Fic: all the roads we have to walk (1/2)
Title: all the roads we have to walk
Author: aramley
Pairing: Roger Federer/Rafael Nadal
Rating: R
Wordcount: ~17,300
Disclaimer: All events described are entirely fictional.
Summary: Thirteen years after Roger Federer's retirement from professional tennis, the release of a new movie chronicling his famous rivalry with Rafael Nadal brings the two back together in London. Rekindling their friendship, Rafa invites Roger to visit his home in Mallorca, where as they relive shared memories, their relationship deepens.
Notes: Written for rpf_big_bang '09, and many thanks to the mods for organising such a great challenge. Title and cut tag from Wonderwall, by Oasis. Dedicated with much love to my flist, who are the best cheerleaders in the world.
Also, many many thanks to roonerspism for her beautiful artwork, which can be fangirled here
all the roads we have to walk
Roger wondered sometimes how much of his life he must have spent in airplanes; years, he thought, a little irritably, gazing out into the clear blue outside the small porthole window, years of my life. He missed the ease of the private jet, but that had been sold off around the time of the divorce, another victim of the bonfire of his various vanities. He could have bought another - could have bought ten - but it seemed like an excess. Anyway, he was supposed to be trying to be more eco-friendly, these days. He could probably spend the rest of his life trying to offset the carbon footprint he’d set down during the years of travel on the tour, but it was a start.
He rubbed at his tired eyes, dry from the sterile recylced air. Most of the other passengers were sleeping, and the cabin was very still and quiet. No matter how luxurious a flight was, it never seemed to achieve true comfort: the air too dry and just a shade too cool, and the roar of the engines a constant drone, at the periphery of awareness but just too loud to be completely ignored. Tired and restless, he wished he could sleep; the time-difference from Dubai to London was going to play havoc with his body-clock, he knew, and with the event tonight - even thinking about the premiere made him nervous. Walking red-carpets had never been his forté - walking one sleep-deprived and jetlagged was another thing entirely.
The thought of the premiere set his stomach turning - even more so the thought of the movie. He’d asked for an advance copy but the director had coyly turned him down, insisting that the element of surprise be preserved for the grand premiere. Strokes of Genius: that was the movie’s name. Roger didn’t like it, but the director loved it and Roger had abdicated enough responsibility for the movie that he didn’t have a say in what it was called.
The idea of a movie had been batted around for years by this director and that, even in the early years of his retirement when the gloss of his achievements was still fresh on the world of tennis, and then later, as fashions shifted and Roger’s name came in and out of vogue. Movies, television, innumerable book deals; money beyond anything he could have dreamed of.
He’d turned them down because his retirement wasn’t supposed to be about tennis - retirement was supposed to be Mirka’s time, payback for putting her life on hold to follow a boyfriend, a partner, a husband, from court to court and country to country, for fifteen years, tiny twin daughters in tow in the later years. So in his retirement they bought the New York house, and settled there to make a life for themselves in one place for the first time in either of their migrant lives. Mirka made friends and contacts in the fashion industry, flourished, and Roger worked with his foundation and watched his daughters grow up. He turned down the offers of the interviews, television shows, the autobiographies, the movie deals.
The only proposal he'd ever taken seriously came after the divorce, while he was living alone in the New York apartment trying awkwardly to adjust to this unexpected turn his life had taken. He blamed that for allowing his personal assistant to set up the meeting with the up-and-coming Hollywood director who was calling his office twice, sometimes three times a day to try and get a meeting with Roger Federer, to pitch him her pet project.
Against his better judgement, Roger went to the meeting. The director had been impossibly young in jeans and a sweatshirt. She’d held out her hand - tattooed on the back with intricate swirling patterns, the nails painted black - and Roger had shaken it, feeling old. "I'm Jenny Lewis. Wow, it's so good to meet you."
"You too," Roger said, sitting down.
"It's really an honour," said Jenny Lewis, wide-eyed with sincerity. "I grew up watching you. You were my hero, man."
Roger couldn't help but laugh. "You were a tennis fan?"
"Oh yeah. You and Rafael Nadal, I was so hooked on that. I remember that final, the Wimbledon 2008, I was ten years old and even then I thought, that would make a great, such a great movie. So this is like, my dream come true.” Jenny Lewis quirked a half-embarrassed smile.
Roger laughed. "That's a lot to live up to," he said.
"A lot for me to live up to," said Jenny, smiling, earnest. Her quirkiness made her oddly likeable. "I don’t want to mess around here. Listen, Mr Federer - "
"Roger, please."
"Okay, Roger. I want you to know that I really want to do this movie right. I want to do justice to what you did, you and Rafael Nadal, your story. I think we have a really great script coming together and what I'd like, very much, is to have your approval." Jenny had leant forward on the table, as if to convey her perfect seriousness. Roger, in spite of himself, found that he believed her.
Roger smiled. "Okay."
Jenny leaned back. "Really?"
"Yes. Really."
"Okay. Wow. That was really easy."
“You were expecting me to be difficult?”
“Well, I called your office like, fifty times before you agreed to meet me,” Jenny said, grinning. “You’re a tough guy to get to see, I thought you might be a tough sell.”
Roger laughed. "So, have you talked with Rafa about this?"
"Oh, yeah," said Jenny, grinning. "He seemed really excited about it."
Roger laughed. "He did, yeah?"
"I mean, he's really into the idea, wanted to hear all about it. Listen, I just can't tell you how much this means to me, Roger, having both you guys on board with this."
“Just don’t turn me evil or anything,” Roger said, and Jenny laughed her high-pitched sort of shrieking laugh and said, “Oh, dude, trust me, I don’t think there’s any danger of that.”
Everything had seemed to happen so quickly after that - though Roger had declined any active involvement in the movie, there were meetings with producers, endless drafts of the scripts, countless emails from Jenny Lewis asking about this detail or that (what did it feel like to walk out onto Centre Court at Wimbledon? What did he remember most about the first time he’d met Rafael Nadal? Roger had spent a lot of time staring at the stubbornly blank screen, trying to recall the minutiae of events that had been hazed with adrenaline even at the time, and were even more shrouded now with the distance of time).
Actors were cast. Roger wasn’t entirely familiar with the current superstars, but Myla and Charlene both went into raptures over Tom Chambers, the actor cast to play Roger himself (which was a little uncomfortable), and even more so over Carlos Castro, who made a smouldering, dark-eyed Rafael Nadal (the resemblance was good and yet, Roger thought sometimes, looking at cast pictures and promo material, there was something off - some elusive quality that Rafa had possessed, and this man didn’t).
And here he was now, a bare eighteen months later. The movie was finished, the premiere only hours away, and Roger settled back into his uncomfortable plane seat as the plane began, inexorably, to descend.
-
At the hotel there was a message waiting for him behind the desk - the studio was sending a limousine to pick him up at seven-thirty. There was a designer suit waiting for him in the suite. They were pleased he could make it, and looked forward very much to showing him the film, they were hoping very much that he would enjoy it.
In the hotel room he called Mirka, who was in New York with the girls. It was late, and the girls were asleep. But he’d promised to call, and he kept his promises.
“I’ll tell them you called,” Mirka said, sounding tired herself. “They’ll be excited. Charlene wants Carlos’ autograph.”
“Sure,” Roger said. “Is there anything I can get for you?”
Mirka laughed, and Roger smiled. It was good to make her laugh, it felt right, the way it had before things got bad between them. “You could get me Tom Chambers’ phone number,” she teased. “He’s hot.”
Roger snorted. “Better than the real thing?”
“I think I could stand to compare you,” Mirka said. “Failing that, you could thank what’s her name, that girl who’s playing me.”
“Charlie?”
“Yeah,” said Mirka, half-laughing. “She makes me look great. I don’t remember ever looking that good.”
“No,” said Roger. “You looked better.”
A silence fell between them, pregnant with the things Roger wanted to say, but couldn’t. The things it was too late to say.
“I’ll tell the girls you called,” Mirka said, at last, with finality.
“Tell them I’ll call tomorrow, before I fly back. Tell them I love them. And I’ll see them soon.”
“I will,” Mirka said, with affection. “You’ll in Dubai a week, right?”
“Right. I’ll be home - I’ll be in New York after that.”
“Okay. Night, Roger.”
“Good night.”
Mirka hung up first; Roger sat for a moment longer, listening to the emptiness on the other end of the phone, and the silence of his hotel room. Then he shook himself, thumbed the phone off and tossed it away onto the bed, and then got up to dress.
The premiere loomed; as he dressed, he felt the unfamiliar butterfly-wings of nerves in his stomach. He hadn’t quite yet mastered his feelings towards the film - whether he felt strangely protective of it, or distant from it. Although, attending the premiere belied the impression that he was completely uninvolved with the project. Perhaps, he thought, fastening the fiddly ridiculous bow tie in the mirror, he shouldn’t have come. He regarded himself coolly - greying temples and faint lines developing. He was forty-three, but he thought he looked older. Tom really did make a better Roger Federer than the real thing, these days.
-
It was in the limousine on the way to the premiere that Roger began to get really nervous. Walking the red carpet wasn't like stepping out onto a court, where you could prove yourself in front of the crowd - smile and wave, yes, but then down to business. His suit was uncomfortable, and he tugged at the collar of his shirt. It was a heavy, humid August evening, unlike English weather as he remembered it. He wished he'd brought one of his own suits, bought to wear in Dubai and better suited to the heat than this heavy material. His nerves increased as the limousine drew through the streets of London, closer and closer to where Roger knew the theatre was. They drew up outside the theatre at last, and Roger saw the crowds, heard the noise of their excited screaming, and saw the camera-flashes like an approaching storm.
