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“The fuck?” Jamie mutters, staring at the text on his phone screen.
no training march 11.
The text is from Roy, and its contents are utterly fucking bizarre.
tht the day of ur nxt colonoscopy or smth?
He shoots the text to Roy, confused because it’s only the third of January and Roy doesn’t so much as plan their morning training a day in advance as far as Jamie can tell, let alone two months.
no.
A second passes and then:
fuck off.
“Alright, then,” Jamie mutters and tucks the phone away.
It won’t really register until later - much, much later - the significance of the date. In fact, it won’t register for another six weeks, just after a Valentine’s Day spent very much alone and definitely not doing something he shouldn’t with one of his coaches, during one of the very few meetings with his publisher that he attends during the season.
“The Gold and The Glory is printing on schedule next week,” Emilia says. She’s a kind, attentive woman - someone’s assistant because not even Jamie Tartt is important enough to merit a check-in meeting with a fucking executive or some bullshit. Or, at least, TJ Hartt isn’t.
Jamie’s camera is off because it always is in front of anyone but his agent, and his agent, Grayson, nods importantly on the Zoom screen while Emilia rattles a list of printers and locations and distribution statistics and all the other shit that someone else is paid to care about. Jamie doodles idly in the notepad at his desk, a loop here, a scrawl there. Grayson will tell him the important shit when they’re done.
“And with all that said and done,” Emilia finishes with a flourish, “we are on track for your March 11 release date!”
Jamie freezes.
March 11. Oh, shit.
Roy reads for fun, he knows that much. He’d eaten up that book Ted had gifted him and had slowly poked around until he’d read most of the books Ted’d given the other lads, too.
And, sometimes, during morning trainings, Roy pulls out a book if they’re indoors and reads while Jamie does squats and burpees and lunges until he throws up. But it’s always high-brow shit, yeah? Proper literature. Nothing like the fantasy romances Jamie writes during the off-season with dragons and fae folk and sprawling political systems where the guy always gets the girl (or the guy, Jamie doesn’t fucking discriminate) and good always triumphs over evil.
It’s a coincidence, Jamie tries to assure himself. His books are read by women in their 20’s - American women, even - and children. Roy Kent doesn’t read his books.
~
It started almost ten years ago.
Jamie was fourteen, home for the off-season, off school for the summer holiday, and his dad was around, trying to be Mr. Perfect Husband so Jamie’s mum would take him back, so Jamie spent every day from eight in the morning until eight at night in the library. He worked his way through every fantasy book he could get his hands on and then some and when he’d run out of books to read in July, he sat down at one of the ancient desktop computers and started writing his own.
The Red and The Rot was published four years later just before the start of the off-season. Since then, Jamie’d published a book a year under his pseudonym, TJ Hartt. He wrote like mad during the off-season and by the first week of pre-season conditioning, a fully formed manuscript was off to his editor.
The Red and The Rot had been followed by The Blue and The Burden, and both had done so well that Jamie had immediately panicked and put off the final book in the trilogy, The Gold and The Glory, for three years, instead producing a series for younger readers that followed a few of the younger dragon riders he’d introduced in The Blue and The Burden. Those, too, had been a smash hit.
It had been Ted Lasso, ironically, that gave him the courage and, frankly, the slap upside the head Jamie’d needed to become a better person and a better writer. A writer who could - and did - finish the manuscript for The Gold and The Glory the summer after they’d been promoted.
And things are fine, really. He’s back on a Premier League team, his sixth book is on track to be published, and Roy fucking Kent is personally training him.
Personally training him and nothing else.
Not a single other unprofessional thing. Definitely.
Roy raises his head with a gasp that sends shudders down Jamie’s spine.
“Oi! Am I interrupting your fucking personal time or something?” he barks, voice hoarse.
Jamie blinks and his hand flexes in Roy’s hair against his will, making Roy groan a little.
“What?”
Roy scowls and crawls up Jamie’s naked body, settling on top of him with his arms bracketing Jamie’s head.
“You’re distracted,” he accuses.
