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The cold night prickles Andrey's skin through the thin fabric of his t-shirt, the air frigid even inside of his hotel room, exuding the kind of chill that permeates to his bones. Although to be accurate, it's not really night anymore. The darkness is blurring into early morning, transforming the horizon into an impenetrable dystopian grey in that liminal time right before the sun begins its climb. The calm before the storm, before the city wakes for the day and the tournament gets into swing and they won't have a moment of peace for a week.
They’re playing video games, him, Daniil, and Karen, and the TV is projecting flimsy echoes of red and yellow and orange on the walls. The images on the screen aren’t quite as clear as they should be, their edges undefined, all warping into one unfocused background, and Andrey’s thumbs drag sluggishly over his controller’s buttons.
There had been a bottle full of vodka that Daniil had stolen from his coach's mini-fridge. It blurs Andrey’s thoughts, distorting them into one incoherent, spinning, winding line, turning them hazy just like his vision. Even though they emptied it nearly an hour ago, he can still taste it. In his throat remains the itch of burning parchedness from the very first sip.
It could be that the alcohol is the cause of his distraction, but it isn’t the only factor. He’s also exhausted and terribly jetlagged, but furthermore preventing his focus is his proximity to Karen and Daniil.
Despite the cold, his thigh is still sweat-sticky where it's pressed against Karen's – a constant, unrelenting, impossible to ignore pressure, that makes his stomach twist with butterflies.
Then on the other side of him, Daniil is only inches away as well. His t-shirt is rucked up from how he’s sitting, revealing a strip of his stomach. The skin is tan like he’s spent hours on the beach or practicing shirtless, tanner than Andrey will ever get, and additionally exposed is that straight arrow of hair leading down under the low waistband of his shorts, tempting Andrey to reach over, to touch.
He bites his lip, restrains himself as he looks up, up Daniil's chest then up the curve of his neck, tracing the line of his jaw with his gaze. He’s so distracted that he’s lost track of everything happening in their game.
“Uh, Andrey? are you okay?” Daniil is looking at him now.
“Huh? Oh yeah, all good.”
Andrey tries not to look at Daniil’s mouth, attempting to ignore the soft curve of his thin lips, trying not to imagine the way they might feel against his own. Because he has imagined it, dozens, hundreds, likely thousands of times. He’s thought of it at practice, when they shake hands at the net, or when their bodies brush on the bench. He thinks about it even though he shouldn’t, even though it’s—
“You scored on your own net.”
“Oh, uh,” the words force a delayed drag from his thoughts to reality, his mind slow and cloudy like his brain was replaced with cotton balls. He hesitates.
He’s still stuck on Daniil's lips. He had looked down at them when Daniil talked and now, he’s realizing how close they are. He can taste Daniil's air, the soda mixed with vodka he drank earlier, and smell the way the scent of it combines with Daniil's cologne and that thin layer of sweat underneath. Their lips are hardly inches apart and their bodies are even closer and, and it would be nothing, just travelling through a few centimeters of open air, to press them together.
He does.
Andrey isn't even sure which one of them leaned in but Daniil's lips part under his, warm, soft, and infinitely better than anything he ever predicted.
The kiss starts slow and exploratory, simple but breathtaking. It feels almost endless, perpetual, deepening as Daniil's tongue searches over his bottom teeth like he's trying to map out the surface, like he's trying to carefully catalogue every detail.
It's like time is frozen. As if they're in their own world. Isolated in the endless early morning grey, the only ones to exist while the rest of the city sleeps. Space and time become almost ethereal and it's a little bit like being underwater, like nothing beyond the current can be seen or heard.
The sheer intensity of it is overwhelming.
Then Andrey feels Karen's hands bracing on his hips, and Karen's hot breath on his neck. He never knew what to expect all the times he imagined it. He had tried to guess at how Karen would touch him and hold him based on their handshakes at practices and casual touches, but his imagination is paltry in comparison to the real thing. Karen's hands feel somehow even bigger around his hips, gentler too, his thumbs trailing over the waistband of Andrey's shorts. He's so warm, from his fingertips to his mouth as he presses a kiss to Andrey's shoulder.
Andrey sucks in a gasp.
It's a lot like tennis. That indescribable feeling in the moment between striking a ball down the line and knowing it's landed in.
Daniil's mouth is still pressed to his and one of Karen's hands is slipping below his waistband. He can feel his heartbeat, the tempo almost violent, thudding against his rib cage.
Then Daniil reaches up to cup his face and it's all too much.
That metaphorical tennis ball skids far outside the lines. His heart stutters painfully in his chest.
Wrong, he thinks, with a panic shooting like lightning straight down his spine.
Suddenly he's six years old again in the back of a tiny car.
His tennis bag had leaned heavily against his legs, against overused, sore muscles, and he had let his head fall against the window. Raindrops had glanced off the glass, sliding down it, blurring his vision. His mother had muttered something in Russian, too quiet for him to catch the words, full of disgust as she stared out the window too. And between the hazy tracks of rain, Andrey just barely glimpsed what she was talking about as they drove past the entrance to a tiny street: two men holding hands in the anonymity of night. Wrong, she said, sick.
His stomach had tied itself into knots at her words, her tone, and at the time he hadn't understood why.
The sense of disgust had stayed with him all the same even if he couldn't yet fully comprehend it, nausea morphing into an overbearing wrongness that settled somewhere deep inside him, remaining ever-present even once the memory had long faded into the background. It was further compounded by little comments in the future, jabs exchanged by the older boys in the locker room, snide remarks under the breath of opponents, all surmounting into one fact: he wasn't normal.
It's like a wave hitting him, shame and regret sharp like ice water. He freezes, going rigid in their arms. Even his lungs cease to function, but his brain is fully present, hyperactive. In a split second, he's sober again. Abruptly he pulls away.
The TV is still on, their game playing the "you won" screen with its golden background the only light, reflecting across Daniil's face. It's almost as if nothing happened at all; as if they hadn't just kissed, but they did, and no matter what Andrey can't take it back now. Andrey can't un-feel the sensation of Daniil's lips against his own, or the way Karen had held him. And he can't unsee the way Daniil is looking at him now, his bottom lip still slick with spit in a way that's overtly visible in the glossy light, confusion evident in his expression.
