Candace is not a Southerner, but four years, more or less, spent in the genteel atmosphere of Knoxville have given her appreciation of Southern manners. She's accustomed enough to the steady, leisurely pace that the rush of the city discomfits her, even when it's her own city. Everything comes in its own time, if you work at it; the ring she wears and the trophies on display are proof of this. People talk about ego and arrogance, but she is what she is. They'd all know it if she was pushing.

But she hates to wait more than she hates to hurry, and Minneapolis carries this sense of holding its breath for something- a Gopher, a new stadium, a healthy arm, a franchise player, a return to glory, a team they can trust. Maybe she'll get used to the sweet summer air, but if she doesn't break this tension, it might break her.

Later, she'll wonder if she would have changed things by fighting Nicole for her number, by Nicole giving it to her and taking the burdens on herself. Maybe it changes the role, maybe it changes the complexion, maybe the expectations would never double and the whispers would be as quiet as they could get. But Nicole has 3 and Seimone has 33, so her options are limited, and as soon as she sets foot in the Target Center, she starts seeing green jerseys with tape across the top, more of them than the blue that's supposed to be the new thing.

Secretly, she's kinda glad. Green doesn't have the… associations of blue.

Seimone makes the blue tolerable, though. Seimone, so liquid and graceful. Seimone, who is a perfect Southern lady at all times, polite and gracious with just a hint of almost-familiar drawl in her low-pitched voice when she shows Candace all the spots in the Twin Cities. Some places, they don't know who she is, for all the press; she's just Mone's friend, or maybe Mone's teammate, and even then they don't put the pieces together.

Sometimes she thinks that might be nice. Just draft along behind Seimone, a hanger-on in Seimone's spotlight. It could be restful. But it's not who she is.

Lindsey is not a lady, but this isn't exactly a revelation. She hides a shockingly crude mouth behind that mischievously pretty face, and her fingers twitch like they want to wander off somewhere they shouldn't be. Most of her baggy shirts button from left to right, hiding the fact that she is, in fact, a girl, and one with a nice body at that. She talks slow, too, slower than Seimone, with a gleam in her eye whenever she says something that might have a double meaning, and even sometimes when there's no possible double entendre.

But she's polite, in her own weird kind of way. She grabs doors and doesn't let Candace do the heavy lifting that's supposed to be part of rookie hazing. She grabs the bill, even when she doesn't have to. She has a weird habit of walking on the left side of the street.

It takes Candace a month to realize what Lindsey actually is: a Southern gentleman, almost as perfect in her way as Seimone is, although not quite. Candace chalks it up to the differences in their upbringing, Seimone being a Louisiana girl and Lindsey being a Texan. Texas is rougher, right? Texas isn't really the South so much as it's the West, more John Wayne than Rhett Butler. So that's Lindsey.

Lindsey sits protectively close to Seimone on the bench, and it makes perfect sense. Candace dusts off her best manners when she realizes why Lindsey's always at Seimone's shoulder, always watching her with those serious dark eyes, always half-smiling when she's around Seimone. There are a thousand and one polite ways to leave a couple alone when they're sharing a private moment after a game, but even though Candace reaches deep into that old bag of tricks during her first two months as a Lynx, she still learns too much for comfort. She sees the spot at the back of Seimone's neck, right between her braids and her cross, where Lindsey's fingers press in just slightly to make Seimone moan low in her throat and melt just enough for Lindsey to kiss her hard against the lockers. She knows that Seimone's hands aren't so bad either, when they push into Lindsey's hips and work across and down her thighs, or when they tease just above Lindsey's waist and Lindsey starts- not giggling, but something giddier than just laughter, and pushing all the harder.

Candace gets the impression that Seimone might be ticklish, and that Seimone didn't let Lindsey find this out on purpose. And that Lindsey has to be the taller person in every kiss, which forces Seimone to flex and bend, to show off the same fluid grace that dazzles opponents on the court.

Candace also gets the impression that she's watching way too much and enjoying way too much, but she can't make herself stop. Like Coach Summitt, she has a vision of how the game is supposed to be played, and it plays out in her locker room.

They've just battled Washington to a close loss, the only kind of loss Candace is at all familiar with. Beard and Currie had words for Lindsey before and after the game, and Seimone is doing her best to erase those words from Lindsey's memory, to replace them with her lips and tongue. Candace has another graceful escape planned, but she misjudges a turn, crashes into a locker, and can't hold back her curse. Seimone looks up and over. "Thought we were the only ones still here," she says innocently.

Lindsey snickers. "'Cause Candy's never next to last out after a game," she answers, pitching her voice to make it clear that Candace is supposed to hear her.

"Sorry, guys," Candace apologizes.

And Seimone laughs. "Don't have to be sorry, not at all."

"We were waitin' for you to say somethin' sometime. It wouldn't have been seemly to be any more obvious than we already were," Lindsey elaborates. Candace blinks, now even more puzzled than before, and then Lindsey kisses her, warm breath and soft lips against her skin, causing her pulse to race right where Lindsey can feel it, right near her heart beating faster, right against the sweat that's starting to bead over the salt left from the game.

"We'll stop if this isn't what you want," Seimone says into Candace's ear, and she's warm and soft too; she's too much of a lady to press, so Candace's imagination must be filling in the feel of Seimone behind her, against her shoulder, hands starting to stray.

Candace swallows. She's never scared. She's not. She isn't. She. "I have- I can't. Once. Just once. I have. I have a promise to keep. But once. I can. Once."

