all the bad boys, wip, vampire!verse, rating: M

[clofic]

I am writing way too many things at once and it isn't working. The vampire!verse sequel needs mad amounts of editing and is only halfway done at 17k, the sequel to syntax is somehow planned out at at least 20k, and at least four other wips keep spilling over into what I'm trying to focus on. I feel like a cat chasing a fly in all directions and never catching it. I'm putting my foot down.

So. Internet. Have the rough draft of the first 17k of vampire!verse sequel so I can bump it down my attention list until syntax 2 (currently named the legacy of the romantic poets) is done. I posted the original vampire!verse half-finished and left it for eight years but it worked. Hopefully this one isn't eight years in development hell. Part of me wants to rewrite the entire thing from Sascha's POV but the entire rest of vampire!verse including the two unwritten middle bits are all from Andy's and honestly, I don't know if that's the problem. Maybe the whole thing just doesn't work, idk. Usually I know what a fic needs to shape like and the general outline stays the same but this whole thing feels - off.

It needs so much editing anyway; bear that in mind. This is why first drafts are a thing.

all the bad boys, novak/andy, sascha zverev, rating: m

Warnings: vampirism, some dubious consent to biting, angst, major bodily injury, blood. wip




Wimbledon 2017

Media day at every tournament is exhausting but at Wimbledon, for Andy, it’s always been a special circle of hell. Every British journalist wants him to rate his chances, but they don’t really care if he’s feeling a little off this grass season or if he hasn’t won a match in months; what they want him to say, without deviation from the script, is of course I’ m going to win.

And then you know, go and do it. Andy marvels afresh every year at how, for sports reporters, they can all be so remarkably dense as to how sport works.

For him, it’s always meant an entire day of talking around the possibility of him winning in careful catchphrases, how anything is possible on grass and you never know how you feel until you’re out there, talking down his own chances until he drags himself home at the end of the day dispirited and convinced he’s going to lose to a quallie in the first round. He used to dread it, forcing himself into the tournament car sent to collect him in the mornings and wondering, half-seriously, how much he really wanted to do this whole tennis thing anyway.

But the last few years at least there’s been Novak at the end of it all. They’d leave Wimbledon in separate cars but somehow he’d always be waiting when Andy stumbled through his own front door, arms going around him from behind as he stepped inside because Novak’s invitation to his house is open and long-standing these days, comfort whispered into the non-existent space between them to remind Andy that he’s fine, he’s got this, until he remembers to believe it.

 

Knowing that’s waiting for him makes it easier to plaster on a smile for the hundredth reporter from a paper he’s never read, to not flinch through the not-subtle hints about retirement and the British public’s expectations. The stock answers roll off his tongue on autopilot while he spends the day contemplating his fantasy football league and knowing that Novak’s right there behind him, at the next table, answering his own thousandth question about vegan diets and occasionally muttering hilariously rude remarks meant for him alone while the journalists shifted around to their next victim. Wimbledon media days are still a long, enervating marathon but they’d started becoming a manageable one; Andy’s survived them all over the last decade and there’s no reason, excepting specific circumstances, that this year should be any different.

 

Excepting circumstances like this where, because it’s England and summer is something to be chased and pinned down until it submits, the slightest flicker of sunlight means the entire media day setup moves outdoors, on to the player’s terrace tucked in a little suntrap opposite Centre Court.

 

Andy can play matches in all kinds of daylight now but hours of sitting still in the pouring sunshine, having his sunglasses confiscated by his agent – ‘You’re not James Bond, Andy; at least try to convince the nice British public that you’re human’, hearing Novak snort a soft laugh behind him – and he can feel the headache building to unbearable levels. Every exposed inch of skin feels like it’s scorching through the layers of sun cream, eyes watering until he has to apologise and ask to swap seats so the sun isn’t glaring directly in his face, the reporter from The Daily Mail giving him a slightly exasperated look as if she thinks he’s being precious. Though he could kiss her feet and the Mail would still write something shitty, so that’s not a great loss.

 

Still, by the time they break for late lunch he can hardly see through the sunspots dancing across his vision. When he almost stumbles rising from his chair, a hand catches his elbow.

 

‘You alright?’ Novak murmurs on the very edge of hearing, although when Andy blinks to focus he can see the Serb’s smile is the casual blandness of friends exchanging pleasantries. The BBC cameraman is only a few feet away. ‘You are starting to smell like burnt toast.’

 

‘Need some shade.’ Andy wipes his forehead with trembling fingers and risks patting the hand Novak has on his arm. He’s barely warm of course, the bastard, face touched with the faintest blush of pink while Andy’s sure he looks like a ripe tomato by now. ‘I’ll nip to the loo and get ‘lost’ for a bit coming back. If you could push them to put the shades up that would be great.’

 

‘I have been, all morning, but it is bouncing off because the cameramen, they are all so excited the light is good. All your journalists have post traumatic rain issues.’ Novak narrows his eyes thoughtfully at something over Andy’s shoulder and Andy turns, sees the Wimbledon media director, Mick, coming across the footbridge from Centre, greeting Sue Barker with a smile. ‘He is, I think, the leverage we need. Go, go, before he spot you and you must be the great British hope until you spontaneously combust. I do some leaning, do not worry.’

 

‘Don’t do anything drastic like make him change the rule about all white kit to all black,’ Andy warns, and winces when he catches Novak’s innocent smile as he turns away.

 

‘Would I do such?’

 

Andy gives him a deeply sceptical look over his shoulder. ‘You made Roger wear orange shoes at Wimbledon that one time so, yes.’

 

He’s already by the door to the restaurant when Novak’s voice murmurs, ‘Spoilsport,’ sounding as if it’s right beside his ear; when he turns, startled, Novak’s already halfway across the terrace to intercept Mick. Exasperated – there are better times to play tricks than when surrounded by the world’s media and several dozen cameras – Andy thinks be careful loud enough to be overheard and gets a flash of amusement in response before he pushes inside.

 

Instant, blessed relief. Resisting the urge to rub every bare inch of skin that’s tight and shivery with the incipient sunburn, he ducks past the greetings of staff and wandering media with a smile and a nod until he can turn down a side corridor, hanging a sharp left into the staff toilets. Years of experience means he knows he’s less likely to run into journalists here, tucked out of sight in the service areas. The sports editor for The Express once asked him, mid-flow at the urinal in the main toilets, if he had to pee for exactly the same amount of time before every match – after which Andy couldn’t pee for a second longer because he so desperately needed to leave the room and he’d spent most of a subsequent interview with The Times wondering if they’d run it as an exclusive on his early-onset dementia if he wet himself mid-question.

 

Thankfully, the doors to both the stalls are open and the slightly downmarket room – nowhere at Wimbledon would dare to be shabby but the staff areas definitely rate a notch below those for the public and players – is empty. Letting himself slump against the sinks, Andy makes himself look in the mirror to assess the damage.

 

Despite how scorched his skin feels he’s not visibly on fire, but that’s about the only positive. His nose and cheeks are the shiny pink of a burn, dark thumbprints of tiredness under his eyes and overall he looks strained at the edges, tension a web of wrinkles when he grimaces at his reflection. Every article tomorrow is going to be about how Andy Murray, the great British hope, looks like he’s just played all four Slams back to back without a break. They’ll probably use words like past it, retirement looming, and for bonus points get in a snide remark about Roger being several million years old and still winning Slams while Andy can’t make it past thirty.

 

And Andy can’t even point out that Roger has an unfair advantage in that he’s not been dragged into a secret war of attrition with vampire hunters over the last few years, because that would immediately be followed by scandal and straitjackets until Novak did something they’d all regret to break him out. Andy’s all for setting the world’s press straight when they’ve got their facts wrong – it’s one of the few perks of the media side of his job – but he agrees with Novak on this one. The international press aren’t capable of dealing with vampires.

 

Although – thinking back over some of the worst interviews in his career, he’d put a fifty-fifty bet on it being equally likely that the vampires wouldn’t be able to handle the journalists.

 

So going public’s not an option; he’ll just have to keep to the shade and try to smile more. If anyone pushes too hard he’ll blame his hip for acting up again. May as well put practice of over a decade of lying to the press to good use-

 

Like being tapped on the shoulder, something on the edge of his hearing catches his attention mid-thought. Frowning, he turns his head to listen; the background hum of Wimbledon is a blur of noise that he can usually ignore unless he concentrates, meaningless shapes of sound like a watercolour painting left out in the rain, but this one – this one is someone walking with purpose, someone tall because there’s a balanced weight to the tread and it’s the soft scuff of tennis shoes on the polished wooden floor so it’s not likely to be a journalist with their loafers and stilettos.

 

The reason it’s snapped in his attention is because it’s also coming, very deliberately, down the corridor toward him.

 

Hiding is out of the question when everyone saw him walk this way. Instead he starts to wash his hands with forced calm, letting the cold water run over his wrists to cool himself off while he waits, watching the door over his shoulder in the mirror above the sinks. If the person turns into the toilets and he doesn’t want to talk to them, if it’s a journalist after all, he’ll pretend to be finished and leave; Novak’s probably got every sunshade in Wimbledon up by now. It’s most likely one of the staff anyway.

 

Closer, and the footsteps slow. Whoever’s outside is breathing a little short as if they’ve hurried, and Andy pauses with one hand on the tap to brace himself, waiting as the handle turns.

 

The instant the door opens, he knows it’s fine. The breath he inhales is bright with the scent of sunshine and beach sand, youth and the truly ridiculous number of dogs the newcomer’s petted since his shower that morning. Andy knows that scent, knows there’s nothing to worry about and feels all the tension go out of his shoulders.

 

‘Hi Sascha,’ he says as the German steps into view, ‘you hiding from the journalists too?’

 

The answering hesitation from Sascha is – well, weird, his usual broad smile toned down to a shifting, uncharacteristic flicker as he glances between Andy and the mirror. He almost looks-

 

Wary.

 

Andy tries not to flinch, or to let the flash of hurt register on his expression; he doesn’t think he’s done anything to upset to younger player – actually, it’s pretty impossible to upset Sascha short of beating him in a tennis match. Novak remarked once, back when the German first went pro, that he had confidence you could bounce a Roddick serve off.

 

Maybe he just wasn’t expecting anyone to be in here.

 

‘Hey Andy,’ Sascha says after an awkward second, and drifts over to the sinks rather than the stalls, Andy shifting over to make space for him. ‘No, the journalists are fine. Think they give you a harder time than the rest of us, yeah?’

