Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

He’s always known that Roy does not like him. Deeply abhors him, actually. And, if he’s honest, he kind of deserves (or maybe, hopefully, deserved, past tense) it: he’s been a right fucking dick, in just about every conceivable way.

Still, when he watches the entire Sky Sport Soccer Saturday commentary after his first match back with AFC Richmond and hears Roy Kent - the Roy Kent! on TV, in a black suit! - say “Jamie Tartt is a muppet and I hope he dies of the incurable condition of being a little bitch” -

well, it doesn’t not sting.

It isn’t even the worst thing that’s happened between them - their shoving match on the actual fucking pitch comes to mind. That was definitely another case of Jamie well-deservedly being on the receiving end of Roy’s anger, though. Or the time he and Roy went literally head-to-head in the dressing room after Jamie’s (pretty cruel) comment about dropping Sam’s mum on Maradona’s cock, or that time when he called Roy ‘grandad’ during Jamie’s first week at Richmond for no fucking reason and Roy laid into him for a full two minutes, calling him every name under the sun in their very first actual conversation. So, Roy calling him a muppet, not even to his face or with the intention of making him hear it, is probably more like in the lower third of bad blood spilled between them.

But still.

He pretends to shrug it off, joking about it with the other lads, especially Isaac who claps him on the shoulder and laughs, and when they comment on the rest of the post-match commentary, he refrains from giving as good as he gets. He wouldn’t have done that just a season ago, wouldn’t have let the others make fun of him at all, would’ve said something genuinely cruel in response. Or maybe he would’ve already been gone by this point, at some stupid club getting drunk with some random dudes who’d recognized him, talking him up while slagging off his teammates, instead of hanging out with them at Zoreaux’s house, watching the commentary his girlfriend recorded together. He’s relieved that they’ve invited him along - standing in solidarity with Sam seems to have done what all the other attempts at amends haven’t - and he’s relieved that he manages to quash that familiar voice forming biting, cruel words in response to every joke at his expense in his throat instead of letting them escape without thinking.

It’s nice, definitely. He’s having a nice time after his first proper game back, even though they’ve lost, even though he hasn’t scored, even though his phone’s been buzzing with texts that he’s ignoring ever since he made the mistake of looking at the very first one and saw the name James Tartt flash across the screen.

He’s taking a large sip of his beer, having a nice time and he’s not going to let Roy Kent, who’s not even relevant anymore, who’s a Sky fucking Sports commentator, ruin it. He’s Jamie Tartt, he’s young and fit and God’s gift to football, and he’s back in Richmond and he’s hanging out with his team who is now actually, genuinely his team, so who cares what Roy fucking Kent, some has-been long past his prime, has to say about him?

Except that he does care, he can’t help but acknowledge in the Uber back home. Except that Roy isn’t entirely wrong, at least about the first part, about him being a muppet, he acknowledges in the shower before bed in his giant empty house. Except he’s changing, he’s doing his very best, he’s on his way to no longer being a muppet. Except that Roy of course will never ever know, probably, he thinks while lying down, and it’s fine, it’s not like he needs or wants Roy to know or acknowledge that he’s trying, trying in itself is worth something, even if Roy fucking Kent never finds out, even if Jamie can never make it right with him, even if he can never get that weird, curt nod that passes for a sign of approval from Roy fucking Kent because he doesn’t actually need it because Jamie knows he’s changing and if he knows and is happy with it, that’s enough, Dr. Fieldstone would tell him again.

‘And I hope he dies of the incurable condition of being a little bitch,’ flashes through his mind just as he’s about to fall asleep, except the last two words don’t quite sound like Roy Kent, sound a bit more familiar, a bit more rushed, a bit more venomous and harsh.

+++++++++++

Being back around Keeley all the time has been a little awkward, mostly because it hasn’t been. She hasn’t been awkward, at least, and that’s made him a bit awkward because he can’t square the guilty conscience with the feelings he’s still got for her and Keeley’s general loveliness that a voice in his head insists he doesn’t deserve.

Because he’s a muppet who should die of the incurable condition of being a little bitch.

So when he walks into the boot room a couple day after his first game, smells a faint whiff of cigarette smoke between all the feet smell, hears someone sniffling quickly and walks around the corner to find Keeley there, he asks her what’s going on in the most un-muppet-y way he can think of.

She rubs the back of the hand not holding the cigarette over her eyes, then says “I don’t think I should talk to you about that,” and he’s about to say ‘yeah fine but I’m here if you need me’ and leave but then she says in a rush “Except Rebecca’s gone for the day and if I don’t talk to someone before I get home I’ll bite Roy’s head off!”

“Okay…?” Jamie says, very carefully and hopefully still un-muppet-y.

“I think Roy’s the cat’s pajamas, you have to know that! Like, definitely - one of the best I’ve ever had, in all the ways. But he’s just - he hated that Sky Sports thing, Jamie, and he doesn’t - he doesn’t have anything to cling to right now, so he’s just clinging to me so hard, and I wanna be, like, a buoy in the storm for him, but I’m - I’m working to get sponsors for everyone, trying to scramble to fix this whole Dubai Air thing - which, don’t get me wrong, that was the cat’s pajamas, too! That was really, really great what you all did, and that you especially joined in, too - I was so proud of you, Jamie, I really was, I thought he’s really come far, I told Rebecca immediately, you can ask her - but it’s a lot here, and it’s a lot with Roy, too, so - it’s just a lot, y’know?” She finishes, exhaling in a puff.

Her eyes are so big, and so green and wet and he knows that look, knows that she’s about to either cry for real or get it together. Jamie slumps down on the bench next to her and gives her knee a short squeeze, then lets his hands rest between his widely spread legs. “That sounds hard. I’m sorry you and Roy are going through that.”

“I just - I kinda hoped the hardest bit was over, y’know? The Sky Sports thing, it’s one of the few things he’s sort of taken an interest in in ages, and I - I’d really hoped that that was it, that that would be the thing to finally get him over the edge and out of the house and all that. But the producers kinda hated him, he hated it, too, and so he got all grumpy and growly again and I finally bit his head off about it, and -”

She sniffles again and Jamie’s suddenly angry, in an oddly protective way, because Keeley fucking Jones should not be crying in a boot room about the guy she’s dating anymore. She’s done enough of that when she dated him. She deserves better than that.

He’s also oddly lost for words, so he just squeezes her knee again before moving his hands back into his lap.

“ - and he apologized and he’s been so sweet ever since, but it’s almost like he’s too sweet, you know? Like, he’s clinging again, and I need to focus on work but I can’t because he’s so - and I can’t tell him to give me space after I just pushed him into the Sky Sports thing and -” She sniffles again and then hiccups. “Shit. I shouldn’t have unloaded on you like that, shit shit shit, I just -”

“ ‘s all fine, Keels,” he reassures her.

“I just dunno what to do.”

“Yeah, I get that.” There’s a part of him that wants to tell her what to do, which is to dump Roy Kent and look for someone else, someone who doesn’t need her as much, who’ll be her buoy or whatever, but he’s pretty sure that would be a muppet-y thing to do, so he doesn’t. “But if there’s anyone who can figure it out, it’s you, Keeley, alright? You’re like wicked smart, I swear, and good with all the feelings stuff.”

She smiles at him at that, and though her eyes are still wet and big, it’s pretty close to that thousand watt smile she’s sometimes had for him - the one that made him feel warm and fuzzy all over.

He’s pretty sure feeling like that about another bloke’s girl is another muppet-y thing to do, even if the bloke is Roy fucking Kent, so he doesn’t offer her a hug, just another pat of her knee, and then he asks her about Bantr and gets her all excited and focused on work and it’s companionable and fun in a way it’s never really been between them, and that’s good and un-muppet-y, too, so he gets to be a little proud of himself today, maybe.

+++++++++++

Except, he realizes a couple days later, he doesn’t, really. Just because he’s managed not to be a dick to Keeley again by not making a move on her doesn’t mean he’s not a dick who’s messing up her relationship.

He’s half-alertedly watching some football recap thingy on the telly and it includes Roy tackling him during the Man City Richmond match that got Richmond relegated, a boot thrown at his head by his father and him a note and a silly little toy soldier from Lasso.

It also got Roy’s knee so fucked up that it ended his career.

Which is something Jamie’s thought about very little so far, to be honest. There’s just been too much other stuff going on, what with his dad being a pain in the arse, Lust Conquers All, having to actually think about his future for the first time in forever, his return to Richmond, seeing Keeley again and all that. But now that he sees the video of Roy rolling around in pain and then hobbling off the pitch, for the first time actually, something in him just feels - weird. So weird.

He’s not entirely sure why he feels weird - he’s hurt plenty of other footballers during his career, or they’ve gotten themselves hurt by trying to square up with him, and he’s never felt weird about any of that, so why is this different?

As Sky cuts to a scene from Roy’s retirement press conference, during which Roy fucking Kent, who Jamie was pretty sure could only communicate in growls, grunts and shouts, is actually fucking crying, he remembers Keeley sniffling and wiping her eyes in the boot room. It suddenly all makes sense.

He knows why this is different. Because he’d goaded Roy for years, made it all personal between them rather than letting it be a good old-fashioned ‘old geezer and young star’-rivalry like there were in hundreds of teams all over the country. He’d provoked Roy to the point that he hadn’t even cared what it would do to his old ass joints to tackle him, to the point that he’d ended his career in the process and now Roy Kent, of all people, is a mess and it’s fucking with his relationship with Keeley and making Keeley a mess, too, making her unhappy. Which sucks, because she’s been unhappy enough. And it’s not fair that even though Keeley had the good sense to end it with Jamie, to leave his muppet arse, his muppet-y ways are still affecting her like that, making her cry.

Yeah, that must be it. He’s feeling weird because of Keeley, and that weird tightness in his throat definitely has nothing to do with the way Roy’s shoulders are shaking and his voice is cracking in a way that burrows straight under Jamie’s skin even as Sky switches to another video from the Man City - Richmond game. It has nothing to do with Roy and his obvious pain and sadness and vulnerability, nothing, it’s just because of Keeley that Jamie wants to beg Roy for forgiveness for the busted knee and all of his other bullshit behaviour, that he wants to make up for it somehow. It’s just because he wants Keeley to be happy again. She’s the one he’s wronged and wants to do right by now because it wouldn’t even matter if he tried to make amends with Roy.

Because Roy thinks he’s a muppet who deserves to die of the incurable condition of being a little bitch.

He turns off the telly and decides to not think of Roy Kent again.

+++++++++++

There’s a whole other bunch of stuff to think about anyway, stuff like re-decorating his home, making it his own now that he's actually bought it properly instead of just renting, and keeping up with all the training and being very good with regard to the photo shoots and sponsorship opportunities Keeley’s setting up for him and making a little but not too much fun of the lads, especially Isaac for the new weird warm up routine he involves everyone in before every match, even the 11-11s they play in training. Especially the latter is a delicate balance he’s still learning to strike and that takes a bit of focus so he doesn’t think of Roy Kent at all. And he especially does not think of what he said on TV about Jamie because he doesn’t even care about that.

And then he’s on the pitch, playing, having the time of his life because he’s back and Isaac’s back, too, genuinely back, like he was before relegation, and Sam’s offered him a bite of his sausage roll from Gregg’s before the game so they’re clearly becoming friends and he’s almost over being annoyed at Dani’s constant ‘Football is life’-thing and the December air is crips and cold on his skin and he’s Jamie Tartt and the fans have sung his song twice already today so it’s all good, it’s all so fucking good -

and then they suddenly break into another well known melody, one he hasn’t heard in ages and he wheels around and there’s Roy Kent, the Roy Kent, Roy fucking Kent, in his black shirt and jeans, with that face chiseled out of stone and the vibe of a thunderstorm that could wreck a country, striding onto the pitch, to the dugout and the other coaches.

Well.

He feels a shiver running down his spine, through his entire body, and jumps one, twice, three times to shake it off.

Roy’s eyes meet his across the distance. The shiver returns.

He’s fucked.

Chapter Text

ii:

He’s thought about what it would be like to return to Nelson Road as a coach, of course. You’d have to torture that information out of him, and if Ted Lasso was the one doing the torturing Roy’d probably rather die than admit it. But he’s thought about it. Once, maybe twice, he’s actually imagined it.

After that fight with Keeley, he’d called the Sky Sports people and set up a second guest appearance because if he couldn’t play and he couldn’t dare coach anyone but nine year old girls because he was still too bitter about not playing, then he’d grit his teeth and talk to some old fucks in suits and hope that Keeley would forgive him for his grumpiness if she saw that he was really trying. And then, when that second appearance had sucked even more than the first one, he’d refused to go back and become more grumpy and withdrawn and ill-adjusted and Keeley’d struggled more and more with it, he’d allowed himself to imagine it again.

And then after the whole Isaac thing, when he got home late at night and told her and her eyes lit up and he told her that he’d never ever do it and her face fell, he’d imagined it then and it had been unbearable. So, the next morning, when he saw a tiny flash of annoyance on her face when he asked her if he should pick her up for lunch, he’d kept himself from imagining it.

And then, a week and a half later, seeing Isaac and his team just joke around before the match, hearing the old fucks in suits comment on it - imagining being back hadn’t been enough, suddenly.

And his imagination could never have lived up to the reality of it, to green opening up to him when he comes out of the tunnel and the feeling of hearing thousands of people chant his name, chant ‘he’s here, he’s there, he’s every - fucking - where’, to the joy on the faces of the lads, his lads, to the happiness he’s feeling when Lasso claps him on the shoulder and welcomes him, welcomes him back, welcomes him into his new life at Richmond.

Isaac jogs over to him and fistbumps him, grinning widely, and Beard gives him a curt nod paired with that weird curl of one of the corners of his mouth, and Lasso is jumping up and down beside him and cheering on his team as if he’s a child on fucking Christmas. Roy imagines Keeley’s ecstatic, too, hugging Rebecca and laugh-screaming in that adorable fucking way she has, up in the owner’s box.

And then his eyes meet the eyes of the Prince Prick of all Pricks, and he’s got his hair slicked back in that twatty way and is jumping and twisting his hips effortlessly like a fucking prick, and that’s something he hadn’t imagined and certainly hadn’t imagined hitting him like a fucking brick in the face.

It’s silly, he’s known that Tartt’s back with Richmond, he’s known for weeks. Keeley’s told him and if he’s honest with himself, that’s been the thing - the fact that this useless twat had not just left football behind for some dumb reality TV show but then been welcomed back to it with open arms while he, Roy fucking Kent, would never play again - that had been mainly to blame for like a five, maybe seven percent increase of his grumpiness. And seeing how that affected Keeley had pushed him to accept that Sky Sports thing in the first place, something he’d hated the second he’d stepped foot inside the building, and then the first fucking thing they’d asked him about had of course been Jamie fucking Tartt and then the producers had really not liked his answer, and that had worsened his mood further.

Still, he’d known that Tartt was with Richmond, and in the minutes it had taken him to get from his home to the dog park, he’d realized that his decision meant he’d have to actually see the tosser again. But knowing and doing it, actually seeing the prick, in a Richmond kit, in front of him are two different things, aren’t they? And as always, when he sees the Prince Prick, something deep, visceral flashes through his entire body and he feels his jaw clench as if he doesn’t even control it.

And Jamie gives him this look, raising his chin and setting his jaw, as if to challenge Roy, as if to tell him that even though he’s a coach now, he can still get lost.

He looks away.

+++++++++++

His first two weeks of coaching go pretty well even though some things feel like they’ve been turned upside down: Nate’s weirdly confident and almost angry, the team seems to like Tartt now and despite working with her, he gets to see a lot less of Keeley than he’d like, and when he does see her, she’s always busy. Which is good, which is a sign of the success she deserves, but he misses her despite essentially living with her. Also, Tartt is so much less annoying than he expected the prick to be, which makes him a hundred times more annoying in Roy’s book and means that he’ll just have to ignore him until that weirdly intense anger that flashes through Roy whenever he sees the twat, and that he could usually at least take out on him, dissipates.

And it’s not easy, being back, even though it’s good. He still regularly gets the urge to run out onto the field, be among the lads, playing instead of directing. It’s an especially strong urge when he sees Tartt because the guy is just so genuinely talented. Roy kind of really wants to play with him now that he wouldn’t have to fight the urge to pass to him, enjoy himself a bit, see how far they could push each other. He can’t do that, of course, and then it feels like someone’s punched him right in the gut, and he either yells or storms off and looks for Keeley.

She’s pretty much the only truly, completely good thing around him.

She’s in the car home with him and she’s praising the muppet for some photo shoot he’s apparently done especially well at and Roy can’t help make a mean comment that leads to the exasperated Keeley sigh that used to be an unfamiliar noise to him but that he’s heard more and more often over the last couple weeks. He decides not to comment on it and instead says that he’ll pop by some art show at Phoebe’s school and then come over but then she says she’s meeting Rebecca for dinner and drinks and it’ll be a long night so maybe he should just chill out at his own place and she’ll come over when they’re done.

Except he’s heard Rebecca tell Ted about some meeting at the Crown & Anchor with the other owners of the club, some old farts she hates. Except Keeley’s told him she’d come over after some late night work thing four times in the last two weeks and only shown up once, making him - unknowingly, inadvertently - wait around as if he was a sad puppy and not a grown fucking man. Except he’s become familiar with her exasperated sigh, and he used to think she never sighed in exasperation.

He pulls into a random free parking space, interrupting the drive to her home where he meant to drop her off and which has low key become his, too, without them ever talking about it just by virtue of him staying over so much.

“Keeley, just be straight with me, alright?” She blinks at him twice, and he can sort of tell she’s about to say something kind but slightly untrue, so he interrupts her. “You don’t want me to stay over tonight, do you?”

Later on, when he’s back at his own home, he knows that that’s where it all started to spiral. That’s the sentence that led to “You haven’t wanted me to stay over for a while, have you?” and “I’m sorry, I know I should’ve just talked to you” and “I’m sorry that me leaning on you has turned into me stifling you,” said with much more tenderness and genuine regret than he’d been able to put into the either the words or the tone, and “I’m so sorry - it’s not how I feel about you, it’s how we both clearly want different things right now” and a long, soft hug and him promising Keeley he wouldn’t become a stranger.

And he meant it, he really did, but as he downs his second glass of whiskey and slumps onto his couch, there is literally nothing that he wants more than to never see Keeley fucking Jones again.

He pours himself a third glass. He knows he isn’t being fair - the woman is an absolute saint, and just because he’s got his feeling hurt by her needing much more space a than he was comfortable giving his first ever serious fucking partner doesn’t mean he gets to take it out on her, even if it’s just in his head. It isn’t even fair that he’s as angry as he ist - she’d pretty freshly broken up with Tartt before getting into a relationship with him and then supporting him through recovery and he’d seen her chafing against his expectations, his wish to be around her all the time. So it’s probably a good thing that it ends now when he’s doing okay and she hasn’t grown to resent him yet.

He takes a sip of his drink and feels the fuzziness snake his way through his entire brain.

Jesus Christ, when did he get so old?

And how did he get to the point of being so old and only having one really serious relationship in his entire life?

Of course he knows the answer to that one: he became a football player for a Premier League team at fucking 17 and then spent a couple decades just having fun and fucking around, and when he finally got so old that he needed to confront the fact that he wouldn’t always be able to fuck around, that fact did his head in too much for him to ever even consider a serious relationship. And then Keeley fucking Jones bid on him in a stupid stunt to make her muppett of a boyfriend jealous and it all sort of spiraled from there, and then it all spiraled out even further.

Somehow, throughout all this gloomy meandering, he’s finished another glass and a half of whiskey. It’s growing dark outside, and he’s never even made it to Phoebe’s art thingy, and he probably needs some grown up company before he drowns in the mixture of whiskey and gloom he’s swimming in. He grabs his phone and scrolls through his contacts, not really looking because he knows whereabouts the number of the only person he could bear to see is saved anyway, and swipes to call. As the phone rings, he just hopes that she’s not otherwise occupied or pissed at him for missing Phoebe’s thing.

Once the dial tone is replaced by the klick that means his sister’s picked up her phone, he immediately says “Keeley and I broke up.”

There’s a moment of silence and then a familiar, grating voice says “I’m sorry, man.”

“The fuck?” It comes out far more slurred than Roy expected. Fuck.

“What? You called me, you dick!” Jamie exclaims and Roy has absolutely no answer to that because it is, in fact, true. He takes his phone away from his face for a second, puts the call on speaker, swipes out of it to check and - yeah, Tartt’s directly above his sister Teresa in his contact list because in a fit of insanity on his first day as coach, he’d gone and changed ‘useless prettyboy dick (#9)’ to ‘Tartt’ and in a second fit of drunken stupidity, he hadn’t paid attention who exactly he was calling just now. “You still there?”

Roy still doesn’t know what to say to the little fuck, so he just grunts. There’s music and chatter in the background and then a door bangs closed and it dies down, which finally makes him think of something to say.

“Where are you?”

“Out, with Colin and Dani and a few of the other lads,” he answers immediately. “So why’d ya call me of all people, huh?”

“Meant to call my sister, actually. Her name’s Teresa, I just changed your contact to Tartt, so -”

“Ah, and it gets difficult, operating a phone, on account of the old person shakes.”

“Fuck off, Tartt.”

“Alright, alright, ya grouch! Sorry!” Jamie takes a deep breath and before Roy can work through the surprise of the word ‘sorry’ having left Jamie’s mouth, the little shit says “So. How you feeling, then?”

The urge to tell him to fuck off again is overwhelming, but he bites it down for some reason and growls “I’m hanging up now” instead.

There’s a moment of silence in which he doesn’t hang up immediately because he low key expects Jamie to make another dumb comment that would give him the perfect excuse to start a real fight. The Prince Prick of all Pricks surprises him again, however. “Well, let me know if you change your mind about talking. Or call your sister, I don’t care,” he adds hastily. “Bye then, grandad.” and then Jamie Tartt is the one to actually hang up, and that just adds insult to injury.

He finishes his fourth glass of whiskey in one large gulp, something he’ll definitely regret in the morning, he realizes when he gets off the couch and the room spins around him for a second. He considers calling his sister, but decides against it - he’s not sure he could handle another person being empathetic towards him without feeling like a pathetic wanker after he just got hit with that from Jamie fucking Tartt of all people. Plus, he’s going to get enough of that over Christmas anyway.

Instead, he slinks over to the fridge to get a slice of cold leftover pizza from the night before - leftover pizza he’d meant to share with Keeley when he’d put it in the fridge - and then off to bed before the night can get even worse. He decides to take some melatonin as well as a paracetamol for his knee, vaguely aware that just nine months ago, he’d have never dared mix all these things, and then he feels old and sorry for himself all over again which does in fact make the night even worse.

The morning starts out pretty bad, too, on account of the hangover and the fact that he’s apparently slept in a manner that aggravated his fucking knee somehow. He does something he has never ever done and calls in sick, by way of texting Ted, to wallow in all of it. It gets boring around lunch, so he decides to take a chance and drive by Teresa’s hospital to see if she’s free.

He steps into something crunchy, cold and wet in front of the door to his house. When he looks down, there’s a brown, mushed paper bag with his footprint in the middle of it and white noodles, bits of green salad, chicken and bean sprouts spilling from it. He bends down to pick up the Deliveroo receipt attached to it, the familiar smell of cold Pad Thai drifting into his nose.

The writing’s a bit smudged on account of him trampling the bag and the note, but it’s readable enough. In the special section, there’s a small printed note that reads “hey grandad, got you my fave hangover/breakup food just in case. jt.”

For a second, he wonders how Jamie even knew his home address or that he’d be hungover, and then he’s more than a little angry. Not at the muppet, just in general, at the world, at Keeley, at himself. Because as much as Roy would like to be angry at Jamie Tartt that he’s got old Pad Thai seeping into his sneakers, it’s not the muppet’s fault that he didn’t hear the delivery driver ring the bell.

The muppet’s done something genuinely nice, actually.

Fuck.

+++++++++++

Roy has given himself one entire day to mope around at home with his hangover and his breakup induced feeling, and then he goes back to work because he is not a baby child. At least, that’s what he tells himself when he’s getting out of bed at the usual time. That’s what he tells himself again as he steps out of his car in the Richmond parking lot and bangs the door shut with just a little more force than necessary.

He’s a grown man. He’s Roy fucking Kent. He can handle working with his ex, even if that ex is someone as brilliant as Keeley fucking Jones and a part of him would rather throw himself in the river.

Apparently, what he cannot handle is running into Sam, Isaac and, of fucking course, Jamie Tartt in the hallway. What he cannot handle is the twatty Icon cap and shiny black vest, and the way Tartt raises his eyebrows at Roy first, the expression in his eyes somehow not arrogant or twinkly or dickish, and then fucking hangs back while Isaac and Sam walk on towards the dressing room, clearly wanting to talk.

There’s that familiar white hot feeling flashing through him at the sight of that stupid, punchable face. Tartt saunters towards him, almost with a spring in his step.

“Nope. Not doing this,” Roy growls before Tartt reaches him, turns sharply to his right and disappears into the coaches office, banging the door shut behind him.

Chapter Text

iii:

Roy had been ignoring him ever since he returned to Nelson Road, and Jamie kind of knows that he deserves it. That doesn’t mean it hadn’t stung every time he came up to where Roy’d been standing by the side of the pitch and he had just turned away from Jamie with a low grunt.

Still, when his phone rang late in the evening while he was out with Dani and the other lads and he’d seen ‘Dusty Old Fart’ on the display, he’d answered immediately. Only to be hit with the info that Keeley was single again in an all too familiar growly voice.

It had been the perfect opportunity to show Roy that he’d truly changed, that he was no longer a muppet who should die of the incurable condition of being a little bitch. So he’d kept the insults and jokes about Roy’s age to a minimum and sent a Deliveroo driver to Roy’s address with some Pad Thai once the call had ended.

There’s been no acknowledgment of the gesture, though, not even a ‘thx’ text, but considering how ancient Roy was, that wasn’t a surprise. So when Jamie gets to Nelson Road the morning after Roy’s call, he’s almost vibrating with impatience. Maybe he’ll at least get coached by Roy now.

Except Ted tells them that growly fuck’s out sick and that Nate will be leading the drills which also sucks for Jamie, because Nate’s definitely not forgiven him either.

He can barely wait for Roy to be back.

When he is the next day and Jamie runs into him in the hallway, Roy seems to actually freeze for a second, holding his arms slightly further from his body than usual in that way that means he’s processing an emotion. Jamie tries to suppress a grin on account of that seemingly always pissing of Roy more and saunters over to him, but before he can reach him, Roy growls “Nope. Not doing this,” turns sharply right and bangs the door to his office shut behind him.

Jamie sighs.

He heads down to Keeley’s office instead - he’d been wanting to check on her anyway - and plonks down on her pink fluffy couch.

“How’s it going, Jamie?” She asks sweetly, looking up from her laptop but not leaving her desk.

“Good, good, yeah. How ’bout you?“

“Yeah, I’m good, too - got a really fun brand deal for Isaac and Bantr’s really taking off, too, so it’s busy but really good.” She smiles at him, but something’s off about it.

He leans forward a bit, trying to catch her eyes. “So did you and Roy break up or -”

She starts a little. “How do you know that?”

He shrugs and fibs “Just figured it out, what with our chat a while ago and him calling in sick yesterday.” Keeley just purses her lips and looks down at her laptop. “Don’t worry about him, he’s already back, all shout-y and annoying.”

For a moment he thinks about getting off the couch, sitting down across from her, but something stops him. She’s really sad, sadder than he’s ever seen her, and there’s a part of him that’s a little hurt. She never been that sad about him.

But then again, though they’d been together longer, their relationship had never been as serious as her and Roy. He’d always sort of kept her at arm’s length, never really revealing all that much about what was going on inside him, rarely taking her as seriously as he should have.

“But let me know if you want to talk, alright? To me. As, like, a friend.”

She does finally meet his eyes at that, and this time around, her smile’s real and warm. “I will, Jamie.”

He gets off the couch and hesitates for a moment, thinks about maybe offering her a hug, but decides against it. “See you ’round, alright?” And just as he’s walks towards the door, Roy passes by in the hallway, clearly seeing him. The way he’s furrowing his brows, Jamie can almost read his mind: Roy thinks Jamie’s started to slink around Keeley because he wants to get back together with her, and it’s not that he doesn’t want that - it’s just that it’s clear that Keeley doesn’t want to and he’s trying to be less of a muppet so of course he’s not going to make a move on her.

Still. He’s fucked.

+++++++++++

The mood between him and Roy gets even worse after that. Where he’d rolled his eyes at Jamie as he turned away, occasionally grunting at him at least, he now refuses to acknowledge his existence at all, not even looking at him whenever Jamie tries to get Roy’s attention.

It makes Jamie a little mental. He pushes himself constantly during training, running faster and longer than any of the others, practicing each drill, each pass, each shot until he does it flawlessly at least three times in a row. He asks for feedback from the coaches constantly and does his best to incorporate it. He passes the ball every chance he gets, even during the rounds of 11-11 they play in training, and is just generally extra nice to everyone at Nelson Road, even fucking Nate. He can tell that everyone’s pretty impressed.

Everyone except Roy, who he overhears tell that he’d take a four percent paycut if that meant he wouldn’t have to coach Jamie.

That tempts him into returning to being a prick in general but to Roy especially just to see if that would get a reaction. He doesn’t - he’s finally getting on so well with everyone else and he doesn’t want to have to clamber around and apologize and mend fences all over again because that shit was embarrasing. He tells Lasso to tell Roy to start coaching him, but the three coaches who are actually doing their jobs just tell him that that won’t work, and he knows that they’re right about it, too.

Keeley is hanging out in the coaches’ office when he makes his demand and although he doesn’t ask her directly, worried about touching on a sore subject she still gives him the only bit of possible useful advice because of course she does. It’s to take Roy’s anger wind out of his brat sails by just agreeing with him. Which sounds like groveling. And as much as he wants to be coached by Roy fucking Kent, Jamie doesn’t want to do that because he shouldn’t have to - Roy should be able to see that Jamie’s trying, especially after the phone call and the Pad Thai, and thus just stop being such a stubborn twat.

But he doesn’t. So after he does all the things he knows Roy’s always wanted him to do - passing the ball, letting others do the free kicks and penalties and corners, checking in with his teammates - and they even win the first game after Christmas and Roy’s eyes still never even move in his direction, not even for a second, he finally corners Roy in the hallway.

“Come on, man, why won’t you coach me?” Jamie asks, proud of his ability to not sound like a petulant child.

Roy doesn’t even turn around, instead he just keeps walking in that incredibly straight-backed manner Jamie’s been trying to imitate since he was like fifteen as he says: “Because you don’t deserve it.”

Apparently it’s time to give in. Oh well.

Jamie swallows. “You’re right, I don’t deserve it.” He’s not sure if he’s imagining it or if Roy is slowing down a little.

“And the way you play is dull and conformist.”

“It's true. I do play in quite a dull and conformist-y way,” he agrees, trying to sound nonchalant, trying not to seem like he hates every second of this.

The shit he puts up with.

But it finally makes Roy turn around and look at Jamie and fuck, he’d completely forgotten how intense that dusty old fart could be. Something flutters in his stomach.

Roy takes a step closer to Jamie, and then another one, for good measure, squaring up in front of him, and the flutter is back, stronger.

“And you’re ugly,” Roy growls. “You’re an ugly, ugly boy. With bad hair.”

And god this is worse than the apology tour, worse than apologizing to Colin i and he can tell that Roy Kent is having the time of his life right now, but he swallows anyway. This is the fucking worst, this is the worst thing he’s ever had to do, but if it gets Roy to coach him, it might be worth it. He can’t help but twitch and shake his head as he prepares.

“Say it,” Roy growls, taking yet another step closer.

“I am an ugly, ugly boy,” he mumbles, not meeting Roy’s eyes because he’s very sure they’d burn a hole in his skull. “With hair that maybe could be slightly -” Roy arches his eyebrows and Jamie finally does look Roy in the his eyes and they are definitely burning a hole into his skull. Jamie grimaces. “With bad hair, fine!”

Roy’s nodding his head, then gives him a firm pat on the arm. “Cheers. I enjoyed that.”

And then the dusty old fart turns to the side and just fucking walks away, into the dressing room, and that’s definitely not how that was supposed to go so Jamie follows him, calling out “You fucking arsehole!” as everyone else goes from sauntering to hurrying out.

“Yeah, I know you are but so are you,” Roy says.

“I’m trying to build bridges here!”

“You couldn’t fucking build Jeff Bridges,” Roy yells and whirls around, rushing at Jamie, shoving him and there’s almost a sense of relief because finally, finally they’re back on familiar territory, finally he knows how to handle this shit and he squares up, ready to shove back

and then Lasso’s between them, hands extended, asking what’s going on and the only reason Jamie doesn’t jab his finger into Roy’s chest is because they’re too far apart as he spits “This man refuses to coach me!”

“He refuses to stop being an arsehole!” Roy spits back and that actually stings again because he’s wrong, he’s fucking wrong, Jamie has stopped being an arsehole, hasn’t he, so why can’t this dick see it?

“Roy, you're not gonna like this,” Ted says softly. “But right now, Jamie here is being the mature one.”

“It's true. I'm being super mature,” Jamie exclaims, all restless energy suddenly because it’s happening, it’s finally happening. “You big, dumb, hairy, baby twat,” he adds. Roy’s face twitches at that and that’s good, that’s so good.

Ted tells Roy “He just wants to learn from you.”

And Jamie swallows because after all the shit he just said, he doesn’t want to have to say it again but he’s definitely going to have to say it. He grits his teeth. “If you know how to make me better, I want to hear it.”

The gaffer is practically vibrating with pride but trying to play it cool, the unbearable little shit, as he gestures at Jamie and says “See?”

Jamie’s pretty sure he can see the moment Roy gives in, his eyes meeting Jamie’s before he gives a small, jerky nod. “Fine. I'll tell you what's wrong with you.” Ted’s mumbling something beside him but Jamie barely hears it, all his attention is on Roy. Finally, finally, fucking finally. “You fucked him up,” Roy tells Ted, the words jabbing him in the chest while Roy’s arms rest at his side.

“Wow.” Jamie exclaims before he can help it. This is not where he expected this to go.

“Okay. Expound,” Ted demands.

“You've made him a team player. You've got him to pass and shit, and in doing so, you've made him average,” Roy explains. Ted clearly considers it for a moment, then simply nods. Roy finally looks at Jamie again as he speaks “'Cause, Jamie, deep down, at your core, you are a prick. ” And again, that stings a little but Roy’s still talking so Jamie shoves it down. “So just be a prick. We need you to score more goals, and we need you to get in the other teams' fucking heads and drive them up the fucking wall like only you can fucking do.”

“So I can go back to being a prick?” Jamie asks, standing up a little straighter, meeting Roy’s eyes.

“No,” Roy answers, slowly and deliberately, as if he’s talking to a child and Jamie exhales. “I'm saying sometimes. When it is appropriate,” Roy is pronouncing every single one of the letters in the last word, taking a step closer, nailing Jamie to the spot with this look as if he was one of these insects on a stick in a museum. “Yes, be a prick.”

“Okay,” Jamie says, unable to meet Roy’s eyes for more than a few seconds. “How will I know when?”

“I'm actually curious about that myself, too,” Ted chimes in.

“We'll give you a signal.”

+++++++++++

Jamie waits for the signal like he waited for the appearance of Father Christmas as a little kid. It feels like someone’s hooked him up to a car battery, like there’s an electricity in the air and under his skin because he can’t wait to be a prick again, be the cocky little shit that he is again, without it pissing off everyone around him.

Roy’s actually training him - monosyllabicly, begrudgingly, looking as if it causes him great pain to be dealing with the little bitch he thinks should die but it doesn’t matter, he’s training Jamie who in turn has been his best un-muppet-y self. And then, half a week after the conversation, during the quarterfinale against Tottenham Hotspurs, the signal finally comes.

“Hey Jamie! Jamie,” someone faintly calls, and then Roy bellows “Tarrt!” across the pitch. Jamie finds the coaches, and they’re standing in front of the dugout flipping him off, Ted looking uncomfortable and trying to hide it with his jacket, Nate looking like a kid trying on his father’s coat and not quite liking it, Beard an enigma as always and Roy doing his very best to have no expression but giving off a slightly smug vibe all the same.

It takes him an embarrassingly long moment to get it, but then he gets it and he’s off like a flash, squaring off with Barnett who’s been on his arse the entire game anyway, taking the throw-in from Richard and getting past Barnett like it’s nothing because it really is, knowing full well that it sets Barnett of, making it past another one of the Tottenham dudes and then hitting the ground when Barnett swipes his legs out from under him, just like he was meant to.

It gets Barnett a yellow and him a free kick, and the electricity is in his body now, in every single fucking cell of it, and he jabs Barnett in the chest, grinning widely. “What did I tell you, mate?” and Barnett lunges at him and he just laughs and sticks his tongue out, meeting Roy’s exasperated eyes across the pitch. Jamie grins and jumps a little as he watches Roy and Ted talk and he’s pretty sure Roy’s saying something about Jamie scoring from right where he is, and he does, taking three steps back and then nailing the ball into the net in a beautiful wide ark as the crowd goes fucking crazy, as everyone goes crazy, Roy shouting “Yeah” at the top of his voice, Lasso clapping and cheering before hugging Roy and high-fiving Beard and Nate.

Jamie turns to the dugout, stance wide, meeting Roy’s eyes, grinning smugly as he flips him off with both hands, a little nervous about it but when Roy rolls his eyes and shakes his head, he knows they’re all good as Colin and Moe catch up to him, pull him into a hug and clap his back, and the stadium erupts into his song.

It feels good, it feels so fucking good, like coming back but better because the others are actually celebrating with him and he can tell it’s genuine and the commentators are calling it a goal that will reverbrate through English football and that feels good, too, and then Lasso high-fives him and Roy gives him one strong pat on the shoulder as he walks into the dressing room at half time, meeting his eyes and nodding once, and that might be the thing that feels best about it.

+++++++++++

They win the whole fucking thing, making it to the Cup semifinals for the first time in forever, and the locker room is crazy, everyone celebrating and screaming and jumping and singing, Roy and Beard leaning against the door to the coach’s office with a drink in hand each, and then they’re off to a bar, Isaac and Colin singing along to Jumpman in the back of the cab and Sam oddly quiet, absorbed in his phone until Isaac calls him on it and he joins in, too.

When they arrive, Jamie lets his eyes sweep through the room once, finding Moe and Richard and Keeley and Nate and Beard and that weird girlfriend he’s got but neither Ted nor Roy but it’s not like it matters all that mucht to him where the old geezers are. He gets an entire bottle of vanilla vodka for the table, and a pint as well, clinking glasses with Keeley and saying “Thanks for your advice on dealing with the brat, by the way.”

She grins and they start chatting over his first pint and his second and the round of shots everyone’s drinking, and that feels good, too, until she wanders off to the loo. Jamie’s got a moment for himself, his head feeling a little fuzzy, in that ‘slightly tipsy but not drunk yet’ way. He takes out his phone, ignoring most of the text notifications to open up Twitter and search his own name, finding a meme someone’s made of him flipping of Roy after the goal. He copies and pastes it into the chat with Roy, and gets a reaction - middle finger emojis, of course - almost immediately. For a moment, he thinks about answering but then Isaac bumps his shoulder and he puts the phone away instead.

Until it starts vibrating in his pocket a while later, meaning someone’s calling him. Probably his fucking dad, the last person he wants to talk to. He takes it out anyway, mostly to decline the call and turn the vibration of for calls as well as texts.

The screen reads ‘Coach Kent’. Jamie’s out of his spot at the table within seconds, striding through the pub to find a quiet spot outside to answer it, but by the time he’s outside, the phone stops ringing.

He hesitates for just a second but calls Roy back because it’s the perfect opportunity to make fun of him again and Jamie can’t let an opportunity like that pass him by, can he?

Roy picks up on the third ring. “What?”

“You called me!” is the only thing Jamie can think to say, sounding almost as outraged as he did when Roy walked away from him after that ‘ugly boy with bad hair’ thing.

“Fuck,” Roy grumbles. “Again?” Something in his words is a little off, a little faster and a little less bite-y than usual. Jamie wonders if he’s drunk.

“Yeah,” Jamie says, looking up and down the street. He doesn’t even think about it, the words are leaving his mouth on their own: “I’m still out with the lads, you wanna come along? I can text you the address.”

Before Roy can answer, there’s the sound of glass breaking. Roy barks out “Fuck. Shit” just as Jamie asks “You okay?” and then the line is dead.

He’s still not thinking when he calls an Uber and gets in, the streets flying past the window until it stops in front of Roy’s house. He only thinks again when he’s at at the door, wondering if he’s making a really dumb mistake as he’s ringing the doorbell.

Judging by Roy Kent’s face, he is.

Well. Nothing to do but go through with it now, is there?

Jamie uses the second of surprise that still leaves Roy frozen to barrel past him into the house before he can block the entrance, their shoulders knocking together. For a second, their faces are almost as close as they were whenever they were about to fight. He can smell the whiskey on Roy’s breath and his shower gel, something fresh and sharp, and something else, something metallic. As Jamie turns back around towards the door and Roy, he sees the dish towel wrapped around his left hand, soaking up blood.

“What did you do with your hand?” He asks before Roy can say anything.

“Cut myself cooking.”

There’s a bunch of follow up questions Jamie wants to ask, like ‘You can cook?’ and ‘How did you learn to do that?’ and ‘Can you teach me?’, but Roy is still glowering at him and hasn’t closed the door, so Jamie saunters off in the direction he suspects vaguely the kitchen is in, hoping that that will make Roy follow him, calling “Why don’t you just order something like a normal person?”

Roy does follow him into a spacious, white kitchen that’s insanely clean apart from the mess on the counter, all cut up carrots, green onions, bean sprouts, chicken, a packet of rice noodles and a glass of whiskey. The room smells slightly sour and salty, and then Jamie recognizes the smell and the ingredients. “You were making Pad Thai?”

Roy grunts affirmatively.

Jamie takes out his phone and opens up Deliveroo, typing in the name of the restaurant he ordered from last time Roy accidentally drunkenly called him. “I’m ordering you some so you don’t have to cook like a caveman and do more bodily harm to yourself,” he announces.

There’s a moment of tension as their eyes meet, sizing each other up. It’s a balancing act, Jamie knows - being pushy enough to bulldoze Roy into letting him stay but not so pushy that he ends up in muppet territory and a fight. Roy’s clearly drunk and Jamie’s a little tipsy, too, so a fight could escalate and get Roy’s knee or hand fucked up further.

“What are you doing in my house?” Roy finally growls.

“I wanted to check on you, make sure you were okay,” Jamie explains defensively. “Can’t have our best coach out with some dumb injury when we’ve got semifinals to play thanks to me.” He snatches the whiskey glass just as Roy stepps closer and takes a sip, making a disgusted face, as he wanders further into the house, forcing Roy to follow him.

“How did you have my address?”

“Lasso made you invite everyone over to watch some stupid children’s film during your first week as coach, remember?”

“You didn’t even show up to that,” Roy points out as Jamie flops down on the large white couch.

“’Course I didn’t, didn’t want to be a muppet worthy of dying of the incurable condition of being a little bitch, did I?” He’s playing with the remote as he says it, but on the last words, he looks up at Roy.

Something flashes across Roy’s face, some expression Jamie can’t place, all flared nostrils and set jaw but with something weird in the eyes, and for a moment he’s sure that he’s pushed it too far now, that he’ll be picked up by the scruff of his neck and thrown out like a mangy cat or something, and he braces himself because old and drunk and hurting as Roy may be, Jamie is not going down without a fight.

Roy sits down on the other side of the couch instead, growling “Give me back my drink at least.”

Jamie can’t help the cocky grin that flashes onto his face at that. He takes a final sip before he hands the glass over to Roy who finishes the last of the whiskey just as Jamie turns on the TV and opens Netflix.

“What do you think you’re doing?”

“Okay, so there’s this thingy called Netflix that - ”

“Fuck off, you little shit.” But there’s no real venom in Roy’s tone, and Jamie’s turned on The Fast and the Furious now anyway, leaning back on the couch, spreading his legs, getting comfortable. The delivery guy will still need around half an hour until he’s there, and Jamie’s sure by then he’ll have charmed his way into staying somehow.

After a while, Roy’s jaw seems to relax just the tiniest bit. Jamie sees an opening.

“You really are a good coach, you know.” Roy’s eyes flicker over to him. He grunts. “Better than any of the dickheads we had before Lasso.”

“Not like that’s difficult,” is all Roy says.

“I’m trying to be nice to you, you twat!”

“Well don’t, it skeeves me the fuck out!”

