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The first time they hook up, Roy pauses mid-thrust to say, “This is a one-time thing, got it? I’m still messed up over Keeley.”
Jamie’s had all the air fucked out of him, and Roy’s got him pinned like a bug, both legs folded over his shoulders, but he manages to gasp, “You really want to have this conversation now? While you’re balls-fucking-deep?”
Roy stares at him for another minute – fucking unsettling, from such close range – then agrees, “Yeah, alright. Conversation over,” and resumes pounding.
***
Jamie’s been the rebound shag before, plenty of times. He likes to think that on the balance he’s caused more people to require rebound shags than served as one himself, but he likes casual sex and it gets him hot when he knows someone’s just using him for his body, which is pretty much a great flashing beacon for women getting sloppy sloshed drinking off breakups in bars – with the added allure of getting to brag to their ex that they’ve hooked up with Jamie Tartt, the Premier League’s resident slutbag – so by the by he’s probably losing on that statistic.
It's never really bothered him in the past. And then Roy Kent – a man he’s always admired, whose poster he’d had on his wall as a kid, who he’d thought was becoming a friend – gets out of bed and starts throwing clothes at Jamie’s head to hurry him out the door, and suddenly it feels like – maybe he’s so prolific at rebound shags because he’s not worth anything else.
Or maybe he’s just being melodramatic.
“Out,” Roy orders, pegging a box of tissues at his head – which Jamie catches, obviously, but it’s still fucking rude. “I’m tired. I want to go to fucking sleep.”
Jamie rolls his eyes and wipes come off his stomach and makes all the appropriate snipes about Roy being older than fucking dirt on his way out the door, because he’s a professional footballer and pretending everything’s right as rain even though you feel like shit ninety percent of the time is part of the job description – but he does feel like shit. It feels like utter and complete shit, sitting on the steps in front of Roy’s flat at three in the morning and seeing the light go off inside, waiting for a fucking Uber to come and pick him up – and not just because Roy did such a number on his arse that sitting is sort of uncomfortable.
Which is not to say that he wouldn’t do it all again, if Roy asked. Because Keeley wasn’t too far off the mark when they were dating, when she’d jokingly accused him of pulling Roy’s pigtails for reasons that went beyond a healthy competitive spirit. Roy and Jamie sitting in a tree, she’d sing-songed, shrieking and kicking while he tried to smother her with a pink fluffy pillow, f-u-c-k-i-n-g.
And later, when she was straddling his stomach, having whooped his ass with the Jamie Tartt body pillow he’d bought her as a gift that she hated with a vengeance and only brought out for ass-whooping occasions, she’d said, I’m sorry for making fun. It would be alright, you know. If you did have a thing for him. Not if you actually cheated on me, obviously, but – I wouldn’t mind.
Jamie wasn’t really big on talking about his emotions, back then. Still isn’t, but he thinks he’s getting better. He’d thought, though – with Keeley’s small, comforting weight settled on him, her forehead all twisted up and concerned – if he couldn’t be honest with his girlfriend, who pegged him sometimes and never thought he was any less of a man after it, then who could he be honest with?
I just want him to be proud of me, he admitted, hot-faced. Is that – weird?
So yeah. Keeley wasn’t far off the mark at all.
***
Right before Colin officially came out to the team, there had been a minor misunderstanding that almost turned into a major international incident due to a mutual inability to communicate, whereby Trent Crimm had tried to offer words of solidarity and support and been so circumspect and mysterious about it that Colin had thought he was threatening to out him.
Jamie had ended up having to jump between Trent and Zava’s fist, which had led to a lot of yelling and the truth coming out in a very dramatic fashion, which had led to them taking Trent out for drinks to apologize and somehow landing at a lesbian bar.
RICHMOND GAY ICONS, declared Buzzfeed the next morning – and the Independent, slightly more eloquently, AFC RICHMOND SIGNALS ALLYSHIP WITH LGBTQ+ COMMUNITY, which Jamie thinks had been more or less the idea. He’s not a hundred percent sure – they’d gotten fairly pissed in the locker room once the tension broke, so things were a bit fuzzy, but he remembers Colin confessing sadly that he’d never even been to a gay bar, and the rest of them resolving that they would all get photographed as a human shield so that Colin could live his best rainbow life and none of the journos would know which one of them was actually gay, except Jan Maas – in a rare moment of something less than brutal and unflinching command over the English language – had asked their Taiwanese Uber driver to take them to a girl bar instead of a gay bar, and enough had got lost in translation that they ended up at a place called Knockers, where the drinks had names like Baby Butch and Madam & Eve and the girls only gave a shit about them inasmuch as they were strong enough to put them up on their shoulders and form a double-decker conga line.
Jamie had half-expected Rebecca Welton to be furious – there was such a thing as bad press, at least in football, and Jamie’s stint on Lust Conquers All had driven that point home for him – but instead she’d banned The Sun, The Daily Mail and The Daily Telegraph from her press room for the less-than-supportive stories they’d printed, issued credentials to Gay Times Magazine despite the fact that they hadn’t asked for any and didn’t seem to want them, then gathered the team quite intimately and seriously in her office to tell them that anyone engaging in hateful speech would be removed from all their home matches, and that if any journos gave them any trouble they were to refer them immediately to her.
