Title: Blood and Thunder, a Cha-Cha Challenge
Author:
phaballaRecipient:
minim_calibreFandom: Bring it On
Pairing: Torrance/Missy
Rating: R
Word count: 2600
Disclaimer: I don't own anything, it's all lies.
Summary: But Missy is pretty much a total freak. She has a bumper sticker on her car that says, "Hockey is life," and Whitney heard from Janice who heard it from Blake that Missy doesn't even really like the roller derby and thinks it's, like, just an excuse for guys to watch chicks beat the crap out of each other while wearing short skirts. Which, okay, she kind of has a point there. A rollergirls AU.
Everything changes once Missy joins the team.
It's not that Torrance doesn't like her, because she does. But Missy is pretty much a total freak. She has a bumper sticker on her car that says, "Hockey is life," and Whitney heard from Janice who heard it from Blake that Missy doesn't even really like the roller derby and thinks it's, like, just an excuse for guys to watch chicks beat the crap out of each other while wearing short skirts.
Which, okay, she kind of has a point there, but that doesn't mean it's not a real sport. The Toros have been roller derby state champions every year for the past five years, and last year they almost beat the Austin Rollergirls for nationals. Feminism has its place in, like, life and history and stuff, but it's just not important when it comes to the derby. Plus, Torrance thinks it's pretty empowering. She's a jammer, she's the highest goal scorer on the team, and she thinks it's pretty damn cool to have the entire arena screaming for her when she scores. So what if half of them are cheering because they can see her underwear?
Plus, she looks cute in the outfit.
So everything changes when Missy joins the team. Missy is brash and opinionated and she's really not afraid to say what she thinks. Mostly, she thinks they should start wearing pants, which is just. It's stupid. It's retarded. It's so not going to happen.
"Seriously, I think we should say, 'Fuck this skirt shit,' and start wearing pants. I mean, what're they gonna do, not let us play?"
"That's exactly what they'll do," Whitney says, hands on her hips, glaring. Whitney likes the skirts too. She doesn't look at cute in them as Torrance does, though. Torrance thinks it's probably Whitney's permanent bitch face more than anything else. Girl needs to get laid, or maybe, you know, for her next birthday the team could chip in for one of those super vibrator dildo things from Sex and the City. If it worked for Miranda, it's gotta work for Whitney.
"Well what about, like, shorts then or something?" Missy skates back and forth in front of the bleachers, does a little spin. Her skirt flares out a little and Torrance thinks, yeah, Missy looks pretty cute in the uniform, too. Maybe cuter than Torrance, which is okay as long as it gets them more fans. More fans means more sponsors, which means that someday, they might actually get paid well enough to just be rollergirls and not have to worry about stupid second jobs. Torrance works at a Starbucks to pay the bills, it really sucks. She doesn't even like coffee, and the customers are all total scags. Sometimes just the smell of coffee is enough to make her want to stab things now, which ends up working pretty well with the whole rollergirl thing. Torrance is a menace with the elbow jab.
"Shorts are for fat losers who are too afraid to show a little skin," Courtney says. "And you can bet your ass the Clovers aren't going to be wearing shorts to states."
"Whatever," Missy says. "Just, you know what, whatever. I don't need this shit, okay? This is misogynistic bullshit and you're all just sitting there like. Like lambs to the slaughter, just like, perpetuating your own oppression. It's sick. I'm outta here."
Missy glares at all of them and skates toward the locker rooms. "Don't fuck up that uniform, we need it back!" Whitney yells after her. She looks pleased, and yet still with the bitchface. It's amazing that Whitney's face is, like, forever frozen in that expression. Torrance suspects too much Botox. It's probably what damaged Whitney's brain, too. Poor girl.
"Uh, girls?" Darcy says. "I hate to, like, say that she's right, because she so isn't, and I don't even know what mysogonitis is, but I'm pretty sure I don't have it unless it's, like, a form of herpes and then maybe because there was that guy I dated last year, you know, the one with-"
"Get to the point, bitch," Courtney says.
"Oh right. Um, don't we kind of need her? She's like, our only decent blocker and if we want to win states this year, much less go to nationals, we kind of need her."
"She's right," Torrance says. "I'm captain, I'll talk to her. And Whitney, try not to be such a bitch, okay? I have three jammers I can replace you with at any time, and none of them are likely to accidentally die in a tragic plastic-surgery-gone-wrong accident, so they're probably a better bet anyway."
