Broken Defence

Slightly different story from me here - this is a one and done story.

Content warning: this story hints at and sometimes directly addresses some of the following themes: self harm, bullying, cyber bullying, suicidal thoughts.

I hope to have done the subject matter justice but please proceed with that warning in mind.

This is a slow burn, which means you won't be getting much sex at all for the first few pages. It'll be worth it, I hope.

All characters where sex is referenced are over 18.

Volunteer

***

I finished my pint of San Miguel while looking at the message on my phone and cursing my life decisions. Dramatic I know, particularly after I read the text again on the way out of the pub, mind less clouded by lager.

Diane Tannar: Tom, get the team together and get to the training ground by 7 am tomorrow. Busy day ahead.

What team? I thought. Georgia was a press assistant who did work way above her pay grade because I didn't have the time or energy to do it. Alf, our photographer, was on retainer and would turn up whenever he heard the sound of our chequebook oxidising. More so, what ground? The ground we shared with a men's team that didn't share our name, our kit, our culture or our belief that women's football, or soccer depending on where you were, was a growing industry? The early start was precisely because they'd negotiated unfavourable but financially beneficial terms to let us train there.

I drove my Hyundai into the training complex the next day, waved through by the security guard who had seen my acid gaze enough recently. Georgia sat next to me, old enough to drive but I didn't pay her well enough to afford to learn. Alf sat in the back, taking the car ride as a further means of payment and serving as a reminder of how desperate we truly were for some investment and a proper team.

Georgia and Alf had spent most of the drive speculating on what we were being dragged in for. Once the coffee kicked in, I joined them. I gave no hint of my cynicism, that would be a dangerous game when the job of you and your team is to excite, inspire and grow the fanbase. I wasn't always cynical, it mostly reared its head when I was blindsided or facing the unknown... or reflecting on bad decisions made years earlier. That's what I had found myself doing the night before and the echoes of those thoughts still left a bitter taste the following morning.

I helped Alf get his kit out of the back but this was more so I could trail in last. I always though that was the best place to be when it came to a surprise or bad news: last to be seen, first to recover. The good news about sharing the training complex is that we had some of our own offices. It allowed the men's team and their fully stocked comms, marketing and press team, to gloat about their work in 'grassroots and women's football." Lovely. Still, it was an improvement on where we were 5 years ago when I got into the sport.

Diane, our Club Director walked out of her office beaming when she saw us. Christ, we've been sold to some prick who wants to get his daughter on the team, was my instant reaction. I locked my cynical thought away quickly.

Behind her walked a smartly suited older man, all moustache and cologne who was our occasional lawyer. You know the type: the one that goes to get his wife perfume at a department store for Christmas, buys his mistress a necklace and forgets to get the perfume. He looked like he wanted to be stupid rich but couldn't quite make it. If he was hanging around woman's football, he never would.

Then it happened. We saw why Moustache was here and why Diane was smiling like she had won first prize in the lottery. In a way, she had. It was just the ticket that nobody currently wanted.

Last to be seen, first to recover. Georgia gasped and Alf whooped at the sight. I nodded, having already collected my emotions - a tough ask, given how conflicted and intense they were at that moment.

"Look who flew over from Portland to sign with us! May I present Holly Dane!" Diane needed to do more work on her pre-hype for the press later but her enthusiasm was certainly there. "We're delighted she's able to join us, she'll bring a wealth of experience and quality at an International level, for our first season in the Women's top flight." All through Diane's quote-heavy speech, my eyes remained on Holly. I felt my breath stick in my throat and it was causing a pile-up of air. I looked away just as her hazel eyes found mine. I looked back at her again just as quickly and saw she was looking away.

Now, I'm not the best at understanding body language. As you'll come to find out shortly, I'm even worse at reading the room. But I could see that Holly wasn't excited by this. How could she be?

"Why aren't you getting this down, Tom?"

"Georgia's on it, I'm.... drinking it in," I replied. Holly looked over at me just as I glanced over at Georgia. Mercifully, Georgia had been scribbling away. This was big for us.

