Kailor: I know it's been a few days! Sorry, work has been BRUTAL. But, hey, here's some more fluffy stuff, babes :)
Chloe wakes up first, which is to be expected. Beca really does sleep like the dead. Chloe once saw her happily doze straight through a very loud argument between Amy and Stacie about which Backstreet Boy was the hottest. It had involved one thrown frying pan and many threats to "pancake" Stacie and anyone else who thought Kevin wasn't the most bangable.
It's possible Beca was just unmoved because she's completely used to the two of them, since she's known Stacie since literal birth and met Amy not long after, but Chloe's pretty sure a building could blow up and Beca would just roll over and dream on.
She breathes in, nosing sleepily against soft skin. Sometime during their nap, Beca had twisted toward her so that they're pressed chest to chest with her cheek resting against Chloe's temple. Their legs are tangled together and her hand has found its way to Beca's back. She strokes her fingers down the soft flannel, following the curves of spine and muscle, as she works her way toward fully awake. The hand Beca has stuck awkwardly between them twitches against Chloe's stomach.
Chloe pulls her head back, turning to blink at the room around them. Beca's head drops onto the throw pillow without Chloe's to prop it up, but she doesn't budge otherwise.
It's gotten dark out and the room is lit only by the kitchen light. Squinting, she can just make out the time on the microwave. Almost eight. Her stomach growls and she decides it's time for both of them to get up and get some food. She's barely eaten today, since she expected more throwing up, and now she's starving.
"Beca," she tries, hand sliding to Beca's hip to shake her. "Come on. It's time to get up."
She doesn't answer, but her leg tightens around Chloe's.
"Up," Chloe commands, trying to channel Aubrey's best leader voice. "Beca."
"No," Beca mumbles back.
Chloe tries to disentangle herself, sure that she could do a better job of waking her if she wasn't also comfortably laid out. But Beca–old basketball injury in her right knee notwithstanding–has strong legs and she locks her ankles together, trapping one of Chloe's thighs between her own. Her hand wraps around Chloe's wrist and pulls it between them so she can't use that to push Beca off either. "Beca!" She really does try to sound annoyed, but she can't stop the giggle that slips out. "We need to get dinner. I'm hungry!"
No response. Beca stays limp, face turned into the pillow.
Huffing, Chloe decides drastic measures are needed. It's really Beca's fault, she thinks, not feeling guilty at all as she eyes the curve of bare neck before her. "Beca. If you don't get up right now, I will bite you."
"No, you wo–OW!" Beca half gasps, half yelps as she jerks backwards and tumbles right off the couch. "What the hell, Chloe?" she croaks, grabbing for her neck.
Chloe just shrugs as she sits up and stretches. "Told you I was hungry."
She rubs at the slightly reddened circle where her neck meets her shoulder. "Jesus, dude. Just because I look like that side character in Twilight does not mean you get to go vamp on me!"
Ignoring her obviously fake outrage, Chloe hops up, moving to pull the fridge open. She doesn't see anything that she could quickly make, so she figures it's a takeout night.
Beca is still grumbling on the floor, but she's turned to lean back against the couch and doesn't look up when Chloe folds herself into the cushions behind her. Her fingers are still pressing at her neck.
"Quit acting like you didn't like it," Chloe teases.
To her delight, Beca's ears turn bright red, but her voice doesn't betray that. If Chloe hadn't been sitting behind her, watching for that exact reaction, she never would have known. "Whatever, dude. What's for dinner?" Her head whips around so she can level Chloe with a glare. "Don't say me."
Chloe pouts, but acquiesces. "Well. I don't know. What can I eat?"
"What do you mean, what can you–oh!" Beca lays her head back on the couch, bumping it against Chloe's shin. "What can you eat, dude? No fish, right? Isn't that a thing?" Her eyes widen. "Shit, I've never wanted sushi more than I do right now."
"Well, you're not the pregnant one, last I checked." Chloe taps her fingers over Beca's forehead. "So, if you want sushi, we can get you some."
"Dude. No." Her brow furrows. "I'm not gonna eat sushi in front of you when you can't have it. That's messed up."
"Oh, so you're just going to eat it behind my back?"
"The literal second you look away, yeah."
Chloe laughs, throwing her head back.
Beca's always made her laugh. It made her a little sad at first, when she'd realized it, because she felt like she'd wasted weeks of class without talking to her. But after Russian Lit Guy, Chloe had started. And she found Beca was funny. Her snarky little remarks under her breath used to make not giggling in class very difficult for Chloe. Whenever someone would ask a dumb question, she'd look over and catch Beca's eyes alternatively widening and narrowing in disbelief. Sometimes she'd close her eyes and press her hands together, as if praying. "I'm trying to teleport anywhere else," she would whisper. "Sci-fi really is all bullshit."
