(no subject)
so there is this. i'm mostly sure it's finished, but that may just be me giving up. i've been having some issues with my particular style of writing, idk. anyway. roger/rafa, starts at the beginning of 2005, ends at the beginning of 2009, to avoid confusion over the timeline, which i'm pretty sure there will be.
i know you know
roger federer/rafael nadal
The first time they kiss is in Australia. It’s fumbling and awkward like the teenager Rafa is, Roger’s fingers skimming feather-light over Rafa’s jaw, his cheek when he catches him in the locker room, his skin still damp from that particularly Australian, sticky summer heat.
He doesn’t mean to do it. Rafa gasps, surprised, wet into his mouth, scrabbling at Roger’s hips.
Roger pulls away, horrified, already wiping at his mouth, and says, “Sorry, sorry,” as he flees.
It’s just as hot in Miami. Roger spots Rafa outside the hotel, sunglasses sliding down his nose, his t-shirt caught unnoticed on the bare ridge of his hipbone.
He blinks. Mirka’s hand is light, too light on his arm and does nothing to dissipate this strange, burrowing itch. He shakes her off and follows Rafa to his room, pushes him against the door and kisses him, bites down on his lips and his neck, along his collarbones, arches into Rafa’s fingers digging hard into his back. “Rafa,” he says, lips to his temple, “Rafa, this isn’t, I can’t.”
Rafa’s head is tipped back against the door, eyes closed, throat working as he swallows. He can’t focus, Roger knows, probably doesn’t know what he’s saying.
He repeats it after, scrubbing a hand through his hair and prising Rafa away from the door. “I don’t know, I mean, but. I can’t do this.”
He stops outside, squaring his shoulders and shaking off Rafa’s dark, wide-eyed gaze.
He doesn’t see Rafa in Barcelona and it isn’t until Rome that he finds him to try and fix this. He’s a nice kid is the thing, and maybe it’s dangerous but he wants to try at least for something, some kind of friendship. He says, “I thought maybe we could get some lunch, and, you know, forget about.” He waves a hand, not quite able to form the words. “Start fresh.”
Rafa nods, eager, smiling. “Si, yes, yes, we can, is good.”
Roger smiles back. “Okay,” he says. “Good.”
Rafa ducks another smile at him as he turns to leave and Roger reaches out, mostly without thinking, and brushes a hand over his shoulder. “I’m sorry, for.” He stops.
“Is okay,” says Rafa softly.
Rafa points to him almost the moment he arrives at lunch and says, grinning impishly, “I going to winning the French Open.”
Roger blinks. “You sound sure,” he says.
“Is sure.” Rafa shrugs. “Is being nice, no, telling you now? Not so upset later.”
Roger laughs. “Well in that case, thank you,” he says.
Rafa nods, serious for all of three seconds, then splits into a grin, wide and bright.
He remembers that conversation when Rafa beats him in the semis, and watches him win the final and can’t even bring himself to feel bad, focused as he is on the way Rafa smiles, dazed and happy, the way he hugs the trophy to his chest like a precious childhood toy, that already familiar, all-encompassing warmth.
Rafa’s knocked out of Wimbledon before Roger even has a chance to see him, and he’s too focused then to have time for much of anything besides tennis.
Rafa texts him though, after the final, just a congratulations :) :), but Roger can picture his smile easy as anything, because even in the short time he’s known him Rafa doesn’t seem to have any sense of malice whatsoever, and the thank you! he sends back is heartfelt, genuine.
A month later he texts Rafa again, this time with congratulations of his own, and Rafa replies, soon i will taking you over.
Roger laughs down at his phone, fingers quick over the keypad, and says, not soon. when i retire, maybe. Rafa says, okay, if you say ;).
Cincinnati is strange, hot and cold, chill gusts of cloud and warm sunshine chasing each other across the sky.
Roger sees Rafa after he loses that first round and says, “Hey,” touching a finger to his elbow, and Rafa smiles but it’s forced, and Roger leans in without thinking, curling a hand around his arm and kissing him until his lips are bruised and wet and pliant, eyes dark, glazed.
Rafa blinks at him when he pulls away, slow, confused.
“I didn’t,” says Roger without any clue what he’s going to say.
“Is okay,” says Rafa quickly, shaking his head and ducking away. Roger sees him lick at his lips before his back is fully turned.