We finally caught eyes and I saw no hint of recognition in hers. She was big time. I was the man holding down the equivalent of 3 jobs in an underfunded football team, with a boss that wanted me to behave like the Nike or Gatorade commercial coordinators that our new Superstar was more familiar with. I was a journalist who took a liking to working in Football and found a job where I'd have creative control over the website, press and communications. It was supposed to be liberating but it was often just tiring and frustrating.

When you work in media, there are several tools that you can use to help you do your job. One of those allows you to flag the mention of keywords in articles. We'd had ours set up for a number of words and anything published by the press with those words would be flagged to us, giving us an instant link to that article. We had the usual "England" "women/woman" "soccer" and "footballer" and that could sometimes lead to hours of scrolling, especially if a tournament was on. It was worth our while though - it was always better to seek out inappropriate or unfair articles than to presume they didn't exist and get called out for them later.

A few weeks ago, it was a surprise to see a higher than normal amount of articles containing those keywords, mostly coming out of America. Often when those articles come up, they're positive. But with the rise of cybercrime over the last few years, it felt prudent to also look out for words like 'nude' and 'sex tape'. I felt my heart drop when I saw articles linked to both words too. If any of those articles had applied to one of our players, I would be straight on the phone with Diane and that would be the rest of my day spent doing crisis comms. They didn't. They applied to Holly.

There was a home video taken on a phone. It was of her performing oral sex quite vigorously with someone the press knew as her boyfriend. From what I could see of the articles, once I filtered out a lot of the misogynistic noise, it was a short video that was quite damaging. I felt for Holy and I felt for the press team at the soccer club (as it was there), despite how many more staff they had to call on. Last year, two of our players were caught fooling around in the changing room by a degenerate photographer who preyed on us not having the security personnel to keep him away. It had been released onto a number of porn sites after the newspapers decided not to publish it and I spent a good amount of the next 48 hours trying to get it down. All while the two women in question prepared to go back to their respective boyfriend and girlfriend to explain it away. So I felt for the press team and I felt for Holly. She didn't deserve that.

I found the video later in the afternoon. You might think me sick that I sought it out once I tell you of our history, but it was a necessary part of the job to be sure nobody else was in it. Besides, you would have found me no sicker than I felt as I watched Holly in the 3-minute video, blonde hair in that famous tight ponytail. I watched with nausea as she licked, sucked and pleasured the hard dick with the enthusiasm and skill of an actual pornstar. I thought it couldn't get worse after the first minute or so but that was before he started to roughly fuck her face, pulling her ponytail out until her hair was wild and loose, sticking to her face. The video ended with her jerking his cum onto her face and outstretched tongue. She was undeniably gorgeous so the video trended fast, watched by people who weren't even familiar with her.

What was worse was the fallout afterwards. I'd watched from afar with increasing horror as articles started to appear about Holly's breakup and the leak of the video thereafter. Holly was as fearless off the field as she was on it. Of course she was going to confront her ex. Of course it would earn her a restraining order, that path was sealed the second the comments had started to come through on her Instagram. She had been slut-shamed for what she had done in that video and then she was punished for her reaction to it.

So I knew Holly wasn't here through the love of our newly-promoted team. She was here because nobody else would touch her right now and we needed her quality and her celebrity more than we feared her controversy. Any guesses who would be taking over from that big team in Portland who were responsible for rebuilding her image? Lucky for Diane, I had built such an insurmountable image of Holly in my brain over the last few years, there was not going to be anyone better in the world at showing the image of Holly the club needed to show.

"Okay, let's take some candid shots of Diane and Holly walking around the complex. Then we'll walk towards the pitches and take some good shots before everyone else comes in," I said, getting my professional mind in gear.

There were shrieks of delight when the rest of the team came in for training. One or two had played with or against Holly before, some in the national squad when Holly had been called up. I suspected she'd be forced to sit out the next few internationals as punishment for the restraining order.

Alf really did earn his wage that day, taking pictures of the training as Georgia and I got to work writing the press releases and announcing the news. Diane was two steps ahead of us and to my increasing frustration, she brought 'Pistol Pete' into our office by the arm.