It’s true. He is distracted. The back of his head is full of concern about the release of the book in four weeks, the ever-present terror that someone is going to find out who TJ Hartt really is (the deeper, quieter horror that his father will find out even though he doesn’t think he’s ever seen James Tartt pick up a book in his life), and the creeping worry that Roy Kent, his coach and on-again-off-again friend-with-benefits and maybe-best-friend, reads his books and hates (or loves) them.
“Fuck, sorry,” Jamie says.
Roy’s eyes soften slightly. “Is everything okay? Do you want to do something else?”
“No, no,” Jamie says, except he knows that he gets like this when he’s stressed, knows he can’t give anything his full fucking attention right now. He sighs. “Yeah, maybe.”
Roy nods and kisses him. “I’ll put the kettle on, you find something stupid on the telly.”
Jamie pulls one of Roy’s jumpers out of his closet - black, of course, but black goes with everything, doesn’t it - and slips back into his boxers. Roy’s dressed similarly, puttering around the kitchen downstairs organizing mugs and tea and pouring the milk before the water, the lunatic.
Jamie fusses with the remote, flipping quickly to a reality show on Netflix they watch sometimes with Keeley, but really he seizes the opportunity to snoop.
Roy’s house is nice - modern but not pretentious. It’s all big windows and light wood and absolutely zero fucking bookcases. Jamie sees Roy with books all the time, but gun to his fucking head he couldn’t tell you where the man keeps them.
That being said, Jamie has also not had proper time to snoop. Before they started… whatever the hell they’ve started, Jamie hadn’t been in Roy’s house ever. And since they started whatever the hell they’ve started, he’s spent 90% of his time in Roy’s house in the bedroom and the rest in the kitchen or telly room. It’s not a huge house, but there’s plenty of places Roy could be keeping a super secret book collection that Jamie wouldn’t know about.
He creeps to the other end of the house quickly, jiggling the door knob. It’s open, of course, because Roy isn’t a fucking spy with locked doors in his house, but to Jamie’s dismay, it’s just a bathroom.
“You alright?”
Jamie jumps.
“Yeah,” he says, spinning to face Roy. “Totally fine.”
Roy raises an eyebrow.
“Where the fuck are all the books?” he says because fuck this.
Roy goes very, very still.
“Alright,” he says slowly. “There’s something you need to know.”
~
Roy Kent is a madman.
Jamie prowls the room slowly. Once. Twice. A third time. He turns to Roy, opens his mouth to say something. Can’t. Closes his mouth.
He walks the room again.
All the while, Roy leans against the wall near the stairs, arms crossed, tracking Jamie on his walkabout with a furrowed brow.
Jamie tries to say something again. Can’t.
He stops in the center of the room, puts his hands on his hips, and just… gazes. Takes it all in.
“You have…,” Jamie says, “a serious fucking problem, mate.”
Roy groans. “I fucking know.”
Floor to ceiling shelves cover every inch of Roy Kent’s basement. The books are arranged alphabetically by the author’s last name (“The way God intended,” Roy lectures), and there must be, and Jamie isn’t fucking exaggerating here, at least a thousand.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” Jamie says. He doesn’t know what else to say. “The fuck’s wrong with the little library down the way that you had to go and make a whole entire new one down in the fucking cellar for?”
Roy groans again. His face is, Jamie’s pleased to note, a little red. He’s embarrassed.
“We didn’t have fuck all when I was growing up, did we?” Roy says. “I… like them.”
He’s saying it through gritted teeth, like it’s costing him everything to tell Jamie this. But Jamie gets it.
“I have me clothes, y’know?” Jamie offers. “I like all the… the fucking colors and shit? The graffiti, yeah? Mum couldn’t really afford the fancy shit, ‘specially since she had to buy all me kits for football.”
Roy’s eyes soften, and he takes Jamie’s explanation for the olive branch that it is.
“‘Sides, these chairs look mad comfy,” Jamie says, throwing himself bodily into one of them. They are mad comfy - all supple leather, real expensive like.
“I knows it’s a lot,” Roy says and fuck him, but Jamie could swear Roy looks shy saying it.
“It’s lovely,” Jamie says. He means it. The library had been like a sanctuary to him, a place to get away from his dad, a place he knew his dad wouldn’t be caught dead in. To see Roy recreate something like that in his home is sweet, really.
