Happy free confused and lonely in the best way
Fandom: Pitch Perfect
Pairing: Chloe/Aubrey
Rating: PG-13
Words: ~4k
Summary: Written for the Pitch Perfect Ficathon, for anythingbutgrey's prompt It feels like the perfect night to dress up like hipsters and make fun of our exes.
“We are not re-enacting Taylor Swift songs,” Beca says, and Aubrey can see her own horror reflected in Beca’s face. Chloe’s idea had been going nowhere good, and Aubrey’s glad that someone cut her off. Still, she finds herself glaring at Beca instead of her friend, whose only fault is occasionally questionable taste in musicians. If it weren’t for Beca and her stupid team building activities, Chloe wouldn’t have suggested that they pretend to be in a T. Swift song, and they would all have been free to go for casual drinks. ‘Casual’ would have ended in a tequila-fuelled rendition of Bohemian Rhapsody that would have made nearby cats’ ears bleed, and everyone would have been happy. Except for maybe the cats. And whoever’s dorms they ended up outside of.
“I agree.” Aubrey stands as she says it for added emphasis, and everyone in the circle of chairs turns to look at her. “What?”
“No one expects you to be agreeable. Like, ever,” Fat Amy says, putting down the fingers shaped in the cross she’d been warding Chloe off with. Hypocrite.
“She is agreeing to disagree,” Stacie points out.
“Ah, yeah, that makes more sense. Carry on,” Amy waves at Aubrey to continue, and she sits down, forgetting her protest in her mild outrage.
“Come on guys, it’ll be fun!” Chloe says, before Aubrey can gather herself to retort. “We need to get more into the character of the songs we’re singing.” The back legs of Chloe’s chair swing off the ground in her excitement, and Aubrey puts a hand on the top of it, steadying her. Chloe breaking her jaw is the last thing they need; Node-Gate was more than enough of that.
“Yeah,” Beca says, “but it’s Taylor Swift. If we get into the character of a Taylor Swift song we’ll just end up boring everyone to death-” Aubrey winces, waving an arm at Beca from over Chloe’s head in an attempt to cut her off, but Beca’s an idiot who can’t take direction even when it’s in her best interests, and she just continues without any apparent regard for her health. “-and spewing petty shit about boys we hate because they broke up with us when they realised how boring we were.”
Chloe makes a huge gasping choked sound, and stares at Beca with her mouth open comically wide for a good half minute. Nobody dares to laugh, and the room falls silent. How Beca had managed to miss Chloe’s love affair with Taylor Swift...
“Did you just-” Chloe swallows the end of her sentence, her face reddening slowly, and Beca’s eyes go wide, not so discreetly shifting her chair away from her.
That’s how they end up on a picnic blanket - all ten of them - in fedoras and scarves, sitting cross legged in too tight jeans, eating scrambled eggs and bacon in the dark.
**
There’s an almost nostalgic feel to the night; the year isn’t over yet, but it’s close enough that this is one of the last times they’ll get to be together, before they start to feel the weight of impending finals and splinter into study groups.
Stacie is actually a pretty damn good cook, and Aubrey isn’t sure if it’s the balmy air of almost-summer, or the second bottle of wine she and Chloe are sharing, but these are the best scrambled eggs she’s ever tasted.
The bacon disappears quickly, and everyone pretends not to notice that it’s all been heaped on Amy’s plate. Aubrey isn’t too disappointed since she hates the salty pig fat (another of those things you don’t tell Chloe), but she does steal a few pieces when Amy isn’t looking and put them on Chloe’s plate.
Chloe’s drunk; she needs all the solids in her stomach she can get.
She can tell that Chloe’s drunk because her hand is warming a place higher on her thigh than usual, and she can tell she’s drunk herself because Chloe is leaning into her, her too-warm body tucked into her front and hair tickling her throat, and it’s taking all she has not to kiss her cheek in front of everyone. But mostly in front of drunk Chloe; drunk Chloe is a whore who will kiss her back, and will not mind an audience.
Aubrey minds the audience. Drunk Aubrey is insecure enough to mind it even more than Sober Aubrey. Although the drunk to sober kissing Chloe ratio really isn’t in Sober Aubrey’s favour. She needs to stop thinking about kissing Chloe, but there are stars in Chloe’s hair and she has red wine staining her lips, and it’s making it very hard to stop thinking about it.
Let’s be honest, she hasn’t stopped thinking about it since that first night, when she’d come into her freshman dorm and Chloe had been sitting on the floor, playing Uno with herself. There had been a bottle of Jäger on her new bed, tied with a sequined bow, and a post-it saying: ‘Get to know you juice! x’. From what she remembers of that first night, the only things she knows for certain are that she got to know Chloe quite well, and she’s never been able to drink Jäger since.
