Chapter Text
“You will need to do more castings," Sophie told Jannik in her dummy-ridden office on Via Giovanni Paisiello. Her angular bob, paired with the gold-plated watch on her wrist, was starting to take on a hyper-specific Alberto Sordi close-up the longer Jannik stared at it.
He’d taken the Frecciarossa from Roma Termini to Milano Centrale the previous night, around 10 PM, and managed only a few minutes of sleep, the rest flipping through notes on Descartes’ Meditations. But it was hard to shake the feeling that the Frenchman was just overthinking things. Was sense-data theory dead, or were people just pretending? Did Aristotle’s unmoved mover solve anything? Geist must have actually collapsed into circularity. It had to.
Professor Marchetti had once asked whether a skier’s muscle memory counted as a form of embodied epistemology, and Jannik had fought the urge to stare out the window as if he were in a mockumentary. Sophie’d probably understand Descartes even less as his fellow countryman. Jannik could practically hear her voice: “Try model ergo pay check. you don’t need to think, you just need to look good.”
He should’ve skipped yesterday’s class. It was summer class anyway. Maybe then he’d have had enough brain power to wrestle with Google Maps an hour ago, which kept insisting the entrance to the Jil Sander casting on Via Solferino was across the street, in front of a dental clinic.
“…the run of Pitti Uomo in Florence, then Salone del Mobile for a few shoots with Ferragamo…and there’s Valentino coming up…”
Jannik propped his head sideways back against the sofa. It felt soft, leather but a little worn. He wondered if he’d ever get around to replacing the small things. An old hoodie. A chair past its prime. A remote held together by habit. Sophie, across the room, looked younger when she was horizontal. Almost like when they first met, when she’d insisted they were a real agency in Milan and tried to hand her business card to his mama in a Piazza della Repubblica bed-and-bath shop during a winter vacation, where the floor tiles were so shiny they looked like they could give you a headache.
Sophie stopped mid-rant, looking up from her screen. She sighed. “Jannik.”
“Ho sonno,” Jannik complained, feeling a little airy, like his thoughts were slipping their moorings one by one.
“Welcome to the industry,” Sophie paused, then fixed him with a pointed look. “Everyone is tired. Don’t waste what you’ve got. Where’s your hunger, Jannik? What do you want?”
Jannik pulled his backpack onto his lap and thought for a moment. “A Ferrari 812.”
Sophie opened her mouth, then closed it. Thirty seconds later, Giulia Bellini, the agency’s senior booker walked in and the two of them just stared at him.
“Read,” Sophie said.
Jannik glanced down at the script, the cover page printed with a glassy, overexposed photograph of linen suits caught in Lake Como light.
“L’eleganza non è un gesto. È un modo di essere. È la promessa silenziosa che porti con te. È ciò che rimane, quando tutto il resto svanisce,” Jannik read word by word.
Sophie and Bellini watched him like he was a chandelier they were deciding whether or not to buy.
“Eh, questo ragazzo forse ha solo la passerella dalla sua,” Bellini said, patting Sophie’s shoulder before leaving the same way she came.
Jannik crossed his legs, untangled them, then crossed them the other way, one knee up and then the other, and made a slight pout. It wasn’t his fault brand campaigns were bland like this, no? Runways were so much easier. He got in line after fifty other six-foot-two boys slumped against the walls scrolling their phones, waited, walked six steps, turned, walked six steps back, and he got the job.
And as long as the air-conditioning reached his corner, he was usually fine with someone’s interns spraying him with fabric refresher like he was a curtain.
He got what Sophie meant, though. Fit modelling, commercials, catalogues—that was where the money lived. The rare commercial spots where he held a prop espresso cup for so long his fingertips went numb. The eight-hour fit sessions in some industrial unit outside Sesto San Giovanni, where he stood in his socks while three pattern-makers circled him with pins.
Jannik earned enough to keep his life upright. He didn’t pay rent, but the monthly pass shuttling him between Rome and Milan took its cut. The three different trains he needed just to make the weeks work. Tuition carved into installments he paid on a cracked phone screen during lunch breaks. Groceries bought at the late-evening discount when Carrefour finally gave up pretending arugula shouldn’t wilt. He even had enough to buy Mark the LEGO Ideas Tree House for Chrismas last year.
