Work Text:
Chloe’s corkboard always brightens Beca’s day. The pastel sticky notes, handwritten notes of encouragement pinned to the corners, the stray photos of her and Beca or the Bellas littered across the surface, even the calendar paper where Chloe puts her daily mood stickers. It’s all one big amalgamation of what goes through Chloe’s head, a representation of the effort she puts into everything and everyone around her.
Beca loves her all the more for it.
Every morning, Chloe rises from bed, gently pulling her arms out from under Beca. This is what Beca wakes to: the touch of Chloe’s hand along her sides, her soft huff of breath puffed onto Beca’s cheek as she extricates herself, and the creaking of the bed turning into Chloe’s padding feet across the room. Beca lifts one eyelid lazily, watches as Chloe places her yellow smiley mood sticker on the date from yesterday, an unbroken streak of yellow smiley faces staring back.
Beca had purchased those for her as a joke, and Chloe had unrelentingly committed to the bit. Admittedly, it wasn’t much of a bit anymore so much as a part of their daily routine, where Beca wakes to red hair and yellow stickers and soft breaths and appreciates every moment.
One slight wrestling match later, as Chloe wrangles Beca out of bed and into their bathroom to brush their teeth together, Beca’s eyes meet Chloe’s. Chloe smirks, toothpaste dripping further down the corner of her lips as she swoops in to drop a minty-fresh kiss on Beca’s cheek.
Bleh, Beca thinks, but her heart warms and the smile lights up across her face. Her toothpaste drips down her chin, but Chloe catches it with her thumb, eyes alight with mischief as she smears it on Beca’s upper lip.
“Fuck off,” Beca manages, betrayed by a tone that can only be described as adoring. She spits, shouldering Chloe out of the way to use the entirety of the sink. Only, Chloe doesn’t mind, one hand finishing her brushing routine and her other arm wrapping around Beca in a half-hug, a mumbled “You love me” blending into the rushing water of the sink.
When Beca straightens, she catches a glimpse of the two of them in the mirror, buns and bedhead, swollen-faced with sleep, and utterly in love. More an initiator than she was earlier in their relationship, she swoops in to drop a kiss along Chloe’s jaw before she breaks contact with Chloe to go make coffee and breakfast as Chloe showers. She had never been much of a morning person, but another hour of sleep when she could be spending time with Chloe feels like missing out.
She heads to work later that morning after an embrace and goodbye kiss from Chloe, content.
She returns home later that day, tired.
The perfectionist in her wasn’t helping her fixation on the final song in her album, a different sound that Theo had asked her to embody. It didn’t feel quite right, no matter the hours she spent with her team attempting to renegotiate its sound. A small argument with Theo later, she slips out from the building into the searing sun and makes the drive home, turning over the argument in her head as she sits in notoriously-awful LA traffic.
By the time she arrives home, she is exhausted, but Chloe greets her with a smile and Beca can’t help but echo it on her own face. She glances around their apartment, finds takeout boxes on the table, a set of chopsticks next to her plate and a fork next to Chloe’s. As nimble as Beca can attest Chloe’s fingers are, Chloe had never gotten the hang of chopsticks back in college and had simply stopped trying.
Beca makes a mental note to clip the other set of wooden chopsticks to Chloe’s corkboard as a reminder to teach her and perhaps to taunt her, but she can’t be bothered right now with teasing when she feels dead on her feet and her stomach betrays her with a loud grumble. She meanders to the table, hand still grasping at Chloe’s before she sits to enjoy the meal and company in front of her.
Later that night, with Chloe’s lips between her thighs, her mind somehow wanders back to work. Despite Chloe’s talented mouth kissing up her inner thigh and edging closer to her core, she can’t help the wave of exhaustion that still threatens to overtake her, and a flash of Theo’s face in her head absolutely kills the mood.
She draws Chloe up, places a lingering kiss on her lips. Though confused, Chloe melts into her, holding Beca close.
When they part, Beca speaks. “Sorry,” she apologizes. “I’m feeling off tonight. It’s work. I can’t stop thinking about that last song. It’s just –” Beca grimaces. “Bothering me. I can’t get it out of my head.”
Chloe leans her head back against the pillow and pulls Beca to rest against her chest. “S’okay,” she says, chin resting on Beca’s head. “I know how you are about your songs. I get it.”
