Kailor: Oh, look at that! I hit the Bechloe Week theme for today! Thank you all so much for your comments. They're a huge inspiration to keep writing.
It's not like she thought Beca would leave, never to be seen again. Or get angry at her for not being more careful. Or judge her in any way. None of those things are Beca so Chloe had never even considered them as possibilities.
No, Chloe didn't expect a negative reaction of any kind. Maybe Beca would have a little trouble wrapping her mind around everything and she would ask a lot of anxious questions. Maybe she'd just stare mutely until Chloe was forced to continue talking, or maybe she'd stumble awkwardly over a "Congratulations, I guess, dude?". But Chloe did not expect this.
This being Chloe, sitting on the edge of the tub in her tiny bathroom, leg jiggling nervously as she tries to contain her freak out and Beca Mitchell calmly opening a box of pregnancy tests above the sink.
"Are you going to take both tests?" Beca peers into the box. "Do you have to take both?" She pulls one out with two fingers, wrinkling her nose at it as she reads the instructions.
"Quit looking at it like that. I haven't even peed on it yet," Chloe says, aware that she sounds a little snappish, but unable to do anything about it. It's like they're on a seesaw somehow–when Beca's calm, Chloe's losing it. "And yes, I'll probably take both. Just to be sure."
"What if you get different answers?"
"Then I'll make you go buy me another box."
The sudden look of panic that flashes across Beca's face tips the seesaw once again and calms Chloe's anxiety for just a moment. Teasing Beca has always been one of Chloe's favorite things to do. But Beca's expression smooths back out almost immediately. She drops the test back into the box. "I can do that."
Chloe blinks, surprised. "Seriously? You would?"
Beca picks up her soda from beside the sink, brow furrowing. "Duh, dude. Like, whatever you need or...whatever." When Chloe just continues to stare at her, Beca rolls her eyes. "It's not a big deal. Here." She hands over the box and then slips backwards into the hall. "I'll be out here. Do you need, like, a bottle of water or something?"
Her mood has been so up and down since Beca arrived and it's hovering somewhere near testy now. She knows it's just the nerves, but she still feels bad for it. Chloe tries–and mostly fails–to smile as she stands to close the door in Beca's face. "No, I'm fine. Thank you."
"I could play rain sounds," Beca says through the wood. There's a short pause and then, "Whoa, YouTube is stocked for you. 'Flowing water to help you pee'. 'The Shy Bladder Helper'."
"Oh my god," Chloe does smile now, slapping a hand against the door.
Beca gasps. "No, dude, this is the one. 'Running water sounds for make you have pee'. Ugh, poetry."
"I don't need you here for this part, Mitchell!"
"Jeez, fine," Beca mutters. "Be unappreciative."
Laughing, Chloe waits until she hears Beca's footsteps fade away. Alone again, Chloe takes a deep breath and turns to the mirror. She feels better. Beca always has that effect on her eventually. She's still kind of freaking out, but it's more like a pot barely coming to a boil rather than the overflowing mess it was before Beca started with her stupid jokes and calm acceptance.
And it had been strangely calm. She'd said, "I think I'm pregnant" and Beca had simply blinked twice, nodded once, and said, "Okay, you got a test?" Then they were in the bathroom, opening the box of pregnancy tests Chloe had bought the day before. All without Beca being the one to freak out.
No, that's Chloe's gig today apparently. Chloe isn't sure why exactly she's so...frantic. Like her whole body is running at twice the speed, but her brain is only at half. It's really quite simple. She's either pregnant or she's not. There's no point worrying about anything until she knows.
It's weird though, because she's always wanted to have a child. Since she was little, she's dreamt of having her own, tiny human to love like Chloe's parents have always loved her. Someone she can help shape and grow, marking their height on the wall in Sharpie.
But now that there might actually be one, it feels very much like she's been thrown in the deep end of a pool she didn't even know was there. Her daydreams had always included a husband or wife or partner that would be there with her, putting one shoe on their child while Chloe laced the other on the first day of kindergarten. Someone to groan and half-heartedly complain with in the middle of the night when the baby wakes up crying. Someone that would feel just as proud and shattered on the day of their child's graduation.
She'd never pictured Tom as that person. Neither had she pictured him as the type to take off running just at the suggestion of a pregnancy. That's exactly what he'd done though. So here she is, alone in the bathroom, holding a pregnancy test and trying to decide if she's more scared of a positive or negative result.
