Archive of Our Own ^beta

The call comes in late.

Patrick mulls it over, eyes flicking over to the fuel gauge on the dashboard. “Could maybe make it for lunchtime Friday.”

He’s bone tired but it’s still light out, all the energy drained out of him through sweat and the humidity. Fucking humidity in Vermont, who ever expects it?

Tashi is silent on the other side of the line and it takes a beat too long, a spike of adrenaline rolling through Patrick’s gut at the thought of pissing her off, for her to reply.

“What the fuck is taking you so long?” Tashi all but growls into the phone. “I thought we were on the same page about how important this is.”

Oh.

Patrick thinks back to the hushed conversation they had had before Tashi had left him in their massive hotel room, still not bright enough to fully make out her features as she loomed over him on the bed. He’s the priority, Tashi had hissed. Art hadn’t even said goodbye, was already waiting impatiently by the door. Patrick was still bleary with sleep, the whole thing felt like a dream. Breath hot, her face disappearing: But I’ll prioritise you next.

“We are,” Patrick stresses. “But it’s going to take me a while. I’m in Stowe.”

“Stowe?” she says slowly, as if she’s trying to work out where that is. “It’s August.”

Patrick feels a pulse of embarrassed anger. It makes his jaw involuntarily clench. Most of the people racked up for the last Challenger this time of year are deadbeats and aren’t thinking of the Open at all. It’s too tight a turn around, technically too late for the ranking cut off. He doesn’t need the reminder that he’s out here playing irrelevant tennis.

He’s played the qualifier with a strange sort of intensity that’s won him no favours. Hence why he’s sitting in his car on his own three days into the tournament and considering a new hotel. He only has to make it to the quarter finals and then he has enough points to beg, borrow, and suck-a-dick into the Open.

And make a pitstop in Cincinnati, apparently.

“I know it’s fucking August.”

There’s that beat of silence again and it makes Patrick’s stomach twist, not entirely horrible but not exactly pleasurable either.

“What the fuck are you doing in Vermont?” Tashi hisses over the phone and her voice sounds suddenly so close it’s like she’s biting at his ear and he can nearly feel it, the heat of her breath, the venom in her voice. Yeah, that’s the sweet spot. Ever since he’s had his hands on her again, had her balanced in his lap, pressed up against his chest, mouth on the shell of his ear, he hasn’t been able to stop thinking about it.

“What the fuck do you think I’m doing in Vermont?” Patrick snaps, knowing it’ll rile her up even more. His hand goes to his dick automatically, blood coursing through his body. Patrick considers for a brief second how he’ll feel after jerking one out in the driver’s seat. Awful, actually. But he keeps his hand pressed against his semi, just in case. “Tennis.”

“Fuck,” Tashi swears, her voice disappearing for a moment, like she’s pulled away from the phone. He can hear her taking a deep, steadying breath. And then she’s back, as if her armour never cracked at all. “And does Stowe have a fucking airport?”

*

It turns out the Duncan-Donaldsons have the annoying ability to charter a private plane like it’s a fucking Uber. It irritates Patrick right up until someone passes him a hot towel, an ice cold beer, and he’s able to recline back and be in Cincinnati after a two hour nap.

It’s dark by the time he lands, the airport taking on that sort of liminal feel he’s missed since he’s taken to trekking around the east coast in his car. And that has, believe it or not, been a much more recent development than Tashi seems to think.

It’s chillier out on the concourse than Vermont but she’s already waiting in an obnoxious escalade that makes Patrick feel a little sick. He leans in, goes for a greeting kiss and grins when she pushes him away. “Fuck sake, Patrick.”

It sets them deliciously off kilter and Patrick sinks back into the seat, suddenly glad that he’s here. He stares for a while out the window, watches as the flat surroundings of the airport are eaten away by the Cincinnati skyline. He hates it here, always flaming out early and in bad form for the Open. Art usually does well, the big build up. For a higher fall but there’s usually glory in it somewhere, he supposes.

Patrick wouldn’t really know what that feels like anymore.

They hit a red light and it seems easier to just cut to the chase. “Does he know I’m coming?”

He can smell her perfume this close, the heat of her body just across the car seat. Patrick hasn’t seen her -- or heard from her -- since New Rochelle. And whilst that was only a scant ten days ago, it feels a bit like whiplash to be this close to her again after so long apart. He’s not sure if the driver is part of her team so he keeps his mouth closed on saying what he really wants to: I knew you wouldn’t be able to keep away.

Tashi glares at him as the car pulls off again and he can’t help but think she’s thinking the same thing.

The hotel is nice, all sleek lines and polished floors that make Patrick’s sneakers squeak. He wishes he had brought more luggage than just his racket bag with him, maybe looks a bit desperate in his ratty shorts amongst the clean cut players also staying here.

Patrick doesn’t know how they stand it, the small talk with competitors and pundits as they wait for elevators or valets or whatever the fuck. But maybe that’s why Tennis TV keeps putting out ten minute highlight reels of Art’s backhand (of all things) and teasers of his on-court meltdowns for the sickos who get off on that sort of thing (not that Patrick would know anything about that).

“Fuck off,” Art says when the door swings open and he sees Patrick there. He swings his head round to look for Tashi. “Fuck you.”

“Obscenity deduction,” Patrick answers mildly, following Tashi into the cool hotel room.

It’s a bit of a mess already -- Patrick’s genuinely surprised that Tashi hasn’t worked that out of him yet -- Art’s clothes from practice in a ball at the end of the sofa, the coffee table awash with crayons that denote the presence of a child but no other hint of where she is, the detritus of Art’s post-work-out regime: empty electrolytes, twisted dextrose packets, flaked off egg shells.

Patrick drops his racket bag beside Art’s in the doorway, takes in Art’s soft jersey shorts, the cut of his bare abs. Time seems to hop, the sharp inhalation burning up the back of Patrick’s throat. He hasn’t seen him in a few days, had nearly got the feeling of Art’s body under his own out from under his skin.

“What?” Art snaps from the middle of the room, his shoulders drawn taut. Patrick feels bad for one millisecond that they’ve seemed to catch him genuinely unaware.

Tashi ignores this all as she goes about the living room. There’s something unexpected in seeing her toe off the Chanel pumps, the slump of her shoulders as her body winds down from the prospect of having to leave the hotel room again, the way she sweeps all of Art’s garbage into the wastepaper basket. Nearly domestic -- Patrick’s missed it.

Art deflates when Tashi doesn’t bite and Patrick can’t help but snort. “Come on man, gotta give it more effort than that.” Then sinks into the plush cushions of the sofa, ankle hooked on his knee.

“This is not helping,” Art murmurs but it’s not clear who he’s talking to -- he still hasn’t looked at Patrick directly. “How is he meant to help anything?”

“I had wondered that myself,” Patrick wiggles his eyebrows, spreads his legs. He genuinely hadn’t been expected their call.

Art makes a half aborted gesture that seems to say see!

“You need a more invested hitting partner. We talked about this,” Tashi says in a strangely calm tone of voice. It must be the one she uses when she needs to get things done, when she expects to get her way, when she’s tired to entertaining Art’s reluctance. “And Patrick needs a brush up if he’s going to even make the first round.”

Patrick bites the inside of his mouth. Tashi doesn’t need to know he hasn’t enough points for the qualifier yet, that duking out of Vermont early had left him forfeiting. A few weeks ago, another def(ns) on his scorecard wouldn’t have made him blink -- he’s had to forfeit for a lot less and a lot more tawdry reasons before -- but if he’s going to give this a go, he needs to play a better game. He draws his hand over the inside of his elbow, hardly thinking about it as he itches at the scabs there.

When he looks up, Tashi scrutinises him with a set of narrowed eyes. “And if he’s still got any talent buried down in there --” Tashi doesn’t finish her sentence but it settles something in Patrick, even if she won’t fucking say it, that this isn’t a lost cause yet.

“You need to play good fucking tennis, Art.” Tashi pushes on, her hand coming up to squeeze at the back of her neck. Patrick notices for the first time how tired she looks, her eyes swinging between them finally. “Like you played last week. Like what we’re training for. If this is the last shot --” she cuts herself off, eyes cutting quickly to Patrick. “Thought he might be of some use.”

They’re silent for a moment and Patrick watches as some sort of tension thickens, drawing taut, snapping when Tashi looks away. There’s something else going on, more than just them, more than just tennis.

Finally, finally, Art speaks but it’s lost the backhand force. “I need Patrick round my neck like some sort of fucking good luck charm?”

“Hey,” Patrick shrugs, leaning back into the sofa. Both Tashi and Art’s eyes trace down the long length of his body but they both look irritated at the effort it takes. “I’m here to be made use of whatever way works for you both --”

“Shut the fuck up, Patrick,” Tashi cuts him off and turns, her hair swinging, so she can bear down on Art. “What’s wrong with you? Why can’t you see that I’m trying to get you over the line?” Tash takes a deep breath, the room seems to hinge on it. “I’m not trying to fuck with you. I promise. I just want to see you win.”

Art looks mollified for a moment, slumping into the side of the sofa with a grim expression on his face. It’s strangely blank, Patrick can’t read these new, adult expressions that Art’s face has grown into in the past decade. He used to be able to read him like a book, know instantly how far he could push him when Art was in a good mood or cajole him out of a bad one. He could read a twitch of an eyebrow, a flutter of eyelashes, the jump of his Adam’s apple across a tennis court.

But now, Art seems to wilt into a frown, deep in thought. And Patrick can’t decipher any of it.

“But there will be fucking involved?” Patrick presses, breaks the growing tension in the room. He can still feel Art’s frantic hands on his shoulder blades, the ghost of his grip at his hips. He’s thought of very little else the past week. After New Rochelle, they’d pressed all the words they couldn’t say to each other into a series of biting kisses in the low light of the Donaldsons’ suite and Patrick had coursed through consecutive bursts of adrenaline that makes the memory blur and swim at the back of his mind, like he’s pressed play too much on an old VHS tape and worn through.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Tashi groans and collapses into the other side of the sofa. “Aren’t you capable of thinking of anything but your dick?” She takes a long-suffering breath. “Art needs to concentrate.”

“So the secret to Art Donaldson’s great success is a sex-ban?” Patrick scoffs. “Alert the pundits. I’d say it’d be his downfall, personally.”

Art shoots him a disdainful look. “Maybe your tennis would benefit from one.”

Patrick grins. “Is that a sex joke? Are you making a sex joke, Art?”

Art doesn’t bite but it seems to broker something between them. An acknowledgement that ten days ago, Patrick clawed his way back into their lives and both of them welcomed it. Wanted it. Got off on it.

Patrick can still taste Art on his tongue.

Art sighs, loud enough in the silence that’s gathered between them and sinks back into the cushions, his taut body finally relaxing. Patrick can feel Tashi do the same on the other side, can feel the softening of her breath, close enough that Patrick can smell where her perfume still lingers on her skin. They’ve come to some sort of agreement around him, wordless and instinctual, an ability grown with so much time spent together.

Patrick burns with jealousy.

It’s in this silence that Patrick’s mind supplies another alternative: maybe he’s here to diffuse whatever is simmering between the two of them, to provide a welcome distraction, to be the go-between, the scapegoat. The back of his throat burns -- he should be playing the fourth round tomorrow at 10am, his body is telling him to carb load, to stretch, to get some sleep. But he’s here in the buttery bright light of Cincinnati's latest boutique hotel acting as a net under tennis’s first couple’s final volley.

“Well,” Patrick says slowly. He tries for louche but something creeps up his throat to make the words come out thicker than he really means for them to. “You better make it worth my while. I came all this way.”

“Oh, what hole did you drag yourself out of this time?” Art asks but even the disdain has bled out from his voice and he just sounds tired.

Patrick can’t help the sarcasm. It’s the natural descent into their teenage selves, the muscle memory of how they communicated for years. “The aspirational environs of Stowe Mountainous Resort and Country Club.”

