to get you out of there soon. Yeah."

Chloe turned back to see Beca throw her headphones onto the desk. As the producer stood, her bandmates turned to see what was going on, and then they looked at Chloe through the glass. Stacie and CR lurched forward to follow Beca, but she barked something at them to call them off. She crossed the studio to the booth door, and Chloe saw her take a deep breath before she opened the door.

It wasn't a big space, and Chloe bet Beca knew that. But the producer stayed at the door when she entered, her back pressed against it as she kept her distance from the redhead.

"You don't need to change a single thing," Beca said, her face a cold mask. "I'm going to pretend to give you notes for a minute or so, and then I want you to do it exactly how you already did."

"Bullshit," Chloe brushed off the compliment.

Beca shot a frustrated glance at her.

"Look, I'm as pissed off as you are," she grumbled. "Do you know what it's like to have no notes? Your pitch is perfect, your tone is full - you don't need me."

She gave a little laugh as she shook her head, pulling her thumbnail up to her teeth.

"I don't know how to do this with someone that doesn't need me," she said, seemingly to herself. "Even your writing is good, Chloe. I couldn't have written 'me' better, and I've tried."

Chloe scoffed.

"Well, then you haven't gotten to the bad parts."

Beca's eyes flashed with a hint of mischief, but she quickly shook it off as shame shadowed her features.

"I am sorry, for what it's worth," the young producer went on. "I thought you were in on it."

Chloe blinked in confusion, wrapping her headphone cord around her fingers.

"In on what?" she asked, and Beca gaped at her.

"Uh… nothing."

"Tell me."

"I will," Beca nodded, but the movement slowed as her expression became pensive. "I just… I don't really know what to do with you, Chloe Beale."

Chloe's temper flared again, and she rolled her eyes.

"Just make us a good group or whatever!" she growled. "Keep it in your goddamn pants and teach me stuff!"

Beca giggled, and that teasing glint re-appeared.

"I could say the same to you, Beale. Some of those entries are quite graphic."

Chloe went to defend herself, but Beca waved her off.

"And like I said, you don't need any help. Thankfully the rest of your group sucks."

"Hey!"

The muffled shout pulled Beca and Chloe out of their booth bubble, and they found themselves staring at four sets of eyes, varying from shocked to indignant. Stacie swung the unplugged input cord for Beca's headphones menacingly, and Fat Amy threw a handful of popcorn against the glass.

At least Jessica isn't recording, Chloe thought.

Oh, but CR is.

Damn.

Beca had the audacity to look embarrassed as she shuffled out of the booth, back to the studio side of the room. Chloe could see her starting to say something, but she was met with more airborne popcorn from the Australian, and a particularly seething look from CR. Stacie said something, and Beca glanced through the glass to Chloe before she turned and nodded to the taller brunette.

Stacie shrugged, seemingly satisfied, but as she set down the input cord, she went to pick up Chloe's notebook as well.

Beca slammed a hand down on the cover, and the two had a stare-off before Chloe spoke up.

"Stacie, I gave it to her," she rushed. Again, all of the eyes shot through the glass, and Chloe swallowed hard before continuing.

"She wanted to read it, and I gave it to her. We worked on some of it yesterday, a new song. She's supposed to be working with us, and she knows better than anyone about, you know, what might work and what might not. I don't want to make it a big deal, okay?"

Chloe could tell Stacie was angry, but she looked to be at least somewhat understanding of Chloe's reasoning. She leaned into the mic and began to speak, and Chloe lifted the headphones to her ears, but no sound came through. Beca rolled her eyes and leaned down, pressing the button next to the microphone, and Stacie glared at her before turning back to Chloe.

"If she's mean to you, we kill her," she solemnly promised. Chloe saw Beca scoff, and then the button was unpressed as the two started bickering again.

Nearly silently, from Chloe's perspective.

"Hey!" Chloe shouted into the mic, and the two reluctantly turned to look at her.

"Can we please just work on music?"

With one more heated glare, the brunettes agreed, resuming their seats and turning their attention back to Chloe.