"Andryusha?" Karen says. Inexplicably it stings. It's physically painful to hear his name said like that, his heart rent in two by the intimacy implicated in his tone.
"We can't," Andrey says. "We can't do this."
Part of him expects Karen to argue. Karen is always the first one to disagree, to voice his opinion both on court and off, but now, he's silent.
Because this isn’t only a few centimetres of air separating them, it's three or four years of denial and guilt and slowly falling deeper into this mess of feelings he has for Karen and Daniil. It would be ruining everything, congruent with losing everything he's ever wanted, everything they've all wanted, and they know that. They can't be this and have everything else.
Tennis is hardly compatible with friendships, less so with relationships, and even more fundamentally incompatible with this, with them.
Daniil picks up his controller again, balancing it in his hands. He presses some buttons as if nothing happened, and for a moment the room is all dark before the game's light illuminates it again, but Andrey isn't watching the screen.
They play another game, until Daniil says it's getting late and they drift back to their own rooms. Friends and nothing more. As if nothing happened at all. In the morning they run into each other at breakfast, schedule practices together, joke around.
And at the end of the week, Andrey will lift the junior's trophy and it will all seem like it's going to be worth it in the end.
Tennis is a solitary sport. The opponent isn't just on the other side of the net but inside him too. Emotions become as much of a rival as any human, a beast to tame, something to kill in exchange for results.
He wipes a bead of sweat from his brow before it has the chance to drip into his vision, pushing back the stray strands of hair that have managed to escape from his headband. The cold breeze is goosebump-inducing whenever he stands still, prickling his skin where it's exposed. He shifts his weight from one foot to the other, trying to relieve the discomfort of his sore, exhausted limbs. His own lack of sleep isn't helping anything either, but there's no giving up. Minor pain is just something to defeat.
Now a ball whizzes over the net, 200km/h, and Andrey's mind is faraway, he's a step slow. His heel catches on the line as he lunges for it and, before he's even fully aware of it, he goes tumbling to the ground.
He lands on his side, his racquet still in his hands. The fall isn't painful exactly, just jarring, a sudden impact.
"Andryusha," Fernando is at his side before he can so much as push himself up on scraped hands.
"I'm fine."
"Hijo de puta. Andrey. We should stop for the day."
"I just slipped," he dusts the dirt from his shorts and his skin.
There's a scrape on his knee, just below the purple outline of a bruise from the last time he smashed a racquet against his leg. However, he isn't bleeding and he tries not to touch either of the marks.
Stopping isn't an option. He remembers being young. The thwack of a ball against concrete over and over, his arms so sore and heavy he could hardly lift the racquet. Working on footwork until his lungs burned in his chest. Collapsing onto the worn-down court, racquet clattering abrasively onto the peeling lines, his face streaked with tears, his legs shaking, but still, he would push himself up to his feet.
It's what he has to do – what they all have to do, just one of many sacrifices they have to make in order to be the best.
"I'm fine," he says.
"What if we never played tennis?"
The thought flits across Andrey's mind sometimes. In his darkest moments: after losing the biggest matches of his career, late at night when there's nothing and no one to distract him from his own turmoil. In those times when everything he wants seems to slip like sand through his fingertips. When playing tennis doesn’t feel like just playing tennis, but like swallowing a hundred shards of glass and trying not to scream. When Andrey wants to be anyone but himself.
Because being himself is so deeply entwined with tennis, inseparable parts of his identity. Tennis is like oxygen to him, he can't remember a time he breathed without being utterly engulfed in and full of it. But oxygen has existed for an eternity, regardless of who breathes it, and in the same way, he's just a speck of dust in the world of tennis.
So sometimes he lets himself think about a life without this. A place maybe one universe away from here. A place he might have ended up if all the dominoes had tumbled in a slightly different direction at some point.
The sun would be a thin line through the curtains, a straight arrow over the white sheets, slashing across Andrey's vision. He would raise his arm to block it out, as he rolls over to bury his face in the pillow. Daniil's arm would lay draped over his waist, a grounding kind of weight, and Karen would snore softly, a familiar sound, making it so easy to fall back asleep.
Then, when Andrey would blink his eyes open again the sink would be running downstairs, the scent of fresh-made coffee wafting gently through the air, Karen's laughter echoing through the walls. Those same walls would be plastered with photos of the three of them, all of them smiling at the camera on holidays, and at birthday parties, and work Christmas parties. One would catch his eye, in the corner at the bottom.
In it, Daniil's arm would be wrapped clumsily around Andrey's shoulders, like he was rushing to get into the photo after setting a camera timer. Meanwhile, Karen would be leaned in close like he was about to kiss Andrey on the cheek but broke away laughing at Daniil's antics at the last moment. They would all have tennis racquets in their hands, clay stains on their shoes, messy sweat-mussed hair. A bright orange handprint would stain the front of Andrey's shirt, and Karen's fingers would be dusted with the colour too, clay streaking down his forearm serving as evidence he dove for a ball.
But really, what would catch Andrey's attention wouldn't be any of that. It would be his own smile, the innocent ease of it, like the racquet in his hand is anything other than a weapon.
Briefly, something tugs at Andrey's heart, there and then gone, like a gust of wind.
Then Karen would appear in the doorway, a mug in his hand, his t-shirt splotched with water like Daniil splashed him while doing the dishes. He would smile though, fondly.
"Andryusha," he would say in that quiet early morning voice that Andrey would have the luxury of knowing so well in this universe, unsure if Andrey is fully awake yet. "I brought you coffee,"
Karen gets married in April of 2016. Andrey's flight is late and he misses the entire ceremony, arriving midway through the after-party as the time is already approaching midnight. Everything is so loud all the sounds blur together into one incoherent wave with the music, and he’s being plied with drinks long before he even spots Karen among the crowd.
