ATP Kindergarten (Chapter 18)
Title: ATP Kindergarten
Main pairings: Djokovic/A. Murray, Gasquet/Gulbis, Nadal/Del Potro, Ancic/Bolelli
Other characters: J. Murray, Cilic, Monfils, Querrey, Henman, Ferrero, Safin, Tursunov, Chardy
Rating: G
Warning: Possible destruction of innocence
Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters and this is a fiction.
Summary: The boys do a fire drill and enjoy a Halloween lunch while Marin gets a good impression from the new boy in school.
From the previous chapter:
Heavy rain had flooded a part of the tennis hall and Mario had asked Simone to fix the water pipes only to find out that the students worshipped his boyfriend even though he couldn’t fix human beings like himself. Simone had reassured him that the boys would soon go back to treating him like god and Mario had been secretly relieved.
Chapter 18: How to watch out for nasty flames
Exactly a week later, Simone was back at the kindergarten with his mighty toolbox. Dmitry’s super laptop had broken down and since the owner was in no shape to teach his class, Mario had to call Simone immediately.
“How does it look?”
The Russian teacher’s voice trembled. Perhaps his laptop got attacked by a nasty virus that was incurable with an anti-virus program.
“Is it because I downloaded a lot from those P2P websites?”
He hoped that his precious collection of sexy videos would stay unharmed. He had spent so much time, effort and money to complete such a high-quality collection.
“I’m afraid I can’t tell you much at the moment. It looks like it’s going to take me a while.”
Simone answered as he picked up the laptop. The headmaster had told him that he could use the empty desk in the teachers’ office if he needed space to work.
“Come on. I’ll show you where the teachers’ room is.”
Mario headed for the door with his boyfriend’s toolbox in his hand and Simone followed him after telling Dmitry that he would do his best.
“Wow, if God has problem fixing it, you’re screwed, Teacher.” Gael said as he helped Sam with his new LEGO gas station.
“Don’t say that, Gael.”
It was Andy who protested faster than Dmitry. He had just about calmed his boyfriend down who was about to burst into tears at the disappointment of not being able to talk to his mother on webcam and Gael’s words weren’t helpful.
“You want me to kiss you again?” Andy asked as he saw Novak’s face fall once more.
“Eww, can’t you guys do that in a corner or something?”
Gael rubbed the goose bumps off his arms. He couldn’t believe that such an unromantic boy like Andy could say such a horribly romantic thing.
“This is our classroom. If you have a problem with it, go back to your own, Ass boy.” The Scottish boy was clearly in a bad mood.
“Andy, no need to call him that to his face.” Sam sided with his roommate.
“What…?” Andy’s jaw dropped.
“Ahahaha…”
Jamie laughed at his brother’s shocked face. He probably hadn’t seen the day coming when Sam would stand up for someone else other than him.
“Shut it, Jamie.” Andy gritted his teeth.
“Bwahaha!” Jamie’s laughter only got louder and Novak felt like the tables had turned.
Chu. Chu.
Before Gael and Jamie could look the other way, he quickly kissed both cheeks which made Andy feel a whole lot better.
“Thanks, Nole.” Andy smiled.
“No problem!” Novak smiled back, ignoring the puking sounds that the two Ass boys were making.
R-ring.
The bell announced that the break was over which meant that Jamie and Gael had to go back to their classroom.
“See you later at lunch.” Jamie patted Sam on the cheek and now it was Andy’s turn to make a dying sound.
“Okay, boys. Get your math books out.” Dmitry spoke in a drained voice. He could only hope that Simone would appear with some great news later on.
Half an hour later, Mario was watching his boyfriend get a seriously intimate hug from his Russian colleague.
“Ahem.” He cleared his throat, hoping that Dmitry would find another way to continue showing his appreciation or just stop showing his appreciation.
“Somebody’s jea~lous.” Rafael sang and Richard giggled.
“Oh, please, boys. I don’t need to be jealous.” Mario said with his arms tightly folded across his chest.
He wasn’t jealous; he just didn’t approve of the way Dmitry thanked his savior. A hot cup of tea with some warm words of thanks would have been nicer than jumping on him and telling him the long and boring story about how he had first met the shiny laptop a few months ago.
“Simone, would you like some caramels?”
Andy asked the Italian and when Mario took a glance at the three milk caramels on the Scottish boy’s palm, he could officially declare that he was jealous.
“You can’t do that! It took me two dozen bandages to get three cara…” The physiotherapist zipped his mouth, regretting that he had talked too much.
Seriously, had that boy just used a polite form of speech starting with ‘would you like’? He remembered how there had been no question whatsoever when he had first earned his three milk caramels. He had just finished wrapping Andy’s big toe when he saw that the boy had pulled caramels out of his pocket and put three of them on his palm before holding out his hand. Despite the lack or words, it had been one of Mario’s proudest moments in this school and now it was about to be heavily compromised.
“Now somebody is real~ly jea~lous.” Rafael continued with his song and Richard’s giggle got louder.
“Thanks, handsome. Do you mind if I share them with my boyfriend?” Simone brought himself down to meet Andy’s eye level.
