SOME PART OF ME CAME ALIVE (THE FIRST TIME YOU CALLED ME BABY)
Rating: T
Chapter 1/? - It's A New Dawn, It's A New Day, It's A New Life For Me...
Pairings: Bechloe
Chapter Summary: Two months on, Barden Med has a lot of new normal to be getting used to
HERE WE GOOOOOOOO!! Barden Med series 2 is officially here, and I have SO much stuff planned for it, I can't wait for it all to unfold honestly. I'm hoping to update semi-regularly over the summer as well as some of the other WIPs I have in progress, but from September onwards thinks might got a little more sporadic. That's a bridge to cross when we come to it though, for now I'm gonna enjoy the ride and hopefully you guys are too!!!
If anyone else is interesting submitting an ask with a prompt, here are my guidelines. No promises, but so far, so good.
I hope you enjoy it, anon!
PHOTO, a Bechloe fic.
Beca can't explain why she suddenly feels the intense and unignorable urge to take Chloe's photo. It's there, though; there's a fresh and relentless awareness of a buzzing beneath her skin, of an itch in her fingertips. It's the kind of thing she used to have haunt her back before she thought she could touch Chloe—of her own volition, not just whenever Chloe instigated. Lord knows Chloe instigated a lot of physical affection.
It was too new, at first, the softness of Chloe's skin when they held hands—when Chloe pulled her across campus or otherwise after the Bellas—and the solidity of Chloe's arms around her when she forced Beca into a hug. It was too alien, too much of a shock to Beca's system to really process fully. Not until Chloe'd been doing it for weeks.
And Beca, well, she didn't like to upset the apple cart. At least, not unnecessarily. She'd go with the flow until she couldn't anymore and touching Chloe followed much the same structure. It took a couple of months before Beca stopped tensing up and going rigid in her arms. A few months after that, Beca could even sink into it a little—Chloe'd more than earned her trust by then.
Only after about a year did Beca ever try to instigate something and even then it was just a pat on Chloe's shoulder. Consolatory that first time, because she'd misplaced her yellow cup. Beca was just trying it out. But it was like that one action on her part opened up the floodgates. She felt this burning need to touch Chloe after that. Needed to be the one to reach out, to wrap Chloe up in her arms.
She fought it. Of course, she did. But she wasn't invincible, wasn't impervious. After a month and a half of clenching her fists to make them obey, of letting there be just a little more distance between them to try and keep temptation at bay, Beca didn't have the stamina to fight it anymore. She found Chloe lying on her bed, reading a Dostoevsky novel in the original Russian, and she answered the siren call. She crawled onto the bed beside her, half-lying atop her with her head comfortably on Chloe's shoulder.
"Was that so bad, Becs?" Chloe asked and then turned a page.
Beca poked her in the side, but she could feel the rumbles of the laughter in Chloe's chest.
"You're welcome anytime," Chloe said. Her voice was soft and lovely and Beca was only so strong.
She took those words and ran with them. The tingles in her fingers ebbed away with every indulgence Beca made in getting closer to Chloe. Eventually, she felt normal again. A little grumpy, but mostly fine—her usual.
But now—now the feeling's back and she doesn't understand why.
Beca's not a sentimental type of person. She doesn't have stuffed animals from her childhood, doesn't have a lot of photos of the people in her life. At most, she's got her little collection of concert ticket stubs, but that's for professional development.
Yet somehow, Beca needs a photo of Chloe like she needs to mix music. It's haunting her thoughts, looming in the back of her head no matter what she's doing or how much she tries to focus on something else. Since the feeling started, she's had no desire to repeat the discomfort of the first time around this rodeo.
She's tried to make the feeling go away. She's snapped countless candids on her phone: Chloe with a red cup in her hand at a party, Chloe offering guidance about choreography to Cynthia Rose, Chloe smiling, Chloe singing, Chloe reading in different corners of the Bellas' house.
The itch persists.
She doesn't understand. The photos are pretty good. They feel like they capture who Chloe is, how Beca sees her. But somehow, they're still not good enough. She's not sure what else she should try. Asking Chloe to pose for her feels a little gross, like the start of a shitty porno which is not the vibe she's going for. She's pretty sure of that.
So what's wrong with the pictures? What more could she possibly need to do?
