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Roy realises, when he pulls into the car park at 3:57 in the morning and sees Jamie's car already there, that he knew it would be. He's surprised by his own lack of surprise, his—he wrinkles his nose—faith in the kid. He fucking believed in him, didn't he. Sickening.
He turns off his engine and says, "Hey Siri, remind me to make Phoebe swear a blood oath that if I ever try to give her one of those fucking army toys she'll suffocate me with a pillow in my sleep."
No reply. Right, last week he called Nate a fucking incontinent baby man in a voice note and then immediately got served an ad for nappies and disabled Siri in a fit of rage against the scourge of surveillance capitalism. Forgot about that.
*
Jamie is waiting for Roy in the gym, wearing his kit and practically vibrating with tension. His hair is loose and fluffy, like he's skipped whatever slime he normally puts in it, and his skin looks a bit more pallid than usual. Roy is extremely tempted to investigate the question of whether he wears some kind of makeup on a regular basis, but he's got a tone to set here.
"Tartt!" he barks. "How much sleep did you get?"
Jamie jumps at the sound of his name, even though he saw Roy come in. "Erm... about three hours?"
"Why's that? Stayed up late at Sam's restaurant drinking with the lads?"
Jamie shakes his head. "I went home soon as you did. Tried to get to sleep early, just... couldn't."
"Well, try again tonight," Roy commands. He turns around and heads for the video room. "Keep up."
"I'm with you, Coach," Jamie says from just behind him, startling Roy slightly. He hadn't expected Jamie to hop to it so quickly.
He gestures Jamie to a seat in front of the big screen and plugs in the USB drive he brought from home. He also got only a few hours of sleep after spending hours lining up these clips, but Jamie doesn't need to know that. He brings up the first one on the screen.
"Zava scores a lot of goals," he begins, then narrows his eyes at Jamie's wrinkled nose. "Oi! Are you gonna listen, or are you gonna be a little bitch?"
"I didn't say nothing!" Jamie protests.
"Not with your mouth. The rest of your face better get its shit together, do you hear me?"
Jamie sets his jaw. "Yes, Coach."
"Now pay attention. Zava scores a lot of goals, but he doesn't score every chance he's got. If he did, we'd be winning every game twenty to one. Remember I said sometimes you should be a prick, when it's appropriate?"
Jamie nods, eyebrows furrowing at the frozen frame on the screen. He's probably noticed that it isn't from a goal.
"Zava's a prick all the fucking time. Anytime he's got a choice between passing or shooting, he shoots. And no one's going to tell him not to, because he scores enough to get away with it. Watch this." He rolls the clip, and pauses it just before Zava takes the shot. "What are his options here?"
"Take the shot or pass to Dani," Jamie says immediately.
"Do you remember what he did?"
"Took the shot, keeper stopped it."
"Right," says Roy. "So if you were in that situation, what do you think you should do?"
Jamie considers it for a moment, frowning. "Feels like you want me to say pass, since it didn't go in, but I don't think... if I'm being honest, I'd still shoot. I think it was the right play."
"Good," says Roy. Jamie raises his eyebrows, and Roy scoffs. "Who do you think I am, fucking Lasso? I told you, sometimes you've got to be a prick. Now watch this one." He clicks forward to the next clip.
Jamie watches intently. "He should have passed to me."
"No, he shouldn't, because he's fucking Zava. But in his position you should pass, correct." Roy clicks forward again. "Strap in, those were the easy ones."
They spend half an hour going through all the clips. Jamie really gets into it, narrating his thought processes out loud before coming to each conclusion, and he actually manages to change Roy's mind about one (not that Roy admits it—he just pretends Jamie's answer was the one he'd had in mind already). It's fucking fun, is what it is, and Roy is looking forward to going through game tape to find more clips for next time.
After they're done with that, he leads Jamie out to the mats and guides him through a longer stretch routine than he would normally do before training. Roy takes the opportunity to get his knee physio out of the way, keeping an eye on Jamie to make sure he's following instructions. He is; he's being remarkably cooperative, for once.
Then they head out onto the training pitch with a bag of balls and Roy says, "Do a somersault."
That surprises Jamie out of his unquestioning obedience. "What?"
"Somersault." Roy snaps his fingers impatiently.
Jamie, bewildered, kneels down and does an awkward somersault on the grass. As soon as he's on his back, Roy throws a ball at him.
The ball bounces off Jamie's shin, and he sits up. "What the fuck?"
"Somersault, then kick the ball in the net. Try again."
Scowling, Jamie does another somersault. This time he manages to kick the ball, but misses the net. "Shit," he mutters, and goes again without needing to be told.
Roy keeps him at it until he's looking a little green around the gills, then switches to bicycle kicks and scorpion kicks for a while, then makes him spin around in circles kicking balls into the net without stopping. Then it's back indoors for yoga.
"This ain't exactly what I was expecting, Coach," Jamie says from Upavistha Konasana, his face pressed against the mat. "I thought it would be more... laps and weights."
Roy leans on his elbows, irrationally annoyed by the entirely predictable fact that Jamie can bend further than he can. "You've already got a strength and conditioning plan, which I assume you're following."
"I am," Jamie assures him quickly.
"That shit's easy to overdo, and you don't need me for it. Makes more sense to focus on the subtleties. Flexibility, balance, proprioception, rare situations, strategy and skills. Teaching you how to be a more judicious prick. Break."
Jamie sits up and reaches for his water bottle, his nose a little pink from pressing against the mat. "What's yoga got to do with being a prick?"
"A more judicious, bendier prick," Roy amends, and Jamie sprays water everywhere laughing.
*
Jamie's behaviour changes dramatically after they start doing the one-on-one training sessions. He used to be such a brash little bitch when he and Roy played together, and since his return to Richmond he's been more of a whiny little bitch, but now he's hardly acting like a little bitch at all. Roy doesn't know what to do with it.
