She didn't think she'd actually do it and now the fearful anticipation is crawling under her skin like ants feasting on a dying butterfly. "Lezbereal. Aca-tastic."? For fucks sake. She wants to be taken out of her self-constructed misery and she's not even sure what way she wants it to go.

Either Chloe will find her silly and tell her to come be aca-tastic with her (somehow the idea of that word doesn't seem so bad when Beca imagines the redhead saying it) or Beca just shot down her future with the Bellas, and she doesn't even know how she feels about that, she thought she'd feel relieved but that is not what stirs in her at the thought of it. It feels more like when she has an unfinished mix, where she just can't find the right beat.

That would also mean that she'd have to find something else to prove to her dad that she's really committed so she can move to L.A. next year. Another group? One that definitely does not have a Beale in it. Beca's stomach suddenly suffers an unexpected case of vertigo and she falls down on her side, clutching on to her phone as if it's a life jacket made out of live venomous snakes. It's been a whole two minutes now and Chloe hasn't replied yet which is highly unusual.

The ants just found more butterflies to gut open and tear to shreds. She keeps looking at the message, challenging it to a staring contest as if it will cave under her stubbornness and somehow make that little typing bubble appear. She can almost hear the butterflies scream in literal gut-wrenching agony now. Three minutes.

Chloe is trying to pick out an outfit for tonight's riff-off. Well, that's not entirely true but also not entirely false. She's trying to pick something for the riff-off but more so she's trying to look nice in front of Beca. Something nice but also comfortable but also something that's not trying too hard to impress while at the same trying to impress. Does that even make sense? Beca. When had this happened?

Well, she knows exactly when. The very first time she saw her Chloe had wanted to get under that plaid shirt and into those tight jeans. And then they had their shower moment. And that's when Chloe knew for sure that she wanted to get under that loofah. Beca could sing, she could harmonise on demand in a shower, literally. Maybe it was because Chloe was already majorly riled up thanks to Tom so when Beca started singing while being stark naked, Chloe couldn't exactly stop herself from getting slightly more turned on, although she still solemnly swears that she did not intend for that to happen.

Beca could've just left the shower, she could've pushed Chloe right out the way and stormed out, leaving Chloe with more shame than she'd been able to handle. Beca could've done that. But Beca didn't. But in the moment Chloe was still too hot, in all senses of the word, to be anything but turned on.

She was however not about to start something in the shower with a girl that barely knew her name, and certainly not while Tom was waiting in the next stall. That wouldn't be fair on anybody and as much as Chloe enjoyed casual hookups with both guys and girls, she was always honest towards everybody involved.

She'd been on the other end of it once, led on for far too long and in the end she felt used, like she'd been the subject of an experiment with a very negative outcome. It'd taken her a while to get over that and she vowed to never put anybody else in that position.

And then Beca had auditioned.

Chloe had had time to calm down after the shower, days, too many days, too much time to think about how good they sounded and how perfectly relaxed they had been, how Chloe couldn't believe that was only their second interaction, and they hadn't even surpassed a total of five minutes together yet. It all seemed too good to be real and in the hours leading up to the auditions Chloe was sure that the only time she'd ever see Beca again was across campus, Beca spotting Chloe in the corner of her eye, maybe at best they exchange an awkward wave of the hand but she can see Beca quickly turning that cute behind on her and leaving Chloe as fast as she had found her.

The auditions started and sure enough Beca wasn't there. She wasn't there and the auditions were making a matching score for Chloe's mood: with each audition everything just got a little bit worse.

And then it was over. Beca hadn't showed up and Chloe could feel her chest tightening, in a way it hadn't for years.

But then, in the far corner of her periphery she sees a tiny shape of dark clothes and brown hair and her blood suddenly feels like nitroglycerin, like she could go off at any second if she just so much as breathes.

How she even manages to call Beca forward she doesn't know.

And then Beca sits down. She asks for the cup holding all of Aubreys pens. Somewhere far at the back of her mind Chloe can feel how this annoys Aubrey but it's only very faint, she can barely even hear herself speak over her heart threatening to burst through its cage.

And then Beca starts auditioning.

And something changes within Chloe.

With every word, with every twist and turn and beat of that cup against the floor she feels herself fall uncontrollably.

This isn't just some talented hot girl that Chloe wants to casually have a good time with. This is serious. This is...oh my aca-gods, this is Dixie Chicks serious.

Chloe has already been through her entire wardrobe once, nothing seems right, she's about to start round two when she hears the familiar buzz of her phone lying on her bed. She quickly skips over and before she can even reach it she reads the French nickname on the screen and her eyes light up, she can't help the large grin forming on her lips. She imagines Beca asking something practical, like will they be allowed to sing something other than "I saw the sign", Beca seems shy sometimes but she never wants to arrive unprepared, she asked Chloe what to expect for the SBT party as well.

Chloe slides the screen to the right and smiles even wider when she sees that Beca called her Chlo and she giggles when she sees that Beca identified herself, and then her smile sort of stops, like the music at a club when they're closing, with the fluorescent lights coming on too quickly and the contrast is too strong, like you're off-beat with the world for a moment, and you can't quite move differently because you were moving to the song, moving with the song.

Chloe's suddenly off-beat with the world, she reads the text over and over, it doesn't make sense, none of it makes sense, what does lezbereal, you don't say that unless you're, Aubrey doesn't hate you, aca-tastic? You don't say lezbereal if you're not a rainbow-cookie, what do you mean quit? She feels like the lights suddenly changed, like everything moved and it's just slightly out of place like when Chandler tried to be nice and clean Monica's apartment but everything is slightly wrong, Chloe can feel her chest tightening and she can't bear to look at her phone anymore, it suddenly looks alien. Her fingers react without her mind stopping her and she types out a reply and then turns the phone on mute and puts it upside down on the bedside table. She slowly moves over to the light-switch and puts her finger to it, it feels strange, like all her nerve-endings are running high, she turns the switch off, the decrease in light calming her ever so slightly. She doesn't move, she just stands holding her finger over the button and silently she leans her head against the wall, her legs suddenly feeling like they're not interesting in supporting her anymore. She can feel her nodes starting to hurt slightly.

The typing bubble suddenly appears. And disappears just as fast. It gets replaced with a one word text and the ants inside her just turned into wolves, circling round, ready for the kill.

"Okay."

It's not. Nothing's okay.