Chapter Text
April Fool
Chapter 1: The Drawer
Jannik checks his phone. 6:23 PM. Just enough time for him to finish before Carlitos returns from dinner.
He slots a neon-orange Post-it in the remaining gap on the wall, then steps back and looks.
"Perfect," he says.
His roommate's side is now completely covered in hundreds and hundreds of Post-its the color of Jannik's hair. Carlos' walls, the posters of Rafa and Roger, his bed, every Poro on his League of Legends sheets, every pair of carefully arranged Nikes, the immaculate pile of books and folders on his desk, his shelves, his closet of vintage 90s shirts, his drawers --
-- Hm.
Jannik frowns. Not quite.
One of the drawers on Carlos' dresser is still pristine. He isn't quite sure how he missed papering it, but...
He looks down at the stack of remaining Post-its in his hand. Carlos will be back soon, but Jannik prides himself on being thorough.
Jannik approaches the dresser, listening for any signs of Carlos' return. No peals of laughter or off-key humming. He starts covering the drawer.
It is slightly open, which may be why he skipped over it in the first place. He moves to shut it. Stops. Yes, the prank is already pretty good, but -- well -- Jannik is thorough.
He hops over to Carlos' desk and grabs a Sharpie.
"DEUCE," he writes in big, block letters on a Post-it note. He doodles spiders around the word and cringes at his lack of artistic ability, but Carlos will appreciate the reference to his April Fool's prank last year.
Jannik rolls his eyes at the memory of the dozens and dozens of spiders Carlitos had hidden in all of his belongings. He still finds one or two now and again, and chucks them at Carlos whenever they turn up.
He had jumped at the first one. Carlos had nearly made himself sick laughing. It made Jannik laugh too. He adds thick brows and big eyes to one of the spiders, tries to make it look like Carlos. It doesn’t, at all, but Carlos will know.
He will put the note in the drawer. A gift for Carlos when he finishes taking off all the others.
Jannik eases the drawer open, mindful not to disturb the rest already covering the dresser.
Being a great tennis player requires tremendous acuity in observation. The specific tics of your opponent's grip, the way their shoulder rises for a lob versus a forehand versus a dropshot, the strength of their serve.
Jannik is the second ranked in the ITA because he can read everyone else -- except for one person. Ranked number one: Carlos Alcaraz.
But after years of tennis together -- against each other -- and now rooming together at Stanford, Jannik thinks he knows Carlos in a way no one else does. Maybe not on the court, but off it.
Yes, Carlos wears his emotions on his sleeve, but Jannik knows the parts that are under his collar.
There is a thick, veiny, bright pink dildo nestled in between neatly folded briefs, and Jannik realizes he knows nothing about Carlos at all.
The keycard beeps. The doorknob turns.
Carlos is home.
Jannik crumples the note in his hand, shuts the drawer, then leaps onto his own bed. He conjures up the same face he makes when down a set and a break, and breathes.
"Janni, are you --"
Carlos stops mid-greeting at the sight of his belongings. The shock of a point just on the line. This. This is the point of the prank. Carlos is the one who is supposed to have his brain leaking out of his ears, not Jannik.
"What the hell!" As predicted, Carlos is instantly amused. "I can't believe you --"
Jannik examines his nails.
"Oh hello, Carlitos.” He refuses to look Carlos in the eye. "Welcome back. How was dinner?"
Carlos is already pulling out his phone and taking photos. "Now I know why you skipped it, pavo. Happy April Fool to me, huh?"
No, Jannik thinks. You got me again this year.
He shrugs. "I have no idea what you are talking about."
Carlos leans over his bed and peels off a few Post-its. Then, he collapses next to Jannik and starts sticking the notes onto Jannik’s face, his chest -- wherever he can reach.
“Vaffa!” Jannik shoves him away. “Get off, Carlos!”
Carlos is strong and Jannik is, too. It’s hard for one of them to win when they fight each other. But Jannik still has bright pink burned in his retinas, so Carlos gets the upper hand soon enough. He sits on Jannik’s chest and mashes the Post-its into Jannik’s hair.
“Can’t even see them,” Carlos teases. “Camo…camouflage.”
Jannik smiles at the way Carlos says the word. A hard “j” where it should be soft. Like how he says Jannik’s name. Jannik likes it.
So his best friend has a dildo.
Maybe for himself.
Maybe for his partners.
Jannik lets Carlos’ weight settle on him for a moment. Anyway, he wasn’t meant to know about it.
