contains: sevika x virgin!reader, strap-on usage, size kink, dumbification, dacryphilia, clit play, finger sucking, cum play, praise kink, gentle dom!sevika, cockdrunk!reader, neck biting (no blood), light spanking, orgasm denial, aftercare
enjoy ♡
You were already straddling her hips when the nerves hit you.
Your palms rested lightly on Sevika's chest, her warm brown skin flushed gold in the lamp glow, the sheets under your knees soft and rumpled.
You were naked—completely naked—for the first time in front of her, and the only thing separating you from her strap was your own hesitation.
"Hey." Her voice was rough, quiet, but steady. One hand stayed on your waist, thumb brushing lazy circles just under your ribs. "You okay?"
You nodded quickly—too quickly. "Yeah. I just... I don't usually—uh, I mean, I've never-" You laughed breathlessly, embarrassed.
"I've only ever touched myself."
Sevika sat up a little, her good arm sliding around your back to support you. Her face softened.
"You wanna stop?"
"No." Your voice cracked. "I want this. I want you. I'm just... I don't know what I'm doing."
A beat. Then her lips curled into the tiniest, cockiest smirk. "Don't worry, baby. I do."
You bit your lip as heat shot between your thighs. That voice alone could ruin you.
She leaned forward, kissing your collarbone—slow, open-mouthed, warm. Her tongue flicked against your skin.
"We'll go slow. I'm not gonna rush you. You just move how you need to. I'll be right here."
You nodded again, this time slower, more sure. Her strap pressed up under you—thick, firm, intimidating—but god, you were wet. Soaked, actually. You could feel it dripping down your thighs already.
Sevika noticed. She always noticed.
"You're so fuckin' wet, sweetheart," she murmured, sliding her hand between your legs to guide the strap. "All that from just thinking about it, huh?"
You whimpered, barely able to meet her eyes. Her gaze pinned you down anyway.
"You been touching yourself to this? Wishing it was me?"
You nodded. "Y-Yeah. So many times."
She groaned low. "Fuck. You’re adorable."
You braced your hands on her shoulders and finally—finally—started to lower yourself down. The head of the strap nudged your entrance, and you gasped, thighs trembling.
"Easy, sweetheart. Just a little at a time." She kissed your neck, sucking gently—just enough to leave a mark. "You're so tight, baby. Feels like your pussy's never letting go."
You shuddered as you sank down, inch by inch, breathing hard. It was so much. So full.
Not painful, just overwhelming. Sevika's hands gripped your waist to steady you, grounding you with every low, patient whisper.
When you bottomed out, your nails dug into her shoulders. You were panting.
"You okay?"
"Y-Yeah," you whimpered. "It's so—mmngh—“
“None of that whimpering. Say it. Use your words, princess.”
“It’s so—full, Sev.”
"I know, baby. You're doing so good. Look at you."
You started to move. Slowly. Rocking your hips in tiny circles, easing yourself into the stretch. The friction lit something up inside you—something deeper than your fingers ever reached.
And then, without warning, your hips jerked forward a little too fast. You gasped. It hit just right. Right on that aching, swollen spot inside you.
"Oh my god—" you moaned.
Sevika chuckled darkly. "There she is."
You started moving again. A little faster. A little rougher. The way it rubbed against your clit every time you sank down made your whole body twitch.
It felt too good. Too much. You'd been so pent up, so desperate for something more than your own hands—and now you had it.
Her. This.
The drag of her strap inside you, the warmth of her skin, her voice in your ear saying, "Fuck, look at you, baby. You're addicted already."
You were. It showed.
You were a mess—whining, grinding, moaning into her mouth. You grabbed her hand, sucked her fingers into your mouth without thinking.
Sevika froze for a second, then let out the filthiest growl.
"God damn, you're really gone, huh?"
You drooled a little on her fingers. Couldn't help it.
She tilted her head, watching your blissed-out face with a lazy, hungry grin.
"Sweetheart... you're drooling."
You looked down, dazed, saliva slipping past your lip while your hips kept moving. You whimpered around her fingers.
"Fucking adorable," she muttered. "You're cockdrunk already, and I haven't even fucked you yet."
She kissed you hard, biting your bottom lip.
You moaned louder, needy and mindless now. You felt her reach between your legs again, rubbing slow circles on your clit while you kept grinding—grinding like your life depended on it.
"Don't cum yet," she warned. "Not yet. I wanna see you lose it first."
