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The evening in Madrid had the color of old honey.
It clung to the glass walls of the stadium, to the white lines still sharp on the clay, to the faces of people drifting out of the stands with their phones in hand and sunburn on their cheeks. The air was cooling, but the court still held the heat of the day, a slow exhale rising from the red surface where Jannik Sinner had just spent two hours chasing a ball as if it owed him an answer.
His shirt was damp against his back. Clay dust marked the sides of his shoes, his socks, the lower edge of his shorts. A few strands of red hair stuck to his forehead despite the cap he had worn for most of the match. He had won, but not easily. Madrid never gave anything easily. The altitude made the ball jump. The crowd made the silence feel crowded. Every point had come with a strange urgency, as though the match were being played not only between two players, but between Jannik and the version of himself he was still trying to become.
He waved to the crowd, signed three caps, two giant tennis balls, and a phone case that someone thrust toward him with trembling hands. He smiled, the polite smile first, then the real one when a child shouted his name in Italian and held up a hand-drawn carrot.
By the time he reached the interview desk, the adrenaline had begun to thin. That was always the oddest part. One moment, his body was an instrument tuned to violence and precision, every muscle firing, every breath measured, and the next, he was standing under lights with a microphone near his mouth, expected to be charming, calm, human.
“Jannik, congratulations,” the interviewer said.
“Thank you,” he answered, leaning slightly forward, his voice still rough from the match.
They talked about the conditions. The bounce. His backhand under pressure. The crowd. Jannik answered in the careful rhythm of someone used to being listened to in many countries at once. He was generous when he could be, vague when he needed to be, and honest in little flashes that always made people like him more than if he had tried to perform.
Then the interviewer smiled, glancing down at her card.
“You’ve been practicing your Spanish a little, no? We heard you speaking some words with the crowd.”
Jannik’s ears warmed before his face did. He laughed softly and looked down.
“A little bit. Not too much. I try. It’s not easy.”
“It sounded good.”
“No, no.” He shook his head quickly. “Not good. But I try.”
The crowd around the small interview area laughed affectionately. He could feel them leaning closer, not physically, but with attention. There was something dangerous about being liked. It made every small mistake feel precious to other people.
“So are you using any apps to learn Spanish?” the interviewer asked. “Anything helping you?”
Jannik relaxed because this was simple. “Yeah. Sometimes Duolingo,” he said, then paused, searching his memory. He snapped his fingers once, faintly embarrassed. “And the other one...Babbel.”
The interviewer blinked.
“Bumble?”
There was a tiny silence.
Then someone behind the camera laughed.
Jannik’s face changed all at once. His eyes widened; his mouth opened, then closed; color rose in his neck so quickly it looked almost painful. “No, no, no,” he said, lifting both hands as though stopping a ball that had come too fast. “Babbel. Babbel. With a B, yes, but Babbel. For languages.”
Now the laughter spread. The interviewer covered her mouth. “I heard Bumble.”
“No.” Jannik laughed too, but his blush deepened, making him look suddenly much younger than twenty-four, younger even than the boy who had once arrived on tour with quiet hunger and enormous shoes. “Not Bumble. I know what Bumble is.”
“You know what Bumble is?”
He looked away, smiling helplessly. “I mean...yes. But no. I don’t use it.”
The interviewer grinned. “You don’t need it?”
It was meant to be light. It was meant to vanish into the noise of the tournament, into a clip people would share for two days before moving on. But something flickered across Jannik’s face, something unguarded and bright.
He looked back at her, his mouth curving.
“No,” he said. “I don’t need a dating app.”
The crowd reacted as though he had hit a winner down the line. There was laughter, a few cheers, a rising murmur of amusement. Jannik shook his head, still red, still smiling, and rubbed the back of his neck.
“Babbel,” he repeated, pointing at the microphone as though making an official correction. “Please. This is important.”
“Very important,” the interviewer agreed, laughing.
He escaped a minute later.
But nothing on the internet ever truly escaped.
By the time Jannik reached the player area, the clip had already begun to move. By the time he had showered, changed, spoken with his team, eaten half a plate of pasta without tasting it, and checked his phone, it had become a small storm.
Not a bad storm. A warm one. A silly one.
His notifications were full of bees, owls, Spanish flags, and people writing Babbel, not Bumble in all capital letters. He rolled his eyes, smiling despite himself. Then one message stopped him.
Carlos.
For a moment, Jannik simply looked at the name.
It was not unusual for Carlos Alcaraz to text him. Their lives orbited the same strange sun. They saw each other in hallways, locker rooms, press conferences, practice courts, trophy ceremonies. They had known each other first through forehands and footwork, through points that left them both bent over and laughing in disbelief. Then, slowly, in pieces too small to notice until they became something, they had learned each other outside the lines.
Carlos sent voice notes when he was excited. Carlos sent too many emojis when he was trying to hide that he cared. Carlos replied late and apologized twice. Carlos carried brightness like a physical thing, but there were shadows under it too, shadows Jannik recognized because champions were made partly of loneliness.
Jannik opened the message.
Carlos:
I saw your interview 😂
Jannik sat on a bench in the quiet corridor, his bag by his feet, his hair still damp from the shower. Around him, the tournament moved in muffled layers: shoes squeaking somewhere, a physio laughing, a door closing, someone calling for accreditation. But his attention narrowed to the small blue-white glow in his hand.
He typed.
Jannik:
Of course you did.
The reply came quickly, then stopped, then appeared again.
Carlos:
I mean, it appeared everywhere. I wasn’t searching.
Jannik smiled.
Jannik:
You were definitely searching.
The typing dots appeared. Disappeared. Appeared.
Carlos was shy in text when it mattered. In person, he could be all sunlight, open grin, hand on your shoulder, teasing everyone in sight. But when the conversation tilted toward something more delicate, he became careful. Not cold. Never cold. Just cautious, as if the words were glass and he had large hands.
Carlos:
Maybe a little.
Jannik leaned back against the wall.
Jannik:
And?
Carlos:
And what?
Jannik:
Did you learn something?
A pause.
Carlos:
That you use Babbel.
Jannik:
Very good. You should also use it. Your Italian needs work.
Carlos:
My Italian is perfect.
Jannik:
Say something.
Another pause. Longer.
Carlos:
Ti...voglio...una pizza?
Jannik laughed out loud, startling a passing tournament volunteer, who glanced at him and then quickly away.
Jannik:
You want me a pizza?
Carlos:
I said it was perfect, not logical.
Jannik’s thumb hovered over the keyboard. He could have kept it safe. They often kept it safe, even when the air between them suggested they both knew another door existed. Their lives were too visible, too disciplined. Every feeling had consequences. Every look could be replayed. Every touch could be slowed down by strangers.
But Jannik was still warm from the court, still flushed from the interview, still carrying that reckless little sentence in his mouth: I don’t need a dating app. So he typed before he could decide not to.
Jannik:
If you wanted to ask me to hang out, Spanish would be more useful tonight.
For nearly a full minute, Carlos did not reply.
Jannik stared at the screen. His heart, which had behaved beautifully during break points, began to behave badly now. It knocked once, hard, then again. He told himself not to be ridiculous. It was flirting. Maybe too much, maybe not enough. Carlos could laugh it off. Carlos could ignore it. Carlos could send a joke and let the conversation float back to safety.
The typing dots appeared. Stopped. Appeared again.
Carlos:
I’m not in Madrid.
There it was. Not a rejection, exactly. A fact. A wall made of geography. Jannik let his head rest against the corridor wall and looked up at the ceiling.
Jannik:
I know.
He waited.
Carlos:
I watched from home.
Something in Jannik softened.
He imagined Carlos on a sofa somewhere in Murcia, or maybe at his family home, wrist resting carefully, eyes fixed on the television while Madrid unfolded without him. Carlos belonged to that tournament in a way few players belonged anywhere. He did not merely play in Spain; he changed the weather of the place. Crowds rose for him as if pulled by gravity. Children said his name like a promise. Without him, the tournament still had stars, still had noise, still had beauty, but it lacked a particular kind of flame.
Jannik had noticed. Everyone had noticed.
Jannik:
How is your wrist?
The reply did not come immediately. That told Jannik more than the answer would.
Carlos:
Better.
Jannik exhaled.
Jannik:
Carlos.
Carlos:
It is better. Really.
Jannik:
That is not an answer.
Carlos:
You sound like my physio.
Jannik:
Your physio is probably right more than you.
Carlos:
He would like you.
Jannik:
Everyone likes me.
Carlos:
You’re very humble tonight.
Jannik:
I won and I survived a Bumble scandal. Let me have this.
Carlos sent laughing emojis, then a voice note. Jannik froze for half a second. He looked around the corridor, then took his earbuds from his bag and put one in. Carlos’s voice filled his ear, lower than it sounded in interviews, softer because it was private.
“First, it is not a scandal,” Carlos said, laughing under his breath. “Second, you were very red. Like...tomato red. Like clay, you know, in the face. And third...” He stopped. Jannik could hear something in the background. A chair. Maybe a door. The small domestic sounds of a life not currently inside a stadium. “Third,” Carlos continued, quieter, “you played well today. Really good. The second set was...tricky. But you stayed there. I liked the way you changed direction with the backhand. It was brave.”
Jannik listened to the message twice.
Praise from other players was usually technical, guarded, wrapped in rivalry. Praise from Carlos was different. It came with attention. Carlos noticed things the way a person notices the weather before rain. Not only what happened, but what it cost.
Jannik typed, deleted, typed again.
Jannik:
You watched carefully.
Carlos:
Of course.
Jannik:
Because of my backhand?
Carlos:
Yes.
A beat.
Carlos:
And because you were playing.
Jannik’s chest tightened in a way he did not trust.
He was used to pressure. Pressure had numbers, names, rankings, scorelines. Pressure could be studied. Pressure could be trained. But this was not pressure. This was something quieter and more dangerous, something that did not ask to be defeated.
He wanted to answer lightly. He wanted to keep the balance.
Jannik:
Careful. That sounds almost romantic.
Carlos did not reply for a while. Jannik closed his eyes.
He could see Carlos too clearly: the shy dip of his head, the smile he tried to hide by pressing his lips together, the way his hand would go to his hair when embarrassed. Carlos, who attacked second serves like he had never heard of fear. Carlos, who could run down impossible balls and turn them into joy. Carlos, who in conversation sometimes approached feeling as if it were a net he was not sure he could clear.
Finally:
Carlos:
Maybe I am practicing.
Jannik’s fingers went still.
Outside, somewhere beyond concrete and glass, Madrid was becoming evening. The city would be full of people eating late, speaking loudly, walking under balconies, kissing at traffic lights, living with the carelessness that professional athletes were rarely allowed. Jannik had spent so much of his life learning discipline that spontaneity sometimes felt like a foreign language. Maybe he needed an app for that too.
Jannik:
Practicing what?
This time, the response came faster.
Carlos:
Spanish.
Jannik barked a laugh.
Jannik:
Coward.
Carlos:
I am injured. Be nice.
Jannik:
Your wrist is injured, not your courage.
Carlos:
My courage is also recovering.
There was humor in it, but also truth. Jannik felt it settle between them.
He looked down at his hands. They were clean now, but he could still feel the racket there, the vibration of impact in his palm, the ghost of clay under his nails. His body was exhausted. His mind should have been too. Instead, he felt awake in a new and terrible way.
He typed slowly.
Jannik:
Take your time.
Then, because honesty frightened him and flirting was easier:
Jannik:
But not too much. I am very popular now. Many language apps want me.
Carlos replied with a string of laughing emojis.
Carlos:
No Bumble?
Jannik:
No Bumble.
Carlos:
Because you don’t need a dating app?
Jannik:
Exactly.
Carlos:
Why not?
There it was again: the opening. Jannik stared at the question until the letters seemed to brighten. He could make a joke. He could say that because he was too busy, because his coach would kill him, because the tour schedule was already a toxic relationship. All true enough. All useless.
Instead, he wrote:
Jannik:
Maybe because I already know who I want to talk to.
The message was sent.
For a few seconds afterward, Jannik wished phones had a way to pull words back from the air. Do not delete them. Truly retrieve them. Undo the pulse that sent them. Return them to the private place inside the chest where dangerous things could remain unnamed.
Carlos did not respond. Thirty seconds. One minute. Two.
Jannik locked his phone, then unlocked it immediately. He stood, then sat again. He drank water, though he was not thirsty. He told himself Carlos might have been called by someone. Carlos might be resting his wrist. Carlos might be panicking. Carlos might be smiling.
The fourth possibility hurt the most.
Finally, his phone lit up. Not a text. A call. Jannik stared at Carlos’s name until the screen nearly dimmed. Then he answered.
“Hello?”
For a moment, there was only breathing.
Then Carlos said, “You cannot say things like that in a message.”
His voice was quiet. Not angry. Not amused exactly. Shaken. Jannik’s heart moved painfully.
“No?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because...” Carlos exhaled. “Because I cannot see your face.”
Jannik closed his eyes. His courage, which on court was so reliable, became unsteady in the quiet corridor. He pressed his free hand against his knee.
“My face is normal.”
Carlos laughed softly. “Liar.”
“I’m not red now.”
“Again, liar.”
Jannik smiled. “Maybe a little.”
“I knew it.”
A silence opened. Not empty. Full.
Jannik heard Carlos move, perhaps shifting the phone to his other hand. He imagined the injured wrist, the carefulness of it, the frustration Carlos must have swallowed every day since the pain began. For players like them, the body was not merely a body. It was an instrument, weapon, home or enemy. When one part failed, the whole world narrowed.
“I miss it,” Carlos said suddenly.
Jannik did not ask what. He knew.
“Madrid?” he said.
“The court. The noise. Even the stress.” Carlos swallowed. “Watching is strange. I thought maybe I would enjoy resting, but I don’t. I watch and my hand wants the racket. My legs move, like stupid, as I cannot help from the sofa.”
Jannik listened.
“I watched your match,” Carlos continued, “and I was happy for you. I was. But also...” He stopped, searching. “Also, it hurt.”
“Because you wanted to be here.”
“Yes.”
“And because you wanted to play.”
“Yes.”
Jannik leaned forward, elbows on his knees. The corridor lights hummed faintly above him.
“Carlos,” he said gently, “you will be back.”
“I know.”
“You will.”
“I know,” Carlos repeated, but this time his voice cracked around the words, not breaking, only bending.
Jannik felt something in himself answer. He knew that bend. He had carried it after losses, after injuries, after days when his body felt less like a promise and more like a fragile arrangement of parts. Tennis made people believe champions were invulnerable because they had to look that way in public. But in private, everyone was held together by tape, routines, hope, and the hands of people who told them not to rush.
“You don’t have to be okay because people expect you to be,” Jannik said.
Carlos was silent.
Jannik almost regretted saying it. It sounded too direct, too intimate. But then Carlos breathed out, and the breath trembled.
“I hate that you know that,” Carlos said.
“Why?”
“Because then I cannot pretend.”
Jannik looked down at his shoes. Clay dust had dried in pale orange streaks around the soles.
“You can pretend,” he said. “I just won’t believe you.”
Carlos laughed once, quietly. “Annoying.”
“Yes.”
“Very annoying.”
“I know.”
Another silence. Softer now.
Then Carlos said, “I am coming to Madrid.”
Jannik sat up straighter.
“When?”
“Soon. Jaime has a match. I want to watch him.”
The name entered the conversation like a bridge back toward safer land, but Jannik saw the opportunity immediately and stepped nowhere near safety.
“So you are coming all the way to Madrid for Jaime,” he said.
“Yes.”
“Only Jaime?”
Carlos made a sound that was almost a groan. “Jannik.”
“What?”
“You know what.”
“I don’t know. I am learning Spanish, not mind-reading.”
“You are impossible tonight.”
“I won. I am allowed.”
“You keep saying this.”
“Because it is true.”
Carlos went quiet again, but Jannik could hear the smile in the silence. It had a shape, that smile. It had warmth. It traveled across the line and reached him where he sat alone in a hallway among the echoes of a tournament.
“I am coming for Jaime,” Carlos said carefully. “And...maybe I will watch some other matches.”
“Interesting.”
“Maybe yours.”
“Only maybe?”
“You have to win until then.”
Jannik grinned. “So demanding.”
“You said everyone likes you. I thought confidence was not a problem.”
“It depends on who is watching.”
The words landed. Carlos did not speak. Jannik let them remain there, bright and obvious.
Finally, Carlos said, “If I watch, you will be nervous?”
“No.”
“No?”
“I will play better.”
“Because I inspire you?”
“Because I will want to impress you.”
Carlos inhaled softly.
Jannik’s smile faded, not because he was unhappy, but because the moment had stepped beyond teasing. He could feel the seriousness beneath it now, the dark water below the glittering surface. They had flirted before in small ways, the kind easy to deny: a joke in a hallway, a lingering look after practice, a message sent too late at night. But this was different. This had weight.
“Jannik,” Carlos said, voice low.
“Yes?”
“I don’t know how to do this.”
Jannik closed his eyes.
Outside the player area, people were probably still laughing about Babbel and Bumble. Clips were probably looping. Fans were probably making edits with music and captions. The world loved to turn human beings into moments small enough to hold. But here was something that refused to be clipped. Here was a silence too tender for cameras.
“Me neither,” Jannik said.
Carlos let out a breath. “You always sound calm.”
“I’m not.”
“No?”
“No.”
“What are you?”
Jannik looked at the wall opposite him. Plain. Beige. Nothing like a tennis court. Nothing like a place where important things should happen.
“Scared,” he said.
Carlos did not answer.
Jannik continued, because now that he had begun, stopping would be worse. “Not of you. But of...everything around us. People. Cameras. What it means. What it could change. How easy it is to lose something before you even know what it is.”
Carlos’s voice came softer. “You think we would lose something?”
“I think we already have something to lose.”
The truth of it stunned him once spoken.
For months, perhaps longer, there had been something. Not a relationship. Not a confession. Not even a promise. Something more fragile: attention. Anticipation. The awareness of each other in rooms full of people. The way Carlos’s grin searched for him after a ridiculous point in practice. The way Jannik remembered small details, Carlos had only said once. The way rivalry had become recognition, and recognition had warmed, slowly, dangerously, into want.
Carlos spoke at last.
“I thought maybe it was only me.”
Jannik’s throat tightened.
“No,” he said.
The word was small. It carried everything.
Carlos laughed, but it sounded unsteady. “That is good.”
“Yes.”
“Also terrifying.”
“Yes.”
“I’m not good at being subtle,” Carlos admitted.
Jannik smiled faintly. “I noticed.”
“Hey.”
“You look at people like sunshine.”
“That is not my fault.”
“It becomes a problem when you try to hide something. You become cloudy.”
Carlos laughed again, warmer. “Cloudy?”
“Yes.”
“My English is not good enough to know if that is romantic or insulting.”
“It can be both.”
“Very Italian.”
“Not everything poetic is Italian.”
“No, but you are.”
Jannik felt his face heat again and was grateful Carlos could not see him.
“Careful,” he said. “You are getting better.”
“At flirting?”
“At Italian.”
“I said nothing in Italian.”
“You didn’t need to.”
Carlos went quiet in that shy way again, the way that made Jannik want to be gentler and worse at the same time.
After a moment, Carlos said, “When I come to Madrid, maybe we can...I don’t know. Say hello.”
“Very ambitious.”
“Shut up.”
“Maybe shake hands.”
“Jannik.”
“In public, of course. Very professional.”
Carlos was laughing now, but breathlessly. “I am trying.”
“I know.”
“I am bad at this.”
“You’re not.”
“I am. You flirt like you are returning a second serve. Fast. No warning.”
Jannik smiled. “You should be ready.”
“I’m injured.”
“Again, wrist. Not heart.”
The word slipped out. Heart. It changed the air. Carlos did not laugh this time.
Jannik rubbed his forehead with his hand. “Sorry.”
“No,” Carlos said quickly. “No, don’t be sorry.”
The corridor around Jannik had emptied. He could hear distant voices, but no one passed. For the first time all day, he felt completely still.
Carlos spoke again, more quietly. “My heart is not injured.”
Jannik’s pulse stumbled.
“No?”
“No.” A pause. “Maybe nervous.”
“That’s different.”
“Yes.”
“I can be careful with nervousness.”
Carlos’s voice softened almost beyond recognition. “Can you?”
Jannik swallowed. “I can try.”
The words were not grand. They were not the kind of people put in poems. But for them, maybe they were everything. A promise shaped like effort. A confession dressed as restraint.
Carlos made a small sound, almost a sigh. “I wish I were there.”
Jannik looked toward the end of the corridor, where a slice of Madrid evening showed through a glass door, blue now instead of gold.
“Me too,” he said.
This silence was not shy. It was aching.
Jannik imagined Carlos arriving in Madrid: the airport cap low over his eyes, the careful way he would carry his bag to avoid straining his wrist, the smile he would give fans even if he was tired. He imagined seeing him in the player lounge, their eyes meeting with too much knowledge inside them. He imagined walking past each other as usual, maybe touching shoulders, maybe saying some ordinary thing, while both of them remembered this call.
The thought was unbearable and beautiful.
“When is Jaime’s match?” Jannik asked.
“In three days, I think. They confirm tomorrow.”
“So you will be here the day after tomorrow.”
“Maybe tomorrow night.”
Jannik raised an eyebrow, though no one could see it. “Very early for Jaime.”
Carlos groaned. “Don’t.”
“I’m just saying.”
“He is my brother.”
“Of course.”
“I am supporting my family.”
“Very sweet.”
“Jannik.”
“What?”
“You are smiling. I hear it.”
“I am not.”
“Liar.”
“Yes.”
Carlos laughed, and Jannik held the sound inside himself longer than necessary.
Then Carlos said, “Maybe I also want to see you.”
There it was. Not hidden. Not safe. Not a joke. Jannik forgot to answer.
Carlos rushed on, words tumbling now. “Not only because of tennis. I mean, yes, tennis, of course, because you are playing and I want to see your match, but also because after today I wanted to text you and then you were...You were saying these things and I-” He stopped, embarrassed. “I told you I don’t know how to do this.”
Jannik’s hand tightened around the phone.
“You’re doing fine,” he said.
“No, I sound stupid.”
“You sound honest.”
“That is worse.”
“No.” Jannik smiled softly. “It’s better.”
Carlos was quiet.
Jannik lowered his voice. “I want to see you too.”
The words left him slowly, deliberately. They felt less like a risk now and more like relief. Carlos breathed in.
“For Jaime’s match?” he asked, trying for humor and failing beautifully.
“For Jaime’s match,” Jannik said. “And for your other matches.”
“I am not playing.”
“I know.”
“So what other matches?”
Jannik leaned back, eyes half closed.
“The one where you try not to look at me too much in the stands,” he said. “The one where I try not to smile every time I know you are watching. The one where we say hello like normal people and fail. The one where you pretend you came only for your brother. The one where I pretend I believe you.”
Carlos was silent for two seconds, then burst into laughter.
“You are terrible,” he said, but his voice was full of warmth.
“Yes.”
“And very confident.”
“No.” Jannik looked down, smile fading into something more tender. “Only with you, maybe.”
Carlos’s laughter softened.
“That is not fair,” he murmured.
“What?”
“You say things like that and I am not there.”
“Then come to Madrid.”
“I told you I am coming.”
“For Jaime.”
“And you.”
Jannik closed his eyes.
There were moments in life that did not announce themselves as turning points. They arrived quietly, disguised as ordinary exchanges, a message after a match, a call in a hallway, a joke about a language app. Only afterward did a person understand: before this, one life; after this, another.
Jannik wondered if this was one of those moments.
He wondered if Carlos felt it too.
“You know,” Carlos said slowly, “when the interviewer said Bumble, your face...”
Jannik groaned. “Please, no.”
“It was very cute.”
“Don’t say cute.”
“Why?”
“I am a serious athlete.”
Carlos laughed. “You were tomato red.”
“I had just played a match.”
“No. This was a different red.”
“You study my face now?”
Another pause.
Then Carlos said, quieter, “Sometimes.”
Jannik’s breath caught. The flirting had been easier when it moved quickly. Now every word seemed to arrive carrying a candle. He could see too much by it.
“Carlos,” he said, and did not know what else should follow.
“I know,” Carlos said, though Jannik had not said anything. “I know.”
Maybe that was what frightened him most: that Carlos did know. Not everything. Not yet. But enough.
Enough to understand the pause. Enough to stand in it with him.
The call continued, drifting in and out of seriousness. They talked about Jaime, about the tournament schedule and about whether Carlos should wear a disguise in the stands. Jannik suggested fake glasses. Carlos suggested that Jannik’s cap after matches was already a bad disguise. Jannik said Carlos would be recognized by his smile alone. Carlos became quiet after that, pleased and embarrassed.
At some point, Jannik’s team messaged asking where he was. He ignored it for four minutes. Then another message came. He sighed.
“I have to go.”
Carlos did not answer immediately.
“Okay,” he said at last.
The disappointment in the world was small but unmistakable. It moved through Jannik like a hand pressed briefly to his chest.
“I’ll text you,” Jannik said.
“You better.”
“So demanding again.”
“I am Spanish. We are passionate.”
“Is that your excuse?”
“Yes.”
“For everything?”
“For most things.”
Jannik smiled. “Good to know.”
Another silence. Neither of them hung up.
Finally, Carlos said, very softly, “Jannik?”
“Yes?”
“I’m glad you don’t need Bumble.”
Jannik laughed, the sound quiet and helpless.
“Me too.”
“And Babbel?”
“I might need Babbel.”
“No,” Carlos said. “You can practice with me.”
Jannik’s heart lifted.
“Spanish lessons?”
“Maybe.”
“What do I learn first?”
Carlos hummed as though considering. “Important phrases.”
“Like?”
“Like...voy a verte en Madrid.”
Jannik understood enough. He closed his eyes.
“I am going to see you in Madrid,” he translated.
Carlos’s smile was audible. “See? You are learning.”
“What else?”
Carlos hesitated.
When he spoke again, his voice had changed. It was shy, but it did not run away.
“Tengo ganas de verte.”
Jannik knew that one too. Not perfectly, maybe. But enough. I’m looking forward to seeing you. No. More than that. I want to see you. I have the desire to see you. Spanish carried longing differently. Openly. Warmly. As if wanting were not something to hide, but something to hold out in both hands.
Jannik swallowed.
“Say it again,” he said.
Carlos did.
This time, Jannik did not translate. He let the words remain Spanish, let them keep their heat.
Then he answered, quietly, “Anch’io.”
Me too. Carlos inhaled. For a moment, neither of them moved, though they were cities apart.
Then Carlos whispered, “Goodnight, Jannik.”
“It’s not night yet.”
“It feels like night.”
Jannik looked through the glass door at the deepening blue above Madrid.
“Yes,” he said. “Maybe.”
“Goodnight anyway.”
“Goodnight, Carlos.”
The call ended. Jannik sat there for another minute with the phone still in his hand.
The world returned slowly: the hum of lights, the distant voices, the ache in his legs, the drying pull of his hair, the ordinary pressure of another match waiting somewhere ahead. Nothing had visibly changed. He was still in Madrid. Carlos was still away. There were still cameras, rankings, injuries, expectations, and the endless machinery of the tour.
But inside him, something had shifted. Not exploded. Not settled. Opened.
He stood at last, lifting his bag onto his shoulder. His body protested. Tomorrow, there would be practice, treatment, scouting, recovery. Tomorrow, he would be disciplined again. He would eat the right food, stretch the right muscles, answer the right questions. He would pretend, as athletes do, that everything important could be measured in serve percentages and break points saved.
But as he walked down the corridor, his phone buzzed once more. A message from Carlos.
Carlos:
For the record, I am coming for Jaime.
Jannik stopped, smiling before he even finished reading. Another message appeared.
Carlos:
And maybe a little for you.
Jannik typed back immediately.
Jannik:
Only a little?
