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Chapter Text

There was a silence settling between them. Only the sound of slight panting making it known that there was life being lived in that grey, anonymous room. That and the quiet buzz of the air conditioning. Nothing moved and no one knew what to do. They stood there like the living statues Jannik had sometimes seen in city squares around Italy.

Jannik was the first to step away. To put some distance between them, breaking the spell of stillness in the aftermath of their kiss. Carlos brushed his own lips with one finger, a light touch, inspecting what they felt like after melting as one with Jannik's as he kept staring at the Italian; maybe he was in disbelief that it had happened for real. Jannik couldn't blame him as he took some small steps back, away from Carlos, and tried to calm his wildly beating heart. He looked around, as if making sure, as if afraid someone had somehow seen.

“I'm not—” Jannik started, feeling like he was swallowing glass with each word.

Carlos interrupted him immediately. “No, yeah, of cour—”

“I mean I've never—” Jannik tried again, raising his voice a little, not in anger but in the panic of not being seen, more piercing shards slicing through his throat.

But Carlos interrupted him, again. “Yeah, I know, I know—”

Jannik took a deep breath. He held his arm out in front of him, and found he was still close enough to Carlos to touch him without even fully extending his arm. He thought, not for the first time, that it was nothing short of insane how Carlos was always close. Always there, in his space, in his mind, in his everything. Like a particularly bad illness he could not rid of even with the power of the strongest medicine. Maybe it was a rude comparison. Jannik just thought he was sick not of Carlos but with Carlos.

He put his hand on Carlos's arm, lightly, not quite squeezing but just resting his fingers around his wrist, trying to signal something, to communicate what he needed with his hands first. He was supposed to be good at that. “Let me,” Jannik whispered in the loudest way he knew how. Trying not to let his panic show but still conveying the urgency, trying to swallow around the cuts and the blood left in their wake. “Let me explain. Please. Charlie.”

The nickname shut Carlos up. Or maybe he just understood this was Jannik's moment. To do what, even Jannik wasn't sure.

“I've never been with a— a man. Never, like,” his voice was small, impossibly small, you would need a microscope to spot it in the vastness of Jannik's feelings. “Kissed one. Kissed. A man. I don't— I don't know what is like, like a man.” His English turned a little jumbled, the uncertainty he felt about himself reflecting in his sentences, the unfamiliarity of his emotions a mirror of the way English was somewhat alien to him.

“Well, what is it like? Kiss me?” Jannik knew that sentence wasn’t fully grammatically correct, but he wasn’t sure if Carlos was, like him, finding it particularly hard to speak that foreign language they had to communicate in despite it coming with a number of layers they had to peel off before they got to words they could, knew how to use, or if Carlos was simply mimicking his difficulties. Jannik had noticed that, in Carlos. Sometimes he mirrored the person he was talking to, if they laughed he laughed, if they scratched their head so did he.

Maybe often, not just sometimes. He didn’t think he was actually in Carlos’s proximity enough to establish that. But he’d first noticed it when they were chatting about nothing in the tunnel before their match in Indian Wells five months earlier. As Jannik started hopping and moving to keep himself warm and ready, so did Carlos; but when he stopped, so did Carlos as well. Jannik had filed that information away in his brain for later— he didn’t know how but it could be important. Everything about Carlos was important.

That, though. That felt too blunt a question. That felt nothing like the out Jannik had hoped Carlos would give him. Perhaps foolishly, knowing the Murcian. But he wished to usher Carlos out of that room in the middle of that August night with his own feelings intact and none of his world and certainties shattered. Carlos had different plans.

“Why are you asking me this?” Jannik said, trying to keep his voice and his English a little steadier, a little surer. Trying not to sound like a kid who didn’t know what he was doing. Even if he was.

But Carlos was even more of a kid than him. Maybe he knew things Jannik didn’t, maybe none of this was scary to him, but he was a kid nonetheless. Or maybe he was just... Carlos. “Oh, Jannik, you are torture me. Torture.” He said it with a laugh. It sounded less genuine than usual. Like he was trying to break up a moment that was suffocating them both but the lack of air was constricting his lungs and making it hard for his full, warm Carlos laugh to come out.

They were still standing, and Jannik was getting tired of holding his body up, feeling an exhaustion he wished he wasn’t feeling merely, what, four days into a slam. It was just like Carlos to shatter him so completely with or without a racquet in his hands.

