Chapter Text
Part One
March 25th, 2005
Wilderness Oak Men's Singles Tournament
The one thing Dean Winchester thought went underappreciated about his sport was the smell.
Sure, there were the usual suspects that accompanied every sport involving strenuous physical activity; the pungent odor of a forgotten pair of sweat-soaked gym socks moldering at the bottom of someone’s locker, the stench of sweat ripe like freshly cut onions, the chemical waft of sunscreen and deodorant failing to do its job.
The sounds couldn’t be undersold, either, so unique and intrinsic to the game; the aerodynamic swish of a racket slicing through the air, the satisfying thwack of a ball hitting the racket in the sweet spot and soaring over the net, the musical beat produced by a particularly rigorous rally, where the ball never touches the ground, and flies back and forth between both players keeping perfect time.
The sights, too, were stunning and enthralling, enough to keep people bobbing their heads from one side of the court to another until their necks were sore; the server leaping into the air and sending the ball rocketing across the net in one fluid movement, the receiver returning the ball in a single bound from the baseline, the bright green ball their only form of communication across the net. And, the moment that everyone who loved tennis--spectators and players alike--lived for; the moment when two players, really, truly understood each other. Their movements were synchronous, the ball obeyed their every command and for just a few perfect seconds, they were playing tennis.
But the smell of tennis was by far its strongest sensory appeal, Dean thought. No other sport had the scent of the crisp air sealed inside a freshly cracked cylinder of lime green tennis balls, or the rocky scent of a court in the high noon sun, tiny almost imperceptible heat waves emanating off the colored concrete. Red courts had the strongest scent, like acrid burning rubber, green was muted and sweet, and blue smelled slightly antiseptic. Maybe one day he’d get to smell the earthy, argillaceous scent of the clay courts in the French Open or the sweet, verdant lawns of the grass courts at Wimbledon, but for now, Dean had contented himself with the unique aroma of the American hardcourt.
He was dreaming of those smells when a loud banging noise jerked him awake. He lunged forward and hit his elbow on the steering wheel, causing a short beep to echo in the empty parking lot.
“Sir, you can’t sleep here. This is private property,”
“No, it’s fine,” Dean said groggily, still trying to remember what city he was in and what tournament he was entering. He remembered driving here last night so he could enter the…Poison Oak? Lonely Pine? Something-Tree Men’s Singles Tournament for a cash prize of fifteen hundred clams. It wasn’t an ITF or ATP-certified challenger, not by a long shot, but it was money. Money he needed to enter anything close to a challenger administered by the ATP and jumpstart his professional career.
“Are you a member?” the security guard asked--if that’s what this man could be called, wearing a navy blue blazer, pleated khakis, and a laminated name badge--holding a walkie on his waistline, threatening to call in the rest of the silver spoon militia.
“I’m entering the tournament,” Dean said, starting to regain some clarity. The sky was steel-blue, indicating the early morning hour. A few wispy clouds adorned the sky, but overall, the promise was a clear and sunny day. “The, uh…the--”
“The Wilderness Oak Men’s Tournament?” the security guard offered.
“Yeah, that’s the one. With the cash prize of fifteen hundred, right?”
“That’s right,” the security guard said with a hint of condescension. He took his hand off his walkie, which was the important part.
“Yeah, I uh, I like to get up early and practice at the actual court, you know? Get a feel for the place. Must have dozed off.” Dean explained calmly and cooly, enough to convince a stuffy country club type, anyways, “And driving this thing, you can’t be too careful, you know?”
The security guard took a step back then and finally noticed what kind of car Dean was driving. Affluenza only spoke two languages; money and age, and typically they were one and the same. Dean didn’t have generational wealth, or indeed, any wealth at all, but a vintage 1967 black Chevy Impala in mint condition could go a long way towards convincing someone he did. It didn’t matter that he didn’t actually have the money to buy the Impala himself and that he inherited it from his father--those were small details of a bigger picture. The Impala had gotten him out of one or two similar jams like this before. “Yeah, I just don’t want to give her any scratches or door dings. Better if I get the first choice on parking,” Dean petted the dashboard lovingly.
“Sure,” the security guard said skeptically.
“Hey, uh…” Dean leaned forward and scrutinized his name badge, “Chauncey. Would you mind directing me to the check-in desk?”
…
“Check-ins don’t start until eight,” the receptionist from the tennis club directed Dean out the door and around the side of a building to a landscaped path leading deeper into the club’s facilities. She was an unpleasant-looking woman with a mushroom cap haircut that only accentuated the unfortunate fact that her face and neck comprised one flat plane, the skin of her neck so swollen with fat it was impossible to tell where her chin was in the flush surface of the flesh. “But you can use the locker room facilities and warm-up courts until then.”
Dean’s stomach growled almost comically loudly. “I don’t suppose you guys have a complimentary breakfast bar?”
“This isn’t Holiday Inn,” she said flatly. Her mushroom haircut quivered as her jowls brushed up against it, “You have to be a member to eat in the club.”
“Of course, how else would this place make money, right?” Dean said sarcastically, “I’m sure the stabling and spa fees barely pay for the golf course upkeep.”
“As a matter of fact, they don’t,” curtly, she sat back down and pretended he wasn’t standing there anymore.
“See you at eight,” Dean mumbled under his breath.
The facilities themselves were almost nicer than the perfectly landscaped hedge path Dean had followed to get to the locker rooms. Everything was spotless; the courts were free of shoe scuffs and frayed nets, the lines were crisp and bright, as if they were repainted fresh every night, and the locker rooms were virtually spotless. It was a level of polish and cleanliness Dean was not used to in league-adjacent tournaments. Once, he’d played a singles match in a repurposed Denny’s parking lot, so this was like playing at the Ritz in comparison.
He’d played at nicer country clubs and bigger venues in ITF challengers that had actually counted towards his NTRP, but that was a long time ago. The Wilderness Oak Men’s Singles Tournament was the highest prize he’d been up for in a while. And he had no intention of ruining it. If Chauncey and the receptionist were any indication of the club’s clientele, Dean was fairly confident the money was already his.
He took a blisteringly hot shower in the empty locker room and let the steam make a small impromptu sauna. He stood in the shower, the pressurized water boring into his back, sweating out the very particular cramp one gets after sleeping in a car. Once his muscles fully relaxed, he geared up and went out to the practice court.
Dean stood on the court and breathed in deeply, his nostrils flaring to take in the smell of the air around him. It was a green court--not too strong, but not so subtle that he couldn’t smell it. The tangy, synthetic scent of turpentine from the fresh paint almost overpowered the sweet almost floral aroma of the green court. To the untrained noise, it just smelled like a slab of concrete but to Dean, it was a portal into another state of being. He dropped his bag and sat down in the bleachers, which were still slightly damp from the morning dew that had accumulated on them. The water clung to his bear legs and soaked through the seat of his shorts, cold and clarifying. His racket and balls lay untouched in his bag. To any passerby, it looked like Dean was just sleeping in the stands, but really, he was practicing. It's just not how one would expect someone to practice tennis.
He remained immobile, his eyes closed, his feet rooted to one spot, breathing deeply and evenly, letting his senses guide the game he played in his mind. Starting with the scent of the court, he felt the rest of his senses follow suit; he could hear the crack of the ball, smell the salty brine of sweat, feel the energy pulsing in his veins, and he was playing tennis.
Across the net, he pictured someone in a crisp white tennis uniform, no stains on his shirt, no wrinkles on the tight shorts stretched across his thighs, and a pristine pair of white sneakers on his feet. His platinum blonde hair was gelled to a tiny peak at the front of his head, and when he smiled, his teeth formed a line of perfect white squares that blinded Dean from across the court. He was holding a perfect racket, brand new from the tennis club, and crouched low to the ground in an open stance, ready for any ball Dean sent his way. Dean didn’t know if this person was real, someone he had perhaps played against once at a similar country club under similar circumstances, or if he was just an amalgam of all the wealthy, privileged assholes who’d made him feel like he didn’t belong in a sport made for country clubs, children of senators, and private lessons, but Dean knew one thing for sure--he was going to destroy him.
Remaining completely still, Dean took the ball in his hand, bounced it several times on the green concrete, then raised his racket, tossed the ball in the air, and blasted it over the net. It bounced in the outer left corner of no man’s land, just barely in the line, but too far back for Golden Boy to return it.
His point.
Even though the game was imaginary, Dean could feel every move he made. He could feel the prickly felt of the ball in his hand, feel the weight being shifted from his left foot to his right as he lunged across the court and returned a pitiful serve, and felt that surge of satisfied energy every time he scored a point, and saw his imaginary opponent’s face twist in frustration. He was so in tune with the game in his mind, that he even thought he might be breaking a sweat.
Dean felt the bleachers quake and heard the sound of footsteps against the metal seats. He opened his eyes and saw Chauncey standing in front of him, his form silhouetted by the rapidly rising sun. “Are you a narcoleptic or something?”
“No,” Dean smiled, “Just getting my beauty rest.”
