Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Contrary to popular belief, Jamie Tartt is capable of sleeping like the dead when the occasion calls for it: and the adrenaline crash following a 5-6 win against Crystal Palace, not to mention the obligationary presser and pub crawl after, certainly qualifies.

Which is how he manages to sleep through the first five calls from the police station.

The sixth wakes him. After a moment's bleary hesitation he thumbs the ringer off and tosses the offending mobile halfway 'cross the room. He warned Colin Saturday last that he wouldn't go bailing him out of any more late-night pro-Independence excapades—no matter how fantastic the post-arrest afterparties—and he intends to stick to it this time.

And, well, if it's a body they need identified—he refuses to imagine which, but really it could only ever be the one, he hasn't any other family to speak of—he can do that perfectly well at a reasonable hour of the morning.

He forces himself to keep his eyes shut. He pretends he is drifting off. His mobile goes off twice more, its buzz muffled by a pile of laundry. He thinks he can ignore it, but fuck if the screen doesn't go flashing a dull wash of blue-white light across the ceiling.

Heat lightning, he thinks. Pretend it's one of those sticky-hot summers off in Cornwall, preseason training at a sleepaway camp for entitled little shits, the one his mum worked three months of double-shifts to pay for and there he was out on the cabin steps pretending to have a smoke, homesickness like a brick in his gut. The long low count between lightning and thunder.

He must doze off, or else lose track of the time, because when the damn thing goes off again it's nearly two in the morning. Swearing, he kicks free of his sheets and retrieves the offending gadget.

It's his publicist.

Fuck.

He's got it pressed to his ear, mumbling apologies he's not sure even make sense.

“—lad to get hold of you, Mr. Ta—”

Yeah, sure, get on with it.

“—ou see the Manchester police...been trying—” Her voice fading in and out. Problem with the connection? “—past two hours—”

“Excuse me,” he interrupts, “how exactly is that prick's legal trouble my business?” Or hers, for that matter.

She launches into yet another Well you see and he spaces out yawning til he hears her say, “—threatening to go to the press—” Then his jaw cracks and he can't hear anything else for a moment, what with all the yawning. “—turned away your own flesh and blood—”

Yeah, and he can just see the headline in The Sun. 'The Real Jamie Tartt': page after page of the old man's most 'vicious infective,' as Roy called it. He doesn't know how infective, exactly, but it turns his stomach just thinking about it.

Probably gonna make him sick, is the thing.

“—eedless to say it could prove extremely damaging, Mr. Tartt, very off-brand if I do say so myse—”

He scrubs a hand over his face. “Then send someone over to bail him out, Christ. Got training in six hours, out the door in five.”

Police won't go for that, his publicist tells him. He hears the word hospital. He hears no other next of kin.

And he's fourteen years old, whispering into the phone so he doesn't wake his mum, pleading with the barman not to call the police 'til he gets there. And he's thirteen years old, breaking into the grocery money to post bail after another late-night smash-up. And he's ten, and he's driving his Dad to the A&E, stopping every half mile or so to make sure the bastard's still breathing.

“—got to get out ahead of this thing—” he hears her say, and he's jamming feet into shoes, one arm already in his kit jacket. “—decide to go the tough love route we had really better work out our messaging in advance, you know, find a way to put a positive spin on—”

Lights are on and he's downstairs, no memory of getting there but there's his agent still wittering on in his ear.

Fuck, his keys. Where the fuck did he leave his keys?

Inspiring, she says. And football legend. And broken home.

And God, she's still talking. How is she still talking?

“Your reception's shite, love,” he informs her. “Can't understand one word in three.”

Hangs up midsentence is what he does. Blocks her number for good measure. Blessed silence.

He's out in the road with his laces undone, half in half out of his jacket. Still doesn't have his fucking keys. Flashbulb goes off. Pap ducking behind the neighbor's hydrangeas, Jamie starts forward and the wanker takes off at a run. And fuck, what the hell does he think he's doing?—he signed a constraining order right there in front of God and everybody promising he and James Tartt, Sr., wouldn't go within five hundred fucking feet of each other.

His mobile goes off again and he's shouting into it that he doesn't give an everloving fuck about his branding with the 9-to-14 age bracket, his sponsorships can go up in flames for all he cares. He can't tell what he's yelling but he's pretty sure sure he calls her a blistering cunt at some point.

The person on the other end of the line—some sweet-voiced Aussie kid—coughs politely. “Did...did you just say you hope I get AIDS and die of something stupid like a cold?”

“Sorry,” he mumbles. “I ah, thought you were me publicist.”

“I sincerely hope you don't talk to your publicist that way, either,” the kid tells him in a tone of voice that suggests he earns his daily bread speaking to people on the very worst days of their lives.

“Fuck,” Jamie hears himself gasping. “Fuck. Fuck.”

The whole swearing thing doesn't seem to be helping. He must be doing it wrong.

And then he's sitting there on the hood of his car with his fingers pressed into the corners of his eyes while some level-headed copper, or whatever, talks him down.

(Tyler. Jamie thinks he heard the name Tyler.)

“Look, Mr. Tartt,” says maybe-Tyler, “we don't have proper facilities for someone like him. Between you and me, what he really needs is a hospital.”

And yeah, Jamie's heard that one before. When he was a kid himself, he spent years buying into that bollocks. “Right,” he says briskly, not really up to disagreeing with an officer of the law at this point in the evening. He takes a long steadying breath. “Right. Okay, mate, how much money do I need to throw at this situation to make it go away?”

“It doesn't work like that,” the kid's whispering now, low and urgent. “We need to release him to a proper guardian, someone who can take legal responsibility for him. I've been trying to dig up next of kin since like, midnight, yeah?—and you're the only one I found. There isn't anybody else. He can get a social worker in, maybe, but their office doesn't even open 'til 9am Monday and ahm...look, I hate to keep harping on about this but...minutes matter right now, Mr. Tartt.”

“Listen, mate,” Jamie tells him. “Dunno if it flagged in your system or not, but I've actually got a constraining order out against me Dad.”

“It did, yeah,” the officer says quietly. “I'm kind of...banking on that, actually.”

His keys. Where the fuck did he put his fucking keys?

Oh. In the ignition, right where they belong, the Iron Giant humming like a humming kitten-robot-thingy. He's made it out to the highway, missing time, missing residential roads, red needle pushing every limit in its power. Officer Friendly's still on the phone, filling him in on charges and court dates. Drugs, assaulting a police officer. Yeah, that tracks. Something about practicing law without a licence, which is a new one, he's almost impressed, but trust James Sr. to get mixed up with the daftest trouble known to God or man. Comes down to like twenty thousand quid—nothing to sneeze at, nothing he can't pull down over a weekend of humiliating promo shoots.

Jamie's got half a mind to drag the old prick to the nearest hospital, let them work their magic, then turn him back in to the police and to cash in on that sweet money-back guarantee for detective dads.

The officer swears suddenly, sounds like he fumbles the phone. Muffled voices, the laughter of men. Reminds Jamie how he sounded, how Isaac and Colin sounded, back a million years ago when a day without having a go at Nate was a day wasted.

Moments disappearing. Miles disappearing. City lights that blink and vanish. Pulled over once, he comes to halfway through a field sobriety test, laughing and joking with the attending officer. Turns out he's a fan. Buys a sob story about James Sr., what with his dodgy heart and troubles the law—the old man's famous, certain neighborhoods, costs AFC Richmond a fortune in bloody NDA's.

The officer lets Jamie off with a warning and a late-night selfie, bad hair and all, that'll most likely end up in the tabloids next time rent comes due. Jamie's so thankful to get back on the road he autographs the wanker's nightstick.

Mobile goes off again and it's Manchester Municipal Police, apologizing all over themselves for something they never quite manage to explain. Call drops midsentence.

Losing time, losing distance. Twenty minutes gone and it's a new conversation altogether. Officer Friendly again, voice hitching, asks How close are you?

Fuck if Jamie knows. Rattles off the road signs. Tyler, can I call you Tyler? The Iron Giant announces he's to take the next left and he fishtails in his haste to whip down the nearest exit. Sounds like summat's 'bout to go down over there, Tyler-Or-Whatever-Your-Name-Is. Appreciate it if you'd tell me what.

Shite, man. Just get here. Please just get here.

And he's standing in the harsh fluorescent glare of the foyer, gooseflesh all over—Christ, it's cold as a witch's tit outside. Car still running. He should see to that. Mobile clutched white-knuckled. Evening, sirs and madam. Back for me Dad. Wouldn't let me wire over bail money for some reason. How many sheets to the wind is he this time?

“—AMIE FOOKIN TA—”

“—leave it, Reggie—”

“—fantastic fookin penally sh—”

“—in here all the time, you get used to it af—”

“—shame you en't playin for the home team no more—”

Jamie waves them off like so many biting flies. “Appreciate it, gentlemen,” he says, just as cool as he can manage, “but I'm not exactly here at balls o'clock in the fucking wee hours, 'stead of cuddled between three buxom lovelies who happen to be on unusually good terms with one another—which, yeah, that was kind of the fucking plan—to discuss humiliating Crystal Palace.” Rambling again. Not sure if he can stop. “Got a call about me Dad. Just...” He can't believe he's saying this, but he learned his lesson the hard way and he's not about to replace the Iron Giant's upholstery again. “Look, if he's shit himself do you mind standing him under a shower for a few? I keep a spare pair of joggers in me car.”

“Oh, James?” the reedy mustachioed man says. “Already come and gone.”

“—and come again,” his jowly companion adds. “Left a few minutes ago to meet back up with his mates.”

“Bloody peculiar, innit, seeing him on the right side of the bars.”

“—ut your face, Williams, man deserves a fookin medal—”

Fading in and out. The second hand on the wall clock stutters, skips, seems to hang suspended in time. “Excuse me,” Jamie interrupts, “an Officer Tyler—Australian bloke, sounded like—rang me up 'round midnight telling me that James Sr. needed to be seen to in hospital and I better come get him. Now was that one of you lot, or were me dad's mates prank calling from the station phone while he hung around here not being like, arrested and that for whatever reason?”

Got their attention, that. Never heard of an Officer Tyler. Scrolling through his call history. Voice messages from Manchester Municipal, his publicist, Manchester again, Orrie-Pilkington-The-Fucking-Third,-Special-Reporter-For-The-Sun.

“The fuck was he doing here anyway?” he finally demands, snatching back his mobile before any of them think to do the maths on how badly he's broken speed limits.

“Stopped by collect his brat, didn't he?” smirks Officer Mustache. “Course, he was more than obliging once we...explained the situa—”

Takes him a minute. It does. Never been known for his brains, has he, but he fucking gets there. Static in his ears and the wall clock stuttering into the strangest positions.

Stopped by to bail out his—

“—dished out a healthy dose of tough love—”

“What about the kid's mum?” He sounds almost calm, asking like that. Like Keeley might've, any of the times she had him on the ropes and knew it—hell, she usually knew it before he did. Jamie takes a deep breath. “Tell me you rang her first.”

“Signed away her parental rights, didn't she. Last—I dunno, check the file, Williams—February or summing.”

No other next of kin.

So yeah, kid's still here, innit

And Jesus God, they're still talking. Jamie must be better at this than he thought, though, 'cos they're looking at him with shit-eating grins like they expect him to join in laughing any second now. So he raises an eyebrow, asks almost gloatingly, “How pissed was he?”

“—suppose he'd been out celebrating the win—”

“—lways so proud of you, Mr. Tartt, chats you up every time he's in—”

“—d've passed a field test, though, wouldn't he?—”

And he's counting his breaths like Doctor Sharon taught him to, hanging on to something like lucidity.

Lucidity. Ha. Knew that word, didn't he? One of Keeley's word a day calendars. Stocking stuffer their first Christmas together and he hadn't made it past the third week in January.

“Stone sober when he got back, though—”

Minutes matter right now, Mr. Tartt.

Dad always had been worse, sober.

“Look,” Jamie says, no longer sure whether he was talking over anyone or not, “I am expected back on the pitch in like, three and a half hours, so here's what needs to happen. You're going to go get the little prick back out here like you should've when I walked in. I'm going to drop twenty thousand quid on that desk over there, no questions asked, and I will sign whatever the fuck you want me to sign to get us the fuck out of here. Then I'm swinging 'round the old Motte and Bailey to pick up me Dad, and I'm driving them both home to apologise and make things right with me cunt of a stepmum.”

Jowls is quick with a protest. “But we're waiting for—”

“Dad's off with his mates, Officer,” Jamie scoffs. “Come morning he won't even remember he was here. So unless you're willing to go out and track him down, I'm next of kin.” They still look uncertain. “Twenty thousand quid. You know I'm good for it.”

And that finally, mercifully, shuts them the fuck up.

They seem to take a long time fetching the little miscreant. Jamie tries to doze in one of the uncomfortable plastic chairs lined up along the wall, gives up, checks the clock. Twenty minutes. The cells are ten fucking feet away. No reason for it to take them twenty fucking minutes. He's about to march back up to the reception desk and lodge a formal complaint, never mind the desk's empty and complaining would just piss them off worse than he's already done—but the door swings open and Jowls is dragging his—

Jamie can't think of him as his brother, not at first. Four foot nothing and soft doughy features, sandy hair and Bleeding Christ, he doesn't even look old enough to arrest. Still cuffed, the twats. Cuffed, and James Sr. here and gone twice already, promising to return with his mates.

And yeah, there's that look in the kid’s eye like he's the one other person on the planet who knows what it's like to be James Tartt’s pride and joy.

Takes him a minute. It does. Dim must run in the family.

Then the kid's face hardens. He plants his feet, won't move another inch. “I'm not going anywhere with him,” he tells the officer flatly. “Take me back to my cell.”

Yeah, it's about like that. They're brothers alright.

Chapter Text

The little twat tries to make a break for it the second they're through the glass doors. Jamie catches him 'round the middle, figures he'll hang on 'til the fight goes out of him, but then it doesn't and right the other side of the glass the coppers are laughing their heads off, so Jamie gives the fuck up and slings the brat over his shoulder like a squirming kicking sack of potatoes, takes an elbow to the ear for his troubles and shouts something that's most likely unforgivable, but whatever. He wrestles open the passenger door on the Iron Giant, flips on the child locks, and dumps his brother unceremoniously into the front seat.

The kid goes off like an air raid siren and Jamie remembers, be-late-and-all-ly, the man they have in common, come and gone twice already, and he feels like an absolute arsehole.

He doesn't remember going back in for the little prick's special effects backpack—police called it that, anyway, not that he sees anything so special about it. But he gets it, doesn't he. And he gets in the car. He must. He doesn't remember getting in the car, but whatever. He's gripping the wheel white-knuckled, so dizzy he's probably a full-blown safety hazard, and the steering wheel's in the car, so he must've gone and gotten in at some point.

Kid's still seething, glaring out the window with jaw set and breath coming in tight little gulps. Keeps muttering Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ. Sniffs hard and scrubs his face off on his sleeve.

Jamie adjusts his grip. “That's fucking disgusting, mate,” he hears himself say. “Check the fucking glovebox. There's like, napkins and that.”

The Iron Giant's shaking something awful. Just his luck, his baby's chosen 4am in the middle of fucking nowhere to blow a transmission or like, the certainty-belt or something. He tells his brother twice to strap in and buckle up and that. This thing crashes, kid's going straight through the windscreen, dead for sure. What's the age for carseats now, six? Ten? Ride in the backseat 'til they hit puberty and their balls drop or whatever?

He whites out again and he's parked on the shoulder of a dirt road out in the middle of fucking nowhere, engine off but the steering wheel still juddering in his hands. Left ear ringing like someone's been screaming down it. His brother biting back awful ugly sounds like an injured baby fox. Must've tapped the brakes a bit hard. Country road's not doing the kid any favours either. He slaps on the light and turns to face the little prick.

He can't ask, How bad off was he? The words lodge in his throat like when he falls off the carbo-wagon and finds himself shoving pancakes into his greedy little pig-face. Like when he binges pancakes too fast and can't find water to wash it all down with.

He gets a little lost, thinking about pancakes. Running the battery down on his fucking car.

Christ, he's got to have a water bottle around here somewhere. Can't fucking find it for the life of him.

Finally he says, “There's a first aid thing under your seat. It's got like, cold packs. There's a little balloon thingy inside, gotta twist it 'til it pops and then squash it around 'til the whole bit gets cold.”

It's his hands shaking, he realizes. Not a blessed thing wrong with the Iron Giant, not at all. Which is a fucking relief, truth be told, even if his chest feels like it's about to fucking explode like a fucking hand grenade, Jesus Fucking Christ.

“You said that already,” the kid says, sounding a little shell-shocked.

“Yeah, alright,” Jamie says. “Did I ask if you needed like, a doctor or hospital or whatever?”

Kid staring at him like he's grown another head. Eyes owlish and unblinking. “You went and double-parked in the pull-through for St. Brigid's—with like, ambulances coming and that, trying to get in around us. Took me ten minutes to talk you out of there.”

“Right,” Jamie says. “Right.”

It's fucking cold in here, innit.

His brother's shivering too.

One second Jamie's fumbling around with the heating controls, the next he's halfway to Richmond, coasting on fumes, the Iron Giant announcing each upcoming turn. He's telling his brother, “Look, mate, I can promise you I'm stone sober. I got a two-drink limit when I'm out with the lads—Coach Kent's orders, they know better than to fucking cross him—and anyway that was like, nine, ten hours ago. I just...I crash really fucking hard after games, yeah? And you woke me up in the middle of a fucking rim-cycle and I'm just, I'm really fucking tired right now, and I'm doing me best, I promise you that, but I'm fucking tired.” And fuck him, kid's still eyeing him warily, like he's a rabid animal or something. “That's all it is, right? I promise I'm not like, on summat or...or outta me head."

He's breathing heavily, shivering again, heat on full blast and barely even touching the chill. He hangs the last left into a petrol station at a slower creep than he'd walk the same fucking distance, wide lollipop turns to avoid speed bumps, fucking five of the fuckers to a little fucking postage stamp of a fucking carpark what the everloving fuck.

He doesn't have a plan. Doesn't have a clue where he is. Takes another deep breath. Throws the car into park because it's a carpark, innit. Tells you exactly what it's for right there in the name of the thing. Dead useful, stuff like that that has the basic decency to get named exactly what you're supposed to do with them.

...The fuck does he do now?

Food, he thinks. Kids like food, don't they? So he asks if the little twat's hungry, gets a mute-in-us glare in return. He rummages in his wallet, pulls out a crumpled fifty, jams it in the kid's hand, tells him to get his scrawny arse in there and buy the biggest coffee they've got and a full tank of petrol. Do that, kid can buy whatever else he wants with the change.

“Why don't you do it?”

Jamie crosses his arms over his chest. “Because if I walk in there wearing—” Fuck, he's still in his pajamas, brick-red boxers with Bantr printed across the swell of his arse. “—If I walk in there with my hair looking like it looks right now, the security footage is gonna get leaked to the internet inside of forty minutes, and the press will be all over it.”

"Yeah, so?" the kid says.

So Dad finds out where you are and who you're with, you whiny little dipshit, and he figures out I crossed him.

Instead Jamie goes, "You want to sit here arguing until someone recognizes my car, and then get stuck talking to fucking journos at balls o'clock in the fucking morning, or do you want to go the fuck inside, buy yourself some paracetamols and like, as much fucking junk food as you can fucking carry, and maybe get home to bed sometime in the next seven hours, Jesus Christ." Kid's still just sitting there, chewing his lip and looking a lot less convinced than Jamie might expect, given that rock-solid logic bomb he just laid down, but whatever. Jamie digs out a crumpled hundred and slaps it down on the seat between them. "Here," he says, "sweeten the deal. Now go get in there and buy yourself a million fucking Mars bars or whatever."

“But it's cold out there!” his brother whines.

“Yeah, fine,” he says, slithers out of his jacket, holds it out. Kid's goggling at him again, openmouthed. “What?” He looks down at himself. Patchy black stubble. Four dark hairs above his left nipple. Must've missed a spot. Blushing to the tips of his ears. “Don't say it,” he warns. “Got a waxing appointment in four days, it'll fix everything.”

Kid's still staring. Mumbles, “You're not...wearing anything underneath.”

“Well I was kind of in a hurry, wasn't I?” Jamie snaps, and that shuts the kid up.

He hadn't been, though, had he? Lay there staring at the ceiling, thinking about football camp and heat lightning and the dead and the dying, ignoring his phone for hours and hours. And all the while, one James Sr. had been—

A dull clicking noise brings him back to himself. His brother's rattling at the door handle. Child lock still on. Jamie cracks his door, fiddles with the controls. Catches his brother's arm before he can dart out of there. “One more thing,” he says. “You do a runner and I will call the fucking police to come pick you the fuck back up, and I will drop another twenty fucking thousand just to do this whole fucking thing all over a-fucking-gain so I can go drop you off home where Dad can't get his fucking hands on you. So just...fucking don't, and we can get on with things and not like, have to go through all that. Got it?” Brat tries to jerk his arm loose, but Jamie hangs on. “I said, you got it?”

“Get the fuck off me,” his little brother snarls. “I wanted you to stick your nose in, I wouldn't have called James in the first place!”

Not sure what happens after that. He's sitting on the the Iron Giant's front bonnet, knees drawn up near his chest, staring at Keeley's number on his mobile. Feels like he's breaking into pieces. Calls Coach Kent instead. Picks up on the first ring: “Somebody had better be fucking dead,” the man grunts.

“Sorry,” Jamie mumbles. “Have I called already?”

“Fifteen fucking times, you little prick. Luckily, Keeley's got her mobile set up to kick you straight to voicemail between the hours of 8pm and 8am. I swear to fucking Christ, if you're drunk-dialing at this hour to fucking whinge on about how much you miss being her fucking boyfriend, I will fucking have you fucking running fucking laps until your knees go snap-crackle-pop worse than mine. And when you're done running those fucking laps, all fucking three of us are gonna sit the fuck down and sort this nonsense like sane fucking adults would've already fucking—”

“'M not drunk,” Jamie says faintly. Hitch in his chest. Not making a bloody great case for himself, sobriety and that. Comes back to himself with Coach shouting his name. Fuck, the man sounds almost fucking scared. “Sorry,” Jamie says again, “I might be late for training tomorrow, that's all. You're me coach. Thought you should know.”

“Well you could've called Beard,” Kent grumbles. “Not like he fucking sleeps at night. Swear to fucking Christ, that man's like half vampire, half idiot savant.”

“Yeah, but Beard dealt with him last time,” Jamie manages to say before his throat closes up and he stops fucking breathing.

He's in joggers and his fucking training kit, bile in his mouth and a puddle at his feet and Roy's voice soft in his ear, can't make out the words but it's so fucking gentle it has him mashing his tear ducts shut with thumb and index finger so he doesn't just—

Keeley in the background, groggy, sounding like a bad-tempered kitten. Something must show on Roy's face because Jamie hears her asking, Babe, what's wrong?

Hears her sounding almost as scared as he is.

“I have a brother,” he tells them. “I have a little brother and I only just found out, had to fucking drive all the fucking way to fucking Manchester to post bail. Little prick got himself picked up for fucking practicing law without a license, if you can believe it.”

Christ, where is the little twat? He scans the parking lot, checks the store. A sandy-blond head pokes out between two shelves.

Coach Kent has gone very, very quiet. For a second Jamie thinks the call's dropped. Then the man says, “Solicitation.” Silence. Then he goes on, slowly, “Jamie, kiddo, I need you to think very carefully for a minute, all right? You said he's facing charges. Was one of them called 'solicitation?'”

Kid steps to the window, flashes a thumbs up and a little wave, then goes back to shoveling fucking Mars bars into his special effects backpack. “Yeah,” Jamie says absently, “that's the one. Only, it can't be a crime all the time, right? 'Cos we got solicitors over at Richmond, and like, that's their job, right, and they're not forever getting pinched for like, doing their work. I get how people would get hacked off if it's a kid though. Need to get through school first and that.”

“Jamie,” Coach asks tightly, “when you say 'little brother,' do you mean like, Colin-little or...Nora-little.”

“Um...no?”

“Phoebe-little?” Roy wants to know, and he's breathing even as a metro-gnome, voice so low and calm and gentle that Jamie expects the wrong answer might earn him a swift smack in the teeth—or would've, anyway, back in the good old days when they still hated each other and like, flirted sometimes.

Kid's out crossing the parking lot. Fucking forgot the fucking coffee but fine, maybe he'll share his Mars bars in the meantime and they can get the fuck out of there and go find a fucking Starbucks or something on the road.

“Uh, no, he's not exactly Phoebe-little. Like...Nora, maybe?” Jamie considers it. “Maybe a bit younger. Balls haven't dropped yet, anyway."

He's left with a ringing in his ears and the vague impression of Roy cursing the air blue.

“—amie, darling, can you hear me?”

Keeley. Her scratchy voice, bad-tempered kitten and that, and it sounds like home and safety and golden Sunday afternoons letting her play with his stupid fucking hair, and it fucking feels like someone's gone and punched a hole through his fucking chest. He manages to grunt something, let her know he's listening and that.

“—need you to pay attention for a minute, sweetheart. Can you do that for me?”

Yeah. Yeah, he can. He can pay attention if she's the fucking one who's asking him to.

“Your brother needs professional medical attention,” she tells him firmly, and Jesus, he thinks, this woman's sharp as a tack. He en't even gotten 'round to telling them about James Sr. “I've pinged you with the location, so just follow along on your GPS. It's a good clinic—discreet, professional, state-of-the-art. They've got standing NDA's with Richmond, so you don't have to worry about press.”

“You don't have to worry about anything,” Roy puts in thickly. Jamie tries to imagine them on speakerphone, because the alternative is picturing them huddled together in the bed he used to sleep in, sharing an earpiece while he snivells into his fucking out-of-date Nokia. “I mean it, mate. Just get him there, check yourself into the nearest motel, and get some fucking rest. We'll get hold of his mum, handle the legal fuckery, let the team know you're excused from training. All of it, you understand?”

“Call us when you get out the clinic, though, alright?” Keeley interrupts. “I'm booking your room as we spea—”

The static takes him again, and they're sitting in the Iron Giant, him and his brother, doors hanging open. “—saw you sick up and said coffee's bad for that, hurts your stomach, but she was selling these five-hour energy shot things.” Jamie's brother holds out a little red bottle, half-open. Smells strongly of B-vitamins and nail varnish. The kid cocks his head, slaps on the lights. Up on his knees looking Jamie over. “You been crying, mate?”

“Honestly, kid, I have no fucking idea,” he says. “Come on, click your seatbelt.”

“...You click your seatbelt,” his brother mutters.

“Or you can like, have a lie-down in the back, if you want. I brought a pillow and that,” Jamie offers.

“Why'd you bring a pillow?”

“Pillow, blankie, rubber sheets, fresh change of clothes. Thought I was driving out to post bail for Dad, didn't I? He always sleeps like a baby after a night in the pokey.”

“Please,” the kid scoffs. “James has never been in jail in his entire fucking life. Hospital, yeah, but not....”

Jamie raises his eyebrows. “Uh...James Tartt Sr.? Mr. Man-City, V.I.P-Box, Hey-Mate-Did-You-Know-I'm-That-James-Tartt-That's-My-Fucking-Boy-Out-There-The-Famous-Fucking-Footballer? Drunk all the time, scruffy beard, looks like Santa Claus after a bad three years strung out on oxy? That James Tartt?” The kid's just gawping at him. “Please say yes, mate, because if your dad en't that same James Tartt Sr., I might've accidentally purpletrated like, at least a couple degrees of kidnapping.”

His brother's quiet for a minute. “He's not a drunk.”

“Uh, yeah, he is. I have to come bail him out after like, every Man City match. Most of Richmond's too. Why else would I have twenty thousand quid on hand, ready to go, night after a big match?” And Christ on a fucking cross, the kid's looking like he's about to be absolutely fucking devastated—like, crushed, even—as soon as that sinks in so Jamie says, “Look, just...put on your belt or climb into the back. I don't really care which, but I don't want you going through the fucking windscreen either, so take your fucking pick.”

“James isn't a drunk,” the kid insists.

“Well if he's cleaned up his act enough to stay sober around you, mate, that's fucking more than he ever fucking did for me.” Jamie hears the petty-lance in it, hears his voice crack. Treachery. Can't bear to see how his brother's looking at him right now. He reaches into the back, fishes out his favourite travel pillow, fucking wings it at the kid. Hears himself yelling, “Jesus fucking Christ, would you fucking sit on a fucking pillow like I fucking said and like, stop squirming a-fucking-round, mate, you're making me fucking nervous and I'm fucking done with it—and buckle your fucking seatbelt, Christ.”

And he's immediately fucking mortarfied, en't he—losing his shit on a little kid, shouting and that like his Mum never did, but the guilt that lodges in his throat goes right out the fucking window when his brother bites off a huge sticky gob of Mars bar and goes, “Yeah, but you never actually said that.”

Testing him? Little prick's braver than Jamie gave him credit for.

“Well I said about the seatbelt, didn't I—and the coldpacks, they're there and I want you to fucking use 'em. And I got...I got extra shorts in me kit bag.” Hears his voice, breaking again, sounding like a scared fucking kid all over again. Pressing fingers against his eyes. Wanting Coach. Wanting Keeley. Still talking: “Big on you, yeah, but drawstrings, fucking comfortable. Those jeans have gotta be fucking agony by now, Jesus Christ.”

Outside again, trying to get control of his breathing. Boot hanging open. Strange looks from the lady in the petrol station. Forcing a grin. Forcing a wave. Hope she en't worked out who he is.