Beca opens the door to her and Fat Amy's bedroom, grumbling, before she flops onto her bed. The tiny bit of a scream she unleashes into the pillow makes her feel a little bit better.
Almost immediately, Beca hears someone else walk into her room and then a tall, lithe body is climbing into bed beside her.
"What's going on, Becs?"
Beca mumbles incoherently into the pillow.
It makes Chloe chuckle, at least. "Come on, talk to me. Something's been bugging you for weeks."
Except what is Beca supposed to say? What version of what's going on with her could she possibly make sound normal and not creepy and woo-woo.
Beca turns her head towards Chloe a bit, just enough to get her mouth out of the pillowcase. "I'm fine."
Chloe snorts and adjusts herself on the bed, clearly getting comfortable. Her hand settles just north of Beca's hip. "Does it have something to do with your newfound hobby in amateur photography?"
Beca starts, intending to push herself up and away, except Chloe's grip doesn't let her go too far. "How do you know about that?"
It's really unfair that Chloe's laugh is so pretty. "You thought I wouldn't notice my best friend—who loathes using her phone for anything not music-related—has suddenly developed an attachment to carrying it around in her hands and aiming the lens at me?"
Damn it. She's too smart. How is she failing Russian lit, again?
Beca sighs, going limp and resettling back against Chloe's side. "Yeah, I guess," Beca admits reluctantly. She burrows a little bit, closing her eyes, trying to hide in the safety of Chloe's presence. The issue is that Chloe is too easy to talk to; she's too kind, too compassionate, too understanding.
Chloe nudges her with her shoulder. "What's the problem?"
"I don't even know," Beca whines. "I just haven't gotten it right yet, but I don't know what that even means."
"We could try different lighting?" Chloe suggests. "I can round up the girls, I'm sure they'd be down to help you."
Beca feels her face flush and curses her own body's betrayal.
There's a pregnant pause and then Chloe asks the question Beca really wishes she wouldn't. "Unless… it's not just pictures of me, is it?"
Can Beca please just die? Perish on the spot? Please?
"Becs, why're you taking so many pictures of me, specifically?"
Oh, no, Beca doesn't want to answer that one either, actually. She tries to sink deeper into her mattress, hoping it might just do her a favour and swallow her whole.
She almost chokes on her own tongue when Chloe speaks next. "Do you want me to pose or something?"
Beca rolls a couple of inches and opens her eyes to look at Chloe incredulously. To her credit, Chloe seems to be 100 percent serious. There's no teasing note in her voice, no flirty raised eyebrow.
"You… you'd do that?" Beca asks, taken aback.
Chloe shrugs. "I mean, if you get a photo of me out of this, then I want a turn to get a photo of you after, but, yeah," Chloe says. "If this'll help you, of course I will."
Beca's heart is threatening to burst, but that's how the two of them find themselves moving about Beca's room, adjusting lighting and the curtains and shuffling furniture to find the perfect picture.
It's easy to lose track, once they've been at this for a while, of how many poses Chloe's given her, how many smiles and winks, and, god, how much patience Chloe's gifted her.
That's why it's more than frustrating that with every new picture Beca checks on her phone, they haven't yet uncovered the one. She's starting to be at a loss for what to try next. It just feels hopeless and unfair because Chloe's also been trying so hard, except Beca doesn't know what she's looking for, so she can't even be helpful.
Beca barely resists the urge to launch her phone at the wall.
"Beca, it's okay if that one's not it either," Chloe reassures her softly.
"No, it's not," Beca says petulantly. She continues, frustrated first and foremost with herself, "You're so pretty and you look beautiful in all of these, but—"
"You think I'm pretty?" Chloe interjects, brow furrowing just a little, just enough to push Chloe over the pretty line and into the realm of cute.
Beca rolls her eyes. It's a safe statement. Anyone would think Chloe's gorgeous. "Chlo, of course you're pretty," she says, fondly exasperated.
A look settles into Chloe's eyes. "Okay, take my picture again," Chloe orders, adjusting herself on Beca's desk chair.
"Chloe, you really don't have to—"
"Trust me," Chloe says and her mouth falls into the softest smile Beca's ever seen.
Beca's nodding before she even realises she's agreed.
