It's ten a.m., and Beca is feeling restless. She has been working on the blue city soundtrack for about an hour and isn't making much progress. She decides to grab some breakfast and listen to some music on her laptop – and worry about the soundtrack later.

She's halfway through her bowl of cereal, flipping through songs on her iTunes playlist when suddenly she hears her own voice blaring back at her. She nearly drops her laptop in surprise. It's one of the original songs she wrote back in college, on the night they'd nearly kissed.

Beca blinks and listens to the song on loop for a while. It's good, better than she'd ever remembered, not melodramatic or overly sappy, but quiet and mellow, with an earthy, subtle undercurrent of wistfulness. Then, in a rare moment of foolhardy courage, she decides, fuck it, it's about time someone heard these. And Beca can't imagine showing anything this personal to anyone else but Chloe, so that someone would definitely have to be her. Besides, the songs had always been about Chloe, for Chloe, to Chloe – no one else would get them like she would.

She takes a deep breath, walks into her room, where the half-filled boxes of her things still lie stacked against the back wall, and starts rummaging around for her stack of empty CDs. By the time she finds what she's looking for, she's sticky with sweat and more convinced than ever that she probably should find some time to finish her packing.

She returns to the living room and burns the songs on her untitled 'Chloe' playlist to the CDs and texts Chloe.

Beca: Free for lunch today?

She flicks through lame articles on her phone until Chloe replies twenty minutes later.

Chloe: Sure. But you'll have to come and meet me at the office
Beca: 12 pm right?
Chloe: Yup

About an hour later, Beca starts making her way through the streets. She's clutching the stack of CDs in her hand. Impulsively, she decides to stop at a florist along the way to get a bouquet of flowers because she knows Chloe was a sucker for gestures like that and at this point in time, she really needs all the help she can get.

Beca reaches the lobby of the office building fifty minutes later. The same fashionable receptionist from a while back was at the counter. If anything, she looks even more suspicious than she was a week ago. "Do you have an appointment?" She asks, training a pair of steely grey eyes on Beca.

Beca gulps and tries to hide the bouquet of flowers under her jacket. It doesn't help. The receptionist raises a single, unimpressed eyebrow. "I'm just waiting for someone," she explains.

"Mm, Ms. Beale, right?" The receptionist asks.

"Yeah." Beca marvels at the other woman's remarkable memory.

To her great surprise, the woman actually grunts and says, "Cute."

Beca frowns and opens her mouth to protest. "She's not my girlfriend or anything, I-"

The receptionist rolls her eyes, completely unconvinced. "No friend of mine has ever showed up to my workplace with flowers."

Beca blushes and shifts. "They're just, you know – they were on sale, so..."

"What's on sale?" Chloe asks, suddenly appearing behind Beca. She's beaming happily and looking so stunning in a tight-fitting white lace dress that Beca's breath actually catches in her throat. She has to awkwardly clear it again in order to regain respiratory control, and this doesn't escape the attention of the desk clerk, who smirks at her.

"You look great," Beca stammers, taking a couple of steps forward before realizing she still has the flowers trapped underneath her jacket. And the stack of CDs clutched in her other hand. Chloe notices them immediately, because apparently flowers aren't all that disguisable.

"They're uh – they're for you," Beca says, rather unnecessarily. She holds out the flowers and the CDs, blushing slightly. Her heart is doing death-defying flips in her chest, and she feels horrifically light-headed. It reminds her of the day she auditioned for the Barden Bellas, Chloe's beautiful blue eyes locked on to hers, calm and sure like a bright summer sky. It's too late to back out now anyway, not when she's standing in the middle of Chloe's office building with flowers hidden under her jacket.

Chloe takes the flowers and the CDs from her, looking perplexed, surprised, and rather touched. "Thanks. Um, what's the occasion?"

"Er... I wanted to thank you for letting me stay with you." There's a strangled sound from the counter and Beca whips her head round just in time to see the desk clerk stifling laughter. She glares at the woman – who gives her an insufferably knowing look – and adds pointedly, "and the flowers were on sale."

Chloe raises her eyebrows and is about to say something else, but Beca grabs her by the arm and leads her out of the office before the desk clerk hears anything else. "And the CDs...?" Chloe studies them curiously, turning them over in her hands.

"It's um, a playlist," Beca says, waving her hand awkwardly at the CDs. "They're – they're mash-ups I made. There're some original songs too."

Chloe looks thrilled. "Original songs?! You sang?"

The tips of Beca's ears have already turned bright pink. "Um... Not particularly well, but yeah, I sang."

"Bullshit," Chloe says. "Why d'you think I barged my way into the shower with you that day?"

"Um, because you wanted to see me naked?" Beca asks.

Chloe laughed. "Well yeah, of course there was that," She admits. She shoots Beca a trademark wink. Beca's insides lurch and twist. She opens her mouth and closes it again, looking so dumbfounded that Chloe decides to take pity on her and change the subject. "C'mon, I need food. Bagels. Friday is bagel day."

Beca has no complaints. She loves bagels, and it's soon clear that Chloe has the location of every decent restaurant memorized. The conversation is tenser, a little more jittery, but in an electrifying, almost magical way, like a tightrope walker balancing on a rope two hundred feet from the ground. Chloe's golden-auburn hair glints in the sunlight. She smells faintly of soap and cinnamon and flowers. Chloe looks so damn beautiful that Beca has to squelch down an almost irrepressible desire to lean across the table and kiss her. Repeatedly.

Chloe finishes her bagel and wipes her mouth. She settles back into her seat and grins at Beca. "God, I can't wait to listen to the CDs. Think I'll probably plug it into my computer at work or something."

"Yeah, just don't get yourself fired," Beca says. "I'm broke, and someone has to pay the bills."

Chloe laughs. "Freeloader."

Beca grins. "You invited me. No take-backs."

Chloe rolls her eyes and checks her phone. "I gotta go," She says reluctantly, her eyes lingering on Beca's. "Walk me back?"

Beca shrugs. "I don't have anything else to do anyway." They leave the restaurant and head down the street, side-by-side, shoulders bumping whenever they squeezed past a crowded area. It isn't long before the tall office building looms large in front of them, and Beca resists the urge to drag her footsteps like a petulant child. She doesn't, however, stop herself from devising an elaborate plan to ferret Chloe away from the office. "...No one will notice. We'll take a train down to Broadway and catch a show. Or go to a museum together. You know, like Ferris Bueller's Day Off. Or Roman Holiday."

Chloe laughs. "I thought you didn't watch movies."

"Jesse's obsessed with old films, and I'm a better girlfriend than people give me credit for," Beca says, grinning.

"Okay." Chloe says.

Beca gapes at her. "Wait. What?!"

"On Saturday," Chloe clarifies. "Today I'm going back to work. Because at least one of us has to behave like a mature, responsible adult." They reach the lobby of Chloe's office building. Beca lifts a hand in farewell, and Chloe smiles and slips into the lift.

Beca must've continued standing there staring dumbly at the lifts for quite some time, because the receptionist clears her throat. "Yo, you done daydreaming? The rest of us have work to do."

"I'm not preventing you from doing your work," Beca says.

"You're in my line of sight," the receptionist says.

"So?" Beca frowns.

"Your bad fashion is driving me nuts," The receptionist replies, grinning slightly.

Beca laughs, rolls her eyes, and leaves the office, Chloe's impossibly beautiful smile still seared into her brain.