Bellini had a point, Jannik thought. He was young, sure, but youth didn’t translate into income, not in this city. Not in this industry.
What was there that paid well, gave enough exposure, and actually lasted? Enough to get him his car? And, the 812 wasn’t just a car; it was a gravitational field. A 6.5-liter naturally aspirated V12. Carbon-ceramic rotors large enough to serve dinner on. 530 pound-feet of torque delivered with the blunt force and politeness of an avalanche. The rear diffuser alone could practically staple the car to the asphalt when the engine wound up past 8,500 RPM… Jannik sometimes dreamed of it. Wittgenstein’d say desire sat outside the limits of propositional language. Jannik agreed; the spec sheet did most of the talking anyway. He could live in that car.
His phone buzzed: a calendar reminder for the qualifier at Grandstand, Harbour Club. “Eh, talk to you later?” Jannik sprang up and crammed his water bottle, comp cards, whatever else he could grab into his backpack.
“sérieux?” Sophie said. “Sapienza has a Milan campus now?”
“Tennis,” Jannik explained, already pushing open the door.
“Ah,” Sophie called after him, voice thinning into the hum of printers and the soft clatter of comp cards being sorted in the next room. “Your boyfriend plays tennis, non? Remind me his name again?”
***
The commute gave Jannik too much time (M1 to Pagano, the 63’s slow pilgrimage toward Aspria Harbour) so he filled it with numbers. By the time he made it to the Grandstand, Jacopo and his French opponent were already shaking hands at the net.
Jacopo spotted him instantly and waved, big and unembarrassed, like it didn’t matter at all that Jannik had missed the entire match. Jannik lifted a hand back, still a little distracted.
So, his average net income sat somewhere between €1,400 and €2,200 a month, depending on how many e-com shoots and catalogues Sophie managed to scrape together. His leftover rarely cracked €1,000 unless someone handed him a rare campaign. The car sat at €335,000. He divided three-hundred-thirty-five-thousand by one-thousand and got 335 months, which became 27.9 years.
If he factored in bad seasons, agency cuts creeping upward, and the occasional month where Milan, Paris, and London collectively forgot he existed, it drifted closer to forty. If inflation existed, or if he ever dared to eat something that wasn’t egg whites or yogurt, it stretched neatly into the realm of 105 years, give or take half a century.
Jannik tried to stay focused, but he wasn’t sure if the task at hand was to meditate on the pocket change male models earned or convince himself that watching Jacopo long enough might magically qualify him to shout a tactical tip at the right moment. Jacopo had done well himself last week in Forlì. Quarter-final good.
The rhythmic thwock-thwock of the tennis ball rose and faded like someone keeping time with a metronome too close to his ear. Every few beats, a grunt, a skid, a soft curse. Someone behind him opened a packet of chips. A few men in faded caps on Jannik’s left were arguing about whether Berrettini’s serve’d stay this hot, if he was actually capable of sustaining that level without combusting, whether he was going to be as untouchable as his brother; a pair of teenagers in mismatched T-shirts debating his forehand like it was a constitutional question.
“Jacopo’s really good,” Jannik couldn’t help himself. He tried not to sound like he was correcting anyone. “He holds well. He adjusts to pace better than people think.”
The guys turned as a unit, the way people sometimes do when they’re not expecting disagreement. Their eyes traveled up him in a long sweep. Ankles, shins, his thigh, his shoulder, until finally reached his face.
Then they all laughed, trading looks. “Hey, you must be right,” one of them said, reaching out a hand as if to shake.
People could be surprisingly nice. Jannik beamed at them and shook the guy’s hand, then made quite an effort to pull away when the umpire called “First set, Furness, seven games to five.”
Jannik then spent the next thirty minutes following the match with the wired, overcorrecting attention span of a person who’d slept forty minutes could: clapping a beat too late, cheering when the ball was already dead, his head snapping side to side like a meerkat tracking volleys. He locked onto every point—Jacopo saving a break with a kick serve that yanked wide, Furness wrong-footing him with a backhand up the line, the ball skidding low off the dusty baseline on the court. He kept thinking, tight match, Jacopo’s going to drag this to a third set, repeating it like a mantra to stay awake.
