It was only seven AM, and Victoria was already having a shitty birthday.

She supposed she only had herself to blame - she had put a fake birthday down on her social media accounts, partially because she was tired of people asking if she had been held back a year (she hadn't) and partially because Internet safety was no joke. For years, she hadn't even bothered correcting close friends who'd send her birthday well wishes.

Her parents had sent her their usual happy birthday texts - she'd expected them, but her phone was otherwise empty of notifications. She had been absentmindedly roaming her phone for the last hour, hoping that someone else might remember what today was, but no one would remember a date they had never been told. Groaning, she rolled onto her back, still wrapped up in her sheets as she debated if there was any benefit of getting out of bed.

She heard a clanging noise in the kitchen, and shot upright in a panic, imagining worst case scenarios in her head. She had started unlocking her phone automatically when she heard a familiar voice swearing. She slumped back into her pillows with a groan, rubbing her forehead.

She heard the familiar stomping footsteps coming closer to the door, and a smile spread across her face as her girlfriend muttered to herself, audibly struggling to open the door. When the handle finally turned, the door was pushed open slowly, blue eyes peering into the room towards her.

"Oh, good, you're up. I made breakfast." Chloe's lips were pulled back into a blinding smile as she pushed the door open the rest of the way, carefully maneuvering a bed tray in front of her.

"Breakfast in bed?" Victoria felt her eyebrows rising as Chloe came closer, and she pushed herself upright before leaning against her headboard. She watched Chloe carefully place the tray down over her lap, slightly dazed at food in front of her. "Where did you even get one of these?" she finally asked, nodding towards the tray.

"Your dad, actually. Apparently, he bought it as a very dumb joke for your mom." Chloe shrugged, looking quite pleased with herself as walked around the bed to sit down on the other side of the king bed.

Victoria picked up the fork on the tray and took a bite of her omelet, eyes growing wide as her head turned rapidly. "Chloe, this is fantastic. Why don't you cook for me more often?"

"Because you like flaunting your money and taking me to fancy restaurants," Chloe teased back, although her cheeks were turning red. "And it's just an omelet, it's not all that."

"Shut up, it's delicious." A shy smile was spreading across Chloe's face, a hand coming up to rub at the back of her neck. Victoria leaned just enough to bump her shoulder, smiling. "I can't believe you've had a key for almost a year, and this is the first time you decided to come and cook for me."

"Better late than never," she murmured, tipping backwards onto the bed and sending her limbs sprawling. If there was one thing Chloe Price did well, besides apparently being an incredible chef, it was taking up as much space as physically possible. "So, anything planned for the day?"

Victoria cleared her throat, hoping it would be perceived as trying not to choke on her food and not at the fact that her girlfriend's shirt had slipped up, exposing her midriff. Knock it off with the gay panic, seriously. "Not really, why?"

Chloe gave a little shrug, one of her feet making its way to use Victoria's shin as a bony pillow. "Well, I was thinking we should go out, celebrate."

Victoria frowned, keeping her eyes on the plate. She knew she hadn't corrected Chloe last year in November, when they had went out drinking for Victoria's "twenty-first" birthday, before they had decided to start dating. "Celebrate what?"

One of Chloe's eyebrows raised in confusion, eyes searching her face. "Are-are you serious? It's your birthday."

Victoria sighed, rolling her own eyes dramatically. "Oh, yeah."

She could feel her girlfriend stiffen next to her, and wasn't entirely surprised to hear a worried tone in her voice. "Sore spot?"

"N-no, I just didn't think you knew when it really was," she admitted.

Chloe snorted, shifting to put her hands behind her head and knocking off her beanie in the process. "What, you thought I'd fall for that November shit? C'mon, you know me better than that."

Victoria shook her head, stabbing her omelet more aggressively than was needed to get a piece on the fork. "How'd you find out, though?"

Chloe exhaled loudly. "Would you believe me if I said Max and I broke into Wells' office back when she was at Blackwell, and I saw your file?"

Victoria had the fork half way to her mouth when she froze, trying to get a read on the woman laying next to her. "Are you serious?" she finally asked.

Her face split into a grin as she started laughing. "No, I'm fucking with you. Your parents told me," Chloe said, although her laugh quickly turned into a yelp as Victoria poked her side. "But seriously, I had an idea of something we could do today."

Victoria lifted a piece of bacon in the air as if giving a toast. "Sure, if you promise to keep cooking for me after this." There was a chuckle next to her in response, which Victoria really hoped was a promise.


