Work Text:
@babytartt
Wishing me mates @afcrichmond luck in Liverpool tmrw!
@oikent
Worry about your own fucking teammates @babytartt
@babytartt
Sorry granddad @oikent can’t hear you from all the way at the top of the table
@oikent
We’re two spots away @babytartt that’s concerning actually you should get that checked
@babytartt
Wut? Sry @oikent can’t hear you did you say something?
@oikent
@babytartt still SUCH a child hasn’t @arsenalfc found a dummy big enough for your big mouth?
@babytartt
Almost like I can still hear the grumpy twat’s whistle
~
Trent Crimm has been back in the country for less than twenty-four hours when he receives an email from one Miss Keeley Jones at KBPR wondering if he’d like to grab a coffee. It’s been a long trip and the latest in a series of long trips; he’s not left home. He’s barely left bed. She could give the Independent’s best investigative reporters a run for their money.
And she scares him a little, so he of course answers yes, lovely and spends the next twenty-four hours fretting over how he’s going to say no to whatever it is she inevitably wants to ask of him.
Trent knows he’s staring a bit rudely across the table but Keeley weathers his bafflement with grace, sips at her latte and somehow manages to make a foam mustache look cool, because she’s Keeley fucking Jones. “A couple questions,” he pulls off his glasses and raises a finger. “Comments, really.”
“Absolutely, go on.”
“…Actually, if I’m being honest, I might need you to run that whole thing by me again.”
She’s cool, Keeley Jones, stylish and elegant, and she works in PR and spends way too much time with fussy celebrities and high maintenance footballers so she’s also endlessly fucking patient. “Right, so,” she sets her mug down, dabs at her lip, and claps her hands together. “Richmond’s annual charity fundraiser, yeah?”
“Mm…can we still call it annual? After last year?”
She deflates with a heavy sigh. “Roy apologized for that.”
“At length.”
“KBPR spent a month in damage control mode.”
“Oh, I remember.”
“The club’s we swear he just meant the gala is stupid, not the cause itself guilt donation was actually more than the gala’s ever raised on its own so it wasn’t even really all bad?”
“Hmm.”
The mug hits the table with a loud thunk as she shakes her head. “The winter transfer window had just ended, he was very stressed.”
Trent leans in and assures her, “We’ll be circling back around to that, do continue,” before taking a long sip of his iced Americano.
“We’re ditching the gala. The gala was very… Rupert,” she shudders. “Thought we might go for something a little more family-friendly than auctioning off players who are already, you know… busting their arses and breaking their bodies for our entertainment. Christmas event. Community event.”
“Very Richmond,” Trent praises; she beams.
“A sort of… winter festival meets Christmas market… craft fair, baking contest, prize raffle-y holiday… fete.”
“I am with you so far.”
“And KBPR is producing a cheeky little bakeoff promotional spot that’ll air during the half at a couple matches!”
“And you’d like me to join you in hosting.” Her earnest smile and enthusiastic nod are honestly flattering; he’s missed the season spent haunting the club and writing his book; he spends a non-zero amount of time mulling angles around which he can justify a new Richmond-based book.
Well, that and he’s been dying for the days of girl talk with Keeley and Rebecca after the news broke in January of Jamie’s abrupt departure from the club. He was in North America doing publicity for The Richmond Way and had no answers to the many questions that ensued beyond standard statements that were quickly undercut by the escalating press and social media feud between player and former manager.
And all of that is – well, it was a shock, if he’s honest, and a disappointment in its way after watching the two men overcome their differences and even perhaps bond a bit, but for their purposes here and now, he’s mostly just confused because, well – “This… fundraiser fete is in fact a collaborative club event. With Arsenal. Ahead of a Boxing Day match.”
She waves her hands across an imaginary marquee hovering between them. “Festive Friendly Football Fundraiser Fete.”
“That’s a lot of Fs.”
“It’s Roy’s favorite letter.”
“Makes sense.” It might be the only part that does. “It’s just, well – it’s not a friendly.”
“The teams can be perfectly friendly outside those ninety minutes, yeah?”
Can they? Trent doesn’t ask, opting instead for a more delicate, diplomatic, “I am… I suppose surprised… that you’d want to draw attention to, well…”
She glances around but it’s slow, lull between the morning rush and the lunch hour. “Roy and Jamie?” Trent hums and absolutely does not lean in, drawn by the sheer magnetic power of the gossip at last, no sir. “They can control themselves for a couple hours,” she promises with a staggering confidence, considering how relentless they are online.