The reply came faster now.
Carlos:
Don’t get confident.
Jannik laughed under his breath.
He could still feel the embarrassment of the interview, the heat in his face when Bumble became Babbel and everyone laughed. He had thought that would be the story of the day: a match won, a blush caught on camera, a joke launched into the hungry mouth of the internet.
He wrote:
Jannik:
Too late.
Then, after a second:
Jannik:
I’ll save you a seat.
Carlos replied:
Carlos:
In your box?
Jannik leaned against the wall, grinning now.
Jannik:
In my attention.
The typing dots appeared, vanished, appeared again.
Carlos:
That was terrible.
Jannik:
You liked it.
A pause.
Carlos:
Yes.
The honesty of that single word stayed with Jannik all the way back to his team.
It stayed with him through dinner, through treatment, through the half-serious teasing from people who had seen the interview clip and would never let him forget it. It stayed with him when he returned to his hotel room and Madrid lay bright below his window, the streets threaded with headlights and late voices.
He stood there for a long time, looking out.
Somewhere beyond the city, Carlos was packing, or pretending not to pack too eagerly. Somewhere, Jaime was preparing for his own match, unaware or perhaps very aware that he had become the most convenient excuse in Spain. Somewhere, the internet continued laughing about a dating app Jannik did not need.
Jannik pressed his forehead lightly to the cool glass. He thought of Carlos’s voice saying, I don’t know how to do this. He thought of his own answer: Me neither.
Maybe no one knew how to do this. Not really. Not when the world was watching, not when careers demanded whole selves, not when tenderness had to learn to live between flights and tournaments and injuries and obligations. Maybe there was no app for it, no green owl, no language lesson, no neat vocabulary list.
Maybe they would have to learn by making mistakes. By blushing. By laughing. By saying the wrong word and discovering it had led to the right person. Jannik’s phone buzzed one last time.
Carlos:
Practice your Spanish before I arrive.
Jannik smiled.
Jannik:
Only if you practice your Italian.
Carlos:
Deal.
Jannik:
First lesson: Voglio vederti.
Carlos did not answer for almost a minute. When he did, the message was simple.
Carlos:
I know that one.
Jannik stared at it, warmth spreading through him with a force that left him briefly defenseless. I want to see you. Outside, Madrid glittered.
Inside, for once, Jannik did not feel like a man alone in a hotel room between matches. He felt like someone standing at the beginning of a sentence, neither of them knew how to finish yet. And somewhere, not close enough but coming closer, Carlos was learning the same language.
⊹₊˚‧︵‿₊୨ᰔ୧₊‿︵‧˚₊⊹
The next morning arrived in Madrid not as a beginning but as a continuation.
Light pushed itself through the hotel curtains in long pale strips, touching the edge of the bed, the floor, the abandoned hoodie slung over a chair. The city beyond the glass was already awake in layers: traffic murmuring below, distant horns, the muted rhythm of people moving toward work, cafés opening, delivery trucks exhaling at corners. Madrid did not care that Jannik Sinner had barely slept. Madrid had never cared about champions needing rest.
His phone was under the pillow. That was the first problem. The second problem was that he remembered why.
Before he opened his eyes properly, before he moved even one sore muscle, his hand found the phone by instinct. His fingers closed around it with the kind of caution usually reserved for fragile things. He turned onto his back and stared at the ceiling for one second, two, three, as the previous night returned in flashes.
Carlos laughed softly through the phone.
Carlos said, I don’t know how to do this.
Carlos saying, Tengo ganas de verte.
Carlos writing, And maybe a little for you.
Jannik pressed the heel of his hand against his mouth, not quite smiling, not quite hiding from himself. It was ridiculous how a few words could remain inside the body. He had played matches in front of thousands, had held trophies, had taken airplanes across continents, had answered questions in three languages while exhausted and hungry and disappointed. Yet one quiet sentence from Carlos had managed to follow him into sleep and wait beside him until morning.
The phone buzzed in his hand. Jannik froze. Then he looked.
Carlos:
Buenos días.
A second message followed.
Carlos:
Did you practice?
Jannik smiled despite the ache in his shoulders. He typed with one thumb.
Jannik:
I just woke up.
Carlos:
Lazy.
Jannik:
I played a match yesterday.
Carlos:
I watched. You were okay.
Jannik let out a soft laugh. His body felt heavy, as though sleep had not repaired him so much as rearranged the pain into new places. His legs were stiff from the clay, his lower back tight, his right shoulder carrying the dull memory of serve after serve. He had physical therapy for forty minutes, then stretching, then gym work, then physio treatment. Everything scheduled. Everything observed. Nothing truly private except the phone in his hand and even that, apparently, was becoming dangerous.
Jannik:
Only okay?
Carlos:
Maybe good.
Jannik:
Maybe?
The typing dots appeared. Stopped. Appeared again.
Carlos:
Very good.
Jannik’s smile softened. Then another message arrived.
Carlos:
Especially from behind when you were picking up balls.
For a moment, Jannik did not understand. Then he did. Heat moved up his neck with such speed that he sat up in bed.
“Carlos,” he said aloud to the empty room.
His phone buzzed again.
Carlos:
Sorry.
Then:
Carlos:
Not sorry.
Jannik stared at the screen, half scandalized, half delighted, fully awake now. Carlos Alcaraz, who could be shy enough to trip over one honest sentence, had apparently discovered courage overnight and chosen violence before breakfast. Jannik typed, deleted, typed again.
Jannik:
You are injured and still causing problems.
Carlos:
My wrist is injured. My eyes are fine.
Jannik dropped the phone onto the bed and covered his face with both hands.
He stayed like that for several seconds, breathing through his fingers, feeling happiness and embarrassment collide inside him so intensely it was almost uncomfortable. There was a particular absurdity to being wanted by someone who had seen him at his most unglamorous: sweating through five sets, missing easy volleys, yelling at his own box, eating bananas with the desperation of a man surviving in the wild. Carlos had seen the machine of himself, the athlete version, the public version. And somehow, beneath all that, he had found something human enough to tease.
Another buzz. Jannik peeked through his fingers.
Carlos:
You are red now, no?
Jannik muttered, “Shut up,” but he was smiling.
Jannik:
No.
Carlos:
Liar.
Jannik:
You are getting too confident.
Carlos:
You started it yesterday.
That was true. Unfortunately.
He had started it, maybe because I already know who I want to talk to. He had started it because winning made him reckless, because Carlos made him brave, because somewhere inside the absurd little Bumble mistake there had been an opening, and Jannik, tired of walking around it, had finally stepped through.
Now, in the clean white quiet of his hotel room, the consequences felt less like danger and more like light. Still, he had therapy. Still, Tennis TV would be there. Still, half the ATP seemed to live in each other’s pockets during tournaments, always close enough to overhear, observe, misinterpret, and ruin lives before lunch.
He wrote:
Jannik:
I have gym now.
Carlos:
Good.
Jannik:
Why good?
The answer came quickly.
Carlos:
More content for me.
Jannik nearly choked on nothing.
Jannik:
You are banned from watching training videos.
Carlos:
Impossible. Tennis TV posts everything.
Jannik:
Then close your eyes.
Carlos:
No.
Jannik stared at that single word for a long time. It was shameless. It was simple. It was so unlike the careful Carlos of last night that affection opened in Jannik’s chest like a bruise being pressed.
He typed:
Jannik:
I am going to ignore you now.
Carlos:
You won’t.
Jannik:
I will.
Carlos:
Okay. Then I will compliment your ass later.
Jannik made a strangled sound and threw the phone onto the pillow as if it had burned him. This was going to kill him. Not tennis. Not pressure. Not the altitude in Madrid. Carlos Alcaraz was going to kill him with a phone and terrible timing.
By the time Jannik arrived at the tournament gym, he had restored his face to something approaching normal. Or at least he hoped he had. He wore black shorts, a white training shirt, and the expression of a man deeply committed to not thinking about his own body from behind.
The gym was bright and too public.
That was the first thing he noticed, though he had been in it many times before. The ATP gym at a major tournament always had the strange atmosphere of a workplace, a hospital, and a zoo enclosure combined. Players moved through routines with resistance bands, medicine balls, foam rollers, and quiet suffering. Coaches stood with arms crossed. Physios crouched beside treatment tables. Camera crews hovered where they were allowed, lenses pointed toward carefully approved corners, collecting footage for Tennis TV, tournament channels, social media recaps, behind-the-scenes edits, and all the endless machinery that fed fans the illusion of access.
It was normal. That was the problem.
Jannik had always accepted it as part of the job. Cameras during practice. Cameras after matches. Cameras in hallways, if you were unlucky. Cameras capturing stretching, laughing, taping, eating, walking with headphones on. Nothing dramatic. Nothing invasive enough to complain about. Just constant enough to remind you that your life belonged partly to people you would never meet.
Usually, he forgot them. Today, he felt every lens like a fingertip on the back of his neck.
“Morning,” Simone Vagnozzi called from beside the mats.
Jannik lifted a hand. “Morning.”
Darren Cahill was already there, talking to the physio with a coffee in hand and the relaxed posture of a man who had seen every variety of player panic and remained unimpressed by all of them. He glanced at Jannik once, quick and sharp.
“You look tired.”
“I’m fine.”
“That wasn’t the question.”
Jannik set his bag down. “I slept.”
“How much?”
“Enough.”
Darren looked at Simone. Simone looked at Darren.
Jannik sighed. “You two are very annoying before breakfast.”
“It’s after breakfast,” Simone said.
“For you.”
The physio pointed toward the mat. “Start easy. Back and hips first.”
Jannik obeyed because his body already belonged to the routine. He lay down on the mat, feeling the faint rubber smell beneath him, and began with breathing work. Knees bent, feet grounded, one hand on his stomach. Inhale. Expand. Exhale. Release. His lower back protested. His hamstrings felt like cables pulled too tight.
A camera moved somewhere to his left. He ignored it. Mostly.
Simone knelt nearby, watching his hip mobility with the serious expression of a man inspecting architecture. “Slow,” he said. “Don’t rush.”
“I’m not rushing.”
“You always rush when you pretend you are relaxed.”
Jannik turned his head. “That sentence means nothing.”
“It means I know you.”
Jannik closed his eyes. That was becoming a theme. People know him.
Carlos knew when he was red. Simone knew when he was tense. Darren knew from one glance whether sleep had been real or decorative. The older Jannik got, the more success he had, the less privacy he seemed to have inside himself. His team could read his body like match statistics. His rivals could read his patterns. Fans could read his expressions and turn them into slowed-down clips with music.
And Carlos... Carlos had somehow learned where the soft parts were. His phone buzzed. Jannik’s eyes opened. It was beside his water bottle, screen down.
Do not look, he told himself.
He rolled onto his side for the next stretch. The phone buzzed again. Simone’s eyes flicked toward it. Jannik pretended not to notice.
“Popular today?” Simone asked.
“No.”
The phone buzzed a third time.
Darren, without looking up from his coffee, said, “That phone is working harder than you are.”
Jannik sat up and reached for it too quickly. That was his mistake. Athletes lived by timing. Too early, and you gave yourself away. He grabbed the phone, turned the screen toward himself, and saw three messages from Carlos.
Carlos:
Are there cameras?
Carlos:
Good.
Carlos:
Then make sure they get your best angle. I am talking about your ass.
Jannik’s entire soul left his body. He locked the screen instantly. But not instantly enough.
Simone was close. Too close.
Jannik saw the moment happen. It unfolded with the terrible clarity of a ball clipping the net and hanging in the air before deciding your fate. Simone’s eyes dropped to the screen. His eyebrows lifted. His mouth opened slightly. Then he looked at Jannik. Jannik looked back. Neither of them spoke.
In the background, someone dropped a medicine ball. The sound boomed across the gym like judgment.
Simone’s face changed slowly. Seriousness gave way to confusion, then comprehension, then an expression of such pure delight that Jannik wanted the clay court to open beneath him and swallow him whole.
“Ah,” Simone said.
Jannik stood too fast. “No.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You said ‘ah.’”
“Yes.”
“That is something.”
Simone’s smile widened. “It is a small sound.”
“It is a dangerous sound.”
Darren looked up now. “What’s happened?”
“Nothing,” Jannik said immediately.
Simone turned. Jannik’s blood ran cold.
“Simone,” he warned.
Simone’s eyes gleamed.
Darren set down his coffee. “Now I definitely want to know.”
Jannik pointed at Simone. “Don’t.”
Simone put one hand over his heart, solemn and false. “I am your coach. I respect privacy.”
“Good.”
“I respect it deeply.”
“Thank you.”
Simone turned to Darren. “Carlos is texting him about his ass.”
Jannik died.
There was no dramatic collapse. No visible wound. He remained standing in the gym under fluorescent lights, surrounded by resistance bands and cameras and elite athletes doing core activation. But spiritually, emotionally, historically, he was gone.
Darren blinked once. Then his face did something Jannik had rarely seen: it cracked. Not fully. Darren Cahill was too controlled for that. But the corners of his mouth twitched, his eyes warmed, and then he looked down at the floor as if needing a moment to compose himself. Jannik covered his face with both hands.
“I hate everyone,” he said into his palms.
Simone was laughing now, not loudly, but with the silent, shaking kind that made it worse. Darren cleared his throat.
“Well,” Darren said, “at least someone’s reviewing the footage.”
Jannik dropped his hands. “Please don’t.”
“No, no,” Simone said, wiping one eye. “This is good. This is important data.”
“It is not data.”
“Player movement analysis,” Darren said.
“Darren.”
“Glute engagement,” Simone added.
Jannik turned away and walked three steps toward the wall, then turned back because there was nowhere to go. A camera crew stood fifteen meters away, filming another player’s band routine. Jack Draper was across the room at a cable machine, his expression carefully neutral in a way that suggested he was hearing absolutely everything. Flavio Cobolli had just entered near the far side, towel around his neck, talking to someone and grinning at nothing in particular.
This was hell. This was locker-room hell. And it was only nine in the morning.
“Okay,” Darren said, lifting both hands slightly. “Jokes aside.”
That phrase rarely led anywhere good. Jannik braced himself.
Simone’s smile softened, though amusement still lingered around his eyes. “We are happy you have a life,” he said.
“I had a life before.”
“You had routines,” Darren said. “There’s a difference.”
Jannik opened his mouth, then closed it. That was unfair. Also accurate.
Darren stepped closer, lowering his voice. His tone shifted from teasing to coach, but not the hard version. The other one. The version that had steadied Jannik through losses, injuries, expectation, noise.
“Listen. You’re allowed to be young. You’re allowed to like someone. You’re allowed to be happy about it.”
Jannik looked away. The gym blurred slightly at the edges; not with tears, not exactly, but with the discomfort of being seen too kindly.
Darren continued, “But you also know what this world is. Phones, cameras, gossip, people looking for stories. Especially with who he is. Especially with who you are.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
Jannik met his eyes, irritation rising because fear was underneath it. “Yes, Darren. I know.”
Simone, gentler now, said, “We are not saying don’t. We are saying be careful.”
“I am careful.”
Both coaches looked at him.
Jannik sighed. “Usually.”
“You were not careful five minutes ago,” Simone said.
“Because I didn’t expect Carlos to be-” Jannik stopped.
“Admiring your athletic qualities?” Darren offered.
Jannik glared. Darren smiled into his coffee.
Simone sat on the edge of the treatment table, arms folded. “Can I ask one thing?”
“No.”
“I ask anyway.”
“Of course.”
“Is this serious?”
The word landed differently from the jokes. Serious.
Jannik looked down at his phone, still locked in his hand. The black screen reflected part of his face at him: pale, tired, embarrassed. Younger than he felt on court. More frightened than he wanted to admit.
“I don’t know,” he said.
It was the truest answer. Simone did not push. Darren nodded once, as if that answer was enough for now.
Jannik swallowed. “It is new. Not new-new, maybe. But spoken new.”
Simone’s expression changed. The teasing disappeared almost completely. “Ah.”
This time the sound was different. Not discovery. Understanding.
Jannik sat down on the mat again, suddenly aware of how heavy his legs were.
“We talked last night. After the interview. He watched from home.”
“The Bumble thing,” Darren said.
“Babbel,” Jannik corrected automatically.
Simone laughed softly. “Very important.”
“Yes,” Jannik said, but his smile faded quickly. “He misses being here. The wrist is...it is hard for him.”
Darren’s face softened. He had seen enough injured players to understand what Jannik did not need to explain. The helplessness. The envy. The shame of envy. The way watching someone else compete could feel like watching life continue without you.
“He’ll be back,” Darren said.
“I told him that.”
“Did he believe you?”
Jannik looked at his hands. “Maybe not yet.”
For a moment, the jokes lay quiet among them.
Around them, the gym continued. Shoes squeaked. Weights clinked. Someone laughed too loudly near the bikes. A camera operator adjusted a lens. The world did not stop for tenderness. It rarely did.
Simone leaned forward, elbows on knees. “Jannik, listen to me. You care about people in a very serious way.”
Jannik frowned. “What does that mean?”
“It means you make jokes, yes, but when you let someone in, you carry them. You take responsibility even if no one asked you.”
“I don’t.”
“You do,” Darren said.
Jannik hated when they agreed.
Simone’s voice stayed quiet. “Carlos has his team. His family. His people. You can care, but you cannot fix the wrist, or the pressure, or everything he feels.”
Jannik’s jaw tightened. He knew that. He hated knowing that.
Darren added, “And he can’t become your distraction from what you’re here to do.”
“He is not a distraction.”
“Good,” Darren said. “Keep it that way.”
There was no cruelty in it. That was what made it harder. If Darren had been dismissive, Jannik could have gotten angry. If Simone had mocked him, he could have closed the door. But they were doing what they had always done: protecting the player and the person, even when the person wanted to hide behind the player.
Jannik looked down.
“I like him,” he said.
The words were quiet. So quiet that for a second, he wondered if the gym had swallowed them. But Simone heard. Darren heard. Jannik felt their attention settle around him, no longer teasing, no longer coaching, simply present.
“I know,” Simone said.
Jannik laughed once, without humor.
“Everyone knows, apparently.”
Darren gave him a look. “Mate.”
“What?”
Darren exchanged a glance with Simone. Simone pressed his lips together.
Jannik’s stomach dropped. “What?”
Darren took a sip of coffee, buying time.
Simone scratched his jaw. “You are not exactly subtle.”
Jannik stared. “I am very subtle.”
“No,” Darren said.
“I am quiet.”
“That’s different.”
“I don’t say things.”
“You look,” Simone said.
Jannik’s face heated. “I look at everyone.”
“No,” Simone said. “You look at Carlos like you are trying to solve a problem no one else can see.”
Darren nodded. “And he looks at you like someone told him happiness is standing across the net.”
Jannik could not speak.
There were forms of embarrassment that made you defensive. Others made you feel suddenly naked. This was the second kind. It was one thing to know something privately, to feel it moving beneath months of conversations and glances. It was another to discover that the people closest to you had been watching it grow before you had even dared name it.
Jannik lowered his gaze.
“I thought we were hiding it.”
Simone’s voice became fond. “From yourselves, maybe.”
The words struck somewhere deep. From yourselves.
Maybe that was true. Maybe everyone else had seen the outline before they had. Maybe he and Carlos had spent years calling it rivalry, respect, friendship, timing, chemistry—anything but what it was becoming. Maybe their bodies had known first. Their eyes. Their smiles after impossible points. The way the space changed when one entered a room and the other noticed without meaning to.
Jannik’s phone buzzed again. All three of them looked at it.
“No,” Jannik said.
Darren raised an eyebrow.
“I am not opening it.”
Simone grinned. “Very disciplined.”
“I am.”
The phone buzzed once more. Jannik closed his eyes.
Darren said, “You might want to make sure he’s not injured himself texting.”
“You are enjoying this too much.”
“Absolutely.”
Jannik unlocked the phone but angled it away from them like classified material.
Carlos:
Are you ignoring me?
Carlos:
Or are you doing squats?
Jannik bit the inside of his cheek.
Another message:
Carlos:
Send proof.
He locked the screen with such violence that Simone started laughing again.
Darren leaned over slightly. “Do I want to know?”
“No.”
“Good. Finish stretching.”
Jannik placed the phone face down, far away, as if distance could save him. It did not. For the next forty minutes, his body went through routine while his mind failed spectacularly at discipline.
Hip mobility. Carlos. Hamstring stretch. Carlos says my eyes are fine. Core activation. Simone says from yourselves, maybe. Resistance bands. Darren warns him about cameras and gossip. Physio table. The word serious moved through him like a question without an answer.
The cameras drifted in and out. At one point, a Tennis TV crew recorded him doing lateral movement drills, his expression so deliberately blank that he feared it looked suspicious. He could already imagine Carlos watching the clip later, sending commentary like an unlicensed analyst of Jannik’s lower body mechanics.
The thought made him miss a step.
“Focus,” Simone called.
“I am focused.”
“You nearly walked into a cone.”
“The cone moved.”
Darren muttered, “Carlos better not be in charge of footwork.”
Jannik threw a towel at him. It missed. That, unfortunately, also got filmed.
By late morning, the physical work ended, and the slower suffering began: treatment. Jannik lay face down on a physio table while the physio worked through the tightness in his back and hips with the kind of pressure that made breathing a spiritual challenge. His phone was in his bag now. Far. Silent. Safe.
Simone and Darren had moved aside to discuss practice scheduling. Their voices were low, professional again. The teasing had passed into something warmer but quieter, tucked away for later use. Jannik knew it would return. It would return for weeks. Months, probably. Possibly at his wedding, if his coaches lived long enough and he gave them microphones.
He buried his face in his folded arms.
A camera crew passed near the entrance. Jack Draper walked by with a towel around his shoulders, glancing once toward Jannik but not stopping. Their eyes met for half a second. Jack’s mouth twitched.
Jannik narrowed his eyes. Jack looked away too quickly. Wonderful. So Jack had definitely heard. By lunch, Jannik had convinced himself the worst was over. This was because he was optimistic in specific and foolish ways.
The player restaurant was crowded, bright, and filled with the unglamorous intimacy of athletes eating between obligations. Plates of pasta, rice, grilled chicken, vegetables, fruit, coffee. Players sat in clusters by nationality, friendship, convenience, or shared exhaustion. Coaches leaned over schedules. Agents checked phones. A young player at the next table stared into space as if mentally replaying a tiebreak he had lost three hours earlier.
Jannik took a plate of pasta, some chicken, and water, then searched for a quiet table. He found one near the window. For approximately ninety seconds, peace existed. Then Flavio Cobolli appeared with a tray and the expression of a man arriving at a party he had personally organized.
“Jannik,” he said brightly.
“No.”
Flavio froze, eyes wide with false innocence. “I didn’t say anything.”
“You were going to.”
“I only said your name.”
“You said it with intention.”
Flavio gasped. “With intention? What does that mean?”
“It means sit somewhere else.”
Flavio sat opposite him. A moment later, Jack Draper approached, carrying his own tray. He looked almost apologetic, which made Jannik instantly suspicious.
“Mind if I join?” Jack asked.
“Yes,” Jannik said.
Jack sat beside Flavio.
“Great, thanks.”
Jannik looked at both of them. Flavio smiled. Jack took a very calm bite of food.
Jannik set down his fork. “What do you want?”
“Nothing,” Jack said.
“Nothing,” Flavio echoed.
Jannik waited. Flavio lasted four seconds.
“So,” he said, leaning forward. “Carlos, eh?”
Jannik closed his eyes. Jack coughed into his napkin, either laughing or choking.
Flavio’s grin spread. “No, no, don’t be shy now. This is beautiful. This is cinema.”
“This is lunch,” Jannik said.
“It is never just lunch.”
Jack finally spoke, his voice dry.
“To be fair, mate, the gym was a bit loud.”
Jannik looked at him. “You heard?”
Jack gave him a sympathetic look.
“Everyone within a seven-meter radius heard Simone announce that Carlos was texting about your arse.”
Jannik stared at the table.
Flavio slapped Jack’s arm. “He said ass. You must say it correctly. This is important for the story.”
“I’m British,” Jack said. “We translate.”
Jannik whispered, “I should retire.”
“No,” Flavio said immediately. “Not now. The plot is getting good.”
Jannik pointed his fork at him. “You are enjoying my suffering.”
“Yes,” Flavio said. “But with love.”
Jack nodded. “Mostly with love.”
“Mostly?”
“Well,” Jack said, “also because some of us have money riding on this.”
Jannik went still. Flavio inhaled sharply, delighted. Jack looked at him. Flavio looked at Jack.
Jannik slowly lowered his fork. “What money?”
Jack’s expression changed to that of a man realizing he had stepped on a landmine. Flavio, however, had no survival instinct.
“Oh,” Flavio said, waving a hand. “Not serious money.”
Jannik stared at him.
“Mostly not serious,” Flavio amended.
Jack sighed.
Jannik leaned back in his chair. “Explain.”
Flavio clapped his hands once, quietly. “Okay. So. For years-”
“Years?” Jannik interrupted.
“Years,” Jack confirmed, resigned now.
“For years,” Flavio continued, “there has been discussion.”
“What discussion?”
“About you and Carlos.”
“There is no me and Carlos.”
Both Jack and Flavio looked at him. Jannik hated the silence.
“There wasn’t,” he corrected.
Flavio pointed at him triumphantly. “Ah!”
Jack smiled into his water.
Jannik rubbed his forehead. “I don’t like this conversation.”
“You will,” Flavio said. “It is romantic.”
“It is invasive.”
“It can be both.”
“Why does everyone keep saying things can be both?”
“Because life is complex,” Jack said.
Flavio leaned in, lowering his voice as though revealing state secrets.
“The whole players’ group knew.”
Jannik’s stomach dropped. “The whole what?”
“Not whole,” Jack said quickly. “Not whole whole.”
Flavio waved him off. “Many. Enough.”
“Enough for what?”
“For a betting pool.”
Jannik stared.
Jack winced. “It wasn’t exactly a betting pool.”
Flavio gave him a look. “It was exactly a betting pool.”
“Thanks, Flavio.”
“You must respect the truth.”
Jannik’s voice went flat. “A betting pool.”
Flavio nodded enthusiastically. “When you two would finally open your eyes.”
Jack added, “Or do something about it.”
“Or kiss,” Flavio said.
Jannik nearly dropped his fork.
Jack looked at Flavio. “Mate.”
“What? That was one category.”
“There were categories?”
Flavio began counting on his fingers.
“First confession. First public suspicious moment. First practice where one of you forgets how to hit because the other is shirtless-”
“Flavio,” Jack warned.
“-first time one of you says something insane in press-”
“That one was yesterday,” Jack said.
“Bumble was not insane,” Jannik said automatically. “It was Babbel.”
Flavio pointed again. “See? Defensive. Very guilty.”
Jannik looked between them, horrified and fascinated despite himself.
“Who started this?”
Jack and Flavio exchanged a glance.
“No,” Jannik said. “Tell me.”
Jack scratched the back of his neck. “I don’t know who started it.”
Flavio said, “I know.”
Jack turned. “You do?”
“Yes.”
“Who?”
Flavio paused for dramatic effect.
Then he said, “Someone in doubles.”
Jannik stared. “That is not an answer.”
“I protect my sources.”
“You don’t have sources. You have gossip.”
“Gossip is just news with better outfits.”
Jack laughed despite himself. Jannik wanted to be annoyed. He was annoyed. He was also, to his intense frustration, a little relieved. Because their faces were not cruel. That mattered.
There was teasing, yes. Too much teasing. Enough teasing to make Jannik consider eating lunch under the table. But beneath it, there was no disgust, no judgment, no sudden distance. Jack looked amused but kind. Flavio looked delighted in the way he looked delighted by almost everything beautiful and chaotic. Neither of them looked surprised.
That might have been the most destabilizing part.
Jannik had been walking around with a secret he did not yet know was visible, and now he was discovering that the secret had not made people turn away. It had made them wait, laugh, place bets, and apparently categorize his emotional incompetence for sport.