“Happy April Fool’s,” he mutters. “To the biggest fool I know.”
Carlos smiles down at him. The orange walls are dull in comparison.
“Did you get a chance to eat or were you doing this the whole time? You want I make you a PB&J?”
Jannik wiggles. He’s not hungry for food.
“I ate,” he says. “Before -- with Jack.”
Carlos slides off him and stares at all the Post-it notes in wonder.
“Jack said it was lame.” Jannik feels almost shy. “The prank.”
“Jack is lame,” Carlos asserts. He pulls out his phone and takes more photos. “This must have taken a lot of time.”
Jannik shrugs.
“Thanks.” Carlos puts an arm around him. “It’s hilarious.”
Leave it to Carlos to thank someone for pranking him. Jannik pulls the Post-its out of his hair, balls them up, and throws them at Carlos, who laughs.
“Nothing like your spiders,” Jannik says. “I went easy on you.”
“Are you kidding! It’s going to take me forever to take all these off!” Carlos waves at all the paper. “If this is you going easy…I do not want to know what it is like when you’re hard.”
Jannik bites his tongue.
“Well,” Jannik says. “I’ll help. After practice?”
Carlos is up in a flash and grabbing his now-very-orange tennis bag. “Vamos,” he says.
Jannik grabs his own bag. His eyes go to the drawer.
Not for you, he thinks, and follows Carlitos.
The Post-its are still there the next morning.
Carlos had pulled off as much as he could from his bed before giving up, letting the paper slough around him with a final, “I’m going to be seeing these in my sleep.”
Jannik wouldn’t have thought anything of it, would have laughed at Carlos’ inconvenience, wouldn’t have considered how the orange of his hair smothers Carlos completely this morning --
-- if it weren’t for --
He sighs and stares at the ceiling.
There is a specific dread that comes with having to wake up at five in the morning, every morning, lest you lose it all. But that is not the dread Jannik is feeling now.
It’s more the dread of knowing exactly what your best friend’s dildo looks like.
They have a simple system for “alone time,” engineered by Carlitos the first day they moved into the four-by-five square meter box at Crothers Hall.
“Well, you know, Janni --” Carlos had scrunched his eyebrows like he was constructing a break point. “When we --”
He motioned jerking off, and Jannik had the violent urge to punch him in the head. “ -- we should say to each other, no? So no accidents?”
“Mamma mia, Carlos,” Jannik said. “You are so --”
“I am just saying!” Carlos shrugged. “You don’t want to watch me do that, do you?”
Jannik sighed. It was embarrassing, but Carlos made a good point. As always.
They settled on sending each other the emoji of an eggplant because of course Carlos had insisted.
“And you have to reply something, Janni!” Carlos said. “So I know you saw it. You never check your phone. I just know you’re gonna come in while I’m --”
“Okay!” Jannik had wanted to march straight to the housing office and request a transfer there and then. “Gesù. Fine.”
Is that why he chose an eggplant? Jannik thinks, slightly hysterical. Because he uses one when he --
Carlos’ alarm goes off.
The Post-its crinkle as he stirs. Jannik shuts his eyes and breathes.
“Jannik?” It’s a familiar refrain, Carlos assuring himself of Jannik’s presence before fully waking.
“Hm?” Jannik answers.
“I really did dream about these.” Carlos’ voice is still tacky from sleep as he sweeps Post-its from his duvet. “Un partido de fútbol …red card, yellow card. But the ref was giving these out instead.”
Jannik laughs. “Well you have so many now, you’ll be ejected.” He stretches, his limbs beginning to comprehend the morning.
Carlos hums. “I think I would rather get than a time violation.”
It’s still dark outside, the pinks of dawn barely diffusing through the window. Jannik lurches out of bed and staunchly avoids looking at Carlos’ dresser.
He cannot avert his eyes when Carlos changes into gym clothes. The room is small, and Carlos wears his bareness without self-consciousness.
“Your serve is looking better, no?” Carlos reaches into his closet and pulls out a black hoodie. “I saw, yesterday. Your hitch is not as bad.”
Jannik realizes the hoodie Carlos is now wearing is actually his. He wouldn’t think twice about it on any other day, but --
“Yes,” Jannik says. He bends over to tie his shoes. Knot. Double knot. “Simone thinks maybe changing my stance…might be good also.”