When he finally does see Karen, and Karen sees him, the alcohol has settled in his stomach, everything is slow, off-kilter, like viewing the room through a fisheye lens. The only thing that's clear is Karen in front of him.
Karen in his perfectly tailored suit that hits at all the right angles of his body, showcasing his height without sacrificing broadness and strength. Then there's the sharp cut of his beard. Andrey's always loved his beard, maybe because it's so easy to imagine how rough it would feel against his skin, how it could scrape between his thighs. Fuck, he shouldn't be thinking that but Karen is so beautiful.
Maybe it's the alcohol, or maybe the illustrious wedding glow, but Karen is practically luminous, shining brighter than any of the dulled overhead lights.
"You made it," Karen says. His voice is muted among the background buzz of music and dozens of other nearby conversations, but his smile is wide, genuine. Andrey's mouth goes dry.
"Yeah," Andrey gulps, trying to swallow over the lump in his throat. “Uh,” a second passes. “Congratulations.”
Karen leans in closer, so his voice is right in Andrey's ear, able to be clearly heard. "Do you want to dance?" he asks.
Andrey is drunk and this can't be anything but a bad idea. He should say no, but instead, the word rolling off his tongue is yes.
So Karen starts into the crowd, smile rapturous and light as air. Andrey can see the gold of the wedding band on his finger, physical evidence of why this is a bad idea, why he shouldn't do this. But Andrey is drunk and he can't back out now.
He has no talent for dancing but at least it isn't a slow song and Karen doesn't seem to mind the uncoordinated movements. He laughs as Andrey nearly trips over his own feet, but at the same time, he also puts a hand on Andrey's shoulder to help him regain balance. It's warm and Andrey finds himself increasingly in Karen's proximity following that first meaningless touch, drawn into Karen’s orbit.
The music is a thumping bass, the lyrics blurring into the drunk landscape of Andrey's mind, his concern fading into the backdrop, and everyone around them seemingly vanishing into the background too. The drum beat builds, deep, sensual, and Andrey can feel it in his chest, in the rapid beat of his heart.
There is no coordination, surrounded by the many relatives and friends and acquaintances, all off in their own world for just a moment, everyone bumping into each other in their distraction. There is no real rhythm either, but it doesn't matter, Karen is smiling and they’re discovering something like a cohesive flow between their movements, a closeness. Despite the lack of proper order they've known each other forever and Karen anticipates his moves, echoing them smoothly, inventing a rhythm just between the two of them.
Andrey can feel the ghost of Karen's breath, dancing like butterfly wings over his cheek when Karen laughs out a smile as he leans forward. Their bodies brush together and it's electric. The drunken noise in Andrey's head is suddenly so much louder, increasingly disorienting.
Fuck.
He wants to reach out, to touch, and he's so tempted. It wouldn't hurt, to run his hand down Karen's back, to step in so their foreheads are pressed together.
So he does.
He pushes into Karen's personal space, foreheads bumping, his hand on Karen's back. He can taste Karen's breath, breathing each other's air in a way that is unbelievably intimate, in some ways taking the tiniest particles of each other inside with each breath. And he can feel the muscle of Karen's back through his suit, the strength of his shoulders, the way he's so much bigger than Andrey.
"Andrey," Karen says, sharp. "Andrey."
Andrey hadn't realized they had stopped dancing, but his feet are now firmly planted on the ground, stationary, unmoving. He's still touching Karen.
There are words on the tip of his tongue but he doesn't know how to get them out. Doesn't truly know what they are.
"No, Andryusha," Karen says. "I'm married."
Fuck.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. His mind is swirling, spinning. He jolts back and his chest heaves. His stomach is turning too, and instantly the crowd around them feels suffocating. The room is too big, endless, and there are too many people. It's like the walls are closing in. Claustrophobic.
He isn't quite sure how he gets out, it's like that innate fight or flight instinct kicks in, adrenaline motivating him to shove through all the people. He thinks he's mumbling sorry or something like it as he dodges people with drinks, all laughing together, to get out of the crowd.
Daniil is there too, at the edge of the dance floor. Of course he's there now, at the worst possible time. His expression transforms into mess of concern, brows furrowing upon seeing Andrey.
"Andryusha what happened? Are you okay man?" he asks.
Andrey is sick.
It's like he's chasing something and just can't quite keep up. Karen is breaking the top hundred, and Andrey thought he was growing closer too. Two months ago he had been climbing, climbing, climbing, only a few spots away from 150, and all it would have taken is one or two more tournaments. He just needed a breakthrough, but instead of one step forward he took two steps back, and now he's a hundred spots away, not just fifty.
He collapses into bed. He's so tired.
On the blankets beside him, his phone flickers on and he shifts to read the screen.
The most recent message is from Anastasija.
They met at the tennis academy where his mother coaches, in the month after Karen's wedding. Andrey had been practicing, bitterly smashing forehands back at the ball machine, when she appeared at the court's gate with a racquet in her hand. They talked, hitting for a few minutes before exchanging numbers, and then Karen had encouraged him, pushing him towards the first date.
He drank coke that night, oddly out of place in the illustrious, sleek restaurant. He probably should have had something like wine or champagne. Something refined. Something adult.
Instead, Coke took him back to being a child. When he wasn't allowed to drink it under the strict dietary restrictions his mother inflicted; exclusively healthy food, and only water with all those electrolyte boosting powders, no soda, and cake reserved for birthdays. Coca-cola was practically an illicit good, but sometimes, after he spent hours struggling through homework from classes he didn't attend, or when he would lock himself in his room and sob after a lost match, his grandmother would smuggle him one.
He had tipped his half-full glass to the side, watching how the ice floated in the water, glossy in the dim light, and he tried to bring himself back to the present, put on a smile, and enjoy the date.
He must have done well, at pretending, maybe because he didn't truly have to pretend. She was pretty, with her blonde hair down to her waist, ocean blue eyes, and easy to earn laughter. She could keep pace with Andrey's tennis analysis and she didn't mind the travel or the unpredictable, irregular schedule.
And Andrey tried, he really tried to let it be enough. It should be enough.
