Beca Mitchell doesn't believe in soulmates.

She does, however, believe in archenemies.

She's had her share of them - enemies, that is.

Alex, who stole her diary in third grade, read it, and told the whole class how she still slept with a stuffed rabbit named Binx, and that she had cried because Binx had gone missing one night.

Cheyenne, the girl who lied to the vice principal in eighth grade and got Beca suspended for two days, accused of vandalizing the girls' bathroom, which she did not do.

Then there was Mr. Taylor, her high school Chemistry teacher who seemed fixated on making her life hell by way of thermodynamics. She'd kept count and he called on her more times than anyone else in the class - by almost half.

There's the barista that perpetually gets her order incorrect despite never changing her drink, and the cop who gave her not just her first but first three speeding tickets, and the guy who didn't hold the elevator when he saw her running for it and subsequently arrived two minutes late for her first internship interview - which she was not awarded.

None of them, however, are her archenemy, a fact she was forced to accept because none of their names were Chloe, the name that's been inscribed on the underside of Beca's left wrist from the day she was born.

She's watched it change and grow with her; it was in neat Courier typeface when she was born - she doesn't remember that of course, but she's seen the baby photos. It changed when she started learning to write, matching her heavy, uneven, scratchy letters, evolving as her skill improved through elementary school until it regressed a bit into its current state - a slanted half-print, half-cursive combination.

Soulmates, on the other hand...supposedly she has one of those, too. Everyone does. Supposedly. She'd heard and read plenty of stories of people never finding theirs, or finding them too late, already married to someone else. She isn't on board with that concept - it seems like a recipe for disaster: you spend your entire life waiting to meet the right person, and maybe you do or maybe you don't but either way, you spend your entire life waiting to meet the right person. Which just sounds like a waste of energy.

The name inscribed on her other wrist has gone through the same evolution as she grew up into the confident-but-secretly-not eighteen-year-old she is today. She's never met someone with that name, either, which she figures is par for the course. No archenemy. No soulmate. She prefers being alone, anyway.

Solitude is nice.

"I'm going to the activities fair."

Beca groans from where she's flopped onto what has just become her bed for the next nine months. She'd feel so much more vindicated if either name on her wrists read "Kimmy Jin." Or even her dad's name, for making her enroll in his godforsaken Barden University. But nope.

Her dad's been hovering awkwardly for five minutes, which is five minutes too long so she heaves herself up and follows her cold roommate out the door. "I'm going to the activities fair with my super good friend, Kimmy Jin."

The fair is, as she expected it to be, stereotypical in every way: sororities and fraternities, clubs for all sorts of student subgroups from ethnicity to orientation to athletics to hobbies. Her fourteen-year-old self pauses at the Quidditch Club booth, heart leaping with excitement until she realizes she's an adult now and moves on.

She's stopped by a redhead presenting her with a flyer with the flair of a Girl Scout selling cookies, except this Girl Scout is trying to sell her on an a cappella group, which pretty much sounds like Beca's worst nightmare.

And the girl's blonde friend...Beca's positive if she were to look up the word "bitch" in the dictionary, her picture would be there. Aubrey is her name.

She's not Beca's archenemy. She seems like she could be, though.

But it's not that Beca hates music - it's the absolute contrary: music is her life . She doesn't even hate singing. She's actually pretty good at it. She just doesn't sing for others. In a group. With choreography. For an audience.

She sings in the shower, though, and she's barely through the first verse of "Titanium" by David Guetta, not even properly wet when her back is hit with a blast of cold air.

"You can sing!"

Beca doesn't know how it happens, but one second she's mortified by the girl from the activities fair barging into her shower, equally nude, and the next she's [mostly] voluntarily singing a duet with her. She clutches her arms to her bare chest and she sees the girl's eyes roam her, pausing over her breasts; they actually most likely paused at her wrists, curious about her names as is normal for everyone to do. Beca hates it; it reminds her of dogs sniffing one another's butts. She makes a concerted effort to not look at others' tattoos. She rarely lets people see hers, hiding them with bracelets, bangles, and watches. She's sure to keep them turned against her body, away from this boundaryless girl.