Back in the car. Hanging onto the steering wheel for dear life when really he just wants to fucking throttle it. Somewhere in there his brother's gotten changed, curled up on the pillow with his face turned away, blush of shame creeping up the back of his neck.

Yeah, all right. Jamie's been an actual prick this time. Reaches slowly across the kid, ignores the flinch—yeah, he gets it, no more than he fucking deserves—grabs the fucking seatbelt and fucking clicks it into its slot. The Iron Giant hums like a happy hummy kitten-thing. Heat flooding out of the vents.

They've been on the road a few minutes when Jamie says, “I got this coach. This fucking Yank. Says the happiest fucking animal in the whole fucking world is the fucking goldfish. 'Cos their memory's only like, ten seconds long. And when summat goes wrong at like, training and that, he says, Be goldfish.”

Sniff. Face wiped off on his sleeve. Still wearing Jamie's kit jacket, fucking swimming in it. Caramel and kid-snot all over the fucking place. Doesn't say anything, but his breathing evens out. Like Yeah, mate, what's your point?

Like he's listening, maybe.

Jamie says, “Look, I know I been a raging arsehole here, and you are well within your rights to be as hacked off at me as you want. I mean, if that's how it is, I fucking deserve that. I do. But I'm thinking maybe we can just like, put that aside for a minute and just...try being goldfish.”

Another wet gulping sound. “Okay,” his brother says thickly, “but like, how d'you mean?”

“Like, let's say okay, my name's Jamie, and I'll be twenty-four next February—and I'm like, not actually the person you see on telly, that's just, that's a character I play on telly. And yeah, I'm still a bit of a prick in reality but it's like, not on purpose, more like I'm a prick because I'm not great at thinking things through before I say them or do them so I fuck up and then people get mad and I'm kind of not expecting that so I get mad right back and then it's a whole fucking mess.” He huffs a little, staring at the road. “And I didn't find out about you until like, just a couple hours ago—sorry 'bout that, our parents are fucking pricks I guess—but...now that I did find out about you I'm like, super fucking happy to have someone in me family who's like, alive and not actually, you know, a fucking vegetable from a fucking stroke.”

Silence.

“Right,” Jamie says slowly. “So...now you go.”

“They already told you my name,” the kid mumbles. “It was on all the papers.”

Dim memories of his brother reading everything line by line before letting him sign. Stopped him from signing away rights to legar representation and like, some other seriously bad shit, probably. He says, “Yeah, okay, but...no boy your age actually goes around calling himself Evelyn, you'd get yourself murdered at recess every fucking day for the rest of your fucking life. So you are...?”

A thousand fucking microexpressions flitting across the kid's face. Looks fucking gutted, sure, but also kind of lit up over something.

Trying to remember the paperwork. It said Evelyn something. Middle initial T.

“Hold on a tick,” Jamie says, feeling like he just about solved the riddle of the Styx. “Your name wouldn't happen to be Tyler, would it?”

“Taylor,” the kid corrects him, and immediately looks furious with himself.

“A-ha! He speaks!” Jamie crows. “Good on you, Goldfish. Now fork over some of those snacks—I'd fucking kill for a Mars bar right about now.”

“Get your own Mars bars, arsehole, these things are fucking currency where I come from.”

“Don't call me an arsehole, you little twat.”

“You just called yourself an arsehole like, three whole times.”

“Oho, you are waaay too young to go running your mouth 'bout good times that are requirous of all three holes.” Laughing at that, more giddy than amused. Got his brother blushing again, which is fucking fantastic, adrenaline hit on top of a second wind on top of a weird fucking energy drink thing. “Show me what else you got stashed in your bag o' tricks, Tyler.”

“Taylor!” But the kid's laughing too. Eyes all red and puffy, face the kind of fucking mess that would get him torn apart in any fucking changing room the world over but fuck it, he's actually laughing.

Craning to take a look. “Let's see...titty mags, ladies' razors, well done indeed.” Cigarettes. And yeah, that's fair, though how the fuck he got his hands on 'em—

“Watch the fucking road, arsehole!”

Yeah, all right, fair.

Then: “Feminine hygiene products! Fucking jackpot!”

Tyler buries his face in his fucking hands, trying to melt into the seat.

“No, I fucking mean it, mate—that's a stroke of marketing genius right fucking there, Keeley would be all over it.” Shakes his head in disbelief. “Guess we know who got the brains in this fucking family, don't we?”

The Iron Giant announces they are to take the next right, and the kid sobers up so fucking fast Jamie's worried somebody must've died. “Right. Um, I know we're being goldfish right now, and that's fucking brilliant—it is—but...do we have an actual plan or...are we just driving?”

“Yeah, mate, there's a plan,” Jamie says. “And uh, it's a good plan, I can tell you that much—I know it's a good plan because somebody else thought of it, and then I went and ran it by Keeley and she didn't laugh at it for being stupid. So it is a good plan.” Swallowing. Mouth suddenly dry. “Plan is, James Sr. isn't actually allowed within like, five hundred feet of me, so if you stay within like, four hundred ninety...six?...ninety-six feet of me, let's say, then he can't actually reach that far...so he can't reach you and...you're fine. And then, the other part of the plan is that no-contact orders don't actually mean anything to him when he's like this, so we put as many miles as possible between him and us in hopes that he either sleeps it off and forgets any of this fuckery ever fucking happened or else comes after us and like, crashes his fucking car—or like...his mate's car, I guess?—anyway, crashes somebody's car drink-driving, and that takes care of the problem for us. Because the problem will be dead.”

“That is a breathtakingly stupid plan,” Tyler informs him flatly.

“No...uh, no, it's—it's not stupid, it's just not...not all of it.” How to admit this. Nothing for it but to maybe just admit it. “Um, I didn't actually hear all of it, I don't think, so it was an incomplete plan and not a stupid one. Which is why I called Keeley, and Keeley added to it, and now it's a good plan again.”

“Uh-huh,” Tyler says, reaching to unclip his seatbelt. “What's the new plan?”

He checks the child locks. Armed and ready. Flipped them on back when he and his kid brother were busy being fucking goldfish. “The new plan is: hospital.”

“I don't need a fucking hospital,” his brother says flatly.

“Well, mate, Keeley thinks you do, and she's usually right about—well, okay, usually she's just...right about things, full stop, and I can either listen to her and then stuff sort of works out or I can ignore her and then it's an actual fucking disaster, and I don't want things to be a disaster with you so...we're going. Sorry. She's already sent over the address.”

“But I don't need a—”

“Jesus Christ, it's like a legal thing, mate,” he tries to explain. “You're in like, all kinds of serious fucking trouble for like, being a solicitor and fucking everybody's mad about it—and Jesus fucking Christ, the coppers went and brought fucking Dad in to get you to sign a confession 'bout whatever they thought you'd done as like, a solicitor, so they could throw the fucking book at you, and there's like, drugs and...assaulting a police officer, all kinds of stuff. Keeley—”

“Keeley Jones?” Tyler sneers.

“Yeah, Keeley Fucking Jones, head of Richmond PR, smart fucking batshit genius goddess media-spin-doctor-witch-goddess—yeah, shut up you, know I said that already—and best fucking friend I've got in the whole fucking world Keeley Jones wants you seen by a professional medical...professional as soon as fucking possible. And I don't really get it, do I, but she was really fucking clear about it so...that's the new plan. Fucking...deal with it.”

“Let me get this straight. The new plan is, we follow your car's plan, and your car has a plan because your ex-girlfriend texted over some fucking coordinates.”

“Okay, yeah, when you say it like that, it sounds kind of stupid,” Jamie admits.

“I've seen horror films with smarter setups than that.”

“Well, those horror films weren't written by Keeley Fucking Jones, were they?” He takes his brother's silence for victory, mutters, “Yeah, didn't think so.” Tries not to smirk.

Takes another left. A cul-de-sac. A carpark. His brother saying, “Don't make me go in there.” His brother choking out his name. His brother swallowing pride like broken glass, forcing out a word that sounds like anything but Please.

“Tyler, mate—” Jamie starts.

“—Taylor!—”

“All right, then, Taylor—”

“You said you weren't gonna make me—!”

“I don't know what I fucking said before, alright?” Jamie snaps. “Back at St. Bridgehead's or whatever. I could've said fucking anything, yeah? I wasn't in me right fucking state of mind. But...I'm your brother, mate. This is me, saying it in me right state of mind, and I don't know how to tell you this mate but I need you to fucking go in there and let them look after you, yeah? Because I am fucking terrified right now—like, literally scared out of me fucking face—that if you start pissing blood or like, bleeding somewhere you really, really shouldn't, that if that happens I'm not gonna know about it. Because I had people, all right? I fucking had people when I was your age—captains, coaches watching me like a fucking hawk, knew me better than I knew meself, knew how to get the very best out of me. And they never noticed—”

He's in another hard fucking plastic chair, public safety services must all get them from the same fucking place, uncomfortable as all fucking hell and the strangest fucking colours, pickle green and dark orange and that weird mustardy yellow that was a big deal as a contrast colour four fucking years ago. There's a paper cup of brown garbage-water in his hand, not enough sugar in the fucking world to make it drinkable, but the nice secretary or whatever seemed to think it would help so he's holding it and pretending to drink every once in a while so she doesn't think he's weird or like, probably a creep or something. Papers in his fucking lap, fucking pamphlets with swimmy titles that make the inside of his head go blank. Sun's up outside. Nokia a dead fucking brick in his pocket. Missing time again. An hour maybe. Maybe three.

He's not sure how long he sits there, thinking about chairs and like, colour trends in the fashion industry. He might think about other things too, but they make him space out and he doesn't remember them after. There's a scrapy hiss from the revolving doors up front—God those things are weird, little fucking merry-go-rounds for you to walk through, he'd fucking loved 'em as a kid, stayed inside going 'round and 'round while Mum nagged at him to come help her with the groceries. He smells coffee and whipped cream. Vanilla vodka. Recognizes a familiar pair of shoes.

He's here, he's there, he's every-fucking-where.

Roy Kent, vanilla latté in hand, impertinently dressed and looking like he's just been run over by a fucking lorry. Stands there a minute fiddling with his mobile. Message to Keeley, probably. Then he opens his arms. “Bring it in, you little prick,” he says, sounding about a thousand years old.

And yeah, it's like that. Jamie pops up out of his seat sort of faster than he was expecting, fucking spills garbage-water fucking everywhere—and yeah, goes in for it faster than he was expecting, too, rocks Coach back on his heels. And yeah, the bastard didn't even bother showering, or slapping on cologne; he smells like Keeley, and home, and those stupid fucking patchouli candles she burns when she's stressed.

And God, Jamie’s fucking shaking, innit. Jesus Fucking Christ, he can't fucking do this here, people fucking watching and a whole wall of glass windows all across the front lobby. But like, Coach is shaking too, and maybe that's all right.

Coach Kent's an angry hugger—muscles bunching, back braided all up and down with tension, like he's hanging on to a fucking punch-bag because if he doesn't he'll start hitting it again and not leave off 'til his hands are a bloody pulp. Like he's every bit as precarious in his body as Jamie fucking feels.

The man grunts, sways. “That's the knee,” he tells Jamie thickly. “I have to hold you up like this, you're gonna fuck it up all over again and there'll be actual fucking hell to pay when Keeley finds out. And I'll like, probably spill your fucking whipped cream Starbies princess coffee, so maybe let's sit down and you can drink it instead.”

And yeah, they're sitting, and it's fucking prickarious in these fucking chairs, but Roy's still got an arm around him. Hand on the back of his neck. And yeah, Jamie always fucking hated it when it was James Sr. doing that, but he kind of likes it when it's Roy. Doesn't quite feel like he's about to get shaken around like a drowned cat or whatever. Cup clutched in his hands. Sniffs it. Fucking vanilla vodka.

Fucking wanker.

“I can't fucking drink this, Granddad. I still gotta drive Tyler over to his mum's or whatever.”

“You're not fucking driving,” Roy tells him drily, “I'm driving. I brought Will, and he's taking your silly James Bond car home, and I'm gonna be your personal fucking chauffeur until you've had a solid ten hours of sleep. No arguments.”

“'S too much car for him,” Jamie protests.

Slow half-cocked grin. “Yeah, I know. Little twat's gotta learn about foreplay sometime, though, doesn't he?”

“Yeah, okay, but like, me brother's got his bag in there and that kid's like, really attached to his fucking Mars bars.” He's quiet a minute, then goes, “The fuck you doing here anyway, Granddad?”

“Well, we didn't fucking hear from you, mate,” Roy says in the easy, measured tone that usually means laps forever or like, the threat of the bench or something. “And then Keels couldn't fucking get hold of you, so...rang the hotel, you weren't checked in, she started ringing up hospitals, morgues, checking up on John Fucking Does. I went over 'round your place, it was all smashed up, had to get the police over and...yeah, I'm the fucking search party, mate.”

Okay, that doesn't exactly make sense, Keeley checking morgues and that. “Where else would I be?” he says. “I haven't been fucking anywhere but where you two said I ought to go.” Coach gets really fucking quiet over that, and then it starts to get a bit scary just how fucking quiet he is, and Jamie cracks. “All right, um, why don't we just pretend for a minute that I've just had this like, absolutely mental fucking...sleepwalking episode and I've fucking woke up now but I'm in this like, gynecowhatical like, women's hospital holding a bunch of fucking Ministry of Health pamphlets about like, being a fucking teenage girl or summat. So just fucking...pretend that's how it is, because that's about where I'm fucking at right now, and I really need someone to like, fucking fill me in on the fucking details.”

“Jamie, mate, this is a very bad time to turn into a fucking goldfish.”

“Yeah, well, I am kind of a master at doing the right thing but at the wrong time and like, fucking it all up like that.”

“You really don't remember,” his coach says.

“No. It's the middle of the fucking night, mate.”

Actually, it's a fair way into tomorrow morning, but details. Coach raises an eyebrow as though he means to say so, then stops himself. “Right,” he says instead. “Drink your fucking princess coffee and clean the muck out your ears, I'll be giving you a fucking pop quiz after and I expect top fucking marks outta my star pupil, yeah?” Pointed glare. Fingers massaging the back of Jamie's neck. Fucking brilliant. Fucking bliss. And like, vanilla fucking vodka latté is the best fucking thing in this whole fucking universe, innit. “Best I understand you came in around four, stayed with your brother through the whole fucking kit, well done there. Then they tossed you out, had to ask him some hard questions, that part's shitty but they have to fucking do that, right? Then the clinic's social worker was like, walking you through some details, and you just fucking...took off.”

Jamie winces.

“Yeah,” Roy says. “That was two hours ago. Taylor thinks you fucking ditched him. But I told him no, you'd probably just gone to pick up breakfast or something. His face fucking lit up and he said you kept going on and on about how Starbies will make you a fucking double vanilla latté with twice as many pumps of syrup, and I said you were a fucking child with a fucking child's sweet tooth and that's probably where you were and then his social worker told me not to use profanity in front of her client. Will and I have been driving around ever since fucking looking for you.”

Ducks his head. Apologises.

“You fucking should be fucking sorry, kiddo, I fucking swear to Christ you are giving me grey fucking hairs like fucking no one else,” the man grumbles, pulling Jamie closer. “Next time you go decide to be an actual hero in the middle of the fucking night, just...fucking bring your fucking mobile with you, yeah?”

He lets go, then. Face is all wet and he's a disgusting sticky mess. Fucking scrubbing his face dry on his sleeves. Coach telling him to use a fucking napkin or like, pocket-handkerchief, Jesus Fucking Christ. Makes him wash his face after, says it's fine for the social worker to see he's upset and for Taylor to see he's upset but it's some fucking serious Bad News fucking Bears if the social worker sees Taylor seeing he's upset, so suck it up and pretend you're still a prick for like ten minutes, fucking Christ on a fucking cross mate.

And they go make nice with the social workers. It's surprisingly easy, all things considered. Or maybe Coach makes it easy, Jamie honestly can't tell at this point. One of them wrinkles her nose at the fumes coming off his latté.

“Fucking Starbucks,” Roy scoffs. “They use fucking like, benzine extractions in all their fucking flavourings—like, the syrups and that. Smells like bleach to you and me, mate, but the kids fucking love it.”

“Mr. Kent, sir,” the clinic specialist cuts in, “sorry, um, big fan but—” She drops her voice, as though Tyler isn't sitting right fucking there rolling his eyes behind her back. “—yeah, if you wouldn't mind watching your language in front of Evelyn, here.”

“I TOLD YOU ALREADY, MY NAME'S NOT EVELYN, IT'S TAYLOR!” his brother hollers at a pitch generally reserved for Coach Nate's training whistle.

Jamie cuts him off, not quite yelling in his own right, but seriously fucking over it. “Right, Tyler, we've been over this, it's been a really long fuuu—uh, fussy...fussbudget of a night and I need you to not go off like an air raid siren in a fff...fun little...tiny little enclosed fucking space like this one because Coach is driving and if you do that in his car while he's driving he's gonna put us out on the side of the fff...sss, um, forested road and make us walk the whole fuh, um, rest, um, of the way home.”

“Valiant effort, arsehole,” Roy whispers in his ear, hand still on his fucking shoulder.

“Shut the fluff up, Granddad,” he whispers back, scowling.

But Taylor, clearly, is not especially happy at the prospect of going home. “YOU SAID I WOULDN'T HAVE TO GO BACK TO MUM'S.”

“Listen, son,” Coach tells Taylor sternly, “this is your last fucking warning about using your fucking inside voice when you're fucking inside. I've got my fucking stopwatch in my fucking pocket and I will not hesitate to make you run fucking laps around a women's fucking crisis center, so help me fucking God.”

“Mrs. Tartt—um, sorry, the other Mrs. Tartt—she um, did decline to participate at this time,” the other social worker tells Jamie apologetically. “We're doing a big big push with outreach right now, though. We're very hopeful that she'll come around.”

What a cunt. Like, he almost doesn't even feel guilty for calling her one in front of the coppers back in Manchester, even though he knows he's not supposed to say shite like that about women anymore. Disrespectful and that. Keeley said.

He holds up a hand for quiet, trying to get it all straight. “Okay, so, the mum's place is out. Dad is...no. Yeah, Dad is not happening. Where was he before?”

“There was a group home. They don't want Evelyn back, unfortunately.”

“MY NAME'S NOT—”

Coach growls low in his throat, muscle jumping in his jaw, and fuck it, Jamie knows exactly what it's like trying to run fucking laps after getting belted twice in the same fucking night so he drops his voice and leans in close to brother's ear. “Don't push it, mate, there's like a whole loop upstairs that the nurses use when they want to get some cardio in, yeah?”

Roy's huddled in with the two social workers. Jamie hears words tossed around, emergency guardianship and psychiatrical fitness evaluation and Yeah, five fucking bedrooms in one fucking flat, can you fucking believe it? There's papers in front of him. Tyler eyeing him suspiciously, finally shrugging and going over the text line by line, pointing out exactly where Jamie has to sign. Hands it back over, feeling like he's run a fucking marathon. Taking down his coffee in long sickly-sweet pulls.

“I want to try some,” Tyler says, grabbing for the Starbies.

“No,” all four of them say at once.

“Why not?” he whines.

“Because it's fucking coffee, Jesus titty-fucking Christ,” Roy tells him.

The social workers wince, make noises about appropriateness of language, so Jamie goes, “Hey um, I like, signed the fff...um, the papers, so can we like, just get fuffing...going now and like, take me brother home and not get in trouble for it? Um, please.”

“I SAID, I'M NOT GOING—”

“Coming home with me, mate. I got like, all these extra bedrooms and that.”

“Wait, what?” Kid looks proper fucking blindsided for the first time all fucking night.

“The fuck you think I was signing for, mate?”

“To...to be able to drive me, and not get in trouble—”

“He's not fucking driving,” Roy informs the room at large, “I'm fucking driving. It's my car, and he's not fucking touching it.”

“Yeah, it's Coach Kent's car so go wash your hands and like, no getting caramel all over,” he tells Tyler.

And the fucking social workers start going on about how it's fine to let Tyler wash up now, they've got everything they need, and at a certain point Jamie starts wondering whether it's like, a fucking lab experiment and that. Like if there's some big push with the national health and that to scrape all the sticky grubby shit off kids' hands and like, grow it in little petri dishes to figure out new vaccinations or something.

And what with one thing and another, Roy alternately appalling and flattering the social workers and Jamie frowning at every new pamphlet with great apparent interest, they manage to more or less get out of there before Tyler goes off again or like, actually starts kicking somebody. They make it through the revolving doors out front and the kid lets out a fucking yowl like the death scream of a fluffy fucking animal getting torn apart by like, fucking owls or something, and after a minute Jamie realizes the little fucker's yelling about how he's not indoors anymore so Coach can't make him use his indoor voice.

But Will—good lad, Will, smarter than he looks—hands Tyler's backpack over to Roy, who says he's not above holding a year's sweets supply hostage if it'll ensure safe fucking driving conditions for the next half hour. And Jamie's so fucking tired he doesn't even fucking laugh, even though it's probably really fucking funny and he'll make Keeley just about piss herself when he gets around to telling her. Then he remembers they don't really hang out outside of work anymore.

“—lright you little pricks. Backseat, both of you—”

Pillows and blankets. Fuck yes. Fuck if this isn't the fucking best of all possible—

“—NOT GOING FUCKING ANYWHERE WITH THIS FUCKING GEEZER—”

Will, good lad, God bless him: “—come on, kiddo, this is like Make-A-Wish, best day you'll ever have, get to ride around with not one but two famous footballers from like, a championship league, and like, eat chocolate and have a nap and I promise you'll feel so much better when you—”

“—SAID YOU HAD A PLAN AND THIS IS NOT A FUCKING PLAN THIS IS FUCKING LETTING SOMEONE WHO BEAT YOUR ARSE ON LIVE FUCKING TELEVISION DRIVE US AROUND WHILE YOU'RE PASSED THE FUCK OUT—”

“—cking check it again, mate, he always keeps fucking athletic tape in his fucking kit ba—”

And Jamie puts his hands over his fucking ears and goes, “Tyler—”

“Taylor!”

“Yeah, okay, Taylor. We have a new fucking plan, okay?”

Well, that shuts the kid up, just like that. “Alright,” he says after a minute. “Tell me what it is and I'll think about it.”

Jamie tells him, “The new plan is: Richmond. You get in the car with us, and we go there, and then Keeley tells us the next part of the plan.”

“Yeah, that's not a fucking plan,” Taylor spits. “That's you expecting your ex-girlfriend to solve your fucking problems, which is not just the plot of a bad horror film but also painfully fucking sexist.”

“It is a fucking plan,” Roy interrupts, before they can get into it. “The plan is, your fucking brother's your fucking legal guardian right now, but there's been a break-in at his place and there's fucking police everywhere over there—which, the charges you're up on are like, really fucking weird, kiddo, not gonna lie—so we're just going to keep you and them like, good and separate for a while 'til that's sorted—so, to recap, his place is a no-go and you two are coming over to stay with me and Keeley, end of story. We already talked about it. There's like, a guest room and my niece's room and you pricks can fucking fight each other for the one with the better bed.”

“See?” Jamie says. “It's a good fucking plan. It keeps all the important parts about like, doubling you up on my no-contact disorder and shit.”

And Roy swivels around in the front seat and goes, “Of fucking course it's a good fucking plan. It's Keeley's plan. Keeley only makes good plans.”

“Yeah,” Jamie says, “I been like, telling him that. He doesn't fucking believe me.”

“You don't have the first fucking idea what I believe and what I don't, you twat,” his brother grumbles.

Jamie scrubs a hand across his face. Jesus Fucking Christ. “Taylor, mate, just...fucking...bring it in, yeah? I'm like, all the way fucking over here and we've fucking fixed it up for you to fucking lie down and Roy's like, a really fucking smooth driver, better than I am, so it's fine. It's like, not something to fucking worry about.”

“Yeah, you're a shit driver,” the kid agrees. But he fucking climbs in, finally. Jesus Christ.

And it's fucking weird, innit.  After a minute, Coach Roy still warming up the engine, letting the vibrations settle him, his brother rolls over and stretches out a bit. And it's not like having an actual brother curled up fucking next to him. Not like they're suddenly fucking family. It's like a fucking stranger, like one of the young fans who hang around the gates begging him to sign their jerseys, got stuck next to him on like an elevator or something, and then fell asleep on him because it'd been a long night and there wasn't anybody else. Not that that's ever fucking happened before, but that's kind of what it's like.

Yeah, he thinks. It's like, really, really fucking weird.

Roy checks the mirrors, looks over his shoulder to back out of the parking space, sees them curled up together like that. Fucking sighs. Fucking glares his famous every-fucking-where footballer death glare straight at Jamie. “Fucking buckle your seatbelts, you pricks,” he sighs. “I don't want you going through my fucking windscreen.”

Chapter Text

Fuck knows what time it is but the sun's overhead melting the frost off the grass and it's fucking brilliant. And he's taking long leisurely run-ups that would never fucking fly in a game, playing Horse with Dani, trick shots off the goalposts, backward bicycles and moves that must have names his coaches must have told him but he'd never bothered paying attention, had he, and now he's a gormless idiot plonker with nothing to recommend him but a right foot God Himself fucking kissed. So he kicks and he kicks like every single football on the field is the face of a drunk Man City hooligan who has personally trash-talked his mum, spoiling for a fight. He lets go like that, and it's fucking brilliant, innit. And Dani is cheering every time they make a shot, or miss, or they fuck up their form but the way he points it out it's like they're not fucking up at all, just trying something new—who knows, mate, football is fucking life, this one might be the next big winner. And sooner or later they get bored, they do, and hang a knotted pinnie up in a weird fucking spot like, tucked behind the crossbar, have to fucking bend it like David fucking Beckham to make the shot. And they do that for a while, and that's fucking brilliant too.

Colin runs up and he starts fetching balls back, and he takes a few kicks with them and it's a master fucking class in why midfielders should never ever get promoted to strikers, no matter who thinks it's a good idea. But he's there and he's trying and fuck it, Dani starts working with him on sticking the landing when he plants his foot, and for a few minutes there it's like Colin's actually fucking playing football with them, grinning like a little fucking kid getting to go run halftime scrimmage with his mates on his home team's fucking field. Then Coach Nate's fucking whistle goes off from the stands, and for a second Jamie thinks it's fucking Taylor fucking going off again at a volume reserved for glitch-hop concerts and fucking war crimes and he fucking flinches and decides to cover it by giving Nate the finger.

And Colin kind of shakes himself like a fucking Labrador Retriever whose entire purpose in life is to fucking die in a freak accident perpetrated by fucking mobsters or whatever by the end of the first act of the fucking film, thus providing justification for the square-jawed hero's fucking vendetta shooting-spree with like rocket launchers and the kind of assault rifles Americans leave lying around for some reason, because Yanks are fucking brilliant like that.

“Sorry,” Colin says. “I'm supposed to be down here collecting footballs. Coach said.”

“Well you're doing a great job, mate,” Jamie tells him. “Let's go kick a couple more for you, get your fucking cardio in, yeah?” And he goes for the next shot. Dani fucking hugs him like they've won the fucking 1997 World Cup, and it's fucking brilliant. Victory dances, chanting each other's names, the bit. Happy as fucking goldfish, they are.

The whistle goes off again and Colin's face falls and he goes, “Sorry, no. I'm supposed to be collecting footballs for training, mate. Coach said.”

“Yeah, fuck that,” Jamie says. “That's fucking Will's job, innit.”

And Colin goes, “Yeah, but Will's not here, so Coach said I have to do it.”

“Well if Will en't here then there's nobody to collect the footballs, and there's no footballs, so...fucking can't start training, so you can stay down here and fuck around with me and Dani instead of like, letting fucking Nate fucking chew your ear off.”

“No, sorry,” Colin says, “I don't think that's how it works.”

“Colin, mate, it's not your fucking job.”

And they fuck around like that for a while longer and Jamie pretends he can't hear Coach Nate's fucking whistle. And it's fun for a bit, worth a big shit-eating grin and a gleeful wave all the way down the pitch. Nate fucking hates running so there's no chance he'll come down here himself and put an end to the party. But Colin's having a fucking Pavlova's reaction to the whistle—like it goes straight to the poor bastard's cock, makes him squirm like anything, swear to fucking Christ. So Colin fucks off after a while and it's him and Dani again, and it's still fun. Still brilliant. Laying into every shot like it's the crotch of every copper who ever woke him up middle of the night to fucking rescue someone who's better off dead and drowned and letting everyone else breathe a sigh of fucking relief for once that he's not here and they like, don't have to fucking worry about it, Jesus fucking Christ.

Fucking Colin jogs back, high-stepping it this time. “Sorry mate,” he says, “Coach says it's time for training and we really need the fucking footballs. He didn't say 'fucking,' though. That was all me.”

“Well, you can't fucking have them,” Jamie tells him.

“Why the fuck not?”

Fucking wanker. “Because I'm fucking using 'em, that's why.”

Good enough. Colin fucks off. Fucking brilliant.

Colin's back a minute later, kicking up his heels and doing that weird grapevine thing to loosen up his hips. And Jamie's feeling magnanimacent, he really fucking is, and he's suddenly very fucking aware that Colin's seven-fucking-teen, balls hardly dropped and not even shaving yet, only on the team at all because he dropped out of school and got his fucking Empancipation Declaration a few months back—seventeen fucking years old, not even old enough to go out fucking drinking with him and the lads, not that that's ever stopped him before. And because Jamie's feeling magnanificent, and there's an outside chance in hell Colin's back because he remembers how fucking brilliant it felt ganging up on fucking Nate, all that helpless fucking fury, he goes, “Here, mate, go for the extra pass!”