Now, Chloe thinks about how often Beca has made her laugh since then. Years of laughter. And she thinks of how much Beca will make her baby laugh, because she knows she will. It's what Beca does. She makes people happy, even if she likes to pretend she's a human rain cloud.
Just like now, when she's doing nothing but sitting on the floor with her legs splayed out under the coffee table and her phone in hand as she googles what pregnant women can and cannot eat, muttering things like, "No raw eggs. Wow, there goes my breakfast plans for the next nine months, I guess. We can still have avocado toast though. That's good, right? You're white. You can live on that."
Chloe leans forward, bracing her hands on Beca's shoulders as she drops a kiss on her head.
"Ow," Beca says, though there's absolutely no way it hurt. "What was that for?"
"I just love you. A lot."
"Gross. Miss me with that gay shit." Beca tucks her chin into her chest, staring down at her phone.
Her ears are pink again. Chloe grins.
They decide to go to Bella Sol, their favorite restaurant down by the lake, instead of ordering in.
"It's not a celebration dinner, right?" Beca calls as Chloe ducks into her room to change. Chloe doesn't think all of the fear in her voice is fake. "Aubrey will kill us if we celebrate without her. Well, she'll kill me. You've got a built-in Aubrey Protection System now." A pause. "Hey, maybe that's what we can call it until you pick a name."
Chloe switches out her sweatpants and t-shirt for some jeans and one of her least favorite button-ups. Just in case the morning sickness hits again.
Morning sickness. Because she's pregnant. Every time she thinks she's gotten used to the thought, it strikes her again. Not that that's surprising. She did only take the test hours ago, but still. It's wild. Earth-shattering. Insane. It's like her entire life has changed, even though very little is different. Sure, she's single again, but that's it. The rest of the world is just the same.
But it feels different.
Beca's waiting at the door. She holds up Chloe's denim jacket for her and Chloe smiles as she turns into it. Beca really is a sweetheart, no matter how much she denies it.
"Got your keys?" Beca grabs her leather jacket from the kitchen chair, slinging it on and slipping her hands under her hair to pull it free of the collar.
Chloe stops with her hand halfway to the key bowl by the door. "Actually." She spins on Beca. Everything is different, but it doesn't have to be. "Can we take your bike?"
Beca hesitates, fingers still wrapped in the gray beanie she's pulling on. "Should we? I mean, can we?"
"I'll ask the doctor about it when I go. But Mamma rode with Dad when she was pregnant with me. All the way until she couldn't reach him to hold on around her belly. And I turned out fine."
Beca's gaze drifts suddenly to the side, one eye squinting, and Chloe gives her a preemptive smack on the arm. Beca hisses. "I didn't say anything!"
"You were going to!"
She laughs, not denying it, and shoves her hands into the pockets of her jeans. "Okay, fine. Get your helmet."
Chloe skips back to her room to get the helmet that Beca had gotten her for their very first Christmas as friends. It had thrilled her to no end when she opened the box and found a full-face helmet painted to look like a ladybug. She'd tackled Beca right off the tiny bed in her and Aubrey's dorm room.
She grabs it by the chin bar and practically dances back out to the living room. Beca rolls her eyes, but she's grinning when Chloe snatches her by the flap of her jacket and pulls her out the door.
The night is cool, but not too cold. She's glad, since she plans for them to sit out on the restaurant patio that overlooks the lake, at their usual table. Smiling, she leads Beca down the stairs to the parking lot and stands back to watch as Beca gets on her bike. It's like something out of a movie every time, how cool she looks as she slings one leg over the seat of her dark blue Honda. The way she settles so smoothly into the seat and flicks her hair over her shoulder before she reaches for her helmet. The bike, the boots, the earrings, the smirk. It's a picture Chloe never gets tired of seeing.
She waits for Beca to get her helmet on and flip out the passenger pegs before climbing on behind her. The bike roars to life beneath them as she puts on her own helmet and shuffles forward a bit to wrap her arms around Beca.
Something smacks her face shield and she leans her head back to see Beca holding her own riding gloves over her shoulder. "It's cold," Beca shouts just loud enough for her to hear.
Sweet, solid Beca. The urge to pull both of their helmets back off and kiss Beca's cheek is a strong one, but she waves it and the gloves off. "I'm okay," she says instead, slipping her hands into the pockets of Beca's jacket. "This works for me."
Beca shrugs and pulls them on herself. And then they're off, gliding out of the parking lot of Chloe's apartment complex and down the street.
