Chapter Text
I
Roy Kent’s career ended in a tangle of legs as Jamie fucking Tartt went sprawling on the pitch in front of him.
His career ended in a burst of agony, some of it even physical.
The tackle was clean – Tartt’s ankle only hooked around his as he wildly tried to recover his footing after having his focus broken and his momentum fucked. But Roy knew the moment his left knee folded under him, the moment he felt the impact, the pain momentarily compartmentalized while his attention stayed fixed on the play, on the match, on the win, just the same way he’d played hurt time and again over the years and ignored physios who warned this day would come, that the day was finally here.
He’d give the game his all, and he’d just given the game his last.
The crowd revived the old chant he’d not heard since the season before he left Chelsea.
Roy didn’t give the little prick the satisfaction of acknowledging him as he clapped his thanks and walked off for the last time.
~
There was a stretch of Jamie’s childhood that, casting back, felt like a blink and forever, between his mother signing him up to play for his first team and City scouts coming ‘round. His whole childhood he’d lived in the same house, but those years it felt like he’d lived just outside, hours of keepie-uppie and bouncing the ball off the no ball games sign across the alley as an easy target. Bit ironic, that.
He didn’t expect anyone home so early on a Monday, not yet noon after an early wakeup in their London hotel. But he stayed there leaning against the brick wall, scuffing his trainers against the asphalt, hands jammed in his pockets, gnawing his lip raw and working up the courage.
She’d talked him around on the loan, mummy. It weren’t City, he’d never lived outside Manchester, had only been to London for matches and a couple weekend visits when he were a lad, but it would be good, she convinced him. Chance to sort out who he was, what he wanted, without dad always getting in the way.
But freedom from his dad also came with freedom from Pep’s strict way of things, and at least Jamie wasn’t too proud looking back to recognize how quickly he knew he was turning into a right cunt by the way he’d stopped going home, calling home, texting at all.
There was a sick moment of dread while he fingered the key in his pocket, convinced himself mummy and Simon had changed the locks, moved house altogether, decided they were better off without him same as Richmond had done, same as Lasso. But it slid right in, because of course it did, and Jamie threw a mocking wave at old Miss Viv next door glaring out her window at him before stepping inside and closing the door.
It looked the same as the summer before, smelled the same as it always had, and Jamie didn’t know it was possible until then to feel like a stranger in his own life.
He kicked off his trainers and eyed the stairs, decided against, and then fucked it anyway by collapsing on the sofa and putting on Sky Sports for end-of-season wrap-up, which should have been mostly about Liverpool pulling out the win for the first time in thirty years. But the pundit world had decided before Richmond put out so much as a statement that a legend had played his last match, and the telly was on all of about a minute before he heard the name Kent and another before he was watching, back-to-back, his own mid-match dustup with Roy and then Roy’s perfect, final, furious tackle.
It dawned with startling clarity that Roy had written Jamie’s legacy in that tackle. It didn’t matter if the knee weren’t as bad as it looked, if Roy laced up his boots again next season to mostly sit second string. Jamie Tartt was and would always be the little prick who’d been worth ending it for, in a match Roy didn’t even fucking win.
He switched off the telly, tossed the remote across the coffee table, pulled his feet up and rolled over, arms wrapped around his middle, eyes closed, face buried in the leather sofa back.
Awareness settled in slow and sluggish, the heavy warmth of a blanket draped over him and the scent of baking cookies competing with the leather sticking to his cheek. He unpeeled his face and flopped over with a rough grunt, and pressed a hand over his face at the sound of slow footsteps. “Sorry,” he muttered, not really sure what he was apologizing for. “S’just – shit, Simon.”
They’d won the match and finished the league in second place, which was the definition of not shit by anyone’s standard except maybe his dad.
“I know, lad.” He meant it, too, was the worst part, worse than the clink of the cuppa being set down and the hand passing gently through his hair. “Georgie’ll be home soon.” Jamie nodded, eyes burning and throat tight, and waited for Simon to retreat to the kitchen at the sound of his phone chiming before forcing himself up to sitting.
The tea was just on this side of too hot and he drank it too fast, grimaced, and dragged himself upstairs at last. Mummy found him sitting on the edge of his bed, shoulders hunched under the weight of Roy Kent’s glower. She sat by his side and drew him into her arms like no time had passed at all, like he hadn’t buried himself in bullshit to drown out the shame, like he were a little lad pouting over a nasty scrape.
“We won,” he mumbled, no pride in it, no nothing except maybe some confusion that this is what winning felt like.
Into his hair, she whispered, “I saw,” in a tone that said clear enough she meant she’d seen it all, every ugly, ugly step of the way. “You got a little lost, baby. We all do, from time to time. You’ll find your way.” Jamie shrugged dully and tightened his hold, wished he were a little lad with a nasty scrape. “Should we take it down?”
It was hard to say if he felt like he owed it to Roy somehow, the miserable git, to keep it up there glaring at him, judging him, or if he owed it to his own sexy younger self not to let the fact of playing with the git to ruin the fantasy of it.
“Oi,” mummy nudged him. He sat up a bit and followed her gaze from the one poster to the other, watched the teasing little grin pull up her lips. “How ‘bout her?”
Jamie laughed. It was small, soft, a little raw, but he did manage a laugh even as he shook his head.
The break was too short. Pep gave him good minutes in the pre-season friendlies, which should have been great, but only offered a preview of what the whole fucking season would be like and in matches that actually mattered. If he weren’t playing wrong, according to his dad, he was sitting on the bench wrong, like Pep would’ve subbed him in if only his shoulders were a little bit straighter, if he looked more fucking serious instead of thumping his teammates on the back when City scored.