“Jeez Louise,” Jamie mumbles, getting a dry chuckle from Roy.

They sit in silence, watching The Fast and the Furious and occasionally each other, until the doorbell rings. Jamie jumps up before Roy can, getting the food, giving a generous tip and even taking a selfie because the dude asks. He’s grabbing two forks from the kitchen when Roy shows up in the doorway leading to the living room.

“You leaving now or what?”

“What, you’re going to kick me out before I’ve even eaten?”

He sees Roy eye the two containers, almost sees him thinking. Then he nods in that jerky, pissed of way he’s got and walks back into the living room. Jamie wipes the grin from his face before he follows, vaguely aware that it would probably only piss of Roy further.

They eat in silence until Roy finally asks what the fuck they’re even watching and Jamie enthusiastically explains the entirety of the franchise between bites he takes very slowly. That earns him a comment about his lack of table manners to which Jamie replies by simply chucking a bit of shredded carrot at Roy, who only rolls his eyes and calls him a fucking child. Then Roy’s finished with his food, and Jamie slows down even more.

The next time he glances over, Roy’s fallen asleep on the couch, head leaned against the armrest at an angle that will definitely fuck with his neck. He must be drunker than Jamie had thought.

He can’t look away. And it’s not like Jamie has never seen Roy asleep before - they’ve been on the team bus more than enough times - but still. Roy’s face isn’t exactly soft, Jamie’s pretty sure it’s not even capable of that, but still - he’s completely and utterly not himself, and he still is exactly the way he always is at the same time, and Jamie’s in his home and he’s coaching him and he’s only told him to fuck off once or twice.

15 year old Jamie would go insane at this.

It’s nice.

Current Jamie still gets up quietly once he’s done with this food, turns of the telly, puts both of the containers in the bin, quietly and thoroughly cleans up the kitchen and puts a soft grey blanket over Roy. For a moment, he remembers the blanket Roy burned what seems like a hundred years ago and then he thinks about shifting him around, making sure that he’s stretched out instead of sleeping in this weird position, but he decides against that because he definitely does not want to wake up Roy and deal with whatever bitchfit he throws then. Plus, he’s done more than enough non-muppet-y things for the day.

He pulls the front door closed behind himself very softly.

Chapter Text

iv:

The thing is that it really was an accident the second time around, too.

Roy hadn’t meant to call the muppet. He really hadn’t. He’d purposefully opened his recent call list instead of going into his contacts to call Teresa, because his mind had started to spiral out a bit while he was cooking, swiping at the first spot in the list because she was always the first person on that list.

Except the first person in his recent call list was still Jamie fucking Tartt.

He’d noticed in time and hung up, but of course the muppet had called him back. And then he’d tipped over the bottle of soy sauce while distracted on the phone which had threatened to roll off the counter, and though he’d been able to catch that, he’d pushed the rice vinegar off the counter in the process, shattering it on the floor of the kitchen he’d used way to rarely lately.

It’d been embarrassing, really, not just that he’d broken the bottle but the entire thing: the way he’d been coming undone, sitting around at home all by himself, drinking whiskey because although he’d been proud, he couldn’t bear to be around the lads, the lads he’s meant to be coaching and leading but couldn’t even lead in the crucial moment, failing to see the play they need to make until Nate’s already seen and shouted it. He couldn’t bear to see them be all the things he’d never be again, never even let himself enjoy being, and then he couldn’t even fucking cook himself a fucking meal because he’d gotten too fucking drunk for a man of his age.

A man of his age. Well, wasn’t that just the fucking heart and soul of all of it? He’d thought, and then he’d tried to call Teresa.

And instead, the fucking muppet showed up on his doorstep, walked into his home as if Jamie owned the place, as if him showing up wasn’t bizarre as fuck. As if he wasn’t trying to get back with Roy’s ex, as if none of the other shit that happened between them had happened.

It got even more bizarre. Tatt turned out to kind of be bearable company, ordering food for them and turning on some stupid movie, not asking him what was going on and just generally being his infuriating, childish self rather than whatever weird arse Tartt clone the gaffer had turned him into. It hadn’t been quite familiar territory - Tartt was still being sort of nice, after all - but it had been something that wasn’t completely unknown. And it had been good.

And then he’d walked into the dressing room early in the morning, the hangover not quite as bad as it had been the first time he’d accidentally called the muppet and of course he’d been there, grinning at him, and that visceral thing that sometimes settled in the middle of his spine had been back for some fucking reason.

He’d nodded curtly at Tartt and then trained him as he always did - okay, not as he always did, being just a little meaner to him than he’d been before, making him do a few extra reps in the weight room or run a few extra laps or do a few extra burpees, pushing him a little harder - but it had all been fine. Tartt hadn’t complained, he’d almost seemed pleased. And if anyone had asked, Roy would’ve told them to fuck off and that it was none of their business but he’d have thought - he isn’t even sure what he’d have thought except that no one else was pushing Jamie as much as he’d needed to be pushed so why the fuck shouldn’t he do it? And then Roy had gone home most evenings, unless he was meeting the yoga mums or picking up Phoebe, and cooked dinner for himself and read a book or watched a film by himself and fallen asleep by himself and it had been fine, too.

Until now, somehow. He’s not quite sure what it is about the day, but it’s not fine anymore.

He’s sitting all alone in his empty home again, staring at the picture of him Phoebe drew that he’s got pinned to his fridge, kind of sad that Teresa’s surgery got cancelled despite knowing that it’s probably good for Phoebe to spend a night with her mum. The glass of rose in his hand is almost empty and he’s trying to decide whether he should read or check out Sky Sports or maybe a film but feeling that all of the options kind of suck. He’s just a little tipsy, too, because apparently all it takes to get him there now is two and a half glasses of rose on an empty stomach which also fucking sucks.

And then Roy’s got his phone in his hand, and he hesitates and puts it away again, and then he takes it out again and because he isn’t a little baby he follows through and tipsily calls Jamie fucking Tartt for the third time.

The muppet picks up on the second ring.

“What was that film you made me watch the other night?” Roy asks before Jamie can say anything at all.

And because Jamie’s a pushy little fucker with no sense of boundaries, he tells Roy to wait a second, he’ll be right over. Roy just grunts, and when Jamie arrives he opens the door so quickly to prevent Jamie’s incessant ringing from driving him insane that it puts one of those absolute shit-eating grins onto Jamie’s face as he barrels past Roy and says “Did you wait in the hallway for me or what?”

“Stop ringing the doorbell like a maniac,” Roy growls out at the same time. “Or next time, I won’t let you in.”

“Who said there’ll be a next time, huh?” Jamie calls as he saunters through the kitchen as if he owns the fucking place.

Roy’s probably made a horrible mistake.

Jamie plops down on the couch again , no sense of discomfort or shame or whatever the fuck else makes a good houseguest and grabs the remote, opens up Netflix and searched a film with the truly boneheaded title

“2 Fast 2 Furious? Seriously?” Roy growls.

“Just wait and see, alright, grandad?”

He does wait and see, and it’s not completely horrible, just fairly. Which he’s not admitting unless tortured.

He’s also not admitting that unless tortured but it’s also still better than the evening had been until he’d called Jamie.

+++++++++++

The fourth time he calls Jamie Tartt, he’s really fucking drunk. He’s also on the tail end of a truly horrible date because in yet another fit of insanity and rose induced tipsyness, he’d somehow concluded that the best way to combat the boredom and loneliness and just general February gloom gnawing at his bones whenever he’s not coaching the lads or hanging out with Phoebe was to download Bantr and meet someone.

Except that he hates meeting new people, even if they’re kind of lovely, smart women who have a fucking PhD in literature and love football and would definitely be a good lay. Except that he can’t bring himself to make a real move because his date isn’t blond and fit and almost surprisingly kind for someone so brash but a classically gorgeous redhead who’s been giving him bedroom eyes all evening. He walks her home like a gentleman anyway, gives her a peck on the cheek and promises to call despite both of them knowing it won’t happen. Then he goes to the Crown and Anchor, a spot he usually avoid but which his masochistic arse picked as the perfect torture sight for the night. He glowers at all the Richmond fans who even breathe in his direction while drinking the whiskey Mae’s steadily supplying, trying very hard not to look at the pictures she’s put up on the walls that chronicle his decline.

Tartt shows up sometime around two years before it’s all over, all youth and enthusiasm and cockiness and raw fucking talent. Roy can see his own envy from the first fucking picture.

It’s embarrassing.

It’s also embarrassing that he takes his phone out and opens up Tartt’s contact. It’s even more embarrassing that before he can make a decision about calling him, someone bumps into him while walking past his table because the pub’s gotten quite crowded for a non-game night and he drops his phone. He wants to jump out of the chair and start a fight but apparently the wine during the date and the whiskey during his self-pity spiral and his bum knee do not like each other and he stumbles a little before falling back into his chair.

Mae’s there with surprising speed for someone so old, grabbing the phone and calling Tartt before Roy can force his brain to make words come out through the drunken fog. “Oi. Roy Kent’s been staring at his phone for a minute now, trying to decide whether he should call you. Come by and pick him up before he starts a fight that gets him banned from the pub, will you?” She barks out and hangs up, meaning that technically, Roy did not call Jamie a fourth time.

That doesn’t mean that Jamie doesn’t show up for him a fourth time, calling him a cab, which Roy feels is a both a statement about his drunkenness and a deep and personal insult, and then climbing in beside him after a moment of hesitation.

“So, what’s going on with you?” Jamie asks as they pull away.

Now it’s Roy’s turn to hesitate for a second. But maybe Jamie kind of earned something other than a ‘fuck off’, so he says “I went on a date.” Again, it comes out a lot more slurred than he anticipated.

Jamie gives him a short surprised look but then rearranges that face into his usual annoying grin. “What, and she was dead ugly and you decided to get drunk of your arse until it drove her off?”

“No, you little bitch,” Roy bites his head off. “She was lovely, actually. Just - wasn’t what I wanted.”

Jamie makes a weird noise, a high weird humming, and juts out his lower lip, cocking his head to one side. That thing that sometimes flashes through Roy is back. “What’s that fucking face?” he asks.

“It’s called empathy, you dusty old fart,” Jamie responds. The cab stops and he climbs out of the car, then calls to Roy “You coming or what?”

It’s only when he gets out of the car that Roy realizes that he’s in front of his own house, Jamie standing in front of his gate with his hands balled up in the pockets of his ugly graffiti jacket. He nods to the cabbie while Roy makes his way over to unlock the gate, only fumbling with his keys a little as Jamie’s jumping up and down on the balls of his feet.

“You could talk to me, you know?” He says as he follows Roy like a fucking puppy. “About Keeley, I mean. I know what it’s like, things ending with her, you know?”

“Over your dead body,” Roy growls. He pulls open the door to the house, and before he can turn around to thank Jamie for getting him home, the muppet’s pushed past him into the kitchen again.

“You want a brew as well, mate?” He calls into the hallway to Roy.

“Don’t call me that,” Roy answers, banging the door shut a little more forcefully then he meant to.

“You want a brew as well, coach?”

“Fine.”

And that’s how they end up on his couch again, watching something called The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift and clutching mugs of tea. Except that Roy’s barely able to focus on it because he’s just so fucking drunk, and he can feel Jamie’s eyes wander over to him every ten seconds so he finally says “Just spit it out, Tartt.”

Jamie swallows loudly. “I just - I wanted to say I’m sorry. About you and Keeley ending, but also about all the other shit - about how I used to act and your knee and me being such a dumb -“

“Oi. The fuck do you mean, you’re sorry about my knee?”

Jamie looks down at the floor, at his hands, at a spot next to Roy’s head, playing with the corner of the blanket, clenching his jaw. “I’m sorry that you hurt your knee. Because of me.”

“I didn’t hurt my knee because of you. I hurt my knee because after decades of professional football at the highest level, my old ass joints are fucked.”

There’s a moment of silence between them and Roy thinks he might finally be able to sort of watch the stupidity on the screen. Then Jamie clears his throat again. “Still. If I hadn’t been such a prick every opportunity I got, you wouldn’t have - ”

“I absolutely fucking would have,” Roy interrupts him. “Stop making it about you, you self-obsessed little bitch. It was about the game, about not letting you score, about us not getting relegated, and nothing else.” And about me having something to prove and proving the exact fucking opposite, but he doesn’t say that.

“Well, you did get what you wanted. Didn’t score once during that entire thing,” Jamie says and there’s something odd in his voice, something that sounds almost bitter but not in that childish pre-Madonna way he’s got but real, like he’s got something to be bitter about, something that’s hurting him.

Roy’s brain can’t stop his mouth, that traitorous shit, from forming words. “That was a good pass you made there, actually.”

“You saw that?” Jamie asks, complete and utter surprise evident in his tone.

Roy grunts. “Watched the entire fucking thing later. Much later. That pass was the only second of that game that didn’t make me want to set something on fucking fire.” Jamie grins at that, widely, though he’s looking at the telly as if that would keep Roy from seeing it. “I’ll rip your tongue out if you repeat this to anyone.”

“Yes coach,” Jamie says but he doesn’t stop grinning.

+++++++++++

He wakes up with a very fuzzy head, an equally fuzzy mouth, and an uncomfortable crack in his neck. For a moment, he’s not entirely sure where he even is, and then his living room takes shape in the gloom. He’s also not sure when he fell asleep in the first place.

He remembers drinking at the Crown and Anchor, staring at the pictures of the team through the year, at Jamie fucking Tartt’s face, at his phone. He remembers dropping it and someone else - maybe Mae? he’s not sure - picking it up and calling someone for him, a cab probably. But he also remembers Jamie Tartt in the cab and on his porch, offering to talk about Keeley and the breakup, and making him tea and apologizing for all the times he was a prick and for Roy’s knee being the way it is now, of all things.

The last thing might be the stupidest thing the Prince Prick of all Pricks has ever said. He’s got nothing to do with Roy’s knee being fucked up.

The possibility of Roy fucking up his knee or some other part of his body had something to do with how things had been between him and Jamie, though. With his half of it at least.

He’d rather bite his own tongue clean off than ever admit that to anyone but himself. Even that he can only do in the middle of the night, when the chance that he’ll remember is very slim.

He finally moves, mostly to look around the living room. It’s all familiar shapes in the darkness, nothing unusual or surprising, no wide-shouldered body spread out on the couch. There’s a flash of disappointment.

The chance that Roy will remember that specifically is also very slim.

He drags himself off the couch and to his bed.

+++++++++++

The next day is a day off for all of them, even the coaching staff, which Roy is pretty grateful for. He’s more hungover than he’s ever been in the last couple years.

He’s not mixing wine and booze ever again.

He naps and orders food and naps some more.

He vaguely hates his body and the passage of time, the fact that he can’t drink like he did at 21 anymore.

He’s also vaguely grateful for it because he’s a little worried that he’d drink a lot more than he should if he could.

Last night had definitely been the worst of the bunch but there’d been too many nights lately where he’d been somewhere between slightly tipsy and proper fucking drunk, he realizes.

Towards the early evening, he drags himself out of bed and prepares himself an ice bath. Afterwards, he pours all the alcohol he’s got around the house down the drain.

He’s not allowed to drink again until he’s got his head back on straight, he decides.

As he watches the whiskey swirl down the drain, he’s a little surprised and pretty relieved that it’s so easy.

He’s been somewhere similar to this before, back when he’d left Chelsea.

He’s not sure how he pulled himself out of this place back then.

He just knows he’s got to manage to do it now, too.

+++++++++++

It clicks into place when he arrives at Nelson Road later than usual the next day because he had to pop by Teresa’s place and get Phoebe to school for her and sees Isaac, Dani, Jamie, Jan Maas, Declan and Colin kicking a ball around, still in their street clothes, just having fun with it. They’re playing a little dirty, too, a little more wildly than they should, wrestling and shoving each other in ways that would get them in trouble with the referee if there was one.

“Oi,” he bellows. They all snap to attention at once. “Either one of you little shits get hurt during this, I am demoting all of you to kit men. Is that clear?”

“Yes, coach,” most of them mumble.

He catches Jamie’s eyes for a just a second. The muppet immediately wipes the wide grin of his face, though Roy can still see that cocky twinkle in his eyes. The thing that attaches itself to Roy’s spine and tingles and burns is back.

He nods and grunts “Carry on,” then, once proper training starts and they’re warmed up and stretched enough, he makes them do thirty burpees each, forty for Jamie, telling them “That’s for fucking around without getting warmed up properly.”

During lunch break, he goes by Keeley’s office for the first time since - well, since. They’ve seen each other around, of course, and made small talk but he’s never sought her out for an actual chat before. There’s a dull ache in his chest the entire time they talk about work mostly and Phoebe a little and he remembers that more than anything either one of them actually said when he’s back in his office, looking out at the lads in the dressing room, and Ted among them.

Another thing clicks into place then.

He may not be a fucking baby child but he’s not quite sure if he would have stuck around if the breakup had happened in any other setting, in any other club. Then again, he’s also not sure if he’d have gone back to any other club. Or if any other gaffer would’ve put in all the effort Ted had put in.

Fucking Ted Lasso and his weird fucking Yankee Doodle bullshit, getting into his head.

Roy pushes himself out of his chair, opens up the door to the dressing room and yells “Tartt,” jerking his head toward his office door.

There’s a chorus of oohs and aahs among the lads while Jamie gets up to walk towards the office, Dani and Sam exchanging a look behind Jamie’s back that makes Roy think of siblings enjoying watching their brother get in trouble. He shoots them a short glare as he closes the door behind Jamie but judging by the expressions on their fucking faces, it might’ve come off as fond rather than intimidating. Fucking hell.

“What’s up, coach?” Jamie asks, slouching against Nate’s desk in that way his 20-something year old spine seems to have no problem with.

Roy’s already regretting this decision.

“The knee thing,” he starts saying, and something in the atmosphere of the room seems to change a little. Jamie straightens up a bit, uncrossing his arms to let his hands rest on the edge of Nate’s desk instead and looking at a spot near Roy’s head. “And the tackle that led to it. I meant what I said two nights ago. It didn’t have any-fucking-thing to do with you as a person. At all.”

Jamie looks surprised first, then like he wants to argue and then he just shuts his mouth and nods seriously.

“So if you’re still feeling guilty or blaming yourself or something, you need to stop with that shit. No distractions, ’cause we’re all gonna need to be at our best to beat Man City in the semifinals in two weeks, and we can’t do that if our best striker is in his head. Understood?”

“You think I’m the team’s best striker?”

Roy rolls his eyes at that. “Fuck off, Tartt.”

Chapter Text

v:

The dressing room after the game against Man City is not a place he enjoys being. It’s almost palpable in the air how devastated everyone is, including Roy. Though with him, it might be for slightly different reasons than with everyone else.

He knew that winning this was a long shot. He would’ve never told the lads that beforehand because he didn’t want to discourage them, but as he looks at their faces now, he wonders if he should’ve, if maybe he failed to do his job properly, failed to prepare them properly for this.

Jamie is taking it particularly hard, he can tell. He wants do to something about it, about all of them, for all of them, but can’t think of anything at all.

And then a security guard pushes open the door, looks around uncomfortably and calls “Uh - Mr. Tartt - you have a visitor - says he’s your father.”

Every eye shifts to Jamie for a second who hesitates, scratches his eyebrow and then says “Yeah.”

A small man with a wild grey beard and hair pokes his head around the door and asks “Are you decent,” in a way that makes Roy wish Jamie had said no. He swaggers into the room, thumbing at his nose and half-turns to the security guard, saying “I told you - dick -” before he he turns to the room and calls “Oh, gentlemen, gentlemen. Hey, it's a tough one, lads,” as he struts in. “It's a tough one, but no shame to it, 'cause, you know, we only ever beat,” he laughs, sniffs, jump-dances around, thumbs his nose again, “Uh, everybody we play.”

So this is Jamie’s father then: a restless, beady-eyed man whose jovial nature immediately seems to have an edge, a bite to it. And then there’s that almost twitchy confidence with which he carries himself, which reminds Roy of quite a few men he used to play with that mostly ended up plastered across the Daily Mail front page after testing positive and then in rehab.

It suddenly feels like there is no air at all in the room.

Jamie’s father stands in the middle of the room, eyes fixated on his son, “his flesh and blood,” as he calls him, continuing to talk, something about Jamie’s heart still being in Manchester that Roy barely hears.

Jamie’s standing a few steps away from the bench, his entire body at an odd angle, as if he can’t decide between slinking away and squaring up, and looks around the room for a second, not meeting anyone’s eyes. Most of the others only look at him when he’s looked away, side-long, uncomfortable, overwhelmed glances.

Roy wants to grab Jamie’s father by the ugly fucking fur collar of his jacket and drag him out of the room.

Jamie’s father makes his way to Jamie, taunting him, jokingly almost-punching his stomach but there’s a look in Jamie’s eyes, his mouth a thin line, and he’s retreating every so slightly.

Roy wonders where the fuck has Jamie Tartt has gone. Because this isn’t him. This isn’t right.

His palms sting. He looks down and realises he’s been clenching his fists so tightly the nails have made little crescent in the skin. He crosses his arms in front of his chest.

“Hey, look, do us a favor and get Denbo and Bug past security, yeah?” Jamie’s father asks with an air as if he already knows what the answer to the question will be. “They wanna go on the pitch, take a few snaps and all that, yeah?”

Roy sees Jamie’s mouth move but for what might be the first time in his life, he’s speaking quietly and Roy can’t make out the words. But he can tell from the way his father reacts - stepping closer to Jamie, moving as if to punch his chest or stomach before hinting at a left upwards hook to the jaw - that he didn’t get the answer he expected.

Roy uncrosses his arms, shifts his weight slightly, catches Sam’s eyes as he glances at Jamie, sees Beard move, too, crossing and uncrossing and re-crossing his arms in front of his chest.

He wants to this man gone. Not just from the dressing room.

“I’d rather them not,” Jamie says, more clearly this time, not meeting his father’s eyes, not meeting anyone’s eyes.

“What?” He asks, drawing out the word, then snapping “What, you're not gonna all go little moody bitch,” getting in and twitching in Jamie’s space and there’s something tight in Roy’s chest suddenly, “just 'cause you got your arse served to you on a plate, are you?”

“Don’t speak to me like that,” Jamie says, but it lacks his usual - Roy’s not even sure what it lacks, but it lacks something, everything, that makes Jamie Jamie.

His father’s taunting him, stretching out his arms, taunting Jamie, who just repeats “Don’t speak to me like that,” and then once more for good measure while his father turns his ear towards Jamie, pushing his face into his son’s space again.

There’s a faint ringing in the room suddenly as Jamie’s father continues speaking, getting even more twitchy, getting on every single nerve in Roy’s body, and then he’s turning around, suddenly loud as he calls the lads ‘amateurs’ as if they hadn’t all been playing in the Premiere League - clinging to their spot by the edge of their teeth, but still - for years.

Jamie deflates just a tiny bit, then turns away just as the older man turns back and growls “Don’t turn your back on me, you pussy,” grabbing Jamie’s arm, jerking Jamie back and shoving him at the same time.

The punch is swift and precise.

Jamie looks as if he’s about to cry.

His father is groaning on the floor, wiping his face with the back of his hand and then he’s laughing slightly as he’s getting off the floor, mumbling “Oh yeah, okay,” and Jamie’s drawing back the fist he struck his father with, shifting his weight away from him slightly, getting ready for something, Roy can tell, ready for a proper fight and he wants to move but for some reason can’t.

His brain is running on empty, not connected to his body.

Beard is there, though, and he can move, grabbing Jamie’s father, wrapping one arm underneath his armpit and grabbing his shoulder, the other arm across his back, fisted tight in the fabric of his jacket, pulling him away from his son as he curses and threatens, hauling him out of the room.

Jamie’s face is completely frozen as he watches, as everyone watches, as the door closes behind Beard and Jamie’s father and then shifts their gaze slowly, uncomfortably to Jamie.

Who’s just standing in the same spot, hand still clenched as a fist but no longer at this side, who barely seems to be breathing.

Roy blinks once, the first movement of his own body in ages, and then he’s moving before he even knows it, as if on an invisible string, towards Jamie, as if it’s his only purpose.

He’s almost got his arms clamped around Jamie when Jamie tenses and draws up his shoulders - it burrows straight under Roy’s skin, that tiny movement - but he’s there already, his arms around Jamie now, his left hand gripping his right wrist across Jamie’s back like a vice.

He’s rigid in Roy’s arms but sways at the same time, as if it’s all he can do not to collapse for a moment, and then he wraps his arms around Roy, clamps his hands onto his spine and buries his face in the crook of Roy’s neck. Jamie’s entire body is tense, his breathing shallow against Roy’s skin, coming in short erratic movements of his chest before it turns into quick quiet gasps and sniffles. That, too - the feeling of Jamie’s hitching breath on his skin, the stifled sobs - burrows under his skin, lodges itself somewhere between his ribs.

Slowly, Roy lets go of his own wrist, spreading his hands along Jamie’s back, letting them rest there ever so lightly, pulling him imperceptibly closer.

He’s not sure how long they stand there like that but at some point, Sam moves, standing up and walking past them, gently queezing Jamie’s shoulder as he does, and it seems to cause a ripple effect, more and more of the others getting up as well, coming towards them, patting Jamie’s back and shoulders as they walk past him and Roy, making little detours on their way to the showers.

As they do, Jamie burrows his face deeper into Roy’s skin as if he wants to disappear completely. But his breathing slowly but surely starts to come more evenly. Finally, he pulls away from Roy, not meeting his eyes, looking at a spot underneath his collarbone but nodding quickly, jerkily at him before he wipes his face with the sleeve of his jersey and stalks off towards the showers.

Roy stands frozen to the spot for a moment, his palms tingling, then walks into the coaches’ office, banging the door shut behind him.

+++++++++++

Jamie’s one of the first to take his place on the coach after. Roy lets two or three other people pass him by, glaring at them, before he gets on himself, finds Jamie in the window seat in one of the back rows and plops down next to him.

The muppet looks at him for a second as if he’s about to say something but then just leans his head against the window and stares straight ahead, at a point just above Roy’s knee. Roy gets out his book - A Swiftly Tilting Planet - and starts reading, in the sense that he stares at the same sentence for minutes at a time, understanding not a syllable of it.

It takes a while before they start driving back to Nelson Road because it takes a while for Ted to reappear. He looks like he’s been put through the wringer himself and a part of Roy wants to ask what the fuck is going on but another, larger part, is just really deeply tired and at the same time electrified, a strange and exhausting combination. So when Ted waves him over to where he’s sitting with Nate and they agree to just meet early in the morning to go over the match because Beard’s making his own way home anyway, Roy just nods gratefully and wordlessly.

When he makes it back to his seat, Jamie’s turned his back to the window, one shoeless foot propped onto the seat, and gotten his phone out, angled so that Roy theoretically can’t see the screen. In practice, he can see Jamie turn on and off the screen in the reflection of the window. And based on that and the frequent vibrations, he’s pretty sure that the barrage of texts Jamie’s receiving is not just supportive messages from friends and whatever family he must have that is not his useless wanker of an excuse for a father.

It’s none of his business. He needs to respect his striker’s privacy. If that privacy possibly, probably involves reading texts from his piece of shit father, that’s Jamie’s business. Because Jamie, albeit a muppet and a prick, is a grown ass man who can take care of himself.

Roy snatches the phone from Jamie’s hand, puts it into one of the inner pockets of his jacket and growls “Don’t.”

Jamie shuts his mouth and leans his head into the space between the window and the seat again.

Roy goes back to reading his book. He makes it about four sentences further before glancing at Jamie.

He’s dead to the world, mouth slightly open, face soft and relaxed.

Fuck.

They pull into the parking lot at Nelson Road around a full three pages of Roy’s book later. Most of the lads are bleary-eyed and quiet as they file out slowly, worn out by more than the lost match. Jan Maas and Dani nod and wave back towards Roy. Ted turns around between the seats and raises an eyebrow at him.

He can’t quite bring himself to wake the muppet yet.

They’re the last on the bus when he does, softly shaking the knee Jamie’s got closest to him. Jamie flinches violently, bringing up his hands in front of his chest. The tightness in Roy’s chest returns but there’s also something sharp between his ribs.

Jamie blinks once, twice, then mumbles “Sorry, coach.”

Roy just grunts and gets out of his seat, eyeing him for a second before he gets off the bus. The parking lot is emptying quickly. Sam, Dani and Isaac eye him from where they’re standing between their cars. He nods at them, so they get into their driver’s seats and pull away just as Jamie finally climbs off the coach, stumbling on the last two steps.

“Alright,” Roy growls. “Get in my car, Tartt, I’m driving you home.”

“Wha - no, it’s fine, I’m -”

“Get in the fucking car.”

The drive to Jamie’s place is surprisingly short but throughout it, his stomach growls so loudly Roy can hear it more than once. Fuck, he thinks to himself as he watches Jamie walk towards his front door. Then he turns off the car and gets out.

Roy’s followed Jamie half of the way to his front door when Jamie realises, starting a little. “Fucking hell, grandad, what are you doing?”

“I’m going to cook you dinner,” Roy states in a tone that usually prevents any further arguing. Then again, this is Jamie he’s talking to.

But Jamie just purses his lips, then nods and unlocks his front door.

It’s weird seeing him like this, almost as weird as him being nice to Roy, so subdued and quiet, not even in that sulky pre-Madonna way that he’s got when his ginormous ego got bruised, but genuinely sad, curling up on his couch and turning on the telly. Roy’s only ever seen that kind of quiet once or twice, after matches, but even then, Jamie’s shaken it off comparatively quickly. This seems different, like it runs deeper.

And he gets that, in a way, he really does. He’d just also really like it to be over because - just because. Because he cannot handle Jamie fucking Tartt falling the fuck apart on top of everything else he’s got going on at the fucking moment.

He wanders off into Jamie’s kitchen, opens up the fridge and finds it concerningly empty of things a normal person should eat, much less a professional fucking footballer.

“Oi,” he calls. “The fuck’s going on with your fridge, Tartt?”

“What do you mean?” Jamie calls from the living room, sounding just a tiny bit more like himself.

“There’s nothing fucking in it except protein shakes, chocolate, Lucozade and fruits.”

“Oh,” Jamie mumbles. “Shit. I forgot to pick up the stuff the nutritionists prepared for me.”

“What?” Roy bangs the fridge door shut and stalks back to the living room.

“They usually prepare me a shopping list,” Jamie mumbles. “And sometimes, some stuff to take home, if it’s a busy week.”

“You’re such a fucking child,” Roy growls. He’s seen the parcels, or rather crates filled with food, a couple times when he’s gone by the nutritionists office and wondered who they were for precisely. Now he knows. “I’m going to the shops. Be right back,” and don’t do anything stupid until I’m back, the tone implies.

“Can I have my phone back at least?”

“No.”

“Then what am I supposed to do until you get back,” he whines, making the familiar annoyance crawl back into Roy’s skin.

Fucking finally.

“Watch a film. Read a book. Plant a tree. I don’t fucking care,” Roy growls, despite not feeling all that much like it. He also bangs the door shut on his way out, but just a little, very intentionally.

He’s so fucking aware of how he’s acting around Jamie, as if he was some dumb ass vulnerable animal with sharp teeth Roy’s involved in a weird power struggle with, trying not to scare it but also trying not to let it know how conscious and aware every movement is so it doesn’t jump him. He wonders briefly if that’s how Jamie felt when Roy accidentally got sort of something like vulnerable with him.

He can’t imagine it. As if Jamie thinks that much before he acts. As if he thinks that much about Roy unless it’s about how to fucking aggravate him.

The Tesco in Jamie’s neighborhood is closed already for some fucking reason and as he wanders around Waitrose, feeling like an alien, he realizes that he’s got no clue what Jamie even likes to eat. Why would he, he’s never paid attention to that, and the muppet wolfs down all his food so quickly anyway that Roy’s not sure he even fucking cares about what it actually is.

So after a while, Roy just grabs stuff for spaghetti carbonara and drives back. Jamie opens the door seconds after he’s rung the bell, eyeing Roy with relief that he wipes from his face quickly.

“What, Google Maps to difficult to work for you, grandad?” He asks.

Roy just rolls his eyes, stalks into the kitchen and throws his jacket over the back of a chair. He sees Jamie eye it. “Don’t.”

Jamie’s all innocence, as if he has no clue what Roy’s talking about.

It’s going to feel like pulling teeth, he knows, but he still asks: “Why don’t you just block the fucking wanker?”

“So he’s still texting?”

“Don’t know, didn’t look,” Roy lies through gritted teeth as if he didn’t almost break the steering wheel in the Waitrose parking lot because of the vile, misogynistic, abusive shit on that little rectangle with the lock screen image of Jamie’s face as he scored his goal in the Tottenham Hotspurs match, fucking self-obsessed little prick that he is. “So?”

“What?” Jamie asks, playing with one of the knifes Roy’s gotten out already, drilling the tip into the countertop.

Roy swats it out of his hand. “You fucking know exactly what.”

Jamie sighs, scratching along the mark he’s left in the wood with one of his fingernails. “He’s my dad, isn’t he? I can’t just block him.”

“Yes, you fucking can.” Roy’s mincing the garlic as if it’s peeked around the dressing room door, asking ‘Are you decent’ in that familiar accent that sounded completely fucking wrong out of that mouth. “I told Phoebe to block her dad’s phone number for much less.”

“Who the fuck is Phoebe?”

“My nine year old niece.”

Jamie peers up at him. “And, did she?”

“No,” Roy admits. “Her mother did, though.”

“Well, mine’s up in Manchester, so -“

He suddenly remembers the only other time he’s ever heard Jamie mention his mum, around that metal trash can in the treatment room. He also remembers how he’d thought about Jamie’s words on his drive home, and about his grandfather and his dad, who’d been everything Jamie’s father hadn’t been, and about some of the coaches back in Sunderland who’d called him soft and other things, worse things, too, and how he’d decided to just never think about any of it again when he found out Jamie’s loan got terminated the next day.

He wants to ask if Jamie still talks to his mum, if he saw her when he had to go back up North, what she thinks about his return to Richmond, if he misses her, if she knows that she could be proud of him. All he says, though, is “What, so you’re not gonna block him until she comes down here or what?”

“Fine. If it’s going to shut you up already -”

Roy grunts approvingly, puts down the knife, fishes Jamie’s phone back out of his jacket pocket and hands it over. He swipes around on the screen for a bit, then hands it back to Roy as if he expects, no, wants him to check so Roy glances at the unlocked screen and sees that the red number above the message symbol has gone down dramatically. He nods approvingly, even smiles a tiny little bit, and puts it back on the counter, face down. Jamie’s got an odd look on his face, as if he’s fighting off a grin, but there’s none of his usual cockiness and instead something almost sheepish.

“Are you finally going to help me cook or what?” Roy asks.

“I don’t even know what you want me to do!” He finally sounds like the Prince Prick again.

Roy takes a deep breath. “Cook the pasta,” and once he’s done that, “Grate the pecorino.” Jamie blinks at him as if he’s spoken Korean and not just given a very simple instruction so Roy chucks the block of cheese at his head without thinking until it’s already left his hand. He has a sudden terrible vision of Jamie flinching but of course the muppet just catches it, grinning cockily, gets out a tiny grate and does as he’s told. Once he’s done, Roy hands him the pancetta and another knife and takes both away again almost immediately because he does not want any rind in his carbonara, thank you very much.

“Oi, at least tell me what I did wrong,” Jamie demands in a tone that makes Roy think back to the days he still ignored him. He doesn’t feel as wistful about it as he thought he would back then.

He explains it snippily but Jamie just nods and watches Roy cut away the rind and then beat the eggs and grate parmesan to mix with the pecorino with the same look of rapt attention he gets when Roy explains a trick play.

He thinks of Keeley suddenly, of the way she’d get bored sooner or later, often sooner, when he’d cook and try to distract him or just wander off. And the few times they’d tried to cook together, she’d get annoyed when he tried to explain how to properly dice an onion or turn down the heat on a pan she was using or something. But Jamie’s just perched on a chair next to him, almost too close, watching his hands with this quiet intensity he’s got and he doesn’t mind the closeness at all, the way Jamie’s muscular arm is brushing against his when Roy shifts a little to put everything into place before checking if the pasta is done and then taking it of the stove.

“Where’s your salt and pepper?”

Jamie startles a little, not like he’s scared or anything, just like someone who was busy absorbing something. He gets them out of a cabinet, then settles back into the chair and watches closely as Roy melts butter in a pan, then drops in the pancetta first and, once that’s golden, the spaghetti, mixes the eggs and cheese, takes the pan of the stove, lets it cool for a moment and pours the mixture in, adding a few spoons of pasta water and salt and pepper. It’s a little freaky how quiet Jamie is again and at the same time, it’s almost comforting to see him get so wrapped up in this simple thing, as if he’s no longer weighed down by the day.

He suddenly jumps to action when he sees Roy set down his wooden spoon and dashes around the kitchen, grabbing two plates and spoons and forks. They eat in silence at the kitchen island but it’s neither tense nor weird, just silent. Jamie doesn’t even wolf down his food as much as he usually does.

He does get a second serving and once he’s done with that, he asks “Where did you learn to do that?” as if Roy had hung the moon and not just cooked a fairly simple pasta dish.

“My grandad -”

“What, he let you mess around with knives while you could barely reach the counter top?”

“No, you fucking prick, he just let me watch.” He knows there’s no real heat behind it and blames it on his exhaustion, nothing else. “He worked in the RAF kitchens during the war. Loved cooking, too, worked as a chef for a few years, hated that. But he kept loving it, kept making Sunday dinner. And he was always fucking great at it so after he died, I started getting into it as soon as I could.”

Jamie just hums and nods, then gets off his chair to put the plates in the dishwasher but when Roy moves to wash up the rest, Jamie shakes his head. “It’s only fair, innit? You did all the cooking.” And since there’s nothing to say to that, Roy just grunts and nods and watches Jamie clean up until he gets bored of it and wanders off to the living room. He flops down onto the couch - soft black fabric, a lot less flashy than he would’ve ever expected Jamie’s couch to be - and, after a moment, grabs Jamie’s remote, opens up Netflix and tries to line up what he assumes is the next film in the Fast and Furious franchise.

Except for some reason, the franchise’s numbering keeps getting dumber and he can’t identify the fourth movie because there just does not seem to be one, a fact he points out when Jamie walks into the room and almost immediately makes fun of how he, an octogenarian, can’t even put on a Netflix movie. Roy threatens to leave and that shuts the little twat right up and he sinks into the couch and they watch the fourth of those dumbass fucking movies and then another one which does at least include the number in the title.

Roy only leaves when Jamie’s fallen asleep, spread out on the couch, his hair brushing against the side of Roy’s leg through his trousers, strands of it falling into Jamie’s face. For some reason, he wants to brush a few fingers through it. He doesn’t. He does spread a blanket over Jamie and waits to see if the muppet wakes up again, and then some more, until the film is over.

The second to last thing he notices before he goes is the brown and golden copy of The Beautiful and the Damned that’s flipped open and face down on the coffee table next to a small green toy soldier.

The last thing is that the crease between Jamie’s eyebrows has finally disappeared again.

+++++++++++

The worst thing about the appearance of Jamie Tartt’s father is that afterwards, Roy can’t fucking stop noticing Jamie, noticing how he’s moving and acting and talking and standing. Well, maybe not the worst because there were a lot of really bad things about that entire thing, like Jamie’s stony face and that look in his eyes when his father’s fist moved towards his jaw and the way Roy couldn’t get the gasping, shaky sounds of Jamie’s breath out of his ears for days afterwards and the fact that fucking no one should be allowed to treat someone else like that and get just a single punch to face for it.

But the worst thing, for him personally, is that Roy notices Jamie. All the fucking time. Despite swearing to himself on day two of Jamie’s loan to never ever notice the prick except if it couldn’t be avoided, to never give him the satisfaction. And now he notices Jamie, no matter what he does. And it’s not like Roy seeks Jamie out, it’s just that he’s always there, somewhere: in the dressing room, in the weight room, on the pitch, all boisterous hyperactivity as if nothing bad had happened to him, and especially not in recent memory. And it’s not that Roy wants him to fall apart again or anything, it’s just that he’s sure that it’s coming and he’d like to be there, be prepared for it, because he’d very much like Jamie not to self-destruct too hard. Because they need their star striker for the two months of the season they’ve got left if they’re to make it back to the Premiere League.

Or maybe the worst thing is that when Roy notices Jamie, which is all the fucking time, there’s that familiar intense feeling in his spine.

So when nothing happens for weeks and Roy still can’t stop noticing the way Jamie acts and wondering about what it means, he decides to consult the resident Jamie-expert.

It still feels weird being in Keeley’s office, especially because there’d been a look of surprise on her face when he entered.

It’s nothing in comparison to the look she gives him when he says “What do you know about the Prince Prick and his father?”

“Not much, Jamie’s always been pretty tight-lipped about him. Why?”

“There was an - incident. At Wembley,” Roy explains.

He’s thought he’d seen all the looks Keeley could give him - surprised, amused, loving, caring, slightly exasperated but fond, annoyed, hurt, wistful - but he can’t place what he’s seeing now as she starts telling him what she knows.

Chapter Text

vi:

He knows Roy’s the one sitting down next to him just by the way his weight falls into the seat. That doesn’t mean he isn’t surprised.

And the thing is, he knows Roy’s body - the way it takes up space, the rough shape of it - the way he knows Colin’s and Dani’s, the way you get to know the bodies of your teammates, especially the ones up front with you, just by being around all of them all of time, the way you need to to be the best on the pitch. Though his awareness of Roy’s body might have always been a little different.

But still. It feels different, now that Roy’s janked him into that hug, held and smothered him almost with those wide shoulders and those arms. Like something’s shifted in his awareness of Roy, and he won’t be able to shift it back.

For a moment, as Roy gets comfortable in the seat next to him, he wants to say something without even knowing what, something like ‘thank you’ or ‘stop fucking babying me’ but he’s pretty sure that even if he tried to say the first thing, the second one would come out, and that would be a muppet move. So he shuts his mouth again instead of ruining the moment. Roy takes out a book and starts reading.

Finally, Lasso gets on the bus and they’re off. Roy leaves Jamie’s side and it’s not like that’s a surprise, he’s probably got more important shit to deal with. It’s fine that he’s gone, Jamie doesn’t need him, he doesn’t need anyone, he needs to stop being a whiny little bitch, even if it’s just internally.

His phone’s vibrating in his pocket. It’s been doing that the entire time.

There’s a part of him - one that sounds weirdly all-American and simultaneously growly - that tells him not to check, to just ignore it. But there’s another part that just wants to get this over with because he has to get it over with sooner or later anway, so why not just do it now? So he angles himself against the window in a way that should prevent anyone from peeking at his phone screen - not that anyone would, not that anyone cares - and clicks it on.

The top notification is a text message from his dad, calling him a useless whiny piece of shit pussy who’ll regret this. Then another one arrives, telling him he deserves to rot with the amateurs at this second rate club. His eyes have barely finished scanning the message when the next one arrives, telling him that just like Pep, Lasso will realise that Jamie isn’t shit, isn’t anything and drop him like he deserves, and then another arrives, telling him that he isn’t good enough to be part of Richmond, of any team, that he isn’t good enough to be a part of anything at all and that he’ll regret everthing in his useless, worthless life.

It’s not entirely new and at the same time it is - like it’s a familiar pair of trainers in a new colour scheme, familiar words with a new flavour of anger. It’s not even a surprise - how else would his father react if not like this? He’d told Higgins before the game: every situation, his dad does exactly what a dick would do. Why should this be any different?

Sooner or later, his dad will tire himself out over drinks with Denbo and Bug, or his high will hit its’ ceiling and he’ll crash and be too tired to text or he’ll run out on his supply and then he’ll go quiet for a couple days or weeks until he’ll resurface after Jamie does something he likes, scores a goal he thinks impressive like the one in the quarterfinal, text him praise and then ask for money or some other favour, butter him up, maybe even apologize. And then he’ll see Jamie do something he considers soft and it will start all over again.

The texts aren’t even the worst of it. The apologies and the horrible sinking feeling that comes every time it turns out those were useless and he’d been an idiot to make himself believe and accept them again anyway aren’t even the worst of it either. The fact that even at 23, even at an age and height and weight where his knuckles could send his father to the floor easily, part of him is still 16 and terrified and sad and howling at the sight of his father on the floor - that isn’t even the worst of it either.

The worst of it is that everyone saw, and now they all know, know that he’s soft and angry and useless. They all saw his dad, saw Jamie freeze and then lose it and now they all know.

Everyone saw and no one did anything.

Except Roy. Roy, who’s back in his seat all of a sudden, who eyes Jamie for a moment, then focuses on his book for a moment, looks at Jamie again and then snatches the phone right out of Jamie’s hand, puts it into his jacket pocket and eyes him again, muttering “Don’t” so Jamie doesn’t, just puts his head against the window and closes his eyes.

