Fic: What a Way to Make a Living (6-10)
What a Way to Make a Living
a crack office romance au
One (1-5) | Two (6-10)
(6/?) Three Tequila, Floor
Novak Djokovic, Maria Sharapova, ~400 words, PG-13
In which Maria proves herself a terrible friend.
"What you need," Maria had said, on Friday night when Novak had slumped on the couch after work and confessed his woes, "is a night out, to drown your sorrows," and Novak had mostly forgotten what came after that in a thick red-shot grey haze of a two-day hangover that still lingered like stubborn rainclouds around his head as he dragged himself up on Monday fucking morning. In the kitchen, Maria was singing.
"I hate you so much, sometimes," Novak said, slumping at the kitchen table.
"Sweetheart," said Maria, setting a mug of thick, bitter-black coffee at his elbow, and thus clawing back a few points in her favour. "I was not the one who suggested the second round of tequila. Or the third."
"I know you bought the first, though," said Novak, letting the pungent coffee aroma waft up, as though he could absorb caffeine through his skin, frog-like, if he only tried hard enough. "You are a bad influence."
Maria drew up a chair at the table. "In my defense," she said, "I have never seen a person so in need of tequila. You remember when Andy dumped you? You were worse than that."
"Please, yes," said Novak, with a heavy sigh, "let's run through a list of my epic romantic failures."
"I'd love to, but I really don't have that kind of time," said Maria, with a sharp grin. "And neither do you. You know you're already running late for work, right?"
"Work is dead to me," said Novak, sipping at his coffee. "Plus, it's a Monday. Roger's always late in on a Monday; he won't notice I'm not there."
"Employee of the year: Novak Djokovic," said Maria, shoving back from the table and standing. "I have to go get ready. I have a casting at midday, and I have to go make myself beautiful."
"You're already beautiful," Novak said, because it was true: Maria was always beautiful, in her glamourous model's outfits or in baggy sweatpants and a ratty t-shirt, her hair damp and dark gold.
"You're sweet," Maria said, with a smile, pressing a mint-sweet kiss to his cheek as she went past. "If you had breasts and a vagina, I'd totally date you."
"If you had a penis, you'd be my first choice, too," Novak said, fondly.
-
(7/?) Monday, Monday, can't trust that day
Novak Djokovic, Rafael Nadal, Roger Federer, Ana Ivanovic (Rafa/Novak, Roger/Rafa), ~800 words, PG-13
In which Novak's life becomes even more ridiculous than it already was.
On the train - eerily quiet and uncramped in the post-rush hour lull - his phone buzzed with a message from Ana: where r u???
Novak sighed. On train. Slept Late. Masha's fault.
Ana's answering text came back in seconds. omg u dick. of all days to be late!!!, and Novak sighed and switched his phone off, because on this Monday morning of all Monday mornings, with the dull bass thud of a headache at the back of his skull and five days of grinding tedium stretching ahead, he did not want to know - as Ana was surely dying to tell him - that Roger had come in early in a rare temper and was itching to dish out an asskicking. Some days Roger got ideas about what a boss was supposed to be like; those were the days when Novak was tempted to ditch his job and go back home to live with his parents and wait on tables for yuppie skiers.
The train rattled along the tracks and disgorged him too quickly onto the familiar platform, from which it was barely a five minute walk to the office (that Novak nonetheless managed to drag out to nearly ten, thus postponing the asskicking). He walked in with his head down, thinking, don't look at me, don't look at me, don't look at me, mentally broadcasting it with as much effort as he could muster until he dropped down at his desk. Nobody was around. Maybe if he only sat there long enough and quiet enough, they would think that he'd been there all along, maybe -
"Novak! You are late today, no?"
Fuck. "Yeah," Novak said, "the thing is, I -" Wait. That voice. He looked up.
Rafa grinned. "Hello," he said. "You look surprised?"
Novak made a valiant effort to shut his mouth. "I - you - the other guy, he said you'd lost your job -?"
"I did," said Rafa, resting his fingertips lightly on Novak's desk, and Novak saw that he was not, indeed, wearing the delivery company's tan uniform, but black trousers and a white shirt that was just a touch too big, and made him look like an overeager teenaged intern. "I lose my job, and then on the weekend I get a call from Roger, and he say he have job here, if I am looking. So now I am his - ah, PA? He is very generous, no?"
"Oh yeah," Novak choked out. "He's a fucking saint."
Rafa quirked an eyebrow, but interrupting him before he could ask Novak just what he meant by that came Roger's hearty, "Novak! You're working the afternoon shift, today?"
Novak cracked a weak half-smile and managed a bleak, "Ha, ha." It was never any use to bullshit with Roger.
Roger didn't seem too pissed, though. He didn't seem much of anything except kind of blatantly unable to take his eyes off Rafa. Novak, in fairness, could relate.
"At least now we have Rafa here to pick up the slack, right?" said Roger, mostly to Rafa. Rafa grinned shyly, ducking his head. The dull thudding at the back of Novak's skull was moving forward, spiking at his temples.
"Yeah," said Novak. "Thank God for that."
-
"Okay," Ana said, at lunch, in between picking the tomatoes out of Novak's half-hearted salad. "You confuse me. I thought you liked this guy?"
Novak said, muffled against the plastic tabletop, "I do. That's the problem."
"Uh huh," said Ana. "Nole, do you ever think maybe this is why you don't get laid more often?"
Novak raised his head, slowly, with a sigh. "Listen. The last thing I want to do all day is to watch my rich, successful boss make moves on the guy. It's like some sixties nightmare, except that Rafa isn't, you know, a pert blonde in a poodle skirt."
