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It’s a cold day on the pitch; an away game, though you wouldn’t know from the crowd. It’s an almost even split of blue and Orange jerseys throughout the stands, which are packed tightly together to shield from the sharp chill. Usually such a full house would lead to lots of chanting and shouting, but the grey weather has subdued everyone on the pitch and those that surround it.
Only Ted appears unaffected, the prick. Dani is smiling through it, but Jamie knows he’s getting tired just from watching him slow down the more the temperature drops. It’s miserable, with the ground turning white from the frost, and the spitting snow flurries that have made Jamie’s fingers go numb and his hair damp and freezing when it drips on his neck and shoulders. It’s not a real snow, more of a light, freezing rain, and both teams are sporting red cheeks as their breath clouds the air. Jamie almost doesn’t even care if they lose, if it gets them out of this weather and under the warm spray of the showers. Almost.
They’re only one point up by the end of the first half, and the idea of a brief reprieve from the elements feels like a double edged knife or whatever it’s called. Going in will feel amazing, but it will be twice as bad when they have to come back out to face it again. Which is perhaps why he’s lagging a bit behind to make his way to the tunnels, as much as he wants to get out of the cold. The crowd has gotten a bit restless and unruly, and he’s seen two different fights break out among the patrons, though only one resulted in anyone being escorted off site. Jamie chalks that up to the weather being too fucked to bother with it. The colder it gets, the more people will drink to be warm, and the worse the behavior will be. Usually he finds that a bit of fun; a buzzed crowd is a happy crowd, and he can work with that. This, however, isn’t one of those instances where alcohol leads to anything much being jolly.
Really, everyone is more like discontent with the slow gameplay and the rough wind that Jamie thinks must have chapped the first few layers off his face. By the time he’s sat on a bench listening to Beard talk, he can feel the heat returning to his ears and the painful prickle of his skin as it takes hold. It’s a burning sensation, like. He’s got it in the very tips of his fingers the worst.
Just like he was worried for, the reprieve lasts just long enough for his body temperature to start feeling normal, and then they’re marching back into the abrasive cold. He’s already decided that the first thing he’s doing when he gets home is treating himself to a hot bath with the posh products that Keeley gave him for Christmas the year previous. Even broke up, she remembers what he likes. Been saving them for a day like this one.
By the time they’re back on the pitch, the crowd has gotten antsy and impatient, calling for game play, less for the hope of their preferred team winning, but more so that they can hurry up with the match and all go home. Personally, Jamie thinks he agrees with them on that point, and he’s known to never want to be off the pitch.
Before they can put their boots to the ground, however, a commotion starts near the opponents goal, and a mix of cheering and booing rumbles through the stadium. When Jamie is able to look around the shoulder of Jan Maas, he sees what has so many people laughing and whistling; one of the public have gotten plastered, and now a man is sprinting across the field with only his socks, shoes, and a Cornwall scarf on—which is perhaps the most bizarre part of his ensemble, as they aren’t even one of the teams playing.
Jamie can’t help but laugh along with the rest of the team as the man dodges security as best he can, sending several of them slipping across the pitch as he weaves. Funniest, he thinks, is when the man tries to make a run towards the Blackpool team, and instead of making any attempt at taking him down, they go white faced and scatter away to get out of the naked man’s path—which only eggs the crowd on more as they cheer and laugh in support. Paper cups are being thrown onto the grass, and several scarves and mittens dot the sidelines as merriment takes hold.
He almost forgets how cold it is by the time the man is tackled tits-first in the grass, sliding a ways as security finally catches him—to the audible disappointment of nearly everyone in the arena. Roy even joins the loud booing as the nude man is zipped into a long coat and dragged off the pitch by three angry security officers. He waves jovially on his way out, earning a standing ovation, but before Jamie can clap, something slams, hard, into the back of his head with enough force to send him onto His knees in the grass, barely catching himself with his hands.
His ears are ringing, and his mouth is full of what he realizes is blood from biting his tongue in the impact. His hands, splayed in front of him, go in and out of focus with the sense of pain that pulses out from the base of his skull. He thinks, for a moment, that he’s been punched, and has the faintest thought to look for his father. He wouldn’t be here, though, it’s not his scene, the cold and the rain. Not if it isn’t for City.
He vaguely feels hands on his shoulders, and can see someone kneel beside him in his peripheral, but it’s just knees and hands and he can’t work his brain into the present enough to recognize who it is. He opens his mouth, trying to say something, and feels the warmth of blood bubble on his teeth and fall over his lip. He can see it drop onto his own splayed hand, dark and stringy, and his ears finally pop as a cacophony of sound rushes in.
