Some Kind of Home
Title: Some Kind of Home
Pairing: Beca Mitchell/Chloe
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: Nothing owned, no profit gained.
Spoilers: Light ones for Pitch Perfect.
Summary: Home is where the heart is; Chloe is just better at following hers than most people. Not that Beca gets that at all.
A/N: For another of Kay’s prompts.
Chloe is riffling through her top drawer when Beca looks up from a sprawling textbook on The Art of Psychology. It’s an activity that used to make her skin prickle with anxiety, because drawers are for private things and a sense of secrecy, but Chloe got to doing it so often that, after a while, Beca could only shake her head and carry on with life. It’s like Chloe’s personal bubble, however small or fragile it might be, extends to engulf everyone around her-and if you don’t like that about her, tough. Your choices are to accept, or to walk away entirely, and Beca finds it near-impossible to do the latter.
Chloe is riffling, without a care in the world, and when she produces a thick brown oblong case and raises her eyebrows, Beca sighs.
“Yes.”
“You-“ Chloe’s eyes widen. “You wear glasses?”
It’s not the first time she’s gotten close enough to unearth something like this about Beca, and Beca’s confounded to say she’s actually sort of getting used to the feeling. A smile pricks the edge of her lips.
“Only sometimes, for reading.”
“You’re reading now,” Chloe points out, waggling the case in the air. Beca shrugs.
“And you’re here. Why are we discussing this?”
It’s the way conversations like this tend to go, when Chloe’s involved: Beca matter-of-factly shrugging off the fact that she’s still hiding things about herself, and Chloe’s whole face going neon with shock at the notion. What’s weird, Beca thinks, is that Chloe still isn’t used to the idea of someone hiding from her. What’s weirder, Beca thinks further, is that she actually kind of is used to Chloe having this reaction.
People keep secrets; that’s just the way life goes. It’s safe, and comfortable, and easy, shrinking into yourself and playing your cards close to the vest. She likes that about life.
Chloe, for whatever reason, through whatever misguided attempts at friendship, due to whatever wild hippie upbringing, doesn’t seem to have a single secret in her heart. She is who she is, and nothing anyone ever says or does is going to alter that.
Beca can’t find another word for it but to be vibrantly envious.
***
She wonders, sometimes, how Chloe came to be so confident about everything she is-confident enough, nine-and-three-quarters times out of ten, to refuse to shroud an inch of it. She’s casual and easily delighted, the kind of young woman who bursts into a shower stall uninvited, baring herself to a stranger, and managing to draft the inklings of a powerful friendship in the process. She’s beautiful, absolutely, with the shine in her ginger hair and the clever twinkle in her eyes, but Beca somehow doesn’t think that’s it. There’s something else there, something so inherently Chloe that it doesn’t even cross Beca’s mind to try replicating it. She couldn’t, not for all the pennies in the world. Chloe is just too Chloe for words.
And this thing that has always come so naturally to her-the hiding, the scuffing behind the scenes with her chin up and her eyes defiant-never seems to occur to Chloe at all. She doesn’t conceal the simple things, like needing glasses every once in a while, any more than she slips the big cards into a hidden pocket-like having a painful medical condition, or feeling…anything at all. Beca can’t remember the last time she actively told someone how she felt without it being dragged out of her, but for Chloe, that’s a daily deal. It’s simple. It’s without thought. Chloe just smiles and steps on to the next stone.
There’s an ease there that she can’t wrap her mind around, and it makes Chloe seem larger than life. It’s like her skin was crafted to fit her perfectly, every strand of hair and ivory seam stitched together with abject precision. Beca has no idea how that feels; too often, she thinks she can see her own dark threads unraveling, the pieces holding her head and heart together crumbling to dust when she needs them most. To be that comfortable in her own skin would be wonderful, and maybe she’d be a whole different person-but, as it stands, she has to make do with what she’s got. A thin smile. A bite of sarcasm. The knowledge that she is good at what she does, even if she may need someone to tell her so the first time around.
It’s cool that Chloe’s not like that, not in desperate, constant need of validation. Beca’s not sure this would work, with two of them cornering the same camp. It’s cool.
But damn, if it doesn’t blow her mind.
***
It’s like the first time Chloe kissed her. Not like she saw it coming, not like girls are just always flinging themselves at her (okay, except for that one time when Stacie all but mounted her at a Bellas gathering, half-drunk and manic), but when Chloe did it, it felt…
Still weird. Always weird. But better, somehow. Easier. Chloe has this way of making the strangest, most awkward moments feel natural, almost scripted. Like it was fated to happen. Like, if she’s comfortable with it, so should everyone else be.
The first time Chloe kissed her, they were walking home from rehearsal. Late at night, stretching their legs and arms tiredly as they sped through campus-Beca’s rape whistle snug in the pocket of her jeans, warm and slightly threatening against her thigh-and Chloe looked happy. Beca, at the time, couldn’t fathom this for the life of her; they’d just finished an excruciating six hours, with Aubrey snapping her jaws and shouting at them to pick up the pace, aca-bitches and reach for that note, Beca, reach for it! An excruciating rehearsal that they’d likely have to replicate the next day, and for endless weeks after, which made Beca’s head feel like it was screwed on three times too tight-but Chloe was smiling. Her breath came calmly in the autumn air, her fingers interlocked behind her head.
“I love it,” she said softly. Beca bent her head against the wind to listen, rubbing her hands fiercely across her own crossed arms.
“What? Getting screamed at?”
Chloe’s eyes were bluer than ever that night, gleaming down at her, and it crossed Beca’s mind to be amazed at how small Chloe didn’t make her feel. A girl with that much energy, that thick and heavy fascination for living, ought to make her feel like a tiny, imperfect child-but Chloe never has. It’s like that joy, ethereal as it is, has this unimaginable power to sweep her up and carry her along for the ride, as if she was meant to be there all along.
“Singing,” is what Chloe said with a brief giggle. “I love singing. I love watching you girls sing. It’s beautiful.”
And that’s all it was, for her, which meant it was all Beca needed. They were still new, then, fresh and green and wary (in Beca’s case, at least) of each other, but already, Chloe’s infectious optimism was curling itself beneath the layers of her thick skin.
