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Dominic's mouth is suddenly dry. He's trying to concentrate on the bowl of fruit on the counter, chilled and gleaming. Trying to listen to the hum of the refrigerator. Searching for anything to distract from the sight of Sascha licking his lips, the sudden tightness in his throat, the trail of goosebumps along his arm.
Sascha leans in closer, his voice a conspiratorial whisper.
"I won't tell anyone if you won't. I'm not ashamed about wanting this."
He reaches out for Dominic's hand.
"Let's be bad. I've even gotten cream cheese!"
Sascha's grin spreads and he's springing up from the table and jamming two halves of a bagel into a toaster in his rented house. He's not falling off his diet alone. Oh no, he'll bring Dominic down with him. If only Masters 1000s worked the same way.
It's classic Sascha, Dominic realizes, to reel him in just to cut him loose. For every moment they spend with eyes locked and hands nearly held, they spend twice as many with their eyes locked on the flickering blue of a TV screen or pushing each other around in the locker room. It's the story of Dominic's life. To get whisper close to his dreams only to find out he's there as part of a joke. Or a bagel heist.
-
"What's the worst that could happen?" Kiki had tossed the question out the night before. "You're in love with him. Quelle surprise. Everyone else knows already."
Dominic sat on the counter, leg dangling below him.
"Worst that could happen? I could be totally wrong, ruin our friendship, and go on losing Slams to him for 10 more years. Meanwhile, he'll get married and have babies with Naomi or something."
"Oh they'd have beautiful babies." She waved him off, plucked a cherry from a bowl. "Ok, but if it goes well. Then you're winning Slams wether it's you with a trophy or him with a trophy. And then your friendship grows even closer. And then it's you with mignons Japanese babies somehow. Surrogacy, I guess?"
-
So it was decided. Sascha had invited him for breakfast and a practice session the next morning. He'd tell him then. If it went to hell, they'd bash a ball at each other from opposite sides of the net and never speak of it again.
Dominic nervously downs two cans of La Croix before he drives over. Sascha hates the stuff, but the gentle pop and fizz of the water is practically Dominic's theme song. This morning isn't the time to give it up.
Now. Dominic tells himself, nerves buzzing as he fidgets on Sascha's doorstep. He swipes his palms against his shorts and knocks on the door. Tell him now.
He prepares his hello. Confident. Relaxed. Pushed through smiling lips as he rakes a hand through his hair. Instead what escapes him is -
"Oh hell."
Mischa lifts an eyebrow, his arm leaning against the doorway.
"Yeah, well, your hair makes you look like a defective Ken Doll."
He walks back down the hallway, yelling something in Russian before disappearing into his room. This can't be a good sign for Dominic's cause.
Dominic lets himself in, slinking into the kitchen. The plan to confess his love doesn't include the X factor of Sascha's older brother. Once friendly enough, Mischa seems to resent Dominic's presence more and more every day. Dominic is disciplined, particular, studied. Mischa hates studying. Bears don't study a fish. They go after it.
Sascha wanders into the kitchen. They hug, the heavy scent of cologne clings to his neck.
"Good morning," Dominic resists the urge to inhale. His mind can't help striking a tally in the "good sign" column. Sascha splashed on cologne for breakfast. Dominic grips the bottom of his chair so hard his knuckles turn white.
"Hey, so. Thank you for, umm, breakfast. Or calling me up for breakfast, that is. But before we get settled, I um," the last button of his polo is immensely tight. "I um, there's something I have to do. Ugh," his Adam's apple bobs, he releases the chair and taps his fingers on the table. "To tell you."
Sascha's face takes a serious look and he sits down. His eyes dart around the room to be sure Mischa isn't lurking.
"Ok," Sascha places his hand over Dominic's to stop the tapping. "But before you say anything. I just want to say that I have an entire bag of New York bagels in the pantry, so if you're back off carbs I'm going to kill you."
Dominic's nerve melts like a pad of butter. His shoulders droop.
"Don't be mad!" Sascha grips his arm, looks up at Dominic through long eyelashes. "I won't tell anyone if you won't. I'm not ashamed about wanting this."
It's hard for Dominic's mind not to hear the words and hope they mean something else. Hard not to see Sascha lick his lips without remembering the tightness of his own shorts.
