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It’s hot on the field today, the sun beating down on the back of Jo’s neck and beads of sweat trickling out of her hairline as she sprints up the center of the field, kicking the ball ahead of her as she runs. It’s a home game and she can hear her friends cheering in the stands - Dean and Sam and Sam’s so-called soulmate, Jess - making enough noise for ten people instead of three as Jo races up the field, looking for an opening. They’re behind 2-1 with ten minutes left in the second half and they’re all feeling the crunch, looking to pull ahead or at least tie it up.
Jo’s closing in on the other team’s defense, the petite bottle-blonde wearing the number 21 on the back of her blue jersey hurtling up the field towards her. Number 21 is about five foot nothing and looks like she would blow away in a strong wind but somehow managed to knock Jo on her ass more than once last year. The girl’s quick on her feet and Jo has a better chance of getting around her if she uses her teammates than if she tries to do it on her own so she looks up, scanning for her teammates in their white and red jerseys. The new girl, Ruby, is open on the left wing so she winds up and hammers it, sending the ball sailing across to her over the heads of the players in between, grinning when the lead is perfect, putting the ball right on Ruby’s foot as she runs.
Jo sprints up the middle of the field as Ruby runs the ball up the side, tapping the ball around the right defense and the midfielder who comes back to help, closing in on the corner of the goalie box. Jo’s wide open when the little blonde zips out to take on Ruby and she runs to the top of the key.
“Ruby!” she yells, “I’m open!” and the brunette’s head comes up, spots her. Jo sees her take stock of the defensewoman hurtling her way, then back to Jo, sees her make a choice and try to go around the girl.
Jo snarls her frustration when Number 21 snatches the ball away from Ruby and passes it off to the wing, where her teammate boots it upfield all the way into the Nebraska zone. Now the other team has a breakaway and they lost a perfectly good chance at tying up the game. Jo skids to a stop and switches direction, jogging over to where Ruby is walking back up the field.
“What the hell was that? I was wide open!”
Ruby looks up at her, a challenge in her dark eyes. “I had it.”
Jo snorts derisively. “Clearly you didn’t. How many times do I have to tell you to pass the damn ball?”
It wouldn’t be so bad if this was the first time Ruby pulled a stunt like this. Jo’s been on the University of Nebraska soccer team for two years running but she’s never wanted to beat the everloving crap out of one of her teammates before; at least not until Ruby transferred in. The dark-haired forward is damn good, there’s no doubt about that. She’s fast, and she has the best moves on the team, but she’s doesn’t use her teammates, preferring to make all the plays on her own. It drives Jo insane.
“I took a chance,” Ruby says, shrugging one shoulder as if she didn’t just cost them the goal and maybe even the game.
Jo opens her mouth to tell Ruby what she thinks about that chance but then their coach, Jody, is barking at her to get her ass back to their half and she swears and sprints away, fuming.
By the time Jo makes it back to the dressing room, most of the team has already made it out. They lost the game, their first loss in a month and it fucking sucks, which is why she stayed behind to talk to Jody about Ruby’s poor sportsmanship. It’s not the first time Ruby’s lack of trust in her teammates has cost them goals and Jo’s had enough. Jody wasn’t hearing any of it, though, telling Jo that they were just going to have to work it out in practice.
In the empty dressing room, Jo kicks off her cleats and strips off her socks and shinpads with more force than usual. She’s midway through pulling her jersey over her head when the sound of cleats on the tile startles her, a shocked voice breaking through her angry internal tirade.
“What the hell?”
Jo tugs the shirt the rest of the way over her head, tossing it into her bag and turning to scowl at Ruby, who’s standing there, staring. Jo thought all the other girls had gone, and the reappearance of Ruby doesn’t help her bad mood at all, nor does the way her teammate is gaping at her bare abdomen, lips parted and brown eyes wide with shock. “What are you staring at?”
“What is that?” Ruby points a finger at Jo’s left hip, still staring.
Jo’s eyes drop unnecessarily to her own hip, eyeing the dark mark in the vague, lopsided shape of a star. “Uh, it’s called a birthmark? Why the hell do you care?”
Ruby’s jaw clenches, her eyes finally sliding up to meet Jo’s. She drops her hands to the hem of her jersey and pushes it up to her rib cage, exposing the line of her own hip and her flat stomach over the low-slung waistband of her shorts and spandex. There on her right hip, mirroring Jo’s, is an identical birthmark to the one perched over Jo’s hip bone.
“Because I have the same mark,” she says flatly.
