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aliciameade · 7 years

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“Bet On It”

Wishing a [slightly belated] Happy Birthday to the incomparable @brittany-snodes!

I gift to you the fic you always wanted but never received.

Beca had always loved weddings.

Not that she let on that she did; it was in direct opposition to the personality she chose to convey to the outside world.

But she loved weddings.

Everyone was happy and celebrating love, and at the reception, she had plenty of opportunities to judge the music, whether it was a live band or a DJ. She particularly liked challenging them - DJ and band alike - with obscure requests to see how deep their knowledge ran.

There was drama. There was always drama at weddings. A girl would break up with her boyfriend - a groomsman - because he got too drunk and made out with someone else on the dance floor. At least one child would throw a tantrum or vomit. Or both. Someone’s aunt or grandmother would pass out drunk slouched on a chair in a corner and embarrass her family. A pair of teens would get caught making out behind an oversized piece of decor. It was especially entertaining if that discovery was paired with a reveal that the teenager was something other than heterosexual; the drama was scrumptious when that happened.

Maybe her taste for it developed when she was one of the teenagers busted kissing the groom’s niece at her cousin’s wedding when she was 14.

Being in weddings, however - she’d do it if she was asked (it was always nice to be asked), out of obligation, but she wasn’t keen on it. Which is why this afternoon as her lone responsibility is to man the guest book, she’s in a good mood.

She’s not bothered that she wasn’t asked to be a bridesmaid this time. Aubrey has a big family and a lot of old friends - two facts that surprised Beca when she learned them - and her wedding party was made up of her two sisters, a cousin, her childhood best friend, and Chloe, the lone Barden Bella who’d been asked.

The rest of the girls were there, too, of course, all involved in one way or another. Chloe had tasked Beca weeks ago with arranging a song for not just her Bellas, but also the Treblemakers to perform at the reception as a surprise for Aubrey and her new husband, Jesse.

And there’s a part of Beca that thinks that’s kind of weird, that she’s participating in her ex’s wedding, but she and Jesse called it quits not long after graduation and that had been nearly five years ago.

So, it’s fine, and she’s scored the sweetest deal of being part of the wedding; she gets a decent table at the reception and didn’t have to drop cash on a bridesmaid dress or plan the bridal shower and bachelorette party she attended.

She’s wearing a brand new dress, a light mauve number with a softly pleated skirt and matching heels she never thought she could pull off but was pleasantly surprised when she looked in the mirror at the store. It made her feel soft and pretty and playful.

Winning all around, really.

She watches their first dance from her decent table and dinner is amazing, and of course it is because it’s not like Aubrey would dare fall short on any aspect of this day. She sits through Aubrey’s sister’s toast which is as prim and proper as Beca expected, but she’s thrown for a pleasant loop when her sister tosses out a story about a drunken college-student-Aubrey, before Beca knew her, screwing a frat boy at a party.

Did she mention she loved weddings?

Benji’s toast is sweet and funny and a touch awkward and it makes her tear up a little, because Jesse really is a great guy, and she knows he and Aubrey will make one another happy.

She watches Aubrey dance with her military uniformed father and Jesse dance with the woman Beca once thought could be her mother-in-law. The rest of the wedding party filters onto the floor and she watches Chloe dance with one of Jesse’s high school friends, and she watches Benji dance with Aubrey’s sister, though he’s constantly looking past her at Emily as though he’s apologizing over and over for dancing with another woman.

Beca makes her way out eventually when the lead singer of the band calls for everyone to hit the dance floor. She’s dateless tonight, which isn’t new for her; sometimes she brings a date, sometimes not. She has a good time either way. Without a date, there’s always someone else who’s without a date because they couldn’t find one in time, or they just went through a breakup. And in the very rare instances that she can’t find someone to dance with, there’s always a shy teenage boy whose mother is thrilled when Beca asks if he’d like to dance with her.

She kind of likes trying to pull the shy ones out of their shells; probably because she had to be pulled out of her own.

There’s also the fact that there are so many pretty girls at weddings, and they’re all in pretty dresses with their pretty hair and pretty eyes and those who aren’t married are automatically in the mood for love, and hitting on bridesmaids is one of Beca’s favorite things because girls like when other girls compliment them, and once in awhile, one of those girls ends up in Beca’s bed at the end of the night.

She’s four cocktails in, having made a few rounds through the reception - talking to Aubrey and Jesse, grabbing a drink, talking to Chloe, grabbing a drink, talking to Amy and slamming back the shot of mystery liquor she was handed, talking to Emily and reassuring her that the demo she’d sent Beca to listen to was good despite the fact that Beca has already told her it was good no fewer than three times in the last week, and grabbing a drink.

