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myownsuperintendent · 4 years ago

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New Fic: “A Freshman Class to Watch”

Dana Scully, Monica Reyes, Samantha Mulder, and Diana Fowley complete their freshman year as college gymnasts. This is a wildly self-indulgent AU combining my two favorite fandoms, The X-Files and gymnastics. I hope I've made it comprehensible for the non gymnerds. Thanks to @scullys-right-eyebrow-txf for some help with the technical details (of course, any mistakes are my own). Also tagging @thefutureisporcelain as the only other person I know at the center of the XF/gymnastics venn diagram. The fic is rated T and is also here on Ao3.

.....

May

It’s Dana’s last JO nationals, which is still hard to believe. She knows it won’t be the last time she puts on a leotard, fastens her grips, salutes before the judges, and it’s not as though she’s not looking forward to college, to what comes next. Still, it feels like the end of something; everything feels like that, around this time. Last time running to her locker, last high school party, last time competing alongside the other girls from her gym.

She’s happy she can end it on a good note, though. She’s never totally satisfied with her own performances—there’s always something that could be better—but even she has to admit that everything goes well today, even bars, especially vault. She places fifth in her division, which is more than she’d hoped for, and she feels a flash of pride as she collects her flowers.

She sees Monica Reyes after the competition; they don’t live in the same city or train at the same gym, but they know each other pretty well by now, from running into each other here every year. She’s glad they’ll be going to college together, that she’ll go in knowing someone else on the team already. After training in the same place for much of her life, it’ll be nice to have someone familiar there when it comes time to make the switch.

“Hey, great job!” Monica says, giving her a hug. “You kicked ass out there today.”

“You did great too,” Dana says. “I love your floor.”

“Thanks!” Monica says. “Yeah, I was pretty happy. If only beam wasn’t a thing.”

Dana smiles sympathetically. “We’ve all thought that at some point.”

“Oh well,” Monica says. “Onwards and upwards. Did you see that college gym site? They said that we’re a freshman class to watch.”

“No, I can’t read that kind of thing,” Dana says. “It makes me too nervous.” She knows that’s weird—why should reading about gymnastics make her more nervous than actually competing? — but it’s true. She doesn’t like to think about people judging her, even if, as in this case, the judgment seems to be positive.

“Well, I think it’s going to be great,” Monica says. Someone calls her name then, and she turns to look. “That’s my coach. I’ve got to run. Text me, okay? And I’ll see you in a couple of months.”

“Definitely,” Dana says, and they hug again, quickly, before they go their separate ways.

She rides back home with her family, and they all go out for dinner that night, to celebrate. She keeps thinking about what Monica told her; she can’t help it. She wonders what the article actually said, if it was talking about her. It might not have been: there are plenty of other reasons they could be called a freshman class to watch. They have an Olympic champion, a world medalist. It might not have anything to do with her.

But she thinks about her vault today. She’d opened out at just the right time. Straight down the middle. Stuck it cold.

.....

June

Monica’s texting with Dana, because she always seems to have her shit together, which Monica could really use. When are you going to start getting stuff for your dorm?

Probably not until August, Dana texts back. Not enough storage space in the house. But my mom’s already freaking out.

How come?

Not sure, Dana says. I’m the third. You’d think she’d be used to it by now.

LOL, Monica texts. Are you excited?

Yeah. I don’t believe it’s real yet, though.

Monica knows what she means. It’s strange to think she’ll be off to college at the end of the summer, after thinking about it for so long. She’s excited for a lot of different things—classes and dorm life and even dining hall food—but she thinks she’s excited for gymnastics most of all.

That’s funny in a way, because gymnastics won’t be something new: she’s been doing it since she was six. But everyone says it’s different in college, being part of a team, competing more for the group than for your individual scores. She thinks she’ll like that. She wouldn’t change anything about her time in JO—it’s always been the sport in which she’s felt at home—but sometimes she has been jealous of the girls in other sports, on the soccer team or the basketball team, who have a lot of friends competing along with them, who aren’t doing it alone. She likes the thought of being a part of something. She likes the thought that they’ve chosen her to be a part of it. She could be intimidated, when she thinks about the competition history of some of the girls who will be her teammates—in just two and a half months! — but, somehow, she’s not. They wouldn’t have recruited her if they didn’t think she had something to add. And she’s going to work her hardest to contribute to the team.

She wonders about it all a lot. Who her friends will be. When she’ll start making lineups. If they’ll ever want her to compete beam (she kind of hopes not, but then on the other hand you are supposed to stretch yourself in college). What she’ll use for her floor music—she wants to do something more fun now.

She texts Dana again. Do you think I could do a floor routine to whale music?

Um…what?

You know, whale music. Like whale sounds.

I know what it is. I just don’t know if you could do a floor routine to it. There’s no rhythm.

You’re no fun, Monica texts back, but she guesses Dana has a point. And she doesn’t know if she’ll get to pick her own music right away, anyway. Still, no harm in thinking about it. She spends a while scrolling through her phone, looking at her music selections, until it’s time to go to practice.

.....

July

Samantha didn’t think it would be a big deal, watching Classics. All that’s behind her now. But she had to leave halfway through, and now she’s in her bedroom, staring at the wall. She doesn’t know why it bothered her so much, but she does know that she’s mad at herself. Mad and worried. If she can’t even watch other people doing gymnastics, in a competition that has absolutely nothing to do with her, what is she going to do when she gets to college?

There’s a knock on her door, and she considers not answering; she doesn’t want to talk about gymnastics with her parents any more than she absolutely has to. But then she hears Fox’s voice calling, “Sam?”, and she relaxes. It’s just him. She gets up, shuffling over to open the door.

“You okay?” he asks.

She shrugs. “I don’t really know.”

“You want to talk about it?” he asks. She shrugs again, but she backs out of the doorway, and they sit down side by side on her bed.

“What if I suck?” she asks, eventually. She’s not sure it’s the main question, but it’s one of them. “What if I get to college and I just suck, and everyone’s like, ‘Wow, what happened to her?’”

“That won’t happen,” Fox says. “Since when have you sucked at anything?”

“Last year,” she says quietly. “Last year I sucked.”

“No, you didn’t,” he says. “You…you were having a rough patch.”

“Don’t,” Samantha says. She knows he means well, but she doesn’t want to hear it. Everyone had said things like that: that her performance last year didn’t mean anything, that she could get past it, that she could come back even better than she’d been at the Olympics. But they’d all said it like it was somehow her fault that it hadn’t happened yet. That she just needed to try harder, eat better, practice more, change her attitude. Stop being such a baby. Want it enough. She knows that’s not what Fox thinks, but it reminds her of everyone else, just the same.

“Okay,” he says. “Well, I still don’t think you sucked. Me trying to do balance beam, that’s what sucking would look like.”

She can’t help giggling at that. “It just made me think about last year,” she says. “Watching, I mean.” Classics last year was the first time she’d really competed since the Olympics, and it had been…well, awful. Three falls across her first three events. She had really wanted to scratch vault, the last one, but she hadn’t wanted to end on that note. She’d landed it, admittedly with a few steps back, but that still made it her best event of the night. No one had said, that night, that it was the punctuation to her elite career. But looking back on it, she felt like she shouldn’t have expected anything different—that she should have known, going in, that she wasn’t going to be at the top anymore and didn’t even want to be.

“I get it,” he says. “But college will be different, Sam. And I’ll still be around if you need me.” They hadn’t planned on going to the same college—they probably would have laughed at the idea if anyone had asked—but now here they are, if only for one year. She’s gladder about it than she’s willing to admit.

“I know,” Samantha says. “And I know college is supposed to be when you have fun. And remember why you fell in love with the sport and all that.” She can’t help sounding sarcastic. It was so long ago, when she fell in love with the sport. “But I just feel like everyone will be watching me. Come see if they broke the Olympian.”

“Maybe at first,” he says. “But not once people get to know you. Then they’ll forget you ever went to the Olympics. You’re not that special.” He elbows her.

He’s teasing, she knows—he really is proud of her, proud of what she’s done, sometimes more than she is herself. Still, she likes the idea of everyone forgetting she went to the Olympics. It’s hard to forget it herself, with the medals hanging up in the living room. She wishes that she could just remember the feeling—that beam routine, knowing she was on from the first second, the spins perfectly connected, the barani landed without a wobble—and forget where it happened and what it all meant.

.....

August

Diana’s packed. It’s something she’s good at—two world championships, three times at Jesolo, and three world cups (and that’s besides all the domestic competitions and training camps) will do that to you. The only hesitation was about whether to bring her medals, which she’s got arranged in a display on her bedroom wall, but after a minute she decided to go for it. She doesn’t care if it looks snotty; it’s not. She earned them. She didn’t practice five times a week, didn’t train that dismount day after day, didn’t tear her fucking labrum so that she could leave her medals at home and pretend she’s not anyone. She’s got two world medals on bars and two with the team and she earned every bit of them.

Her mom pokes her head in. “You’re packed already, Diana?”

“Yes,” Diana says. “Just finished.”

“And you have everything?” her mom asks. “Everything you need?”

“Yes,” she says. She’s always been very independent; she’s packed her own bag every morning since she was five, and she came back from her first day at gymnastics class announcing in a loud voice what kinds of leotards she would need and how often she was going to practice. Her mom tells that story a lot, but Diana sometimes thinks she’s kind of sorry about it, that she’d like to do more for her. Not that she’s one of those gym moms, thank God. Diana’s been really lucky there; her parents have always been the good kind of supportive. They’ve come to all her competitions, even the ones that were on the other side of the world, and waved banners with her name on them, and they’ve also made it completely clear that she could quit tomorrow if she wanted to. She’s never, never wanted to.

Her mom looks at the wall. “You took down your medals?”

Diana nods. “I’m going to put them up in my dorm room.”

Her mom nods too. “Dad and I are going to miss you so much,” she says, after a minute. “Well, you know that. But you’re going to do amazing things in college.”

“You’ll come and visit,” Diana says. “You can come to my meets. It’s not like I’ve never been away from home before.”

“Still,” her mom says, “it won’t be the same. But I am looking forward to watching you.”

She’s looking forward to it too, to this new field of competition. Everyone says NCAA is all about the team, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have its stars. And Diana’s pretty sure she’s going to be one of them. She knows other people think so too: she read an article online, a couple of months ago, about how her cohort was a freshman class to watch. That has to have been because of her. The other girls in the class are two JO girls and Samantha Mulder, who—well, she was great when it counted. In the year it counted most, the Olympic year, Samantha was still all tiny and crisp form and 6.3 beam d-score, while Diana was all recurring injuries and low stamina and downgraded bars. Not that Diana has anything against Samantha, personally. The shoe could easily have been on the other foot. The shoe easily is on the other foot, now, because the last time she saw Samantha compete, she’d clearly entered the burnout phase, and she hasn’t been training seriously for a while, as far as Diana knows. And Diana’s ready. She’s healed and she’s been practicing and she’s ready to be a star in college, to make sure her gymnastics career ends on a high note. Because she’s in control of that.

She checks over her packing, carefully, and she zips up her suitcases. They’ll be driving down tomorrow, for a team training camp before classes start. She can’t wait.

.....

September

Dana’s parents dropped her off this morning (her mom cried a little, and her dad hugged her tight), and now she’s getting ready to head over to the gym. She’s redone her bun about five times. It’s silly, she knows. They’re just training; it doesn’t matter what her bun looks like. But this is her first day really on the team, and she wants to make a good impression, and she figures having a neat bun can’t hurt.

She checks her bag, too, where she’s packed her things, her water bottle and her muscle roller and some extra hair elastics. She can’t delay it any longer, she guesses, and most of her doesn’t really want to. So she heads out of her dorm, towards the gym building.

She’s left extra time, in case she gets lost, but it doesn’t take that long to get there. She pauses outside the door when she sees Monica coming toward her, also carrying a gym bag, also with her hair pulled back (ponytail for her). “Hi!” Monica says, when she gets close enough. “You get here this morning?”

Dana nods. “Yes. You?”

“Yeah,” Monica says. “I’ve just been unpacking a little. But I couldn’t really concentrate.”

“I know what you mean,” Dana says. She’s been trying to put her things away all morning, but there’s just too much adrenaline. “Are you…are you as nervous as I am?”

“Well, I don’t know how nervous you are,” Monica says, “but probably. But we’ve got to go in there, right? It’s not going to make a very good start if we just lurk outside the gym like weirdos. Plus, you’ve got nothing to be nervous about. I’ve seen you do gymnastics. You’re good!”

Dana has to smile at that. “Thanks. You’re good, too.”

“See, that’s the spirit,” Monica says. “We’re two good gymnasts, and we’re going to go in there and show them what we’ve got.”

“That’s right,” Dana says, firmly, and they walk into the gym side by side. She’s glad she has Monica with her. A team already.

Some of the upperclassmen are there already—Dana’s met a few of them, when she came here for recruiting, and she’s watched some of their meets, so they’re not entirely unfamiliar. There’s the girl who did the disco floor routine. There’s the girl who vaults an Omelianchik. And there’s their coach. Walter Skinner is one of the big reasons Dana wanted to go here, why she picked it over other schools. A lot of people say he’s strict, but that’s not something Dana minds, so long as he’s fair. She wants someone who can push her to be better, who takes the sport as seriously as she does.

He sees them as they come in. “Dana, Monica,” he says. “Welcome.”

“Thank you,” Dana says. “I’m really excited to be here.”

“Me too,” Monica says, nodding.

“You can join your teammates if you like,” he says. “We’ll be getting started in a few minutes.” They nod again, wandering over to where the other girls are chatting in the middle of the room. They stick together, still.