If from a distance the commotion around the entrance of the theatre looked like a lightning-storm, then getting out of the limousine was like walking into its heart. The camera-flashes from the press ranks and the screams of the fans were dazzling for a moment until he remembered how to keep his composure: to smile and wave at the banks of cameras and the massed ranks of the fans. They were screaming for autographs, and he walked the lines, automatically scrawling a long-practiced signature onto movie posters and merchandise promotional magazine covers. Some of the fans had RF caps and t-shirts, and he scribbled his signature over these with a feeling of nostalgia, smiling. Some of the fans were grasping pictures of the actors from the film - alien-familiar faces that Roger avoided signing, if he could. Those pictures made him feel strangely obsolete.
He managed the red carpet without falling over or embarrassing himself in front of the crowds, but he made it inside with no small measure of relief. The lobby of the theatre was crowded, but he recognised a few faces amongst the glittering array of beautiful people. Tom Chambers caught sight of him, and waved in recognition before extricating himself from the conversation of the young woman he was standing with and making a beeline for Roger.
"Roger, hi," said Tom. He had cropped his hair for a new role, and the change was jarring. "It's so great to see you here."
"I’m glad I could make it. It's crazy out there," said Roger.
"Yeah, you never get used to it,” Tom said, with a wry smile and a shrug. His gestures always seemed a touch overdone; Roger supposed that was the actor in him. “Hey,” Tom continued, “I think Rafael Nadal is here already, too. I think I saw him talking to Jenny just a moment ago."
"He's here?" Roger looked around the crowds inside the theatre, scanning the people with a sense of anticipation shot through with nervousness. He and Rafa had fallen out of touch, in recent years. The movie had made Roger think of Rafa a lot, and yet somehow they still hadn’t gotten back into contact, as though each was embarrassed to be the first to make a move.
"Yeah, he's here. Oh, hey, I think I see him - over there, is that him? I actually haven’t met him before." Roger followed the direction of Tom's gesture and saw, with a jolt, Rafael Nadal. Rafa's back rather, but still, there was something about him that was unmistakeable: something familiar in the way he held himself, or the hair curling at the nape of his neck, still worn long and rather shaggy, as he always had.
"Yeah,” Roger said, “Yeah, that’s him. Do you mind if I -?" Roger said to Tom, and Tom shook his head vigorously, saying no, you go ahead, man, and Roger set off through the crowds. Some of the people he brushed past glanced at him - some with recognition, some without. Many of them seemed impossibly young, and Roger might have wondered for how many of them he was barely more than a historical figure, if he hadn’t been intently focused on his goal.
And then, at last, he was within reach of Rafa. He reached out, almost shy, to touch Rafa's elbow and get his attention. Rafa turned, and his face lit up instantly.
"Roger!" He was beaming, a smile that Roger remembered, as infectious as it had ever been - Roger felt his own smile broaden in reply. "Is so good to see you!"
"You too," Roger said. It really was; Rafa was almost unchanged - perhaps his hair was a little shorter, and his face a fraction fuller, but he was essentially the same, although dressed rather better than Roger remembered in a smart black suit, tie-less, his collar casually unbuttoned in a way that was somehow very Rafa.
"Really, I am so glad to see you," Rafa said, and he reached forward to pull Roger into a quick, firm hug that Roger returned fully, breathing in the scent of Rafa's aftershave and the clean laundry-freshness of his suit. "You look good," Rafa said, pulling back to hold Roger at arm's length for a moment, as if for inspection.
"You too," Roger said, gesturing at Rafa's suit.
"Oh, the studio arrange this for me. There was a tie also but," Rafa trailed off, shrugging disarmingly. Roger remembered that Rafa always had been shy about things like that, deflecting compliments with self-effacing modesty. "How are you?"
"Good. Tired," Roger admitted. "Jetlag, you know."
"I know," said Rafa, with emphasis. "You fly from New York?"
"No," Roger said. "Dubai. And you from -?"
"Mallorca. Less far," said Rafa, smiling. "You are looking forward to the movie?"
"Yeah," said Roger. Rafa raised an eyebrow quizzically, and Roger realised that he could have sounded a little more enthusiastic. "No, really. Just - maybe a little nervous."
"I understand. But it will be fine," said Rafa, shrugging. He pushed his hair back from his face with one hand. "And if no, then is no real."
Roger envied Rafa his blithe assurance.
“Hey, you guys!” Jenny Lewis emerged from the crush of people, beaming. “Oh wow, I’m so glad you could make it,” she said, placing one hand on Roger’s arm and the other on Rafa’s, linking them together.
“Congratulations,” Rafa said, smiling as he bent to drop a quick kiss on the director’s cheek. “Very exciting, no?”
“Scary,” Jenny said. “We’re about to get started in a couple of minutes. I’m shitting bricks - if you’ll pardon the expression. You guys ready to head inside?”
“For sure,” said Rafa. Roger nodded in agreement.
“Okay! Awesome! I’ll catch up with you after the showing - I want to hear exactly what you think about it, okay?”
“Of course,” said Rafa. Jenny flashed them a huge smile and disappeared back into the crowds.
Roger and Rafa made their way together into the theatre, which was decked out in old-fashioned style: plush red-velvet seats and a red curtain over the screen. When Roger looked up, he saw gallery seating, and a ceiling painted with cherubs and touched with gold curlicues, more like a theatre for stage plays than a modern cinema. He and Rafa made their way together through the seats, Rafa leading the way to the middle of the theatre, where the view was always the best.
"You mind if I sit with you?" Roger asked, as Rafa stopped, having apparently chosen his own seat. He didn’t seem to be saving the seat next to his for anyone; Roger hadn’t even remembered to ask if Rafa had brought anyone with him.
"No, no, of course," Rafa said, gesturing at the seat next to him. “Is only right, no?”
"Thanks." Roger settled into the seat, feeling the faint flickering of his nerves as he did. He hoped, again, that the movie would be good - at the very least, that it wouldn’t be embarrassing.
After a brief interlude, Jenny Lewis made her way to the front of the theatre. "Hi guys," she said into her microphone, looking young and hip in a skinny black suit and her short hair slicked back like an old-fashioned movie star's. "Well, thank you so much to everyone who came. I'd like to thank two people particularly - Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer, without whom, of course, this movie would never have been possible." The audience laughed, appreciatively. Roger glanced at Rafa, found him chuckling slightly, seeming at ease with the attention of the crowd turned towards them. Roger forced a smile, trying to emulate that ease.
"Anyway, I'm really honoured that you guys could make it, and I hope this movie captures even a tiny little piece of the amazing things you guys did. Thank you," Jenny said, taking an abbreviated bow before she left the stage to the applause of the audience. The lights dimmed as she took his seat.
"Here we go," said Rafa, leaning fractionally closer to Roger.
"Brace yourself," Roger returned, smiling. The screen lit up, and the movie began.
-
The opening credits ran over a sequence of photographs - snapshots, Roger realised with a start, of himself as a child: playing football with his school team, his first tennis racket, hitting with his parents as he struggled to master the basics of the game. Then, older, at tournaments, lifting small trophies. The photographs that he recognised of himself were interspersed with pictures of another child, tanned and tousle-haired: Rafa, Roger realised, half-laughing - Rafa as a child really didn’t look that different to the thirty-eight year old Rafa at his side. As a response, Rafa gave Roger’s knee a sharp poke.
The children in the pictures got older, the trophies got larger - Roger had graduated onto the ATP tour. Had he ever really looked that young? His hair, truthfully, had been appalling.
The movie began in earnest at Miami, in 2005 - the first time he and Rafa had met on court, the first match they'd ever played together. Roger recognised Tom Chambers with a jolt - on screen, with his hair longer and tied back the way Roger had worn it, wearing Roger’s clothes, and carrying himself differently, the resemblance between him and Roger was striking. It was disconcerting, as though Roger had caught a glimpse of himself in a funhouse mirror - unquestionably him, but wrong somehow.
Roger wondered if Rafa felt the same about Carlos Castro, with his sharply-drawn features and dark colouring, mimicking Rafa’s on-court habits with an accuracy that was almost funny to see.
It was so strange, to see the two actors on screen together, meeting for the first time. Roger didn't even clearly remember the event himself - he remembered mostly what came after, the shock of this strange boy beating him, even though he was approaching the apex of his career and his talent. Rafa had been so young, and so strong, so fierce. The Roger on screen mirrored his remembered frustration back to him, and for a moment he couldn't separate them, his own feelings and the actor's; they were, for a moment, the same. Roger had to shake himself out of the moment with some difficulty.
He realised, with surprise and some relief, that the film was very good.
It hit the highlights and the lowlights of their careers: there was Rafa's first French Open victory, coming hard on the heels of his defeat of Roger in the semi-finals (Roger, French Open champion twice over, still remembered the bitterness of that defeat, and how he had been convinced over the years of Rafa’s domination that he would never win that title); there was their Wimbledon finals, and the Wimbledon final, unsurpassed even thirteen years on. There was Roger crying at the trophy ceremony of the Australian Open, and Rafa casting one arm easily around his neck, as gracious in victory as he ever was in defeat.