“Rafa,” he says in New York, catching him in the hotel the night he arrives. “I didn’t get a chance before you left Cincinnati, but I wanted to say sorry, I don’t know why I keep.” He stops, shaking his head.
Rafa laughs softly, leaning into the window at the end of the corridor, overlooking the city. It’s beautiful, the endless buildings and traffic-choked streets, lit up and twinkling against the sky, and Rafa too, with his hair curling about his neck, his smile, his tired liquid eyes. Roger swallows. “Is because I am too handsome,” says Rafa. “You no can helping.”
Roger chokes out a startled laugh.
“Is okay, no, is tennis, is hard sometimes, and this.” He waves a hand. “Is easy. I no mind.”
“I.” Roger shakes his head, and smiles. “Thank you.”
Rafa’s eyes are warm when he nods in the soft washes of light through the window, and his hand too when he curls it briefly over Roger’s shoulder.
He talks to Rafa a lot after that, long laughing phone conversations, but doesn’t see him properly til Dubai the next year.
“Is so different,” says Rafa as they walk back to the hotel, awed, craning his neck at everything they pass.
Roger laughs. “I like it,” he says.
Rafa tilts his head then, considering. “Is nice,” he says finally. “But no like home.” His smile is soft, satisfied, his eyes bright beneath the fall of his hair.
Roger’s fingers twitch against his sides. He shoves his hands into his pockets and quickens his stride, and wonders afterwards, with Rafa splayed out beneath him, pushing into his touch, the afternoon sun glancing off his skin, only how he held out so long. “Shit,” he breathes, afterwards, “God, what-- ”
“Is okay,” says Rafa, sitting up and dipping his fingers tentatively into the small of his back. “Is no problem, we forget, si, go back to like always.”
Roger nods numbly and thinks, enough. No more.
It’s not so hard once the clay season starts. Rafa beats him in the final at Monte Carlo and again in Paris, and Roger swallows past the disappointment, the mounting pressure, and thinks, next year.
Rafa smiles nervously at him, almost afraid, and Roger tells him over a quick dinner before they leave Paris, “It doesn’t matter, you know, the tennis. It’s too hard otherwise.”
Wimbledon is Wimbledon, as always, and Roger’s glad of it. It’s easier to concentrate there, somehow, easier to hit every shot, easier to walk out onto Centre Court each time.
It’s even easier to play the final against Rafa, to push down the choking tension in his chest and edge past him in four sets.
When he clasps Rafa’s warm hand in his at the net, for a moment he feels nothing but relief.
New York feels colder than usual that year.
Roger’s not sure what it says that he can count every day, every tournament, probably every match he’s won and lost if he tried, since he last touched Rafa all the way back in Dubai, and that if he closes his eyes the memory of Rafa, stretched damp and golden in the summer glare, pink-cheeked and open-mouthed, swallowing gasp after hitching gasp, is more real somehow, more vivid than this, here, his hotel room seeped in pale early-morning light, the overcast sky through the windows, and Mirka: soft, pale, sleeping on the pillow beside him.
She smiles when she wakes, eyes creased with sleep, lashes fluttering, and Roger hates himself then, as he brushes the hair off her forehead and thinks how beautiful she is.
He feels almost safe when he talks to Rafa at Christmas, watching the snow float to the ground in lazy drifts outside the window, listening to Rafa talk, smiling when he slips back into Spanish and then catches himself, says, “Sorry, sorry, I forgetting at home,” breathless, laughing.
Roger shakes his head and says absently, “It doesn’t snow in Mallorca, does it?”
“No,” says Rafa, “Is no snow. You having snow?”
“Yeah,” says Roger. “Yeah, it’s snowing.”
“Is nice,” says Rafa. He sounds vaguely jealous.
Roger chuckles. “I’ll see you in Australia, yeah? Definitely no snow there.”
Rafa snorts and Roger can picture his grimace. He’s smiling though, Roger can hear it, when he says, “Si, in Australia.”
The new year arrives with Mirka in his arms, her head tipped back against his chest, one hand curved over his on her stomach, the other around a champagne flute, dainty like her ringed fingers. He leans down to kiss her as the countdown spills into midnight, soft and lingering, and thinks, I love her, I love her, and feels safe here, safe and in love.
It lasts right up until Rafa loses the quarterfinal.