"And while I process that mental image," said Ana, "have you considered - it's a radical concept, I realise - actually making some moves on the guy yourself?"
"Right, right," said Novak. "You're so right, who would go for Roger when they could have me?"
Ana kicked him under the table. "Don't be such a pussy."
"Have you ever considered hooking up with Maria?" Novak grumbled, rubbing at his bruised calf. "You two are made for each other."
"Sorry," Ana said, shrugging. "For some reason, I still like guys."
"I forgot," said Novak, leaning back in his chair. "How was the date with what's-his-name?"
"Fernando," Ana said, with a little smile. "It was nice."
"'Nice'?" Novak frowned. "What does 'nice' mean?"
"It means that we sat down in a restaurant and talked to each other rather than me making huge googly eyes at him from a distance - stop throwing food at me! Nole! If you stain this blouse I'm going to fucking end you, you whore!"
-
(8/?) The King of Paperclips
Novak Djokovic, Rafael Nadal (Rafa/Novak), ~500 words, PG-13
In which Novak longs to be a queen.
"What the fuck," Novak said, pulling open the door to the storage cupboard in search of staples only to be confronted with a wall of Xerox-paper cartons.
"Stock take," said Rafa, rising up from behind the stack looking harassed and dishevelled. "I think maybe I am trapped in here."
"You have paperclips in your hair," said Novak, staring, and Rafa sheepishly reached up to untangle the little gleaming silver bits from his hair.
"There was a paperclip, uh," he said, gesturing up at the highest shelf and then making a sweeping downwards movement.
"Avalance?" Novak supplied, and Rafa nodded, "Avalanche, yes, that is a good word."
"You want some help back there?" said Novak.
Rafa looked somewhat cheered by the offer. "You are not busy?"
Novak thought about his desk and the phone that never rang and the spreadsheets that never ended, and looked at Rafa with his softly-hopeful face and the paperclips in his hair, and said, "No. Really, really no."
Rafa grinned. "Then yes, please."
"Okay." The cartons of paper made a wall across the storage cupboard that Novak traversed clumsily, dropping down into the smaller, darker space behind. "Whoa," he said, looking down at the paperclip-strewn floor. "Paperclip avalanche was right."
"Yeah," Rafa said, ruefully. He ducked down to scoop up a handful, and Novak ducked down beside him, and for a while they cleared up the carpet of silver clips and Novak tried very hard not to think about the cramped space and they way their elbows bumped together in the half-darkness.
"What are you doing?" said Rafa, after a little while, because Novak had gotten bored and started to string paperclips together into a chain.
"It's -" Novak broke off, laughing at himself and the short chain in his hands. He closed the loop with a final clip and said, "It's a necklace," and reached over to hang it around Rafa's neck. It was too short, though, lying in a circlet about his hair. "Or it's a crown, then," Novak amended.
Rafa laughed and reached up to touch his fingertips to the silver links. "What am I king of?"
"Uh - paperclips?" Novak suggested, with a smile. "You're the king of paperclips in a Xerox-paper castle."
"Does that make you the queen?" Rafa said, and Novak thought, in a blinding ridiculous flash, oh, if only.
"Nah," he said, fighting for breezy. "Jester, maybe."
"You should have a crown too, though," Rafa said, and Novak got a little distracted watching the quick movements of his long fingers as he started to string together a new chain.
"I think jesters wear hats," he said (or rather, babbled, inanely). "Hats with, you know, bells."
"Here," Rafa said, ignoring Novak to drape his paperclip crown around Novak's head. It was a little big, resting further down around his ears than Rafa's, but then Rafa's fingers brushed against the short bristles of Novak's hair as he adjusted it with care, and Novak's brain went out of service as ten thousand extra nerve endings blossomed into life everywhere that Rafa's warm fingertips fell.
"There," Rafa said, when he was finished. He grinned broadly, and Novak tried to remember to breathe.
-
(9/?) a stapler, a stapler
Novak Djokovic, Rafael nadal (Rafa/Novak), ~500 words, PG-13
In which Novak loses his stapler, and Rafa is an asshole.
"My kingdom," Novak said, distractedly, rummaging through the wreckage of his desk drawers - pencils, old papers, innumberable loose staples mocking him in useless ones and twos. "My kingdom for a fucking stapler."
"What are you king of today?" said Rafa, appearing with predictable bad timing just as Novak smacked his forehead against the edge of his desk as he plunged elbow deep into the middle drawer.
"Ow," said Novak, firstly, and then, "Today, I am the king of unbelievable messes." He rocked back on his heels, pulling out a crumpled handful of used Post-It notes which, at a glance, seemed to be mostly comprised mostly of memos to himself reading FUCK MY LIFE. He dumped them in the bin quickly, shaking stragglers off where they stuck to his fingertips.
Rafa laughed. "What are you looking for?"
"My stapler," Novak said, fishing out an ancient Mars bar wrapper from between a couple of entirely random sheets of coloured paper. "It's always on my desk. It's bright red and I used the label maker to put 'Nole' along one side and 'if you take this I will end you' in Serbian on the other side. Some asshole must have taken it. What's the matter?" he asked, because Rafa had flushed red across his ridiculous cheekbones.
"Ah," he said, "I think I am an asshole," and turned away quickly and disappeared across to his own desk, and before Novak could dash his own idiot brains out against the desk he was back, sheepishly holding out Novak's red stapler with the labels along the two long sides.
"Sorry," he said, quirking a little smile at Novak as he set the stapler down on the desk. "Roger have three on his desk and, ah, I don't read Serbian. And I no know - Nole is for you?"
"It's me," said Novak. "It's short - like Rafa for Rafael."