There were the big moments, and the smaller moments, too - their growing friendship was sketched in a series of gentler interludes between the big, beautifully-shot set-pieces of Grand Slam finals (this movie, a journalist had commented, was the most expensive sports movie ever made - and it showed, in the sweeping grandeur of the Slam finals - Roger's breath caught more than once; the film had captured the atmosphere of tennis on the Grand Slam stage beautifully, and for perhaps the first time in his life Roger felt as though he understood some of the true excitement of the spectator). There were short scenes in locker rooms, shared publicity events, the time that Roger had given Rafa a lift on his private plane. Strange, to be reminded through the interaction of two almost perfect strangers how much he’d really liked Rafa in those days, how much he’d valued their friendship - and guilt caught at him, thinking of how they’d fallen out of touch in recent years. It had been wrong, to lose that.
There were other difficult moments. The actress who played Mirka had a delicate touch with her character, and she had a way of moving - just a tilt of the head, that brought the full force of their relationship back for Roger. It had been wrong to lose that, too.
The film ended with their last Grand Slam meeting, Wimbledon in 2011 - rather, it ended just before that, in the locker room as they were preparing to head out onto court. The locker room was quiet, empty except for Rafa and Roger together, sitting on opposite ends of the same bench. In reality, the locker room was almost never as quiet as it was in the picture - especially at Wimbledon, with officials getting ready to carry the players' bags onto court, and everything needing to run like clockwork. But on the screen, Rafa and Roger sat together, quiet and alone.
"Roger," the onscreen Rafa said at last, looking up.
The onscreen Roger looked up at Rafa. "Rafa."
"What are you gonna do now, when you are retired?"
The onscreen Roger shrugged. "I don't know. I guess - with the babies, I mean, I guess we'll just - be normal. I don't think I've ever been normal, not once in my whole life. So I guess we're going to do that, for a while."
Rafa nodded. "Is never gonna be the same, you know. Without you."
"I know," said Roger.
"I gonna miss you."
"Yeah," said Roger. "Me too."
"One minutes, sirs," came a clipped English voice from somewhere off-screen, and Roger and Rafa stood up quickly, with a speed Roger almost remembered - nerves snapping into play, muscles tensed and ready at an instant's notice.
"I'm gonna miss you," Rafa said, again.
"You too, Rafa," said Roger, and then they were moving towards each other, embracing quickly. This was the point of the film, Roger saw at last: two players who had brought out the very best in each other. It was like a scene of lovers parting: Roger was the one who was leaving, going off to explore a new life that had no place for Rafa in it; and Rafa was the one being left behind, afraid that he would never again be quite the player that Roger had inspired him to become.
It was a good ending, Roger decided, as the two actors on the screen drew apart from each other, and made their way slowly towards the exit that would take them through the winding corridors of centre court through to the main court that Roger still remembered. It was a fitting ending, one that he and Rafa had never shared in real life. Tennis wasn't like cinema. Tennis was drama, but it had no sense of the theatrical: Roger had won that match, his last match as a professional tennis player, and so he and Rafa's last embrace as professionals had taken place as winner and loser at the net. Not quite a Hollywood ending, Roger thought, as the screen dimmed to black. The last touch of the movie was a brief summary of their careers: Roger Federer won seventeen Grand Slams, and established himself as the greatest tennis player in the history of the sport. Rafael Nadal played for four years after Federer's retirement, eventually gaining twelve Grand Slam titles, including three more French Open trophies, cementing his place as the greatest clay court player in tennis history. The text read uncomfortably close to eulogy, Roger thought. It was as though they were dead, and the audience had to be reminded of their achievements. Of course, he thought then, in tennis years, thirteen years out of the game was dead and buried, too.
The lights came up slowly, bringing Roger back to reality. All around people were rising to their feet in spontaneous standing ovations
"Well," Roger said, as the first rumble of applause rolled thunderously through the theatre. "That was..." he trailed off. He didn't know how to quite describe the experience.
"Yes," said Rafa. "I know how you mean."
"It was good," Roger said, leaning closer to Rafa to be heard over the applause. The crowd had obviously loved the movie - and why not? It was a good movie. Maybe a great one. Maybe an important one. "But - strange. For us, I mean."
"Yes," said Rafa, his voice in Roger's ear, the two of them somehow alone together in the crowd. "Was strange to see - us, and not us."
"Fact and fiction," Roger said, because he was thinking of that, the fact mixed in with the fiction.
"Fact more strange than fiction," Rafa said, with an unreadable smile.
-
"I've never really been into sports, you know?" the woman was saying, flicking her long dark hair back behind one lean shoulder. "But wow, I mean. What you did was just incredible. I had no idea."
"Thank you," said Roger. He took a sip of his drink, and realised that his glass was empty. It was the after-party of the premiere, and the woman - an American actress, young and beautiful and very aware of both these facts - had talked to him about the movie for close to ten minutes before she realised who he was. She was standing very close, close enough that he could smell the light flowery scent of her perfume, and she kept her heavy-lashed dark eyes fixed firmly on his. Occasionally, to emphasise a point, she would tap his elbow lightly and playfully. Roger didn’t have a lot of practice, but he had the distinct feeling that he was being flirted with.
He took another sip from his empty champagne glass, trying to think of something to say. The actress's eyes narrowed onto his hand.
"Oh," she said, sounding disappointed. "You're married." Roger remembered, with a start, the wedding band.
"Divorced," he said, without thinking.
"Oh," she said. The smile was back, and she narrowed her eyes slightly, giving them a hungry, sultry look. "I'm sorry. Recently?"
"A few years now," he said, wishing again that his glass was filled. The champagne waiters were moving subtly through the room, but none of them seemed to have any intention of approaching near enough to rescue or refuel Roger.
"And you still wear this?" Her voice was incredulous, amused. She tapped his hand lightly, her fingertips lingering. "When I got divorced the first time, the first thing I did was to throw that thing in the trash. Of course I picked it right back out; that thing was expensive, you know?" She laughed, loud enough that Roger knew he was supposed to laugh along with her. He didn't. "But you should take this off," she said then, tipping her head to one side, affectedly confidential. "It's healthy; it gives you closure. You have to put the past behind you before you can move on. You know what I mean?"
Before he could answer, a touch on Roger's elbow distracted him.
"Roger, hi," Rafa said. Roger didn't think he'd ever been so grateful to see him. Bracketing Roger's elbow with one hand, he tugged lightly. "Carlos want to talk to you, is okay?"
"Sure," Roger said, and to the actress, "I'm sorry. It was good to meet you."
"You too," said the actress, a little sourly. The look she shot at Rafa was not in the least seductive.
"What did Carlos want to talk to me about?" Roger asked, as Rafa led him through the party to the glass doors which led out onto the patio, where it was quiet and there were few people milling around and smoking, talking in low voices.
Rafa made a face. "I lie," he said. "Carlos no want to talk. But you look very - scared, no? So I come rescue you."
Roger laughed. "Thanks."
"No problem," said Rafa, grinning. "Is more quiet here. Less people." He waved his hands around and frowned, as if to indicate the cramped, busy space inside and his disapproval of it.
"Yeah. It's nice to be able to breathe," Roger said. The heat of the day had burned away, leaving the night mellow and perfect, the air languid and fragrant with the scent of the roses that decorated the small garden space. Fairy-lights glittered in the darkness.
"So many people," said Rafa, glancing back inside at the crowd. The noise was muted a little, easier to deal with as a background hum.
"The big stadiums, though," Roger said, a smile tugging at his lips in spite of himself. "Roland Garros. Flushing Meadows. Wimbledon."
"Different," said Rafa. "They were -" he made a pushing movement, to show that in those places the crowds had been removed from the players. "On the court, was just you. It no matter if ten people or ten thousand people in the stands, only you on court."
"You and me," said Roger, without really knowing why. Rafa caught his eye.
"Sure, you and me," he said. "Like in the film, no?"
Roger laughed. "The film," he said. "I liked the guy who played Andy," he said, to lighten the mood, somehow.
"Andy Roddick?"
"Yeah."
Rafa laughed. "Novak gonna be pissed," he said. "No impressions."
"You still hear from Novak?"
"Sure, we talk," said Rafa. "He call me, sometimes. Or email. I see him some months ago, in Madrid."
Roger paused, a little chastened. "Listen, Rafa. I'm sorry I haven't kept in touch," he said. "It's been - it's been kind of strange, these last couple of years. But I should have kept in touch."
"Roger," Rafa said, low, scolding. "No worry. We are still good friends, no?"
"I hope so," Roger said.
"Then it no matter if we talk every day, or every ten years," Rafa said. He bumped Roger's elbow with his own, reassuring. "Anyway. More to catch up on now, no?"
Roger quirked a small smile. "Sure. Yeah."
They stood for a few moments in companionable silence, surveying the throng of people that made up the after-party of the premiere. Roger knew very few of them - the people directly involved with the making of the movie and no more. This wasn't his place, he thought, uncomfortably. Perhaps he shouldn't even have come. Back inside, he’d felt sometimes as though his presence put a dampener on people’s discussion of the movie, as though any criticism was criticism of his own accomplishments. If anything, though, he felt almost as if the movie had made the real trophies and memories more private. He wondered if Rafa felt the same way.
"Rafa," he said, suddenly. "Do you want to get out of here?"
Rafa turned to look at him, surprised. "You don't want to stay?"
"Honestly? No," said Roger. "It feels like - like this party isn't for us, you know?
"I know," said Rafa, offering Roger a small, conspiratorial smile. "Where do you want to go?"
"Where are you staying? Do you want to come back to my hotel? The bar should still be open. I’d like to catch up, and we can talk there better than we can here, anyway."
