Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Jeremy, Paul, and Baz are at the Crown and Anchor for a celebratory pint. They’ve pooled their savings (not all their savings; even they have more sense than that) to buy a share in AFC Richmond and are staring at their certificate of ownership in collective awe.

“To the new owners!” Baz brays, lifting his glass, and Jeremy and Paul echo him with cheers. They drink. Paul burps happily.

Then Mae drops an enormous stack of certificates on the bar, and Baz feels his heart drop. He’s never really had money; his parents always got by and he finished school, but he and his friends don’t have much for extras. Not like Mae, apparently, but they’re happy.

After regarding the boys for a moment, she divides the stack into four. Baz sees the names on the three new piles.

Paul.

Jeremy.

And his own name, right there in bold, black letters.

Mae’s pile is still the highest, of course. But when Baz looks up, his mouth hanging open, Jeremy and Paul are silent and Mae’s eyes are a little wet. “You’re my boys,” she says. “Richmond ‘til we die.”

Chapter Text

Mae knows she’s a bit of an enigma to the patrons. Partly that’s a quirk of longevity; she’s run the Crown and Anchor for so long that the regulars have lost any curiosity they may have had. Partly that’s by design; the newcomers realize quickly that, while she will learn their children’s names and remember them ten years after they leave home, she reveals almost nothing about herself.

But the old-timers…well, they know her. The old-timers: the men who served with her father while her mother waited at home, alone and pregnant, and who helped her mother keep the Crown and Anchor running after the officers left her in the sitting room, clutching her husband’s medals and blankly wondering how she would manage.

There aren’t many old-timers left anymore. But those who are come to the Crown and Anchor and settle in for their afternoon pint or take up their table during Richmond matches (kept empty with a small “reserved” sign even when the pub is otherwise standing room only) and do what they have been doing for nearly sixty years: protecting Mae.

“Mind how you go - there’s a good lad,” they say when a newcomer asks a question that’s a bit too personal. Or “service, please!” if they think Mae needs rescuing from a too-persistent conversation. Or, on one memorable occasion, “and don’t come back,” after tossing out a tipsy patron who got a little too handsy with a much younger Mae. Captain Post is in his 90s now and won’t be bodily removing anyone these days, but he still has a sharp tongue and a swift hand with his metal-tipped cane and no qualms about telling a yobbo or two off.

The old-timers know Mae doesn’t want to talk about herself. They know that Mae’s life has been punctuated by profound sorrows, from never knowing her father to her mother’s death before Mae was even thirty to her fiancé leaving her before the wedding, neither of them knowing she carried twins. They know she misses her boys - one killed in Afghanistan by an IED and the other scant years later when he tried to intervene in a very public domestic - with all her heart. They’ve seen her life unfold and then nearly unravel.

(The woman survived and visits Mae thrice yearly with her new husband and their baby. Mae dotes on them all but the empty spaces in her life remain.)

She finds them in the alleyway one day - three boys, not more than nine and already fast friends. They’re clearly up to something, but they’re also a bit too scrawny for her tastes. She hauls the smaller two inside by their ears with the taller, gentler boy following behind, his constant stream of “sorry, mum” as accompaniment, and sits them down at a table where they look up at her with guilty faces. Mae sighs, then ducks through a door and returns a moment later with three cold pies and three glasses of milk. “Eat,” she says, unloading the tray onto the table. “And then we’ll have a chat.”

They quickly and neatly demolish their pies, their obvious interest in the food tempered by fear and the good manners that come with generations of being English. When their plates are empty, the tall one - “Paul, missus,” he introduces himself - preempts her questions by quickly asserting that they wasn’t doing nothing, honest; they was just hiding from some bigger boys from the school who was making fun of him on account of his shoes being pink (secondhand, Mae thinks to herself) and of his being Black; yeah, maybe they was thinking about how to get back at the boys, but they wouldn’t never do anyfing. He stops talking rather abruptly and the other two boys nod, wide-eyed, then start agreeing in earnest, stumbling over each other’s words.

Mae regards them evenly. She knows boys, but she also knows Richmond; for all its poshness, there’s still a noticeable population living on more limited means. She’s seen a lot of boys grow up to be a bit rough not by personality but by necessity; her own sons, perhaps, might have gone that route if she hadn’t had support in keeping sure she could provide for them. Paul and his friends seem like good lads. She makes a decision.

“Right,” she declares, her arms still crossed against her chest. “Here we are.”

Mae puts them to work: swabbing the occasional table at first, then helping with the dishes as they get older. Not every day - she’s careful that they know their schoolwork comes first, football second, and the pub a distant third, and she lets them decide when they want to come. But enough that they have some pocket change now and then for sweets or to spend on a school trip or to buy their mums a small gift or to replace their old, ragged football that finally fell apart. She lets them do their homework in the pub on a slow afternoon and gives them bags of ice for their eyes and knuckles when the other boys’ teasing turns physical. (Old Captain Post teaches them to throw a punch properly, which Mae chooses to ignore but is privately grateful for.) In exchange, they tell her about their dreams - to be footballers, of course, though Paul allows that being a florist would be excellent too - and bring her pictures they drew in school (which she hangs behind the bar) and cheer on the Greyhounds together. Later, they celebrate first kisses and wallow in teenage heartbreak, and it’s Mae that Jeremy tells first when he says there’s something wrong with him, he doesn’t like girls, and she holds him and lets him cry into her jumper and says he’s perfect, and then she tells him about her son and his wonderful boyfriend, who still comes round for tea sometimes.

When they leave school, she throws them a small but lively party at the Crown and Anchor and their parents embrace her and whisper their thanks in her ear. She tries hard to remain composed. (She fails.)

They don’t go to university - that was never in the cards, but they find apprenticeships and then steady jobs and they grow up to be good, if occasionally trying, men. In a rougher area or with a different team (Millwall, perhaps) they’d be proper hooligans rather than working-class boys with tough mouths and kind hearts.

And if Captain Post has to give them a tongue-lashing every now and then, well…he goes a little easy on them. Because he watched Mae grow up, and he knows that every time they yell “wanker!” at the telly or threaten to commit arson in the event of defeat or sing too loud while in their cups, her heart heals a little.

Rebecca Welton sells off part of the club and Mae, knowing an investment when she sees one after decades of running a business on her own, makes a large purchase. She knows that Baz and Jeremy and Paul have bought a single share together and she wants to respect their pride in that, but she also wants them to have something to pass down. She wants to give them something for everything they have given her.

She sets the certificates on the bar and watches their expressions falter for a brief moment. Then she divides the stack into four parts and nudges one part towards Paul, one towards Jeremy, and one towards Baz. It takes them a moment, but then they look at her in awe.

She can feel the tears prickling in her eyes. “You’re my boys,” she says. “Richmond ‘til we die.”