"Jeez, Vic, it's like you've never went bowling before," Chloe snickered, watching the ball go straight into the gutter.

Victoria groaned, hand splaying over her forehead as she watched the ball spin mockingly away from her. "No, I-I've bowled. I've bowled many times."

Chloe laughed behind her, clapping mockingly. "On the Wii, maybe," she remarked, and Victoria bit her tongue to avoid incriminating herself further.

"N-no." She felt her face burning, and she forced herself to pick up one of the other balls before tossing it half-heartedly down the lane. The ball wasn't even halfway to the pins before it landed in the gutter as well. Chloe sounded like she was in stitches, and when Victoria turned to stalk back to her chair, she saw her girlfriend bent in half in her seat, struggling to breathe.

"Are you fucking kidding me?" Chloe forced out between bursts of laughter, shaking her head in disbelief. "I should have brought you here a long time ago!"

"Whatever," Victoria huffed, throwing herself down a few chairs away. She crossed her arms tightly, glaring down at the hideous bowling shoes she was being forced to wear. Between the horrid material on her feet and the dismal numbers next to her name, she was feeling utterly humiliated, not aided by how hot her face felt.

Over the blaring music, she hadn't heard Chloe slide across the couple of seats to sit next to her, but her hand was suddenly warm against Victoria's back. "Hey, I'm sorry," she said gently, leaning forward to try to make eye contact. Victoria just closed her eyes in response. "I didn't mean to upset you, just thought we were having fun."

"Well, I'm not," she muttered, turning her head away before opening her eyes to look at the rack of bowling balls behind their lane, starting to count and mentally rate the colors on a scale of one to ten. Most of them were getting ranked very low.

"Do you want to go?" Chloe asked, hand starting to rub Victoria's back slowly. "We don't have to stay if you don't want to."

Victoria shrugged, glancing at her companion's knee - she still wasn't interested at eye contact. "You seem to like this," she commented with a shrug.

"That wasn't what I asked." The hand on her back kept moving slowly, comfortingly, and Victoria finally looked up to see the apologetic expression on her girlfriend's face. "We can go, if you want, or I can help teach you how to bowl."

Victoria mulled over her options for a moment before sighing. "Fine, show me how it's done."

"Hey, if I can't teach you, we'll get the bumpers up if you want to stay, okay?" Chloe added, standing up and offering her hand to pull Victoria back up. "It's alright to laugh at yourself. Bowling is dumb. No one's really good at it."

Victoria stared at the offered hand suspiciously, tempted to cross her arms in response. "Says the girl who's winning."

Chloe scoffed, waving her other hand dismissively. "Hey, I never said I was good at it either. Just, er, better than you."

Her grin faltered for a moment, realizing she what she had said, but Victoria forced herself to give a little undignified noise as she stood up on her own, stalking over to the ball return. "Okay, Price, teach me how to roll this stupid thing."

Chloe was still standing in the same spot when she glanced back, frowning. "On my frame?"

Victoria groaned, rolling her eyes as she picked up the one ball she had found in the whole complex that she had liked. "Are you going to teach me or not?" she snapped, moving back to what she assumed was the starting point again.

"Okay, okay, sorry." Unexpectedly, Chloe came up from behind her, hands reaching around to grab Victoria's wrists and maneuvering the ball by association. "Relax, okay? You're tense, that's not gonna help," she commented, a smirk in her voice.

"Gee, I wonder why," Victoria shot back, although the warmth emanating from her girlfriend seemed to be doing wonders already to her stress.

"So you're gonna take a few steps, build up some momentum, you know? Biggest thing is the follow through - don't start twirling your hand or anything when you're throwing it."

She bit her lip, eyes more focused on the hands still resting on her wrists. "You make it sound so easy," she forced out, swallowing hard.

"You're not going to be able to hit whatever pin you want, that part's not easy, but getting it to at least stay in the lane isn't complicated." Chloe had pulled her hands back, now comfortably resting on Victoria's waist. "You got this, go for it."

She was very aware of the hands still on her, and was not overly motivated to step away. "Are you going to let go of me?"

"I'm not stopping you." Chloe's voice was smug, not moving.

"You're a pain in my ass," she muttered before taking a few steps forward. Chloe lived up to her words and let Victoria walk away, and she let her arm swing down and hoped for the best as the ball left her fingers.

A little part of her had dreamed that she would suddenly have become an expert, which was a silly idea in hindsight. Even so, considering how excited Chloe got over the two pins she had managed to hit, she felt like her birthday was actually pretty good this year.