ATP Kindergarten (Chapter 4)
Title: ATP Kindergarten
Main pairings: Djokovic/A. Murray, Gasquet/Gulbis, Nadal/Del Potro
Other characters: Roddick, Cilic, Tursunov, Ferrero, Henman, Monfils, Federer
Rating: G
Warning: Possible destruction of innocence
Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters and this is a fiction.
Summary: Richard conducts a highly important survey and Coach Andy's karma finally pays off.
Author's note: I'm very sorry for the extremely late update. And, I'm even sorrier that I probably won't be able to update as often as I used to do. But I'll try my best not to take too long for each chapter :)
From the previous chapter:
Coach Roger had introduced Teacher Tim’s special cookies to the new students and Juan Martin had fallen in love with his roommate who had kindly offered him one of his hard-earned cookies. Richard had been treated to a nice tuna sandwich and Coach Andy had asked him to pick a menu for a special dinner.
Chapter 4: The perfect menu
A new week always started with the joint music class in the big hall in ATP Kindergarten. It was one of the small traditions that the headmaster Tim liked to preserve.
“Everybody hates to sing on a Monday morning, no?” Juan Martin still had an eye asleep but somehow managed to throw a question.
“I don’t!” Novak beamed.
“Yeah, he doesn’t.” Andy agreed.
“Bah… he’s from Serbia.” Marin pointed out, clearly remembering the boy next door who always sang at the top of his lungs.
Thankfully, for children like Marin and Juan Martin, the school also needed students who could play instruments. Marin had brought his own clarinet to school and Juan Martin chose the simplest instrument, the cymbals. The Argentinean boy was supposed to sit next to the drummers; Rafael who was in charge of the big drum and Andy who played, or rather tortured, the small one.
‘Ah, I’m sitting next to Rafa. Maybe he’ll get more cookies today?’
Juan Martin closed his mouth just in time to avoid embarrassing himself in front of the whole school by drooling on his cymbals. He had even dreamt of those cookies last night and when Rafael had shaken him up this morning, the first word he spoke was ‘Cookie?’.
However, there were also students who were excited about learning new songs at school. Ernests was sitting between Richard and Novak, ready to sing whatever the teachers would teach him.
“New song!”
He was getting quite tired of the songs that he already knew by heart. Whenever guests came over to the house, his mother would ask him to sing and it was fine since most of the guests gave him money to buy snack but he could use some new songs for the regulars.
“You like new songs?” Richard asked in his softest voice.
The weekend had been hard, not getting to nap with his little angel. He had been cranky after lunch, on both Saturday and Sunday, and had given his dad a hard time.
Ernests nodded and Novak pinched the cute boy’s cheek.
“Aww, you’re so cute.”
“He is! Next time, you sit next to me, okay?” Gael cut in and got stabbed in the heart when Ernests shook his head.
“Ahahaha… it must be your hair, Gael.” Novak laughed.
“Hey, who are you to talk about hair?” Gael shot back.
“What? Andy always says that my hair is adorable.”
“Huh… he doesn’t know what “adorable” means then.”
“But he’s Scottish! He knows everything about English.” Novak defended one of his clever boyfriend’s many abilities.
Clang.
“Oops!”
Juan Martin’s cymbals echoed in the hall and teacher Dmitry thanked him for getting all the students’ attention.
Soon the Russian teacher was conducting the singing kids while Tim was helping out the ones with instruments. Juan Carlos was behind a grand piano, trying not to laugh at some kids who were singing way off-key, aka, Gael and Sam.
As strange as it may sound, music was his favorite subject. On most of the days, he only needed to play the piano which was more than soothing. He wasn’t talented or had played piano all his life but the children considered him as the greatest pianist in the world and even teachers and coaches asked him for a few tunes every once in a while. He had especially enjoyed playing love themes for Roger and Marat. It was a shame that they had broken up this summer.
‘I wonder how Marat’s doing these days.’
He had never particularly liked the grumpy Russian who cursed much more often than Andy -in Russian though, and thank god for the short indoor season- but he did feel bad for the heartless guy losing someone that he seemed to really care about. He had even started to like listening to a piano all thanks to Roger, which could only be explained by the immense power of love.
‘Too bad really. Maybe I should text him and see what he’s up to.’
Having decided that it should be his good deed of the week, Juan Carlos went back to secretly laughing at the boys’ singing.
R-ring.
