Chapter Text
Mark Rebellato Tennis Academy
2005
Their shared dorm room always smelled the same, no matter how many times Art cracked the windows or tossed their sneakers out into the hallway. Like tennis shoes and Tiger Balm and the distinct smell of boy, as his little sister Amelia had worded it when their families had visited on a parents’ weekend last year. Even now, in April, with both windows cracked and the spring breeze pushing in, the smell lingered, settled into every nook and cranny of the space Patrick and Art had shared since they were 12 years old.
Patrick always said it smelled like home to him. The first time he’d said it five years ago, Art had laughed – a sharp noise of disbelief – and asked if his family’s house smelled like sweaty socks.
Patrick had just shrugged in a non-committal way, his laced with a bitter edge of resentment. “Nah. My house smells like—fucking—mothballs. But sure as shit not like home. I mean this place. It’s home.”
Art had snorted out a laugh just a beat too late. The kind that tried to play along but landed clumsily, because even at twelve he could hear there was an edge to Patrick’s words, an actual bitterness that seeped through. He just didn’t dare ask, not when they’d only been roommates for a few months by then. Not when Patrick Zweig had already felt like someone Art was supposed to keep up with.
And now, five years later, the line still hadn’t lost its weird sting. Patrick still said it sometimes, usually when the room reeked after back-to-back practises and their shared laundry basket was spilling its sweaty contents onto the floors. He’d collapse onto his mattress, shirt stuck to his skin, dark hair damp, and grin. Smells like home, huh?
And every time, Art felt that same clumsy laugh catch in his throat. Halfway to affection, halfway to pity.
This morning was the same. The sun was already high enough to cast golden slants on the wall across from their beds, warming the dusty air – a sure sign they were already behind schedule. The alarm on Art’s bedside table shrilled at 6:30, loud and so fucking insistent, nearly drowned out by the thud of footsteps and laughter carrying through the hallway outside. The whole academy was awake before Patrick Zweig, as it always was.
Art silenced the alarm with a quick slap of his palm and swung his legs over the side of the bed. He was up first. He was always up first: the routine has ground had calcified over the years into something that felt more like a rule than routine, with Patrick stealing a few extra moments of oblivion while Art dragged himself through the motions and into another day. Routine carries you where willpower fails you, Coach Ramirez always barked, his words like a prayer in Art’s head now.
His body felt too heavy from yesterday’s drills, his right shoulder still wincing as he rolled it on his way across the room. He stepped into the narrow bathroom, flicking on the overhead light that hummed above his head. The mirror offered him a bleary-eyed reflection, and Art closed his eyes as he bent over the sink, splashing his face with cold water until it pinched his cheeks, the shock jolting him a little further awake. Art grabbed the hand towel from the hook and pressed it against his stinging eyes for a moment before stepping back into the room.
Patrick hadn’t moved.
He was sprawled across his mattress in the exact way he always slept. Diagonally, taking up more space than the narrow bed almost allowed, sheet twisted low at his hip. One freckled arm was flung above his head, the other tucked against the mattress. His black curls were an overgrown mess, stuck up at odd angles from restless sleep. At seventeen, Patrick didn’t really look like the awkward kid Art remembered from five years ago, the one who’d been all scraped knees and elbows and nose way too long for his face. He’d filled out, the sharp angles smoothed into a stronger frame and a height that no longer made him look like he’d been stretched thin.
No wonder some of the girls at the academy giggled in the bleachers whenever Patrick was running drills, whispering and laughing behind their hands. Patrick soaked the attention up without so much as looking their way, which was the worst part. How natural it all came to him.
Art stood at the foot of the bed, the little towel still in his grasp, eyes ingering on the slow rise and fall of Patrick’s chest, on the ripple of muscle along his abdomen. And then he tore his gaze away before any further thought could finish forming, throat growing tighter.
“Hey.” He muttered, rounding the bed until he could nudge Patrick’s shoulder, slightly sharper than he’d intended. “Pat. Wake up. Ramirez’ll kill us if we’re late again.”