Jamie hops up from the chair, going up the bookcase starting at “B” and trailing his fingers along the books. He acts like he’s taking it all in, but really he’s looking for a few books in particular.
He finds them exactly where they should be. All five Hartt books in a line, and from the look of them, well-loved. The spines are cracked like they’ve been read a dozen times.
His heart sinks. Fuck.
He takes great care not to linger too long over his own books and makes it to “Q” before Roy interrupts him, crowding against his back and kissing his neck and fuck it, Jamie’s head is still fucking crowded with anxiety - about the book release and his dad and Roy and there’s even a little spot of worry for the match this weekend - but his head is also a little more in love with Roy today than yesterday and he wants him.
There are no interruptions this time and when they’re done, Roy doesn’t even make him put on pants before he pulls him in for a cuddle on one of the over-sized leather armchairs.
“Your chair’s gonna stick to me bum,” Jamie mumbles into Roy’s neck.
Roy doesn’t mind.
~
On March 1, Jamie gets an emergency text from Grayson and has to leave Nelson Road immediately after training to make it home for a video call with him and the lady from before - Emilia, Jamie thinks.
Except when he gets on, it’s not just Emilia but also Emilia’s boss and Emilia’s boss’s boss.
“Excellent to meet you, Mr. Hartt,” the boss’s boss begins. He hesitates, very visibly glancing at the part of his screen where Jamie’s - ahem, Mr. Hartt’s - square will be decidedly black, what with Jamie’s camera being off and all. Jamie makes no excuses. Mr. Hartt values his privacy, after all.
His phone vibrates.
Mr. Mitchell says the text from Grayson. Jamie sends back a heart.
“You as well, Mr. Mitchell,” Jamie says in an affected accent. He takes great care to sound like a posh London twat any time he has to speak with anyone but Grayson. Grayson had let it slide the first few years, but when they became friendly he’d informed Jamie that he mostly just sounded like a twat. A twat with a head cold, even.
“Yes, yes, well,” the man huffs. He looks nervous, dark circles under his eyes and sweating bad enough that Jamie can see it even through the screen. “We’ve had the most dreadful news.”
Jamie’s stomach drops.
“Pardon?” he says.
“I’m afraid there’s been an absolutely unprecedented incident with the shipment of your books.”
Jamie catches only bits and bobs of the rest of the call, struggling simultaneously to contain his laughter and smother a smattering of expletives.
They’d fallen overboard.
Fucking overboard.
The Mitchell bloke had provided a list of excuses - over-crowding at port, bad weather, and on and on - but the bottom line was that nearly the entire fucking shipment of copies of his book along with two other books set to release in the same week were currently lying at the bottom of the ocean.
“We’ll have to reprint the entire order, I’m afraid. This is going to delay the release by quite a bit - at least two or three months,” Mitchell finishes.
“Fucking hell,” Jamie sighs.
~
It’s fine, it’s fine, it’s fine.
Jamie chants the words to himself, hoping that if he says them enough times it will make it true.
His social media team is in the middle of figuring out how to break the news to his fanbase, organizing a fucking fleet of Tweets and Facebook posts and LinkedIn bullshit - Jamie doesn’t even know what a LinkedIn is. It isn’t going to do much good - the fans will be let down by the news.
He feels small and guilty about this, even though it isn’t his fault. He’d delayed writing book three for a variety of reasons. Mostly he felt like he’d bitten off more than he could chew. Felt like he had the book version of the fucking yips, like he’d forgotten how to make his characters move and talk and love and fight.
The first two books had come to him so easily, the words flowing almost faster than he could type. He’d written like a man possessed, unable to stop even in the dead of night when he would have to write under his covers with pen and paper in a notebook he’d grabbed from a bin. He knew the characters better than himself - their motivations, their speech patterns, what made them tick. It was fun to write about things that would never happen, fun to unravel a world that didn’t exist, a world that he could put back together no matter what he did to it.
And then the books had released and the sales had gone up and up and up and the pressure was on.
Suddenly, it wasn’t just a fun story Jamie was telling himself. People had opinions on what should happen. Reviewers picked apart plot holes, made an entire fucking database of his world and its characters, and it’s not like Jamie hadn’t put any thought into it, yeah? Shit made sense. But he’d also played a little fast and loose with the rules because it were fantasy, weren’t it? People could come back from the dead just because he said so, yeah?