Wind whistles by, tugging at her jacket and the few red curls that stick out of her helmet. She tightens her legs against Beca's sides as they take a curve, leaning into it. The road races by beneath them, flashing yellow lines and dark concrete. It's almost hypnotizing. The bike is small, bought and modified specifically so it would fit Beca's short frame, but it's comfortable and has always been a good excuse to press as close as possible to Beca.
She remembers their very first ride. Three weeks into Chloe's mission to become friends, she'd asked Beca to go get coffee after class. To talk about their upcoming Astronomy test, of course. She doubts Beca would have agreed to anything else then. At that point in their relationship, Beca was still stubbornly pretending Chloe annoyed her more than she really did and Chloe was struggling to learn even basic things about her besides the fact that she liked to doodle in the margins of her Astronomy tests if she finished early.
"Fine. But we're going somewhere with good coffee, not the student union." Beca grimaces at the very thought. "I'm pretty sure that guy that sits in the corner with the fedora drinks straight out of the pot sometimes." She snorts at the face Chloe pulls and turns on her heel, marching toward the parking lot.
"Oh, I'm parked on the other side," Chloe says, motioning the opposite direction.
"We're taking my ride." The glance she throws over her shoulder is a little sly and Chloe's stomach does an excited flip. "The parking's easier on my bike."
"Your bike?" Chloe frowns. As much fun as riding around on the back pegs of a bicycle sounds, she does kind of need to be back on campus before her next class. The closest off-campus coffee shop she can think of is Weeping Willow and it's almost ten minutes away by car. She doubts anyone, especially tiny Beca, can pedal fast enough to get them there and back on time. Then they step out of the dimness of the hallway, into the sunshine, and Beca gestures to the motorcycle parked by the curb. "Oh!" Chloe gasps, brightening. "Your bike!"
"You thought I meant a bicycle?" Beca's eyebrow tilts up and Chloe tries not to look too embarrassed. Of course she should have realized it was a motorcycle, but Beca's just so...small. "You can ride on the handlebars if you want, but I don't think it's that safe."
"Shut up," Chloe laughs. "I didn't know you drove a motorcycle." It's the first thing about herself that Beca's willingly revealed to her and she can't help but feel accomplished. It's progress.
"How would you?" Beca shrugs as she drops her backpack beside the front tire and starts unlocking the black and blue helmet from the seat. "Unless you've been stalking me. Are you, like, realizing you're a bad stalker or something?"
"Excuse you. I'm good at everything I do." Chloe winks, tongue between her teeth.
And then tries not to look as stunned as she is when Beca's ears go bright red.
She turns away to dig into her backpack before Chloe can comment on it. "Here. You get the funky helmet." She pulls out a black helmet that looks like it was once a bowling ball that got chopped in half and stuffed with padding. There are mismatched, zigzagging pink lines painted across the crown, coming to a swirl at the back.
"You just happen to be carrying a spare helmet?" Chloe takes it, turning it over in her hands. "Or do you often whisk girls away like this?" She gasps. "Oh my god, this is, like, your pick up technique, isn't it?"
Beca shrugs again, a lazy smirk slipping onto her face that makes Chloe's insides flutter. Nobody should just look that cool without trying. God, she really wants to be friends with this girl. "Maybe. Is it working?"
Chloe takes a breath around the butterflies stirring in her chest and plops the helmet onto her head. "Totes." The chin strap pinches a little as she fastens it. "How does it look?" She strikes a pose, hands tucked behind her back and her most winning smile in place.
Beca gives her a blatantly pitying half-smile. "Sorry, dude. Not even you make that helmet look good."
But Chloe, being the ball of sunshine she is, rolls right over that and picks out the part she wants to. "Not even me? What's that supposed to mean, Miss Mitchell?" She waits for some kind of sassy retort, but all she gets is Beca rolling her eyes and swinging her leg over the bike. It sets off that fluttering in her gut again and she bounces on her toes, trying to shake the feeling out.
"I'm driving away now," Beca says, twisting her heel to knock the kickstand up. "With or without you."
Chloe hurries to climb onto the back. Beca tenses a little when Chloe's hands land on her waist, but she doesn't say anything about it.
"Have you ridden before?" Beca pulls on her own helmet, rocking their weight onto her right foot as she prepares to start the engine.
"Yeah. My dad has a Harley." She smirks. "His spare helmet is cooler though."
She feels Beca chuckle more than she hears it. Then, to her surprise and delight, Beca's head turns and she says, "It's Mackenzie's helmet. My cousin. She has questionable taste." The engine starts before Chloe can respond and that's it.
They do end up at Weeping Willow, but Beca is careful not to spill anything else about herself. They talk only about Astronomy. It doesn't matter. Chloe gets back with plenty of time before her next class and a big smile on her face. Baby steps are still steps.