Chapter Text
Jannik holds out the ball. Carlos feels everything, his whole life, his whole body, narrow down to that ball, a little yellow flicker across the court. Silence. The day-bright blue of the court beneath them. In the corner of his vision, the serve clock counting down.
Carlos feels sometimes like he remembers, in photographic clarity, every point they’ve ever played. He’ll remember this one, too: Jannik serves, the beautiful rhythm of his hands and shoulders, the quicksilver flash of the ball over the net at him. He gets his racket on it, lunging out wide, and it lands in, but it’s slow and high over the center of the court, and he’s off-balance already. Jannik is running forward for the swinging volley, the echo of a shot he’s hit a hundred times against Carlos before, and he knows already it’s over. He guesses wrong, and all he can do is watch when the ball goes past him.
When Jannik wins, he’s looking right at Carlos. His familiar face, pale and glowing, the set of his mouth, the bright hunger in his eyes. He looks like he’s conquered the entire world. Carlos swallows, and goes to him.
Loving Jannik is not always a nice feeling. Sometimes it’s terrible, actually: now, when he comes to the net and for just a moment they’re together. For just a moment, he has Jannik in his arms, the closest he ever gets. He looks up into Jannik’s face and he knows: this doesn’t mean to you what it means to me.
“Congrats,” he says. When they were younger he’d nearly confessed every time they’d met like this, at the net. Now he keeps as much distance between them as he can bear, and he treats Jannik like he would any other rival.
“Carlos,” Jannik murmurs. “Thank you. It’s good to be back.” The last time they’d played was early last year, in Indian Wells. Jannik had touched him like this at the net but he’d been so far away, then, cold and strange. Since then, it’s the longest they’ve gone between matches since the first real one they played in Paris. Carlos had kind of been hoping it might go away.
Jannik holds him tighter for a moment, his cheek pressed against the side of Carlos’s head, his breath hot and humid. Carlos wants to fold himself into Jannik’s rabbit-quick heartbeat and stay here for a long time. It hasn’t gone away.
Jannik keeps his hand on Carlos’s lower back as they walk the length of the net to the umpire, his long fingers spread. He rubs at Carlos’s spine a little bit before he lets him go; this, too, is familiar, though it’s been far longer than a year since Jannik has held him like this. A low, creeping dread that this is going to be the rest of his life: having only these brief moments of intimacy, loving someone who will never love him back.
Jannik applauds him as he walks off the court. Only then, in the locker rooms, the adrenaline all drained out of him, the exhaustion sets in, the ache of his muscles, the grinding anger and disappointment. He feels like he’s left his whole heart out on the court, and all of it for nothing, just this stupid predictable loneliness. He’d loved to play Jannik more than he hated to lose, once. Now he’s not so sure he loves to play Jannik at all.
“It was a good match, Carlitos,” Juanki tells him, as he sits shaking with his elbows braced on his knees. Almost no one calls him that, anymore. But Juanki always has, and he always will. “It was.”
“A good match that I lost,” Carlos points out. He’d known from the start Jannik had him; the serve raining down with shocking accuracy, the impenetrable wall of him on the baseline. Carlos had dragged it out to four sets with a close tiebreak in the third—the first set Jannik had lost the whole tournament—but he had won 6-3 in the fourth; it was like he’d come back from injury and decided to become some unplayable machine. “No, I know. It’s okay. I’ll be okay in a minute.”
He goes to his press quickly enough to be sure he won’t run into Jannik in the locker room. Carlos can’t imagine facing him right now, raw and tired and still, horribly, in love.
“One of the hardest matches of my career,” Carlos tells them, like he does about every match he plays with Jannik, and it’s always true: more even than Novak was, back in the early days of his career, more than anyone he’ll play now. On a tennis court, he has to forget he loves Jannik. On a tennis court, he has to beat him. The only times in his life he ever loses the sense of loneliness he’s carried with him for so many years.
Of course Jannik is kind to him, when Carlos loses. They’re friends again, or friendly, and years ago they’d been so close he could almost imagine they’d been more. And it’s almost enough, almost. The almost is the worst part.
“What do you think of his comeback? I mean, coming in, he’s been injured, he hasn’t really played at all the last eight months. It’s the first tournament he’s played since Monte Carlo. He’s defending the title, but he wasn’t a favorite. So after playing him, do you think he can win it?”
“For sure he’ll win it,” Carlos says, and then realizes what he’s said. “No, I mean, he has chances to win. I think Jannik, if he’s not injured, he’s always a favorite here. He won already a couple times.”
“Casper Ruud was seeded to meet you in the quarterfinals. Were you surprised when Jannik beat him? Or by the outcome of the match today?”
“No,” Carlos says. “Never I’m surprised when Jannik wins. The ranking is a little lower, it doesn’t matter. If he plays, he can always be the best in the world.”
Carlos hasn’t had to answer questions about Jannik in a while. He’d forgotten what he sounds like. Juanki is looking at him in abject despair. “Sorry,” Carlos says. “I know.”
Juanki sighs and crosses his arms. “You know. Well, hopefully he does win it, so at least you look like you know what you’re talking about.”
“Yeah.” Carlos sits down next to him, knocking their shoulders together. “You think he’s going to?”
“Do I think he’s going to. Jesus. The way he played today? You kept it pretty close for two. Andrey will be lucky if he wins a set on Friday.” It’s true; Carlos had played pretty well, and he’d barely held on. Andrey can be dangerous, but it’s hard to imagine him doing any damage to Jannik when he’s playing like this.
“Who is it going to be in the final?”
“Are you kidding? Of course it’s going to be Daniil.” Holger is really very good, but he’s got a thing at the slams where he always seems to lose to anyone ranked higher than he is. He’s beaten Daniil once, but only at Roland Garros. “And Daniil hasn’t beaten Jannik since 2026.”
“He hasn’t played Jannik since 2026. And he beat me last year.”
“It takes different things, beating you and beating Jannik. Anyways there were other problems for you, then. It wasn’t about the tennis. I don’t think you hit a first serve that entire match.” The memory makes him wince a little bit. That had been a very bad time, after Jannik had announced he wouldn’t play for the rest of the year. He’d lost in the fourth round at Wimbledon, then early through the entire American hardcourt swing; he’d managed to push through to the final in Cincy where Daniil had beaten him 6-2 6-2, the worst loss he’d ever had in a final.
“I hit a lot of first serves today,” Carlos mutters. He has to eat for recovery but he’s not hungry. He never is after he loses. Probably he’ll feel better tomorrow, when he can get back to work. Juanki sighs a little bit and rubs at Carlos’s shoulder. They’ve got Jannik’s press up on the televisions and he looks tired and boyish, his hood pulled up over his head, smiling a little, rubbing at the corners of his eyes.
“How do you feel, winning the match today? Is it good to be back in the semis?”
