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"nice play" are the first two words out of nayeon's mouth when she gets into the car, huffing with the exertion of having lugged all of sana's stuff across the softball pitch and into the car. she takes a few seconds to collect herself, pouting when sana laughs at her and reaches across her to start the car up.
"nice play?" sana snorts, shaking her head fondly as she sits back in her seat. the cushions are soft and plush, and sana's careful not to lie on the spots uncovered by the towel nayeon laid down. nayeon loves sana, but she might just love the seats in her car more.
nayeon nods. "it looked good from where i was."
(nayeon was off at the football game, and only made it back in the final few minutes of the game.)
nayeon still has glitter around her eyes and mouth from the pre-game pep rally - the one the entire softball team boycotted in protest - and sana has the overwhelming urge to lean in and kiss all of it off. but she holds back, only retrieves nayeon's oversized pullover from the backseat. it's grey, one hundred percent cotton. nayeon's had it since forever.
sana focuses on the rain pattering against the windscreen. it's a cold night, one that will undoubtedly end up with the two of them wrapped up in each other and sana's parents demanding to know where she is in the morning. they try to be lax about things, seeing as it's her senior year and they'd prefer not to be stereotypically asian, but there are some things sana still struggles to get away with.
one of those things is staying over at nayeon's place multiple times a month, up to thrice a week. she can't help it, she just can't find it in herself to leave once she's with nayeon.
beside her, nayeon finishes putting the pullover on. adorably, she looks like she's drowning, and sana marvels at how much nayeon's actual dress sense contrasts with what cheerleading necessitates she wear. sana isn't complaining about the revealing outfits, but it's amusing to watch nayeon tug the shorts a little lower down her thighs, her plunging neckline a little higher up her chest.
occassionally, nayeon's teammates will make an attempt at fixing her outfits, maybe alter them a little with the help of a needle and some thread, but they never succeed. sana will watch on and only smile when nayeon whines. it reminds sana that she was there first, gives her an unparalleled measure of satisfaction.
"so." nayeon rubs her hands on the steering wheel. sana wants to put them in her lap. "where to?"
sana thinks, thinks about where she wants to go, thinks about nayeon, thinks about the pep rally she ordered her team to boycott. they don't care about us, sana had announced to the huddle that was the riled-up softball team. why should we entertain them if they do things like this?
things. things like coach lee scheduling the football game on the same day as the softball game, despite the fact that sana had repeatedly told him how bad of an idea that was. she had brought it to administration, even, but they had ignored her and approved the football game. even scheduled a pep rally beforehand, as if they hadn't rubbed it in hard enough.
"sana?" nayeon's voice is soft and has a hypnotic feature to it. it's hoarse from shouting school cheers but sana has always found the coarseness of her voice attractive. but not now -- now she feels as if she's choking back tears, and she doesn't like it, not one bit. it's bad enough that she's already doubting her prowess as a leader, and thinking endlessly, back to how she failed the team when they needed her most.
"i wish you'd been there," sana says, and she feels helpless. she knows she's being selfish, because nayeon knows that she can't do anything either. just be with sana and hope that makes her feel better. sana swallows. "i wish you'd watched my game."
"i'm sorry," nayeon murmurs, but sana has words rising in her throat, twisting her voice cruelly. she has to speak, or she might just explode.
"i wish you knew what position i played--"
"outfielder," nayeon supplies.
"and i wish you didn't have to be with those footballers all the time--"
"i never want to be," nayeon soothes.
"and i wish you could see me play." sana squeezes her eyes shut, thinking back to the game she'd just played. for a moment, it feels like she's back on the pitch, screaming for jihyo to make it back to home base on time, watching the rival school surreptitiously stick a foot out to trip jihyo. for a moment, wild rage rushes through her, and sana has to clench her jaw and make it go away. for a moment, she forgets that nayeon's with her.
"every game i play is for you," sana admits, and it's real this time.
nayeon's hand cups her jaw, and guides sana to look her in the eyes. sana wants to avoid them, but nayeon has always had such a thing about sana and her eyes, and nayeon is always impossible to reject. she rubs a thumb against sana's face, and sana loosens in her seat.
