That night, the music is mind-blowing. Beca isn't happy, or even contented, but there was a nervous energy building up inside her that flowed out of her and into her music. The crowd can somehow sense that tonight is different – and the bar buzzes with a special kind of magic.
She's in the middle of a particularly emotional rendition of across the universe when suddenly her heart stops and did a crazy little music blares on, raw and completely un-synthesized, as Beca stares open-mouthed at the woman standing in front of her.
"Chloe," she says, unable to believe her eyes. "What the hell are you doing here?"
Chloe's eyes move down to meet hers. The naked honesty in her blue eyes sends Beca spiraling slowly out of control. "I came because if I didn't, you probably wouldn't," Chloe says bluntly. There is no accusation in her tone, only a dry, calm amusement that Beca knows only too well.
Beca leaps out of her seat and pulls the redhead into a tight embrace. She buries her face into Chloe's chest and breathes in the warm, familiar scent, mixed with the floral notes of a new perfume. "I missed you," she murmurs, soft words half-buried in the soft folds of the other woman's dress. Maybe people are staring, maybe this isn't exactly the most appropriate way to greet someone who might not even likeher anymore– but hell, Beca doesn't care. She hasn't seen Chloe in months and to her, Chloe will always be a dearly loved friend.
John clears his throat and growls, "Beca," loudly enough to make her scowl and pull away.
"I only finish at two thirty," she says, moving reluctantly back to her mixing table. She goes back to DJ-ing, even though her mind isn't in it anymore, not in the least. "I have a thirty-minute break soon though, at eleven. Wait for me – I'll buy you a drink." She pauses to re-orientate her fingers on the dials as she got through a particularly tricky riff. "Well actually, I'll force John to give me something for free, but I'll make sure it's good."
Chloe smiles. "Sure." For the next fifteen agonizing minutes, Beca finds her gaze constantly drifting towards the beautiful redhead sitting at a table near the back of the bar who returns her stares with hooded, inscrutable ones of her own. Beca doesn't have a clue where tonight will lead them, but then again she's never been particularly good at planning ahead.
Finally, at eleven o'clock, Beca gets out of her seat and goes straight to the bar. Her mind is racing and the lump in her throat is getting so large that it actually might choke her to death before she even reaches Chloe. "Give me something expensive," She says, waving her hand impatiently at Blake. "None of that piss-poor beer you keep shoveling out to drunken brutes, mind you."
Blake eyes John hesitantly. He likes Beca and wants to help her out tonight, but he also likes his job. Very much. John only shrugs resignedly, wondering what this tiny brunette woman had in her that made people twice her height and weight think twice about disobeying her idiotic commands. Two minutes later, Beca taps Chloe on the shoulder and tugs her through the back door of the crowded bar and into the streets.
She passes Chloe the drink.
"Thanks," Chloe says, taking a long sip from the glass. Her lips leave red lipstick stains on the rim and Beca can't help but stare. "I just finished work, so I thought I'd drop by and see you."
"You only finish work at eleven?!" Beca asks incredulously. "I always knew you were crazy, Beale, but a sixteen-hour workday is pretty excessive even for you."
Chloe shrugs. She loves her job, Beca can tell. They'd always been able to read each other's emotions effortlessly and apparently nothing had changed in that department. "The music you were mixing sounded pretty good back there. Well, before you noticed me, that is."
Beca feels a hot blush spread across her cheeks and immediately chides herself for it. "Any idiot with fingers can mix," she says dismissively. "Even Aubrey manages to come up with something half-way decent once in a while."
Chloe lets out a guffaw and Beca feels a tingle go down her spine at the sound. There's a short silence. "She's a lot more than half-way decent at being a best friend, though." Chloe says, raising an eyebrow. Beca catches the jibe and bristles slightly, even though she knows that it's the truth.
Chloe moves closer to Beca. The space between them is crackling with electricity. "Why didn't you answer my calls? Why didn't you ever text?" Chloe leans in until their noses were nearly touching. Her blue-grey eyes are blazing. "Why did you leave me behind?"
Beca breathes in sharply at the hurt in her voice. Chloe's intoxicating proximity makes her heart pound hard in her chest, but she doesn't pull away. All the blood in her body seems to be pooling at her gut, tugging so hard that she has to bite her lip to keep herself from whimpering or doing something she'd regret later... Well, too late for that now.
Their lips meet – collide is more like it – and suddenly the walls Beca had painstakingly built around herself crumble to her feet. Her planet had once again been sucked right back into orbit around Chloe's dense, blinding sun and there's no route back, only the deep dark endless darkness of space without gravity.
The kiss is swirling, magnetic, overwhelmingly powerful; all action and aggression, all sweet and all consuming. Beca is rocked to the core, her head spinning so fast – too fast – to think; she's acting purely on instinct now, raw need rippling through her body like a shock wave. It's a kiss that had been brewing for months, years, now, and it is everything that they'd both wanted, dreamed about, craved. And now it's happening. After months – years – of inaction, they are finally moving and moving so fast that Beca knows at the back of her mind it was now too late to stop or turn around or take anything back; she's hurtling towards certain destruction and yet stupidly, foolishly, she believes that maybe it will be worth it anyway.