Beca feels like a spider in a sink, scrambling away from the redhead who keeps pushing herself closer than is socially acceptable for two naked strangers to be. But there's something oddly...intriguing about the whole encounter that makes Beca, just for a second and at the very end of their duet, crack a smile and lower her guard.

She doesn't miss that those startlingly blue eyes drop from hers again. To her breasts? To her wrists? She quickly curls inward again, the girl seeming distracted until an equally boundaryless guy prompts her exit.

Beca surprises herself by going to the dumb audition. She likes that the redhead is clearly excited that she showed up. She kind of likes that the blonde - Aubrey, she remembers - seems irritated that she can, in fact, sing.

She learns the shower invader's name at the "aca-initiation," a formal introduction coming after she's signed away her first-born child or something.

"I'm Chloe," the girl says, going in for a hug when Beca has her hand out for a shake.

Beca feels her blood turn cold. The name has haunted her her entire eighteen years. Soulmate? Archenemy? She hasn't met a Chloe until this moment, and the girl seems so impossibly sweet and nice she can't imagine her being an enemy. Or a soulmate, for that matter.

Perhaps it's just a coincidence; this happens a lot. You might only have one soulmate named Jennifer, but there are a million Jennifers in the world, so...good luck with that.

"I'm so glad that I met you," Chloe says later at a party full of nerds Beca's been forced to attend. Chloe's about two inches from her face and Beca wonders if this girl is going to kiss her. "I think that we're going to be really fast friends." She wonders if she'd let her do it.

It makes her shiver and call upon her handy dandy snark to end the conversation and get back to her efforts in not socializing.

The whole a cappella thing isn't the worst thing in the world, Beca decides. At least she's doing something involving music.

She's able to pinpoint the turning point of her opinion on the matter to the so-called "riff off" in an inexplicably empty and abandoned yet publicly accessible swimming pool. She likes improvising music, playing one song off the other. Chloe explains to her how it works and somehow she drums up the courage - probably driven by the need to show up the cocky guy group they're up against - to jump in with "No Diggity."

It brings the whole event to a screeching halt. It's weird and awkward and has no one ever rapped at this thing before? She's about to give up when the Bellas figure out how to join in, and suddenly the song works and the whole place is into it. It's kind of awesome.

But they lose. Because of a fucking contraction. It's fun, though, and she's psyched because the group actually sounded good . And then her excitement is squashed.

"Before everybody goes to bed tonight, I need you to list everything you did wrong."

Beca questions how neither of her tattoos read "Aubrey."

She surprises herself again that she actually cares about these girls. They're all beautiful in their own ways, how Stacie loves unconditionally and how Cynthia-Rose can give the best pep talks, how Fat Amy can lift anyone's spirits with humor but knows when to dial it back, how Lily keeps them on their toes and Ashley and Jessica are a one-two positivity punch, Denise is the best listener and Aubrey...Aubrey is still on her shit list.

And then there's Chloe.

Beca can't quite figure her out.

She's a ball of bubbling energy, sure. She will listen to anyone talk for an hour and hang on their every word and equally talk their ear off for the next hour.

Beca finds herself seeking Chloe out when she has bad days or bombs a pop quiz, going out of her way to find her at the Bellas' house.

"I like this," Chloe says one evening.

Beca's in her bed - Chloe's, that is. Somewhere along the way, they became cuddle buddies, and Beca does not cuddle. But Chloe likes to, and it feels nice and makes her feel safe and she got a C on her Calculus exam and she feels like shit about it and getting a good snuggle from Chloe does wonders for her mood.

She doesn't really admit this, though, acting standoffish despite being the one to initiate it by texting Chloe and asking if she's busy.

"Me, too," she admits, feeling goosebumps rise when Chloe drags a fingernail along the soft skin of the underside of her forearm. She feels her trace the bands of the black leather bracelet there.

"What are your names?"

Beca stiffens and she feels Chloe's touch pause. They've known each other for six months now and she's managed thus far to keep them private - no easy task with a friend who is as physically affectionate as Chloe, always hugging and tickling and wrestling and picking Beca up just because she can and she knows Beca hates it.

"What are yours?" she counters. She's intentionally never looked at Chloe's, though they've rarely been hidden by clothing or accessories. Because of that whole dog metaphor thing.