"Is it just me, or has Tartt been almost tolerable lately?" he asks one day in the coaches' office. "Fucking weird."
No one says anything for a minute, and Roy has mentally moved on to planning next week's drills when Beard says, "Roy, everything that kid has ever done was to get your attention."
"What?" Roy glances at Jamie through the window to the dressing room. Jamie catches his eye and smiles a little. Roy looks away, disgruntled. "What are you on about?"
Beard makes that face that means he's done saying what he wanted to say and it's not his problem if he hasn't been properly understood. Roy respects him for it, and also would very much like to fucking punch him.
*
The puzzle pieces don't truly snap together until Jamie asks Roy for advice on his urination schedule.
"Last two games I've really had to go towards the end, is there anything I could do about that?"
Roy is halfway through his knee physio, supervising Jamie's stretching. He pauses a moment to absorb the question. "You... want me to tell you when to piss?"
Jamie shrugs a little defensively. "Or when to drink water, if that would help. Or... salt or something? I don't know, that's why I'm asking."
Roy chews on it while he's putting Jamie through his paces on the pitch. He keeps remembering Keeley sarcastically texting him is it okay if I go pee? when he was pushing his opinions on her too much, before they even got together. She got more and more like that towards the end, getting all tetchy anytime he tried to suggest she might be working too hard or reminded her about an overdue oil change or had anything at all to say about the way she lived her life.
Back in the gym, as Jamie is getting started on his yoga, Roy says, "If I gave you a schedule of when to piss, would you really follow it?"
Jamie glances up. "Don't know if I could, but I'd give it a go."
"Why?" Roy demands.
Jamie thinks about that for a moment as he settles into his next pose. "I guess... because it would mean you thought about it. You were thinking about me, and what's best for me."
"Attention," Roy mutters under his breath. Beard was fucking right, wasn't he. Fuck.
He watches Jamie go through the yoga routine. He doesn't need much guidance anymore, he's listened and he remembers what he's supposed to do. Thinking back, he always has listened to Roy. Even when he was only listening so he could do the exact opposite of what Roy wanted, he still listened.
As Jamie is wrapping up his last pose, Roy says, without really realising what he's saying, "What would you think if I told you we were going to Marbella for six weeks during the offseason?"
Jamie flinches, and Roy wishes he'd thought twice before speaking, or even once. He knew the six-week holiday issue was entirely his fault. It was too much, it would be too much for anyone, he's the one who's weird for wanting so much.
"Is this a test?" Jamie asks. "Some kind of... psychologic training, like?"
Roy tries to think of some way to walk it back without losing his dignity, to no success. He's pretty sure his dignity is fucked.
Before he can come up with anything to say, Jamie meets his eyes straight on with determination. Roy can tell, somehow, that making eye contact right now is hard for him, but he doesn't waver.
"I want that," he says. "I want it so much that it... it's gonna really fucking hurt when you tell me you didn't mean it." He swallows hard.
"Fuck," Roy says, at a reasonable volume representing some genuine personal growth for him, and he turns around and goes to hide in his office like a fucking coward.
He doesn't turn on any lights, just slides down the wall to sit on the floor, even though it's going to be hell on his knee to get up. He's going to just... wait here until the others start turning up, he decides. Maybe give Trent Crimm a fright when he comes in, that'd be a laugh.
Right. He's got to fucking think about this like a fucking adult.
It's the exact opposite of Keeley, isn't it. He's spent a lot of time ruminating on all that, trying to sort out where to put the blame, and he's come to the irritatingly mature conclusion that it really wasn't anyone's fault. They wanted different things. He wanted them to share a life, and she wanted them to have two separate lives that intersected now and then. He wanted to shower her with attention, all the time, and she wanted peace and quiet and space.
Jamie hates space. He fills space with anything he's got, with jokes and boasts and insults and arguments and swagger and drama and complaints. He wants nothing more desperately than to be showered with attention.
Roy's attention, fuck you very much Beard. He wants Roy's attention.
*
Roy has been sitting on his office floor in the dark for at least twenty minutes when a tentative voice says from the next room, "Coach? Are we done for today?"
Roy squeezes his eyes shut. He hoped Jamie would have left, gone home to eat breakfast and put on his hair slime before the start of normal training, but he can't actually send him away. "Come in here," he says, and Jamie does.
He sits down next to Roy, mirroring his posture. "Did I do something wrong?" he asks softly.
"Of course you didn't—" Jesus Christ. "No, you didn't do anything wrong. I'm just having a fucking feeling, and I'm bad at it."
"Oh." Jamie hesitates. "A feeling... about me?"
He sounds so fucking vulnerable. It's nothing like the way Keeley used to respond to Roy's feelings, like she was happy to listen but also perfectly happy to bounce off and do something else if he wasn't ready to talk about it yet. Jamie sounds like he's holding his breath for Roy to answer. Like it really fucking matters.
"Yeah," Roy says finally. "A feeling about you."
Jamie doesn't say anything else. He's holding still, waiting. Listening.
"Fuck," Roy mutters. "There's probably fucking... regulations or some—"
"No," Jamie interrupts, the hesitation abruptly gone. "There aren't. I've checked."
Roy looks at him, or tries to. It's dark, and his eyesight isn't what it used to be, but Jamie's face is close and his eyes are glinting. Roy lifts a hand to stroke his jaw.
"You've checked, have you?" he says, a bit dry, a bit panicked. "You've been having a feeling about me too, then?"
Jamie laughs like he's trying not to. "Roy," he says, "I've been having every feeling about you."
"Fuck," Roy whispers, because what the hell else is he going to say before kissing Jamie Tartt.