“I have to say, I was… not expecting that relationship to,” he searches for the diplomatic word, because he knows Keeley is still friends with them both and implode sounds rather harsh, “develop in quite the fashion it did, and so quickly.”
But she just settles in, finishes her latte, unfussed. “Looking back I guess I’m not all that surprised.”
“No?” She just gives him a pointed look, and he does remember their on-pitch dust-up when Roy was still playing, he does. Still. Perhaps Ted’s methods could only do so much; couldn’t withstand Roy’s promotion. “Can’t be a great look, them always at it.”
But Keeley waves it aside, resigned. “Jamie’s Arsenal’s problem now and I’ve long given up trying to tell either of them what to do.” A pause and, “They used to be into that, you know.” Trent sits back and casts his gaze into the middle-distance, trying not to let that image form up into anything too specific in his mind. “Guess they deserve one another. Anyway, it’s really all just a bit of foreplay, isn’t it?”
Trent coughs. There’s another F. “I suppose a bit of… pregame tension is, ah – to be expected.” She barks a sharp little laugh, like he’s just said something fantastically hilarious. “And your other… contestants?”
“Well, Rebecca threatened to sell the rest of the club if anyone tried to make her, but then Ted said he’d fly in with a suitcase full of biscuits if she’d do it, and I’m not quite sure whose bluff was called in the end there but either way, yay, peer pressure works!”
“Maybe don’t say that in your friendly festive footballing F-themed fete advertisement.”
And he’s really so busy, Trent is. Barely knows what country he’s in after all the travel. He’s got notes to type up. Follow-up interviews to schedule. Holidays to prepare for with a daughter he’s seen more through a screen than in person over the past year.
But it’s Richmond. “It sounds fabulously messy,” he winks at Keeley. “Wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
~
By the time Trent arrives at the venue – there are venues for this, is a thing Trent learns, and then wonders why he’s surprised – Keeley’s got a whole crew flitting around putting finishing touches on the setup. It’s lovely, décor heavy on cheery red and a gold that leans Richmond yellow, or maybe a yellow that leans Arsenal gold, because she’s very good at what she does. Tinsel-wrapped name placards on the baking stations and wreaths on the walls next to the baking shelves in the back stocked with myriad confectionery, giant empty presents stacked artfully around a judging table at the front. Trays with red and green cloths covering them are already laid out at each of the four stations.
“Aw, Trent, look at you!” He’s done up gaudy for the holidays, loud sweater with twinkling lights that delight his daughter without fail. Keeley’s gone all-out in somewhat more elegant fashion, shimmery red dress with a bow on one hip, but the cheeky red and green poms in her hair add a touch of silly as well. “Do you want a headband?” She lays out a collection, elf hats and reindeer antlers and Christmas trees. “I’m going to make Roy wear one and it is going to be great.
He looks forward to seeing that. “Chances it disappears before the cameras start to roll?” he asks as he settles a jaunty tinsel bow atop his head.
She shakes her head. “All I have to do is say,” she pitches her voice low and gravelly, “No. We’re not fucking doing that ever again. That’s fucking stupid and he gets shockingly agreeable quite quickly.” It’s a very good impression. “I’m hoping that soundbite gets me through another two or three fundraisers, but we’ll see.”
Rebecca and Leslie turn up first looking like they’ve just come from the club. “Let it be known,” Rebecca announces to anyone and no one while she makes her way to the back corner station with her name on the front, “I am here under duress.” Even as the words leave her mouth, she slips a striped green elf hat from her bag and jams it on her head, to Keeley’s audible delight. “Oh, hello, Trent, my word it’s been ages.”
“Touring one book and onto the next, the year has been quite hectic.” There’s so much he wants to say, such as Tell me about the breakdown between Roy and Jamie and How’s morale after Richmond’s star player transferred mid-season? and Do you expect barbs, or possibly knives, to fly tonight? And instead, he plasters a pleasant smile on his face and says, “I think this is a marvelous change of pace from the former benefit. A whole community festival is just so very Richmond.”
Roy turns up next, grunting his greetings at Keeley’s crew as he passes. He pauses at the front of the room and takes in the layout, him and Rebecca along the left side, Jamie and Ted on the right, scowls, and makes for Ted’s station. “You’re up front, Roy-o,” Keeley points out.
“No, I’m baking here,” he plants himself at the station across the aisle from Rebecca, tone brooking no argument.
Keeley looks like she wants to argue, until he slips off his coat and she gasps, “Oh my God, Roy, you dressed for Christmas.”
