#*afterimage

Afterimage (part 2/2) Jannik Sinner/Jack Draper, 21.8K

for @mmeihaps 🫶

“You liked that?” Jack repeats. His voice is hoarse. Pink darkens to red, perfect splashes of color on cream canvas like they were painted there with an artist’s brush. That’s where Jack would kiss Jannik first, he thinks, if such a thing were allowed to him again. Right over the swell of his cheeks, where his freckles fan out like wings. The moment stretches, shrinks. They haven’t kissed, they haven’t even touched since the perfunctory post-match hug, but Jack knows as Jannik opens his mouth that whatever he says will damn them more than Montreal ever did. Be brave, Jannik, he thinks like a command, and even unvoiced, Jannik listens beautifully. “Yes. I liked.”

Afterimage (part 1/2)

Jannik Sinner/Jack Draper, 8.7K (so far)

The allure of Jannik lives in the wild, voracious, animal nature of him; like holding the force of the ocean’s tide in your hands for just a single, ephemeral moment before it crashes against the shore. To bottle him up would be to ruin him. Jack still wants to, just a little. Or: Jack doesn’t expect Jannik’s invite to play doubles together at Indian Wells. He certainly doesn’t expect everything that follows.

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Jack will never, ever get over the thrill of this, every twitch of his fingers maneuvering the greatest right arm in tennis like he’s a puppet master tugging Jannik’s strings. Fist behind his back, thumb pointed out. Wide serve. “Yeah,” Jannik calls from the baseline, agreeing. Then a closed fist. I stay. “Yeah,” Jannik calls again. Is Jack imagining the little hitch in his voice, the breathiness?

Jannik serves. Wide, kissing the sideline and kicking out even wider. The return loops beautifully back to the middle of the court, soft and high with nothing on it, straight to where Jack is waiting to smash-volley it for a winner. He does so happily, the sword-arm to the king.

God, sometimes he loves his life.

Jannik can do absolutely anything on a tennis court. Things Jack can only dream of, and things he’s never even imagined in his dreams, constrained always by the fraying sinew of his body. But in these few moments, when they’re on a doubles court and Jack’s up at the net and Jannik’s serving, god’s gift to tennis chooses to channel all that immeasurable, boundless potential into doing exactly what Jack tells him instead.