Chapter Text
The… fifth? sixth? time Roy’s phone rings, it finally threatens to buzz right over the edge of the nightstand, so he leans over and snatches it up and snarls, “What?”
It’s half ten and he’s still in bed, feeling the unpleasant aftershocks of a pleasant evening, or what passes for it in his circles. Head pounding, stomach roiling, nose and throat gone somehow stuffed and dry all at once, he feels like his sinuses have been packed with cotton.
“For fuck’s sake, Kent, you know how many times I called you?”
He’s still in bed, and he’s alone – a vague shadow of a memory tickles around the edges of his hangover, less a row so much as her trying to have a row and Roy simply couldn’t be fucked. Waste of a good high.
“Enough times to piss me off, the fuck you want?”
It’s half ten, he’s still in bed, and he is well within his rights to be there because, by his count – which might be a few days off one way or the other at this point, granted – he’s got a month until he has to suffer the indignity of taking phone calls from fuck all to do with Nelson Road.
“I want you to pretend to give a flying fuck that I’m your manager every once in a while, how’s that for starters?”
The laugh that barks out of him sends a jolt of pain driving deep into his brain; fucking hell, he can’t go as hard as he used to. “I’ll pretend to give a shit when you stop being a shit manager, how’s that, George?”
Cartrick unleashes a series of swears. Roy puts him on speaker while he yawns and rubs at his eyes and scratches himself. It’s empty and Cartrick knows it – Mannion about creamed himself when he finalized the sale on the Roy Kent, Roy knows damn well he can waltz into the man’s office anytime, wait for him to pull his hand out from under whichever skirt of the week has caught his eye, and tell him to get the gaffer to stop acting like a little bitch.
Eventually, Cartrick moves on from his perpetual sense of insufficient self-worth in favor of why he called – eight times, Roy glances at the log – but by then Roy’s turning his attention towards the fact that a woman’s size small jacket in some godawful combination of denim and snakeskin that’s been hanging on the back of the door is finally gone. Spare heels and spare flats vanished from the corner by the nightstand and – yep, his fucking Rolex walked away with them.
He slides open the drawer – she even remembered to grab the custom dildo and the fuck off expensive specialty lube.
He respects that, as breakup statements go.
As he’s slamming the drawer back into place – it slides a little too well on its tracks ever since he spilled a half-full bottle of massage oil in there – one word has featured enough in whatever in God’s name Cartrick’s ranting about that alarms start sounding in Roy’s already noisy head. “What about Manchester?”
Another minute of creative swearing – Roy should write some of these down, fuck knows his lagging brain will retain fuck all – and Cartrick repeats the whole thing again.
Roy laughs first, bright enough his head protests for it, like it’s a joke. “Fuck off.”
“Goddammit, Kent –”
“It’s off-season. I’m not babysitting one of Pep fucking Guardiola’s snot-nose teenage benchwarmers.”
“That snot-nose teenage benchwarmer is going to save our arses after our new striker stepped one foot in England and forgot how to fucking walk.” There’s a part here, Roy knows in some abstract corner of his mind, where he’s supposed to pretend to give a fuck. “Kid’s driving down tomorrow. Meet him at the club, give him the tour, tell him to enjoy his London summer and try not to trip over the queen’s tits in the excitement.”
It’s the off-season. Roy takes his off-season very seriously. Careful training plan, a meal plan he gives fewer and fewer fucks for every passing summer, lots of ice and rest for his shit knee, but most importantly, it's the six precious fucking weeks where he doesn’t have to give the tiniest of shits about what any of the rest of the team is up to.
“You do it,” he yawns again, and ends the call.
A text pings through ten seconds later: I’m in Cyprus, prick.
Roy groans and flops his head back into his pillow. What a fucking arsehole.
The best thing about AFC Richmond is not fucking being at AFC Richmond, but after eighteen years playing professional footie, his luck finally ran out on that one.
The next best thing, if he’s stuck being at AFC Richmond, is being at Nelson Road when there’s no one else around but the ghosts lurking in the treatment room, and Roy’s had a comfortable don’t fuck with my business and I won’t fuck with yours understanding with them since his first week with the club, when he ducked in for an ice pack and an hour later, a freak hail storm left a dent in his car.
There’s no one in the carpark when Roy pulls up, so he unlocks the side door, and the gaffer’s office, settles himself nice and comfortable with his feet propped up on the desk because fuck that old geezer, figures he shouldn’t be surprised that a City lad can’t be arsed to be on time, and closes his eyes.