“Get lost on the way to hell?” Art barters back.

“Just followed the scent of money, Art,” Patrick snarls. “You know how it is.”

“What happened?” Tashi asks, smile working slow and predatory across her face. Her mood seems to improve at having another person to pick at without risking their game tomorrow but it jars slightly -- she was never part of their adolescent bickering, it disrupts the rhythm of it. “You crash out in the second round as usual?”

Patrick feels his anger mould into an answering smile. “Defaulted. Personal circumstances.”

Tashi’s eyes flash, like she doesn’t quite believe him, before she grins and half her face disappears behind a couch cushion. Patrick wants to fuck her into it, the yearning need comes over him so suddenly, he’s breathless with it.

Art scoffs. Doesn’t believe him either but he won’t look at him, his body held unnaturally still at the other end of the sofa. Patrick looks down, picks at the blister on the inside of his thumb. He needs new tape but feels like if he moves, he’ll ruin the fine balance between the three of them, spread out across the sectional.

“I’ve an early court time,” Art says, eyes glancing up at the clock. It’s barely eleven. “Gonna head to bed.”

Patrick pushes up off the couch and enjoys the startled expression on Art’s face. Behind them, Tashi lets out a short huff of laughter.

“I’ll sleep in the guest room,” Patrick promises. “Wouldn’t want to keep you up during a tournament.” Tacks on -- “Not with the sex-ban and al --” and is gratified when Tashi rolls her eyes.

Art stares at him for a long moment before his eyes betray him and he glances, skittish, over at Tashi. Oh.

“The sofa then,” Patrick says, sinking back into the cushions, all the fun of the teasing draining out of him at the downturned look on Art’s face. He hadn’t expected that.

“Or you can fuck off to where you came from,” Art murmurs. He’s on his feet now and Patrick looks at his thighs straining in his shorts rather than his expression. How the fuck does Tashi cope with this all day long.

Tashi pulls a face. “Lily --?”

“Five-thirty wake-up for you too then,” Art shrugs and slopes off to the bedroom.

Tashi looks over at Patrick, her face softened with the need for sleep. For a long moment, Patrick is convinced she won’t move, that she’ll stay with him but at the very last moment she unfurls her long legs and stalks off to the other bedroom.

*

Back when Patrick first turned pro, he’d call Tashi and listen to her quickened breath and soft, bitten off moans as he coaxed her to come by voice alone. It would be the highlight of his day sometimes, muscles aching from the accelerated training, from the more intense matches. Pro-tennis was no fucking joke. Patrick couldn’t believe it sometimes -- how different it was, how he had chosen this, argued with his mother about turning down Stanford (and Columbia and U Virginia and fucking Pepperdine) because this was a better opportunity.

Some nights, Patrick regretted it. Those nights where he was eating shitty motel pizza and couldn’t sleep because of the paper thin walls and when he had to fill the shallow, grimy bathtubs with bags of ice from the 7-11 across the street. He’d lie there, teeth chattering, and count to three hundred before he’d clamber out, gasping.

Tashi didn’t seem to want to know. Sceptical in her own way, naive and didn’t want to admit it, horny and missing him, desperate to get off. All of the above. Wanting him and not knowing how to say it. Wanting his life on tour and unable to admit it. Patrick would lie back and listen, hand curled around his own cock, body learning to like how abrasive she could be sometimes, half hard just talking about tennis.

And then he would phone Art straight after. Talk about the girls in his class, the girls on tour, Tashi, the fucking weather until he had calmed down enough to sleep, the familiar in and out of Art’s breath. If he closed his eyes, he could pretend it was just one bed over.

*

Five thirty comes quickly. Patrick wakes to Art standing over him, senses him hovering before he shakes himself awake. He’s still exhausted but months of sleeping in his car has fucked with his danger perception.

Art looks caught out, his hair mussed from sleep, reaction times slow and there’s a strange satisfaction in it, watching how his face tightens in panic, both of them caught in each other’s gaze.

They stare at each other for a long moment before Patrick breaks the silence and wishes him a good morning. Art just walks away.

It’s a long day. Patrick is shuffled about the living area like he’s one of Tashi’s stacks of paperwork -- “move Patrick!” -- as they carry out their well-trodden morning routine. Patrick watches as a trainer comes in, as Art stretches in front of the TV, as Tashi scrolls through emails. She doesn’t even acknowledge him until he’s climbed out of Art’s shower, clean but smelling of him, to find breakfast has arrived.

The table is newly occupied, Patrick feels a wave of embarrassment as Tashi’s mom glares at him.. He slides down beside Tashi on the sofa, all the way across the room, so he doesn’t have to acknowledge Lily’s curious stare.

“Eat,” Tashi says, pushing a plate towards him with the end of her biro.

“Nothing fancier than oatmeal?” Patrick snips back but he’s ravenous, already digging a spoon in.

Tashi’s gaze lingers on him, her eyebrows knitting together, but says nothing. There’s a wave of shame deep down there somewhere, threatening to emerge but it’s been that long since Patrick genuinely felt ashamed at his behaviour regarding the basic needs of living, it’s nearly unrecognisable.

“Be grateful it's not a grass smoothie,” Art finally acknowledges he’s there. And it tamps something down in Patrick, makes the muscles at the back of his jaw unclench as they share a smile at Tashi’s expense.

They hit the court early and Patrick spends a long day in the Cincinnati sun watching Art’s hitting partner dodge 115 mile per hour serves.

“He’s consistent at least,” Patrick breaks the silence around lunch time. Tashi has hardly moved, her sunglasses slotted down over half her face.

Patrick itches to pick up a racket, feels the burn of the sun where he’s sweated through the sunscreen, could nearly sleep with the boredom. As much as it’s nice to be allowed into whatever the fuck Tashi has planned for them, he’s not quite sure what wasting his time working on his tan has got to do with tennis.

“Am I here just to look at?” Patrick asks her when they step away from the stands and enter the shadowy empty corridor outside centre court. His plan is to just keep prodding her until she snaps. The locker rooms are somewhere even further away so he has a few minutes before Art will appear.

“I didn’t bring you all this way to annoy the fuck out of me,” Tashi tells him, unimpressed. She’s pushed her sunglasses up off her face and it makes her hair sit funny, framing her face in childish wisps. He can tell that she’s flustered, not used to having him here, not being able to boss him around like he’s an employee.

“What am I here for then?” Patrick asks, crowding in close to her. There’s two spots on either side of her nose where her sunglasses have rubbed away her makeup. Patrick wants to fit the pad of his little finger to them.

When they fight, Patrick’s always so surprised at how close they get. It’s like he has to feel the anger pulse under her skin, feel each shuddered, shallow breath hit his face.

“You’re here to work for me,” Tashi snaps, her eyes flying up to his face. She stands her ground, her neck bending so their bodies can press together but she can still glare at him.

Patrick fits his palm to the cinderblock over her shoulder and then Tashi’s mouth is hot against his and it’s easy to twist the frustration into her mouth, to lick across her teeth, suck on her tongue and push it all in there so it’s not part of him anymore but all her.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Art’s voice, sharp and echoey in the tunnel. “Look at where you are please.”

They break apart, Patrick feeling suitably chastened. Art looks furious, his hair towel-mussed and his face still pink from exertion. It must’ve been the quickest fucking shower Art’s ever taken in his life (and Patrick’s lived through his fifteen-and-foul phase).

“Sorry --” Patrick says and Art’s eyes flash.

“Maybe you don’t have to worry about it,” Art says, stepping close. Patrick could groan, bites at his lip to stop himself from reaching out. Art never fought with them before, never needed to press close like this but he does anyway. Patrick wonders what way Art and Tashi fight, if they bend into each other’s space like this just to feel the anger pulse across each other’s skin. “But I’d like to keep my fucking personal problems private.”

And then he’s twisting away, stalking off down the tunnel. Tashi looks fucking chastened and that’s what grates at him. “I’m a personal problem now?”

“Fuck off, Patrick,” Tashi all but growls, sunglasses sliding onto her face again. “Come on.”

*

And the kid. That’s something to wrap his head around. Art is unbelievably soft with her. It’s disconcerting to watch, to weigh up that side of him with the hardened, New Art that Patrick’s still getting used to. And it’s even weirder to see Tashi melt at the sight of her, the way her voice would bend and gentle, a lullaby lilt, the guilt of telling her they had more tennis to talk about.

And she’s a sweet kid. All goofy smiles and trying to catch him out with riddles and rhymes that only a seven-year-old could find funny. The guarded way she surveyed him across the breakfast table, the unabashed way she asked why he was sleeping in their suite, the grin when she finds out his patience hasn’t yet been worn down by her shrieking the lyrics of How Far I’ll Go at full belt.

But it’s the way, in a certain light, that he’d see himself in the shadow of her smile.

And isn’t that a whole other mind-bending headfuck.

*

Art scrapes a place in the semifinals, face set in grim determination the entire time.

It’s a rough match, not his best. Patrick watches from a screen tucked away in the depths of Court 3, nerves making him feel oddly sick. He’s wearing an official Team Donaldson lanyard and a pair of Art’s branded Uniqlo shorts. He hasn’t put much thought into anyone else’s tennis but his own for a few years now, has even really stopped watching Art because it spiked something hot in his stomach to see him advance up the rankings without him.

And maybe Patrick can’t stand to see him out there, playing the tennis of his fucking life, and not enjoying it, winning on a technicality at a fucking big title tournament.

Tashi is all strategy and recovery and offensive tactics in the car on the way back from Mason, the sun slipping down the sky quickly.

Patrick had watched as Art ate an unappetising looking dry chicken breast and salad out of a tupperware box while he cycled a few cool down miles before slinking off to a conference room for questions. The final rounds of a tournament exude exhaustion, it’s been so long that Patrick’s had to think about this type of relentless tennis that it makes his muscles ache from just watching him.

He had met them at the car and expected them to be celebrating but the tension seemed to ratchet up from there, slinking thick and toxic between the three of them sandwiched into the back of the car.

“I’m just trying to help,” Tashi says, imploringly, once they’ve made it back to the hotel and they’re on their own -- or at least, alone with Patrick.

“And how do you think this is helping?” Art asks, surprisingly acerbic now they’re both in private. He tugs his shirt roughly over his head and launches it across the coffee table. “We have tried everything. Every new serve, every fucking mindful technique, we went to fucking New Rochelle --” Art’s gaze swings to Patrick and he feels nailed to the wall by it, the sharp anger burning in Art’s pursed mouth. --“Fired Dan. And we’re still only scraping through.”

Patrick watches as they glare at each other for a long moment, Art’s shoulders heaving with each deep breath.

“Aren’t you tired of this?” Art asks suddenly. “Just say. Just admit it. Just --” he breaks off but Patrick hears the put me out of my misery.

Patrick would kill for Art’s success so his refusal to make the most of it mystifies Patrick a little. With all this time in the stands, he can’t help but critique Art, can’t help imagine himself in his shoes, think about how he’d return that serve or how he’d do that point differently.

Tashi’s had a lifetime of it. He understands her anger at Art’s limping to the finish line.

But he can see how he’d get bored of it too -- the frustration of the plateau, the inability to advance, to improve. Patrick’s tennis is at rock bottom through no fault but his own -- he hasn’t been on the up for years. Any progression across the board is an improvement. The round of 16 is the goal, sometimes a fever dream.

Patrick can see where the frustration can build, layered with resentment. Tashi turns to him suddenly. “Fix this.”

“Can’t fucking work miracles,” Patrick jokes but realises with a sharp twist to his gut that neither of them are in a joking mood. “What’s the deal? He fucking won, Tash. He’s into the next round.”

Tashi draws a hand up over her face as if Patrick’s idiocy is actually paining her.

