It had been a couple days since Beca and Chloe's last… encounter. It's not that Beca was avoiding Chloe. It really wasn't. She was just really busy with her internship and Worlds planning. She admittedly needed some time away from Chloe, or from the situation really. She needed some time to think. Well, she didn't really need to think, but she just needed to take a breath and that was becoming exceedingly difficult to do when Chloe was around. The red head just, well… took her breath away. God, that's cheesy, Beca thought. But the brunette hadn't been avoiding her. The breathing room was simply a happy side effect of how busy she'd been.
Beca had taken Emily to the studio to record "Flashlight" and after mixing in that signature Mitchell voice and style, the track had come out amazingly. And, miracle beyond miracles, Beca's boss had agreed. While he offered a few tweaks, which Beca was happy to accommodate, he had said it was a really solid demo and the DJ was on cloud nine. A few short months ago, she was certain she wasn't cut out to produce music. But now she had something to show for all her hard work, something that could propel her toward her next step, whatever that step may be.
She had called Jesse almost immediately, but he hadn't picked up. She'd left an excited, squealing voicemail asking him to give her a call as soon as possible. And then she'd called Chloe, who was quick to answer and join in on all the excited squealing.
Her final classes were winding down, the arrangement for Worlds was well underway, and she wasn't a complete and total failure as a music producer. Everything was coming up Mitchell. But something felt a little odd. She hadn't been able to spend any real time with her red haired friend the past few days. And Beca… missed her? It was weird. It's not like she hadn't seen her at all. In fact, she'd seen her every day, at least for a brief moment (they did live in the same house after all). That's what was strange about it. She knew this feeling, knew she missed Chloe… but she had no reason to. The hollow, empty feeling made her feel stupid. How could you miss someone that you literally saw only three hours ago? But miss her she did.
So when that brilliantly shining smile peaked over the railing on the staircase to her and Amy's attic room, Beca was more than happy to save the Worlds mix she was working on and shut her laptop.
"Hey there," she said casually, removing her headphones and placing them gingerly onto the desk as the red head climbed the last two steps and entered the room.
Chloe practically bounced over to where Beca was seated at her desk, and the DJ spun in her swivel chair to face the girl. "Hi, friend!"
"What brings you to my humble abode on this fine evening?" Beca asked, adding a bit of a Southern inflection to those last words.
"Well, I do declare. My my, Miss Mitchell," Chloe said, pressing a hand to her chest in true Southern Belle fashion. "You haven't come 'round to see me none and I reckoned it was 'bout time I paid you a visit instead." Chloe paused, taking in her own words before shaking her head with a breathy laugh. "Sorry," her normal voice had returned, "that turned real cowboy real quick, didn't it?" She laughed again.
Beca grinned. "What is happening?!" Chloe's laugh was contagious. Beca couldn't stop herself. She laughed loudly, embarrassingly so.
"I don't know," Chloe cackled through watery eyes. The red head cleared her throat and took a deep breath, calming herself. Once she had blinked back the tears, and Beca had stopped giggling herself, Chloe asked: "Can I, like, try that again?"
Smiling, Beca gave her a nod of permission. The older girl's face took a suddenly serious turn and the DJ was thrown by it. Chloe leaned down, resting one hand on each arm of the computer chair. Beca stared into the light blue eyes that were now only an inch from her own, their noses almost touching. She was reminded of her initiation night and the way Chloe, a complete stranger, had so easily inserted herself into Beca's bubble. At the time, she'd figured the other girl was already drunk, but she'd quickly learned over the next few years that, no, in fact, she wasn't. She simply made a habit of invading others' personal space.
"What I meant was," Chloe started, and Beca could feel the girl's warm breath on her lips. Her body wanted to shudder at the sensation, but she held strong. "I've missed you." Chloe tilted her head and the brunette watched those brilliant blue eyes flutter shut. "Have you missed me?" she asked with the confidence of someone who already knew the answer to their own question.
Beca edged forward slowly, agonizingly so, and brushed her lips gently against her friend's. She couldn't allow Chloe to have all the power here. She had to prove to Chloe, and also to herself, that she could exercise some amount of self-control in the red head's presence. So after a moment so short it barely registered as a moment at all, Beca pulled away and watched as Chloe's eyes flashed open. "Yes," she stated matter-of-factly, "I've missed you," then sunk backward into the chair, away from Chloe.
