Chapter Text
"Tremble for yourself, my man / You know that you have seen this all before."
-Mumford and Sons
.***.
Roy ran his idea by the other coaches. Not that he needed their permission, but while he had decades of being a soccer player under his belt the only coaching he'd done was for the rec league and, as much as he liked to act like it, Jamie perhaps needed slightly different treatment than he'd doled out to the little girls.
Ted watched the video thoughtfully. "You think stooping to this level is wise? Only there's a lot of carrot and stick mentality in this coaching game, but I've always been more of a fan of carrots and the occasional cake."
"Jamie's not eating cake at the moment," Roy pointed out. "And he won't until the end of the season, if the wanker knows what's good for him."
"Carrots still make a mighty fine snack, though," Ted pointed out.
"He doesn't need rewards. He needs consequences. Rules to follow. Try anything once, yeah? And his old coach said it worked like a charm."
Ted glanced over at Beard, who gave a trademark shrug. "Just another in the bag of tricks. If we gave Led Tasso a shot, might as well unleash whatever monstrosity this is."
Ted handed the phone back to Roy. "So you enjoyed the conference?"
"Being locked up in ugly rooms with old dickbags for two days?" Roy thought about it. The coaching conference had been Ted's idea, a few days of middling catering and panel discussions. Once Ted RSVP'd on Roy's behalf he'd received a dozen emails asking him to join this or that table conversation. He declined them all. What could he add to conversations about diets and training that the doctor-led discussions didn't have? The whole experience had reinforced something Roy was only just coming to grips with: being a footballer and a captain made him aware of what the players wanted from coaches. But it didn't necessarily prepare him for doing the things the players needed.
So when he was approached by a man who'd said he'd known Jamie back in the day of youth training, and that there was a particular tactic that seemed to work to put his sizable ego in check...and especially once he'd seen that priceless video. Well. How could Roy not have a bit of fun?
"Actually, it wasn't terrible," Roy admitted.
Coach Beard raised an eyebrow. Ted let out a whistle. "Well, look whose writing poetry over here. That's high praise indeed!"
"Fuck off," Roy muttered. He looked at the window into the locker room. It's amazing how he could spot the lads. How they walked, how they held themselves. Jamie didn't walk into the room. He sauntered, head bobbing to a song piping through those ridiculous headphones.
"Tartt!" Roy bellowed.
Obviously Jamie couldn't hear him. The music. The headphones. Sam went to catch the man's elbow but before he could a pencil came whipping out of the coaches' office, smacking Jamie square between the shoulder blades.
"Nice shot," Ted said.
"You're not the only one who's good at darts." Roy put his fingers to his lips and whistled. "Tartt!"
A chorus of childish "oohs!" were taken up around the locker room.
"What'd you do this time, Jamie?"
"All that training paying off yet, Ace?"
Jamie flipped them all the bird and took his sweet time getting to the coach's doorway. "What?"
Roy raised an eyebrow.
Jamie closed the door behind him, the movement not quite enough to hide him rolling his eyes. "What, Coach?"
"I had an interesting conversation with an old coach of yours this weekend, Tartt."
(Roy didn't know, okay? He didn't know that Jamie had been walking around like a man with a curse, that "an old coach" were the words that unlocked that particular spell. He didn't know but later on he would think back to this moment and remember the way Jamie closed his eyes, resigned. The way one hand went back to the doorknob, as if reminding himself of all the possible escapes. But Roy didn't know. Not yet.)
"He told me of some of his methods of keeping you humble out on the pitch. Had some videos and everything."
He held up his phone, a prop, and Jamie took an unexpected swipe at it. Roy still had the reflexes of a footballer, though, and pulled the phone back easily. "I was talking it over with the coaches here and they've given me their blessing to bring some of those methods here."
Jamie looked shocked. He'd kept his eyes on the phone but now lifted his gaze to Ted and Beard. Ted was smiling in his usual bemused way, but Beard was staring at Jamie intently, as if he could read all the ugliness there, just under the surface. "So...you all know? You all...there's videos? And you saw...?"
"Now, it's not tactics I use on many players myself," Ted admitted. "But it's the sort of thing that was done a lot in the States when I was growing up, isn't that right Coach Beard?"
Beard didn't even acknowledge his friend, but Ted went on by himself anyway. "Seemed like every other coach had a new style they wanted to try out. A little bit of indignity can go a long way in building character, that's what they always said."
Jamie's brow furrowed. "So it's...normal? These..." he tried to think of the words they were using. "These methods?"
"Never happened to me," Roy declared. "I would have knocked the teeth out of any coach that tried. And I definitely would have made sure there was no incriminating evidence after." He wiggled the phone again.
Jamie swallowed hard. "So, um. When do these methods start?"