“Bah, not really.”
Andy looked up at Mario who happily opened his mouth to get a caramel from his divine boyfriend. The way Simone pushed one of the caramels into the Croatian’s mouth looked just like how he did things with Novak.
“Oh, they look just like us, nom nom.”
The Serbian boy commented as he finished chewing on a caramel. He felt much better now that he could talk to his mother again.
“Yeah, I was thinking the same thing.”
“Aww, brain twin moment!”
The boys shared a high-five and Andy picked up a pen to get to work with Find the hidden picture on the cover of the caramel box.
“I found the banana!”
Novak let out a cheerful sound and Andy quickly drew a circle around the spot where his boyfriend was pointing. Things were going back to normal in classroom T.
“Children, you remember I talked about the fire drill all week?”
“Yes, Teacher Juanqui.”
“Well, as I’ve been telling you, we are going to have it right now instead of PE.”
Classroom P got noisy at Teacher Juan Carlos’ words. Unlike class A and T, the newcomers of the school had been given the exact date and time of the fire drill to give them time to prepare themselves, but apparently, it couldn’t stop the chaos and worried murmurs ran through the classroom.
“Boys! It’s just practice. You are not going to see real fire and nobody will get hurt in any kind of way, okay?”
Some students nodded but some of them still had an expression of doubt on their faces.
“For those who forgot how it works, I’ll explain it one last time.”
The Spanish teacher explained how Ivan’s wife, Aida, would ring the fire alarm in the hall and Coach Marat would play the role of the flames for class P. Since the classroom was on the first floor, they would stand in line and follow Marin’s lead to get out safely through the front door and eventually arrive at the front gate where Coach Roger would be waiting for them with a stopwatch.
“Ah…”
Marin looked down at the fluorescent yellow flag that was sticking out of his drawer. He knew that all he had to do was to grab the flag and run until he saw the front gate with the flag high above his head, but it felt like a huge responsibility to be one of the leading boys in an emergency. He and Ernests had recently changed seats because the Latvian boy had been complaining about the sunshine making his freckles get darker. Now that he was sitting right next to the front door, he knew that the teacher had even more reasons to pick him.
“Don’t worry. You’ll do fine. You run fast.” Ernests made Karlis pat his friend on the shoulder.
“Thanks, Ernie.”
Marin smiled and paid attention to his teacher’s instructions. They were supposed to ask him questions if they were still unsure of anything and had to write or draw themselves getting safely out of the classroom.
“I wish we could just run out of the class already.”
Juan Martin pouted as he didn’t feel like drawing today. This morning, he had woken up even later than usual and had to see the tired look on Rafael’s face. He had muttered a small ‘sorry’ and the Spanish boy had smiled and had gently ruffled his hair, but he didn’t want Rafael to think of him as a baby boy who could never wake up on his own.
“Juma, what’s wrong?”
Juan Carlos tried to get the Argentinean boy’s attention after he had helped Ernests choose colors for the flames. The long-haired boy was holding an orange crayon, staring at the empty sketchbook.
“Nothing.”
Juan Martin shook his head and started to draw the fire. He was going to pay yet another visit to Mario’s office after lunch.
Twenty minutes had passed and Juan Carlos checked the clock before asking, “Ready, children?”
“Ready!”
Ernests and Marin both took a deep breath as they waited for the siren to go off. They could see Coach Marat looking inside from the hall, ready to storm into the classroom at any moment.
“He looks… creepy.” The Latvian boy shuddered. Marat looked delighted to get inside and scare them.
“Yeah. I think I can run really fast now.” Marin grabbed the edge of the desk and eyed the front door.
Meanwhile, in class A, Rafael was looking at the clock that was right above the blackboard. They were told that there was going to be a fire drill today, and by experience, he knew that it always happened right before lunch.
In this class full of six year olds, Rafael was the leading boy. He had always been the one since he was four years old so he wasn’t really nervous but there was something different this time; their classroom was on the second floor now which meant that they had to get to the ground through the two emergency tunnel slides on the wall that was facing the playground.
‘So, I grab the flag, run to the first slide and try not to get stuck inside there. Very easy, no? I’ve been on slides in the playground for years.’
Confident that he could lead his classmates to the front gate safely enough, Rafael took a glance at Tim who was busy writing down new English words that they had to learn for the weekend.
“Ah, I wish we were still five. We didn’t have homework last year, no?”
Richard nodded right next to him and was about to say something when the siren went off.
R-riing!
“Eek!”
The Swiss boy jumped up from his seat and ran to the first slide. Rafael had just jumped inside it and a boy had followed him.
“Gah! Run for your lives, kids!”
Mario, who was playing the part of the flames for class A, walked into the classroom, trying to look scary.
“Oh no, Mr. Flames! We don’t want to die!”
Gael chuckled before getting inside the slide and Mario could tell that the boys weren’t frightened at all. This was a very serious drill and he knew that he had to do his job better.
“Gaaah!! I am dangerous! Run away from me!”
Tim rubbed the side of his face at the horrendous act. There was a reason why Mario was a physiotherapist and not an actor despite his good looks.
