Double Fault

Chapter Eight: Winners

-.-

I wake up the next morning to an unusual smell: cooking food. This is unusual because Derek burns water and I'm usually nowhere near a kitchen in the mornings. Blinking away the sleep, I roll over in my bed (which Isaac and I both ended up just after one A.M. and a shower, where I demonstrated by excellent cleaning-up skills) to find the other side empty.

Well, if he's the source of the food smells, I guess I won't be having bacon for breakfast this morning. Not that I recognize what the Brits call and sell as bacon as such, but anything's better than sausage. It's my small effort at avoiding playing into the "gay equals sausage eater hur hur hur" stereotype.

Rolling out of bed and stretching with a big yawn, I grab a pair of sweatpants and slip them up around my hips as I stroll out of the bedroom. Isaac is indeed manning the stove, and seems to have commandeered half the combined contents of both the fridge and the pantry. At least, judging by the number of containers and half-used ingredients strewn about the countertops. He appears to be wearing an apron and nothing else on top, and I can't tell beyond that thanks to the countertop.

What's even more incredible than the fact that someone besides me is making breakfast, is that Derek is at the table already and appears to be enjoying it.

"Alright, what have you put in there and will it get me disqualified?" I ask, pointing at the omelet and waffles sitting on separate plates. Bowls of diced melon, cantaloupe and strawberries are also on the table. Clearly, breakfast was always intended for three this morning.

"You wound me, Brian," Isaac says. "I am eating this too, I would not dare to place chemical additives in it. Mr. Langholt over there is enjoying his breakfast because it is delicious, not because I made Dutch waffles instead of Belgian."

I'm actually a little curious as to how one would even go about baking weed into waffles, especially when it would be a lot easier to put it in the omelets and try to pass it off as dill, but that's beside the point. I graciously take the plates and bowl offered to me, and go sit at the table, where Derek has finished his own omelet and is now making his waffle thoroughly unhealthy by adding copious amounts of butter and syrup to it.

"Man, he's a way better cook than mine. Can we keep him?" Derek asks after taking a bite out of the dripping waffle.

"Excuse me?" I ask. "You want a guy that can cook, go find your own, this one's mine."

"You are both adorable," Isaac says, coming and joining us with his own plates. "But Brian clearly belongs to me, not the other way around."

Derek laughs at my indignant expression.

Unable to come up with a witty retort, I flick a bit of burnt cheese from my omelet at Isaac. It lodges in his hair, which makes Derek laugh even harder.

"It is true, and I will prove it tomorrow," Isaac says with a smirk, calmly removing the cheese from his head and flicking it into Derek's mouth at a high speed, turning his laughter into a choking fit.

"We've got to get past today first," I remind him. "And neither of us has a pushover."

Isaac waves my concerns off. "Formalities. This time tomorrow, I will be preparing to smack your ass all over the court."

"Oh, that's how you're going to play this, is it?" I ask, my voice dropping to a very low level. Derek recovers from his choking fit by spitting the offending cheese into his napkin and glares at both of us.

"It is," he confirms. "I keep telling you, confidence is key. Will I win today and tomorrow? We will see. But I will not have a chance if I don't believe in myself."

"We'll see indeed. I expect I'll smack your ass just as easily on the court as I do off it," I say off-handedly, prompting Derek to choke on a grape.

-.-

Beating a player from the host country of a tournament is never easy. The crowd always gets behind them, as it's a given there will be more natives than tourists in the stands (unless it's in a really backwater place where there's not a whole lot of interest in tennis. Looking at you, Memphis…).

Beating a player from the host country of a tournament, in the semifinals of the tournament, in soaring heat and oppressive humidity is harder than learning how to say absolutely anything in Mandarin Chinese.

Unfortunately, that's the situation I find myself in this afternoon. It's 90 degrees outside before you factor in the humidity, which is hovering around 95%, making it feel like it's around 105. Which is, in layman's terms, really fucking hot.

Though it's of absolutely no consolation to me, the British meteorologists are saying it's setting records for heat and heat index for this day.

Meanwhile, I'm sweating my ass off and struggling to keep up with my British opponent. I eked out a first-set tiebreaker win, 8-6, but dropped the second set 6-4. Now, we're even at 3-3 in the deciding set.

It's my serve, and I'd really like to get this game over with quickly, so I can drain another bottle of water at the changeover. Seriously, I'm sweating buckets out here. It's gross.

Taking my place on the baseline, I bounce the ball a couple of times, take a deep breath and let it rip. Unfortunately, I hit it almost right at my opponent, who returns it with ease. We rally for a few strokes each before I send a backhand into the far corner opposite where he's currently standing. He sprints across court to try and make a return, but even doing the splits and sliding he's unable to reach it. The noise he makes while trying tells me I'm going to get that water break more quickly than I thought.

He almost immediately signals for the trainer to come out, and the man does… along with the tournament's doctor. I follow the chair umpire's direction to take a seat while the medical staff tends to him, and immediately throw a towel over my head and crack open a bottle of water, draining half of it in a gulp.