The door opens, and another girl comes into the gym. She’s shorter than Dana, which isn’t that unusual in the realm of gymnastics, but it’s something she notices anyway. Monica nudges her a little, but Dana knows who it is, of course. Samantha Mulder: she was on the last Olympic team. She won the gold on beam; Dana remembers her routine, its perfection, its precision. She knew Samantha was in their class, but seeing her in person is still a little bit exciting. She says hello to Coach Skinner and then makes her way towards the rest of them, slowly, looking a little shy.

Dana smiles at her. “Hi,” she says. “I’m Dana.”

“And I’m Monica,” Monica says. It’s all a little weird—are they supposed to pretend they’ve never seen her before?

“I’m Samantha,” she says. “Hi.”

“How are you so good on beam?” Monica blurts out. So they’re not pretending, apparently. “I mean, have you ever fallen? I’d be in a cast if I tried to do half the things you do.”

Samantha shrugs. “I just like beam, I guess,” she says, and then she’s quiet, fiddling with the end of her ponytail.

Other girls are filtering in, and Dana sees the last member of their class, Diana Fowley. She’s not as famous a face as Samantha, but you’d still recognize her if you’d been following gymnastics during the last quad: she went to worlds twice and medaled on bars. She clearly spent some time this morning redoing her bun too; it’s pristine, sitting secure at the back of her head. Her tank top and shorts match. Dana doesn’t know if she was trying to make an impression, but she’s certainly succeeding. “Hello, Samantha,” she says when she joins them. They must know each other already, from the national team.

“Hi, Diana,” Samantha says. Her voice is quiet; she’s fiddling with the ponytail again.

The last girls come in, and Coach Skinner, along with the assistant coaches, groups them in the center of the room standing in a circle. “Returning athletes, welcome back,” he says, “and new athletes, welcome. As always, I’m looking forward to working with you this year. I’m here to help each one of you achieve her best as an individual, but, more importantly, to help all of you work together to achieve our best as a team. We made the final round at nationals last year, and I’m confident that we can do it again this year. It will take a lot of hard work, but you’ll get out of it what you put in. What I ask is that you bring a willingness to work hard, to try your best, to be open to feedback, and to always help the team. In return, I’ll be here to support you in what’s best for your gymnastics. Let’s go get ‘em this year!” Some of the older girls whoop.

They do some introductions—Hi, my name’s Dana Scully, I’m from California, I’ve been doing gymnastics since I was five, and my favorite apparatus is vault—but they get into actual training pretty quickly. Dana likes that; she’s never been a fan of icebreaker games. She wants to get to know her teammates and make friends, of course, but she thinks she can do that better by working with them towards a goal. By knowing they’re all in this together, as they spread out around the mats, doing leg lifts and handstands and back tucks off blocks. She can tell she’s going to be a little sore tomorrow—she hasn’t really been practicing in the last couple of weeks, there’s been too much to do to get ready for school—but she doesn’t mind. She’s back in the gym, as part of a team she can contribute to, and she’s so glad about that.

She watches the other girls too; they’re doing a circuit as the last exercise of the day, and everyone has to complete it before they can go. Monica’s front tuck is high and powerful. Diana points her toes in the air and seems determined to stick every landing. Samantha looks at the blocks like they might be snakes, but her air awareness is like nothing Dana’s ever seen. She remembers what Monica told her at JO Nationals: them, a freshman class to watch. In this moment, as she cheers her teammates on, she fully believes it.

Dana looks around for the other freshmen after practice—it would be good to have people to stick with, she thinks, while they start trying to navigate campus. Diana’s gone before she can see where, and she doesn’t see Samantha at first either. But when she and Monica make their way out the door, talking about exploring a little, she sees Samantha trailing after them. “Hey,” Dana says, “you want to come with us? We were going to look around.”

“Yeah, I want to find food,” Monica says. “And maybe if there’s a store or something? There’s already stuff I need for my room.”

“I said I’d meet my brother,” Samantha says. “But he could probably tell us.”

“Your brother?” Dana asks. “Does he go here?”

“Yeah, he’s a senior,” Samantha says. They’re outside the gym now, and she points to a tall guy leaning against a tree. She’s really smiling for the first time since Dana’s met her. “That’s him.”

Samantha’s brother waves as they head towards him. He looks a little bit like Samantha—same eyes, same smile—but the height difference is almost comical. He’s got to be over six feet, and Dana doubts Samantha quite reaches five. Not that she wants to make fun; she’s used to being a lot shorter than the people around her. “Hi, Fox!” Samantha says. She turns to the two of them. “This is my brother, Fox.”

“Samantha, don’t tell him that,” he says.

Samantha rolls her eyes. “He hates his name so much,” she says. “So just call him Mulder. I’m allowed to call him Fox because it would be too weird otherwise. Anyway, these are Dana and Monica. They’re on my team.”

“Hi,” he says, smiling. “How was the first practice?”

“It was fine,” Samantha says. “We want to find out where stuff is. Will you show us?”

“Of course I’ll show you,” Mulder says. “What kind of stuff do you want to find? Library stacks? Anatomy lab?”

“Actually, I wouldn’t mind,” Dana says. “I have a class there next week.” They seem a little surprised from the way they look at her. “I’m pre-med.”

“Hey, that’s cool,” Mulder says. “We can swing by the science buildings. And then there’s a dining hall near them, if you want food.”

“We do want food,” Monica says. “Sounds good to me.”

So they set off across campus, the four of them. It’s turning into evening already, so Dana decides she’s made it: her first day at college. She hasn’t gotten lost, she hasn’t embarrassed herself, and she’s met people who are going to be a big part of her life here: her coaches, her teammates. Maybe her friends.

.....

October

Monica invited the other three freshmen over to watch world championships tonight; she’s always watched it with the girls from her gym, and she thinks it’s more fun in a group. Diana said she was busy—she’s made it clear she’s here to do gymnastics, not to make friends—but Dana’s there right at 7:30, popcorn in hand, and Samantha shows up a few minutes later. They settle around Monica’s laptop to watch. “I want to be her when I grow up,” Monica says, as they watch Oksana Chusovitina vaulting; she’s in her forties and still making finals when most gymnasts are long retired. “Just keep doing gymnastics until I die. That sounds awesome.”

“You don’t think you’d get tired of it?” Samantha asks.

“No,” Monica says. “Why would I? I love it. I mean, my body might give out on me before I get that far.” She can’t really imagine being in her forties, let alone what doing gymnastics would feel like then. “But even if I can just do some cartwheels, I’ll be happy.”

Dana laughs. “Maybe if you have kids, you can be on a team together.”

“Yeah!” Monica says. “Definitely.” She watches as Chuso’s score comes up. “Did you ever meet her, Samantha?” she asks. She knows they were at the Olympics together.

“Just for a couple of minutes,” Samantha says. “We weren’t in the same group or anything. She’s nice, though.”

“That’s so cool,” Monica says. “Seriously.” Samantha sort of shrugs, but she’s smiling a little bit.

On a break between subdivisions, she looks at her phone, wanting to see how scores are stacking up. “Hey, here’s an article,” she says. “‘NCAA Gymnastics Stars of the Season: Our Predictions.’ And it says—”

“Stop!” the other two say, almost at the same time. They don’t like following college gym sites, but Monica doesn’t see the harm in it, so long as you don’t take anything too seriously.

“Why do you always read those?” Samantha asks.

“I know,” Dana says. “I don’t want to know what a bunch of people online think about me!”

“None of us are in it, anyway,” Monica says. “It’s Diana.” She scans the blurb. “Four-time world medalist…flawless lines…do you think Diana wrote this herself?” She laughs.

“I think it’s kind of hard for her,” Samantha says, quietly. “Doing so well and then getting hurt before the Olympics and having to start all over. I think that’s hard.”

Samantha has a point, she knows. That can’t have been easy, and if Diana’s kind of standoffish, kind of full of herself, maybe it comes out of that. Besides, they’re teammates; they should be on the same side. “You’re right,” she says. “I shouldn’t make fun.” She clicks out of the article.

“Besides,” Dana says, “she is really good. I wish I could do bars like that.” She shakes her head. “I hate bars.”

“Why?” Monica asks. “You’re pretty good at them.”

“I guess,” Dana says. “It’s been a process, though. I actually…I had to redo level five because I couldn’t get the routine.” She lowers her voice when she says it, as if someone might be eavesdropping, looking for scandalous gossip about the level five bar routine.

“Well, you obviously came back strong,” Monica says. “No shame in that.”

“Still,” Samantha says. “I get it. That’s hard too.”

“It’s just never natural for me,” Dana says. “I wish it was. And it obviously is for Diana.”

“We can only do what we can do,” Monica says. “We all have our strengths and weaknesses, right?” She turns back to the screen, where the next subdivision has started; a gymnast is vaulting a Cheng. “Like I could never do that. But I’ve still got some things going for me.”

Dana smiles then, and they keep watching.

.....

November

It’s two months into the semester, and Samantha decides that, all in all, things aren’t going so badly.

Her classes are pretty good. She was worried about them being hard, but she’s found she can keep up. She was worried about people recognizing her and asking questions, but so far that hasn’t happened much either; maybe it’s been long enough since the Olympics, or maybe people just don’t watch gymnastics as much as she thought. It probably helps that she never had her face on a cereal box or anything like that, thank God, thank God, thank God.

But even gymnastics…she’s liking it a lot more than she’s liked it in years. She’s only really training bars and beam for now, although she’s played around with a couple of floor passes. (She doesn’t think she could get anything more than a full twist around now on vault, and they’re already got plenty of those.) Her sets are a lot simpler than what she did in elite, and sometimes she misses some of the moves that used to be a part of her, but mostly she likes it. And Coach Skinner…he’s serious but he’s never mean. He doesn’t yell at her if she misses a dismount. He doesn’t ask her if that means she doesn’t care about it. He doesn’t say that maybe she doesn’t belong in the gym.

And she likes having a team, a real one, where they’re all working together and they all know they’re part of it. She likes having the other girls cheering for her, and she likes cheering for them too, likes dancing on the sidelines when they practice floor routines. She’s got friends here, she thinks.

She spends the most time with the other freshmen, and she likes them, especially Dana. She thinks they have the most in common, especially in the gym: they’re both serious about it, but it’s not the only thing in their life. She doesn’t think she’d ever want to be as competitive as Diana is, all the time, and she doesn’t know if she could ever have as much fun as Monica seems to, even here. But she can take pride in a skill well done, can love the feeling of flying. She thinks Dana’s like that too.

The two of them hang out outside of practice a lot. Sometimes they work on their homework together; Dana’s really smart, and she’s good at explaining things that are confusing. Sometimes they go off-campus to explore. “You know what sounds really good?” Dana says one Saturday afternoon. “Actual pizza. Not from a dining hall.”

“You want to get pizza?” Samantha asks. She’s not used to being invited to that kind of thing, not when she’s training, which is basically all the time.

“Yeah,” Dana says. “If you do.”

Why not? She’s in college now. Her parents and her old coaches can’t tell her what to do. “Yeah,” she says. “I’ll ask Fox. Maybe he knows a good place.”

He does, and they go, the three of them, to a place that’s a complete hole in the wall but has some of the best pizza she’s ever eaten. The whole time they’re there, they talk and laugh. She’s with two people who she likes spending time with. She’s doing something she wanted to, because it sounded fun. She’s not dreading having to be back in the gym on Monday. It almost doesn’t feel real, but she tries her best to trust it.

.....

December

There’s about a month until the season starts, and tonight they’re having an intrasquad competition, blue versus red. Diana’s on the blue team, and she’s doing the all-around; she knows that doesn’t necessarily mean she’ll make all four lineups in actual competition, so she’s using this as an opportunity to show that she should, that all of her skills are clean and consistent. She deserves to be out there, come January.

It’s not as crowded as she assumes it will be during the season, but there are some students there to watch. Coach Skinner is very big on trying to replicate the conditions of competition, even in an event like this that doesn’t count towards anything. That works with Diana’s mindset. There’s no point in doing things you aren’t going to take seriously.

They start on vault. She’s gone down to the full for college, at least for now; she’s grown since she last did the double, and it’s hard to get around. And the blind landing on the one-and-a-half is trickier than it looks. She’s hoping she can work up to it eventually, but even now, she thinks they could still use her, even without a ten start. Her full is very clean, and when she lands it solidly, there’s basically nothing to take. She lands it solidly tonight, and the other girls on the blue team cheer. She keeps her eye on the other fulls. They all have something to take away.

But she’s been looking forward to bars the most. She knows it’s where she can shine, and so it’s where she feels the happiest, the most solid. Her routine’s a lot simpler now, but she’s trained a couple of her favorite moves; she’s got her half-twisting shaposh in the routine now (she’s not about to jump to the high bar like an eight-year-old, come on). She goes over it in her head while she waits. Samantha’s the last one to go before her, on the blue team, and her routine goes pretty well, until she stumbles out of the dismount. She looks upset, afterwards, and Diana pats her on the shoulder, but she’s not really thinking about it. And she’s not paying any attention at all to the senior who’s going for the red team, because it’s about to be her turn.

Diana’s heard other girls say that she thinks she’s perfect. Girls at her gym back home, and girls on the national team, and even girls here already. Here’s the thing, though: she doesn’t. She knows what her weaknesses are, and she knows when she’s fucked up. She’d never say it to anyone, but she wouldn’t have picked herself for the Olympic team either. She would have been right for it once, only the year before, but by then other girls were better.

