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Darren tells him about the event Nike want him to do in Torino, at one of their stores with Carlos, and leaves it sitting there in the silence like he’s waiting for Jannik to pick it up. They’ve been like this since Paris, hinting at Carlos to see what he does, half-teasing and half-encouraging. They’ve taken this and made it part of their mission. “We should do it,” Jannik says. Simone covers his mouth with his hand but pretty clearly he’s grinning. “Okay, don’t. Don’t! Not just for— it’s a part of my job, no?”
“Oh, of course,” Darren says. “No, it’s a good idea, I was going to say.”
“Honestly,” Jannik says, crossing his arms. “The two of you, not so funny.”
“Pretty funny,” Simone says. Jannik has a grim feeling this is going to be his life for the next fifteen years or so, but he does do the thing for Nike, because it is part of his job, and a little bit because of Carlos. He hasn’t seen Carlos since Paris and he’s not sure how exactly to go about fixing things between them, but it doesn’t seem likely to happen unless he tries.
Of course because the media people know exactly what they’re doing they have Carlos standing directly next to him, the whole time, and then sitting next to him, and then standing tucked against his side again for photos. Carlos is right there. He’s right there, and Jannik is still filled with a piercing warmth, and rising up along with it the instinct to shove it down where no one can see.
Instead he wraps his arm around Carlos’ shoulders. Not tightly, just resting his hand on the strong muscle. “Good to see you,” he says, and Carlos looks up at him, nearly suspicious. “You’re doing good?”
“Yeah,” he says. His mouth twists, and Jannik can see in the shape of it how unsure he is, how hurt and angry still. He turns away to look out at the cheering crowd, hiding. He’s never been like this before with Jannik, sullen and reticent. Jannik feels the loss of Carlos’ smile deep in his chest and for a moment he’s almost sick with the possibility that this will be how it is: distance and bitterness, a cold thin blade of a rivalry, a grim shadow of what he’d wanted. “Good. You think I’m doing good?”
“Carlos,” Jannik says. They’re in public; cameras and microphones and people watching, everywhere. The things he needs to say, he can’t say here. “Maybe no, I don’t think so. But I want always, I hope. That you are good.” Carlos is still looking away from him but his head tilts. He’s listening. Jannik lowers his hand to Carlos’ waist and spreads his fingers, feeling the solid muscle beneath his hand, feeling the slow in-out of Carlos breathing; he’s missed Carlos so much, talking to him, touching him. “I want to— I have to say some things to you. That I’m sorry.”
“You’re sorry,” Carlos repeats. He doesn’t sound convinced; when he turns back to Jannik his eyes have gone clear and dark, but the hard resentment of his mouth remains.
“Yes, this. Other things also, that I can’t say so much here. You know?”
“Yeah,” he says, trying hard to sound flippant, but there’s a thread of tension pulled taut enough to snap in his voice, shaking. His hand is at Jannik’s hip, now, cupping the bone, his fingers digging into the hollow. “Always you, ah, being careful.” That lands exactly the way Carlos had meant it to, but then he shakes his head, pulls his hand away. “Sorry.” There’s not a lot of sharp edges in Carlos he can use to hurt anyone, but he’s finding them. Jannik has driven him to it.
“For you, nothing to be sorry for,” Jannik says. Carlos is pulling away from him, now, and it aches like panic, like an over-worked muscle cramping. And probably he doesn’t get to force Carlos to listen, not after how Jannik let them fall apart. What does it matter that he was trying? The failure was the same, the hurt was the same: Carlos looking lost and furious and wounded in a hotel room and Jannik sitting ten feet away from him, doing nothing. “It’s not your fault. It’s mine.”
Carlos says nothing to this, only smiles at the crowd and laughs, and answers all the questions and hits balls with the kids and doesn’t look at Jannik, like he thinks if he smiles brightly enough no one will see how shadowed he is, how tired, the new cold distance between them. Carlos still isn’t so good at hiding things, but he’s gotten better at distracting from them.
It’s not a very encouraging start.
Jannik has to figure out a way to get through to him. He also has to win a tournament. The tennis, not very surprisingly, is going a lot better than the other thing; Stefanos hasn’t been himself in months, maybe not since the start of the year, and Jannik puts him away pretty cleanly.
But Carlos loses. It’s not a bad match, and he doesn’t play really poorly or anything, but he still loses. Jannik is watching when it happens, sitting with his elbows braced on his knees at the edge of his bed; he sees Carlos’ face, his eyes, and feels an awful lurch in his stomach. He’s cut little crescents into the palms of his hands from clenching his fists so tightly. The last time he’d been here, he’d texted Carlos but he hadn’t gone to see him, hadn’t done anything to help. He’d been thinking of how risky it was, of how everything could fall apart so easily if he wasn’t careful for even a second. He’s still thinking of that. Probably he always will be.
He grabs his keycard off the desk and heads for the door.
Charlie is laying on the floor in his hotel room, Juanki sitting silent and grim in the corner, finishing recovery with Juanjo working hard on his thigh and feeling pretty much miserable, when there’s a knock at the door. He’s not expecting anyone and from the look on their faces neither is anyone else on his team, but Juanki goes to check it anyways.
He gets the door about six inches open and then freezes. “Jannik,” he says. Charlie scrambles up to his knees and then his feet. For a moment, stupidly, he wonders if it could possibly be a different Jannik; it just seems so impossible that he would be here.
“Juan Carlos,” Jannik says. It’s him. Charlie could never mistake his voice for anyone else. There’s an instinctive moment of glittering simple happiness— it’s Jannik!— before it pops like a balloon. He can’t imagine what Jannik thinks he’s doing. “Carlos is here? It’s — I have to say some things, to him.”
Juanki looks at Jannik, a little cold. They all know what happened. “Yes,” he says, and opens the door, and there he is: a long razor-blade line in silhouette, his slight slouch, his messy hair. Charlie’s pulse is doing something complicated and kind of painful.
“Can I—“ Jannik pauses. Charlie had almost forgotten what it’s like, to have his undivided attention, the way it unravels things and puts them back together. He’d forgotten how much he likes it, the way he feels when he’s with Jannik, why all this had happened in the first place. But it’s all still there, tucked into the channels of his stupid heart. “It’s okay if I talk to you alone?”
