Bump, Set, Scoreee-Chapter One
Summary:Despite winning against your team’s biggest rival, you aren’t in the mood to celebrate afterwards, so Olivia takes you under her wing.
Warnings: N/A
A/N: Collab with the amazing @impossiblewolf
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The hard, loud smack of the volleyball colliding with your hand as you serve it never fails to be such a satisfying sound to your ears even with the crowd being as noisy as they are tonight.
Your team was playing against its biggest rival tonight, and the lead your team had on them was slim. Two points, to be exact, and only two more were needed to win the game. As the best server on the team, the coach had just put you back in to finish up the game.
Your serve went straight to the player in the far corner on the other side of the volleyball court. She quickly braced herself and the ball hit her forearms hard enough to make you wince internally as you imagined the nasty red mark that would surface by the end of the play. You watch as her single pass sends the ball back over the net directly to Jocelyn, your fellow teammate protecting the left corner of the court.
“Got it!” She yelled, assuming the proper passing position.
Eyes on the ball, you watch as she passes it to Olivia, who sets the ball to Maya, the middle blocker by the net. Maya jumps in the air like it’s effortless and smacks the ball downward over the net. Your rival’s defense narrowly misses blocking the ball, and it hits the ground with a loud boom.
The triumphant roar from you and your teammates is instant and in unison, the six of you briefly meeting in the middle of your side of the court to give each other a celebratory pat on the back or the waist.
“Nice serve, Y/N/N,” Olivia grins at you, her smile so bright it makes her eyes sparkle. Her hand when she congratulates you comes to your hip, her fingers curling slightly, as she draws you closer to her by an inch.
The moment is over in seconds but it doesn't matter. Your heart flip flops so hard in your chest you swear it falls to your stomach as you grin back, suddenly breathless.
“Thanks,” you reply, doing your best not to betray your excitement.
“Hey Liv!” You hear one of the girls from the opposing team — Calleigh, you think her name is — say as you and your teammates get back into position for the next play. “You should come over tonight and grab my hips like that.”
Olivia’s back is to you at this point, so you don’t get to see how she rolls her eyes good naturedly at the rival player’s flirtatious remark. Instead, a familiar ache blossoms in your chest at the reminder of just how out of your league Olivia is. She’s the captain of the team. A jock, according to many. Others called her a player because of her looks and popularity. And, of course, the ones who have kissed her say she has incredible lips. Calleigh was one of the lucky ones to have experienced this for herself. She and Olivia had been caught making out at the regional tournament last year. That little make out session had been one of many.
Olivia could have anyone she wanted, and had yet to make a move on anyone in a while. Rumor was that she had slept through enough of the rival teams that she finally wanted to look inward. Which to you meant one of the prettier, funnier, smarter girls that filled your team.
“This could be your last play of the night, girls!” Your coach yells from the sideline, abruptly pulling you from your thoughts. “Make it count!”
You take a deep breath, trying to rid your thoughts of Olivia Benson for more than a split second. All that mattered right now was winning, and showing your team that you were a key part of that win.
“Let’s do this guys!” Olivia yells as the rival team serves what could be the final ball of the night.
Their serve doesn’t go as far as yours did. Maya passes it back over the net with a rather anticlimactic whack against her forearms and a player in the back row of the opposing side passes it to Calleigh, the best setter on their team, who sets it to the player directly in front of Olivia.
Bad move.
The girl goes to simply tap it over the net, which would usually result in a point for the team, but Olivia is quicker. She tips the ball back over the net, just over the player’s head, and you and her watch as Calleigh narrowly misses diving for the ball. Olivia quickly looks at the referee standing guard on her right and they signal that your team got the point.
The crowd went wild and so did you, Olivia, and your fellow teammates on the court, the six of you meeting in the middle for a celebratory hug, where you feel Olivia’s hand resting heavy in your back and practically burning a hole through your jersey.
“Great job guys!” Olivia yells over the chaos of the crowd, a proud grin on her face as she looks at everyone. You think you imagine it, but her gaze seems to land on you for a moment longer than everyone else.
For a moment, her general praise pushes away the insecurity that Calleigh’s flirtatious remark had caused. But as your team lines up to congratulate the rival team on a good game, you see Calleigh still looking at her. It’s not long before they’re close enough to exchange whispers, and you see Olivia laugh at something Calleigh whispers in her ear. Her laugh reaches your ears a moment later, and the sound is so sweet that a pit forms in your stomach. You rush to the locker room before anyone else can see your crestfallen face.
