Beca had called Aubrey with every intention of spilling her guts, of being honest, of really talking about this thing and the feelings she was having about it, but now that she had the former captain on the phone, she didn't have a clue what to say, where to start. And even if she did, she was pretty sure that she wouldn't have known how to say it all anyway.

So instead she said nothing, just sat silently with the phone pressed to her ear, eyes shut tightly, shaking her head at herself, at the situation she had put herself into.

"Beca?"

Still she said nothing. She did stupidly nod, sort of absently. Of course Aubrey couldn't see her, but the logic of that wasn't filtering through her brain at the moment.

"Did I lose you?"

A breath escaped her as she moved her mouth in a valiant effort to form any singular word that would let Aubrey know she was still there. Luckily, the breath itself was enough.

"Okay, I can hear you breathing. So, judging by your inability to speak, I'm going to venture a guess and say you're calling about Chloe?"

Beca nodded again. This time, rational thinking suggested that, you know, nodding over the phone was as useless as flicking a light switch when the power's out. She took a moment to shake her head and roll her eyes at her own idiocy.

"Right…" Aubrey started. "Well then, I suppose the best I can do without you actually saying anything about what's going on… is to say that whatever it is that's happening, or whatever it is you're feeling, it's going to be okay. And I really do want to talk about it with you, help you if I can, once you're able to find the words to talk about it."

The brunette found herself, once again, surprised and altogether touched by Aubrey's kindness and understanding. She had never known the older girl to be thoughtful or sympathetic or, really, even considerate when it came to the feelings of others. It was something that Chloe had always assured her that Aubrey had the capacity for, but that Beca had never experienced first-hand… well, not until this past week where it had been shown and proven to her again and again and again. She reminded herself that this Aubrey, today's Aubrey, the one she had on the phone, was a different Aubrey than the one who had chewed her out at semis her freshman year, an Aubrey who had, to put it simply, grown up. An Aubrey who was Beca's friend, and wanted to be a supportive and loving one at that.

The thought filled her with a feeling of warmth, which managed to melt the freeze on her brain and freed up her jaw, allowing her, finally, to string some words together into something that, she thought, at least resembled a complete thought.

"I'm scared."

"Scared? You? The big, bad Beca Mitchell?" Her joking tone, Beca assumed, was a sad attempt to lighten the mood, to show Beca how silly she was being. But Beca already knew that. That's what she probably hated most about this whole friggin' thing! It was making her over-dramatic. She was losing her cool and she already felt like a total fucking idiot. She really didn't need anyone reminding her of that fact.

"I'm serious, Aubrey! Look, I know it's stupid, but this, like, fear, or whatever… It's overwhelming me! And I don't know what to do, how to fix it…"

She heard a quiet sigh on the other end of the phone. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that... Just… tell me what happened."

There was a long moment of silence after that. Aubrey was waiting, presumably patiently, for Beca to speak, but she needed a moment, not only to collect her thoughts on the subject, but to decide if this is what she really wanted to do… to discuss her innermost thoughts with her former enemy. Okay, that was unfair and Beca knew it. She remembered the picture that accompanied Aubrey's contact info in her cell phone, of them hugging after the ICCAs performance. The moment where the two women came to finally respect each other, love each other even, beautifully captured in the after performance high, before they had even been crowned national champions. Beca had to stop thinking of this woman as a former rival, and recognize her for what she had proven herself to be over the past 3 years, and especially over the last week, a true friend. Someone who cared about Beca, who wanted her to be happy. Someone who was looking out for her best interests, even from afar after graduation.

And so she did what she had intended to do when she picked up her cell in the first place: she spilled her guts. She gave the bulleted list, the short version of the story, of what had happened between her and Chloe thus far (leaving out, of course, the conversation she'd overheard outside the tent the night this all began) and then recounted, in as much detail as she could muster, what had happened just a few hours ago, and how she had felt as it transpired.

"So what is it you're afraid of, Beca?" Aubrey asked softly when she finished her story.

"I—" but she stopped herself. She actually hadn't really thought of that. Beca knew that was stupid, because of course the obvious analysis technique would be to try to figure out what was causing her to feel such paralyzing fear, then address that issue. But Beca wasn't the best at these things and her focus, thus far, had purely been on just stopping the feeling, not how to stop the feeling. "I… don't know."

"You don't know?"

That sounded a lot like a judgment to Beca, and she didn't like it. She didn't like it one bit. "No!" she practically shouted. "I don't know. Okay?!"

Yes, she probably overreacted a little bit, but Aubrey had the uncanny ability, just with the tone of her voice, to cut right through her in a way no one else ever had. It was sort of disturbing, really, how she could do that. And weird, honestly, if she continued that line of thinking… because the ability to pull such ferocity out of Beca over the littlest thing could really only mean, well… that Beca actually cared what Aubrey thought. Why should she care? She was Beca effin' Mitchell and Beca effin' Mitchell totally didn't care about stuff… right?

