Chapter Text
Jamie has come to expect a lot of things out of his 4 am training sessions with Roy. For the first month or so of his training sessions he learnt to be aware of the very real probability that he would vom before 7am. Over the next few weeks the vomiting definitely decreased, but he has become accustomed to the burning in his thighs, the tightness in his back and shoulders, and the perpetual dryness in his mouth. God he was sounding less and less sexy by the second. Fucking Roy Kent. Here, there and everywhere he isn’t wanted.
To be fair, Jamie did enjoy the morning trainings. He did miss sleeping, and having girls over after a night out, but all of that was meaningless compared to his abilities on the pitch. When Roy had volunteered to train him, claiming he could make him better than Zava he accepted out of desperation. Now though, he was feeling the benefits every match. He always knew his right right foot was blessed by higher up people and all that, but now his whole body was, every match.
Which is why when he was sent a random address by Roy at 3:45 he didn’t even question it. All he did was google directions to see if it was really worth running, (it wasn’t) and check the weather app to see whether or not he needed a sweater and a jacket (probably).
In retrospect, he probably should have googled where he was going.
The drive was long, through weird twisty back roads Jamie didn't even know existed. Although, to be fair, he really didn’t know many roads in London, other than the ones to get to Nelson Road and back, and the ones to get to the main clubs and back. He could probably drive those drunk. (Honestly he has probably driven them drunk, and would bet good money on having hit fewer kerbs than Colin.)
Eventually the housing lining the streets give way to a few businessy looking buildings and a large field with some rugby posts set up randomly in the middle. That isn’t what catches his eye. The fenced in rectangle sitting in the corner of the giant expanse of grass is. And Roy. Roy also catches his eye.
He slowly pulls his Aston through the narrow loop and parks haphazardly on the side. He tosses up parking right behind Roy’s giant G-wagon as punishment for making him be in the middle of nowhere in the damp dark early hours of the morning. Plus, Its not like anyone else is here at quarter past 4 on a Tuesday, making it all the more suspicious if he acts like a dick here. Not that he knows where “here” is.
As he hops out and gets ready to tie his boots on he sweeps his eyes across the space. When he was looking up directions on Google Maps he took a wild guess that green meant grass. Looks like he was right. He’s yanking off his Dunks (they’re bright orange and camo and were a perk of his last Nike sponsorship, Keeley thought they were absolutely atrocious but he loves them) when Roy shouts over:
“Keep them on. Leave the boots, they won’t do shit here.” Before turning around to fiddle with the fence gate. Jamie is now confused. For one, he doesn’t know what the gate is for. Maybe Roy’s gonna lock him up. Given all the weird training routines he’s had to do, this honestly wouldn’t even be in the top three weirdest.
“Oi Tartt? Are you coming in this century or do I have to wait until the sun has finished coming up?” Roy seems to have given up on the fence.
“That doesn’t even make sense Grandad?” Jamie pulls a face, but then decides, its not really worth fighting over when the sun does or doesn’t rise over the London suburbs. He jogs over past the small saplings that blocked his full, unobstructed view. Looking past the flimsy metal fence and sees… basketball courts? But with no backboard.
The memories come rushing back. Shit. He knows what this is, and its not good.
———————————————
Lily was his first girlfriend, the first and only one he had while at St Bedes. She was pretty, with straight bronde (Keeley taught him that word) hair, braces and fake eyelashes that always looked like they would fall off.
She liked the fact that he was a footballer, and he liked that she liked that he was a footballer. It had all gone so well. She didn’t ask for anything out of him, other than a date every so often and to kiss behind the toilet blocks. She also liked Georgie, and Georgie liked her, and that was good enough for Jamie.
All of it was going so nicely, it was all so low maintenance, that it honestly shocked Jamie when Lily asked for something back. He knows this is shitty. Was shitty. Or at least he knows now, after Keeley told him how shitty that was during their relationship. But that doesn’t really matter.
Thinking back, it does make sense that she wanted him to come to her games. She had come to all of his, shown her off to the lads. His dad didn’t “like her” per se, he liked that Jamie had pulled her, proved he wasn’t a sissy or a pussy. Jamie had made very sure not to formally introduce the two, not letting something very good mix with the very bad.
But one day he begrudgingly came to one of her games, a final of some sort, for her more important team. He went with a few lads from the U18s, the older team that he played with sometimes. Their captain had a girl in the same team as Lily and had offered to drive Jamie, leaving him with no excuses as to why he couldn’t go.
They had pulled up, in their finest. (They were british lads in the mid 2010s, nothing about it was fine.) While the girls were warming they had managed to find some grass and a soccer ball appeared so that they could have a kickabout while blatantly ignoring Harvey and his girlfriend making out by the side gate.
Overall the game was fine. Interesting enough, like basketball but with less dribbling and more fit girls in mini dresses. Jamie just followed the other lads, and maybe they didn’t understand the rules, that didn’t stop them from heckling the ref when one of their girls got whacked or rammed. There shouldn’t have been a problem with it, they did it to footie refs all the time.