He arrived at training one morning to find Roy Kent’s retirement conference playing quietly on the corner telly, the dressing room at a low murmured quiet out of respect for a legend, a legend they’d faced for his last match after two decades in the Prem.
The conference weren’t why, and not the awkward sideways glances thrown his way. Just the final straw that broke him down while he was already staggering under the pressure of his dad’s bullshit. But he could see the season stretching out before him and it was already a fucking misery, and he’d known it were surely coming, but he was Roy Kent, English football without Roy Kent somewhere on the pitch –
What was the fucking point?
~
Most people in Roy Kent’s shoes – proverbially speaking, he hadn’t left Keeley’s house in two days and was just fine in his hedgehog socks Phoebe picked out for his last birthday – would have delighted at the news, delighted at whatever misfortune happening behind the scenes had led to a decision so unfathomably shortsighted.
Fair play. Schadenfreude. Comeuppance for the little prick.
Roy was not most people.
From the moment he saw the blurb about Jamie Tartt stepping out on his Man City contract, he was searching the news furiously for any further details beyond the absolute fuck-all he’d already read. No indication he’d been injured, no hint of an unrefusable offer from another club. Tartt was just known enough after the theatrical ending to the season prior to make the newsflash, had even started a couple pre-season friendlies while Pep sorted his roster after summer hols, without being enough of a name to merit a demand for answers.
And Roy wanted some fucking answers.
“Oy,” Keeley prompted from a safe distance after she was home and changed, pouring a glass of wine and watching him chop dinner veg with more passion than he’d summoned for anything since his fucking press conference. “Does the onion know what it did?”
So he put down the knife and pulled out his phone and showed her. Watched the corners of her lips turn down and the little crease between her brows furrow deeper. “What’s that fucking look?”
His tone was more prickish than he meant and her glare was well-earned. “You’re in here about to lop off a finger and I can’t be worried, too?”
“I’m not fucking worried about the little pr –”
“Then what’s your fucking problem, Roy?”
He picked up the knife again and swapped the onion for a potato. “When you’ve got a fucking foot like his,” he grunted, chop, chop, chop, “you don’t just get to fucking… decide not to play.”
It was a dick thing to say, he knew on some kind of level. Knew by Keeley’s silence dragging on a bit too long, the words hanging heavy in the air between them.
Knew when her tone was more sympathetic than judgmental when she finally said, “I know you believe that,” and took her wine and wandered off to the other room.
He blew his knee out bringing down the little prick. Least Tartt could do was have the goddamn decency to make a worthwhile career. If he was going to be some has-been called Roy, he’d at least like to say he went out tackling a legend, not just some punk pre-Madonna who pitched a strop three months later and vanished from the game.
Roy finally got his schadenfreude three months after that when Tartt un-fucked his priorities but found himself dumped by City, forced to come crawling back to Richmond. A touch of humility could go a long way, and considering the enduring draw-streak, Tartt would certainly help them finally win a fucking match.
Except he woke up two mornings later, still coming down off the high of stepping a toe back around the game, the high of several rounds of celebration with Keeley late into the night, to find her sitting at the table with her legs drawn up, chewing on her bottom lip, looking a bit stunned and not in a good way. “Oi. What’s the matter?”
She slid her phone across and climbed to her feet to go start the kettle. There was a message from Tartt, first one since May when he’d come over before the City match.
hey Keels. thanks for the talk. sorry for the stalking. Ted said no but he were nice about it anyway. see you around yeah?
Roy stared at it, looked at Keeley clearly trying to hide how upset it had her, and stared back down at the message some more. “Well that’s fucking… stupid.”
“You don’t even like Jamie.”
“I like Richmond.”
“Yes, I can tell by the way you literally run away any time someone from the club gets close enough they might say hello.”
Roy put down her phone and followed after her, hovered over her with her back against the counter. “Run away?” he repeated. “This knee? The fucking state of it?” A smile broke through her brooding and she looped her arms around his neck, pulled him down for a quick kiss. “Hobbling at a quick clip, at best.”
II
Roy wasn’t expecting his return to Richmond to play out like a fucking fairy tale, but he wasn’t expecting the goddamn tragedy of it, either. It wasn’t the team – they were holding their own, what with Isaac sorting himself out, they won four straight after a draw with Sheffield Wednesday.
But Tartt was virtually unrecognizable as a player. Watching from the pundit’s desk there was an awkwardness to Tartt’s presence on the pitch, a player who wasn’t quite sure where he was supposed to be, but a player who did help nudge Richmond out of her draw streak.
Watching in person, in training, in the dressing room, realizing Tartt wasn’t even struggling to fit in after crawling back, realizing he wasn’t just overcorrecting in matches for fear of Ted changing his mind again, but that he was just – like this now, in training or in matches, on or off the pitch. Cautious and fidgety and more desperate for approval than desperate to show off and it should have been a fucking… relief.
Instead, Roy yielded to the call of coaching and, in the form of Jamie fucking Tartt, came instantly face-to-face with Ted’s most glaring shortcomings as gaffer. What the fuck was he supposed to say to that? You fucked him up, bring back the little prick?
Fuck that. They won the next four, which Roy attributed to Isaac getting out of his head and Isaac attributed to the Roy Kent Effect, fucking hell, and absolutely no one attributed to Jamie Tartt’s dully average style of play.
What a fucking waste.