Jo stares incredulously, feeling her lip curl in shock. She knows the theory behind matching birthmarks but had never actually believed it: that every person is born with some kind of birthmark and that there’s one person in the world that has the exact same mark, and that person is supposed to be your soulmate. Sure, when she was a kid, Mom told her some story about her and Dad having them, and Sam says he and Jess have them, but she’s never seen them for herself and Jo’s a seeing-is-believing kind of girl. And if they are real, maybe it only works for some people because there’s no way that Ruby is her damn soulmate.
A laugh bursts out of Jo’s throat. The whole thing is totally ridiculous. “Don’t tell me you believe that matching birthmarks crap.” She ignores the unimpressed arch of Ruby’s eyebrow as the brunette lets her jersey drop to cover the mark. “We can’t be soulmates because I hate you. Call me crazy but I think that goes against the whole ‘meant to be together’ thing.”
Ruby raises her eyebrows, crossing her arms over her chest as she leans back against the lockers. “Well that’s nice,” she says sarcastically. “Tell me how you really feel.”
“Seriously?” Jo drops her shorts, tugging on her jeans in their place. “You actually believe in soulmates?”
“You don’t?”
Jo shakes her head. “If I did before, I wouldn’t now. The whole idea that the universe knows who would be the perfect match for me is bullcrap. Especially since the universe thinks that person is you.”
Ruby watches speculatively as Jo pulls her sweatshirt on over her sports bra and shoves her feet into her boots. When Jo straightens up, Ruby pushes away from the lockers and steps forward. “Well, there’s only one way to find out.”
Jo freezes, pausing halfway through shoving her cleats into her gym bag. “What’s that?”
One corner of Ruby’s mouth curls up in a crooked smile. “You could kiss me and see.”
Jo scoffs incredulously. “Kiss you? We’re not friends. I don’t even like you..”
“So?” Ruby shrugs, indifferent. “I’m not crazy about you either, but you have to admit it’s fucking weird that we have them. If we kiss and nothing happens, we’ll know the whole soulmate thing is a crock of shit and we can go on with our lives.” She cocks her head. “Unless you’re too freaked.”
“I’m not freaked,” Jo retorts, and she can see that Ruby’s baiting her but that doesn’t stop her from rising to the challenge. “Fine, let’s get this over with.” She dumps her bag back on the bench and steps towards Ruby, puckering her lips and looking up at the ceiling as she waits for Ruby to close the distance between them.
Ruby laughs and steps in, leaving a bare inch of space between their bodies. Jo startles when Ruby’s warm hand curls around her elbow and she looks back down to meet Ruby’s eyes. Ruby’s mouth is wide, her lips slightly parted as she leans in and in spite of herself, Jo feels her breath catch in her throat.
Both their eyes are open when their lips touch. It has all the air of a clinical experiment, and Jo mentally rifles through her hookups searching for a control, comparing this brush of lips with all the others in her memory. Victor had kissed more passionately and Dean more sweetly, and with Charlie it had been a bit of both in turns but mostly just a lot of fun.
This isn’t really like any of those. There’s nothing particularly special about this kiss; nothing romantic, no fireworks, no sparks going off behind her eyes. The planets don’t align, there are no angelic choirs singing praises, no bright light shining down on them. Her dislike doesn’t disappear in a magical poof of metaphorical purple smoke, and she doesn’t suddenly forget all the things about Ruby that piss her the hell off. She’s still mad about missing that play because Ruby didn’t pass her the ball. Nothing changes.
Except. Hmm.
The hand on Jo’s elbow is warm, and Ruby’s lips are soft and pillowy against her own. It feels kind of… nice? Not spectacular or anything, not soulmate nice, whatever that is, but just regular nice. Like kissing a pretty girl with nice lips, nice. Jo tries to look at Ruby and her eyes go crossed at their closeness so she lets her eyelids fall shut, leaning in a little closer to Ruby’s heat. The hand on her elbow tightens just slightly, not proprietary or possessive, but steadying, as she sways into the kiss. Ruby’s lips move against her own and Jo’s part automatically over the swell of the other girl’s full bottom lip.
Ruby pulls back first, but her hand still lingers over Jo’s elbow. “Well?” she asks and Jo shrugs.
“You’re a good kisser,” she concedes, “but no dice.”
“Yeah that’s what I thought,” Ruby said, and finally lets go. “So we can go on hating each other like before.” She grins as if she thinks she’s funny and Jo shocks herself by barking an answering laugh.
“Guess so.” Jo steps back and scoops her bag off the bench and slinging the strap over her shoulder. She pauses with her hand on the door. “And since we got that over with, you need to learn how to pass the fucking ball,” she calls, pushing her way out of the locker room door before Ruby can reply.