“Good, yes. Of course, I always love to play here. The happy slam, no? Maybe for me it’s more happy.” A little laughter from the journalists; he never gives them anything really exciting, but they all like him. “But it’s for sure the biggest challenge, to play Carlos. Very glad to be through.”
“You visited the Ferrero Academy over the break. Do you think that gave you the edge today, a little bit of inside knowledge?”
“Yes,” Jannik says, smiling now. “I steal all his secrets. No, because of my injury we didn’t see each other for a long time, since April last year. But he gave me a lot of support the past year when I was not playing to come back, and then when I went to Alicante also. We’re good friends.” There’s a rustling now in the crowd, and Carlos sits up straight. Usually Jannik doesn’t talk about him unless asked directly. “These matches with him, this is how I measure myself. He’s the best in the world. Number one, no? Of course it means more to win against him. It’s good to play him again, to be back here.”
“Oh my god,” Juanki says. This isn’t the kind of thing Jannik says, ever. Not in years, at least, since before the terrible year of his injury and the one before it. “What did you say to him?”
“I didn’t say anything!” His heart has risen up into his throat, this awful kick of hope in his chest: maybe this time, finally, Jannik has felt what he does. Maybe, finally, he won’t be alone. “Only the normal stuff, I said congrats.”
“You said congrats. And what did he say to you?”
Carlos thinks back. “Only thanks.” But maybe—Carlos has imagined too many times some secret intimacy in the way Jannik touches him, the sound of his voice. And after that awful year before the injury—he won’t do it to himself again. “No, it’s probably just that he’s out of practice with these. And, I mean, he’s probably in a pretty good mood. Coming back from injury, and he’s in the semifinals at the Australian Open?”
“Sure,” Juanki says. “He’s in a good mood.” It’s clear he finds this unconvincing, but Carlos doesn’t know what else to say. He can’t imagine why Jannik would say that. It doesn’t make any sense at all.
“I don’t know.” It’s not fair, that Jannik can still do this to him, that Jannik always does this to him. “What, you think I know something you don’t about him?”
“I think you probably know a lot of things I don’t about him,” Juanki says, with dry irony. “I really don’t spend very much time thinking about Jannik.” Carlos sighs. He can’t take his eyes off Jannik, on the screen. He’s missed him so much, and he’s so angry, nearly choking on it, that Jannik has once again stolen his chance at the Australian Open, at the career slam. He’s sick of feeling like this, the endless cycle of hope and bitterness. He fumbles for the remote and turns off the television. “You know they’re going to ask you about this. What are you going to tell them?”
“I don’t give a shit,” he mutters, and crosses his arms.
Juanki puts a hand on his shoulder. “Maybe we should think about what Molina said. I know you said you didn’t want to do it, but Carlos. People are going to keep asking questions.”
“Yeah, they always ask questions. It’s not different.”
“It’s going to be different if he’s saying things like this.” Juanki sighs. “Look, it’s fine for him. He’s had girlfriends. He’s had public girlfriends. You haven’t.”
“So your great idea is I’ll have a fake girlfriend.” Carlos glares at him. “Yeah, brilliant. Clearly I’m an idiot for hating this. But sure. Whatever you want.”
“I don’t want you to do it,” Juanki snaps. “I want you to be happy, Carlos. But I don’t know how to make you happy. I only know how to keep you safe.” Juanki has always been protective, and even more so once he understood that for Carlos, it was probably always going to be Jannik. The year when Jannik had become a stranger, and then the injury, and then the long absence; Juanki had been there for him through all of it. But it’s only been since Alicante last winter that Juanki has been like this: trying to fix the problem.
Carlos knows that there’s no solution and there’s no way out. How the fuck is a fake girlfriend supposed to help? He’s not going to be less in love with Jannik. He’s tried. “I’ll think about it,” he says, mostly just to make Juanki shut up. But then he looks up at Jannik, his pale calm face suffused with quiet joy. He’s not sure how much longer he can go on like this.
Jannik beats Daniil in three sets in the final. Carlos watches the entire match alone from his kitchen table, a full room away from the television; he can’t handle being in the same room. Daniil plays well. But Jannik is untouchable. He plays beautiful, razor-sharp tennis, all his customary power and precision, the clarity of his decision-making. They keep saying surely he can’t keep it up, surely his level will drop.
Carlos knows he can keep it up. The last Wimbledon final they’d played, deep in the fifth, he’d caught Jannik’s eyes as they crossed at the net at three-all. There was an expression in them he’d seen only rarely; not every time they’d played, or even every time Jannik had won. The shocking incandescent heat that rose up in his face when they were both playing their best, pushing at the limits of their abilities, and Jannik found just the barest fraction of advantage. It’s an expression Carlos loves as much as he hates, and he sees an echo of it now, when the camera pulls close on his face.
He's back, Carlos thinks. A terrible weight in his throat, joy or horror, desire or despair.
“He’s back,” Brad Gilbert says on the feed when Jannik breaks in the third set, an impossible passing shot, sliding into the down-the-line forehand on a full sprint after a rally that lasted nearly forty shots.
Jannik doesn’t fall to the ground when he wins. He hasn’t since the first. He closes his eyes and tilts his chin up, lifting one hand to the sky, breathing as the cheering crowd crashes around him. His mouth trembles with emotion. Then he opens his eyes and goes to the net.
He shakes Daniil’s hand and pats him on the chest. Daniil is gracious, joking already; the crowds have grown to love him as much as any of them, and they roar nearly as loudly for him when he gives his speech as they do for Jannik. Jannik is so beautiful, smiling and illuminated in the evening. Carlos has to turn off the television before he starts speaking. He can’t stand to look at him.
He wants to cry, a little. How many times, now, has Jannik taken this from him? Even when Carlos wins, he loses. And when he loses—there’s nothing. He presses his face hard into his hands and shudders, once.
And none of it changes anything. He still texts Jannik congratulations, like he always does.
Thank you.
Almost I can’t believe it, you know? That I won.
Like the first time again.
I believe you’re gonna win then and now too
Maybe that’s too honest. He can’t help it. He doesn’t expect Jannik to respond to that; in recent years he always withdraws, whenever Carlos pushes a little too far. But how he’d been at the net, earlier, the warmth of his hands.
I always believe in you, too.
I hope we play again soon.
Really, I missed you. So much.
Carlos turns off his phone and puts his head in his hands. He feels hot and sick, feverish. Jannik—he can’t mean it, these things he’s been saying since he came to Alicante last winter. Almost like they were young again, wrapped up in themselves, in the intimacy of their strange friendship. But they’d been so far from that before his injury, so much coldness and scar tissue between them. Carlos opens his phone again, looks at the messages. He imagines Jannik saying that to him, touching him. He imagines Jannik’s eyes when he smiles, the softness of his mouth. He opens his messages with Juanki.