And he passes the football with hardly any more warning with that, and Colin's still all tangled up in his own legs, and Colin fucking whiffs it, doesn't he. But Dani's yelling something about fucking rebound shots and sets the kid up for it again, and this time Colin's ready for it and takes the fucking shot. Plants his foot good and proper this time, and it's fucking brilliant. And Dani goes for them fucking both like it's the end of the fucking world and any normal reasonable person would use their last three minutes alive to like, try and have one last proper nut, but Dani's neither normal nor reasonable and is content to fucking hug it out until the meteor or whatever comes crashing down into the fucking earth and turns them all into like, dead fucking dinosaurs. Or whatever.

Then Colin goes, “Hey Jamie, Coach wants to know if you drank your Gatorade.”

Fuck if he knows. That was like, so long ago it might as well have been fucking yesterday. “The fuck does Nate care whether I drank his fucking Gatorade.”

“Coach says Coach Roy come out and told him if you don't fucking drink your fucking Gatorade you're not allowed out on the practice pitch.”

Well, Coach fucking Roy fucked off first chance he fucking got, couldn't even be bothered to come down and fucking yell at him himself, and he's probably off complaining to fucking Keeley about what a hard night he fucking had, so fuck him and fuck his fucking Gatorade.

Yeah, Jamie probably didn't drink any. Just to like, be a prick and that.

He decides to fucking ignore Colin, stops passing to him altogether, and eventually Colin gets the message and like, fucks off. Looks a little hurt, but whatever. Fucking practiced making that extra pass, didn't he? It's not like he's a complete arsehole anymore.

It's a few more minutes and Colin comes back, hopping on his toes, jogging in place to keep warm. Jamie's out in knee socks and his fucking summer shorts, can't find his normal ones, and his arms and legs and fucking face are so fucking cold he can't fucking feel them, and it's fucking brilliant. “Colin,” he says, “what the fuck.”

And Colin goes, “I brought you your bottle of Gatorade.”

And fuck him, the little twat actually brought it. So Jamie goes, “I don't fucking need anymore fucking Gatorade, Colin.” It's like, a sneaky coaching strategy-trick to pump his bladder so full he has no choice but to hit the bogs, and Doctor Sharon will be waiting inside to fucking ambush him, and he is not fucking getting ambushed after the night he's fucking had. No, fuck that, he is going to stay right fucking here where he belongs, and he—

Is going.

To be.

A fucking.

Gold.

Fish.

Colin's fucking talking at him, and he finally fucking notices. The little twat goes, “Look, Coach said that Coach Kent said that Miss Keeley said you have to drink the whole bottle or she'll march right down to the changing-rooms and show Taylor her personal videos of you singing Rocket In My Pocket at our last karaoke night.”

“For someone as dense as fucking you are, Colin, you've got like, a fantastic fucking memory.”

And Colin brightens up a bit and goes, “Thanks, I think.” He's hopping up and down again—Jesus, Jamie gets fucking seasick just trying to look at him—and after watching the strikers for another little bit he goes, “Hey, who's Taylor?”

“He's me fucking brother,” Jamie snaps, and kind of regrets it. He hasn't said it out loud to like, anybody but Roy and Keeley while they were fucking cuddled in fucking bed together last night, ganging up on him to try and talk him out of his fucking tree while he sniveled into his mobile like the fucking child Roy always said he was.

He shakes himself out of it. He is a fucking goldfish and he doesn't fucking care about his ex-girlfriend and his ex-crush cuddling up together to fucking pity him.

Colin stops moving for like five fucking seconds and that's like, got to be some kind of fucking record, innit. Utterly gobsmacked, he is. Like, right down square in the gob. And then, bless his dense little heart, he goes, “You got a brother.”

Fucking brilliant.

Jamie lines up another shot. Sinks it. Goes for another. Finally goes, “Yeah, I got a fucking brother.”

“It's just, you never talk about him.”

Dani sets him up with a pass and this time he imagines his cunt of a stepmum's face on the fucking football. He doesn't actually know what she fucking looks like so he imagines her as the fucking clinic social worker, but like, dumpier or whatever. He sinks the shot and it feels so fucking good it ought to be illegal. And for a second he feels like, actually fucking brilliant, like he can do this, like kicking a fucking football is his own fucking praying mantis or whatever and it fucking gives him the strength to say fucked up bullshit like, “Yeah, I've been such a fucking colossal prick on fucking national fucking telly and that that his mum decided it was better if he never fucking met me and I never fucking found out about him because if we spent any time together my prickishness might like, actually be catching and not just fucking, jeans or whatever.” He sniffs. His eyes are watering. Fucking cold out, innit. “Joke's on her, though. Turns out he's already a colossal prick himself, chip off the old block, so she should've just like, let us see each other and bought him his fucking designer jeans and like, let me pay for his school and clothes and that.”

“Guess you done good, then, changing your brand and that, getting his mum to trust you with him. Bet Miss Keeley's proud.” Colin's really quiet for a minute, fucking high-stepping it again. “Bet it was that interview after Wembley, yeah? That was fucking brilliant.”

So Jamie goes, “Fuck off, Colin.” And like, means it this time.

“You got to drink your drink, though. Coach said.”

“All right,” Jamie says, “tell you what. You make this shot, I'll drink some fucking sports drink.” And Colin shrugs a little like, Yeah, all right, and his face lights up like he's got a whole fucking tangle of fairy lights up there where his brain's supposed to be, and Jamie pities him a little. So he makes that extra pass, the one that earned him a little plastic army man and like, a neon green football boot thrown at his fucking face. But he doesn't think about that, because he's busy being a fucking goldfish.

Colin takes the shot, fucking sinks it, jumps up and punches the fucking air yelling his fucking praying mantis or whatever about being strong and capable and that. Jamie reckons he can forgive him a little for being an embarrassing fucking plonker and that—certainly yelled stupider things when he was that fucking age. And when Colin fucks off he's still feeling so good about it he actually drinks some fucking sports drink so he's not, like, technicality-lying, even if he is putting one over on Coach fucking Kent.

Dani must have been paying better attention to things besides footballs than Jamie thought, though, because he stands around and refuses to play Horse or anything else 'til Jamie finishes the whole fucking bottle, fuck him. His bladder does end up a little full, but it turns out that's okay. He whips it out right there and pisses on the fucking goalposts, marking his fucking territory like stray fucking dog: THIS PENALTY BOX BELONGS TO JAMIE FUCKING TARTT, JR., CROWN PRINCE PRICK OF ALL FUCKING PRICKS.

It is fucking brilliant, as far as solutions he's thought up to problems all on his fucking own. Much better than getting ambushed by Doctor fucking Sharon in the Richmond fucking bogs, innit.

And it's good out there, it really is, sun and grass and cold crisp air, kicking and kicking 'til he can't fucking feel a thing. He and Dani have got bored with the fucking pinnie game and they're practicing like, those fucking head-over-heel handspring things that you can kind of use for throw-ins but can sometimes do it as a trick penalty shot if you catch the football between your boots just right, fucking whip in into the net so fast you can like, break the keeper's ribs if you aim it just so. Not even a fucking foul, innit. They're talking about making it illegal in tournament play, the fucking pussy faggot poofters, but it's an absolute fucking crowd-pleaser, fucking launches 'em out their seats every fucking time. Fucking brilliant.

And Colin's fucking back going, “Coach says you two have to stop fucking around. It's time for training and we need some footballs and he says if I go back without 'em he's gonna make me run laps.”

And Jamie goes, “You're fucking midfield, mate. You fucking run laps before training, and then like, during training, and then you race your fucking friends around the pitch for shits and giggles when the rest of us are ready to fucking bring it in, and then we hit weight room after and you run laps again but like, on the fucking elliptical so you can track your fucking heart rate when you're running with this stride or that one. Then you fucking go home and run laps around your fucking posh fucking neighborhood with your fucking dog instead of like, trying to find a girlfriend or like a boyfriend or whatever. So don't come fucking whinging at me about running fucking laps. It's like you fucking get off on it or summing.”

“I have to run Winnie around, mate, she's like a rescue, yeah? She doesn't get a good run in she gets really fucking agitated and like, chews my flat apart.”

“Brilliant,” he says. “Fucking bring her here then and then Nate can punish you all he fucking likes. Make his fucking morning, and Winnie will sleep like a fucking baby.”

“No dogs on the pitch, mi amigo. My heart cannot take another.”

“Shut the fuck up, Dani. Take your fucking shot or kip along home with your tail between your legs to like, the Guada-Sahara or whatever.”

Dani takes the fucking shot. Fucking nails it. Fucking brilliant.

So Jamie goes for it too, doesn't stick the landing, but fuck it. Try again. Fucking goldfish, yeah?

Whistle goes off mid-shot and it's nails on a fucking chalkboard, Taylor crying like a little fucking kid when they take a curve too fast and that fucking pothole comes up out of fucking nowhere, Jesus fucking Christ where's the fucking council or like, zoning people or whatever it is supposed to be fixing the roads, that's what he pays fucking taxes for innit.

Maybe shouldn't be thinking about that when he's flipping through the air like that. Lands him square on his fucking back, breath knocked out of him like he's gone down with a good solid kick to the kidneys, eyes fucking watering, bleeding Christ. It's the wonderful thing though about trick shots, innit. Can't fucking think about shite like that when you're practicing for 'em. Wonderful fucking thing. Fucking brilliant.

And Colin's leaning over him, looking like the fucking seventeen-year-old fucking prodigy twat that he fucking is. Looking fucking scared, is how he looks. And the little twat's going, “Fucking hell, mate, you all right?” Eyes all wide and goggling, Jesus fucking Christ.

Can't get up yet, fucking winded. Fucking cramping his fucking style. Gets his breath and goes, “Colin, if I let you have some fucking footballs, will you leave me the fuck alone?”

Nettles him, that. “You're not fucking alone, mate, Dani's like, right fucking there.”

“Well you can be right fucking there too, mate, fuck around with us and that, long as you shut your fucking face about what fucking Coach says.” Climbs to his fucking feet. Everything still working. Doesn't do another trick shot but gets back on that fucking pony and rides, good solid kick and the ball sinks deep into the net. Worth like, at least half a chub. Shoots again and it's so fucking good it's like, borderline inappropriate.

Nate's whistle again and Colin fucking flinches and Taylor's up on the fucking exam table trying to say something Jamie can't even begin to fucking understand and then there's a horrible dying-animal sound crawling out the back of the kid's throat and Jamie just wants to glue his fucking face shut with all the fucking caramels in all the Marks & Spencers in the fucking pre-Brexit EU if it'll just stop the poor little bastard making that fucking sound. And he's yelling something down the field at Nate that has Colin fucking going grey in the face and Dani going still like he's fucking glad he doesn't grasp the finer nuances of the King's fucking English.

Sun and grass and footballs. Kick and kick and kick like his life's depending on it—which, let's be honest, James fucking Sr. hanging around after matches yeah, life fucking does depend on it, always fucking has. Only as good as your last match. Only as good as your last goal. Only as good as the shot you're fucking taking. So plant your foot and stick the landing. Take the fucking shot. Fucking goldfish, mate. Be a fucking goldfish.

And he's a goldfish, and it's fucking brilliant. It is.

“Jamie, mate, training's started.” Colin again, looking seriously fucking uncomfortable.

Hurt his feelings, hasn't he. Fucking brilliant.

“Here,” he says, flicking a ball up with the edge of his foot, fucking balancing it there. Taps it, juggles. Kicks it at Colin's fucking face, but not like, hard. He's not a complete prick. Colin moves quicklike, catches it with his chest and it drops right there, right at his fucking feet, right where it fucking belongs. “I am giving you this fucking football, Colin,” Jamie says with an air of wounded magnificimety, “go fucking scrimmage or whatever. And tell Nate if he blows that whistle one more fucking time, I will make what I did to him back when he was our fucking kitman look like Paradise Fucking Lost, swear to fucking Christ.”

And that's it for a while. Colin fucks off. Feels kind of fucking bad about it, but whatever. He's playing with Dani again, playing his fucking heart out. Leaving his heart out on the fucking field, where it belongs. It's seriously kind of fun. Maybe they should get fucking Sam down here. Kid's got talent. Promise, even. Three of 'em could run around down here doing trick shots, being fucking goldfish, 'til the sky gets dark and the sodium lights flick on and fucking Rebecca comes out in her tappy fucking terrifying fuck-me-boots to yell at them about staying after hours.

Yeah, that. That would be absitively, posilutely, confirmatively—fucking—brilliant.

And he takes the shot, and sinks it.

Fucking goldfish, mate.

A hand on his shoulder and he fucking jumps the fuck out of his skin. Just about punches somebody, but that somebody moves awful fucking quick for a fucking grown fucking man who doesn't have to fucking get out the way of anybody's fucking words or fists or fucking thrown boots or what-the-fuck-ever. So his fist sails through empty air and it's fucking brilliant, innit. Swear to Christ, he hasn't felt this fucking safe since fucking Coach Roy turned him fucking loose in the fucking showers with orders to like, get a massage and a fucking nap and like, not fucking forget about his fucking mandatory fucking appointment with Doctor fucking Sharon later, and then proceeded to fuck off to wherever the fuck Roy fucking Kent fucks off to when he's not too fucking busy being the stable fucking center of Jamie's fucking universe, Jesus fucking Christ.

And for what it's worth, fucking fuck Coach Roy in his stupid fucking face.

So, yeah, whoever got sent down, he's fast enough Jamie isn't actually worried about hurting him on accident, which means it's fucking Colin again, Jesus Christ. So he says, “The fuck you want, Colin?”

“Coach says training started already and you're both fucking late. He said the 'fucking' this time. I didn't like, add that.”

“Well, Coach Kent excused me from fucking training, so it's fucking fine, mate.” Colin fucking woggling at him. Should shut his fucking mouth before somebody shuts it for him. But Jamie doesn't want to fucking say that, fucking hates those big hurt puppy-dog eyes that Colin makes when he's like, being a prick more on purpose than on accident. What he says instead is, “Fucking what, Colin?”

“Are you fucking benched, mate?”

“I'm not fucking benched, Colin, Jesus Christ.”

“Well, you're gonna get fucking benched if you keep this up, mate.”

“Well, it doesn't fucking matter anymore, Colin, 'cos I went up in front of a fucking judge and he gave me a fucking restraining disorder and I'm fucking fine now. Everything's fucking fine. Like, even if I do get fucking benched, he's not allowed within five hundred fucking feet of me and he like, can't reach that fucking far so it doesn't fucking matter if I'm fucking benched, it's fucking fine.” Lines up the fucking shot, fucking sinks it. Grass stains and blisters. Sunshine and football. Gold. Fish. “Keep trying to fucking explain that to Taylor, yeah, but he doesn't fucking believe me. Says it's stupid fucking plan but it en't fucking stupid, mate, it's fucking brilliant. I can get benched and then that's fucking it, I'll be benched and then nothing else will happen and then that's actually like, fine.”

“Um, Dani,” Colin says softly, “did he get like, knocked in the fucking head or something?”

“Jesus Christ, Colin, I didn't get knocked in me fucking head. I'm like, actually fucking fine. I'm like, playing the fucking goldfishiest of fucking goldfish football and it's absolutely fucking brilliant and Coach Wanker would be so fucking proud of us you like, wouldn't even believe it. Or, he would be proud if he weren't fucking missing in fucking action so fuck him, let's go get Sam and all your friends down here and let's just fucking...play, yeah?”

“No, Jamie, I like, actually got to go to like, actual training. Coach says it's your last fucking warning.”

“Well fuck him then, Colin, and fuck you too for going with him, Jesus fucking Christ.”

And fucking Colin goes, “The fuck's your damage, mate?”

And Jamie's feeling extra shitty now, speedy little motherfucker has to go fucking raining on his parade. So he goes, “Fuck off, Colin.”

And just like magic, Colin fucks off again and It. Is. Fucking. Brilliant.

It's still a good time, though. Sun and grass and kicking footballs 'til his heart's pounding out of his chest and he's probably like, all windburned and shit. Fucking cold out here, innit. Keeley would've made him put on like, skin exmollients or something. Fucking lotion, is what he's getting at. But all his skincare products smell like her, now, so he lets his face be a fucking ruin and they fucking airbrush it for promo shoots and nobody else ever gets close enough to fucking notice and it's fucking fine, it is.

No time to fucking think about Keeley, though, huddling with Coach in the fucking king-size Tempur-pedic he used to wake up in, sounding so fucking scared she has no choice but to nut up for the both of them and take fucking charge like only she can in a fucking emergency and—

No, no time for that. He is busy, mate. He is fucking busy.

If anybody asks, he is busy off over here sinking shots and like, being a fucking goldfish.

And when Colin comes back and says, “Coach says he needs the extra footballs and like, Dani and that,” Jamie's so fucking done with it he kicks a ball at the little twat's fucking face and like, doesn't even bother holding back.

“Hey!” Colin yells. “Coach says if you take another fucking swing at me he's going to fucking make you run fucking laps.”

“Well, I'm fucking excused from training today so I'm not like, actually training right now, yeah? And if I en't training then Nate en't actually me coach right now so he can't actually make me run laps so...that's fine then.” And he takes another shot at fucking Colin.

And Colin yells back, “I'm not the one being a fucking prick about it, am I? We got like, training and that, and you're fucking holding it up. The rest of us got shit to do today, yeah?”

He gets another fucking football sailing at his fucking face. And he's pretty fast, innit. He's a moving fucking target, that's what he is. And he keeps running his mouth, weaving back and forth, ducking and dodging like it's a fucking game.

It's a good fucking game, actually. Fucking brilliant. Brilliant like you wouldn't believe, mate. Like you wouldn't fucking believe.

And it goes on like that 'til Jamie's winged him twice and Colin's collected eight or nine footballs and Jamie's more or less figured it out that that's been the little twat's angle all along, but whatever, it's been fun. And Colin's fucking smiling again, doesn't look so fucking scared anymore, so Jamie goes, “Hey Colin, you should run down the end of the fucking pitch and like, round up Sam and Bumbercatch and like, eight or nine of the lads, and get 'em down here for a Dani fucking Rojas fucking master class on drilling a fucking football into the back of a fucking net.”

“I can't like, go down there and start a fucking mutiny, mate. Coach'll nail my fucking dick to the floor as a warning to other midfielders who might like, try to cross him someday.”

“Yeah, alright,” Jamie says, because fucking Nate. “But like, you should go round up Sam anyway. You got like, this fucking fantastic kick in you mate just like, screaming to get out, yeah? Not just him, yeah?—you as well, both you fucking lads. And like, I can't fucking do that for you, teach you to sink a ball, but Dani fucking Rojas can and it's about fucking time somebody believed in you lads enough to at least fucking try with you, yeah?” Colin's still jogging the perimeter, still looking unsure. So Jamie kicks another ball at him and says, “Come on, you prick, it'll be fun.”

“Yeah, alright. But like, later, yeah?” Colin promises, and fucks off.

It's good for about a minute, and then Colin comes wheeling back around going, “Sorry, um, fuck. Coach says that Dani's like, our actual ace in the hole and not your fucking emotional support animal. Sorry. He's um, kind of being shitty about it.”

“Well, you go back and fucking tell Nate that Dani and I learn more from each other in like, an hour than we do trying to go train with him all fucking month.”

“Okay, um, I'm not telling him that.”

“Well, tell him I told him he's not allowed to make you run laps and that for telling him what I told you to tell him.”

“Why don't you just like, go get your mobile and talk to him yourself?”

“I don't bring my mobile onto the pitch with me to training. It's a fucking distraction.”

And Colin goes, “You're not at training, though. You just said.”

“Yeah, well, it's a fucking habit, right?” He takes another kick. “Left it in my fucking cubbie, didn't I, and I can't fucking go back in there without risking fucking getting ambushed by Doctor fucking Sharon, so yeah. Mobile's out.”

“Wait, I thought you liked Doctor Sharon.”

“Colin,” he says, “will you please just fuck the fuck off.”

So this time when Colin fucks off Dani fucks off with him and that is like, absolutely positively not on. And Jamie's about to go off and call them both fucking poofs but then he remembers Keeley doesn't like that and she's probably still hacked off at him for like, making her call around to like, rue morgues and that. So he squares his fucking shoulders and doesn't call them any names at all, just hates them a little bit for going off and letting Nate push them around without him.

He's back to working on his reverse bicycles or whatever—not as much fun, now Dani's fucked off to get bossed about by some shitty little tin-hat Neapolitan. But whatever, Nate'll get his fucking Water-in-the-Loo and deserve whatever the fuck he has coming to him, Jesus Christ. Fucking brilliant, yeah? Fucking brilliant getting pushed around by shitty little mini-Mursolinis like Nate fucking Shelley.

Whatever. Not like it matters, does it?

Nate was like, ten whole seconds ago and Jamie fucking Tartt is a fucking goldfish.

Sun and grass and football, sinking shots into the net he fucking pissed on, fucking marked his territory, fucking staked out this whole fucking penalty box as his private fucking fiefdom. It's fucking brilliant, innit. Lonely, yeah, but brilliant.

Yeah, fuck them.

Colin comes back and his heart leaps a little in his chest, but turns out he's just the bearer of more bad fucking tidings. “Coach says Coach Kent says you got a fucking appointment with Doctor Sharon in ten fucking minutes so you better stop fucking around and get in for a fucking shower because she's got like, this tiny fucking office and he doesn't want you to fucking embarrass him again by going in smelling like our fucking boot room.”

“Yeah,” Jamie says, because he's fucking shitty like that and Roy fucking Kent has made it very fucking clear he's someone else's fucking problem right now. He makes no move to go but Nate's fucking yelling for Colin again, hasn't touched his fucking whistle yet but it's a matter of time, so Colin fucks off and leaves him alone for a bit, which wasn't so bad the first time but fucking sucks massive sweaty hairy fucking donkey balls this time around.

Whatever.

What. The fuck. Ever.

And it goes on like that for a bit. Has to fetch his own fucking footballs now, but whatever—cardio, yeah? Doesn't get enough of it these days. His heart's gonna take whatever the fuck he throws at it, innit? And Colin comes back and goes, “Coach says Coach Kent says to get your sorry fucking arse inside, you're late for your fucking appointment with Doctor Sharon and it's like, seriously fucking disrespectful, she's a fucking professional.”

“Well, Coach fucking Kent can come the fuck down here and say it to me fucking face if he really fucking cares that fucking much.”

And Colin goes, “Can't. Coach says Coach Kent is in the fucking War Room with Miss Keeley, Ms. Welton, Coaches Beard and Lasso, a couple people from down in Legal, and like, the rest of the fucking brain trust.”

And Jamie goes, “What?”

“Yeah, mate. Coach is like, trying to run fucking everything and like, fill in for Higgins and that.”

And all Jamie can think to say is, “Wait, we have a fucking War Room?”

“Yeah, mate. We have a fucking War Room. I don't like, actually know where it is, but apparently we've got a fucking War Room now.”

“Huh,” Jamie says.

“I know, right? Fucking brilliant.”

“Yeah,” Jamie says. “Fucking brilliant.” And he kicks the next football like an actual fucking football, not somebody's fucking face. And he sinks it.

Brilliant.

“Hey mate, you like, actually got to go in now, yeah? 'Cos like, you have an appointment you actually have to be at, and we need this end of the pitch clear to do a full scrimmage match. Coach said.”

“Yeah, well, go tell Coach that no, you can't have it, because I'm fucking using it.”

“Yeah, Coach said you'd say that, but then Coach said to tell you he said you won't be using it when you go to your appointment, so it shouldn't be a problem then.”

And Jamie's feeling shittier than ever, isn't he? So he goes, “Look, Colin, you can go tell Nate that I'm not giving up my spot to go sit in a fucking office with Doctor fucking Sharon and talk about things that aren't even fucking revenant anymore, yeah? So I'm still using this part of the fucking pitch for the forseeingable fucking future and Nate can just fucking wait his fucking turn because I was here fucking first, wasn't I?”

And yeah, this time he is running like, a master-class semen-war on how to be a first-class prick, the on-purpose kind, not just doing it on accident because he never fucking knows better, does he. He's being absolute unrepenting prick on fucking purpose and yeah, he fucking knows it. But fucking Nate fucking crossed him this morning, didn't he—Nate fucking took away his emotional support Dani for no other reason than that he fucking could, the statistic little prick, and now fucking nothing feels fucking better than winding Nate fucking Shelley up and knowing he can't do a fucking thing about it.

Whatever. Dani was good while he lasted but he was ten fucking seconds ago too, wasn't he. Fucking goldfish. Fucking goldfish doesn't fucking need anybody the fuck else after they've been nice for a while but fucked off. It's been ten fucking seconds and it's like the nice thing never fucking happened at all, innit, so there's nothing else he can do but plant his fucking foot and sink the next shot.

And Colin's still talking. Fucking whining like a little fucking kid. Fuck that.

“Colin, mate,” Jamie says, “if I hear you say one more thing about whatever fucking Coach said, I'm going to like, put you up against that goalpost and take fucking potshots at you like a wartime fucking firing squad.”

“Okay, well, it's not just about Coach and what he wants,” Colin says, like he's finally fucking getting it that Jamie's been an actual prick all along and just like, hiding it better these days. “We actually got like, couple new plays to test out in an actual game environment. They're actually kind of brilliant. You should come down after your session with Doctor Sharon and have a watch.”

Fucking traitors, that's what they are. “Colin,” he says, “go tell Coach that if he wants to use this part of the pitch for training, he's gotta come down here and say it to me fucking face.”

So Colin fucks off, looking more put out than ever, and it's not fucking fun anymore is it, sinking shot after shot. Fucking joyless is what it is. But fuck it, he's already committed to the play, skipped his session, been shitty with Coach and Roy and fucking gone and hurt Colin's feelings again, probably. He's staked his territory and he can't back off now without looking like a soft little poof.

Fucking brilliant.

And then Colin's back, didn't take long. “The fuck is it now, Colin?” he says in a steady, measured tone that reminds him of Roy at his angriest, because it's either that or lose his head entirely and start fucking shouting at a fucking kid like he's no fucking better than James-fucking-Sr.

And Colin goes, “Coach says I need the exercise.”

“Fuck off, Colin,” he says.

Colin fucks off.

Fucking brilliant.

He sinks like, four fucking shots and goes to collect the rest of the footballs, line them up again, when Colin jogs back, looking fucking knackered by now, and tells him: “Coach says Miss Keeley says Legal says if you're not actually doing training you gotta clear the pitch. It's like, liabilities and that. If you hurt yourself and that, you're not actually covered by the club insurance.”

What the fuck ever. Liabilities and that is for human beings, not fucking goldfish. Goldfish don't need anything but sun and grass and footballs.

And like, Gatorade. Gatorade was actually fucking brilliant, not that this fucking goldfish would ever fucking admit that in a million fucking years.

Well, maybe if Keeley asked him. If Keeley asked him he'd fucking tell her anything her little heart ever wanted to know about being a fucking goldfish grateful for a bottle of fucking sports drink sent over by his ex-girlfriend's new boyfriend.

But fuck it, goldfish don't have exes. Goldfish don't fucking drag that baggage around on a team full of boys who probably became men jerking it to fucking pin-ups of Keeley fucking Jones. Goldfish are fucking goldfish. Goldfish are only as good as their next fucking shot.

And he must have been out there looking like an absolute fucking prick, fucking snuffling on himself thinking about Keeley fucking Jones, soon to be Keeley fucking Jones-Kent or whatever, fuck him probably she's the kind of modern independent badass boss-bitch who doesn't need to change her fucking name. He must have been out there for a while, kicking footballs or not, sinking shots or not, because Colin comes back and he's not fucking jogging this time.

“Fuck off, Colin,” he says before the kid can even fucking get close.

“The fuck you do to your hands, mate?” Colin says.

Fuck if he knows. Smears of blood on the goalpost. Marking it out like a doorway for the Angel of fucking Death or whatever—fuck it, mum made him go on Sundays sometimes, when she could swap shifts with somebody and wasn't too tired to make it through the opening remarks, but Jamie stopped paying attention somewhere around Honor thy father, never even got around to Honor thy mother, so fuck if he knows what all the blood on the all doorways was all the fuck about.

And Colin's dense, he fucking is—almost as dense as Jamie fucking Tartt, Jr.—but even he can look over the goalposts and do the fucking math.

“Come on, mate,” Colin says, sounding all of seven-fucking-teen, “let's get you inside.”

He doesn't have to get inside, though, does he. It's not that cold. Makes him all stuffed up and snotty but whatever, it's fucking fine. He's got a fucking restraining disorder and nobody but fucking nobody can collar him in the boot room and fucking give him what-for for snotting and snivelling on himself like the prissy little bitch he is. He's got a fucking scar on his left hip from the last time and it's the last one that bastard's gonna ever fucking put on him, innit.

He's got his own praying fucking mantis and it goes, "I said don't speak to me like that."

Because the fists never come out, do they, until the fucking words have done their fucking work.

So yeah, it's a good fucking mantis, innit, and he knows it's a good fucking mantis 'cos Keeley's never laughed at it once.

And Colin's still standing there like a needy little bitch, narrow-chested and fast as fucking anything, fucking football fucking prodigy getting told he's nothing better than a fucking motel lobby painting there to cover up a fucking bloodstain.

Fuck Nate Shelley.

Fuck Nate for fucking ever, mate. Fuck him for putting that kicked-puppy look on your face, Colin. Pulls that shit again Jamie's gonna smash his fucking teeth in 'til he fucking begs for it, won't he, and keep on 'til there's nothing left in there to remember what begging ever was or why he was ever sniveling in the first place.

He can picture it. He fucking can.