 

‘Making the British players cry in the toilets, all part of the Wimbledon tradition,’ Andy agrees dryly. He watches Sascha soap up his hands, rinse, then soap up again, the slide of the long, tanned fingers folding over each other a little hypnotic. It’s not until he glances up to ask Sascha if he’s okay – no one washes their hands that intently, even when the caterers made the questionable decision of serving up lunch as a finger-food buffet – that he meets Sascha’s amused smile, genuine this time, in the mirror and realises he’s been staring.

 

‘Checking to see if my hands work alright?’ Sascha asks, the deadpan edge of teasing in his voice. ‘Don’t worry, when I see you on court I’ll be able to serve.’

 

‘With this draw that’ll take a while, don’t jinx it,’ Andy warns, to cover that he’s silently kicking himself for acting noticeably weird. It’s Alexander Zeverev for godssake; the kid’s about as threatening as a newborn puppy without a racquet in his hand, even if he’s somehow grown from a tiny ten year old who’d occasionally ballboy Andy’s practices into a giant looming beanpole. ‘Sorry,’ he says, ‘think I’m a bit out of it after all these interviews. Only so many times I can explain that being British doesn’t mean I automatically get handed the trophy you know?’

 

‘You want that, maybe try changing your name to Roger Federer.’ Sascha’s smile resurfaces when Andy laughs at that. He may have self-belief the size of Centre Court when to comes to tennis but sometimes Andy gets the feeling that the German’s testing the waters when he jokes, constantly reassessing his standing against the older players because underneath all those smiles, he’s never quite sure if they take him seriously. It reminds Andy of himself at twenty, makes him feel a little fond – and also unbearably old.

 

None of that is Sascha’s fault though so Andy claps him on the shoulder as he turns toward the door.

 

‘I don’t think I could handle that many fans. See you back out there with the vultures.’

 

‘Sure,’ Sascha says and then, added with awkward nonchalance that makes it more glaringly unsubtle than neon lights and skywriting, ‘I saw you talking to Novak, and he was asking for umbrellas for the tables just now. Shame there is so much sun out today, don’t you think?’

 

Andy stops, one hand on the door handle. His own heartbeat’s kicked up to a quick rattle in his chest, that and the splash of the tap drowning out the background noise but he’d swear he can hear Sascha holding his breath. Waiting, expectant.

 

Trying not to let the quiet mental chant of panic – you knew someone would find out, you knew, you knew – show on his expression, he turns to look back.

 

Sascha meets his eyes in the mirror, blue the same shade as the cloudless sky outside. He is irritatingly attractive, Andy acknowledges with the superficial calm of controlled panic, the magnetism of the German’s smile something that draws the eye as much as any tricks Novak has – but it’s just chance, favourable genetics and nothing else. Andy can tell the difference without doubt these days and Alexander Zverev is one hundred percent human.

 

And yet, if he knows-

 

‘We play in the sun all the time,’ Andy says, keeping it neutral. ‘Sitting around in it having waiters bring us cold drinks is pretty relaxing in comparison.’

 

‘It’s difficult though, right?’ Sascha’s still watching him, those blue eyes going wide, uncertain; he’s only pretending to be sure of himself and if he does know something, it has to have occurred to him that Andy is between him and the only exit. Not that Andy would do anything but even the whispered rumour of vampire tends to make humans twitchy. ‘I mean, if you are more likely to burn, it should be a bad idea to be out in it at all.’

 

He swallows and, just for an instant, Andy can’t stop his gaze flicking down, skipping over the tanned line of Sascha’s neck. Over the pulse that beats just below the skin, that would taste like sunshine and sand and the gleam of sweat Andy can see pooling in the hollow of Sascha’s throat.

 

When he looks back up, Sascha meets him with a pale echo of his former smile that’s obviously only for show, tense in a way that suggests he’s waiting either for Andy to take the bait or let him go.

 

Andy smiles back at him with maybe a little more tooth than necessary. ‘Don’t worry,’ he says, level, ‘they’re putting the sunshades up. It won’t be a problem.’

 

‘Andy-’ Sascha starts, not quite moving toward him but the incline of his body suggests he wants to – and if he knows anything that makes him insane, so Andy brushes it off with a shrug and,

 

‘Got to get back out there. I’ll see you later, Sascha.’

 

It’s only when he’s walking back, too fast because he’s thrown and panicking and trying not to break into a run as if vampire hunters are chasing at his heels, that he realises that his thoughtless parting shot could, in certain circumstances – circumstances like, a human knowing they might be surrounded by vampires – be interpreted as a threat. Fuck.

 

When he gets back on the terrace, the sunshades around the edges are up and every press table now has a sun parasol but Andy barely glances at them. Dodging the crowd around Roger and German television interviewing a tired-looking Tommy Haas wearing a media pass, he locates a smug-looking Novak over by the lunch buffet, now picked mostly clean. Andy grabs his arm without caring how many cameras catch it.

 

‘Novak!’ he hisses. ‘I think Sascha knows!’

 

Novak, with a guilty mouthful of pizza that he’s not supposed to be eating – he knows they always put garlic in the sauce and Marian banned it after the third match he lost to stomach cramps, mercilessly started the gluten intolerance rumour among the journalists when Novak kept sneaking it anyway; just because Marian’s asked to stay home with his family for a while doesn’t mean Andy would let this one go if he wasn’t panicking – raises his eyebrows.

 

‘What?’ he asks around a mouthful of cheese, ‘he know how to win Wimbledon in straights? What is two plus two? What is Roger’s secret of eternal youth — I knew he cheat, the bastard-‘

 

‘About- you know.’ Andy can’t say it out loud when they’re surrounded by the world’s international press so instead he makes his best biting face, hands miming leaping at someone with fangs out. Novak chokes on his illicit pizza.

 

‘Andy,’ he says when he’s managed not to suffocate himself, ‘no vampire-’ he ignores Andy’s warning hiss, ‘- has ever made a face so undignified.’

 

Andy debates mentioning the face Novak made last night when he came with Andy’s mouth around his dick, but there’s more important things at stake right now than kicking off an argument that’ll inevitably result in them starting a competition for the worst orgasm face. ‘Novak, I’m serious. He was just asking about the sun, in the toilets-’

 

‘There is sun in the toilets? Maybe they can put it in the gym so I can work on my tan-’

 

‘Novak-’

 

‘Andy!’’ Novak interrupts him softly, his smile as much reassurance as the way he lets his hand rest briefly on Andy’s against his arm. ‘It is fine, we are talking about the baby Zverev here. He do not look up from his gym session or Playstation enough to notice that even the grass is green. He cannot know, but-’ He holds up a hand to stop Andy when he starts to interrupt, ‘next time I get the chance though, I take a look okay? Poke around that pretty blond head and no doubt find only a hormonal twenty year old, you get to deal with my teenage mood swings after, but I look.’

 

Andy exhales all his tightly-compressed panic on a breath. Usually he doesn’t like Novak cheating by spying on other players – it seems unsportsmanlike, even though there can’t be a rule if no one’s ever known about it – but on this occasion, it’ll stop him twitching every time Sascha walks into the locker room.

 

‘Thank you.’

 

Novak grins at him, eyes bright in the sun that’s just slanting down toward the deeper gold of a late English afternoon. There’s tomato sauce smudged across the corner of his mouth, a bright red smear reminding Andy of something else. Reminding him that he’s hungry.

 

Thankfully Novak distracts him by saying, ‘Is not like the baby Zverev to make you so uncomfortable, or to be so awkward. Are you sure he was not just hitting on you?’

 

Andy’s saved from having to reply to that by being called back to the press tables, but the rude gesture he imagines very clearly has Novak snorting with laughter all over the handsome reporter from The Guardian.

 

 

In the way Wimbledon has of taking several thousand years to hype itself up and then happening all in a rush the moment someone hits the first ball, Andy gets swept up in the fluster of matches and practices, of interminable press conferences and the BBC collaring him for just one more interview in the stifling studio. By the end of middle Saturday he’s exhausted, collapsing with a sigh of relief into his own bed and Novak’s lazy kisses that taste faintly of the handsome Guardian reporter from media day, copper and mid-price aftershave.

 

‘Were you-’ Andy murmurs, not bothering to finish out loud and Novak hums assent with his hands already slipping down over Andy’s bare hips, whispering,

 

‘Yes, we are careful, he think we just go for a drink. I can introduce you next week if you like,’ and then he’s too busy with hands and mouth and Andy playfully wrestling him for top to say anything else. It isn’t until the morning that Andy wakes with bone-deep sated contentment, Novak breathing soft and steady with sleep beside him, that he watches the rippling sunshine spilling around the edges of the blackout curtains, and remembers.

 

‘Hey,’ he says into the point of Novak’s shoulder, skin warm from the stifling room and having fed yesterday. Novak makes a protesting mutter with his face half-mashed into the pillow, sprawled on his front with the tanned line of his back a tempting, flawless curve against the navy sheets (Andy knows better than to buy white any more). He groans when Andy runs a palm down to the dip of his spine, nails digging in.

 

‘Andy, we have day off,’ he mumbles. It’s a little raspy; his fangs have a habit of sliding out in his sleep if he’s fed recently, and the side of his mouth that Andy can see has one sleek white point denting his lip, scratching a bead of red. ‘If you are hungry, the fridge it is full.’

 

Andy is hungry but that’s less important than his remembered panic, so he pokes Novak’s side. ‘Did you spy on Sascha yet?’

 

One hazel eye slits open to glare at him over the pillow. ‘Is not spy,’ Novak says reproachfully. ‘Is only, how you say, pleasantries. Like I ask how his day go, only he do not need to answer.’

 

‘People generally like answering when you ask them how they are; it lets them lie so they can be polite about it,’ Andy points out but he can tell Novak is misdirecting the question on purpose and he pushes up on one elbow to give him a pointed stare. ‘Did you? See how he is?’

 

Novak groans and rolls onto his back with a sigh, clearly conceding that he isn’t getting his lie-in today. His fangs are all the way out, getting in the way when he licks his lips and he frowns, pressing his tongue to one delicate point. ‘Is good I do not have early practice,’ he says thoughtfully. ‘That journalist was not so satisfying but it would be bad for the courts to have to eat the groundskeepers.’

 

‘It’s going to be bad for your odds on ever getting sex again in this relationship if you don’t answer the question,’ Andy says with a sharp edge of irritation, drumming his fingertips against the flat plane of Novak’s stomach.