'I'll be back in a few minutes. Picking up something for us to eat. Sorry about the match.' her message says, followed by several hearts.
He types back some monotonous response and throws his phone back down on the bed.
He and Anastasija are in a hotel in any city in the world and the day is dwindling into night. She looks up at him through her lashes as she's playing with the hem where his t-shirt meets his shorts. Her hands are soft, missing the callouses caused by racquets or the small scars from blisters and injuries. They slide up under the fabric, trailing over his waist and pushing the shirt up with the movement.
It's wrong but he can't help being taken back to that moment with Karen and Daniil, comparing their touches to hers as she helps him to lift his shirt over his head. He thinks of the heat of Karen's hands, the sweet taste of Daniil's lips pressed against his, the overwhelming sensation of having both of them at once.
Her fingers dip under the waistband of his shorts, pulling the tie there loose.
He closes his eyes and wishes it could have been them.
Later, when she comes back from her nightly adulations in the bathroom, her hair now tied back in a messy ponytail, dressed in one of Andrey's tennis shirts and a pair of checkered pajama pants, she crawls into bed and he kisses her on the forehead. He thinks he should feel something more than the empty void in the pit of his stomach as he curls an arm over her waist.
"Andrey," she says, into the darkness once the lights are out. "We're okay, right?"
He can hear her heavy breath.
"Yeah."
It's a lie but he could never say the truth out loud.
He wins his first title in Umag. The moment between the last point and lifting the trophy is a blur, nothing but a disorienting, overwhelming sensation he can't explain. He must have shaken his opponent's hand, must have found his way to his bench, but he hardly recalls doing either.
The resounding feeling of relief engulfs him. He's making progress. He isn't a failure. It will all be worth it in the end.
Dasha is beautiful in her dress. She was beautiful when she walked down the aisle too, Andrey is sure, but he hadn't really been watching her then. His focus had been wholly on Daniil alone, and Daniil, at least to him, had been more beautiful than anyone else in the room.
He was an extended straight line in his pitch-black suit at the altar. His shoulders broadened by the cut of the jacket. His hair swept back from his smooth, clean-shaven face. Without his beard, the curve of his jaw was more apparent than ever, the perfect place to suck a bruise into, to pepper with kisses. Only it isn't Andrey's place to do that, least of all now.
The tables are white and the guests are dressed in their Sunday best. All neutral, taupe dresses, grey and black suits, delicate pearl jewelry, and the only colour in the room is the flower. Lilies of the valley with as many as a dozen bells to an arched stem – so many they cause it to bend under their raindrop weight. They grow neither tall nor extended, choosing to keep close to their demure green leaves, much broader than the slender flowers themselves, orchestrated among the vibrancy of lilac and hyacinth in each table-top bouquet.
Andrey stares at those flowers, a distraction, anything to keep himself from the temptation to glance over as Dasha leans in to kiss Daniil again.
Anastasija nudges his arm. "They're so cute together."
He blinks, doesn't look. "Yeah."
It's funny how many times the human heart can break without being put back together. Because the pieces never truly repair themselves to be broken again, they only shatter smaller and smaller until they turn to dust.
It's never quite the same as before. And maybe it's all in Andrey's head. Maybe he imagines how Karen shies away from touch, or maybe Daniil is only focusing on tennis, and it's the regimen and travel that keeps him from answering late-night messages rather than anything exclusively Andrey related.
The locker room is entirely vacant aside from them when they finish their doubles match, and the suffocating silence is oppressive. Their lockers are beside each other and Andrey shrinks into himself as Karen comes to sit on the bench while Andrey fiddles with his lock. Andrey grabs his phone and a clean change of clothes.
"Andryusha," there's something grave in Karen's tone, all deep gravel. Serious.
"Yeah," Andrey doesn't look up. He turns the screen of his phone on, then off again.
"Me and Veronika, we uh" Karen starts, pauses.
Andrey dares a glance. He can't quite meet Karen's eyes and instead his vision drifts somewhere between there and the floor. Starting at Karen's shoes, the same sponsor-provided ones Andrey is wearing. His shorts are the same too, but tighter, shorter, stretched across his thighs where he twists his hands together in his lap. Nervous, in a way he isn't usually.
"We're having a child."
"Oh uh," Andrey falters. His gaze meets Karen's and he's windswept, like all the air is knocked out of him. "That's great," he can only hope the words don't sound as hollow to Karen as they do in his own head. He manages a smile. "Congratulations."
Karen smiles back, genuine joy that crackles through all his features.
He wraps Andrey in a hug and Andrey is a split-second slow, his arms hanging at his side a moment too long, snail-paced to take their proper place around Karen's waist. They don't hug often. Sometimes when they're swept up in the atmosphere of playing for their country, when the emotions are running high and the moments after victory are a blur of racquets and hugs and high fives. But they aren't the type who hug after every loss or victory. They aren't touchy. Maybe there's a reason for that.
Briefly, Andrey's mind flits to that ‘What If’ fantasy, and involuntarily he is flung into contemplating where they could be and what they could be if he hadn't made the choices he did.
They wouldn't be in a locker room. Maybe they would be on a couch. Something pale and modest, but comfortable, covered in blankets and pillows that make it feel like home. Somewhere clean. He wouldn't feel Karen's skin slick with sweat, or his own clothes clinging to his overused, sore body.
He wouldn't ache, and he could bury his face in Karen's neck, or burrow into Karen's lap. He wouldn't have to pull away like he does now.
He pats Karen on the back and tries to compose himself in the brief moment Karen can't see his face.
They separate in fractions. Karen lets go first, within an appropriate modicum of time for a friendly embrace, but the process is slow, his hands hovering over Andrey's back before fully disentangling. Andrey hesitates too, a stuttering drag back into reality.
He turns back to his locker, to all the tennis things that encompass his life so entirely. "
There are times when a loss isn't just a loss. It becomes something like a stab wound, something that festers and aches, infecting his mind.
That's this loss.