"Sure," said Rafa, nodding. He downed his own flute of champagne with a quick, decided motion, then set the glass down on the nearest surface. "I come back to yours.
-
It was late by the time they got back to Roger’s hotel, and the bar was quiet and nearly empty, the few patrons scattered throughout the islands of tables with the small candles burning in the dimness. Roger led the way to a table near the open glass doors, looking out into the dark garden, from which a gentle breeze brought the scent of honeysuckle into the bar. The waiter approached. Roger ordered a whiskey; Rafa, a beer. The drinks came quickly and discreetly.
They sat quietly for a while, sipping their drinks in companionable silence, looking out into the garden to enjoy the cool night air.
At last Rafa said, slowly, "I was sorry to hear about the divorce."
Roger grimaced. "Thanks. It was - rough."
"For sure," said Rafa, as though he understood, though he had never married - was not even seeing anybody, as far as Roger was aware. "How are the girls?"
Roger smiled. "They're good, thank you. Beautiful. Fifteen this year."
"Fifteen?" Rafa sounded incredulous. "When I see them last, they are this big," he said, laughing, holding his hand up maybe two feet from the floor.
"They grew," Roger said.
"Of course,” said Rafa, shrugging. “They are with Mirka now?"
"Yeah," Roger said. He took a sip of the whiskey, enjoying the smooth burn of it on his tongue, his throat. "They live with her, in New York. I see them a lot. They stay with me, sometimes."
"Good," Rafa said, nodding. "That is good." He smiled. "They like tennis?"
Roger laughed, shaking his head. "They hate tennis."
"They hate tennis?"
"Well, they hate me," Roger said, swallowing. "So."
"Roger," said Rafa, gently. "They no hate you."
"They're teenagers. They hate everything. I don't take it personally." He paused. Rafa was watching him carefully, sympathy in his dark eyes. "I try not to take it personally," Roger said. Rafa tipped his head a little, thinking.
"Is hard," he said, finally, with real empathy, "when parents split up."
Roger remembered, then, that Rafa's own parents were divorced. "I’m sorry,” he said. "I forgot. That was the year the girls were born."
"Yes."
"I'm sorry."
Rafa waved away Roger's speech with a dismissive gesture, shrugging. "Is a long time ago. I am an adult. Roger, your girls, they will get used to it, so long as you love them, no? They will forgive you."
Roger laughed low, without humour. "What if I don't forgive myself?"
Rafa quirked an eyebrow, puzzled. "For what?"
"For - I don't know." Roger paused, and continued, after a long moment, "Mirka said I was different, after I retired. She said it was like she didn't even know me anymore. Am I different, Rafa?"
If he'd expected an earnest denial from Rafa, he didn't get it. Rafa considered him quietly, watching him with dark, soft eyes. "Yes," he said at last. "You are different. You look tired, Rogelio."
Rogelio. The old affectionate nickname caught him off-guard, stuck in his throat and prickled unexpectedly at his eyes. "I am tired," he said. "I'm tired, and I'm old."
"Old!" Rafa snorted. He kicked Roger lightly underneath the table. "You no old, Roger. You come to Mallorca sometime, I show you how young you are."
Now it was Roger's turn to snort. "Yeah?"
"For sure.” Rafa’s grin flashed bright in the semi-dark. “You come to Mallorca, you leave feeling twenty-five. Promise."
"Maybe I'll take you up on that," Roger said. He didn't really mean it, but Rafa grinned broadly, delighted.
"I gonna hold you to it," he warned. He lifted up his beer bottle in a half-toast to the promise, and Roger, charmed in spite of himself, lifted up his tumbler and clinked the crystal against the bottle.
-
"So,” Rafa said, as they wandered slowly through the lobby of the hotel - they’d been talking for hours, it seemed, and it was late now, so late that an apologetic member of staff had quietly approached to ask if Mr Federer and his guest would mind perhaps moving, so that the bar could be shut up for the night? “You are going back to - New York?"
"No," said Roger. "Dubai. Only for a week, then I go back to New York to see the girls."
"Ah. I did not know you have apartment still in Dubai."
"I don't spend a lot of time there," Roger said. "The foundation does a little work based out of there, but they don’t really need me. I go for the change of scenery. Mostly I live in New York now. You're still in Mallorca?"
"Si," said Rafa. "Always, no?"
Roger smiled. Of course Rafa would always live in Mallorca. Of course.
"You come and visit," Rafa said, again. "I show you my house."
"You're not still living with your family?" Roger teased.
Rafa batted Roger's arm lightly, smiling. "I am thirty-eight years old."
"I thought you were afraid of being alone in the house."
Rafa shrugs. "Get used to it, no?"
Roger nodded. "Yeah," he said. "You do."
Rafa offered him a small smile. "Invitation stand," he said. "Come and visit. I promise you will never want to leave."
"I'll come," Roger said, laughing. "I promise I will come."
"Good."
An attendant approached them quietly. "Excuse me, Mr Nadal? Your car is waiting."
"Okay," said Rafa. He turned to Roger. "It is very good to see you, Roger."
"You too," said Roger. He offered Rafa his hand, and Rafa took it, his grip just as warm and firm as Roger always remembered from handshakes at the net. Win or lose, always the same warmth, the same pressure. Rafa pulled Roger closer and swung his arm across Roger's back in a hug, and Roger replied in kind, trapping their clasped hands between their bodies, where they pressed just above Roger’s heart. Rafa sighed against his ear and Roger inhaled the scent of Rafa's hair, and the masculine scent of his aftershave, scents that sparked his memory back to those hugs at the net (missing, though, the musky undertone of hard-earned sweat). After a long moment - longer, perhaps, than either of them had intended - they began by unspoken mutual agreement to pull away - drew back, unclasped hands.
"I see you soon, Roger, yes?" Rafa said, smiling.
"Yes," Roger said.
"Not ten years this time,” Rafa chided.
"No," said Roger, laughing. "Sooner than that."
"Good. Goodbye, Roger."
"Bye, Rafa."
Rafa turned and followed the attendant outside, to where the car that would take him back to his own hotel was waiting. He paused briefly at the doors to give Roger a small, half-shy and strangely characteristic wave that made Roger smile to himself, and then he was out of view, gone. Roger lingered a moment longer in the empty foyer of the hotel, and then he too turned away and made for the elevator, to take him back to his own empty room.
-
He slept through the flight home and arrived in Dubai dazed and disoriented, wandering through the airport dazzled and emerging onto the street blinking in the sharp sunlight. London, with its soft June warmth, seemed worlds away. In the car on the way back to his building, his apartment, he rolled the passenger side window down and let the arid desert-dry air blast through, stinging his eyes.
-
The apartment was empty. Had it always been so empty? The housekeeper had been through not long ago, and the dry, air-conditioned air was tangy with the lemon-fresh scent of cleaning products. Every surface gleamed, every window sparkled. His bed looked as though it had never been slept in. If it weren't for the clothes hanging pressed and perfect in the wardrobe, the apartment might have been uninhabited. Roger stood in the hallway, weekend bag still slung over his shoulder as though he were trying to decide whether to stay at all.
No, he was only tired and ridiculous with jetlag. He took the bag into the bedroom and dumped the worn clothes into the laundry basket. He replaced the toiletries in the bathroom, and afterwards, heavy-eyed and almost aching with exhaustion, he dared to disturb the pristine bedclothes and climbed in. He feel asleep immediately.
In his dream, he was back at Wimbledon, as he often was, the colours sharpened to an unnatural brightness and clarity: the grass an acidic green, the tennis ball in his hand blinding sunshine yellow, the tennis whites of the player at the other end of the court dazzling. The sun was always in Roger's eyes, blinding him at the ball toss. The player at the other end of the court was always a stranger. It was always match point, Roger's serve. He would bounce the ball once, twice, three times, and then he would turn to scan the stands, but his player's box was always empty.
When he woke, it was almost fully dark, and for a few confused moments he didn't know where he was. London? New York? No - Dubai. He had been to London, was going to New York in a week. Seven days - and they stretched out ahead as bleak and empty as the desert that lingered outside Dubai.
Wide-awake, Roger got up. His body still felt stiff and strange after the flight, not entirely his own; it still took him a long time to get used to travel and time-changes, even after so many years of the itinerant tour lifestyle, and all the years of casual travel afterwards. The silence was palpable as he padded softly through the apartment. It was too large for him, really, he thought. The girls hardly ever came to Dubai to visit, and the place was beginning to lose its charms even for Roger. He should sell this place maybe, use the money to - what? Buy another empty property?
He sat in the kitchenette with a strong cup of coffee and the lights turned down low, lost in thought. The movie had stirred up old memories - London had stirred up old memories. London, with its weight of history, a city steeped in nostalgia. London was Wimbledon - London was tennis - London was, in many ways, Rafa.
Rafa, Roger thought, smiling into his coffee-cup. It had been so good to see him again
You look tired, Rogelio, he'd said. But Roger hadn’t felt tired with Rafa, despite everything, he’d felt better than he had in a long time. Maybe it was the nostalgia of the city and the movie tricking him into old ways - or maybe it was Rafa himself. Rafa smiled easily, laughed easily. Youth and summer and sunshine seemed to cling to him. Roger had missed him. He should visit soon, he thought, while he sipped at his coffee, the tile floor cool against his bare feet.
Yeah. Soon. And he thought again of the seven empty days stretching out ahead of him.
The hell with this, he thought, and stood up, and went to pack. He dumped the coffee in the sink. It was bitter, anyway.