"Beca Mitchell, you're such a little tease," declared Chloe, releasing the arms of the chair as she stood back and crossed her arms. The scowl Beca was faced with made her think of a petulant child, denied a toy she desperately wanted to play with… but an adorable child. The kind you couldn't bear to punish for more than a few minutes, a child that tended to get her way.
"You love it," Beca replied. Chloe gave an honest to goodness "hmph" at that response. The DJ's jaw dropped in mock surprise.
"Whatever, Becs," the red head smirked, "you admitted you missed me. There's no way you can resist all this," she joked, gesturing to her own form, "for long."
The brunette stood and quickly invaded Chloe's personal space for a change. Standing toe to toe with the taller girl, she spoke with practiced control: "Oh yeah?" Chloe nodded smugly. "I think you have that backwards," she husked, tilting her head until her lips hovered above the soft flesh of the red head's neck, just below her jaw line. "Aren't I the experiment?" She could feel Chloe's body tense, could sense her screwing her eyes shut, could see her biting her lower lip in her periphery. "And you the experimenter?" she asked coolly, holding still for a few seconds too long, allowing the moment to really sink in before she brushed past the other girl and took a seat at the edge of her bed. She looked up to Chloe, whose back was to her, temporarily frozen in time.
And that's what Beca needed, really. She needed to feel like she had control of this situation, and this was the first time she felt that way at all. Ever since this started, Beca felt how she could only imagine Chloe felt right now. She was completely at the whim of the other girl, could do nothing but react to Chloe's actions. And while there was nothing wrong with that, she needed to prove to herself that she could hold herself together for even five minutes, that she could exercise a power of her own over the older girl. It made her feel like she had control over this whole thing they were doing. Sure, she probably didn't. This thing was probably – no, definitely – going to continue to spiral, but she had to feel like maybe it wasn't. At this particular moment, she felt that, perhaps delusional, thought was the only way not to be in a constant state of "I'm totally freaking out about this."
Chloe turned toward her slowly and then sighed like she wanted to say something, but didn't. Beca watched as she fixed her eyes on the floor, contemplating something, then looked back to the brunette and said nothing. Beca was sick of this secrecy.
"You really need to stop doing that," she offered forcefully from her seat on the bed.
"Stop doing what?" Chloe innocently asked.
The DJ released a loud breath. "I know there's something you're not saying, something you're not telling me." The older girl's eyes grew wide as she averted her gaze. "And that's, like, fine or whatever," she sounded more defensive than she intended, "but let's not pretend that you're not doing it, or that I don't notice."
Chloe was clearly taken aback by her comment. This wasn't the way Beca intended these next few seconds to go only a moment ago, and she was a little surprised at herself as well. She hoped that she didn't sound mean, that certainly wasn't how she intended to sound, but she really was sincerely done with not acknowledging whatever extra weirdness was looming around this already weird situation.
Chloe's voice rang out suddenly with a quiet sincerity. "This isn't the first time I've done this."
"Done what?"
Chloe looked down at her feet and shifted slightly, but was certain to reconnect her gaze with Beca's before she answered that question. "Been with a woman," she said.
Initially, Beca felt something akin to surprise. Chloe had never divulged that particular secret to her before and what was weird about that wasn't the fact that she'd done it, but that she hadn't shared that news with Beca. But the brunette's surprise stopped there, because of course. It only made sense. In fact, there was really nothing surprising about it, save for the fact that the red head hadn't talked about it when she so enjoyed talking about literally everything else. Chloe clearly wasn't shy about her sexuality, and from the stories Beca had heard from the other girl, she was almost always willing to try something new and different, and maybe weird, with a partner she trusted. And, of course, that was why the older girl wasn't having the same trouble with this whole "experimentation" thing as Beca was. She knew what she was doing, so to speak. But, then, that did make Beca wonder what had caused Chloe to invent this whole scheme in the first place…
She cleared her throat, and even though she was pretty sure she already knew the answer, and it was an answer that sort of terrified her, she asked the question. "So then this… ex-experimentation thing…" It was unlike Beca to stutter, but stutter she did because, damnit, this was a stutter worthy revelation. "…Is, like… actually… about me, then?" She paused, before quickly amending, "Like me specifically."
"Yeah," Chloe answered with a shrug. "It kind of is," she said, eyes shimmering. "Something like that anyway…" she trailed off. While Beca wasn't expecting that level of shyness and uncertainty, she wasn't surprised by it. It was a weird and awkward thing to have to admit to a person, that you were into them, or, as Beca's mind reverted to a particularly "middle school" way of thinking, that you liked them liked them. She appreciated Chloe's candor, appreciated the truth finally being set free, as it were. It was a scary admission, but oddly, Beca found, upon actually hearing it, that she wasn't really scared of it at all.