She lifts the phone back in front of her face, moving it a little to get the right angle for the awkward lighting in the attic. Then she waits. She waits for Chloe to tell her, "Okay," and then she taps the button.
Beca clicks on the preview of the photo to enlarge it and stops breathing.
This is it. This is the one. It's not that different, really, from some of the others they've taken, but it's… perfect. The light in the photo is more coming from the sun out the window than the artificial light above them and it casts Chloe in this ethereally soft glow. Chloe's turned toward the camera, her chin just slightly dipped to draw attention to the line of her jaw. She's smiling—of course she is, Chloe Beale was born to light up a room and to smile wide enough to convince everyone within a thirty-foot radius to smile along with her.
This smile, though, it's not her signature mega-Watt beam. It's subtler, gentler, and Beca feels it resonate within her like a punch in the gut. That's not what causes Beca to gasp, though. No. What causes Beca to gasp are Chloe's eyes. They are normally such a piercing combination of shades of blue, alight with optimism and occasionally mischief. In this photo, though, they're not just that.
The blues border on stormy, with tinges of greys at the edges of the irises. While the characteristic brightness of them is there, it's subdued by how much warmth seems to pour out of them, by how much love radiates into Beca's awareness just by staring at them.
By staring at her.
"Is that the one?" Chloe asks, after Beca's been speechless and gazing helplessly at the photo for almost a minute.
Beca nods silently, still unable to pull her eyes away. Yes. It's perfect. The tingling in her fingertips is blessedly absent because she has it. She finally has it. This is the picture she'll be able to look back on, once Chloe's graduated and they've all moved on with their lives, away from each other. This is how Beca will want to remember her when she has no choice left but to revisit Chloe in the past.
Beca's throat tightens, trying to stave off the impulse to cry now that she understands what this has been about. She needs to stop looking at it, needs to stop living in the past when that past is still the present.
She forces herself to look up, to break eye contact with the photograph and focus on Chloe right in front of her instead. "How did you know?"
Chloe's smile wavers, but it's still that softer version of it. "Lucky guess."
There's something odd about the way she says it, though, something that scratches at Beca's brain. "I don't believe you," Beca says, eyebrows knitting together as she tries to reevaluate the Chloe in front of her. "You know what changed; you did it on purpose."
Chloe's lips purse together briefly and then she nods. "Yeah, I had a hunch."
"So what was it?" Beca asks, trying not to sound too eager at the prospect of uncovering what she'd thought was unknowable.
Chloe's tongue pokes out first and then Beca watches closely as she nibbles on her lower lip. "Don't freak out," Chloe warns.
"I'll take three words to make me freak out immediately for $100, Alex," Beca says. She tries to make it a joke, even throwing in a half-hearted laugh, but suddenly she's wound too tight for that kind of levity to come across as genuine.
"Beca," Chloe says, almost stern.
"What was it?" Beca asks again.
The sigh Chloe lets out is subtle, but Beca hears it easily. "The issue wasn't the lighting or the angle or even the background was it?" Chloe asks, clearly rhetorically. "The issue was in the way I was looking," Chloe divulges. "Whether I was looking at… the camera," Chloe says this and her face changes minutely, eyes no longer a storm. "Or at you," Chloe finishes, and then the greys are back, sharpening the blues in her eyes and the affection seems to thicken.
"Oh," Beca comments blandly. She's not even sure what to say to that. How does that— "Why would that make a difference?"
Chloe raises one skeptical eyebrow. "Really, Beca? Are you really going to stand there and pretend like we're not different with each other than with everyone else?"
"You're my best friend," Beca answers.
Chloe's nod borders on sad. "Yeah. Which totes explains why you hated Tom and why I hated Jesse."
"You hated Jesse?" Beca blurts out. She can't help herself, she hadn't known. Why does Chloe think she'd known that?
"Yeah, I told Aub you wouldn't twig, but she insisted even you weren't that oblivious," Chloe shakes her head with a kind of glum amusement.
Beca's denial rises to her lips and falls like a thousand kilogram stone with the look Chloe levels at her. She swallows nervously and then says, "Spell it out for me, then?"