…
Dean sat on the sidelines with his eyes closed. He heard the bleachers start to fill, heard his opponent start to warm-up, stretching and scuffing his shoes against the rough surface of the court. He could hear the muted murmur of voices, the umpire’s chair creaking beside him as the umpire ascended the ladder and took a seat atop it. Microphone feedback, scratching pen, the chair groaning as the umpire descended again, preparing to call the coin toss.
He could see it all without having to open his eyes. He’d been through this so many times; sitting on the sidelines while the court buzzed with quiet anticipation, while all the necessary preparation were made. He could even see into the future, when the coin was tossed, when the server got the ball and made their first volley, and a rally started that only went on for two or three returns before Dean took the point. He hadn’t seen his opponent in the flesh yet, but the stand-in in his mind would do just as well--some preppy asshole in Ralph Lauren, who took one look up and down Dean and wrote him off as a trailer trash wannabe. Dean could see all the way through to the end and what he saw made him smile.
“Okay, guys. First seed makes the coin toss,” the umpire said. Dean opened his eyes and stood.
Julio Garza was just a kid. His hair was practically still wet from the womb; he had that shiny, dewy skin that denoted only the purest, most coddled form of youth. A youth spent in yacht clubs of the northwestern coast and polo classes and country clubs eating caviar served from white porcelain serving spoons. Garza’s eyes dragged him from head to toe, sizing him up--the faded tattoo on his chest, the threadbare muscle tee, the fraying tennis shoes grey with age--and Dean clocked Garza’s expression subtly change from apprehension to one of smug amusement. That’s when Dean knew he had it. Garza had underestimated him the moment he stood up.
Maybe it would turn out to be a good lesson for him; don’t judge a book by its cover.
“Call it,” the umpire said to Garza. Dean was a last-minute wild card, which might explain Garza’s initial apprehension for his opponent. There was no name on the roster, which meant he wasn’t sure what to expect, not that Garza would have recognized Dean’s name anyways. He was probably still off at a Swiss boarding school when Dean’s professional tennis career was still the topic of some notoriety.
“Heads,” Garza said. Of course. Cocky assholes always picked heads. Dean should know.
The umpire flipped the coin and called the serve, “Okay, Garza. You’re up to bat. Shake hands, gentlemen, so we can begin.”
Dean extended his hand across the net. Garza gripped it like a vise.
“Good luck. You’re gonna need it,” he said civilly.
Dean just smiled.
…
March 28th, 2005
Round 1
MATCH 1: Garza 2 1 1
Winchester 6 6 6
Round 2
MATCH 4: Thompson 3 4 2
Winchester 6 6 6
Round 3
MATCH 12: Sobchak 3 2 1
Winchester 6 6 6
Round 4
MATCH 15: Novak
Winchester
(Delayed for rain)
Dean sat in the Maple Dining Hall as rain rapped softly against the floor-to-ceiling windows facing the golf green. The golfers that had been rained out by unexpected morning showers had taken refuge under the massive dining veranda outside and parked their carts on the porch. They sat inside and drank coffee and beer and watched as their caddies ran like drowned rats up the green, lugging massive bags of clubs and slogging through mud up to their ankles.
“Well, looks like today’s shot,” one man said, sipping a beer at nine-thirty in the morning.
“And I was just about to shave four strokes off my game,” another said sullenly.
Dean took advantage of this moment to grab a plate from the breakfast bar--which did exist after all--and piled his plate with a mountainous amount of scrambled eggs, toast, hashbrowns smothered in hot sauce, and a little bit of fruit salad for good measure. He scarfed the plate down before any of the uptight waiters could ask him to present club identification.
He’d taken the first three matches with little to no expenditure of effort. So quickly, in fact, that he’d had the next two days to sit around and wait for the rest of the qualifying matches to end so he’d know who his next opponent was.
Garza and Thompson were both young, no older than eighteen or nineteen, and a little too cocky, which coming from Dean Winchester, was saying something. Overconfidence is one thing, but overconfidence in unfounded abilities is another.
Garza had done so poorly, that Dean almost felt bad. It was a complete wash. It was fairly obvious after the first set how the rest of the match was to play out. Garza faulted twice on his first serve before he got it over the net; once his foot went over the baseline and the next time, his serve clear the net. Even after the first game, Dean could see Garza become visibly frustrated at his unpredictable playing style. Irritating Garza even more was the fact that Dean had no coach, didn’t follow any particular stance, and moved across the court less like a tennis player and more like a predator stalking his prey. Garza, on the other hand, followed the basics right down to a tee. His inexperience showed to everyone on the court and off. At the end of the match, Dean felt some measure of guilt knowing he’d just completely annihilated some random teenager until he looked down and saw he was wearing a pair of three-hundred dollar tennis shoes and had a Louis Vitton duffel for his gear. He wasn’t hurting for that cash prize like Dean was. He shook Garza’s hand with a smile and said, “Thanks for your luck, but you might want to keep it for yourself next time.” Garza stalked away with tears in his eyes.
Thompson put up a little more of a fight, a fight that was substantiated by a fair amount of illegal coaching that the umpire only heard half of. Throughout the game, Thompson’s coach was calling out gibberish words, that to Dean and the rest of the spectators made no sense, but to Thompson were clearly some kind of code. He’d change up his stance, throw Dean an outside serve, or do something otherwise unexpected after his coach yelled out something like, “Chicken cordon bleu!” They received two penalties and were on the verge of a disqualification before Dean took the final set. He was glad. He didn’t win by default.
The only outlier in the group of boys he’d played so far was Sobchak. He was young, younger than Dean, but not as young as Garza and Thompson. He was tall and lean, always played open, striding gracefully across the court, elegant even if he missed the serve or flubbed the rally. Towards the end of set two, Dean saw him losing stamina having to chase his unpredictable serves and volleys across the court, but he never lost his composure. The final set had taken only ten minutes. It would have taken five, but Dean respected Sobchak’s poise in the face of sheer defeat so much that he let him get a point on him.
At the end of the match, Sobchak approached the net, drenched in sweat and panting, but did not look down the bridge of his aquiline nose at Dean like everyone else at the club had. He presented his hand as if Dean was the better man, the victor, and said in a voice very lightly accented with an Eastern European cant, “Thank you for letting me have one final point.”
Dean shook his hand, “Thank you for one hell of a game.”
Sochak inclined his head humbly, and then returned to his side of the court where his coach began screaming at him in a Slavic dialect.
Everything about Sobchak reminded him of his little brother, Sam; tall, lanky, with brown hair, and kind eyes. Eager and talented, but impeded by a childlike ideal to play by the rules. He saw in the excited look on Sobchak’s face when the umpire called out the score in his favor the same naivety he saw in his brother’s face when they were kids.
But he hadn’t seen Sam in a while, so maybe he’d grown out of it by now. Maybe the world had finally caught up to him. In fact, it had been so long since he’d seen his brother that he couldn’t place the last time. Dad’s funeral? Or had he crashed in his dorm a couple of months after that while he was in California for a challenger? But that was three years ago. Surely it hadn’t been that long since he’d seen Sam in person.
Dean’s lifestyle made the months pass like weeks, and the weeks like days. Dean was always too focused on where he’d sleep, what he’d eat, and what tournament he could scrape together the entry fee for next to keep track of sending letters and phone calls back home to his baby brother. Moving from place to place at a moment’s notice also meant Dean wasn’t especially easy for Sam to pin down, and who had the money for postcards? It was isolating, living this way. Sam learned early on that he couldn’t get a hold of Dean even if he’d wanted to, so his solution? Stop wanting to.
That left Dean with only one alternative.
…
The pay phone in the Maple Dining Hall lobby rang three times before Dean’s brother answered.
“Hello?”
“Hey, Sammy.”
“Hi, who is this?”
The bluntness of the question caught Dean by surprise. Had it been so long that he didn’t remember the sounds of his own brother’s voice? “It’s me, Dean.”
“Oh, Dean! Sorry, you sounded…I don’t know I couldn’t place your voice, man. What’s going on?”
“That’s actually what I was calling to ask you.”
“Really?” Sam said, sounding amused, “You just called to ask ‘what’s up?’”
“Yeah. What’s wrong with that?”
“Nothing. It’s just usually your ‘what’s up’ calls end in you asking for money or a place to stay…”
“Oh, I don’t need your hand-outs anymore, little brother. I’m a member at this real nice country club now.”
“Oh, yeah? For how long?”
“Until I win the tournament.”
Dean could hear Sam’s sad smile on the other end of the phone, smiling because he loved his brother, but sad because he couldn’t just grow up and give up on his dreams of being a tennis pro. Dean wondered if Sam realized that he’d given up on his dreams a long time ago. It’s just that if Dean wasn’t playing tennis, he didn’t know what he’d do.
“Where are you?” Sam asked.
Dean realized he didn’t actually know the answer to that question, and looked around for a clue. “Uh, Washington? Wisconsin? I don’t know, one of the double-ues. It’s raining, so I’ll say Washington.”
Sam sighed, “How much is it this time?”
Dean realized the irony of his situation with his brother. He was the eldest, meant to be the level-headed, stable one who supported his younger brother through his phases of irresponsibility and and dreamchasing. Instead, Sam was the one with his life put together; a stable job, all A’s at an elite university on the track to law school, a girlfriend, and Dean was the one grifting his way across the country, impossible to pin down and constantly asking to borrow money he never intended to pay back.