Fucking brilliant, innit.

“Mate,” Colin goes, “Coach didn't exactly ask me to ask you, but he asked if I knew why you were being such a prick to him today. He said he had to fucking wake up at like, balls o'clock in the morning and like, go drive around hospitals checking unidentified car crash victims to see if he could identify you by your clothes.”

Can't fucking believe it. Colin fucking Hughes standing here defending Nate fucking Shelley.

Water under the bridge, yeah? Whole fucking football team made up of fucking goldfish.

“Were you in like, a fucking smashup or summat, mate?” Colin's saying, sounding fucking worried all of a sudden.

“No,” he says. “It's fine. I'm fine.”

“But your car, mate—oh fuck, that why you wasn't driving this morning?”

Colin and his fucking Lambo. Like a smashup with his car is the worst fucking thing he can fucking imagine. “Fuck off, Colin,” Jamie says thickly.

And Colin's there looking lost and confused again, like his world almost made sense for a fucking minute before Jamie fucking Tartt turned it upside down again.

Yeah, alright, maybe he knows the feeling.

But fucking Colin comes over to like, put a hand on his shoulder or go in for a fucking hug or some shite, and Jamie's had like four minutes at that point of trying to actually carry on a conversation with him instead of being a fucking goldfish, and the contact fucking startles him out of his skin.

And Colin fucking moves faster than Jamie's ever seen him—moves like someone who's actually learned to dodge slaps and punches instead of just soaking them in. And Jamie can't help it, he yells at him this time. Yells to keep his fucking distance, because the last thing in the world he wants to fucking do is to accidentally smack a brilliant fucking kid in his brilliant fucking teeth.

And fuck it, he's already lost. Nate can have his field of fucking battle. To the victor gets the spoiled, and that.

What the fuck ever.

Laps it fucking is.

Whatever. Let them have their fucking scrimmage. He runs til his fucking lungs are ready to climb out of his chest and start like, a punk band or whatever called “Fuck Jamie Tartt, He's An Absolute Prick To Work For,” and then like, that can be the name of their band and their debut album and their first like, platinum hit single. It'll be fucking epononomous or whatever, and everyone will say it's fucking brilliant.

Fucking Keeley and her fucking word-a-day calendars. Should've fucking listened to her and fucking used it every day while he was flossing, just like she said, and then he could sound like, half as brilliant as she did even if he was still an ignorant bleeding plonker with like, a Year 11 education and royally smashed-up knuckles. But no, he had to go fucking fuck that up with fucking Bex, because he wanted to show his brilliant fucking marketing genius girlfriend that he could do brand management and strategy and shit on his own without her so they could like, separate business and pleasure and that every once in a fucking while.

And like, maybe have a threesome with Bex, because she was seriously fucking fit and Keeley's always been kinkier than anyone gives her credit for, wouldn't be surprised if she and Old Rebecca weren't up there behind closed doors knocking boots and plotting world domination, just like he always hoped they would before she went and took up with Roy fucking Kent.

And he goes on like that, running and feeling like, left out and that, 'til he's too tired to think and Colin jogs over to tell him they've like, got a break for lunch and that. It's not that he missed the whistle so much as Nate must've taken one or another of his threats seriously and like, put away his fucking coach whistle for the fucking morning, which is a piece of fucking mercy on top of a shit sandwich of a fucking day.

Little fucking prick's not even winded.

But then, almost like a desolation prize or whatever, Colin goes and rounds up Sam and Bumbercatch and like, his very favorite emotional support Dani, and they go on down to the penalty box Jamie's marked out as his own private little feet-dom in the war of each against fucking everybody else and that, and they round up all the footballs they can find and Dani's fucking Labrador puppy enthusiasm is fucking infective, innit. And they play their little hearts out, don't they—Dani fucking Rojas and his master fucking class on career paths from midfield to striker or at least like, professional fucking wingman. It's fucking brilliant. It is. And they can be goldfish for a while, all of them together.

Sun and grass and footballs. The best things in all the world and there they are, they've got all three.

The others keep their distance, though. Not even Dani fucking tries to hug him. Colin must've told them that the next person not to keep their distance might maybe be getting a smack about the teeth. Must've got the memo, didn't they. Must've seen his fucking hands.

Whatever. They're playing Horse again and he and Dani go head-to-head and it's just as good as it was this morning, almost fucking better. It is. And then Isaac fucking MacAdoo comes out and fucking bellows that they only like, got a half hour left for lunch and he's not fucking listening to anyone fucking bellyaching on through afternoon training because they bolted their shawarma in the last couple minutes and got sick halfway through the first fucking warm-up.

And they fuck off again, in ones and twos, because even brilliant fucking goldfish don't want Isaac fucking MacAdoo fucking yelling at them when they sick up running drills.

Colin tags behind, though. And he ducks his stupid fucking head and goes, “Sorry 'bout earlier, mate. Coach says I should fucking ask before I fucking touch you right now. Says you're running on a fucking hair trigger and to tell you it's not your fault.”

And he wants to say, Hey mate, no hard feelings, sorry I took a swipe at you that was like, actually uncalled-for and like, pretty fucking shitty. But his friends are fucking abandoning him again to like, go eat shawarma together instead of staying to be goldfish with him, and he's mad about it and he's even a little mad at Colin, so he just kicks footballs and makes polite noises when the kid tries to talk to him.

And Colin doesn't fuck off this time. He hangs around. Goes, “Hey, Coach says you've got a fucking make-up appointment with Doctor Sharon, but if you want to go have a lie-down in his office he'll tell Coach Roy you made a good-faith effort but like, passed out instead.”

“Colin,” he says, like he didn't try to deck the kid an hour ago, like he still has any right to have any kind of say in this, “I'm not talking to Doctor Sharon right now.”

“Why not?” Colin wants to know.

Because Doctor Sharon is a fucking doctor for fucking human beings with fucking human being problems, and Jamie Tartt, Jr. is fucking fed up with being a human being with fucking human being problems, and he has decided to be a fucking goldfish instead. And you know what? Being a fucking goldfish is actually fucking brilliant.

“Oh,” Colin says, because maybe Jamie's said some or all of that out loud, or maybe Jamie's fucking gone off and screamed in his face again. His throat's all stuffed up and he really can't tell anymore. And then Colin goes, “Look mate, have you actually slept at all?”

“Yes,” he says firmly, because he actually has. He slept in the fucking car for all of ten minutes before someone cut them off in fucking traffic and Roy tapped the brakes too hard, and Taylor rolled onto an open gouge the size of Jamie's little finger and made a noise that Jamie remembered making when he was still that size, or else maybe a bit bigger, and learning all about that horrible in-between space after a man's peeled off the last of your pride and before he's taken the rest of your skin with it. And that was about the time he decided that being a human being was fucking bullshit and he might as well go and be a goldfish for a while because that sound he'd made as a kid was longer than ten seconds ago and it no longer existed except in his imagination and if the past was imaginary anyway then he might as well burn the whole place down and go kick so many footballs he couldn't imagine anything else for a while. Then the static had fucking filled his head and he let himself just like, listen to Roy swear at traffic and the other drivers and things like that.

It can be absolutely fucking brilliant, that static. That's the thing he wants to tell Colin right now, innit. If Colin wasn't an innocent fucking kid he'd be running his fucking mouth all about it.

And maybe he is running his fucking mouth, because after a while Colin stops trying to get him to come inside and eat fucking shawarma with the team.

And that's just sad, that is. Fucking pathetic. And he tells Colin to fuck off, and fuck it, even Colin's looking tired of his shit.

“All right,” Colin says, “let's do a fucking swap. I will fuck the fuck off and leave you the fuck alone for like, the entire rest of the fucking day, and Coach Nate will either have to like, fucking deal with it that you're not doing what he wants or like, jog all the way down here and talk to you himself.”

Well, Coach Nate fucking hates jogging, doesn't he? 'S why he thinks laps are like, the worst fucking punishment anyone's ever thought up. Well, laps and that fucking whistle.

Seriously, fuck that whistle.

“Fucking brilliant,” Jamie says. “You've got yourself a fucking deal, Colin.”

“All right,” Colin says, “I want your fucking boots.”

“Sponsorships don't work that way, you twat. You want a line of boots, go bother Keeley about it.”

And Colin goes, “No, I want the boots you got on. Gimme your boots, and I'll fuck off. Scout's fucking honor.”

“Fucking brilliant,” Jamie says.

Colin hangs around for a while.

“Fucking hell, Colin. I thought you fucking promised to fuck off.”

And Colin goes, “You really want me to fuck off.”

And he goes, “Yes.”

...And he's back to kicking footballs by himself. It gets to be longer than a half hour and he starts to wonder what they're all doing in there, if lunch ran late or they're waiting for him to come in to join in, and then he figures maybe they're hiding from him because let's face it, this plucky little goldfish is like, out of his fucking head right now, and he wouldn't want to be around him either.

It turns out the next person to fucking touch him is not fucking Colin, and therefore not fucking fast enough to avoid an accidental smack in the teeth.

“Sorry Gaffer,” Jamie says, all business. “Running on a bit of a hair trigger right now. Thought they fucking told you.” He doesn't take his eye off the fucking ball, though. Knows better by now.

Fucking drills it. Fucking sinks it. Coach Lasso is like, saying some shit.

“Lasso,” he says, “no offense, mate, but I like, really don't want to be talking to you right now.”

Coach says some more shit. Fucking hell. It's going to be one of those fucking feelings conversations, innit.

Fucking cramping his fucking style.

“—I do something to piss you off?—”

“No,” he says, maybe a little too quickly. But he's feeling pretty shitty himself, isn't he, so he fucking says, “You know what? Yeah, you did. You fucking left fucking Nate, of all fucking people, in charge of fucking training. And you know what that statistic little motherfucker did? He fucking took away me emotional support Dani and I really fucking some emotional support right. Worst thing you ever fucking did, mate, giving that little prick a fucking whistle. Nothing worse than a soft little man with a belly full of rinse-entsments who gets his hands on a bit of power.”

And yeah, then there's more fucking talking. And Jamie kicks footballs. And it's like that for a while.

“—way I hear it, you weren't even at training. Coach Nate—”

“Fuck Nate,” he says. “You just watch him, mate. You fucking watch what he fucking does when he thinks you en't watching.”

“Now hang on a minute,” Lasso says, so reasonable about it all Jamie's ready to haul off and smack him again, on purpose this time. “Nate took over training today so we wouldn't have to cancel entirely. The rest of us were—”

“—in the fucking War Room, yeah.” Whatever the fuck that's about. Jamie figures it's probably something pretty bad. If like, relegation and taking on corruption in the Nigerian government and like, fucking trading him back to Man Fucking City didn't warrant a fucking War Room, this has got to be on like, a whole other order of Bad News fucking Bears. Like, club's probably folding or something. Probably out of a job, and the other clubs have made it very fucking clear they don't fucking want him anymore. Probably gonna have to go fuck off to reality television for awhile, take fucking ecstasy on camera 'til he fucking cracks and starts fucking hammer-hatching fucking intel like in that confusing fucking Bond film with like, the scorpions or whatever that made him feel really fucking weird about Mrs. Yee in Fourth Year maths.

“—gonna go out on a limb here and guess you either agree with me or...else you've deci—?”

“Fucking fuck off, Gaffer,” he says tonelessley. “I fucking told you I don't fucking want to fucking talk right now. It's a bad fucking time for it. I'm fucking busy.”

“—ot tryin' to shut you down or anything, here, but I'm kinda havin' a hard time figurin' out—”

Right, he's like, not even rounding up footballs to fucking kick about right now. Better get on that.

He fucking gets on that. Fucking brilliant.

“—ust curious, you kno—”

And yeah, Lasso can go on being fucking furious for all he cares.

“—ou so busy doin—”

“Lasso!” he shouts. “I am fucking practicing!”

And then fuck everything in the world, Gaffer starts going on about how he was excused from practice and didn't Colin tell him.

And yeah, Colin probably did fucking tell him, and last thing he needs is the coaches thinking Colin didn't do his fucking job when Colin deserves a fucking award for zipping around the pitch like a human fucking mobile. So he goes, “No, Lasso, I am excused from fucking training, not fucking practice.”

“—thought over here you guys say training when you mean practi—”

And that's fucking it, innit? So Jamie goes, “No, training's where you fucking let fucking Nate throw his fucking weight around and like, blow his stupid fucking whistle where I can fucking hear it. Practice is not that. Practice is the one fucking place in the entire fucking world where I have any...fucking...control...over...anything.”

And he sets up the next shot, and he plants his fucking foot, and he fucking sinks it again. And yeah, he does get another nice little half-chub, even in this fucking weather, but it's not like that plucky little half-chub's going anywhere fast with Ted fucking Lasso yakketiyakking it up in his ear.

“—lad as I am you were um, listening more than I realized, I think you might've gotten a couple wires crossed with what I was trying to impress on you there—”

And yeah, Jamie feels like maybe he should fucking remember that bit, something to do with getting benched and like, a kidney-shot later out of nowhere when everyone else had gone and he was finally done trying to fucking drown himself in the showers, twenty-fucking-three and bench-pressing the better part of his body weight on a good day, big enough now to put anyone on the ground but he'd fucking stayed down and let it happen, hadn't he. And the next day he'd gone to change into his fucking training kit and like, stood there for twenty minutes taking the piss with Colin and Isaac before realized he fucking couldn't get changed in front of them, could he. And yeah, Gaffer had been fucking hacked off about it—yelled a fair bit, but whatever. It wasn't exactly out of the ordinary for coaches to lose it with him when he got himself in trouble again and couldn't like, shower with the lads for a bit or wear a weather-appropriate training kit.

And yeah, just like normal nobody fucking noticed a thing, did they? Keeley had fucking broke it off with him that week so not even Keeley had fucking noticed.

No, you know the fucking weird part? And it had been fucking weird, it had.

The weird part? Lasso got in close with his face, all scary-calm like he was right now, and went, “You know what, if you say you're hurt and you can't practice, then that's it. I believe you. You're hurt, and you cannot practice.”

And Jamie's a fucking wreck again, just like that. Looks up and Gaffer's standing there looking like a drowned rat-terrier with his stupid fucking mustache and his busted fucking lip and his hair plastered down against his face. Arsehole needs a fucking shave and like, probably a week of sleep.

So Jamie gives up on trying to talk it through with Coach fucking Lasso and he goes back to being a fucking goldfish. He kicks some more fucking footballs and it's not actually as fucking brilliant as it sounds but whatever, it's fucking football and right now he feels like he might actually get what Dani's always on about when he yells Football is life! Like how 'brilliant' sometimes means what it means and sometimes means the opposite of what it means but if you just keep on calling things 'brilliant' it sort of evens out after a while into something that's more or less okay, something you can more or less live with if it doesn't creep up from behind when you're not expecting it or like, bring its cracked-out fucking mates along as backup.

And after a while Lasso fucks off, and it's Doctor Sharon out there in her magenta rain-slicker and her cute paisley-print umbrella—just quirky enough, as accessories go, to give her the illusion of professional fucking warmth. And she doesn't try to fucking talk to him and that's all right, innit. It's like, actually all right. So he kicks some more footballs and tells her all about being a fucking goldfish. And she says some stuff and it's probably fucking brilliant, but whatever—he's practicing, en't he, and that means things are more or less under control. Rain lets up a bit, and that's nice. Better for his aim and that. And that's how it is when Taylor comes out to get him.

“We need a new plan,” is what the kid says.

“We have a plan,” he says, and sinks another football deep into the back of the net. “The plan is I look after you and then you don't have to go back to a fucking group home with a cunt who keeps calling you fucking Evelyn. And if you don't think that's a good plan, you can go run it by Keeley that you want to go to a fucking group home where some cunt has just told all the lads your name is fucking Evelyn, and see how long she fucking laughs at you, and then come back here and tell me your plan is better than mine.”

And Taylor goes, “No, that part of the plan's all right.”

Fucking finally.

Then the little twat goes, “I mean, we need a new plan about where we're staying tonight.”

And yeah, that tracks. That's about fitting for the day he's fucking had. “Did Roy and Keeley's place burn down?” he says.

“Um, not that I know of.” The kid kind of shuffles his feet. “They, um, sort of took my mobile though, so I'm not really sure.”

“Okay, well, if their place didn't burn down, then we're staying with them until my flat stops being a fucking crime scene.”

And Taylor goes, “Okay, I get it that we can't stay in your flat while it's an active fucking crime scene, but maybe the new plan can be that we go stay in a motel for a while instead of imposing on your ex-girlfriend and her new boyfriend.”

“Taylor, staying in a fucking motel right now is one of those plans that sounds like it's going to be a good plan but is actually a very bad plan, because when you're fucking famous and the police are fucking hacked off at you and you go and stay in a motel then the press get wind of it that you're staying in a fucking motel and then it's all over the news cycle and Dad finds out where we're staying and then he resurfaces and I have to fucking fight him for fucking custody, and if I have to fight him for fucking custody I'll have crossed him again and that'll remind him of all the other times I've fucking crossed him and he'll think up something worse to do than like, smashing up me fucking flat. And if he thinks up something worse we'll have to like, do another runner and come up with a whole fucking new plan without Keeley's fucking help—and look, mate, Richmond's got semifinal playoffs starting in like six fucking days and I just really can't deal with it right now so no, Taylor, we are not going to go fucking stay in a fucking motel.”

“All right, that is like, a very specific scenario,” his brother says slowly, like Jamie's been out here playing by himself in the rain all afternoon and he's got like, water on the brain or something.

“Taylor,” he says, “go tell Keeley you want to go stay in a fucking motel where the press can get wind of us instead of with her, where they fucking won't. I mean it. I will stay here and fucking wait for you to get back and then you can fucking tell me how long it took for her to stop laughing at you.”

“Jamie, we go can't stay with Coach Kent and Miss Keeley. Look, I am like, actually sorry, but that is just how it's got to be.”

“Did they fucking say that?”

“Say what?”

“Did they fucking say that we couldn't fucking stay with them anymore?”

“No, but—”

“Then we are fucking staying with them, and you are fucking shutting your fucking face about it until I've had like, a week of sleep and we're through the fucking semifinals—and then like, okay, we can maybe talk about it then, if Keeley doesn't fucking laugh her head off at you for fucking suggesting it.”

“Okay, but like, Coach Kent is like seriously hacked off at me.”

Well, that tracks. Jamie kicks some more fucking footballs and says, “Did Coach Kent make you run any fucking laps?”

And Taylor goes, “Um, no.”

“Did he say anything about putting it on your tab?”

“Your what?”

“Look, if Coach Kent did not make you run fucking laps or start a fucking tab for running fucking laps for him later, then Coach Kent is not actually fucking hacked off at you, that's just how his face is. And like, his voice or whatever.”

“Okay,” Taylor goes, “but what if like, he thinks I did something worse than something he'd try to make me run laps for?”

“Look,” Jamie tells him firmly, “there is nothing fucking worse in Coach Kent's fucking mind than running fucking laps. Coach fucking Kent used to be a fucking midfielder, which means he used to fucking love running laps more than anything in the whole fucking world—but then he fucked his knee, and he can't fucking run anymore, and he's this like, ambivalousness about running fucking laps that he projects on like, all of the rest of us, so he'll never try to do anything worse to you than like, make you run laps like he fucking can't anymore 'cos like, for him that's the worst thing there is.”

Fucking projecting. That's what it's called, innit. Doctor Sharon might have like been saying something about projecting and that.

And he's thinking about that—why the fuck Doctor Sharon would see fit to whip out big fucking words like fucking projecting while he was just trying to like, kick footballs like a happy fucking goldfish in the pouring-down fucking rain. He's thinking about that, and Taylor goes, “Okay Jamie, but like, let's say hypothetically he thinks I did something that was actually that bad that he'd think he should do something worse to me than make me run laps?”

And he turns to his pain-in-the-ass little brother and goes, “The fuck did you do now?”

And Taylor yelps, “I didn't!”

And yeah, Jamie believes that about as far as he can throw him, or whatever. Jesus fucking Christ, this kid. So he kicks some fucking footballs and fucking tries to think for a minute, which is hard at the best of times but like, actually really fucking hard right now because he's been trying to be the goldfishiest goldfish out of all the goldfishes in the goldfish world today. But eventually all he can come up with is to go, “Alright look, just don't do anything to make him want to make you run fucking laps over for at least like, a week and a fucking half, because if he tries to make you fucking run laps then one or the other of us is going to have to explain to him why you fucking can't run fucking laps right now, and I like, really don't want to have that talk with him right now.”

And then he fucking drills another ball into the net, and forgets all about whatever the fuck it was he was fucking worrying about, and it's fucking brilliant. It is. So he kicks a football over to Taylor and it like, bounces off his shin and the little twat goes, “Fucking ow, you arsehole!”

“Come on,” Jamie says, “stop being a fucking twat and like, kick the fucking football into the fucking net. It'll feel fucking brilliant and you'll forget all about Coach fucking Kent.”

“I don't even like football!” Taylor whines.

“You don't have to fucking like fucking football,” Jamie tells him, “you just have to like fucking kicking things. And if I learned anything from like, carrying you over me shoulder out of Manchester Municipal, it's that you like, really like fucking kicking things.”

“No,” his brother says, “I fucking don't.”

“Fuck you, you fucking don't. You fucking kicked me in the ear like, four fucking times. Jesus fucking Christ.”

And Taylor kicks the fucking football, and it's fucking brilliant. Well, sort of. Clearly, the little twat has never kicked a fucking football in his entire fucking life. It bounces off his big toe and he makes face. “Can we fucking go now?” he says, still all shitty about something or other.

“All right,” Jamie says, “that was fucking pathetic and we've like, actually got to work on that. You can't be me little brother and like, not know how to kick a fucking football. Sooner or later the press and that will figure out I got a little brother and then like, if it turns out you can't kick a fucking football the other lads at school are going to like, make fun of you forever and that is just not on. I might be a fucking prick but I'm not the kind of fucking prick who lets me little brother go around calling himself Evelyn and getting fucking bullied at school 'cos he never learned to kick a fucking football.”

“This is a brilliant fucking plan,” Taylor says. “Have you run it by your ex-girlfriend yet?”

And Jamie goes, “No, I have not run it by me ex-girlfriend yet, because it's me fucking plan and it's fucking brilliant. Keeley is in charge of like, plans that keep you out of jail and keep Dad out of our fucking hair. I am in charge of plans that keep you from getting fucking bullied by the other lads, because I spent half me life getting bullied and the other half being a better bully than all the other bullies I had ever met, and I've been like bully-sober for like four fucking months and I know how it fucking works, all right? So stop whining and like, go kick that football over there, Jesus Christ.”

And he shows Taylor what part of his foot to kick with, and Taylor shuffles over and kicks another fucking football—and yeah, it's still the kind of kick that'll get him fucking bullied, but not the kind of fucking kick he'd get destroyed over.

"Yeah, okay," Taylor says.  "See? I kicked the fucking football."

“Fucking come on,” Jamie complains, “why don't you want to fucking come hang out with me and kick fucking footballs like a normal fucking kid your age?”

“I told you, I don't fucking like football,” Taylor says crossly, and glares at him like he's being fucking stupid on purpose.

And well, yeah, he kind of fucking is. He's being a fucking goldfish on purpose, and that means being fucking stupid about Manchester fucking Municipal. “Jesus fuck,” he says. “Got it with the buckle end, didn't you.” And he drills the next fucking football he sees deep into the fucking net, because the alternative is storming off the fucking pitch and getting himself fucking arrested for fucking murder, and that is just fucking not on, because even if James fucking Tartt is out of the fucking picture there will always be ignorant cunt social workers ready to fucking call his little brother fucking Evelyn in front of other lads and like, pretend that's not going to have long-term fucking consequences for his psycho-sociopathic development.

And what do you know? Taylor must have actually fucking heard that, because he goes and kicks a fucking football like he actually fucking means it, and fucking Colin picks that fucking minute to come jogging over by the penalty box and the poor luckless sod gets drilled in the fucking face, doesn't he, and goes down like a bag of wet cement.

And Jamie gets him up and like, slaps him 'til he comes around and that while Taylor just fucking stands there like a bleeding plonker with his stupid little hands clapped over his mouth. “Fucking hell, Colin,” Jamie shouts at him. “You said you'd fucking fuck off and stay fucked off.”

“Sorry,” Colin says thickly, “it's just, Coach says—”

And Jamie puts Colin over his shoulder and goes, “I don't fucking give a fuck what fucking Coach says, you were supposed to fucking stay fucked off so you didn't get drilled in the fucking face.”

And Colin's punch-drunk, or else just maybe actually that dense, because he goes, “Coach says you can't use the practice pitch while it's raining. It'll like, mess up the grass and that, and Will's not here to fucking fix it, and Coach says he'll have to do it and he doesn't want to.”

“Jesus Christ, Colin, it like, en't even like, raining and that anymore.”

“Yeah, but like, Coach also says you're not allowed out on the pitch unless you're wearing proper football boots.”

And yeah, his fucking boots are missing. “Colin, mate,” he says, “where the fuck did my fucking boots go?”

And Colin says, “I've got them. But like, out in my cubbie in the changing rooms, yeah?”

“Colin,” Jamie says, “the fuck are you doing with me fucking boots?  They're my fucking boots."

“Well, Coach said I had to get you in off the pitch before it started raining so you wouldn't fuck up the grass, but then you wouldn't, so I promised I'd fuck off and leave you alone if you gave me your boots, so you gave me your boots and now I have them. And you were supposed to fucking come in, only you never.”

Yeah, that fucking tracks. “Well I don't know what to tell you Colin, except I was a fucking goldfish at the time and you should really fucking know better than to try to talk to me when I'm busy being a fucking goldfish.” And he wants to tell Colin he fucking brought it on himself, but fuck it, Colin's busy being a gangly fucking kid with a nosebleed all down his front so he doesn't. He just rolls his eyes and goes, “You really should have just like, sent Coach Kent out for me or whatever.”

“Yeah,” Colin says, “about that—”

And they bicker like that all the way inside, Taylor trailing a few steps behind all big-eyed with his hands still clapped over his mouth.

Fucking brilliant, Jamie thinks. If the kid pulls a fucking runner right now, Colin's getting fucking dropped and it'll be like, his fifth concussion this year. So he puts Colin down on the nearest bench and sends Taylor to go find a fucking first aid kit, and the kid comes back with fucking Nate of all people but whatever, at least someone's there to look after fucking Colin.

Well, so much for that. He thinks, briefly, about going back outside to kick some more footballs or like, maybe figure out where Taylor's fucking got to, but fucking Bumbercatch comes up to him and goes, “Hey, is it true you've got like, a little brother or something running around the club with you today?”

“Yeah,” he says, “I've got a fucking brother now.”

“Well, he's fucking getting into it with Roy out by the showers.”

“Fucking brilliant,” Jamie says, “thanks for letting me know.”

And he fucks off to the fucking showers, ready to explain to Roy exactly why laps are non-fucking-option right now. He's got a speech all mapped out and everything. He will will use extremely small words. And well, mostly that'll be because he's Jamie fucking Tartt, and he mostly only knows extremely small words. But it will also be so that Roy fucking Kent is not confused about who does and does not get to bully the fucking Tartt brothers, because that is a very, very small list and Roy's name is not fucking on it—because actually it's a list that's gotten so fucking small that no fucking names are fucking left on it, not even Keeley fucking Jones.

The racket's not coming from the fucking showers, though, is it. Racket's coming from the haunted fucking therapy room, the one where he showed up in long fucking sleeves running his fucking mouth about James Tartt, Sr. And Roy fucking Kent has an ice bath set up in there that looks like fucking heaven and makes Jamie's knees actually go a little weak with relief.

“But it's fucking cold,” Taylor wails in what cannot, in any universe, be said to be a fucking indoor voice.

“Yeah,” Roy says, “it is fucking cold, mate. And in like five fucking minutes, when it's done being fucking cold, it is going to start feeling fucking amazing like you can't even believe, so cut your fucking whining and get up in there.”

And Taylor goes, “This is about the fucking mobile, isn't it.”

And Roy goes, “No, Taylor, this is not about your fucking mobile, Jesus Christ.”

“Bullying me little brother, Granddad?” Jamie says carefully, sidling in and closing the door behind him. “Thought you'd know better than that by now—kid's gonna like, pretend to be a solicitor again so he can sue your hairy arse for like, decimation and that.”

And Taylor's going: “It's fucking 'defamation,' you festering fucking idiot, and that's not what I'd be suing him for anyway, Jesus fucking Christ,” at about the same time Roy's pointing a finger in his fucking face and going: “Jesus fucking Christ, you telling me you didn't even get a fucking shower yet?”

“The fuck I need with a fucking shower?” Jamie says. “There's like, an ice bath right here, and that's gotta be like, a hundred million thousand times better than a fucking shower.”

“No,” Roy says, “this ice bath is for your fucking brother. What you need is a fucking shower, so fuck off and go fucking get yourself one.”

And Taylor goes, “Maybe we can fight each other for it, like with the bedrooms.” And then he like, inches a little closer tot he exit and says, “I should tell you right now that I'm signed up as a conscientious objector for religious and philosophical reasons that are none of anybody's fucking business, and that means I'm taking the moral high ground and not fucking fighting Jamie for the fucking ice bath, so Jamie wins by default and he can have the fucking ice bath instead. Problem solved.”

And Roy says, “I've seen your fucking rap sheet, you little prick, you're not a conscientious fucking objector.”