But all that means she knows when she’s doing well, too. And she knows, tonight, that she’s on: that her toes are pointed, that each transition is smooth, that her release is high and that there’s no way she’ll miss the catch. And when she comes in for the dismount, her feet are not about to move. She doesn’t need to hear them screaming for her. She doesn’t need a score. It feels for a minute like she’s back at worlds again and they’re about to put that bars medal around her neck. She thinks she might cry, if that weren’t totally ridiculous.

You’ve got to put each event behind you to go on to the next, Diana knows, so she thinks about beam and then about floor. They go well too. She thinks she’s made her case. Coach Skinner says, “Good job, Diana,” as they head out of the gym, and he’s not what you’d call an effusive guy.

She’s forgotten about the other girls, who are chatting around her as they change. As far as she’s concerned, this was her night. Again. Finally.

.....

January: Week One

She’ll be competing as a college gymnast for the first time in less than half an hour, and Dana is both extremely excited and extremely nervous. It’s a home meet, and she can’t decide if that makes it better or worse; they’ll have more support, but there will also be more people to see if she messes up.

Coach Skinner put her in the all-around, which surprises her. She’s confident about vault and floor, and beam is beam but she feels all right about it, but she’s very nervous for bars. As she fixes her hair one last time, she gives herself a pep talk, reminds herself that she’s being silly, that she’s put extra work into bars for years just so that it won’t go wrong. That this is not like that time in level five, that she’s gotten a lot better since then, that her issue with bars is one of confidence, not skill. She still wishes Coach Skinner hadn’t picked her, but she knows they need her, that it’s not their strongest event as a team and there aren’t that many routines to choose from. You just need to hit, Dana, she tells herself. No one’s asking you to get a ten. It’s your first college meet and you’ve got to enjoy it and stop psyching yourself out.

She wonders if she put on too much face glitter. Or not enough face glitter.

She turns to look at the other girls in the locker room. Most of the upperclassmen seem to have their getting ready rituals; they’re excited for the season to be starting, of course, but they already know what they’re doing in a way that she doesn’t. Monica has her headphones on and is bouncing on the balls of her feet, but she’s smiling. Diana’s sitting down with her eyes closed; she looks calm, like she always does. Samantha is clinging to her bag like it’s the only thing between her and death, and she looks like she’s about to throw up.

“Are you okay?” Dana asks her.

“I’m…I get really nervous,” Samantha says, her voice so quiet Dana can barely hear it.

“We all get nervous, I think,” she says gently. “But it’s going to be fine. You’re great at this. Your beam is so beautiful.”

But Samantha shakes her head. “I haven’t even competed since last year,” she says. “I’m not going to be any good. I’m going to let all of you down…”

“You’re not going to let anyone down,” Dana says. “We’re a team. We’re here to lift each other up.” She knows a lot of people think that kind of thing is cheesy—Melissa always used to roll her eyes, when she’d hear Dana say that. But she really does believe it, and she wants Samantha to believe it too.

She doesn’t seem to. “I shouldn’t even be here,” she says.

“That’s not true at all,” Dana says. “And it’s only the first week. We don’t have to be perfect.” She’s worried about Samantha, though; she looks terrified. “Do you want to talk to Coach Skinner?”

Samantha shakes her head. “No,” she says, her voice still small.

“Maybe we could do some breathing exercises?” Dana says. She doesn’t know if it’ll help, but she figures it’s worth a shot. “We used to do them before competitions at my gym back home. They can really calm you down. Does that sound okay?” Samantha nods, after a moment, and they sit down across from each other on one of the benches. “All right,” Dana says. “Copy me.”

She breathes in, holds it, breathes out, counting all the while; she sees Samantha doing the same, after a moment. It’s time to march out after a couple of minutes, but Samantha doesn’t look quite so scared, and she murmurs, “Thanks.”

“Of course,” Dana says. “Here, we can walk out together.” She keeps an eye on Samantha while they’re waiting to start. She’s not thinking about her own nerves anymore, not much anyway.

She’s fourth in the vault lineup, after Diana, who lands her full with just a small hop. “Great job!” Dana says to her, as she goes up, and Diana nods. And then it’s her turn.

She’s done this a million times, and she loves vault best. And everything feels right today, starting from the run. Her block is good, and she can tell she’s on in the air, opening out for the landing after one and a half twists. She has to take a step at the end, but only a little one.

The other girls are cheering for her, running to give her hugs and high fives. Monica’s first, shouting, “That was amazing!” Dana’s a little nervous waiting for her score, but mostly she’s happy. And when they show the 9.95, Monica screams and hugs her again. She doesn’t scream herself. She almost can’t believe it.

She’s not as worried as she was before the meet when they go to bars. She takes a few more deep breaths before she goes up, reminds herself how many times she’s hit her routine in practice. It goes fine, not as well as her vault, but for her it’s a good bars routine. And everyone cheers for her again, and it’s hard not to feel happy about that, even before she sees the score. 9.85. She thinks she must be hallucinating for a second, but there it is up on the screen. She knows NCAA scoring is looser than J.O., but still!

She cheers for the other girls too. Samantha looks scared again, when she’s about to go up, and Dana squeezes her shoulders. “You’re going to be amazing,” she tells her, and Samantha manages a smile at that. And she hits too, coming off the mats looking stunned and relieved. Diana’s the last to go, and she’s almost perfect. Dana wishes she could fly like that on bars, everything looking effortless.

At the halfway point of the meet they’re in the lead, and Dana’s happy as they move over to the beam. Coach Skinner talks to them as they warm up, giving them last-minute reminders. “Don’t rush your turn, Dana,” he tells her, and she nods. Now that she’s gotten through bars, she’s feeling a lot more confident. Beam can be unpredictable, but it doesn’t scare her. She knows she can hit for the team, if she just concentrates and does everything like she did in practice.

She takes her time setting up for the turn, like Coach Skinner told her. She snaps her arms down so that she doesn’t wobble when she lands the acro series. When she lands the dismount, her feet don’t move.

It’s a 9.9 for her beam, and she’s thrilled with that, but she’s more worried about Samantha than she is about herself at this point. She’s looking pale again, and a lot of girls from the other team have turned around to watch. Dana can’t blame them—she wouldn’t want to miss one of Samantha’s beam routines either—but she doesn’t think it’s helping. “We’re a team,” she says. “It’s going to be okay.”

“I’m not worried about you, Samantha,” Coach Skinner says. “Don’t worry about anyone else.” That seems to do something, because Samantha nods and draws herself up a little straighter. She walks up to the beam and salutes.

The thing about Samantha is this: she has a quality of movement on beam that none of the rest of them have. They probably won’t ever have it, no matter how much they practice. Dana can’t explain what it is, exactly. But it reminds her of something Melissa said to her once, after one of her meets. “I don’t get how you do all this stuff,” she said, “and you don’t feel like it’s freaky. It’s just like walking for you.” Dana hadn’t known how to answer her then, but now she thinks she knows how Melissa must have felt, because what Samantha does is different, somehow, even when they’re doing the same skills. She looks like beam is what she was meant to be doing. It’s not a question of being perfect, even: she has a big wobble after her side aerial, and even when she’s saving it, she still looks like that.

They mob her when she comes off the beam, with hugs and cheers. “You were so good,” Dana says. “So, so good.”

“I wobbled—”

“Fuck wobbling,” Monica says, and even Samantha grins at that. “That was amazing.”

“Pretty great,” Diana says; she’s been in her own world most of the meet, her face concentrated, but now she’s smiling too.

Floor is last. Dana’s already realized how different competing in college is—a lot more screaming—but floor is something else again. The crowd claps along to all their music, and they all do each other’s moves. Monica’s routine is going to be a big hit, she can already tell; the music is insanely catchy, and she knows how to perform, how to get everyone on her side.

Dana’s own routine isn’t as flashy, but she loves the music they’ve chosen: it’s a big band piece, “Beyond the Sea.” She hits the tumbling passes cleanly, remembers to smile, ends with a little shimmy. And then it’s over. She’s hit four for four in her first college meet, and her score comes up, 9.9, and that’s it, she’s done for today.

But she’s not, quite. Monica’s tugging on her arm. “Dana, you won the all-around!”

“What?” She looks around for some confirmation. She wasn’t adding up her scores over the course of the meet; there was too much going on.

“Yeah, look!” Monica points to the scoreboard. “Not bad for week one, huh?”

“I…is that real?”

“Of course it’s real,” Monica says. “You think they put fake stuff on the scoreboard?” She’s smiling as she hugs Dana. “You deserve it. You did awesome today.” The other girls are hugging her too, congratulating her, but she still can’t quite take it in. It’s not that she’s not happy or proud. It’s just that she didn’t expect it at all.

And she guesses she’s not the only one who didn’t expect it. Diana says, “Congratulations, Dana,” in the flattest voice she’s ever heard, and the expression on her face can only be described as scary.

But Dana wants to be nice. “Congratulations to you too,” she says. “Your bars, they were amazing.” Diana’s 9.95 was the highest score on bars for the meet, and that’s something Dana wishes she could do.

“Thanks,” Diana says, her voice still flat. “It helps to have difficult moves, I guess.” Dana tries to figure out if that was meant as an insult—she’s pretty sure it was—but Diana’s already moving away, so she decides to leave it, not to respond.

It’s not worth it. She’s too thrilled anyway, too filled with adrenaline, too eager to see what the rest of her college career holds. It’s started on a high note. She thinks she can keep it there.

.....

January: Week Two

They have their first away meet this week, and Monica is excited. It’s at Utah, which has a huge stadium, and a lot of people come out to all of their meets. Monica already knows that she can thrive off a crowd; sure, it’s not a home crowd this time, but she doesn’t think that’s going to stop her.

The only downside is that she’s rooming with Diana, and it doesn’t look like that’s going to be a super fun time. They’re only here for one night, and Diana’s already arranged all of her hair products in height order on the edge of the sink. What is the point?

Still, it doesn’t really affect her, she guesses. She’s lying on her bed, reading on her phone, when Diana looks over at her. “What are you doing?”

“Reading,” Monica says. “College gym site. Got to find out what they’re saying about us, you know.” She smiles, so that Diana can take that as a joke if she wants to. She knows that Dana and Samantha hate it when she does this, that they won’t let her read anything out loud.

But it seems like Diana will. “So what are they saying?”

“Well, they put this as one of the top meets for this weekend,” Monica says. “Both teams had really strong opening weeks…oh, and they say that Dana’s one to keep an eye on.” She watches Diana as she says it. She knows Diana’s mad about the attention Dana got last week; she hasn’t said anything during practice, but she’s not exactly subtle.

“Sure,” Diana says. “Of course.”

Maybe it’s not a good idea to piss Diana off the night before their meet, but Monica’s never been a particularly cautious person. “Why are you mad?” she asks.

“I’m not mad,” Diana says.

“Yeah, you are.”

“I’m not,” Diana says. “That’s so juvenile. I just think…they’re really ready to throw out the high scores for the 10.0 vaults, aren’t they? Even if they’re not perfect.”

“First of all, you’re bullshitting me,” Monica says. “And second of all, even if that’s true, why is it a problem? Dana’s on our team, the last time I checked. So it’s good for all of us if she does well.”

“I never said it wasn’t.” Diana’s not looking at her.

“And besides, she deserves it,” Monica says, because Dana’s her friend, and because it’s the truth. “She’s really, really good.”

“She’s fine,” Diana says.

“Okay, be bitter,” Monica says. “Again, reminder that this is a team sport.”

“It’s not really,” Diana says. “It’s a fake team sport.”

“Maybe when you were in elite,” Monica says. “Not here.”

Diana sighs. “Look, I just see it differently, all right? And there is an individual part, even here. If we want to make lineups—”

“You’re still going to make lineups,” Monica says. “I really don’t think you have to worry about that.”

Diana’s looking at her now. “Do you even care?” she asks. “About how you do, I mean. Not just this rah rah we’re a team shit.”

“Of course I care,” Monica says. “But I wouldn’t, like, break any of your legs. And I don’t care that I’m not in the bars or beam lineups, because I know other people are better there.” Diana’s looking at her like she’s insane now, so she goes back to reading. “They did shout out your bar routine,” she says. “That ought to perk you up.”

“Yeah, I saw,” Diana says. “Earlier this week.” Of course she did.

But at least Diana’s willing to discuss online coverage with her. “Did you see the American Cup announcement?” she asks.

“Yeah,” Diana says. “It wasn’t really surprising. She did get the silver at Worlds.”

Monica nods. “Yeah. I just wish she’d get a more interesting floor routine.”

“I wish ninety percent of people would get a more interesting floor routine,” Diana says, and then Monica’s laughing, she can’t help it. And Diana smiles at her, just for a minute.

.....

January: Week Three

Samantha’s still getting used to competing again. She was sure something awful was going to happen, the first week, but it didn’t. It didn’t happen the second week either. But this week, the third, she’s off on her beam series and there’s no chance to save it. She barely gets half of one foot on the beam before she’s falling.

She takes a deep breath and gets back up to finish, but the damage is done. She’s let the team down. She doesn’t know what Coach Skinner is going to say. He’s never yelled at her before when she made mistakes, but that was in practice: there’s more at stake when you fall in a competition, where everyone can see.

“Do you know why that happened, Samantha?” he asks her after the meet.

Maybe she’s supposed to say that she wasn’t trying hard enough. But she thinks she was. “I was trying,” she says. “I swear.”

“I know you were,” he says. “I meant, do you know what was off technically?”

“Oh,” she says. “I think…I wasn’t straight when I took off for the back handspring.”

“That’s what I think too,” he says. “It happens. I just wanted to make sure you understood, so you can try to check for that next time.”