I’m thinking about it.
February is kind of a weird month, like always. He’d tried once to do the Middle Eastern swing, right after he’d given up on the February clay season, but he’d hated it, how sterile all the stadiums were. He needs a real crowd, so he stays in South America.
Jannik plays Rotterdam, like he always does. He wins it, like he usually does, and then he goes early to Indian Wells. He doesn’t play in the Middle East either. He’d confided in Carlos once that he hated it too, the dry heat, how processed everything was, the slick wasted wealth. He’s never, even to this day, quite gotten used to the money.
Carlos wins in Acapulco, his first title of the year. A good win over Ben, who grabs his hand at the net, grinning, and says, “Great game, man.” Carlos is playing well, finding his way back into form after the mediocre second half of last year. Carlos knows how much of his game depends on his feeling on court, how much of it is confidence. He’s getting closer to it, that freedom, and his team knows it too, even if he’s not there yet; Juanki cups the back of his head and grins at him after the trophy ceremony, flush with pride.
“You want to go right to Indian Wells?” Juanki asks, when they’re sitting in their rented apartment. “A lot of players are there already.” He means: Jannik is there already. It’s clear after Australia and Rotterdam that he’s going to be Carlos’s real challenge for the number one this year. Really, Carlos had known that before Jannik had ever stepped on court in Melbourne. If Jannik is playing, he’s always the real challenge.
“You think it’s a good idea?” Jannik is just outside the top ten, so they could meet as early as the round of sixteen, if they’re unlucky with the draw. It’s a little weird to think of facing Jannik in a match that isn’t also for the title. It hadn’t felt any less important in Australia.
“Get used to the conditions, a little bit,” Juanki says. What he’s not saying is that Carlos might need the extra prep. He usually beats Jannik at Indian Wells, but he’s just finished watching Jannik beat Andrey and Holger back-to-back in Rotterdam, identical 6-2 6-2 score lines, and he hadn’t lost a set the whole week. He looks focused and efficient and deadly. Beautiful.
His phone buzzes.
Congratulations. You played great.
Juanki must see something in his face. “That’s Jannik? What’s he saying?”
“Nothing,” Carlos says. “Just congratulations.”
you watch the match?
Of course. I always love to watch, when you play.
Carlos turns his phone facedown and sets it on the table. He feels feverish and young, like he’s twenty again. He feels insane. Jannik been like this, more with the texting and talking to Carlos all the time, since late last year, when he’d been starting to work back into form. It’s beginning to seem like maybe he means it. Carlos isn’t sure what to do with it, after everything. The phone buzzes again, twice in quick succession. Carlos glances at it a little warily.
“Well, that’s nice. Maybe he’ll post about it, like you used to,” Juanki says.
“Yeah,” Carlos says, bitter. “Sure, maybe.” It’s enough that he’s going to have to play pretend with some poor girl. He doesn’t need Juanki always reminding him of that Jannik doesn’t think of him as anything other than a rival, and maybe sometimes a friend. Juanki sees it and softens immediately.
“I know this isn’t easy for you,” he says. “I just worry about you. The rules are different for you than they are for everyone else.” He ruffles Carlos’s hair, sighing. “It’s not fair, kid. You deserve better than all of this bullshit.”
He means: you deserve better than Jannik. He’d said it outright when Carlos had first told him, during that awful year when Jannik had been so distant and cold, and he’d refused to even talk to Jannik for two months. It had gotten bad enough that Jannik had broken his silence and actually asked Carlos what he’d done wrong.
“It’s not his fault he doesn’t love me,” Carlos says, even though it sometimes feels like it is; that Jannik had just decided, years and years ago, that he wasn’t ever going to let Carlos close enough to care about him. He turns over his phone and checks the messages.
I love to play you, also
You’re coming to Indian Wells soon?
He turns his phone back down. “He wants to know when we’re coming to Indian Wells,” Carlos says. He can hear the wavering in his own voice. He wants badly, even now, to respond immediately: I’m coming tomorrow, you want to get lunch, you want to practice, anything. The way he would have when they were boys. But they’re not boys anymore, and it’s not that simple.
“Well, tell him if you want, but he’ll see you when we get there,” Juanki says, and Carlos nods. He doesn’t owe Jannik anything. And he’s sick of this pathetic tenderness, how easily he folds every time Jannik so much as smiles at him.
“But I think we should go early,” he says. He’d won last year and he’d beaten Jannik to do it, sweet revenge after Australia. He’d like to do it again.
“Okay. And I’ll call Molina, so we can discuss how to move forward. You have anyone in mind?”
“Yeah, I know loads of women who want to pretend to date me. What do you think? Alvaro says maybe he knows someone, though.”
“Okay. We can bring her out to Monte Carlo? The most important thing is making sure everyone is comfortable, that we all know what we’re doing and we’re okay with it. For you too. If you decide you don’t want to do it, we don’t do it.”
“Sure,” Carlos says. But he thinks of how Jannik had looked at him in Melbourne, and the stupid kick in his chest. He’s going to do it.
He loves Indian Wells. The hot clear air, the still silence of the desert. He’s won here more often than he’s lost, and there’s a comfort in that, being the clear favorite, for once, on a hardcourt. Usually this is how it goes: Carlos wins Indian Wells, Jannik wins Miami. No one’s won the Sunshine Double since Roger, more than a decade ago now, and the one time Jannik had come close he’d lost to Holger in the semifinals in Miami.
But there’s a rumbling below ground: Jannik, coming in undefeated again. Everyone is talking about some crazy statistic, he’d lost only twenty or twenty-one games in Rotterdam, or something. There’s still only the one set Jannik has lost this year, 6-7 against Carlos in Melbourne. They’re waiting for the draw; there’s a sense of hungry anticipation hanging in the air, around the empty roads of the complex. They want their match.
Carlos wants it too. He wants to take it from Jannik, like Jannik took Australia from him. He wants to look at Jannik after beating him, after winning, and feel nothing at all except vague satisfaction. He wants to prove, to the world and to himself, that Jannik no longer has the power to do anything to him at all.
They’re scheduled to practice right after each other. All the tournaments like to do this, manufacture these little moments between them. Carlos had loved it, once, knowing that he would see Jannik all the time. “You want me to handle him?” Juanki asks.
“I’m not going to start crying if I talk to him, Jesus,” Carlos says, and then he makes direct eye contact with Jannik across the court and his stomach sinks. Jannik lifts a pale slender hand and his mouth changes, somehow, softening. Then his whole face breaks open into a broad smile.
Carlos goes over to him, a cloying mixture of dread and affection rising in his throat. “Jannik. You’re doing good?”
“Yes, good. Good.” He touches Carlos’s elbow, then his shoulder, like he doesn’t quite know what to do with his hands. “You’re good also?”
“For sure. You know, good to win, always.”
