#but mostly bea & lilith honestly just... being weird horribly soft friends

[possibilistfanfiction]

lilith

[obsessed with this ask, first of all. second of all, lilith pov from footy au for @unicyclehippo.]

//

you meet beatrice for the first time when you’re fourteen, and she’s thirteen. you’re in different club academies but you vaguely, before this, had heard of her: girls around you talk, hushed, when she walks in, because she’s the youngest and everyone is already saying she’s the best, a generational talent — beatrice xin, the next great center midfielder, the future of football. that’s what you want to be, so badly you can taste it, so badly that when you miss an easy tap in the first day of camp you bite the inside of your cheek so hard you draw blood.

it’s not your first time at national team camp, but it is hers. maybe because you’re serious and driven, or maybe because you don’t find enjoyment in the pranks other girls like to play, and you don’t eat the junk food they sneak in in tampon boxes, they have her room with you. you were the youngest once; you remember.

you’re both reserved and careful, not particularly friendly, but beatrice’s stems from awkwardness, from a split second of figuring out how to read social cues around her while everyone else laughs. she’s thin and kind of small, her face full and young. she has freckles and braces and little wisps of her hair escape her bun; she unpacks efficiently into the little dresser on her side of the room: simple underwear, sports bras, joggers, hoodies. she pulls out a little leatherbound journal and a book in a language you don’t know and a pen and lines them up with military precision on the desk. she sets her little shower caddy on top of the dresser and neatly places her toiletries in it: acne cream, shampoo and conditioner, a fresh bar of lavender soap, lotion, sunscreen. ‘i’m going to freshen up before dinner,’ she says, impossibly formal and a little funny, honestly, but it doesn’t seem kind — not yet, anyway — to tease her about it.

you wait for her to come out of the bathroom at the end of the hall and back to your room. her black hair is in a neat braid, the wet ends darkening her t-shirt, which she’s tucked into a pair of joggers, which, for some reason, hurts you a little bit. 

‘ready?’

she seems surprised when you’re still there; you’re in a hoodie and shorts and slides, and you wait for her to neatly tie a pair of — admittedly, very cool — sneakers and then nod. ‘lilith,’ she says, gently and tentatively touching your elbow, ‘thank you.’

��for what?’

‘for waiting for me.’ i’m used to being alone, she means, and she’s quiet throughout all of dinner, only adding into the conversation when someone brings up a type of bird they saw this morning, which she knows the latin name for and all of its characteristics, and she eats with the most exacting bites you’ve ever seen.

i’m used to being alone, she means, as you both settle in your small, twin beds later — ‘goodnight, beatrice,’ you say. you’re not alone, and neither is she.

‘sleep well, lilith.’

/

beatrice is, you can admit by the time you’re sixteen, the best in the world. maybe not yet — although, some days, when you play with her and watch her beat players twice her age without breaking a sweat, one after another through the midfield, or in a tight space around the 18, or even on the touchline if she drifts for a give and go — you think maybe she already is. 

her time on youth sides is running out, you know, because she is a generational talent, because everyone wants her already. she seems, mostly, unfazed by it all, still stoic and focused and brilliant. she gets her high school diploma at fifteen; she tells you, quietly while you juggle together in the courtyard of the hotel you’re at one tournament when neither of you can sleep, that she’s enrolled in online college classes and has enjoyed the challenge so far: she’s learning german, and she’s taking a revolutionary chinese history course, and her favorite is calculus iii. she’s kind of bizarre, but you’re fond of her. sometimes she texts you pictures of her cat between camps, and you send her any meme that makes you laugh privately.

you’re a little surprised when she’s on the u-20 world cup squad with you, mostly because you had honestly thought she might get pulled into the senior squad, at least for some friendlies, but you’re glad she’s here: you’re nervous, and restless. when you had told your mother that you’d gotten called up, tamping down any expectations for excitement as hard as you could, she had said, ‘as we expected of you,’ and continued on with her day.

‘do you have a boyfriend?’ you ask into the dark. 

you hear her roll around in bed for a few moments, probably turning to face toward you, and then she says, ‘when would i have time to have a boyfriend?’

you shrug. ‘i don’t know; seo-jun and nora have boyfriends.’

‘i guess.’

‘so that’s a no, from you.’

she laughs. ‘do you have a boyfriend?’