He took a slow breath.
“What did people bet?” he asked before he could stop himself.
Flavio’s eyes shone.
Jack said, “You don’t actually want to know.”
“I do.”
“You don’t.”
“I do now.”
Flavio leaned back, pleased.
“Okay. Some said Carlos would say something first because he is more emotional.”
Jannik’s gaze dropped to his plate. Jack noticed but continued gently.
“Others said you would, because once you decide something, you move fast.”
Jannik thought of the message from last night. Maybe because I already know who I want to talk to.
He cleared his throat. “Who won?”
Flavio and Jack looked at each other again.
“That depends,” Jack said.
“On what?”
“On whether something has happened.”
Jannik’s face heated.
Flavio gasped. “Something happened.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You turned red.”
“I am always red in Madrid.”
“No, you are usually pale and haunted,” Flavio said. “This is different.”
Jack studied him with more kindness than mischief now. “You don’t have to tell us.”
That made Jannik look at him. Jack shrugged slightly.
“Seriously. We’re winding you up, but you don’t owe anyone details.”
For the first time since they had sat down, the conversation loosened its grip on his throat.
“Thank you,” Jannik said quietly.
Flavio softened too. “Yes. Of course. We joke, but not like that.”
Jannik nodded. He picked up his fork again, though he did not eat.
After a moment, he said, “We talked.”
Flavio became very still, as if sudden movement might scare the information away. Jack’s eyebrows lifted slightly. Jannik stared at his plate.
“After the match. After the interview. He texted me. Then we called.”
Flavio pressed both hands to his chest.
Jack said, “That’s nice.”
Simple. Not theatrical. Nice.
The word settled into Jannik with unexpected force. Because it was nice. Beneath all the fear, the teasing, the cameras, the impossible logistics, it was simply nice. Carlos had called. Jannik had answered. They had been honest in small, shaking ways. There had been no audience, no scoring system, no ranking points awarded for bravery. Just two voices in the space between cities.
Flavio’s voice softened. “And?”
Jannik glanced up.
Flavio held his gaze, no longer grinning. “Are you happy?”
The question was so direct that Jannik had no defense prepared. Was he happy?
He thought of waking to Buenos días. He thought of Carlos’s shy silences and sudden boldness. He thought of his own terror when Simone saw the message, and the strange warmth when Darren said he was allowed to be young. He thought of Carlos coming to Madrid for Jaime and maybe a little for him. He thought of wanting to play better because Carlos might be watching.
“Yes,” he said.
The word was quiet, but it changed the table. Flavio smiled, not teasing now.
“Then good.”
Jack nodded. “Yeah. Good.”
Jannik looked out the window.
Beyond the glass, the tournament moved under white sunlight. People walked between courts. A child in a hat held a giant tennis ball nearly as big as his head. A camera crew hurried after someone. Madrid continued, loud and bright and hungry for stories.
Inside, at this small table, something fragile was being handled with more care than Jannik had expected. Jack leaned back.
“For what it’s worth, I think people were rooting for you.”
Jannik looked at him sharply. “People?”
“Players,” Jack clarified. “Not everyone. But, you know. Those who noticed.”
Flavio nodded. “It was like watching two people stand in front of the same open door and both say, ‘After you.’ For two years.”
Jannik frowned. “Two years?”
Jack smiled. “At least.”
“That is exaggerated.”
“It isn’t,” Flavio said.
Jannik tried to think back. Two years ago, he would have denied everything. He and Carlos were rivals. Friends, maybe. Opponents shaped by the same era, pushed together by draw sheets and headlines. They were compared before they understood each other. They were made into a story by other people first.
But somewhere inside that story, something real had begun.
A practice in Indian Wells where Carlos had laughed so hard after a ridiculous rally that Jannik had missed the next feed. A locker room in Miami where Carlos had sat beside him after a loss and said nothing for five full minutes because he seemed to understand silence was kinder. A hallway in Turin where their shoulders had brushed and Jannik had thought about it for the rest of the night. A message after an injury. A look across a net. A joke remembered months too long. Had it really been so visible?
Jannik’s voice was low. “I didn’t know.”
Jack’s expression softened.
“Yeah. We figured.”
Flavio reached across the table and stole one piece of chicken from Jannik’s plate.
Jannik blinked. “Did you just-”
“You were having a deep emotional moment. The chicken was vulnerable.”
Jack snorted. Jannik stared at Flavio, then laughed despite himself. It came out suddenly, surprising him. Not loud, not wild, but real. The tightness in his chest broke open just enough for air to enter. Flavio grinned as though this had been his plan all along.
“There he is,” Flavio said.
Jannik shook his head. “You are impossible.”
“Yes.”
The conversation shifted after that, the way conversations do when they have touched something honest and need to recover by becoming ordinary. Jack talked about practice conditions. Flavio complained about Madrid's altitude as if it were a personal enemy. Jannik ate slowly, listening more than speaking, grateful for the noise.
But peace, again, lasted only a little while. His phone buzzed. All three men looked at it on the table. Jannik did not touch it.
Flavio whispered, “Carlos.”
Jack said, “Has to be.”
Jannik said, “It could be my team.”
The phone buzzed again.
Flavio leaned forward. “Your team is here.”
Jannik snatched the phone before Flavio could even think about reading it. It was Carlos. Of course, it was Carlos.
Carlos:
Tennis TV posted a gym video.
Jannik closed his eyes. Another message arrived.
Carlos:
You ignored my advice.
Another.
Carlos:
Still good angle though.
Jannik lowered the phone to his lap, staring at nothing.
Flavio was practically vibrating. “What did he say?”
“Nothing.”
Jack smirked. “That bad?”
“No.”
Flavio clasped his hands.
“Please. I am invested emotionally and financially.”
Jannik looked at him. “Financially?”
Flavio coughed. “Emotionally.”
Jack muttered, “Too late.”
Jannik should not have laughed. He did. Then he typed under the table.
Jannik:
My coaches saw your messages.
The reply came almost instantly.
Carlos:
Which messages?
Jannik stared at the phone.
Jannik:
Carlos.
Carlos:
Ah.
Then:
Carlos:
Sorry?
Another message:
Carlos:
No, this time, actually sorry.
Jannik’s mouth softened.
Jannik:
Simone told Darren.
Carlos sent a horrified emoji. Then:
Carlos:
I am never coming to Madrid.
Jannik smiled.
Jannik:
You are coming for Jaime.
Carlos:
Jaime can play without me.
Jannik:
Too late. Everyone knows.
There was a pause. Then Carlos wrote:
Carlos:
Everyone?
Jannik looked up at Jack and Flavio, who were pretending not to watch his face with the intensity of scouts analyzing match footage.
He typed:
Jannik:
Maybe not everyone.
Flavio whispered, “Say everyone.”
Jannik kicked him under the table. Flavio yelped. Jack laughed into his glass. Carlos replied:
Carlos:
I am red now.
The words stopped Jannik.
He could picture it: Carlos somewhere at home, phone in hand, brown eyes wide, cheeks warming, maybe laughing in disbelief, maybe hiding his face in his arm the way Jannik had done that morning. Carlos, bold by text and shy in consequence. Carlos, who could hit a forehand like thunder and still be undone by being known.
Jannik’s chest filled with tenderness so sudden it almost hurt.
He typed:
Jannik:
Good.
Carlos:
Good?
Jannik:
Now we are even.
Carlos sent no words for a moment.
Then:
Carlos:
Are you okay?
Jannik’s fingers paused. The question cut through the joking like light through curtains. Are you okay?
He looked around the restaurant. At Jack and Flavio pretending badly not to care. At players laughing two tables away. At staff moving through with trays. At the cameras outside the window. At the world where something tender feels dangerous simply by looking at it too hard.
Was he okay? He thought of Simone’s warning. Darren’s kindness. Jack’s reassurance. Flavio’s ridiculous joy. Carlos’s courage arrives in bursts and retreats. His own fear is still there, but less lonely now.
He wrote:
Jannik:
Yes.
Then, after a second:
Jannik:
A little embarrassed. But okay.
Carlos replied:
Carlos:
I’m sorry.
Jannik smiled.
Jannik:
Don’t be. Just stop talking about my ass when I am with my coaches.
Carlos:
So only when you are alone?
Jannik pressed his lips together.
Flavio leaned in. “He said something good.”
“No.”
Jack looked amused. “You’re red again.”
“I hate this table.”
Carlos added:
Carlos:
Kidding.
Then:
Carlos:
Mostly.
Jannik typed:
Jannik:
You are impossible.
Carlos:
You like it.
Jannik glanced at the message for a long time before answering.
Jannik:
Yes.
A small word. A dangerous word. A word that felt, somehow, like another door opening. Carlos did not reply immediately. Jannik imagined him reading it. Smiling. Maybe going quiet. Then the phone buzzed.
Carlos:
I like it too.
Everything in the restaurant seemed to dim around the edges. Not because the words were dramatic. They were not. They were almost plain. But after years of not saying things, plain words could arrive with the force of weather. Like. Simple. Human. Almost teenage in its vulnerability.
Jannik stared until the letters blurred slightly. Flavio stopped smiling. Jack noticed too. Neither spoke. Jannik locked the phone carefully and set it face down. He looked at his plate, then out the window, then back at nothing. His throat felt tight.
Flavio’s voice was gentle when he asked, “Good message?”
Jannik nodded once. Jack leaned back, giving him space without leaving. For a while, the three of them sat with the noise of lunch around them. Jannik did not explain. He did not need to. Maybe that was friendship too; not always knowing, but knowing when not to ask.
Eventually, Flavio broke the silence with unusual softness.
“You know,” he said, “when people bet, it was stupid. Just jokes. But I think...maybe everyone wanted something nice for both of you.”
Jannik looked at him. Flavio shrugged, suddenly less theatrical.
“Tennis is hard. We all know. You travel, you lose, you win and still feel empty sometimes. People think it is all trophies, but mostly it is airports and ice baths and missing birthdays. So when two people look happier near each other...” He paused, searching for the right words. “It makes people hope.”
Jack nodded slowly. “Yeah.”
Jannik absorbed that. It makes people hope.
He had thought visibility only threatened. He had thought being seen meant being exposed, judged, turned into content, laughed at by strangers who knew nothing about the cost of anything. And sometimes it did mean that. Often it did.
But maybe being seen by people who understood the same life could be different. Maybe some eyes were not cameras. Maybe some witnesses were gentle.
His phone remained face down beside his hand, warm from use.
He thought of Carlos watching from home, injured and restless, laughing at the interview, brave enough to text first. He thought of himself in the gym, mortified under fluorescent lights, convinced discovery was a disaster. He thought of Simone saying, We are happy you have a life.
A life. Not just a career. Not just points, pressure, rankings, recovery, discipline. A life in which someone could make him blush before breakfast. A life in which friends could tease him and still protect the soft center of the joke. A life in which he could be afraid and happy at the same time.
Across from him, Flavio stole another piece of chicken. Jannik slapped his hand.
“Enough.”
Flavio grinned. “Love makes you slow.”
“Touch my food again and you will see speed.”
Jack laughed. “There’s the competitor.”
Jannik picked up his fork and finally ate properly.
For the next twenty minutes, they talked about everything except Carlos. Which meant, somehow, they talked about him constantly in the spaces between words. Flavio asked too casually what time Jaime’s match might be. Jack wondered aloud whether Carlos would sit in a public box or hide somewhere. Jannik refused to answer both and failed to hide his smile.
When lunch ended, Jack stood first.
“Seriously,” he said, looking at Jannik. “Happy for you, mate.”
Jannik looked up.
Jack’s voice was quiet enough that it did not become a performance.
“Whatever it is. Whatever it becomes.”
Jannik nodded. “Thanks.”
Flavio stood too, then leaned down close to Jannik’s ear and whispered, “I have next month in the pool, so please do not confirm anything officially until then.”
Jannik shoved him away. Flavio laughed loudly enough that three tables turned. Jannik shook his head, but he was smiling. After they left, he stayed a moment longer by the window.
His afternoon waited: practice, media, recovery, another night of trying to sleep while the tournament pressed against the glass. Carlos was not yet in Madrid, but he felt closer than yesterday. Not physically. Not in kilometers. In courage.
Jannik picked up his phone. He opened the message again.
Carlos:
I like it too.
He let himself look at it. Then he typed:
Jannik:
When you come to Madrid, I want to see you. Not by accident. Not only with everyone around.
He stared at the message. His thumb hovered. This was the kind of sentence that changed things. It had shape. Intention. No joke to hide inside. No Bumble, no Babbel, no gym angle, no brother as an excuse. Just want.
He sent it. For a minute, there was nothing. Then two.
Jannik waited, watching people pass beyond the restaurant window. A ball kid is laughing with another ball kid. A coach speaking urgently into a phone. A player with headphones walking alone, expression distant.
His phone buzzed.
Carlos:
Me too.
Another buzz.
Carlos:
I’m scared.
Jannik’s chest tightened.
He typed:
Jannik:
Me too.
Carlos replied:
Carlos:
But I am coming.
Jannik closed his eyes.
There were no guarantees in those words. No promises too large to carry. No answer to every problem waiting ahead. Cameras would still exist. Gossip would still move. Their careers would still demand discipline, distance, sacrifice. Carlos’s wrist would still need healing. Jannik would still need to win his next match, and the one after that, and survive the pressure of being himself in public.
But Carlos was coming. For Jaime. For Madrid. For maybe a little for him. No. Jannik smiled faintly, correcting the thought. Maybe more than a little.
He typed:
Jannik:
Good. I’ll practice my Spanish.
Carlos answered:
Carlos:
And your squats?
Jannik stared at the message. Then he laughed so suddenly that an agent at the next table looked over.
He wrote back:
Jannik:
Goodbye, Carlos.
Carlos:
See you soon, Jannik.
Jannik held the phone for one more second before putting it away. When he stood, his body still ached. His hips were still tight, his shoulder still heavy, the day still crowded with obligations. Nothing about the work had become easier. But something inside him had.
Not simple. Not safe. Just lighter.
He walked out of the restaurant and into the afternoon light of Madrid, where cameras waited, practice waited, pressure waited. And somewhere, coming closer, Carlos waited too.
⊹₊˚‧︵‿₊୨ᰔ୧₊‿︵‧˚₊⊹
The evening began with noise.
Not the sharp, organized noise of a tennis court, not the roar that rose and fell with points, not the applause that arrived like weather. This was human noise. Softer, messier, warmer. Forks against plates. Chairs scraping back. Coaches calling across tables. Someone laughing too loudly before apologizing to no one. The layered murmur of people who spent most of the year competing against each other and then, in strange pockets of tournament life, eating from the same buffet as though they belonged to one enormous, exhausted family.
Jannik stood at the entrance to the private dining room for half a second longer than necessary.
Madrid glowed behind the wide windows, city lights beginning to gather beneath the darkening sky. Inside, the room was full of cream-colored walls, polished wood, white tablecloths, and the low golden light that made everyone look slightly less tired than they were. The tournament had arranged the dinner as one of those semi-official, semi-relaxed player evenings that existed in a category of their own. Not a gala. Not exactly private. Cameras were not everywhere, but they were nowhere either. Staff moved with quiet efficiency around the edges. A few tournament photographers hovered at a respectful distance, waiting for easy smiles and harmless moments.
It should have felt simple.
Dinner. Food. Friends. Coaches. A few hours before tomorrow, the pressure returned.
But Jannik had spent the day being discovered in installments.
First by Simone. Then Darren. Then Jack. Then Flavio.
And now, as he stepped into the room, he felt as if every person already knew some version of him he had not officially introduced.
“Jannik!”
Ben Shelton lifted a hand from a table near the middle of the room, grin wide, posture loose, all American ease and restless energy. His father and team were there too, mid-conversation with Darren, who looked far too comfortable for someone who had spent the morning participating in Jannik’s public humiliation.
Simone turned and waved him over. Jannik walked toward them, carrying the expression of a man who had accepted dinner but not fate.
“Look who finally arrived,” Ben said.
“I am on time.”
“You’re a tennis player on time, which means everyone has already judged your outfit.”
Jannik looked down at himself. Dark trousers. Simple shirt. White sneakers. Nothing adventurous. Nothing to judge.
“What is wrong with it?”
“Nothing,” Ben said, grinning. “That’s the problem. You Europeans make boring look intentional.”
Darren laughed.
“He’s got you there.”
Jannik pulled out a chair. “I can leave.”
“No, no,” Ben said. “Sit. We need someone serious at this table. My team says I’m too loud.”
“You are too loud,” Jannik said, sitting down.
Ben placed a hand over his heart. “Damn. Immediately?”
“It is better you know.”
Ben’s father chuckled from across the table. “I like him.”
“You would,” Ben said. “He looks polite before he attacks.”
Jannik smiled despite himself.
It was impossible not to relax a little around Ben. He had a way of filling space without taking all the air from it. Loud, yes. But never careless. There was a current of generosity beneath the confidence, a warmth that made even his teasing feel like an invitation rather than a challenge. Around him, conversation did not have to be dragged into motion. It bounced, ricocheted, landed in unexpected places.
Dinner unfolded slowly and then all at once.
Plates arrived. Bread passed from hand to hand. Someone argued about whether pasta tasted different in Spain than in Italy, which offended Simone on a national level. Ben asked Darren for one story about young Lleyton Hewitt and received three, each more dramatic than the last. Darren, warmed by food and company, became dryly theatrical. Simone corrected details he had not witnessed. Ben’s team laughed. Jannik listened more than he spoke, but his silence was no longer heavy. It was the silence of someone resting inside the noise.
For a while, he almost forgot.
Almost forgot the phone in his pocket. Almost forgot the message waiting there from Carlos. Almost forgot that Carlos was coming to Madrid. Almost forgot the exact sentence: I like it too.
But the body remembered what the mind pretended to set aside. Now and then, for no visible reason, Jannik’s attention drifted toward the door. Not dramatically. Not enough for anyone unfamiliar with him to notice. Just a glance, quick as a return. But Simone noticed. Darren noticed. Ben, unfortunately, began to notice too.
“You expecting someone?” Ben asked eventually.
Jannik looked back too quickly. “No.”
Ben’s grin sharpened. Darren took a sip of water with great interest. Simone suddenly became fascinated by the bread.
Jannik narrowed his eyes at all of them.
“What?”
“Nothing,” Ben said.
“That is the sound of something.”
“I didn’t make a sound.”
“You made a face.”
“I have a face.”
“It was suspicious.”
“My face is famous for honesty.”
Darren nearly choked on his drink.
Ben pointed at him. “See? He agrees.”
“He does not,” Jannik said.
Darren wiped his mouth. “I’m staying neutral.”
“You are never neutral.”
“Not true. I’m neutral when both options are bad.”
Simone smiled into his plate. Jannik was about to answer when his phone buzzed against his thigh. His entire body betrayed him.
It was small. A shift of attention, a pause in breath, fingers tightening around his fork. Tiny things. Invisible to most people. Not to this table. Ben’s eyebrows went up. Jannik ignored him and drew the phone halfway from his pocket beneath the table.
Carlos:
Still at dinner?
Jannik’s chest warmed. He typed quickly.
Jannik:
Yes.
Carlos:
With who?
Jannik glanced up at the table. Ben was pretending to talk to his father while very obviously watching him.
Jannik:
Ben. My team. His team.
Carlos:
Ben is loud.
Jannik bit back a smile.
Jannik:
Yes.
Carlos:
Tell him I said hi.
Jannik considered this.
Then:
Jannik:
No.
Carlos:
Why?
Jannik:
He will become impossible.
Carlos:
He already is.
Jannik’s mouth curved.
Ben leaned slightly closer. “You texting about me?”
Jannik locked the phone. “No.”
“You smiled after looking at your phone and then looked at me. That’s evidence.”
“You watch too much.”
“I’m American. Surveillance is part of the culture.”
Simone made a sound somewhere between a laugh and a cough.
Jannik put the phone away. “Carlos says hi.”
The table changed. Only slightly. Darren’s eyes flicked up. Simone’s expression went carefully neutral and therefore became completely obvious.
Ben’s grin spread slowly, delighted but not unkind.
“Carlos says hi?”
Jannik regretted everything.
“Yes. Because I said I am having dinner with you.”
Ben placed a hand on his chest again.
“Carlos Alcaraz knows I exist. Huge night.”
“You have played him.”
“Still.”
Darren leaned back. “Careful, Ben. You’ll make him jealous.”
Jannik stared at Darren. Darren looked innocent. Simone began laughing silently. Ben glanced from one to the other, then at Jannik, and something in his expression shifted into understanding. Not full knowledge, perhaps. But enough. More than enough.
He did not say Carlos’s name again.
Instead, he lifted his glass. “To dinner,” he said. “And to survive the press later.”
Jannik groaned. He had forgotten that part too.
The press obligations were scheduled after dinner because tournament organizers apparently enjoyed cruelty dressed as efficiency. It would not be long, they had said. A few questions. Tomorrow’s match. Physical condition. Spanish crowd. The usual. But nothing was ever truly usual anymore. Not after a match. Not after a clip. Not after Carlos’s absence had become a story of its own. Not after every interviewer in Europe had apparently discovered that asking Jannik about Carlos made his face do interesting things.
Darren caught his expression. “You’ll be fine.”
“I know.”
“Just answer what you want to answer.”
“I know.”
“And don’t blush.”
Jannik looked at him.
Darren smiled. “Too late. You’re practicing.”
Ben laughed. “Wait, is this about the language app thing? Because I saw that.”
“Everyone saw that,” Simone said.
“It was Babbel,” Jannik said, tiredly.
Ben leaned forward. “The way you corrected her, man. Like she accused you of a crime.”
“It was important.”
“It was adorable.”
Jannik’s eyes narrowed. “Do not say adorable.”
“That’s exactly what Carlos said,” Simone murmured.
Jannik kicked him under the table. Simone yelped. Darren stared at the ceiling as if asking for strength.
Ben froze, then slowly turned to Jannik.
“Carlos said adorable?”
Jannik covered his face with one hand. Dinner, which had been peaceful for almost six minutes, collapsed into laughter. And yet, beneath the embarrassment, Jannik found something strange happening to him. He was not as terrified as he had been that morning.
The teasing still burned. His ears still grew hot, his stomach still flipped when Carlos’s name entered conversation with too much knowledge around it. But the fear had thinned. It had not vanished. It might never vanish. Their world was too public for that. But it was no longer standing alone. It had been joined by warmth, by ridiculousness, by the discovery that people could know and still stay kind.
That was not nothing. That was, maybe, everything.
When dinner ended, the staff cleared plates and fresh coffee appeared. Jannik ate a small dessert he had not planned to eat because Ben insisted one bite did not count as dessert and Darren said that was not how nutrition worked, which naturally made Ben argue harder. For a brief and shining moment, Jannik felt young in the simplest way: surrounded, teased, full, not yet required to be anything except present.
Then a tournament media coordinator appeared by the door.
“Jannik? Press in five.”
The room seemed to tilt back toward reality. Jannik wiped his mouth, nodded and stood.
Darren stood with him. “We’ll come.”
“I can do press alone,” Jannik said.
“I know,” Darren said. “We’re coming anyway.”
Simone patted his shoulder as they passed. “Remember. Babbel.”
Jannik gave him a look.
Ben called after him, “And don’t wink if they ask about Carlos!”
Jannik turned around. “Why would I wink?”
Ben shrugged.
“I don’t know what Europeans do under pressure.”
Jannik left before he could hear more laughter. The press room was colder than the dining room. It always was.
Not physically, though sometimes that too. It was colder because every object inside it seemed designed to remove softness from the human body. A long table. A microphone. Bottles of water with labels facing forward. Rows of chairs. Cameras are waiting with their little red lights. Journalists shifting papers, checking recorders, refreshing phones. The room smelled faintly of coffee, carpet, and recycled air.
Jannik sat down and adjusted the microphone. For a second, he saw himself from outside.
A young man in a clean shirt, shoulders slightly rounded from fatigue, hair neat enough, face composed. A player. A professional. A headline waiting to be written. Not the person who had laughed over dinner. Not the person whose phone held messages from Carlos. Not the person who had been told that maybe everyone had been rooting for him.
He took a sip of water. Questions began. At first, they were mercifully tennis-shaped.
“Jannik, tomorrow you face Rafa Jodar, nineteen years old, one of the exciting young Spanish players. What do you know about his game?”
Jannik leaned forward. This was easy. This was honest in the safest way.
“He’s a very talented player,” he said. “I watched a little bit. He has good energy on court, good forehand, and I think he plays with a lot of courage. When you are young and you play at home, especially here in Spain, it can give you a big push. So for me, I have to be ready from the first point.”
Another journalist followed.
“He is younger, less experienced. Does that make this kind of match more dangerous?”
“Every match is dangerous,” Jannik said. “Ranking does not play the point for you. Experience can help, yes, but young players sometimes play more freely. They don’t think too much about consequences. They go for shots. So I respect him a lot. I know he will have the crowd. It will be a nice challenge.”
He meant it.
There was something about young players that reminded Jannik of how quickly hunger could become momentum. A teenager with a belief could be terrifying. Especially a Spanish teenager in Madrid, with the crowd lifting him and nothing heavy enough yet on his shoulders to slow him down. Jannik had been young too. He still was, people said. But tennis years were strange. They aged you in airport lounges, in losses, in matches where your body became a negotiation.
The next questions turned toward physicality.
“How is your recovery after yesterday’s match?”
“Good,” Jannik said. “Of course, some things we manage. Madrid has different conditions. The ball flies, the rallies can be physical in a different way. But we did good work today with the team. Therapy, gym, stretching. I feel ready.”
“Any concern with the hip or back tightness we saw you stretching this morning?”
There it was. The filmed gym. His body as public evidence.
Jannik kept his expression calm.
“No big concern. It is normal after matches. You always have something. The important thing is to understand what normal pain is and what is not. My team knows my body very well. We work every day to be in the best condition.”
“Do you feel stronger physically this year compared with previous seasons?”
He paused.
“Yes,” he said slowly. “But stronger is not only muscles. It is also about knowing yourself better. Knowing when to push, when not to push. Before, maybe I always wanted to do more. Now I understand sometimes recovery is also training. Maybe this is maturity.”
He heard Darren’s voice in his head: Good. More questions. Serve. Movement. The altitude. Scheduling. Then the air changed. It always did before Carlos.
A Spanish journalist smiled slightly and leaned toward his microphone.
“Jannik, Carlos Alcaraz is not playing here because of the wrist, but we know he is expected to come to Madrid to watch his brother, Jaime. Have you spoken with him?”
Jannik’s hands were still on the table. He kept them there.
“Yes,” he said. “We spoke.”
The room sharpened.
“How is he? Did he tell you anything about his recovery?”
Jannik felt the line under his feet. Some answers were his to give and answers that were not.
“He is doing better,” Jannik said carefully. “Of course, for any player, to miss a tournament, especially here for him, is not easy. But he has very good people around him. He knows what he has to do. I think everyone wants to see him healthy on court.”
“Do you miss him in the tournament?”
It was such a simple question. Too simple. Jannik took a sip of water.
“Yes,” he said.
A few journalists looked up from their notes. He continued before the silence could become too interesting.
“Carlos is one of the best players in the world. When he is in a tournament, the energy is different. The crowd loves him, especially here. And as a player, you want the best players to be competing. So yes, of course, we miss him.”
It was a perfect answer. Professional. Respectful. True. Not the whole truth. Never the whole truth.
Another journalist asked, “You said yesterday you don’t need a dating app. There was a funny moment with Babbel and Bumble. Carlos reacted to that?”
A few people laughed. Jannik’s face warmed despite every prayer he had ever made to composure. He smiled because fighting it would make it worse.
“I think everybody reacted.”
“Did Carlos?”
Jannik looked down briefly, then back up.