They walked, quick and languid at the same time, and after a few moments, Beca realized Chloe’s hand was wrapped around hers. Their fingers had slid together, interlocking like so many perfectly-cut puzzle pieces, and that felt…okay. Unquestionable. Kind of lovely, actually; she couldn’t remember the last time someone held her hand for no reason at all.
Chloe’s hand was soft, the lines of her palm lightly indented; her skin radiated a warmth that seemed both healthy and supernatural, pulsing all the way up Beca’s arm. She imagined she could feel Chloe’s heartbeat, pulsing there beneath her life line, syncing up with her own before she could rationalize the fact that it was happening at all. It made her feel strong in a strange way, like, with Chloe and her bold, charming confidence, she could face anything.
They stopped off at her dorm, where Chloe had parked her car earlier that day-she had insisted on picking Beca up and walking together, claiming the fervent need for early team bonding, and denying her hadn’t even seemed a possibility-and paused in the lot. Beca hadn’t really thought about walking Chloe to her car; it just seemed like the thing to do. Not that Chloe has ever seemed to need protection. It just…
“Thanks,” Chloe had said, beaming at her under the dim lamps lining the lot. “I’m really excited for this.”
“For the drive home?” Chloe lived with Aubrey, which-to Beca-made it impossible to imagine wanting to return to that apartment. She briefly toyed with the idea of inviting her giggly new friend inside, and tossed the notion aside just as quickly.
“For us,” Chloe laughed, nudging her arm. She was always doing that, even early on, jabbing at Beca’s guarded walls with careless slaps and shoves. It was like she never even thought about how it might be read; she just wanted, and so she did. Simple as that.
Mind blown.
She craned her neck, running her fingers through flyaway brown hair and shrugging. “Yeah. We’re interesting.”
“We’re awesome,” Chloe corrected, and squeezed her by the forearms. She seemed larger than life in that moment, her cheeks rosy in the October chill. Beca remembers swallowing against a bizarre urge to flee, a sense that something big was coming that might undo her somehow.
And yet, when Chloe’s eyes flickered from her gaze to her lips, and her face drew nearer in the dark, it didn’t seem necessary that she run. It didn’t seem necessary to brace herself at all, even as Chloe-hands still propped against Beca’s arms, feet scuffing forward to knock against Beca’s boots on the pavement-bent to kiss her sweetly. A quick kiss, but longer than was entirely appropriate for friends of any normal stature. Beca remembers blinking in not-quite surprise when it was over, reflexively sweeping her hair behind her ears.
“Thanks,” she’d said, somewhat stupidly, and Chloe grinned.
“You’ll see,” she replied, with a tone that could have been ominous, but somehow came off sounding more like a promise. Her fingers clutched once more at Beca’s biceps, then slid away, rustling the fabric of her shirt in a hot, lazy stream of skin and interest and Chloe.
Then she was clambering into her tiny red car, the one that made her hair look just the faintest bit duller than it was, and blowing Beca a carefree kiss out the window. And Beca remembers thinking that that was it: the stage for their relationship, officially set. Chloe’s bubble of comfort snaking out and drawing Beca in without giving her a say in the matter.
It probably should have bothered her.
***
The second time Chloe kissed her, Beca found herself kissing back-and there was nothing friendly about it. If the first time was inappropriate, the second was jarring, and heated, and far more than Beca should have wanted-but Chloe did, and so Beca did, and there didn’t seem a point in questioning why that might have been.
The second time Chloe kissed her, they were curled together in her dorm room. That in itself felt weird: lounging on her couch-bed with another person, like she wanted them there (which, she was patently startled to discover, she did). They weren’t studying the way they were supposed to, although Aubrey’s notes and immaculately-designed “aca-flash cards” were spread across the blankets. Instead, they were sitting in perfectly companionable silence, but for the music playing from Beca’s laptop.
Not her music. Not something she’d put together. She wasn’t ready for that just yet, even though something inside her swore up and down that Chloe would love her mixes.
The music was on, but Beca wasn’t focused on it in the least. Her attention was on the nudge of Chloe’s legs, draped across her knees, and on the relaxed pressure of Chloe’s hand on top of her own. Chloe behaves so often like she is some sort of human sofa that it has become natural-and was, even back then. Even when the newness of it still made Beca’s eye twitch ever so slightly.
She couldn’t find a thing to say about it, any reason why Chloe shouldn’t be sprawled across her lap like a breathing, bubby blanket, and so they remained that way for what felt like hours. Chloe’s head nested itself against her shoulder, her breath timing with the beat of the lyrics against Beca’s throat, and that felt okay, too. Strange, and too warm, and sort of sticky-because the dorms are legally obligated to remain at eighty degrees year round, apparently, lest some poor, hapless freshman catch cold-but not bad. Not unpleasant.
Were it anyone else in the world, even someone as slapdash-excitable as Stacie or Fat Amy, it would have been uncomfortable. She would have pushed them away as gently and as awkwardly as she could, and that would have been the end of it. Physical contact has never worked for her, really.
But with Chloe, as everything tends to be when Chloe’s involved, it was different. It is different. Chloe and her confidence, Chloe and her casual awareness of her own body, Chloe and her disinterest in labels, and judgments, and fulfilling social expectations-Chloe makes it okay. Just by being Chloe.
She tipped her head down to look just once, to see if Chloe had fallen asleep-the rasp of breath on her neck had evened out, steadied, the words no longer falling from Chloe’s lips in a whisper-and it had happened again. Chloe had been looking up at her with brilliant blue eyes, wearing that same half-smile she seemed to form every time Beca’s in the room, and things just sort of…escalated. And, because it was Chloe, it felt-again-natural. Like the next course of action was not to blush and laugh uneasily and look away, but to lean down just enough to meet soft, pink lips with her own.
She isn’t the kind of girl who kisses people often, or even really wants to; kissing has always seemed to her a pointless activity, sloppy around the edges and caked with effort. Kissing means getting to know a person, or, at least, getting to know their mouth-and Beca’s not into that. Much.
Except Chloe’s mouth, it turned out, was equal parts soft and demanding; Chloe’s mouth curved up in a gentle bow, all hopeful energy and squirming eagerness, and when her palm lightly slid across Beca’s cheek, all bets were suddenly off. Chloe kissed with a determination that matched the expression she always wore in rehearsal, right when Aubrey’s head was getting that “spin off its axis into the sun” look. Chloe kissed like Beca was the only person on the planet.