‘ew, no. have you met sixteen year old boys?’

‘i know. disgusting. i don’t know what the point is of boys, anyway. i’m too busy with football.’

you understand the point of boys, in a way: you like looking at mohammed’s arms when you’re training together, the way they press and cut when you’re doing push-ups. you’ve kissed him; you kiss him often. ‘yeah,’ you say, because it’s not your truth to name for her. ‘gross.’

/

it’s unsurprising to you when you get signed to the same club team beatrice debuted for two years ago, when she was sixteen. they’re building a franchise around her, bringing in young talent and trading for the world’s best veterans. she’d been on loan abroad for a spell, came back even more lethal, even more deadly — she’s taller, now, and still thin enough trainers are always on her to put on muscle. she spends extra time in the weight room — she spends extra time doing everything — and you’d never tell, but beatrice is the best in the world because she doesn’t allow herself anything else, even when she’s hurting and exhausted.

you have nothing better to do, and you’ve, admittedly, missed her, so you agree to spot her while she does more squats. when you see the weight she racks up you’re glad for the state of the art recovery facilities they have, and for the rest day you have tomorrow. 

she pushes through her first set, her face turning red but her expression perfectly calm, her quarterzip neatly tucked in, and it’s kind of terrifying. ‘you’re kind of terrifying.’

she racks the bar and steps out from under it, takes a big deep breath, shakes out her shoulders. ‘i’m small.’

‘you’re eighteen.’

she considers it. ‘i have to get bigger.’

it’s a razor’s edge, football and greatness: beatrice will train until she can’t; beatrice will eat exactly what she’s supposed to; beatrice will run until she throws up; beatrice will sleep exactly as she’s supposed to, and take all of her recovery seriously, and —

‘after this set, do you want to get a drink?’

‘a drink?’

you laugh at her indignation. ‘yeah, one drink. dinner, maybe? i don’t know any good spots around yet.’

‘oh,’ she says, ‘i don’t really go out, and i don’t drink. but —‘ it takes her a moment — ‘yes, we can. mary and shannon like a place across from the grounds.’

‘is it quinoa bowls?’

she blushes, steps back under the bar. 

‘i want a burger and a cocktail, beatrice. please.’

she does her other set, straining for the last two, unable to keep it off her face. ‘fine,’ she says, out of breath once she finishes, ‘fine.’

/

you’re twenty-one, at a celebration after a championship, and you’re drunk. beatrice is laughing, her hair somehow pulled out of its bun; she’d won the golden ball, which, since the first touch of preseason, seemed inevitable: she is, very concretely, the best in the world. 

‘come dance!’ ashante says, tugs on her hands, and she shakes her head but when you say, ‘yeah, beatrice, come on,’ she sighs and follows you out onto the dance floor. there are plenty of hot boys, and beatrice is beautiful, you can easily admit. she’s weird and a huge nerd — she has a bachelor’s degree in ecological anthropology, which she’d worked on for fun — but you love her. she’s your friend, and you want to celebrate with her. she hasn’t been drinking, so she’s stiff and awkward, even more than usual, in loose slacks and a collarless button down which she lets you unbutton down to the middle of her chest without any fanfare. a few guys walk up to you — beatrice xin, holy shit — and then you’re dancing. it’s easy, after a few shots, to close your eyes and let everything drift away around you. 

but then you hear beatrice say, ‘stop,’ and the guy she was dancing with doesn’t, not quick enough, not immediately, and you see red.

you get kicked out, which only avoids the media because the bouncers let you leave through the back. beatrice clenches her jaw and her hands and your knuckles smart, already bruising.

‘i can handle myself,’ she says, although you see the way her body is trembling.

‘i know,’ you say, because you do. ‘but you don’t have to, not all the time.’

you wait in the alley, shivering, for a car; it’s silent and just after a spurt of rain, and, after a beat, she laughs. ‘did we get into a bar fight?’

you grin over at her. ‘who says we don’t know how to have fun, huh?’

/

‘are you gonna do the pride thing?’

beatrice looks far too calm for being in an ice bath. ’no, not publicly.’

‘yeah, that’s cool,’ you say. ‘mary and shannon are, like, the couple, anyway. marketing has an easy out there.’

she snorts. ‘easy out.’

you roll your eyes. 

‘i’m —‘ she takes a deep breath — ‘i’m a lesbian.’

