zozowrites

[zozowrites]

I Lied

Emily Prentiss x BAU!fem!reader

words: 1.8k

Warnings: kissing, canon typical violence (happy ending)

A/N: this was originally inspired by the song I Lied by Housewife, and then I kept writing and it took a turn (oopsies). Also not proofread.

For game nights at Penelope’s, you could always depend on fun mixed drinks and maybe a hangover the next morning. This is why you enjoyed nights at Rossi’s better; eating good, homemade Italian food, drinking good wine, and dancing with your friends and coworkers would never let you down. 

Reaching for the bottle or red, Emily refills her glass and tops of your own, absently letting the strap of her tank top slip off her shoulder. She doesn’t seem to care that you���re watching her with a hint of friendly want in your eye. The silky cream of the tank top perfectly complimented her brown slacks and black hair. It somehow brought out the red of her lipstick in a way that made it match the wine she was bringing up to her lips, after she had clinked her glass against yours with a wink. You were also a little wine-drunk, but it didn’t escape your mind to know the added swing in Emily’s hips was because she wanted you to watch her walk away. 

As the night came to a close, everyone paired off to head back to their respective homes, and it only felt right that you and Emily split a cab. 

When the car stopped outside of her apartment building, she paid for the cab and you didn’t resist when she grabbed your hand to pull you out of the car and up the steps with her. 

She lets go when you reach her door, so that she can unlock it. In the silence it dawns on you that you’re maybe standing too close. You can’t escape the awkward feeling. 

“What are you doing?” Emily asks and pushed the door open. It’s almost like she could read your thoughts. 

“I’m making sure you get home safe.” Is all that you could respond with. Technically true. 

She rolls her eyes and doesn’t need to grab your wrist again to know you’ll follow her inside. She hands you a glass of water, clinking it with her own like she did to your wine glass earlier in the night. 

However this time she doesn’t walk away. She lingers in front of you, sets her glass down on the counter to your left and rests her other hand on the other side, so close to you that when you breathe the soft warmth of your hip brushes over her wrist. 

She’s searching your eyes, but for the first time with Emily you don’t know what she’s looking for. You had spent a good two years as coworkers before the line got a little blurry. You’ve spent the last ten months sharing looks and jokes and whispers on the jet, or long talks in the hallways of hotel rooms on trips. The pair of you seemed to communicate the most through your eyes. Quick glance on the jet, playing off of each other’s ideas in meetings, or the look of simple understanding, when to anyone else it likely wouldn’t feel that simple at all. Of course there were the lingering touches, the flirty quips, and the occasional gentle and worried gaze, because no complicated relationship could be complete without those too, right? 

Your heart was practically beating out of your chest, and you were certain Emily could hear it. If only your mind could think about something other than what Emily’s lips might feel on yours for long enough to feel embarrassed. Or better yet, get your wits about you. This was your coworker, after all. This was your friend, after all. Because that’s what you two were, right, friends? 

“I’m not staying over,” You blurt out. Jumping the gun, you know, and she knows you know, seeing it in your eyes. 

“Okay,” Emily whispers, having gotten closer in the time your mind had spent running in place. “Just a little taste, at least until we’re sober?” 

She asks it as a question in her eyes but a statement in her words. 

You don’t have to nod, you just have to let the warmth of the moment, not caring that maybe it’s the wine or Emily’s enveloping aroma. She takes a step closer to bring one of her legs slightly in-between yours and her lips are quick to follow. 

Soft and full and warm and the perfect amount of wet, every physical feeling you’ve ever experienced before fails to even draw close to what you feel. Remembering to kiss her back, you follow her lead of taking in slow, moving your lips with hers in a perfect rhythm. Like the two of you were designed for this. 

Break for air and her hips against yours, the cold counter cutting through your own lacy-hemmed shirt. Goosebumps run up her back and you follow them with your fingers, twisting the hair at the nape of her neck around your fingers to bring her mouth back down to yours. 

A few more seconds and then you tug lightly, and it earns a soft moan from Emily, which is immediately swallowed by the relative silence in the rest of her apartment. 

It kicks you to your senses and you pull her face away by your grip on her hair. 

“What?” She asks, eyes searching your face before resting on your own eyes, which makes her thumbs stop rubbing the small circles into your hips that you hadn’t noticed until it stopped. 

“I’m not staying over.” You repeat yourself, not sure if you’re trying to tell her or yourself. 

“It’s too late to take a car, I’ll sleep on the couch.” She says and starts to gather different things from around the apartment. 

You stop her with a hand on her shoulder, keeping her still and pressing your front into her back to lean over and kiss her temple gently. 

“I won’t take a car if you don’t sleep on the couch.” 

She turns to look in your eyes and suddenly she gets it. 

“Ah, plausible deniability.” She says, smile growing over her sharp features. 

And so you don’t take a car and she doesn’t sleep on the couch. Instead you fall asleep innocently wrapped in each other’s arms in her bed, the soft linen twisted between your intertwined legs. 

Soon, Friday nights became your favorite nights. Before, it used to be Saturday, since you had a normally free day behind you and a hopefully free day in front of you. 

Friday’s had surpassed it when after the next few weeks of long cases ended with a night at the bar with the team, or a night at Derek’s or Penelope’s or Rossi’s. And that meant that your night ended with Emily’s sweet lips on yours. 

And then somehow when there weren’t team activities, you two still had plans on Friday evenings. You cooked steaks and drank wine and made out at your place one week, then binged movies and ice cream and got to kiss each other’s sticky lips the next. And somehow along the way alcohol wasn’t even involved anymore. 

“New case,” JJ says as she walks briskly into the bullpen, pulling you out of your planning for the weekend. Maybe you’d do a chill night in and something in the morning? A bookstore or a cafe or something. Maybe a walk along the mall. 

Everyone got out of their seats and made their way to the conference room, where JJ explained the series of three murders with the same MO but dying in seemingly random places. Wheels up to Oklahoma in 30. 

Two days into the case and you knocked on the door of a woman who said she had information on the killer but refused to leave her house or give it over the phone. Yourself and Reid took out your badges and she let you in when she answered, all slightly frazzled hair with a green shawl wrapped around her. 

She led you to the living room, where you sat on sofas across from each other, a few cups of piping hot tea sending rolls of steam into the air between you, bringing the soft smell of earl grey with it. 

The conversation was long, and the woman had nothing much to say, but each time one of you tried wrapping up the conversation, she said she had something more and proceeded to then talk in circles, still saying not much at all. 

You had enough. Confidently, you stood up and reached out for the woman’s hand, intending to thank her for her time and explain that you had to go on your way. She took your outstretched hand and yanked it down to her level, still in her seat. This caused your head to go crashing down towards the tray of tea, and one of the fragile cups shatters on the impact with your forehead, making blood gush from your face. 

Waves of searing pain start to rip through your body, starting in your head and the woman tightens her grip on your neck, which you didn’t even know she had. You can’t help but let out a cry, not really sure what it was adding to the scene. 

Through the little you could see, Emily appeared in the corner of your eye, and you guess it was Reid who knocked the woman out, and she fell to the ground, subsequently leaving you to collapse into Emily’s arms. 

The extra kerfuffle had left you seemingly unscathed, although it did require an extra day in Oklahoma for you to be medically cleared. That was more than enough time to explain to you and Reid (who had worked out this theory on his own over the course of the physical encounter) that the woman was actually the unsub you had been looking for, and the team had luckily figured out that she poisons her victims with tea. 

Emily follows you onto the plane, and instead of sitting in her regular chair, she opts to sit next to you on the couch. After what you thought was a respectable amount of time, you lean your head against her shoulder. She takes a deep breath and slips her hand into yours, reveling in the comfort of your proximity, of knowing you were still alive. She had a funny mixture of feelings swelling up in her. Something had shifted the moment she heard your scream and ran straight into the house, against Hotch’s orders. It was like she had no control, no thoughts in her head. She needed to get to you.

The rest of the team seems to share a knowing look, which anyone could have picked up on, profiler or not. All your friends were catching on. Neither you or Emily seemed to mind that people had some guesses or assumptions about what was going on. You didn’t care, as long as she kept her hand in yours. And she had plenty of time to sort out her own feelings later. For now, she'll make sure you get home safe.

[zozowrites]

There's No Place Like Home for the Holidays

Paige Bueckers x ex!fem!reader (no Y/N)

Words: 3k

Synopsis: Blackout Wednesday rekindles some old flames.

All the shoes squeak on the sticky floor and the pungent, yeasty smell of beer floods the noses of any new patrons who enter the bar. The Paige-blonde hair is the last head of the newest group to enter, and you catch yourself doing a double take from the makeshift dance floor. Trying to convince yourself it’s just the alcohol coursing through your veins that’s making you see things. You hadn’t seen Paige since either of you left for college. It was better off like that. 

But then on your third look towards the booth the group of girls had slid into, you catch the gleam of her blue eyes and there’s no denying Paige is here with her friends in the same bar you and your friends always frequented, and on blackout Wednesday of all nights. 

You suppose it was sort of the purpose of blackout Wednesday, especially in a hometown as small as yours. Since it was your senior year of college, practically everyone from your high school’s graduating class that had a social life was out and about tonight. But Joe’s had always been your spot, so it felt weird that Paige would come in here. 

The cold fingers of your best friend tap you on the shoulder and it pulls you out of your trance. 

“Paige’s here,” You say to her, not quite sure the appropriate volume to be heard over the music but not across the room. 

“I know,” She says, a sloppy smirk growing onto her face. “I tapped you so you’d stop staring at her.” 

“But she was staring back,” You say, the words slipping out of your tipsy mouth before you even realized you were speaking. Before you even realized that what you had said was actually right. 

“So it looks like you have some unfinished business to address then?” She asks, setting her drink down and reaching for yours in your hand. Instead of taking a sip like you thought she would, she sets it down next to hers. 

“Oh no,” You scoff, reaching for the drink that she pushes further out of your reach. “Our business is plenty finished.” 

“Well the fact that we still talked about it on a monthly basis until last year begs to differ,” She remarks. Of course she would bring this back up. Just because she was the only person you had genuinely felt attraction to before doesn’t mean you weren’t over her. Because you were. It just means whenever you have any sort of romantic prospect, they need to be compared to her. Naturally.

At the buzz of your phone in your pocket you slip it out clumsily and slide into a bar stool, keeping one leg on the ground. 

Don’t answer, bitch!!: ur not subtle u know

Your best friend gives you a knowing look that also somehow says “just go and get it out of your system” so you disregard the warning of the contact name and respond. 

You: its not like your’e not looking too

“You okay there, Ma? A typo’s not like you.” The beautifully deep and yet still very feminine voice asks and you look up from the white glow of your phone to find Paige standing pretty close, the scent of her baby blue t-shirt wafting into your personal space. You sigh as you take in her soft blonde hair she left down to fall into lazy waves. You push the memory of her head in your lap, of your fingers running through her hair. Or of sitting on the bleachers and braiding her hair before a game. Or of sitting next to her on the bus, leaning your heads on each other to sleep on the way back from an away game. 

“Yo I said are you okay there Ma?” She asks again. You get an image of her guiding you back into this stool and you’re suddenly glad you were already sitting in it when she came over. 

I should play nice, you think to yourself. There’s no reason to start a tif on Thanksgiving break. Everyone will be back at school and back into their own worlds in just a few short days. 

“And why would you care?” You spat back, not able to control yourself. Then you decided to add the nickname to throw it back at her, “Ma?”

She just lets out a sigh and gestures to the seat next to you. “This seat taken?” 

“Yeah my best friend is sitting there,” You respond, obviously lying. Paige sits anyways. She leans her forearms on the bar and you wonder to yourself how she managed to get hotter in the two years you haven’t talked. Well, more like the two years you hadn’t responded now. Someone had to make the change so the both of you could move on. 

“Yeah I know you and I know her. And I know that she ‘left’ for the bathroom when I started walking over here because she wants me to talk to you. And no matter what you tell yourself, you wanted me to talk to you too.” 

The glass leaves a line of condensation as you slide your dirty Shirley across the bar from in front of your best friends real seat to the one Paige had taken. 

“You make too much sense. Drink something.” You say. It just earns a chuckle from the blonde. She takes a long sip of your pretty full drink obligingly. 

“I came to apologize.” She says when she sets it back down. She keeps it in front of her, swirling the small black bar straw through the ice of the drink. 

This makes you scoff. 

“Do you even know for what?” 

“Yes.” She says, the dead serious look in her eyes breaking through your haze of alcohol. You believe her. That’s not the problem. The problem is that you always do. 

This makes you reach back out for your drink, but when you grab it to take a sip, Paige doesn’t let go. Instead she lets you guide her hand and the glass to your lips, and lets you slowly tip it back. 

“Then tell me, what are you sorry for?” 

“Everything.” 

“Not good enough.” 

“I know. I’m sorry especially for the last time. That I said I was going to be different and then acted the same. I’m sorry I never called to tell you I was feeling anxious about it again. I’m sorry I just stopped talking to you instead of saying something. I’m really genuinely sorry, you know. I wish I could take it back. I wish I never fucked it up so bad. I wish I could go back and do it all again differently.” She says to you, her blue eyes boring into yours. 

You take a second before responding, not wanting to let the drinks influence your word choice. “Do you remember what I said on the first time you called me our freshman year in the spring?” 

“That phone call was four hours long, I’m gonna need you to be a little more specific.” 

“When you said you always disappear because you’re so afraid of messing it up and hurting me.” 

“Yeah.” She says. “Which I realize now probably hurt you.” 

“Well on that phone call I also said to stop trying to take responsibility for hurting me. I would never let you fucking hurt me Paige. I learned after the first time in the eighth grade that it wasn’t gonna work, so I learned to just have fun. I learned how to not let you hurt me.” The attitude was coming back out. You really had tried to keep the peace when starting this apparently pretty serious conversation. But this topic inevitably always came up every time you two started something new again. 

“I’m sorry-“ 

“Shut up I’m talking now.” You say and she laughs. It makes you laugh. It’s familiar which is nice, but the niceness of it all makes your heart ache a little bit. The laughter reminds you of late night frozen yogurt runs after admitting you still had feelings for one another and kissing just out of sight of the Ring camera in your driveway. Of playing hide and seek from your best friend and laughing at nothing while shoved into a bathtub. 