In the parking lot that first night, the kiss was sweet and chaste; on her bed, a week later, it was driving and borderline mad. Chloe kissed her like she knew what Beca was thinking-or wasn’t thinking, with her brain a fuzzy wreck under the slant and pull of Chloe’s lips-and like she was okay with it. With Beca not quite knowing what this was, or why it was happening, or how Chloe could have come to want her this way. With Beca not quite understanding how she felt about it, though her response was surprisingly fervent. With Beca being Beca.
Chloe has always seemed perfectly okay with Beca being Beca, and it astonishes her even to this day.
Chloe kissed her on that bed, half sprawled across her lap, lips parting and sighing, and Beca was struck by how wildly, completely at home the other girl seemed. As if this was her room instead of Beca’s, and, moreover, a place she had built with her own hands. As if she had bought the sofa bed, and stationed the desk in its place, and put down the floorboards herself. As if she had every right to the pillows, and the blankets, and to Beca-and as if no one in their right mind could ever question the fact of the matter.
And, in all honesty, Beca’s not sure anyone could.
Chloe kissed her on that bed, mouth open, tongue licking with sweet eagerness, and Beca caught herself thinking that no one person should be able to contain all that confidence. No one person should have the space for it all. But Chloe does.
Chloe, she thought then and thinks now, wonderingly, seems to have the space for just about everything.
***
The third time Chloe kissed her, it was in public, at a last-minute Halloween party. Bellas, and a couple of Trebles (much to Aubrey’s mingled horror and fury), and more alcohol than Beca had ever seen in the same place in her life; a recipe, she remembers thinking, for utter disaster.
Except it actually went all right, if you didn’t count the way Aubrey continually stalked from one end of her cramped little apartment to the other, her fluffy angel wings swishing to and fro. No glass was broken, no hearts shattered, and the only person Beca saw cry was a Treble guy whose name she never caught-after Fat Amy had accidentally smashed in his nose with a remote control.
(She decided, rather pointedly, not to ask.)
It was a party, and a party at Chloe’s, besides, and so Chloe was drunk. Drunk, and handsy, and beautifully flirtatious, and Beca could do nothing for the first hour but stand in a corner in her half-hearted costume (a pair of Ray-Bans she’d dug out and a black blazer, claiming she was a poverty-stricken Man in Black, unable to afford the whole nine yards of swag), and watch. She sipped horrendously-strong Jungle Juice from a blue plastic cup and kept her eyes on Chloe’s hips as they swayed to the Britney song blasting from the stereo.
It almost certainly wasn’t wise, to stand gaping, but it would have been infinitely less wise to stroll up to Chloe-in her skimpy cowgirl outfit with its hat long since vanished behind the couch-and feign some confidence of her own. Aubrey was already ten seconds from losing her shit, and Beca wasn’t inclined to push her further.
Still, she wished she could have tapped into some of what Chloe seemed to operate on every day. A sense of steadiness in herself, a belief that her choices made her stronger, and that anyone else’s opinion (or laughter) meant less than the spatter of a bug on the windshield of life. She wished she knew how to be that way, at home wherever she was, but it seemed insane, and impossible. She settled for watching Chloe, leaning against her secure little wall and pretending like any of this was easy.
They hadn’t done it again-the kissing thing, bold and strangely uninhibited-since that night in her dorm, and Beca was almost concerned to note how much she missed it. The memory of Chloe’s body beneath her tentative hands flared white-hot in the center of her mind, the phantom sounds of Chloe’s sighs and whispers echoing beneath every song she tried to sing. Now, watching Chloe’s arms twist above her head, her body twirling in place, that emptiness in her chest, the vibrancy of missing Chloe’s mouth against her own, grew hungry and forceful. She swallowed a gulp of unpleasant, vaguely fruity liquid, and considered making a break for the door.
And just like that, as if reading her urge on the air, Chloe turned and caught her eye. She winked, a slow, lazy motion that should have come off drunk and a little messy, and actually struck Beca as wickedly sexy. Beca smiled.
There was nothing else to do after that but walk over and accept the arms Chloe wrapped around her neck. She isn’t sure, remembering that night now, where she put down her glass, but she can say with some certainty it remained left behind after that. Alcohol ceased to be a necessity, with Chloe in her arms, her hips gyrating against Beca’s seemingly without effort. There was nothing else in the world to focus on but the way Chloe turned in her grasp, her ass brushing against the front of Beca’s worn jeans, her grin light and seductive over her shoulder.
Confident, even when unable to stand straight without Beca’s hands steady on her waist. She shook her head, laughing despite herself, because how can one person be so magnificently insane?
She danced a little, feeling mightily embarrassed all the while; dancing isn’t her thing, has never been her thing, even when the steps are as simple as “stand relatively still and press against another human being.” Luckily, no one was looking at them. No one cared. That was yet another marvelous thing about Chloe and her particular brand of madness: she tended to block out the whole world, and take whomever she was interested in along for the ride.
The fact that she could be interested in someone like Beca spun her head right around-but she was beaming as Chloe moved in time with her, and laughing when Chloe sang along in a purposely off-key sort of way, and nothing in the world felt as perfect as the girl with the flushed cheeks pressed tight to the girl with two left feet.
The fact that Chloe, even drunk and silly, could make her feel perfect was the most astonishing thing yet.
The song changed, and Chloe spun in her arms, threading her hands around Beca’s neck and smiling. It was foolhardy, and not at all Beca’s style to display affection around other people, but the half-cup of liquor she’d ingested was starting to warm her from the inside, and Chloe’s eyes were lidded, and her lips were making their way slowly up the side of Beca’s neck. There were entirely too many variables to zero in on at once, so she gave up and fixated only on what was most important: Chloe’s fingertips, toying with the hair at the nape of her neck, and Chloe’s tongue, crawling across her skin, and Chloe’s voice, husky and soft and asking if Beca wanted to see her room.
They’d never quite made it there; she remembers, hazily, making out against a wall for a while, and then somehow ending up on the couch, tangled together and trying to ignore the sloppy sounds of Stacie and some random guy. All of which was probably for the best, given how drunk Chloe was, and how confused Beca felt, and how complicated the whole situation was rapidly becoming.