To be fair, Jack probably shouldn’t have wolf whistled the opposing teams shooter.
“Time!” A loud, piercing whistle cuts through their banter. A tall brunette is staring them down, the game frozen. “Saint Bede’s football team!” Uh oh, they’re in trouble. “This is your first and only warning. If you keep heckling, do not shut the fuck up, or in another way disrespect me, the game, and the players, you will be removed from the courts.”
“Got it Sweetheart.”
Archie, a brash new lad from Liverpool, always flirting with girls, is fully the reason that Jamie finds himself sitting on a curb 50 meters away from his girlfriends game, with said very angry girlfriend standing in front of him, fucking pissed.
Next thing he knows his hoodie is getting thrown into the dirt next to him and Lily is slapping him across the face. It’s not hard, and honestly his pride is wounded more than anything else, but he can’t help how he flinches after it.
“We’re done.” she says with finality, “This was meant to be my day, just like all of your fucking football games are. Yet, no one will talk about how we won, just how Jessie and my asshole boyfriends got kicked out of our semi-final games. This was important Jamie. And you don’t realise that. Just go.” She walks away dejectedly, leaving a confused and emotionally repressed footballer holding a hoodie that smells like whatever the heck teenage girl perfume is meant to smell like.
If Jamie had had any more interpersonal awareness he would have seen his own failings as a boyfriend, or maybe just blamed his friends. Instead, he blamed netball for the hopeless failure of his first real relationship. Which is categorically unfair.
——————————————
So now Jamie’s standing in front of a fence, staring, confused as Roy gives up on the big rusty padlock holding the gates together. Seems rather pointless considering how weak the hinges look. Beyond the fence, the belly of Jamie’s very small beast, looks almost identical to those courts back in Manchester where he was very aggressively dumped for the first time.
“Oi Tartt. Come here.” Roy shouts over. He diligently jogs up, and stands next to Roy, now both staring at the gate like two middle-aged dads might stare at a lawn mower.
“Whelp, might as well get going then Coach.” He dramatically turns around, aiming to leave, one foot off the curb, secretly hoping that Roy will turn him back around. It's not like he had other plans. Plus, his favourite smoothie joint only opens at 11 on Tuesdays, because the owner has yoga. Stupid old women trying to be the better versions of themselves.
Just as he takes the first step off the road, Roy asks, unimpressed:
“Well, are you going to start climbing?”
Jamie looks at Roy, then looks at the fence.
“You can't be fookin’ serious Coach. I’m going to break my leg and then where will you be huh? Playing without your star striker?”
“I wouldn’t be up at 4 training a giant thorn in my side who refuses to do what I tell him.” Roy raises an eyebrow, “Git.”
Jamie’s not an idiot, he knows how to climb a fence for goodness sake. You don’t grow up on a council estate in Manchester without learning how to scale a fence quickly and efficiently. But Jamie’s also not an idiot, and therefore starts climbing slowly and dramatically, turning to gesture extravagantly with his arms, to show exactly how bad an idea this is.
After a few deliberately dropped footholds and over the top exclamations, Roy grunts. “Stop being an idiot, it was in your file when you transferred to Richmond that you would regularly break into the Etihad Campus. Steven the groundskeeper made Pep add it.”
Jamie pause for a second. Huh, he had forgotten about Steve. Good guy, bit of a weed problem and couldn’t use a screwdriver to save his life, all unfortunate traits for a groundskeeper, but overall solid dude.
Then, because he would take any opportunity to show off, (and also because he now doesn’t have to keep up any pretences) he sprints up the fence, experienced and frankly just a little reckless until his feet are firmly back on firm concrete and bouncing side to side, teasing Roy through the fence.
Just as Roy slides up the latch across the gate, swiftly cracking the lock and letting it dangle over his index finger. He swings the—now Jamie free– fence open and walks through confidently.
“Are you ready Tartt?” He raises an eyebrow at the no-longer bouncing footballer. At Jamie’s nod he jerks hiis head to indicate to the courts. “Laps.”
Jamie just starts running. And running. And running. And hand to god it’s so much worse running in these courts. He feels like one of those hamsters in their running ferris wheel thing just on and on. Plus he misses proper running shoes, his feet hurt and every times he runs around a corner he feels very close to going full send into the fence. It must have been at least 2 hours and 75 million laps by now and he’s still running on the chalky blue concrete, trying to dodge the murky puddles in the bottom corners of the courts.
He is eventually and inevitably broken from his whiny reverie by a ball straight to the the back of the head. Hard. It hurts.
He turns to say as much at Roy, middle finger at the ready but stops right in his tracks when he sees the nightmare that is now set up in front of him. It stretches 4 courts, with more jumps, hurdles, balls, cones and ladders than Jami has ever seen on a football pitch.
It’s an obstacle course, and Jamie knows it will kill him.