"Nole," Rafa said, trying out the unfamiliar word. "Your friends call you this?"
"Yeah," said Novak. Say it, he told himself, swallowing hard. Go on. "You can - I mean. You can call me that. If you, you know, want to." He shrugged, but nonchalance was a tall order when he was kneeling on the ground amongst the littered mess of his stupid life. He probably just looked insane. Rafa smiled, though, looking absurdly pleased.
"Nole," he said again. His accent made the long-familiar nickname sound new, and Novak tried hard not to blush. "I make it up to you for stealing your stapler. You go for lunch at the place next door, yes?"
"Uh," Novak said, blinking a little at the. "Sure. Yeah."
"Maybe tomorrow I buy you a sandwich?" Rafa shrugged, one-shouldered, a no-big-deal kind of gesture, but there was something almost hopeful about his expression. "Is fair deal? Sandwich for stapler?"
There was a beat's silence while Novak tried to contain the high girlish shriek forcing its way up his throat. "That sounds fair," he managed, at last, sounding only a little strangled. His fingers had curled into a vice around a biro; there was an ominous cracking noise.
"Good!" Rafa said, his smile broadening. "Tomorrow, then. You go for lunch at twelve?"
"Sure, whenever," said Novak. He seemed to be hearing himself from a distance, as though a strange imposter who talked almost like a normal human being had temporarily taken the pilot's seat while Novak's hindbrain dissolved into a shrieking, flailing mess.
"I see you tomorrow, then," said Rafa, tapping the desk briskly just once as though to finalise the arrangement.
"It's a - plan," Novak said, cutting himself off just in time before he could say it's a - don't even think it, he warned himself, don't you fucking even - date.
-
(10/?) Cocktail Hour
Novak Djokovic, Rafael Nadal, Roger Federer, Ana Ivanovic, Maria Sharapova (Rafa/Novak, Roger/Rafa, Ana/Nando, Feli/Nando, Feli/Marat), ~1800 words, PG-13
In which there are Cosmopolitans and girl talk.
"Okay," Ana said, appearing suddenly at Novak's desk at precisely one minute to five. "You. Me. Right now."
Novak blinked up at her. "Okay, but won't your boyfriend be jealous?"
Ana made a face. "First, don't even go there," she said. "Second, ew. I mean, not 'ew' like 'ew you're too gross for me', 'ew' like ' ew you're my gay best friend'. I mean," she went on, making a rolling motion with one hand as though to symbolically sweep away Novak's mounting mental trauma, "drinks! You and me, drinks, now."
"When you put it so nice, how can I possibly resist?" said Novak, rolling his eyes.
"Whatever. Come on, let's go." She bounced a little on the balls of her feet, looking like a tall, stunning, overexcited puppy.
"It's not even five yet, Ana," Novak protested.
"Your computer isn't even on," she shot back, leaning over his desk to check the monitor, which was blank. She checked her little pink wristwatch, crowing, "And now it's five. Come on, drinks."
"Your alcoholism is disturbing," Novak said, gathering his stuff together and shrugging into his jacket. "Okay. Just give me a minute to go check with Roger, then I'll be back."
Roger's office door was half-open, and he and Rafa were standing together at his desk (maybe just a fraction too close) as Roger pointed out some facet of the sheaf of papers spread out over the smooth polished surface. They both looked up as Novak cleared his throat and tapped lightly on the door, Rafa with a smile, Roger's smile following half a second behind a quickly-smothered look of annoyance at the interruption.
"I'm heading home now, unless you need anything," Novak said.
"No, no," Roger said, with a dismissive wave of his hand, as though to hurry Novak out of the room. "You can go. See you tomorrow."
"See you tomorrow," Rafa echoed.
They looked disgustingly good together, thought Novak. Fuck, Ana was right, he needed a drink.
-
Ana slipped her arm into Novak's as they left the building, clipping along beside him in her heels that brought her head height to him so that she could lean in and gleefully whisper into his ear, "A little birdy told me you have a lunch-date tomorrow!"
Novak groaned. "God! How do you even know that?"
"Please," said Ana. "There is a cottage industry in gossip in this office, Nole. Someone emailed it to me about thirty seconds after he asked you."
"What is it that you actually do, again?"
"Anyway," said Ana, neatly sidestepping the question, "we are going for drinks, and you are going to tell us all about it, and then we're going to brief you on how to not fuck this up, okay?"
"Who is the 'we' in this sentence?" said Novak.
Ana snorted and squeezed Novak's arm. "As if I wasn't going to call Maria and tell her about something this good. She's meeting us at the bar."
-
Maria was already snugly tucked into a quiet alcove of the bar when Novak and Ana arrived.
"Hi!" she said, springing up to give Ana a quick one-armed hug and two-cheeked kiss, and to hit Novak on the shoulder. "Why didn't you text me about this, you jerk?"
"Because it's lunch," Novak protested, holding an arm across his body to ward off further attack. "Because it was a stupid - he stole my stapler, so he said he'd buy me lunch to make up for it. It's not a date."
"It's a start," said Maria, dropping back down into the plush leather seat. She shoved a cocktail at him across the shiny black tabletop. "Here, drink your Cosmo, tell us everything."
"You are kidding, right?" Novak nudged the shallow-bowled glass, the pink liquid sloshing inside. "God, Maria, could you have bought me a more homosexual drink?"
"Nole, I think when you start seeking out men to put your dick in, you can stop worrying about whether a pink drink is going to tip the scales of your gayness," she snapped back, and Ana snorted a sip of her own Cosmopolitan.
"Alright," Novak said, taking full advantage of the diversion and rounding on her. "Fair exchange: before I spill my guts, you spill yours."
