Chapter Text
Jamie’s Big Gay Scandal is mostly an accident.
Technically, it’d be a Bisexual Scandal, on account of how Jamie’s bi and not gay (“Oh, like Nikesh in Accounting!” says Billy, helpfully, trying to show that there are other queers working at a football club) but turns out that many Premier League fans don’t really see a difference between a full poof and a part-time poof, or however it was that George Cartrick tried to put it. And, ‘course, there’s no point in trying to get Cartrick to stop using the word ‘poof’ at all.
It’s like, as far as the footballing world is concerned, there are only two ways for a bloke to be—Gay or Non-Gay, and pictures of Jamie getting his tongue sucked out of his mouth by another man in front of a gay club in Canal Street land him squarely in the former. Or, once you eat arse you can never go back, which is something Jamie says in an Instagram live three days after the news breaks, and is also the point when the club PR tell him, very nicely, that he should get his posts approved beforehand.
“Right,” Jamie says, because maybe they have a point. “But it was funny, though. Admit it—Lou, you laughed. I know you laughed.”
It starts in the middle of the summer, during pre-season. Or maybe it starts a bit earlier, on break, when Jamie’s doing fuck all and feeling a bit sorry for himself.
After relegating Richmond and thoroughly ending Roy Kent’s waning career, the off-season is pretty uneventful. He goes to Ibiza for a week with O’Gara, because who the fuck would turn down Ibiza, then takes his mum on a two-week holiday in the Austrian Alps to some unpronounceable postcard town that feels a world away from Manchester.
Then it’s home for the rest of the break, getting up by lunchtime and going out every night at parties he doesn’t really enjoy, sipping on alcopops and grinning on camera for his Insta stories. He gets his pick of the girls who flock to him, because he’s a fit footballer with great hair, because he’s loud and cheeky and dead sexy. He’s having fun, he says, to anyone who asks, and everyone who doesn’t. He’s having a great fucking time.
And when he stumbles home past four in the morning, and it’s quiet, he hates that he can hear himself think. He hates that sometimes he feels like a scared little boy still, that he helped City their last match and still let his fucking tosser of a dad tell him off and throw shit at him just because he hadn’t done the whole thing single-handedly by himself. Fuck it, fuck that. Fuck him.
It looms like a shadow over the season. At least that shit had been at Richmond; the idea of his father meeting anyone from City has him fucking terrified. Jamie gets him comped tickets every week, but thanks fucking Christ that Dad likes to sit with his mates in the South Stand and stays well clear of the VIP section. Some of the lads bring their fucking kids to watch the matches, for fuck’s sake. Jamie’s met them, the kids and the wives and the parents of his team-mates who come to the home games. Dad ever showed up there, mean and pissed and reeking of beer, he might just die.
Jamie likes it at City—it’s a fucking great club, he gave all his life to it, feels like, and sometimes he still can’t believe he got where he is. But the idea of his dad being there, week after week after fucking week, makes him feel like he’s being strangled. Back in London, he didn’t realise how much different it had been, just to be—free.
Pre-season rolls around, and that’s when the trouble starts. It goes fine, at first. Jamie loves being back on the pitch, and he’s finally got a reason to get up in the mornings. Even after he’d been sent back from Richmond last year he got decent minutes, and now it’s looking like he’ll get to start every once in a while, could get to be on the pitch on most matches if he puts in the work. And that’s good news, he should be dead chuffed, but all he can think about is his dad putting every minute he’s on the pitch under a fucking microscope, spitting and yelling and ranting like he knows better than fucking Pep. He feels nauseous, like, all the fucking time, and the nutritionists are on him because he’s been dropping weight, and he feels like a whiny bitch because sometimes he wakes up in the middle of the night in cold sweat and feels like there’s a weight crushing down on his soul.
In late July, they host a pre-season friendly; he comes in late in the first half and they win 3—1. Should be a good day. But Jamie didn’t score, even if he got two fucking assists, and he didn’t start, and it wasn’t a real match anyway so it barely even counts, does it.
The voice in his head is Dad’s, the texts blowing up his mobile are also Dad’s, and Jamie texts back, right. sorry. out with the team, and that’s going to get him grief later about how he thinks he’s too good for his old man, but Jamie couldn’t give a fuck right now. He disappears on the lads halfway through the evening and goes back home to sulk. He wakes up in dread, and he knows, he knows, that he can’t do this for much longer. He can’t remember how he managed to survive until now. He can’t do it.