He doesn’t hear the banging of the exterior door, nor the squeak of trainers on the hard floors enjoying their summer illusion of cleanliness. It’s the Mancunian drawl that snaps him out of his doze, “Sorreh I’m late, yeah, traffic on the M-forteh were –” Roy cracks a peeved eye open in time to catch the unfiltered, uncensored little oh of shock settle over the little prick’s face. “You ain’t the gaffer.” Sharp one, this lad. “Er – is Mister Mannion here?”
Roy takes his time swinging his feet back to the floor, wiping his hands over his face, before telling the wide-eyed little thing, “I imagine Mannion’s in some solicitor’s office shitting himself for the fact that this particular wife won’t just be humiliated out of sight, out of mind, out of marital assets.” He gets a blank blink; maybe City should have thought twice before loaning one of their precious prodigies to this brewing disaster. “Gaffer’s in Greece or some shit,” he tacks on in a disgruntled growl.
Kid’s got a bag slung over his shoulder; fuck knows what he thinks he’s gonna do with it. He shifts the weight, shuffles there in the doorway before finally blurting, “You’re Roy Kent.”
Roy snorts, braces himself and shoves to standing. “Good to see the academy’s still teaching the greats.” Another gawp – kid does a good impression of a fish. “This your first season with first team?”
He steps to the doorway – the kid leans back, like Roy’s cornering him and not like he’s the one blocking the damn exit. “Third,” he admits, a tinge of pinks settling high in his cheeks.
“Jesus Christ, kid.” He’s not a kid, really, just wide-eyed earnest with a schoolboy haircut. Shorter than Roy by an inch or two, but he’s got some real muscle under the eyesore of a hoodie he’s for some reason donned in the sweltering summer heat. Rich little City pricks with more money than sense. “How old are you?”
“Twenty-two,” he grumbles.
Fucking hell. At twenty-two, Roy was champing at the bit for a proper trophy with Chelsea and a year away from getting it. “Here’s a hint – no bench is better than being out there and if you’re good enough to warm Pep’s this long, you’re good enough to start in plenty of other places.”
“Why I’m here, ain’t I?”
Roy smirks; the flush deepens. The kid still hasn’t registered that Roy’s not boxing him in, he’s the one blocking the door. “That the deal is it? Season here, pay your dues, slip you into the first string next season?” A muscle twitches in the kid’s sharp jaw. He’s a good-looking thing, if you search hard enough under the bravado and past the fawning awe it’s failing to mask. “No,” Roy supposes softly. “Waste of talent – if you’re any good.”
“Alright, pops, who asked you?”
Trouble with these talent-hoarding cults, all the players they produce think the sun shines out their own arse and only realize too late they were just a useful cog in a machine of bullshit that’s done little but mold them into a perfect package of wasted potential. “I’m Roy Kent,” he reminds the sullen little shit standing in his way. “You got a name?”
The flush deepens just a little more, a swallow Roy can damn near hear, and: “Jamie Tartt.”
“Jamie Tartt?”
“…Yeah?” Jesus fuck, he looks almost hopeful, eager for words of wisdom.
“…Move,” Roy whispers. Jamie Tartt starts, and sidles out of the way. “Pick a locker,” Roy gestures vaguely at the scattering of missing names and numbers, “no one fucking cares. Gym’s through,” he waves a hand irritably at the corridor, and then at the window across the gaffer’s office, “but not like anyone uses it off-season, it’s shit.” Jamie turns on the spot, drags his lower lip between his teeth – there’s some sick pleasure in watching his soul slowly exit his body as he realizes just how apt Roy’s phrasing, paying his dues, and that he’ll earn fuck-all for the holiday to this shithole that’s probably not up to the standards of the goddamn kids’ training camps at the Etihad campus. “Showers through there,” he gestures the other way. “Water pressure’s shit. Better off taking a bottle of three-in-one and standing in the rain, when the weather allows.”
Jamie’s face runs through a series of contortions at that, trying to sort out if Roy’s taking the piss.
“Everyone’s fucked off to LA and Mallorca and Saint Tropez and shit, we don’t start training for a month, I don’t know why you bothered –”
“Three weeks and three days,” Jamie corrects in a rush and shit, Roy’s lost more time to hazy nights in strobe-lit clubs than he thought. “I were just – wanted to come and –”
Roy doesn’t care. His due diligence is done. “Cheers,” he slaps the kid’s shoulder and shoves past him, standing there in the middle of the dressing room with his gawping fish face and his awful hoodie and the schoolboy hair that makes him look like one of the eager Chelsea boys who all thought the ticket to first team was batting their lashes at the biggest stars when they were too drunk or high or both to so much as remember their names.