Charlie’s not sure if it is. Neither is Juanki, who’s looking at Jannik like he’s some kind of venomous snake: not necessarily deadly, but something to be wary of, something to guard against. Jannik can feel it. He looks very uncomfortable, blushing slightly, and it brings out the fondness in Charlie like pressing a deep old bruise. This is the second time Jannik has asked, and he’d apologized, and Charlie is curious. Also, Charlie feels like shit, and now that Jannik is here in front of him, actually here, Charlie just wants to lay down and curl around him and feel the solid in and out of his breathing and the unbending strength of his body. He still wants Jannik to hold him and tell him everything is going to be okay and that he wants Charlie and cares about him and maybe even loves him. And he can’t do that—because to do that was to hand himself right back over to be hurt again—but he can’t send Jannik away, either.
Charlie shrugs at Juanki, it’s okay, and he ushers everyone out, staring Jannik down the entire time. Jannik looks back at him, unbothered, patient, statuesque, but as soon as Juanki closes the door behind himself he breathes out long and low and the poise goes out of his shoulders; he’s only a boy, again.
Charlie sits on the couch, leaning back, just looking at Jannik. “Okay,” he says. “You have something to say?” He says it like a dare. He says it like, this had better be pretty good.
“I was watching,” Jannik says. He takes an aborted half-step towards Charlie, his hands curling at his sides and relaxing again. “I’m sorry you lost.”
“You were watching,” Charlie says, and suddenly the raw, dark hurt wells up in his chest, a simmering that tastes the same as anger. What use is being sorry? Because Jannik had been right, about how easy it was for everything to go wrong.
His whole career pretty much he’s been the one in front, the one being chased. Even when he hasn’t been number one he’s always felt like it; whoever he played, felt he was better, that if he played his game he would win. Jannik had been chasing him too— he’d always believed Jannik was good, that he could be, probably, the best in the world, but Charlie had still felt that he was better. When Jannik beat him he always felt like he could have won if he’d played better, if he’d played his best. That was the belief you had to have, to win.
It’s the belief he can’t quite find anymore. Now he’s the one chasing, and he doesn’t like the way it makes him feel, the uncertain vulnerability. He’s never felt before like there was anything he couldn’t do on a tennis court but staring down Zverev today he’d thought, with awful inevitability, I can’t beat him. He doesn’t understand what’s gone wrong, in his game or in his head, he can only feel it like a slow creeping poison within him, and it makes him panic, and the panic only makes things go wrong faster. It’s like— someone had told him once the reason why racehorses don’t recover when they break their legs isn’t because the break won’t heal but because the horse can’t stand on only three; it’s all or nothing. If a thoroughbred can’t run it dies.
And meanwhile, Jannik has— well. He doesn’t want to feel this stupid jealousy, but he does. In all the time he’d been imagining what it would be like, when Jannik caught him, he had never thought, not really, that he would be left behind. He’d never thought he would be alone with it. But if the only thing they can be to each other is rivals, every time Jannik wins, he loses, zero-sum.
“I— Carlos,” Jannik says. He swallows hard, and then he steps forward and sinks to the floor, so he’s crouched in front of Charlie, looking up at him. Clearly this is making him uncomfortable and a month ago Charlie would have given in immediately, just to take away the pained expression on his face, the tension in his mouth. And still, today, he wants to take Jannik’s hands and say everything is okay, that it’s fine. But he’s done that before and all that happened was he had his heart broken in a hotel room and lost his chance at the year end number one, so. He crosses his arms, waiting. “I say everything wrong. I know this is my fault.”
“Yes,” Charlie says. That night in Paris after that terrible loss, he’d felt like he was losing himself, and he didn’t know why. He’d come back to Jannik expecting to wrap himself up in that steady low warmth, to rest for a little while with someone who didn’t expect him to be anything other than himself, only Jannik had been pale and hard, his face cold and remote and exhausted, and he’d told Charlie to be careful. Well, Charlie spends every single day of his fucking life being careful, every second planned and orchestrated down to the smallest detail by his team and the tour and the sponsors, everyone. The thought of this, too, being something he has to manage; he hates it.
“I’m sorry,” Jannik says, soft-mouthed, earnest. Tentatively, he puts a hand on Charlie’s knee. The feeling of his warm-rough fingers makes Charlie twitch with the memory of all the other times Jannik has touched him there, tracing delicate lines and following them with his mouth. But Jannik hasn’t touched him now in weeks. The desire and the anger are all knotted up inside him; he misses this terribly. “Lo lamento, yes? Sorry.”
“Sorry for what? For say to me, Carlos, you are too much, Carlos, you can’t come here. Carlos, I don’t want you.” Carlos crosses his arms and shifts his leg so that Jannik’s hand falls away. “Okay. Sorry now, too late. Maybe now I don’t want you to come here. Maybe I don’t want you.”
He doesn’t mean it but right now he’s just so angry; he doesn’t understand why, for the first time in his life, he’s running up against walls in every direction he turns. He’s never reached the limits of his ability before, only his body or his mind or his age, and maybe that’s all this is, but he can’t shake the awful fear that this is it, this is all he’ll ever have. And Jannik is tied up in all that, the things he’d said and the things he hadn’t.
For a moment there’s a flash of hurt in Jannik’s eyes and his pale stark face goes hard and remote, but then it’s like he unfolds himself, crumpled and worn soft. “If this is true, then okay. But I don’t say to you the things I am thinking, this is my fault. So I say them now, even if it’s too late. After New York, all the time I am afraid that something will happen, that this will make problems for us. I think, how can I make it so we can live like this, you and me. So I try to be careful, always. I hide these things, so no one can see it, how I feel for you. You know this already.” He smiles a little, rueful, looking young and lost on his knees. Not much older than Charlie, really, however steady and assured he seems. He doesn’t know anything, either. “I try also not to hurt you. I don’t want to lose you. I try— I try to make it so it’s safe for us. So we are together, and it’s okay. I think how I do it, it’s the only way.”
Charlie pulls himself away from Jannik and stands, walking over to the glass doors that open onto the balcony, turning his back. He can see all the little lights of the city, people living their lives, sitting down to eat together. He doesn’t want to hear this, how Jannik is always right, how he’d been so stupid, so stupid. He says, “Yeah, you think this, I know. Don’t want you to tell me again. You try not to hurt me? Right now, you hurt me.”