Trust the little prick to force the issue. His mechanics weren’t the problem, so Roy just took to ignoring him entirely. Coaching around him. He couldn’t get in his fucking face and tell him to take some fucking initiative and score a fucking goal when Ted showered him with encouragement every time he made a pass without enough space to a teammate with a trickier shot on goal.
Or, the moments that really pissed Roy off – the moments he could imagine that blessed fucking foot making a shot that ought have been impossible for any but the best strikers, only to have the anticipation ruined by a cautious pass instead.
Trust the little prick to force the issue.
Roy hadn’t been lying when he walked off the Soccer Saturday set, it wasn’t where he was meant to be, not really. He hadn’t been lying to Keeley, either, it had been nice being back around the game as a pundit. But he missed the pitch. What he really missed was two good knees and playing, but he could grudgingly admit to himself that moving from Chelsea to Richmond hadn’t bought him all that much time as a consistent asset in a match.
Introducing Isaac to his tried-and-true unfuck-it strategy, seeing it work, felt good. Bringing some much-needed perspective on the actual mechanics of the fucking game while the team racked up four consecutive wins wasn’t terrible for his ego.
Watching Tartt climb to his feet with Sam’s helping hand and then get right back in Barnett’s face like the prick he was deep down, Roy visualized the whole performance from the goading to the tackle to the kick, saw it, felt it, fucking tasted it while Nate scoffed and Beard voiced his doubts. We need you to score more goals, Roy chastised him, and Tartt was clearly keen to deliver.
Watching the ball actually slip in just under the top post and bury itself in the back of the net was so satisfying he might’ve kicked the damn thing himself.
Of course, sharing any of that satisfaction with Tartt was out of the bloody question.
It took a little while to herd everyone out of the dressing room as the initial celebration wound down and the team showered and changed. They’d go out and celebrate, a Cup win over Tottenham of course they’d go out and fucking celebrate, but Ted’s disappearance and Beard’s inability to conjure any easy answers left the team lingering, wondering if they ought to be concerned more than necessarily concerned already.
When Roy finally made it out to the carpark, he probably shouldn’t have been surprised to find Tartt hanging around waiting for him, something almost hopeful in his fucking voice, the pathetic prick. “Big man Roy Kent,” he tried again.
“No,” Roy reminded him, not bothering to pause or turn to acknowledge him at all where he leaned against the wall by the door. The scamper of feet against the asphalt following in his wake made him roll his eyes all the way to his car and tossing his bag in the passenger seat. “Fuck off. Go celebrate.”
“You celebrating?”
Of course he was. At home. At Keeley’s home. With Keeley. “None of your fucking business.” He slammed the door and Tartt was there, all eager and earnest and utterly unable to find himself a fucking clue. “The fuck you want?”
“C’mon, man,” Tartt whinged. “You’re really not gonna tell me what you thought of the goal?”
Jesus. “You scored, we won, stop being a prick.”
“How’m I being a prick?” he exclaimed.
A growl started forming low in Roy’s throat. He only had a few centimeters on Tartt, so he hovered right up close to make full effect of it, glaring into his eyes and enjoying the hope there starting to shift towards nerves. “I’m only going to say this once, so listen good – I’m not going to kiss your arse just because you finally stopped wasting your fucking potential.”
Tartt’s expression shuttered off and he pivoted away. Roy snagged him by the elbow before he could wander off.
“What you did today wasn’t remarkable, it was just the universe correcting itself after the fucking stunt you pulled on City. And if you keep it up, after a season or two, maybe you won’t be introduced on every fucking match broadcast as the prodigy who nearly pissed it all away to go get his dick sucked on telly. And if you’re really lucky,” he added, watching Tartt’s jaw twitch, watching his face contort with the taste of something bitter, “one day, that little detour will just be an amusing bit of trivia on a legendary career, instead of the thing that fucking defines a wasted one, yeah?”
He let go of Tartt’s elbow, slapped his shoulder, offered a bright, “Cheers,” and ducked around him to be on his way.
~
“M’sorry.” He didn’t know how many times he’d said it, muffled in Roy’s collar, but he did know it wasn’t the first. Maybe it wasn’t loud enough, or clear enough, face buried in Roy’s jacket as it was, but the trouble with being bound up in Roy Kent’s arms was that eventually the hug would have to end and Jamie dreaded what would happen then. “Sorry. M’sorry, I don’t –”
“No,” he felt Roy rumble more than he quite heard him speak. No, the fuck was Jamie supposed to do with no, it was Roy’s favorite word right after fuck. The hand pressed between his shoulder blades shifted without quite lifting away and the sense of careful bodies maneuvering around them made him want to crawl under the bench and refuse to come out until they left and left him behind.
Roy wouldn’t fucking stop hugging him. Jamie couldn’t fucking stop crying into the damp shoulder under his disgusting, sweaty face, so they were just going to stand here forever apparently because the only thing worse than clinging to Roy Kent like a baby was letting go and being forced to take a look around and see the team looking back.
Somewhere around the time Roy Kent was making his Premier League debut, Jamie’s dad was fucking off out for a drink after a row, and his mum told him not to bother coming back and for once in his useless life he’d listened.
Jamie didn’t remember any of that. Any memory of his dad being around when he were little was just senses, feelings, echoes, loud laughter and clinking bottles and a scratchy beard.
He did remember the first time he saw Roy Kent play on the telly. It was just before his seventh birthday, his mum had just signed him up for his first football team at the start of term, and he asked her to put on the City match every weekend like a proper respectable Manchester lad. City won that match in what would turn out to be Chelsea’s only League defeat all season. He cheered City on, ‘course he did, but even then, knowing fuck-all about footie, not really, he loved watching Chelsea play, the way they played together, they way they didn’t fucking quit.