“Of course,” Jannik says, with a fleeting smile. “Congratulations. I watched. Fantastic, really good. But I mean with your family, everything good? Jaime, your brothers?”
It would be so easy to say it: I maybe met someone. A girl. But looking at Jannik’s face somehow it’s impossible to lie to him. The sunlight glistens over him and he’s so alive, the warm vitality of his body, close and dear. Maybe he should have let Juanki handle him after all. “Jaime, he doesn’t like school so much, but yeah, with everyone all good.”
He wants Jannik to leave, before he says something stupid like he always does. “Well, to be honest, I don’t like school so much either. Good thing for me I can do this instead, no? But say to them hi from me.” Jannik pops open his water bottle and drinks deeply. Carlos watches his long pale throat, aching and miserable. “Hey, I mean to ask the other day, you want to practice before the tournament starts?”
“With you,” Carlos says, flat. He looks over at Juanki, but he’s not paying attention. “You want to?”
Jannik’s mouth twitches a little, bemused. “I’m asking.”
“We can see,” Carlos says. They’ve done it before, though not in years. If it’s long enough before they play, it won’t mess him up for the match. “Juanki and Simone, they can work something out, if it’s okay with the scheduling.”
“And maybe we can get lunch, or something,” Jannik continues. His hand is back on Carlos’s shoulder, his warm broad palm a heavy weight. “We don’t talk really since I came to Alicante last year, you know? Too busy.”
“Lunch.” Carlos is properly unsettled now. Jannik has had lunch or dinner with him before, with their teams usually and once or twice just them, but not often, and never right before a tournament like this. He looks back over at Juanki again, looking for a way out; it’s a really, really bad idea for him to go to dinner with Jannik but he can’t say no. He wants to do it. The memory of Jannik’s face in the low light, the easy flow of conversation between them. The brief moments of intimacy that have sustained him for years and years.
But then Jannik had stopped, suddenly, and left him in the cold. Then he’d come to Alicante after his injury and Carlos had fallen right back into him. He can’t bear for it to happen again. He wants it back, what they’d had before, and at the same time he wants to sever the connection between them once and for all, to escape from it. It’s all a godawful mess and he can’t see a way out of it. “I think is not so good this week, maybe. A little busy for me too.”
“Oh,” Jannik says. He doesn’t look surprised exactly but it’s clear he expected Carlos to say yes. It’s a fair expectation; he almost always does. “No, I understand. In Miami, maybe.”
“Maybe,” Carlos says. But he knows they won’t get dinner in Miami. They’re not ever going to get dinner again, and for a moment the thought of that is so heart-wrenching he nearly takes it back. He doesn’t know how he’ll be able to live with even less of Jannik than he has now, but he’s going to have to learn.
Jannik furrows his brow a little. “Carlos, I—for sure everything okay?”
Juanki is standing behind Jannik now, with his arms crossed. “Whenever you’re done with him,” he says, only a little impatiently, when Carlos meets his eyes.
“It’s fine,” Carlos says to Jannik. Jannik shakes his head a little, unconvinced. He curls his hand around Carlos’s arm, gentle, and steps closer, so that he’s Carlos’s entire field of vision, his body, his concerned face. Carlos pulls away. “I have practice now, but anyway not a problem for you. Just—I have practice now.”
“Not a problem for me,” Jannik says, picking carefully over the words. “I don’t—if it’s a problem for you, then for me, I care about it.” He’s too much, this close. His sharp angled jaw, his long neck. Wanting him has turned into a habit over the years, the kind of thing Carlos doesn’t think about, he just does. But then, moments like this: the desire like a stone in his throat, tired and painful. If he pressed his mouth, just there, to the shadow of Jannik’s collarbone, if he kissed the hinge of Jannik’s jaw. Would that bring an end, finally, to the hollow ache? An answer, at last, to a question he’s never quite been able to ask, a final rejection.
Juanki takes Jannik’s shoulder and turns him around. “Jannik,” he says, with a tight unfriendly smile. “You have a good year, so far.”
“Yes,” Jannik says, still looking a little uncertain. He can see that Juanki’s not happy with him; Juanki had been cold when he’d come to Alicante last year, but now he’s hostile. “My team, we work hard last year to prepare. But of course like this, a little bit more than I expect. Only try to play good tennis, no?”
“Important to prepare,” Juanki says. “We prepare to play you, also. In Australia you win. This time, we prepare better.” He gestures to Carlos to get his racket and Carlos relaxes a little bit, the tension gone. Jannik shifts his weight like he’s going to turn to Carlos again but Juanki tightens his grip on Jannik’s shoulder, holding him in place. “You play, we see who wins.”
“I hope to play him, for sure,” Jannik says. Carlos meets his eyes and feels the pull of it. Before anything else, he’d wanted to play Jannik. He would do almost anything to go back to that, to tear everything he feels for Jannik out of him and cauterize the wound. But it’s all twisted together now, inseparable.
I hope you lose before I can play you, Carlos thinks. I hope we never play again. “We gonna see, I guess,” he says instead. Jannik nods, touches his shoulder one last time, and walks away. There had been a time when Juanki had really liked Jannik. But Juanki hasn’t forgiven him for his sudden distance, his terrible coldness in that year before the injury, and it’s starting to look like he’s not going to.
“You know,” Juanki says, “I hope he’s in your draw early. I want to see the look on his face when you beat him.”
The draw comes out. They’re on opposite sides, which means people are already coming out with predictions about who will win when they play in the final. They’ve got the draw arranged on all the posts about it so he’s at the very top and Jannik at the bottom, even though he’s the fourteen seed. It’s kind of ridiculous.
They both get through the first few rounds without any trouble. Jannik is still seeded high enough to have a bye, and he gives a convincing performance against Cerundulo. Carlos more or less dismantles Popyrin, and then handles Tiafoe easily. Jannik keeps his perfect record against his fellow Italians and beats Musetti. The tournament has an odd stillness to it, a sense of inevitable momentum building in the hollow desert air, everyone following the script.
“Don’t worry about it,” Juanki says. “If you play him, we’ll think about it then.”
“Yeah, okay,” Carlos says. “Don’t think about him. Why don’t I just do that.” Juanki sighs and rubs his temples. Then he throws a tennis ball at Carlos across the net.
“Don’t be a shit just because he’s a shit,” he says, and starts feeding Carlos balls to his forehand. He works Carlos pretty hard, preparing him to play someone who will drag him wide again and again, redirect and send him running across the court. Yeah. Clearly he’s not thinking about playing Jannik.
When they’re done, he hands Carlos a bottle of water at the bench. “He asked me to practice with him,” Carlos says. Juanki just looks at him. Clearly that’s not happening, but it’s good Carlos can make Juanki say no instead of doing it himself. He’s not sure he can say no to Jannik. He hasn’t managed to yet.