As the bell announced that it was break for the next fifteen minutes, Rafael immediately abandoned his English book and pencil and ran to the back of the classroom. Today was the day that Richard, Gael and his awesome LEGO castle would be completed.
“Richie! Hurry up!” Gael yelled loud enough for everybody to hear.
“I’m coming!” Richard closed his book, got up from his chair, and joined his coworkers.
However, after five minutes, Rafael could tell that his best friend’s mind was elsewhere.
“Hey, you wanted to finish building this today, no?” He wriggled his eyebrows. The Swiss boy had been a little different today; not much smiles and rather more sighs.
“He’s sick?” He asked.
“Who? Ernie? No, he’s fine.”
“Then what? The bad woman in that drama still didn’t die?”
Rafael was trying his best to come up with possible reasons of Richard’s discontentment.
“No. It’s nothing like that.”
Richard let out another deep sigh and got an idea that might help him out of his misery. He had been thinking all weekend -of course, apart from the time that he thought about Ernie, which was quite a lot- and still couldn’t find the answer to Coach Andy’s question.
“Oh, right! Why didn’t I think of this before? I can ask you!”
“Ask me what?”
“What will you have for dinner if you can buy expensive food?”
Rafael hadn’t expected such a question but he still tried to answer it. “Hmm… isn’t lobster super expensive?”
“Lobster?”
“Yeah, I saw dad eat lobster with important people. They smashed them with little hammers, no?”
“Really? Hmm… but are they delicious? I don’t even like shrimps!”
“Oh, right.”
It was then that Richard saw Gael grin, almost drool, thinking about his dream meal.
“Gael, if you had…”
“Pasta!”
The French boy didn’t wait for Richard to finish his question. It was important to properly show his admiration of that incredible Italian food so that his friend would make the right choice.
“But pasta’s not…”
“I’m sure there are very expensive pastas in Italy!”
Startled at the loud shout, Richard just nodded. Then, after a few seconds, it hit him that pasta might actually be a very good idea. He had never been able to say no to any kind of yummy spaghetti.
“How about asking other boys? We have lot of students, no?” Rafael offered his best friend a piece of advice and Richard thanked him with a dazzling smile.
So the Swiss boy started asking around as soon as lunch time arrived. On his way to the hall, he asked his classmates and got all sorts of different food as answers and when he entered the hall, he knew that it would be the perfect opportunity to conduct a full-scale survey.
“What is he asking around about?” Dmitry was curious.
“No idea. It’s not every day that he puts priority on something other than food.” Roger chuckled, wondering what had the power to make his son go from table to table with a pen and a piece of paper.
“You know, if I ever get to have a son, I’d like him to be like Richard.”
Andy’s sudden statement had all the people at the table give him a weird look.
‘Okay, that probably wasn’t the best way to start a casual conversation.’
“Hahaha…” The American tried to laugh it off and he couldn’t have been gladder when Dmitry helped him out with a funny joke.
“You’d like a boy like my Richie?”
Roger had returned to the previous, disastrous subject which just turned into a fairly fascinating one as the Swiss put on a warm smile, looking at his own son.
“Sure. Absolutely. You must be so proud of him.”
Roger nodded and wore the softest expression on his face. “You have no idea. I mean, I’ve always wanted to have the perfect son, but never really thought that there would be such an adorable thing in my life.”
“Aww, well, your adorable thing can’t sit still these days. He doesn’t even stay in his own classroom at snack time. I’m sure he went to see Ernie.” Tim smiled, finding children’s romance utterly endearing.
“Yes, he came over once.” Juan Carlos confirmed Tim’s theory.
“Only once? I thought that it was twice.”
“I’m sure it was once. They left to see Mario after a few minutes. I would’ve remembered if he had come any other day.”
There was absolutely no soul in the school that didn’t trust the Spanish teacher’s devilish memory.
“Oh, I must be getting old. Anyway, it looks like the young Federer finally found someone attractive in here.”
Roger looked over at his boy again. True, Richard was always sitting with the Latvian boy whenever he got to see him last week.
Meanwhile, Andy let out a sigh of relief as Tim and Juan Carlos dropped the subject of questioning Richard’s recent whereabouts.
‘That was close. I guess today should be the last day that I take him out.’
Andy made up his mind and picked up his fork again when he felt a pair of eyes on him. He looked up and met Juan Carlos’ piercing eyes.
‘What? Is he suspecting me? He doesn’t have any proof anyway.’
The nervous coach put on his game face and stared back. He had nothing to be guilty of. Or at least, that was what he wanted to believe.