Chloe's breath is shaky with the tremor across her shoulders, but she nods. "Beca," she starts and Beca starts to sweat. It's extremely unusual for Chloe to call her by her first name instead of the nickname she's favoured for over a year. "The difference in the photo is that I wasn't hiding how I feel about you."
Beca might be stunned. Is this what shock feels like? "How you… feel about me?"
"I love you, you nerd," Chloe says then, like it's an admission. Her eyes are glossy now and Beca can't focus on anything else.
"Yeah, I know," Beca says, confused. "I love you, too." It's a recent development, saying the quiet part out loud like that, but Beca could never tire of hearing those words from Chloe's lips—not when they're meant for her.
Chloe shakes her head. "Not like that, Beca," she says quietly. "I look at you like I'm in love with you," she admits in an undertone. "And if I don't try to hide it, anyone can figure me out within minutes."
She's—Chloe's in—
"But—Tom?" Beca asks, brain short-circuiting as it tries to work in double-time to process what the actual hell is happening right now.
"What, a girl can't have a little fun without being in love with a guy?" Chloe says. "No, I mean, he's fine, but I'm not seriously into him," Chloe explains. "And I haven't seen him in like a year."
"You haven't?"
Chloe shakes her head. "No, I've been… too focused on someone else to bother with that, honestly."
Someone else—
"You mean me?" Beca asks, still trying to find her footing in this new world she's been dropped into.
Chloe smiles a little and rolls her eyes in a fondly familiar way. "Obviously."
"Oh."
Is that what this has been? Is that why Beca's needed to be as close to Chloe as humanly possible? Is that why she thinks about her in a near constant loop in her head? Is that why there are ten USBs in her desk drawer with different mixes Chloe inspired?
Is that why she needed the photo, with Chloe looking at her like that?
"I'm not expecting anything," Chloe says, after Beca's been silent for a little too long. "Nothing has to change."
"What would you want to change, though?" Beca can't help but ask. The question's out there before she can even think of keeping it locked tight inside her head.
"We don't have to talk about this," Chloe says, sidestepping the question in a way Beca would admire if it wasn't contrary to her goals at the moment.
"What if I want to?"
"Why?"
Beca chews on her lip for a second before replying. "I… think I might look at you like I'm in love with you, too," Beca admits. The statement is a little clumsy, but it feels right as soon as she says it, settling across her shoulders like a comfortable blanket.
"Really?" The astonishment in Chloe's voice is palpable.
Nodding, Beca says, "I think, maybe, that's why I needed a photo of you—this photo of you." She gestures down at her phone. "But I've never—and I don't want to steer you wrong or anything, so… what would it look like?"
Chloe considers her at length. She has on her thinking face, complete with the little crease of consternation in the middle of her forehead. "Okay," Chloe says. "Come here." She waves at her lap and Beca approaches her, automatically climbing into the desk chair to sit on Chloe's thighs.
"Are you sure you want to know?" Chloe checks.
"Yeah," Beca says.
Chloe nods slightly and then leans in against Beca's ear, her breath warm against the shell of it in a way that sends a shiver down Beca's spine. Chloe whispers examples and scenarios straight to her brain, noting things they could do and where and how and why and Beca's whole body grows warm up and over her collar. Her pulse skyrockets. Chloe's lips are so close to her, they graze her ear every so often and goosebumps rise on Beca's arms.
She squirms a little in Chloe's lap and Chloe just wraps her arms tighter around Beca's waist, securing her in place.
Eventually, Chloe finishes telling her in vivid detail some of the things they could get up to. She leans away from Beca as Beca tries to corral the thoughts racing around her head faster than lightning strikes. Her heart's beating fast and if there isn't a deep, ugly blush on her cheeks, Beca will subject herself to another horrible evening of Jesse's supposed moviecation.
"So, what do you think?" Chloe asks, voice still low and a little raspy. It's like it rubs against Beca's skin.
"Yeah, yes, please, yes, let's—yeah," Beca babbles, trying and failing to find a coherent combination of words suitable as a response to… all of that.
"Great," Chloe murmurs and then she brushes her lips against the edge of Beca's jaw in such a way that Beca almost drops her phone.
"We could go get dinner," Chloe offers, still nosing along Beca's skin and Beca's heart is still pounding in an effort to calm down. "Or jump right to dessert."