“Oh, I want to see it.” Carlos pulls out his toothbrush and points it at Jannik. “I think pinpoint is better for you since you are so big.”
Jannik blinks. It can be maddening, how well Carlos knows his tennis.
“Tall, you mean,” he corrects. “I am not that big.”
“Bigger than me, no?” Carlos winks and leaves for the bathroom.
Jannik grabs his own toothbrush and ignores the drawer.
When it came to the two of them, nobody could say what started first. Rivalry or friendship.
Carlos had risen above the Mediterranean, inevitable as the sun. By ten years old, he was already sending vicious backhand slices into the clay and screaming his trademarked "¡Vamos!" with every point.
Jannik had a more unconventional path to the sport. His first instinct was not to defy gravity but to follow it. He won championships as a junior skier in Italy and seemed set on that path until at thirteen years old, he realized he had reached the bottom of the mountain.
He didn't have the physique for it. Or the mental. One mistake meant the end.
Jannik chose tennis, where you could fix mistakes. In so doing, he sealed his fate with Carlos Alcaraz.
They met at the Piatti Tennis Center, which sits between the mountains and the sea, a juncture where the elements press in from every side.
Carlos, thirteen and small, but with a presence larger than the court. Jannik, eight months older, gangly and strange, could meet the ball wherever it landed.
They played a practice match on the first day and Jannik lost. Afterwards, unable to sleep, pacing with the fury of defeat, he found Carlos on one of the courts. Crying under the full moon.
“You won today, so why are you sad?” Jannik asked. His Spanish wasn’t great, his English even worse. Still, he tried.
“Echo de menos mi casa,” Carlos whispered. He didn’t seem particularly bothered that Jannik had found him crying. He pinched his lips. “Casa…eh…manca?”
Jannik understood.
“Mi manca casa,” he said. “Anch'io.”
He sat next to Carlos and mimed with his hands. “Your tennis, it is -- you are very good. Your family must be happy you are here. It is one of the best places to learn.”
Carlos’ eyes shone bright. With tears and with moonlight. “Your tennis is good too,” he said. “You almost beat me.”
“Almost is nothing.”
Carlos looked at him with the same exacting stare that led to his match point earlier in the day.
“Poco a poco se va lejos,” he finally said. At the time, Jannik had no idea what it meant. But he felt only comfort when Carlos put an arm around him and said, “Then beat me next time.”
At the end of the day, the two of them head to ‘Llaga for dinner.
“Germán wants to come visit,” Carlos announces as they settle in.
Jannik considers this. He wants to say no, absolutely not, and he wants to say of course, whatever is fine, but their teammates Jack and Holger are making their way over, so it is not the time or place to say anything.
“I saw the pictures,” Holger says as he pulls out his chair. The soft planes of his Danish accent remind Jannik of the Deutsch spoken at home. “Good prank, Jan. Like your hair, huh?”
“I still think you should have hidden all his sneakers,” Jack interjects. Every bit the British mad lad. “Imagine the meltdown.”
“I would kill you if you touch my shoes,” Carlos says around a french fry. “Break every bone in your body, Jannik Sinner.”
Jannik rolls his eyes. It isn’t lost on him that Carlos is still wearing his hoodie from the morning.
“I wouldn’t touch your smelly shoes even if you pay me,” he says. “Disgusting.”
"Stai zitto, stronzo!" Carlos flicks a fry at him. “Those shoes are worth more than your life! You should feel -- ah -- honored to be in the same room.”
“Crowded.” Jannik slices his chicken breast and thinks about Germán.
“Did you do any pranks?” Carlos asks Jack and Holger. Jack launches into how he called his older brother Ben and told him he had gotten a woman pregnant. It had been, he claims, the acting performance of a lifetime.
Holger blows a raspberry. “He didn’t fall for it at all! He hung up twice before you finally just texted him.”
Jack covers Holger’s face with a large palm and continues. “Anyway, I even Photoshopped a pregnancy test and everything. I was really committed. Way more interesting than some Post-it notes.”
“Yeah?” Carlos smiles. “It’s such a pain getting rid of them all. I don’t know how I’m gonna do it. I think Jannik’s got you beat, Jack.”
Holger titters. “What’s new?”
“Shut it, you --”
Jannik looks over at Carlos, who oversees the squabbling with placid amusement. He knows when to volley and when to hold back. It’s why he brought up Germán before dinner, when Jannik wouldn’t have the space to think.
It’s maddening, how Jannik is always on the back foot when it comes to Carlos.