The boy in question was still busy with his survey. He had just moved on to the next table where Marin and Juan Martin were sitting with a bunch of kids from their own class. Richard asked the million dollar question again and got ready to take a note.
“Cookies.” Juan Martin’s answer was simple.
“I mean, for dinner, Juma, dinner.” Richard made his question clear.
“Yes, lots of those special cookies. Best dinner ever, no?”
The Swiss boy grabbed the younger one’s face and took a good look at his eyes. Yes, that was the typical first-year madness that he saw; the uncontrollable obsession with teacher Tim’s special cookies sparkling like his mom's diamond ring. He himself had suffered more than three weeks from the horrible disease two years ago.
“You need to go see Mario after lunch. Don’t worry. Mario can fix anything.” Richard patted the boy on the back and turned his attention to Marin who had been thinking about the answer all along.
“So?”
“I need more time to think. I don’t even have Internet here.”
“What?”
“I said that I don’t have Internet to look up some info.”
“Okay…” Richard didn’t know what else to say. This Croatian boy had to be lying about his age.
He left the disastrous table and visited the next one. Andy and Novak were enjoying their meal alone, feeding each other occasionally.
“Could you stop doing that in front of me and tell me about your dream menu?”
“Oh, we know everything about the perfect meal.” Andy boasted.
“Right. We do!” Novak backed up his boyfriend.
“You should go with steak.” Andy nodded, smacking his lips.
“Steak?” Richard asked back.
“Yes, from a seven star hotel.” Novak was the one who answered though.
“Wait. I thought five stars were the highest.” Richard was puzzled.
“There’s one in somewhere called Dubai. Write it down.” The Scottish boy enlightened the Swiss boy who nodded and wrote down the valuable information.
“And, you need the perfect wine with it.” Novak added.
“Yeah, that’s going to be our dinner when we become twenty, on our sixteenth year together.” Andy beamed, excited about their wonderful days lying ahead of them.
“Aww, how cute.” Richard had to admit that sometimes he did get a little jealous of what these boys were sharing. The two seemed to fit like matching LEGO pieces.
“It’s all my clever Andy’s idea!”
The Serbian boy smiled ever so proudly and Andy was quick to place his cheek in front of his boyfriend’s face. He couldn’t get enough of those little kisses; he liked the feeling, the sound and even the envious pouts from the other boys around.
‘Ah, this makes me feel like kissing Ernie.’
Richard knew that it was soon nap time but nap time always felt so far away. He turned around to see what Ernests was doing and saw him sitting on Aida’s lap, listening to whatever Ivan was telling him.
‘Is Ivan explaining how juice is made? Why those bright eyes?’
Then, the boy got another good idea.
‘Right! Ivan’s the cook! He’ll know what I should ask Coach Andy for dinner!’
Richard left the lovebirds kiss each other and flew towards the new chef.
“Tim, could you please get Richie for a moment? Ernie has brought him something.” Juan Carlos knocked on class A at snack time.
It was a Russian boy’s birthday at class P and Ernests had kindly saved a small piece of cake for Richard. Well, to be honest, the piece wasn’t that small at the beginning but it grew smaller and smaller as the four year old couldn’t resist the temptation to take one more bite.
“But he went to your class to see Ernie...”
Tim’s answer alarmed Juan Carlos. “You’re sure? He never came to our class.”
“Oh, God. I’ll ask Roger and Mario.” Tim picked up the phone.
“I’ll ask Dima and Ivan.” Juan Carlos pulled out his cell phone.
All phone calls turned out to be in vain and soon the whole school was on alert. Richard was nowhere to be seen and not a single student had seen him ever since he had walked out the door of his own classroom.
“Don’t tell me you still haven’t found him.”
Roger walked into the classroom and Tim ducked his head, not able to produce a word. He couldn’t believe that such a thing could happen right in front of his nose.
“Oh, Jesus.” The Swiss quickly scanned the classroom in desperation. His boy was missing.
“We called the police. They’ll be here at any minute.” Juan Carlos informed him but Roger didn’t even nod, running out of the classroom, determined to check all corners of the school.
The boy that Roger was desperately looking for was currently enjoying a huge ice-cream cone under the generous amount of sunlight.
“Yum!”
“Haha, it’s that good?” Andy patted him lightly on the head and saw Richard nod. Apparently, the boy was too busy to form a verbal answer.