 

He’s rewarded with the scowl Novak wears when he’s frustrated and pinned down by awkward questions in press after a loss, the look that’s meant to cover up his uncertainty but just ends up giving it away, and something cold creeps down between Andy’s shoulder blades.

 

‘What is it?’ he asks, softer now with his fingers going still. Novak never looks at him like that.

 

‘Is not bad, do not go hunting down the baby Zverev!’ Novak says hastily, pushing himself upright in a rustle of sheets and alarm. Still, he pulls his legs up to sit cross-legged, fussing the sheets straight and drawing in on himself in a hunch, avoiding Andy’s stare in a way that’s far from reassuring before he answers. ‘Is only, I take a look yesterday, you know when everyone distracted because Grigor start that FIFA reenactment in the locker room?’

 

Andy winces; he hadn’t been there but he’d seen the smashed light fitting, and been impressed at how close the all-player email from the Wimbledon Facilities team came to threatening passive-aggressive British murder to the next person they spotted carrying a football. ‘Yeah.’

 

He frowns, briefly diverted by a thought tangent. ‘It’s been a week. Is that the first chance you had?’

 

Novak hitches a shoulder. ‘We are all busy, I not see him so much. I try to put my name down to practice with him and he have to rearrange. Not so unusual.’ His glance at Andy is sharp with a question. ‘Why?’

 

‘Get the feeling he’s been avoiding me,’ Andy admits. ‘What do you see when you spied on him?’

 

Novak lets that one go, probably because he’s too distracted by frustration as he spreads his hands, sighs, and says, ‘Nothing.’

 

‘Nothing? Like, he doesn’t have a single thought in his head? I know he’s blond and pretty and spends most of his free time pushing weights but come on-’

 

‘No, nothing as in I hear nothing. Like, static, poof.’ Novak’s trying to sound casual, waving a dismissive hand, but the frustration chips through in his frown, in the way he bites off the words between very sharp teeth.

 

He’s been evasive because he’s been annoyed at himself for failing, Andy realises, and he sits up too, shuffling close enough on the bed to tuck his shoulder against Novak’s in a tacit not your fault. Novak leans into him immediately, still too thin after the last year. Maybe after this they should go for that early practice after all; if not the groundskeepers, then there’s sure to be someone around Wimbledon who could afford to feel tired for a few days.

 

‘Is it weird you couldn’t hear anything?’ Andy asks after a minute, thinking about what this might mean for Sascha’s intentions and how fucked they might be on a sliding scale of ‘knowing about vampires’ up to and including ‘wants to kill all vampires’. He hadn’t done anything at all yet after all but Novak clearly didn’t expect this, didn’t even consider it, so it’s unlikely to be a coincidence. ‘I thought you could read anyone, that was how it worked.’ He pauses, wincing. ‘If Stephanie Meyer got it right after all, I might have to give myself up to the hunters out of sheer embarrassment.’

 

Novak pulls away to give him a narrow-eyed look. ‘Are you making a Twilight reference?’

 

‘Well yeah, because-‘

 

‘You know what I feel on people who make Twilight references.’

 

‘It’s just that-‘

 

‘If you try to tell me something that happen in Twilight,’ Novak said, tone ominous with the promise of swift retribution, ‘after I spend years — literally years of my life being asked by people I bite why I do not sparkle — I shall go outside and bite the very first person I see in full view in the street so that I can be arrested and spend all my years in a restful prison cell where no one shall ever talk to me about things that may or may not happen in Twilight, and Marian will hunt you down in annoyance that I can no longer pay his salary as coach and beat you many times with the collected boxset of that series we are not going to be mentioning ever again on pain of the previous said things that will happen, yes?’

 

Andy manages to suppress his smile, only because he’s pretty sure Novak isn’t joking. A few years ago they’d walked into the locker room during a rain delay in New York to find Juan Martin, who Novak is almost embarrassingly fond of because he says his mind is like snuggling into a warm blanket in the middle of winter, reading New Moon.

 

Andy managed to drag Novak away — getting fangs through the hand he had over Novak’s mouth for his trouble — but he hadn’t been particularly surprised when the fire alarm went off a few days later, prompting an evacuation of the entire Ashe stadium. The sad pile of ash on the locker room floor and Juan Martin complaining that his locker had been broken into didn’t make it hard to work out, although Novak had returned Andy’s glare (he’d been showering when the alarm went off and had to evacuate in a towel, to the delight of the ballgirls) with an expression of righteous innocence.

 

So, probably best to let that one slide he decides, and clears his throat. ‘Right. Forget I said anything about — just forget it.’

 

‘I intend to,’ Novak says and adds, sullen as he leans back into Andy, ‘I cannot believe you read fucking Twilight.’

 

‘I was researching everything I could find on vampires-!’

 

‘Which makes it all the more of a waste of time that you read Twilight.’

 

‘I promise to never ever mention Twi- those books ever again, alright?’ Andy says, as soothing as he knows how and Novak’s annoyance subsides into a grumble of agreement, resting his head on Andy’s shoulder, which still leaves Andy with his original question.

 

‘Should we be worried?’ he asks quietly. Wonders what they’ll do if the answer is yes; the Zverevs are a familiar sight around the locker rooms and Sascha’s too noticeable, already too vivid and popular to quietly be disappeared. Andy wouldn’t do that anyway; he likes Sascha, likes him playing tennis and the way crowds who’d been disdainful of the new gen, too busy trailing after the same old Federer-Nadal hype, have started paying attention to the German.

 

He’s just so tired of worrying about everyone who so much as looks at them suspiciously, voice reluctant as he ventures, ‘I know it’s been quiet for a while but if they’re hunters-’

 

‘They’re not,’ Novak says immediately. He brushes his mouth over Andy’s neck in a half-kiss, half-habit, his teeth the lightest of scrapes over skin. ‘Germany has none, remember I tell you the history? None of the families still remain after the war and is all vampire territory now. Hunters chose to move there, they would not last long.’

 

‘Russia has hunters though,’ Andy points out. He feels vaguely uncomfortable discussing this when he’s known Mischa almost his entire professional career, likes the easy-going Zverevs and the affable way they go about looking after their tennis prodigy, never letting Sascha run faster than he can walk. But the discipline, the focus on getting done what they have to – that’s too close to the hunters he’s come across in the last few years.

 

Who’ve tried to kill Novak more than once and in a choice, if it comes to that, he knows who he’d pick.

 

‘I know you said Safin was disowned,’ he says, trying to remember everything he’d read about the Russian hunter families, ‘but they have the network, the traditions. The Zverevs could’ve brought it with them.’

 

‘And they would not be here now because when they move to Germany, the vampires there would handle the problem. Even I have to be polite to German vampires when I go there to play tournaments, Munich, Hamburg; they dislike anyone on their territory.’ Novak heaves a sigh, hot against Andy’s neck. ‘’No, sometime people are simply not readable, you know? Not often and mostly it is other vampires – my father, I try to read him and it give me the migraine, remember?’

 

Andy makes a sympathetic noise because he remembers lying in a dark hotel room for an entire day as teenagers, Novak’s face pressed to the dip of his neck and the choked sounds of agony he’d made around his teeth in Andy’s skin. Novak sighs again, heavy with the memory of failure and of failing now.

 

‘Is unfortunate but I do not see how Sascha is anything but harmless. He is not a vampire at least so if he try anything, we can handle it.’

 

‘And if he puts holy water in the drinking fountains?’

 

‘The fountains you tell me always not to use because you are afraid someone may put holy water in them?’ Novak says, dry, and bites down hard enough on Andy’s neck that he breaks the skin. Andy mutters a half-hearted protest but Novak knows all the best ways of distracting him even without cheating, and Andy lets himself be pushed back down with the bright ache of the bite already coiling heat low down, Novak pinning his hips to the mattress with hot, familiar hands.

 

Just before they slide to where it counts, they pause, Novak pulling back until they’re nose to nose. His eyes are shadowed in the dark room, the shifting hazel-green that Andy knows better than his own grey almost hidden but the affection still clear in the way they crinkle at the corners when he smiles.

 

‘It is fine Andy, I promise,’ he murmurs. ‘I have done this always, many years, and I am still here.’

 

You almost weren’t, Andy wants to remind him but Novak’s dipping down to catch his mouth in a kiss, wet with the tang of Andy’s blood and the sharpness of teeth and Andy sighs, giving himself up to the distraction.

 

He’s still relieved when he catches the scores after his press the next day and realises that Sascha lost to Milos. He doesn’t have to keep looking over his shoulder for what the German might be up to if they’re in entirely different countries – although that doesn’t stop him double-checking their water bottles every morning, squinting at shadows when he enters a room and flinching from sudden movements in the corner of his eye. Novak might be blasé about his near-indestructibility but Andy remembers every time they’ve almost ended in disaster, in Australia, in Miami, with Roger last year and how all of it has been pretty much outside his control, no way he can plan tactics for something he can’t see coming. At least suspecting Sascha gave him a focus and he’s restless, irritable until Novak tumbles him onto their bed in annoyance Monday evening and bites him to hold him still, bringing him off hard and fast in frustration.

 

It’s better than smashing his entire bag of racquets but it does barely anything to ease the tension crawling under his skin, wound so tight he keeps catching the smell of sunshine and sand around every corner. By Wednesday it’s almost a relief to lose his quarterfinal in a grinding five sets that take them almost into darkness, the last shot thunking half-heartedly off Andy’s racquet into the tramlines.

 

At the net Sam clasps his hand, his usual affability vanished into a frown.

 

‘You okay Andy? Aside from-’ He waves his racquet to indicate the disappointedly dispersing crowd, all the usual rumbling discontent of typical of Murray, letting us down that Andy’s trying not to overhear. ‘When I hit that serve at you at five all, you flinched like it might take your head off.’

 

‘It’s been a long week,’ Andy excuses himself, and claps Sam on the shoulder. ‘Not your fault. Good luck in the semis.’

 

The same excuse works in his press, long week, my hip isn’t one hundred percent, not my year, and to a lesser extent with Jamie, who gives him the dubious look he’s been directing Andy’s way for months now. As his coach, he knows Andy’s exaggerating the hip thing but not why, and he trusts Andy to tell him, the look says, he does, but that won’t be the case forever. At least tonight, after a loss at Wimbledon which is always the worst kind, he’s willing to hand wave it one more time.

 

Andy thinks maybe that’s the worst of it over with until he walks back to the locker room from the media centre, ducking through the first floor door into the labyrinth of walkways around Centre – to find Novak leaned against the wall just down the corridor, head down with his arms folded and bitter exhaustion in the curl of his hands, tucked tight into his sides.