The DJ quickly stood and nodded her head once firmly. "Okay then," she said simply.
Chloe's eyes scanned her face, presumably in search of any sign of a crack, her brows narrowed in scrutiny. But after a moment, her face relaxed, and she spoke lightly. "So… that's not, like, a problem then?"
Beca shook her head. "No, Chlo. It's not a problem."
"Good," came Chloe's hurried response as she rushed forward, grasping Beca's face in both hands before fearlessly fusing their lips together. The brunette stumbled backward a bit on impact, but found her footing again by grabbing the taller girl's hips. Chloe's fingers tangled in the hair at the back of her neck, and Beca found her own fingers gripping Chloe more tightly. As her lips moved gently against Chloe's, she felt that feeling of power, of needing to be in control of this situation, amble through her bloodstream once more, until it finally reached her extremities. Beca took a step to her right and tugged at the red head's hips until, with a twist, the backs of Chloe's knees were now the ones pressed against the side of the bed. Beca's hands pushed further, urging Chloe to sit, whose fingertips drifted slowly down the brunette's arms as she gladly obliged.
The new position broke their kiss and pulled Chloe's hips out of Beca's reach. She stood looking down at the girl below her, who looked so strangely innocent and wholly beautiful in that moment, lips parted slightly in an attempt to catch her breath. Yeah, Beca did miss this girl, missed this… this whole thing they were doing. She moved slowly, placing a knee on either side of Chloe's hips. She took the time to settle herself, to revel in the powerful feeling that burned through her in this new, dominant position. A satisfied hum escaped her as she grabbed her friend's face, pulling her into a kiss much more heated than the last.
As Beca had probably thought about a million times over the past week, this was so weird. It'd really only been a few days, a few encounters… but every time she was with Chloe it just felt so… so… natural. Somewhere a covenant of Catholic priests were shaking their heads in unison… but it was true! And who was she to deny the truth of that? Everything just felt right when she was with Chloe. It was like finally matching up two puzzle pieces, or some other clichéd adage.
Beca wasn't denying that it was still weird, but as she lowered the woman beneath her onto her back, mouths still locked and tongues still dueling, she recognized the fact that she was kind of getting used to it, to the weirdness.
She felt the movement of Chloe's hands, reaching for the buttons of Beca's red plaid flannel shirt. The DJ's eyes shot open in a brief moment of panic, but she didn't stop kissing the red head. Chloe's hands moved quickly, but deliberately, starting from the bottom and working her way up. Once three buttons had been unfastened, Beca felt a hand press against her lower abdomen, the digits of which were a bit cold. The touch was cool, but sent a wave of heat up her spine and straight to her cheeks and, closing her eyes, she moaned into her friend's mouth at the sensation. The sound had a rippling effect and it echoed in her own ears as she felt Chloe's hips rise as her hand moved to grip Beca's side and pull her downward. The older girl broke their kiss to let out a breathy noise that sounded almost frustrated to Beca. The brunette had always been an auditory person, so it wasn't surprising that the sound brought a tingling heat to her core. She watched as Chloe made quick work of the remaining buttons.
She continued watching Chloe, watched carefully as the girl looked down at her, shirt now hanging open baring her black bra-clad breasts and flat stomach. Chloe's gaze returned to Beca's eyes, but not before making a brief stop at Beca's mouth, agape and breathing loudly. There was something in those big, blue eyes. Something cute and sexy and devious and innocent and grinning and kind, and Beca wondered how it was even possible for one woman to be all of those things at once… but Chloe Beale was. She always was. Right now, though, Beca could literally see it all shining in her eyes.
The red head's hand lifted, delicately cupping the side of Beca's face. The brunette shut her eyes and leaned into the touch, gently kissing the older girl's palm. She looked back at Chloe just as the girl smiled, then moved her hand to tug at the shoulder of Beca's shirt. The DJ sat up and flashed a smirk toward the woman beneath her before tugging the shirt off and dropping it onto the floor.