“No,” Jannik says. He’s stood up behind Charlie and now his fingertips brush against the back of his arm, stroking tentatively, and then the warm breadth of his palm is resting on Charlie’s shoulder blade. Charlie doesn’t look at him. “I want to tell you, I was wrong. Yes? You were right.” Charlie turns around, shocked, but Jannik keeps his hand where it is so that he’s half-holding Charlie, his gaze set and steady. “I didn’t know what I was doing. I was afraid to lose you. I don’t tell you, anyone, these things that are important, it’s a mistake.”
“You think this now?” Charlie says, incredulous. It’s almost worse that Jannik has decided to trust him only now when everything is already lost to them, and suddenly he’s angry again, bitter, and he wants Jannik to feel it. He wants Jannik to feel it in his gut, in his chest; he wants Jannik to feel the loss the way Charlie does, like he’s been hollowed out. “I try to tell you, you don’t trust me. You are afraid, like this makes it okay? No. And now you think I am right.”
“I trust you. Always, I trust you.” Jannik reaches out to him again, touching the back of his hand, still with that terrible softness in his face. Charlie doesn’t want his softness. He wants something to break himself against, a way to get all this helplessness out of him, and into someone else, but Jannik is giving him nothing.
He shrugs off Jannik’s hand and steps into him, close enough to feel the warmth of him, the shape of his body. He’s so angry, and he misses Jannik so much, and it’s just awful. “I don’t care. You want that I say it again, that I don’t want you? I don’t want you. So leave me alone.”
Jannik flinches back. “Okay,” he says. “This is all I want to say to you. I’m sorry. It’s my fault, that I hurt you. And I still— I still want you. To be with you. You are— I don’t have the words to say it. You are important to me, you were my friend, even before we are together, and after—you are the best thing in my life. But you don’t want to be with me, I understand. I will go.”
He starts to turn as if he’s actually going to go and Charlie feels a moment of deep panic. He grabs Jannik and pulls him in against his body, wrapping around him until he can be sure that Jannik isn’t going anywhere. Of course he doesn’t want Jannik to leave; even in Paris, when he’d been the one to leave, he’d only been trying to keep himself safe. He can’t bear for Jannik to leave. “Don’t,” he says, his voice breaking a little, embarrassing. The only warmth in his body is where Jannik is pressed against him, holding him, a great swell of relief. He can’t let go. He doesn’t have the strength. “I don’t want—”
He can’t finish. Jannik embraces him, holding him tightly, breathing out long and low and pressing his face into Charlie’s hair. “I miss you,” Jannik says, raw sincerity. “Every day, I think about you, how much I— tell me what I can do. Whatever you want, I will do it.”
In those weeks before Paris, Charlie felt like the whole world was blooming, lit aglow; he’d been caught up in the wonder of having Jannik and he’d thought that nothing could ever change it or darken it. It’s difficult to resist Jannik, always, and impossible when he’s like this: vulnerable, open. Charlie can feel the emotion in him, the tension in his muscles, how he trembles. What he wants Jannik to do is keep holding him, to stay, to love him.
Jannik is trembling still against him, cupping the back of his head. They all have the same callouses, the same blisters; Jannik’s hands are rough and torn but there’s something elegant about them anyways. Maybe the gentleness of him, how lightly he touches the world around him, how tenderly he handles it. How tenderly he handles Charlie. “I miss you too. I want—I want you.” It's true. But wanting him had never been the problem; having him had broken Charlie’s heart. He can’t bear for Jannik to leave but he also can’t bear to let him in again. “But Jannik, for me it’s really bad, how we were. I feel alone, feel like you don’t want me, even when I am with you. You do all this and don’t tell me, it hurt me a lot. This, I don’t think I can do again,” Charlie says.
He expects this to be the end of it, that Jannik will withdraw from him. He braces himself to see the distance in Jannik’s face, his implacable coolness. But Jannik just keeps holding him, his fingers carding gently through the short hair at the back of Charlie’s head, lightly. “Carlos, I’m so sorry,” Jannik says. “I hurt you, I know I can’t change this. Only try to make it better. If—I understand if it’s not enough. But if you still want—if you want, this time, you and me, we do it together. I promise. Please.”
He pulls away from Jannik a little, and looks at him, studying. Jannik swallows. Charlie still can’t see very much of what he feels in his face; he’s not sure blind trust is enough to get him there, anymore. But Jannik doesn’t lie, not ever, to Charlie. And there’s the intimacy in the shape of his mouth, the soft devoted darkness of his eyes. There’s the way he smiles when he looks at Charlie, blown open with joy. It’s not obvious, but it’s there. It could be enough.
So maybe it isn’t going to be how he thought. It’s like tennis: it’s going to be harder and scarier and sometimes it will leave bitterness coating the back of his throat. They’re going to make mistakes. It’s not— Charlie thinks this with a lingering shock of bitterness, a slow resentful hurt still pooled in his stomach— it’s not safe. But just because something hurts, just because it’s difficult, doesn’t mean it’s not worth it. And for a moment with Jannik held close against him, even though he’s angry and uncertain and nothing really is fixed yet, Charlie starts to feel it again, the old belief in himself, the old belief in the two of them.
It carries him through to his match the next day, that odd mix of relief and lingering anger, the first really good win he’s had since maybe New York. He’s still not sure if he’s forgiven Jannik for hurting him so badly. He thinks of Jannik in his hotel room, making promises. Charlie had been desperate to believe him, then, desperate to have anything to hold onto, but it’s a lot easier to make promises than it is to keep them. Charlie is sick to death of feeling like he doesn’t know anything, like he can’t rely on anything for certain. If Jannik means it, that things are going to be different, he’s going to have to prove it, and he hasn’t proven anything yet.
They ask him about Jannik in the press after and he feels a narrowing around him, a pressure in his head. He feels like this is a test, only he’s not sure who it’s for and he’s not sure what the point of it is; only the timing of it, the sudden awareness of the cameras, of his own face.
He knows they only ask him about Jannik all the time because he always gives them what they want, and they would stop if he started talking about Jannik the way he talks about other players: yes, he’s good, I want to beat him, I want to beat everyone. They don’t ask him questions like this about Daniil, or even Novak. Maybe that’s what Jannik wants. He’s not sure he cares so much what Jannik wants. Okay, Charlie thinks. Here’s the test.
“He’s one of the players who can win a Slam,” Charlie says, which is only something anyone might say. And then, feeling a kind of mulish determination, trying to prove a point, he says, “This year, he’s going to be number one.”
