Chapter Text
But lately I’ve felt so good
Forgot my diagnosis
I should be the poster kid for this shit
I’ve got so much anxiety
But I’m so good at hiding it
I could be freaking dying and I’d still look perfect
- POSTER KID, Peach Martine
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It came down to the timing, really.
Every locker room Jamie had ever been in had worked its way around to this topic sooner or later. Especially in the Academy, where the typical teenaged obsession with ‘who had done it’ reigned supreme.
Jamie had never had a problem with it. He’d shrugged or laughed or lied and no one ever called him out. He was Jamie Fucking Tartt, after all.
He’d never had to breathe a word about Amsterdam.
Telling Roy had been a spur of the moment decision, and one that hadn’t really bothered him at the time. It hadn’t fundamentally altered their friendship or made Roy tiptoe around him (thank fuck).
But his reaction - Jesus. Must have been traumatising. - had played on Jamie’s mind. So much so that when his talks with Dr Sharon had broached the subject of ‘intimacy’, he thought it was probably worth bringing up.
Yeah. That conversation had gone a bit differently.
And now, here Jamie was, two days into processing his freshly unpacked trauma and his teammates were cheerfully regaling each other with stories about losing their virginity.
Fan-fucking-tastic.
“It was my last night before flying out here.” Sam was telling the group, a sweet, bashful smile on his face.
“Didn’t know you’d had a girlfriend back home.” Isaac chimed in.
“We had already decided to break up, instead of doing the whole long-distance thing,” Sam explained. “It was a nice way to say goodbye, though.”
There was a general sound of agreement and Richard took the opportunity to launch into a questionable story about charming a runway model at the ripe age of 17.
Jamie just continued getting changed in silence, letting the voices wash over him and trying not to let the sudden nausea show on his face. Removing his jersey felt like a Herculean task when all he wanted to do was get the fuck out of here.
Sam’s experience sounded like something out of one of Ted’s rom-coms. That was good. That’s what someone as nice as Sam deserved.
What had Jamie deserved, then?
He quickly cut off that line of thought. He didn’t want to do this. He didn’t want to think about it. Not here. Not now.
It was like trying to cover up an open wound when everyone else had a morbid impulse to poke at it.
A ripple of laughter pulled him back to the room and set his teeth on edge. He pulled a fresh shirt over his head and tried to breathe through the swelling, pulsating anger and shame that threatened to surface.
It was utter bullshit. He hadn’t thought about what had happened with anything more than vague disgust and detachment for years. A whole decade, even. Fuck Dr Sharon and Roy and all these giggling idiots for changing that.
“Oi, you’ve gone quiet, Jamie.”
A few curious eyes turned in his direction and the only thing that stopped him from shrinking away was years of playing at being untouchable.
Instead, Jamie scoffed and plastered on a smile, hiding his fists in his clothes and digging his nails as deep into his palms as they would go. “Eh, a gentleman never tells, mate.”
But he had hesitated a second too long and he saw the potential for mischief light up in a few faces. They knew him too well, he realised, the knowledge churning in his gut.
He wasn’t Jamie Fucking Tartt here. He was just Jamie.
“You are not a gentleman.” Richard stated bluntly, eyebrows raised and a grin playing at the corners of his mouth.
“That is true.” Jan agreed, because of course he fucking did. “You have bragged many times about being with women.”
“What happened, amigo?” It wasn’t fucking fair that Dani sounded so genuinely interested.
“Maybe she didn’t like his pink pants.” Isaac threw in and it drew another round of laughter. The noise echoed in Jamie’s head.
He knew, he knew they were just teasing because they didn’t know better. They were being dickheads because they were always kind of dickheads to each other. It was banter. On any other day it would be fine.
His neon underwear had nearly caused a riot the week before and it had been hilarious.
Why couldn’t he just act like it was funny now?
“It’s none of your fucking business.” he finally managed, not quite keeping the harsh edge out of his tone. He turned away and pretended to be looking for something in his bag so he wouldn’t have to meet anyone’s eyes.
“C’mon, mate, can’t be more embarrassing than mine.” Colin added easily, utterly comfortable with the conversation, in spite of all the implications it had for him specifically. Jamie really fucking admired that.
He was ridiculously, fiercely envious of it.
“Guys, he doesn’t have to talk about it if he doesn’t want to.” Sam admonished lightly. He was offering him a liferaft and it rankled at Jamie in all the wrong ways.
He didn’t need fucking saving. He wasn’t some soft, delicate little thing that needed Sam Obisanya of all people rushing to his rescue.
Suddenly, he was speaking without having made any conscious decision to do so.
“14.” Jamie’s voice was too loud, too sharp in this safe space that on any other day felt like home. But his fingers were clenching and unclenching, and his shoulders were coiled tight, and there was a rushing in his ears.
The vitriol pooled like acid on his tongue and Jamie couldn’t help but spew it out before it began to eat him away.
“I were 14.” He smirked and it felt wrong. It felt cruel and bitter. He rounded on Colin and relished in the flicker of unease that crossed his face. “No fucking idea how old she were but I can tell you how much my dad paid for her to fuck me straight.”
The silence should have been oppressive, he thought distantly. The way the air stilled should have made it hard to breathe. The colour leaching from not just Colin’s face, but Jan’s and Richard’s on either side, should have been concerning.
It just felt freeing, in a twisted, emptying sort of way.
“Jamie-”
“No! No, it’s alright!” Jamie turned wild eyes and a manic grin on Sam, finding it abstractly funny that the younger player took a step back. “You wanted details, right?”
He shrugged, looking around at the slack faces of his teammates. He’d moved forward, he realised, making himself the centre of attention. Typical.
“Tell you what, yeah? Next time we’re in Amsterdam, I’ll take you all on a little tour. Don’t remember her name but I’m pretty sure I could find the place again, no problem.”
And he probably could. He remembered his dad talking to some bloke smoking in a doorway while Jamie stood in the rain, confused. He remembered loud people and neon lights all around. He remembered how the place had smelled when he’d been pulled inside…
Someone else was saying his name now. He didn’t care. He just got louder.
“You wanted a show, didn’t you Thierry? We could put on a repeat performance. Play-by-play reenactment, ‘cept you’ve got to think I can do better now, right? Better with age and all that.”
Arms closed around him from behind and whatever vile shit he was about to spray out into the atmosphere died in his throat. Jamie’s entire body bucked, trying to break away.
“Fuck off!”
It didn’t sound like his voice, a screeching snarl that cracked partway through.
“Jamie.” Roy’s voice in his ear. Roy’s arms around his chest. “Jamie. Stop. Don’t make it worse.”
And what response was there to that except to laugh? Fucking hilarious, that one. Too little too fucking late.
Jamie only registered that he was being half pulled, half carried out of the locker room when the laughter started to hitch in his chest. When the air wasn’t coming like it was supposed to. When Roy manhandled him into an office chair and the tears started in earnest.
All the fight went out of him like a marionette with its strings cut and he just cried.