I've written tennis slash!
Title: Whenever We Both Lose
Characters: Rafael Nadal/Roger Federer
Rating: R
Disclaimer: Work of fiction. Never really happened.
Summary: Rafael will take what he can get.
Author's Notes: Takes place after Roger's loss in Miami.
On nights we are together, Roger rarely sleeps peacefully. I shouldn't even know that, because I shouldn't stay, but when he comes to my room he always stays anyway. I know that's a habit with him, that when he's with someone for the night, he likes to be with them for the entire night. So I stay too, when I come to his room, and I try to sleep, and I end up lying awake watching him toss and turn and moan, just like I'm doing now.
Tonight is worse than usual, which I expected. I'm afraid he lost more than a match today. It makes my own loss yesterday seem unimportant; I can afford to lose, it seems, while he can't. Not when each loss is another blow on an already battered mind; that much is clear to everyone. I don't know what he's going to do now. I have some ideas of what he should do, who doesn't? But even if I tried to say them he wouldn't listen, definitely not to me. Maybe not to anyone.
I knew what I was in for tonight. The minute I heard he'd smashed his racquet I knew. I came prepared to be brutalized. He's been asleep for nearly an hour, and my ass is still burning like it's been split in two, there are bite marks on my shoulders, and, which I maybe did not expect, my hair is soaked with his tears.
When he stopped crying he apologized for being so rough. I told him it didn't matter. I don't think he believes I meant it. I don't dare tell him I did.
Maybe, though, he can believe I meant it. After all, it's not the first time either of us have taken our frustrations out on the other. That's how it goes when we chose to have sex when we do.
This is the usual way you do it when you're on the top of the world. The younger and lower-ranked members of the ATP tour can sleep with whom they like, and fully enjoy being part of such a wide group where casual sex with each other is the rule. But those of us who reach the top, especially if we have significant others outside the tour, sooner or later, will start setting specific rules about whom we sleep with and when. I'm not sure who started the practice, but now it's almost universal. I have my own rules, about when I sleep with my various countrymen on the tour, when I sleep with Marat, and when I sleep with Roger.
That I sleep with Roger would probably make me the envy of everyone else in the tennis world even if I wasn't who I am; since his youth, apparently, he's been one of the most wanted and one of the hardest men to get. He even tried to opt out when he first started dating Mirka, and when she was still competing and traveling, too. Which is ironic, because of course it's easier if your girlfriend's from the sport and accepts how it goes without question. There have been a few men who had him earlier in his career, who have now retired, and there may be others he will accept into his little circle, so to speak, in the future-I know Murray wants in, but for now, there are only four of us.
For him and Marat, it's whenever they play against each other. Of the four of us, I think Marat might be the closest to him. I'm pretty sure he was the first person outside of Roger's group to know of Mirka's pregnancy; the way he looked at her and spoke to her after his and Roger's match in Australia make it obvious in retrospect Roger told him that night. Of course, Marat has just about everyone, because he wants everyone, and certainly everyone wants to sample the wild Russian. Roger will probably miss having him, since once you retire, it’s supposed to stop. I know I'll miss it.
For him and Stanislas Wawrinka, it's whenever they play together. He's the newest addition to the group; he invited himself in with a well-timed kiss in Beijing and Roger, it seems, accepted. It was clever of him; since he can thus have him more than once a tournament, he might have him the most by the time we all retire.
I think Andy Roddick, who has definitely been with him the longest, if not the most often, used to be required to defeat him, but now for them, it's whenever he wins at least a set against Roger-so he had him two nights ago, and even now, I'm trying not to think about that. Of course I have absolutely no right to be jealous, but sometimes I think I wouldn't mind having Roger when he's victorious, when he's happy. Of the four of us, I'm the one who doesn't get that.
Because for the two of us, it's whenever we both lose.
When Feli learned that, he joked to me that we must not be together very often. But there have been plenty of occasions since we started, and I have the sinking feeling there'll be plenty more before the year is out.
For the past month, I've dreaded the final in Roland Garros. Because of course if he makes it, I'm going to crush him. Smash him to pieces and possibly destroy him. And even now, when I'm starting to think he won't make it that far anyway, I'm dreading the Wimbledon final instead, because I think he will make that-that is, if his ranking doesn't drop further and land in him my side of the draw. Either way, I have no doubt we'll meet, and when I crush him there, I think it probably will destroy him once and for all.