At some point (maybe during a five-ball rally, maybe during the changeover when Jacopo toweled off and downed half a bottle of electrolyte mix), Jannik must have drifted. His eyelids lowered, the bright red clay bleeding into the inside of them, the murmuring noise smearing into a single warm hum. Then suddenly he was upright again, collar caught in a firm grip, Jacopo hauling him back onto the seat like they’d rehearsed it.
“Nice nap, Jan?” Jacopo asked, sweat trailing down his neck, shirt clinging damply to his spine.
“Sorry, sorry,” Jannik muttered, rubbing his eyes with the back of his hand, clay dust and sun and sleep all blurring together in one soft, disorienting fog. “Did you win?”
Jacopo made a face, then flopped down beside him. The entire crowd (all twelve of them, by Jannik’s estimate) had mostly cleared out, except for a girl and her dad still discussing the court about thirty feet to their right.
“Oh, sorry,” Jannik said softly, placing a hand on his back.
Jacopo waved it off, hummed something noncommittal, and patted his cheek. It was a Berrettini thing. Even Luca and Claudia sometimes patted him that way. It made Jannik felt gently, undeniably claimed. “I’ll cool off and then we can head out, okay? We’ll make the flight. He texted you yet?”
Jannik shook his head, but checked his phone anyway. Queen’s always wound Matteo up; he lived for the grass but the grass lived in his head, too. It showed in his texts, which alternated between emoji-laden novellas and single-word grunts. Nothing in between.
“Hey, he beat Travaglia. Just now,” Jannik broke into a grin and showed the scoreline to Jacopo.
Jacopo high-fived him, then rose, stretching like a giant leopard with his wet hair blonder than a sun-bleached wheatfield at noon.
Jannik watched with an absent, almost wistful envy. They all looked so strong. Built clean, lungs full, shoulders broad like they’d been raised on sunlight and protein. Jannik’s own frame was still the same gangly outline Prada kept insisting had “lines.” Once a casting director had dubbed him otherworldly, which he suspected was not meant as either insult or compliment but some inconvenient third thing.
“You’re still his lucky charm. Not even a sea can break that, eh?” Jacopo said, and headed toward the locker room, jerking his chin for Jannik to follow. A few steps later, he paused, turned.
Jannik stood exactly where Jacopo had left him, backpack slung over one shoulder, dizzy from the thought. He stared at nothing like his brain had quietly blue-screened.
That job was right there, wasn’t it?
It was called WAG.
A role he was already half-performing (minus the petites études, as Sophie liked to call them) but with media appearances, brand deals, sponsorship posts, maybe the occasional Vogue Italia interview about “supporting Matteo through the season.” All things he knew how to do. He already understood posing, understood lighting, understood how to look good next to someone famous without eclipsing them. He already lived off pasta and anxiety—arguably the two primary food groups of the influencer ecosystem.
And best of all, no more talking to twenty casting assistants a week whose entire expressive capacity lived somewhere between maybe and we’ll see. Just… loving Matteo. Being present. Being photogenic about it.
Jannik could do this. He’d be excellent at this.
He should study Georgina Rodríguez’s walk-of-fame glow, haloed in Netflix cameras and diamond-light. Captioning photos from private jets as if “grateful ❤️” were a vocation. In Monaco, you couldn’t throw a baguette without hitting some influencer-girlfriend with a pastel-filtered feed. Or look at Wanda Nara, juggling football contracts like live grenades. Or the Spanish, French, Swiss blondes whose boyfriends’ salaries were Googleable and whose brand partnerships paid entirely in immaculate resort-wear. Posting lakes and dogs and somehow waking up with three hundred thousand followers.
His head spun so fast he actually wobbled.
“Eh—everything good?” Jacopo scratched the side of his head.
“Jaco,” Jannik said, snapping back and jogging up to him, one hand slipping onto the strap of his tennis bag. “Do you want water? Towels? Your hands okay? I can get it for you.”
“I'm good,” Jacopo muttered. “You though. Maybe don’t sleep in the middle of a tournament site next time, huh? Not exactly the best idea.”
***
Jannik had rarely seen any part of London that wasn’t shaped like a casting map. His London existed almost entirely inside a triangle bordered by Soho, Shoreditch, and the edges of Islington.