He can see in the faces of the journalists that this is more than they expected even from him, a low murmuring rising up from the crowd of them. What he’s said is not just that Jannik is very good, that he’s better than almost everyone, that Charlie loves playing him; he’s said, even if only by implication, that Jannik will be better than everyone. Better than Novak, better than Charlie. He’s said he thinks Jannik is going to beat him. That’s not the kind of thing top players say about each other, ever, and he’d been smiling while he said it, like he’s looking forward to it, like he wants Jannik to beat him.
For a moment he feels exposed, under the hard glimmer of all those eyes, hunting for something, hungry, murmuring: if they find it, he’ll never be able to take it back, he’ll never be able to keep it safe again. He understands what Jannik had been afraid of— how much people could take from the smallest openings, how much he could reveal without meaning to. He feels very far away from his victory on court, now. Whatever ground he’s gained is only shifting sand beneath his feet, treacherous.
He covers as well as he can—he’s going to give himself the chance, whatever, he’s already given them the quote—but he’s a little shaken. The wounded anger that’s been driving him is going cold, replaced with this frantic defensiveness, the uncertainty that’s hounded him recently on court infecting him off it. He’s not used to facing any problem he doesn’t feel like he can solve, but this isn’t solvable. It’s going to be this, all the time, for the rest of his career—we have to be careful, he thinks, and there’s the reliable kick of resentment. He doesn’t want to think that Jannik was right about anything.
He's in no mood to talk to anyone, after that. Which means of course that someone calls him about five minutes after he gets back to his hotel, lying face down on his bed in the dark on top of the sheets. Probably it’s Juanki wanting to ask about dinner. He rolls over onto his back and picks up.
“Carlos,” Jannik says. Fuck, Charlie thinks. “I hear what you say about me, today. About—I don’t know how to say, about this.”
“Yeah. I don’t want to hear this,” Charlie says, and rolls back onto his face and goes to hang up, only Jannik is already talking again.
“It’s not—I don’t mean it’s bad. Just—to hear it, I was surprised. That you would say this now, after I—” Jannik breaks off. He sounds—it’s hard to say how he sounds. Not upset. He might be smiling. Charlie wishes he could see Jannik’s face.
“It’s true now,” he says, after a moment of silence. “True all the other times I say this, too. Probably bad idea, to say like this. I know. I don’t want you to say this again, I don’t—” He feels wrung out, exhausted. He can’t imagine how Jannik lives like this all the time, trying so hard not to give anything away. He can’t imagine doing it himself. If this is what Jannik wants of him, he’s not going to be able to do it. It’s a pretty depressing thought to have.
Another silence and then the sound of Jannik shifting, a door closing. “It’s not bad,” Jannik says again. “You sound—you are okay?”
“Great,” Charlie says. He sounds thin and sullen, even to himself; he shoves his face down into his pillow and wishes fervently he hadn’t picked up the phone.
“You sound not great. Do you want—” he pauses, covers the phone speaker with his hand, and there’s a burst of muffled rapid Italian. “It’s okay if I come see you?” Charlie sits up and turns on the light, staring down at his phone screen in shock. Offering to come to his hotel room again, the second time this week; that’s not careful. This is not something Jannik would have done before. “You can tell me it’s not okay.”
“It’s okay,” Charlie says, reflexive. Does he actually want to see Jannik? He’s not sure. He remembers the way Jannik had looked last time, his serious mouth, the softness of his eyes in the low light; he can feel his heartbeat in his throat. “Yeah. It’s okay.”
“You—yes?” The sound of the door again, more rustling. “Okay. I—see you soon.” He sounds a little awkward, like he’d been expecting Charlie to say no. Charlie waits for him to hang up but he doesn’t and by the time he hears another door open and shut he realizes Jannik isn’t going to. He does it himself and then looks down at the blank dark screen of his phone, pressing his hands hard and flat into the mattress, bracing his feet against the floor.
He sits there until Jannik knocks. Jannik steps neatly into the room when Charlie opens the door. He looks very calm but his hands tucked into the pockets of his sweatshirt, which he does when he wants to keep himself from fidgeting. He looks, maybe, just the slightest bit nervous.
“Carlos,” Jannik says. Charlie loves the way Jannik says his name, unlike anyone else in the world: how purposefully he forms the sounds in his mouth, cradling it like something precious. He takes his right hand out of his pocket and runs his fingers along the side seam of his sweatpants, which makes Charlie smile a little bit to see: he is nervous. But the smile doesn’t last very long. “Ah, I want to say also congrats for the win.”
Charlie walks back to the bed and sits down in the same position as before, feeling the mattress beneath his palms, digging his fingers in. “You don’t want to talk to me about that I win,” he says. “You don’t care that I win. You care what I say after to the press.”
“I care when you win. But it’s true I didn’t come here only to say to you congrats. I think you are upset, and I want—when you are upset I want to know. How I can help, no? This too.” Jannik takes his other hand out of his pocket and folds them up in front of his chest, rubbing at the back of his wrist, pushing up the sleeves of his sweatshirt. “What you say to the press, this is why you are upset?”
“What I say, it’s not careful,” Charlie say, pushing, pointed. He can see it land; Jannik takes a quick breath and his hands fall to his sides. He doesn’t look upset but he doesn’t exactly look happy, either.
“Maybe not so much,” Jannik says, and then, hesitantly, he sits down next to Carlos on the bed, looking sideways at him. “But you know, everything we do, it’s a risk. So maybe there are some questions about what you say for a few days, it’s a little difficult, but we deal with it. You and me, it’s going to be okay.”
“Now you say it’s okay,” Carlos mutters. “Yeah, you lose again, not okay anymore.” Jannik looks down at the floor, abruptly, almost flinching. It’s not really a nice thing to say but it’s true; he hadn’t ever thought about hiding anything, when he was winning. He hadn’t worried about being careful, about letting people see vulnerabilities. He’s worried now.
Jannik takes Charlie’s hands between his own and get down on his knees, on the ground in front of Carlos, between his legs. He holds Carlos’ hands to his chest and looks him in the eyes, directly, and he says, “I know you don’t believe this, I have to show it better, okay. To me, I don’t care if there are problems, I don’t care if it’s hard. I don’t care if I lose.” They both know that’s not true; Carlos just looks at him, and Jannik shakes his head a little. There’s a hardness to his mouth he gets sometimes when he’s break point down, like he’s just decided: he’s not going to lose the point. He’s looking at Charlie with that expression now. “Not I don’t— for me it doesn’t change how I feel about you, winning or losing. I don’t win like this all the time, I want you anyways, to be with you, for years. Before I have this success and after, for me will be the same. Always.” He looks down at his hands when he says this, his long pale fingers steady around Charlie’s. Carefully, he traces the bones of Charlie’s hand, his fingers, the ridges of his knuckles. His face is soft and open when he looks back up at Charlie, terribly beautiful.