Beca leaned down again, supporting her weight by pressing her hands into the mattress on either side of Chloe's shoulders, and recaptured perfect, pink lips with her own. Almost instantly, she felt Chloe's hand groping her left breast. The red head groaned through her nose as she continued fondling clothed flesh. And that's when Beca started to lose that powerful, confident feeling. Suddenly her awareness of the wet heat between her thighs became painful. She tried to grab hold of a thought, an image, of something that would ground her, calm her, as her mind began to race, but she floundered, even as Chloe writhed beneath her. The sounds coming from the other woman were no longer arousing and enjoyable but instead swiftly caused an unexpected anxiety to bubble in Beca's stomach.
Come on, Mitchell. Get it together. You can do this. You want to do this.
Chloe's hands moved around to Beca's back in an attempt to unhook her bra. It took a moment of Chloe's fiddling before Beca lost it entirely. She shot up, panic continuing to rise as she looked down at a shocked and confused Chloe, then immediately climbed off the bed, folding her arms across herself in an attempt to cover the exposed skin. Beca took a few frantic steps backward before grabbing her shirt off the floor and holding it in front of her to cover herself.
"Sorry," Beca uttered, her head downturned and eyes clenched shut.
She heard the movement of bed springs first and it honestly staggered her that Chloe was taking so long to say something. With each passing second, Beca was growing more and more uncomfortable and altogether panicked. The relief that came when Chloe finally spoke was incalculable.
"Beca, it's okay," she insisted in a tone that wasn't quite patronizing, but wasn't exactly not patronizing either.
"No, it's not okay," she shot back, surprising even herself. She opened her eyes, looking at Chloe now perched at the edge of the bed. "I'm terrible. I'm sorry. I just—"
"You're not terrible. It's totally understandable."
She released a huff of a sigh. Not unlike the last time, Beca was feeling altogether overwhelmed. She wanted to talk to Chloe about what was going on, about this terrifying fear, or something, that was overtaking her in these moments they shared together. But Beca Mitchell wasn't an articulate person during her best moments, and this particular moment was certainly not one of her best. No, it was way, way closer to being one of her very worst. So instead of explaining herself properly, she simply said: "I'm just sorry, okay? It's not that I don't want this."
Chloe stood and walked toward Beca, who tried her very best not to flinch (and mostly succeeded) as Chloe placed a comforting hand on her shoulder. "I know, Becs. I don't think that. I don't think that at all." The brunette almost felt like crying. Chloe's words were kind, and filled with all the love and support only a best friend would know how to offer. It was a lot to handle, but she, at the very least, recognized how lucky she was to have such a good and caring friend. "I've been there, okay?" Chloe said, looking directly into Beca's stormy blue eyes. "I have literally been there. I get it. And it's okay."
Beca felt even closer to tears than she had a second ago. And that made her feel stupid, so stupid. She shut her eyes tightly and managed to nod as Chloe's arms wrapped tightly around her in a warm hug.
"It's okay," Chloe insisted again. "I understand. I'm happy to let you set the pace here. Please don't worry about it."
Beca still couldn't bring herself to speak, to respond, but nodded again. She let Chloe hold her like that, allowed the gesture to comfort her, and hoped that the action – or lack of – said everything she needed to say to Chloe in that moment for her.
Several hours of separation from the moment in question had brought Beca some semblance of sanity. And as she thought back to it, she was glad she hadn't said anything more to Chloe. The simplicity of what she had managed to say was all the red haired woman really needed to hear.
But Beca still needed to talk, to work through this fear thing, in order to move forward. It just wasn't Chloe that she needed to talk to.
Amy still wasn't home, and while Beca sometimes felt lonely without her, she was grateful that the Aussie had shacked up with Bumper and was spending most of her time at his place. It gave her some much needed space for all this experimentation and all the thinking and talking that went along with it.
She was again seated at her desk, and had been for the past 20 minutes, staring blankly at her computer screen, which had gone dark from lack of use. Beca reached for her cell and thumbed the green phone icon in the bottom left corner. She scrolled through a few names before she reached her desired call-ee, then pressed her name. A picture of her and the blonde woman at ICCAs three years ago flashed on her screen, and she stared at it for a long moment as she listened to the distant sound of the phone ringing. They were champions, they were hugging, they were happy, and they were realizing they were friends, perhaps for the very first time. When the ringing noise stopped, Beca quickly put the phone to her ear.
"Aubrey? Hey, it's Beca. Um. Is now a good time to talk?"
A/N: Happy 2016, everybody! With the holidays finally over, I should have a bit more time to dedicate to working on this? No promises, but hopefully the next update will come a bit quicker... Mucho love and well wishes for a stellar 2016 to you all!