 

‘Shit,’ Andy mutters, because he’d seen the scores before he went on, knew Novak was losing the first set but he’s been so much better lately — Andy just assumed he had this one. ‘Did he lose?’

 

‘Retired,’ Jamie says, quiet. He’s never questioned Andy’s relationship with Novak, or treated it in any way unusual; when he’d updated Andy on Novak’s score, unprompted, during practice their second week together, Andy’d known it was going to work.

 

Of course, Andy’s never mentioned the whole vampire thing. That might be cause for a contract renegotiation when it finally comes up.

 

That’s not going to be tonight though, Jamie patting him on the shoulder with a soft, ‘Call me in a few days, we’ll discuss the new practice schedule yeah?’ and he ducks back out the door, leaving Andy alone to approach Novak.

 

‘Hey,’ he says when he’s within reach – more to break the silence than to warn Novak that he’s there. Novak’s eyes are closed, but he never needs them to know he can reach out and touch Andy. ‘Why’d you retire? Thought you were feeling better?’

 

Novak sighs through clenched teeth, tips his head back against the wall to look at Andy through his lashes.

 

‘Long week,’ he says with a half-hearted effort at a smile that fades before it’s had time to settle. ‘Should have eaten more journalists. I see you also, not so good?’

 

‘Couldn’t concentrate.’ Andy shrugs, letting the disappointment of losing another Wimbledon slough off; it’s easier, having won a couple, and he hadn’t believed this was going to be his year anyway. He owed Roger this one. ‘It’ll be a relief to get out of here to tell the truth. Something still feels off.’

 

Pushing off the wall with a warning shake of his head, Novak falls into step with him as Andy gets the message, not here, and turns toward the seeded men’s locker room. It’s late, night creeping into the nooks and corners of Wimbledon through the windows until the pathways are rivers of shadow beneath them, broken by the occasional floodlamp. Nearly everyone’s left or leaving, the faint buzz from the media centre fading away as the press call it a night, and the maze of hallways around Centre Court is quiet in all directions, only the distant hum of cleaner hoovering far down the opposite end of the building. Still, it’s stupid to stand in the middle of Wimbledon blaming a loss on being a vampire and expecting to get away with it.

 

Especially with the sense, needle-sharp, that they’re being watched. He glances over at the building opposite through the wide windows, the member’s terrace and restaurant, the lights already flicking off as the last of the staff leave.

 

‘I ask my mother to look into the Zverevs,’ Novak says very softly as they approach the locker room; the corridor’s long and empty so it’s safe enough. Andy shoots him a startled look, and he twitches his shoulders, obviously trying to make it not a big deal. ‘It cannot hurt and the Russians, they have many families, many rules, more secretive than the French. It may be that something going on, that they move to regain ground in Germany. It cannot hurt to ask. And,’ he adds with a rueful air, flashing Andy a tiny smile, ‘you are usually right you know.’

 

‘Can I get that in writing to show you next time you decide to bite a fan who’s also a martial arts good medalist,’ Andy says, deadpan, and Novak huffs mock irritation that might be half-genuine. Andy’s never let him hear the end of that one, doesn’t plan to; it’d made him more careful for months.

 

‘She only broke two ribs,’ Novak grumbles as they come up on the locker room, ‘ and I was fine for match the next day. I do not know why you keep bringing it up. Is not like she wear her black belt to courtside, just because you recognise her from the Olympics-’

 

Andy pauses with his hand halfway to the door, staring at the polished brass plaque that designates it the Men’s Locker Room, the empty, pristine corridor with the oversized portraits of past champions staring down from the walls. It looks exactly the same as when he’d left it an hour ago after dumping his bags before press – except for one thing.

 

‘Novak,’ he says, barely making a sound.

 

Novak’s still in full flow, gesturing around as if to ask the past champions to back him up which is a big ask when half of them are Roger. ‘Maybe I should believe you then but who know she kick like a horse, she would take you by surprise also-’

 

Andy puts his hand over Novak’s mouth to cut the rant off into a mumble, Novak’s eyes going wide and intent on Andy’s frown.

 

‘Mmpf?’ he asks; Andy doesn’t need telepathy to translate, what’s wrong.

 

‘Where’s the steward?’ Andy says, not realising he’s whispering until Novak goes tense, the sudden scrape of fangs sliding against Andy’s palm. ‘I know it’s late-’ But they never leave this corridor unguarded, he doesn’t need to finish – not when it’s Wimbledon, with so many fans who’d love to gatecrash the men’s locker room, to steal Roger’s socks and take selfies in the showers. Or worse, to sabotage the players they don’t like. ‘And there’s something else – it doesn’t smell right.’

 

Pushing his hand away, Novak inhales deeply, and frowns. He can read minds but he doesn’t have Andy’s senses, probably doesn’t catch the faintest trace of oil and wax that has no place among the plastic-rubber of tennis balls and fug of old match shirts. Andy’s halfway to forming an explanation when Novak nods decisively, stepping back.

 

‘We take the cleaner’s door, come on.’

 

Like everywhere else at Wimbledon, Centre Court has two faces: the meticulously maintained public areas, and the vast network of service tunnels running around and behind, used to keep the tiny fraction of the building that’s on show pristine without, apparently, making any outward effort. It wouldn’t look good on primetime BBC to have a cleaner’s trolley covered in mops and branded cleaning products tripping Roger and Rafa up on their way to play their matches, but over a hundred twenty-to-thirty year old men who spent most of their lives with hotel staff picking up for them, made a truly astounding mess every day. The Wimbledon cleaners and workmen needed twenty-four seven access to clean dusty showers, collect towels going musty in corners, and sweep up broken glass from smashed light fittings.

 

Thus the discreet door tucked into a niche between the banks of lockers and the showers, out of sight unless you knew where to look and always, on pain of immediate firing for the entire cleaning staff, kept locked. It was the work of a second for Novak to open it, by simple expediency of wrenching the handle off with the ping of screws shearing.

 

With a wince, Andy wonders if any of this is necessary. A locker room break in is going to cause a security meltdown in the morning and he doesn’t think I had a bad feeling is going to cut it as an excuse if it’s nothing.

 

A minute later, standing in the silent rows of lockers and exchanging grimly horrified looks with Novak, he concedes that it isn’t nothing.

 

‘The hunters, they are getting desperate,’ Novak mutters. He lifts a hand that shakes slightly, drifting a fingertip along the elegant scrollwork on the sides of the crossbow but hesitates before touching it at Andy’s warning hiss. Neither of them want it going off, even if they’re not stupid enough to stand directly in front of it. ‘The way it is strung up, see the string around the trigger, whoever walk through the main door get the bolt to the...’ He measures the height with a hand, even though they both already know the answer, the fatal accuracy it would’ve been if Andy hadn’t paused. ‘Yes, to the heart.’

 

‘And they know my match ran late, that I was second in press after Sam...’ Andy stares at the bow and the way it’s hung, suspended from thin wires and tacks driven into the wooden lockers, the string wrapped around the trigger pulled tight and attached the door handle on this side. It would’ve gone off from the increase in tension as the door opened, no doubt timed perfectly to catch someone in the chest – or a vampire in the heart.

 

‘How did they even set this up? I was in here an hour ago and this wasn’t.’ Appalled he steps back, almost recoils because: ‘What if Sam came back for something? What if someone was practicing late, or the cleaner took the main door?’

 

He takes a breath to catch his voice from cracking, feeling numb and like the floor might be tilting beneath him, the might have happeneds that they barely avoided and his voice cracks anyway when he adds, ‘Anyone could’ve died.’

 

Novak’s mouth pulls in tight around unhappiness, pale under the fluorescent lighting that seems at odds with the heavy antique tiller of the crossbow, the inlaid ivory and lethal-looking wooden bolt polished to a shine. ‘Perhaps,’ he says, soft and terribly, mutedly small, ‘that may have been their point.’

 

‘They want to start killing random players now?’ All the air seizes in Andy’s chest, hearing his own heartbeat pick up to a skipping thump; they can’t stop this if the hunters decide to turn it into an all-out war. They’ll have to leave, can’t risk the entire tour and he imagines that press conference in a blur of panic: I can’t tell you why I’m retiring because you’d all be murdered by angry vampire hunters. No I’m not retiring to go into a mental health facility. No, really.

 

Novak’s shaking his head though, swallowing what looks like nausea. ‘No, is not a want – remember the books you were reading last year, when you were too busy studying to pay me attention and instead we talk history all night? The ways they would execute people they thought may be vampires-’

 

Andy shakes his head to cut him off because he’d read all the books on vampires that Novak could find for him last year, working through manuscripts from Dijana Djokovic’s library that he’d had to handle with archivist gloves over his tennis-toughened hands, to brand new paperbacks with the logos of internet printing websites – but he knows the ones Novak’s referring to, those illustrations both hand drawn and printed in stark lines leaving an impression.

 

The one of some people up against a wall while a hooded figure took aim with a crossbow – that one in particular had stayed imprinted behind his eyelids every time he tried to sleep for a week.

 

‘Same as when they try to drown the women they say are the witches, yes?’ Novak says, adding his usual snort of derision. ‘As if witches exist. But is same, if you drown you are human, good for you being dead. With vampires is simpler, if you-’

 

‘I remember,’ Andy said shortly. The books had been very clear, as had Novak’s teenage explanations while watching badly-dubbed Buffy reruns in hotel rooms; vampires disintegrated when they died and being hit with a wooden stake – or wooden crossbow bolts – through the heart did the trick nicely.

 

Not that humans wouldn’t die pretty effectively all the same, but there’d be more blood and less dust involved, along with the thin comfort of everyone saying how sorry they were after you were six feet under. Ever since knowing it, Andy’s never quite trusted journalists using pencils.

 

Novak’s staring at the crossbow, a lost, shuttered look in his eyes. ‘They used to line the suspects up and shoot until they find the heart, find the vampire.’ Something bitter flickers in his tone. ‘Sometime my mother say, they miss it on purpose for hours.’

 

Briefly distracted from the crossbow, from how monumentally awful this entire situation could’ve ended up, Andy blinks at him. The illustrations he’d seen were from the sixteenth century but that sounded… anecdotal.

 

He’d known for years that Dijana Djokovic wasn’t just the sharp, charming facade she offered up to the journalists and other players but- ‘Just how old is your mother?’