-
( Part Two)
Author: aramley
Pairing: Roger Federer/Rafael Nadal
Rating: R
Wordcount: ~17,300
Disclaimer: All events described are entirely fictional.
Summary: Thirteen years after Roger Federer's retirement from professional tennis, the release of a new movie chronicling his famous rivalry with Rafael Nadal brings the two back together in London. Rekindling their friendship, Rafa invites Roger to visit his home in Mallorca, where as they relive shared memories, their relationship deepens.
Notes: Written for rpf_big_bang '09, and many thanks to the mods for organising such a great challenge. Title and cut tag from Wonderwall, by Oasis. Dedicated with much love to my flist, who are the best cheerleaders in the world.
Also, many many thanks to roonerspism for her beautiful artwork, which can be fangirled here
all the roads we have to walk
Roger wondered sometimes how much of his life he must have spent in airplanes; years, he thought, a little irritably, gazing out into the clear blue outside the small porthole window, years of my life. He missed the ease of the private jet, but that had been sold off around the time of the divorce, another victim of the bonfire of his various vanities. He could have bought another - could have bought ten - but it seemed like an excess. Anyway, he was supposed to be trying to be more eco-friendly, these days. He could probably spend the rest of his life trying to offset the carbon footprint he’d set down during the years of travel on the tour, but it was a start.
He rubbed at his tired eyes, dry from the sterile recylced air. Most of the other passengers were sleeping, and the cabin was very still and quiet. No matter how luxurious a flight was, it never seemed to achieve true comfort: the air too dry and just a shade too cool, and the roar of the engines a constant drone, at the periphery of awareness but just too loud to be completely ignored. Tired and restless, he wished he could sleep; the time-difference from Dubai to London was going to play havoc with his body-clock, he knew, and with the event tonight - even thinking about the premiere made him nervous. Walking red-carpets had never been his forté - walking one sleep-deprived and jetlagged was another thing entirely.
The thought of the premiere set his stomach turning - even more so the thought of the movie. He’d asked for an advance copy but the director had coyly turned him down, insisting that the element of surprise be preserved for the grand premiere. Strokes of Genius: that was the movie’s name. Roger didn’t like it, but the director loved it and Roger had abdicated enough responsibility for the movie that he didn’t have a say in what it was called.
The idea of a movie had been batted around for years by this director and that, even in the early years of his retirement when the gloss of his achievements was still fresh on the world of tennis, and then later, as fashions shifted and Roger’s name came in and out of vogue. Movies, television, innumerable book deals; money beyond anything he could have dreamed of.
He’d turned them down because his retirement wasn’t supposed to be about tennis - retirement was supposed to be Mirka’s time, payback for putting her life on hold to follow a boyfriend, a partner, a husband, from court to court and country to country, for fifteen years, tiny twin daughters in tow in the later years. So in his retirement they bought the New York house, and settled there to make a life for themselves in one place for the first time in either of their migrant lives. Mirka made friends and contacts in the fashion industry, flourished, and Roger worked with his foundation and watched his daughters grow up. He turned down the offers of the interviews, television shows, the autobiographies, the movie deals.
The only proposal he'd ever taken seriously came after the divorce, while he was living alone in the New York apartment trying awkwardly to adjust to this unexpected turn his life had taken. He blamed that for allowing his personal assistant to set up the meeting with the up-and-coming Hollywood director who was calling his office twice, sometimes three times a day to try and get a meeting with Roger Federer, to pitch him her pet project.
Against his better judgement, Roger went to the meeting. The director had been impossibly young in jeans and a sweatshirt. She’d held out her hand - tattooed on the back with intricate swirling patterns, the nails painted black - and Roger had shaken it, feeling old. "I'm Jenny Lewis. Wow, it's so good to meet you."
"You too," Roger said, sitting down.
"It's really an honour," said Jenny Lewis, wide-eyed with sincerity. "I grew up watching you. You were my hero, man."
Roger couldn't help but laugh. "You were a tennis fan?"
"Oh yeah. You and Rafael Nadal, I was so hooked on that. I remember that final, the Wimbledon 2008, I was ten years old and even then I thought, that would make a great, such a great movie. So this is like, my dream come true.” Jenny Lewis quirked a half-embarrassed smile.
Roger laughed. "That's a lot to live up to," he said.
"A lot for me to live up to," said Jenny, smiling, earnest. Her quirkiness made her oddly likeable. "I don’t want to mess around here. Listen, Mr Federer - "
"Roger, please."
"Okay, Roger. I want you to know that I really want to do this movie right. I want to do justice to what you did, you and Rafael Nadal, your story. I think we have a really great script coming together and what I'd like, very much, is to have your approval." Jenny had leant forward on the table, as if to convey her perfect seriousness. Roger, in spite of himself, found that he believed her.
Roger smiled. "Okay."
Jenny leaned back. "Really?"
"Yes. Really."
"Okay. Wow. That was really easy."
“You were expecting me to be difficult?”
“Well, I called your office like, fifty times before you agreed to meet me,” Jenny said, grinning. “You’re a tough guy to get to see, I thought you might be a tough sell.”
Roger laughed. "So, have you talked with Rafa about this?"
"Oh, yeah," said Jenny, grinning. "He seemed really excited about it."
Roger laughed. "He did, yeah?"
"I mean, he's really into the idea, wanted to hear all about it. Listen, I just can't tell you how much this means to me, Roger, having both you guys on board with this."
“Just don’t turn me evil or anything,” Roger said, and Jenny laughed her high-pitched sort of shrieking laugh and said, “Oh, dude, trust me, I don’t think there’s any danger of that.”
Everything had seemed to happen so quickly after that - though Roger had declined any active involvement in the movie, there were meetings with producers, endless drafts of the scripts, countless emails from Jenny Lewis asking about this detail or that (what did it feel like to walk out onto Centre Court at Wimbledon? What did he remember most about the first time he’d met Rafael Nadal? Roger had spent a lot of time staring at the stubbornly blank screen, trying to recall the minutiae of events that had been hazed with adrenaline even at the time, and were even more shrouded now with the distance of time).
Actors were cast. Roger wasn’t entirely familiar with the current superstars, but Myla and Charlene both went into raptures over Tom Chambers, the actor cast to play Roger himself (which was a little uncomfortable), and even more so over Carlos Castro, who made a smouldering, dark-eyed Rafael Nadal (the resemblance was good and yet, Roger thought sometimes, looking at cast pictures and promo material, there was something off - some elusive quality that Rafa had possessed, and this man didn’t).
And here he was now, a bare eighteen months later. The movie was finished, the premiere only hours away, and Roger settled back into his uncomfortable plane seat as the plane began, inexorably, to descend.
-
At the hotel there was a message waiting for him behind the desk - the studio was sending a limousine to pick him up at seven-thirty. There was a designer suit waiting for him in the suite. They were pleased he could make it, and looked forward very much to showing him the film, they were hoping very much that he would enjoy it.
In the hotel room he called Mirka, who was in New York with the girls. It was late, and the girls were asleep. But he’d promised to call, and he kept his promises.
“I’ll tell them you called,” Mirka said, sounding tired herself. “They’ll be excited. Charlene wants Carlos’ autograph.”
“Sure,” Roger said. “Is there anything I can get for you?”
Mirka laughed, and Roger smiled. It was good to make her laugh, it felt right, the way it had before things got bad between them. “You could get me Tom Chambers’ phone number,” she teased. “He’s hot.”
Roger snorted. “Better than the real thing?”
“I think I could stand to compare you,” Mirka said. “Failing that, you could thank what’s her name, that girl who’s playing me.”
“Charlie?”
“Yeah,” said Mirka, half-laughing. “She makes me look great. I don’t remember ever looking that good.”
“No,” said Roger. “You looked better.”
A silence fell between them, pregnant with the things Roger wanted to say, but couldn’t. The things it was too late to say.
“I’ll tell the girls you called,” Mirka said, at last, with finality.
“Tell them I’ll call tomorrow, before I fly back. Tell them I love them. And I’ll see them soon.”
“I will,” Mirka said, with affection. “You’ll in Dubai a week, right?”
“Right. I’ll be home - I’ll be in New York after that.”
“Okay. Night, Roger.”
“Good night.”
Mirka hung up first; Roger sat for a moment longer, listening to the emptiness on the other end of the phone, and the silence of his hotel room. Then he shook himself, thumbed the phone off and tossed it away onto the bed, and then got up to dress.
The premiere loomed; as he dressed, he felt the unfamiliar butterfly-wings of nerves in his stomach. He hadn’t quite yet mastered his feelings towards the film - whether he felt strangely protective of it, or distant from it. Although, attending the premiere belied the impression that he was completely uninvolved with the project. Perhaps, he thought, fastening the fiddly ridiculous bow tie in the mirror, he shouldn’t have come. He regarded himself coolly - greying temples and faint lines developing. He was forty-three, but he thought he looked older. Tom really did make a better Roger Federer than the real thing, these days.
-
It was in the limousine on the way to the premiere that Roger began to get really nervous. Walking the red carpet wasn't like stepping out onto a court, where you could prove yourself in front of the crowd - smile and wave, yes, but then down to business. His suit was uncomfortable, and he tugged at the collar of his shirt. It was a heavy, humid August evening, unlike English weather as he remembered it. He wished he'd brought one of his own suits, bought to wear in Dubai and better suited to the heat than this heavy material. His nerves increased as the limousine drew through the streets of London, closer and closer to where Roger knew the theatre was. They drew up outside the theatre at last, and Roger saw the crowds, heard the noise of their excited screaming, and saw the camera-flashes like an approaching storm.