“Taylor,” Jamie says, with about as much patience as he can work up at this point in a very long and very confusing night-that's-not-even-a-fucking-night-anymore-or-even-the-next-morning-but-like-already-tomorrow-fucking-afternoon-actually-and-Jesus-fucking-Christ-what-the-fuck-is-he-doing-still-standing-here-arguing-about-this, “do you remember that conversation we had like three fucking minutes ago about running fucking laps and the conversation I do not want to have with Coach fucking Kent about why you fucking can't run laps right now?”

“Jesus fucking Christ, Jamie, I'm not making Taylor run any fucking laps, the fuck you think I am?” Roy says. And Jamie must look pretty fucking surprised or something, because Roy's hands clench up in fists like he's about to go in for another hug, and probably would've already if there weren't fucking witnesses who'd have to be sworn to secrecy and like, sign NDAs about it afterwards. So Coach stands there looking actually kind of put out about that, and crosses his arms instead and goes, “You think I don't know what a fucking buckle gouge looks like, you twat? Jesus Christ, why the fuck you think I set him up with a nice fucking ice bath and like, a whole fucking bottle of arnica gel?”

And Jamie must be feeling a special kind of fucking stupid after being a goldfish all day, because even though it's industry fucking standard for bumps and bruises and all the petty injuries that come from getting fucking fouled for a living by grown men wearing spiked boots strapped to their feet, all he can think to fucking say is, “Arnica, mate?”

And Roy goes, “Yeah, you twat, fucking arnica. The fuck you used to use?”

And yeah, Jamie's head fills with static again and he goes back to being a fucking goldfish but like, only for a few fucking minutes because sooner or later Roy's got him out of the haunted therapy room and like, back out in the corridor where he can yell at him to his heart's fucking content about The fuck you do to your fucking feet, you prick? Jesus fucking Christ, I've got half a mind to drag you along to my next fucking podiatry appointment so you can see first-fucking-hand what happens when you spend your fucking twenties thinking you can play fucking football without proper fucking boots on.

Turns out Roy's actually kind of hacked off at him about that, or else about not taking a nap like he was supposed to—or like, not thinking to drop Taylor face-first in like, a whole fucking jacuzzi tub full of arnica seven fucking hours ago when it might have maybe made a fucking difference, Jesus fucking Christ. He knows Roy's hacked off at him because he hugs him like the fucking world's on fire and it's the only thing that can keep them from burning up and floating halfway across the planet like little bits of ash from fucking Australia or whatever, and then after all that makes him go fucking stand under a fucking shower alone for ten minutes thinking about the life choices that put him there. And he's like, this fucking close to breaking down entirely and hammer-hatching information about why he actually like, lejitterately hates showering alone, but Roy's standing just outside the door the whole fucking time making sure no one comes in and sees the fucking scar on his left hip-bone and puts the fucking pieces together like Roy fucking Kent must've fucking managed at some point long enough ago that it shouldn't fucking matter to a sobbing fucking goldfish.

And Roy's still going, “Look, it was really fucking simple. You were supposed to come in, have a kip, drink some fucking Gatorade, talk to Doctor Sharon, and have a fucking shower so you wouldn't fucking embarrass yourself in front of fucking Keeley at the meeting and like, mope around about it for the next month.”

And Jamie goes, “Come on, I drank the fucking Gatorade and Doctor Sharon came outside and like, we talked for a bit and it all turned out fucking fine.”

“It wasn't fucking fine you daft little prick, you fucking missed your fucking appointment and then you missed the fucking meeting and then you missed the fucking meeting after that one, and then you missed the fucking emergency meeting that we had to call because you'd missed the first fucking meeting to go outside and play fucking football in the fucking rain without your fucking boots on for seven fucking hours.”

And Jamie yells back, “I was being a fucking goldfish, you unmiterated arsehole!” and he's about to yell something else but then he comes out wrapped up in his towel and Roy's eyes are all puffy and he looks about a million years old, and just like that they're back to hugging it out again and somewhere in there Jamie realizes he's finally warmed up enough to start shivering again, and it's fucking brilliant.

He must get dressed at some point. Roy's at his shoulder like a fucking sheepdog and like, probably wouldn't let him go wandering around the Richmond club all starkers while his fucking ex-girlfriend's there and there's probably like, a fucking custody dispute in the offing. Eventually Roy steers him into the back office, dressed up sharpish and smelling kind of all right, actually, under the circumstances—and like, even his fucking hair is combed, even though he doesn't actually remember fixing it.

And Keeley is there on the fucking couch, knees joggling up and down like she's in fucking middle school, and her eyes are all red and puffy too, and she's got a soppy Kleenex that she's just kind of picking apart between her fingernails, letting little bits fall to the fucking floor. Jamie doesn't know what to fucking do, then, but that's all right because he ends up sitting on the couch huddled between his ex-girlfriend and her new boyfriend and they've tucked a fucking weighted blanket from Doctor Sharon's office up over him and they just fucking hang on to each other like that for a bit, all three of them, and it should be really fucking weird but he starts feeling warm again for the first time since he woke up last night thinking about fucking heat lightning and eventually he hears himself start talking about life as a fucking goldfish.

“Sweetheart,” Keeley says, and for a brief, shining second there it almost sounds like she could be talking to either one of them, “please remind me to get Richmond corporate to like, send Dani a fruit basket or something.”

“You can't send Dani fucking Rojas a fucking fruitbasket,” Roy says. “I know you think fruit baskets are like the be-all and end-all of brilliant fucking thank-you gifts from fucking corporate, but Dani fucking Rojas is just going to turn around and give it to his fucking neighbors.”

“Yeah,” she says, “but like, just think how happy he'll be seeing their faces light up when he does.”

“She's right,” Jamie chimes in, even though Roy's still probably a little hacked off at him and neither of them asked his fucking opinion anyway. “A thank-you gift that Dani can turn around and give away is like, the best fucking thank-you gift you could possibly think of for him.” Definitely better than those stupid fucking balloon arrangements or whatever. “And hey, while you're at it—if Dani deserves a fruit basket than Colin fucking definitely deserves a fucking fruit basket.”

And Roy says, “No, Colin doesn't deserve a fucking fruit basket, Colin deserves a fucking medal.”

“Yeah,” Jamie agrees. “Purple fucking heart, or whatever. He like, broke his fucking nose trying to run messages while I was teaching my brother to kick a fucking football.”

“Look, sweethearts,” Keeley says, and that makes Jamie feel so fucking warm inside he thinks he might finally actually be hammer-hatching, “we can't nominate Colin for a fucking medal. He's an anti-fucking-monarchist, and he wouldn't appreciate it.”

“Fucking fine,” Roy says, “let's make a fucking donation on his behalf to like, a metric fuckton of pro-Independence MP's.”

“We can't start campaigning for pro-Independence MP's,” Keeley says. “It's against the club bylaws and it's like, a lot of extra paperwork for our Cardiff games if Wales is suddenly part of the EU again.”

“Yeah,” Roy says, “but just think how happy Colin's parents will be if Wales gets to be its own country and like, part of the EU again. Think how proud of him they'll fucking be. Tell me you don't want to fucking get in on that.”

“No,” Jamie says, feeling shitty but whatever, it needs to be fucking said, “Colin's mum and dad don't get to be part of the EU or like, fucking happy and that, until they fucking un-disown him and invite him back 'round home for the fucking holidays.”

“Alright darling,” Keeley relents, “we won't support Independence or anything—we'll just stick to like, three MP's or something, not enough to make a difference or make his parents happy, just enough to make him feel like getting nutted in the face again might actually be fucking worth it.”

Roy clears his throat uncomfortably, shifting on the couch. “In my defense,” he says, “I was kind of night-blind at the time and like, thought he was Jamie and like, eighteen and that.”

“Oh come on,” Jamie scoffs. “That was the same fucking time you made fun of my taste in vodka and like, called me a fucking child—and if I was a fucking child that makes you totally like, the kind of person willing to concuss a fucking child for liking vanilla vodka and like, bullying and that.”

A high-pitched yelp rattles through the offices, and it's either Nate's whistle or fucking Taylor, and Nate's actually fucking put his whistle away for the day so that means it has to be fucking Taylor, and Jamie's startling up out of their fucking blanket-pile like it isn't the best thing that's ever fucking happened to him and like, where he wants to live for the rest of his fucking life forever. But Roy and Keeley pull him back down, and after a minute or so he kind of stops fighting them.

“Thank fucking Christ,” Roy says, “guess the little prick finally fucking decided to try the fucking ice bath. Fucking deserves it, waking me up at 3:30 in the fucking morning.”

And wow, if Roy's angry hugs are the most brilliant of all fucking brilliant things Jamie's every fucking experienced, Roy relaxing into a hug is like, a hundred million thousand times even better. It's like, even a lot better than that, is what Jamie's fucking going for.

“Look,” Roy says to Keeley, “I am absolutely fucking knackered, sweetheart. Please just fill our ridiculous little goldfish in on everything that happened at the fucking meeting.”

And that tickles something familiar, so Jamie goes, “Wait, what meeting?”

“The meeting about Taylor, sweetheart,” Keeley says, and that does it.

“Meetings,” Roy says, and drops his fucking head back so it's propped against the wall like he's about to fucking doze off like the Granddad Jamie's always calling him.

And now Jamie's thoroughly fucking confused like he hasn't been all day, and that's really fucking saying something considering the fucking goldfish of a fucking day he's fucking had. “You had a meeting about Taylor?”

“Yeah, kiddo,” Roy says, “we had a fucking meeting about fucking Taylor—and then another one, and then another one. The fuck else you think we were having all those fucking meetings about?”

“Oh,” Jamie says, and feels kind of bad, actually, for letting everybody down and that. “Sorry I missed your meeting, Keeley. I'm sure you were absolutely fucking brilliant, and like, worked really hard at it and that.”

“Jamie,” she says gently, “please just fucking shut your adorable fucking face and fucking let the people who give a shit about you look after you for a bit, all right? Can you please just fucking do that for me right now?”

And yeah, yeah he thinks he can fucking do that. He can fucking do that if she's the one who's fucking asking him.

And Keeley wraps an arm around him and her scary fucking curvy-pink nails are scritching up along his hairline, carding through the stupid sweaty bangs that he should've washed better or like, let his stylist fucking cut 'em off like she'd wanted to, and she's playing with his hair like a kitten with a ball of yarn and it is—

Jesus fucking Christ, this thing right here, it is—

Absolutely.

Magnificently.

Fucking.

Brilliant.

Chapter Text

So it turns out there's actually quite a bit of money missing from Jamie's car, something to the tune of nine thousand quid, but it also turns out that that's the least of his problems because by the time he wakes up on a cold empty couch in Roy's office and like, works up the nerve to go face everyone who saw him turn into a fucking goldfish for the better part of the day, Taylor's backpack is missing from the changing rooms and Taylor himself is missing from the Richmond club premises. Turns out the kid gave Will the slip while the responsible adults were busy picking apart Kleenex and making sure Jamie went down for his afternoon nap. Roy seems to be having an actual proper aneurysm about it, if the vein in his forehead is anything to go by, and Keeley's dithering with her mobile trying to figure out the relative risk-reward matriarchs of calling the police this early on in the search.

That's kind of how it is when Jamie stumbles out rubbing his eyes and looking for more vanilla vodka latté and like, hoping someone will maybe fill him in on whatever it is that merits AFC Richmond's new War Room. And when they tell him Taylor went and took off again Jamie's like, not actually all that surprised. He figures if he was twelve years old and thought Roy fucking Kent was like, hacked off at him for something that might merit worse consequences than running laps for the rest of forever, he might have gone off and done a runner too.

Well, probably not. His self-preservation instincts have never actually been like, all that sharp when it comes down to it. But he gets it how a reasonably bright kid like Taylor might do the math and figure laying low in a shelter or something 'til he scabbed over a bit might like, actually turn out to be the better part of valor.

So Jamie takes a deep breath and takes Keeley by the shoulders and tells it's not her fault or anybody else's, and then says in a firm and hardly-goldfishy-at-all voice that it's not as much a disaster as it looks like. He's got a good enough read on Taylor's pain tolerance and like, general willingness not to be a whiny little bitch about things to say that public transit is going to be a functional a non-option right now, even under the influence of a nice long soak in a therapeutic Roy Kent Special ice bath. So their search area's narrowed to like, two kilometers in every direction, tops, because Taylor's not actually that athletic of a kid. Can't even kick a fucking football, Jesus Christ. And he's probably indoors somewhere, not out under a fucking bridge or something, because he didn't think to bring a jacket and he hates the fucking cold. And if he's indoors somewhere, that actually narrows it down a lot because there's only so many places a kid that size can fuck off to on his own at 4pm on a Sunday afternoon and not get fucking noticed.

It's a fucking start, is what Jamie's getting at. Keeley pulls up Google maps and Beard sticks his head into the changing rooms and rounds up everyone under the age of twenty who's not actively getting treated for head trauma, and between them they work out all the major local hangouts for teenagers and that. For a plan Jamie came up with, it's like, astonishingly not-stupid. Keeley doesn't even laugh at it or anything.

After a few minutes Isaac gets wind of what's going on, and the next thing Jamie knows they're all out in the changing rooms talking strategy like it's halftime at the semifinals, and the lads have divvied up into search parties and are heading out to look for his pain-in-the-arse little brother. And Jamie's about to head out himself, work the streets and that, but Roy says he's still a good eight fucking hours short on the amount of fucking sleep he needs before he can be fucking trusted behind the fucking wheel of a motor fucking vehicle, Jesus fucking Christ. They hunt around for a minute or three until they find Will hiding in the boot room crying his eyes out like Nate's just spent the last twenty minutes yelling at him and that instead of like, actually trying to do something constructative, which is probably exactly what happened.

And Jamie has the presents in his mind to ask Will how old he his, and finds out Will's like, actually sixteen, and also from around there, which is a very fucking good thing as far as Jamie's concerned. And he goes, “Okay Will, if you didn't have access to a car and you were trying to like, lie low and stay off Coach Kent's radar and like, maybe trade a pile of Mars bars and titty mags for like Percosets and that, where would you fucking go first?”

And Will says, “I don't know about Percosets, mate, but Colin picks up his Adderalls and that in the YA room down the Richmond library.”

It is news to Jamie that the club has a library, let alone a whole special section for footballers going after their A-levels. He's just about to be impressed that Ms. Welton's gone to all that trouble just for like, Colin and Bumbercatch, but then Will keeps talking and it turns out that Richmond actually has a city library with an unusually tolerant childrens' librarian and a legitimately brilliant selection of graphic violence novels, and it's not even two blocks away, and it's open for another twenty minutes or something.

Will is a fucking lifesaver, is what he's saying.

And that is more or less the story of how Jamie and Will end up in the basement of the Richmond Public Library, minutes from closing, wandering through a labyrinth of fucking Batman comics—yeah, turns out 'graphic novels' is what librarians call fucking comic books so they can lend them out to little fucking kids and not feel funny about it. And just about the time Jamie's got turned around enough that he expects David Bowie to pop out around the next corner with a small fucking army of seriously ugly muppets filling in for his usual backup singers, he finds Taylor offering an eight-year-old kid four Mars bars and a titty mag if the kid will agree to go crying to the head librarian about being lost and not able to find her mum long enough to distract said librarian so Taylor can sneak into the back office and make a call from the landline.

“Taylor,” Jamie says, once he's confiscated the skin mag and run off the little kid, “Jesus fucking Christ.”

Yeah, it's like that. Turns out Taylor managed to barter a half-bottle of Adderalls for an eighth of weed and two hits of acid, and then upcycle that into a ketamine, four hits of MDMA, and a handful of MAO-inhibitors, and then trade up again for a six-week supply of Clozapine. Jamie frog-marches him into the toilets by the collar and flushes the whole fucking bottle in front of him while the little twat cries and carries on about it. He feels a little bad about it, actually, when the little twat starts to panic and like, try to fight him on it, but one addict in the family is one addict too many, and Taylor getting into that business before his balls have even dropped is just not on.

“It's not even a good fucking party drug, Jesus Christ,” Jamie says, jamming his finger in his brother's stupid snotty face. “And no, I'm not telling you what the good ones are. As far as you and I go, there are no good fucking party drugs—and like, you're not even allowed beers or like, THC chewables outside of Christmas fucking dinner with the lads until you've grown up a bit and your balls have fucking dropped, so don't even fucking ask.”

“It wasn't for me, you blithering twat-face!” Taylor yells back. “How fucking stupid are you?”

“No?” Jamie says. “Well whoever you're running for, you can ring him up right now and tell him you got a better job, and it's called being me fucking brother, and it pays a hell of a lot better and you don't need his fucking money anymore and you fucking quit like you should've already. Go on, I'll fucking wait.”

“I can't ring anybody!” Taylor wails. “Coach Kent took my fucking mobile!”

And it goes on like that for a bit, Taylor snotting on himself and Will with his mouth hanging open, until the loudspeakers announce the library will be closing in five minutes and Jamie remembers someone might actually hear them shouting at each other and like, call in a tip to the paparazzi. So he washes his face and puts his eyebrows and that back in order, and he makes Taylor splash his with cold water until the kid looks like he could just have hay-fever or like, a bit of a cold or something.

And yeah, being James Tartt, Sr.'s pride and fucking joy must've done at least as bad a number on the pipsqueak's head as it's done on Jamie's, because the kid's mask slides back into place without a fucking ripple.

Whatever. Jamie refuses to feel fucking bad about anything. He stashes the extra skin mag in a pile of comics by some geriatric-sounding twat named Grant fucking Morrison, gives Taylor a tenner, and makes him go back to the skinny blonde girl cramming for her A-levels and buy back the half-bottle of Adderalls that like, probably belonged to Colin at some point even though the name on the prescription bottle says Elmer H. Hoskins.

The overly-understanding children's librarian flags them down on their way out and goes, “Taylor, sweetheart, we did manage to get a hold of your Dad at the number you gave us.”

“Brilliant,” the kid sighs, shoulders going all soft and slumpy with relief. “How did he sound?”

“Sort of...tired,” she says, because that's what public fucking servants say when they really mean drunk but they're still trying to be fucking polite about it for some reason. “You can't have him meet you here though, sweetheart,” she says. “The library's closing and—”

“It's all right,” Taylor says. “There's a burger place across the street, I already scoped it out. Did he say where he was?”

And the overly-understanding children's librarian looks kind of unhappy and goes, “Um, you know Taylor, your Dad and I didn't really get that far in our conversation. Is there anyone else who can come pick you up right now, sweetheart?”

Jamie does his best to roll the tension out of his shoulders and goes, “It's all right, Miss. Will and I can go drop him off home. Is his Dad still on the line?”

But well, it turns out Christmas has not, in fact, come early, because it turns out James Tartt, Sr. is not still on the line and Jamie Tartt, Jr. does not have the opportunity to go scream his frustrations down the phone-line at him but like, from a safe enough distance that he doesn't have to worry about getting fucking clocked in the fucking teeth for it.

“Wait,” the librarian says to Taylor, “how does your family know Jamie Tartt, kiddo?”

And fucking Will goes, “Make-a-Wish.”

“It's not fucking Make-a-Wish, Will,” Jamie says. “Does me little fucking brother look like he's got fucking cancer?”

And the librarian goes, “Wait, did you say your little brother?” And Jamie could just about kick himself.

But Taylor goes, “Yeah, you know, Big Brothers/Big Sisters. The club for like, kids and that. I got assigned Jamie Tartt as my big brother.”

“Yeah, that,” Jamie says. “They're doing a big promo down with the club, bunch of photos and that. Our football team's doing a big push to rebrand as being like, a lot more um, communally-orientated.”

And the librarian blinks hard at them. “Wait, they were all right assigning you to be somebody's Big Brother?”

“Look, I'm not an actual prick, all right?” Jamie says. “I just play one on telly. Our PR team like...fucking explained that to them, and went over our club's rebranding strategy and like, me appeal with the nine-to-fourteen-year-old age bracket, and I passed their background checks with flying fucking colors and...yeah. The uh, organization...fucking...decided they were fucking fine with it, you know?”

“Well,” she says to Taylor, still a little shocked and that, “aren't you a lucky little boy?”

And Taylor goes, “Not really. I don't actually like football.”

And Jamie laughs like it's a brilliant fucking joke until she gets uncomfortable and joins in. Then he puts up with getting wished good luck with the semifinals and that, and somehow manages to get Taylor out of there without anything else going wrong.

Jamie feels the yelling about to start up again before they're even through the doors, but Will loops an arm around Taylor's shoulders and goes, “Look, if you're not running, or selling, or wanting those pills for yourself, why don't you just tell us who it is who actually needs them, and then we can go back to the club and tell Miss Keeley all about it and get some proper fucking help, all right?”

Yeah, that God Jamie stopped believing in 'round about the second or third time Dad took off and turned their family upside-down all over again?

Yeah, that God.

That God had better bless Will fucking Whatever-His-Name-Is from now until Hell freezes over and the fucking Americans win the World fucking Cup.

“Will,” Jamie says, “the fuck is your last name?”

And Will, gormless plonker that he is goes, “Um, Hartmann.” And then he goes, “Look, Taylor, whoever needs that much Clozapine doesn't actually need Clozapine, they need to be in hospital where they can be looked after properly and that, so why don't you just tell us who it is and maybe we can help them get there.”

God, please bless Will fucking Hartmann, who is neither gormless nor a plonker nor a gormless plonker, for all of the days of his You-given life, forever and ever Amen. And Keeley, please bless Will fucking Hartmann with something much better than fucking fruit baskets from fucking corporate, because he won't get nearly as much joy out of sharing fruit baskets around with his neighbors as Dani would, but he deserves at least that much fucking joy, all right? And like, also to never have Nate fucking yell at him like ever again, Jesus fucking Christ.

And Jamie's still a little lost like that, just sort of staring into space and praying a bit, when Taylor goes, “Fucking Dad,” in the lowest and most miserable tone of voice Jamie can ever remember hearing a kid use, and that's saying something because he used to be the king prick bully of all king prick bullies, and he's made some kids pretty fucking miserable in his time.

“The fuck you think was going to happen, Taylor?” Jamie says. “You think he was just going to show up at the fucking library and you could like, hand over the meds he spent thirty fucking years knowing he had to take to not turn into a completely terrifying fucking prick who was like, bombed out of his gourd at all times, but then choosing to like, turn around and sell them for fucking beer money instead of taking them and not turning to a completely terrifying fucking prick—and he'd like what, start taking them for once instead of knocking you silly for making him look a fool in front of the coppers and like, his mates and that, and then turning around and selling them to fund the next round of drinks for the lads like he's done every other fucking time he's been prescribed a mood stabilizer that might have actually fucking helped?”

“No,” Taylor says, “I had a fucking plan, and that wasn't it, and you two arseholes went and flushed it down the fucking loo!”

And Jamie goes, “Yeah? Let's hear it then. But like, Will has to be the one to pretend to be Keeley and like, laugh at you when it's a stupid plan because I am like, way too hacked off at you to like, even think about fucking laughing right now.”

And Will goes, “Um, I can't actually imagine a scenario within the next five minutes where your brother says something and I like, have any kind of reason to think that it's funny,” at about the same time that Taylor goes, “We were going to meet up for hamburgers, I was going to slip a couple Clozapines in his drink, and then when he passed the hell out on the table I was going to cry like a fucking kid until the nearest waitress called 999, and then they'd take him back to the hospital and like, straighten him out and get him back on his meds and that.”

“All right,” Jamie says, “you're not allowed to make fun of my plans for at least a fucking week because that plan is so blizzardingly stupid that it is like, not actually a plan at all.”

“It's not fucking stupid,” Taylor snarls. “It worked last time and the time before that. And like, one time when I was a kid and Mum did it with his Seroquels.”

“No, Taylor, it did not fucking work, because he is out there right now two days deep into a fucking bender. You can't just take an addict out for hamburgers, roofie his fucking hamburgers, and then like, expect the fucking doctors to fucking take care of it.”

“Why not?” Taylor says. "James fucking loves hamburgers and he never turns one down, and he really never turns one down when it's Mum or me that's paying.”

Well, that tracks. Dad always did have kind of a thing for hamburgers. And yeah, he was really into letting other people pay for shit.

Instead Jamie says, “Look Taylor, it'll stop him for a week or two, but it doesn't actually fix the problem, because you can't actually fix a problem that he doesn't want fixed when there are like, hysterity cuts and that, and they can't keep him in the hospital long enough to get him properly clean, and even the people whose job it is to give a fuck about him no longer give a fuck about him because doctors stop giving a fuck about addicts when it's the same fucking faces landing back in the same fucking clinics every four fucking months.”

“It was different with the Clozapines!” Taylor yells. “They were like, actually helping, and he was hitting his meetings every week, and Mum was letting him have visitation again and that, and we were gonna be a fucking family again.”

And Jamie gets real quiet, because yeah, he can see how Taylor would think that. And then he says, “How long ago was that, Taylor?”

And Taylor goes quiet in a way that probably means it was long enough ago that his festering cunt of a mum hadn't yet signed away her parental rights and stuck him in a fucking group home where the other lads knew his first name was Evelyn. But Will still has an arm looped around the kid's shoulders like Jamie should've thought to do right away, instead of marching the little prat over to the men's toilets and flushing away a two-month supply of mood stabilizers or antipsychotics or whatever.

“Fuck,” Jamie says.

He realizes he's lost a bit of time. They aren't back at the club yet, but they aren't standing on the library steps anymore either. They're just sort of walking together, the three of them, and Will is pointing out landmarks, keeping up a steady stream of patter to fill up the silence between the two brothers. He should probably ring Roy and Keeley, let them know he's found Taylor and they can all just like, call it in with the search parties and that. So he gets on that, mostly because he could do with a kind voice right about now.

And yeah, Keeley's voice is balm in his fucking ear. Turns out Will already made the necessary phone calls, but whatever. She talks at him for a while. They get within sight of the car park and Jamie says alright, he'll be in in a few. He has to talk to his fucking brother first.

The Sorry sticks in his throat, though, so he hands over the prescription bottle full of Elmer H. Whatever's Adderalls and tells Taylor to go give them back apologize to Colin for nicking his uppers and like, promise not to nick his uppers again because Colin's a fucking midfielder and fucking midfielders need their uppers to like, make it through lunch without puttering out.

“Wait,” Taylor says, “where are you going?”

And Jamie goes, “I need a fucking minute.” And then he goes and climbs into the Iron Giant and like, sits there for a while. Lets himself be a fucking goldfish.

After a bit it's dark. He's not really sure what's going on, but Taylor comes back out and climbs into the passenger seat. And like, offers him a Mars bar.

And it's like that for a while.

And eventually Jamie goes, “Look.” He doesn't know what else to say. He keeps meaning to apologize. He's quiet, though. Taylor just like, stays there with him. Lets him be quiet. Eventually Jamie nuts up, wipes his face, and sucks a stray gob of caramel off his thumb.

It's like, really fucking good.

Kind of makes sense, how attached his brother gets to his fucking Mars bars.

And finally Jamie hears himself say, “Okay, so...last night.” He's quiet for a bit longer. Then he goes, “Has he ever like...flipped on you like that before?”

And Taylor doesn't say anything, which is kind of worse getting a straight yes or no out of him.

So Jamie decides to like, go ahead and give his very best shot at acting like the fucking adult in the situation. “All right,” he says, “so maybe you don't know. What he's like, I mean. When he's like this.”

“Rapid-cycling,” Taylor supplies.

And Jamie says, “Yeah,” because the alternative is starting to run his mouth about what Dad's like when he's low and starts to pick up steam again, how it's better, how it's a fucking relief is what it is, and then it goes on and it's still better, it is, but it's unpredictable too, you got to watch him every second like he's a little fucking kid who could dart off into rush hour traffic any second, but you're willing to pretend unpredictable is just another kind of better because you just want the good times to last for a bit this time; but then after a while better stops being better. After a while better is just another kind of worse, but you're both willing pretend that it isn't. After a while brilliant just starts being its own special brand of shit. And it's still good, innit. It's good. It's good until it isn't.

And Taylor goes, “I've been around a bit when he's up. And like, when he's starting to come down.”

And Jamie says, “Yeah,” because the alternative is remembering all the times he's been so fucking sure Dad's finally starting to stabilize a bit, mellow in his old age, find the right combination of lithium trazodone melperone risperidol benzos quaaludes marijuana Celexa fluoxitine tricyclics and like, good old-fashioned alcohol, one failed promise after another but this time it's working, this time he's holding a job and like, going to group every day, and then one day he's slowing down on the phone and it's like he's finally learning to listen half as much as he talks, and then the plunge comes on so fast it feels like it's out of nowhere even when you've been watching it work up its long slow head of steam for like, months. And then it's over again and he's gone, or screaming obscenities into the phone, or dropped off the face of the earth into one hospital or another where nobody gives a shit and nobody visits and the press would have a field-fucking-day with it if Jamie like, even once worked up the nerve to poke his head on those family weekends he kept getting fucking fliers in the mail for.

Jamie comes to and Taylor's going, “Look, I'm sor—”

And look mate, that is just not on. So Jamie blurts, “I shouldn't have lost it at you and like, yelled and called you names and that. I'm like, twenty-three, and you're a fucking kid, and it's like...really not okay. It's just, you were gone, and then you were trying to get back in contact with him, and like, I really don't think you actually get just how dangerous he can be when he's worked up like this.”

After a minute Taylor says, “Huh.”

And Jamie goes, “Yeah.” And takes another bite of his fucking Mars bar.

And Taylor goes, “You're like, really fucking afraid of him, aren't you?” The kid gives himself another minute, working it out. And whatever, he's a smart kid. Bound to get there eventually. So it's not exactly a surprise when he says, “So um, did James ever...like, flip on you like that?”