Still, if asked about her favorite party freshman year, Beca finds she doesn’t have to think twice. No other party ever left her feeling quite as much like she fit. No other party left her skin tingling pleasantly with the stroke of tempting fingers. For the first time-tipsy, and tired, and listening to the rhythm of Chloe’s heartbeat against her chest-Beca felt just a little bit like she was home.
Home, which can only ever be the fault of someone like Chloe.
***
Chloe crafts her home wherever she goes, and no matter how many times they kiss-or do more than kiss-Beca can’t seem to wrap her head around it. Chloe tells her time and time again that this is just the way she is, that she can’t explain it, that she just likes people, but Beca still questions it. Can’t seem to stop questioning it. It just doesn’t make sense to her.
She asks again one afternoon in November-a few weeks after the Halloween party, laying in a tank top and jeans in bed with Chloe straddling her hips-and Chloe laughs. She doesn’t sound exasperated, which Beca loves, but she doesn’t give a straight answer, either. No straighter than any other time, anyway.
“I don’t know,” Chloe tells her around a giggle. Beca reaches up without thinking, brushing back the wave of ginger hair that sways across Chloe’s face.
“It’s just so weird,” she says, and then, upon spotting Chloe’s mock-glare, amends, “I mean, it’s cool. So cool. I just don’t get it.”
“Get what?” Chloe’s hands flex on the pillow on either side of her head. Her hips spike gently forward, her knees digging into the lumpy mattress. Beca inhales.
“How you do it. How you, like, just kiss somebody.”
“It’s you,” Chloe says, simply. Beca makes a frustrated little noise, but accepts the kiss that sweeps across her lips.
“I know it’s me, but how do you just decide to go for it? Like, how did you know I wouldn’t shoot you down?”
“I didn’t,” Chloe says, and kisses her again. Her lip-gloss has a mango tang to it, and causes her bottom lip to skid wetly across Beca’s mouth. It makes the whole event infinitely more pleasant.
“And how did you know we wouldn’t get mutilated, making out at that party?” Beca pushes. Chloe’s lips capture hers again, red hair tickling her face as her lower lip is tugged into a hot mouth.
“I didn’t,” Chloe repeats, the words vibrating across Beca’s skin until she shivers.
“But how did you know-“
“I didn’t.” Chloe leans back on her haunches, palms sliding to Beca’s shoulders and pushing down with gentle force. Her face has taken on a sheen of amusement, one eyebrow cocked. “You ask too many questions.”
This, from the girl who can't fathom Beca's silence on any topic at all. Beca makes a frustrated little noise, straining up against the hands pinning her. “I just want to know.”
“There’s nothing to know,” Chloe laughs. “I do what I like, and if I find someone I like, I do what I like with that person. And if they don’t want to, then whatever; I find someone else.”
She says it with such flippant ease that Beca can’t help but wonder who else Chloe aimed her interest toward before she wandered into the picture. A flash of memory flares in her mind, the image of Aubrey’s gaze prickling across a crowded, drunken party. She swallows hard.
“I don’t know what else to tell you.” Chloe flops down against her chest, stretching like a large cat and sighing contentedly. “I didn’t know you wouldn’t push me away, or hate me forever. Just like I didn’t know you wouldn’t pepper spray me for interrupting your shower that one time.”
Beca’s skin goes hot with the memory of the first time she ever saw Chloe naked-and how powerfully comfortable Chloe seemed with that, not even knowing her last name.
“I just liked you,” Chloe goes on, nosing against her cheek and smiling. “And I go after the things I like. Things that make me happy. It’s the only thing that makes sense to me.”
Beca is still and quiet, her hands making mindless shapes under Chloe’s shirt. Her nails skid up and down the line of Chloe’s spine, her palm creasing against the small of her back. “Okay. But it’s like you’re…it’s like you’re home. Even with people you don’t know. How do you do that?”
Chloe is silent for a minute, pondering. At last, she says, “I’m home when I’m happy. I’m happy when I’m with you. I’m happy because I’m with you.”
“You didn’t know me,” Beca counters. “Before. You didn’t know me at all until recently.”
“Oh, I knew you,” Chloe teases, smirking. “You didn’t want me to know you, but I knew. You’re not so mysterious, little Miss Tough Girl.”
“Am too,” Beca chides, slapping a hand against the seat of Chloe’s jeans and squeezing. Chloe squeals.
That still feels weird, in a way-maybe weirder than being in bed with this girl in the first place, or tasting her on Beca’s tongue. That feels like the action of a friend, a close friend, even a girlfriend-and, as she does it, Beca can feel herself retreating instinctively. It’s the same instinct she has whenever Chloe gets too close to a new secret.
She almost feels guilty about it.
Chloe doesn’t seem insulted; she only reaches around, grasping Beca by the wrist and holding her in place. “I’m home,” she says quietly, peering dead into Beca’s eyes, “when I’m with you. And I think you’re home when you’re with me, too. Even if it scares you. Even if you don’t always like it.”
Beca opens her mouth to protest. Chloe kisses her, hard.
“I like you,” she says, matter-of-factly. “And you like me. And even if you won’t tell me stuff like your favorite color, or that you wear glasses, or about your childhood just yet-you will. Someday. Because, when you’re with me, you’re as at home as I’ve ever seen you.”
She wants to come up with an argument for that, something sound and logical and clean, but she finds herself unable to locate the words. Chloe is smiling the smile she gives when she’s about to kiss someone in a dark parking lot, or when she coaxes someone anxious into dancing with her at a party. It’s a smile that says she knows exactly what you’re thinking, even if you don’t.
Chloe gets people, and she gets herself, and she gets the whole damn world-and Beca can’t understand any of that. She’s envious of it, deeply so, and proud at the same time. Proud to know someone that open. Proud to be tied to someone so true to herself. Proud to be with Chloe, in whatever way this is, even if she can’t find the words to clarify it even in her own head.
Chloe kind of is home, if home is jarring, and confusing, and far too pretty to think straight around. Chloe is home, in her own very weird way, and Beca thinks that-so long as Chloe doesn’t mind the hidden details and the ten-thousand-piece puzzle that is her life-maybe that’s kind of cool. Maybe that’s kind of awesome. Maybe.
Still, she can’t help but be jealous. Because Chloe knows who she is. Because Chloe goes for what she wants. Because Chloe, somehow, against all odds, is that sparkling Disney princess who follows her heart and damns anyone who tries to tell her that’s wrong.
And because, somehow, Beca is finding herself wanting to be like that, just a little bit, as well.
