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It’s a blur, getting off the pitch at the end of the Man City match. The lads are yelling, jumping around, and Jamie wants to join them but his foot is starting to ache again. The physios grab him as soon as they’re through the tunnel and force him onto a bench in the treatment room, strapping ice onto his ankle and making disapproving faces whenever Jamie makes noise about joining the rest of the team in the changing room.
He’s just about resigned to missing out on the celebrations when Sam comes in the room with his bright smile and too-innocent eyes and oh, we just can’t celebrate without Jamie, I’ll make sure he stays on the crutches, I promise, and the physios fall for it immediately. Sam winks at him as he holds the crutches steady for Jamie to stand up, and Jamie has to duck his head quickly to hide the laugh that threatens to burst out of him.
They make it into the corridor, and Jamie says, “it’s a good thing you use your powers for good, mate, ‘cause I don’t wanna know what they’d look like used for evil.”
Sam laughs, and throws an easy arm around Jamie’s shoulders, and all of this would have been impossible two years ago. “You are lucky I came before Van Damme and Richard finished their plan to distract the physios enough for you to escape.”
“Lucky for Van Damme’s nose, you mean,” Jamie says, because any distraction those two would think of would involve removing Van Damme’s mask and doing something stupid. And they were planning that to make sure Jamie could come celebrate the win with them. Sometimes these feelings well up in Jamie’s chest and he doesn’t know what to do with them other than stand still and breathe until it passes.
Sam must notice something–Sam is always noticing something, because he is quiet and observant and knows Jamie far too well at this point–and he stops them just before they enter the changing room, giving Jamie a quiet moment to catch his breath. Jamie plays it off like the crutches are taking it out of him, but they both know it’s a lie. “I am glad you scored,” Sam says softly. “And you deserve the credit for it.” Sam is looking at him intently, and he’s referencing what Jamie said at the press conference earlier in the week, when he couldn’t find anything in himself worth celebrating.
Now, still, he has an urge to downplay it, too afraid of turning back into Prick Jamie off the pitch that he needs to give someone else the credit. But when he opens his mouth, Sam squeezes his shoulder a bit and all Jamie can say is, “yeah, alright. Thanks, mate.”
“Anytime,” Sam says, and he knows Sam means it, which kind of fucks with his head in a nice way, and then they walk into the room with everyone cheering, and he decides to float on this feeling for a while.
*
On the bus, the lads are still partying, passing out beers and shouting out song requests to Isaac, who’s got his phone hooked up to the speakers already. Jamie pushes through, accepting back slaps and fist pounds until he gets to the seat he wants.
Keeley’s sitting on Roy’s lap, despite the whole we’re just friends charade they insist on pulling in front of everyone else. But Jamie doesn’t mind, because it allows him to fall into the seat next to Roy and lean heavily into his side. They’re both looking at him and smiling–well, Roy’s got that half-smirk on, but Jamie knows it’s really a smile because Jamie knows Roy. The two of them had followed him to his mum’s house last night, and sat on his childhood bed and looked at the posters still up on the wall and seeing them there had made something click in Jamie’s brain, something that’d been out of place for most of the season.
“Hey,” he says, and Keeley smiles wider and Roy grunts but he hasn’t shrugged Jamie off his shoulder yet, which is a win.
“You alright?” Keeley asks, eyes glancing down to his ankle.
“Never better,” he says with the cheeky grin that always makes Keeley roll her eyes and smile indulgently at him. Jamie had missed that look.
“You’re icing that when we get back,” Roy growls, and the look on his face is less familiar but it’s one that Jamie’s beginning to recognise more and more. It’s the face that says Roy cares about him, though he hates to admit it. It’s the look Roy had when Jamie showed up to Phoebe’s Uncle Day with a present that he’d spent far too long thinking about, worried that it’d be too stupid or Roy wouldn’t like it. But Jamie doesn’t say anything about that face, because Roy had mostly let it slide when Jamie lied about who his best friend was (with a lie that wasn’t even convincing, since he could’ve said Dani or Sam but he said Isaac so that Roy would know, because sometime in the last year Roy fucking Kent became his best friend and he doesn’t know how to deal with that).
“Sure thing, coach,” is all he says now, shuffling around so he’s more comfortable against Roy’s shoulder. He looks at them both after a moment’s silence, when they’d probably been doing that weird telepathic communication thing they have, and says, “I’m glad you could meet my mum.” Thanks for following me, he wants to say, thanks for knowing me better than I know myself, but the words don’t come. Dr. Sharon used to say that some truths take longer for people to recognise, and then even longer to say out loud. He’s somewhere in the middle on that one, but they’re both looking at him like they know what he’s saying.
“We’re glad, too,” Keeley says. “Your mum’s well fit.” Roy nods along to both statements, smirk on his face like he can’t wait for Jamie’s reaction.