“Anyways, as I WAS saying, I was trying to bring up that I told you that I would always be here if you wanted to start something again. That I would say yes as many time as it took to get it right. That no matter how bad it went the last time, I probably wouldn’t be able to say no. So I stopped saying anything at all. That’s why I haven’t responded.” 

“Do you still feel that way?” 

“What way?” 

“Would you still say yes if I asked?” 

“If you asked what?” You responded, being coy with it. It wasn’t your responsibility to say her feelings for her. She can be a grown up just like you. 

“I want to be a part of your life again. However much you’ll have me.” 

Those were not the words you had expected her to say. If anything you would think she would want to ask if you wanted to try again, or if you wanted to sneak off to the bathroom to hit it just this once. But to ask to just simply be a part of your life? In whatever way you’ll have her? 

How were you supposed to say no. Of course you missed her. Over the years the hole of her absence had shrunk, surely, but it never healed. “It’s not like it was with Paige” was always running through the back of your mind whenever you met someone new. 

This sort of a proposition is a slippery slope. You two could go to from friends to something more to nothing at all in a blink of an eye. That’s actually what you’re best at together. This sort of opening, presenting as a tame and gentle re-connection is just the sort of thing you needed to actually avoid to not get hurt. A quick fuck in the bathroom wasn’t going to be an emotional rollercoaster. 

“Don’t you just want to go fuck in the bathroom instead or something?” 

She laughs, but this time you don’t. 

“I have two answers to this. Both of which I probably shouldn’t say but will anyways. Yes, I will always want to fuck you in the bathroom. And no, I want to be not just a hook up this time. I want longevity.” 

“Well, P boogers, for longevity you’ll have to earn my trust back. Text me tomorrow and let’s make plans for Friday.” You say since your best friend just returned from the bathroom, pointing to her mom on speaker phone. 

“She’s here to pick us up,” She says and you slide out of your seat and into the chilly night air, not bothered enough to look back at Paige, whose gaze you could feel following your steps out. 

The buzz of your phone had you on high alert all day. The first two were spam emails, and the third was a series of texts in your friend’s group chat. As you pulled your phone out of your sweatshirt pocket it was actually who you wanted to hear from this time. You stood and went into the kitchen under the guise of retrieving more snacks to avoid your siblings’ wandering gazes. 

Don’t answer, bitch!!: how’s the parade this year? 

Of course she remembered you and your family always watched the Macy’s day parade together after brunch. And of course she opened with that. It was only the first day and it was getting harder and harder not to keep hating her. 

You: just as boring as it was last year 

You: how’s football? 

Paige immediately answers with a picture of Drew mid-griddy in their makeshift backyard end zone. You can’t help but smile at the sight of the kid in his happy place with his sister, half covered in mud. 

Don't answer, bitch!!: tied 108-108 

You: how long have you been playing? 

Don't answer, bitch!!: both too long and yet still not long enough 

You: typical

Don't answer, bitch!!: so Friday, I’ll pick you up at 10:15 if that’s chill 

You: sure 

You: are you going to tell me what we’re doing?

Don't answer, bitch!!: no

Don't answer, bitch!!: dress casual, don’t eat breakfast

You wait for another text but none comes. You simply like the message and slip your phone back into your pocket, trying to return your attention to the parade. It’s practically the same every year, but your parents still insist you watch the whole thing as a family each time. Some traditions never die, you guess. 

On Friday morning, instead of the typical Paige pull into the driveway and honk pickup method, you’re actually greeted by her ringing your doorbell. You open the door to find her version of “dress casual” as camo cargo pants and a UConn bball hoodie. Yours was ripped jeans and a pink long sleeve, paired with a cutie vest you thrifted a few years ago. 

You walk the six strides to her car in silence before Paige tries to open the door for you. You place your hand over hers and shut it. 

“This isn’t a date, Bueckers.” You say. 

“I know.” She responds, a cheeky grin on her face. You don’t have the brain space to think about what that means right now. “What if I’m just trying to be nice?” 

“That ship has sailed for us.” 

“Aight then” She says and goes around to the drivers side, letting you get situated on your own. 

She starts to drive without putting anything in the maps, but you quickly know you’re going to your favorite breakfast spot in town, which is right across the street from the infamous fro-yo place. 

The smell of pancakes and coffee overtakes you before you’re fully into the booth. Paige unsticks your menu from hers and passes it to you, and you thank her. 

“So are we going to talk or what?” You ask. 

She doesn’t look up from the menu. Instead she puts a finger to her lips and responds “Shhhh I’m thinking.” 

“Oh well if you’re thinking then I’ll be quiet, I know it’s hard for you.” 

“Hey!” She says looking up now, the same smile from when you were fifteen together on her face. 

From there the conversation progresses naturally, her telling you about the season that’s just starting and you recapping your own soccer season for her. She makes a funny retirement joke and you spend a few minutes laughing at how the orange juice almost flew out of your nose. Then the conversation moves on to classes and futures, whereas she still wants to play in the WNBA, and she asks if you still want to be a graphic designer. You follow up about Azzi and her friends, and tell her about your own adventures in the last year. It’s good times. It’s good. 

Since you’re both in agreement that it’s not a date, you split the bill and head across the street for frozen yogurt. You hip check each other out of the way so you can each get the toppings you want to the extent that you each want them, pushing each other back and forth between fits of giggles. This is what it was like, and you guess still is now, when you’re together. 

You easily let the giddy feeling overtake you, and willingly forget about all the reasons this could be bad, and all the reasons why you shouldn’t watch the way her hair falls over her hood, pushed back by the sunglasses on her head. Why you shouldn’t let your gaze linger on her when she has her back turned. Why you shouldn’t feel excited when you can tell she’s “secretly” watching you too. 

Back in the car you eat mostly in silence, except when she tries to take a bite of your yogurt from your bowl, attempting to dip her chocolatey spoon in your fruit-flavored concoction. You lean way out of the way and she follows, an almost messy impromptu game of half keep away half wrestling. There’s no giggles but only because you’re both so concentrated, and you each have a pretty big smile on your face. The magic is still there when you catch her eye.

Eventually she stops chasing after your bowl because you feed her a bite of your yogurt from your very own spoon. And you know what you want to happen next. 

Placing your bowl on the dashboard, you know you have her attention. She sets hers aside the same way. 

An inkling feeling tells you she won’t initiate it this time, because she’s “trying for longevity” or whatever. But the real tipping point is when you’re reminded of a late-night phone call admission, during an “on again” phase where she said she found it really hot when you were slightly more assertive. 

So, you take your index finger and hook it around the collar of her sweatshirt, pulling her by the place where the sides of the hood meet until you faces are very close together, yet still feel distances apart. Looking into her blue eyes, you can sense the question. What will this mean? What do you want? Does this mean today fixed a lot of things? Will it ever happen again? Is this the last chance? 

“Please?” You ask her, knowing she knows what you’re asking for. 

“Whatever you want, Ma.” She replies. And you don’t hate the nickname. Slowly, you pull her face closer to yours until your lips meet. It’s soft and warm and slightly sticky from your dessert. Slow at first but it turns faster, and suddenly she’s rubbing circles into your hip with her thumb and you’re doing that thing with your teeth you know she likes. It familiar like when you were in high school but also a million times better.

She lets out a soft “mh” and you break apart slowly, moving only far enough away that your foreheads aren’t touching by a gap the size of a sheet of paper. 

No questions anymore. It’s just eyes and a little happy exhale, shy smiles. You close your eyes, trying to cement the memory into your mind, just in case, and this time Paige is the one to kiss you. 

[zozowrites]

💙 💙 💙

Week 3 Reblog Masterlist 2025

Welcome to Week 3, 2025, or Week 263. As always, the fics will be listed in the order I read them.

I hope you enjoy it!

«────── « ⋅ʚ♡ɞ⋅ » ──────»

♥ You can check my reading guidelines here.

♥ You can check my masterlist here.

♥ You can check my main reblog masterlist 2025 here.

♥ You can check my January reblog masterlist 2025 here.

«────── « ⋅ʚ♡ɞ⋅ » ──────»

𝙺𝚎𝚢𝚜: 💛 ᵒʳᶤᵍᶤᶰᵃˡ ˢᵗᵒʳʸ

💜 ʰᵒʳʳᵒʳ

🖤 ᵈᵃʳᵏ

❤️ ˢᵐᵘᵗ

💚 ᶠˡᵘᶠᶠ

💙 ᵃᶰᵍˢᵗ

🧡 ᶜᵒᵐᵉᵈʸ

«────── « ⋅ʚ♡ɞ⋅ » ──────»

This is the list of the fics I read and recommend in Week 3 2025:

Fic (Ransom Drysdale X Reader) by @sosa2imagines 💚💙

Christmas lights (Steve Rogers X Reader) by @amethystarachnid  💚

You don’t know part 6 (Steve Rogers X Reader) by @1000plants 💚💙

Labyrinth (Steve Rogers X Reader) by @innorogers 💚💙❤️

I’m not where you belong (Steve Rogers X Reader) by @callalillywrites 💙

Won over with affection (Steve Rogers X Reader) by @sergeantbarnessdoll 💚❤️

Helping hand (Steve Rogers X Reader, Bucky Barnes X Reader) by @daddysfangirls-marvel 💚❤️

You don’t know part 7 (Steve Rogers X Reader) by @1000plants 💚💙

Every bit as magical (Steve Rogers X Reader) by @stellar-solar-flare 💚

Solar witch 2 (Steve Rogers X Reader) by @kaunis-sielu 💚

The Three Times Steve Put Exactly What You Wanted in Your Hands and the One Time He Didn't (Steve Rogers X Reader) by @zozowrites 💙

Mission Control 25 (Steve Rogers X Reader) by @darkficsyouneveraskedfor ❤️🖤

Danger in the Heat of my Touch (Steve Rogers X Reader) by @buckets-and-trees 💚💙❤️🖤

Fic (Steve Rogers X Reader) by @thezombieprostitute 💙

I fell in love but you didn’t (Steve Rogers X Reader) by @callalillywrites 💙

A fresh start (6) – New Beginnings (Steve Rogers X Reader) by @holylulusworld💚💙❤️

A place to stay part II (Steve Rogers X Reader) by @amethystarachnid 💚💙

Headcanons for being an Avenger with botanical powers Steve Rogers X Reader) by @moonlit-imagines 💚

Fic (Stucky X Reader) by @mercurial-chuckles 💚

Old letters chapter 1 (Steve Rogers X Reader) by @sparks-and-smoke 💙

Rainy days (Stucky X Reader) by @spidermans-l-o-v-e-r💚💙❤️

Once Upon A Friendship: Bittersweet Symphony (Steve Rogers X Reader) by @steviebbboi💙

The Fate Of A Fae - Part 8 (Stucky X Reader) by @mrs-barnes-rogers-writes💙

Just the Two of Us: Starry Night (Steve Rogers X Reader) by @darkficsyouneveraskedfor 💚💙❤️🖤

Fic (Steve Rogers X Reader) by @mercurial-chuckles 💚

Climbing trees (Steve Rogers X Reader) by @daddysfangirls-marvel 💚

Steve Rogers headcanons (part 2) (Steve Rogers X Reader) by @fictophilianworld💚

Hope (Stucky X Reader) by @eridanusco💙

[zozowrites]

The Best Game Chapter 5: Breakfast of Champions

Words: 2.8 k

Warnings: slight sexual content (kissing)

fem!oc x fem!oc Olivia Oley and Emma Murray

Emma

It sucks that the soccer tournament group play starts before opening ceremonies, and that we don’t even get to be in Paris to experience it. Or even the substitute opening ceremonies in the village with the rest of the USA athletes that can’t go since they play the next day. But that does mean we’re doing our own photos before dinner as a team. 

I’m doing my makeup in a mirror and sitting on our bed and Olivia is in the bathroom doing her own. 

“Hey do you care if I go live on TikTok?” She asked from the bathroom, so I shouted back that I don’t. After ten more minutes I hear her reading out fan questions and answering them. 

“Yeah, I’m roommates with Murray.” I can hear her say. I take that as my cue to bring my makeup bag into the bathroom on the other side of the sink and ruffle her hair. She looks up at me and scrunches her nose. (Not) shockingly, the comments go crazy. 

We continue doing our own things for a little while before we hear a knock on the door. I answer it and it’s Trinity and Alyssa, all dressed and ready to go. 

“We came to make TikToks with you guys!” Trinity informs and I let them in. 

“What’s up with your beds?” Alyssa asks as they get further into the room. I’m confused for a second since there’s nothing wrong with the bed, it’s been made and our suitcases are nicely lined up. There’s a few things on my nightstand like a bottle of water and a charger, but nothing incriminating. 

Trinity shoots her a look that says “I told you not to say anything” and that’s when I realize they think we’re fucking or, at the very least, that Olivia and I have not been sly in the slightest about anything going on between us (which, for the record, is nothing). 

“Oh we just couldn’t separate them when we got here for some reason,” I explain, hoping it sounds real, since it is. 

Then Olivia joins us and props her phone up somewhere so the live can get the behind the scenes of us making these TikToks. 

We film a dancing one for Trinity and then a lip-sync one for me, and then Olivia cracks a joke that has us all rolling on the floor laughing. Eventually Trinity and Alyssa leave and Olivia ends the livestream. Then she turns to me and looks me dedicatedly up and down. I feel like squirming under her scrutiny but I can’t move. 

“You look good, Ma.” She says. There’s a charge in the air. The tension is back. It has been for a while now, but we had other people to distract us and we both look really really good right now, not that Olivia could ever look bad. I stare at her flickering eyes and every fiber of my body is telling me to kiss her. To rip off her perfectly buttoned shirt and slide my fingers down her strong body. 

But instead I turn and run out of the room. 

I walk down the steps to our photo location with Sophia Smith and Mal Pugh and I don’t see Oley until we take our seats and she chooses the one next to mine. Great. 

“You’re suck a fucking weirdo,” She says to me at a volume only I can hear. 

“And you know exactly what you’re doing,” I reply. She raises her eyebrows. 

“And what it that, exactly?” 

“There is no reason to look at me like that.” 

“Look at you like what, Ma?” 