“Fifteen hundred,” Dean said. “Enough to pay back part of what I owe you, at least.”
It was quiet for a minute. Dean heard the rain start to lighten up. The lobby got brighter as the sun dissipated the grey rain clouds. “Why did you call, Dean?”
His initial reason for calling felt stupid now. I beat some young kids in tennis today and I thought I’d call you to brag about it . “I told you. I called to catch up with my little brother.”
“What do you want to talk about?” Sam asked. He sounded impatient, distracted, like he was busy doing something else. Which he probably was. Studying or hanging out with someone or working. He didn’t have time for his deadbeat older brother anymore.
“Uh, nothing. Never mind. I know you’re busy, man.” Dean said.
“Look, if you need money or something, I honestly don’t mind. I can spare a couple hundred if you need a place to sleep--”
Dean did need a place to sleep. He’d ended up parking the Impala at a truck stop the first night of the tournament since he still didn’t have any money, not even for a shitty roadside motel. HIs attempts at getting an advance on the prize money were nil, even if it was obvious to everyone there that he was going to win. Dean cut Sam off. “No, no, I don’t want your handouts, okay? I just thought I’d call and talk to my brother.”
“Dean--”
“I’ll send you the money once I get it,” and Dean hung up the phone.
He turned around and saw it was sunny outside. The rain was already beginning to evaporate from the shallow pools that had gathered on the porch outside. The golfers finished off their drinks, left their trash on the tables for the waitstaff to clean up, and ushered their caddies, still dripping wet and shivering like skeletons, back outside.
In a few hours, the courts would be dry enough to play on. He’d seen the game stats posted for Novak. He’d taken the first three matches as easily as Dean had, it would seem, wracking up six games a set before his opponents could find their footing well enough to get more than two or three games on him.
Dean wasn’t concerned. If anything, he was excited for the challenge. It would make winning that prize money so much more gratifying. He was tired of crushing the little guppies that swam up to compete with him--it was about time he got to swim in a bigger pond. Nothing was getting between him and that prize money now--not Sammy, not his ego, and certainly not some country club hotshot.
He felt bad for Castiel Novak, whoever he was, because he was going to destroy him.
Notes:
I'll try to include a song at the end of each chapter the matches the vibes or provided inspiration to me while writing. Sometimes I take direct inspiration from the song and other times, I write the chapter and the song comes to me afterwards as a perfect representation of the feeling I was going for. Either way, I'll try to remain vigilant for those of you who like that stuff (i.e., me).
The song that matched this chapter's freak was, you guessed it, Ramble On by Led Zeppelin.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LzGBQerkvWs
Chapter Text
March 28th, 2005
Wilderness Oak Men's Singles Tournament
Dean sat alone on his side of the court, no coach, no trainers, and no partners in the plastic deck chairs that had been set up courtside, and watched as his opponent, Castiel Novak, entered.
He was older than Dean was expecting, not the prepubescent man-children who had just been transplanted from their private estates into the real world, but more around Dean’s age. He was tall, not quite as tall as Dean, with a head of dark, wild hair and had a dour demeanor. Very self-serious. Judging from his pale complexion and unique name, Dean guessed he was Slavic.
He’d seen this type before--the prim and proper country club players who’d grown up with the best tennis instructors who gave private lessons on the sequestered courts of the family’s vast estate, a tennis racket in their hand and a silver spoon in their mouth since they could walk. He walked onto this court expecting to win and nothing less.
He hated it.
He watched as his opponent, Novak, crossed the court with his coach, his racket hanging loosely from one hand. He didn’t look at Dean. His eyes didn’t drift across the court. It was like he didn’t even know there was another side to the net. He remained focused on his warm-ups, stretching with precision and making his swings with determination. He was different from Garza and Thompson--he wasn’t cocky. He wasn’t leering across the net at Dean and whispering to his coach about his wrinkled generic clothes and off-brand racket. He was warming up, treating Dean as if he were a worthy opponent, not just some trash who’d picked up a racket and wandered onto the court to be obliterated.
While Novak ignored him, Dean observed his form. Reserved, closed, but powerful. Adaptable, but rote to a certain extent. If he could catch him on some odd swings, he could get a couple points on him, but that would only do so much good. His legs were strong; Dean could make out the pronounced tendons of muscles in his upper thighs and calves. If he hit any balls directly to him, Novak would be able to return them--getting him to move around the court and tiring him out quicker would be Dean’s best course of action.
Any such observations of Dean during warm-up time would have been wasted. Dean’s warm-ups were slightly unconventional, in that he didn’t stand up, didn’t stretch, and didn’t touch his racket or any of his equipment. Dean didn’t warm up because Dean was not a tennis player. He was a barbarian. He had no form, he had no tells or tics on the court that his opponent could exploit, he didn’t lean too heavily on his right foot, which made his left side weaker, and he didn’t struggle to maneuver into a backhand from the baseline and forehand at the service line. He was all over the court, putting everything he had into every set, regardless of the stakes.
He’d suffered more injuries in his short, unprofessional career than most would in an entire lifetime of the sport, which at times made him sluggish. He never allowed himself the time to fully recover from his injuries--he’d prefer to hurt on the court, not the couch--and there was no telling when his knee would buckle during a serve, or his pinched nerves would send sharp, mind-numbing flashes of pain up his arms and down his back and into the tips of his toes. He was in pain more than he wasn’t. That carelessness made him a weaker player.
But it also meant he was unpredictable. Anyone who ever played against him could tell you that--whatever Dean lacked in finesse, he made up for in sheer willpower. It was nearly impossible to beat him. He could return a serve from anywhere on the court, it didn’t matter where he had been standing just one moment before. He flung his racket like a club, blustering through the air and returning balls at staggeringly strong speeds. It was ugly, it was ungraceful, but it was tennis.
That was how Dean played on a good day like every swing of the racket was his last. But today was not a good day. He was angry, and he was ready to take his anger out on the poor son of a bitch on the other side of the net. Castiel Novak would never play another game like this in his life, Dean thought. He almost felt sorry for the pummeling he was about to give this unsuspecting player, but not in the same way he’d felt bad for Garza and Thompson. They were kids. This guy was Dean’s age, old enough to know the game.
He felt sorry for him because it was going to be embarrassing.
The umpire clambered down from his chair and called them both to the net, “Novak, Winchester. Coin toss.”
For the first time since he’d arrived, Novak was forced to look Dean in the eye. Up close, Dean observed one detail about his opponent he had been unable to discern sitting so far away--his eyes were blue. Not too bright, not steely, but a nice, calming ocean blue that put Dean ill at ease.
“Call it,” the umpire directed at Dean.
“Heads.”
He used the tip of his thumb to flip the quarter a couple of inches into the air, caught it, and flipped it onto his palm. The bust of George Washington stared back.
“First serve goes to Winchester. Do you accept?”
“Does a bear shit in the woods?’
“A simple yes or no, Winchester.”
“Yeah.”
He retrieved six balls, three for each of them, and handed them off. “Alright, your three-minute warm-up starts now,”
Dean put the match balls the umpire had given him in the empty chair next to him. He closed his eyes and took deep, controlled breaths. This time, he didn’t let any pictures come to his mind; he didn’t picture Novak or the racket or feel the court beneath his feet or the coiled-up potential energy exploding into kinesis as he lunged for a ball. He let his mind remain completely blank, and he inhaled. There was a smell on the undercurrent in the wind--not the rubbery freshness of the tennis balls or the fungal mildew of his old tennis shoes. It was sweeter, almost sickening, and it intoxicated him.
“Two minutes.”
Victory . He could smell victory.
“Ladies and gentlemen, this round two match will be a best-of-three tie-break set and will determine which player moves on to the Wilderness Oak Men’s Singles tournament semi-finals. To the right of the chair is Castiel Novak of Salt Lake City, Utah, and to the left of the chair is Dean Winchester of Lawrence, Kansas.”
His estimation of Novak’s ethnicity had been dead wrong, then. Salt Lake City was fairly close to home. Hell, they were practically neighbors.
“Winchester won the coin toss and will make the first serve. Time, gentlemen.”
Dean opened his eyes, stood, retrieved one of the match balls with his racket, and walked out onto the court. He let his brother’s words echo in his head, the nature of their conversation and the tone of Sammy’s voice; the disappointment he felt in his older brother. Dean dredged up the anger he felt that morning, the shame, and gripped his racket tighter.
Novak stood directly down the center line, swaying back and forth at the baseline, low and slow, waiting for his serve.
Dean squeezed the ball until he felt the rubber lining bulge under the yellow felt.
Sam’s voice echoed in his ears; the disillusioned, impatient timbre of someone at the end of their rope, the lingering sighs, “Why did you call, Dean?” What do you want?
What do you want?
By the time he opened his eyes, he’d been standing there motionless for almost ten seconds. If he didn’t serve soon, he’d get a time violation. That was all the warming up Dean did in the presence of others--in the few, short seconds between the umpire calling time and the first serve of the game. It was all he needed
He crouched low and then jumped up with all his energy, his calves propelling him two and a half feet up in the air. Dean found the ball again just in time for his racket to collide with it, right in the racket’s sweet spot, where the mesh of synthetic string was at its softest, most pliable, and sent the ball barreling over the net powered by sheer brute force.
