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ZENDAYA, THE ARTTASHI UNDERSTANDER YOU ARE!!!!

source

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been traipsing around japan instead of writing for vacation but last night i was contemplating timeslip shenanigans

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patrick wakes up when a wet towel hits his face.

“argh,” he sputters, jerking up out of bed. the sun’s low in the sky, in his fucking eyes. someone's in the bedroom, but he can't tell who. shit. they don't like when he doesn't remember the name.

on the other hand, they usually wait until then to throw things. “hey, what the fuck.”

“wake up, asshole, it's practice time,” says a cheerful voice, and that’s—patrick knows that voice. it's fucking art’s voice.

ok, pause. regroup. patrick digs up his phone. it is seven fifteen in the fucking morning and art donaldson’s in his bedroom in—patrick squints disbelievingly—the tiniest pair of briefs known to man.

“uh,” patrick croaks, because jesus, and then: “where's tashi?”

art’s pulling a shirt on. “who?�� 

“tashi. tashi duncan? your—” wife, but that word’s got teeth, sticks in patrick's throat.

art turns. “oh jeez, it's been a while since i heard that name.” his mouth gets soft, wistful. “i mean, the wimbledon thing was what, ten years ago?”

is this dying? is that what's happening? patrick’s heart’s racing at a hundred miles per hour. “what wimbledon thing.”

“meniscus tear, right? c’mon, man, we were there.” 

the first month after the pepperdine match patrick crashed out of two challengers and no-showed a third, and still the thing that kept him up at night had been, what if i’d been there? a live electric wire. he’d thought he’d buried it.

art’s smiling, faintly puzzled, like he hasn't just detonated a bomb in patrick’s chest. “put some pants on, at least,” he says. “karl’s gonna be here in ten minutes. no omelet for you if you're late.”

art leaves. silence. what the fuck is going on. patrick puts his head between his knees, tries to think.

then he notices the ring.

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New ask game:

Reblog if you want your followers to tell you what your trademark ™️ is. Like, what’s that thing that really identifies you.

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can’t get over your beautiful controlled writing style. is availability for sex and mind games the only calling card Patrick has left with Art and Tashi now he’s squandered his natural talent for tennis? bar an 11th hour comeback of course. interested to know if your wip is entirely cruel towards the characters - specifically Patrick - or allows for some tenderness and care to creep in? even if only between the lines.

anon thank you for this very sweet message & sorry this is so stupidly late!!!!! i have been dealing with a crisis at work

on tenderness: i am a huge romantic at heart!!! i'm interested in a/t/p because here are these three people, pinned to this moment of trauma. and they come together & fall apart so many times, but still here is one more try at communication, the fully bared heart—and the absolute triumph that follows. so i fully believe they can make it work, big complicated love two decades in the making, it is just very messy first

WHICH IS TO SAY, i did think this scene was going to be more soft than it ended up being:

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Art’s a masochist or something, because he's doing laps in the pool at 6am. So’s Patrick, though. It's his rest day and here he is, struck still in the middle of the kitchenette, watching Art slice through the water.

The heat hasn't settled upon them yet. Patrick walks out of the pool house barefoot and flops by the side of the pool, dips his feet in. The water’s freezing. Art doesn't notice until he turns, an abortive stroke. His head comes up, slicked wet, looking at Patrick. Breath.

Art ducks back under and finishes the lap. Another one. The sky’s turning pinker, lighter. There's the curve of Art’s shoulder; his back, twisting beneath the ripples. Patrick thinks maybe his ankles are going numb.

It's a long while before Art comes up to the side of the pool. He hauls himself up and out, hands braced on the concrete, and the water sluices down his shoulders in a cool chlorinated spray. Patrick feels the dampness trickling through the hair on his arms, seeping into the fabric of his shorts. Next to him Art’s breaths come fast and loud: in, out.

“What do you want,” Art finally says. There's a drop of water sliding down his jaw. Patrick follows it, along the side of Art’s neck, catching on the collarbone. Lower, that whole bared expanse of skin. His swim briefs are plain black, logo printed over one hip. He looks like a fucking wet dream.

Patrick wants to smoke, badly; he wants a win, the high of slamming a match point down the line. He wants to press his fingers to the knob of Art’s knee, feel the warmth in his palm.

“When you and Tashi,” Patrick says instead. “You know. Does she let you hit it bare?”

Pause. Art turns. “What?”

“When you fuck.” One word at a time. The crispness of the k. “Does she let you—”

“We,” Art says, “are fucking married.”

Patrick gives Art his best grin. “Yeah, and? I don't judge.”

For a moment Patrick thinks Art might hit him—but no, that's Tashi. Art goes cold, not hot. The flare of his nostrils; mouth thinned into a line. “I’m going to leave now,” he says, getting to his feet. “Bye, Patrick.”