“He found it funny.”
The room laughed.
“Did he tease you?”
Jannik pressed his lips together. That was enough. The room laughed harder.
“Yes,” he admitted. “A little.”
A little. Somewhere, Carlos was probably already proud of himself.
“Are you still using Babbel?”
“Yes,” Jannik said firmly. “Babbel. Please write correctly.”
More laughter.
Someone from the back called, “Not Bumble?”
“No,” Jannik said, smiling despite himself. “Still no Bumble.”
Another journalist leaned in. “Because you don’t need it?”
The room waited.
Jannik knew the trap. Not a cruel trap. A playful one. But still a trap. He had walked into it yesterday because he had been tired and amused and perhaps already half-thinking of Carlos without admitting it.
Tonight, he could avoid it. He should avoid it. He heard Darren in his head: Answer what you want to answer. He heard Simone: Be careful. He heard Carlos: I’m scared. And beneath all of it, he heard his own voice from the night before.
Maybe because I already know who I want to talk to.
Jannik smiled, small and unreadable.
“I am here to play tennis,” he said. “For dating advice, maybe ask someone else.”
The room laughed again, accepting the evasion because he had offered it gently. But then came another question.
“Carlos said many times that your rivalry is very special. How do you see him now? As a rival? Friend? Inspiration?”
The microphone seemed suddenly too close.
Jannik looked down at his hands. Long fingers. Clean nails. A faint mark near his thumb from gripping the racket. Hands that had held trophies and phones, rackets and towels, small private things. Hands that did not know what to do when the question was too large.
He looked up.
“I think it is not only one thing,” he said.
The room quieted.
“With some players, you share many important moments. Big matches, difficult matches. You grow up a little bit together, even if you are on opposite sides. Carlos pushed me to become better. I think maybe I pushed him also. This is sport. But outside of court, there is also respect. There is friendship.”
He paused. The next words came slower.
“And there is understanding. Because not many people know exactly what this life is. He knows. I know. So yes, it is special.”
He stopped there. It was enough. It was more than enough.
For a second, no one spoke. Not because the answer was shocking, but because sincerity has a way of rearranging a room. It had landed softer than gossip, heavier than a quote. Some journalists looked down quickly, typing. Others watched him with the expression people wore when they had expected a headline and received a human being instead.
Then the moderator moved things on.
Two more questions about tomorrow’s match. One about Spanish fans. One about whether he had learned any Spanish phrases.
Jannik said, “Not enough to say here,” and smiled when the room laughed.
Then it was over. He stood, thanked them, and left the press room with Darren and Simone flanking him like guards pretending not to guard. For a while, none of them spoke.
The corridor outside was quieter, lined with tournament signage and closed doors. Jannik could still feel the press room clinging to his skin. The questions had not been cruel, but they had touched places he preferred to be covered.
Darren finally said, “Handled well.”
Jannik exhaled. “Thanks.”
Simone bumped his shoulder lightly. “Very diplomatic.”
“I tried.”
“You almost became poetic with the Carlos answer.”
Jannik looked straight ahead.
“No, I didn’t.”
Darren said, “A bit.”
“I said respect and friendship.”
“And understanding,” Simone added.
Jannik’s mouth closed. Understanding. The word had slipped out because it was true. That was the danger of the press. Not that you might lie, but that you might tell the truth in a room where people were paid to notice.
Darren must have sensed the shift in him, because his voice softened.
“It was fine. Really.”
Jannik nodded. But his heart had begun to beat faster. Not with panic exactly. With anticipation. Because they were returning now to the private room. And Carlos was in Madrid. He knew because fifteen minutes before press, his phone had buzzed with a message he had not been able to answer.
Carlos:
We landed.
Two words. Enough to make the ground feel different. The private room had changed by the time Jannik returned.
Dinner had dissolved into something looser. Players moved between tables. Some stood in small circles with drinks. Coaches leaned against walls, talking softly. Music played low enough not to dominate. The lights had dimmed slightly, making the room warmer, more intimate, more dangerous.
Jannik scanned it before he could stop himself. No Carlos. His disappointment came so fast that he had no time to disguise it from himself. Then he hated himself for the disappointment.
Carlos had family with him. Jaime. His parents, maybe. His team. He had only just landed. He was not summoned. He was a person. A scared person. A person with an injured wrist and a brother to support and a whole country ready to notice him the moment he entered any room.
Jannik took a breath.
Ben spotted him first. “Press survived?”
“Barely.”
“You cry?”
“No.”
“Make anyone else cry?”
“Maybe.”
Ben grinned. “That’s the goal.”
He was standing near one of the side tables now, drink in hand, with Emma Raducanu beside him.
Emma looked like she belonged in the room in a way very few people did. Not because she tried. Because she seemed to have understood its rules before entering and decided which ones were worth obeying. She wore something elegant but not loud, her hair falling neatly over one shoulder, her expression bright with the particular confidence of someone raised among polished rooms and public scrutiny. She smiled when Jannik approached, and there was nothing accidental about it.
“Jannik,” she said warmly. “Congratulations on surviving the Spanish press corps.”
“Thank you,” he said. “It was close.”
“I heard you were terribly charming.”
“I don’t think so.”
“That usually means yes.”
Ben made a low sound into his glass.
“Here we go.”
Emma glanced at him. “What?”
“Nothing.”
She turned back to Jannik with a smile that sharpened delicately at the edges.
“I also saw the interview yesterday.”
Jannik closed his eyes for half a second.
“Of course.”
“I thought it was sweet.”
“Everyone says this word now.”
“Sweet?”
“Or cute. Or adorable. It is becoming a problem.”
Emma tilted her head. “Would you prefer devastatingly composed?”
“Yes.”
“You weren’t.”
Ben laughed.
Jannik sighed. “Thank you, Emma.”
“No, truly,” she said, eyes dancing. “The correction was excellent. Very earnest. Very Italian.”
“I am not earnest because I am Italian.”
“No?”
“No. I am earnest because people misunderstand language learning apps.”
Emma’s smile widened. “Naturally.”
There was nothing aggressive in her flirting. That was what made it difficult. It came wrapped in refinement, in wit, in the airy elegance of someone who knew exactly how to stand near a boundary without appearing to press against it. She did not lean too close. She did not say anything too obvious. She simply turned her attention fully on him, and attention, Jannik had learned, could be more intimate than touch.
“You know,” Emma continued, “if you need help with English phrasing after Spanish, I could be persuaded.”
Ben looked at the ceiling.
Jannik blinked. “My English is okay.”
“It is,” she said. “But okay can become excellent.”
Ben muttered, “Oh my God.”
Emma ignored him. Jannik, who could redirect 220-kilometer serves, found himself with no idea where to put his hands.
“That is very kind,” he said.
“Kind,” Ben repeated under his breath. “Man’s fighting for his life.”
Emma smiled, amused now. “Ben, you’re being very distracting.”
“I’m trying to be.”
“Why?”
Ben gave her a look. A look that said many things. Not Carlos’s name. Not the messages. Not the fact that half the ATP had apparently been running an emotional betting exchange for years. Just enough. Emma’s gaze flicked from Ben to Jannik. Something in her expression shifted. Not embarrassment. Recognition. Then curiosity.
“Oh,” she said softly.
Jannik hated that syllable almost as much as Simone’s ah.
Ben lifted one hand. “Let it be, Emma.”
His tone was light, but there was a warning threaded through it. Friendly. Protective. Not possessive of Jannik, but protective of something around him. Emma looked at Ben for a moment, then back at Jannik. To her credit, she did not tease. Not immediately.
Her smile softened into something less performative.
“I see.”
Jannik looked away, heat crawling up his neck.
“There is nothing to see,” he said.
Ben snorted.
Emma’s eyes glimmered. “That, Jannik, is the least convincing sentence I’ve heard all evening.”
Before he could answer, the room changed. It did not become silent. Not fully. But a subtle ripple moved through it, a shift in attention like wind turning grass. Conversations thinned. Heads angled. Someone near the door laughed in surprise. A staff member stepped aside.
Jannik knew before he looked. His body knew. Carlos entered with his family.
He was not dressed like a player arriving for battle. No kit. No racket bag. No cap pulled low for practice. He wore a dark jacket, simple trousers, his hair slightly disordered from travel, and a smile that appeared first for someone near the door before faltering as his eyes began to search the room.
His family moved around him like warmth made visible. Jaime was beside him, younger, alert, carrying the faint nervous energy of someone trying to be both proud and independent under the shadow of a famous brother. Carlos’s father spoke to a tournament official. His mother smiled politely at someone greeting them. There were familiar faces from his team too, half protective, half relieved to have arrived without chaos.
But Jannik saw only Carlos. Or rather, he saw everything because Carlos was there.
The room seemed to gather light differently around him. Not brighter exactly. More alive. Carlos had always been like that. On court, he could change the emotional temperature of thousands. Off court, even tired, even injured, even trying to enter quietly, he carried a kind of open electricity. People wanted to turn toward it.
Jannik did. He turned before choosing to. Carlos’s eyes found him. Everything else fell away.
It was not dramatic from the outside, perhaps. Two players seeing each other across a room. A pause. A smile. Nothing a journalist could prove. Nothing a camera could necessarily turn into a headline unless it already knew the story.
But inside Jannik, something gave way. There he was. Not in a message. Not in a call. Not as a name lighting up a screen. Not as a voice in the dark after a match.
Carlos.
Real. Present. Close enough that the distance between them became physical, measurable, unbearable. Carlos smiled first. Small. Shy.
Not the stadium smile. Not the grin he gave crowds, not the laughing open face that made people chant his name. This was private despite the room. A smile that seemed to ask and answer at once.
Jannik forgot Emma. Forgot Ben. Forgot Darren and Simone watching from somewhere. Forgot press. Forgot every careful sentence he had just given about respect, friendship, understanding. His body did all the talking.
His shoulders eased. His face changed. The guarded calm he wore in public loosened as if someone had untied a knot at the center of him. His mouth curved, not wide, not performative, but helplessly warm. His eyes stayed on Carlos with a softness he could not have hidden if the entire room had demanded it.
Beside him, Emma inhaled quietly.
Ben murmured, “Yeah. That.”
Carlos said something to Jaime, then began crossing the room. Not directly. That would have been too obvious. But not indirectly enough to fool anyone who mattered.
He stopped once to greet a tournament director, once to shake hands with an older Spanish coach, once because someone called his name. Each time, his attention flicked back to Jannik like a compass correcting north.
Jannik stood very still. His heart was not.
When Carlos finally reached their small group, he looked first at Ben, because politeness and self-preservation apparently still existed.
“Ben,” Carlos said, smiling. “How are you?”
“Good, man.”
Ben clasped his hand carefully, avoiding the injured wrist without making a show of it.
“Good to see you. How’s the wrist?”
“Better,” Carlos said.
Ben raised an eyebrow. Carlos laughed softly.
“Okay. Improving.”
“That sounds more honest.”
“Yes.”
Emma greeted him too, graceful and warm. “Carlos. Lovely to see you.”
“Emma, hello.”
Carlos kissed the air beside her cheek in the Spanish way, easy and familiar enough to make Jannik look briefly at the floor.
“How are you?”
“Very well. We were just discussing language learning.”
Carlos’s eyes flicked to Jannik. There was mischief there now.
“Oh?” Carlos said.
Jannik gave Emma a look that begged for mercy. Emma smiled like someone considering whether mercy suited her outfit.
“Yes,” she said. “Jannik was explaining the importance of pronunciation.”
Carlos’s mouth twitched.
“Very important,” he said.
Ben coughed.
Jannik said, “Hello, Carlos.”
Two words. Simple. But his voice changed on them. Not enough for strangers. Enough for everyone standing there. Carlos turned fully to him.
“Hello, Jannik.”
His accent wrapped around the name differently in person than on the phone. Warmer. Lower. It landed somewhere under Jannik’s ribs. They did not touch. For one second too long, they did not touch.
Then Carlos offered his left hand because his right wrist was still protected, still not quite trusted. Jannik looked at it, then took it carefully. It was only a handshake. Except it was not.
Carlos’s hand was warm. His fingers closed around Jannik’s with just enough pressure to be felt beyond politeness. Jannik’s thumb shifted once, instinctive, almost nothing. Carlos noticed. His eyes lowered for the briefest moment to their hands, then lifted again.
The handshake ended because it had to. Jannik already missed it.
“You arrived,” he said.
Carlos smiled. “I said I would.”
“For Jaime.”
“For Jaime,” Carlos agreed.
Ben made a strangled sound and turned it into a sip of his drink. Emma’s eyes moved between them with bright, restrained amusement. Jannik heard his own voice before he fully decided to speak.
“And maybe a little for other matches.”
Carlos’s cheeks colored. There it was. Not stadium red. Not full embarrassment. Just enough. Jannik felt an absurd rush of triumph. Carlos looked down, smiling, then back up.
“Maybe.”
Ben whispered, “Oh, this is painful.”
Emma whispered back, “It’s exquisite.”
Jannik should have been mortified. He was, faintly. But Carlos was here, and the shape of the room had changed, and all the fear in him had been joined by something larger.
Joy. Not loud joy. Not easy joy. A trembling, complicated joy.
Carlos’s family approached then, and the moment widened to include everyone else. Jannik greeted them politely, warmly, carefully. He had met them before, of course, in the way players met each other’s families across years of tournaments. But tonight, each greeting felt heavier with unspoken meaning. Carlos’s mother smiled at him with such gentle kindness that Jannik wondered, with sudden panic, what Carlos had told her. Carlos’s father shook his hand and asked about tomorrow’s match. Jaime stood slightly behind Carlos at first, then stepped forward when Jannik turned to him.
“Big match tomorrow?” Jannik asked.
Jaime grinned, nervous and proud. “Yes. I hope.”
“You will enjoy it.”
“I will try.”
“That is all you can do.”
Carlos watched them, expression soft. Jannik noticed and almost lost his sentence. Ben, blessedly or disastrously, entered the conversation with enough energy to save him.
“Jaime, don’t listen to him, man. ‘Enjoy it’ is what calm players say. You gotta bring some chaos.”
Jaime laughed. Carlos pointed at Ben.
“Do not teach him this.”
“It’s good advice.”
“It is terrible advice.”
“Effective advice.”
Jannik said, “From Ben, chaos is always included.”
Ben bowed slightly. “Thank you.”
The group relaxed.
Conversation expanded. Carlos’s family settled into the room. Drinks were offered. Jaime was introduced to others. Darren appeared and greeted Carlos with easy warmth, asking about the wrist in a way that was direct but not intrusive. Simone arrived behind him and, because life was cruel, looked between Carlos and Jannik with the expression of a man who had absolutely not forgotten the morning’s messages.
Carlos saw Simone. Simone smiled. Carlos’s eyes widened slightly. Jannik almost laughed. Almost.
“Carlos,” Simone said, shaking his hand. “Good to see you.”
“You too,” Carlos said, then glanced at Jannik as if asking silently: How much does he know?
Jannik’s look answered: Everything. Carlos’s ears turned red. Simone’s smile became angelic. Darren noticed and closed his eyes briefly, as if praying for maturity from no one in particular.
Emma leaned toward Ben. “There is clearly a backstory.”
Ben said, “You have no idea.”
Jannik heard him and shot him a warning look. Ben lifted both hands.
Carlos, trying valiantly to recover, said to Simone, “I saw the gym video today. He looked good.”
Silence. Jannik stared at him. Carlos realized. Too late. Simone’s lips parted. Darren turned away. Ben made a noise like he had been stabbed. Emma covered her smile with her glass. Carlos closed his eyes.
“I mean physically. For tennis.”
Jannik muttered, “Stop helping.”
Simone nodded gravely. “Yes. Very good physically.”
“Simone,” Jannik warned.
Darren placed a hand on Simone’s shoulder.
“Let the boy live.”
“I am letting him live.”
“You are enjoying this.”
“Also, yes.”
Carlos looked at Jannik, mortified and laughing at once. “Sorry.”
Jannik’s irritation lasted less than a second. Because Carlos’s eyes were bright, his cheeks were flushed, and he was here. He was really here. The embarrassment became something else inside Jannik, something tender and nearly unbearable.
“It’s okay,” he said.
Softly. Too softly. Carlos heard it. The others did too.
The teasing quieted again, not because the joke had ended, but because something more delicate had passed between them and everyone decent enough decided not to step on it.
For a while, the evening became almost easy. Almost.
They stood in a loose circle, then drifted toward a quieter corner of the room. Carlos’s family moved between conversations. Jaime spoke with Ben about lefty serves and crowd noise. Emma, perhaps sensing the story had shifted beyond flirtation, turned her charm elsewhere but remained nearby, amused and observant. Darren and Simone eventually retreated to speak with Carlos’s father, leaving Jannik and Carlos standing side by side near the windows.
Not alone. Never alone. But less surrounded. Madrid stretched below them, blue-black and gold. For a moment, neither spoke.
Then Carlos said, “I saw your press.”
Jannik looked at him. “Already?”
“Clips.”
“Of course.”
“You said nice things.”
“I said true things.”
Carlos looked out at the city.
His injured wrist rested close to his body, protected almost unconsciously. Jannik noticed the way he held it, the care hidden inside a casual posture. He wanted to ask if it hurt. He wanted to touch it. He wanted to do something absurd and impossible, like take the frustration out of Carlos’s bones and carry it himself for a while.
Instead, he said, “How was the flight?”
“Short.”
“That is not an answer.”
Carlos smiled faintly. “You always say this.”
“You often don’t answer.”
Carlos looked down. “I was nervous.”
The honesty arrived quietly. Jannik’s chest tightened.
“To come here?”
“Yes.”
“To see Jaime play?”
Carlos looked at him. Jannik knew. Still, he let the question stand. Carlos’s smile was small, shy, helpless.
“Not only Jaime.”
The room seemed to fall away again. Jannik looked at the city because looking at Carlos was suddenly too much.
“I’m glad you came,” he said.
Carlos moved slightly closer. Not enough for anyone to accuse. Enough for Jannik to feel his warmth.
“I almost didn’t,” Carlos admitted.
Jannik turned back. “Why?”
Carlos lifted one shoulder. “Because I thought maybe it would be too real.”
The words entered Jannik slowly. Too real. Yes.
That was exactly what standing here felt like. The messages had been real, but they had existed in the strange safety of distance. A phone allowed courage because it separated the body from consequence. You could type desire with your hands shaking and still be alone when it landed. You could confess through glass and light.
But now Carlos was close enough that every silence had a pulse.
“Is it?” Jannik asked.
Carlos met his eyes.
“Yes.”
Jannik swallowed.
Carlos’s voice lowered. “But not bad.”
“No,” Jannik said. “Not bad.”
A laugh broke out somewhere behind them. Ben, probably. The sound reminded them both where they were. Carlos looked away first, smiling.
“I saw Emma talking to you,” he said.
Jannik blinked at the change. “Yes.”
“She looked very...interested.”
There was something careful in his voice. Jannik studied him. Carlos kept looking out the window, too casual.
Ah.
So this was jealousy. Not sharp. Not possessive. Not ugly. Just a small shadow crossing the sun. Jannik felt warmth spread through him, followed by the dangerous desire to tease. But Carlos had said he was nervous. Carlos had come scared. Carlos deserved gentleness before punishment.
“She was being friendly,” Jannik said.
Carlos hummed.
“And Ben told her to let it be.”
Carlos turned quickly. “He did?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Jannik raised an eyebrow. Carlos’s blush returned.
“Oh,” he said.
Jannik smiled. “Yes.”
Carlos looked deeply pleased for someone trying not to look pleased.
“Good,” he said.
Jannik’s smile widened. “Good?”
“No. I mean-” Carlos stopped. “I don’t mean good like...I am not...”
“Jealous?”
Carlos looked horrified. “No.”
“No?”
“No.”
Jannik leaned a little closer. “Liar.”
Carlos stared at him.
Then laughed under his breath, shaking his head. “You are very brave in person now.”
“Only because you are red.”
“I am not.”
“You are.”
Carlos looked toward his family instinctively, as if checking whether anyone had noticed. Jannik felt a sudden rush of affection so strong it became almost painful. This was the same man who could light up stadiums, who could play drop shots under pressure as if gravity were a toy, who could roar into a Spanish crowd with both fists raised. And here, beside a window at a dinner, he was undone by being caught caring.
Jannik lowered his voice.
“It’s okay,” he said. “I liked it.”
Carlos turned back.
“The jealousy?”
“The honesty.”
Carlos’s expression softened. The word hung between them. Honesty. Maybe that was the language they were actually learning. Not Spanish. Not Italian. Not the careful English they used when words had to meet halfway.
Honesty. A language with no app, no lessons, no owl reminding them to practice. Just moments like this, awkward and luminous, requiring more courage than match point. Carlos looked at Jannik’s hand resting near the window ledge. For one second, Jannik thought he might touch it. He did not.
Instead, he said, “Can we talk later?”
Jannik’s heart moved.
“Yes.”
“Not here.”
“Yes.”
Carlos nodded. His relief was visible. So was his fear. Jannik understood both. Before either could say more, Jaime appeared beside them, eyes bright.
“Carlos, they said we have to leave soon. Early practice tomorrow.”
Carlos straightened. “Yes. Okay.”
Jaime looked between them with the subtlety of a teenage boy who had not yet learned how not to be obvious.
“Hi, Jannik,” he said again, smiling.
“Hi.”
“Will you watch tomorrow?”
Jannik glanced at Carlos. Carlos glanced at him. Jaime’s smile widened.
Jannik cleared his throat. “If schedule allows, yes. I would like to.”
Carlos looked down, pleased. Jaime looked as though Christmas had arrived early.
“Good,” he said. “Carlos said maybe you were busy.”
“Carlos says many things,” Jannik replied.
Jaime laughed. Carlos muttered something in Spanish that sounded like a warning and a plea. Jannik did not understand every word, but he understood enough.
They rejoined the larger group slowly. Goodbyes began stretching across the room. Carlos’s mother came to collect him gently, touching his arm, reminding him of rest. His father shook hands again. Jaime bounced between nerves and excitement. The room shifted toward departure.
Jannik stood a little apart as Carlos moved with his family toward the door. The evening had been long. Wonderful. Embarrassing. Exposing. Warm. And still, it felt as if the real thing had barely begun. Carlos stopped near the door and turned back.
Their eyes met. No one needed to translate. Jannik took one step forward. Not enough to follow. Enough to answer. Carlos’s mouth curved. Then he lifted his left hand slightly, almost a wave, almost a promise. Jannik nodded.
The door closed behind him. For a moment, Jannik remained still. Ben appeared at his side.
“Man,” he said quietly.
Jannik did not look at him. “Don’t.”
“I wasn’t going to tease.”
That made Jannik glance over. Ben’s expression was softer than expected.
“I was just going to say,” Ben continued, “that was kind of loud.”
Jannik frowned. “What was?”
Ben smiled.
“You.”
Jannik looked back at the closed door. His face warmed, but this time he did not rush to hide it. Maybe Ben was right. Carlos had entered the room with his family, and Jannik had not confessed anything. Not in words. Not publicly. Not in any way that could be quoted.
But his body had betrayed him with tenderness. His face had opened. His eyes had followed. His voice had softened. He had done all the talking. And for once, standing in the golden aftermath of it, Jannik was not sure he regretted being understood.
⊹₊˚‧︵‿₊୨ᰔ୧₊‿︵‧˚₊⊹
The morning came too early.
It arrived as a pale bruise of light behind the curtains, soft and gray at first, then gradually sharper, cutting through the dark hotel room in thin lines that found Jannik’s face before he was ready to be found. For a few moments, he did not move. He lay on his back, eyes open, looking at the ceiling as if it might offer him instructions.
It did not.
The room was quiet except for the muted hum of air conditioning and the distant, steady pulse of Madrid waking below. Cars passed somewhere far beneath him. A door closed down the hall. Someone laughed once, softly, then the sound disappeared.
Jannik’s body knew it was match day before his mind accepted it.
His legs felt heavy from the work of the previous days, but not bad. His shoulder carried the dull echo of serving, his lower back a line of tension that would need attention before warm-up. His hands flexed once under the sheet, fingers remembering the shape of the racket even in sleep. He was used to waking like this: half athlete, half machine, inventorying himself before emotion could interfere.
But emotion was already there. Carlos. The name appeared before any other thought, and Jannik closed his eyes. They had not talked. Not properly. Not last night. Carlos had asked, quietly, by the window: Can we talk later? Jannik had said yes.
And then the evening had done what evenings at tournaments always did. It had slipped away through obligations. Carlos had left with his family. Jannik had been pulled into a meeting with his team, then food planning, then treatment, then a late conversation about Rafa Jodar’s patterns, then sleep preparation, then a message from Carlos that had arrived just as Jannik was brushing his teeth.
Carlos:
Sorry. Family. Jaime is early tomorrow.
Jannik had stared at it for too long.
He had typed:
Jannik:
It’s okay.
Then, after nearly a minute:
Jannik:
Good luck to Jaime.
Carlos had answered with a heart. Not a red one. Not a romantic one. A simple yellow heart. Friendly. Warm. Ambiguous enough to ruin a man’s sleep. After that, nothing.
There had been no call. No private conversation. No chance to take all the things their eyes had said in the room and place words beneath them. No chance for Jannik to say, I was glad you were jealous. No chance for Carlos to say whatever had been trembling behind his smile. No chance to decide what they were doing or what they were not doing or whether deciding was even possible.
So Jannik had gone to sleep with a door open inside him. Now it was morning, and the door was still open and the wind was coming through. He reached for his phone. No new message from Carlos.
There were messages from his team, from tournament transport, from someone confirming match timing, from a sponsor contact he ignored immediately. Nothing from the person whose silence he had no right to resent and yet resented anyway, quietly, ashamedly.
He sat up.
“Okay,” he said aloud.
His voice sounded rough, unused. Match day.
That was the answer. That was always the answer. When feeling became too large, tennis offered structure. Wake. Eat. Stretch. Warm up. Prepare. Play. The court did not care about unsent words. The ball did not care about hesitation. The scoreboard did not pause because a person had slept badly for reasons too tender to explain.
Jannik moved.
He showered. He dressed. He ate breakfast because discipline did not ask permission from appetite. Eggs, toast, fruit, coffee he barely tasted. Simone was already in the breakfast area when Jannik arrived, studying something on his phone. Darren appeared five minutes later with the expression of a man who had been awake for hours and found no reason to announce it.
“Morning,” Darren said.
“Morning.”
Simone looked up. His gaze lingered on Jannik’s face.
“Sleep?”
“Yes.”
“How much?”
“Enough.”
Darren sat down. “We should ban that word.”
Jannik cut into his eggs. “It is a good word.”
“It means nothing when athletes say it.”
Simone leaned back. “You look a little...busy in the head.”
Jannik did not answer immediately. That, unfortunately, was an answer.
Darren’s expression shifted slightly. “Tennis busy or life busy?”
Jannik looked at him. There were moments when he hated how gently Darren could ask a difficult question. A harsh question invited resistance. A gentle one walked in before the door could close.
“Both,” Jannik said at last.
Simone nodded slowly, as if he had expected this. “Carlos?”
Jannik stared at his plate.
“He is coming today?” Darren asked.
“I don’t know.”
That was not true.
He knew Carlos was at the tournament. Jaime’s match was earlier. Carlos would almost certainly stay. He would watch. Or not. He might be with family. He might avoid the box because it would be too much. He might sit somewhere private. He might appear and unsettle Jannik completely.
Jannik hated the uncertainty more than he wanted to admit.
Simone’s voice softened. “You didn’t talk?”
“Not really.”
Darren took a sip of coffee. “And now you’re carrying that into a match.”
“I can separate.”
Both coaches looked at him.
Jannik exhaled through his nose. “I can try to separate.”
“That’s better,” Darren said.
Simone leaned forward.