He can hear Roy shouting, “Drag him fucking out!” Somewhere behind him, and Beard is saying something at his side, but it’s Dani’s voice he registers as being closest, where the knees are bent beside him and a warm, heavy hand lies on his shoulder. He’s asking Jamie if he’s alright, in a tone he’s never heard from the man. It sounds wrong; too soft and too anxious. That’s not the way Dani is meant too sound.
There are people yelling, and a sea of orange jerseys have crossed the pitch to join them, an opposing player kneeling down in front of him and asking with a strong American accent if Jamie can follow his finger. He thinks he recognizes him when he finally gets his body to listen to him and can look up. He’s the goal keeper that Jamie had scored against early on, with eyebrows more unruly than Roy’s. The thought makes him smile, but he feels blood leaking through the corners of his mouth and down his chin, so he turns and spits a mouthful into the grass.
The medics are on the field, he knows, because he can see the fucking board being laid out for him, and tries to fight off the hands that move to maneuver him onto it. He wants to say he just fell, just bit his tongue like a fucking idiot, but that’s not quite right because when he moves to shake the medics off of him, his vision goes spotted and he’s falling hard to the right. He thinks he’s going to slam into the grass without even being able to catch himself with how heavy and hot his limbs feel, but finds instead that he’s slumped against a solid chest and can feel whoever he’s collapsed on breathing hard, heart thundering. It’s better than the yelling of the teams, both of them shouting together on the visitors side of the pitch, and the crowd as well, which had briefly gone silent before screaming abuse about something.
Jamie really hopes they aren’t yelling at him, and wants to tell them that he’s trying; he wants to get up and start the second half, truly, but his body just isn’t letting him. He can’t even keep his eyes open, really. Everything has gone fuzzy and muted, rather quickly, and the next thing he knows he is waking up from a haze to the sound of someone whispering in what sounds like another language.
He thinks he must be on the side of the pitch still when he tries to force his heavy eyes open, but it’s too quiet, and he’s on his back now, with someone holding his hand. It’s Dani, he realizes, as he makes himself listen harder, praying in Spanish. It would normally sound very pretty, but there’s a tightness to his voice that ruins the sweet tones he’s used to.
It changes, though, when he realizes that Jamie is waking up. The warmth of his hand leaves, but comes back to land delicately on his shoulder. He’s giving him gentle encouragements, he’s sure, though he doesn’t know the words, and Jamie slowly forces his eyes to open to find Dani hovering above him with his face a half breath away from his, warm brown eyes swimming with anxiety. He smiles gingerly to meet the attempt at grinning that Jamie makes, though his entire face feels like it’s moving in delayed reaction to what he wants it to do.
Dani doesn’t rush him, and instead moves his hand to the top of Jamie’s head, his thumb tracing circles on his forehead. His skin doesn’t even feel like his own, and his voice is sticky with exhaustion when he manages to ask, “we win?”
Dani’s smile is immediate, and he announces happily, “We won. It was 3-0 by the end of the match. We could not let you down, Jamie Tartt, though we did wish you were there to be playing with us.”
“Wh’ happened?”
This makes a frown crease his face, and he explains slowly, “I did not see it happen. We were all watching the streaker when someone in the stands threw the bottle. It was not meant to hit anyone, I do not think, but in the spirit of excitement it was thrown from the seats. Coach Ted said we should save it for you, so you can drink it when you are better, but Miss Welton did not think it was appropriate.”
Hearing that pulls Jamie nearly the rest of the way out of the fog, and he finds himself blurting in surprise, “That’s what it was? I was hit with a fucking pils?”
Dani nods somberly, thumb still circling the skin on Jamie’s head absentmindedly, “A waste of alcohol. They do not think it would have been so bad if it had not been partly frozen.”
“Who the fuck throws a full beer away? What a twat.”
“I agree, Jamie Tartt. I pray they are forgiven for such an act, though letting it hit you I will not so easily forget.”
“Nice to know I mean more to you than the sacristy of booze.”
“Of course, Jamie Tartt.” And the genuine warmth forces him to glance away when butterflies start swarming unpleasantly. He doesn’t think it’s an apt metaphor, more like a fucking family of woodpeckers drilling at his weak points of his gut. He wants to cave in to it.
Dani Carrie’s on like it’s a normal occurrence, being at Jamie’s side in a hospital room. The brightening of his tone as he gains speed makes Jamie’s world start tilting back to rights. He is told it could have been much worse, and he nearly pukes watching the coverage that Dani pulls up on YouTube—it was a hard throw, and the hit was solid, the base of the bottle cracking right into the bottom of his skull. Just watching gives him an awful headache, his wound throbbing.
