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Mulan has been bowling, so family legend has it, since she was smaller than the ball. The Sunday afternoons she spent at the bowling alley with Papa are some of her fondest childhood memories: they’d play three games and then go out for ice cream, and sometimes when Mulan thinks back, she can still taste the chocolate syrup, the sweet vanilla as it melted on her tongue. After the accident, Papa couldn’t really play anymore - couldn’t put enough weight on his bad leg, and a fall would have done him too much harm - but he’d still bring her to the bowling alley every Sunday, and watch her play three games, and cheer for her, and bring her out for ice cream afterwards.
They kept the tradition up whenever she came home from college, and whenever she came back on leave from the army, and even now, when she’s living halfway across the country from her family, trying to figure out who she is without the slightly overbearing presence of her kin or the oddly comforting structure of the military surrounding her, she makes time every Sunday to go down to the local bowling alley and play three games, and then she goes out for ice cream afterwards and Skypes her Papa and tells him how she did.
The alley closest to her tiny apartment is a fairly well-kept one, and the regulars greet her with polite nods and mostly leave her be. The manager is a fire-haired woman named Merida, who told Mulan the first day she ventured in that if anyone gave her any trouble, she should tell Merida, and Merida would give them trouble, see if she didn’t. Mulan quite likes her, and is rather wondering if it might be worth asking Merida if she has any job openings, because frankly temping is not doing kind things to Mulan’s bank account.
Really the only problem - and it’s not really a problem, honestly, just a...minor discomfort, if that - is that there’s a bowling club that meets on Sunday afternoons at just about the same time Mulan likes to get there, and their captain is…
Well, he’s too damn handsome, that’s what he is.
It’s not as though he’s ever bothered Mulan; honestly, she’s not entirely sure he knows she exists. He’s quite a good bowler, and a pretty good team captain, too, from what she’s overheard, pushing and encouraging his teammates in equal measure. And he has this unfortunate habit of taking his team polo shirt off after the practice is over, to change into something more presentable in public, and...well...Mulan can’t help looking.
At least once Merida has caught her looking, which was mortifying, and got worse when Merida winked broadly and waggled her eyebrows. Thankfully Merida hasn’t actually attempted matchmaking, though. Mulan gets enough of that at home.
She finally speaks to the too-handsome team captain on an otherwise unmemorable Sunday in spring. She gets to the alley a little earlier than normal - she had to get out of the apartment before she went stir-crazy, it’s been raining all week and she hasn’t been able to go running - to find it far busier than it normally is. She has to shoulder her way through a crowd of people she’s never seen before to make it to the desk, and Merida looks so swamped that Mulan ducks behind the desk before she can think better of it and starts handing out shoes. Merida shoots her a grateful look.
The crowd finally dies down enough for them to talk after nearly half an hour. “What on earth is going on?” Mulan asks Merida, staring at the full lanes. Is there even room for her to play?
“Tournament,” Merida sighs. “Their usual place fell through - maintenance, I think. Sorry, I would have warned you but it was kind of...abrupt.”
“‘S okay,” Mulan says. Maybe she’ll go try out that new gym down the way - they’ve got a special for two free introductory sessions -
“Excuse me,” someone says, and they both turn to see the too-handsome team captain looking sheepish and hopeful, rubbing the back of his neck with one hand and giving Mulan a plaintive look. “I - um - I - wanted to ask a favor?”
Mulan raises an eyebrow. “Oh?”
“It’s like this,” he says awkwardly. “Chien-Po’s not feeling well, so he can’t make it to the tournament, and we need a fourth player, and you’re really good, so I was wondering if you’d - if you’d like to join our team? Just for today? We’ll pay your entrance fee, and - um -”
Mulan blinks in surprise. “You’ve - ah - you’ve seen me play?”
He nods. “You’re here every week, and - well - um -”
He’s blushing. Mulan glances over at Merida, who nudges her with an elbow and nods encouragingly. “...Sure,” Mulan says. “That sounds...fine.”
“Thank you so much,” the too-handsome team captain says, and holds out a hand. “I’m Shang, and the guys are Yao and Ling. Um. Don’t mind Yao, he swears a lot.”
“I’d noticed,” Mulan says dryly, and follows him over to his team’s lane.
“Ohmigod, you got her?” the skinny one - Ling - squeaks, and then blushes bright red. Shang puts a hand over his face in dismay.
“Hi,” Mulan says. “I’m Mulan.”
“Huh,” Yao says. “Well, it’s shorter than ‘oh-god-she’s-here-again, she’s-so-talented-and-gorgeous, oh-help’. Good t’meet you.”
Shang sinks down into a chair and covers his face with both hands, moaning something that certainly sounds like ‘God help me.’
Mulan decides to ignore this, because otherwise she’ll probably be blushing too hard to bowl. “What’s our first match?” she asks instead, and Shang shakes himself and gets up, cheeks still flushed, to go see who they’ve been paired with.
Mulan is, she is not ashamed to admit, a very competitive person, and so she’s able to put the fact that apparently Shang is, if his friends are to be believed, just as interested in her as she is in him, out of her head in favor of playing the best she can - and she is good. She’s better than Yao or Ling by quite a ways, and a hair better than Shang, too. She gives him mental points for not sulking every time she beats his score - indeed, he seems delighted that she’s doing so well, not put out at all.
She has no idea how well they usually do in these tournaments, but with her on their team, they’re pretty well guaranteed to be in the running for first place. The team to beat, Mulan decides, looking at the scoreboards while Ling bowls, is probably down in lane five: the Huns, apparently. (Their team, at what Mulan is assured was Chien-Po’s insistence, is the Noodle Bowl. Mulan isn’t going to ask.) Their captain is listed as Shan-Yu, and every time Mulan racks up another strike, he glares down the lanes at her like he’s been personally offended.
“He’s...kind of an ass,” Shang says when Mulan asks. “Also usually they win these things hands-down and I suspect he’s not happy he’s being beaten by a girl. Um. Woman. Sorry.”
Mulan snorts a laugh. “One of those,” she says. “Heh. Well, if he wants to choke on his own misogyny, let’s give him something to really regret, hey?”
Shang grins. “Let’s,” he agrees.
They win - not handily, perhaps, but by a comfortable margin, and Mulan takes great pleasure in the scowl on Shan-Yu’s face. Shang throws an arm around her shoulders, clearly high on victory, and says, “Since this is apparently my day for unlikely triumphs - let me buy you a drink?”
Mulan considers this. “Make it an ice cream,” she says at last, “and you’re on.”