So it keeps going. In the semis he beats Daniil in two clean sets and then orders way too much pizza and sits down with Juanki and his team—all of them, Juanjo Moreno and Lopez and Alberto—to watch Jannik play Holger. He texts Holger to wish him luck, and in that moment he really does hope Holger beats Jannik. When they walk out, the sun is setting and the court is painted in long shafts of golden light and hazy shadows, beneath the low deep blue of the evening sky.
“So who do you think is the actual favorite?” Petko asks. “Jannik Sinner is Jannik Sinner, but the rankings, obviously Holger has been playing so well for a year now, winning the US Open. And he’s looking good this week, great win over Casper in the quarters.”
“Well, he’s having a pretty good year so far. But there’s pretty good,” Courier says, “and then there’s Jannik Sinner. Undefeated on the year, and the last time they played—well, he didn’t make much of an impact in Rotterdam. But I think this will be a much closer match.”
It is. Holger is sharp and edgy the way he is at his best, wrestling with the crowd and his box and his own game, forcing his way through everything Jannik throws at him. He takes the first in a tiebreak and goes up a break immediately in the second, and for a moment Carlos thinks maybe this is it, maybe he’ll escape.
Holger’s serving to go up five-two when it happens. Jannik steps up to the baseline to return and then steps back. He turns for a moment to his box, not speaking, just looking at them. His shoulders drop and it’s like he unfurls. Suddenly he looks enormous on the court, inhuman. Holger serves and Jannik reads it perfectly, and the ball flashes past the edge of Holger’s racket. That’s when Carlos knows it’s over.
They sit in silence watching the match statistics flicker across the screen after it’s over. “So,” Juanjo says. “Nice of him to keep the date.” Juanki cuffs him over the back of the head, and then holds his hand out for the remote. Carlos hands it over and he switches off the tv emphatically, like he can somehow erase Jannik from the final by doing it.
“Okay,” Juanki says. He’s not looking particularly encouraged. “We prepare for Sunday. The opponent doesn’t matter.”
“Matters a little bit,” Lopez points out. He means Carlos will have to focus on different things, playing Jannik. But they all know it matters for the other reason too, and he can feel them all staring at him, waiting for him to say something.
He mostly just wants it to be over. “It doesn’t matter,” Carlos says. Maybe if he says it enough it will become true, and he will finally, finally be free of this.
Someone calls him while he’s brushing his teeth, and Carlos is shocked into picking up when he sees Jannik’s name on the screen, a little fox emoji and a tennis ball next to it, a leftover token of long ago. “Carlos,” he says, quiet. He always does this thing where he just says Carlos’s name like he expects Carlos to understand what he’s trying to say, and sometimes Carlos does but mostly it just sounds like Jannik is saying his name. Carlos doesn’t really feel like trying to guess tonight so he just waits. “Congratulations. Your match today, very good.”
They’re playing in the final in less than two days. Is he doing this to get in Carlos’s head? He doesn’t want to think Jannik would do that, but what else could it be? He spits in the sink, staring at himself for a moment. He can’t think of anything. “You watch?”
“For sure. Good preparation for the final, to see how you play.” He doesn’t sound like he’d thought much about having to prepare for Daniil. “And also just to watch. I’m a fan of the sport, no? And your tennis, to watch, I think is the best.”
Carlos looks down at his phone. “Better than yours?” Jannik laughs a little.
“To watch? For me, I don’t like to watch myself play so much as you. Ah, or I mean more—I can be a little bit just a fan, watching you, and always watching myself I think what I can improve. Anyways my game, not so exciting.”
“Today pretty exciting,” Carlos says, and then glances back up at himself in the mirror, grimacing. He hadn’t been planning on telling Jannik he had watched. He thinks of Juanki’s pitying expression, the low sinking in his stomach in Melbourne. He needs to end this phone call. “Or first two sets, the score was close. You almost lose.”
Carlos puts his head in his hands. That was a little meaner than he’d wanted to be. But Jannik only breathes out low. “Almost, yes. I feel this a little bit. But never you can know until the match is over, no? Today I find a way.”
6-1 in the third, and he’d only lost three points on serve; he’d found a way. Carlos smiles, helpless. Still the same boy he’d fallen in love with. There’d been a time where he hadn’t been so sure about that. “So now I see you on Sunday.”
“Yes. You know in the second set I think of this, how I want to play you in the final. Our matches, they are for me different. More.” Carlos is holding his phone to his ear now, cupping it close. It feels wrong to have these words said out into the sterile air.
“Of course I know,” Carlos says, a little incredulous. He’s the one who’s been saying it for seven years. “Always, I know you and me, what we do, it’s special.”
A sigh. “Maybe I don’t see so well when we are younger. But last year, I understand better. What I miss most, playing tennis, playing you. Yes. You and me, it’s special.” Carlos closes his eyes. “I call to say this, no? I am glad to play you. I want you to know.”
“Maybe not so glad if I win.”
“Yes, even then. Always,” Jannik says. Carlos doesn’t believe him.
The stadium is absolutely packed. They can hear the rumble of the crowd from the little waiting area, the announcers firing them up. Jannik smiles at him a little bit, an echo of their previous matches; the little conversations they have beforehand, wishing each other luck. There’s cameras on them, waiting for Carlos to say something to him they can use. Carlos offers his hand, smiling tightly in return. He’s done giving them what they want.
They scream for Jannik when he walks out. Everyone loves a comeback, and this is a good one. Really, Carlos is used to having the crowd more or less on his side when he plays Jannik. He has plenty of fans, but Carlos has always had more. Today it’s perfectly even: they want to see how far he can take it. They want to see if Carlos can stop him. They want to see a fight.
They get one. Jannik wrestles the first set from him 7-5, breaking in a ten-minute game and then saving two break points to take it. Over an hour of brutal, exacting tennis, Carlos shouting at the crowd, rallying, stalking the baseline, and the grim, implacable line of Jannik’s mouth, his clenched fist, his unflinching resolve. They trade breaks to open the second; Jannik keeps his momentum in the first game but then his serve disappears and Carlos manages to pull himself back.
This is his court. He’s beaten Jannik here before and he’ll do it again. The point he wins to break for the lead lasts thirty shots and he nearly loses it three times, scrambling to recover, but Jannik can’t get past him. When Jannik just barely catches a dropshot and sends it into the net he turns to the crowd and screams; the whole world filled up with noise, his own name echoing. He turns back to Jannik and Jannik is smiling at him, shaking his head, nearly laughing. He feels himself smiling in return. They’re locked into it together, now, dancing across the court with each other, the ball on a string between them, pushing each other to impossible heights. The crowd is immaterial, background noise. They’re the only people in the world.
He takes the second. He feels it building in him, the great swell of victory. This is the point in the match—even difficult matches—when he usually pulls away, his opponent broken, realizing he’s already lost. But he’s not playing another opponent. He’s playing Jannik.