“He doesn’t get it,” Art says and Patrick feels out on his own again, unmoored. He can’t seem to figure out what they -- either of them, both of them -- want him to say.

Art kicks his shorts off and he’s wearing the tiniest pair of briefs that Patrick’s ever seen. They’re drenched in sweat, the material wet and dark with it.

Patrick defaults to: “Art, man, I can’t talk about tennis when you look like that --”

“You are a fucking child,” Tashi tells him, face curled up in a frown. For a sharp moment, Patrick’s worried she’s going to cry and then she’s gone, storming through the other door.

“See!” Art calls after her and Patrick feels like he’s missing half of the conversation.

*

She doesn’t bring it up again. Instead, she slips onto the living room sofa at five in the morning, just when the sun is threatening to come up over the horizon, and fucks him with her fingers curled into his mouth, their heavy breathing loud enough to wake up the entire suite.

Patrick stares at her the whole time, finds her staring back.

*

Patrick comes to when something warm is pushed carefully into his cheek. And then again, the blunt pressure of a tiny finger against his gums. “Ow!”

“You shouldn’t sleep with your mouth open,” Lily says, her eyes big and round and only a few inches from his face. “You’ll swallow a fly!”

Patrick shrinks back into the pillow and it takes a few moments for reality to trickle in: Cincinnati, the TV showing cartoons and not ESPN, the thin blanket wrapped around his hips.

“I better swallow a spider then,” Patrick rolls with it because that’s the strategy he’s gone with -- just agree to everything a kid says and they’ll be happy. Right? He dated a single mom once, had to get used to a kid hanging around. He can’t remember her name but wonders sometimes what the kid is at now.

Lily looks abjectly horrified. “No,” she says slowly. “Grammy says pancakes!”

Patrick pushes himself up onto one hand, catches Tashi’s mother’s now familiar glare from the table.

“You can have pancakes too,” Tashi mutters from the other end of the sofa, her hands around a porcelain coffee cup. His feet are tucked under her hip and he wonders how long she’s been sitting like that, squeezed into the space he’s unconsciously made for her on the sofa.

“Have you lost your mind?” Patrick whispers to her, eyes catching on the bruise on the corner of her jaw. It’s nearly the shape of his mouth. She’s still in her nightdress and Patrick is hyper aware of his own nakedness. What fucking time is it? How long has been lying here with his irritated in-law across the room? Can everyone see that motherfucking hickey?

She shrugs, her head swinging round to look at him properly. She looks so tired, her eyes landing on his face and then moving away again as if she can’t stand to look for too long now. “Go get washed up, Patrick.”

“Am I here to ruin your marriage?” Patrick asks her outright. Gets no answer.

It’s nearly nine. Patrick feels like they’ve slept the whole day away according to Tashi’s normal schedule but he still feels groggy as he pulls the sheet around him, face burning as he shuffles past Tashi’s mom towards the main bedroom.

“Are you still asleep?” he asks, pushing through the door and finding Art a lump in the middle of the bed. “Need to use your shower.”

Art doesn’t answer but as Patrick creeps forward, he can see the way he’s looking at him. Eyes too bright to have only woken, the worn expression on his face suggesting that he actually hasn’t slept much at all.

Guilt slices through him. Patrick isn’t the one trying to win this tournament, Patrick’s an asshole but he’s not actually here to destroy Art’s tennis career (despite what Art maybe thinks).

“Come on man,” Patrick tries. “You’re on court at 6.”

Art snorts softly, rolling onto his back to look at the ceiling. And maybe it’s a dick move but Patrick drops the sheet, crawls onto the bed beside him, gets into his space.

Even Patrick can smell Tashi on himself so he decides not to fuck with him further. “Did you hear?”

“Fuck sake, Patrick.” But Art’s voice is resigned and somehow that makes Patrick feel worse than if he had been angry.

He used to dream about Art punching him, back when they were still in limbo, back when Patrick still thought they’d reconnect and start talking again.

Those weeks after Tashi was injured were a mess -- Patrick had to get back on the tour, his father flew him out to Fes to see how he’d fare on clay. He had tried to keep up with Tashi, creeping into the business centre of the hotel to send her email after email. By the time he’d got back to the States, Art had stopped replying and Patrick crashed out of Tallahassee, Santa Clarita, and then Naples in such quick succession, he barely made a dent in his points deficit.

His father stopped coming to games: This isn’t what we discussed, Pat. And his mother started on about how she could maybe get him into Ole Miss on a legacy, that he could use the time to recalibrate, get a degree in business, cash in on the family membership down the country club.

It was easier to take the European circuit -- a perfect excuse for there not to be any support in the stands, a disorientating time difference to obscure the overwhelming feeling of isolation, cell service blocked the longer he stayed out there. And then Marin Čilić pounded him into the clay in a tiny tournament in Rijeka, sun hot enough to make Patrick feel faint, and made him see the beauty of tennis again.

He was fucking nineteen and drinking cheap beer in sun drenched town squares, the cobble stones of tiny European cities in summer sliding under his feet, an entire generation of inter-railing college students hanging on his arm.

He learned how to serve against the sun, managed to push through straight sets on a hangover, fucked lithe French upstarts in locker rooms that smelt like chlorine and copper.

By the end of the summer, Art had changed his number, Tashi had Fed-Exed him a few things to his parents’ house in the Hamptons, and Patrick had racked up enough prize money to pay his own way.

“You know it doesn’t work like this,” Art says quietly, drawing Patrick’s attention back into the present. He looks genuinely pained that he’s talking about this. Or maybe that he’s talking about it with him.

Patrick stretches out across the bed, burrows under the duvet until he’s in Art’s space. The sheets smell like Tiger Balm and the plastic-chalk smell of racket grip. It’s comforting, like how their beds used to smell like in the Academy when both of them were dealing with round the clock training on top of their growth spurts and in agony half the time.

“What doesn’t?”

“I need calm,” Art mutters, voice tight like a vice. Like Patrick’s crowbarring each and every word from him. “I can’t do emotion on the court. It gets me over emotional. I don’t even talk to anyone else still playing --”

“That’s the School of Tashi Duncan talking --”

“Donaldson,” Art corrects quietly but it’s useless, Patrick won’t ever think of her as anything else. And Art knows that, deep down.

They lie for a moment, the sounds of the girls out in the main room doing breakfast filtering into their little bubble. A reminder that it’s never just them two. Alone. That Patrick has entered into something with many moving parts.

And maybe that’s part of the issue. Patrick’s been waiting for Tashi to tell him how he fits and he hasn’t really considered that Art’s been waiting for that too.

But it was the two of them before they ever met her. They had learnt how to communicate without her help. They spoke in half-sentences and could communicate with gestures behind their back, half blindfolded, Patrick knew what each of Art’s breaths meant.

“I actually don’t know that,” Patrick goes with, pushing further into Art’s space. They can carve out these moments for themselves, surely. The pocket of blankets around his body is sleep-warm. “I don’t know why I’m here, Art. Really. But I am. So we may as well make the most of it.”

“And that means fucking Tashi?” Art bites out. “Right?”

“I’d happily fuck you too,” Patrick shrugs, already tired of this argument. “We’re still settling into the rhythm of it.”

“Patrick --”

“Art,” Patrick meets his gaze. “I’m not here with some plan to fuck you over. And Tashi isn’t doing that either.” He pauses, then shrugs. It makes the pillow jostle under their heads but Art curls back into the space. “At least, I don’t think she is. ”

Despite it all, Art smiles. “What are we doing, Patrick?”

Patrick’s not sure how to answer. Doesn’t really know himself. “We’re finding our feet.”

“That’s not really an answer,” Art sighs, the whole bed seems to dip with it. Then he’s rolling over, skin brushing Patrick’s hip.

“Well,” Patrick says. “It’s the only one I’ve got.” And it’s so so easy, too easy for Patrick to curl up behind him. To feel the slow, rhythmic way that Art breathes, the thump of his heart against his chest. “You do want me here, don’t you?”

Patrick blames it on the fact he’s wrecked and still jittery from Tashi last night, from the emotional whiplash of waking up this morning to an audience, to being here at all. When he closes his eyes, he can see Art back in New Rochelle. The fire in his eyes as he leapt into the air, the feel of him as Patrick caught him, the way he had combed his hair back from his forehead, later, when Patrick was on his knees.

Art had wanted him then..

“Can I coach you?” Patrick asks, breaking the silence when Art doesn’t answer. “Just a little bit?”

Art tenses. “You’re asking?” sounding genuinely surprised.

“I think you need to work out a way to vent out that emotion on the court,” Patrick says softly. He can feel the shiver of Art’s body as Patrick speaks into the nape of his neck. It’s maybe the closest they’ve ever consciously been. “Because that’s where everything makes sense, even when it all feels like it’s getting too much. When it all feels like it’s crumbling down.”

Art’s quiet for a long moment. “I need to fucking sleep.”

“Then sleep,” Patrick whispers. And when he goes to move away, Art’s hand curls around his wrist and keeps him there against his back, bright morning light filtering into the room.

*

He wins Cincinnati. Tashi is effervescent and Patrick finds himself strangely elated. Art offers him a soft, satisfied smile -- shy -- but Tashi powers on through with her own analysis, a loop of continuous feedback.

“That was good tennis,” Tashi tells him, tells them both, as if they don’t fucking know that. There’s an entirely new fire in her eyes as she crowds both of them into the bedroom of the hotel suite, the top button of her dress already open.

They’re on their own -- for the moment -- a brief respite before Art needs to go do whatever the fuck he does after winning a Masters. Promo, evaluations, interviews, a new strap line for Wilson, suit fittings, book the jet for the Finals in London now before the holiday rush.

Tashi’s bright with it, spreadsheet updated, trainers’ bonus paid.

Patrick reaches for her, a hand cupping her hot face. Tashi flits away from his mouth, her shoulder jerking with adrenaline. Patrick finally realises that this has only increased her appetite, Tashi ravenous even after the win. Already on to the next one.

He turns to Art instead, taking in how he smells of clean sweat, his body glistening with it. He seems cowed by the win, not sure what to think. It’s not the one that matters, Patrick knows that, it’s part of a bigger move for the season.

Patrick licks at his jaw. It seems more appropriate than a kiss. Listens to the way Art lets out a satisfied groan and slumps, exhaustedly, into his space to allow it.

Even though they’d kissed after New Rochelle and Patrick had jacked Art off in the dark of their fancy hotel room, he’s gone shy again, hands hovering but never landing on Patrick’s skin.

Tashi doesn’t seem to notice, wriggling between them, mouth easy on Art’s before she’s smearing wet kisses over the hinge of Patrick’s jaw and licking into his mouth. Tashi meets him, tongue for tongue, until her chin is wet, Patrick’s thumb sliding over her skin to pull at her bottom lip.

“I’ve missed you,” he finds himself whimpering because it’s true. Even though he kissed her yesterday, even though she had climbed into his lap a few nights ago, even though he’s been back in their orbit for weeks now -- it still hasn’t clocked up all that missing time yet.

He thinks of that summer, of the pit in the bottom of his stomach from just missing her. Before he even got to the guilt and the regret and futile worry about her. How he’d stare at his empty inbox and yearn for her to reply, his insides growing darker and darker each day despite the Mediterranean sun.

But he has her now, pulling him closer, hands sinking into his hair. Patrick kisses her into the pillow, his body pressing her deep into the mattress and this is new, this feeling of having her under him like this.

Art makes a soft noise beside them. Patrick’s aware of him, hovering, a foot of space between them. When he flutters his eyes open, he can just about see the pale line of Art’s knee, the rest of his body curled in on itself as if he’s trying to take up the smallest amount of space on the bed possible.

Patricks rolls off Tashi into the space between them, his hand curling around the swell of her ass to bring her with him, Tashi’s knee hooked over his hip. It gives Art the permission he needs to tap in, his hand smoothing up over Tashi’s thigh.