She tunes in when she hears her name being sung in giggles by most of the girls, and the lyrics are something like ‘Aubrey is drunk doo doo doo doo’, which, wow, there’s a best original score up for grabs in that one for sure. Chloe is tapping her knee along to the beat and looking at her with a teasing grin, and she shifts her leg to loosen the pins and needles as if she hadn’t just been zoned out staring at her best friend. Who’s looking really pretty tonight--fuck everything. “Bitches, please, as if the rest of you are sober,” she tells them.
“Come on, your turn,” Beca says. “If I had to go first, you’re going next.”
Oh, making fun of exes, right. Yes. “I dated this composer called Mark in freshman year,” Aubrey says. She’s drunk enough that the story falls easily from her lips, despite the niggling thought that she’ll regret telling it later. “After like our third date he took me back to his room to listen to some of the songs he’d written, which were a genre of music he called dub step up. It was, like, a mixture between dub step and musical theatre? I’m not sure. Then he and his roommate did my hair into like... I can’t even describe it,” Aubrey says, making a motion above her head that tries to encompass the body of a mohawk with the spirit of a mullet. “Then his roommate got a call from the hospital where his sister had a burst appendix, so I ended up at the hospital at three in the morning wearing my boyfriend’s hair gel, and buying coffee for my boyfriend’s roommate’s family.” She pauses, feeling Chloe’s laughter and smiling wryly. “That was my second worst date with him. I should have figured out from that one that it was over but--shut up, Chloe.” Her words have no bite to them, and Chloe just laughs harder, taking a long drink directly from the bottle.
“Denise’s turn,” Chloe sings, and Aubrey leans to get the wine from Chloe. Chloe offers it to her, her fingers stroking across her hand as she passes the bottle. She knows it’s just meant to be comforting - at the time Mark had been devastating, even if he is just an amusing anecdote now - but Aubrey’s just glad of the dark to hide her blush.
“My ex gambled away our strap-on money,” Denise says.
Aubrey doesn’t know why she continues to be surprised by these girls, but she still chokes a little on her wine, ignoring the way Chloe laughs at her.
“Well, my ex is an uptight bitch,” Cynthia Rose rejoins. “And really bad at poker.”
“Maybe if you’d bought the strap-on, you’d have had something to poke her with,” Amy says, and Chloe’s face turns into Aubrey’s shoulder to stifle her laughter. Aubrey sighs, taking a large gulp from her bottle. Fortunately both Denise and Cynthia Rose have turned to glare at Amy, and it’s enough time for her to wave hurriedly at Stacie.
“One of my exes would only have sex with me twice a day.” Everyone waits, but that seems to be Stacie’s entire contribution.
Chloe turns her face back towards the others, but not before Aubrey feels the delicate press of her lips against her exposed collarbone. Aubrey’s sigh is hidden in her wine, but her light shiver isn’t, and Chloe’s eyes crinkle up at the corners. When she turns to take the wine back from her, her face is innocent, and Aubrey settles into familiar confusion. Sometimes it’s really hard to tell the difference between Chloe being nice and Chloe being a bitch.
“You know there’s a name for the disorder you have, right?” Beca asks.
“Hotness?” Stacie says, trying to prove her point by reaching her arms above her head and stretching in a way that probably wouldn’t have been legal in front of minors.
“A kangaroo once tried to punch me,” Amy says, cutting over anything else Beca could say. “Baz didn’t punch it back.” It takes Aubrey a second to understand that Baz is a person and not some sort of pocket Australian anti-kangaroo defense mechanism. “I broke up with him and reported him to the cops. He got three years,” Amy says solemnly.
Aubrey shares a look of bewilderment with Beca, adding another mark to her mental tally of reasons never to go to Australia. She doesn’t catch what Lilly says, but she sees her lips moving, and it makes Beca gag, and Amy chokes on a mouthful of the VB beer she gets imported from her home state.
“And finally,” Beca says, gesturing at Chloe. “You’re not getting away with not saying something just because this mess was your idea.”
(Jessica puts down her hand, and Ashley closes her mouth from where they’re sitting on the outskirts of the picnic blanket, but everyone’s a little too drunk to notice them.)
Chloe is quiet for a few moments, taking a quick swig from the bottle in her hands and looking down at it as she picks at the corner of the label. “In freshman year I dated someone who didn’t even realise we were going out. And I didn’t realise they didn’t realise until they started dating someone else.”
Aubrey leans to catch Chloe's expression, but she's only able to see the soft waves of her hair and the tilt of her chin.
“Seriously?” Beca says.
“Yeah,” Chloe sighs, and Aubrey frowns at the bottle in Chloe’s hands. Sean? Freshman year, it had to be Sean.
“We went out for like, six months, then all of a sudden it was ‘I’m dating someone, be happy for me’ and I was like... but dude, we’re dating.”
“That’s a douche move, not saying it’s not,” Stacie says. “But maybe if you’d put out he would’ve understood.”
“I did!” Chloe protests. “Not that I’m a whore. Four dates before we slept together.”
“Are you saying there’s something wrong with sleeping with a guy on the first date?”
Aubrey looks over at Stacie to roll her eyes at her, but finds herself blinking at Amy instead. Unexpected.