It's to the point where I'm trying to think of a way out of it. I've even wondered if I should fake an injury, though I'm not sure my pulling out wouldn't only result in Murray doing the deed. And in the end, I can't bring myself to do such things. I have to go on, I have to destroy him. Even though I'll destroy myself in the process.
I tried to tell him once, that I need him. I need to him to play, I need him to defeat me on occasion. If he can't do that, what point is there to all of this? I can't do this without a real opponent. I don't have that ability. He replied that Murray would probably serve just as well, but he won't. It wasn't even Murray who took me down yesterday. It wasn't even Del Potro, not really. He played well, he earned the right to defeat me, but it still wasn't him who did it. It was seeing Roger barely defeat Roddick, and starting to fear I'd lost him. Like I said, we'll be together more often after the clay season-I might even wonder if we'd be during it if he had more in his schedule, because he's not the only one who might start getting defeated more often.
That's what I've come close to telling a few more people, what I've hinted at in interviews, the professional reason I might not be able to stand what's happening. But there's another part of it I don't dare tell anyone.
It started in Madrid, I think, when we went down on the same day. He was the most cheerful, then, that he's ever been after a defeat; he was able to take that one philosophically, it seems. And he likes having me the night after I've played, when he can still smell my sweat, he says. Sometimes if I lose after him he sneaks into the showers so he can have me right then and there. Not that time, but he was hungry that night. I still remember his hot kisses, the way he pressed himself against me as he pushed me down into the bed, his hands and tongue on my cock, how he felt inside me. Like it was the first time I'd paid attention to how it really felt to be with him. Then it wasn't long after that when we were in Paris and both injured, and I remember his tenderness, the way he rubbed my back and kissed my shoulders as he gently stroked me, what he whispered in my ear after I came.
I suppose I should've realized what was going on when, after Madrid, every time I jerked off I thought of him. But I often thought of the men I'd slept with while jerking off, so I didn't think anything of it at first. It wasn't until I started thinking about him when I was with the other guys, and then, god help me, when I was making love to Xisca, that I started to realize something was wrong.
But I didn't know what until the Australian Open. Until I defeated him one too many times, and saw his heart break in response. I watched him cry and didn't want to live anymore. I stood there, I made my speeches, I gave Roger what consolation I could get away with, and when it was over, I spent the night letting Fernando fuck me and barely being there with him, and when he left I wondered how Roger was, and wanted to be with him, wanted to lay him down and kiss his pain away. I wanted to love him.
Everyone has their secrets, but I don’t have many. It’s hard to keep this one, and I don’t know how well I’ve really kept it. I fear Uncle Toni suspects, and Xisca certainly knows something’s going on; she’s turned very cool to me lately. At least Roger didn’t find out tonight; I’m fairly sure of that. Tonight, he was too wrapped up in his own grief to notice mine when I spent much of the time with my face pressed into the pillow. Even when I turned to speak to him and kiss his face, he wasn’t in much of a state to notice things.
But even if he didn’t see it tonight, it’s only a matter of time. And once he knows, I don’t know what he’s going to do. It’s possible he’ll turn me away. Once feelings of this kind get involved, everything turns dangerous. You want too much, you lose everything. That’s something Carlos said to me once about being ambitious in tennis. It’s a lesson I think Roger’s learning on the court. It’s what I’m afraid will apply for me off it. But can either of us really help what we want? I can’t, anyway.
Next to me Roger goes quiet. It won’t last long. I’ll know when it’s coming, know the first signs of his unrest returning. I’ve spent so much of my time watching him, though more on the court than off it before this past month or so, that I could tell you when he’s about to smile and frown. I wonder if Mirka could tell you that.
I wonder where she is right now. The first time I stayed in his room, she, probably thinking I was going to do the sensible thing and leave, came back some time past midnight and woke us both up and left me embarrassed. Thankfully the bed there was big enough to accommodate all three of us easily, but I didn’t get much more sleep that night, watching the two of them sleep pressed her back to his chest, with the ease that comes of years of sharing a bed. I never felt more out of place.
She never returned before morning after that. Roger told me later I’m not the first one who’s stayed. He didn’t say who's stayed before me, and I didn’t ask. Even then, I didn’t want to know.
So it seems she has a course of action in place for that. She’s sleeping somewhere, maybe accompanied-it’s awkward because she’s retired, but ultimately as long as he’s not she has that right-or maybe with no company besides that which is in her womb, and which might put an end to all of this.
