Chapter Text
Toni’s POV
Toni was getting ready for the second slam of the year, and also the one she hated the most. Tennis’ a high pressure, competitive sport in which you have no one to rely on besides yourself. Every tennis player's dream is to win a Grand Slam: the Australian Open (the closest Toni has of a home slam being from New Zealand), Roland Garros in Paris, Wimbledon in England and of course the US Open. Toni already had 2 different ones of those, 3 in total, which was really impressive at the age of 23. Of course, she wanted more, she wanted them all and then she wanted to go and win all of them again, until she was up there with the great names of the sport.
The hard part about it, though, was winning this next one: Roland Garros, because it was played on freaking clay. Toni didn’t like clay. Tennis has 3 different surfaces you can play on: clay, hard courts and grass. Toni was pretty good on the hard courts, and she was maybe the best current player on grass. She won 2 Wimbledons already (played on grass) and added them to the collection along with her Australian Open title from 2 years ago, which was on hard court along with the US Open. Now, it was clay season, and she was preparing again to play her least anticipated slam.
The problem for her is that clay courts are slower, you have longer rallies, defending is a bit easier, and Toni’s a bit… impatient. She liked faster games, that you can rely on your force and speed and serve and just get it over with quickly. The other thing that made her hate it even more, is that at that moment, the best women player in the world on clay was her biggest rival and someone she absolutely despised: Shelby Goodkind.
Shelby was just… terrible, as a person, and incredible as a player, and everything about it made Toni want to scream. She was American, of course, and from Texas, also of course, and she came from a super religious family and had talked before about how God helps her in her matches and how she’s proud of bringing her christian values to such a high level of the sport. Toni wanted to kill her every time they played. Problem is, wanting to kill your opponent wasn’t always helpful, and sometimes it just left Toni with a lot of broken rackets and headlines the next day about how unstable she was as a player and how she needed to ‘step up her mental game’. Toni also wanted to kill all the journalists sometimes.
Shelby Goodkind was also the star of Paris, having won 3 Roland Garros already, the first one when she was only 19. She also had a US Open, which meant she had the 2 slams Toni didn’t, and Toni didn’t like that. She also didn’t like that Shelby had 4 in total, and she had only 3. She liked even less that at that moment, Toni was ranked #2 in the world, and Shelby was ranked number #1.
Rankings on tennis were pretty volatile and changed every tournament, as you won or defended points, or lost the points you earned the previous year. Toni made number #1 for the first time 2 years before, but now it’s been more than a year since she was there, because Shelby freaking Goodkind had the best year of her career the previous year. She won a bunch of 1000 tournaments, won 2 slams and won the WTA finals, which meant she was leading by a good margin even though she left the AUS Open in the quarter finals. Toni was having a good year, but she needed to step up to get that #1 spot back. Even winning Roland Garros right now wouldn’t do it, but it would leave her very close to it, and she wanted it more than anything.
“Hit the ball like you mean it.” Rachel, her coach, yelled at her from across the court.
“I am!” Toni replied, not willing to admit she got a bit distracted.
“Well, I don’t see it right now.” Rachel said, and Toni just sighed and kept hitting the balls.
Rachel was an amazing coach, and a good friend. They played together as juniors, but Rachel got a bad injury that never allowed her to make it pro, so now she was Toni’s coach, and Toni was glad for it. The other person in her team was her physical therapist and best friend, Martha, who also took care of her mental prep. Some people judged her for having people close to her in her team instead of more experienced and famous professionals, but she didn’t care. She wasn’t good at working with strangers, and she made her career without the help of fancy coaches, like probaby Shelby had all of her life. Ugh, why was she thinking of Shelby again, she needed to take that girl out of her mind.
Easier said than done, considering as soon as she thought that, Shelby showed up, entering the court Toni was practicing on, forcing her to stop hitting the balls Rachel was throwing at her.
“Hey, sorry to interrupt.” She said, a stupid smile on her face as always. “But I think we are scheduled to practice here now.”
Shit, was her practice time over already? She was here for like 30 minutes.
“I don’t think so.” Rachel replied to her. “We booked it for 2 hours.”