Pairing: Beca Mitchell/Chloe
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: Nothing owned, no profit gained.
Spoilers: Light ones for Pitch Perfect.
Summary: Home is where the heart is; Chloe is just better at following hers than most people. Not that Beca gets that at all.
A/N: For another of Kay’s prompts.
Chloe is riffling through her top drawer when Beca looks up from a sprawling textbook on The Art of Psychology. It’s an activity that used to make her skin prickle with anxiety, because drawers are for private things and a sense of secrecy, but Chloe got to doing it so often that, after a while, Beca could only shake her head and carry on with life. It’s like Chloe’s personal bubble, however small or fragile it might be, extends to engulf everyone around her-and if you don’t like that about her, tough. Your choices are to accept, or to walk away entirely, and Beca finds it near-impossible to do the latter.
Chloe is riffling, without a care in the world, and when she produces a thick brown oblong case and raises her eyebrows, Beca sighs.
“Yes.”
“You-“ Chloe’s eyes widen. “You wear glasses?”
It’s not the first time she’s gotten close enough to unearth something like this about Beca, and Beca’s confounded to say she’s actually sort of getting used to the feeling. A smile pricks the edge of her lips.
“Only sometimes, for reading.”
“You’re reading now,” Chloe points out, waggling the case in the air. Beca shrugs.
“And you’re here. Why are we discussing this?”
It’s the way conversations like this tend to go, when Chloe’s involved: Beca matter-of-factly shrugging off the fact that she’s still hiding things about herself, and Chloe’s whole face going neon with shock at the notion. What’s weird, Beca thinks, is that Chloe still isn’t used to the idea of someone hiding from her. What’s weirder, Beca thinks further, is that she actually kind of is used to Chloe having this reaction.
People keep secrets; that’s just the way life goes. It’s safe, and comfortable, and easy, shrinking into yourself and playing your cards close to the vest. She likes that about life.
Chloe, for whatever reason, through whatever misguided attempts at friendship, due to whatever wild hippie upbringing, doesn’t seem to have a single secret in her heart. She is who she is, and nothing anyone ever says or does is going to alter that.
Beca can’t find another word for it but to be vibrantly envious.
***
She wonders, sometimes, how Chloe came to be so confident about everything she is-confident enough, nine-and-three-quarters times out of ten, to refuse to shroud an inch of it. She’s casual and easily delighted, the kind of young woman who bursts into a shower stall uninvited, baring herself to a stranger, and managing to draft the inklings of a powerful friendship in the process. She’s beautiful, absolutely, with the shine in her ginger hair and the clever twinkle in her eyes, but Beca somehow doesn’t think that’s it. There’s something else there, something so inherently Chloe that it doesn’t even cross Beca’s mind to try replicating it. She couldn’t, not for all the pennies in the world. Chloe is just too Chloe for words.
And this thing that has always come so naturally to her-the hiding, the scuffing behind the scenes with her chin up and her eyes defiant-never seems to occur to Chloe at all. She doesn’t conceal the simple things, like needing glasses every once in a while, any more than she slips the big cards into a hidden pocket-like having a painful medical condition, or feeling…anything at all. Beca can’t remember the last time she actively told someone how she felt without it being dragged out of her, but for Chloe, that’s a daily deal. It’s simple. It’s without thought. Chloe just smiles and steps on to the next stone.
There’s an ease there that she can’t wrap her mind around, and it makes Chloe seem larger than life. It’s like her skin was crafted to fit her perfectly, every strand of hair and ivory seam stitched together with abject precision. Beca has no idea how that feels; too often, she thinks she can see her own dark threads unraveling, the pieces holding her head and heart together crumbling to dust when she needs them most. To be that comfortable in her own skin would be wonderful, and maybe she’d be a whole different person-but, as it stands, she has to make do with what she’s got. A thin smile. A bite of sarcasm. The knowledge that she is good at what she does, even if she may need someone to tell her so the first time around.
It’s cool that Chloe’s not like that, not in desperate, constant need of validation. Beca’s not sure this would work, with two of them cornering the same camp. It’s cool.
But damn, if it doesn’t blow her mind.
***
It’s like the first time Chloe kissed her. Not like she saw it coming, not like girls are just always flinging themselves at her (okay, except for that one time when Stacie all but mounted her at a Bellas gathering, half-drunk and manic), but when Chloe did it, it felt…
Still weird. Always weird. But better, somehow. Easier. Chloe has this way of making the strangest, most awkward moments feel natural, almost scripted. Like it was fated to happen. Like, if she’s comfortable with it, so should everyone else be.
The first time Chloe kissed her, they were walking home from rehearsal. Late at night, stretching their legs and arms tiredly as they sped through campus-Beca’s rape whistle snug in the pocket of her jeans, warm and slightly threatening against her thigh-and Chloe looked happy. Beca, at the time, couldn’t fathom this for the life of her; they’d just finished an excruciating six hours, with Aubrey snapping her jaws and shouting at them to pick up the pace, aca-bitches and reach for that note, Beca, reach for it! An excruciating rehearsal that they’d likely have to replicate the next day, and for endless weeks after, which made Beca’s head feel like it was screwed on three times too tight-but Chloe was smiling. Her breath came calmly in the autumn air, her fingers interlocked behind her head.
“I love it,” she said softly. Beca bent her head against the wind to listen, rubbing her hands fiercely across her own crossed arms.
“What? Getting screamed at?”
Chloe’s eyes were bluer than ever that night, gleaming down at her, and it crossed Beca’s mind to be amazed at how small Chloe didn’t make her feel. A girl with that much energy, that thick and heavy fascination for living, ought to make her feel like a tiny, imperfect child-but Chloe never has. It’s like that joy, ethereal as it is, has this unimaginable power to sweep her up and carry her along for the ride, as if she was meant to be there all along.
“Singing,” is what Chloe said with a brief giggle. “I love singing. I love watching you girls sing. It’s beautiful.”
And that’s all it was, for her, which meant it was all Beca needed. They were still new, then, fresh and green and wary (in Beca’s case, at least) of each other, but already, Chloe’s infectious optimism was curling itself beneath the layers of her thick skin.
They walked, quick and languid at the same time, and after a few moments, Beca realized Chloe’s hand was wrapped around hers. Their fingers had slid together, interlocking like so many perfectly-cut puzzle pieces, and that felt…okay. Unquestionable. Kind of lovely, actually; she couldn’t remember the last time someone held her hand for no reason at all.