Anyone else saying that about Beca’s fixation with her music would get to her – who could truly understand how she feels about her music? But Chloe, her former Bellas co-captain and current partner, truly understands. She says it effortlessly, fingers tracing comforting circles onto Beca’s arm, no malice or bitterness in her voice. Just – adoration.
“I love you,” Beca says fervently. “I love you so much.”
“Love you, too.”
Beca sleeps through Chloe’s corkboard routine in the morning, only opening her eyes when Chloe tugs at her to join her in the bathroom. They jostle over the sink again; Beca wins.
When Beca walks out of the bathroom, she catches a flash of deep red, unlike the hair that often catches her attention. It sticks out from the corkboard, a tiny red frown marring the perfect streaks of yellow smileys across the calendar days.
Her stomach bottoms out. Did Chloe have a bad day yesterday? Had yesterday’s interruption put a damper on Chloe’s mood? Had she not been paying attention?
She grabs her towel from their room and returns to the bathroom to flee past Chloe, right into the shower, hot water rushing down to meet the tendrils of worry that curl around Beca.
She emerges from the shower clean but weighted. She changes into her clothes for the day, dragging through her movements as she anticipates the breakfast ahead. Chloe and her, they don’t let issues sit long, not since their blowup fight during preparation for World’s. If Chloe doesn’t bring it up, Beca will before the morning is over.
Beca feels a flash of indignant anger. If Chloe is mad at her for not being in the mood, well. They would both be angry at each other, and Beca wasn’t going to be caught in a net this time.
She trudges out to the table, sits in front of a steaming cup of coffee and a plate of avocado toast. Glancing up, she catches Chloe eyeing her, eyebrows furrowed and mouth pursing like she’s about to say something. Beca’s stomach rolls.
“Are you okay?” Chloe asks.
That is not what she had been expecting. “Uh, yeah?”
Chloe finishes her coffee and steps over to their sink to rinse out her mug. “You’re like, really stiff this morning. Is this about last night? I told you, I understand.”
“Are you sure you’re not mad?” Beca questions, a disbelieving note rising in her voice. “It’s just…” She trails off, the ridiculousness of the sentiment she is about to express tightening in her chest.
“I’m not mad, I promise. What’s wrong?”
“Your…your moodboard has a frown today.”
“Oh, that.” Chloe dries the mug with a towel and plops it into the rack. “You didn’t orgasm last night.”
Beca lets that hang in the air for a moment as she struggles to process the words. “What?” she asks dumbly.
“You didn’t get to orgasm last night. That’s why there’s a red frown. And it’s not a moodboard – it’s a BecaBoard.”
“Chloe,” Beca inhales. “You’re telling me you’ve been tracking my orgasms?”
“Well, yeah? Orgasms are great for your health,” Chloe defends, chin jutting out defiantly. “And I love getting you to that point,” she adds, shameless.
Beca pinches her nose, laughter bubbling up and out. She laughs and laughs and Chloe eventually joins in.
“I thought you were mad at me. Or that you had a shitty day."
Chloe shakes her head, lips tugging upward. “You know I would tell you how I was feeling. I’m seriously not mad. I know the song has been bothering you for weeks and with a deadline coming up, I totally get it. I’m never going to be mad at you for stopping sex when you weren’t into it, Beca.”
Beca climbs out of her chair and wraps her arms around Chloe. “I seriously love you.”
“I seriously love you, too.”
They stay like that, curled into one another. Before long, however, Beca’s hand trails down Chloe’s elbow to her palm, swiftly interlocking their fingers and tugging. “Can the BecaBoard be changed retroactively?” she questions playfully.
“Not really,” Chloe says immediately before another tug has her softening. “But I’ll see if I can make an exception.”
“Good. I’d hate to wake up seeing red everyday.”
Chloe makes a face, pointing to her hair, and Beca shrugs. “That was supposed to be a joke about being mad.”
“I know,” Chloe replies, a goofy grin stretched onto her face. A pause, and then: “Seeing red doesn’t matter, because all you’ll be seeing soon are stars.”
“Boo,” Beca says. “That was worse than mine.”
But she tugs Chloe back to their bedroom, kisses Chloe with coffee still fresh in their mouths, and soon enough Chloe’s prediction does come true.
Beca sees stars. Chloe leans down to kiss Beca, flooding Beca’s vision with her, and a weightless Beca observes that she can’t always tell the difference between her partner and the stars when they both shine so bright.