"Okay," Beca said as she jumped back on the mic, sliding the headphones over her ears and plugging them in. "Are you ready?"

Chloe would've laughed if she had the emotional wherewithal.

As I'll ever be, she thought grimly.

The rest of the session went as well as it could. Chloe was done with the majority of the vocals for the song within twenty minutes, and then Stacie went into the booth to record her sections. Besides telling her that she was done for now, Beca barely paid her any mind as Chloe finished up, settling back on the couch with CR and Jessica as Stacie got into the hot-seat.

"I bet Doogie Howser over here is much nicer to us now that you're here," Amy lamented as Chloe passed her. "She was being a real ass while you were in the booth."

"I'll probably still be an ass, thanks," Beca shouted over her shoulder, and Amy groaned loudly. Chloe stifled a giggle as Amy went on.

"You're, like, a really shit substitute teacher. Or a mean babysitter."

"Which means you're a child, Fat Amy. Is that right? Am I tracking that right?" Beca shot back, still not looking away from Stacie, who was practicing her vocals into Beca's headphones, one of which was still in position over her ear.

Amy grumbled in response, and Beca reset her headphones, clicking on the mic to ask Stacie to change something.

They continued like that for the remainder of the afternoon. Jessica left, so it was just the singers, and one after another, the women went into the booth to record their vocals. By 6:30, they had pretty much completed their parts of the song, barring some additional vocals Beca said she would consider once she got it mixed down.

"Great, you can come out now CR," Beca said into the mic before spinning around in her chair. It was smaller, but it was still to big for the tiny deejay.

"Okay, so we got through the first song. I'll punch it up tonight and send something over. It's a decent start."

"'Decent'?" CR gasped as she stepped out of the booth. She ran a hand through her short red hair. "That's the best we've sounded in a while."

"Well we're not going for your best, we're going for my best," Beca countered. The singers groaned while Beca just smirked.

"I don't know, shortstack," Amy jumped in. "I've heard some of your stuff. Pretty sure we're on the upper end of that catalogue."

"Watch it," the producer warned, but then Stacie jumped in too.

"And how many of them had singers that have 'perfect pitch' and 'didn't need any notes'? Hm?"

Chloe blushed, and so did Beca, and they steadfastly ignored each other in favor of the surrounding walls.

They hadn't talked at all for the rest of the afternoon, but Beca had gotten much more comfortable around the rest of The Bellas. They were all teasing each other in a way that Chloe was almost envious of - from both sides.

But really, she was just happy to see that they were all getting along. It was like, with every joke, a weight was being lifted off her shoulders, bit by bit.

But now that Stacie had recalled Beca's comments earlier, Chloe took time to dismiss them.

"Beca was just being nice," she sighed, refusing to meet Beca's affronted expression as she pressed on.

"Is it time for food?"

"Yessss," Stacie moaned. "Pizza?"

The women agreed and began to file out, but CR stopped in the doorway and turned back.

"You wanna come, boss-man?"

Chloe snuck a glance at Beca as the producer considered CR's offer. She looked interested - excited, even - but her face fell when she checked her phone. She ran a hand through her hair and shook her head.

"I can't, actually," she replied. "I, uh… I already have plans."

Of course you do, Chloe thought sullenly. What's her name this time? Kalina again, or Danielle? Or Sara? Or just another nameless, boring, hot-

"Chloe?"

Chloe blinked out of her jealous thoughts to see Stacie regarding her carefully. Chloe moved quickly, stepping in front of the busty brunette, up with Fat Amy, not even saying goodbye to Beca before taking off to the elevators.

But through dinner, and at the bar after, Chloe couldn't get her out of her head.

Where was she? Who was she with? Was she working on their song, or did she put it off? Was it important enough to her to get done right away, or did The Bellas end up in a stack of To-Dos?

Was she reading her notebook?

Was she thinking about her?

She ended up leaving her bandmates and Aubrey early, claiming she needed a good night's sleep. She took an Uber back to the empty apartment, not even bothering with the overhead light in her room as she collapsed face-first onto her bed.