And you would. You were. A drooling, clenching, wet fucking mess—and Sevika wasn't done with you yet.
You didn't even realize how loud you were until Sevika growled, "You hear yourself, baby?"
Your hips were moving faster now, grinding down on her strap like it was the only thing keeping you alive. Your soaked pussy squelched with every roll of your hips, and your breathy moans came out high and broken and endless.
"I—fuck—I can't stop," you whimpered.
Sevika's fingers moved back to your clit—slow, torturously slow—and circled it while you ground down.
"You're so fucking sensitive." Her voice was wrecked, almost shaky. "Didn't know it'd feel this good, hm?"
You shook your head frantically. "No-I mean yes—I mean I can't—please-"
And then she spanked you.
It wasn't hard—just a quick, firm slap to your ass. Not enough to hurt. Just enough to make you jerk and moan and clench so tight around her strap that she had to bite back a groan.
"Yeah?" she rasped. "You like that, sweetheart?"
You nodded so fast it made your head spin.
"Yes—Sevika—I like everything—please, please-"
She hissed through her teeth. Her hand stayed on your ass, squeezing tight, grounding you. Her fingers never stopped circling your clit—slick and slow, not giving you enough, teasing you right to the edge.
Your thighs were trembling. Your belly was tight. Your breath was all over the place.
"I'm close," you whimpered. "I'm—I'm gonna—“
But Sevika stopped.
You sobbed.
"Shh." Her voice was low, gentle, but firm.
"Not yet. Not like this."
You blinked, dazed, drool still clinging to your lip. "Wha...?"
"I want your first time cumming on my strap to be perfect, baby," she murmured. "I want you to remember it. I want it to stay on your mind forever. So not yet. Not until I really give it to you."
Your pussy clenched again. Your whole body shook.
Sevika looked up at you—and something changed in her expression.
You were dazed, panting, spit-slick around the mouth, grinding down like you were in a trance. You were a fucking vision.
And the second she saw the way your lip quivered when she took her fingers off your clit, something snapped.
"Jesus fucking Christ," she growled.
She surged up and bit your neck.
"Ah—!" you gasped, the cutest, neediest little cry slipping out as your body arched.
"S-Sevika—!"
She didn't draw blood. Just sank her teeth in enough to make you feel it. Enough to make you moan and cling to her harder.
Her hands gripped your ass like she was holding herself back from flipping you over and fucking you into next week.
"You feel too good," she whined against your throat. "You're driving me fuckin' crazy, baby—You're so perfect."
You whimpered, grinding harder, your pussy slick and messy against her strap.
She kissed the spot she'd bitten—then her tongue soothed it, slow and loving.
"Still with me?" she whispered.
You nodded, tears in your eyes now.
"Mhm..."
"Good girl." She cupped your face with her good hand. "Just keep going. Ride it slow. I'll get you there. But I want you cockdrunk and shaking by the time I let you cum."
You moaned helplessly.
Her fingers slid down again, teasing your clit while you moved.
"I love how sweet you sound when you get desperate," she muttered. "You sound like you need it so bad."
"I do," you cried. "I need it so bad—please—please—“
"You drooled all over my hand," she teased.
"What, baby? My cock too good?"
You nodded, crying and grinding. "Too good. So good. I can't—I can't think—“
"You don't need to think, sweetheart." Her voice dropped low. "Just fuck yourself dumb on my strap. I'll take care of you."
You were gone.
Absolutely out of your mind—drooling, whimpering, and still rocking your hips like Sevika's strap was the only thing keeping your body alive.
Your thighs were trembling. Your hands clung to her shoulders, nails leaving faint little crescent marks in her skin. And your mouth—god, your mouth was open and leaking spit, little strings of it slipping down your chin while you babbled incoherent little moans.
"Look at you," Sevika murmured, brushing her fingers over your tear-damp cheeks.
"You're drooling and cryin' on my cock, honey."
You whimpered, a fresh wave of tears prickling your eyes, even as you kept grinding.
"Is it that good?" she asked, smiling crookedly. "So good it's makin' you cry?"
You nodded so fast it made you dizzy. "Y-Yes—I c-can't—I wanna cum—p-please-"
Your voice cracked on the last word, and the second it did, you sobbed.
Your face crumpled. Your whole body jerked like you couldn't take it anymore. And Sevika immediately pulled you down into her chest, shushing you as she cupped your pussy with her palm—warm, strong, steady.
