Chapter Text
Roy wakes up and immediately the state of his body hits him like a freight train. He’s sweat all the way through his shirt and feels the heat radiating off his body. Nausea rolls in his stomach and he dreads what will happen upon any movement. All Roy could hear was the pounding of his own heart and he was pretty sure it wasn’t supposed to be beating that fast. There was nothing Roy wanted to do more than just lay there and suffer. But his skin felt horrible and sticky and his mouth was weird and tacky. He needed to get up to at least got some water or something. Roy managed to roll so he good drop his good leg to the floor but even that usually trusty limb caved under him. Roy crashed to the floor and groaned as he rolled onto his back. Roy wasn’t one to cave to illness. He had worked through stomach bugs and head colds and one pretty spectacular training session with gall stones. But this, he felt like death warmed over. Roy fumbled up onto his bedside table knocking his book and his little clock and nearly the lamp onto the floor before his phone thudded down next to him. The letters on the screen were blurry but Roy’s leaden fingers managed to send Ted a message he hoped said that he wouldn’t be training today. Then luckily she was speed dial one, Roy managed to ring his sister. He pressed it onto speaker and dropped the phone by his head so he could curl up around his rebelling stomach. “Ruth I think I’m dying,” Roy hissed as soon as he heard what he hoped was his sister’s voice.
“Jesus Christ Roy!” Ruth muttered, even the low tones sending shooting pain through his head. “You shouldn’t have called me you should have called an ambulance,” she whispered, seeing Roy’s discomfort painted all over his huddled form.
“Fix this,” he hissed.
“Roy, love, you need to go to hospital,” Ruth sighed, pressing her fingers to the side of his neck to check his pulse as she did. Roy growled, but leaned into the comforting touch.
“Don’t you growl at me young man,” Ruth huffed a surprised laugh. “Your heart rate is well elevated, you’re clearly dehydrated, your pupils are shot and you’re shaking. Are you going to cooperate so I can drive you to A&E or am I calling an ambulance?” she had slipped into doctor mode and usually that would calm Roy’s heart but everything hurt so fucking much. He nodded. Ruth looked at him in surprise like she wasn’t really expecting him to agree to go to the hospital on the first try. That look of surprise then shifted to worry. “Ok lad then you’re going to need to work with me here. Thank god you sleep on the first floor and in pyjamas.”
Getting Roy into the car in his current state was hard going but with a lot of whining, growling and time spent he was eventually slumped in Ruth’s passenger seat. Nausea rolled in his gut but at the first gagging sound Ruth had pressed a hospital sick bowl into his hands and pushed the car into first in one smooth movement. The rumbling of the engine and the scratching of the cheap cardboard in his hands were the only things tethering him to coherency. The streetlights were blindingly bright and screwing his eyes shut only worked to worsen the feeling of impending vomit. “No I don’t know what’s caused it,” Ruth’s voice cut through Roy’s pained haze. Her frustration was palpable and whoever was on the other end of the phone was getting the brunt of it.
“Could it be a substance?” the tinny voice echoed around the car and Roy’s rattled brain.
“He barely drinks and doesn’t do any drugs anymore. His coach says all their players are accounted for and Phoebe and I are the only others he regularly interacts with,” she explained. Roy knew he was supposed to be being awake but his eyelids were so heavy. His eyelids would slump closed but then fly open again at the slightest movement sending a ripple of agony through him. It felt like his skin was on fire and every touch just sent that roiling feeling deeper and deeper.
Ruth and the other doctor’s voices faded in and out but before long they were in front of the hospital. Roy yelled and growled and squirmed as the light burned his head and the touch hurt everywhere else. It felt like hours as they poked and prodded and everything just hurt and none of this fucking touching was making anything hurt less and … “Roy you need to breathe. Stop fighting them they are trying to help,” Ruth begged as Roy’s good leg flailed out again when the doctor pressed on his midriff.
“Hurts,” Roy gritted out through clenched teeth.
“I know I know. You’ll have some painkillers soon,” she tried to soothe but Roy’s body wouldn’t listen. Spasms kept trembling through him at every touch. It shouldn’t hurt like this. There was no explainable reason why his sister’s hands should hurt this much.
“What the fuck is wrong with him?” Ruth yelled, the frustration and desperation in her voice sending a lance of pain through Roy’s mind to compliment the pain of everything else.
“He’s overheating.”
Roy’s consciousness drifted in and out as doctors got to work on trying to cool him down. The painkillers were dulling every sense but he skull still throbbed and every limb felt leaden. Hands were poking and prodding but he had nothing left to give to fight their ministrations.
