Archive of Our Own

Carlos kept an inventory consisting of Jannik in his mind, though he'd never consciously decided to start one.

In Alicante, 2019, when neither of them were anyone yet.

It was Carlos' first challenger when he drew an Italian player named Jannik Sinner who was tall and gangly and looked about his age even though it was said he was eighteen.

Jannik pushed Carlos harder than anyone ranked that low should have been able to. Fun, it was so fun. They'd just met but playing with Jannik felt like a reunion with an old friend.

After the match, they shook hands, Jannik smiled at him then—this open, genuine smile that had nothing of defeat in it—and whispered in his ear, "You play beautiful tennis. I hope we play again some more."

Carlos went back to his hotel room thinking about the weird fluttery feeling Jannik's smile produced in his chest.

They played again in Paris, two years later. The commentator said there was a sense that they were building something together, that it was the beginning of something mighty.

Jannik's ball came heavy and flat, forcing Carlos to generate his own pace, making him work for every shot like being stripped down by Jannik's game.

Carlos won in straight sets, persistent as he was.

That day, Jannik put a permanent mark on Carlos by turning him into a devoted believer of their greatness. "I am so happy for this win as Jannik was fighting for a spot at the Nitto ATP Finals. It's my third top 10 win of the year. I think Jannik and I will have a great rivalry in the future."

The promise of a future sent a thrill through Carlos, the assurance that there would be a next time, and a time after that, and a time after that. That they would continue finding each other.

And a great rivalry, they had.

Over the next three years, as both their rankings climbed, as Challengers turned into ATP events and ATP events turned into Masters and Grand Slams, they found each other over and over again at tournaments.

Jannik was kind, warm, and approachable. That was what Carlos had naively fallen in love with first, Jannik's fundamental goodness. He asked about Carlos' family, he remembered that Carlos' little brother played junior tournaments. It was intoxicating to someone like Carlos, who felt everything too intensely, being near Jannik felt like being near the moon, and Carlos wanted that, he wanted to learn the warmth that radiated from the coldness of Jannik, wanted to absorb it through proximity alone.

But then there was the aftermath of their final in Croatia, when they played in the quarterfinals of US Open. Carlos went in expecting the Jannik he knew—kind, collaborative, generous. Instead he'd encountered someone else entirely. On court, Jannik's warmth disappeared, replaced by a cold-blooded and ruthless monster.

In the handshake after, though Jannik had seemed slightly affectionate, there'd been a cruelty in his eyes that established whatever existed between them off court had to be completely separate from what happened on it.

In truth, Carlos loved both versions equally, hopelessly. He loved kind Jannik who asked about his family and brought the joy out of tennis. And he loved ruthless Jannik who played with cold precision, who never gave anything away, and treated every point as life or death. He loved watching Jannik play against other people, studying the different ways he broke down his opponents, salivating at the sheer power of his groundstrokes when he was fully concentrated. The violence of Jannik's tennis was almost sexual, arousing, he could bruise his opponents without ever touching them.

They created magic in the form of tennis throughout their time together. Wimbledon, Roland-Garros, US, Monte-Carlo, China, Indian Wells, (…).

"I wouldn't say I read his game, that he was predictable. But I know him." Jannik's habit of bouncing the ball exactly four times before serving, the way Jannik's serve toss was slightly to his left, the sound of his grunt on forehands—understated compared to most players, almost polite—the way he taped his fingers before matches, the way Jannik looked after wins—relieved more than jubilant, the way he looked after losses—blank and processing, the way he always stopped for every kid asking for autographs, the way he spoke to linesmen in whatever language they shared—making the effort to connect even in the smallest interactions, the way he'd befriended the players at every tournament.

These were the soft shapes of Jannik, the ones that made him alive, that complicated the ruthless tennis with evidence of kindness and consideration. Carlos loved these shapes maybe most of all, because they were evidence that his chilling malevolent on court was an armor, underneath it was someone warm and reachable.

Carlos remembered all of it. Jannik's first Masters title, then his second, then his third. His rise to number two, then number one. His first Grand Slam victory in Melbourne, the way he knelt on the court and Carlos could feel it in his own body, he felt the triumph and the terror of it, he loved him and hated him and wanted him with an agonizing intensity.

¿Qué es una persona, si no un recuerdo?

What is a person, if not a memory?

Carlos' collection of memories of Jannik was proof of how easy it was to fall in love with Jannik. It didn't require effort. Carlos could have stopped himself if it had been sudden, but it was quiet, incremental, inexorable.

By the time he recognized what was happening, it was too late.

After standing in the doorway long enough that Carlos could feel the weight of Samuel's presence like a hand pressed against the back of his neck, he finally said something—Carlos wasn't sure what, the words arrived distorted, underwater—but when the silence stretched too long, he'd left.

The door's pneumatic hiss marked the severance.

Now Carlos was alone with the mistake he'd done to himself on court that would become another fossil layer in the sediment of his failures.

His phone sat face-down on the bench, a dark rectangle that pulsed frantically with arriving messages he wouldn't read. The news would already be everywhere, the footage would be dissected and replayed. His body had betrayed him. He'd double-faulted three times in that final game. Three times his arm had performed a motion it had executed tens of thousands of times, and three times the motion misfired, the ball sailing long or catching the net with a sound like tearing fabric. Fault! On the fourth set point, he sent a backhand into the tramlines by a margin so wide the linesman called it out a second before the ball even landed.

Carlos sat on the bench in his sweat-stiffened Nike kit, his skin cooling and tightening. He rested his hands on his knees—looked at them as if they belonged to someone else, these alien collection of bones and tendons.

Failure colonized every nerve ending until he became a single raw surface, unable to distinguish between physical pain or the need to eradicate himself until there was no trace left of him or his failures—this pain had no source and no remedy.

The knuckles of his right hand were swollen, the skin split where he'd caught the court during a slide in the second set. Huh, he supposed he'd bled without noticing. There was something satisfying about seeing the evidence now, proof that his body could still sustain damage and mark itself with the costs of effort. He pressed his thumb into the wound and watched it weep.

Someone left a towel on the floor near the showers, dark with sweat. The smell was familiar—the accumulated body-reek of men, salt and rubber and the chemical tang of sponsored drinks. Carlos' own smell had turned acrid in the past hour, the sweat of the first two sets replaced by the scent of adrenaline curdling into panic.

He could only smell himself and wanted out of his skin.

He stood, finally, his left ankle clicked when he walked—a gift from Roland-Garros, a year back. His body carried a constellation of small tears that would never fully heal, only be endured. This was the trade, no? You gave your body to the sport and the sport gave it back to you in pieces, a map of all the ways you'd tried and failed.

He peeled off his shirt as he walked slowly toward the shower stalls. The fabric clung where the sweat had dried, removing it felt like exposing a layer of his own skin.

Carlos turned the tap to cold—the far end of the dial. He stepped directly under the stream and let it hit his head, his shoulders, the long curve of his spine, until it trailed down the thick of his thighs. He thought then, not for the first time, of Jannik and his malevolent eyes—a cold that felt akin to warmth, like the comfort of a villager house near the Dolomites blanketed with snow under the deep winter. Here, the cold was immediate and totalizing, a violence that shut down his thoughts. His lungs seized and his skin tried to crawl away from itself, every pore slamming shut against the assault. This was what he needed. Punishment that couldn't be argued with or reasoned away.

The cold didn't care about the double faults or the backhand error or the look on Samuel's face in his box. The cold simply was, and under its indifference, Carlos could begin the process of becoming nothing.

He stayed under the water, counting his breaths as they shortened and sharpened. Thirty seconds, a minute, ninety seconds.

His teeth began to chatter and he clenched his jaw until the muscles in his temples ached. His core temperature dropped, then finally the numbness, the blessed shutting-down of all sensation. His fingers lost their articulation, became mere clubs at the ends of his arms.

This was the point he was aiming for—the place where his body and the connection between intention and action severed completely. If he couldn't feel his hands, they couldn't be the hands that had failed him. If he couldn't feel his legs, they couldn't be the legs that had turned on him.

He thought of medieval flagellants, the way they'd beaten themselves bloody in the streets, trying to outrun plague or sin or the certainty of death. He understood that impulse now—if you hurt yourself before the world could hurt you, you maintained control, no? If you measured out your own punishment in precise doses, you could convince yourself you were choosing it.

The water hammered against his skull and he thought about staying here, just staying, until someone found him or didn't find him.

Five minutes under the stream and his lips had gone blue. He could see them in the chrome of the shower fixture, a color that shouldn't exist on living flesh. His whole body shook now, involuntary tremors that started deep in his core and radiated outward. He forced his body to confront its inadequacy. Good. This was good. This was what losing should feel like.

He pressed his palms flat against the tile wall and let the water run down his back, pooling at his feet before spiraling toward the drain. He watched it go and thought about all the things that couldn't be washed away, the match, the seventeen thousand people who'd watched him, the millions more who'd see it replayed into eternity—their opinions of his tennis.

When he finally turned off the water and stood dripping in the stall, gone was the golden sun-kissed brown of his skin, replaced by mottled red and white. At least now, his appearance was a faithful representation of his emotions: a dead man walking.

He touched his own arm and felt nothing, only pressure without sensation.

He'd done this enough times to know it would come back, the feeling, in an hour or two or three, sensation creeping back in pins and needles and eventually returning.

The silence was loud, deafening, laughing at him and his reprieve from being himself and his single, indelible inability to win.

He dried himself, the towel rasped against his frozen skin but he felt it only distantly, as if it were happening to someone else in another room.

The mirror above the sinks showed him a face he almost recognized, hollowed out. He made himself look. The slight tremor in his jaw. The shadows under his eyes that would be there for days.

Carlos gathered his things slowly, his numb fingers fumbling with zippers and straps. Eventually, he would remember every detail of the loss so that he could carry it with him like a stone in his pocket that would either drag him down or make him stronger. He didn't know which yet. He suspected it didn't matter, tennis would take what it wanted from him regardless.

The restaurant was Samuel's choice—somewhere in South Yarra.

Carlos already said he wasn't hungry, but Samuel insisted that was out of the question. So here he was, pressed into a corner booth while his team arranged themselves around the table. He rested his head against the wallpapered wall as Alvaro explained something about the wine here to Juanjo, who was nodding along. Samuel sat directly across from Carlos with his menu open.

Carlos studied his own menu without reading it, the words fragmenting into letters that refused to cohere into meaning. His body had mostly thawed during the car ride from Melbourne Park, sensation returning in the jagged way he'd anticipated, yes, but still his hands felt strange—too light, disconnected, like they might float away if he didn't keep them anchored to something solid. He gripped the menu harder.

There was a discrete clink of silverware against porcelain and a jazz piano in the background, Carlos felt himself slipping into drowsiness.

"The barramundi is supposed to be very good here," Alvaro offered.

Carlos made a sound that might have been acknowledgment. Across the restaurant, he'd spotted the group of people almost immediately upon entering and a sudden wave of alert washed over him. Jannik Sinner's table. Four people, maybe five. Carlos looked away quickly.

Jannik won with straight sets today. Carlos saw the score on his phone during the car ride, he watched the numbers load, fascinatingly sick, like pressing on a bruise. Three-six, four-six, two-six.

Tomorrow Jannik would play his semifinal.

Tomorrow Carlos would be on a plane.

"Are you thinking the fish, then?" Samuel asked, and there was an insistence in his tone that Carlos participate in this.

"Maybe," Carlos said. His English always deteriorated when he was tired, the grammar he'd worked so hard to master becoming slippery to arrange in his mind, so he talked in Spanish for the rest. "I don't—not very hungry."

The waiter arrived and took their orders, Carlos ordered the fish because it required the least number of words. When the waiter left, the silence settled over the table.

