Work Text:
“Do you want to come to my apartment this summer?” The notification makes Carlos’ phone vibrate in his pocket, and he types up his answer without hesitation.
”Seriously? That’d be awesome!”
”Yes, seriously. I thought it could be good to meet outside of a tennis court for once,” Well, There are plenty of other ways for Jannik and Carlos to enjoy each other’s company without a racket in their hands, but Carlos would be a fool to say no to a free vacation in Monaco.
Tournaments go by, more trophies get added to Jannik’s and Carlos’ respective collections, and it’s finally July as Carlos gets out of the airplane and into the taxi from Nice to Jannik’s apartment. The weather is lovely outside, the sun shines brightly in the clear blue sky and the water reflects the sun’s rays, shining like glitter even through the tinted glass of the car.
Finally, the car pulls up to the curb in the busy street of the principality and Carlos calls Jannik, not wanting to be out in the open for more than need be.
”Hey, I am at your door,” The Spaniard hears some rustling coming from the other microphone and wonders if he has even been heard.
”I am coming!” The words come through the phone and a few seconds later, the door to the apartment complex opens and out comes a head of ginger curls. ”Ah! I am glad you arrived safely. Come inside, please.”
The inside of the apartment is nice — cosy in a way you’d expect from a person as structured as Jannik. The windows open to a balcony that wraps around the entire length of the apartment, letting the golden rays flow through the room, giving a yellowish tint to the wood furniture. Even if Carlos knows Jannik is not often home, the space is lived in — not dirty by any means, but it holds remnants of past use — some plates are still in the sink, waiting to be washed, the TV remote is sat on the couch and the door to the bathroom is left open. No dust is left on a surface as they each seem to be used on the daily, even if they are left alone for a vast majority of the year.
”Aye, excuse the mess, it’s been a busy few days,” Jannik scratches the back of his head and looks away from Carlos, as if embarrassed of his own living space.
”What?? Your place is so nice, I wish my house looked this clean!” Growing up with three brothers did not leave much space for cleanliness, which is one of the things Carlos has come to love about hotels.
Jannik lets out a small laugh, then leads the way to the apartment's second room, dropping Carlos’ bags which he has taken from the Spaniard as soon as they entered the building.
”I was thinking, if you’re not too tired, we could go down to the beach? You know, the weather is very good today and I know a place on a beach that’s not too crowded and-” Jannik says, unsure of whether this is a good idea.
”That’d be amazing,” interrupts Carlos and Jannik lets out a sigh, a smile of relief forming on his face.
The walk down to the beach isn’t long, which makes sense as the windows of the apartment allowed for a full view of the sea, but it is still surprising to Carlos that the secluded area of the beach where they ended up was so close.
”Do you bring everybody here?” Carlos asks, his mind letting him wonder if this is just an elaborate plan his rival set up to get rid of him. Jannik wouldn’t do that though.
”No. Only the ones I want to beat,” Okay, maybe he would. Jannik turns around to look at Carlos, who was trailing behind, and winks at him. Well if he didn’t kill him literally, that would do it.
The sun is now setting down, nearing the edge of the horizon slowly, making the water golden. They set down their towels and Carlos goes for the water, motioning for Jannik to join him. The water is not cold, even as the time is nearing the evening, so Carlos swims under the next wave and shakes his hair like a dog on Jannik as he comes back up.
“Stop that!” Jannik laughs, more hesitant to come fully into the water.
“Come on, the sea is not going to eat you,” Carlos grabs his hand and drags him further into the open water, reaching a point where their chests are covered halfway by the water.
“This is nice,” says Carlos with a grin on his face, splashing Jannik’s hair with the water. Jannik puts his arms up, trying to protect himself from the water in vain, then dives under the surface. Carlos sees the ginger hair under the clear water, but he doesn’t even notice that the Italian grabbed his legs until he falls beneath the surface.
“You asshole!” says the Spaniard as his rival comes back up along with him.
“I like to believe you deserved that; you kept splashing me.”
“At least give a warning!” Carlos somehow can’t even bring himself to really be mad, now just pretending to be annoyed and approaching his face to Jannik’s, trying to make himself bigger to hold eye contact with him.
Jannik’s eyes keep jumping around the different features of Carlos’ face — his lips, his nose, his eyes, mostly his lips — which are now only mere centimeters away from his own face. He finally settles on Carlos’ eyes, his gaze heavy as he looks at the Spaniard. The silence between them carries the words that are left unsaid: We can’t do this. We can, but we shouldn’t. Do you want this as much as I do? The thoughts bring them back to the tennis court: they get hit back and forth between the opponents as they each search to take control of the game. This time though, the game is a force which can not be understood, therefore none of them have the upper hand: they both find themselves at the mercy of their feelings.
Every move Jannik makes, Carlos notices. From the way his eyelashes are fluttering and the way his breath is growing heavy, to the slow movement of his arms that come up to Carlos’ back.
“Oh for God’s sake,” Carlos’ patience has run out and his hands shoot up to Jannik’s neck, pressing the Italian closer to himself, finally closing the distance between their lips. The world seems to stop turning on its axis and simultaneously everything goes by a thousand times faster than they really are when Jannik starts kissing him back. The kiss seems to get impossible deeper by the second and they both can’t get enough.