The next day, he goes to a club. Not like it’s anything new—he’s young and rich and hot; he goes clubbing like three times a week and gets shagged almost as often. But this is a gay club. He’s wearing big sunglasses and boring colours, but he’s doing it. He’s walking in, Jamie Tartt, Prem footballer and local lad, whose face’s on a dozen trams up and down the city. A bloke catches Jamie’s eyes and grins, all flirty-like, and Jamie’s not nervous at all. He grins back.
The place looks like every other gay club Jamie has been in before—a grand total of three, and none of them in Britain because even when he wants to suck a dick he still has a working brain, usually. Except that now his working brain is whispering, you know what’d really fucking piss off fucking Dad? and Jamie throws all caution to the wind and before he knows it he’s grinding up against, like, a dozen topless men as he dances, and snogging five different people before going home with some guy named Shane, who has large hands and a fucking sexy voice. He’s a bit older and he doesn’t seem to recognise him, but Jamie gives his real name and takes him to his house where he’s got a ton of City stuff laying around, and the whole time he’s thinking, fuck, fuck, fuck.
But it feels fucking great. The sex is hot, and it feels good, and afterwards in the shower Jamie thinks that his dad would be properly fucking angry if he found out that his son had a hand on some bloke’s dick, fingers in his arse, inside of him, that he got fucked, that Jamie liked it. He’d break Jamie’s skull, probably. But also he might have a stroke, and wouldn’t show his face around his local for like a month, so there.
The guy doesn’t stay the night and Jamie goes to training the next morning with a new spring in his steps—and yeah, maybe a bit sore because it’s been a while, but he scores two fucking brilliant goals and that feels almost as good as the sex. Afterwards, he fucks around in the gym with the lads for a couple of hours, then to Mum’s for tea, and he stays the night in his bedroom there and almost feels at peace.
The day after is good, too—they do position-specific work in the morning and the attacking coach looks pleased, so he might get some good minutes in their first proper game. He’s out with a few team-mates after training when his mobile starts to ring, and his heart drops.
“Got to take this,” he says, apologetic, because he doesn’t want his dad to show up at his place if he makes himself scarce—or, fucking hell, show up at Mum’s. Jamie holds his buzzing phone in hand and watches it ring, steeling himself.
“Alright?”
“Jamie, fucking hell, would it kill you to pick up the phone? Thought you was ignoring me, son.”
He fucking wishes he could. “No, I was—out with the lads.”
“Oh, the lads. You starting against Villa?”
Fucking hell. “I don’t know.”
“You don’t know? It’s next week, Jamie! It’s fucking August already—”
“Gaffer hasn’t decided yet.”
“Maybe if you’d fucking scored at all last season, yeah?” He’s pitching his voice nastier, thin and sharp like knives. “Fuck, Jamie, what the fuck is wrong with you?”
And just like that he’s off, talking about City’s line-up for the year, and how Jamie could’ve scored at least five times last season but missed all of them—never mind that he scored three times for City even though they’d barely played him, and eleven goals at fucking Richmond, all by himself. That Jamie’s twenty-three and playing another fucking season with his old academy number, that he’d been caught on camera slouching on the bench at the last match, that his fucking socks are too low, and Jamie just stands there and lets all of it wash over him like chilly crashing waves of absolute fucking despair.
So, like, it seems like a perfectly good night to go out and get fucked. Keeley would say he’s being Freudian, but he and Keeley haven’t talked in months and Jamie doesn’t care for self-reflection besides. He wears his tightest jeans and sunglasses and a zip-up shirt left half-opened over his chest, and barely bothers with dancing before getting down to business. He walks up to a fit guy—thirty, maybe, with brown hair and three different facial piercings with shiny silver rings.
“Hey,” he says. “You want to get out of here?”
He gives a long look from under his lashes, that half-lidded look Keeley used to call his fuck-me-eyes. It takes less than ten minutes before leaving together, and they kiss outside on the pavement, right under a streetlamp, and nobody seems to care. And even if they did, he thinks. What then?
Yeah, Jamie, he’ll tell himself later, with the all-knowing smugness of hindsight. Fucking what then?
Jamie drove here, so he drives them back to his place. The guy takes a look at the Aston Martin and then at Jamie, and smiles in a way that goes straight to his dick because, look, Jamie’s always liked to show off.
“What’d you do, anyway?” He asks once they’re at Jamie’s, looking around as Jamie gets a good grope in right against the front door. “Living alone, big place like this?”