“I’m just – “ she’d said, starting to get a bit choked up and misty in that tight, straight-backed way posh ladies did, “I’m so very proud of you all. Of the team you’ve become.”
At which point Roy showed up at the door to yell, “Why is no one on the fucking pitch when we’ve got fucking training!” which was the perfect excuse they needed to file out fast instead of standing around awkwardly watching Rebecca cry.
Overall, the backlash wasn’t much worse than when they’d gotten relegated, though obviously the arseholes tearing into them on Twitter were a worse breed of arsehole this time around. Instead of worrying about it, most of them swore off socials for a few weeks and let Keeley run things, just really drilled down in training, and it was – nice, mostly. Jamie’s never had friends he could really, actually trust like he trusts this team, and it’s nice to know that if they found out he occasionally liked to get railed by hairy, growly men, none of them would start spewing homophobic slurs at him. He definitely couldn’t have said as much for his Man City squad.
And that’s at the back of his mind, always – that as fucking loud as they chant Richmond til we die, he could lose this at any moment, if Rebecca decides to trade him again. He might not even have any warning. Just – off you get, Jamie, and every major relationship in his life lost in an instant.
So it doesn’t really matter what the team would think of his personal life, because he doesn’t have time for a personal life. Everything is resting on football. Everything relies on his ability to perform. Like Dani says, Fútbol is life. Fucking literally.
And then, of course, there’s Roy.
***
The second time they hook up, they’ve just lost a match to fucking Villa.
Roy grabs Jamie by the collar as he’s coming off the pitch and steers him into an empty hallway like he’s scruffing a puppy. “What the fuck was that?” he demands, shouting. “I thought we were fucking past all this!”
Jamie twists free just to glare at him. He already knows he fucked up – he knew it as soon as he made the split-second decision to take the shot on goal instead of pass. He doesn’t need Roy to rub his face in it. “Fuck off,” he mutters, and tries to shove past.
“You’re fucking better than this,” Roy growls, getting in his face.
Jamie’s whole body flinches.
He knows, of course, that Roy’s not going to hit him. Roy’s not the sort of person who would hit someone for losing a match. But there’s a big difference between some rival player yelling at him in the locker room and a coach yelling at him for being stupid – and an even bigger difference still between a coach and someone whose cock he’s had inside him, and he just – he forgets, for a second, and he flinches.
For a minute it’s dead silent in the hallway. The team’s stomped off to the locker room to mope, escorted by Ted and Coach Beard. Above them, fans are filtering out of the stadium, off to get drunk and beat each other up at secondary locations.
It takes a second to click, for Roy, but when it does Jamie can see it on his face. He looks like he’s had a bucket of ice water dumped on his head. “I wasn’t,” he starts, voice rough. “I wouldn’t – ”
“I know,” Jamie assures him, not meeting his eyes. “Just leave it, yeah?”
“No. No, I’m not going to fucking leave it.”
Jamie blows out an irritated breath and looks up at him. Roy’s staring at him like he’s got laser vision and he’s trying to drill a hole through Jamie’s head. It’s his concerned look. “Let me drive you back to the hotel,” he says.
Jamie makes a face. Pity’s the fucking worst. “Look. You don’t have to get all like – touchy-feely just because my lizard brain thought you were gonna smack me.”
“Your lizard brain,” Roy echoes.
“Yeah,” Jamie says defensively. It’s real – he heard it on one of Isaac’s psychology podcasts.
“Your animal hind-brain, you mean.”
“I don’t think so,” Jamie says. “Pretty sure it’s lizard brain.”
“Fuck’s sake.” Roy looks at the ceiling like there might be something up there about to kill him and put him out of his misery. “Get your fucking things. I’m driving you.”
And what Jamie really wants isn’t to argue. What he really wants is to find a janitor’s closet, somewhere private where he can sneak his hands under Roy’s jacket and feel the heat of his body and let Roy hold him for a while, until he stops carrying the weight of the match – the suffocating pressure, the sick apocalyptic dread that he’s fucked everything up and there’s no way to fix it, the naked vulnerability of having everyone in the world realize he’s not as good as they thought he was. He knows it’s pathetic and stupid and that Roy wouldn’t do it even if Jamie had the words to ask, but Roy wants to drive him back to the hotel, and he figures – next best thing, sort of.
So he goes to the locker room, gets clapped on the back by Isaac and Sam and Dani and glared at by Zava, hears the tail end of Ted’s pep talk that has nothing at all to do with football – they never fucking do – then grabs his things and follows Roy out to his car. The ride back to the hotel is short, and they don’t talk. Roy puts on a radio station that’s mostly playing ABBA, which seems to be the only fucking channel in Birmingham that isn’t doing match recaps. Jamie thinks about complaining; doesn’t. The car smells like Roy. Jamie’s maybe less cool about the fact that they fucked than he’s trying to be.
In the elevator, Roy hits the button for six and says, “Floor?”
“Six,” Jamie lies.
He follows Roy to his room. He’s pretty sure Roy knows he’s following him to his room. At the door Roy stops and turns to say, “Look, I’m sorry I yelled, I shouldn’t have, but if you’re coming up here to fucking murder me – ”
Jamie presses him against the door and kisses him. Hard.
