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Patrick hasn't even managed to catch his breath yet when he notices the mark. "What is that?" he asks, catching Tashi's wrist in his hand so that he can turn her arm over and get a better look, not thinking of much beyond the simple fact that it was a mark on Tashi's skin that he hadn't put there.
"What-, it's nothing," Tashi snaps, pulling at his grip on her without the energy to actually convince him to break it. Liar, Patrick thinks, the edges of a smirk on his face as he pulls her into a sliver of light from a nearby streetlamp to get a better look at it. A bite mark — not a hickey — puffy and angry in the sin, and Patrick presses his thumb into the center of it, where the faint beginnings of a bruise lurks in the shape of someone's incisors. Whose? Art's? Or, their kid is more likely, isn't it? Some kids bite like that — Patrick had, at least.
Of course you did, Patrick, he can almost hear Tashi saying, condescending tone thick around her scorn and anger — its sting abstractly soothed by the fact that there's not a world where Patrick can picture Tashi's open palm coming down on the back of any kid's head. Focus, he scolds himself, and shrugs back the temptation to press his nail down into the silhouette of a tooth.
His silence seems like it knocks something loose between them, or maybe the orgasms were what did it. "I just-," Tashi concedes to saying, like she's not really sure why, "got frustrated."
Knowing it's her own teeth just makes Patrick want to dig his own into the same space to see how well they overlap. He wonders how far he could get into trying before Tashi smacks him upside the head for it, because Patrick isn't a child anymore.
"Oh, yeah?" he asks instead, curious. He brushes his fingers over the swollen skin, thinking about Grosu breaking his racket open against the bench Patrick had decided against sitting on. About the handful of guys in the circuit who sometimes make an effort to crack their own heads open in the heat of their frustration. What drives Tashi Duncan into that kind of hole? Patrick wonders, and then decides to press his luck the way he always does. "At what?" he asks, not sure if he wants a chance to twist the knife in her or in himself — wondering the way he has for a decade at the shape of their lives without him in it.
Her other hand is still pressed down against Patrick's abdomen, and her nails dig into the fat and muscle there like she's thinking about trying to gouge another piece of him out. Patrick inhales and resigns himself to the fact that he's open to it.
He'd misstepped, in the alley behind the hotel the other day. He'd known it as soon as Tashi had shown him the depth of disgust on her face, at the idea that she didn't actually love Art. That was Patrick's bad, but he couldn't back down then and he still won't now — he'd meant it when he said he wanted her to coach him. Patrick's happy to keep rolling over for a chance to prove that he means it this time; he might still be an idiot sometimes, but he's not nineteen and insecure anymore. Does she believe him?
Maybe she does. Or maybe, Patrick thinks as he stares up into her eyes that don't quite seem to be looking at him at all, she's just that desperate for other options these days. What do you have that belongs to you? he hadn't gotten a chance to ask her the other day. Everything she has, she shares entirely with Art.
Even Patrick, really, but maybe this is all there is for either of them. Art had made it clear enough, earlier, that Patrick might still be stuck being his, but he has no intention of being Patrick's anymore.
What the fuck else do we have to talk about? so maybe that's why Tashi opens her mouth and says, "You were right," like it's carving something out of her to admit it. "I can't make him talk to me."
What the fuck else do we have to talk about? Patrick thinks, and thinks about how he'd scraped together some admiration after he'd gotten tired of feeling small and wounded, over how easily Tashi's voice fell out of Art's mouth these days.
But here's Tashi now, with a shadow of Patrick's own bit-lip agony wrapped up in the corners of her mouth, so maybe that's just the voice Art had grown into while Patrick wasn't around to hear it.
"Yeah," he says, running his tongue over his teeth to keep the irritated grin off of his face. It's a good habit on the court, but Tashi might think he's laughing at her for real, and Patrick doesn't want to break this quiet understanding before he has to.
He's rewarded for it when Tashi adds, "He kept asking if I'd leave him, if he lost."
Patrick thinks about the disgust on Tashi's face the other day again. Wonders if Art knows he has that. Patrick hadn't, but Patrick had been nineteen and seeing Tashi's face in week-long sips between months of travel as an excuse. Art has her undivided attention and his ring on her finger, so what's his? "Like in college," Patrick hazards, and watches Tashi's face crumple for a split second before she steels it over again.