It bounced in the outer right corner of the service court and skipped out of bounds before Novak could even make a move for it. His head was the only thing on his body that moved, to watch the ball skip away from him, waving his arms and whistling a sweet tune as it cut through the air.
“15-love, advantage Winchester,” the umpire’s voice echoed in the largely empty court. There was a smattering of applause.
Dean saw a blue blaze in his opponent’s eye from across the net. Novak seemed to realize then what he was up against. He didn’t look shocked like the rest of his opponents had, blindsided by the power of his serve, his self-satisfied smirk wiped from his face; Novak looked intent. Intent on what, Dean couldn’t be sure.
Dean smiled breathlessly. It wasn’t reciprocated.
Dean took another of his match balls and held it, debating his next move. That’s part of what made Dean such an unpredictable player--most of the time, he didn’t even know what he was going to do until he was standing on the court. It was a weak point, at times, sure, when he stood there for too long thinking instead of playing and went over the 25 second time allotment, but the reward outweighed the risk. When you don’t even know what your next move is, how can your opponent? If he was open to any possibility, that meant he was open to any change. Change on the court was good. It was a necessity.
Dean thought he’d change it up on this serve--one bounce, and send it across. Don’t milk it. Catch him off guard.
But this time, Novak was ready. After one high bounce, Dean hit the ball into the service court, about a foot away from the net on Novak’s side, and miraculously, Novak had made the two bounding strides from the baseline to return it. Dean had to admit, he wasn’t expecting that. He shuffled left clumsily as the ball crossed back over to his side of the court, and tipped it with the edge of his racket. It stuttered a little further up the court and Dean ran to meet it, ultimately returning it across the net.
Novak was more prepared than he was expecting and they rallied--an actual honest to God rally --for a few shots.
“30-love.”
This might even prove to be challenging, Dean thought.
“30-15.”
Dean swallowed thickly.
“30-30.”
Shit . I could have gotten that. Why didn’t I get that?
“30-40.”
Dean hit the ball across the net, and it came back over within a second.
One shot. Return.
Two.
Three.
Ten.
Dean’s shoulder began to scream by the eleventh shot in the rally. His rotator cuff was being ground down to the bone. He screamed as eleven shots turned into twelve, thirteen, fourteen.
Fifteen. He hadn’t played a fifteen-shot rally in years.
“Game, Novak”
Dean stretched his shoulder and gripped his racket tighter.
Fuck .
…
Round 4
MATCH 4: Novak 6 5 6 5
Winchester 3 6 5 7
Every trainer Dean had ever spoken to when he could scrape together enough cash for a lesson here and there told him he’d never play a game past thirty--hell, twenty-eight--if he kept going at the rate he was. He needed to learn poise, posture, the proper stances and serves and movements in order to become a truly great player, and he had the makings for one. Oh, yes, all the piece were there. A balanced diet, balanced exercise regimen and daily meditation would be all it took to bring them together. He could be an all-time great.
Dean was an all-time great, and he didn’t need to eat kale and drink protein shakes to prove it. It wasn’t his responsibility to prove it to anyone. It was their responsibility to see it.
Dean learned fairly quickly to save his money, and not bother spending it on the advice of people he didn’t respect. But, any way you spun it, his tennis career was not long for this world. He didn’t care how long he played, he didn’t care how bad he hurt himself--there was nothing like the thrill of playing tennis, and playing it his way was part of the deal. But the injuries didn’t matter, Dean thought. Once he made it to the U.S. Open, he’d get his own coach and personal trainer and dietician and physical therapist and they could figure out what to do about his rolled ankles and a steady diet of hamburgers and gas station hot dogs. All he had to do was play.
Dean had truly believed this all his life, and up until now, had no evidence to the contrary. But as he crouched over in his chair, gulping down massive breaths of air still thick with the scent of petrichor from the drying rain puddles, and cast a sidelong glance to Novak on the other end, he doubted himself for the first time.
His shoulder had been aching since game one, and he hadn’t let up once. He knew it was a mistake that was going to cost him in a big way, bigger perhaps than any injury he’d incurred thus far, but he didn’t care. He wanted to win. Now more than ever.
How long had they been playing? One hour? Five?
Before the match, he felt he’d never been more ready to play tennis in his entire life, and yet here he was, four sets later, with no end in sight. This was the finale, but somehow it felt like the game was just beginning. They’d been trading wins and losses the entire match, one not quite pulling ahead before the other had caught up. He’d taken the last set, just barely, after a rally that had lasted twenty-three shots finally ended in Dean’s favor.
Dean thought he’d never been more relieved to hear the words, “Two-minute break,” in his life.
Spots swam in front of his eyes from the pain in his shoulder. Every pump of his heart sent a legion of white blood cells rushing to address the pain, where they charged headlong into the line of fire and were decimated by the angry, torn cartilage in his rotator cuff. Their annihilation sent writing pain through Dean’s veins and capillaries until he could feel them finally cough their last, pained breaths in the tips of his fingers. Then, the next wave came and the pain began anew. His arm was buzzing with the death of billions of blood cells.
Dean looked over at Novak; he drank from a crisp, dewy bottle of cold water and remained perfectly still in his chair. He could tell he was hurting, even though he showed no outward signs. It was an internalized exhaustion Dean had endured before.
Novak was keeping it inside. Seemingly, he kept everything inside. Throughout the entire match, Novak kept his cool. As a goddamn cucumber. His face was completely unreadable, a blank slate, the complete opposite of Dean’s emotional and physical composure throughout the game--Dean grimaced at bad volleys, bared his teeth in frustration when he flubbed an easily returnable rally, grinned when Novak missed a shot and barked out a laugh when the umpire called the game in his favor. He let everyone see him pant like a dog and sweat like a pig.
Novak, however, was as neutral as Switzerland during wartime. He didn’t look frustrated at his mistakes, even when he lost the twenty three shot rally, or joyous at his expert plays, like the change-up serve that had sent Dean running left when the ball was, in fact, going right. His expression of intent remained consistent and unchanged.
Dean knew now what that intention signified--he intended to win.
“One minute, gentlemen.”
Novak had a way of maneuvering the ball close to himself, so it always seemed to land in the same three places--at his feet, to his immediate left or to his immediate right. It made switching between forehands and backhands fluid and effortless, and even after four long games and hundreds of shots exchanged between them, Dean still wasn’t sure how he was able to do it. Dean could only give him a run-around for the first three or four shots of a rally, and after that, it was like Dean was playing a game he didn’t know the rules to in a dark room with a pair of earplugs in. Novak bent the ball and racket to his will. It was infuriating. He had to break him somehow. This was his last chance.
“Time,” the umpire called. Shakily, Dean stood. His overexerted legs trembled like plates of Jell-O on a fault line. He pushed out of his chair using his racket as a makeshift cane and walked to the baseline. Even the calm, cool, collected Novak was starting to show the repercussions of the day’s demanding proceedings; he looked like a puppet being pushed forward by marionette strings as he crossed the court.
Normally, Dean wasn’t one to pay any mind to the peanut gallery that watched from the stands, mostly because in the kinds of matches he played, it would be record-breaking if there were more than two dozen people watching. But, he couldn’t help but notice the stands had gradually filled as the match continued.
They had started with the going rate of eleven or so senior citizens in the bleachers, but as the day dragged on, and the sun had moved more than halfway across the sky since they’d started, and the match became more contentious, and the other club activities had ended, and word had begun to spread about the tennis finals match that had gone on all day long and was still up in the air in the last set, it was a full house.
Dean hadn’t played for an audience in a very long time. Granted, this was an audience of elderly Masons, middle-aged golfers, and day drinkers, but it was more eyes on him at one time than there had been since before his dad died. Luckily for him, he didn’t get performance anxiety. It almost emboldened him, in a way, to see an expectant audience sitting opposite the court.
He scanned the faces in the crowd. The old people fresh out of their water aerobics classes, what little hair they had still damp from the pool, the middle-aged winos with purple stains on their chins, the golfers in paisley sweater vests--he looked at the other half and felt, for the first time, an understanding with them. For perhaps the only time in his life, his interests and the interests of the rich and well-off intersected, the briefest slivers of their lives converging right there, in the middle of the court, like the shadows of the moon and sun for that brief moment in dawn and dusk that they can glimpse one another.
“Ladies and gentlemen, the score is currently Novak, 2, Winchester, 2. This is the final set. The winner of this match will be the winner of the Wilderness Oak Men’s Singles Tournament. Best of luck, gentlemen. Set five serve, Novak.”
He let the adrenaline coursing through him blot out the blinding pain in his arm. He lifted his racket. He planted his feet. He crouched down.
Here we go .
Dean played with emotion. He didn’t mind chasing the ball all around the court, or making an ugly serve, or screaming with the amount of effort it took to push his aching body past its limit. That was the only advantage Dean had over Novak--stamina and a pure, animalistic desire to win.
In this, the last set, Dean decided he’d stop trying to figure out the rules of Novak’s game. He’d play to his advantage, that’s how he’d break him--by hitting every ball as hard as humanly fucking possible.
