Maedayarchive - Charmae

TAKING WHATS NOT YOURS 4

ART X TASHI X PATRICK X F!READER

part 1 part 2 part 3 part 4

it is here yall, no smut but a surprising amount of straight sexual tension, i’ll make it gayer in the next one dw

you can’t believe you’re here. fuck. fuck. you changed too, back into tennis gear. fuck. the stars twinkle above like little spectators, a clear night in new york city. like fate was watching. they had reserved a court before even asking you, cocky as ever. you had all driven there together. you sat in the back, like mommy and daddy were taking you to a dance recital. this whole thing was ridiculous, and positively beneath you. and yet here you are, separated by a net from the man you’d thought in your naivety you would marry one day. you each stretched, rackets on the ground a ways away. every time you saw them in the corner of your eye you tensed, thinking about what was to come.

when you beat art, you wouldn’t fuck him. that’s something you were certain of, because it would make it so much more embarrassing for them. pimping yourself, your husband out is one thing, trying to and failing is much more humiliating. you thought about it, briefly on the car ride. what it would feel like after all these years. how good it would feel to make tashi squirm. and she would squirm. so help you god she would squirm. and art too. while he was inside you and clinging to you and more vulnerable than he’s ever been, you would tell him all about tashi and patrick’s little raundevouz, their little secret excursion. you would hear his heart break beneath you, feel his world crumble. you smiled to yourself in the backseat. art gave you up, tossed you out like a used tissue the second he could wriggle his way into the amazing tashi duncan’s life. and where was he now? coming second place, being cheated on, being whored out. and where was tashi? still seething over college, still hating you. you couldn’t judge her so violently, you were uncomfortably similar. except you can play, and she has art for a husband. it seems you can have love or tennis, and never both. tashi seems to have neither. in a roundabout way you pity her. in a more direct way you think she got what was fucking coming to her.

but no. you couldn’t fuck him, because that would hurt infinitely more. if tashi had come to town and avoided you, that would have angered you five times more than whatever this is. no. you weren’t sleeping with him. no way no how. nuh uh. dick is dick and you can get dick from anywhere. if the night before told you anything, historical dick will always do you wrong. so there. not sleeping with art. or tashi. or whatever.

tashi watches you stretch. your muscle fibres flex and protrude, a threat. if you beat art, she thinks you’re going to try to refuse the reward. or you at least plan to. you’re so fucking proud. everything is beneath you, everything, you can’t be pleased by anything. art is perfect, in every way, and yet you sneer and turn your nose up at her perfectly fine man. she wants to see it. she wants art to fuck you so bad it makes her angry. she wants him to be rough, and mean, she wants him to hold you down and make you cry. she watches the body that dominates the court, the face that haunts her dreams. she wants you to fucking submit. she wants your tennis body to become a cocksleeve and nothing more, and she wants art to do it. art would like it too. she knows he would. he doesn’t speak about you. he avoids you like the plague. something is left. maybe because of how you ended, in one clean silent chop the day of tashi’s accident, that he feels there’s something unfinished. she thinks he wants you. and he’s gonna get you and destroy any dignity that might remain. he’s gonna pound you like he owns you, because really he does, and tashi is gonna watch and she’s gonna laugh.

if you lose, she’ll watch her husband destroy you at tennis. and that will be just as freeing.

your gaze shifts from man on court to woman in stands, woman to man. they both have this serene look on their faces. not a care in the world. art should be worried. you’re going to thrash him. presuming this was still somewhat about tennis and he had any pride left at all, he was in for a rude awakening. second in that open. hm. you were gonna hang his sorry pathetic cuck ass out to dry and then you were gonna leave him wanting.

art’s certain he can win. tashi gave him comprehensive coaching in your style, your weaknesses and your strengths. truth is, you’re impressive, but art is a man. he could over power you, smash you into the dirt with sheer brute force. he’s certain he could beat you. but will he? tashi was unclear. this was of course entirely for her benefit, so which would she prefer? art had a feeling that your prize wasn’t only there to make you want to play. the prize didn’t seem to entice you at all, which bruised whatever remained of his ego. so should he win, or lose? what would please tashi more, seeing you beaten, or seeing you beneath something she owned? maybe they were the same.