At practice that week, Jody gives the team at large a lecture on seeing the field and using your teammates while they stretch. Jo exchanges a look with Cassie who’s stretching nearby and chances a look over her shoulder at Ruby who’s seated at the back. She’s listening, combing her hands through the loose strands of her hair, but at the exact moment that Jo looks back, she turns and their eyes meet. Her expression doesn’t change, she just stares until Jo finally tears her gaze away, forcing herself to focus on Jody and ignore the weight of Ruby’s stare she can still feel burning into the back of her neck.
Ruby doesn’t pass to her all practice, not even when they’re in a line together for drills. She doesn’t pass to her at the next game either, though she does manage to score two goals on her own before halftime. So Jo retaliates by keeping the ball away from Ruby, sending it out to the right wing or up the field to the center instead, even if Ruby’s open. Maybe it’s childish, but two can play at that game, and hell if she’s going to give the ball to someone who won’t pass it back if the opening’s there. Somehow they manage to pull off a win, but the entire team is tense by the time the whistle blows.
Jody’s too sharp to miss what’s happening out on the field, and she pulls Jo aside as the rest of the team files into the dressing room. “What the hell’s going on between you and Ruby?”
Jo shrugs. “If Ruby doesn’t want to be a part of the team, then she won’t be.”
The coach raises her eyebrows, crossing her arms over her chest. It’s an expression Jo’s seen before and dubbed Jody’s Mom Look because it reminds her of her own mother, and she recognizes with a sinking feeling that she’s not going to like what comes next.
“You need to work this out with her. On your own time. You both are damn good players but neither of you are showing very good sportsmanship, and I know you’re better than that.”
“C’mon Jody.” Jo reaches behind her head to tug the elastic out of her hair, combing her fingers through the messy waves that fall to her shoulder. “She’s the one who doesn’t like to pass, who thinks she can take on everyone by herself -”
“Jo, you sound like a spoiled kid,” Jody says plainly. She never was one to sugar-coat anything. “I know you’re better than that. And I know you two would be an awesome team if you can just work together. Now I’m telling you to fix it, so fix it. Or I’ll bench you both.”
Jo’s jaw drops. “You’re not serious.”
Jody smiles grimly. “Does it look like I’m joking?”
Jo’s pretty pissed that it’s on her to fix things with Ruby when clearly it’s Ruby joining the team that’s causing all the issues, but whatever. With Jody’s words running over and over through her head, she makes a point of changing slowly after the next practice, parking herself on one of the benches in their locker room to wait until everyone is gone and hopefully catch Ruby before she leaves. Her feet, already shoved into her boots, tap restlessly on the ground as she smiles and waves goodbye to Tamara and Casey on their way out, leaving her alone in the room.
She waits until the clock on the wall ticks past the six thirty mark, and her sigh echoes against the metal banks of lockers. Clearly Ruby isn’t coming; she must have skipped out right after practice without changing which is kind of weird but not unheard of. So Jo’s the dumbass sitting all by herself in the girls locker room at the university field, waiting for someone who’s not even coming, someone who has her fucking soulmate mark or whatever but won’t even pass to her in fucking practice.
Wait. What?
Since when does she even think of Ruby like that? She doesn’t believe in soulmates, whatever some dumb spot on her hip says, and Ruby couldn’t be further from soulmate material, anyway. Yeah, they’d kissed once, so what? The world as she knows it remains unmoved, even though she’s thought about Ruby’s lips and that hand on her elbow more times than she’d like to admit.
Like, if a staged, experimental non-kiss like that had felt that nice, what would a real one be like? If Ruby’s hand on her elbow had felt like it belonged there, what would it be like to have that hand on her hip or clasped in hers? And if Ruby could make her laugh when just minutes before she had wanted to kick her ass for being a ball-hog, could she really be that bad?
Truth is, she knows nothing about Ruby besides that she’s kind of dirty hot and a good kisser and a damn good soccer player who prefers to take on the whole field rather than pass to her teammates. She’s sort of snarky funny in a way that’s constantly surprising, and she enjoys pressing Jo’s buttons. And she’s got a birthmark on her hip shaped like a wobbly star that exactly mirrors the one on Jo’s. Ruby’s a mysterious girl, a giant question mark in Jo’s mind behind which anger and curiosity and - if Jo’s honest with herself - interest swirl together in a confusing mess that she can’t even begin to unravel.
All she knows is that she and Ruby have to figure this shit out. The universe says they’re supposed to be soulmates which is probably bullshit but if they don’t smooth things over, Jody’s going to bench them, and the one thing she knows they definitely have in common is that neither of them want to be benched. They may not be willing to listen to the universe, but the Coach’s word is law.