“I’m a footballer.”
It slides out like it’s the easiest thing in the world to say, and like he’s signing his death sentence. He’s grinning, even, and probably looks like a self-important knob, but Jamie’s never been this honest with any man he’s fucked before. He feels drunk; he hasn’t had a drop. “So, can I blow you or what?”
It’s like that time he went cliff diving when he was seventeen, weightless, falling faster as his stomach drops. He’s weightless and nothing can touch him and he’s going to crash soon enough, but at that moment he feels immortal. It’s a thrill, and it’s hot, and Jamie’s into it, and when they’re done the guy asks if he can have Jamie’s number—it’s a fucking horrible idea, so he says yes.
But just because he’s sort of getting off on wrecking his life it doesn’t mean Jamie’s fully suicidal. He watches as the guy types his number into Jamie’s phone then says, “So you know this is like… on the down-low, yeah?”
It takes a couple of seconds for it to sink in. “What the hell, man? I’m not going to out you.”
“Yeah, sorry, just…”
“I get it,” the guy says, but Jamie doubts he does. Because Jamie doesn’t know what there is to get, doesn’t know what the fuck is going on with him except that the idea of doing something his dad would hate makes it a little more bearable to get through every day.
Freudian, Keeley’s voice whispers in his mind. Jamie thinks about calling her for a chat but why even bother? She’s all loved up with Roy fucking Kent now, probably changing his bedpans and washing his dentures or whatever gets them going. Oh, she’d pick up if Jamie rang. She’d be nice about it, even, she’d listen and even care what he has to say, but then she’d still be in London and he’d be home and nothing would change. He deletes the number instead.
The season starts. Jamie plays seventy-two minutes of City’s their first three matches and downloads Grindr. He goes back to that club three times and once meets up with the guy he exchanged numbers with, whose name is Paul. He scores twice in their third match, except the whole thing ends in a resounding loss so it really means fuck all. They were already two down when Jaime got sent in, but he could’ve salvaged a draw if he’d managed a hat trick, Dad says. He missed three good chances to send it in, Dad says. He could’ve been the hero of the town if he weren’t such a whiny little bitch, right Jamie, Dad says, and Jamie spends the evening creeping on the Facebook page of a members-only gay club that does shit like leather night and toga parties, and goes as far as to fill in the membership form with his real name and everything before he freaks out and backclicks at lightning speed.
He ends up on Twitter, scrolling aimlessly through his mentions. He got tapped for the post-game interviews on the pitch, which are online by now, and most of the replies to his segment are nice enough. Everyone agrees that they played like shit but that he, Jamie Tartt, probably did his best. Except all he hears is Dad’s voice like it’d sounded on the phone, spitting mad. Fucking hell, Jamie. It was right there and you let it go. Fucking pussy.
He mixes himself a drink to sip on whilst he scrolls, something wimpy and sweet that tastes like sugar and fruit, but Jamie likes it anyway. It’s the only kind of alcohol he keeps in the house—sometimes when Dad shows up he can be talked into getting Jamie to buy him a pint somewhere else, but if Jamie kept tinnies in his fridge he’d never fucking leave. He drinks in small sips as he turns on the TV to find out if they’re saying anything about today’s match, but fucking Cartrick got himself hired by SkySport and Jamie can’t handle looking at his smug face.
He ends up splayed on the sofa on his back with his hand in his pants, exchanging absolute filth with some guy off Grindr who says he’s going to tie Jamie to the bed and fuck his throat, and that’s a good enough distraction that he’s stopped thinking about Dad, and when Paddy texts him You coming at Billy’s to play Fortnite? he says yes right away and he even has fun.
Jamie’s shit at Fortnite and he gets fucking murdered, and when Billy gets up to get everyone a beer Paddy shifts closer and gives Jaime a long concerned look, the kind you’d only get after missing a pen or getting properly lambasted by the coaches.
“Why the long face, mate? You weren’t half bad today.”
Another day, Jamie might say, Fuck off, I was fucking brilliant, or he might say, Yeah but we lost anyway, didn’t we? but he’s feeling all moody and out of sorts, so he shrugs and stares down at Billy’s shiny floor. “It’s all a bit shit.” And then he says, “Whatever. It’s not gonna last.”
And it doesn’t. Three days later the pics hit Twitter, and all hell breaks absolutely fucking loose.