The third set drags on. He can’t make any headway on Jannik’s serve; he’s finding his spots perfectly. It’s extremely frustrating. He knows this is how things get dangerous for him, the ceaseless grinding rhythm giving him absolutely nothing to dig into, and it begins to slip away. He gets to forty all late in the set and he feels it: now, or not at all. Jannik leans over, bounces the ball, looks at Carlos. He knows it too. Both of them stripped down to just this moment, this point.
This time it’s Jannik who refuses to give. He anticipates everything perfectly, everything Carlos throws at him returned with interest. He moves so impossibly fluidly, all the unlikely angles of him falling into beautiful coordination. He wins the point with a beautiful half-volley, an impossible pickup right at his feet, the kind of shot he never could have managed when he was younger. He lifts his hands, calling for the crowd, smiling, and Carlos smiles with him. And then: an ace right down the T, untouchable.
He wins only a single point in the tiebreak.
In the locker rooms, after the ceremony and everything, Jannik finds him. The glow of victory about his face, beautiful, his hair wet and plastered to his forehead, the nape of his neck. His low voice over the phone, you and me, it’s special. He’d been very kind in his speech, self-effacing, complimentary. Carlos understands, in the abstract, that they played probably the best match of the year so far, at a level most players can only dream of. It doesn’t make him feel any better about losing it. Carlos can’t bear to look at him.
“It was a great match,” Jannik says. For you, Carlos thinks. Easy to be gracious, now that he’s won.
“Sure,” he says. “Great. You got press, or what?”
“Of course. But I want to see you first.” A flicker of a smile, across his face. “You—amazing, how you play. I can forget a little bit how it’s like, but we play and I always—amazing.”
Carlos drops his head back against the locker, a dull thunk. He doesn’t want to hear this. He’s not a kid any more, so caught up in the brilliance of the two of them together, the perfect understanding they’d had of each other, that he barely minded losing. It’s been long brutal years since then. “Okay. Well, obviously you play great. You win. Congrats.” Jannik is looking at him a little strangely. The adrenaline has faded and with it the joy of playing, the joy of feeling himself and Jannik together. Now there’s only a cold disappointment in him, the same loneliness as always.
“Ah,” he says, shrugging philosophically. “Today, yes. But never for sure. Every time, it’s something new to play you. Why I love these matches with you, no?”
“Jesus fucking Christ,” Carlos mutters, in Spanish.
“What?”
“This—you think you just beat me and now I want to talk about it?” He looks at Jannik, his fading smile. “No. I want you leave me alone.”
“Okay,” Jannik says. He backs away a little, expression inscrutable. It’s impossible to say if he’s upset, or embarrassed, or surprised. “I—sorry. Sorry.”
Carlos stands, slinging his bag back over his shoulder. Jannik moves aside so that he’s not in front of the doorway. “Look, I gonna go to my press now. I see you in Miami, yeah?”
“Of course,” Jannik says. He watches Carlos as Carlos leaves but doesn’t say anything else. He posts something early the next day, a photograph of himself with the trophy, and one of he and Carlos embracing at the net. His eyes are closed in the photograph, his cheek pressed against the side of Carlos’s head. The caption: Thank you Indian Wells! Another great battle with my friend @carlitosalcarazz. Always a privilege to play you. I hope many more to come. Let’s keep pushing! #30 #forza
He doesn’t see Jannik in Miami, through careful coordination of practice schedules and Juanki calling in a few favors. He’s already back home after losing in the semis when Jannik wins. He doesn’t congratulate him. Jannik sends him a text after the final, but he doesn’t respond.
Alvaro brings his friend to Alicante to meet the team before Monte Carlo. Her name is Sofia, and he knows her a little from El Palmar but they weren’t best friends; she’s closer to Alvaro’s age than his. Alvaro likes her a lot and it’s easy to see why: she walks into the dining area with all of them sitting around the big table and immediately she’s smiling, saying hi to everyone. Carlos goes to shake her hand, and she hugs him, stronger than he’d been expecting looking at her small frame.
“It’s so good to see you again,” she says. “Alvaro told me loads of stories.” He smiles at her as she takes him by the shoulders. “Don’t worry. I didn’t believe anything he said.”
“Hey, I told good stories!” Alvaro yells from the kitchen.
“For sure!” Sofia yells back, and then she winks at Carlos. He likes her, which is good. This is only going to work even a little if he likes her.
“How much did he tell you about—” Carlos kind of gestures towards himself and also the room and also the world—“everything?”
“Not too much, really. Only that, you know—he said I had to promise never to tell anyone about any of this, which obviously okay, and then that you maybe needed someone to help, and he asked me if I would consider it. And he’s my best friend, you know, and I liked you when we were kids. So I said I would think about it.”
“But he didn’t say anything about—” Juanki gestures to Carlos and the room and the world, and then shakes his head. “This is stupid. Okay. You already promised you won’t ever tell anyone anything, and Alvaro says we can trust you.”
“I’ll sign something if you want,” she says.
“No,” Carlos says, and the same time Molina says, “That would be great, actually,” and pulls out a thick packet of paper.
“Jesus,” Carlos says. “What the hell is this, an NDA? No. Look, the thing is—so we need you to be my girlfriend.”
“Your—” Sofia looks at him. “Oh. Oh.”
“Yeah.” Molina has his head in his hands, but if Carlos is going to do this, he’s doing it how he wants to. He’s not going to do it with contracts and lawyers and all that. He likes this woman, Alvaro trusts her. If they can’t do this much, there’s no way they’re going to be able to pretend to be in love. “So, I know it’s a lot to ask.”
“Well.” But she’s considering it, taking it seriously. “Okay. Alvaro told you all I’m in PR?” They nod. “So this is actually the kind of thing I do. But you know, I’ve never been on the other side of it, I guess.”
“I don’t want you to think you have to,” Carlos says.
Sofia smiles. She’s really very pretty. “I know I don’t have to. But honestly, not as bad as what I thought when Alvaro asked me.”
“What the hell did you think?” Juanki asks.
“With athletes? Could be anything. Maybe he’s accidentally killed someone in Ibiza.” Juanki makes a face. “Well, I don’t think Carlos would, but you never know. But this, I want to help. And I like the challenge, you know?” Juanki looks a little overwhelmed, but he nods along. “So I think this is the best way to do it: Molina and I can start thinking of maybe how to put it out, and I’ll stay for the tournament, and we’ll see if we think it’s going to work. Not just for me, I mean for you, too.”
Juanki raises his eyebrows at Molina. “I told you she was the best,” Alvaro says. He looks extremely smug.
“I am the best,” she says. “You guys want to get lunch?”
“Sure,” Carlos says. He likes her; this is good. He can see how it will work, the freedom it will give him: something to hold up against the rumors, something to hold up between himself and Jannik. The power he’ll be taking back for himself.