Patrick stirred with a muffled noise, ripping his pillow from underneath his head and pressing it over his face. “Fuck off.”
Art looked away fast and let out a short laugh that was more exhale than a sound, already moving to his dresser, pretending he hadn’t just thought of the word beautiful about his best friend of all people. He grabbed his last clean pair of short and started stuffing shit into his bag without looking back at Patrick. “You said that yesterday,” he called over his shoulder. “We ran suicides for half an hour.”
“Yeah, well—” Patrick shoved himself up onto one elbow, hair sticking up every which way around his head. He squinted at Art in the dim of their shared dorm. “You ran ‘em. I, uh, jogged them. Different cardio.” He wiggled his eyebrows in a mock-convincing attempt at some sort of solemnity. “Pro athlete pacing, Artie.”
Art snorted, tossing the strap of his bag on his shoulder. “Okay. Sure.”
Patrick grinned at him like a kid. “What? Seriously. It’s all in the technique. Pace, serves, footwork. All that shit.”
“You have the weirdest fucking serve I’ve ever seen. That’s not technique.”
“But it works.” Patrick said, pointing at him like he’d proven something. “That’s talent.”
Irritation flared somewhere in Art’s gut, hot and unexpected and yet annoyingly familiar. He cleared his throat, adjusting his bag just to give himself a moment to look away, to control his face. Because Patrick wasn’t wrong. His serve was insane – all wrong angles and terrible mechanics, his fucking racket cocked behind his ear like a kid about to toss a stone, leaping off both feet to smack the ball. Any coach with any sense had tried to tear it down and start again.
It wasn’t beautiful. Not like Art’s game, his clean strokes and one-handed backhands, every move polished into a rehearsed, mechanic routine. His tennis had a shape and a logic to it, one that followed rules and was pristine. Patrick’s was just pure chaos, his serve a monster that was impossible to look at and yet impossible to return, either. It shouldn’t have worked, but it did. And people loved it.
Art hated how natural it all came to him. How Patrick could step onto a court with no sleep and somehow still come out the stronger one, while Art had to grind out every point and every drill, work till he dropped for even an inch of the same approval Patrick got with pure, raw fucking talent.
Art bit the inside of his cheek, keeping his face neutral. And Patrick didn’t notice – he never did. He swung his legs over the side of the bed and stood, scratching at his side, still grinning like the conversation had been nothing but a warm-up for him. “Face it, Artie. You polish, I improvise. That’s why we work.”
It should’ve been a compliment. Maybe it was seriously. But right now, coming from Patrick, that small smirk still tugging at his mouth, it only made the bitterness drip onto Art’s tongue as he watched Patrick sling his racket bag over his shoulder in a careless motion.
That’s why we work. Except no one cheered for the polish. They cheered for the chaos.
Art adjusted his own strap, fingers tightening around it. “Get dressed, Pat. I’m not getting reamed out alone.”
“Relax.” Patrick bent down to scoop a T-shirt off the cluttered floor, sniffed it, shrugged and pulled it on before kicking on the Adidas slippers he always wore on the walk to the courts. “Ramirez loves me.”
Art rolled his eyes, the gesture a mix of irritation and the affection he had never quite learned how to swallow down. That’d always been the problem. Patrick Zweig drove him halfway crazy, pissed him the fuck off, overshadowed him at every turn, and still Art couldn’t stop orbiting him. Couldn’t stop showing up first, couldn’t stop making sure Patrick didn’t sleep through practise, couldn’t stop looking at him longer when his smile widened at his own jokes.
Art yanked the door open, letting the hallway noise spill in, his voice a quiet mutter: “Come on.”
Patrick was still grinning, still amused by his own joke as he slipped out of their room, brushing part Art on his way out. The faint mix of sleepy sweat and Tom Ford deodorant trailed with him, sharper than the Tiger Balm and sneakers that usually haunted their space. It was just Patrick, familiar and impossible to ignore in a way that Art never could quite scrub out of himself.
Smells like home, huh?