“Roy? I need you to listen? Can you hear me?” Ruth’s voice cut through the fog and pulled him back to reality. Everything was cold. It felt like when he spent so long in an ice bath that his skin tingled and he couldn’t feel his fingers. He tried to move his mouth, distantly there was a drawn out groan. Maybe he was underwater, maybe that’s why everything was so weird. That’s why everything was distance, out of reach. “Have you taken any food or drinks from anyone in the last day?” Why would Roy have taken any food or drinks from anyone? He was an adult, he cooked for himself. He didn’t even have a kebab because he had Phoebe. Ruth knew that. Why was she asking him stupid questions? He was too tired for this. He tried to shake his head but something was stopping it from moving. Why couldn’t he move? “Think Roy,” Ruth pleaded with him.
“Club,” he slurred. He had eaten at the club and had some of the sports mixes that Nate put together. But he couldn’t have been poisoned at Nelson Road. The facilities were shit but not that shit. Nate didn’t like him but he didn’t hate him enough for murder and if it had been something at the club they would have all been hit, Roy didn’t have anything there that was not shared.
“Anywhere else?” Ruth continued to push. Roy could see tears in her eyes but they were blurry with his own. Everything hurt. He had Phoebe that night, they read the fucking Lasso book.
The fucking Lasso book.
Nate.
Jamie fucking Tartt.
He knew where he had been drugged.
“Club,” Roy slurred out.
“We know Roy. But it wasn’t at Nelson Road,” Ruth’s voice cracked.
“No. Club. Music. Jamie.” Why weren’t they understanding.
“You went out to a club with Jamie?” Ruth frowned. Ok maybe that’s why they weren’t understanding, it was a wild situation without context. There was no way that Roy would have willingly gone out partying with Jamie Tartt.
Roy forced his head into a nod but the world started spinning around him as soon as his head started to move.
“His heart rate’s dropping again!” one of the nameless voices echoed around the empty box that was his head right now.
“I’ll go find Jamie. This better be right,” Ruth shouted. Roy whined as the pressure of her hand in his left. If he felt like this then where was Jamie and what state was he in?
Ted hung up the phone with Roy’s sister and immediately cornered Isaac. “Where’s Jamie?” there was no time for mincing words or dancing around the problem. Two of his new players had got themselves into a right old situation and there would be time for having a pow wow about that later when they were both in hospital beds not with one of them roaming around this facility somewhere.
“How would I know?” Isaac shrugged and gestured to Jamie’s bags, “he’s probably here somewhere.”
“Any of you boys seen Jamie?” Ted called out over the low thrum of players getting ready. Generally murmuring of confusion before Nate slowly raised his hand.
“He pushed past me on his way out to the field about half an hour before everyone else arrived.”
Ted didn’t even wait for the answer to finish before he was running out of the door. Beard was beating him to it, that man did always have the legs of a gazelle, and made it out onto the pitch before Ted wheezed his way down the tunnel. “He’s got to be …” Ted gasped, trying to inflate his lungs as he scanned the pitch.
“There!” Beard called out, pointing at the corner flag at the other side of the pitch. A bag of balls was toppled over on its side with some of its contents already in the net. But slightly obscured by the bag of balls, was a leg. “Call our security. Get them to show the ambulance to the pitch,” Beard yelled, setting off at a run again. If Nate was right then that meant Jamie had been out here for a couple of hours at least. Dr Kent had said that if they hadn’t got to Roy in time then there could have been some serious problems. His mind rolled back over each of her words. Brain Damage. Heart Failure. Seizures. Reduced Kidney Function. Ted skidded into the most depressing knee slide he had every completed as soon as he was at Jamie’s side. He was out cold, curled up with his hands resting over his stomach. His head lolled to the side with a trail of dried vomit under his head and a trail of bile crusty from the corner of his mouth along his cheek. Beard had his hand on the side of Jamie’s neck and one holding his wrist.
“He’s alive.”
Ted crumpled, the relief coursed through him. He hadn’t known any of these lads for long but, god, if one of them died on him he didn’t know what he would do. “We need to move him?”
“We just need to wait for the ambulance,” Beard stated, nodding to his lit up phone on the floor where 999 were still on the line.
“We need that ambulance,” Ted hissed, not necessarily at anyone other than the heavens. Only God had the ability to make the Richmond traffic move quicker. Ted was lapsed. He had been ever since his father’s death. He hadn’t seen the purpose of bargaining with a deity that saw fit to plague a wonderful man with the level of self doubt that caused him to turn to a gun to solve it. However in that moment as the young man, that admittedly Ted hadn’t put that much effort into getting to know, laid unconscious in a pile of his own vomit Ted round himself turning to anybody that might be listening. They needed that ambulance. They needed someone who was more use than just rubbing the kid’s back and checking his heart didn’t stop.