“Listen. Today is simple. Rafa is young. He will come with energy. The crowd will help him. If you let your mind go outside the court, even for a few points, he can grow. You know this.”
“I know.”
“You don’t need to solve your whole life before the warm-up,” Darren added.
Jannik almost smiled. “Good, because I don’t think I can.”
“No one can,” Darren said. “That’s why tennis is nice. For a few hours, the problem is just the next ball.”
Just the next ball. Jannik held onto that. Through transport to the site. Through activation in the gym. Through the familiar press of tape around his fingers. Through the warm-up court, where the ball came fast and clean and his body began to remember itself. Through the walkways where staff moved around him, where cameras appeared and disappeared, where people called his name from behind barriers.
His phone stayed in his bag. That helped. Then, twenty minutes before match time, Simone came back from somewhere with an expression too casual to be trusted. Jannik was sitting on a bench in the player area, adjusting the grip on one of his rackets.
“What?” he asked.
Simone blinked. “What?”
“You have a face.”
“I always have a face.”
“No. That one.”
Darren looked over from the chair opposite.
Simone rubbed the back of his neck. “Carlos asked if there was space in the box.”
Jannik’s grip stopped moving beneath his hand. The room seemed to narrow. Darren watched him carefully. Jannik looked down at the racket. The white overgrip was smooth under his thumb. He could feel his pulse there.
“What did you say?” he asked.
Simone’s voice was gentle, but there was amusement underneath.
“I said yes.”
Jannik looked up sharply.
“You said yes?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because there is space.”
“That is not why.”
Simone smiled faintly. “Because he asked politely.”
“Simone.”
“And because maybe if he is there, you stop wondering where he is.”
Jannik had no answer.
Darren leaned forward, elbows on knees. “Is that a problem?”
Carlos is in his box. Not in the crowd. Not in some hidden seat. In his box, beside his team, visible to cameras, visible to everyone who knew how to read proximity. A simple thing. An enormous thing. Jannik’s first feeling was panic. His second was something so warm it frightened him more.
Carlos had asked. Carlos had chosen to be there. Even after they had not spoken. Even after the uncertainty. Even scared. Jannik inhaled slowly.
“No,” he said. “It’s not a problem.”
Simone nodded. “Good.”
Darren’s mouth curved. “Then play tennis.”
Jannik finished wrapping the grip. Just the next ball. Except now, beyond the next ball, there would be Carlos. The walk onto the court felt different from the first step.
Madrid received him with warmth, though not the way it would receive Carlos. That was natural. This was Spain. This was a young Spanish opponent across the net. Rafa Jodar, nineteen years old, walked with the quick, electric tension of someone trying to look fearless while feeling everything. The crowd gave him a roar that seemed to lift him half an inch taller.
Jannik understood.
He had been young under lights. He had been the promise on the other side of someone established. He had felt the dangerous freedom of being underestimated and overobserved at the same time.
He looked across the court at Rafa and nodded. Then, before he could stop himself, his eyes moved toward his box. Darren. Simone. A few familiar faces. And Carlos.
He was seated slightly behind Simone, wearing a cap pulled low but not low enough to hide him from anyone who cared. His injured wrist rested in his lap. Jaime sat nearby, still carrying post-match energy, whispering something to Carlos that made him smile. But when Jannik looked over, Carlos’s attention was already on him.
Their eyes met across the space. Not long. Long enough. Carlos gave the smallest nod. Jannik turned away quickly. His heart hit once, hard. The umpire called time. The match began.
At first, everything was too loud inside him.
The crowd. The ball. The knowledge of Carlos in the box. The unfinished conversation. The memory of Carlos by the window saying, I almost didn’t come because I thought maybe it would be too real. Too real.
The first game was messy. Not disastrous. Jannik held, but only after deuce, after one mistimed backhand and one forehand, he overhit because his feet arrived too early and his mind too late. Rafa came out swinging. His forehand jumped in the Madrid air, heavy and brave. The crowd loved every forward step he took.
Jannik told himself: next ball. By the third game, tennis began to save him. It always did, eventually.
The geometry appeared. Patterns formed. Rafa’s backhand under pressure floated slightly shorter. His second serve kicked high but not deep enough. His eagerness opened space. Jannik took the ball early, flattened the backhand, moved him corner to corner. The first break came not as an explosion but as a tightening. Three strong returns. One long rally. A Rafa forehand pushed wide.
The crowd sighed. Jannik did not celebrate. He walked to the towel. As he turned, his eyes betrayed him again. Carlos was leaning forward now, elbows near his knees, watching with the focus of a player, not a spectator. No phone. No distraction. Just attention.
Jannik felt the look like a hand between his shoulder blades. The first set began to flow after that.
He moved better. Served sharper. Choose the right moments to attack. Rafa fought, but youth sometimes burns too bright and too fast. At 5-2, Jannik served for the set, landed two first serves, then won a twenty-shot rally that ended with a backhand down the line so clean the crowd applauded despite itself.
6-2.
He sat at the changeover, towel over his legs, breathing steady. Do not look. He looked. Carlos was smiling. Not broadly. Not triumphantly. Just proud. The kind of smile that made Jannik’s chest ache because it carried no demand. It did not say win for me. It said I see you. The second set was different.
Rafa stopped playing like a nineteen-year-old overwhelmed by occasion and started playing like a nineteen-year-old with nothing to lose. He swung freer. Returned deeper. Used the crowd. At 2-2, he saved a break point with a forehand so reckless and brilliant that even Jannik almost smiled. At 3-3, Jannik faced two break points after a loose service game and a double fault that made Simone sit forward sharply.
For the first time in the entire match, the unfinished things returned. Carlos is in the box. Carlos was not talking last night.Carlos sees him. Carlos is leaving soon, maybe. Carlos, with his injured wrist, was unable to play, watching Jannik do what he wanted most. Jannik bounced the ball.
Once. Twice. The court blurred at the edges. Then he heard Darren’s voice, not spoken aloud but stored inside him. The problem is just the next ball. He served wide. Ace. The crowd murmured.
Second break point. Longer rally. Rafa attacked the forehand. Jannik defended deep, then deeper, then changed direction with the backhand at the exact moment Rafa leaned the wrong way. Winner. He did not look at Carlos. He did not need to. He held.
The set went to a tiebreak.
Madrid was loud now. Hungry for the young Spaniard to push the match further, hungry for drama, hungry for proof that the next generation could trouble the present one. Rafa bounced on his toes at the baseline, eyes bright, jaw tight. Jannik stood still.
Something in him became very quiet. The tiebreak was not close.
First point: return deep to Rafa’s feet, forced error. 1-0.
Second: first serve, forehand into the open court. 2-0.
Third: Rafa double-faulted, the crowd groaning. 3-0.
Fourth: Jannik read the drop shot before Rafa finished disguising it, sprinted forward, and lifted the ball crosscourt so softly it died near the sideline. 4-0.
By then, the noise had changed. The crowd was still loud, but now with recognition. They understood the door was closing. Jannik did not slam it. He simply kept stepping through.
5-0.
6-0.
Match point.
Rafa served. Jannik returned deep. The rally began neutral, then stretched. Forehand to forehand. Backhand crosscourt. Rafa changed direction first, bold, aiming down the line. The ball caught the tape, rose, fell short. Jannik moved in and finished with a clean forehand into the corner.
7-6.
Tiebreak: 7-0.
Match: 6-2, 7-6(0).
The applause came in waves. Jannik turned to the net. Rafa met him there with disappointment still hot in his face, but also pride, anger, youth. Jannik shook his hand firmly.
“Good match,” he said. “You played very bravely.”
Rafa nodded, breathing hard. “Thank you.”
“Keep going.”
The boy’s eyes flickered, surprised by the sincerity. “Good luck.”
Jannik nodded.
Then came the usual blur: wave to the crowd, on-court interview, praise for Rafa, talk about physical condition, mention the difficulty of the second set, make people laugh gently about Spanish lessons without saying anything dangerous. The whole time, he felt Carlos in the box like a second sun.
When it was over, Jannik packed his bag slowly. He allowed himself one glance. Carlos was standing now, clapping. Jaime is beside him. Simone said something to Carlos and Carlos smiled, but his eyes did not leave Jannik for long.
Jannik wanted to go to him immediately. He could not. There were routines. There were cameras. There was a walk-off court. There were signatures. There was the tunnel. There was the strange cruelty of public life: the person you wanted most could be twenty meters away and still unreachable. So Jannik walked.
The corridor swallowed him with its cooler air and artificial light. Staff congratulated him. A tournament official handed him something. Someone from the media asked for two minutes later. Darren caught up first, then Simone.
“Good,” Darren said.
Jannik nodded.
“Tiebreak was excellent,” Simone added.
“Thanks.”
Simone studied him. “You okay?”
“Yes.”
It was almost true.
His body was settling from match intensity into exhaustion. His mind, freed from the immediate structure of points, began to reach again toward everything unfinished. Carlos had been there. Carlos had watched from his box. Carlos had smiled. But they still had not talked.
“Go shower,” Darren said. “Then recovery.”
Jannik nodded again and headed toward the changing rooms. The locker room was half-empty when he entered.
Quiet, but not silent. Water ran somewhere behind tiled walls. A locker door clicked shut. Someone’s music played faintly from a phone, muffled and bass-heavy. The air carried the familiar mixture of sweat, soap, deodorant, damp towels, and the mineral ghost of clay.
Flavio Cobolli was already there. Of course he was.
He stood near his locker, shirt off, still laughing at something on his phone. His hair was damp at the temples, his match or practice clothes half discarded, towel slung low around his waist as he rummaged through his bag with the chaotic energy of a man who considered organization a personal insult.
When he saw Jannik, his face lit up.
“Winner!”
Jannik dropped his bag by his locker. “You are too loud.”
“I am celebrating you.”
“Celebrate quieter.”
Flavio threw a wristband at him. Jannik caught it without looking and threw it back.
“Nice tiebreak,” Flavio said. “Zero. Very rude.”
“I wanted to finish.”
“You looked like a man with somewhere to be.”
Jannik paused while unzipping his bag.
Flavio’s grin sharpened. “Ah.”
“No.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You were going to.”
“I was only smiling.”
“You smile with intention.”
Flavio laughed. “You learned this phrase and now you use it always.”
Jannik sat down heavily on the bench and began undoing his shoes. The relief of removing them was nearly spiritual. Clay dust fell lightly onto the floor. His socks were marked orange. His shirt clung to him unpleasantly, cold now where sweat had dried.
Flavio leaned against the locker beside him.
“So, Carlos in the box.”
Jannik kept his head down. “Yes.”
“Subtle.”
“Simone said there was space.”
“Simone is now your romantic manager.”
Jannik looked up. “Please never say that again.”
Flavio lifted both hands. “Okay. Emotional logistics coordinator.”
Jannik groaned. Flavio laughed, delighted with himself.
“Did you see him watching? Very serious. Like coach. But prettier.”
“Flavio.”
“What? This is a compliment.”
“To whom?”
“Everyone.”
Despite himself, Jannik smiled.
There was something easy about Flavio’s ridiculousness after a match. It pulled him back into his body, into the ordinary world of towels and jokes and sore legs. It kept the enormous feelings from consuming everything. Jannik needed that more than he would admit.
He pulled his shirt over his head and tossed it into the laundry bag. The air felt cool against his skin. He stood, unfastened his shorts, and changed into a towel with the practiced indifference of someone who had lived his adult life in locker rooms. Privacy in tennis existed differently. Bodies were functional here. Tools. Machines. Everyone was tired, everyone had tape marks, bruises, tan lines, scars, rituals.
Flavio was still talking as Jannik wrapped the towel around his waist.
“I’m telling you,” Flavio said, also adjusting his towel, “the best part was after the match. Carlos clapping like a proud husband.”
Jannik nearly slipped on his slide.
“Don’t say that.”
Flavio burst out laughing. “You almost died.”
“I will kill you.”
“You won’t. You are too happy.”
“I am not happy.”
“You are glowing.”
“I am sweating.”
“Same thing in romance.”
Jannik grabbed a clean towel and snapped it lightly at Flavio, who yelped and dodged, laughing. The sound bounced off the lockers. Jannik laughed too, the release sudden and helpless. For a few seconds, they were just two players in towels after a long day, too close because locker rooms were narrow, laughing because exhaustion made everything stupid and funny.
Flavio stepped around the bench toward the showers, still grinning.
“Come on, Romeo. Shower before your Spanish prince arrives.”
Jannik shoved his shoulder. “Stop.”
Flavio, dramatic as ever, stumbled back as if wounded, clutching his chest.
“He attacks me! After I support love!”
Jannik laughed again, reaching for his shower things. That was when the door opened. Carlos walked in. Everything stopped. He had entered quickly, as if he had followed instinct more than plan. His cap was still on, his expression open and searching. For the first half second, he looked relieved.
Then he saw them. Jannik, shirtless, towel around his waist, still smiling from laughter. Flavio, also in a towel, was close enough that the space between them looked smaller than it was. The aftermath of laughter still in the room. Too close. Too easy to misunderstand.
Carlos froze. His face changed so fast it broke something in Jannik.
The warmth drained first. Then the color. His eyes flicked from Jannik to Flavio, then back, and in that tiny movement, Jannik saw the whole terrible story Carlos had told himself before either of them could speak.
Not anger. Worse. Hurt. Shock. Embarrassment at having walked into something he thought he had no right to question.
“Carlos,” Jannik said immediately.
Carlos stepped back.
“No, sorry,” Carlos said. His voice was too light, too quick. “I didn’t-sorry.”
“It’s not-”
But Carlos was already turning.
“Carlos.”
The door swung shut behind him. For one second, Jannik could not move. The silence that followed was awful. Flavio stared at the closed door. Then, because Flavio was Flavio and disaster often reached him first as comedy, he started laughing. Not cruelly. Not fully understanding yet. A sharp, shocked laugh, one hand over his mouth.
“Oh my God,” he said. “He thought-”
Jannik turned on him.
“Don’t.”
The word came out harder than he intended. Flavio’s laughter died. The room seemed suddenly colder.
Jannik stood there, heart hammering, one hand still gripping his towel, shower gel forgotten on the bench. His mind replayed Carlos’s face with vicious precision. The way he had frozen. The way his eyes had dropped. The way he had run before being told he did not have to.
Flavio’s expression softened as understanding caught up with him.
“Jannik,” he said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean-”
“I know.”
But Jannik was already moving. He grabbed his phone from his bag, then remembered he was still only in a towel and cursed under his breath. Think. Shower. Dress. Find Carlos. His hands shook as he shoved the phone back down and headed toward the showers.
Flavio followed a step. “Do you want me to tell him? I can explain.”
“No.”
“Jannik-”
“No.” He turned back, panic making his voice sharp. “Not you. It will be worse.”
Flavio winced, but nodded. “Okay.”
Jannik forced himself into the shower.
The water hit hot and hard, and he washed like a man trying to outrun his own thoughts. Sweat, clay, shampoo, soap. His body wanted the usual routine: slow, careful, recovery-minded, but his mind was already outside the room, chasing Carlos down corridors.
What if Carlos left? What if he went back to his family, smiled through dinner, said nothing, and closed the door? What if this, this ridiculous accident, became the thing that confirmed every fear he had carried into Madrid?
Too real. Too vulnerable. Too dangerous.
Jannik pressed both hands against the tiled wall and lowered his head beneath the water. He should have talked to him last night. He should have found him before the match. He should have said something clear, something impossible to misunderstand, something that could survive one bad angle in a locker room. But he had waited.
They had both waited. And now Carlos had seen a picture without the story attached. Jannik shut off the water. He dried quickly, dressed faster than he ever had after a match, pulling on clean clothes while still damp enough that the fabric stuck awkwardly to his skin. Flavio hovered nearby, no longer joking.
“Jannik,” he said quietly.
Jannik shoved his feet into shoes. “What?”
“He cares. That’s why he reacted.”
Jannik stopped. The words landed hard. Flavio’s face was serious now, stripped of performance.
“If he didn’t care, he would make a joke. Or nothing. He ran because he cares and because he is scared.”
Jannik swallowed.
“I know,” he said.
That was the problem. His phone was in his hand before he reached the corridor. He opened Carlos’s chat.
Typed:
Jannik:
Carlos, that was not what it looked like.
He stared at it. Deleted it. Too cliché. Too guilty.
Typed:
Jannik:
Please let me explain.
Deleted. Too desperate. He called. No answer. He called again. No answer. His stomach tightened.
He texted:
Jannik:
Please. It was nothing. Flavio was joking. We were changing after the match. I need to talk to you.
The message delivered. No reply.
He stood in the corridor outside the locker room, clean and shaking, while staff moved around him with clipboards and badges. Someone congratulated him. He nodded without hearing. Somewhere, a camera waited for a post-match segment he had forgotten entirely.
Darren appeared at the end of the corridor. One look at Jannik’s face, and his expression changed.
“What happened?”
Jannik shook his head. “Carlos saw something. Misunderstood.”
Darren stepped closer. “What something?”
“Flavio and I were in the locker room. We were just laughing, changing. Towels. Nothing. Carlos came in and-” He stopped, throat tight. “He left.”
Darren exhaled slowly. “Ah.”
“I called. He won’t answer.”
Simone arrived behind Darren, concern sharpening his face.
“What?”
Darren explained in one sentence. Simone winced.
Jannik looked between them. “Do you know where he is?”
“No,” Simone said. “Maybe with his family.”
Jannik looked at his phone again. Nothing.
His mind moved frantically through options. Carlos’s team. Jaime. Tournament staff. But asking too widely would make it a story. The last thing Carlos needed was people searching for him because Jannik had panicked.
Then he remembered. Álvaro. Carlos’s brother.
Older, steadier, protective in the quiet way family members were when they had spent years watching someone beloved become public property. Jannik had spoken with him before, briefly at tournaments, always in passing. They were not close, but he had his number from an old group arrangement during an exhibition event, buried somewhere in his contacts.
He searched. Found it. His thumb hovered. Was it too much? No. Carlos running away with that face was too much. Jannik typed quickly.
Jannik:
Álvaro, it’s Jannik. I’m sorry to bother you. Do you know where Carlos is? He saw something in the locker room and misunderstood. I need to explain, but he is not answering. Please don’t make it big. I just need to know he is okay.
He sent it before fear could stop him. Then he waited. Thirty seconds. One minute. Two. Darren stayed nearby, silent. Simone put a hand briefly on Jannik’s shoulder, then removed it. Jannik stared at the phone until the screen blurred.
Finally, it buzzed.
Álvaro:
He is okay. Not with family now. Give me one minute.
Jannik breathed for the first time in what felt like ten minutes. Another message came soon after.
Álvaro:
He went back to the hotel. Basement pool area. He goes there when he needs quiet. Don’t tell many people.
Jannik closed his eyes. Relief and fear collided so strongly that his knees felt weak.
He typed:
Jannik:
Thank you. I won’t.
Álvaro replied:
Álvaro:
Be gentle. He is pretending not to care. That means he cares a lot.
Jannik stared at the message. Then he put the phone away.
“I know where he is,” he said.
Darren nodded. “Go.”
Jannik blinked. “Recovery-”
“Can wait twenty minutes.”
Simone gave him a look. “Maybe thirty.”
Jannik almost laughed, but it came out broken. Darren’s voice was firm.
“Listen. Fix the human thing. Then we fix the body.”
Jannik nodded once. He left. The ride back to the hotel felt endless.
Madrid passed outside the car windows in streaks of late afternoon gold and shadow. People moved along sidewalks unaware that inside the quiet tournament car, Jannik Sinner was unraveling over a misunderstanding in a locker room. The city had no idea. The city carried on. Couples crossed streets holding hands. A man walked a dog. A child in a tennis cap swung an imaginary racket near a bus stop.
Jannik’s phone remained silent. He did not message Carlos again.
Every instinct told him to explain, to fill the silence with proof. But another instinct, deeper and perhaps wiser, told him words on a screen would only crowd Carlos more. Carlos had run from what he had seen. Jannik needed to offer him a different sight, a real one, face to face.
The hotel lobby was cool and elegant, all marble and soft lighting. A few tournament guests turned as he entered. Someone recognized him and whispered. He kept his head down, moving quickly toward the elevators, then changed his mind and took the stairs down one level, then another, following signs toward the spa and pool.
The basement was quieter.
The air changed first. Warmer. Damp. Carrying chlorine, stone, and the faint mineral scent of heated water. The hallway lights were dimmer here, golden along the floor. His footsteps sounded too loud.
At the end of the corridor, glass doors opened into the pool area. Jannik stopped before entering. Through the glass, he saw him.
Carlos sat at the edge of the pool with his shoes off, feet near the water but not in it. His cap lay beside him. His injured wrist rested carefully on his knee. The pool lights painted shifting blue patterns across the ceiling and the side of his face. He looked younger without the stadium around him. Smaller, not in presence but in defense. Alone in a way that made Jannik’s chest hurt.
For a moment, Jannik only watched. Not because he wanted to spy. Because he needed to understand the cost of what had happened.
Carlos’s shoulders were slightly hunched. His gaze was fixed on the water, but Jannik doubted he was seeing it. Reflections moved over him like weather. The room was so quiet that even from behind the glass, Jannik could imagine the soft lap of water against tile.
He opened the door. Carlos did not turn immediately. Maybe he knew. Maybe he had heard the footsteps and chosen not to react. Jannik stepped inside. The humid air wrapped around him. He walked slowly, stopping several feet away.
“Carlos.”
Carlos’s jaw tightened. He did not look up.
“How did you know I was here?”
Jannik swallowed. “Álvaro.”
A bitter little smile touched Carlos’s mouth.
“Traitor.”
“He was worried.”
“I’m fine.”
Jannik’s heart twisted. That sentence again. Fine. The word athletes used when they were bleeding in places no one could tape.
“You’re not,” Jannik said softly.
Carlos let out a humorless breath. “You don’t know that.”
“Yes, I do.”
Now Carlos looked at him.
His eyes were bright, but not with tears exactly. With anger held back so tightly it had become strained. Hurt sat underneath, raw and humiliated. Jannik had seen Carlos frustrated on court, furious at missed chances, devastated after losses. But this was different. This was private hurt, and therefore more dangerous.
“You don’t get to know everything,” Carlos said.
The words struck hard.
Jannik nodded slowly. “You’re right.”
Carlos looked away first, as if Jannik's agreement had taken some force out of him. The water moved softly. Jannik stepped closer, but not too close.
“Can I explain?”
Carlos laughed once, low and painful. “Do you need to?”
“Yes.”
“Maybe I don’t want details.”
“There are no details.”
Carlos’s mouth tightened.
Jannik crouched a few feet away, lowering himself so they were closer to the same level. The tile was cool beneath his shoes. “It was Flavio. We were in the locker room after the match. He was already changing. I came in. We were joking. He said something stupid about you being in my box, and I laughed. That is all.”
Carlos stared at the water. Jannik continued, because stopping would be cowardice.
“We were both in towels because we were going to shower. That is normal in the locker room. It looked...” He exhaled. “I know how it looked. But it was nothing. He is my friend. That’s all.”
Carlos’s injured hand flexed slightly, then stilled.
“I know locker rooms,” he said.
“I know.”
“I’m not stupid.”
“I never thought you were.”
Carlos turned on him then, anger flashing.
“Then why are you explaining like I don’t understand towels and players and jokes?”
Jannik absorbed it. The anger was not really about towels.
“No,” he said quietly. “I am explaining because you ran before I could say your name twice.”
Carlos looked away. His breathing changed. Jannik waited. That was one thing tennis had taught him: not every point could be forced. Sometimes you had to stay in the rally, patient enough for the opening to come. Carlos spoke at last.
“I felt stupid.”
Jannik’s throat tightened.
Carlos laughed again, but this time it broke slightly.
“I walked in because I wanted to see you. Like an idiot. I thought maybe after your match we could talk, just for a minute. I knew it was probably not the right place. I knew you would be busy. But I saw you win, and you played so well, and I was...” He stopped, jaw working. “I was proud.”
Jannik closed his eyes briefly.
Carlos continued, quieter now. “And then I opened the door and you were laughing with him. And you looked happy. And I thought, what am I doing? Why am I here? Why did I think I had some right to walk in?”
“You did.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Yes,” Jannik said, firmer. “You did.”
Carlos shook his head. Jannik moved closer, then stopped again.
“Carlos. Look at me.”
For a moment, Carlos did not. Then he did. Jannik held his gaze.
“You had every right to come find me.”
Carlos’s expression crumpled for half a second before he controlled it.
“No,” he whispered. “Because we haven’t said what this is.”
The words hung between them, heavier than the humid air. There it was. The thing beneath everything.
They had confessed in fragments. They had flirted. They had admitted fear. They had said they liked each other. Carlos had sat in Jannik’s box. Jannik had glowed across a room when Carlos entered. Everyone around them had begun to understand.
But they had not said what this was. A beginning? A risk? A secret? A mistake? A hope?
Without a name, it had no shelter. Jannik sat down fully on the edge of the pool, leaving space between them. The water glowed blue at their feet.
“You’re right,” he said.
Carlos looked tired suddenly. “I hate when you say that.”
“Why?”
“Because then I have to keep being honest.”
Jannik smiled faintly, but it hurt. Carlos looked down at his wrist.
“When I saw you with him, I knew maybe it was nothing. In my head, I knew. But in my chest...” He pressed his good hand briefly there, frustrated. “It was awful. Like everything fell. And then I was ashamed because I have no right to be jealous. No right to be hurt. No right to expect anything.”
Jannik’s voice was low. “You have the right.”
Carlos turned to him.
“If it hurts you, it matters,” Jannik said. “Even if we are still learning what to call it.”
Carlos looked at him for a long time. The pool reflected in his eyes.
“And you?” Carlos asked.
“What about me?”
“If it were me,” Carlos said, voice barely steady. “If you walked in and saw me laughing like that with someone else.”
Jannik did not answer immediately. He could have lied. He could have been noble. He could have said he would understand, because it was normal. After all, they were athletes, because jealousy was childish. Instead, he looked at the water.
“I would hate it,” he said.
Carlos inhaled.
Jannik continued. “I would tell myself it was nothing. I would be calm outside. Maybe. But inside, yes. I would hate it.”
Carlos’s eyes softened with something like relief and pain combined.
“Good,” he whispered, then immediately winced. “No. Not good. I don’t want you to hurt.”
“I know what you mean.”
Carlos looked at him. For the first time since Jannik had entered, the anger between them thinned enough for tenderness to breathe. Jannik placed his hands loosely between his knees.
“I’m sorry you saw that and felt alone.”
Carlos looked away.
“I’m sorry I didn’t find you last night,” Jannik said.
Carlos shook his head. “It was not your fault. My family-”
“I still could have tried.”
“We both could have.”
“Yes.”
The admission settled quietly. For a while, they listened to the pool.
Somewhere above them, the hotel lived brightly. Elevators moved. Guests ordered drinks. Madrid carried on. But down here, beneath the polished surface of the world, they sat at the edge of blue water with all their unfinished things, finally unable to escape.
Carlos spoke first.
“Your match was very good.”
Jannik let out a breath that was almost a laugh.
“Now?”
“I wanted to say it.”
“You ran away before.”
Carlos looked embarrassed. “Yes.”
“You can say it now.”
Carlos’s mouth curved faintly. “First set was very controlled. In the second set, he played better. You were tight for one game.”
Jannik glanced at him. “Only one?”
“Maybe two.”
“Generous.”
“I am always generous.”
Jannik huffed softly.
Carlos continued, more serious, “The tiebreak was...” He searched for the word. “Cold.”
Jannik raised an eyebrow.
“In a good way,” Carlos added. “Like you closed every door.”
“That sounds very friendly.”
“It was impressive.”
Jannik’s chest warmed.
“Thank you.”
Carlos looked down at the water. “I liked being in your box.”
The sentence was quiet, almost shy. Jannik turned toward him.