Roy doesn’t make a sound. He just opens his mouth under Jamie’s and lets him do what he wants, his hands on Jamie’s hips, beard scratchy against Jamie’s face. The problem is Jamie doesn’t really know what he wants – he wants to sink into Roy the same way he sinks into a warm bath or into his unmade bed after a long night, but that doesn’t make any sense, so instead he makes a pleading, frustrated noise in his throat and fists his hands in Roy’s shirt.
“Alright,” Roy tells him, like he’s soothing a spooked horse. “Alright, I’ve got you – but just this once,” and reaches behind them to unlock the door.
***
Ever since the Knockers thing, Jamie’s dad has been texting him every couple days just to call him slurs. It’s essentially the same frequency as he was texting him before – any time he’s drunk, if Jamie had to guess – but before he was just nagging him for tickets or money or telling him he was soft, and now it’s – worse. He’s thought, once or twice, about referring him immediately to Rebecca, like she told them to, but he’s not sure her offer applies to his own dad. He’s also thought about flat-out denying what his dad’s assuming, because he didn’t technically come out and he’s not technically gay, but even just the idea makes him feel guilty and bad and like he’d be saying he thinks it’s wrong, when it’s not and he doesn’t, and it’s just – it’s complicated. So he ignores the texts when they come in, and it’s fine.
Except this time he’s still drooling on Roy’s bed mostly unconscious when the texts start coming, his whole body tingling with the aftermath of a good thorough pounding, and he doesn’t even hear the phone buzzing.
Roy does.
Roy groans and says, “I’ve got to do fucking everything around here,” leaning out of bed to snag Jamie’s phone from his trackies, and as he comes back up – abdominal muscles bunching under the dark mat of his chest hair – he frowns and looks at the screen and goes very, very still.
“Jamie,” he says, low and tense, “why’s your fucking piece of shit dad texting you?”
Jamie’s too blissed out to argue when Roy grabs his thumb to open the fingerprint lock. The real world seems very far away. He’s going to have beard burn between his shoulder blades, where Roy buried his face – he can feel the raw pink skin – and coming felt sort of like a purge, like puking everything up after a dodgy night out, and Roy hasn’t kicked him out yet. All he wants to do is sprawl here a while longer, in Roy’s room, where Roy is in charge of everything, including Jamie, and he doesn’t have to think or worry or – be better.
“He’s drunk,” Jamie explains, while Roy – presumably – scrolls through his text thread with his dad. “Just trying to get me to hit back at him.”
“Why don’t you block his fucking number?”
Jamie shrugs as best he can still lying on his stomach. “He’s my dad, isn’t he? What if he was – I dunno, dying in fucking hospital or something?”
“Then he’d be fucking dying,” Roy says, unsympathetic. “He can’t talk to you like this. It’s no fucking excuse just because he’s drunk. If he was drunk and he hit you, it would still be fucking child abuse.”
“Well, he hits me all the time,” Jamie mutters, hiding his face in Roy’s pillows. “Not just when he’s drunk. So.”
He’s not sure what point he’s proving by saying that, he’s just – talking to talk, he guesses. It feels good telling Roy shit. Roy’s gotten plenty angry with him about plenty of things, over the years, but he’s never been mad at him for telling the truth. And he still remembers, can’t ever forget, probably – the mortifying, silent aftermath of decking his dad in the face, when Beard had escorted the bastard out and the rest of the team was just staring at him, not saying anything, how he’d been standing there alone with his hand throbbing and Roy had marched across the locker room and yanked him into a hug, held him and stood with him while he totally fucking lost it. It all feels tied up together, now – Roy, his dad, that safe and protective male presence that Jamie never had growing up that he always wished he did.
Freudian, Keeley’d probably tell him, not that he ever understood what that fucking meant. She always called him Freudian whenever he wanted to suck her tits more than usual, which wasn’t fucking fair – lots of blokes probably wanted to suck them, they were nice fucking tits.
Nice fucking tits, Jamie has to remind himself, that Roy’s going to go back to, as soon as he gets his head on straight and emerges from whatever this mid-life crisis is that’s got him in bed with Jamie.
Roy sighs and puts Jamie’s phone on the nightstand. “I don’t fucking like it,” he says.
Jamie rolls over, nudging him with his foot. “Come over here and show me how much you don’t fucking like it,” he prods, thinking they’re going to argue some more and maybe Roy will rough him up about it, in a sexy way. Instead Roy crawls over him, like lowering a roof down over a roofless house, warm and sheltering and blocking out the sky, and if Jamie could make half the things he thinks in his head come out his mouth properly he’d be a fucking poet – but all he can do, when Roy glares and ducks to kiss him again, is claw at him and grapple his legs around his waist and beg with his body because he doesn’t know how with his words.
***
Can’t train today, Roy texts, around three thirty. Knee’s fucked. Sorry.
Jamie’s already up doing his pre-run stretches, buzzed on caffeine and electrolyte gummies. He’s eaten two Clif bars, which are fucking disgusting, because they’re the only thing he can stomach this early, and his whole body feels shaky and cold because he’s gotten up before the fucking sun. Outside the rain is coming down in sheets, but he’s committed. He’s got rain clothes and a cap to put over his headlamp – no way he’s pussying out.
whats roy need when his knees fucked, he texts Keeley, then kits up and heads out, taking the route to Roy’s house that will take him past a 24-hour Tesco.
