Beca's life becomes a long distracting cycle after her hospital stay. The Bellas become closer and spend most of their time together bonding and getting ready for regionals. If she isn't with the Bellas, she is with Chloe. They spend time together like best friends, but Chloe hasn't brought up the kiss in the hospital and hasn't done much but hug Beca. It leaves the girl very confused but kind of relieved from having to deal with the heavy morality questions hanging on her mind. And if Beca isn't with Chloe, then she is with Jesse. He is very nice and cute, Beca won't lie. He tried to kiss her a few weeks ago, and she thought about it, but got scared, because she doesn't know how she even feels about him.
Upon the end of the evening in the regionals fiasco, Beca finds herself handcuffed in the back of a cop car. She reflects on the night and how it so simply started. And now after her throwing her signature left hook over some man pushing at her friend Jesse, or whatever he is, a shattered window probably shattered her likelihood of ending up in LA. Beca tries to keep her rationality in her mind as she rubs the handcuffs against her wrists in anger at this fucked up situation.
Jail is cold. And almost damp. She sits on a bench across from a cross dresser and diagonal from most likely a cocaine dealer and Beca feels wimpy with all the earrings out of her body. A rather aggressive pal of the cocaine lady makes fun of Beca's apparel. And when Beca is about to engage in her first ever jail fight, the bars open and an officer tells her she has been bailed out.
Beca finds Jesse outside, and the idea of him bailing her out makes her stomach flutter slightly. Not in the way it usually does with Chloe though. She quickly wants to punch the boy when she pieces together that he called her dad. And the car ride with her dad driving and yelling at Beca about no more LA and the felon she basically is becoming and Beca screaming profanities at her father and Jesse silently in the backseat, it goes down for the record books as one of the most awkward car rides of her life.
She feels extremely upset walking up the stairs of Baker Hall. Upset doesn't begin to describe. She is drained of hope. No more LA, her dreams, now, crushed like the window she broke. Beca is surprised to say the least when she witnesses all the Bellas sitting in her dorm room waiting for her.
And when Chloe says, "Of course we waited up for you." She feels her stomach do a flip.
After Aubrey leaves, the rest of the Bellas slowly filter out with pats on the back to Beca and quick hugs. Until it leaves just Beca and Chloe in the room after Fat Amy leaves yelling that the night is still young enough to party Australian style. Whatever the hell that means. When the door closes, Beca feels Chloe's arms wrap around her in a tight hug. And Beca has never felt more at home. And then Beca just starts crying, for the first time since the suicide attempt.
"Beca, it's okay, I'm here," Chloe whispers while her hands rub up and down Beca's back and eventually rest right near the bottom of Beca's vertebral column.
"My dad," Beca sobs out.
She can't continue, and she knows Chloe doesn't understand the slightest. But the ginger still holds her tight and wipes away the tears. Beca feels her insides crumbling, honestly, she is cut off from future hope by her dad. He doesn't even care at all. And that ideal is enough to make her heart sink and the tears to flow.
Chloe just leads Beca to the edge of her bed and they sit there while Beca cries into Chloe's neck and grips fistfuls of that blue sweater in her hands. And Chloe just holds her and pets the girl's hair down and whispers encouraging words to the younger girl. Chloe is patient and waits until Beca's crying slows. She doesn't ask until Beca speaks, and Beca appreciates it.
"My dad said I couldn't go to LA anymore," Beca says through her cracked voice.
"Like on spring break or something?" Chloe asks.
Beca just now realizes she hasn't been sharing these big parts of herself with Chloe, and she almost feels dishonest. Because just a mere twenty minutes ago, Chloe learned Beca made mixes for the first time. So Beca sighs and tells the girl about how she wanted to go to LA first and the crazy guidelines her dad gave her before she could pursue her dream. And now he just suddenly cut her off from that.
Chloe just stays silent when Beca finishes and almost looks upset. Beca waits for the girl to speak and fiddles with her earrings while she waits. "That's not fair of him," Chloe says, tightlipped.
Beca nods and sobs, "Yeah. What's wrong?"
"Nothing, just why did you never tell me these huge things about you?" Chloe sounds hurt and Beca feels like a piece of shit.
"I tend to not be an open person," Beca reverts to her sarcasm.
"I'm here for you Beca, I really am. You need to know that. And God I care about you a lot. But how am I supposed to do all that when I give you everything, and all you give me are tiny bits and pieces. I'm not mad, I just get irritated," Chloe grunts.
"Are you really mad at me right now?" Beca stands up.
"No," Chloe sighs, "I can't even try to be mad at you anymore. I've come to realize that it just doesn't work. I just can't stay mad at you."
"Thank you?" Beca questions. "But you're getting irritated."
"Fine, I'm not irritated, that was a bad word choice. I just feel like sometimes you don't want me to know you," Chloe mumbles.
Beca observes how she holds one arm and kicks almost shyly at the ground, and Beca genuinely feels bad. And she genuinely wants to let Chloe in. "It's just that I have learned to never let anyone in, that way I can't get hurt when they leave. Because that is what always happens, they always leave."
"Becs, that's no way to live," Chloe says, "It sounds incredibly lonely."
"Well I don't know if you have picked up on it, but I haven't really been wanting to live for a while now."