"Me?" Ana said, with an expression of wide-eyed innocence that Novak had seen far too many times before to buy.
"Yes, you," he said. He took a sip of his drink; it was cranberry-flavoured and sweet and delicious, and he hated Maria. "I want to hear about Fernando before I tell anything. That's the deal."
"Oh, come on," Ana said, rolling her eyes, "I'm a lady, I don't kiss and - actually," she amended, tone changing, raising one immaculately-manicured finger to point at Novak, "you might be able to help me with something."
Novak shrugged. "What?"
"Okay, so, the thing is," Ana said, slowly, glancing between Novak and Maria and pausing to take a fortifying sip of her drink before she carried on, "the thing is, Fernando's great. He's really great. And the sex is -"
"- none of my business," Novak interrupted, getting a swift stilettoed jab from Maria for the trouble.
Ana made a face. "Well anyway, we get along really well except for - I don't even know how to say this - but he has this, I don't know, this really intense relationship with his roommate."
"Guy or girl?" said Maria and Novak, simultaneously.
"Guy," said Ana. "His name is Feliciano and he's - seriously, he's something to see. But every time I'm there he and Fer have these screaming fights - and I don't speak Spanish, so I don't know what they fight about, it could be the groceries - but then Feliciano goes and locks himself in the bathroom and I swear I hear him crying in there. And then he goes out and brings home this insanely hot Russian guy and they have unbelievably hot sex in the next room all night long."
"How do you know he's Russian?" Maria asked.
"Because I can hear him shouting through the wall," Ana said, with a grimace. "And because we all sat down to the world's most awkward breakfast on Sunday and when I came into the kitchen he said 'morning, beautiful', and slapped my ass."
"Ana," Novak said, staring at her in mingled wonder and horror. "What is your life?"
Ana put her head in her hands and groaned. "God, I know, right? How does this even happen to me?"
Maria reached out and put a consoling hand on Ana's wrist. "Do you think Fernando is secretly in love with Feliciano?"
Novak wondered if he should mention how much that sounded like the gay subplot of a South American soap opera, and decided against it in favour of more Cosmo.
"I don't know!" Ana threw her hands up in disgust, then reached for her own drink. "Anyway, so what I was thinking is, why doesn't Novak do some recon with Rafa for me?"
Novak snorted cranberry-flavoured alcohol, and gasped out, blinking back tears, "Wait, what?"
"They're really good friends from way back," Ana said. "Couldn't you just ask him whether he's ever liked guys?"
"Oh yeah," Novak snorted. "'Thanks for lunch, Rafa. By the way, your friend Fernando who's seeing my friend Ana, does he also like cock?'"
"I was thinking a little more subtle than that," said Ana, dryly, while Maria hid a flood of giggles behind a hand. "But essentially, yeah."
"I'm not even close to drunk enough for this conversation," Novak sighed, herding the empty cocktail glasses together with one hand and reaching for his wallet with the other.
-
When he got back to the table, balancing the drinks (three Cosmos, because it was half-price cocktail hour, and also because shut up), Ana and Maria were sat close together, heads bent close over something on Maria's iPhone.
He set the drinks down carefully on the table. "What are you doing?"
They both looked up. Maria thumbed the screen blank in a quick movement. "Nothing," she said, too brightly.
"I'm withholding the alcohol until you tell me what you're scheming," Novak said, dragging the tray closer to his side of the table.
"It was Ana's idea," Maria said, quickly leaning over to liberate her cocktail and bring it safely over to her side of the table.
"It's your stupid iPhone," Ana said, aiming a bedraggled cocktail umbrella at Maria. "If you must know, Nole, we were facebook-stalking your boyfriend."
"Because I don't even know what he looks like," Maria said, picking up the thread, "and I have to base my advice to you on how attractive he is."
"Why do I even know you?" Novak said, and then, after a respectable pause of a second or two, "Did you find him?"
Maria grinned, pulling out her iPhone with the pink sparkly cover that Novak always refused to touch. "I found three Rafael Nadals, tell me which one is him."
Novak scooted closer to Maria on one side while Ana crowded in close on the other, Maria's glossy blonde hair a screen around the phone until Ana held it back on one side, Novak the other.
Maria found the facebook page, and lifted the phone closer to Novak so that he could see. "Okay, which one is it?"
"Fuck," said Novak, squinting at the stupidly tiny pictures, "I need my glasses."
"Wait, it's this one, isn't it," said Ana, pointing at something on the screen while Novak rummaged in his pockets for the stupid fucking glasses.
"This one?" Maria said. "With the hot girl?"
"Hot girl?" Novak finally found his reading glasses in his jacket pocket and shoved them on, peering down at the picture Ana indicated. Rafa grinned back up at him, as did the pretty, dark-haired girl whose head was tipped against Rafa's shoulder, his arm curved protectively around her. "Oh my God. He has a girlfriend?"
"Wait, wait," Ana warned. "What's his relationship status?"
"It's a private profile," Maria said, shaking her head. "Name, profile picture, that's about it. It could be his sister?"
"Does that look like a fucking sister?" Novak said, slumping back against the leather seat. "Oh my God, he has a girlfriend."
"He has a hot girlfriend," Maria said, peering down at the picture. "I mean, seriously. I mean - poor baby," she amended, turning to put a hand on Novak's shoulder, kneading it in what was probbaly supposed to be a soothing manner. "Oh, Nole."
"I'll get more drinks," said Ana, leaping into action despite the fact that the three glasses were still all full. Novak did not protest.
"Look on the bright side, though," said Maria, as Ana hurried off to the bar, and rubbed Novak's back in huge soothing circles as he put his forehead down against the cool marble table and groaned aloud. "At least now you know he's not banging your boss, right?"