you were both fully stretched and watered, and had began the stroll to pick up your rackets in synchronicity. his eyes raked over your face, and for the first time in all of this he considered what he wanted. he would’ve wanted to leave you alone. to respect you. but that couldn’t have happened. tashi needs closure. sleeping with you would be strange. you weren’t the same person he left in college, he wasn’t naive enough to forget that. before it all fell apart, when he was your tentative boyfriend, there were nights he locked away, too tender to be thought of by a married man. nights at his lake house, nights in your dorm, mornings when he would wake up covered in you and it was so still and calm that he had thought maybe it was still night, and you forgot to turn the light off. those nights, bolted into the safe for lost things in his mind, now drifted free. your soft skin and its smell, the weight of your body on top of his, your strawberry balm kisses. when you would dash away before sex to ‘freshen up’, and he’d smell his dorm’s cheap fruity hand soap when his nose pressed into your clit, when you opened your arm pit. you’d stopped drinking because he wouldn’t sleep with you drunk. you’d cry sometimes when he held you, when you were on top of him or when he was curved over your body so tightly everything touched. you’d cry. because no one had ever been this nice to you. and he would kiss them away, right from your under eye, licking them as they drooped of the edge of your chin. you never said i love you. never got that far. but he felt it from you. he knew you did. you had. he could tell in the way you listened to him. any tiny thing, any tiny little thing you logged away and remembered about him. if he told you once that he liked your hair half up half down, that was your hair for the next year. if he told you he liked your hands, rings and bracelets would scatter all across your dorm to be thrown on at his arrival. superficial things like that, but you listened so hard. you tried so hard. in those nights, you were like putty in his hands. he could’ve moulded you into anything. so receptive, so soft and wet and gentle. when he was inside you, when he was milked by your suckling, loving heat, he felt more at peace than he had in his whole life. it felt like you were the only two people left in the world, by God’s perfect design. you would take anything he gave to you, and because of that he was sweet and perfect to you. he was a dream man because you deserved a dream man. he truly adored you. but he wasn’t yours. and when those loving nights and sleepy mornings ended, it was tashi that returned to his mind. tashi. and she was so different from you. she was dangerous and painful and she made him itch. it was like getting high from a wasp sting, like he was addicted to the hurt. he didn’t want what was easy, what was simple and good and hearty. he wanted her. and it all worked out how it was supposed to, because tashi was his wife and she loved him and needed him and you were a tennis star. but, taking everything into account, it could never be how it was with you ever again. because you didn’t trust him anymore. he watched as you scooped up your racket, doing the same. you looked so concentrated. so angry. he wondered if you always felt angry. it probably helped you play better.

did he want to sleep with you again? that was the real question. well, if you would let him, he would. he wanted to. he never stopped adoring you, he realises now you hate him. you never did anything to make him stop. never pullled the plug, just walked away. the passivity of it made you slip away into the back of his mind, and for so long he didn’t realise you never left. he wanted to know how you changed. he wants to know how you’re different, and selfishly, he wants you to forgive him. if he was close enough to you you would know how sorry he was. if he could touch your skin one final time, and know whatever hurt he had caused you hadn’t stopped it being soft, then he could let go of you for real.

“you two ready?” tashi called from where she lounged in the seating area.

you flipped the racket round in your hold a few times, and nodded. art nodded too.

“alright. first to

this was it. you were going to beat that man into the ground and you were going to laugh in tashi’s face and you were going to remain unfucked. partially unfucked. god, in this rush you had forgotten that just the night before patrick had smiled at you, and for a glorious hour you had lost your mind. it didn’t bear thinking about. you wondered what he was doing tonight. probably laid up with some sorry girl in that fucking motel room. what a simple life failures lead. you eat, you fuck, you shit, you die. when you’re actually worth something everything is struggle.

art was undecided. he held a little fluorescent ball in his hand, putting it into the neck of the racket. his eyes darted in the dark to his beautiful wife. he raised his eyebrowqa millimetre. tashi’s head flicked side to side, incrementally left to right, shaking no. throw the match. this wasn’t about tennis anymore. it had never been about tennis. he knew that now.