Carlos’ back hits the door of the apartment as he is pushed against it by his rival. This is bad, but it’s so, so good. Their feet move like a waltz and they keep pushing each other against the closest surface they can find, never separating, even as the water drips down from their hair to their faces. Eventually, Carlos pulls away and takes off his shirt, with Jannik following suit. They don’t pull away from each other any longer than necessary and their lips seem to be magnetised, finding their way back to one another even if the rivals’ lungs are completely devoid of oxygen. Their feet lead them to Jannik’s bedroom, where Carlos quickly finds himself on his knees.
Over the two weeks that Carlos spends at Jannik’s apartment, they repeat a cycle: wake up in the same bed, eat a light breakfast, go for a walk along the beach and find a restaurant for lunch, go back to the apartment and after dinner, they end up kissing and more often than not find themselves with their clothes off before the clock strikes midnight.
Carlos leaves early in the morning, putting a light kiss on Jannik’s lips one last time before grabbing his luggage and taking the Uber back to Nice’s airport. Maybe it is the sun that is shining brighter, but the sea glistens even more than on the first time he took this road two weeks ago.
Only a week after he has left Monaco to go back to his family home in Spain, Carlos gets this impression that something has happened. A shift in the balance maybe. He opens up his phone. Even though Carlos has always tried not to care about what he sees on social media, when he opens his instagram feed, the first thing he sees are pictures of Jannik and Laila Hasanovic at a beach that seems oddly familiar. Wait, what? This has to be fake, it can’t be.
“Are you dating her?” The Spaniard’s fingers seem to be acting faster than his mind.
“Yes.” Okay, no, this is a good thing, it has to be. There has to be a good side to all of this. Jannik Sinner can’t just be going around being with someone else after having spent those two weeks with Carlos and leaving him like this, there has to be something that will make this a win-win situation.
“Okay.”
Carlos shuts his phone off and considers throwing it across the room.
The summer is finally over and the two rivals meet again at the US Open. Carlos has not been answering Jannik’s texts and Jannik has stopped trying. Carlos wishes he hadn’t. If he kept texting, it would have meant that there was still hope for normalcy between them, if only a sliver of it, but no, they have not heard from each other in nearly weeks and now they meet in the locker room before the final.
“I just wanted to say I’m sorry-”
“Save it. If you need to say something, say it after the match” Carlos interrupts and looks at Jannik, who now looks like a kicked dog.
“Fine. May the best win.”
Game, set and match.
A few hours later, it’s Carlos who holds up the Tiffany & Co silver trophy. It’s him that gets the glory, that gets the right to brag about his second US Open title. Yet, he doesn’t feel like celebrating it, it feels pointless.
It doesn’t matter. He’s 23, he should not be left longing for something that only happened once. To put himself out of his misery, Carlos decides to get out. The night leads him to a club in which he knows he will be recognised. Good. I need this. I need anything that isn’t Jannik.
That’s what leads Carlos through the door, feeling the stares that are coming in his direction but not caring particularly about them. This is how my life is supposed to be. The purple lights are dim, but still manage to reflect Carlos’ bright smile as he orders a drink at the counter. As if the universe — more so the DJ — knows that the number one tennis player in the world has entered the room, his favorite songs start playing, leading him to quietly abandon his drinks and join the dancefloor, jumping up and down with the crowd. This is what it’s like without him.
After a few songs, the beat slows down, allowing Carlos to actually see what — and who — is around him instead of having the lights glare in his eyes. Still, the bodies around him are nearly indiscernible, all blending into each other colored in purplish hues. One of what Carlos is finding to not be unlike walking corpses puts their arms around him, forcing eye contact. Finally. A perfect stranger, seemingly a girl from what he can make out of her hair, is stealing his attention for the night, and he lets her. Carlos thinks, for a split second, that he wishes these were someone else’s arms. He has learned to not dwell on what his mind says after dark, but if he has had these thoughts while the sun is out, what should he make of them?
His hands come to rest on the girl’s hips, guiding them to the rhythm of the song while forcing a bit more proximity between them. He doesn’t even think before his mouth speaks.
“Wanna get out of here?” He screams over the music and yet he is unsure if she has heard him until a small grin forms on her face and she nods.
As they’re walking to his hotel, he learns that her name is Maria and that she was in the crowd watching the match today. The elevator door opens and as Carlos steps inside, he thinks he sees a mop of ginger curls from afar. He can’t ruin this, not right now.
Carlos takes Maria to bed and after he takes her to the seventh heaven, he watches the hair that revealed itself to be brown in the streets of New York drape over the pillowcase. The Spaniard steps out of the bed and his padded footsteps can be faintly heard going to the bathroom. He takes a shower, scrubbing harder than he probably should be, since his skin is turning into an angry red, and he repeats this process a second time; he has sinned, he has lusted and he needs to scrub himself clean of this. Worst is that he has sinned again, he remains a sinner but, this time, it wasn’t caused by Sinner. He is the only one deserving of my sins.
When Carlos steps out of the shower, the brown hair is replaced by a note written on the hotel’s stationary.
Call me. With Maria’s number written under it and a lipstick kiss mark. After getting closer, Carlos can make out the other message that is written: P.S. I don’t think your next girl will like being called a sinner.
What?