Chapter Text
The general consensus was that Jamie needed to be left alone for a bit. Even after Roy’s hug, Jamie was still visibly shaken and had to leave to collect himself in the bathroom. The whole locker room had fallen silent as if Jamie’s absence wasn’t enough to get rid of the ghosts of his father’s echoing shouts, spirits that the team wasn’t sure even Coach Lasso’s rituals could expel.
Dani was the last one left in the locker room. He insisted that everyone head out first, gesturing to the ice pack pressed against his knee. One by one, he watched the Richmond players exit the Man City locker room, looking more defeated than he had ever seen them.
It hurt so much to see his teammates so upset.
By the time Jamie walked back into the locker room, Dani was still having trouble with his knee. They avoided eye contact, with Dani staring at the water drops gathering on the ice pack and Jamie trying to hide his sniffles. Though Dani didn’t look up, he could hear Jamie packing up his belongings into his duffle bag.
Moments later, the duffle bag dropped next to Dani’s feet.
“Rojas, are you alright?” Jamie asked as he took a seat next to Dani.
“I’m fine, gracias.” Dani finally raised his eyes to meet Jamie’s. He had never seen so much thinly guarded pain in Jamie’s expression before. “Are you okay?”
Jamie shrugged, dropping his gaze despite his attempt to seem nonchalant. “Eh. It is what it is. Shitty dads will always be dickheads, you know?”
“Still, it was not right for him to yell at you like that in front of the team. I’m sorry,” Dani replied, though he knew that his sympathy wasn’t enough to rectify years of heartbreak and betrayal.
“It was bound to happen at some point. I just hope it doesn’t happen again.” Jamie absentmindedly rested his head on Dani’s shoulder.
Dani wanted to ask whether that happened when Jamie played for Man City, whether he had endured his father’s screaming fits without Coach Beard to throw the asshole out of the locker room and without Roy’s shoulders to soak up his tears and muffle his anguished sobs. But he was too scared to ask, and he knew the answer already.
“Are you sure your knee’s okay? The fall you took looked pretty bad, and if I’m not mistaken, that’s the knee that got fucked up when you first got here.”
Surprised that Jamie remembered, Dani offered a small smile. “Sí, I am sure.”
Though he wanted to prove that it wasn’t so bad, when Dani bent his knee, he clearly winced. Regardless, he pushed his hands into the bench, preparing to stand up. “I am ready to go when you are.”
“We don’t have to go right now. I’m sure the team won’t mind waiting a few more minutes. If you want, we can tell them that I just couldn’t stop bawling like a baby,” Jamie chuckled, amused at his own suggestion.
Dani, however, didn’t find it as humorous. “Crying is not something that you should be ashamed of. Everyone cries, but it can be hard to know how to be there for people when it happens.”
Jamie scrunched his eyebrows together as he considered Dani’s words. After a beat, he sighed, “I think Coach Lasso’s mad at me. I saw him walk away. I don’t want him to get too mad about it, especially since he just invited me back to the team.”
Although unspoken, the fear that he might get sent back to Man City and to the threat of his father’s constant harassment was clear.
“I do not think he is angry at you. If anything, he should be angry at me. If I had looked to the left, I would not have been tripped and injured again. I do not think he would appreciate it if I had to go back into the treatment room again, even if the curse is gone.”
“Yeah.” Jamie bit his bottom lip as he subtly rubbed away the tears gathering at the corners of his eyes. “I know the curse is technically gone, but sometimes, I still think it’s there. It’s just hard to believe that it’ll ever really go away because the fear’s always there.”
“Like my knee pain. There are days when it is very obvious and hurts a lot, but there are days when I forget about it. Today, it is so painful that I was worried that I was going to die out on the pitch, but I have faith that a week from now, it will not hurt as much.”
Dani didn’t know if Jamie woke up in the middle of the night feeling a phantom ache through his body too. He figured that they both had their fair share of sleepless nights in which they both wondered if there would ever be a day, perhaps when they’re old and everything makes a little more sense than it did in their twenties, that they would stop instinctively bracing themselves for the worst.
“Well, hopefully, the pain will get better for us both,” Jamie grinned slyly, and Dani recognized the signature glint of confidence returning to his eyes. Of course, emotional and physical pain aren’t completely comparable, but there’s at least hope of eventual recovery for both.
