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Andrey doesn’t want to think about it, but he is going to serve for the match, and he’s always nervous when he does it, even on days when he gets here without much of a struggle.
He knows why that is. He’s done it before, failing to close when he’s in the lead and then losing the tiebreak. Across the net, there’s another good reason: his friend, who’s bending down low in the shade, dutifully awaiting his serve. Despite the scoreline, Andrey is far more used to regarding Dominic as a grand slam champion than a round one opponent that he’s about to beat in straight sets.
He tosses the ball into the sun.
It isn’t until Dominic starts moving again that Andrey is brought back to the reality of just how weak his friend is. There is a primal part of him that is ecstatic at the sight of a wounded prey, but the rest of Andrey hurts to see Dominic play this way, a game littered by desperate lobs and soft loopy groundstrokes begging to be punished.
To think that he’s the one forcing out this game makes Andrey want to smash the ball twice as hard into the ground.
He can almost hear what his mental coach is going to say, that he should focus on the fact that he’s winning, he’s doing things right. But Andrey’s had more than enough of this fucking match. Why does it even have to played? He punched his own temples three times upon seeing the draw. He curses the heat that is slowly but surely debilitating both of them. Some time in the second set, his breath went out a little as he watched Dominic trying to serve in a funny motion, before immediately catching the toss, clutching his ribs. But the medical time out came and went and he is still on court swinging, so Andrey doesn’t divert energy into worrying just yet. He doesn’t need any more help getting distracted.
He just needs the match to be over.
It’s probably what Dominic needs right now, too, but Andrey has no clue. The more he steps forward, the further back Dominic retreats, and that’s how Andrey knows he can’t reach him: no use banging on a computer that’s glitching out when running on very low battery.
Where Dominic has gone in these moments is beyond him. He sometimes wonders what has happened in the past couple of years, besides the injuries, that has trapped Dominic like a caged animal, and worn him down into malnutrition.
——
It’s not that he hasn’t tried asking. Andrey considers himself a decent friend, in most cases. What’s been shared happens to be just enough to make Andrey wonder a bit more.
There’s the frustration that Dominic doesn’t hide when they train. He has to throw all his weight behind that forehand now and he can’t control it. He’s no longer confident that he could win matches. As someone who’s never confident about winning matches, Andrey hates the fact that he can’t offer anything other than making sure to find time and practice together whenever possible.
He tries to imagine what it was like for Dominic, when years ago, Andrey was the one tentatively asking if they could perhaps hit again next Sunday, hoping it wasn’t too much disruption to his busy schedule. In his memory, Dominic had always smiled as if Andrey was flattering him, not asking for a favour. “Of course we can, what do you mean you’re not good?” “Thank you, that was the best hit I’ve had in a while, you have amazing power and intensity.” He’s always had infuriatingly nice things to say, too. Even though Andrey didn’t believe Dominic, didn’t believe in himself, he kept coming back for it.
If only he knew how to reciprocate the effortless reassurance that Dominic had once given him.
Andrey didn’t realise that very little about Dominic was effortless, until the injuries broke him apart.
Then there’s the distance that Dominic doesn’t cross. As the season drifts on and they enter fewer tournaments in common, Andrey quickly loses track of his friend’s life outside tennis. He heard that things got especially tough for Dominic around the time he lost Hugo. But the sunken eyes and the sharp cheekbones have stayed, long after Dominic started using pictures of his new Labrador as the lock screen for his phone.
Last year in Gijon, Andrey caught him sitting alone in the empty player lounge late at night, staring at his tablet, when he was supposed to get sleep for his match the next day. By that time, it was no secret that Dominic was going through difficult times, but seeing him alone was still a strange scene for Andrey.
He didn’t like the way that his friend’s normally radiant existence seemed to have stopped right where his body did, contained by a couch in a dark room.
Andrey had wanted to walk over and sit with him, but he hesitated, because he had just finished late and he needed his treatment, because he wasn’t good at making words in situations like this, and Dominic didn’t look like he wanted to hear words anyway. But mostly, he couldn’t remember the last time that Dominic had made plans, or given any indication that he wanted to hang out with him, or anyone for that matter, since coming back on tour.
In a brief moment of bitterness, Andrey walked away. Whatever Dominic needed to get through the night had to come from somewhere else.
——
But now, this is the least he can do.
Andrey doesn’t pause and wait for the clock to tick down, before serving up another point to put Dominic out of his misery. He grimaces at the thought, but for a minute he’s able to forget about himself, and shut out the constant anger that threatens to eclipse him, no matter how he plays, or who he plays. He prays that his luck will hold.
And it does, of course. It’s a simple matter of letting it happen.
——
The pale pink of Dominic’s shirt makes him look like a shimmering iceberg, ready to melt under the blistering sun into the blue underneath him. Andrey wraps his arm around the shoulders covered in drenched fabric, and remembers Dominic’s unpleasant serve motion with a start.
“Shit, I forgot, did anything tear?” he blurts out, and for a second Dominic looks confused. Andrey wants to say something more coherent, but is drawing a blank - why does he have to be so fucking bad with words, man - but Dominic comes around and saves him the trouble.
“It’s ok, I’m ok, thank you Andrey.” He leans in to the hug comfortably, tucks his head just under Andrey’s left ear, looking exhausted, all measured vulnerability. It’s a well-practiced Dominic gesture after a loss to a friend. Andrey recognises it, but lets it tug at his chest anyway. He’s missed him so much. Suddenly Andrey’s hot with anxiety again; something wistful pools in his stomach.
“You need to take it easy, man,” he hears himself say.
“You should too,” Dominic tells him, pulling away, “you still have a lot of matches to play here.”
Andrey shakes his head, lies, says he will. He doesn’t quite believe it, brushing it off as another well-practiced Dominic gesture of blind optimism, and nothing more. But a week later, as he’s 0-5 down in a final set tiebreak, he tells himself exactly that.