His head connects with the cool glass and it’s like it zaps all of his energy. Suddenly, he’s just utterly exhausted.

He doesn’t mean to fall asleep but the soft shaking of the coach as it drives them back to Nelson Road is almost as soothing as the broad shouldered familiar presence at his side, so when he feels sleep pull him under, he lets it.

Someone shakes his knee. His body reacts on instinct, drawing together and away from the touch as his eyes fly open.

Roy’s face is hovering above his in the dim white lights of the bus. For a second, Jamie thought he saw an emotion on it. He mumbles “Sorry, coach.” Roy just jerks his head towards the front and walks off, leaving Jamie to gather his things and his thoughts which are a little messy until he realises that Roy still hasn’t given him his phone back.

For a moment, it registers as a surprise with his brain before he realizes that Roy probably simply forgot that he took it. He glances out the window and sees Sam, Dani and Isaac hang around between the cars, clearly waiting for - for him. Because he’s the only person left on the bus.

Something unknots in him a little as he sees it. As a vague memory of a hand gripping and squeezing his shoulder, of more and more soft, supportive touches on his shoulders and upper back as he was buried in Roy’s shoulder, makes it way through his sleep-riddled, slow brain. That’s a surprise, too.

He gets another surprise when Roy orders him to get in his car and then another one when Roy follows him to his front door, announcing that he’ll cook him dinner, and then another one when he goes to the shops to get food for dinner instead of berating Jamie or just fucking off when he realises there is barely any food in the house because like a muppet, Jamie forgot to pick up the stuff the nutrionists prepared for him.

And then Roy essentially coach-provokes him into blocking his dad in that way that he’s got, comparing him to a nine year old girl when Jamie’s an adult man who doesn’t need his mummy to hand-hold him through it, and that’s another surprise, though it isn’t the biggest. Even the feeling of calm that settles over him when he sees the number of new texts go down dramatically isn’t the biggest surprise, and it isn’t that he hands his phone back to Roy without even really thinking about it afterwards. It’s the warm, soft feeling in his belly when Roy glances at the screen, nods and puts the phone back down. It’s that he’s feeling anything other than sadness and exhaustion and anger at all.

The biggest surprise isn’t even that Roy actually stays and cooks him dinner, makes Jamie help and lets him watch, lets him watch those big hands move with precision and care through all the steps, lets Jamie hover around him without ever telling him to fuck off. It isn’t that they eat dinner in silence because Jamie resists his muppet urges. It’s that Roy tells him about his grandfather and how he loved to cook. It’s that he sticks around afterwards, as Jamie does the dishes, and turns on Fast & Furious and then Fast V.

It’s that even though Jamie’s royally fucked up their relationship with his death-deserving muppet ways, Roy Kent is hanging out with him in a way that would make 15 year old Jamie, staring at the poster on his wall - and 23 year old Jamie, all excited to get loaned out to Richmond because it meant he could play with Roy Kent - and 23 year old Jamie who realised he’d fucked up any chance at a relationship with Roy Kent that wasn’t shaped exclusively by hatred - go absolutely insane.

It’s that even though he fucked up in every conceivable way today, playing like shit and letting his father into the dressing room, punching him, he’s starting to feel just a tiny little bit less like shit.

+++++++++++

Roy’s stopped calling him.

It’s taken an embarrassingly long time for Jamie to notice, mostly because he’s been preoccupied with finding the balance between being enough of a prick that the others realise he’s fine but not so much that he has to make another grand apology tour through the club and with hanging out with Isaac and Sam and Colin and even Dani, whose constant chipperness no longer sets his teeth on edge, because they’ve kept inviting him to come over and play video games or to the pub, and with training enough to make up for his shit performance during the semifinal.

But also because it’s not like Roy called him regularly or anything, like he ever knew when the phone would ring. So it’s not a surprise that it takes him a while to realise, and then it hits him like a freight train. Because it’s not just that Roy hasn’t called him since the Man City game a bit more than a week ago, which wouldn’t be that big of a deal, but because he hasn’t called him even during the two weeks before that. And that feels weird.

Still, it’s not like Jamie can corner him somewhere and ask. It’s not like they ever talked about these late night drunk dials so he’s pretty sure it would be muppet-y to ask about them now, to demand an explanation when he’s never wanted one before, to essentially demand Roy’s attention. So he puts his head down and does the work, puts his energy into training and tries to be good.

Except that when he leaves Nelson Road and drives to his house, more often than not, this weird, antsy feeling creeps back in, the one that often came before he did something stupid, like giving that interview where he shit-talked Richmond before playing them for Man City or going on Lust Conquers All. Sometimes, he even finds his fingers hovering over the ‘blocked contacts’ button of his phone’s setting. So he starts sticking around just a little longer after the others are done training, mostly to run circles around the pitch and stretch some more, at least on the nights when none of the other lads are down to hang out, just to make sure he’s too exhausted when he gets home to mess up his life.

It’s only the third time he’s doing this, stretching in the ball of light his car’s headlights create, when the coaches catch him while they’re leaving after a long strategy session. One of them stops for a moment before walking towards him.

Despite the fact that he’s no more than a shape against the headlights, Jamie can tell it’s Roy.

And it’s the first time they’re alone together since the Man City match, since the spaghetti carbonara, since Roy pulled him into this bone crushing hug and let him sob into his track suit jacket as if he was a stupid child.

His heartbeat, still not quite back to normal due to the all the running, picks up speed.

“What do you think you’re doing, Tartt?” Roy barks out, crossing his arms.

“Just stretching, coach.”

Roy grunts in a way that might be approving and stays where he is, and then he starts ordering Jamie around, commenting on his form.

It feels good, though his muscles burn, and when he gets home, his brain is pleasantly quiet.

A couple days later, Jamie ends his run and walks to the parking lot to reposition his car and turn on the lights only for someone else to turn on theirs first. He almost jumps out of his skin.

The car door bangs shut, and then Roy calls “Tartt! Start stretching!” and Jamie does.

+++++++++++

Jamie keeps going on occasional late runs across and around the pitch, and Roy keeps sometimes showing up, supervising that he stretches properly and correcting him when he doesn't. They barely talk, except for the occasional comment Roy makes about something Jamie did during one of their matches and every time he does, it jumpstarts Jamie’s heart. Doesn’t even matter what Roy’s actually saying, if he’s praising or criticizing him - the fact that he notices is enough.

And Jamie, though he might be a muppet that should die of the incurable condition of being a little bitch, is neither stupid nor completely oblivious to his own feelings. He knows what it means that he gets excited when he makes his way across the pitch and sees Roy’s ridiculous car still in the parking lot. He knows what the prickle at the back of his neck means when he thinks Roy might be watching him, what it means that he pushes himself a little harder when he feels it. He knows what it means that he’s taken to staring at his phone all the fucking time and not to take selfies or check Twitter or Instagram or the blocked contacts button but because he thinks if he just stares at it long enough, Roy might call and he might get to see him again. He knows what it means that he sees Roy almost everyday at Nelson Road and still wants to see him more. He knows what it means that he’s re-playing Roy cooking in his kitchen over and over again, remembering the feeling of Roy’s arm against his as he cut and sliced and moved, and that the memory never fails to tap into an electric current under his skin.

It feels dead pathetic but it’s not like it’s new. He’s been in this spot before. It’ll pass, like it did.

Except, it might not. He thought it had but it’s back, so maybe it had never really passed.

It’s not like it matters, though, innit? There’s nothing he can do about it - it’s not like Roy even likes men. It’s not like he’d go for it even if he did like men. It’s not like Jamie’s going to do the absolutely most muppet-y thing he could ever do and risk the begrudging coach-player dynamic they have now.

But it makes him even more antsy, this added need to keep in control, to keep an eye on himself, on his impulses, to not just keep figuring out if a joke his crossing the line or not, to not just figure out if he’s being too much of a prick during training or a match but to also keep a lid on that feeling. Some days, he feels like he’ll explode with all of it, so he runs and runs and runs.

Keeley’s the first to notice, though she doesn’t explicitly ask about it, just starts dragging him to nail salons and spas and cute little cafés after training where he watches her eat pastries and internally curses the nutritionists until he drags her to a tattoo parlour and makes her sit by his side while he gets something done for a change. She mostly talks to him about her job, about how much she loves the stress, and he even manages to help her prepare for a Vanity Fair article and photo shoot she’s doing about being Richmond and Bantr’s head of PR. She’s also just really, really nice to him, accompanying him to a Make A Wish meeting with a kid, letting him ramble on and on at her about it and even telling him she’s proud of him when he drives home, gets a cuddly toy shark he’d gotten for Secret Santa and then drives back to the hospital to give it to the lad because he’d had a bunch of ocean pictures spread around the room. It’s nice, hanging out with her, even though it is effectively cutting down on the times he gets to jog around the pitch and then be supervised cooling down by Roy afterwards. Though that might also be a good thing, if he’s honest with himself.

Dr. Sharon is the second to notice, though when he doesn’t tell her the real reason, she links it to the encounter with his father and tries to make him talk about that more instead of letting him rant about the fact that people are still mocking his Lust Conquers All stint. It doesn’t seem entirely fair to him - isn’t she supposed to just let him talk about what’s on his mind? When he points that out to her, she laughs and explains that her job is also to make him stop deflecting and confront his trauma. Which is silly - he doesn’t have trauma, just a crap dad. But she also tells him that she’s proud he’s developing healthier coping mechanisms, whatever that means, so it’s not all bad.

The lads don’t explicitly notice, he doesn’t think, but he can tell that things between him and all of them are getting better and better. Colin’s invited him round to his place for a video game night twice now, Isaac’s calling him ‘bruv’ again and Sam actually seeks out his company pretty regularly, though he’s become tight lipped about his Bantr girl situation no matter how much Jamie pesters him about it.

And through all of it, Roy is still there and not there at the same time, somehow, floating around Jamie like one of those comets he learned about at the observatory when his Mummy took him. Watching, all creepy like, ordering Jamie to do extra burpees or reps or drills or whatever else he can imagine Jamie should do more of during training with the others, grunting and nodding occasionally. Spotting him running on the pitch and waiting for him to finish, too, when Jamie does his additional post-training cardio, though not every time. So the feelings - the electricity under Jamie’s skin, the antsy-ness, the thing that makes him push himself until Roy nods or grunts or claps his shoulder as he walks into the dressing room - stay there, too.

And then Sam scores a hat-trick, which Jamie has never managed to do and which of course wins them the game and raises the pressure for the next three matches, and then some dude named Akufo shows up in a fucking helicopter on a cold morning at the beginning of April. Rumour around the club is that he’s looking to poach Sam. Which is great for Sam, it really is, and Jamie’s very happy for him, except he’s so jealous he wants to scream, and so scared he’ll lose his friend he kind of wants to tie Sam up in the club’s basement.

And just because all of that isn’t enough, Miss Welton’s dad dies.

There’s a speech by Isaac in the dressing room about proper funeral attire and then dress shoe shopping with the lads, which is actually kind of fun despite the shoes being so shit, and then the actual funeral. He’s a little lost on the protocol for it - not funerals in general but for his boss’ father specifically. So he decides to just make sure neither Jan Maas and his general Dutch-ness nor Dani and his struggle with the dress shoes cause any major mishaps, and then Keeley, Miss Welton and a friend of Miss Welton get so loud and silly in a sideroom of the church that the priest has to actually reprimand them which in turn makes Jamie relax a little, breathe a little easier.

Unfortunately, once he’s no longer focused on minding Dani and Jan Maas, who are sitting in one of the church rows in front of him, his mind begins to wander.

The casket is near the altar, surrounded by flowers and a picture of a stern but fit middle-aged man, all angular and posh. Is that even something people are allowed to think at a funeral? That the dead person was once fit? It feels a little disrespectful, to be honest. Still, Miss Welton had a fit dad. Or maybe not fit, maybe more like handsome.

He tries not to think about what kind of picture they’d choose of him to put up there because that’s a weird fucking thought to have.

What picture of his dad would he choose to put up there?

Would he even choose a picture to put up there? Would he be asked to? Would he even want to be asked?

Would he even find out in time? Especially now, with his father’s number blocked and a month long quiet period stretching between them - the first he’s had in years. Would he find out in time? If his dad died -

Yeah, that’s a whole bunch of weird thoughts to have in a row. He needs to get his shit together, to stop being a little bitch crying about his own choices.

He looks around the church.

He’s kind of always liked them, these big, drafty, old buildings, all quiet and serious. Not because he was religious or anything, just because - well, just because. His mum liked them, too, and when he’d been a kid, whenever they’d gone for a trip somewhere and there’d been a particularly lovely or old one, they’d visited it. He’d loved the prettily stained glass windows but he’d also loved it when they were just ruins, just skeletons like the one in that giant park in the northwest of Leeds.

He realises he hasn’t been in a church except for his grandads funeral in years. Almost ten, actually. For a moment, he wonders why he and his mum ever stopped visiting churches when they travelled and then a half-repressed memory comes back, of Amsterdam and his father, beer breath in his face, of being called a soft fucking poof for wanting to see boring fucking buildings and -

He looks up at the glass window behind the altar, at the green and red and yellow figures from Bible stories he’s never cared about, and then at the colourful splotches it leaves on the floor.

It’s nice, being back in a church.

It’s different, though, being in one when there’s a funeral service taking place, like there’s something in the air that makes everyone either sad or antsy and uncomfortable. Colin’s definitely part of the first camp, Dani, Nate and Keeley are in the second. Coach Beard is unreadable as always, holding up his phone next to his head, Lasso - Lasso isn’t even there and Roy -

Roy is sitting in the row directly across the aisle from him, staring straight ahead. He looks good in his suit, like he did during that Sky Sports thing. Intense, somehow.

And then Roy turns his head and catches Jamie staring at him, and he can’t really read Roy’s expression, can’t make out which level of pissed off he is - he just remembers “Jamie Tartt is a muppet and I hope he dies of the incurable condition of being a little bitch,” as if he’s hearing it for the first time.

Except he’s not anymore, he’s no longer a muppet and he definitely does not deserve death through the incurable condition of being a little bitch. And Roy must have seen that, must know, because if he didn’t he would’ve never allowed Jamie to stay over and eat Pad Thai with him while watching The Fast and the Furious, would’ve never let Jamie invite himself over to watch the second one, would’ve never allowed Jamie to make sure he got home safe while drunk, would’ve never told Jamie to forget about the knee.

Would’ve never hugged Jamie after the loss to Man City in the semi final. Would’ve never driven him home and cooked for him.

Or maybe he would’ve. Maybe it wasn’t about Jamie, about him being a muppet or not, maybe it was just Roy being a good coach, taking care of one of the players on his team. Maybe he just needs to stop being a self-obsessed little shit.

Except - would Roy have done what he did for Jamie for any other player? Would he have done it even if he did think that other player was a muppet? Or a prick? Or would he - what would he have done if it had been somebody else getting screamed at by their father in the Wembley dressing room?

He’s still mulling it over when Miss Welton gets up to give a eulogy and instead just starts - starts singing ‘Never Gonna Give You Up’ until her voice almost breaks and then Lasso picks up the melody first and then everyone else follows suit. He’s still mulling it over when he’s at the wake at the house where Miss Welton grew up, watching Keeley and Roy steal pained glances at each other while sipping a beer - the first beer he’s had since Wembley. He’s still mulling the Roy thing over, mostly so he doesn’t have to think about what those looks mean, but he still can’t come to a conclusion.

And it’s not like he can ask. He can’t go up to Roy and just demand the answer, just like he can’t ask about the drunk dialing, just like he can’t ask why the fuck Roy’s always glaring at him like that. Just like he can’t ask Roy to teach him to cook or to come over and finish watching all the The Fast and The Furious films.

Just like he can’t do anything about the fact that Roy and Keeley clearly want each other back.

He finishes his beer, opens up another one and wanders into the hallway just in time to see Miss Welton close the door to a sort of Harry Potter cupboard behind herself, wiping her eyes quickly before stalking off without looking around. And then the door opens again after a minute and Sam steps out.

It takes all of Jamie’s willpower to neither drop the beer nor yell ‘Fuck’ and just mumble it quietly instead. Sam still hears him, looking like a deer in the headlights. “Bloody hell mate, you and Rebecca bloody Welton?”

“I - Jamie, it’s not what you think it -”

“Oh, is it?” He cannot keep the sarcastic, giddy tone out of his voice but at least he manages to keep it down. He also manages not to high-five Sam. “What, she show you a portal to Narnia?”

Sam takes a step closer. “Alright, Jamie, it kind of is - but you can’t tell anyone,” he pleads.

Jamie grins. “I won’t, mate, swear down. Not a word.” Sam breathes a sigh of relief. “But you owe me all the details!”

And Sam gives them to Jamie, later, at a bar over pints and vanilla vodka: how he met up with his Bantr Bossgirl only to find out that it was Rebecca Welton all along, how they decided to have a friendly dinner that ended with a kiss, how they’d been seeing each other ever since. For almost two months.

How she ended it in the cupboard because she wanted to ask Sam to stay. And it scared her, both because of the club but also just because.

Jamie’s not entirely sure if he gets it, if he’s honest, but he can tell that Sam would rather not be asked more about it. So he doesn’t and they text the group chat instead and some of the other lads come out and it gets a little cheeky and a little loud and he can tell that at least Sam’s a little less down.

Jamie’s also a lot more drunk than he’s been in a while.

And he can’t get Roy Kent out of his head.

Not that he’s ever really out of it anyway, but right now, he’s right at the forefront, looking at Jamie from where he’s seated in church. Grunting at him during training, ordering him around. Not calling.

Why did Roy stop calling him? There has to be a reason, and the only reason Jamie can think of is that he’s done something muppet-y again. But he hasn’t, or at least he hasn’t done it intentionally.

But it clearly doesn’t matter if it was intentional or not, considering Roy’s stopped calling him. It’s like Keeley said: being accountable matters. And if he’d done something muppet-y that had led to Roy not calling him, even if it hadn’t been intentional, wouldn’t the accountable thing be to call and apologize?

It’s a conclusion he comes to when he’s in the Uber home, and that leads to him calling Roy almost as soon as the front door closes behind him, slouched against the kitchen counter.

It only rings three times before Roy picks up and growls “What the fuck is wrong, Jamie?”

“Why’d you stop calling me?”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

For a moment, his tongue feels sluggish and too big in his mouth, his brain fuzzy and slow. “You used to call me. Before. Before Man City.” he finally manages to say and it’s like a dam breaks. “And we used to watch The Fast and the Furious and eat Pad Thai and just - hang out together. You used to call me, and it was nice, wasn’t it? Just hanging out. Felt like you didn’t hate me guts quite as much. But then you stopped calling, all sudden like, and just started giving me those looks again instead and I just want to know why and to apologize for being a muppet that made you stop calling and-“

“Where are you?” Roy interrupt him suddenly.

“What - Roy -“

“Where are you? Are you at home?”

Jamie hesitates for a second, not getting why that matters. Finally, he says “Yeah,” anyway.

“Alright,” Roy says and hangs up.

Chapter Text

vii:

Roy Kent hates funerals.

Ever since he got pulled from Sunderland for a week to attend his grandfather’s and stood there, trying to deal with his grief and the fact that missing training made him feel like a failure and the gaping loneliness of being at Sunderland in the first place and the joy of seeing his parents again and the guilt and all the grief at the same time, at fucking nine years old, he’s fucking hated funerals.

It doesn’t even matter what kind of relationship he has with the person whose funeral he’s attending, if he’s at a funeral, he feels like an overwhelmed nine year old again, mouthing off to pretend he isn’t scared shitless.

He takes a deep breath.

He’s not fucking nine years old.

He kind of wishes he was.

It’s a pathetic fucking thought to fucking have, but he still has it. If he was a nine year old, he’d still have most of the good stuff in his life to look forward to instead of - well, instead of shit being the way it is now.

He’s been trying to be less fucking despondent. If anyone asks - not that anyone will - he’d say he’s been doing an okay job with it, most of the time. He keeps busy: He throws himself into training, from the other side this time, trying to figure out their way back to the Premiere League. He keeps a stealthy eye on Jamie, pushes him to keep himself and Jamie distracted, even worries about him - though at this point, a little more than five weeks have passed since he punched his useless piece of shit wanker father, meaning that the Prince Prick probably won’t fall apart anymore. He spends a lot of time with Phoebe, mostly trying to live up to the responsibility he’s got for her by figuring out what the fuck is going on with her boob drawings and swearing less around her. He even flirts with one of her teachers once.

And it all helps.

But he’s allowed a few low moments, like seeing Sam score a hat-trick and knowing he’ll never even score another goal that counts in any way again or an article about his beautiful, smart, successful ex-girlfriend coming out or having to spend his Sunday at a funeral.

He’d tried very hard not to read the Vanity Fair profile on Keeley and failed fairly spectacularly, thumbing through the issue on the floor of Maureen’s living room while the others chatted about whatever the fuck was playing on the telly. Keeley’d looked so fucking gorgeous in the pictures, but that hadn’t been the thing that had gotten stuck in his brain. No, what had gotten stuck was a bit of the actual article: “When asked about what’s her love life, Jones chuckles and states ‘Well, I’ve been ‘Keeley Jones, Lucy Bronze’s girlfriend’ or ‘Keeley Jones, Jamie Tartt’s girlfriend’ or ‘Keeley Jones, Roy Kent’s girlfriend’, at least in the tabloids, for a really long time now, haven’t I? So I think it’s time I focus on being ‘Keeley Jones, Head of PR’, for a long time instead’ in the absentmindedly-insightful manner that is so characteristic for the thirty-two year old Head of PR.”

And it hadn’t been a surprise and it hadn’t been at all wrong in any way but it had still stung. Not that Keeley tried to put the focus back on her work instead of waxing poetically about her broken heart or that she’d list him and Jamie and her other ex in the same sentence like that, like he was just the latest in long list while she was so much more than that, but that that was how she felt in the first place, had felt even when she’d been with him. Keeley didn’t want to be someone’s girlfriend, had wanted and still wants to focus on herself.

But he wants - he doesn’t want a girlfriend, doesn’t want someone to wear his kit to matches and cheer from the sidelines and come home with him - but he did want, does want to be someone’s partner, wants to be there for someone, to support and cherish and cheer someone on, and get that in return. He’s not ever had that, before Keeley, only one night stands and superficial, short relationships. It’s like the fact that she came back to the dressing room after his final game, sat down beside him even as he tried to chase her off and laid his head against her shoulder, had woken a need in him. Except he’d been too fucked up to recognize it or reciprocate properly at first and then he’d over-corrected and smothered her. And she’d done her best to deal with it, to accommodate him, and it still hadn’t been enough.

Still, he can’t shake that desire, that need, to be needed, to take care of someone. He’d felt it again after the Man City match, ordering Jamie into his car and cooking for him, had felt good and satisfied about being able to do something like that, and that’s the only reason he sometimes finds himself thinking about cooking for Jamie again. It’s got nothing to do with Jamie, he just misses being needed ever since the breakup, that’s all it is.

And it doesn’t sting quite as bad anymore as it had when he’d read the article and definitely not as much as it did when the breakup had been fresh. But that doesn’t mean he’s fine or that that need is gone or that channeling it into training the lads fulfills it or that he isn’t fucking mortified by all of it every single fucking day, by this pit in his stomach and, to make things worse, he has to spend the entire fucking day at a funeral first and then at a wake. Around his boss, his ex and all of the lads.

At least all of them are there.

He’d heard Isaac’s speech to them about proper funeral attire and it had filled him with an odd sense of pride and longing and shame at the same time. He would’ve never felt like it was his duty as captain to make sure they didn’t show up in bright red Yeezys or without a shirt. He wouldn’t even have cared if they showed up, or known how to make them except through headbuts.

If he could be nine years old again, there are so many things he’d do differently. Captaining the Richmond team chief among them.

Well. It doesn’t matter. He’s not fucking nine years old, he tells himself, and it doesn’t do anyone any fucking good to keep dwelling on this.

Still, he’s so fucking proud of all of them, of Sam and Dani and Colin and even Jan Maas, and of Isaac especially.

And of Jamie. Jamie, who’s been finding the balance between being a prick and being a team player more and more easily, independently, on and off the pitch. Who he understands so much better now, who seems to be coping almost absurdly well with the aftermath of the Man City match, who Roy understands so much more now that he got this glimpse of Jamie’s father, who he actually really feels for. Who straightens up every time Roy gives him any kind of feedback, who does the extra exercises and reps and drills Roy asks of him without a complaint, who still causes that weird, visceral thing to flash through him, who’s taken to hanging back after training to work on his condition by himself and who seems glad if Roy happens to catch him at it - though that’s been happening less often over the last two week, unfortunately.

Unfortunately. What a strange fucking word to use in a sentence about spending time with Jamie fucking Tartt.

Still. It’s true. He’s slowly starting to enjoy spending time with Jamie, even if it’s less than half an hour during which he just makes sure Jamie does his cool down stretches properly. He almost wants to ask him to finish watching those dumb fucking car films together.

What the fuck is happening to him?

Or maybe it’s not just him - maybe it’s Jamie, too. Maybe it’s the fact that he seemed just genuinely happy for Sam, telling him he’d buy the him the first pint at the bar while they were leaving the dressing room, arm in arm, when just a year ago, he might have tackled Sam to prevent him from scoring a hat-trick before Jamie did. Maybe it’s the way he seems a little calmer, a little more focused, a little less full of himself. Maybe it’s the way he seems to be genuinely enjoying himself out on the pitch now while still striving to be the best without rubbing it in everyone’s face, no longer being an unbearable arrogant little shit about it, no longer ignoring his teammates to try and score no matter what. Maybe it’s the way he had he looked asleep on his couch, his face angular and unguarded and so fucking soft. Maybe it’s the fact that Roy still remembers that.

He looks over across the aisle, at the pews on the other side where he knows Jamie is sitting with the lads, and catches him staring.

It barely even irritates him.

+++++++++++

After the wake and the funeral, he needs to feel a little better, so he drives to his church, orders a kebap, does the usual back and forth about paying with the dude behind the counter, sit downs, opens his book, eats and reads. And then, just as he’s about to put his book down and drive back home, leaving Anthony and Gloria Gilbert to their date and his empty plate at his spot in his church, his phone starts ringing.

He flips it over and sees ‘Jamie Tartt’ on the screen, above the symbols indicating whether he wants to answer or decline the call.

It isn’t even a question which one his thumb moves to.

He files that realisation and the questions of ‘how did that fucking happen’ away for later.

“What the fuck is wrong, Jamie?” He growls, hoping Jamie hasn’t yet learnt to distinguish ‘concerned Roy Kent’ noises from angry or annoyed or just normal Roy.

“Why’d you stop calling me?” The muppet asks.

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Roy answers before he can even really think about it, knowing exactly what Jamie is talking about but not clear on what to do with the fact that Jamie isn’t relieved that Roy stopped drunk dialing him.

“You used to call me. Before. Before Man City. And we used to watch The Fast and the Furious and eat Pad Thai and just - hang out together,” Jamie rambles. His voice sounds - weird, not-Jamie-like but a different flavour of not-Jamie than in the Wembley dressing room. Not flat and dead but just a little higher than normal and at the same time he’s stumbling over his words. “You used to call me, and it was nice, wasn’t it? Just hanging out,” and Roy is about to interrupt him and tell Jamie to stop being such a whiny little bitch about things that are none of his business but it’s like a part of his brain blocks his mouth, a part that remembers the Man City match and the aftermath and the expression on Jamie’s face when he called himself ‘a muppet worthy of dying of the incurable condition of being a little bitch’ on Roy’s couch very, very clearly. “Felt like you didn’t hate me guts quite as much,” Jamie rambles on. He sounds so fucking vulnerable. “But then you stopped calling, all sudden like, and just started giving me those looks again instead and I just want to know why and to apologize for being a muppet that made you stop calling and -”

Finally, Roy’s mouth and brain seem to reconnect. Suddenly, everything becomes very urgent, so urgent it’s actually kind of mortifying. He asks: “Where are you?”

“What - Roy -“

“Where are you?” He repeats. “Are you at home?”

There’s a moment of silence and Roy considers telling Jamie that he’ll be right over because this is a conversation they should have face to face but before he can form any of these embarrassing fucking words, the muppet mumbles “Yeah.”

“Alright,” Roy says and hangs up, swipes his keys and his book from the table and hurries out to his car.

He doesn’t drive like a maniac because he’s still Roy Kent and this is still Jamie fucking Tartt, but when he has to take a diversion because of some fucking construction site that adds another fifteen minutes to the drive, he might punch the steering wheel and curse.

A part of his brain tries to ping him through the anger and the concern to ask what the fuck he’s doing but Roy ignores it, puts it on the back burner. He can wonder about why it’s so important that he explains himself to Jamie, that he doesn’t fuck up their new dynamic, that he makes Jamie understand that Roy not calling anymore is not because Jamie’s done anything wrong, once he’s actually done it, he tells himself as he parks his car and hurries up the short little path to Jamie’s front door.

When there’s no reaction to him ringing the doorbell, not even the second time, he knocks loudly. Still nothing.

He knocks again, rings again and when there’s still a fat load of nothing, he takes a step back to look up at the house. It’s dark, utterly and completely. He looks over his shoulder, at Jamie’s car parked next to his own.

Why the fuck isn’t the muppet opening the door?

He rings the doorbell again, longer and more intensely this time, and when the house stays dark anyway, he punches the doorframe, cursing under his breath.

His hand still stings as Jamie’s phone goes to voicemail immediately, not even ringing. Meaning it’s turned off.

Where the fuck is Jamie?

+++++++++++

Roy’s tried to banish the question from his mind.

But it had come back when he’d climbed into his car some two hours after he had arrived at Jamie’s empty house and left it behind, still empty. It came back shortly before he went to bed when he checked his phone and saw no reply from Jamie. It came back when he checked again after waking up and saw no notifications, or at least none that he cared about. It came back when he started his car and realized he’d have to stop for gas on his way to the Dog Track. It came back when he pulled into his parking spot and didn’t see Jamie’s car anywhere. It accompanied him all the way through the corridors of Nelson Road Stadium and now that he’s standing in the otherwise empty dressing room, looking at the painted number 9 on the cubicle above the bench, it’s taking up all the space in his brain.

Where the fuck is Jamie?

He pushes the question out of his mind.

It comes back when Ted and Beard arrive, take-away coffee cups in hands. “Oi,” Roy calls out to them from his desk through the open door between their offices. “Any of you heard from Tartt?”

Ted blinks at him in that ‘slightly surprised but pretending he isn’t way’ that he’s got. Beard raises an eyebrow. “Nope,” is all Ted says and a part of Roy’s brain wonders what kind of energy he is giving off that kept Ted from making a pun or a pop culture reference and how to cultivate it in the future.

It comes back when he hears the first of the lads arrive and he rolls back his chair to see Thierry and Richard enter the room.

The fourth time he does it and it still isn’t Jamie fucking Tartt entering, he notices the look Beard gives him, stands up and places himself beside the door connecting the dressing room and Ted and Beard’s office, arms crossed. Dani’s the first person he asks, though.

“No, Coach, sorry,” he answers, smiling in that way he has that makes it almost impossible to be angry. “Baby Shark did text me a meme this morning, though.” Roy raises an eyebrow, surprised that the nickname is back and that Dani uses it fondly, not derogatorily, like they all used to. Then again, it is Dani.

The air in the dressing room is becoming more and more tense the more time passes without Jamie arriving or anyone telling Roy where he is, though he only asks Sam and Isaac. Every single arriving player gives Roy and his death glare a confused or unsure glance only to be informed via whispers or head jerks in the direction of Jamie’s cubicle about what’s going on. It doesn’t take long for them to start whispering but it takes even less long for them to stop again when they see Roy’s face at that and to instead engage in a heated discussion about some club the Everton players apparently attended during their last away match in London and whether that means they’ll no longer be able to go there or not.

There are twenty-two people in the dressing room and the time for training to actually start is creeping closer but neither Roy nor any of the twenty-one others are making a move towards the pitch.

Finally, when it’s a few minutes after nine, the question burning through his stomach still hasn’t been answered and no one’s made a move to leave the dressing room, Roy grunts and starts walking out of the room, towards the pitch.

Only to run straight into Jamie fucking Tartt in the doorway.

Suddenly, Jamie is everyfuckingwhere around Roy.

He’s panting a little, hot minty breath on Roy’s face, and so incredibly close, all wide eyes and boyband hair and the smell of some absurd fucking Lynx concoction that should be banned under the Geneva Convention.

Relief floods Roy, followed by that visceral flash that sits right in the middle of his spine. He wants to grab Jamie the way he did in the Wembley dressing room, wants to pull him close, wants to fucking murder him for disappearing, wants to grab Jamie by the collar of his ugly fucking shirt and -

The room has gone completely and utterly quiet. Roy doesn’t need to look to know that every single eye is on him and Jamie, can feel the weight of the stares like fucking lead on his shoulders.

He grunts and walks past Jamie, knocking their shoulders together wordlessly, forcefully, hears Jamie call “Oi! Coach,” as he storms off, out, away, wondering what the fuck is going on with him.

It takes the lads ten more minutes to make it onto the pitch, followed by Lasso, Beard and Nate who all do their very best not to look at Roy in a way that he’d notice. He gives them another ten to stretch, then yells “Whistle,” which makes everyone snap to attention. “Run,” he barks. “End to end to end, until I tell you to stop,” and they do. Apparently whatever energy he’s giving off stops the other coaches from intervening. Good.

It’s weird. He’d thought that he’d feel less fucking - whatever he feels once Tartt showed up. Instead, it’s like someone has set his spine on fire.

After a while, Colin and Moe are starting to look a little green around the gills, and then even Isaac’s breathing heavily, too, so Roy calls whistle again, then barks out “Stretch!”

He takes a deep breath, but that thing in him is still there.

“Not you, Tartt,” he barks out. “Laps. Around the pitch. Now.”

Jamie looks up and Roy is not prepared for that because it means he’s meeting his eyes.

For a moment, Jamie looks like he might want to say something. Roy bristles, ready to order him to the boot room, ready to tear him a new one for disappearing, for scaring Roy, for thinking Roy hated him again but instead, Jamie just nods, gets up and starts running.

He keeps running while the others stretch and then start practicing drills. He keeps running even though he starts to slow down after a whe. He keeps running even though he stops on the other side of the pitch to honk up his breakfast. He keeps running, not meeting Roy’s eyes when he passes the coaches, not complaining, not making a sound.

At some point, Ted clears his throat. “Hey, Roy.” Roy grunts. “I know you and Jamie have history and all that, but maybe we should let him get back to a part of practice that isn’t cardio for a bit?”

Suddenly, there’s a painful something in the pit of Roy’s stomach. He grunts and nods and when Jamie passes them again, he says “Tartt. Stop.”

Jamie’s chest is heaving and for a second, Roy remembers the feeling of it against his own body. He pushes the memory away, forces himself to nod and grunt approvingly at Jamie who straightens up immediately, a sparkle returning to his eyes.

The pain intensifies. Roy turns around and walks off the pitch, not conscious of where he’s going until he finds himself in an ice bath.

He stays in there until almost every cell of his body hurts. After, he makes a quick round through the weight room, checking on the lads. He discusses strategy with Beard, Nate and Lasso for the upcoming away game against Cardiff more animatedly than usual, ignoring the looks they throw each other when they think he doesn’t notice.

In the evening, when he sees Jamie running laps around the pitch again, he gets into his car and drives off despite wanting nothing more than to do the opposite.

+++++++++++

When Roy returns to Nelson Road the next day, walks into the dressing room and finds Jamie already there, in his kit, guilt roils in his stomach. Then he notices the way Colin and Moe eye him carefully, and it’s like the realisation that’s been sitting under his skin, forming in the back of his mind, ever since Jamie called himself a little bitch on Roy’s couch, crashes over him.

He wants the floor to open up and swallow him. He wants to drown himself in an ice bath. He wants to walk out of Nelson Road, out of London, out of England, to never return or at least not until he gets his head on straight.

He’s their coach. He’s their fucking coach and he’s been using them as his personal punching bags, Jamie more than anyone.

He’s a fucking piece of shit.

He should walk out of Nelson Road.

Instead, he nods at the lads and walks into his office where he stays for most of the day and tries to figure out his options.

He could quit.

He could quit and get his head right, find a way to deal with his shit that doesn’t involve him taking it out the players he’s supposed to be mentoring, doesn’t involve him becoming the kind of bastard he’s hated training and playing under, before Lasso realises how unfit Roy is to be a coach and fires him the way he should.

Except he’d rather walk into the sun than quit. If he quits, it would be like it was immediately after his injury when all he had to look forward to was picking up Keeley for lunch and the yoga nights and meeting Phoebe and Keeley coming home from work, except without Keeley. If he quits, he’d have to find another job to keep himself from going insane and the only option he can think of is going back to the Sky Sports gig and he fucking hated that, hated every single aspect of it, hated the studio and the make up and the way they’d say “language” to him, as if he was a fucking child, hated the way it made him feel, as if he was Trent fucking Crimm. If he quits, he’s got no clue when he’ll see Isaac and Colin and Jamie and Dani and Sam and Jamie again, if he’ll even see them again because who knows if Ted would take him back if he wanted to come back once he’s worked out his shit or if the lads would even still be at Richmond.

If he quits -

So that’s not an option.

But what else can he do?

He’s still mulling that over when his office door bangs open and Ted strolls in, hand in his pockets, all Middleamerican ease and comfort, and for a second Roy wants to throw something at his head.

“There you are! We were beginning to miss your dulcet tones on the pitch.”

“Fuck off.”

Ted raises his eyebrows, then closes the door and leans against the frame. “Wanna tell me what bees got in your bonnet there?”

“Are you fucking -“ Roy snaps, then grits his teeth. “What do you want, Ted?”

He shrugs. “Just wanted to check in.” Roy just scoffs and glares, hoping it’s enough to send Ted back to whatever the fuck it is he’s supposed to be doing. “You know, back in my college days in the good old US of A, my favorite TA was going through something - probably a nasty breakup, based on her mood and abruptly changed hairstyle. So she suddenly started making us do a lot of declension tests, different verb tenses and so on, which no one in that course enjoyed. And then, after a little while, she got out of her funk and went right back to teaching Latin in that engaging, fun way she had that had made her my - and everyone’s, really - favorite TA.”

Roy knows exactly what Ted’s doing, knows what he’s trying to say through a surprisingly short Lasso story. A part of him wants to thank him, another part wants to ask him why the fuck he was doing Latin in college in the first place, a third part wants to tell him to fuck off and that it’s not the same. He growls instead.

“Y’know, Roy, when Michelle and I started first having problems, the lads at the Shockers saw a lot more of Led Tasso than maybe strictly necessary.” He sees Roy’s eyebrows move, and hastily adds: “Oh, yeah, right, you weren’t back yet when I brought Led Tasso out around here. He’s - well, he’s a version of me combined with a more toxic version of you, I’d say. When Beard was going through a rather nasty breakup a couple years back, the lads did tackling drills for weeks on end.“ Ted scratches his jaw. „So you brought some personal stuff into the way you led practice yesterday. Big whoop. We’ve all been there.”

Roy growls again.

“You didn’t demean anyone. You didn’t belittle or abuse anyone or any of the other fancy SAT words for hurt that I can’t think of off the top of my head right now,” For a second, Nate’s face flashes through Roy’s mind. “You just made the lads run a bunch. They grumbled and joked about it this morning, and when you didn’t show up for practice, they started joking about it in that way where it’s clear they worry. So it’s all okay, Doris Day.“

There’s something painful lodged in his throat, making it hard to breathe and impossible to speak, so Roy just nods which makes Ted smile widely, brightly, affectionately. “Alright-y then. How about you get back out there and make them run again, hm?”

Roy nods again and follows Ted out onto the pitch. He’s not entirely convinced, if he’s honest, and still more than a little embarrassed. He’s back out anyway, watching and commenting on the drills, telling Isaac how to stay close to his mark, how to block without it turning it into a foul, telling Jan Maas how to make sure his long pass lands instead of teetering out, telling Colin how to score the penalty shot properly by angling his body just right in the crucial moment, and the way all of them lap up his feedback, grinning and “Yes, Coach”-ing him, does what Ted’s words couldn’t.

But he doesn’t allow himself to look at Jamie.

And he knows he needs to keep an eye on his shit, needs to keep himself in fucking check, needs to make sure he doesn’t become the kind of fucking arsehole where the players cheer when he doesn’t show up on the pitch. So the following week, he focuses all of his energy on doing his best: he takes ice baths in the mornings, he actually talks to his sister about what’s going on with him, even if it’s only in five word sentences, instead of just chatting about Phoebe and work. He still yells and growls and grunts but he banishes words like ‘maggots’ from his vocabulary, at least while he’s yelling at the lads. He stops making Jamie do extra work.

He doesn’t stick around after training to make sure Jamie stretches properly after his solo cardio sessions. He doesn’t even look to see if he’s still doing them, Roy tells himself, and if he notices Jamie achingly familiar, wide shouldered form circling the pitch late every evening of the week from the corner of his eye, that’s no one’s fucking business but his own.

If a part of him almost waits for Jamie to call him again, staring at his phone on the coffee table as if it was a venomous snake while he tries to read, that especially is no one’s fucking business. If he notices that Jamie seems more on edge on and off the pitch on Thursday, that’s also no one’s fucking business. If he wants to put his head into a bowl of ice to scream because he can barely allow himself to acknowledge Jamie in the dressing room, that’s no one’s fucking business.

Except, apparently, Keeley’s.

She corners him Friday evening in the Richmond parking lot, eyes blazing and ponytail swishing as she pushes away from the wall next to the entrance and calls his name.

He cycles through about a million emotions as he stops and turns to face her but lands on curiosity about what she might have to say.

“Roy-o, you need to talk to Jamie,” comes out of her mouth. It is abso-fucking-lutely not what he expected. He growls in response. “I’m serious! He’s been dead mope-y ever since he called you and you hung up on him, and if you don’t and it continues, I might have to drown him in the river. And I cannot go to jail for murdering my ex due to his mopeyness about my other ex!”

He growls again, the gears in his brain turning. Then he says: “I only hung up on the muppett to drive to his fucking place.”

Keeley sighs and leans against the side of Roy’s car, her shoulder just a few centimeters from his. For a second, he wants, and then it’s gone again, replaced by the memory and the fear of all the pain that they’d be in if he did something stupid despite knowing full well that nothing’s changed between them.

“Well, he’s got no way of knowing that, does he? He thinks he’s pissed you off again,” she says, with that patient, soft undertone that makes Roy want to throw himself at her feet.

“He hasn’t,” he says instead. Again, there’s something tight in his throat, and something else, something intense, in the pit of his stomach, and Jamie’s face, all soft and open and relaxed, in the back of his head and the ghost of his weight in Roy’s arms. “He - I -”

Keeley just sighs and pats his shoulder, then pushes away from his car. “Roy-o, you know I care about you, and I care about Jamie, and I want the two of you to figure out whatever’s going on between you but you have to know that I cannot be the one to handhold you both through it. I’ve got stuff of my own to figure out.”

He wants to say something, wants to apologize, not just for dragging her into this but for all of it, for taking and pushing and still never being satisfied, for always wanting more. All he can do is grunt and nod.

And wonder how the fuck he’s supposed to figure something out he can barely even acknowledge.

Chapter Text

viii:

Five days after his ill-advised call to Roy fucking Kent, Jamie doesn’t even do his usual evening laps around the pitch. Not because he doesn’t want to run but because he has to acknowledge that Roy won’t be there once he finishes and he doesn’t want to carry the disappointment he’ll feel about it into the Cardiff match.

Instead, he drives home and then runs on his brand new treadmill in his gym, and when that feels wrong, he goes for a run around his neighbourhood instead.

He’s come to really enjoy running, not just because of the improvements that come with the additional regular cardio but also because he likes the way it kind of quiets down his brain. It’s not like it is when he plays an actual game, when the world shrinks to the size of the football ground and maybe the dugout, but it’s also not the way it usually is when he cannot stop his brain from going a hundred fifty miles an hour as if it was Colin’s ugly arse Lambo. It’s a nice middle ground where he can just let the thoughts come and go.

Dr. Sharon had nodded approvingly when he’d told her on Tuesday because they’d talked about coping skills for after her imminent departure. Then she’d asked him about the whole ‘running even after he hurled’ incident that she’d apparently witnessed from her office’s window, noting “I’d heard a rumour that Coach Kent had a hand in it. Do you maybe want to talk to me about that?”