Patrick likes it, likes how Tashi shivers against him, how he can feel Art’s touch on her through her body against his. Can feel the way he moves his hand up towards the base of her spine with the way she rolls into Patrick’s stomach, how he knows Art’s tugging down her underwear because it makes her roll forward, her tits pressed against Patrick’s chest.

Tashi moans into his mouth, her fingers clenching in the shoulder of his t-shirt and Art’s knee bumps clumsily into Patrick’s hip before it disappears again, his movements skittish. Patrick wants to touch.

Patrick’s had plenty of threesomes. It’s something that he oscillates between feeling proud and fucking god-awful about. It’s helpful in some situations -- logistics, practice, imagination -- but can make him feel hollow in others, too many strange hands, too many moving parts.

This is different though. Patrick wants to drink them in, wants to be sandwiched between them, wants his mouth on both of them at once.

“Please,” Tashi moans and then she’s the one using momentum to twist between them again, squeezing into the tight space between their bodies. Art looms above them, sitting up on his knees. It looks like an effort to keep his eyes just on Tashi.

“Hey,” Patrick says because the two of them are strangely quiet together. That’s another thing to wonder about -- do they fuck like they fight? Silent glares and unspoken resentment? Patrick can’t imagine it, feels the need to fill the space between them with words. “Art won. Shouldn’t he be in the middle?”

Art groans but doesn’t say anything, dipping to kiss Tashi like he’s laying claim. But Tashi smirks, rolls her shoulders between them. “He hasn’t won yet.”

Onto the next one.

And isn’t she the prize, anyway?

Patrick helps pull her underwear off her ankle, watches from the corner of his eye as Art starts to kiss her properly, his hand big and flat on Tashi’s heaving stomach. It’s easier to gather his thoughts by Tashi’s knee, to nose up the inside of her thigh and just go straight for it, licking wet and wide into her, pointing his tongue just below her clit.

“Fucking --” Tashi groans and then her hand is in his hair, pads of her fingers pressed against the hot base of his skull to direct him. And he’s missed this. Having the time to eat her out like this, wanting to do it with someone that he’s known for longer than a few awkward Tinder dates. He doesn’t mind it when it’s Tashi, her fingers twisting and insistent in his hair, the way her knee folds easily under his shoulder so he can stretch her out further.

He has to curl an arm around her thigh, hitches her hips up against his mouth until she’s nearly off the bed altogether. His elbow brushes Art’s heaving stomach but he leaves it there, more skin for Art to press against as he kisses across Tashi’s collarbone, licks down the valley of her breasts.

“Art --” Tashi whines and it sounds different, more desperate, something that Patrick can’t fully translate yet. And Art’s sweeping his big hand down past her navel, his wrist brushing at Patrick’s nose as he wiggles a finger into her.

Patrick looks up, catches Art staring at him before he turns his attention back to Tashi. Art’s arm is a warm length against Patrick’s cheek and it makes him pause, unsure for once what to do next, catches his breath as Art fucks his fingers into Tashi. It’s dirty but practised, Art’s knuckles crooked just right.

Heart in his throat, Patrick scrapes his teeth across Art’s bony wrist, listens to how they both gasp at the judder of Art’s arm. And then he licks around Art’s knuckles, nose pressed close to Tashi’s clit, feels the way he’s twisting inside her with his mouth.

It’s a mess. And awkward, Art’s wrist at a weird angle and Patrick’s mouth numb but it gets Tashi moaning, her knees coming up as she tries to curl into herself, an orgasm rocking through her.

It’s nearly background noise because Art’s pulling his hand free, fingers wet and clumsy and pushing them into Patrick’s mouth so he can taste. It’s the first time Art’s initiated touching him and Patrick wants to roll over, wants to just bare himself to him and let Art do whatever the fuck he wants with him. Could swallow his hand whole, wants him inside himself whatever way he could get it, imagines himself stretched around each and every broad knuckle.

“My good boys,” Tashi murmurs, voice pitched low enough that it seems to reverberate up Patrick’s spine. He feels the way Art reacts, the jerk of his fingers against Patrick’s tongue, the mirrored shudder of pleasure.

Art’s fingers slip from Patrick’s mouth and smear across Tashi’s belly, reaching for her again.

“Are you going to avoid me forever?” Patrick asks, planting a hand on the mattress and hefting himself up until he’s licking into Art’s mouth.

Tashi flops back against the pillows to watch but Patrick hardly registers it. Art’s mouth is hot against his own, sucking and sucking, body finally relaxing into it. They can’t press any closer, their noses mashed together and the taste of Tashi on each other’s lips.

And this is the logistics that Patrick has become an expert in. He kisses across Art’s jaw, all sharp angles, licks into his mouth, bites at his ear until Art is panting, his hands skating across Patrick’s hip, up over his shoulder, clutching at his hair. Kisses him until Tashi is tugging at them impatiently, groaning, “come on --” and then her hands are on Art, palms pushing roughly at his boxers and he’s curling over her, pushing into her with practised ease.

They’re different with each other, different than maybe Patrick expected. Or imagined. Because he’s imagined them often, in all sorts of combinations and configurations.

Tashi lies back and lets Art fuck into her slowly, her face pressed into Art’s throat, something that’s clearly happened thousands of times. Patrick burns with the urge to touch them, both of them, to put his hands on Tashi’s hips, to feel where Art has touched her, to touch her together.

Patrick’s used to being under her, letting her dictate the pace, the rhythmic roll of her hips under his palms. And he likes her like that, taking charge, using him. But he likes the thought of this too -- of her being vulnerable in it, of her unravelling underneath him, of meeting him thrust for thrust.

It looks all consuming. Art’s hand slides down her hip, his fingers pressing underneath her thigh to pull her leg up over his hip. And Patrick knows it’s letting him fuck her deeper, easing her open, filling her up.

“I’m gonna come,” Art tells her, his voice strangely loud and Tashi moans, shakes her head, fingers clenching in his hair to pull him closer.

“No,” she begs, mouth against the jut of his Adam’s apple. Art’s face twists, agonised. “I can’t --”

Art has his eyes closed, as if all his concentration is focused on fucking her without giving in to the urge to come. “It’s okay, it’s okay,” he soothes her, voice ragged. “Patrick’s gonna get you.”

And Patrick’s back in the game again, his dick aching at Art’s words. They sizzle through him, the knowledge that Patrick’s on his mind through all that despite Tashi’s body working against his. Despite the sweat gathering on the base of his spine, despite the way Tashi has moulded around him.

“Fuck!” she cries, eyes snapping open and she’s staring at him, her gaze boring into where Patrick’s curled over beside them. “Patrick,” she fucking whines and then Patrick is falling forward, all rational thought leaving him and acting on instinct alone.

“Shit,” Art groans and whether it’s Tashi calling out his name or the brush of Patrick’s palm against his hip but he’s coming, his breath punched out of him and hips jerking.

It’s strangely familiar, Patrick conscious of each sound that Art could make -- those quiet nights at the Academy when they never talked about it and then all those times after, when they stopped pretending altogether, the loud slap of Patrick’s hand in the shower, the dirty sound of Art kissing Macy Clarke in their dorm that last semester and Patrick getting off on it.

Once, at Stanford, Patrick considered getting him to come over. Had said as much to Tashi but then chickened out, Tashi kissing away any thoughts of Art joining them. It had been fleeting -- a wild, half coherent thing he had said to Tashi as she rode him but he can still remember how her eyes had lit up.

Tashi reaches for him right now, all roads leading back to this moment, here, all three of them together. For a bright second Patrick thinks he’s going to come like that too -- Tashi’s firm, familiar touch and Art’s glassy expression, slack jaw as he pulls out, swearing, making room for Patrick. Art’s palm gently drags across the sweaty inside of Tashi’s thigh, keeping her legs open for him. Patrick can see how wet his dick is, still half hard and cupped gently in Art’s free hand.

“Fuck,” Patrick chokes out, could sob with the big, inexplicable heat that’s filling him up at Art’s gesture, at his hand, at his stupid fucking face, shy in the way he’s watching what Patrick’s going to do next.

“Hurry up!” Tashi moans, the moment snapping around them and Patrick’s barking out a hysterical laugh and, like flashes, he’s kneeing into the space that Art has left him, sinking into her, his hand fitting where Art’s had been.

She’s so fucking wet, the squelch of Art’s come, and Patrick fights to catch his breath at the suddenness of it.

“Patrick,” Tashi begs brokenly and then she’s rolling desperately up to meet him. “Art-- Patrick-- please. Fuck, I’m --”

Tashi is fucking beautiful when she comes, Patrick could watch it on a loop all day but Art’s part in it sends his mind spinning, the dip of his head as he kisses her, the soft, soothing noise he makes as if he can feel it too, the way it makes her shake apart, her eyes darting between them. Art’s hand is still on Tashi’s thigh, Patrick can feel his knuckles against his hip with every thrust, the shivery feeling of an unexpected touch, of another person in the bed with them.

“Art,” Patrick’s desperate for him, needs his attention too and he’s twisting, Tashi crying out at the change of angle. The three of them bend together, pressed too close together, Patrick still pressed deep inside Tashi, Art’s hand trapped between them.

Tashi gasps against him, her mouth wet against his temple -- the only place she can reach -- and Art’s mouth on his jaw, tongue wet. It’s hot, their frantic, racing breaths and Art drags his hand up Tashi’s knee and onto Patrick’s chest, fingers pressing against his right nipple and Patrick’s giving into the urge to come before he can process it, heat twisting through his body and vision sparking as he spills into Tashi, all wet, wet all encompassing heat.

“Wait,” Art says when Patrick pulls out and flops across the other side of the bed and then Art’s twisting across the bed, mouthing up Tashi’s thigh. Tashi melts into the pillows, her hand sinking into Art’s sweaty hairline and pulling him where she wants him.

Patrick watches, half-exhausted, as Art licks into her. With a jolt he realises what he’s tasting, all three of them mixed together.

“Fuck you,” Patrick moans, torn between being jealous and exhausted. “I don’t have the stamina for that.”

“We’ll work on that,” Tashi says, mindlessly, breathless, eyes half-wild with it.

Patrick goes to snipe back but it’s easier to reach out, palm against the hot skin of her hip as she arches off the bed, her head thrown back as she comes again.

*

They don’t even notice that Patrick hasn’t made the Open qualifiers until that night and Tashi’s scrambling across the bed to turn up the volume of the TV.

And fuck ESPN for bringing it up, really. Patrick rolls his eyes, avoids drawing attention to it. They’re still in the middle of this tournament, why are they already talking about the Open.

“We’re not in fucking New York --” she says faintly as the commentator fires through the week’s qualifier schedule ahead of the main tournament. And then she’s rounding on him, her eyebrows crumpled into a frown. The anger in her face is diluted slightly by her state of undress. “Patrick. What the fuck?”

“What?”

“I thought you qualified --” Art starts, pushed up from his spot on the other side of the bed.

“Can’t all seed in, Art,” Patrick says, avoiding his eyeline. Despite the AC, the room is hot and Patrick doesn’t like how they’ve both turned to scrutinise him. A line of defence ripples through him, it’s fucking Sunday, why are they only asking this now.

“When were you going to say?” Art asks just as Tashi says “You needed the points.”

Tashi’s face does something complicated, something Patrick hasn’t really seen her do much before. Maybe it’s something that she’s learned in their time apart. Because if you asked Patrick, Tashi nearly looked guilty.

The irritation spikes up the back of his throat, hot and dry. “What did you think I was doing in fucking Vermont?” His voice quivers and for a quick moment, Patrick thinks it’s going to break. He slides off the bed, pulls on the first t-shirt he sees. “Skiing?”

Art looks confused, his gaze flipping between the both of them now glaring at each other over the corner of the bed. “It’s August.”