His head is practically pounding with the chaotic rush of disappointment and rage. He's so close to snapping, patience drawn taut, like the only thing holding him together is the thinnest piece of string, and it's being tugged at both ends, tighter and tighter. It's suffocating. Heavy, like the tennis bags on his shoulders that he wants nothing more than to throw to the ground.
He can see his reflection in the glass of the elevator. The light sharpens his bone structure, defines shadows, making him look exhausted. His shoulders are slouched too, his body swallowed in a shirt that's a size too big. His hair is still damp and messy from the shower, leaving cold droplets of water on his neckline, stray strands curling over his forehead.
He hates it and involuntarily his grip tightens on the strap of his racquet bag. The image is hardly himself. He can barely recognize himself through the layers of disappointed expectations. If he threw his racquet bags now, threw the racquets inside, the balls, the water bottles and strings and grip, it would break the glass. Everything could shatter at his feet.
But he doesn't do it and the elevator doors open luckily before he has the chance to reconsider. He makes it to his room without anything going terribly wrong, but the tightness in his chest remains, bubbling over. It's like he wants to hit something at the same time he wants to curl up and cry.
The only similarity between the two feelings, the only link, is that regardless of which action he takes, he'll still be entirely alone. He's going to go back to his bed alone. Maybe his sister, or Karen, or Anastasija will text him some small condolences on the match. Karen's text will only compound the emptiness, because Karen will be at home with his wife and his kids, and Andrey knows he's nothing more than an afterthought in that life. He's the fifth or sixth most important person in Karen's life, if he's being generous, while Karen is still at the top of his own list in bold capital letters. In the end, remembering that will make him too sad to answer the message at all, as if that can inflict even a measure of the pain he feels.
Then Daniil won't so much as text him. Unlike Karen, Daniil has stopped wasting his time and as Andrey's answers became less frequent, so did his initiation of the conversations.
Remaining, always, is Anastasija, but somehow he only feels more alone with her here than he does with her gone.
Did he make the wrong choice?
He pushes the door to his room open, immediately letting his bags slide from his shoulders to the floor, where they land with a reverberant thud. It doesn't feel like a relief though, not like any of the tension in his shoulders vanished with the weight. Tennis still hates him. It’s still untameable, all the goals he set for himself so far out of reach. And what if, what if he never achieves anything?
What if he gave up the only other thing he's ever wanted this much, just to get nothing in return?
He slams his door shut, but it doesn't remain closed. It creaks open again. He pushes it back. Again. And Again. It's almost violent, actually, it is violent. He slams his palm against the wood with all his strength. Over and over.
He registers the crack before the pain. Something that snaps like a dry branch does underfoot; sharp and abrupt. The sound echoes in the crystalline silence of the hotel. Then the pain follows with a wave of nausea as he clutches his wrist to his chest. He sinks to the ground. The skin is already turning purple and he can't bear to look at it.
His next breath shudders through him and its volume is magnified inside his head. Time is something of a blur too, unclear how much of it passes between each beat of his heart that wracks his chest.
He doesn't realize he's crying until a single drop of cold wetness falls on his hand.
"How's your wrist?" Karen asks.
Andrey shrugs. "It's fine. Not much I can do about it."
The brace is still on, heavy and rigid. He can't take it off when he showers, which is irritating, but more importantly, he hasn't hit a tennis ball in weeks. He's never gone that long without tennis, not since he was too young to remember. He would play through sickness and exhaustion, and any prior injuries were minor, fleeting, the kind of aches and strain where skipping part of his regimen for a few days was enough. Now it's like an itch he can't scratch.
He still runs every day, and works on footwork and agility. Anything that doesn't require his hand, he does, but still it's never quite enough. He'll trace over the callouses in his palm, constant reminders of what he should be doing, and as he lays in bed and watches the points drop off beside his name with each passing week, the urge to play combines with hopelessness.
"Do you wanna play Fifa or something?" Daniil asks. "If your hand is okay for it?"
It's the same as before, but so much is different too, so much has changed, grown into something that makes Andrey's heart sink into the pit of his stomach.
It's evening, the air cold in the way it always is in Russia, and Daniil reclines on the couch in that way where his clothes go all askew, until things get serious and he hunches as close to the TV screen as possible. Meanwhile, Karen passes up his turn and provides constant running commentary instead. But they're in Andrey's apartment instead of a hotel room, not that there's much of a difference there either. This place doesn't really feel any more like home than any of the nameless, temporary places he stays on tour. It's still all tennis equipment sprawled messily on the carpet, trophies and childhood metals on the walls, empty water bottles on the table and in the trash. Like tennis is all he is.
Daniil's wedding ring clinks against the plastic of the controller as he thrusts his hand into the air to celebrate a goal. That's what's different – all the physical, irreversible reminders that they aren’t teenagers anymore, all the indicators of the choice he made that he can never take back.
The boy has the tiniest little hands. He latches onto one of Andrey's fingers with all of his own, cherub cheeks smiling, so blissful and unaware as he pushes his hand against the racquet calluses at the top of Andrey's palm. Innocent.
Andrey tries to smile back. He has to smile, because Karen is smiling too, and his wife is watching them both.
"He's so cute isn't he," Karen reaches into the crib too. His hand is even bigger than Andrey's, even more noticeably so in comparison to the baby's, and his fingers brush over Andrey's wrist as he reaches for his son. "So smart too," Karen says when the baby coos in response to his touch.
Everything about him is so gentle like this, the touch of his hand, the curve of his smile.
It takes Andrey back to that one night, and all the nights prior. Karen was always so gentle with him too, but that gentleness isn't his to have anymore. It never was his.
He'll be a good father. Andrey can already tell. The kind of father who takes his kid to the park, who will be there as much as tennis allows, for school concerts and parent-teacher meetings, who won't force his child into tennis before the child so much as knows the word 'no'. His love would never be conditional, never be dependent on results. His love would never be painful.
Andrey retracts his hand, drawing into himself.
There's a brief moment of recognition when Karen's gaze finds his, as if Karen can read his mind.
"I should go soon," Andrey says. "I have practice."
"Wait. I'll walk you out," Karen says.