City squeaked out the win, one-nil, and Jamie pumped his little fist in celebration; that night come bedtime, he was still humming Roy Kent’s chant like a lullaby while mummy tucked him in.
The poster came later. After his dad turned up not long after the City scouts came calling, after all of mummy’s worst fears about the Academy sucking all the fun out of the game had nothing on what his dad did to it. Everything changed in the blink of an eye and playing footie went from feeling like flying to fighting from drowning.
Roy Kent was a legend. Jamie liked watching him play as much as any good City fan could admit. Chelsea won the FA Cup when Jamie was nine and then again when he was eleven and twelve, which was the same year they claimed the League again after a run from the cunts at United. The way Roy Kent played every match like he were fucking furious, it was like he bottled it up, week-to-week, let it all explode on the pitch.
So Jamie put his poster on his wall and thought about Roy Kent whenever his dad were laying into him, imagined tucking away all the frustration and humiliation and, when he’d admit it to himself, fear, shutting them away in a box in his head and open it up on the pitch and let it all out.
And if, after his dad cuffed him upside the head after an upset loss with the U14s and all the other lads and parents and coaches looked awkwardly away and no one said nothing but the color rising in their faces said plenty – if he let himself imagine, just once, raging Roy Kent laying out his dad, well – that was between him and the poster looking over him while he slept.
The fact of finding Roy Kent in the same room as his father, in the end, were nothing like the fantasy of it. Jamie had to lay the miserable old prick out himself, and Beard had to haul him out while terror crashed over Jamie, froze him to the spot as he realized what he’d done, and Roy Kent, big man Roy Kent, fucking furious Roy Kent –
He just fucking hugged him. “Fuck,” Jamie muttered into the damp jacket under his face. “Sorry, fuck – fuck,” he wrenched away, turned, broke the hold around him and wiped furiously at his cheeks.
“Jamie.”
He wanted to hit his dad again. He wanted to hit Roy for reasons he couldn’t even understand, or just didn’t want to admit. He settled for cocking his arm back and aiming for the head of the fucking greyhound logo on the wall which was all kinds of fucked up after what happened to poor Earl, but a hand caught his elbow before he could follow through, don’t turn your back on me you pussy, and he pivoted and howled, swinging wildly and wide before arms wrapped tight around his shoulders, pinning him, and Roy put his whole weight into dragging Jamie’s uncooperative body down onto the seat below his number 9.
“That’s not gonna help,” rumbled close by his ear.
“Fuck off,” Jamie bit, chest heaving. “Let go o’me.”
“You gonna hurt yourself?”
“Fuck you, Roy, let me go.”
He kept his blurry stare fixed to the floor, so he didn’t know who the approaching footsteps belonged to until he heard Isaac’s voice, “Showers, bruv,” and Roy apparently decided Isaac was an acceptable new babysitter because he let him go so suddenly Jamie almost toppled to the floor with the momentum of trying to break free.
Through the back of the room and around the corner, everyone avoided his eyes as he and Isaac walked in, but that weren’t so odd in the showers. Jamie stripped off with stiff arms, numb fingers, and didn’t bother to wait for the water to warm up, just stood under the shower head at the end and turned the knob.
Overtop the sound of water pattering around the tiles at his feet, all around the room – Wembley had great water pressure – he could finally hear the distant clatter of something flying or toppling over and Roy’s roared, “Fuck!” out in the dressing room.
~
When Roy filed onto the coach behind Will, the team was all onboard and the atmosphere was fucking tense. Isaac was sitting midway back with a fucking say something glower on his face, Tartt at his side with his forehead pressed against the cool window. Ted and Beard were nowhere to be seen. Nate, in the back, was furiously tapping up notes in his phone and when Roy sidled in across from him he started right in.
“I was thinking, if we move Goodman over to –”
“Are you fucking joking?” Roy asked mildly.
“We’ve just had our arses handed to us,” Nate pointed out, like that wasn’t just the cherry on top of the whole fucking shitshow of a sundae. “Match doesn’t stop for a panic attack and our jobs don’t stop for,” he peered up, the aisle, eyes narrowed, “anyone’s personal bullshit, either.”
Some days lately, Roy had to stop and remind himself where they’d all started, him and Jamie, Isaac, Colin, Nate, and try to make some kind of sense of where they all were now. “Nate?”
“Yeah?”
“We got our arses handed to us in a Cup match by a team that’s literally out of our league. It’s not a fucking shock. I don’t want to hear a fucking word about it before film review. Fuck.”
Nate huffed and turned away. Whatever.
Ted finally showed up, and Roy was looking forward to yielding the role of concerned coach over to him, let him swap places with Isaac, dispense some folksy wisdom for the ride home, sort out if anything needing doing tonight.
Except Ted shuffled back looking somehow more a mess than Tartt, all red eyes and tight smiles and stiff nods and guilty relief when Jamie didn’t so much as turn his way as he passed.
It was the most uncomfortable half hour coach ride of Roy’s entire life.
Roy went back to his that night after sending Keeley a vague non-answer to her text, did something happen after the match?, and not long after received Isaac’s confirmation that Tartt had made it home with some takeaway after declining the offer to play FIFA at Colin’s.
He grabbed himself a beer and pulled up last month’s Tottenham match, watched Jamie sink that magnificent shot again and again and again, the shot he’d watched and felt like he’d taken it himself, the shot that told him in no uncertain terms that he was pointed in the right direction with the coaching gig, that he wasn’t done on the pitch just yet.