Keeley hasn’t texted him back by the time he makes it there, dripping rain through the front doors into the aircon and the white fluorescents, but that’s fair. It’s barely four thirty and Jamie would still be asleep too, if he could. Luckily he knows enough about muscle and bone and what it’s like when they hurt that he can guess on a few things – Tiger Balm, some ice packs, a compression sleeve, a bottle of paracetamol and some vodka to wash it down with. He jams it all in his drawstring bag, takes his jacket off and puts it back on overtop, so nothing gets wet – then hesitates as he’s leaving the register and circles back for a pack of jaffa cakes.
Roy takes one look at him, standing in the door with his Tesco shopping bag, the rain still thundering in pitch darkness behind him, and heaves the biggest, most put-upon sigh Jamie’s ever heard. “Fine,” he says, “fucking get in here – you can do pushups while I take an ice bath.”
“Sexy,” Jamie remarks, and follows him in.
Roy takes the shopping bag from him and dumps it out on the kitchen counter while Jamie strips in the entryway, trying not to drip everywhere. “I have all of this,” he tells Jamie, sorting through. “You think this is the first time this has happened? It’s every time it fucking rains. I have ice packs.”
“Hey,” Jamie protests, “I’m trying to be helpful and shit.”
Roy finds the jaffa cakes and pauses. “Okay. I didn’t have these.”
“See?” Jamie peels off his shirt and drops it on the floor with a splat. “Helpful.”
“And shit,” Roy agrees.
Keeley texts Jamie back while Roy’s in his ice bath, Jamie in the hallway outside doing push-ups on command. He swaps to one arm to pick up his phone, and sees that she’s included only two list items. Jaffa cakes! And blowjobs. xoxoxo
ha fckn ha, Jamie replies, because Keeley doesn’t know they’re fucking. She can’t know they’re fucking, because Jamie hasn’t told her and Roy wouldn’t tell her, and they’re the only two that know. There’s no need for anyone else to know, because it’s not real. It’s just – fun. Just Jamie helping Roy work through his issues, before he gets back with who he’s really supposed to be with.
“Bicycles!” Roy hollers from the bathroom.
Bicycles are the fucking worst. Jamie groans, “Fuuuuuuck you,” with as much teenage melodrama as he can muster, and gets on his back.
***
The next time it rains, Jamie finds Roy after Ted calls an end to training. He’s sitting in his and Trent’s shared office with his foot up on the overturned trash bin, eyes closed, holding himself very, very still in a way that means he’s in an incredible amount of pain and moving would just make him puke.
Jamie checks across the way to make sure the kit room’s empty, that Will’s not lurking around in the shadows, then waits for the hallway to clear out, lets himself into Roy’s office and wheels him across the hall – over his protests – without ever making him get up. “What the fuck, Tartt,” Roy growls, but he doesn’t get out of the chair to come at him or anything, which is probably another sign.
“Relax, grandad.” Jamie locks the door, pulls the blind over the window. “It was fucking freezing out there, everyone’s going to be in the showers for a bloody hour.”
“You should hit the showers then,” Roy tells him, jaw tight, “before they use up all the hot water.”
“No,” Jamie says.
Roy finally manages to look at him. “No?”
Jamie kneels in front of him. He has to position himself over to the side, because Roy’s holding his bad knee at a weird angle, but he moves the chair around until he’s more or less between his legs, face to face with his crotch.
“Jamie,” Roy says warningly. He’s still tense enough it looks like his head’s going to shoot off his neck, but for a different reason now. “We’re at fucking work.”
“Are you saying you don’t want me to blow you?” Jamie checks.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” Roy mutters, almost to himself, then decides, “No. Fuck. I’m not saying that. But if we get fucking caught – ”
Jamie rolls his eyes and opens Roy’s pants.
He’s got a lot of experience when it comes to shagging – not bragging or anything, just stating facts – but everything he does with Roy feels new somehow. Different. Maybe it’s because Roy’s loomed so large in his life for so long, but Jamie wants simultaneously to impress him and to not have to impress him, for Roy to want him even when he’s pathetic and soft and fucking up. He gets twisted up in knots every time one of them starts to get naked, and it doesn’t make sense at all, because it’s just Roy. It’s just sex. It shouldn’t be complicated. But it’s Roy and it’s sex and somehow together they’re – important. To Jamie, at least.
So it should feel lewd and cheap, kneeling on the floor of the kit room letting Roy get hard and thick and hot in his mouth, holding the chair instead of Roy’s legs to keep it from rolling away. It should feel like getting used when Roy yanks his headband off so he can pull on his hair, when he starts fucking up into Jamie’s mouth in these abortive, needy little thrusts, blocking his air, but instead it feels like he’s offering a service. It’s weirdly intimate, like it means something that Roy’s letting him do this.
Doesn’t hurt that it’s fucking hot, too.
Roy’s barely making any noise, Jamie can tell that he’s trying not to, but he can’t help the short, breathy moans, barely loud enough for even Jamie to hear. He doesn’t use any of the showy, fashionable colognes that Jamie and the rest of the team do, he just smells like him – cold sweat, warm skin, and a hint of old leather, so good that Jamie wants to close his eyes and go to sleep. Or come in his fucking shorts. Or both.
“Fuck,” Roy mutters, one hand on the side of Jamie’s face. His thumb rubs over Jamie’s notched eyebrow, over his temple, proprietary. “Look at you. Good boy.”
Coming in his fucking shorts it is.
***
Later, Jamie’s thighs tremble, muscles wrung out from training as he sinks into Roy’s lap in Roy’s bed.