"Hey, hey. I got you," she cooed. "You're okay. Just feelin' too much, huh?"
You nodded, sniffling. "I need it—need it s'bad..."
"Yeah, I know you do." Her thumb circled your clit so slow you almost cried harder.
"You've been so good, baby. So fuckin' perfect. I'm gonna give it to you. I promise."
"Please," you whispered, tears dripping from your chin. "I wanna cum—I need to— please, Sevika-"
And then she fucked up into you.
Her hips lifted. Her grip on your ass tightened. And her strap slammed into the deepest, most perfect spot while her fingers rubbed your clit in the exact rhythm you needed.
Your mouth fell open.
You made a choked, broken little noise.
And then—you screamed.
Your orgasm ripped through you so hard it hurt. Your body locked up, your thighs shook, your pussy gushed so much it splashed against Sevika's lap, and you collapsed forward, shaking, sobbing, whining her name over and over like a prayer.
Sevika caught every second.
"Fuuuuck," she groaned, watching you ride it out. "That's it, baby. That's how I wanted it. Just like that. Scream for me. Fuckin' soak me."
You sobbed harder, body twitching, your voice all high and shattered and full of relief.
"Y'feel that?" she murmured. "That's what a real orgasm feels like, sweetheart."
You could barely breathe. Barely think. You were slumped over her chest, drooling, twitching, tears still running down your face.
And Sevika was so sweet with you after.
Her hand never left your pussy—just soft, gentle strokes, too slow to overstimulate. Her other hand brushed your hair, kissed your temple, held your shaking hips down when you whimpered again.
She looked down at your soaked thighs and smirked.
"Goddamn," she muttered. "You made a mess, baby."
You giggled.
And then she dragged her fingers up your slit, scooped the dripping slick from your folds, and showed it to you.
"See that?" she said softly. "That's what it looks like when I fuck you right."
You stared, eyes glazed, lips parted—and when she brought her fingers to your mouth, you didn't even hesitate.
You sucked them in with a needy little whimper.
Sevika's jaw flexed.
"Yeah," she whispered. "That’s it, sweetheart."
You were still trembling when Sevika pulled the strap out.
You whimpered, your body jolting with the aftershocks, and Sevika shushed you instantly, one arm curling tight around your waist to keep you grounded.
"Shhh, I got you, baby. It's okay. I'm right here."
Your head lolled against her shoulder. You were spent. Crying, shaking, drooling a little—and completely boneless in her arms.
And Sevika? She looked at you like she was in awe.
"You did so good," she whispered, pressing a kiss to your temple. "So fuckin' good. You were perfect, sweetheart."
You let out a soft little whimper, still not fully back yet, and Sevika cradled the back of your head like you were something precious.
"Hey," she said gently. "Can I clean you up, pretty girl?"
You nodded weakly, and she was already moving—careful, slow, so fucking tender it made your chest ache.
She laid you back on the pillows with her arm still around you, pressed one more kiss to your jaw, and then grabbed a warm, damp towel from the drawer.
It wasn't rushed. It wasn't mechanical. She cleaned you softly—like she was scared to hurt you. Every wipe was followed by a kiss. Every wince got a murmured "I'm sorry, baby." And when she finally pressed the towel between your thighs, she paused and whispered:
"You okay?"
You nodded, tears still on your cheeks.
"Mhm... just tired."
Sevika smiled.
"Yeah? That cock put you to sleep, huh?" she teased, but her voice was full of love.
She finished wiping you down, tossed the towel aside, and came right back to you-pulling you into her arms, wrapping the blanket around you both.
You buried your face in her neck. Your body was sore, aching, still tingling everywhere—but you felt safe. Warm. Loved.
"Did I do okay..?" you mumbled sleepily.
Sevika froze for a second.
Then she pulled you even closer.
"Baby," she murmured, her voice low and steady and soft, "you didn't just do okay.
You were the best thing l've ever touched."
You let out a tiny, broken breath.
She cupped your cheek, thumb brushing the dried tears from under your eyes.
"You're mine now," she whispered. "All mine. No one's ever gonna touch you like that but me."
You blinked, slow and dazed.
“…Okay," you whispered.
Sevika smiled like she'd just won the lottery.
She kissed your lips. Kissed your forehead.
Kissed every little tear-stained inch of your face before pulling you into her chest again.