“Yeah,” Jamie says around a mouthful of like, chocolate and gooey nougat and that, “Dad um, he does that.” It's like, actually pretty undignified trying to say all that with his mouth full of sticky candy, so he tries to swallow. Turns out that's like, harder than he thought it would be. After a bit, though, he gets it down and goes, “He uh, does that kind of a lot. It's been kind of a shitty year for it.”

“Oh,” Taylor says. Then he says, “Sorry.”

“Don't be sorry,” Jamie says, “I should've said something. I mean, I kind of thought last night would've like, been its own warning and that, but I should've said something anyway. He's like, really not doing good right now—and it's not just the drink, and the bipolar, and like his mates and that. It's like, bad enough I had to go up in front of a judge. And I'm like, bigger than him, even—and you're like really, really not.”

And Taylor goes, “What I meant was, I'm sorry about the library. It was the middle of the afternoon and you were like, getting a bit of sleep and that, and it was within 500 feet of club property, and I just didn't think it would be that big a deal. I was pretty sure I could be in and out in under an hour. I wasn't like, trying to take off or anything.”

And that's about the point in the conversation where he realizes the kid's still kitted out in Jamie's zip-up pullover from last night. He's not sure how he feels about that, but he's pretty the fucking volume control on those feelings just got turned up to fucking 11. So he tells his brother, “Alright, well, for what it's worth, I haven't tried to take off on you yet either. So let's like, keep that up and...not run off or ditch each other, yeah? We got to stick together on this one.”

“You know, I'd feel better if I could get that in writing,” Taylor says, because he's still a little shit like that.

So Jamie rolls eyes and reaches under the pullover hood to like, muss the kid's hair. There's still like, little bits of chocolate and caramel on his hand, which is brilliant, because it means his brother gets at least that sticky and messy and will maybe have to wash up and like, get a proper haircut that doesn't make him look like a dorky little plonker at some point. “Oh come on, Tyler, are you really that fucking worried about your fucking mobile? Jesus fucking Christ, stop stalling, get your arse inside and like, apologize to Keeley and Coach Kent for scaring the everloving shit out them.”

And yeah, it's like that. Taylor goes back inside and Jamie stays in the Iron Giant for a bit longer—not thinking too hard, not up in his head, but not spacing out or like, turning into a goldfish or anything mad like that. After a bit he flips on his mobile and rings whoever the fuck it was who passed themselves off as Manchester Municipal Police last night, and persuaded him to drive out there at 3am and find out he had a pain-in-the-arse little brother. The call goes straight to voicemail. He leaves like, this embarrassingly detailed thank-you message that whoever-it-was might not even get to listen to, and discovers he feels a bit better after.

Then he rings up Richmond corporate, and asks which one of them he has to blow to get them to send Will fucking Hartmann a fucking fruitbasket.

Chapter Text

Then Roy Kent comes out the side door looking like he just opted to drown himself in the fucking showers for an hour instead of putting up with getting apologized at by a banged-up little kid, and he saunters on over and knocks on the Iron Giant's driver-side window like a copper about to ask for license and registration. He's not really that kind of authority figure in Jamie's life these days, but Jamie puts down his window anyway because it actually feels like, really fucking good—like, dark chocolate double-caramel Mars bar good—to see that man's ugly fucking mug after the fucking day that Jamie's fucking had.

“Jamie, mate,” Roy says—and it's kind of a bad sign, innit, that he and his coach are seemingly on a first-name basis instead of calling each other pricks like normal fucking people, “do you have anything approaching a good fucking reason for blowing up Taylor's mobile instead of coming back in and saying whatever it is to his face, or did you go and turn back into a fucking goldfish?”

And Jamie gets all fucking indignatious about that, doesn't he, and he goes, “Look, you prick, I haven't called anybody yet but Richmond corporate and Manchester Municipal Police.”

And it's a few minutes later, and they're back inside, and Roy fucking Kent's corralled the Tartt brothers back into the War Room with the rest of the fucking brain trust, and the man's in the middle of delivering the sternest fucking browbeating Jamie's ever seen not tick over into full-blown fists-and-cuffs, and that's about the time Jamie finally puts it together what his coach is all hacked off about this time.

So...yeah.

It's like that.

Chapter Text

“So,” Taylor says around a mouthful of soggy lumpia, “which one of you is my brother actually fucking?”

Jamie, who’s been too fucking preoccupated shoveling shrimp noodles into his face to pay much attention to the goo-goo eyes Roy and Keeley have been making at each other, decides his best fucking option is the choke and die on the spot, in the hopes that Keeley‘s panicked 999-call and all subsequential failed attempts at resuscitation will prove less socially awkward than whatever the fuck this is, Taylor, Jesus FUCKING Christ. It will be the table manners version of hara fucking kiri. It will be worth every last pained dying gasp of whatever is left of his dignity.

“See,” his shit-eating twat of a little brother goes on, “the ex-girlfriend’s the most obvious answer here, innit, but I’ve known this arsehole all of ten hours and even I can tell he’s got kind of a thing for authority figures, and you two―” Here, Taylor jabs his chopsticks at Roy, then Jamie, then Roy again. “―got this whole kinky chemistry thing going on and like, a history of beating on each other and that on live telly.”

“Oh,” Roy says, laying down his plastic fork and lacing his fingers together like a primary school headmaster turned mob boss, “it’s going to be like this, is it?”

“Taylor sweetheart,” Keeley begins, “the details of your brother’s sex life are none of your business unless he sees fit to share them with you―and even then, kiddo, that’s a conversation that requires appropriate boundaries and mutual respect.”

And Taylor goes, “Yeah, I know that’s how it would be under normal circumstances, Miss Keeley, but Jamie here’s gone and got blowjobs from like, six different women on live telly and now every eight-year-old in the Commonwealth knows his favorite position’s Reverse fucking Cowgirl.”

“It is not,” Jamie retorts hotly, “it’s just like, a really, really good angle for the cameras ‘cos you can like, see that it’s me and me abs en’t all blurred out and that, so that’s the shots they mostly end up using.”

Taylor looks about ready to explain, at high volume and in excruciative detail, that Jamie’s confused Reverse Cowgirl with a different position with an even filthier-sounding name―but Keeley, God bless her, puts the kibosh on that one right quick. “Taylor,” she says, sounding about as stern as Jamie’s ever heard her sound without the conversation veering immediately into breakup-territory, “we do not slut-shame one other at this dinner table, young man.”

“It’s not a fucking dinner table because this isn’t fucking dinner,” Taylor says, “it’s fucking side dishes is what it is.”

Which, yeah, it is nothing but side dishes, but side dishes are like the best fucking part of takeaway anyway and a full-on nothing-but-side-dishes-takeaway dinner is a guilty pleasure one Jamie N. Tartt, Jr. had not thought to indulge since Keeley dumped his ungrateful arse and took up with his childhood-crush-slash-sort-of-nemesis, and Jamie was like, really fucking enjoying that full-on nothing-but-side-dishes-takeaway dinner is apparently once again A Thing in his life.

Roy gives a long-suffering sigh that could, to one less cutely attuned to his personal idiot-syncrasies, be mistaken for a growl. He takes his time chewing his steamed dumplings or whatever before washing it down with a long swig of seltzer and going, “You know, I don’t fucking know why I was expecting our fucking honeymoon to last longer than five fucking minutes but all right you pricks, you want to go ahead and do this now we can go ahead and do this right the fuck now.”

And Jamie’s not sure why he’s getting told off too, all he did was sit here explaining the realities of shitty reality television and like, wishing it were actually possible to die of shame and get it over with. So he goes, “Come on mate, nobody here comes from the kind of families that like, bothered with going off on honeymoons.”

Or like, figuring out about rings and that. Or getting fucking married in the first place.

“Hey!” Keeley says. “I’ll have you know my mum and dad worked hard and saved up their money and when I was four they stuck me with my Auntie Gina for a week and got a group rate with this like, born-again church group to go have an off-season couples retreat in the Bahamas.”

“The Bahamas!” Roy lets out a low whistle, looking at least as disgusted as Jamie feels right about now. “Bougie twats.”

Then he glares over at Jamie and seems to be trying to send one of those sneaky grown-up messages comprised almost entirely of eyebrows. Jamie isn’t quite sure what’s going on, but agreeing with Roy when their general lines of communication have been reduced to nonverbal intimidation and like, weird eyebrow things has generally proven a solid survival strategy in the past so he goes, “What a bunch of wankers. Keeley, you foxy clever minx, you never let on your family was fucking rich.”

“Oh sweetheart,” she says, “we were posh like you wouldn’t even believe. One time, when I was ten, Dad took a third job doing landscaping and that for the city, and by the end of summer we had enough left over in the budget to replace the lino in our kitchen.”

And yeah, that tracks. Jamie met her parents once. They’d hated him, of course, but their daughter took her top off for photos for a living so they more or less left her alone and pretended not to know her to the neighbors, which meant not getting invited ‘round for Sunday tea often enough for it to matter that they hated him. He’d gone over for Christmas hols that first year, though; they’d been like, really proud of their flooring choices.

And just as Jamie’s starting to drift off again, thinking about all the perfectly legitimate reasons a woman’s parents might not want someone like him as prospective son-in-law, Roy gives clears his throat and gives him the slightest nod, and he remembers Taylor and like, this baffling clusterfuck of a conversation. Still, the nod seems to say that Jamie’s sort of managing not to fuck this up even though he still hasn’t the foggiest what the fuck is going on here, so he works up his nerve and goes, “You know, there were times Mum and I would’ve been over the moon to have a proper kitchen. Most of the time we were like, working off this janky little hot plate.”

“See, Jamie?” Roy says with a warmth that seems to imply Jamie might have actually said the right thing for once. “This is how the other half fucking lives. Lino and that―”

“―Fucking kitchens,” Jamie agrees. “One time we were in this um, think it had been like a garage or something that this bloke went and converted into a studio, and the only running water was this laundry sink he’d put in over in the washroom, and there wasn’t anywhere to set the hot plate, so Mum fitted a plank over top and that was like, our sink, and our stovetop, and a cutting board, and our bathtub-slash-showers-slash-laundry, and like, me homework desk and that all in one.”

“Oh,” Keeley says, “that’s actually um, dead clever use of space, if you stop and think about it. I bet the tiny house wankers would be all over that.”

Roy smiles broadly, making eyes at his-girlfriend-slash-Jamie’s-ex-girlfriend like she at least gets it. “Fucking tiny house wankers. It’s what I been saying about this fucking country needs a Labour movement as good as its fucking word. Jeremy fucking Corbyn needs to put these posh tiny house wankers up against the wall and like, give ‘em what for and that.”

“Oh come the fuck on,” Taylor says, clearly not having any of it. “Corbyn hasn’t been fucking relevant to Labour since I was in fucking primary.”

“Taylor sweetheart, Corbyn hasn’t been relevant to Labour since I was in fucking primary and your mum was busy getting herself knocked up with this dim little grumblemuffin,” Keeley replies sweetly, gesturing vaguely at Jamie with her chopsticks. “Anyway, you can’t go ‘round expecting Labour to go solving much of anything, you know―posh apparatchiks like my mum and dad are like, still the backbone of the Party.”

Roy lets loose a growl of legitimate discontent and goes, “I will not stand idly fucking by while Jeremy fucking Corbyn is fucking slandered under my own girlfriend’s roof. Us geriatric old apparatchiks gotta stick together, don’t we.”

Taylor rolls his eyes so hard that for a second, Jamie’s honestly concerned the kid’s about to sprain something. “Don’t go ‘round pretending you got like, prole street cred as a Democratic Socialist just because you grew up in fucking council housing. Your kitchen’s like, big enough to fit any house Mum and I ever even lived in, and you guys aren’t even fucking using it.”

“You’re right,” Roy says, almost amiably, “we’re not fucking using it for fucking anything except as a fucking conversation piece tonight, because you, young man, fucking scared the three of us out of our fucking skins fourteen hours into a shit fucking day where just about the only two things that went fucking right are your brother dropping enough quid in straight-up bribes that it legally qualifies as a fucking felony because that’s what it took to get you out of lockup and Keeley fucking turning out to be the kind of evil genius who could keep you out of fucking lockup and out of a fucking group home and work it out so you could fucking come home with us and sit here in her fucking kitchen bitching about getting to eat fucking takeaway with us―and if you’re going to fucking scare Keeley like that after she’s pulled off a million-to-one hat trick to keep you in one fucking piece, and Keeley turns around and offers you a no-hard-fucking-feelings hug and like, dinner and that, then Keeley deserves to get whatever the fuck her evil genius little heart desires out of the rest of her evening, up to and including a takeaway dinner made up of nothing but fucking side dishes from Bangkok fucking Banquet, and then like, a fucking three-hour bubble bath, and then like, watching three more fucking hours of Carrie fucking Bradshaw pretending to be fucking reflective about her life but like, never in a way that would require compassion for other people or, or personal growth or anything.”

And he stabs another steamed dumpling and stuffs it in his face while Jamie gawps at him with the kind of shell-shocked awe reserved for religious experiences and like, maybe a young lad’s first encounter with an older kid's used titty mag.

“I do love it when Carrie Bradshaw puts herself out there and like, pretends to be reflective and that,” Keeley admits. “Life goals, yeah?”

And Taylor sets his jaw and looks carefully between all three adults, as though he’s more or less worked out what Roy and Keeley are doing but he’s willing to sit back and let this play out, watch where it all goes. As though the only actual wild card here is Jamie and like, whether he’ll actually manage to follow along for a bit, hit his marks and spit his lines, or whether he’ll misjudge things altogether and start flailing around like the gormless bleeding plonker he actually is and like, fuck things up for all of them.

And Jamie’s going to be honest, he’s trending hard towards Door Number Two right now, because he lost the plot back when they started going on Carrie and Jeremy and like, whatever other mutual acquaintances he seems to have missed out on.

So, yeah. It’s like that.

Taylor lets them go for a minute, picking at a container-box of green papaya salad. Then he works up his nerve and goes, “So if Colin buys off-market Adderalls at the public library and you’re all apparently fucking fine with it, and Will picks up Colin’s Adderalls for him when he's supposed to be working or like, in school and that, and you’re all apparently fucking fine with it, and Jamie goes out and commits felony fucking bribery and you’re apparently fucking fine with that too, at what point do you two stop being such fucking hypocrites and give me back my mobile?”

“I didn’t commit any fucking felonies,” Jamie grumbles, “I posted your fucking bail, you little twat. And if driving up to fucking Manchester and posting bail the night after a big game is a fucking felony then like, I should be in fucking jail kind of like...a lot because I been driving up to fucking Manchester to post bail every time there’s been a big game for the past six and a half years.”

And that’s about the time Jamie notices the three of them are exchanging meaningful glances that he sincerely hopes he isn’t deciphering correctly. Roy does more eyebrow-things with his eyebrows. Keeley sets down her chopsticks and like, stares off into space for a minute.

Then Taylor goes, “Whatever. I need my fucking mobile back, is what I’m saying.”

“Well, you getting a mobile is not the fucking plan right now,” Roy says, “so let your brother know if you need to make a call and he can lend you his bricked Nokia.”

“Um, Taylor doesn’t get to borrow me Nokia,” Jamie tells them firmly, figuring he might as well make his personal wishes known up front, even though his personal wishes won’t make a lick of difference if Keeley’s already made Plans to the contrary. “It's just...no offense, mate, but the last two times I know of that you made a fucking phone call, Dad got involved and I like...really don't want him getting a hold of me new number.”

“Of course I can’t borrow your fucking Nokia, you fucking twat, it’s a fucking brick right now, innit,” Taylor says. “And even if it weren’t a brick, it wouldn’t have the things I actually need on it, which is why I actually need mine.”

“Well, you’re not getting your fucking mobile back because it’s not actually your fucking mobile, is it?” Roy says. “You fucking pinched it off the prostitute they picked you up with.”

“Wait, you got arrested with a prostitute, mate?” Jamie gives an astonished whistle. He’s spent the better part of his life in locker rooms and heard every possible permutation of unlucky one-time-I-tried-to-lose-my-virginity stories, and this one seems about ready to take the cake. “Jesus, Taylor, I’m actually kind of impressed.”

“First off, it’s not ‘prostitute,’ it’s fucking ‘sex worker,’” the kid says. “Second off, she’s not a fucking sex worker, not that there’d be anything wrong with it if she fucking was. Third off, I didn’t get arrested with her, I got arrested kind of at the same time but like, a block over from where she was. And fourth off, I didn’t fucking steal it, she fucking gave it to me.”

“Oh, she gave it to you?” Roy says with apparent interest.

“She did.” And Taylor levels a here-and-there-and-every-fucking-where Coach-Kent-worthy death glare at all three of them.

Roy goes, “It is her mobile, though.”

“No,” Taylor says, “it is not her fucking mobile, it’s fucking my mobile. It stopped being her fucking mobile when she fucking handed it over and said, ‘Here, Taylor, why don’t you fucking hang onto this for a bit, looks like you need it more than I fucking will.’”

“So it's borrowed, then,” Roy says.

“Fine, yes, it's fucking borrowed, Jesus Christ.”

“Well, then if it's borrowed, mate, it actually fucking isn't yours, is it?” Jamie puts in, trying to be helpful or at least like, get it straight why Roy's been so hacked off about the mobile. “And we should like, probably try and get it back to her, yeah?”

And Roy flashes him the slightest smirk out the corner of his eye—a smirk, incidentfully, that does not in any way escape Taylor's fucking attention—but whatever, Jamie might have finally stuck the landing on this whole Being The Adult thing.

Which is why it's so fucking baffling when Taylor's face lights up all at once. “Wait, are you fucking serious?” he blurts, glancing back and forth between Roy and Jamie. “You can like, give me back the fucking mobile, and we can go back up 'round Three Magpies and like, give it back to her?”

“Well see, I don't actually have the authority to say yes or no to that,” Roy says, “because—and trust me, kid, you and I had better get this cleared up straightaway, otherwise it's going to be a seriously long fucking week—the thing is, mate, I am not your fucking Dad. And I am not your foster dad, or your houseparent, or your social worker, or your mum's shitty new boyfriend. I am your fucking landlord, got it? And that means it is not my fucking job to figure out how long to take away your fucking mobile privileges when you like, nick mobiles from hookers and use 'em to digitally impersonate officers of the fucking law. It's my job to keep the furnace in fucking repair and throw you and your brother out on your ear if I get too many fucking noise complaints from the fucking neighbors.”

“Okay then, Coach Kent,” Taylor says, like he's heard that one a million times before from like, shitty new boyfriends or whatever. He tips his head appraisingly—first at Keeley, then at Jamie. “But are you like, the kind of landlord who actually, say, fixes the furnace and that, or are you the kind of landlord who covers up complaints about your property manager stalking your tenants' fourteen-year-old sister until the situation finally blows up and the kid's gran has to go ring 999 and like, get the fucking police involved?”

And Roy Kent's eyes narrow in a very specific way that immediately reminds Jamie that Roy does have an older sister named like, Ada or whatever, and that Taylor spent a whole entire unsupervised morning with an internet-connected smartphone and like, probably a lot of questions about these strangers he and his brother were planning to stay with.

And Roy Kent goes, “You know what, Taylor? I am the kind of fucking landlord who fucking expects that any kid smart enough to figure out that landlords who actually fix the fucking furnace instead of lying to the fucking Housing Council about their plans to go get on that sometime ever aren't actually like, a real-thing-that-actually-exists-in-real-life—is also a kid who's fucking smart enough to figure out exactly how limited him and his fucking brother's fucking options actually are if the landlord has to deal with any more noise complaints over dinner and like, finally gets fed up enough to chuck them out so he can eat his fucking egg rolls in peace, Jesus fucking Christ.”

Keeley clears her throat and says, “Actually, sweethearts, I'm the fucking landlord in this situation—it's, yeah, um, my flat that we're in right now, if you've noticed. And while I'm not about to issue any formal warnings about noise complaints and that or like, uninvite anyone from my birthday party, I am going to request an immediate moratorium on bickering at the dinner-slash-side-dishes table because any more of this nonsense is going to start seriously cutting into my bubble bath time.”

Roy immediately flushes, looks at his shoes, and goes, “Sorry, sweetheart.”

And Jamie, for good measure and to like, not be shown up by his ex-girlfriend's new boyfriend and that, also ducks his head and goes, “Yeah, sorry Keeley,” even though he's scarcely got a word in edgewise this whole time and cannot by any stretch of the imagination be blamed for the overall level of bickering in the last ten minutes.

And Taylor, who is still apparently pretty shitty about something-or-other, goes, “Okay, but if you're both landlords and that—or like, landlord and property manager, I guess?—and neither of you have the authority to revoke my mobile privileges, I want my mobile back so I can go return it to its original owner.”

“Keeley,” Jamie says desperately, “which one of you lot actually has my brother's mobile?”

“Look, you're not getting the mobile back, so stop being a little twat about it and like, kick back and enjoy the fucking egg rolls,” Roy snaps.

“You don't get a say in it, either of you, you just said!”

“Jamie, you're not giving him back his fucking mobile right now and that's final,” Roy tells the elder Tartt brother sternly.

“Oh,” Jamie says. “Sorry, mate.” Keeley and Roy both turn to glare at him.  He has a sad sinking feeling Coach Kent's been setting him up for something-or-other, and that it's important, and that he's somehow managed to rather colossally fuck it up.

“No,” Taylor says, “you were right the first time. Jamie's my legal guardian right now, and you lot aren't, and legal guardians are the ones who get a say in mobile privileges and like, car trips back up to the Three Magpies to return lost and/or misplaced property.”

“Yeah, I may be your fucking landlord but I am your brother's fucking football coach and I'm telling him right now that if he reinstates your mobile privileges after your behavior at the dinner-slash-takeaway-table, I am making him run laps like a fucking midfielder from here to fucking Judgment Day, end of fucking story.”

“What?” Jamie asks, more confused than ever. “Come on, Coach, what'd I do?”

“Hypothetically? You'd have been irresponsible to the point of making me suspect severe head trauma, and I'd have no choice but to treat you like fucking Colin until you wised up a bit and started acting like a fucking adult again.”

Jamie shrugs a bit, still not sure what Roy and Keeley are trying to get out of him here, but reasonably certain that the deep breath Taylor's taking is about to turn into a patented four-alarm BUT COACH KENT—! And it's Keeley who saves him this time. Clears her throat, awkward as anything, and says, “Actually sweethearts, Richmond Legal's still got the mobile and they really are going to need it for the foreseeable future—you know, for the case and that—so it's not just about table manners.”

“There, see?” Jamie says with a rush of relief. “Mobile's off the table, but you can borrow mine once it's charged back up. Now can we please go back to fighting about something fucking normal like who gets the last crab rangoons?”

“Wait,” Roy says to Keeley, “there were crab rangoons?”

And Keeley goes, “Not as far as you're concerned. You and lactose and like, guests we want to respect us in the morning don't get to share the same house and like, still expect to have it all work out.”

“I will sleep in the fucking garden, Keels.”

Taylor clears his throat, clearly having picked up on it that, as far as Roy and Keeley are concerned, foreigned respiratory distress is the preferred way to commandeer the subject of conversation and make a break for the far end of the pitch. “Alright,” he says, “no mobile. But the nice lady who lent me hers really does need it back, yeah? We should go up to the Three Magpies and like, drop her off a burner to use in the meantime. And like, apologize and that.”

Jamie has exactly enough situational awareness to notice the Look that passes between the other two—and it's never exactly a bad time to loudly agree with Keeley, so he says, “Well, mate, accountability matters. I'm um, glad you want to make it right.”

“We're not driving back up to fucking Manchester tonight, Jamie,” Roy sighs, his patience sorely strained by the loss of his crab rangoons.

“Why not?” Taylor whines.

“Yeah,” Jamie says, genuinely curious. “Why not?”

The vein starts going again in his coach's forehead. “One, because it is a festering flaming fucking...garbage-fire shithole of a city with fucking coppers who are gunning for us in general and you in particular, little man. Two, because every pap from here to New-fucking-Zealand is going to be swarming the fucking place the second Orrie fucking Pilkington the fucking Third's writeup on your little escapade last night hits the front page of The Fucking Sun. Three, because your brother is not fucking driving you fucking anywhere until he's got a good night's sleep under him, and he hasn't, so he's not fucking driving, and I don't see so great at night anymore, so I'm not fucking doing it, so there's no one to drive, so it's not fucking happening.”

“Keeley could drive,” Taylor mutters, glaring between the three of them with mutiny in his eyes.

“No,” Roy says, “Keeley has had a fucking shit day and Keeley is getting a fucking bubble bath like, the second we're done here because however shit today was? Tomorrow's going to be a whole lot more fucking shit for all of us, yeah, but especially for you, if she's not on-fucking-point and ready to tackle the next round of fucking nonsense they decide to throw our fucking way.”

“Actually, yeah,” Keeley admits. “I come up with all my best plans in the bath.”

“Oh my god, with those jacuzzi jets?” Jamie puts in, doing his very best to be supportive and that. “Throw in some fucking rose petals and that thing turns you into like, the Oracle of fucking Dolphins.”

“No rose petals tonight, though, love,” Roy says. “After last time, the H.O.-fucking-A. waited 'til you were out and sent 'round couple of their fucking enforcers to threaten to break my other kneecap if they caught me near Miss Warrington's fucking shrubberies again.”

“You can't lose your other fucking kneecap, Granddad,” Jamie says. “We'd have no choice but to ship you off to the glue factory.”

“I have an idea,” Taylor says, not even bothering to clear his throat this time. “What if we ring for a fucking Uber, and then nobody has to drive, and we can go up to Manchester and that'll like, help me be responsible and accountable and like, a good fucking citizen and that.”

And Keeley's just come round, making noises about how that isn't the worst idea she's heard if it keeps them out of her hair and like, quiet and that for five fucking minutes, when Roy rolls his shoulders and goes very, very still. “Taylor,” he says in a voice so calm it makes Jamie fumble his chopsticks and like, only realize a couple seconds later it's 'cos his hands are shaking, “there is a very good reason why we are not taking a two-hour car trip to fucking Manchester and back, and we both know what it fucking is. I am not going to say it out loud, because I have a fucking care for your pride and throwing it in your fucking face like that is a dick fucking move.”

“All right,” Taylor goes, “in that case I want a fucking bubble bath.”

“Well you can't fucking have one,” Roy snaps at the same time Keeley goes, “Jamie, sweetheart, can you show your brother where the guest suite is?—there's a love.”

And Roy goes, “Jamie, don't you dare so much as think about it.”

And Taylor goes, “Look, if Miss Keeley's had a shit day, and that means she deserves a bubble bath, I can guarantee you I have had a day that is like, a thousand times more shit than that.”

“Your day,” Roy says, “was not shit. You went from being a mouthy little twat who'd gone and got himself in a whole lot of fucking trouble to being a mouthy little twat who's still in a whole lot of fucking trouble but has Jamie Fucking Tartt in your corner, which adjusts your odds considerably. That's like, the opposite of a shit fucking day. That's the luckiest fucking day of your whole fucking life, and you just, you're gonna need a bit to fucking work it out that that's what it fucking was.”

And Jamie's not sure what to do with that. He's not sure how he feels, hearing something like that fall out of Coach fucking Kent's mouth, matter-of-fact, like Roy's describing the nature of sunshine or like, trying to explain the off-sides rule to his little twit of a niece.

He's not sure how he feels, but he's pretty sure it's not fucking normal that suddenly he can't swallow this half-mashed lump of shrimp noodles.

And then Keeley, apparently, is at least as determined as Roy to like, ruin him in front of witnesses and that, because she goes, “Yeah, I might be the brains of this operation—sorry, Roy—but your brother? I don't know if you've ever seen him when he decides to show up and be a prick on someone's behalf, Taylor, but this man is a fucking monster. Like you can't even imagine, sweetheart. If I had to pick anyone to be in my fucking corner—sorry, Roy—it'd be your fucking brother, kiddo.”

And things get a little hazy after that.

“Whatever,” Taylor's saying, making to push away from the table. “Go find the guest rooms on my own, I guess. Can't be that fucking hard, posh pricks who design these fucking places en't actually that creative when it comes down to it.”

“Taylor,” Roy says, “stop being a twat. I know you don't actually want a bath.”

This, apparently, is news to Keeley. Jamie gets it, though. Gets it enough that his head starts swimming pretty bad, actually.

“Yes. I. Do,” Taylor goes. Dangerous set to his jaw that means he might like, flip the table or call one of them a cunt or burst into fucking tears or something.

“No, you don't,” Roy says, “and you're not going to actually want one for four fucking days so just...chill out with us and like, put some fucking food in your fucking face.”

And Taylor gives him a shrewd sort of look and goes, “How would you know?” Like four days is a weirdly specific timeframe. Like he knows Coach didn't just pull it out of thin air, did he, and he's decided he wants everybody in the room to be aware of that fact too. Turnabout, and that.

And Jamie's really not all there right now, is he—but he's not like, not-there enough that he misses the flush prickling up the side of Coach's neck. “Because I fucking know, all right?” Roy says. “Now are you gonna actually like, eat something, or are you just planning to sit around all fucking night looking for scabs to pick at?”

“I don't know,” Taylor says, “Ten milligrams of Ativan with breakfast says I am like, fantastically talented at picking at scabs.”

“Fucking ten?” Roy says, because he's the kind of coach who like, actually pays attention to what's going on with kids like Colin, and therefore knows something about dosages and that.

“Whatever,” Taylor says, “I get it. It's like, the only way they stood a chance, yeah? And anyway, the retail value was like way too good for me to like, not slip 'em under my tongue. I'm not stupid.”

