#so this is part of my art girldad agenda

[cowboygideon]

Hi, please enjoy this little Challengers drabble I wrote. It's mostly a character study of Art?? I guess?? And it's essentially artrick, but if I continued it, the intention would be throuple endgame, so keep that in mind. Also, it's tragically unedited, and sentence structure means nothing to me. Anyway, here it is—!

---

After New Rochelle, it’s like a switch in Art’s brain flips. He feels Patrick’s hands on his back, the sliver of skin at his waist where his shirt rode up when he jumped, ghosting over the scars on his shoulders—and, somehow, it twists his stomach like a betrayal.

Patrick wins the match. He tries to talk to Art afterwards, chases him off the court, but Art just can’t. He can’t talk to Patrick, not after the match they just played. It’s not even about the signal, that goddamned serve, even though it should be. Really—and he doesn’t want to admit this to himself, inside his own brain, even—it’s about the fact that it’s been thirteen fucking years and playing tennis with Patrick still feels the way it did at Mark Rebellato, still lights up every synapses in his brain, still feels like really good sex, or something equally euphoric. It’s also about the fact that there’s been a hole, a giant gaping wound, in Art’s gut for over a decade, and now it feels like it's scabbing over.

It’s about the fact that Art doesn’t even care that he lost. It’s about the fact that he knows that he’d lose a thousand fucking matches, a million, if it meant getting those years back; if it meant he wouldn’t have Patrick’s hurt, confused expression outside of that room at Stanford tattooed on the back of his eyelids, burning there everytime he blinked.

Tashi finds him afterwards—he can’t hide from her, not anymore.

He tells her he’s quitting tennis.

He tells her he needs some space.

What the fuck does that mean, Art?

I—I don’t know, Tashi. I just need a second.

A second?

He leaves her, standing in the waning afternoon light, outlined in the sun like a fucking angel, wondering what he meant by a second. He wants to tell her what he meant. He doesn’t know what he meant, he realizes, and then he goes to the bathroom and vomits up his breakfast. When that meager meal is gone, he sits on the grimy tile with his head in his hands, wondering if he’d just fucked up his entire life.

---

By a second, Art meant a separation—or, at least, that’s how Tashi takes it. She doesn’t yell at him, doesn’t say anything, really, as Art packs some of his clothes into a couple suitcases. He brings his tennis gear, which Tashi also, very pointedly, says nothing about.

She follows him down stairs—a giant sweeping staircase; white, sterile, like everything else in this monster of a house, which Art has many times considered throwing himself down, bleeding out just to give the place a little color—and outside into the driveway.

She stands, their mansion at her back, arms folded across her chest, nails digging into her biceps. He wants to go to her, take her hands in his and work the tension out of them. He still loves her—so fucking much, a painful amount—but he also knows that he needs this. Tennis is Tashi is tennis. It doesn’t matter how many years stretch between now and the last time she actually played a match, Art knows the sport would never relinquish its hold on her.

And that’s perfectly fine. But if Art wants to quit, and wants to really commit to it, he can’t be falling asleep, waking up next to a constant reminder of everything he was leaving behind. After so many losses, after his blatant loss of passion, anyone would believe that this was Art Donaldson simply giving up, giving in. They’d believe it was easy for him, like he could just put down his racket and never pick it up again, and that was the end.

But he knows it isn’t going to be easy. As much as tennis has ripped him apart these past couple of years, it’s a very real, very big part of him. It’s his childhood, his college experience, his livelihood. It’s how he met Tashi, it’s why he has a beautiful daughter.

It’s how he met Patrick fucking Zweig.

“I slept with Patrick,” Tashi says, after a couple very long minutes of silence. She’s staring him right in the eyes, worrying her bottom lip between her teeth, unashamed but sympathetic. “Before the final.”

Art shifts his weight onto his back foot, clutches the strap of the duffel on his shoulder. He knows, of course, but he didn’t expect her to just come out and admit it.