His first British job had been for a small designer on Redchurch Street; the fittings took six hours, and the only thing anyone asked him was whether he could “please stand marginally more neutrally.” He had no idea what that meant.
Sophie had sent him with the vague reassurance that someone would meet him at the airport. Someone usually did. A junior booker, a driver, another eighteen-year-old model who had already done Paris and now spoke exclusively in moodboard references. Sure, his directional abilities had always been something of a longstanding concern. Put him anywhere west of Porta Romana and he became a confused Vespa with cheekbones. A British metropolis was asking rather a lot. Kensington, to him, might as well have been Cardiff.
Which was how he ended up hovering alone (“Shit, my phone. Do you remember where I left it? At the accro desk? Be right back, Jan”) in the antechamber of the Queen’s Club Members’ Pavilion, first floor, west wing, earnestly examining sepia photographs of 1920s and carved honor boards in gold leaf, when the voice cut in.
“Hello there,” someone said behind him, the vowels edged with that unmistakable Eastern European softness.
Jannik looked up from the glass case displaying a pair of antique wooden rackets that looked unfit for anything except maybe home invasion, and the caption beneath a 1934 photograph, “Gentlemen’s Singles: Sidney Wood def. Frank Shields, 6–4, 6–3.”
Light-chestnut hair, a remotely familiar face Jannik’d definitely seen on Tennis TV at some ungodly hour. If Matteo had taught him anything about the tennis world, it was that the average height here made a Paris runway backstage look like the kids’ section at Zara.
“Hello,” Jannik said.
The guy grinned, hands sliding into the pockets of his neon-trimmed Nike practice shorts. “What are you doing here? You don’t look injured or stressed, so you’re clearly not a player.”
“Eh,” Jannik said. It felt like he’d wandered into the setup of a joke, given that the credential hanging from his neck very clearly read ‘PLAYER GUEST—BERRETTINI’. “I’m just waiting.” Jacopo had probably toppled off the terrace overlooking the practice courts.
“Ah,” the guy nodded like he’d solved a puzzle. “Then wait inside, no? Lounge is open. Unless your badge is fake.”
“It’s not fake,” Jannik told him. Talking to this guy was its own kind of twilight-zone choreography; Jannik genuinely couldn’t tell if he was joking. “I can’t go in alone,” he needed a player or a coach to escort him—Vincenzo wasn’t here, and Matteo told him to stay here. He’s on his way.
The guy clapped his hands together, loud. “I can get you in,” he said, sliding an arm around Jannik’s shoulder. When Jannik protested, he held tighter, and pinched once for emphasis. “No, no, you can’t stay here. It’s against the club protocol. Guests left unescorted get removed. Come.”
Jannik didn’t want any trouble. He let himself be steered because the alternative seemed worse.
And then he was suddenly on the wrong side of the door, into the world of white tablecloths and cutlery and the low thrum of conversation; the softer sprawl of sofas, card tables, and screens showing BBC weather report; the air thicker with sweat, massage oil, and whatever eucalyptus thing someone had plugged in near the physio room.
The stranger kept a hand on him, shoulder to shoulder, and loosed him into the center of it all as if dropping off a parcel. Jannik was dragged along in his wake as they threaded past a cluster of players at the buffet: a dark-haired guy in a sleeveless practice top drowning his pancakes in syrup; another, pale, prosecuting a mound of scrambled eggs. Everything on this side seemed fractionally inflated, from the bowls of electrolyte gummies to the lightbulbs, from the playing cards to the physios’ ice buckets.
They moved on, skirting a table where two men with racquet calluses were picking at frighteningly green smoothies and a plate of chicken. Jannik’s escort slowed just long enough to exchange a volley of words in another language—could’ve been Russian, could’ve been something adjacent—before propelling him onward again.
They passed table after table that turned to look. Card tables where men were deep into a game of briscola. A trainer in a navy polo walking past with a stack of protein shakes tucked against his chest like exam sheets. Someone icing a knee with while their coach monologued over match stats.
The guy never stopped moving or talking. Every few meters he dropped a remark, a joke, a greeting, switching languages with the fluid, slightly showy ease of someone who knew it made people pay attention. He nudged Jannik forward whenever he wanted someone to see him.