He watched the kick again and again and again and each time it hit the net was like being sucker punched in the gut, remembering how it felt and wondering why he couldn’t bring himself to just fucking tell Tartt good job after the fact.
Another beer and then another before he lost hold of his resolve to not make tonight about his shit, turned off the telly, pulled out his phone and scrolled through the contacts.
I’m sorry, he sent.
Three dots appeared in an instant, and just a few seconds later a little bubble: Fuck you.
Fair play. But after a few minutes sitting in the dark trying to summon the energy to drag his sorry arse upstairs, his phone buzzed on the sofa by his side.
Sorry, Jamie sent, which was frustrating enough to pull Roy to his feet with a tired groan, and when he glanced at his phone one last time after brushing his teeth, tugging off his coaching kit, he’d followed it up with: Thank you.
But once the first niggling doubt had crept into his mind, he spent the rest of the season trying to keep his head above water. He’d mostly been a shit captain for Richmond – he knew that already. But that was nothing on being a shit coach who let his personal shit get in the way of the job, he was a shit boyfriend who couldn’t take a fucking hint, he was a shit friend who couldn’t find it in himself to be appropriately philosophical at a funeral, he was a shit model with psychotic eyebrows who just wasted everyone’s time getting in the way at Keeley’s shoot, he was… no, not married, nothing else, no explanation, when Phoebe’s teacher was most certainly flirting with him now that she was done telling him what a shit uncle he was for swearing all the fucking time.
He was someone now who would apparently fucking forgive Jamie Tartt, the little prick, for the shit he pulled at the funeral with Keeley.
And Jamie Tartt was now someone who would hand off a make-or-break penalty to a teammate who needed it more.
The team celebrated the Brentford draw and subsequent promotion like they’d won the World Cup.
And as the reality set in – they’d done it, they’d redeemed themselves, got promoted back on their first go – Roy waded into the cheering mass feeling like he’d touched a toe back on solid ground. Feeling echoes of his old self again.
So he headbutted Jamie – principle of the thing – before tugging him into a second go at a hug. The stiff uncertainty in his shoulders was familiar; the cautious hope in his eyes was new, and Roy took him by the arms and celebrated with all the enthusiasm he regretted denying him from the first Roy came back.
Flying high, even with Nate’s disappearing act putting a damper on Ted’s mood while the team made a chaotic effort at getting changed and making plans, Roy left a message with his travel agent before driving home to see what magic she might work last-minute.
III
Best was a vague, fluid concept on the pitch. Best scorer meant fuck-all without teammates who could reliably move the ball down the pitch and get it to the striker. Roy’s career had been forged in the midfield, not on goal. Knowing the pitch, knowing his team, taking every minute their opponents possessed the ball like a personal fucking insult and busting his arse to fix it, turn them around, get them going the right way again.
He was fast, he was angry, he never fucking quit, even when he should have paused or slowed down at least and listened to his fucking body, he didn’t stop, even when best became more and more the business of younger men no matter how you measured it.
It had shocked the team at Chelsea, the decision he’d made several weeks earlier the moment the whistle blew on a 3-0 win over Arsenal. To Roy, it was the most logical thing in the world. Step aside, make way for the rising stars, slow down with a smaller club where he could maybe even stroke his own ego a little longer while he considered the size and shape of best. Nearly two decades’ worth of wisdom from the Prem to dispense, a seasoned captain who could steer a shaky ship to stabler ground, let his stamina carry him where speed had long started to slip away.
All of it was bullshit in the end, of course. His knee didn’t give a fuck if he was overworking it on the grass at Nelson Road instead of Stamford Bridge. He hurt all the time, one kind of way at first and then another taking more bitter root somewhere untouchable at the core of him.
It shocked Keeley, too, as the break wound down and Nate took up with West Ham and the pundits started taking the piss. Richmond’s triumph would be short-lived while Keeley’s career was ascendant. They would become the embarrassing client she kept on for pity’s sake and one day, she’d wonder why a has-been old man was still following her home and struggling to even make it up the stairs to bed half the time.
It shocked Keeley, but some part of Roy had known as soon as the embarrassment finished sinking in, realizing that he was too fucking thick to get it, to get where she was going in a career he’d never much understood in the first place, to get that she couldn’t take her job on fucking holiday just because he finally had one he could enjoy.
One day, she’d realize that the pretty boy rising star with his fucking brand who still fucking loved her was and had always been the obvious choice.
He could deal with leaving behind a legendary career at Chelsea; but he knew himself enough to know he couldn’t handle the humiliation of dragging things out until he got kicked to the kerb.
Bringing Zava onboard was, Roy was forced to concede by the end, something like the whole experience he’d lamented with Keeley over their combined two million one-night stands.
The fucking… satisfaction. Pulling a superstar everyone else wanted. That win against every last one of their competition and all the fucking pundits who’d already written them off in between gorging themselves on their meringues. The adrenaline kick of quite literally winning, between Zava’s skill and the way just having him on the field was fucking mind game enough for most the teams they faced.
But George bloody Cartrick wasn’t wrong. It was fucking… empty. There was no real purpose in it, none of them were coaching, they were writing Zava on the sheet and letting the lads’ hero worship do the rest.
Except Jamie. Fragile little bitch Jamie, except the longer it went on, Roy had a harder time finding the line between Jamie’s bruised ego and Zava’s, and it took entirely too long, amidst waiting with his teeth gritted, on edge all the fucking time, for Jamie to make his move with Keeley and it never fucking happening, for it to occur to Roy that he might’ve fucked this one where Jamie’s concerned, too.