Roy remembers their pouty faces though, and then their stunned betrayal when they spent yet another season spinning their wheels in the Reserve League until they finally caved and left to play proper football for a shittier club. Jamie Tartt’s even worse, special enough for the promotion, average enough to spend the match on his arse, wasting his potential under the brainwashed conviction that if it’s not City, it’s not worth having.
“Mist – er, uh. Roy?”
Roy rolls his eyes, Jesus Christ. “Oh,” he remembers as he steps a foot out into the corridor. “And stay out of the treatment room, it’s haunted.”
“Roy?” He tries to keep walking; footsteps trot along after him so he swears and turns so sharp Jamie’s gleaming trainers – also hideous – squeal on the floor. “You’re here.”
“I’d like not to be,” he says pointedly.
But Jamie’s got a dogged determination in his dim, doe-eyes, and the flush in his cheeks and a lip he can’t stop tugging between his teeth and abusing to distraction. “Said everyone’s fucked off, why ain’t you?”
Because he spends two nights a week at his sister’s while she works the late shift. Because he’s got appointments every two weeks to keep an eye on his left knee. Because the longer he drags his career out, the more football and all its component parts joins the list of things he’s happy to forget for an hour or a night with drink and drugs and eager young things in his bed.
“I like the quiet.”
“I can be quiet.”
“Can you?” Jamie shrugs, coy, a little cocky – convinced the sun shines out his own arse, but maybe appreciative enough of a legend he can catch a glimpse shining out Roy’s, too. “I called up your mum and pops right now, what would they say?”
“That I’m a pain in the arse.”
Honesty, at least. “You fixing to be a pain in mine this season?”
Jamie bites that fucking lip and smiles. “Yep.”
Maybe it’s boredom, relationship (if he can call it that) newly ended and one Rolex down for it, drying out ahead of his two nights fulfilling his uncle obligations for the week, before he starts the cycle all over again in some new spot with some new party favors and some pretty new thing to snort or lick them off and warm his lap after.
Maybe it’s pity, the shitshow this kid has no idea he’s walking into at Nelson Road. Mannion’s a creep, Cartrick’s a cunt, molding a dressing room of mediocre-talent mini-cunts and wondering why he’s never so much as broken the top ten in all his years managing damn near every club in the greater London area.
And Roy’s just fucking here, keeping the squad functional on the pitch because fuck knows he’s not wrangling them off of it, and pathetically stroking his wounded ego with the reassurance he’s still the best on the team. Price of playing.
Or maybe it is just that echo of old appreciation. The kid’s in the presence of greatness, and he knows his place, even if he’ll put on a bit of a performative strop about it.
…Or maybe it’s just that touch of pink in pretty cheekbones and a jawline a model would envy, the lip that’s gone a bit raw for the anxious abuse inflicted since Jamie fucking Tartt walked into the club.
“What do you want, Jamie Tartt?”
His number, so he can harangue him about stupid club bullshit all summer; a coffee, so he can say he got coffee with Roy Kent; an invite to his favorite clubs where the tabloids never find him anymore.
The bag shifts on Jamie’s shoulder, he’s still holding the fucking bag. He scuffs his feet and looks up through his lashes all bashful, the little actor, and suggests, “Could have a little kickabout?” and stutters Roy’s brain to a fucking halt in its earnest innocence.
Fuck’s sake, he really is just a kid who appreciates good football.
“No,” Roy refuses.
He’s also a kid accustomed to getting what he wants, by the ready indignation that lights up his face and strips away the tease of shyness. “Why not?”
The halls are empty, the lighting dim. There’s no reason to step right up close and put his mouth right next to Jamie’s ear, except that Roy enjoys the stutter in his breath’s rhythm, and the satisfaction of toying with one of Pep’s little sycophants is too good to pass up. “Because,” he breathes; he’s close enough to feel the shiver, to see the goosebumps rise on his neck, “I think you’re good, Jamie, and if you’re better than me, it’ll just piss me off.”
He pulls back and doesn’t really know how to interpret the expression that’s taken hold. “C’mon,” he slaps the kid’s shoulder again. “You’re that desperate for a London tour guide –”
“I ain’t –!”
“ – you can come help me pick out my next Rolex.”
Several steps and seconds pass before the quick scurry of feet begin to follow. “What?” Roy can hear the gawp on Jamie’s face even as he refuses to turn or break stride on his way back out the building. “Roy, mate, what?”