Jannik felt like he’d been smuggled into a wildlife enclosure (an extremely restless, extremely sweaty, extremely competitive wildlife enclosure) and everyone was looking at him as though he’d wandered in through a ventilation duct. He started wishing, very deeply, for Matteo to materialize. Preferably before he was auctioned off to whichever match needed a mascot.
One of the guys slouched on a couch beneath a screen playing a soundless women’s match raised his head, who’d glanced over earlier but hadn’t said anything. He had the look of someone who’d been awake for too many flights.
“Sasha, dude,” he said, in a calm, almost clinically tired American accent, making a vague semicircle of a gesture that could’ve meant stop, nice one, slow down, speed up, enough, for the love of God, what are you doing.
“Yeah, yeah,” Jannik’s escort said. “C’mon now, look at this. You see?”
“Yeah, I do, man,” the American said. “You might not want to push that.”
Jannik decided he hated people speaking in codes; the only upside was that Sasha seemed mildly put-out in a way that belonged on a sulking child. He begrudgingly returned Jannik to his original corner (“I’ll see you later, eh? You’re here all week, no?”).
Also, if neither Matteo nor Jacopo showed up in five minutes, Jannik was going to walk out to Centre Court, lie face-down on the baseline, and let the grounds crew turf him over with the rest of the lawn repairs.
That, apparently, was when the world found its overdue mercy. Matteo appeared, his cap tilted backward and slightly askew, shirt damp and clinging. Ramon trailed behind with another massive tennis bag.
He came from the far end, once saw Jannik and held the eye contact. Jannik leaned back against the wall because his body made the decision before he did. First time seeing Matteo in almost two months and it hit with the same stupid guilt-response he got when a professor asked if he’d read the assignment.
Matteo closed the distance without breaking stride, hooked an arm around him, and hauled him in hard across the chest, lifting him a few careless inches off the floor. Jannik let out a noise he’d deny later, but he was laughing by the end of it anyway.
“Jan,” Matteo said.
For a moment Jannik had the faint, unnerving sense that Matteo was studying him—measuring whether he’d grown, changed, done something the Jannik he last saw wouldn’t have done.
And then that feeling washed off him, the way it always did. Whenever Matteo came near, it was a suffocating, elemental pull that was the same with being too close to the edge of a drop. Something massive latched onto the back of his neck, a jaw closing, and his brain went quiet in the worst or best possible way.
“You locked my door before you left, yes?” Matteo teased.
“Yeah,” Jannik assured him. Matteo’s eyes had the same brown as the terracotta floor tiles in his Monteverde apartment, the ones Jannik kept tripping over at the same uneven ridge near the bathroom because he refused to turn on the hallway light. “Always. Key’s in my bag—eh, at the hotel.”
Then Matteo grinned, eyes twinkling, said “good boy,” and kissed his forehead.
***
Jannik played out the last few minutes of the match after Matteo got up to shower. They’d been running Juventus (technically Piemonte Calcio thanks to licensing hell) against Inter, and Matteo kept yelling ‘vai, vai!’ at the players on screen as if volume alone would fix their positioning.
After two long minutes of micromanaging the midfield, trying to stop the CPU from making another catastrophic overlapping run, Jannik managed one clean interception with Škriniar, immediately over-corrected the dribble, and handed possession straight back to the computer. Three passes, triangle, triangle, through ball, and suddenly Morata was sprinting into the box like Donovan Bailey. Jannik switched frantically between defenders, each one somehow arriving half a second too late, and watched the shot slide past Handanović’s outstretched hand in that resigned, pre-scripted animation.
Jannik dropped the controller onto the couch and let the system idle. João Félix kept rolling the ball under his boot on the home screen. He debated calling Mama, decided that was a terrible idea, and abandoned it. Instead he drifted to the bathroom door, pressed an ear to the wood, and listened to the running water.
He knocked once. No answer. He pushed the door open.
“Woah—” Matteo said, half-turning toward him. The glass door of the shower was fogged from the middle down, leaving his upper half starkly defined through the haze, water tracking off his shoulders, across the lines of his torso, everything about him looking a little unhinged by heat and steam. “Jan? What’s wrong?”
Jannik sat down on the closed toilet lid, knees drawn slightly inward, back against the cold tile, letting Matteo look at him.