“That can’t be right.” It was Shelby’s manager's turn to chime in, if Toni wasn’t mistaken her name was Fatin. “We booked this court for 2:30pm.”
“Well, Rachel just told you we booked it too, and we got here first, so why don’t you find somewhere else to be?” Toni spoke for the first time in the conversation, looking at Shelby as she said it. The girl didn’t stop smiling.
“Look, I’m sure it was just a misunderstanding, but I do really need to practice, since the tournament starts tomorrow.” She said in a calming voice. “Why don’t we just practice together for a bit?”
It wouldn’t be uncommon, since players practiced together all the time. It’s easier to do it with another professional, and it was actually helpful. Toni and Shelby, on the other hand, hadn’t done it together in years. When they both started playing pro they were actually kind of friends. They met each other when both of them were on top of the junior tournaments, and afterwards they were just two 18 year olds getting to know this whole new world and it felt a bit comforting knowing there was someone else in that situation with you, trying to make it at the same time against all the experienced players. Seeing Shelby succeed at the time gave Toni confidence that she could do it too. They practiced together a lot of times and even texted sometimes, wishing each other good luck on their games and stuff like that. So at first all was well, but it all seemed to change after Toni came out.
Toni knew she was a lesbian since she was like 11 years old, but it wasn’t something she told the media right away. Not that she was trying to hide it, but she just never saw a reason to speak about it. When she started playing pro, though, and more than that, started doing well, the media paid more attention to her. That led to people seeing her out with girls, and when asked about it in an interview she was just honest: “Yes, I'm a lesbian, what does that have to do with tennis?” was what she said at the time. It made all kinds of headlines and it actually… helped her. Suddenly all these brands wanted to support the openly lesbian player who was beating the best players in the ranking before even turning 19. She knew it was pink money, but it was also helpful, considering she didn’t have that many resources coming into it.
So suddenly the whole world knew she was a lesbian and people were nice to her, except for one of her fellow colleagues and rivals, Shelby Goodkind. Shelby just became weird after that, she stopped talking to her as much and suddenly she didn’t want to practice together anymore. One time, when Toni asked her what was going on after she rejected practicing with her again, Shelby just said: “I’m sorry, Toni. I’m happy for you, and I respect you, but I just can’t anymore.”
It was the way she said it, the use of the word respect, that made Toni realize what that was about. It also made her realize Shelby wasn't the person she thought she was. Toni always knew she was somewhat religious, Shelby’s dad ran a church back in Texas and she spoke about it in interviews before, but Toni was just maybe hoping that didn’t mean she was also homophobic. Of course, she was wrong.
“Oh, so now you can do it?” Toni asked her, referencing what Shelby had told her all those years ago, but the other girl didn’t seem to connect the dots.
“Hm, yes? I just said I need to practice.” Shelby replied.
“Well, I’m not practicing with you, so good luck with that.” Toni stood her ground, crossing her arms.
That led to Fatin and Rachel arguing about who scheduled the court first, but Shelby didn’t pay them attention, instead, she just got closer to Toni, talking low enough that only they would hear:
“Are you scared, Shalifoe?”
“What?” Toni asked, looking at her, not sure of what she just heard her say.
“I mean, I know clay is not your strongest surface, but I didn’t take you for such a chicken, especially not in practice.” Shelby replied, her eyebrows raised, and Toni felt her blood running hot.
“Okay, we are doing this.” Toni spoke louder, so Rachel and Fatin would hear and stop arguing with each other.
“Are you sure?” Rachel asked her.
“Yes, I am sure.” Toni affirmed. “Now c'mon, Goodkind, let’s do this.”
Shelby just smiled, going to leave her stuff at the bench and collect her racket. Her coach was also there, but he just kept to himself. He was older, and actually one of the big names in tennis. Used to be a professional player, won a couple slams, retired early to become a coach. Ever since Shelby hired him, he took her game to another level.
As soon as Shelby placed herself on the other side of the court, Toni grabbed some balls to get this going.
“Start easy on me.” Shelby yelled from her side of the court. “I didn’t have a chance to warm up.”
Toni just scoffed and whispered a “You wish” to herself before she hit the ball with her racket.