“You did?”
“Yes.”
“You looked nervous.”
“I was.”
“Why?”
Carlos gave him a look. “Because it was your box.”
Jannik did not smile, though he wanted to. The answer deserved care.
“I liked you there,” he said.
Carlos’s eyes lifted.
“I played better,” Jannik added.
Carlos’s face softened. “Because you wanted to impress me?”
Jannik remembered saying that on the phone.
“Yes.”
Carlos swallowed. The silence that followed felt warmer than before. Jannik shifted slightly, close enough now that their shoulders were less than a foot apart. He did not touch him. Not yet.
“I don’t want you to feel like you have no right,” Jannik said. “To come find me. To be hurt. To ask. To be jealous even, maybe.”
Carlos looked at him carefully.
“But I also don’t want us to become afraid of every misunderstanding,” Jannik continued. “This life is...locker rooms, travel, people, cameras, friends. Things will look strange sometimes. People will say things. We need to talk before running.”
Carlos gave a small, pained smile. “That was directed at me.”
“Yes.”
“Fair.”
“And I need to be clearer,” Jannik said.
Carlos’s expression shifted. Jannik’s heart began to beat harder, but he did not stop. He had spent too many hours almost saying things. It was almost becoming dangerous.
“I like you,” he said. “Not as a joke. Not only messages. Not only because you watched my match or because everyone thinks it is funny. I like you in a way that makes me scared.”
Carlos became very still. Jannik looked at him fully.
“I don’t know what we can be,” he admitted. “I don’t know how to do this with tennis, with people watching, with your injury, with my schedule, with everything. But I know I don’t want you to walk away thinking you imagined it.”
Carlos’s mouth parted slightly. The water moved. Jannik’s voice softened.
“You didn’t imagine it.”
Carlos closed his eyes. For a second, Jannik thought he might cry. He did not. But something in his face loosened, some hard defensive line giving way. When Carlos opened his eyes again, they were brighter.
“I was so embarrassed,” he whispered.
“I know.”
“I thought Flavio would laugh.”
“He did.”
Carlos made a wounded sound.
Jannik quickly added, “At first. Because he is Flavio. Then he felt bad.”
Carlos covered his face with his good hand.
“I hate this.”
Jannik smiled gently. “He also said you care.”
Carlos peeked through his fingers.
“He said that?”
“Yes.”
“Flavio is too smart sometimes.”
“Only by accident.”
Carlos laughed. It was small, but it was real. Jannik felt something inside him unclench. Carlos lowered his hand and looked at him, the humor fading into vulnerability again.
“I don’t like feeling jealous.”
“No one does.”
“It makes me feel...not myself.”
Jannik tilted his head. “Maybe it is also you.”
Carlos frowned.
“Not the ugly part,” Jannik said. “The caring part.”
Carlos looked at him as if the idea hurt.
Jannik continued, “On court, you feel everything. Joy, anger, crowd, momentum. You don’t hide it. People love that in you.”
“That is tennis.”
“Maybe you are like that off court too.”
Carlos stared at the pool. “That sounds exhausting.”
“It can be beautiful.”
Carlos looked back at him. The words had landed. Jannik saw them enter, saw Carlos struggle not to turn away from them.
“You think so?” Carlos asked.
“Yes.”
“Even when I run away?”
Jannik’s smile became sad. “Maybe don’t make that your main strategy.”
Carlos laughed again, softer.
“I’ll try.”
“That’s all I ask.”
Carlos was quiet for a moment.
Then he said, “I like you too.”
Jannik had read those words on his phone. With an 'it' tho. Hearing them was different. They entered the air between them and became real in a new way, no longer letters but breath.
Carlos continued, voice low. “Not because of rivalry. Not because people make edits. Not because everyone jokes. I liked you before I understood what it was. Maybe that is why it took so long.”
Jannik could not move. Carlos looked down, shy now but determined.
“I liked how serious you are and how you pretend not to be funny. I liked that you listened. I liked that when I lose, you don’t say stupid things to make me feel better. You just look like you know. I liked that when I play well against you, you are angry but also happy because the tennis was good.”
Jannik’s throat tightened. Carlos’s smile trembled.
“I liked you too much, maybe. So I called it respect.”
Jannik looked away because the emotion rose too quickly. The pool lights blurred.
Carlos whispered, “Jannik?”
“I’m here.”
“You okay?”
Jannik laughed quietly, pressing his fingers against his eyes for a second.
“Yes.”
“You do not look okay.”
“I am very okay. That is the problem.”
Carlos smiled. For a while, neither spoke. Then Jannik placed his hand on the tile between them, palm down. Not touching Carlos. Offering. Carlos looked at it. His breath changed.
Slowly, carefully, he placed his left hand beside Jannik’s. Their fingers did not interlace. Not yet. But their hands touched at the edges, little finger against little finger, knuckle against warmth.
It was almost nothing. It was too much. Carlos stared at their hands as he had never seen hands before. Jannik looked at him.
“Is this okay?”
Carlos nodded.
“Words,” Jannik murmured.
Carlos swallowed. “Yes. It’s okay.”
Their fingers shifted. This time, Carlos moved first. He hooked his little finger around Jannik’s. A tiny, childish gesture. A promise small enough to hide. Jannik’s heart broke open around it.
Above them, somewhere beyond concrete and hotel marble, Madrid’s night deepened. Tomorrow would bring more practice, more cameras, more questions. Jaime would play again or recover from playing. Carlos’s wrist would still need patience. Jannik’s next opponent would already be preparing. The world would not become easier because two people had finally said something true beside a basement pool.
But for this moment, the world narrowed kindly. Blue light. Quiet water. Their hands are touching. Carlos breathed out.
“I’m sorry I ran,” he said.
“I’m sorry I made you feel you had to.”
Carlos shook his head. “You didn’t.”
“Maybe not. But I don’t want to be careless with you.”
Carlos looked at him then, eyes soft and startled. The words seemed to move through him slowly.
“Careless,” he repeated.
“No.”
Carlos’s voice lowered. “And what do you want to be?”
Jannik looked at their hands.
He thought of match points. Of press rooms. Of Carlos’s face when he entered the private room. Of jealousy, laughter, fear. Of mornings with messages and evenings without conversations. Of everyone seeing before they had allowed themselves to know.
He answered honestly.
“Brave,” he said.
Carlos’s fingers tightened around his.
“Me too,” he whispered.
Jannik smiled faintly. “You ran away today.”
“I said me too. I didn’t say I am already good at it.”
The laugh left Jannik before he could stop it. Carlos smiled, and this time the smile stayed.
After a moment, Carlos leaned slightly against him. Not fully. Just shoulder to shoulder. Enough to be real. Enough to be felt. Jannik allowed himself to lean back. They sat like that at the edge of the pool, two athletes trained to chase everything, finally learning the courage of staying.
⊹₊˚‧︵‿₊୨ᰔ୧₊‿︵‧˚₊⊹
The message arrived while Jannik was still sitting on the edge of the bed in his hotel room, one shoe on, one shoe off, towel-damp hair falling into his eyes. For once, he was not holding the phone. It lay beside him on the blanket, screen dark, innocent-looking, as though it had not spent the past three days turning his life inside out.
His body was tired in the deep, settled way that came after a match, a panic, a shower too fast, a chase through a hotel, and a conversation beside blue-lit water that had left him feeling both lighter and more breakable than before. His legs ached. His shoulder was heavy. His mind, though, refused to rest.
Carlos’s little finger around his. Carlos saying, I liked you too much, maybe. So I called it respect. Carlos leaning against him at the pool, like staying was something they could practice.
Jannik had replayed the moment so many times that it had begun to feel unreal, like a scene from someone else’s life, too tender to belong to him. But the warmth remained in his hand. Not physically, not exactly. More like memory had taken up residence beneath the skin.
The phone buzzed. Jannik looked down.
Carlos:
Are you busy tonight?
His heart reacted before his brain did. He picked up the phone too quickly, then forced himself to breathe.
Jannik:
I have recovery and dinner.
A pause.
Carlos:
Dinner with the team?
Jannik looked toward the door of his room, as though Darren or Simone might be standing outside, ready to supervise his emotional choices.
Jannik:
Not arranged yet.
The typing dots appeared. Disappeared. Appeared again. Jannik’s pulse climbed.
Carlos:
Do you want to have dinner with me?
Jannik stared.
The words were simple. So simple they almost looked harmless. But they shifted the air in the room completely. Dinner with me. Not by accident. Not in a group. Not with family. Not with teams pretending not to watch. The thing they had avoided naming all day had arrived in a message with no decoration.
Another message came before he could answer.
Carlos:
Like a date.
Jannik’s breath stopped. He read it once. Twice. A third time, as if the letters might rearrange themselves into something safer. They did not. Like a date.
He imagined Carlos typing it, deleting it, typing it again. He imagined the blush rising in his cheeks, the determined set of his mouth, the bravery it must have taken after the misunderstanding, after jealousy, after confessing fear beside the pool. Carlos, who had run from the locker room but had come back to the truth faster than either of them expected. Carlos, who was scared and still asking.
Jannik pressed his thumb against the edge of the phone. He wanted to say yes immediately. He wanted to call. He wanted to make a joke because tenderness without humor felt like standing too close to a flame.
He typed:
Jannik:
Very direct.
Carlos answered quickly.
Carlos:
I learned from you.
Jannik smiled.
Jannik:
Dangerous.
Carlos:
Yes.
Then:
Carlos:
So?
Jannik leaned back on one hand, looking at the screen, feeling something inside him open again. A date. The word was almost absurd in their world. Dates belonged to people with evenings off, people who could sit in restaurants without being photographed, people whose names did not trend because they corrected an interviewer about a language app.
But maybe a date could also be two players walking carefully into the same small risk. Maybe it could be dinner after a day of almost losing each other to misunderstanding. Maybe it could be a choice.
He typed:
Jannik:
Yes.
Then, after a second:
Jannik:
Like a date.
The reply came not in words, but in three dots that appeared and vanished several times, as if Carlos had suddenly forgotten every language.
Carlos:
Good.
Jannik laughed softly.
Jannik:
Very romantic.
Carlos:
I am panicking.
Jannik’s smile became tender.
Jannik:
Me too.
That seemed to steady them both.
The plan came together in fragments. Not too close to the hotel. Not too public. Not somewhere so hidden it looked suspicious. Carlos knew a restaurant because of course Carlos knew Madrid better, even if he was from Murcia and would complain if anyone suggested otherwise. A quiet place, he said. Good food. Private enough.
Jannik changed three times and hated himself for it.
The first shirt felt too formal. The second too casual. The third was exactly like the first in a slightly different shade, which somehow made him angry. In the end, he wore dark trousers, a simple black shirt, and a light jacket. He looked at himself in the mirror and saw what everyone else probably saw: calm, controlled, almost severe.
Inside, he was a disaster. His phone buzzed again.
Carlos:
I’m leaving now.
Jannik answered:
Jannik:
Me too.
Then he stood there for another full minute, not moving. Because once he left the room, the date would become real.
A ridiculous thought, considering Carlos’s hand had been touching his hours earlier. Considering Carlos had sat in his box. Considering half the ATP had apparently been running a betting market on their emotional blindness.
Still. A date was different. A date had an intention. A date meant they were not simply being pulled by gravity anymore. They were stepping. So Jannik stepped. Madrid at night was impossible not to forgive.
The city held heat even after sunset, releasing it slowly from the stone and street. Lights spilled from restaurants and bars onto sidewalks. People walked in groups, laughing loudly, dressed beautifully, moving with the relaxed urgency of a place that believed the night was a second life. The car moved through narrow streets, past balconies and glowing signs, past couples leaning close outside tapas bars, past old buildings that looked golden under lamps.
Jannik watched through the window, hands folded loosely in his lap. He was early. Of course, he was early.
He arrived seven minutes before the time and stood outside the restaurant trying not to look like a man waiting for someone who mattered. The entrance was understated, tucked beneath a deep green awning, with warm light visible through frosted glass. A host inside glanced up, then away politely. Good. Discretion. Carlos had chosen well.
Then, from the corner, Carlos appeared. Jannik saw him before Carlos saw him.
He wore dark jeans, a white shirt open at the throat, and a brown jacket that made him look warm even before he smiled. His hair was slightly unruly, as if he had run his hand through it too many times on the way. His injured wrist was still protected but less obviously than earlier. He walked quickly, then slowed when he saw Jannik waiting.
For a moment, both of them stopped. The street moved around them. People passed. A motorbike hummed by. Somewhere nearby, someone laughed. Carlos smiled first. Shy. Bright. Jannik’s chest answered.
“You’re early,” Carlos said when he reached him.
“So are you.”
“I didn’t want you to wait.”
“I didn’t want you to wait.”
Carlos looked down, smiling. It was absurd how intimate politeness could become when both people understood the fear underneath.
“Hi,” Carlos said.
Jannik’s mouth curved. “Hi.”
They did not touch. They both noticed. Then Carlos tilted his head toward the restaurant.
“Shall we?”
“Yes.”
Inside, the restaurant was all low amber light, dark wood, white plates, and the comforting smell of garlic, olive oil, grilled fish, and warm bread. It was busy enough to soften attention, quiet enough for conversation. The host greeted Carlos with recognition he tried to hide and did well enough. They were led toward a table near the back, half-screened by plants and a curved wall.
It was perfect. Almost. Because as they followed the host through the restaurant, Jannik heard a voice. A very loud, very American voice.
“No, I’m telling you, if you order that and don’t share, that’s actually criminal.”
Jannik stopped walking. Carlos stopped beside him. They turned slowly.
At a large table near the far side of the room sat Ben Shelton, Jack Draper, Holger Rune and Flavio Cobolli. Of course. Of course.
Fate, having received the fragile offering of their first date, had apparently decided it needed more witnesses. Flavio saw them first. His face changed from casual amusement to divine revelation.
“Oh,” he said.
Too loudly. Ben turned. Jack followed. Holger looked over last, one eyebrow lifting. For one beautiful second, everyone froze. Then Ben grinned.
“No way.”
Carlos whispered, “No.”
Jannik closed his eyes. Flavio stood halfway from his chair, waving with both hands as though guiding a plane to land.
“Jannik! Carlos! Here!”
Jannik opened his eyes. “We can leave.”
Carlos, whose face was already warming, muttered, “Too late. They saw us.”
“Seeing is not legally binding.”
Ben called across the restaurant, “Don’t be rude, come say hi!”
The host looked between them, professional smile strained by curiosity. Jannik could feel Carlos beside him, tense with embarrassment and reluctant amusement.
“This is your city,” Jannik murmured. “You choose.”
Carlos looked at him, then at the others. Flavio was still waving. Jack looked apologetic. Ben looked delighted. Holger looked entertained in a way Jannik did not trust.
Carlos sighed. “Maybe just say hello.”
That was the first mistake. They approached.
Flavio immediately hugged Carlos with dramatic warmth, careful of the wrist, then hugged Jannik as if they had not seen each other two hours ago in the middle of a crisis he had helped create accidentally.
“Wonderful,” Flavio said. “Everyone is here.”
“No,” Jannik said. “This is not wonderful.”
Ben slapped the back of an empty chair. “Sit. We ordered too much food.”
“We have a table,” Carlos said.
“Cancel it,” Ben said. “This table has vibes.”
Jack gave Jannik a look that said, I am sorry, but not enough to stop this. Holger leaned back in his chair, smiling faintly.
“Come on. One dinner. We don’t bite.”
Flavio added, “Except Ben. But only emotionally.”
Ben pointed at him. “That’s fair.”
Carlos looked at Jannik. Jannik saw the question there: Do we run? Jannik should have said yes. He should have taken Carlos by the sleeve, thanked everyone politely, and gone to their quiet table where the date could remain a date.
Instead, perhaps because Carlos looked nervous and the others looked too expectant and the whole situation had already become ridiculous, Jannik shrugged.
“Maybe for a little,” he said.
Carlos stared at him. Just a little betrayed. Jannik mouthed, Sorry. Carlos sat. So did Jannik. The date immediately became a group dinner. Chaos began politely.
At first, it was survivable. Ben explained, with unnecessary volume, that they had come because Jack wanted proper food and Flavio had claimed he knew a place, then admitted he had simply followed Holger, who had chosen it because someone online said famous people went there and he found that funny.
“That is not why,” Holger said.
“It is exactly why,” Jack said.
“I wanted good food.”
“You wanted to be seen eating good food.”
Holger shrugged. “Maybe both.”
Flavio pointed at Jannik. “See? Both. Life is complex.”
Jannik groaned. “Not again.”
Carlos looked confused. “Why does everyone say this to you?”
“Because they are tormenting me.”
Ben leaned forward. “We prefer supporting.”
“No.”
“Support can look like torment.”
Carlos smiled into his water. Jannik saw it and felt better.
Food arrived in waves: bread with tomato, small plates of grilled vegetables, croquettes, jamón for those who wanted it, fish, rice, sauces, dishes Ben mispronounced with confidence and Carlos corrected with increasing horror. Jack tried to maintain order by suggesting they let Carlos explain the menu; Flavio interrupted every explanation with an unrelated story; Holger made dry comments that landed late but sharply.
For twenty minutes, it was almost easy.
Carlos relaxed. His shoulders lowered. He laughed when Ben tried to roll an r and failed so badly the waiter visibly suffered. He translated something for Jannik, leaning slightly closer, voice low near his ear.
Jannik, despite everything, began to think perhaps the night could still be saved. Then Flavio noticed something.
He looked from Carlos to Jannik. Then to the two untouched place settings at a small table near the back, still waiting. Then back again. His face lit slowly.
“Oh my God,” he said.
Jannik froze. Carlos paused mid-sip.
Jack looked at Flavio. “What?”
Flavio pointed at them, delighted and horrified.
“You were on a date.”
Silence. The table stopped. Ben’s mouth opened. Jack closed his eyes. Holger’s eyebrow went higher. Carlos choked. Jannik stared at Flavio with the cold fury of a man betrayed by a golden retriever.
“No,” Jannik said.
It was the wrong answer. Too fast. Too flat. Carlos looked at him.
Jannik corrected, “I mean-”
Ben slammed a hand lightly on the table.
“You were absolutely on a date.”
Carlos’s face had turned a spectacular shade of red. Flavio leaned back, clutching his chest.
“And we ruined it.”
Jack said, “You ruined it. I was sitting quietly.”
“You were present,” Flavio said.
“That’s not a crime.”
Ben was grinning so hard it looked painful. “Wait. This is your first date?”
Carlos covered his face with one hand.
Jannik said, “Ben.”
“What? This is historic.”
“It is dinner.”
Holger smiled. “Dinner can be a date.”
Jannik glared at him. “You too?”
Holger lifted his glass. “I’m Danish. We observe.”
Carlos lowered his hand and looked at Jannik.
“You said maybe for a little.”
Jannik winced. “I know.”
“This is not a little.”
“I know.”
Ben leaned toward Jack. “They’re fighting like a couple already.”
Jack muttered, “Do you want to die?”
Flavio looked emotional.
“I cannot believe we are here for this.”
“You were not invited,” Jannik said.
“That makes it more beautiful.”
Carlos’s embarrassment began turning into something else. Not anger exactly. A sharp, overwhelmed amusement that needed somewhere to go. He pointed at Jannik.
“You should have said no.”
“I was trying to be polite.”
“To them?” Carlos asked, incredulous.
Ben lifted a hand. “Rude.”
Carlos ignored him.
“You are always too polite in the worst moments.”
Jannik blinked. “I am?”
“Yes.”
Jack nodded. “Actually, he has a point.”
Jannik turned to him. “You are not involved.”
“I’m at the table.”
“That was your choice.”
“I regret nothing.”
Holger leaned back, enjoying himself.
“So it is a date.”
Carlos looked at him, still red. “It was supposed to be.”
The table erupted. Ben actually stood up halfway. Flavio made a sound of triumph. Jack laughed into both hands. Jannik stared at Carlos, stunned by the public honesty. Carlos seemed equally stunned by himself. Then he looked at Jannik, eyes wide, as though to say: I panicked.
Jannik’s heart softened instantly. He could not help smiling. Carlos saw the smile and looked down, embarrassed but pleased. That small exchange only made the others worse.
“Oh, come on,” Ben said. “Look at that. You two are impossible.”
Flavio leaned toward Carlos. “Do you know about the bet?”
Jannik’s blood went cold.
Jack said, “Flavio.”
Carlos turned slowly. “What bet?”
Jannik closed his eyes.
There were many ways the night could have gone. Quiet conversation. Nervous laughter. Maybe a walk afterward. Maybe a goodnight at the hotel elevator, full of unfinished promise. Instead, he was about to be publicly tried in a restaurant over a betting pool he had known about for less than two days.
Flavio, who understood no danger when storytelling was available, began.
“For years,” he said.
Carlos’s expression sharpened. “Years?”
Ben leaned back, laughing. “Oh, he didn’t know.”
Carlos looked at Jannik. Jannik opened his eyes. Carlos’s face was a perfect mixture of shock, betrayal, and fascination.
“You knew?” Carlos asked.
“I found out yesterday.”
“And you didn’t tell me?”
“I was going to.”
“When?”
Jannik hesitated. The table made various noises of judgment.
Carlos pointed at him. “No. Don’t make the face.”
“What face?”
“The one where you look innocent because you are quiet.”
Ben whispered, “Damn.”
Jack said, “He knows you.”
Jannik’s mouth opened, then closed.
Carlos turned to Flavio. “Explain.”
Jannik said, “Please don’t.”
Flavio said, “Gladly.”
What followed was less an explanation than a theatrical reconstruction.
Flavio described, with great emotion and questionable accuracy, how the player group had apparently observed “the slowest romantic awakening in ATP history.” Ben contributed categories that may or may not have existed: first meaningful look after a five-setter, first suspicious post-match hug, first press answer that sounded like poetry, first time one of them watched the other practice for longer than socially necessary. Jack tried to clarify that it had not been everyone, not officially, and definitely not as organized as Flavio made it sound.
Holger listened with increasing amusement. Carlos listened with increasing horror. Jannik slowly sank lower in his chair.
“They bet money?” Carlos asked.
“Not much,” Jack said.
Flavio said, “Some.”
Ben said, “I wasn’t in early enough. Big regret.”
Carlos stared at Jannik. “You knew all this yesterday?”
“Not all this.”
“But enough.”
“Yes.”
“And you didn’t tell me.”
Jannik leaned toward him. “We had other things happening.”
Carlos’s ears reddened. “That is not an excuse.”
“It is a good one.”
“No. I was jealous in a basement pool and you were keeping gambling secrets.”
Ben lost it. Jack covered his mouth. Flavio looked like he might ascend.
Holger murmured, “That is a strong sentence.”
Jannik pressed his fingers to his forehead.
“Carlos.”
Carlos folded his arms, wounded dignity somewhat undercut by the blush still on his face.
“No. I am schooling you now.”
“Schooling?”
“Yes. You should tell me when people are betting on our emotional stupidity.”
“Our?”
“Yes, our. I am not letting you be stupid alone.”
Jannik looked at him. The table quieted for half a second because the sentence, ridiculous as it was, had landed with unexpected tenderness. Carlos realized it too late and looked away.
Jannik’s voice softened. “I’m sorry.”
Carlos glanced back.
“I should have told you,” Jannik said. “I didn’t know how.”
Carlos studied him.
Then his mouth twitched. “Because you were embarrassed?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
“Good?”
“Yes. You should suffer a little.”
Ben whispered, “I love this man.”
Jannik looked at him. “Do not.”
The night became uncontrollable after that.
The teasing loosened into affection, the way it had at lunch, but louder, fueled by food and the relief of the secret being less secret among people who already knew. Carlos, once recovered from the shock, demanded details of the bet with the seriousness of a lawyer. Flavio supplied false statistics. Jack corrected him. Ben invented odds. Holger offered dry commentary.
“So who won?” Carlos asked.
Jannik groaned. “Why do you want to know?”
“Because maybe I want half.”
Ben laughed. “Businessman.”
Jack said, “Technically, no one wins until something is confirmed.”
Carlos’s eyes slid to Jannik. Jannik stared at his plate.
Flavio gasped. “Wait. Are we confirmed?”
“No,” Jannik said.
Carlos said nothing. That nothing was dangerous. Jannik looked at him. Carlos’s expression was unreadable, but his knee brushed Jannik’s under the table. Not by accident.
Jannik’s breath caught. Carlos took a sip of water as if innocent. Holger watched this with a faint smile. For the first time that night, Jannik noticed Holger watching Carlos.
Not rudely. Not obviously. But with a particular kind of interest. Holger had always possessed a sharp, competitive energy, even in conversation. He did not enter rooms like Ben, filling them. He occupied space with a cooler confidence, choosing when to speak, when to cut, when to smile. His attention could feel like a challenge.
Now, when Carlos turned to answer something Flavio said, Holger’s gaze lingered half a second too long. Carlos noticed. Of course, Carlos noticed. Carlos was emotional, not oblivious. Holger said something in Spanish then, unexpectedly good Spanish, though with an accent that made Carlos laugh. The laugh was bright, surprised.
Jannik looked down at his food. It was nothing. People flirted. People joked. Carlos was allowed to laugh at someone else. Jannik was not a jealous person. A memory answered immediately: I would hate it.
He took a drink. Across the table, Jack glanced at him. Jannik ignored that.
Dinner ended later than planned. Their abandoned private table had long been cleared. The restaurant had emptied around them, leaving only a few late diners and staff moving discreetly. Ben suggested dessert. Flavio suggested another place. Holger suggested a club nearby. Jack, who had been trying to preserve sanity, said they all had training or matches or lives tomorrow.
Ben said, “Exactly. That’s why we go now.”
Carlos hesitated.
Jannik saw the hesitation and thought, for one hopeful second, that maybe Carlos would say no. Maybe they would leave together. Maybe they would reclaim the date from the wreckage and walk back through Madrid slowly, laughing about their terrible luck.
Then Holger looked at Carlos and said, “Come on. You can dance with one good wrist.”
Carlos’s eyes narrowed playfully. “I can dance with no wrist.”
Holger smiled. “Prove it.”
The table reacted. Ben whooped. Flavio clapped. Jack looked at Jannik with sympathy so immediate it was almost insulting. Jannik smiled. He could do that. He could smile like it was fine.
“Disco?” Flavio said. “Yes. This is the correct ending.”
“It is not ending,” Ben said. “It is escalation.”
Carlos turned to Jannik. “You want to go?”
The question was sincere. Jannik could have said no.
If he had, Carlos might have stayed. Or he might not. Jannik did not want to find out. He also did not want to seem possessive, not after Carlos had already been embarrassed by jealousy earlier. He did not want to be the person who closed Carlos down just because Holger had made him laugh.
So he shrugged.
“If you want.”
Carlos studied him for a fraction too long.
“You sure?”
“Yes.”
Liar.
Carlos seemed to hear it anyway, but Ben was already standing, Flavio already calling for the bill, Holger already checking something on his phone. The decision carried them forward.
The club was close, tucked under another street, pulsing before they even reached the door. It was not enormous, not one of those overwhelming places built for tourists and bad decisions, but it was crowded enough, dark enough, full of light moving over faces and music pressing through the floor into the bones. They entered through a side door Holger apparently knew about, because Holger's knowing side doors suddenly felt inevitable.
Inside, the air was warm and dense, smelling of perfume, alcohol, smoke from somewhere outside clinging to clothes, and the electric heat of bodies moving together. Lights flashed blue, violet, gold. The music was not Jannik’s taste, which he suspected was part of the point. Ben loved it immediately. Flavio looked as though he had been born for this exact environment. Jack accepted his fate with a drink in hand.
Carlos changed in the club. Not completely. But visibly. He loosened.