"I asked you first." Chloe's tone is teasing but peaceful.

Beca shakes her head and sits up, hands out of reach of Chloe's curious fingers. "I don't tell people."

"Not even me?"

Something about the question, still teasing but tainted with poorly masked hurt, makes Beca's chest tighten.

She feels Chloe sit up next to her and can see her out the corner of her eye, staring at Beca's profile. The fingers that had been tracing Beca's arm lift to trace the angle of her cheek until they're tucking a lock of hair behind Beca's ear. It makes Beca feel nauseous and giddy at the same time. She doesn't know what to do or how to react, so she does nothing, still as a statue as she feels Chloe's eyes on her.

"You don't know what mine are?" Chloe asks quietly. "After all this time?"

Beca doesn't dare speak, her eyes on her own folded hands in her lap when Chloe's forearm extends across her own. She doesn't want to look, but she can't not, and her eyes follow the line from Chloe's elbow to her wrist and she feels nauseated all over again.

Because there, in the neat script that mirrors the dozens of notes Chloe has written for her - grocery lists, reminders, requests - is "Beca."

She hears her own breath catch and she has the urge to flee but feels frozen, Chloe's arm as heavy as stone keeping her from moving.

"I've met a Beca before," Chloe says quietly. "Well, Rebecca. She went by Becca. With two C's. In high school. I thought she was my soulmate, that maybe you know...it was just a spelling preference or whatever which is why it wasn't quite right. But…"

"But?" Beca heard herself prompt when Chloe fell quiet.

"But she broke my heart."

Beca glanced at the name again. It was definitely spelled the way she spelled it. She looked at her own tattoos, still hidden from Chloe's view. "Beca's your archenemy?" Her own voice sounds foreign in her ears.

Chloe's hand moves to curl around Beca's forearm, not pulling, just touching, but a way that Beca knows is a request. To part her hands. To show Chloe what's there.

"She didn't have my name," is Chloe's answer. "She wasn't the right Beca."

Beca holds her breath again; it suddenly feels like they're on a precipice and the energy in the room has shifted from calm to buzzing to chaotic.

Because Chloe is implying she's her soulmate. Her name is imprinted on Chloe. Chloe's is imprinted on her. Not that Chloe knows that.

It's the moment she's read about her entire life, a meet-cute where two people discover they've been The One for each other all along. Their meet-cute was arguably that day in the shower when Chloe proceeded to upheave her entire life.

It isn't that Chloe is a bad person; Beca can't think of someone purer. But Beca had a plan. A goal. She'd adjusted when her father forced her to enroll here, insisting she needed a backup plan which was as insulting as it was motivating. She met his terms - enrolling, joining a group, making friends. She'd had every intention to finish out the year, drop out, and move to Los Angeles.

Along the way, she began second-guessing that plan. She didn't want to leave. She hadn't wanted to leave for quite awhile. Perhaps as long ago as that late night in the empty swimming pool.

It's why she's thought for five months that perhaps archenemies weren't always malicious evildoers. It's why she's been working on accepting that Chloe is her archenemy - someone who came into her life solely to disrupt it, make her question everything she thought she knew, and throw her irrevocably off-course.

And now Chloe is suggesting they're soulmates.

But she is going to be another Beca to break Chloe's heart.

They're the archenemies.

"What names do you have?" Chloe sounds nervous now, and she tugs at Beca's arm.

Beca swallows bile and lets Chloe pull her right hand away from where it's been curled around her own waist. Watches Chloe wiggle the bracelet out of the way. Watches her reaction - the confusion is evident, sliding over her features until her brow is furrowed.

"Beca?"

"I have to go." Beca doesn't remember deciding to say the words, but she hears them and she's moving, pulling away from Chloe's embrace and out the door.

Chloe doesn't bring up their small but life-altering revelation the next day at rehearsal. Part of Beca is grateful. A bigger part of her is screaming for it to happen, which is a new emotion for her - the desire to talk about feelings and secrets. But Chloe isn't offering her the opportunity, acting like nothing has changed.

Which, Beca figures, is another tick mark in the Beca-Chloe archenemy tally.

