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This Time (She's) Gonna Take The Crown

Summary:

When Allison was fifteen she chose Exy over her health.
When Allison was seventeen she chose Exy over her parents and their inheritance.
When Allison was eighteen she chose Exy over the best education in the country.
When Allison was twenty-three she chose Exy over a business career.
When Allison was twenty-seven she was ready to choose her love over Exy...

...but she didn't have to.

Notes:

Allison Reynolds nearly killed herself as a teenager to play Exy and if you try to tell me that she gave that all up to design clothes I will flat out tell you that you're wrong.

Honestly, I just wanted to write her being a pro and her and Kevin being friends.........

Title from Pretty Hurts by Beyonce (which let's be honest is fully Allison's song at one point in her life.

Warnings: None-Graphic Eating Disorder. Non-Graphic Emotional Abuse of a Child. Non-Graphic Neglect of a Child. Someone Gets Outed. Vomiting Not Related To The Eating Disorder. Panic Attack.

(See the end of the work for more notes.)

Chapter Text

Heiress Allison Reynolds Wowing All In New Photoshoot Page Two… and how the heiress to a multi-billion dollar empire plans to celebrate the millennium and how she manages starting High School! 

Allison Reynolds, heiress to the empire her parents have built up over the years, like many, started high school this September. We asked her all your burning questions about boys, styling a uniform and more in this exclusive interview!! 

Int: So, you’ve just settled in at a new school. How’s that been? Exciting? Scary?

AR: The scariest part of it all has got to have been the uniforms! We often joke about how much we wish we could just go to a regular high school where they let us wear whatever we like

Int: Back in my day we used to try and accessorize without our teachers noticing. Anything to get the boys to notice! Do you do any of that?

AR: Not really! I don’t really have to! They notice anyway! But I won’t go without my lipgloss though if that counts…

Int: That definitely counts! I suppose with a perfect figure like yours they can’t not notice you! How do you keep your figure so well all of the time…

-oOo-

When Allison was fifteen, she met her parent’s eyes with a defiant tilt of her chin. She’d grown up with money and luxury. “No” wasn’t a word she heard.

They’d said that the bruises were too much. That it was too dangerous. That she was hurting herself. That it wasn’t ladylike. But Allison heard what they were really trying to tell her. It was unattractive. 

Since she’d taken up exy she’d paid less interest in the boys outside of her team. She’d turned down dates with her parent’s friend’s children but that was less embarrassing than when she’d stopped getting asked out altogether.

She was the best dealer her private school had despite only being a freshman, fast and currently unspecialised and not one to shy away from a court brawl. She was also the only girl on a team of boys who thought they were men, they respected her game and nothing else about her.

It took weeks but finally, she’d struck a compromise with her parents. If she didn’t tarnish their image, she could keep playing.

She lost the muscle tone, letting them think she was cutting back on practice when in reality she was cutting back on food - always the first to excuse herself after a meal as she all but ran to the closest bathroom. 

Losing weight was the easy part, but without the nourishment that she needed to still be the best at what she did, the bruises healed slower. So she bought twelve different types of foundations and concealers a piece and spent a weekend locked in her room, skin rubbed raw as she perfected the art of something else.

Once the compliments on her appearance returned, her parents stopped caring. Happy to let her do whatever so long as it didn’t affect them and Allison was perfectly fine with that if it meant she made starting line.

The reprieve didn't last though and her body finally reached its breaking point two years later. As the adrenaline seeped out of her system after their win at the District Championships, she staggered off the court, unable to make it back to the privacy of the locker room before her legs buckled and the side of her head slammed into the bench.

She woke up in the hospital with three stitches, a psych referral and her parent’s anger.

“How dare you?!” her mother had spat like this was all just some big plan to bring shame on the family.

The sessions with her psychiatrist were long and painful but they were also the most peaceful time Allison got - being the only time her parents gave her space to breathe.

They’d diagnosed her with an eating disorder.

It was something Allison knew she’d had for a long time, but hearing the words come out of the doctor’s mouth still stung.

The first time Allison got back to her room after her therapy appointment and found both her parents absent - the nurse told her that they’d been called into work but Allison didn’t care, turning to the nurse.

“I’ll give you the five hundred dollars currently sitting in my purse if you let me make two calls and warn me before they come back.” 

The nurse’s eyes had widened for just a moment before Allison was ushered into an empty office and directed towards the phone.

The call with the lawyer was simple, a heads up more than anything, that the money she’d been setting aside for years might be needed soon. When the word emancipation got bought up she hesitated for just a second before asking for the papers although she doubted they’d be needed.

The second call was her Coach, she’d gotten his voicemail but not knowing when she’d get another chance to speak to him she left him a quiet message.

“I’m sorry. Give away my spot if you like but I’m going to get better and earn it back - properly this time.” 

And she aimed to keep that promise.