Apparently not.
So he delayed the finale of the series for three years, and now he’s going to have to do it again.
Jamie’s so deep in his thoughts, so frustrated by the events of the day that he fumbles for too long with the key Roy’d given him to come over whenever he wanted. He flinches a little when the door swings open suddenly.
“You okay out here?” Roy asks. He holds the door open, eyebrow quirked and mouth half-pulled in a smile.
“I’m good,” Jamie says automatically.
The truth is at the tip of his tongue, but Roy kisses him and it recedes.
“There’s a plate in the microwave,” Roy says, waving him inside. “You left training fast.”
Jamie makes his way to the kitchen and pulls the food from the microwave to eat slouched against the counter while Roy heads back to the couch he’d been lounging on before Jamie arrived.
“Yeah,” he agrees.
“‘Yeah’,” Roy says. “Is that all?”
“That’s all,” Jamie says. He stops inhaling the food and wanders to the edge of the kitchen. Roy’s absorbed in a book, as usual. “Whatcha reading?”
Roy holds it up and the plate of food in Jamie’s hands, delicious as it is, becomes immediately unappealing. He abandons it on a counter so he can go into the other room with Roy.
“The new one’s releasing next week,” Roy says.
Fuck, Jamie thinks because no, it’s not.
Roy is, of course, holding The Blue and The Burden.
“‘t’s one of my favorites,” Roy says, and Jamie feels suddenly queasy and light-headed. “Phoebe likes it, too.”
He’d read these books to Phoebe?
“Isn’t there, like, a ton of murderin’ and sexy times in those?” Jamie asks weakly.
“Not too much,” Roy disagrees. “I make those bits child-friendly when I’m reading ‘em to her, don’t I?.”
Jamie’d written those bits - he knows exactly how much there is, and it’s definitely too much for any eight-year-old girl, precocious as Phoebe is or not.
There’s a strange wooshing in Jamie’s ears and an odd static buzzes at the tips of his fingers.
"Uh, I - I gotta go," Jamie stutters. He drops his plate in the sink, food unfinished.
"What? Jamie?"
But Jamie, heart in his throat and hands shaking, is already gone.
~
are you alright?
Jamie, just let me know if you’re getting my texts. Let me know if you’re okay.
Jamie, please.
Are we meeting for training tomorrow morning?
It’s uncharacteristic of Roy to ask rather than order when it comes to training, so much so that Jamie’s tempted to respond just as positive reinforcement if nothing else. But he doesn’t.
He doesn’t touch his phone, in fact, for three entire days with one exception - a quick text to Beard. Beard, not Ted.
If there is anyone in the world who would keep Jamie’s secret - who would delight in keeping Jamie’s secret, it’s Beard.
Jamie had once told the man he didn’t know how to talk to him. It’s still true, but he finds the words during a panicked drive away from Roy’s house to his own.
“Beard,” the tinny voice says over the car speaker.
“Coach, listen, it’s Jamie. I have to tell you something really weird, right? And I need you to just shut up and believe me.”
There’s a moment of silence.
“I’m listening.”
Jamie takes a deep breath. “When I’m not playing football, I write books under the name TJ Hartt. No one knows. Me dad would… if he knew, he would -”
“I understand,” Beard says.
“Right, well, Roy reads me fucking books, and we also might be involved or something - all romantically and shit. Listen, I just… I just need a few days away, okay?”
“Take three days,” Beard says, easy as anything. “And Jamie?”
“Yeah, Coach?”
“I fucking loved The Red and The Rot.”
“Thanks, Coach,” Jamie says and hangs up the phone.
~
He goes home because of course he does. His mum’s always been his biggest fan, whether it were his footballing or his writing. She hugs him, tight as anything, thrilled beyond reason to see him.
“I have to work, though, you know,” she says and hugs him tight again just inside the door. “Oh, you should’ve told me you were coming! I would’ve taken the time off - could’ve made a proper holiday of it!”
“Next time, Mummy,” Jamie says. “Promise.”