———————-
The team throws a party like they always do whenever they win against this particular team. It’s the biggest party of the year and people spill out of every room of the chosen house. There’s always alcohol involved but it’s usually only a couple of teammates who are dumb enough to get wasted on it. Everyone else usually dabbles in it while you and Olivia tend to steer clear of the substance. You have heard rumors that Olivia’s mom is the drunk professor who is currently on probation, but you are too scared to ask her for the truth. Even with the drunk friends, you usually always find the parties to be a lot of fun.
Not tonight though.
Tonight, you can’t stop hearing Calleigh’s words in your head and can’t stop seeing the way she looked at Olivia. After having a crush on her for months and not having the guts to do anything about it, convinced that Olivia was out of your league and simply didn’t feel the same way — despite how friendly she always was toward you — being around a group of people is the last place you want to be.
Suddenly, too many emotions are running through your head that you don't know how to handle. The thrum of anxiety is building in the part of your brain you desperately try to ignore. You can't tell if it’s your brain closing in on you or the wall, but suddenly the house feels cramped and overheated. You look around, trying to find solace and your gaze lands on the table littered with alcohol. The ghost of its taste coats your tongue, making your fingers twitch for a moment before you curl them into a fist.
‘Not today. Not today.’ You think to yourself as you turn away.
Jocelyn nudges Olivia’s shoulder as she notices you reappear from the corner you had retreated to. Olivia hums an acknowledgment but her eyes are already tracking you. She has been frantically trying to find you since she got to the party, and now that she has she refuses to stop.
“Looks like someone’s not in the mood to party,” Jocelyn observes with a hint of disappointment partly directed towards you as well as the way she notices Olivia looking at you. “Maybe a few drinks could unscrew whatever has her so wound up.”
“Not everyone needs two shots of Tequila to keep mentally sane like you,” Olivia replies before pushing away from her spot on the wall. “I got her.”
“Y/N/N!” She says over the noise of the music and teenagers talking as she pushes through the thickest part of the crowd.
Your head turns at the sound of her voice against your will.
“Y/N,” Olivia exhales once she reaches you. “Where are you going?”
Her gaze is soft as she studies you from head to toe. She quickly notices how flushed you look, and she can’t tell if it’s from how warm the house is or because of the anxiety that’s beginning to show itself in the way you subtly squirm.
Finally, you stuff your hands in the pockets of your varsity jacket as you shrug. “I-I don’t know, to be honest. Home, probably. I’m just not in the party mood tonight.”
“Let me walk you home,” Olivia says.
You shake your head briefly as your gaze momentarily shifts to the floor. “You don’t have to do that. Stay and have fun. I’ll be alright getting home.”
Olivia leans a little closer as if she were about to tell you a secret, the sound of her heart pounding in her ears drowning out the noise of the party. “I want to,” she insists, her voice a little quieter, more personal. “Please.”
You swear your heart and your lungs simultaneously forget how to function as the smell of Olivia suddenly wraps itself around you. For a moment, all you can do is stare dumbly at her before you finally snap back to your senses and nod.
“Okay,” you reply dumbly.
You let out a trembling breath as her hand comes to rest low on your back to usher you out of the crowded party. She looks over her shoulder towards where she had been standing with Jocelyn and finds her and Maya watching. Maya smiles a little too knowingly for her own good and waves, briefly holding her thumb and pinky finger out in the shape of a cellphone. Olivia nods once and flashes her a smile.
The cold nighttime air the two of you step out into is a welcomed relief, and you inhale loudly but slowly through your nose, exhaling out of your mouth. Immediately, you feel some of the anxiety begin to fall away, and your thoughts begin to clear up.
“Better?” Olivia asks softly, and you nod.
“Yeah,” you sigh, running an anxious hand through your hair. You miss the way Olivia’s eyes immediately fall to your exposed neck before your hair falls back down. “I love a good party, but sometimes they’re just a lot, you know?”
“Yeah,” Olivia chuckles briefly.