He wishes distantly, his mouth pressed to the corner of Rafa’s eye, the lids beating in some helpless rhythm against his lips and his hand curled around Rafa’s cock, jerking him off fast and desperate against the tiles in the shower stall, he wishes that he was better at just saying things, something comforting and encouraging and friendly all at once, instead of this, this selfish thing masquerading as comfort.
Then he laughs as Rafa comes, hips arching off the wall, and thinks, it wouldn’t make a difference.
“Roger,” says Rafa, slipping into his room the morning he’s due to leave Melbourne. Mirka’s already downstairs with their luggage. “Congratulations.” He smiles, a little off but still real.
“Thanks,” says Roger. He feels, he doesn’t even know, so many layers of guilt, and awkward, and stupid, and then there’s the other stuff, another Slam, and. It’s too much.
Rafa ducks his head, hands buried in his pockets, and says again after a silence, hesitant, “Roger-- ”
“I know,” says Roger. He palms a hand over his face. “I’m sorry. I don’t.” He stops and laughs at the uselessness of that phrase.
Rafa looks at him, biting down on his lip, and for one stupid moment he thinks Rafa’s going to kiss him. “Is okay,” he says instead, quiet.
He keeps his head down after that, doesn’t even talk to Rafa as much, which he can’t help but feel bad about, because Rafa when he looks at him is sad now, not overly or even outwardly so, but there’s something about his eyes, not quite so sharp, and his smile, not quite so intense.
Roger beats him in Hamburg and there’s this rushing sense of excitement in Paris until he loses again, and Rafa looks at him in the locker room afterwards, tugging a fresh shirt over his head, and says, “Roger, is. Is okay, si?”
Roger nods. It isn’t really, but not Rafa, just. He’d thought this year he could do it.
“Roger,” says Rafa again.
Roger looks at him then, standing uncertain and awkward, brow furrowed, cheeks pink.
He can’t even bring himself to feel too bad about it this time, as he pushes Rafa back against the lockers with a worrying air of resignation and the biting, clenching tightness in his chest, his throat, loosens somewhat.
There’s something unsettlingly good about Mallorca. Roger can’t stop laughing at the ridiculousness of it, Rafa on his burnt orange half of the court, Roger on his grass, which is probably why he loses, but it’s not like it even matters. It feels like those off-season practise matches, tennis for tennis' sake, hitting stupid shots and not trying too hard and just grinning the whole time, and Roger thinks about it, Rafa’s laugh echoing across the court, his hair loose about his face, flushed and damp and smiling.
Afterwards Rafa shows him around, ducking away from the last of the press and just walking, peering at things Rafa points out through the soft shadowy twilight.
“Is not knowing so well as Manacor,” Rafa says, “But I coming here sometimes.”
“It’s really nice,” says Roger honestly. He likes the atmosphere in Spain, even in the big cities, the kind of lulled drowsiness, the unhurriedness of it all.
Rafa smiles at him then slants his glance away and says, “Maybe one day you can seeing Manacor.”
“Is it nicer than here?” asks Roger, biting back a grin.
“Is nicer than anywhere,” says Rafa, crossing his arms decidedly.
Roger nods, humming in absent agreement as Rafa leads them down a narrow, over-crowded street, watching the butter-yellow light from the streetlamps pool in the hollows of his eyes and the dip beneath his cheekbones, the damp Mediterranean air clinging to him like something easy, familiar.
“I think you liking the Ciudad Vieja,” Rafa’s saying, “The Old City, but.” He shrugs. “The beach is closer today, no? Is still nice.”
“Of course,” says Roger.
As they walk the street opens out almost onto the beachfront, the crashing of waves louder now than the bustle of people, the water still just visible in the last red sliver of light. Rafa stops, rolling his jeans up to bunch beneath his knees and Roger does the same then follows Rafa down to the sand, still sun-warm, soft and dry.
“Is no like Switzerland, si?” Rafa shoots a smile over his shoulder, hands tucked into his pockets, shoulders loose and fluid.
“No,” says Roger. He feels a sharp stab of something, he isn’t sure what, it’s too quick and too sudden for him to place it. “No, it’s not like Switzerland at all.”
He heads onto the grass at Wimbledon feeling a little off-balance this time, and so he closes his eyes and centres himself and thinks about nothing but tennis.
He practises, he plays his matches, he has dinner with Mirka, he sleeps. He smiles at Rafa when their paths cross in the corridors, and practises, and plays his matches, and has dinner with Mirka, and sleeps.