It’s when she’s four cocktails in that she and the rest of the women - the unmarried ones, anyway - are prompted to cram into one spot on the dance floor and jostle one another to catch the bouquet that she’s elbowing and shouldering Chloe for position and making each other laugh.

Beca’s scrappy; she’s caught her fair share of bouquets no thanks to her height and all thanks to determination. She’s never been the next to get married in any of the scenarios despite the omen associated with the success, but she doesn’t care about that; she just wants to win.

Only this time she loses to Chloe who’s whooping and smiling and holding the caught bouquet high above her head like a trophy. There’s a chorus of oohs and the comments about how now she has to get married and Chloe just laughs and rolls her eyes and Beca walks her back to the head table so she can set down the flowers.

“Well, you know what they say…” she teases as they walk.

Chloe laughs. “I doubt I’ll be getting married anytime soon.”

“No? Don’t have your eye on anyone?” She knows Chloe’s in a rare period of singledom, and if she hadn’t repeatedly declared that it was empowering and that it was by choice, Beca would never tease her about it. They don’t see each other as often as they once did; Beca moved to New York after graduation following her internship to a real job, and Chloe ended up in Nashville. Beca’s work took her there with some frequency, and Chloe made it a point to take at least one trip to New York every year, but Beca missed her. It was kind of impossible to miss someone like Chloe Beale after she infiltrates your life the way she did Beca’s.

“No more than usual, I guess,” Chloe answers with a shake of her head as she sets the bouquet on the table at her place.

Beca doesn’t quite understand that answer, her brain starting to be a little fuzzy, but she thinks the implication is that Chloe’s had her eye on someone for a long time, but has grown weary of it. Maybe it’s the four drinks or the offense she takes at someone having the audacity to turn down Chloe, but Beca feels a little saucy. She hasn’t hit on a bridesmaid yet tonight.

Yet.

“What about you?” Chloe continues when she turns and leans against the table. She’s gorgeous; that’s old news to Beca. But Aubrey’s put her in a grayish lavender dress that reminds Beca of something a garden nymph might wear. Her stunningly red hair is longer than Beca’s ever seen it and it’s all pulled to hang over Chloe’s right shoulder, guided and held there by a trio of braids.

“What about me?” she says, wondering if it was obvious she was staring and maybe not really caring if it was.

“Do you have your eye on anyone?”

She hesitates for the briefest of moments as she runs a thousand scenarios through her buzzed mind, and then nods. “Yeah, I have my eye on someone.”

“Really?” Chloe pushes away from the table, surprised. “Who?”

“You.” She winks when she says it and part of her can’t believe that of all the bridesmaids in the world, and of the five options she has tonight, it’s Chloe who’s become the unwitting target of Beca’s fun. But another part of her kind of thinks maybe she’s known all along it would be Chloe tonight.

Chloe throws her head back in her usual style of wild laughter as she gives Beca’s shoulder a shove and tells her she’s a dork, and then takes Beca’s hand and walks them toward the bar which Beca bumps into when she forgets to stop walking. She was kind of distracted by Chloe holding her hand; it’s not as though it was the first time - it’s probably the 4,791st time. But it’s been awhile since the last time, and Chloe’s so pretty tonight, and Beca’s just really happy, and her hand feels nice in Chloe’s.

“Easy there, tiger,” Chloe says with her other hand moving to Beca’s hip to first pull her back a half step from the bar and then rub where it had collided with the bar. “How many have you had?”

“Either too many or not enough,” she says with a confident nod. She still feels saucy, and now a little silly, and her skin is on fire where Chloe’s hand had rubbed away the pain and that’s a new thing. Chloe’s touches always leave her a little fluttery, but the actual heat was a recent development. Like, a tonight development.

Chloe eyes her for a moment and Beca knows she’s evaluating Beca’s inebriation; they’d both become experts at judging one another over the years - a requirement to surviving college with the astounding number of parties they found themselves at. Beca holds her stare and then Chloe turns to the bartender and orders a pair of vodka cranberries.

They make small talk as they meander around the room - small talk with Chloe is never really small talk, but since they do talk in some way every day, there isn’t a massive catch-up conversation needed. They talk about the wedding and how pretty Aubrey’s dress is and their surprise performance that is mere minutes away which has them both slamming their drinks quicker than they'd have liked because Amy is on the stage stealing the mic from the band, which means it's showtime.

Beca's missed performing with Chloe. They'd only run through tonight's performance twice last night when everyone had been able to escape their pre-wedding responsibilities, all other rehearsals taking place via Skype and FaceTime and singing along to voice memos of one another and everyone else.

Chloe had asked Beca to put together an arrangement of “Jessie’s Girl,” and “I’ll Make Love To You,” which Beca found odd on a few levels - mainly that they were going to sing a song about wanting to steal their best friend from her husband of less than a day and the boys were going to sing about sleeping with her. But it was also meant to be funny and a way to acknowledge that the couple was moving on to the next chapter of their life and that they would miss them both.