"Let's be bad," Sascha whispers, eye trained on Dominic. "I've even gotten cream cheese!"
Dominic is left at the table, leg bouncing erratically. The hand holding is a step in the right direction, but secret bagels and Sascha's total obliviousness definitely are not. That's the whole problem, Dominic knows. He's dreaming of Sascha while Sascha is dreaming of complex carbohydrates.
Sascha's excited, narrating his bagel making in sing-song. He's humming, his head inside a fridge while he digs out cream cheese hidden behind a grapefruit.
"And bagel was it's Name-O. B - A - G - E - L." He wiggles the tub at Dominic and smiles at the toaster.
"Oh shit!"
The flames are small but curling up the sides of the bagel and out of the slots of the toaster.
"Oh shit shit shit. Dom, fix it." He's tapping Dominic over and over, hands on his shoulders, warm on his chest. Frantic.
"Fix it. Fix it!"
Dominic yanks the plug from the socket. Sascha blows at the flames.
"Don't unplug it. Domi, fix it!"
Dominic's mind can't find the words to describe the difference between a standard fire and an electrical fire, how one would spread with water, how unplugging the toaster could help. Instead, both charmed and irritated, he looks at Sascha like he wants to throw him out a window, then touches his lips when the pang of loneliness feels too real.
"Sticking your fingers in your mouth is not a plan!" Sascha grabs at the dish-sprayer alongside the sink. He drags it half a foot before the hose pulls loose from the basin.
"Shit! Dom! Fucking sprayer."
The flames jump higher. Sasha bats at the flaming metal wreckage, panic settling behind his eyes.
"Mischa!"
"No!" Dominic lurches for the towels. "Not Mischa. Anyone but Mischa."
He wraps his hands and makes a mad grab for the toaster. He holds it out in front of him and dashes down the hallway, kicking open a bathroom door and throwing the toaster into the bathtub. He mutters quiet German prayers that the fire isn't electrical after all and turns on the water.
Sascha catches up and they watch the fire die down. Dominic only then realizing the bathtub is full of La Croix cans, a pair of gym shoes, and a small mountain of dirty clothes. Why in the h-
"Shit! My computer," Sascha ducks into the spray to fish out a Macbook, SUPREME stickers curling at the corners. His hair is wet and matted against his forehead.
Sascha is holding his hand again, this time to dry his computer with Dominic's towel-covered palms. Dominic is dazed, can't stop staring at the heap of clothes under the smoldering toaster. He's mildly aware Sascha is using him to buff electronics.
His brain tries desperately to slot the pieces together. "Why is half your room in the tub?"
Sascha drops his hand, sets the computer aside. He shakes droplets from his head and forces a smile. "I didn't have time to clean my room so I just... I didn't plan to catch breakfast on fire."
He cleaned. He cleaned his bedroom. Dominic's mind snags on the sentence. He invited you over and cleaned his bedroom for you. He cleared off his bed just in case and-
"You, ugh," the words are embarrassingly jumbled in Dominic's mouth, thoughts crashing into each other before they can reach his lips. A charred can of La Croix pops under the toaster. "You said you hated fizzy water."
Sascha shrugs, buries his hands in his pockets.
"I dunno. I thought maybe it could be good." His eyes refuse to leave the toaster, a small fire reflecting in them. "Maybe it tastes like you."
"GODDAMMIT, KISS ALREADY!" Mischa's voice rattles through the neighboring wall. "Fucking jesus every time, it's like they're afraid of everything..."
In an instant, Dominic realizes how terribly he's misread all of Sascha's signs. He's been waiting for years, too afraid to take a shot despite all his invitations, then afraid he'd missed his last chance. But Mischa is yelling that he's wrong. And the sight of two shoes hidden in the bathtub let him know that he shouldn't give up just yet. He suddenly understands why Mischa seems to hate him. Bears don't study a fish.
"So," he swipes at his Ken Doll hair, not as smooth as he'd imagined but when Sascha looks up the fire is still in his eyes. They can finally see each other.
"...Where is this super clean bedroom?"
Sascha's giddy smile is a good sign. The last one Dominic needs before his mind slows down and his lips take over.