It's funny, Beca thinks, how you can live with someone for years going about your separate but intertwined lives that when your government tells you to stay inside, to only socialize with the people you share a home with, how quickly things can change.

"Chloe, will you please turn off the news? I can't listen to that idiot anymore."

"Sorry; it's like a train wreck. I can't look away." Chloe finds the remote in the cushions of the couch and changes the channel to the E! Network.

The news isn't much different there; they're showing videos celebrities have posted on social media about how bored they are or singing off-key versions of 'Imagine' to try to uplift the public only for the anchors, two of them standing six-feet apart, to debate whether or not such things are in poor taste.

"Are we supposed to feel bad for these multi-millionaires being stuck in their mansions with their huge yards and private swimming pools?" is the point being argued.

"Yeah, boohoo," Beca says as she drops onto the couch next to Chloe. She'd gone to the kitchen to get a new bag of chips but managed to make a healthier decision and came back with a bowl of grapes instead. "We don't even have a pool."

"But at least we don't have a bathtub in our kitchen anymore," Chloe says as she helps herself to a few of Beca's grapes.

Beca nods in response. This whole social distancing thing would have been a lot more irritating if it had happened last year when she and Chloe shared an impossibly small studio apartment (if you could even call it that) with Fat Amy. The thought of being locked in that space for weeks makes Beca's skin crawl. She loves Amy, but she is not the tidiest or quietest of roommates.

She glances at Chloe, fresh-faced and hair damp after the shower she just took, tucked into her couch-nest with a fuzzy blanket and thinks there are about a million worse scenarios she could be stuck in than this one.

It had been nice to get that paycheck from Khaled's record label. It had been just as nice for Amy to get access to the hundred-plus million dollars she somehow had. They were able to part ways without the guilt and drama Amy was prone to when asked to take responsibility for something. She'd been eager to drop a cool ten million on a house in the South of France. It made Beca's job of breaking the news that she wouldn't be renewing their lease a lot easier.

She's still not quite sure how it happened, though. Maybe it was because Chloe was the only one who didn't suddenly have an unnecessary amount of money at her disposal. Maybe it was because their orbits were always drawn to one another.

But when Beca moved to Los Angeles and bought a house, Chloe rush-applied to area veterinary schools to beat the looming application deadlines and managed to get into one.

They hadn't even really discussed it. "Beca moving to LA" was inclusive of "Chloe moving to LA to live with Beca."

"Maybe I shouldn't post that video of us playing catch out back," Beca says as they watch the debate about people who are privileged and whether they are out of touch with reality or if hardship and inconvenience is relative.

"Maybe not," Chloe agrees.

It's not that Beca thinks she'd ever show up as a debate topic on tabloid television, but she'd rather not risk it.

"What do you want to do today? And don't say Monopoly," she adds as soon as Chloe's mouth opens to answer.

Chloe immediately whines. "But I want us to play!"

"And I want us to still be friends when this is over," Beca says with a biting, sarcastic smile.

"Ooh, I know!" Chloe says, unfazed by Beca's rejection. "Let's get drunk!"

"That's not really an activity…" Beca says but she knows she's going to lose this debate.

Chloe's already detangling herself from her blanket and heading toward the kitchen. "If getting drunk at 3:00 in the afternoon isn't acceptable during a viral pandemic, then when is it?"

Beca just shakes her head. She's opposed to the idea, it's just that Chloe is so...Chloe.

Chloe who usually gets her way, not because she's a good negotiator but because Beca finds it almost impossible to tell her 'no.' (Activities that would lead to contempt and arguing like a game of Monopoly are exceptions.)

"Beer or wine?" Chloe calls from the other room.

"I don't care," Beca yells back. If there's one thing they stocked up on far more than she knows was necessary, it was alcohol.

She should have made a choice. She knows better. When Chloe returns, she's holding a bottle of expensive tequila, a shot glass nestled in one of two tumblers, and a plastic bowl of ice.

"Oh, whoa, seriously?" she says as Chloe sets her wares down on the smooth black coffee table with a smile. Shots of tequila weren't exactly what Beca had in mind.

"Calm down, I have to make another trip. I'm making margaritas."

Not that she wouldn't have done them if that had been Chloe's intention.

"You know what we should do?"

Beca looks down at Chloe who's using Beca's leg as a pillow. "Hmm?"

"We should play hide-and-seek!"

Beca's not sure what she expected Chloe to propose, but it definitely wasn't that. "Dude, what?"