It was somewhere around the time Beca was listening to Chloe singing a harmony on Skype that she realized it wasn't the first time she'd heard Chloe singing the girls’ song. She'd caught snippets of her humming it many times, over many years, and Beca knew the song was an earworm but right now as they warm up by singing the chorus quietly to one another, their backs to Aubrey, that she wonders if there was a reason other than it being a catchy tune.

Chloe smiles at her when their harmony resonates; Chloe was always a sucker for a perfect harmony. Not that Beca isn’t, but Chloe's eyes always lit up when they found it, and Beca kind of lived for those moments.

Maybe, she thinks as they mingle by the stage trying to not be super obvious as the rest of the Bellas and Treblemakers she graduated with were also suspiciously near the stage, she kind of wants to see Chloe’s eyes light up like that every day.

She doesn’t have a chance to get caught up in the thought because the moment Amy thumps the microphone on her chest to send feedback screeching through the room, Aubrey shrieks at an equal volume in a different key because she’s figured out what’s about to happen. Instead, Beca leads their now-co-ed group through the performance that is as silly as it is heartfelt, and Beca knows it’s going to end up on YouTube in 30 seconds and it’s going on Snapchat in real time, but she doesn’t care.

She doesn’t care that an imperfect, under-rehearsed performance is going to go viral, because she’s singing with Chloe and Aubrey is crying and Jesse is misty-eyed, and the fact that the two long-rivaled groups have called a truce for tonight in honor of their former captains tying the knot makes her feel like there’s hope in this fucked up world.

Trite as the impetus might be, she feels it.

Her hand is in Chloe’s, as is required for the final steps of the performance, when it’s over and they take their bows and Aubrey rushes them both, nearly knocking them off their feet hugging them both at the same time.

“Thank you,” Aubrey says, crying into both their shoulders. “That was amazing.”

They hug her back, and then Aubrey swaps places with Jesse and he’s hugging both of them and Beca takes a second to glance at Chloe when it happens and she can see the tiniest hint of tension in the corner of her mouth, a smile that’s not quite as genuine as it could be.

When the excitement of the performance has finally passed, Beca decides to grab Chloe’s hand again and pull her away from their old classmates so they can actually hear one another.

“You look really beautiful tonight,” she tells Chloe when they sit down at an empty table toward the back of the reception hall. She doesn’t let go of Chloe’s hand, instead scooting her own chair close enough so it’s comfortable to maintain that connection.

“Oh.” Chloe looks down for a moment, at their hands, and then looks up again. Beca thinks she might be blushing, but it’s hard to tell with the dim mood lighting that’s descended upon the party as the hour creeps later. “Thank you.” She smiles, and then in what seems like an unplanned of rush of words, adds, “So do you. Really pretty.”

It makes Beca smile. “Thanks. So...when are you flying out? Tomorrow?”

“Monday night,” Chloe answers with a shake of her head. “You?”

“Me, too. What are you, um...what are you going to do while you’re here?” She feels a little weird, like internally itchy, but she likes it.

“I don’t know; figured I’d ask the hotel concierge for some recommendations in the morning. You know how I don’t like to plan everything when I travel.”

“No, I know.” They both laugh because Chloe’s definitely referring to the last time she visited New York and refused to tell Beca anything she wanted to do while there, resulting in Beca going nuts trying to figure out how to plan anything whatsoever and breaking down in tears when Chloe said she wanted to go somewhere on the west side of Manhattan when they were on the east side, and it was a weekend, and the transit system was super fucked up. “Maybe we can hang out?”

“Totes!” Chloe says as she takes a sip of the drink a waiter’s brought for them. She keeps her eyes on Beca, though, and it makes her feel a little like she’s in a fishbowl.

But she kind of likes Chloe’s eyes on her. They are the prettiest eyes she’s ever seen, so what is there to complain about?

“Your eyes are like...fucking blue, dude,” she says, and the line doesn’t form quite as smoothly as it had in her head, but it was an okay start.

Chloe’s brows go high in surprise but she smiles. “I’ve been told.”

“Like the ocean.”

“The ocean is blue, yes,” Chloe says with a wider smile.

“And baby, I’m lost at sea.” That one came out exactly as she’d planned it and she watches the amused confusion slide over Chloe’s face.

“What?” Chloe asks with a laugh.

“What I’m trying to say is,” Beca says, winding her free hand like she’s trying to move time forward, “you’re so beautiful that you made me forget my pickup line.”

“Beca…” Chloe’s smile fades a little, “are you...are you hitting on me?”