By the time his ears had stopped ringing from the force of his last shot, the amplified voice of the umpire cut through the miasma of pain. “30-40.”
Who had the advantage? He’d forgotten. He didn’t know how long they’d been playing. He’d lost time trying to maintain focus on holding his racket and not vomiting from the dizziness.
He could just make out Novak on the other side of the court, a blurry little figure in a white polo, his body halfway turned away, preparing to make the game’s final serve.
His adrenaline could no longer outweigh the agonizing pain in his shoulder. He could barely see through the pain. He’d focus on the senses he could still rely on--sound, taste, and smell. Dean closed his eyes.
Crack . The ball was served. Thwop. It hit the court and bounced off.
He swallowed and tasted blood.
And a smell, familiar and yet distant. The same sugary-sweet odor that made his head spin before the game flooded his nostrils--victory.
He swung.
Dean opened his eyes.
There was a time delay.
It was uncanny, horrifying in a way, to see everyone in the stands rise to their feet in slow motion, their faces elated and excited, mouths contorted into the oblong O-shapes of shouts, or the misshapen gashes of smiles and not hear any of the sounds that accompanied it. Their hands were sharp daggers or clenched fists, crashing and crashing and crashing against each other. They leaped into the air, suspended in time. The loaded hair trigger of the match had gone off, and burst into the stands like cannon fire. They screamed as it hit them.
Then, the words echoed in his head, “Game, Winchester.” All the noise from the court came crashing in on him all at once; the uproarious cheers and claps, the cacophony of excited screams, the loud thundering of his own heart and pumping blood, the clattering of his racket as it fell out of his hand, the bright, blinding light of the mid-evening sun burning his eyes as the light came flooding back in.
The crowd had never seen anything more exhilarating in their entire lives. Even the umpire had risen out of his seat in the last seconds of the game, when Winchester had closed his eyes and taken the final swing on what was, apparently, complete faith. He had never seen anything like it in all his career in professional tennis.
He’d won.
His legs gave out. Dean sank to his knees. He felt the sandpapery-rough texture of the green hardcourt press into his flesh, the pebbles and dust embedding itself into his skin, leaving little red pocks and impressions from the impact his knees made with the ground. His right arm finally withered and hung limp at his side, completely useless.
The umpire called out the results, “Dean Winchester is the champion of the Wilderness Oak Men’s Singles Tournament, 2005.”
But another, deeper, shrouded part of himself knew that wasn’t why he was so overcome with emotion.
Dean won almost every time he played, but he rarely ever competed. He didn’t even have to try anymore. Winning had lost its thrill entirely. It had become the expected product of a simple and straightforward equation he’s calculated hundreds of times.
He was on his knees now not because he’d won, but because he had come so close to losing.
He had forgotten tennis could feel like that. That winning had once felt so good. The thrill of real competition, hard fought and hard-won, was more exhilarating than any other product of the game. More than the money, or the respect of his little brother, or the roar of the crowd or the immense satisfaction of emerging victorious.
The competition. That was everything. It was addicting.
It was the lifeblood of the sport when he was younger. If a match wasn’t competitive, it hadn’t been worth playing. There was a time not too long ago that picking off fish in a barrel like he'd done Thompson and Garza would have made him sick to his stomach. That wasn’t playing tennis; it was giving up. Dean had given up. Years ago.
But thanks to the man on the other side of the net, he had found it again, the feeling he had stopped chasing, stopped even imagining he’d feel again.
The feeling of the game .
Novak hung his head--Dean couldn’t tell if he was disappointed or just relieved the match was finally over.
“Please shake hands, gentlemen.”
“I can’t stand up,” Dean laughed.
Notes:
The musical inspiration for this chapter is the same as its namesake; You Don't Know How It Feels by Tom Petty.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ygfA1A45tn8
Chapter Text
March 28th, 2005
Wilderness Oak Men's Singles Tournament
“I’m looking at it right now, Sammy, and I’m telling you, it’s gorgeous.”
The 1st place trophy for the Wilderness Oak Men’s Singles Tournament sat on the edge of a pool table in the expansive lounge area of the club, the dim orange light causing it to glow like boiling metal in a furnace. At the bottom of the two-tiered trophy a stem and cup, sat on a small pedestal that had “1st Place Wilderness Oak Men’s Singles Tournament” monogrammed onto a placard. Around the cup was a cage of gilded plastic support beams that formed a scaffolding for the figure that sat atop the second tier; a little golden man leaping into the air with one leg aloft holding a tennis racket. Dean could tell the trophy was cheaply made, but it was a cheap symbol to represent everything more valuable he had gotten out of this tournament, and he couldn’t even put words to that.
It was hours after the final match had concluded, and the landscape that lay outside the giant bay windows of the lounge was dark and dusky. Off to one side, the mountainous landscape (so definitely not Wisconsin), rose and fell like ocean waves suspended in time, their peaks still blanketed with the last remnants of stubborn spring snow. Running adjacent to these windows was one solid pane of glass that revealed a sheer drop-off into a snaking valley that had a gushing river coursing down it, swollen with freezing-cold melted snow and Washingtonian rains. It was a perfect panorama of the northwestern night. Now Dean could see why membership to this place was so expensive--it was like playing golf in a postcard.
After he’d collapsed on the court, Dean spent three hours in the club infirmary being pumped full of electrolytes and Tylenol 3 to mediate the searing pain in his shoulder. The screeching of a few hours ago had now become a dull, hot throbbing that turned the inside of his leather jacket into a furnace. Now, he was self-medicating. He found the more beer he drank, the more distant the pain became.
All the losers, plus the one winner, had been called back to the club for a ceremonial wrap party to signify the end of a successful tournament. A brief ceremony was held where awards were disbursed, and Dean thought he’d never seen a room of people hate him more. Half of the faces that stared back at him from the small raised stage where he received his trophy were the babyfaces of his opponents still nursing their wounds, and the others were simply the snotty members of the club, who took one look at him up there in his scuffled leather jacket and jeans, grinning lopsidedly, and found him wanting.
This only made Dean’s grin even bigger; they didn’t want him here, but they couldn’t do anything about it. He won , and they had to engrave his name onto their fucking trophy. All they could do was hate him from a distance, not realizing how much Dean rejoiced in it.
The small subsect of people there who didn’t look ready to mob him with torches and pitchforks were the people who were sitting in the audience for Novak v. Winchester. None of those select few could have hated him after the sheer artistry they’d seen on the court that night. They were exhilarated just to be in the same room as him and Castiel. He hoisted the trophy up victoriously and was met with a handful of claps from the spectators of the match, and from his opponent, Castiel Novak, standing next to him as second-runner-up on stage.
Sam laughed. “Are you drunk?”
“Not yet,” Dean said, draining the last dregs of his beer mug. “I’m working on it.”
“Well, congratulations,” Sam chuckled.
Dean worked his jaw in an attempt to get the next words out, “Hey, I’m sorry about earlier. I really didn’t--”
“Dean, it’s fine. I’m sorry, too.”
There was an awkward pause over the line. It was an unspecific, blanket apology on behalf of both of them--delving into the specifics would have only made it harder to talk the next time Dean called. Sorry was an empty word, but it was all either could muster up without opening a cut that had only just healed.
Dean felt the envelope containing the cash prize press into his chest when he took a deep breath in, “Hey, I got the money, and I’m gonna pay you back every cent I owe you. After I get a little gas…and maybe a motel for the night…and a bite to eat.”
Sam laughed. It made Dean feel good, how quickly he and his brother could make amends. There was a thought gnawing at the back of his head that this was just another temporary solution, a fresh band-aid being put over a years-old wound that hadn’t been given time to heal, but Dean knew, at least for the moment, that things between him and his brother were alright.
“But that still leaves you with, like, eighty-five percent of the money. Seventy-five at the least.”
“When will I see you again?” Sam asked.
“I was thinking maybe just a couple days. Hell, I’m on the same coast. Why not swing by and say ‘hey’ to my little brother while I’m on this side of the country?”
“That sounds great, Dean.”
He didn’t tell Sam how badly he’d injured his shoulder in the match. It would only make him worry, or worse--insist that he should stay with him for a few months so he could heal properly. Dean, even though he loved his brother more than anything--more than tennis--could quite frankly think of nothing worse than playing house with his brother and his girlfriend where he played the part of the invalid on the couch.
“I won't be interrupting anything, will I? Study group or chess club or whatever it is you do down there?”
Sam chuckled good-naturedly, “No, please. Come.”
“Alright, I’ll see you then, Sammy.”
“Bye, Dean.”
He handed Chauncey his cell phone back. “Appreciate it, man. I really got to get me one of those.”
Chauncey snatched the phone away, put it back in its clip fastened to his belt, and stalked away, wordlessly.
“Who shit in his cornflakes?” Dean mumbled to himself.
Dean picked up his pool cue, buffed the end with blue chalk, and resumed shooting the game of pool alone. Dean knew that he had overstayed his welcome here--a welcome he’d never really had in the first place. But while the food and drinks were still aplenty, Dean thought he would stay. Or, at the very least, until he finished his solo game of pool.