It had taken Jamie a moment to get what she’d been getting at, that she hadn’t been asking him to deny or confirm but to talk about his feelings surrounding Roy instead. He’d rambled on a bit after that, about knowing that Roy was only pushing him because he saw that Jamie still had potential that wasn’t being used and that Roy just wanted to see how far he could push, wanted to see what Jamie could handle. He hadn’t originally said that he knew that Roy wouldn’t push farther than that. She’d hmhm-ed him and tapped her pencil against her clip board at that which always made him spill his guts for some reason, so he’d spilled: “And it’s like - Roy’s a grumpy old fuck and I don’t think he knows how to have an emotion that isn’t, like, anger so of course that comes through during training. But I know he’d never ever put any of us in any real danger of getting harmed. I trust him.”

She’d just raised an eyebrow at that.

“Because with Roy, you can know what’s what, you know? It’s not like with me old man where I never really know what version of him I’ll get. And I know I only have to worry when Roy’s ignoring me. And -“ He’d hesitated for a second, and she’d raised her eyebrow even higher. “Back at Wembley, when I was hurting, he was - he was there, wasn’t he?”

He’s talked about Wembley with her, of course. Quite a bit, and it had helped, sorting through the numbness and then the feelings - through the sense of shame, burning hot in his stomach, and guilt and fear because he’d fought back, and he’d never ever fought back before, and then the sudden relief when Roy, marching towards him in the dressing room, hadn’t done anything but pull him close. But he’s never really articulated that aspect before, that the way that being pulled in tight by Roy, being allowed to sob onto his shoulder, had made him trust Roy in a way he never had before, had made him realise that as much as Roy was an angry fuck, he wouldn’t pile onto Jamie’s hurt, that when Roy recognized someone was hurting, his instinct was to care and not to mock or kick or something, the way it had been - and sometimes still is - for Jamie. “He was there, and he was - I don’t know, kind, you know? He never once mocked me, never gave me any shit, he just - cooked for me. And I trust him.”

She’d nodded at that and made a quick note and then she’d mercifully allowed him to switch topics. For a moment, he’d wondered if he should’ve told her about the drunk dialing and the Fast and the Furious movie nights and Roy hanging up on him. But he hadn’t, ever - there was nothing actually wrong with it, he supposed, and at the same time, he figured as a shrink, she might be obligated to alert Mrs. Welton or something if she found it inappropriate, and there was always so much other shit to talk about, shit that felt bigger to him. And now she was on her way out and it felt like too big a can of worms to open up now because if he did, he’d also have to explain to her why he never mentioned it before. So they’d talked about her impending departure from AFC Richmond instead which hadn’t bothered him all that much - learning the NSYNC dance had been good fun and she’d offered to continue therapy via telephone anyway which he’d declined because the idea just sounded odd.

And then he’d noticed that Roy had actually started ignoring him again.

He’d been afraid of it when he’d seen his G Wagon peel out of the Richmond parking lot on Monday evening, finishing his second and final slow lap around the pitch. He’d worried about the possibility of it when Roy barely grunted at him but when Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday passed and there hadn’t even been a single barked out “Tartt, twenty more,” he’d known for sure. So by Friday evening, he’s ready to acknowledge the fact that there will be no more extra conditioning and stretching sessions supervised by Roy fucking Kent and just goes home to run.

Jamie knows he probably should’ve expected it. After all, he’d randomly called Roy in the middle of the night like a whiny baby to bring up something they’d unspokenly agreed to not talk about.

Except Roy had broken that agreement first, sort of, hadn’t he? By calling Jamie into his office to talk about ‘the knee thing’. So he shouldn’t be so angry about a simple phone call, shouldn’t just go back to ignoring Jamie even if drunk dialing had been a bit of a muppet move.

A part of Jamie thinks about calling Dr. Sharon after all but it feels dead pathetic. He’s a grown man, he doesn’t need to go back to therapy just because his crush started being a dick to him again. Especially because Roy isn’t even properly ignoring him - he trains Jamie the same way he trains Jan Maas and Richard, growling and grunting and occasionally nodding at him, but he isn’t Jan Maas or Richard, he’s Jamie Tartt. He wants more. He needs more.

He’s been unsure of how to get it, though. He’s thought about sauntering up to Roy during training again, asking for feedback, but every time he’s on the brink of it, he looks at Roy’s face and freezes for a second. He’s thought about going back to being a prick again, just in general, not just when he feels it might be necessary during a game, but the disappointment Sam and Keeley and Dr. Sharon would feel at that keeps him from it. He’s thought about asking Keeley for advice again but that just feels inappropriate. a a

Ever since he called her after Roy hung up on him and she told him to order an Uber and come over, they’ve texted her more which led to them watching a movie one night and grabbing dinner together the other. He’s caught her giving him the odd side eye through it, the one she does when she’s thinking through something but doesn’t want to talk about it yet. For a moment, when Jamie gets home and then out of the shower, running a towel through his hair the way he never would if he’d conditioned it properly, he considers asking Keeley to hang. But then he remembers the side eye and the fact that he’s got to get up early the next day for the away game in Cardiff and just goes to sleep instead.

They leave at the arsecrack of dawn for the game because the gaffer wanted to give Colin a chance to reconnect with his family in Wales. Lasso hadn’t noticed the odd look on Colin’s face when he’d said it but Jamie had. Well, he’d mostly noticed Isaac and Colin murmuring more quietly and seriously to each other, and alerted Sam to it. So before they get on the team’s coach, the three of them corner Colin and gently bully him into revealing that he hasn’t made any plans with his family yet.

“Okay then!” Jamie proclaims as he pulls Colin into a headlock and towards the coach. “You’re giving us the Grand Colin Hughes Cardiff tour then, including all the best places for jaundiced worms to do their jaundiced worm things.”

Colin protests ineffectually, mostly about the return of the jaundiced worm thing, but agrees, grinning ever so slightly. They pile onto the coach, Jamie only shuddering slightly at the way Roy looks at them, and when he falls into a seat behind Colin and Isaac, he can see that Colin’s already opened Cardiff on Google Maps to plot out sightseeing routes for them. Something warm and giddy spreads through Jamie, as if he’s scored a goal during 11 v 11 or sent down an especially good pass.

After Kenneth has dropped them off in front of Cardiff City Stadium and the lads have teased Colin about its’ Welsh name to the point that he’s reaffirmed the need for Welsh independence loudly and proudly, they begin badgering him about their sightseeing tour to the point that it draws in more than half of the rest of the team.

Jamie tries to put the look Roy gives all of them before they leave, the way his eyes maybe seem to linger on Jamie, out of his head. Unfortunately, Colin’s Cardiff tour doesn’t offer enough of a distraction, seeing as it’s more him and Isaac trying to herd the team from one place to the other as if they were cats and less actually learning anything about Cardiff. Moe seems especially hard to wrangle, demanding they make their way to some weird memorial in Cardiff Bay Colin staunchly refuses to take them to. It’s fine with Jamie because Ianto whoever is apparently not even a real dead person and Colin does seem distractedly happy enough. Jamie considers their Cardiff tour a success.

Once they get back to the dressing room, Colin seems a little down again, though. Isaac’s with the coaches for some reason so Jamie slumps down beside him on the bench, pulling his foot up to fiddle with the laces as if they need to be retied, knocking their shoulders together.

“You alright, mate?”

Colin glances at him for a second. “Yeah, I’m alright. And strong. And a capable man.” For a second he looks deeply embarrassed, as if he expects Jamie to make fun of him but when he notices that Jamie’s just looking at him quizzically, he expounds. “It’s this thing - this mantra Dr. Sharon helped me come up with. To say when I’m - well. You know.”

“Yeah,” Jamie mumbles and hesitates about what to say. A part of him really wants to kick past Jamie in the shins for the way Colin just looked at him, another wants to apologise. He settles on: “Dr. Sharon was dead good, wasn’t she? Sucks she had to leave.”

“I didn’t know you’d been seeing her!”

Jamie just shrugs. “Shrink-footballer confidentiality.”

Colin smiles at that and bonks his shoulder against Jamie’s, which leads him to consider the conversation another success despite the way Roy is staring at him from doorway to the coaches’ office.

The game’s a success, too: Jamie catapults the ball into the net in the 31st minute, Isaac, Jan Maas, Goodman, Dixon and Zoreaux disrupt absolutely all of Cardiff’s attempts to equalize and then Jamie draws the defense’s focus on him in the last fifteen minutes of the game and Colin - despite essentially being continually booed by the Cardiff fans - lands another beautiful goal off of Jamie’s long pass, cinching their three points. And Jamie’s like ninety-two percent sure that he could’ve landed the goal, too, but the complete and utter joy on Colin’s face as they all run towards him to celebrate and the soft but all encompassing way Jamie feels proud of himself makes it absolutely worth it.

So it doesn’t even matter that while Ted praises him and Beard nods at him with that odd smile and Nate seems both uncomfortable and bregruding and overwhelmingly happy at the same time, Roy just keeps eyeing him with that intense thing he’s had going on for the last couple days. Jamie doesn’t even care as he celebrates with the lads - they’re so close to getting promoted that he can almost taste it and no amount of Roy being a grumpy old fart can sully that, not even when he can feel Roy’s eyes drilling into his skin from the back of the bus where he’s sitting with the other coaches during the drive back to London.

It doesn’t matter, he tells himself as he gets into the Uber with Sam and Dani to go to a club. It doesn’t matter, he tells himself as he flirts with an older bear on the dancefloor. It doesn’t matter, he tells himself as he does shots with Colin.

It doesn’t matter, he tells himself as he turns off his phone so he can’t drunkenly dial Roy and demand answers.

+++++++++++

It doesn’t matter, Jamie keeps telling himself every day, in a hundred little moments, and it rings less true every time.

He’s refrained from trying to bother Roy into paying more attention to him but it’s getting more and more difficult. It becomes unbearable when he scores a beautiful goal during free kick training that essentially earns him some form of praise - high fives from Isaac, Colin, Bumbercatch and even Richard, a ‘well done’ from Nate, a rambling comparison to some obscure American sports highlight from the gaffer, hugs from Sam and Dani - from everyone but Roy. So as they make their ways back to the dressing room after, he slows down a little and asks “Any pointers before the next match for me, coach?”

Roy just growls and shakes his head. It’s not even a surprise but it is like a knife through the ribs. It’s been like this for almost two weeks now and though it’s not as bad it had been during the winter, it’s worse. He and Roy had been making progress - Roy had genuinely coached him, not just the way he coached all of them but singling him out, paying extra attention to Jamie, and they’d had almost friend-like moments. And now it’s all gone, destroyed by Jamie’s muppet-ness.

He makes a detour to the loo before joining the others in the dressing room, mostly because he isn’t yet in the mood for company.

It’s not fair, though. It hadn’t even been that big of a muppet move, calling Roy, and anyway, Roy should have expected it. Drunk dialing people for weeks and then suddenly stopping would’ve done anyone’s head in. Still, it’s not like he can go and demand another explanation from Roy.

Or can he? Should he?

Wouldn’t that be more muppet-y? Wouldn’t it fuck everything up further?

He’s still mulling it over as he enters the dressing room and catches a snippet of Dani proclaiming loudly that “Baby Shark has been playing very well anyway” to the entire room.

“Who’s Baby Shark?” Jamie asks.

“You, amigo!” Dani proclaims enthusiastically, clapping him on the shoulder as the rest of the lads stare in horror, Colin quickly making the throat cutting motion that has never once worked to get Dani to shut up.

“Wait, why am I Baby Shark?”

A look passes between all of the lads in the room as Jan Maas says: “Because of the children’s song Baby Shark that the fans have based your song on.”

“What the fuck are you talking about, Jan Maas?” Jamie demands angrily as Colin and Sam can barely suppress a grin and Dani looks guiltily around the room, clearly struggling with the knowledge that he’s just ruined an inside joke.

A quick YouTube search, a heated discussion about which video is the original which Beard of all people heats up most, a decisive order from Isaac to just open the first video and two minutes and seventeen seconds later, Jamie knows what Jan Maas had been talking about. “I hate all of you,” he grumbles, fondly, and then exclaims “Oh my God, is that why you got me that giant cuddly shark toy along with booze for Secret Santa, Dani?”

“Sí,” Dani mumbles, still looking at his shoes a little uncomfortably. Lasso, who’s come out of the office during the heated discussion, followed by Roy, claps him on the shoulder jovially.

“Oh,” Jamie mumbles.

“What have you done to Tamie Jartt, you prick?!” Colin, the only one who heard, asks in a loud, horrified voice.

Every head in the locker room turns to Jamie, who’s holding up his hands defensively. “Nothing, nothing, swear down!” When they keep looking at him, he says: “I gave him away. To some kid at the cancer ward I was meeting for this Make A Wish thingy. The lad had a bunch of shark pictures and other ocean stuff in his room! And cancer!”

There’s a round of ‘Oooh’s and ‘Aww’s in the room, Sam beaming at Jamie as if Christmas had come early, Ted and Beard exchanging a meaningful look before Ted states “That was mighty fine of you, Jamie,” and Roy is just - not quite glaring at Jamie, not quite looking angry, but almost like something’s startled him and he’s reacted with anger first.

Jamie just shrugs, partially to signal that he’s not sure what else he could or should have done but go home, sign Tamie Jartt and bring him back to the hospital, partially to make everyone do something other than stare at him all misty-eyed and partially because he hopes it’ll make it easier to not care about whatever has Roy’s knickers in a twist.

He sort of manages to do that, at least until the next day when he gets to the dressing room after lunch. All of the coaches plus Higgins are huddled in Lasso’s office with the door closed, Roy looking uncomfortable and then very quickly at him when he enters. The others eye him for a second, too, then Roy and then a heavy look passes between Ted and Beard. Before Jamie can even try to begin untangling any of it, Roy yells “Fuck” so loudly Jamie can hear it from his spot, almost rips the door of its hinges and storms out - not just out of the coaches’ office but out of the dressing room and apparently even out of the building because he does not show up for afternoon training.

“Oh, he’s taking care of some - personal stuff,” Ted answers when Jamie asks, shooting Coach Beard another one of those heavy looks as Jamie bites his tongue to keep himself from asking more.

Still, concern lodges itself between his ribs for the rest of the day. If something makes Roy leave training the day before their second-to-last match, while they’re fighting to get promoted again, it has to be serious. So after, he goes by Keeley’s office and asks if she happens to know anything despite having sworn to himself to not bother her about Roy, to not keep poking what must be like a slowly fading bruise.

She sighs even as she smiles softly at Jamie. “Why don’t you just ask Roy yourself, Jamie?”

“I would, but I can’t, can I now, Keeley? He’s barely even talking to me on the pitch! I can’t go up to him and ask what’s going on, he’d fucking - I don’t know, headbut me again or some shit.”

Keeley sighs and closes her laptop. “Jamie, remember what I told you last year?” For a second, Jamie struggles to remember - Keeley has told him so many smart and important things and he’s not sure which she could mean, especially because he sometimes only realised it way later. “You’re a battler, Jamie. And I’m so glad you stopped battling the people who’re trying to help you but that doesn’t mean you have to stop being a battler outside of matches, you know?” He’s not entirely sure if he’s getting what she means with that, if it means he should keep pushing for Roy to stop being such a fucking dick, and she can probably see that on his face because Keeley sighs again and says: “Roy’s - he’s a tough nut to crack, Jamie. But like I said, you’re a battler.”

Jamie drums out a rhythm with his fingers on top of her desks, then plays with the strap of his bumbag. “What if - what if it goes back to how it was before, though? What if we start - I don’t know, fucking each other up in the locker room again?” There’s a longer list of attached ‘what if’s that he doesn’t dare pronounce: what if that makes everyone else hate him again? What if it angers the other coaches? What if it makes them decide that the team’s better off without him? What if it makes them trade him or end his contact prematurely, the way he did with Man City? What if he ends up all alone again?

It’s not just that he’s worried that no other team would take him in, it’s that he genuinely likes being at Richmond, likes the way his days are structured, the way his life works now, likes essentially all of the people he spends his days with, even Beard, even the odd shy kitman, Will, even Nate. And he knows what life as a professional athlete is like so he’s under no illusions that he’d stay as close with the lads as he is now if he had to go. So he can’t push his luck, can’t push Roy too hard. And this feels like a situation where if he went about it all Jamie Tartt, all confidence and demands for attention and explanations, it would be pushing too hard.

Keeley smiles at him again. “That won’t happen.”

“Swear down?” Jamie asks, hating how soft his voice sounds, hating that he can’t make it sound quite like himself.

She nods. “Yeah Jamie, I swear.”

+++++++++++

Still, Jamie doesn’t find the time or the words to talk to Roy until shortly before their last game of the season. They won the second-to-last by a hair’s width, Jamie scoring the final goal in injury time, but unfortunately, Nottingham Forest win, too, meaning they need at least a draw to make it back to the Premiere League.

Tensions are so high at Nelson Road it’s like there’s a metallic taste in the air.

And there’s a bunch of stuff adding to it: Sam still hasn’t made a decision about leaving Richmond yet. Nate’s suggested a new tactic for the final match and though they’ve been working their arses off, Jamie can tell they’re not quite getting it yet.

And then, an article about Ted comes out in The Independent, claiming he had a panic attack during their match against Tottenham Hotspurs. Jamie vaguely remembers Ted running off the pitch, remembers Nate yelling at them to park the bus, but if he’s honest, it’s not like he’d thought much about it afterwards. There’d been too much other stuff - Roy drunk dialing him, his fucking father, winning and getting Richmond promoted again, the whole thing with Sam, Roy’s suddenly changed mood - to think about. He’d never suspected that the gaffer might’ve had a panic attack and even if he had, it would not have been any of Jamie’s fucking business anyway.

Just like it isn’t any fucking journalists business.

Still, it’s touching that Ted apologizes to them for not telling them in a rambling, pop culture references laddled speech, ending with “I hope you can forgive me for what I’ve done ‘cause I sure as heck wouldn’t want any of y’all to hold anything back with me.”

Jamie joins the chorus of “We got you, coach,” and tries not to look at Roy which, as almost always, is a struggle. Ted’s words about choices and building trust are bouncing around in his brain throughout training, and finally, after, he stops being a sexy little baby about it and intercepts Roy in the hallway, asking if they can talk in private for a second.

He’s a little surprised when Roy follows him into the boot room, a presence behind Jamie like a storm cloud on the horizon. He fiddles with the hem of his kit’s sleeves then finally says: “Look, I - I wanted to apologize for calling you. After Mrs. Welton’s dad’s funeral.” The words almost get stuck in his throat as Roy growls at him. For some reason, the old fart seems especially pissed off today. “It was wrong, and I shouldn’t have done it. But I ain’t used to being around dead people and I’d just found out that Sam was maybe leaving Richmond and it just - it did something to me. Emotionally, you know? So - I got drunk and I called you and I shouldn’t have.” He can see Roy grinding his teeth as he shifts his weight almost imperceptibly closer to Jamie who internally gets ready to be head butted. “And I’m dead sorry about it and I just need you to know that I respect you, as my coach, and I want to learn from you, and I will never ever do anything like that again.”

Roy’s eyebrows are coming together and he’s opening and closing his mouth as if he wants to say something but decides against it. Jamie tries to suppress the urge to fidget, tries to find some more words but feels vaguely sure that there are none that could make the situation better, so he just nods to himself and fixes his eyes on a spot just underneath Roy’s collarbones. He hopes Roy can’t see his heartbeat because it’s so strong and so fast Jamie’s not sure he can’t.

After a few seconds that feel like an eternity, Roy grinds his teeth, takes a deep breath and yells “Fuck,” before storming out of the room.

He’s still trying to make sense of it all when someone mumble “Woah.” Jamie looks up into the surprised face of Will Kitman, clutching a bunch of towels to his chest. “Sorry. I kind of froze when you two came in here and I-I-I just didn’t know what to do.”

“Alright,” Jamie mumbles and nods. “Not a word about this, yeah?”

Will nods. Jamie nods again, too, and then he leaves the boot room. He’s got no clue whatever the fuck just happened - but he tried, didn’t he, and he can’t do more than that.

And apparently, it’s enough because when he gets back to post-lunch training, Roy orders Jamie to run two extra laps around the pitch. As the other lads give him a sort of concerned, ‘what did you do’-look, Jamie struggles to suppress a grin and starts jogging.

It stays like that for the last week of training, Roy pushing Jamie just a tiny bit harder than everyone else, though they’re pushing everyone pretty hard. Jamie feel like he’s floating rather than walking through life, like the electricity under his skin is back. He carries it into the final match and it makes the weight of it just a little lighter, though it doesn’t make it disappear.

He wants them to get promoted again so fucking badly. More than he’s ever wanted almost anything in his life. More than he wants Roy to call him again, more than he wants his dad to stop being such a useless fucking dick, more than he wants Sam to stay, more than he wants to live in a universe where Roy could fall in love with him. So he works his arse off and when the first half still ends with Brentford leading two-nil, he kind of wants to scream. Still, Jan Maas’ quiet confidence in them and the false nine is infectious. When Jamie puts his hand on the believe sign next to Isaac’s and meets Roy’s eyes with a quick glance over his shoulder, the electricity is back.

Sam lands them the first goal in the second half and Jamie wants to kiss him as he runs across the pitch, ball tucked under his arm, yelling “Let’s go, let’s go, come on, one more, one more!” at all of them. The rest of the game feels like trying to push through slowly drying concrete, the pressure mounting with every minute until there’s only two more minutes to go and the stadium erupts into chants of “Come on Richmond, come on Richmond.”

Jamie’s skin is on fire as injury time starts. They only have three more minutes to make it.

Jan Maas lobs a long ball at him and he catches it perfectly, can almost taste the victory and then suddenly Brentford’s goalie is there and the pitch comes up, smacks him right in the shoulder, he’s eating dirt and grass and laughing because this is exactly what they fucking needed, a fucking penalty during injury time, and there is no way this can go wrong now, he knows as he makes his way to the spot, breathing deeply.

And then something shifts in the atmosphere, in him, and he turns and finds Dani, waves him over and grabs his hand. “You got this, muchacho.” He hands him the ball and for a second, the doubt on Dani’s face threatens to grip him, too, but he knows, he can feel it in his bones, that this is how it has to go. Dani can do it, Jamie knows, and because of that Dani has to be the one to do it. “It’ll be fun. Trust me.” He says as he claps Dani’s arm and walks away.

He takes his spot with the others at the line, hears Beard and Ted encourage Dani, tries not to look at Roy, hears Dani mumble something and watches as he nails the ball into the upper left corner beautifully, easily.

They’re still celebrating Dani’s goal when the final whistle blows. Everything becomes a euphoric blur after that, filled with hugs and shouting and chanting and jumping until he suddenly finds himself face to face with Roy who’s grinning widely at him, shouting for joy.

“Hey come on, come on,” Jamie shouts and Roy grabs the hands he extends towards him, grin widening a little, and it feels like Jamie’s touching an electric fence, couldn’t let go even if he wanted to, Roy’s hand warm and a little sweaty and perfect in his.

And then he suddenly and violently headbuts Jamie right in the fucking face.

Jamie groans through the pain, stumbling, but Roy still has his wrist tight in his grip. “Fucking hell, what’d you that for?!”

Roy grins slightly, a wicked glint in his eyes. “So I could do this,” he growls and suddenly, Jamie’s flush against his chest, Roy’s arms tight around his shoulders, his hands splayed out on Roy’s back, Roy’s nose and cheek pressed against his jaw and neck, his breath hot on the skin right beneath Jamie’s ear, the world shrinking to the size of Roy’s arms around him and the weight of this moment.

“Call me tomorrow, alright?” Roy mumbles into Jamie’s neck, so quiet no one else could’ve heard him but loud enough for Jamie to know he’s not imagined it.

And then Roy takes just a tiny step back before Jamie can ask any sort of questions at all, grabbing Jamie’s arms as he starts jumping and shouting in celebration again and Jamie just joins in, just lets himself be pulled along, the ghost of Roy’s beard and breath still on his skin, Sam’s arm suddenly around his shoulder and then all of them are jumping and screaming into the locker room, dancing and celebrating their fucking hearts out.

They’ve made it. They’ve fucking made it.

The rest of the night is a whirlwind that only stops when Jamie sneaks out of the club for a moment. He’s made it until an hour and a half after Roy’s left after joining them at The Crown and Anchor and karaoke and another bar. He takes a deep breath, the fresh night air a relief on his face and in his lungs.

Then he takes out his phone and calls.

Roy answers almost immediately. “Jamie. You alright?”

“Yeah, yeah, man. Just - just didn’t want to wait until tomorrow, you know?” Roy breathes deeply. “So - why did you want me to call, grandad?”

Another deep breath. “Just - I’ll tell you tomorrow, you impatient fucking child, alright?”

“Come on, grandad, just tell me now, before a stroke kills you or something.”

“Fuck off, Tartt,” Roy growls and then sighs. Jamie can almost imagine him. “Just - go back to celebrating with the others. You’ve fucking earned it.”

“But -”

“Just - fucking do it. And then call me tomorrow. When you’re sober.”

Roy’s voice is intense. It sends a shiver down Jamie’s spine. For a second, he wants to argue, to push further, just so Roy doesn’t hang up on him but what if he pushes too much and then Roy won’t want to see him anymore? So he says: “Alright, grandad. But no dying in the night!”

Roy snorts, the way he did at that gala what feels like a hundred years ago, and then says “Fuck you, you prick.” He chuckles again, though. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

“Cheers, man,” Jamie says, hangs up and heads back in.

+++++++++++

He doesn’t leave earlier than the others and he doesn’t set an alarm for the next day but he does drink just a little bit less than he did a year ago, after the Man City Richmond match. He lets the night and the euphoria and the soft little feeling in his belly when he looks at the lads, at his team, at Dani and Sam, who’s staying, and Colin and Isaac and Thierry and Declan and even fucking Richard and Jan Maas, sweep him up and carry him until all twenty-two of them are sitting down for end-of-the-night Maccies and he’s throwing chips at Colin’s head for not shutting up about wanting Nando’s instead.

And then he gets back to his own house, the sky just turning light blue at the edges between the houses as his keys clink into place, and downs a bottle of Lucozade and then he falls into bed, and when he wakes up, his head is only a little fuzzy, so he showers and drinks another Lucozade and an insanely strong and sweet coffee and sits down atop his marble counter to call Roy.

Who again answers almost immediately.

“Alright, old man, let me have it,” Jamie says, biting back a joke about Roy answering his phone so quickly.

There’s a moment of silence, then - “Do you want to come over?”

Again, Jamie bites back a comment on Roy making him call only to ask him to come over. After all, there are very few things in the world that he wants to do more. Which of course he doesn’t say.

“Yeah, alright,” he says instead.

The anticipation is not as intense as it was before the match but only just barely. As he walks up to Roy’s front door, he can feel his heartbeat in every cell.

He rings the doorbell.

Roy opens up almost immediately and steps aside, letting Jamie into the house.

Chapter Text

ix:

He’s never minded getting up early for away games but for some reason he’s slept like shit the night before and his fucked up knee is bothering him and he can’t get Keeley’s words out of his brain. So all in all, when he gets to the Richmond parking lot on Saturday at the arsecrack of dawn just so they can get to Cardiff way earlier than necessary so Colin can see his fucking family, Roy is in a pretty bad fucking mood.

And then he overhears Jamie, arm around Colin’s shoulder, say something about a Cardiff tour and jaundiced worms doing jaundiced worm things and the tingle along Roy’s spine is back. He wants to snap at Jamie, tell him not to fuck around or something, but he swallows the words again, just gets on the bus and tries not to stare as Jamie hangs over the back of Colin and Isaac’s seat, bothering them endlessly before falling asleep in a position that makes Roy’s back hurt just looking at it.

He does not wonder whether Jamie’s face looks the same as it did on his couch when he fell asleep there after the Man City match. He makes his eyes linger on Colin instead, who he can imagine might feel a little weird - he’s playing his previous team, which isn’t unusual, but Colin’s still young, he doesn’t have that much experience with this kind of situation, and he’d mentioned once that Cardiff’s his family’s team, too.

A gaggle of the lads wanders off once they’ve reached Cardiff, Jamie in its centre, an arm around Colin, Roy watching with a feeling in his gut that may be resembling fondness before he joins the others for a final strategy session in the guest coaches’ office. He tries not to think about what Jamie and the lads are doing but when they’re back and he’s watching them get dressed for the match, he sees Jamie sit down next to Colin to fiddle with his shoelaces and can’t help but listen in despite having long since perfected the skill of tuning out all dressing room conversations.

They’re talking about the fucking team shrink of all people. Apparently both Colin, who’s always seemed like nothing could get him down, and Jamie had been seeing her before she up and left the team. Roy has no clue why but it almost makes him feel like he’s watching one of those videos of a couple having sex in the woods, that slight twinge in the pit of his stomach that’s almost like the envy he feels when he sees the lads play.

And then he’s watching them play a beautiful game, the weird feeling replaced by a sense of pride of all of them but especially of Jamie who’s gotten the Cardiff defense to focus on him almost completely so they don’t notice Colin coming up until Jamie’s already landed a beautiful long pass to him despite having an opening himself. And then Colin nails the ball into the net, the keeper unable to do anything but stare and twist his body, leaned into the opposite direction towards Jamie, and Roy wants to run onto the pitch and pull them both into a tight fucking hug, crush them - Jamie especially - to his chest and never let him go.

How the fuck has this happened to him?

He can’t fucking bring himself to say anything to Jamie, can barely even bring himself to look at him because every time he does, every time his eyes find the number 9 on the pitch, the thing in his spine is back. And then Jamie’s in the dressing room and Roy can barely look away, can barely move his tongue, can absolutely fucking not talk to Jamie.

“Seems like we needn’t have worried all that much about Colin, huh?” Ted’s saying to Beard as Roy steps into the office.

“Huh?” Roy growls.

“Oh, me and Beard-o here got a little worried about Colin before the game, on account of how his family never picked up their tickets and all the booing. But apparently, Jamie and Isaac got him to give other lads a Cardiff tour and he’s played real well, hasn’t he?” Ted says, smiling up at Roy.

He can only grunt and nod and try not to think about why exactly that makes him want to turn around to stare at Jamie. Why that makes that intense thing that creeps up his spine comes back.

Jamie, who a year ago would not have given a flying fuck about Colin’s feelings going into a match. Who, if he thought about Colin at all, egged him on to torture Nate. Who wouldn’t have tried to distract and cheer up and checked on Colin, who would have never admitted to seeing Dr. Sharon, who wouldn’t have seen her at all. Who wouldn’t have made that extra pass, and especially not to Colin.

He thinks back to what Keeley said. He’s still not quite ready to acknowledge it and definitely not ready to figure it out, but it’s getting harder to ignore.

++++++++++++

Jamie scores a beautiful goal during free kick practice the Monday after the Cardiff game, reminiscent of the one against Tottenham, and as he watches the lads and Ted and Beard crowd around a beaming Jamie, whose eyes flicker over to Roy, his throat suddenly gets tight again. So tight that when Jamie wanders past him on the way back to the dressing room for the lunch break and asks if Roy has any pointers for him, he just shakes his head and has a visceral flashback to December and January, when he didn’t give Jamie any pointers because he didn’t want to and not because his head went static and weird as fuck whenever he’s looking at the prick.

Jamie’s face falls at that. Roy tries to ignore the urge to fucking hug him or something but still can’t think of a single thing to say to him, just remembers that face even as he’s already in the coaches’ office with Nate.

And then a heated discussion breaks out in the dressing room that slowly but surely draws all of the lads and then Beard and Nate and Ted in. Roy realises very quickly that he’d prefer not to be listening. By that point, however, it’s already too fucking late and all he can do is wait and see Jamie react like a fucking whiny little primadonna when he finds out about the Baby Shark song.

Jamie just laughs and mumbles “I hate all of you,” but it’s so clearly said with fondness that everyone just sort of rolls their eyes at him. And then he asks Dani about the Secret Santa gift - a huge fucking cuddly toy shark from IKEA that Phoebe’s been wanting ever since Roy made the mistake of letting her tag along once while he was getting new bookshelves - and then mumbles something that makes Colin ask about the fate of Jamie’s shark - which has been fucking named Tamie fucking Jartt of all the fucking names in the fucking universe - in a deeply shocked and accusatory tone.

“Nothing, nothing, swear down!” Jamie exclaims. It clearly does not satisfy the lads so he finally explains: “I gave him away. To some kid at the cancer ward I was meeting for this Make A Wish thingy,” which in itself hardly squares with the things Roy thought he knew about Jamie just a year ago. “The lad had a bunch of shark pictures and other ocean stuff in his room! And cancer!”

The last word comes out with such an air of indignation that Roy snorts quietly. It’s drowned out by the cooing and clucking of the rest of the team, all of them getting misty-eyed about Jamie, and suddenly there’s this feeling of heat again, in Roy’s spine, so similar to how he used to feel a year ago whenever he was about to pick a fight with the little prick. But that makes no fucking sense - Jamie just reacted with something akin to maturity to the Baby Shark thing and then revealed that he had done something really fucking nice for some random fucking kid and then sounded genuinely upset about kids getting cancer. Why is that making Roy angry?

He needs space to think. So he barks out “Oi! If you’re all done clucking about fucking Baby Shark, you can get your arses to the caf for lunch. Anyone late for afternoon practice gets to do burpees,” and watches the dressing room empty while ignoring the look that passes between Ted and Beard.

Nate isn’t in the office when Roy bangs the door shut behind him and sits down in his desk chair, staring at the wall for a moment to try and sort out what the fuck is going on with him.

He’s having an intense fucking feeling about Jamie fucking Tartt. Who did something fucking genuinely sweet, who joined in on a joke his teammates had about him, who’d Roy had just seen doing sweet fucking things for one of his teammates. Which had made him feel this intense thing, too. So it makes no sense for the feeling to be anger, like it was when Jamie had called him drunkenly after the funeral and then disappeared, or when he showed up to Roy’s house uninvited, ordered Pad Thai and made him watch the dumbest film on earth.

What the fuck is going on with him?

Roy grits his teeth, gets up and knocks on the door to Ted and Beard’s office. Both whirl around immediately.

“Roy-o! What can we do you for?”

He considers turning around and walking straight into the Thames. Instead, he growls: “I could -” He looks at the ceiling, unclenches his jaw, clenches it again, cracks his knuckles. “- use some -” God fucking damn it, this is torture. “ - advice.”

“Whoa. Hold on. Are you saying you wanna become a Diamond Dog?” Ted Lasso’s face lights up like a whole fucking christmas tree farm at the thought.

“Fuck no,” Roy snarls and again, considers walking into the Thames. “I’m just saying I wouldn’t mind being in the room while it fucking happens.” Each word needs to be dragged through his throat and mouth.

Ted mercifully enough clamps down on his stupid fucking grin as he picks up the phone and barks into it, Beard joining in as he texts someone. Within minutes, Higgins shows up, barking in greeting. They wait another few minutes for Nate, Beard even tries calling him, but when Nate declines the call, the other three agree to just get started through another round of excessive barking.

By now, Roy wants to drown them all in the Thames

“Our beloved junkyard dog Roy Kent has asked for a one time visitor’s pass, my furry friends,” Ted begins explaining. “How do we feel about that?”

There’s more barking which apparently is to be read affirmatively because they then all fucking look at Roy. “All right,” Ted finally says after a moment of silence in which Roy can neither find the words nor make them come out of his mouth. “Bark away.”

He cracks his knuckles again and takes a deep breath. “I - fucking -” Another deep breath. “Jamie. Fucking. Tartt.” He blinks up at the ceiling tiles for a second. If he looks at any of the other three, he will drown them and Jamie and himself along with them. “I keep - I look at him and it makes - there’s this intense thing. That I fucking. Feel.” Dragging out the last word feels almost fucking painful but he’s finally done it and it almost feel like it’s breaking a dam or something. “And it’s - it feels like fucking anger but it doesn’t make sense for it. To be. Fucking anger. Because it’s situations like earlier, with the - fucking shark toy and the nickname, situations where he isn’t even being a fucking prick. And I don’t know how to - stop it. Or what to do with it.”

There’s a whole bunch of other things he could tell them, or fucking should maybe tell them, about the phone calls mainly but also about the way he can’t make fucking spagetti carbonara without thinking about Jamie’s wide eyes watching him cut the pancetta and about how he’s opened up these stupid fucking car films on Netflix more than once but never actually started the next one because it just feels fucking rude and about how he sometimes still thinks about driving up to Manchester to wrap his hands around Jamie’s father’s neck.

He doesn’t. But it’s all there in the back of his mind as the silence in the room stretches and Ted, Beard and Higgins swap gazes that all seem to be about who’s supposed to speak first.

Finally, Ted clears his throat. “Y’know, Roy, we’re all as proud as a Mama hen that you came to us for advice.” Beard catches Roy’s eyes and nods once. “And we intend for the Diamond Dogs to remain a space where men can feel comfortable sharing their personal struggles and asking for support from their fellow men and we’d love to issue you visitor’s passes any time you might need them. But I do think some things a man has to realise for himself, right, fellas?” There’s some more barking from Higgins and Beard. His thoughts of drowning are replaced by thoughts of throwing all of them and himself of one of those fucking Dover cliffs into the channel, give the tourists a fucking show. “Sometimes, an answer to an emotional conundrum just does not ring as true when it is presented by someone else as it does when you arrive at it on your own. Like how when I was just a lil’ sunflower sprout back in Kansas and my daddy told me that I was pulling Eloise Marshes’ pigtails in the schoolyard because I wanted her attention and didn’t know how else to get it. Now, I didn’t believe him until Eloise was sick for a week and I could not for the life of me focus on my multiplication tables because I was so worried her cold would kill her, and then it all made sense.”

It feels like Roy’s brain is on the verge of short-circuiting. Why the fuck is Ted brining up some schoolyard crush he had? What’s that got to do with his fucking situation?

There’s a movement in the corner of Roy’s eye. He looks towards the dressing room and sees Jamie standing there.

Oh, Roy thinks. Oh.

Oh fuck.

Oh fucking hell.

“Fuuuuuuck,” he yells as all eyes flit to him. He just - he needs - he storms out of the office, avoids looking at Jamie - because if he doesn’t, he will do something very fucking stupid - and out of the dressing room and down the hallway and out of the fucking doors.

Fucking - fuck.

He’s fucked.

+++++++++++

He ends up with the one and only person he has always talked to about every fucking thing.

Teresa O’Sullivan takes one hard, long look at his face, then whirls around to one of the other A&E doctors and says “I need to deal with this, can you cover for me for a moment?” The other doctor nods. “Great, I owe you one. Page me if anything big happens.“ She loops her arm through Roy’s, steering him gently but decisively to the roof of one of the buildings. “Okay, baby boy, what’s up?”

The fact that she’s dragging up his childhood nickname, the nickname she gave him when he was twelve and came back from Sunderland for the summer break with an ego that might have matched that of Jamie Tartt, grounds him a tiny bit. “You’re fucking younger than me,” he growls.

“And you’re the family baby. Now shut up and tell me what’s going on in that thick head of yours before I have to go because some idiot got something unimaginable stuck somewhere unmentionable.”

Roy growls.

He cannot fucking say it. He cannot make the words ‘I think I want to fuck Jamie Tartt’ come out of his mouth. Not even to his sister. He can’t. He fucking cannot fucking do it.

“I think I want something to happen. With one of the players. On the fucking. Richmond team,” he says instead, after a long moment of silence.

Teresa’s eyes take on never-before seen dimensions in terms of width. “Which one?” She finally asks. Apparently his facial expression is enough of an answer because she gasps “No,” the ‘o’ long and soft and then says: “Seriously? You’re not fucking with me?” Roy forces himself to nod. “How did it happen?”

“Fuck if I know,” he growls.

Teresa just raises an eyebrow at him.

If she was anyone else at all, he’d tell her to fuck off. But she’s not - she’s Tes, his baby fucking sister, who climbed into his bed the night before his grandad drove him up to Sunderland and cried and got him to admit that he was scared despite having been the one who’d terrorised his family into letting him go, who made him hold her hand through the entire fucking funeral because she knew he’d never ever reach out first, who cheered so loudly at his very first serious match that she could only croak at him afterwards even though he only played for the last thirty minutes plus injury time, who, until Keeley, was the only person he told he was bisexual and who let him rave and rant about the fucking unfairness of having to stay in the closet to have a career, who almost broke his fingers when she gave birth to Phoebe and then shifted his entire fucking world on its’ axis and set it on fucking fire for good measure when she put that that tiny little bundle of a human being into his arms.

So he forces himself to talk even though all he has to say is “I’m not being an arse about this, Tes, I genuinely don’t fucking know.”

“You cannot fix on the hour, or the spot, or the look, or the words which laid the foundation because you were in the middle before you knew that you had begun and all that, huh?” She asks, tongue pocking out of the corner of her mouth.

“If you didn’t have Phoebs, I’d fucking throw you off this roof.”

Her grin widens. “It is kind of Austen-y, isn’t it?”

“I hate you so fucking much.”

“You love me and I love you. Which is why we’re here,” she says as she lightly punches his shoulder, grin widening before she arranges her face into a lovingly serious look. “What are you going to do about this?”

Roy sighs, deeply. “I don’t know that either,” he admits. “I only just fucking figured out there was even a fucking this to l do something about, alright?”

Tes smiles sympathetically at him. “Can coaches even date players? Or are there, like, league rules against it?”

It’s a question Roy hadn’t even considered considering, too preoccupied with the realisation that the visceral feeling sneaking up his spine wasn’t anger or hatred or annoyance or any of the million other things he ought to be feeling about Jamie fucking Tartt but instead attraction. Of all fucking things.

It’s a realisation he would maybe prefer to not have had; especially now that Tes has pointed out that he might not even get to do anything about it. It’s a thought that for some reason feels fucking unbearable. But not realising also feels impossible - not just in the sense that he can’t fucking repress the knowledge again now, banish it to some dark corner of his mind and never touch it again, but also in the sense that it feels like it would have been impossible to never acknowledge this. Or maybe it wouldn’t have been, if some things had gone differently, for example if Jamie hadn’t bothered to distract and comfort Colin before the Cardiff match. Or if he hadn’t stood in his kitchen, staring at Roy’s hands like they were the most interesting thing he’d ever seen while Roy cooked them dinner. Or if Jamie hadn’t called him and sounded so fucking vulnerable and insecure that it made Roy drop everything else, including his ability to talk, to drive to see the little prick.

Oh.

“Fuck,” he mumbles.

Tes raises her eyebrow at him.

“Fuck. I -” Roy exhales forcefully. “I think I might actually fucking care about the little prick.”

Tes is raising her eyebrow just a tiny bit higher but she doesn’t say anything about it, doesn’t mock him for thinking he just wanted sex and not realising that there was an actual fucking feeling involved. Roy is actually pretty grateful for that, considering that all of this will definitely mortify him as soon as the he’s recovered from the shock.

And because it wouldn’t be fair, if she were to mock him. He’s hated Jamie fucking Tartt for a long fucking time, he’s never allowed himself to feel anything towards men that went beyond attraction and lead to very sneaky hookups involving separate cars to dodgy hotels in foreign cities, and even those stopped completely once he started playing for England, he’s just out of his first serious relationship. He deserves to be cut some fucking slack for thinking this was just about the fact that Jamie was fit.

Plus, he doesn’t need to be reminded that Tes sort of got over her case of the Kent family brand emotional constipation years ago, mostly through the help of some post-divorce therapy, but also through just having a lesser case due to her gender and lack of having spent her formative years among footballers.

“I’m glad,” she says. Roy gawps at her. “I am! You’ve been extra-misanthropic lately. Not that you don’t have reason to be, mind, but I did worry about you. So it’s good to know that you’re not - I don’t know, retreating back into your shell, you know?”

His throat is so tight he can barely breathe, let alone talk or reassure Tes, so all he does is nod. She smiles at him and pulls him into a tight hug.

+++++++++++

When he gets to Nelson Road the next day, none of the Diamond Dogs comment on his abrupt departure or the conversation immediately preceding it. He does catch both Ted and Beard giving him quick weird little looks, especially whenever Jamie does anything remotely remarkable and it does make him think about gouging their eyes out. He doesn’t say anything to either one of them about it, absolutely unwilling to risk them trying to rope him into a conversation about his fucking feeling for the Prince Prick, just glares every time he catches them and after two days, the looks stop.

What doesn’t stop is the part of Roy’s brain that’s trying to figure out what to do about it, except for the duration of their second-to-last match, and then it starts up again but more intensely. Jamie’s face when he scored that goal during injury time, again cementing three more points they need to be able to go up feels like it’s been burned into Roy’s corneas.

