Chapter Text
Something had felt wrong for a few days. Jamie couldn’t put a finger on it but something just felt off and his hackles were constantly raised. It was exhausting. Man City were playing in Manchester that weekend so there was no reason for him to be in London. But no matter how many times Jamie told himself that fact, the apprehension remained. It was probably just worry about West Ham at the weekend. That was all Jamie could think of. They could win it all. He was the only player in the team that had experience of this business end of a winning Premier League season. His medal was in a drawer somewhere. He had hadn’t earnt that medal but he could earn this one. With all that pressure it was understandable he was on edge and felt like someone was watching him. Doctor Sharon called it hyper vigilance, the idea that deep down in Jamie’s brain there was a little voice telling him that someone wanted him to hurt and that little voice never shut the fuck up. Sometimes it was louder, sometimes it was quieter but it was always there. It was exhausting and today it was screaming.
He needed out.
Jamie kept on repeating the mantra that it was just a voice in his head, over and over and over again as he tied his trainers and put on his head torch. It was just a voice in his head and so there was no harm in going out for a jog to settle his nerves. After Jamie’s ankle injury they had stopped the four in the morning sessions until pre season so he wasn’t over working himself, Roy would have no problem with a little late night jog for Jamie. He set off out with no destination in mind, he just needed to run. The blood pumped in his ears blocking out the sound of his own thoughts. The cool night air and the straining of his muscles was all he needed.
Jamie slowed down, revealing in the burn in his thighs from the sprint and looked up into the darkness at the off floodlights. He didn’t know why he had run to Nelson Road. There was something about this incredibly sub-par campus that screamed home so much more than his soulless Richmond house did. He could break in and spend the early hours of this morning running around on the familiar turf. Will wouldn’t like it though, the grass was supposed to be resting whatever that meant. He should leave, he should jog home and get some rest before training but yet he couldn’t bring himself to move. The grass should be resting and Jamie should also be resting. He groaned, rubbing his hands up and down his arms to try and get some feeling other than anxiety running through his body. Everything was riding on this last game of the season. He never really believed that Richmond could do it. Sure, he had bought into all of Lasso’s believe nonsense but there’s believing and there’s complete delusion. Richmond winning the league the first season back in the Prem was not in the cards, until they beat Man City. Now it was incredibly real and it was all the press could talk about. They even had the t-shirts made up and the parade permits put in just in case it did happen. Jamie couldn’t help but feel like it was all on his shoulders and for the first time in his life he was starting to crumble under the weight. “Get it together Tartt,” he growled to himself and turned to head back home. He did need to get to the sleep and standing outside the ground was not helping anyone.
As he turned to restart his jog, movement caught Jamie’s eye. There was a grey window cleaners van parked over the road but he could faintly hear the engine running. The van started to roll forwards and rolled under the glimmer of one of the street lights. It felt wrong, Jamie could feel a tingle of unease underneath his skin. As the light shone into the drivers seat, Jamie froze. The drivers were wearing ski masks. This was not paranoia. Someone was watching him. Someone was trying to kidnap him. Jamie needed to run.
The van speeds up and that flash of movement stirs Jamie out of his panic and into flight mode. Jamie’s feet pounded against the pavement and his heaving breaths echoed in time with his heartbeat. He needed to get to safety but it was the middle of the night, nowhere was open and a young man in a hoodie banging on people’s doors was never going to end well. He needed to get off the street, if he could get to Richmond Green then he could get to Crown and Anchor, or Ted’s, somewhere more pedestrianised in central Richmond. But he had to get there first. Jamie slammed into a wall as he took the turning into an alleyway with more pace than he could control. He stumbled back up to pace and focused everything into running. He could hear the whirring engine of the van getting closer and closer. He didn’t have long. He needed to just … Jamie slammed, hard into the side of the van as he emerged blindly out of the end of the alleyway. Somehow it must have got round to cut him off but now Jamie was dazed, sprawled on the floor as the scrapping of metal told him that the van’s door had been thrown open. Jamie scrambled on the floor, trying to work through the throbbing of his head to get his feet under him. Instead of the coordinated dancing professional footballer, Jamie more represented Bambi on ice as he crawled and fell back into the alleyway. The floor swum, moving like the deck of a ship at sea. Jamie wanted to curl up into a ball and maybe throw up as he scrapped his fingers on the cold hard concrete. Hands grabbed onto the back of his jacket and one rough movement latched onto the back of his head and the fingers laced in his hair yanked him upright. Before Jamie could do anything, the world went dark as a dark bag was thrown hurriedly over his head. Pinpricks of light filtered through the fabric as his legs were knocked out from under him again and Jamie found himself being dragged like a sack of potatoes. A wounded cry of pain tore itself out of his tight panicked chest as his feet scrambled to find any purchase. There had to be something he could do. This wasn’t how Jamie Tartt died. “Fucks sake,” one of the thugs snarled as Jamie’s foot connected with bone but his grip did not waver.