restless you leaned from knee to knee, crouched, flaunting your mobility, eyes never leaving tashi duncan. he looked back to you, and when he met your eye a shiver ran down his spine. he’s gonna touch you again tonight.

he paused a few more seconds. and then he served, a big sweeping motion, a thunk over his head. you were put into play.

what was it tashi had said? something really pretentious. you remembered hearing about it, something she had said to the threesome lackeys. it was passed down in bits like chinese whispers, but you’d heard the thesis of it. tennis was like fucking. like making love. like a beautiful dance where souls intertwine and total nirvana is reached and blah blah blah. at the time you’d thought that it was the biggest load of drivel you’d ever heard, and that if that was how she really felt then she’d never amount to shit, at least not in tennis.

but now, on this moonlit court, a dozen feet away from tennis star art donaldson, a dozen more away from star coach tashi duncan, you think maybe she was right all along. because you are fucking the shit out of art. he can’t seem to get a single fucking point. if this was a relationship, it’s fucking abusive. small grunts emanate from him, wimpy and down trodden sounds like a kicked dog. you get halfway through the match before realising what’s really going on.

the sound of the ball cracking from racket to racket is ear splitting, but the sound of your celebration every time you sink a point is louder to art. more distinctive and more memorable. you pump your fist at your side, and almost hiss, yes, and you walk around in a little circle, as if unable to contain your excitement. in all the match footage tashi had him watch, you never celebrated unless you won the match. he almost felt himself smile, but forced it away. he couldn’t let you know your joy was under his control, that he was allowing it.

but he wasn’t subtle. point after point after point, and art never withered. his spine was straight, not beaten wavy with defeat like it was supposed to be. once or twice the ball passed right by his racket, he didn’t even lift it. he got a few points, it wasn’t forty love. but he didn’t sweat. grunted before he even lost the point, before he even began to hit the ball. his arms were loose. they flung one way and another. was he even trying to hit the ball? you were grunting, you were sweating. you were fucking trying. you respected tashi and art enough, if not as people, then as competitors, to fucking try. all this bullshit about fucking, and you were still willing to try and win because despite everything, you still felt you had something to prove. didn’t they? what was this if not proving something? what more could it possibly be? art was smiling. beaten into the dirt and smiling. this was fucked. your turn to serve. you hold the ball in your hand, and seethe. you don’t move. your head tilts incrementally. you stare art down, half to determine the degree of fuckery, and half just to make him squirm. until his eyes flick to tashi. guidance please, master? his big loping puppy dog eyes scream.

fucking pathetic.

your racket clatters to the ground, ear splitting in the dark and quiet. tashi grinds her teeth, fingers drumming the seat, and almost calls out. almost barks at you to keep playing. but she doesn’t. because for some reason, you’re stalking towards the net. she can see the moonlight bounce off your closely shaven legs. the springing of your pony tail wafts towards her a paralysing chill, and she remains in her seat, silent.

your shoes grind as you stop on the astroturf, gripping the net with one hand, beckoning art with the other hand. he looks at you, up and down, eye brow quirked up. his lips pout involuntarily, and the bottomless well of tenderness you have for this silly, silly man pours fourth once again, doing nothing to stave off your anger.

“you tryna fuck me or something?”

art recoiled slightly. his eyes dashed to tashi.

“what do you mean?” his voice was thin. he wanted you to be quieter.

“play like you mean it or get off the court.”

you turn on your heel as soon as you spit the words, tearing at the dirt red asphalt. but then you stop. art never does anything you want him to. you know from experience. he needs an ulterior motive. you flick the sweat off your slick forehead with the slick back of your hand, and turn to art, savage smile pulling uncontrollably at your lips.

art remained where you left him by the net, stunned. what a violent, vulgar woman you had grown into. the creature he knew, that swallow, that doe, would never have spoken to him like that. jaded. vicious. you were changed. you were mangled. even that look on your heavenly face sent chills ricochetting up his spine, across his ribs. he visibly twitched as you returned to the netside.

“art, did tashi tell you about atlanta.”

you let the end of that word flick, like a feather in the wind. ta.

art blinked.

“atlanta? we were just there.”

you grasped the net and leaned forward. all was hush, even new york waited for you to continue. no car alarms, no distant drunken hollering. it was just you and art and festering contempt. and tashi, off the side, craning to hear a word and hearing her heart beat instead.