“You told me to.” Trent looks him over; he’s wearing a very Roy Kent standard black suit, but the shirt is a green so deep it almost looks black at a glance. He supposes it’s the little things.
Keeley walks over, leans up, kisses his cheek, says, “Thank you,” and jams a pair of antlers on his head. She skips away while he growls, and supposes under her breath to Trent and Leslie, “I suppose he wants to keep an eye on Jamie, if you know what I mean.”
Trent turns a startled look on her. “Are things that heated between them?”
She blinks and lets out a bright peal of laughter. Leslie just gags.
“Why the fuck have I got grated cheese?” Roy peeks under his festive cloth.
“Because you stole Ted’s station,” Keeley snipes at him while one of her team hurries over to swap the trays full of ingredients.
Roy takes a moment to examine the replacement, apparently deems it satisfactory, and says, “Great. Why the fuck does Ted have grated cheese?” If anyone actually knows the answer to that, they’re spared from giving it by the happenstance of Jamie’s arrival, all boundless energy and bright smiles and – “Take that fucking thing off,” Roy recoils in horror.
“What, this?” Jamie twines his hands around the end of his red and white striped Arsenal scarf. “Like a candy cane, innit? It’s Christmas.”
“It is,” Roy growls, “December the fucking tenth, take it the fuck off.”
Jamie giggles, unfussed, and drapes it with his coat on a rack by the door. “Hey, Keels,” he accepts her peck on the cheek and Christmas tree headband with a graceful bow of his head before setting about rolling up the sleeves of his silky red dress shirt that’s undone just that one extra button and is just tight enough that he absolutely knows what he’s doing.
Roy fixes a glower on Jamie’s back and growls low and constant under his breath.
Leslie gags.
Ted of course arrives to much fanfare, armed with a bag full of pink biscuit boxes, which he delivers around the room like Santa, hat and all, names written on the tops to include every last one of Keeley’s crew, plus an extra for Phoebe left with Roy and Jelka left with Rebecca and, “Can’t forget Miss Ivy,” he hands another one to Trent.
This ridiculous man.
“Let battle commence?” Trent suggests.
“Just one quick question,” Ted says apologetically, staring at the name placard on the last empty station, and they take a few minutes to swap that over too.
Keeley and Trent start to read the opening script, which devolves quickly into a debate on whether it’s the thirteenth annual fundraiser they’re advertising on account of last year’s debacle, or the fourteenth on account of the club having made a massive donation anyway, or the first on account of not being a charity gala anymore, or the nothing on account of the collaborative fundraising affair ahead of the Boxing Day match, which leads to a whole complicated series of phone calls between Leslie and legal folk at the club, and then some representatives at Arsenal, and in the end they tear down the banner at the front of the room and re-do the starting pan shots.
They begin the three-hour countdown and start with Roy, whose expression paints the picture well enough that he’s being held hostage here by his press gaffe back in February. “So, Roy Kent,” Trent starts as the cameras roll into place behind them. “Second season as Richmond’s manager and, well – as I understand it, the reason we’re all here, really.” Roy growls; Trent beams.
From the station in front of them, Jamie pipes in, “For the children, innit?” and the growl continues.
“We’re in a kitchen,” Roy points out; he’s yet to make any move to uncover his tray full of ingredients, offer any clue as to what he’s making. “Full of little kitchens. There’s four kitchens in this big kitchen. This is a party venue. People come here and do this for fun.”
Keeley nods, commiserating, before asking, “You ever watch Bake Off, Roy?”
“Fuck no.” Jamie, still eavesdropping, snorts. Keeley holds Roy’s stare, unimpressed, until he breaks and starts on a rant about the series prior that only ends when he cuts off abruptly to demand, “Who the fuck said Tartt could have knives?”
“Roy,” Keeley grits out, “You know this is for… families. Children?”
He works his jaw tersely and corrects, “Who the… fuuudge… said Tartt could have knives?”
Jamie snickers, knife in hand, cubing butter to dump in his mixer, and Trent figures it might be best to steer them towards safer pastures. “What are you making for us today, Roy?”
“Fudge.”
“I – oh.” Roy stops glowering at Jamie’s back long enough to finally pull the cover from his tray. “That’s not really – baking is it?”
“It starts with the letter F.”
“I was joking about that!” Keeley gasps, aghast.
Three voices ring out in tandem from around the room, “Were you?” Roy just snickers.