“I can’t say these things always like you do, how you— I don’t know. I think I’m not so brave as you but I want to be. I want you to know this.” Charlie doesn’t feel particularly brave at the moment but he does feel a swell of affection in his throat so sharp it’s almost pain, a heavy gilded joy.
“You say it pretty good right now,” he says. “But I—what you say before about what people say—”
“It doesn’t matter,” he says, shaking his head. And then smiles a little, rueful. “To be honest, I’m still afraid. I worry about rumors, if they publish these things, they hurt you or me. I don’t know what can happen. I don’t like not to know, yes? But I think if something happens, you and me, we deal with it. Your team, my team; we have people who are pretty good at this. Easier not to be scared like this. So I try still to be careful, but it’s more important to me that—only what matters is that you’re okay.”
Charlie looks down at their hands, in the open space between his knees. Jannik is holding himself very still, steady, waiting for Charlie. “I’m okay,” he says, and he thinks it’s almost true. There are still pieces of himself he feels he’s lost, of his life and his game, but he feels the ground beneath his feet again and the roughness of Jannik’s palms. He looks at Jannik’s face, his downturned mouth, the flat focus of his eyes, no artifice to him at all. He’s not trying to hide anything. This, Charlie thinks, isn’t something he can lose. Not with both of them fighting, together, to keep it.
“Okay,” Jannik says, and turns Charlie’s hand over and presses a quick kiss to the inside of his wrist, the delicate skin there. He’s a little bit ridiculous. Oh, fuck, Charlie thinks, helpless with affection, the bright joy that Jannik always seems to bring out in him. “You know, to hear you say that, it was—you think this for real?” He’s smiling, boyish, a little wonder in it.
“No, I say all the time things I don’t think.”
“You’re—Carlos.” Jannik shakes his head, looking back down at their hands. “It means a lot to me that you believe this. When people say things like this I don’t listen so much, but you, it means more.”
“But tomorrow maybe you’re gonna have some questions about it. If you win a slam next year, if you’re number one. About me.” Charlie knows it’s not the kind of thing Jannik would ever say, or even think, about himself; now he’s in the uncomfortable position of having to defend something he doesn’t even believe is true.
“Maybe I say I win four.” Jannik is smiling again, the gap-toothed grin he has when he thinks he’s being funny. He’s usually not. “Plus the Olympics. And I say you and me play doubles the whole year.”
“Yeah, for sure you’re gonna say this. They think you’re crazy,” Charlie says, half-laughing, and pulls Jannik up on the bed next to him again. Jannik goes easily, allowing Charlie to arrange him, though he’s heavier than he looks and a lot stronger. “You’re not worried someone sees you come here?”
“Of course, a little worried,” he says. Charlie pushes him back until he can get them both under the covers and drape himself across Jannik the way he likes to, feeling the full length of his body, the movement of his chest as he breathes, how they fit together. “I was—” he shrugs, rueful— “careful, coming here. But it’s more important to me to see you.”
It’s embarrassingly comforting to hear. Really what he’d been afraid of wasn’t that Jannik didn’t care about him but that Jannik didn’t care about him enough; Charlie had been sick of always feeling like what they had mattered more to him than it did to Jannik. But he doesn’t feel like that now. Jannik wraps his arms around Charlie, stroking gently over the short hair at the back of his neck. “Ah, it’s okay, you stay here tonight?”
“Yeah, it’s okay. Simone, I told him I was coming here. You know, after Paris I told my team that you and I were— are together.”
Charlie tilts his head up, resting his chin on Jannik’s chest so he can see his face. “You tell them this after Paris?”
“I tell them I was with you,” he says. His eyes are closed. He’s not exactly smiling but he looks happy, the angle of his eyebrows, the line of his mouth. “And I make mistakes, and I hurt you. I don’t know, you say to me you told your team, and I realize this is stupid, I don’t tell them before. I want my team also to know that this is something to me, something important. I want them to know who you are to me. Simone thinks also I am pretty stupid. Darren I think was not so surprised, you know, was not the first time he sees something like this.”
“Okay,” Charlie says. “Like you say. This time we do better.” They lay there for a moment, just breathing. And then Charlie remembers what happened yesterday with a jolt of exhilaration, and he grabs Jannik’s shoulder. “Yesterday, you beat Novak! I don’t say congrats to you for this. Amazing, for sure.” Jannik opens his eyes and his smile goes crooked. Charlie likes to see the pride in him, the way it loosens his composure a little, how it makes him look young.
“It was a good match,” Jannik says. He’s very bad at taking compliments. Sometimes Charlie wants to pin him down and tell him nice things about himself until he just says thank you instead of trying to brush it off. “I was thinking how I want to play you in the final, no? This was good for motivation.”
Charlie smiles against the soft fabric of Jannik’s sweatshirt, slow honey warmth seeping through his muscles, pooling in the small of his back. “You so sure we play in the final?”
“Of course,” Jannik says. He lifts his shoulders half-off the bed to press his mouth against Charlie’s hairline, a kiss, then another. “More sure for you than for me, maybe. But it’s like you say: you and me, the next ten years, winning everything. So we make it happen.” He sounds certain. Maybe he can be certain enough for both of them, for a little bit.
Carlos is a heavy sleeper. Jannik sleeps a normal amount for a tennis player—a lot—but he wakes up easily; he’s been awake now for maybe an hour, since a little after sunrise, and Carlos hasn’t moved at all. He’s sprawled on his stomach with one arm and one leg thrown over Jannik, pinning him down, and his face pressed into the pillow. The sun cuts a slow path across the white hotel-room sheets, clean starch and gold. Jannik rolls over and kisses his shoulder, resting there for a moment, feeling the weight of Carlos’ arm across his spine, and then slowly extricates himself to shower. Carlos makes a noise and Jannik freezes, halfway out of bed, but he doesn’t wake up.