“‘Course she is,” Jamie says. “You saw me dad. Certainly didn’t get the looks from him.”
“You didn’t get anything from that fucking dickhead,” Roy says, and Jamie smiles at him.
“Reckon I got a few things,” he says, “but I got more from other people, now.”
Keeley nods and Roy says “damn right you have,” and Jamie can’t help but to grin at them like a fool. Keeley, who dated him when he was a right prick and still tried to see good in him, and who stuck around as a friend even when he didn’t deserve it after they broke up. And Roy, whose career he’d bloody well ended and who he’d been a little shit to besides, and who’s still been showing up at four AM for months to train him and make him better. Roy, who'd let Jamie teach him how to ride a bike and confided in him about Keeley’s new relationship. Keeley, who’d insisted it wasn’t his fault that video leaked, who’d hugged him tight and didn’t mention that it had been her who’d taught him how to properly apologise in the first place.
Roy and Keeley together, a sight that had once made Jamie feel sick to his stomach but now just makes him feel warm. It hadn’t been right when they weren’t together; the warm feeling in Jamie’s stomach intensifies when he thinks that their shared concern for him had brought them closer to where they are now, curled together in one seat on the team bus as it makes its way from Manchester back home to Richmond.
Looking at them gets to be slightly too much, and he closes his eyes, head falling to fully rest on Roy’s shoulder. He hears Roy chuckle. “Oh, you’re going to fall asleep but I’m the grandad?”
“Painkillers,” Jamie mumbles. Roy is warm and comfortable. “Wake me up when Dani starts doing Mexican karaoke, yeah?” He hears another chuckle, feels someone–Keeley, he thinks–lean down and press a kiss to his temple. Roy’s shoulder shifts, arm moving up to wrap around Jamie more securely. He tries, maybe unsuccessfully, to hide his smile in Roy’s shirt, and lets the motion of the bus and Roy’s steady breathing lull him to sleep.
*
He’s awoken sometime later by a soft hand on his shoulder and a voice calling his name gently. When he opens his eyes, he’s greeted by the sight of Roy and Keeley looking at him and for a brief moment he wishes to wake up to this every single day. He remembers himself just in time to avoid doing something stupid, like saying that out loud, and instead tears his eyes away from the couple, glancing around the bus.
“Dani and Beard are bullying Isaac to play Selena,” Roy says after a beat, and when Jamie looks at him there’s something in his eyes that says he might have an idea of what Jamie was thinking. He seriously needs to get out of here.
“Right, that’s my cue,” he says, manoeuvring the crutches to stand in the bus aisle. “I’ll see you later, yeah?”
“Sure!” Keeley says, all chirpy and Keeley-like, and Jamie can’t help but smile helplessly at her. Better that than leaning in and kissing her while she’s sat there in Roy’s lap, he supposes, and he quickly turns and makes his way down the aisle.
The lads in the front are playing keep away with Isaac’s phone to stop Dani from queueing up a whole album of Mexican folk songs, and Jamie ducks under Bumbercatch’s outstretched arms to grab an empty seat next to Colin, who’s engrossed in his own phone.
“Hey, boyo,” Jamie says, and Colin immediately looks up with a grin.
“Heya!” he says, reaching a hand out to squeeze Jamie’s shoulder. “How you feeling?”
“Good, good. Who you texting?” he asks, quick to change the subject from the unknown status of his ankle. It’s not as painful as it had been, but he’ll need to take it easy a few days, probably under strict supervision by Roy (not so bad a prospect, his traitorous brain says).
“Oh! Um, Michael,” Colin says, ducking his head a bit but not enough to hide the slight pinking of his cheeks. Jamie cocks his head to the side, trying to figure out why the name sounds familiar.
“S’that the lad you brought to Sam’s?” he asks eventually, and Colin nods, looking at Jamie like he’s surprised Jamie remembers. He tries not to be offended by that because, well, a year ago he probably wouldn’t have remembered the random guy Colin brought to a team night out. “Is he your…?” Jamie trails off, not sure what word to use.
Colin laughs a little. “Yeah. Or, well, it’s kind of early, and we haven’t put a label on it, but he’s my fella, I suppose.” Jamie smiles.
“That’s great, man,” he says, and Colin smiles back at him. “Hey, listen,” Jamie continues, and he hadn’t planned on saying this to anyone, but Colin shared something important and now he feels he should return the favour. “You know when you came out and they was saying it’s likely someone else were gay and the team all looked at me?”
“Yeah,” Colin says slowly. He’s looking at Jamie like he’s grown a third head.
“Well, they were only half-wrong, like,” he finishes, and Colin keeps looking at him strangely for a moment, head cocked to the side. Then something like realisation dawns on his face and he brings Jamie in for a tight hug.