Keeley turns and looks around at Jamie, Ted, and Rebecca before sighing, “Oh, fuck me,” and Trent is beginning to have his doubts about how much of this little venture will make it to airing.
They skip Jamie while he runs his stand mixer and jump over to Rebecca, who is staring at her recipe with an expression suggesting she’s never seen it before in her life. “Whatcha making, Rebecca?” Keeley hops up on her station and starts picking through her tray of goodies.
Her tray includes a bottle of red wine.
“I told my mum I wanted something with booze,” Rebecca murmurs, “she suggested fruitcake.”
Keeley shrugs and nods. “That’s Christmassy, isn’t it?”
Trent leans in, one finger held up. “Apologies. Question. Did you, perchance, tell your mother this was for a three-hours competition?”
Rebecca searches around until she comes up with a corkscrew, opens the bottle with practiced ease. “Lord no, she’d have asked to come along.”
“Ah ha. Hm. It’s just – I’m not sure you can make a fruitcake in three hours time?” Her brows inch up her forehead as she reads, nodding slowly. “Soaking the fruit is meant to be hours to days all on its own.”
“You know I’m really not much of a baker, Trent.” Rebecca starts tipping pre-measured bowls of orange peel and sultanas and currants into one bigger bowl, into which she then pours a generous splash of the wine. “There.”
“Lovely,” he smiles. “You know Rebecca, I do miss hanging around the club.”
“Ugh,” she despairs, throwing an arm around Keeley’s shoulders, “this one’s so busy, I’m starved for girl talk.”
Across the narrow aisle, there’s a thwack of a wooden spoon against metal countertop and an outraged squawk. “Mind your own fucking station, Tartt.”
“Just wanted to see what you’re doing, granddad,” Jamie protests, while plucking a couple chocolate chips out of a bowl and grinning and Roy’s glare. “Lots of butter, did ya pop out back and churn that yourself like when you were a wee lad and they hadn’t invented Tesco yet?”
Rebecca holds up the wine and asks vaguely about the room, “Have we got any glasses?”
When they reach Ted, he’s scraping an orange monstrosity of a dough out of a food processor. “Coach Lasso.”
“Why, hello, Trenthouse Magazine, Miss Keeley, it is mighty good to see you both.” He looks up mid-wrapping his dough to tell the camera, or the room or generally, “In fact, last I saw Trent, we were in the good ol’ U S of A chatting with some lovely folk about his book in Kansas City.” It was his most popular event all-tour; Ted, bless his heart, refuses to acknowledge that he was the draw, rather than some phenomenon of soccer-obsessed Americans residing in the Plains. “And then we went out for barbecue done right.”
They did. Trent still doesn’t entirely grasp the myriad American barbecue feuds, but the meal was nice enough. “So, Coach Lasso, tell us about what you’re making, and why its primary ingredient seems to be… cheese.”
Ted finishes wrapping his dough, gives it a satisfied little pat. “I am making goldfish-for-F crackers.”
That is both clarifying, and not. “I – sorry,” Trent frowns at Keeley while Ted carries his dough to the fridge he’s sharing with Rebecca. “Is dessert a requirement, or…?”
“Um…” she pulls a strained smile, but before she can answer Jamie is dancing over and leaning around the camera. “What the fuck’s a goldfish cracker?”
“Shoot,” Ted frowns when he wanders back. “Crackers? Do y’all call ‘em crackers? Crisps? Wait, no, that’s chips, which are fries. Don’t matter, just look at how adorable this little guy is.”
He holds up a cutter that’s got five little fish shapes all in a line. “Biscuits,” Trent suggests.
“Thought biscuits were cookies.”
“Savory biscuits?”
“Ehh,” Ted frowns, dubious.
“Fuck’s sake, Ted, how long did you live here?” Rebecca grouses from the station behind. Keeley snickers and gasps a quiet little Oh! that has Trent turning to see that someone has quietly slipped a tray of wine glasses onto Rebecca’s counter.
“Oi!” Roy bellows; everyone jumps but Jamie, who sighs in resignation. “Tartt!” He turns and props his hands on his hips. “Your fucking timer’s going off, fucking focus.”
“Yes, Coach,” Jamie trots dutifully back over. “Focusing, Coach.”
Roy starts aggressively chopping walnuts, little pieces flying this way and that and scattering about the floor and creating marvelous little slipping hazards that have one of the crew already dashing about for a broom. “Not your coach anymore, you twat.”
Leslie waves from behind the camera and confirms, “Technically the requirements are baked element and dessert, but this is hardly a proper Bake Off so we could probably let it slide…”
“Oi!” Jamie and Roy protest in unison, only to promptly turn their glares on one another and forget the offense altogether.