By the time Jannik is finished showering Carlos has rolled over onto his back, starfished, and pulled a decorative pillow over his face. “Good morning,” Jannik says, very loudly, and Carlos fumbles for another pillow and throws it in Jannik’s general direction, missing very badly. Jannik pulls the wet towel off of his shoulders and throws it on top of Carlos, who scrambles until he’s shoved the towel and sheets both off of himself. “That’s nice. You forget you have a match today?” Jannik can feel he's smiling, huge and stupid, as Carlos blinks up at him sleep hazy and disgruntled.
“Hijo de puta,” he mutters. “Too early.”
“Eight-thirty? It’s late.” Jannik pauses by the side of the bed and ruffles Carlos’ hair. “Come on, things to do. I made coffee.” Carlos makes a little noise and then grabs Jannik by the back of the neck and pulls him down. Carlos kisses him slowly, feeling his way into it, and then his hand tightens and Jannik has to brace himself against Carlos’ shoulders: his mouth, soft and hot, the hard press of his fingertips. He bites at Jannik’s lip a little and it sends a shock of low heat all the way down Jannik’s spine.
“What things to do?” Carlos says, suggestive, against Jannik’s mouth. He sounds really smug, which Jannik wishes he found a little less charming. Jannik cups his jaw and tilts his head up and kisses him very thoroughly. He presses his tongue, just lightly, against the edge of Carlos’ top lip until his mouth opens, and then pulls back.
“Things like practice in an hour,” he says. It’s a busy day for both of them, the semi-finals: Carlos playing Novak and Jannik playing Daniil. They don’t have time for—things. Carlos groans and flops back onto the bed and Jannik goes over to the coffee machine—for hotel coffee it’s not so bad—and then turns on the television, the Italian morning news. He keeps the volume low just to have it in the background and then sits down on the couch, glancing back over at Carlos. He’s managed to pull himself out of bed and he’s stretching out his shoulders.
“You play Daniil tonight when? It’s nine?” Jannik nods; Carlos is scheduled to play Novak first, the afternoon match, so he’ll know already who he would face in the final by the time he plays. “I think you beat him.”
“Maybe. Of course you don’t know until you play, but I have good preparation for this match, I think. And you play against him really well, yesterday.”
“You see my match?” Carlos sounds surprised, pausing in his stretching to twist around and stare at Jannik.
“You think I don’t like to watch you play?” Jannik smiles up at him from the couch, setting his coffee down on a coaster on the little table. “Of course, it’s important to prepare for if I play you. But also I like— I like to watch you, always. Your body, how you move, seems like you can do anything, sometimes. Amazing.” Carlos watches him with dark eyes, waiting. Jannik doesn’t say things like this but he wants Carlos to know how much Jannik wants him, all the time, and Carlos won’t know unless Jannik tells him. “Your face— I love always how you smile, you know this? The first thing about you I love, how you smile when you play.” Carlos swallows, heavily, and starts slowly towards Jannik. “It’s beautiful to see. You are. Beautiful.”
He feels the heat between them, building, a pull deep in his gut. In the bright winter light with the curtains drawn wide and the faint sounds of the city beneath the morning news, it’s so easy. Carlos is so vividly beautiful it’s almost difficult to look at him; his generous mouth, the breadth of his shoulders. His hands, the strength in his wrists and forearms, the tidy line of his waist, the curve of his hips. All of him, chiseled like marble, bare skin catching the sunlight, dazzling. He settles into the desire, feeling out the contours and edges, and reaches for Carlos, taking him by the hips and pulling him in. Carlos braces his hands on Jannik’s shoulders. It’s hard to tell, but he might be blushing. “You’re crazy, huh? Saying these things.”
“Why crazy? It’s true. You don’t like it?”
“Maybe I like it,” he says. Jannik hadn’t even known this was something to want, having Carlos like this: half-openly, in his room, in his bed, in his life. Now he has Carlos smiling at him, warm and strong beneath his hands, and later Darren will look at him knowingly and ask how he slept and Simone will laugh when he goes red, and then he and Carlos will play the sport they love. It’s better than anything he could have imagined. It’s worth anything, any difficulty, any pain. “Hey, you want to come to Villena?”
“Now? I think next few days will be pretty busy.” Carlos rolls his eyes a little.
“No, I’m thinking after Davis Cup, for a few days, you come and stay with me. You can say it’s for training, yeah?” Jannik closes his eyes and presses his forehead to the soft skin right beneath Carlos’ ribcage. Carlos wants him to come to Villena. Carlos is thinking up excuses for them to spend the holidays together. He can feel the way his mouth trembles, smiling, a dangerous joy. He’s just— he’s so glad to be here.
“This can work,” Jannik says, looking up. There’s too much emotion in him to feel it properly. Carlos isn’t really smiling but the happiness is blown wide all over his face, so terribly dear; Jannik hasn’t done anything at all to deserve this. “It’s okay with everyone, your team?”
Now Carlos is blushing a little bit. “Actually was Juanki’s idea, he tells me to ask you.”
“I thought he doesn’t like me,” Jannik says, laughing. Carlos shrugs and pats Jannik’s shoulder, pulling away.
“He likes you a lot,” Carlos says, crouching down to pick up his shirt from where he left it last night in a pile of clothes next to the bed. “Just also he thinks you’re, ah, you’re maybe an asshole.”
“Oh, very funny.” He’s actually not so sure it’s a joke. Carlos flashes a smile back at him and pulls his shirt on, getting stuck for a moment with his arms halfway through. When he finally gets it settled it’s on inside out, which Jannik decides not to tell him. “You know, I think will be pretty easy to convince my team. They think it’s good for me to practice with you. For sure, I think this also. You make me better.”
“For me, too,” Carlos says. And then he shifts his hips, lowers his chin, suggestive, clearly fighting laughter. “Maybe you come see me not just for practice, though.”
“No, to be honest, I’m only with you for the tennis,” Jannik says, as seriously as he can, and when Carlos bursts into laughter Jannik goes to him and holds him and tumbles him back onto the bed, laughing with him.
Carlos loses to Novak, but the loss doesn’t seem to drain him the way it has recently. He seems, instead, sharpened by it, hungry. He’s waiting for Carlos after his press in the hallway—he doesn’t play for hours yet—and when Carlos sees him he almost drops his bags. He doesn’t quite gape at Jannik but it’s a close thing.
