Chapter Text
> how to know if your soulmate is in love with someone else
> what to do if your soulmate is in love with someone else
> break soulmate bond
> bond breakage clinic locations
Carlos was on the practice court when someone stomped on his chest. He honestly didn’t have another word for it. Completely out of nowhere, right in the middle of some normal forehand drills. Everything in his chest started to almost burn, pain filling every space.
For a moment, he couldn’t breathe, his vision blurry as yellow spots danced in front of his eyes. He tried to remain standing, even if his racket had dropped out of his hand, but he couldn’t, too overwhelmed by pain. His knees hit the ground after they’d buckled and from there he tipped over, only just managing to get his hands out to brace his fall slightly. He vaguely heard his team asking what was wrong, but his brain couldn’t process what was being said or even begin to form some sort of reply.
He couldn’t understand what was happening. He certainly hadn’t picked up any sort of chest or back injury recently to have just suddenly aggravated an existing injury. And the drill he’d been in the middle of was one he’d done thousands of times before. There was no one it had led to him hurting himself this badly.
But then, as suddenly as it appeared, the pain disappeared. Almost instantly, his vision cleared and he could suddenly hear his surroundings again. Realising that he was pretty much lying in the middle of the court, he at least lifted himself into a seated position.
“Carlos, what is wrong?” Juanki was crouching in front of his, deep worry lines running across his face.
“I don’t know.” He didn’t know how to explain what he’d just experienced. He didn’t even understand what had happened.
“What hurts?”
Carlos slowly catalogued himself, “Nothing, anymore.” And he was telling the truth. For pain that had been mind-numbingly bad, the fact that it immediately disappeared, leaving no feeling of it behind, felt wrong.
“But something did hurt?” Juanki asked.
Carlos nodded before explaining what had just happened. Juanki’s eyebrows furrowed as he spoke, looking extremely worried for him. The expression didn’t clear when Carlos assured him that the pain had left.
“We are finished for the day,” Juanki decided, “Let’s get you checked out.”
Carlos wanted to argue that he was fine, but he knew that wasn’t the point. If he was actually hurt, he needed to know about it, needed to know if it was something they should be concerned about.
Picking himself up off the ground, with the help of Juanki, Carlos expected a flare of pain once he was standing. But, he still felt completely fine. It was like it hadn’t even happened. Packing up his gear, he followed his team off the court and inside the building before finding a quiet room for treatment.
Juanjo ran through everything, not limiting himself to just his chest. But nothing that he did or pressed hurt. It was almost like the minute of pain had just been a bad dream.
“You are fine,” Juanjo confirmed, “But if it happens again, let us know.”
“Of course.” Carlos knew just how important his body was and he couldn’t risk his health by being stupid and ignoring pain.
He could admit to himself just how worried he'd been, even once the pain had disappeared. But hearing the all clear from Juanjo was a serious relief. He had a couple of days before his next match, but he didn’t want to start a tournament already feeling sore and injured.
Pretending like he hadn’t had to end his time out on court half an hour earlier than expected, Carlos ran through his normal cool-down routine. There were a few players milling around, but no one stopped to bother him, thankfully. He wasn’t prepared to deal with talking to people right now.
Despite the confirmation that he was fine, Carlos still felt weird for the rest of the day. He couldn’t put a finger on exactly why, but he figured it was just because of everything that had happened. Maybe some of him was still worried that he was actually hurt.
It was only when he was lying in bed that night that he suddenly realised what was wrong.
Feeling a wave of nausea rush over him, he scrambled out of bed and made it to the bathroom just in time to throw up everything in his stomach. Once he was done, he slumped back against the wall, legs stretched out in front of him across the cold bathroom tile. And he berated himself for being so stupid and not realising earlier.
He couldn’t feel his bond anymore, couldn’t feel the emotions flowing through it from his soulmate.
Technically, the bond could just be blocked by his soulmate, but deep down, he knew that it wasn’t. For starters, he and Holger rarely blocked their bond, from either side, but it also felt different. Now that he noticed it, it almost felt like a gaping hole in his chest.
And honestly, that caused Carlos to panic even more than the pain had earlier.
He’d never heard of a soulmate bond breaking and the idea terrified him.
He and Holger had been bonded since they were 14. Almost as soon as they were old enough for bonds to be possible, they’d been bonded. He’d always carried Holger’s emotions just as much as he’d felt his own. He couldn’t believe it had taken him hours to notice. Holger was generally an emotional person, Carlos couldn’t believe he hadn’t realised he hadn’t felt anything from him in hours.
He also didn’t understand, why if Holger had realised their bond had broken, why he hadn’t told Carlos. He hadn’t been watching his phone all day, but he certainly hadn’t received anything from Holger. Maybe he hadn’t noticed either and Carlos wouldn’t feel as bad for not immediately noticing.