“…That seems to be going well,” Trent remarks, cool and casual like.
“Yeah,” Ted agrees with a bafflingly fond smile.
“I can’t help but ask if the news of Jamie’s departure for Arsenal came as a bit of a blow, only half a season after you left.”
“Aw, hell, Trent – just the way these things sometimes shake out. Richmond couldn’t be in better hands.” Roy growls somewhere over Trent’s left shoulder. "And sometimes, it's the what's going on off the field that ends up mattering most, you get me?”
Not at all. “Absolutely.”
Keeley wanders up by Trent’s elbow with a glass of wine in hand and redirects back to Ted’s not-dessert. “Cheese crackers then! The judge might not exactly… allow that.”
Speaking of – “Who is judging?”
She shrugs. Across the way, Roy hollers, “Don’t fucking worry about it, I’ve got a guy.”
“I’m worried,” Keeley confesses. Jamie cackles. Roy pelts him in the back with a walnut.
“You know me, Trent,” Ted says as he accepts the wine glass Rebecca slips his way. “I’m not worried about winning or losing. “And if I do lose, I figure I’ll just be a goldfish, forget about it, and still have some tasty snacks to get me through my trip, so have I really lost in the end?”
“…Yes, Ted. It’s a contest. With a winner, and losers.”
“Well, oh well,” he shrugs, sobers up, and turns to start studying his oven, so they leave him to it.
Trent is a little afraid of what they’ll find when they cross over to Jamie’s station, but the station itself is actually… quite well organized and tidy, with a laminated recipe print-out and a step-by-step to-do list on which Jamie seems to be stalled out after chill dough 30min. Stalled out, because he’s back to poking and prodding around Roy’s station while Roy weighs out sugar in a saucepan.
“The fuck’s evaporated milk, mate?” he picks up a can and studies it with morbid fascination. “Where the fuck’d it go? And what the fuck’s in here then?”
“Oh, Jamie,” Trent hears Rebecca mumble.
“Jamie, come talk to us, babe,” Keeley pulls him around, which might be for the best considering Roy’s just wielded the wooden spoon again. “What’re you making?”
“I’m me,” Jamie points out like it ought to be obvious. “Making a tart, ain’t I?” Okay, maybe that ought have been obvious. “Fruit tart.”
Behind him, Roy corrects, “It’s an apple tart.”
“Apple’s a fruit, you daft twat,” Jamie snarks. By his tone, Trent’s guessing not for the first time. “Fucking hell.”
Trent takes a moment to peer around the room and the myriad disasters taking shape before pointing out, “You know, the actual Bake Off has cause-oriented celebrity special –”
“We asked,” everyone pipes up all at once. “Apparently they did a footballer episode once,” Keeley says.
They absolutely have not, because Trent has never missed a Bake Off in his life. “Guess I forgot that one,” he allows diplomatically.
“They never aired it, the footage is locked in a vault somewhere, and footballers are banned forever!”
“Thank heavens everyone in this room is more mature than that,” Trent says somberly as another walnut hits Jamie in the back of the head. He turns and opens his mouth and catches a chocolate chip out of the air, pumps his fist like he’s just won the league. “Jamie, a year ago you were playing in your first World Cup, well done.”
“Cheers, mate, I love that you said first, please continue.”
Roy mumbles something behind them that sounds suspiciously like cocky little prick. Jamie turns around and flops his tongue out of his mouth. The next walnut bounces off his nose and sends Jamie a little cross-eyed.
“Was the impending move to Arsenal already an ongoing discussion or decision made, or did you find your career ambitions changed by that experience?”
“Umm…” Jamie tips his head this way and that, humming while he works over an answer. “Hm. Yeah, I mean,” his eyes dart nervously towards Roy; Trent imagines the glower there, “when you know, you know… you know?”
“I don’t, no,” Trent confesses at that non-response. “I was in America, you sent quite the shockwave even there.”
Roy helpfully contributes: “They don’t actually know him from football, they’re just hoping he pops up on an American reality spinoff.”
“I’m fucking fit, of course they are.”
“How does your neck carry that overinflated head of yours around the pitch, exactly?”
“Oh my fucking fit shoulders, abs, and arse, mate, s’like you ain’t even listening to me.”
Keeley pinches the bridge of her nose, shakes her head, and pulls Trent away from their bickering to go collect his own glass of wine at Rebecca’s station. Far as he can tell, she’s done precisely nothing in the direction of assembling any sort of dessert, fruitcake or not, while watching them make the rounds.