“Jannik,” Carlos says. He clasps Jannik’s hand, friendly, and then pulls him in, half-hugging him; there’s people around, though no one is paying that much attention to them. It’s normal to see them talking with each other, so no one sees how Carlos leans into his side a little too long, slides his fingertips beneath the collar of Jannik’s shirt, or how Jannik flattens his palm low over Carlos’ stomach, stroking. “I don’t think to see you today! You don’t practice?”
“Later. I want to see you before you go, say goodbye.” It’s very difficult to keep a polite distance between himself and Carlos, knowing it will be weeks before they see each other again, but what he wants to do—push Carlos against a wall and kiss him—isn’t possible, so he settles for putting a hand on Carlos’ shoulder. “I think you leave already, when I’m done playing.”
“Yeah. But I’ll watch on the plane, your match.” Now the tiredness comes out in him a little and Jannik squeezes at his shoulder, trying to give whatever comfort he can. He still doesn’t look as grim as he had in Paris but there’s a heaviness to his eyes, a hard set to his jaw.
“You don’t have to,” Jannik says, and Carlos shakes his head.
“I want to. And tomorrow too, I watch you in the final.” He smiles a little, patting Jannik’s side. “Hey, good luck, man. You’re gonna win.”
“For you,” Jannik says, quietly, mostly joking. Carlos had said the same to him in New York: like they’re a team, as much as they possibly can be, like the wins and losses belong to both of them. All he’d been able to see then was that they would, in the end, always be fighting against each other. All he’d been able to see was the danger, how precariously they were balanced on the edge of disaster. He trusts his footing better now and he trusts Carlos more too, and even though he’s joking the feeling is real: whatever happens will happen to the two of them together, shared.
It’s not exactly easy to beat Daniil that night, but the match is never out of his control. Possibly he could have managed to win in two but he pulls away cleanly in the third. It’s a good win, a real win. He’s playing, he knows, the best tennis he ever has.
But it’s not enough.
Against Novak in the final, he doesn’t have a chance. Jannik sits there on his bench, in the great roiling mass of heat and sound and light of the Pala Alpitour, at the center of these twelve thousand people who tried, with everything they had, to carry him over the line, and keeps himself very still. These are the dangerous moments— in a few minutes, by the time they’ve brought out the trophies, he’ll be under control again, he’ll have swallowed it all down. But now it sits sharp and sour right in his soft palette and if he’s not careful it will all come spilling out: the urge to cry, or shout. Or apologize, for the fact that he’s failed. Not even just that he’d lost, but that he’d been brushed aside, dismissed, like a child playing with adults. He’d thought— but no. He and Carlos both, taken apart like nothing.
He does not allow his expression to change. Eventually, the burn behind his eyes recedes and he swallows smoothly, and he’s safe again. He stands, he takes the trophy they hand to him. He waves at the crowd. He can see Novak in his peripheral vision, a bright shadow, inevitable. In time, he knows, this will become another thing that fuels him, another thing he can pull into the steel of his spine. In time he will take a lesson from it. He makes his speech, he waves to the crowd. Novak says something to him and he laughs, and all the while he’s thinking: next year I will be here again. And next year I will win. He’s thinking: what do I have to do to get there?
He had never forgotten what it feels like to lose, to feel lost and helpless and inadequate; he’d never forgotten how easy it was for things to fall apart. But fear is only another obstacle. He remembers the clean cold air of the mountains, the rush of the wind in his ears, the pale lurking shadow of danger, of death. He’d conquered that fear. He’ll conquer this one too.
He’s also thinking that he wants to talk to Carlos, now after the loss, just the way he’d wanted to talk to Carlos after he’d won. He wants to see Carlos and hold him and feel all that bright focus and strength and kindness against himself. Because he loves Carlos, maybe more than he should, probably more than is safe. But it’s true.
So he’s thinking: what do I have to do to get there?
Seeing Jannik in Villena is slightly surreal. He’s in his glasses— he always wears them on planes because the contact lenses get dry in the pressure-controlled air— which is great because Charlie loves his glasses; they make him look softer, and gorgeous, and also like kind of a nerd. When he gets changed to actually practice he’s wearing a long-sleeved shirt under his normal Nike stuff, which also makes him look like kind of a nerd. He is kind of a nerd, actually. But Charlie loves him anyways.
As soon as they start practicing it’s clear that Jannik isn’t going to play around. He’s really sharp, everything flowing cleanly. Charlie feels himself sharpening in response, pushing each other higher and higher until they’re managing the kind of rallies he wouldn’t normally bother with outside of a match.
He understands himself well enough to know that some of what he feels for Jannik is about how good Jannik is. Most of his life is tennis and before he’d ever wanted Jannik he’d stood across the court from him and felt that they were something different. The comparisons were obvious but in the end they were only comparisons; Charlie wasn’t anyone else and neither was Jannik and the two of them together were something new and rare and wonderful.
He’d watched Jannik win the Davis Cup—pretty much by himself—from the kitchen table, yelling at the television and jumping to his feet on every other point. The match against Novak he’d felt insane, looking at Jannik’s pale determined face as he stepped up to the line, three match points down.
When Jannik won, he’d collapsed back onto the couch. He’d been proud, but more than that he’d been vindicated; before any else knew, before anyone else understood, Carlos had known what Jannik was capable of.
After Jannik had dismantled poor De Minaur in the final, Rafa had posted a congratulations to Italy and about a minute later sent Charlie a text: your boy looks good. Of course Rafa knows what it’s like better than anyone else on the planet. For so many years, and still now, he and Roger had survived it. He doesn’t talk about it— not to Charlie, at least, because even though they’re friendly they’re not really friends— but it’s more or less an open secret. He knows how it is, to live like this, to love someone you can’t be with, not really, not the way you want to; he knows how difficult it is, and he knows it’s all worth it, the sacrifices and the hiding and the pain, all of it. And now Charlie knows it, too.
He'd watched the camera close up on Jannik’s face again, the moment after he’d won for his country and turned to the team, illuminated with exhaustion and satisfaction, the exacting sharpness of his smile. Charlie had felt the joy of winning reflected back in himself, the same lightness in his chest. It was the thing he’d been missing for so long, that joy.
Charlie feels it again right now, as Jannik demolishes a backhand down the line right past him, like he’s standing still. He can feel himself grinning and in between points Jannik is smiling too, pink across his nose and cheekbones. He feels worlds away from where he’d been before Turin, when he felt so uncertain of everything, when he’d felt like Jannik was just another thing he couldn’t hold onto, something else he was failing, another match lost. He knows now that Jannik is holding onto him, too, just as tightly. It makes everything else just a little easier, having this.