No. Not alone. Beca's here, probably leaning against the kitchen island with both hands wrapped around her soda and her lip between her teeth as she waits. Maybe fidgeting with the buttons of her flannel or tapping the toe of one boot against the heel of the other. Any of the multitude of nervous tics that come out when Beca's impatient or anxious. Tiny little cracks in her apathetic rebel façade that Chloe has learned to spot over the years.
Thinking of her waiting outside, Chloe takes another deep breath and turns away from the mirror. She's not alone. It's all going to be okay either way. No matter what the test says.
When she's done, she opens the door and calls for Beca.
She appears in the hallway almost immediately, without her soda, and hurries to the bathroom door. "You okay?"
"Yeah," Chloe says, mostly not lying. She gestures to the test sitting on the edge of the bathtub. "We have to wait five minutes." Despite knowing this, Chloe paces over and glances down at it. She bites her lip, lowering herself to sit beside the tub, her back to the wall and her legs straight out in front of her in the space between the toilet and the trash can. She picks at the lap of the faded gray sweatpants she'd slept in. There hadn't been much need to get dressed for the day, after she woke up vomiting, though she had changed into a fresh t-shirt before Beca's arrival.
Beca shuffles in and flops down beside her, facing the opposite direction with her back against the cabinets under the sink. She pulls out her phone, stabbing at it with both thumbs. "Okay. Alarm set. Five minutes."
Chloe glances at the test again. Her hands are shaking, so she presses them together between her knees. It barely stops the tremor, but she pretends to not feel it anymore.
"So, when's Aubrey getting here?" Beca asks after a moment of tense silence.
"Um." Chloe blinks. "I haven't called her yet."
"What?" Beca looks more shocked now than she did when Chloe had told her she might be pregnant.
It's a fair reaction, considering Aubrey has been Chloe's best friend since their first day of pre-K. She tells Aubrey everything. "I haven't called her yet," she says again, shrugging. "You're the only one that knows."
Beca stares at her, slightly slack-jawed.
Chloe squirms a little, because she did feel a bit guilty that Aubrey had not been her first thought to call. She's rationalized it all away by now and she does the same for Beca. "She would get on the first plane out and I didn't want her to do that until I knew for sure. She's already flying up for your birthday in two weeks." She glances at the test and doesn't tell Beca that she, not Aubrey, had been Chloe's first thought. It had been Beca, Aubrey, her mother, and then Tom. "I'll call her if it's positive."
"Oh. Okay," Beca says, nodding and blinking rapidly. "Okay, so like. Do we know yet which result we're hoping for?" She reaches up blindly to drop her phone on the counter. "Like, Aubrey would know what to say either way, but just so I don't say something awkward or whatever, you should give me a head start on planning a response."
She chews idly at her lip, studying the metallic curve of the toilet paper holder instead of Beca. "Is it okay if I don't know yet?"
"Yeah," Beca says immediately. "Totally, dude. I was just…" Her hands flutter up from the floor, as if she means to pluck the word she's looking for out of the air. After a moment, they drop back down and she finishes lamely with, "Uh, checking."
Chloe nods, looking again at the test.
"So. What happened exactly?" Beca asks cautiously. She crosses her arms over her bent knees. The multitude of leather bracelets on her wrists shift and rustle against her jeans. "With Tom?"
A sigh pushes up from the very pit of her stomach, making its way around the churning heat that's part barely lingering anger and mostly anxiety. "I've been feeling sick the last few days, off and on. And I missed my period, which I rarely do, so I kind of started to suspect…" She motions to the test, taking a moment to check it. "I asked him to stop by before work this morning. I thought maybe I should tell him first. I don't know what I expected to happen. I just thought it was...fair. To tell him first," she repeats unnecessarily.
Beca nods so simply and surely that some of Chloe's anxiety eases again.
"And I was throwing up when he got here." Chloe stops, resting her head back on the wall. She can feel Beca's eyes on her, but she keeps her gaze on the toilet paper holder. "I let him in and told him I'd been sick." She thinks of how Tom had taken quite a few steps away from her the second he'd realized she wasn't feeling well. "He said maybe it was food poisoning or the flu or something, but I told him I didn't think so. And I tried to tell him I thought…" She breaks off, turning again to the test. "But before I could even get it out, he realized what I was going to say and told me to stop. Said he didn't sign up for any of this and he didn't want anything to do with it."
Beca's leg tilts, her shin bumping against Chloe's elbow and resting there. Warm and reassuring.
