Work Text:
i.
Hope groans into her pillow when she feels someone poking her cheek. “Babe, get up,” Kelley says.
The keeper pulls the covers tighter over her and buries her face deeper into the soft white fluff. But the poking continues.
“What do you want,” she grunts, voice muffled by the pillow. She peeks one eye open only to find Kelley standing naked next to the bed.
“There’s a spider in the shower,” the smaller woman replies, arms wrapped around herself in the cool morning air.
Hope groans again. “Are you fucking serious,” she croaks, glancing at the clock beside the bed to see 6:38 am glaring back at her. No one should have to be awake this early on their day off.
Nevertheless she gets up, dragging her own naked body into the master bathroom to go kill the goddamn spider.
Less than a minute later, Hope walks back into the bedroom where Kelley is sitting on the edge of the bed waiting.
“Thanks baby.” The freckled woman smiles charmingly at her wife.
Hope just makes a grunting noise at her before climbing back into the bed and pulling the sheets over her head. Kelley smirks to herself at how whipped the goalkeeper is and heads back into the bathroom for her shower.
ii.
“HOPE! HOPE! HELP!!!”
Hope drops the pan she was working with in alarm, burning her thumb in the process. “Shit,” she mutters, quickly turning off the heat and rushing up the stairs.
“What Kel? What’s wrong!?” she sprints into their bedroom, expecting the worst.
But all she finds is Kelley standing on the bed, arm wrapped around a pillow in fear as she points to the wall above the TV.
“Spider,” is all she says, and Hope runs her hand through her hair in frustration.
“You can't scare me like that, Jesus. I burned my thumb trying to get up here thinking that you’d injured yourself or something.”
Kelley just hugs the pillow tighter to herself. “Please can you just get it.”
Hope glares at her, but nevertheless grabs a tissue from the dresser and smacks the spider to its poor, poor death. Kelley looks ridiculously relieved, and Hope shoots her another look as she moves into the bathroom to flush the dead spider down the toilet.
When she comes back into the bedroom, Kelley has moved off the bed and is smiling sheepishly at the taller woman. Hope walks past her with annoyance, intending to head back to the kitchen, but stops when she feels a weight jump onto her back.
“Thank you,” Kelley says into her ear followed by a peck on the cheek. Hope just hums in acknowledgment, but can't find it in herself to be annoyed with her wife any longer.
“One day we are going to get over this fear of yours,” she states, grabbing onto Kelley’s legs and carrying her piggyback style down the stairs. Kelley just lets out a squeal and holds on tighter.
iii.
“I'm at training Kel, I can't just leave.”
“Please, Hope. It's like a 5 minute drive,” comes the muffled reply through the phone.
“This is getting ridiculous,” Hope says, more to herself than anyone, hanging up on her wife.
She tells her trainer that there was “an incident at home” and she’ll be back in “no more than 15 minutes,” as she jogs out to the parking lot, keys and phone in hand.
When she arrives, Kelley already has the door open and looks more flustered than one should be over something so trivial. Hope is a little surprised when she feels the smaller woman bury herself into her body. “I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I really tried Hope, I did. But this one is so big and I just couldn't do it, and I-”
“Babe, it's okay,” Hope comforts, wrapping her arm around her wife. She finds that she’s a little worried herself, considering how worked up Kelley seemed. “Just show me where it is.”
Hope braces herself as she enters the bathroom, expecting a tarantula or something equally big and hairy after hearing the freckled woman’s description.
“Where, Kel?” she asks her wife, who’s practically cowering in fear outside the door.
“The corner of the bathtub.”
Hope looks at the pearly tub, many a bath shared in there, and wonders if she might have to get her entire bathroom decontaminated after she has to murder a five-foot-wide creepy crawler (according to Kelley’s description).
So it’s safe to say she's more than irritated when all she sees is a tiny spider, no bigger than a coin, chilling in the tub like that's its job. She rolls her eyes, killing it in one try.
“You've got to be kidding me.”
Kelley, in all her “traumatized” glory, goes back to training with Hope after a long ‘what is and what isn't an appropriate reason to make your spouse come home from work’ lecture from the goalkeeper. She receives the silent treatment for the rest of the day.
iv.
“We are ending this once and for all,” Hope declares.
They're on a boat off the coast of Greece celebrating their 3 year wedding anniversary, and Hope is livid .
Here they are, surrounded by clear blue waters and an abundance of luxury, and yet all Kelley is concerned about is that she saw a spider moving across the deck a minute ago.
“Come here Kelley.”
“No.”
“Come here.”
“No.”
“Can you stop acting like a child.”
“You know I hate spiders!”
Hope lets out a frustrated groan before walking over to her wife and picking her up.
“Put me down!” Kelley protests in disbelief, but the goalkeeper has already brought her within 3 feet of the spider. Now being let down is the opposite of what she wants.
“Listen, babe. You were afraid of sharks and you went swimming with them. You were afraid of heights and yet you went flying with the Blue Angels.” Kelley gives her a look, knowing where this was going.
“You can get through this fear. I believe in you.”
The smaller woman just lets out a childish whine as her wife forces her closer to where the small spider has moved onto one of the sun loungers.
“You can do it Kel. Just take the paper towel.” Hope nudges her even closer.
“Ugh can you help me at least?”
Hope sighs but moves her body behind her wife’s grabbing her arm and guiding her to where the teeny black dot scuttled across the lounger.
“Okay on the count of three, we’re gonna smush it. 1... 2… 3!”
Kelley lets out a squeal and closes her eyes as Hope steers the paper towel in Kelley’s hand onto the spider. “It's dead, you can open your eyes.”
The smaller woman sprints to the trash and drops the paper towel like it’s diseased before allowing a giant smile to break out on her face.
“I did it Hope! I fucking did it!”
The goalkeeper rolls her eyes at her wife, but can't help the matching grin that creeps onto her lips.
“I'm fearless. I am FEARLESS.” Kelley’s running around in circles across the deck with her arms raised in triumph.
She watches her wife in amusement until a 5’ 5 sized lump is barreling into her arms.
“We did it,” Kelley says softly, looking up at her in adoration. Hope can't help herself when she leans down to kiss her.
Later, Kelley insists on a bottle of wine in commemoration of her finally overcoming her fear of spiders. Hope thinks that it didn't really count, considering Kelley’s eyes were closed and Hope did all the work, but she obliges anyway, figuring that maybe this will discourage future ‘emergency’ wake up calls at 6am or insistence that she come home from training over a bug in the bathroom.
She can't believe she's celebrating the death of a spider.
She can't believe she married this idiot.