"Listen," Samuel began in Spanish, and Carlos felt his shoulders tense, "we don't have to do the post-mortem tonight. We can just—"

"I don't want to talk about," Carlos interrupted. "About it."

Samuel held up his hands in surrender. "Okay, chico. So we won't. We'll talk about literally anything else. Juanjo, tell us about that disaster of a day-off you went on last week."

Juanjo launched into his story with great details, and under the cover of the team's laughter, Carlos let his gaze drift back across the restaurant. The plants divider shifted and for a moment he had a clear sightline to Jannik's table. Jannik himself was visible now, he wore a cozy white crewneck, leaning back in his chair, saying something that made his team laugh. He looked—Carlos tried to find the word—loose.

He looked young. Free.

Carlos looked away before Jannik could sense the attention, glance up, and meet his eyes across the restaurant. That couldn't happen. No. He wasn't ready for whatever expression he'd have to arrange his face into. Congratulations, man. Great win today. The preemptive words tasted like copper in the tip of his tongue.

The wine arrived—Alvaro ordered a bottle without consulting anyone, and now he poured it slowly. Carlos took his glass and the alcohol hit his empty stomach and spread outward.

Alvaro started asking Carlos about an ATP 500 he participated in two years ago where he was vomitting the whole night just before the final. "I remember," Carlos answered. He did remember. He'd won. The trophy presentation was interrupted twice while he'd vomited into a bin just off-camera. It wasn't a good memory, but it was a winning memory, and maybe that was Alvaro's point.

"That trophy still counts, you know," Alvaro continued. "It's on your Wikipedia page and everything. My point is, there's lots of ways to—" He abruptly stopped because Samuel had kicked his under the table, not subtly enough. His team. Trying so hard. Trying to remind him that he was world number two and he'd won many, many trophies and much more to come, everything that was promised to him as Rafa Nadal's heir apparent. He appreciated it, or the part of him that wasn't submerged in self-loathing appreciated it. The rest of him wanted to be left alone in his hotel room, in the shower, in the cold, floating until unconsciousness greet him like an old friend.

The food arrived, his barramundi sat before him. It tasted like fish. It tasted like nothing. He fed himself three times before abandoning it completely.

Halfway through the meal, Juanjo excused himself to take a phone call and headed toward the restaurant's entrance, his path took him past Jannik's table. Carlos watched it happen with a growing sense of dread. Juanjo paused, recognizing someone, extending his hand, a brief exchange, and then the inevitable happened—Juanjo gestured back toward their table.

"No," Carlos said quietly, to no one, but it was already happening.

Juanjo returned happily, his face beaming with excitement. "You'll never guess who's here," he announced. "Jannik and his team. I told them we were here, they should come say hi after dinner."

Carlos set down his fork.

"Is necessary?" He asked in English.

"Oh, come on," Juanjo continued in Spanish, oblivious or pretending to be. "He's a nice kid. Off-court familiarity matter, remember? It would be weird not to say hello."

Carlos was sure they were friends once—at one point in their relationship, they weren't anymore, but they were friendly, or had been. Under normal circumstances, ignoring Jannik's presence would be stranger than acknowledging it, yes, but these weren't normal circumstances.

Partly, that would be a lie.

Carlos was looking for excuses to not lose himself to the religion of Jannik Sinner again—making a deity out of someone who only ever saw him as a rival, not even a friend, just someone tolerable to pass time with—after the hard work he'd put himself through to create distance, he did the responsible thing after years of foolish pining, he stopped feeding the monster of his own desire until it would hopefully, eventually, mercifully starve to death and leave him in peace. This had been their relationship since then, a respectful boundary between rivals that was a great sacrifice from Carlos' part, a self-imposed exile from Jannik's orbit. But it was fine, he would rather this than being close enough to smell his shampoo yet not being allowed to bury his face in Jannik's fiery ruffles of hair.

Jannik had always been Carlos' weakness, he was rightfully frightened this small off-court interaction might ruin his effort of putting an end to his desire and he would be back to square one.

"My English is not good tonight," Carlos tried again, sounding desperate. "I'm..."

"Tired," Alvaro murmured.

"Yes, mierda, tired. I don't want to do all the…" He gestured widly with his hands, frustration bleeding onto his expression. "The talking. You know how Jannik is," he finished his sentence in Spanish.

Porfa.

"You don't have to talk much, chico," Samuel said. "Five minutes. Be gracious. Then we leave."

Carlos didn't have to talk much? Sure, then what were they going to do? Stood around like a flock of birds waiting to be fed? But he understood what wasn't being said, that this was part of the job, the emotional labor of professional tennis. You didn't get to hide just because you'd lost, the sport required you to be visible in your defeat, to shake hands and make eye contact. He despised it.

After the plates was cleared and Carlos pushed his food around enough to create the impression of eating, Juanjo caught Jannik's eye across the restaurant and waved him over. Carlos' eyes glued on them as they approached—Jannik, Darren, and his coach, Simone, and one new face Carlos didn't recognize.

"Ciao," Jannik said when he reached the table, his hair was still damp.

Everyone stood for the greeting except Carlos, who rose slowly, his body protesting the movement. They shook hands—Jannik's hand warm and dry.

"Congrats today. Great stuff," Carlos said.

"Ah, thank you." Jannik's eyes flickered, maybe he, too, recognized that the situation was oddly awkward, they rarely ever interacted off-court anymore. "I saw the highlights from today. You played good, too."

There it was. The kindness that felt like a knife—Jannik's kindness, in particular, always felt like one.

Carlos managed a smile.

"Yes, well. The third set was not so amazing."

"It happens," Jannik said, he mumbled an inaudible sound as his English stumbled slightly. "It happens to everyone. Last month, I lose from two sets up four times. Four! Terrible, but you know, is tennis."

Juanjo materialized at Carlos' elbow, running interference. "Janni, you've met Alvaro, my brother? And Samuel you know."

The conversation turned into smaller exchanges. Carlos found himself sitting next to Jannik, holding a wine glass he wasn't drinking from.

"Your semi is against Ruud?" Carlos asked, even though he already knew, he had to say something—this was what he wanted to prevent, talking. And with Jannik, he always did the talking. He was used to it by now, he found easiness in leading conversations. Just not tonight.

"Yes, Casper. Will be tough match. I am not... I don't want to say I am confident. Is bad luck to say."

Carlos hummed affirmatively. "For sure, you will play good," he said, and meant it, mostly. "You are playing very good this tournament."

Jannik's cheeks flushed a rosy pink color, he looked down in a shy manner, his force of habit when given compliments. Carlos' heart skipped a beat, a betrayal to his benumbed emotions toward the Italian. He knew that what he saw was probably just his own want reflected back at him, his own desperate need to believe that Jannik felt even a fraction of what Carlos felt. Remembering it now, he held back the increasing urge to laugh manically, back when Jannik was just a tall lanky boy who did not know what to do with the extra length of his limbs with fiery hair and a wide gap between his two front teeth when he would flashed his kindest smile, back when Carlos thought he could have it all. The world and everything in it, chico. When he turned 19, he eventually came to know Jannik's elusive manner of rejection when the older boy made it clear, then—there was no timeline in this life or the next where Jannik would ever want him back, not then, not now, not ever.

A flickering ember on a pile of dust, the memory smelled like charcoal, blinding his senses. He snapped out of it.

"And you—" Jannik hesitated, after a moment of silence. "You go home now?"

"Yes. Tomorrow I fly."

"Ah." Jannik nodded. "Is good to rest. I think you are tired, no? The season is long already."

"Esatto, Janni."

Carlos looked at Jannik and saw recognition in his expression.

Carlos understood the importance of having a fated rival in a two-horse sport, like the one Fedal or Venrena had, they had one thing in common which was the ability to be fluent in a language only two people in the world could understand. Tennis, in that regard, was a lot like romance, and this sport was inherently monogamous—he didn't want to share Jannik, Carlos was here first. Maybe that was the main reason why he misread what they had. There was always a quiet understanding between Jannik and him, acting as a bridge—connecting two great, but lonely players—that respect could not build alone. It didn't make Carlos feel better. But it made him feel, briefly, less alone in the feeling bad. He thought of jokingly asking Jannik if he also waterboarded himself under cold water just to escape from the omnipresent belittling thoughts. Probably not. But who knows. They would never be close enough for that type of jokes.

They sat there another minute before Simone called Jannik back to their table, and the moment dissolved into another one of their swift and awkward goodbyes.

"Good luck," Carlos said, to fill in the suffocating silence.

Carlos never knew what to do with his useless hands in these type of situations with Jannik, so he kept them inside his pockets, off-camera he felt as if Jannik inflicted some of his gangly behavior on him and in turn, he possessed Carlos' lay-back nature. A spin on their persona.

"Thank you. And you—" Jannik paused, searching for the right phrase. "You will have other chance. Many other chance. Your tennis is too good to not have."

He said it with such earnest conviction that Carlos almost believed him. It was not usual for Jannik to say anything other than the cordial remarks.

"Claro, te lo agradezco, Janni."

Then Jannik was gone, back to his table.

Carlos sighed heavily.

"That was fine," Samuel said in Spanish. "That was completely fine."

Carlos hummed approvingly. He finished his wine in one swallow. "Can we leave now?"

They could. They did.

The car pulled away from the restaurant and Carlos closed his eyes, let the motion rock him.

Carlos watched the final from his room in Murcia. He was home alone, which was perhaps the first mistake. Alvaro suggested they watch it together at a sports bar where the sound of other people might dilute the experience, but Carlos declined.

The thing about Jannik's beautiful game of tennis that Carlos had never been able to adequately explain to anyone, including himself, was his forehand, that strange flat trajectory that seemed to defy physics, and Carlos felt something in his chest that wasn't admiration exactly, though it contained admiration, and wasn't envy exactly, though it was constructed partially from envy. It was want. The desire not to beat Jannik but to be him, to inhabit his body for just one match, to know what it felt like when your body was a perfect instrument of your will.

Carlos could burn through his three wishes from the Genie all he wanted and still nothing would ever happened between him and Jannik, that was the iron law of professional tennis, you didn't fuck your rivals. You didn't even think about fucking your rivals, or if you did, you kept it locked in your brain and you confess to no one. Carlos had gotten good at not thinking about it, he transmuted the want into something else—respect, competitive fire, hooking up with strangers who resembled Jannik, that all ended the same way, with someone telling him that his first love would always be tennis, he gave everything to the sport and had nothing left over for actual human intimacy. They weren't wrong. But they also weren't completely right, because he used tennis as a alibi for a different unavailability, that the sport wasn't his first love so much as a convenient excuse for not examining what his first love actually was, or who.

Jannik won the first set seven-six. Medvedev looked visibly frustrated, grunting in Russian.

Between sets the broadcast cut to the players' boxes, and Carlos' finger hovered over the remote button that would turn the television off, because he knew what was coming. The camera found Jannik's box and there Laila was, sitting next to Jannik's parents with her blonde hair pulled back, wearing sunglasses despite the roof, her hand raised to wave at someone off-camera.

Carlos had met her once when Jannik introduced them, briefly. She was beautiful. When he shook her hand he felt her smooth skin lingered and he briefly wondered about where it had been, she smiled at him with what seemed like genuine warmth and said she just started watching tennis when she watched his final match in Madrid, that it was some of the best tennis she'd seen all year. Carlos thanked her and excused himself as quickly as possible, standing next to her, next to them—Jannik's hand resting on the small of her back proprietary—made him feel like he was being flayed.

The second set was closer. Medvedev found his rhythm and he started hitting through Jannik rather than being dictated to, and for a few games it looked like the match might shift.

Carlos leaned forward on the sofa, his body unconsciously mirroring the tension on screen. He realized he was rooting for Jannik to win.