Roy gets impatient with the delicate show Jamie’s making of taking his cock, grabs his hips and growls, “Sit,” and hauls him down, and Jamie’s coming before he’s even flush with Roy’s hips, moaning and shuddering and striping Roy’s chest with come.
“I don’t usually have a hair trigger,” he swears when he comes back to himself, panting and braced on the mattress, still seated on Roy’s dick. “Fuck. I never come this fast.”
“Sure you don’t,” Roy agrees, disbelieving.
It rankles a little – not Roy poking fun at his sexual prowess, that’s just razzing, but the fact that he doesn’t believe him, because it’s true. Jamie hasn’t come like this, this fast, since he was a fucking teenager.
But Roy touches him, and he just – loses it.
***
They start screwing regularly.
It’s still just casual, still no strings attached, but Jamie’s lizard brain is having a hard time getting with the program, because the more they fuck the more it feels like they should be a done deal. Roy should be his. Jamie shouldn’t be counting down the days until Roy decides to throw him over for Keeley, not when he’s had his fingers inside Roy’s body and he’s got a KENT sweatshirt at home, but that’s not the agreement they made. Granted, the agreement they made has already been broken – but still.
Roy knows him better than he’s ever let anyone know him – better than anyone’s ever wanted to, aside from Keeley – mostly because he doesn’t seem to give a shit if Jamie doesn’t want him to know something. He’s like the fucking all seeing eye, apparently – at least when it comes to people he’s sleeping with.
Jamie’s got no secrets left, pretty much. It makes him feel naked and nervous and sort of violated, but also – peaceful, he thinks. Like – normally when he walks into a room he has to make sure he’s acting right, that he’s not too mopey or too worried or too soft, even if it’s just him and the team, but when he’s with Roy he doesn’t have to think about any of that. Roy knows what he looks like sobbing for cock, when he turns bright red from his belly button to his scalp, sweaty and desperate; he knows that when Jamie’s brain is working overtime after a bad match, what he really needs isn’t to go out with the lads but to be taken home and put face-down over the bed and rimmed until he’s got fucking beard burn on the inside and he can’t remember his own name. He knows that sometimes Jamie lashes out because Roy’s anger is easier to bear than his disappointment, that when he messes up sometimes all he wants is to be smacked so it can be over, that the only way to deal with him when he’s like that is to not listen, not engage, just stick around and weather it. He knows that rum gives him the shits and that he gets his downstairs waxed once a month and that when he feels sick to his stomach he likes to wet his hair and stick his head in the freezer, letting all the cold air out; he knows that Jamie sometimes cries when he’s on the phone with his mum, he misses her so much, that he has a big house and he’s proud of having it, proud that he can look after himself and his mother, but he hates living alone.
There are some things that he doesn’t know, because he’d have no way of knowing unless Jamie told him. He doesn’t know that looking at him feels like coming home, not in that sappy way that doesn’t really mean anything but in a real, concrete way, like lying in his childhood bed at age seven, ten, thirteen, looking up at Roy Kent’s official Chelsea team poster. He knows that Jamie’s not sleeping with anyone else – they gave up on condoms a while ago – but he doesn’t know it’s because Jamie went out to the club to try and pick someone up and literally couldn’t do it, found a girl who was interested and got her into a dark corridor in back and felt like his hands weren’t really his when he put them on her body, that he got right back in his car and drove straight to Roy’s and it wasn’t until he let himself in with his key and climbed the stairs to the bedroom and slid into bed that his hands felt like his own again, because they were on Roy. Feeling Roy, rolling into him, wrapping around him in grumbly sleep.
So yeah – he doesn’t lie to Roy about much, anymore, even if there are some things he doesn’t tell him. Like, for instance, that he’s so gone on him it’s embarrassing – or that he has the fucking yips.
***
A few of the lads know – Isaac, Dani, Colin and Sam, but not Jan Maas because Jan Maas cannot keep a secret to save his fucking life.
It’s pretty much impossible to hide a case of the yips from your coaches if you haven’t got help, and Jamie knows from experience that there are only two rules to having the yips: one, don’t ever fucking say the word “yips,” or you’ll never get rid of them, and two, don’t let the coaches know what’s going on. There are a lot of superstitions, a lot of ideas, but getting rid of the yips is like getting rid of hiccups – no one really knows what they’re doing, and sometimes, in extreme cases, there’s nothing to be done. The best thing to do is work through it yourself before the coaches can find out and bench you, because you might never come back from the fucking bench.
Ted’s different, probably. Jamie doesn’t think he’d bench him and then leave him there to die just for having some problems, but he doesn’t think he can fix him, either.
So – secret training sessions in the dead of night.
Isaac shows up with reading glasses and a bunch of sports psychology books, Dani has a solemn look on his face like he’s going to a funeral, and Colin’s got a sheet of LSD, in case all else fails. “Rewires your neural pathways, doesn’t it,” he tells Jamie, in a tone that would sound wise if he weren’t fucking Colin. “We can totally erase everything you know about football – and then train you back up again. Like a little baby.”
“Tabula rasa,” Isaac agrees, nodding.
Jamie stares at them in alarm.
Sam’s late, but he turns out to be the only helpful one out of the four of them – because he brings Zava.
