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“Do you want to know?” She asks, laying back on their bed. As always, she is watching him. Watching him like a ball on the court—not quite like an extension of her own arm, but a part of her nonetheless. Like an arm that might break and shatter if she’s not careful—or take it all, win it all, if she is.
“Know what?” He asks. He doesn’t know what she’s going to ask before she says it but he can feel it in a way, like a shark smelling blood in the water. Like a prey animal against a predator it can’t see, but can hear.
She meets his eyes. She always does. She never flinches like he would. She never falters, not ever. Even before, that was always her strength. “What it was like,” she says, against the pin-quiet of their bedroom. “Between him and me.”
His breathing stops. The world does too. He looks at her, wide eyed, his heart beating the way it does before the match point, like everything rests in the next few seconds. He doesn’t have to ask who he is. There is only one him between them.
She stares at him. She still stares at him. He doesn’t ask her to repeat herself, as if he thinks he might be dreaming. Not even his dreams would ever go this far.
“Well,” she says, raising an eyebrow. “Do you?”
He doesn’t say yes. He cannot bring himself to do that, cannot bring himself to say anything. His mouth is dry. Too dry. Even if he tried to speak it would come out choked and wrong. He nods instead. As if not agreeing audibly makes it any better.
To her credit, she doesn’t try to force him to say it. She opens her legs, instead, and beckons him forward. “He’d get on top of me, like this,” she says, her voice low and husky, quiet like a secret. “Not like you do,” she says. “Confident. Aggressive.”
He pictures Pat across from him on the court. The cocky strength in his arms as he serves, the way his muscles play as the racket meets the ball. He can see it so clearly, so clearly in his mind. He puts his hands on Tashi. Not the way he normally does—not gentle, not loving. He sees Pat in his vision, that same fucking smirk on his face as always, the same one he had when they met her for the first time, when they played together the last time, the same one he had in his bed that night he taught him to—
“Harder,” she says, and he thinks about their skin grappling against each other, slick with sweat after a match, of the easy affection of before, and the power that had lived under his skin then, too.
“Kiss me,” she says, and so he does, his mouth finding hers slick and easy, and it’s like every time he’s kissed her before and also not, because he can’t get him out of his mind, can’t stop thinking about how it’d been for those few moments when he’d first kissed her, when they both first kissed her, the slick slide of all their mouths together, of tongue and lip and nothing but that perfect sensation, that glide. And it was nothing but perfection— until they’d opened their eyes and there’d only been Pat and him and her eyes on them both.
“Good,” she whispers, against his mouth. “good.” Her hands caress his face. The praise alone makes him shiver, grow harder. Good boy, Art. Always so good. That’s what he is.The good one, the good one.
She looks at him again, her eyes, as always, inscrutable. Her fingers trail over his mouth. “You’ve always kissed the same,” she says. Her eyes grow teasing, then cruel. “Did he teach you that, too?”
He didn’t. Of course he didn’t, or that would’ve been the story Art let him tell that night, cute and being and not so unbelievably embarrassing and sexual as the one Pat actually did say. But she knows this, of course. And the thought—the thought—
He can see it now, so clear, so clear. Pat, the way he’d been at twelve, fourteen, sixteen, eighteen. The way he’d lean in with that same damn smile on his face, saying you just can’t quite get it, huh, like Art is asking for help with his backhand, like he needs to be taught, be led, following in the shadow of Pat’s flame like he has since they were fucking kids—never leading, never quite burning that bright, but reliable, steady, easily taught when shown the way.
His hand would curl around the base of Art’s neck. He’d lean in and he’d smell like cigarettes or the mints he took to hide the smell of cigarettes from their coaches. His eyes would drift down to Art’s lips, and he’d run his fingers against them just like Tashi’s doing now, and he’d murmur relax against his mouth, close enough to feel it. To taste it, too—the ghost of menthol on his lips.
And then their mouths would brush together.
Slow at first, then methodical. The way Art liked to be taught. Eventually, as fucking always, Pat would get impatient, speed up, and expect him to catch up. But he always did try to keep it slow in the beginning. For him.
When he kisses her again, he expects it to taste like cigarettes and spearmint. It doesn’t, but that doesn’t stop him from hating himself for it anyway, nor does it stop him from being harder than he’s ever been in his life.
They break apart for air. She runs her thumb against his lips again. “Smile like he does,” she says. He knows just the one. He can picture it so easily, mirror it on his own mouth, the one that kisses, apparently, exactly like he does.
He can mirror it, but the second it stretches across his face it feels so wrong and so fake, the same way it did when he was fourteen and practiced it once, curiously, in the mirror. Slick and itching and wrong. It falls off his face almost immediately, but the feeling still remains, skeezy and wrong, like an oil spill.
He doesn’t want to do this anymore, he thinks in a sudden hysterical clarity. It was a mistake—
“Hey,” she says, “look at me.”
He does. He does. She stares into his eyes. Her fingers caress his cheek.
“Okay,” she says. “Maybe not. Maybe not.” She pets his hair like a dog. He closes his eyes.
When he opens them again, it’s her who’s smiling just a little too cocky to truly be teasing, and. The world slows to a complete stop.
“Let me show you what he was like with me,” she says, and twists them around so effortlessly to press him into the mattress. He goes limp but pliable, as if any movement or resistance would make this grind to a stop.
She kisses him. Hard. Tender. It’s the same as before but it isn’t, not when he’s kissing that smile off her lips.
This is how she was with him, he thinks, going mad as she kisses her way down his neck, his chest. This is how he was with her, he thinks, and it hits him like something primal, visceral.