"Okay! Okay," Aubrey conceded. "But don't you think that we should try to figure that part out?"

Beca gave a silent eye roll to an empty room, but reminded herself that she had been the one to call Aubrey and that, yes, she did, in fact, kind of need the blonde to help her here. It's not like she had any other options. "I guess," was all she offered, though.

"Okay then… So are you – and don't yell at me, but – are you afraid of, like, the act itself?"

She thought that maybe she should be. I mean, she had absolutely no idea what in the hell she was doing and her experience with sex more generally was… limited, but as she considered that possibility, she knew, just knew, that wasn't it. Chloe had a way of making Beca feel like she could do anything and she also had a way of making Beca feel at ease. No, she wasn't afraid of having sex with Chloe, the act of it anyway. She wasn't unconcerned about it, but it surely wasn't the cause of the overwhelming fear. "Weirdly? No, not really," she finally answered.

"That's good, Beca. That's really good!" Was it just her imagination or was Aubrey a little too excited to learn that information? Beca thought it was sort of creepy, the way she said that… but she supposed Aubrey had the right to be pleased on Chloe's behalf. "So then… is it more about, like, what it all means?"

"What it means?" Beca shot back too quickly. "What do you mean, 'what it all means?"

She heard Aubrey clear her throat. "You know… like, well… like what having sex with her would mean… you know, like what it would mean for you?"

Beca, again, felt stupid for not considering something so obvious. Obvious insofar as Beca was acting like this whole thing was somehow unique. Of course it wasn't. Of course it was all the same sort of stuff a person has to deal with when connecting with someone sexually, or romantically, for the first time. All the same concerns and all the same fears were at work here. "Experimenting" with Chloe was no exception.

"I hadn't really thought about that…" Beca answered honestly, her voice tinged with something akin to sadness.

"I mean… if-if I were in, you know—" Aubrey cut herself off. She sounded hesitant, nervous even, and was clearly unsure if she should say what she was about to say because of course she couldn't stop now. If she didn't continue on her own, Beca would have asked her what she was going to say. It was odd to hear Aubrey, a person with an almost excessive amount of outward self-confidence, sounding uncertain about anything. Beca hadn't heard such a tone from the blonde woman since she had begun to second guess everything she knew about a capella in favor of the insane notions of a nonconforming alt girl. "If I were, like, in your position," Aubrey hedged, "I'd probably be worried about, you know, what it said about me, what it meant about my sexuality…"

It was another super obvious thought that Beca hadn't really thought of, or at the very least, hadn't yet found the words to articulate it. Yeah, that definitely was a little scary. If Beca had sex with Chloe, and especially if she enjoyed it, would that make her… what? What would that make her? Bisexual? Suddenly, an even more frightening thought quickly flashed before her… what if she was a lesbian? She swallowed hard and panic briefly gripped her, but she was able to shake that thought swiftly from her mind. Sex with Jesse may not have been great, but she still enjoyed it. There was no way that Beca Mitchell wasn't into dudes, but it was very possible that if she was into Chloe – which was a glaringly evident fact that she was slowly but surely (and finally) coming to terms with – then maybe she was into women in a much more general sense…

And yeah… definitely scary, but Beca had always been unconventional. She was a nonconformist at heart, someone who defied labels and put little, if any, stock into them. The fact that her sexuality was potentially changing, or growing, was slightly petrifying, sure, but it wasn't probably what was holding her back here… because whatever having sex with Chloe might have "meant" for the world's definition of her own sexual orientation, well… Beca simply didn't give a shit about that. She wasn't afraid of labels. Beca was Beca, and no word would change that.

So maybe that was part of it, part of the problem at hand, but it certainly wasn't the whole story. In fact, it wasn't even half the story. It was some minuscule amount of what was really freaking her out.

A sick feeling started to bubble in Beca's stomach. "Maybe a little…" was her shy response.

"Oh." Beca could tell Aubrey was surprised by that, could tell that the blonde had felt certain she had just pinpointed exactly what it was Beca was afraid of, and really didn't have anything else to offer. "So… something else, then?" she genuinely queried.

Yeah, Beca thought, something else. Aubrey wasn't really that far off. She was right to ask the question she asked, to point the brunette toward what this experiment might mean. She was just a bit off the mark on what it was Beca was worried it meant.

Aubrey had shone the light in the right direction. It illuminated something for Beca that the former captain wasn't even aware of, that she couldn't see herself, but Beca could see it. She could see it in full Technicolor. Beca's fear wasn't of the act, and it wasn't of what the act might mean about her sexual orientation. No, Beca was afraid of what it might mean for her relationship with Chloe. She could feel it tingling within her: this relationship was going to change. And, yeah, that's what Beca wanted from the start. She wanted to be closer to Chloe, as close as possible, really, but… Well, she hadn't realized that wanting to be closer to her best friend necessarily meant that she maybe, kind of, sort of liked the other girl. Like, to borrow that middle school phrase again, liked her liked her. Or perhaps even… well, worse than liked her.