-
a crack office romance au
One (1-5) | Two (6-10)
(6/?) Three Tequila, Floor
Novak Djokovic, Maria Sharapova, ~400 words, PG-13
In which Maria proves herself a terrible friend.
"What you need," Maria had said, on Friday night when Novak had slumped on the couch after work and confessed his woes, "is a night out, to drown your sorrows," and Novak had mostly forgotten what came after that in a thick red-shot grey haze of a two-day hangover that still lingered like stubborn rainclouds around his head as he dragged himself up on Monday fucking morning. In the kitchen, Maria was singing.
"I hate you so much, sometimes," Novak said, slumping at the kitchen table.
"Sweetheart," said Maria, setting a mug of thick, bitter-black coffee at his elbow, and thus clawing back a few points in her favour. "I was not the one who suggested the second round of tequila. Or the third."
"I know you bought the first, though," said Novak, letting the pungent coffee aroma waft up, as though he could absorb caffeine through his skin, frog-like, if he only tried hard enough. "You are a bad influence."
Maria drew up a chair at the table. "In my defense," she said, "I have never seen a person so in need of tequila. You remember when Andy dumped you? You were worse than that."
"Please, yes," said Novak, with a heavy sigh, "let's run through a list of my epic romantic failures."
"I'd love to, but I really don't have that kind of time," said Maria, with a sharp grin. "And neither do you. You know you're already running late for work, right?"
"Work is dead to me," said Novak, sipping at his coffee. "Plus, it's a Monday. Roger's always late in on a Monday; he won't notice I'm not there."
"Employee of the year: Novak Djokovic," said Maria, shoving back from the table and standing. "I have to go get ready. I have a casting at midday, and I have to go make myself beautiful."
"You're already beautiful," Novak said, because it was true: Maria was always beautiful, in her glamourous model's outfits or in baggy sweatpants and a ratty t-shirt, her hair damp and dark gold.
"You're sweet," Maria said, with a smile, pressing a mint-sweet kiss to his cheek as she went past. "If you had breasts and a vagina, I'd totally date you."
"If you had a penis, you'd be my first choice, too," Novak said, fondly.
-
(7/?) Monday, Monday, can't trust that day
Novak Djokovic, Rafael Nadal, Roger Federer, Ana Ivanovic (Rafa/Novak, Roger/Rafa), ~800 words, PG-13
In which Novak's life becomes even more ridiculous than it already was.
On the train - eerily quiet and uncramped in the post-rush hour lull - his phone buzzed with a message from Ana: where r u???
Novak sighed. On train. Slept Late. Masha's fault.
Ana's answering text came back in seconds. omg u dick. of all days to be late!!!, and Novak sighed and switched his phone off, because on this Monday morning of all Monday mornings, with the dull bass thud of a headache at the back of his skull and five days of grinding tedium stretching ahead, he did not want to know - as Ana was surely dying to tell him - that Roger had come in early in a rare temper and was itching to dish out an asskicking. Some days Roger got ideas about what a boss was supposed to be like; those were the days when Novak was tempted to ditch his job and go back home to live with his parents and wait on tables for yuppie skiers.
The train rattled along the tracks and disgorged him too quickly onto the familiar platform, from which it was barely a five minute walk to the office (that Novak nonetheless managed to drag out to nearly ten, thus postponing the asskicking). He walked in with his head down, thinking, don't look at me, don't look at me, don't look at me, mentally broadcasting it with as much effort as he could muster until he dropped down at his desk. Nobody was around. Maybe if he only sat there long enough and quiet enough, they would think that he'd been there all along, maybe -
"Novak! You are late today, no?"
Fuck. "Yeah," Novak said, "the thing is, I -" Wait. That voice. He looked up.
Rafa grinned. "Hello," he said. "You look surprised?"
Novak made a valiant effort to shut his mouth. "I - you - the other guy, he said you'd lost your job -?"
"I did," said Rafa, resting his fingertips lightly on Novak's desk, and Novak saw that he was not, indeed, wearing the delivery company's tan uniform, but black trousers and a white shirt that was just a touch too big, and made him look like an overeager teenaged intern. "I lose my job, and then on the weekend I get a call from Roger, and he say he have job here, if I am looking. So now I am his - ah, PA? He is very generous, no?"
"Oh yeah," Novak choked out. "He's a fucking saint."
Rafa quirked an eyebrow, but interrupting him before he could ask Novak just what he meant by that came Roger's hearty, "Novak! You're working the afternoon shift, today?"
Novak cracked a weak half-smile and managed a bleak, "Ha, ha." It was never any use to bullshit with Roger.
Roger didn't seem too pissed, though. He didn't seem much of anything except kind of blatantly unable to take his eyes off Rafa. Novak, in fairness, could relate.
"At least now we have Rafa here to pick up the slack, right?" said Roger, mostly to Rafa. Rafa grinned shyly, ducking his head. The dull thudding at the back of Novak's skull was moving forward, spiking at his temples.
"Yeah," said Novak. "Thank God for that."
-
"Okay," Ana said, at lunch, in between picking the tomatoes out of Novak's half-hearted salad. "You confuse me. I thought you liked this guy?"
Novak said, muffled against the plastic tabletop, "I do. That's the problem."
"Uh huh," said Ana. "Nole, do you ever think maybe this is why you don't get laid more often?"
Novak raised his head, slowly, with a sigh. "Listen. The last thing I want to do all day is to watch my rich, successful boss make moves on the guy. It's like some sixties nightmare, except that Rafa isn't, you know, a pert blonde in a poodle skirt."
"And while I process that mental image," said Ana, "have you considered - it's a radical concept, I realise - actually making some moves on the guy yourself?"