Jannik let go of Carlos's arm that he didn't even realise was still in his gentle grasp and walked past him to carefully, tiredly, unsurely sit down on the couch. Anonymous like the rest of the room, just a slightly nicer color, a shade of green he didn't have the eye nor the presence of mind to identify. He could barely identify what was happening within him, he thought, not a judgement so much as an exasperated plea to himself to get it together. Because it was almost eleven and this was going nowhere and he needed to sleep. Carlos had no match to play for a few weeks, but he did, the next day. This he thought kind of bitterly, despite himself.

Carlos stayed exactly where he was, just turned around so he was looking at Jannik. He was stroking his own arm where the redhead was touching him until moments before, seemingly unconsciously. Running circles on his skin with his finger, in shapes unknown to Jannik, just like everything seemed to be that evening.

Carlos looked at Jannik expectantly. Jannik took a deep breath.

“Look, Carlos I— kissing you was... fine. It was, you know, fine. It is like being eat alive, in some way. You make things so intense. You make me— okay, listen, you are good. At everything. We know this. Everyone. So, yes, of course good at this too. I just don’t think this is a good idea. Because we are, well, us, and I’m— not. That.” He gestured with his hand towards Carlos. Which maybe wasn’t his most brilliant idea. Carlos flinched slightly.

“No, I mean—” Jannik started, but it was too late. Carlos was wearing a badly concealed pained expression on his face, eyes softened by a weakness that was never there in that entire evening, that maybe Jannik hadn't seen before, ever.

“No, Jannik, is fine. You don’t have to explain. I know what you mean,” Carlos said, now putting on his signature smile. As his mask of being perfectly fine. Jannik could tell the difference between that and the real deal, though.

Jannik was just trying to be honest without offering himself up as a prey animal. Without giving up everything he was feeling— or rather, everything he was telling himself he wasn’t feeling. As if he could put a stop to something as inevitable as the beat of his heart or the sweat on his palms, to the way his throat went dry and his hands twitched to touch. No such thing as controlling everything, he had to remind himself every day, multiple times, and yet. And yet.

He looked down at his feet shuffling on the carpet, also anonymous, not that nicer shade of green though. That same grey as the walls and the bedsheets and the closet. Silence passed between them in the ticks of the clock — grey — and in the breaths Jannik felt coming ragged. He was fucked up, he fucked up, everything was going to be fucked up.

“Why did you do this now?” Jannik heard himself say before he knew he was going to speak. His voice was again the smallest thing, smaller than an ant that was going to be stepped on by a boot that wasn’t even aware of being used for killing.

Jannik reminded himself he wanted to be honest, mostly because they wouldn’t be going anywhere with this otherwise, but he had to be careful. He could not offer a weapon to the person who could use it to kill him or at least to break his arms and his legs and his heart.

“I mean— did— did something make you so it felt you should?” He cringed at his English. He pinched the skin on the palm of his hand, not sure if trying to wake himself up from the unreality of all that was happening or making himself bear a little bit of pain so he knew he could feel something other than the oppressive feeling, the heavy awareness of himself that Carlos’s gaze on him filled him with.

Carlos was looking at him with an expression Jannik was finding hard to decipher. Everyone always said Carlos was an open book, but Jannik didn’t exactly think so. He was easy to read in mundane situations, in inconsequential conversations, in ATP media videos, in casual chats. And maybe most people didn’t know him in any other situation. Maybe people didn’t know him like Jannik did. Not as well as Jannik did, just in the same way that he did. And Jannik, well, Jannik felt that in tricky, tough situations, in hard, deep conversations, in the moments that are real like nothing else except the beat of their hearts is, Carlos was as unreadable as his game. He could change his grip to deliver a perfect, unexpected dropshot at any moment.

When they were alone, completely alone, Carlos could look at him like only he had the power to break the unwritten rules between them.

“I was sad,” was all Carlos said for a moment. Jannik felt a pang of something he didn’t know how to name, right inside his ribcage, fighting to be acknowledged. Jannik looked away.

Carlos was looking away from him now, at something in the distance, out the big windows of the room, except the curtains were drawn so the New York night sky was hidden like the intentions of a skilled conman. His expression changed slightly and Jannik almost missed it in his inability to look at the Spaniard for more than twenty seconds at a time. But he saw it, a vulnerability, a controlled admission of pain. An unmistakable perceived wrongness.