“It was an I’ve seen you naked look.” I say, looking straight forwards towards the camera before tacking on “And stop calling me Ma.” 

“Three, two, one, smile” The photographer says and we snap back into place. She takes a few more photos, then Coach joins. 

“Let’s do a silly one!” Someone shouts and before I can react, Olivia lifts both her arms to give me devil horns. The first photo is taken right as I turn to her, meaning to look at her in shock but instead I have a grin I can’t seem to bite down. Then without thinking, I seize the opportunity to tickle her armpits, and she screams like a chicken, drawing everyone’s attention. 

The third photo is her real reaction, and the photographer captured the exact moment when her open palm made contact with my cheek, the background filled with the dropped jaws and equally hilarious reactions of our teammates. 

If it could have, the sound of the contact would have echoed through the space. Everyone falls still and silent, staring at the two of us. Even I freeze. 

Olivia doesn’t. Instead her eyes go bug-wide and she stands up, reaching for my face to examine my cheek, saying “I’msosorryEmmaI’msosorryohmyGodEmmaI’msosorryareyouokayI’msosorryMaI’msososrryI’msososrry” And I let her panic and caress my cheek softly for a second, letting myself lean into the warm touch of her thumb on the same hand that had slapped me not even moments before. And in this moment I had a choice to make. So I decided to laugh at her. I stuck my finger out to point and my head flew backwards out of her grasp and I let out a true belly laugh, grinning wide. 

And that seemed to do a pretty good job at easing the tension since everyone else started to laugh too. Except Hayes. She looked like she was going to have a talk with Livvie when we were done. Olivia just stood there, gaping at me.

Under the teams laughter I spoke just to her. “You worry too much.” 

“I know.” 

“If you could break me, you would have broken me a long time ago, Oley.”

“I know.”

We went through team dinner trying to act completely normal. I sat down first and she appeared timidly at my side for once. I pulled out the chair for her. The table played out the slap and the story and their reactions a few times, and while it was funny and interesting, I had a better game to play. At first, I was trying to see how close I could get to Olivia and for how long, and now it had turned into how much could I touch her without her moving away. Which, as it turns out, is actually a lot. By the time we were getting out of our seats I had my whole calf and shin of my left leg in the space inbetween her lower legs, since she had crossed her ankles. I had my right leg squeezing onto her own right leg to complete the tangle. When we stood up she looked at me first without saying anything, and I untangled my legs and got up. 

Nothing abnormal happened when we got back until we were lying in bed, trying to fall asleep. I could not for the life of me get comfortable. I tried the left side, then the right side, and then the left side with my legs another way again. For a second I tried to sleep on my stomach, and then when I switched to my back I felt Olivia’s arm sling over my chest. 

“What the fuck are you doing,” She asked but it wasn’t a question. Her voice wasn’t even grovely with sleep yet. 

“I’m just trying to get comfortable” I tell her, not intentionally trying to pick a fight but intentionally not apologizing. 

“Will you please stop moving. Some of us here want to go to sleep.” 

I sighed. “Make me, Oley.” 

And then she was on top of me, her face suspended above mine because she braced herself on her forearms. There was only a soft glow of light from the window, but I knew she looked beautiful. I could feel her warm breath on my lips and I wanted her. I want her so bad. 

She dipped her head even closer to mine and I could feel the swell of her breasts push into my own. 

When it became clear she wasn’t going to talk next, I decided I’d lose this competition if that means I’d get something better. 

“Just kiss me already,” I asked, looking straight into her eyes. 

She quirked an eyebrow and instead of sighing. I really lost. “Please,” I whispered. 

And then slowly, she lowered her lips to mine. I practically melted into her warmth. She was just as soft as she was a few moths ago in June. She tasted minty like the mouthwash she kept on the bathroom counter. I didn’t have a care in the world that I was wearing my retainers because I was finally kissing Olivia Oley again. 

She had given me bottom lip and I smiled into the kiss at the thought. She took this as a cue to slide her tongue into my mouth, slowly exploring the space above my top teeth and upper lip. I welcomed it. 

She likes her kisses a little teethy, and I let mine graze her bottom lip the next time it was available to me. She let out a soft little moan and it squeezed my heart. I snuck my fingers into her shirt and slowly and softly dragged my nails up and down her sides, being careful to avoid her armpits. 

She broke the kiss for the first time to sigh. “Fuck, Ma. You have no idea how much I missed you.” 

I couldn’t do anything but smile because the only words in my brain were the three little silly special ones, and I know I can’t say those. Not here, not now, not like this. Not until I know she’s ready to say them back. Because I don’t doubt for a second that she doesn’t feel them too right now. 

Olivia knew this too, because she took no hurt in the lack of response. She actually liked it a little bit. 

“And I know you missed this too because you were pulling out all of my favorite little tricks”

I made a “what can I say” face and reached up to kiss her, a short and sweet one, because we both knew anything more than that would take up the whole night, and there would definitely be no coming back from that. 

Olivia shifted slightly off of me but put her head on my stomach, so I wrapped my arm around her. I sighed and snuggled my head backwards into the pillow. 

“Comfortable now?” Livvie asked. 

“Something like that”

Falling asleep with Livvie is one of my simple pleasures in life. It’s one of my top three favorite things ever, which consists of my family, soccer, and falling asleep with Livvie. It’s better than anything we would ever do before we go to bed, or any of our charged moments because we let out guards down. But somehow it always manages to get my hopes up. 

When I wake up to the sound of my alarm alone in the room. Of fucking course. This always happens. We kiss and make up and she leaves in the morning. When I’ve been so clear that if she’s ready to say that she wants me she has to back it up with her actions. 

But I guess it’s my fault this time. She never said she was ready, and I never told her what I wanted. I don’t know what I want. But I do know it involves her. I shouldn’t have expected to wake up with her still in my arms. A small part of me hopes she’ll come out from the bathroom and crawl back into bed with me. 

I grab my phone from my side table to see that it’s dead. I reach for the Stanford soccer sweatshirt I threw off in my sleep, when Livvie was still here, but its not at the foot of the bed. Whatever. I plug my phone in and grab my key card before slipping on some shoes and heading down for breakfast. 

I’m sitting with Alyssa and Lindsay at one of the round tables when Oley walks in with the audacity to wear MY Stanford soccer sweatshirt. I stand up and my chair pushes back, almost to the point of tipping over. 

I don’t feel like myself when I call out to her scooping her eggs across the room.

“Are you fucking serious, Olivia?” I ask. 

She doesn’t look like herself either. Her hair is way neater than it ever is in the morning after a full night of sleeping. She has an already defeated look on her face and really tired eyes. What the hell is going on? I start to regret yelling before fully examining her. Where the hell has she been? 

Alyssa and Lindsay get up and leave the room, obviously to leave us alone since they take their plates of breakfast with them and sit down on seats in the hotel lobby that we can still see through the doors. I guess it’s the thought that counts?

Olivia turns away from me. 

“Not right now, Emma, please.” She says. In her voice I can hear she’s hurt or tired or something. But she definitely means it. 

I take a few steps forward to meet her where she is. I place my hand on her shoulder before I speak. 

“Okay. I’m sorry, Livvie.” Her nickname slips out of my mouth but I don’t regret it. She’s Livvie now. She always has been, no matter how hard I’ve tried to make her Olivia or Oley for this tournament. 

Its not the nickname that makes her turn around but I think its the nickname that contributes to why I can see the tears in her eyes as she puts her plate down and wraps her arms around my waist. She puts her head on my shoulder and I don’t hesitate to wrap my arms around her, drawing the nails of my right hand up and down her back through my soft sweatshirt. 

I feel the drops of a few tears through my t-shirt and squeeze her tighter. 

“Livvie, what’s wrong?” I ask. She doesn’t speak yet but instead takes a choked breath in. I just hold her and sway her back and forth. Then she picks her head up and finally looks at me. She pulls back just enough to press her finger to the crease between my eyebrows and giggle. 

“Don’t look so concerned, Ma, I’m alright now.” She says, taking another shaky breath out. “I’m sorry for leaving-“ 

She starts but stops when I pull her back farther into our embrace and lean my head on her shoulder. Oh, how long I’ve waited to hear those words. I can practically feel them putting the scattered pieces back together. It’s going to be better this time. I can feel it. 

I don’t move but eventually she keeps talking. “They took me for drug testing. Worst three hours of my life. I felt like I was being kidnapped honestly. They were pounding so loud on the hotel door I was surprised it didn’t wake you up. I’m sorry I grabbed your sweatshirt by the way, I was freezing and they were really in a rush. Probably to make sure I didn’t grab a spare jar of drug free urine in case we came prepared. Which also, I’m not doping so like I shouldn’t’ve been so worried, but you know how pee shy I get.” 

Wow, once you got her going she really went, I remembered. But I could listen to her talk for hours. I wish she would talk for hours. I pulled back from the hug and just smiled at her. 

“Did your phone die?” She asked.

“Yeah, why?” 

“Its not that important but I did text you all of this so like maybe next time, not that I want there to be a next time, but there are somethings I don’t intend on stopping, shit where was I?” She pauses, the rest of the team that aren’t early risers were coming into breakfast now at the mandatory time. We each took a step back from each other to make the gap a little bigger, but we didn’t even have a cover to blow with how we had been acting all trip. 

“Ugh I am so sorry. It apparently wasn’t charging last night and I was quick to jump to assumptions.” 

“Well it’s not like I don’t follow the same pattern every time.” She takes a pause but continues. “I want it to be different this time. I’m going to be different this time.” 

“You’re not the only one to blame.” Is all I can say before Trinity comes running in yelling through cupped hands. 

“Breakfast of champions!!!!!!” 

[zozowrites]

The Game (Fancy Pants part 2)

Paige Bueckers x actress!fem!oc Ava Radmall

Words: 4.5k

TW: religious services (church)

A/N: so I originally meant for this to be a little filler chapter buttttt ended up putting two together and adding my version of plot (there won't be too too much in this series, I'm doing my best tho).

Ava

It’s raining when I go to pick up my mom from the airport. I get out of my spunky little blue car to hug her hello and put her bag in the trunk. Then we stop at Whole Foods for the list of foods she needs to buy (which I tried to buy ahead of time but she insisted we go together, apparently it doesn’t “feel the same if she doesn’t look at it first”). 

In the parking lot I ask her to stop and turn around and catch her in such an aesthetic picture where she’s holding a bag under each arm bundled in her bright red raincoat with a slight rainbow in the background. I post it to my Instagram story and caption it “Mama and me <3” 

We get back to my place and start to put the food away when I get a text from an unknown number. 

I can’t help but smile slightly at the fact she’s texting me. 

Hey ava it's paige

cam gave me ur number hope it's cool

Hi Paige

It's cool dw

ok phew

how long is ur mom in town?

Until Jan 3, why?

does she like the lakers?

Are you wanting to take my mom on a date to a lakers game?

no no chill

she's pretty tho

Thanks??

lemme try again

does ur mom like the warriors AND CAM

I guess, why

do you have nye plans

Probably not, why

ok im getting cam lakers tickets for us for her bday

if you guys wanna join

Well you could've just said that, silly

well it was more fun this way, silly

At that I put my phone face down on the island to find my mom staring at me from across the counter, eyebrows raised. 

“Who ya texting?” She asks, always one for hot goss. Or prying questions. 

“Just a friend.” I answer, but I know I’m not controlling the upturn of my lips of blush of my cheeks very well. Yes I’m an actor but this is my mom, the woman who single-handedly raised me. 

“Okaaaaaay,” She extends the word and turns back to re-organizing the contents of my fridge, probably knowing that this is the move that never fails.

“I met Paige Bueckers at Cam’s Christmas party and she just asked if we want to go to a Laker's game for Cam’s birthday with them on New Year’s Eve.” I spill the beans. After being met with her silence, I add, “I think we’re gonna be friends!”

“And what did you say?” My mom asks, not turning away from the egg shelf she was inspecting. 

I slip into one of the stools at the hightop counter, swinging my feet in the air. “I said I’d get back to her. Do you want to go?” 

“I love CamCam, of course I’ll go. If she’ll be alright with me there, of course.” 

“Oh don’t even pretend, we both know she likes you more than me.” 

She sets down the butter that she’d moved on to and comes to stand behind me, running her hands up and down the sides of my arms. 

“I’m sorry sweetie,”

“No you’re not.”

“Yeah, no I’m not.” She says and laughs. 

My doorbell rings at 6:30 pm on Christmas Eve and I open it to find Ellie, my neighbor, just as expected. The twelve year old smiles at me as I let her in and wave to her mom, driving off to her shift at the hospital. 

We do our secret handshake (three fish slaps back and forth before a faked out high five) and she asks if my mom is here yet. When I tell her yes, she drops her backpack at my feet and bounds up the stairs from my entryway to the open-concept living space. 

“Sarah!!” I hear her shout before I can hear the impact of her jumping into my mom’s arms. I sigh to myself with a smile and bring the backpack up the stairs to place in her guest bedroom. 

I met Ellie and her mom Jules when I first moved in two years ago and got really close with them. Ellie walked my dog Frankie on my long set days and I watched Ellie during the summer on my off days and she slept at my house when her mom was working night shift. Like on Christmas Eve. Only last year when my mom visited for Christmas did we discover that we actually share the same runaway dad. It was an interesting Christmas morning to say the least. 

“Are we ready to commence the second annual Great Christmas Competition?” My mom asks, putting on her low rumbly announcer voice. Ellie squeals, already set up at my dining room table. 

We pull out hot glue guns and our bags of candy and graham crackers and start building our gingerbread houses. My mom finishes way before our half hour timer is up, so she takes a spoon to the pink icing tub, dying her mouth a brighter color. Then we move onto cookie decorations, where she’s more interested in eating the cookies than decorating them. Through both heats, Ellie is so focused she doesn’t say a word. And she wins, of course. We wouldn’t just let her win, but she’s a creative genius. Even if she wasn’t a kid she would still be winning. 

Then we move on to reindeer races (I win), Christmas karaoke (my mom wins), and snowman making (Ellie wins). Since she wins the tournament, she gets to pick the movie to cap off the night, and we settle on the couch to watch Elf. 

Around halfway through I pull my phone out to text Paige. 

What's your Venmo and how much for the tickets?