Normally, of course, competitive tennis players don’t have children, but when they do the rules can change. It’s possibly, though unlikely, that Roger will call a halt to it again once she gives birth. And since I’m still not sure of her due date, that could mean that tonight was the last time. That’s a possibility I’m not thinking much about, because it’s too overwhelming to face. He’s already hinted what I think is more likely, that he’ll put himself exclusively in her company as she gets close, possibly even marrying her, and for the first few months after the baby is born, and resume normal activity slowly.
But the birth is less a time to worry about, then when the child starts to walk and talk, and starts to become aware of the world around him or her. Roger talks of playing when his child can see him, and presumably be aware of what’s going on. But you don’t want your children knowing about this kind of thing. I’ve heard of parents stopping it before retirement for that reason before. And when Roger has his child, I believe that child will come before everything for him, even tennis, probably, and certainly everything else.
And then of course is the worse possibility, that the child will lead him to retirement anyway. He says it won’t, but history is not on his side. There’s no telling what will happen there; everyone can only wait and see.
How will this go? How long will it be from the time I understood how I wanted Roger to when I can’t have even this? Do I want it to be long, or would it be a mercy for it not to be?
Sure enough, Roger stirs again, at first barely making a sound as he shifts from side to side, then gasping and moving more. Then the sobs come.
Even though I knew they were coming I can’t stand it, as he gets worse and I feel helpless. I spend several minutes lying there, afraid to touch him, afraid of what will happen if he wakes up with my arms around him, before, with no choice at all, I’m pushing the danger aside and holding him close, pressing kisses to his face, whispering, “Please wake up, Roger, please wake up, please I can’t bear knowing you’re in pain as it is, and I can’t make it better. Please, Roger, I love you.”
At that moment Roger stiffens in my arms, and I know he’s woken up, and it’s over. If only I’d left out the last sentence; he might not have understood the rest; Spanish isn’t his strongest language, but he must have understood that.
“I’m sorry,” I whimper, “I’m so sorry.”
Then he sags, falling silent, and his eyes remain closed, and when I place my hand over his chest, I can feel his breathing is still even; his muscles are limp; he can’t be faking this; he really is still asleep.
I let go of what’s not really mine to touch. I pull away and move my head back to the other pillow. Roger now sleeps with his face towards me, so peaceful, so beautiful; I don’t even try to take my eyes off him. I’m left here, in his bed, with him, and yet alone, with noone to turn to.
Characters: Rafael Nadal/Roger Federer
Rating: R
Disclaimer: Work of fiction. Never really happened.
Summary: Rafael will take what he can get.
Author's Notes: Takes place after Roger's loss in Miami.
On nights we are together, Roger rarely sleeps peacefully. I shouldn't even know that, because I shouldn't stay, but when he comes to my room he always stays anyway. I know that's a habit with him, that when he's with someone for the night, he likes to be with them for the entire night. So I stay too, when I come to his room, and I try to sleep, and I end up lying awake watching him toss and turn and moan, just like I'm doing now.
Tonight is worse than usual, which I expected. I'm afraid he lost more than a match today. It makes my own loss yesterday seem unimportant; I can afford to lose, it seems, while he can't. Not when each loss is another blow on an already battered mind; that much is clear to everyone. I don't know what he's going to do now. I have some ideas of what he should do, who doesn't? But even if I tried to say them he wouldn't listen, definitely not to me. Maybe not to anyone.
I knew what I was in for tonight. The minute I heard he'd smashed his racquet I knew. I came prepared to be brutalized. He's been asleep for nearly an hour, and my ass is still burning like it's been split in two, there are bite marks on my shoulders, and, which I maybe did not expect, my hair is soaked with his tears.
When he stopped crying he apologized for being so rough. I told him it didn't matter. I don't think he believes I meant it. I don't dare tell him I did.
Maybe, though, he can believe I meant it. After all, it's not the first time either of us have taken our frustrations out on the other. That's how it goes when we chose to have sex when we do.
This is the usual way you do it when you're on the top of the world. The younger and lower-ranked members of the ATP tour can sleep with whom they like, and fully enjoy being part of such a wide group where casual sex with each other is the rule. But those of us who reach the top, especially if we have significant others outside the tour, sooner or later, will start setting specific rules about whom we sleep with and when. I'm not sure who started the practice, but now it's almost universal. I have my own rules, about when I sleep with my various countrymen on the tour, when I sleep with Marat, and when I sleep with Roger.