It's not late, but it's already growing dark outside. The street lamps are on, and in their ineffective, gloomy light Karen's breath is a porous cloud that plumes slowly with each exhale, as he tucks his hands into his pockets. A single snowflake falls on his cheek, remaining solid only a second before melting against the heat of his skin.
Andrey's car behind him is covered in a dusting of snow too. The cold of it stings against Andrey’s palm as he grabs the door's handle.
"I guess we'll see each other soon?" Andrey says. He begins to yank the car door open but Karen stops him.
First, Karen grabs his wrist, covered by the sleeve of Andrey's coat, but his grip is loose. As Andrey tries to pull away Karen's hand slips too, catching only at the last moment, and somehow it ends with them disjointedly holding hands. Andrey freezes, but Karen doesn't pull away, doesn't so much as try to separate them, he only holds tighter.
"Wait, Andrey," his fingers are warm, comfortably so, in a way similar to the homely warmth of hot chocolate or freshly baked bread. "Are you," hesitation. "Are you okay?"
"I'm fine," he says, like always, because what else is he supposed to say?
Against his palm, Karen's is rough and calloused. Karen's thumb strokes softly over the back of his hand and the temptation to twine their fingers together, slot them so they are fully and properly holding hands, is a striking full-bodied urge. His breath catches in his throat.
He shouldn't. He can't.
"You can always talk to me, you know, if something is wrong."
"I know," Andrey watches another snowflake land on Karen’s face, follows the path of another few that blow through the quiet gap between them, before his gaze travels up to Karen’s face again, meeting Karen’s eyes.
Then Karen lets go. "Okay," he says, followed by a pause. His heavy exhale of the word becomes a white cloud. "Okay. Just take care of yourself Andryusha."
Suddenly, the cold is much worse than before.
The early morning light would give everything soft, gentle edges, all the colors of the room paler in that time before the sun has fully risen, when the horizon is painted in streaky yellows and oranges.
Softness that would be a lot like how Daniil's hands would grip his thighs, how Daniil would leave kisses there, sucking the sensitive skin enough to leave the faintest of pink marks. He would work his way up Andrey's thighs, teasing, taking his time, before taking Andrey's cock in his mouth.
Meanwhile, Karen's hardness would press insistently against Andrey's ass, and Karen's strong hands on his waist and hips would hold him steady, restraining him in the best of ways.
It would be too much and not enough all at once, and he would grind into Karen's lap, asking for more, desperate. And Karen would give him more of course, so gentle, taking Andrey apart with his fingers, opening him up. And when Karen sinks in Andrey would take Daniil into his mouth, filling him from both ends.
He comes, shuddering, into his palm.
Then, following the high, shame surfaces.
It settles into his bones after every time. A visceral sensation, ensuing when Andrey opens his eyes to his dark bedroom, his hand sticky, disgusting, his body covered in a thin sheen of sweat, the space beside him empty, vacant.
Sometimes it's all Andrey can think about, keeping him up at night because whenever he closes his eyes his thoughts become highway fast and deadly. Impossible to ignore in the empty darkness, when there's nothing to distract himself with and every part of his body feels twice as heavy and every thought twice as loud.
The only other sound is the breeze through his open window, blowing in from the shadowed corner of the room. Cold air drifts over Andrey's arms and face, and his cross necklace becomes frigid from it, so much so it feels as if it could burn when it swings to land on his chest as he rolls onto his back.
God , he thinks, wishes, prays. Wishes he could sleep and wake up different.
He covers his face with his hands, breath shuddery as he exhales. He's been praying and wishing like this for years as if he could will the thoughts to go away, hone his mind so someday he's normal.
It never works.
"I think we should break up," Anastasija says.
Her suitcase is at her feet, packed and ready to go. She's wearing the coat that Andrey bought her when they were in St Petersburg. It cuts off at her knees, a few inches above where her boots begin. Andrey only notices because he can't meet her eyes initially.
He breathes in once then out again.
It should hurt more than it does.
He looks up.
"Okay."
"Okay?" she asks. A wave of incredulity passes over her features, as if she had said turn left and he went right, like she wanted him to ask why.
But he already knows why without so much as an ounce of doubt, and the bitter taste of guilt, remorse, and shame, rises in his throat. The emptiness of their relationship isn't lost on him, and possibly, he knows even better than she does, better than she ever will.
"Yeah," he mumbles.
For a second, she looks as if she wants to say something more, but she doesn't. Instead, she lifts her suitcase full of all of her possessions that are kept at Andrey's apartment, everything that merged their lives together, and she pushes it towards the door.
She bites down on her bottom lip, drawing colour to the spot, hesitating with one hand on the doorknob. Her eyes are glassy with unshed tears.
Andrey should feel something more. He should have loved her. That's how it's supposed to go. They're supposed to meet, go out, fall in love, get married, have children, then teach those children to play tennis, and he should feel pain at the loss of that, not just apathy. Apathy and guilt, but not guilt because she's leaving, guilt because he led her on this long.
The words are stuck in his throat. Caught. He opens his mouth but they don't come out.
"I'm sorry," he mouths, but she's already turned around. She's already leaving. She doesn't hear it.
The night in St Petersburg is frigid and all dark, hardly a fraction of the moon's opalescence able to sneak through the clouds. The only source of light is the distant streetlights floors below, peeking through the snow distorted glass of his hotel window. The curtains shiver slightly, maybe from a draft or maybe just from the inadequate heat escaping the radiator below them with its constant dull hum.
He sits up in bed, brushing his sleep-mussed hair back from his eyes.
When he first started travelling as a kid, occasionally he would wake up and it would take a moment for him to orient himself in a strange bed in an even more unfamiliar room, to recognize that he wasn't in fact at home but in some other country entirely. He would roll over and in bleary morning vision his surroundings would reveal themselves, France, Australia, America. It doesn't happen anymore. He spends more time away than he does in his rented apartment in Moscow, and in all his luggage, tennis equipment, and hotel rooms, no place to call home exists.