And then, as you drifted off to sleep, she murmured—
"Next time, I'm making you cum twice."
thank you so much to @anonymousgirl23456 for this amazing request <3 i hope u like it !!
pairing: washington mystics!sonia!all star!dating x wag!reader!dating
wc: 4.0k
request: y/n
anon asked: Heyy can u write a Sonia citron x gf smut maybe about Sonia gets all star news?
summary: the coaches don't pick friends but they pick who they're scared of and when sonia's name shows up on the list for the second year in a row, you're the only one who gets to see what it costs her to act like it's no big deal.
the text comes in at 9:47 on a monday morning, which is how you know it's real, because sonia does not text you during shootaround unless something has gone very right or very wrong. don't say anything. i mean it. not even to the group chat. especially not the group chat then, four seconds later: i made it again.
you're sitting on the counter of your kitchen with a mug of coffee going cold in your hand, and you read it twice before you understand what it means, and then you have to set the mug down because your hands aren't steady enough to hold it.
second year in a row reserve spot the coaches vote for players, not popularity, and they picked her again, and she is telling you three hours before anyone else on this earth knows, in a text messonia she probably typed with her thumb while standing in a hallway at the practice facility, trying not to smile in front of her teammates. i'm so proud of you, you type back. i'm not going to cry in this kitchen alone but i might.
please don't tell kiki i told you first she will actually kill me
your secret is safe. what time are you home
not until late. media stuff. i have to sit there and act SURPRISED when they announce it publicly later. i am going to have to fake my own reaction to my own news
you'll be great at it. you're great at hiding things from me all the time
i'm literally not
soni. you hid a whole all star selection from me for THREE HOURS
that's different and you know it
it isn't, really, but you let her have it, because you can feel the adrenaline coming off her even through text, that particular electric hum she gets when something has gone right and she doesn't have anywhere to put it yet.
you know this feeling of hers the way you know the sound of her keys in the door you have spent two years learning the specific grammar of sonia’s joy how she deflects it, undersells it, turns every good thing that happens to her into something she has to be talked into believing is real.
you set your phone down on the counter and you sit there for a second in the quiet of your kitchen, coffee cold, and you let yourself feel it too all-star second year running you think about the summer before the draft, when she used to stay up too late replaying film of guards she was scared she wasn't as good as, and you think, not for the first time, that you have been given a strange and specific privilege to watch someone become exactly who they always suspected they might be, from the closest possible seat.
you do not tell anyone not even when your best friend texts you an hour later asking if you've heard anything, fishing, because everyone in your shared orbit knows sonia's phone was buzzing all morning.
you say nothing you go about your day with the news sitting in your chest like a low coal, and every time you think about tonight about her walking through that door already knowing, and you already knowing, and the two of you finally getting to just look at each other about it the coal gets a little hotter.
the league announces the reserves publicly at 2pm. you watch it happen on twitter like everyone else, even though you've known for five hours, and you still feel your throat go tight when her name scrolls across the graphic. sonia citron guard washington. second consecutive selection.
the caption underneath says something about her being the only returning all-star to raise her scoring, her assists, and her rebounds all in the same season, and you read it three times, thinking; that's her. that's mine. that's the girl who falls asleep with her hand on my stomach and complains that i steal the blankets.
you don't reply to any of the texts blowing up your phone from mutual friends you let sonia have her public moment, the interviews, the team group chat probably going insane, kiki no doubt screaming into a locker room somewhere you send her one text around four: saw the news. very proud of #22. very cool girl. 10/10 no notes
she sends back a single laughing emoji and: home by 8. don't wait up if you're tired; you are not going to be tired you have never in your life been less tired.
she gets home at 8:40, and you hear her keys in the lock and you are already standing in the middle of the living room like an idiot, arms crossed, trying to arrange your face into something casual, and it does not work, because the second she walks through the door and sees you standing there she just stops. bag still on her shoulder, one shoe still on. "you look like you're about to say something annoying," she says.
"i don't know what you're talking about."
"you have your proud face on. i hate your proud face."
"i don't have a proud face."
"you have had a proud face since 9:47 this morning, i've been getting texts from you all day laced with proud face energy—"
you don't let her finish you cross the room and you get both hands on her jaw and you kiss her, hard, before she can deflect this into a joke the way she deflects everything, and for a second she makes a small surprised sound against your mouth and then her bag hits the floor and both her hands come up to grip your waist like she's been waiting all day for someone to stop asking her to be modest about this.
"hi," she says, when you finally let her breathe. her voice has gone lower already. "that a congratulations?"