Jannik held, and he broke in the eighth game, a sequence of four clean points. This was it. The ending to Jannik's symphony. The scoreboard read 7-6, 6-4, and Jannik bounced the ball four times before serving, the same ritual he always used, and Carlos thought, I know you.

Ace. Fifteen-love.

The camera cut to Laila again and this time she'd removed her sunglasses and Carlos could see her face fully. She was nervous, her teeth worrying her bottom lip, her hands clasped together. She cared. Why wouldn't she? She was watching the person she loved chase his victory.

Thirty-love. Forty-fifteen. Match point. Medvedev served and returned but it landed short, and Jannik hit a forehand down the line that Medvedev couldn't reach. The ball landed in, the chair umpire called the score, and Jannik dropped his racket and fell to his knees on the court, his hands covering his face. The stadium erupted. The broadcast showed it in slow motion, Jannik on his knees, Jannik standing, Jannik shaking Medvedev's hand at the net, Jannik shaking the umpire's hand, Jannik standing in the court with his hands up in the air and a smile so bright, his eyes beaming with happiness.

A picture so bewitching.

The camera followed Jannik as he climbed into the box, he embraced his Simone and his team and then finally Laila. Carlos watched Jannik kiss her forehead, her hands came up to gently frame his face and he giggled into her embrace.

He told himself repeatedly that he no longer loved Jannik. He convinced himself that he'd moved past it and his body's response to Jannik was just residual muscle memory, the ghost of an old feeling rather than the feeling itself.

But watching Jannik stand on the court holding a trophy, kissing his girlfriend in front of thousands of people, Carlos understood that perhaps he'd been lying to himself, the feelings hadn't diminished at all, it only grew in the dark like a fungi, or a malignant tumor, and now here it was. Opened, undeniable, unavoidable.

Jannik was, as he had always been, Carlos' great, all-consuming love.

The broadcast continued with the speeches. Jannik gave his speech in English, stumbling slightly over his pronunciation, thanking his team and his family and Laila, who he called "my person."

When Jannik hoisted the trophy, Carlos felt hunger deep in his body that was indistinguishable from grief. He wanted to be there. He wanted to be Jannik. He wanted to possess what Jannik possessed, both the trophy and the girl and the certainty that seemed to emanate from him in this moment.

But more than any of that, more than the jealousy or the hunger or the terror of his own unreliable body, what Carlos wanted was Jannik to want him back. In the same consuming way that Carlos wanted him. He wanted to be Laila. He wanted to be the person Jannik came home to.

The yearning was so intense it felt like nausea. Carlos stood up again, walked to the kitchen to pour himself a glass of water he didn't drink. No language was good enough to describe the magnitude of his feeling, which was that he was being torn in half—one half that wanted to destroy Jannik on a tennis court so badly until Carlos left a permanent scar on him, and the other half that wanted to be destroyed by Jannik in a different way entirely, to submit to him in totality, wanted Jannik to break him down and rebuild him and own him in ways that made his skin feel too tight just thinking about.

The broadcast replayed Jannik's winning point in slow motion. Carlos watched the ball leave Jannik's racket, it arced through the air and landed in the court, skidded low toward the corner Medvedev couldn't reach. The point took less than five seconds in real time. The rest of Carlos' life stretched out ahead of him, an endless series of moments in which he would have to continue being an outsider—watching from a distance as Jannik accumulated victories and accolades and built a life with someone else.

Carlos turned it off.

He went to the bathroom, turned on the shower, and twisted the dial to cold. The water hit him and he didn't flinch this time, didn't even register it as cold, because everything inside him was already cold, already numb, already dead. He stood under the stream and thought about Jannik's hands on the trophy, Jannik's hands on Laila's face, Jannik's hands that Carlos had watched serve and volley and grip. He thought about those same hands touching him, skin to skin, caressing his chest, holding the nape of his neck.

The water ran over him.

He waited for the cold to spread and extinguish the fire inside him, but it didn't work. This time his feeling stayed exactly where it was, lodged in his chest, a fire that would never dissolve no matter how much cold water he subjected himself to.

His lips were blue again when he got out and his skin was mottled, yet it didn't wash him out of his scorching need in his lower belly, he still felt everything.

The reality that he would spend the rest of his life orbiting around Jannik, drawn by the same force that made planets circle stars, never able to break free, never able to collide. Pluto, the forgotten planet. Carlos, the spectator, to perform normalcy so convincingly that no one would ever suspect the truth.

The intensity of love Carlos harbored for Jannik made him understand why people would die of heartbreak—why the body just gave up when faced with the impossibility of having what it needed.

His body was a traitor and his heart was a liability and his want was a wound that wouldn't heal.

"Te odio. Te odio por hacerme sentir esto." I hate you. I hate you for making me feel this. Whether he meant Jannik or himself or God, he wasn't sure.

Carlos was in the gym when Samuel called. His phone buzzed against the mat and Samuel's name appeared on the screen and he knew before answering what this would be about. Draw day.

"You're going to laugh," Samuel said without preamble.

"Am I."

"Jannik's in your half."

Carlos said nothing for a moment, holding the plank even though his arms were screaming. The Internazionali BNL d'Italia was technically neutral ground but functionally Jannik's tournament, the way Madrid was Carlos'. The Italian fans would pack the Centrale to will Jannik through every match as if they were watching their own son, their brother, their prince.

"That's very funny," Carlos said flatly, and lowered himself to the mat.

"Where are you? You sound out of breath—"

"It's fine," Carlos interrupted. "Just light work out, don't freak out!"

"Don't freak out? It's saturday, Charly. You're supposed to rest."

"Sì, tío, I hang up now."

"Mocoso—"

Three months ago Jannik ascended to world number one. In those same three months, Carlos won a Masters title that didn't move the needle on anything except his bank balance. He'd been playing well, but "well" wasn't the same as "great," and great was what you needed to beat Jannik when Jannik was playing the way he'd been playing since Melbourne.

Rome started on a Monday and Carlos won his first match easily, then his second in three sets against a Frenchman who played beautiful tennis, sure, but couldn't close. In the third round he beat Rublev, and in the quarterfinal he dismantled Tsitsipas.

Meanwhile, Jannik advanced through his own half of the draw. Carlos watched some of his matches. Jannik beat Ruud, and then Zverev in a two-hour semifinal that everyone claimed was the match of the tournament so far.

Then, the final between Carlos and Jannik was set for the title.

Except on Saturday morning, Carlos woke up to a text from Samuel.

"Sinner withdrew from ankle injury."

Carlos sat in bed staring at the message for a long time. He'd won Rome without playing the final.

He read it multiple times until the realization crystallized, and all Carlos felt was… relief.

The parasitic hunger in him felt a sick relief that he wouldn't have to face Jannik today.

He'd been dreading this match for days. No—longer than that. He'd been dreading it since the draw came out, he played through his other matches with the chilling knowledge of Jannik waiting at the end like an executioner, and in the quiet of his hotel room at night he'd found himself wishing that Jannik would lose before the final.

And now, his wish was granted. He was safe.

Except Jannik was suffering, both mentally and physically, Carlos understood how much winning in Rome meant to him. He tried to feel concern, sympathy, but when he reached for it all he found was a terrible gladness mixed with a guilt so profound it made him want to vomit—God, he was glad Jannik was hurt enough to not play, it bought Carlos more time before they'd have to inevitably face each other again, and for that, he was relieved, terribly relieved, and underneath the relief was a darker satisfaction that Jannik's body failed him the way Carlos' body failed him, for once the vulnerability wasn't solely Carlos' to carry. And underneath that satisfaction was an even darker wish that the injury would be serious enough to keep Jannik out longer, to give Carlos more space, more distance from the moment when they'd have to face each other again and Carlos would have to confront the fact that he couldn't have Jannik and couldn't stop wanting him no matter how much damage it did.

They gave Carlos the trophy in a conference room at the club, a subdued affair with maybe twenty people present. He held the trophy and smiled for the photographers and performed the role of gracious winner so convincingly that he almost believed himself.

In the locker room afterward, Carlos checked his phone and saw that Jannik had posted a withdrawal statement in Italian.

The statement had been up for two hours and already had thousands of comments. Carlos scrolled through them masochistically, watching people express their disappointment and their well-wishes, and closed the app without commenting. He told himself Jannik wouldn't notice, among the hundreds of comments from players and fans and sponsors, one absence wouldn't register. But he knew that was a lie.

The guilt had only intensified until it became a tightness in his chest that made it hard to breathe.

His mind kept thinking about Jannik's ankle—what rolling it had felt like.

By now, Jannik was probably in his hotel room with ice wrapped around his ankle, his mood sour with disappointment of not being able to play in front of his home crowd, in front of Laila who'd probably flown in to watch.

Carlos wondered if Jannik was thinking about him. Had it been difficult for him to give up a trophy from his own tournament to his rival without a fight or whether it had been a relief for him too, if some part of Jannik had also been dreading this match.

But—no. That was Carlos' brain imagining a narrative where his twisted desire was reciprocated, looking for evidence of anything—reciprocity, recognition, desire, even just human warmth—that would suggest this wasn't entirely one-sided. The veracity was certainly simpler, he felt all of this alone, Jannik saw him as just another opponent, talented but ultimately beatable, someone to respect but not to want. And the cycle would continue, endlessly, until he retired or died and the universe finally granted him the mercy of not having to feel anything anymore.

The thought made him sick with dread.

Both of them were already in Paris.

Jannik had known about the Nike shoot for six weeks. A promotional campaign shoot at Stade Roland-Garros, him and Carlos in the new clay-court collection.

He'd thought about asking his agent to get him out of it. But he'd known before even composing it that it wouldn't work, Nike had paid too much for this particular pairing and that trying to withdraw would create more problems than it solved.

Jannik had known about what Carlos felt for him for a long time, since their first final in Croatia, four years ago. He was only twenty then, but he had enough experience with desire—giving it, receiving it—to recognize what he was seeing.

It was love, he decided, and Carlos had so much of it, an endless wellspring that seemed to generate more the longer he tried to cap it, and it was eating him alive having nowhere to put it. Jannik couldn't afford to be anywhere near that kind of feeling, especially not directed at him by a man he'd have to compete against for the next decade. To be with Carlos was to seperate who he was in tennis (an obstacle) and who he was outside of tennis (a devotee), and Jannik was no God, he was not capable of that level of grace.

After Croatia, Jannik kept brevity in their interactions, he declined invitations to dinner unless other players would be there too, he stopped responding to messages that weren't strictly about tennis, and he maintained a cordial distance.

In Vienna, Jannik openly stated he was dating Laila. He wanted a way out, of saying without saying that whatever Carlos was hoping for would never happen.

It worked, mostly. Carlos backed off after meeting Laila. But Jannik could still feel it, radiating off Carlos like heat. He could feel it most intensely in the moments right before they shook hands—before a match, after a match—when their eyes met and a flare of passion passed between them, the ferocity of it was searing.

In their game of tennis, Carlos would willingly expose himself completely in pursuit of beauty, watching him play when he was playing well was like watching someone surrender to adolescent in public—it was vulnerable and magnificent and obscene. Jannik felt drawn to it despite knowing better, like watching a fire from outside its radius of heat, unable to look away even as you maintained the safe distance that prevented you from being consumed.

Jannik arrived fifteen minutes early at Court Philippe-Chatrier, which was his habit.

The crew was still setting up, adjusting lights and testing angles, Jannik stood at the baseline watching them work.

Carlos arrived exactly on time, accompanied by someone from his team—his agent, Jannik thought, though he wasn't certain. Carlos looked tired, or maybe just tense. They made eye contact across the court and Jannik raised his hand in a brief wave, Carlos returned it with a smile.