They meet again in the final and Roger wins, again, but it’s harder, always harder, and there’s some vague, niggling unease behind all the elation at the end. He sees Rafa walk off the court from the corner of his eye, the trophy still heavy in his arms, the cameras still whiting out his vision, a quick flash of golden-dark skin and set shoulders.
When it’s his turn to leave he’s actually thinking to himself, Not now, not this time. He’d probably feel bad about it if everything else didn’t feel so good.
Rafa’s still in the locker room, fresh from the shower, all dewy damp skin and curls.
Roger says, “Hey,” rougher than he’d like and heads straight for his bag, his change of clothes.
Rafa stands and crosses the room to sit on the bench beside Roger’s bag.
“Rafa,” says Roger, stilling.
“Is okay,” says Rafa quietly, looking up at him with something too much like awe, too much like hope in his eyes, and even a half-smile playing about his mouth.
Roger feels sick to the stomach. He leans in to kiss it away, pulling back only when Rafa’s eyes are glazed, dark and hungry and nothing else, his mouth slack.
They have lunch in Montreal before the tournament starts. Roger sits leaning back in his chair, watching the lines creasing about Rafa’s eyes, his mouth when he smiles.
He wonders too at how easy this is, just sitting here talking, and how easy it shouldn’t be.
Rafa loses the semis, Roger loses the final, and then he goes on to win Cincinnati, New York again.
The next year, 2008, seems in a lot of ways almost out of reach. Like so many things are slowly spiralling out of control. Moreso because he's not expecting it, not yet.
Australia is hard, harder than anything’s been in a long time, every point a battle, his feet never moving right, never moving how they used to, his shots going into the net or over the line where they used to land perfectly. He doesn’t win Paris again, again, and then he loses Wimbledon, the singles in Beijing, and just.
There’s a moment or two amidst it all where he’s not so sure about anything anymore.
Then there’s Rafa everywhere he goes, the one constant still left in this whole tennis thing, and he stops even trying after a certain point, kissing him in empty, echoing changerooms, backing him onto the bed in his hotel room, touching, tasting for the last time every time. Rafa always goes so easy, so compliant.
He doesn’t quite know how he looks afterwards, the expression on his face, but Rafa meets his eyes with some strange mix of caution and determination and says, “Is okay.”
Before matches, after matches, at the beginning of tournaments and the end, in locker rooms and hotel rooms: is okay. Is okay.
Things start looking up when he wins gold in the doubles.
There's no time for anything but practise, and Stan is immeasurably cheerful, lighthearted, always laughing, encouraging, and it’s just, for the first time in so long, easy.
Then he wins the US, and afterwards he smiles and breathes in and out, easier, clearer.
That’s maybe why Australia hurts so much the next time. So close, he gets so close, and he should, he knows, he could have done it, and he cannot fucking figure out why he didn’t. It’s Rafa again too, on the other side of the net, never the same person on court he is anywhere else, and neither is Roger really, but it’s still inescapably him.
He doesn’t touch Rafa though, is the odd thing, not once during the Open, and then Mirka tells him she’s pregnant, and he sits for a moment on the edge of their bed, the edge of something far more huge and amazing and terrifying, it feels like, her hand cupped loosely in his, and thinks, shit.
Not good, not bad, then, just. Shit.
Rafa says, “Congratulations,” the first time Roger sees him after they break the news.
His smile is forced, eyes darting away from Roger’s, and Roger doesn’t mean to but he says, “Don’t.”
“Sorry,” says Rafa softly, looking at the floor.
Roger shakes his head and sits on the bench beside him; close but not touching.
“I am your friend now,” says Rafa after a silence. Roger glances at him. “I am your friend. I can't go away. Is too late.”
“You don’t have to go away,” says Roger. “We can stop. I can stop.”
“You say this before, no?” Rafa’s lips curl, soft but not happy.
“It’s different now,” says Roger.
“Si.” Rafa sighs. “Is different.”
“I’m sorry,” says Roger, quiet, half desperate, “Rafa, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t-- ”
Rafa turns to face him; a quick, stilted movement, and wraps a hand around his wrist. “You can stop? You mean this? You can say, ‘Hello, Rafa,’ in locker rooms, and having lunch with me, and no touching, no nothing?” He leans in just a little. “I am your friend now,” he says again, softly. “I saying yes, and yes, and yes again, if you no can stop.”