It wasn’t so obvious as the Tottenham shitshow. Wasn’t to his face, he wasn’t spitting vitriol and hearing the same sentiments echoed some weeks later from the mouth of the kid’s own father, for fuck’s sake. But Richmond climbed the table and the dressing room became an unrecognizable cult around one man, and the deeply uncomfortable fact of it dawned, eventually, that Jamie’s subdued and avoidant state was less a symptom of his own pride as his coaches’ hypocrisy.
All the work he’d put in to change, to balance skill and ego and cooperation, and watching Zava steal that goal out from under Jamie all Roy could think was how much it seemed like a thing Jamie of old would have done. It occurred to him that he’d never asked Ted why he’d initially turned Jamie down and why the turnaround so quickly thereafter.
“I want to be better than him,” Jamie sulked at Ola’s, and that –
That was something Roy could reach for, seize on, anchor himself in the turbulent sea of bullshit that had been figuring out just who that fuck even is Roy Kent if he’s not playing the game.
Deep down, he supposed he’d known since Tottenham last season that the answer spun somewhere in the orbit of Jamie fucking Tartt.
“I could train you,” he offered.
~
One-on-one training with Roy fucking Kent. That place that’d been thawing out somewhere inside of him, that place that first tingled all warm and low and satisfying the first time a coach watched him dribble a ball through a row of cones and stammered That was… really something, Jamie, and Jamie’d beamed and hollered Thanks! and run to the back of the line with his mates to keep yammering on about Spiderman or Transformers or summat – that place was feeling all soft and gooey for the first time since Zava set foot in the dressing room.
He didn’t think he were fucking serious about the 4 a.m. bit though. Fucking hell.
(The place inside of him that had, in that chaotic mess of his Academy teen years, discovered a different sort of warm and tingly quite specifically where Roy Kent was concerned, had cooled off quite effectually once Jamie actually met the miserable old bastard, but he respected how chuffed sexy young Jamie would be to know that one day Roy Kent would be at his doorstep every damn day.)
(At 4 fucking a.m.)
(Fuck’s sake.)
Zava was still Zava, the dressing room was still a bloody nightmare, training was a joke. But those things mattered… less. When he was coming in already loose from his morning workout and left at the end of the day to go hydrate and stretch for the evening one. When he could maybe look at today’s bullshit as a sort of… boiling time.
“A fucking what?” Roy demanded while they jogged ‘round the Green.
“Ya know, like – when you watch the pot on the hob, yeah, and it don’t look like it’s doing nothing and it takes for-fucking-ever but you can’t not do it.”
“Is this like the frog thing?”
Jamie cast a skeptical sideways stare. “The fuck goes on in your kitchen, mate?”
Point was, You thought I was the best? pulled Jamie out of bed at 3:45 a.m. daily and kept him going through the aches and the pukes and the list of things he were allowed to eat that Roy tacked on his fridge and his sharp Ha at Jamie’s confused, “Well where’s the rest of it?”
Across nearly two decades now, which were fucking crazy to think about, Jamie’d had more people interested in his progress and performance on the pitch than he could possibly remember. Coaches and teammates, scouts, physios and nutritionists, teachers at the stupid posh school partnered with the Academy who snapped at him to stop wrinkling up his uniform and waved shit grades in his face while saying, Keep this up and they won’t let you play.
But all of that were scheduled. Structured. Part of a team, a class, a long line of appointments of which Jamie was just one of many.
The only other person who’d ever banged on Jamie’s door at off-hours with a mind towards making him better – not that he knew fuck-all about how to actually do it – was his fucking dad.
He didn’t really make that connection until he stopped tensing up and glancing over nervously every time he fumbled his left foot cross or failed to beat his best sprint time, and then he didn’t really know what to do with it once he had.
When he was eight, there were a couple older girls lived ‘round the corner on the estate who played on the school team. They cut through the alley one day while Jamie was out doing keepie-uppies, watched him for a minute, and invited him to come kick the ball around the park across the big road Jamie weren’t allowed to cross without his mum.
Afterwards, in between yelling at him for wandering off and wandering off where he knew he weren’t allowed to be, Jamie’s mum promised those girls she weren’t mad at them for Jamie’s bad choices, and if they wanted to come back once he were done being grounded, maybe they could work something out.
Friends were easy with football in a way they’d never been at school. Were always lads eager to show early or stay late from practice just chatting and fucking about. Summers when he were nine, ten, eleven, he practically lived down the road at the big park, playing with those girls and their friends, collapsing in the shade with water and whatever mess of snacks they’d nicked from their homes. They’d talk about football, United and Chelsea battling out the League title while Jamie and Ally dug in their heels on City’s chances next season; school things that mostly bored Jamie but he were just happy to be there; boys when they got a little older and they weren’t even mean about laughing at the face Jamie pulled when Gemma confessed about her first kiss.
It hadn’t taken Doctor Sharon long to get down to it, why he’d left football (because he fucking hated it) and why he’d come crawling back (because he fucking loved it) and it hadn’t taken Jamie long after that to break down and pull together those two sides of him and what it were really about, in the end (his dad fucking ruined it).
So she had him sort the pieces of himself and file them away, put all those bits he’d loved once in a drawer he could open up and examine and remind himself when his dad’s voice started getting loud in his head. First boots, first match, first goal. First scout looking to talk to his mum, even if he were from United.
The teams he’d loved, win or lose, loved post-match cookouts and going out for ice cream, before his dad got it in his head he couldn’t have that anymore at the Academy where they were all competing with one another as much as against the teams they faced. That night they’d exercised the ghosts and drank Dani’s Mezcal, if he didn’t think too hard on the call that woke him up the next morning. First time the lads invited him out after he came back. Standing there with the tape across his kit feeling like part of something beyond the ninety minutes on the pitch at their backs.