“No-just-not-I mean, personally-no,” Chloe splutters, and there’s more than one person laughing at her. “Shut up, you know what I mean.” She grabs a clump of grass and throws it at Beca, who just laughs harder when it doesn’t even reach her feet.
“How does that even happen?” Beca asks.
“Well, there wasn’t much talking...” Chloe says, and Stacie’s wolf whistle is so loud that a light clicks on across the park. “I didn’t mean-” she says, then gives up when it becomes obvious that everyone is too busy making fun of her and piling up the empty plates into a tidier fashion to listen. “You guys are hopeless.”
“No, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Moment of silent for the asshole that Chloe dated without dating,” Beca says.
“I have relationship talk dot points now,” Chloe says, as if that will make the others laugh less at her.
“Was that Sean? I’ll kill him. Again,” Aubrey says, and Chloe laughs for a little too long, finishing the rest of their wine with a flourish and standing unsteadily.
“Well, I hope everyone had fun tonight. Are you okay with tidying that--okay,” Chloe says, as Lilly nods at her. “I hope you’re all feeling the character of the song. Next week, get ready for thrift shopping.”
Amy’s looking under the tupperware lid, Beca’s standing and grinning at her phone (ew), Denise and Cynthia Rose are making out (double ew; honestly, Aubrey can’t say if she prefers it when they’re on or off) and... Stacie is watching them like she wants in, which, okay, Aubrey’s out.
“I’ll head back too,” Aubrey says, standing. “You look like you could use a hand.”
“Or a casual vom,” Amy says. “There’s a good bush over there.”
Chloe blinks at her. “We stopped being the Bulimic Bellas after Alexandra left last year,” she says, and Aubrey steadies her with an arm around her waist, turning her towards their dorm.
“Okay, let’s get you back home, stop talking now,” Aubrey says, leading her along to the path, and waving goodbye to the others.
Chloe seems to sober up - at least a little - on the walk back, but she keeps hold of Aubrey after she hugs her good night, and that’s how, not for the first time, Aubrey ends up in Chloe’s bed.
Chloe’s cuddling her, and Aubrey wants to object, but, well, Chloe’s cuddling her. Anyone who says she isn’t agreeable needs a serious reality check.
Aubrey pats Chloe’s hair delicately as she groans, “I’m going to be so hungover tomorrow.”
“Same. Whose idea was that second bottle of wine?” Aubrey says sleepily.
“Someone stupid,” Chloe sighs, and Aubrey blinks her eyes open past their heaviness. Is she crying? Shit. Aubrey’s no good at crying Chloe. She can deal with basically every other Chloe, but crying Chloe is terrifying.
“You’re not stupid,” Aubrey tries. She’s pretty sure she’s crying. Their room is lit only by the failure of the blinds to block out the orange lights on the path outside, but she can still see that her face looks damp and red around the edges, and Aubrey glances around the room for a tissue or a face towel or something. She grabs the closest teddy bear and puts it in her arms instead, and Chloe sniffs, curling around it. “Are you still upset about Sean? I’ll totally kill him again, if you want.”
“I wasn’t talking about Sean,” Chloe says, and she sounds angry enough that Aubrey is beginning to think that these are Chloe’s angry tears, not her sad ones.
She’s going to kill Not Sean. And enjoy it. “Who was it?”
Chloe is silent for long enough that the arm trapped underneath her starts to tingle unpleasantly.
She’s thinking Chloe’s passed out when she shifts, turning around so they’re nose to nose so suddenly that Aubrey feels like she just sneezed. “You’re so stupid, sometimes,” Chloe tells her, the anger in her voice finding a subject. There’s a rising horror in Aubrey’s throat that comes out in a timid squeak of protest.
“Wh-” she says, because that’s the only way she can voice the silent question marks lodged sharply in her throat. Chloe barely has to lean to kiss her, and yes, okay, if that kiss is anything to go by those are definitely angry tears, and the bottom is dropping out of Aubrey’s stomach because this is really bad, but she tastes like red wine and bacon, and even things that Aubrey hates taste good on Chloe’s lips.
“We never-” she tries again, in bewildered protest.
“We dated for around six months, three years ago. But you never managed to catch on.” Chloe doesn’t sound drunk at all now, but Aubrey’s head is spinning and she can’t make her brain come up with anything to say in response to that.
“We were roommates. And we were getting to know each other,” Aubrey says lamely.
“Yes. At restaurants. Getting to know people at restaurants is what they call dating. Aubrey, you took me to dinner with your parents.”
“Yeah, because-” Aubrey splutters, and Chloe’s face loses the red tinge, falling into something that just looks a little sad, and a lot tired.
“We made out like every night.”
“It was freshman year, we were drunk every night.”
“We didn’t always just make out,” Chloe reminds her with a quiet intensity.
“I thought that was just a thing people did in college once or twice,” Aubrey says faintly.
“Five times. Once on Valentine’s Day.”