That I sleep with Roger would probably make me the envy of everyone else in the tennis world even if I wasn't who I am; since his youth, apparently, he's been one of the most wanted and one of the hardest men to get. He even tried to opt out when he first started dating Mirka, and when she was still competing and traveling, too. Which is ironic, because of course it's easier if your girlfriend's from the sport and accepts how it goes without question. There have been a few men who had him earlier in his career, who have now retired, and there may be others he will accept into his little circle, so to speak, in the future-I know Murray wants in, but for now, there are only four of us.
For him and Marat, it's whenever they play against each other. Of the four of us, I think Marat might be the closest to him. I'm pretty sure he was the first person outside of Roger's group to know of Mirka's pregnancy; the way he looked at her and spoke to her after his and Roger's match in Australia make it obvious in retrospect Roger told him that night. Of course, Marat has just about everyone, because he wants everyone, and certainly everyone wants to sample the wild Russian. Roger will probably miss having him, since once you retire, it’s supposed to stop. I know I'll miss it.
For him and Stanislas Wawrinka, it's whenever they play together. He's the newest addition to the group; he invited himself in with a well-timed kiss in Beijing and Roger, it seems, accepted. It was clever of him; since he can thus have him more than once a tournament, he might have him the most by the time we all retire.
I think Andy Roddick, who has definitely been with him the longest, if not the most often, used to be required to defeat him, but now for them, it's whenever he wins at least a set against Roger-so he had him two nights ago, and even now, I'm trying not to think about that. Of course I have absolutely no right to be jealous, but sometimes I think I wouldn't mind having Roger when he's victorious, when he's happy. Of the four of us, I'm the one who doesn't get that.
Because for the two of us, it's whenever we both lose.
When Feli learned that, he joked to me that we must not be together very often. But there have been plenty of occasions since we started, and I have the sinking feeling there'll be plenty more before the year is out.
For the past month, I've dreaded the final in Roland Garros. Because of course if he makes it, I'm going to crush him. Smash him to pieces and possibly destroy him. And even now, when I'm starting to think he won't make it that far anyway, I'm dreading the Wimbledon final instead, because I think he will make that-that is, if his ranking doesn't drop further and land in him my side of the draw. Either way, I have no doubt we'll meet, and when I crush him there, I think it probably will destroy him once and for all.
It's to the point where I'm trying to think of a way out of it. I've even wondered if I should fake an injury, though I'm not sure my pulling out wouldn't only result in Murray doing the deed. And in the end, I can't bring myself to do such things. I have to go on, I have to destroy him. Even though I'll destroy myself in the process.
I tried to tell him once, that I need him. I need to him to play, I need him to defeat me on occasion. If he can't do that, what point is there to all of this? I can't do this without a real opponent. I don't have that ability. He replied that Murray would probably serve just as well, but he won't. It wasn't even Murray who took me down yesterday. It wasn't even Del Potro, not really. He played well, he earned the right to defeat me, but it still wasn't him who did it. It was seeing Roger barely defeat Roddick, and starting to fear I'd lost him. Like I said, we'll be together more often after the clay season-I might even wonder if we'd be during it if he had more in his schedule, because he's not the only one who might start getting defeated more often.
That's what I've come close to telling a few more people, what I've hinted at in interviews, the professional reason I might not be able to stand what's happening. But there's another part of it I don't dare tell anyone.
It started in Madrid, I think, when we went down on the same day. He was the most cheerful, then, that he's ever been after a defeat; he was able to take that one philosophically, it seems. And he likes having me the night after I've played, when he can still smell my sweat, he says. Sometimes if I lose after him he sneaks into the showers so he can have me right then and there. Not that time, but he was hungry that night. I still remember his hot kisses, the way he pressed himself against me as he pushed me down into the bed, his hands and tongue on my cock, how he felt inside me. Like it was the first time I'd paid attention to how it really felt to be with him. Then it wasn't long after that when we were in Paris and both injured, and I remember his tenderness, the way he rubbed my back and kissed my shoulders as he gently stroked me, what he whispered in my ear after I came.
I suppose I should've realized what was going on when, after Madrid, every time I jerked off I thought of him. But I often thought of the men I'd slept with while jerking off, so I didn't think anything of it at first. It wasn't until I started thinking about him when I was with the other guys, and then, god help me, when I was making love to Xisca, that I started to realize something was wrong.
But I didn't know what until the Australian Open. Until I defeated him one too many times, and saw his heart break in response. I watched him cry and didn't want to live anymore. I stood there, I made my speeches, I gave Roger what consolation I could get away with, and when it was over, I spent the night letting Fernando fuck me and barely being there with him, and when he left I wondered how Roger was, and wanted to be with him, wanted to lay him down and kiss his pain away. I wanted to love him.