“I mean... I was sad and you... you make me feel less sad. I go to you and you look at me like I am something,” he took a shaky breath and cleared his throat. A vulnerability. “Like I am something other than the tennis player who have— has to be perfect.” An unmistakable perceived wrongness.

That’s when Carlos turned his gaze to Jannik again. He smiled. Not the usual Carlos smile, the one that’s open and big, so impossibly big and warm it engulfs you, buries you under Carlos’s happiness so that you don’t even know what you feel anymore. No, this one was small like Jannik’s voice, small like the kid Carlos sometimes still was. This smile made it clear to Jannik that even Carlos didn’t fully know what he was doing.

That only made Jannik panic harder. If neither of them knew where they were headed, they could very well crash against a wall. Or worse, tumble over a cliff.

Jannik might’ve had the power to break their unwritten rules, but he wasn’t sure he knew how or if he even wanted to.

Chapter Text

It was not “why did you do this,” full stop. “Why did you do this now,” Jannik had said. Did he expect it would happen sooner or later just like Carlos did? Did he think about it? Did he wonder what it'd feel like?

Carlos had a thousand questions for Jannik, yet none of them seemed like they could leave his mouth. Burst out of his stomach, crawl up his ribcage, through his throat, and escape past his lips. The one question he had found the courage to ask wasn't exactly rewarded with a satisfying answer.

Jannik wasn't gay. He made that clear. Sort of. Not really, actually, not with the way his hand had found Carlos's hair when the younger had kissed him tentatively and held onto it for dear life as he pushed his tongue in Carlos's mouth and made his moans vibrate through the both of them, causing Jannik himself to shiver. Not with the way he kept shivering even after they parted and just stood there, their shallow breathing in sync.

But with his words, Jannik had kind of made the point that he was not gay. Not like him.

So Carlos wasn't sure what to expect Jannik to respond to his confession, if you could call it that. There were so many more damning things he could've said.

Jannik couldn't keep his eyes focused on a single thing for long. Now his eyes were darting from the chair a few meters to his right, to the windows, then to Carlos's face, but only briefly, and finally always ended up fixed on the floor. Studying his feet, his socks, the black of them against the white luxury vinyl.

“You are... a lot of things,” Jannik said carefully, voice still impossibly small. His hands were messing with the hem of his t-shirt, Carlos thought he might end up ruining it, stretching the material. He felt like Jannik could turn out to be his ruin too.

Carlos was still looking at Jannik, and as he kept his stare resolutely on his face, he dared to ask, “A lot of things like what?”

Jannik's breath audibly caught in his throat. Since after the kiss, it had kept sounding like Jannik had trouble speaking and breathing and being his usual cool self. Carlos couldn't allow himself to think of what all of that implied right now.

“I meant—” Jannik started, then closed his mouth again. He looked like a deer caught in the headlights, but a deer that still wanted to keep walking his path to the other side of the road. “Carlos, dio santo, I don't know, you are incredible in... in... so many ways. You are... bright like the sun. You are funny and kind and— what's the word?” He thought about it, looking frustrated with his English not for the first time that night. Carlos knew Jannik didn’t like not being in control, and with English he didn't always feel like he had everything in his grasp, like he could control what he was saying. That drove him crazy, Carlos suspected.

“Friendly. You are friend with everyone and some say this is not good but I think you look be— you look, like, sweet when you listen to- to everyone, to what they have to say, you joke with them, you— you make people happy,” Jannik concluded, and went back to staring at the pristine white floor.

Carlos was speechless. Yeah, sure, they were friends, you could say. They knew each other. But the thought that Jannik looked at him even when he was with other people made him feel like he could melt right then and there, turning into liquid love. A warmth spread through him like late spring rays of sunlight shining upon a valley.

“Do I... Jan, do I make... you? Happy?” He phrased it like two questions, and he framed into them all the other thousand he still had stuck in his ribcage.

Jannik seemed to think about it, still looking distraught, in a way. Carlos kept wondering if he'd fucked up Jannik and their relationship forever; then he remembered the Italian's tongue sliding against his own and the hunger practically radiating off Jannik right after the kiss, before panic settled in. And he knew. Knew it was worth trying. Knew it was worth getting his heart ripped into pieces if it meant loving Jannik openly, even just for a night, even if it was only him leaving said heart there in the middle of the room for an hour so Jannik could step on it again and again. He might shake through it all and he might end up battered and bruised but he would never be sorry about it.