The sirens were faint. But Ted could hear them. He wasn’t imagining it, he couldn’t be imagining it for Jamie’s sake. In those stretching endless moments between finding Jamie and now Ted had run through every hypothetical. Every what if had flashed through his mind like a dream sequence in an indie film. The proportion of them that had turned out good was low, far lower than Ted’s heart rate would have liked it to be. So he latched onto the best outcome that he could think off. He sat there with the projector behind his eyes playing through the ambulance arriving and the paramedics looking like buff male swimsuit models leaping out of it. They pushed Ted out of the way of Jamie, plunged a syringe into Jamie’s chest and the lad woke up with an ethereal glow with no signs of what had happened.
That wasn’t really what happened.
What really happened is as the ambulance drove onto the pitch, leaving grooves that Nate would be moaning about for days after this, and as soon as the wheels touched turf Beard tensed. “He’s stopped breathing.”
“Help! Over here!” Ted was yelling before his brain even caught up. It was like he was untethered from his body. He could feel himself waving and shouting and the breath hitching in his chest but he also couldn’t. There was static on the line. The paramedics were running and then they were there. Ted was pushed out of the way and sprawled backwards onto his back as they tended to Jamie. Jamie who wasn’t breathing. The medical jargon was washing over him like a tsunami while they got to work. The vomit by Jamie’s head shifted from the murky yellow through orange to a reddish tinge and Ted prayed that it was just his mind playing tricks. This wasn’t Kansas. Jamie didn’t have a gun in his hand. But little Theodore Lasso felt just as helpless as he did that day.
“He’s back with us,” one of the paramedics slumped back onto his heels with his hand pressed to the side of Jamie’s neck. And just like that Ted could breathe again. The whole world came cascading in around him like a barrier had been lifted. “Let’s get him moved,” the other paramedic called out and then Jamie was disappearing into the back of the van. Ted wanted to call out for them to wait for him, so that he could go to hospital with Jamie and make sure the kid was alright. But when had he earnt that? Jamie didn’t even like Ted, why would Jamie want him at his bedside now. As Ted was deliberating, his window of opportunity closed leaving Beard and Ted sat on the pitch with an army of footballers inside that were ready to train.
Training was cancelled.
At the hospital it was a mess. Ted hadn’t been able to focus and according to Higgins Jamie’s emergency contact hadn’t been reachable. He was sure that Jamie would rather Ted than no one in his corner.
“Coach Lasso?”
Ted turned ready to bat of a fan who wanted a picture or an autograph. Instead of that he was met with a confused expression that was a mirror of his own confused expression. There was something familiar about this woman. She was frazzled, hair that seemed to be previously scrapped back into a ponytail was marred with flyaways and she sported deep bags under her eyes.
“Did Roy call you?” she asked and it dawned on Ted.
“Roy’s sister,” he whispered, clearly louder than he wanted to when she nodded.
“Sorry yes, Ruth that’s me,” she offered her hand for a brisk shake.
“Pleasure’s all mine. I’m here about Roy and Jamie. Have you managed to get anything else about their condition?”
Ruth shook her head. They brought Jamie in and have managed to put them in a shared room to try treatment but kicked me out then,” she explained, rubbing a tired hand over her eyes.
“Treatment?” Ted felt his spirits lift and then fall at Ruth’s shrug.
The two of them decided to stick together and wait until the doctor came to usher them into a private room. “It’s called bindweed,” he began as soon as the door clicked closed behind them. Ted’s heart tightened at the name of the drug that had nearly taken two of their own from them but even with that thrum of discomfort he appreciated the briskness of the doctor’s explanation. Roy’s sister stood to Ted’s right, just out of arm’s reach not that he wanted to. Her demeanour was closed off, like her brother’s often was. Did it run in the family or was it just the horrific situation they had both been thrust into that morning? Her arms crossed over her chest tightly as the doctor continued. “It’s a new date rape drug that has been hitting the streets. It works that when one tablet is dissolved in a liquid. The next two people to drink it become connected together.”
“And someone put it in Jamie’s drink. Jamie and Roy both drank it?” Ted frowned. That would mean that someone was trying to hurt Jamie. Someone in that nightclub had got access to Jamie’s drink and wanted him to either have to be connected to them or die. He had got incredibly lucky that Roy had been there that night, even though Ted had no idea why Roy had been there and drunk Jamie’s drink that night.
“That’s our working theory,” the doctor nodded. “There’s a few experimental cures but none are close to human trials yet.”
“Then what now?” Ruth asked the question that was stuck in Ted’s throat. The room was getting smaller with every word from the doctor. Hopelessness was creeping in at the seams and the edges of his vision. He had seen what this drug had done to Jamie and now there was no cure. Were they going to die? Was Ted going to lose two of his players, those two lads he was trying to bond with the most?
“The only way to alleviate the symptoms is to be in regular direct contact with the other person. The further you stray or the longer you go without contact then the worse the symptoms get. We’ve got them now sharing a larger hospital bed and soft restraints ensuring that they remain in skin to skin contact to aid in their recovery.”