"that's a you did it again and i watched you fake surprise on television and you were terrible at acting surprised, by the way, everyone could tell."
"i was not terrible—"
"soni. your eyebrows went up like a cartoon character's. kiki looked more surprised than you did and she already knew."
she laughs the real laugh, not the interview one, the one that cracks a little in the middle and drops her forehead against your shoulder, and you feel the whole day come off her in one long exhale, all the performing and posing and pretending she'd learned about it for the first time on camera, all of it just leaving her body in your front hallway.
"second year," she says, quiet, into your shoulder, like she's telling you a secret instead of something forty thousand people watched announced on a graphic today. "i wasn't sure they'd do it again."
"i was sure," you say, and you mean it, and you feel her arms tighten around you. "you don't know anything about basketball."
"i know you. that's a better metric." she pulls back enough to look at you, and there's something in her face that's not the adrenaline from this morning anymore it's slower, warmer, the thing underneath the coal. "you kept it a secret all day. from everyone. i know your friends were texting you."
"i'm an excellent secret-keeper."
"you are not. you told me you cried at a commercial last week."
"that's different, that commercial was evil—" she kisses you this time, cutting you off, one hand sliding up into your hair, and you feel the shift in the room the way you always do the exact moment where teasing becomes something with a current under it.
she tastes like the mints she chews before interviews, and she's still got her jacket half on, one arm free, and you tug at it until she shrugs the rest of the way out of it without breaking the kiss, like she's done this exact motion a hundred times, because she has. "i want to hear you say it," you murmur against her mouth. "out loud. not to a camera."
"say what."
"that you're proud of yourself. i've listened to you talk yourself out of every good thing that's ever happened to you for two years, sonia, i want one night where you just own it."
she goes still for a second, and you watch something in her expression crack open, the deflection dropping away, and when she speaks again her voice doesn't have the joke in it anymore.
"i worked really hard for this," she says, low. "i wanted it. i wanted it so bad i couldn't sleep for like a week before the announcement. and i got it. two years in a row." a breath. "i'm proud of myself."
"there she is," you whisper, and kiss her again, softer this time, and she makes a small sound against your mouth like relief.
"okay," she says, breaking away just enough to look at you, eyes dark now, that competitive glint sliding into something else entirely. "you wanted me to own it. i'm going to own tonight too. that alright with you?"
your whole body answers before your mouth does. "yeah. that's alright." she doesn't say anything else she just takes your hand and walks you backward toward the bedroom, unhurried, like she has all night, because she does.
she undresses you slow, which is not her default her default, most nights, is fast and a little clumsy and laughing about it, both of you racing to get out of your clothes like teenagers tonight is different.
tonight she peels your shirt up over your head like she's unwrapping something, and she watches her own hands do it, and then she just looks at you for a second, the way she looks at film, cataloguing, like she's trying to memorize an angle. "what," you say, half self-conscious under the attention.
"nothing." she runs a thumb along your collarbone. "just had a good day and i want to remember all of it."
she kisses down your throat, unhurried, and you feel her smile against your skin when your breath catches, feel her notice it, the way she notices everything on a court where the gap is, where the give is.
she gets your bra off with the practiced ease of two years of practice and she takes her time with your chest, mouth and hands both, until you're arching up into her and biting back a sound, and she pulls off just to say, low and smug: "you don't have to be quiet tonight. no games tomorrow. no early flight."
"sonia—"
"i want to hear you." she says it plainly, not as a demand, just a fact she wants stated between you. "i've had a very good day. let me have a very good night too."
you don't have much of a comeback for that, not with her mouth already moving lower, tracing the line of your ribs, your stomach, her hands pressing your hips into the mattress with an ease that's never stopped doing something to you she's strong in the specific, functional way of someone whose whole career runs through her body, and she has never once used that strength for anything but exactly this, careful and deliberate and entirely for you.
she gets your underwear off and settles between your thighs like she's got nowhere else to be all night, and when she looks up at you before she starts, there's a question in her face even though you both already know the answer.
"go," you breathe, and her mouth is on you a second later, and every thought in your head that isn't her
just empties out.
she's good at this the way she's good at reading a defense patient first, feeling out where you tense, where you shift, adjusting before you even have to ask, and you have your fingers in her hair within a minute, not guiding, just holding on, and she makes a low sound against you that you feel more than hear.
she takes her time, she's not chasing anything fast tonight; she's savoring it, the same unhurried attention she gave your collarbone, like tonight of all nights she wants proof that she can make you feel as good as she's feeling.
