Work Text:
“We need to send a message.” Isaac steepled his hands together. “Richmond are not to be fucked with.”
It had been bad enough that Nate walked out of Nelson Road at the end of the season; hearing he’d walked straight into Mr. Mannion’s arms was a betrayal of the highest order. One that they were not going to ignore, no matter how much Lasso encouraged them to forgive and forget. There was no amount of living and laughing and loving that would make this right. It was the kind of crime that could only be settled Hammurabi style.
“What’s that one again?” Arlo asked. “Is it ninjas?”
“An eye for an eye,” Sam said.
“I heard someone’s been spray-painting ‘believe’ on Nate’s car every day,” Cockburn said. “West Ham had to hire a whole new security team for the car park.”
Isaac grunted. Now his nephew would have to find a new way to get under Nate’s skin, which sucked. But it was part of why he’d called everyone together. They needed a new plan. One they all agreed on. Teamwork and all that.
“It was a shit message anyway.”
“Oi.” Isaac glared at Jamie. It was clearly working, if West Ham were putting money into preventing it.
“Come on, mate, it’s not like, intimidating at all. Oooh, believe.” Jamie made a sound like he was a bored ghost. “No one cares, least of all that twat.”
“He cares a little,” Dani said, pointing to the taped-together sign above Ted’s door.
Isaac fought the urge to argue that Nate cared a lot. It wasn’t productive. “So what do we do about it?”
Dani leaned in, his voice barely above a whisper as he said, “It needs to be something so dreadful, they will never recover. They will pray for death every day rather than endure one more minuto of pain.”
Around the room, people were nodding, Isaac included. This was what he was talking about. “Go on, bruv.”
“We replace all their shoes with dress shoes.”
Colin squinted. “I don’t know if that’s strong enough, boy-o.”
Murmurs of “it’s not” and “definitely no” went around the room. On the whiteboard, Cockburn wrote DRESS SHOES and then crossed it off the list immediately.
“I say we put greyhound heads in their beds. Nate’s and Mr. Mannion’s, too. Scare the piss out of ‘em both. What?” Colin somehow managed to look surprised by the horror on everyone’s faces.
“You want us to kill another dog?” Theirry asked.
Across from him, Jamie held his hands protectively over Dani’s ears. “Two dogs, actually,” he added, completely unhelpfully.
“So they know it was us!” Colin tried to defend himself. “And then they have heart attacks and poof.” He clapped his hands together.
“If we’re trying to kill them, surely there is an easier way,” Jan Maas said. “Sam, can your rich friend lend us his assassins?”
“Akufo isn’t my friend,” Sam said. “And I don’t think he has assassins.”
“Oh, he definitely has assassins,” Moe said.
“He landed a helicopter on the training pitch.” Winchester made a face like Sam was an idiot. “That man has assassins.”
On the board, under the crossed-out SHOES and DOGS, Cockburn wrote ASSASSINS. This idea, he didn’t cross out.
“He’s still not my friend. If I called him, he’d probably have me killed.”
“We couldn’t afford it anyway,” Thierry said. “I say we get them on a hike, stage an accident. Rocks fall, everyone dies.”
“Everyone like all of us, too?” Dani asked.
Thierry rolled his eyes. “Obviously not all of us.”
“Why would they want to go on a hike with us?” Jamie put in.
“I hate hiking,” Richard said. “It is so dusty.”
“Here’s a better idea,” Jamie said, “we invite them to a cabin up north in the winter and then get some of those massive icicles, you know the really pointy ones like —” he held his hands apart to demonstrate an icicle bigger than anything Isaac had ever seen “— and then we stab them.”
“Why can’t we just use a normal knife if we’re stabbing them?” Colin asked.
“Because the icicle melts.” Jamie sounded exasperated. “No murder weapon.”
“That’s really smart, actually,” Winchester said.
“Are icicles really scarier than dog heads?”
“You’re just jealous because his idea was better than yours,” Winchester said to Colin.
“I’m not jealous, I just think my idea is cleaner.”
“Yours has dead animals, his has a disappearing murder weapon.”
“Fine, we can use fake animals,” Colin said. “And like, corn syrup for the blood.”
“Poison would be easier,” Richard said. He held up his phone. “We can mail him some anthrax. It’s only £39.99.”
“Where do you buy anthrax?” Jamie asked. “Can’t exactly special-order it from the chemist.” He paused. “Can you?”