"I tried to say that it was just a possibility, but he kept talking over me. He stayed just long enough to break it off in no uncertain terms and then he was out the door." She sighs. "I thought he was a good guy. Not a forever guy, but a good guy. I thought we'd stay friends after we eventually broke up, but…" Her anger flares again and she sees it reflected in the tightened muscle of Beca's jaw.
"Tom's a dick." Beca's leg flexes against her arm, like she's fighting the urge to jump up and march out to hunt him down. "He doesn't deserve you. Or life in general."
That makes Chloe smile. "Are you plotting his death already?"
Beca squints at the door. "He's very tall. I'll have to borrow your car. You've got a trunk."
Laughing, Chloe drops her head back against the wall. "Only if you fill my tank after."
"Duh. I'm not a dick."
Chloe chuckles, looking down at the test again.
"Okay, enough." Beca suddenly leans into Chloe's space to snatch the test off the tub edge.
"Hey!"
"Nope. You keep staring at it." Beca moves the test over to her other hand and tucks it behind her back. "The stress and worrying is not good for the baby."
"We don't even know if there is a baby yet!"
"I meant me." Beca smirks. "I'm very fragile." She gives a shuddering sigh that's far too heavy to be real and Chloe giggles.
"Oh, I'm sorry. I forget about your delicate sensibilities."
"It's okay," Beca gasps dramatically, blinking away imaginary tears. "I forgive you." Her brow creases and she rolls her lips together, biting down on them as she puts on a show of gathering herself.
Chloe snorts, shoving her. Beca yelps. "You're so stupid."
"Words can hurt, Beale!"
She smacks Beca's arm–totes not hard enough to warrant the sharp hiss Beca gives–and smiles. "I'm sorry you can't handle the truth, Mitchell."
Beca thunks her head against the cabinet door, rolling her eyes. "I hate you."
"No, you don't." Chloe watches her pout for a second, then grabs Beca's right hand. Leaning forward, she drops a kiss on her forearm, where she'd hit her. "How's that?"
Shrugging, Beca stares up at her through her lashes. "It's not money, but I guess it works," she drawls. She doesn't try to take her hand back, so Chloe doesn't let it go, pulling it into her lap.
They fall into a comfortable silence. Chloe distracts herself with studying Beca's hand.
She has nice hands, with long, thin fingers made for the piano. Her skin is smooth, for the most part, but it's the rough parts that Chloe likes best. Like the three white scars that curve over the heel of her palm. If anyone asks, she'll say it's from an accident while working on her motorcycle, but Chloe knows better. Beca had gone home for Thanksgiving during their second year of college and returned with a bandaged hand and an hour-long rant about her aunt's stupid cat.
Chloe also loves the small callus that sits just beneath the ring Beca wears on her pinky. It's a simple, silver band that she'd bought on the last vacation her dad had taken her on before her parents broke up. Beca says they hiked all around these caverns in Arkansas for hours and it had been cool, but the little ring at the gift shop had been her favorite part. She'd spent six dollars of her own money and borrowed seven dollars from her dad to buy it. She's worn it ever since, moving it from finger to finger as she grew. It had ended up on her pinky before they met in college and it's lived there ever since. Chloe loves how that fact is written in her skin.
Absently, she slips the ring off of Beca's finger, just to turn it over and slide it right back on. It's something she does so often that she barely realizes she's doing it this time. She just watches the silver glide over Beca's knuckle and twists it until it settles into place where the skin is a little paler. Then she pulls it back off and instead slips it onto her own ring finger.
That's another thing she hardly notices as she does it. Sometimes she just steals the ring. Mostly on accident. It fits so well on her left ring finger that she'll take it, put it on, and then forget it there until the movie they're watching is over or until they finish grocery shopping. Or until Beca asks for it back, though she rarely does that anymore. She must have learned by now that Chloe will eventually return it, even if it takes a few days sometimes.
The metal is warm, like Beca's hand, and she tucks her thumb under to spin the band around her finger. There are tiny scratches almost everywhere on it, but that's to be expected after someone wears it for nearly a decade. Despite the wear and tear–or perhaps because of it–she likes the way it looks on her. But she also likes how it looks on Beca. It's just a really pretty ring.
The alarm on Beca's phone goes off and they both jump.
Chloe looks up to find Beca blinking rapidly, as if just waking up, and she reaches up with her left hand to grab her phone and shut off the alarm. Her right hand tightens around Chloe's.
"Five minutes," Beca says. She tucks her phone between her thighs and leans forward.