Oh my god. Aubrey can’t even voice it, just staring at Chloe until she continues, her lips trembling as she takes the kind of breath she always needs just before she hits the high note she’s been preparing for.
“Your parents said they were glad you’d met someone so nice,” Chloe says, and there’s a note of wistfulness in her voice that she doesn’t successfully cover, and Aubrey’s mouth goes so dry she has to count to three along with her too-loud heart beats before she can respond.
“I never had many friends,” Aubrey explains, because she’s sure her father hadn’t under-
Wait.
“Oh my god,” Aubrey says, rolling on to her back to stare at the ceiling. “Oh my god.”
Chloe lifts herself up onto her elbow, clicking on the light and looking at her. Aubrey shields her eyes, half from the brightness and half from Chloe, redness creeping up her throat and filling her cheeks as several million things from the past few years suddenly make a lot more sense. “Oh my god,” she groans, covering her eyes fully with both hands, hearing herself making a long, continuous noise but not able to make it stop coming from her throat.
Chloe had been looking at her seriously, but at that she seems to see the funny side, flopping down on to her back and giggling breathlessly.
“Chloe, oh my god. I dated a girl. I dated you. That’s not funny.”
“It’s a little bit funny,” Chloe says, still laughing. “Your face right now.”
“Chloe! I know I’ve been a shit friend sometimes, but that’s just...” Aubrey’s sentence ends in another groan, and she looks out from in between her fingers just to check on the progress of Chloe’s angry tears, which thankfully seem to have evaporated with her laughter.
“You’re not a shit friend. Just a little obtuse,” Chloe says, holding her fingers up a small distance apart and smiling at her.
“How are we even still friends oh my god I’m the worst,” Aubrey says, sitting up abruptly and making to get up out of bed.
“Hey,” Chloe says gently, turning her face towards her and kissing her cheek. Aubrey sighs, stopping on the edge of the bed, the hands fisted in Chloe’s sheets slowly loosening their grip. Chloe has always been able to settle her anxious stomach better than anything else. “You’re not. I maybe didn’t like you very much when you were dating Mark, but you were pathetic about him afterwards, and really bad at being in a relationship with him, so I thought that maybe I should just count myself lucky. And I should have talked about it with you instead of just assuming; it wasn’t just you. I was just as responsible. Now I just mostly feel dumb about the whole thing. I’m sorry I could never bring myself to tell you.”
Chloe's thought about it enough to have a concrete opinion on an entire relationship that Aubrey hadn’t even known existed. “Oh my god, I’m your worst ex story,” Aubrey realises, covering her face with her hands again and flopping onto her back dramatically. Chloe follows, her head pillowing on Aubrey’s shoulder.
“Yep,” she agrees, and Aubrey can feel her eyes on her until she finally meets her gaze, finding her expression a little bit fond and a bit more amused.
“I’m so sorry,” Aubrey says miserably.
“Me too,” Chloe says, giggling again. “You’ll laugh about it soon, don’t worry.”
“I will not. That’s not even fair. How was I supposed to be a good ex if I didn’t know I was dating you?”
“Want another shot?” Chloe says, with a careful nonchalance, the smile on her face not matched by the wary look in her eyes. It lets Aubrey know that if she wants to, she can treat that as a joke and they’ll still be friends, and the certainty of their friendship, at this moment of all moments, is enough to make Aubrey kind of want to cry.
Aubrey just looks at her, knowing that if she doesn’t say something soon the silence will have gone on too long and it’ll be too late. But she can’t do anything but stare at Chloe and think of how much she likes her and how important the next thing that comes out of her mouth is, and Chloe reaches up, sliding a hand up her face.
“You’re pretty,” is the only thing Aubrey can think to say, and Chloe smiles around her kiss.
“Good start.”
“Can I... take you out some time? On a date? I’ll pay.”
“Better start,” Chloe says, kissing her again, and it’s softer than their usual drunk kissing, and it’s nicer, and Aubrey really doesn’t understand why it took her this long.
“And since it’s not our first date, you can turn up in track pants and I’ll still like you,” Aubrey says, and Chloe laughs so hard she nearly slips from the bed.
“You know how to charm a girl.”
“As if,” Aubrey says, smiling at the gentle slope of Chloe’s cheek as she turns the light back off, and settles back into her. “I just know you.”
Chloe’s laugh turns into a yawn, and for the first time, Aubrey understands Chloe’s appreciation for Taylor Swift. Maybe trite, indulgent, teen fairy tale romances aren’t the worst kind of lyric in the world.
Everything will be all right if we just keep dancing like we’re twenty twoo-oooh-oo-ooooh. “Shit,” she swears under her breath, but humming songs aloud is the only way she knows to get songs out of her head, and really, Chloe should be used to listening to her hum in the dark to get to sleep by now. Chloe’s hand slips inside the fabric of Aubrey’s shirt, curling up against the skin of her hip and resting there, and Aubrey relaxes into the contact. Who knows, maybe whatever this is will end up being her own trite romance.
(She’s still not going to any Taylor Swift concerts. There’s limits to her agreeable nature.)