Standing up, Jamie grabbed his duffel bag and Dani’s with one hand and offered the other to his teammate. “Here, let me help.”
Jamie grabbed Dani’s hand and carefully helped him up. As Jamie wrapped his free arm around his waist, Dani leaned into his teammate and snaked his arm around Jamie’s shoulders. They took it one step at a time, slowly but carefully walking out of the locker room and down the empty halls.
When they returned to the bus where the rest of the team had been patiently waiting for them, nobody made any remarks about the way Jamie’s arm remained wrapped around Dani’s waist even after they sat down. They could tell that their teammates were worried about their injuries, but the pair knew that tomorrow, the pain would hurt a little less and the ghosts would be a little farther away.
—
As much as Jamie despised Zava, he couldn’t find it in himself to celebrate the departure of the self-centered asshole. The silence and defeat echoing in the locker room after the Man City match were all too familiar. Jamie’s ankle sort of ached — he thinks he might have twisted it at some point in the game, but it was really all a blur — but he figured it wasn’t the right time to bring it up. He sat with his back to his locker, scrolling through the confused and shocked messages flooding social media about Zava, and listened to his teammates pack everything up.
In a way, Jamie didn’t want to leave the club because if he did, he would have to face the outside world’s questions about why the hell Richmond had lost their star player. Maybe if he never left, the match could have been just a bad dream, and he could get another chance to play Man City, another chance to prove himself.
He didn’t notice that almost everyone had left until he heard the sound of someone sniffling. Only then did Jamie shut off his phone and look up to see Dani sitting in front of his locker with his knees pulled up to his chest.
“Hey, muchacho, what’s wrong?” Jamie asked as he stood up and walked over to his teammate, careful not to put too much pressure on his aching ankle. He scooted closer as he waited for Dani to reply.
Collecting himself, Dani said in a small voice, “I thought he was going to stay forever. I know he leaves clubs often, but I thought it would be different with us.”
Jamie forgot that Dani was not used to people leaving. He remembered hearing Dani talk about how close he was to all his siblings and his family to the point where he called them every single day, no matter what.
Jamie remembered that he had once also left Dani and felt a pang of guilt deep within his gut.
“Honestly, it’s his loss. People are saying we need him, but we were fantastic without him before, and we’ll be great without him now,” Jamie reassured, rubbing comforting circles on Dani’s back. Dani buried his face into the nape of Jamie’s neck, and Jamie gulped as he tried to remain composed, even though he could feel the wetness of Dani’s tears and his shuddering breaths.
“I guess you’re right,” Dani conceded. After a beat, he asked, “Is your ankle okay, amigo? You fell hard out there.”
Jamie rolled his ankle to the side as if to test it out and noted that the pain was starting to dull. “Yeah, it’s a bit fucky, but it’ll be fine. If anything’s hurt, it’s me dignity. It was rough out there today.”
“We did not play our best today,” Dani agreed as he lifted his head to wipe the tears away with his arm.
“But we have plenty more chances to play our best. We’ve proved everyone wrong before. What’s one more time?”
A few years ago, Jamie would’ve laughed at himself for saying something so cheesy and, even worse, believing it with his whole heart. But after facing his previous teammates and recognizing how he had truly been one out of many incredible players, Jamie realized that he didn’t only hate Zava for stealing his spot but rather that he despised what Zava had done to his team.
Despite his watery eyes, Dani broke into a hopeful grin. “Muchas gracias, Jamie Tartt.”
“Any time.” Jamie can’t explain why, but he instinctively pressed a kiss on the top of Dani’s head. In response, Dani hummed happily and reached over to place his hand on top of Jamie’s.
The sense of deja vu Jamie experienced at that moment was overwhelming — how strange it was that they managed to recreate a scene of intimacy after losing to one of their enemies yet again. How very nostalgic it was for the both of them to keep flinching from the fear of facing formidable demons.
“Do you wanna go?” Jamie asked, challenging the delicacy of the moment.
Dani shook his head. “Can we stay here for a while?”
“Okay.”
Jamie knew that tomorrow the pain would hurt a little less, but he still wrapped an arm around Dani’s shoulders and held him tightly in the stillness of the locker room.