‘okay,’ you say, and fight the desperate urge to laugh and say yes, beatrice, everyone and their mother knows, that’s why i asked if you were going to be in the pride campaign. ‘obviously, that’s cool with me.’

horrifyingly, she starts to cry. ‘i’ve never said it out loud before.’

she’s twenty-one, so, fair, you guess, but it also makes you so sad. ‘well, now you have. in an ice bath, no less.’

‘yes.’ she sounds a little in awe of herself. ‘i have.’

‘do you, like, want me to hug you?’

she wrinkles her nose. ‘no. but, thank you.’

‘anytime.’ you pause, then try your luck, ‘so can we find you a girlfriend now, or —‘

she splashes you with a flick of water and you could kill her, you really could.

/

‘beatrice!’ you shout into her intercom. ‘let me in!’

it takes about a minute, and you’re about to, like, scale her giant fence or something, but then the gate opens and you drive through. it’s not that you care about her — she makes it hard; you make it hard right back — but she’s your captain and you’re not going to win a fucking world cup if she’s not recovering from surgery.

‘lilith,’ she says, dry, even though it’s a little slurred and she looks wobbly on her crutches.

‘mary and shannon sent me.’ you hold up a bag of food, stupid healthy shit she insists on eating, even when she’s on pain meds. ‘i can knock you over, right now, so you have to let me in.’

‘fine,’ she says, lacking its usual precise clip. you follow her to her kitchen, slowly, while she carefully crutches, exactly how a physical therapist showed her, you’re sure. she’s exhausted, you can tell, her hair down and a little messy, her hoodie crooked on her shoulders, just in a pair of tight nike boxers and a sock on the foot opposite her cast, as if you’d woken her up from a nap.

‘were you sleeping?’

‘i’m on — a lot of medication.’

‘you can go back to sleep, if you want. i can put the food in the fridge and warm it up in a bit?’

she seems to weigh her options, slowly, but her eyes are drifting closed and she sways a little. ‘okay. you can watch anything you want. or leave, if you don’t want to wait.’

‘oh, i’m fully taking advantage of your gorgeous house and your giant tv. i’m not crazy.’

she had ankle surgery two days ago, so you know she really is exhausted. disgustingly, she was watching what looks to be like game film on her tv. ‘disgusting,’ you tell her, and she doesn’t seem to really pay you much mind because she situates her casted ankle on top of a few pillows and then pulls a soft blanket over herself and snuggles down into the couch. she’s asleep almost immediately, and you put on schitt’s creek, just in case she drifts in and out and wakes up. she doesn’t; you have to shake her awake two hours later at a normal dinner time. you warm up her food for her, as promised, and eat your bowl beside her, then get her water and her next dose of pain medication.

‘we’re signing ava silva,’ she says, marginally more awake for a good five minutes. 

ava silva, wunderkind with the worst injury you’ve ever seen; a 9 too. ‘i thought i was replacing shannon.’

‘i’m sure you will,’ beatrice assures you. ‘we need a sub, at least.’

‘you think she’ll be good.’

‘we both know she’s good, lilith.’

she settles back into the couch. ‘you think she’ll be great.’

she smiles a little absently, but genuine all the same. ‘let’s hope so.’

eventually, you wake her up and help her to bed, despite the fact that she tries to do it herself, even up her steep stairs. i’m used to being alone, you understand still. 

she gets situated in her giant, gorgeous bed in her perfect house, all gossamer curtains fluttering in the salt breeze off the ocean. ‘thanks, lilith.’

‘sleep well, beatrice.’

/

(and ava silva, it turns out, is great, although you’d rather die than say it out loud. beatrice stands in front of the full length mirror in the fitting room and smooths down the non-existent wrinkles in her traditional chinese wedding outfit, bright red and embroidered in gold. it’s probably the most incredible piece of clothing you’d ever seen.

‘what do you think?’

it’s an insane question, really. ‘you look… you look really beautiful, beatrice.’

she smiles, shyly; you’re thirty, now, old enough to be able to feel an easy fondness. ‘thank you.’

‘you owe me a burger and many, many cocktails after this, though.’

‘sure, sure.’

if you cry at their wedding while ava stands in a wispy, open-backed dress and smiles so big her eyes almost close and, with steady hands, promises everything to beatrice, to, maybe, your first friend — well, no one says a word.)