“Knock him out,” another voice hissed. Jamie’s efforts intensified with limbs flailing all over and yowls befitting a feral cat echoing around the bag restricting his vision. His leg connected with the solid metal of the van wall and Jamie was roughly thrown against the hard plastic. The door of the van was slid shut and the hope of escape was immediately extinguished. Jamie was stuck. The shock of the door closing froze Jamie for just a couple of seconds but that was long enough for a pinprick in his arm. Jamie kicked out, earning a winded whine from one thug but his limbs started to fill with lead and his head started to fill with cotton wool. The flailing weakened. Blackness crept in at the edges of his vision. Jamie fell limp and drifted into the void.
The first thing that hit Jamie was that he couldn’t see. He could feel that his eyes were open, his eyelashes brushed against soft fabric that was moulded to the top half of his face. What was happening? Jamie went to move his arms up to try and get out the tight, constricting blindfold and take stock of his position. But his arms wouldn’t move. No, his arms couldn’t move. He managed to flex his biceps and the muscles scratched against a tough fabric that was pinning his arms into his sides. Wrists were tied in a similar way and the coarse material was no moving. Put simply, Jamie was fucked. This wasn’t some one night stand gone wrong, even though he didn’t usually do those sort of things anymore. Why couldn’t he remember? There was something important that he needed to remember.
Nelson Road.
He had gone for a run and ended up at Nelson Road and then the van come out of nowhere.
Fuck.
Jamie had been abducted. And he was now blinded, and deaf, and restrained in some secondary location.
Fuck summed it up pretty well.
Jamie opened his jaw and just yelled but there was nothing. He couldn’t see. He couldn’t hear. Kicking out his bound legs, they only made contact with the soft plush of the surface he was laid on. Tossing and turning his head did the same thing. Nothing was coming loose, he wasn’t making contact with anything. He was in some soft, noiseless, black void. Jamie could feel his breath heaving out of his chest as the wave of panic started to lick at his feet. Jamie screwed his eyes closed and curled up his body into as small and defendable curl as he could. He was shaking, he couldn’t stop it. Such a coward, so fucking weak, couldn’t even deal with a blindfold before starting to fall apart. He should be fighting and trying to break out of these restraints not just trying to hold himself together so he didn’t break. He could feel the weight of a sob forming in his throat and the pressure releasing but the sound never came. Another one dragged it’s way up his body and was lost as soon as he opened his mouth. Jamie’s head started thrashing almost against his will. He needed the earplugs and blindfold off. He needed to do something instead of just laying there like an animal in a trap. He was defenceless. These thugs could do anything to him and Jamie wouldn’t be able to stop them. He rolled onto his other side but just found more bed, more and more bed and there was no escape. His head continued to hit against the mattress, unsure if he would dislodge the earplugs or something important in his brain first but at this point Jamie didn’t care. He needed them out. He needed to see or to hear again before the world shrunk down to this little pinprick of sensation and Jamie lost feeling of himself.
A hand presses down on Jamie’s shoulder and he freezes. Prey caught in a trap. The hand is hard and rough and Jamie shrinks under it’s touch. He can feel his tongue and lips moving but has no clue if any of the words coming out of him are real or are having any impact on the wielder of the hand. Another hand comes and presses down over Jamie’s mouth. His lips stop, the movement of air in his lungs stops and Jamie is so paralysed with fear that he forgets to breathe. His chest feels like an anvil has been dropped on it and strains with the effort of staying perfectly still.
The point has been clearly made. Be quiet. The hand over his mouth released but Jamie’s mouth stayed plastered shut. The movement of the hand on his shoulder reminded Jamie that movement was a thing he could do and suddenly tears poured out of his eyes, soaking the blindfold that blocked them from view and heaving breaths were dragged in through his nose. His mouth was still too scared, too paralysed to even consider helping the efforts of getting oxygen back into his system.
Jamie drifted in and out of awareness. Time was passing, or at least Jamie prayed that time was passing. The void was empty with only the soft plushness of the mattress and the harsh roughness of his restraints to provide any sensation, anything could be happening in the outside world and Jamie would be none the wiser. Was anyone looking for him? Had anyone noticed that Jamie wasn’t home? Was it training time? Surely if he hadn’t turned up to practice someone would have sounded the alarm? Had they called the police or had they assumed that this was just Jamie running out when it got difficult again? Was anyone looking for him? He had got better, Jamie had got better this time and he had friends. His friends, Dani, Sam, Isaac, Roy, Keeley, they all had to know that he wouldn’t just disappear on them the day of the most important game of their lives. Ok maybe not Roy’s life but everyone else’s. He wouldn’t desert them, they had to know that. The tears were stinging his face as the wet fabric over his eyes shifted and rubbed the salt against his skin.