Patrick laughs, all the anger rumbling up through his chest. Says: “Christ, you two are the same person now” and hates how he sounds jealous.

“This wasn’t part of the agreement. Deal’s off.”

“Deal?” Art asks sharply but Tashi waves him off. It only makes the anger on Art’s face tick up incrementally until he’s scowling at both of them across the room.

“What?” Patrick asks incredulously, willing the panicked feeling out of his gut. He’s been getting used to this, allowed hope to flare at the pit of his stomach every time she includes him in the green-juice-protein-recovery regime. This is why he’s here, isn’t it? “Because I actually followed your orders?”

“Orders?” Tashi splutters. “Am I some sort of dictator now?”

“Why am I being punished for actually doing what you asked me to do?”

“Tennis comes first,” Tashi cries out. “The points mattered more. I can’t coach someone who doesn’t recognise that.”

Art’s still trying to catch up: “You’re going to coach him?”

“Oh, okay, then. Are you just going to crawl back to your mansion in Miami, with your his-and-hers Aston Martins, and be done? The Great Tashi Duncan reduced to begging Chris Evert for a few shifts down the Academy? How’s that gonna play with your massive fucking ego. Maybe catch a break on the Real Housewife of Boca Raton --”

“Patrick --” It’s Art, his head whipping between them.

“Who are you gonna love then, Tashi?” Patrick pushes, it feels like pressing at a bruise. He can’t fucking believe she’d dangle this in front of him like this and pull it back again. “All alone out on the court with some snotty-nosed rich kid who can’t fucking serve for shit? How are you gonna look at yourself then? Who’s gonna love you when you’re not winning tournaments --”

“How’s that any different to training you?” she fires back, meanly. Her face is blooming with colour and she looks nineteen again, all wild energy and fuck you attitude. “You’re nothing but adolescent immaturity with that shit serve that you still haven’t fucking fixed. I don’t even know why you thought it was possible. Can’t teach an old dog new tricks. I don’t know why you even bothered coming --”

“Because you wanted this. You came back to me with the offer,” Patrick twists, ignores Art’s bewildered slump of his shoulders. They’re leaning towards each other now, over the corner of the bed and in each other’s faces again. “I know you, Tashi. The thought of it is getting you through this week. You can’t let Art give up without an escape route --”

“Will you shut the fuck up?” Tashi exclaims.

“I’m right,” Patrick leads with but his voice is shaking. He can feel the spark of a tension headache, his vision narrowing slightly. “You know I’m right. It was Art’s tennis that mattered first. Isn’t he the priority? Aren’t I next? Wasn’t that the deal?”

“Yes,” Tashi finally snaps. Her fingers clench together and then she’s turning away from him and the whole room seems to breathe with it.

Art’s staring at her from the other side of the room and Patrick can’t see what he sees. He looks gobsmacked, his eyes flickering over her shoulder to glance at Patrick before he’s back watching her, watching whatever her face is doing, back in her corner and picking his side.

“Yes,” she says again, shoulders heaving and Patrick realises, with a start, that she sounds like she’s crying. “You’re right. It was the right choice.”

*

It’s only when he’s out on the street, wind whipping around his bare arms that he realises his fucking car’s still in Vermont, windscreen gathering bird shit in the leafy corner of the country club where he’s stashed it, hoping no one will flag it for being abandoned.

Each breath feels searing, his throat burning with the need to fucking scream or sob or whatever the fuck.

And this. This is why he walked out all those years ago and never fucking looked back because he can’t deal with this, this overwhelming wave of terror at losing them, the burning angry fire that ignites in his bones when he thinks of them together. Without him. It’s easier to push through it, to just keep going, to decimate everything with fire and live in the ashes.

And hasn’t he done it again. Hasn’t he orchestrated this whole thing so he has to put himself through it on his own. But now it’s worse -- he’s had them both, together, all three. Felt how right it was, how well they slotted together. Art’s tennis is better, Tashi lit up from the inside, Patrick warm and protected and needed somehow, even if it’s just on the tennis court, Art telling him to not go easy on him and Patrick listening to him.

“Fuck!” Patrick shouts, feels the prickle of something zip up the back of his skull. He’s a hundred degrees and drowning, the claw of it choking him. Fingernails pressed into the soft, meaty part of his palms, the stretch of skin over his knuckles, the burning power in his shoulder socket as he overextends, a big swinging serve.

And then his knuckles are smashing into the rough brickwork, pain searing across his hand as the skin splits and bone splinters and he’s well and truly fucked.

*

He asks for two inches of house bourbon and a bag of ice in that order. The residents’ bar is empty this time of night, the hotel too fancy for a night crowd and most of the tennis contingent already heading for Flushing.

Art finds him easily. Settles down on the stool beside him and leans forward so they can speak in hushed tones. “That’s fucking it?”

Patrick sits back, takes in the hard angles of his anger. This is more like it. Art glares at him, looks away. Spins his wedding ring around his knuckle before he pushes it back on.

“What else am I meant to say?” Patrick shrugs, keeps his hand in his lap and tries not to squirm at the cold from the ice pack leaching into his hip. “We’re hardly on talking terms, are we? We’ll just go back to that, eh?”

Pain is radiating up his wrist, the muscles the entire way up his arm cramping. If he ignores it, it’s not an issue. If he keeps drinking, he’ll stop feeling it. If he goes out and scores, well, it’ll all go away then won’t it.

“Patrick,” Art says vaguely. He clears his throat, Patrick can tell he’s nervous. “I don’t know what we’re doing but I think it’s more than talking terms. We’re --”

The whiskey is making him loose, his head scattered already. “Three weeks ago, we weren’t in each other’s lives. And you didn’t want to talk tennis. I was hardly going to ring you up and say, hey Art, you know the way you just beat me in this dumbfuck challenger? Well, you’ve just stolen all my points as well as my rent money and your wife has some batshit idea that I’m heading for the Open anyway. Should I have paused the threesome before or after I got fucked to admit I’m a fucking loser who can’t even qualify for the qualifiers?”

Art deflates, his whole body seemingly slumping down. Patrick watches him, sees the oddly vulnerable quirk of his mouth. It reminds him of when they were teenagers and Art was embarrassed, shrinking in the safety of Patrick’s gregariousness. He’s probably baulking at Patrick saying threesome so loudly.

“You’re wrong, you know,” Art says, finally. “My tennis isn’t more important than yours.”

It’s an olive branch. Their first attempt at this conversation in the sauna feels like a lifetime ago. Patrick takes in a shuddering breath, feels each place in his throat where it catches. “Bullshit, Art. Of course it is.” Fights against saying: it doesn’t fucking matter now, anyway.

“Not to the point where we don’t even ask you what’s going on with yours,” Art persists. “Look, this week has been --” Art looks away, a frown marring his face. --“confusing. It’s strange to have you back. To have you with us. It’s just been me and Tashi for so long. But it feels right, too.” He asks it like a question, his face searching Patrick’s for the answer. “We probably need to talk about it. Talk about all of it. But that would mean Tashi admitting that it’s over, and --”

“Tashi isn’t going anywhere,” Patrick reassures him but his voice is too sharp, irritation banking through him like a growing wave. “She isn’t. She would’ve left already if she was going.”

It’s too blunt. But it’s true. Sometimes Patrick wonders how Art can be the other half of this marriage and not see what’s going on right in front of him.

“She’s staying for you,” Art volleys back and Patrick feels his insides turn over, everything turning into liquid. He can’t let himself go down this path. “You said it yourself.”

“You think she cares about my tennis? She only cares about it when it impacts yours.”

Patrick bites down on the urge to tell him about throwing the challenger because that’s something Tashi has to tell him. Patrick and Art don’t throw barbs at each other and hope they catch on skin, that’s something reserved for Tashi. Because he knows she can take it, because he takes it from her. Art’s too fragile to be told that casually.

“She cares about you,” Art fires back. “You could do it, y’know. Get a tournament. If you put in the work. You could do it together.”

Words lodge in Patrick’s throat. Together all three of them? Together without him? Patrick can’t see it, any of it. And he ends up saying something else entirely, leans forward to grip the back of Art’s neck. “Art, don’t do this to yourself, man. Go upstairs. Forget about me.”

Art rears back, his face curling into a frown. “What?” And then Patrick really feels Art look at him, his eyes roving over him, Art’s hand coming up to feel the back of his forehead like he’s a fucking child.

Patrick shrugs away from him, bile gathering at the back of his throat. The whiskey has numbed his hand -- finally -- but it’s numbed the rest of his limbs too and he stumbles off the stool, curving away from him so Art can’t see his hand.

“Just leave it.” Patrick says. “We tried it. Didn’t work. Fucking tennis, right?”

“Patrick,” Art says sharply, body lithe as he follows him across the bar. “Have you taken something?”

And Patrick finds himself laughing. “Yeah,” he says, desperately clawing for an out. “Yeah, that’s it.” And then because he can’t even do that right either. “Look, I’ll sleep it off. Forget about me. This is just some wild blip on your season and you don’t have to ever think --”

Patrick comes up breathless, not sure what he’s going to say next. You don’t have to ever think of me again. Because that’s what it would be. They’d never have the opportunity to see each other again by accident, Patrick crashing out of the circuit without any of the glory to be invited back again and Art carrying on: the Foundation, the Academy sponsorships, the punditry.

Art looks devastated in front of him, his face soft and vulnerable in the dim light. “Why are you being like this?” he asks. “I thought we were over everything being about tennis. I’ve just got you back --”

Patrick feels sick. Art’s face swims in front of him and he realises, faintly, that he might be crying.

“It’s all tennis. It’s only ever tennis with us.”

*

5am finds him face down in Tashi’s bed. He knows it’s hers before he even opens his eyes, knows the smell of her in the dark, could pick her out of a line up. It overpowers the second smell -- Art -- from the t-shirt he pulled on last night, the smell mixing with his own sweat. The whiskey must have worn off and all he can feel now is the pulsing of his heartbeat in the meat of his hand.

“I don’t care if you’re hungover,” Tashi is telling him, her voice too fucking chipper for this early. She had been in Art’s bed when they got back to the suite last night and despite Art’s cajoling, Patrick had slunk into the spare room. “You need to get up and we are talking about this before we head to New York--”

He feels another wave of nausea but can’t move. The pain radiates up into his elbow and he manages to twist onto his side just as he coughs up a mouthful of bile onto the pillow beside him.

“Patrick --” Tashi says sharply, disgust quickly melding into panic. --“holy fucking -- Patrick!”

Patrick stares at his hand, gingerly held out at an angle so he won’t drop his body weight onto it by accident. So much for keeping it a secret. At the end of the bed, Tashi is staring at him in shock and he watches, abjectly, as her face morphs into devastation and then anger.

“Art!” she roars and then the big light is being flipped on and Tashi is climbing onto the bed beside the puddle of vomit like it’s nothing. The power of motherhood or some shit. “What the fuck did you do?”

“Only a sprain --” Patrick slurs, pain slicing through his ability to just fall asleep again. The room spins around him and even though Patrick is already lying down, he wants to be as still as possible.

Tashi shifts on the bed and his stomach lurches, room tilting around them.

“Oh, shit,” Art says groggily, suddenly there and kneeling down at the side of the bed. “You didn’t say --”

“How the fuck did you miss this?” Tashi snaps. “His hand is like a fucking, a fucking-- ham --”

“Don’t say ham --” Patrick closes his eyes to it, sees the old dining room of the Florida house, all laid out for the holidays, Christmas. Or Easter, maybe. The whole table sweating under the unseasonable heat. His mother at one end, the smell of hairspray cutting through the gin. Because that’s how he remembers her, aged eight, her carefully sculpted and bouffant Hilary-Clinton-hair wilting in the humidity. The feeling of his father’s clammy hand on his neck, the busted and gnarled curl of his knuckles when he nudged Patrick around like a trophy for his friends. Patty’s going to be the next US number one! the murmur of disinterest, of non-committal disbelief, and then laughter or so he says.

