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Yaz loves a lot of things about curling: the strategies, the pace of the games, the almost meditative state she gets into when she’s delivering a stone, the thrill when it stops exactly where she’d visualised it.
But her favourite thing about it is the community, the people who make the game what it is. Sure, all sports depend on people coming together – and she has good friends from her hockey days – but she has never felt it as intensely as she does with curling. Good sportsmanship is part of the tradition of the game, and it tends to attract people who value that. It’s literally in the rulebook as part of the spirit of curling, along with kindly feeling and honourable conduct. The natural disposition of most players, combined with Yaz’s kindness and Dan’s friendly demeanour, means that they usually become friends with their opponents by the second end.
Every rule has an exception, though. And the pair currently playing against them is definitely the exception.
For the first few ends, Yaz and Dan tried to chat as usual, making jokes and being generally friendly towards them, but Aster Smith and Omar Corin barely acknowledged their efforts. Yaz decided to give them the benefit of the doubt; everyone has bad days sometimes, after all, and today’s one of those for the pair. It can’t be personal, since they had never even met before. She does her best to keep that in mind.
It usually takes a lot for Yaz to lose her patience with someone – part of why she’s such a great teacher – but the constant whispers and sideway looks from the other pair hit a little too close to home, making her feel like she’s back in secondary school. She knows they are professional players while she and Dan are amateurs who never really tried to make it their career, and she’s starting to think that Smith and Corin believe they’re too good for this tournament, even though they entered it of their own free will. And the wildest thing is that they are losing.
By the beginning of the 8th – and theoretically last – end, Yaz is beyond annoyed. Smith and Corin have been disputing every decision they can throughout the game and refused to concede early despite the fact that they’re 5 points behind. It’s not mathematically impossible for them to tie and get an extra end, but still… They haven’t managed to get 5 points throughout seven ends, but think they can manage that in the last one?
It feels like they’re just being difficult for the fun of it.
Yaz feels bad for thinking that; she usually tries to be kinder, and that’s a rather petty thought. But Yaz and Dan are winning by 8-3 and it hasn’t felt like a particularly difficult game so far, which is weird given the difference in their expertise levels, so it makes her wonder about what her opponents want out of this game. She wasn’t expecting to win; she and Dan mostly played these local tournaments to motivate their students and have fun.
Though fun is certainly the wrong word for this particular game.
However, the 8th end goes more similarly to what Yaz had imagined the whole game would feel like. She and Dan barely manage to get any stones in the house for more than a minute, while their opponents get the five points they needed. Yaz is staring speechless when the last stone falls perfectly into place.
She would be in awe if she weren’t so angry at those two.
The extra end is much the same, and Smith and Corin win by 12-8. Yaz feels frustrated not so much because of the loss, but because they spent most of the game toying with her. It feels disrespectful not only to her and Dan, but also the officials, the audience, and even the game itself.
Maybe she’s being a little overdramatic, but she gives herself a pass after enduring that insufferable pair the whole game.
Yaz takes a few deep breaths to calm herself down before she and Dan go say hi to the students who are in the audience. That part, at least, can’t be ruined by snobby opponents, and she feels better after a chat.
Another advantage of spending some time with the students is that Aster Smith has probably already left the locker room by the time Yaz starts making her way there, so she won’t have to see the other woman again so soon. Or, hopefully, ever.
She should have waited longer, though, because the blonde is still there when she enters the locker room. On the bright side, she’s closing her backpack so should be leaving any second now. Yaz decides to just ignore her, but Smith looks up as she walks in and, with a nod and a cocky smile, says, “Hey, good game.”
“You call that good?” Yaz retorts before she can stop herself, her anger and frustration back as strong as ever.
“Come on, Khan, don’t be a sore loser,” the blonde replies, still with that cocky smile.
Yaz wishes she could slap the smile off her face. “I’m not a sore loser,” she snarls back. “I just don’t like arrogant people. What the hell were you doing? Why drag it out like that and only play properly in the last end?”
“O likes the adrenaline,” Smith says with a shrug, her cocky smile finally gone.
“And you couldn’t tell him to knock it off?” Yaz realises her fists are clenched and tries to relax them. She shouldn’t even be arguing; she hates to let the blonde see how frustrated she is.
“He won’t play otherwise. Not in these meaningless tournaments.”
“Then don’t! Stick to your big leagues if you’re not going to be serious about the game!”
“I never said that I’m not serious,” the blonde retorts. “Sometimes we can learn something from local tournaments. Granted, this wasn’t one of those times, but…”
If this were a cartoon, there would be smoke coming out of Yaz’s ears by now. She has to walk away from this argument, or she might actually do something she’ll regret. “Y’know what, I’m done. I’m not talking about this anymore,” she says in what she hopes is a calmer voice, raising her hands as if conceding. “This whole discussion is even more frustrating than that game. I might actually need to beat the hell out of a punching bag now.”
“Or…” Smith says, running her eyes over Yaz with a smirk. Yaz only now realises how close they got to each other, too wrapped up in their fight to pay attention. Her back is almost touching the lockers behind her, and Smith is barely three steps away from her. It makes her feel weird, and she assumes it’s because she’s basically trapped there. “If you want to burn off some of that angry energy, I have some better suggestions. Way more fun than a punching bag.” She lifts an eyebrow as her eyes dip to Yaz’s lips.
“You can’t be serious,” Yaz tries to scoff, but it comes out weaker than she would have liked. She’s shocked that Smith would dare suggest something like that while Yaz is this mad at her. Does she really think it will work?