“And I talked to him afterwards,” Tashi continues. Now she looks away, training her gaze on the concrete. “He wants me to coach him.”

That is a surprise. Art’s heart seizes in his chest, and he feels the same way he felt after he lost the Junior Open final to Patrick and lost Tashi to him, too. Like one game had just determined his entire future. Like he’d really, truly failed.

“Are you going to do it?” Art asks. “Coach him, I mean.”

There are a couple more moments of tense silence, which is familiar. Their marriage has consisted of a lot of those silences the past couple of years, disjointed conversations mingled with stale air, pulled taut between them, like a tightrope of pain and indignation.

“I’m considering it.”

Art nods. There’s not much else to do besides that, he thinks, but he says something else anyway, not really knowing why: “You should.”

Tashi looks up from the ground, a plain shock opening up her face. It’s not often he surprises her. “Seriously?”

Art shrugs. “Why not?” There are a lot of answers to that, but he continues, “I think he has a few good years left in him.”

A beat. Tashi’s mouth pulls up at the corner, tucking a small smile into her cheek. “That’s what he said.”

Art hums. Of course he did, Art doesn’t say. Of course, even after all these years, they’d maintained some of that signature synchronization.

Tashi tells Art to pick Lily up this Friday, at around lunch time, and Art agrees. A quick, perfunctory hug that neither of them wants and he’s off, driving fifteen minutes away, further into the heart of Palm Beach, where he’s renting an obscenely expensive apartment. While he drives he thinks about how close they are to the academy he’d grown up in; Mark Rebellato sat only half an hour or so south, near Delray. With the thought comes that familiar roiling in his stomach, a painful twist of nausea so powerful he considers pulling over.

It was funny when they bought a house here—Tashi and Mark Rebellato had been slotted into very separate parts of his brain, a kind of before and after. He’d (they’d) met Tashi at the beginning of senior year, the end of August, so, really, he’d had about nine months of both Tashi and the academy mingling in his mind. But the entirety of that year had been permeated by both the thought and the absence of her, the memory and the repression of what had happened in that fucking hotel room. She and Patrick’s phone calls started to take up half of the time that he and Patrick used to dedicate to each other.

Before and After.

---

Art and Tashi are separated for six months—half a year, Jesus Christ—before he sees Patrick again.

He knows she’s training him. It’s all over the sports channel, for one thing, stories about Tashi Donaldson’s new project spliced with stories about his own retirement. It's a devastating, headache-inducing loop that he cannot bear to turn off.

He keeps playing tennis, somehow. Not as often, obviously, but just enough to keep him sane. He’d tried to go cold turkey in the beginning, spent an entire week laying on his bed in his empty apartment, dreaming about the New Rochelle match; the win in the doubles tournament; his loss to Patrick the next day. It was enough to make him consider taking a dive off the balcony.

Still, it’s nice. Eating a burger for the first time in a decade, sleeping past five-thirty, playing for fun, not to get somewhere.

Nice.

How he manages to avoid Patrick for so long, he isn’t sure. An act of God, maybe. Maybe some very intentional scheduling on Tashi’s part, maybe some subconscious effort on his own. Either way, his breath catches every single time he leads Lily up to the house, peering up and down the street for Patrick’s shitty white Honda CR-V, listening for the tell-tale sound of a ball hitting a racket out back. But there’s nothing. Six months of nothing.

It’s enough that he gets comfortable, simultaneously grateful and disappointed in the fact that he clearly isn’t meant to ever see Patrick Zweig again. He’d walked away from that part of his life: Tashi and tennis, and by extension, Patrick.

So, when he sees that familiar head of dark curls behind Tashi when she opens the door, his heart plummets, from his chest into his gut.

Tashi looks surprised to see him. “Art,” she says. “You’re early.”

Patrick is in one of the chairs in the sitting room, which is past the entryway, all the way across the room, beside the sliding glass doors that lead to the backyard. He’s so far that his head is really more a dark smudge against the bleached white of the house, but he turns around when Tashi says Art’s name.