She shoves herself to her feet with a sigh, shouldering her bag. Their next game is in four days, which means they have four days to iron out this mess and make sure they can both stay in the game and hopefully start working together.
Jo corners Ruby the next day after her Chemistry lab, from which the brunette emerges smelling distinctly like sulfur, with her mass of dark waves twisted into a bun on top of her head and secured with a ballpoint pen. She pauses when she sees Jo sitting crosslegged on the floor outside the classroom, then tells the guy she’d walked out with that she’ll see him later.
“What are you doing here?” Ruby asks, shuffling the books in her hands.
“Well hello to you too, soulmate.” Jo pushes to her feet, holding out the coffee cup in her hand which Ruby takes gingerly, eyeing it as though she expects it to explode at any moment.
“Is there arsenic in this?”
“Ha ha,” Jo deadpans, and Ruby’s lips twist like she’s forcing down a smile as she raises the cup to her mouth and takes a sip. She hums contentedly, letting her eyes slip closed for just a moment before she flicks a glance in Jo’s direction.
“Not poison, so it must be a bribe. Is this from the cart on the west side of campus?”
Jo nods. “It’s my favorite.”
“Mine too.” Ruby falls into step beside Jo. “So what brings you to my neck of the woods? Is this an apology for being such a dick at the last game?”
“Only if you want to apologize for doing the same thing,” Jo fires back. “You started it.”
“It’s not personal.” Ruby shrugs nonchalantly, and Jo has to suppress an answering retort. It sure felt personal. “I just don’t know you well enough to trust you to get the job done. Soulmate or otherwise.” There’s the crooked smile again, and Jo’s heart does a weird little flutter even as she rolls her eyes; she really has spent way too much time thinking about that mouth.
“Okay, enough of the soulmate crap.” She stops Ruby with a hand on her arm. “Jody told me you and I have to work this out before the next game or she’s going to bench both of us.”
Ruby snorts. “If she benches her two top players, no one’s going to score any goals.” Jo just barely registers that there’s a compliment buried in there somewhere before Ruby goes on. “You think she’d be stubborn enough to do that?”
“I know she is,” Jo answers grimly. “It’s the quickest way to get us to do what she wants, and she knows it. And - look, it’s no fun being pissed at you all game when we could be scoring goals.”
Ruby studies her, speculative, sipping at the coffee in her hand. “What do you think we should do?”
Okay. This is it - The Plan. She’s been warring with herself since yesterday after practice, oscillating back and forth on what she should do. Part of her wants to keep hating Ruby but as pissed as she is about how she’s been shutting down plays during their games, she can’t seem to stop herself from being interested, from laughing at Ruby’s jokes and wanting to know more about her. She’s intriguing even if she is frustrating, and Jo can’t seem to get her out of her head.
“I think we should go out,” she says finally, the words rushing out before she can stop them, and heat rising in her cheeks. “You don’t know me and I don’t know you but there’s clearly something going on here. Maybe if we spend some time together outside of practices and games, that’ll be able to translate better to the field and we can work together.”
Ruby smirks, her wide mouth splitting into a toothy grin, and that should absolutely not be hot. “You mean you think we should date? Harvelle. I thought you didn’t believe in soulmates.”
“I don’t. Shut up!” Her face flushes even more as Ruby laughs. “Just because I don’t think that some dumb birthmark on my hip should control my decisions doesn’t mean we shouldn’t hang out.”
“You can just say you want in my pants, Jo,” Ruby says, leaning in, her voice low and teasing. “It’ll be our little secret.”
“Ugh, shut the fuck up,” Jo replies but her lips curl into a grin and she doesn’t miss the way Ruby’s eyes flicker down to her mouth. “Is that a yes?”
Ruby pretends to consider. “Yeah I guess.” She smiles wickedly and leans in the last few inches, brushing her lips against Jo’s. The kiss is soft and teasing but it feels so much different than their first, spontaneous and born of something more than simple curiosity. It makes Jo want to kiss her again.
Jo clears her throat as Ruby straightens up. “So. You wanna break into Jody’s office and grab a ball to kick around for a while? The south field should be empty this time of day.”
Ruby throws back her head and laughs. “Ooh, talk dirty to me,” she jokes. “That’s your idea for a first date? You sure you’re not my soulmate?”
Jo snorts and gives Ruby a shove with her shoulder, fighting to hide her grin. “If you like that, how about this move: race you to the Phys Ed building?” And before Ruby can respond, she bursts into a sprint, laughing breathlessly as Ruby chases her down the hall.