Archive of Our Own ^beta

The plane lands in Perth and it's sunset and the world looks a little different from how it normally does. Novak has seen a lot of summers, but none quite like this: empty and almost silent, except for the wind and the engine, winding downward. The tarmac is warm, sun-soaked, and Novak can feel the heat rise up, radiating into his skin. He can taste the salt of the ocean air on his tongue and he turns towards the breeze, laughing, trying to catch it with his outstretched palms. "Welcome to Australia," the customs person says.

It has been barely weeks since the end of the last season, but it feels like even less to Novak, like yesterday he'd been rejoicing on the streets of Belgrade. It feels as if he has only just collapsed into his bed after months, after years, and felt everything fall inside – an unsung story filling every crevice with noise. His legs are still weary, his fingers still blistered, he's still tired; he feels like he's spent the past weeks in a daze, watching the tide in Monte Carlo roll inward, turning over to find Jelena already in his arms. Days, he remembers, that were filled with dreams, and with falling asleep and waking in between. Even this feels dreamlike, standing here in the midst of orange clouds, watching everything move around him, but he's back again, ready to begin another season.

He settles in his room quickly, starts his still-imperfect routine of unpacking, lays his books across the back of the dresser, places perfectly-plastic wrapped shirts into drawers, smells the complimentary shampoo. He spends the next day not doing much of anything, spreads out across his bed and flips through channels, doesn't realize that it's the new year until he hears it from a news anchor, hours later. He turns incessantly, wrecks the sheets with creases, falls asleep: early, with the lights on, and his book still open.

When he walks into the lobby on the third morning, it's Ana that he sees first; Ana who had convinced him to come to Perth to play with her. Ana who smiles, well-worn, as he walks towards the mess of couches where she's sitting, and she goes back to talking to—

Andy's there, and Novak isn't sure why he feels surprised, but he can feel the pulse of it against his consciousness. It hasn't even been that long since he's seen Andy last, just over a month ago at the year-end tournament, and nearly every week before that; still Novak feels as if it's been months, years, since he's really seen Andy. Novak feels it, doesn't know how he recognized it: the way the years have slipped by with nothing but courteous "hello"s and an empty space that used to be filled with more than pre-match well wishes. In this place, untainted by thousands of milling players and tourists and officials, it's easier to see Andy, sharp against the soft blur of Australian summer where even Ana disappears.

It's not even that he hasn't seen Andy, but more that he hasn't played Andy in a long time, hasn't spent time with Andy in a long while. They've spent the years erasing the history between them, spent years turning their relationship into a rivalry, but they've fallen into a near-comfortable lull in the past months, as time passes and they're stagnant. Novak forgets more and more why it was so important in the first place and, as he looks up at Andy, he thinks that maybe, finally, they're at a good spot. Maybe, finally, they can ignore the things that have sprung up between them: the distance and the age and the competition. Andy smiles and Novak asks, without thinking, abrupt: "Do you want to hit?"

They start practicing together. They sneak out to a deserted club in the forty-degree heat and they play together, sweating, laughing, like they're both thirteen again. There's no one watching and they hit balls back and forth with their feet, joking; they tease each other with lobs and tricks and too many dropshots; they splash each other with water from the coolers. They play practice sets and the loser has to pick up all of the balls, carry the bags, put up with the never-ending gloating. Late into the afternoons until the sweat and the sunlight gleams under their eyes, at their necks, they play, and, when they walk away, they seem younger than they are (still fifteen and free of everything that's seized them apart).

Afterward, sometimes late into the nights, when the sun has gone and left nothing but stars in the sky, they eat, drink, talk, laugh. They settle into a life that they never had, but once may have, finding almost-lost patterns and the ends of each others' thoughts. It feels like coming home, like finding an old t-shirt and being surprised when it fits just right. It feels the same, like six years have been swept into the sea with the last waves, like nothing has changed between them. Novak tells stories that Andy's heard already, of Belgrade and restaurants and brothers, but, surely, they're different, just as Novak and Andy are: interspersed now with tales of Pierre and Monte Carlo, of trophies and fame. These stories and Andy's spill across them, alongside the fading-dawning light, and they spend the ends of evenings, the beginnings of the mornings, re-learning each other.

There are moments, too, when it feels like no time has passed at all. Novak opens his door in the morning in his boxers, as groggy as he used to be as a child, and Andy invites himself in, flops down onto the bed and stretches out as Novak gets dressed. Andy chucks a grape at Novak from across the table and Novak retorts, "Ow, fucker, just because you don't have brain cells doesn't mean you need to screw up mine." Novak's hair sticks up when he takes off his cap and Andy straightens it for him, hands carding over the top, ruefully grinning. They catch each other's eyes from across the net and Novak finds himself smiling and surprised, somehow; he turns away, wondering.

He asks Andy, once, when they're both breathless from having laughed too long and the sunshine is just dying down, golden, "What happened with us?" and he can hear the crack in his own voice, as he says it. Andy's face shadows, grows a little grim, and Novak almost regrets asking because he wishes it had never changed from back then, wishes that it won't change again now. The light in Andy's eyes, wistful, bright like the evening firebugs, dims and he says: "I don't know," mumbled and with too many beats in between. He gets up, hastily, starts packing his bag and Novak wants to call after him, take it back, but Andy has already gone. Novak sits there, in the breeze and the last of the sun's glow, and can't help but think of all the times, years ago, when Andy had turned away, hadn't smiled back, had told Novak that he was too busy. Novak wonders what it might have been, why Andy couldn't have just said something. He thinks about how he (still) catches himself glancing over in Andy's direction, expecting him to be looking back; the way that he's found himself searching for Andy beside him even with so many years gone. There's a clarity, suddenly, of how much they have been broken.