Chloe’s hand was soft, the lines of her palm lightly indented; her skin radiated a warmth that seemed both healthy and supernatural, pulsing all the way up Beca’s arm. She imagined she could feel Chloe’s heartbeat, pulsing there beneath her life line, syncing up with her own before she could rationalize the fact that it was happening at all. It made her feel strong in a strange way, like, with Chloe and her bold, charming confidence, she could face anything.
They stopped off at her dorm, where Chloe had parked her car earlier that day-she had insisted on picking Beca up and walking together, claiming the fervent need for early team bonding, and denying her hadn’t even seemed a possibility-and paused in the lot. Beca hadn’t really thought about walking Chloe to her car; it just seemed like the thing to do. Not that Chloe has ever seemed to need protection. It just…
“Thanks,” Chloe had said, beaming at her under the dim lamps lining the lot. “I’m really excited for this.”
“For the drive home?” Chloe lived with Aubrey, which-to Beca-made it impossible to imagine wanting to return to that apartment. She briefly toyed with the idea of inviting her giggly new friend inside, and tossed the notion aside just as quickly.
“For us,” Chloe laughed, nudging her arm. She was always doing that, even early on, jabbing at Beca’s guarded walls with careless slaps and shoves. It was like she never even thought about how it might be read; she just wanted, and so she did. Simple as that.
Mind blown.
She craned her neck, running her fingers through flyaway brown hair and shrugging. “Yeah. We’re interesting.”
“We’re awesome,” Chloe corrected, and squeezed her by the forearms. She seemed larger than life in that moment, her cheeks rosy in the October chill. Beca remembers swallowing against a bizarre urge to flee, a sense that something big was coming that might undo her somehow.
And yet, when Chloe’s eyes flickered from her gaze to her lips, and her face drew nearer in the dark, it didn’t seem necessary that she run. It didn’t seem necessary to brace herself at all, even as Chloe-hands still propped against Beca’s arms, feet scuffing forward to knock against Beca’s boots on the pavement-bent to kiss her sweetly. A quick kiss, but longer than was entirely appropriate for friends of any normal stature. Beca remembers blinking in not-quite surprise when it was over, reflexively sweeping her hair behind her ears.
“Thanks,” she’d said, somewhat stupidly, and Chloe grinned.
“You’ll see,” she replied, with a tone that could have been ominous, but somehow came off sounding more like a promise. Her fingers clutched once more at Beca’s biceps, then slid away, rustling the fabric of her shirt in a hot, lazy stream of skin and interest and Chloe.
Then she was clambering into her tiny red car, the one that made her hair look just the faintest bit duller than it was, and blowing Beca a carefree kiss out the window. And Beca remembers thinking that that was it: the stage for their relationship, officially set. Chloe’s bubble of comfort snaking out and drawing Beca in without giving her a say in the matter.
It probably should have bothered her.
***
The second time Chloe kissed her, Beca found herself kissing back-and there was nothing friendly about it. If the first time was inappropriate, the second was jarring, and heated, and far more than Beca should have wanted-but Chloe did, and so Beca did, and there didn’t seem a point in questioning why that might have been.
The second time Chloe kissed her, they were curled together in her dorm room. That in itself felt weird: lounging on her couch-bed with another person, like she wanted them there (which, she was patently startled to discover, she did). They weren’t studying the way they were supposed to, although Aubrey’s notes and immaculately-designed “aca-flash cards” were spread across the blankets. Instead, they were sitting in perfectly companionable silence, but for the music playing from Beca’s laptop.
Not her music. Not something she’d put together. She wasn’t ready for that just yet, even though something inside her swore up and down that Chloe would love her mixes.
The music was on, but Beca wasn’t focused on it in the least. Her attention was on the nudge of Chloe’s legs, draped across her knees, and on the relaxed pressure of Chloe’s hand on top of her own. Chloe behaves so often like she is some sort of human sofa that it has become natural-and was, even back then. Even when the newness of it still made Beca’s eye twitch ever so slightly.
She couldn’t find a thing to say about it, any reason why Chloe shouldn’t be sprawled across her lap like a breathing, bubby blanket, and so they remained that way for what felt like hours. Chloe’s head nested itself against her shoulder, her breath timing with the beat of the lyrics against Beca’s throat, and that felt okay, too. Strange, and too warm, and sort of sticky-because the dorms are legally obligated to remain at eighty degrees year round, apparently, lest some poor, hapless freshman catch cold-but not bad. Not unpleasant.
Were it anyone else in the world, even someone as slapdash-excitable as Stacie or Fat Amy, it would have been uncomfortable. She would have pushed them away as gently and as awkwardly as she could, and that would have been the end of it. Physical contact has never worked for her, really.
But with Chloe, as everything tends to be when Chloe’s involved, it was different. It is different. Chloe and her confidence, Chloe and her casual awareness of her own body, Chloe and her disinterest in labels, and judgments, and fulfilling social expectations-Chloe makes it okay. Just by being Chloe.
She tipped her head down to look just once, to see if Chloe had fallen asleep-the rasp of breath on her neck had evened out, steadied, the words no longer falling from Chloe’s lips in a whisper-and it had happened again. Chloe had been looking up at her with brilliant blue eyes, wearing that same half-smile she seemed to form every time Beca’s in the room, and things just sort of…escalated. And, because it was Chloe, it felt-again-natural. Like the next course of action was not to blush and laugh uneasily and look away, but to lean down just enough to meet soft, pink lips with her own.
She isn’t the kind of girl who kisses people often, or even really wants to; kissing has always seemed to her a pointless activity, sloppy around the edges and caked with effort. Kissing means getting to know a person, or, at least, getting to know their mouth-and Beca’s not into that. Much.
Except Chloe’s mouth, it turned out, was equal parts soft and demanding; Chloe’s mouth curved up in a gentle bow, all hopeful energy and squirming eagerness, and when her palm lightly slid across Beca’s cheek, all bets were suddenly off. Chloe kissed with a determination that matched the expression she always wore in rehearsal, right when Aubrey’s head was getting that “spin off its axis into the sun” look. Chloe kissed like Beca was the only person on the planet.