First trip to Saint George’s Park, called up for the England U18s.
First time he’d seen Roy Kent play on telly and the first time he’d seen him play from the crowd and first time he’d seen him play from the sidelines when Jamie was nineteen and bumped up for a few months from the EDS to plug a hole in the City bench during Pep’s first year as gaffer.
Those girls he’d played with, made friends with, grown up with, until his dad got it in his head he should try and get back with his mum and started hanging ‘round and caught wind, lurked about and watched them fuck about with the ball and then laze about giving shit advice about their crushes and comparing shades of nail polish Abbie nicked from her sister.
He’d come home and found his dad waiting with a beer, sneering, shaking his head, “Twaddling about with a bunch o’girls, eh, son?” and that were fine, whatever. But his dad snagged his elbow as Jamie pushed past with a muttered reply, never quite sure anymore if his dad were allowed in the house one day to the next, gripped him tight and studied his fingernails done up in all different colors, scoffed and spit, “She’s raising you so fucking soft.”
By the time his birthday came ‘round that fall, his dad had cleaned his act up enough mummy let Jamie decide whether he wanted to go with him to Amsterdam or not, but that drawer had been filled and shut and locked up tight long before Jamie ever set foot into Doctor Sharon’s office.
He never expected to crack it open again with Roy of all people, after Zava left and left the team pretty fucked up.
He kissed Roy in Amsterdam. It was stupid, impulsive. Late, wound up and exhausted all at once, mind warm and relaxed while his body was shivering in the cold night air sitting on the damp grass by the river gleaming with lamplights and stars.
It was quick and fleeting, and he didn’t ask first, which was like, kissing 101 what not to do, but his brain was mush in a way that felt alright for once, like the ache after exercise instead of the ache of injury, and the asking bit didn’t really catch up with him until he was already doing it.
Roy tensed, which was impressive considering he was already a giant knot of frustration, sitting there beside the corpse of his crashed bike. So Jamie tensed and swallowed as he sat back, gaze sliding away from Roy’s furrowed brows to the hand wrapped around his elbow, tight without squeezing, holding him back without pushing him away.
“Jamie.”
“I’m sorry you’re hurting,” he mumbled down at the ground. Because Roy’s ache wasn’t the pleasant sort, his knee, his granddad, Keeley. “Just – lemme help you home, yeah?” The prospect of sitting on the rack of Jamie’s bike had put them at this chilly impasse for a while now. “I ain’t gonna drop you, Roy.”
Fingers touched his cheek, the frigid touch shocking his face up, but he wasn’t fluent in Kent eyebrows despite his best efforts.
Whatever was there, questions or arguments or warnings, all fucking three, Roy smoothed it all back with a deep breath and a gravelly rumble of, “Fucking… fine,” that came out almost gentle.
You thought I was the best? and I could train you got tucked into that drawer of good things and pulled out every time You’re better than that, Jamie! started to get too loud, or You burned a lot of bridges.
Ted got it in his head to try Total Football, which were how Jamie trained up through City from the first youth team at the Academy, but no one asked what he thought or thought he could manage it at all, apparently. So he kept his mouth shut during training, because he didn’t want to go ‘round again with Beard on irony and hypocrisy.
And maybe it were properly ironic, when they were getting murdered by Arsenal down 0-3 at the half, that when he finally heard You’re better than that! and thought back I am now and no thanks to you, when he heard You thought I was the best? and You still could be, when he cleared his throat and climbed to his feet to tell them they were all doing it wrong, he was fighting to pass more so somebody else could score.
~
After returning to London, Roy didn’t know how to process the ups and downs, the absolute fever dream that was the match and night in Amsterdam, and so he didn’t, put it in a box and slammed closed the lid with no particular plans to ever open it and reexamine those contents beyond the simple fact – they found a windmill.
Except he did go out and buy a bike, which was worth it for the way Jamie’s face lit up and even more worth it for the way his grin dropped and his brows crept up his forehead as he eyed the rope in Roy’s hands and demanded, “You wanna do what?”
The goal against Tottenham the season prior had been remarkable in the way Roy could read it in Jamie’s cocky air, the way he could see it unfold as the pieces fell into place, the way he could taste it as the ball sailed and landed true.
The goal against Arsenal staunching the bleed of an 0-3 first half thrashing was fucking breathtaking because Roy couldn’t read it at all. Tensed up with anticipation the same moment Arsenal’s keeper threw himself in the path of Jamie’s kick and was just as shocked when Richard hauled up from behind and hammered it in instead.
What he could see was Jamie’s career unfolding before him. Southgate would give him a look finally, find all that raw talent he must’ve encountered years ago with the Young Lions sharpened and shaped up in a matured team player who could be the heart of a national squad, given the chance. Richmond might hold on to him another season or two, if they were lucky, but a bigger, richer club would come calling and make Jamie an offer he couldn’t refuse, he’d go back to Manchester maybe, maybe one day step outside the Prem to Madrid, or Munich, become a global name with his brand and his hair and that fucking… tongue always hanging out of his mouth.
Roy would follow his career with that same longing he always felt to be back on the pitch and jealousy for Jamie taking the game to far greater heights than Roy ever could and pride for the part he played to help forge one of football’s greats and that complicated combination of all of it for that season where it all began, the two of them, and for how it ended.