Her response is immediate. For some reason, that makes me smile.

don't even think about venmoing me bc i'll just send it right back

Don't make me go ask Cam

don't do that either I'm deadass

20 bucks says I can guess it right on the first try and if not you'll tell me

I don't think you understand how bets work

They way I see it it's a win win

uh yeah for u

What, you don't want me to win?

not if it means I lose, no

Don't make me write you a check

I'm not gonna honor that with a response

I put my phone away and try to refocus on the movie when Ellie leans on my shoulder, her soft brown hair falling into my lap. 

Christmas morning comes and goes. I spend it with my mom and Ellie, and Jules brings over Ellie’s presents from Santa when she gets back from her shift. She sleeps on the couch as my mom and I make breakfast, or she sleeps as much as she can before Ellie comes running in. 

Later in the day my mom finds a church service for us to attend, because apparently my five o’clock Episcopalian service wasn’t good enough for her. The church is small and charming, the service taking place in a gym of an old school that was turned into a community center. The congregation is very friendly and I spend half the time making faces at the baby in front of me. 

The next Sunday we return to the church for a regular service, and to my surprise, I spot a certain blonde in a middle row. I walk my mom towards her, and she turns and seems to have a similar look of surprise on her face. 

“These seats taken?” I ask. She shakes her head with a smile. 

“All yours.”

I introduce her to my mom and she shakes her hand, very formal. TikTok isn’t wrong, she definitely has good rizz. During the community time she’s asking us about our holiday and how my mom is liking LA right now. She brings up the Lakers game. 

“I’m assuming you know Cam since she roomed with Ava in college, right?” Paige asks. 

“Oh, do I know Cam. I adore Cam. She used to come on vacation with us sometimes.” 

“We always joke that Cam likes my mom more than she likes me.” I say and pretend to pout. Then the community time ends, and we move on to the sermon. 

After the service ends we help stack up the chairs and push them to the side. 

“This is only our second time here, do you know any good brunch spots around?” I ask Paige as we descend the stairs to the exit. She tells us about a bookstore cafe around the corner, and my mom insists she join us. 

Fifteen minutes later, we settle into our seats and the navy blue bookshelves behind Paige perfectly compliment her slick back blonde bun. I’m sitting across from her at the table, and I let my eyes travel down from the bun to the slope of her purple cardigan over her shoulders, crisp white t-shirt underneath a great contrast. On our walk here I had to really focus on keeping my eyes away from the way her legs looked so juicy in her simple black pants. 

I finally rip my gaze away from her to look at the menu. Then I look to my mom, who was watching Paige through her menu. I resist the urge to look back at Paige, because I can already feel her eyes on me. It makes heat rise throughout my body, and I untuck the hair from behind my ears to shield my neck, which I can feel is probably blushing.

Thankfully the waiter arrives, and we order our food. Then we resume being normal human beings, and partake in normal conversation. How Paige is doing on the team. The press tour I’m about to start and the next round of auditions. What my mom does as an elementary school art teacher. We discuss Cam a good bit, and her impending nuptials. 

When our food arrives we play roulette, where we rotate the dishes through the three of us at random. Thankfully, Paige is understanding of my mom’s shenanigans. I excuse myself halfway through under the guise of using the restroom, but really I find the waitress and cover the bill. My Asian dad may not have stuck around or been a decent guy, but there’s some things that may just be nature. 

I come back to my mom and Paige chatting, and apparently she was telling Paige an embarrassing story of me from childhood. Just great. 

“Yeah she like didn’t talk until she was like four. But she would point. Her two words were ‘puppy’ and ‘soccer.’” My mom tells her and Paige smiles. 

“Aw that’s so cute, my younger brother Drew did that too,” Paige responded. I pulled out my chair to sit back down with a squeak. “My step-mom always claimed that it was because Drew had me to interpret for him so he didn’t need to talk since I was fluent in Drew.” 

It makes my mom laugh which makes me smile. Paige is good.

Our waitress comes back and my mom asks for the check, so she lets us know it has “already been taken care of.” 

My mom fake scowls at me, and Paige gives me a look I can’t quite decipher. 

Paige 

I open my phone to call Azzi, but for some reason my fingers hover over Ava’s contact instead. 

u didn't have to do that u know

Do what?

buy brunch

I think the words you're looking for are "Thank you, Ava"

Thank you, Ava

You're welcome, Paige

The way she texted my name had the same effect on me as her actually saying it. I can see the way her lips wrap around the P of my name in my head. I need to send something to change the mood.

ur mom is cool

Ok ew don't text me that

I don’t know what to say because “sorry” doesn’t sound quite right. I’m not sorry. I do think Ava’s mom is cool. And pretty. I know where Ava gets her beauty from. 

Turning the the other side of the couch I had flopped down on five minutes ago, I pick up Aziz’s call instead of trying to craft a lackluster response to Ava.

“Yo, what’s up?” I ask her. 

“Please tell me you don’t answer the phone like that with other people.” She sighs in response. 

“This is just for you, Az.” I chirp in response. “But seriously, what’s been going on with you? How’s Dallas?” 

“Eh, Dallas is Dallas, like always.” She says. “Practice is practice. Life is life.” 

“Well you don’t sound very enthused,” I noted. “What’s going on.” 

She sighed, even longer this time. “Just worrying about my offseason training, nothing new. I want to hear about what’s been going on with you. How was Cam’s party?” 

I almost don’t want to answer about the party, because I know that means bringing up Ava, and for some reason there’s a part of me that wants to keep her to myself. Like she’s too special to share. 

But that’s ridiculous. I shake my head and answer her truthfully. 

“Wait what!?” Her gentle voice somehow screeches through my phone speaker, and I place her on my living room table so I can stretch my arms over my head. 

I let myself laugh along with her. I know. It’s almost ridiculous. I’m crushing on a movie star. Who’s also smart and pretty and athletic. Who I have no idea if she likes me back. 

Azzi sighs yet again. I make a mental note to wear her down until she tells me what’s really going on. Because I know something is. She’s my best friend. 

“I have to go,” She says. She sounds miserable. “I miss you. I love you!”

“Love and miss you too, Az.” I say and she hangs up. I turn onto my back and close my eyes, letting the silence of my apartment envelope me. 

I knock on what I hope is the front door of Ava’s townhouse. It’s white and modern. She has a nice yard and a single potted plant by her door. There’s a pumpkin on the step and I’m scared of how long it’s been there. 

The knock earns me no response, so I ring the doorbell. I hear it reverberate through her house, and then an indecipherable shout and heavy thudding footsteps of someone running down stairs before the door is thrust open so hard I’m surprised it doesn’t hit the wall next to it. 

A very frazzled Ava greets me, followed by the most adorable black Scottish terrier I’ve ever laid my eyes on scurrying behind her. I could never have imagined something could upstage Ava, but her dog definitely does.

I crouch down to pet the dog and it props its two front legs up on my knee, licking my ear. I don’t mind, and Ava seems too distracted to tell them to get down. 

“Her name is Frankie,” She says, a fond smile flitting across her face. Her hair is half curled, and she appears to be wearing a full face of makeup with bare lips. “She really likes you, you know.” 

Everything about this moment makes me smile. The way Ava looks effortlessly beautiful in her half-ready state. It feels too intimate for me to witness. I’m filled with an overwhelming amount of pride that her dog likes me. 

“You look nice,” I offer, truthfully. It slips out. I didn’t mean to say anything too forward in my flirting or cross weird lines or make any moves or confusion. Yes, it’s hard when you compliment a (bitchy) straight girl when she knows you’re gay, but personally it has always been harder for me to compliment my also lesbian female friends. Weirdly, I’m not worried about how she’s interpreting it, but rather aim to stick the thought process in my mind to analyze later. How did I intend it? 

Luckily, she just scoffs. 

“Yeah, whatever, if you say so Paige. You look good.” 

It makes me smile against myself. 

“Thanks. But I mean it, you know?”

“I am obviously running behind,” She says, gesturing frantically with her hands. Another female voice calls for her from up the stairs, who I’m pretty sure is her mom. But now I’m concerned why the thought of it not being her mom is making me slightly jealous. Shit. I’m done for. 

A red leash with pink hearts and a purple collar is placed into my hands as I stand. 

“Do you mind walking Frankie quickly before we leave? I haven’t done it yet and I need to help my mom with something.” She makes a face when she says “something” that indicates she doesn’t really know what her mom called her for. “Usually just up and down the street is enough to get her to go, and there’s bags on the leash.” 

I snap the collar onto Frankie as she thanks me profusely before trotting back up the stairs. 

“Guess it’s just you and me, kid.” I say and lead her out the door. She lets out a huff of air. 

I walk her up and down the block, Frankie trotting perfectly next to me. Of course a perfect woman like Ava has a perfectly leash trained dog. I walk her to the end of the street and back, trying to let all of my fast-paced thoughts go. 

Seeing Ava like that felt like she was letting me in to a private part of her, for some weird reason. She doesn’t seem to me like the type of woman to pressure herself to always be put together, but I guess whenever I see her she is. She’s secure in those moments and she’s secure when I knock five minutes too early on her door. 

Frankie and I make it back to Ava’s small front yard, and she gracefully stops in the grass to go to the bathroom. I grab it with a bag, not even surprised anymore about how perfect the dog is. 

I open the door and wipe her paws and butt with a wipe from the pack decorated with paw prints on the shelf. Then I unclip the leash and hang it up, but stop, unsure of what to do next. Was it weird I let myself into her house? Probably not any weirder than walking her dog, right? 

Thankfully I don’t have to think on it too long because she bounds down the stairs with her mom, and we’re off. 

At the game we slide into our seats, Cam’s fiancé on the end and then her, Ava’s mom (since the two of them haven’t stopped talking since we picked up Cam), followed by Ava, and then me. 

There’s a good amount of time before the game starts and Ava’s mom is still completely immersed in conversation with Cam. Which means lucky me gets to talk to Ava. 

I turn to her, a plan forming in my mind. 

“So tell me more,” I try to prompt her, and she turns to me from where she was staring off at the court, seemingly tracking the players warming up. 

“Huh? What do you mean?” She says, her eyebrows creasing in confusion.

“Tell me more,” I say to her again. I struggle to hide a small smile fighting its way onto my face. 

“I wasn’t saying anything, Paige.” By the way she says my name she sounds slightly displeased and it worries me, before I look her in the eyes, trained on mine already, and see the mischief gleaming behind them. 

“Tell me more about yourself, Ava. So far I know you were Cam’s roommate, you went to Stanford, you played soccer. Midfield.” I echo the way she told me at the bar in Cam's yard that night. I see a smile creep onto her face, and my heart hopes it’s at the memory. “Your go to drink is a Shirley temple, you’re a Christian but once struggled with your faith, you’re gay,” I lean in towards her and whisper for the last one, before returning to normal. “You sleep like a rock, you’re gorgeous when you just wake up,” I pause, counting them all on my fingers. Maybe I’ll reach double digits at this rate. “You’re close with your mom, you like the Lakers-“ 

“So it seems like you know a lot about me already.” Ava cuts me off. Now it looks like she’s the one planning something. “What, specifically, would you like to know, Paige.” 

The perfect opening to hit her with a silly, small talk first date get to know you question. 

“Well, for starters, do you have any siblings?” I ask nonchalantly and shrug. 

Ava snorts out a laugh that she tries to cover with the back of her hand. 

“I have a sister. She actually lives next door to me. I only found out we were related a year after I moved in. She’s twelve.” Ava smiles so I smile back. Oh my, would I like to meet her sister. But oh my, would I like to kiss that smile more. 

I shake the thought out of my head. Ava keeps talking, almost lighting up as she describes Ellie, her sister, and discusses her hobbies and interests, and the adventures she’s gotten to take her on at length. I really hit the jackpot with this question. 

“I mean, technically she’s just my half sister, but-“ 

Now it’s my turn to cut her off. “It’s not different, I get it.” 

“I don’t have a full sibling so I wouldn’t know how to compare.” 

“With Drew my younger brother, he’s everything. We only share a dad, but we also share a soul, I just know.” 

This makes her smile. She gets it. More importantly, she knows that I get it.

The lights lower and a loud rumbling voice begins to announce the happenings as players begin to run out from the tunnel. It pulls us from our conversation and we clap. I realize that we were practically turned in our seats to face each other because I have to turn back. 

A few minutes in to the second quarter, I stand and declare it’s time for hot dogs. I turn to walk out of our row and Ava follows, claiming she’s getting up to “lend me a hand.” 

As we wait in line, only a few people in front of us, she speaks and I have to forcefully drag my eyes away from the place they had been resting, looking at her perfect hands clad in dainty gold rings, perched over her stomach as she uses her left hand to twist the one on her right ring finger around and around and around. 

“Ok my turn. But I’m not letting you off the hook with ‘do you have any siblings?’” She quotes me using a horrible frat boy impression. 

I look up at her through my eyelashes, a smirk on my mouth. I quirk my eyebrows. “Is that really what you think of me?” 

“Oh, you think I think about you?” she says smirking back. Flirting back! It brings the butterflies in my stomach into full torment mode. I will be remembering this moment for forever. 

I open my mouth to say something but she lets out a huff of air instead and squares her shoulders. We’re moving on. 

“Why basketball? I’m sure you played other sports as a kid, so, why basketball?” 

I take a second to contemplate, gathering my thoughts before answering so I can be as sincere as Ava deserves. 

“It’s the only place I felt at home. The flow state. It still takes hard work but it’s the only sport that just felt right. That just clicked.” I answer. Even though she looks like she’s listening, Ava doesn’t say anything in response. I take a deep breath and keep going. She knows I have more I could say, I guess. “It’s also what I clung to when my parents divorced. They told me during soccer season, so soccer was ruined for me. Then I had basketball to look forward to, basketball to focus on, basketball that wasn’t going to change. Basketball that I couldn’t ruin.” 

The moment is heavy. Ava’s gorgeous brown eyes look into mine and I’m almost surprised when I see understanding instead of pity. 

“Paige,” She says, placing a gentle, warm hand on my elbow. That’s her only response. Just one word. One simple touch. But she’s with it she's saying everything. She gets me and basketball just as much as I got her and Ellie. 