She isn't surprised when Chloe plops down next to her on the bleachers where they pack up their bags side by side, as though nothing is amiss.

"Wanna grab dinner tonight?" Chloe asks.

"I...don't know."

"Oh, do you have other plans?"

"No, I -"

"Great!" Chloe drops her character shoes into her duffel bag, having changed into flip flops. "I'll pick you up at your dorm at 7:00." She leaves before Beca can muster what she needs to in order to reject Chloe.

Instead, she goes to her Music in Contemporary Pop Culture class, partly because she loves it, but mostly because she needs the distraction because it feels like Chloe just asked her on a date, despite that exact scenario happening innumerable times in the past.

It doesn't do much to distract her, and her knee bounces nervously through the entire lecture. She showers and spends entirely too much time on her hair and makeup because, again, this still feels like a date. And she's nervous. And excited, though she wishes she wasn't. She knows she's going to hurt Chloe, which is arguably the worst fate she could ever foresee.

She's waiting for Chloe's usual text to let her know she's outside when there's a knock on her door. She rolls her eyes, not wanting to deal with some stupid check-in from her RA. She pulls the door open, ready to prove that no, she does not have candles or a hot plate, and is surprised to see Chloe.

With flowers.

"Hi!" Chloe says, eyes bright. "Ooh, you look nice." Chloe's eyes roam over the black skinny jeans, white v-neck, black unbuttoned vest, and black heels, an outfit which Beca spent an embarrassingly long time putting together. But the attention and compliment make her feel vindicated.

"You didn't say where we were going. I hope this is okay? I'm not, like, underdressed?"

Chloe giggles at that. "It's not that fancy. These are for you," she adds, extending the bouquet of wildflowers toward Beca.

"Oh. You...didn't have to…" She stops herself. "Thank you." She accepts them with what she hopes is minimal awkwardness, only to realize she has no vases in her tiny dorm room. "I…"

"Here you go," Chloe says with as smile, holding up a brown paper gift bag. Beca doesn't have to look in it to know it contains a vase because, of course, Chloe would do that.

"You look really nice, too. By the way." Beca says as they walk along the pathway from Beca's dorm to the parking lot. It's an understatement really. Chloe is... astonishing. It makes Beca feel underdressed anyway, despite Chloe's insistence that she wasn't. Despite Chloe wearing what would qualify as a Little Black Dress if it was black instead of cobalt blue.

Chloe takes Beca's elbow as they walk, not that Beca had offered it. (She realizes maybe she should have.) "Thank you."

She does offer it for the walk from Chloe's car to the restaurant Chloe's driven them to. Beca relaxes the moment she realizes where they are and now feels silly for worrying about her wardrobe.

"Pizza Planet?" she asks with a crooked smile before opening the restaurant's door for Chloe to enter first.

"It's your favorite, isn't it?"

"Yeah, but...oh, Chlo they don't take reservations here," she adds when Chloe approaches the host and offers her name.

But contrary to Beca's knowledge, the high school student in the red polo shirt and khaki pants nods eagerly and gestures for them to follow until he's deposited them in one of the private party rooms, which has already been set up for two.

Beca's blushing at the very sentiment that Chloe put in the effort to arrange such a thing because there's not really any denying now that this is, in fact, intended to be a romantic date. It's just casual enough, however, to keep Beca from wanting to flee.

Which, she figures, is exactly what Chloe was aiming to accomplish.

"Want a beer? We can share a pitcher," Chloe asks before Beca's even fully settled into her seat at the square table. "They won't card you if I order it."

She had expected Chloe to take the seat across from her, but at the last second, she stepped around the corner of the table to sit to Beca's right. Chloe sounds a little anxious with her question, eager to get alcohol into her system, and the concept that Chloe is maybe a little nervous about all this is calming. "Definitely. What do they have on tap?"

After three beers and two slices of pepperoni and mushroom (ham and pineapple for Chloe, which had prompted a lengthy debate regarding the appropriateness of pineapple on pizza), Beca has almost forgotten this was probably a date until a particular boisterous moment of laughter results in Chloe's hand landing on top of Beca's thigh. They both acknowledge it with a glance, and for a second it's clear Chloe is waiting for Beca to reject it.

