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After a humiliating defeat and two bad trainings, it’s only natural the conversation shifts to the topic of dealing with it. Ted is half listening in from the office while Beard reads his book, feeling proud of the boys for how they’re trying to shake it off.
It starts with Sam saying: “I know we need to be goldfish, but I cannot stop thinking about how poorly I’ve been doing. How do you all deal with it?”
“You need a blame fantasy, bruv,” Isaac speaks up with all the authority he has.
“A blame fantasy?” Sam repeats, clearly unfamiliar with the term.
“Yeah, boyo, it’s the thing you blame instead of yourself when you play shit,” Colin chimes in. “I always say it’s because I’m playing on colonizer ground.” Everything goes back to Welsh independence with him.
“Ahhh,” Sam nods, getting it.
His understanding noise gets overshadowed by Jan, who says: “It is superstition and nonsense. You can’t play well every day, it’s just statistics.”
“So your blame fantasy is statistics,” Colin points out. “You totally got one too.”
“No, mine is science,” Jan argues, the two of them devolving into bickering.
Desperate to not have it devolve too much and trying to get a sense for the newly introduced concept, Sam asks Isaac: “What’s your blame fantasy then?”
“The grass, bruv, it was cut wrong,” Isaac answers seriously. Tucked away in his office, Ted allows himself to snort at the grave tone.
“It’s the government,” Bumbercatch interrupts. “They don’t want anyone too confident or they’ll rise up, so they put you down. You can’t let them.”
“I say it’s because the food here is wrong, you can’t play without French cuisine,” Richard adds his two cents.
“What do you when you play shit in France then?” Colin asks, which earns him an angry French tirade that none of them bar Thierry can follow.
Soon everyone is sharing their blame fantasies and judging the ones the others have in a good natured manner. The locker room is filled with chaos and that’s the way is should be. Ted is proud of them for managing a lively locker room when they were all so down earlier.
However, that atmosphere changes when Sam asks: “What about you, Jamie? What do you blame?”
Everyone looks curiously over to the Mancunian player, who has remained strangely silent on the topic thus far. He’s been a bit distant throughout the whole thing, likely still stuck up on their less than stellar streak. Ted hopes the discussion will cheer him up a bit.
He is instantly proven wrong in that when Jamie blinks back into awareness, then casually throws out his answer: “Undiagnosed cancer.”
The locker room falls silent at the words, staring at Jamie like he’s crazy. Ted can’t blame them, cancer is a very serious thing, not something to joke about. It definitely feels out of place in this discussion, which had been light hearted up until two seconds ago.
“Undiagnosed cancer?” Sam repeats rearing back somewhat at the words, finally breaking the silence with that exclamation.
Jamie seems to have not noticed the rapid mood shift at all and appears to think Sam is confused, rather than put off and somewhat worried. He airily answers: “Yeah, ‘cause like if I got cancer and I didn’t know, then I tried my best but I couldn’t play better, because I’m sick, not because I’m shit, and then everyone who was mad at me for playing like shit feels bad for blaming me, cause it weren’t my fault, it were cancer’s fault.”
Ted’s own judgment of Jamie’s answer is rapidly making way for concern. Looking over at where Beard has stopped pretending to read at his desk, the other coach thinks the same thing: This could potentially be very bad.
“Boyo, why the fuck would you want cancer?” Colin chokes out as the answer settles around them.
“I don’t want cancer,” Jamie scoffs, like they’re the stupid ones for thinking that he’d want cancer after he just told them he fantasizes about getting cancer. It should be a relief, but then he goes on: “Unless it’s like terminal, cause otherwise it’s just embarrassing.”
Now everyone is giving each other wide eyed looks, unsure where to go from here. Ted himself feels a hand start to claw at his throat, but he swallows it down. He needs to make sure he’s hearing what he’s hearing first, then he can panic about it. Maybe he’s wrong. Maybe he’s overreacting. God, he hopes he’s overreacting.
So after a helpless look from Isaac, Ted steps in: “Hey, now, Jamie, kiddo, that’s a leap to make. What makes you say that?”
“Well,” Jamie starts, still oblivious to how his words have landed. “If you have cancer then you can’t play, so you’d be out and miss a bunch of footie. And I know I’m around the peak of my career and I might never get back to it if I have to recover from cancer. So that’d be embarrassing. You just wasted your good years and fucked yourself over. That’s not worth it, so you’d have to die from it so everyone always says you could have, instead of everyone knowing you couldn’t do it. Go down as a legend like, instead of living with the failure and all that.”
With a tight voice, Sam summarizes: “So your blame fantasy is that you’re going to die of cancer?”
“Hm, I guess,” Jamie shrugs, scrunching his nose as he considers if that is truly what he’s saying, before nodding.
“Amigo,” Dani cries, flying into a hug, holding Jamie tight and rubbing his cheek all over the top of Jamie’s head.
A little confused Jamie pats his back, saying: “Hey, muchacho, what’s all this then?”
“I don’t want you to die, Jamie Tartt,” Dani sniffles.
“I ain’t actually got cancer, Dani,” Jamie snorts. “It’s just a blame fantasy. It’s to make you feel better, like when you had a bad day so you don’t look both ways before crossing the street.”
If it’s meant to be a comfort, it’s not at all comforting. Again. In fact, the words are enough to finally send Ted over the edge. He needs to get out of there, he needs to breathe. Without a word he turns on his heel and gets out of there, a look from Beard assuring him things won’t fall apart in the locker room while he falls apart somewhere else.
Jamie blinks at Ted leaving, but shrugs. It’s not that interesting of a conversation, just complaining about them doing bad. He’ll probably pack his stuff and get out of there soon too.
That plan is interrupted by Beard, who has appeared in the doorway of the coaches’s office, his arms crossed. “Jamie?”