Richard had showed him the long list of all sorts of food and told him that the winner was bolognaise spaghetti with crispy chicken salad and tomato soup. A huge glass of coke and three scoops of chocolate ice cream had to be on the dinner table as well. Andy had laughed so much that, in the end, the six year old eventually chose a meal just like any other six year old would choose. Specialties like shark’s fin soup or any other less familiar dishes had been abandoned.
When Richard was just finishing his ice-cream, both Andy and the boy heard a siren coming from the direction of the school.
“Fire?”
“No, I think that’s a police car.” Andy answered, recognizing the form of a police car in front of the kindergarten.
“Why is the police here? A bad guy came with a gun?”
“I hope not. Come on, Richie. I think we should go back.”
“Can we ask the policeman why he’s here?”
“Sure. Come on.”
The coach took the boy’s hand and hurried back to the school.
“Isn’t that Roger?” Andy frowned at the paleness of the other guy’s face as they approached the front gate.
“Dad? Where?” Richard looked at the person who was talking to one of the police officers and his face lit up.
“Daddy!”
For some reason -probably because of his good mood after having ice-cream- Richard was particularly happy to see his dad and let go of Andy’s hand.
“Richie!!” A wide-eyed Roger dropped to his knees and took his boy in his arms. He had never been so grateful all his life.
“Oh, God. Are you okay? Where were you? Why are you outside the school?”
The Swiss stopped asking questions as he saw Andy stand near them.
“Oh, you found him wandering around? Thank you, Andy. Thank you. Thank you so much.”
“Er…”
Andy didn’t have time to explain what had really happened since Roger stood up and pulled him into a strong hug.
“Thank you. I can’t thank you enough.”
“Uh… It’s fine. I’m just glad that I was passing by.” He knew that it wasn’t the most honest thing to say but he couldn’t resist the perfect opportunity to become Roger’s hero.
Everyone was relieved to have found the golden boy back except for a certain Spanish teacher. Of course, it wasn’t that he wasn’t glad to see Richard safe but he could smell that something wasn’t right. And, it was too bad that Andy could tell that Juan Carlos was suspecting him.
‘Oh, not him again. Did he used to be a private detective or something in his previous life? Why can’t he just let things go?’
But he knew better than to think about another guy while he was in Roger’s arms. Roger felt good and smelt good, just like he had pictured him for weeks.
“Really, I don’t even want to think about what could’ve happened to him. I still receive phone calls from psychopaths, threatening that they’ll kidnap my boy if I don’t send them money and I swear that hundreds of awful scenarios were running inside my head when Tim…”
“Whoa, slow down, Rog, it’s fine. He’s safe, not even a hair touched. He’s okay, back under your solid protection.”
Andy had to stop Roger from talking like a rapid-fire gun. He wasn’t a father himself but it didn’t take a genius to relate to the sheer fear of a parent, thinking of losing his child.
“It’s okay. I’m so sorry you had to be alarmed like that. I’m really sorry.”
Since all this mess had truly been his own fault, the words were sincere and Andy could only hope that Roger could somehow forgive him.
“Andy, if there’s anything I can do for you… to let you know how thankful I am, please…”
Tim, Dmitry, Juan Carlos and even Richard could all see the unmistakable glee on the American’s face.
“Well, if you insist…”
“I do. I really do.”
Andy couldn’t believe that this was happening.
“Well, it’s not like I’ll ask you anything but since you seem to insist so much…”
“Yes, Andy. Tell me, please.”
“How do you feel about having dinner with Richie and me?”
Gulp.
‘Did I just swallow hard? Me? Andy Roddick?’
The American playboy had to admit that Roger was special. For some reason, he couldn’t be himself around the Swiss. He couldn’t throw suggestive words at him to see what he thinks about him or ask him out on a proper date. He somehow couldn’t use all his experience and super special tactics that he had been accumulating to lure another human being into bed and it had been torturing him for months already.
“Sure, I’d love to have dinner with you two.”
Oh, the joy! Andy felt little bubbles of thrill go through his veins. He had been terrified for a split second that he would be kicked out of school, slapped and kicked so hardly by Roger, hunted down by the media for having taken Roger Federer’s beloved son out of school, but amazingly, he just got himself a dream date.
‘It’s all about karma! I knew that my foundation and all those charity events would pay me back like this one day! Ha!’
Suddenly feeling rather proud of himself, he wrapped his arms around Roger’s shoulders and enjoyed the hug to full extent. Life was good and God was kind for once.