She nods. “I’m sorry,” she says.

“Nothing to be sorry for,” he says. “That’s why we have a whole season. So you can keep getting better.” She nods again. She doesn’t know what to say. She tries to imagine her coaches back home saying that to her. She might as well imagine that she’s suddenly seven feet tall.

Dana’s waiting for her outside. “Hey,” she says. “You okay?”

“I think so,” Samantha says. “I’m sorry I fell. But Coach Skinner was really nice.”

Dana hugs her. “The rest of the routine was beautiful,” she says. “And your bars.”

Dana’s always so sweet, so kind. She was worried that people might only want to be her friend here because she went to the Olympics, even though that might be kind of a conceited way to think. But she thinks Dana just…likes her. And that might be the thing she likes most about being here so far.

.....

January: Week Four

Competing every week has been different, but Diana feels like she’s into the rhythm now. In some ways, she likes it more. She’s always been at her best in competition; she’s not one of those girls who trains well and then chokes. She likes attention, which she knows some people would say is a bad thing, but she doesn’t agree or care.

Actually, she thinks she should be getting more attention, although that’s not something you can really say. Aside from her bars, she hasn’t been as much of a standout as she expected here. Beam’s probably her second best, but it’s hard to stand out on beam when you’re on the same team as Samantha. She gets that, because Olympic champion and all, but she couldn’t have predicted Dana. Dana’s been outscoring her on everything but bars, week after week, and it’s maddening. And the worst part is that she always acts so damned surprised about her scores. At first Diana thought it was an act, but now she’s beginning to think it’s real. She can’t decide which possibility pisses her off more.

But in college they’re supposed to be all about the team. So she’s supposed to jump up and down and scream every time Dana gets another 9.975 on vault. Ugh.

She keeps working her own routines, of course, but there’s a closed ceiling here; it’s not like in elite where she could keep adding difficulty. As long as the routine starts from a 10, they’re all evaluated on the same scale. So there might be a limit to where she can go, and she doesn’t like that idea. It makes her think of Olympic trials all over again, of coming in knowing she wasn’t going to get there.

So maybe she’s not smiling and screaming after this meet as much as everyone else is, even though they won. She doesn’t think anyone would notice, or care, but Coach Skinner beckons her over as they’re leaving the arena. “Diana. Is everything okay?”

She can’t put it exactly as she’d like to, of course; she could pretend she’s tired, but she wants to be straight with him. “I just want to be better,” she says.

He looks at her for a moment. “You did very well today.”

“Not as well as I’d like,” Diana says. “Is there anything you think I should do to train differently?” He is her coach, after all; that’s what he’s here for.

“I’ve been happy with how you’re doing,” he says. “Is there something in particular that you feel isn’t working for you?”

“It’s not exactly that,” Diana says. “But I’d like to focus on correcting my problems, so that I can score higher.” For the team, she thinks about saying, but she doesn’t think she can pull it off without sounding fake.

“Everyone has room for improvement,” he says, and his voice sounds careful, “and I’m happy to work more with you this week, if you like. But you need to remember that it’s your first year here, Diana. And it’s only our fourth meet. You shouldn’t necessarily expect to be getting top scores right away.”

She doesn’t know what to say to him. She knows she’ll sound like a jerk if she says she wants to be the best on the team. “I think I’m just very competitive,” she says, finally.

“And that can be a good thing,” Coach Skinner says, “if it helps motivate you. But you don’t want it to take over your headspace, either. You should be proud of your work, Diana. You’ve been very consistent this season. You’re going to be someone we can count on.”

She knows he means it, and she is pleased, even if it’s not everything she wanted. “So we can work some more this week?” she says. “I think there are things I could refine on beam, especially.”

“I’m happy to work with you,” he says. “But think about what I just told you, all right?”

“All right,” Diana says. “Thanks.” And she picks up her gym bag and turns and goes.

.....

February: Week Five

“Wow,” Diana says to her after the meet, when they’re back in the locker room. “Way to go out there.”

Dana doesn’t say anything, but Monica does. “What the hell, Diana?” she says. “We’re a team.”

Diana shrugs. “Well, then, it would be great for the team if people could hit when they needed to.”

“The point of being a team is that we lift each other up,” Monica says. “So it doesn’t matter if one person falls. Like it’s completely possible for someone to never fall.”

“There’s falling,” Diana says, “and then there’s losing your shit all over the place.”

“Look, what the fuck is wrong with you?” Monica says; her voice is getting louder now, and this is becoming way more of a thing than Dana wants it to be. She already feels bad enough. “Do you think you’re helping? How would you have felt if someone said that to you after Olympic trials?”

There’s a silence, and Dana feels like she has to say something. “Guys, please just stop it,” she says. “Monica, it’s fine. I did mess up.”

Everyone ignores her. Diana’s gone pale. “You little bitch,” she says to Monica. “You little bitch!” Dana’s never heard her sound so upset.

“Okay, okay.” It’s Karen; she’s one of the seniors. “You both need to cool down. It’s not okay for you to be talking to each other like this.” As she turns to Monica and Diana, Dana finishes changing as quickly as she can. She wants to get out of here.

She doesn’t want to keep thinking about the meet, but of course she can’t help it. She had a good vault, but everything went wrong with bars. She missed a hand on her transition to the high bar and fell, and then…well, she just couldn’t get out of her head about it. It made her think about all her old bars nightmares, and the rest of the routine, after she got back on, wasn’t much good either. And the more she tried to shake it, the more it lingered. She fell on her turn on beam, and then she sat the dismount. After that, Coach Skinner pulled her from the floor lineup. He did it nicely, saying that he just wanted to make sure she was okay, and after the meet was over he pulled her aside and talked to her about focusing on the mental game and putting this behind her. He told her he knew she could do a great job again for the team next week. He was saying all the right things, but she couldn’t take in any of it. At least she didn’t cry.

She might cry now, though, she thinks as she leaves the locker room. Just go back to her room and cry for about an hour.

She didn’t see Samantha leave, but she’s sitting on the wall at the end of the path. “Hi,” she says, as Dana comes up to her. “Are you okay?”

“Not really,” Dana says. “I feel so bad about today.”

“I know how you feel,” Samantha says. “It’s so hard, when you don’t have a good day.”

Dana nods, sitting down next to her. “Bars is just so hard for me,” she says. “Even when I hit, I don’t feel good about it. And when I mess up…I just can’t bounce back. But I should be able to. I know it’s all a mental thing. But I…” She trails off. “It’s hard. And I let you all down.”

“No, you didn’t!” Samantha says. “No one’s mad at you.”

“You heard Diana,” Dana says.

“Well, I’m not mad at you, anyway,” Samantha says. She puts an arm around Dana’s shoulders. “I still think you’re great.”

“Thanks, Samantha,” Dana says. It does help a little, hearing that. “I’m just…I’m mad at myself, I guess.”

Samantha nods. “I know what that’s like,” she says. “The mental part really is the hardest.”

“Yeah,” Dana says.

“Gymnastics really makes you hate yourself, sometimes.”

That’s not exactly what she was saying. She hopes Samantha doesn’t think she’s making this into more of a thing than it is. “I don’t…hate myself,” Dana says. “I’m upset with myself, yeah. But I’ll be okay.”

Samantha’s hugging her knees. “When everyone’s expecting you to be good,” she says, “and you just don’t have anything that day, and you know you’re disappointing them…that’s the hardest.”

Dana doesn’t think Samantha’s talking about her falls today, anymore. “It’ll be okay,” she says, for both of them. “I’ll practice a lot this week. Work on the mental stuff. And it helps, knowing you’ve got my back.” Samantha smiles at that. “I don’t think I’ve really disappointed anyone.” She’s not sure she totally believes that, but she thinks it would be good for both of them to hear. They sit together for a little bit longer, not talking.

.....

February: Week Six

Monica knows she should apologize to Diana. She wouldn’t want anyone bringing up things she’d messed up, especially things that were important to her. And gymnastics is one of those things, for both of them, even though she knows Diana thinks she doesn’t take it seriously. She likes to have fun, sure, but that doesn’t mean she won’t give everything she has to perfecting a skill. They’re not so different, in that way. And she knows she was mean, even if Diana was mean to Dana first.

So she’s glad when she gets to practice early on Monday and sees that Diana is early too. “Hey, Diana,” she says. “I just wanted to say…I’m sorry for what I said to you on Saturday. I was being a jerk.”

“Yeah,” Diana says. “Okay.”

That’s not much of an answer. “I really shouldn’t have said it. I’m sorry.”

“I said okay,” Diana says. “So you can feel better about yourself now, all right?”

“I’m not trying to feel better about myself,” Monica says, even though maybe she is, a little.

“Then just drop it, okay?” Diana says. “It’s not something I love discussing. If that wasn’t obvious.”

Maybe she should just drop it. Instead, she finds herself saying, “You shouldn’t be ashamed.”

“Oh my god,” Diana says. “Are you my therapist now? I’m not ashamed.”

“All right,” Monica says. She’s had about enough of this. At least she apologized. Diana hasn’t apologized to Dana, as far as she knows. “I’m sorry I started this, okay? I just wanted you to know I was sorry. We’re a team, and we shouldn’t be tearing each other down.” Diana rolls her eyes and goes back to stretching, and fortunately Monica doesn’t have to push things any further, because Dana and Samantha show up then.

“Hey!” Dana says. “How’s everything going?” She’s not really looking at Diana.

And Diana’s not looking at her either—she’s looking at her own feet—when she says, “Hey. Sorry if I was too much on Saturday. I get really competitive.”

It’s not what Monica would consider much of an apology, from anyone else, but she’s surprised Diana’s giving Dana even that. Dana’s surprised too, if the look on her face is anything to go by. “Okay,” she finally says. “Yeah, it wasn’t very cool of you. I didn’t need you to tell me I’d messed up.”

“Well, okay then,” Diana says, still not looking. “I won’t.”

“Well, good,” Dana says. And they stand around a little awkwardly until Coach Skinner appears and practice starts.

.....

February: Week Seven

Samantha was happy yesterday.

She was happy because she was on beam, and sometimes she can forget about everything else when she’s there. This was one of those times. Her double turn was steady. She flew through the side aerial and both of the layout step-outs. When it came to the part of the choreography where she smiled and winked, it felt like a natural expression of how she was feeling. She stuck the dismount.

The other girls screamed and hugged her after she saluted. And then they did it again when her score came up. A ten.

It might sound silly to a lot of people, but she couldn’t remember being happier in gymnastics. Not even when she won her gold. Because there weren’t people screaming and hugging her then. Dana even tried to pick her up, which was pretty silly, because Dana’s barely taller than she is and they almost fell over. But they just started laughing then. And Coach Skinner patted her back and said, “Well done, Samantha.” And she could see Fox waving to her from the stands.

But that was all yesterday. This morning there was an article about the meet on the school website. She wishes the article didn’t have a picture of her at the top, and she really wishes it didn’t call her “Olympic gold medalist Samantha Mulder.” She’s not sure why she wishes it, because it’s true, after all, and they do cover all the meets, and it makes sense for them to talk about her getting a ten, because that’s important in gymnastics. But she doesn’t like people looking at her, thinking about her, expecting things of her. She wants this to be for her and her team, not for everyone else.

So she was already feeling weird about things, and that was before she opened her email. Before she saw the message from her parents. They saw the article and they’re glad she’s working to her potential here, because it really would be a shame to keep throwing everything she’s worked for away, after all the time and money they spent on her training. There’s no reason you can’t still be the best, Samantha. Being tired or upset or so sick of it all isn’t an excuse not to practice, Samantha. Bring home only the gold for us, Samantha.

This is the first time they’ve emailed her since January. She hates reading their emails, so she doesn’t know why she’s upset about that now.

She sits on her bed and hugs her knees. She doesn’t even feel like crying. She doesn’t even feel like anything.

She’s not sure how long she’s been sitting when she hears a knock on the door. “Who is it?” she calls.

“It’s me.” Dana’s voice. “Can I come in?”

“Okay,” she says, her own voice tight. “The door’s not locked.”

Dana pushes the door open. “Do you want to get dinner with me and Monica?” she asks. “We thought we could—hey, are you okay?” She crosses the few steps of the dorm room, looking concerned. “You look really upset.” Samantha tries to answer, but she can’t. “What’s wrong?” Dana asks, and her voice is gentle, and Samantha starts to cry.

Dana doesn’t ask anything more right then; she just puts her arms around Samantha and lets her cry. “I’ve got you,” she says. “Let it out. It’s okay.” Samantha wishes she’d had a friend to say that to her before. “Do you want to talk about it?” Dana asks, when she’s mostly stopped crying.

Samantha tells her about the email. And about how it’s not just the email, how it’s years of things like that. Of her parents only caring about her winning. Of her coach forcing her to keep going when she didn’t have anything left. “I really…I hated it so much at the end,” she almost whispers. She doesn’t look at Dana when she says it. She hasn’t even told Fox this. “I just couldn’t…I couldn’t be good anymore and I knew people were going to be so mad at me.”

“Is that why you said that to me when I fell?” Dana asks. “About hating yourself?”

“Yeah,” Samantha says. “I didn’t mean you should hate yourself. It’s just that’s how I always felt.”

“You know,” Dana says slowly, a little cautiously, “you know you shouldn’t have to feel like that, right? That it’s not right how they treated you?”

“I guess I know it,” Samantha says. “Like when you say it, it makes sense. But it’s hard to stop feeling it.”

“I’m sorry,” Dana says. She’s still hugging Samantha; she hasn’t let go.