"And you think sleeping with me will make him less likely to leave you?" Patrick asks, the words tripping out of his mouth before he can stop them. He's not sure if he's more baffled by Tashi's decision making or Art's — Patrick hadn't thought Art would want to phone in everything he had when he decided to retire. Is he stupid?
Tashi's glare would hit a little harder if she didn't look completely fucking miserable. "You don't count," she says lamely, and it should land like a blow. It should eat at him — I don't matter? — but the words mean something different coming out of Tashi's mouth than they had out of Art's, don't they?
In college, Art had made a concentrated effort to drive a wedge between them and he'd succeeded — helped along by stupid, teenaged insecurities, of course — but Patrick still wonders every now and again whether Art had ever realized he hadn't needed to. That Patrick and Tashi had always left space for him to fit in alongside them, almost more eager to fit him in than each other. Or maybe Art had known, and he'd just decided he wanted Patrick gone anyway.
Patrick runs his tongue over his teeth and almost wants to laugh. They must be the biggest morons on the planet — him and Tashi — crawling back for more like this. Art gets mean when he's nervous; he lashes out like a reflex, and Patrick had been almost surprised by the ferocity of it yesterday in that fucking sauna, ugly and small and wounded in the wake of the door slamming behind him, but here Patrick is anyway: sniffing around for more.
Here's Tashi, hungry for the exact same fucking thing.
For a moment, Patrick looks away, unable to look at her for fear that he might start screaming. He swallows, and then pulls Tashi down against his chest so that neither of them have to look at each other at all, and she lets him do it, like she's grateful for the reprieve. Tashi curls down into the hollow spaces of Patrick's body like she's slotting into a place carved out just for her, her fingers tracing the strands of his chest hair in idle little patterns, and Patrick feels nineteen years old again like a lightning strike, like a knot in the base of his throat.
Fuck him, right? he almost thinks about saying. Fuck Art and his passive aggressive bullshit — never asking for what he wants, making everyone guess and then getting mad when they inevitably guess wrong. We'd be better off without him, but Patrick can still taste the honest revulsion in the slap Tashi had leveled him with for it yesterday, and knows she doesn't want that anymore than Patrick does.
"Are you sure this is what you want?" he asks her anyway.
"What else could I want?" Tashi asks him in return, and it's so painfully earnest that Patrick can feel the anger pulling at the corner of his mouth again. Everything, he wants to tell her. You were supposed to be more; fuck you for letting us ruin it for you.
Fuck Art for that, and fuck Patrick for it too.
He thinks about saying it anyway, just to dig the knife in deeper for both of them, but Patrick can already taste the resignation, chalky and dry on the back of his tongue. He doesn't want to make it worse anymore. He can't even be mad that Tashi's trying to push him under the bus for a chance to stay in Art's good graces for just a little longer anyway, not when Patrick had tried to do the exact same thing to her yesterday. Are they really that stupid? Is Art really worth any of this?
It's a stupid question. It's Art.
"How will I know you're gonna do it?" Tashi asks, and Patrick can feel his own resignation in the hitch of her lungs. He wonders if she's bracing herself for a blow from him — the idea that Patrick might actually win against Art tomorrow after all — or maybe from Art. That's the actual question she can't bring herself to ask, right? How does she know this will make any difference at all, if Art has already made up his mind about quitting tennis and her along with it?
God, fuck all three of them.
So all Patrick does is shrug. "You won't," he tells her, answering both questions at once, and Tashi breathes out measured and slow, absorbing the blow instead of spitting on him for it again, because that's the problem, isn't it? It's not actually up to Patrick. It never really is.
Does Art know he holds all the cards here, or is he still over there in his ritzy little hotel room, convincing himself it's all up to everyone else?
The thought is so infuriating that, for a second, Patrick understands Tashi completely. He wants to feel Art's weight pinned underneath him, teenaged wrestling but meaning it this time. Wants to pin Art down and sink his teeth down into him and rend, until Art's petty ice queen facade shatters, until he's bleeding just as much as they are for once.
It isn't something Tashi would want, obviously. She'd bitten herself instead of Art for a reason. It isn't something Patrick is supposed to get.
But Patrick never was the patient one between them. He rolls the thought of it over his tongue, and can't help but think that if he plays his cards right tomorrow, he might just net himself the next best thing.
After all, if this is his last shot, then why not go out with a bang?