“Why, is it working?” She squeezes the hand she’s still holding. She’s kind of swinging for the fences right now and thinks it might actually be working.

Chloe’s confusion seems to grow and she shifts in her seat and starts to reclaim her hand but Beca holds tight to it. “Are you being serious right now? Because -”

“Completely.” Beca drops whatever cocky or smug look she knew she had on her face because this is suddenly very serious.

“What...I don’t...huh?” Chloe seems lost and looks a little like she might pass out as she fans her face and then holds her hand to her forehead.

Beca feels lightheaded, too, not expecting her day to go this route, but something about the wedding and the singing and the reconnection had tripped a wire. “Go on a date with me tomorrow?”

Chloe seems to deflate at that. “You’re asking me on a date?” Her voice is meek and Beca’s not quite sure how to read her reactions to all this and she’s about to start worrying when Chloe perks up with the suddenness of toast from a toaster. “You’re asking me on a date?!” she repeats, all the enthusiasm typical of Chloe now back in her voice.

“Yeah, dude,” Beca says with a laugh, relieved that the embarrassment she felt looming seconds away got shooed away with Chloe’s adjusted reaction.

Chloe’s sitting ramrod straight in her chair. “Like, a date-date. A romantic date?”

Beca nods. “A romantic date. Maybe even with a kiss goodnight.” She knows she blushes when she says it, but she’s just drunk enough to be holding this conversation she wants to have and doesn’t care if she blushes because she’s being honest.

She hears a squeal and doesn’t have time to prepare for Chloe flinging herself into her lap, arms around her neck and lips on hers.

It’s a sound, firm kiss, one they’ve shared innumerable times over the years but Chloe hovers when it ends, and she’s grinning at Beca from her perch in her lap and Beca feels warm and tingly and every place their bodies are connected is on fire, especially her lips that desperately want to feel Chloe’s again.

“Or...we could...move that kiss goodnight up a few hours…?” Beca edges.

“To tonight?” Chloe whispers, and though the room is loud they’re close enough that Beca hears her and she nods. “Okay.”

This time when Chloe’s lips touch hers it’s different. It’s soft and cautious and exploratory and Beca can feel Chloe’s fingernails tickling the back of her neck along her hairline to make her shiver and it prompts her to wrap her arms around Chloe’s waist and hug her close.

When Chloe’s other hand makes an appearance, it’s at Beca’s cheek to tilt her head just a touch so their mouths meet at a better angle. It’s a true, real kiss, and their first of such, and Beca can feel it all the way to her toes. She sighs and that’s when she feels the tip of Chloe’s tongue graze her lip and so much anticipation rushes through her she almost forgets to do more than just open her mouth for it and actually keep kissing her. But only almost, because she could never forget to kiss Chloe, not after this moment and the way Chloe’s tongue teases over hers before retreating and instead offering featherlight kisses until it’s back with a vengeance and Beca actually groans at how good she is.

A shout of, “Bhloe’s real!” startles both of them and though her vision is slow to focus she knows it’s Amy who yelled it, is still yelling it, and is accentuating her yelling by pounding her fists on the table.

“Oh my God,” she groans, letting her head fall forward to rest against the hollow of Chloe’s throat, and because she thinks it’s probably totally allowed now, presses a kiss to her chest a few short inches away from the line of cleavage that’s been teasing her most of the night. “Why? Why does she do this?”

“She wouldn’t be Amy if she didn’t.” She feels Chloe kiss the top of her head and then she’s moving off Beca’s lap to stand. “Fine! Yes. Okay? Amy, are you happy?” Chloe’s shouting right back but she’s not mad, just joining in Amy’s fun.

“All you pitches owe me so much cash! With interest!” Amy’s already gone to make the rounds and shake down their friends to pay up on the bet Beca knows was made on her fate with Chloe.

Chloe’s hands are on her hips watching their friends talk, point, gasp, laugh, nod, and dig through their purses and wallets and she says over their shoulder, “They had a bet on whether or not we’d hook up?”

“Looks like it.”

“For how long?”

“Since Beca’s audition,” Cynthia Rose says as she passes by, also collecting her winnings. She’d bet in their favor as well, apparently.

Chloe laughs at her response and then she’s turning with a sigh and dropping back onto Beca’s lap but Beca catches her before she’s settled.

“Let me up.”

“What? Why?” Chloe asks with a pout.

“Because I have to collect on the bet I just won so I can take someone out on a killer date tomorrow.” She slides out from under Chloe with a smirk that she kisses Chloe with once they’re both standing.

Chloe catches her hand before she gets far. “You bet on us?”

She smiles easily, feeling every bit like she’s hit the jackpot tonight. “Always bet on a sure thing, babe.”

Beca had always loved weddings.

#bechloe #fanfic #bechloe fanfic #brittany-snodes

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