Art checks his watch. It’s ten forty-five, he usually drops Lily off a little after eleven. “I guess,” he says.

He can hear the sounds of a bag being packed, the sound of rackets clacking against tile and clothing shifting against polyester. Then, Patrick-smudge stands up, heaves a bag-smudge onto his shoulder.

“Hi, Mommy,” Lily says.

Tashi’s shoulders, squared and tense, relax at their daughter’s voice. She smiles—uninhibited, all teeth, a smile she reserves for Lily alone—and opens her arms. “Hi, sweetie,” she says, and tucks Lily into her side in a tight hug.

When they separate, Lily turns around and hugs Art. “Bye, Daddy,” she says, muffled against his shirt.

“Bye, Lils,” Art says. He wraps his arms around her, feels his shaking hands still against her tiny shoulders, his one constant. “I love you so much, okay? I’ll see you next weekend, baby.”

Lily pulls back, an affronted look on her face. “Um, no!” she says. “My show’s on Wednesday, remember?”

He does remember. Her dance recital, he’d been looking forward to it all month. It was marked on the calendar on his fridge, a reminder on his phone.

The sight of Patrick had thrown him off more than he’d care to admit.

Art brought his hands to his mouth, a show of exaggerated remorse. “Oh, my God,” he says. He kneels in front of her and puts his hands on her shoulders. “Of course, I remember, Lils, I’ve never been this excited for anything in my life.”

She giggles, and he pulls her into another crushing hug, pressing a dozen kisses to the top of her head. “Okay, okay!” she says, pulling away.

“One more,” he says and presses a last kiss to her forehead.

“Gross, Dad,” Lily says, nose-wrinkled, but she’s smiling at him, and so is Tashi. For a moment, they aren’t living in separate houses, trading their daughter back and forth at the end of every week. For a moment, they’re a family.

Then Art stands, and looks past them. And—Patrick.

He’s smiling, too.

Lily takes her bag off the steps and slides past Tashi to head inside. She waves to Patrick as she passes him. “Hi, Patrick,” she chirps, and Art is thrown by the familiarity there.

Patrick glances at Art, so quick he almost misses it, and then waves back. “Hey, Lily,” he says. “You have fun with your dad?”

“Yeah,” she says. “We went to the zoo!”

“Awesome,” Patrick says, grinning like it really is awesome. “I’m about to head out, so I’ll see you later, kid.”

“Okay, bye, Patrick.”

Art watches them, a little bewildered, before returning his gaze to Tashi.

She talks before he can: “He’s here for training, and he stays for dinner sometimes,” she says. “That’s it.”

Art thinks this is her way of telling him that she’s not sleeping with Patrick, but it's hard to say. Not that he could object, exactly. He’s the one who asked for a second.

Patrick-smudge becomes a full-fledged Patrick as he approaches them in the doorway. There’s this stupid fucking sheepish look on his face, like a kid who’s been caught with his hand in the cookie jar—which, on anyone else, would look just that: fucking stupid; but on Patrick is irritatingly endearing. Art remembers Patrick was always good at that, at making his bad qualities look like good ones.

Regardless, it doesn’t lend much credence to Tashi’s proclamation that she and Patrick aren’t fucking, but Art attempts to suspend judgement. If they are, he thinks, he can’t blame her. Not really. Not when Patrick looks—well.

Back in New Rochelle, he and Tashi had caught a split-second of one of Patrick’s matches, his third or fourth, maybe, not long after the tournament started. As they headed back to the hotel, Tashi had talked at Art about how terrible Patrick looked, with the scruff and the track marks and the general air of a stray dog that’d wandered onto a tennis court.

Art hadn’t contributed much to that conversation, for the simple fact that he didn’t entirely agree with her. Later, in the sauna, his suspicion was only further proven: Patrick Zweig, thirty years old, living out of his car, maybe addicted to drugs, still looked really fucking good. The universe was truly cruel.

Crueler still is the fact that now, under Tashi’s care, with a workout regime and a real bed, he looks impossibly better.