Pairing: Chloe/Aubrey
Rating: PG-13
Words: ~4k
Summary: Written for the Pitch Perfect Ficathon, for anythingbutgrey's prompt It feels like the perfect night to dress up like hipsters and make fun of our exes.
“We are not re-enacting Taylor Swift songs,” Beca says, and Aubrey can see her own horror reflected in Beca’s face. Chloe’s idea had been going nowhere good, and Aubrey’s glad that someone cut her off. Still, she finds herself glaring at Beca instead of her friend, whose only fault is occasionally questionable taste in musicians. If it weren’t for Beca and her stupid team building activities, Chloe wouldn’t have suggested that they pretend to be in a T. Swift song, and they would all have been free to go for casual drinks. ‘Casual’ would have ended in a tequila-fuelled rendition of Bohemian Rhapsody that would have made nearby cats’ ears bleed, and everyone would have been happy. Except for maybe the cats. And whoever’s dorms they ended up outside of.
“I agree.” Aubrey stands as she says it for added emphasis, and everyone in the circle of chairs turns to look at her. “What?”
“No one expects you to be agreeable. Like, ever,” Fat Amy says, putting down the fingers shaped in the cross she’d been warding Chloe off with. Hypocrite.
“She is agreeing to disagree,” Stacie points out.
“Ah, yeah, that makes more sense. Carry on,” Amy waves at Aubrey to continue, and she sits down, forgetting her protest in her mild outrage.
“Come on guys, it’ll be fun!” Chloe says, before Aubrey can gather herself to retort. “We need to get more into the character of the songs we’re singing.” The back legs of Chloe’s chair swing off the ground in her excitement, and Aubrey puts a hand on the top of it, steadying her. Chloe breaking her jaw is the last thing they need; Node-Gate was more than enough of that.
“Yeah,” Beca says, “but it’s Taylor Swift. If we get into the character of a Taylor Swift song we’ll just end up boring everyone to death-” Aubrey winces, waving an arm at Beca from over Chloe’s head in an attempt to cut her off, but Beca’s an idiot who can’t take direction even when it’s in her best interests, and she just continues without any apparent regard for her health. “-and spewing petty shit about boys we hate because they broke up with us when they realised how boring we were.”
Chloe makes a huge gasping choked sound, and stares at Beca with her mouth open comically wide for a good half minute. Nobody dares to laugh, and the room falls silent. How Beca had managed to miss Chloe’s love affair with Taylor Swift...
“Did you just-” Chloe swallows the end of her sentence, her face reddening slowly, and Beca’s eyes go wide, not so discreetly shifting her chair away from her.
That’s how they end up on a picnic blanket - all ten of them - in fedoras and scarves, sitting cross legged in too tight jeans, eating scrambled eggs and bacon in the dark.
**
There’s an almost nostalgic feel to the night; the year isn’t over yet, but it’s close enough that this is one of the last times they’ll get to be together, before they start to feel the weight of impending finals and splinter into study groups.
Stacie is actually a pretty damn good cook, and Aubrey isn’t sure if it’s the balmy air of almost-summer, or the second bottle of wine she and Chloe are sharing, but these are the best scrambled eggs she’s ever tasted.
The bacon disappears quickly, and everyone pretends not to notice that it’s all been heaped on Amy’s plate. Aubrey isn’t too disappointed since she hates the salty pig fat (another of those things you don’t tell Chloe), but she does steal a few pieces when Amy isn’t looking and put them on Chloe’s plate.
Chloe’s drunk; she needs all the solids in her stomach she can get.
She can tell that Chloe’s drunk because her hand is warming a place higher on her thigh than usual, and she can tell she’s drunk herself because Chloe is leaning into her, her too-warm body tucked into her front and hair tickling her throat, and it’s taking all she has not to kiss her cheek in front of everyone. But mostly in front of drunk Chloe; drunk Chloe is a whore who will kiss her back, and will not mind an audience.
Aubrey minds the audience. Drunk Aubrey is insecure enough to mind it even more than Sober Aubrey. Although the drunk to sober kissing Chloe ratio really isn’t in Sober Aubrey’s favour. She needs to stop thinking about kissing Chloe, but there are stars in Chloe’s hair and she has red wine staining her lips, and it’s making it very hard to stop thinking about it.
Let’s be honest, she hasn’t stopped thinking about it since that first night, when she’d come into her freshman dorm and Chloe had been sitting on the floor, playing Uno with herself. There had been a bottle of Jäger on her new bed, tied with a sequined bow, and a post-it saying: ‘Get to know you juice! x’. From what she remembers of that first night, the only things she knows for certain are that she got to know Chloe quite well, and she’s never been able to drink Jäger since.
She tunes in when she hears her name being sung in giggles by most of the girls, and the lyrics are something like ‘Aubrey is drunk doo doo doo doo’, which, wow, there’s a best original score up for grabs in that one for sure. Chloe is tapping her knee along to the beat and looking at her with a teasing grin, and she shifts her leg to loosen the pins and needles as if she hadn’t just been zoned out staring at her best friend. Who’s looking really pretty tonight--fuck everything. “Bitches, please, as if the rest of you are sober,” she tells them.