Roger stares. “I can stop,” he says. His voice is low, hoarse, his pulse quick beneath Rafa’s fingers.
Rafa holds his gaze a moment longer, and sighs but doesn’t call him on the lie.
i know you know
roger federer/rafael nadal
The first time they kiss is in Australia. It’s fumbling and awkward like the teenager Rafa is, Roger’s fingers skimming feather-light over Rafa’s jaw, his cheek when he catches him in the locker room, his skin still damp from that particularly Australian, sticky summer heat.
He doesn’t mean to do it. Rafa gasps, surprised, wet into his mouth, scrabbling at Roger’s hips.
Roger pulls away, horrified, already wiping at his mouth, and says, “Sorry, sorry,” as he flees.
It’s just as hot in Miami. Roger spots Rafa outside the hotel, sunglasses sliding down his nose, his t-shirt caught unnoticed on the bare ridge of his hipbone.
He blinks. Mirka’s hand is light, too light on his arm and does nothing to dissipate this strange, burrowing itch. He shakes her off and follows Rafa to his room, pushes him against the door and kisses him, bites down on his lips and his neck, along his collarbones, arches into Rafa’s fingers digging hard into his back. “Rafa,” he says, lips to his temple, “Rafa, this isn’t, I can’t.”
Rafa’s head is tipped back against the door, eyes closed, throat working as he swallows. He can’t focus, Roger knows, probably doesn’t know what he’s saying.
He repeats it after, scrubbing a hand through his hair and prising Rafa away from the door. “I don’t know, I mean, but. I can’t do this.”
He stops outside, squaring his shoulders and shaking off Rafa’s dark, wide-eyed gaze.
He doesn’t see Rafa in Barcelona and it isn’t until Rome that he finds him to try and fix this. He’s a nice kid is the thing, and maybe it’s dangerous but he wants to try at least for something, some kind of friendship. He says, “I thought maybe we could get some lunch, and, you know, forget about.” He waves a hand, not quite able to form the words. “Start fresh.”
Rafa nods, eager, smiling. “Si, yes, yes, we can, is good.”
Roger smiles back. “Okay,” he says. “Good.”
Rafa ducks another smile at him as he turns to leave and Roger reaches out, mostly without thinking, and brushes a hand over his shoulder. “I’m sorry, for.” He stops.
“Is okay,” says Rafa softly.
Rafa points to him almost the moment he arrives at lunch and says, grinning impishly, “I going to winning the French Open.”
Roger blinks. “You sound sure,” he says.
“Is sure.” Rafa shrugs. “Is being nice, no, telling you now? Not so upset later.”
Roger laughs. “Well in that case, thank you,” he says.
Rafa nods, serious for all of three seconds, then splits into a grin, wide and bright.
He remembers that conversation when Rafa beats him in the semis, and watches him win the final and can’t even bring himself to feel bad, focused as he is on the way Rafa smiles, dazed and happy, the way he hugs the trophy to his chest like a precious childhood toy, that already familiar, all-encompassing warmth.
Rafa’s knocked out of Wimbledon before Roger even has a chance to see him, and he’s too focused then to have time for much of anything besides tennis.
Rafa texts him though, after the final, just a congratulations :) :), but Roger can picture his smile easy as anything, because even in the short time he’s known him Rafa doesn’t seem to have any sense of malice whatsoever, and the thank you! he sends back is heartfelt, genuine.
A month later he texts Rafa again, this time with congratulations of his own, and Rafa replies, soon i will taking you over.
Roger laughs down at his phone, fingers quick over the keypad, and says, not soon. when i retire, maybe. Rafa says, okay, if you say ;).
Cincinnati is strange, hot and cold, chill gusts of cloud and warm sunshine chasing each other across the sky.
Roger sees Rafa after he loses that first round and says, “Hey,” touching a finger to his elbow, and Rafa smiles but it’s forced, and Roger leans in without thinking, curling a hand around his arm and kissing him until his lips are bruised and wet and pliant, eyes dark, glazed.
Rafa blinks at him when he pulls away, slow, confused.
“I didn’t,” says Roger without any clue what he’s going to say.
“Is okay,” says Rafa quickly, shaking his head and ducking away. Roger sees him lick at his lips before his back is fully turned.
“Rafa,” he says in New York, catching him in the hotel the night he arrives. “I didn’t get a chance before you left Cincinnati, but I wanted to say sorry, I don’t know why I keep.” He stops, shaking his head.