——
Jamie wants a nice funeral. Flowers, definitely, orchids maybe, or the super fancy roses that the rich buggers back in Manchester would yell at you for sniffing on the way back from school. His mum always liked sunflowers though, and so did sexy little baby Jamie, who would grab onto the stems and try to swing on them. Fucking mint that there are whole ass flowers taller than him. Maybe tulips, those were great in Amsterdam, and he hopes that maybe Dani would maybe be able to pull himself together enough to not get overwhelmed by more than one tulip in a room.
Jamie is still dying and is mentally running out of flowers. Daisies? Too dainty. Irises? Nah they always look a little funky and droopy. Maybe he should ask Roy. Nah, Roy’s favourite flower is probably one of those dead or poisonous Addams family plants with like spikes and the teeth that eat you like in that musical Keeley made him watch. Adele or Auggie or Audrey or something. Ehn, what the hell, no harm in him asking right?
He finishes off the set of the star shaped cone pivot things Roy’s making him do and turns around.
“Oy Roy!” One raised eyebrow meets him in return, “What flower d’you want at your funeral?”
Out of all the things Jamie has said during their 4am trainings, this one question seems to have confused him the most.
“I’m not that old you prick.” He retorts gruffly. There’s an awkward sort of pause, Jamie not knowing if he’s gonna answer or yell at him to keep running in a star like a confused hamster that's flunking geometry.
Eventually, just as Jamie turns away he hears the gruff voice speak:
“Lilies.” Pause. “Now burpees.”
Fuck yes! Jamie does a little internal victory dance before quickly dropping into Roy’s burpee routine, which is so hard he’s watched Premier League football players faint before finishing. (Richard. He’s watched Richard faint before finishing.).
Roy’s vanished behind the small building (either to grab more torture devices or to sit down to help his bum knee, both equally likely) when he hears a call from over the fence.
“Jaaaa-Mieeee! What are you doing here babes?” The hot pink pantsuit of one Miss Keeley Jones appears through the wire cross hatching of the fence. “Where’s Roy? Has he already given up on this after just one training session?”
She turns to Rebecca, who is currently carrying the iced coffee that Keeley had given up to be able to entwine her fingers in the fence, and Sassy, who looks far more excited than she should be.
“I really thought he would have lasted longer. Plus I was planning on using it as good publicity for the club and the women's team you wanted to start.”
Keeley pouts adorably. God Jamie hates that pout, the way it makes his insides all gooey and him feel all guilty. It’s a manipulation tactic, is what it is. Or is it a womanipulation because Keeleys a woman? Or is that sexist because she’s using it on a guy? He’s trying to remember what the equality lady (or was it person?) said when she came in at the end of last season.
Isaac and Keeley had teamed up for the world's scariest crossover episode after Richard had said a few too many things about the lineup of women who had (very consensually and apparently enthusiastically) hooked up with him, and had made them do sensitivity training. Jamie’s still not entirely sure what they need to be more sensitive about, because from the sounds of it Richard was in fact quite sensitive in bed, and during the talk so was Colins stomach, because he looked like he wanted to hurl whenever Richard so much as said the pronoun she in the context of sex.
He brings himself out of his derailed train of thought to see Roy return with a folding camping bench and a tall pile of cones. Like Leaning Tower of Pizza style cones. And turns back to the fence, and the women beyond it.
He lets them know they can keep going at the same time that Roy summons him back with a loud shout out of:
“Tartt!”, with an irritated tone, and then shifts to a (mostly) quieter, “Keeley, Rebecca,” with a far less gruff and far more fond tone, followed by a noticeable, yet not yet impolite pause, before he acquiesced and says, “Sassy.”
“Roy toy, Jam Drop.”
Jamie is definitely expecting this to be the end of it, Rebecca, Sassy and Keeley heading back along their way, but really, that makes him the idiot for underestimating how much of a force of nature Florence “Sassy” Collins can be when her curiosity has been piqued.
“What are you boys doing out here? I thought your talents normally lay out on the grass Jam? And you Roy?” she looks at them inquisitively. “From the way Keeley tells it you live, breathe and bleed football. Never thought netball would be your speed.”
Keeley turns to Rebecca. “This is the PR thing I was talking to you about babes. The new opportunity to endorse your women’s team.”
Sassy perks up. “Women’s team? You’ve been holding out on me Stinky. Tell me more.” Rebecca starts pulling up things on her phone to show her and they all continue on their way, but not before Sassy turns around and calls back:
“If you need any help with this whole” she gestures wildly at a dying Jamie, who is standing awkwardly among the detritus of cones from a sadistic drill, “call me, and then I'll call Stinky. She played for the Roses, you know.” And with that they walk away.
“What are the Roses Roy?” Jamie asks, hoping to stall for time.
“Fuck if I know.” Maybe he’ll ask Phoebe, she’ll probably know.
It isn’t until two days later that Roy finally looks it up. How was he supposed to know that the Roses were the netball equivalents of the Three Lions?
And why didn’t he know that Rebecca had almost been captain at the 1994 Commonwealth games? And why didn't anyone else know either?