 

‘You should know better.’ Novak gives him a smile that’s too tense to be teasing. ‘It is not polite to ask a lady her age.’ He does touch the crossbow this time, the lightest brush of a fingertip over the engravings along the side. ‘We should take this down before it cause an accident, and show it to her soon as we can. It look old, perhaps she have something she can tell us.’

 

Andy’s about to press him beyond the joke and the subject change – vampire life span isn’t something they’ve discussed beyond the superficial “much longer than humans” but sixteenth century, that needs at least a pause to discuss and maybe lose his shit, a little, if he’s honest; he’s not sure he wants to know if tennis even still exists in four hundred years – when a sound snaps his attention to the corridor they’d been in five minutes ago, just beyond the door.

 

‘Someone’s outside,’ he hisses and Novak becomes the stillness of a cat sighting something defenceless and tasty, eyes narrowed as he glances between the crossbow and the door.

 

‘Is it them?’ he asks.

 

There’s the soft promise of violence in his level tone and Andy’s startled into remembering a cold February night when he’d opened his front door to Novak soaked in blood that wasn’t his, the ruin of his back garden the next day with half the trees snapped and everything coated in fine grey dust like frost, ash staining Andy’s fingertips black when he picked Novak’s splintered wooden cross necklace out of the torn grass.

 

‘We don’t know if it’s them,’ he warns. The last thing he needs is an innocent cleaner getting a faceful of teeth and fury; knowing their luck, she’d get away and every tabloid in England would start claiming that players who lost were fed to the vampires living in the Wimbledon basement. Though – ‘they are trying to be quiet,’ he admits, because the footsteps are on the edge of his hearing, a creeping quality to them that’s too stealth to be innocent and he makes a decision. They can’t risk the person who did this getting away to try again.

 

Tapping a finger to his lips – the stealth footsteps are almost outside – he meets Novak’s eyes with a raised eyebrow of warning, let me handle this, and reads the agreement in Novak’s grudging nod, the way he steps back to keep out of the line of sight as Andy walks as quietly as he can across to the door. He doesn’t need Novak’s warning hiss to keep him out of the path of the crossbow; he’s dodged enough 100mph serves to judge the trajectory, and he values not being a pincushion.

 

Whoever’s outside isn’t making any intentional sound, walking on tiptoe and only the faintest echo of their heartbeat – too fast, they’re nervous – audible as they hesitate. To hear if there’s any sounds of vampires exploding into dust probably, waiting to see if the plan worked.

 

Or it’s a fan who’s broken in and taken advantage of the unguarded corridor to steal Roger’s socks. Either way, Andy positions himself against the wall on the handle side of the door, tensed to grab whoever it is and haul them through the gap the moment the door inches open, shielded from crossbow and bloody-or-dusty death by the door – heavy wood, safe enough and thank fuck for Wimbledon being too proud of themselves to skimp on the trimmings.

 

Whoever it is, Andy’s sure the person outside is going to sneak in like a thief, careful not to open the door too fast if they’re anticipating angry vampires or angrier security on the other side. Briefly distracted by a terrible sinking feeling, he wonders if it is a hunter what they’ll do – what he’s prepared to let Novak do and if he can – what if it’s someone he knows –

 

In the instant he’s not ready, the door’s pushed open. Too fast, skimming past his outstretched fingertips as it’s flung back; in the split second before Andy hears the string snap tight, he takes a startled breath and knows with clarity as sharp as a knife, too late, that they’ve properly fucked this up.

 

‘No!’ he starts to shout. The taste of sand and sunshine is in the air like the bright ache of failure and he lunges forward to get between it and the crossbow, reflex action not quite fast enough. He hardly needs Novak’s desperate shout of ‘Andy!’ because the soft, fatal whistle of the bolt through the air is as loud as a gunshot in his hearing, bracing himself for the impact. Fast as an unreturnable serve, watching it with the same slow-motion resignation, he sees it for an instant coming toward him – and sees it skim his arm and sees it go past.

 

Sees it thud, with a muted crack, directly into Sascha’s chest.

 

The shocked little sound Sascha makes will haunt him for years, Andy realises later. In the moment all he’s processing is sheer, blank refusal, no, no – Sascha didn’t do this, doesn’t have the malice and wouldn’t have walked directly into his own trap anyway. Shouldn’t have mattered because they shouldn’t have let him and Andy catches the German when he staggers, knees gone loose with shock.

 

The wide-eyed confusion on his face as he looks down rips into Andy with the guilt. Fuck, what have they done?

 

‘Sorry.’ Sascha says, voice thin as he stares down at his chest and the automatic edge of sarcasm to it is somehow worse than rage. The breath’s already rattling wetly behind it, his hands shaking when he tries to hang on to Andy to stay upright. ‘I didn’t know you did not want company.’

 

‘It’s fine,’ Andy says on autopilot and has to correct himself because it’s quite obviously anything but fine, forcing himself not to go lightheaded in shock with every scrap of willpower he’s built up over the years. ‘I mean, we’ll fix this, Sascha, we will, alright? The worst thing you can do is panic,’ and he hears the echo of his mother, telling his seven year old self to calm down one day when he couldn’t get a serve in the box. If you let one thing wobble, it all goes to pieces. Start at the beginning and take each action as a small step to be accomplished before you link them together. Small steps aren’t so hard.

 

Small steps aren’t but this is a fucking gigantic one; he doesn’t even know where to start. Tennis players get injured all the time but it’s bruises and blisters, grazes from falling on their knees on court. He’s pretty certain none of them keep a field surgery kit in their lockers.

 

‘Let me look, Andy. Andy.’

 

It’s Novak at his shoulder, possibly repeating himself several times if the way he’s gripping Andy’s arm to get his attention is any indication. Andy’s brief flare of hope – Novak’s been ripped to shreds more than once, outside and in; maybe he knows how to fix this – dies in silence when he shifts, lets Novak catch sight of the bolt embedded a good three inches deep in a spreading circle of crimson across Sascha’s white t-shirt and Novak actually flinches, cursing so fast that he trips over the English.

 

‘Shit, shit, shit, shit, Andy-’

 

‘I know,’ Andy says grimly. He can already hear Sascha’s heartbeat fluttering, the wet rasp of blood and air in his punctured lung and feel the German’s skin gone clammy with shock where his cheek brushes Andy’s as he holds him up. Being taller bought him time, the bolt missing his heart but there’s no point even calling an ambulance; Sascha’s going to be dead in maybe five minutes or less.

 

At the thought of that, adrenaline-fueled clarity washes over Andy. He lets it sit, lets it crystalise into something cold and certain, waits for the decision to arrive.

 

When it does, it’s a single blank refusal: no.

 

Whatever he suspected about Sascha before doesn’t matter; he could be a hunter and it wouldn’t matter. He doesn’t deserve this, not for stumbling after Andy and Novak and everyone on tour since he was five years old, not when he holds up his practices to make friends with every dog in the crowd and falls asleep at least once a week in the player’s lounge wherever they are, head tipped back and the promise of laughter still echoed at the corners of his mouth.

 

That’s not going to end. Andy’s going to stop it ending the only way he can.

 

‘Novak,’ he says, hearing his own voice oddly distant and hollow through the haze of crystal certainty. Small step one: get Novak to agree. ‘You know what we have to do.’

 

Something mutinous crosses Novak’s expression. He’s going to argue, already two steps ahead on what Andy’s about to say and positioning himself against it, the hypocrite – until Sascha makes a rasped sound like he’s trying to clear his throat but is coming up short on breath. It’s the worst thing Andy’s ever heard, and as he turns to catch whatever Sascha’s trying to say, he sees Novak flinch and close his eyes, resignation and acceptance overwriting the argument. This is something they’re doing.

 

Regardless of whether Sascha agrees, Andy wonders, and doesn’t have an answer.

 

He wasn’t in the position to agree himself when it happened to him, and he hasn’t let himself think too hard on what his answer would’ve been. It seemed futile to waste the time thinking about it, after.

 

‘Andy,’ Sascha rasps, voice a thin sliver of sound in his throat. He’s leaning almost all his weight on Andy now, sagging into his grip. ‘I don’t know what just happened, but sorry... sorry I walked in. Bad timing I guess? Only, I could not get a flight until tomorrow and I want to ask you before I leave, if you are-’ His voice runs into a cough and a gasp, staring down at his chest where the Adidas logo is fading into the deeper spreading red, and he gives a strangled groan. ‘Doesn’t matter now. Fuck, this hurts. Mischa’s going to kill me.’

 

‘That would be a waste of effort,’ Novak observes. He winces when Andy gives him an incredulous look. ‘Sorry. Not the time?’

 

‘Not really, no!’

 

‘I was only trying to say-’

 

‘Try to say it sympathetically-’

 

‘I do not want to interrupt your domestic,’ Sascha says, faintly, ‘but I can’t feel my fingers. Kind of need them for tennis, so... can we maybe call someone? Like, with medical training?’

 

‘Fine,’ Novak snaps but he’s talking to Andy, raising his eyebrows when their eyes meet in a silent we don’t have a choice but we’re going to fight about this later. ‘Take him in the showers, in case anyone walk in and is easier to wash away the blood. I sort this mess-’ He gestures around at the crossbow, the string, the trail of red dripping across Wimbledon’s polished floor. ‘-but wait for me, do not do anything stupid.’

 

‘Think we’ve already hit our stupid quota for today,’ Andy mutters and chooses to ignore the irritated mumble of Serbian that he’d bet on meaning, don’t underestimate our ability to fuck up.

 

It is kind of a good point though because the first two steps he takes towards the showers with his arm around Sascha end in a stagger and Andy ramming his own shoulder into the lockers in an attempt to keep them upright when Sascha’s knees give way, tipping them sideways like a bad comedy routine. ‘Try not to break him any worse,’ Novak says from somewhere behind them and Andy, a lifelong believer in violence never solving anything except occasionally in specific situations when faced with members of the international press, wishes earnestly that his hands weren’t full so he could punch him.

 

Without bothering to acknowledge the comment, he mutters ‘Sorry,’ to the gasping Sascha and bends, scooping him up into a ridiculous bridal carry with his legs trailing because there’s no one to see him doing the impossible, no one but Sascha and in a minute that won’t matter anyway.

 

‘What are you doing?’ Sascha mumbles as Andy kicks aside the door and sets him down just inside the nearest of Wimbledon’s palatial shower cubicles, easing him down to the tiles. It’s incongruous to see him sprawled out against the stark white, all long, skinny legs and the over-saturated crimson on his chest a startling burst of colour against the tile. There’s sallow tint to his skin where he’s gone pale beneath the shock of blond, like a knock-off Michelangelo where the painter hadn’t quite got the colours right.