We’re called up to the counter and order the hot dogs. She tacks on a few baskets of fries. When the screen tells us to pay she quite literally elbows me out of the way and uses her card as I’m reaching out for my own.

For a reason I wished I regret knowing, I don’t move farther back, and instead relish the brush of her hair against my shoulder, the scent of orange and vanilla lingering in the air now, and the sweep of her hip against the very top of my thighs as she grabs half of the food and turns back to head towards our seats. 

The game is interesting, and Ava and I ease into a steady rhythm of trading quips or comments back and forth. I’m funny and she’s funny. A match made in heaven, I think to myself. Maybe I should stop thinking to myself. 

At some point Ava’s mom stands up and announces she’s going to the bathroom. Her brown hair is wavy in the same way Ava’s is, but shorter. It looks just as soft and I catch myself wondering if it smells like Ava’s vanilla and orange. 

“Which way is it, Paige?” Her mom asks me. I’m a little stunned why she would be asking me that until I realize it’s so that I come with her. Obviously she can find a bathroom by herself.

“Oh um let me show you,” I say and stand up from my seat, following Sarah out of the row. 

When we’re out in the hallway I keep up the gesture of showing her where the bathroom is and point simply across the hall. I mumble a few nondescript words about it being “over there” since I’m really just waiting for her to say something.

“Thanks, Paige.” She says but doesn’t turn away. “So you and Ava.”

Her words hang in the air, turning the space around us thick. What about me and Ava? We’re friends? Can she see I’m flirting with her daughter? Does she want me to stop flirting with her daughter?

Suddenly she cracks a grin and lets loose a laugh so compelling that I just have to laugh with her. She reaches for my elbow just like her daughter did half an hour ago. 

“I’m not grilling you at all, sweetie, sorry I just thought it would be fun to see you sweat.” She smiles to herself, her plan having obviously worked. “Anyways I was just going to tell you that she likes you. She’s probably just beginning to realize it now, but I know she does. I think you like her too since you haven’t stopped flirting with her ever, even in my presence.”

This makes me blush. Which, in turn, makes Sarah smile more. 

“Just a word of warning, honey. You have to be really patient with her. If you act too soon you will scare her off, and I would really hate to see that. You two will be so good together. I suggest you wait for her to make the first move when she’s ready.” 

I nod, taking this all in. Her mom thinks? Knows? That she likes me. And that I like her. And she wants us to get together. But from the sounds of it I need to wait for her to make the first move. Huh. 

“And I know I cannot just ask you to wait or something. I’m trying not to ask anything of you, but rather tell you what I see in Ava. The flirting is good for her. Please don’t think I’m telling you to stop. I’m gonna work on her from my end, see what I can do.” 

I don’t know what to say but Ava’s mom seems to know even that too. 

“I’m almost sorry for dropping this on you. I’m gonna hit the bathroom, maybe consider a walk if you don’t want to return yet.” She says with a warm smile and I nod in response, turning to go for a short walk. 

[zozowrites]

Words: 2.2k

Pairing: Natasha Romanoff x Carol Danvers

A/N: Bringing this back from my AO3 account to spruce things up in here while I work on the next chapter of Fancy Pants. I'm hoping to post it this weekend!

Originally published August 2019 (oml I was fourteen)

"I need you to be my girlfriend for about five minutes" Carol demanded Natasha. 

"Okay, but why" 

"I'll explain later" Carol grabbed Natasha's hand and strolled down the street. She pushed her up against a blue mailbox and kissed her. 

There was a stir in a crevice near a shop across the street. Normally that meant just a homophobe, but this time it was more. This time it was a guard. 

Carol knew she had everyone's attention. She kept kissing Natasha. The guard left his post. She pulled Nats forehead together with hers and whispered. 

"When I give you the signal, shoot the guard." 

"ME? Carol, there's too many witnesses." 

"No silly, I was talking to Hawkeye." 

"Then why kiss me?" 

"So no one knows the guard was shot." Carol couldn't believe Nat had actually gone along with the plan. "Steve's coming in a car in two minutes to pick us up."

She kissed Natasha again and slid her hands down her leather jacket. Her hands found a resting place at her ass. 

Natasha actually liked this. Then two minutes felt like an eternity. Nat wished this was eternity. Maybe she liked Carol. And maybe a little too much. 

Steve drove up and honked. Carol opened the door for Natasha. If Carol hadn't told her the guard would be shot, she wouldn't have realized; she was too caught up in their kiss. Nat liked the idea of her and Carol. Maybe too much. 

"Nat." Steve's serious voice caught her attention. How long had she been dreaming? Carol giggled. 

"Yes. What?" 

"How was the mission?" 

She didn't understand the point of the mission. Maybe the guard had some information they already knew. However, she didn't understand why they needed to kiss. And how pretending to date led to passionate PDA. 

"Nat. Seriously. Where is your head?" Steve interrupted her again. Carol laughed. 

"Was I that good?" Carol smirked. 

Damnit, Nat loved that smirk. 

"Uh. No" Nat paused. "Well not like no but like that's not what's distracting me." 

"So then what is?" Steve's voice was low and calm. 

"Nothing"

"Then where's your head?" Carol chimes in. 

She was stuck in the loop. "It's right here" She pulled out her knife. "Don't question me."

"You're cute when you pout" Carol said. 

Nat blushed. Damnit, emotions. 

"Don't tease her, Captain." 

"She's the one who pulled out a knife!" 

"You know this sexy banter is kinda turning me on," Nat smirked. If they were going to play games she might as well too. 

"Put the knife away and then you can be funny" 

She put the knife away.

"I've had a rough day and all I want is a drink and someone to cuddle with," Natasha collapsed onto the couch in the common room. 

Carol looked around. It was just them two. 

"I can give you both," She poured two drinks and sat on the coffee table near Nat. 

Nat put her hand out and motioned for a drink. Carol put one in her hand. "No. I want you." 

She sat up and took Carol's hand. 

"Me? Really agent Romanoff?" She smirked. 

"It's always you" Nat sighed. She's been crushing on her Captain for years. 

Nat pulled Carol into her lap. She wrapped her arms around her waist and rested her forehead on Carol's shoulder. 

"I'm so cold" Carol pretended to shiver. "Hold me closer" 

"Enough with the excuses. Grab a blanket and lay down with me" 

Nat slid down when Carol got up. Carol unzipped Nat's suit to her belt and lay down with her and the blanket. She buried her face in her crush's hair. 

The smell of her hair always calmed her. It was like cherries and rain and softness all bundled into one scent. 

"Hey can I ask you something?" 

"Whatever floats your boat, Captain" 

"Why did you agree to be my girlfriend on that mission?" 

Nat paused. She didn't know how to respond. She rolled Carol onto her back and kissed her. 

She kissed back. She felt safe, her face surrounded by Nats hair, their lips locked. 

Carol sighed. "That's not an answer, darling" 

"You're so smart. This isn't even a puzzle," Nat didn't know what she was saying anymore. "Do me?" 

"Horny are we?" Carol laughed. She was secretly yearning for Nat. "Only if I top"

"I'm too tired to care, but we'll come back to this" 

Carol kissed Nat again. She felt safe. Maybe too safe. 

The elevator doors opened. Tony walked out with Peter and Wanda. "Children look away, your aunts are making out" 

"Fuck off, Tony" Carol mumbled through Nats lips. Nat sat up and realized her suit was still unzipped. 

"Turn around kids, your aunts are naked, too!" 

Nat grabbed at the zipper and left with her drink. 

"Tony, it's not like you haven't done the dirty" Carol smirked. Wanda squirmed and Peter tried to leave. Tony pretended to gasp and be offended. 

"I didn't do it in the middle of the living room." 

"Don't let Tony convince you it's bad to be passionate, because it's not" She left for Nat's room.

She shut the door gently when she entered.

"Lay here with me" Nat was under the blanket in pajamas. She got in too and pulled her closer. 

"Promise me," Carol started "Promise me you won't leave." 

"Aye aye, Captain"

She tangled her fingers in the short blonde hair. "How are you this pretty?" 

"Pretty?" Carol couldn't let go of this moment. She never wanted it to end. "Have you ever looked in a mirror, miss?" 

"Make it Mrs. Danvers" She rested her forehead on Carol's. "Please." 

"If you insist" She smirked "let me take you on a date first" 

Shhhhhh Nat put a finger to Carol's lips, but soon her finger was moved to make room for her lips.

Carol walked into the gym, the familiar sound of Beyonce already blasting over the speakers. 

"Morning," Nat said from the treadmill section. 

Carol joined her, running at top speed. 

"Slow down, Danvers. It's not like our relationship," Nat teased, but deep down, she loved their relationship. It's only been a couple weeks, but they've been the best weeks. 

"Too fast for someone? Should've said that last night." Carol smirked.

Natasha couldn't get enough of that smirk. Or when she grinned so hard you can't see her eyes. Or anytime really. She might love Carol. Maybe too much. 

"Not too fast but. Uh-" Nat was at a loss for words. She looked at the gorgeous woman next to her and smiled. 

Carol was brave. She was always the boldest. Nat was trained to blend in anyway. Carol loved to stand out. 

She stopped her treadmill from full speed and stopped Nats too. She stepped from one to another and pushed Nat up against the handles. 

"Too fast, huh?" She whispered and kissed Nat, who melted into Carol's lips. She tried to push Nat up so she was on the handlebars and kissing down at her, but she pushed the instant full speed button instead. 

They both shot back off the treadmill in a pile of limbs. They also just so happened to hit Steve's water out of his hand as he was entering the gym. 

"So, more than just a mission, eh?" He laughed and offered them a hand. 

Nat pulled out a knife and walked toward him. "if you ever even think this to someone else, I will kill you." 

Carol grabbed her arm and pulled her back, "Shhhhhh, babe, he wouldn't do that." Nat loved it when Carol touched her. Usually she's really big on personal space, but with Carol it's different. With Carol she wants to be together. And touching. 

What was happening? She thought to herself. Am I in love? No, love was for children. Maybe Nat wanted to be a child then. 

"Let's go do something else," Carol grabbed her stuff. She led Nat out by the arm. "See ya, Steve." 

"Let's explore," Nat wanted to be a child, to have a proper childhood. Maybe hide and seek? Maybe that was too much. 

"Okay, miss bossy." 

"It's Mrs. Danvers now." 

They pushed open a heavy glass door on the seventh floor. There was a swimming pool. 

"A pool huh?" 

"Ever been skinny dipping?" Carol took her clothes off. Nat looked skeptical. "C'mon, it'll be fun."

She took off Nats too. 

They dipped their toes and then Carol jumped in. 

Nat was tempted by the good time she'd have. "Fine," she jumped in towards Carol. 

"Ever played colors?" 

Nat shook her head. Carol explained and soon she was curled up in a small ball in Carol's arms. 

She loved being held by Carol; only the warm water between them. 

"Uh. Blue" she was dunked. 

"Red," she was dumped. 

"Gold," she was flipped. She came back up laughing. This was more fun than she thought. Maybe too fun. Everything was too fun with Carol. 

"How did you know?" 

"You only have three colors on your suit, ya know." she splashed Carol. "Even an amateur detective would've known."

"Fine. You win." Carol pulled her close and kissed her. 

"And you're my prize."

"Oh my God! You're in love with her!" Steve shouted on the phone. Everyone around him looked up. He was in the compound with only Clint and Carol. Except fury was there too. And Tony. And Wanda. And Peter. So a lot of people were there. But they didn't know who Steve was talking to. 

"No, I'm not!" Nat's voice was feisty on the other side of the phone. No one could hear her except Steve though. Except the people at the cafe where she was in. She might have been scoping out possible date places. But she's not that committed. Is she? 

"Then why are you calling me out of the blue about this problem you have?" Steve wanted to help. He really did. "What is your problem? She's not cheating and you two seem just fine." 

"My problem is that you're probably right" she stopped her late. "Thinking about it, I do."

"Then what's stopping you?" He already knew the answer. Time. It was too soon. 

"Time. It's too soon. It's only been three months" Nat was really concerned. She had bought Carol some cat earrings she wanted to give her, but now, she also wanted to tell her she loved her. 

"Well, if you don't do it soon, you guys might get hurt and maybe you'll never get to say it to her face." Steve had a point. He also had a very bad case of grandpa-tech, or not being able to do anything with technology from this century. 

"What? You want me to give them to her and say, Carol, I love you?" The common room in the compound went silent. Steve had put the phone on speaker. 

"Well shit, Steve, she's gonna kill you." Fury speculated. 

"Why did I hear Fury. Did he hear me? I'm gonna fucking kill you, Rogers." Nat was yelling now. She turned heads in the cafe. 

"Well, good news, you already told Carol. And everyone else here. Sorry" 

Natasha hung up. She jumped on her bike and drove over to the compound. Yeah she was speeding, and yeah she was running reds, she's the fucking black widow, no one gives a hoot. 

Yet she gave one about Carol. Maybe too much. 

She arrived at the compound and Carol was sitting on the steps to the main entrance. 

"Shhhhhh. Don't say anything, baby," she kissed Nat. In public. Nat thought about the news article Tony would find later on about this. 

"Tell me a secret." Nat said between kisses "You already know my biggest one." 

"Biggest one? What about all the people you murdered?" 

"Shhhhhh" Nat kissed her. "Not the time. We don't talk about that anymore"

Carol kissed back. Her hands traveled under her leather jacket and we're pulled to Nats ass. She gave it a squeeze. 

Nat blushed and giggled. 

"I love you too," Carol always knew what to say. She always made everything better. 

"Do you want to get married?" Nat blurted out. She instantly regretted it. She had to recline into her defense system -- cutting off the outside world. 

"Wow, that's fast" Carol smirked. Nat panicked. Was that no? Was that yes? Her head was spinning. 

"Shhhhhhhhh" Carol looked at Nat. She looked so hurt. Her eyes started tearing up. She kissed her again. 

Nat didn't kiss back. 

"Don't kiss me if you're not going to marry me" She was angry. 

Carol laughed. Nat shed an actual tear. In public. She was gonna regret this later. "Of course I'll marry you" 

Nat cried harder. She crawled into Carol's soft warm arms. It was like coming home as a child to your mother's fresh, homemade cookies. But Natasha didn't know what that feels like. Maybe this time she could be the mother. 

They stood there, crying it out, together.