One of the waitstaff came by and whisked away Dean’s empty mug, instantly producing another.
“Thanks, garcon, but I don’t need any freshening up, yet.”
“I’m sure,” the waiter said, voice sodden with indifference, “but this comes compliments of that gentleman over there."
Dean followed the tip of the waiter’s finger to find Castiel Novak at the other end of it. He was sitting alone at the bar, no drink in front of him, staring silently out of one of the windows into the scenic night.
He felt a vein in his forehead throb.
It was always some kind of mind game with these country club types, always trying to get in your head, psyche you out, or better yet, paying their daddy’s bodyguards to rough you up the night before a match. It had only happened to Dean once, and he’d be damned if he’d let it happen again. It seemed like they could play every game besides the one that actually took place on the court.
He knew tennis was a sport of affluence, and of all Dean’s many strengths, money was never one of them. Tennis was not a game for underdogs, and that had always been made very plain to him, starting with his father telling him and reinforced every time he was asked to leave the premises of a country club for not looking the part, every time he was snickered at behind his back, every time he couldn’t cough up the entrance fees for challengers. He didn’t belong, and that’s what made winning so damn fun.
It was intoxicating to watch the expressions of cocky self-assurance melt into panic and then harden into sheer frustration at the realization that some no-good hillbilly trash from Lawrence, Kansas was going to mop the fucking court with them. Sometimes that almost beat the high of playing the game
He didn’t want to gloat--oh, who was he kidding? Yes, he did. He wanted to ram it down Novak’s throat. But what had happened out there today, he couldn’t gloat about. He had almost lost. Novak had taken the competition away from him at his strongest, his angriest, and Dean could safely say no other player had ever accomplished that before.
Rather than spend time trying to decode what the anagram of a free beer was supposed to mean, Dean set his pool cue down, shouldered his way through the party crowd, and right up to Novak.
“Hey.”
“Hello,” Novak said civilly. Dean narrowed his gaze at him. Was he playing dumb? What was the angle?
“You mind if I ask you a question?”
“Sure.”
“Where do you get off, man?”
Novak didn’t look taken aback or threatened so much as genuinely confused, “I beg your pardon?”
Dean leaned in closer, “You lost, but you lost gracefully, man. Not a lot of people can say that. Own it. The game you’re playing now it’s just…sad.”
Novak furrowed his eyebrows, “I’m sorry if I’ve offended you. I simply saw you were drinking a beer and asked the bartender to send you another as a congratulations for a game well played.”
Suddenly, Dean got the very odd feeling that Novak was being genuine. There was no sharp edge to his voice or leer in his eyes. Either he was being for real, or he was the best liar Dean had ever met.
In any case, he wasn’t going to let his guard down. Novak was up to something…he had to be. These types didn’t take their losses on the chin. They couldn’t. Especially not when their loss was to someone like Dean.
“Well, I appreciate the free drink, but I don’t like owing debts to anybody,” Dean said, flagging down the bartender. “What’ll you have? Long Island iced tea? Mojito?”
“Oh, no thank you. I don’t drink.” Novak said.
Of course, you don’t , Dean thought. “Alright, coffee then. How do you take it?”
“I don’t drink caffeine, either.”
“No booze or caffeine? What are you, Mormon?” Dean half-joked.
Novak didn’t laugh. Dean’s gaze shifted down to a golden pendant lying on Novak’s chest--a tiny gilded statuette of Jesus nailed to the cross. Dean moved back, now slightly embarrassed that he had tried to strongarm him. He didn’t understand the particulars of religion, since he’d never really bought into the whole scheme himself, but he did know that people were awfully touchy about it. He didn’t want to get near that one with a ten-foot pole.
“Alcohol is a depressant and caffeine is a stimulant. Taking either one of them is like taking a drug. Not to mention other negative health side effects…increased heart rate, insomnia, headaches, and in extreme cases, liver disease.”
For once, Dean was the one at a loss for words. He couldn’t get a read on this Castiel guy. What kind of name was that, anyway? It sounded like a knock-off luxury clothing line.
“Can I help you gentlemen?” the bartender asked, once he’d finally made his way back around to them.
“Yeah. Another stout for me and a glass of warm milk for my extremely disciplined friend here.”
The bartender rolled his eyes and stalked away. “I don’t believe they offer milk at this establishment,” Novak observed, “I appreciate the gesture, Mr. Winchester, but I don’t think my coach will appreciate me conferring with the ‘enemy,’ so to speak.”
Dean recognized Novak’s coach from earlier in the day--during the match, he’d sat off to the sidelines and fulfilled the same purpose all coaches did--fuck all. He mingled in the crowd, schmoozing with other tournament officials and club members, laughing raucously.
Dean had almost been willing to give Novak the benefit of the doubt after their brief conversation--he seemed a little ignorant to the world, not just the world of tennis but the world in general. His mannerisms were strange, robotic almost, like he was raised on a different planet and had been supplanted into modern society very suddenly and very recently.
But all those doubts had gone away the second he laid eyes on his coach. Dean could feel his resentment towards Novak grow just looking at the man. Whatever stereotypes Novak broke, his coach played into enough to make up for both of them. His fierce hatred for coaches almost could not be put into words, but hell, he’d give it the old college try.
“You want to know what your real problem is? It’s not me, or alcohol or a cup of stiff Folger’s, it’s him,” Dean jabbed a finger in the direction of Novak’s coach, “People like him are what bring good players down. And you are good, but you could be so much better if you weren’t dragging around all that dead weight. How much of the earnings does he take? Twenty-five or fifty?”
Novak didn’t seem intimidated. He kept his cool against the ropes just like he had in the game. He turned his head slowly, and Dean felt a cold chill run down his spine when his deep blue eyes bored into him.
“I noticed you didn’t have a coach in your corner,” Novak said calmly, “Perhaps if you had, they would have told you to stop playing on that bad shoulder in game one.”
Dean’s nostrils flared with anger. He could feel his hands curl into fists, wanting to punch Novak in his chiseled nose for tricking him into believing his “dumb religious rube” act, sure, but wanting moreso to punch himself for falling for it. He’d let his weakness show on the court and if he ever faced Novak again, he’d know exactly what to do to exploit that weakness. Dean deserved a sock in the jaw for that, too.
Dean unclenched his fists and smiled amiably at his opponent, “You might want to spend less time worried about my shoulder and more time asking yourself why you’re sitting here alone while your coach is talking to everyone here but you.”
Dean had been clawing for a way to break Novak’s visage of cool neutrality ever since he’d met him that morning on the court, and it looked like he’d finally found a soft piece of flesh to sink his nails into. Novak’s eyes shifted involuntarily to his coach, who was laughing loudly, clapping some big-nosed, balding hedge fund manager on the shoulder, and sloshing his whiskey sour onto the polished wood floors. “Might be time to reevaluate your priorities when the only person who will talk to you is the guy who beat your ass.”
The bartender returned balancing an amber-filled mug of stout and a small glass of milk on his forearm along with several other drink glasses. “Here’s that stout,” the bartender said, putting the glass down in front of Dean, “and milk for you. Can’t promise it’s not gone off. I found it at the back of the walk-in, but it passed the smell test.”
Dean took the rim of his glass of stout and slid it down the bar in front of Novak. “Leave it for him. I have a feeling he’s gonna need it,” Dean put a firm grip on Novak’s shoulder in a display of what his father would have referred to as dick-measuring, “Have a good night.”
Dean brushed past Novak, intending to leave on a high note, “I’m looking forward to our rematch, Mr. Winchester.”
Dean half turned around to face Novak, “Guess I’ll see you then.”
Before he turned back to leave--he couldn’t be sure--but he thought he saw him reaching for the glass of milk.
So it was a rivalry.
That whole exchange was something straight out of a Paul Newman-Robert Redford movie--the quick-fire banter, the acid in their voices, the growing dislike in their eyes. But underneath it all was an undercurrent of excitement that bordered on giddiness--how long had it been since Dean had gone toe-to-toe with an opponent like that? He walked away from the interaction feeling alive, electrified by the possibility that he’d see him again on the other side of the net. He flexed his hands and wished to God there was a racket in them. He wanted that rematch Novak promised.
Dean retrieved his trophy from the pool table, drank a few gulps of the stout that had gone flat sitting out for so long, and started making for the door. He was going to redline the Impala all the way to Stanford to give Sammy his money and let him know more was on the way.
“Hey, Winchester!” a slurred voice barked after Dean.
He ignored it, successfully, until the owner of the voice lurched out from the folds of the crowd and blocked his path. Dean recognized him--it was the big-nosed bald man Novak’s coach had been rubbing elbows with.
He was a couple of drinks deep and, judging by appearances, he couldn’t hold his liquor very well. He swayed unsteadily, dribbling the contents of his glass down his shirtfront.
“Winchester! I thought that was you! You were an animal out there on the court just--” he paused in his drunken ranting to let out an unintelligible roar. Whatever he was trying to imitate, it didn’t sound like any animal Dean had ever heard of, “Reminded me of the good ole days.”
“Hey, you know, I always have time for my loyal fans, but I’ve really got to run,” Dean said.