If from a distance the commotion around the entrance of the theatre looked like a lightning-storm, then getting out of the limousine was like walking into its heart. The camera-flashes from the press ranks and the screams of the fans were dazzling for a moment until he remembered how to keep his composure: to smile and wave at the banks of cameras and the massed ranks of the fans. They were screaming for autographs, and he walked the lines, automatically scrawling a long-practiced signature onto movie posters and merchandise promotional magazine covers. Some of the fans had RF caps and t-shirts, and he scribbled his signature over these with a feeling of nostalgia, smiling. Some of the fans were grasping pictures of the actors from the film - alien-familiar faces that Roger avoided signing, if he could. Those pictures made him feel strangely obsolete.
He managed the red carpet without falling over or embarrassing himself in front of the crowds, but he made it inside with no small measure of relief. The lobby of the theatre was crowded, but he recognised a few faces amongst the glittering array of beautiful people. Tom Chambers caught sight of him, and waved in recognition before extricating himself from the conversation of the young woman he was standing with and making a beeline for Roger.
"Roger, hi," said Tom. He had cropped his hair for a new role, and the change was jarring. "It's so great to see you here."
"I’m glad I could make it. It's crazy out there," said Roger.
"Yeah, you never get used to it,” Tom said, with a wry smile and a shrug. His gestures always seemed a touch overdone; Roger supposed that was the actor in him. “Hey,” Tom continued, “I think Rafael Nadal is here already, too. I think I saw him talking to Jenny just a moment ago."
"He's here?" Roger looked around the crowds inside the theatre, scanning the people with a sense of anticipation shot through with nervousness. He and Rafa had fallen out of touch, in recent years. The movie had made Roger think of Rafa a lot, and yet somehow they still hadn’t gotten back into contact, as though each was embarrassed to be the first to make a move.
"Yeah, he's here. Oh, hey, I think I see him - over there, is that him? I actually haven’t met him before." Roger followed the direction of Tom's gesture and saw, with a jolt, Rafael Nadal. Rafa's back rather, but still, there was something about him that was unmistakeable: something familiar in the way he held himself, or the hair curling at the nape of his neck, still worn long and rather shaggy, as he always had.
"Yeah,” Roger said, “Yeah, that’s him. Do you mind if I -?" Roger said to Tom, and Tom shook his head vigorously, saying no, you go ahead, man, and Roger set off through the crowds. Some of the people he brushed past glanced at him - some with recognition, some without. Many of them seemed impossibly young, and Roger might have wondered for how many of them he was barely more than a historical figure, if he hadn’t been intently focused on his goal.
And then, at last, he was within reach of Rafa. He reached out, almost shy, to touch Rafa's elbow and get his attention. Rafa turned, and his face lit up instantly.
"Roger!" He was beaming, a smile that Roger remembered, as infectious as it had ever been - Roger felt his own smile broaden in reply. "Is so good to see you!"
"You too," Roger said. It really was; Rafa was almost unchanged - perhaps his hair was a little shorter, and his face a fraction fuller, but he was essentially the same, although dressed rather better than Roger remembered in a smart black suit, tie-less, his collar casually unbuttoned in a way that was somehow very Rafa.
"Really, I am so glad to see you," Rafa said, and he reached forward to pull Roger into a quick, firm hug that Roger returned fully, breathing in the scent of Rafa's aftershave and the clean laundry-freshness of his suit. "You look good," Rafa said, pulling back to hold Roger at arm's length for a moment, as if for inspection.
"You too," Roger said, gesturing at Rafa's suit.
"Oh, the studio arrange this for me. There was a tie also but," Rafa trailed off, shrugging disarmingly. Roger remembered that Rafa always had been shy about things like that, deflecting compliments with self-effacing modesty. "How are you?"
"Good. Tired," Roger admitted. "Jetlag, you know."
"I know," said Rafa, with emphasis. "You fly from New York?"
"No," Roger said. "Dubai. And you from -?"
"Mallorca. Less far," said Rafa, smiling. "You are looking forward to the movie?"
"Yeah," said Roger. Rafa raised an eyebrow quizzically, and Roger realised that he could have sounded a little more enthusiastic. "No, really. Just - maybe a little nervous."
"I understand. But it will be fine," said Rafa, shrugging. He pushed his hair back from his face with one hand. "And if no, then is no real."
Roger envied Rafa his blithe assurance.
“Hey, you guys!” Jenny Lewis emerged from the crush of people, beaming. “Oh wow, I’m so glad you could make it,” she said, placing one hand on Roger’s arm and the other on Rafa’s, linking them together.
“Congratulations,” Rafa said, smiling as he bent to drop a quick kiss on the director’s cheek. “Very exciting, no?”
“Scary,” Jenny said. “We’re about to get started in a couple of minutes. I’m shitting bricks - if you’ll pardon the expression. You guys ready to head inside?”
“For sure,” said Rafa. Roger nodded in agreement.
“Okay! Awesome! I’ll catch up with you after the showing - I want to hear exactly what you think about it, okay?”
“Of course,” said Rafa. Jenny flashed them a huge smile and disappeared back into the crowds.
Roger and Rafa made their way together into the theatre, which was decked out in old-fashioned style: plush red-velvet seats and a red curtain over the screen. When Roger looked up, he saw gallery seating, and a ceiling painted with cherubs and touched with gold curlicues, more like a theatre for stage plays than a modern cinema. He and Rafa made their way together through the seats, Rafa leading the way to the middle of the theatre, where the view was always the best.
"You mind if I sit with you?" Roger asked, as Rafa stopped, having apparently chosen his own seat. He didn’t seem to be saving the seat next to his for anyone; Roger hadn’t even remembered to ask if Rafa had brought anyone with him.
"No, no, of course," Rafa said, gesturing at the seat next to him. “Is only right, no?”
"Thanks." Roger settled into the seat, feeling the faint flickering of his nerves as he did. He hoped, again, that the movie would be good - at the very least, that it wouldn’t be embarrassing.
After a brief interlude, Jenny Lewis made her way to the front of the theatre. "Hi guys," she said into her microphone, looking young and hip in a skinny black suit and her short hair slicked back like an old-fashioned movie star's. "Well, thank you so much to everyone who came. I'd like to thank two people particularly - Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer, without whom, of course, this movie would never have been possible." The audience laughed, appreciatively. Roger glanced at Rafa, found him chuckling slightly, seeming at ease with the attention of the crowd turned towards them. Roger forced a smile, trying to emulate that ease.
"Anyway, I'm really honoured that you guys could make it, and I hope this movie captures even a tiny little piece of the amazing things you guys did. Thank you," Jenny said, taking an abbreviated bow before she left the stage to the applause of the audience. The lights dimmed as she took his seat.
"Here we go," said Rafa, leaning fractionally closer to Roger.
"Brace yourself," Roger returned, smiling. The screen lit up, and the movie began.
-
The opening credits ran over a sequence of photographs - snapshots, Roger realised with a start, of himself as a child: playing football with his school team, his first tennis racket, hitting with his parents as he struggled to master the basics of the game. Then, older, at tournaments, lifting small trophies. The photographs that he recognised of himself were interspersed with pictures of another child, tanned and tousle-haired: Rafa, Roger realised, half-laughing - Rafa as a child really didn’t look that different to the thirty-eight year old Rafa at his side. As a response, Rafa gave Roger’s knee a sharp poke.
The children in the pictures got older, the trophies got larger - Roger had graduated onto the ATP tour. Had he ever really looked that young? His hair, truthfully, had been appalling.
The movie began in earnest at Miami, in 2005 - the first time he and Rafa had met on court, the first match they'd ever played together. Roger recognised Tom Chambers with a jolt - on screen, with his hair longer and tied back the way Roger had worn it, wearing Roger’s clothes, and carrying himself differently, the resemblance between him and Roger was striking. It was disconcerting, as though Roger had caught a glimpse of himself in a funhouse mirror - unquestionably him, but wrong somehow.
Roger wondered if Rafa felt the same about Carlos Castro, with his sharply-drawn features and dark colouring, mimicking Rafa’s on-court habits with an accuracy that was almost funny to see.
It was so strange, to see the two actors on screen together, meeting for the first time. Roger didn't even clearly remember the event himself - he remembered mostly what came after, the shock of this strange boy beating him, even though he was approaching the apex of his career and his talent. Rafa had been so young, and so strong, so fierce. The Roger on screen mirrored his remembered frustration back to him, and for a moment he couldn't separate them, his own feelings and the actor's; they were, for a moment, the same. Roger had to shake himself out of the moment with some difficulty.
He realised, with surprise and some relief, that the film was very good.
It hit the highlights and the lowlights of their careers: there was Rafa's first French Open victory, coming hard on the heels of his defeat of Roger in the semi-finals (Roger, French Open champion twice over, still remembered the bitterness of that defeat, and how he had been convinced over the years of Rafa’s domination that he would never win that title); there was their Wimbledon finals, and the Wimbledon final, unsurpassed even thirteen years on. There was Roger crying at the trophy ceremony of the Australian Open, and Rafa casting one arm easily around his neck, as gracious in victory as he ever was in defeat.