"Let's go make cookies" Carol suggested after a while. 

"It's like you read my mind." 

"I didn't, but Wanda does."

[zozowrites]

The Three Times Steve Put Exactly What You Wanted in Your Hands and the One Time He Didn't

I'm reposting some old works from AO3 on here, this is a

Steve Rogers x avengers!fem!reader

Words: 3.8k

TW: mentions of past trauma/descriptions (surgical), angsty-ish

“Ready for the jump?” Steve yelled at you in the back of quinjet. He would never yell at you except if absolutely necessary, and in this scenario it was. Over the roar of both the wind and the engine, only words spoken at an ungodly decibel could reach your ears. You nodded. 

Nothing is as fun as the jump. You used to think it was the debrief, which meant it was all over, but you quickly learned that missions stay with you far, far after the debrief. And the missions themselves slowly gained your amusement. Gradually it became more and more fun to jump into a forest in Germany with a few other agents and walk to the base, break in, take their data and log the men, and take the tunnels back for rescue. 

On the ground, the walking was the most boring part. When you were on missions with Nat, you would play I spy. With Peter you’d help explain concepts for his science classes, and with Bruce you’d debate different new occurrences in the science world. And theoretical physics, but that's besides the point. You’d only been on missions with Steve with other people. Never alone. 

The sticks crunched as quiet as possible as you kept walking. Left at the tree, right at the creek, and stop when you get to the rocks or the forcefield will stop you first. You couldn’t help but memorize every mission plan you got, because if anything went wrong it wasn’t just your life on the line. It was Steves and any other name that managed to squeeze out of you if you got captured, because they weren’t about to kill Captain America and SHIELD’s best agent before they spilled their guts under mind control, poison, or truth serum (the last one was a rumor). You pretended not to notice when Steve was looking at you in the moonlight but you kept close track so that when he wasn’t you could look back. The feeling of him looking at your swishing ponytail and side profile made you kind of nauseous. First off, the ponytail was certainly incredibly messy due to the drop and the hike. And secondly, you weren’t really a fan of your side profile. It wasn’t your least favorite quality, but when you thought about things you loved about yourself, it didn’t show up (but don’t worry, the list was quite long). 

You held your arm out to stop him once you had gotten to the rocks. Once you bent down to pick up some dirt from the ground, you stood up again and lazily tossed it at where the forcefield should be. It floated until it lit up a fence shape and disintegrated. 

“Well at least we know where the fence stops,” Steve said and sighed, putting his hands on his hips. Old boomer man was too slow to keep up with you. “Whats-”  He looked up at you, already halfway up the nearest tree. 

“The lowest branch is fifteen feet up, Y/N, how did you get up there already?” You responded by silently pointing to the rope that was still hanging on said lowest branch with your foot before you continued climbing. After you had made it to sit on the same branch a good thirty feet up in the air, you spat out the dirt you had been keeping in your mouth. You watched it fall over the forcefield fence, lighting up the extent of the barrier. 

“When Nat said you were unconventional, this is not what I had in mind.” He said and shook his head at himself. What had he had in mind? 

“Ok Captain, we still have a mission to do,” You told him and slipped the goggles off where they rested on your forehead to cover your eyes. You turned yourself backwards and took a deep breath, puffing your cheeks and holding your nose closed before falling in backwards as if scuba diving. 

On the ground, you walked faster in the shadows of the night and talked in quieter whispers. 

“That's not a move they teach at the Academy.” He said, amused. 

“No, but they do at scuba certification in the Maldives.” You responded. He held in a snort. “What? Does that not fit into your Unconventional box?” He didn’t have the time to shake his head in fake disgrace before you peeled back the closure of a vent and slithered in like a snake. He followed. 

The layout of all the remote Hydra bases are slightly different, but nothing too drastic. It's like stepping into the Target two miles from your house and not the one three blocks over. Everything is practically the same, you just came in the hopes this store isn’t out of pretzels like the other always is. 

Well, this Target was one with pretzels if you had ever seen one. You had done dozens of these missions but never actually encountered a real, live agent of the other side on one. There were two at the door to the lab that you shot with your stunning pistol before you called clear and Steve joined you. Through the locked doors of the lab you watched three or four scientists with steaming test tubes pacing back and forth, but not actually doing anything. 

“This has to be it!” You whisper yelled at Steve, finally excited. 

“But they aren’t actually doing anything, it has to be a hoax or a trap.” He rebutted. 

“Everything is a trap if you think about it too long. That's how capitalism gets you!” You said. “Pick up one of the soldiers hands and scan the door. Fifty bucks says those scientists aren’t even real people.” 

He did as he was told. But this time you were wrong. They were real people. Real mad people, too. Steve took them all out with one throw of his glorified frisbee. You put in the tiny USB shaped like the Eiffel tower and walked around the room. It was different from the others. It was brighter, with the light coming up through the white floorboards. They felt as if they were on the verge of breaking away and dropping you into the depths of nothingness. 

“Y/N” Steve called as the nearest scientist starter to stir awake. You pointed your gun at his shoulder and shot him down again. Without noticing how light your gun felt, you put it back into your waist holster and yanked the USB out, knocking over a bottle of blue substance off the counter. 

“Lets go,” You said and motioned him back to the door. But getting out was much, much harder than getting in. Pairs of soldiers came running after you as soon as the doors closed, shooting like their lives depended on it. For everything you knew about Hydra, it would be a safe bet to say it did. You sprinted around the next corner and shot back at the men before your gun clicked empty. Cap was standing right next to you, anticipating the next catch of his shield, but still made time to effortlessly slip one of his guns out of his holsters and place it in your empty hand, rendered useless without a weapon by your side. 

“Thanks” You shouted back at him and left the place back to back.

As soon as the doors to the Quinjet closed, you took off all your equipment. You unsnapped the parachute that had been on your back all this time and flung the utility belt full of resources to the ground. It skidded across the metal floors before coming to a rest under the line of seats. 

“What's the rush, Agent Y/L/N?” Steve asked you in a way that was intended to be flirty (hopefully) but it really wasn’t the right time. Before you could respond, you reached into your mission bag and found exactly what you were looking for. You popped the cap of the lipstick tube and quickly used the knife inside to cut off your pants. Why was this a jumpsuit in the first place? It's difficult to take off enough as it is. 

“Are you alright, Y/N?” He changed his question. No, you obviously weren't alright. The blue liquid you had spilled in the lab had gotten on your suit had soaked through the suit so it could burn your thigh. You slid against the cold back of the Quinjet and sat down, surrendering to the increasing pain. You didn’t care anymore that you were sitting in your underwear with your suit pants down by your ankles in front of Steve. You just wanted the pain to stop. He poured a bottle of emergency pure water over the hand-sized burn on your thigh. You liked to watch the water roll off your skin and turn on the floor with the movement of the Quinjet. What you didn’t like about the water, however, was how much more it made your leg burn. 

You closed your eyes to hold the tears back and let a long, slow, (accidentally loud), breath escape from your lips. This wasn't the worst pain you've ever been in. Not by a long shot. But it still made you feel like you could taste colors and hears smells. 

“Good? Bad?” He asked, concerned. 

“Bad, really really really bad” You said so fast. Immediately, he stopped the slow pour. He tightened the cap on it and put it back in the emergency kit. He stood up from his seemingly extremely uncomfortable position on the floor and over to the comm center. 

“We’ll need med on site when we land.” He said with as much control in his voice that he could muster before coming back to sit with you. 

While he was up, you debated whether or not it would be an appropriate thing to ask him. But the water was reacting with the acid in your skin and starting to bubble and boil and fizz. He was looking at you, right in the eyes, asking what you needed without actually using words. 

“Steve, will you-” You started to ask and held out your hands. Somehow, he knew exactly what you were asking him to do. He put his hand in yours and pulled you out from the little crevice you had nested yourself in and slid in behind you. Then he wrapped his hands around yours and used them to wrap both your and his arms around you and pulled you into him. You sighed and leaned back against his strong chest, matching your breathing with what you could hear of his. 

“I think I’m gonna go to sleep,” You said, tired of fighting to stay awake. The sun was just starting to rise, rays of sunlight penetrating through the windshield and reflecting contorted shadows of reality onto the back wall. 

“No, Y/N, I need you to stay awake for me.” He said in the calmest voice but it was already too late. You had given in to the pain.

It had been almost a year since your last mission. And it had taken almost as long to recover. But now you were fine. They figured out that the substance was the most aggressive form of acid, and it broke down every substance they tested it on except for your suit material. That included a sample of a civilian cadavers leg (don’t ask how they got that because you do not want to know). The new running theory was that you were superhuman. Anytime someone asked what you think about that theory, you responded “I will neither confirm nor deny that information” with a stern, monotone voice. Sometimes it was fun to play robot. 

Tony had decided to host another party on a whim, and you had decided to actually attend this one. For the last year you had been avoiding people like they were a virus to avoid their questions and stares about why you were always wearing some form of pajama shorts. The answer was because tight pants (the only type of pants you had) were too painful the first time you tried them on a couple months ago, so you just went back to Amazon and bought more pajama pants. But today you decided, would be different. You were finally ready to tell the world that a little unknown acid eating the skin and some of the muscle in your leg wouldn’t get you down. So you put on real jean shorts to prepare yourself to open your closet. 

The three racks of clothes stared back at you blankly. This was a lot. You wanted to wear a dress because Tony’s parties were black tie only (and that rule was strictly enforced). You tossed a couple cute dresses you rarely wore anymore onto your bed. There was the red one with the open back and gold collar, the pink one with the lace and sweetheart neckline, and the black one that clung to your body like wet dog smell. 

Once the party had died down, Tony had decided it was the right time to take out the really nice vodka. You didn’t much care for alcohol but after standing in insufferable gold heels and talking to insufferable people who asked about your leg and made sad faces at you for a couple hours made anything alcoholic sound like liquid heaven. Gathered into the stiff couches of the living room on the party floor (the living room you only sat in after parties, that is), Tony announced the game. 

“We’re playing strip truth or dare. If you don’t want to answer or do, you take off an item of clothing of your choice” He said. Then he turned to Peter, “So kid, that means you gotta go.”

You took off your gold shoes and tossed them at Peter, who wrapped them in webbing and tossed them back at you laughing. He was the only one who never asked about what happened. Well, besides Steve. At first he asked if you were okay every time you moved to stand up or sit down but you shot him daggers each time and conditioned him to stop bringing it up. It was embarrassing enough that you passed out in his arms and took your pants off like that in front of him that you never wanted to talk about that night again. 

“I choose Bruce,” Tony said and proceeded to tell him a dare, despite Bruce’s request for a truth. “I dare you to turn into the Hulk right now” 

“Tony, no” Literally everyone besides Tony in the circle said. Instead, Bruce took off his shoe. He tossed it onto the center of the “living room” table and the clothes of rejected truths and dares started to turn up there. 

It was Carol’s turn to pose a truth or dare and she chose Steve. 

“Dare.” 

“I dare you to kiss someone in this circle.” She said with smug arrogance on her face. This would surely get him to strip, right? 

“Wow Carol was not the person I would’ve pegged as the pervert of this group.” Vision stated plainly. 

“And who would that be?” Tony asked. 

“Why, you, Mr. Stark” He said back and we all snickered like we were in middle school and he just laid a sad burn on the teacher. 

“It’s not a perverted dare to pose, it's like the most common in truth or dare, frankly I’m surprised it hasn’t already come up” She said, defending herself.  Regardless, Steve put his finger to his temple to feign thinking and Tony groaned. “Stop pretending it's hard to choose, we all know you want to kiss me.” 

This one got an eye roll out of everyone this time. Steve just stood up from his spot on the loveseat next to your sofa and leaned down to whisper something in your ear. 

“Is it alright if I kiss you?” He asked in a gentle voice. You nodded. He cupped the back of your head before he brought his face away so he could bring it back. The kiss was short and sweet, just once with no tongue, but it wasn’t entirely impossible to imagine what it would be like with it. It would be like home. You knew that now. 

He pulled back and you couldn’t help but blush a little, no matter how hard you didn’t want to. Tony wolf whistled and a few others joined them. Another round of truths and dares went around before you were asked the inevitable. 

“Y/N, tell us about your supernatural family history.” Tony asked. You had chosen truth despite knowing this would be it. You didn’t want your next kiss with Steve to be another dare. 

You weren’t going to answer this, but you could entertain them. You held your hand out in Steve's direction. He handed you the bottle of vodka and you took a long sip. You extended the amount you downed by breathing through your nose. You set the bottle down and stood up. “Nat unzip me” 

She stood up too and gently tugged the golden zipper from the top collar of your tight, black dress down to your lower back where it ended. You slipped it off your shoulders and stepped out of the circle of fabric it left on the floor before bending to pick it up and toss it on the pile. You sat down with a satisfied smile on your face. You knew you had to drink that much to take off your dress. When this party had started you didn’t want to show your scars, but now you’d do anything to make it feel normal. So, you thought to yourself “what would you do if you hadn’t got that scar and were asked this question?” and the answer was take off your dress.  It was one of the good days for Moana -- the name you had given your scar after careful consideration and one watch of the movie -- because it wasn’t very puffy or painful, it was just a faded yet vibrant red. You felt fine and confident about the rest of your body. Surprisingly, it hadn’t changed much through the months of recovery. As long as no one asked about your first scar, Gennadon -- named as tribute to your past self, you would be fine. It was hard to ignore a large scar running up the left side of your stomach from a few inches below your bra to a few above your underwear. You hoped a copious amount of cleavage was enough to distract them. 

Most people in the circle were watching and whistling as you showed yourself off and sat down again. Most people excluded Steve Rogers.  “It's okay to look, Steve,” You told him. Besides you, every other person in the circle had noticed how he tried very hard to do his very best to respectfully not look at you almost naked. He allowed himself to meet your eyes and you smirked when they fluttered down to the rest of you.

"Scalpel,” The lead surgeon on the team asked the scrub nurse in a commanding tone. 

“Scalpel,” She echoed as she placed one in his hand. You were awake on the table, and no one noticed. But that was the point. All of their last attempts had resulted in a dead “volunteer”, so this time they tried to transplant the very same foreign organ with you awake. 

After a few hours, an intern bumped into the part with your head and moved the drape covering your face. She saw you blink and screamed. 