Rafa laughs softly, leaning into the window at the end of the corridor, overlooking the city. It’s beautiful, the endless buildings and traffic-choked streets, lit up and twinkling against the sky, and Rafa too, with his hair curling about his neck, his smile, his tired liquid eyes. Roger swallows. “Is because I am too handsome,” says Rafa. “You no can helping.”
Roger chokes out a startled laugh.
“Is okay, no, is tennis, is hard sometimes, and this.” He waves a hand. “Is easy. I no mind.”
“I.” Roger shakes his head, and smiles. “Thank you.”
Rafa’s eyes are warm when he nods in the soft washes of light through the window, and his hand too when he curls it briefly over Roger’s shoulder.
He talks to Rafa a lot after that, long laughing phone conversations, but doesn’t see him properly til Dubai the next year.
“Is so different,” says Rafa as they walk back to the hotel, awed, craning his neck at everything they pass.
Roger laughs. “I like it,” he says.
Rafa tilts his head then, considering. “Is nice,” he says finally. “But no like home.” His smile is soft, satisfied, his eyes bright beneath the fall of his hair.
Roger’s fingers twitch against his sides. He shoves his hands into his pockets and quickens his stride, and wonders afterwards, with Rafa splayed out beneath him, pushing into his touch, the afternoon sun glancing off his skin, only how he held out so long. “Shit,” he breathes, afterwards, “God, what-- ”
“Is okay,” says Rafa, sitting up and dipping his fingers tentatively into the small of his back. “Is no problem, we forget, si, go back to like always.”
Roger nods numbly and thinks, enough. No more.
It’s not so hard once the clay season starts. Rafa beats him in the final at Monte Carlo and again in Paris, and Roger swallows past the disappointment, the mounting pressure, and thinks, next year.
Rafa smiles nervously at him, almost afraid, and Roger tells him over a quick dinner before they leave Paris, “It doesn’t matter, you know, the tennis. It’s too hard otherwise.”
Wimbledon is Wimbledon, as always, and Roger’s glad of it. It’s easier to concentrate there, somehow, easier to hit every shot, easier to walk out onto Centre Court each time.
It’s even easier to play the final against Rafa, to push down the choking tension in his chest and edge past him in four sets.
When he clasps Rafa’s warm hand in his at the net, for a moment he feels nothing but relief.
New York feels colder than usual that year.
Roger’s not sure what it says that he can count every day, every tournament, probably every match he’s won and lost if he tried, since he last touched Rafa all the way back in Dubai, and that if he closes his eyes the memory of Rafa, stretched damp and golden in the summer glare, pink-cheeked and open-mouthed, swallowing gasp after hitching gasp, is more real somehow, more vivid than this, here, his hotel room seeped in pale early-morning light, the overcast sky through the windows, and Mirka: soft, pale, sleeping on the pillow beside him.
She smiles when she wakes, eyes creased with sleep, lashes fluttering, and Roger hates himself then, as he brushes the hair off her forehead and thinks how beautiful she is.
He feels almost safe when he talks to Rafa at Christmas, watching the snow float to the ground in lazy drifts outside the window, listening to Rafa talk, smiling when he slips back into Spanish and then catches himself, says, “Sorry, sorry, I forgetting at home,” breathless, laughing.
Roger shakes his head and says absently, “It doesn’t snow in Mallorca, does it?”
“No,” says Rafa, “Is no snow. You having snow?”
“Yeah,” says Roger. “Yeah, it’s snowing.”
“Is nice,” says Rafa. He sounds vaguely jealous.
Roger chuckles. “I’ll see you in Australia, yeah? Definitely no snow there.”
Rafa snorts and Roger can picture his grimace. He’s smiling though, Roger can hear it, when he says, “Si, in Australia.”
The new year arrives with Mirka in his arms, her head tipped back against his chest, one hand curved over his on her stomach, the other around a champagne flute, dainty like her ringed fingers. He leans down to kiss her as the countdown spills into midnight, soft and lingering, and thinks, I love her, I love her, and feels safe here, safe and in love.
It lasts right up until Rafa loses the quarterfinal.
He wishes distantly, his mouth pressed to the corner of Rafa’s eye, the lids beating in some helpless rhythm against his lips and his hand curled around Rafa’s cock, jerking him off fast and desperate against the tiles in the shower stall, he wishes that he was better at just saying things, something comforting and encouraging and friendly all at once, instead of this, this selfish thing masquerading as comfort.