“That’s not a no,” the blonde says calmly, moving even closer. Yaz means to tell her that of course it’s a no, then turn around and get her things from the locker before leaving in a huff, but she feels frozen to the spot and does none of it.
“I…” she says, but nothing follows. What a time for her brain to stop functioning.
“You…?” Smith questions, taking another step closer. She’s now close enough that Yaz can see the little flecks of gold in her eyes. “Come on, Khan, use your words,” she teases. The fact that Yaz can feel Smith’s soft breath on her face when she speaks makes it even harder to find a reply.
“You still haven’t answered my question,” the blonde points out, leaning in a little, and Yaz wants to argue that there wasn’t a question, but still can’t form words. “You can just nod or shake your head, if you want.” She reaches up and rests her hand on the locker behind Yaz. “Do you want me to leave?” Her voice is barely a whisper now.
Yaz wants to nod, to tell her to leave, to push her away, but she can’t stop staring at the blonde’s face. The hazel eyes, the little freckles on her cheeks, her lips; she notices her top lip is a bit wonky–
And then Smith kisses her, and Yaz stops thinking altogether. She barely registers her hands grabbing the back of Smith’s shirt, pulling her closer, or her back hitting the locker when the blonde obliges and pushes her against it, not a sliver of space between their bodies.
Yaz can’t help the embarrassing, needy whine that leaves her mouth when Smith breaks their kiss to mouth along her jaw. She can feel the blonde smile against her skin and it makes her feel like she’s burning, and she needs more, she needs–
She pulls Smith into another kiss, a hand sneaking under her shirt to rest on the bare skin of her back, and she’s not thinking, she can’t think, not now.
Smith breaks the kiss again when they start running out of oxygen, but stays pressed against Yaz, kissing down her neck and nipping at her skin and Yaz has her hands buried in Smith’s soft hair, and stars, she can barely remember how they got here–
–and then her brain comes back online and she remembers she was angry at this woman until thirty seconds ago. (Or thirty minutes? Yaz has no idea how much time has passed since they started kissing, time has no meaning, she doesn’t need time, she needs–)
Smith nips her earlobe and Yaz shivers, then remembers she meant to push her away, but attempts to do so by pulling her hair, and Smith lets out a moan that almost makes Yaz forget everything and–
Before she can get carried away again, Yaz tries to hold on to how angry she was just minutes before. Smith shouldn’t be able to distract her this easily, no matter how good of a kisser she is.
She did say it was her partner’s fault, maybe she just couldn’t go against him, a voice inside Yaz chimes in, trying to advocate for leniency, but she mentally shushes it. Whatever that voice is, it is not coming from her brain. She moves her hands to Smith’s shoulders and finally pushes her away.
“Did I hurt you?” Smith asks, breathing a little too hard, with a dazed look in her eyes. Yaz tries not to stare at her kiss-swollen lips.
“No, I…” Yaz trails off, a little surprised by the softness in the other woman’s voice. She turns and opens the locker door, forcing Smith to back away from her. “This isn’t what I wanted from that conversation. I want you to be more considerate of people while playing against them, not… Whatever this was.”
“This was a kiss,” Smith says, crossing her arms. “A pretty good one, too. And you sure seemed to want it until a second ago.”
“That was just a reflex. I dare you not to react when being suddenly kissed by a pretty–” Yaz interrupts herself, but it’s too late.
“Aw, you think I’m pretty?” the blonde says, cocky smile back in place. “For future reference, I prefer to be called handsome, but ‘pretty’ is also nice. You should see me in a suit.”
Yaz hates that some part of her reacts to that and does want to see her in a suit, but she retorts, “No need for me to know your preferred terms since I don’t intend to see you again unless I have the misfortune of running into you out there on the sheet.”
She realises she said the wrong thing when Smith's smile grows. “I would love to meet you in the sheets,” she replies with a shit-eating grin.
Yaz feels her face burn and does her best to glare at the blonde. “On the ice sheet! You know I meant the ice sheet!” She pinches the bridge of her nose in annoyance, ready for this day to end. “Please leave now.”
Smith shrugs. “Suit yourself.” She walks back to her backpack and picks it up, then says, “When you change your mind…”
“When?” Yaz scoffs. “I won’t be changing my mind, thank you very much.”
“When you inevitably change your mind, you’re welcome to slide into my DMs,” the blonde says with a wink. “I look forward to it. See you later, Yasmin!”
“No, you won’t,” Yaz replies in a singsong voice as the blonde walks out.
Once she’s alone, Yaz sits on a bench and rubs her face in frustration. The audacity of that woman! She isn’t wrong that it was a good kiss, though, that same voice inside Yaz points out.
“Shush,” Yaz says out loud, this time. “That is not the point. The point is that she used it to distract me. And I fell for it,” she says, now angry at herself too. Yaz isn’t a teenager with raging hormones anymore; she shouldn’t be losing control that easily. She should have shut it down before their lips had ever touched–
And now she is thinking about Smith’s lips and all the places they’d touched and Yaz’s skin is tingling with the memory. She sighs and looks at the ceiling, as if begging for divine intervention.
She shakes herself and gets up, forcing the blonde out of her thoughts. She needs to change and leave; Dan is waiting for her, and he’ll worry if she takes much longer to meet him outside.
Yaz decides it’s not worth worrying about this whole day too much. It was a bad game followed by an unadvised kiss, and both memories would lose their sting soon enough, especially since she has no plans to play against that pair again or to slide into anyone’s DMs, ever.
No matter what Aster Smith wants to believe.