In the end, she did start slow, because she didn’t want Shelby to accuse her of being dirty, even if she wouldn’t be against it. After they exchanged a few balls things started getting more intense.
Soon, they were playing almost like they were in a match, not a practice session. Toni was throwing everything she had at her, and Shelby was matching her energy. They were technically not counting points, but of course Toni was in her mind. Not in tennis count, because she would lose herself, but normal count was good enough in this case.
Shelby threw a slice her way, so she got into the court, hitting the ball hard and going to the net, but she was surprised with a lob as Shelby threw the ball over her head, forcing her to run backwards. She wasn’t able to catch it in time.
“Shit!” Toni yelled as she saw the ball kick on the ground a second time.
“Calm down, Toni.” Martha said from the side. “It’s just practice, you're doing well.”
“No I'm not!” Toni replied. “She’s winning.”
“We are not even keeping count.” Martha protested.
“Well, I am, and it’s-” Toni started saying.
“13-9.” Shelby yelled from her side of the court. God, did that girl hear everything?
“So I’m not the only one keeping count.” Toni replied to her, and Shelby just lifted her shoulders.
Shelby liked to act like she was all polite and nice and a good sportswomen, but in reality she was just as competitive and petty as Toni. She didn’t judge her for it, because if you want to make it this far into the sport you have to be, but she judged her for acting like she wasn’t.
Toni came back to her spot, grabbing the ball so she could serve now. She cleared her head, thinking about nothing else but the ball, and she hit an ace. Yes, that’s exactly what she needed. Shelby just sighed, and Toni opened a smirk to her.
They kept playing for a while more, until Toni was there for over 2 hours - counting the time she practiced before - and Rachel pretty much forced her to stop because she needed to rest for the actual tournament tomorrow.
“But… C’mon, just a bit more.” Toni protested. “She’s still winning.”
She knew it was ridiculous, but she didn’t want to leave while Shelby was winning, even if it wasn’t a real match. Shelby also moved to the side of the court, grabbing her bottle of water.
“I don’t give a shit!” Rachel said. “You need to go do an ice bath right now and prepare yourself for your actual match tomorrow. So let’s go.”
Toni just sighed, defeated, and went to gather her stuff. As she did, Shelby got closer to her.
“Don’t worry, Toni.” She said in a light tone. “I’m sure you’ll have better luck when we play in the tournament.” She continued, and Toni was already getting mad. “That is, if you make it that far.”
Shelby just completed and went away, going to talk to her own coach.
Toni and Shelby being number #1 and #2 in the world at that moment, meant they would only play each other in the final. Shelby had just said to her face that she didn’t think Toni could do it, and pretty much implied that she would. That cocky little bitch, who does she think she is?
Toni was about to ask her exactly that when Marty grabbed her by the arm, dragging her out of the court.
“It’s not worth it, Toni.” She said as she pulled her away.
“I’m going to kill her Marty, I swear to you.” Toni told her. “If we play together, I’m going to crush her so hard she’s going to go home crying, that much I know.”
“For that, you need to win your previous games first, so stop complaining and go to the ice bath, now!” Rachel told her, and Toni sighed, but obeyed.
She made her way to the locker rooms, and then to one of the ice baths they had there available for the players. They were good for the muscles, but Toni also thought they were good for her mind. She was a really talented player, but she always struggled with her mental game. She got too stressed, too into her head, wanting to smash things every time she lost a point. She needed to get herself under control if she wanted to win this. She was having the best clay season of her career, which meant it was her best chance yet to win this slam against Shelby. Of course, her best meant she won one clay title in which Shelby wasn’t playing and made one semi final and one final, in which she lost to Shelby. They were not slams, though, so this was the most important one, and she did not want to lose to her again, not here, with the whole world watching.
She tried to clear her thoughts, focusing on relaxing her muscles and getting ready for the next day. The first rounds were always technically easy matches when she’s ranked as high as she was, but she couldn’t think like that. Sometimes a rising player is having a really good day, and so no matches should be treated as easy ones. Specially not when she only cared about the title, of course because it’s a slam, and she doesn’t have this one already, and it also means a lot of ranking points and a lot of money, but also because she wanted to win it by completely destroying Shelby Goodkind, which would make it just extra sweet.