Like the drawer. Which he is not supposed to be thinking about.
There had been a bottle of lube next to the dildo.
It registers now, as Jack brings up Man U’s most recent game.
The garishness of the dildo detracted from that detail last night, but it’s like studying game tape. Revisit enough times and the picture sharpens.
A nondescript bottle of lube that wouldn’t have mattered, would have been almost funny, if it hadn’t been next to --
“I saw Pavlović’s goal the other day against Torino!” Holger says to him. “Twenty yards!”
Football. Right.
“Yes.” Jannik eats his bland chicken breast. “And they had a good blitz in the second half. Unbeaten at home.”
Carlos groans. “Meanwhile back-to-back losses for us. Ah, it is really --” He bites off a mixture of profanities -- some in Spanish, some in Italian.
“Well, you’ll just have to play twice as good.” Jack shakes Carlos by shoulder. “Represent your country well, huh, Carlitos?”
Carlos chews his burger. The grease sticks to his lips. Jannik’s fingers twitch.
“I will play ten times as good.” He swallows. Jannik watches his throat move. “To make up the difference.”
After dinner, they return to their room, and Jannik helps remove the Post-its. They stand shoulder-to-shoulder on Carlos’ bed, which is finally clear of orange paper.
They discuss Germán. He is an old friend of Carlos’, from Murcia. He wasn’t good enough to make tennis his career, so he settled for the next best thing, which is writing about it.
“It’s a busy time, Carlos,” Jannik starts. “The Cup and conference championships --”
“Tell me the real reason you don’t want him to come,” Carlos interrupts.
He stacks the Post-its on top of each other. No. Stop. I still want to use them, he said when Jannik started carelessly grabbing them off the wall, Don’t throw them away.
Jannik sighs. “Is he actually coming to visit or is he going to interview you for an article again?”
Carlos lines up the edges of his orange stack. “Why can’t he do both?”
“Because, Carlos.”
Jannik doesn’t like it. How Germán uses Carlos to gain name recognition for himself.
“I do not mind it, Janni,” Carlos says. “It’s better than having a stranger write about me.”
“He shouldn’t be writing about you at all!” Jannik balls up the Post-its in his hand. “If he wants to come visit, then have him come visit. It shouldn’t be some kind of a -- business trip.”
Carlos’ eyes turn pleading. “It is no problem, Jan. But if it bothers you so much, then okay. I will not do the interview.”
Jannik huffs. He can’t stop Germán from visiting -- not really. But it’s satisfying to know that Carlos asks for his approval. With things like this, it’s best to meet his roommate at the net. “Okay. Good. Fine. Then. Yes.”
Carlos reaches over and sticks a Post-it right on the middle of his chest. Jannik feels the heat of Carlos’ palm spread under his skin.
“Ah, I knew you would say yes. Deep down you have such a big heart.”
Jannik rolls his eyes and grabs Carlos’ wrist. “He is not sleeping here. The two of us barely fit with all your shoes. And clothes. And -- toys.”
He means the Poros. Of course.
“We’ll figure it out.” Carlos smiles and wriggles his fingers. He stares at Jannik’s grip. Licks his lips. His tongue is pink. Not as pink as the --
“Big hands," Carlos comments. "Could have played basketball instead of tennis.”
Jannik lets him go, and goes back to the Post-its. “Yeah, the world is missing the next Michael Jordan because I picked tennis.”
“I’m glad you did,” Carlos declares. “What’s the point of another Michael Jordan when the world could have a Jannik Sinner.”
It would be empty praise if it didn’t come from the person he lost to the most.
“I’m glad I did too,” he says. He can taste the salt carried by the sea breeze, drying on the cheeks of a homesick boy from Murcia.
Eventually, they remove most of the notes, but Carlos opts to keep a square of orange on his wall. As a reminder, he says. Carlos puts the stack of Post-its on his desk and heaves a satisfied sigh.
“That took forever! I think I am sick of naranja now.” He glances at Jannik’s hair. “So you will have to shave because looking at your hair gives me ah…trauma. Yes.”
“Looking at your face gives me trauma, Bruttissimo.” Jannik makes his way back to his bed and watches Carlos. His profile is soft in the dorm’s yellow light and he is not ugly. Not even a little bit.
Carlos laughs. He is beautiful.
“Close your eyes then,” he says. “Don’t look.”
È troppo tardi, Jannik thinks. Too fucking late.