#yes art is the male being manipulated yes he is the meat pumpkin married to the tiger

[ladyluscinia]

Tashi/Patrick + No Art = disaster fling. Tashi withholds easy (non-sexual) affection like vulnerability will kill her instantly. Patrick has massive commitment issues and defensively frames everything as a joke that he can pull back from at any time. It's impossible to resolve how your relationship is failing to meet your emotional needs if both parties are allergic to treating it more seriously than fuck buddies who could go find someone else at any time. They are constantly on the edge of a blowout fight because they understand each other instinctively but use that understanding mostly for sex and knowing who wins more points in the argument. On a tennis level, Patrick gets it but he is too comfortable as is and lacks a guiding reason to strive, which is even more infuriating than if he didn't get it at all because the wasted potential is constant. And Art in this situation is swallowed by jealousy, like a big ugly pit in his center. His inferiority complex is at an all time high (the second choice twice) and while it does give him some motivation to improve, mostly the spikes of envy/rage derail his focus and trap him in his own negative spirals. He seethes at tennis because he feels like he's always losing before he even steps on the court.

Tashi/Art + No Patrick = cracking under pressure. Tashi's withholding becomes a long term problem when pitted against Art's inferiority issues because she won't be able to stop doing so when it slips over the line from giving him something to strive for to enabling his negative spirals when he really just needs some reassurance. Art is pliable and willing to take direction, but he's also prone to being passive and simply losing energy when Tashi wants him to push back. His quips rarely turn into rallies. He builds low-grade resentment for decisions he's not willing to actually challenge. Tashi likes control but loves a certain kind of adrenaline-junkie spontaneity that gets ground out of Art the longer they are locked in on enabling each other to tunnel vision on optimizing him into the best tennis player ever. On a tennis level, Art is an eternal exercise in frustration because his emotional investment and technical skill are usually a trade-off instead of Tashi's ideal harmony, and she's constantly (and increasingly resentfully) fighting his mental fires for just a spark of real tennis to make it onto the court. Patrick, meanwhile, goes into near permanent flop era because he can't admit he's emotionally starved and his issues make him refuse to chase their coattails out of spite. He embraces the carefree loser persona and lets his own, smaller inferiority complex tell him he won't ever catch up, so why try?

Patrick & Art + No Tashi = I knew that guy in high school. Both deciding against pushing their homoerotic thing too far, and different life goals would probably have just drifted them apart.

Patrick/Art + No Tashi = potential murder-suicide. Patrick is once again non-committal and joking, and Art once again has a lot of jealousy and needs reassurance in the security of his relationship. But where Tashi's withholding at least has an element of she would just leave him if she wanted to, Patrick's eternal hints that there could be a punchline dropping any moment makes Art angrier, not depressed. Art is inclined to compete with Patrick but he doesn't find it as fun and low stakes, and also how do you meaningfully "win" against the guy you are dating and who refuses to take you seriously as a competitor or partner (bringing out the uglier side of the inferiority complex again). Patrick doesn't meaningfully distinguish between when Art is playfully mad at him and genuinely mad at him until he gets his feelings hurt about it, and he still can't talk about those feelings directly. Either a fight goes ugly and they have a messy breakup or Art gets mad enough to kill them both and Patrick just dares him to do it. Tashi probably continues with her life trying to find some other tennis player that can understand the convoluted prism through which she expresses love, but odds are not great because usually romantic partners like it when you can say the words "I love you" and not sound sarcastic about it.