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After losing match point, Carlos did what he always did, or what was expected of him. The smile came first because it slipped into place so easily it almost felt real, stretching across his face in one fluid motion. Then his hand followed, firm and warm as he usually reached across the net, the picture of grace. Cameras loved that version of him and Carlos knew the crowd did too. He was their “good loser”. The one who made defeat look almost forgivable and silly.
What they didn’t see, what none of them really saw though was how it sat beneath his ribs, sharp and restless. The anger and the bitterness that only came with being a professional athlete, fated to be either on the side of complete glory or disgrace. Carlos, fortunately, had been on the victorious side too often already to understand that losing was necessary, even for someone generational like him. Juanki had seen it, once. He had understood from the beginning that Carlos’ smile wasn’t softness, not really, but control. A blade wrapped in colorful cover. But Juanki was gone, and now the feeling belonged only to him, unshareable.
Because that was the rule, wasn’t it? Winners won, losers smiled.
And Carlos, Carlos was exceptional at smiling. Except… not like this.
Because when it was Jannik on the other side, something in him refused to behave. The bitterness didn’t vanish, no, rather, it changed. It still bit at him, still gnawed and it had taken Carlos a long time to name honestly and even longer to stop fighting. Not admiration exactly, though that was part of it, had somehow always been part of it. He’d turned it over and over, set it down so many times it had worn smooth, lost its edges. He wasn't smitten anymore, even made his peace with that, and on most days it held. Emphasizing here: On most days.
Even now, with the Monte-Carlo wind tugging at everything, with the crowd tilting unmistakably toward that bright red hair, Jannik looked like he belonged here, on Carlos’ red clay. Yet victory settled on him naturally, effortlessly.
Carlos hated that.
Carlos couldn’t look away.
When the final point ended, it wasn’t the loss that hit him first. It was Jannik dropping to his knees. The same image burned into him from another court, another time. White lines and green grass and that same damn feeling of watching him reign once again, finally. Just the body keeping score of things the mind had already closed the book on.
For a second, Carlos forgot to move, forgot to breathe even as something twisted in his chest, urging him to keep going, keep fighting, keep–
By the time Jannik stood again, Carlos had already rebuilt himself. The smile returned, sharper now, steadier. His hand tingled before they even met at the net, and he noted it the way you note bad weather. When they finally collided, under the whole world’s watchful eyes, close enough to catch the heat off him, everything in Carlos went very still and very quiet.
“Hard court, grass, clay court, man…” Carlos grinned, because that’s what he did, because it was easier to speak than to think in front of all these big lenses and microphones. Jannik leaned in fully, arm curling around the back of his neck, solid and familiar and completely unfair. Carlos guessed Jannik didn’t even notice it in its full extent. “Next time,” he said, laughed, and all of it came out softer than intended, same as always, a habit he'd apparently not been able to train out of himself despite everything.
Then Jannik giggled, actually fucking giggled, breath warm against his skin, and Carlos felt the short-circuit happen and let it, because what was the point anymore of pretending it didn't. He knew what this was. Even the most delusional neurons in his brain knew what their after would look like, the same way he knew the sun would come up tomorrow and he would be gone from Jannik’s mind already. Hell, Carlos himself would be on the way to the airport already, back to his respective reality. That was simply the shape of it.
Hand to heart, it was a workable arrangement. Eyes open, no illusions, take what's offered and don't call it anything it isn't.
The rest of the ceremony blurred, but well, it always did. Those unwelcome, ugly mosquitos low in his stomach every time Jannik just so glanced back at him from the podium– and Carlos hated them not because they were confusing but because they weren't. Being a multiple Grand Slam champion, it turned out, did nothing to make you immune to wanting something you'd already fully diagnosed as impossible. Embarrassing, to be honest.
Especially when Jannik turned back to him during the trophy ceremony, the silver cup in his hand to ask what time Carlos would be leaving tomorrow and that pathetic little flicker of hope lit itself without permission, as if she wasn't sitting mere rows away. He stamped it out, rigorously, and smiled instead.
“Not that early,” he said. Jannik laughed like the answer was charming and as if he didn’t know it himself, written in their private Instagram dm’s days ago.
Sometimes, when Carlos was tired enough to be honest, he redistributed the blame. Pointed it at Jannik, because Carlos never, never, would have been the one to start this. He wasn't built for recklessness, whatever the world liked to say about him on court. It had been Jannik who'd said he wanted to see him more, play some more. Alicante, years ago now. Who could blame Carlos for taking the door when it was held open so deliberately by someone who apparently had no intention of walking all the way through it himself. Carlos wasn't even sure anymore if his 18-year-old self would recognize what he'd settled for, but frankly, that version of him could go to hell.
Yes, foolish. Yes, immature. They'd both technically grown past those early years. But this thing (two people who knew each other's bodies and games better than anyone else on earth), it hadn't gone anywhere. It had just changed what it asked of Carlos, mostly to smile across the net and mean it when he said next time and understand that next time had nothing to do with forever.
The polished smiles, a healthy public distance, this brutal efficiency with which they tried to dismantle each other for three or five sets and then stood close enough to share breath at the net was their best performance, probably. Fed to the whole world without the world knowing what it was watching. People really were oblivious to their own eyes when they wanted to see and didn't know what they saw.
Carlos stood poolside now, a gentlemanlike grin on his face, watching Jannik jump into the water. The rehearsed phrase already lying on the tip of his tongue. Normally they didn't allow themselves to see each other so soon after a final (an unspoken rule, one of several), but because she was here, they had to be fast. Meaning: locker room it is this time. Unfortunate, truly, as Carlos hated dropping down onto the cold tiles and Jannik never really fucked in these spaces. Carlos knew, with his phone in hand and the Italian’s team laughing into the recording camera right in front of their faces, that he would go home unsatisfied tonight.