Patrick vomits again, feels Tashi’s hand at his jaw, gentle despite the anger positively rolling off her.

“Are you fucking concussed or something?” Tashi asks, fingers moving hair away from his sweaty forehead to look at his eyes. “What did you do?”

“No,” Art’s answering for him. “He has no pain threshold --”

“You are a fucking pussy,” Tashi’s muttering and then Patrick’s pushing himself up, groaning with the effort. It brings his face close to Tashi’s, smells the lotion she keeps slathering herself in and it calms him a bit.

“Is it bad?” He doesn’t want to look. His hand aches, feels massive against his knee, like all the blankets on the bed are touching him. It makes his skin crawl but he’s frozen, cold sweat gathering at the nape of his neck and he can’t bring himself to look.

Any concern melts from Tashi’s face and it’s just pure irritation, her face framed in the pre-dawn light and the bulb in the ceiling like a halo around her. She’s dressed already -- soft in a jumper and casual pants -- Art’s still in the t-shirt he slept in but he’s looking at him fondly, mouth twisting up into a smile. And he’s caught again, between them both.

Maybe this is what he’s here for, Patrick thinks deliriously -- he’s forgetting he’s already figured this out last night, that he’s walked away from them, that he’s angry at them -- but maybe this is why he’s here: someone for both of them to care for, to mend, to look after together. A conduit for the middle ground.

“You’re pathetic,” Tashi says and then she’s away, flapping her way back into the main suite and leaving Art slumped against the mattress, nose wrinkled from the vomit.

*

Tashi doesn’t speak to him for two whole days. Part of Patrick -- a very large part of him -- wants to tell her in no uncertain terms to go fuck herself because it’s his hand, he can do whatever the fuck he wants with it! and the irritation at her and anger at himself festers into something that twenty-year-old Patrick would be proud of.

He wallows, considers ignoring her altogether, feels vindictive (and then pathetic) about taking her money in place of his health insurance to get his hand seen to.

It’s a minor fracture of the fifth metacarpal and a hairline on the neck of the fourth -- nothing a doctor would even worry about except Tashi is blazing on ahead about the fact that Patrick’s a so-called professional tennis player -- and lands him with a plaster cast just to be sure.

“Are you fucking serious, Tashi?” Patrick asks her when he’s sweated through the first round of pain meds and they won’t give him anything stronger. It makes him itch, the hunger for something more, and hardly makes a dent in the pain radiating up his arm.

“If that hand’s ruined, we are over,” she tells him, her eyes dark. “I can’t believe you did this. Punching a wall. What age are you?”

“Sorry for giving a shit about something,” Patrick finds himself saying, petulant, proving her point.

“Thought tennis came first?” she says, icily. “This is why this --” she waves a hand between herself and the empty space between them where Art should be. “Shouldn’t be getting in the way of tennis. Of any of our tennis and I’m apparently a glutton for punishment, so that fucking means you too.”

“Fuck you,” Patrick retorts because he’s tired and worn to the wire and his hand is hanging from some metal contraption attached to the fucking ceiling and his entire right side is growing numb from the lack of movement and he can’t think of anything else to say.

Tashi’s face blazes. “Very mature.”

But then he sees the relief sag through her when the doctor says he’s fine to fly, that her normal doctor can cut the cast off in three weeks, that as long as he can wiggle his fingers and keep an eye on swelling, it should be fine and he’ll be back to training in no time.

“Tash,” he says as they wait for a car outside Cincinnati Mercy and she turns into him, lets him press all his apologies into her mouth because neither of them can say anything normal to each other now.

“Why are you so reckless with your body?” she asks and means why are you reckless with my body too because it is hers, just like her body was his body when she tore her knee, just like how Art is both of them and none of them at all and they are all each other, all of the time, and never their own person because they fail at it.

Patrick gasps into her mouth, wishing he could answer her.

*

New York is New York. Art and Tashi don’t stay in the players' hotel out in Queens so Patrick takes their room and allows himself to melt back into the hubbub of the Open and his god-awful sleep schedule. He wakes up at noon, catches a few sets of the qualifying matches from the back of the bleachers at the outer courts, salutes any player that recognizes him -- of which there are depressingly few -- and slowly falls in love with tennis again.

He makes sure he shows off the cast, as if to say -- this is the reason I’m not down there hammering you into the decoturf, you asshole -- but even that grates at him, the level of tennis played out here to fuck all crowd and with no commentary is soul destroying. He’s not even on their level, hasn’t clawed his way into a big tournament in years.

It burns through him -- the desire to be out there on the court, the feeling of being left behind on the stands, time ticking by like sand through a sieve -- and when Art finally turns up to put in some practice a few days in, Patrick’s bouncing on the balls of his feet, adrenaline firing through him again and ready for it.

“You need to rest,” Tashi tells him, wrenching the racket out of his weak left grip. “Benched.”

“I think you get off on that,” Patrick jokes with her and she glares at him, the first time she’s looked at him all morning. “Aw, c’mon Tashi. This is the longest I haven’t played anything in a while --”

“Sit down or I’ll revoke that pass --”

Patrick is in on a staff pass, it hangs heavy around his neck every time he swipes through security without them.

“Let him hit a few backhands --” Art calls from the other side of the net and Patrick can see the moment Tashi’s patience fizzes away, the muscle in her jaw flexing.

She sends a serve rocketing across the court, the force of it unexpected and out of nowhere, and it takes Patrick’s breath away, the raw beauty of it.

And he knows what she means by it, by the show of strength after all this time. Rest, prepare for training, or else you could be like this. Serving into the wind with no one watching.

*

She forgets she’s not talking to him later that night, has him spread out across their big Californian king in their suite in the city, her hand planted on his chest.

“If that cast fucking touches me one more time --” she threatens but undermines herself when she throws her head back, a moan escaping the back of her throat. She’s wearing a pale silk nightdress and Patrick likes the way her nipples look in it: shadowy, obvious, pert. It’s the colour of champagne but it’s ruined, a damp patch on her chest where Patrick had sucked at her breast through it, wrinkled fist marks, the dark stain from where Art had come over her back a few moments ago.

Beside them, Art laughs, flushed red, sated. “I wouldn’t risk it,” he says, rolling into Patrick’s space and pushing his elbow up and out of the way. It stretches his shoulder, Patrick’s fingers clumsy and awkward as he curls them around the top of the headboard.

Gone is Art’s hesitance and Patrick’s so fucking glad, wants to wallow in his new exuberance for the three of them together, isn’t sure how to parse out the change in his demenor when they aren’t rolling around bed together.

Patrick turns his face to the side, his free hand -- the one unencumbered by the cast -- sliding down his own stomach to give Tashi something to rut her clit into as she rolls her hips but his eyes are on Art as he ducks down, half-laughing, bright-eyed, to lick across Patrick’s armpit.

He’s had his fingers inside him, has kissed Art into the mattress of this very bed for an hour before Tashi got out of the bath, has had both of them on him at once, has Tashi clenching around him right now -- but it’s Art’s soft expression, the intimacy of his tongue there, that has him coming.

*

By the weekend, Patrick’s cast has been decorated by a sprawling L I L Y that takes up most of the real estate on his outer arm. Art had watched, his demeanour strangely relaxed compared to the last week, as Lily had fussed over the blank canvas and Patrick had forced himself not to watch as she scrawled all over it, her soft breath on the bare skin of his elbow as she curled over his wrist.

Art had praised it when Patrick couldn’t, words lodged in his throat as he looked down at her name claiming him, the tiny tennis rackets she had splodged across his knuckles, the hearts and flowers and blurred shapes that circled around her name. Lily had bowed shyly into Art’s neck as he hugged her and then beamed at him when Patrick finally cleared his throat to thank her.

“That’s all she wants,” Art said quietly, his voice low as Lily bounded over to her grandparents and Tashi on the other side of the hotel room. “Just a few words.”

“I know,” Patrick murmured, feeling scrutinised and judged and hot with love all at the same time.

Art smiled softly at him and then they went quiet as Art took his hand, his grip warm across the sensitive tips of Patrick’s fingers. He turned his hand over and right in the worn space of his palm, wrote A R T in black Sharpie, Patrick’s breath caught in his throat.

It was a strange place to put it. Small and hidden. Just for him. No Tashi. Just them. Art seems to realise at the same time as Patrick does, his eyes skating up to meet his and the blush working its way across his face.

They were out on the court this morning but that afternoon had been reserved for sightseeing, Tashi’s dad coming into town now they were so close to home. Patrick had done his best to avoid Tashi’s dad, thinking back to the disastrous last time he had met them out in Stanford all those years ago. But Lily had demanded to sign his cast properly and it meant Patrick coming up to the hotel room too.

Art had stuck by him most of the evening and Patrick can’t help but be grateful for him. (Or, maybe, Tashi’s dad still scares the shit out of him, too). And it had been nice, feeling like they were a gang again, laughing their way through most of the Central Park zoo with Lily swinging between them.

And it isn’t lost on him that this is some sort of Step. He’s popped up now in New York after Cincinnati and Tashi’s mom isn’t an idiot. He’s meeting the parents again, he’s holding Lily’s hand as they wait for a crosswalk, he’s spending the Saturday before the Open eating ice cream with the extended Donaldsons and everyone is being very Normal About It.

Part of Patrick wants to scream. At the speed of it all. But there’s a bigger part of him that is on edge because of how he wants this to work this time, wants it to go well.

Art’s fingers trace over his name before he folds Patrick’s fingers back into his palm, gently.

“Are you going to do something soppy like kiss the cast because, bro, that’s nasty --” Patrick says, anything to break the growing tension.

“It’s on your hand,” Art retorts back but he’s grinning, crawling over to crowd into his place at the corner of the sofa. Over his shoulder, Patrick is aware of the rest of them well within eyesight but Art’s all restless energy and he looks young, relaxed, like they’re discussing throwing the Junior Open again and the reality of adulthood is far, far ahead of them.

“You’re the one that wants that hand on you --” quiet, teasing, necessary.

“Shut the fuck up,” Art laughs but he ducks in, seals their mouths together quickly, like he can’t fucking stop himself.

It makes Patrick breathless -- to have him like this, to know that Art isn’t always tension and anxiety, that there’s still some of the old him buried under his skin. He thinks of anger a fortnight ago when Patrick turned up at the hotel, of the jut of his chin when he followed him down to the bar, the sad look in his expression when Patrick argued with Tashi.

“I like you like this,” he admits softly, lets the words slip out of him, quiet and secret.

“Kissing you?” Art replies and Patrick can hear the nervousness in it.

Over his shoulder, Tashi’s watching them. And that means that her parents can see, that she doesn’t mind them seeing. It feels bigger than it is -- ostensibly a Saturday night in front of the TV -- but with downtown Manhattan sprawling out beyond them from the panoramic windows and a child bouncing around in a sugar rush, her grandparents pretending that No. 9 ranked in the world Art Donaldson isn’t kissing their daughter’s ex-boyfriend across the thousand dollar hotel room.

It takes all of his resolve not to freak the fuck out. Patrick shakes his head, rubs his thumb over Art’s scratchy jaw. “Happy.”

Art shrugs, flops back into the sofa. “This --” he lifts a hand to gesture between themselves. Patrick suspects he can see a hint of his panic reflected in Art’s expression. He’s gone very pink, very pretty. “Just a nice day.” And then, more nervous. “Wasn’t it?”

Patrick thinks of that afternoon, of being stopped outside the penguin enclosure and signing a hat. The way Art had tucked his head down but couldn’t hide the grin, the feeling of jealousy and joy that had burst across Patrick’s chest to see it, to see him finally fucking enjoying it.

“The best day, Art,” teasing in a different way. But not dishonest.