But she doesn't.

It makes her heart pound, but she likes how Chloe's hand looks and feels there, and she hates it because she knows this can only end badly. She's about to start overthinking when their waiter returns with prepaid gameplay cards for the restaurant's arcade and she imagines herself swooning because honestly Chloe knows her so well to orchestrate such a perfect first date.

"I'm about to kick your butt at air hockey," Chloe says with a sly smile as she leans close and then pops backward and out of her chair, holding out her hand for Beca to take.

Chloe does kick her ass at air hockey. But Beca wins at the basketball game which is a fair trade.

It's when they're in a two-seater game requiring teamwork as they steer and man the cannons of a pirate ship, a game that really is going for an aesthetic and has them fully encapsulated aside from the open sides through which they entered, that they're laughing hysterically about dealing with their ship going over a waterfall and Beca's shrieking about Chloe not holding onto the ship's wheel when Chloe uses her free hands to turn Beca's face away from the game to kiss her.

It takes Beca's brain a few seconds to catch up to the action and when it finally does, she freezes. Her eyes are open but Chloe's are closed and they're kissing and she knows now without a doubt that this is a date.

She sees Chloe's eyes start to flutter open and that's when she unfreezes, with the realization that she should close her eyes and maybe kiss Chloe back before Chloe interprets her lack of response as rejection rather than the surprise it was. Because she doesn't want to reject Chloe, even though her conscience is telling her to stop it now before anyone gets hurt.

So she responds, letting her eyes close to actually kiss Chloe back and the sound of contentment that escapes Chloe does things to Beca. Twists her up inside. Sends electricity through her. She drops the firearm controls in favor of reaching for Chloe, hands framing her face as Chloe readily grants her curious tongue access to her mouth.

Beca's had her share of first kisses, but none of them have made her feel like this one is, all warm and tingly and buzzy, like she's...like she's been waiting her entire life for it. The reminder makes her pull back, and the way a flushed Chloe chases the broken kiss for a second gives her another rush.

"Wow," Chloe says, eyes still closed as a smile starts to appear as her fingernails scratch lightly at the back of Beca's neck. "You're really good at that."

Chloe was good at it, too, and Beca wants to do it again - which seems like a terrible idea because this is never going to work out with them.

"Is this a date?" Beca suddenly blurts. It's been the elephant in the room of her mind all night. She needs Chloe to address it.

The question gets Chloe to open her eyes, and though her smile remains, it diminishes a tad which makes Beca feel bad. "Do you want it to be?"

Beca hesitates. Does she want it to be a date? Clearly, it is. But Chloe's just offered her a Get Out Of Jail Free card. "We're friends, right?"

She immediately knows this was not the right way to respond to Chloe's open door because her smile disappears and she removes her hands from Beca's body. "Yeah, of course."

Beca shakes her head, more at herself than at Chloe. She's going to hate herself for this, more than Chloe will hate her. "Will you take me home?"

She sees the hurt and disappointment in Chloe's eyes as she turns to exit the arcade game and Beca realizes what she just said. She panics because Chloe completely misinterpreted her terrible choice of words so she reaches for her arm and pulls her back into the game and back into another kiss.

"Take me home?" she tries again, this time breathless and clinging to Chloe to convey her meaning.

Chloe utters a quiet, "Ohh," and Beca nods.

"That's what I meant. Not...not that I just wanted to go home."

"Yeah." Chloe smiles. "Yes. Okay." She's bouncy and twirly as she climbs out of the game and Beca follows. She lets Chloe lead the way back to their private room to gather their purses and settle the bill - something Chloe refuses to let Beca contribute to.

Beca knows this is a terrible idea. This is going to ruin their friendship and hurt them both, but the effect Chloe's had on her body is impossible to ignore and archenemy or not, apparently they have amazing sexual chemistry.

Maybe once this all blows up in her face she won't want to stay at Barden anymore and she'll get her life back on its original track. Silver linings.

This time, she offers her arm to Chloe who takes it with a giggle of gratitude. She completes the circle of politeness by opening the driver's side door for her.

The car is running by the time she circles it and gets in and she isn't one iota surprised that the moment she sits down, Chloe's leaning across the console to pull her into another kiss, this one much less restrained than the first two in the arcade.