Every so often he would thrash or roll just to feel something but nothing changed. No formless hands or anything from his captors. Theye couldn’t have just left him here. They had to be watching at least. He was important. They couldn’t have just left him here to die? He was Jamie Tartt, they had to have taken him for a reason. He couldn’t die in this void. His mouth opened and the sound of a wounded animal presumably echoed around the room. Jamie didn’t care what reaction he got from the men now, he just needed something. He needed some confirmation that he wasn’t alone in the world now. His lips cracked and the taste of iron dripped onto his tongue. A new sensation, Jamie licked his bottom lip, hooking it with his teeth and spread the taste around his mouth. His mouth was dry. He hadn’t noticed. Jamie was a professional athlete, he prided himself on his hydration routine. Time must be passing because Jamie could remember hydrating before his late night run. Time was real because he was thirsty. His tongue continued to run over the abused flesh of his lip, chasing that feeling.
A hand gripped onto Jamie’s jaw sending him instinctively thrashing and chasing freedom from the unwanted restraint. Another weight pressed down over his ankles and he was hefted up the bed to prop up against a padded headboard. Jamie whined and keened against the pressure on his jaw, his mouth tired of trying to form words that he couldn’t even hear. Would he ever hear again? What if they weren’t actually ear plugs and he was just deaf now? Another painful pressure of a noise ripped out of his throat. The grip on his jaw tightened and a weight was pressed onto his tongue. Jamie tried to throw his head back and clamp his jaw shut but the grip was too tight and he was too weak. The weight pressed on his tongue and then liquid squirted out to fill his cheeks. A straw. Jamie coughed and spluttered as the water trickled down his throat and out of the corners of his lips. The pressure at the corners of his jaw loosened and the flow of liquid paused. Jamie coughed and could feel the water spilling down his front over the arm and seeping into his t shirt. When the heaving of his chest had expelled all of the water and Jamie could breathe normally again, the straw pressed against his lips more gently and tentatively. Jamie slowly opened his mouth to let it though. It could be drugged, this could be a way of killing him or doing something else to him but he was so thirsty. He was so weak, they could do anything to him anyway. He needed water. So Jamie drank. The water trickled too slowly out of the straw no matter how much force Jamie put into trying to drag the precious liquid into his mouth but his captor seemed content to leave it there for Jamie to take however much he needed. When he was done Jamie forced the straw out of his mouth with his tongue and the bottle was removed. It was the softest interaction Jamie had experienced since he saw that van on the street but that thought just caused the tears to well up again. He shouldn’t be thankful for not being beaten or threatened or abused during his abduction. This was all so fucked up. There was no sign of Jamie’s captors as he rolled over, burrowed his head into the pillow and cried.
More time passes and Jamie had long given up trying to work out how much time was passing. There was no way of knowing as he drifted in and out of consciousness and even when he was pretty sure he was conscious he was in the noiseless sightless void. He resigned himself to just laying there, drifting. Someone would be looking for him. Someone had to be looking for him. He was Jamie fucking Tartt. Jamie was pathetic, he couldn’t help himself. He might as well just lay here until someone found him or he just stopped.
Jamie floated. Jamie didn’t even feel like he had a body anymore. What was the point of having a body if you couldn’t move it or hear it or see it? That was until his body demanded his attention. Heat started to pool in his abdomen and Jamie absently shuffled his legs and his hips in place. It felt weird and his lips opened, exhaling in what he hoped was some sort of noise. As the breath left him in an exhale, the heat in his abdomen moved and pooled between his legs.
Oh.
How had Jamie forgotten what happens when you drink liquid? How was he so pathetic and gone that he had just laid there and done nothing as he pissed himself? He was so tired and all he had done was lay here and sleep and tears streamed down Jamie’s face as he sobbed and whined, eyes screwed shut to try and hide from the shame. His nose tickled with each sniffle and the acrid scent of urine penetrated his frenzied breathing in through his nose. There was nothing he could do. He just had to sit there in a pool of his own piss and with his shame hanging in a cloud around him. He hoped that the pleas that his lips were forming were audible because the wet fabric was already beginning to sting. He had fallen so far that he was having to plead and hope for the opportunity to change his trousers.