"Yeah!" Chloe says, suddenly full of energy after dozing on the couch for a few minutes. She scrambles to sit up. "Come on; it'll be fun!"

All she can do is stare at her and her dumb, pretty face. "Fine," she relents (much too easily).

Chloe squeals and immediately covers her eyes with her hands. "I'll count to 100. Go."

Beca's reluctant agreement morphs into nervous adrenaline as soon as Chloe begins counting and she leaps off the couch, stumbling when her foot gets caught in Chloe's blanket.

She hears Chloe laugh through her numbers and realizes Chloe can hear her route. She mutes her steps, creeping quickly but quietly away as her mind races for the optimal hiding spot.

Then she's got it.

She walks as lightly as she can through the house until she's taking the stairs two at a time to get to what will eventually be an office or study (she hates herself a little that she bought a house that will have a study in it). It's still empty save for a few dozen books on the shelves, some of them novels, some of them old textbooks. The room has a closet and when Beca had been scoping out good storage spots in the house for things like seasonal decorations, she'd found what was arguably a creepy-as-fuck hidden door in the wall of the closet.

She never got around to telling Chloe about it; she'd been at a day-long lab that Beca didn't want to interrupt with a text and then she promptly forgot about it.

Until now.

She creeps through the second floor, wincing when she hits a squeaky floorboard in the hallway. The rest of her journey is silent, though, and she pops open the push-latch door to slip inside and close it behind her.

She can hear Chloe's voice faintly yelling, "Ready or not, here I come!" and regrets not bringing her phone with her.

There's no way Chloe's going to find her any time soon. Plus, it's pitch-dark.

Chloe's voice echoes around the house, taunting Beca as she searches downstairs. It makes Beca snicker because Chloe is way, way off until she can tell she's making her way up the stairs.

"You could at least make it difficult for me," Chloe says somewhere in the hallway, still taunting as if it will goad Beca into revealing herself.

She can hear her opening and closing closet doors in the hall and the other rooms but she remains confident even when she can hear Chloe's voice quite clearly from the study a few feet away.

"Come out, come out, wherever you are," Chloe sing-songs and Beca hates that it makes her anxious. Her voice is louder like she's just outside the door that Chloe doesn't even know exists when it suddenly pops open, blinding Beca with a flood of light.

"Gotcha!" Chloe says with a jump of victory but Beca's too quick for her, something her petite stature is good for.

She scrambles out of the closet and past Chloe. "You didn't tag me!" she yells, grinning as she launches into a full sprint, nearly sliding down the stairs to make it back to the couch in time.

"We didn't declare a home base!" Chloe shrieks behind her and Beca can hear her running, too.

"It's the couch!"

"Not fair!" Chloe yells and Beca hears her on the steps.

It makes her launch herself onto the couch, right over the arm of it and she scrambles for the blanket to hide under even though she's already safe; it's silly adrenaline and she can't stop smiling as she hears Chloe in a full-out run through the living room.

"No!" Her cry of defeat is nearly a wail and Beca's still savoring victory when the wind is nearly knocked out of her.

"Dude!" she says when Chloe lands right on top of her. "I made it back, you can't tag me!"

She fights to hang on to the blanket as Chloe tugs it away until it's off her face, leaving Beca to sputter and try to blow hair out of her eyes. She stops when she sees Chloe above her, face flushed from excitement and exertion smiling down at her. But the smile is fading, bit by bit, into something else and it feels like the air around them shifts.

"You cheated," Chloe says.

Beca has to swallow the sudden lump in her throat. "Not my fault you don't know the rules."

She keeps waiting for Chloe to move off her and let her up, to tell her it's Beca's turn to count and Chloe's turn to hide, but instead, Chloe seems to get heavier, to press Beca further into the couch beneath her.

An eternity seems to pass. She struggles to keep her gaze steady; it's hard to hold eye contact with Chloe in a normal setting: they're so bright and full of life. It's a relief when Chloe's are the first to break eye contact but only until Beca realizes Chloe's focus shifted, albeit briefly, to her lips.

Her heart had been racing from the excitement of the game and the thrill of the win but suddenly it's for an entirely different reason.

When Chloe looks up again Beca can't help but let her own eyes flick down, almost feeling like if Chloe was allowed to, Beca should be allowed to, too. It's subconscious for Beca to wet her lips when she sees the way Chloe's are parted the tiniest bit.