In the parking lot that first night, the kiss was sweet and chaste; on her bed, a week later, it was driving and borderline mad. Chloe kissed her like she knew what Beca was thinking-or wasn’t thinking, with her brain a fuzzy wreck under the slant and pull of Chloe’s lips-and like she was okay with it. With Beca not quite knowing what this was, or why it was happening, or how Chloe could have come to want her this way. With Beca not quite understanding how she felt about it, though her response was surprisingly fervent. With Beca being Beca.
Chloe has always seemed perfectly okay with Beca being Beca, and it astonishes her even to this day.
Chloe kissed her on that bed, half sprawled across her lap, lips parting and sighing, and Beca was struck by how wildly, completely at home the other girl seemed. As if this was her room instead of Beca’s, and, moreover, a place she had built with her own hands. As if she had bought the sofa bed, and stationed the desk in its place, and put down the floorboards herself. As if she had every right to the pillows, and the blankets, and to Beca-and as if no one in their right mind could ever question the fact of the matter.
And, in all honesty, Beca’s not sure anyone could.
Chloe kissed her on that bed, mouth open, tongue licking with sweet eagerness, and Beca caught herself thinking that no one person should be able to contain all that confidence. No one person should have the space for it all. But Chloe does.
Chloe, she thought then and thinks now, wonderingly, seems to have the space for just about everything.
***
The third time Chloe kissed her, it was in public, at a last-minute Halloween party. Bellas, and a couple of Trebles (much to Aubrey’s mingled horror and fury), and more alcohol than Beca had ever seen in the same place in her life; a recipe, she remembers thinking, for utter disaster.
Except it actually went all right, if you didn’t count the way Aubrey continually stalked from one end of her cramped little apartment to the other, her fluffy angel wings swishing to and fro. No glass was broken, no hearts shattered, and the only person Beca saw cry was a Treble guy whose name she never caught-after Fat Amy had accidentally smashed in his nose with a remote control.
(She decided, rather pointedly, not to ask.)
It was a party, and a party at Chloe’s, besides, and so Chloe was drunk. Drunk, and handsy, and beautifully flirtatious, and Beca could do nothing for the first hour but stand in a corner in her half-hearted costume (a pair of Ray-Bans she’d dug out and a black blazer, claiming she was a poverty-stricken Man in Black, unable to afford the whole nine yards of swag), and watch. She sipped horrendously-strong Jungle Juice from a blue plastic cup and kept her eyes on Chloe’s hips as they swayed to the Britney song blasting from the stereo.
It almost certainly wasn’t wise, to stand gaping, but it would have been infinitely less wise to stroll up to Chloe-in her skimpy cowgirl outfit with its hat long since vanished behind the couch-and feign some confidence of her own. Aubrey was already ten seconds from losing her shit, and Beca wasn’t inclined to push her further.
Still, she wished she could have tapped into some of what Chloe seemed to operate on every day. A sense of steadiness in herself, a belief that her choices made her stronger, and that anyone else’s opinion (or laughter) meant less than the spatter of a bug on the windshield of life. She wished she knew how to be that way, at home wherever she was, but it seemed insane, and impossible. She settled for watching Chloe, leaning against her secure little wall and pretending like any of this was easy.
They hadn’t done it again-the kissing thing, bold and strangely uninhibited-since that night in her dorm, and Beca was almost concerned to note how much she missed it. The memory of Chloe’s body beneath her tentative hands flared white-hot in the center of her mind, the phantom sounds of Chloe’s sighs and whispers echoing beneath every song she tried to sing. Now, watching Chloe’s arms twist above her head, her body twirling in place, that emptiness in her chest, the vibrancy of missing Chloe’s mouth against her own, grew hungry and forceful. She swallowed a gulp of unpleasant, vaguely fruity liquid, and considered making a break for the door.
And just like that, as if reading her urge on the air, Chloe turned and caught her eye. She winked, a slow, lazy motion that should have come off drunk and a little messy, and actually struck Beca as wickedly sexy. Beca smiled.
There was nothing else to do after that but walk over and accept the arms Chloe wrapped around her neck. She isn’t sure, remembering that night now, where she put down her glass, but she can say with some certainty it remained left behind after that. Alcohol ceased to be a necessity, with Chloe in her arms, her hips gyrating against Beca’s seemingly without effort. There was nothing else in the world to focus on but the way Chloe turned in her grasp, her ass brushing against the front of Beca’s worn jeans, her grin light and seductive over her shoulder.
Confident, even when unable to stand straight without Beca’s hands steady on her waist. She shook her head, laughing despite herself, because how can one person be so magnificently insane?
She danced a little, feeling mightily embarrassed all the while; dancing isn’t her thing, has never been her thing, even when the steps are as simple as “stand relatively still and press against another human being.” Luckily, no one was looking at them. No one cared. That was yet another marvelous thing about Chloe and her particular brand of madness: she tended to block out the whole world, and take whomever she was interested in along for the ride.
The fact that she could be interested in someone like Beca spun her head right around-but she was beaming as Chloe moved in time with her, and laughing when Chloe sang along in a purposely off-key sort of way, and nothing in the world felt as perfect as the girl with the flushed cheeks pressed tight to the girl with two left feet.
The fact that Chloe, even drunk and silly, could make her feel perfect was the most astonishing thing yet.
The song changed, and Chloe spun in her arms, threading her hands around Beca’s neck and smiling. It was foolhardy, and not at all Beca’s style to display affection around other people, but the half-cup of liquor she’d ingested was starting to warm her from the inside, and Chloe’s eyes were lidded, and her lips were making their way slowly up the side of Beca’s neck. There were entirely too many variables to zero in on at once, so she gave up and fixated only on what was most important: Chloe’s fingertips, toying with the hair at the nape of her neck, and Chloe’s tongue, crawling across her skin, and Chloe’s voice, husky and soft and asking if Beca wanted to see her room.
They’d never quite made it there; she remembers, hazily, making out against a wall for a while, and then somehow ending up on the couch, tangled together and trying to ignore the sloppy sounds of Stacie and some random guy. All of which was probably for the best, given how drunk Chloe was, and how confused Beca felt, and how complicated the whole situation was rapidly becoming.
Still, if asked about her favorite party freshman year, Beca finds she doesn’t have to think twice. No other party ever left her feeling quite as much like she fit. No other party left her skin tingling pleasantly with the stroke of tempting fingers. For the first time-tipsy, and tired, and listening to the rhythm of Chloe’s heartbeat against her chest-Beca felt just a little bit like she was home.