"Pete's here to interview our new signing, can you keep him company while I go and get her?" Diane said, bouncing off before I could refuse.

Pete and I were frequent sparring buddies in the world of football reporting. He was almost twice my 28 years old and his incisive and often controversial opinion pieces showed no signs of becoming any less popular than they were during the days I had interned at the same paper. In fact, data had shown that more women read his articles than any other reporter, despite his apparent disdain for the sport. I suspected most people read his stuff waiting for him to be taken down a level or two. Holly vs Pete? That was a good move from Diane.

"So Tommy boy, what am I here for?" Pete asked, taking a nearby chair and spinning around slowly. Any slower and I might just have a leg spasm and speed it up. "You don't know?" My lip curled into a smile as I locked my screen away from Pete's prying eyes. "Don't worry Petey, I'll sit in so she doesn't bite."

Holly walked in a moment later and I wondered how much of that she caught. If she did catch it, she showed no reaction. Quite honestly, I was alarmed by how dead her hazel eyes looked. It darkened her face, especially set against her pale complexion. Her golden blonde hair and pale skin were a striking combination and one Holly had always worn well. I had dark brown hair and pale skin that I hid behind a decent beard and reading glasses. She never shied away, even when people took an interest in her for more than her football skill. Even now, when she could have gone into hiding, she sat across from Pistol Pete. He whistled as she walked in, thinking it was like a lamb to the slaughter. He didn't know her well enough to know he was the lamb.

The opening part of the interview went well enough. Holly was a pro at it, I was the amateur in comparison to who had trained her in the art of the media interview. Her eyes were temporarily lit again, her smile looked as real and as genuine as I had ever seen it. She laughed, she said the right things and she made me believe. She's really bloody good at this, I thought. I might need to write better content now she's here. Despite my earlier cynicism, that challenge excited me.

"Now that you're here," Pete was saying, "can Clapham FC expect you to focus on your contribution on the pitch rather than your contribution to our newspapers?"

I rolled my eyes. I could have stepped in but then I saw Holly's smirk and I knew Pistol was in trouble.

"Clapham can certainly expect that Pete, I don't anticipate any future boyfriends giving you much to write about, just like my ex wasn't much to write home about." Holly looked at me as she said that and I felt my pulse beating hard into my neck over the sound of Pete's chuckle. She looked back at Pete before I'd had a chance to memorise the look and within a few minutes, I had become less sure I had seen it that way.

By day's end, I was delighted to leave. I dropped Georgia off and drove home. I needed to unload to someone about my day and I needed a friend who didn't have a stake in it.

Tom: Fancy a beer?

Chris: It's a Tuesday so not so much. How about Thursday?

Tom: Come on, I'll make it worth your while...

Chris: I've told you, tickets that you get for free anyway, isn't a good enough bribe.

Tom: What about now we've just signed Holly?

Chris: What?! Do you mean the same Holly who left for America the second she realised how crap her life would be with you?

Tom: The very same. Luckily, she doesn't seem to remember how badly she could have had it before I messed it all up and she went off to be a star. She doesn't seem to remember me at all, actually.

Surely she hadn't forgotten me?

***

8-ish years ago

***

I met Lucy in my 1st year of University. We had plenty in common and got on easy. We became almost instant best friends, both of us were commuting into University given we both lived in London and could avoid the cost of living out. We'd find ourselves on the same train and in some of the same classes so then we'd spend lunchtime together and go for drinks every few days after our shared afternoon class. Soon I met Lucy's family and the girlfriend she was going steady with, and likewise, she met my family too. I wasn't dating at the time though would later meet a girl in my 1st year, the three of us regularly hanging out in the library. Lucy would also occasionally keep watch while my girlfriend and I snuck into a meeting room to get a little frisky. She reminded me of it in our final year when she had a new girlfriend at University and wanted to do the same. Suffice it to say, we both knew we'd built the kind of friendship that would last for life.