Then he laughs as Rafa comes, hips arching off the wall, and thinks, it wouldn’t make a difference.
“Roger,” says Rafa, slipping into his room the morning he’s due to leave Melbourne. Mirka’s already downstairs with their luggage. “Congratulations.” He smiles, a little off but still real.
“Thanks,” says Roger. He feels, he doesn’t even know, so many layers of guilt, and awkward, and stupid, and then there’s the other stuff, another Slam, and. It’s too much.
Rafa ducks his head, hands buried in his pockets, and says again after a silence, hesitant, “Roger-- ”
“I know,” says Roger. He palms a hand over his face. “I’m sorry. I don’t.” He stops and laughs at the uselessness of that phrase.
Rafa looks at him, biting down on his lip, and for one stupid moment he thinks Rafa’s going to kiss him. “Is okay,” he says instead, quiet.
He keeps his head down after that, doesn’t even talk to Rafa as much, which he can’t help but feel bad about, because Rafa when he looks at him is sad now, not overly or even outwardly so, but there’s something about his eyes, not quite so sharp, and his smile, not quite so intense.
Roger beats him in Hamburg and there’s this rushing sense of excitement in Paris until he loses again, and Rafa looks at him in the locker room afterwards, tugging a fresh shirt over his head, and says, “Roger, is. Is okay, si?”
Roger nods. It isn’t really, but not Rafa, just. He’d thought this year he could do it.
“Roger,” says Rafa again.
Roger looks at him then, standing uncertain and awkward, brow furrowed, cheeks pink.
He can’t even bring himself to feel too bad about it this time, as he pushes Rafa back against the lockers with a worrying air of resignation and the biting, clenching tightness in his chest, his throat, loosens somewhat.
There’s something unsettlingly good about Mallorca. Roger can’t stop laughing at the ridiculousness of it, Rafa on his burnt orange half of the court, Roger on his grass, which is probably why he loses, but it’s not like it even matters. It feels like those off-season practise matches, tennis for tennis' sake, hitting stupid shots and not trying too hard and just grinning the whole time, and Roger thinks about it, Rafa’s laugh echoing across the court, his hair loose about his face, flushed and damp and smiling.
Afterwards Rafa shows him around, ducking away from the last of the press and just walking, peering at things Rafa points out through the soft shadowy twilight.
“Is not knowing so well as Manacor,” Rafa says, “But I coming here sometimes.”
“It’s really nice,” says Roger honestly. He likes the atmosphere in Spain, even in the big cities, the kind of lulled drowsiness, the unhurriedness of it all.
Rafa smiles at him then slants his glance away and says, “Maybe one day you can seeing Manacor.”
“Is it nicer than here?” asks Roger, biting back a grin.
“Is nicer than anywhere,” says Rafa, crossing his arms decidedly.
Roger nods, humming in absent agreement as Rafa leads them down a narrow, over-crowded street, watching the butter-yellow light from the streetlamps pool in the hollows of his eyes and the dip beneath his cheekbones, the damp Mediterranean air clinging to him like something easy, familiar.
“I think you liking the Ciudad Vieja,” Rafa’s saying, “The Old City, but.” He shrugs. “The beach is closer today, no? Is still nice.”
“Of course,” says Roger.
As they walk the street opens out almost onto the beachfront, the crashing of waves louder now than the bustle of people, the water still just visible in the last red sliver of light. Rafa stops, rolling his jeans up to bunch beneath his knees and Roger does the same then follows Rafa down to the sand, still sun-warm, soft and dry.
“Is no like Switzerland, si?” Rafa shoots a smile over his shoulder, hands tucked into his pockets, shoulders loose and fluid.
“No,” says Roger. He feels a sharp stab of something, he isn’t sure what, it’s too quick and too sudden for him to place it. “No, it’s not like Switzerland at all.”
He heads onto the grass at Wimbledon feeling a little off-balance this time, and so he closes his eyes and centres himself and thinks about nothing but tennis.
He practises, he plays his matches, he has dinner with Mirka, he sleeps. He smiles at Rafa when their paths cross in the corridors, and practises, and plays his matches, and has dinner with Mirka, and sleeps.
They meet again in the final and Roger wins, again, but it’s harder, always harder, and there’s some vague, niggling unease behind all the elation at the end. He sees Rafa walk off the court from the corner of his eye, the trophy still heavy in his arms, the cameras still whiting out his vision, a quick flash of golden-dark skin and set shoulders.