And the clay season is starting, his season. All of Jannik’s victories, his momentum, it won’t mean anything once they step onto clay. Let him bring all of his indomitable will, all of his hard-earned skill and precision. Carlos will face it and beat him down.
They have her sitting in his box next to Alvaro. He waves a little bit when he walks out onto court and she grins and gives him a thumbs up. All the cameras find her immediately, of course. He’s high off the rush of victory and of successfully pulling this off; they ask him in his press who she is and he says, smiling as brightly as he can, she’s my brother’s friend, with all the implication years of dealing with the media have taught him. He feels good, in control of his life again, and his tennis. It all clicks together, his team and his family and Sofia. He feels it: this is going to work.
Jannik texts him after the second round, Sofia still in his box. Carlos has drawn him in the quarterfinals and he’s planning on avoiding him entirely until then.
Sofia is your brother’s friend?
He doesn’t really understand what Jannik is asking him.
yeah for sure. I know her a long time too
Of course.
Only I ask because I never see her before.
There doesn’t seem to be a good response. What does Jannik want him to say to that? Yeah, you’ve never seen her before because I’ve never had a fake girlfriend until now. So instead he just waits.
Good luck for tomorrow. I hope to see you Friday.
for sure good luck for you too.
So that’s that. Or that’s that until he runs into Jannik and Hubi having lunch—they’re playing doubles again—and Hubi sees him and waves him over. “Hey, man,” Hubi says, and Carlos nods at him. Jannik turns around and grins up at him. He’s not wearing a baseball cap and his hair is a disaster; he reaches out and clasps Carlos’s hand, holding on for a long time. They’re playing tomorrow, the quarterfinals. It doesn’t seem to be bothering Jannik that much.
“Carlos,” he says. “Hey, you were watching the Madrid match this weekend? I thought to text you about it but, you know, with the flight.”
“No, a little bit the highlights.”
“The assist from Bellingham.” Jannik shakes his head. “Beautiful.”
Carlos smiles at him, the familiar spark rising in him. “Yeah, he’s pretty good,” Carlos says. Jannik still has his hand. And then, with what he knows is a shit-eating grin, “Milan, you watch their game?”
They’re not having a good season, which Carlos knows because he keeps track of them because of Jannik. But it’s a little less embarrassing because Jannik, at least, does the same for Madrid. Their texting history—back when they’d talked all the time, and again since the injury—contains a detailed account of the records of Real Madrid and Milan FC. Mostly it’s Jannik bemoaning the failings of Milan and Carlos rubbing it in. They’ve had this conversation, different versions of it, maybe dozens of times over the years; somewhere they had lost this casual intimacy but it seems Jannik has decided to open the door again and invite him in. He can’t bear to close it, though he knows he should.
“Oh, god,” Jannik says, letting go of Carlos and rubbing at his face with his hands. “No, not nice to remind me of this. I don’t want to think about it.” Carlos laughs at his put-upon expression of misery. “You want to have lunch? Or you have plans?”
He doesn’t have plans. But this is the danger of spending time with Jannik: every time he thinks he’s going to manage to extricate himself, he catches the sharp subtle edge of Jannik’s smile, and it reels him back in. “Yeah, gonna eat with Sofia,” he says, and Jannik breaks eye contact. Immediately he can breathe again, released.
“No, of course,” Jannik says. His mouth quirks a little, an odd expression. “Sofia. Your brother’s friend.”
“Okay,” Hubi says, looking a little uncomfortable. “I think I’m going to go.”
“I see you for practice later?” Jannik says, turning to check.
“Yeah, little later,” Hubi says. Jannik puts a hand on Hubi’s shoulder, easy, and Hubi leans down to half-hug him before leaving. Carlos is for a moment piercingly jealous. When Jannik touches him it’s never easy. This kind of friendship has never been possible between them, not even when they’d known each other like the other halves of their own hearts, not with Carlos feeling the way he does and Jannik’s strange slow affection in return. But for a moment he sees a glimpse of another world where they can do things like this: play doubles, embrace, get lunch, and it would mean nothing, just simple friendship. A world where he’d never loved Jannik.
“I missed you in Miami,” Jannik says, after Hubi goes. There’s something conspiratorial in his smile and Carlos falls into it. “After you leave, terrible weather the rest of the tournament.”
“A lot of rain?”
Jannik makes a so-so motion with his hand. “Sometimes rain, sometimes heat. Crazy, it changes all the time.” Then, with a flash of humor, “You know for me the heat is not so good.” It’s true; it’s become less of problem as he’s gotten older and sturdier, but it still haunts him every time he plays in extreme conditions. The fragility of his youth.
“Yeah, I think somehow you still play okay,” Carlos says. He’d won the final only dropping five games. “You don’t need any more help.”
“Maybe a little more,” Jannik says. He holds up his fingers, pinching: a little. “On clay, no?”
“For sure. On clay you suck, man,” Carlos says, and Jannik crinkles at him, goofy and gap-toothed. “So bad.”
“Ah, well,” he says. “I grow up playing on this surface, like you. Now it’s a little strange to play on. I mean not so comfortable, like a hard court. I guess things change, no? When we are younger and now.”
“For me not so strange,” Carlos says. Probably it’s his best surface, though he matches up just fine against Jannik on all the others. It’s uncommon for Jannik to be in this kind of philosophical mood. It’s uncommon, at least, for him to come to Carlos with it. Or it was, before he’d come back to Alicante. “Why you’re thinking about this?”
Jannik pulls his mouth to one side a little. “I don’t know. Maybe I just think how everything changes in my life now. The injury, all I can do is think, no? For months. I come back, so much is different.” Then he looks up at Carlos and smiles. “Of course not everything. Still you, winning. Still number one.”
Carlos can feel himself blushing a little bit. “Ah, not so much winning, end of last year. And this year, maybe.”
Jannik shakes his head. “I mean, you’re for me the same. Even when you lose, you’re still—you know. Still Carlos. If I don’t know you’re here, maybe it’s harder for me to come back, no?” There’s something strange in his voice, some low tremor as he looks at Carlos. Something strange in his eyes, a softness, a brightness. He wants to ask Jannik what else has changed, what else is different. He wants to know everything.
“I’m always gonna be here,” Carlos says. His own voice is unsteady. He’s dangerously close to promising Jannik anything he wants, if only he’ll keep looking at Carlos like this, close and familiar.
“Yes?” Carlos nods, and in a flash of movement, almost reflexive, Jannik takes his hand. He blinks, like he’s surprised himself with the action, but his hand is steady and his face is open. “I—sorry, my mood, a little strange today.”
“Always you’re a little strange,” Carlos says, warm with affection. “This don’t change too. Still strange.”