Carlos decided to move, finally. Listen to his therapist who told him to combat anxiety with action. He took a few small steps towards the couch, and Jannik, and once he was in front of the redhead he knelt in front of him. Didn't touch him, just looked at him better, more openly; more defiantly, even. You can avoid it once I'm gone from this room but not until then.

So he knelt in front of Jannik and just looked into his eyes, not expecting, just inviting.

Jannik chanced a look back at him. He looked devastated, but there was a little less fear, a hint more of clarity. “It’s more like you make my head spin and my tongue, like, stumble, and I don't know what the fuck I'm doing, I only know I-I need to keep looking at you. And it will be fine.”

Carlos was stunned. Jannik said it all in what felt like one breath and then exhaled, like he was shaking off rocks that had been piling up on his back for years. Carlos, in turn, was not really breathing. It was like he was swimming in one of those ball pits he loved as a kid. He remembered movement being hard, he remembered he could hear things a little muffled if he really went under. He also remembered unrestricted joy.

“You can look at me. Always.” Carlos said, nothing more than an elated, incredulous whisper. He could not tear his eyes away from Jannik's face. He still looked pained. Carlos just wanted him to keep talking to him. He said just that. “Keep talking to me. Jan. Please.”

Jannik blinked at him, opened his mouth, then closed it again. Carlos slowly, gently put a hand on his knee, trying to be a steady presence. Jannik released a shaky breath. “I'm scared,” was all he said, finally.

So was Carlos. So was Carlos. “Honestly, Jannik, I don't know what I am doing too,” he said. “But— I kissed you because I want to kiss you for years. Literally. Joder, I think of kissing you so much since Bercy, maybe before. I—” He might end up bruised but he would never be sorry about it. “I love you, Jannik, I think I love you for a long time.”

Jannik stared at him. Carlos was terrified he would flee. This was Jannik's room but he was so fucking scared he would just leave. Get up, walk out, leave him there, not sorry but still broken. Instead, Jannik did the inexplicable. He lifted himself up from the couch slightly and surged forward, taking over all of Carlos's space, all of the air leaving Carlos's lungs before Jannik had even placed his lips on his. And then he did and it was the opposite, like breathing again, like the sky opening up after a storm, clouds making room for the bright sun.

Jannik had called him bright like the sun, but Carlos had never seen anyone shine of a more fiery, dazzling light than Jannik.

He kissed back, feeling all of their uncertainties crumble with the act and letting their heartbeats grow steady in each other's presence. He kissed back for all the years he stopped himself from satiating his hunger when Jannik was so close he could've touched him in all the ways he wanted to, if Jannik would let him. He kissed back because there was never going to be any other ending for them but this.

In chasing the feeling, the kiss, the right ending that was also the perfect beginning, Jannik all but fell down the couch, ending up on the floor with Carlos sprawled below him. They both burst out laughing, Jannik resting his head on Carlos's shoulder, his laughter rumbling out of his chest and spreading through his entire body, shaking them both.

“Jan! Jan! ¡Me estás aplastando!” Carlos yelled in between his own bursts of laughter.

“Cosa?” Jannik replied, automatically switching to Italian.

“You are heavy!”

“Oh,” Jannik blushed a little, now giggling. “Sorry, sorry.” He sat up and pulled Carlos with him, making him rest his back against the couch.

“You are so cute,” Carlos said, the biggest smile on his face. This. This was the real Carlos smile. “I can say this now? Yeah?” the Spaniard asked, a hint of uncertainty in his voice.

Jannik smiled too. More contained, and now a little serious too. “Yeah, I— I have to be honest, I need a little time to... figure out things. Put pieces together and... accept it, I think.”

He paused, but Carlos could see he had more to say, so he let him gather his thoughts, only raising his hand to Jannik's face to fix a stray curl behind his ear. He couldn't help himself. Now that he knew he could touch Jannik, he would always live in fear of getting so drunk on it he couldn't move. Move away from him.

“I didn't think I liked... men. Honestly. Like, maybe now I look back and understand some things but I didn't know. This is scary. Not in— in a way that I have to not be with you. But scary and I can't promise it won't be difficult for me sometimes. If— if I freak out,” Jannik took a long, deep breath and continued, “If I freak out, will you leave?”