"i always want to be there," she promises, and moves to straddle
sana's lap. sana moves instinctively to accommodate nayeon's weight on top of her thighs, and her heart is beating a little too fast when nayeon looks at her again, because sana has never really gotten used to the proximity and how nayeon looks when they're this close.
there's something about nayeon sana has never been able to pin down, something wild and unpredictable that keeps sana double-guessing, wondering and wandering.
it's not a bad feeling, sana thinks, fingers curling around nayeon's hips instinctively as nayeon noses at her jawline. there's words being whispered into sana's ear, syllables that should have no meaning with how senseless they are but manage to have significance. sana lets it happen, with nayeon caging her body and the towel soaking up her sweat as nayeon begins kissing down sana's throat.
she's still murmuring, and sana loses herself to the words, trying hard not to remember tonight, telling herself that she's worth this, she deserves this, she earned this.
-
sana wakes up in nayeon's bed, still half-asleep as she scrabbles for her phone on the nightstand. nayeon is passed out beside her, and evidently went straight to bed after she drove the two of them home, evidenced by the pullover and jersey in a pile on the floor. thankfully, she'd had the presence of mind to leave sana's phone within grabbable distance - sana is always antsy without it, and is always too hopped up on post-sex energy to remember to keep it close.
it's plugged into one of nayeon's chargers. one of five, actually, if you count the three chargers sana keeps in her car, her bag, and her pocket for nayeon's sake. it's interesting how nayeon remembers sana's phone troubles but forgets about her own, and vice versa. sana supposes it's just how the universe made them - unable to thrive without the other, even if it's something as pointless and minuscule as this.
she swipes away the notifications from the softball group chat, only taking a cursory look at the time before she switches her phone off again. there it is again - the tension that nayeon had tried so hard to work out just now.
nayeon's efforts are always concerted and sana always tries to make nayeon feel useful and helpful, but the truth is that they don't always help sana feel less small. it's not nayeon's fault, and it's sana's battle to fight, but that only makes everything that much harder.
it's just that... sana is sensitive, and things get to her easily, even when they shouldn't and even when she tries her hardest not to let them. she's empathetic, too open, and gets trampled all over when she's least expecting it. and nothing nayeon does, sana thinks, will change the fact that sana is everything she doesn't want to be.
one day, she tries to convince herself. one day, she'll get back at everything that tells her otherwise. and she's not alone. she never has been. for now, she just has to stop overthinking.
a leg settles on her waist, startling her into dropping her phone back on the nightstand, but her shock is quelled by nayeon's warm hands on the skin where sana's top rides up. (she's wearing one of nayeon's shirts, and her torso is longer than nayeon's so it's always hard to find things that fit sana's proportions properly. nayeon just gets to look cute in sana's comparatively oversized outfits.)
"sana," nayeon moans quietly, and it sounds so unguarded and tender that sana knows nayeon must still be half-asleep. she smiles and snuggles back into nayeon's touch. nayeon relaxs against her, dropping back against sana's shoulder with a soft snore within the minute, and sana tells herself that she deserves this.
-
nayeon has, of course, asked sana about the ins and outs of her sport multiple times. she actually took it upon herself to read up on the entire history of softball when they first got together. (jeongyeon and jihyo had warned sana about nayeon's slightly frightening tendency to fixate easily on things and not let up until she's satisfied, but sana just found it cute, as she does most things.) hell, she probably knows more about softball than sana does, even if she once ran to a spot a good five metres from home base and proclaimed proudly that she had won. the pitch remains sana's territory.
nayeon later confessed that she'd just thought of softball as 'lesbian baseball' - a moniker that was kind of offensive but mostly accurate, given the number of girls on the team who have gone out with myoui mina. but it's sana's job to brush up the team's image, so she had appropriately reproached nayeon for that opinion of hers.
("how would you feel if i called cheerleading glorified pom-pom waving?"
