requests; open. more info in ‘about me’

focus: ♡= sfw ♥︎=nsfw

if both are tagged it means it is a mix of both, but read tags + summaries!

some fics will be cross-posted to my ao3; summerlix, if so, links are in the post!

Player Pairings

➤LUCY x ONA

hardest of hearts ongoing ♡︎♥︎ chapter 1+2 chapter 3 chapter 4 chapter 5 chapter 6 chapter 7 chapter 8 chapter 9 chapter 10 chapter 11

greatest in the league collab with @marchaprilmaybe ♡︎♥︎

➤LEAH x KEIRA

don’t touch, I’ll never cross the line ♥︎

➤LUCY x ONA x KEIRA

better than revenge ♡︎♥︎ pt 1/3 pt 2/3 pt3/3

Player x Reader one-shots

➤KEIRA WALSH

princess treatment ♡︎♥︎

captain’s superstar ♥︎

lipstick and lace ♥︎

➤LUCY BRONZE

dirty talking ♥︎

lasting impressions ♥︎

➤PATRI GUIJARRO

summer forever ♡︎

Alone, Ona wakes from her dream with a fright. Her body sweats out onto the sheets beneath, trembling in the darkness. 

She doesn’t check the time. Doesn’t need to.

She lies deathly still, agonisingly aware of her own heartbeat. One. Two. Three.

One. Oh my god. Two- Three.

She throws her sheets to the side, blinds herself with her bedside lamp, before rummaging deep in her drawer. Finally, she feels glass, just two small vials. Why had she kept them? She isn’t sure. Saving them? For someone or something? 

In the bathroom, she uncaps them both, hardly breathing and a bit heady as a result. Her hand shakes, the extractor fan whirs ceaselessly. 

The sharp chemical smell almost knocks her back. 

She feels, remembers, the urge, the kick, the euphoria, the fear, the tears. 

She tips the contents down the sink. Though typically more eco-conscious than that, it was truthfully, the last concern on her mind.

She takes the empty vials to the kitchen, smashing them to pieces in a doubled-over ziplock bag. Puts that in another bag. Trash. Scrubs her hands clean with dish soap, until they are scratched raw, until all that’s left is the suffocating tightness in her chest. 

She finds herself heaving for breath over the sink, a hurricane in her throat, clutching the counter and waiting until she finds the strength to bring herself to the couch. There she sleeps. Not well, not peacefully, but the sun rises again a few hours later.

Because for the first time in a long time, she has something to lose.

Summer comes with its blossoms and shoots, a home to the air and a life to her skin that didn’t exist in the winter months. Sleeping is harder; she can’t weigh herself down with blankets, and her life has yet again found a monotonous rhythm of work, and friends, and Lucy. Their last parting was sweet; a morning spent lazing in bed, shaking off the tension of the previous night’s conversation. 

Lucy comforted her further, said all the right things, and Ona gave into it. For snapshots of time, she felt truly safe. In fact, she had felt surprisingly good about the entire ordeal, considering how resolved she once was to never run into any details with Lucy. 

But the past had a funny way of creeping back around, of hinging itself to the things and people that mattered most to her. Lucy knew, but that was only the first step; now they had to acknowledge what it meant, and whether Ona was willing to face her fears. 

She’d been running, for so long, trying to exist in people’s peripheral and in the margins of her own life. All that had led her to was here: nestled deep in someone’s heart, clinging on desperately like the borrowed time had played them for fools. 

And it had. 

It had made a mess of Ona, just as she thought she might be cured, because now, she can’t imagine a life without Lucy. And that is an unnerving feeling—to be reliant. 

The shift was palpable, and Ona had felt it the moment she woke the morning after their lengthy conversation. Maybe it was Lucy’s agitation she sensed, but she had no courage to push the conversation further. Neither of them did, because it risked detonating the miraculous sanctuary built between them. 

But was it really accidental? When every moment they’d shared since the very beginning felt like a lifetime of want and longing culminated, every word spoken with acute intentionality, every touch meant to heal and renew.

What they had couldn’t exist any longer in the margins, or in some liminal space where they didn’t have to address it, and even Ona knows this. It had already burst apart at the seams, flooded her system. And they were both far too honest in cadence to pretend any differently.

To make matters worse, she has been keeping something from Lucy. Not a fact of her past, of her future. The justification she found is that she is letting it unravel in her own mind before making Lucy aware, but nonetheless, she is feeling horribly guilty. 

Most poisonous of all, Ona has been thinking heavily on her uncanny ability to always choose the wrong path. Maybe this time will be different, she thinks. Maybe. Hopefully. This. Time.