Art stalks back to the house. Patrick flops back on the concrete and stares up at the sky. What do you want, Art had said, clipped, like he was braced for a trick. Like it never occurred to him that it could just be him.

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that bit where tashi's telling art "sure, we can just be rich people, if that's all you can handle. or you can keep being a tennis player, which is what you are. still." after art's atlanta loss is so transparently manipulative that i laugh every time tashi tells patrick "[art's] a grown man, he can do whatever he wants" like damn girl i would hate to see how you get him to do the dishes

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do you ever think about what other sports the atp trio could translate into? obviously tennis is the perfect setting for what they got going on which makes it tough for other comparisons, but just as a thought experiment? i mostly just want to see patrick in a baseball uniform

akskskdjf anon i support you and your dreams!!!!! i know nothing about baseball but as an olympics watcher here's how i would categorize some sports:

sports that are tennis

i have actively been thinking about that czech tennis mixed doubles pair who are exes and won gold against the guy's usual doubles partner because they are obviously atp

sports that make narrative sense

cycling road race. being able to draft behind someone, first as teammates then as rivals. art having meticulously planned hydration stations. patrick pouring water into his mouth, beard soaked. the psychological & physical isolation. also important: thighs.

sports that are hot

fencing. swords? check. the erotic sight of your opponent taking the mask off and catching a glimpse of heated cheeks? check. complex right-of-way rules that would drive patrick insane as he complains he's being fucked over by bad judging? check.

climbing. art the most precise technical climber of all time. patrick launching into insane dynos. tashi is just janja garnbret. they all have such strong hands.

pole vaulting. god, those abs. also patrick getting dq'd due to his canonically big dick would be very funny to me, personally.

team sports

i have a harder time fitting them into team sports just because atp are so laser-focused on each other but i will shout out the rugby sevens shorts swap in particular (patrick is the one with the olympics ring thigh tattoo)

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it has taken me four years but gf getting into mdzs has finally allowed me to finish watching cql, so let me present this:

lan wangji does not want to be chief cultivator

wangji super doesn't want to "have responsibilities" and "be dutiful to the sect" and "live an austere life", because he tried that once & then decided none of it mattered as much as being by wei wuxian's side

wangji, however, loves lan xichen

lan xichen reasonably does need time to recover from killing his murdery schemy boyfriend; wangji isn't going to deny him this

so lan wangji can't go traipsing about the world until lan xichen is ready to handle leading gusu lan again

and maybe it would help lan xichen if there were, hypothetically speaking, some dimpled twinks around cloud recesses who could soothe a broken heart

flash to: wei wuxian six months later hearing at a tavern that hanguang-jun has been discreetly soliciting (!) beautiful (!!) men (!!!) to come to cloud recesses

oh? what is lan zhan up to, wei wuxian thinks. and what's this talk of dimples? surely lan zhan isn't into dimples. surely wei wuxian would know

does he have dimples, wei wuxian wonders, squinting into a mirror, poking a fingertip into his cheek. mo xuanyu's cheek? but he's earned the right to these dimples by now. he's worked hard for them.

there's only one thing to do, he decides. he's a beautiful man, right? he'll go to cloud recesses and find out what lan zhan's up to. everyone's wondering about it; it's almost a public service.

so wei wuxian gets on his donkey and wanders toward gusu. the trip takes him three weeks. he stops at markets when the wares catch his eye: a new ribbon for his hair, a fine rippling robe that reminds him of water. he tells himself it's about blending in. how else is he to sneak into cloud recesses with a horde of other men?

okay, so maybe it's not a horde. but one can't deny there seems to be a great many smooth-faced young men going about the streets of caiyi town.

wei wuxian stables apple in an inn and settles down to a productive evening of eavesdropping. one youth confides to another in having received a dinner invitation. wei wuxian squints at the letter, trying to see— surely that's lan zhan's brush strokes, crisp and neat. he has letters in that handwriting, tucked inside his robes. another complains about the fare. it was bland, he says. only water for refreshment, and nothing more flavorful than tofu. wei wuxian remembers sharing wine with lan zhan, spices burning on his tongue, and feels obscurely victorious.

anyway, the path forward is obvious: wei wuxian steals an invitation.

there's a disciple at the gate who receives him. not someone wei wuxian knows. briefly wei wuxian thinks it'd be good to see sizhui again, or even that rascal jingyi, but at least it means he gets in undetected. the disciple looks puzzled for a moment, but wei wuxian waves the invitation harder, and soon he's being led along a quiet winding path. it's odd, how the familiarity sinks into his chest. he knows these bamboo, the fresh smell of them, the rustle of the breeze through leaves. he hadn't thought he missed this place. he was always made for wandering.

he's shown into an austere room. the table is set for two. wei wuxian sets himself down and looks around, marveling. has lan zhan changed so much while he's been gone? wei wuxian thinks of rabbits, and forbidden liquor, the times he's seen lan zhan's unguarded smile. there is a softness in him that makes wei wuxian's heart clench tenderly, but you would hardly ever guess this room could hold that at all.