Turns out, when Jamie kissed Paul-from-the-club right in the middle of the street, it brought out something in him. Not in a kinky way, or even a regular sexy way—more like in the sense of flirting with danger, like all the times back at Richmond when he used to get right in Roy Kent’s angry face and mouth off at him. There’s a part of Jamie that loves a hint of danger, and all of Jamie fucking loves showing off, so. Paul might have been the first man he kissed in public, but he sure as hell wasn’t the last.
It was reckless—so fucking what? Maybe he got a bit of a thrill from it, knowing he was playing with fire, taking a hammer to everything he’s worked for. Knowing all along that he was on borrowed time, that it was only a matter of when and not if, knowing how fast everything would go to shit if it ever came out. But he’s still surprised by the absolute frenzy that kicks off when pictures of Jamie kissing a guy with thick earrings and meticulously trimmed facial hair hit social media.
They’re shit fucking pictures, all saturated yellows and blurred like they’ve been cropped and zoomed in, the opposite of a professional shot. It wasn’t the paps, because a pap would’ve gone to the club first, or to Jamie, and offered to sell them. Not even the rags would out someone like this. But Twitter? Twitter’s the fucking Wild West, and they’re off their collective rocker.
The pictures go up at 3 AM. By five in the morning, his house is already besieged by paps, and his agent’s on the phone to give him a proper bollocking, talking about optics and timing and the media cycle, and—
“What the fuck were you thinking, Jamie?” Uri spits out, for like the third time, only Jamie hadn’t been thinking at all.
“It weren’t on purpose, you know?” he says, moodily, even though it maybe had been. Because when the pictures got posted, low-quality enough that he could’ve maybe got away with a denial, he didn’t. Somebody tweeted @JamieTartt is this u?? and Jamie immediately shot back @Arrtax81 fucking what about it?? and that was all, really.
So maybe Jamie didn’t mean to kick off the biggest PR crisis in English football since Iceland 2016, but he’s happy enough to go with it. Maybe he didn’t think things through and maybe this will explode in his face, but the absolute certainty that there’s no taking this back almost feels like relief.
Uri, who’s a right fucking prick, is humming on the line like he always does when he’s thinking up something evil. “Right, whatever. Fucking call me before tweeting next time, yeah? But we can do something with this. How does Graham Norton sound?” That tone makes Jamie nervous. He wishes he could see his face, but Uri has a policy on video calls before morning coffee.
“Don’t answer that, it’s rhetorical. I’ll get on you on Graham Norton. I’ll get you in the papers, you’re gonna do the campaigns and the interviews, and I can get you, like, a dozen endorsements out of this…” He trails off like he’s mentally calculating the five per cent of a whole bunch of zeroes. Pink pound, innit? “Just don’t punch anyone. You can’t be a queer and get sued for assault. And stay off on social media, you don’t want to know what they’re saying about you online. Be good, yeah?”
Yeah, no shit, Uri. Fucking brilliant advice. His phone hasn’t stopped vibrating for the last hour and his accounts are in a frenzy. Jamie ends the call and puts his mobile in flight mode. It’s five thirty—good enough. He can drive to the City grounds and swim laps until his lungs burn.
He throws some things into a bag. Underwear, laptop and charging cord, a toothbrush, shampoo and moisturiser. Enough that he can stand not going back home for a few days if he has to, but not so much shit that if he gets papped there’ll be headlines about how he’s fleeing the country within the hour. That’ll teach him to park in the fucking garage next time.
He almost makes it to the car before someone spots him. There’s got to be, like, two dozen paps right outside his house, and the camera flashes are blinding. He’s wearing sunglasses at dawn, like an asshole, so at least he won't look spooked in the pictures.
“Jamie! Hey, mate. Look here—”
“So it was you in the pics, wasn’t it? Sucking face with that guy? You suck his dick too?”
“Oi, Tartt, are you gay? That why Keeley left you?” One of the journos asks, just as someone else just fucking goes for it and shouts, “Jamie, you a faggot?”
Uri said not to punch the press. Uri’s a dick, but decent at his job, and Jamie sort of asked for this anyway, didn’t he? So he doesn’t punch anyone, just gets his car open, and he’s about to get into the driver’s seat when another flash goes off right in his face and some smirky fucker says, “So, you like taking it up the ass?”
“Love it,” Jamie’s mouth says before Jamie’s brain can get in on the action. “Feels fucking great. Have a good day!”
And he flips them off cheerfully, slams the door closed, and drives off.