“Yeah, coach?” Jamie replies, unsure what Beard would want from him, since they barely talk on the pitch, let alone off of it.
“Are you suicidal?” he asks and Jamie’s eyes grow wide.
Around the locker room many noises go up as they all react to the blunt question. It makes Jamie feel like he’s caught in some sort of trap, like he made a wrong move. Like he said something he shouldn’t and he’s going to pay for it.
Swallowing quickly, Jamie says: “Uh, no, coach. I never tried to kill myself or nowt. Just a stupid thing to think about, I didn’t mean anythin’ bad by it.”
“I’m not mad at you if you are, just answer me, okay?” Beard says, picking up on what Jamie tried to stuff away.
“Oh.”
Jamie doesn’t really know what to do with that. He can feel everyone’s eyes on him, boring through his skin. He’d never put much thought in his blame fantasy, but now he feels very exposed.
Tangling his hands in the front of his shirt to soothe himself, he shrugs: “I don’t think so, coach. Never really planned a suicide or owt. I mostly just make shit decisions when I’m feeling bad, blowing my life up and shit, but I don’t really plan on leaving it behind.”
“Passively suicidal?” Beard checks.
“What's that?” Jamie asks.
“When you’re having thoughts of death without a clear plan or intent to actively end your own life. It could be taking drugs you can’t trust, driving drunk, going to places you know are unsafe, picking fights you can’t win… not looking before crossing the street… wishing you had a terminal illness,” Beard explains, continuing to look at Jamie pointedly as he goes down the list.
Again Jamie swallows thickly, the weight of everyone’s eyes suddenly a lot heavier. He feels massively stupid and embarrassed by his small voice as he asks: “Doesn’t everyone do that, though?”
Beard clenches his jaw and closes his eyes for a second, as if he wishes Jamie had given a different answer. Around him a murmur goes through the locker room, making Jamie want to disappear. Dani hugs him once more, saying: “No, amigo.”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Jamie says, feeling even more dumb, shifting in his seat as his cheek flush. “I- uh, I didn’t mean to be a downer. Shouldn’t have said that.”
That answer invites a wave of noise to crash over him and he can’t make his ears listen and he feels overwhelmed and guilty and bad. He didn’t mean to make everyone upset. He didn’t even know this was something he shouldn’t say. That it was something he shouldn’t feel.
Thankfully, he is saved by Beard, who screams loudly, forcing everyone to shut up. Once they are quiet, Jamie is a lot less grateful, because now coach Beard is directing himself at him. “Jamie, I’m glad you mentioned this. I want you to keep me updated on how you’re feeling. Not a daily report, but I will check in on you. This is not up for discussion.”
Jamie can’t help but make a face at that. He’s never been much for sharing how he’s feeling, hell, most of the time, he doesn’t even know if he’s feeling anything and what that feeling might be, so having to update anyone on that sounds like torture. Having it be Beard, whom he barely knows how to talk to, doesn’t make it much better.
“I know,” Beard says and Jamie believes him when he does. Beard is weird like that. “Do you go see Dr. Sharon?” he asks.
“Uhm, yeah,” Jamie answers.
“Have you mentioned this to her?” he asks.
“No, uhm, not really. We’re mostly talking ‘bout other stuff,” Jamie mumbles. The said other stuff is how to be a better teammate and less of a shit person. He hasn’t really been talking much about how they’re playing, more how he is playing with everyone. Now he wonders if he should have.
“Alright, that’s okay. Can you do me a favor and mention this to her next time you two chat?” Beard requests.
It’s weird. Beard has never spoken this much in his life as far as Jamie is aware. He also sounds less distantly better than everyone else when he talks, though he still has that blunt to the point manner to himself that Jamie is growing to appreciate. “Uh, yeah, I will, coach.”
“Good,” Beard nods, a finality to it that makes Jamie relax. He did well and the conversation is over now. Beard turns to everyone else, pointing to them as he goes: “No pushing, no prying. Just keep an eye out.”
“Yes, coach!” they all chorus like school boys.
Meanwhile, Jamie ducks into himself with embarrassment, though it’s a little hard to be embarrassed when Dani is pulling Jamie close to him, giving him a bright and reassuring grin. It feels right, Dani is supposed to be smiling, not looking upset like he was earlier. “Come on, amigo. We’ll play FIFA and I will feed you Sopa de Lentejas.”
“You don’t have to babysit me, muchacho,” Jamie blushes. “Not actively doing owt, ‘member?”
Dani does not let that deter him, grin keeping steady on his face as he says: “It’s not babysitting, it is hanging out, my friend.”
Jamie is pretty sure that’s not the reason for the invite, but when Colin excitedly exclaims that they can have a tournament and everyone piles in on the plan with gusto, Jamie can’t bring himself to mind too much either. It feels like care. Like love. It’s nice.
Beard stays for a moment to make sure Jamie is okay. He looks to be alright, at least surrounded by people who’ll watch out for him. It’s going to take a moment for them to reorganize themselves about this revelation and find a way to help Jamie, but Beard hopes Dr. Sharon will help with that. For now, they just have to catch him and make sure he’s not spiraling into something worse, which the boys seem to have covered.
He doesn’t know how training tomorrow will go and when – if at all – it will get weird. A part of him had never expected it from Jamie, another part can’t believe he missed it, especially after the whole public meltdown, before he can back to Richmond. He just hopes it won’t go too bad. That they did enough to ensure that this will be okay.
Fuck, he needs to check up on Ted, tell him he’s not going to find Jamie on the floor anytime soon, that they got it handled and he needs to not be too much himself about it.
With a final look to Jamie, who is in the middle of sticking his tongue out at Goodman, challenging him playfully, Beard turns around. Time to do more damage control.