She followed the Doctor’s orders to the letter, she ate and she talked and slowly the bruises healed.

The day she was discharged was one of the most terrifying of Allison’s life. Her parents had ushered her through the crowd of paparazzi’s and they’d barely been home two minutes before Allison dropped the emancipation papers onto the table in front of them.

“You let me play or I cause a scandal you won’t recover from.”

They let her play.

She moved into their penthouse a mile from her school and their conditions were just as clear.

If you play exy, you get nothing.

She played.

The countdown to her eighteenth birthday hung over her head like a bomb. If she wanted to pursue the sport after her senior year, she had to find somewhere else to live.

She kept her promises to the doctors and to her coach, she stayed healthy, practised whenever she could and when she got the chance at tryouts, she made starting line without a doubt in anyone’s mind. 

With growing muscle tone and lasting energy, she was better than ever.  

Scouts came but when none of the offers stuck, she had no doubts that her parent’s money was the reason. So when Coach Wymack approached her after a game - unable to be bought - with a contract in hand she didn’t hesitate.

It didn’t matter that his team was bottom of the league, made up of broken pieces and fractured souls. They still had a Class I rating and at the end of the day, despite the makeup that covered her cracks, she was no better than any of them really.

-oOo-

Allison Reynolds, Teenage Heartthrob and Heiress has chosen the most unlikely of college choices…

With rumoured offers on the table from Harvard, Berkley and more… Allison Reynolds has chosen to go to Palmetto University in South Carolina with a Scholarship for exy to study fashion and business. While we’ve known for some time that exy has been a hobby of Allison’s since she joined her high school team it’s uncertain why she’s pursuing this with the lowest-ranked Class I team in the division coached by David Wymack who is known for recruiting players from broken homes.

We reached out to Reynolds Inc earlier for a comment on Allison’s choice of school and the fact that despite their wealth she’s getting her education through a scholarship but we were refused a meeting.

We also caught Allison and although she was in a hurry she did tell us that she was “going to Palmetto because that’s the best offer on the table for what I want to do.” 

Are the Reynolds just using a scholarship that could go to someone more in need? Why is Coach Wymack breaking the pattern of Foxes recruitment for Allison? How’s the heiress going to fit in on a team full of runaways with questionable pasts? Could there be more to her hospitalization last year for an eating disorder than meets the eye?

We’re just going to have to wait for summer practice to start to find out when we follow her to South Carolina! 

-oOo-

Moving into Palmetto as summer practices started was an adjustment that she didn’t know how to make.

It was the first time in over a year that she’d constantly been around other people. She’d gotten so good at being self-sufficient, she’d even enjoyed learning to cook and design her own space but she’d never had to do it with other people before.

She had two roommates now and ten other team members surrounding her constantly at it’s all overwhelming for a while.

Renee is softness grown from unspeakable horrors. She accepts Allison as a roommate and a friend without hesitation and Allison surprises herself and enjoys letting her defensive mask slip a little to lean on another person.

She and Dan had clashed instantly. In hindsight, Allison didn’t even know why. They would snap at each other over the tiniest things until all of a sudden they were best friends. Allison didn’t know if it was Dan finally realising that she could handle her own or if she herself was just tired of letting their cockier male teammates try to pick them to pieces but it didn’t matter.

The trio were a force of nature when side by side and on the court together they were ruthless.

It took longer to find her feet with the rest of the team, the guys all saw her as some spoilt rich barbie and they weren’t exactly wrong so she tuned a lot of it out. But when Michaels had kicked off at practice when she didn’t pass to him, she finally put her foot down.

“What the fuck is she even doing here? She’s not a fox! She’s never gone hungry a day in her life! Always had mommy-” 

He hadn’t finished his outburst when her fist hit his face and Dan not so kindly told him to not comment on things he knew nothing about.

And then there was Seth…

Seth was the first thing she’d let distract her from Exy in years but there was a reason she had a reputation of getting what she wanted and she wanted to be loved by him.

And she was.

When he was sober she loved him so much that it hurt and when he wasn’t it just hurt.

It was the most real relationship she’d ever had. Neither of them having to hide a part of themselves, both of them free to make their own choices. He respected her for more than her body or her talent on the court although he appreciated both.

He was her first real love and his death shattered her heart into more pieces than anything ever had before.

She was stronger after that, they all were.

Fuelled on vengeance and an anger that nobody above the bottom could understand.

In the aftermath of several lifetimes worth of trauma and pain, the foxes had all become the best versions of themselves.

Sure, Allison was still as Nicky put it “a catty bitch” but she had a family whom she’d gone through hell with and she wouldn’t change them for any inheritance.

Senior year came and she found herself hesitating for the first time in nearly a decade.

Dan and Renee had both turned down Pro contracts because despite both of them having the potential to go further, neither of them had the drive. Exy had always been a means to an end for Dan and an outlet for Renee, they both wanted other things out of their lives.