“And I know it’s better here,” Samantha says. “Coach Skinner’s so much better. I guess that’s why I got upset. I thought I could like gymnastics again here, you know? And then their email…I’m worried everything is going to be the same.”

“It won’t,” Dana says. “We won’t let it.”

“How?” Samantha asks.

“Well, first,” Dana says, “we’re going to set up your email so that everything from your parents goes into a different folder. And you don’t ever have to look at it, if you don’t want to.”

“You can do that?” Apparently, she can. Samantha sits and watches her.

“And now,” Dana says, closing the screen triumphantly, “we’re going to meet Monica for dinner. And we’re going to get pizza and laugh.”

So they do that too. And Dana hugs her again at the end of the night, and she says, “You can always talk to me, okay? Text me any time.” And Samantha thinks about that for a while, before she falls asleep.

.....

February: Week Eight

They have an away meet this weekend, and it’s near Diana’s hometown, so her parents are coming. They haven’t seen her compete live in college yet, although she knows they watch every meet on TV. Usually, they call her up afterwards to tell her how proud they are. It’s a little embarrassing, but mostly she’s happy about it.

“My parents are coming to the meet tomorrow,” she mentions in the hotel the night before. She’s rooming with Monica again, and Samantha and Dana are in their room too right now; she did not ask them to come over, but Monica apparently did, sometime when her guard was down.

“Oh,” Samantha says. “Are you nervous?”

“No,” Diana says. What a dumb question. “Why would I be? They’ve seen me at worlds, so a meet like this isn’t suddenly going to intimidate me.”

“It was just a question,” Dana says; she’s painting Samantha’s nails and not looking at Diana. “You don’t have to be snotty.”

“Who says I’m being snotty?”

And Dana turns around and looks at her now. “A meet like this,” she says, putting on a voice that is, in fact, snotty but that isn’t what Diana sounds like. “We get it. You’ve been to worlds. You think elite is better than NCAA. Well, no one’s forcing you to be here if you’re too good for it.”

She didn’t expect that from Miss Good Girl Dana. “Wow,” Diana says. “Jealous much?”

It’s a dumb comeback, and she knows that as soon as she says it. “No, actually,” Dana says. “I was completely happy in JO. I’m just tired of you having an attitude with the rest of us.” Samantha’s looking away, as she always does at the faintest sign of conflict. Monica’s watching them as if she’s waiting for the scores to come up.

“I’m just a very self-motivated person,” Diana says. “I don’t need to be in a screaming lovefest to succeed.”

“Oh, of course,” Dana says. “And that explains why you take it out on us when you’re not happy with how the meet went.” Her face is turning red. “So if I fall, that’s something to lord over me, and if I do better than you, that’s a reason to freeze me out. For someone who doesn’t care about these meets, you sure seem to care when you don’t have the top score.”

She can’t let Dana rattle her. “Yeah, it’s a sport,” she says. “So, you know, I care about my scores. I’d rather do that than your fake ‘Who? Little old me sticking a vault?’ routine.”

“I’m not fake,” Dana says. “I’m just happy to be here. I’m sorry if you think that’s awful.”

Diana rolls her eyes. “That’s cute. Really.”

“But I don’t know why I thought I’d get through to you,” Dana says. “If all you care about is yourself, I guess that’s just the way it is.” She turns to Samantha. “Want to go back to our room? It’s kind of late.”

“Sure,” Samantha says, and they go.

“Wow,” Monica says, when they’ve left. “That was…something.”

“Whatever,” Diana says. “I know you’re on Dana’s side.”

“You have this whole thing about sides,” Monica says. “I’d like it if we could all be friends, actually. Believe it or not, I think things would be more fun that way. For you, too.”

“I don’t know how long it’s going to take for all of you to get it,” Diana says, “but fun is not my number one priority here.”

“Okay,” Monica says. “It’s not worth us arguing.”

“You’re right about that,” Diana says, and they don’t talk much more before they get ready for bed.

She sees her parents in the stands when they march out the next day—they’re kind of hard to miss, because they’re waving a giant banner that says GO DIANA! on it. It’s goofy, but she stands up a little straighter at the sight.

It’s a good meet for her, it really is. Her best bar routine of the season yet: a 9.975. The ten so close she can almost reach out and touch it.

And then the ten is there, in the next rotation. You don’t even have to wait for the scores to come up to know. Everything is perfect from the first step of Dana’s vault run: her block is straight on, she’s laid out all the way in the air, she gets so much height, and her feet don’t move on the landing. Diana loves her sport because when it’s done right, it’s beautiful. This is one of those beautiful moments.

But she stands frozen, with her hands at her sides, when the ten does come up and everyone else is screaming and cheering and hugging Dana. She can’t even make herself clap or smile or do something, anything, that makes it look like she’s a team player.

She sees her parents in the stands again, their banner still flying high. She knows this won’t make them any less proud. They’ve seen her be second best before, and they’ve celebrated her silver medals as if they were platinum. No, it’s Diana who’s less proud. No matter what the other girls say about NCAA and elite, there is a difference. There’s a difference between coming second behind Aliya Mustafina, who was the most decorated gymnast at the 2012 Olympics, and second behind Dana Scully, who’s spent her whole life in some rec gym. And there’s a difference in what it’s doing to her mental game. When she concentrated on herself, it used to be a good way, one that made her work on perfecting her skills. Now it’s just in a way that makes her stew.

She can see Coach Skinner watching her; he’s probably going to pull her aside later, going to talk to her about her attitude. She can’t even blame him for that. But she turns aside, and stretches for beam, and doesn’t look back at him.

.....

Week Nine: March

Dana doesn’t go to church every week now—she knows her parents wouldn’t be thrilled, but college is just so busy, and sometimes she’s exhausted and can’t get up on a Sunday, especially if they’ve just gotten back from a meet. But she goes this morning, and when she’s praying she thinks about gratitude. Her season’s gone so well so far, and even though she knows that’s probably not God’s number one priority, in the grand scheme of things, it means a lot to her. She still finds it hard to believe, though. When she came here, she wanted to do her best, but she wasn’t expecting to be a star. And now she’s freshman of the week for the fourth time. She knows Diana thinks she’s fake for being surprised by it, but she honestly is. She wants to let it sink in, though, so she can really feel all the gratitude it merits.

When she’s back in her dorm room, her parents call her. They congratulate her on being freshman of the week: she can tell they believe it, that they’re proud. She’s glad, because they’ve always supported her in gymnastics, even though they’ve never really gotten past referring to the individual skills as jumps and flips. (Mulder knows the name of every skill Samantha does. Dana’s very impressed by that.) She’s just finishing up the call when Monica and Samantha arrive; they’re all going to get lunch together.

“My friends are here,” she says into the phone. “Thanks so much for calling, though.” After they say goodbye, she turns to the other girls. “I was just talking to my parents,” she says. She feels a little guilty saying it to Samantha, even though she knows it’s not her fault that Samantha’s parents are awful about things.

“Mine called me this morning too,” Monica says. “They want to know what I’m eating and if I have a boyfriend.” She shakes her head. “I don’t know where I’d find the time.”

Dana laughs. “Yeah,” she says. “Anyone we’d date would have to be right there in the gym.” She’s thought about it herself, having someone special, but for now she likes being with her friends in the gym. She likes getting to know all the people she’s met.

“I guess some people manage it,” Monica says. “There are those gymnast couples. And I heard there are a ton of hook-ups in the Olympic village. Is that true, Samantha?”

Samantha looks thrown. “Um,” she says, “I was fifteen.”

“Good point,” Dana says.

“And I don’t really…” She’s fiddling with her ponytail, which she used to do almost constantly at the start of the year, so she must be nervous about something. “I don’t actually like boys.”

Dana hugs Samantha right away, because she wants her to know that she has nothing to be nervous about. “Thanks for telling us,” she says.

“Yeah, that’s cool,” Monica says. “Now if I ever do find the time to get a boyfriend, at least I know you won’t try to steal him.” She grins at Samantha.

Samantha smiles too, for a minute. “I hadn’t told anyone except Fox before,” she says. “It’s actually…it’s part of the reason I didn’t want to go pro after the Olympics. I didn’t want to be public and have to hide myself like that. And I wouldn’t like all the attention you get, anyway.” It’s completely obvious, if you’ve known Samantha for more than five minutes, that she’s not the kind of person who likes attention, but Dana doesn’t laugh.

Instead, she says, “I get that. You can always talk to us, though. Right, Monica?” Monica nods. “Let’s get lunch.” And she winds her arm through Samantha’s, as they walk downstairs together. She’s grateful for this, too.

.....

Week Ten: March

Monica can’t believe the season is this close to being over. She feels like she just got here. She’s happy with how she’s been doing—she’s in the floor lineup every week, and usually in the vault lineup—but there’s still stuff to keep working on. In terms of her skills, of course, and she likes how Coach Skinner helps them with that, how he works with each of them as an individual. He doesn’t expect her to stick every vault like Dana or swing bars like Diana or have Samantha’s spooky sense of where the beam is every time—he just expects her to keep getting better at what she can do.

Which brings her to another thing she wants to work on: getting Diana to see that so that things can be less uncomfortable at practices. She thinks Coach Skinner must have talked to Diana after their away meet two weeks ago, because she’s been pretty subdued since then; she’s not what you’d call friendly, but she hasn’t lobbed any additional insults at Dana, and she did clap for everyone’s routines last week. Maybe Monica should leave it there. She doesn’t know herself why she wants to get Diana to be friends with the rest of them. Except that she feels like you can do both—try to be the best you can be and still see your teammates as friends instead of direct competition—and that college is the place to do it in. She doesn’t like to think about anyone having a bad time here, and she thinks that Diana is, even if her way of dealing with it is making it a bad time for everyone else too.

So she runs to catch up with Diana after practice. “Hey,” she says. “What are you up to tonight?”

Diana raises an eyebrow. “Why are you asking?”

Monica tries for charming. “Because I need some company to save me from having to study.”

“Why don’t you ask Dana and Samantha?” Diana says. “Don’t you always eat dinner together?”

Is Diana jealous of that too? “You could come,” Monica says. “If you wanted to.”

“I don’t,” Diana says. “And anyway, I doubt that invitation comes from all three of you.”

She probably has a point. “Well,” Monica says, trying another tack, “I was going to watch the Stuttgart world cup, since we missed it yesterday. You want to watch?”

“I already saw the results.”

“Well, it’s still fun to see the routines,” Monica says. “Don’t you think? Come on.”

Diana’s clearly unsure; maybe this isn’t worth it. But then she says, “All right. If you want,” and that’s something.

They settle down to watch it on Monica’s laptop. “Do you know any of them?” Monica asks.

“Yeah, I’ve met a bunch of them,” Diana says. “I don’t know them that well, though.”

“That’s still really cool,” Monica says. She doesn’t share Diana’s belief that elite is the only worthwhile form of gymnastics, but that doesn’t mean she can’t fangirl.

Diana seems to pick up on this logical inconsistency, though. “So you think I’m too snotty about having gone to worlds,” she says, “but that’s still the reason you want to hang out with me?”

“I didn’t say you were snotty,” Monica says.

“You didn’t exactly defend me either,” Diana says.

“Well,” Monica says, “I do think it’s kind of a big deal to you. Maybe bigger than it needs to be, here. But that’s not the reason I want to hang out with you. I just…I like to be friends with the people I’m in the gym with.”

“Okay,” Diana says.

“And I don’t mean you shouldn’t care about what you’ve done,” Monica says. “I think it’s awesome you can do all this kind of thing.” She gestures towards the screen, where one of the gymnasts is doing an impossibly packed bar routine, transitions and releases all back to back. “I know I never could in a million years.”

Diana’s fiddling with the zipper on her bag. “But that doesn’t matter here,” she says quietly. “Knowing how to do bigger skills…that doesn’t matter.”

“It doesn’t not matter,” Monica says. “I mean, it’s not as important, sure. But that doesn’t mean it’s not still cool that you can do it. It doesn’t mean…” She pauses, trying to figure out what she actually wants to say. “I don’t know why you get so upset when Dana does well. It doesn’t take anything away from you.”

Diana’s so quiet for such a long time that Monica’s sure she’s really put her foot in it. But she tries to give Diana space. She watches a French gymnast stick her dismount. She listens to the commentators opine.

“I thought I’d do better here,” Diana finally says.

“You do great,” Monica says. “You’re our best on bars by a lot.” She might have thought, earlier in the year, that she was stroking Diana’s ego unnecessarily by saying that, but now she’s beginning to think her ego isn’t as big as all that.

Diana shrugs. They watch the meet.

.....

Week Eleven: March

It’s almost the end of the regular season—next week is conference championships, and then regionals, and then nationals, if they make it, which Samantha thinks they will. Of course nothing’s sure, but they’ve been ranked in the top six pretty consistently.

She’s reading in her room, the night before their last regular meet, when there’s a knock at the door and she gets up to open it. It’s Fox. “Hi,” she says.

“Hi, Sam,” Fox says, and she can tell something’s wrong. He’s worried about her. “Did you know Mom and Dad were coming tomorrow?”

She stares at him. “No.”

“They called me just now,” he says. “They want to come see your meet. They said they’d emailed you, but you hadn’t answered.”

The filter Dana set up. Her throat is dry. “Why?” she asks. “They don’t really want to see me. Not really.”

“Look, I can try and head them off,” Fox says. “Meet them tomorrow and take them somewhere else. They won’t be there if you don’t want them to be.”

He’s always done everything he can to protect her. That’s why she feels safe and happy with him. That’s why she wants him at the meet tomorrow, cheering for her, not off somewhere doing diversionary action with their parents. ��No,” she says. “You don’t have to do that.”