The two of you begin to walk in the direction of your apartment, your shoulders nearly touching with each step. There is plenty of room on the sidewalk, but Olivia doesn't seem to care, only wanting to be close to your warmth. It isn’t long before Olivia stuffs her hands in her pockets to protect them from the cold. It seems like the air is only going to gain more of a bite to it as the night progresses. Definitely not the ideal weather to be walking home in, but at least you’re not alone.
“Where’d you go after we high-fived the rival team?” Olivia finally asks, breaking the silence, glancing sideways at you. “I couldn’t find you.”
“I thought I’d get a headstart on freshening up and getting changed,” you lie, suppressing the wrenching in your gut that resurfaces at the memory. “You know how the locker room gets after games.”
Olivia doesn’t buy your response despite the amount of truth it holds. She shakes her head briefly and, despite the cold, tucks some hair behind her ear.
“That girl, Calleigh,” she starts, still looking at you. “She’s really nice and all, but there’s nothing going on between us. What happened last year was just a one-time thing.”
You blink at the abrupt change in topic before you frown a little, studying her. “Why are you telling me this? It doesn’t matter to me.”
“I don’t—I don’t know,” Olivia smiles nervously, looking down at the sidewalk as she kicks at an imaginary rock. “I guess because I have a crush on someone and I haven’t told anybody, but I wanted somebody to know I’m not looking for a fling.”
The disappointment in your gut is instant. It’s heavy, heavy enough to bring your steps to a screeching halt. The anxiety that had started to dissipate comes back darker, hungrier, threatening to eat you alive.
“Wow,” you say a bit breathlessly, a strained smile with an unknown emotion attached to it briefly surfacing. “Must, uhm…must be really nice for them.”
Olivia swallows before she nods, her stomach feeling like an enclosure with a hundred panicking butterflies searching for a way out. “Yeah, I’d say it is pretty nice for you.”
“What?” You question immediately, convinced that you didn’t hear her right.
“It’s you, Y/N,” she admits softly. “It has been for months.”
Out of any moment to remember rumors of someone, the cold streets of New York is not a location you had thought of. People thought of Olivia as being a bit of a player, of allegedly sleeping with almost the entire rival team. As her friend, you find those rumors hard to believe. But a small part of you wonders if there’s some truth behind it to be feeling the urge to pull back, to put some walls up. Putting walls up is how you deal with everything, though. It is safer to push people out instead of letting them in.
“I don’t want to be just another girl for your scorecard, Liv,” you say with a hint of bitterness. You see the moment your words hit Olivia, the way her eyes squint a little as if you had physically hit her to cause pain.
She steps closer to you, the two of you practically standing toe to toe. “You aren’t just some dash or number on a nonexistent scorecard, Y/N. You’re the trophy.”
You feel the tears surface immediately from her words, the sincerity behind them completely blindsiding you. You part your lips to respond, but your brain comes up empty, so you simply lick your lips instead and roll them together.
Despite the cold air, you feel some heat blossom in your cheeks when you notice Olivia’s gaze drop to your lips.
“My place is closer than yours, if I remember right,” Olivia points out. “Why don’t we head to my place instead? Either just for a little while or overnight is completely up to you, but maybe we could talk some more?”
“Yeah, sure, that sounds good,” you nod, a smile tugging at the corners of your lips.
This time, when you start walking again, Olivia holds out her hand as an invitation. You hesitate for a moment, but then curl your fingers through hers. She grins so broadly that your stomach flips. Olivia shoves your intertwined hands in her coat pocket to keep them warm, forcing you to walk with your shoulder pressing against her. Your face feels like a furnace now, and a small part of you is grateful it’s dark so Olivia can’t see just how red your cheeks are.
When you get to her apartment, your hand is clammy in hers. You try to pull away to wipe it off on your jeans but she only grips it tighter. With her free hand, she slides her key in the lock and pushes the door open. The apartment is dark when you enter, and you only get a couple of steps in when your foot hits something with a clink.
Olivia swears, and her hand releases yours as she rushes to pick up the vodka bottle you had accidentally knocked over. She flicks on a lamp to dimly illuminate the living room that is covered with alcohol bottles of various types and sizes. Her face turns a beet red as she rushes to pick them all up.
“They’re from my mom,” Olivia explains in a strained voice. “I-I know you don’t drink anymore, and I wouldn’t have brought you here if I had known it had gotten this bad.” Her words are rushed now as she refuses to look at you. “I’m really sorry.”