Lucy invites her out for a walk and lunch. It dawns on her that maybe the other day hadn’t even been the hard part. This would be. 

The day is electric blue, the sun stiflingly bright. She brings Coco, who seems overjoyed to be in the car, nosing at the fresh air blowing in from the cracked-open window. 

Her emotions do a multitude of switches while she drives, and as she parks up on the gravel, she just hopes for some kind of catharsis by the end of it all. 

Lucy beams when she sees her, and Ona feels now more than ever that Lucy’s face is all she seems to know. She looks so different outdoors; more confident, less reserved, even though a more reserved Lucy is merely a personal one. And Ona adored her private smile, the softer way she spoke when they were holding each other and there was nothing to hide or run from.

“I’ve never been here before.” Ona says, holding onto Lucy’s arm menially, while Coco trails behind Narla and they test how far ahead they can pad in front before Lucy calls them back. It’s a quiet footpath, surrounded by dry grass and high trees that rustle in the gentle wind. 

“No? It’s a really nice route. Narla loves going for a little swim so I always take her here when it’s hot.”

Lucy glances at her, shifting her arm out of Ona’s grasp to put it around her shoulders instead. A firm hand, keeping her closer than perhaps she’d like to be. “You look a bit tired today.” 

“A little. But I’m okay.” Ona replies earnestly, leaning her head against Lucy, blinking her eyes shut and realising just how heavy they really are.

They walk on.

After some time, Lucy speaks. “I’ve been thinking about you.” 

Ona raises her brows, humming with curiosity.

“Just about you. I mean I’m always thinking about you, but especially since the other night.”

The inevitable. “You don’t need to worry about me.” Ona soothes quietly, keeping her head down.

“I’m not worried. I just...” Lucy cuts herself off, but it’s not from harsh restraint, rather, a lack of appropriate words. Wrapped in tenderness, she finds, “I feel a lot for you.”

Ona knows it too well. Whatever Lucy meant by it. To feel a lot was to be taken by something you can’t quite control. “Thank you,” she murmurs, knowing it was from a place of empathy, and she can’t find the words to express her own a lot feelings.

They find a small, private riverbank, where Narla wastes no time in bounding for the water, her small body wading only a meter in before she’s paddling eagerly towards her favourite orange ball.

Ona grins at the sight, even more at her more apprehensive boy who takes some serious persuasion from Narla’s excitement to join her. 

“So sweet, aren’t they?” Lucy smiles, her arm still across Ona’s shoulder, Ona’s now around her waist. She slips her other arm against Lucy’s front, tugging her in for a side-hug.

Ona is quiet, her dread a perpetual mood that she thought she had hid well from Lucy. 

“Everything okay?” Lucy asks finally, without overwhelming urgency.

Ona nods once, her smile fading to something tenser but still present.

She’d like to just stay here, for a moment longer. It was really quite perfect…so peaceful…

Only the periodic trill of a bird breaks their devoted silence, and Ona closes her eyes again, feeling only the breeze on her face and the jolt of Lucy’s body when she flings the ball.

“There is something I wanted to tell you.” Lucy says casually, and Ona feels her suddenly rapid pulse electrify her back to life.

“Yes?” She answers, her hands still looped atop Lucy’s hips.

“I don’t know if I mentioned it or not, but I applied for a job in London. And…I got it.”

Ona pauses for a long moment, as Lucy steps forward to collect Narla’s ball in the thrower and toss it downstream once more.

“What does that mean?” She finds, unable to read whether Lucy was softening a bigger blow or if this was all she had to say.

Lucy purses her lips, not uneasily, but she seems to second-guess what Ona’s reaction might be. “I’m thinking of taking it. It’s so much better than my current one, I’ll actually get to plan my hours so I can hopefully get more time to myself.”

“You should go for it then.” Ona says, half relieved that it wasn’t anything too serious, or maybe she was too preoccupied with her own awaiting confession to really process it. “If it will be good for you.”

“I know, I want something new, but...I wanted to speak to you first.”

Lucy would overhaul a whole life plan for her? Ona feels her heart tremor, her breath catch in her throat. Unable to keep it hidden any longer, she speaks timidly, “I have something to tell you, as well.”

Lucy turns sharply, an attempt at sounding composed. “Go on.”

Ona wavers, of course, because now she actually has to do the thing of saying something difficult. Something she isn't even quite sure of herself, or maybe she's only unsure because it was much easier to not think too hard about Lucy’s reaction when she wasn’t standing right beside her. When she isn’t in the throes of her very pressing feelings. “When I went back home a few weeks ago, I looked at apartments. And helped my family but-”

Lucy seems to deadpan. “You’re moving back.”

