They settle, slowly, into the rhythm of the tour.

It's a new world and Fabio matches the rise in the level perfectly, making the quarterfinals more often than not. He meets the same players again and again, the usual suspects. Axel Braun with his sledgehammer of a serve, Gio Russo, the left-handed Italian, Samuel Ruiz with the dizzying topspin, Kenji Saito, the wily hardcourt specialist. Julian and Fabio analyse their game almost obsessively, dissecting their strengths and weaknesses.

It's like a puzzle to Julian, taking the footage apart, finding the patterns, then translating it into an action plan for Fabio.

"Braun goes wide on the second serve in key points," he will tell a bleary-eyed Fabio late at night in the hotel. "Force Ruiz to hit cross-court when he's tired. He will go too deep and make errors."

It works, almost without fail. They turn Julian's strategising into a personalised menu of shots that Fabio can choose from going into each match. The wins are starting to stack up, and with them, the prize money. The hundred thousand from Eastbourne slowly trickles into two, inching towards three.

But it's not just about the game. One day, as they step into the players' lounge during a rain delay, Julian realises how much like a stereotypical American high school it is, cliques and all.

In the corner, the buff Czechs, impossibly cool, are talking among themselves, the language barrier impenetrable. The Brits nod politely at Fabio and Julian when they pass their table, but they won't speak unless spoken to. At another, amidst roaring laughter, the Lithuanians are no doubt plotting how to further terrorise the stuck-up Danes.

Julian hates it, but Fabio is thriving. With a clap on the shoulder he leaves Julian and throws himself down at the Spanish table. Within a minute, they're debating football at a volume that drowns out all other conversation in the room.

Fabio is popular, Julian realises with equal amounts of amusement and horror. At every tournament, he collects friends like Pokémon cards.

On the practice court in Washington, Julian finds him sprawled on the bench with two long-limbed Americans, barely out of their teens. Their names are Alex and Mario, and Fabio hasn't shut up about them in days. The three of them are bent over Mario's phone, heads together, and Fabio is in awe at whatever they're looking at, TikTok again, no doubt.

"Did you really do that? Three million views?"

"Don't let him fool you," Alex teases. "He was just showing off, he didn't even win that set. He goes on court, does the trick shots for the highlight reel, then gets his ass kicked and leaves."

Mario reaches across Fabio's head to punch Alex in the shoulder. "Shut up. You're the same. You would bring a ring light on court if you could."

Fabio doubles over laughing. Julian is reluctant to step in, but he must.

"Fabio, come on, we need to hit."

Fabio turns back to the boys. "Will you teach me later? How to do the transitions in the edit?" Then he bounds off the bench, spins his racquet dramatically, and steps onto the court.

In Beijing, Valentina and Chiara, an Italian doubles pair keep showing up at their practice sessions. They're in their mid-twenties, slightly older than Fabio but just as childish. They sit courtside and heckle him, verging on bullying at times.

Julian watches them again today as they're sat up front still in their practice kits, leggings and matching blue Asics tops. Valentina has her legs propped up on the half-wall separating the stands from the court, and Chiara, leaning forward, watches on intently as if she had front-row tickets to Formula 1. They're passing segments of a tangerine between them and chatting incessantly. The smell of citrus drifts onto the court. They're loud and distracting, and Julian can feel a headache coming on.

He tries to redirect his attention to Fabio, who is hitting steady forehands into the court.

"Try to hit deeper," Julian tells him, trying to keep the irritation out of his voice. "Put some muscle into it."

Chiara latches on immediately.

"Did you hear that, Fabio? Che disastro!"

Fabio, his eyes set deep into the court, lifts his hand to give her the finger. Julian snorts, then adjusts his grip on his racquet. They need to go on, time is ticking.

"Fabio, focus, please."

He hits a slow ball at Fabio, but the return is still not deep enough.

"You call that a forehand?" Valentina supplies helpfully, her mouth full of fruit. "My nonna can hit bigger."

Fabio groans. "Shut up, Vale, or get the fuck out!"

The next return falls short yet again. Fabio looks up pleadingly at Julian.

"I can't figure it out. Help me."

Julian wipes his forehead, thinking his idea through. On a whim, he says,

"Valentina, come on down and make yourself useful."

The girls share a look, and with some suspicion in her eyes, Valentina hops across the barrier and saunters up to Julian. Julian wipes the handle of his racquet on his t-shirt and hands it to her.

"You hit with him."

Then he walks across the court to stand behind Fabio.

"Show me your motion."

Fabio ghosts a forehand, his racquet swishing in the empty air. Julian places a hand on his shoulder, just to feel it out.

"Again."

Fabio repeats the movement, and Julian thinks for a second. He touches Fabio's elbow, then drapes his hand over Fabio's grip on the racquet.

"Relax your grip a little," he says, voice low in Fabio's ear, still lightly touching, "and let your elbow follow through, swing further back. You're tense today."