“Come on, your turn,” Beca says. “If I had to go first, you’re going next.”
Oh, making fun of exes, right. Yes. “I dated this composer called Mark in freshman year,” Aubrey says. She’s drunk enough that the story falls easily from her lips, despite the niggling thought that she’ll regret telling it later. “After like our third date he took me back to his room to listen to some of the songs he’d written, which were a genre of music he called dub step up. It was, like, a mixture between dub step and musical theatre? I’m not sure. Then he and his roommate did my hair into like... I can’t even describe it,” Aubrey says, making a motion above her head that tries to encompass the body of a mohawk with the spirit of a mullet. “Then his roommate got a call from the hospital where his sister had a burst appendix, so I ended up at the hospital at three in the morning wearing my boyfriend’s hair gel, and buying coffee for my boyfriend’s roommate’s family.” She pauses, feeling Chloe’s laughter and smiling wryly. “That was my second worst date with him. I should have figured out from that one that it was over but--shut up, Chloe.” Her words have no bite to them, and Chloe just laughs harder, taking a long drink directly from the bottle.
“Denise’s turn,” Chloe sings, and Aubrey leans to get the wine from Chloe. Chloe offers it to her, her fingers stroking across her hand as she passes the bottle. She knows it’s just meant to be comforting - at the time Mark had been devastating, even if he is just an amusing anecdote now - but Aubrey’s just glad of the dark to hide her blush.
“My ex gambled away our strap-on money,” Denise says.
Aubrey doesn’t know why she continues to be surprised by these girls, but she still chokes a little on her wine, ignoring the way Chloe laughs at her.
“Well, my ex is an uptight bitch,” Cynthia Rose rejoins. “And really bad at poker.”
“Maybe if you’d bought the strap-on, you’d have had something to poke her with,” Amy says, and Chloe’s face turns into Aubrey’s shoulder to stifle her laughter. Aubrey sighs, taking a large gulp from her bottle. Fortunately both Denise and Cynthia Rose have turned to glare at Amy, and it’s enough time for her to wave hurriedly at Stacie.
“One of my exes would only have sex with me twice a day.” Everyone waits, but that seems to be Stacie’s entire contribution.
Chloe turns her face back towards the others, but not before Aubrey feels the delicate press of her lips against her exposed collarbone. Aubrey’s sigh is hidden in her wine, but her light shiver isn’t, and Chloe’s eyes crinkle up at the corners. When she turns to take the wine back from her, her face is innocent, and Aubrey settles into familiar confusion. Sometimes it’s really hard to tell the difference between Chloe being nice and Chloe being a bitch.
“You know there’s a name for the disorder you have, right?” Beca asks.
“Hotness?” Stacie says, trying to prove her point by reaching her arms above her head and stretching in a way that probably wouldn’t have been legal in front of minors.
“A kangaroo once tried to punch me,” Amy says, cutting over anything else Beca could say. “Baz didn’t punch it back.” It takes Aubrey a second to understand that Baz is a person and not some sort of pocket Australian anti-kangaroo defense mechanism. “I broke up with him and reported him to the cops. He got three years,” Amy says solemnly.
Aubrey shares a look of bewilderment with Beca, adding another mark to her mental tally of reasons never to go to Australia. She doesn’t catch what Lilly says, but she sees her lips moving, and it makes Beca gag, and Amy chokes on a mouthful of the VB beer she gets imported from her home state.
“And finally,” Beca says, gesturing at Chloe. “You’re not getting away with not saying something just because this mess was your idea.”
(Jessica puts down her hand, and Ashley closes her mouth from where they’re sitting on the outskirts of the picnic blanket, but everyone’s a little too drunk to notice them.)
Chloe is quiet for a few moments, taking a quick swig from the bottle in her hands and looking down at it as she picks at the corner of the label. “In freshman year I dated someone who didn’t even realise we were going out. And I didn’t realise they didn’t realise until they started dating someone else.”
Aubrey leans to catch Chloe's expression, but she's only able to see the soft waves of her hair and the tilt of her chin.
“Seriously?” Beca says.
“Yeah,” Chloe sighs, and Aubrey frowns at the bottle in Chloe’s hands. Sean? Freshman year, it had to be Sean.
“We went out for like, six months, then all of a sudden it was ‘I’m dating someone, be happy for me’ and I was like... but dude, we’re dating.”
“That’s a douche move, not saying it’s not,” Stacie says. “But maybe if you’d put out he would’ve understood.”
“I did!” Chloe protests. “Not that I’m a whore. Four dates before we slept together.”
“Are you saying there’s something wrong with sleeping with a guy on the first date?”
Aubrey looks over at Stacie to roll her eyes at her, but finds herself blinking at Amy instead. Unexpected.