The almost hazy calmness that had settled over Chloe suddenly skyrockets into mild panic again. "Oh my god," she says, dimly aware that her voice is rising, reaching for hysterical quickly. "I don't think I can look. Oh, god." She tries to take a breath and finds it a little difficult. "What if I am pregnant? I mean, I always wanted a kid one day, but I didn't think it would be today! What if I'm a bad mom? Oh no, what if I raise a complete jerk? Or a serial killer?" Her eyes widen. "Or a politician!"
"Chlo." Beca's thumb sweeps across her wrist. "Look at me."
She does, meeting dark blue eyes and a raised eyebrow.
"Okay," she says. "First off, if we're pregnant, we're pregnant. And we'll deal with that however you want to. Keep it, don't keep it, put it up for adoption. Whatever. We'll handle it, okay?"
Chloe blinks at her. "'If we're pregnant'?"
"Yeah, dude. We. You're not alone." Beca's lips tilt up at the corner. "I've got you, alright?"
A surge of warm affection rises so quickly in her chest that it very nearly topples her over. Solid, sweet Beca, she thinks. She manages a shaky nod, squeezing Beca's hand.
"And secondly, you couldn't be a bad mom if you tried. It's not in your DNA." Beca's grin grows. "Do you even realize you've always cut the crust off Emily's sandwiches before you gave them to her?"
Chloe thinks of Emily, the freshman that stumbled baby deer-like into their senior year of college and somehow integrated herself so solidly into their friend group that they'd decided to keep her even after they'd all graduated. Kind of like a cross between a pet and a little sister. "She always pulls it off anyways."
"Yeah. And you noticed. That's the kind of stuff good moms do." Beca shrugs, gaze suddenly shifting away. If Chloe didn't know better, she might think Beca looks shy as she says, "You...remember everyone's birthdays without using Facebook notifications. And you make homemade soup when your coworkers get sick. You are the only one that can wrangle our friends when we go out. Honestly, without you, half of us would be dead." She snorts. "And the other half would probably be the ones that killed them."
Chloe smiles, tilting her head in agreement. Amy alone would likely have gotten them all killed if left unchecked.
Beca grins, continuing. "You fuss at us for our language in public. You're the one that makes sure everyone has everything they need when we go on trips. You carry spare toothbrushes in your purse, just in case someone forgets theirs." Her smile gets smaller, but somehow warmer too. "You listen when people talk–even people like that rambling old lady that works at the pharmacy. The ones that most people brush off or actively try not to speak to. You listen. That's good mom stuff."
"Is this going to be a thing now?" Chloe's voice tremors a little in the middle, tears threatening to fill her eyes. Because Beca usually hides compliments in witty remarks or disguises them as insults. But not today, apparently. "Are you just going to list good things about me all the time? Because I could get used to this."
Beca's eye roll is expected and it makes Chloe smile. "Yeah, don't do that." She squeezes Chloe's hand. "My point is, you're going to be an awesome mom. Whether that starts today or not, it will still be true, okay?" Her gaze returns and holds so steady that Chloe doesn't doubt her words for a second.
Instead, she just throws her arms around Beca's neck and hugs her tight. Beca grunts, but returns the hug after an awkward second of flailing limbs. Chloe takes a deep breath of vanilla shampoo and that unnamable scent that has always been a staple of Beca's person. She couldn't pinpoint it if asked, except to say that it's just Beca. It's soft and a little sweet, and strongest at the curve of her neck, just beneath her ear, right where Chloe's nose lands when they hug. It's one of her favorite scents in the world.
"Are you done sniffing me, weirdo?" Beca asks, voice a little muffled in Chloe's hair.
"Not really," Chloe says, but releases her anyway.
Beca reaches behind her, pulling out the pregnancy test. She glances down at it, then back up just as quickly, face unchanged. "Do you want to look or..." Her nose crinkles, one eyebrow rising questioningly.
Chloe shakes her head and grabs Beca's empty hand again. "You tell me."
She nods, gaze dropping back to the test for a moment. Then she looks up, catches Chloe's eye, and says, "I guess it's time to call Aubrey."
And, just like that, it's over. All of her anxiety and worry is washed away by something hot and bright that fills her chest near to bursting, different fireworks than the angry ones that had started her day. They spark through her ribs and pull a wide, wild smile from her. She thinks she might look a little insane to anyone that saw her now, but she doesn't mind.
Because Beca's answering smile looks just the same.
"Congratulations, dude," Beca says and Chloe yanks her into another hug that somehow ends with them both sprawled on the bathroom floor, laughing.