 

There’s also a tear tracking down his cheek, the first Andy’s ever seen. Sascha never cries, not since he was a tiny ten year old skinning his knees on the hard courts at Mischa’s practices, not since he’s been winning and losing finals, laconic and self-assured through all of it.

 

Until now and any lingering doubts Andy might’ve had about this, about compounding Novak’s bad life choices and Andy enabling them, disappear.

 

‘We’re fixing this,’ Andy tells him. He tugs down the sleeve of his hoodie to wipe Sascha’s face dry because it’s a firmly practical thing to do, and he remembers his mother doing the same for him after he lost here in Wimbledon in 2012, catching him just outside the locker room and sacrificing her favourite scarf. The soft cotton was somehow grounding on salt-raw cheeks, being treated like a child exactly what he needed when he didn’t feel up to coping with the world or anything in it and it seems it works no matter the disaster, Sascha’s eyes fluttering shut with some of the tension easing from his frown. ‘Alright?

 

‘Have to fix it faster,’ Sascha mumbles. He’s right; his breath is coming shallow and rasped to razor-thinness, heartbeat skipping too hard, working overtime to keep running on pure stubbornness but starting to slow. Novak’s almost done, Andy can hear him locking the main door, but there’s no time.

 

Making the impulse decision based on that reasoning – and perhaps guilt if he allowed himself time for that self-reflection; that crossbow was meant for him – Andy reaches down to tangle a hand in the sun-bleached mass of blond, tight, not letting himself be gentle because it’s kinder not to lie about what he’s offering. He waits for Sascha to blink up at him, hazy and half-focused.

 

‘Sascha,’ he says, forcing his voice into ruler-neat lines to keep it from shaking, ‘I need you to drink something for me.’

 

‘Don’t drink,’ Sascha mumbles, faint. ‘Regretting that a bit now.’

 

‘Wait ‘til you win your first Slam,’ Andy tells him, with a wince for the memory of his. ‘But, not the life choice I’m talking about.’

 

He meets the red-rimmed blue eyes and sees the instant they widen, knows Sascha’s watching the fangs curving down, feeling the points pressing into his lower lip. They haven’t rounded off in a year, still just as viciously sharp as when he woke up in his own bedroom with Novak leaning over him, grey with exhaustion and relief that he was still alive. Andy’s bitten through his own tongue more than once in the year since and he’s careful now when he brings his own wrist to his mouth, tasting the salt-tang of the thin skin.

 

When he bites down the pain is a sharp focus, the relief of taking action like the winding plunge of an ice bath on a hot day: bite, feed, drink, keep Sascha alive. Small steps. Sascha’s watching him the entire time and somehow that level regard settles the panic still thumping in Andy’s chest, keeps his hand from shaking when he brings his torn, red wrist down to the German’s mouth.

 

‘Drink it,’ he says softly, aware his mouth is full of fangs and blood and making no attempt to hide it.

 

He can count on one hand the number of people who’ve seen him like this, really seen beyond the glimpse of a horror movie over their shoulder before there’s nothing more than teeth and waking the morning after, Novak’s light touch all over their memories and the belief they’ve had nothing more than a bad night’s sleep to explain why all their bones feel sandpapered. Novak loves the chase, the stalk, letting the object of his attention get just close enough to the truth to be a thrill before he bites down but Andy draws out the intervals between feeding as long as he can, until practices become an unending slog and Novak’s silent concern a tension that crackles between them every time his hands drift over Andy’s fresh sunburn.

 

There are people who volunteer – Andy was one himself, after all, even if it was only ever for Novak – but they want to flirt or fuck and Andy’s never their ideal of a vampire anyway, too reluctant, too awkward and always drawing back too soon. He’d rather be a forgotten bad dream than someone’s fantasy.

 

So he’s never had someone look at him like Sascha’s looking up at him, paper-white still with pain and shock written in furrows around his eyes but nothing like fear, only an intense – curiosity, Andy thinks, startled, if he had to put a word to it.

 

Slowly, without ever looking away, Sascha parts his lips and the soft, wet slide of his tongue over torn skin is an acknowledgment, knowing exactly what he’s agreeing to as the blood spills into his mouth.

 

‘No!’ Novak, pushing through the cubicle door and taking in the tableau in front of him, lunges forward with a shout and pulls up in the same motion, too late. There’s already a wild light in Sascha’s eyes, blue bleached smoke-pale in the fluorescent light reflected by the tiles and gleaming on the blood spilling down his chin but mostly into his mouth and Novak drops to his knees with a snarl that doesn’t sound quite human.

 

‘This,’ he snaps, vivid with despair, ‘is not what I mean when I say to wait.’

 

‘You just got over the last time, Novak,’ Andy says, doesn’t have to add with me. When he shifts on his suddenly aching knees against the tiles Sascha grabs his wrist to hold it pressed to his mouth, grip surprisingly tight. Andy blinks down at the tanned fingers digging in, before he remembers to add in slightly defensive tone, ‘It is my turn.’

 

He knows, both from the exhaustive research and what happened a few years ago in Miami, that Novak can’t take over now; different vampire blood doesn’t mix in the turning of a new made vampire. He knew it when he offered Sascha his wrist and he’d do it again because this is on him, his match running late and the trap set for him walking into the locker room but catching Sascha instead.

 

This would’ve been his fault. It’s his problem to fix.

 

Novak rubs a hand over his face as if he can scrub away the frustration. There’s hardly any space in the cubicle around the sprawl of Sascha’s ridiculous legs halfway out the door, Wimbledon planners clearly not accounting for two and almost-a-half vampires in their designs and Novak slumps back against the tiled wall into the corner, looking at Andy over his knees tucked up to his chest.

 

‘Is not so simple,’ he says, worn out and curled in on himself as small as he can. His voice, bundled up in the space between his ribs and his knees, comes out almost plaintive. ‘You are so new, and this is not so easy. It will take you out six months, maybe longer. You not play tennis fit to beat a junior in all that time.’

 

Well…fuck.

 

Up until now Andy’s been basing his judgment on how badly it affected Novak – that was bad enough, the exhaustion hardly shifting even when he slept entire days away and balance gone, falling so often on the court that Andy would catch him in the showers after, kissing across the bruises that would’ve healed in seconds, once, with guilt a thick weight behind his whispered apologies.

 

But he hadn’t thought it might be worse for him. No matter how much he reads, how much he tries to extrapolate from experience and observation so he can learn to be this thing as well as — better than — he was ever human, he keeps making decisions that turn out wrong.

 

And yet — Sascha’s mouth is a desperate warmth on his wrist, the body heat and sheer want of him telegraphing every second he’s still alive and going to stay that way. Andy thinks of the countless times Novak fell asleep in the shower the morning before matches this last year, the fall in Doha where he’d hit his head so hard Andy found blood on his shirt later and the day-long fight they’d had about it, everything he’d done to keep Andy alive — and it’s almost a relief to realise that, if he has to suffer the same, if losing every tennis match he plays for a year is the price for his survival and Sascha’s, he won’t grudge paying it.

 

Tennis isn’t worth the other option.

 

‘This is my fault,’ he says, steady as he meets Novak’s concern with a crooked smile. ‘I got a pass a year ago. Paying it forward is the least I can do.’

 

‘Save me from fucking British chivalry,’ Novak mutters after a tense moment where he might’ve argued but he reaches across to grab Andy’s wrist, just above Sascha’s hand and ignores the way Sascha’s grip goes white-knuckled, bruising tight. ‘Okay, your way is how we do this but you have to stop before he take too much or he will be only vampire in the world with a wooden rib piercing.’

 

Involuntarily Andy looks at the bolt still sticking out of Sascha’s chest, looks hastily away again. He’s seen all kinds of tennis injuries but they’re mostly minor scrapes or breaks in muscle and tendon, hidden safely beneath the skin. The thought of pulling that bolt out makes his stomach roll uncomfortably but Novak’s right, they have to; vampires heal from impossible things, Novak’s skin knitting together beneath Andy’s curious fingertips more times than he can count, but not around a wooden bolt, and Sascha can’t play tennis on one working lung.

 

It’s still daunting. He’s seen Novak ripped into all sorts of pieces but Andy’s rarely had to put him back together with his own hands. That’s why tennis players hire physios and doctors, why the tour has an entire staff of trainers trailing around after them in case anyone gets a paper cut on their serving hand. This isn’t even in the same fucking branch of medicine; the closest he’s ever come to studying surgery was that US Open where it rained the entire two weeks and the only thing they had to watch in the locker room were the battered Grey’s Anatomy dvds that Grigor stole from Maria. It probably doesn’t count.

 

‘Sascha,’ he tries first, tugging at his pinned wrist. When that doesn’t work, he tries unpicking the German’s grip with his other hand but there’s the strength of a decade of gripping racquets behind it and a blank refusal to let go, Sascha’s eyes half-lidded with just a defiant sliver of blue through dark lashes.

 

Looks like Sascha’s made his mind up and Andy curses inwardly that this happened to the most stubborn, overly-confident, least likely to flinch member of the next gen. If it’d been Thiem or Khachanov walking through that door, he could’ve ordered them to let go in his best Big Four tone and they would’ve been intimidated enough to do it.

 

‘Alex,’ he says, as level as he can with his wrist bent almost at right angles, with the dizziness from the blood loss starting to blur his vision at the edges. ‘It’s fine now, you’re fine. Let go.’

 

With the faintest sound of dissent trembling his mouth wetly against Andy’s skin, Sascha shakes his head a bare inch, stubbornness sitting in the frown line above his eyebrows. They’re not to the point in the turning process where rationality went out the window and they’d be tying Sascha down to stop him eating anyone and everyone in reach; Andy was pretty out of it at the time but he remembers that part, the hunger clawing up his throat until he was out of his mind with it, until Novak’s wrist at his mouth was like a single canape when he hadn’t eaten in a year, like being offered a scant mouthful of water when he’d been lost for days in the desert.

 

Sascha doesn’t have that look, not yet. Instead he’s lit with determination, wearing the unwavering self-assurance he carries around the practice court and the locker room, certain of himself and what he’s trying to achieve. If he didn’t want to be a vampire before, he at least wants to be one enough to avoid dying in the Wimbledon locker room.

 

Which he isn’t going to do anyway, which is what Andy’s trying to tell him. Trust Alexander Zverev to be a pain in the ass vampire before he’s even halfway there.

