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1: Speak reflectively to take responsibility for your emotions.
Roy and Jamie are cool now. Everyone knows it—everyone had seen the Incident At Wembley, as they all referred to it when Roy and Jamie were out of ear shot, and you didn’t just hold a dude through an emotional breakdown and walk away still hating him afterwards. But though the underlying hatred was gone, their. . . unique way of interacting had remained. Any lingering doubts had been distilled after Roy had head butted and hugged Jamie in short succession after they were promoted.
Beard wasn’t sure what had started the current argument by the time the sound of it spilled into the coaches office, but with Ted meeting with Rebecca and Roy being involved, Beard figured it was up to him to break it up. He just prayed it wasn’t the bear vs shark debate again, because that had turned into an escalating prank war and Beard paying for a tattoo removal.
Sure enough, the team has formed a loose circle, Jamie and Roy stunting at each other in the center. They haven’t quite devolved into shoving yet, but Beard figures it’s only minutes away. “Someone should shove your head in a toilet, you absolute bellend.”
“Roy, please use ‘I feel’ statements,” Moe prompts.
“Fine. When you say Bella should have ended up with Edward instead of Jacob, I feel someone should give you a swirly, you giant prima donna.”
“He’s only saying that because he’s part werewolf himself,” Jamie shouts, anger making his accent so thick Beard can barely understand him. “Edward couldn’t live without her.”
Roy apparently has thoughts about that, given the way he inhales deeply. But Beard claps his hands before Roy can give his no doubt very loud rebuttal. “Silence!” he yells, nodding with satisfaction as the locker room falls quiet. “This is a stupid argument.”
He makes sure everyone is looking directly at him. “The correct answer is obviously Mike."
2: Saying your goals out loud can help reinforce them.
“It’s called a mantra,” Colin tries to explain. “It’s like, you say something out loud and it happens.”
“Like a wish!” Dani exclaims.
“No, no,” Colin says, frustrated. He tries to remember how Dr. Sharon explained it to him. “It’s something you’re trying to make yourself believe, and it’s gotta be something you can do. If you say it instead of just thinking it, it makes you internalize it or something, makes you more likely to believe it. Like, ‘I will play well tomorrow because I’ve been training hard.'”
“I will have a foursome tonight,” Richard says.
Colin nods. “Now you’re getting it!”
3: Create a space where your loved ones can speak freely without fear of judgment.
“So I’ve been thinking about going back to school at night,” Isaac says nonchalantly to no one in particular. The locker room slowly grinds to a halt, various conversations until the only thing sound is Rebecca Black’s Friday before Colin can jab his speakers off.
“Are you sure that is a good idea?” Jan Maas asks with his usual tact. “I am told that you can no longer write your name after a curse sacrifice.”
“Hey!” Zoreaux shouts, glaring. “Shut up. This is a safe space.”
“I got carpal tunnel, bruv!” Isaac says. “‘Sides, they do everything on computers now anyway.”
“I think that is a wonderful idea,” Sam cuts in smoothly before another argument can break out. “What are you thinking about studying?”
“Speech therapy,” Isaac says, and doesn’t say that he always found it hard to speak as a kid, no matter how supportive and loving his family was. He doesn’t say that his adorable nephew seems to be having the same problem. He doesn’t say that Sam and Ted and their goddamn insistence that Isaac can help people—people beyond this group of misfits he’s found himself in charge of—have driven him to do crazy things, like thinking about getting his goddamn BSc. “For little kids and the like.”
“Well,” says Jan Maas again, “if you want to work with poorly-spoken immature people, you will get plenty of practice here, no doubt.”
4: Identify your loved ones’ love languages. Examples include words of affirmation, quality time, and acts of service.
Higgins stares at the locker room, which doesn’t smell like decaying feet for once. Instead, it smells like what the Costco-sized bottle of dish soap, lying innocently on the washing machines, declares is Summer Breeze.
Isaac drags his boot against the carpet, leaving a trail of squelching bubbles in its wake. “Will’s birthday is today. So we—” he gestures loosely at where Sam and Jamie are huddled nervously in the corner “—were trying to help ‘im out so he could leave early.”
Higgins takes a deep breath and counts to five. Across the locker room, Dani emerges from a pile of suds. “Look, it is like a snow angel!”
5: Express gratitude to your loved ones.
It happens quickly—Dani is tired, and they’ve just had a close loss, and he has to translate everything into a different language in his head. So he says my ex-boyfriend without really processing it, and the quiet press room roars back to life. He thinks about trying to back track for a moment, but he’s a terrible liar, and the secret weighs on him besides. So he rolls with it.
Dani’s been out to his family for years now, and Keeley, wonderful angel that she is, is helping him navigate the PR side of things, keeping the worst of it from him. So he isn’t too worried—the only real question mark is his teammates, but he’s optimistic.
And yet, they still surprise him with just how nice they are about it.
“Anyone bothers you about it, I’ll kick ‘em in the ass,” Isaac says, before crushing him in a hug. Behind him, Roy grunts, but Dani thinks it’s a fond grunt.
Higgins gives him a stuttering talk about how he appreciates Dani sharing his truth, and offers a number of pamphlets about LGBTQ support resources. It’s incredibly awkward but obviously well meant, and he leaves with an invitation to the Higgins’ family movie night, which will no doubt be something pointedly-fond like Love, Simon.
Sam says that the “dates have to pay for their food” rule doesn’t change if the date is a guy, but Dani and the rest of the team still get to eat for free. He squeezes Dani’s shoulder as he says it.
Moe knits him a hat; Colin downloads Grindr on Dani’s phone. Jan Maas says that homosexuality has been observed in many species in nature, Richard has a speech about the puritanical nature of English culture, and Zoreaux mercifully makes them both stop.
Jamie doesn’t say anything about it at all, but he sits next to Dani at practice like always, and the warmth lingers long after.
+1 Avoid threats of violence and words of anger.
Ted had tried to be very clear in his pre-game speech that the team shouldn’t react to anything ugly that was said. He and Rebecca and Higgins had all spoken to security and to the League officials, and Rebecca had made it very clear, in her scary girlboss way, that any shenanigans would not be tolerated. Ted made the point to bring Rebecca with him, to drive the message home: someone would probably say something, but everyone should ignore it and let the appropriate people handle it.
That strategy lasts for approximately ten seconds, until Jamie is suddenly shoving at his defender. Isaac approaches, and Ted has a moment to think the Captain will calm things down before he realizes Isaac is trying to pin the guy so Jamie can punch at him better.
By the time the game is over, the team has received so many yellow and red cards that Ted’s pretty sure they’ve set a new record. Roy and Beard have both been sent off and are fuming on the sidelines. He’s pretty sure Rebecca is going to get fined for the way he caught her yelling at the referee at half.
Ted’s never been more proud of his team.