There were the big moments, and the smaller moments, too - their growing friendship was sketched in a series of gentler interludes between the big, beautifully-shot set-pieces of Grand Slam finals (this movie, a journalist had commented, was the most expensive sports movie ever made - and it showed, in the sweeping grandeur of the Slam finals - Roger's breath caught more than once; the film had captured the atmosphere of tennis on the Grand Slam stage beautifully, and for perhaps the first time in his life Roger felt as though he understood some of the true excitement of the spectator). There were short scenes in locker rooms, shared publicity events, the time that Roger had given Rafa a lift on his private plane. Strange, to be reminded through the interaction of two almost perfect strangers how much he’d really liked Rafa in those days, how much he’d valued their friendship - and guilt caught at him, thinking of how they’d fallen out of touch in recent years. It had been wrong, to lose that.
There were other difficult moments. The actress who played Mirka had a delicate touch with her character, and she had a way of moving - just a tilt of the head, that brought the full force of their relationship back for Roger. It had been wrong to lose that, too.
The film ended with their last Grand Slam meeting, Wimbledon in 2011 - rather, it ended just before that, in the locker room as they were preparing to head out onto court. The locker room was quiet, empty except for Rafa and Roger together, sitting on opposite ends of the same bench. In reality, the locker room was almost never as quiet as it was in the picture - especially at Wimbledon, with officials getting ready to carry the players' bags onto court, and everything needing to run like clockwork. But on the screen, Rafa and Roger sat together, quiet and alone.
"Roger," the onscreen Rafa said at last, looking up.
The onscreen Roger looked up at Rafa. "Rafa."
"What are you gonna do now, when you are retired?"
The onscreen Roger shrugged. "I don't know. I guess - with the babies, I mean, I guess we'll just - be normal. I don't think I've ever been normal, not once in my whole life. So I guess we're going to do that, for a while."
Rafa nodded. "Is never gonna be the same, you know. Without you."
"I know," said Roger.
"I gonna miss you."
"Yeah," said Roger. "Me too."
"One minutes, sirs," came a clipped English voice from somewhere off-screen, and Roger and Rafa stood up quickly, with a speed Roger almost remembered - nerves snapping into play, muscles tensed and ready at an instant's notice.
"I'm gonna miss you," Rafa said, again.
"You too, Rafa," said Roger, and then they were moving towards each other, embracing quickly. This was the point of the film, Roger saw at last: two players who had brought out the very best in each other. It was like a scene of lovers parting: Roger was the one who was leaving, going off to explore a new life that had no place for Rafa in it; and Rafa was the one being left behind, afraid that he would never again be quite the player that Roger had inspired him to become.
It was a good ending, Roger decided, as the two actors on the screen drew apart from each other, and made their way slowly towards the exit that would take them through the winding corridors of centre court through to the main court that Roger still remembered. It was a fitting ending, one that he and Rafa had never shared in real life. Tennis wasn't like cinema. Tennis was drama, but it had no sense of the theatrical: Roger had won that match, his last match as a professional tennis player, and so he and Rafa's last embrace as professionals had taken place as winner and loser at the net. Not quite a Hollywood ending, Roger thought, as the screen dimmed to black. The last touch of the movie was a brief summary of their careers: Roger Federer won seventeen Grand Slams, and established himself as the greatest tennis player in the history of the sport. Rafael Nadal played for four years after Federer's retirement, eventually gaining twelve Grand Slam titles, including three more French Open trophies, cementing his place as the greatest clay court player in tennis history. The text read uncomfortably close to eulogy, Roger thought. It was as though they were dead, and the audience had to be reminded of their achievements. Of course, he thought then, in tennis years, thirteen years out of the game was dead and buried, too.
The lights came up slowly, bringing Roger back to reality. All around people were rising to their feet in spontaneous standing ovations
"Well," Roger said, as the first rumble of applause rolled thunderously through the theatre. "That was..." he trailed off. He didn't know how to quite describe the experience.
"Yes," said Rafa. "I know how you mean."
"It was good," Roger said, leaning closer to Rafa to be heard over the applause. The crowd had obviously loved the movie - and why not? It was a good movie. Maybe a great one. Maybe an important one. "But - strange. For us, I mean."
"Yes," said Rafa, his voice in Roger's ear, the two of them somehow alone together in the crowd. "Was strange to see - us, and not us."
"Fact and fiction," Roger said, because he was thinking of that, the fact mixed in with the fiction.
"Fact more strange than fiction," Rafa said, with an unreadable smile.
-
"I've never really been into sports, you know?" the woman was saying, flicking her long dark hair back behind one lean shoulder. "But wow, I mean. What you did was just incredible. I had no idea."
"Thank you," said Roger. He took a sip of his drink, and realised that his glass was empty. It was the after-party of the premiere, and the woman - an American actress, young and beautiful and very aware of both these facts - had talked to him about the movie for close to ten minutes before she realised who he was. She was standing very close, close enough that he could smell the light flowery scent of her perfume, and she kept her heavy-lashed dark eyes fixed firmly on his. Occasionally, to emphasise a point, she would tap his elbow lightly and playfully. Roger didn’t have a lot of practice, but he had the distinct feeling that he was being flirted with.
He took another sip from his empty champagne glass, trying to think of something to say. The actress's eyes narrowed onto his hand.
"Oh," she said, sounding disappointed. "You're married." Roger remembered, with a start, the wedding band.
"Divorced," he said, without thinking.
"Oh," she said. The smile was back, and she narrowed her eyes slightly, giving them a hungry, sultry look. "I'm sorry. Recently?"
"A few years now," he said, wishing again that his glass was filled. The champagne waiters were moving subtly through the room, but none of them seemed to have any intention of approaching near enough to rescue or refuel Roger.
"And you still wear this?" Her voice was incredulous, amused. She tapped his hand lightly, her fingertips lingering. "When I got divorced the first time, the first thing I did was to throw that thing in the trash. Of course I picked it right back out; that thing was expensive, you know?" She laughed, loud enough that Roger knew he was supposed to laugh along with her. He didn't. "But you should take this off," she said then, tipping her head to one side, affectedly confidential. "It's healthy; it gives you closure. You have to put the past behind you before you can move on. You know what I mean?"
Before he could answer, a touch on Roger's elbow distracted him.
"Roger, hi," Rafa said. Roger didn't think he'd ever been so grateful to see him. Bracketing Roger's elbow with one hand, he tugged lightly. "Carlos want to talk to you, is okay?"
"Sure," Roger said, and to the actress, "I'm sorry. It was good to meet you."
"You too," said the actress, a little sourly. The look she shot at Rafa was not in the least seductive.
"What did Carlos want to talk to me about?" Roger asked, as Rafa led him through the party to the glass doors which led out onto the patio, where it was quiet and there were few people milling around and smoking, talking in low voices.
Rafa made a face. "I lie," he said. "Carlos no want to talk. But you look very - scared, no? So I come rescue you."
Roger laughed. "Thanks."
"No problem," said Rafa, grinning. "Is more quiet here. Less people." He waved his hands around and frowned, as if to indicate the cramped, busy space inside and his disapproval of it.
"Yeah. It's nice to be able to breathe," Roger said. The heat of the day had burned away, leaving the night mellow and perfect, the air languid and fragrant with the scent of the roses that decorated the small garden space. Fairy-lights glittered in the darkness.
"So many people," said Rafa, glancing back inside at the crowd. The noise was muted a little, easier to deal with as a background hum.
"The big stadiums, though," Roger said, a smile tugging at his lips in spite of himself. "Roland Garros. Flushing Meadows. Wimbledon."
"Different," said Rafa. "They were -" he made a pushing movement, to show that in those places the crowds had been removed from the players. "On the court, was just you. It no matter if ten people or ten thousand people in the stands, only you on court."
"You and me," said Roger, without really knowing why. Rafa caught his eye.
"Sure, you and me," he said. "Like in the film, no?"
Roger laughed. "The film," he said. "I liked the guy who played Andy," he said, to lighten the mood, somehow.
"Andy Roddick?"
"Yeah."
Rafa laughed. "Novak gonna be pissed," he said. "No impressions."
"You still hear from Novak?"
"Sure, we talk," said Rafa. "He call me, sometimes. Or email. I see him some months ago, in Madrid."
Roger paused, a little chastened. "Listen, Rafa. I'm sorry I haven't kept in touch," he said. "It's been - it's been kind of strange, these last couple of years. But I should have kept in touch."
"Roger," Rafa said, low, scolding. "No worry. We are still good friends, no?"
"I hope so," Roger said.
"Then it no matter if we talk every day, or every ten years," Rafa said. He bumped Roger's elbow with his own, reassuring. "Anyway. More to catch up on now, no?"
Roger quirked a small smile. "Sure. Yeah."
They stood for a few moments in companionable silence, surveying the throng of people that made up the after-party of the premiere. Roger knew very few of them - the people directly involved with the making of the movie and no more. This wasn't his place, he thought, uncomfortably. Perhaps he shouldn't even have come. Back inside, he’d felt sometimes as though his presence put a dampener on people’s discussion of the movie, as though any criticism was criticism of his own accomplishments. If anything, though, he felt almost as if the movie had made the real trophies and memories more private. He wondered if Rafa felt the same way.
"Rafa," he said, suddenly. "Do you want to get out of here?"
Rafa turned to look at him, surprised. "You don't want to stay?"
"Honestly? No," said Roger. "It feels like - like this party isn't for us, you know?
"I know," said Rafa, offering Roger a small, conspiratorial smile. "Where do you want to go?"
"Where are you staying? Do you want to come back to my hotel? The bar should still be open. I’d like to catch up, and we can talk there better than we can here, anyway."