Art laughs again, curling down so his head settles on the back of the sofa right beside Patrick’s shoulder and in the tight space between their bodies, he takes his hand again, Art’s finger tips tracing over Lily’s name scrawled across the cast.

*

Art blasts through the first two rounds, demolishes a wild card and the asshole underdog that Patrick watched all the way back on Monday in the first round of the qualifiers. It makes Patrick breathless, to be impressed by someone’s tennis one day and see it cracked open in three straight sets by someone in the single digits the next.

When Art is on form, he’s ruthless. And there’s a strange beauty to it -- different to Tashi, Patrick concedes -- but beautiful all the same. All straight angles and precise serves, the spin on the ball so accurate Patrick could put a bet on it.

But then the Italian number one breaks his serve and gets under his skin in a series of shaky sets on a bright Wednesday morning in the Round of 16. In the stands, Tashi goes quiet and Patrick sits next to her feeling acutely as the tension builds in her shoulders.

“He’ll get back into it --” Patrick tells her during a set break and the crowd has broken into relieved chattering.

Tashi’s blunt nails dig into the soft underside of Patrick’s elbow. “Will you shut the fuck up. Why are you incessantly talking?”

“I’m trying to make you feel better,” Patrick hisses back and shakes her grip off. “Isn’t that why I’m still really here?”

She has no real answer for that but her glare falters, must see the vulnerability in it and Patrick sees it reflected in her expression. She’s scared shitless, Patrick can see it in how she’s masking her nerves, the sick way she’s curling her lip, the staccato of her breath when she thinks he can’t hear her catch her breath.

They’ve slowly come to a detente, Tashi starting to talk to him again, softening the more Lily badgers Patrick into playing with her, seeing the way Art has been leaning on him the past few days.

But they haven’t really talked about tennis.

“I want this,” Patrick tells her, now, in the stands of Court 9. “I want it for Art, here and now. But I want it for me more. I want next season and I want you there with me.”

Patrick remembers sitting here, watching her demolish Anna Mueller in straight sets, his heart in his throat and knowing he wanted her, forever, then. It had seemed so simple -- he had everything he wanted: graduation, tennis, Art, Tashi.

“I can’t do it without you--” Patrick pauses, corrects himself. “I don’t want to do it without you anymore.”

Tashi’s face is turned towards him but he can’t be sure if she’s looking at him or not. He suddenly wishes he could reach forward to shove the sunglasses off her face. Wants to be closer to her, the way they always seem to be only a racket width apart for all of their most serious conversations.

“I’m giving you next season and more if you’ll have me. Let Art have what he wants and you’ll have the time to find your way back to each other.”

Tashi’s voice is quiet, her expression inscrutable. “You’re a snake, Patrick. Art is literally on the court right now and --”

Patrick grips at her wrist, feels the delicate bones shift under his palm as she turns towards him.

“I’m telling you that there’s something beyond this,” Patrick cuts her off. “And I’m telling you before you have to think about it. Whether he wins or loses right now. I’m in this. Us. All three --”

--“no matter what happens,” Tashi finishes for him, turning his hand over so she can slot her fingers between his instead.

It’s maybe risky -- the stands are full, Art’s a big draw, so there is more chance of bored cameramen swinging round to the players’ boxes for reactions. The last thing they really need is to mar Art’s Open with salacious rumours but Tashi’s pulse is hammering against his wrist and he can feel how her palm has started to sweat.

“I know you’re only distracting me,” Tashi tells him when they can talk next. Art’s pulled back a set, isn’t looking so shaky on the far side of the court. Patrick’s been waiting for him to look up so he can flash a reassuring grin at him but he hasn’t glanced in their direction all morning. Tashi’s mood has buoyed but she’s still glaring daggers at the back of Lorenzi’s coach a few rows down.

It isn’t really the place to have this conversation, each response cleaved apart and spread between point breaks. But it gives them time, gets Tashi out of her head and Patrick into his. He watches the ball fly back and forth as he formulates his response, the volley ratcheting up in energy, Art’s guttural grunt reverberating through the court.

“What would you say if you let yourself believe it?” Patrick asks her, squeezing her hand. “Believe I could do it. That I’d dedicate myself to it like Art did.”

Tashi looks at him.

“You’re scared I’m bullshitting you,” Patrick says, turns away so he doesn’t have to look at her but it just brings him back towards Art on the court. He wishes, suddenly, that he was up here with them. So he’d only have to say this once. “That I’m treating it like a game.”

“I’m the one who always makes it about tennis,” Tashi admits and Patrick’s nearly shocked to hear how bitter she lets herself sound. She drops his hand, fidgets with the bright beads that spell out L I L Y on her wrist.

“And you think I don’t take tennis seriously,” Patrick fills in. He rubs his sweaty palm on his shorts, pushes his fingers through his hair. “But I’m saying that I do. Tennis and everything else. All of it, Tashi. Everything.”

He reaches across with his right hand, gripping awkwardly at her wrist so she can see the block letters of Lily’s name on the front of his cast.

He hasn’t asked what she’s said to her parents but they left on Sunday cordially, her mother giving Patrick a quick hug, ice finally broken. And Art had tucked Tashi into his chest, kissed her forehead in a private little way that made Patrick squirm to see it, like he was invited into something so intimate that he shouldn’t have been there.

He feels her let out a breath beside him, the pad of her finger tracing over the tingly, sensitive tips of his fingers that are sticking out of the cast.

“But I think you know that,” Patrick pushes on. “I think you want me here. Not just for Art or in bed or playing tennis. I think you want me here for you.”

Tashi rearranges the sunglasses on her nose and fucking hell, Patrick could scream. No wonder Art has half lost it -- if it’s this hard to wrench an honest word out of Tashi’s mouth. Patrick knows this isn’t a punt in the dark -- he knows that what he feels for Tashi is real, that it never really left. And he knows that Tashi feels something for him too, that she’s drawn to him like a magnet whenever they’re in the same proximity, that something sparks between them, low and dangerous. “Why am I really here, Tashi?”

Down on the court, Art breaks Lorenzi’s serve. It’s a miraculous comeback, Cliff Drysdale will praise it for the rest of the tournament, adamant that it was the match of the season, no matter the final result.

Tashi is on her feet with the crowd, turning to him. Patrick gathers her up into his arms and feels the way she clutches him back. “I believe you!” she’s yelling into his ear. “I believe you!”

*

It all shakes apart as the week wears on. Patrick steps into the space of Art’s hitting partner reluctantly, feeling the pressure of the occasion mount. In a quiet moment, Tashi tells him to work him on the court but Patrick can see how it just seems to wear Art down rather than rile him up.

“Why are you allowed to exhaust yourself training but Tashi won’t let me give you a blow job?” Patrick asks the morning of the semi finals. It’s hardly even dawn and Art had woken him up with a hand cradling his jaw, telling him the alarm was going off.

Art fucking blushes. “It’s tennis,” he shrugs. “Different rules, isn’t it?”

“Come on,” Patrick pleads, his hands slipping down to grope at him, watching as Art’s eyes slip closed across the pillow. He’s half hard in the tiny underwear he’s taken to wearing, Patrick wants to suck him through the cotton. “She’ll never know.”

“I’ll alway know,” Tashi murmurs, her voice floating through the darkness.

Art laughs but pulls him into a long kiss, tongue lapping along Patrick’s lower lip. It’s gratifying when he initiates it, Patrick’s skin buzzing from each sweep of Art’s hand up his neck as Art clutches him closer. Patrick thinks of four weeks ago -- a lifetime -- of how much has changed between all three of them since then.

The players’ hotel had cleared out fast and Patrick has to admit that it makes for a depressing stay, even if he’s not playing. The lure of watching great tennis has waned too so when Tashi had texted him once, a simple come into the city that read much more like come home during the second WTA semi, he had slipped out of the stadium and into traffic.

It makes his head spin if he thinks too much about it: about how quickly he ordered an Uber without a second thought, about the hotel key burning a hole in his wallet, about how he let himself in and found them sleep-slow and quiet, not fussed at the intruder. The contented hum from Tashi when he told her Andreescu would face Williams on Saturday and how Art had shuffled up behind him, his arm reaching across both of them.

Patrick deepens the kiss now, dragging Art closer so they can grind against each other, his fingers exploring. Art moans, low and guttural into his mouth, and Patrick’s hungry for it, wants to hear it again.

“That doesn’t look productive,” Tashi says, voice much closer.

Patrick opens his eyes, sees in the bright doorway to the en-suite that she’s still in her pyjamas.

“Depends on your definition of productive,” Patrick counters, throwing off the covers so she can see where they’re rutting against each other. The bathroom light slices across the bed and Patrick catches the outline of Art’s cock, the damp spot across the briefs, the way the muscles of his abdomen keep contracting as he thrusts up to meet Patrick’s hips.

She rolls her eyes but her gaze lingers and Patrick takes it as a win. He makes a show of groaning, throwing his head back and when he looks down at Art, he can see him reaching for her, his hand outstretched and begging.

“You have an early court time --” Tashi protests but she’s already slipping closer to the bed.

“Shit,” Patrick groans because does she ever fucking think of anything but her schedule? Catching Art’s eye, --“won’t you be so fucking delighted when this is all over?”

Art’s face twists, falters maybe, Patrick can’t really process it before Art’s ducking away, trailing down Patrick’s body with his distracting mouth.

“Don’t be an asshole, Patrick,” Tashi tells him but then she’s climbing onto the bed, her hands reaching for his face so she can kiss him properly, tasting of toothpaste.

“Sorry,” he half-apologises because he very much does not taste of toothpaste and belatedly, realises that he could be apologising for being a dickhead too. “Sorry,” he repeats, putting more weight behind it.

Tashi rolls her eyes but it’s endeared, Patrick’s stomach dropping at how fond she looks. He stares at her, tries to work out what she’s thinking as Art wriggles across the sheets, settles near his waist and before Patrick can ask what he’s doing, his mouth closes around Patrick’s cock, all hot and wet heat. “Art, fuck,” Patrick arches up into it. “I’m meant to be blowing you.”

“Let him,” Tashi breathes, catching his mouth in a final kiss before she’s dragging her mouth down his jaw, her teeth scraping across where Patrick has let his stubble grow in again. Tashi seems to like it, keeps rubbing her fingers over it when Patrick pulls her into kisses.

“Can he?” Patrick asks mindlessly, straining up to see what’s going on. Tashi’s eyes flick up, her gaze molten under her eyelashes and he corrects himself, mind running away with him, imagines Art’s mouth stretched around some cock that doesn’t belong to him. “Has he?”

But Tashi isn’t listening to him anymore, she’s ducking down, her hand sinking into Art’s hair to coach his pace, Art pulling off with each scratch of her nails across his skull. She nips in, her mouth wet on the jut of Patrick’s hip bone.

There’s just enough light in the room for Patrick to see them, heads bobbing together as they lick around him. Tashi’s nimble hand cradles at his balls and Art’s heavy forearm is wedged across his belly. One of them spits and then there’s a palm around him, squeezing as they both pull off to kiss over his lap.

“No,” Patrick babbles, his hands flying down. It’s Tashi’s hand, a teasing too-loose grip, and Art’s groaning into the kiss, Patrick can hear the wet movement of their mouths and for a mad moment, he wants to be down there with them. To be kissing them, to be a part of it, to twist his body so he can be a few inches above his own straining cock, too.

Tashi’s hand is too lax, deliberately too slow as she works him over and Patrick rocks his hips up into it desperately, jerking when the heat of his cock bumps against Art’s chin.

He knows what they’re going to do next but Patrick is selfish in his want, desperate for it. He lets his hands slide over their jaws, Tashi’s hair caught against his palm, fits a thumb at the corner of their mouths.

“Fuck sake, Patrick,” Tashi says but she’s laughing, pulling away to bite at the pad of this thumb, teeth closing round it.