It feels a lot like showing his soft vulnerable underbelly to an apex predator, so Jamie’s initial fucking instinct is to run for the hills, but before he can do that Zava puts one enormous hand on his head like he’s holding a basketball and says, “I will help you climb the Everest that is in your heart,” and it’s a load of bullshit just like everything out of Zava’s mouth, but Jamie figures if he’s willing to get photographed at Knockers for Colin then he’s probably willing to hide Jamie’s yips from the coaches. And besides, he's got experience or whatever. Maybe he knows what he’s doing.
“I have cured many men of this before!” Zava announces, when they’re out on the dark pitch. None of them could figure out how to get the big lights on, but they’ve got their cars all parked with their headlights aimed at the field, so they can sort of see. Zava’s drilling ball after ball straight at Jamie’s legs, so he has to figure out how to receive the pass or dance out of the way like a fucking pussy, and mostly he’s just getting nailed in the knees but he thinks it might be starting to work.
“I will fix you, Little Tartt!” Zava promises, like a fucking knight swearing he’s going to rescue a damsel or something.
Jamie’s not wild about the nickname, but so far he can’t really argue with the results. An hour ago he couldn’t run with the ball without tripping over it, and now he can take it to the goal, at least.
Not that he can hit the goal, but – that’s what passing’s for. If the alternative is missing wider than anyone’s ever missed and embarrassing himself on national TV, he can suck it up and fucking pass to Zava.
Sam claps him on the shoulder, looking out over the pitch strewn with balls. “I think you are getting better,” he says.
“Slowly but surely, amigo!” Dani agrees – slightly more tired than usual, but still peppy.
“Sure,” Jamie mutters. “Slowly but fucking surely.”
It doesn’t feel right, though. He knows that progress is sometimes like this, in football, that it can come in the form of inches instead of strides, that not everything is a breakthrough. But every second he’s broken like this, he feels – hunted, nervous, like he’s running out of time, about to get caught. Football is the only thing he has, the only thing he can do, and if he doesn’t have that – and he sure as shit doesn’t have it right now – then he’s nothing. If he can’t get it back, he’s nothing. And these lads, they’re good friends, they’re good for helping him, but if he can’t get back to being one of the best, if he gets benched or traded away, then they’re gone too.
Roy’s parked in his driveway when he gets home.
It’s still an hour until four, and they haven’t even got training scheduled for this morning, which means he must be here for a fuck. Jamie’s not sure he’s up for it after the emotional beating he just took, but while he’s getting out of his car trying to think of an excuse that’s not I don’t feel sexy right now, Roy climbs out of the Land Rover and says, “I’ve been out here for a fucking hour. Why don’t I have a key?”
Jamie stops. “Er. Because it’s my house?”
“You’ve got a key to my flat,” Roy points out.
“Look, I think I’ve got a headache – ”
“I’m not here for that.” Roy looks sort of uncomfortable, which is hard to spot on him but Jamie’s getting better at it. Shoulders higher than usual, not quite meeting your eyes. “I couldn’t sleep. The bed felt too fucking empty.”
Jamie just stands there for a minute, staring at him.
It means something, probably, that Roy drove across London in the middle of the night to stand here on Jamie’s front stoop. It means something that sometimes Jamie can’t sleep either, for the same reason.
“Yeah,” he says, “yeah, alright,” and unlocks the door.
***
There’s a charity something or other two days before their next match. Jamie decides to wear a shirt under his jacket because he’s feeling modest, and also because it’s fucking chilly. He shares a car with Isaac and Colin, arrives fashionably late, shakes hands and lets photographers flash their fucking cameras at him and doesn’t actually enjoy posing, for once in his life.
Across the room, Roy’s getting his photo taken with Keeley. They look fucking good together, his hand on her teeny waist, her head on his shoulder. Keeley’s smiling and laughing while Roy helps her cut through the crowd to the bar, letting him steer her, because he’s not moving his hand. She doesn’t look like someone who got dumped.
Jamie shouldn’t feel so jealous about it. It’s shit of him to feel jealous about it, because he knew what he was getting into the first time him and Roy fucked, but somehow knowing he shouldn’t be feeling it doesn’t actually make the feeling go away.
He makes his rounds with the lads, says hello to Rebecca and Higgins and Ted – they give Beard a pass because he’s off in a corner with his insane girlfriend and they all know better than to approach. Then he splinters off to order an entire bottle of vanilla vodka from the bar – the expensive shit, since it’s for charity – and goes to find himself an empty table to drink himself to death at.
Unfortunately, he’s still alive when Keeley finds him.
“Jamie!” she says brightly, joining him. “Why do you look like that time I bid on Roy at an auction?”
“I do not,” Jamie says. “I’m wearing a shirt.”
Keeley makes that serious face that means she’s trying not to smile. “Well, you’ve got me there.” She nudges him with her shoe. “Come on, though, spill. What’s got you feeling so down?”
Any number of things, really. The fact that Roy’s going to dump him any day now. The fact that he can’t hit the goal from ten fucking meters dead on. That he’s built this entire life, career and friends and personality and the man he’s in fucking love with, on his ability to play a sport at an extremely high level, and the second football’s removed from the equation – the whole structure’s going to come crashing down.
He can’t tell Keeley any of that, though, so he just says, “Nothing. I’m fine.”