The shyness from the restaurant, the embarrassment from the bet, the carefulness around Jannik: all of it blurred beneath music and movement. He smiled more freely. He spoke close to be heard. He let Ben pull him into a rhythm for half a song, laughing when Ben did something ridiculous with his shoulders. Flavio joined. Jack pretended not to know how to dance and then proved he did, badly but with commitment.
Jannik stood near the edge at first, arms folded, cap low, watching. He did not hate clubs. He simply did not trust places where no one could hear themselves think. Carlos looked over at him once, eyebrows raised, inviting. Jannik shook his head.
Carlos made a face at him. Jannik smiled. For a while, that was enough. Then Holger moved closer to Carlos.
It happened naturally. A shift in the circle. A song change. Ben is distracted by Flavio. Jack is speaking to someone near the bar. Holger stepped in with that cool half-smile, saying something near Carlos’s ear because the music demanded closeness. Carlos laughed. Again. Jannik looked away.
He studied the wall. The bottles behind the bar. The way condensation ran down his glass. Anything but Carlos’s hand briefly touching Holger’s shoulder for balance. Anything but Holger leaning in. Anything but Carlos moving with him, not provocatively at first, just dancing, just music, just bodies finding rhythm in a crowded room.
Nothing wrong. Nothing wrong. Nothing wrong. Jannik repeated it like a score. But his chest tightened anyway.
Holger was handsome. Confident. Unbothered. He did not look scared of what he wanted. Or if he was, he hid it better than Jannik did. Carlos responded to warmth, to challenge, to joy. Holger offered all three in a polished, dangerous way.
Jannik took a sip from his drink and tasted nothing. Jack appeared beside him.
“Mate.”
Jannik did not look at him. “What?”
Jack followed his gaze.
Carlos and Holger were dancing closer now. Not obscene. Not even necessarily serious. But enough that Flavio had noticed and was watching with the expression of someone enjoying a soap opera. Ben was too busy dancing with three strangers to be useful.
Jack leaned closer to be heard.
“Don’t make me lose such a stupid bet. Go take the boy.”
Jannik turned.
“What?”
Jack’s face was half-lit by the moving blue light. His expression was amused, but there was urgency beneath it.
“You heard me.”
“He is not a thing to take.”
“Oh my God,” Jack said. “Fine. Go speak to the emotionally significant Spanish man before Holger wins the subplot.”
Jannik looked back at Carlos. Carlos was smiling at something Holger said. His head tipped back slightly when he laughed. The light caught his throat, his jaw, the curve of his mouth. He looked alive. Beautifully, painfully alive.
“He can do what he wants,” Jannik said.
Jack stared at him. “That is not the point.”
“It is exactly the point.”
“No. The point is you are standing here pretending to be noble when actually you are jealous and terrified.”
Jannik’s jaw tightened. Jack softened slightly.
“I’m not saying drag him away. I’m saying don’t disappear inside your own head and then act surprised when he thinks you don’t care.”
The words hit harder than expected. Because Carlos had already thought that once today. In the locker room. At the pool. No right. No name. No claim. Jannik looked down.
“I don’t want to be like that,” he said.
“Like what?”
“Possessive.”
Jack nodded slowly. “Good. Don’t be. But wanting someone isn’t the same as owning them.”
Jannik said nothing. Jack took a drink.
“Also, for the record, Carlos has looked over here about seven times.”
Jannik’s eyes flicked up. Carlos was looking now. Their eyes met across the lights. For a second, the club fell away. Then Holger said something, and Carlos turned back. Jannik looked away first. Stubbornness rose inside him, hot and defensive.
“No,” he said.
Jack sighed. “You are exhausting.”
“I am calm.”
“You are a statue with anxiety.”
“I’m going to talk to Flavio.”
“That will not help.”
“It might.”
“It absolutely will not.”
Jannik ignored him. Flavio was near the side of the dance floor, glowing with sweat and happiness, holding a drink he seemed to have forgotten. He saw Jannik approaching and immediately opened his arms.
“Finally! You dance?”
“No.”
“You brood?”
“No.”
“You lie?”
“Yes.”
Flavio nodded. “Good. Progress.”
Jannik stood beside him, facing away from Carlos and Holger. The music pulsed through his back. He could still feel them behind him like weather. Flavio studied him, then surprisingly did not tease.
For once, he simply said, “You okay?”
Jannik stared ahead.
“No.”
Flavio nodded again, slower. “Because of Carlos and Holger?”
Jannik closed his eyes. “I am being stupid.”
“Yes.”
Jannik looked at him.
Flavio shrugged. “You said it first.”
“I don’t have the right to be jealous because someone dances with him.”
“Maybe not right. But feeling does not ask permission.”
Jannik hated that this sounded wise. Flavio leaned against the wall, his expression unusually gentle.
“You know Carlos is not doing it because of Holger.”
Jannik frowned. “What does that mean?”
“It means he is doing it because of you.”
Jannik turned fully toward him.
Flavio gestured vaguely toward the dance floor.
“He looks at you. You look away. He tries to make you come. You stay there like a sad mountain. So maybe he dances with someone who does not stand like a sad mountain.”
“I am not a sad mountain.”
“You are very tall, very quiet, very tragic. This is mountain behavior.”
Despite himself, Jannik almost smiled.
Flavio continued, softer, “He is scared too. Maybe he wants to see if you will come.”
“That is a game.”
“Yes.”
“I don’t like games.”
“You play tennis.”
“That is different.”
Flavio gave him a look. Jannik sighed.
“Maybe it is childish,” Flavio said. “But people are childish when they are scared. You, him, everyone. You both act as if you move first, you lose. But this is not tennis, Jannik.”
The words settled. This is not tennis. No scoreboard. No advantage. No opponent across a net. No clean rule for when to attack and when to wait. He could not win Carlos by patience alone. He could not protect them by refusing to move.
He looked over his shoulder. Carlos was still dancing with Holger. But now his smile had changed. It was still there, but thinner. Performed. His eyes flicked toward Jannik again and caught him looking. This time, Jannik did not look away.
Carlos’s expression shifted. Question. Challenge. Hurt. Want. Holger said something. Carlos did not respond immediately. Jannik’s feet remained rooted.
Flavio groaned. “Go.”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because if he wants to talk, he can come.”
Flavio stared at him. “You are both idiots.”
“Yes.”
“You admit it?”
“I am tired.”
“Then go to sleep with dignity.”
Jannik gave him a look.
Flavio grinned. “Not like that. I mean emotionally.”
Jannik shook his head, but a laugh escaped. For several minutes, he and Flavio simply talked. Not about Carlos. Not directly.
About Rafa Jodar’s forehand. About Madrid's altitude. About how Ben danced like he was trying to intimidate gravity. About Holger knowing the side doors. About Flavio’s theory that hotel pillows were designed by people who hated athletes. It was ridiculous and grounding. Flavio, for all his chaos, had a gift for staying near someone without demanding they bleed on command. Jannik began to breathe again.
Then he felt it. A tug. Not on his sleeve. On the back of his cape. Firm. Sudden. He turned, startled. Carlos stood behind him. No smile. No softness. His eyes were dark under the club lights, jaw set, cheeks flushed from dancing or anger or both. His fingers were still gripping the back of Jannik’s cape.
For one second, neither spoke. Flavio’s mouth opened. Carlos did not look at him. He simply tugged again. Not hard enough to hurt. Hard enough to command. Jannik, astonished, let himself be pulled one step. Carlos released the cape only to grab his wrist, not the injured hand, the good one closing around Jannik with decisive heat, and turned toward the exit. Jannik followed.
Behind them, Flavio said, “Finally.”
Jack, somewhere nearby, laughed and shouted,
“Thank God!”
Ben yelled something unintelligible. Holger watched from the dance floor, expression unreadable but faintly amused. Carlos did not turn back. Neither did Jannik.
They moved through the club without speaking. Through lights, bodies, music, heat. Carlos’s grip remained around his wrist, not painful, not gentle. Certain. Jannik could have stopped him. Could have asked where they were going. Could have made a joke.
He did none of these things. The air outside struck cool against his face.
Madrid’s night opened around them, wide and dark and alive. The music dulled behind the door, becoming bass through the walls. Carlos kept walking, still holding Jannik’s wrist, past a small line of people waiting to enter, past a man smoking near the curb, past a couple arguing softly in Spanish.
A black car waited near the corner. Maybe Carlos had ordered it. Maybe someone from his team had. Maybe fate had finally decided to be useful. Carlos opened the back door and got in. Jannik followed. The door closed. Silence.
Not complete silence: the city moved outside, the engine started, the driver confirmed the hotel softly in Spanish, but between them, there were no words. Carlos sat on one side of the back seat, Jannik on the other. Their knees did not touch. Carlos looked out his window. Jannik looked at Carlos’s reflection in the glass. The club lights had left color in his face. His hair was a mess. His mouth was pressed tight, but his breathing was unsteady.
Jannik wanted to speak. He did not.
Something about Carlos’s silence forbade easy explanations. Not because he was punishing him. Because whatever had happened in the club had moved beyond teasing, beyond jealousy, beyond Holger, beyond the ruined date and the stupid bet and everyone laughing around them.
Carlos had pulled him out. Jannik had followed. That was the conversation for now. The car moved through Madrid.
Streetlights passed over Carlos’s face in gold intervals. Light, shadow, light, shadow. Each flash revealed another piece of him: the tension in his jaw, the curve of his throat, the hand resting on his thigh, fingers flexing once as though remembering the back of Jannik’s cap.
Jannik’s wrist still felt warm where Carlos had held it. He looked down at it. Then out the window. The city blurred. No one spoke. When they reached the hotel, Carlos got out first. Jannik followed.
The lobby was quieter now, polished and dim, with only a few late guests and staff moving like ghosts. Carlos did not look back to see if Jannik was behind him. He seemed to know. They crossed the marble floor, entered the elevator, and stood side by side facing the closing doors.
The mirror inside reflected them. Two athletes. Two rivals. Two idiots, Flavio would say. Jannik looked at Carlos in the reflection. Carlos stared straight ahead. His face was still flushed. His mouth is still firm. But beneath it, Jannik saw the same fear from the pool. The same vulnerability. The same question wearing a different disguise.
The elevator rose. One floor. Two. Three. Neither spoke. The doors opened.
Carlos stepped out.
Jannik followed down the quiet hallway, past identical doors and soft carpet that swallowed their footsteps. Carlos stopped outside his room, took out the key card, and held it for a moment without using it.
For the first time since pulling Jannik from the club, he looked back. His eyes met Jannik’s. Everything unsaid stood between them. The date that had not been a date. The bet. The jealousy. Holger. Jack’s warning. Flavio’s wisdom. The cap tug. The silent car.
Carlos’s hand shook slightly as he tapped the key card to the lock. The light turned green. The door opened. Carlos stepped inside. Jannik followed him into the room. And the door closed behind them.
⊹₊˚‧︵‿₊୨ᰔ୧₊‿︵‧˚₊⊹
The door closed behind them with a soft click. For a moment, neither of them moved.
The hotel room was dim except for one lamp near the window and the faint spill of city light through half-open curtains. Madrid glittered beyond the glass, restless and gold, indifferent to the two men standing just inside the doorway with too much unsaid between them.
Carlos walked in first. Not far. Only a few steps. Then he stopped, his back to Jannik, shoulders tight beneath his jacket. His breathing was controlled in the way breathing became controlled when it was not calm at all. Jannik stayed near the door.
He could still feel the club on him. The heat. The bass. Carlos’s fingers are gripping the back of his cape. The sudden pull. The silence in the car. The elevator mirror reflects two faces pretending not to break.
Carlos crossed to the small table near the wall, grabbed a bottle of water, and turned.
“Here,” he said.
He held it out. Jannik looked at the bottle, then at him.
It was such a Carlos thing to do that it almost hurt. Furious, jealous, clearly seconds from exploding—and still giving him water because Jannik had played a match that afternoon, because athletes knew bodies had needs even when hearts were being impossible.
Jannik took it.
“Thank you.”
Carlos looked away sharply, as if politeness had insulted him.
“Don’t.”
Jannik paused, fingers around the bottle. “Don’t what?”
“Don’t say thank you like we are normal.”
The first shot. Clean. Hard. Jannik felt it land. He unscrewed the cap slowly, not because he was thirsty, but because he needed one ordinary movement before answering.
“We are not normal?”
Carlos laughed once, without humor. “Are you serious?”
“No. I am asking.”
Carlos stepped closer. “You are always asking like that. Like if you ask calmly enough, nothing is happening.”
Jannik’s jaw tightened. There it was. The match is starting. Not tennis. Not exactly. But close enough.
Carlos attacked first. Jannik defended by going still. That was their pattern. Carlos with emotion like a forehand struck early, loud and dangerous. Jannik with silence like a backhand down the line, flat and controlled enough to look cold.
“I came to the club with you,” Jannik said.
Carlos’s eyes flashed. “No. You came with everyone.”
“You invited them?”
“I did not invite them.”
“You agreed to sit.”
“So did you.”
“You said maybe for a little,” Carlos snapped.
“And you said yes.”
Carlos stared at him, furious because it was true. Jannik took a drink of water. Carlos watched the movement as if even that irritated him.
“Do you know what tonight was supposed to be?” Carlos asked.
Jannik lowered the bottle. “Yes.”
“Do you?”
“Yes, Carlos.”
“Our first date,” Carlos said, voice sharp enough to cut. “I asked you. I was nervous. I asked like an idiot by message because I couldn’t say it to your face yet. And then we sit with Ben and Jack and Flavio and Holger like it is some players’ dinner.”
“I know.”
“No, you don’t know, because you sat down.”
“You also sat down.”
Carlos’s mouth parted, angry, wounded. “Because you did.”
Jannik looked at him. That was the second shot, and it went deeper. Carlos kept going, words gathering speed now.
“I looked at you. You shrugged. Like it didn’t matter.”
“It mattered.”
“Then why did you shrug?”
“Because I didn’t want to make it more obvious.”
Carlos laughed again, bitter this time.
“More obvious? Jannik, they knew before we arrived. Everyone knows before us, apparently.”
Jannik’s hand tightened around the bottle.
“You are angry about the bet.”
“Yes, I am angry about the bet.”
“I found out yesterday.”
“And you didn’t tell me.”
“We had other things to talk about.”
“But we didn’t talk,” Carlos shot back.
Jannik went still. Carlos’s chest rose and fell. There it was. The center.
They had not talked after the private room. They had almost lost each other after the locker room. They had repaired something at the pool, yes, but even that had been fragile, a bridge built quickly because the river had risen. They had not sat calmly and said: this is what I want. This is what I fear. This is what we are.
They had let longing carry them. Now longing was turning on them.
“You could have told me,” Carlos said, lower now. “At the pool. In a message. In the car. Any time.”
“You were upset.”
“Yes. And you decided what I could handle?”
Jannik’s anger rose then, sudden and hot.
“No,” he said. “I decided not to throw one more thing at you while you were sitting by a pool because you thought I was with Flavio.”
Carlos’s face changed.
“Don’t say it like that.”
“How should I say it?”
“Like you understand why I was hurt.”
“I do understand.”
“No,” Carlos said. “You explain. You understand with your head. Not here.”
He touched his chest once, hard. Jannik looked at the place where his hand had landed. Something in him pulled tight.
“You think I don’t feel?” he asked.
Carlos’s silence was answer enough.
Jannik laughed softly, but there was no amusement in it.
“Good.”
Carlos narrowed his eyes. “What?”
“Good. So this is what you think.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t need to.”
Carlos stepped closer.
“You hide everything. You stand there with your calm face and make me feel crazy because I am the only one reacting.”
“I am reacting now.”
“Yes, finally.”
“And you don’t like it.”
Carlos’s eyes burned. “No, I do not like it when you act like you don’t care and then punish me for believing you.”
The sentence hit so hard that Jannik had to look away. He put the water bottle on the table carefully. Too carefully. Carlos saw it.
“See?” Carlos said. “Even now. Everything controlled.”
Jannik turned back, anger moving through him with frightening clarity.
“You want uncontrolled?” he asked.
Carlos lifted his chin. “Maybe I want honesty.”
“I watched you dance with Holger.”
Carlos froze. The name landed between them like a ball struck into the body. Jannik continued before he could stop himself.
“I watched you laugh with him. Lean close. Let him talk in your ear.”
Carlos stared at him.
“So don’t tell me I don’t react,” Jannik said, voice low. “I reacted. I just didn’t drag you away from him in front of everyone.”
Carlos’s eyes widened slightly.
“There,” he said.
“What?”
“There it is.”
“What?”
“You were jealous.”
Jannik’s mouth closed.
Carlos stepped nearer. “You were jealous.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t need to.”
Jannik almost hated him for using his own words against him. Carlos’s anger shifted now, mixing with something else, something bright and dangerous.
“You stood there like ice,” Carlos said. “I looked at you and you looked away.”
“Because I did not want to play games.”
Carlos’s face flushed. “It was not a game.”
“It looked like one.”
“You think I wanted Holger?”
Jannik’s jaw tightened. Carlos saw it and laughed once, incredulous.
“You do.”
“I think you wanted me to watch.”
Carlos stopped. Silence.
There was no music now, no Ben shouting, no Flavio laughing, no Jack intervening before disaster. Only the hotel room, the lamp, the hum of air, and the two of them standing close enough for anger to feel like touch.
Carlos swallowed.
“And if I did?” he asked.
The words were quiet. Terrible. Jannik felt his pulse in his throat.
“Then that was cruel,” he said.
Carlos flinched. For the first time, the anger broke enough for hurt to show.
“I wanted you to come,” Carlos said. “Not to own me. Not to make a scene. Just to come.”
Jannik looked at him, breathing hard.
Carlos’s voice shook. “Jack came to you. I saw him. Flavio talked to you. I saw that too. Everyone came to you except me, because I was waiting to see if you would choose me without me asking again.”
Jannik’s anger faltered. Carlos looked away, embarrassed by his own honesty, but too angry to retreat now.
“And then you didn’t,” he said.
Jannik closed his eyes. The accusation entered him slowly because it was not entirely fair, but it was not entirely wrong either.
“I thought I was giving you freedom,” he said.
Carlos looked back. “You were giving yourself an excuse.”
Jannik opened his eyes. That one was a winner. Clean down the line. He felt it and had no return ready. Carlos moved past him, then turned sharply, restless, unable to stand still.
“And then you talk about Holger like you didn’t have Emma smiling at you last night.”
Jannik blinked. “Emma?”
“Yes, Emma.”
“She was just talking.”
“She was flirting.”
“You were not even there at first.”
“I saw enough.”
“She flirts with everyone like that.”
Carlos’s eyes flashed. “Ah, okay. So when Emma does it, it is nothing. When Holger does it, it is cruel.”
Jannik’s anger came back.
“That is not what I said.”
“It is what you mean.”
“No. What I mean is I did not dance with Emma while you watched.”
Carlos stepped toward him.
“Because you didn’t have to. You already had her attention.”
Jannik stared. Carlos seemed to realize what he had revealed only after saying it. His mouth closed. Jannik’s voice dropped.
“How long?”
Carlos looked away.
“How long have you been jealous of Emma?”
Carlos laughed, defensive. “I am not jealous of Emma.”
“Liar.”
Carlos looked at him sharply. The word hung there, familiar now, dangerous in this new tone.
Jannik stepped closer. “How long?”
Carlos’s jaw moved.
“Carlos.”
“I don’t know,” Carlos snapped. “Maybe whenever she looked at you like she wanted to discover something private.”
Jannik’s breath caught. Carlos kept going, reckless now.
“And you smiled. You always smiled politely. Like you did not notice. But you noticed. Of course, you noticed.”
“She is my friend.”
“I know.”
“Then why are you angry?”
“Because I am stupid,” Carlos shouted. “Because I watched you with people for years and told myself it didn’t matter because you were not mine.”
The room went silent. Jannik’s anger changed shape. Not gone. Transformed. Carlos stood there, chest heaving, eyes bright, as if he had thrown his racket and only now realized the whole stadium had seen. Jannik’s voice was quiet.
“And Anna?”
Carlos went still.
The name opened another door.
Not Emma’s light teasing. Not Holger’s club flirtation. Anna was different. Anna was real history. A relationship. A woman Jannik had cared about, walked beside, been photographed with, spoken of carefully when asked. A life that had existed while Carlos’s feelings, if they had been there, had no place to go.
Carlos’s face hardened, but the hurt underneath was immediate.
“Don’t.”
Jannik did not let him escape.
“You were jealous then too?”
Carlos turned away. “You had a girlfriend.”
“Yes.”
“So no. I was not jealous. I had no right.”
“That is not an answer.”
Carlos spun back.
“What do you want me to say? That I hated seeing her touch your arm? That I hated hearing people ask if you were happy with her? That I hated myself more because you were happy and I wanted to be a good person?”
Jannik absorbed each word as if struck. Carlos’s voice cracked but did not break.
“I told myself it was normal. You were my rival. My friend. You were allowed to love someone. Of course you were. I wanted you to be happy. I did. But there were times I saw you with her and I felt like I had missed a train I didn’t even know I was waiting for.”
Jannik could not speak.
Carlos laughed bitterly at himself. “There. Are you satisfied?”
“No.”
“No?”
“No,” Jannik said. “Because now I know you were suffering and saying nothing.”
Carlos’s eyes widened. “What was I supposed to say? Hello, Jannik, I think maybe I like you, while you have a girlfriend?”
Jannik flinched.
“No,” he said quietly.
Carlos rubbed both hands over his face, careful with the injured wrist, then dropped them.
“I hated it,” he admitted. “Not her. Never her. She didn’t do anything. I hated the feeling. I hated that I could be jealous of someone kind. I hated that I still wanted to beat you on court and then wanted to be the person you looked for after.”
Jannik looked down. The words scraped against memories he had locked away because they had been inconvenient at the time. Carlos, after the matches, is too bright. Carlos avoiding his eyes when Anna was nearby. Carlos sending messages about tennis and nothing else. Carlos laughing too loudly with other people at events where Jannik had arrived with someone else.
Years. Not obvious in the moment. Obvious now. Jannik pressed his fingers against his forehead. Carlos’s voice was lower when he spoke again.
“And you? Don’t act innocent.”
Jannik looked up.
Carlos stepped closer. “You think I didn’t see you when Emma joked with me? Or when people around me touched me? Or when someone asked me out in front of everyone as a joke and you suddenly became quiet?”
Jannik said nothing.
Carlos’s smile was sharp and wounded. “There. You see?”
Jannik’s silence became admission.
Carlos moved even closer. “You were jealous too.”
Jannik’s eyes lifted to his.
“Yes,” he said.
Carlos stopped. The word was plain. No defense. No elegance. Yes. Jannik continued, because if the night had become a battlefield, he was tired of hiding behind the baseline.
“I was jealous of Emma when she made you laugh in London. I was jealous of people who could touch you without thinking. I was jealous of your friends when they sat beside you after matches and knew how you were really feeling. I was jealous of your family because they could take care of you when you were hurt.”
Carlos’s expression changed completely. Jannik’s voice roughened.
“And when you flirted tonight with Holger, yes, I hated it. I hated that he could make you move when I was standing still, being proud of myself for not caring.”
Carlos stared at him. Jannik swallowed.
“I cared.”
The room seemed to hold its breath. Carlos’s anger did not vanish, but it trembled.
“You should have come,” he said.
“You should have asked.”
“I did. By looking at you.”
“I am not always good at reading looks in a club.”
Carlos gave a short, disbelieving laugh. “You read my serve better than that.”
Despite everything, Jannik almost smiled.
Carlos saw it and shook his head. “Don’t.”
“I’m not.”
“You are.”
“You are impossible.”
“So are you.”
The argument shifted again, like a rally changing direction. Still fast, still sharp, but now something else moved underneath it. Recognition. Relief. The awful pleasure of finally saying the ugly things and discovering the other person had carried matching wounds. Jannik stepped back, suddenly overwhelmed.
“I should go.”
Carlos’s face changed. “What?”
“I should go.”
“No.”
“This is too much.”
Carlos laughed harshly. “Of course. Now you leave.”
Jannik turned toward the door.
“I am not leaving forever.”
Carlos followed. “That is what people say when they leave.”
Jannik reached the door and put his hand on the handle. For a second, the cold metal grounded him. He needed air. Distance. A hallway. A place where Carlos was not close enough to undo him. They were both too angry. Too honest. Too full of years, they had not known how to name.
Behind him, Carlos said, “If you open that door, I swear-”
Jannik turned his head. “What?”
Carlos stood a few feet away, eyes fierce.
“What will you do?”
“I don’t know,” Carlos said. “But don’t.”
Jannik’s hand stayed on the handle.
“Carlos.”
“No.” Carlos stepped closer. “You don’t get to say all that and then leave because it scares you.”
“It should scare me.”
“It scares me too.”
“That is why I am leaving.”
“That is why you stay.”
The words struck deep. Jannik closed his eyes.
Carlos moved closer still. “You always want to be careful.”
“Yes.”
“Careful is not the same as brave.”
Jannik turned fully then, hand still on the door.
Carlos was close enough now that the argument had no room to expand, only intensify. His face was flushed, eyes bright, hair messy from the club, breathing unsteady. He looked furious. He looked hurt. He looked alive in a way that made Jannik’s control feel like paper.
“Do not lecture me about brave,” Jannik said.
Carlos’s chin lifted. “Why? Because you win tiebreaks?”
“Because I came here.”
“I pulled you here.”
“And I followed.”
Carlos faltered.
Jannik stepped away from the door now, anger returning with heat.
“I followed you out of the club. I followed you into the car. I followed you into this room. I am here. Stop acting like you are the only one risking something.”
Carlos’s eyes searched his face.
“You think this is easy for me?” Jannik asked. “You think I enjoy everyone knowing before we do? You think I enjoy watching you flirt because I am too afraid to move? You think I enjoy wanting something I cannot control?”
Carlos’s voice dropped. “You want me?”
Jannik stared at him. The question was not soft. It was not innocent. It was a challenge thrown across the smallest possible distance. Jannik’s answer came low.
“Yes.”
Carlos’s breath changed.
For one suspended moment, the fight became something else without ceasing to be a fight. The anger did not disappear. It sharpened. Focused. The air between them charged so heavily it felt almost visible.
Carlos looked at Jannik’s mouth. Only once. Only for a fraction of a second. Jannik saw it.
He saw, too, the way Carlos’s body betrayed the same storm his face was trying to master: the restless shift of weight, the clenched hands, the pulse visible at his throat, the heat of emotion rising through him with nowhere left to go.
Jannik’s voice lowered dangerously.
“You are very angry for someone who wanted me to come after you.”
Carlos’s eyes snapped back to his. “Do not start.”
“I think I already did.”
“You are so arrogant.”
“No,” Jannik said. “I am observant.”
Carlos stepped into his space.
“Then observe this,” he said. “I am still mad.”
“I know.”
“I should not want to kiss you right now.”
Jannik stopped breathing. Carlos looked just as shocked by his own words as Jannik felt hearing them. There was no taking them back. Jannik’s anger, his fear, his jealousy; all of it moved at once, gathering in his chest until it became almost unbearable.
“No,” Jannik said quietly. “You should not.”
Carlos’s eyes burned.
“But you do?” Jannik asked.
Carlos swallowed. His voice was rough.
“Yes.”
Jannik’s last restraint trembled. They stood close enough now that one of them only had to give up. Neither did. They fought even in silence. Eyes locked. Breathing hard. Two players waiting for the other to blink, to miss, to leave a ball short.
Carlos broke first, but not by surrendering. He moved. Fast. One hand gripped the front of Jannik’s jacket, pulling him down at the same time Jannik stepped forward, and then there was no space left between them.
The kiss was not gentle. It could not have been.
There was too much anger in it, too much waiting, too many years of pretending rivalry was only rivalry, respect only respect, jealousy only irritation, admiration only tennis. It crashed into them with the force of something older than language. Not polished. Not careful. Not the cautious almost-touch of fingers by a pool.
This was instinct.