In a flash of movement Jamie flinched from hands on his hips that lifted him up clean off the bed like he was a sack of potatoes not a real person. The air was knocked out of him as he thumped down onto the floor and laid there with heaving breaths. His pleas must have been audible as the velcro ties around his ankles were ripped lose and Jamie could pull his ankles apart and rotate them for the first time. A hand settled on his hip and another on the leg he just tried to move. A firm reminder that even though the first of his bonds had been removed, he was not free. The hand on his hip trailed downwards dragging a shiver down Jamie’s spine as he tried in vain to wiggle himself free. The hand grabbed onto the waistband of Jamie’s trousers and everything narrowed down to that point. Words, noises, begging, anything was tumbling out of Jamie’s lips as he struggled, kicking out, and sobbed. His trousers and pants were yanked down over his flailing legs and the cold air tingled against his dick. As soon as the fabric was clear of his feet, more hands pressed down on Jamie’s lower legs draininig any hope of escape. Jamie didn’t know what he was saying but his lips kept moving with frenzied pleading. Tears stung at his eyes, trails escaping out of the blindfold as a cold flannel was efficiently rubbed over his dick and between his legs, replacing the smell of urine with a sharp chemical scent. There was no change to their actions as Jamie wept openly, they continued to move with a cool clinical detachment. Jamie didn’t even have the strength to resume his fight as his ankles were released and a soft pair of shorts pulled up over him, returning some semblance of modesty. Jamie’s whole body was shaking, the phantom touches lingered with a chill all over his legs wherever the hands had pressed their possession. Jamie wheezed and heaved as he was lifted back onto what seemed to be a dry and clean bed. All the evidence was gone. It was as if it had never happened to the wider world but Jamie knew, Jamie could still feel it. He could still feel them touching him, them stripping him, them manhandling him. That feeling would never go away.
Jamie huddles up, slightly propped up on the bed, and tries to mentally grab onto the cracks that were forming all over him. There were too many, he couldn’t hold all of them together and could feel himself leaking out into the void. He flinched as hands grabbed onto the side of his head. There was nothing he could do. These people had proven that there was nothing he could do, they could do anything to him and Jamie just had to sit there and take it. There was nowhere to run. There was nowhere to hide. The fingers brushed his temple and the soft curve of his ear.
Jamie cried out, screwing his eyes shut and trying to pull his shoulder up to his ear. The sounds were everywhere. The TV was on with some cooking show clanging metal with overlapping words that were pummelling Jamie’s brain. The fan was on, a low dull whirring that was static ricocheting off the inside of his skull. There was a low shrill whine that it took too long for Jamie to realise was coming from his own mouth. Jamie’s teeth bit down on his bottom lip to desperately keep his mouth shut. It was too much. The noise was too much.
“Turn the TV off,” a voice looming over him barked and Jamie flinched up off the bed and to the side away from the unseen spectre. The TV rang out, prompting a cry of pain to eek out of Jamie, then fell blissfully silent.
“Please,” Jamie whispered, his voice hoarse and almost unrecognisable. He wouldn’t think it was him if he hadn’t felt the word form in his mouth.
“If you will behave yourself then you can keep your hearing,” the voice muttered. Jamie whined, his head rocking back and forth in a jagged shaky nod. He’d do anything, whatever they wanted from him. It was so much, but it was a good so much. He could feel again, he could think again. “Jamie. No kicking, no fighting, no nothing and I’ll take the other plug out,” the voice stated again. Jamie couldn’t stop nodding. His head was tilted to the side and held in place. He could hear the deep chesty breathing of his captor getting closer. It was just a reflex. Jamie’s head flinched backwards and the hands moved from his head. “Jamie,” the voice scolded.
“Sorry, I’m sorry. Please,” Jamie begged, willingly and immediately tilting his head back towards where the voice was coming from. The hands settled on his head again. It took every force of will that Jamie had left in his body, that hadn’t leaked out through the cracks that snaked under his skin, to keep his head still. The plug was eased out of his ear but this time Jamie was ready. The winced and groaned but let the influx of sound intensify, let it crackle like sandpaper being dragged over his brain, and breathed through the torment. It slowly dulled back to a manageable volume and Jamie groaned, loosening his jaw from where it had clenched. He still couldn’t see. He still couldn’t move. He was still trapped. But he wasn’t completely vulnerable any more. Small victories, so so small, are still victories.
“Rest. We’ll know what we are doing with you tomorrow. We don’t want to hurt you Jamie. The ransom request has been sent,” the voice was gruff and tense but was whispered and considerate to his pounding head.
“I, I can pay. Whatever you want I can pay,” Jamie wheezed, his voice tortured and pitiful now he could hear the weak noises that were coming out of his throat.
“You can’t pay this,” the voice laughed. And then, with echoing footsteps, he was gone.