It doesn't bother him most of the time, the transient lifestyle that leads to a lack of any real home. He can cover up that gaping emptiness with extra practices or music that rings so deafeningly through his headphones that it forces every other thought out of his head. But sometimes, sometimes it becomes impossible to ignore.
Everything about him is so irreparably entwined with tennis. Sometimes he wishes he could think of the seasons as spring, summer, autumn, and winter, instead of clay, grass, and hard. If only his months were just January, June, July, and September, without the involuntarily associated locations, Melbourne, Paris, London, New York. If only he could sever himself as a person from this painful, terrible, wonderful sport.
If only he wasn’t so unimaginably alone.
He isn't good enough.
His fingers are stained with a single drop of smeared blood, the tiniest bit of dark crimson, hardly noticeable but still there. He isn't sure how it happened. Sometime between losing the match, punching his racquet in the locker room, and arriving back at his room he scraped his right knuckle. But a bit of blood is nothing next to missing the sole opportunity in four years to be an Olympic singles medalist. Sure, there are doubles and mixed doubles, but that feels like a consolation prize, like coming runner up.
He buries his face in his hands, rubbing at tired eyes as he sinks into the bed as much as its thin mattress allows.
It's at that moment the door creaks open. Technically it's Karen's room too, they agreed to share, but Karen should still be out at his match. Unless he managed to lose as badly as Andrey did. Or worse, was forced to retire due to heat or injury.
Andrey holds his breath. He doesn't want to deal with Karen now. Not when he himself hasn't yet had the chance to recover, not when the pain of this loss hasn't yet washed away into the background and subsided into something manageable. He can't tell Karen all the reasons it's okay to have missed this opportunity when he hasn't convinced himself. He’s incapable of providing comfort when he's still spiraling.
"Andryusha? Are you in here?"
It isn't Karen at all, instead, standing in the doorway is Daniil.
"Sorry, Karen stole my charger after practice yesterday. He said he couldn't find his because he thinks he left it at breakfast," Daniil is already coming in, rummaging around in the pile of belongings at the end of Karen's mattress.
His t-shirt is loose, a size too big, hanging from the angles of his shoulders. The neckline is slouchy like it got slightly messed up in the wash, or like it's been tugged and pulled at in the heat, and disappearing into it is the redness tinting the back of his neck, a faint sunburn becoming visible as Daniil bends over to uncover the charger from beneath Karen's sleep shirt.
A similar redness tints Daniil's cheeks, some combination of a burn and overheating that will fade before tomorrow that Andrey only notices when Daniil turns back to him.
Quickly Daniil's face morphs into concern when he glances down at Andrey's hand.
"Andryusha," he says. "You're bleeding."
Another small drop has welled up and Andrey quickly wipes it away against the dark fabric of his shorts. “It’s nothing,” he says. “Just a scrape.”
Daniil refuses to accept that answer though, taking Andrey’s hand in his own even as Andrey lets out an involuntary noise of protest. He thumbs over the tiny wound despite the fact it’s no longer bleeding, and it’s oddly soothing.
His fingers are warm, actually, his whole body is. He’s still overheated from earlier when he had threatened to die on the court, and he looks as worn-out as Andrey feels. He should probably be resting, recovering, and maybe that was his intention, but instead, he's here gently examining the tiny self-inflicted injury on Andrey's knuckle, taking care of Andrey rather than himself. Really, they both need to rest, and Karen would tell them both that, especially Andrey whose irregular sleeping patterns he's complained about since they've arrived. Actually, Karen might tell him just to go on vacation once the Olympics are over; he's always saying that, insisting Andrey takes a break, texting to make sure Andrey is taking care of himself, 'Andryusha, take a vacation for once'.
A humid breeze blows softly through the tiny gap the balcony door is open, sticky, and Andrey wonders, off-hand, what it might have been like to vacation together.
Against Andrey's shoulders, the sun would burn volcanic, and his feet would be trapped in the grainy damp of sand that is covered and uncovered with each sway of the tide.
Daniil would kiss him on the forehead, then run a finger over the sensitive, pink flushed skin of Andrey's nose. "You need more sunscreen," he would say, softly.
Daniil's own tan would be uneventful, conventionally attractive in the way tennis tans aren't. Golden-bronze everywhere, only a hint of paleness where his swim shorts would start. There wouldn't be lines caused by t-shirt sleeves and socks, nor the paler inflection where wristbands sit.
"What are you looking at?" Daniil would say, a teasing lilt in his voice. And Andrey would look up from Daniil's body, away from the sun-kissed curve of his waist and the length of his legs, to find Daniil looking at him too. Daniil's lips would curve in that familiar lopsided smile.
"Maybe at you," Andrey would say back, slightly bashful, embarrassed.
The tide would rise over his feet, a soft lulling sound, the only sound with no one except him and Daniil to hear it, and it would make their insignificance startlingly loud. Then Daniil would take Andrey's hand in his and they would fit together so perfectly, seamlessly, without callouses or wedding rings, and maybe insignificance would be worth it.
For a moment, a split second that drags into something that feels like whole minutes, whole hours, infinite, everything is silent. The slightest gap between the end of the point and when the realization dawns on the crowd.
It almost doesn't feel real and he can hardly breathe.
It's like his emotions have been thrown in a blender, so twisted together he can hardly pinpoint any single one. Somewhere in there is an ache of jealousy because he wanted to be first but wasn't quite good enough. He lost a match he should have won – would have won if he wasn't such a disappointment, in the third round to Frances Tiafoe, and maybe if he was just a bit better he would be where Daniil is now.
They all want to be where Daniil is now. Everyone who ever played tennis as a child dreams of winning the US Open, and those in the top ten or top twenty dreamed of it more than most. They would all be envious that Daniil is one of the first outside of the generation of Djokovic, Nadal, and Federer to have achieved that.
The difference is that mixed in with Andrey's envy is the desire to be there, to be in the audience, to be in Daniil's box, and be the first person Daniil goes to in the moments following this win. He can't be though, and somehow that's what hurts most of all.