The Nike representative gathered them together. "Okay guys, we're going to keep it simple with some rallying action shots first, then we'll do a few casual portrait shots in the players' areas." She smiled at them.

They started with the rally shots. Jannik and Carlos took their positions on opposite baselines, and one of the crew members fed them balls to hit back and forth while the photographers circled, their cameras clicking rapidly. It should have been easy—they'd hit together dozens of times, they could maintain a rally indefinitely without much thought. But Jannik felt hyperaware of Carlos and where his eyes went between shots.

"Magnifique, that's great," one of the photographers said. "Jannik, can you move a little to your left? Oui, parfait. And Carlos, maybe put a little more topspin on the next one, we want to see the clay spray, yes?"

They adjusted and continued on.

The ball bounced between them. Forehand, forehand, backhand, forehand. As the familiarity of the motion override the discomfort of the situation, Jannik let himself fall into it. This he could do. He didn't have to think about Carlos, or how this felt intimately domestic. He just had to hit the ball.

But then while they were switching sides for a different camera angle, Carlos said something quietly, probably not meant for Jannik to hear.

"Esto es una tortura." This is torture.

Jannik's Spanish wasn't fluent but it was good enough for that. He looked at Carlos, found him staring at the ground, his jaw tight. For a moment Jannik wanted to say something, maybe to acknowledge that yes, this was awkward, he understood why Carlos was suffering through it.

But Jannik shook his head and said nothing, he bounced the ball four times and served to start the next rally. He was filled with satisfaction as he watched Carlos track the ball, adjust his position and return it, as if the younger man on the other side of the court was an extension of himself.

The ball, his body, his response to Carlos' presence. It all felt natural, familiar, like a route back home.

There were various setups of action shots from different angles, close-ups of their hands gripping rackets, slow-motion footage of serves and forehands. Then they were directed to the locker room for the portrait portion. Jannik and Carlos were told to sit on the bench, not too far apart.

"Beautiful, that's great energy," the photographer affirmed encouragingly. "Now Carlos, put your hand on Jannik's shoulder. Oui, like that. Jannik, you can relax a little."

Carlos' hand landed on Jannik's shoulder and Jannik felt the contact like an electrical current, he could feel every point where Carlos' fingers pressed against the fabric of his shirt. He forced himself to stay relaxed, but he was aware—painfully aware—of the heat of Carlos' palm, the slight tremor in Carlos' fingers, and the fact that they hadn't touched since they'd shaken hands in South Yarra months ago.

"Beautiful. Now let's get one where you're both looking at each other like you're talking."

They turned toward each other. This close, Jannik could see the exhaustion in Carlos' eyes, the fine lines of stress around his mouth, the vulnerability that Carlos tried so hard to hide from everyone but that was visible now, here, under the harsh photography lights with nowhere to hide.

For a moment, Jannik let himself look at Carlos the way Carlos looked at him.

It was a mistake. He saw Carlos register it, something shifted in Carlos' expression, hope kindled there like a flame catching. Jannik immediately killed the moment, he looked away.

"Bon boulot, les gars! Really natural chemistry. D'acc, let's do a few more setups and we're done."

When they finally finished, nearly two hours later, Jannik's shoulder still felt warm where Carlos' hand had been.

Jannik was exhausted, he'd spent the entire shoot making sure that nothing he said or did could be misinterpreted as encouragement. It was draining, this constant vigilance in the face of Carlos' feelings.

They were packing up their bags when Carlos spoke, the first time he'd addressed Jannik directly since they'd started. "Good luck for the tournament," he said carefully.

Jannik looked at him. Carlos was studiously not making eye contact, focusing on zipping his bag with excessive concentration. There was something about the set of Carlos' shoulders, the obvious effort it had taken to say even those four words, that made Jannik feel cruel.

"Thanks," Jannik said. "You too. I hope—" He stopped himself. What did he hope? That Carlos would play well? That they'd meet in the final so Jannik could beat him and put more distance between them in the rankings? Or that Carlos would lose early and save them both from having to face each other? None of those things felt right to say.

"I hope your shoulder is okay," he finished lamely, grasping for something neutral. "I saw you working with Juanjo yesterday."

It was a mistake to admit he'd been paying attention, but the words were already out. Carlos looked up, surprised, and for a moment their eyes met and Jannik saw everything there—the hope, the hunger, the desperate wanting, all of it completely unguarded—and he felt his own chest responded with a tight pang.

It reminded Jannik of a time when they were close, so close, closer than most. It felt like a century had passed since then.

He looked away.

"Is fine," Carlos said quietly. "You know, cramps."

"Right. Good." Jannik picked up his bag, searched for something else to say that would end this conversation. "Ciao ciao."

"See you."

Jannik left first, walking out of the locker room.

His phone buzzed with a text from Laila, "how was the shoot?"

He stared at the message.

"Fine," he typed back. "Long. See you for dinner?"

She sent back a heart emoji, and Jannik felt himself relax. He felt safe. Laila was beautiful and kind and she didn't look at him like he was the answer to a question she'd been asking her entire life. She didn't make him feel like he was standing at the edge of a cliff, constantly resisting the urge to jump.

But that night, lying in bed next to Laila while she slept, Jannik could still feel the warmth of Carlos' hand on his shoulder, how easy it was to just reach out and accept what Carlos was offering, to let himself want someone who wanted him. But the scrutiny would inevitably destruct both their careers, and Carlos' feelings would eventually turn from desire to resentment when he realized that Jannik couldn't match his intensity—burn with the same fire.

He couldn't. He couldn't give himself over completely to anything except tennis.

In the darkness, Laila shifted closer to him, her head resting against his shoulder. Jannik put his arm around her and tried to feel something other than the phantom of Carlos' hand, still insisting on being felt no matter how many boundaries Jannik constructed against it.

But Carlos wouldn't let go.

Jannik drifted off to sleep with the comforting warmth lingering on his shoulder.

Jannik was in bed by ten, the fatigue of six matches in two weeks settling into his bones.

The hotel suite was nice, all cream-colored walls and heavy curtains. Through the window he could see a slice of the city, lights scattered across the dark.

Laila was beside him, propped against the headboard with her laptop balanced on her knees, finishing some work email. The television was on low volume, playing a recording of the Monaco Grand Prix that Jannik missed, small joys he allowed himself to have before the gruel of Roland-Garros final tomorrow. But he wasn't really watching it, just letting the sound of engines wash over him, white noise in the shape of cars going very fast in circles.

"You should sleep," Laila said without looking up from her screen. "Big day tomorrow."

"I know. I will." But he didn't move yet, was enjoying this liminal space between wakefulness and sleep. "Leclerc is having a terrible race," he observed, watching the Ferrari drop another position.

"Mmm." Laila finished typing something, closed her laptop, and turned to look at him properly. "Are you nervous?"

"No." It was true. He felt calm. He always felt calm before big matches against Carlos.

"You're going to win," Laila reached over and ran her fingers through his hair, a gesture she knew he liked, that helped him relax. "And then we'll celebrate, and then you can nap for three days straight if you want, my cat."

"Sounds perfect." He caught her hand and kissed it.

Laila made sense in his life, she was a steady presence, stable, uncomplicated. Being with her was restful. It required nothing from him except that he show up and be present.

The race ended with Verstappen winning. Jannik turned the broadcast recording off and the room fell into silence, so silent he almost forgot he was in a middle of a bustling city. Laila already started drifting off, her breathing evening out, and Jannik was about to do the same when his phone buzzed on the nightstand. He almost ignored it—his phone was always buzzing—but some instinct made him reach for it.

Jannik stared at the notification for a long moment.

One missed call from Carlos Alcaraz.

His brain tried to construct a reason why Carlos would be calling him at ten at night, the night before they were supposed to play each other in a Grand Slam final. They didn't call each other, not anymore in a long time. They barely texted except for the short messages revolving around work.

He locked his phone and placed it face-down on the nightstand. Rolled onto his side, away from it.

Whatever Carlos wanted, it could wait.

No late-night phone call the night before a Grand Slam final ever ended well, was there?

Simone kept up a steady stream of conversation during the drive to Roland-Garros, going over the game plan one final time, but Jannik was only half-listening, his mind was off somewhere else—in between Carlos' irises, then further inside his head, looking at himself from Carlos' panorama, wanting to know what made him love Jannik, what did he see in Jannik? Curiosity got the better of him but he shut off that thought as quickly as it appeared.

The walk onto Chatrier was always surreal—the crowd already electric even though nothing had happened yet. Jannik did his warm-up, hitting serves and returns with Carlos across the net, he looked tired like he hadn't slept well. They didn't make eye contact or even acknowledge each other except for the briefest nod when the umpire called them to the net for the coin toss.

The match started and Jannik fell into the rhythm of it immediately.

Carlos was playing well but not great, his serve was slightly off and his footwork was slower than usual.

The first set took forty minutes and Jannik won it six-three.

The second set was tighter, went to a tiebreak that Jannik won seven-five on a backhand winner down the line.

Jannik was starting to get frustrated with the level Carlos was playing at, it was highly unlikely for the Spaniard to be on low energy and unmotivated, especially for a Grand Slam final and above a surface he excelled at.

Jannik thought "Get your head in the game, Carlos. I want to play great tennis."

As if Carlos could sense Jannik's telepathy, the third set was when he finally showed up. He broke Jannik in the opening game, held easily, broke again.

The crowd came alive, sensing the possibility of a comeback, and Jannik finally felt it deep in his bones, the pure adrenaline rush he'd always got when playing Carlos.

The set evened at three-all, then four-all, then five-all. Both of them were playing at a level that felt unsustainable, hitting winners from positions that should have been defensive, running down balls that should have been unreachable.

Their tennis was beautiful and violent and Jannik was alive. He was aware, even in the middle of it, that this kind of tennis could only be brought out of him by Carlos.

At five-six, serving to stay in the set, Carlos saved two match points. On the first one, he hit a serve-and-volley that Jannik barely got a racket on. On the second, a forehand winner down the line that landed millimeters inside the baseline.

The crowd roared and Carlos' team was on their feet in an instant, yelling "¡Vamos!"

They went to a tiebreak. Jannik got an early mini-break, led four-one, then four-two, then four-three. Carlos was fighting for every point like it was his last match on earth, and Jannik could see in his face what this meant to him, his desperation—mirrored Jannik's own—condensed into this single tiebreak, this single match.

At six-four, two match points, Jannik served.

First serve in, heavy and deep to Carlos' backhand.

The return sailed long.

Jannik dropped his racket and fell to his knees on the clay, he felt nothing for a moment except relief—it was over, he won.

It felt like hours had already passed before he finally stood up and went to the net where Carlos was waiting.

They only briefly shook hands. Carlos' hand was cold and damp, and his grip was loose, his eyes not quite meeting Jannik's. Carlos seemed so down and not even initiating a hug, even one where he lost, it was so uncharacteristic of him it left a strange taste in Jannik's mouth.

"Congrats," Carlos said, barely audible over the roaring crowd.

"Thank you. You played great." It was an automatic habit for Jannik to say, one he almost always said to all of his opponents after matches, but this time it was also true—Carlos did play great, especially in the third set, and if things had gone slightly differently, the outcome could have been different.

But they hadn't, and it wasn't, and Jannik was finally a Roland-Garros Champion.

He ran to his box where his team was waiting. His parents hugged him tight, his team grabbed at him, Laila kissed him, and everyone was crying.

Everyone except for Jannik.

He felt separate from it, watching himself experience joy rather than actually experiencing it, but that was normal for him—his emotions always came later in private, when he could process them without an audience.

The enormous silver cup was passed into his hands, heavier than it looked, and the crowd was chanting his name as he hoisted it up.

Jannik briefly saw Carlos leaving the court, his bag over his shoulder, walking through the tunnel that led away from the stadium with his head hung low.

