- Part 1 -
Arrhythmia
Can we recover?
Can we get over this?
Are we too frozen inside to feel the flame?
- Ruelle
There isn't time to stop and fully process what Beca is saying to her.
Jessica. Ashley. Donald.
"We need our bags." Aubrey bolts in the directions they're hidden. Jessica. Ashley. Donald. They're just names. There are a lot of people named Jessica, Ashley, and Donald. They're just names. It doesn't mean they're dead. And, in Aubrey's mind, that's where she leaves it – in pictures of their names spread like graffiti over the walls, not images of their bodies in indescribable states on the floor. But only because in trying to imagine it, she can't.
She tries to imagine it realistically – and her brain shuts itself down.
Their things are exactly where they left them. She gathers everything up herself, not expecting Chloe to be directly behind her when she turns around. She jumps, causing Chloe to practically leap out of her skin as well in response. "Here." She hands Chloe her bag. Beca doesn't reach for her bag, and Aubrey doesn't offer it to her, because handing Beca her bag would mean later hauling around a bag stained with blood.
"We'll go back to the inn," Aubrey states, "We'll clean up and regroup and -" and what? "We'll clean up and regroup." She nods to convince them, not that they need much convincing – at least not on the cleaning up part. They walk beside her as she turns and leaves, Chloe in the middle, Beca trailing the side of the road. No one says anything. Every so often, someone changes pace, and Aubrey checks to make sure no one is following them, triggering everyone else to look back as well.
They walk like that all the way back to the inn.
xxxxx
"Do you always get drunk on the balcony at three in the morning?" Beca asked.
Aubrey jumped, nearly knocking her glass of wine over the edge. "What the hell, Beca?"
"You know, that's starting to sound like a catchphrase." Beca approached the balcony, bottle of beer in hand, and positioned herself a few centimeters away from Aubrey. She peered down over the edge. "Couldn't sleep?"
Aubrey looked away to watch a car stop in the middle of the street to honk its horn at Chloe's stupid cat friend, who had decided the road was the perfect place to clean its ass. The person driving gave up and drove around it.
"Yeah, me neither," Beca replied to the silence. She gently tapped her bottle against Aubrey's glass. "What's up? Still thinking about how Chloe wants us to have sex?" It was meant to be a joke – Beca just prodding at her and poking fun. "You know, we could." She was also slightly drunk from earlier. "I hear hate sex is -"
Aubrey spun to face her, effectively cutting her off. "Why are you here, Beca?" She was tired, and maybe she was a little bit tipsy too. She thrust her hand toward the door back inside. "If you want to have sex with her, then just do it." The words slipped out, and she wanted to take them back the moment she heard them. That was the exhaustion talking, not the alcohol. It was being done hearing Beca's name all the time. She turned back to the street, breathing angrily at the street lamps. Worse than Beca hitting a nerve, was letting Beca know that she had hit a nerve.
"That's not what I -"
"Not what you meant?" Aubrey finished for her. "Then don't say it."
Beca slouched forward over the balcony again.
Aubrey finished what was left in her glass. "Everything is such a joke to you." She shook her head as she placed the glass back down. "It's not funny to me."
"Is anything?"
Aubrey turned her entire body to face her, her jaw dropping open in disbelief at her audacity.
"Shit, Aubrey, that's not -" Beca stopped herself this time.
"…what you meant?" Aubrey finished for her again anyway. She shook her head again, looking up at the sky, anywhere but Beca's face. "Yes, it is." It didn't matter. What anyone thought (especially Beca) did not matter. "I'm going to bed," she hummed, far too sweetly, "Goodnight." She gave her a half wave then turned to leave – knowing full well, she'd be back after Beca left to retrieve her glass and put it in the sink.
"Wait," Beca sighed, reaching out for her arm.
Aubrey spun back around, smacking her hand away on reflex. "I said goodnight." She plastered on a brief, bitter smile, before turning to the door again and letting the expression fade to an even more bitter frown.
xxxxx
The Candlewick is silent – a large, extravagant, empty haunted house. From the bottom of the driveway, streaks of red are visible across the gravel. For a moment, Aubrey fears the worst – that everyone had returned and now no one is left. But then it sinks in. Someone had removed the bodies that had already been killed. Why? She doesn't know. But it must have taken a great deal of effort, and if whoever it was is still in the process of what they were doing, she doesn't want to be the next person dragged down the road.
They circle around back, through crab apple trees and various bushes, avoiding the driveway completely. The sweet smell from just days before is tainted with the metallic smell of blood now. It's what Aubrey thinks a dug up grave must smell like – a sickening, contrasting combination of flowers and death. It's hard to believe she and Chloe were once making daisy chains from this very yard.