"My place?" Chloe asks breathlessly when they part.

Beca nods; it's not the best possible option, but between her dorm room with a probably-home roommate or the Bellas' house which is only home to Chloe and Aubrey as Freshmen are required to live in the dorms and they're the only non-Freshmen Bellas. She doesn't want to have to face Aubrey tonight; she's confident that if Aubrey were to know what they were about to do, Beca would be rejected from the group.

The drive seems endless, and it's quiet save for the 90s playlist filtering through Chloe's sound system. Beca's knee is bouncing and Chloe reaches over and rests her hand on it and it stills immediately. Something about the way Chloe is able to calm her nerves so easily is, well, unnerving, but it works nonetheless. She wants to return the gesture, but she doesn't trust that if she puts her hand on Chloe's bare knee that they'll make it to the house without an accident caused by distracted driving.

So she keeps her hands to herself and her eyes on the hand on her knee and the way it's almost petting her. It's the same hand that has her name - well, some Beca's name - inscribed just above it and there's a sad irony with that.

Their walk from the car to the house is quick, and the looks Chloe throws over her shoulder more than once make Beca's feet move more quickly until she collides with Chloe's back when she stops to unlock the door, the momentum pressing Chloe against the wooden barrier and Beca has her accidentally pinned to a door.

Custom dictates that Beca should immediately step back and apologize, but she's close enough that she heard the whimper that escaped Chloe when the impact occurred and Chloe's body feels like a magnet. Her hands are on Chloe's waist where they'd moved instinctively upon impact and she lifts one to pull Chloe's hair back and over her shoulder to lean close. It's clear Chloe's anticipating something by the way she tilts her head, and for a second Beca considers biting the curve of her neck but instead she just leans in to say, "Open the door."

"I'm trying," Chloe said with a breathy laugh and Beca looks down to see her fighting with her keys with a shaky hand until she succeeds and only the threat of Aubrey being on the other side of the door is a strong enough force to repel Beca from where she'd molded herself to Chloe.

They half-stumble into the house with a laugh and Chloe immediately heads for the stairs. "Bree, you home?"

Beca holds her breath, ears straining for a response. She doesn't hear anything but their footfalls on the stairs as they climb and Chloe repeats her question more loudly and Beca sees her retrieve her phone from her purse to check it.

Chloe stops at the top of the stairs and spins around, smiling down at Beca who is two steps from the top. "She's spending the night at her boyfriend's."

"Aubrey has a boyfriend?" The concept is as weird as a dog walking on its hind legs and Beca can't fathom what kind of guy would want to date her.

Chloe doesn't answer her but instead reaches her hand down to pull Beca up the rest of the way and almost into a kiss, but she spins away, still hand in hand, to lead Beca to her bedroom.

"Tease," Beca mutters and she hears Chloe chuckle.

Beca doesn't realize they're standing in Chloe's bedroom until Chloe's going through the 'just got home' motions of hanging her purse on the back of a chair and stepping out of her heels and drawing the curtains and lighting the trio of candles on her nightstand.

"Nervous?" Chloe asks, looking up from where she's lighting the third candle, the light from the match in her fingers reflecting in her eyes.

Beca notices she hasn't moved from where she'd stopped three steps into Chloe's room, feet still rooted in place. It gives the impression that she's nervous, but it was just that she got distracted watching Chloe and didn't bother to move.

"Not really," she admits. "I feel like I should be. Shouldn't I be? Are you?"

Chloe shrugs and flicks her wrist to extinguish the match and drops it in the small dish that serves that purpose. "No. Well, excited nervous, but not scared nervous."

"Yeah, same," Beca says as she pushes her fingers through her hair and finally takes what feels like an awkward step forward, unsure of what her destination is. Other than the obvious.

Chloe sees the hesitation and takes a seat on her bed, scooting until she's in the middle of it, reclining against the pillows, ankles crossed like she's settling in for a movie. "Come." She pats her thigh in invitation and Beca wonders if that is as direct an invitation it seems - to actually...just go be in Chloe's lap.