This had been an odd match for Carlos, he was never a sore loser. This couldn't have been bigger than Wimbledon last year, where he also lost but took it like a champ, kept his head up high and smiled the whole post-ceremony.

Uncertainties crept up Jannik's spine like a spider, but no—he knew Carlos would survive. Jannik had no doubt about it. He always survived. He had to survive, Jannik needed him to. Someone had to be there for him to beat or be beaten by, again and again, and if he only ever wanted it to be Carlos, he blamed it on the high of dopamine.

The restaurant was warm and loud with celebration. Jannik's second glass of wine sat half-empty in front of him, or maybe it was his third—he'd lost count somewhere between the antipasti and his father's toast. The Chianti painted everything in softer edges, the candles on the table blurred into small suns, and his mother's laughter sounded like music from underwater.

"Campione," his father said again, reaching across the table to grip Jannik's shoulder. "Campione di Francia! Jannik, you understand what you did today?"

"Papà, I know—"

"No, no," his father interrupted, his eyes bright with wine and pride. "You don't know. Not yet. But you will! Mio figlio."

Laila's hand found his under the table, her fingers lacing through his, and Jannik squeezed back automatically. She leaned in close, her perfume cutting through the smell of garlic and wine. "How are you feeling?" she asked softly.

Jannik looked at her—her blue eyes, her smile, the way the candlelight caught in her blonde hair—and felt a strange disconnect, like he was watching himself from a distance. "It feels... è strano. Good, but strange."

"Strange how?"

"I don't know," he said, and it was true. He didn't know how to explain that winning felt inevitable and empty at the same time, and standing on the court with the trophy felt like standing alone even with thousands of people surrounding him. "Strange."

Simone was arguing with Darren about something—they were always arguing about something—and the noise of it mixed with the restaurant's ambient chatter, the clinking of silverware, the pop of another wine bottle being opened. Someone ordered champagne. Jannik's mother was crying again, happy tears this time, dabbing at her eyes with her napkin.

His phone buzzed in his pocket.

Jannik pulled it out absently, expecting a congratulations text from another player or his agent or one of the sponsors. But it wasn't a text.

One missed call from Carlos Alcaraz.

The name sat on his screen, stark and impossible.

Jannik stared at it, his thumb hovering over the notification. Around him the celebration continued, oblivious—his father was telling the story of Jannik's first tennis lesson again, the way he always did when he'd had enough wine, and Laila was laughing at something Darren said, and the waiter was bringing out a massive tiramisu with a sparkler stuck in the top.

Carlos called him again.

Why?

The wine in Jannik's system made his thoughts slow and sticky. He tried to think of a single good reason why Carlos would call him again, tonight of all nights, and came up empty. To congratulate him? That didn't make sense—they'd barely spoken in years, and when they did it was always careful and brief. Carlos wouldn't call just to say bravo.

Unless something was wrong.

Jannik's chest tightened. What if Carlos was hurt? What if something happened after he left the court? He looked so—Cristo, he looked destroyed in the post-ceremony, his eyes distant and his hand cold, Jannik was too caught up in his own victory to really see just how uncharacteristic it was.

"Jannik?" Laila's voice pulled him back. She was looking at him with concern, her hand on his arm. "You okay? You look pale."

"Yes, yes," Jannik said automatically, locking his phone and sliding it back into his pocket. "I'm fine. Just—scusa, I need to use the bathroom."

He stood, his chair scraping against the floor, and the room tilted slightly. Cazzo, he really had drunk too much. He steadied himself against the table, forced a smile at his mother's questioning look, and made his way through the restaurant toward the restrooms.

In the hallway, away from the noise, Jannik pulled out his phone again. The missed call notification was still there, mocking him. He should call back. He should—

No.

No, he couldn't. He was drunk, not like this.

He typed out a text instead, his thumbs clumsy on the screen.

"Hey. Sorry I missed your call. Big dinner with family. Everything ok?"

He stared at the message, deleted it, and started over.

"Thanks for the call. Celebrating with team right now, can't talk. Hope you're good."

That one felt wrong too—"Che cazzo stai facendo?" he muttered to himself. What the fuck are you doing? He leaned against the wall and closed his eyes. The wine made his head feel full of cotton. Why was this so hard? Why was everything about Carlos always so impossibly hard?

He ended up not sending anything. Just locked his phone and stood there in the dim hallway, listening to the muffled sounds of his own celebration happening without him.

When he returned to the table, the tiramisu was already cut into slices and everyone was singing—an Italian song about victory and glory his father started, he had his arm around his mother's shoulders, and Laila smiled at him when he sat down, sliding his dessert plate toward him.

"There you are," she said. "I was worried you'd fallen in."

"Mi dispiace," Jannik said. "Just needed a minute."

"Too much wine?"

"Maybe," he allowed, and picked up his fork.

The tiramisu was good—sweet and rich with espresso-soaked ladyfingers—but it tasted like nothing in his mouth. He ate it anyway because this was supposed to be the happiest night of his life.

A letter arrived three days later.

Jannik was back home in Sesto when his brother handed it to him—a white envelope with his name written on the front in handwriting he recognized immediately even though he'd never seen Carlos write anything more than an autograph. But he instinctively knew it anyway. The handwriting of Jannik's name was careful, slightly cramped, the letters slanting to the right. Just seeing his name written in Carlos' hand made his chest tightened, his breath catched that felt like the beginning of panic and his mind was dragged back to the calls he missed.

"This came for you from Paris," Mark said. "But, uh, there's no return address."

Jannik took it, and the moment his fingers made contact with the paper he felt his stomach drop. The paper was thick. And the fact that it came with no return address meant that Carlos didn't expect a response, he was offering this as a one-way ticket, a message in a bottle thrown into the ocean with no expectation of being found.

"Grazie," Jannik managed, and his brother left him alone.

He stood still holding the envelope, slowly becoming aware of the absolute silence of the space around him. His parents' new house was closer to the Alpine mountains, overlooking a vast slope of the mountain that would be blanketed in snow once winter came, a perfect place to ski. He planned on staying until a week before grass season started. Their new house was only slightly different than the one Jannik grew up in, bigger and had more rooms, but the architecture was the same, they even brought the old furnitures with them, too, a lot of memories carved into the permanence of those wooden doors and chairs. He was home and surrounded by safety, familiarity, and now here was this envelope, this small rectangle of paper, threatening all of it.

He knew what this was. Or at least, he knew what it might be.

Jannik set the letter on his kitchen counter and walked away from it.

He paced around his kitchen, then back to his room, trying to work off the anxiety that settled into his muscles like lactic acid after a long match. He should just open it. He should read whatever Carlos had written and deal with it like an adult. But his hands were shaking—he looked down and saw them trembling slightly, a fine vibration he couldn't control—and it made him angry. Angry at Carlos for not being able to just accept the boundaries Jannik set and move on like a fucking normal person. Angry at himself for being so affected by it and caring what was in the letter, angry for not being able to just throw it away unopened and forget about it, or just read the fucking letter, or do anything except stand here trembling in his kitchen like a child afraid of the dark. He was angry at the whole impossible situation, he wanted to scream and wail and curse at the universe or fate or whatever decided that the person who wanted him most was the one person he absolutely couldn't have.

But mostly he was angry because a traitorous part of him wanted so badly to read it.

Hours passed. The sun moved across his house, light shifting from morning gold to afternoon white to evening amber, and through it all the envelope sat on his kitchen counter, accusatory and patient, waiting.

Jannik tried to work out, he went down to the gym and spent forty minutes on the bike trying to exhaust himself into clarity, but it didn't help. He tried to watch television, but couldn't focus, he kept thinking about the letter, would reading it hurt more or less than not reading it? He tried to reason with himself that it's harmless, just one person's feelings that didn't have to mean anything to him. But the reasoning didn't work either, because Carlos' feelings always meant something to him.

In the evening, Laila made dinner with his family, kissing him and spreading containers of pasta across his dining table.

"You look exhausted," she said, studying his face with concern. "Tesoro, are you sleeping okay?"

"Più o meno," he said. More or less.

Laila brought out their red wine and poured his family each a glass, and they ate and talked about their days and about his upcoming tournaments, the grass season that would start in three weeks. His mother planned about maybe going to Lake Como for a few days to refresh before Halle, away from tennis. Laila reached across the table and took his hand, her fingers warm, Jannik squeezed back and tried to feel grateful for this, for her.

But the whole time they were talking, the letter sat on the counter just behind them. Jannik could feel its presence like a third person in the room that only he could see, like a bomb waiting to detonate. He kept his back to it, but he was aware—acutely, painfully aware of its presence.

After dinner, Jannik stood in the kitchen and looked at the envelope again. The handwriting seemed to pulse at him in the low light, carrying Carlos' presence in the loops and angles of the letters, as if the pressure of the pen against paper was the evidence of time and care and intention that went into writing Jannik's name.

He picked it up.

He turned it over and saw that Carlos didn't seal it with anything, just licked the flap, and Jannik could see the slight wavering edge where Carlos' tongue moistened the glue, he could imagine the moment of it. Cristo. The intimacy of it hit him suddenly, realization that Carlos touched this letter, held it, breathed on it, left the physical evidence of his body in the saliva that sealed the flap. It felt obscene somehow, intimate, like Jannik was holding and touching something of Carlos' body without permission. His hands were shaking harder now, actually trembling, and he hated that a piece of paper could affect him this way, even after years of careful boundaries he was still this susceptible to anything involving Carlos.

He should just open it.

But he couldn't make his fingers work.

The anger came rushing back, flooding through him hot and acidic.

Jannik shoved the letter roughly into the drawer where he kept spare batteries and takeout menus, pushed it all the way to the back where he wouldn't have to see it every time he opened the drawer looking for something else.

He would read it later. Tomorrow maybe. Or next week. He just needed time.

Codardo. The word appeared in his mind, harsh and accurate, and Jannik couldn't even argue with it. He was being a coward.

A brave man would be able to read the letter and acknowledge what Carlos felt and respond to it honestly, even if that honesty was just—I can't. I'm sorry, but I can't. But Jannik was never a brave man. He was brave on court, yes, bravest of all. Off court, in his life, he was careful to the point of paralysis.

Days turned into weeks. The grass season started and Jannik won Halle. Wimbledon came and he claimed his third Grand Slam title of the year, he knelt on the perfect green grass and felt the satisfaction of another milestone reached. Laila was there in his box, and afterward when they celebrated, he felt genuinely happy, genuinely grateful, genuinely convinced that he'd made the right choices.

The US Open came in September and Jannik lost, defeated by Carlos in the final, but he secured the year-end number one ranking with two months still remaining in the season.

Though he lost Paris-Bercy in November, he won the ATP Finals in Turin, and ended the year having won more matches than anyone.

The media called him the best player in the world, maybe the best of his generation, destined for greatness that would rival the legends. And through every victory and every celebration and every moment of triumph, the letter sat in his kitchen drawer. A small white rectangle that Jannik couldn't bring himself to look at and couldn't bring himself to throw away.

Not yet. He'd convinced himself he would read it after Wimbledon. Then after the US Open. Then after the season ended. Then after he had time to rest and approach it with fresh eyes and a clear head. Non ancora. That's what he told himself every time he opened that drawer looking for batteries or menus, every time he saw the envelope sitting there, yellowing around its edges and slightly bent now from being shoved around by other objects but still intact, sealed, and waiting. But the excuses were transparent even to him.

Maybe never.

Maybe he would never read it.

Maybe it would sit in that drawer forever and became a permanent fixture of his life, it would be there when they eventually moved houses or he retired, maybe it would outlast his career and his relationship and possibly even his memory of why it seemed so important.