Her mind races as quickly as her heart. She's thought about this so many times over their decade of friendship. The way they've always danced around each other (while still dancing with each other all the time). How it wasn't even up for debate that Chloe would move to Los Angeles, too. How she didn't hesitate to put the house in both their names, not just her own. How she's been a little bit (a lot) in love with her friend for so many years.

She wonders if Chloe's moving closer or if it's her imagination. If she is, she's moving so slowly it's almost indiscernible, but her eyes keep flicking down and back up. It's excruciating to wait to find out what is about to happen. What Beca thinks is about to happen.

What Beca decides to make happen as she lifts her head and presses her lips to Chloe's.

It's another eternal moment but it passes in the blink of an eye.

There's some kind of sound from Chloe, maybe a whimper?, and Beca's not quite finished regretting her actions that will surely make things super weird between them when Chloe's tongue slips across her lips and into Beca's mouth.

It shouldn't happen so fast. It shouldn't be so natural for Beca to tilt her head to the left just as Chloe tilts hers. She shouldn't feel so hot so quickly; Chloe helps as much as she contributes to it, suddenly tugging at the blanket between them to let it fall to the floor. It gives Beca a second of cool air before Chloe's body is on her instead. It shouldn't be so mindless for her to twist her hips and part her knees so Chloe can fit against her more comfortably.

It shouldn't be a lot of things, but Beca stops listing off all the things it shouldn't be in favor of all the things it is.

Like how desperate and heated their kiss has become. How Chloe doesn't seem to know what to do with her hands since this began in a slightly awkward position but doesn't quite want to stop to rearrange herself so instead her fingers bury themselves in Beca's hair.

Beca doesn't have the same problem. Her hands are free to roam, and she lets them roam.

Chloe's back is solid beneath her hands. She can feel it every time Chloe takes a breath. They're uneven and deep and in synch with Beca's because the only chance they have to take in air is when Chloe lifts her mouth from Beca's. Even the few seconds they spare for oxygen feel like too much time apart for Beca and she finds herself chasing Chloe's lips even though they're both breathing hard.

She catches Chloe off-guard, cutting into their oxygen break with her tongue. She's thought endlessly of what it would be like to frame Chloe's perfect face with her hands, tilt it to the angle she wants, and keep her there to make her submit to whatever Beca wants to do to her mouth.

The moan that escapes Chloe when Beca does just that, tongue pushing far into Chloe's mouth to explore before retreating to start licking over Chloe's makes a sound escape Beca, too.

It's as though the mutual audible release is gasoline to a lit match.

Chloe's entire body shifts forward into Beca and it makes Beca moan again and give up the brief control she had as Chloe kisses her so hard her head presses uncomfortably against the arm of the couch. Her neck is going to be killing her tomorrow but she doesn't care. There's only one thing aching right now and it's between her legs where Chloe's hips are resting, though they're hardly at rest.

Beca doesn't know at what point they started moving together but her hips are lifting to meet Chloe's every time Chloe's rock forward into her.

She parts her knees further until she finally just gives in and hooks her left leg, the one not pinned against the back of the couch, around Chloe's waist.

She hears her name on Chloe's lips, an exhale between kisses that somehow keep getting hotter and wetter...just like she is elsewhere. Chloe's hips shift their angle; it's subtle but the difference is immense and the moan that escapes Beca when Chloe rocks into her in the exact right place is almost embarrassing.

She doesn't have time for embarrassment, though. Not when Chloe pulls back from the kiss to look down at her. Her slow, steady pace doesn't let up, though, and Beca knows she just wants to see Beca's face while she does it. She knows because if their roles were reversed, she'd want to see Chloe's reaction, too.

It's intense to be watched this way. She wonders if Chloe is fully aware of just how much she's affecting Beca, if she's thinking about how far this could go or how quickly. If she wants it to.

The way she's looking down at Beca, though, her eyes dark as she finally starts to adjust herself so her arms aren't trapped, tell Beca Chloe isn't thinking about stopping.

Beca's fine with that.

She moves with Chloe, both of them shifting down on the couch so Beca's neck isn't stuck at a terrible angle and so Chloe can finally prop herself up on an elbow. She watches— and feels— Chloe's hand ease out of her hair, fingertips drifting along Beca's cheek and jawline to her neck. They stroke softly there, along her throat and Beca swallows. Chloe's watching so intently, both where her fingers travel and how Beca responds to them.