Oh dear god, okay, being the recipient of Chloe's full attention like this?
Beca's kind of looking forward to Chloe breaking her brain on the regular.
AN: I'll throw it on AO3 at some point, but for now, a lil tumblr fic.
omg pls I never once put in a request to any writer before but I read a prompt from a generator page which is ‘quiet confessions in the moonlight’ and I can’t imagine it being written by anyone but you because you get the vibe and you write moments in a perfect chaste and soulful way where its not just physical
I’ll even take it in the form of a screenshot of the shortest draft ever written on your notes app and sell you my soul in return (or whatever’s left of it after aoioy) 😭
Beca's voice is soft when it finds her. "A little late for a swim."
Chloe opens her eyes. She isn't sure how long she's been sitting here in the dark yard, on the edge of the pool with her feet slowly dragging through the cool water. The LEDs are off and the kitchen behind Beca is still dark, the rest of the girls retired to bed long before Chloe wandered out here.
There's only the moonlight to see by, cresting on the little ripples around her legs and painting Beca's face in silver and shadow.
She's standing a few feet away, hands tucked into her pockets, barefoot with her pants legs already rolled up. Like she already knew Chloe would ask her to join her and she'd already decided to say yes.
Chloe can almost see it: Beca coming home, letting herself in quietly. Spotting Chloe outside and chuckling to herself as she kicked off her shoes. Or maybe she'd headed upstairs and not found Chloe in bed and came looking for her. The thought lands warm and fluttering in Chloe's chest. And beside it, another thought she can't stop having.
I love you. I think I've always loved you.
Chloe takes a deep breath around her pounding heart. "Never too late for a swim, Becs. Come closer, I'll prove it."
"No, thank you. I," she sits down on the edge of the pool, just out of reach, "don't trust you."
She gasps, playing up offended because she knows it will make Beca laugh. "I am TOTES trustworthy!"
Beca hums non-committally, feet plopping into the water. Her ripples collide with Chloe's breaking in tiny splashes of moonlight.
Chloe huffs playfully, scooting closer. Beca, despite eyeing her cautiously, does the same. There's only a foot of space between them now and Chloe wants to reach across it. Run her fingers across Beca's side, tap beats into her thigh. Idly play with the rolled cuffs just below her knees. Anything that brings her close, keeps her there.
I love you. I think I've always loved you.
Beca is the one that reaches. The back of her fingers drag softly down Chloe's side, her rings catching bits of light as her hand turns and her palm smooths down Chloe's thigh.
Chloe wants to combust, to sing, to scream. And she wants to stay utterly still in this moonlit moment forever.
"How are you feeling?" Beca's hand comes to rest a few inches above Chloe's knee. The same spot Beca holds when she drives.
"Good. Tired." Chloe shrugs and closes the gap between them so she can drop her cheek onto Beca's shoulder. She wraps her fingers loosely around Beca's wrist to keep her hand in place. "But not sleepy. I just wanted to get some fresh air for a bit. What about you?"
"Same," Beca says. Chloe can feel her unoccupied shoulder shrug. "But when I headed upstairs, you weren't in bed."
So Beca did come looking for her. Chloe can't resist turning her head to press a lingering kiss against Beca's shoulder.
I love you. I think I've always loved you.
"We can go to bed now, if you want," Chloe whispers against the place she's just kissed.
Beca turns her head so her cheek brushes against Chloe's hair. "Nah. I'm good here a while longer."
So they stay exactly as they are. Chloe half-wrapped around Beca's arm, Beca warm and relaxed under her lips. The ripples in the pool flickering and fading around their legs.
Somewhere in the distance, a car door shuts. There's a faint hum of sleepy voices and then quiet again, but Beca stirs. Chloe can hear it in the way her breathing changes that Beca had been on her way to dozing and the sound has roused her. She bumps her chin lightly against Chloe's head. "Alright. You ready for sleep yet, Beale?"
"Not really," Chloe says honestly, but she leans away, letting Beca stretch lazily.
"Mm. Do you want to make you some tea? That mango one helps you sleep, right?" Beca pats her thigh, dark eyes tracing over Chloe's face.
She means to say yes. To say that sounds nice and thank you.
Instead, she says, "I love you."