But what Jannik would never forget was his understanding that his boundaries were always about protecting himself from having to acknowledge that a buried and suppressed part of him responded to what Carlos was offering. That he felt it too.

He would never let himself think about it directly.

But it was there.

Had always been there.

5 years later.

The red clay of Court Philippe-Chatrier always lifted in fine orange veils under the Parisian breeze. It rose and drifted and settled again.

Today, beneath the late afternoon sun, it did not look like dust at all. It looked like gold broken open by light. Long amber shadows stretched across the stadium floor, softening the hard geometry of the court, and for one suspended heartbeat the whole arena looked like a cathedral, where all things bright were also passing.

Carlos Alcaraz stood at the baseline, twenty-eight years old, his chest rising and falling in deep drafts.

The final ball landed wide and the match was over.

One last time, the championship was his.

He was, without argument and without remainder, the King of Clay, a title he inherited from his childhood hero, Rafael Nadal, and would continue to be passed on long after him.

Yet the triumph did not arrive to him as the old dream had once promised it would—violent, ecstatic, tear-wet, almost unbearable in its intensity. The desperate urge to collapse to his knees and weep, that old parasitic hunger that once colonized his nerves, did not come. He felt no flood of ruinous emotion nor an immediate fever of joy. Instead, a quiet and lucid stillness gathered in him, as if some long-locked room inside his chest was finally opened to the air. He inhaled, and the breath stayed there, luke-warm and steady, no longer snagging on grief or want.

For years, his body felt like disputed territory. It was an instrument of brilliance, yes, but also a battleground, uncomfortable bones and tendons and muscle fiber that would constantly ache.

There were seasons when even his own skin felt like an enclosure he could not bear to inhabit, as though he were trapped inside the machinery of himself, forever trying to outrun the limits of flesh.

But today that same body felt whole.

He was one light being.

The old injuries no longer read like defeats. They read like a proof of a life that had been lived to the fullest.

His sun-kissed body, though now battered, older, and tired, was luminous in its imperfections.

He felt light, he felt happy in a manner deeper than joy. Acceptance. At last, he was at peace with the machine of his flesh.

Beside him stood Jannik.

The Italian was almost thirty, his fiery curls a little more subdued, his face more settled than it had been when the world first began to understand just what kind of force he was, he had achieved a great many things since then—things belonging in history books. Yet even time had not dulled the peculiar gravity of him.

Carlos spent so many years orbiting that gravity that it became part of the shape of his own life.

Jannik held the runner-up plate, nothing in his posture betrayed how much had been spent to arrive there. But there was a softness in Jannik's expression that was not there in their younger years.

Jannik's hand was warm in Carlos' when they shook hands, steady as a promise and just as difficult to keep.

Carlos squeezed it once, gently. Relishing it as the last time he'd ever held Jannik.

For years Carlos' words always faltered, his thoughts arriving faster than the words could bear them. But today his voice held itself beautifully. It was steady and resonant and clear enough to reach the rafters without strain.

Seventeen thousand people came to see a champion crowned, and yet when he began to speak, the absolute silence that met him felt intimate, almost reverent.

"Thank you," Carlos said into the microphone, the words travelled softly through the air before settling into the crowd. "To my mamá, my papá, my brothers… Alvaro, Jaime, Sergio, my family, my team, Samuel, Juanjo, Albert, todos... and to everyone who has support me in this journey. You know, when I was very young, before all of this... there was one summer in Murcia when I always lose. I was maybe eleven. And I remember coming home after another bad match, angry, crying—llorando muchísimo, I throw my racket bag on the floor, and my father say to me… ‘If losing hurts your ego more than your love for tennis… entonces estás yendo por el camino equivocado.' You are going wrong way. At the time I hate to hear it, you know, I wanted comfort and I wanted him to tell me I'm special, that the umpire was blind maybe, not... not this, you know? But my dad—he's right. So much of my career I spend learning how to lose… without losing myself too. There were years where I forgot that, I was not—I was not always kind to myself. I thought if I was not winning, then maybe I was failing, that something was wrong with me. But these people, they keep loving me anyway. Even when I was difficult, when I was, no sé—impossible sometimes. You spend enough years in professional sport and eventually people stop seeing you as human, so I think when I was young, I doubt myself a lot because their words got to me, you know. But they never let me forget I was still just Carlitos. That I'm also just a human. And I think... I think I finally owe that same kindness to myself too. Standing here now, I look at the boy I used to be... and I just feel proud of him, coño." He placed a hand over his heart. "He survived everything."

He stopped there for a moment, his gaze lowering to the clay beneath him. The surface held the imprint of the match. Then his eyes rose briefly to Jannik, and a tenderness crossed his face before he looked out toward the stands.

"Tennis... is beautiful, is what I live for. But you need at least two person to make it great. The magic of this sport, it cannot be created alone. For most of my life, my person was Jannik. For ten years, I have the honor of standing across the net from the most beautiful player I have ever see," his face softened into something so nakedly accepting it bordered on holy, then he looked around the stadium slowly, taking all of it in. "You know... when we were young, everybody keep calling us rivals. But, ah, I never like that word. It sound too small for what he is to me."

Jannik looked shattered suddenly. Carlos saw it. And because he loved him, truly loved him, Carlos looked away first.

"Yes, there were nights I hate him for winning, claro. Many nights. Madre mía—many." A rueful smile. "But even when losing to him was hard for me, I'm still grateful just to share the court with him. The greatest privilege of my life is simply that I exist at the same time as him. Gracias, Janni. Grazie. It was fun. We were fun—it was so fun." Carlos' eyes filled despite himself, just him standing there with tears finally gathering in his eyes after a lifetime spent swallowing them whole.

"Me siento consado ahora," he admitted with a small laugh. "People say to me, maybe it's too early, I should think again, yes? But, no, uh… my body is, uf, very tired. But I'm not sad. Because this life… this life give me more beauty than I ever deserve. How lucky am I? Honestly. How lucky I am that I get to live this life?"

He drew one slow breath.

"So, I think… this is enough for me," Carlos said, and his voice went low enough now that the vast stadium seemed to listen from a greater distance, he smiled through tears. "Ya está, all is well. I give everything I have to this sport."

The light on the clay brightened and then softened again as the sun shifted.

"Today," he said, "I am choosing to step away from professional tennis. I am… I'm retiring."

A collective intake of breath moved through the stadium like a wave drawn backward from the shore.

What an abrupt, swift end to a greatness.

"Dejo mi corazón aquí. I leave my heart on this clay," Carlos said, more softly now with such tenderness in his voice. "I leave it here, entero."

How merciful all of it was.

For so long Carlos tried to starve the monster of his own desire, to dry out the endless ache that kept him trapped in Jannik's unreachable orbit. But as long as they shared the tour, the ember would never have been allowed to die, it would have remained alive despite only being fed the small mercies of proximity. So he removed himself from the circle altogether.

Carlos stepped out in reverence for what had been real and unbearable and painful and beautiful. He was leaving his heart, and with it the love he had for Jannik, exactly where it belonged, sealed beneath the sacred red clay of Paris, preserved there in its final immaculate form, untouched by hope, untouched by time.

He felt nothing hurt in him now. No appetite. No resentment. No grief. The hunger quieted itself so completely that it felt to have belonged to another life, another body.

He was just full. Impossibly full.

He looked at Jannik who was already looking at him, and every year between fifteen and twenty-eight collapsed inside him at once.

Alicante. Vienna. Paris. Melbourne. New York. Rome. Countless locker rooms, practice courts, coin tosses, handshakes, hugs, trophies. The shape of Jannik’s silhouette across every net his life had ever known. The sound of yellow balls splitting open against strings beneath floodlights and sunlight and closed roofs during rainstorms. Every glance stolen and every glance denied. All of it lived inside this moment.

And instead of pain, Carlos felt something vast and peaceful unfurl inside his chest.

Dios mío.

He was so impossibly, completely full of it, of happiness.

He was so happy, it settled into his bones like warm water.

For so many years he mistook love for hunger. But he saw it now, love could also be release.

It could be this.

Looking at Jannik and wanting nothing anymore except for him to exist.

Jannik was still beautiful. Maybe more beautiful now than he was at twenty-five, at twenty-three, at twenty, at eighteen. The clock was counting down, down, down until Carlos was fifteen again, and they were nothing but two teenagers.

There you are, Carlos thought.

His beautiful boy.

His beautiful, impossible Jannik.

Carlos felt his tears gather again, but they no longer frightened him. Let them come. Let the whole world watch him love openly for once. What shame could possibly survive a feeling this pure?

Jannik gave him a life.

When the losses that came hand-in-hand with tennis was a cold, numbing sensation, Jannik made him full—of pain, of a burning desire, of feelings. Jannik was the cause of his pain as he was his cure, the source of his tears as he was his commotion.

Every great forehand Carlos had ever hit existed partly because Jannik was there waiting on the other side to return it harder. Every evolution of his game. Every version of the man he became.

All roads led back to Jannik.

Carlos smiled through tears, looking at Jannik, breathing in the sight of his great love.

Thank you, he thought.

Carlos looked past Jannik and into the roaring bowl of the stadium, and then he smiled a smile so open it exposed the youth inside him. It was the same smile Jannik had once given him on a dusty court in Alicante in 2019, when he was eighteen and Carlos was fifteen and they were still unfinished, neither of them had yet become a name the world could hold, and the future was still a field of open doors and impossible heights. That smile had once seemed like a beginning. Now, mirrored back through all those years, it felt like an ending folded inside a beginning, a light that traveled too far to be anything but haunting.

The stadium held its breath for one fractured second, motionless in the fragile severity of Carlos' grace.

Then Philippe-Chatrier erupted.

The crowd rose in a thunderous wave, applause breaking loose from every tier of concrete and iron, the sound swelling. It felt worshipful. The sound rolled through the stadium in great, continuous surges, a living tide that seemed capable of carrying memory itself.

Carlos stood at the center of the court beneath the warm Parisian sun, one hand lifted in farewell, his face tilted toward the light. He closed his eyes and let the warm sunlight gently washed over him. For a final moment he looked at peace.

Carlos waved once more to the game that had made him, and to the boy he had been when all of this was still only a dream, and then he let the applause carry him forward, out of the life he had known, and into the silence beyond it.

"You hiding from your own party?" Jannik asked softly, stepping out onto the balcony overlooking the Seine.

The farewell ceremony ended an hour ago.

He found Carlos standing at the railing with his hands in his pockets, watching the boats pass below, the last golden light of evening painting the river in shades of amber and rose.

Carlos turned, facing him and smiled. "Ah, you know me. Too many people inside." He gestured vaguely back toward the reception hall where some noise of the leftover celebration still echoed. "I need the air, you know?"

"What an extrovert you are." Jannik stood beside him at the railing, leaving a short distance between them. "É... it's strange, no? This morning we play, and now..."

"Now I'm unemployed," Carlos finished with a small laugh. "Maybe I become a golfer, now, or a baker. You think I would be good baker?"

"Terrible," Jannik said immediately, and the ease of it surprised him—how quickly they fell back into a friendly banter, like muscle memory. "You would eat all the bread before you sell any."

"Eh, this is true." Carlos grinned, a bright unguarded thing that Jannik hadn't seen directed at him in years. "Okay, not baker. Maybe... maybe I coach juniors. Teach them my beautiful drop shot, sì?"

"Your drop shot is shit half the time," Jannik said, and Carlos laughed, his long hair fell gently across his face from the warm evening breeze.

"Joder," Carlos shot back without heat, his eyes crinkling at the corners. "Your drop shot is worse."

"Hm, I agree," Jannik shrugged, admitting with ease.

Carlos laughed again, harder this time, and Jannik felt his chest loosened. When was the last time they were like this?