Not saying a word, Aubrey hands the other two bags to Chloe, who takes them without question. She pulls the handgun out of her pants. Just to be safe. As safe as they can pretend to get. She slowly pushes the door of the suite so generously given to herself and Chloe open, and peers inside. There is no sign of movement. No blood. The room appears untouched. She steps in first, holding the gun out in front of her, her finger idling over the trigger. As far as she can tell, they're alone. "Lock the door behind you," she tells Chloe and waits to hear it click.
They tiptoe through the main room and down the hallway – Aubrey taking the time to look into every room. It isn't until she's sure they aren't about to be ambushed that she turns around and faces them. "The shower." That's all she needs to say.
Chloe nods and pulls Beca along with her into the room.
Aubrey looks around again. Are they any safer if someone stays outside with the gun? It's highly possible that that one person, her, could be killed, and Chloe and Beca would walk into a trap with a false sense of security. But, if they're together, they might not hear anyone come in. No matter what, there is the possibility that they're screwed.
"Aubrey," Chloe calls.
That makes her decision. Aubrey quickly grabs three towels from the bedroom then backs up into the shower room and locks the door behind her.
Chloe has their bags on the floor and is pulling out clean clothes for all of them. The last place Aubrey wants to die is naked in the shower, but this could be their last opportunity to feel clean for awhile.
"Go," Aubrey says and nods toward Beca, who is stripping out of her bloody clothing, throwing it all haphazardly in a corner where it will stay for God knows how long. How many people would it take to collect evidence from this entire island? She kneels down and checks to make sure they all have the necessary clothing, while Chloe begins to turn on everything in the room that releases water. The wall jets. The shower head. She folds their clothes and the towels with precision, but it doesn't make her feel any better. From the corner of her eye, she can see a stream of red run from Beca's clothes to the drain as water soaks into them.
Beca and Chloe are both completely naked when she turns around. There is no room for any discomfort. She strips her clothes off as well and folds them next to her clean clothes with the same attention to perfect creases. There is plenty of room for all three of them, so she huddles in a corner, away from where Beca and Chloe are standing in the middle. There, she somehow manages to wash her body and her hair with just the jets, unable to watch as Chloe helps Beca make sure all the blood has been scrubbed away. And when she's done, she sinks to her knees against the wall, resting her forehead against the ceramic tile in a place the water won't spray her face. Her entire body hurts.
The hot water and cool tiles are a comfortable contrast, and she's so tired. She doesn't mean to close her eyes, it just sort of happens. She doesn't sleep, not here, not now. But she doesn't last very long as completely awake either. She hovers somewhere in between, and suddenly Chloe's long showers are a blessing.
xxxxx
Beca just didn't know when she stop, did she? She stepped in front of Aubrey, effectively blocking her from getting through the door. Unbelievable. "Move."
"Or what, Aubrey?"
Aubrey's nostrils flared. "Or I'll make you move." Beca's words were starting to slur; it couldn't be that hard to move her out of the way.
"We can't keep -"
Whatever Beca had to say, Aubrey didn't care. She grabbed Beca by the collar of her shirt and dragged her along inside, closing the door behind them with her free hand. She dropped Beca off by her makeshift bed on the couch.
"Jesus!" Beca cried when Aubrey released her.
"Stop," Aubrey said slowly, her face inches away from Beca's to make sure she heard and understood, "getting on my nerves. Or you will sleep on the balcony."
"You just brought me inside," Beca whispered.
"Like my father always said: I carried you into this house for the first time, and I can carry you back out for the last." Aubrey pointed at the door.
"Why does your father only speak in proverbs?"
This time Beca was purposely trying to snap her last nerve. Aubrey drew in a deep breath, slowly counting to five in her head, so she didn't throw Beca off the balcony. "Enough -" She didn't have time to finish, because suddenly Beca's lips were pressed against hers.
xxxxx
The water slows down to warm trickles before it stops completely, and Chloe drapes a towel over Aubrey's back. It's the softest thing she's ever felt. She doesn't want to move. Every bruise hurts, her arm pulsates, muscles burn from exertion, stomach and chest remind her with every breath that she has vomited far more than she's eaten anything. She turns her head just enough to look at Chloe. She doesn't even have to say anything.
Chloe presses her lips against the side of Aubrey's head. "I know," she murmurs, and sits down next to her.
xxxxx
Aubrey pushed Beca backward. Beca's legs hit the front of the couch, and she fell down onto the cushions. "Wha- " Aubrey couldn't even sound out the entire word.
"-t the hell, Beca?" Beca guessed.
Aubrey looked around the apartment for some sort of explanation hidden among the décor.
"Say something," Beca whispered.
"You're drunk," Aubrey stated matter-of-factly.
