Chapter Text
„Betty!“ Tom, her Editor in Chief seems nearly frantic, when he reaches her desk in the shared office space. “Thank god, you are here.”
Betty looks up from the article she is proofreading for another colleague and gives him a questioning look. “Saturday is the busiest news day in sports. And I know my delicate, ponytailed appearance doesn’t suggest it, but I’m a sports reporter. So, while I’m glad you are obviously happy to see me, I don’t know why you seem so surprised that I’m here.”
Tom scoffs and leans against her desk, catching his breath. “Save your sass, Cooper. Peter’s wife just went into labor and he can’t make it. So, you are taking over the life coverage for the website. Get all your stuff together and go. Game starts in two hours.”
This catches Betty off guard. She has been working at the Guardian’s sports department for three months now, taking the leap over the big pond just one year after college.
If she is being honest, she had been glad to get out of the United States (and as far away as possible from her mother, she supposes). While the political landscape sometimes seems as crazy as the one in the US (lately even producing a prime minister, that bears a truly terrifying similarity to the US president. Both, in behavior and looks.) everything else in the UK seemed more orderly, cleaner. London is a beautiful city and living in a small apartment in Notting Hill, feels like something straight out of one of her favorite movies. She is yet to meet her own personal William Thacker, but without her mother and her ever lasting questions about her dating life close by, finding her Prince Charming seems way less of a task.
Doing live coverage for a Premier League game though, even if it is not a high stake one seems like an incredibly large task. And she is not sure if she can live up to it. When she voices that concern to Tom, however, he brushes her off with a wave of his hand.
“Bollocks. There is a reason we hired you here and it is because you are good. You can manage that. Now get your stuff together and go.”
So, 15 minutes and a mad scramble for her recording device, phone, press card, laptop and coat later, Betty is sitting in the back of a cab headed to Emirates Stadium, trying to reign in her breathing.
“You can do this. This is the kind of opportunity you don’t get every day. You won’t mess it up, despite what some parts of your weirdly wired brain want to tell you. You can do this.”
She repeats the last sentence to herself all the 1,9 miles from York Way to Emirates Stadium, where she tosses the cabby a ridiculous amount of money (it’s not like she cares, the paper is paying for it anyway) and starts her search for the press entrance. She has never been here, because up until now, she had only covered the Aston Villa and Tottenham press conferences, so despite Tom’s very precise directions, it takes her a little longer than she’d like to find the seats assigned to The Guardian.
When she shows her press card to the security guard he gives her a look that she has known ever since she was 12 and had tried to engage in a conversation about an NBA game with some boys from her class. Nobody ever expects her to be interested in sports. Cupcakes, unicorns and Make-Up? Yes. 22 sweaty men chasing after a ball for 90 minutes? Not so much.
The security guard even has the nerve to ask her where Peter is and if she wasn’t so nervous, Betty would definitely give him a piece of her mind. For now, though, she settles on a murmured: “His wife went into labor” and then passes him as fast as possible.
She spends the rest of the time setting up her laptop, preparing the live feed and analyzing the line ups. There is nothing out of the ordinary, both teams deploying the usual players. She can basically see West Ham throwing everything into defense, before the game even begins, which never really makes for an interesting 90 minutes. Arsenal will probably do their best to run up against the wall, break through once or twice, mark and then leave victorious. Its how this kind of games always go down.
…
90 minutes later, Betty (and most of her colleagues, from what she had picked up from their conversations before the game) is proven completely wrong. Arsenal is barely holding on to their 1:0 lead and she has almost no time to update the news feed, before the next thing is happening. So, when the referee declares a penalty for West Ham in minute 88, she is almost glad about it, because the few seconds that it takes West Ham’s forward to position the ball are time for her to catch somewhat of a breath.
Her eyes flicker from the forward to Arsenal’s goalkeeper. She’s found that focusing on the goalkeeper rather than the forward in a penalty, always proofs more fruitful. In the few seconds the ball is in the air, you can usually determine by the goalkeeper’s facial expression if the ball goes in or not. They always seem to know milliseconds before anyone else does. It takes her about half a second to realize that this penalty is not going to turn into a goal. The look of determination Arsenal’s goalkeeper has on his face, the way his whole body tenses when West Ham’s forward takes the run-up, lets her know that he is going to stop the ball just a few seconds before it happens.
Most of the stadium erupts into cheers, when the ball bumps from his gloves to the side of the field and into the out. Betty, meanwhile, updates her news feed and smiles a little at the ridiculous name of the man that just saved his team’s victory.
Jughead Jones.