“You know, I almost didn’t recognize you up there on stage. You’ve gotten a lot older and put on a couple pounds since then, huh? Oh, well. Who hasn’t?” The man slurped from his glass only to realize his beverage was no longer there, as it was currently soaking into his dinner jacket and shirt.
“I’m sorry, do I know you?” Dean asked.
“No, no. But I’m a big tennis fan--huge. I’ve been following the sport for years. I had a rare blood disease when I was a baby, you know, so I could never play myself. But I’ve been watching tennis as long as I can remember. And I remember you. Hell, I remember your father, that’s how old I am!” The man guffawed loudly and sprayed a fine alcoholic mist all over Dean’s face. He failed to find a similar humor in the situation. “You were the most promising rookie in tennis…what did they call you?” the man waved his hands around in the air, hoping perhaps to conjure up the name out of the lounge air stale with cigar smoke. He snapped his fingers.
“The Firecracker! That’s it! Di-no-mite! You were gonna be the youngest Grand Slam winner in history, and then poof. I always wondered what happened to you. I never would have expected this,” the man paused to take another drink from his empty glass. “So what did? You know, happen.”
“My father died.”
This didn’t seem to bother the man at all. “Dead, huh? That’s a shame. But from what I remember he wasn’t all that great of a player anyways. Maybe if he’d died a little sooner, you’d be back in the running for Grand Slam already!”
Dean dropped his winning trophy and seized a fistful of the man’s collar, cutting him off mid-guffaw so that a strangled, death-rattle gasp escaped his throat instead. He shoved him against the wall so forcefully and suddenly that he dropped his empty glass. It fell to the floor and shattered and a large ripple of silence made its way across the longue, so that when Dean shouted, “Is that all you think my dad was? Some washed-up tennis player? At least he has someone to remember his name. By the time I get done with you, you fat fuck, you won’t even be a shit stain in your own pants,” everyone heard him clear as day.
Dean reared his closed fist back, ready to put it straight through the man’s face and into the oak-paneled wall behind him, but a set of hands caught his arm and held him back. Even injured, one man almost wasn’t enough to keep him from beating the man’s face to an emulsified red paste. If he had been in full health, it wouldn’t have been.
Two other men grabbed Dean by the shoulders and wrested him away from the man. The big-nosed man with his hands clutched over his face to prevent any damage Dean may have done to it. Dean looked at him in disgust, trembling like a child, big bald spot, an ugly bulbous nose, fingers fat like sausages from all the money he'd been gorging himself on over the years, and thought anything he would have done to him would have been a vast improvement.
Who was he? Some rich entitled asshole who'd never picked up a racket in his life and thought he was some expert on the sport because he'd had the luxury of kicking back all these years and memorizing stats, watching the rise and fall of people's careers like it was the nightly news. Maybe this was the only time he'd ever get a real taste of the sacrifice it took to play tennis. Dean had sacrificed everything three years ago by bowing out of the Grand Slam title after his father's death, just as he had sacrificed his shoulder out on the court that day. Now this guy was going to sacrifice a couple of his teeth and the cartilage of his nose. A small price, Dean thought.
Fighting against three security guards holding him back to get at the man made the pain in his shoulder double, triple, quadruple to the pain he’d felt in the match. He felt the tendons of muscles pulling apart, sinewy and stringy. It felt as if his entire arm were going to separate from his body.
As he was dragged from the bar, heels making grey scuffs on the polished floorboards kicking and lashing like an animal, he saw a giant wet spot on the man’s pants, but couldn’t tell if it was his spilled drink or piss. He stopped fighting against the security guards and went limp in their arms, the pain in his shoulder too much to bear on top of fighting three other able-bodied men, white collar or not.
A crowd formed at the door as Dean was thrown out. He landed in a heap on the parking lot outside and let out a strangled gasp of anguish as his right shoulder writhed in pain beneath him. He couldn’t tell if he was crying or bleeding from his eyes the throbbing behind his eyes was so intense. Every nerve ending in him popped and crackled with a pain he’d never felt before. He’d be surprised if he could even lift his arm. A figure was standing above him, chastising him, but his ears were still ringing from the impact of his shoulder hitting the ground and he couldn’t hear a word they were saying.
When Dean’s vision finally became clear enough that he could see through the pain, the umpire came into focus, holding his first-place trophy, “--do not tolerate violence of any kind. Your first place prize will be revoked and given to the second runner-up, as well as your cash prize.”
He hoped it was just a hallucination brought on by the extreme pain, some perverse manifestation of his worst nightmare, but he felt the ground beneath him hard as rock and the night air cold as ice and knew it was real. “No,” Dean choked, “Please.”
The umpire stooped down and rummaged around in Dean’s jacket pockets until he found the envelope. He yanked it out and handed it to one of the security guards flanking him.
“The winner of today’s tournament is Castiel Novak. Please take these to him.”
Everything Dean had fought so hard for that day was gone in a matter of seconds. He didn’t suppose anyone would believe him, or even if they did, that they’d care, about what the man was saying to him. Making light of his father’s death and the death of his career. Dean cradled his arm, feeling like he deserved every second of the mind-numbing pain he was enduring for not being able to control his temper. This tournament was supposed to be the beginning of everything; of his new career, of making things right with Sammy, of a new rivalry that began in his favor. Now it was all receding into the distance faster than he could chase after it, and he had no one but himself to thank.
All he could hope for now was that Novak wasn’t one of the people standing outside in that crowd. He could take being kicked or being down, but he couldn’t take both at the same time.
Slowly, people began trickling back inside, the gawkers steadily losing interest watching him bleed on the pavement until only one man remained. Dean could barely make out his face in the rapidly receding light of the dusk, but his stance and laminated name badge were a dead giveaway--Chauncey the security guard.
“A little help over here?” Dean coughed.
Begrudgingly, he walked over and offered Dean a hand. He took it and rose unsteadily to his feet.
“You know, Chauncey, you’re not so bad.”
“Don’t mention it,” he grumbled. “Just get the hell out of here if you know what’s good for you, kid.” He turned to go back into the lounge, but Dean called after him.
“Hey! I know you’re probably supposed to forcibly remove me from the premises now, but can I ask you one more favor?”
“Oh, my God, you just don’t know when to quit,” Chauncey said in disbelief, “What?”
“Can I borrow your cell phone?”
“Unbelievable,” but as he said it, he pulled the cell out of his utility clip and tossed it to Dean.
He hit redial and waited as the line rang.
“Sammy, it’s me. Hey, listen man, I messed up…”
Notes:
The song for this chapter is Perfect Day by Lou Reed.
https://youtu.be/9wxI4KK9ZYo?si=EzjbRhB2Mid_JlcY
Chapter Text
September 14th, 1995
WhataBurger Southwest Junior Invitational
“Dean?”
“Yeah, Sammy?”
“Do you ever get the feeling Dad only loves us when we’re playing tennis?”
It was hot in Arizona, a different kind of heat than Dean had ever felt before; it wasn’t humid like the Florida heat, which was its own kind of misery, sticky and so thick it felt like he wouldn’t even be able to drag his arm through the dense haze of it, nor was it dry in the same way the Kansas heat was, where it got to be eighty-five, ninety at the most and the dry, tilled farmland dirt kicked up into your eyes and nostrils and made you hack and sneeze.
No, Arizona heat was the closest Dean had ever felt to being in Hell. Actual Hell. There was no relenting. It started the second the sun peaked up over that craggy, dry horizon, and instantly the barren wasteland that was the state of Arizona went from below-freezing to the temperature inside a blast furnace. The heat was all-consuming, so dry Dean could feel his lips chapping and the inside of his eyelids scraping the thin mucus layer of his eye due to a lack of moisture. Even the sweat pouring down his face and pooling in the waistline of his shorts seemed dry with a salinity level higher than ocean water that left phantom, white streaks on his face and arms.
Dean took his brother’s interruption excuse to take a breather and mop the sweat off his face.
“What? No. Don’t be stupid.”
Sam glowered at him from over the edge of his book, The Beginner’s Guide to Magic . Dean scoffed good-naturedly at his brother’s childish choice in literature. The only books Dean had ever read were Arthur Ashe’s autobiography Days of Grace , The Autobiography of Billie Jean King, and Slaughterhouse Five, which he thought was going to be about five grisly murders in a slaughterhouse, but ended up being much more terrifying than that.
“It’s not stupid,” Sam protested.
“I didn’t say it was stupid, I said you were stupid, stupid.” Dean resumed practicing his serving stance. He threw a ball up and served it over the net with a neat, thwack . It echoed in the silence between him and his brother.
“Maybe if I were in school right now, I would be so stupid,” Dean heard Sam grumble, a pointedly timed comment he made sure could be heard in between serves.
Dean sighed. They’d gone through this already, starting with an explosive fight between Sam and John back in Lawrence that Dean was concerned might turn physical. The gist was; Sam didn’t want to leave because he wanted to school and John didn’t give a damn. “Sammy, I thought we were past this.”
Sam dropped his book into his lap to give Dean the full wither of his glare, “Maybe you are,” he grumbled. Dean resisted the initial urge to roll his eyes and serve a ball directly into Sam’s face and instead set his racket down.