"So are you." Beca wasn't wrong.
Or maybe Beca was wrong, and this was some sort of nightmare. Aubrey pinched her arm.
"Dude, seriously?"
"Beca," Aubrey forced herself to appear composed, "I don't want to have sex with you." She didn't right? The fact that she had to ask herself threw her off even more. No, she did not want to have sex with Beca.
"Have you even had sex with anyone other than Chloe?" Beca asked – more curiously than accusingly, which might have been even worse.
Aubrey refused to dignify that question with an answer.
"Wait, really?" Beca leaned forward with her elbows on her knees. "Only Chloe?"
Aubrey clamped her mouth shut to avoid speaking.
"So, you have no experience with anyone else?"
"I have plenty of experience with other people, Beca." Damn it.
"Plenty?" Beca's eyebrows shot up.
"You know what I mean," Aubrey hissed at her. This conversation had gone way too far. It shouldn't have even started to begin with. She folded her arms protectively across her chest. "I'm am going to bed."
"Was it anyone I know?" Beca asked.
"No," Aubrey answered, walking away.
"What about that dude from Sigma Beta Theta?" Beca kept bothering her, "Howie?"
"Did Chloe tell you that?!" Aubrey spun around. Chloe would never… She shot a quick panicked glance toward Chloe's room, worried she'd woken her up. "Who told you that?" It had probably been Howie himself. That god-awful, blabbing dick; she was going to pay him a phone call.
"Wait, you slept with Howie?" Beca asked incredulously, "Howie? From Sigma Beta Theta?"
Aubrey had walked right into that one. "Is that so hard to believe?"
"Yes," Beca answered, "That's why you're hearing disbelief in my tone. Was he good?"
Aubrey tilted her head as she thought about it then frowned at Beca. "I'm not going to talk about having sex with Howie with you." It wasn't that it had been bad. It had just been what it was. And what it was was a moment of weakness while Chloe was sleeping with Tom. He was very cute. She wouldn't exactly place him under a list of regrets. "At least I wasn't fawning all over some guy at the radio station. I heard the rumors at Bellas practice."
"Okay." Beca held a hand up to stop her, and Aubrey knew she had gained some advantage with that one. "First of all, they were talking about Jesse."
"No, they weren't."
"They were. They just didn't want you to know, because they didn't want my vocal cords to be ripped out by wolves."
Aubrey shook her head. That wasn't true at all, because she had never been told the rumors, only overheard them. The Bellas weren't smart enough to be so sneaky.
"I thought you were going to bed."
Not anymore. Not while she was winning. "So, what didn't he like about you?" she asked, walking back over to the couch to sit down. She angled herself toward Beca. "The same things I don't like, or an entirely different list?"
"I think it's less like a list and more like a venn diagram."
Aubrey nodded. That made sense.
Beca stared at her. "Go to bed."
"I can understand why he wouldn't want to have sex with you." Aubrey placed her hand over her chest to express her most sincerest of sympathies. "Bless your heart." She reached over with her other hand to squeeze Beca's knee, missing and grabbing a few inches higher when Beca tried to move away from her. That was awkward. She cleared her throat, quickly placing both hands on her lap. "Tell me all about him," she quickly tried to recover, "3am, girl talk."
"Yeah," Beca said, not looking up from where Aubrey had grabbed her leg, "I don't think you gathering blackmail counts at girl talk."
"Sure, it is!" Aubrey enthused, "Who would I tell?"
"Like, literally everybody," Beca answered.
"Well, it has been awhile since we've all had anything new to talk about." It was hard to gossip when they were all so busy with their own lives. "Consider it a contribution toward bringing us all closer." Aubrey needed her to look up and stop acknowledging that she had grabbed the inside of her thigh. "An abdication donation."
"I think I would rather decapitation," Beca responded with a forced smile, finally looking up again.
Aubrey returned the expression. "We can arrange for that too."
Beca exhaled a laugh and shook her head. "Dude, you're ridiculous," she said.
Coming from the person who just asked her if she was able to find humor in anything. Aubrey settled sideways against the back of the couch. It was easy with the alcohol to forget for a moment that Beca had just initiated kissing her for a second time – but only for a moment. The second they ran out of things to banter about it, it came rushing back to her. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand as she stared down at the quilt beneath them. It didn't make any sense. What bothered her most was that it wasn't exactly unpleasant either.
"Do you want to try it again?" Beca asked tentatively.