And then things get kind of foggy for a bit. Jamie like, finds some dumplings to pick at. Chews at something-or-other 'til it's a sticky gluey lump. Says some things, probably. Never really gets the hang of swallowing.

And Roy's got him in the side hall, standing so close Jamie can feel the heat off his body. Leaning in, like he means to threaten him, or flirt with him, or show him the real reason no one in their right mind crosses Coach fucking Kent.

“—ry to think about it from his perspec—”

“—ot about what's right, it's about what he expects, and who he's expecting it fr—”

“—looking to one or the other of us to come in dick swinging and like, lay down the fucking law—”

“—ot getting it from you, he's going to push and push and p—”

Water running upstairs. Keeley's already at her bath, not to be disturbed.

“—ot fucking getting it from you, he's going to be fucking looking for it and he'll be, it'll be be, he's going to be fucking looking for it from fucking... me and I, Jamie I fucking can't righ—”

“—iscipline and like, boundaries and that are gonna be like, fine, yeah?—and...not like, the end of the fucking wor—”

And Jamie hears himself saying, “I can't be that person right now, all right?” He's quiet for a bit. There may or may not be more talking. So he says again, “I can't be that person for him.”

“—asn't got anybody else—”

“—amie, are you even fucking listening to m—”

“I'm not Him,” Jamie says to his coach. And it might be the look in his eye or the edge in his voice or like, Jesus fuck he doesn't know what, but Roy steps away like he is only just understanding why Keeley would use a double-edged word like monster.

And Jamie? Jamie doesn't say anything else for a fucking while.

That's how it is.

Then Jamie's outside, popping the boot on the Iron Giant for some fucking reason. It might be the same night. It might be four nights later. And Taylor's out there in his soggy trainers and too-big drawstring shorts, cuddled down in Jamie's kit jacket like it's his mates' gang colors, innit, like it's a suit of armor or the closest fucking thing he'll ever have to a hug. And Taylor's going, “Look, I'm like, four paracetamols deep right now and the story hasn't broken yet, and Miss Keeley's in her fucking bubble bath, and if there's a good time to get in and get out and get this thing done, it's fucking now.”

“If I say yes, kiddo,” Jamie tells him, “we are in so much fucking trouble with Coach that like, not even Keeley fucking Jones can get us out of it.”

“Oh, like you always do what your coaches tell you,” Taylor grumbles, fully prepared to be as shitty as fucking possible if it means getting his way.

Which it won't, Jamie promises himself. Fuck if it doesn't mean his brother isn't going to fucking try though, Jesus fucking Christ.

But you know what? Jamie fucking Tartt has been paying a-fucking-ttention since like, Roy walked out of the AFC Richmond War Room—which is apparently a fucking thing now—and announced he had ordered the good egg rolls. And Roy and Keeley have been doing that thing with Jamie all fucking night where they're exchanging Looks and saying things without coming out and actually saying them, and like expecting him to follow along like they're all like, fucking super-spies who manage to be good enough at their fucking jobs to like...follow along and that, and Jamie's the only fucking one who left his secret decoder ring at home or like, never dug it out of the cereal box in the first place.

Or like, mistook it for a really un-tasty marshmallow and that and like, crunched it down with the rest of his fucking sugar cereal.

The point is, Jamie's brain is working so hard trying to keep the fuck up that he's kind of a little surprised something hasn't melted down by now and like, oozed out his fucking ears.

The point is, mate, Jamie fucking Tartt is working the fuck overtime like only a professional fucking athlete can, and Jamie fucking Tartt might have actually worked it out, what Roy and Keeley want out of him.

So he turns to Taylor and goes, “Look bruv, we are just running a fucking drill right now.”

And the kid looks so fucking confused it's like an out-of-body experience. Like, Jamie N. Tartt, Jr. finally fucking understands why Keeley tells him to “shut his adorable fucking face” because oh my God, his brother's fucking face.

And it might be a win, or it might be the eye of the fucking hurricane, but Jamie fucking takes it. “Coaches make players run drills all the fucking time because drills are how you practice like, teeny-tiny little splinter-skills that you only need like, a teeny-tiny little fraction of a percent of the time but then when you actually need them you like, really, really need them,” he explains. “So you run the drill for like ten fucking minutes, and it sucks hairy sweaty donkey balls, and then you go back to faffing about with a scrimmage or whatever and everybody forgets all about it unless it's like, eight years later and you suddenly really, really need that weird little splinter skill and like later you look back and go Wow, I'm glad someone thought to run us through that drill that time. So right now the drill is, I tell you no mobile and no late-night runs to Manchester, and we go back to fighting about something normal like who gets the guest bedroom and who has to sleep on Phoebe's weird little IKEA bunk, and then in ten minutes Keeley and Coach Kent forget all about it because they know that you and I know how to do that fucking thing now in case we might need to like, eight years from now. And then we can do whatever the fuck we want, because they'll have fucking forgotten about it, and it's fucking fine.”

And Taylor, God bless him, is actually starting to look thoughtful. The kid takes a deep breath and rolls his shoulders like a fucking prizefighter. Then he says, “Look, Jamie, I can appreciate that. I actually fucking can.” He takes another breath, kneading his hands together, trying to get warm again maybe. “And like—yeah, I get it, grownups think you have to play head games with kids so we'll grow up knowing to obey the law and like, run from coppers and be a functioning part of society and that. But...I really need you to pick something else right now. Something else to run that drill with. 'Cos like this thing I gotta do, I like...actually gotta do it.”

And then Taylor, God fucking bless him, says something else.

And Jamie, he's doing his level best to be the responsible adult here. Boundaries and that. Laying down the law, like Roy said, so Taylor's not eternally skittish around Roy expecting him to be the one to do it. Jamie's been paying attention, yeah? He has.

But apparently, Jamie Tartt, Jr. is not paying quite as much attention as he thinks he is, because the next thing he knows he and Taylor are back in the Iron fucking Giant, and Roy fucking Kent's adorkable sea-green Tesla is right up wheelwell-to-wheelwell with them, and the driver's side window is down and there is quite a lot of shouting, and Roy fucking Kent himself is either fixing to pull them over like a small-town officer of the fucking law—or else run them off the road.

It is probably not the second one.

Jamie pulls over anyway.

“I am going to name my first fucking stroke after you two,” Roy says, all scary-calm like he gets sometimes, once he's got them out the car. “Right now, there is an annoying little twat of a fucking bloodclot hiding somewhere deep in like, my femoral fucking artery, and his name is Taylor James Evelynn fucking Pilkington the fucking Third, and he is just hanging out waiting for me to let my guard down long enough that he can slip into my brain unnoticed and go off like a fucking hand grenade. And when he fucking does, the little twat, I fucking hope one of you has enough of a fucking conscience to feel the least bit fucking guilty for like, five tenths of a fucking second.”

And Taylor seems about ready to ask why Roy said five tenths of a fucking second rather than like, reducing it to the lowest common denonimino—a question for which Jamie actually has a good answer, namely that Roy is a fucking coach now, and therefore all prior knowledge of maths has been replaced by a single fucking stopwatch that is fucking running at like, all fucking times, so he can tell exactly how much dim little twats like Jamie are slacking when they're slogging through their fifteenth fucking punishment lap of the morning.

But instead, Taylor takes a deep breath and goes, “Coach Kent, with all respect—”

And Jamie goes to Taylor, “It's my fucking fault, mate, I—”

And Roy goes, “Shut it, you fucking twat, you're like grounded for the next fucking month if I have anything to say about it. No car, no telly and I'm gonna ring up Keeley's sister to see if her fucking eleven-year-old niece passed her Red Cross Babysitter cert yet, because clearly neither of you can be left unattended for five fucking minutes.”

And Jamie isn't quite sure what grounded means, or if coaches are allowed to do that to pro footballers or not, so he keeps his mouth shut and waits to see whether Roy's going to lay one on him or like, hug it out like he clearly seems to want to. So Jamie's just sort of standing there, braced for whatever, when Taylor opens his big fat mouth and goes, “Jesus Christ, if you would shut your fucking mouth and open your fucking ears for five fucking seconds—”

And yeah, that's probably not the best tack to take, under the circumstances. And it's sort of Jamie's job, innit, to keep this situation under control. So he digs down deep and says to himself, What would Will fucking Hartmann do?

And when he thinks about it like that, it's like, really fucking clear, innit?

So he takes Taylor by the shoulders—which, to his complete and utter fucking astonishment, does not earn him a fucking flinch—and he says, “We gotta fucking tell him, mate.”

What they have to fucking tell him is a complete and utter fucking mystery to one Jamie N. Tartt, Jr. He's like, ninety percent certain Taylor ran it by him once already, and it was serious enough to get them out on the road, no questions asked, after Coach made it pretty fucking clear that any such excape-pades were like, really not on.

And Taylor starts looking kind of scared, actually. And he drops his voice and goes, “I thought you said it was my decision.”

“Well, the thing about Coach is, he's not a complete knobhead. Probably worked it out already,” Jamie bluffs. “Come on, bruv, in for a penny.”

“But what do I tell him?” Taylor whispers.

And Jamie goes, “Fucking all of it, mate.”

And Taylor gets a lot fucking paler than usual, but he stuffs his hands in the pockets of Jamie's kit jacket and squares his shoulders like he's just decided Fuck it, death before dishonor. And he stands like he's planning to go four more fucking rounds with James fucking Sr. And then he looks Roy Kent right square in the fucking eye, and the first word to fall out of his mouth is Sir.

And things get quiet for a bit, for Jamie.

That's how they are. They're quiet.

And there's things Taylor says. And those things, they're just...they're sounds that float past, like moths seeking light. There's no making sense of them. They never come close enough to settle.

And after a bit, they're gone. Jamie's buckled into the passenger seat in Roy's car. It occurs to him, distantly, that he has no fucking idea what's going to happen to the Iron Giant now. That he'll just have to fucking trust that Roy and Keeley can just like, pull it together. Take care of a very expensive, kind of famous car left out by the side of the road. Make sure it like, all works out and that.

And he hears Coach outside going, “Look, I get how that's important, I do. But it doesn't have to be tonight, and it doesn't have to be you.”

He drifts again, comes to. No frame of reference left for anything.

And he hears Coach outside going, “It's kind of a long trip. Not all the roads are great.”

And Taylor talks some more.

And he hears Coach go, “Taylor. Mate. If you were to like, look me in the eye and say, No, Coach Kent, I don't actually feel up for it tonight, why don't you drop me off home and run up there yourself like you been saying, not a single person in this world would think fucking less of you.”

And yeah, it's like that.

Then they're on the road again, and nothing but nothing is fucking familiar. Taylor's sacked out in the backseat, looking at least as knackered as Jamie fucking feels right now. After a bit Jamie goes, “So, what's the plan?”

And Roy goes, “Manchester.”

“Huh,” Jamie says softly. “You tell Keeley?”

“Oh,” Roy says, “she laughed her fucking head off at us, didn't she.”

“Huh,” Jamie says. “So...you're driving?”

“Yeah,” Roy says. “You miss the part where you're fucking grounded for-fucking-ever?”

“No,” Jamie says, feeling a bit relieved at that, because it turns out grounded means his kid brother's talked Roy into driving them both up to Manchester to return a phone they don't have to a nice woman who is not a prostitute or like, sex worker and that, not that there's anything wrong with being one, but also she definitely got arrested for being one—and not a bit of that makes a bit of sense, does it, but there's a whole lot of things in this fucking world that don't make sense to one Jamie N. Tartt, Jr., and as long as it's not the kind of not-making-sense that ends in sudden fists-and-cuffs, he's willing to take a deep breath, lean his head against the window, and call it a fucking win. “But um, I thought your um, eyes. Thought that was a problem.”

Roy huffs a dry, joyless sort of chuckle. “Oh, I might be old, but I'm not that fucking night-blind, Jesus fucking Christ. I was just fucking saying that, yeah?”

“Oh,” Jamie says. And it still doesn't make sense, does it, but whatever. Turns out grounded means Roy's fucking handling it, and apparently not hacked off at them anymore—hacked off, sure, but like...not at them.

And later—it might be the same conversation, or a different one; the same night, or another—Roy says very, very quietly, “The drive over to Richmond.” His breathing is steady and even as a metro-gnome. After another little bit he says, “It um, just about did my nerves in.”

“Oh,” Jamie says, and his world makes sense again. He kind of wishes it didn't.

“Yeah, well,” Roy says. “I'm a better driver than you are.  And um, this is important.”

And maybe it's last night's adrenaline crash, finally hitting him; and maybe he's spacing out again, swimming free like the happy fucking goldfish he keeps trying to be; maybe he's rocked by the car like a little fucking kid with like, a grandparent or somebody in their life who spends enough spare minutes not working graveyards and double-shifts to like, actually hang out with that fucking kid in like, a rocking chair or whatever it is normal families keep on hand for kids who haven't yet caught the trick of settling down on their own without like, a major fucking intervention being necessary. Maybe it turns out being grounded is secretly kind of fucking brilliant. Maybe Jamie comes down a bit, even dozes the fuck off like the old man he's always teasing Roy about being.

Maybe he does, is the thing.

Because when he comes 'round again—and he does, yeah, eventually—it's with Taylor leaning over the space between the seats (not fucking buckled in but whatever, Roy's a better fucking driver than Jamie will ever dream of being) pointing out landmarks with great enthusiasm.

And there's a car park, kind of nondescript. A one-story concrete building that might have been a petrol station, once, or maybe the first floor of a council housing project that got like, scrapped and sold off to the highest bidder early on in the Thatcher years. Big fuck-off sign overhead, though.

Three Magpies.

Yeah, all right. It's about like that.

“All right you two,” Roy says firmly, swiveling in his seat to glare them both down. “I'm the only fucking one who's like, not potentially in a lot of fucking legal trouble so...I'm going to go poke my head in, see what's what, and I expect both of you to stay fucking put with the doors locked and your hoods up and like, not burn my car down or do another runner or pull any more crazy fucking stunts while I'm over there doing you a fucking favor. Got it?”

“Scout's fucking honor,” Taylor says.

And that has Roy glaring at fucking Taylor for like, the better part of a minute.

“Taylor,” Roy says at last.

“Yes, Coach?” the kid says, all respectful and innocent-like.

“You know how your brother can be a real first-class fucking twat with me sometimes?” Roy says at last.

“Yes, Coach.”

“Don't be a fucking twat like your fucking brother.”

“Yes, Coach,” the kid says, still sounding a bit like a fucking twat, but a bit like fucking Colin more than anything.

They hang out for a bit. Roy goes over, knocks on a side door. Jamie wants to ask his brother what they're actually doing here, but he doesn't want to sound stupid, or like he hasn't cared enough to pay attention for the past however-long-they've-been-in-the-car.

A couple security guards come out. Big fucking fans, apparently. After a few they're palling around with Roy, taking the piss. He says something—might be something funny, might just be some patented Roy fucking Kent atomic cluster-swears—but one of the security guards damn near shits himself laughing. And then the one who's not laughing hands Roy a sharpie, and Roy autographs the fucker's left bicep.

Yeah, that's probably getting like, tattooed over later.  The guy's like, the right generation. And also clearly a poof.

But like, a badass one. Obviously.

And the guards duck back inside. Roy leans against the wall, all casual-like. Checks the lot for security cameras and that.

The door opens again, and out comes a six-foot-tall Maori amazon with a head of blue-black curls that would like, make Little Miss Beyond Thunderdome sick with envy and that. Jamie's just sitting there absolutely gobsmacked—and yeah, bit jealous of the muscle definition around her lats and delts and that—when he realizes the back door's hanging open and his little brother's managed to do the one thing Roy asked them both to please pretty please not fucking do.

And Taylor's sprinting across the fucking car park, isn't he, while Jamie's still fumbling to unclip his seatbelt.

Taylor catches the woman so hard around the middle he just about rocks her back against the wall.

And Jamie's out the car, ready to tell him off for like, plummeting into somebody who's tottering around on heels like that. But the woman's going, “Tyler, Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ, Tyler.”

The woman's going, “Jesus fucking Christ, kid, I was so fucking scared for you.”

“Yeah,” Taylor says tightly. Just hanging on to her and that.

And she goes, “The fuck, Tyler? The fuck I tell you 'bout hanging 'round The Motte and Bailey?”

“I'm sorry,” Taylor says. “I'm so fucking sorry, mate.”

And she goes, “Jesus Christ, kid.”

And yeah, it's like that. His snotty kid brother just got like, a whole lot more snotty.

She goes, “Listen, okay? I am all right, yeah? I am fucking all right. Nothing fucking happened, Tyler. We're sweet as, got it?” And she goes on for a bit like that, and Taylor says some more things against her middle that sound a little too much like the things Jamie doesn't remember the kid saying in hospital, when he was getting his kips done or whatever Roy said Jamie did all that handholding through. Jamie sort of floats away a bit, but fuck it, he's still standing. Fucking standing right there, isn't he. And after a bit the woman finally seems to notice him and goes, in a weirdly normal voice, “Oh, Jamie! Cheers, mate. You been a fucking lifesaver, yeah?”

“...The fuck?” Jamie manages to say.

“Don't worry, I'll catch you back,” she tells him. “Arts are like, tragically underfunded in this pisshole of a country but you know what? I'm fucking good for it, mate.”

Jamie takes a deep breath. He feels very badly out of his depth here—and given the past twenty-four hours, that is seriously fucking saying something. Finally he says, “Please tell me you are just me brother's like, weird fucking friend and not...I dunno, another fucking long-lost relative or summat.”

And she laughs at him then, not in a mean way but like she honestly thinks he's trying to be funny. The way she laughs, all teeth and unapologetic belly-shaking, she reminds him a bit of Keeley. “Tyler,” she says then, once she's caught her breath a bit, “has your brother been taking good care of you, mate?”

“The best,” Taylor says, without missing a beat. “It was good fucking plan, Cress. Like, seriously good. And you're...?”

“I'm actually okay,” she says, “I mean it. You know this guy you didn't want me calling?" She points a finger at Jamie; he braces, ready to duck the next accusation that flies his way. "This guy swung back 'round the station like, an hour or two later—like way before anything too seriously bad had any kind of chance to happen—and he like, dropped bail for the lot of us. Said he figured one of us must've helped you out, so.”

“Huh,” Taylor says, turning to look at Jamie like he thinks for a minute he might've seriously understimulated his dim plonker of a brother a-fucking-little.

And they go on like that for a bit, talking. Taking the piss. And she's got this weird fucking accent, Jamie can't place it. It's just....

Huh. Let's say there's something about her voice that makes him feel like, calm and anchored. Like once upon a time, she said in his ear, I'm going to need you to trust me, mate. Like she said that, and then maybe he did, and maybe it all worked out well enough, didn't it.

Because Taylor's maybe not in one piece, is he. Because maybe he's not. But you know what? Jamie thinks. James fucking Sr. never made it in for round fucking three, and that's not nothing is it. That's not nothing at all.

“—oesn't really strike me as being the kind of person who's polite enough that he'd call you his fucking brother over and over just to fucking be pol—” Jamie hears her say.

Hears her say about him.

“He hasn't like...clocked me yet, though,” Taylor says, as though this is maybe possibly a bad thing.

“I'm not going to fucking clock you, Tyler, Jesus fucking Christ what kind of person do you think I fucking am,” Jamie says hotly.

“It's fucking Taylor, Jesus Christ!” his kid brother yowls at him.

Right on fucking cue.

“Oh, she gets to call you fucking Tyler, does she?”

Taylor looks at him like he's the stupidest creature he's fucking seen in his entire fucking life and goes, “Do you like, actually notice any-fucking-thing that goes on around you at all, or do you just like...hang around with your mouth hanging open, and like...only perk up a bit when a reasonably fit authority figure comes up behind you and goes, Hey Jamie, you see that fucking football over there? Why don't you run over and give it a good kick?”

And the terrifying awesome Maori chick goes, “Hey! You apologize to your brother this instant, young man.”

And Taylor, instead of getting shitty with her like Jamie's expecting, ducks his head and scuffs his shoes like a normal fucking kid his age, and mumbles, “Sorry, Jamie.”

The fuck? It's like his little brother's got fucking cheat codes or something, and this lady's somehow got a hold of them.

And she goes, “I don't care how bad your day's been, you better fucking know better than that. You and your brother are what each other's got for family, and you won't last ten fucking minutes against the world if you start taking it out on each other the second you two start feeling bad about the other shit going on in your life, because life is fucking life and there will always be some bad fucking shit going on somewhere.”

And...yeah. All Jamie can think is all the times he's gone off on this kid already. Kind of sees her fucking point, doesn't he. Kind of remembers a voice a whole lot like hers, Aussie or Kiwi accent that, now he thinks about it, might make a name like Taylor sound an awful lot like Tyler. Kind of remembers that voice scolding him: I sincerely hope you don't speak to your publicist that way, either.

Yeah, there might have even been a young man thrown in there for good measure.

But all he can say is, “Taylor, I'm not going to fucking clock you, Jesus Christ. I don't care how fucking lippy you get, that is just...not on.”

He's not fucking Dad, is what he means.

And the lady looks kind of...well, more impressed with that than Jamie finds strictly flattering, but whatever. Taylor says sorry again, like he actually fucking means it this time. Disentangles himself from the stranger and takes the two steps over to give Jamie a quick squeeze around the middle. Jamie's a bit too dazed by this turn of events to respagropate, but turns out that's okay.

“Here,” the woman says, “you got a cellie? Give you my work number, I got office hours a couple afternoons a week when I'm not like, actually about to go up in front of a crowd of drunk wankers.”

Well, Jamie's got no fucking idea where his bricked fucking Nokia even is, but Roy whips out his mobile without even being asked.

The woman goes, “Sorry, you are...?”

“Oh,” Jamie says, “this is me Granddad, Roy.  Be sure to talk nice and loud for him, his hearing en't what it fucking was.”

“Roy Kent, no relation,” Roy sighs, holding out a hand to shake.

“Fuck yeah I know,” she says, grinning a bit, “I was just fucking with you, yeah? Jesus, that like, topless war-dance you did—what was it, 2013 championships, forty-three minutes in, something like that?—Jesus fucking Christ mate, there's like a whole generation of Commonwealth lads who like, didn't even give a shit about fucking football, who decided to switch teams right then and there.”

Yeah, Jamie has an absolutely vivid memory of that specific dance in that specific match. Flipped him from Man City to fucking Stonewall or whatever. Went and switched jerseys and everything. Not that like, wild horses could ever fucking drag that little titty-bit of information out between his teeth. Not in like, a thousand million years.

“You can call me Cris, by the way,” she tells them. “I'm only like, Lady Cressida when I'm going up on stage to perform and that.”

“So um, how do you know my brother, then?” Jamie says.

“Well,” she says, “I run him off places he shouldn't be hanging around. But like, we didn't actually talk 'til last night. Saw some seriously bad shit start to go down, called the cops...turned out some of the seriously bad shit involved an off-duty officer...so I got arrested, all the usual...and yeah, then we were arrested together. Got us talking, didn't it?”

She ruffles Taylor's hair. Taylor puts up with it.

And Jamie's about to say Hold on, you went and got arrested, put your green card in jeopardy and that, for some mouthy little twat you don't even fucking know? She must see it, though, because she asks Taylor to please go wait in the car for a minute, let her talk to his brother alone.

And Jesus fucking Christ, the kid goes without a fucking peep.

She taps a finger under Jamie's chin, shuts his fucking face for him. Goes, “Flies will get in, darling.” Sounds a hell of a lot like Keeley, actually. And then she decides, apparently, that Taylor's far enough away because she drops her poise and sparkle, and looks at Jamie like she just swallowed a fucking ghost. “Look,” she says, “people like your brother. People like me. We gotta fucking stick together, don't we. Gotta fucking look out for each other. Because if we don't, nobody else fucking will.”

“I did, didn't I,” Jamie says. Not feeling nettled or anything, just....

And she goes, “Yeah. Sort of a Hail Mary, though, wasn't it. Really didn't think that was going to fucking work.”

That...that is news to him. “Thanks for thinking to call me,” Jamie says. “Or like, me publicist or whatever.”

She brushes it off: “Oh, all I did was smuggle a fucking phone in my hair—which is like, industry-standard workplace safety practices, seriously—and like, badger Taylor into hacking it so it would look like I was calling from Manchester fucking Municipal. Your brother's kind of brilliant, you know.”

“Yeah,” Jamie says, because he can't very well point out she was the one who made the actual calls, and kept calling even when it looked fucking hopeless, didn't it. He can't say she worked it out that the James Tartt, Sr. flitting in and out of Manchester Municipal was the same James Tartt, Sr. flitting in and out of tabloid interviews, bitching about his ungrateful brat's new restraining order. He can't say she talked him out of his fucking tree when he was too wrecked in the head to put a plan together on his own, and kept him lucid and driving and got him there, didn't she—got him there in time to get his brother out. Instead he just says, “Taylor's like...actually a pretty great kid.”

“I mean yeah, he is that,” Cris says, “but that's not what I mean. I mean your brother's like, an actual fucking genius. You better like, enroll in some night classes at uni or whatever, or he's going to run circles around you.”

Roy snorts. “Yeah, um, already does that, doesn't he.”

"Not really," Jamie says. "Turns out he's like, weirdly not-athletic. Like, not even at all."

She glares at him like he's missing the fucking point. “Listen, mate, it's like...objectively harder for kids like that. You get that, yeah?” And Roy blinks twice, and then he drops his eyes. “I mean, he's going to work it out, sooner or later. Work it out that it wasn't just him.”

Roy's staring at the ground in a way that fucking rattles Jamie. He nods, tightly. Almost like he's fucking ashamed.

But it's over Jamie's head, isn't it, and Jamie's kind of got a vestiged interest in being able to rein his little brother in, so he goes, “Look, I don't know who gave you Taylor's cheat codes, but do you mind sharing them?”

It's just, social services are involved. He kind of has to pass as an adequate authority figure, at least enough to keep hold of guardianship.

Cris sighs. “Listen,” she says, “you can't do what I do with him. He's not going to respond to you like he does with me. You get that, right?”

“Why not?” And yeah, he sounds every bit the petulant little kid they just sent to go wait in the car, but needs must.

“Because you're not like him,” she says shortly. “He's dealing with some stuff right now that people like me, people like him, we have to deal with—and people like you, you don't. You get to go deal with other stuff. And that's fine, that is. It is. Now me, I dealt with that same fucking stuff but like, thirty fucking years more of it than he has, and I am still on the right side of the fucking dirt, yeah? And he's a smart enough kid, he gets that. He gets if I tell him something, I'm telling him because I know how it goes, and I'm trying to teach him how to stay on the right side of the fucking dirt himself. That make sense?”

Huh. Sort of.

“Doesn't mean you're not helpful,” she says. “Doesn't mean he doesn't need what you got, you know? He does. It's just...he needs what you've got in a different way than he needs what I've got. So just...keep being his brother, and keep treating him like your brother, and calling him that where he can hear it. Like, call him that as often as you fucking can.”

“Yeah,” Jamie says softly.

Yeah, he can fucking do that.

“And like, don't clock him, okay?” she says. She's a little quieter with that. Jamie doesn't quite get it. Doesn't quite get why.

“I won't, Jesus,” he says.

And she goes, “Yeah, you better not. You just, you better fucking not. Just like, keep telling him he's your little brother and you give a shit about him, and like...believe him when he goes and tells you how things are for him, and like...don't fucking clock him. That's it. That's like, all you gotta fucking do right now.”

Call him my brother. Believe him.

And well, Jamie's not fool enough to think it'll be that simple, is he. But it's a start. It's something he can do.

Then Roy goes, “Jamie, mate, can you excuse us a minute? I like, actually need to talk to her.”

Yeah, all right. Whatever works.

By the time Jamie makes it back to Roy's Tesla, Taylor's stretched out on the back seat—not so snotty as before, really, but quiet. Kid's taking deep breaths, like he's teetering on the edge of saying something. Jamie's not sure whether to tell him not to apologize again, or else just wait it the fuck out.

But when Taylor squeaks, “Thanks for not being a fucking prick to her,” it's so far out of left field Jamie doesn't really know what to say.

So he thinks about what she's just told him, and he swivels around in his chair so he can get a good look at Taylor's face. And yeah, eyes all red and puffy, the whole bit—this kid's gonna get fucking murdered in school. But whatever, Jamie N. Tartt, Jr. has his marching fucking orders from a terrifyingly awesome six-foot-whatever amazon goddess straight out of a fucking penal colony, doesn't he. So he says, “I'm not going to be a fucking prick to the woman who rang me up in the middle of the night to finally let me know I've got a fucking brother.”

And Jesus, Jamie thinks, he really hasn't been paying attention, has he? Because the second the b-word falls out of his mouth, Taylor's painfully transparent face just like, lights the fuck up.

Jesus fucking Christ. Who knew that kids came with fucking cheat codes?

So Jamie goes on, “Yeah, she's actually pretty great. She um, kind of gave us both what-for, didn't she. Roy and me.  Made kind of a big thing about how my brother's a fucking genius and I like, better enroll in uni and that if I want to have a prayer of keeping up.”

And it happens again, doesn't it. Stupid face lights up, just like that. Fucking brilliant.

And for the first time, it actually feels like Jamie might actually have a chance in hell of doing right by this kid. Who fucking knew?

So what the hell, he lets Taylor talk his ear off for a while. Eventually turns back around, catches sight of Cris talking Roy's ear off too. Grins a bit. She must really be giving him what-for, he thinks. Roy's shoulders are hardening into a straight miserable line that will be absolute murder for an old man like that, come morning—and ten times as much murder if Keeley decides she feels sorry for him and like, tries to give him a backrub and that.