Here, on the outskirts of the world, in this deserted paradise, they somehow mend themselves: tenuously piece themselves back together until the cracks look instead like a mosaic of glass. They find themselves in endless days of matches and practices and exploring Perth, in routines similar, so similar, to what they used to have. They walk through the streets together, unnoticed; wander around the shops on the pier, trying on hats and jewelry and memorabilia, so they're both giggling; use the leftover crusts from their sandwiches to tempt the squirrels closer. They go to the beach and roll in the sand until it's everywhere, all around them, and they sink into it like they've sunken into their old lives. They meander, through the city in the summer, between the lines that they've drawn for themselves; they fall so far from their old lives that Novak forgets that there's anything else. For the first time in his life, he feels truly carefree, unburdened by things that he's thought about even when he was young – his future and his family and his country.

Together, they sit on the pier, dangling their feet above the water, and Novak thinks it feels like longing, this complicated, entwined thing between them. He's happy, happier than he's been in a long time, he thinks. He's happy, but he can't help that twinge of sadness inside of him, even as he smiles, and he can't figure out why. He looks over at Andy, looks out over the coast and into the blue sky, shielding his eyes from the sun and the salt water, and he is awed. He wonders, somewhere deep inside, how it might have been if they'd had this all along, wonders what might have been for years and years instead of just for a few days.

They had always been friends: spent all of their time together, practiced together laughed together, chased after girls together, and the thought stops Novak short because it feels like lifetimes ago all of a sudden. All of a sudden, he feels old, and his mind reels. They used to dream about this, he thinks, or close enough to this. They've been doing this for years, dancing around what they used to be, not used to what they could become. The way that they automatically turn towards each other, even now, sometimes, even though they've learned otherwise, and how easily that's all untaught. How much he wants to reach up and brush Andy's ridiculous hair out of his eyes or grasp his wrist and drag him along.

The way that he teases Andy when he sees Andy's skin, bright red, sunburned; the way Andy glares when Novak can't stop laughing. He's still giggling minutes later, with new stories about lobsters and Scots, and Andy tries to hit him in the head with the sun cream (and then asks him, grumbling, if he would put it on). Novak complies easily, palms over Andy's shoulders; marvels at how it stains as he presses a thumb in and the skin goes white, just for a moment.

He wakes slowly, drawing out the lingering warmth of the sun and the blankets and the body next to his own; when he opens his eyes, he can still see the freckles on Andy's back, bare except for the blanket draped across his ribcage (still itches to trace it with his fingers). He turns away, turns over to the other side, and wonders what he's done. Shit, he thinks. The early morning air is too thin, too full of salt, like the sea, and he chokes, tries to breathe deeper just to find that it doesn't help at all. He looks over at Andy, still asleep, and thinks about Jelena, half a world away, and her laugh and all of the times she's been there for him, times when no one else had been. He thinks about the ring, stored away in his closet back home: the diamond, shining even in the snow and the grey skies, that he'd picked out as soon as he got back home from Belgrade.

He wonders, somewhere in the back of his mind, what this could be, between him and Andy, but he doesn't know what it is. Andy's been gone too long, Nole thinks, to forget so easily. It may have been simple in this place, in sunshine-filled summers that they could almost pretend were outside of the world that they knew, but, out there, it is not so easy. He finds himself clinging to Andy, to this dream-like place, as the days go by, but he knows that he will have to let it go. He catches himself wishing that he could live just like this, forever, but then he thinks about everything else and he won't give up those things either; can't give up those things.

Inch by inch, the fantasy drifts away, until there are only hours left and they can't hold on any longer. They both have lives and careers and families that await them and, as they prepare to board the planes to Melbourne, the last of the Indian sunlight drips away like slow honey, staining the skies pink and dark blue. The Australian Open, next, and both of them will find again their coaches and their obligations (and their expectations). Their eyes will grow hungry out of the laziness, the content, and they'll push themselves with the beginning of a new year, a new season. Back to the world where they are tennis players, first; boyfriends to beautiful women; rivals; and then, only, friends. Back to a life where they're vying for the same spot atop the world, pushing each other further than they've ever gotten before and racing to see who gets there first.

Novak reaches out one last time, thinks for a second that Andy will have disappeared as he feels only the emptiness, but then there are fingertips, soft and callused, and he squeezes. Goodbye, he thinks. Goodbye to this dream, to this thing, whatever it is. Goodbye to all of the things that we haven't done together; will never do together; should have done together. Goodbye to this wonderful time, he thinks, fondly, and there is little regret now. It may have not been a lifetime together, not what they deserved (years of running around in the sand, years playing with children together, discovering each others first grey hairs, making tea when they can do little else), but he's ready for the world again, somehow.

He emerges from the plane and he feels new. The sun is shining down on him and it is empty around him, the tarmac stretching out for miles and not a cloud in the vast sky. It's like new life that's been breathed into him and he exhales, but the feeling stays.