“Teacher Tim! Jamie doesn’t want to get in the slide!”
A boy’s voice made the headmaster run to the second slide at the back of the classroom.
“What’s wrong, Jamie?”
“I have a lunch date with Sam later and I don’t want my hair to get messy.”
“Huh?” Tim couldn’t understand what the slide had to do with his hair.
Jamie pointed at where his hair was lightly touching the top of the slide. He was a tall boy for a six year old and his impossibly high hair only made him taller.
“Gah! I’m coming for Jamie!”
Mario started thumping towards the second slide after sticking a red post-it to a Swedish boy’s shoulder and that was when Jamie gave up on his hair and disappeared through the slide. He didn’t want to get the ‘I’m burnt!’ post-it and make Sam think that he was slow enough to get caught by Mario.
‘Ho… at least, one boy finds me scary.’
The Croatian flattered himself while Tim threw a few mattresses outside the window to jump out as soon as the last kid went inside the slide. The evacuation was almost done.
In class T, most of the boys had left the classroom and were running towards the front gate with Novak running in front as fast as he could, one hand holding the flag up high and the other one tightly holding his boyfriend’s hand.
Sam was running right behind them with one of the baby wipes over his nose and mouth, pretending that he had just escaped from a fire scene with thick smoke. He even let out a few coughs to complete his acting.
‘I wonder how Jamie’s doing.’
The American boy turned his head as soon as he stood in front of Roger. He could see a tall boy with huge hair running fiercely.
“Bwahaha, look at my bro.”
Andy laughed at his brother’s hilarious form and made sure that his own hair didn’t look that disastrous. He wanted to look stylish even in times of emergency.
“You look great, Andy. And I think we ran faster than the wind this time!” Novak clapped his hands.
“Yeah! I think we’re getting faster and faster.”
Chu. Chu.
Andy kissed both cheeks of his boyfriend and waited for the slower boys to arrive.
However, there was a poor soul in the building who couldn’t afford to look stylish at a similar moment of emergency.
Splash.
It happened so suddenly that Marat didn’t have time to back away or put his arms over his face. It just happened.
“Fair enough. I’m destroyable with water.”
The Russian coach shook his head and wiped water off his face while the last student to evacuate gave Juan Carlos two thumbs up before running out of the classroom. He had been dedicated to his role of flames and after using his share of post-its on some of the kids, he had gone after the teacher only to get a bowl of water splashed in his face.
“Why in hell do you keep a huge bowl of water under your desk? Are you into some sort of crazy rituals or something?”
Marat was annoyed that water drops kept dripping from his hair no matter how many times he shook his head.
“No. I remembered that you had played this same prank to Tim last year. Given your modus operandi, I thought you’d do it again.”
Marat let out a sound similar to a growl of a lazy bear that had lost a honey jar to Winnie the Pooh.
“Next year, I’ll think of something different. And, I hope I’ll get to scare the A boys again. It’s always easier to make Tim freak out rather than you.”
Juan Carlos grinned and lightly jumped over the window with the squirrel cage in one hand.
“There’s a clean towel in the cabinet, Mr. Flames. And, don’t forget to mop the floor. We don’t want any kids to slip.”
Marat groaned once more before heading to the cabinet. It sucked to be flames.
“Teacher Dima, one more please!”
Sam raised his hand to get another one of those yummy eyeball tacos. They were having a special Halloween lunch in the hall after a successful fire drill and he had already enjoyed a coffin sandwich and a piece of zombie meatloaf.
“This is really good!”
Gael dived into his pumpkin pancake while Richard and Ernests were trying some of the cocktail sausages that were disguised as monster toes.
“Oh, these look like toes of the monster that lives under my bed.” Ernests observed, picking up another toe from the plate.
“Acck!”
A horrible sound came from right next to the Latvian boy. Juan Martin was choking on a hard-boiled egg ghost that was on the haunted forest platter.
“Are you okay?”
The Argentinean boy nodded, not sure what hurt more; the piece of egg slowly going down his throat or Ernests’ helping hand pounding his back.
“I don't think I chewed the egg twenty times. My mom said I will get a chick in my belly if I don’t. This is horrible, no?”
Juan Martin was worried. He had always been careful not to eat his eggs too fast but with all the nervous running during the fire drill, he had been awfully hungry.
“Ah, you should go see Mario. Last week, I swallowed a cherry seed and he fixed me so I won’t have a cherry tree growing inside me.” Ernests recommended his friend the best doctor he knew in town.
“You won’t get a chick or a cherry tree. Science doesn’t work that way.”
An unfamiliar voice made the four year olds look up.
“Who are you?” Marin asked.
The mysterious boy had just done the job that he used to do; helping his classmates see the light. Perhaps he wasn’t the only one in the school who was familiar with science.
“He’s our new student, Jeremy Chardy. He’ll be studying with us in class T from next week.”
Tim smiled, happy to show the French boy and his mother around the school.
‘Class T. That means he’s one year older than me.’
Marin watched the new boy leave the hall with two monster toes. He couldn’t wait to find out what next week would bring.