Beca smiles, automatic, but then there's a blink. A moment that anyone else would have missed in the dark, but Chloe knows Beca's face better than anyone. Faint moonlight is more than enough for Chloe to see the way Beca's attention sharpens. And she knows that Beca heard it, heard the tone that says she doesn't mean it the way she usually means it. Not in the casual way you say it to friends or family. But in the way you can only say it to someone you long to see at the end of every day, in the light of every morning.
"I think I've always loved you." Chloe continues. The nerves she'd felt earlier, when she thought about telling Beca, are gone.
When Beca kisses her, it doesn't feel shocking or strange at all.
There’s a soft ticking noise from the clock on the mantelpiece. Beca eases the front door closed and lets out an exhale, a tired smile sweeping across her face.
It’s funny, she thinks, the way this place immediately makes her relax. Immediately reminds her how stressful her job is. Of how relentless being in the public eye is. Of how safe this tiny cottage makes her feel.
She allows her travel luggage to slip from her shoulder, landing at her feet with a thud. She lets out a light chuckle when she sees a large tabby cat stretch from its favourite position on the back of the couch, bathing in a pool of its own fur covering the rainbow blanket which is specifically there to protect the fabric of the couch itself.
‘Don’t look at me like that, Gismo,’ she mumbles quietly when the cat gives her a side-eye for disturbing him, ‘I’ve only been gone seven weeks.’
She slips her sneakers from her feet, and curls her toes into the long shag pile rug as she does every time she returns home from tour. Her eyes gloss over her trinkets and belongings that line the windowsill and bookshelves and mantelpiece above the fireplace. Trinkets that are merged with her wife’s, and some that they’ve chosen together over the years.
Beca bites her lip when she moves a little further into the lounge, keeping her ears peeled for movement, but she hears nothing more than the clock that’s set to London time. The clock that’s set to whatever time zone she’s performing in so her wife knows when to call her or expect a call in return.
‘Oh you’ve forgiven me then?’ she asks, her grin broadening as Gismo wraps himself around her legs. She picks him up and allows him to bop her cheek with the top of his head over and over, his thick-set purr rumbling from deep within his body, and she chuckles, ‘You’ve been looking after Mommy like you promised, right?’
She’s never been a cat person, but after a devastatingly long world tour ten years ago, Beca hadn’t denied her wife when she’d requested they adopt the stray cat with one eye that seemed to have an unhealthy interest in the large composter they’d erected at the end of their long cottage garden. Gismo is as much part of the furniture as the furniture itself and provides Beca with the peace of mind that whenever she’s away her wife has company at home. Still, she enjoys his little head-boops, even if she doesn’t admit it out loud.
At last she hears the heavy clunk of the back door, and the sound of a heavy sigh. The wicker picnic basket lands on the little kitchen table with a thud, clearly filled with fruit and vegetables from their garden.
Beca feels her excitement increase, imagining exactly how her wife will look the moment she realises she’s home from her European tour three days earlier than planned.
‘Mo-Mo?’ she hears her wife’s sweet voice sing out from the kitchen, ‘Mommy got you apple from the garden!’
Beca smirks. She’s never known a cat like theirs - one that adores the apples they pick from their apple trees at the bottom of their garden. Beca’s tried to advise they keep the apple feeding to a minimum but it’s no surprise to her that her wife goes rogue while she’s away. So she allows their cat to scramble out of her arms and race through to the kitchen.
She slowly follows, her hands stuffed into her back pockets. She pauses in the doorway, leaning her arm on the frame, and takes a deep breath.
This is what they’ve always dreamt of. A little cottage, away from the prying eyes of the general public, with a beautiful long garden full of flowers and vegetable patches and fruit bushes and trees. It’s taken seven long years, but they finally have their home exactly the way they want it.
Beca sees her wife leaning over a chopping board, slicing a freshly picked apple up into chunks. Her beautiful long red hair is tied up in a loose knot, strands falling down her cheeks, and Beca notices a few beads of sweat on her wife’s forehead. As stunning as she was the first day she met her; the first day she spoke to her; the first day she duetted with her; the first day she moved in with her; the first time they kissed; the first time they had sex; the first time they swapped ‘I love yous’; the day they eloped; the first day they looked around this cottage; the first day they moved into it…
Chloe places the apple down into a little cat bowl then lets out a sharp gasp as her eyes land on the figure of her wife.