So, yeah, if Tashi is fucking him, Art won’t—can’t—blame her. Patrick has that effect.

Patrick hovers around Tashi’s shoulder in the doorway, staring at Art. Art deliberately does not stare back.

“Tomorrow,” Tashi says. “Six a.m. Don’t be late, Zweig.”

She says Zwieg like people usually do, pronouncing it with the w sound, instead of like a v. Art used to correct people when they were kids. He doesn’t now.

Patrick salutes. “Yes, Coach.”

“I’m fucking serious, Patrick,” she says, casting a glare over her shoulder.

Patrick throws his hands up. “So am I, Tashi! When am I not serious?”

Art has to look up at that, out of habit, leveling Patrick with a glare that used to say you’re being such an idiot, and they make eye contact. Patrick grins. Art doesn’t.

“Art,” Tashi says, voice softer. “I’ll see you Wednesday, okay?”

“Yeah,” Art says. He doesn’t want to watch the two of them say goodbye, deal with the fanfare that a goodbye entails, so he turns and starts down the driveway. He can hear them talking as he walks, and then a door shutting. Then there’s the sound of slides scuffing against concrete.

“Hey, man, wait up,” Patrick says.

Art hesitates, mid-step, and is reminded of Patrick following him after winning the challenger.

“Art, man, come on,” he says. “Just talk to me for a second.”

Art stops. Turns around.

Patrick is wearing one of his stupid muscle-tees, a pair of his even stupider mid-thigh length gym shorts. So, to put it plainly, he looks fucking stupid. He also looks so Patrick that Art swallows.

“What?” Art says.

There’s a smile on Patrick’s face, as there usually is, but it’s not as sure as Art remembers it. His eyebrows are pushed together, his grin failing a bit at the corners. He looks hesitant, cautious, which are both decidedly not patented Patrick emotions. “Uh,” he says, like now that he has Art, he doesn’t know what to do with him. “I just wanted to, I don’t know. Say hi. I guess.”

Some of the anger simmering in Art’s gut fizzles out—he can’t help it. “Hey,” he says quietly.

“Hi,” Patrick returns. His smile regains some sincerity and he drags his eyes over Art, appraising him. “You look good.”

Art huffs out a laugh. “Yeah, you, too, dude.”

“That’s what having a mattress will do for you.”

He says it jokingly, but at the same time it's a reminder—of Patrick’s years spent without him, of Art’s spent without Patrick, of the fact that Patrick was living out of his fucking car and doing drugs which is still an idea that Art can’t wrap his head around.

They stare at each other for a moment.

Then Patrick says, hooking his thumb over his shoulder, “I still can’t believe you had a kid, man.”

It’s not what Art’s expecting him to say, treading over another reminder of their separation, but Art hums and nods anyway. He isn’t sure how else to respond. There are some thoughts swirling around in his head, prospective replies piled up beside things he would never fucking say under any circumstances, the loudest of which is: I still can’t believe I had a kid without you, which Art understands is a very odd thing to think, so he mentally scratches it out and replaces it with: I still can’t believe I had a kid and you weren’t there, which he also understands is only marginally better.

Art casts a look around, checking the driveway and the street, and finds only his car parked up by the garage.

Patrick says immediately, like he’s reading Art’s mind, “Tashi picked me up today. My car’s in the shop, its—”

“Shitty, yeah,” Art finishes.

Patrick hesitates a split-second before laughing. “Yeah, it is,” he says. “I’m just going to get an Uber back to my apartment.”

Some deep-rooted urge to take care of Patrick, fostered by six years of living out Patrick’s pocket and Patrick living out of his, of pushing their beds together and operating in complete synchrony, compels him to say, “I can take you.” He pauses, then adds, “If you want.”

“Oh,” Patrick says. His eyebrows have shot up to his hairline, and he’s momentarily stunned into silence. Another unfamiliar occurrence. “Uh, yeah. I mean, yeah, if you don’t mind. Thanks, Art.”

tbc.