The time ticks past and the murmuring from the crowd intensifies until after nearly ten minutes of treatment, he gingerly stands up and takes a few tentative steps before breaking out into a light jog along the baseline. I notice he's limping at slow speeds, and he can't really run at all without wincing. If he has any sense, he'll retire from this match right now.

He doesn't, though, and after another five minutes to allow him to try and regain some semblance of a footing (and another bottle of water and a change of shirt for me), I step back up the baseline to serve at 15-love. Obviously, I'm going to press home my new advantage. My next serve goes as far away from him as possible while still remaining in. It's a bit sad watching him hobble and try to get his racquet on it.

The next two points go much the same way, and I have a 4-3 lead before you can blink. Rolling the spare ball in my pocket back to the ballgirls, I head for my seat for the changeover, wondering if he'll press on or just give in.

90 seconds later, it's clear: he knows he's going to lose, but wants to go down swinging. I'm game, even if I look like a total dick by hitting my returns to places it's impossible for him to run to and hit back. It's called playing the advantage, and I play the advantage to a 5-3 lead and a chance to serve for the match.

Four serves later, I've won my way into the Queen's Club Final. I have to wait at the net for a few seconds as my opponent gingerly hobbles over to shake my hand, but he does eventually, and we both shake the umpire's hand before he collapses into his chair with a grimace. The trainers are already bringing him a pair of crutches so he can make his way off the court, and two of the ballgirls have been drafted into carrying his bags.

As for me, I have a guy in a suit holding a microphone headed my way. Time for a post-match interview, and this BBC guy doesn't look too enthusiastic about having to interview the American instead of the Brit.

The questioning is predictable: Why did I go so aggressive at the end when my opponent was clearly injured. It takes all my willpower to not tell the idiot to shove his microphone, along with his communistic fair-play nonsense and hometown player storylines up his ass. I make platitudes about how sometimes the game gives you bad breaks, but that's the way the ball bounces and you just have to play the hand you're dealt. I add that I hope his injury is nothing too serious, and wish him well for Wimbledon coming up.

The next question is a softball about the heat, and I answer it by emptying the remains of my last bottle of water over my head and telling the BBC guy that my real answer isn't suitable for broadcast.

I'm let go quickly after that, and just after 4:30 British Summer Time, I head in to the locker room, intent on taking a long shower. Only, the locker room's not empty when I get in there. Isaac's still there, not out on the court warming up for his semifinal.

"The hell are you still doing in here?" I ask, ripping my shirt off and kicking off my shoes.

"How bad is it out there, really?" he asks.

"It think the on-court temp was about 40 Celsius," I tell him. "And that's not accounting for the humidity. I'd pick something other than black, if you've got it."

He looks down at his mostly-black ensemble with a quizzical look. "I think I will be fine," he says. "I have played in black in similar temperatures in Haifa, which is on the sea."

"Suit yourself," I say. "But make sure you drink plenty of water. I'd rather not spend tonight massaging cramps out of your hamstrings."

"If you insist," he says, grabbing his bags and heading towards the door, leaning up to give me a kiss as he passes me by.

"Good luck," I tell him, and he smiles as he walks out the door. I shake my head, and finish stripping out of my sweat-soaked clothes before heading for the shower.

-.-

Two hours later, Isaac's back in the locker room with an even bigger smile on his face. He's won his semi-final in straight sets, 6-4, 6-3, and the bastard barely looks winded. Meanwhile, I'm just now not feeling like hot garbage, after a half-hour long ice-cold shower and 90 minutes of guzzling water, Gatorade and bananas.

"How is it you have lived for most of the last eight years in Florida and still struggle with heat and humidity?" Isaac asks me with a curious tone to his voice as he gets ready for his own cold shower.

"Because I spent most of the first sixteen years of my life in Colorado, where it's a big deal when it gets hotter than 80 and 90 or 100 is nearly unheard of," I say.

"Well, then that will make tomorrow that much easier," he says, "since the weather is supposed to be similar to this afternoon's."

"We'll see," I say. "Kinda be hard to run all over the court if I fuck you so hard you can't walk tomorrow."

"Gamesmanship through sex? That is a new one," Isaac says. "You are, of course, most welcome to try to fuck away my ability to walk, but I do not believe you will be successful."

"We'll see about that," I say. "Go take your shower, the sooner you're ready to go, the sooner we can get started on guaranteeing my victory tomorrow."

He smirks and whips me with his towel on the way into the showers. "In your dreams, Brian."

Please, as if my dreams these days were filled with things as mundane as winning tune-up tournaments. Even ones as famous as Queen's Club. What's a tournament championship compared to fucking an insatiable guy in exotic locations around the world?

-.-

Author's Note: Ta-da! Just in time for Opening Round matches at the U.S. Open, as promised. It's a shorter chapter, since I couldn't gin up a lot of enthusiasm (or time) to write out two full semifinal matchups. Kind of surprising, since I had an entire week off work, but various and sundry other things came up during that week that prevented me from doing much in the writing department. Oh well, c'est la vie.

So Brian and Isaac are set to square off on court... while dating and doing each other off it. Will the dirty talk spread to the match where it can be picked up by on-court microphones? We shall see, sometime in September.

Until then, please let me know what you thought of this chapter, or indeed this story so far, by leaving a review.

Ta!

-Phoenix II