Home, which can only ever be the fault of someone like Chloe.
***
Chloe crafts her home wherever she goes, and no matter how many times they kiss-or do more than kiss-Beca can’t seem to wrap her head around it. Chloe tells her time and time again that this is just the way she is, that she can’t explain it, that she just likes people, but Beca still questions it. Can’t seem to stop questioning it. It just doesn’t make sense to her.
She asks again one afternoon in November-a few weeks after the Halloween party, laying in a tank top and jeans in bed with Chloe straddling her hips-and Chloe laughs. She doesn’t sound exasperated, which Beca loves, but she doesn’t give a straight answer, either. No straighter than any other time, anyway.
“I don’t know,” Chloe tells her around a giggle. Beca reaches up without thinking, brushing back the wave of ginger hair that sways across Chloe’s face.
“It’s just so weird,” she says, and then, upon spotting Chloe’s mock-glare, amends, “I mean, it’s cool. So cool. I just don’t get it.”
“Get what?” Chloe’s hands flex on the pillow on either side of her head. Her hips spike gently forward, her knees digging into the lumpy mattress. Beca inhales.
“How you do it. How you, like, just kiss somebody.”
“It’s you,” Chloe says, simply. Beca makes a frustrated little noise, but accepts the kiss that sweeps across her lips.
“I know it’s me, but how do you just decide to go for it? Like, how did you know I wouldn’t shoot you down?”
“I didn’t,” Chloe says, and kisses her again. Her lip-gloss has a mango tang to it, and causes her bottom lip to skid wetly across Beca’s mouth. It makes the whole event infinitely more pleasant.
“And how did you know we wouldn’t get mutilated, making out at that party?” Beca pushes. Chloe’s lips capture hers again, red hair tickling her face as her lower lip is tugged into a hot mouth.
“I didn’t,” Chloe repeats, the words vibrating across Beca’s skin until she shivers.
“But how did you know-“
“I didn’t.” Chloe leans back on her haunches, palms sliding to Beca’s shoulders and pushing down with gentle force. Her face has taken on a sheen of amusement, one eyebrow cocked. “You ask too many questions.”
This, from the girl who can't fathom Beca's silence on any topic at all. Beca makes a frustrated little noise, straining up against the hands pinning her. “I just want to know.”
“There’s nothing to know,” Chloe laughs. “I do what I like, and if I find someone I like, I do what I like with that person. And if they don’t want to, then whatever; I find someone else.”
She says it with such flippant ease that Beca can’t help but wonder who else Chloe aimed her interest toward before she wandered into the picture. A flash of memory flares in her mind, the image of Aubrey’s gaze prickling across a crowded, drunken party. She swallows hard.
“I don’t know what else to tell you.” Chloe flops down against her chest, stretching like a large cat and sighing contentedly. “I didn’t know you wouldn’t push me away, or hate me forever. Just like I didn’t know you wouldn’t pepper spray me for interrupting your shower that one time.”
Beca’s skin goes hot with the memory of the first time she ever saw Chloe naked-and how powerfully comfortable Chloe seemed with that, not even knowing her last name.
“I just liked you,” Chloe goes on, nosing against her cheek and smiling. “And I go after the things I like. Things that make me happy. It’s the only thing that makes sense to me.”
Beca is still and quiet, her hands making mindless shapes under Chloe’s shirt. Her nails skid up and down the line of Chloe’s spine, her palm creasing against the small of her back. “Okay. But it’s like you’re…it’s like you’re home. Even with people you don’t know. How do you do that?”
Chloe is silent for a minute, pondering. At last, she says, “I’m home when I’m happy. I’m happy when I’m with you. I’m happy because I’m with you.”
“You didn’t know me,” Beca counters. “Before. You didn’t know me at all until recently.”
“Oh, I knew you,” Chloe teases, smirking. “You didn’t want me to know you, but I knew. You’re not so mysterious, little Miss Tough Girl.”
“Am too,” Beca chides, slapping a hand against the seat of Chloe’s jeans and squeezing. Chloe squeals.
That still feels weird, in a way-maybe weirder than being in bed with this girl in the first place, or tasting her on Beca’s tongue. That feels like the action of a friend, a close friend, even a girlfriend-and, as she does it, Beca can feel herself retreating instinctively. It’s the same instinct she has whenever Chloe gets too close to a new secret.
She almost feels guilty about it.
Chloe doesn’t seem insulted; she only reaches around, grasping Beca by the wrist and holding her in place. “I’m home,” she says quietly, peering dead into Beca’s eyes, “when I’m with you. And I think you’re home when you’re with me, too. Even if it scares you. Even if you don’t always like it.”
Beca opens her mouth to protest. Chloe kisses her, hard.
“I like you,” she says, matter-of-factly. “And you like me. And even if you won’t tell me stuff like your favorite color, or that you wear glasses, or about your childhood just yet-you will. Someday. Because, when you’re with me, you’re as at home as I’ve ever seen you.”
She wants to come up with an argument for that, something sound and logical and clean, but she finds herself unable to locate the words. Chloe is smiling the smile she gives when she’s about to kiss someone in a dark parking lot, or when she coaxes someone anxious into dancing with her at a party. It’s a smile that says she knows exactly what you’re thinking, even if you don’t.
Chloe gets people, and she gets herself, and she gets the whole damn world-and Beca can’t understand any of that. She’s envious of it, deeply so, and proud at the same time. Proud to know someone that open. Proud to be tied to someone so true to herself. Proud to be with Chloe, in whatever way this is, even if she can’t find the words to clarify it even in her own head.
Chloe kind of is home, if home is jarring, and confusing, and far too pretty to think straight around. Chloe is home, in her own very weird way, and Beca thinks that-so long as Chloe doesn’t mind the hidden details and the ten-thousand-piece puzzle that is her life-maybe that’s kind of cool. Maybe that’s kind of awesome. Maybe.
Still, she can’t help but be jealous. Because Chloe knows who she is. Because Chloe goes for what she wants. Because Chloe, somehow, against all odds, is that sparkling Disney princess who follows her heart and damns anyone who tries to tell her that’s wrong.
And because, somehow, Beca is finding herself wanting to be like that, just a little bit, as well.