"Right, right," said Novak. "You're so right, who would go for Roger when they could have me?"
Ana kicked him under the table. "Don't be such a pussy."
"Have you ever considered hooking up with Maria?" Novak grumbled, rubbing at his bruised calf. "You two are made for each other."
"Sorry," Ana said, shrugging. "For some reason, I still like guys."
"I forgot," said Novak, leaning back in his chair. "How was the date with what's-his-name?"
"Fernando," Ana said, with a little smile. "It was nice."
"'Nice'?" Novak frowned. "What does 'nice' mean?"
"It means that we sat down in a restaurant and talked to each other rather than me making huge googly eyes at him from a distance - stop throwing food at me! Nole! If you stain this blouse I'm going to fucking end you, you whore!"
-
(8/?) The King of Paperclips
Novak Djokovic, Rafael Nadal (Rafa/Novak), ~500 words, PG-13
In which Novak longs to be a queen.
"What the fuck," Novak said, pulling open the door to the storage cupboard in search of staples only to be confronted with a wall of Xerox-paper cartons.
"Stock take," said Rafa, rising up from behind the stack looking harassed and dishevelled. "I think maybe I am trapped in here."
"You have paperclips in your hair," said Novak, staring, and Rafa sheepishly reached up to untangle the little gleaming silver bits from his hair.
"There was a paperclip, uh," he said, gesturing up at the highest shelf and then making a sweeping downwards movement.
"Avalance?" Novak supplied, and Rafa nodded, "Avalanche, yes, that is a good word."
"You want some help back there?" said Novak.
Rafa looked somewhat cheered by the offer. "You are not busy?"
Novak thought about his desk and the phone that never rang and the spreadsheets that never ended, and looked at Rafa with his softly-hopeful face and the paperclips in his hair, and said, "No. Really, really no."
Rafa grinned. "Then yes, please."
"Okay." The cartons of paper made a wall across the storage cupboard that Novak traversed clumsily, dropping down into the smaller, darker space behind. "Whoa," he said, looking down at the paperclip-strewn floor. "Paperclip avalanche was right."
"Yeah," Rafa said, ruefully. He ducked down to scoop up a handful, and Novak ducked down beside him, and for a while they cleared up the carpet of silver clips and Novak tried very hard not to think about the cramped space and they way their elbows bumped together in the half-darkness.
"What are you doing?" said Rafa, after a little while, because Novak had gotten bored and started to string paperclips together into a chain.
"It's -" Novak broke off, laughing at himself and the short chain in his hands. He closed the loop with a final clip and said, "It's a necklace," and reached over to hang it around Rafa's neck. It was too short, though, lying in a circlet about his hair. "Or it's a crown, then," Novak amended.
Rafa laughed and reached up to touch his fingertips to the silver links. "What am I king of?"
"Uh - paperclips?" Novak suggested, with a smile. "You're the king of paperclips in a Xerox-paper castle."
"Does that make you the queen?" Rafa said, and Novak thought, in a blinding ridiculous flash, oh, if only.
"Nah," he said, fighting for breezy. "Jester, maybe."
"You should have a crown too, though," Rafa said, and Novak got a little distracted watching the quick movements of his long fingers as he started to string together a new chain.
"I think jesters wear hats," he said (or rather, babbled, inanely). "Hats with, you know, bells."
"Here," Rafa said, ignoring Novak to drape his paperclip crown around Novak's head. It was a little big, resting further down around his ears than Rafa's, but then Rafa's fingers brushed against the short bristles of Novak's hair as he adjusted it with care, and Novak's brain went out of service as ten thousand extra nerve endings blossomed into life everywhere that Rafa's warm fingertips fell.
"There," Rafa said, when he was finished. He grinned broadly, and Novak tried to remember to breathe.
-
(9/?) a stapler, a stapler
Novak Djokovic, Rafael nadal (Rafa/Novak), ~500 words, PG-13
In which Novak loses his stapler, and Rafa is an asshole.
"My kingdom," Novak said, distractedly, rummaging through the wreckage of his desk drawers - pencils, old papers, innumberable loose staples mocking him in useless ones and twos. "My kingdom for a fucking stapler."
"What are you king of today?" said Rafa, appearing with predictable bad timing just as Novak smacked his forehead against the edge of his desk as he plunged elbow deep into the middle drawer.
"Ow," said Novak, firstly, and then, "Today, I am the king of unbelievable messes." He rocked back on his heels, pulling out a crumpled handful of used Post-It notes which, at a glance, seemed to be mostly comprised mostly of memos to himself reading FUCK MY LIFE. He dumped them in the bin quickly, shaking stragglers off where they stuck to his fingertips.
Rafa laughed. "What are you looking for?"
"My stapler," Novak said, fishing out an ancient Mars bar wrapper from between a couple of entirely random sheets of coloured paper. "It's always on my desk. It's bright red and I used the label maker to put 'Nole' along one side and 'if you take this I will end you' in Serbian on the other side. Some asshole must have taken it. What's the matter?" he asked, because Rafa had flushed red across his ridiculous cheekbones.
"Ah," he said, "I think I am an asshole," and turned away quickly and disappeared across to his own desk, and before Novak could dash his own idiot brains out against the desk he was back, sheepishly holding out Novak's red stapler with the labels along the two long sides.
"Sorry," he said, quirking a little smile at Novak as he set the stapler down on the desk. "Roger have three on his desk and, ah, I don't read Serbian. And I no know - Nole is for you?"
"It's me," said Novak. "It's short - like Rafa for Rafael."
"Nole," Rafa said, trying out the unfamiliar word. "Your friends call you this?"