Thirty minutes earlier, when he told his Alice-in-Wonderland story to Matteo, Matteo had blinked, like he was trying to picture which part of Queen’s Club counted as a rabbit hole, and asked, “Which Sasha?”
He then laughed, one of those low, warm laughs that broke across his face all at once, before Jannik had the chance to answer (his guess would’ve been pointless anyway). He reached out to ruffle Jannik’s hair. Apparently, they’re nice people. Jannik believed him. Matteo was always right.
“I… want to come with you,” Jannik blurted. “When you travel. When you play.”
“If you want that, you know,” Jannik added, suddenly aware of the obvious thing he’d missed—that this wasn’t only about what he wanted. “if you want me there.”
Matteo pushed the glass door open without bothering with the water. He braced a hand on the frame, and Jannik’s throat locked at the sight of his cock hanging heavy between his thighs and tried not to stare.
“Jannik,” Matteo said, a hand out.
Jannik was guided by that invisible grip, until Matteo caught him and yanked him under the spray. Matteo bit Jannik’s lower lip, then sucked his tongue so hard Jannik’s spine arched and his palm slapped the glass behind him.
“What the fuck?” Matteo laughed, breath scalding. “Of course I want that. Are you crazy?”
“Oh, okay, okay,” Jannik said, wildly relieved. He liked this t-shirt and now it was soaked through. He had nothing to wear for bed now.
Matteo was already off, talking himself into motion. New York sushi at Masa; boats off Star Island, Miami, and dinners at Joe’s Stone Crab; Tokyo Wagyu and wandering past Sensō-ji; Private practice courts in Dubai, recovery suites that looked more like spas; Sunset walks around the Indian Wells Tennis Garden; Kids lining up along the Caja Mágica walkways with giant foam tennis balls held out; Melbourne Rockpool Bar & Grill on a rest day, Nobu Crown if everyone was feeling indulgent.
Jannik nodded along but had a hard time focusing. Matteo’s tattoos right there at eye level, black ink slick and shining, the Sol Invictus dripping, the cross on his ribs flexing every time he breathed.
His cock gave one helpless twitch against Matteo’s thigh, useless, obvious. Matteo noticed immediately. A low, smug laugh rumbled against Jannik’s hair.
“Stay still,” he said, grabbed the back of Jannik’s neck and the other hand slid straight down, shoving under the waistband of Jannik’s shorts and wrapping around his small dick in one rough grip.
Matteo jerked him fast, almost mean, thumb swiping hard over the head on every upstroke, palm slick with water and pre-come. Jannik’s hips jerked helplessly into the grip, thighs shaking, calves burning from staying on tiptoe because that seemed to be the only thing keeping him from sliding straight down the drain. Jannik knocked his forehead against Matteo’s collarbone.
“Matti,” he pleaded, not even sure what he was asking for. It just felt like he was being punished for feeling this good.
“Oh fuck,” Matteo said. He dropped Jannik, and shoved his shorts and briefs down in one impatient yank, fabric catching on his hips before it peeled off and slapped wet to the tile. Jannik’s legs were bare, and the sudden exposure hit him like a slap: vulnerable, ridiculous, achingly hard.
“Fuck, I thought you spoke English there,” Matteo laughed, almost sheepish, cheeks flushed under the spray. “Christ.” Then he stepped in, crowding Jannik back until the tile hit his spine, cold, shocking, a sharp gasp ripping out of him.
“Shit, cold—”
“Sorry, sorry,” Matteo apologized, sweet, but didn’t move. He snaked a hand under Jannik’s knee, jerked the thigh to his waist. Hold it, the grip said. He brought two fingers to his own mouth, and sucked them in. Eyes on Jannik the whole time.
Then the hand slid down, water-slick, knuckles brushing Jannik’s balls before two fingers pressed blunt against his hole.
One slick finger in to the first knuckle. Jannik clenched hard, a strangled sound catching in his throat.
Matteo huffed. “That’s my little finger, Jan. What do you want me to do, vanish?”
Still, he reached for the tiny bottle of baby oil from the shelf, tumb snapping the cap. A fat ribbon of oil spilled over his fingers, thick and warm, sliding in slow trails down Jannik’s cock, pooling at the base, dripping off his balls in heavy, glistening drops that hit the shower floor with soft, wet plops.