He wanted to call Holger, wanted to speak to his soulmate, but in the rush to reach the bathroom, his phone had been left behind. And right now, he wasn’t prepared to get up yet. So, he stayed where he was, trying to collect himself. He kept hoping he was wrong, hoping that he’d get a burst of emotion from Holger, but his heart stayed empty.
Desperately trying not to spiral into panic, Carlos forced himself to take deep, calming breaths while pressing his hands down onto the cold tile in an attempt to settle himself. His head tipped back against the wall as he blankly stared out in front of him.
He didn’t know what to do, was so unprepared for this situation. Honestly, he didn’t even know that soulmate bonds could break. When he and Holger had first bonded, they’d both been handed pamphlets that Carlos had barely read about nurturing your bond and keeping it strong. And while they hadn’t done any of those things, Carlos hadn’t felt any of the signs that the bond was getting damaged.
He couldn’t understand how it had just suddenly broken.
Deciding he couldn’t handle the silence anymore, he forced himself up off the bathroom floor in search of his phone. Finding it tangled up in his sheets, he found no new messages in the time he’d been gone. His message thread with Holger suspiciously silent.
Knowing that he couldn’t handle waiting for Holger to respond to a message, he pressed the call button instead.
It rang and rang and rang until he got Holger’s voicemail. Not sure what to say, and certainly not wanting to pour his heart out about their bond onto a voicemail, Carlos hung up and tried again.
But his second call went unanswered, as did the third and fourth. And by the fifth, Carlos had accepted that he wasn’t going to get an answer. For a horrible split second, Carlos worried that something terrible had happened to Holger, but he tried to assure himself that he would have already heard something if that was the case. Hopefully, he just couldn’t get to his phone right now, or was already asleep, or something equally mundane.
If he couldn’t talk to Holger, he needed to find someone else to call. Sleep certainly wasn’t going to be coming any time soon and he couldn’t handle the silence. So, he called his Mum.
“Carlos, darling, is something wrong?” she opened.
Carlos felt bad for worrying her when she was likely already in bed, but just hearing her concern had tears leaking out of his eyes. Between sobs, he managed to tell her about his broken bond.
“Are you still in pain?” she asked once he was done.
“Not anymore.” He wished that she was here and could wrap him up in a hug. But that wasn’t possible with the miles between them.
“And you have not spoken to Holger yet?”
“He’s not answering my calls.”
“Alright, breathe for me and then try and get some sleep. Tomorrow, you can talk and work out together how to fix things.”
Carlos agreed, even if he didn’t know how they could possibly fix things. While he hadn’t known that bonds could break, he also hadn’t heard of anyone fixing a broken bond. He might be wrong, but he wasn’t feeling optimistic about the situation.
Having at least told someone, he felt a little better. The nauseous feelings had faded and his eyelids were starting to get heavier. Bidding his Mum goodnight, after promising that he would call her after talking to Holger tomorrow, he hung up.
Tossing his phone aside, he flopped back onto the mattress, hoping that lying down and closing his eyes would help him sleep. And it did, but his sleep was plagued by nightmares he could barely remember. He could see snippets, all involving Holger, but not enough to put it back together. It meant that when he did wake, he almost felt even worse than the night before.
The first thing he did was reach for his phone and call Holger again, not caring how early it was. But just like the night before, his call went unanswered. He tried a second time, hoping that something would change, but it didn’t.
At this point, he didn’t know what to do. He needed to hear Holger’s voice if he couldn’t feel his emotions anymore. He’d never felt like this before, perhaps taken their bond for granted after so many years.
Normally, their bond was such a small part of their lives. Holger and Carlos had both agreed from the beginning that tennis would always come first. There would be many, many years after they both retired for just their bond. And that wasn’t to say that they ignored each other or their bond, just that it wasn’t the priority. And it had worked for them. Carlos was certain he’d never felt any sign of the bond breaking, didn’t know how this could possibly have happened.
As much as he wasn’t prepared to face the world, he did need to eventually get out of bed. He might still have a couple of days before his first match, but that wasn’t an excuse to slack off, especially with it being his first grass match of the season. He wanted to win the titles, both here and at Wimbledon and that started with properly getting used to the surface again.
“You look terrible,” Juanki greeted him with, “Are you sure that you are alright?”
Later, Carlos would tell him about his broken bond, not liking to hide things from his team, but right now, he wasn’t prepared to talk. He didn’t even know how to explain it anyway. At least he wasn’t fully lying when he nodded and told Juanki he was fine. The pain he’d felt on the practice court the day before hadn’t returned and that was all Juanki was aware of.
Throughout the day, he kept dialling Holger’s number while constantly searching for him. But he never caught sight of the other man, even though Carlos knew that he had to be here somewhere. And with each unanswered call, Carlos drew closer and closer to spilling his guts out to Holger’s voicemail.
The worries he’d tried to ignore the night before were starting to make themselves known again. He didn’t want to believe that something truly terrible had happened to Holger, still hopeful that he would have known or been told if there had, but he didn’t answer why he was just as desperate to talk to Carlos as Carlos was to him. He had to be feeling the effects of their broken bond just as much as Carlos was.
