Chapter Text
Chapter 1: November, 2006, Shanghai
They first kiss against the shimmering backdrop of the Shanghai night skyline.
Roger and Rafa are sitting on the balcony of Rafa’s hotel room, overlooking the Bund district in its lustrous nighttime glory. They watch the lights of the world flicker below them --- all the people and their anonymous yet fiercely colourful lives and imaginations. They indulge in a drink, for which they will be severely scolded the next day, but the view is so intoxicating that it would be a shame not to pair it with something. They speak little of the ongoing tournament but drabble in inconsequential pleasantries: the humidity of Shanghai in late autumn, their lives since London, and upcoming plans for Christmas. They have been laughing too, in between the comfortable silences, a languid sort of laughter that continues to bubble even when its original cause has long been forgotten.
The situation is never intended to be romantic, despite how much it has ironically turned out so. After facing each other six times in one year on the tennis court, Roger and Rafa have developed a sort of unlikely friendship, which consists of meeting for coffee whenever they play the same tournament. There are many compelling narratives to this relationship --- the one of getting-to-know-your-opponent for their teams, the one of rivals-turned-friends for the media, and of course, the one of tennis camaraderie for their rational selves. Yet, none of these aspects, while not false, captures the raison d’être of this peculiar bond --- the unspeakable ease when they are in each other’s company. Whenever they have coffee or the occasional meal, the world seems to recede slightly, no longer constantly prying them open and sapping them of life, and they feel alone and a bit invincible --- a feeling that they thought was confined to the tennis court. So Roger and Rafa have continued this arrangement, or secretly cherished it even, their little private reprieve from the quotidienne, until here at the Master’s Cup, where Rafa’s practice dragged on too late for coffee at the hotel’s bar and Rafa invites Roger to coffee in his room instead.
So, as the meandering conversation trails off and the last hiccups of laughter dissipate, Roger finds himself studying Rafa’s smile lines --- the ones that gently curve around his lips, forming an indentation that is not quite a dimple but adorable regardless. And suddenly, instead of his eyes, Roger’s lips are now tracing the edges of these lines, trying to find Rafa’s mouth. The briefest contact ensues. If this kiss was a serve, it is probably a let --- one that grazes at the edge and demands a second try. Roger retreats and they look at each other, both a bit incredulous at what he just did.
Roger realizes, if he is quick, he can play it off as a spur-of-the-moment accident, just another one of the thousands of unfortunate consequences of intoxication. Yet, he does not because he does not believe in accidents. Tennis has taught him that everything he does, no matter how seemingly spontaneous, is the result of a complex and unstoppable link of events. Every shot he makes on the court has been thought of a thousand times before he takes it and the fulfilment of the action is nothing but the last prostration to the hands of fate. So, Roger bides his time as seconds tick by and the window of a retraction slowly closes. He panics a little when Rafa does nothing, just sitting there and looking at him in a very concentrated way, the glistening-eyes and grimacing-brows-sort-of- look that Roger only gets to see in the tiebreaker of a fifth set. Roger panics more when he realizes he has no idea of what he wants Rafa to do --- as the dizzying sense of fateful intuition evaporates, he sees how high up they are, beneath, the world an inescapable labyrinth, and how easily they can break if they teeter on the edge.
That thought dies a premature death when Roger feels Rafa’s lips on his for the second time this night. If the first kiss felt like an electrical pulse when two exposed wires meet, jarring and caustic, this kiss feels like the radiance of the city below is slowly trickling into their bodies, warm and paralyzing. They take their time this time, slowly memorizing each other’s topographies, the elevation of a nose, the valley of a cheek, the curve behind a jaw, and of course, the tender grooves of lips as they fold over each other. In the end, Rafa proves to be more impatient, discontented with mere superficial investigations, he laps his tongue around the inner edges of the Swiss’s lips, asking for more. And Roger finds himself surprisingly giving with Rafa when not on a court. So they continue for what feel like years, decades, centuries, dancing with their mouths and tongues as the lights below them dim and a few stars fall out of the sky.