you smell like everything I want (and coconuts)

Part 1

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Now, Christen wasn't quite sure when she figured out she needed touch kind of like she needed oxygen - but the fact remained that if she wasn't touching someone or being touched in some way she just felt...unsettled.

It was an uneasiness that spread through her body slowly; her network of nerves all working in unison to make her feel just a little on edge. A little not right.

She suppose, if she had to pinpoint it, would guess it had started far before she had even been slightly aware of it. It sort of made sense now why as a baby, she was practically inconsolable if she wasn't being carried, or why she took such a long time to be trained to sleep in her own bed, away from her parents.

It sort of made sense that when other kids wanted to go and play outside, running around with their friends, shrieking with laughter, all she really wanted to do was curl up on her Grandad's lap and watch whatever took his fancy that day - more often than not, golf, but occasionally football which stole her focus more prevalently than she can remember anything else doing before.

(Before Tobin Heath, of course.)

Maybe it was when she got older, a teenager, realising that people were a lot less naturally inclined to physical contact - that when a boy touched you or you touched him, as innocent as it may have been, it suddenly came with strings and expectations and rumours.

Christen hated it. She hated not being able to hug some of her childhood friends without being checked out, eyes of the boys she had grown up with filled with expectation and barely contained lust. She hated not being able to go anywhere without girls in her school claiming she was some sort of easy lay because of how free and open she was with her movement, as painfully platonic as it may have been.

She suppose she could've realised it when she finally got into the National Team, a solid place on the roster for World Cup's and Olympics alike, where the women on the team joked and laughed around with each other constantly, affectionate and comfortable with each other in a way that Christen could only dream of achieving. They didn't quite need to be touched like she did, but they made her feel like, for the first time, it was okay to want that.

It could've been when she met Tobin Heath.

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She guesses it all starts the first time she has a panic attack after a game - where the pressure was high and they've all been working for this for as long as they can remember and they're all playing as hard as they can. There are hundreds of thousands of fans watching; Christen's family and friends are all there, her nieces and nephews and uncle's and aunt's and her parents - all there to cheer her on.

And she misses the penalty.

It doesn't even need to be saved by the goalkeeper, it just flies over the net, over the crossbar, and into the crowd. The stadium suddenly becomes deafeningly silent and all Christen can hear is the blood rushing through her ears and all she can see is her hands shaking and all she's thinking about is how she's let everyone down - again.

Her 200 shots at the goal a day didn't matter. How hard she'd worked for this didn't matter. How much she cared didn't matter. Because in the end, she just wasn't good enough.

She showers for what feels like hours in the locker rooms, making sure she waits till the last echoing footsteps have disappeared and scrubs her skin raw, till she's sensitive and tender all over, in a pitiful attempt to wash the shame and hurt and disappointment off of her. She waits till she can no longer discern the tears in her eyes from the water pouring down on her and till her eyes are blurred and red from crying. She turns the water as hot as it can go, till she feels like she's drowning in steam and her skin is on fire, because she deserves this. She deserves to feel like this.