Roy hadn't thought that far. Jamie wasn't really reacting to the video the way he'd assumed. Sure, being made to sing "I'm a Little Teapot" complete with hand gestures and movements was a little humiliating, but in the video at least Jamie had put on quite a serious performance, endearing enough to make the rest of his team laugh and clap at the end. Lately it had seemed to Jamie was getting too serious about it all, too snappy at the team. For Isaac the cure had been a reminder of childhood footy. For Jamie, Roy hoped, it would be a reminder that he didn't have to be serious to be taken seriously.
But now he was rethinking some things. "Why don't we do a private performance after practice? Just to check you still know all the moves?"
Jamie kept glancing at Beard and Ted. Throwing them helpless, anxious looks. "Does it...does it have to be with you? Only. I thought." He squeezed his eyes shut. "I thought we were getting on, now."
"Oh, it's not that big a deal, Jamie! Look, if you're going to be such a pussy about it maybe I'll try it out on Sam first, let you see how it's—"
"No!" Jamie yelped. He glanced out into the locker room. Poor Sam was a kid. "No, I'll do it. Don't rope anyone else in." He bit his lip. Ground out the last word. "Please."
"Roy, maybe we should think about this," Beard murmured.
Roy waved the worries away. "It'll be fine. We'll get some one-on-one practice in later, right Jamie? It won't take long for you to remember how it's done."
Jamie looked stricken but when he spoke his voice was surprisingly steady. "And you won't bother the others, right? Sam? He won't have to...?"
"As long as we get started today," Roy said. "This can stay just between us."
Jamie looked at Ted and Beard again. "O...okay."
Ted shrugged. "Try anything once. Who knows, if it works with Roy maybe Beard and I will start a similar program."
He glanced at his friend, who was still staring too hard at Jamie. "I doubt it," Beard said, which was as close to a dismissal as Jamie was likely to get. He couldn't help himself after that. He fled.
.
By the afternoon Jamie was actually in need of some kind of talking to. He'd swung wildly throughout practice, missing goals, hogging the ball, sneering at Will...but also sprinting over to Isaac after he fell hard in a slide, bowing his head as the gentle ribbing from teammates turned to annoyed remarks after two, three, four goals missed.
"Guess we'll see if the plan works," Ted muttered, "because that boy needs some sort of talking to."
But by the time practice was wrapping up, Roy was starting to second-guess the plan. Sure, singing a song to teammates might have worked when Jamie was ten or eleven, but with grown men would his attempt at levity lead to...well, anything at all?
Everything's worth trying once, Roy told himself as the locker room cleared out for the day. Sam stopped by the coach's office, asking Roy about some company or other that had reached out for sponsorships. "Only, after DubaiAir, I'm not sure if I want my image associated with anything at all."
Coach Beard sidled out the door, tapping Roy's arm as he left and saying, oddly, that he'd be next to his phone and next to Ted for the rest of the night if anything came up. Roy raised an eyebrow at the departure then turned back to Sam. "That's really more of a Keeley question, mate."
"I know marketing is a part of this, but it's a different thing when it's your face associated with a brand that could be monstrous."
"Even more of a reason to ask Keeley, her face is in more places than even she remembers." Roy shrugged and tried to think of something coach-like and meaningful. "Um. I guess go with your gut."
Sam grinned, lifting his shirt and pretending to inspect his midriff. "My gut says to sleep on it."
"Smart gut."
"Hey-o!" Jamie appeared in the doorway, still damp from the shower. "I thought—you said—"
"Sam's here on different business."
"And I was just leaving. Thanks for the advice, Coach." Sam glanced between the two and took a guess, shutting the door behind him. He was the last person to leave the locker room.
Jamie wasn't meeting Roy's gaze. "So, what, we're just doin' it 'ere?" Roy couldn't prove it but he suspected Jamie played up his accent around him and the other London blokes.
Roy crossed his arms. "I mean, I'd prefer to do it out on the field, but let's see what you've got here first."
Jamie swallowed hard, fists clenched at his side. Then he blew out a breath that sounded an awful lot like a murmured "fuck it" and fell neatly to his knees, one hand reaching for Roy's groin.
"What the fuck are you on to?" Roy grabbed Jamie's wrist and used it to drag the boy back to his feet. It happened that quickly, boom-boom, the swing between a normal day and Jamie kneeling, mouth inches from Roy's cock.
The player looked more confused than ever. "You said you—do you want me somewhere else?"
"I want a bloody explanation! You can't be that hard-up for action, Tartt. You grabbing everyone's cock now or am I just special?"
Jamie's face was ashen. He pulled his arm a few times before Roy got the hint and released his wrist. "I just...I don't understand...I..."
Roy didn't move to stop Jamie from bolting, but he did follow him out into the locker room, listening as the trainers slapped around the corner. As the back door opened and thudded back shut.