She doesn’t buy it. Of course she doesn’t. But she doesn’t push anymore, either – she just reaches out and squeezes his knee, reassuring. Jamie feels like a wet tissue. She’s so kind, and so bloody gorgeous, and he used to really fucking love her, as shit as he was at showing it. Part of him still does, probably.
Keeley doesn’t get up and go back to Roy like he expects. Instead she says, “You know why Roy and me broke up?”
Jamie doesn’t. He shakes his head.
Keeley’s lips get tight, sad – but he can tell it’s a dull sad, like an old bruise. “Roy started the discussion,” she says, “but it was a mutual decision, really, in the end. I mean, I knew it wasn’t working. He just – I think he needed someone who was going to match his intensity. He can get sort of obsessed. It’s just who he is. And I needed more space than he knew how to give me. You know? He was doing his best, but he just – he wanted everything, all the time. And he was trying not to need that, for me. But after a while it started feeling like I was – failing, not to be able to give it to him. Like I wasn’t holding up my end of the deal.”
“Keeley,” Jamie says softly.
She’s tearing up, dabbing at her mascara with the pads of her fingers, trying not to smear it. Probably it shouldn’t be surprising that it still hurts to watch her cry. “No, no,” she says, waving him off when he tries to reach for her. She takes the bottle of vodka from him instead, takes a swig. “I always liked vanilla,” she says, wiping her mouth and handing it back. “Fuck Roy, yeah?”
Jamie snorts. “Sure. Fuck Roy.”
Keeley shakes her head a little, getting back on track. “Anyway. What I’m trying to say is – see the way he’s looking over here?”
She points, and Jamie turns to see Roy across the room. He’s standing in a group with Ted and Rebecca and a few posh rich people, but he’s not paying attention to their conversation – he’s staring straight at the two of them.
“What,” Jamie asks Keeley, “like he wants to fucking murder me?”
But even as he says it he knows it’s not true. There’s something melty in Roy’s eyes that he can see even from all the way over here, maybe because he knows him so well. Like the last time Jamie scored the winning goal and turned back to the sidelines, looking for one specific man as the entire stadium erupted in cheers, and –
“That’s how he looks when he’s in love with you,” Keeley tells him. “And before you say it, he’s not fucking looking at me.”
“No,” Jamie says, alarmed.
“Yeah, babes.” Keeley pats him on the arm. “Get used to it.”
***
Jamie wriggles out of seeing Roy after the gala by going with the lads to Knockers, which has become their favorite spot when they don’t want to be hit on. Roy does text him, but Jamie turns his phone off. It’s not that he’s scared or anything, but if Keeley’s right – well, then he’s fucking terrified. Not because he doesn’t want it – he wants it so much he thinks he’d go to fucking war for it – but because he’s not sure whether he can keep it.
He’s felt this way before, mostly when he was a kid coming up through the academies and then again his first year in the league – uncertain of his own ability, constantly nervous like he was an undercover agent or something. Back then he’d covered it up by being a douche, insisting to anyone who would listen that he was the best, best of the best, no one better. And he can’t do that now, because he’s a bigger fucking person or whatever, but he doesn’t know how else to hide it. How else to deal with the fear.
Roy would take one look at him and see it all over his face. So Roy can’t see him – not until he’s got this whole yips thing sorted.
***
The score at the half is 2-0 Arsenal, the home crowd at the Dogtrack is absolutely murderous, and Jamie’s flubbed every fucking ball that was passed to him. Ted gives one of his usual pep talks, but the mood in the locker room is not good. Isaac keeps shooting Jamie looks like he’s thinking this whole thing is his fault, and it might not be fair but that doesn’t mean it’s not true; Jamie gives him a nod that means he’s going to handle it, and while everyone else joins Zava in fucking meditation, Jamie follows the coaches into their office.
He avoids Roy’s eyes. He’s afraid if he looks at him he’ll see it on Roy’s face, the disappointment – You’re fucking better than this – and he can't stand to see that, or hear it, because he isn’t. Today, he just fucking isn’t.
“Swap me out, coach,” he says to Ted. “I’m no fucking use to you like this.”
The office goes quiet. Jamie keeps his head down, waiting for the agreement, but it doesn’t come. When he looks up, Ted has his hands in his pockets, looking at Jamie with an expression he can’t interpret that just feels – accepting. Non-judgemental.
“Fellas,” Ted says to the others, “can you give us the room a minute?”
Beard tips his hat and exits.
Roy lingers another minute, arms out like they always are when he’s standing – as if he can’t touch his elbows to his body for some unknowable fucking reason – but tenser than normal, like he gets when he wants to hit something but can’t decide what to fucking hit. Jamie still doesn’t look at him. They haven’t talked in almost a week. Haven’t screwed, either. Haven’t even been alone in a room together. Jamie’s not sure he’s ever missed anyone the way he misses Roy right now, when he’s three fucking feet away.
It doesn’t matter. Roy follows Beard out, and then it’s just Jamie and Ted.
“Look, Jamie,” Ted starts, gently, “after the performance you just gave, it’s clear as day to me and everyone else on this team you’ve got the – ”
“Don’t say it,” Jamie warns.
Ted zips his lips. “Gotcha. Like Voldemort.”
“What?”
“Nevermind. Point is – I’ve got a responsibility to Rebecca, and to the rest of your teammates, to do the best that I can to win this match. I’ve got a responsibility to you, too, but all you’re doing out there is making yourself worse. So I’m gonna have to bench you. But I want you to know something first.”