Ona startles, her hands dropping in reflex. “No- no, not for sure. It was only…”

Only half a lie. She anxiously searches Lucy’s face, waiting for her to snap. Even though she knows Lucy doesn’t snap, doesn’t speak on selfish impulse.

“Kept that bit hidden, didn’t you?” She replies finally with a slightly wry smile, and it’s quite a warranted response, really. Ona should have told her, at any point throughout this ordeal. At least that her tenancy was running out, and she didn’t plan to renew.

The thought of betraying Lucy’s well-earned trust makes her gut twist horribly with regret. 

“I didn’t find the right time. I’m sorry. I needed to think about it myself, first. I was sure of it, but now, I don’t know.” Ona confesses. 

Lucy watches her more carefully, sensing the gravity in her voice. “When did you start planning this? And…why?”

Ona swallows, burning up under the pressure and the sweltering sun. 

“I’ve been thinking about it for some time, because my lease is up next month.” She admits, and Lucy softens in a very devastating way. “It’s nothing about you. I’ve just been here, in Manchester, a long time now, and…I miss home. Which is crazy to say because home is- it’s never somewhere I’ve liked to be. And there’s just… a lot there that’s unfinished. With my parents especially.” She says, like there is anything simple about the matter. “I feel like, I know, I need to go back. It’s been so long since I spent proper time with them and my other family, and they’re getting older, and so am I, and I don’t want to keep associating home with who I was before. I need to give back to them, in some real way. And everything is just kind of pointing to now. With work, and my lease, and my brother's job.”

Lucy looks ahead, her face quite unreadable as she processes the information. Narla threatens a tussle with Coco when he mouths at her ball, but he soon drops it at Lucy’s feet for her to throw it again.

“I can understand that.” She says, the dogs racing their way back into the water.

Ona releases her breath. “You’re not upset?”

“Why would I be upset?” Lucy answers with a genuine disposition.

“Because…I won’t be near you.” Ona says, like the words alone will tear them apart.

“Well,” Lucy smiles non-committedly. “I of course want the best for you. If that’s going back home…I have to support you.” 

Ona doesn’t hide the fact she’s a bit speechless, and Lucy lets out a small but sincere laugh. “Why, did you want me to say something else?” 

“No, but...us.”

Lucy is silent for a few seconds, her face ironing out like she had a thought which stabbed right through her. Like reality was becoming far too real. “...Would I seriously be enough of a reason for you to stay?” 

Ona feels her throat pull tighter. A few empty, torturous beats pass them by, and Ona would think that life has stopped altogether for them if it weren’t for the fact that the leaves are still swaying, breaking apart from their branches every so often, the water is still moving ceaselessly, and their dogs are sniffing the many smells of the bank, blissfully ignorant. Ona wishes she were them.

“Maybe.” Ona says, but her uncertainty is clear. More to test how the feeling sounds out loud. Maybe? Maybe you are?

Then, something even more unforeseen spills from her lips. No preamble, no hesitation, no control. “Do you love me?”

It shocks Ona more than it does Lucy. She feels the colour drain from her face, but Lucy? Lucy looks as though her heart stopped entirely and like the world around her folded in on itself until she was the only thing left. 

Ona almost has to beg her to say something, but Lucy finds her voice first.

“Is there…an answer you want to hear?” 

It very much breaks Ona’s heart that Lucy has to doubt it for even a moment.

She almost says no.

“Yes.”

Lucy’s mouth trembles at first, not daring to glance in Ona’s direction, until something in her gives way. “Of course I love you.” 

The space between them gets considerably heavier. Before Ona can think, Lucy is speaking again with avid certainty, like these words had been waiting until they couldn’t wait any longer. “I- I really love you Ona. You’re my whole world. You’re all I see, you’re all I want to see. I would be…upset to see you go, but…” Lucy inhales slow and deep for the next bit. She tries to sound sure, affirming, strong, but Ona just hears the hurt. “I’d be heartbroken if you stayed and didn’t put yourself first.”

Ona feels like a ghost who begrudges having a soul. Like she died, somewhere in this, and has come back with no knowledge of how to speak or breathe or deal with this mess. She never had, truthfully.

But she had known Lucy loved her. She’d felt it hold her together, heard it in her honeyed voice, seen it in the flecks of light that shone between them when they were together. 

And the way she looked at Ona, like the rest of the world was lifeless and dull in comparison.

Nothing about it had felt real. Even now, it feels more like a dream, like a surrealist film where the water will go stagnant at any point and she’ll fall through the earth to somewhere very hot and very far from here. To be loved…what did it even mean to be loved?