“Relax, no?” Matteo rumbled, voice low under the hiss of water. “I’ve got you.”
He hooked Jannik’s left leg higher, calf locked in the crook of his arm, Jannik balanced on one trembling foot, toes curling against slick tile. One knuckle, two inside. The burn bloomed sharp and sweet. Water sluiced down Matteo’s gorgeous, lethal face, clinging to those dark lashes in trembling beads. Every time one broke free and rolled, Jannik stared like a starving man.
He lost track of time completely, minutes, hours. The next time awareness slammed back through the fog of steam, he was nipping at Matteo's collarbone like a drenched sewer cat, with the feeling of a blunt cockhead pressing slow and insistent against his hole.
Matteo was breathing like a lunatic, locked in some epic, silent battle against whatever the fuck.
“Eyes on me,” Matteo demanded. “Eyes on me, Jan.”
Jannik did what he was told. He looked up, dazed and stupid, feeling like Matteo would somehow look less wrecked after a five-set grinder against Rafa Nadal on clay. He didn’t get what Matteo was so stressed about. Sex was supposed to be fun, no? Happy. Sex with Jannik was meant to feel good, to unwind him, to make him loose and grinning. Jannik was here for that, no? Here to make Matteo happy.
“It’s okay, Matti,” Jannik whispered, cooing him, even though he had no idea what he was soothing. “It’s okay. Come in. Inside. It’s loose now, no? Feels good.”
Matteo laughed, dry and cracked. “Shut it, would you? You have no idea—”
His hands clamped down hard on Jannik’s ass, fingers sinking into wet muscle, and shoved. One brutal push and Jannik dropped, impaled to the root. Jannik’s eyes rolled straight back into his skull, vision whiting out.
Matteo fucked him like the height difference was a personal insult. Jannik was too tall for this to be graceful, probably taller than any girl Matteo had ever bounced on his dick before, so Matteo wasn’t really carrying him; he was just pinning him there, one iron arm wedged under Jannik’s ass, the other braced at his waist, half-suspending him so Jannik’s long legs dangled useless and his weight rocked awkwardly down onto every upward thrust. Jannik’s thighs trembled, knees bent wrong, toes barely scraping tile. He was half-sitting on Matteo’s forearm like it was a fucking shelf.
God, shit, fuck, Jan, motherfucker, Matteo muttered things like a broken VHS tape, over and over, kissing Jannik’s eyes, brows, nose, the soaked strands of hair on his forehead. Jannik wasn’t even sure Matteo knew the words were spilling out loud.
Jannik reached up to loop his arms around Matteo’s neck, fingers locking tight at his nape. He tried to bury his cheek against Matteo’s, but Matteo resisted, just enough tilt to keep the distance, like he still needed to see Jannik’s face.
Jannik fucking whined. He opened his mouth, to beg, to breathe, to something, and water poured straight in, down his nose, stinging his eyes, flooding his tongue. He coughed hard, ridiculous and choking, body jerking with every hack. That was apparently enough for Matteo to curse viciously.
Matteo pulled out and eased him back down to the ground.
“Fuck, fuck,” Jannik chanted, legs trembling. He felt cavern-empty, aching, hole fluttering around nothing. He braced himself against the tile between wall and glass for balance. He was losing it.
In blind, shaking desperation, he reached down and slid two fingers back inside himself. His walls clamped around them, hot and slick with Matteo’s pre-cum, the baby oil, his own mess. It squelched loud enough to make him whimper.
“Jesus,” Jannik thought he heard Matteo say, the word muffled like it was filtering through deep water.
He wanted to fucking cry. He had no idea what Matteo was seeing right now.
Matteo shut off the water. A huge, thick, dry towel wrapped around Jannik’s shoulders, then Matteo eased Jannik’s hand away from his hole. He squeezed Jannik’s ass hard, one palm enough to span half his perineum from behind, offering rough friction, cooing low and soothing as he half-dragged, half-carried him out of the shower.
He planted his ass on the counter, another towel was somehow under him. Jannik’s back hit the mirror with a dull thud, the glass fogged at the edges. The veins on Matteo's arms stood out as he held Jannik’s legs spread.
Jannik stared with a dull aftershock while Matteo lazily stroked his cock right up against his own, the sight he hadn’t caught before, fucking standing up like that.