“She's awake!” She yelled. “This is inhumane!” She huffed and left. She didn’t bother to cover your face again. After that basically everyone else in the operating room left too. They said it was inhumane but no one ever came to save you. No one reported it to the hospital that an illegal organ transplant was taking place right under their nose because that meant they were involved in such a thing. 

So when the lead surgeon finally needed an assist again, the only one left was you. He set up a mirror so you could see the reflection of your abdomen in it. He gloved your hands and looked at you. You held your hand out for a scalpel and he placed one in your hand. Slowly the surgery came to a close. Well, he had you close. And he left you the bad suture string for you to close with. He gave you the type that left ugly scars. 

He reversed the anesthesia with another illegal drug. “I always knew you’d make a good surgeon, Dr. Gennadon.” He said with an antagonizing smile. 

You glared back at him. 

You woke up in a cold sweat and gasped for air. You tried in vain to throw the blankets off of you and run into the bathroom like you normally did, but it led to no avail. Steve had a steel grip on you even in his sleep. His face was sweetly nestled into the soft spot of your neck between your shoulder and face, but it couldn’t stay there. You needed to breathe. You did the only thing you could think of, and frantically ran your hands through the sheets feeling for anything fleshy and not yours. You finally grabbed something and yanked, not realizing what you had done. 

“YOW!” Steve awoke with a jolt. 

“Sorry sorry sorry I’m so sorry Steve that was not what I wanted to grab! Are you okay, honey?” You asked him, sitting you both up. You tilted his face so that he’d look at you. 

“Yup I’m fine” he said through gritted teeth and a forced smile. That means he must’ve seen the involuntary tears running down your face that, unfortunately, always accompanied the dreams. Now he was focused on you, using his simultaneously soft and calloused fingers to lovingly wipe the tears from your cheeks. “Want to tell me?” 

You shook your head, you never did. 

“Well, it's just a nightmare, right?” Steve asked you, searching on your face for some sign of fake reassurance. Both you and him knew very well that that was a blatant lie. “Well it's over now. You’re here now.” 

He wrapped his arms around you in an attempt to draw you back into bed so you could sleep but that didn’t help. It activated your stupid fight or flight response and you slapped him across the face when his hug intensified. 

“I’m so so so so sorry, Steve” You said again. It seems you couldn’t stop hurting him. But he stayed. 

“It's totally fine.” He said and rolled over to fall asleep. 

“It's just a nightmare” You repeated his words to yourself as if they would make it true. You both knew it was a lie. Those were memories.

[zozowrites]

The Best Game Chapter 4: Sweet Treat

Words: 1.9k

Olivia

Everything up until this point has been going really really well. We’ve had three practices and two media events, one where I got to film a roommates quiz video with Emma, which was fun. We were competing for who knows each other better, and I didn’t get a single question wrong. I should’ve been more careful to not blow my cover but I couldn’t just let her win. To her credit, she only got the “favorite color” question wrong because mine had changed since we were 18. 

It was also pretty entertaining to see the new edits flood in. I would be lying if I said I wasn’t a little bit vain because I enjoy them. I mean, I know I’m hot, but people making edits is not discouraging. There were a few ship edits of me and Emma, with captions like “back together again?” And “and they were roommates…” which I found pretty funny. I sent her the “and they were roommates” one which included a good bit of thirst for her (can’t blame the editor, ) and a few good clips of us connecting on the field too. I could tell when she watched it on the bus back from practice too, because of the way she froze and slapped her hand over her mouth, and then giggled and looked up at me before going to send it to someone. 

Even this evening had been splendid. After team dinner and a quick team meeting, we were all dismissed and most of us went back up to our rooms. Emma was journaling and I was actually being productive and answering some branding emails until she started poking me in the shoulder. She kept going and going and I tried to push her off, and it eventually turned into a mock slap fight. 

“What is it?” I said, resigned to losing this one. She looked so pretty with her hair down and a little messy, spilling gracefully over the hood of her sweatshirt. 

“Let’s go get a sweet treat. Ice cream for good luck tomorrow!” She said, batting her eyelashes at me. I sighed and closed my computer. She took this as a yes (it was) and started jumping up and down on the bed. Then she texted the team group chat to invite everyone else, apparently. 

Emma:

Oley and I are going to venture out and forage a sweet treat (ice cream) if anyone wants to join us!

I promise we’ll be on our best behavior :)

I assume she added this because everyone had noticed how much we argued and bickered during camp. And then how we sort of got along now, too. I mean, we still throw jabs and go insanely hard against each other, but now I poke her in the back just to stick my tongue out at her, and she rubs my head and calls me “sad little girl” in response but with a smile on both of our faces. 

Olivia:

speak for yourself 

i have my own agenda out here 

She pushed my shoulder. 

Emma:

EYE promise that WE’ll be on our best behavior 

We had met Alyssa and Trinity in the lobby, ready to go (it looked like Trinity wanted to go and she somehow roped Alyssa into coming too). Regardless, Ma had skipped out of the elevator when she saw them, saying “OMG! FRIENDS!” And hooked their arms through hers. Trinity linked me into the chain on the end, and I would be lying if I weren’t a little jealous I wasn’t closer to Ma. 

Then she drags us out going on and on about how much she loves ice cream and how it’s the perfect energy source before a game and how her mom would make homemade ice cream when she was a kid and she always had it before games so it helps her that way too. Then she’s asking them about their traditions from when they were younger and somehow looked over Trinity at me once and smiled like something she had said was our little secret. It made me feel like my chest was going to explode. 

As we meandered to find an ice cream place (much to Alyssa’s surmise, we did not already have one in mind), Emma kept the conversation really flowing, then moving to yap about favorite ice cream flavors and the qualities of each one, the rankings of the classics, and the best flavors for every occasion. She had us all in fits of giggles on her commentary about rocky road, and then the purpose of coffee flavored ice cream, and then her theory on how mint chocolate chip came about. 

Her energy was infectious and the vibe was high. She lit up every person and every room she was in and it was so painstakingly obvious right now. She was sunshine in human form. How could you not fall in love with her? 

Her presence puts me in such a good mood that I don’t have anything to argue with her about. When we get back to the hotel Alyssa notes that Emma was right and she did keep me on my best behavior. My only response is to shrug it off and say “you win some you lose some.” 

She ends up unlocking our door for me after we wave goodnight to Trinity and Alyssa and she waves me in saying “Ladies first,” in a fake British gentleman accent. It makes me giggle and that makes her look proud. 

She spins me around in the small space in our room before flopping dramatically onto the bed. 

“Oh goodness,” She sighs, being an absolute cutie. “I don’t know where I got all that energy from, but I think it’s time for me to sleep now.” She yawns and turns to the side. 

We settle into bed, still on our phones a half hour later. She throws one of her legs over mine before plugging her phone in and shutting her eyes. Well, for the last twenty minutes it had looked like she was fighting to keep her eyes open to watch her tiktoks. She nuzzles into the pillow and mumbles “Goodnight, Livie” 

My breath catches. She hasn’t called me Livie since we were young. And we have been on pretty good terms recently (at least I assume, since we haven’t actually said anything about it, we just gradually morphed how we interacted. I think being roommates really helped). I put my phone away too and tuck a piece of hair behind her ear. She doesn’t notice since she’s fast asleep already somehow. 

At some point in the night I’m forced awake by my racing heart. I didn’t even have a nightmare I was pulled from, but I feel like I was just sprinting. I focus on trying to catch my breath instead of why I’m feeling like this at 3 am. Of course this is about our game tomorrow (more like today). 

I’m used to the pressure of being good. Everyone on this team and on my college team and on my pro league team was the best of the best in high school. For everyone here in college and pro too. It’s not that I don’t think I deserve to be here, I know I’m good. I know I’m great. And I worked hard for my skill and endurance. I just have no mental game. 

In college I earned rookie of the year with four hat trick games, my sophomore year I scored at least one goal in every game (and I started them all) and broke Stanfords shutout streak (sorry not sorry Emma). Junior year I became captain, was a four time player of the week, and overall player of the year, and senior year I broke the NCAA record for most goals scored in the third game of the season. 

Sophomore year I had the most pressure to perform. It was my year of consistency. But sophomore year was also the one where Emma and I had our falling-out (break up?). So I had the most to prove. And the most distraction and the most motivation. It was just training, school, practice, extra reps, scouting, repeat. I wanted to prove to myself I could be something without her, since I knew I loved her but didn’t know I could have had her. That I could love a woman and be okay. But now I know, and the woman I love doesn’t want me anymore. 

While yes I’m afraid that tomorrow when we go out there I won’t live up to the hype, I’m more afraid of what Emma will think. If she’ll still be nice to me, if she’ll say something that’ll help. If she’ll look at me with pity in her eyes. 

I’m sweating. I rip the blankets off and it doesn’t help. Why don’t we have AC? I just need to touch something cold. I make my way over to the bathroom and lay down on the cold tile but I don’t turn the light on. The change in temperature seems to push me over the wrong edge and big hot tears start streaming down my face. I don’t even bother to wipe them away. I can’t put my finger on what exactly I’m crying about but it nonetheless feels good to cry. 

As time passes I eventually calm down and wipe my tears with the hem of my shirt. I sigh and sit up to lean against the wall and hug my knees in. Then the door opens and I see Emma’s hand reach and turn the light on. She opens the door and we’re just looking at each other. She looks like she was in a deep sleep, her hair ruffled but looking soft as ever. She also only has one of her ridiculous fuzzy animal slipper socks on. She looks at me on the floor, eyes probably red and watery, but I’m not convinced she sees me. Her mouth is open. 

“I um, I gotta pee,” 

“Oh! Yeah,” I say and shoot up, “Of course.” 

She steps into the bathroom so we pass by each other in a bigger space than the doorframe. She closes the door behind me and I go to lie down again, facing the window/balcony and wall combination. I don’t close my eyes. I’m not convinced I’m going to fall back asleep tonight, which means I’ll probably play like shit tomorrow. Fucking wonderful. 

But then I feel a weight in the bed and hear the rustle of blankets. Emma lays back down way closer to me and I can feel her hesitate before roping an arm around my torso. I make sure to maintain a respectful distance between my butt and her hips, which she closes slowly as she weaves her feet through mine. I turn my head to look at her but she’s not looking back at me. Instead she takes the chance to snake her other arm under my neck, fully spooning me. She loops her arm under my elbow to move my hair out of her face and then I decide to lace my fingers through hers as she moves it back. 

Her touch right now has the opposite affect than it usually does. Instead of giving me butterflies in my stomach and making my heart and mind race, everything slows. Everything is calm. She strokes a space on my hand with her thumb and I no longer need to worry about anything. I’m at peace. I’m home.

[zozowrites]

The Best Game Chapter 3: Road to Paris

Words: 3.6k

fem!oc x fem!oc Emma Murray and Olivia Oley, playing soccer and each other

Olivia

We haven’t even spent 30 minutes on the plane from our camp in Florida to our NY/NJ friendly before the Olympics and Emma is already asleep. Her head is leaning back against the seat, her face tilted up and jaw hanging low. She holds the pen she was using for her word search book limply over her lap. If it weren’t for the roar of the engine I would’ve been able to hear her soft snores. 

I keep looking over the aisle at her, hoping Kelly to my left doesn’t notice I haven’t turned a single page of the book in my hands this whole time. She does. 

“What’s the deal with you guys because it seems like there’s something you need to work out before you’re real teammates again” She asks. I sigh. 

“We have a bit of a past, and I was an asshole, actually, I’m still an asshole to her, or were assholes to each other. But I think we play the best that way. I mean, you see us at practice.” Kelly nods. “I am never able to play harder when I go against anyone who isn’t her, and we connect on the field so, so well.” I look over at Emma, sleeping peacefully with her mouth more than slightly open. I had missed the sound of her soft sighs in the years we spent apart. 

“So for the rooming situation, will you guys be okay rooming together?” 

Im not even embarrassed by how much I just know my face lights up when she says this. 

“Oh. So you have that kind of a past.” Kelly says in realization. I can tell she’s doing her best not to smirk. “And you’re just fine hating each other?” 

“I don’t hate her. And it’s not like we ever liked each other, it was always just competition and arguments, and then we’d end up back in our shared room. Well, it’s more like we never admitted we secretly liked each other under the mask of the rivalry.” I pause, remembering our last u20 call up. “Well, it's more like I never admitted I liked her.”

Kelly nods, digesting it. 

“Just don’t let it mess either of you guys up. We need both of you.” 

Emma

It’s an hour long bus ride to our specific hotel, because we get stuck in half an hour of traffic. Before they sit down, Lindsey and Kelly stand in front of the player’s half of the bus (aka the back) and announce room assignments. When they call my name followed by Olivia’s and room 226, my head snaps to look at her, three seats directly behind me. She’s already looking at me. There’s a mix of apology and longing in her eyes and I can’t look away. She doesn’t either. 

Something about it stirs up this feeling in my stomach, almost like if we just keep looking at each other we’ll be fifteen again, playing in the u17 World Cup before everything was so complicated. I can’t help but smile at the thought. I see her eyes flicker to my lips but she pulls them back up to mine and smiles back at me. It makes my heart ache, imagining against my better judgement what could’ve been if we hadn’t been so stupid. 

I get pulled away by Sophia Smith next to me, tapping on my shoulder, with Tierna and Naomi looking at me too when I turn back around. 

“D’ya wanna make a TikTok?” They ask and I agree, deciding to fully throw myself into it instead of thinking about Olivia and sharing a room with her for (hopefully) the next three weeks. It’ll be good, I tell myself. Just like old times, back when we were teenagers just figuring out what it meant to be good at soccer. 

I don’t know it, but Olivia watches me the whole time we’re filming. It’s some sort of lip-synch/acting TikTok, and she thinks I’m adorably terrible at my lines. She rolls her eyes but can’t take them off of me. 

Then we roll off the bus and grab our bags. Somehow we walk in next to each other. 

“Roomie” She greets me with a deceptively shy smile. Her hair has been down all travel day, the blond waves mostly hiding in the hood of her USA sweatshirt and shiny black headphones. It looks effortlessly perfect and I want to run my hands through it to mess it up. 

“Roomie.” I greet her back with a nod. 