"Yeah," said Novak. Say it, he told himself, swallowing hard. Go on. "You can - I mean. You can call me that. If you, you know, want to." He shrugged, but nonchalance was a tall order when he was kneeling on the ground amongst the littered mess of his stupid life. He probably just looked insane. Rafa smiled, though, looking absurdly pleased.
"Nole," he said again. His accent made the long-familiar nickname sound new, and Novak tried hard not to blush. "I make it up to you for stealing your stapler. You go for lunch at the place next door, yes?"
"Uh," Novak said, blinking a little at the. "Sure. Yeah."
"Maybe tomorrow I buy you a sandwich?" Rafa shrugged, one-shouldered, a no-big-deal kind of gesture, but there was something almost hopeful about his expression. "Is fair deal? Sandwich for stapler?"
There was a beat's silence while Novak tried to contain the high girlish shriek forcing its way up his throat. "That sounds fair," he managed, at last, sounding only a little strangled. His fingers had curled into a vice around a biro; there was an ominous cracking noise.
"Good!" Rafa said, his smile broadening. "Tomorrow, then. You go for lunch at twelve?"
"Sure, whenever," said Novak. He seemed to be hearing himself from a distance, as though a strange imposter who talked almost like a normal human being had temporarily taken the pilot's seat while Novak's hindbrain dissolved into a shrieking, flailing mess.
"I see you tomorrow, then," said Rafa, tapping the desk briskly just once as though to finalise the arrangement.
"It's a - plan," Novak said, cutting himself off just in time before he could say it's a - don't even think it, he warned himself, don't you fucking even - date.
-
(10/?) Cocktail Hour
Novak Djokovic, Rafael Nadal, Roger Federer, Ana Ivanovic, Maria Sharapova (Rafa/Novak, Roger/Rafa, Ana/Nando, Feli/Nando, Feli/Marat), ~1800 words, PG-13
In which there are Cosmopolitans and girl talk.
"Okay," Ana said, appearing suddenly at Novak's desk at precisely one minute to five. "You. Me. Right now."
Novak blinked up at her. "Okay, but won't your boyfriend be jealous?"
Ana made a face. "First, don't even go there," she said. "Second, ew. I mean, not 'ew' like 'ew you're too gross for me', 'ew' like ' ew you're my gay best friend'. I mean," she went on, making a rolling motion with one hand as though to symbolically sweep away Novak's mounting mental trauma, "drinks! You and me, drinks, now."
"When you put it so nice, how can I possibly resist?" said Novak, rolling his eyes.
"Whatever. Come on, let's go." She bounced a little on the balls of her feet, looking like a tall, stunning, overexcited puppy.
"It's not even five yet, Ana," Novak protested.
"Your computer isn't even on," she shot back, leaning over his desk to check the monitor, which was blank. She checked her little pink wristwatch, crowing, "And now it's five. Come on, drinks."
"Your alcoholism is disturbing," Novak said, gathering his stuff together and shrugging into his jacket. "Okay. Just give me a minute to go check with Roger, then I'll be back."
Roger's office door was half-open, and he and Rafa were standing together at his desk (maybe just a fraction too close) as Roger pointed out some facet of the sheaf of papers spread out over the smooth polished surface. They both looked up as Novak cleared his throat and tapped lightly on the door, Rafa with a smile, Roger's smile following half a second behind a quickly-smothered look of annoyance at the interruption.
"I'm heading home now, unless you need anything," Novak said.
"No, no," Roger said, with a dismissive wave of his hand, as though to hurry Novak out of the room. "You can go. See you tomorrow."
"See you tomorrow," Rafa echoed.
They looked disgustingly good together, thought Novak. Fuck, Ana was right, he needed a drink.
-
Ana slipped her arm into Novak's as they left the building, clipping along beside him in her heels that brought her head height to him so that she could lean in and gleefully whisper into his ear, "A little birdy told me you have a lunch-date tomorrow!"
Novak groaned. "God! How do you even know that?"
"Please," said Ana. "There is a cottage industry in gossip in this office, Nole. Someone emailed it to me about thirty seconds after he asked you."
"What is it that you actually do, again?"
"Anyway," said Ana, neatly sidestepping the question, "we are going for drinks, and you are going to tell us all about it, and then we're going to brief you on how to not fuck this up, okay?"
"Who is the 'we' in this sentence?" said Novak.
Ana snorted and squeezed Novak's arm. "As if I wasn't going to call Maria and tell her about something this good. She's meeting us at the bar."
-
Maria was already snugly tucked into a quiet alcove of the bar when Novak and Ana arrived.
"Hi!" she said, springing up to give Ana a quick one-armed hug and two-cheeked kiss, and to hit Novak on the shoulder. "Why didn't you text me about this, you jerk?"
"Because it's lunch," Novak protested, holding an arm across his body to ward off further attack. "Because it was a stupid - he stole my stapler, so he said he'd buy me lunch to make up for it. It's not a date."
"It's a start," said Maria, dropping back down into the plush leather seat. She shoved a cocktail at him across the shiny black tabletop. "Here, drink your Cosmo, tell us everything."
"You are kidding, right?" Novak nudged the shallow-bowled glass, the pink liquid sloshing inside. "God, Maria, could you have bought me a more homosexual drink?"
"Nole, I think when you start seeking out men to put your dick in, you can stop worrying about whether a pink drink is going to tip the scales of your gayness," she snapped back, and Ana snorted a sip of her own Cosmopolitan.
"Alright," Novak said, taking full advantage of the diversion and rounding on her. "Fair exchange: before I spill my guts, you spill yours."
"Me?" Ana said, with an expression of wide-eyed innocence that Novak had seen far too many times before to buy.