Everyone has their secrets, but I don’t have many. It’s hard to keep this one, and I don’t know how well I’ve really kept it. I fear Uncle Toni suspects, and Xisca certainly knows something’s going on; she’s turned very cool to me lately. At least Roger didn’t find out tonight; I’m fairly sure of that. Tonight, he was too wrapped up in his own grief to notice mine when I spent much of the time with my face pressed into the pillow. Even when I turned to speak to him and kiss his face, he wasn’t in much of a state to notice things.
But even if he didn’t see it tonight, it’s only a matter of time. And once he knows, I don’t know what he’s going to do. It’s possible he’ll turn me away. Once feelings of this kind get involved, everything turns dangerous. You want too much, you lose everything. That’s something Carlos said to me once about being ambitious in tennis. It’s a lesson I think Roger’s learning on the court. It’s what I’m afraid will apply for me off it. But can either of us really help what we want? I can’t, anyway.
Next to me Roger goes quiet. It won’t last long. I’ll know when it’s coming, know the first signs of his unrest returning. I’ve spent so much of my time watching him, though more on the court than off it before this past month or so, that I could tell you when he’s about to smile and frown. I wonder if Mirka could tell you that.
I wonder where she is right now. The first time I stayed in his room, she, probably thinking I was going to do the sensible thing and leave, came back some time past midnight and woke us both up and left me embarrassed. Thankfully the bed there was big enough to accommodate all three of us easily, but I didn’t get much more sleep that night, watching the two of them sleep pressed her back to his chest, with the ease that comes of years of sharing a bed. I never felt more out of place.
She never returned before morning after that. Roger told me later I’m not the first one who’s stayed. He didn’t say who's stayed before me, and I didn’t ask. Even then, I didn’t want to know.
So it seems she has a course of action in place for that. She’s sleeping somewhere, maybe accompanied-it’s awkward because she’s retired, but ultimately as long as he’s not she has that right-or maybe with no company besides that which is in her womb, and which might put an end to all of this.
Normally, of course, competitive tennis players don’t have children, but when they do the rules can change. It’s possibly, though unlikely, that Roger will call a halt to it again once she gives birth. And since I’m still not sure of her due date, that could mean that tonight was the last time. That’s a possibility I’m not thinking much about, because it’s too overwhelming to face. He’s already hinted what I think is more likely, that he’ll put himself exclusively in her company as she gets close, possibly even marrying her, and for the first few months after the baby is born, and resume normal activity slowly.
But the birth is less a time to worry about, then when the child starts to walk and talk, and starts to become aware of the world around him or her. Roger talks of playing when his child can see him, and presumably be aware of what’s going on. But you don’t want your children knowing about this kind of thing. I’ve heard of parents stopping it before retirement for that reason before. And when Roger has his child, I believe that child will come before everything for him, even tennis, probably, and certainly everything else.
And then of course is the worse possibility, that the child will lead him to retirement anyway. He says it won’t, but history is not on his side. There’s no telling what will happen there; everyone can only wait and see.
How will this go? How long will it be from the time I understood how I wanted Roger to when I can’t have even this? Do I want it to be long, or would it be a mercy for it not to be?
Sure enough, Roger stirs again, at first barely making a sound as he shifts from side to side, then gasping and moving more. Then the sobs come.
Even though I knew they were coming I can’t stand it, as he gets worse and I feel helpless. I spend several minutes lying there, afraid to touch him, afraid of what will happen if he wakes up with my arms around him, before, with no choice at all, I’m pushing the danger aside and holding him close, pressing kisses to his face, whispering, “Please wake up, Roger, please wake up, please I can’t bear knowing you’re in pain as it is, and I can’t make it better. Please, Roger, I love you.”
At that moment Roger stiffens in my arms, and I know he’s woken up, and it’s over. If only I’d left out the last sentence; he might not have understood the rest; Spanish isn’t his strongest language, but he must have understood that.
“I’m sorry,” I whimper, “I’m so sorry.”
Then he sags, falling silent, and his eyes remain closed, and when I place my hand over his chest, I can feel his breathing is still even; his muscles are limp; he can’t be faking this; he really is still asleep.
I let go of what’s not really mine to touch. I pull away and move my head back to the other pillow. Roger now sleeps with his face towards me, so peaceful, so beautiful; I don’t even try to take my eyes off him. I’m left here, in his bed, with him, and yet alone, with noone to turn to.