"Sure," said Rafa, nodding. He downed his own flute of champagne with a quick, decided motion, then set the glass down on the nearest surface. "I come back to yours.
-
It was late by the time they got back to Roger’s hotel, and the bar was quiet and nearly empty, the few patrons scattered throughout the islands of tables with the small candles burning in the dimness. Roger led the way to a table near the open glass doors, looking out into the dark garden, from which a gentle breeze brought the scent of honeysuckle into the bar. The waiter approached. Roger ordered a whiskey; Rafa, a beer. The drinks came quickly and discreetly.
They sat quietly for a while, sipping their drinks in companionable silence, looking out into the garden to enjoy the cool night air.
At last Rafa said, slowly, "I was sorry to hear about the divorce."
Roger grimaced. "Thanks. It was - rough."
"For sure," said Rafa, as though he understood, though he had never married - was not even seeing anybody, as far as Roger was aware. "How are the girls?"
Roger smiled. "They're good, thank you. Beautiful. Fifteen this year."
"Fifteen?" Rafa sounded incredulous. "When I see them last, they are this big," he said, laughing, holding his hand up maybe two feet from the floor.
"They grew," Roger said.
"Of course,” said Rafa, shrugging. “They are with Mirka now?"
"Yeah," Roger said. He took a sip of the whiskey, enjoying the smooth burn of it on his tongue, his throat. "They live with her, in New York. I see them a lot. They stay with me, sometimes."
"Good," Rafa said, nodding. "That is good." He smiled. "They like tennis?"
Roger laughed, shaking his head. "They hate tennis."
"They hate tennis?"
"Well, they hate me," Roger said, swallowing. "So."
"Roger," said Rafa, gently. "They no hate you."
"They're teenagers. They hate everything. I don't take it personally." He paused. Rafa was watching him carefully, sympathy in his dark eyes. "I try not to take it personally," Roger said. Rafa tipped his head a little, thinking.
"Is hard," he said, finally, with real empathy, "when parents split up."
Roger remembered, then, that Rafa's own parents were divorced. "I’m sorry,” he said. "I forgot. That was the year the girls were born."
"Yes."
"I'm sorry."
Rafa waved away Roger's speech with a dismissive gesture, shrugging. "Is a long time ago. I am an adult. Roger, your girls, they will get used to it, so long as you love them, no? They will forgive you."
Roger laughed low, without humour. "What if I don't forgive myself?"
Rafa quirked an eyebrow, puzzled. "For what?"
"For - I don't know." Roger paused, and continued, after a long moment, "Mirka said I was different, after I retired. She said it was like she didn't even know me anymore. Am I different, Rafa?"
If he'd expected an earnest denial from Rafa, he didn't get it. Rafa considered him quietly, watching him with dark, soft eyes. "Yes," he said at last. "You are different. You look tired, Rogelio."
Rogelio. The old affectionate nickname caught him off-guard, stuck in his throat and prickled unexpectedly at his eyes. "I am tired," he said. "I'm tired, and I'm old."
"Old!" Rafa snorted. He kicked Roger lightly underneath the table. "You no old, Roger. You come to Mallorca sometime, I show you how young you are."
Now it was Roger's turn to snort. "Yeah?"
"For sure.” Rafa’s grin flashed bright in the semi-dark. “You come to Mallorca, you leave feeling twenty-five. Promise."
"Maybe I'll take you up on that," Roger said. He didn't really mean it, but Rafa grinned broadly, delighted.
"I gonna hold you to it," he warned. He lifted up his beer bottle in a half-toast to the promise, and Roger, charmed in spite of himself, lifted up his tumbler and clinked the crystal against the bottle.
-
"So,” Rafa said, as they wandered slowly through the lobby of the hotel - they’d been talking for hours, it seemed, and it was late now, so late that an apologetic member of staff had quietly approached to ask if Mr Federer and his guest would mind perhaps moving, so that the bar could be shut up for the night? “You are going back to - New York?"
"No," said Roger. "Dubai. Only for a week, then I go back to New York to see the girls."
"Ah. I did not know you have apartment still in Dubai."
"I don't spend a lot of time there," Roger said. "The foundation does a little work based out of there, but they don’t really need me. I go for the change of scenery. Mostly I live in New York now. You're still in Mallorca?"
"Si," said Rafa. "Always, no?"
Roger smiled. Of course Rafa would always live in Mallorca. Of course.
"You come and visit," Rafa said, again. "I show you my house."
"You're not still living with your family?" Roger teased.
Rafa batted Roger's arm lightly, smiling. "I am thirty-eight years old."
"I thought you were afraid of being alone in the house."
Rafa shrugs. "Get used to it, no?"
Roger nodded. "Yeah," he said. "You do."
Rafa offered him a small smile. "Invitation stand," he said. "Come and visit. I promise you will never want to leave."
"I'll come," Roger said, laughing. "I promise I will come."
"Good."
An attendant approached them quietly. "Excuse me, Mr Nadal? Your car is waiting."
"Okay," said Rafa. He turned to Roger. "It is very good to see you, Roger."
"You too," said Roger. He offered Rafa his hand, and Rafa took it, his grip just as warm and firm as Roger always remembered from handshakes at the net. Win or lose, always the same warmth, the same pressure. Rafa pulled Roger closer and swung his arm across Roger's back in a hug, and Roger replied in kind, trapping their clasped hands between their bodies, where they pressed just above Roger’s heart. Rafa sighed against his ear and Roger inhaled the scent of Rafa's hair, and the masculine scent of his aftershave, scents that sparked his memory back to those hugs at the net (missing, though, the musky undertone of hard-earned sweat). After a long moment - longer, perhaps, than either of them had intended - they began by unspoken mutual agreement to pull away - drew back, unclasped hands.
"I see you soon, Roger, yes?" Rafa said, smiling.
"Yes," Roger said.
"Not ten years this time,” Rafa chided.
"No," said Roger, laughing. "Sooner than that."
"Good. Goodbye, Roger."
"Bye, Rafa."
Rafa turned and followed the attendant outside, to where the car that would take him back to his own hotel was waiting. He paused briefly at the doors to give Roger a small, half-shy and strangely characteristic wave that made Roger smile to himself, and then he was out of view, gone. Roger lingered a moment longer in the empty foyer of the hotel, and then he too turned away and made for the elevator, to take him back to his own empty room.
-
He slept through the flight home and arrived in Dubai dazed and disoriented, wandering through the airport dazzled and emerging onto the street blinking in the sharp sunlight. London, with its soft June warmth, seemed worlds away. In the car on the way back to his building, his apartment, he rolled the passenger side window down and let the arid desert-dry air blast through, stinging his eyes.
-
The apartment was empty. Had it always been so empty? The housekeeper had been through not long ago, and the dry, air-conditioned air was tangy with the lemon-fresh scent of cleaning products. Every surface gleamed, every window sparkled. His bed looked as though it had never been slept in. If it weren't for the clothes hanging pressed and perfect in the wardrobe, the apartment might have been uninhabited. Roger stood in the hallway, weekend bag still slung over his shoulder as though he were trying to decide whether to stay at all.
No, he was only tired and ridiculous with jetlag. He took the bag into the bedroom and dumped the worn clothes into the laundry basket. He replaced the toiletries in the bathroom, and afterwards, heavy-eyed and almost aching with exhaustion, he dared to disturb the pristine bedclothes and climbed in. He feel asleep immediately.
In his dream, he was back at Wimbledon, as he often was, the colours sharpened to an unnatural brightness and clarity: the grass an acidic green, the tennis ball in his hand blinding sunshine yellow, the tennis whites of the player at the other end of the court dazzling. The sun was always in Roger's eyes, blinding him at the ball toss. The player at the other end of the court was always a stranger. It was always match point, Roger's serve. He would bounce the ball once, twice, three times, and then he would turn to scan the stands, but his player's box was always empty.
When he woke, it was almost fully dark, and for a few confused moments he didn't know where he was. London? New York? No - Dubai. He had been to London, was going to New York in a week. Seven days - and they stretched out ahead as bleak and empty as the desert that lingered outside Dubai.
Wide-awake, Roger got up. His body still felt stiff and strange after the flight, not entirely his own; it still took him a long time to get used to travel and time-changes, even after so many years of the itinerant tour lifestyle, and all the years of casual travel afterwards. The silence was palpable as he padded softly through the apartment. It was too large for him, really, he thought. The girls hardly ever came to Dubai to visit, and the place was beginning to lose its charms even for Roger. He should sell this place maybe, use the money to - what? Buy another empty property?
He sat in the kitchenette with a strong cup of coffee and the lights turned down low, lost in thought. The movie had stirred up old memories - London had stirred up old memories. London, with its weight of history, a city steeped in nostalgia. London was Wimbledon - London was tennis - London was, in many ways, Rafa.
Rafa, Roger thought, smiling into his coffee-cup. It had been so good to see him again
You look tired, Rogelio, he'd said. But Roger hadn’t felt tired with Rafa, despite everything, he’d felt better than he had in a long time. Maybe it was the nostalgia of the city and the movie tricking him into old ways - or maybe it was Rafa himself. Rafa smiled easily, laughed easily. Youth and summer and sunshine seemed to cling to him. Roger had missed him. He should visit soon, he thought, while he sipped at his coffee, the tile floor cool against his bare feet.
Yeah. Soon. And he thought again of the seven empty days stretching out ahead of him.
The hell with this, he thought, and stood up, and went to pack. He dumped the coffee in the sink. It was bitter, anyway.
-
( Part Two)