Simon makes a proper Sunday roast, even if it’s only a Wednesday, and they eat together, the three of them. Georgie knows about his writing, and Simon had been sworn to secrecy, so he knows, too, and it’s the first time he can talk about the shit happening in his other professional life in a long time.
“Into the ocean?” Georgie says. The small glass of wine she’s holding waves haphazardly with her laughter.
“The fucking ocean!” Jamie confirms. “Thought I were going mad, didn’t I?”
“That’s too bad, son, I was looking forward to reading it,” Georgie says and Simon hums in agreement, mouth full of potato.
Jamie sighs and slumps back in his chair. “I’ve got a few advanced copies,” he says. “I’ll send one to you. Should’ve sent it a few weeks ago, if I’m honest, just been busy with the club.”
Georgie smiles at him, rubs his shoulder encouragingly. She was always better at the empathy thing than him.
“Well, not for a few days, though, yeah? You’ll stay for a bit?”
“Three days,” Jamie says, “then I’ve got to be back. Good luck that we don’t have a match this weekend - perfect timing for a visit.”
~
It is the perfect timing. Jamie eats breakfast with his mum every day before she leaves for work. He spends most of the time she's away watching telly or re-reading the few books he kept in his old room. He runs, of course, and generally tries to keep up with his training as much as he can because he thinks Roy’d kill him otherwise.
In the afternoons he and Simon have tea, and the three of them eat dinner together, all family-like. It’s nice. Peaceful. No one can find him here.
Well.
At least, he thought no one could find him.
Roy proves him wrong.
~
“You writers and your fucking melodramatic -”
Jamie blinks, still holding the front door open, Roy directly in front of his face.
“What the fuck?” he says. He looks wildly around the yard, like it might explain Roy’s sudden appearance at his mother’s door to him.
There are no answers.
“Did I fucking stutter?” Roy demands.
His words replay in Jamie’s head. Wait. What the fuck?
“Wait, you knew?” Jamie sputters.
“Of course I fucking knew!” Roy says. “The fuck do you think I gave you so much shit for? Your books are fucking poetry - fucking works of art about sacrifice and camaraderie and the things we do for the people we love and you showed up and you were a fucking tit! I was disappointed.”
The words crush him. Roy sees and rolls his eyes, stepping across the threshold to pull Jamie bodily into a hug.
“Not for too long,” he says. “Not once I understood that you’d been a child when you wrote that shit, full of fucking optimism and all that bullshit. And then you grew up and learned that life was shit and most people were shit and nothing works out the way you want, and it twisted you a bit. It happens.”
Jamie relaxes.
“And you weren’t disappointed then?” he says, voice small.
Roy hums. “A little, maybe. Ted helped, the wanker.”
Jamie huffs a laugh into Roy’s neck, tries to ignore how watery it sounds.
“Yeah, he does that, doesn’t he?” Jamie says. “How did you know?”
“TJ Hartt?” Roy scoffs. “Really? Like it’s not fucking obvious? Could’ve at least spelled Hartt differently - one ‘T’ maybe.”
“See, I told Grayson that -” Jamie begins passionately, pulling away from Roy’s hug, but Roy kisses him soundly instead.
“No one’s mad at you,” Roy says. “You’re fucking entitled to your privacy. You’re even entitled to act like a little bitch and hole yourself up at your mum’s if you want. But,” he says, voice going rough, “you are not entitled to fuck off like that without letting me know you’re okay.”
“Fuck,” Jamie says. He hugs Roy. “Yeah, shit, sorry about that. It was a shit day.”
“They delayed the release,” Roy says.
“Roy,” Jamie says, a half-grin at his lips because it's been a few days and it's fucking funny now. “My books fell in the fucking ocean.”
Roy snorts, amused.
“No, mate, really! What if it’s a sign?” Jamie says.
“Fuck off,” Roy laughs outright. “It isn’t a fucking sign.”
“Maybe it’s so shit that the fucking gods had to step in or something!”
Roy laughs harder, kisses him with a grin. “I’ll tell you if it’s shit,” he promises. “Not for another three fucking months, though, apparently.”
Jamie considers this. He does have more than one advanced copy to give away, doesn't he?
“About that,” he says.
fin.