"Sh," Jannik said, with the first breath they were alone, pushing Carlos back against the white wall, into the narrow gap between two lockers. His skin was cold from the pool, wet through his shirt where their chests met, and the shock of it ran straight down Carlos' spine. He didn't care. He'd stopped caring about the reasonable objections a long time ago,and his patience had already run out somewhere between being broken at 3-1 up and the pool deck, so with one fluid motion he grabbed a fistful of Jannik's wet hair and pulled, and Jannik's mouth crashed into his.
The thing was (and Carlos had turned this over enough times)– Jannik was mostly bad at this. Technically he was fine, better than fine; they wouldn't have ended up here repeatedly if that had been the problem. It was the rhythm of him; too eager at the start, greedy in a way that made Carlos feel briefly, dangerously wanted, and then too careless in the end, attention fraying at the edges– and Carlos was still an addict for it. Had been one from the first time and would remain one in all likelihood until something, someone intervened.
He was addicted to his phone too, he reasoned sometimes, in the small hours when the blue screen came easiest. What difference did Jannik make, practically speaking.
Though the difference, which Carlos did not say aloud and barely let himself think in direct language, was that his phone had never looked at him the way Jannik occasionally did, briefly, between points, accidentally unguarded, before putting the mask back on and going home to the newest one.
But that was a thought for the plane. Not for now, with Jannik's cold hands finding the hem of his shirt and the harsh LED-lights making everything too real, door locked, probably, because Jannik was always careful about doors when they ended up like this. Carlos had approximately ten minutes before someone came looking for one of them. He'd learned to work with less.
Biting into Jannik's chapped lips– would he ever find the time to buy a chapstick, even while being sponsored by a fucking skincare brand?– he slid his hand (fire, flames, electricity, all at once) into Jannik's wet shorts and grabbed the leaking dick before stroking, pulling up and down, as Jannik panted softly into his mouth. The friction had to be slightly uncomfortable but with the way Jannik arched into it he clearly didn't care much. Neither did he particularly attend to Carlos' own arousal, but that was fine. And so Carlos started grinding against his thigh instead, past caring about what that looked like.
When Jannik started bucking up into Carlos' hand, his mouth wandering to Carlos' neck and biting down softly there, Carlos couldn't stop the sound that escaped; small and involuntary, a quiet "Gianni" before he could catch it. All this shit.
He felt Jannik still for exactly half a second. Not long enough that it would mean anything to anyone observing, if anyone were observing, which they of course weren't, which was the only reason any of this was possible. Half a second of stillness against Carlos' throat, and then Jannik exhaled, maybe a mix between a laugh and a breath, and his hips rolled forward again and the pause felt like it had never happened.
The way Jannik moved through those pauses was the real source of Carlos' pain after every collision of theirs.
He tightened his grip, less generous now, and Jannik made a sound against his collarbone that Carlos filed away in the part of himself he'd stopped pretending didn't exist, a personal archive that he thought of grimly sometimes, a place where he kept all the sounds and the reactions for two-in-the-morning hotel rooms that smelled like nobody or felt empty even while being shared for a single night. It was a large archive.
Jannik's fingers curled into his hip. Anchoring, the absentminded grip of someone who reached for the nearest solid thing without thinking about what it was. Carlos ground down harder against his thigh and told himself it was just friction, just two people at the top of their sport who had found a reasonably efficient method of decompression, and if Carlos occasionally used Jannik's name like it was the only word in his vocabulary left then that was just– that was–
Jannik came quietly, the way he did everything, with minimal announcement and maximum efficiency, shuddering once against Carlos' neck and then going loose and heavy and warm, the cold from the pool finally gone off his skin. For a moment he just breathed there, forehead dropped to Carlos' shoulder, and Carlos kept moving, jaw tight, chasing it, because he was not going to make this into something by stopping now.
He finished with his face turned into Jannik's damp hair, not saying anything this time, biting down on the name before it could embarrass him twice.
Their breathing evened out slowly in the white silence of the room.
Jannik straightened first (didn’t he always?), already pulling himself back together and smoothing his wet hair back, adjusting his shorts, looking for all the world like a man who had simply stepped inside to find a towel. He glanced at Carlos once. Carlos met the unreadable expression with the same one he uses at the net every time now. A steady and practised soft-fake smile.
"They’ll be looking for me," Jannik said.
"I know," replied Carlos.
Jannik's hand found his jaw for one purposeless second, his thumb pressing just below his cheekbone, not tender exactly but not nothing, and he was gone, door swinging behind him, back out into the noise and the cameras and the version of his life that was real and documented and had his parents, his brother and his girlfriend in it.
Carlos stood between the two lockers for a moment longer than necessary. Then he straightened his shirt, checked his phone; two missed calls from Samu, one message from his father, nothing from anyone who knew where he actually was, and walked out into the Monte-Carlo evening wearing the smile that had always been his best performance.
Next time, he'd said at the net and meant it. Carlos always, always meant it, and it had nothing and everything to do with tennis anymore and had for a long time running. There would be a next time, that he didn't doubt, had never doubted, but the form of the next clash, that, he couldn't predict.
Jannik knew and came back anyway. Carlos let him. Neither of them called it anything. And the world watched them smile at each other across nets on three different surfaces all over the year and called it rivalry, called it respect, called it the greatest competition of their generation.
And it was all of those things. It was also this.