He wants to do something about this. About his fucking feelings for Jamie fucking Tartt. He wants to kiss him, to pin him against the wall of his office or the door of the boot room or the side of his car and snog him until they’re both breathless and flushed and then he wants to do some more things to Jamie that he does not allow himself to think about in any more detail because it feels like his skin is on fire if he does. He wants to cook for Jamie and to run his fingers through his hair, scratch the soft short hair of his undercut, and trace his tattoos with his fingertips and hear all about them and fall asleep cured up against those broad fucking shoulders, burying his face in that broad fucking chest. He wants to make Jamie laugh and gasp and groan, wants to hear him moan Roy’s name. He wants to push him, wants to make him succeed, wants to make him be the best and at the same time, he wants to make sure he is never hurt again, wants to make sure he never sounds as nervous as he did when he drunk-dialed Roy or looks as scared as he did it at Wembley or is as quiet and withdrawn as he was on the bus back to the Dog Track that day. He wants to see Jamie thrive, wants to see him straighten up in that little way he does when Roy praises him, wants to see his eyes light up and that quick little smirk flash across his lips. He wants - he wants.

It kind of scares him, if he’s honest. It’s like all the intensity he used to feel for Jamie is back except this time around, it’s not anger and disgust and annoyance. And it’s a lot, he knows that, knows that this sort of intensity isn’t fucking normal, knows that even without it, the way he gets in a relationship isn’t normal either, but he can’t help it. A part of him - a stupid part of him, one that’s filled with a desperate sort of optimism - thinks Jamie could even maybe be interested, though he probably wouldn’t be willing to deal with all of Roy.

But it’s not like he can do anything about it. He’s the coach. He can’t fuck one of the players, much less start a relationship with one. And even if coaches in the abstract could, he himself can’t. He’s got too much bullshit, too much anger and too few ways to deal with it, to do something like that, to make someone put themselves in the vulnerable position of having to deal with him as both a partner and as a coach at the same fucking time.

And even if he could - even if he could work on himself enough to handle the gray areas inherent to coaching and dating someone at the same time - the second it got out, it would ruin Jamie’s career. Doesn’t matter how deeply talented he is, doesn’t matter that his right foot was indeed kissed by God, once the fucking tabloid rags found out he was dating his coach, the favoritism allegations would never ever stop. And they’d run them ragged, trying to drag up every little detail of their relationship, the way they’ve always done when Roy’s dated someone, except even worse. And that in combination with the microscope being out would put both of them but especially Jamie under, who would only be known as boyfriend of The Roy Kent - it would be too much, and it would end their relationship, and it would end Jamie’s career. He can’t do that to Jamie.

So he can’t do anything about it. He can’t and he won’t.

And it’s fine. It’s fine, it’s just another thing he can add to the list of things he’s given up for his career, for football, for this life that he’s got, even though the majority of that is behind him now and he still has to sacrifice things anyway, and it’s fine. It is fucking fine. Completely and utterly fucking fine.

Or it will be fine. Soon. Definitely.

Except, after Trent fucking Crimm, of all the fucking bastard journalist hacks in the world, runs an article about Ted’s panic attack, Jamie asks Roy to speak in private. For the few seconds it takes him to follow Jamie into the boot room, he’s torn between staring at that arse and thinking about what he’ll say when Jamie inevitably demands an explanation for the way he’s been acting.

Instead, he gets a completely unnecessary apology.

And instead of saying any of the things that he should say - like ‘Jamie, stop being fucking stupid and apologizing for things you don’t need to apologize for’ or ‘I’m sorry I made you run laps until you puked because you made me worry and I mistook that for anger and then was an utter fucking knob about it’ or ‘You could call me any time of any day and I’d never hang up on you again’ - all he can do is yell ‘fuck’ and storm into Higgins’ office, startling the poor man into spilling tea all over himself, and growl out “What are the fucking league rules for coaches dating someone playing for the team they’re employed by?”

Higgins doesn’t actually know but promises to inquire discreetly and get back to Roy even more discreetly. He also advises Roy to talk to Rebecca.

Which Roy plans to do one he knows the results of Higgins’ inquiry. He plans to talk to Rebecca and Ted and to make an actual fucking plan, probably with their help, during the off season, to do this the proper way, to make sure there are people Jamie can turn to if he even considers it for a second, to make sure Jamie is safe. He forces himself to be just a tiny bit more normal around Jamie, coaching him the way he used to, trying to focus on breathing like he does when he’s with the yoga mum, and he makes plans.

But of fucking course, Jamie throws a fucking wrench into those fucking plans.

+++++++++++

Jamie goes down in injury time. A tiny part of him - a part that Roy is very sure didn’t exist just a couple of weeks ago - flinches internally, but Jamie is up on one of his knees, grinning as he gestures towards the referee and it’s all fine.

It’s all better than fine. They get a penalty and Roy knows with the same sort of certainty that he usually only feels about Phoebe that they’ve also got the promotion. Because Jamie will take the penalty and he will nail it into the net and then it’ll all be the way it’s supposed to be.

Instead, Jamie hands the ball to Dani, claps him on the upper arm and takes his spot on the line. And although every eye in the stadium is on Dani, Roy’s are on Jamie.

His entire fucking body is on fire.

He wants.

So when Dani knocks the ball into the net with ease and everything erupts into celebratory chaos and Roy finds himself face to face with Jamie, his brain shortcircuits and it’s all he can do not to fucking grab him by the front of his shirt and kiss him in front of everyone - especially when Jamie stretches out a hand that Roy grabs without thinking and it feels like he’s touching an electric fence and couldn’t let go even if he wanted to. He’s already halfway on his way to Jamie’s fucking face before he even realises and can only coursecorrect to a headbut.

Jamie’s pressing his other hand to his nose, voice muffled and indignant as he bites out “Fucking hell, what’d you that for?!” and affection for the little prick floods Roy.

“So I could this,” he growls and pulls Jamie flush against his chest, clapping his arms around his back. They slot together perfectly, like puzzle pieces, and he presses his nose and cheek into the hard line of Jamie’s jaw and the soft skin of his neck, the smell of sweat and fucking Lynx and just Jamie as intoxicating as the victory, and murmurs “Call me tomorrow, alright?”

And then he releases Jamie from the hug before anyone can notice and wonder, grabbing his upper arms and jumping for joy with him and then somehow, suddenly, the whole fucking team is there with them and then they’re making the way back to the dressing room, rioting and dancing and shouting and celebrating as if they’d won a fucking trophy and not just gone up and even doing a fucking polonaise through the dressing room and the coaches offices and the weight room.

It’s the perfect moment for Roy to extricate himself and make his way to Rebecca’s office.

She hides the surprise behind the stiff upper lip she’s perfected when he enters but then he actually closes the door and it slips a little. She turns towards her minibar, fills two glasses with champange - and none of that cheap shit, either - and hands one to Roy before asking: “Roy. What can I do for you?”

He takes tiny sip and then a deep breath. “What are the official AFC Richmond guidelines on relationships between players and coaches?”

Rebecca chokes on her drink, coughing and spluttering a little before she composes herself. She clears her throat. “Until now, there are none.” Her voice isn’t lacking it’s usual composure and measuredness but it is just a tiny bit off as she continues talking. “There should be, to protect players in that situation, but I don’t think they would include any sort of outright ban on it.” She eyes Roy for a second and he knows she at the very least suspects why he’s asking. He hopes she won’t ask who this is about, because as little as he wants to, he will tell her, after telling her to fuck off. Respectfully.

Instead, she just nods and, as he gets up, gives him one of those two-finger salutes.

He’s not sure if he’s more relieved about this or them getting promoted again, even though he knows there are still a hundred thousand things making this complicated and weird and scary. Still. He can tell Jamie - he can tell him, and he doesn’t have to tack ‘but nothing can ever happen between us because I’m your coach’ onto the end of that sentence, and he can navigate all the rest of it somehow.

The second conversation he needs to have about this terrifies him even more, though.

But Keeley surprises him even more than Rebecca did, because before he can even say anything, she explains that she’s leaving Richmond to open up her own PR firm financed by Bantr’s VC backers. He’s still trying to sort through the emotions of that - mainly sadness, probably, but also pride and maybe a tiny little bit of relief, too - while the words “I want to start - something - with Jamie. If he’s up for it,” leave his mouth.

Keeley grins quickly at that before rearranging her features and lightly punching his shoulder before crossing her arms. “Glad you figured it out, Roy-o.”

He frowns as that piece slides into place, too, and then bites back the drawn out ‘fuck’ that wants to leave his mouth. There are fuckton of other words - words like ‘thank you’ and ‘you are so important to me’ and ‘I’m really fucking sorry I wanted so much more than you could give’ and ‘please let us find a way to be proper fucking friends’ and ‘I’ll miss you so fucking much’ - but it’s like the fuck he bit back is blocking them and all he can do is nod and pull her into a very quick but tight hug.

And then they get back to celebrating, meeting the rest of the team at the fucking Crown and Anchor of all places at Ted’s insistence. That turns out to be a horrible fucking idea because they can’t get a single drink with how they’re mobbed by the fans so they fuck off after twenty minutes to go to a karaoke bar, where Jamie, Sam and Colin belt out fucking ‘Voulez Vous’ and Roy has to suppress the part of his brain that wants to drag Jamie into a corner to snog him senseless by focusing on the one that wants to kill Ted for introducing the team to that fucking ABBA movie, and then to some stupid fancy bar where Jamie almost has a conniption about the lack of fucking vanilla vodka and Roy almost has one about the fact that he apparently wants this fucking muppet anyway.

He extricates himself again and drives home and has a cup of tea and tries to figure out how to tell Jamie what he needs to tell him the next day. He’s on his way to the shower when his phone rings.

“Jamie. You alright?” He answers, hoping his voice doesn’t betray the concern he feels.

“Yeah, yeah, man. Just - just didn’t want to wait until tomorrow, you know?” Jamie sounds nervous, again, but excited-nervous, not concerned-nervous, and Roy forces himself to breathe deeply. “So - why did you want me to call, grandad?”

He takes another deep breath. Jamie is probably drunk. This is not how he’s going to do this.

“Just - I’ll tell you tomorrow, you impatient fucking child, alright?”

“Come on, grandad, just tell me now, before a stroke kills you or something,” Jamie whines.

Fucking hell. He’s in fucking hell. “Fuck off, Tartt. Just - go back to celebrating with the others. You’ve fucking earned it.”

“But -”

“Just - fucking do it,” Roy bites out. He wants to ask Jamie to come over now so badly, wants to throw even more of his not at all carefully laid plans overboard and just do this fucking thing. But he can’t. It wouldn’t be right. He wants to do this right. “And then call me tomorrow. When you’re sober.”

There’s a moment of silence and for a moment, Roy’s resolve weakens. He’s about to maybe say something stupid when Jamie says “Alright, grandad. But no dying in the night!” instead.

Roy can’t help the snort or the soft feeling in his stomach or the visceral flash of longing. “Fuck you, you prick. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

“Cheers man,” Jamie says and hangs up.

Roy takes a very cold shower and goes to bed, fantasizing about Jamie in his kitchen until he falls asleep and when he wakes up, he makes both a proper breakfast and Pad Thai just because he has the time for it. Jamie calls and agrees to come over and then he’s actually fucking there, on Roy’s threshold, in a pair of almost criminally tiny black shorts and a pink hoodie with the word ‘official’ printed on it in an ugly fucking font, and then he strides into Roy’s kitchen, glances through the kitchen doorway at the breakfast on the dining room table, stares as if he’s never seen a proper one before, leans against the counter and starts staring at Roy.

“So. What did you want to talk about?”

The silence between them stretches while Roy waits for his brain to grant him access to what he planned to say the night before.

Unfortunately, it does not. Unfortunately, every single thought that he ever had has evacuated Roy's brain, to be replaced by the desire to bite and lick at Jamie's tighs.

“Jesus, man, what the fuck’s happening in that big head of yours? Did the, what, two glasses of champers you had last night fry whatever brain cells the headers didn’t kill? Or -” Jamie draws out the ‘o’ while grinning wickedly, leaning forward slightly, excitedly, rolling up and down on the balls of his feet. “Did you finally recognize how fucking fit I am and that fried your brain?”

For fuck’s sake, Roy thinks.

He says “Yes.”

Chapter Text

x:

“Did the, what, two glasses of champers you had last night fry whatever brain cells the headers didn’t kill?” Roy’s still staring at him, maybe more intensely than he ever has, and he isn’t fucking saying anything, and it’s unnerving, especially because there’s a proper breakfast that the grumpy prick probably made himself on the dining room table and Jamie has no idea what to do except further try to provoke him into talking, so he says: “Or did you finally recognize how fucking fit I am and that fried your brain?”

There’s a short silence in which Jamie can imagine about twelve different Roy Kent reactions but absolutely never ever the one he gets. Because the one he gets is a strangled “Yes” out of Roy’s mouth.

“What?” He mumbles. He’s sure he’s looking at Roy as if his coach had grown a second head.

His coach. Roy. Roy fucking Kent. Roy. Who wants him. His coach, who hates him, who can barely acknowledge him enough to train him the way he deserves. Who used to drunk dial him and hugged him twice, who cooked for him, who helped him block his father. Who barely spoke to him for the last two months, who called him a muppet deserving of death by way of the incurable condition of being a little bitch, who literally just fucking headbutted him.

His - his fucking hero since his fucking teenage days. The first man he ever had any feelings for at all, the one that kind of always remained, even when they almost bashed each others’ heads in in the dressing room.

Roy.

Roy, who’s claiming to have finally seen the light.

Roy, who he could probably kiss now.

Jamie’s brain is malfunctioning, definitely, or maybe someone slipped something into his drink last night and he’s having an intense hallucination or he did fall through a portal into some sort of parallel universe or Roy is just fucking with him because he’s a sadistic bastard or something.

“That’s - are you - don’t fuck with me. Like that. That’s dead mean.”

“I’m not,” Roy growls. “I am not trying to fuck with you. I -” He takes a deep breath, nostrils flaring. “I’m not,” he deadpans. For a second, Jamie wonders if Roy’d been gearing up to say something else while he grimace-grins.

“I - this - just - be fucking for real.”

“I am.”

“But - you hate me!” And you’re in love with Keeley, but Jamie doesn’t say that part out loud. “You told me! All the time! You once old me that given half the chance you’d drown me in the Thames like a fucking kangaroo!”

“I did say that, didn’t I?” Roy says in a tone of fond reminiscence, biting back a grin.

Jamie would like to throw something at his head.

Jamie would like to kiss him.

“This isn’t - this isn’t fucking funny, Roy!” he snaps instead. “Just - just stop fucking with my head! You always do this - going back and forth, like in that Katy Perry song, calling me a muppet who should die of the incurable condition of being a little bitch and drunk dialing me and watching Fast and the Furious with me and then not talking to me, and fucking - fucking hugging me and cooking for me and then hanging up on me and staring at me like you want to kill me and I know, I know you’ve got the emotional range of, like, an angry fucking piranha or something and you’re all fucked in the head over Keeley but this is too far, man, this isn’t fucking funny, it really fucking -”

Roy is taking a slow step closer to Jamie, his stance wide and his forehead and eyebrows doing something that would definitely merit closer inspection if Jamie wasn’t too busy trying to figure out why the fuck Roy has decided to fuck with him like this, and then he says “I don’t want to fucking kill you. I - I haven’t wanted to kill you in weeks.” He takes another step. Jamie can feel the edge of the countertop press into his back, can almost smell Roy’s aftershave, something rich and heady and good, and all he wants to do his pull him in and kiss him. “I - I’ve been - working through - some fucking - feelings, alright?”

Jamie can’t help but snort-laugh at that. “That’s what that fucking face was? Jesus, man.” Roy’s eyebrows might leap out of his face and throttle Jamie. “How did Keeley put up with that?”

“Don’t be a fucking prick!” Roy bites out. “Arse,” but it’s almost affectionate.

“See!” Jamie exclaims almost simultaneously. “How am I supposed to believe you don’t want to drown me like a kangaroo?”

Roy growls and takes another step closer, pinching the bridge of his nose for a second. “Are you really going to make me fucking say it?”

“Say what?” Jamie can’t help but ask. Roy is so, so close to him now, taking up all of his space and Jamie’s wanted this, wanted this for years and when Roy growls again and his breath is on Jamie’s face, it’s like - he’s not even sure what it’s like, maybe like seeing the perfect opening for a goal or maybe like that time he bought his mum a first class ticket to Barcelona from his first real salary or maybe like the euphoria of just having landed the ball exactly right or like getting to sign his contract with Richmond, the proper one, or like Sam hugging him off the pitch for the first time or maybe it’s like the euphoria of all of these things rolled into one. And he can see that Roy’s trying to say it, trying to find the words and for some reason, Jamie doesn’t even need to hear them anymore because maybe it’s enough that he’s trying.

He brings up his hands to Roy’s chest, hesitating for a second and then Roy’s eyes wander from Jamie’s to his mouth so Jamie’s grabbing his soft black shirt and then Roy’s arms are wrapping around Jamie’s back, his hands warm on his spine as they pull each other closer, their noses brushing against each others and

finally, their mouths are on each other.

Roy’s beard is scratchy and yet oddly good against Jamie’s skin. His lips are a little shy and chapped and there’s a millisecond of hesitation and then Jamie feels a shudder run through Roy’s body and suddenly all he can do is press himself against Roy, grab his shirt and try to pull him closer, the edge of the countertop digging into his back, try to disappear into this kiss just in case it’s the only one, Roy’s lips soft and somehow dominant on his at the same time, his own slipping apart as a he lets out a soft noise that makes Roy groan into his mouth. Jamie’s knees almost go weak at that and he sigh-hums into the kiss, one of his hands finding the side of Roy’s face, and just lets himself be carried away.

+++++++++++

Jamie is actually fucking kissing him, all soft mouth and coffee breath and wide warm shoulders. Roy groans into the kiss again.

He pulls away and presses his forehead against Jamie’s, nuzzles the tip of his nose against Jamie’s cheekbone, lets his hands wander onto Jamie’s hips, feels Jamie’s hand on his face, the flutter of Jamie’s eyelashes against his skin, Jamie’s warm breath on his lips.

Oh, he is proper fucking gone on him.

Jamie whines softly and moves in for another kiss and Roy lets him for a long, beautiful moment before he pulls away and takes a tiny step back, or at least he tries to because Jamie immediately chases after him and Roy can’t help but chuckle and plant a quick, short kiss on Jamie’s cheek that somehow develops into yet another round of full-on snogging, including Jamie wedging one of his legs between Roy’s and grinding against him which would’ve set Roy’s skin on fire if it hadn’t been that way for the last couple minutes and makes him gasp and groan into the kiss again.

He takes another step back and growls out “Stop - stop for just - just one fucking second, alright, Jamie?”

And Jamie’s face falls at that even though he immediately pulls back a little, too, and it makes Roy’s stomach drop so he reaches out and runs his thumb softly along Jamie’s cheekbone. Jamie doesn’t even smirk or grin, just genuinely smiles softly, closing his eyes for a fraction of a second.

“I just -” He groans. “Fuck. Jesus, Mary and fuckface Joseph, Jamie.”

“That good, huh?” Jamie mumbles, smirking now.

“Fuck off, you muppet,” Roy says, trying to pack as much fondness as he can into his voice before taking a deep breath. “I just -” He groans and stares at the ceiling for a moment before meeting Jamie’s eyes again. “I just want to - fucking - do this right, alright? I don’t want to bollocks this up more than I already did. I want to have a fucking conversation about this and then I want you to have a conversation with someone at the fucking club and then I want to -” Jamie’s face isn’t moving, and Jamie’s face is always moving, and he isn’t saying anything either and suddenly, Roy is very fucking nervous so he forces himself to keep talking. “I mean, if you want to. If you want to - if you just want to shag, if you just want a one time thing, then you should leave and I’ll see you at fucking pre-season training and we’ll never ever talk about this again, alright?”

“Wait, what?” Jamie mumbles.

Roy pinches the bridge of his nose and groans at the prospect of having to fucking say all of that again. As if the first time hadn’t been excruciating enough. “What part exactly do you need me to repeat again?”

“I - you - you don’t just want sex with me,” Jamie says, and Roy’s not sure if it’s a statement or a question but he nods anyway. “You don’t just want to fuck me.”

For a second, Roy’s genuinely shocked at how fucking slow Jamie is being for some fucking reason. “I just told you I have fucking feelings,” he snaps.

“No, you told me you were working through some fucking feelings!”

“What, and you thought that meant -?”

“I thought that meant that you finally realized that I’m fit as fuck and had to work through, like, some anger and denial and repression or whatever else men who grew up in the Stone Age have to deal with when they realise they wanna shag a man before you were ready to bang it out! I didn’t think you meant you want to, like, take me on a date and all that, court me, like a fucking Victorian gentleman.”

Roy can’t help but blink at Jamie, twice, before he growls “I - I made you fucking breakfast. A proper one. And Pad Thai.”

“Well, how am I supposed to know the booty call etiquette of someone your age?”

“Brat,” Roy growls, but he takes a step closer and leans his forehead against Jamie’s again, just catching the grin that’s spreading across Jamie’s face. “This is not a booty call.”

“Well, I realize that now, don’t I?” Jamie mumbles and leans in.

It shouldn’t be a surprise to Roy, but for some reason it is, and despite all of his best intentions, they’re kissing again, Roy’s tongue by now in Jamie's mouth, Jamie pliant and soft and going where Roy’s leading despite all of his brattiness and that’s another surprise and a very good one at that.

He pulls away again anyway, Jamie actually panting now, whining and still grinning unabashedly. Roy groans, his jeans deeply uncomfortable, and runs his hands up along Jamie’s arms. “Come on. Let’s have breakfast.”

For a second, Jamie looks like he might argue, demand more kissing, or make a filthy joke, but he nods, then smirks, leans into Roy’s space and quickly presses a cheeky kiss to the side of his face. Roy’s heart melts a little, and it melts a little more when they’re at the table, Jamie wolfing down the food, praising it as he goes, and then chattering on about the night out.

“Sounds like good fun,” Roy says at one point.

Jamie flashes him a cheeky grin, then says “Well, next time we have a night out with all the girlfriends, you’ll get to come along, too, y’know?”

“Oh, is that so?” Roy growls, but he can’t help that he grins back.

“Well, seeing as you’re my boyfriend now -“

Something warm and soft pools in Roy’s belly while something electric sneaks up his spine. It’s a little insane to him, if he’s honest - the fact that Jamie is sitting at his table now, eating food he cooked for him, calling him his boyfriend, when just a year ago, he was sat in a doctors’ office, indulging in fantasies about breaking Jamie’s knee. It had been a low point if there ever had been one, wanting to hurt another player for a choice he himself had made, and he got over it, but still: he would’ve never expected to feel this way about Jamie.

He wouldn’t have expected Jamie to be interested. Even just a few hours earlier, while he was scrambling eggs and slicing chicken and vegetables - even just a few minutes ago, snogging him in the kitchen - he hadn’t been sure if Jamie would be open to this, would really want to date his almost 40 year old, fucked knee, fucked in the head coach, considering how many options a fit young footballer like he has to have. But Jamie just takes it and runs with it, like he’s done with so much of Roy’s bullshit, not just matching his intensity but outstripping him, and it’s insane to Roy, and fucking endearing and maybe a tiny bit concerning to the part of his brain that hasn’t gone completely stupid yet.

Which is why he puts his fork down and interrupts Jamie, saying “I - you don’t have to - you have options. You can just say no.”

“Yeah, I know that, man.” Jamie grins at him and shoves scrambled eggs and baked beans into his mouth. “I don’t want to say no, though.”

“Who raised you?” Roy mumbles at the sight of Jamie talking while chewing.

“Well, mostly I did, on account of me old man being a bastard and me mummy having to work her arse off to get food on the table.”

Roy groans again - not because he doesn’t want to know, he suddenly wants to know everything - but because he has something he wants, needs, to say and it’s so easy to get sidetracked by the little shit.

“Look, Jamie. I - I’m your coach. I know there’s some - fucking - power imbalance shit here. I know I’m - a lot, I know I can be fucking intense. I know you’re used to taking orders from me. So I just - I want to hammer that into your thick fucking skull. You can always say no to me. Or tell me to fuck off, or to fucking slow down or whatever.”

Now it’s Jamie’s turn to put down his cuttlery, fixating on Roy intensely. “I know, Roy. I do. I just - I trust you, alright, man? And I, like - want you. Wanted you for ages, actually.”

Roy’s stomach lurches at that and suddenly his throat is tight and scratchy again, so all he can do is nod and spear a bit of sausage with his fork. Most of him is relieved and a little amazed, still, even as he remembers ‘I had a poster of you on my wall’ and ‘Used to love watching you play’ and, maybe most importantly, ‘You and that Doug bloke ever become friends,’ asked as if it didn’t matter to Jamie at all. Another, smaller part is worried - worried that it’s all just hero-worship that will inevitably fade again, turn back into the sort of bitterness between them that coloured and poisoned their first two seasons at Richmond together, and worried that whatever is developing between them will be discovered and then squashed like a bug by The fucking Sun or The Independent or The Daily Mail or whatever fucking tabloid rag writer breaks it because it would be the story of the decade so it wouldn’t matter to anyone that it would break their relationship and their careers, too.

He’s not sure if he should push any further right now, though, worried, too, that it might ruin the mood. He can feel Jamie’s eyes on him, though, and he looks up to meet them, a smile spreading on his lips almost against his control.

“Jesus, grandad, give a guy a warning next time,” Jamie says, hand on his heart. “That smile near killed me, man.”

“Fuck off,” and Jamie looks just a little bashful at that, looking down at his hands for a second, and it makes Roy smile even more. They continue eating in silence for a bit until Jamie takes a sip of his tea, eyeing Roy over the mug as if he wants to say something but isn’t sure if he can or should, so Roy growls “What?”

Jamie bites his lip for a second. “I - when did you - realise? That you wanted to do this, I mean.”

Jesus, Mary and fuckface Joseph.

It’s not even that Jamie asks, the needy little shit, all curiosity tinged with just a bit of hesitation. It’s that Roy knows he’ll answer.

+++++++++++

Roy smiles at him, again, and this is maybe the best day of Jamie’s life, at least until he scores his first goal for England. He bites the inside of his cheek - he has a million questions, wants to know a million things, but Roy still seems - well, Jamie’s not sure, but he doesn’t seem quite like himself yet and it’s been an insane morning so he probably shouldn’t push. If he makes Roy talk more about his feelings, he’ll probably combust, and that would be a real tragedy, considering he’s apparently willing to become Jamie’s boyfriend and they’ve not even fucked yet because Roy’s discovered his moral compass all of a sudden.

So they eat in silence for a while and he can’t help staring at Roy, at the way his mouth moves and his hands, and then, when he’s sipping on his tea, Roy meets his eyes and maybe Jamie wasn’t as subtle about the fact that he has questions as he thought he was, because Roy growls “What?”

For a second, Jamie bites his lip and then he can’t help it, he has to know. “I - when did you - realise? That you wanted to do this, I mean.”

Roy’s jaw tightens for a second and he breathes in deeply.

Yeah. He should’ve just kept his mouth shut.

“I -” Jamie starts to walk it back just as Roy opens his mouth and says “Week before last,” and Jamie’s eyebrows wander up of their own accord. “The -” Roy’s jaw tightens again. “ - fucking - Tamie Jartt. Incident.”

He blinks, completely and utterly not getting it, feeling like he did just a few minutes ago when Roy didn’t tell him to fuck off when Jamie had called him his boyfriend to test the waters or a few more minutes ago when Roy told him that this wasn’t just about sex, that seriously dating Jamie was something that he seriously wanted, or another few more minutes ago when Roy said yes to Jamie asking wether Roy had finally realized just how fit Jamie was.

Of all the moments they’ve had, Jamie would’ve never ever guessed that Tamie Jartt was the one.

“Why?” His mouth asks before he can do anything.

Roy grunts and finishes chewing. “I don’t fucking know.” Apparently he sees something in Jamie’s face, or maybe he’s trying to figure it out himself, because after a moment, he speaks again. “Just - I don’t know. Probably started earlier, if I’m honest, but that’s -” He looks at his plate as he continues. “- that’s when I fucking realised. You were so - fucking indignant about some random kid getting cancer. And so fucking - soft. And sweet.”

He looks up as he says it, and Jamie knows it’s stupid but that doesn’t change that his hands tighten around the mug and he hears his father in his head, and his hackles go up no matter how much he and Dr. Sharon talked about it.

Roy notices, though. He notices and reaches across the table for Jamie’s wrist. “That - you being soft and sweet - that was a good fucking thing, Jamie.” Jamie just nods. His throat is tight, suddenly, and his face is hot and for some reason, he just wants out of this situation, wants to be anywhere but here. Roy doesn’t seem to notice, just keeps talking. “Could’ve realised it earlier, probably,” his hand still on Jamie’s wrist, warm and firm and a little rough. “Like during the game against Cardiff, when you were such a brilliant little prick that they didn’t even notice Colin and then sent that beautiful fucking pass to him despite having a shot yourself.” And it’s silly, honestly, the way the praise goes straight to Jamie’s head and heart, makes him straighten up a little, but it’s also not because this is Roy fucking Kent after all. Roy, who’s attention he’s been craving for forever, who he thought was ignoring him but who’s really been noticing him, who’s been impressed with him, who wants him.

Roy doesn’t seem to notice that, though, because he keeps talking. “Or like the night after the funeral, when you called me and I drove over to your place and you weren’t there and didn’t answer your phone and I could barely sleep because I was so fucking worried about you.”

There’s another rush of excitement and endorphines going through his entire body. Roy was worried about him.

And then it suddenly clicks into place a little more, like his brain only fully registers what Roy just said a few seconds after the feeling sets in.

“Wait. Is that - that’s why you hung up the phone on me that night? To drive to my place?” Roy grunts and nods, withdrawing his hand. “And me not being there - is that the reason you were such a fucking dick to everyone at training the next day?”

Roy nods again. “Jesus, man,” Jamie whispers. It feels like it did when he was waiting for the signal from Roy, electric and a little intoxicating, realising that he has this much power over Roy.

“Ted already gave me a bunch of fucking shit for it, no need to lay into me again,” Roy says and Jamie just raises his hands, open palms turned towards Roy, making it clear that he had no intention to.

But then another thing clicks into place. “Is that - was that the reason you started ignoring me again?” Another nod, and this time, Roy actually looks uncomfortable, and Jamie can’t help the snort and the “Jesus, Roy, you could’ve just talked to me, for fucks sake,” which makes Roy look even more uncomfortable.

“Don’t know if you noticed but that’s the part I’m historically fucking shit at,” Roy growls, then sighs. “See, that’s why I want you to talk to someone at the club about this. To make sure you know who to turn to if I bring my shit into how I’m coaching you.”

“What, because I won’t tell you to eff off if you are?” Jamie grumbles, more than a little offended.

“Yeah,” Roy says without the slightest hint of hesitation or guilt or discomfort. Jamie’s about to tell him off but before he can, Roy interjects. “Jamie, you came and apologized to me. After I was a dick to you for like, almost three fucking weeks. Despite not having done anything at all wrong.”

And there’s nothing he can say to that, is there? Roy was a dick to him, Jamie thought he deserved it so he went and apologized and, if he’s quite honest with himself, if that hadn’t sort of worked, gotten Roy to pay attention to him, order him to do extra work, he might have apologized again. Or maybe not, maybe he would’ve gone back to annoying Roy or asked Keeley for advice or done something else. But he can see Roy’s point: he’s a little desperate for Roy’s attention, always has been, and as much as he trusts Roy, Roy does sometimes have a bit of an issue with handling his emotion.

“Yeah, alright,” he concedes. “I’ll talk to whoever I need to talk to at the club.”

“Good lad,” Roy says, completely casually, setting Jamie’s skin on fire and spearing another bit of sausage with his fork.

Jamie wants nothing more than to leap out of his chair, to be close to Roy, to get back to making out. But Roy said he wants to do it right, whatever that means, so he’ll let Roy take the lead, like he always does.

“What was it for you?” Roy asks suddenly.

Jamie needs a moment, not just to recover from the ‘good lad’ comment but also to figure out what Roy could possibly be referring to. Then it clicks. “Told you already, didn’t I? Always loved watching you play. The way you moved on the pitch - like it was yours, your space, and you were just sort of allowing everybody else to be there. And the way you understood the game, the way you could see like three moves ahead - ” And then he realises how that sounds, and he doesn’t want Roy to think that it’s just hero worship, that he’s just some dumb kid getting a kick out of his hero finally noticing him. “And of course then I got to Richmond and you were such a fucking cunt right from the start, weren’t you? ” Roy grunts. “I’d actually really looked forward to it, y’know? Playing for Richmond, with you. But you were such an arrogant wanker. And I still - still wanted you to notice me, so I kept watching you. And there was all this small shit you did, like the handshakes tailored to everyone and giving Isaac tips for his left foot cross and getting Nate some chocolate for his birthday and telling Sam to keep his head up when Cartrick was especially shit to him and giving Colin a leek on that Welsh holiday and it was just - I don’t even know, you made such a big deal out of being Captain, out of everyone taking you seriously, respecting you while barely talking to any of us, but you didn’t make a big deal out of all of that, didn’t expect any gratitude or ring kissing in return, just did it. And it made me think that as much of an arse as you were, there was also that other side. And that kept me from fully hating you, you know? And it - I don’t know, it made me keep wanting you to notice me, wanting you to do something like that for me. So - I don’t know, I guess there isn’t one moment where I realised because I never really needed to realise, you know?”

Roy’s silent, his face stony except for the eyebrows knitted together. Jamie eyes him, a little worried that this is the point where the emotions and the deep talk and all of it become too much and he does combust or needs a hard reboot or something, but after a long moment, he just nods and grunts.

Jamie can’t fight the grin but he tries to downplay it just a little, spearing the final piece of grilled tomato and plopping it in his mouth. He’s still got a million questions about this but instead, he asks Roy if he’s seen the final Premiere League matches and what he thinks the next season will be like, and they chat about football until they’re done and Jamie pushes his chair back and gets up. There’s a quick, small thing that passes over Roy’s face - just a tiny move of the eyebrows, another tightening of the jaw - but it’s gone when he grabs his dishes and then moves over to where Roy’s sitting to grab his as well, hesitating for a second.

“What?”

Jamie pushes his tongue into the inside of his cheek for a moment. “Nothing! Just - can I kiss you again?”

Roy snorts and rolls his eyes but also says “Thought you’d never ask,” and as Jamie leans down, Roy grabs him, tugging him down by the collar of his shirt. For a few seconds, his lips are almost shy on Jamie’s, and then he’s pushing and pulling, a low grumble in his throat that Jamie drinks in before sighing softly into the kiss.

Roy pulls away shortly after, Jamie whining when the contact breaks before pressing another quick kiss against the corner of Roy’s mouth and straightening up. “Right. Going to take care of these real quick.” He almost adds something like ‘and then I’ll get out of your hair’ but remembers that this is a date and Roy might have more planned so he keeps that part to himself.

Once he’s in the kitchen, he turns on Roy’s radio, finds BBC 1 and begins humming along to the song they’re playing while putting the dishes into the dishwasher. He knows that one, has heard it a million times, recognizes the swell and fall of it and hums, even knows a bit of the lyrics - something ‘rain over me, baby, come back to me’ - but doesn’t remember the title, so he gets his phone out to Shazam it and almost drops it when he realises that Roy’s leaning against the doorframe, watching him.

“Some day, you’re going to actually scare someone to death sneaking up on them like that, and then I’ll have to put a little collar with a bell on you,” he exclaims.

Roy uncrosses his arms and crosses the kitchen towards Jamie. “I’d love to see you try that.”

“Oh, I bet you’d look proper fit with just a little black collar.” Jamie can’t help the way he grins as he says it, the way the image does something to his insides, turning him gooey and boneless and jittery at the same time.

“Not nearly as fit as you,” Roy growls and then they’re kissing again, the upper rack of the dishwasher digging uncomfortably into Jamie’s bum and back so he can’t really do anything but press himself closer to Roy, sliding his hands from his shoulders to Roy’s waist, grabbing and twisting his hands in the soft black shirt again.

Roy slides a bit closer to Jamie who bumps into the rack, making the glasses and mugs in it rattle and Roy chuckle into the kiss and pull away and mumble “Oops.”

“It’s fine,” except for the part where it’s not because it’s made Roy stop kissing him. Still, Jamie turns and puts the last mug into the dishwasher, then closes it and asks “So - what are your plans for the rest of the day?”

“Don’t really have any,” Roy says, clenching and unclenching his fists. “You?”

Jamie slouches against the kitchen counter. “Me either,” he says and starts playing with the hem of his jumper. “Can I just - I don’t know, hang out with you?”

“Yeah,” Roy says without hesitation, another one of those small killer smiles on his lips.

Jamie’s like ninety-eight percent sure this is the best day of his life.

+++++++++++

They wander into Roy’s garden, after, mugs of tea in their hands, and just lounge on two sunbeds, Jamie talking about this and that and Roy weighing in occasionally. It’s one of those odd early May days, surprisingly warm despite a thin layer of clouds, more white than gray, and every time the sun breaks through, Jamie turns his face to the sunshine like a cat. The fucking affection Roy feels when he notices it almost knocks the wind out of him.

At some point, Jamie wanders over into Roy’s space, almost hesitatingly and when Roy growls “Come here, then,” his face breaks out into a wide, dazzling grin as he folds his massive frame into Roy’s side. Roy hesitates for a second before pressing a quick peck to Jamie’s temple. The way he shivers under it does knock the wind out of Roy.

He tries to remind himself that this is essentially their fucking first date, that there are million things that could still go very wrong very fucking easily, like Jamie having that conversation with probably Higgins and Rebecca and Ted and whoever else he fucking needs to talk to and realising that it’s too much of a fucking bother. Or Roy pushing too much, wanting too much too quickly while giving too little, and Jamie realising that it’s too much of a bother. He tries to not get so fucking lost in it, in the soft feeling in his belly and the tingling in his spine, tries not to get so accustomed to it, so fucking addicted to it, the way he did with Keeley, but as Jamie’s hair tickles his neck and chin, he can already tell it’s a losing fucking battle.

“Hey, can I ask you something?” Jamie interrupts his thoughts.

Roy hum-growls.

“You said you realised the week before last. Why did you wait until now to tell me?”

Roy sighs, running one hand along Jamie’s arm hesitatingly. It’s a fair question, he supposes, but he doesn’t think he’s ever talked as much about his fucking feelings as he’s done today. He also still hasn’t entirely recovered from from the way that Jamie had noticed all these things Roy had thought no one really noticed all along or from him just casually revealing the depth of his - he’s not even sure what it is.

“Didn’t know if I could. Or should, honestly,” he murmurs, though it comes out more like a growl.

He can feel Jamie tense just a tiny bit against his side. “Because you’re my coach?”

He nods, then hesitates for a moment before saying: “That and -” He sighs. “ - because life would get real fucking shit if anyone found out.”

“What do you mean, if anyone found out?”

“If someone at the fucking - Daily Mail or whatever trash rag - found out. Our careers would be so fucking fucked.”

“Oh, that,” Jamie sighs and presses himself a little closer to Roy. “Thought you meant, like, the other lads or something.”

Roy thinks about it for a moment, tensing up again. He hasn’t thought that much about whether or not this is something they should tell the rest of the players. A part of him feels like it would inevitably come back to bite them in the ass if they did, like someone would get their fucking feelings hurt by something Roy did or by Jamie being too much of a prick and do something with this knowledge. Another, bigger, part feels like fucking shit for thinking like this, for not trusting these men that trust him with so much. “Don’t know if we should tell them, to be honest.”

Jamie presses his head against Roy’s shoulder, snuggles closer. “I’m not sure either. I want to trust them, I just - I don’t know. This is all so new, you know? Don’t want everyone staring and judging and all that.”

It surprises Roy, though maybe it shouldn’t. He’d sort of expected Jamie not to care, maybe even to be humming with excitement to rub this in everyone’s face. Instead, it seems like Jamie sees this as something - Roy’s not quite sure, but as something that he wants to protect, to keep safe, as something that’s important to him even though - or maybe because - it’s new.

“But I do also want to tell, like, Sam, cause it feels weird not to tell my best mate. And maybe it would be good to just be open with this, not give people a chance to gossip and shit. And at the same, it feels risky. So I don’t know.” He ends and turns his head a little, looking up at Roy. “But it’s the off season anyway, innit? So we don’t have to make a decision one way or the other for a while,” he says as he turns his head back and leans against Roy.

And maybe that - the fact that Jamie just seems completely fucking sure that this will last not just the next six weeks but longer than that - shouldn’t surprise Roy either. But it does, and it makes him feel warm and soft again as he leans forward, turning Jamie’s face towards his own and kisses him, hungry and loving.

Chapter Text

xi:

Jamie stays curled up against Roy on the sunbed, sort of expecting Roy to shove him off at some point, or to complain that the sunbed is too small for the two of them, but he never does. He just keeps running his hand up and down Jamie’s arm absentmindedly, occasionally grunting and growling as Jamie talks, about the season, about the coming one, about the previous one when Lasso first appeared, about the other teams, and occasionally just silently chills, leaning against Roy, fiddling with the drawstrings of his own hoodie or twisting his hands in the bottom of it, still a little nervous about this whole thing, about the fact that he might fuck it up.

When it gets towards the late afternoon, they both get hungry again. Roy reheats the Pad Thai he made while Jamie sits on the kitchen counter, kicking his feet, watching attentively and wondering if Roy made Pad Thai because he remembered that it was Jamie’s favourite hangover food or if it’s Roy’s favourite breakup food, too, and he made it just in case he’d need it or if he just likes it for completely unrelated reasons. They eat, and then Jamie does the dishes, Roy just leaning against the counter next to him, arms crossed, watching in that way that he’s got, and then states that he’s going to watch something on the telly but Jamie can stick around if he wants.

He does want, of course, so he plops down on the couch next to Roy, knees and shoulders and arms touching, and bites back a dumb comment when the something Roy wants to watch turns out to be Fast & Furious 6. Less than twenty minutes into the movie, he properly curls into Roy, throwing one of his legs into his lap, which makes Roy grunt before he starts beating out a rhythm with his fingers on the skin just above Jamie’s ankle and then switches to just running his thumb along it. Which is a move that shouldn’t be turning Jamie on but for some reason does and thus leads to them making out passionately on the couch until Jamie climbs into Roy’s lap, grinds against him and goes for his neck and Roy groans for him to stop. He places another open-mouthed, nibbling kiss on Roy’s neck, in the space just below his ear, and then a cheeky one on the tip of Roy’s nose, laughing while Roy growls “fucking muppet” and looks as if he has decided that the kangaroo drowning plan does actually sound quite good after all.

They settle back in next to each other, Jamie stretching his legs in the other direction this time, his back against Roy’s side and propped up leg and his head leaned against Roy’s shoulder while Roy wraps one arm around his upper body. After a while, his fingers start dancing and tracing circles across Roy’s leg on their own accord, genuinely completely innocently because if Roy wants to adhere to the 1940s morals he grew up with, Jamie will respect that. That doesn’t keep Roy from sighing softly and then growling after a while before intertwining his fingers with Jamie’s, keeping them in one spot on his leg, and suggesting that Jamie leave once the film’s over.

He does try to hide his disappointment at that but must not be doing a very good job, because Roy rolls his eyes in a way that reminds Jamie of the Tottenham Hotspurs game and then he can’t help but think of how fucking far they’ve come and how little he wants to fuck this up. So he only barely teases Roy as they walk down the hallway to the front door and then gets serious again, leaning against the wall to say. “So, I wanted to go and see the physios tomorrow anyway, figure out if there’s anything I need to keep an eye out for during the off season.” Roy grunts and nods approvingly which in turn makes Jamie smile a little as he buries his hands in the pocket of his hoodie. “Who was it that you wanted me to talk to? Maybe I can get that out of the way tomorrow as well.”

“Leslie Higgins, mostly, and then whoever he says to talk to.”

Jamie nods, trying to suppress the weird feeling he gets remembering the last time he talked to the man.

“Call me after, alright?” Roy says, chasing away that feeling, and then leans in for a soft, sweet, chaste kiss, the kind Jamie’s never really gotten with any of his exes, not even with Keeley because they both always got so hot and bothered. It’s in the kind of kiss he used to see between mummy and Simon as a teenager and kind of want and kind of hate himself for wanting, and he knows suddenly that there are very few things he wouldn’t do for Roy Fucking Kent to keep kissing him like that.

So he goes and has a deeply awkward conversation with Higgins. It’s one thing to admit to himself, internally, that he might not always make good decisions when it comes to Roy but it’s an entirely different thing to listen to Higgins talk about AFC Richmond being aware of the power imbalance and establishing safeguarding mechanisms to protect him. It’s an especially different thing because it’s clear Higgins would also much rather be somewhere, anywhere else.