Ona thinks up a hundred things to say before a burst of tenacity overcomes her. 

“I…I do, love you, as well.”

Lucy smiles, almost immediately, almost accidentally, a tad restrained, but real. So very real. She finally glances at Ona.

“You do?”

“I do.” Ona replies faintly, hardly above a whisper, shock washing over her face, caught between wanting to smile too and snapping apart with fright. 

Lucy doesn’t sweep her off of her feet, doesn’t pull her into a kiss or call a carriage for them to ride into the sunset. Instead, this was Ona’s overcast reality where she has built a fortress around herself. Where she has no concept of love, never has, except knowing now…this must be it. There can’t be another explanation.

“But, do you want to be with me? Are you ready for that?” Lucy asks, soul in her voice, heart in her throat. She is patient and tender, yet it rips at Ona’s insides, because she knows none of this is the perfect promise Lucy deserves. 

Suddenly, Lucy continues. “I don’t want to leave you. Or for you to leave me. I just…I feel so at odds that we do all of this, we love each other so intensely it’s like I can’t breathe sometimes, but I go home and I’m still single. And I know I said at the start that I was fine with that and it’s my fault for kidding myself, because I’ve known since the second we met that I would feel this way.” Lucy scoops the ball up again in the thrower, sending both dogs after it. “And it’s not your fault, not at all. But I can’t…I can’t do this, anymore, if you know in your heart you can’t commit to me. Because I really am- in love with you, and it’s not…something I can compromise on.”

Ona almost keels over, flooding with sudden emotion. She exhales, her breath shallow, her voice sudden and fragile. “I never meant to hurt you.” 

Lucy looks a tad surprised by that. “You didn’t hurt me sweetheart. You did the opposite.”

The urgency she feels is abrupt and immense. She’d never been in this position before, and she thinks herself utterly senseless for the facts of it all only computing now. 

Had she thought there was a way around this? Had she thought Lucy would procure some miraculous antidote to her indecision and all would be well?

“I understand you. I do. You shouldn’t have to compromise how you feel.” Ona says, her stomach sick with wordless distress. Lucy stays quiet, so she speaks again with a bruising honesty she’s now incapable of reigning in. “I want you, so much, but I’m scared. And I thought I had something figured out, finally, but now...”

Lucy drops the catcher and hugs her tightly, an inevitable magnetism, sending every wall of tension crumbling. She gives Ona time, stroking her hair and leaning into her like she was her lifeline, not the other way around. “You’re scared.” Lucy echoes in question, softly against her head. Ona nods, not wanting to pull away from the comfort just yet. “What’s holding you back then?” 

Lucy guides them to sit down, resting her cheek on her knee as she watches Ona with bone-deep affection. Some inevitable sadness as well. 

Ona speaks with a shameful candour. “I feel like I can’t give you what you deserve. I’m so scared I’ll mess this up. And…” She trails off.

Lucy prompts her softly to continue with a lift of her brows.

Ona scrunches her lips a bit. “-No, it doesn’t matter.”

“It does.” Lucy returns gently.

Ona wavers, before admitting quietly, “I thought I was finally going to do something for myself.”

Lucy glances down, waiting a few, prolonged seconds. “So, you know what you need to do.” She looks at Ona. “You carry so much weight, and family, that time to just be your parent’s kid again, it’s so important. We don’t get many of those chances in our life, so take it.”

For once, Ona wishes Lucy wasn’t so obtuse with the objective truth. Wishes she would just break down, beg her to stay until there’s no doubt left and emotion supersedes any logic.

Doubt. That had always been her poison.

Emotion chokes Ona. Don’t get upset. Don’t cry. “But Lucy I really do- love you. You made me realise…just by being in my life, that how I’d been living wasn’t me at all. I was pretending to be okay, and that I didn’t want love, from anyone, but I do. Because I remember what love is now.”

It’s ridiculous, because she hears herself. The only person she’s at odds with is her own mind, and she’s so angry, because for every step she took closer to Lucy, something pulled her back. Now it was home, her family, and it feels real this time, not a trauma-induced reflex to run. Okay; perhaps she had some independent trepidations about being in a relationship that were making her hesitate but those don’t feel as pressing.

And it was true—Lucy had slowly but surely made her into someone different, and she was still reckoning with that, still learning who that person was. 

Her eyes are wet with tears, an ache clawing its way up her throat.

Lucy doesn’t look at her, presumably on the brink of breaking down herself. “That’s so lovely to say. I just…I’m not sure what you want, now.”

