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elane-in-the-shadows · 4 years ago

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Red Queen Secret Santa 2020: Nightmare (affectionately) - Part 1

A/N: This is my present for @evangeline-of-montfort and the first part of my Evangeline soccer AU! I would’ve liked to wrap it up in one story but I felt to better do the characters justice, I need a few more pages and time to brew over it. Bear with me until the next part arrives, I promise not to make you wait too long.

This idea was largely inspired PVRIS’s recent album Use Me which is why the record is alluded to in the text as I’ll also name-drop all the songs’ titles en passant.

PS: Nightmare is not on the album but a song on PVRIS’s last year’s EP Hallucinations and I couldn’t pass the chance for the wordplay and thus made it the title of whole story.

Happy holidays!

Also on Wattpad and AO3

Part 2

Mare

The chance flashes before me like a lightning strike; not stunning but charging me as Iral passes me the ball and it comes to me. I don’t dribble, don’t let the opponent grasp what I see. I kick immediately to Captain Samos who meets my eye as much as the ball, sharing the moment with me.

Consequently, she evades the opponent’s 9 in a move so simple and elegant as if she were dancing, right before she shoots, still beyond the penalty box yet straight through the gap in the defense and before the goalkeeper can react to prevent our scoring.

Captain Samos roars, once, and so do I. Just as in sync, our team gathers to cheer with her. There I’m slower, keeping it to a half-hearted hug and a few high fives. Still the newbie come from another club, but part of the win.

No time for more connecting when the match goes on and already, the captain emerges from the embrace cluster to shoo her team back into positions. She jerks her chin and a shiver runs down my spine as I realize it’s for me. I don’t know what to make of it. Acknowledgement? Praise? Or rather another, “I’m watching you, Barrow”, as to remind me she is not only the captain, but also the central conductor of the team and no matter how well I filled the same role in my old club’s soccer team, I have no place to challenge Evangeline Samos’s lead.

In the locker room, I wonder if I could’ve passed to another player, and avoid Samos entirely. I couldn’t have made the goal myself from my point, but at least I’d have been recognized for good preparation if Samos’s textbook shoot didn’t grab everyone’s awe by the throat.

She really has enough of that, mine included. Hailing from prestigious families, she’s the star of the Archeon Soccer Club, a talent able to pick pro-team scouts instead of the other way around. But her stardom begins to outshine the rest of the club like we’re the darkness between when –

I startle embarrassingly for a mere hand on my shoulder, a proof my grumbling went too deep when among a group. I can’t help it; I’m frozen even once I’ve turned. Speak of the devil, of course it’s her, the captain.

The perfect and pristine model athlete, from the curve of her thighs, to defined abs and strong arms and not a hair out of place. I’m envious of her magic tricks to fix her hair so short after the match, my short curls would take ages just to get dry.

Not that I intend to bother with her generally elaborate coiffure, with her long ponytail bleached a silvery-white the black roots shift into through carefully dyed, dark-greyish transitions.

She snorts and I cough, finally releasing the breath I’d been holding.

“Good work, Barrow”, she says with a smirk I can’t determine as ironic or genuine which reminds me that I’ve gaped enough. It’s her method, reaching out while never making you sure of your footing, encourage while letting you know her doubts. Like when she offered to drive me to training or matches in her car – our ways overlap expediently – and then never talks with me like I’m not worth the attention.

Too bad I excel at this game as well. A sneer I can return, just like her resolute posture. “I do my best for the team, Captain,” I reply.

She frowns, detecting my tease. Maybe a mistake. Maybe I should bow and flatter to rise in the team but such had never been my strength. I only know success by demanding my due. Now she leans forward, stepping ever closer as if to put me back in place.

When she lays a hand on my chest, I expect her to shove.

I don’t fall back an inch. Only her head inclines to speak in my ear as my heart beats faster with her hand pressing against my collarbones.

“If you want my position, Nightmare,” she whispers, “you’ll have to take it.”

I flinch at the blighting of my name as she shifts aside, smiling sweetly. “Don’t call me that,” I quietly retort, “not among the team.” I’m all too aware of the teammates around us and yet I don’t scan their reactions to our exchange and my hot face. I’ll be glad enough if by tomorrow, not everyone calls me Nightmare.

Her smile doesn’t waver at all. “Sure,” she mouths unperturbed and leaves me standing, back in the game that’s both soccer and not soccer at all.

Evangeline

On autumn Sunday mornings, I enjoy running at the break of dawn when the streets are so empty as if they belong to me alone. I may exert yet it feels like freedom on my strictly scheduled Sundays. After running comes styling for the nearly endless family brunch with Grandmother Éva and Aunt Sofía, followed by the weekly soccer match, the team meeting aka fastfood feast, and another formal dinner while I’m to excel on all accounts, which is naturally impossible.

Grandmother resents the sportive break in showing me off to Mother’s and Father’s business connections in finance and industry, as I resent missing the team’s more outgoing after-match events. There were …the parties in our lake house but they grew rare since last year, like so much. Formal dinners aren’t what they used to be when hardly anyone besides the most loyal friends attend anymore, and even the brunch is make belief the Samos shipyard isn’t in decline.

Sofía and Grandmother are the worst at it, treating brunch and dinner like a family tradition when it’s always only revolved about the prestige they could reap from the family’s success, having never been their own, but always swept up in the gearing of a company that exclusively demanded from, but not encouraged them.

All they see is more reason for “networking”, as Grandmother, Sofía and my parents call their matchmaking, when my college fund was depleted for my brother and the company, as if they weren’t the ones who decided Tolly is more likely to save the company instead of giving me the chance.

Once more checking my straps, one more breathe before I break into a run. I grind my teeth for the first minute until I get used to the cold and the pace. I endure it, as I endure the stress at home. I welcome the first as a distraction from the latter.