Still, once Higgins has gone through his entire spiel that ends with him stating that he’ll reach out to Jamie again before pre-season training starts to update him on the official procedures, he gives Jamie an awkward smile and says “I hope this isn’t too out of line, but I just wanted to say that I am happy for the both of you.”

Jamie nods awkwardly and then adds “Thanks, man,” even more awkwardly, relieved to get out of there and call Roy, who tells him he’s with Phoebe and can’t talk properly but invites him for dinner. Jamie spends most of the day looking forward to it while distracting himself, only for their date to start out with the disappointment of arriving at Roy’s place to find that he’s already finished cooking and an annoyed eyeroll when Jamie’s disappointed at that. It turns sweet when he tells Roy that he’s just disappointed because he likes helping or watching Roy cook, and though there are little moments of awkwardness, it stays sweet and a little horny until he leaves, another soft kiss goodbye still on his lips.

When he wakes up the next day, he can feel his usual end-of-the-season bout of illness coming on. It’s not a surprise, just annoying because he wants to see Roy again before he goes up to Manchester and to Rome with his mummy from there but he also doesn’t want him to see him sick, especially because he’s not willing to deal with Roy being a grumpy dick to him, calling him a whiny little bitch because he wants to be petted and held and spoiled. So when Roy texts him and asks what his plans for the day are, he just says that he doesn’t have time but will let him know once he’s free again and then spends his day curled up on his couch, finally watching the entirety of Lust Conquers All and bombarding Roy with his thoughts trough texts.

As always, it gets worse before it can get better, and by day three, his head hurts so much and he is so exhausted, he can barely text. His bedsheets are disgustingly sweated through, he’s barely eaten because he has no appetite at all, and every muscle in his body seems to hurt and protest at every movement. He mostly lounges on the couch, playing Candy Crush while something’s playing on the telly, and then he falls into a sleep that is so deep he might as well be unconscious.

He wakes up, disoriented and exhausted, to someone simultaneously ringing his doorbell and furiously hammering against the door.

+++++++++++

Roy makes it four days without seeing Jamie, the last two of those with no texts from the muppet, until he shows up on his doorstep, ringing the doorbell with an ever-increasing mixture of feeling buzzing under his skin and a deep embarrassment about that, and about being there in the first place.

It’s fucking stupid. He’s acting fucking stupid. He’s clearly going insane. He should fucking stop.

He rings the fucking doorbell again.

He and Jamie have gone on two fucking dates and snogged a bunch. And that happening and Jamie referring to Roy as his boyfriend one fucking time doesn’t mean - it doesn’t mean that Roy gets to show up on Jamie’s doorstep just because Jamie hasn’t had time to see him. It doesn’t mean Roy gets to freak out because over the last four days, Jamie’s texts have been coming more and more infrequently until they stopped completely the day before yesterday. Roy knows that, or at least a part of him does. That same part also reminds him that he doesn’t get to act like a fucking Neanderthal just because he suspects Jamie lost interest, that Roy had planned to get a fucking grip, that banging on Jamie’s door the way he currently is is more than a bit of an overreaction.

Unfortunately, that part of him is losing out to the one that remembers Jamie telling Roy that he could’ve just talked to him, that is taking that sentence very fucking seriously and that has decided that if he does have to fucking talk, he has to do it right the fuck now. Unfortunately, that part is losing out to the one that remembers Jamie telling him that he had wanted Roy for ages, that remembers Jamie talking about watching and wanting Roy, that remembers ‘I never really needed to realise’ and feels very entitled to an explanation as to why Jamie has suddenly changed his fucking mind. Unfortunately, that part of him is losing out to him currently standing in front of Jamie’s fucking front door, ringing the doorbell and hammering against it at the same time. Unfortunately, once again, that part of him is losing out to the fucking Neanderthal in him.

There’s movement behind the glass of the door, and Roy immediately drops both of his hands to his side, clenching and unclenching them, focusing on his breath. Just because his aggression got him this fucking far doesn’t mean he should carry all of it into his interaction with Jamie, he tries to tell himself, but the anger doesn’t exactly wane just because he wants it to.

And then Jamie opens the door and the feeling immediately disappears, replaced by concern and nothing else.

“Fucking hell, you look like fucking shit,” he blurts out.

Jamie blinks at him for a moment before saying “I also feel like fucking shit, but I’d wager I still look better than your hairy arse,” but there’s none of his usual defensive bite to it.

It gets under Roy’s skin all the same.

And the thing is, he’s never been especially good with sick people because they require the kind of care and soft touch he isn’t fucking capable of, and this is Jamie, who’s always been able to get on his nerves in a way no one else could, and this is Jamie and they should be past all of this angry ‘sniping at each other’-bullshit and the fact that they aren’t jabs between his ribs, and at the same time, there’s this weird feeling - the one that made him barrel straight through the Wembley locker room and cling to Jamie as if he’d drown otherwise - in his stomach, and it’s just all a fucking lot.

He focuses on taking a deep breath and growls “Are you going to let me in?”

Jamie eyes him for a second, then nods and pulls the door open, leaning against the hallway wall. Roy moves towards him almost immediately, kicking his shoes off as he goes and then putting a hand on Jamie’s forehead while also realising that he’s not sure if he could tell if he’s feverish just based on that.

He’s not good with sick people.

“Don’t -“ Jamie mumbles weakly and tries to jerk away, then adds “Don’t want to get you sick as well.”

“That the reason you didn’t want to see me?” Jamie nods, some of his hair falling forwards into his face, and Roy softly brushes it away. “Okay. Let’s get you back to bed, then.”

“M’bed’s minging, all sweaty.”

“Alright, then back to the couch it is.” Jamie’s a little wobbly on his feet, and slow, but it’s not so bad that Roy needs to steady him, luckily enough. Still, he keeps on hand wrapped around Jamie’s upper arm until he slumps onto the couch, closing his eyes and taking deep, rattling breaths.

Roy uses the opportunity to eye both Jamie and the room carefully. There are balled up tissues spread around the couch, and a couple of empty water bottles, too. There’s a gray fluffy blanket tangled on the couch, and Jamie’s dead phone as well, but no used plates or anything anywhere. Jamie looks pale and exhausted, twisting his hands in the hem of his sweaty shirt, his hair sticking to his sweaty forehead, reminding Roy of a pathetic wet cat.

“When was the last time you ate anything?”

“Dunno - what day is it?”

“For fuck’s sake,” he snaps before he can stop himself. “Alright. You stay here. I’m making you food, and then I’m changing your sheets, and then you’re getting back into your fucking bed because this can’t be good for your spine, alright?” Jamie nods. “Did you at least go see your fucking GP?”

Jamie shakes his head and when Roy can’t suppress another growl at that, he croaks “Don’t need to. It’s just a cold, happens every year, just need to though it out for a couple days.”

“You get sick after the last game of the season every year?” Jamie just nods in reply.

Roy’s always known that Jamie pushes himself, works with a level of diligence and passion that no one at Richmond but Roy himself matched, but learning that he essentially pushes himself so much it makes his body pull the brakes the second it gets a moment of rest makes Roy feel a bunch of weird things at the same time, admiration, mostly, and affection, too, but also concern and something like - he’s not even sure what it is but it feels like it sometimes does when he looks at his father, sees him square his shoulders, grunt and nod approvingly or when he looks at Isaac glaring sharply and walking away - a sense of understanding, like looking at a part of himself mirrored and distorted in someone else. Which is not something he ever expected to find with Jamie.

It’s too big - too big to put into words, swelling up in his chest and blocking his airway and also too big to keep in, this confusing thing still tinged by the fear and anger that Jamie’d lost interest and the embarassment at how that thought had made him react. He doesn’t know what to do with any of it, so he just nods and grunts and stomps off to the kitchen to make Jamie some porridge with shredded apple and banana and just a tiny bit of cinnamon, the way his grandma made it for him when he was sick, the way he makes it for Phoebe when she is. It takes a little while - he wants to get the consistency and the flavour just right so that Jamie can still eat it whether he’s nauseous or not - so by the time he’s bringing the bowl back to the living room, Jamie’s curled up against the armrest of the couch, legs drawn to his chest and tangled in his blanket, worrying his lip with his teeth.

Roy sets the bowl down on the armrest in front of his face. “Eat this. I’ll take care of your bed.” He’s already turned away and taken a few steps before he thinks better of it, turns back and runs his fingers through the long strands of Jamie’s hair sticking to his forehead and squeezes his shoulder. Jamie leans his head against his lower arm and again, Roy can’t help but think of a cat, feeling soft and stupid. “Bedroom?” he mumble-growls.

Jamie tells him where it is, and where the fresh sheets are, and when Roy’s made his way there and recovered from the shock of that ugly fucking headboard, he opens up the windows while he switches out the sheets and tries not to stare too much at Jamie’s stuff. His eyes do get stuck on the glass and metal shelf next to the bed anyway and especially on the trinkets and framed photos on it. There’s one of a woman who might be his mother and Jamie, roughly the age he was when he made his Premiere League debut, in front of that ugly ass unfinished church in Barcelona and a candid picture of Keeley, holding an ice cream that’s melting over her fingers and covering half her laughing mouth with the other hand, leaning against a black and white railway with the Brighton Palace Pier sign in the background, one of the team, a brown-haired teenage girl smack-dab in the middle of it, black tape covering the Dubai Air logo on their chests, and a press photo of the coaches in the dugout during the Tottenham Hotspurs match. The last one makes Roy’s stomach tighten a little, and he looks away quickly, focusing on the three snowglobes - a windmill from Amsterdam according to its’ base, the church from Barcelona and the Acropolis of Athens standing between the photos and a bunch of books, though Roy forces himself not to look at the titles as if that would mean he’s respected Jamie’s privacy.

He takes a deep breath when he’s back in the hallway, trying to figure out what to do with the way being in Jamie’s bedroom has made him feel before he gets back to the living room. He needs to stop snapping at his almost-boyfriend or soon he won’t have one anymore, he tells himself.

Jamie’s still curled up on the couch in almost the same spot Roy left him in, but at least he’s eaten most of the porridge. “Your bed’s ready. Do you need help getting there?” Jamie shakes his head, so Roy just follows him down the hallway to his bedroom door before turning back to the living room to tidy up. It feels like the easy way out, like avoiding Jamie because he doesn’t entirely know what to do with him, how to be around him right now. Still, there’s only so much time to kill, and after he’s cut up some fruit and made some ginger-lemon tea with honey and filled a bunch of water bottles, he carries all of it to Jamie’s bedroom.

“Oh,” Jamie croaks and coughs violently. “Didn’t think you’d still be here,” he whispers.

It stings, Roy realises, as he sets the stuff down on the bedside table, so he takes a deep breath. “Just tidied up the living room a bit,” he growls. “But I can leave, if you’d rather be alone.” Jamie hesitates, worrying his lower lip between his teeth again, and Roy balls his fists inside the pockets of his jackets and takes a deep breath. “But if you want, I can stay, too.”

There’s another moment of hesitation before Jamie says “Promise to try not to be a dick to me?” That stings, too, but Roy nods anyway. “And I’ll try not to be too much of an incurably whiny little bitch,” Jamie mumbles and scoots over. For some reason, that stings the most.

While Roy takes off his jacket and looks around for a spot to place it on, he finds himself saying “Sorry about that.”

“Huh?”

He can’t make himself turn back to Jamie which is pathetic, he knows, but still. “About saying you should die of the incurable condition of -” He says to the wall as he puts the jacket down.

“It’s fine,” Jamie interrupts him. “I said a bunch of shit about you, too, remember?”

He turns around again, grunts and nods and climbs into bed next to Jamie. For a second, it feels weird as fuck - sitting next to this man he used to hate, who used to get under his skin like no other person could, who fucking knew that and seemed to make a sport out of it - and then Jamie scoots closer, and sneaks an arm underneath Roy’s back, lets the other rest on his chest and puts his head against Roy’s shoulder.

Suddenly, it feels like the most natural thing in the world.

The emotional whiplash might break his fucking neck anyway.

“Never imagined you landing in my bed like this, by the way,” Jamie croaks and Roy snorts loudly. “Fucking mint, though.”

Roy places a short kiss on the crown of his head. “Yeah,” he mumbles. “How are you feeling?”

“Bit better. Eating helped.”

“Good.” He runs the arm curled around Jamie’s shoulder up and down his spine which makes Jamie shiver and immediately stops. Jamie responds with a low whine and Roy can’t help but chuckle as he starts doing it again. “Could’ve just texted me that you weren’t feeling well. I was - worried.”

“Yeah, I figured, what with the way you showed up here.” Jamie coughs again. “Got a little scared you’d rip the door off the hinges, man. But like, horny-scared.” He presses a little closer, his hands twisting in the back of Roy’s shirt. “Sorry for not texting you. Felt weird. About you seeing me like this. And then yesterday I started feeling too shit to text.”

“You sure you’re not fucking dying?”

“Yeah, very sure. You wanna know why?” He rolls his eyes but asks anyway. “I refuse to die til we’ve shagged.”

“Well, then congrats on becoming immortal.”

“As if you could resist this,” Jamie says and gestures to his body which falls victim to another coughing fit. “You want me so bad it makes you look stupid.”

“Shut up, you fucking muppet,” Roy growls, burying his nose in Jamie’s hair, hoping that Jamie hasn’t figured out that it means ‘yes’ yet.

+++++++++++

Roy sticks around all throughout Jamie being sick, making him food and making sure he eats it, watching Planet Earth with him and listening to all of Jamie’s comments through it without complaint, petting his hair, running his hand up and down Jamie’s spine, reading to him from the book he’s currently devouring and answering all of Jamie’s questions about it. Once he even joins Jamie in the shower and helps him with his hair routine when Jamie cannot stand another day without it but feels to woozy to do it alone, though Roy does growl and grunt the entire time and even once threatens to chop Jamie’s dick off should he ever tell someone about it. He doesn’t sleep over, though, because according to him, it’s too early for that, and returning to an empty bed after spending the entire day essentially wrapped around Roy and kissing him goodbye at the front door feels a bit shit.

Still, it’s the first time since he was a teenager that he’s got someone around to do all the spoiling and caretaking that he wants when he’s sick, which is already brilliant, and the fact that it’s Roy Kent who’s there because he’s dating him makes it even better. A part of him still wonders how the fuck that ever happened and if he really didn’t trip into some sort of parallel universe. “Or maybe I really am dying and this is just some drawn out hallucination my dying brain’s giving me before it kicks the bucket, letting me have one good thing before it’s all lights out like, you know?” He says to Roy while they’re curled up on the couch on day seven, when the sick bout is definitely already fading.

“Would death hallucination Roy do this?” Roy growls and bites Jamie’s fucking shoulder hard enough for Jamie to yelp in pain but not hard enough to leave a mark. Jamie swears and swats at him for it and from there, it turns into their first real snogging session since Jamie got sick, though the grumpy spoilsport ends it before it can go anywhere really fun. By this point, Jamie is almost constantly desperately horny, as if he was a fucking teenager, and when he tells Roy as much, all he gets is laughter and Roy telling him he’ll just have to learn how to be patient for the first time in his life.

And Jamie has probably never needed to be more patient. Once he’s back to his physical prime, Roy has to have an emergency sleepover with Phoebe due to Teresa, Roy’s sister, having to do surgery very urgently. The next day, Jamie goes up to Manchester and from there to Rome for two weeks with his mummy. He loves her very much, and he’s sure Roy loves his sister and niece only marginally less intensely but there is a short moment when Jamie’s very annoyed at the existence of both of their families. Still, he asks Roy if he wants to come up North for a day or two and when Roy hesitates before saying no, it feels to early for that, he swallows a weird mixture of excitement and disappointment, and just texts and facetimes and normal-old people-calls Roy all the time instead.

He half expects Roy to tell him to stop fucking bothering him so much. Instead, Roy props his phone up in his kitchen as he cooks, narrating what he’s doing to Jamie and texts him pictures of especially good parts of the book he’s reading, sometimes accompanied by whole paragraphs on why he likes it, especially if Jamie asks and sends him selfies back, though he looks like a grumpy shit in most of them. Jamie saves all of them anyway but there’s one - Roy in a white shirt sitting underneath a tree, sunlight and the shadows of the leaves dancing on his skin, one arm resting on his knee, looking at the camera as if he’s only just noticed it, his face relaxed and distracted as if he’s talking to someone out of frame that he send after an afternoon with his sister and Phoebe - that Jamie would turn into his lockscreen or hang inside his hallway or get tattooed on his arm if all of these things wouldn’t lead to a bunch of very awkward conversations and tabloid articles. Roy looks good whatever he does, and he looks especially good in that picture with those thighs that Jamie just wants to bite into or rest his head on forever, crawling into Roy’s lap and never leaving it, but there’s something about the way he just looks utterly relaxed in the photo, the tiniest smile around his lips, the way he’s looked on the sunbed on their first date, that sets Jamie’s skin on fire.

Roy even has a short chat with Jamie’s mummy once when she comes into his hotel room while Jamie and Roy are on facetime and at dinner afterwards, when he asks what she thinks of Roy, she says that that’s not as important as what Jamie thinks and feels about him. He almost cries from the relief of it - he’s not even sure why because his mummy has never been anything but lovely, never focused on anything but whether or not he was happy and acting like a good lad, even when he went on Lust Conquers All. Still. He’s never told her that he might bring home a bloke, and now he sort of is, and she doesn’t bat an eye. She must see something on his face, though, because she pats his hand and says “He seems dead nice, though, that Roy Kent. Not like I imagined him at all. And dead fond of you, too.”

Jamie’s almost vibrating with the joy of it, almost walking on air as he jogs through Rome in the late evening hours and gets up at 9 in the morning even while on holiday to use the hotel’s fancy-looking but truly mediocre gym. He loves getting to spend time with his mummy, just the two of them, and he loves being on holiday like this, just wandering around a foreign city, learning new shit and eating whatever he wants and spending a day at the beach, the Mediterranean’s salty water fucking up his hair, and he loves the heat and the sunshine. He also cannot wait to get back to London, to see Roy again.

Roy says something similar when they facetime on Jamie’s last evening in Rome as Jamie’s packing his suitcase, making Jamie’s heart grow like four sizes. “When’s your flight getting in?” He asks.

Jamie tells him once he finds his digital boarding pass, and then asks, all excitement: “So should I expect to find your ugly mug waiting for me at Arrivals, then?”

“Don’t know if it’s a good idea,” Roy growls. “But yeah, I was thinking about picking you up. If you can control yourself in front of like a million fucking people.”

“I will, swear down,” he says, though a part of him wonders if Roy picking him up won’t cause enough speculation all on it’s own.

Apparently, Roy had the same thought because when Jamie gets out into the arrivals hall, he’s nowhere to be seen. And it would be totally fine if Jamie hadn’t been just a little down after saying good-bye to his mummy at the airport in Rome anyway and if Roy had at least fucking texted. It doesn’t matter, he’ll see the grumpy fuck in the evening, he tells himself as he mopingly makes his way to where the taxis wait.

Except he only makes it about halfway there before his phone rings, displaying Roy’s name on the display and he gets told off for not being aware enough of his surroundings because Roy’s been parked in the second row behind a bunch of cabs for two minutes, leaning onto his car’s horn and flipping of the taxidrivers he’d boxed in. As he climbs into the car, he can’t help but grin madly.

“I didn’t see you in the hall so I figured you didn’t come and didn’t think to look for this monstrosity you’re pretending is a normal car to have,” he says by way of greeting. The urge to do something as phenomenally stupid as kiss Roy right then and there, with a bunch of angry drivers and curious tourists staring at them, is overwhelming. He tamps it down.

Roy growls as he pulls out of the spot. “Some fucking shithead waiting for fuck knows who recognized me while I was waiting for you and pointed me out to his fucking kid who wanted a fucking picture.”

“And you didn’t disembowel the shithead on the spot?”

“He was with his fucking kid, wasn’t he?”

Jamie can’t help the cheeky grin.“Are you going soft in your old age then, grandpa? Or has lo -”

“If you ask if love has made me soft, I will drive this car of the next fucking bridge I see and plunge both of us to our fiery fucking deaths.”

“It’d just be your fiery fucking death, not mine, though - remember, I’m still immortal ’cause we haven’t shagged yet.”

“You’re such a fucking muppet,” Roy growls, but the look he gives Jamie and the way his hand first grabs his thigh and then the hand resting atop it, almost vice-like, clearly communicate the opposite. “Anway, people wouldn’t stop fucking bothering me, so I decided to drive in fucking circles until you got out.”

Jamie hums and nods, flipping his hand over in Roy’s, intertwining their fingers and running his thumb along the side of Roy’s hand. If he reads it right, then Roy is wound more tightly than normal and that seems a little strange to Jamie because no matter how much Roy hates journos and people bothering him, a - probably larger - part of him also thrives on the attention.

He glances over, meets Roy’s eyes and can’t quite figure it out.

Roy sighs and grips the steering wheel a little tighter.s. “I - fucking figured it wouldn’t -” The words make something in Jamie’s stomach drop but Roy has already interrupted himself to clench and unclench his jaw. Jamie uses a little more pressure with the thumb running along the outside of Roy’s hand, trying to be patient even as a part of him finishes Roy’s sentence with ‘it wouldn’t work.’ “I didn’t think it would bother me this fucking much.” Each word sounds like Roy is dragging it from somewhere deep in his chest. “Not getting to kiss you in public. Not getting to kiss you even in my own fucking car. Because some fucking fuckwit could recognise me or you and fucking - out us to the entire fucking world. I knew it wouldn’t be fucking easy. I just -” He sighs again. “I didn’t think I would hate it this fucking much.”

“I hate it, too,” Jamie mumbles and bites his lower lip for a second, then leans forward, over his knees, to place a kiss on every one of Roy’s knuckles in the security created by the car and his own body. “There. Hope that tides you over until we get home. And then we can kiss and do some things we should never ever do in public even if I wasn’t insanely famous,” he says, waggling his eyebrows.

Roy rolls his eyes at that, but there’s also that tiny smile tugging at the corners of his mouth that Jamie’s pretty sure means fondness.

Chapter Text

xii:

It’s silly. It’s silly and weird and it’s especially silly and weird that he’s so fucking nervous about this. But he’s never done this before, never had to, never wanted to, except for Keeley and then, it was easy because they’d liked the same stuff. And this is Roy, so of course he’s nervous.

He checks his reflection in the mirror one final time, aware that Roy doesn’t care about fashion at all. Still, he’s put an effort into his outfit, picking a pair of well-fitted light blue trousers, a simple, tight white shirt and a thin gold necklace. It’s a far cry from the more flashy or slutty stuff he’d usually wear, especially for a date, but it shows off all of his best features so Roy’ll probably appreciate it. Then he grabs his phone, wallet and keys and checks the kitchen and garden on his way out.

Roy’s face when he opens the door and takes in Jamie is a sight to see, and even if the rest of the night should turn to shit this alone would’ve been worth it. First, he’s surprised and then he looks turned on, almost hungry, and then fond and then turned on again.

He tugs Jamie inside and presses him against the door to give him an intense kiss before nibbling a path down his neck that turns Jamie’s inside to goo and almost makes him forget all of their evening plans. But only almost which is why he wriggles out of Roy’s grasp.

“What’s this then?” Roy growls, drinking Jamie in again.

And by now, Jamie’s almost giddy but not with nerves, just with excitement. He can’t believe he gets to do this. “Told you. I got dinner plans for us. Can’t be late.” Roy’s eyebrows knit together in what Jamie knows is concern and fear so he reaches out and runs a thumb along his jawline. “It’s going to be very private and romantic and shit. Swear down.”

“Alright then,” Roy growls. “Got five more minutes?”

Jamie makes a show of checking his phone before saying “Go on then,” and leaning against the door. Roy walks off, leaving Jamie to send off a few texts to let the people who need to know know before dicking around on Instagram. He’s just about to send Sam a meme when Roy walks back into the hallway, black t-shirt exchanged for a simple black button down and a tie that elicits a wolf-whistle from Jamie. He essentially skips down the steps in front of Roy, opening the passenger door of his car for him with a flourish which leads to Roy furrowing his brows at Jamie, but in a curious, not an annoyed manner.

The fact that he can tell those apart now makes Jamie borderline ecstatic.

“This is not what I expected when you asked if I was free for dinner tonight,” Roy says as Jamie slides into the driver’s seat.

Jamie fucking blushes, he can’t help it, and almost drops his car keys instead of getting them into the ignition. He’s got all of Roy’s attention and it’s intense and intoxicating and all those other words that mean really fucking mint, and he just hopes that Roy’s not disappointed with what he’s got planned.

He starts the car and, on a low volume, the music, a playlist he curated specifically for the night that makes him pathetically nervous again because what if he’s missed Roy’s taste entirely? He’s paid attention over the last two weeks since the plan started to take a vague shape and even dug out one of Roy’s earliest interviews where he’d reluctantly and grumpily talked about his favourite artists, not yet able to get away with his trademark Roy Kent attitude, but still, it’s a risk. But then the third song comes on, Good Old Fashioned Lover Boy, and Roy’s head, which has been turning between Jamie and the road, whips around. Roy doesn’t say anything, and Jamie doesn’t either, but he can’t help the smile on his lips.

And then they stop in front of Jamie’s house and for a moment, he’s incredibly tense as Roy’s eyebrows knit together. It makes him jump out of the car and whip around to open the door for Roy again and even offer him his arm.

“Bit fucking fancy, all of this, innit?” Roy grumbles out.

“Oi. Patience, you grumpy old fart.”

Roy harrumphs and follows Jamie through the front door. He’s about to toe his shoes off when Jamie stops him with a hand on his wrist that he uses to gently tug him into the garden instead.

Roy exhales softly at the sight in front of him. Jamie’s heart flutters through his chest or something.

The garden is covered in fairy lights that set it faintly aglow. They’re wrapped around tree trunks and the branches of bushes and the legs of a small pavilion that Jamie’s set up with the help of his neighbour. Under it, there’s a small table with a white tablecloth, a set of plates and wine glasses, two chairs and a vase with a massive flower arrangement. It’s still fairly early, not even half past eight, so the fairy lights are more decorative than illuminating, and in the light of the early summer evening, Jamie can see Roy’s face but not quite read its’ look.

He gives Roy’s wrist another gentle tug, this time towards the table, where he pulls out one of the two chairs for Roy to sit in and then slides into the other one, placed on the side of the table directly next to him rather than across. He still has no clue what Roy might be feeling and it makes him a little anxious but he just slides him a sheet of fancily thick cream paper. He’d felt like a proper twat, trying to pick out a font and a type of paper but when Roy looks up at him from the menu, there’s something warm and heavy and strong in his gaze and Jamie knows that this was worth it.

“You cooked me a four course meal?”

“Nah, I can’t cook that well,” Jamie admits. “I hired a fancy private chef to cook us a four course meal.”

Roy looks down at the menu Jamie had agonised over for days, trying to remember Roy’s favourite foods and if he liked oysters at all before settling on a simple garden salad, a caramelised goat cheese starter, risotto with lemon, a fancy cheese Jamie already doesn’t remember the name of and asparagus as a main dish and death by chocolate and raspberry cake for dessert. It’s not the fanciest route he could’ve gone, food wise, but he’d decided to play it sort of safe, the rest of the evening being as kitschy as it was when he didn’t even know if Roy cared for all that stuff.

And based on what Roy’s face is doing, he might not.

“I know it’s sappy as shit and if you hate it we can just head back inside and pretend it never happened but -“

Roy meets his gaze and Jamie shuts up immediately. “I love it.”

“Oh,” breathes Jamie with a sigh of relief. “Oh, good.”

Roy looks at him for a moment longer, his eyes and entire face still intense but his eyes more than anything. “No one’s ever done shit like this for me before,” he growls, low and deep, and for a moment Jamie’s confused again before he realizes that this is what emotional, maybe even vulnerable Roy sounds like.

And it’s weird because on the one hand, Jamie can sort of see why no one had ever thought to do something like this for Roy. He just doesn’t seem like he’d like it is the thing. And if he’s been as quick and as intense in his care for his exes as he’s been with Jamie, he can imagine that they all simply got too swept up in it to ever think about returning the favour. But on the other hand, now that Jamie knows how Roy reacts to simply being wined and dined instead of always being the one organising the wining and dining, he wants nothing more than to romance Roy properly. Wants to take him on proper dates to like maybe a private museum tour or a fancy play or something, leave him cute little notes, get him personal, emotionally charged gifts, maybe even send him flowers.

Jamie gives Roy’s thigh a short squeeze, than grabs his hand again. “Never done this - the whole romance thing - for anyone before either,” he admits.

Roy eyes him curiously, then growls “Why are you so infuriatingly good at everything you try, you little shit?”

Jamie feels like he’s been hit by bolt of electricity, the praise going to his brain, making him all woozy. He is so going to romance the shit out of Roy.

+++++++++++

Jamie meets Phoebe earlier than Roy had intended, in a different way than Roy had intended.

He’s starting to suspect a pattern. After all, he had intended to tell Jamie about his fucking feeling after making a careful plan, considering the options, all of that shit. He didn’t. He had intended to take this slow, to take Jamie on a couple dates, to give them time and space to figure some stuff out before - well, before falling into bed with him on the one hand, and before becoming this intense fucking person he could be in a relationship. He didn’t. Though he thinks he might be doing better on the intensity front, considering Jamie hadn’t even hinted at needing space.

Still. With Phoebe, it’s different. First of all, he doesn’t necessarily get to have the final say as to when and how Phoebe and Jamie meet, or at least he thinks he shouldn’t. Tes seems to have far less of an opinion about it than Roy expects her to, though, which is just so fucking typical. Second, it’s Phoebe.

So even though he knows that Jamie’s actually really fucking good with kids and even though he fucking trusts Jamie, trusts him so much more than he thought he could trust someone he’s only dated for a fucking month, he isn’t ready for him to meet Phoebe yet.

That doesn’t keep him and Phoebe from essentially walking into Jamie’s path as he’s running laps around the Richmond Green one sunny afternoon in June.

Jamie’s stayed over the night before, as he does every other night, and Roy’s said goodbye to him with one of those soft, sweet kisses in the doorframe that makes Jamie’s eyes go wide and soft and sparkly, and if Tes’ surgery is over in time, he’ll probably see Jamie for dinner, too, but that doesn’t change that Roy feels fucking elated when he recognizes the person jogging towards them.

It’s not the first time they’re together in public since Jamie came back from Rome. They’d gotten coffee and tea together, just walking around or sitting in some café, and once, Jamie dragged him to a ridiculously fancy Italian pastry shop where he’d essentially gorged himself on all the stuff he usually denied himself, Roy’s affection threatening to drown him while Jamie became more and more delightfully irritated by Roy’s lack of a reaction to the different minicakes and tartes and whatever the fuck else he was insisting Roy needed to try. Moving together in public still isn’t easy, both of them constantly trying not to be too close to each other, both of them trying - and occasionally failing - to keep the dirty banter out of their conversation, but it’s not as excruciating as it was that first fucking time.

But it is the first time they just run into each other in public instead of consciously going out into the world after having a moment - or a bunch of moments - just for themselves, and it is the first time Phoebe’s around. So as much as he feels this warm and soft thing spread through him at the sight of Jamie, it’s also tinged with nerves. Jamie looks good - ridiculous tiny shorts and a tight t-shirt - and Roy feels that thing in his spine that he by now recognizes as want. This is going to fucking suck.

“Tartt,” he greets him, oddly conscious of his tone, oddly worried that it’s too sharp or too friendly, when Jamie finally reaches them and stops to jog in place.

Jamie grins and waggles his eyebrows. “Coach Kent.”

And the thing is, they could probably leave it at that. It wouldn’t even look fucking weird, them just quickly greeting each other and then going their separate ways - he isn’t fucking Lasso, he doesn’t need to stand and have a friendly chat with every random person with some connection to Richmond that he randomly meets. But he doesn’t fucking want to leave it at that, so he doesn’t. “You alright?”

“Yeah, yeah. Just trying to keep in shape.” There’s another quick grin, then Jamie asks: “How about you, coach?”

“Yeah, fine,” and then Phoebe tugs on his jacket and asks “Uncle Roy, is that the Jamie Tartt, Prince Prick of -”

“Oy!” He interrupts her. “Didn’t we have a conversation about that shit, Phoebs?”

“Bad word, Uncle Roy,” she chirps, and a tiny part of him almost suspects she’s set him up, except that that would be fucking absurd. He fishes a pound out of his pocket and hands it to her.

Jamie’s still jogging in place, essentially beaming at them. “Oh, so you must be Phoebe Kent!”

“No,” Roy barks out. Jamie frowns. “My sister’s name is O’Sullivan. So is Phoebe’s.”

“Apologies, Ms. O’Sullivan,” Jamie says, all mock seriousness fit to meet the Queen, as he crouches down to be eyelevel with her. “Hope I didn’t offend too deeply.”

Phoebe laughs at that before decreeing that Jamie’s forgiven with an equal measure of seriousness. Roy can’t help the smile and then a part of him is terrified at the power these two will have over him if he isn’t very fucking careful, and another part is still a little nervous and a little relieved at the same time, and a third, smaller part, is marveling at how many fucking feelings Jamie Tartt keeps making him have. And then Phoebe perks up and says “But only if you play football with me.”

Jamie’s eyes widen. “You play football, too?”

“Yes! Uncle Roy even coached my team. We almost won the cup!” The delight in Phoebe's voice at the memory is mirrored on Jamie’s face, and again, he realizes how different his life has become in just six months. Because back in October, when he did coach Phoebe, he would’ve hated for Jamie to find out.

“Oh, he must’ve been dead chuffed at that!” Jamie says.

“You don’t know Uncle Roy very well, do you?” Phoebe asks and Jamie, the little shit, smirks and winks at Roy.

“Used to be he didn’t like me all that much, you know? But I’ve been getting to know him a little better lately.”

“Oh, that makes sense then. I don’t think he’s called you the Prince Prick while talking to my mum in a while,” Phoebe says gravely.

Roy’d like the Earth to swallow him whole, please and thank you, even as Jamie’s grin sets his spine alight.

“Are you going to play footie with me?” Phoebe repeats her demand.

“I’d love to! I just don’t have a ball,” Jamie states.

“I have one in the boot of my car. I can get it for you,” Roy growls.

And the thing is, a part of him is remains apprehensive as he makes his way to his car and back and becomes only more apprehensive when he sees Jamie sitting in the grass and Phoebe doing something to his fucking hair, and another part feels fluttery and soft as if he was some character in a fucking Austen novel, and it feels like they’re struggling until Jamie and Phoebe are kicking a ball around and he promises to teach her his favourite flick up tricks “if they’re somewhere less public because it’s a secret, innit?” and then he just feels soft and fluttery and comfortable about the whole fucking thing.

And then some other kid - one a little older than Phoebe, kicking a ball around with her mates- recognizes Jamie, too, and within ten minutes, Jamie’s playing an unserious match against six kids varying from nine to fourteen years old. He’s laughing and panting, his tongue sliding out beneath his teeth occasionally, and looking over at Roy, like when he’s let one of the kids outsmart him, grinning and winking, and there are a million fucking feelings inside Roy’s stupid fucking chest and something else, something deeper and sadder, and he really isn’t sure what to do with any of it.

What he does, it turns out, is snap at Jamie for something completely unrelated and minor when they’re trying to cook together later the same night, once Phoebe’s been picked up by Tes and Jamie’s come over. Jamie gets in his way and Roy bellows “Oi! Watch where the fuck you’re going, Tartt!” in a tone and volume he’s not really used with Jamie since this thing between them has started.

Jamie holds up his hands, one of them still holding one of Roy’s good knives, and backs off a little. “Alright man, sorry,” the soft -eh sound at the end of the final word going straight under Roy’s skin, making hot, sludgy shame bubble up.

Jamie finishes chopping the vegetables Roy told him to chop, then backs off to two counter spaces down, leaning against it with his phone in hand, glancing at Roy occasionally while he finishes cooking, a picture-perfect version of ‘Giving you space but there if you want me.’ There’s almost a part of Roy that resents it, that wants Jamie to crowd him and demand an explanation or to snap back so they can have a proper fight about it, but of course Jamie’s too fucking smart for that.

Roy takes his anger out on the rest of the vegetables instead.

By the time they’re eating, his feeling still hasn’t dissipated enough for him to talk and Jamie’s getting a little restless and sulky. It’s a tense, awkward affair and the fucking shame keeps bubbling up under Roy’s skin, linking up with a nice new flavour of apprehension, namely the ‘what if I’ve fucking ruined this’ one. So when Jamie gets up to do the dishes, Roy stays at the table for a moment, groaning quietly and burying his head in his hands, pressing them against his closed eyes, and then he follows Jamie into the kitchen, just leaning against the counter next to the sink, millimeters between him and Jamie as he’s elbow-deep in sudsy water.

“I was thinking of watching something before going to bed, if you want to stay over,” he finally says as the water’s swirling through the drain. The words feels stilted and wrong but it’s the best he can fucking do right now while a part of him screams that Jamie deserves better, another, smaller one is still confused as to how Jamie even ended up in his kitchen in the first place and a third, almost minuscule part still wants Jamie to be a prick, to fight, to fuck this up.

He looks over at Roy from where he’s standing, twisting his hands in the bottom of his shirt, and blinks once, twice and all Roy wants is to grab his shirt, pull him close and hold him and never let go. “Are you going to tell me what crawled up your arse and died there, grandad?”

And Roy wants to, he really wants to, but the words won’t fucking come, so all he can do is grunt “Soon.” Jamie nods at that and glances at Roy questioningly, then reaches out and pats and squeezes his shoulder.

It doesn’t undo Roy but it does undo something in him, and he turns and crashes into Jamie, burying his face in the crook of his neck. Jamie presses a quick kiss to his temple, nuzzles his nose against it, and then they just stand for a moment before Roy pulls Jamie to the couch, turns on Planet Earth and wraps himself around him again, head resting against Jamie’s chest.

Still. He can’t talk about it, can’t talk about the sinking, horrible feeling in the depth of his stomach that threatens to swallow him whole, that came into being while watching Jamie kick around a ball with a bunch of kids, ease and joy beaming out from his face like a billion watt laser, while all Roy could do was stand at the sidelines. He can’t put words to it, he can’t, and he won’t.

And then Jamie’s curled up in bed against him, his head against Roy’s chest as Roy reads, and he says: “If you didn’t want me to meet Phoebe you could’ve just - just said so, or walked away, you know? I wouldn’t have minded.” and Roy is smacked in the face by the fucking unfairness of all of it.

He’s being such a fucking dick.

So he takes a long, deep breath, closes his book and says: “It’s not - that’s not fucking it.” He puts the book down and lets his hand wander to Jamie’s face, brushing his thumb along Jamie’s jaw, playing with his hair. “I haven’t played. At all. Since Richmond got relegated. Have barely even kicked a ball.”

+++++++++++

“Oh,” is all Jamie can think to say to that at first, and then he’s ashamed and uncomfortable because he knows it’s not good enough, knows it’s a shit answer, especially in the face of his own role during the relegation match, no matter what Roy says about that.

“Yeah,” Roy growls, his hand in Jamie’s hair stilling for a moment. “It’s not about Phoebe. I mean, yeah, it was earlier than I wanted it to be, but you were so fucking great with her. She wouldn’t fucking stop talking about you and your fucking hair and what she’d do to it. Fucking adorable. So yeah, it’s not about Phoebe. It’s about that.”

Jamie nestles a little closer to him, chest hair scratchy against his cheek and considers it for a moment before saying: “Remember when you caught, like, Isaac and Declan and me and so on having that little match months ago?” Roy grunts affirmatively. “Well, we still have them, like, once or twice a week, just - somewhere else, before we drive to the club. Not all of us, it sort of rotates, but always Isaac. He started it, you know? Said it was to remind us that we started playing footie as kids because it was fucking fun, and that we’d feel better if it wasn’t just always life and death matches and work.” Roy’s gone oddly still against him. “And we do. And - football is still your job, innit? Even if it it’s different, with you standing at the side of the pitch rather than being on it with us. And I know how that can leech that fun right out of it, even though that’s probably different for you, too, especially with your bum knee. But maybe what Isaac said still applies, you know? Maybe it’ll be good to kick a ball around with like, me, or Phoebe, just for fun, to be able to get back to it.”

Roy just grunts, his hand still just resting in Jamie’s hair, right at that sweet spot in the scruff of his neck, and his chest moves under him, deep and slow, twice, and then he says “It was never really just fun for me, though.”

“What’s that mean?” He asks before he can think about whether or not that’s something he should make Roy talk about because he doesn’t get it but he wants, no, needs to.

“It was just always too - fucking loaded to ever be just fucking fun, you know? It was never really just a game, never really something that I just did for the hell of it,” Roy begins slowly, as he runs his thumb along the side of Jamie’s neck. “Back when I started playing, on that ground right next to where we lived, I was the scrawniest, youngest, only Jewish kid there. So every single time I wanted to play, I had to prove myself, had to fucking fight to just be fucking tolerated. So I fucking did.” He’s quiet for a moment, and Jamie can sort of imagine it - tiny Roy Kent, a scrawny, dark haired kid but with the same sort of angry presence that adult Roy always had. “And it was such a fucking rush - seeing these older kids be so fucking confused and angry and humiliated when I took the ball from them, when I got past them, when they fucking lost to the team that got stuck with me. It became the only thing I gave a fuck about. Not my parents, not my sister and definitely not fucking school. And it made me good. It made me really fucking good.”

Roy’s thumb stills for a moment and Jamie realizes he’s almost holding his breath. He’s read about it - about Roy’s childhood, has devoured every fucking scrap he could find - but this, this is different. And maybe he shouldn’t be surprised because they’re dating, after all, so of course he’s going to learn things about Roy that the public doesn’t know, that the team doesn’t know, that maybe no one else except Keeley knows. Maybe he shouldn’t be surprised because he has already learned things he could’ve never fathomed finding out, like how Roy’s tongue feels in his mouth and the way Roy holds him sometimes, pressed so tightly against Jamie that it feels like he wants to melt into Jamie’s skin, and all the ways he can make Roy fall apart with his mouth and his hands and his arse in bed and on the couch and and the kitchen counter and against the walls of their homes, but still. And he’s learnt bits and pieces about Roy here and there, like the fact that he can cook and why, but this - this is different. This goes deep. This is so much more than he could’ve ever have imagined, and it’s so good a part of him still can’t believe it’s real, and at the same time, he’s so scared he can barely move, can barely breathe because what if that breaks it? What if the next thing he says is the wrong thing and Roy clams up again? Or, worse, he says the really wrong thing and it all falls apart?

“And then I realised that it could be a way out,” Roy says suddenly, exhaling, and it feels like something’s shifted. “Out of that shitty fucking council flat, out of a school that I fucking hated with teachers who fucking hated me, out of having to work some shitty fucking job I would fucking hate some day, out of fucking all of it.” And that is familiar, Jamie realises, only set fifteen years earlier than his own sense that if he got good enough, he could make up for all the shit his mum had had to go without. “So I terrorized my parents, who were working their fucking arses off just so we wouldn’t notice how fucking poor we were, into letting me go when Sunderland was the only fucking place that would fucking take me. And I know I could’ve been patient, could’ve trained some more, could’ve reapplied to some of the London academies and all that shit. But I didn’t fucking want to - at fucking nine years old, I’d gotten it into my head that if it didn’t happen right the fuck then, it would never fucking happen, and I was such a stubborn little fucker that I made them give in.”

He stills again for a moment and Jamie slides one arm under Roy’s back, between his body and the headboard of the bed, and lets his fingers just ghost along Roy’s spine, the way Roy did a couple weeks ago when Jamie was sick. Roy turns his head and presses his nose into Jamie’s hair.

“And then, of course, once I was at Sunderland and especially after my grandad died, I - I needed to be good enough for all of it to be worth it. I couldn’t have fun, I couldn’t just mess around, I couldn’t even just be good, I needed to be the fucking best. Because if I wasn’t, then all that shit I put my family through was for fucking nothing,” he says. “So yeah. I know I told Isaac he needed to remember that football is a fucking game that we used to play as fucking kids ’cause it was fun, but I never really approached it like that.”

“That’s dead fucking sad, Roy,” Jamie mumbles and then curses himself and his mouth and the fact that his brain can almost never stop it.

He’s fucked it up, hasn’t he? Roy’s going to kick him out of bed any second now, tell him that this was a shit idea and threaten him with bodily harm if he ever repeats any of this to anyone, and then he’s never going to see him again except at training where Roy’ll barely look at him.