‘Wha—?’ she bursts, a broad dazzling smile sweeping across her face.
‘Surprise, babe.’
Chloe lets out a squeal of delight and darts over to Beca, pulling her into a piercing kiss, hands cradling her cheeks. Beca sweeps her arms around her wife’s waist that Chloe’s been so self conscious of in recent years. (‘You’re going to leave me for a younger skinnier girl one day’ she whined, staring at her naked self in the mirror, her hands sweeping her stomach. ‘Not a chance’, Beca replied, curling her arms around Chloe from behind and placing a kiss on the nape of her neck, ‘You’re the most beautiful woman in the world’.)
‘You’re home early!’ Chloe says, tears of joy beginning to roll down her cheeks.
‘I’m home early,’ Beca replies.
They both chuckle and kiss again and again, giddy within one another’s presence, together at last.
Just as Beca is about to broach the subject of dinner out to celebrate, Chloe shakes in excitement, almost fit to burst. It takes her by surprise. Chloe’s usually thrilled to be reunited with her but not quite like this. Then suddenly the reason becomes clear.
‘I’m pregnant!’
Beca’s jaw drops, her eyes watering and nose tingling as Chloe falls into a rapid description of how their sixth round of IVF has finally finally worked and how she’d only taken a pregnancy test this morning, then had proceeded to take several more tests and had planned on telling Beca once she’d returned home from her little European tour and now she had, Chloe could.
All the while, Beca finds her hands naturally gravitating to Chloe’s soft stomach, sweeping her palms across the skin. The fear and anxiety surrounding the pregnancy will come in due course, but for now, Beca and Chloe Mitchell relish this little moment of perfect happiness.
They chuckle between salty kisses as tears roll down their cheeks, and Gismo curls his way around their legs, purring in contentment.
dropping a sequel to this story sometime this week!
*
'cause i wished you the best (all this world could give)
Summary:
Beca runs into Chloe at the supermarket.
aka
Angst.
Beca hates grocery shopping.
It's a waste of time and a test her patience always ends up failing. The noise, the infuriating music, the children crying and the lines are some of the things that make her skin crawl unpleasantly.
She didn't hate it as much, ten years ago. Chloe managed to make it bearable; fun even. Beca remembers the impromptu dance sessions in the aisles when Chloe heard a song she liked, the arguments on which ice-cream to get for movie night, or the goofy marco-polo they engaged into when one of them was lost among the cacophony.
The stolen kisses and loose hand-hold as they wound through different sections of the supermarkets, the whispered i love you's for no reason while waiting in line to check-out.
Grocery shopping got filed away in that box of things that triggered bitter memories when they broke-up, and even though it's been years, Beca avoids it as much as she can.
She just came home from tour, however, and decided to go buy some food to cook for herself after living on take-out for the better part of the last three months spent on the road.
Beca regrets that decision the second she steps through the gigantic sliding doors, but doesn't turn around because she's too stubborn for that. She simply makes a deal with herself to be as quick as possible so she can chill on the couch in her sweatpants for the rest of the day.
She's standing in the cereal aisle, torn between fruit loops and cheerios for dinner (okay, so she might have changed her mind about cooking. Whatever.) when she feels something tug at her pants.
Looking down, she's met with a pair of cerulean eyes that are so familiar she almost chokes on her saliva. Except they belong to a girl no older than four or five and not her ex-girlfriend.
Beca blinks away the memories assaulting her mind and focuses on the situation at hand. “Yes?”
It isn't technically Christmas, but it is the last weekend before Christmas break, which means it's the last weekend they'll all be together until after the holidays.
Which, Chloe says, basically means it's Christmas.
this drawing is my pitchmas gift to @ridiculously-over-obsessed hope you like it!!💖
MERRY CHRISTMAS✨✨ AHH im so excited to be participating in the gift exchange this year! this fandom is dying help- ndncndnf NO CUZ i was so scared that there’s not gonna be one this year lol but yea anyways hope y’all enjoy this and your holidays!!❤️
yousharknotpass
vaporwave
tangentwithtanner
theartofmadeline
blakekathryn
gummygunk
kaledo-art
origamiaround