“Very nice to say, thank you,” Jannik says. He hasn’t let go of his hand, looking down at the contrast of Carlos’s fingers to his, long and pale. He looks up at Carlos like he’s about to say something else, but Carlos’s phone buzzes and Jannik shifts away, almost imperceptibly, a distance opening up between them where the rest of the world comes back in.
“Sorry.” He checks his messages and it’s Sofia, asking where he is. He texts her back that he’s in the café and he’ll be there in a few minutes. He doesn’t say he ran into Jannik; she’ll give him shit and he’s not really in the mood. “Sofia,” he says, smiling apologetically. “She want to know where I am.”
“Sure,” Jannik says. He does seem a little off. He sounds almost—angry, to be reminded that Carlos is meeting Sofia for lunch, the hard edge to his mouth that he gets when he’s frustrated in a match.
“Sorry,” Carlos says again. He’s not sure what Jannik’s problem is exactly, but Jannik only shakes his head and squeezes his hand before letting him go.
“No, no,” he says, waving it off. But he still seems weird, a little unsettled, like he’s lost his footing and he can’t quite trust his own balance. “Of course you have with her plans. Say hi from me. And I see you tomorrow on court, no?”
“Yeah,” Carlos says, stepping away from him. He’d almost forgotten but he’s glad of the reminder. Jannik cannot be anything to him other than a rival, or this is where he ends up: smiling stupidly in the café while the entire tour and thousands of people on social media watch him make a fool of himself over Jannik. If Jannik is feeling off, good. He’ll play Jannik tomorrow, and he’ll beat him, and that’s it. “See you.”
He's got himself convinced of it by the time he steps out onto Rainier. Jannik tried to chat with him in the dressing room, in the waiting area, their usual light conversation, and Carlos had ignored him. Jannik looks a little unsettled by it again. Carlos lifts his chin. Let Jannik be the one unsettled, this time. Carlos is in perfect control of himself. He doesn’t care how Jannik feels, only how he plays.
He plays pretty well. But Carlos is better.
His fifth match point in the second set tiebreak Jannik meets his eyes for a moment and Carlos sees a wavering. For the barest moment, a weakness: Jannik doesn’t believe he’s going to win.
That’s all it takes.
At the net Jannik takes his hand, unsmiling. Carlos claps him on the back like he would anyone else. “Good match,” Carlos says. This is good; this is how it should be. A normal match with a normal opponent. A good match. Not a special one.
Then Jannik pulls him close, wrapping an arm around his waist, and the corners of his mouth twitch upwards. He smells of clean sweat and warmth and the Monte Carlo sun, his body a solid burning line. Jannik leans down, his breath ghosting over the side of Carlos’s face. “You were amazing,” he says. And then, horrifically, “Go for it. I’ll cheer for you, no?”
Carlos only barely manages to stop himself from recoiling. He’d said that once to Jannik years and years ago, when he’d been even more stupid and obvious. Jannik can’t possibly remember that. It hadn’t meant anything to him, only to Carlos. It cuts like a knife to hear it said back, with none of the terrible doomed longing that had seeped into his own voice.
Jannik puts a hand on his chest for a moment and then lets him go to shake the umpire’s hand. Carlos lifts his hands to the crowd but he barely hears their adulation. He can’t stop thinking about the way Jannik’s hand felt on his chest, how warm and steady it was. He’s won.
Jannik is waiting for him in the locker room. Carlos tries to ignore him and hopes he’ll go away but Jannik is completely impervious to that kind of thing; he could out-wait God. “You play good,” he says, eventually. “First tournament back on clay, not easy.”
“I’ll get you next time,” Jannik says. He doesn’t seem that upset, at least not how he sometimes used to after he lost to Carlos. There’s no tightness around his eyes. He’d said he was going to cheer for Carlos and looking at him right now Carlos can almost believe it.
“You get me enough,” Carlos mutters, shoving all his sweaty stuff into his bag and pulling on a clean shirt. He turns around and Jannik is suddenly right there—right there—looking down at him. The expression on his face is really strange. “You okay?”
“Of course okay,” he says, touching Carlos lightly on the shoulder, like he’s testing uncertain ground, then pressing his palm flat there. Carlos feels a moment of mild outrage—Jannik is not following the script for what they do after their matches, not even close, and he’s the one who’d written the fucking script—before Jannik takes him by the shoulders, just smiling down at him. He’s changed into clean clothes too but he’s still warm with exertion, and the air between them heats quickly to a flashpoint. He feels the same as he always has. Maybe not as skinny as he’d been when he was nineteen, but close.
Carlos feels all his thoughts of treating Jannik like any other opponent evaporate like dew in August. He can’t imagine letting go. “Jannik,” he says. “You know when you say your mood is strange? I think now it’s true.”
“Maybe,” he says, pulling away. He’s laughing at himself a little. “But I tell you a lot of things change, I mean for me, too. I tell you what I miss most is you. I mean it even when I lose, no?”
“Probably more when you win.”
“Little bit,” he says. His ridiculous hair is getting in his face. He adds with a rueful smile, “But also, you know, when I think of this court for a year all I think of is the injury. Now I think also of this match, of you. Better to remember I lose this match than lose my leg.”
Carlos closes his eyes. He always feels like he’s said the wrong thing to Jannik, even when he hasn’t. “Sorry,” he says, not sure what he’s apologizing for.
“Sorry? No. For me a privilege, to play you here. I’m glad to do it.” Carlos opens his eyes and Jannik is just looking at him, steadily. For a moment they hold each other’s eyes and it’s like they’re back out on court: the only two people in the world. But then Simone’s voice drifts through the door, calling for Jannik—he has to go to his press—and the moment snaps. Jannik steps away from him, such a warmth in his face, smiling still. “Even when I lose.”
It's clear that right now he means it. It’s never been true before, not even before the long year of cold bitterness; even when they’d been close Jannik had never been a great loser. A lot of things change. “Yeah, okay,” Carlos says, smiling a little. But the problem wasn’t that Jannik had sometimes been a bitch when he lost; the problem was that Carlos had loved him anyways. And Jannik still doesn’t love him back.
It’s in Barcelona they decide to do it. He wins the tournament with Sofia in his box, and she winks and him and flashes a thumbs up when he goes to take the trophy. He feels the strength of her belief, her competence. He trusts her to make it work. So he thanks his team, the fans, the tournament. He thanks his family. And then he thanks his girlfriend.
He thinks, with a kind of grim determination, this had better be enough. Monte Carlo has made it clear to him that he can’t cut Jannik out of himself or his life without breaking his own heart in the process. He hadn’t been able to do it when Jannik was strange and cold in the year before his injury and he definitely won’t be able to now, when Jannik is like this: posting congratulatory messages when Carlos wins tournaments, touching him so tenderly, telling him even when I lose. It’s impossible.
So this will have to be enough, to keep him safe.