Matteo made a low, satisfied sound, grabbed Jannik’s left wrist, and pressed his hand down, making him lift his own cock and balls clear. Then he pushed in.
Matteo had a thing for the most absurd places to fuck, like it was a personal challenge, some stupid, testosterone-fueled game he played with himself. A narrow counter edge, a wobbly locker-room bench, the cramped seat of a rental car with the steering wheel digging into Jannik’s spine.
Jannik knew why, deep down. He’s not stupid.
It turned Matteo on because he got off on making it work. On proving he could fold Jannik’s body into whatever awkward angle, pin him against whatever inconvenient surface, and still fuck him so thoroughly that Jannik forgot his own name. On the idea he was the one who’d taught Jannik what it felt like, the only one who’d ever done this to Jannik. The only one who ever would.
“You’re coming now,” Matteo decided for him. His big, bronzed hand clamped around Jannik’s flushed, leaking little cock and gave rough pulls.
Jannik convulsed, folding forward into Matteo’s chest. For one dizzy second he wished it would just end. It felt like they’d been fucking forever, and he knew that if Matteo really, really wanted, Jannik could black out right there and wake up later on the bed with Matteo fucking him missionary.
It happened like that. Quiet, almost peaceful, a bone-deep exhaustion washing over him as he came. Jannik went completely limp, spilling hot and thin over his own pale pubes and Matteo’s bronzed fist, body surrendering with a soft, shuddering sigh.
Matteo eased him back against the mirror, cool glass steadying his weight, and kissed him slow, deep, praising, tasting the salt on his lips. He said he did so good, he was so proud of him.
Then he kept moving, hips rolling steady and selfish for a few more minutes.
Jannik wimpered, soft. It had a surreal feel of rewinding eight hours, Jannik back on the plane, opening La Grande Bellezza on his iPad for the fifth time.
Jep Gambardella walks through the crowd. Someone screams “Cumbia!” at an unreasonable volume. someone else faints for no reason; a woman in a sequined dress announces her divorce over the DJ set. The giraffe in the courtyard. The nun who climbs the stairs on her knees and refuses to speak, except to say she lives on roots. One of the half-drunk socialites drifted through strobe-lit courtyards like a migrating species. A man in a velvet jacket sobs at a flock of flamingos.
His boyfriend over-fucking him after three straight days of two-hour pro-level matches in a hotel suite that probably ran fifteen hundred a night on the open market.
Never 2006 Baden-Baden your life, Jannik told himself.
Yes, sure, not even in a parallel world where he might have grown up as a five-foot-seven Minnesota beauty-pageant princess with sequined sash and a tiara would he ever spend £28,000 on a weekend of strategic shopping and sixty bottles of pink champagne.
They once blamed the England WAGs for an entire World Cup meltdown; Jannik refused to be drafted into that level of delusion. No chance.
Matteo’s rhythm started to crumble, thrusts turning sloppy, cock jabbing at odd angles, shallow and desperate, nowhere near deep enough. Jannik moaned anyway, helpless, fingers digging hard into Matteo’s forearm.
Matteo cursed through gritted teeth. Fuck, Jan, love you, feels so good, my perfect baby, so fucking tight, before he yanked out abruptly.
“Open up,” he gasped, whole body shaking, arms trembling as he held himself up. “Hold it open for me, please, Jan.”
Jannik whimpered, exhausted, shy, but obeyed. His hands slid down, fingers spreading himself slightly, exposing the slick, swollen rim.
Matteo groaned like he’d been punched, cursed again, and came hard—hot stripes painting Jannik’s open hole, splattering over his limp cock and the damp curls above. Then he collapsed forward, heavy and spent, caging Jannik against the mirror, shielding him completely.
A low, breathless laugh rumbled out of him, chest vibrating against Jannik’s as he buried his face in Jannik’s neck. “Fucking hell,” he muttered, voice wrecked.
Matteo hauled himself up, cradling Jannik’s face in his hands while smearing cum, oil, spit all over. He leaned in and kissed him deep, wet. Jannik was seriously fighting to keep his eyes open.
“It’s going to be a great year for us, Jan,” Matteo told him fondly, lovingly, then lifted him off the counter and to the shower.