I can’t help resenting the company, can’t ignore my aversion to ever work for it. It is not my brother who I’ll always love more that envy, though nowadays I’m almost glad when he doesn’t come to visit and I suffer our family’s reminiscences of our better times alone. He’s expected to present his efforts at connecting in college which means bringing at potential date for me.

Of course, they never call it that, as if my future lies in marriage, certainly not so soon, but what options do I have when Father won’t give both of us a company to rule? I hear Sofía’s voice and want to scream but the exertion does the job of numbing my anger just as well. Pretending must run in my blood, as Grandmother can also very well feign ignorance if I simply allude to the truth of my romantic intentions.

At least Tolly showed his instincts when such a setup couldn’t be avoided, presenting friends not any more interested in “economically advantageous relationships” than me.

Moments like that remind me how close I’ve always been to Tolly, smiles and eye-rolls our secret language. Without him, I have no ally when I can’t keep a straight face as Father rants about Lesbos and greek politics once more.

Tolly played soccer with me first, passing me the ball I never let go of. We both joined clubs, he for fun and friends, me for passion. And ever-growing ambition.

With our money gone, I’ll need a sports scholarship to study and later get a prestigious job, like a proper Samos. Or I give a fuck about the crumbles of our past glory and seek it by becoming a totally unladylike soccer pro.

Imagining my family’s faces at that news first lets me giggle, then stumble in my tracks, just for a second. If the idea hasn’t been growing more and more serious lately, I would’ve burst out laughing.

Elane certainly would’ve, her chirp-like giggling my favourite melody. The memories of her are those I hold dear, where Father dreams of vanished successes. Hallucinations both.

I take in the sight of the prism of sunrise and wish Elane was still with me. She hated my routine, both for the early hour and the work-out itself, but she’d drive with me one town away from home nonetheless, up to the parking lot before we separate so she could wait for me in a bakery-café, sipping hot chocolate until I was done and could join her for breakfast.

Our only dates not in the dead of night in her garden and yet as much out of sight.

In my now loveless days with her in boarding school in paradise – Finland – I can only imagine the feel of her hand, my hand tracing along her spine. There’s just me, the crisp morning, and the performances ahead of me.

Catching my breath, I finish my lap at my car and don’t want to drive home at all. I want to check on Barrow, my reluctant driving companion living in a village along the way, to invite her to jog with me, or her to invite me to her Sunday morning, to pick on me in her very own way, anything but to crouch back under the dead weight of expectations.

I need several more breaths before the illusions of escape vanish and my lungs relax. I lean back against the car. What a foolish notion – the weight has never left; I only need to wait for the afternoon to pick up Barrow for our match.

It can’t come soon enough, but it will come.

“Good to be alive but I hate my life” – I try to restrain from humming along to the song playing in my car, try to evade Barrow’s glances attempting to figure me out, my choice of music.

“Who can’t relate?”, she says with a shrug. A trace of a smile hides in her face as she settles in, stretching her legs and putting her ankle boots up to the dashboard. She fits there surprisingly well, thanks to her short stature. I faux-glare at her, long used to this display. I can’t refuse her the repose, not when I can hardly find the words when once more, I try to unravel the familiar secret of her perfume.

I could ask, but never do. I could tell so such but stay silent. I keep on pretending yet also want her to see me. It’s tiring to no end and still each small but true guess elates me.

Barrow, on the other hand, remains unknowable to me with her eternal frown. If my resting bitch face is noticed, for good or bad, it’ll always be inferior to Barrow’s. Perfection in its own way; perfection my eyes are ineluctably drawn to at every chance the traffic lets me.

I chew my lips at the next song, with its “love like a loaded gun”, to distract myself from brushing Mare’s hand as I use the hand brake. From laying my hand on her thigh. From –

I catch her gaze and avert it, my heart rushing as I rush back into traffic.

Barrow’s ever-apt perception didn’t miss it, of course not, the same perception that makes her so good a player she desires my position, my rank.

I can’t give it up, not when my future hangs from it, but – if she desired something else –

Foolish. Foolish. I’m sick with yearning from missing my ex-girlfriend and listening to sad sapphic songs that make me long to kiss any girl’s lips –

“Already know how to use me today, Captain?” Barrow breaks into my confusion and I don’t know if I want to thank or throttle her. Use me.

Good we’re just arriving at the club house. I lean back and flash her my widest grin. “I always know what to do with my team. Forgotten the tactic?”

Barrow isn’t intimidated. “Thought you’ve come up with something better by now.”

“Dream on, Nightmare. I’m still the number 10.”

She sighs dramatically. “Too bad I’m an 11.” And then she – we – burst out laughing, our sound both harmonious and discordant, different from Elane and me, but as engrossing. Even when the laughter dies down, the mood lingers and I touch her brown hand before I can stop myself.

“Want to come running with me next week?” I ask and don’t curse myself for it, for once.

She is silent. Ridiculously blinking for seconds as if it’s funny. “Weird way to ask for a date,” she blurts out.

Whatever we had for a few seconds is gone. “Are you fucking joking?”, I spit, my voice low like a hiss.

Her mouth opens and closes, stunned quiet.

I can’t decide whether to berate her or scream at her as calmly explaining how terrible a joke it were is out of the question. “Are you fucking joking?!” I repeat, louder, and finally shame begins to bloom on her face.

If only she took me seriously, she could know it to be true. And yet – how can saying the truth out loud feel so disrespectful? I wish, I wish –

“Gimme a minute,” I mutter and storm out of the car.

I am truly a coward. I don’t speak to her until the match begins.

@lilyharvord @mareshmallow @elliemarchetti @samanthaslytherin @redqueenetwork @farleydiana

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