She wants to ask for more but isn't quite sure. Isn't quite sure if this is cabin fever and a brief (it has been anything but brief) make-out session between bored, tipsy close friends. Isn't quite sure what it will mean for them if she lets go of what little self-control she's maintaining and rocks herself into Chloe until she comes.

She lets her own hands roam again, beyond Chloe's back and neck and shoulders and hair to her throat, mirroring with both hands how Chloe's fingers are touching her. Her skin is hot beneath Beca's fingers and she can feel under her jaw the way her heart is pounding. She can feel how she swallows when Beca's fingers find the dip between her clavicles and how her breathing speeds up after easing during their momentary break from kissing as Beca's fingernails trace along the smooth skin along her décolletage. There's so much of it on display.

Chloe's touch is now following Beca's, drawing lines and circles along the edge of her V-neck tee.

Beca gets stuck, though; Chloe's skin feels so nice under her fingers and she's never touched her, not like this, along the lines of her collar bones and the tendons in her neck and the slight dip that will give way to cleavage if she were to follow it. She gets stuck but Chloe doesn't. Chloe's touch finally breaks past the collar of Beca's shirt to travel lower, over the thin material. It only takes a second or two before her fingers are grazing over the curve of Beca's left breast.

Beca's entire body tries to arch into it, a reaction that makes Chloe's jaw drop, which is the last thing Beca sees before her eyes close when Chloe leans down to start kissing her again.

She whines a little, starting to feel desperate (an understatement) for release.

The sound seems to spur Chloe on, her kiss quickly returning to the deep, passionate exchanges they've been sharing. The hand at Beca's breast gets more daring, more exploratory and Beca knows when Chloe finds its peak, not because she feels it (God, she feels it) but because Chloe's touch slows, circling the surely visible rise.

Beca's hands just fall away from Chloe, not because she doesn't want to touch her but because her brain's ability to do more than one thing at a time is being reduced. Meeting Chloe's tongue and lips and pushing her hips into her, again and again, is about all she can manage.

Chloe must read her mini-collapse as further surrender (it was, really) because her exploratory touch, circling Beca's nipple again and again with the edge of her fingernail, suddenly changes. Her fingers close against it and Beca's thin bra and shirt might as well be nonexistent for as much as she feels it. Beca groans and her hips throw themselves up into Chloe with needy force and Chloe echoes her, pushing into Beca harder, her pace suddenly increasing.

It's so difficult to breathe with Chloe's tongue filling her mouth again and again but Beca's ready to suffocate before she gives it up.

She also knows she's going to come. Soon. She's resigned herself to it and will deal with the consequences later; she feels she has a solid defense: Chloe tonguefucking her mouth the way she has been is a pretty stellar excuse.

She doesn't know where the fuck she learned to kiss like this, but Beca is so, so grateful.

She can hear herself moaning, can hear how often it's happening. She can hear Chloe, too, and the sound is turning Beca on almost as much as the way Chloe's touching her.

The incessant attention to her nipple disappears and she whines in protest but all Chloe does is shush her and then kiss her more deeply. She feels Chloe's hand on her stomach and sucks it in not out of vanity but because it almost tickles. But her hand is steady; it doesn't linger to risk bumping into what are Beca's few ticklish spots (Chloe knows them well). It moves confidently lower and Beca gasps when she feels her fingertips move over the waistband of her leggings because there's only one reason Chloe's hand would be moving in that direction.

The sound she makes when Chloe's fingers graze between her legs, over the thin, form-fitting material of her pants, is obscene.

It makes Chloe's mouth rip away from hers. "Fuck, Bec, you're so wet."

Beca hadn't thought of that; she hadn't thought about the fact that she was in leggings and nothing else because why did she need to be for a day of lounging around and what would happen if she ended up grinding with Chloe on the couch.

If Chloe means for her to respond she doesn't give her enough time to do so. Her mouth is on Beca's again to swallow Beca's pitiful groan as fingers press down firmly against her. Now she can feel what Chloe felt, the soaked fabric slipping against her body with every lift of her hips.

As suddenly as Chloe cut her off her kiss ends again and Beca watches her lift herself a little higher; she wonders what she's doing until she realizes Chloe's not looking at her.

Well, not looking at her face, anyway.

Her focus now is between their bodies, specifically between Beca's legs where her fingers are starting to rub and stroke, cutting the time Beca knows she has to wait to come in half, if not more.