“you wanna know who else was there?”

you bit your lip, gleeful. art took a step closer to grip the net, to lean over.

“who? what are you talking about?”

“patrick.”

slowly, like a fall through quicksand, art realised. art screwed up his face, looked at his shoes, and then slowly, and right before your eyes, he found out who his wife really was. face fallen, eyes wide and focused on you, you only nodding. now that it was in front of him it seemed to obvious.

“what does that mean?”

but he knew what it meant.

“it means, i saw him yesterday. he said he saw you. well, not you. your other half. she didn’t tell you? he said it was a quite vigorous discussion.”

“stop it.”

that sickly satisfied smirk slipped off your face like leftovers into trash, leaving only the fire that never left.

“make me.”

neither of you looked away, rarely blinked, both fumed. art thought he could best you, thought you wouldn’t notice, thought you would just accept his bullshit and roll over. but art didn’t know his wife like you did. and now he would play you like he hated you, and you could beat him at his best. also, he most likely wouldn’t want to have sex regardless of the outcome, so it was win-win in truth.

arts thoughts were not so controlled, nor as proud or positive. the limpness of his arms, the rise and fall of his chest, it all spurred on a horrible sinking feeling, as if along with his world he too was crumbling. he had thought nothing when she left for a walk after the finale. nothing whatsoever. but it was then she had stolen away, like a criminal. a secret dirty rendezvous. forbidden, tantalising, stomach churning. art got second place that day. was that why? was she punishing him? why had you done this to him? patrick. patrick. of all people. patrick. each flash of his smiling face in the void of arts mind was like a gunshot, a flash breaking through the void. how could one person be this cruel? and why did it have to be you? why were you changed? why couldn’t you be the same, why couldn’t you love him still? he needed someone that loved him and you were right in front of him, dead. dead to love. dead to connection. you were a creature, but you were no doe. you were a wounded sulking beast. you would beat down or maul anything wilfully ignorant enough to cross your path. but he needed you to love him. if not tashi, you. despite tashi, you.

watching his crumble had a strange effect on you. he swayed, and looked all around like he was blind. you felt bad. the animal softness you kept for him in your soul churned inside you. you felt guilty. but he should know. he deserved to know. maybe not in that way. but in a way.

“is that true? swear to me you’re not lying.”

the night was cooling off, and the ice-lake blue of art’s eyes, the press of his lips, the sag of his shoulder made you shiver. only now did you realise how close his face was to you as he leant over the net. incrementally moving back, you swallowed.

“i swear.”

“ok. ok.”

he looked down, rocked, didn’t pull away.

“i’m sorry. i’m sorry.”

his cheeks filled with air, and you could hear him try to cough out the lump in his throat.

“hey, art. art.”

he wouldn’t look up.

“i never wanted to know that. i would’ve never known.”

you didn’t think about this, about how ugly this all was. that was an ugly, horrible, jaded thing to do. jaded. patrick was right.

“i’m sorry.”

hands on hips, he turned around, moving away from you, racket clutched in a white fist. he just walked. and walked. it looked like he was about to leave the court when he turned around.

“you serve.”

and you and him played. actually played for the first time all day. he was running for the god damn ball, he was slamming it so hard your wrist ached to receive it. his face was aged, he looked more wrinkled and wisened and sinister, and he played like that too, like he has a clue what was going on and what tennis was. on one hand, this pleased you. a real fucking game. someone of the tashi clan is finally speaking to you in a language you can understand, a field you can dominate. art, try as he might, still, still, still, using all his anger, wasn’t beating you. this pleased you immensely.

but on the other hand, art was so angry. so fucking furious, and he was directing it at you. of course he was, you’re right there, you’re the bitch that told him his wife cheated, you get the surface of it. but he was so fucking angry. the grunts he made, the force behind his strides, the festering resentment he looked at you with, that was all bullshit. art is so bullshit.

in times gone by, tashi was the big bad in your mind, a monolith for your hatred. but this hissy fit is alerting you to another fact. art left you for her. he married her. that was his choice. but now, it blows up in his face, and he has the gall to be angry at you? to glare at you, grunt at you, spit on the moon-shaded clay and snarl at you? he comes into your life for the second time, blows it up, while you have a competition, and now he’s pissed at you for biting back? with the truth no less.