“They agreed to be in a confined space together,” Trent notes in wonderment.
Rebecca grimaces and sips the rest of her glass. “We agreed to be in that confined space with them.”
Roy leaves off once Jamie picks up a knife to start having a go at his pile of apples, so Trent risks sidling back over to watch while he stirs his bubbling concoction with what Trent can only assume is all the pent-up frustration with Jamie. “So, Roy. Fudge.”
“It’s confectionery. It counts. Fuck off.”
“Ehh…”
“I fucking… cook,” he grunts. “Real fucking food for grown-up people. I’m good at it, too.” Trent looks around; Keeley nods solemnly. “Baking with its fucking… stiff peaks,” Jamie snickers, “and soggy bottoms – if that crust isn’t cooked to perfection, Tartt, I will still be laughing about it come Boxing Day.” Jamie half-turns and sketches a salute with the knife in his hand, and Roy about has an aneurysm. “Baking’s too fucking fussy.”
“It’s not fussy,” Jamie objects while he works through his first apple, careful thin slices. “It’s precise, like. Just gotta be good with instructions. Baking’s aces.” He taps at his checklist and assures the closest camera, “I’m very good with instructions.”
Across the way, perched on the edge of Rebecca’s station, Keeley hollers, “Think before you speak, Roy, make good choices.”
Jamie’s shoulders shake with silent laughter. Roy grunts. Trent beats a strategic retreat.
“So it’s a bit like squares and rectangles, yeah?” Jamie asks, lips pursed thoughtfully, pressing his chilled tart dough into his pan with infinite care.
“Mm, not quite,” Julie Higgins corrects over the line, Leslie holding his phone on speaker in the middle of the room while everyone listens with rapt attention. “Baked sweets count as confectionery but not all confectionery is baked and not all things baked are sweet.”
A chorus of Aahs rises throughout the room.
“You can’t be done already.”
“Why not? Rebecca’s not even making anything.”
Rebecca clears her throat and argues, “I’m soaking my fruit.”
“Well,” Roy turns a triumphant look on Keeley, “then I’m setting my fudge.”
“It’s not even been an hour!”
“I am failing to see the problem.”
“Roy! At least do something Christmassy on top.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know… red and green icing?”
“Who the fuck puts icing on fudge? It’s sugar. You want me to put sugar on top of sugar.”
“I am failing to see the problem,” Jamie contributes as he slides his tart shell full of pie weights in the oven to blind bake and avoid the dreaded soggy bottom.
Ted, who is taking his goldfish cracker project very seriously, brings a small bowl around once the first batch is out of the oven. They are, indeed, quite cute. “Not quite the same without the little eyes and smilies on them,” he laments. “And also without, you know, all the preservatives and food colorings and stuff y’all have banned over here that gives American junk food that certain irresistible charm.”
“Aw, Ted, they’re really good!” Keeley delights.
Roy’s expression doesn’t change while he crunches on a single cracker, but he does tell Ted, “You keep those the fuck away from Phoebe, I’ll never hear the end of it,” and by Ted’s broad answering smile, it’s win enough for him.
The inevitable knife incident happens when Jamie’s blind bake timer goes off while he’s slicing his last apple and slips.
“Oh for fuck’s – whistle! Whistle!”
None of Keeley’s production crew are trained to understand this apparently means first aid kit, now, but then again, no one else does either. Roy, who apparently has nothing better to do while his fudge sets up in the fridge besides glare at Jamie’s back, snatches up a towel and circles around to take charge, because Jamie’s mostly just letting his thumb bleed down his hand and arm while he swears under his breath and tosses contaminated apple slices into his sink.
“No, no!” he exclaims when Roy tries to wrap his bloody thumb in the towel. “The tart! Save the tart!”
“Fucking hell,” Roy rolls his eyes, shoving the towel at Jamie and snatching up an oven mitt.
An emergency kit is unearthed from somewhere, and Jamie perches on a stool at the end of his station while one of Keeley’s team washes and bandages the gash in the pad of his thumb, smiling with strange self-satisfaction as he reads off ingredients and amounts to Roy, who somehow ends up making his frangipane for him.
With just over an hour left to go, Rebecca’s bowl of wine-soaked fruit is still sitting on her bake station. There’s dirty bowls in the sink, and something in the oven. “Weren’t you going to use that?” Trent asks, gesturing at the fruit. “For the fruitcake?”