Carlos looked stunned. He felt stunned. That thought hadn't even crossed his mind.

“No. No, of course, no. Jan, I can help. I— I knew. About myself I mean. Since a while. I've been through all this. I understand. We can... figure out everything and make you, uh, what's the word?” He racked his brain. “Comfortable. Yeah. Sure. Seguro. Yes?”

Jannik exhaled. Again. It seemed he was doing that a lot, tonight. Carlos thought back and, yeah, that was what coming to terms with it was. Just— finally breathing. At first with difficulty, through trembling intakes of air, then slowly with your full chest, lungs filling up. With the freedom, with the possibilities. And it was true that the possibilities were limited, for them, because of who they were, what they did for a living. But something that made being free worth it could always happen, even if it was just that you could experience all of the smells of spring, whether you touched the flowers and stepped onto the grass or not.

“Yes, okay. Okay,” Jannik replied. Then he smiled a more open smile. “You know, I— I didn't want to give this a try. I didn't even want to think about it. I wanted to go to sleep, I wanted you to leave, I wanted the kiss to never happen.”

Carlos thought about the way Jannik seemed devastated by all that was happening, all they were saying. It was incredible that it all turned out well, but if there was anything Carlos was, that's a believer. A dreamer. He would never stop believing; bleeding, drowning, skull split open, six feet under ground, he would never stop believing he could do it. Once he took that leap, once he kissed Jannik, he couldn't help the dreamer in him thinking the impossible was, in fact, possible. That was just who Carlos was.

“What changed?” he asked Jannik. In all of his dreaming, he couldn't see what made Jannik believe.

“You said I look at you in a different way. Like you are more than tennis. And I thought, well, uh.” He scratched his head and then rested it on the — grey — coffee table placed near the couch, knowing he'd ruin the glass on top of it but not really caring. “I thought I always see you like tennis when I want to think about you less. I try to only see tennis. But more and more the time pass and I can't do it. I can't. I think of you when I cook. I think you'd slurp up my spaghetti in the most impolite, enthusiastic way and it makes me laugh. I think of... of like... please don't laugh, but you know, when it's August 10? We have something in Italy.” Carlos nodded. He'd rarely heard Jannik talk so much all in one go. It made his heart swell with joy. “San Lorenzo, it's when they say there are shooting stars. In the sky. You see them on other days too, in August, around this day. And, you know, you make a wish when you see one. I think of you, the last, I think, two years? Yeah. A few weeks ago too. I think I'd like to see the shooting stars with you. Lie down at night, outside. Point and shout because I see one, and you get mad because you were looking in another direction.”

There was some silence. A beat passed, then another. Jannik had closed his eyes, was maybe imagining the scene. When he realised Carlos was uncharacteristically quiet, he opened them. He sat up abruptly, scared.

“What's wrong, Carlitos? ¿Qué pasa?”

Carlos was silently crying. Looking down and crying and not saying a word. What could he say? Nothing could describe the way he'd never felt that full. That seen. That loved. He was so used to being the one who played tricks for a crowd, that he forgot sometimes there is no trick needed. Sometimes people just look and see you. No need to do anything special because you're already, inherently, special.

“No, no, is okay, is okay. I'm okay. I just... you... you see me in a way that I am never seen and I can also never see myself like that. It's... beautiful. Thank you.”

Jannik smiled, again, and he was getting more beautiful each time, Carlos marveled. The redhead approached him gently and, even more gently, brushed a slim finger right under one of his eyes, drying the tears that wet the skin there. He did the same with his other eye, then he left a small kiss where his finger had been. He rested his forehead on Carlos's, sighing and closing his eyes.

“I think I'm the one who needs to say thank you,” Jannik whispered, unspoken but heavily present in his words the emotions of all that had happened that night.

“We both can say it,” Carlos declared. “I think we are good, no? For each other.”

Jannik chuckled. “I think you're the best for me.”

“Mh,” Carlos mused. “I think you're the best for me also. I also think you should sleep.”

“Oh, yeah. Goodnight, Charlie,” Jannik kissed him goodnight.

“Goodnight, cariño,” Carlos, of course, kissed him back.

They stopped talking and kept kissing until their eyes could barely stay open, the smiles never leaving their lips.