He knew that Juanki had to suspect that something was wrong. He was giving Carlos odd looks all day, but he didn’t say anything. And Carlos wasn’t about to start that conversation. Honestly, for the first time in a long time, he wished that his parents were here. He wanted a hug from his Mum and to be told that everything would be alright because right now, he wasn’t sure.
The next few days continued in the same pattern. Carlos still getting silence from Holger, both from their bonds and with his phone. He thought that he might have caught a glimpse of him once, but before he could be certain, the person was gone. Even when Holger’s match finished five minutes before Carlos’, by the time Carlos made it to the gym to cool down, Holger was nowhere in sight.
Carlos didn’t quite know what to think about that. He was no longer worried that Holger was dead or anything. He might not have seen Holger himself, but unless he’d been replaced by an alien, he was playing his matches. He was just completely avoiding Carlos. And Carlos didn’t quite know what that meant. It didn’t stop him from being worried about Holger.
He hadn’t been able to help himself from mapping out the draw, wanting to know exactly how soon he’d have to play Holger. Obviously, they’d played each other many times since their bond had formed, but Carlos knew that this would be different. He just didn’t know if it would be worse.
In the end, it didn’t matter. Holger lost a round before they would have played and Carlos went on to defend his title without having to go through him. And Holger disappeared from Queens without Carlos getting to talk to him, or even see him.
Determined to not let the same thing happen again, and desperately wanting to get things settled before Wimbledon actually started, Carlos considered his options. While he had his own schedule and everything to worry about, top of his priorities list was talking to Holger and figuring out what they were going to do next. With so many more players around, ambushing Holger was significantly difficult, especially with Holger still avoiding him. It took Carlos searching out the practice schedule and waiting for Holger off to the side of the courts.
Holger hadn’t immediately spotted him, so Carlos hung back, keeping himself mostly hidden by a fence while still having a slight view of Holger.
He didn’t know why he expected something different, but at least at a distance, Holger looked normal. He’d already finished up his practice, so Carlos couldn’t know what he looked like on the court, but watching him chat with his team, Carlos wouldn’t know that anything had happened if he didn’t have a gaping hole in his chest.
Not wanting to get Holger escape, as soon as he made moves to walk off the court, Carlos stepped out from his hiding space, putting himself right in his path. For a moment, Holger still didn’t notice him, too deep in conversation with Lars in a language Carlos didn’t speak. Carlos watched him, and saw the exact moment he did finally notice Carlos. Something in Carlos’ heart clenched as Holger’s face dropped and his shoulders tensed.
“You haven’t answered my calls,” Carlos opened when it became clear that Holger wasn’t going to.
Holger shrugged, not even bothering to lie about being busy, not that Carlos would have believed him. At last count, he’d made 46 calls, all of which had gone unanswered and it was honestly more than that now.
“We need to talk,” he continued when Holger still didn’t speak.
“Not here.”
Carlos agreed, not wanting to have this conversation in the middle of the practice courts either. While their bond wasn’t a secret on tour, neither made a habit of talking about it either, not wanting it to become speculation for the press. Carlos was sure more players on tour knew about it than he would know, but he didn’t want to add to that number.
“If I meet you after you’ve cooled down, will you hide from me?” Carlos didn’t quite mean for his tone to be quite as rude as it was, but he was exhausted after the last week and he just wanted to talk to Holger without having to chase him down.
Lars remarked something in Danish that Holger responded to before switching back to English to answer Carlos, “I won’t.”
Carlos hated that he didn’t fully trust that answer, but he nodded, not wanting to start this conversation on a worse foot by calling Holger out for possibly lying. “Let me know when you are done.”
Deciding that that was all he was going to get out of Holger right now, he stepped aside, letting him continue inside with his team. The problem now was that he had an unknown amount of time before Holger was ready to talk and nothing to occupy his time. Not sure what else to do, he found a quiet enough corner where no one would bother him and just scrolled around on his phone until he got a message from Holger with a location.
When he found Holger again, he was in a small treatment room, no one else inside. He was sitting cross-legged on the massage bed, staring down at his phone. The sound of Carlos opening the door was enough to get him to look up, and on recognising him, he pocketed his phone.
“What did you want to talk about?” Holger asked, eyes watching Carlos close the door and move across the room to the small chair.
Carlos stared at him, surprised that he was even asking the question. He would have thought that it had to be obvious, “Our bond, it’s broken.”
“I know.”
He didn’t know what he’d been expecting Holger to say, but that hadn’t been it. He’d expected some fight, but Holger so far was showing none of that.
“What are we going to do about it?”
“I don’t know?”
This conversation was starting to almost physically hurt Carlos with how hard it was to drag answers out of Holger, “Why don’t you care? Why don’t you care about our bond?”
That got Holger’s attention as his hands stopped fidgeting in his lap, “Because I broke it.”