This is the story that I wrote for the @fallforcs event. I live in Northeast Florida, and we don’t often see many of the traditional markers of fall, like cooler weather and turning leaves, until much later in the year. But one fall tradition that is universal to the south is football. I grew up on football, and I knew it was fall when the regular season games started.
When I had to pick a fall topic to write a story about, football was one of the first things that came to mind. I must send a HUGE thank you to my beta @jonirobinson64. She not only helped me focus and fine-tune the story but also helped me pick the title. She was such a joy to work with, and I am really glad the mods assigned her to be my beta.
I also want to thank the mods of Fall for CS. This was a fun event. I loved the blind date with a fanfic concept. I hope it will be repeated in the future.
Thanks also goes to my artist, @nicole-nikla who created the lovely banner for this story.
Summary: When her son takes up football, Emma Swan starts attending games to support him. She just wants to cheer on her kid, but all the other moms want to set her up with the team’s coach, Killian Jones. No matter how good looking he is, she hates set-ups. But can she really resist his charms once she starts getting to know him better?
Rating: T for mild language and some light petting (nothing explicit)
Trigger Warning: brief mention of deaths of minor characters in the past (this is an AU, but Killian still lived through some of same tragedies that he does in canon)
Emma cringed as she watched Henry get tackled for the third time that day. He had insisted on playing football this year, and it was the first extracurricular activity his dad Neal supported and was willing to pay for. So, despite her concerns about injury, she hadn’t tried very hard to talk her son out of playing. She was just happy there was finally something that allowed her ex to connect with his son.
Henry was good at the sport when he paid attention, but today was not one of those days. He kept looking to the bleachers to see when his dad was going to show up, and the defensive players were taking advantage of his distraction. Luckily he hadn’t given up any points… yet. Being one of the fastest runners at his school, he’d been given the position of Running Back. His slight stature and ability to weave through obstacles had dubbed him the team’s secret weapon. The other team wouldn’t see him coming until it was too late. But he had to avoid getting tackled to make that work, and today he was doing a very poor job of it.
The coach blew his whistle. “Swan! Get your head in the game! Our first real matchup is Thursday. We need you focused!”
Emma couldn’t help but swoon just a little at the football coach’s accented speech. His elegant tone made even the most mundane platitudes sound exciting. And, even if she thought he might be granting a little too much importance to a game played by middle school kids, she appreciated his motivation tactics. He never lashed out in anger or tried to embarrass the kids. Instead he reminded them how dependent they were on each other.
“Sorry Coach Jones,” Henry called back.
“Don’t apologize to me. Apologize to your teammates.” He blew his whistle again. “Everyone bring it in. Let’s do a water break. The weather hasn’t caught up with the date yet.”
Emma fanned herself as she silently agreed with him. The weather in their North Georgia town was still hot, despite the September date. She was ready for fall and cooler temperatures.
“Oh my god, I know. He’s so hot, right?” came a voice from her left. Emma looked over to see Ariel Seafarer, whose daughter Melody was the team’s Kicker. Ariel was a beautiful woman with thick red hair, creamy smooth skin, and bright green eyes. She had a personality to match, being one of the kindest people Emma had ever met, outside of her sister-in-law Mary Margaret. She was also very happily married to her husband Eric for fifteen years, so why was she ogling the coach?