ANTHRAX went on the board.
“On the dark web,” Richard said. “I should buy it, yes?”
Colin leaned over his shoulder. “Oh, you can use Apple Pay? Sick.”
“No.” Isaac put his hand up. There was a lot he could let slide, but a captain had to look out for the good of his team, and someone getting arrested because they used their Apple ID to buy illegal drugs was like, number three in Keeley’s list of Bad Ideas for Footballers. Right under syncing your nudes to the cloud. “We need a burner phone.”
Richard grinned. Colin nodded. Thierry whipped out his own phone and narrated as he typed, “‘Burner phone store Richmond’ — don’t worry, I’m searching on private mode.”
“Guys, I think we are forgetting something.” Jan Maas waited until everyone was looking at him. “Psychological warfare would be even more effective.”
Everyone stared at him blankly.
“There’s a place ten minutes from here,” Thierry said.
Isaac gestured for Jan Maas to go on. They could use the psychological stuff as backup if nothing else.
“For example, we play music very loudly outside their homes. That would be very annoying.”
“Are you shitting me, Jan Maas?” Jamie said. “That’s the dumbest idea yet, and Colin wanted us to decapitate —”
“I said we could use fake dogs!” Colin yelled.
“It is not stupid, it is effective,” Jan Maas said. “Imagine if every time you tried to sleep someone started playing the most annoying song in the world.”
“Simply! Having!” McCracken started to sing. Someone threw a boot at him.
Gareth opened his mouth, but Issac was quicker. “No.” He stopped him with a glare. Chumbawamba was not tolerated at Nelson Road.
“Jan Maas is right,” Moe said. Three people started booing, Isaac couldn’t tell who. “No, not about the music, that’s terrible. Sorry, mate.”
“Do not be sorry, I know I’m right.”
Moe made a face and then visibly decided to ignore Jan Maas. “Okay. We bribe someone at West Ham to sneak into their offices at night and glue tiny disks to their furniture so that it gradually gets taller and taller and they think they’re shrinking.”
Off everyone’s blank looks he said, “Like The Twits? Roald Dahl? Come on, guys.”
“How do we find someone to bribe?”
“We could convince Will to take a job there.”
“Do you think he’d leave us?”
“If it’s for the greater good, probably.”
“Call him,” Colin suggested.
There was a beat of silence.
Moe looked around the room. “Does anyone have his number?”
Issac sighed. There went that plan, then.
They all jumped when someone cleared their throat. Cockburn didn’t even have time to flip the whiteboard to the clean side before Roy and his angry eyebrows were stomping through the room.
“I didn’t see or hear any of that,” he said, heading straight for the manager’s office. “I refuse to go to prison for any of you idiots.”
The door slammed behind him. Isaac waited a second and then two and then let out the breath he’d been holding.
They all jumped when the door slammed back open.
“Using Will as a plant is too fucking obvious. You’ve got to hire someone entirely new that they won’t suspect. Don’t —” he reached out and pushed Moe’s phone back into his lap “— post about it online, not from your actual phone, are you fucking stupid? DId Keeley not go over her list before she left? Fuck.”
“You need a burner phone?” Isaac didn’t shout when Beard started talking from directly behind him, but it was a near thing.
Moe nodded tentatively, like he wasn’t sure what the right answer was.
Beard nodded once. He looked from Moe to Roy to Isaac. “Done. And get me the name of Rupert’s tailor.”
Even though he said it in a way that didn’t invite questions, Jamie still opened his big dumb mouth and said, “Why?”
Beard turned ever so slightly. “Furniture can’t be the only thing getting bigger. We have to alter his clothes, too.”
Jamie’s jaw dropped.
“Everyone, out on the pitch now. Start running.” Roy waved them all out of the room. “Leave this to the grown-ups.”
“It was my idea,” Moe grumbled as they all started to jog out.
“Technically, it was my idea.”
“Technically, shut the fuck up, Jan Maas,” Jamie said.
Isaac lingered, bringing up the rear so he could herd any of the stragglers. He watched out of the corner of his eye as Roy started erasing Cockburn’s list.
“Fucking mental,” Roy said, gesturing with the eraser. “What do you think they meant by ‘dogs?’”
Beard looked at him. “You don’t want to know.”
Isaac was halfway down the tunnel when Roy figured it out. He was pretty sure they could hear Roy’s “FUCK” all the way in France.