*
It's not that hard to get Missy back on the team because really, Missy wants to play, she just has, like, these weird morals or something and Torrance has to lie her ass off to get around them. She doesn't think of it as lying, though. It's, like, creative negotiations, or something. It works, Missy joins the team, and they pretty much kick ass.
The roller derby is pretty much the best thing to ever happen to Torrance. She was never any good at school and she barely managed to graduate, but she doesn't even really feel alive anymore unless she's skating. She puts all her derby money back into her skating, into wheels and stoppers and practice skates she has to spend extra rink time breaking in so they're good for competition later, because it's important to have at least two pairs of backup skates in case of sabotage. Not that there's a lot of derby money because they're not good enough yet to have the big name sponsors, but someday all she's going to do is skate. Until then, there's the Starbucks.
Torrance works at the Starbucks because they're pretty flexible with her shifts and when the Toros need extra practice sessions, she can always find some loser high school kid to take her shift so he can buy pot with the extra cash. If it weren't for the customers, it would be a pretty awesome gig.
Torrance works the early morning shift, which is usually pretty great because she can just stand around like a zombie for the first two hours until the morning work rush hits. And then it's all, "I said no whipped cream, Christ, is this job that hard that you can't remember?" and "Did they take your brain when they gave you that apron, or did you just never know that a caramel macchiato is supposed to have actual CARAMEL in it?" Torrance hates her job. Also, she's not very good at it.
Usually Marie has her work the cash register because Torrance sucks at making coffee, but she's great at smiling and producing fake cheer.
"Good morning, sir, what can I get you?" she asks, giving her biggest, fakest smile to the dickwad in the three thousand dollar suit. She hates this guy, he's always taking from the 'give a penny' jar and he never, ever tips.
"I come here every morning. Don't you know what I get by now?"
Torrance smiles brightly. "A lot of people come here every morning, sir."
"You remember that last girl's regular order." He's not letting it go. He's a total dickwad, and Torrance really wants to pour coffee all over his suit. You know, on accident.
"Yeah? Maybe that's because she tips." Big, bright smile. Dickwad looks like he's going to have a coronary. Torrance kind of hopes he does. At least then she'd have to, like, call an ambulance and stuff, maybe someone would do CPR. It'd be exciting.
"Fuck you, lady," the guy says. "You know, I don't have to come here. There's a million coffee shops and I could just-"
"Why don't you, you jackass?" someone says from behind him. It's Missy. Torrance gives her a smile, a real one. Missy is her total hero right now.
The guy leaves, finally, without his coffee because Marie heard him swearing and came out and glared at him and banned him from the store. Missy gets a white chocolate mocha and Torrance doesn't let her pay. "I never have to deal with that guy again," Torrance says. "That's worth, like, a million free mochas. I would totally have your babies right now."
*
Missy is pretty awesome. Torrance can't help notice that Missy is just. She's cool. She's a kickass blocker, a fierce skater, a defender against asshole customers. She's just all around awesome, and Torrance decides that they should probably be best friends. It's only right.
Torrance decides they should totally be BFFs, so she invites Missy to her weekly Friday night at the roller rink. Usually she goes alone because, like, who else is she going to go with? Fucking Whitney or Darcy or one of the other bitches from the team? Hell no. But Missy is cool. Missy is awesome, she's not like the other girls, and besides which, now Torrance doesn't have to sit out half the songs during couple's skate.
"Come on!" Torrance says, grabbing Missy's hand and pulling her over to the rink. "I love this song."
Most of the people at the rink can't skate worth shit, but some of them are okay. Missy and Torrance are the best, though, of course they are, but they don't try to show off. They just hold hands and skate side by side, and it's pretty fun. Missy is fun, she's funny, actually, and she has all these crazy stories from when she was a hockey player up north, before she moved down to California to help her parents with her brother.
"What's wrong with him?" Torrance asks, squeezing Missy's hand a little. The rink is smooth beneath her skates and the lights are low, the disco ball flashing pink and blue over the other couples. Missy frowns and shakes her head.
"Just, you know, typical adolescent emo shit he never got over. No biggie, but we're really close and my parents can be totally useless sometimes, you know how it is."