“No-just-not-I mean, personally-no,” Chloe splutters, and there’s more than one person laughing at her. “Shut up, you know what I mean.” She grabs a clump of grass and throws it at Beca, who just laughs harder when it doesn’t even reach her feet.
“How does that even happen?” Beca asks.
“Well, there wasn’t much talking...” Chloe says, and Stacie’s wolf whistle is so loud that a light clicks on across the park. “I didn’t mean-” she says, then gives up when it becomes obvious that everyone is too busy making fun of her and piling up the empty plates into a tidier fashion to listen. “You guys are hopeless.”
“No, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Moment of silent for the asshole that Chloe dated without dating,” Beca says.
“I have relationship talk dot points now,” Chloe says, as if that will make the others laugh less at her.
“Was that Sean? I’ll kill him. Again,” Aubrey says, and Chloe laughs for a little too long, finishing the rest of their wine with a flourish and standing unsteadily.
“Well, I hope everyone had fun tonight. Are you okay with tidying that--okay,” Chloe says, as Lilly nods at her. “I hope you’re all feeling the character of the song. Next week, get ready for thrift shopping.”
Amy’s looking under the tupperware lid, Beca’s standing and grinning at her phone (ew), Denise and Cynthia Rose are making out (double ew; honestly, Aubrey can’t say if she prefers it when they’re on or off) and... Stacie is watching them like she wants in, which, okay, Aubrey’s out.
“I’ll head back too,” Aubrey says, standing. “You look like you could use a hand.”
“Or a casual vom,” Amy says. “There’s a good bush over there.”
Chloe blinks at her. “We stopped being the Bulimic Bellas after Alexandra left last year,” she says, and Aubrey steadies her with an arm around her waist, turning her towards their dorm.
“Okay, let’s get you back home, stop talking now,” Aubrey says, leading her along to the path, and waving goodbye to the others.
Chloe seems to sober up - at least a little - on the walk back, but she keeps hold of Aubrey after she hugs her good night, and that’s how, not for the first time, Aubrey ends up in Chloe’s bed.
Chloe’s cuddling her, and Aubrey wants to object, but, well, Chloe’s cuddling her. Anyone who says she isn’t agreeable needs a serious reality check.
Aubrey pats Chloe’s hair delicately as she groans, “I’m going to be so hungover tomorrow.”
“Same. Whose idea was that second bottle of wine?” Aubrey says sleepily.
“Someone stupid,” Chloe sighs, and Aubrey blinks her eyes open past their heaviness. Is she crying? Shit. Aubrey’s no good at crying Chloe. She can deal with basically every other Chloe, but crying Chloe is terrifying.
“You’re not stupid,” Aubrey tries. She’s pretty sure she’s crying. Their room is lit only by the failure of the blinds to block out the orange lights on the path outside, but she can still see that her face looks damp and red around the edges, and Aubrey glances around the room for a tissue or a face towel or something. She grabs the closest teddy bear and puts it in her arms instead, and Chloe sniffs, curling around it. “Are you still upset about Sean? I’ll totally kill him again, if you want.”
“I wasn’t talking about Sean,” Chloe says, and she sounds angry enough that Aubrey is beginning to think that these are Chloe’s angry tears, not her sad ones.
She’s going to kill Not Sean. And enjoy it. “Who was it?”
Chloe is silent for long enough that the arm trapped underneath her starts to tingle unpleasantly.
She’s thinking Chloe’s passed out when she shifts, turning around so they’re nose to nose so suddenly that Aubrey feels like she just sneezed. “You’re so stupid, sometimes,” Chloe tells her, the anger in her voice finding a subject. There’s a rising horror in Aubrey’s throat that comes out in a timid squeak of protest.
“Wh-” she says, because that’s the only way she can voice the silent question marks lodged sharply in her throat. Chloe barely has to lean to kiss her, and yes, okay, if that kiss is anything to go by those are definitely angry tears, and the bottom is dropping out of Aubrey’s stomach because this is really bad, but she tastes like red wine and bacon, and even things that Aubrey hates taste good on Chloe’s lips.
“We never-” she tries again, in bewildered protest.
“We dated for around six months, three years ago. But you never managed to catch on.” Chloe doesn’t sound drunk at all now, but Aubrey’s head is spinning and she can’t make her brain come up with anything to say in response to that.
“We were roommates. And we were getting to know each other,” Aubrey says lamely.
“Yes. At restaurants. Getting to know people at restaurants is what they call dating. Aubrey, you took me to dinner with your parents.”
“Yeah, because-” Aubrey splutters, and Chloe’s face loses the red tinge, falling into something that just looks a little sad, and a lot tired.
“We made out like every night.”
“It was freshman year, we were drunk every night.”
“We didn’t always just make out,” Chloe reminds her with a quiet intensity.
“I thought that was just a thing people did in college once or twice,” Aubrey says faintly.
“Five times. Once on Valentine’s Day.”
Oh my god. Aubrey can’t even voice it, just staring at Chloe until she continues, her lips trembling as she takes the kind of breath she always needs just before she hits the high note she’s been preparing for.