Umag, Jannik realized. Croatia, years, years ago. Cazzo, they were still young, fireworks exploding above the sky so high, mesmerizing in its beauty, yet they found themselves looking at each other instead.

"So, you're leaving me to win all the trophies?" Jannik asked before he could stop himself.

Carlos hummed. "Go win everything, Janni."

"It is… It's early, no? Carlos, you're only twenty-seven," Jannik continued, because he'd started now and couldn't seem to stop. "How long have you thought about it?"

"I'm twenty-eight, Janni," Carlos corrected, his voice soft. "I… you never read my letter, yes?"

Jannik went still. "No."

"Ah, don't." Carlos smiled at the memory, his eyes distant. "Don't read it."

"Carlos, I'm sorry for—"

"No, no," Carlos interrupted. "Nothing to be sorry for. What's done is done, is all in the past now. It's been a long time, too, you know, since then. I forget about it already." He lied. "But you, eh, finding me in my own party and ask me all this questions. Your turn, now, why you didn't invite me to your wedding?"

"Okay, okay," Jannik conceded. "Laila wanted to have a big wedding. You say it, you and crowds. Wouldn't want to have to find you alone and sad like this at my wedding when I'm busy, I have to be the groom, no?"

"I'm not sad and I won't do that!" Carlos protested, and there it was again—their easy banter sliding back into place like it never left, as if it hadn't been almost a decade since the last time they had a meaningful conversation. "You don't know. Or it is true, we won't know. But still, would be nice for me to reject an invitation, no? Pay back."

"Pay back," Jannik echoed, he tucked his chin down and giggled, shaking his head. "You sound loco, mate."

"Loco! Ay, Jannik! You don't even know what it means," Carlos scuffed, his voice became louder, so contrast to their fragile moment.

"Hey, yes I do."

“Yes, yes, you do." Carlos laughed. "You only know loco and vamos. You have ten years to learn! What does it mean, then, tell me?"

"Crazy," Jannik said. "Loco, you." He was smiling now, really smiling.

"Okay, me, loco, and what are you? The Italian prince now wants to be a Spanish boy, hm, what would they say?"

"Yes, I take your fans," Jannik fired back.

"Coño, so you have double the size! Greedy Janni." Carlos nudged Jannik's shoulder teasingly, he let out a soundless giggle once more.

They stood in comfortable silence for a moment, watching the river. A tour boat passed below, its lights reflecting on the dark water.

"I'm gonna miss this," Carlos said eventually, his voice gone quiet again. "Not just... not just tennis—" He gestured helplessly at the city spread out before them. "Everything." You, he didn't say.

"You can still come back," Jannik offered. "To watch, no? As a fan."

Carlos made a small sound that might have been a laugh. "Ah, sì, I will sit in the stands and eat the overpriced food and boo at the umpire like a normal person."

"You would be terrible at being normal person," Jannik said.

"Janni, so I'm terrible at everything! Is that what you say? I'm terrible baker, terrible normal person! What should I do to pass time, then?" Carlos turned to look at him then.

"É… I don't know. Be an old man in Murcia." Jannik hysterically laughed, maybe it was the evening sun half-buried above, or the alcohol in his system, but he inched himself closer to the Spaniard. "I think you should stay."

Jannik wished he could take back his words, because now Carlos had a somber expression on his face, staring at Jannik but not looking at him. Jannik felt the weight of his gaze all the same.

“Don't… don't ask that of me." Carlos looked down, he feared he would say yes and grant Jannik of his wish without even a moment of hesitation, and he would. He can't let that happen, he can't trap them in the same endless loop anymore, not when he was so close to ending it now. "What about you? You're going to keep playing, yes?" He changed the subject.

"For now," Jannik said carefully. "Maybe... maybe three more years? Four? I don't know yet. I feel I have some good years left in me. My body still feels okay, mostly. Is just..." He paused, measuring his words. "It's just, it will be different now. Without you there."

Pain flickered across Carlos' face. "You'll find other people to play," he said lightly, but his voice caught slightly on the words. "Younger players. They're coming up so fast now, Dio mio. That kid from Denmark—"

"Michaels," Jannik supplied.

"Sì, Michaels. He's good. Really good. And the American, too, the next Jim Courier—"

"They're not you," Jannik said. He saw Carlos flinch slightly and started to retreat back behind that careful wall, but Jannik couldn't let him. Not tonight. Not when this might be the last time they had this. "I mean... they're good players, yes. Great players. But it's not us, it's not the same."

Carlos was quiet for a long moment until the last light faded from the sky, leaving them in the soft glow of the city lights. This moment, the sky, the lights—they all made Carlos want to leave it all out in the open, for the first and the last time. He had nothing to lose.

"You know what I wrote in the letter?" Carlos said eventually, his voice barely above a whisper. "I was—I'm—" he hesitated.

The soft wind was blowing gently in his face, like a little nudge to help him gather any courage he still had, and God did he have so little left. But he had been brave, hadn't he? He had been so brave. And he was ready, now.

"Sei stato il mio grande amore, totalizzante e assoluto, Janni."

The words felt strangely right coming out of Carlos' mouth.

Jannik's breath caught. He knew. But, they were going so steady the past few years he'd just thought Carlos had moved on.

"Ah… feels good to finally say it." Carlos said into the night, his eyes heavy with longing. "But it's okay. I have love you for so, so long. For ten years. Maybe more. Now, it just feels like a part of me. Like, clay on my shoe, or weight of my racket. It's just like a habit of me, loving you. It was hard, yes, but I've grown to like it, it's a good feeling to have." Carlos kept his eyes on the river, not looking at Jannik. "In the letter… I was... I don't know what I was thinking. I wasn't thinking, probably. I just—I wanted to say it to you. To say... something. I don't even know what."

"Carlos… I still have your letter," Jannik admitted quietly. "I just never read it."

"You do?" Carlos smiled, but it was sad around the edges. "Is okay. I understand why. I shouldn't have write, anyway."

"No, was—" Jannik stopped, tried again. "I want to read it. But it was complicated, no? With tennis, and everything. I didn't know what to do, you were… I thought... I thought if I read it, I would do something, I don't know because—I didn't, I didn't read it." He paused. "I should have read it."

"No," Carlos said firmly. "You were right not to. I was... I was not in a good place then—" He made a frustrated gesture. "It would have made it worse. For both of us."

"Maybe," Jannik allowed. Then, because he needed to know, "What… what did you write?"

Carlos was quiet for so long that Jannik thought he might not respond, his eyes were caught in direct moonlight—brown, yes, but also gold and amber and something warm that Jannik never found and will never find it in anyone.

"I was learning Italian, remember? It's similar to Español, so I write the letter in Italian. It's better than my English. But, ah… the language, it reminds me of you. Of course, you're Italian. It's why I want to learn it, too, to speak to you. I know, it's stupid, but it's a part of me, the boy that wrote that letter is still me and I don't want to make fun of his feelings. You know how I am when I'm... when I feel too much. I lose all my, all my sense. I just—" Carlos laughed, but it sounded hollow. "I was happy for you."

"Were you?" Jannik asked. "Happy for me?"

"Yes, I'm so happy for you, now too," Carlos said simply. "And also I hate you a little bit."

"Sometimes, I feel that way, too," Jannik agreed.

They fell quiet again. A cool breeze picked up, carrying the scent of the river and the distant smell of someone's dinner cooking—garlic and wine and something sweet.

The golden light caught in Carlos' hair, turned the brown to amber and bronze, and Jannik honestly thought that he'd never seen anything more beautiful in his entire life.

Nothing in this world can compare to Carlos laughing freely on a Parisian balcony.

"I'm going to miss beating you," Jannik said suddenly, and he meant it as a joke but it came out too honest.

But Carlos laughed that full-bodied sound that Jannik remembered from when they were younger. "Eh, fuck you," Carlos said, still laughing. "You didn't always beat me."

"Hm, I did," Jannik countered, and he was laughing too now, helplessly.

"No! No!" Carlos relentlessly denied through his laughter. "You remember Wimbledon? Two years ago? Molto bene."

"Unfortunately, yes."

"I destroy you that day," Carlos said gleefully. "Six-two, six-one. You couldn't even—you looked so sad after, like a wet cat."

"I did not look like a wet cat—"

"You did! You absolutely did!" Carlos was grinning now, a brilliant sunshine that made him look years younger. "Simone try to give you the pep talk after and you just—" He made a miserable face, hunching his shoulders. "Like this."

Jannik found himself laughing harder, the sound punching out of him. "Okay, okay, maybe I was a little sad—"

"A little? Janni, you were devastated. Devastato."

"Because you were unplayable!" Jannik protested. "What was I supposed to do?"

"Ah, so you admit it," Carlos crowed. "I'm better."

"That day, yes," Jannik allowed. "But only that day."

"Mentiroso," Carlos accused, but he was still smiling, his whole face bright with it.

God, Jannik missed the sound of Carlos' laughter and the way they could needle each other without malice. How long had it been since they were like this? Since before Vienna, certainly. Before Laila.

Years. It had been years.

"We didn't meet in Nantarre, you know, we meet in Alicante," Carlos said, reading Jannik's mind.

"You were so small," Jannik said. "Like a baby."

"I was fifteen!"

"You looked like a baby," Jannik insisted. "All big eyes and—and too much energy. Like a puppy, kind of."

"Oh, joder," Carlos said, but he was smiling. "And you! You're no better. You were so tall and so skinny. Like a... cómo si dice... like a noodle. A noodle with red hair."

Jannik laughed despite himself. "This is the worst description of me I ever hear."

"Ah, but true, yes?" Carlos turned to face him properly now, leaning his hip against the railing. "You were all—" He made a gesture indicating length and thinness. "And you didn't know what to do with your legs. You keep tripping."

"Now, you know that's not true—"

"You trip at least three times during that match," Carlos said.

"Why would you count the numbers I trip?"

"I like numbers," Carlos said with a shrug. "And math. They make sense. Tennis make sense. You..." He paused, something shifting in his expression. "You make sense when we play. You know? On court, I always know where you will be, what you will do."

Jannik's chest tightened. "Oh, yes," he managed. "I know what you mean."

"But off court..." Carlos continued, his voice going quieter. "Off court, I never know. I never know the right thing to say, the right way to be. I'm always too much, or not enough, or—" He made a frustrated sound. "It's exhausting sometimes, being me."

"Carlos—"

"No, is okay," Carlos interrupted gently. "I'm not—I'm not trying to make this heavy. I just..." He sighed. "I just want you to know that these moments, when it's like this? When we can just talk and laugh?" His voice cracked slightly, he was desperate for Jannik to just know. Do they still speak the same language, now? "I don't regret anything. But… these are the moments I will miss most."

"Anch'io," Jannik said, his own voice was unsteady now.

They looked at each other then, God, Carlos was beautiful. He'd always been beautiful, the boyish softness still decorated his face even now and his smile was still the same—his brilliant and all-consuming smile.

Jannik saw the love and the longing and the loss all tangled up together in Carlos' bright eyes. And he knew Carlos could see the same thing reflected back in his own face, all of it crumbling to nothing under the weight of this moment.

"I'm sorry," Jannik said suddenly, the words pulled out of him. "For... for all of it. For ending our friendship, for not answering your call, not reading your letter, every time I—" He stopped, his throat tight.

"Janni—"

"No, let me—" Jannik's voice was shaking now. "You're always so brave, you were brave enough to feel everything. And I—" A laugh that was almost a sob caught in his throat. "I'm sorry I couldn't love you back. I was so fucking scared of what you felt and what we could lose. I didn't understand what I want—" His voice broke completely. "Cazzo, this is the last time we will have this, and I—"

Jannik's hands tightened on the railing.

For most of my life, my person was Jannik. The words echoed in Jannik's head now, relentless. I never liked that word, rival. It sounded too small for what he was to me.