When it’s his turn to leave he’s actually thinking to himself, Not now, not this time. He’d probably feel bad about it if everything else didn’t feel so good.
Rafa’s still in the locker room, fresh from the shower, all dewy damp skin and curls.
Roger says, “Hey,” rougher than he’d like and heads straight for his bag, his change of clothes.
Rafa stands and crosses the room to sit on the bench beside Roger’s bag.
“Rafa,” says Roger, stilling.
“Is okay,” says Rafa quietly, looking up at him with something too much like awe, too much like hope in his eyes, and even a half-smile playing about his mouth.
Roger feels sick to the stomach. He leans in to kiss it away, pulling back only when Rafa’s eyes are glazed, dark and hungry and nothing else, his mouth slack.
They have lunch in Montreal before the tournament starts. Roger sits leaning back in his chair, watching the lines creasing about Rafa’s eyes, his mouth when he smiles.
He wonders too at how easy this is, just sitting here talking, and how easy it shouldn’t be.
Rafa loses the semis, Roger loses the final, and then he goes on to win Cincinnati, New York again.
The next year, 2008, seems in a lot of ways almost out of reach. Like so many things are slowly spiralling out of control. Moreso because he's not expecting it, not yet.
Australia is hard, harder than anything’s been in a long time, every point a battle, his feet never moving right, never moving how they used to, his shots going into the net or over the line where they used to land perfectly. He doesn’t win Paris again, again, and then he loses Wimbledon, the singles in Beijing, and just.
There’s a moment or two amidst it all where he’s not so sure about anything anymore.
Then there’s Rafa everywhere he goes, the one constant still left in this whole tennis thing, and he stops even trying after a certain point, kissing him in empty, echoing changerooms, backing him onto the bed in his hotel room, touching, tasting for the last time every time. Rafa always goes so easy, so compliant.
He doesn’t quite know how he looks afterwards, the expression on his face, but Rafa meets his eyes with some strange mix of caution and determination and says, “Is okay.”
Before matches, after matches, at the beginning of tournaments and the end, in locker rooms and hotel rooms: is okay. Is okay.
Things start looking up when he wins gold in the doubles.
There's no time for anything but practise, and Stan is immeasurably cheerful, lighthearted, always laughing, encouraging, and it’s just, for the first time in so long, easy.
Then he wins the US, and afterwards he smiles and breathes in and out, easier, clearer.
That’s maybe why Australia hurts so much the next time. So close, he gets so close, and he should, he knows, he could have done it, and he cannot fucking figure out why he didn’t. It’s Rafa again too, on the other side of the net, never the same person on court he is anywhere else, and neither is Roger really, but it’s still inescapably him.
He doesn’t touch Rafa though, is the odd thing, not once during the Open, and then Mirka tells him she’s pregnant, and he sits for a moment on the edge of their bed, the edge of something far more huge and amazing and terrifying, it feels like, her hand cupped loosely in his, and thinks, shit.
Not good, not bad, then, just. Shit.
Rafa says, “Congratulations,” the first time Roger sees him after they break the news.
His smile is forced, eyes darting away from Roger’s, and Roger doesn’t mean to but he says, “Don’t.”
“Sorry,” says Rafa softly, looking at the floor.
Roger shakes his head and sits on the bench beside him; close but not touching.
“I am your friend now,” says Rafa after a silence. Roger glances at him. “I am your friend. I can't go away. Is too late.”
“You don’t have to go away,” says Roger. “We can stop. I can stop.”
“You say this before, no?” Rafa’s lips curl, soft but not happy.
“It’s different now,” says Roger.
“Si.” Rafa sighs. “Is different.”
“I’m sorry,” says Roger, quiet, half desperate, “Rafa, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t-- ”
Rafa turns to face him; a quick, stilted movement, and wraps a hand around his wrist. “You can stop? You mean this? You can say, ‘Hello, Rafa,’ in locker rooms, and having lunch with me, and no touching, no nothing?” He leans in just a little. “I am your friend now,” he says again, softly. “I saying yes, and yes, and yes again, if you no can stop.”
Roger stares. “I can stop,” he says. His voice is low, hoarse, his pulse quick beneath Rafa’s fingers.
Rafa holds his gaze a moment longer, and sighs but doesn’t call him on the lie.