And as if that wasn’t bad enough, his mouth keeps producing words. “But still. Maybe - I don’t know, it’s like this. You could never just play footie, the way I sometimes do with Isaac and the others. It was always football for you. The entire time, even before you played professionally but especially then - like you said, you needed to be the best, or it wouldn’t be worth all that shit you gave up for it and put your family through. And now - you were the best and you don’t have anything left to prove to anyone, have you? So maybe - I don’t know. It could be fun now, you know, finally.”

Roy has gone very, very still next to Jamie. So still he’s worried he’s broken Roy’s brain or really, genuinely, deeply fucked up in a way that is not fixable - though if that’s the case, it would mean Roy’s an unbelievable fucking arse and he isn’t, Jamie knows that - or somehow magically stopped time or something.

And then Roy breathes in underneath him and breathes out in a soft, growly hum, his breath tickling Jamie’s temple, his hands twitching and tightening where they’re touching Jamie for just a second. He presses a short, soft kiss to Jamie’s temple, buries his nose in Jamie’s hair again and just breathes and Jamie can feel his own heart beat in his entire body. He’s not sure what to do with this, how to read this Roy Kent reaction and at the same time, a part of him feels like this is familiar, like he’s back in the Wembley dressing room, having gone through one of the worst moments of his life, and Roy is a quiet, still, steady presence at his side. Except he’s not going through anything, Roy is, but maybe - probably - Roy was going through something back at Wembley, too.

Jamie hesitates for a moment and then he presses his open hand carefully, lightly against the middle of Roy’s back, against his spine, just underneath his shoulder blades. Roy breathes again and pulls him a little closer, and they just lie there, the ghost of Roy’s lips against his temple, his fingertips on Roy’s spine and shoulders, until a shudder runs through Roy’s entire body and he suddenly twists and burrows his face against Jamie’s chest and stays like that until his breathing comes so regularly that he has to be asleep.

Chapter Text

xiii:

The thing is that he’s always had a soft spot for Roy. Always, always, always. Ever since he watched his the first Man City v Chelsea match, rooting for Man City because who else was he supposed to root for, and Roy landed such a beautiful fucking goal that Jamie’s eyes kept finding him on the screen no matter where the ball was.

But in the last weeks, with every new tidbit of information he’s learned about Roy, his soft spot has grown or transformed, into something that is threatening to swallow him whole. It’s not just the obvious stuff, like the fact that the sex is so good that Jamie’s tempted to just quit football, make Roy quit coaching, too, buy a house on some empty island and just spend all of their time shagging each other’s brains out in increasingly euphoria inducing way, though that is definitely also a part of it.

It’s the fact that ever since their second date, Roy almost always waits until Jamie gets home to start cooking so they can do it together. It’s the fact that he’s noticed that Jamie still goes for a run every morning, and when one of them sleeps over, Roy gets up and comes along, just keeping Jamie company. It’s the fact that he makes fun of Jamie’s hair routine, but fondly, without any sort of bite to it and then, when he stays over at Roy’s place two days after coming back from Rome, Jamie finds all of his hair products in Roy’s shower. It’s the fact that Roy not only watches all of the The Fast & the Furious movies with Jamie but actively has an opinion when Jamie turns off the telly after the last one and towards Roy and asks about it, even though that opinion is batshit insane and incorrect. It’s Roy bringing Jamie all of his favourites from Giomecca’s Pastry one day, grumbling about it still being off season and Jamie deserving it. It’s the way he reads next to Jamie sometimes, one hand always on Jamie’s thigh or shoulder or in his hair if he’s not turning a page, his thumb drawing tiny circles on Jamie’s skin. It’s the way he sometimes looks genuinely pained at not getting to touch Jamie in public and then, when they’re back in the safety in one of their homes, pulling Jamie in for a hug that feels like he’s simultaneously trying to squeeze all the air out of Jamie’s body and melt into it. It’s the fact that even when they wake up together and go to bed together, Roy texts him throughout the day, just tiny little observations and thoughts he has about the stuff that goes on around him or articles about the upcoming season or reactions to the memes and stuff that Jamie sends him. It’s the way he says ‘give your mum my love’ every time, without fail, when he knows Jamie’s going to talk to her.

And it’s all the stuff he tells Jamie about himself, about his life, offering up bits and pieces off himself, like the story of the first bloke he ever fooled around with all the way back in Sunderland or how his sister held his hand through the entire funeral of his grandad because she knew he needed it but couldn’t reach out himself or that he does yoga with a bunch of women in their sixties twice a week.

And it’s the fact that maybe three days after Jamie’s met Phoebe, Jamie gets to Roy’s place - a place he has to actively stop himself from calling home even though he knows where Roy hides his spare key by now - in the early evening and finds Roy in the garden, just rolling a ball around casually. Jamie doesn’t say anything about it, isn’t even sure if Roy saw him see, but Roy cannot keep his hands off of Jamie the entire evening and the sex is so good and dirty and slow and good that Jamie sees stars when he comes and does not move for a full twenty-five minutes afterwards.

So yeah. He’s always had a soft spot for Roy, and with the way things are going like six weeks into their thing, that soft spot is only growing.

Which is why he’s decided he wants to tell Sam and maybe Keeley, who he’s been avoiding, about it before pre-season training starts.

Sam’s the priority though, and he’s very prepared to explain that decision to Roy when he brings it up, to convince Roy. He wants to say that he knows the gaffer and Higgins and so on are setting up mechanisms within the team to prevent abuse of power dynamics and he trusts them but all of them still have obligations to protect the club itself, too, and wouldn’t it be good if someone who has no such obligations, someone they can trust to genuinely only have Jamie’s best interests at heart, knew as well? He also wants to point out that everyone loves and trusts and confides in Sam, so if he knew about their relationship, he could give them the heads up if he started to hear that people on the team felt like Jamie was getting preferential treatment from Roy.

Instead, Roy just looks at him, nods and says “Yeah, that’s a good idea,” before walking past him to the kitchen and smacking his bum as he passes.

So he texts Sam and they meet up near his new restaurant that’s still being renovated. Sam gives him a tour, shows him the plans he’s got for it, discusses the menu and Jamie can tell that Sam might’ve found the other love of his life. “Don’t drop the team to become a full-time chef, though, mate,” he says.

Sam laughs. “I have no plans to become a chef at all. I am interviewing people for that, though, and there are some very talented people out there. It is not an easy decision to make.”

“Well, better it’s not easy because there’s too many good people than because there aren’t enough, you know what I mean?”

Sam smiles widely at that. “Definitely! There is this one woman, Simi, who I really like. Her food is divine but she has not worked as a head chef yet. Still, I think she could be very good at it. She seems very comfortable taking charge.” Jamie does a knowing smirk and eyebrow waggle that earns him a light swat on the arm from Sam. “It is not like that! Her Ewa Agoyin is just very good. And the Moi Moi - you have to taste it. I can’t even describe it.”

“Alright, alright, mate, I’m just teasing,” Jamie laughs.

“Please don’t tease like that in front of her if I do hire her, alright? I would hate for her to be uncomfortable.”

“I won’t, swear down.”

Sam nods and surveys the restaurant, which is still more of a building site than a place you can have a good dinner. But there’s a vision there, Jamie knows, and he can see it, too, and wants nothing more for Sam than for it to come true. “How has your off season been so far, Jamie?” he asks as they leave.

“It’s been alright. Pretty good. Really good, actually. Kind of awesome, honestly. The best.” He can’t help the grin spreading across his face as Sam arcs an eyebrow at him. “I went to Manchester to see my mummy and then to Rome with her and that was nice, and I’m indulging a little, you know, filling up on the good stuff before I have to adhere to the diet plan again, and keeping up with my cardio, and -” He’s not sure why but he’s hesitating suddenly, even though this was his idea. “And, look, I’m telling you as, like, my best mate, but you have to absolutely keep your mouth shut, okay?” Sam’s eyes widen a little but he nods very seriously. “I’m - I’m kind of dating Roy. Kent.”

Sam’s eyes go even wider, his mouth a tiny little ‘oh’ as he whisper-laughs “Nohooohoo.”

Jamie can’t help the grin that spreads across his face. It feels like a stone he didn’t even know was there has disappeared. “Yeah, yeah. We started seeing each other, like, right after the season ended, and it’s - I don’t know, I think it’s going really well, you know?”

“And I’m the only one who knows?” Sam asks, eyes still wide and maybe a little concerned, now, too.

“No, the gaffer knows, too, and Mrs. Welton and Higgins and so on. Like, the people at the club who need to know do. But like, you’re the only one of my mates who knows.”

Sam smiles widely at that. “I am very touched that you’re trusting me with this,” which is something Jamie has no clue what to reply to. “And I am glad that Ted and the others know, and that it is going well between the two of you. You seem very happy.”

He bonks his shoulder and upper arm against Jamie’s as they walk and they grin at each other. “Thanks, man.”

+++++++++++

He’s in Jamie’s kitchen, Jamie sitting on the counter playing around on his phone, BBC Radio One on in the background and Jamie singing along absentmindedly to some song about kissing and being corny, fuck it. He does this all the time, just hum and sing along to whatever’s on the radio which is always tuned in to BBC Radio One because when he was a lad, he fiddled around with the radio every chance he got and it drove his mummy nuts so she decreed that they’d only listen to Radio One and Jamie’s grown to kind of love it. He even has opinions about the different fucking hosts.

He also does this all the time, just tell Roy these things, stories from his childhood and teenage years, offer bits and pieces of himself, without hesitation or second thoughts. It’s like the second he decided to trust Roy, he’s decided to trust Roy with all of himself. It’s so very unlike Keeley, who rarely talked about her past or her family, and unlike Roy himself, who can’t shake the fucking fear that whatever he reveals to Jamie will be the thing that kills Jamie’s hero-worship and ends this thing between them. Every time that doesn’t happen, every time Jamie just keeps looking at him with the same affection and warmth even after Roy’s been vulnerable and pathetic, and especially after that conversation in bed on the day of the match with Phoebe on the Richmond green, he feels - he feels something too big to put into words.

It also makes Roy feel something like envy, something that’s familiar when it comes to Jamie, though he used to be unable to admit that, and admiration, a feeling Roy had always refused to acknowledge, even when he caught him staying behind in the weight room long after everyone else was done back when he first got loaned to Richmond, much more comfortable with annoyance. That also still shows up, but very rarely, for example when he tries to cook at Jamie’s place and cannot find a single good knife to save his life, asks Jamie about it and gets handed a completely blunt one from fucking Tesco that he’d rather throw out the window than use to dice an onion.

He closes the drawer on the the new, good knives he’s picked up on his way to Jamie’s from the Dog Park after the first preseason coach meeting, takes his phone out, finds out the title of the song Jamie’s singing along to and adds it to a playlist that’s been growing steadily. Then he turns to Jamie and says “Look, we should talk about the upcoming season,” and Jamie immediately tenses.

“Oh.”

“Yeah,” Roy growls. He wants to do this about as much as he wants to sit through another shitty strategy meeting with George Cartrick and Rupert Mannion, those stupid fucking smug shitstains. Jamie looks equally as unenthusiastic about the prospect, so Roy growls, rolls his eyes, makes his way across the kitchen and kisses him, hungry and dominant at first, and then a little slower and softer the longer it goes, the way he knows Jamie goes absolutely fucking bonkers for.

He loves this, loves the way Jamie goes boneless and greedy at the same time underneath him, always chasing another kiss, another touch, another moment with him when Roy pulls away, loves the little sighs and whines he lets out, loves the way Jamie looks at him, wide-eyed and breathless and a little dumbstruck sometimes. So when he pulls away and Jamie does that little whine and sigh combo he does, Roy gives in and goes in for another one, or rather a series trailing by way of Jamie’s collarbone, peaking out underneath the denim shirt he’s wearing, up to his neck and along his jaw to his mouth. And of course Jamie is the absolute opposite of content when Roy stops kissing him, and Roy can’t help but grin as he growls “No more fucking kissing until we’ve talked about this.”

“Why are you always such a grumpy spoilsport?” Jamie murmurs, but burries his face in Roy’s neck anyway before hopping of the counter and following him to the couch where he promptly plops down so close to Roy that his leg is wedged between Roy’s leg and the back of the couch and starts running his fingers along the outside seam of Roy’s jeans. “So. The season.”

“Yeah.” Roy sighs. “Look. I still don’t know if we should tell the team about it.”

“I’m not sure either,” Jamie mumbles. “Feels like no matter which way we do it, it’s going to be a bit shit, doesn’t it? If we well them, we’re going to feel like they’re watching and judging us and if we don’t tell them, we’re going to wonder after every interaction if someone who doesn’t know noticed something.”

Roy nods, his fingers searching for some more contact with Jamie, finally trailing along the knuckles of the hand Jamie’s got on his leg. It just feels so fucking comforting. He’s never been one for all of this touchy-feely stuff in public, never exactly wanted to hold hands or snog or cuddle someone with prying eyes all around. He’s always preferred to keep that shit private, and he still does. But if they do keep this a secret, he’ll have to keep the complete coach-player distance rather than getting to have lunch with his hand on his boyfriend’s knee or bringing Jamie a protein shake and getting a short kiss in return and all this small shit that he could do with Keeley.

But at the same time, maybe it could be good - maybe it’s good if there’s an outside limit as to how intense he can get with Jamie, something that’ll keep him from being too fucking much like he was with Keeley, because he’s apparently not good at keeping a lid on that shit even when he tries. He doesn’t want to ruin another relationship the same way, so maybe it’s good if there’s something that might keep him from doing that.

Plus, no matter how much a dressing room under Ted differs from the average football dressing room, it’s still a football dressing room. There are still more than enough moments when something gets called ‘gay’ in a joking but derogative manner, more than enough macho behaviour between the lads, to make him a little worried about how things would change if they knew, though the worry is more for Jamie than for himself.

And while he trusts Rebecca and Ted and Higgins and wants to trust the lads, there are dozens of other people he barely knows around the club, working in admin and public relations and wherever else, and if it became public knowledge at the Dog Track that they’re dating, it could get out and on some fucking front page. It doesn’t even have to be intentional - it could just be someone overhearing something that gets the rumour mill spinning enough for someone like Ernie Lords or that human shaped trashbag working for The Sun to decide to investigate and then it would all go to shit.

And that - the idea of not even getting to go for a run with Jamie like they’ve done so often in the last weeks without some fucking arsehole with a camera lying in wait for or chasing them - maybe more than anything makes a tight little knot appear in his stomach.

“True,” he growls. “But the less people know, the less likely this can reach some fucking gossip rag piece of shit journo who can sick the paps on us. And -” He remembers the moment he kissed Keeley on their first date and the way he’d felt when he’d heard the billion snaps of the camera, the hot, white anger of it, and tries to imagine how he’d feel if that happened while he was out with Jamie. “And that’s the one thing I really don’t fucking want, some fucker with a fucking camera trailing us everywhere we go.”

“I don’t want that either,” Jamie says and catches Roy’s finger in his. “So. Let’s keep this quiet, then. On the down low, like.” Roy nods and Jamie leans closer and twists, curling up against his side. “I kind of want to tell Keeley, though. I’ve been avoiding her ’cause I hate lying to her, after everything, and -”

“She already knows.” For a moment, Roy wonders if he should’ve told Jamie earlier. But it wasn’t like they ever really talked about Keeley, ever really acknowledged that weird triangle where she was the ex of both of them and also sort of Roy’s friend and definitely a good friend of Jamie.

“Oh,” is all Jamie says. He’s silent for a moment, almost tense, and Roy wonders what might be going through his muppet head. Maybe he should’ve - maybe he should've told Jamie how he felt about him before running to Keeley with it, should’ve waited how things developed between him and Jaime and then asked him if it was okay to tell Keeley rather than telling Keeley about his feelings for Jamie before he’d told the man he actually had the fucking feelings for but that hadn’t been how he’d done it, had it? Though by now, he’s not even sure why, only that it had felt imperative he talk to Keeley after talking to Rebecca.

“Well, that’s that sorted, then,” Jamie says, pulling Roy out of his spiral by scooting just a little closer, bonking their shoulders together and resting his head on Roy’s. The way Jamie stretched out and twisted across the couch makes his spine hurt in sympathy. “How do you want to act around each other at the club, then? Like, apart from the obvious stuff, like you having to control yourself around my fantastic arse all day and me not getting to blow you in the boot room no matter how much that’s been a fantasy of mine.”

“The fucking boot room? Seriously?” Roy growls and buries his nose in Jamie’s hair for a second, remembering the way Jamie had grinned and thanked him the first time he’d gotten out of Roy’s shower after coming back from Rome. If Jamie’s blowing him on Richmond property, it won’t be in the least sexy room there. Not that he will, because it’s too fucking risky. “We drive separately, even if you stay at mine or the other way around. If I forget shit at yours or you at mine, it stays there for the day. No mentioning shit we did outside of work at work. No touching.” he lists.

“Obviously,” Jamie mumbles.

“I only come along for team hangouts when Ted and Beard come, too, and then we leave separately.”

He feels Jamie nod and the sinking, tense feeling returns, the one he had felt earlier, when Ted had so clearly avoided looking at him when he’d said something about the entire team having to readjust to being back at the Dog Park while Beard, subtle as always, had given him a very pointed stare. Suddenly, he does not want to talk about this anymore. He doesn’t even want to think about it anymore. Preferably, he does not want to think at all.

Jamie seems to notice him tensing because he turns a little, concerned eyes and silly, provocative grin as he sneaks one hand behind Roy’s back into his hair. “Alright, Coach Kent, got any more rules for me to follow or can we get back to the part where you fuck my brains out?”

“Oh, is that how you think it’s going to go?” Roy growls.

“Yeah, pretty much,” the cheeky twat says, turns, crawls into his lap and pulls him into a kiss that leads to Roy proving Jamie absolutely and completely right about how it’s going to go.

He’s resting against Jamie on the couch, curled up tightly into him because if not they’d fall off, after, trailing his fingers along his chest when he notices a tattoo he’s never noticed before, nestled in the space between Jaime’s ribs and following the clean curve of his body. For a moment, he’s almost embarrassed - how has he been dating this man for almost two months, fucking him for a little more than one, and overlooked one of his tattoos? - and then he realises that usually, they’re curled up the other way around, Jamie resting his head on Roy’s chest.

He shifts a little, running his fingers along it, and reads the words ‘and for a hundred visions and revisions’ set in the clear, unadorned font of an old typewriter on Jamie’s skin. It pings something in his brain, a half-forgotten memory of his sister’s brief but intense literary phase, back when she was on the cusp of going to university and always trying to talk to him about poems and plays she’d read, but he can’t quite place it.

Before he can ask about it, Jamie shifts underneath him, turning onto his side and shuffling down a little so his face is level with Roy’s and kisses him softly. “You hungry?” Roy nods and hums affirmatively so Jamie asks “Cooking or ordering in?”

“I don’t care,” Roy mumbles, and, as he does so often, Jamie prefers cooking.

That’s how they end up in the kitchen, side by side at Jamie’s counter, cutting up carrots and chicken and spring onion, Roy’s eyes wandering over to Jamie’s tattoo once or twice because of course the muppet foregoes the shirt in this scenario, too, when Jamie says “I got it after the semifinal, you know.”

Roy hm-hms and focuses on prepping dinner. He knows that if Jamie wants to tell him more, he will, as he always does.

“It’s from this poem this teacher at St. Bede’s showed us just before A-Levels. She was pretty young and well fit, just out of uni, you know? Said she didn’t need us to analyze the poem to death, just wanted to show us how different poetry could be. She’d brought along a whole bunch of, like, modernist poetry for us to read, and some stuff that was even from this century, like something from this dude Larkin. I didn’t get it, not like all these posh twats did - didn’t really care about it, either, if I’m honest. But when I was cleaning out my old place in Manchester, I found all my old school stuff and the handouts with the poem were among them. I still didn’t get it but parts of it got stuck in my brain and after the semifinal, I got the tattoo done.”

“What’s it called?”

“What, the poem? Can’t always remember it quite right, it’s got a ridiculous name - The Lovesong of Something Alfred Something by this dude Eliot.” Jamie leans over and steals a bit of carrot from Roy’s cutting board. “Why? You thinking about getting a matching one, grandad?”

“Already got a matching tattoo with my sister so I’m full up on that soppy stuff,” he growls.

“What?” Jamie exclaims in the same tone of personal offence he’d used when he’d discovered that Roy used 3in1. “Where? What? How? When? Why?”

“Around the ankle. My sister’s got one of the first time Phoebs wrote her name, in her exact handwriting, and I got mine.”

“Oh wow,” Jamie mumbles and stares at him as if he’s landed an especially good goal or something, and for some reason it rankles Roy.

“The fuck’s that supposed to mean?” He growls.

“Nothing, man!” Roy gives him a look. “Nothing! Just - surprised, is all, that big man Roy Kent’s secretly a bit of a softie for his niece, you know?”

And a small part of him can already tell that he’s overreacting, can already tell that he’s going to regret this, that he’s going to hurt Jamie’s feeling because Jamie’s just teasing, but another part is even more rankled by the combination of the words ‘big man Roy Kent’ and ‘a softie.’ It feels mocking, like it’s meant to make him feel small and pathetic and shitty, and he bites out “Fuck off, Tartt,” even as he’s aware that it’s completely unwarranted.

For a second, Jamie looks hurt and confused, then he starts opening his mouth but before he can say anything, Roy’s already blurted out “Shit. Fuck” and Jamie’s mouth snaps shut. Instead, one of his eyebrows arches up and he gives Roy this questioning, curious look. “I’m -” He takes a deep breath, “I’m sorry.”

Jamie nods, then hesitates for a moment before he says “It’s - it’s dead sweet, really. That that’s your tattoo. And soft, like.” Roy growls and nods, his throat too tight to let him say more. Jamie eyes him for a moment, then turns and slides just a little closer, leaning against the counter, not quite touching Roy yet but close enough for him to feel Jamie’s warmth. “It’s a good fucking thing. You being soft with her. Because of her.”

His throat untightens just a little as he puts the knife down, clenches and unclenches his fist tight. “I know,” he finally manages to press past the tightness. “I swear I do. I just - don’t fucking like people knowing that part of me.”

“Well, good think I’m not people then, innit?” Jamie’s grin is back. Roy’s throat is a little less tight as he finally allows himself to lean into Jamie’s side for a moment.

“Get back to fucking chopping shit, you muppet.”

+++++++++++

They make it ten days into preseason training until Isaac asks Jamie “What’s going on with you and Roy, bruv?” while they’re both filling their water bottles in the hallway, Isaac having followed him out.

“What d’you mean?” He asks, trying to buy time. He and Roy have been good - never arrived at Nelson Road together, never even arrived at the same time, never spent any time one on one, never stole any smouldering or longing glances at each other in the dressing room or the caf, never barked out orders for extra exercises or begged for attention during training. They’ve been so good, and it’s a little fun, if Jamie’s honest, getting to text Roy hearts emojis and gifs or sometimes something a little more explicitly cheeky and watching the tiny little things that hint at Roy Kent reacting, fondly or amusedly or turned on, getting to act like some spy on a mission and then going to either his or Roy’s place, lounging around there for a bit until Roy gets back and then pouncing on him as soon as the door opens to snog and cuddle and shag. Which reminds him that he still needs to replace the shoe rack that used to be by his front door.

“You’re ignoring each other again. And you’re all tense around each other.” Isaac says, screwing the top back onto his water bottle.

“What makes you say that?”

“Kinesics, bruv. Study of body language.”

“We’re not ignoring each other, though,” Jamie says weakly, still trying to figure out what exactly about his body language seems tense without actually tensing up around Isaac. “He’s training me the same as everyone else, isn’t he?”

“If he ain’t ordering you to do extra shit, he’s basically ignoring you.”

Isaac’s tone is that of complete and utter confidence, which is entirely justified. Every time Roy had been coaching Jamie properly, he’d pushed him harder than anyone else on the team. But he and Roy had decided to cool it a little with that, just to make sure no one could suggest that Roy was either favouring or punishing Jamie. They had just unfortunately failed to take into account that Isaac was an observant, caring team captain.

“I don’t know, man - maybe the gaffer said something to him about it?” is the only thing Jamie can think to say. “It’s fine. There’s nothing going on, alright? Don’t worry about it, mate.”

Except apparently, Isaac does continue to worry. Jamie can feel his eyes on him, can see them wander over towards Roy, throughout the rest of the day and the next one as well. Still, there’s nothing they can really do about it, he supposes and Roy, curled up around him on the couch as he tells him, agrees. So he banishes the thought from his mind, at least until he’s finally hanging out with Keeley again and she asks about how things are with the team.

“Yeah, good, yeah,” he says immediately and then thinks of Isaac’s eyes following him around the Nelson Road about as much as they did back when he’d initially gotten back to Richmond. “Kind of hate keeping secrets from them, though.”

“Yeah, I get that.”

“And - I don’t know, I kind of hated keeping this from you. Even though I wasn’t really and you already knew and all - I thought you didn’t and I didn’t want to lie to your face, you know? You’ve been such a good friend to me, Keeley, even after I was such a shit boyfriend and all.”

“Aww, Jamie, that’s so sweet of you,” she says, smiling warmly at him. “I’m glad you think I’ve been a good friend!”

And, as she says it, he realises that it’s been a while since he’s thought of her as anything but a good friend. He can’t even say when it happened, which is not how it usually happens for him, emotions just sneaking up on him like that. But it feels like somewhere along the way, somewhere between Roy and Keeley breaking up - or no, maybe even earlier, somewhere between Keeley confiding to him in the boot room about her relationship struggles with Roy - and now, he’s stopped wondering about the possibilities between the two of them. It’s almost weird because back in Manchester and during Lust Conquers All, he’d really missed having her as his girlfriend, had missed sex with her and talking to her and everything. But then, once he’d gotten back to spending any time with her at all, the possibility of sex just didn’t seem worth losing all of the other stuff and over time, and with everything else going on, that aspect had just faded into the background completely.

For a moment, he wonders about Roy and Keeley, about their breakup, about Roy telling Keeley about him and Roy. He’s never asked either one of them about them ending, it was none of his business, and he’s not sure if it is now. Just because he’s dating Roy - getting fucked stupid by him almost every night, has a key to his place on his key ring, letting him chat to Mummy, going for runs with him around the neighbourhood every morning, his favourite protein shakes and Lucozade flavours at Roy’s place - doesn’t mean he gets to dig into Roy’s past, does it? Roy’s told him things but that’s different than Jamie asking as if he’s owed answers, as if they’re serious enough for that. And they’re not, no matter how much Jamie wants them to be because they haven’t talked about it yet and asking Roy about Keeley, reminding him explicitly of this gorgeous, smart, funny, kind woman Roy had had and must surely still want, is a surefire way to make sure they never get there.

And asking Keeley is out of the question, too, because as happy as she seems to be for him, he’s not going to poke at the hurt that must be her and Roy ending just to get her to soothe this pathetic little insecurity he’s got. She does seem happy enough, has seemed like that for a while, throwing herself into work, equally stressed out by and enjoying it, and Jamie’s not about to remind her of how much happier she was with Roy either, because if he does and she realises that she could still be happier, he knows he doesn’t stand a chance. Whatever fragile little thing has grown between him and Roy will go up in flames the second Roy realises that Keeley is still or - again - an option because there is no way Roy will tolerate all of Jamie’s bullshit, all his neediness and the way he always says the wrong thing, then.

He tries to shove the thought aside as he sits with Keeley, watches her demolish an ice cream sundae, hates that he’s already back on his meal plan and even allowed himself a cheat day already, and he’s fairly successful at it, too, unti Roy and Phoebe wander past them and even stop for a short conversation. There’s something a little odd in Roy’s eyes, something like longing as he looks at them and Jamie gets little twitchy again but it calms down a little when Roy gets to Jamie’s place after he’s dropped off Phoebe with her mother again and pulls him into tight hug the second he crosses the threshold.

“Missed you,” he murmurs against Jamie’s neck, his beard scratching lightly against Jamie’s skin and sending a shiver down his spine.

“Missed you, too,” Jamie mumbles. He pulls Roy to the couch and essentially on top of him, the weight of Roy comforting like a blanket. “Never been this annoyed about having to go back to preseason training.”

“What, missing all the sweets and pastries you could indulge in in the off-season?”

“Yeah,” Jamie grumbles. “Miss doing this all day more, though.” He leans up and trails a line of kisses along Roy’s neck to the shell of his ear and then down along his jaw to the side of his nose.

Roy chuckles lightly against Jamie’s skin in return, a noise and a feeling Jamie still hasn’t entirely gotten used to. He tries to pull away a little, but Jamie’s clamping an arm against Roy’s back, holding him close with just a enough force to make it clear that he doesn’t want to let go yet but will if he has to. “So it’s that kind of night, hm?” Roy chuckles as he settles atop Jamie again for a proper cuddle. “Alright then.”

Three days later, Jamie gets home and finds a little paper box with the logo of The Ritz London, of all places, on his kitchen counter. They’d indulged in the fantasy of a dinner there because of Roy’s favourite Queen song, humming along while cooking, knowing that there was no way it would happen unless they’d decide to fuck their careers or somehow talked Ted into an absurdly overpriced team outing to balance out the trip to the London sewers. Jamie had essentially forgotten about it until the box showed up. It makes him grin even before he tries to read the note in Roy’s horrible chicken scratches attached to it and manages to decipher “You’re getting a second cheat day this week. Coach’s orders.”

The little pastry tastes almost as good as kissing Roy.

Chapter Text

xiv:

Sam is the second member of AFC Richmond to have something to say about their relationship because of course he fucking is. It’s only a couple more days before their first game of the season, against Chelsea, which makes Roy tense anyway, in addition to everyone else already being tense about wanting to prove all the pundits who suggested they’d finish last in the league wrong. And then there's the the whole fucking shitshow with Nate. So when Sam, Jamie in tow, knocks on the door to Roy’s office and eyes Ted and Beard leaned around the doorway before admitting that he wants to talk about their relationship, the “for fuck’s sake” comes from somewhere deep within Roy.

“I am sorry, Coach Kent,” Sam says, respectful and cheery in that way he always is and that makes it impossible for anyone to really be pissed with him. “It’s just that - well, the team is still confused and wondering about you and Jamie being tense around each other.”

“For fuck’s sake,” Roy grumbles again. “We’re not fucking tense around each other. I’m coaching him the same way I do everyone else.”

“I think that’s part of the problem,” Sam points out. Jamie can barely keep a smug grin off his face, twisting his hands in his shirt, and Roy wants to kiss it off so badly. “Everyone’s wondering why you’re not assigning extra laps and reps and drills to Jamie like you did last season, coach.”

Ted clears his throat. “Well, we all thought it best to avoid things like that, nip any favoritism allegations in the bud, all that.”

“With all due respect, coach,” Sam says, clearly considering his words carefully. “Everyone was relieved not to be Coach Kent’s favourite. Now that things seem like they are tense between him and Jamie, some people have gotten a little worried about who will be chosen in his place.”

Jamie allows the smirk to spread as he crows “Hear that, grandad? No one but me wants to be your favourite.”

“For fuck’s sake,” Roy growls, his own lack of imagination only adding to his annoyance about the entire situation. “So, what, I start pushing Jamie harder during training again, everyone untwists their fucking knickers and we can stop talking about my fucking personal life?”

Ted and Beard exchange a look, having one of their non-verbal conversations once again, and then Ted says “Seems like the smartest course of action for now.”

“Great,” Roy growls and catches Jamie’s eyes. The little prick looks so fucking excited at the prospect that a part of him wants to make him regret it, regret all the goading he did, too, and another part can’t help but feel equally excited, knowing full well that whatever he throws at Jamie, he’ll do it without complaint and fucking beautifully, too, and that it will only feed this soft, evergrowing thing in Roy’s stomach.

“Thank you for bringing this to us, Sam,” Ted says. “We appreciate it, and you.” Jamie pats Sam’s shoulder, too, and Roy meets his eyes and nods curtly.

It’s not like it’s the magic fix for all of it, but it lifts some of the tension from Roy, feeling like he can acknowledge Jamie a little more, even as rumours about them maybe getting fucking Zava for their team begin to float around the Dog Track. That only lasts until Trent fucking Crimm of all people shows up to write a fucking book about their season. A part of him - the part deeply aware of the piece of paper carrying Trent’s byline and words in his wallet - wants to bite Ted’s or Rebecca’s or Leslie’s head clean off for sanctioning this and at the same time, he’s very well aware that considering the circumstances he and Jamie are in, he can’t. That doesn’t mean he can’t make Trent’s job, which he still sucks fucking shit at, a little harder, ordering the lads not to say a word around this hack and feeling a sense of deep contentment when he hear’s Dani’s faint voice piping out a “Fuck off Trent Crimm.”

Jamie rests his head against Roy’s chest in bed that night, looks up at him and says “Should I be worried about the intensity of the death glares you give Crimm, love?” There’s a teasing note in his voice, a tease in the nickname, too, and it’s something Jamie’s been doing more lately, and it’s cute and flirty and makes Roy melt a little, not that he’d ever admit it but he also sees something odd in Jamie’s eyes.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Well, the way you looked at me used to be quite similar, didn’t it? And look where we ended up.”

Roy snorts and places a kiss against Jamie’s temple. “You do not need to worry about that, baby.” Jamie hums contentedly at the nickname. Roy makes a mental note of it. “I wouldn’t fuck a journo if they were the last person on the planet and I hadn’t touched another human in two decades.”

“Good.”

Roy reads half a page, then asks: “That’s really the only thing you’re worried about, with this whole Crimm thing?”

“You're worried about him finding out about this?”

“You’re not?”

“He’s just one more person. And it’s not like being a journo gave him mind-reading powers, you know? And we’ve been good, no one suspects anything. So we’ll just have to keep being good, and it’ll be fine.”

And that does him some good, just like the quick beaming smile he gets from Jamie’s after he’s finished the three extra laps he made him run and gotten an approving grin and nod from Roy for it.

It does Jamie good, too, he can tell, getting more of Roy’s attention at the club again which in turn soothes a little of the worry Roy feels about how them getting Zava would impact Jamie. A year ago, he wouldn’t have given a rat’s arse about Zava joining Richmond and even less about how it would have impacted Jamie, still too incensed about Jamie walking away from Man City to feel anything but rage at the thought of him. Two years ago, he would’ve been fucking ecstatic about Zava not just because he’d be good for the team but specifically because he’d take the Prince Prick down a peg. But now - now that he knows more about the actual origins of the Prince Prick, knows all the parts of Jamie that that persona kept hidden, knows that there’s an actual fire burning within Jamie to be the actual best instead of his claim to it being just another layer of his prick persona - now he can’t help but worry when he comes home and sees Jamie watch the Sky Sports commentators speculate about where Zava will go intercut with clips of highlights from his career. Now he can’t help but remember how he felt, back when he heard rumours about Jamie getting loaned to Richmond, and looking up reports on him, and wonder if he can keep Jamie from turning as bitter about this as he did, if he even should, as his boyfriend, as his coach.

“You did well today,” he tells Jamie when he gets home a day before the Chelsea match and finds him tuned in to Sky Sports again, trailing his hand along the nape of his neck as he walks past the couch, and the way Jamie’s face lights up makes him lean in for a quick kiss. “Keep up the good work and it won’t even matter if we get Zava or not.”

Unfortunately, as they slog through the first half against Chelsea, Roy knows that it’ll still be a while before Jamie’s good enough for it to really not matter whether they get Zava or not, and he suspects that Jamie might know that, too. Still, when they’re in the dressing room and Jamie’s the one to start making a suggestion as to how they can turn the match around, affection and pride well up in his gut, and the feeling spreads to the rest of the team when Crimm enters the room and everyone immediately clams up.

Of course, Ted has to go and ruin it by giving Roy a stern talking to and then also being actually fucking right about it, too. Not just about his ego almost sabotaging the match but about the fact that it actually, genuinely feels good to bury this particular hatchet, to let this go, to exorcize the ghost of the angry 17-year old living in his wallet, to get an apology for the harm done to him and to feel a little bit of the guilt and shame and anger about the fact that all his sacrifices had still maybe not been enough dissipate. Because Trent Crimm’s words hadn’t even been about him, they hadn’t been about Roy at all, they’d been about Trent fucking Crimm.

So when he gets back out on the pitch for the second half and looks up at the banner still proclaiming that they don’t make them like Roy anymore, he feels - he’s not even sure what he feels, but at least he doesn’t feel bitter and pained and angry anymore. And then the fact that Jamie not only spotted the chink in Chelsea’s armour and made the suggestion that got them the chance to score but also assists Sam’s shot beautifully brings up another wave of pride at his amazing fucking boyfriend, at the man and the player he’s slowly but surely growing into. He resolves to tell Jamie that, especially when Zava decides to actually really sign with Richmond, and he’s packing his stuff and sorting through the words, trying to decide how else he wants to make Jamie feel good at home, how nasty and kinky he wants to get with it, when Ted asks about how it felt to be back at Chelsea.

If he was still the man he was a year ago - half a year ago, even - he would’ve told Ted ‘none of your fucking business’ and gone home, opened a bottle of whiskey and drunken too many glasses of it in brooding silence, marinating in the pain of it, a decades old slip of paper still in his wallet, haunting him. The man he is now takes a second to consider it before answering, talking about the Arsenal match and his last season, about his fear of becoming one of the broken-down footballers sitting out his time on the bench before finally being dropped years after they should’ve been.

He looks over at Trent and considers it for a moment before saying “But going back there today - there's a part of me,” He sighs and sucks in his teeth. “ - thinking maybe I should have stayed and just fucking - ” He tastes the words on his tongue, tries them on for size before he pronounces them, thinks back to Jamie curled against his chest in his bed weeks ago, and says “enjoyed myself.” He takes another breath, meeting Ted’s eyes. “But that is not who I am. Or was. I don’t know.”

Ted wiggles his eyebrows at him, a small, soft smile on his lips. “Doesn’t mean you can’t be,” he says and Roy can’t help but glare at him, wondering what they’d say to each other if Trent wasn’t there with them, if the unspoken thing that Ted helped him realise but never mentioned again after would become spoken. “But hey,” Ted says, shifting his head slightly. “If you wouldn't have left Chelsea when you did, we probably never would have met,” he says as he draws his folded hands up under his chin and gives Roy a fluttering rom-communist look that hints at the unspoken thing, at all the other people Roy wouldn’t have met and at one of them more than anyone else and that makes him want to chuck something at Lasso’s head.

He says goodnight to the both of them instead, fully aware that the only reason he isn’t going home to a bottle of whiskey and hours of brooding and empty distraction is a combination of odd fucking coincidences and Ted Lasso’s Yankee Doodle bullshit. At some point, he’s going to have to actually explicitly thank the fucking twat, an infuriating though that occupies him too much for him to pay much attention to whatever Trent Crimm, literary minded twat that he fucking is, is saying about sport as a metaphor while he makes his way through his own office.

And it makes sense to see what he said about Chelsea as a metaphor for him and Keeley. After all, he did essentially do the same thing: leave before he could get left. A part of him had even thought that he wasn’t good enough for her, that if he was a better man, he’d be happy with what she could give him, that he’d let her be enough the way she was, but it had been like she’d said all along, hadn’t it? It had been about them wanting different things, needing different things even, and needing people they wouldn’t have to twist their needs for. It had never been about being good enough.

He feels good enough, now. He hasn’t felt not good enough in a while, he realises, which is odd because it’s not like he’s unaware of his flaws - some of them have jumped out starkly at him, lately, have almost cost him his relationship, his job, this contentment he’s got now - or unwilling to work on them. It’s an odd combination, one that doesn’t entirely make sense to him, but that still feels comforting all the same.

+++++++++++

He doesn’t mean to eavesdrop on Roy, he really doesn’t. And especially not about something as personal as Roy leaving Chelsea. All Jamie meant to do was talk to the coaches about Zava joining the team and then he’d heard Roy’s familiar timbre and just frozen and listened in, like a fucking muppet.

There’s something a little absurd to it almost, to Roy thinking he’s not good enough, to making the insecure man grieving his career and his abilities that Roy had been on the inside fit together with the hot-headed, arrogant bastard that had he’d seen Roy as during his loan time with Richmond, who mostly expected them to ask how high when he deigned to tell them to jump. And at the same time, it’s not so absurd, is it? That the man who acted like he owned the pitch was the same one who did all these small little things for his teammates was the same one who felt like he wasn’t good enough anymore. At least not to Jamie to whom bits of it feel familiar, and not just because of what Roy had told him about what being the best had meant for him.

His heart aches. His soft spot for Roy grows.

And then he hears Ted say something about people preferring to quit over being fired and Roy say something else about wondering if he should have stayed and just enjoyed himself and then, when Roy’s already said goodbye, he hears Trent Crimm say “Sport. It’s quite the metaphor.”

And for the rest of his drive home, Jamie can’t help but wonder what it could have been a metaphor for.

He’s turning it over in his mind, trying to figure if Roy’s been on the verge of quitting Richmond, too, before getting benched, or if he’s maybe on the verge of quitting now or was at some point, maybe when he’d first realised his feelings for Jamie, and then he realises that that’s not metaphorical enough. For it to be a metaphor, it has to be about something other than sport and the last time Roy left someone or something that wasn’t about sport, it was Keeley.

Meaning he’d left Keeley because he was scared she’d leave him if he didn’t, not because he didn’t love her anymore. And if Chelsea and Keeley are the same, aren’t Jamie and Richmond the same, too?

It feels like someone’s dunked him in one of the stupid ice baths Roy’s always taking.

Jamie’s just the thing Roy ran to after leaving what he really wanted, because he was around and he wanted Roy. He’s just the guy Roy used to drunk dial and then started dating because Roy didn’t want to be alone but that he doesn’t really like, doesn’t really care about, the way Roy had gone to Richmond without ever really caring about Richmond, had been the captain, had done all of this small caring stuff because it was the right thing to do and that’s just who Roy was, the same way he did all this small caring stuff for Jamie now.

He almost feels like laughing.

Because the thing is, he really is the same as Richmond: he’s more than happy with whatever Roy’s giving him, even if it’s not even about him, the way Roy playing and captaining for Richmond had never been about Richmond either, even if it’s not all of Roy, even if it’s only temporary. It’s Roy, after all, and getting a little of Roy for a while is better than not getting Roy, the same way getting an older, slower, less passionate version of Roy Kent than Chelsea had gotten had been better for Richmond than it would’ve been for the team if they’d never gotten Roy Kent at all. Especially because a little of Roy is still a whole fucking lot, is still more than Jamie ever got from anyone else he was dating, is still more than he ever imagined he’d get, more than he deserves.

So it shouldn’t change anything, that realisation, but when he stops in front of Roy’s house, he finds that he can’t park his car. He can’t get out. He wants to, he really does, he wants to spend as much time with Roy as he can anyway but now especially, it’s just that he can’t get his body to move.

He drives home instead and realizes he hasn’t been here for days, doesn’t even have any food that is both on his meal plan and something he actually wants to eat so he decides to order in. He’s almost placed the order for Pad Thai when he stops, unable to imagine himself sitting on his own in his living room eating the food that kind of started it all.

As much as he is happy with what he’s gotten, what he can still get, he’s also devastated that this is all he’ll get, that this isn’t real, that Roy doesn’t really like him, doesn’t really care about him, doesn’t really -

He forbids himself from finishing the thought. It doesn’t matter what he thought Roy felt because Roy doesn’t really feel it, no matter how he sometimes looked at Jamie when he got home or pulled away from a kiss or slowly came down from the blissed out, post-orgasm high. It doesn’t matter because he did get pieces of Roy and that should be more than enough, even if he doesn’t get Roy’s love.

Except it’s not enough. It’s never enough, he’s like a bucket without a bottom when it comes to love and affection, always wanting more, he’s always been like that, even as a kid when mummy loved him, loved him so, so much, and it was still never enough to fill the giant void in him even though it should have been. But because Jamie was a whiny needy little bitch, it never was, and it’s not enough now.

He forces himself to take a deep breath instead of throwing his phone across the room like he wants, and another one, and tries to remember what Dr. Sharon told him. He’s not a whiny needy little bitch, he’s a human being with needs, needs that go beyond just food and water and shelter, like they do for everyone and just because he’s been made to feel bad for them doesn’t mean he is. He’s a human and he deserves to have needs without beating himself up about them.

He still feels like a whiny needy little bitch, though.

He takes another deep breath, then orders something else from that cute little Thai place he’d wanted to actually take Roy to on a proper date one day, curls up on his couch, turns on The Fast and the Furious, opens the door when his food gets there, eats, ignores his phone and goes to bed. Maybe tomorrow, he’ll feel better.

Maybe tomorrow, he’ll reach out to Roy. Explain, sort of, why he didn’t reach out, and then things will be okay and he’ll be fine. And then he’ll enjoy as much of Roy as he can get, because as much as it might not be the real thing, he still wants it. He just needs a day to mope around in it, is all. He’ll be fine.

