One-shot: Coda to 'In His Absence' (G, implied Andy Roddick/Roger Federer) Title: Coda to In His Absence Rating: G Pairing: None/ implied Andy Roddick/Roger Federer Summary: Sometime after In His Absence, maybe a year or two later. Andy would give it all up. Notes:Read In His Absence before this. Disclaimer: Not mine, never happened, **hopefully** never will.
The Wimbledon museum is quiet now, days of passing feet and the snap of cameras left to the echoes. There’s music playing but faintly; Andy thinks they’d turned it down for him, a habit now, knowing what his asking look means as he slips past the closed sign on the doors.
“You think he’s mad that I lost?”
He hears Mardy’s sigh from the doorway – caught out, not meant to be seen in his careful surveillance – and the slow scuff of tennis shoes across the polished floor. It’s gleaming tile and uncomfortable to sit on for long but Andy’s ignoring protests from his muscles, already exhausted after two long weeks. As Mardy sits beside him, he can’t find the energy to so much as shift to make more room.
“I don’t know.” Mardy’s answer’s soft but sounds louder in the small room, echoing back from the frozen images of players decorating the walls. “You’d know better than me.”
Andy gives a half-shrug, barely a hitch of one shoulder that’s cut short with a wince at the burn of strained muscles. He’d known going into the final that he could make the damage worse; he’d practically been asking for it. “I came close. It’s not like the Brits are complaining, anyway. They’ve forgotten anyone but Murray ever won.”
Edged with razor-bitterness, the words surprise even Andy and he feels Mardy tense at his side. A hand creeps, hesitantly, across Andy’s knee to curl around his fingers, cold from air-con set too high.
“We haven’t forgotten Andy.”
“You haven’t.” Moment drawing out, endless with the softness of their joint breathing, the tinny beat of a drum from the muted music – a long, long moment while Andy’s still and then eyelids flutter shut as he turns his face away. Mardy’s hand tightens on his, unspoken comfort they’ve perfected by now.
When Andy speaks again it’s lower and tight, words squeezed past teeth gritted together. “I can’t even win Wimbledon when he’s not here.” Leans into Mardy, face settling into the curve of his friend’s shoulder and free hand curling blindly into a handful of Mardy’s shirt, leaving a handprint in stretched cotton. “I can’t do anything without him here.”
Hand rubbing soothingly – helplessly – over Andy’s back, Mardy takes a jerky breath, Andy feeling his throat move as he swallows his first words. “You won Wimbledon,” he says instead.” “You won the Australian. You made number one again—“
“—barely.”
“It counts.” Warm breath brushes Andy’s forehead, Mardy pressing his face to his hair in a half-kiss, half an attempt, Andy knows, to hide the tears caught in wet eyelashes. “He’s proud of you Andy.”
Sounding hollow in the empty museum. Andy doesn’t reply, just closes his eyes and holds his breath because he can’t look at the Wimbledon trophy, gleaming in its glass case, at the golden lights of reflection it sends skidding across the tiles. At his own name, neat letters, that he’d give his cars and his money and his serve for someone, anything, to rewrite.
He hadn’t realised how much he’d miss losing the Wimbledon final for better reasons than a wrenched shoulder.
“I really miss him.” Mumbled against the warmth of Mardy’s shoulder and strands of golden hair, coarser than the ones he lets himself remember, sometimes. “If never winning Wimbledon again fixed it all, I’d do it. Anything. If I knew—if I could—“
Tightness in his throat closes on the words. Mardy’s warm and solid, arms pulling him across a half-inch of floor into a hug, sudden shock of warmth after the cold room and Andy’s shivers slowing to almost nothing.