Jamie nods, and braces. He can take it. Whatever it is, he can fucking take it.
But Ted’s still looking at him kindly – not with pity, just with – like he’s actually seeing him. Not just a player on his team, but him, Jamie.
“Maybe I’m going about coaching all wrong,” Ted says, “maybe I should treat it more like a job, treat the team more like a business. But you boys, you’re important to me. All of you, and you especially. And it ain’t just about you being able to play soccer. You could lose both your legs tomorrow and you’d still be important to me. I think you got it in your head somehow that you’re only worth anything if you’re useful, and what I want you to know is, that’s a crock of shit.”
“Coach.” Jamie swallows hard, blinks harder. He can’t think of anything else to say.
Ted claps him on the shoulder. “Now. Halftime’s almost over, and I gotta go see if we can’t pull this one out. You want me to send Roy in?”
Jamie looks up sharply, but there’s no accusation in Ted’s eyes. If he knows, he’s not mad about it. Or he’s not mad at Jamie about it, at least.
“No,” he says. “No, I’m – I’ll be alright. Thanks.”
“Okie dokie.” Ted squeezes his shoulder. “Good talk,” and goes back out.
***
His dad has plenty to say about the game and Jamie being pulled from it, but he’s gotten better at turning off his phone since he started this whole avoiding Roy like the plague thing, so Jamie doesn’t read any of it. Since he’s trying to be a good teammate, now that he’s Jamie Tartt 2.0, new and improved and less douchey, he sticks around for the post mortem and Ted’s pep talk even though he didn’t play the second half - they tied the game 2-2, thanks to Zava and no thanks to Jamie, and the lads want to go out and celebrate their brush with death; Jamie promises halfheartedly that he’ll meet them at Knockers with no plans to actually do so.
It started dumping rain immediately when the match ended, fans clearing out faster than usual to avoid being sopping fucking wet when they made it to their pubs – Mae, at least, has busted skulls for less - and most of the staff seems to have followed suit, so the car park’s almost deserted when Jamie makes his way out.
Key word, almost.
“Oi!” Roy calls, getting out of his Land Rover. “Why are you fucking avoiding me?”
Jamie sighs, tosses his kit bag in the back seat of his car so at least something doesn’t get soaked to the bone, and turns to face Roy. “I’m not fucking avoiding you,” he lies.
Roy looks like a wet goat, or one of those cats on Insta that doesn’t like to take baths. “Did I do something wrong?” he demands. He sounds uncomfortable to even be asking, oddly vulnerable, and Jamie hates it. “Was I smothering you? Keeley says I smother.”
Jamie stares at him sadly, through the rain. “I can’t play,” he says. “I’ve got the – ”
“I know what you’ve got, you idiot, don’t fucking say it. Christ.”
Fair enough. Jamie shrugs and stands there waiting for Roy to walk away, except – it doesn’t happen. Roy just goes on standing there, squinting harder and harder. “What the hell’s that got to do with why you’re avoiding me?”
“Are you joking?” Jamie checks.
Roy glares. “Do I look like I’m fucking joking?”
He doesn’t, actually.
“Jamie,” Roy says – slowly, like he does when he thinks Jamie’s being a dumb fucking child, “I’m going to need you to tell me exactly what’s going on in that fucked up head of yours. I can’t fucking guess.”
Jamie just looks at him. I’m never going to get over you, he thinks.
“Fine,” Roy says, after a long minute, “I’ll fucking guess. You think that you being able to play football brilliantly has something to do with you and me. That I’m going to lose interest because you can’t score a perfect fucking corner kick. Is that it?”
“More or less,” Jamie admits. He’s not sure why Roy has to spell it out like this – they both understand what’s happening here, so why can’t he just rip off the Band-Aid?
But Roy crowds him back against the car. His body is so warm that Jamie’s surprised the rain pounding on them isn’t turning to steam. “That,” Roy says, “is just about the dumbest thing I’ve ever fucking heard.”
Jamie blinks. “What – ”
“The only thing you have to do,” Roy says, low and rough between their faces, “to make me love you, is be you, and come home at the end of the day. Got it?”
Jamie gapes.
"Got it?" Roy says again.
Jamie’s eyes sting. “Fuck off,” he tells him.
Roy sighs, takes hold of him by the back of the hair, and kisses him. “I’m not going fucking anywhere,” he says, “unless you tell me to. Get that through your thick lizard brain.”
Jamie's eyes are locked on his mouth. “So you admit that it is lizard brain – ”
“Shut up,” Roy mutters, and kisses him again.
***
Ten minutes later in the back of the Land Rover, Roy pauses mid-thrust to say, “This is a one-time thing. We are not going to make a habit of fucking in the fucking car park.”
Jamie’s too busy being nailed to the seat to bother telling him how absolutely not true that is, so he just says, “Yeah, whatever grandad,” and hauls Roy down to lick the rainwater off his clumpy eyelashes and his frowny beard, biting his throat and digging his heels into Roy’s ass until he gets with the program and starts moving again.
“Fine, alright,” Roy mutters, like it's a fucking hardship, breathing hard and doing his best to fuck Jamie through the door – prevented only by Jamie’s hands braced on the window, “I’ve got you. Twat.”
“Love you too,” Jamie fires back, cheeky.
And Roy doesn’t deny it.