art is angry at you, but the truth is, you’re angrier. and so you wipe the floor with him.

above, tashi surveys, quietly mystified. this is the best you’ve played, ever. your form is exquisite, and strong, violent but controlled. you’re not fucking around. not that you ever are, but she notes that as your tally climbs and climbs, you never get comfortable, you never let up. it’s the same measured looks, the same desire as you lick the sweat off your lips and eye-fuck her husband. whatever you spoke about got art playing good too. maybe you should come to all his tournaments. tashi is itching to know what was said, but moreover she’s itching for the match to end, for a forfeit to be exchanged. whatever that may be.

it doesn’t take long before her prayers are answered, and the verdict is art has lost. he miss your last mighty shot by a landslide, on the other side of the court when it crashes down and bounces away out of bounds, into the nothing. you have won. you won. art lets out a guttural throaty cry and throws his racket to the ground while little sweat droplets leap from him like glitter.

he laps the court angrily, and you just hold out your arms, let the cool air hug your skin. no victory cry, because your body is singing with exhaustion, hard earned exhaustion, as your chest fills with air you feel vilified, you feel your truth has been exacted. you beat tashi. tashi’s husband. you beat art. you beat tashi’s man servant into the ground. you fucking win.

“fuck. fuck. fuck. fuck,” he holds the back of his head, elbows swinging as he moves about.

“fuck is right. i win.”

“shut up.”

like the crack of a whip you turn to look at him. he is still so fucking angry. at you. you, of all people.

“what was that? shut up? did a loser just tell me to shut up?”

“you know what you fucking did. you told me so i would lose concentration and throw the match.”

you were both approaching the net, seething, panting. he pointed at the floor as he spoke, with passion, like he even had a leg to stand on. maybe it was his righteous outrage that pissed you off, his self important hurting. why was he so angry at you? you didn’t fuck patrick. well, not in atlanta anyway.

“i told you so you would give enough of a shit to play me for real. that was the best you’ve played in year, art,”

you poke his chest, and aggression blooms within him from your point of contact like blood in water. you’re gonna make him crazy, he’s so angry. you’re still poking him.

”and guess what? i still. fucking. beat you.”

“you shut up or ill make you shut up.”

“oh, that really got the testosterone pumping didn’t it donaldson? do you think your balls are gonna drop soon, you spineless shit?”

“you vicious little bitch. you’re this much of a cunt just because tashi was better than you in college? how pathetic can a person be?”

“she is not fucking better than me. and you of all people should know that.”

your voice cracks. so it comes out fu-cking. but your point remains. a breath filled quiet settles and for a brief moment all either of you can do is stare at each other and realise how close you’ve gotten and ache and burn and crave. his hand rests on the net, a centimetre away from yours. if you wiggled your pinky at all you’d be touching.

you watch him breath, watch his eyes trace the sweat from your chin that drips to your chest, watch him hate the fact he noticed. you watch his anger congeal. set into warm mush instead of hot liquid. you felt a heaviness in your chest as you felt yourself giving in, giving over to your anger. giving over to the hurt that fueled it.

and you kissed each other. because there was nothing else in the world to do. like opposite poles, against both of your conscious wills, you crashed into each other and kissed like biting vipers. it hurt. your fingers dug into his thinly covered shoulders, his back, dull though they were. he gripped the back of your neck, the base of your skull, pushing you forward into him, keeping you where he could have you. his other hand fisted the back of your tank, like he was holding the scruff of a bad cat’s neck. trapped in his hold, you had no choice but to love him. you clawed and kissed and little noises escaped you, and all of a sudden he was 19 again and he had you. All thoughts of tashi and patrick and coming second place were vanquished, and all he could feel was the softness of your nose pressed into his cheek, the pliable flesh of your tongue and the freedom with which you enjoyed things, how much noise and honesty you were willing to give. nothing had felt so raw, so real for a long time.

your lips mushed and deformed around the other, your tongues licked like fire, you held each other until you felt you couldn’t be closer. and then tashi existed again. and you pulled away.

“congrats. our room or yours?”

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