Carlos kissed like he argued: all fire, all demand, all feeling arriving before permission and somehow still asking for everything. Jannik answered like he played when pushed to the edge: precise until precision failed, controlled until control became impossible, then suddenly ruthless with need.
The world narrowed to contact. To Carlos’s hand still gripping his jacket. To Jannik’s palm finding Carlos’s waist and stopping there as if the body had finally learned the shape of the truth. To break the breath between them. To the small, furious sound Carlos made when Jannik pulled back half an inch.
“No,” Carlos whispered against his mouth.
It was not a plea. It was a command. Jannik obeyed. The second kiss was worse. Or better.
It emptied the room of every other thing. The club, the bet, Holger, Emma, Anna, Flavio laughing, Jack’s warning, Ben’s shouting, the cameras, the press room, the match, the score, the names people had given them before they had named themselves: all of it burned away.
There was only Carlos. Warm. Angry. Real. Jannik felt as though something had been torn open in him and flooded with light. He had thought kissing Carlos would answer a question. It did not. It destroyed the question.
There was no what is this while Carlos’s mouth was on his. No rivalry. No fear. No careful sentence. Only the terrifying recognition of how badly they had wanted and how long they had survived not knowing what to do with it.
Carlos pulled back first, but only enough to breathe. His forehead rested against Jannik’s. Both of them stood there shaking. Not dramatically. Not visibly to anyone else. But to each other, yes.
Carlos’s eyes were closed. Jannik’s hand was still at his waist, fingers tense against fabric. For several seconds, neither spoke. Then Carlos opened his eyes. The anger was still there. So was fear. So was something new and enormous.
Jannik looked at him and understood, with a force that nearly hurt, that they had not solved anything. They had not fixed the jealousy. They had not decided what to tell people. They had not reclaimed the ruined date. They had not made the world safer. They had only crossed a line. And now there was no pretending they had not seen the other side.
Carlos’s voice was barely audible.
“I am still mad at you.”
Jannik’s breath left him in something almost like a laugh.
“I am still mad at you too.”
Carlos’s mouth curved for the first time since the door had closed. Small. Dangerous. Tender beneath the fire.
“Good,” he whispered.
Jannik looked at his mouth again. Carlos noticed. This time, neither of them argued. At least not with words.
⊹₊˚‧︵‿₊୨ᰔ୧₊‿︵‧˚₊⊹
Morning entered the room slowly.
It did not arrive all at once, not like stadium lights snapping on or the sudden white glare of cameras. It came in thin gold lines through the curtains, soft at first, touching the carpet, the edge of a chair, the scattered clothes near the door, the half-empty bottle of water on the bedside table. Outside, Madrid was already awake. The city hummed beyond the glass, distant and bright, but inside the hotel room, everything felt suspended, held in the fragile quiet after something irreversible.
Jannik slept on his stomach, one arm under the pillow, his hair a mess against the white sheets. For once, he did not look like a player.
Not like a world-class athlete. Not like a man built from discipline, repetition, training, and impossible calm. He looked young. Unarmored. Human in the softest way, face turned slightly to one side, breathing deep and even, the tension that usually lived between his shoulders finally loosened.
Carlos woke before him. For a while, he did not move. He lay on his side and watched Jannik sleep. That felt dangerous in itself.
More dangerous than the argument. More dangerous than the kiss. More dangerous, even, than pulling him out of the club with no plan except the certainty that he could not stand watching Jannik stand there pretending not to care.
This was quieter. And quiet things could be worse.
Carlos had known Jannik in motion first. Across nets. Across courts. Across years of comparison neither of them had asked for, but both had learned to carry. He knew the shape of Jannik’s serve, the way his backhand traveled so flat it seemed to cut the air open, the way he walked between points with his head slightly down as if listening to something internal and severe. He knew Jannik’s match face. His press face. His polite dinner face. His embarrassed face, which Carlos had quickly become addicted to provoking.
But this face, the sleeping one, felt like something given by accident. No cameras. No crowd. No point to win. Carlos swallowed. His heart, unhelpfully, decided to ache. Last night had not solved everything. That was the first thing he knew.
They had fought. Really fought. Not the playful kind, not the teasing that lived between rivals who enjoyed making each other uncomfortable. They had cut too close. Said too much. Almost ended a thing before it had even been allowed to begin. Jannik’s hand had been on the door. Carlos could still see it: those long fingers curled around the handle, the decision almost made. He had hated that sight so much that he had stopped him with anger because anger was easier than begging.
Then the kiss. Carlos closed his eyes for a second, memory moving through him like heat. The kiss had not answered everything either. It had only made lying impossible. Now morning had come, and the truth was still here, breathing beside him. Jannik shifted slightly, still asleep.
Carlos looked at the line of his back beneath the sheet, the curve of his shoulder, the faint red mark near the base of his neck from where his shirt had rubbed after the match. There was so much care stored in Carlos suddenly that it had nowhere to go.
So he moved closer. Slowly. Carefully. He pressed the first kiss to Jannik’s shoulder blade. Jannik did not wake.
Carlos smiled faintly and kissed him again, lower this time, a soft, lingering touch between warmth and apology. He did not know what language this was. Maybe the only one they were any good at this early in the morning: not Spanish, not Italian, not English, but contact. A way to say, I am still here. I did not leave. Please don’t leave either.
He kissed the slope of Jannik’s shoulder, the middle of his back, the place where muscles shifted under skin when Jannik breathed in. Gentle. Reverent. Almost shy, despite everything. Jannik stirred.
“Carlos,” he murmured, voice rough with sleep.
Carlos froze. “Sorry.”
Jannik’s eyes stayed closed. “Don’t stop.”
The words were barely audible. Carlos’s chest tightened. He kissed him again. Jannik exhaled into the pillow, one hand moving blindly until it found Carlos’s wrist. Not gripping. Just touching, as if making sure he was real.
“Good morning,” Carlos whispered.
Jannik turned his head slightly, enough to show one half-open eye. “You wake everyone like this?”
Carlos smiled. “Only people I fought with for one hour and kissed after.”
“That is a very specific category.”
“Yes.”
“How many people?”
Carlos pretended to think. Jannik’s eyes opened properly.
Carlos laughed. “One.”
“Good answer.”
“I am learning.”
Jannik rolled onto his back slowly, sleep still clinging to him. His hair fell over his forehead, and he looked at Carlos with the kind of softness that made Carlos forget every clever thing he had ever planned to say. For a second, neither moved. The room held them. Then Jannik lifted one hand and brushed his fingers lightly along Carlos’s cheek. It was such a small touch. Carlos almost turned into it.
“You stayed,” Jannik said.
Carlos tried to make a joke. Nothing came. So he answered honestly.
“Yes.”
Jannik nodded once, as if some private fear inside him had settled.
“I thought maybe you would wake up and be mad again,” Carlos said.
Jannik’s mouth curved. “I am still a little mad.”
Carlos smiled. “Me too.”
“Good.”
Carlos laughed softly. “We said that last night.”
“It was true then too.”
The silence that followed was not awkward. It was full, but no longer sharp. Last night’s anger had burned through the room like fire through dry grass. What remained now was smoke, warmth, and the strange exposed earth beneath. They had not become simple overnight. They had not become safe. But they had become more honest.
Jannik’s hand slipped from Carlos’s cheek to the back of his neck. Carlos went willingly. Their first kiss of the morning was nothing like the first kiss of the night before. That one had been in a collision. A storm. Years breaking their teeth on each other. This one was slower.
Jannik kissed him like he was checking if Carlos was still there. Carlos answered like he was afraid the slightest wrong move might wake them both from a dream. Their mouths met, parted, found each other again. Once. Twice. Then again, because stopping felt like losing the thread of something they had only just begun to understand.
Carlos smiled against him. Jannik noticed.
“What?” he murmured.
“Nothing.”
“Liar.”
Carlos’s smile widened. “You say that too much.”
“You lie too much.”
“I was thinking.”
“That is dangerous.”
“I was thinking,” Carlos continued, “that yesterday morning you were pretending you did not care if I came to Madrid.”
Jannik looked at him. “I never pretended that.”
“You did.”
“I failed.”
“Yes.”
“Then it was not pretending.”
Carlos laughed, and Jannik kissed the laugh before it could escape. After that, they did not speak for a while.
Some kisses felt like punctuation. Small, soft commas between breaths. Others felt like questions. Others like apologies, neither man knew how to phrase without ruining them. They kissed lazily at first, then with sudden urgency, then broke apart laughing because Carlos’s injured wrist complained when he leaned the wrong way, and Jannik immediately became serious.
“Careful.”
Carlos rolled his eyes. “I am not made of glass.”
“No. But your wrist is annoying.”
“My wrist is healing.”
“Then let it heal.”
Carlos narrowed his eyes. “Bossy.”
“Yes.”
“I forgot this about you.”
“You forgot nothing.”
Carlos smiled. “No.”
There was tenderness in the way Jannik adjusted his position without saying much, making space, keeping Carlos from putting weight where he should not. It was not dramatic. It was not even something many people would notice. But Carlos noticed that because care had a texture, Jannik’s care was practical. Quiet. Almost hidden until you realized he had rearranged the world an inch to make it easier for you to exist inside it.
Eventually, the morning forced itself upon them.
Phones buzzed. Schedules returned. Bodies remembered they belonged to athletes, not lovers in a room outside time. Jannik had recovered. Carlos had to check in with Jaime and Álvaro. Lunch had been mentioned the night before in some vague, disastrous group chat that apparently now included half the people who had witnessed their emotional collapse in stages.
Carlos reached for his phone first. He made a face.
“What?” Jannik asked.
“Messages.”
“From?”
“Álvaro. Jaime. Ben. Flavio.” Carlos paused. “Jack.”
Jannik groaned and covered his eyes. Carlos sat up, scrolling. His expression changed from confusion to horror to reluctant amusement.
“What?” Jannik asked again, lowering his hand.
Carlos cleared his throat. “Ben says, ‘Hope you two survived the hostage extraction.’”
Jannik stared at the ceiling. “I hate him.”
“Flavio sent fifteen voice notes.”
“Delete them.”
“I cannot. What if they are evidence?”
“Of what?”
“Our emotional crimes.”
Jannik laughed. Carlos looked at him then, really looked, and the laughter inside him softened into something else.
Jannik caught the shift. “What?”
“You laugh more now.”
The sentence was simple, but it landed heavily. Jannik looked away.
Carlos regretted it immediately. “Sorry. I didn’t mean-”
“No,” Jannik said. “It’s okay.”
The quiet returned, gentler now. Jannik sat up too, sheets falling to his waist, hair wild, face still marked by sleep and feeling. He looked toward the window.
“I think maybe I was laughing before,” he said slowly. “Just not where people could hear.”
Carlos watched him.
“Do you want people to hear?”
Jannik looked back. There it was again. The question underneath every question. Not lunch. Not jokes. Not teammates. Not even kissing. Visibility. How much. How fast. How dangerous.
Jannik answered carefully. “I don’t know yet.”
Carlos nodded. There was no disappointment on his face, not exactly, but there was fear. Jannik saw it. He reached for Carlos’s hand. Carlos let him.
“I don’t want to hide you because I am ashamed,” Jannik said.
Carlos’s fingers tightened around his.
“I know,” Carlos whispered.
“I am not ashamed.”
“I know.”
“I just-”
“You are careful,” Carlos said.
Jannik smiled faintly. “You hate this word.”
“Sometimes.”
“And you are impulsive.”
Carlos lifted his chin. “Sometimes.”
“So maybe we meet in the middle.”
Carlos looked at their hands.
“What is the middle?”
Jannik considered. Then he leaned forward and kissed him once. Softly. Openly. In the morning light.
“That,” he said.
Carlos’s smile arrived slowly.
“Good middle.”
“Very diplomatic.”
“Very Italian.”
“Not everything is Italian.”
Carlos kissed him again. “This is.”
They showered separately in theory and together in practice only because neither of them seemed capable of staying away for longer than thirty seconds.
There was nothing polished about it. They bumped elbows, reaching for shampoo. Carlos nearly slipped and blamed the hotel floor. Jannik accused him of moving too fast. Carlos accused Jannik of having no romance in his safety instructions. Jannik kissed him quietly against the steam-fogged glass and then immediately told him again to be careful with his wrist.
“You cannot kiss me like that and then talk like a physio,” Carlos complained.
“I can do both.”
“You are impossible.”
“You like it.”
Carlos paused. Jannik smiled.
Carlos muttered, “Unfortunately.”
They kissed again. And again. By the time they finally dressed, they were late.
Not catastrophically late. Just late enough that Jannik became visibly stressed and Carlos found this adorable, which made Jannik more stressed. Carlos wore a clean shirt and jacket from his own room after disappearing briefly down the hall, then returned because apparently leaving once had already become too long.
Jannik was tying his shoes when Carlos knocked and entered without waiting.
“You cannot just come in.”
Carlos closed the door behind him. “I did knock.”
“You did not wait.”
“I am impatient.”
“I noticed.”
Carlos leaned against the wall, watching him.
Jannik glanced up. “What?”
Carlos shook his head. “Nothing.”
Jannik stood. “You are doing the face.”
“What face?”
“The one where you think something emotional and pretend it is nothing.”
Carlos laughed. “That is your face.”
“Now it is yours too.”
Carlos stepped closer. They kissed by the door. Then again, in the hallway, which was a bad idea because anyone could appear. So, of course, someone did. A housekeeping staff member turned the corner, saw them too close, and immediately became fascinated by the carpet. Carlos stepped back, red.
Jannik whispered, “Careful.”
Carlos whispered back, “Middle.”
Jannik almost smiled. Lunch was in a private room at the hotel restaurant, which should have made things easier. It did not. By the time Jannik and Carlos arrived, the table was already full of people with too much energy and not enough mercy.
Darren sat near one end with Simone beside him, both looking suspiciously composed. Álvaro sat beside Jaime, both of them talking quietly until they saw Carlos enter. Flavio was already halfway through a bread basket. Jack sat with coffee, looking like a man who had decided to enjoy the disaster from a safe distance. Ben occupied more space than his chair strictly allowed. Holger sat near the middle, calm, unreadable and unfortunately elegant.
Jannik noticed him immediately. He tried not to. Failed. Carlos noticed Jannik noticing. Before anyone could speak, before jealousy could rise into anything stupid, Carlos reached down and took Jannik’s hand.
Not dramatically. Not high in the air. Just their fingers together at their sides, visible enough to those looking, hidden enough from the doorway. Jannik went still. Carlos looked ahead, face red but determined. The table saw. Of course, the table saw. Silence fell for exactly one second. Then Flavio inhaled as if preparing to scream.
Jack pointed at him. “Don’t.”
Flavio held up one finger, trembling with effort.
Ben’s grin spread slowly. “Well, well, well.”
Carlos muttered, “Maybe we should leave.”
Jannik squeezed his hand. “Too late.”
Álvaro looked from their joined hands to Carlos’s face and smiled with the deep satisfaction of an older brother who had known more than he had said. Jaime’s eyes went enormous, then delighted. Darren looked at Simone. Simone looked at Darren. Both of them had the expressions of men receiving confirmation of whether they had predicted.
Holger raised his glass slightly. “Good morning.”
Jannik gave him a look. Holger smiled. Carlos squeezed Jannik’s hand once, warning and reassurance at once. They sat. Unfortunately, sitting meant letting go.
Carlos solved this by choosing the chair directly beside Jannik and resting his knee against his under the table. Jannik did not look at him. He did not need to. Lunch began with extraordinary restraint. For almost five minutes, everyone behaved like adults.
Food was ordered. Jaime talked about his match and how strange it had felt to play with Carlos watching. Darren asked thoughtful questions. Simone discussed practice timing. Álvaro asked Jannik if recovery after yesterday’s match had gone well, his tone polite but his eyes amused. Carlos ate bread and avoided looking at Flavio, who appeared to be physically vibrating.
Then Ben ruined everything.
“So,” he said, leaning back with a grin. “Last night.”
Jannik put down his fork. Carlos closed his eyes. Darren looked up. Simone looked interested.
Ben continued, “I just want to say, I have seen a lot of exits in my life. Dramatic exits, angry exits, Irish exits. But Carlos pulling Jannik out of a club by the cape? That was cinema.”
Darren’s eyebrows rose. Simone slowly turned to Jannik. Jannik stared at Ben. Carlos covered his face. Flavio slammed both hands on the table.
“I forgot the cape!”
Jack sighed. “How did you forget? It was the main visual.”
Jaime leaned forward. “What cape?”
Álvaro began laughing silently.
Darren set his water glass down. “Carlos pulled him out by the cape?”
Ben nodded enthusiastically. “Like he was retrieving luggage.”
Carlos groaned. “Please stop.”
Simone looked at Jannik. “And you followed?”
Jannik’s face heated. “Apparently.”
“Apparently?” Darren asked.
“It happened quickly.”
Flavio pointed at Carlos. “He was fierce. Very Spanish. Very dramatic.”
Carlos lowered his hand and glared at him.
“You are Italian. Do not talk to me about dramatic.”
Flavio clutched his chest. “This is a cultural attack.”
Jack added, “To be fair, Carlos looked like he was about to start a duel.”
Holger spoke lazily. “He had reason.”
The table shifted. Jannik’s eyes moved to Holger. Holger looked back, smiling faintly. Carlos stiffened beside him.
The memory of the dance flickered: Carlos laughing close to Holger, Jannik standing like a statue with anxiety, Jack telling him not to lose a stupid bet. Jannik’s mood dipped before he could stop it. Carlos felt it.
Under the table, his hand found Jannik’s. Not on top. Not where everyone could immediately see. Just beneath the tablecloth, warm fingers sliding into his. Jannik looked at him. Carlos did not look back at first. He kept his eyes on Ben, pretending nothing had happened. But his thumb moved once against Jannik’s knuckles.
Jannik breathed out. The jealousy did not disappear, but it lost its teeth. Ben, unaware or pretending to be, kept going.
“I mean, we all thought maybe there would be a conversation, right? Like adults. But no. Carlos said, ‘Absolutely not, this Italian is coming with me.’”
“I am not Italian when it is convenient for jokes,” Jannik said.
“You are always Italian when it is funny,” Ben replied.
Darren was still looking between them. “And then?”
Jannik’s eyes widened.
“And then nothing.”
It was the wrong answer again. Too fast. Simone smiled slowly.
Carlos whispered, “You are terrible at this.”
Jannik whispered back, “Help me.”
Carlos, without thinking, turned and kissed him. It was not a polite kiss. Not a peck that could be laughed away.
It was quick, yes, but fierce enough to silence the entire table. Carlos caught Jannik by the side of the face, leaned in, and kissed him with the same sudden courage that had pulled him out of the club. No hesitation. No explanation. A flash of heat and certainty in the middle of bread, water glasses, coaches, brothers, friends, and all the people who had been waiting for them to stop pretending.
Jannik froze for half a second. Then he kissed back. Not long. Long enough. They separated. The room was silent.
Carlos blinked, as if only now realizing where they were. Jannik stared at him, stunned. Then slowly, very slowly, both of them turned toward the table. Everyone was looking at them. Darren’s mouth was slightly open. Simone looked like a man witnessing a tactical breakthrough. Álvaro had one hand over his face, shoulders shaking. Jaime looked like he had just watched his favorite film ending live. Jack stared at the ceiling, smiling. Ben’s grin was so wide it seemed impossible. Holger lifted both eyebrows, impressed.
Flavio stood. Literally stood. He pushed his chair back with a scrape and threw both arms into the air.
“I won!”
Half the table erupted.
Carlos’s face went crimson. “Flavio!”
“I won!” Flavio shouted again, pointing around the table. “Carlos did the first move! Carlos! Not Jannik! Pay me!”
Jack burst out laughing. “Sit down!”
“No! History must recognize me!”
Ben slapped the table. “Wait, that counts? That was the first public kiss!”
“It absolutely counts!” Flavio declared.
Darren leaned toward Simone. “There was a category?”
Simone, without missing a beat, said, “Apparently several.”
Jannik closed his eyes.
Carlos whispered, “I am going to die.”
Jannik whispered back, “You started it.”
“I was helping you.”
“You kissed me in front of my coaches.”
Carlos looked at him, horrified. “I forgot.”
“You forgot Darren?”
Carlos glanced at Darren, who was now laughing quietly into his napkin.
“Yes.”
Darren lifted a hand.
“Don’t mind me.”
Simone said, “Too late for that.”
Álvaro finally lowered his hand and looked at Carlos with brotherly cruelty.
“Mamá is going to hear about this.”
Carlos pointed at him. “No.”
Jaime grinned. “She already knows everything.”
Carlos turned to him. “What?”
Jaime shrugged. “She has eyes.”
The table lost control again. Jannik, despite the heat in his face and the overwhelming desire to vanish under the table, began to laugh. He could not help it.
The absurdity was too complete. The day before, they had been unable to say what they were beside a basement pool. Last night, they had nearly destroyed themselves with jealousy in a hotel room. This morning, they had kissed like they were trying to make up for years. And now Carlos had accidentally announced them in front of brothers, coaches, rivals, friends, and at least one man who apparently had a financial stake in who initiated the first visible move.
It should have been terrifying. It was terrifying. But it was also funny. Warm. Alive. Carlos heard Jannik laughing and looked at him. The embarrassment on his face softened immediately.
“You are laughing,” Carlos said.
“Yes.”
“At me?”
“With you.”
“I am not laughing.”
“You will.”
Carlos tried to stay serious. Failed. A smile broke through, helpless and bright, and then he laughed too, dropping his forehead briefly against Jannik’s shoulder to hide his face. The table saw that as well. Naturally.
Flavio clutched his heart. “No, this is too much. I need dessert.”
“You need medical help,” Jack said.
Ben leaned toward Darren. “Coach, how long have you known?”
Darren considered.
“Depends what you mean by known.”
Simone said, “We knew before them.”
Carlos lifted his head. “Everyone says this.”
“Because it is true,” Flavio said, sitting back down at last.
Jannik gave him a warning look.
“Do not start the whole speech again.”
Flavio opened his mouth.
Jack pointed a fork at him. “Don’t.”
Flavio closed his mouth. For three seconds.
Then: “But it was years.”
Carlos groaned.
Ben leaned in. “No, I want the full lore.”
“You do not,” Jannik said.
“I absolutely do.”
Holger looked amused. “I also want it.”
Jannik glanced at him.
“You are enjoying this too much.”
Holger smiled. “It is better than television.”
Carlos’s hand under the table tightened around Jannik’s again. This time, Jannik squeezed back immediately. No hesitation. The conversation became impossible to contain.
Flavio insisted he had predicted Carlos would make the first unmistakable move because “Carlos is emotional and Jannik is a locked door with legs.” Jack argued that pulling someone out of a club by their cape should already have counted. Ben wanted to know who officially held the money and whether he could still buy in retroactively. Darren asked, dryly, whether there had been a compliance officer for this betting operation. Simone said he was offended that no one had invited the coaches to participate because he would have won.
Carlos stared at Simone. “You too?”
Simone shrugged. “I saw the way he looked at you.”
Jannik muttered, “I hate this lunch.”
Carlos leaned closer. “No, you don’t.”
Jannik looked at him. Carlos’s smile was smaller now, private under the public noise. Jannik looked away first because if he did not, he would forget the entire room again. But this time, forgetting the room did not frighten him as much.
At some point, food actually arrived. It helped.
Athletes, no matter how emotionally chaotic, could be steadied by plates. Conversations scattered. Ben argued with Jaime about American college sports. Álvaro asked Jack about the grass season. Holger, to Jannik’s irritation and reluctant respect, spoke very kindly to Carlos about the wrist, asking direct questions without pity. Carlos answered easily.
Jannik watched. Not with the sharp burn from last night. Something softer now.
He still noticed Holger’s attention. Still noticed when Carlos smiled. Still felt the old jealous reflex twitch somewhere inside him. But beneath the table, Carlos’s hand rested near his knee, sometimes touching, sometimes not. Each time Jannik grew too still, Carlos seemed to know. A thumb against his hand. A knee brushes his. A glance that said, I am here.
It was enough. More than enough. Darren noticed them too. Of course he did. During a lull, he leaned toward Jannik and spoke quietly.
“You alright?”
Jannik looked at him. Darren’s face held no teasing now. Only the steady concern that had carried Jannik through more difficult days than he could count. Jannik nodded.
“Yes.”
Darren studied him for a second longer, then nodded back. “Good.”
Simone, on Jannik’s other side, said without looking up from his plate, “Remember, happiness is not a recovery plan.”
Jannik rolled his eyes. “I know.”
Carlos leaned forward. “What does that mean?”
“It means,” Simone said, pointing his fork lightly at Carlos, “if you keep him awake all night before matches, I will blame you.”
Carlos turned red. Ben made a sound of delight.
Jannik stared at Simone.
“Why would you say this?”
Simone looked innocent.
“I am discussing scheduling.”
Darren pinched the bridge of his nose, but was smiling.
Carlos recovered enough to say, “I am injured. I am very calm.”
Álvaro snorted. Jaime coughed. Jannik looked at Carlos.
“Very calm?”
Carlos nodded solemnly. “Extremely.”
Flavio whispered loudly, “He pulled you by the cape.”
Carlos pointed at him.
“You are still on my list.”
“I am on everyone’s list. It means I am important.”
The chaos rose again. And yet, for all the noise, Jannik felt strangely peaceful.
Not calm exactly. There was too much happening for calm. But grounded. Present. As if, after days of almosts and misunderstandings and fear, something had finally settled into a shape he could touch.
Carlos beside him. Their friends laughing. His coaches knowing and not turning away. Carlos’s brothers teasing instead of judging. Holger’s presence no longer a threat but part of the strange ecosystem of their world. Ben loud enough to drown out anxiety. Jack quietly watching the emotional weather. Flavio declaring himself victorious over every human feeling in the room.
It was absurd. It was too much. It was theirs. Near the end of lunch, when plates were half-cleared and everyone had begun talking over everyone else, Jannik felt Carlos shift beside him. He looked over.
Carlos was laughing at something Jaime said, head tilted back slightly, eyes bright. His injured wrist rested carefully on the table, but the rest of him seemed loose, alive, warm. The morning light from the windows caught the side of his face and turned his skin gold.
Jannik looked at him and felt the old fear rise. Not fear of Carlos. Fear of wanting this much. Fear of the room noticing. Fear of what came after lunch, after Madrid, after one tournament gave way to another and they returned to airports, training, press rooms, opponents, expectations, injuries, headlines.
Carlos looked back at him mid-laugh. The laughter softened. He knew. Of course, he knew.
Jannik lowered one hand beneath the table. Slowly, deliberately, he placed it on Carlos’s leg. Carlos went still for half a second. Then his smile changed. Not bigger. Deeper. He did not look down. He did not draw attention to it. He simply placed his own hand over Jannik’s and kept talking to Jaime as if nothing had happened.
Jannik’s thumb moved once. Carlos’s fingers closed around his.
Across the table, Flavio was arguing that emotional bets should be considered a legitimate sport. Ben was demanding official rankings. Jack was laughing into his coffee. Darren and Simone were pretending not to hear while hearing everything.
Jannik looked around at all of them. Then back at Carlos. And he laughed. Quietly at first.
Then more fully, because Carlos’s smile answered, because the table was ridiculous, because the world had not ended, because after all the fear and jealousy and waiting, Carlos’s hand was over his under the table, warm and certain.
For once, Jannik did not try to hide it. Carlos leaned closer, his voice low enough for only him.
“What?”
Jannik shook his head, still laughing softly.
“Nothing.”
Carlos narrowed his eyes. “Liar.”
Jannik smiled.
“Yes,” he said. “But you like it.”
Carlos’s hand tightened over his.
“Unfortunately,” he whispered.
And around them, the chaos continued.
⊹₊˚‧︵‿₊୨ᰔ୧₊‿︵‧˚₊⊹