Chloe's jaw drops in shock and then she closes her mouth again, "Are you trying to be cynical and hostile to scare me off?"
"Chloe, I'm just making this easier for you," Beca mumbles, and she knows it makes no sense to the ginger. "So you won't have to miss me when I'm gone."
Chloe's eyes are done welling up, but producing a steady stream of tears. And she sits down on the edge of the bed and stares up at Beca with a saddening look, "How could you say that? Do you know what happened when I found out you tried to…to kill," she almost chokes on her words, "yourself? I never cried so much in my life, and I shut down. Beca, I could never go on if you were gone. You're too amazing, too damn important."
Beca shakes her head, "You don't mean that. Nobody sticks around or wants to care that much."
"Really? Because I could give you a whole fucking list of people who would be destroyed if you were gone," Chloe almost yells.
Beca slouches against the wall and gapes at Chloe. Chloe is red and a blubbering mess, and the amount of passion and emotion in the voice of the lovely senior almost convinces Beca that it is the truth. Maybe it is? But she knows it isn't, not when her whole future and purpose has been diminished by her father cancelling Beca's dreams over a shattered window.
"What's the point now? I don't have LA, I am even more hopeless than before. Just leave already, I want to be gone!" Beca is yelling and crying, her whole world is messed up and this makes no sense. She just needs this all to stop.
"Beca Mitchell, you have so much going for you," Chloe cries. "Don't ever believe that there is no hope for you. You can do anything, and you have a purpose."
"What do I have other than LA?" Beca rhetorically asks. "Music is all I have, and I can't pursue it."
"You are brilliantly minded, you could do anything. And you have so many people. You have the Bellas, Jesse, you have me," Chloe pleads.
Beca feels her heart squeeze, and she needs to build her walls right back up. She crosses her arms, "Chloe, you do know I can never give you what you want, right?"
"All I want from you is for you to be happy," the ginger says it so sincerely, it switches a flip in the younger girl. Beca loses the sense to argue, and she just stands there. Maybe Chloe is right.
"That's hard to ask of me," Beca jokes.
"I'm right here with you so it can happen," Chloe smiles. "Because, you, Beca Mitchell, are an amazing human who deserves happiness. And I want you to have that happiness, because you deserve nothing less. So it won't be hard to ask, because I will be with you every step of recovering from this and helping you love yourself. Which is a pretty easy task to do."
Chloe's words are a catalyst in Beca's brain. It's a like a surge of hope and life and love in her brain. And in that moment everything seems so fucking right, so she boldly crosses the room in two strides and holds that beautiful face in her palms and crashes her lips into the redheaded beauty's.
A soft and delicate hand frames Beca's cheek as she crashes down to sit beside the girl as their lips move in sync. Beca can feel her heart pounding and every cell of her body burn with life. She feels warm. She feels a purpose. She feels love. Beca cups her hand on the back of Chloe's neck to pull her in closer. And Chloe eagerly follows. Beca can feel the electricity of the hands running up and down her back and the lips attacking hers. She feels alive. Like a light switch in her mind has turned on. The idea of Chloe being forbidden in her mind escapes her, every thought escapes her. All she can feel is Chloe in this moment and the intimacy in the true happiness that life is capable of holding.
And she wants more.
She pushes the delicate shoulders back, and attached at the lips she follows. Her body crashes on top of Chloe's and it is a perfect fit as if their two bodies were carved to fit together perfectly. She feels Chloe groan at the contact and it spurs the brunette on more. Beca removes her lips and quickly attacks the redhead's neck, and she is spurred in her kissing and sucking from the hands roaming all over the top of her clothes. And when Chloe's hands move down to Beca's ass, Beca sits back to pull her shirt off.
Suddenly, she feels two hands on her elbows and her shirt being pulled back on her body. Beca looks into Chloe's beautiful blue eyes, and she has concern in them as she holds Beca's shirt on her body.
"Why did you stop me?" Beca asks.
Chloe sighs and sits up and therefore Beca is sitting in her lap facing the girl with an adorably frustrated expression, "I know you aren't ready."
"No, probably not. But if feels right," Beca groans.
"You can't let the spur of the moment fuel you, you are still coming to terms with your sexuality and I don't want to push you at all. Even though I want this as much as you," Chloe reasons.
Beca climbs off of Chloe's lap and out of her bed and runs her hands through her hair, because now the nagging thought and fear is in the back of her mind. Beca hates herself, why can't she accept it? It all just felt so great and normal, but now she just feels dirty because of old ideals in her head.
"Are you regretting it already?" Chloe asks cynically.
"You don't need to be a dick about my problems," Beca snaps in the middle of her stress. "I'm fucking terrified and you getting pissed off every two seconds is not helping. So maybe I do regret it."
"You do realize you talk to me a hell of a lot worse than I talk to you? I'm not the harsh one here," Chloe bites her lip, almost to hold back tears.
"Sorry I'm not as mentally stable as you to be nice," Beca growls.
"I think I should just go," Chloe says through tears.
"Yeah, you should," Beca grumbles to the already closed door from Chloe's tearful exit.
A/N: Sorry about the long wait. Chapter 11 may take a bit as well, sorry for that. Tell me what ya think!