“You better not screw this up for us.” She says, taking on a stern, argumentative manner. I open my mouth in disbelief. 

“I better not screw this up?” I can’t believe this bitch. This is the one who comes to me begging for sex and then leaves while I’m asleep when I specifically asked her to either leave after or stay the whole night. Bitch. 

“Yeah, did you not hear me? We really need to get your ears checked out.” 

“We?” I say again, just as exasperated. I decide to heed Olivia’s advice and not “screw this up for us” by following up with a firm “there is no we anymore.” So instead shove my shoulder into her so that she swerves off the path but not hard enough to actually hurt her. 

“Wow, no need to get physical.” She says, hands up in a fake surrender. 

“You literally started it,” I say, taking out a finger to point it in her face. 

“No, you pushed me.” 

“You literally started this fight with your comment.” 

“You touched me first.” 

“You asked me to.” 

“What? When?” She asks, a little surprised but not denying it. 

“Hmm let me see, when we were seventeen, or when you showed up at my door last camp?” I ask her, pretending to think hard. She bites her lower lip. We had somehow already made it to the elevator, our bags were now completely dropped and everything but each other forgotten. The doors stop at the second floor and ding open, but that’s not enough to break our stance. 

Lindsey clears her throat. I blush, a little embarrassed she has a way better grasp on our story from this little spat. That is if Olivia didn’t already run her mouth and spread our business, which wouldn’t be that surprising since she seemed pretty close to the captain and they played for the same club. 

I pick up my bags and start down the hallway. As we get into our room I overhear Lindsey say to Alyssa that she “can’t tell whether its a good thing they’re going to be rooming together” but we don’t hear Alyssa’s response. 

Olivia went into our room first, dropping her bags just barely in the room so that I almost immediately trip on them before the door closes behind me. Her first move is also to go into the bathroom, not even caring to check out the room. 

I push past her bags, already thrilled at how this is starting to find the worlds smallest hotel room. Thanks, France. 

There’s a window that (hopefully) leads to a balcony and shoved up right next to it is the bed. I pause. The bed? Just one? Uh-oh. I step closer to it, observing the terrible layout of the room even closer.  It’s shoved completely to the far window side, leaving an awkward but yet still small amount of space between the bed and the wall shared with the bathroom. But I also discover that it’s two twin-sized looking beds pushed together. 

I hear the sink running and before Olivia even comes out of the bathroom she yells out and claims the bed closer to the window, saying “I want the far bed so if someone breaks in they snatch you first!” 

“Get out here and help me move them then!” I yell back and she appears by my side, matching my hands-on-hips posture. 

“What’s with the beds, Murray?” She asks. I resist the urge to kick her in the shins. 

“Just help me pull them apart,” I instruct and move to grab the frame of the one that’ll become mine. She grabs it too, so close that our elbows bump together. We pull and pull and pull and yet they won’t move. 

I stand up and she’s still pulling, knees bent into a seated position making a grimacing face like she’s a diver or something. Her fingers are almost completely white and her grip starts to slip. I let her fall back on her ass. She gets back up and into position. 

“Just help me pull them apart,” She says, throwing back at me what I had just said to her. 

“What if they can’t be moved?” I ask. Maybe I should be worried that we’ll have to sleep in the same bed for the five nights we’ll be here but I’m not. I’m actually (terribly) a little secretly happy about it. I mean, it technically wouldn’t be the same bed, but it functionally would be. 

“Then I call the window side.” Olivia says, needing no convincing to give up. She jumps and flops onto her side of the bed and I roll my eyes. Since we took the red eye over its only 11 am. I decide an hour rotting in bed and then a little pick-me-up jog won’t hurt. 

For the next half hour Olivia and I just chill like that, our phones at respectable volumes so that we can hear our own FYPs. I can hear the songs that are often edits playing from hers pretty frequently. 

At some point she stands up and rifles through our bags to find a cropped USA soccer quarter zip that one wouldn’t expect to look as good as it did with her sweatpants. Then I watched her prop her phone up on the desk against her water bottle out of the corner of my eye. She started rehearsing the moves to some TikTok dance and I search for something on my phone more interesting than my FYP, which isn’t helping distract me from the way Olivia’s moving her hips and her shiny hair is bouncing. 

I check my TT notifications and see someone has tagged me in a video. It’s not an edit but rather a series of photos on a screenshot of the TikTok I had just made with the Stanford sisters (as our college coach Paul occasionally calls us). Well, the first image was the “he wants that cookie so bad” image with the yellow Starbucks cake pop looking at the cookie. Then the screenshot of the TikTok, where I’m saying a line and in the background Olivia’s head is peaking out, her hand holding onto the seat in front of her. Although it’s sometimes hard to tell through a screen, it’s pretty obvious in this video (at least to me, and whoever made this) that Olivia’s looking at me. And she’s looking at me like I hung the moon. The face of complete and utter adoration, unmistakably so. The screenshot gets closer and closer in on her face but it keeps me there too so we know what she’s looking at. 

Before thinking I text it to Olivia, who’s already tagged. 

I unfortunately ruin her take because she sees it pop up on her phone and she turns to me. I wave my hand to brush it off, saying “Just something funny I saw.” 

She goes back to the video but I can’t not watch her. Did she really look at me like that? Does she really feel like that? I get drawn back from the glean of her hair and the shape of her ass in her sweats and realize I’m probably looking at her like she was at me, but this time it’s obviously thirst, since she’s making a thirst-trap-esque dance. I look straight at the camera, stick my chin out, and throw up a cheesy peace sign. This room is too damn small for any privacy. 

Olivia picks up her phone and I watch her watch the last take. It plays twice before she realizes that I photobombed her and her eyes snap up to mine, which are already trained on hers. I smirk. 

“Shithead.”

“Deal with it.” 

“Can I post this one?” 

She lays down on her stomach, looking up at me. Thank goodness I turned to kind of lay on my side and curl my legs up, otherwise our positions would’ve reminded me of something (that they’re not even that close to, its just the way she props herself up on her shoulders and looks up at me that’s giving me flashbacks). 

She turns her phone around to show me. The clear case has hot pink glitter in it, and I take note of the change from when we were young and to the phone I sometimes saw in her social media posts. Not that I would check that often, of course. 

On the screen I watch her, but I also watch myself watch her. It reminds me of the way she was looking at me on the bus TikTok. 

I shrug. She can if she wants. I’m not mad about it, surprisingly. 

“I won’t if you don’t want me to.” 

“No, no.” I say, then pause. I try to form something to say about how I don’t want to watch her do that horrendous dance again, but instead “You look good.” Slips out. Shit. I totally blew my cover. 

She raises her eyebrows at me. I smack her with a pillow. 

After some time I peel the covers off and stand up. I raise my hands above my head and lean side to side, ignoring how Olivia’s eyes trace along the lines of my stomach peeking out under my shirt. I sigh and move towards my bags to find some running clothes. 

After I find them, I surprise myself by turning back to her. 

“I’mma go for a run, do you wanna join?”

“What kind of run?” 

“Probably just a two-miler, easy ten minute pace.” I answer, deciding to just whip my long sleeve t-shirt off and turn slightly away to pull a tank top on instead. “Just to keep everything moving, ya know?” 

“Yeah, I’ll join.” She answers, getting out from under the covers and crawling over my side of the bed to rummage through the bags. 

Once on the road, we run down each street together, our feet matching pace perfectly. We both know to stop after the first few minutes and stretch out a few muscles before we keep going. Every time we near an intersection or the end of a street, one of us points wordlessly in a new direction and we go. 

Although we run in silence, it feels so natural. Just two people so in sync. It’s reassuring almost. Neither or us has music playing since we’re in a new area (and not to mention a foreign country). As out feet pound the pavement I let my mind wander into pretending this is normal. That maybe we’re retired or playing in the French league and we go for simple slow runs every day together. That I look to either side of myself and see her so often that I start to take it for granted. That when we go to sleep at night I always wake up with her next to me. 

The last thought stings and I inadvertently pick up the pace. Olivia doesn’t seem to mind and matches me. We hit the end of the two miles according to our watches and I’m about to finish running by an ice cream place when Olivia stops and reaches for me, snagging the back of my tank. 

“Hey,” She says when I snap back to her and she releases my shirt. “Let’s get ice cream, on me.” 

I let her steer me into the store and pick out a mango sorbet that doesn’t really match her mint chocolate chip. We both sit down at the metal table and chairs outside. 

After eating our ice cream for a few minutes in silence and trying not to look too much at each other, Olivia speaks. 

“So, do you like your team and all that?” She asks. It catches me completely off guard. I just stare back at her. She continues, apparently determined to make conversation. “Gotham, how do you like playing for Gotham?” 

I guess I do have to answer but it’s something I’d actually love to talk about. “I mean I love it there. Great community, awesome soccer, the uge” I answer. Maybe she wants me to keep going. “It’s nice that a lot of the people on this roster play there too because I know them and stuff. I think it’s the best team to learn from, for sure.” 

“Do you see yourself there for a long time?” 

“I mean yeah, I would love to stay as long as I can. I have two more years in my contract.” I answer, then take another bite. “I’m living with my best friend Riley and Lynn picks me up for practice half the time, it’s a good life.” 

Before I can ask her a question, she hits me with another one. 

“Do you ever miss college?” 

I pause. She has some look in her eye which makes me wish I knew her better. Not that I don’t know her or haven’t spent hours studying her. I know how she plays down to every single detail, I know her gamday routine, I know her family story and her siblings, I know how when she’s scared she runs, I know the little trick with my tongue that she goes crazy for and the soft sounds of her breath when I do them are engraved into my memory. I just wish I knew what she was asking for from me with this conversation and the almost sad look I can tell she’s trying to hide. I wish I knew her well right now. 

“Sometimes, but not the important parts. For what it’s worth, I miss that it was familiar, that I was comfortable. I miss my teammates and my friends but I text and call them all the time.” 

She nods and looks down. 

“Do you not like Angel City or something?” I ask. She looks like she’s trying hard to hide her inner turmoil. 

“No I do, I do. It’s just new and I don’t do well with change.” She tries to laugh it off. “UNC felt like somewhere I was supposed to be in a way that Angel City doesn’t though, and I’m just not sure, like maybe that’s what another team would feel like or maybe there’s something missing, or I don’t even know. But whenever I’m with the national team at camp it feels right, in a way I’m not convinced Angel City ever will.” 

I nod, digesting. Does this mean anything about me? She said she felt at home in college though, and I wasn’t there, so. Probably not. 

“Do you want to find a place around here to grab dinner?” She nods and we stand. There’s a cute cafe we ran by a block ago that we decide on. Once we place our orders and are left looking at each other, she speaks first again. 

“I’m sorry I brought up soccer again,” She says and stops. We both know what she’s not saying: it’s a safe topic for us. As long as we don’t slip down memory lane we’ll survive some shop talk. 

“We don’t have to talk shop.” Is my response. I want to know her again. I want to be updated on every silly little detail from college and hear about her boring commute to practice and updates on her younger brothers. “How are your brothers?” 

I see that I asked the right question because she lights up a little bit, ready to tell me about how Alex is about to start high school and he made the Varsity soccer team as a freshman. She keeps going about him and soccer, then her youngest brother going into sixth grade and getting really into sci-fi books. She gets me to talk about my roommates and my time in NYC, and then we’re making jokes and throwing in some insults but still laughing. 

We split the bill and head outside into the slightly chillier night air. Somehow we keep talking and I realize talking with her is so much better than fighting. I realized the depths of how much I missed her. She’s funny, she’s witty, she’s also somehow honest at the same time. I wish I could talk to her forever and we would never stop. 

Fuck. I am so in love with her. Still. Since I was seventeen, but probably for longer. At first we were just a couple of nervous fifteen year olds on the u17 team, making small talk in our hotel room, cheering each other on, posting TikToks (musically’s?) in our downtime, and competing hard at practice. Then something changed. We committed to colleges and came back for the next camps and she was mean. More jabs, no jokes. She stared at me a lot too, but never looked at me when I looked at her. 

Then we won the u17 World Cup and we kissed. We tried a few additional small things that remain my favorite. On the u20 team we ended up doing slightly more than that quite often, but we were never friends again. Yet I still managed to fall in love with her, how she would always pick me up from the ground and even a rare encouraging smile made my game. And it’s not like we didn’t chat in the dark, lying together skin on skin, and discuss everything we could possibly talk about until we fell asleep (and I normally fell asleep first). Then in the morning we’d be back to bickering. 

We reach the hotel and go up to our room, falling back into our silence, but this time it felt pretty comfortable. I fall asleep easy knowing she’s there next to me and going to be for the whole tournament. 

[zozowrites]

Masterlist

Hi! I'm Zoe (or Zozo), a 19 y/o writer and college student! I love Marvel, Criminal Minds, Brooklyn 99, and recently have gotten into wbb and Paige Bueckers/UConn! I also write stories with completely original characters!

I'd love to be friends or mutuals so let's connect! I started posting stuff originally on @zoesshortstories and am moving stuff over here from now on! I am also on AO3 and wattpad as @newestnewgirl (its also my og tumblr account)

Requests: Open :)

My Vibes (at least I like to think):

Smut = * (18+ only -- minors DNI)

Paige Bueckers

There's Place like Home for the Holidays Paige Bueckers x ex!fem!reader (not strictly fluff or strictly angst, warnings: kissing)

Fancy Pants series, Paige Bueckers x famous!fem!oc Ava Radmall

Chapter One, The Party

Chapter Two, The Game

Marvel

Natasha Romanoff x avenger!fem!reader Part one

Steve Rogers x avenger!fem!reader Three plus one things

Natasha Romanoff x Carol Danvers Maybe too much

Criminal Minds

Emily Prentiss x BAU!fem!reader I lied

All Original Characters

Series: The Best Game

Emma Murray and Olivia Oley are soccer stars and enemies, but they haven't always been. After a tumultuous road to the Olympics with the USWNT, they try (and fail) to finally stop butting heads. What will happen as history, competition, and soccer combine?

Chapter One, Jan Camp

Chapter Two, May Camp *

Chapter Three, Road to Paris

Chapter Four, Sweet Treat

Chapter Five, Breakfast of Champions

Additional works

Special Ghost

Safety First (angst)