Torrance's parents are pretty useless, too. She just nods, skates a head a little so she can spin around and face Missy. "Come on," she says, resting her arms on Missy's shoulders and smiling. "Let's show these amateurs what we can do."
Sometimes, showing off can be fun, too.
*
They go on the circuit and Torrance has to quit her job. Not that she minds so much, really, because coffee slinging really sucks and sometimes her face starts to ache from smiling so much, but it makes paying rent and shit a lot harder. She and Missy decide to get a place together to split costs, which isn't really an apartment so much as a place to keep their shit while they're on the road for games. They only come back once a week at most, and even then it's mostly just to crash until it's time to get back on the road.
The derby circuit is the most exhausting thing Torrance has ever done, but she loves it. Skating really is her life, and sometimes when they're on the bus on the way to the next town for the next game and the other girls are all passed out in their bunks, Torrance likes to stay up and watch the road fly by beneath them. She presses her forehead to the cool glass of the bus windows and stares at the yellow paint lines flicking by on endless stretches of black highway, and she's never been happier.
"What're you doing, Torr?" Missy mumbles, rubbing at her eyes and slipping into the seat next to Torrance. It's late, really late, and Torrance should've gone to bed hours ago, but she can't help it sometimes. She can't believe this is really her life, that she really gets to skate like this as her job. It's pretty much the coolest thing ever, it deserves some thought sometimes.
"Nothing. Just, I like to look out, sometimes, you know. It's like, calming or something."
"Mmm," Missy says, and rests her head on Torrance's shoulder. Torrance looks down at her and smiles a little, brushes tangled dark curls off her face. This is the happiest she's ever been. Her life pretty much rocks.
*
They win states and it's pretty much the best thing ever. Whitney uses her fake ID to buy them booze and they celebrate back at the hotel. They have a suite this time because it's states and they could afford to splurge a little. A suite with two bedrooms and a pull out couch in the living room, and Torrance made sure that she and Missy would get a bedroom. They take a bottle of Goldschlager into their room and sit on the bed, drunk and laughing and it's pretty perfect. Torrance didn't think things could really get better before, but now she knows there's always something better that could happen, and she's pretty lucky, so it probably will.
They use Dixie cups from the bathroom at first, but then Torrance accidentally spills all over the bedspread and Missy rolls her eyes and starts drinking from the bottle, all, "You can't go wasting good alcohol like that, Torr." They drink a lot and it's a good night, a great night. They just won states, and they're going to nationals. It's pretty awesome.
Torrance wakes up and it's still night out, still dark. She can see Missy in the dim half-light of the moon, asleep on her side facing Torrance. Their legs are tangled together and it feels. It's interesting, it feels good, different than a guy because Missy shaves her legs and Torrance only met one guy who did that and he was gay, so there wasn't this leg rubbing thing going on. It feels nice and Torrance is maybe still drunk, just a little. She shifts closer to Missy, lets her fingers slip from Missy's waist to the small of her back where Torrance knows she has a tattoo. "It's a tramp stamp," Missy said the first time she showed it to Torrance. She smiled in way that made Torrance feel weird, off-balance and strange, said, "It means I'm easy." Torrance traces her fingers over the place, tries to remember the exact design. The skin there is smooth and warm, it isn't any different that other skin, but Torrance thinks she can feel where the tattoo is, the strong black lines crisscrossing Missy's back. She wants to taste them, maybe. She wonders if she'll be able to taste the ink.
"Mmm." Missy sighs a little and shifts closer, opens her eyes. "Torr. What're you doing?"
"Nothing," Torrance says. She doesn't stop her fingers tracing the imaginary pattern though. "Can I. I want to kiss you. I'm maybe still a little drunk and I want to. Is that?"
Missy smiles a little, sleepy and happy. "I thought you'd never get there," she says, and presses her lips against Torrance's, licks her way inside. It's, yeah, it's pretty much the best thing ever, and Torrance thinks she'll never think this is the happiest she can be again, because there's always something better. She's never really thought that much about girls before, about if she likes them like that or whatever, but she definitely likes Missy. Missy's the shit, pretty much, and kissing her is way better than kissing Aaron, who she always thought was a little gay anyway. They're both a little gay, she thinks, and almost starts laughing but her mouth is kind of busy with the kissing, so.
She's pretty sure there's nothing better than Missy, though. Well, maybe winning nationals. Because that? Would fucking rock.