Beca wasn't quite ready to communicate that, though. Only bits and pieces of the revelation had even been properly articulated in her own mind at that point, so she surely wasn't about to attempt to share those incomplete thoughts with Aubrey. Instead, and honestly without really thinking about anything at all, Beca said something else, something that surprised even herself.

"Jesse…"

"Jesse?" Aubrey sounded confused.

"Well, um…" Why the fuck did you say that?! she scolded herself. And really, she had no idea what possessed her to say that, to mention him. She had to cover, had to say something else. She knew it, but she couldn't. Instead, she sputtered over her words as she tried anything that would even remotely pass for English.

But Aubrey Posen wasn't a particularly patient human being. She cut Beca off before she could even attempt to explain herself. "Why is he a problem? I thought you guys broke up?"

Beca shook her head vehemently. Heat rushed to her face. "No, no, no, no, no" she hurried. "Uh… I mean, yes… we did… um, sort of. I mean—like, n-not… forever? I don't know!" She was flustered, and inarticulate, and she knew it, but it's not like she could stop it.

"You don't know?!" Aubrey was practically yelling, which seemed incredibly unnecessary to Beca, but she tried not to focus on it. "Do you know anything, Beca? Anything at all?!" And yeah, Beca could understand Aubrey's confusion, and her frustration. It's not like she'd been eloquent, or even coherent really, during this conversation. But she could sense also that Aubrey was actually, like, angry… for some reason. The blonde honestly sounded almost hurt. And Beca didn't know why she brought up Jesse in this moment, but she had… and maybe it was a Freudian slip of some kind because now that she was thinking about it, yeah, Jesse did actually have a place in this fear equation. After all, if her relationship with Chloe changed in the way she was terrified it might, then Jesse was, well, no longer in the equation. They wouldn't be picking up where they left off when they "took a break." She wouldn't be meeting him in LA. In fact, the way she envisioned her entire future would be caput. Graduation was going to happen any minute now, really, and this thing, this goddamn thing, with Chloe… if it continued…and if it continued in the way a rational Beca had to concede that it, at the very least, could… well, then she really had no future at all, or at least that's how it felt, to Beca.

And that was a lot of fucking pressure to be under right now, especially with Worlds right around the corner, too. What was Beca even going to say to Jesse if all those things that she thought could potentially happen, did actually happen?

The brunette took several deep breaths, attempting to calm herself, to will her mind into a place where it could manage to speak to Aubrey in a clear and sensible manner because she knew, despite whatever exasperation the other girl was currently experiencing, she was here to help Beca. She wanted to help Beca deal with this.

Just as she was beginning to get a hold of herself and to form rational thoughts again, Aubrey did something that the Aubrey of the past never would have done. She apologized, almost readily. "I'm sorry. That was unfair of me."

Beca was shocked by the raw sincerity of the blonde's expression of regret, and in this moment she realized that she needed to stop being surprised that Aubrey was a kind and decent human being. She'd proven herself enough already, time and again. Beca really needed to let go of the way they clashed freshman year. Now was the time to do it, and as she loudly exhaled, she could practically feel the built-up resentment rush from her body and evaporate into the air around her.

"I thought I was going to meet him in LA after graduation," she slowly explained. "I thought we were going to get back together. That's… well, that's what we had talked about anyway." Beca hadn't shared that information with anyone, not even with Chloe. She had, more or less, refused to talk about her split with the Treble to anyone who asked. She wasn't really sure why, but she just didn't want to talk about it with anyone. It was… too hard to talk about. Not because it was painful (thought it was), not really… but it felt almost embarrassing to her, to talk about it. So she just hadn't, except to tell the Bellas that she and Jesse were no longer together. All of them, of course, shared their condolences and offered a variety of opportunities to mope and eat cookie dough straight out of the container, but Beca had rejected all of it. She told herself that was because she knew her and Jesse would be together again, so mourning over the loss of something that would knowingly be rediscovered in just a few months seemed a waste of time. But now…

She didn't get a chance to finish that thought, because Aubrey interrupted to ask her the same question she was asking herself. "And… you don't think that anymore?"

She still felt hesitant, felt unsure, about exactly what it was she was thinking and feeling, but her brain decided to make the leap anyway, to say the thing her gut was telling her was the undeniable truth. "No, Bree. I don't."

A/N: So maybe this is a weird thing to say, but I really enjoyed writing this one, so I hope you guys enjoy it, too! This chapter was supposed to have another scene... but the Beca/Aubrey conversation ended up being a bit bigger, and longer, than I thought it would be... so I'm going to have to restructure my outline a bit moving forward. But never fear! You guys will still get all the same goodness. Happy almost Friday, nerds.