The greatest privilege of my life is simply that I exist at the same time as him.

Jannik wanted to die when he heard those words, it reached inside his chest and wrapped around his heart like a fist, he wanted to walk out of the stadium and keep walking until he reached the Seine and then keep walking into it.

There was nothing kind about the feelings he denied. Nothing merciful. He was just a coward, too afraid of what loving Carlos would cost him to even try. Now he was leaving, time had run out, and Jannik had no right to ask him to stay. This was all they would ever get. He knew it was the right choice for Carlos to retire. He deserved peace and a life that didn't revolve around loving someone who couldn't love him back.

Except that was a lie, wasn't it? The cruelest lie of all. Jannik did love him. The final acceptance settled inside his chest and sent warmth throughout his body.

The way the evening light turned Carlos' skin to gold made Jannik want to close the space between them and kiss him, just once, just to know what it would have felt like if Jannik was brave enough to choose differently.

The tears came suddenly, without warning, Jannik tried to hold them back but couldn't—couldn't hold back anything anymore, not when Carlos was standing right there looking at him with those eyes that haunted Jannik's dreams for a decade, not when this was the last time, not when Jannik spent so many years not letting himself feel any of this and now it was all pouring out at once and he couldn't stop it, couldn't control it, couldn't do anything but feel the enormity of what he'd done and what he lost and what he never let himself have.

"I'm sorry," he managed through the tears, his hands coming up to cover his face. "Cristo, I'm sorry, I don't—I don't usually—"

"Hey, hey," Carlos' voice was soft, closer now, and then his hands were there—gentle on Jannik's wrists, pulling his hands away from his face. Jannik didn't deserve Carlos' forgiveness or the tender way he was looking at Jannik now. But Carlos was always generous. It was one of the things Jannik loved most about him, his infinite capacity for caring. "Janni, look at me. Please, look at me."

His name on Carlos' tongue was a diminutive that no one else used. Janni—soft and abbreviated, intimate in the way only Carlos made it, the double-n humming in the back of his throat, the J more enunciated. Janni. Jannik's entire nervous system responded—a full-body recognition at the intimacy of being known. Janni—a version of himself that existed only when Carlos said his name like that. Janni. The way it sounded in Carlos' accent made him want to be the person that name suggested he could be—braver. His own name, transformed by Carlos' mouth into evidence that he was loved. Janni, soft and certain, like Carlos knew exactly who he was calling to—reachable if only Jannik would let himself be reached.

Jannik lowered his hands and met Carlos' eyes, and Carlos was crying too, tears streaming down his face in the golden light, but he was smiling through them, a heartbreaking smile that Jannik wanted to carry with him forever like a talisman.

"You don't have to be sorry," Carlos said, his voice thick with emotion. "For any of it. You did what you thought was right. What you needed to do. It's okay. It has passed. I'm happy, I am. I'm happy for your happiness, you've achieved so much—ah, what am I saying, I'sure you hear all of this already."

"No—Carlos. Maybe I want to hear it from you." Jannik's gaze softended.

"Janni, I… I'm proud of you, I'm happy of the life you built, you deserve all of it, Janni. And I—" He laughed wetly. "I understand. I always understand you."

"Carlos..." Jannik's breath hitched. "I wanted to read your letter," he confessed. "I wanted to so badly. I almost did. My hand was—and I—"

"I know," Carlos said softly. "I know, Janni."

"I'm cruel, I'm cruel—I'm sorry, I hurt you."

"You are far from cruel, silly Janni." Carlos looked at him with so much love and adoration in his eyes.

"Every time after, every time we were in the same room and I kept my distance, it wasn't because I didn't—" Jannik couldn't finish, the words lodging in his throat.

"Lo so," Carlos whispered. "I know. I always know."

The city lights blurred through Jannik's tears into something that looked like those fireworks from Umag—distant and beautiful and impossible to hold.

"Cazzo," Jannik said shakily, wiping at his eyes. "I'm a mess. Look at me."

"You're beautiful," Carlos said simply.

"Carlos—"

"No, I mean it," Carlos continued, his hands still loose around Jannik's wrists. "You are beautiful, Janni. You have always been beautiful. Sientes—you are kind, warm, sweet, you are—eres extraordinario, Janni. And I—" His voice went impossibly soft. "I am so lucky I got to know you. All of these years, I am so lucky I get to believe in you, to love you. It's you… you are my great love, Janni. Love is—it's a big, consuming thing inside my chest, in my belly. I misunderstand it for hunger, and I thought I could only be full when I could have you. But no, I was wrong. This love I have for you is a fulfilling gift, I feel it now. I feel it so deeply. But I see it, too, not a lot of people have that, you know? I do. I'm grateful, and I'm happy it's you. I have you to thank for this. Grazie, Janni."

Jannik couldn't speak. The words were there but they wouldn't come. So instead he did the only thing he could do, he closed the distance between them and pulled Carlos into his arms.

Carlos came easily, melting into the embrace, and they stood there holding each other as the city hummed around them. Jannik felt Carlos' tears against his neck, Carlos' hands clutched at the back of his shirt like he was afraid to let go, and Jannik's chest finally—finally—let itself break open completely.

"I'm going to miss you," he whispered into Carlos' hair, and the words felt like an understatement so vast it was almost laughable. "So much. Too much."

"I'm going to miss you too," Carlos said against his shoulder. "Every day. But, Janni—" He pulled back enough to look at Jannik's face, his own tear-stained and open in a way that made Jannik's heart ache. "I hope you play some more."

"I hope we play some more," Jannik echoed, remembering.

"Sì." Carlos smiled through fresh tears.

They separated reluctantly, Jannik immediately felt the loss of Carlos' warmth against him. But Carlos kept one hand on his arm, his thumb tracing absent patterns through the fabric of Jannik's shirt, and Jannik let him. Let himself have this last small intimacy.

"You're going to do great things still," Carlos said. "Go win everything, Janni. Everything you want."

"Not everything," Jannik said quietly.

Carlos' expression flickered—understanding, grief, acceptance, all of it passing across his face in quick succession. "But enough," he said softly. "It will be enough."

Would it? Jannik wasn't sure.

The night deepened around them, neither quite ready to let go, Jannik thought about all the matches they played, all the courts they shared, all the moments like this one that led them here—to this balcony, this city, this ending.

"I should go back inside," Carlos said eventually, though he made no move to leave. "My family will wonder where I am."

"Let them wonder," Jannik said, and Carlos laughed—soft and sad and utterly genuine.

"Okay," he agreed. "A few more minutes."

5 years later.

The house in Sesto is quiet in winter, sound itself seems to have been absorbed into the white. The Dolomites rise like ancient sentinels outside the tall kitchen windows, their peaks sharp against a sky so blue. The heating system hums its low mechanical song, the wooden floors creak as the old house settles into the cold, and a drawer opens with the soft whisper of wood against wood.

The envelope is yellowed now, its edges soft from years of being pressed and forgotten by a life lived mostly elsewhere. The handwriting on the front has faded slightly, the ink oxidized by time, but it's still legibly and unmistakably what it always was.

The house in Sesto was supposed to be for holidays with the family, but it became more permanent after retirement, the body finally insisted it was done, there was nothing left worth winning for and nowhere left to go except home.

Years of being forgotten and remembered and forgotten again and never, ever opened.

The paper took on the smell of its surroundings over time—a faint mustiness, the ghost of cardboard and dust, nothing unpleasant but evidence of age.

Hands—older now than when the envelope first arrived, the fingers slightly stiff from the cold, the skin marked with scars and callouses from a decade and a half of gripping rackets—lift the envelope from the drawer.

The hands are shaking, just slightly, the yellowed edges of the letter catch the winter light coming through the kitchen windows.

Snow is falling again, adding to the layers that already blanket the village, everything is soft and muffled and separate from the rest of the world.

The envelope is opened slowly, carefully unsealed, a fingernail working under the loosened flap and lifting it gently, preserving the integrity of it.

The glue gives way with a sound like a sigh, and the handwriting inside covers both sides of the page, dense paragraphs with very little white space, written in Italian.

❝Jannik, I see you. I see you so clearly.

I see you as you become one of the greats, and still all I could think was, look how gentle you are. There are people in my world, and then there is you, as extraordinary as the day I met you. Extraordinary, Jannik. I knew before anyone else, you know? I was the first believer in the greatness that awaited you. Back when you were only this tall, awkward boy with red hair and shy eyes and hands too big for the rest of your body. You have no idea what you sounded like inside my head all these years.

I tried to hate you for the ease with which you exist inside me. I tried. I tried to resent your happiness. But even my heartbreak refuses to make me cruel towards you. Every road inside me leads back to the same truth, I love you exactly as you are. Not as I wish you were. Just as you are. I think some part of you knew that from the beginning. I wanted us to stay friends, but I understand our distance and how this too, shall pass.

You have been the great love of my life, Jannik.

I feel it so deeply in my bones, my love for you, and it wants your happiness more than I want my own. And I do want you to be happy. God, I want that so much it frightens me.

I hope one day you will get married and live the life that you deserve. I hope you wake up beside someone who you love with all your heart, I hope you get to grow old with her. I hope your body stays healthy long after tennis is finished with it. I hope one day when you learn how loved you are, your bones will ache from the weight of love you receive. I hope when you retire, you can finally sleep and dream and wake up in peace. I hope life becomes gentle with you. I hope you continue laughing with your whole chest. I hope children grow up copying your backhand. I hope your people speak your name fifty years from now with pride.

I hope every beautiful thing in this world finds you.

But most of all, I hope you are kind to yourself, I hope you are proud of yourself, I hope you will always find the strength in you to forgive yourself, over and over again.

And I hope you remember me.

Jannik… please know that despite everything, I would do it all again. I would find you again at fifteen years old on that dusty court in Alicante and I would fall in love with you all over again knowing exactly how the story ends. Loving you has been one of the most beautiful things that ever happened to me.

Grazie di esistere, Jannik, grazie.

If I want to rewrite my tomorrow, I should start now, yes, Jannik? So, I think I will retire in five years and in my speech, I will confess my love for you. There, a secret between us. I promise to be good until then if you promise not to tell.

I see you.

You are you. Beautiful, beautiful Jannik, go win everything.

I am I. I will love you from where I am.❞

The hands fold the pages reverently, and set them down on the kitchen counter.

The winter light shifts, the afternoon moving towards evening, shadows lengthening across the snow outside.

The house is still quiet.

Nothing changes and everything changes.

The hands pick up the letter again, not to reread them but just to hold them and feel—paper and ink and words.

The letter is caressed, and kissed gently.

And it is folded again, carefully, returned to its envelope.

But the envelope is not returned to the drawer.

Instead it's carried to the living room, to the armchair by the window that looks out at the mountains, and it's held there as the winter afternoon fades into evening, as the light goes from blue to purple to black, and as the stars come out above the Dolomites one by one, distant and witnessing.

The letter sits on a lap in Sesto in the dark winter.

I hope every beautiful thing in this world finds you.

But most of all, I hope you are kind to yourself.

The cruelest kindness. The most generous curse. The final gift by a lover.

The wrinkled hands hold the letter close above the body's beating heart, until darkness and there's nothing visible except for the white of the snow and the white of the letter.

The hands are pressed against a face, and cries, quiet and contained.

Too late.

The snow falls.

For whatever it's worth,

Tú también has sido mi gran amor, Carlos, te amo.

Te amo, te amo, te amo.

❝My dear,

Find what you love and let it kill you.

Let it drain you of your all. Let it cling onto your back and weigh you down into eventual nothingness. Let it kill you and let it devour your remains.

For all things will kill you, both slowly and fastly, but it's much better to be killed by a lover.❞

- Charles Bukowski, Falsely Yours