He doesn’t feel better when he wakes up early, because he always does now, and has a quick protein shake for breakfast, so he goes for a very, very long run, one that leaves him exhausted and his brain empty, so empty that he doesn’t even notice Roy’s car parked next to his own or Roy’s shoes in the hallway until he’s noticed Roy in his kitchen, making breakfast, a solid presence in a black shirt and black trackies.

He stops dead in his tracks. He wants nothing more than to go over to the kitchen island, crawl into Roy’s arms, into his skin, into his ribcage, into the space between his ribs and his lungs. If he does, maybe it won’t matter.

Roy eyes him carefully, slowly, his face unreadable to Jamie as he puts the spatula down.

“What are you doing?” Jamie finally asks.

“Making us breakfast,” he answers without any venom but still a little surprised as if it’s a stupid question, as if he’s done this every day. And, Jamie realises, Roy has, almost every day.

He could just go over there, probably. Kiss Roy, wrap an arm around him, place his chin on Roy’s shoulder from behind the way he’s done a hundred times while Roy cooked. It would be fine, it’s always been fine, and it’ll keep being fine until it isn’t, and then Roy will leave and it’ll all come crashing and burning down around him. And if this is how he feels right now, at the mere prospect of it, he does not know how he’ll feel when it does.

So maybe, as much as he wants to continue being happy with what he’s gotten, maybe the smarter thing is to end it right now, before he gets tangled up in Roy even more. Act in self-preservation, for once.

“You okay there, baby?” Roy asks, snapping him out of his thoughts, and it’s that little nickname that hurts more than anything else for some reason.

“What are you doing?” He repeats again, a little angrier this time around.

He can see Roy’s knuckles tighten and relax around the spatula. “I - you didn’t come over last night and you didn’t call or text, so - I don’t know, I got fucking worried, alright? That you got sick again or that something happened with your piece of shit father or -”

“That’s not what I mean,” Jamie snaps, something in his chest tight at the thought of Roy worrying about him, alone in his home. It’s not enough, it’s everything he wants, it’s more than he deserves. It’s not enough. It’s not real. “What are you doing with me?” To me, he almost bites out, but he swallows that bit. That phrasing doesn’t feel fair - whatever Roy’s doing, he’s been a more than willing participant, an enthusiastic one, because he’d allowed himself to believe it was real.

“Jamie, what the fuck is going on?”

There’s something odd and tight in Roy’s voice, something that’s not anger, that Jamie can’t quite place. It’s bitten off, almost pained or maybe scared, and Jamie doesn’t know what to do with it because why would Roy be scared or pained by this?

“I - what the fuck am I to you, Roy?” They’re staring at each other, Roy’s grip on the spatula tightening again, his eyes boring into Jamie’s soul, the kitchen island between them. It makes him feel naked and small and sad and he’s so fucking knackered from his run that it’s like his brain isn’t working quite right because he can’t stop talking. “Why are you in my kitchen, cooking me breakfast, looking like you want to kill me, just because I didn’t come over? Why do you - why do you show up, all the time, and do all these things for me? Why do you care when all -” he can’t say it but it’s also like he can’t not say it. “- when you’re going to go back to Keeley anyway?”

“Why the fuck would I go back to Keeley?”

“Why the fuck wouldn’t you go back to Keeley?”

Roy puts the spatula down, tense and careful and then takes another breath before growling “I - Jamie, where the fuck is this coming from? What the fuck is going on in that thick pretty skull of yours?”

Jamie takes a deep shuddering breath. Roy moves carefully along the kitchen island, towards him. “Jamie. Come on. Just talk to me. Please.”

And that’s the word that finally breaks him because he’s not sure he’s ever heard Roy say please if his cock wasn’t in Jamie’s mouth and he was breathless and on the edge and desperate to keep going longer, and the familiar word in this unfamiliar setting, in this unfamiliar tone of Roy’s voice while he’s looking at Jamie all weirdly - it breaks Jamie down and open and he spills his guts.

Roy listens, carefully, slowly moving closer to Jamie until he’s right on the edge of his space, eyeing him carefully, and when Jamie finishes, he half expects Roy to be pissed at him for eavesdropping.

Instead, Roy takes a deep breath. “Wait. So. All of this is because Trent fucking Crimm claimed something I said was a metaphor because he assumes he knows more than he does like the presumptuous wanker that he is and you overheard?”

Jamie just nods. Suddenly, he feels silly and pathetic.

“Jamie,” Roy says, softly, fondly, taking another step closer to him. “Trent Crimm does not know what the fuck he is talking about. Me talking about Chelsea was just me talking about Chelsea. Keeley and I left each other because it wasn’t fucking working. Because we need different things from a relationship. And that hasn’t fucking changed, and even if it had - even if Keeley suddenly wanted all the same shit I want - I wouldn’t just fucking leave you.”

“You wouldn’t?”

“I wouldn’t. I’ve got you. I want you.”

They’re close again, now, Roy in his space but not nearly as close as he usually is, radiating warmth and comfort and steadiness, and Jamie hesitates for a moment and then his hands wander up to Roy’s chest, grabbing the soft material of his shirt, and within seconds, Roy’s there, pulling him close, clamping his hands onto Jamie’s spine as if he wants to never ever let him go.

Jamie releases a shuddering breath. It’s odd - this thing between him and Roy is still so new, has only been going on for around two months, but the space inside of Roy’s arms, against his chest, might be his favourite place in the world. Roy’s arms are wide and muscular along his sides and his back, his chest broad, his hands a soft but firm, determined pressure. His beard is a well-known scratching agains Jamie’s skin. It feels wholesome, good, like stepping out of the pouring rain into a warm, comfortable home, like the familiar water pressure of the showers at Nelson Road washing off all the dirt and grime and sweat and pain of a long day of training, like going back up North and his mummy pulling the door open with that wide smile on her face, like being somewhere he belongs.

“I’m sorry,” he mumbles against Roy.

One of Roy’s hands trails up and down his spine while the other grabs onto his shirt underneath his shoulderblade and pulls him a little closer. “Just - fucking talk to me instead of spiraling out and disappearing, alright?”

He nuzzles a little closer to Roy and mumbles “Don’t know if you noticed but that’s the part I’m historically fucking shit at,” which gets him a dry chuckle.

Roy pulls back a tiny bit to kiss the corner of his mouth and his temple. “Next time you disappear on me, I’m getting you a collar with an AirTag on it.”

“Ohh, look who’s keeping up with current technology. Good for you, grandad,” Jamie teases as he leans in for another, proper kiss.

Roy steps out of his embrace insteads and back towards the kitchen island, one hand still on Jamie’s biceps. “Alright, so you’ve officially left freaked out territory then, have you?” he asks as Jamie whines a little. He nods. “Great. Then care to explain to me why you think I’m the kind of fucking arsehole who’d just up and leave his boyfriend for his ex?”

“Oh,” is all Jamie can say, and suddenly he feels guilt and shame roiling through his stomach, and excitement fluttering as well. Roy called himself his boyfriend. “I - I didn’t know you were - that. My boyfriend,” is the only thing that comes out next. “I figured we were just dating. Casual, like.”

Roy is very quiet for a moment, again, but this time it’s the quiet of gears turning in his brain. “You’ve - you’ve got a fucking key to my place,” he growls finally. “I’ve got all of your expensive ass hair products in my fucking shower. And the shit for your ridiculous facial routine next to my sink! I’ve talked to your mother! On the phone! Multiple times!” Jamie can’t help but grin and, for the second time in history, Roy’s eyebrows look like they might leap out of his face to throttle him for it. “Last night was the first time in fucking weeks we slept apart which sucked fucking shit, by the way. I’m - you’re the emergency contact in my fucking phone. I’ve got a drawer full of fucking shirts here because I refuse to wear the ugly ass shit you think of as fucking fashionable. How the fuck is any of this fucking casual?”

“I - I just meant, we never talked about it!”

“You called me your fucking boyfriend on our first date.”

“Yeah, ’cause I was teasing you!”

Roy groans, the kind of noise that’s reserved for occasions when he finds Jamie especially exasperating, like the time he when he’d intentionally mixed up Freddie Mercury and Mick Jagger or when he handed Roy a knife he’d gotten at Tesco ages ago and Roy came back after a meeting at the Dog Track with a bunch of fancy Japanese knives that he’d stored in one of Jamie’s drawers.

Jamie sidles a little closer to him, almost into another proper hug. “I’m sorry. I really am, Roy, I just - I mean, like I said, we never had that conversation about being exclusive and serious and so on so I thought we were still dating and -”

“God, I hate your generation so fucking much,” Roy growls but pulls Jamie closer anway.

For a second, Jamie thinks about making another age joke. Instead, he leans up and kisses Roy.

That, too, feels like being somewhere where he belongs.

Chapter Text

xv:

He turns the key in the ignition. The car’s motor quiets. The song he’d been listening to abruptly cuts out. He bangs the car door shut with more force than necessary, then presses the palms of his hands against his eyes. The reporter’s questions still bounce around his head, Isaac’s face interspersed among them and their raised hands.

He unlocks the front door and closes that softly behind himself. He toes off his sneakers in the hallway and puts them in the only free space on the shoe rack. His knuckles brush against the floral patterned tracksuit jacket that hangs above the rack as he does.

He finds him in the kitchen, humming along to a song he literally just heard on his drive home, stirring something in the pan on the stove.

As Roy wraps his arms around Jamie from behind, he feels himself relax for the first time since the match against Brighton turned into an utter shitshow.

Jamie turns his head just enough so that Roy can place a kiss on his cheek. “What’re you making, sweetheart?”

“As if you don’t know already,” Jamie laughs, wiggling his arse against Roy teasingly. And Roy does, in fact, know and not just because he can see the pancetta turn crisp and golden but because in all the months they’ve been dating, spaghetti carbonara is still the only thing Jamie cooks when either one of them had a shit day.

“Looks good,” Roy hums and presses a kiss against Jamie’s shoulder. “Smells good, too.”

“Mint,” Jamie mumbles. Roy runs his fingers up Jamie’s left side and leaves another kiss on his shoulder. Jamie leans into the touch. “I think we should tell Colin,” he says after a moment.

Roy hums approvingly, then says “I think we should tell the entire team.”

Jamie half-turns in Roy’s embrace. “Really?”

“Yeah.”

So the Monday after the Brighton game, before everyone heads home for the day, Roy comes out of the coaches’ office. Ted, who’s asked everyone to stay for a moment after training, and Beard lean against the doorframe, glancing at each other. Jamie feels his heartbeat pick up speed as Roy catches his eyes. He gets off the bench, hands twisting in the bottom of his shirt, and makes his way over to his spot just a little behind Roy. Not quite in his space, not yet, but almost.

“Oi!” Roy yells out. The dressing room quiets immediately. “I’ve got an announcement. A private one.” An eeriely quiet anticipation settles over the room, every eye on Jamie’s fucking boyfriend. “Jamie and I are in a relationship.”

There’s another moment of silence.

Then the room erupts into chaos - a mixture of yelling, howling laughter, congratulations and disbelief. Jamie catches Colin’s eyes, sees the mixture of relief and bafflement on his face, and winks at him. Colin nods, a little of the tension fading from his shoulders.

Jamie slides a little closer to Roy and places a hand on his shoulder, running his thumb along the side of his neck. He feels Roy relax under his touch.

Whatever nervousness he’d felt about this is overshadowed by the simple pleasure of getting to do something he’d kept himself from doing for months.

It’s Dani’s voice that rings out above the din of his mates, his friends, clambering between confusion and joy for him. “Congratulations, amigo!” Jamie grins at him and nods. “When did it start?”

It’s probably good that Dani’s the one asking. Roy’s tensing under Jamie’s hand again, and anyone else would’ve gotten a growled ‘fuck off’ and a death glare.

“Why do you care?” Roy asks instead, still growly and death-glaring. Jamie resolves to be extra-nice, which means bratty, in bed once they get home.

There’s another moment of silence in the room, before Jan Mass says “Because of the bet.”

“Shut the fuck -”

“About wether and when the two of you had started dating.”

“ - up, Jan Maas.”

Jamie, trying to keep from doubling over with laughter, almost misses Roy’s growl, the one that means he’s pissed. “Oi,” he murmurs. “It’s sweet, alright?”

Roy exhales and leans a little more into Jamie’s space. “Okay. Which of you little shits bet on what exactly?”

Silent glances are being exchanged among the lads. “Come on, out with it,” Roy growls. Jamie tries and fails not to chuckle. “Or you’re not getting the truth.”

Issac, ever the team captain, is the first to speak. “I said it was during preseason training, when Roy started giving Jamie extra reps and shit again.” Jamie raises an eyebrow. “Figured something had happened before but that’s when you actually started dating.”

“Wrong,” Roy growls. Isaac deflates.

“I figured it happened when your car broke down and Roy had to give you lifts for a week,” Moe pipes up.

Jamie can’t help but smile at the memory. It’d been a good week, getting to hold Roy’s hand on the centre console, having a little more time with him every day, discovering the playlist of all the songs he’d sing along to that Roy had secretly made and listened to while driving alone. Still, he feels a little satisfied when he says “Nope,” making the ‘p’ pop.

“Was it after the first night at Ola’s, boyo?” Colin says.

Roy’s hand wanders back a little and finds Jamie’s upper thigh, squeezing it in memory of the squeeze he’d given him that night under the table, the first time they’d touched like that, softly, fondly, in secret with the entire team around. He’d pulled Roy on top of him like a heavy blanket when he’d gotten home that night and said “It’s not just that I’m no longer the best. It’s not, swear down, it’s that Zava’s pulling all the shit Ted was always riding me about not doing, all the shit he sent me back to Man City for, and everyone just loves him anyway,” and Roy had said “I know. I just can’t say anything to Ted about it. But I know and I hate it, too.”

“No.” Roy says, starting to sound like he’s having fun, too.

“Ha! I told you, it was when he started training Jamie personally!” Van Damme exclaims.

“You mean when he officially started training me personally?” Jamie says. Roy snorts, and Jamie knows he’s thinking of that day in the locker room when, on Ted’s orders and to try and kill any favoritism allegations, he’d proclaimed that he and Jamie were doing additional training, starting at 4am, and whoever wanted to join in could. They’d gone running together almost every morning before anyway but that had been when Roy had started genuinely training him, implementing a grueling regimen that no one else had wanted to join. He’d needled Roy about that but truthfully been absurdly happy about it, too, Roy’s approving gaze as he met every challenge thrown at him like coals on a blazing fire and a balm for his soul at the same time. “Yeah, no.”

“Amsterdam,” Will throws in.

His breath hitches in his throat. Roy turns towards him, catches his eyes for a second.

Amsterdam.

It makes sense that Will would think that. Amsterdam had been - something. They’d rented a car and driven out of the city for half an hour, to an insanely fancy restaurant nestled among the dunes near the Atlantic. It had been odd, in a way, suddenly having the sort of public swanky date they never really got to have, turning them both self-conscious and a little tense around each other, and it had only gotten easier when they’d gone for a walk along the beach, Roy ultimately cursing at the sand in his shoes and Jamie teasing him about his Anakin Skywalker tendencies which lead to Roy revealing that he’d never seen Star Wars. Jamie had decreed that they had to return to their hotel immediately to remedy that but on the drive through Amsterdam, he’d slipped into this tourist guide persona that constantly called Roy ‘lad’ and that both of them had enjoyed so much that they’d abandoned the car and the Star Wars plan and just gone for a walk until Roy’s knee had acted up and he’d started to become grumpy, calling Amsterdam a Disney version of an old city and declaring the windmills fake. And Jamie’d rarely seen Roy climb a hill and not decided to die on the opposite one, so he’d found them some bikes to get to a windmill, then actually taught Roy to ride a bike, ‘for granddad,’ and then taken him to a windmill, as he’d promised. He’d just been so happy, taking everything Roy had thrown at him in stride, including the actual bike at one point, genuinely ecstatic to get to be making new memories with another one of his favourite people in Amsterdam, and Roy had kept looking at him as if he was the sun and not just an eternally sunshine-y presence, even after Roy had crashed his bike in Amstelpark. They’d lain down in the grass there, Jamie pointing out and making up star constellations until Roy looked over at him at one point and told him that he was in love with him, and then they’d fucked in Amstelpark. When they’d gotten back to the hotel, they’d been so exhausted they overslept the alarm, curled up in bed in Roy’s room together, and only woke up when Will had burst into the room to get Roy’s luggage and needed to be lightly threatened into keeping his mouth shut about all of it. They’d been the last on the bus because Jamie’d gotten distracting in the shower, going the hundred metres from hotel to bus by bike with Roy clutching Jamie’s middle the same way he had all the way from Amstelpark just for the hell of it, Roy growling at the lads not to fucking ask and Jamie exclaiming that they’d seen a windmill to cheers and high fives. Then, at the airport, he’d gone through a fun little high and crash cycle of exhaustion, jokingly blackmailing Roy into sitting next to him on the plane by threatening to divert it otherwise and then falling asleep on his shoulder in full view of everyone on the team. They still had the picture Sam had taken of them when Roy had dozed off, too, in a frame in the office at Roy’s house, and Jamie carried a 4 picture strip from a photobooth that he’d bullied Roy into taking in the back pocket of his bumbag at all times.

They smile at each other, and Jamie knows Roy’s remembering all the same things as he is.

“Nope. Not Amsterdam,” they say in unison, and the lads go crazy at that all over.

“After the Villa match,” Isaac’s voice rings out over the din.

The memory makes something pained flash over Roy’s face and Jamie’s stomach twist. One of the Villa midfielders had put Jamie flat on his back with a nasty foul right before half time, the fall knocking the air out of his lungs and his head back against the ground. Roy’d already been on the other player, seconds away from charged with assault and battery even as Isaac, Dani and the ref tried to intercede, by the time Jamie recovered enough to notice. He hadn’t had a concussion, luckily, but Roy had still clung to him like a barnacle in the treatment room during the break, and then Jamie’d said that he wanted to play the second half and they’d argued so heatedly that Ted and Beard had needed to step in. It’d caused a lot of chatter on Twitter.

“No,” Roy says, in a tone that Jamie knows he absolutely does not want to keep remembering that match, and that the others misread as fury.

“Was it when Roy put that leash on you and made you drag him through Richmond on his bike then?” Jan asks in a stunning show of Dutch bravery.

Jamie waggles his eyebrows at that but shakes his head at the same time. Jan shrugs.

The day before, he’d officially been introduced to Phoebe as Roy’s boyfriend. She’d spent twenty minutes braiding his hair again, and then almost an hour first pelting him with question about his tattoos and then colouring them in. He’d whined at Roy that he deserved to sleep in for being so good with her and instead, Roy had tied him to the bike.

“After the match against Arsenal, when you figured out how we needed to play Total Football and set up Richard’s goal?” O’Brian asks.

Roy turns to Jamie again, his fingers tapping out a little rhythm against his Jamie’s tigh, a glimmer of the same deep, burning pride as back then in his eyes. He’d blown Jamie in the boot room that day, the first and only time they’d ever broken that rule at work. So far, Jamie thinks.

“No. And no, it also wasn’t when Roy almost got my dick ripped off in training,” he says.

“Wait, you were already dating at that point?” Declan calls out.

Jamie nods and sees a few raised eyebrows but is a little grateful no one’s making the obvious comment. “You want to tell them?” He whispers to Roy, his hand still on his shoulder.

Roy grins and nods. “Alright, since none of you twats are getting it right -” He growls, and the room falls silent again. “We started dating the day after we got back to the Prem.”

“What?!!” multiple people yell. The room descends back into chaos as Sam collects his winnings. Colin catches Jamie’s and Roy’s eyes again and smiles.

They intertwine their fingers, and squeeze each other’s hands for a moment.

Chapter Text

epilogue: sure about this

“You’re sure about this, aren’t you?” He asks and hates himself for it. Jamie’s sure, he knows that, he just worries and wants reassurances which is right fucking pathetic.

Jamie turns onto his side on the sunbed he’s lounging on and grabs Roy’s hand to press a kiss to his knuckles. “Of course I’m sure. If I wasn’t, I wouldn’t’ve signed the contract.” He grins suddenly. “There’s no better way to finally prove once and for all that I’m the better footie player than by scoring more goals with your old team, now is there, Grandad?”

Roy laughs and shoves at Jamie’s shoulder, trying to topple him from the sunbed and almost failing until Jamie goes slack and rolls off onto the floor, yelping melodramatically. His grin, when he peeks up from behind his lounger and looks up at Roy, is wide and wholfish. “Oh-ho, it is on, sweetheart!”

Roy makes it maybe three steps before Jamie tackles him, their momentum carrying both of them into the pool.

The cold water is a shock to his system. It takes him a moment to orient himself, grasping at nothing until Jamie’s steady hands take his and lead them onto his shoulders. For a moment, their eyes meet. Jamie’s are warm and steady and sure and so full of love.

They’ve known that this moment would come sooner or later. Jamie’s outgrown Richmond, and Richmond needs Jamie to leave to see what it can be without it’s central cog, to give someone else a chance to really take on that responsibility. That doesn’t mean either one of them had been happy about it, and the fact that both Man City and Chelsea expressed interest in Jamie hadn’t made it easier.

Roy hadn’t wanted Jamie to go to Manchester. But it was the obvious choice for his career and Jamie hadn’t wanted to go either, so of course Roy had argued for it. Jamie hadn’t budged, though, and digitally signed the contract with Chelsea today, one week into their three week Marbella holiday, after a long discussion with his agent on the balcony that Roy had watched from their privately accessible part of the beach. Asking if Jamie’s sure, again, now, in light of all the talking they did about it - no wonder Jamie threw him into the pool.

But in the last three years, it’s like Jamie’s wrapped himself around Roy, nestled himself in the core of every single one of his cells. It’s been a little unexpected, if he’s honest - he’s spent so much time focused on training and pushing and essentially shaping Jamie that he never even noticed Jamie worming his way into him. But through Richmond getting to second place in the Premiere League and Ted leaving and Roy freaking out about it and starting therapy and his first two years as gaffer and Richmond finally winning the league, Jamie’s been this constant in Roy’s life in a way only Phoebe and Tes and football ever were before.

Sometimes, when he allows himself to be melodramatic, he thinks he could imagine living without oxygen more easily than he could imagine falling asleep without Jamie in his arms. It’s very rarely, though.

He knows Jamie feels the same way. So he needs Jamie to be sure about choosing Chelsea over Man City.

The fear that Jamie might be doing this because of Roy more than anything and then grow to resent him for it had been so visceral that for a moment, he’d been tempted to forget all the work he and Dr. Fieldstone had done. It would’ve been easy, if Roy’s honest with himself, to just fall back into comfortable old patterns, to become a sullen and silent twat that let Jamie flounder around on his own. It’s been hard, doing to opposite of that, but he’s sort of done it. He’s actually fucking talked about his fucking feelings, curled around Jamie on their couch and in their bed which used to be just Roy’s but which he can’t look at anymore without thinking about Jamie.

They haven’t really talked about that, still, two years and six months into living together, but that’s essentially what they’re doing. A few days after he’d gotten to Jamie’s place after that Richmond-Chelsea match, Jamie had started leaving more and more of his clothes’ and photos and trinkets at Roy’s until his own home was essentially a bare-bones place they keep for appearances sake, and so Jamie has a place to invite his mates. People are used to the antics they allow themselves in public - Jamie tied to Roy’s bike, them having a friendly but rough, handsy little kick around on the Richmond green, Roy draped across Jamie’s back as he does push-ups or whatever else Roy can come up with to get to touch his boyfriend in public under the guise of exercise - and ever since he broke that one pap’s camera, they’ve been able to do it in peace. But they’re both still too paranoid about the questions he’d get if Jamie’s house got put up on the market and someone started noticing Jamie’s car at Roy’s place or something.

He realises he won’t get to do that anymore. Train Jamie in public, get handsy and intense with him, now that he’s not Jamie’s gaffer anymore. It would call Jamie’s loyalty to Chelsea into question. They’ve talked about that, just like they’ve talked about all the ways they’ll have to navigate talking about their workdays now, but he hasn’t really realised it.

His hands on Jamie’s shoulders twitch.

Jamie’s eyes are warm and firm on Roy’s face, just like his hands are when he places them on Roy’s scratchy cheeks and pulls him in to press his mouth onto Roy’s. He’s sure, sure enough for both of them.

+++++++++

“’M still not sure,” he mumbles into the darkness between their chests, Roy’s hair scratchy along his cheek. It’s muppet-y, probably, to do it like this, when they’re blissed out, post-shag-post-argument exhausted, but still. Jamie’s not sure, and it’s going to keep gnawing at him, and he needs Roy to know because if there’s anyone who can make that gnawing stop, it’s Roy. Plus, he’s never lied to Roy or really ever kept anything from him in the last six years, and he’s not going to start now.

“I love you,” Roy mumble-growls into Jamie’s hair, his hands resting just between Jamie’s shoulder blades.

Jamie doesn’t know if he can do it, he realises suddenly. He doesn’t know how he’s going to be able to fall asleep without these warm, big hands on his back, the feeling of Roy’s chest hair against his skin, the scratch of Roy’s beard and the hollow of his collarbone where Jamie nestles his face during the night, the weight of Roy pressed tight against his back or chest whenever he wakes. He can count the nights he and Roy haven’t shared a bed bed on, like, one and a half hands, and if he does what they’ve decided to do, there’s going to be so many more nights without Roy than there ever were before, and, like, all of a sudden and for weeks at a time, months maybe even.

But he’d be proper mad not to do it, wouldn’t he? You don't always get a transfer offer from fucking Barca, and if he doesn’t take it now, he might not ever get one again. He might not ever get another international offer, full stop.

But he doesn’t want to change his entire life. Doesn’t want to leave London, doesn’t want to leave England.

Doesn’t want to leave Roy.

And at the same time, not going would be among the stupidest decisions he could ever make. It’d be soft, and he hasn’t used that word to describe himself with that tone in ages, but that’s what passing up this chance would be: soft and pathetic and a sign that he didn’t take what he and Roy had been doing as seriously as Roy had thought so why the fuck where they even doing any of it?

Roy had never called Jamie soft or pathetic, but he had said that last bit had. It had been the thing that had cut deeper than anything else and when Jamie had snapped back “Yeah, how dare your pet project forget what he is and think like your boyfriend” he’d seen the same hurt flicker across Roy’s face that he’d felt, and then he’d almost cried.

“So much,” Roy mumbles after a moment. “We’ll make this work. I know we will.”

They’ve both gone for the low blow, both gone for the things they knew would hurt the most, so hearing Roy says that he loves him is - he’s got no words for how it is, no words to capture the feeling of bliss and calm and warmth and right and good that spreads over him. Saying it back feels just as good.

It’s far from the first time they’ve said it. Of course it’s not, they’ve been together for six years now, and Jamie’s lost count of how many times he’s said it. He’s very giving, in general, and with his ‘I love you’s specifically, and especially around Roy. He’d tack it onto every sentence, and he did, for a while, after he’d said it the first time. That had been weeks after he’d first felt it and keeping it in, waiting for Roy to say it first, had almost done his head in.

Roy’s more careful with it just because he’s more careful with his words in general and especially with feeling words, except when he’s angry. It’s not the first time he’s said “I love you so much,” either. That had been when Jamie played Princesses and Dragon with Phoebe for the first time, and Roy had looked over at him in his princess tutu and crown and Jamie’d given a twirl in his matching tutu after having put it on.

It’s not even the first time they’ve said it after a fight, but it’s the first time they’ve ever had a fight of this magnitude and there’d been a moment when Jamie thought that this was it, this was the end and he’d never hear Roy say ‘I love you, Jamie’ or ‘love you, you muppet’ or ‘fuck, I love you so much’ or any variation of it again. So hearing it now, like this, curled into Roy, with a promise of making it work tacked onto the end?

That’s fucking perfect.

And it’s made even more perfect by the fact that Roy doesn’t lie to him. Doesn’t promise that he’ll love Jamie just as much if he stays because both of them know it won’t be true, at least not entirely, at least not after a while. Oh, Roy’d still love him, Jamie knows, he’d never stop loving Jamie and he’d never leave him for staying instead of going to Barca. But he wouldn’t respect Jamie as much anymore, just like Jamie wouldn’t respect himself as much anymore, and that would mean the end of that. Of them. Slowly, very fucking slowly, like a glacier moving across the land, but definitely.

So that’s what it’ll be like: he’ll finish his fourth season for Chelsea, play it just as well as he’s played the other three, despite all of the complications, and then he’ll play for Barca despite not being sure about it, because he’s even less sure of the other options. And Roy will be there, staying in London, in their house, and managing Richmond, being fucking brilliant at it, and on Jamie’s phone screen and they’ll see each other as much as they can, and they’ll make it work.

+++++++++

“You sure about this placement, mate?” Jamie’s tattoo guy asks and he barely bites back a growl. They’re sure about the placement, both of them, and they’re sure about the design, and they’re sure of this.

They’re sure of this. Which is insane to Roy, except for the parts where it isn’t at all insane, which are, funnily enough, most parts.

He’s been sure of this ever since he brought Jamie to the airport, accompanied him through the security check and to a private first class lounge, where they’d sat wrapped around each other until Jamie’s flight was called, and then to the gate, and watched him board the plane to Barcelona as the final passenger, watched Jamie’s familiar form disappear down the walkway and felt like someone ripped his spine out through his chest. He’s been sure every day since then when he facetimed Jamie first thing in the morning and last thing at night, his phone propped against his pillow so he could look at Jamie in bed, and all the times he’s facetimed him in between, and he’s been sure that he didn’t want to propose to Jamie via facetime, so he didn’t.

He’s been sure about his plan, and then he’d picked Jamie up from the airport two days before Christmas and then he’d been even more sure, so sure that as soon as they made it to the house that hadn’t really felt like home until he’d gotten Jamie back onto it’s threshold and Jamie’d made to unlock the door, he’d been so fucking overjoyed that he’d had accidentally let it slip. Jamie’s key had clicked into place and Roy had thought ‘I want to marry you,’ and he hadn’t even noticed that he’d said it aloud until half a second later when Jamie had whirled around, wide eyes and mouth a perfect o, and asked “What did you say?”

And then Roy had reached past him and pushed the door open and past the embarrassment at having bollocksed up the romantic fucking proposal he’d planned and pulled Jamie into the house and clicked the door shut and turned to Jamie and said “I want to marry you. I want to make you my husband, and I want to be yours, too, and if you don’t want that it’s fucking fine but -”

“Are you insane?” Jamie had answered. “Why the fuck would I not want to marry you? Of course - of course I - of course I’ll be your husband, I love you, don’t I and I’d be anything you want me to be, I -” and Roy had cut him off with a kiss because how could he not? He’d only actually seen Jamie twice in six the months since he’d transferred to Barca because training and playing and life had kept them too fucking busy for anything else, and Jamie wanted to marry him, actually wanted to tie himself to Roy for real and forever, so what else was he supposed to do but kiss his fucking fiancé?

And then they’d fucked and cuddled and had a bath together and fucked some more and then finally gone for a romantic private dinner, organized with Rebecca and Leslie’s help who’d made sure that the NDA’s the waiters had signed were tight as could be, and Roy’d proposed to Jamie again, this time in the romantic fucking manner his fiancé deserved just for the hell of it, including the whole getting down on one knee thing because he’d wanted to do it right, and then Jamie had plonked down onto the floor next to him and kissed him so hard he’d knocked the air right out of Roy’s lungs.

And it’s all he’s been able to think about, truthfully, in the space between then and now. While they celebrated Christmas with Mummy and Simon and Tes and Phoebe, all Jamie could do was look at Roy and think ‘I am marrying this man.’ While Richmond faced off against Chelsea on Boxing Day, and he sat in the owner’s box with Rebecca and Jelka and Keeley and her partner Avery, who was the kind of dead lovely person Keeley deserved, and Higgins, every time he looked down at the pitch and at Roy pushing his team to greatness, all he could think about was how far they’d come. And while they celebrated the win and Jamie clapped Colin, who’d returned and become Captain after Isaac had left for Chelsea, on the shoulder and hugged Dani, who’d also just come back after a longer stint with Cruz Azul and Ajax and Bayern Munich, and chatted to some of the younger lads, every time he’d looked across the room at Roy, he’d thought ‘This is my fiancé,’ like a soppy twat.

And now he’s in his favourite tattoo parlour, with his fiancé’s hand grasped tight in his own, while his tattoo guy gets the needle ready and Jamie laughs and says “Of course I’m sure, mate, don’t make me go and get this done somewhere else,” before leaning over and giving Roy a quick peck.

Before getting two fine lines, connecting six black dots, tattooed above the third knuckle of his left ring finger. Matching the nine dots connected by a simple black line that Roy will get on the corresponding finger of his own left hand.

It’s not quite what either one of them wanted, truthfully. He’d wanted to go suit shopping with Mummy and to pick out the perfect wedding ring for Roy - though he knows already what it would be, has known for like five years and three months. He’d wanted to spend hours with Keeley discussing floral arrangements, waggling his eyebrows at her while asking when she and Avery would tie the knot. He’d wanted to celebrate this properly, with Simon walking him down the aisle and Mummy as his best man, with Keeley and Sam stood by his side while he waited for Roy and Tes to make their way down the aisle, Phoebe throwing flowers before them, and Colin and Michael and Dani and Isaac and Ted and Moe and Declan and Thierry and Richard and Rebecca and Mathjis and Jelka and Will and Coach Beard and Nate and Simmi. He’d wanted them all looking on as he and Roy exchanged cheesy vows and rings and a first kiss as a married couple and danced and had an exquisite, insane cake and tons of other great non-meal plan food, and enough champagne to replace their blood volume twice over and then danced until the sun came up and maybe went down again.

It’s surprised Jamie, honestly, the vehemence with which he’d wanted all these things because he’d never expected to want a giant, posh wedding. He’d never actually thought about his wedding at all, until Roy came along and then he’d honestly thought more about the marriage part and Roy wanting that than about the wedding. It’s surprised him even more that when he confessed to Roy that that was what he actually wanted on the morning after their engagement, Roy’d considered it for a moment and then growled “God, I’d fucking love that.”

But there would be no surefire way to keep such an event a secret, and they’d have to do that for the final leg of Jamie’s career to work out the way he wants it to. And as much as Jamie wants to marry Roy properly, with a mint fucking party and all the other stuff, he wants his final seasons before his retirement to be at Richmond. He wants to end his career playing for and with Roy, the way he sometimes think it began, watching him hammer Man City at the Etihad as a little lad and deciding that that was what he wanted to do for life, preferably while winning every trophy they can think of, and he wants to do it without some tabloid bullshit or talk about him and Roy and favouritism marring all of it. So they’d drawn up a bunch of papers with their solicitors and signed them with Mummy and Simon and Tes and Phoebe and Keeley and Sam and Beard in attendance and then they’d gotten champagne drunk in his and Roy’s garden, and now they’re getting their wedding bands that no one will ever notice, hopefully. Which, in a way, is even better because they’re tattoos and they’ll always have them on and tattoo removal hurts like a bitch. Not that either of them will ever need it.

He’s getting married to Roy. It’s the best thing he’s ever done, and the happiest he’s ever been, and he scored the goal that put England into the World Cup Finale just last year.

+++++++++

“Are you sure about this?” He can’t help the way his voice sounds, growly but also wobbly, or the way his left thumb runs across the tatto on his ring finger. Jamie blinks at him through the phone screen.

He looks miserable, and it breaks Roy’s heart. “Yeah,” he says. “This is my last season here. Once it’s over, I’m coming straight home.” He sounds miserable, too.

Jamie playing for Barça had been harder on them than either one of them had expected, honestly. Much like Jamie playing for Chelsea had been harder than expected, even though they’d expected that not getting to train in public together anymore would be. What he hadn’t expected was how much they’d both need to think about how much they told each other about their days and how much fucking harder that would be. He’d gotten so used to Jamie just saying whatever popped into his head around him that seeing him clam up because he didn’t want to give away something about the inner workings of his club had felt like hot shit. And he’s far from talkative himself, but he loves telling Jamie about his day, loves the way Jamie listens to everything he says with rapt attention, loves that he finally feels like he doesn’t always have something stuck in his throat. So having to be a little more careful about what he says again had been hell.

But at least he got to see Jamie everyday when he played for Chelsea. Now, he gets to tell Jamie more things but he also hasn’t even slept in the same bed as his husband for the majority of the last two years, except for the days around Christmas, the couple of times Richmond and Barca have met in the Champions League, the few times Roy managed to sneak into the England training camp, the occasions when they’ve managed to get a couple days off to visit each other and the off-season.

It had also been better than they’d expected, in some ways. It hadn’t been as good as getting to face off against each other again had been, even if it was only in the form of Roy trying to find a strategy that would stop Jamie and Chelsea. But getting to watch Jamie’s matches, watch him grow and change and develop in Barcelona, and getting to text him his comments about it again, having Jamie lap it up and then see him implement it in the next match - that had been really fucking good.

And then Roy comes back to his dark, empty home and puts on one of Jamie’s jumpers while he cooks dinner for himself and watches a movie or reads or something while Jamie’s on FaceTime and then falls asleep in his empty bed and remembers that actually, it sucks fucking shit, is what it does.

So a large part of him is really fucking happy that there’s an end to Jamie’s time with Barca in sight. Another feels guilty about it because he’d been fairly insistent that Jamie needed to do this, and a small part wants to push Jamie to stay there one more season because he’s scared Jamie will resent him if he doesn’t, and then there’s another, the smallest, that wonders and even hopes that Jamie will not just return to the UK but to Richmond, too. Which would mean that he’d really be entering the last phase of his career, and that would mean that soon, they’d finally be able to stop all of this dodging and repressing and hiding. Which would mean that if he ever has to fucking pick Jamie up from a fucking airport again - which he’ll probably have to do, because Jamie and Georgie’s vacation are a sacred, husband-free tradition - he’ll be able to kiss him right there in the arrivals hall, and he’ll probably also finally get to throw that lush fucking wedding they’ve both been wanting, and do a billion other things with his husband in public he can’t even think off right now.

The weird thing is that even now that it’s no longer a distant glimmer on the horizon, he hasn’t suddenly become worried about it, only in the way he’s always a little worried about Jamie. The prick’s so enthusiastic about all of the possibilities - traveling and going to uni and finally going public with Roy and learning to bake properly and getting to eat it all and doing graffiti and charity work and whatever else catches his fancy on any given particular day - that as much as Roy knows it’ll be an adjustment for him, he’s also pretty sure that his husband won’t fall into the kind of depression Roy fell into once he retired.

His husband.

Roy’s finger rubs along the tattoo above his knuckle again.

He’s only said goodbye to Jamie seventeen days and four hours ago, and he has not counted the minutes because that’d be dead fucking pathetic, and he’ll see him again in three weeks, two days, 17 hours and twenty-two minutes, for Sam and Simi’s wedding. It promises to be a ridiculously gorgeous affair that’ll rip his heart straight out of his chest. It’s been like this every time, at Colin and Michael’s wedding and Rebecca and Mathjis’ and even Beard and Jane’s, though at that last one, he’d been a little preoccupied by what Jane’s tantrum about some bullshit meant for Beard’s marriage to her, which had luckily been rather short anyway. At least they won’t have to keep their distance like they did for Rebecca and Mathjis’ wedding. Sam and Simi have enough brains not to invite anyone who’d snap a picture of Roy Kent dancing with Jamie Tartt or crying silently during the ceremony with his head leaned against Jamie’s shoulder and sell it to some tabloid, thank fuck.

“I can’t wait for you to come home then,” he tells Jamie, and the smile on his husband’s face makes a part of him ache and another glow with love. “I miss you.”

“I miss you, too. And I love you.”

+++++++++

They exchange a silent glance across the press room, checking in with each other one last time. Roy nods almost imperceptibly, letting Jamie know he’s sure. Then Jamie says “ - and of course, finally get back into dating, see if I can find a man or woman or nonbinary babe to spend my life with,” answering the question of what he’ll do now that he’s retired.

The journos erupt into frantic shouted questions.

It’s what he’d expected when he’d decided to come out at his retirement press conference. And it’s not like he’s new at this, he’s done a few explosive pressers throughout his life. It’s still a lot.

Under the table, he runs the thumb and second finger of his right hand around the tattoo on the fourth finger of his left hand. It eases the nerves a little, the way it always does.

There’s been a few things to be nervous about with this. For one, the press reaction. He’s not the first UK footie player to come out - that honour belongs to Colin, of course - but there are few who are as high status as he is. Or was, because from this day forward, he’s officially no longer a football player, just a living legend. Which is fucking mint as well as dead sad.

There’s also his fucking father. He hasn’t actually heard from that human ballsack in almost ten years, and he’s only thought about reaching out once, back when Richmond played Man City during Ted’s last season as gaffer, a roiling knot of fear and anxiety and stress in the pit of his stomach. When he’d told Roy, he’d only needed to take one look at his then-boyfriend’s, now-husband’s face to know what he thought of it even as he told Jamie that it was his decision and he’d support Jamie either way but that he wouldn’t do it. And then Jamie had fucked his ankle and all thoughts of his father had left his head.

But James Tartt Sr. had reached out to Jamie in a letter sent from rehab a couple months later. Jamie’d gone to see him, Roy waiting outside in the car because ‘recovery home or not, Jamie, I want to fucking kill that man,’ until Jamie stormed out when he’d realised that James Tartt Sr. seriously thought he'd had a hand in Jamie’s success, claiming he’d made Jamie tough when all he’d done was make Jamie bitter and cruel. Two years later, his old man had fallen off the wagon and drunkenly shown up at Jamie’s old house only to be arrested there when he got so rowdy at Jamie not opening the door because he wasn’t there in the first place that the neighbours called it in. Jamie’d refused to show up at the police station.

He knows the piece of shit hasn’t kicked the bucket yet based on the letters that arrive in irregular intervals, always sent from some sober home or rehab facility or other. The last one came just four months ago and went straight into the rubbish bin. Most of the time, Jamie doesn’t think about it, doesn’t fear James Tartt Sr. anymore. Still, during the prep for this, bits of the fear came back. What if this was the one thing that finally meant he’d have to deal with him again?

But then he’d looked at Roy and known it would be fine. They’d handle it.

In ten day’s time, when the waves of his coming out have settled, he’ll take his husband for a proper date in London, without having to worry about NDA’s or booking entire restaurants or rooftop bars. He’ll probably take Roy to the V&A. They’ll get to touch and flirt and even snog in public, someone will take a pic, and then, in a couple more weeks, they’ll publish a statement making their relationship official.

It’s not quite how either one of them wanted to do it, truth be told. He’d just wanted to grab Roy on the field when they won their final game and the league, snog him properly, cameras and fans be damned. But they’d decided against it, not wanting that to be the thing that dominated the press about their final league win together. So they’re doing it the responsible, boring way, Jamie coming out in his retirement presser and then getting papped together on a date with his husband as if they haven’t been married for five years, in a relationship for eleven.

Plus, there’s also Mummy and Simon and Phoebe and, to a lesser degree, Tes, to worry about. Not what they’ll say about it but how all of it will affect them. The press would’ve been rabid if they’d kissed on the pitch the way Colin and Michael did all those years ago, not to mention the fans. And it would've affected them way more than it will this way.

Phoebe’s the one he worries about most, though she probably doesn’t need it, ferocious little firecracker that she is. If any paps managed to sniff her out in St. Andrews, where she’s doing her marine biology degree at, they’d probably find their camera at the bottom of the ocean quicker than they’d like, and then there’d been that time she’d broken a guy’s nose for harassing her at a club. Mummy’s a close second, though she has more than enough experience handling paps or fans and a quick tongue.

Roy grins at him quickly from his spot next to the door to the press room, a wicked glint in his eyes, and when one of the reporters - he might be with the Mirror - shouts out “So what’s your type of man then, Jamie?” and Roy nods slightly, Jamie knows exactly what it means.

He leans forward and says “Oh, you know - tall, dark and fit, maybe a bit older - a footballer, though retired and coaching now would be more than fine, too.” At that, his eyes very obviously wander over to Roy, who he shoots a flirty smile . “He’s got to be passionate, funny, a little bossy, maybe - and yeah, well fit, you know?”

“You little shit,” Roy growls into his ear as he crowds Jamie against the closed door of their home later that night. “Tall, dark and fit?”

Jamie pulls him closer by the belt loops of his jeans and kisses along his jaw. “You were flattered, you grumpy old dick.”

Roy grunts affirmatively and bares his neck for Jamie to kiss along. “You’re lucky we’re already dating - ”

“Ohh, am I?”

“‘cause if that had been how you’d asked me out the first time, I would’ve said no.”

Jamie stops kissing Roy’s neck and grins at him instead. “Lucky I got you to marry me then,” he says before leaning in for another kiss, soft and slow and sweet.