Ona wipes her eyes with her wrist. “I don’t know, either.” She trembles, and Lucy pulls her closer, brows drawing together from the sight of Ona’s sadness. Though she feels profoundly undeserving of Lucy’s comfort, she sinks into her regardless, pressing into her side until Lucy pulls her into her lap.

“It’s alright.” Lucy whispers, holding her head down against her shoulder, a hand firm on her back as she shudders.

Ona makes an attempt of pulling herself together, unable to withstand feeling this pathetic. She lifts her head, her voice cracking. “I can’t put you in the middle of this. It’s not fair. But I don’t want you to think I'm running from you. I don’t know many things, but I know that.” 

“I believe you.” Lucy says with frank tenderness, her own face delicately broken. She gives Ona a gentle squeeze, her chest rising and falling beneath her body. 

When she finally speaks again, it’s soft but intentional. She pulls back enough for their eyes to properly meet. “I love you, but I love you enough to let you go if you need to. Because if you don’t, if you stay here, I can’t be the thing to hold you back.”

Ona shatters, burying herself back in Lucy’s shoulder. “I love you too, so much. You keep me so safe, so happy, I- don’t have the words, Lucy. For what you are.” She clings to her tightly, wiping her tears on her shirt before chuckling rawly when Lucy sniffles. “Sorry, I don’t want to make this worse.”

“You’re not.” Lucy murmurs, her green eyes wrought with a devastation she won’t quite admit. “I know you think you’re doing something wrong, but no one has ever been this honest with me before. You’re a treasure, Ona.” 

In all the pain Ona has felt in her life, all the betrayal and hurt and failure and shame, this may be the worst. 

Lucy’s mouth trembles until she finally allows a small cry to escape, and Ona doesn’t hesitate to bring her close, gently running her fingertips through her hair, fighting off a full-body sob herself.

“I’m sorry.” Ona sniffles against her hair.

“No, don’t say sorry.” Lucy returns, muffled tearily into Ona’s neck.

“If I leave I’ll break your heart.” She whispers hopelessly.

Lucy wipes her nose, the other resting surely on Ona’s lower back. She gathers some strength, wiping a falling tear from Ona’s soft cheek. She takes in a heavy breath, before letting go. “I’ll mend. Love couldn’t be wasted. Not with you. Sorry, I don’t mean to get upset, you’re just…you really got to me.“ She smiles weakly.

“And you got to me.” Ona attempts to pull herself together as well, placing a hand on the back of Lucy’s neck, caressing beneath her fingertips, watching her soften from the familiar touch. “I don’t know how long this will be. But I won’t be a stranger. We will…”

“Figure it out.” Lucy finishes uncertainly.

Ona leans her forehead against Lucy’s, sighing shakily, speaking in a whisper that’s meant to soothe, but more so shows her regret. “You don’t have to wait for me. At any point.” 

Lucy’s lips curve into a tight smile. “I’m not sure that’s something I can control.”

Ona realises then, that none of this is within their control. And love is…not what she thought it was. It’s surrendering to that doubt, it’s giving in to someone new.

Lucy throws her bag behind her head, lying down against it, shaded by the tall willow tree above them. 

“C’mon. Let's still enjoy today.” She says, welcoming Ona to curl up at her side.

Ona rests then, shutting her eyes and letting Lucy rhythmically stroke the bridge of her nose, and her cheek, and her jawline, and her shoulder, everything until she has relaxed entirely. Until every part of her is reverently accounted for.

At some point Coco rests on her leg. Narla up against Lucy’s other side. Her chest deepens with the senseless hope that Lucy will wait for her after all. She just can’t forget this, because this? She would soon choose this over anything else in the world.

And so, it all happens much faster than she anticipated. Her brother flies out to help her pack, and he sleeps on the couch, while she lies awake in her empty room. Telling people was the hardest part, because now her popularity precedes her and everyone wants to see her for a final time. She declines most of them, saying it's temporary, and really, she hopes it is.

The loneliness surrounds her on both sides, and she thinks until she can’t think any longer, until it feels like her mind erupts in flames and finally she gets some peace.

She mostly texts Lucy at night, both far too busy to allocate any real time during the day. They dance around the serious part, and though it pains her, Ona can’t bring herself to stay away completely. 

Isn’t it funny how our paths have aligned? Lucy says, sharing a photo of her own life in boxes the day before Ona leaves. Like any of this was okay.

Ona closes her phone, falling to her couch, breaking into tears for the first time since they last saw each other.  

She tells her brother about Lucy. Properly this time. He sits by her side, and she realises how much easier it is to explain in the language her heart knows best.