Art's dorm room smells like sweat, sex, and the faint citrus of the Gatorade bottle tipped over on the desk—orange liquid pooling sticky around a stack of scouting reports for tomorrow’s practice. The air-conditioner rattles like it’s personally offended by the heat you two just generated.

He lies on his back, one arm flung over his eyes, chest rising and falling in slow, heavy pulls. His blond hair is dark with sweat at the temples, curls plastered to his forehead. The sheet rides low on his hips, barely decent, and every time he shifts the fabric drags across skin that’s still hypersensitive, making him bite back a hiss. He’s nineteen, supposed to be invincible, but right now he feels raw.

You’re sitting up against the headboard, sheet pulled loosely to your waist, legs folded, scrolling through the match footage on your phone with that razor focus he both envies and dreads. Your hair is a wild halo, lips swollen, a fresh mark just below your collarbone that he put there twenty minutes ago when words failed and bodies took over.

“You hesitated on the backhand down the line in the second set tiebreak,” you say without looking up, voice still husky from earlier. “You had the angle, but you floated it—gave him time to run around his forehand and punish you. It’s the same damn tell you had against UCLA last month.”

Art exhales through his nose, a soft frustrated laugh. He drops his arm, turns his head on the pillow to study you fully. “Yeah, well, maybe if my head wasn’t full of someone riding me harder than the opponent, I’d have closed it out cleaner.”

You glance at him, eyes narrowing. “Don’t put this on me, Donaldson. You lost because you got tight. Again.”

He pushes up on an elbow, the movement bringing him closer to you. “And you’re in my bed lecturing me because…?”

The question hangs, soft but pointed. You set the phone down on the nightstand with deliberate care, screen still glowing with frozen footage of his unforced error.‎ ‎ ‎

Art reaches out, fingers gripping your wrist (gentle, a contrast to the way he gripped your hips an hour ago). “We could, y’know, not talk about tennis for five goddamn minutes.” His voice is quieter now, the sarcasm dialed back. “Just once.”