"sonia—" your voice cracks around her name, and she hums against you, and the vibration of it nearly finishes you right there, but she eases back, just enough, dragging it out, and you swear under your breath and feel her laugh, low and wicked, against your thigh.
"not yet," she murmurs, dragging her mouth up to your hip, pressing an open kiss there. "i told you. i'm having a good night. i get to enjoy this part."
"you are evil—"
"i'm an all-star baby," she says, and you'd laugh at the cockiness of it if you weren't so far gone, if her mouth wasn't already back on you a second later, less patient now, like she's decided she's teased you both enough.
you feel the shift in her, the moment restraint gives way to want, and her grip on your thighs tightens, and this time when you say her name it's not a warning, it's a plea, and she doesn't make you wait for the rest.
you come with her name half-formed in your mouth and her hands anchoring your hips to the bed, and she doesn't stop until you're pulling gently at her hair, oversensitive, and even then she presses one more slow kiss to your inner thigh like she's savoring the last of it before she finally lifts her head, chin shining, looking unbearably pleased with herself.
"there we go," she says, voice rough. "that's the reaction i wanted from twitter today. no offense to twitter."
"i hate you," you manage, breathless, and she grins and crawls back up your body to kiss you, unhurried, letting you taste yourself on her mouth, and something about that the shamelessness of it, the ease has heat pooling low in you again already.
"my turn to hate you," you say against her mouth, and she raises an eyebrow, a challenge, and you use the moment of her distraction to flip your weight and get her under you instead, and she goes willingly, laughing, arms coming up loose around your neck. "oh, this is happening," she says.
"you don't get to have all the good ideas tonight."
you take her clothes off with none of the patience she showed you you're too worked up for patience, and she doesn't seem to mind, arching up to help you get her out of her shirt, her bra, laughing when you get impatient with a clasp until she reaches back and does it herself. "i could've had that in two seconds—"
"shut up and let me function."
she goes quiet fast once you're actually touching her, though sonia talks through almost everything, deflects with a joke or a comment, except this, except the moments right before she falls apart, when the running commentary finally cuts out and it's just her breath, ragged, and her hand fisting in the sheets.
you know her body the way she knows a scouting report where she's sensitive, where she needs pressure instead of lightness, the exact rhythm that has her hips lifting off the bed within a few minutes, chasing your hand.
you kiss down her stomach the way she kissed down yours, unhurried at first, and she makes a sound of protest, hips shifting.
"you don't get to be smug and then also make me wait," she says, breathless, half-laughing, half-desperate.
"i absolutely do. you invented this rule twenty minutes ago."
"i'm rescinding it—"
"too late. i'm an all-star's girlfriend, i have some pull now." that gets a real laugh out of her, breathless and surprised, and you use the distraction to finally close your mouth over her, and the laugh breaks apart into something else entirely, her hand flying to your hair, not pulling, just holding, grounding herself.
she's vocal when she finally lets herself be quiet at first, breath catching, and then less quiet, your name and something unintelligible and her thighs trembling against your shoulders, and you don't let up, you've learned the exact place she needs you to stay and you stay there until she's right on the edge, and then you slide two fingers into her, curling them the way you know undoes her, and her back arches clean off the bed.
"i'm—" she doesn't finish the sentence she doesn't need to you feel it happen, her whole body drawing tight and then breaking, her voice cracking around a sound that's almost a sob, almost a laugh, pure relief, and you ease her through it slow, the way she eased you, until she's boneless underneath you, chest heaving, one arm thrown over her eyes.
"okay," she says finally, voice wrecked. "okay. you win. whatever this was. you win."
"i wasn't aware we were competing."
"we're always competing. i'm an athlete. everything is a competition." she peeks out from under her arm, grinning, wrung-out and soft in a way she almost never lets herself be outside this room. "you just won something, though. i don't know what. but you won."
you crawl up to lie half over her, and she wraps both arms around you loosely, and for a second neither of you says anything, just breathing each other in, her heartbeat still too fast under your ear.
"second all-star selection," you say quietly, into her collarbone. "how's it feel now that it's had a few hours to sit."
she's quiet for a second, and you feel her chest rise on a breath. "good," she admits. "really good. like maybe i get to stop being scared it was a fluke."
"it was never a fluke."