Before they’d left Lawrence, Dean and Sam had agreed that this tournament was too important for them to miss. The WhataBurger Southwest Junior Invitational was the most prestigious event for 18U tennis players in the country, and most contestants had to be enrolled in an accredited sports program or charter school to even be considered for admittance, but Dean, as was usually the case, was a special, last minute addition. John had pulled some strings for him, and now he was entering as an unseeded wildcard.
The WhataBurger invitational was the rite of passage for all aspiring tennis professionals, and Dean’s talent was so apparent that even the pretentious contestant review board couldn’t deny him--it was obvious to everyone that he was destined for tennis greatness.
But Dean knew his brother. He knew he didn’t want to go with them. He wasn’t meant for this life out on the road, and, more importantly, he wasn’t meant for tennis. Someday, Sam was going to grow up, go to college, get married, have the white picket fence and a white, crusty little dog, and maybe even pop out a couple of kids, and their father was going to absolutely despise him for it. Sam didn’t had no interest in carrying on the family legacy, if it could even be called that. He was a good player, talented even, especially for an eleven-year-old, but he wasn’t going to stick with it long-term. Dean knew that, and, he thought, so did his father. The difference was that it seemed like his father cared less and less what Sam wanted, while Dean only cared more and more.
“What do you want from me, Sam? Do you want me to withdraw from the tournament? Lose the cash prize? We’ll just pack up in the Impala right now and strand Dad. Is that what you want?”
Sam groaned petulantly. “No, but,” Sam whined “All my friends went to middle school already. And I’m stuck here. I’m not even going to know what’s happening when we get back.”
Dean walked over to the bench where Sam sat. Sam picked up his book and pretended not to notice his brother approaching. His legs were splayed out in front of him, skinny and awkward like a foal’s. Before too long, his little brother was going to outgrow him. No more hand-me-downs. It made his back hurt just thinking about it. Or maybe it was the muscle tweak he’d gotten from sleeping in the Impala the night before.
He sat down next to Sam, “You know, most kids would be stoked not to be in school.”
Sam had his entire face hidden behind the cover of the book. All that poked out over the top of the book was Sam’s shaggy head of light brown hair. Sitting this close to him, Dean could see a small comic book-style text blurb on the cover that read, Plus Six Easy Sleight of Hand Tricks all Newbies Should Know!
“I know.” But I’m not most kids .
Dean put his hand on the top of the book and pushed it down so he could see Sam’s face. There were shallow wells of tears pooling under his eyes. Dean was surprised they didn’t evaporate in the direct Arizona sunlight. Sam’s bottom lip quivered and Dean felt his heart break. It wasn’t fair to his little brother, he knew. Dragging him across the country, making him miss out on life events that any other kid would bored to tears just thinking about. Dean supposed that when all you knew was abnormal, normal was the most desirable thing of all.
When Dean was younger than Sam, he had grown to love the nomadic lifestyle he and his father lived. He loved living out of motel rooms and eating room service and fast food all the time, listening to Dad’s tunes, and riding in the front seat of the Impala without a car seat. And at the end of every trip, Dean knew he’d get to do his favorite thing of all; play tennis. It was all he’d ever known.
But the moment their mother got pregnant with Sam, Dean’s days of living out on the road with Mom and Pop were over. Sam had gotten a real life with his own room and his own bed back at home in Lawrence-- that was his reality until their mother died. Mary forbade John from doing to Sam what he had done to Dean. Dean was realizing that any resentment he harbored wasn’t towards Sam himself--it had to do with his upbringing. Why had John decided to pack it all in when Sam was born and not him? Why hadn’t he been afforded the same luxury as Sam? Why hadn’t he sacrificed that for this first-born son?
Sometimes it felt like he made more sacrifices than anyone; more than his father and certainly more than Sammy. Dean and his father were cut from the same cloth, it was easy for them to get along. They agreed on everything. He and Sammy were not. And because he and Sammy were not, that meant Sammy and their father were not either. But Dean felt, especially lately, like his father didn’t even try to understand Sam. He just powered through their disagreements and strong-armed Sam into submission because at the end of the day, what could Sam do? He was eleven years old. And their mother wasn’t around to talk John back from the ledge. Dean loved his father more than anything, but these days even when he was sitting right next to him in the passenger’s seat of the Impala, he felt alone.
There were times, alone in his room forced to miss another tournament or frustrated at Sam’s lack of enthusiasm, that Dean secretly wished his brother had never been born. Not because Sam didn’t care about tennis or because he didn’t like living out of motel rooms, but because then he wouldn’t have to go through all the pain that John and Dean’s lifestyle had already caused him.
Dean knew it was only going to get worse between John and Sam, so he had to do the understanding for both of them. His method to understand Sam was fairly simple--just think the opposite of what he personally believed and, usually, that got him pretty close. The fastest way between two points was a straight line, after all. So, he powered through every gut instinct in his body to put himself in Sammy’s shoes.
Imagine you love going to school and learning and making new friends . Even the thought of it made Dean’s stomach turn, but he knew that’s what Sam wanted.
“School just started, Sammy. We just have this one thing to do, and we’ll be back home in no time. You’ll only have a little catching up to do, and then you’ll be back on track with all the other kids, okay?”
Sam sniffled and wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. “Okay?” Dean repeated.
Sam nodded, but the simple gesture of just moving his head up and down was painful to watch. He lifted the weight of a thousand unspoken thoughts in that head, and Dean didn’t know what he could say to draw them out. He decided, instead, to go in himself.
Dean tried, as best he could, to imagine what their lives would be like if they were normal like Sam wanted; he saw John dropping them off in the carpool line, them walking into school with backpacks and homework (or Dean’s case, homework the dog ate), eating meatloaf together in the dining room except on Fridays when they ordered pizza and watched pay-per-view. He saw Sammy graduate college and go to law school, and Dean was a mechanic who had his own junkyard and restored old cars for a living. He saw their father’s funeral, where they stood side by side at the front door of a church handing out programs, offering smiles to all the sad faces that entered. Them standing shoulder-to-shoulder at their mother’s headstone as their father’s urn was lowered into the ground next to it. He saw himself in a suit standing behind Sammy, the best man at his wedding, as a beautiful girl dressed all in white made her way down the aisle towards them--Sam was crying. He saw himself dancing with someone’s cousin and drinking at their reception, then standing up and giving a speech about how his little brother was a pain in the ass, but also his best friend and how much he wished their parents had been there to see Sammy get married. There wasn’t a dry eye in the house.
The last image that came to him was the most intricate of all of them. It was of himself, years later, sitting on a short dock over the surface of a beautiful, crystalline lake. The autumn leaves--orange, yellow, red, brown, and even a few green left over from the warm summer air--drifted through the sky and landed on the water like butterfly’s wings. Dean was alone, sitting in a fold-out chair, a tacklebox open at his feet. Inside was every kind of fishing tackle Dean’s meager imagination could conjure up--hooks and bobbers and fishing line and bait and lures shaped like little jellyfish. He looked out over the surface of the lake and saw a line bobbing up and down in the water. His eyes worked their way backward up the line, down the length of the rod to the handle being held in his lap. His hands were so old, the skin wrinkled and delicate like crepe paper. He wasn’t wearing a wedding ring. He saw in the lines in his hands their entire lives; long and happy and so, painfully average.
He tried to want it for his brother, but he couldn’t. It just made him sad, thinking that his life would be lived and died in the same meaningless, aimless way everyone's was lost to time. That he would die the old fisherman out on the lake. Dean had a talent, and he was going to use it to hoist himself out of mediocre anonymity if it killed him. He’d rather it did than live through what he just imagined.
He and his brother didn’t have to want the same things, Dean knew that. Differences make us stronger or blah, blah, blah, whatever. But it would have made life so much easier for both of them if they did.
He put an arm around his little brother and pulled him close, “I’m sorry, Sammy.”
“Me too.”
“You got nothing to be sorry for,” Dean said, heavily. “And to answer your question, the one from before…yeah. Sometimes I do get that feeling. Sometimes I get it a lot.”
Sam turned into his brother’s shoulder, looking up at him with round, searching eyes. Dean didn’t know how to help them find what they were looking for. Sam opened his mouth to say something but was interrupted by the rusty gears of the practice court gate screeching open.
John crossed the threshold of the chain link door holding two grease-stained brown paper bags, pin-striped in bright orange and emblazoned with a large “W,” bulging with burgers compliments of the tournament sponsor.
“To the victors go the spoils!” he yelled to his sons.
Dean pulled his arm tighter around Sammy’s neck and hissed in his ear; “I know you’re pissed, but don’t even think about going on hunger strike.”
Sam smiled and wriggled out of his brother’s grasp. He watched him run over to their father and get a bag, the bottom soaked through and semi-translucent with grease.
“Did you get any milkshakes?” Sam asked.
“You bet.”
“Hey, save me one!”
Notes:
For any DFW fans out there, I hope you appreciated my little nod to his great novel "Infinite Jest" and his tenacity for tennis throughout his entire career. His depictions of the game in his work and essays also greatly inspired me to write this fic! This chapter's song was Back to the Old House by The Smiths.
https://youtu.be/laXY5e5JaV0?si=qDKDN9fr1dcdOIN6
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