Yeah, someone should probably warn Taylor about that. Roy is going to make some serious fucking noises in the morning.

Eventually a security guard comes out and like, claps Cris on the shoulder. She trots over to the car and knocks on Taylor's window. “Sorry,” she says, “I'm on in fucking four. You know my office hours though, right?”

And Taylor rubs at his eyes and goes, “Monday-Thursday-Friday, half three to supper.”

“Yeah, alright,” she goes. “I don't hear from you, Coach fucking Kent is hearing from fucking me, got it?”

“Yes ma'am,” he says, and clambers out long enough to hug her again 'round the middle and like, definitely not get weepy this time.

And then Roy gets in the car, and doesn't talk for a bit.

Then it's been a bit, and Roy still isn't talking. But whatever, Taylor's got strangely animated over their little car trip adventure. He and Jamie keep up a steady stream of patter, and it's almost like it makes up for it. All Coach Roy's not-talking.

And then it's been a bit longer, and they're halfway home, and conversation's petered out between the Tartt brothers. Taylor's sacked out in the back, finally fucking quiet. And Roy's still not talking.

So Jamie turns to him and goes, “All right, you can fucking say it.”

And Roy's quiet a bit longer, and goes, “Say what?”

“I dunno, whatever it is.” Jamie glances over his shoulder at his brother, asleep in the backseat. “Or, um. I dunno. You worried Tyler might hear you?”

Roy huffs a little. It's not a laugh. It's a puffed, sad little sound that stands in where a wry chuckle might have done in better days. “Kid crashed pretty fucking hard, mate. Listen how he's fucking breathing. Fucking...dead to the fucking world.”

Huh. Yeah. Guess that's how it is.

“Just saying, you better be in good enough shape to carry the little twerp up to bed, 'cos he'll be a bastard and a half to try to wake after all that and if I try to carry him I'll like, fuck my other knee, and that'll be two fucked knees from two different Tartt brothers, and like, that will piss Keels right the fuck off.”

It strikes Jamie as like, kind of an odd turn of conversation. Comes to him, then, that Roy lost almost as much sleep last night as Jamie did—and like, never really had it offset by an afternoon nap. So he goes, “Hey, um, do you want me to drive for a bit?”

“Fuck no,” Roy says.

And then it's another while like that. Quiet, but like...not the good kind, like they maybe might've had before. So Jamie goes, “Are you all right, Coach?”

Feels like fucking Colin.

And Roy goes, “No.” It's another bit, and he says, “Look, I got some stuff in my head.”

“Yeah,” Jamie says, because he gets that. He's got some stuff in his head too. “You thinking about your stuff, or just like...kind of letting it be in there?”

“I'm thinking about fucking Keeley,” is what Roy says.

Huh. Come to think of it, she was acting pretty fucking strange over dinner too.

“Look,” Roy says, “Keels is...she's a really fucking strong person. She is. But um, she's really kind of not okay right now.” He takes a minute, adjusts his grip on the wheel, rolls his shoulders like a fucking prizefighter. “She needs, um...she needs a bit of space right now. That's why, with the bubble baths and all that. Bathtime is kind of um, sacrosanct. With her.”

“Word-of-the-day calendar?” Jamie says, apropos of nothing. Sacrosanct is one of those words, nowhere else Roy could've got it. Apropos is another. January 2019 sometime.

“Oh my God,” Roy says, “fucking word of the fucking day. I swear to Christ, it's like a fucking thing. It's like she fucking gets off on it or something.”

And Jamie's quiet a bit, thinking. He goes, “What's going on with her, though? Is it 'cos I was like, missing and that this morning?”

Roy's quiet, but it's a different kind of quiet. Thinking-quiet. Not so tense as before. “Okay look,” he says at last, “I need you to be really fucking honest with me right now, Jamie. Do you um, remember having this conversation with me? Or like, maybe with Keeley, or Coach Lasso...or like, me and Keeley together?”

“I remember a conversation about sending Dani Rojas a fucking fruit basket,” Jamie says.

“All right,” Roy says. “How about the rest of that fucking conversation?”

“Um,” Jamie says. Then he goes, “Look, Keeley was playing with me fucking hair, all right? It's like, really fucking hard to concentrate when Keeley plays with me hair.”

And Roy doesn't take the obvious bait, about Jamie's stupid hair, how Jamie's stupid hair makes the rest of him stupid too. Roy just nods and flexes a bit on his steering wheel. “All right. Um, well, there was a conversation. And um, right now I am trying to decide whether to try to have that conversation...fucking again, a-fucking-gain...or if that's just going to make you go away again.”

“I'm not chucking meself out a speeding car, mate. Come on, we both know that's not fucking happening.”

“'Course not,” Roy says, quirking a grim sort of smile. “Child locks, yeah?” He sobers up pretty fucking fast, though. “That's um, not what I fucking meant though, mate.”

And Jamie goes, “Oh.”

Finally Roy shrugs and goes, “Look, Jamie, I think you're going to work it out, all right? I think you're going to get it, what's going on. But...I don't think you're going to get it until you're ready to get it. And normally, as your coach, as your friend, um—you know if it was just you we had to worry about, that'd be one thing, I'd say give you your fucking space. But it's not, mate. It's like, really not.”

And Jamie thinks about that. And yeah, Taylor's going to need him to fucking get it. So Jamie goes, “Give me a little bit then. Not like, all of it. Just...enough.”

“Okay,” Roy says, doesn't miss a beat, “this thing with Taylor, it is like...bad. Like, really fucking bad.”

Yeah, okay. Jamie's following along, a bit.

“Like, worse-than-your-Dad-being-involved-in-it bad.”

Yeah, okay. That's pretty fucking bad. That's the kind of bad Jamie can only like, glimpse from the edges before he flies out of his body and like, loses time and that. The kind of bad he can't really think about and still like, be a person anymore, and show up and be there for Taylor and that.

Roy does some more eyebrow things, kind of checking in. Jamie does some eyebrow things back. He takes this to mean they understand one another. Well, understand one another well enough anyway. So Roy nods and says, “All right, so the thing Cressida did for us, the thing that was really fucking good, was she got some recordings of your Dad and um, Taylor and your Dad, and the coppers and your Dad, and Taylor and the coppers. And I'm going to tell you that like, having those recordings, having them down in evidence and that, that is like, a very good thing. That protects Taylor. And like...you, a bit. With me so far?”

“Um, yeah,” Jamie says. Ticks it off on his fingers like maybe, if he says it out loud, maybe this time it'll stick. “Bad shit went down, Cressida deserves a fucking medal for getting it recorded on her mobile, and Legal's got the mobile, and that like...helps us a lot. But it's also like, worse stuff than Dad.”

“That's about the shape of it,” Roy says. “And like, the thing about the recordings is like, someone had to fucking listen to them, figure out what we had to work with. There's like, there's legal stuff, there's custody, there's press. We're going to have to get out ahead of this thing, yeah? And fucking...somebody had to go get all the details, do the math, run the strategy, figure it the fuck out.”

And...yeah. There's like, one person in their respective lives they'd trust with that sort of thing. And all Jamie can think to say is, “Please tell me you sat with her through that. Like, held her hand and shit. Did the boyfriend thing.”

And Roy doesn't say anything at-fucking-all.

“Mate,” Jamie breathes.

“Fucking stop it,” Roy says, “I didn't see you fucking in there, did I.”

“No, but—”

Roy goes, “Look, I made it three fucking minutes, all right? I did that. And then I figured, one of us has to be competent to like, drive and that. Order takeaway. Handle the...the arnica gel and ice baths and that. And I stepped out to get some air and you were outside trying to play fucking football in a fucking thunderstorm, mate, without your fucking boots on, and not even Doctor Sharon could get you in out of it. So yeah, clearly that nuts-and-bolts person was going to be fucking me, so I tapped the fuck out and went off to put out fires for the rest of my fucking life, Jesus Christ.”

“...Sorry,” is all Jamie can think of to say.

“It's not your fucking fault, all right?” Roy snaps. “It's not. Jesus, mate. I fucking get it, all right?—and for what it's worth, I think you deserve a fucking medal. I meant it, what I said to your brother about it being the luckiest day of his life so fucking far, even with everything.”

And yeah, Jamie has to go turn into a fucking goldfish for a minute. He doesn't know what to do with it when Roy comes out and says shit like that. Kind of makes him want to turn around and do something extra-shitty just to like, have his coach haul off and yell at him for being a prick again.

And Roy goes, “Look, it's just...three minutes was like, about three minutes more than I could fucking handle, and now I've got some stuff going on in my head. Can you just like, fucking talk to me or something? Keep me awake, Jesus Christ.”

“Um,” Jamie says, because the only things he can think to talk about are like, Taylor and their Dad and like, that one coach that time. He's pretty sure that's not something that's going to be helpful right now.

“Jesus, mate, just like...do some fucking icebreakers or something,” Roy says. Jamie's about to ask what chewing gum has to do with anything, and then he's about to apologize for what is obviously his very bad breath, but Roy cuts him off. “It's like, this thing fucking Lasso does, it's like secretly kind of fucking brilliant. Like, I ask what your first concert was, that you ever went to, and then like, your best concert.”

Jamie thinks about that. “You know Roy,” he says, “I've never been to a concert.”

Roy's quiet for a bit. “You know what?” he says. “Fucking me neither.”

Chapter Text

Somewhere in Keeley's flat, the shower is running.

It's the middle of the night, and somewhere in Keeley's flat, the shower is running.

It's the middle of the night, and Jamie hasn't really slept, and somewhere in Keeley's flat, the fucking shower is fucking running.

Jamie can hear the shower running from the heart of a tangle of blankets with his pillow pressed over his ears, humming the Jamie Tartt fight song to himself to try to block out the sound of the fucking shower that is fucking running.

Jamie can hear a shower running from like, anywhere in the same building. It's like the world's most very shite superpower. Like he got a couple of good ones, like the foot God Himself must've fucking kissed, but he got a couple that were just the actual worst, and one of them is his ability to hear showers.

Keeley used to do this. Sometimes, back when life was good and they were together and there was still someone around to like, play with his hair and that on the regular, he'd be a royal prick to her just so he could be sure where they stood and they'd have a proper shouting-and-throwing-fluffy-pillows-at-each-other fight, and then break up or not, and then get back together for a couple hours of mind-bending sex where she really let him know what was what and like, let him make it up to her, and then afterwards he'd have new marching orders and like, very specific instructions about what not to do in future. And yeah, that probably wasn't the most healthy relationship dynamic for grown-ass adults over the age of like, fifteen or whatever, but at least he knew where he fucking stood. He'd be a prick, and she'd put him in his place, and he'd at least know where all the lines were, and he'd sleep like a fucking baby every night for the rest of the week.

Those weren't the nights when the shower would be running.

Sometimes, back when life was life and Keeley would look at him like a little fucking boy with a pathetic schoolboy crush and no knowledge of the world and like...relationships and that, he wouldn't be a prick to her at all. Or anyway, he wouldn't try to be one. It would just sort of work out that way, whether he meant it to or not, because he'd never had a girlfriend long enough to have an anniversary before, and no one ever let him in on the fact that anniversaries like, came with expectations and that. Or like, there was that one time he couldn't sleep so he woke her up, asked her for a blowjob, and she said no, she was fucking tired and she'd already brushed her teeth and wasn't getting up to fucking do it the fuck again, Jesus Christ, and then he'd wheedled with her a bit about how he couldn't sleep and he was so tired and he really, really needed it, and she'd turned on her reading lamp and sat him down hard for a Very Serious Talk about something called “enthusiastic consent,” which was also apparently a fucking thing.

And, yeah, those were the nights he'd wake up and her side of the bed would be cold, and the shower would be running, and he could only just hear the low miserable noises she'd muffle into her hands. He'd try to talk to her about it the next day, but she'd just sparkle at him extra hard, like she didn't know what he was talking about, or else she'd say something truly awful, like that it wasn't his fault and he hadn't done anything he had to make it up to her over.

Yeah, mate. Sometimes it wasn't even something he'd done. Sometimes it was just...him.

She's not making sounds tonight. He's not even sure he heard her get up.

But the shower. That fucking shower is fucking running.

His Nokia left off being a brick like, an hour and a half ago. He considers going down to Keeley's garage and hunting around the Iron Giant for his Boost over-ears, which he's pretty sure he stuffed down a side pocket of his kit bag on the bus ride home from Crystal Palace. Hell, he considers crawling into the backseat and taking a kip wrapped up in his AFC Greyhounds fleece—like it's any other time he's crossed Dad and can't go home (because Dad knows where his flat is) and can't go home with a girl (because sometimes he's marked in a way he can explain away as a fight or like, in-game fouls, and sometimes he's not marked at all, but sometimes he can't take his clothes off without said girl going straight to the press about all the weird freaky sex shit he's apparently into) and can't even check into a fucking motel (because yeah, press), but even Jamie fucking Tartt's got to give up and get some fucking sleep sometime.

Apparently, though, Coach was actually pretty fucking serious about Jamie being grounded right now. And while Jamie's still not one hundred percent clear on what grounded is supposed to mean, part of it definitely involves Coach confusticating the keys to the Iron Giant until there's an actual fucking grownup behind the fucking wheel, Jesus fucking Christ. So slapping on a pair of headphones and listening to Isaac's weight training playlist on riot volume is apparently fucking out, and so is curling up in the back seat of his car like the homeless stray he fucking feels like right now.

Instead, Jamie lies there on the bottom bunk of a double-decker pink-and-white IKEA futon that creaks like an old timey-wimey sailing-ship straining not to break apart in a storm every time he like, rolls over to try and find a more comfortable position. And good Lord in heaven, it is fucking weird, innit. It is fucking Weird. As. Shit.

Because, see, back when he and Keeley were shacked up together in all but name, this nice little walk-in closet had housed his most fashionable clothes, the kind that looked covered in grafitti but had naffy little tags reading Dry-Clean Only, and his double-wide vanity with a selection hair and skin products that were so meticulously curated they belonged in a fucking museum, and three full-length mirrors so he could see himself from every angle if he needed to, because he always fucking did.

And that's the difference eight months makes, innit. Now it's been repainted peach and cream and coral. It contains a bed and a homework desk, a cat tree and a fluffy pink beanbag big enough to fit, like, two reasonably leggy adults and one pint-sized pipsqueak who apparently hasn't decided she's too old for sitting on laps. The built-in shelving that used to house one-off prototypes for Jamie N. Tartt-branded athletic trainers is back to being a fucking bookshelf, like it was the first time Keeley bedded him and he got lost at 3am looking for the washroom, only this time it's stuffed full of trade paperbacks with titles like Northern Lights and Nine Who Rocked the IX and Bedtime Stories for Rebel Girls.

The shower is still fucking running. Jamie would have heard it from anywhere in the fucking flat, but this particular little closet-turned-bedroom opens four feet from the bed Keeley shares with his childhood crush, and their on-suite washroom is right on the other side of that, so...yeah. Sounds like a cow pissing on a flat rock, is what he's fucking getting at.

Nothing to do but lie here and let that fucking sound work his very last nerve.

And you know what? Jamie can seriously see how if he were nine and his mum worked odd hours saving lives in the emergency surgery, and his dad was so shit Roy fucking Kent could hardly stand to let said child out of his fucking line-of-sight, knowing Roy and Keeley were sleeping right there, four feet away, putting their bodies between him and whatever else is out there in the world so he could like, just not worry about that for a couple hours and get some fucking sleep...yeah, Jamie can seriously see how that would be a comforting fucking thought. Make a little kid feel fucking safe or whatever. But for him?—the twenty-three-year-old ex-boyfriend who should actually be old enough to put himself to fucking bed without like, needing a tuck-in and that, not that he ever fucking did, but—

For him, is what he's getting at. For him, it feels seriously fucking weird.

And it's hard to imagine being jealous of a nine-year-old kid who won't, like, have proper human rights and that for another nine fucking years, but there it fucking is.

And Jesus, how long has that fucking shower been running? Got to be fucking cold by now, yeah?

Even fucking Keeley never cried about things this long. Not when he found out the hard way about anniversaries and that. Not when she started checking in with him about what kinds of touch he wanted and what kinds of touch he didn't. Not even the time he lied and let her think he'd been fucking cheating on her.

So he lies there and thinks about it, that shower. Maybe nobody's in it. Maybe it's not covering up anything, yeah? Maybe by the time Carrie fucking Bradshaw finished her little voiceover epilogue, the three of them were the kind of out-of-your-head knackered that any fucking one of them could've started the shower running, meant to get in one last good scrub-down, but then fucking forgot about it and like, fallen into bed fully-clothed.

Yeah. That's probably what happened.

And Jamie could leave it go, couldn't he. Been years, hasn't it, since any of them been the kind of poor that an out-of-control water bill would force them to choose between groceries this week and still being able to flush the jakes.

But like, the environment and that. Global fucking warming.

So he crawls off the bottom bunk—but like, carefully, yeah? 'cos he en't about to explain to a kid who's got Coach fucking Kent as her uncle-slash-bodyguard why her nice peach-and-coral IKEA bed's a pile of fucking kindling these days—and he slips out the door to the en-suite washroom as quietly as he fucking can. No point being a prick to his ex-girlfriend and her new boyfriend. Whatever they are to him, they need their fucking sleep too. Fucking earned it this time 'round, didn't they.

And that's how it is that Jamie Tartt, Jr. finds Roy still in his pajama pants, half-in half-out of a seriously cold fucking shower that was hot enough, at some point in the not-so-distant past, to leave blisters down his chest. Man's hairy as a fucking cryptid, Jamie thinks, and right this second he seems to be wearing an expression to match. His left arm's clawed open, like he's been scratching an itch for hours 'til it wasn't an itch at all, anymore, just raw open meat. Water all over the floor—he'd never bothered closing the shower door. Eyes open and staring.

Carefully, Jamie reaches around him and shuts off the water. No way to do it without getting within range of a good solid smack, but whatever. Roy doesn't respond, not even a bit.

“Coach,” Jamie says softly.

And yeah, if boiling-hot water and scratching himself open and that didn't wake Roy up, Jamie going Coach at him some more isn't going to make much difference, Jamie reckons. So he fucks off right quick to shake Keeley awake, because even he knows when shit like this goes that far over his pay grade.

Turns out that takes some doing. Turns out Keeley's epic bubble-bath-to-end-all-bubble-baths included half a bottle of champagne sipped out of a World's Best Cat-Mum novelty mug—which, good on her and all, but she doesn't actually drink all that often now that Jamie's not around to like, take her out clubbing and be a shit influence and that, and she sort of lost her tolerance, and that half-bottle put her on her tail a bit harder than she was expecting.

It takes him a minute, is what she's saying. And she must've like, not woken up all the way, because she goes in for a kiss like they're still fucking together.

When he tells her about Roy, though, she doesn't panic. Swears a little, in that sleepy-kitten seriously-fucking-done-with-this way she has of swearing when she has to wake up properly to deal with someone else's fucking problem. Then she goes, “Yeah, look, it's all right. He fucking does this sometimes.”

Turns out “this” is like, a whole sleepwalking thing Roy's got that no one ever saw fit to fucking mention. Had it since he was a kid. Flares up a bit when he's stressed.

They don't really manage to wake Roy up, but they get him cleaned up and dried off, and Keeley slaps plasters on anyplace she can find where he's actually broken the skin. Jamie hangs back by the door with his hands not in his pockets—the pajamas he borrowed off Roy are like, the softest possible flannels he's ever fucking touched, but also so delicately made that apparently no one thought to bother with pockets, so there's nowhere to put his hands and he has to just like, stand around awkwardly not knowing where to fucking put them. There's no getting Roy dressed when he's like this, Keeley says, so Jamie gives up and keeps his head turned until she gives up and admits she needs his help to manhandle her boyfriend back into her bed.

And, yeah. It's about like that. Jamie's fought with Roy, partied with him, fucking hugged it out with him—hell, even sat next to him on the fucking team bus and watched the man be like, seriously fucking uncomfortable for two hours because a waitress asked if he'd like his pie a la mode, meaning with ice cream, and Roy wasn't about to turn down a bowl full of ice cream even if he did have a minor issue with lactose and that. And here's the thing: nothing but nothing has driven home the raw animal fact of Roy Kent's body quite like wrestling him like a giant lurching meat-mannequin straight out of The Cabaret of Doctor Kalahari from a sopping-wet washroom to the bed a few feet away.

And it's weird—it is—but somehow it takes the whole situation of like, staying in a little kid's room with Jamie's ex-girlfriend and her new boyfriend sharing a bed close enough by that he can hear which one of them's snoring and which one of them like, really shouldn't have gone on a hunt for the last couple crab rangoons seem a whole less fucking awkward. Makes it feel a lot more like they're just a couple of fucked up human beings being fucked up human beings in close proximity, instead of weird exes with weird fucking chemistry that even a mouthy little twat like Taylor picks up on.

“Jamie, sweetheart,” Keeley says, “can you dig an extra blanket out of the bottom drawer of the linen closet?—there's a love.”

There are two blankets down there, musty and scratchy, all moth-eaten Scottish wool.

“Can't tuck him in with these, Keels,” he says. “Pretty sure it like, qualifies as a war crime and that in most civilized countries.”  The ones that don't make exceptions for like, 'enhanced interpretations' and that.  The ones not in Neo-Natal, is what he's getting at.

“Oh hush,” Keeley says crossly. “Fucking watch and learn, J.J. darling.”

And God, the old pet-name hits him like a sucker-punch to the throat, but he covers it, doesn't he, because Keels is wrestling Roy's hands into a pair of mittens that buckle so securely at the wrist he's pretty sure she got them at some posh fetish shop down 'round East End. She makes Jamie go fill up a hot water bottle, and by the time he's back he no longer feels the need to mash his fingers into his tear ducts and he can just like, nut up and help her look after Roy like the man fucking deserves right now.

Then she goes, “Hey, um. You mind like, staying a bit?” She must see the look on his face because she goes, “Sorry, sweetheart, I um. I know it's a bit weird.”

“Oi Coach,” Jamie says loudly, “mind if I stay on a bit with your fucking girlfriend? Or is that too fucking weird even for us?”

Roy rouses a little, grunts. Isn't quite with it enough to swear.

Keeley goes, “Roy sweetheart, you can either take a half a Trazodone now, let it put you down for a bit, and I'll do all the driving tomorrow—or else Jamie here can fucking sit on you so you don't fucking hurt yourself again.”

“Jesus fuck,” Roy growls, sort of half-getting it.

“Or he can lie down next to you, darling, keep you down that way. How does that sound?”

Roy grunts something that sounds a bit like, Long as he's not fucking sitting on me he's fucking fine, what the fuck ever.

“Yeah,” Keeley says with obvious relief. “Yeah, brilliant.”

And that's more or less how it goes. They tuck Roy into the middle with a hot water bottle and a whole pile of weighted blankets and that, and Keeley puts the scratchy wool war-crime blanket up against his chest and neck, and then she and Jamie curl up on top of the blankets, one on either side of him. Jamie's not really expecting it to fucking work, but Roy cuddles into the weighted nest of them like a cat in a particularly plush beanbag chair and goes down so hard so fast someone ought to out and yell Lost fucking horizon. And Keeley huffs a little laugh that's more relief than anything, and drops her head back on the pillow like she's a geriatric old Granddad herself.

Huh. Who would've thought Roy fucking Kent had fucking cheat codes.

Jamie's not sure whether he's said that out loud, or whether he's just thinking it really hard. Or maybe Keeley's just that much of an evil genius, maybe she knows him better than he knows himself, because she chuckles to herself and goes, “Fucking everybody has fucking cheat codes, Jamie.”

Like him and his thing with his fucking hair. Like Taylor turning into a normal fucking kid for five minutes every time Jamie uses the word brother.

“Yeah?” Jamie says, still a little uncomfortable, still feeling a little like a shit, because he's back in her bed for the first time since they had a one-night-stand that he thought seemed to go pretty well, all things considered, but apparently didn't because she turned around right the next fucking morning and started going steady with his childhood crush, so. Because he's back in her fucking bed, isn't he, and it smells like her and it smells like home and it smells like the man who grabbed him tight and hung the fuck on the night he punched his Dad and everyone whose opinion of him ever fucking mattered fucking saw and fucking worked it out and fucking worked out the worst of the rest of it, and it didn't fucking matter because Roy fucking Kent was a castle nobody but nobody was getting through and the part of Jamie that was apparently still a needy fucking five-year-old could like, duck behind those walls and come apart at the seams for a while without fucking listening for the stomach-twisting clink of—

Because he's back in her fucking bed, and Roy fucking Kent is lying there cuddled in between them, and that doesn't actually feel as weird as it fucking sounds.

“Fucking yeah, Jamie,” Keeley interrupts him muzzily, tired as fuck and probably still a little drunk. “You're not like, fucking special that way or whatever. We're all like, needy little shits with weird fucking shit we needed and didn't get when we were kids, or like, got and probably shouldn't have, and now whoever can get it for us and give it to us gets us wrapped around their little pinkie fingers whether that's fucking good for us or not. That's not called being fucking crazy or damaged or whatever, that's called being fucking human, Jesus Christ.”

“You know,” Jamie says as casually as he dares, “I wasn't entirely thrilled with it when you started hooking up with Roy, but on balance I think it's like, an even better thing than whatever I could've dished out for you. If your tipsy monologues are anything to go by, he's been like, a seriously good influence.”

“Mmmh,” she goes, mashing her face deeper into her like, million-thread-count pillow. “Don't need your fucking approval, J.J. Independent woman and that.”

And yeah, maybe it's the solid warmth of Coach Kent next to him, but the pet name doesn't feel so much like a punch to the chest this time. So he sets up a whine worthy of Taylor and goes, “It's not fucking fair, Keels, you know fucking everyone's cheat codes and I never even figured out like, even one of fucking yours.”

“The fuck you didn't,” she snorts. “You know like, every last one of them. Wine gums, roses, foot rubs, bubble baths, fucking hazelnut Starbucks with like, double the pumps of syrup. And like, dinner that's nothing but side dishes, and those adorkable fucking post-it notes you used to leave on the fucking fridge. And like, fucking respect and that.”

“If by respect you mean that thing I do with me tongue—”

“Jamie, sweetheart, I know you think you invented that thing you do with your tongue, but it is to adult sexual relationships what Please pass the salt and fucking pepper, mate is to fucking table manners, yeah?”

It shouldn't have him fucking snickering, day he's had, day he's got ahead of him tomorrow, but the tension's draining out of his shoulders like he couldn't have even imagined. Like...God, he's fucking missed this, yeah? This fucking Tempur-pedic that smells like home and her and like, sleepy evenings lounging around talking rubbish 'til one or the other of them's laughing and neither one can even properly say why. So Jamie admits, “You know, I'm actually kind of embarrassed about the girls I bedded before you like, turned me world upside-down and showed me what's what and all.”

“Jesus fucking Christ,” she says, batting sleepily at his bangs, “do you have a 'snooze' function, or do I need to keep fucking swatting at you 'til I find your fucking 'off' button.”

“Coach,” Jamie says with great...magnanimity—fuck yes, that word-of-the-day word he's been hunting around his brain for for the past twenty-fucking-four hours is like, magnanimity! “Hey uh, Coach, I want it on the record right the fuck now, in case there's any fucking trouble about it tomorrow, that even though I shared a bed with your fucking girlfriend, she spent like, half the night trying her very fucking best to turn me off.”

And Roy grunts something that sounds an awful lot like, Jesus fucking Christ you fucking pricks, shut the fuck up and go the fuck to sleep, the fuck is fucking wrong with you.

And yeah, Jamie feels a little fucking guilty over that, actually, because if Roy was tired enough to sleep through like, second-degree burns and scratching a hole open in his arm, maybe Jamie and Keeley shouldn't be waking him up giggling like fucking nine-year-olds at a fucking sleepover. So he settles down a bit and tries to just like, enjoy how he feels right now, with the knots loosening in his chest and neck and back, and his lungs finally getting enough air for once, and his heart not exactly pounding out of his chest. And yeah, he can definitely fucking feel it that he smashed up his knuckles and like, maybe spent a couple hours kicking footballs without proper boots on. He lets himself lie there while the catalogue of aches settles back into his body like he's a real fucking boy again, not a wooden puppet or like, goldfish or whatever. For lack of anything fucking better to do, he tries to match his breathing to Roy's, slow and even as a fucking metro-gnome, though what those pointy-haired little bastards are doing down the underground instead of like, out in working-class twats' fucking flower gardens is really fucking beyond him.

“Jesus,” Keeley says softly. And she gets up for a minute and Jamie hears a stomach-twisting clink that turns out to be his fucking car keys after all.

It's a bit later, and Jamie's got his face mashed between Coach Kent's shoulder blades, which is definitely something that sounds a lot fucking weirder than it fucking feels. And Keeley's back with his fucking AFC fleece, and it smells like nights he fucked off in the Iron Giant, too rattled to talk or think or yeah, probably be in any fit fucking condition to fucking drive, and fucking drove around anyway 'til he was too tired to see straight and far enough away from anywhere even James-fucking-Sr. wouldn't be able to find him, and he'd finally come down enough to pull off on the shoulder or like, a car park somewhere, and catch his forty fucking winks.

And Keeley's playing with his fucking hair again, and he's not even fucking trying to hold it in anymore, is he. And Coach rouses exactly enough to pat clumsily at him with like, those weird fucking kink-mittens that apparently keep fucking sleepwalkers from fucking hurting themselves and go, “No you twat, you had the right of it before. Just like...put your face right fucking here and match your breathing to fucking mine, Jesus Christ.”

And Jamie doesn't really know when he stops shaking and that. Just that when he's done, there's not enough left of him to fucking dream.