He cn practically see him in all her movements. The way he must’ve been on top of her, the. Way he might’ve been on top of Art—she grinds down and he wants, suddenly, to fuck so badly, to be fucked—it doesn’t matter, it doesn’t, it doesn’t.
He wonders if she ever fucked him. He would’ve let her, he knows, and the thought is heady and hot.
She’s slick through her panties, and normally he wouldn’t dare take them off for her—he always liked to let her take the lead. But he’s got Pat in his head now, Pat and her, and she’d never hesitate to strip him down, roll him over and ride him.
The movements come without thinking about it, the same kind of body-instinct which comes so naturally to both of them but never has to him. He has to train, normally, to have those kinds of reflexes, that kind of intuition, the kind that’s just born into them like it’s their fucking birthright to play tennis, to win at it. Like Kings and Queens of some land he can never dream of reaching, not on his own.
But in the fantasy, he’s not the good one any longer, not the second best one, not Tashi’s second chance at anything. He’s her, and she’s him, twin fucking flames of passion without a single shard of ice between them, just burning and burning until there’s nothing left in sight.
He flips her over, kisses her. Kisses her in the way Pat did, and fuck, she must’ve known that would stick with him, would ruin him. How the fuck is he supposed to move on with his life knowing Pat kisses like this, Pat kissed her like this, he knows how Pat kisses now.
Though he supposes he’s known that for a long time, since the night they met her, though they never spoke about it and never admitted it. Slick tongue and teeth and teasing, testing, knowing—knowing him in ways that only Pat has ever known him, only Pat and her.
He kisses the smirk off her face because he knows she’d do that to Pat, grinds his hips into hers, wet and hot and messy. He’s leaking so much he almost feels like a girl, harder than he’s ever been before in his life, wanting to fuck into her, but also, wanting more than anything, to be fucked—for her to slide into him, for Pat to slide into her, for Pat to—with him—
He bucks, he gasps. She guides him into her, but he can’t escape the thought, the fantasy.
They never had, before. God, of course they never had. If they had, they’d have never—he’d have never—It would’ve been them, still, always. Always, always them.
If they had, it wouldn’t have been like this. Or maybe it would have, after a match, on top of the world, but the first time—it wouldn’t’ve been like this.
Pat would’ve kissed him slowly, teasingly, irritatingly. And Art would’ve let him. Would’ve let his hand creep up his thighs—especially then, especially before, eighteen and shining and perfect and nothing mattering but tennis and Patrick. They’d never had boundaries, then. And pat had been used to taking, taking, taking.
Pat would be coy at first, maybe. Expecting Art to bolt or push him away. Art wouldn’t, of course. But Pat would probably still have some useless excuse, claim it was some how platonic, just helping a friend out, just guys being dudes. And maybe, at first, Art would give protests—token ones—and Pat would insist because he was a dog and Art hated that and loved it in equal aching measures.
He’d press Art forwards, press him down in their tiny dorm beds, their shitty tournament hotel beds, the showers, the changing rooms, anything, anywhere. Trust me, he’d say. And Art would’ve parted his legs submissively, sweetly, the way he’d been told brides were supposed to on their wedding day, though of course Tashi hadn’t been anything like that.
Pat would take him, then, would’ve pressed himself into him, remake him, and tie them together. And it would’ve been everything, everything, everything.
His hips twitch and falter and spasm. He thinks of Pat on top of him, under him, consuming him and being consumed. He imagines Pat at eighteen, shining and perfect and all their futures ahead of them, his in every way except for a way they could name, Pat at twenty, with Tashi, and the way the jealousy had burned in on him from both sides and Pat had to have known, had to, but they didn’t do anything about it then just like they didn’t do anything about it before, couldn’t, wouldn’t. Pat, now, after years have passed and Tashi is wearing his ring but she still doesn’t feel like she belongs to him in any way except as a goddess at an untouchable alter, except as the vision of victory she’d been that day, the one that only he and Pat probably still remember. To her, he is a vessel of devotion and an unbroken body, and he’s still not good enough, will never be good enough, not like she had been before, like she could’ve been if it hadn’t been for that match, but it is steadfast and unwavering and he thinks that’s enough—even though he knows she hates it for being enough, too. He knows she hates him, sometimes, too.
So he imagines the world that could’ve been but never was, her body still whole and resplendent, never needing either of them the way she does now but still having them, both of them, Pat and him in bed with her, worshipping her, toying with her. He goes back to that hotel room at eighteen, except this time she commands them to kiss and they do, they, do, they do; for her, a good enough excuse to hide the fact that it’s very much for them, too.
Pat then, Pat now, in bed with them both, in bed with him, that stupid scruff on his face rasping against his cheeks as he kisses him again and again and again, parting his legs, taking him in hand, whispering in his ear I’m sorry, I’m sorry, and I missed you, I did, I want to play with you again, I need you— His hand slick and tight and fast, the way he’d taught him to do when he got close, his own cock pressed between his thighs and sliding against him, a pantomime of fucking, but so goddamn good he cannot breathe. And Tashi’s eyes on both of them, dark and peering and so pleased with them as they play with each other, as Pat bites into Art’s shoulder and murmurs I missed you, I missed you, like a mantra, up until their hips stutter in synchronization and he moans out I love you—
The world goes white. When he comes back, he finds he’s made fingerprint-shaped bruises on Tashi’s hips, and he’s just come harder than he ever has in his life.
She stares at him with dark, scrutinizing eyes. She slides off of him, leaving a lewd trail of white behind, and strokes his face. “Homewrecker,” she murmurs, almost absentmindedly, though he doesn’t know which one of them she’s referring to.