“But Sam—”

“I don’t want them to think they can control how I feel,” Samantha says. “They’ve already done enough of that. They’ll come and I’ll compete like it’s any other meet.” She doesn’t know if she can really do that. It sounds nice, but she doesn’t know.

He’s quiet for a minute, and then he bumps his fists against hers. “I know you will,” he says. “You’re the toughest person I know, Sam.” He means it, and that means something.

She and Dana sit together in the changing room before the meet, the next afternoon; she’s told Dana her parents are coming. “You okay?” Dana asks, squeezing her hand.

“Yeah,” she says. “Let’s just…let’s pretend it’s a regular meet.”

“I don’t know what you’re even talking about,” Dana says, widening her eyes. “What are we pretending? There’s nothing special about this meet.” And Samantha has to laugh, and she feels a little bit better. They do the same breathing exercises they do every time, and she concentrates on her breath, in and out, in and out. She remembers how nervous she used to get every time she competed, how fast her breath and her heart would get, how she always felt like she was about to throw up. Even at the Olympics. Sometime this year, that stopped. And she won’t let it start up again today.

She waves when they announce her name—she still doesn’t love that part, and probably never will, but she can get through it. She sees Fox in the crowd; he waves back. She doesn’t look for her parents.

The waiting through vault can be tough, so today she concentrates as hard as she can on watching the other girls and cheering for them. They have a good rotation; Diana and Dana both stick.

She tightens her grips before bars, making sure everything’s all set. And then she salutes and she goes, before she has a chance to think about anything. She has a close catch on the tkatchev and a couple of steps on the dismount, but she makes it through. That’s what matters. Doing her best and making it through. She knows why she had those mistakes, and she can work on them before next week. The other girls hug her anyway. It doesn’t mean she’s a failure or she wasn’t trying or she doesn’t belong on this team.

Dana hugs her before beam, but she’s not nervous about that, really. Beam’s always been for her, no matter what. Even when she hated everything else, she felt all right during the ninety seconds she spent up there.

She flies through her routine. Her feet are hitting the mat before she knows it, solid, unmoving. She doesn’t look at the crowd afterwards, just the other girls; she barely looks at the scoreboard either, until the ten comes up and they all scream.

After that, it’s easy: watching the rest of the girls on floor and doing their choreography and shouting her lungs out. Because she’s one of a team. And that’s why she had a good meet today, not because of anyone who told her she wasn’t good enough.

“Great work today, Samantha,” Coach Skinner tells her afterwards. From the way he’s looking at her, she thinks he’s not just talking about her scores: he’s talking about her mental game. She doesn’t know how he knew something was bothering her today, except that he’s a good coach and he doesn’t miss much.

She leaves with Dana, arm in arm, and Fox is waiting outside. “Hey,” he says, smiling. “You did pretty good today, Sam.”

“Yeah,” she says. “I thought so.”

“I saw Mom and Dad by the parking lot,” he says, “if you want to sneak out in the opposite direction.”

She thinks about it. A part of her wants to say something to them, defy them; a part of her wants to let her gymnastics do the talking and not waste any more mental energy.

Dana’s looking at something on her phone. “Monica says we’re getting pizza.”

That settles that. “Yeah, let’s do that,” Samantha says, and they head back around the gym to meet Monica, away from the parking lot.

.....

Week Twelve: March

Conference championships are tomorrow, and tonight they’re settled into their hotel rooms. Diana’s rooming with Monica again, which she’s used to by now.

“Here’s an article,” Monica says. “Conference championship previews. And what they mean for the future.”

“They don’t really mean that much,” Diana says. “Just bragging rights.”

“Well, I don’t know about you, but I love bragging,” Monica says, grinning. “Besides, it helps build up our reputation.”

“True,” Diana says. “What else does the article say?”

“It talks about the different conferences,” Monica says. “Predictions for the teams and the individual events. That kind of thing. You want to hear?”

She’s already leaning over to look at Monica’s phone—she wants to know if they think she might win the bars title—when she stops to think. “No, actually,” she says. “It’ll happen however it happens.”

“Oh, man,” Monica says. “Don’t say you’re leaving me alone in the world of feverish internet gymnastics gossip. Dana and Samantha already won’t read it.”

“Maybe they have a point,” Diana says. “It just makes you get in your head.” She’ll start thinking about whether she could win bars. She’ll start thinking about other girls who are mentioned in the article, and if they could beat her on bars, and if they’re actually better than she is.

Monica watches her narrowly, but she doesn’t ask her again. She starts talking about an essay she has to finish, instead.

They start on beam, the next day, which means bars will be last. Diana’s glad about that, because the scores will build—everyone knows it happens, even if they claim not to—but then she tells herself not to think about it. The judges will do what they do, but she’s in control of whether she hits. Besides, there are three other events to go before that, and she needs to concentrate on those. On everyone, not just herself. Coach Skinner told her that, when he talked to her a few weeks ago. That she should try to be present when the other girls were competing, to think about all of their performances as making up one whole.

It doesn’t come naturally to her, and it probably never will, but she’s going to do her damnedest to master it. If that’s what she needs to do here. If it can help her.

She tries to concentrate on the details of their routines. What they do that she could learn from. What they do that’s different from her own style. She tries to think of cheering for them, of doing their floor choreography, as part of that whole.

She tries really hard, when Dana’s launching herself off the vault table, up and up and up, to keep thinking that way. To think of it as something beautiful. To mean it when she yells, “Yeah, Dana!”

When it comes to bars, she goes through her routine in her head one last time. And then she’s up, flying from bar to bar, hitting her handstands, keeping the rhythm, pointing her toes. Sticking the dismount before she knows it. Bars is so fast, so much a part of her muscle memory.

The other girls clap and cheer and hug her, like she’s been doing for them. Dana smiles at her and says, “Great job.” She probably wants to mend fences. That’s very like her. But Diana smiles back while she waits.

She’s spent the whole meet trying to think about the team, not just about herself. It’s hard to keep doing that, though, when her ten finally—finally—comes up on the scoreboard.

.....

Regionals

They’re a host site for regionals, which Dana’s really happy about. It means it’s close enough for her parents to drive up, and she’s looking forward to having them see her compete with the team. Besides, it means she doesn’t have to get up at the crack of dawn to get to the airport or deal with jetlag and an unfamiliar room and an unfamiliar gym.

She is kind of nervous, though. So far, the season’s gone better than she could have dreamed, but regionals means a lot more than any of the meets they’ve had so far. It’s sudden death: if they don’t finish in the top two here, they won’t be at nationals. She doesn’t want to have a repeat of her mid-season bars disaster. Nor does she want to start thinking about it, in case it throws off her mindset and becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

She’ll go over to the gym early, Dana decides, and sit there and do some deep breathing. It’ll help her to be in the space. To remind herself that this isn’t anything new, that she’s done it a hundred times.

She’s so early she isn’t even sure she’ll be able to get into the locker room, and when the door does yield to her touch, she’s sure she’ll be the only one there. But she’s not. Diana’s sitting in front of one of the benches, stretching.

“Oh,” Dana says. “Hi.”

“Hi,” Diana says. “Decided to get here early?”

“Yeah,” Dana says. “I thought it might help calm me down.” She doesn’t know why she’s giving Diana that. She hasn’t been as much of a pill the last couple of weeks, true, but Dana’s still not sure it’s a good idea to show her signs of weakness.

But Diana just nods. “Makes sense,” she says. “I like to get warmed up early too. Plus my roommate’s boyfriend came over and they were dropping hints they wanted me out of there.”

“Awkward,” Dana says.

“You got that right,” Diana says.

This is awkward too, Dana thinks, as she sits down. It’s not easy to think calming thoughts with Diana right there in front of her.

“How are you feeling about the meet?” Diana asks her.

“Pretty good, I think,” Dana says. Even though she just said she wanted to calm down. Maybe Diana won’t notice the inconsistency. But Dana doesn’t think she misses much.

She doesn’t expect the response she gets, though. “I get if I’m…if I’m not exactly making things easier for you,” Diana says. “I haven’t been at my nicest here. Especially to you. I get competitive, and you were doing so well, and…well, that’s not an excuse. Anyway…” She’s still stretching, and she holds it for so long that Dana wonders if she’s ever going to finish her sentence or if they’re just going to spend the rest of their lives in suspended motion. “Anyway, I’m sorry.”

“Thanks,” Dana says. She could be cold now, but what would be the point? She wants to get along with the other people on the team. She doesn’t want to waste time thinking about rivalries and grudges. “Thanks for saying that.”

“You’re a really good gymnast,” Diana says. “Your vault especially.”

“Thanks,” Dana repeats. “So are you. I wish I had your bars.”

“Yeah,” Diana says. “Put us together and we’d be the next Simone Biles.” She starts laughing then, and so does Dana. She doesn’t know if she’s heard Diana make a joke before. “So are you nervous for today?” Diana asks.

“Yeah, kind of,” Dana says. “The whole all or nothing aspect. What about you?”

“I don’t know. I don’t get that nervous anymore,” Diana says. “We’ll show them what we can do. We’re not the top seed for nothing.”

She’s acting a little cocky again. But cocky about the team, not about herself, and somehow that makes all the difference.

.....

Nationals: Semifinals

Nationals is different, Monica can feel it. It means being up against the best of the best, with every step counting. No room for error, she finds herself saying in her head. She’s not usually a no room for error kind of person, but the atmosphere can really get to you.

At least she’s not worrying about the individual titles. The semifinals are where those are determined, and she knows some of the girls on the team could definitely contend, but she’ll just be going out there and doing her thing. Performing her heart out on floor. She likes being a star for those ninety seconds and being part of a unit for everything else.

They’re starting on bars, which means Monica has to wait through two rotations to do anything, but she thinks it’s a good thing on the whole; they’re getting what’s probably their weakest event out of the way. The first routine goes smoothly; Dana, up second, is working well too, until she loses her legs in a handstand and goes over. It’s not technically a fall, but she has to take an extra swing, and she doesn’t ever really get her rhythm back. She looks frustrated with herself as she comes off the podium.

“Shake it off, Dana,” Coach Skinner says. “You fought through. Concentrate on the next routine.”

“We’ve still got the rest of the meet,” Monica says. “Don’t beat yourself up.” She squeezes Dana’s arm.

Samantha, who’s already got her grips on, bumps her fist against Dana’s. “We’ve got your back,” she says. “Right, Diana?”

“Right,” Diana says. “We’ll go up and hit, and while we’re doing that, you be thinking about how you’re going to knock us out on beam.”

“Thanks, guys,” Dana says, softly. Monica holds her arm while they watch the other girls’ routines. Samantha’s is quick and tidy. And Diana’s is as gorgeous as ever, her transitions and releases and pirouettes all pristine.

On to the next rotation. Dana draws herself up before her beam routine. “I’m going to do this,” she says, and Monica knows she’s thinking about that meet in February, when she missed bars and then missed beam. “I’m going to hit for all of you.” And she does. It’s one of the best beam routines Monica’s seen her do, actually; everything looks incredibly secure. By the end, she’s really smiling.

Samantha’s the star of the show here, of course. Monica watches her compete every week, not to mention all their training sessions, and she never gets bored with it. You can see, watching her, why Samantha was a champion. Why Samantha still is a champion. There’s a little step on the landing, but Monica honestly doesn’t see anything else wrong. She guesses the judges don’t either, because Samantha comes up with one of the top scores of the meet.

Now floor. She huddles with the other girls as Coach Skinner gives them some last words of encouragement. She cheers and does the choreography for the first four routines. And then she’s up.

There’s nothing like doing gymnastics before a crowd this big and hyped up. And within the world of doing gymnastics, there’s nothing like doing a floor routine. Monica can feel the adrenaline threatening to overtake her; she concentrates on making it work for her, on keeping the tumbling passes big but not out of bounds, on selling her routine to the hilt. She feeds off the music, off her team, off the audience. She knows she’ll remember this.

The other girls hug her afterwards, and she’s happy with her score when it comes up too. It’s funny to think that she’ll only do this particular routine one more time, tomorrow, if they make the finals. But it’s exciting, too, to think that she’ll have a new routine next year. Maybe one she’ll love even more than this.

It’s time to concentrate on vault, though. Monica’s glad she’s gotten her adrenaline out, because vault’s over so quickly that it doesn’t give you any time to course correct. She’s third in the lineup, and she’s going before she knows it. She takes a step back on the landing, but all in all she’s pleased.

Dana’s their anchor, and her face is set, determined, as she stands at the end of the runway. From her beam and floor, it looks like she hasn’t let the mistake on bars get to her, like she’s in a good frame of mind. Monica’s glad about that, because Dana can stick the crap out of a vault when she’s on, and that would be good for them tonight. Mathematically, they’re already into the finals, but it never hurts to make a statement.

It’s a statement. High and huge and stuck right down the middle.

Four of the judges give her the ten; two of them go with 9.95, for some incomprehensible reason. “Oh, come on!” Monica shouts, but Dana’s so happy that she’s jumping up and down, and it is the top vault score of the whole meet, so she might as well let it go.

She cheers for them all during the medal ceremonies, even though she’s exhausted at this point; when the competition’s over, it really hits you. And they’ll be doing it all over again tomorrow. She may be exhausted, but she can’t wait.

.....

Nationals: Finals

When she’s getting ready for finals, Samantha remembers how she felt getting ready for team finals at the Olympics. How she was sure she was going to throw up. How she was terrified she’d make a mistake. How she felt all wrong in her red, white, and blue leotard, and how sweaty her hands were. How she felt so alone—the other girls on the team were nice, but they weren’t her close friends. She didn’t have any of those, in the gym.