Chiara wolf whistles from the sidelines. "I wish it was me," she shouts in Italian. Fabio flushes a deep red, furious.

"He can understand you, you know."

Julian steps back laughing, although he feels like he's not quite in on the joke.

"Valentina, let's go," he shouts across the net, and Valentina tosses up a ball.

Afterwards, when the girls have cleared out and Fabio is changing his shoes, Julian sits down heavily next to him on the bench. He takes a drink from his bottle. It's been intense.

"You need to keep your friends in check," he tells Fabio, narrowing his eyes. "They're distracting you."

Fabio finishes tying his shoes, straightens up and gives him a look. "I can't keep them away." His lips part in a dazzling grin. "They're not here for me."

Julian raises an eyebrow. "What do you mean?"

"Are you blind?" Fabio laughs and kicks Julian lightly in the foot. "They're obsessed with you. They think you're super hot."

Julian buries his forehead in his palm. Unbelievable.

In Stockholm, they meet Jasper Söderlund.

Julian knows exactly who he is. Fabio has no idea. Jasper is a soft-spoken boy, half Swedish, half Nigerian, with a thoughtful face and a full head of neatly woven braids framing his face.

Julian often sees him hunkered down with an iPad during rain delays, reading quietly, the light of the screen reflected in his dark eyes as he swipes lazily every minute or so to turn the page. He couldn't be more different from Fabio, which Fabio takes as a personal challenge.

"What are you reading?" he asks him one day, draping himself across the back of Jasper's chair as if they were old friends, right in his personal space. Julian winces. They haven't exchanged a single word until today.

Jasper raises an eyebrow and looks up.

"Just a novel," he says, his accent clipped and lilting at the same time.

"This one reads all the time," Fabio says, tugging at Julian's shirt as if to show him off. "What's the book called?"

"Uh, Normal People."

"I know the TV series," Fabio shouts, enthusiastic. "They have a lot of sex in it."

"Christ in Heaven," Julian hides his face in his palm.

But Jasper bursts out laughing, and, encouraged, Fabio slides down into an empty chair.

"Do you only read?" he pries, "Or do you like football too?"

Jasper's face lights up, and Julian walks away, leaving them to it.

One day, over dinner, Fabio mentions almost offhandedly that Jasper gets teased for being coached by his mum.

"His mum is a legend. Ingrid Söderlund." Julian frowns. "Do they not remember her?"

It exasperates Julian, how quickly tennis history fades into nothing. He remembers watching on in awe, as a child, as Ingrid knocked out win after win at the US Open in 1995 as a mere qualifier, going on to take the whole thing, never done before and never done since. Afterwards, at the peak of her career, she completely dropped out of the public eye to have a baby — Jasper — with her footballer boyfriend.

"It was ages ago," Fabio shrugs.

"Google is free," Julian mutters, stabbing listlessly at his salad, suddenly feeling see-through, like a ghost.

They train in London before the last stretch of the season.

Not long to go now, no more surprises, Julian hopes. There's been enough excitement for a year.

The weather is too warm, too nice. It's the kind of autumn that turns the air golden and lovely, and although it would be wiser to actually train indoors, on the actual surface they're preparing for, they feel like taking advantage of the last of the sunshine. They have a long session on one of the grass courts, stretching into the sunset, neither of them willing to call it.

Julian, exhausted, feels like his muscles are softening in the golden light. It's a tender kind of fatigue, not unpleasant, one of a job well done. It makes him feel connected to everything, as if the surface of his skin was caressing the cooling air back, as if his feet were rooted into the soft grass. He glances at Fabio, standing behind the baseline, to see if he's ready to wrap up and go home. And then it happens.

Drenched in sweat, Fabio lifts the hem of his shirt to wipe his face with it, dragging the fabric up enough to reveal the perfect cut of his abs. Something like an electric shock goes through Julian, sudden and unwanted, settling as a pool of heat uncomfortably low in his abdomen. 

He immediately wishes he could unfeel it.

He realises then, although he doesn't yet understand why it feels like it's to his detriment, that Fabio is something. He doesn't know what to call it — fit, yeah, attractive, apparently. Beautiful, too, although Julian would've preferred not to have thought of that word just now.

But apart from that, magnetic. Not just his physicality, his impressive athleticism, muscles beginning to shape up to a standard of perfection, but his whole presence, the loud personality that dominates the room, the easy way he can make people laugh wherever he goes.

People will want to be close to him, to be with him, to be him, Julian understands.

It's not his problem though, he hopes.

"What?" Fabio asks, and Julian realises he had forgotten to look away. He thinks on his feet.

"Catch," he says, tossing a water bottle at him in a split second. Fabio catches it with one hand and laughs. He drinks deep, runs a hand through his dripping wet hair, and then, the absolute cheek, gives Julian a wink.

Nothing to it, Julian tells himself. Nothing to worry about.