When they’re done, tired but satisfied, Jannik wanders over to him by the benches, clasping his hand again, lingering, before he goes past to say something to Juanki. Simone is right behind him and he shakes Carlos’ hand and asks, “Having fun?” There’s something teasing in the way he smiles, eyes flickering over Carlos’ shoulder to Jannik and then back; it’s embarrassing but also sort of wonderful.
“Okay, we’ll take a picture?” Jannik says, glancing over at Simone. “Me and Carlos. Or you want the whole team?” He doesn’t sound like he cares either way. He doesn’t sound like he’s trying to hide anything, and when he looks back at Charlie he’s not doing the thing where he chisels down his expression to flint to hide everything he’s ever felt.
“Maybe the team first,” Simone says. “Then the boys.” Jannik smiles at that, wide and a little crooked. It’s hard to think of him as a boy sometimes but with his team there are flashes of youth, the lightness that Charlie has only ever seen briefly when the two of them are alone. It’s so good to see.
He holds Jannik around the waist and feels like he’s getting away with something, but Jannik just wraps an arm around his shoulders and pulls him in, smiling still; later, Juanki does this ceremony to name a court after Charlie—silly, but Charlie is actually pretty touched by the gesture—and Jannik is there, smiling, and filming it on his phone. There’s a tight bond of conspiracy running between all of them: the illusion that he and Jannik are only friends, that they share nothing except the time they spend together on a tennis court. It’s risky, maybe. Plenty of people are watching and if anyone slips the illusion could dissolve in an instant. Charlie and Jannik won’t ever be completely safe.
But Jannik is here anyways.
Later, they’re both sprawled over Charlie’s bed, Charlie on his stomach and Jannik propped up against the headboard reading some article Darren sent him on his phone. Charlie’s looking through the pictures they took, trying to figure out which ones he wants to post.
“Hey, this is okay?” Jannik pushes his glasses up his nose and then leans over to look at Charlie’s phone: the two of them together with their teams on the court, and one of just the two of them, signing things. Just their faces are in focus, everything else blurred out, and Charlie’s looking at Jannik, facing the camera. You can see in his face that he’s looking at something important to him, something beautiful and good. You can see in his face he’s looking at someone he loves.
“Carlos,” Jannik says. He sounds very fond. “It’s your page, no? What you want to post, it’s okay. Maybe some people say something, we deal with it. And—“ he looks down at the photograph, tucks his smile down and away, shy. “The way you look at me. I don’t say this so much but I feel— I like how you look at me, to see like this.”
It’s shockingly sweet. Charlie wants to wrap himself around Jannik and not let go for a very long time. Maybe not ever. “How I look at you?” He’s teasing a little now and Jannik can hear it; he looks up narrow-eyed, half-annoyed, and then his face turns intent, suggestive. Charlie has seen this expression before and he feels a frisson of anticipation go up his spine, his whole body going hot and loose in anticipation.
He hadn’t thought Jannik was particularly attractive, not at the start. He was distinctive-looking, maybe; striking, which was a kind of beauty. Not handsome, really, but there was something about him that made you look and keep looking, and eventually it became impossible for Charlie to look away, and then it snuck up on him and seized him, like a hand around his heart. Now he knows Jannik is maybe the most beautiful person on the planet: the high sharpness of his cheekbones, his soft pale mouth, all the clean stark lines of his face, like the wind-bare peaks of mountains. And it’s more than a bare aesthetic beauty; Charlie wants him, badly. He remembers the exacting strength of Jannik’s body, the hidden power of it. He remembers how Jannik looked in his bed, so different from how he looks now on court but no less powerful, no less beautiful.
“How you look at me,” Jannik repeats, speaking low and hot under the hinge of Charlie’s jaw, flirting, kissing the delicate skin there. Charlie shudders and cups the base of his head in one hand, holding him close, but it’s not enough. He grabs Jannik and flips him backwards, straddling him, pinning him by the shoulders back to the bed. Jannik makes a really unsexy squwack followed by a strange grunting noise but it doesn’t matter because Carlos has his lean body warm beneath his hands and Jannik is looking up at him with such a sharp heat in his face, a wanting. “The same as how I look at you, always.”
He’s half-teasing, but it lands deep in Charlie’s chest. Charlie leans down and kisses the little hollow of Jannik’s throat, the sharp edge of his collarbone. He hasn’t ever wanted anyone the way he wants Jannik, with this compulsion, this deep need to feel, physically, the weight and solidity of Jannik’s body. He knows this body so well, how it moves, how it fights, all of its little miracles. Jannik holds him tightly and his thumbs press, just softly, into the slight give of the skin just above his hips, and Charlie arches into his hands, a burning low in his gut; Jannik knows him, too. And Jannik wants him, more than anyone else ever has: him, himself, not Carlos Alcaraz.
He knows what this is, what he feels. And he trusts Jannik now the way he only thought he had before, with anything, with everything; it rises up in him, flooding over, and it feels like the most important thing in the world that Jannik knows it too, that he understands. “Hey, I love you,” he says. “Ti amo, yeah?”
Jannik closes his eyes and swallows hard. Charlie sinks into him, just feeling him close and solid and strong. “Carlos, you know I— very much, for very long. More than— than—“ Jannik is still not so good at this but it’s okay. They understand each other better now, and Charlie knows Jannik loves him; he won’t doubt it again. And then Jannik opens his eyes and cups Charlie’s face between his hands. “Carlitos,” he says, in his low rasping voice, and he smiles and his whole face goes bright and open with joy. “You know, of course I love you too.”
And of course they can’t know how it will go, how things will change; the season will start again soon enough and bring with it all the wins and losses it always does, the constant grinding hunger. Charlie knows now in a way he hasn’t before that it’s going to be painful, sometimes, and difficult, always. That it will empty him out as often as it lifts him up, and he can’t know what it will do to them. But whatever it brings, whatever it takes from him, he’ll have this, too: Jannik in his home, in his bed, smiling at him, with him, the way it feels like his heart has unfolded inside his chest into little starbursts of light. He’ll have always at his fingertips the smell of fresh-cut grass in July and the raw stinging of his palms pressed flat to the warm soft dirt, the roar like a jet engine, the bright solid gleam of gold, and, now, the sound of his name in Jannik’s mouth, victory.