Tonight she’s wearing a green and silver leotard, and she feels all right. Monica is insisting that they put a truly outrageous amount of glitter on their faces. “It’ll hype us up,” she says.

“It’ll get in our eyes,” Dana says. “You want to be the girl who missed a catch because she was trying to blink away glitter?”

“I’ll never be the girl who missed a catch,” Monica says, “because I don’t compete bars like you suckers. Can’t miss a catch if you never try.”

Diana is spraying her hair into place. “Give me a little bit,” she says, and she smears it on her cheeks. “Not bad. We could do something to match with eye shadow?”

“Now you’re talking,” Monica says. “See, Diana gets it.”

“Will you put some on me?” Samantha asks, and Diana does her eyeshadow carefully, in the same colors as their leotards. When they look into the mirror, once they’re ready, they all match.

Dana takes a picture. “You think we can win this thing?” she asks, softly.

“Well, I was reading,” Monica says, “and statistically, if we have our best floor of the season…”

“Oh my god,” Diana says. “Stop trying to make this a thing!”

“I think we can win it,” Samantha says. She can tell the others are maybe a little surprised, from the way they look at her. “No statistics. Just my feelings.”

“I think Samantha’s right,” Dana says, and she hugs her.

“But even if we don’t win,” Samantha says, “we’re…we’re going to kick so much ass!” Now they’re definitely surprised, no doubt about it. But Monica whoops, and so does Diana, and then they hurry out of the room, because it’s time for the last team gathering, for a final talk from Coach Skinner.

“I’m very proud of how you’ve all performed this year,” he says. “We had a lot of new contributors on our team, and you’ve all stepped up and taken on new roles. You’ve made yourselves an indispensable part of the team, and we’ve had some great achievements.” His face is serious. “That said, tonight those achievements are behind us. It’s time to build on them, yes, but it’s also time to set new goals. You can’t coast on the past—you’ve got to leave it all on the floor.” Samantha clutches Dana’s hand. The past is gone, she thinks. “Know your routines. Know yourselves. Know your team. I know what you can do—now show everyone else tonight. We can do this.” They all nod seriously. It doesn’t seem quite the time for whooping.

They whoop afterwards, though, when the seniors lead them in a cheer. Samantha looks at the other girls’ faces: they look nervous but excited, determined, ready to leave it all on the floor. She takes a deep breath before they march out.

She knows she has Fox in the audience, which makes a difference. He asked her if she wanted him to come, and she said she did. That’s one thing that hasn’t changed: he’s the only spectator that she really wants or cares about. But everything else is different.

They’re starting on floor tonight, which means Samantha’s beam will be the final routine for the team. She used to hate waiting more than anything, always feeling like she was about to jump out of her skin. It’s still not her favorite part of a meet, but it’s better now. She has the other girls’ routines to watch and cheer for.

Floor goes well. She does the choreography on the sidelines: Diana’s fluttering arms, Dana’s shimmy, Monica’s salute to the audience. She thought the semifinals were exciting, but tonight’s even better, each girl selling her routine with everything she’s got.

On vault, they don’t have as much difficulty as some of the other teams: they’re using two Yurchenko fulls, but they’re both solid tonight. After that, Monica does well with her tsuk, Karen sticks her Omelianchik, and both of the one and a halfs are good, especially Dana’s. She always seems to know where the ground is.

At the halfway mark, they’re in second, but things are close. That’s another thing she’s had to get used to here—every routine being graded on the same scale, without the big difficulty gaps that were there in elite. At first it made her nervous; it was so much easier for one mistake to be costly. But now she doesn’t mind so much.

“Keep it up, everyone,” Coach Skinner tells them. “Nice and easy. Like in practice.” He stops to talk to those of them who are putting on their grips, getting ready for bars. “You ready, Samantha?” he asks.

“Yeah,” she says. “I am.”

He almost smiles at her, although he’s not really a smiley kind of guy. “I know we can count on you,” he says. She would hug him, if they weren’t in the middle of touch warmups.

She doesn’t love bars the same way she loves beam, but she likes having it come first, something to steady her. She squeezes Dana’s arm while they’re waiting. “You good?” she says.

“Yeah,” Dana says. “Thanks. I’m good.” She smiles at Samantha. And then it’s time to scramble off the podium—the rotation is starting.

The three routines before her are clean; she’s never seen anyone look as relieved in her life as Dana does, coming down from the podium. Samantha steps up then, pictures her routine one last time, salutes, and goes. It feels so quick, but then she’s done, and she’s hit, and the other girls are cheering. She hugs them quickly, before taking off her grips and walking to the side of the arena, where she can think about beam. She throws a back handspring. She wants to keep loose.

She still watches the last two routines, though. Diana’s is beautiful; two of the judges give her a ten. They’re still in a close second, going into beam.

“Do what we all know you can do,” Coach Skinner tells the six of them when they’re in the huddle. “Don’t think about the scoreboard. Think about the beam.” The one thing she’s never had trouble with.

Samantha couldn’t tell you much about the five routines before her. She thinks they go fine, because she doesn’t hear any gasping or groaning, but she’s busy concentrating. She doesn’t look at the scores—she doesn’t want to know what she would need, if it’s close enough at the end. Dana bumps fists with her before she goes up. “You’ve got this,” she says. “We all know you do.”

Her routine is almost over early; she can feel she’s off as she’s coming in for the landing at the end of her series, and one foot is almost off the beam. But she saves it, somehow, gripping with her toes, even though she has to wave her arms a few times. She takes a deep breath and slows down her choreography a little, to give herself the chance to refocus. Then the double turn. Then the side aerial. She’s moving smoothly now, and she’s able to smile, to look out at the judges and the crowd. She doesn’t see Fox—there are so many people—but she pretends she does, that he’s right at the spot where she’s looking. She sets up for the dismount then, and that’s on, high and stuck.

And then it’s over. She won’t be competing again as a freshman, but the other girls are hugging her, and she looks at the scores again, to see hers come in. They’re second. It’s so close. She has to wonder what would have happened if she hadn’t had that check on her series.

But Coach Skinner pats her shoulder. “Good job, Samantha,” he says.

So she stops wondering. She jumps up and down with the other girls, instead.

.....

Afterwards

Diana feels a little flat; she always does, after a big competition. They were up late last night, celebrating, and now they have to fly back to school. She finished early, and now she’s helping Monica stuff things into her bag.

“Want to see what Dana and Samantha are up to?” Monica says, when they’re done.

“Sure,” she says, and they go over to their room. They’re almost done packing too. Dana’s wrapping her first-place vault trophy up, with an almost tender look on her face.

“Enjoy it,” Diana says, teasingly. “Because I’m going to train a one-and-a-half this summer, and then it’s over for you.”

Dana looks startled for a second—maybe it’s too early to say mean things to her as a joke—but then she laughs. “Thanks for the warning,” she says. “I’d better start working inbars. Beat you at your own game.”

“It’s kind of funny,” Monica says. “You’d think you’d want a break, right? But I actually can’t wait to get back in the gym.”

“Yeah,” Samantha says. “I think I’ll actually like off-season training this year.” She’s not going home, she’s told them; she’s staying out here with her brother, at the apartment he’s getting, and she’s going to train in the university gym with Coach Skinner. “But I’ll miss you all, though.”

“We’ll miss you too,” Dana says, hugging her. “But we can chat.”

“Are you actually going to train a one-and-a-half, Diana?” Monica asks.

“Yeah, I think so,” Diana says. “I don’t really think I’m going to threaten Dana. But it’ll be good for the team.” She can’t believe she’s saying that and meaning it. “How about you, Dana? Actually going to work inbars?”

“No thanks,” Dana says. “But I do want to work on cleaning some stuff up on bars and beam. And thinking about what I might do for my floor routine next year.”

“Definitely,” says Monica. “I want to do something really different from this year. And I want to get my vault more consistent.”

They all look at Samantha. “I want to train floor,” she says. “I’d like to compete it next year. I’d like one of those routines like the Dutch have.”

That’s surprising. Samantha’s elite routine, the last time Diana saw her, was basically still a junior routine: dependent on being tiny and cute. Samantha’s still pretty tiny and cute now, even though she’s eighteen, and Dutch routines are known for being elegant and dramatic. It doesn’t seem like a natural fit, but she can tell it’s something Samantha really wants, so she says, “Go for it.”

“Hell yeah,” Monica says. “That’d be awesome.”

“It’s a great idea,” Dana says. “Something really different.”

They’re quiet for a minute, and then Monica says, “Look at us jumping ahead already. We literally just finished the season. And we’re the second best in the nation!”

“Yeah we are,” Diana says, and then they’re quiet for another minute, to take that in. Dana finishes wrapping the trophy and puts it in her bag.

“And we’re only losing three routines next year,” Monica says, “which is a lot fewer than most teams. I was reading online—”

“Stop,” Dana says.

“You literally never stop trying, do you?” Diana asks.

“Nope,” Monica says. She’s grinning.

“We’d better go,” says Samantha. “We don’t want to be left behind.”

So they head down to the lobby, to join Coach Skinner and the rest of the team.

#my fic #the x files #gymnastics #Dana Scully #monica reyes #samantha mulder #diana fowley #alternate universe

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vgcam · 7 years ago

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Fanfic: There’s a First Time for Everything…

Author’s notes: Fic created for @txf-prompt-box challenge. Prompt: An FBI charity event. Story takes place towards the end of season one. I can’t exactly categorize it. It’s very delicately smutty, but I’m a terrible smut-writer, so it’s the closest I’d get to this sort of stuff. It’s mostly broody and slightly funny. With these prompts I seem to have lost contact with my real life friends, and have ignored my work, kids, hubby and home… oy vey!

Also tagging @today-in-fic

Disclaimer: Not mine. Sigh.

There’s a First Time for Everything…

By Vered Gilad Friedman

It was their first official FBI event together and for the life of him, he was unusually nervous. He’d been on the job with Scully for almost a year now but even though they’d been having plenty of off duty phone calls, they’d hardly seen each other off work. Not that he hadn’t thought about it; it was just that she was so closed-up when it came to her private life and somehow in a manner that was very uncharacteristic to him, he felt extremely cautious when it came to handling her.

Yes, they’d both been to one another’s apartments but it was always work-related and it was always shop talk they dealt with. He’d always wanted to go beyond but whenever he’d try to dig in a little further through that unseen façade of hers, she would button up and he’d not pushed further.

Why? Because… it was even hard for him to admit this to himself, but the bottom line was, he cared for her and it was more than just this partnership that had been forced upon them. No, it was far more than that.

She intrigued him from the moment he read about her, but when he actually got to meet her, he became fascinated. Yes, he’d tried all those boyish tricks of his on her, and he got her annoyed at times, but he loved those moments when she set her blazing blue eyes upon him, and glared as if she were willing to bash him with a mallet of sorts. He’d get her pissed on purpose, just so he could see that expression on her face. He liked that she took him seriously to the verge that his words could get her to react so strongly. Later on, as they got to know each other better, she had figured out his dry sense of humor and was able to respond in line with it. This just made him feel even more excited being with her. And he got to be with her every day and it was pure elation. Even when they argued. Maybe even especially when they argued.

And they grew closer. He knew that. Nobody had to force them to work together anymore. She could have left and he could have asked that she be removed but none of that happened. Neither of them wanted that to happen. And it was more than just work. He knew it, even though neither of them said any of that to each other, even though he’d still not invited her over to his place just to have a plain cup of coffee.

And here they were, about to go on a… date? Could a formal FBI charity event even be considered a date?

He got out of his car and walked the well-known path to her house as if it were the very first time he’d ever seen it. His heart was pounding so strongly. Why couldn’t he control himself? This was Scully! He saw her just a few hours ago at the office. Why was he making such a big deal out of this?

Last year he went to this event with one of the lab techs he’d been dating. Well, more like screwing, he had to admit. A tall woman, with long blond hair. Not a natural blond. Screwing a woman tended to unveil such hidden details about her. Not that he’d cared. She was a great fuck and a perfect accessory just for such formal occasions. He’d show up, enjoy a good dinner and then finish it up with a satisfying fuck. He’d not delve about it even one second after coming. He was no stranger to dating and screwing and having a good time with pretty women, yet now, when it came to dating his partner, he felt as if he were about to break some sacred vow.

Besides, was this even considered a date? True, he was the one who came up to her and suggested they’d go to the charity event together, but he wasn’t quite sure if she understood that this was more than just two work partners going to some work function. She didn’t even make a fuss when he offered to pick her up. After all, he’d come by and picked her up several times when they went on assignments. He was usually in charge of getting their rentals, so she never argued, and they both took turns driving, so she didn’t go all feminist on him, so maybe all she read into this was just two partners on yet another assignment.

He realized he would have been a lot more self-assured had he known that his companion for the night was going to end up in bed with him a few hours later, but with Scully he wanted much more than just casual sex. Not that he didn’t think about sex when he was with her but this time sex wasn't his main goal. He wanted it to be the culmination to a far more meaningful interaction. He wanted foreplay, but not only of the sexual kind. He wanted them to just snuggle together and talk over a glass of wine, or a movie, or both. He wanted her to let him in. He wanted to know more about her and he longed to share more about himself, because he knew she'd listen and not in a patronizing fashion like his past relationships; those few relationships where it was more than just the sex. Back then when he was a mere toy boy for strong dominant women. It was a time in his life when he had needed that sort of trait in a woman. He was young and inexperienced and they were there to teach him something about the world and he didn’t mind being controlled by them because in a way he felt so out of control about his own life that he wished somebody would just take over. Both Phoebe and Diana had no problem filling that position.