It was Kevin of all people who’d encouraged her to go forward, with a surprising gentleness he’d sat with her and gone through the three contracts she’d been offered and once they’d narrowed it down to one, he watched her sign it with a proud smile.

That week Allison made headlines again for the first time in years and although she’d deny it until the ends of the earth when Wymack dropped the magazine in front of her at her last team meeting the day after they secured their second championship title, she looked down at her face on the cover and burst into tears.

-oOo-

Allison Reynolds, Defensive Dealer - The First Palmetto Fox To Ever Go Pro!

When Reynolds first signed up at Palmetto there were a lot of questions surrounding her future and choices but now it couldn’t be clearer. Earlier this morning Miami’s Manta Ray’s released a statement that they were excited for Reynolds to be joining their lineup after she graduates. 

Reynolds proved herself on Court last year with the Foxes after they won the Championship against Edgar Allen’s Raven’s and she’s the first Fox to ever sign a professional contract. Current Foxes captain Danielle Wilds is rumoured to have also been offered a chance to go pro but neither of Reynolds graduating teammates have any interest in going pro.

Word is going around that Foxes Kevin Day, Matt Boyd, Neil Josten and Andrew Minyard may also be scouted in the coming years but it’s too early to say for sure.

Either way, Reynolds has made Palmetto history this season and we look forward to seeing her on professional courts next season! 

-oOo-

Learning to play for a new team is hard, she can’t fling the ball back to Andrew and know that he’ll get it where it needs to go. She can’t pass forward to Kevin or Neil who knows what her play is going to be three steps before she does herself. And it’s really lonely for a while.

But she finds her place and makes new friends with her teammates, although none of them will ever come close to the family she left behind in South Carolina. Her little family still talk daily through group chats and long phone calls with both Dan and Kevin - the latter of who pleasantly surprises her with his friendship and support. She could always count on him for a pep talk/lecture whenever she doubted her abilities and he was happy to let her rant about the shitty ways the media spoke about her. It was a long way from when he first came to them, angry, scared and outright cruel at times.

Her foxes had all come to her first game, a block of orange in a sea of her new team’s green. When she saw Wymack and Abby side by side in the stands, she swore to herself that she’d make them proud. And she did.

When it came time, Kevin, Matt, Andrew and Neil graduated in turn and went pro themselves and the game got exciting again. It was so strange to be playing opposite her former teammates as opposed to next to them but it was a challenge and she never backed away from a challenge. 

She’d swear at Neil when he darted past her with a grin and retaliated later by tripping him up with a move he’d taught her. She’d taken great joy in tackling Kevin whenever she could, something they’d laugh at over drinks later as he critiqued the game. She didn’t get to see as much of Matt or Andrew on the court but at the end of every game, she’d launch herself into Matt’s waiting arms and accept Andrew’s fist bump with a grin before he let her buy the drinks for the night no matter who won or lost.

After three years with her first team in Florida, she signed onto Kevin’s in New York and it was the warmest reception she’d ever gotten from a team.

She’d earnt Kevin’s respect on the court years ago so, by default, she’d earnt his teams.

They fell back into old - but improved - habits quickly, both trusting themselves and each other more than they had in college. She’d snatch the ball from her backliner and be volleying it down to Kevin to score before her mark had even registered she’d had it.

It took her and Matt a season longer to get the call from Court than it had their former teammates but she didn’t care, because their first proper practice with all five of them felt a little bit like coming home.

Three years later, five foxes stood together at the top of an Olympic podium a gold medal apiece and if anyone saw Wymack beaming up at them all proudly in the stands with tears on his cheeks, nobody said a word.

-oOo-

US Court Takes Gold For The Fourth Year In A Row!

There were a lot of fresh faces on the lineup this Olympics. Kevin Day, Jean Moreau, Neil Josten, Andrew Minyard, Matthew Boyd, Jeremy Knox, Sara Alvarez and Allison Reynolds all joined Olympic veterans this summer in London in the biggest team shake up the Court has ever seen but it seems to have paid off as they bought home gold once again! 

Captained for the first time by Thea Muldani - the first woman to captain a National team, the US team bought home gold with the largest goal margin in the sports history! 

When questioned about her new line up, she had this to say:

“Fresh blood is always good on Court and this just proves it! A lot of people were criticizing my ability to lead them to victory and the inexperience of some of my players but I think we proved them all wrong out there. I don’t think it was that big of a risk to be honest, all of these guys have been proving themselves since college. I played with Day and Moreau at Edgar Allen. Josten captained Minyard, Day, Reynolds and Boyd at PSU while Knox, Alvarez and Moreau were a force to be reckoned with in LA. We all enjoyed mixing it up a little and bringing back some of the best partnerships from our college days. And we’re all very excited for next season!”