Lucy was popular, playing sports including hockey and football, for the University team. She stopped playing for her local football team as she never really had the time to get there for training after her classes and she knew she was never going to make it professionally anyway. It did mean that she had quite a few different groups of friends across University and back home and I was simply in one group of them. It was the same for me when I joined the debating club and wrote for the University paper - we were best friends but also ran in different crowds too.

Over the following summer, Lucy and I continued to meet up, going out and doing what Uni students do - namely get drunk and deny having a hangover the next day. Lucy's 19th birthday was at the start of October as we moved into our second year. Deciding that she had far too many friends in different circles (what a wonderful problem to have, I teased constantly in the build-up,) she organised a night out the following Saturday after her birthday, for all her different groups of friends to meet for drinks and go to a club in Central London. The idea was to book a few tables at a bar, get sufficiently drunk and then pile into one of the LGBT-friendly clubs.

I took some convincing. I didn't like loud noise ("you go to a football game every weekend!" came the reply), I hated busy places ("you go to busy bars just fine!") and I hated strobe lighting which always felt excessive and invasive to my senses ("fair enough on that one,"). Eventually, I was convinced to go. Lucy knew me well enough that a combination of guilting me and the promise of meeting some of her hot, single friends would crumble my resolve. The girl I was seeing had broken it off to pursue pastures new and the sudden removal of frequent hot sex was a challenge. I tucked the introverted version of me into a corner of my brain and came determined to have a good time.

At the bar and then the club, Lucy went about stitching conversation between her groups of friends and I was pulled into a conversation with a couple of her friends from the local football team she had left the year before.

"This is Tom, my best mate," she declared, rather drunkenly and unsubtly. "This is Naomi and Holly, we all played football together," she said before hurrying off to stitch more connections between her friends, leaving me totally alone to make conversation with the two of them.

I watched Lucy go with a degree of annoyance and then turned back to them, using the excuse of sipping my drink to buy me a bit of time to take a little look at them, in turn. Naomi was a well-built woman with pretty eyes and long eyelashes that deliberately created some mystery about her. Her hair was steamed straight and she had a body that could keep even the loosest dress hooked to her curves. She was undoubtedly very pretty. I realised I lingered too long so trying to play it smart, I turned to Holly, intending to ask her a question as a means to check her out too. I was young, dumb and shameless.

I didn't get as far as a question. I couldn't get one out. Holly, quite simply, took my breath away.

Now, I won't pretend she was the best-looking girl anyone had ever seen but she was the best-looking girl Thomas Bradley had ever seen and I stand by that to this day. Maybe she wasn't everyone's type - hell, until that point I didn't know a girl like that was mine, but she was. She was blonde (I'd had a thing for brunettes at that point so this was a surprise in its own right), a little pale but in a way that only helped bring out her hazel eyes and I could imagine how good her face would look with a blush or a cute smile. Her hair was pulled back into a loose ponytail and she had a dress on that wore her and not the other way around. She came across like she belonged more in jeans or tracksuits or probably football shorts, and I liked that about her instantly. She was thin and the opposite of Naomi - I doubted even the most flattering bra would find much of a chest to support and she had a fitness to her that wasn't overwhelming but added a good balance to her body.

Naomi rescued me and therefore my night, as I was ready to stay there for as long as they'd let me. "So, you're her best mate huh? Her best bud?" She finished her teasing with a playful chuckle which helped break the ice.

"I do indeed hold that title but I'm looking for a replacement for obvious reasons," I paused to point at Lucy wandering about, full of stress. "That's why I'm interviewing you today. Tell me a bit about yourself?" I fell back on stupid humour and it seemed to work as we all chuckled.

I found out that both of them were working full-time while they tried to make it professionally. Holly played in Defence and Naomi in Midfield. The conversation flowed naturally. I even risked sitting down at their table. I spent a little more time looking at Naomi, partly because I feared if I looked at Holly too much, I'd never stop. There was a natural warmth to Holly. She seemed determined to look at me until I returned her gaze, as the conversation moved on to my degree and career aspirations. I felt like I interested her with my passion to write, but I wasn't sure why. It was hardly original.