 

‘I can-’ Novak starts to offer and Andy doesn’t want to hear what morally dubious thing he’s about to suggest because he might just take him up on it, panic starting to run like a shiver beneath every breath so he shakes his head to cut him off. Undaunted, Novak points out,‘He deserve it, he is being awkward on purpose,’ and Andy shakes his head again, distracted, trying to work out if he’ll have to break his wrist to get it free, how fast he’ll heal with the blood loss and if he can bring himself to do it.

 

He’s just bracing himself to pull when Novak sits up from his slump against the wall with a sharp sound of exasperation. Before Andy can stop him – before he even registers the intention – Novak’s reached out to the crossbow bolt wedged between Sascha’s ribs and yanked.

 

Sascha lets go of Andy’s wrist with a jolt and a gasp as it comes free, all the remaining colour leached out his face and bloody lips open on a yell. Faster than the sound can surface, Novak clamps the hand not holding the dripping crossbow bolt over his mouth and Sascha’s stream of cursing comes out muffled, his glare wide-eyed and furious over Novak’s hand.

 

By that point Andy’s mouth’s caught up with the rest of him through the blank shock of Novak’s complete insanity and he yells instead, voice pitching high with panic because, what the hell.

 

‘Are you insane?! Even if it missed any arteries he could still fucking bleed to death, we’re not all Novak fucking invicible Djokovic-’

 

‘He is already half vampire and I am pretty sure he is too stubborn to die on us now,’ Novak dismisses it. He tosses the bolt casually over his shoulder towards the discarded crossbow, leaving a dark print against the blue of his t-shirt when he wipes his hand. ‘We are saving his life, the least he can do is to do as he is told.’

 

Andy – and half the men’s tour – could’ve told him that was the wrong thing to say, even if they’d been on a practice court and Sascha was armed only with a racquet. Given the situation as it is, he’s entirely unsurprised when Novak yelps and yanks his hand back from Sascha’s mouth, staring at the two deep punctures in his palm between the tennis calluses.

 

Andy looks down to find Sascha glaring back, two brand new and wicked-sharp baby fangs curving down over his lower lip, white so new it’s almost translucent against the red.

 

‘Do not talk about me as if I am not here,’ he says with difficulty, mouth full of teeth and blood around the English. ‘And next time we play I serve at your face, Novak. That hurt.’

 

‘It got you to let go.’ Novak shrugs, casually dismissive. It’s only Andy, still watching Sascha’s expression and the indignant hurt he can’t quite mask in time, that realises, with a sense of sinking despair, that they might have a problem.

 

Novak doesn’t mean it, he wants to say, wants to tell Sascha that it’s just how Novak is when he isn’t hedging his every word around humans. The way he always is about grievous bodily harm when it’s only vampires involved (unless that vampire is Andy, a source of constant amusement and frustration when Novak steals garlic-laced pizza every time Andy’s back is turned, but clucks like a mother hen over every inch of Andy’s sunburns). Andy knows it’s not that he doesn’t care about about hurting Sascha, not that he wouldn’t have cared if that bolt had been two inches higher.

 

It’s that Novak’s lived for over three decades in a body that knits broken bones and severed arteries in seconds, with skin that never bruises and that heals almost before the pain has any meaningful time to register. Once, watching Novak arm-wrestle Djordje over who got to serve first in practice, Andy heard the unmistakable crack of bone snapping and Novak’s yelp; before he could leap up, sprint over with panic chasing at his heels – aside from the pain, a broken wrist could ruin an entire tennis season – Djordje had shouted ‘I win!’ and Novak had grinned, rueful, sitting back with his fingers already flexing, shaking out the stiffness and picking up his racquet. Later, after winning a close practice set six-four, he’d come bouncing over to Andy with a smile that turned to bemusement when Andy caught his wrist and gave it a once-over, fingertips trembling over the smooth tan skin, the delicate solidity of Novak’s radius bone underneath.

 

‘Is okay, Andy,’ he’d murmured, softly affectionate when he leaned in to kiss the worry from Andy’s mouth, his hand easy and whole in Andy’s,‘I let him win,’ and Andy hadn’t known how to ask, was afraid of the answer, if that meant Novak had known his wrist would break or if he just didn’t care.

 

Now, watching Sascha’s expression shutter down fast to hide his hurt, Andy doesn’t know how to say hey, don’t take it personally that vampires are all crazy with Novak sitting right there. When this is over, he’s going to have to catch the German to one side and apologise, explain all the things Andy’s internalised over the years of being almost the only human who Novak doesn’t pretend with, no one to ever exchange exasperated looks with except sometimes Marian – except Marian thinks Andy’s crazy too, so maybe that’s not a fair comparison. Sascha’s in this mess with the rest of them now and he’s not had Andy’s years of experience to back him up; he’s going to need Vampire 101 in a hurry.

 

Andy hadn’t planned on coaching for a good few years yet but if he can’t play for months, at least playing umpire while Novak and Sascha try to out-vampire each other will keep his reflexes in practice.

 

In the meantime- ‘Novak,’ he says, and catches the startled look Novak flashes him at the sharp edge to it, ‘if that’s your way of helping, next time ask first. Sascha, we’re trying to help and this isn’t hitting a fucking forehand; accept that you don’t know shit and let us handle it, alright?’

 

Contrition chips at the edges of Sascha’s frown, mouth gone soft and uncertain around his new-minted fangs like a child being told off. Fuck, even with blood all over his teeth he’s still so young.

 

Young but still a smart arse because instead of simply agreeing, he says with his uncertainty fading into a smile that’s almost genuine, ‘Sure thing coach.’

 

‘Years from now,’ Novak mutters, raising his eyebrows at Andy, ‘even if it take centuries, I shall look at you when the hunters find us because he cannot keep his mouth shut and say, I tell you this was a bad idea and I will enjoy your face, knowing I will be right.’

 

Before Andy can say, wait, go back to the part where you hold a grudge for centuries you massive drama queen and also centuries?, Novak catches a handful of Sascha’s ruined shirt and hauls him easily into sitting upright, ignoring Sascha’s startled squawk and his hands flailed out to catch himself, the heavy warmth of him tipping forward into Andy who barely catches him from thumping back to the tiles. ‘Here,’ Novak says with a tight-lipped smile over Sascha’s bowed head, his startled, gasping breath pressed hot to the dip of Andy’s collarbone and Andy’s face full of blond curls, ‘he is all yours. Happy birthday.’

 

Andy’s about to protest that it’s not his birthday – when it dawns on him that Novak means the other birthday and he grimaces. He’d have preferred more cake and less blood if he’s honest but then, he’s not a very good vampire. Maybe biting co-workers is a first vampire anniversary tradition.

 

Still- ‘Next year just get me some socks,’ he says ruefully. Novak’s smile goes bleakly miserable for an instant.

 

‘I am not so much planning a repeat of this.’

 

‘Three cheers to that,’ Andy mutters. Carefully – at least one of them should play good cop with Sascha if he’s going to listen to anything they say – he shuffles his grip and tips the German’s head back to rest against his shoulder, throat bared in an arc of tanned-gold skin and Sascha’s pulse, beating just beneath. There’s the faintest of scars tucked in the hollow against his throat, a paler gleam against the tan and Andy wonders if it was catching a wayward serve there when he was too young to know to duck, leaving split skin to imprint the lesson.

 

He can’t find the words to ask because Sascha’s watching Andy through his lashes, throat bobbing when he swallows nervously and god, Andy knows exactly how he feels.

 

‘Sascha,’ he says, trying to keep his voice calm as if he knows exactly what he’s doing, the comfort rasping awkward around his fangs, ‘I’m going to bite you, okay?’

 

‘Should at least buy me dinner first,’ Sascha says, and Andy’s startled into a grin, tension dropping a notch.

 

‘I did,’ he points out, lifting his wrist into Sascha’s line of sight. It’s still smeared red, drying patchily to flaky brown but the skin underneath is unmarked, smooth and Sascha’s eyes widen. Before he can ask – vampire healing is the best part of it all, Andy agrees, would’ve saved him years of long sleeves and sacrificed wristbands and knees that crippled his tennis but they don’t have time right now – Andy leans in to press his mouth to the warm beat of pulse in Sascha’s neck.

 

It’s already fast and erratic, a panicked flutter against his tongue as Sascha’s entire body reacts to the vampire blood, like a drug the testers never know to look for. Without checking, Andy knows the hole in the German’s chest is already closed, nothing but smooth skin beneath the palm Andy presses to his ruined shirt to brace him up but the rest of Sascha is fever-hot as every inch of him fights the change, trying to be human and vampire together and both losing the battle.

 

Andy remembers only after-images and haze from his turning but he remembers the dreams of burning for days, hotter than running sprints in the Miami sun, hot enough that he thought he’d catch fire and how surprised he was to wake and find his skin pale and unmarked, cool beneath newly-sensitive fingertips.

 

Even if he tried to stop now, it’s too late. Left like this, the change would kill Sascha as thoroughly as the hole in the chest.

 

‘You have to do it,’ Novak confirms quietly when Andy still hesitates, lips trembling on Sascha’s skin. When Andy gives him a questioning flick of his eyes, a now you agree?, Novak lifts one thin shoulder in dismissal. ‘Or not, and I start telling the press that never were we here and cannot imagine what happened, where the baby Zverev may have gone. Maybe he become a personal trainer to celebrities, maybe he cannot hack the tennis, what a terrible shame and everyone will move on, forget him soon enough. Is your choice.’

 

He says it like it’s simple as breathing, simple as a binary yes or no answer without any shades of grey. Make Sascha a vampire, let Sascha — fade out of sight until no one knew he’d existed except Novak, except Andy, and the unfamiliar name engraved across some minor tennis trophies. As if it’s that easy.

 

Andy thinks of Novak this last year, beleaguered by every journalist scenting blood in the water when he went from on top of the tennis world to barely winning his service games. Boris, hired as a temporary publicity stunt that ended up sticking too long, shouting at him behind closed doors about dedication or lack of, and later shouting the same to every newspaper that would listen when he was unceremoniously fired.

 

And through it all, Novak, sometimes so exhausted that Andy had to hold him up in the showers, locking himself in the cramped athletes’ room in Rio so Andy wouldn’t see him cry, only he could hear every sob as he sat outside the door all night enduring both suspicious and sympathetic looks from the Serbian team. The whirlwind that was Rome, dust and clay, Novak starting to find his feet on a tennis court again until he ran up against the immovable object that was Sascha.