Aubrey lowered her hand, refusing to look at her again. She hadn't meant for her face to make it that obvious – or obvious at all. She corrected her thoughts, because, of course she didn't want to try it again. She slowly got to her feet, and left Beca to stare at her back from the couch as she silently walked away in an effort not to think about it at all.
xxxxx
They all three sit against the wall, wrapped in towels, no one making an effort to urge the other two to get up. Aubrey finally turns around so her back is pressed against the wall – shoulder to shoulder with Chloe. They have to have options. Maybe they should start thinking about building some sort of fucking raft. It isn't that far to Seattle. But if they're trapped on the water, there is no hope. Just like there is already no phones. No docks. Nothing they can use to get home. There is nothing. She can think of absolutely nothing that can help them. Her mind wanders, and she continuously tries to reel it back in, but it's so hard to focus on anything. She should be constructing a plan – but instead, she's starting to understand what watching your entire life flash before your eyes feels like.
"Beca?" If they're going to die here, she has one thing she has to know. "Luke was your boss at the radio station, right?"
"Yeah," Beca answers, barely audible.
"It was him, wasn't it?" Aubrey asks, "The guy that didn't want to have sex with you."
"Aubrey," Chloe is quick to reprimand her, "Now is not the time."
"Shut the fuck up, Aubrey," Beca mutters.
"I knew it." Honestly, Aubrey hadn't even thought about it until now. But now it hits her. Luke had been hitting on her this whole time, after rejecting Beca's advances, and, even if he didn't really like Aubrey, if that isn't the most hilarious thing she's ever witnessed… She breaks down into laughter.
"Aubrey!" Chloe lightly backhands her.
Beca lifts her leg over Chloe's lap and kicks Aubrey in the thigh – just causing her to laugh harder. "Stop being a dick, Aubrey."
Aubrey can't breathe.
"Aubrey!" Beca sounds like even she might be laughing now. She leans her whole body over Chloe and shoves Aubrey, nearly knocking her over onto her side. "Stop!"
"Is this some kind of inside joke?" Chloe asks, "Because if so, please let me in."
Aubrey can't stop laughing enough to even try to let Chloe in.
"Aubrey is just an asshole," Beca states.
"And he tried – he tried…" Luke might not have actually been into her – but he probably would have still had sex with her, had she let him. Aubrey can't get the words out. She slouches over sideways onto the floor, her forehead resting on her hand, laugh echoing throughout the entire bathroom.
"Okay, Aubrey, we're done." Chloe pulls her back upright, sounding less entertained and more concerned that Aubrey might be losing it. Maybe she is.
"You said -" Aubrey has to gasp for air between words. "I don't find anything funny." She leans to the other side, over Chloe instead of the floor, tucking her face into Chloe's arm as she tries to push Aubrey upright again, then gives up and just holds her instead.
"You're a dick and an asshole at the same time," Beca informs her, "A dick hole."
"Beca, stop," Chloe commands.
Aubrey laughs harder – tears stinging her eyes.
"Oh my god, okay, Aubrey, stop."
It's Chloe's concern that finally convinces her to take a breath. Several breaths, really. It takes a few minutes to rope herself back in. Once she does, she feels calmer, albeit more exhausted. Like every emotion rushed out of her all at once, leaving her not quite numb, more like pleasantly empty. She sits up and wipes under her eyes with the palm of her hand. Her body aches even more than before, but this time it's only physical. Her chest feels lighter, more willing to take in air.
Chloe just stares at her.
Aubrey uses Chloe's shoulder to push herself to her feet. They can't live in this bathroom – as much as she wishes they could until someone comes to save them. No one is coming. She walks over to her bag and folds her towel up beside it. Neither of them follow her. When she looks at them, they're both still looking at her – Chloe with an unshakable frown, and Beca somewhere between amusement and wanting to punch her. "Let's go," she demands. That gets them up.
Their dirty clothes will just have to stay where they are – as much as Aubrey hates to think about it. She checks her pockets for anything that needs to go with her, then zips up her bag and places Chloe's sweatshirt on top so she can tie it around her waist once she's dressed. She dresses herself in the same methodic way she has done since she was old enough to shower and dress herself – underwear, bra (okay, that came later), pants, socks, shirt, shoes. The order comes so naturally, she doesn't even think about it anymore.
Chloe doesn't have a method. It's underwear and bra first, in no particular order, and then whatever other article of clothing is on top. Aubrey vaguely wonders if Beca has a specific order.
Probably not. Beca is the definition of chaos.
Aubrey glances at her out of the corner of her eye. Her eyes are rimmed red, cheeks pink, and she keeps sniffling every five seconds as she wrestles her clothes on over her still damp body. It's almost like Beca is a legit person with real feelings. It makes Aubrey's skin crawl to witness her vulnerable, and she has to focus on gathering up her things to avoid acknowledging that maybe she should be a little kinder toward her – just for the time being. Although, she will never let her live down Luke, they are in the same boat after all.