He caught Jamie on his way out of the dressing room after they’d returned to Nelson Road and all the lads changed out of their trackies, made their plans to go out and celebrate, and fuck the fact that they actually lost. Quite literally caught him by the nape and held him there, thought about Tottenham match when all Jamie wanted was his approval and listening to his father at Wembley and hearing his fears he’d voiced to Phoebe, the worst parts of me, and it maybe hit him in his fucking… feeling… to find themselves where they were now.
His eyebrows must’ve been doing something typically psychotic because Jamie got a contrite look on his face and promised, “Just one drink with the lads, swear down.”
And Roy told him, words slow and a bit strangled in their sincerity, “You are fucking extraordinary.”
Jamie’s face lit up brighter than any London summer day could ever dream.
IV
Roy wasn’t expecting Southgate to call about the very next break for international play, and he wasn’t expecting Southgate to call him first.
He came stumbling out of his office after damn near an hour on the phone. Roy didn’t know the man, save by reputation. They’d missed one another by a matter of months after Roy’s long career as a regular visitor to Saint George’s Park.
The team was trickling back in after lunch. Roy spied Jamie wandering back in with Sam as he went to close the door, turned to Ted and Beard and said, “Southgate’s got a hole in his roster.”
“Oh no,” Ted straightened up in his chair. “Is it serious?”
Roy let out a slow breath through his nose and met Beard’s eyes instead, gone just fractionally wider in interest. “Jamie?” He grunted; Beard swiveled his chair around to peer through the window out into the dressing room. “So our little hound’s become a lion.”
“Now hold on,” Ted leaned forward on his elbows, brows tugged down, “did no one tell me we’re borrowing Jamie from someone else this time?”
Beard rubbed at his brow. Roy squinted at Ted and admitted, “I never know where the bit ends anymore.”
“Yeah, no, that’s fair,” Ted allowed. “Me neither, most the time.”
“You gonna tell him?” Ted asked while they watched scrimmages.
“Nah. He should get the call, do the thing properly.” He could feel Ted’s eyes on the side of his face so he glowered and grunted and admitted, “I might have suggested they call ‘round the time we train in the evenings.”
Ted chuckled under his breath and turned to watch the lads reset, laughing and clapping Colin about the shoulders for some play Roy missed entirely. “You’re a good coach, Roy. And a good friend.”
“Fuck off,” Roy grunted. “Whistle! Whiiiistle!”
Maybe they were friends. Much as they could be anyway, knowing Jamie was going to leave some day, leave Roy behind.
But maybe that was the part that made him a good coach. Knowing his limits, when to stop, when to let go. Coaxing forth potential until Jamie outpaced him, surpassed him, and watching him move on with pride. Needs of the team versus needs of the player, nothing lasted forever.
And maybe he could find the fucking difference between a time for shouting and a time for listening, could understand that every last one of them had their own shit going on outside the club, in their heads, in their pasts.
And maybe he was fucking… not a shit uncle, even if he’d never, ever believe Uncle’s Day was a real fucking thing.
“You seem lighter than the last time I saw you, less… stuck,” Phoebe’s teacher told him the day Jamie earned his first England cap, and he had been, she wasn’t wrong. He just never… stopped and admitted to himself that all he’d done, in his desperation to avoid infecting Keeley with his own shit, drag her down, keep her stuck right alongside him, was slam a door in her face with no real reason why.
He wasn’t expecting her to crack that door back open when he finally found the words to apologize.
~
There was a paper in a drawer somewhere Jamie figured he ought to find.
He turned the telly on, and back off again, and on again but with the sound off, slumped heavily against the arm of the sofa, and stared at the colors and pictures flashing by without quite holding on to any of them long enough to figure out what was playing, or long enough to care.
His phone chirped an alarm he’d already snoozed twice; the idea of getting up was no more appealing now than ten minutes ago, or ten before that and he could not give less of a fuck about the containers of chicken and rice and veg stacked in his fridge.
He quieted the alarm and tapped at his screen before remembering that Roy had deleted all the delivery apps off his phone months ago. Didn’t even delete them really. Took the icons off so he’d have to hunt it down in the menu. Temptation or summat.
Except nothing that wasn’t the chicken, rice, and veg stocked in his fridge sounded good enough either to be worth upsetting that quieted little place in him he had to search for, prod at, remind himself he didn’t want to let Roy down, so he settled in and resolved to worry about it again in ten more minutes.
There was a paper in a drawer somewhere, a paper Doctor Sharon gave him with names and numbers when she were leaving, but she never told him this was what winning felt like. She never told him that he wouldn’t know who he even was if he weren’t always arguing against that voice in his head about who he wasn’t.
She never told him it were like rot somewhere deep inside. That if he could get away from his dad, stop giving a fuck what he thought, stop hearing him taunt that weak little pussies don’t make it far – that if he shut him up, did it Roy’s way, Ted’s way, his own way, and made it anyway, won his first cap for fuck’s sake and on a last-minute call-up – it wouldn’t make all those good bits he had tucked away spill out and take his dad’s place, it would just leave a jagged hole somewhere at his center.
She never told him how hard it would be to push himself if he weren’t pushing back against nothing.
She never told him that if it stopped feeling like fighting from drowning, it wouldn’t go back to feeling like flying, it would just be like flopping on land finally and catching his breath and wondering what happens now.
She never told him he wouldn’t know what he wanted out of football anymore if he didn’t want to prove a fucking point.
There was a paper in a drawer somewhere.
When the alarm next chirped, Jamie toggled it off entirely, jammed his hands in the pocket of his hoodie, wriggled his way lower on his sofa, rolled over, and closed his eyes.