Okay, there's only two ways out of this, she thought to herself, head still spinning from alcohol, exhaustion, and frustrating preoccupations with dark blue eyes.

I can find some scratch paper, try to write my way out of this.

It'd worked before, with modest success.

Or…

Her lower abs clenched, rolling, and she felt her hips tilt against the bed.

She'd been good, so far. She hadn't - ahem - done a solo performance while thinking about Beca. Even while she was writing, she had held off. It would be impossible to look at Beca without blushing if she had touched herself to thoughts of them together.

But now that Beca was reading her notebook, the producer would clearly know that Chloe had imagined them together, and that was enough to make Chloe blush, too.

So, if she was going to blush either way…

Chloe groaned, turning over and pushing herself up to the pillows at the head of the bed. She grabbed her phone, scrolling to Spotify, and clicked through her playlists until she found one titled Lady Jams. She picked a song at random and set the phone next to her.

(Yes, it was one that Beca produced.)

(No, not every song on the playlist had Beca's talent on it.)

(How many of them did? … Chloe didn't want to check.)

Chloe stripped off her dress, sliding between the floral sheets and under her offensively pink comforter. She closed her eyes, listened to the music, and finally gave in.

And, of course, the first thought she had was of Beca's hands.

Her own hands moved across her body as she thought about Beca behind her board. She was in the booth, again, and Beca was at the mixing table, adjusting some dial.

Thumb, and the side of her pointer, wrapping around a knob to turn it - up, down, it didn't matter.

In her bed, with one hand, Chloe palmed her breast through her bra before holding her nipple between the two fingers herself, tweaking something.

Turning it.

Like Beca did.

Tonight, she was the mixing board, and Beca was compiling an orchestra of touch.

Chloe's other hand slid down her stomach as Beca slid down one of the sliders, turning down the backing track, and then she was talking.

"You have to tell me what works," she growled in Chloe's imagination. "Tell me what makes you sound good."

Beca twisted another knob as Chloe twisted her other nipple, and she moaned into the microphone.

"There, perfect, keep going," Beca told her, pressing two fingers against a slider, and Chloe felt it against her pubic bone, under the thin fabric.

She flipped a switch at the top, and Chloe groaned at the nearly glancing touch.

Another slide, this one meeting no resistance as Chloe slipped a finger through her arousal. Beca was humming into the microphone, right into Chloe's ears, as she conducted the show.

"Now, what could've made Chloe Beale nervous?" she chuckled darkly, and Chloe watched as Beca's fingers traced small, strong circles on the edge of the board.

Gasping, Chloe brought a finger to clit with the same motion, doing a perfect imitation of the producer's movements from earlier that afternoon. Beca's wrist rose and fell as she continued moving her middle finger forward, her fingers flicking around the purposefully light pressure.

"More," Chloe keened, and Beca slid the backing track back up. Chloe felt fingers push through her arousal, and she took them inside herself, clenching. The heel of her hand landed on her clit, and she ground against it.

"Tell me what you want," Beca demanded.

"You know what I want," Chloe shot back, and the hand stilled. Chloe cried out desperately.

"Tell me, or I stop."

"I want you," Chloe gasped. "Please."

She was pleading - a captive to the rhythm.

"Don't stop, please."

Up, and down; in, and out; and maddening circles, curling inside. Chloe thrust against her hand recklessly, pushing herself, eyes locked on the producer through the glass. Beca smirked as she watched Chloe build up, like a song rising to climax.

"Put the headphones on, Chlo," Beca demanded. "I want you to hear yourself come."

Chloe shattered against her hand, curling into herself as she groaned loudly in the empty apartment. She tried to catch her breath as it rushed out of her.

The world came back to her.

Her sheets were tangled, and her phone was muffled under the blanket.

And she was alone.

And Beca has your notebook.

"Fuck," she gasped between harsh, quick breaths.

Fuck, she heard Beca echo in her head.