She steps out of her own heels and climbs to kneel on the bed, still unsure where she's going to end up until she's crawled all the way up and is indeed straddling Chloe's lap.

"Hello," she says, letting her hands rest on Chloe's shoulders. She notices Chloe's eyes slipping to try to read the name on her wrist not yet revealed to her and Beca makes a point of withdrawing her arm to hide it behind her back with a raised eyebrow.

Chloe bites her lip sheepishly and then smiles. "Hello to you, too." Her fingers trace the buttons and eyelets of Beca's open vest and then they grip it to give it a tug. And then another when Beca doesn't react. "Come kiss me."

There's something so innocent but sexual about the tone of her request that it makes Beca's hips roll and she lets the motion carry her right into Chloe's kiss. This one is slower than the first three, but it's immediately deeper, the hesitation of being unsure already evaporated from both of them. It's slow, and searing, and Beca's confident she's never felt a tongue as skilled as the one that's visiting hers in her mouth. She tries to stop the moan forming when she thinks about all the other places that tongue could visit, but Chloe pushes the vest off her shoulders to slip down her arms and she fails, moaning into Chloe's mouth.

She feels Chloe start to smile. "Shut up," she mutters before using her own tongue to make her comply.

She's rewarded with a moan from Chloe and it emboldens her to kiss Chloe harder, to touch her in places other than her shoulders, like her arms and hair and neck and along her décolletage.

Chloe's hands don't really roam. They move from discarding Beca's vest to holding her waist to grabbing her ass to pull her closer.

The fact that such a move doesn't shock Beca, barely even makes her take pause other than to enjoy it, makes her think it should be a red flag. Nothing should feel so easy and natural as this moment unfolding in front of and beneath her. She knows it was going to be terrible to recover from. That's what makes her start to panic and pull back, but Chloe just chases her and draws her back in like the magnet she is and manages to calm her down again.

And then they're moving and Beca finds herself on her back with Chloe's hips between her legs and they've barely missed a beat with their kissing; in fact, it's only growing more intense and Chloe's rocking into Beca with a clear purpose. She's hitting the seam of Beca's jeans just right and it's driving Beca crazy. Crazy enough to reach to pull Chloe in harder, and to do that, her hands have ended up under Chloe's blue dress and on round, smooth flesh, hints of lace at her fingertips.

She wonders if it's blue or black or maybe red and she releases her grip long enough to reach up and find the zipper at the base of Chloe's neck to pull it down to where it ends at her lower back. It loosens the bodice enough and the lace she sees there is red and she knows it'll match and it makes her drop away from Chloe's kiss with a groan.

"What?" Chloe asks, hips still rolling into Beca.

"Red lace? Seriously?"

"What about it?"

"You planned this?"

"I asked you on a date, Bec."

"So this is a date?"

"Your hand's on my butt and you have my dress unzipped and I have you, like, three minutes from coming and you're still questioning whether or not this is a date?"

Beca gasps in indignation at the proclamation that she is already close, but then both the acknowledgment of what's happening and the fact that Chloe said what she said hits her like a bolt of lightning right as Chloe pushes into her again and the gasp comes out as a groan because holy shit she is suddenly so close that there's no way she'll make it three whole minutes.

Chloe moans in response and finds Beca's hands one at a time to press them into the pillows next to her head and pin them there as she grinds into Beca, who gives in and closes her eyes.

She doesn't want to - she wants her pants off for this because it feels so juvenile that on their first date she's going to come in her jeans from this but Chloe's evidently determined.

She hears a sound from Chloe, one of surprise, or shock, or maybe it's a whimper of mutual pleasure and it's followed by a whispering of her name and then Beca's body is rolling with Chloe's thrusts, the pleasure overwhelming her, setting stars exploding in her mind.

She returns to herself to find Chloe kissing her, over and over, and the blue dress off Chloe's torso and bunched against Beca's stomach between them. She kisses back half-heartedly, not because she doesn't want to but because she's still recovering, and she feels Chloe's thumbs brushing back and forth over her wrists.

That's what lurches her back to full consciousness, because where Chloe's holding her should be where her bracelets are and she panics, trying to pull her arms away but Chloe holds firm and keeps peppering her with kisses.