"Yes, you," he said. He took a sip of his drink; it was cranberry-flavoured and sweet and delicious, and he hated Maria. "I want to hear about Fernando before I tell anything. That's the deal."
"Oh, come on," Ana said, rolling her eyes, "I'm a lady, I don't kiss and - actually," she amended, tone changing, raising one immaculately-manicured finger to point at Novak, "you might be able to help me with something."
Novak shrugged. "What?"
"Okay, so, the thing is," Ana said, slowly, glancing between Novak and Maria and pausing to take a fortifying sip of her drink before she carried on, "the thing is, Fernando's great. He's really great. And the sex is -"
"- none of my business," Novak interrupted, getting a swift stilettoed jab from Maria for the trouble.
Ana made a face. "Well anyway, we get along really well except for - I don't even know how to say this - but he has this, I don't know, this really intense relationship with his roommate."
"Guy or girl?" said Maria and Novak, simultaneously.
"Guy," said Ana. "His name is Feliciano and he's - seriously, he's something to see. But every time I'm there he and Fer have these screaming fights - and I don't speak Spanish, so I don't know what they fight about, it could be the groceries - but then Feliciano goes and locks himself in the bathroom and I swear I hear him crying in there. And then he goes out and brings home this insanely hot Russian guy and they have unbelievably hot sex in the next room all night long."
"How do you know he's Russian?" Maria asked.
"Because I can hear him shouting through the wall," Ana said, with a grimace. "And because we all sat down to the world's most awkward breakfast on Sunday and when I came into the kitchen he said 'morning, beautiful', and slapped my ass."
"Ana," Novak said, staring at her in mingled wonder and horror. "What is your life?"
Ana put her head in her hands and groaned. "God, I know, right? How does this even happen to me?"
Maria reached out and put a consoling hand on Ana's wrist. "Do you think Fernando is secretly in love with Feliciano?"
Novak wondered if he should mention how much that sounded like the gay subplot of a South American soap opera, and decided against it in favour of more Cosmo.
"I don't know!" Ana threw her hands up in disgust, then reached for her own drink. "Anyway, so what I was thinking is, why doesn't Novak do some recon with Rafa for me?"
Novak snorted cranberry-flavoured alcohol, and gasped out, blinking back tears, "Wait, what?"
"They're really good friends from way back," Ana said. "Couldn't you just ask him whether he's ever liked guys?"
"Oh yeah," Novak snorted. "'Thanks for lunch, Rafa. By the way, your friend Fernando who's seeing my friend Ana, does he also like cock?'"
"I was thinking a little more subtle than that," said Ana, dryly, while Maria hid a flood of giggles behind a hand. "But essentially, yeah."
"I'm not even close to drunk enough for this conversation," Novak sighed, herding the empty cocktail glasses together with one hand and reaching for his wallet with the other.
-
When he got back to the table, balancing the drinks (three Cosmos, because it was half-price cocktail hour, and also because shut up), Ana and Maria were sat close together, heads bent close over something on Maria's iPhone.
He set the drinks down carefully on the table. "What are you doing?"
They both looked up. Maria thumbed the screen blank in a quick movement. "Nothing," she said, too brightly.
"I'm withholding the alcohol until you tell me what you're scheming," Novak said, dragging the tray closer to his side of the table.
"It was Ana's idea," Maria said, quickly leaning over to liberate her cocktail and bring it safely over to her side of the table.
"It's your stupid iPhone," Ana said, aiming a bedraggled cocktail umbrella at Maria. "If you must know, Nole, we were facebook-stalking your boyfriend."
"Because I don't even know what he looks like," Maria said, picking up the thread, "and I have to base my advice to you on how attractive he is."
"Why do I even know you?" Novak said, and then, after a respectable pause of a second or two, "Did you find him?"
Maria grinned, pulling out her iPhone with the pink sparkly cover that Novak always refused to touch. "I found three Rafael Nadals, tell me which one is him."
Novak scooted closer to Maria on one side while Ana crowded in close on the other, Maria's glossy blonde hair a screen around the phone until Ana held it back on one side, Novak the other.
Maria found the facebook page, and lifted the phone closer to Novak so that he could see. "Okay, which one is it?"
"Fuck," said Novak, squinting at the stupidly tiny pictures, "I need my glasses."
"Wait, it's this one, isn't it," said Ana, pointing at something on the screen while Novak rummaged in his pockets for the stupid fucking glasses.
"This one?" Maria said. "With the hot girl?"
"Hot girl?" Novak finally found his reading glasses in his jacket pocket and shoved them on, peering down at the picture Ana indicated. Rafa grinned back up at him, as did the pretty, dark-haired girl whose head was tipped against Rafa's shoulder, his arm curved protectively around her. "Oh my God. He has a girlfriend?"
"Wait, wait," Ana warned. "What's his relationship status?"
"It's a private profile," Maria said, shaking her head. "Name, profile picture, that's about it. It could be his sister?"
"Does that look like a fucking sister?" Novak said, slumping back against the leather seat. "Oh my God, he has a girlfriend."
"He has a hot girlfriend," Maria said, peering down at the picture. "I mean, seriously. I mean - poor baby," she amended, turning to put a hand on Novak's shoulder, kneading it in what was probbaly supposed to be a soothing manner. "Oh, Nole."
"I'll get more drinks," said Ana, leaping into action despite the fact that the three glasses were still all full. Novak did not protest.
"Look on the bright side, though," said Maria, as Ana hurried off to the bar, and rubbed Novak's back in huge soothing circles as he put his forehead down against the cool marble table and groaned aloud. "At least now you know he's not banging your boss, right?"
-