She tries to say Chloe's name but it gets caught in her throat when Chloe shifts from watching, awestruck, as her fingers touch Beca to dropping her hips to pin her hand between them and against Beca.

She moans in Beca's ear, not quite making it back to her mouth. Beca knows her supporting arm has to be tired but Chloe not stopping is so hot and sexy. Her own arms finally work and she yanks them out from between their bodies to wrap them around Chloe, to run them up her back and into her hair to hold on.

She has to hold on because Chloe's hips are bucking into her like she's really fucking her (and she is really fucking her) and the urgency of her moans and gasping breaths in Beca's ear make it register that not only is she fucking Beca now, with her hand where it is, she's fucking herself, rutting against the back of her own hand.

It's hard and fast now; there's no teasing or precision touching. It's contact and friction and neither of them need more than that.

Beca's first to slip, the nonstop assault on her senses becoming too overwhelming. Chloe moaning in her ear on the verge of ecstasy. Chloe's hips and Chloe's fingers grinding and rocking against her. The now phantom memories of Chloe's tongue twisting around Beca's and fingertips pinching and rubbing her nipple.

She holds on, not thinking about whether or not her fingernails are scratching Chloe's shoulders or if she's pulling too hard on her hair, as her body rocks into an orgasm she's been waiting to experience for ten years.

She hears Chloe and knows they're coming together, an uncoordinated yet simultaneous release of energy and stress and tension that somehow increases in intensity as it unfurls between them until there's what could be a sob in her ear. It's not, though; it's just Chloe coming down from her orgasm.

Something Beca never, ever thought she would actually bear witness to.

Chloe's body is heavy on hers, no longer holding herself up at all but Beca doesn't care. She just pushes Chloe's hair out of her face and over Chloe's shoulder so she can turn her head and put her mouth on Chloe's heated neck, immediately sucking a mark into it. Everything feels so primal, so raw, even in the increasing afterglow but she's spent.

She's so, so spent.

If Chloe's delay in moving at all, in any way other than her fingers which are still rubbing against Beca, is any indicator, she's spent, too.

There's a long, heavy sigh in her ear and Beca releases freshly purpled skin and feels her body fully sag into the couch, Chloe's pleasant weight keeping her from floating away.

Chloe does start to move after a few minutes of quiet sighs and slow, sometimes chaste, sometimes sensual kisses and when she finally removes her hand its absence leaves Beca feeling cold and needy, despite what just happened.

"Bec—" Chloe starts and something about her faces tells Beca she's about to apologize or in some way dismiss what just happened.

"That was amazing," Beca says to interrupt whatever Chloe might have been thinking about saying.

A smile of relief breaks on Chloe's flushed face and she drops down to kiss Beca again, hard and happy before she's pulling away with finality. They're a fair bit entangled and they're both laughing by the time Chloe tiredly gets back onto her knees to fall back onto her ass at the other end of the couch.

She doesn't offer Beca a helping hand to sit up, but Beca honestly doesn't blame her. Chloe just did all the work; it's the least she can do to push herself up until they're sitting, both still red-faced and not quite breathing normally, on opposite ends of the couch.

"Just...give me a minute," Chloe says before her head lolls back to rest on the couch and her eyes close.

Beca gives her the minute and uses it to take in her appearance: the flush of pink on her chest, the hardness of her nipples, the (Beca can't help but look with curiosity) obvious dark patch between her legs on the gray sweatpants she's wearing.

The need to touch—and taste—Chloe is suddenly overwhelming. She's about to make her move when Chloe lifts her head, eyes sparkling and clear and a smile starts spreading across her features. There's tension in her limbs and Beca wonders if Chloe is still as turned on as she is.

"Tag," Chloe says, suddenly reaching out to slap her hand against Beca's foot before bolting off the couch and heading for the stairs. "You're it!"

Beca's dumbfounded for several seconds until she bursts out laughing. It's a different kind of release than she just experienced, one of pure joy. "I'm giving you 60 seconds!"

"I gave you 100!" echoes back to her.

"I can't wait that long," she says to herself. She hopes Chloe's not actually hiding; she hopes she's going to one of their bedrooms so they can keep doing what they've started.

She knows their future is unknown in many ways, what this means for their friendship, for their relationship with one another. She doesn't know how much longer they'll be required to spend all day, every day inside together.

But, she thinks as she finally makes it to the top of the stairs and to her room to find Chloe sitting in the middle of her bed half-naked in only a bra and panties, they have plenty of activities to pass the time.

The End