"Why didn't you tell me?" Chloe murmurs against her ear before she kisses it.

"Don't. You're not...stop."

Chloe does stop at that. She pulls away completely until she's kneeling between Beca's thighs. "Beca? What's wrong?"

Beca's already recoiled, hiding her tattoos by crossing her arms over her bare stomach where her shirt's ridden up during their activities, despite knowing it's too late and Chloe's seen both of them. "I know what you're thinking. And you're wrong."

Chloe's face falls, and then she looks confused. "But…" she holds out her arm with Beca's name on it and grabs for the arm with her name.

"You're not my soulmate, Chloe," she bites out. She knew this would happen. She thought she would at least have a few weeks of amazing sex before it did, but she let herself lose focus and Chloe took advantage of it to learn the other half of her fates. And now it's ruined.

"Yes, I am. I felt it the first time I saw you. You didn't feel it?"

Beca did feel something that very first day, but she knows it wasn't that of two soulmates finding each other.

"We're not soulmates," she repeats. She feels trapped even though Chloe isn't holding her in any way. She could get up and run out. She wants to. "We're...we're…"

"Beca Mitchell, we are not archenemies." Chloe's voice wavers and Beca realizes she's crying.

And that just figures. "Only an archenemy could make someone like you cry," she says, feeling like the world's biggest asshole.

"And only a soulmate would stay here and argue with me instead of just leaving."

Beca doesn't mean to yell, but it comes out that way. "I'm not your -"

"Shut up!" Chloe yells back and it actually scares Beca; she's never heard Chloe yell. Chloe grabs at her arms again and finally Beca just lets her. They're jerked away from her waist and turned over to reveal the names there. Chloe points to the other name. Beca's right arm. "What do you think this is?"

"Chloe, stop," she says weakly but doesn't try to pull away.

"You're trying to ruin us before we've even had a chance."

Beca just bites her lip and tries not to look at Chloe, because she knows if she does, she'll break and start crying.

"You're your own archenemy, Beca. For trying to sabotage this."

Beca's psyche seizes up until it cracks, a thick layer falling away in shambles.

She's spent her entire life anticipating, though not looking for, another Beca who would either be her soulmate or archenemy and the Chloe who would fulfill the alternate role. She was certain she'd found the archenemy in this Chloe.

But the fact that she doesn't want to leave Chloe's presence despite her emotions never being ripped so raw, the fact that Chloe makes her feel more at home than anyone ever has, the fact that as angry and upset as she is right now, all she really wants to do is flip Chloe over, rip the dress the rest of the way off, and push her thighs apart makes Beca start to reconsider.

It's not Chloe upheaving her life that makes her an archenemy.

It's Chloe upheaving her life that makes her Beca's soulmate. It's Chloe refusing to take 'no' for an answer at this exact moment that will again alter their lives permanently that makes her Beca's soulmate. It's Beca knowing Chloe better than Chloe knows herself that makes her Chloe's soulmate. It's Beca wanting to always do everything she can to make Chloe happy that makes her Chloe's soulmate.

It's Beca trying to deny what was so screamingly obvious that makes her her own archenemy.

Chloe gives Beca's arms a shake to make Beca look up at her and when she does, Beca finally breaks down crying and Chloe's on top of her again, this time just holding her.

It feels amazing, and amazing is an understatement. It feels like every single puzzle piece of her life just miraculously locked into place with not a single one missing. Arms around each other like they were trying to sew themselves back together, having been split apart at some point before they were even born. Later, when this epiphany passes, she'll hate herself for the myriad cliches spinning through her mind but negativity is absent now.

Now it's only Chloe, Chloe, and nothing but Chloe and Beca doesn't think she can possibly pull her any closer so instead she bursts, shoving Chloe off her in a fit of desperation. Chloe moves back but seems confused until Beca just grabs her by the waist and flips her onto her back. She pulls the dress the rest of the way off and pauses to whip her own tee over her head and toss it aside and unbutton and unzip her jeans and wipe the tears off her face and then she's falling into and onto Chloe to kiss her hungrily. Her nails drag down over Chloe's ribs and Chloe arches beneath her with a moan, and Beca thinks...yes.

Soulmates do exist.

And she's finally found hers.