 

The quiet memory of Novak confessing to Andy, in the darkness beneath the sheets in their hotel room after, Rome settled ancient and peaceful through the open windows, that he wasn’t really annoyed he lost because Sascha had been bright with happiness at the win, bubbling up behind every smile and giddy with making it, at his tennis taking flight. In that shining moment, as beautiful as the trophy cupped like something unquantifiably precious in his hands.

 

He’s already made his choice. It’s not even a choice at all.

 

‘Sascha,’ Andy says now, quiet with the memory of it and regret, and he feels Sascha tense against him. Bracing himself. When Andy takes a breath he still smells beach sand and sunshine, the fading afterthought of grass courts in the summer, sweetness overlaid with the old metal tang of blood and fear. No matter how well or badly this goes, he’ll never smell sweetly like Sascha-the-human ever again.

 

‘I’m so sorry,’ Andy whispers, and bites.

 

*

 

Turning someone from human to vampire isn’t an exact science, Novak told Andy once when he asked. When Andy protested that was ridiculous, that it couldn’t simply be a case of biting random strangers like whack-a-mole until you found one who took it well, Novak’s shrug had implied that was pretty much it.

 

‘It becoming entirely new version of everything, muscle, heart, all,’ he’d said, sitting cross-legged on the hotel room desk and idly flipping through the AC instructions. It’d been just before Australia 2008, the last time they were still barely-anyone-worth-noticing together and the heat had been pressing down the whole week they’d practiced, Andy curling into Novak’s cooler skin on top of the bed sheets and complaining about having to put up with normal human heat tolerances. ‘It cannot be made to go faster, only managed. Like you come up to the main tour from the Challengers you know, when everyone adjust to how suddenly fast the forehand come at you and how hard you must train, how hard your body let you work to be this new thing. If you are say Rafa, already muscle all over and good for tennis, it not take you long at all; if you are like others,’ – you, me he doesn’t have to add – ‘it take longer to adjust. To become a new version of you.’

 

‘But what if you don’t?’ Andy had asked, frowning from the bed where he was down to boxers and a melting ice pack resting on his chest, sweat still uncomfortably damp on the back of his neck. ‘You said made vampires don’t always work – you used a word, what was- you said “feral” right? You mean they go mad?’

 

Novak had given him a long, unreadable look, one finger keeping his place in the instruction booklet. ‘Andy, you know me biting you only is not making you a vampire? You never have to worry about this.’

 

‘I’m just curious, that’s all,’ Andy deflected quickly, careful to think of nothing at all, especially nothing like fear – and Novak had shrugged, glancing away.

 

‘No reason to be, and there is no reason to think of ferals either. If anyone become one, vampires, we deal with it as we find them. Hunters say we all are feral anyway but born vampires, we stay always the same, always know what we do.’ The faintest trace of superiority tugged his mouth up at the corners, the way it always did when he was referencing his multiple generations of smug vampire lineage; it always had Andy thinking carefully about his serve or physio exercises so Novak wouldn’t hear his very human irritation. ‘Only the newly made must worry about going feral. Even to them it not happen so often though, is not like a common problem. At least not after the first day or so.’

 

Andy had paused in shifting the ice pack to his neck, blaming the cold shiver running down his back on the dripping water. ‘What happens in the first day or so?’

 

With a shrug, Novak looked back at the instructions. ‘Is why the new made are not so many, is not only bite and presto, vampire! you know? It is not so pretty, but if you tie them down until they settle it is fine, keep them from eating all the people they see. Usually they are vampire and not feral afterward but if not, they are still tied down. Easy to deal with.’

 

The finality in his tone left no illusions to his meaning, the simple way he shrugged it off rippling another shiver down Andy’s back and causing Novak to give him another look, this time all raised eyebrows and a frown over his sunburned nose. Tossing the booklet to one side, with a flick of his hand he dismissed the entire subject and unfolded his legs to slide from the desk, toes pointed like a ballet dancer rather than a tennis player because, in an unguarded moment the month before, Andy thought about how much he liked Novak’s legs and Novak had taken every opportunity since to show them off.

 

‘Now,’ he breathes, picking his way over tennis bags and clothes to the bed and sliding onto it on his knees, smile gone wicked and put of shape around his fangs sliding out, ‘we can talk of other things as, I think I finally work out these terrible air con instructions.’ On hands and knees he crawled up the tangled sheets to straddle Andy’s hips, the cool press of his thighs to either side and the light of mischief in his eyes better than all the ice in Australia. ‘So if I promise to bring you off first and make the room to cool you down after, now?’

 

‘Now,’ Andy had agreed with a long-suffering sigh that he hadn’t meant at all, and he’d offered Novak his arm with wrist turned up, along with a crooked smile. ‘For the record,’ he’d added, watching Novak kiss the fragile curve of his wrist, lips warm and familiar, ‘I’m never afraid of you biting me.’

 

‘That is nice of you to say,’ Novak murmured before his teeth met skin, parting in a well of crimson and Andy was too busy wondering if that reply meant Novak had ‘read’ the lie behind his eyes to worry any more about made vampires gone feral.

 

 

 

Years later, curled in a heap of blankets at the foot of his own guest room bed and watching Sascha stir in the bloody tangle of sheets, he can’t make himself think of anything else.

 

It’d been an endless two days – almost three, another dawn creeping pale pink and shy around the curtains now – since the locker room, since Sascha relaxed with a sigh against Andy’s teeth, slumped limply into his grip, and Novak said, ‘Okay, now we have to get him back to yours before he wake up again.’

 

Only, any attempt at hauling six and a half foot of not-exactly-inconspicuous unconscious tennis player across Wimbledon without notice was doomed. Although it was technically after hours, Wimbledon never truly wound down during the Championships; they’d bumped into groundskeepers and half the cleaning staff, rounded a corner right into Sue Barker and had to sneak past a group of opportunistic tennis fans lurking near the car park with cameras before Andy, aching down to his bones despite the taste of Sascha’s blood in his mouth, managed to dump the sleeping German across the back seat of his own Jaguar with a brief flicker of mourning for the leather that’d need replacing again.

 

‘Shame he look like we stab him to improve our US Open chances,’ Novak remarked. He’d been leaning casually-but-not-fooling-Andy against the car to stay upright and taking in Sascha, sprawled on his back across the seats with his head tipped sideways in a fluff of blond and the sharp crimson smear of the bite on his neck, the uneven soak of blood all over his white shirt. ‘Hard to pretend is only a prank when he actually bleed everywhere. We should have change his shirt.’

 

‘Too late now,’ Andy said wearily. One of the groundskeepers had screamed when she saw the blood, sound half-muffled by her hands going over her mouth in horror and followed immediately by Novak’s hand to muffle the yell as he ran to catch her, to meet her wide eyes and murmur, it’s fine, he’s fine, you didn’t see anything to worry about and all the panic dropped off her face. It wasn’t easy to cheat with people when there was six foot plus of unconscious evidence in front of them, when they were aware enough to protest – Andy still has a flare of nausea when he remembers letting Novak practice on him when they were teenagers, the way he’d hear Novak’s whispered suggestion and the blurring confusion of the lie set against something he knew as a truth, how it threw him off balance until he made Novak promise to stop – and Novak had been shaking by the time they reached the car, shadows bruised beneath his eyes and exhaustion in the slump of his shoulders.

 

At least Sue, a potential catastrophe, hadn’t made a scene. Andy had cursed their luck when they rounded the corner to see pale hair, the pastel shaded blue she’d been wearing when she caught him after that morning’s practice to wish him luck what felt like a lifetime and a half ago. They’d both stumbled to a halt partway down the corridor to the player’s exit, Novak just in front but not enough to hide what Andy was carrying and Sue, juggling jacket and keys, glanced up with a greeting that died on her lips when she caught sight of Sascha, keys hitting the ground in a sharp jingle of sound.

 

Wondering guiltily if brain-washing an icon of British tennis was grounds for forcible removal of his Wimbledon titles, Andy had adjusted his aching arms around Sascha’s ridiculous sprawl and waited for Novak to lunge forward.

 

Only he didn’t. He stood planted with his shoulders hunched miserably as Sue took them in, as silently disapproving as Judy catching Andy sprinkling chilli flakes in Jamie’s cereal, as unsurprised as Marian every time he caught Novak wiping Andy’s blood from his mouth. It’d been an achingly tense pause before she raised her eyebrows at Novak who said, voice scraped raw with shame, ‘I promise, I am fixing it.’

 

Sue had nodded once. ‘Fixing what?’ she’d asked smoothly and bent to pickup her keys as if that only was why she’d stopped, smiled at Andy as she carried on past, gaze barely flicking over Sascha’s pale face, the faint rise and fall of his bloodied chest but missing nothing. ‘Goodnight Andy,’ she’d said over her shoulder, calm as if ending any interview about his Wimbledon performance and Andy had fumbled a nonsensical response, barely hearing himself, staring his bewilderment at the back of Novak’s neck the rest of the way to the car.

 

‘Why didn’t you-‘ he’d asked halfway home, one eye on the rearview for blue lights and the entire London Met descending to demand why they had a half-dead tennis player crumpled on the back seat. Novak had blinked, surfacing from a dazed stare at the passing houses to glance at him, picking up the rest of the words unsaid.

 

‘Sue?’ he’d asked in a tone of genuine bafflement. ‘Of course I would never, to Sue. There is no need.’

 

‘But if she tells anyone-‘

 

Novak had huffed a dismissal, already turning back to the window. ‘If Sue Barker tell all of everyone’s secrets, they would stop being told to her. She trust I fix it, she do not need to ask,’ and that was the last he’d say, even when Andy thought increasingly loud and irritated things about how maybe if certain people liked her that her that much, they might prefer to be in relationship with Sue instead.

But he also wondered, driving the familiar route home through sleeping Surrey villages, tiredness dragging at his own reflexes until it was a miracle they didn’t end up wrapping themselves around a tree — if it could be useful, if they might ask Sue to run cover for them. Neither of them might play tennis again for the season, him less likely than Novak, and he was so tired, the sheer complexity of excuses they’d need to cover the former top two players tumbling down the rankings together seemed impossible.

If they didn’t play they’d need a reason — one that didn’t mention vampires because getting committed wouldn’t help the tennis or the vampire problem — but not telling the truth meant more lies to his coach and his mum and the rest of the locker room, invented hospital appointments and missed training sessions, all the lies tangling into a maze that was bound to trip them up. The sheer enormity of faking the next six months of his life was a depressing thought before he’d even started.