“Ow,” he yelps, tugging his hand away and knows that it’s a warning of sorts. “Fuck, I want you so badly --”

“I know,” and it’s Art, his voice hoarse. His body is twisted in such a way that when Patrick touches him, he can feel the sweat gathered at the crease of his thigh, can fit his fingers into the elastic of the legs of his underwear. Art shudders against him, his leg curling up and all Patrick can do is prod against his perineum, his finger only wet from Tashi’s spit. It’s frustrating, it’s better than nothing, it’s Art and Tashi curled either side of him but both of them too far to really reach.

Tashi sets the speed, directs Art’s mouth, does something with her tongue that has them both moaning when Patrick rocks his hips up again. He has to close his eyes against the sight -- Tashi and Art’s tongues meeting over the slippery head of his dick, the way both of them curl their lips over it, the two of them impossible, together. It’s so wet, Patrick dribbling over himself, someone’s spit sliding down the underside of his dick. Two mouths on him at once, eating at him, sucking, tongues overlapping.

“Come here,” Patrick begs, wants to put his hand on Tashi too, wants to pull Art up to return the favour, needs something inside his mouth so desperately that he considers -- wildly -- sucking on one of Art’s toes. But Art ignores him, his hand curling loosely around the base of Patrick’s dick as he pulls the head into his mouth. His other hand slides between Tashi’s legs, Patrick can feel the jostle of it against his thigh and she pulls away to pant wetly against Patrick’s hip.

All those years ago, the three of them in that messy hotel room, Patrick could never have imagined it would work out like this. Adolescent bravado had painted Tashi splayed out in the middle of their extended bed at the back of his imagination. His ego had them both coming at the same time because of his body, because of something he had done. Every time he jerked off thinking about it, Patrick never considered that he was in the middle. Not like this. Not all consuming, watching Art and Tashi working wordlessly together like they had planned for something like this, that they wanted this just as much as Patrick does.

Patrick’s leg is starting to grow numb the way Tashi’s splayed out across him and there’s nothing he can do but plant his foot on the mattress to give her more of his knee to grind down into. Art’s knuckles -- wet -- drag across his skin as he twists into her and she bites into the soft flesh at the inside of Patrick’s thigh as she comes.

It happens sort of abstractly, Patrick rocking up in response. “Sorry, sorry,” he’s moaning, can’t stop it, has lost control of his tongue as Art gags, swallowing around him, Patrick helplessly giving in and coming into the heat of his mouth.

The room whites out for a moment, his eyes clenching shut at the force of it and it’s just the image of Art and Tashi across the back of his eyelids. He can hear them talking -- Tashi coaching him through the aftermath maybe -- but it’s too low to understand over the rush of blood in his ears.

Tashi’s looking up at him when he opens them and Patrick tries to find words, his hand reaching out to touch Art’s ankle.

And then it’s like whiplash, Art’s staggering off the bed and towards the bathroom, the door slamming closed.

“What was that?” Patrick asks, stomach dropping, the shaky feeling of his orgasm draining away quickly.

Tashi sighs, curls her legs up into her chest all the way across the bed. She’s still in the t-shirt she slept in, ratty and stretched at the collar, nearly completely faded I Told Ya across her chest. “That’s the Open.”

*

So. Maybe Tashi had a point about not pushing him this close to the final. Patrick concedes this to Tashi in the hallway outside the Arthur Ashe that evening, both of them pressed against the door that Art’s hidden behind.

The stadium is packed to the brim and behind the scenes isn’t much better. The place is crawling with media and corporate jackasses trying to poach players or push their new fangled pedometer app or some shit. There’s a strange sort of energy this close to the final, just within touching distance, three long weeks stuffed inside the same stadium starting to draw to a close.

It’s like every tournament Patrick’s been to but on steroids.

“Don’t fucking start,” Tashi all but growls and rattles the doorhandle. “Art, let us in.”

And really, it’s the schedule (and not a panic response induced by Patrick coming down his throat at 6am this morning, thank you very much) that has them in this pickle. The semi is a night match, advertised like Art is a returning US hero or whatever the fuck the USTA have cooked up and the crowd is ravenous for it.

Art had emerged from the bathroom early this morning pale and shaky, his routine -- as Tashi had pedantically pointed out -- messed up already. Patrick thought that this barb was particularly underhanded given that she was still flushed from coming not ten minutes before but she was right all the same.

They missed his practice court time and the rest of the courts are jammed with the junior rounds. “Back to the scene of the crime,” Patrick had joked as they looked at the Junior Boys’ Doubles roster sheet that was currently taking up courts 4, 5, and 6 but Art had just complained that they were hogging courts with bad tennis.

Instead, Patrick ran Art through a set of reaction drills in the warm up area and then sat through a stoic and stressed protein-packed early dinner whilst Tashi had murmured strategy in his ear. By the time he was heading into the locker room to get changed, he finally looked match ready.

Except, then Tashi was turning to some tall fuck from Wilson and introducing him to Patrick, her new client, and Art was back to being pale and sickly looking. Patrick hadn’t realised Art was going to be so fucking anal over it or he wouldn’t have bothered pushing it so early, would’ve waited a few weeks until Art properly worked himself up to admitting he was retiring.

Over the Tannoy, time is called for the players and Tashi flashes Patrick a panicked look. People seem to flood into the corridor and when he tries the handle again, it gives way, letting Patrick and Tashi fall into the tiny room that Art’s tucked himself away in.

“I can’t do this --” Art says, miserable but direct. He paces in the tiny space between storage containers, jaw working manically over a piece of gum.

This is the meltdown that Patrick is more familiar with, the nervous energy that expels itself on the court when Art loses it and starts smashing rackets. He’s seen it over grainy pixelated screens and felt the beginnings of it all the way back in their Academy days but he’s never experienced it in person before.

“You can’t Mardy Fish this,” Tashi’s telling him, a hand smoothing down the back of his head and Patrick holds in a snort. The other one is cupped under his chin, holding him in place. “It’ll be fine. You’ll be okay once you’re out there. You’ve got this, Art. You aren’t forfeiting.”

“But what if I don’t?” Art asks, sounding so vulnerable it makes Patrick’s stomach ache. “What if I lose?”

Tashi’s expression falters. “Then --” she can’t answer him, her voice twisting into a croak.

“Then you lose,” Patrick shrugs, attempts a joke. “You know six grand slams is better than none.”

Art lets out a bark of nervous laughter and Tashi reluctantly lets go of him to run her hands through her hair. She looks on the verge of pulling it out. “That isn’t helpful right now, what the fuck?”

But it is actually helpful right now. Art’s shoulders drop and he’s looking past her, staring at Patrick and willing him to be just as fucking annoying and childishly distracting as he was all those years ago when they played together. Art never second guessing his playing back then, both of them bolstered by each other’s bravado until they were seeding in Top 5 into the fucking Junior Open.

“I’d know,” Patrick offers and this time Tashi’s mouth quirks up and she’s looking at him with that glint in her eye that makes Patrick believe that everything is actually going to be fucking okay. Eventually.

A knock on the door startles them and Tashi moves to the doorway to assure the umpire that they’re on their way, just a minute, it’s just a wardrobe malfunction, and they’ll be on the court soon, she promises.

Art’s staring at Patrick, his expression so open that Patrick could nearly read every emotion swirling round his head.

“What if it’s all just tennis?” Art asks quietly and Patrick can tell he’s been thinking about this for a while, that it’s been playing on his mind all day. Maybe it was some sort of post-nut clarity, afterall. Patrick isn’t sure if it’s just dawning on him as the tournament draws to a close, those questions of what next, or if it’s the warm way they’re slotting together now, three of them squeezed into a bed with no desire but to hold each other. The slow realisation that this could be it and still being wrong.

He can hear Tashi’s breathing behind him and knows that she’s thinking carefully of what to say -- that this is the bit she struggles with -- so Patrick goes and just says it for her:

“We love you.”

The plural softens it slightly but it still lands hard. Art’s face seems to short circuit and he can feel Tashi’s eyes on the back of his neck. It makes him sweat, the feeling of dread spreading coolly through his gut in case he made a wrong move again. He’s never said it to anyone else before. Never meant it! Even those relationships that lingered on for longer than a few months never tipped into love territory.

“Patrick --”

Maybe he’s so conditioned to not thinking about it, Patrick doesn’t even know the real meaning of the word. But it feels like this should be it. Even after all this time, Patrick still feels like Tashi and Art have their claws hitched under his skin. He isn’t able to just untangle himself from them this time, has been absorbed so fully into their relationship the past few weeks it’s nearly as if the past ten years never happened.

“Patrick?” Tashi this time, voice quiet. None of them have moved. The braying of the crowd outside filters into the dressing room and Patrick feels the first pulse of panic. The umpire is going to knock on the door again, Art’s going to get a time penalty. “Are we doing this now?”

“I --” Patrick feels the words clog in his throat but knows he has to make Art believe him. “I love you.”

Art suddenly inhales, his eyes flickering away from Patrick to Tashi over his shoulder. It feels loud, Patrick’s barely breathing, Tashi’s hand slides onto his back. He can feel the way five tentative fingers press into his t-shirt. He’s not sure who’s holding up who.

“No listen,” Patrick shuffles forward, cups the back of Art’s skull, tugs him closer. “I do. Always have in some fucked up way. It’s always been me and you. And you know I still will after the tennis. Whatever happens out there.”

Art looks about one moment away from shattering apart and Patrick knows now that this is actually the worst time to do this but he can’t take the words back, can’t swallow them back down now that they’re tumbling out of his mouth like this.

Tashi’s fingers clench in his t-shirt, pulling it taut around his middle.

“And Tashi too,” Patrick says into Art’s mouth. He’s so close he can hear the catch in Art’s throat. “And I’m enough for her too. It’s all three of us, Art. It always has been. This can’t be the end of it.”

“It’s only just beginning --” Art murmurs and Patrick seals their mouths together, presses everything he wants into Art’s dry mouth. It seems to last an eternity, Art’s shaking hands clutching at him so he can’t let go. Tashi’s hand slides over the back of his shoulder and then she’s pressing into the space by their side, her forehead pressed to Art’s cheek bone. Patrick can stretch his embrace around both of them and it’s all hands, Tashi pressing in against their mouths in a way that should be funny but instead is sweet, needy, consolidating the spaces they have for each other together.

“We need to talk about this,” Art says, pulling away. There’s more colour in his face now but his eyes are abnormally wide, flitting between the two of them.

“Not now,” Tashi says but she looks devastated. “There really isn’t time. You need to go out and fucking win this thing.”

It’s actually grounding, having Tashi be the one to act rationally, just like herself. Because tennis, right in this moment, is the bigger thing. Patrick’s made his point -- to both of them over the past two days -- and they’re slowly piecing it together. That’s enough for now. Enough to get them to the final.

Patrick presses his forehead to her temple as Tashi holds her hand out for his gum. Art looks between them, forehead creasing into a determined frown. Neither of them mention how much her hand is shaking.

“And then come back,” Tashi pauses, Patrick feels her shoulders heave in a deep breath, around the conscious plural. “To us.”

*

He doesn’t win. That would only happen in the movies. The entire arena is stretched thin on adrenaline, ten thousand hearts beating in time to the thwack of a tennis ball. Patrick finds himself oddly emotional about it. He reaches for Tashi in the final volley, his fingers sinking into the hot space between her thighs. There will be a picture of it buried a few pages into the sports section in the morning, her hands clutching him back, but by then, they won’t care. Her skin is red hot, the nimble fingers of one hand around his wrist, manicured nails digging into the sensitive underside of his palm.

Art turns away from them on the court when De Marier smashes the matchpoint and Patrick can feel his throat close over. Like he’s lost him forever. Gone before they ever really started again. But then Art’s turning, the flood lights blinding his face as he congratulates De Marier, and then he’s looking up, eyes sharp, face sweaty, finding them in the crowd.

And smiling.