"but it is!")
news had spread quickly about nayeon and "the captain of the softball team", obviously, with most of the football team being simultaneously grossed out and disappointed. they were all expelled following a particularly uncomfortable incident, so that's that. sana still doesn't know what they did, but it must've been really bad for administration to have expelled them.
that was sophomore year. since then, they've been on the down low, not out of any particular situation but just because they can't be assed to tell anyone who isn't bright enough to deduce on their own. you must be really thick to not notice sana and nayeon all over each other.
(chaeyoung, a member of the softball team and also the genius who skipped a grade, had found out about nayeon and sana's relationship rather unpleasantly. that was the first and last time nayeon talked sana into having a tryst in the softball locker rooms.)
-
sana has cried a total of one time in front of nayeon, and that's impressive, given how emotional sana is about everything else. it's just that... crying in front of someone makes you so vulnerable, and sana always feels awkward about that. she's fine with jumping on nayeon and hugging her to death, but crying? that's just a no-no.
that one time? it was the night of their loss at the hands of the undefeated state champions. they'd made it so far, and had lost narrowly, the deciding factor being sana's decision not to bat to first base. she'd tried to bat the ball out instead, but their skilled third base player had caught it, and ended the game right there. (or so it had seemed - nayeon assured her later that it wasn't the fault of sana alone, but many blunders that their team had made, compounded by the experience and talent of the other team that had led to the loss.)
it's still the worst night of her life that she can remember. nayeon had taken her home that night, stubbornly stayed even when sana told her to go home, and stayed by her side the entire night as sana cried her eyes out, recounted all the mistakes that she'd made. she'd almost stepped down as captain that night, given the role to jeongyeon instead, and had only been stopped by an intense nayeon.
nayeon takes being elected captain a very serious affair - seeing how she was unanimously elected captain of the cheerleading team, she might not value democracy much, but she does take the post more seriously than she should. she holds certain values close to her, and one of those is maintaining a strong grip on the post of captain.
"they elected you because they trust you," nayeon had said. "there isn't anyone who can do what you do."
it had taken a while for the words to properly resonate with sana, but it happened. sana still wishes she could take that night back, but being with nayeon has taught her that some things happen for a reason.
-
nayeon drives the two of them to school the next day. sana's hair is messy because she can't find a hairbrush and nayeon's face is still glittery from the pep rally the previous night and the two of them kiss more than they should at stoplights, leading to them getting honked at relentlessly.
they get stares when they get out of nayeon's car, both of their faces positively covered in gold glitter. there's even some on sana's jaw and throat, much to everyone's chagrin. they hold hands through their walk through the hallways, with nayeon sweetly asking a junior what he's staring at when she catches him eyeing sana's ass. he skedaddles so fast sana thinks she sees skid marks.
"you're a mess," sana chides, sliding on nayeon's pullover gratefully. her midriff is still woefully exposed, but it covers the bruises there. "i can't believe you gave him the time of day."
at this moment, the bell goes, and so does half of the population in the hallways. nayeon, poised as ever, just flips her hair and gives sana a smug look. "i'll see you after school?"
"i have practice," sana pouts, knowing that nayeon's schedule is wide open, "you can go back without me."
"and miss my girlfriend getting sweaty and dirty? no way." nayeon wiggles her eyebrows, or lack thereof. "i'll see you at the bleachers, then."
and this is where sana decides that this is worth it - in full view of the latecomers dashing through the gates and trying to make it past the hall monitors, sana presses nayeon into her locker, hands sliding down her body to grope at her ass, giggling when nayeon yelps, moving her lips against nayeon's. nayeon is so gorgeous and pretty and sana feels like she could take her apart right now, and it's motivated by a fierce hunger that she doesn't feel very much.
this is only broken when a monitor clears his throat, and even then it takes a few seconds for them to pull apart. nayeon looks dazed and at a loss for words, and sana admires her work with a giggle and an appreciative look.
"nice play," nayeon gasps, and runs off to her first class.
yes, sana thinks, ignoring the late bell. nice play.