He is ridiculously proud of how the team rallied after, though, and is glad that the pundits are being so generous towards him about the incident. To watch the opposing team clear benches and pelt across the pitch to come to his aid made his heart do a loop sort of motion in his chest. He was right about the one who came to his aid; was the goalkeep with wild eyebrows. The fact they cared so much, even as his opponents, when they didn’t even know him, not really, drives a pleasant ache into his chest.
Dani sits right up beside him in the hospital bed as the evening turns darker; they hardly fit, but they squeeze in to watch videos on Dani’s phone, with Dani’s arm around Jamie’s shoulders as a makeshift pillow behind his neck, careful of his head wound.
He isn’t sure when he nods off, but he wakes in the same position, with Dani quietly speaking to a nurse, trying to keep their voices low so as not to wake him. He is told he fractured his skull, and needed stitches; that he’d been awake when they’d done it, but aren’t surprised he doesn’t remember it happening. Apparently, he was in and out of awareness before passing out fully.
They want to keep him for observation to make sure he’s okay. He’ll have a nasty bruise, and a pretty decent concussion, but he’s told he’s lucky there isn’t any worse trauma to his brain.
Dani has elected to stay, which Jamie had already come to guess, seeing as he was the one currently with him, and from his FaceTime with the team he finds out that he must have really fought for it, because Isaac and Colin are both sulky not to be there, and Jan Maas keeps trying to interject that he is very good in hospitals, and can convince the nurses to give him better food than what is offered in the canteen.
It’s a nice feeling, being so cared for. Apparently, they’ve all been making get well cards, and Ted has gotten the other team to draw some up as well. Says it didn’t take much convincing, or, really, any, if Sam is to be believed. Ted finally wrestles the phone away from them all after Moe tells him earnestly that he will knit him a hat to cover where they shaved a patch of his head—which Jamie had strategically not been told about previously, and was now ready to panic about.
Ted is as jovial as always when saying goodbye, and assures him that he’s well loved and severely missed, but that they’ll come to the hospital to visit in the morning, so he’d better be ready for an early wake up call so they can all fit in a turn to see him, and that they’re all ‘mighty jealous of Dani’. When Jamie returns the phone to Dani, he takes it to the opposite corner of the room, and stays on for a few more minutes until Ted asks Dani something that Jamie can’t hear, but that make Dani blush, and shush Ted urgently. Jamie wonders about that, but doesn’t ask. Privacy and all that.
He isn’t sure what to say when Dani hangs up, and catches him staring from the chair he’s taken up across the room. He settles on, “Bumbercatch was kidding, yeah? About the hair thing?”
Dani is studying Jamie closely, and it finds his words slowly, “I think you are still as pretty with some of your hair shaved.”
The heat rushes to his face so fast he knows he’s gone an unattractive shade of red. Fuck, he’s charming. And he’s fucking—he doesn’t know if Dani is flirting with him or just trying to make him laugh. Is he trying to make a joke?
Dani let’s him struggle for a moment before he nods towards the dark window, “It is a real snow now. None of the pitiful stuff from before. My madre says that snow like this looks to be very romantic.”
Fuck, he can’t stop blushing. He needs to say something, though he doesn’t know what, and concedes, “like in the Christmas films and shit?”
“And shit.” Dani nods, with a hint of a smile, and asks him patiently, “Have you ever had a first date in a hospital Jamie Tartt?”
He’s frozen. Is this part of his head wound? Is he hallucinating? Is he really even in the hospital or is he still lying on the pitch, spitting blood from a bitten tongue? But, no, he can feel a stitch in his mouth when he runs the edge of it over his teeth. All he can do is shake his head and try not to look like a frightened bird. A partially-shaved frightened bird, he thinks unhelpfully.
“Would you like to?”
Jamie short circuits for a moment, and then, warm with both mortification at Dani’s charming smile and with the feeling of being seen, he gestures towards the window and mutters, “Be a shame to waste the romance of it, wouldn’t it? What would your poor mother think if I said no?”
And Dani beams like Jamie’s done him a favor; like he hasn’t just made Jamie’s heart burst nearly through his ribs with feeling. So they sit together on the dingy, scratchy sheets, eating shitty hospital grilled cheese, always careful of Jamie’s IV, and watch the snow fall in slow motion outside the window while they talk. It’s as real a date has ever felt, though he promises Dani he’ll be better company for the next one. Dani just smiles kindly, and lets Jamie rest his head against his shoulder, whispering that any date is perfect if he’s part of it. And, well….Jamie thinks it’s a lucky thing that they don’t have him on a heart monitor to give away just how much his insides are fluttering.