“It said it should soak overnight at the least and it’s only been going two hours.”
“…Okay.” She looks supremely unconcerned, picking her way through a dish of goldfish crackers one-by-one. “So what’s in the oven?”
“I’ve absolutely no idea.”
“Uh, Roy?” Keeley’s back to sitting on the edge of Rebecca’s station, the two of them picking their way through a bowl of glace cherries. There’s… some sort of loaf of something sitting cooling at the other end and Rebecca isn’t even pretending that Ted didn’t do ninety percent of the work to make it happen.
Ted’s chatting away with Leslie, his goldfish long finished and piled in a bowl on the judging table. Jamie’s tart is – well, Trent didn’t know he had it in him, he marvels, watching as he brushes a jam glaze over the painstakingly-arranged rose of apple slices.
Roy, after cheerfully finishing first and unfussed by making the fudge more than it is, is suddenly very tense about whether it’s fully set, removing it from the pan, cutting it into perfectly even pieces.
Footballers – they do contain multitudes.
“Roy, we’re going to need our judge soon, tell me you haven’t fucked it.”
He takes a deep breath, lifts the edges of the parchment paper, mutters, “Let’s fucking do this,” and extracts his block of fudge in one piece. “No, I haven’t fucked it,” he promises absently. He takes a moment to slide his phone from his pocket and tap away at it before producing a tape measure from the other pocket and laying it out to mark even spacing to cut his fudge.
“Who do you think will win?” Jamie gnaws on his thumbnail after laying his tart on the judging table and re-donning the scarf that has Roy glowering anew. Everyone in the room turns an incredulous stare between him and his immaculately arranged tart and back again. “What? Don’t know how it tastes, do I?”
“Jamie,” Ted admires the final product, “I gotta ask, son – how many times did you practice that?”
Jamie scuffs his feet against the floor and mumbles vaguely down to the ground, “Once or twice.”
Roy, Keeley, and Rebecca burst out laughing. “We’re actually letting you win,” Roy thumps him on the back on his way to the door out into the central lobby space, “on account of the fact that we’re going to fucking murder Arsenal on Boxing Day, cheers.”
Jamie lets out an indignant squawk, that doesn’t so much end as change pitch when Roy ushers in a few newcomers, ending in a garbled, “Wha –?”
“Paul Hollywood turned us down,” Roy grunts; Trent looks at Keeley, who rolls her eyes and shakes her head before going back to looking about as gobsmacked as Jamie. “Everyone say hi, Fake Paul.”
“Hi, Simon,” Keeley and Rebecca offer instead, though Simon looks altogether thrilled at fake Paul, regardless. Roy’s other guests duck out of the way into the back with Leslie. Trent recognizes Phoebe even with how much she’s grown up in the time since he’s seen her; the woman holding her hand is unfamiliar to him.
While Rebecca rattles off another pre-scripted bit about the Christmas Eve fete, Trent sidles over to Keeley and leans in to murmur, “So who exactly is Simon?”
She turns a surprised look on him. “You’ve met Simon!”
“Hmm… I don’t believe so, no.”
Keeley nods at the woman with Phoebe. “Georgie and Simon? Jamie’s mum and stepdad, yeah?” And there is a lot to unpack there – truly, so much, he’ll be unpacking it all still come Christmas morn – but all he can do is open and close his mouth a few times, not even sure where to begin, as surprise and realization and a touch of horror begin to dawn on Keeley's face. “Oh, fuck me, I think I fucked it.”
But then they’re on to the judging, and he doesn’t get to learn quite how.
Jamie wins, because of course he does, and Simon is maybe a little confused by the fudge that isn’t baked and the crackers that aren’t dessert and the fruitcake that hasn’t got any fruit in it, but he’s endlessly cheerful and complimentary about it all. He also looks unsurprised when Jamie confesses to having made the winner, and he winks and says, “Oh, dear, now they’ll say I played favorites.”
Jamie beams. “Bit o’despotism, innit?”
“Nepotism, Jamie,” Rebecca mutters under her breath. “Nepotism.”
“’Sides, Simon,” Roy grunts, producing a fork from somewhere and obtaining a bite of tart, “Everyone knows Keeley’s your actual favorite.”
Keeley laughs, high and nervous, and ushers them through the last bits. Once the cameras cut, Trent shamelessly follows Jamie on his way to go wrap his mother in a hug, high-fiving Phoebe along the way, leans in and offers, “Trent Crimm, I don’t believe we’ve met.” She manages to extract one hand enough to shake, because Jamie won’t quite let go of her. “I gather Jamie’s baking skills must come from your husband, so I can only assume the remarkable football skills come from you.”