"i know that now. i think i actually know that now." her hand comes up to stroke through your hair, absent, thoughtful. "you made me say it earlier. that i'm proud of myself. nobody's ever made me say that out loud before."
"somebody should've been making you say it for years."
"yeah," she says softly. "well now i've got you."
you don't stay still for long sonia has never in two years been able to lie quietly after either of you comes for very long, some restless competitive current in her that needs an outlet even in bed, and within twenty minutes her hand is trailing down your spine again, testing, and you laugh into the pillow. "you cannot possibly—"
"i had a good day," she says, entirely unrepentant, rolling you onto your back. "i'm allowed a good night. you started this, technically. you're the one who wanted the proud speech."
"i didn't know the proud speech came with a rider clause."
"everything with me comes with a rider clause. you should know that by now." she settles over you, braced on her forearms, and there's less urgency now, more of the slow warmth from earlier, both of you soft and unhurried in the aftermath she kisses you long and easy, and you feel her smile against your mouth.
"i keep thinking," she murmurs, between kisses, "about you sitting on that counter all day knowing before everybody. keeping it from your own friends. for me."
"it was your news to tell."
"i know. i just—" she pulls back to look at you, something almost shy crossing her face, which is rare enough on her that you go still to receive it properly. "i liked that it was ours first. before it was anyone else's. before it was the league's, or twitter's, or my mom's, even. for like five hours this morning it was just you and me knowing something good was true."
"that's my favorite kind of secret to keep," you say, and mean it, and she kisses you again like the words did something to her.
this time when her hand slides between your thighs again it's slower, less about winning some invented game and more about just wanting to be close to you, and you let her take her time, let the two of you move together without any hurry at all, her forehead pressed to yours, her breath mixing with yours, both of you murmuring things that don't quite qualify as sentences anymore.
when she finally lets herself go still afterward, tucked against your side with her leg thrown over yours and her hand splayed flat on your stomach — her favorite place to fall asleep touching you, always has been you feel her yawn against your shoulder, all the adrenaline of the day finally spent.
"you have to be up early," you murmur into her hair. "media availability, right? about the selection?"
"mm. ten a.m. i have to go be professionally humble about this all over again." she sounds half-asleep already. "you should come. sit in the back. give me the proud face. i've decided i don't hate it as much as i said."
"i thought you hated my proud face."
"i lied. i love your proud face. i want it in the room tomorrow when i have to lie about being surprised again."
"you're terrible at lying."
"i know," she mumbles. "that's why i need you there. remind me how it's supposed to look."
she's asleep within another few minutes, the particular deep sleep she only gets after a day that took everything out of her, good or bad, and you lie there for a while longer with her weight warm against your side, thinking about the morning — the text at 9:47, the four seconds of silence before i made it again, the whole quiet, electric day of carrying a secret that wasn't yours to spend, just yours to hold.
you think about the graphic on the league's twitter this afternoon, her name scrolling past under a stat line that took a whole season of six a.m. gym sessions and film nights and games where she came home too wired to sleep, replaying every possession out loud until you learned to just listen instead of trying to follow the basketball logic of it. you think about how she said i worked really hard for this like it was the first time she'd let herself believe the sentence all the way through.
second all-star selection you turn it over once more in your head, quiet and pleased, the way she'd let you see the whole shape of her pride tonight instead of the deflected, joking version she gives everyone else. you think: i got the version nobody else gets. i got to watch her actually believe it, just for tonight, just for me.
you fall asleep like that, her hand still splayed warm over your stomach, and somewhere around four in the morning you half-wake to feel her press a sleepy kiss to your shoulder and mumble something that might be your name and might just be a sound, and you tug her closer instead of asking her to repeat it, because you already know, more or less, what it means.
in the morning she'll put the joking mask back on for the cameras she'll do the interview, underplay the achievement, deflect every compliment into a comment about the team, about kiki, about how much work is still left this season.
you'll sit in the back with your proud face on, exactly like she asked, and nobody watching will know that you already heard the real version last night, said out loud, meant completely i worked really hard for this. i'm proud of myself and that you're the only person on earth who got to hear it before she learned to make it sound modest again.
that's the part nobody else gets that's the part that's just yours.
a lil off topic but the respect i gained for t when she realized azzi wasn't into the hennessy and immediately told her not to drink it if she didn't want it, the way she stepped in with that man on the street, and js the plain kindness she's shown everyone. she's js a sweetheart and i love that for her
