Ficlet: Relativity (R, Andy Roddick/Mardy Fish) Title: Relativity Pairings: Andy Roddick/Mardy Fish Rating: R Summary: Andy's realising winning is relatively unimportant. Notes: Set in the 2006 US Open, working with kindoftrouble's theory that Mardy broke up with Andy last year. Disclaimer: I went out to an auction and bought them all, really. Except, that's a lie and I don't own anything at all. Blame this on wishful thinking. Dedications: For kindoftrouble, who needed cheering up.
There a thousand things Andy should hate about New York in late summer. A thousand things he’s lived through, matches lost he should’ve won, press conferences he’d rather forget. One night last year, crying until 4am, leaning against Mardy’s hotel room door and that’s something he thought he’d never get over, tears in his soul too deep to mend. Each memory a little stab in the heart when he steps into Flushing Meadows for the first time each summer, wondering how soon before the rollercoaster that is his U.S. Open comes off the tracks this year.
A thousand things and that’s plenty of reasons for him not to be smiling as he leans on the railing of his hotel balcony. He could not smile for the whole two weeks and no one would think to wonder why, when he has every excuse to hate the city he’s left in tears for two years running. Every excuse in the world and yet—
Yet he’s still smiling. Has been long enough for his cheeks to hurt but he can’t see himself stopping anytime soon. New York’s glittering across the water, Manhattan’s lights spread out in front of him in a shimmering sea and, this year, they aren’t blurred through tears. Even though he lost today and somehow, that should be upsetting him more than it is.
“You look about twelve when you grin like that.” Warm lips, hotter with the breath behind, chase the cool night air across the back of his neck until he shivers from the contrast. Tip of a tongue brushing the ticklish spot along his hairline that no one else knows and a callused, familiar hand, curling over his bare stomach in what would be a gesture of possession were anyone there to watch.
The reason he’s smiling and why New York’s never looked more beautiful, including that half-forgotten time he stood on a balcony just like this with a trophy beside him. Still a trophy with him now but better, as Mardy kisses up to his ear and nips the curve to have Andy squirming back against him.
“If I’m twelve, what does that make you?” he asks breathlessly. There’s a chuckle in his ear that, god, he’s missed more than he thought it possible to miss anything, an empty, aching echo of it behind every impersonal good morning exchanged this last year and Mardy’s sliding round to kiss his mouth with hands in Andy’s hair and down his jeans and warm, damp skin everywhere he can touch. Everything New York’s done to him in the past and he’s forgiven it all in a second for giving him back this.
“I’m sorry you lost,” Mardy murmurs against his lips after a minute of soft kisses, leaning into each other because they’re tired and maybe a little because neither of them want to let go. Andy shrugs.
“Don’t care,” he says and means it. He could’ve lost in the first round this year and not cared, not with a nervous and trembling Mardy knocking on his door almost before he’d put down his luggage, blue eyes bright with tears and locked firmly on the floor as he’d stammered out an apology. Clinging to Andy until he’d left bruises the first night and sometime soon Andy thinks, he’s going to have to ask what it was that made the older American decide to come back to him now.
Sometime soon but not tonight. New York’s been kind to him this year and the least he can do is return the favour.
“Besides.” Mardy looks at him with a smile that mirrors his own, backlit in the light shining through the open door to their room and almost glowing with it, short hair that Andy’s not quite sure he’s used to yet still damp from the shower they’d shared. “Semis are pretty good. And, it’s not as if you were beaten by someone bad.”
Nothing like actually, Roger’s hug warm at the net and it hadn’t stung like usual. Helped, perhaps, by the whoopee cushion Mardy’d snuck onto the Swiss’s chair at his press conference but underneath, he knows it’s just the icing on the cake. This year was a success from the moment he’d arrived; getting this far, playing so well, it pales in comparison.
“And,” Mardy murmurs, fingers slipping under the waistband of Andy’s jeans again and down, other hand working at the button. “You know, there’s always next year.”
Maybe there is, Andy thinks as his boyfriend drops to his knees, arcing back against the balcony railing with a moan when soft lips slide so close to where he needs them. But then again, as the hot, wet mouth he’ll never tire of having as his again closes around his cock and the world goes hazy at the edges with pleasure, he can’t help smiling.
Because in the end, this year had turned out pretty damn good too.