“Proud of you, boyo,” Colin whispers in his ear, and it’s a weird echo of earlier that day, when he’d come off the pitch and Roy grabbed him and muttered “I’m so fucking proud of you,” right in his ear. Jamie’s not sure he’s ever been told that this many people were proud of him in one twenty-four hour period. It’s a bit mental.
Colin pulls back after another moment, lightly pounding Jamie on the shoulder as he goes. “Proud of you, but I ain’t gonna be your first boyfriend,” he says, and he’s joking, Jamie knows he’s only joking.
It doesn’t stop Jamie from stammering, “oh, no–I don’t–” and it doesn’t stop his eyes from darting back to where Roy and Keeley are sat, several rows behind. He can feel his ears burning when he turns back and sees the knowing look in Colin’s eyes, the slight twist to his mouth before he opens it to say something.
Luckily, Jamie is saved by a bell in the form of Dani Rojas practically falling on top of them with a shouted “muchachos!” that quickly devolves into rapid Spanish that Jamie can’t follow. He thinks he catches the words gol and futból and cervezas before his (admittedly small) knowledge of the language runs out.
“Dani, Dani, mate,” he says after a minute of this. “You ain’t speaking English, amigo.”
“No, Jamie,” Dani says, his eyes all serious like he’s telling a secret, “it is you who ain’t speaking Spanish.” Jamie stares at his friend in stunned silence for a moment before Colin busts out laughing next to them. Then Dani sets off, eyes crinkling up and shoulders shaking as Colin collapses into Jamie’s side, and Jamie is helpless but to join in, buoyed by their unrepentant joy.
Someone’s finally got hold of Isaac’s phone and has put on Queen, and then Sam and Isaac are leaning over the seats in front of them and singing along in frankly terrible Freddie Mercury impressions. Isaac hands him a beer, and Jamie sips at it slowly. The painkillers are still wearing off, and he also has the urge to remember this. He doesn’t want to black out the sight of Dani headbanging so hard he nearly knocks Sam over; he wants to remember the noise of all the lads singing horribly off-key as they pull into the car park at Nelson Road and start to pile off the bus.
Jan Maas had grabbed him as Jamie’d started down the bus stairs with his crutches, and they’d danced together into the changing room, where Jan set him down in front of his locker and then grabbed Richard into a complicated do-si-do that nearly toppled the laundry bins.
Jamie settles in at the lads keep up a healthy chatter around him, getting changed and planning their night out and still high on the biggest win they’ve ever had. Roy had told Jamie to ice his foot, so he’s not going to change yet, and it’s probably not the smartest idea to go out with the ankle still fucked.
Jamie from a year or two ago, Prick Jamie, wouldn’t have cared. He’d have wanted to go celebrate, to get absolutely bloody pissed and shag someone. Now, he’s sad to miss the night out not because he’s missing the chance to get a fit bird in his bed (someone who wouldn’t be who he really wants there, anyway), but because he’ll miss the time with the lads. He’ll miss the chance to tease Colin more about this ‘fella’ of his; to figure out if Sam still has feelings for Rebecca or if he’s moving on with Simi from Ola’s; to watch Richard unsuccessfully challenge Dani to a drinking contest.
It’s all things he never would have thought about, before. Certainly not after the last couple Man City-Richmond matches, with his dad breathing down his neck after each one. He glances over at the coaches’ office, watching Ted and Beard chatting about something, and thinks about the toy soldier sitting on his bedside table at home. The soldier he got after making an extra pass–after being the kind of teammate his dad always hated. And then he thinks of Wembley, of the whole team seeing how his dad spoke about him, about them, and finally, finally standing up to him. How Roy hugged him when he was breaking down. And then, after he’d carefully avoided the team for the first couple weeks of their off-season break, how Colin, Dani, Sam, and Isaac had shown up at his door unannounced and declared they were having a FIFA tournament right then, no excuses, and how they’d all stuck around until he began to feel normal again.
All the things this team has done to make him better. All the ways he tries to thank them, to show them he knows it wasn’t easy and he’s so glad they did it anyway. He sits and he breathes through it.
*
The team trickles out, and Jamie sits with his foot in an ice bucket in the treatment room and texts his dad, which may be a mistake in the long run but feels right in the moment. He doesn’t get much time to dwell on it before Roy and Keeley are coming in with champagne and choosing to stay here and celebrate with him.
The warm feeling he’s had all night grows and grows as they chat with him, laughing and teasing and making no move to leave until he’s ready. He fits his mouth over the bottle where theirs had just been and lets it fill him all the way up. It’s a warmth that replaced the emptiness he’d felt gnawing at him for weeks, a hole inside that was steadily replaced by the quiet, comforting moments with his mum, with the team, with Ted, with Roy and Keeley.
Maybe it’ll stay for good. Or maybe it won’t. But he’s got people around who will help him out if it goes away again. And that’s worth a whole hell of a lot.