Again, you’re caught off guard with the knowledge that Olivia pays enough attention to you day in and day out to notice such a thing.
“Liv,” you say, grabbing her wrist gently, which forces her to look up at you, “I’m fine. The bottles clearly aren’t your fault.”
“My room is alcohol free, I promise,” Olivia says, taking a deep breath to compose herself. She deposits the bottles into the trash. Some of them sound like they break upon impact, but that’s an issue neither of you are particularly worried about.
She reaches for your hand again, and you walk behind her until you get to a room at the end of the hall. For a moment, you feel a bubble of nerves burst in your chest because there was no way you ever imagined you would be entering Olivia Benson’s bedroom. Before you can overthink it, she is pulling you inside and shutting the door.
Your eyes scan the room when she turns on a couple of lamps. Her walls are filled with a few posters of Dire Straits, women’s volleyball, the Empire State Building, and various group pictures of the team from freshman year until now. As you walk further in her room to investigate the group photos more closely, you notice your absence in many of them. You’re not a big fan of having your photo taken, so your absence doesn’t hurt your feelings. But given the scene you first walked into, maybe it was time to put aside that dislike so Olivia could have more physical memories of you, of someone who actually cares about her.
Her bookcase catches your eye next. A couple of shelves are filled with used books, and a third shelf has a record player with a collection of records that spans the rest of the shelf. Your first instinct is to walk over to touch it, but you would never forgive yourself if you actually wrecked it somehow, so you stay where you are and keep your hands in your pockets.
“You’ve got a nice room,” you say as Olivia takes off her coat and hangs it in her closet.
“Thanks,” she smiles briefly. “Not much to look at though.”
“Not from where I stand,” you reply before you can stop yourself.
Your cheeks instantly get hot as Olivia blinks, visibly caught off guard by your words. You only start to smile shyly when you notice her blush.
“Didn’t know you were the flirty type, Y/N/N.”
“Me either,” you chuckle nervously. You’ve made the occasional yet playful flirtatious remark to your friends in the past but you never had the opportunity to actually flirt with anyone in a more romantic manner.
Olivia pats on her bed for you to sit and you slowly plop on the edge of the bed, Olivia sitting close enough beside you that your thighs almost touch. You keep your hands in your lap, fiddling anxiously with your fingers.
“I like you too, you know,” you admit slowly. “In a crush sort of way. I can’t stop thinking about you when you’re not around and when I see you, you’re all I can focus on. And…god when you get close, like this, or you do that cute little thing when you flip your hair… my-my brain just…short circuits.” You laugh briefly.
Olivia reaches over and lays her hand over yours, squeezing gently. You steal a glance her way but refuse to lift your head, which doesn’t matter in the end since she places a finger beneath your chin and lifts it. You swallow nervously, but are met with a smile on her face and a twinkle in her eye that makes your heart melt.
“You don’t have to explain it to me. I go through the same struggles everyday,” she admits, her thumb slowly stroking your knuckles. “In case I wasn’t clear earlier, I want you to be mine.” Finally letting those words come out into the open is enough to make her pause for a moment, her gaze suddenly portraying how nervous she is too. “If you’ll have me, that is,” she added quietly, her gaze falling to your jacket.
“If I’ll have you?” You ask, your tone gentle yet full of disbelief, a huff of laughter forcing its way through. “You’re Olivia Benson, captain of the volleyball team and one of the smartest people in school. I’m lucky just to get to call you my friend. It’s me who should be asking that.”
“Well I’m asking, and I hope months of pining for you won’t end with an answer that includes rejection."
Your face grows warm again at her words, and it feels like flames are licking at your skin where she’s touching you. You gulp, trying to form words when you finally whisper, “Of course I’ll have you. But I’m curious, what does being yours include, exactly?”
Your lungs suddenly tighten when Olivia reaches over with her free hand and cups your cheek. “For tonight, it includes staying over and letting me hold you until we fall asleep,” she says, her voice a little unsteady from anxiety.
Just the mere idea of getting to do that with you has her heart in her throat and the butterflies in her belly threatening to make her fly away.
You smile at her simple request and Olivia visibly relaxes as you press your face a little harder into her palm. Your own butterflies are making your stomach vibrate with a mixture of nerves and excitement at the idea of sharing a bed with Olivia.
“I can do that,” you reply.
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