But that Fox Mulder was now long gone. He remembered how vulnerable he felt when Diana got up and left him. He was like this hurt puppy, left to lick its wounds, but slowly he grew stronger without her. A thick layer of scar tissue formed on top of those wounds and he stopped feeling when he went out with women. He made sure they weren’t as smart as he was and he focused on their bodies and zoned out when they spoke. He had enough charm to lure them in so he could satisfy his needs and none of them realized he was just playing them.

And then Scully came and something snapped. She was beautiful and smart, yet vulnerable and soft, and she cared for him and admired him, but she also didn’t let him have his way and she had her own set of values and beliefs. She was never a bitch towards him, she never abused him and he realized that for the first time he had found his equal.

But for the life of him, he didn’t know how to proceed in this new uncharted territory where he wasn’t in control, nor was he controlled. He was at a loss.

He was finally at her door-step. If it weren’t for time constraints, he would have waited out there forever, but the new Assistant Director, Walter Skinner, was mentally breathing down his neck. The A.D. bothered to stress the point that tardiness could possibly lead to re-assignment. Mulder still didn’t know him all too well and he didn’t want to risk it; especially not when it came to Scully. So now being almost out of time, he heaved a deep breath and pressed her doorbell.

He could hear her calling out from behind the door. “Just a second.” And then indeed, a second later, the door was unlocked and opened.

Despite promising himself he’d behave normally, he was so taken aback by her looks, he wasn’t able to speak. He just stared at her, gawking like a total dork, feeling somewhat out of breath in lieu of the totally out of character attire she was wearing.

Yes, he knew she’d be wearing some sort of evening gown, but never in his life did he imagine this look. Her petite slim body was perfectly encased in a black strapless dress that enhanced every minute detail of her every curve, not to mention her perfect snow-tainted breasts.

It’s not that he didn’t think her beautiful in her plain FBI dress code 'uniform', but most days he forced himself not to think what lay beneath, but at this very moment not much was left to his imagination.

"Mulder?" Scully, stared at him confused.

Still speechless, he kept on gaping at her figure. When he realized his eyes had unintentionally become affixed on the amazing crack between her bosoms, he hurried to transfer his gaze to a different section of her body.

He set his attention on her hair, which had been beautifully pulled up into some form of elaborate construction, which he had no idea was at all possible. He always marveled at her perfect auburn hair, but he'd gotten so accustomed to her helmet hairdo, he didn't even think of the possibility of her wearing it differently. The usual second option was a basic ponytail which she reserved for trips to the wilderness and autopsies. There was only one single occasion when she had it up in a bun. It was during their case with the liver eating creature, Tooms. Suddenly she wore it up a-la Melanie Griffith in working girl. That do made her appear very professional and somewhat uptight and he knew she only wore it like that to impress her snarky former classmate, Tom Colton. She tried to appear serious because she thought nobody would take her seriously now that she worked for the X-Files with Spooky Mulder.

She never wore her hair like that ever again. It was then that she really decided where she wanted to be and with whom her loyalties lay. The return of the helmet do was a symbol of sorts. She removed the shackles that were imposed upon her by her previous training and she didn't care anymore what people thought. Well, at least not like she did before, he added as an afterthought.

And this amazing do she was sporting at that very moment was nothing like that puffy, professional bun of hers. No. This do was a testament to seduction. Part of her hair was pulled up while precisely calculated strands of auburn fell loosely against her perfect glowing neck. Mulder had no doubt Scully had bothered to pull the precise number of strands out of the pulled-up arrangement of hair but he wondered if he was the prime target of her amazing look or was she aiming at the general male population.

"Mulder!"

He blinked, somewhat startled by Scully's peeved tone. He had to say something. He had to, but he was so stunned, he just kept on eyeballing her, unable to hide his astonishment.

"Mulder. It's just a dress. Snap out of it. Seriously!" she blazed.

"I… I'm… you… I'm sorry, Scully. It's just that… I've never seen you in this way before." He managed but he quickly regretted his words as she pursed her lips and glowered at him.

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?" She shot at him.

Jeez! The woman didn't really know how to take a compliment. "Hmm, well… it's just—"

"Never mind, Mulder," she uttered impatiently. "We're going to be late if we don't get a move on."

And she glided down the front steps slightly brushing him against his shoulder as she went towards their rental. Her superficial touch was enough to exert an involuntary gasp out of him.

Dammit, he had turned into a puddle of boyish adolescence. He expected to sprout zits on his cheeks next as final proof of his total inability to function like a mature, professional adult.

His mind was racing back and forth between 'Jump right in and fuck the hell out of her' and 'Whoa boy, this is Scully you’re talkin’ about. Settle down cowboy'. He was afraid he'd lose control and that that would ruin any chance he'd ever have with her. He knew he wanted it to be totally different with her, but it was as if that dress had managed to erase Agent Dana Scully, colleague, partner, best friend, companion and so forth and instead it brought about only Dana Scully, sex bomb.

He was ashamed of how out of control his physical reaction was, when he knew that what he truly wanted was to treat her with respect and win her affection and love like a true gentleman.

"Mulder! Are you coming?"

Scully stood beside their car, her stance oozing irritability, prompting him into a wobbly dash towards her. He'd lost all his basketball training finesse all of a sudden, barely managing to avoid stumbling right into her as he broke his step at the very last second. He was hoping to get the door for her, but the moment he unlocked the car alarm, Scully hastily opened her own door and slid into her seat.

For a moment he stood there like a child lost amidst a bustling crowd, then he scooted around the car and took his place beside her at the driver's seat.

"If I would have known you'd have reacted this badly to me wearing this dress, I might've worn my bathrobe instead," Scully teased him as they drove through the evening traffic.

Still unable to trust himself, Mulder opted to keep from side-glancing. "Maybe you should have eased me into this," he suggested, surprised that he was actually not only making sensible conversation, but that he was actually able to joke about his awkwardness.

"I'll uncover only one shoulder next time," she laughed.

And just like that the tension that was threatening to implode his belly a mere second earlier suddenly disintegrated into nothing. Dress or no dress, they were their usual selves again, banter and all. He smiled, then slid a quick sideways glance, took in her beauty but now she was his companion again, just that she was even more beautiful than usual.

"You can keep both shoulders out in the open," he told her. “I think my moment of shock is over."

"Pity," she feigned disappointment. "I was kind of getting used to this unknown side of your personality."

"Well, you were privy to a rare event akin to an X-File," he chortled.

"It's definitely worth cataloguing under the bizarre category," she agreed.

--------------------------

Grand Hyatt Hotel, Washington D.C. 21:04 PM

Scully decided to let Mulder help her out of the car this time. Her dress was making it somewhat harder for her to lift herself out of her seat without having to perform some unconventional acrobatics.

Mulder was over his initial shock re her attire and was mostly back to his usual self. Mostly, because she couldn't help noticing how his glance kept straying towards the central section of her chest. Well, when she chose this particular dress she had precisely that in mind.

There were moments during their assignments when she glimpsed something more about Mulder's reaction towards her, but it always seemed like a flicker that he quickly tucked away. She knew he saw her more than just his partner. They were definitely close but that stemmed from the type of job they did day in and day out. He did try to stir their conversations to more personal direction on many occasions, but she kept reverting back to the professional path, despite his constant attempts.

He'd share a sports’ jokes with her and search her face for a reaction. He'd tell her about his family from time to time and he was a major support after her father had died.

But she was having a hard time opening up to him. She was a woman, working in a male territory and to prove herself worthy, she had to show she was strong and unflinching and she couldn't let him in or she'd appear vulnerable, so she kept him out, but he never stopped trying.

So today she chose to leave that comfort zone of hers. She could have worn a far more conservative evening gown. Certainly had her mom and dad seen her like this, she would have had plenty of explaining to do, but her daddy was gone and she wasn't that innocent girl anymore. She wanted to receive more than just a flicker from Mulder this time. She didn't know where this would lead them and how far she was willing to go, but she was willing to move forward and she felt this was the best way to send this message.

The only thing she hadn't accounted for was that Mulder would lose it altogether. He had such a reputation, she was sure he'd take her appearance in stride. Instead, he went all school-boyish on her and at some point she was considering slapping his face so he'd snap out it.

She was glad when he'd eventually recovered, at least to a certain degree.

The door beside her opened and Mulder peered at her through it, making her almost chuckle as he bent all the way down and then snuck another peep at her partially exposed breasts. She offered him her hand and he grabbed it and assisted her onto the sidewalk.

As he gave the car keys to the valet service, she snuck her own peep at his amazingly built body and marveled at the view before her. Yes, he was dressed in a suit and tie most days, but his usual choice of jackets and especially ties were not the greatest. His pants were usually a lot less snug around his buttocks, not to mention his frontal parts, and the loose shirts he usually wore made him look far less masculine than he actually was. And she knew he sported a great set of abs on him, having handled his medical misfits a little too often ever since they'd become partners.

But today it was a black tie event and he'd chosen a much tighter suit and a bow tie instead and not that he wasn't handsome enough as it was, it was just that this particular garb he had on, brought everything into focus, so to speak, and she enjoyed zooming in.

"Scully? You coming?"

She shook her head. "Yes…" she answered, absent-mindedly.

She felt his palm sliding into hers and to her surprise, she shivered. Up until now, most of their physical contact was of a friendly kind; a tiny shove on the small of her back as he ushered her about or a slight touch on her shoulder. It never went beyond that. She was amused at how holding hands like silly schoolkids could make her all giddy and tingly inside.

They climbed the stairs slowly as her narrow dress was preventing her from taking large strides. She’d been watching her footsteps, making sure she wouldn't take any unceremonious dives, so she was completely startled when she heard a familiar army-style voice speak all of a sudden.

"You're late."

Scully gazed up and saw the recognizable shiny cap of the Assistant Director towering above them.

"Sorry sir," Mulder apologized as if he were this tardy student standing before the school principal, "We had shit traffic."

"Save your sorry-ass excuses for somebody else, Mulder," Skinner growled. "Everybody else got here half an hour ago. You're the last to arrive."

Fuck. She was never late for anything before she met Mulder. In fact, her nickname was goody-two-shoes-Scully. She was always the first to arrive and customarily on the decoration committee which meant she was usually preparing for an event hours before. Now she'd fallen in with the wrong crowd, aka, Mulder, and look at her, she'd become little miss tardy and possibly a slut all in one go. Her father would probably be rolling in his grave at that very moment.

"Sorry sir," Mulder apologized, sounding like a very unrepentant schoolboy.

"We'll deal with this tomorrow. Now step on it." Skinner ordered, turned around and basically marched into the grand Hyatt as if expecting Mulder and Scully to fall in line right behind him.

"Somebody's going to get detention tomorrow," Mulder whispered under his breath.

Scully was too uptight at that very moment to find Mulder's antics funny and she sent him a peeved glare to which he responded with a shrug.

Unfortunately, there was no way she could hurry her step while ensconced within the restrictive evening gown, so she proceeded as best she could while Mulder kept to her side. By the time they reached the elevator, Skinner was already long gone.

"Relax, Scully. We’re already late. It's not like we can do much about it."

She wasn't able to see these things the way he did. There was no point in him trying to calm her down. She was still unaccustomed to being scolded, even after all these months with Mulder. She wondered if this would ever change.

The sign by the elevator listed the FBI event two floors down and if she were wearing one of her power suits and comfortable shoes, she would have made a dash for the nearest stairwell, but she'd had enough of stairs with this dress for one day, so the both of them waited patiently till the elevator arrived.

Mulder got in and Scully followed suit. She was barely inside when the elevator doors slid shut. To her utter horror, the trail of her beautiful evening gown got caught between the doors. She felt a strong pull on her body as the elevator began its downward journey.

It all happened very quickly after that. She let out a cry of shock just as Mulder realized what had just happened. He didn't think twice. He grabbed hold of her body and made sure she remained grounded to the floor. The beautiful garment's seams exploded under the pressure and gave way. It was better the garment than her limbs, she managed a quick thought.

Mulder held her firmly to the ground as the bottom half of her dress tore off, they both breathed fast as adrenaline washed through their blood stream. She could feel his warm breath against her nape, and to her surprise she also felt a firm presence pressing against her lower parts. It was the most absurd of moments; sheer horror, pure danger, uncontrolled excitement and sexual delight all mixed into one crazy juncture. It was like the epitome of their relationship, she came to realize.

She let out a silly hysterical chuckle.

"It's great that you're enjoying this, Scully," Mulder murmured against her cheek.

She was about to respond in kind, but suddenly she heard the elevator doors whooshing behind her accompanied by a chilly breeze brushing against her now exposed thighs and buttocks.

Then came a deafening sound created by a major group of people gasping all at once.

She knew she shouldn't look behind her, but despite herself she did. The minute her head turned around, she regretted it.

The entire membership of the Federal Bureau of Investigation all stood outside, their jaws ajar, and their eyes the size of continents, and like a cherry on top of a cake, there stood Assistant Director Skinner fronting the entire crowd. But unlike the rest of the gathered law enforcement personal present, Skinner bore the most outraged scowl she'd ever seen.

She was still pressed hard against Mulder's body, her exposed thong-clad butt there for everyone to see, and she was unable to move a muscle. But Mulder stirred slowly, gently pushing her behind him, but never letting go of her. Finally he stared squarely at Assistant Director Skinner and said, sheepishly, "Errr… what's up doc?"

THE END

@today-in-fic @txf-prompt-box @fictober

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