It's so easy to get caught up in the moment at team competitions, swept up in the atmosphere of togetherness, forgetting about boundaries that should exist. Andrey can't resist the urge for physical contact, to reach out, to touch. Physicality is his love language and he’s starved.
It's why he finds himself leaning into Daniil, it's involuntary, automatic, and in conversation he's pulled in like the tide coming into shore. He presses their foreheads together when he's foolish with pre-match adrenaline, careless among the energy of everyone around them, and his heart sinks when Daniil steps back, jokingly telling Andrey to go wait for his match to start. The partial rejection doesn't stop him from leaning into Daniil's presence in the future, shoulders brushing unnecessarily when they talk, pinching his nipples, pulling him in close for a hug at the end of a match.
It's the same with Karen. Andrey is struck by an urge he hardly resists, to twine their hands together, to refuse to let go when he wraps an arm around Karen's back.
The whole week he’s been stupidly incapable of understanding personal space, and now, following their Davis Cup victory, with his lips still tasting of champagne, he might be worse than ever.
He tries to focus on his menu to distract himself, but the noise from their team’s table is enough to fill the whole restaurant. Karen is across from him and Daniil beside him, everyone encompassed by the multiple champagne-drunk conversations occurring around and among them.
"How about you? Any idea what you want to get, Daniil?" Evgeny asks, leaning to look at Daniil with Andrey sitting between the two of them.
"No idea, I don't have a menu," Daniil laughs. "Andryusha I'm using yours."
Andrey looks up as he speaks, turning attention away from the menu in his hands to Daniil shifting closer to look at it. Golden light reflects against the silver dials of that Bovet watch on his wrist as he reaches out to hold the corner of the menu just above Andrey's hand, his fingers curling around the paper so close to Andrey's own that they brush for a second. Then Daniil leans in, over Andrey's shoulder, his other hand coming to rest on the back of Andrey's chair and his thigh pressing lengthwise against Andrey's own. A firm, hot pressure that makes Andrey's throat feel tight.
"Hmmm," Daniil's voice is gravel, his head turned to speak to Evgeny.
Fuck, he shouldn’t be staring at Daniil but he can hardly think. Abruptly he redirects his vision and across the table he meets Karen's eyes, pupils dilated in the dim of the restaurant, glancing through dark lashes in a way that's almost intimate. Below Karen's foot playful and friendly, nothing more, nudges his own, and he can't help wanting it to be more than just friendly contact with the way Daniil is pressed against him and his heart is beating fast in his chest.
Without thinking his gaze flickers back to Daniil. Slender fingers with rough callouses that scrape over the back of Andrey's palm as he lets go of the menu and pulls back. Just a light touch, accidental, inconsequential, but to Andrey it feels electric. His mouth shapes around words as he orders something but Andrey, too focused on the movement, Daniil's warmth, their proximity, and dozens of other things, has the words flit over his head without absorbing any of them.
"Andrey?" Evgeny's voice snaps him back into the present.
"Uhhh?" he blinks.
"What are you getting?"
"Oh uh, I'll just have whatever Danya's having," he says. "I, I'm just going to go for the bathroom first."
He’s halfway across the room when he can hear Daniil’s exasperated but amused cry of “Karen don’t kick me” followed by Karen’s bellowing laughter over the din of conversation, and his heart aches.
The lights are bright and harsh in front of the mirror, emphasizing shadows and sharpness, and casting Andrey's face in stark relief. They buzz, their sound layered on top of the dull background noise from the dining room, then blended further into the whir of Andrey's thoughts. He looks exhausted under their luminosity, his skin pallid, dark circles purple beneath his eyes.
Splashing cold water on his face he tries to disentangle himself from his thoughts. His stomach is heavy with guilt but he tries to smile. He shouldn't feel this way. He can't feel this way.
At the end of the day, Karen and Daniil will go back home to their wives, to their families. They’ll relax, enjoy the brief off-season, and they won’t think about Andrey, at least not in the way Andrey thinks about them. Occasionally they’ll text him, Karen wondering if he’s coming to train in Barcelona, and Daniil asking him to play Fifa or showing off how he's in the top 20 fantasy football players in all of Monaco, but it won’t be the same. Andrey won’t mean the same thing to them that they do to Andrey, at least not anymore and not ever again.
He has to accept that.
Of all the ways it could have happened, Andrey thinks as he approaches the net, approaches Daniil, this is by far the cruelest.
Their handshake is a blur, like neither of them can wait to escape from it at the same time both of them want it to last an eternity. In the brief wave of warmth, Daniil's palm is broad and hot through the dampness of Andrey's shirt, and Daniil says something, good match maybe, or congratulations, but it's lost in the roar of the crowd that envelops them. He pats Daniil on the back in response, a half hug, and he mouths an apology nearly against the fabric of Daniil's own t-shirt. He can see the pain in Daniil's eyes when they pull apart, and his stomach twists awfully with the urge to reach out.
Karen is in the audience too, he reached the quarter-finals unexpectedly only to lose to Daniil in three sets. Somehow, despite not knowing where his seat was, Andrey’s eyes fall on him automatically. Karen gives him a thumbs up and Andrey looks away near immediately.
The exultant rush of elation that he should be experiencing is missing. He always thought he would be overjoyed at winning a slam, but instead, there's simply emptiness and a sense of guilt. Winning never brings happiness, only relief. No matter how high he reaches, or how lofty the goal he achieves is.
His knees are scraped from how he collapsed to the ground, skin pink and white and aching. He hadn't felt the pain when he landed, after that last ball went long he hadn't heard or felt anything except the all-encompassing feeling of relief, thank God, thank God, thank God, over and over again inside his head.
The trophy is hot, the polar opposite of the cold metal feeling he had always expected. It burns against his palms, like when he was little and he would tip himself down the metal slide at the park even as it scalded any bare skin that touched it. He lifts it above his head, disregarding the burning in his hands and the protest of sore muscles in his arms.
Cameras flash and he smiles, but he doesn't feel happy, only disillusioned, like he's reached for something gold only to find it was plastic.
It wasn't worth it, in the end.