“Your parents said they were glad you’d met someone so nice,” Chloe says, and there’s a note of wistfulness in her voice that she doesn’t successfully cover, and Aubrey’s mouth goes so dry she has to count to three along with her too-loud heart beats before she can respond.
“I never had many friends,” Aubrey explains, because she’s sure her father hadn’t under-
Wait.
“Oh my god,” Aubrey says, rolling on to her back to stare at the ceiling. “Oh my god.”
Chloe lifts herself up onto her elbow, clicking on the light and looking at her. Aubrey shields her eyes, half from the brightness and half from Chloe, redness creeping up her throat and filling her cheeks as several million things from the past few years suddenly make a lot more sense. “Oh my god,” she groans, covering her eyes fully with both hands, hearing herself making a long, continuous noise but not able to make it stop coming from her throat.
Chloe had been looking at her seriously, but at that she seems to see the funny side, flopping down on to her back and giggling breathlessly.
“Chloe, oh my god. I dated a girl. I dated you. That’s not funny.”
“It’s a little bit funny,” Chloe says, still laughing. “Your face right now.”
“Chloe! I know I’ve been a shit friend sometimes, but that’s just...” Aubrey’s sentence ends in another groan, and she looks out from in between her fingers just to check on the progress of Chloe’s angry tears, which thankfully seem to have evaporated with her laughter.
“You’re not a shit friend. Just a little obtuse,” Chloe says, holding her fingers up a small distance apart and smiling at her.
“How are we even still friends oh my god I’m the worst,” Aubrey says, sitting up abruptly and making to get up out of bed.
“Hey,” Chloe says gently, turning her face towards her and kissing her cheek. Aubrey sighs, stopping on the edge of the bed, the hands fisted in Chloe’s sheets slowly loosening their grip. Chloe has always been able to settle her anxious stomach better than anything else. “You’re not. I maybe didn’t like you very much when you were dating Mark, but you were pathetic about him afterwards, and really bad at being in a relationship with him, so I thought that maybe I should just count myself lucky. And I should have talked about it with you instead of just assuming; it wasn’t just you. I was just as responsible. Now I just mostly feel dumb about the whole thing. I’m sorry I could never bring myself to tell you.”
Chloe's thought about it enough to have a concrete opinion on an entire relationship that Aubrey hadn’t even known existed. “Oh my god, I’m your worst ex story,” Aubrey realises, covering her face with her hands again and flopping onto her back dramatically. Chloe follows, her head pillowing on Aubrey’s shoulder.
“Yep,” she agrees, and Aubrey can feel her eyes on her until she finally meets her gaze, finding her expression a little bit fond and a bit more amused.
“I’m so sorry,” Aubrey says miserably.
“Me too,” Chloe says, giggling again. “You’ll laugh about it soon, don’t worry.”
“I will not. That’s not even fair. How was I supposed to be a good ex if I didn’t know I was dating you?”
“Want another shot?” Chloe says, with a careful nonchalance, the smile on her face not matched by the wary look in her eyes. It lets Aubrey know that if she wants to, she can treat that as a joke and they’ll still be friends, and the certainty of their friendship, at this moment of all moments, is enough to make Aubrey kind of want to cry.
Aubrey just looks at her, knowing that if she doesn’t say something soon the silence will have gone on too long and it’ll be too late. But she can’t do anything but stare at Chloe and think of how much she likes her and how important the next thing that comes out of her mouth is, and Chloe reaches up, sliding a hand up her face.
“You’re pretty,” is the only thing Aubrey can think to say, and Chloe smiles around her kiss.
“Good start.”
“Can I... take you out some time? On a date? I’ll pay.”
“Better start,” Chloe says, kissing her again, and it’s softer than their usual drunk kissing, and it’s nicer, and Aubrey really doesn’t understand why it took her this long.
“And since it’s not our first date, you can turn up in track pants and I’ll still like you,” Aubrey says, and Chloe laughs so hard she nearly slips from the bed.
“You know how to charm a girl.”
“As if,” Aubrey says, smiling at the gentle slope of Chloe’s cheek as she turns the light back off, and settles back into her. “I just know you.”
Chloe’s laugh turns into a yawn, and for the first time, Aubrey understands Chloe’s appreciation for Taylor Swift. Maybe trite, indulgent, teen fairy tale romances aren’t the worst kind of lyric in the world.
Everything will be all right if we just keep dancing like we’re twenty twoo-oooh-oo-ooooh. “Shit,” she swears under her breath, but humming songs aloud is the only way she knows to get songs out of her head, and really, Chloe should be used to listening to her hum in the dark to get to sleep by now. Chloe’s hand slips inside the fabric of Aubrey’s shirt, curling up against the skin of her hip and resting there, and Aubrey relaxes into the contact. Who knows, maybe whatever this is will end up being her own trite romance.
(She’s still not going to any Taylor Swift concerts. There’s limits to her agreeable nature.)