"wei-gongzi," a quiet voice says. "you are always welcome, but to what do i owe the honor of your visit?"

wei wuxian whips toward the voice so fast he nearly slides off his cushion. "zewu-jun?"

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can't decide if i need to radically restructure this fic

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it's weird where life takes you. patrick hated running at school. art took it seriously, a good little boy doing his cardio, but patrick just got bored. he measured success instead in how many times he got art to stumble, wheezing out a laugh.

running’s still boring. tashi makes good on her threat, suicides until patrick feels like throwing up. zigzags, the cones garishly bright against the court, and then out on the roads where the elevation is murder. he has a physio rubbing him down three times a week, which still isn't enough to work the tightness out of his hamstrings. “you know how we can work on flexibility,” patrick suggests, only half-hopeful. tashi looks at him like he’s a badly behaved dog, which is deserved; and like she's too good for it, which is laughably untrue.

patrick rolls that over in his mouth. “well, if you don't want it, i can try art.” it comes out nearly casual. he's had practice, talking about art. he watched the us open in a sports bar, for fuck’s sake.

tashi pauses. point, zweig. a second of silence, two, before she says, “he’s busy.”

“i noticed.” tashi in the mornings, court time, evenings. the most he's seen of art is pictures on the mantel. “i live in his fucking pool house, tashi.”

“i didn't bring you here to get your dick wet,” tashi says. she wasn't always this self-righteous, surely. maybe it's something she picked up from art. “do you want to win a slam or not?”

“unlike your husband,” patrick says, “i can multitask.”

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brainstorming some extremely stupid scenarios where patrick gets recruited onto the olympic team of some small country that's supposed to get knocked out in the round of 64 but gets upset after upset until someone shoves a mic in his face on day three like "mr zweig, nobody thought you could make it this far, what are you aiming for, do you think you can take portugal to gold" and patrick grins his half-grin directly into the camera and says "i'm just here to play art donaldson"

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at any given moment there's like a 50% chance i'm thinking about patrick's last serve: not the "yeah i fucked your wife" one but this soft slow tap he gives afterwards when art asks for it, the long lazy arc across the court that's like, "and sorry about it a little bit"

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absolutely insane to me that patrick zweig walked into that sauna like "art why are you so mad at me" just to answer it himself with "oh yeah because i fucked your wife" because sex with tashi isn't real unless art knows

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this is NOT the post-canon "patrick moves into the donaldsons' pool house" fic i'm writing but

so they're fucking, tashi and patrick, pre-practice, post-practice, never during practice, obviously

art's not around at the courts, which makes sense; not around the house either, which is less so

patrick's eating lean chicken breast at art's dining table and doing stretches in his basement and fucking his wife in the pool in his goddamn backyard, so where is the guy, there's only so many fundraisers a retired athlete can go to

"what the fuck," patrick says eventually. "is he hiding? we can fuck too if he wants."

"don't," tashi says, jaw set, eyes hard, even harder than when he'd said he wasn't gonna change his serve. "don't you fucking dare."

"oh, like i'm good enough for you, but not enough for him--"

"yeah," tashi says. casual, factual, like she's not twisting the knife. "it's gonna mean something to him."

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patrick zweig pov is SO hard to write, how are you guys doing this

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in some ways challengers (2024) is a movie about how if you have a big forehand and a dream you can get everything you want, and by some ways i mean specifically if you are leo du maurier, seventeen and french, defeating a six-time slam winner in your first atp 250

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"why would tashi take art's last name" listen. imagine being tashi duncan, once in a generation talent, and you are going to change the face of tennis. you are best in the fucking world. there are posters screaming your name, the crowds at every match, and you love them and you love tennis and you love being her, the girl the athlete the legend. you are nineteen and you know by heart the golden shape of the rest of your life.

you are tashi duncan and human and you let your foot slip on the court, and it turns out this is a sin that cannot be forgiven. the brace comes off and the limp fades in time but you are always going to remember that sickening crack, the thing that killed what tashi duncan could have been.

you leave. you rebuild yourself. you're hitting for players with half your talent and a quarter of the dedication but their bodies are whole and yours is a mausoleum. you think this is the best it's gonna get until a boy says he loves you, which you don't need; says let me play for you, which you do.

you were tashi duncan, and you're so fucking tired of being haunted.