She laughs and wriggles out from under Jamie’s clinging embrace. “Oh, I like you. And I love your book.”
“Oh, thank you.”
“Mummy, what are you doing here?”
Keeley elbows in next to Trent, Simon in tow, and starts, “So, funny story –” at the same moment Roy appears over Jamie’s shoulder and murmurs, “Merry Christmas.”
He’s preening, or close to it as Roy Kent could ever manage.
“It’s December tenth!” Jamie protests, fighting valiantly to keep a serious face.
“Yeah,” Roy loops his hands around the ends of Jamie’s candy cane striped Arsenal scarf. “But we’ve got to celebrate early. On account of you spending Christmas worrying about us murdering you on the pitch on Boxing Day.”
His response to Jamie’s answering scowl is to drag him backwards by the scarf and, “Oh, there they go,” Simon chuckles while Phoebe pops up at Keeley’s elbow and sighs, all long-suffering impatience, and demands, “Why are they always snogging?”
Ted sidles his way into the growing group, offers out a bowl of crackers to Phoebe, and says, “Well, Miss Phoebe, that is what we like to call positive reinforcement.”
Trent slides his glasses off his face, drags his fascinated stare away from where Roy’s got Jamie pinned against the judging table and is, indeed, snogging the daylights out of him, and muses, “I can’t quite figure out if I’ve got more questions now, or answers.”
“Yeah,” Ted smiles affably, “it does make some kinda sense, don’t it?”
Rebecca joins them with a last glass of wine, soaking fruit at the bottom like a sad sort of somewhat sangria, and grimaces, “If you say so. Wait,” she freezes with the glass halfway to her mouth – Keeley liberates it from her and drains half of it in a go, “You didn’t know? How did you not know?”
“Right,” Keeley coughs, “so Trent was touring his Richmond book and missed the ah – manager shagging his star player is a PR-slash-HR nightmare waiting to happen so Jamie’s moving to Arsenal surprise!... party.”
“Did it say that on the invite? I’d have rearranged my schedule if it’d said that on the invite.”
“And now he’s been working on the next book so he missed the end of summer watching Jamie play for another team really pushes Roy’s possessive buttons engagement!... party.”
Trent casts back. “I feel like that was phrased something like Dinner with the old crowd, you around? at the time, if I’m being honest.” And there’s really only one thing to be done. “Book canceled, I’m never leaving the country again. God forbid I make my excuses when one of you invites me to karaoke as a front for the wedding.”
Somewhere over his shoulder, Jamie exclaims, “Oh, that’s brill, can we –?”
“No,” Roy barks; Jamie makes a muffled squawk, and Phoebe pulls a face and goes back to her crackers.
“Just one last question,” Trent tells Keeley after her team has mostly wrapped up and everyone else is milling about chatting and sampling the night’s offerings. He can work back through most of the misunderstandings and talking past each other. What he hasn’t yet sorted is, “Why did Roy swap places?”
She hides a laugh behind her hand and asks, “Have you noticed Jamie’s arse?”
“I mean… I am only human.”
“…Okay, fair play,” she snorts. “But no, I mean – right now, have you seen Jamie’s bum?”
He looks to where Jamie is telling Ted and his parents some exuberant tale and, “Ah,” Trent notes the faint flour handprint on the seat of his trousers just below where Roy’s arm is curled around him, hand gripping possessively at his hip. “Indeed.”
“Been there since about five minutes in,” she laments. “It’ll be a nightmare in editing.”
~
@oikent
Congratulations on the win @babytartt it was a good APPLE tart
@babytartt
@oikent APPLES ARE FRUITS FFS
@oikent
@babytartt but the frangipane was the best part
@babytartt
FUCK OFF @oikent
@babytartt
@oikent oh frangipane was right there this whole time huh
@afcrichmond
@babytartt @oikent Oh Jamie.
~
Jamie’s bakeoff showing makes him the darling of the football world.
The festive friendly football fundraiser fete is a smashing success.
Roy and Jamie’s social media foreplay feud escalates until Boxing Day. Trent can’t decide if it’ll be neater if Richmond wins or if Arsenal does.
So naturally they wind up with the anticlimax of a 1-1 draw.
And when he receives an incongruously elegant handwritten invitation for a karaoke night in the spring, he pulls up his schedule and makes sure to block out a wide berth around the date and rearrange his travel accordingly.