"Then this isn't the place," Seimone says. Lindsey confirms it without saying a word, and Candace will never know how. They walk her out between them to Lindsey's car, teasing her every so often with a casual touch whenever she looks like she's thinking about changing her mind, even if she isn't changing her mind, even if she's not together enough to even consider changing her mind because that would require way more thought than she can put into much of anything at this point.

It's quiet. Seimone rolls her eyes just loudly enough for Lindsey to hear when Lindsey reaches for the radio dial and turns it to the local slow jams station. "None of that. Let's not get her hot and bothered where we can't do something about it," she says, and Lindsey's hand is back on the wheel so fast that maybe it never came off at all.

Of course, Seimone's hand up the back of Candace's shirt, warm and pressing against her back in slow, steady, gentle, relaxing circles, is doing more to keep Candace "hot and bothered" than anything, so it's really a moot point, and not something Candace would really have concerned herself about. The ride is a blur, scenery half-glimpsed in snatches through half-lidded eyes; she wouldn't be able to retrace her steps for all the endorsements in China.

Seimone pushes her gently out of the car, into the building, into the apartment. Not an apartment she's seen before. Lindsey's, then. Maybe. Probably.

Lindsey looks her up and down, glances at Seimone. "We better get you out of those wet things," Seimone says with a smile. Confusion seeps through the haze, but Lindsey's fingers easing off Candace's pants and underpants clarify Seimone's point. So, for that matter, does the scent of arousal that's released to the open air. This wasn't what Candace had considered when Minnesota won the lottery, not by a long shot, but it's easy not to mind.

"See, now you just look silly, walkin' around in just a shirt," Lindsey teases her, and the touch of Seimone's hand through the thin fabric is enough inducement for Candace to work the buttons herself, somehow, and toss the shirt over her shoulder. Lindsey lets out a "Hey!" when the shirt hits her in the head, but it's her own fault for being on the floor anyway, with her pants down so that they cushion her tender knee as she kneels between Candace's legs, her head tilted back, her tongue out and working industriously. "Smooth," she says with a grin between licks, and then she settles back to her quest of discovering just where Candace's spot is and then hitting it again and again.

Lindsey has done this before. She doesn't have to search for long, and Candace moans with pleasure- well, not moans, it's more of a graceless combination of a whimper and a grunt, or at least that's what she's been told after nights that were a little too honest for comfort. But it comes faster and faster, and it's harder and harder for her to stay upright, she's melting, she's falling, she's-

Seimone catches her from behind just before her legs buckle, hands just below her shoulder blades, and she feels Seimone pulling her close, Seimone kissing the back of her neck; oh, so that's why Lindsey does this to Seimone all the time, it feels so nice, intimate in a way she never thought of before, and she lets herself melt into the touch, lets herself lose control, and she can't see anything, can't hear anything, all she can do is feel…

The next time she's able to focus again, she's still in Seimone's arms, but Lindsey's standing in front of her, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. "So?"

"I. Wow. I never. I mean. Before."

"Duh," Lindsey says.

"We still on that once?" Seimone inquires. "Or was that all you could take?"

Candace twists in Seimone's arms and kisses Seimone hard on the mouth. "Once isn't over yet." She's got her footing back now, and even if her mind is a little hazy, it's also focused on giving what she took, so as she begins to let her right hand wander over Seimone's breast, she reaches back with the other hand to bring Lindsey into the embrace. Somehow, nothing feels right unless all three of them are in on it, and that would bode well for the chemistry of the Lynx for years to come if any of them were thinking about how anything would bode at all. But who needs to think about the future when the present is so much more interesting, when the present has hands and mouths and soft skin and a warm glow?

They stumble together towards the bedroom, Lindsey leading, Seimone pushing, Candace following. "Hope you were payin' attention," Lindsey says, and Candace gets Lindsey's point when she feels Lindsey's weight settle on her chest, when she gets her first up close and personal look at another woman's pussy.

Shy would have gotten Candace nowhere in life, and it gets her nowhere in bed. She isn't even sure how to begin, so instead of applying her mouth, she applies her fingers, sliding two in and probing until she feels Lindsey's clit, then stroking; this is something she knows, this is something she understands from lonely nights alone in campus housing and on the road against another team that was lining up to get its ass handed to it by Tennessee. It's almost like she's getting herself off.

"Not bad," Lindsey pants. "Still. You lied. You weren't payin' attention. Mone, would you please show her so she can do it right?"

Seimone doesn't say anything, which isn't exactly new, but Candace feels her mouth working, how different she is from Lindsey, how gentle she is. Seimone takes her slow, makes her beg incoherently until she comes, her back arching and her head thrown back so that it's between Lindsey's legs. She knows what to do now, and though she may never do it again, she applies what she has learned until she hears Lindsey muttering "oh god oh god oh my god" and feels Lindsey shuddering as she comes.

There's something more intense about this than what she's experienced before, something in doing instead of being, in using hands and mouth and working instead of lying back and simply enjoying. Candace has never been content to let things happen to her; she'd much rather go out and do them herself. Once, she thinks; once there was a time once would have been enough and she would have just written it off as a learning experience, something that needed to be tried for the sake of being tried. It would only have been the once.

It's still only once. She knows that, and she knows that Lindsey and Seimone know that. They can't do this again, not the three of them like this. There's too much at risk. Too much to gain and even more to lose, and no matter how much she might want this, the things she would lose mean even more to her.

But this is still the once, and as she rolls Lindsey over and twists around so she can pull Seimone onto the bed for her share of the loving, she's bound and determined to make it a memorable occasion, to make the most of it the same way she's made the most of every other opportunity handed to her.