Ruth scoffed as Ted’s eyes widened. “Well they are going to hate that,” she laughed, manic in her mix of tension and relief.
“Jamie would not have agreed to that,” Ted whispered.
“Unfortunately at this stage that is the only way to ensure they can recover,” the doctor flicked through his notes, clearly not understanding why this was going to shortly be a major problem for everyone in the near vicinity. Because this was exactly what Ted had been warned against doing. He had thought about forcing them to room together, locking them in a closet together to try and get them to bond and had explicitly been told that it would lead to explosions not reconciliations. Now they were about to tell them to remain within touching distance or they would die? Ted wasn’t sure that Roy wouldn’t choose the second option.
“For how long?” Ted finally regained use of his vocal chords to choke out the question.
“About two weeks.”
One of them was going to die. Roy would kill Jamie. By the end of two weeks together, Roy was going to have killed Jamie. But it looked like they didn’t have a choice.
Ruth had to go pick up her daughter from a friends and so left Ted to keep an eye on their boys, a responsibility he was pretty sure he didn’t actually want. Jamie thankfully looked more alive than he did on the pitch of Nelson Road that morning. His cheeks had some colour in them now but that colour skill looked painted on. He was rigidly still, arm laid at his side. And there sat the cuffs. They were wide and soft Velcro and looked like the restraints that you put on someone going through a mental health crisis. There was one around their forearms and one up near the shoulder. The two footballers were well and truly pinned together, for better or for worse. Ted was alone with the beeping of the machines and the slow rise and fall of both Jamie and Roy’s chests the only things reminding him that his charges were still alive not on their way to morgue transport. Ted would stay. He would stay until he wasn’t needed anymore. Those two had already been through a lot today and so he would do whatever he could do to bring comfort.
Jamie’s first word when he came to was a whined, “please” that broke Ted’s heart. He looked like he had gone five rounds with a bulldozer and was tense with discomfort. Roy tensed as Jamie shifted next to him but remained in a much needed sleep.
“Hey Jamie. It would be good to see your eyes lad,” Ted tried to coax Jamie to full wakefulness as the young man’s brow furrowed and lips twisted in discomfort.
His next words were still pained but a lot more familiar. “Fuck off Lasso,” Jamie croaked as his eyes creeped open.
“That’s more like it,” Ted smiled.
“What the fuck’s going on? I feel like I’ve been hit by a truck,” Jamie groaned. He moved his hand to try and rub at his eyes but his hand wouldn’t move. He tilted his head and flexed his fingers where they were interlocked with Roy’s. “What the,” this time it was real confusion as the grogginess started to fade away.
“It’s complicated Jamie but it’s necessary for you both,” Ted leapt to his feet and pressed his hand onto Jamie’s free forearm as he was about to reach other.
“This is fucking violating,” Jamie squeaked, writhing weakly to try and do anything to dislodge the two soft cuffs holding his and Roy’s arm together. Ted had warned them. He had told the doctors that Jamie wouldn’t agree to this.
“I know I know. But you were drugged. Jamie you died and staying close to Roy is the only thing keeping the two of you alive right now,” Ted rambled as he tried to explain everything in this insanity to the rapidly tiring, writhing in place Jamie.
Jamie blinked up at Ted. “You’re fucking with me right?” he mutters as he slumped back into the hospital bed. “This all is some elaborate prank to get back at me for it all. Something to go, hey you and Roy need to be best buddies or something.” Jamie’s eyes were tiring but he wasn’t stopping.
“This isn’t a prank Jamie. You died earlier. When you were feeling rough and for some reason went out onto the pitch, which is a conversation for another day, you died,” Ted’s voice increased in volume until he was shouting through the pounding in his chest.
“I, what?” what colour there was in Jamie’s face drained out as he stammered.
“You and Roy got drugged at the club last night,” Ted tried to explain again in the period respite from Jamie’s hostility.
“When Roy headbutted Colin?” Jamie frowned.
“Roy headbutted Colin?” Ted questioned but then shook his head. “That’s a hoverboard thought we can explore later. But at the nightclub when he finished your drink you both got drugged. That drug means you two will feel better when you are close and in physical contact.”
“Fucking what,” Roy snarled, causing both Jamie and Ted to startle. He was still laid like a vampire in a coffin but now had both of his eyes open. His voice sounded like sandpaper on the way out and his eyes didn’t seem to be able to focus on anything. But both boys were awake. Ted did not want to be the person here to deal with this.
“You were both drugged and now you have to be as close as conjoined twins for the next two weeks,” Ted blurted out.
“I’d rather fucking die,” Roy snarled.
“Ain’t peachy for me either you old fuck,” Jamie bit back with an accompanying glare you could melt metal.
“If I have to spend more than 90 minutes anywhere near him I’ll murder him,” Roy stated, no hint of exaggeration anywhere. Ted fully believed that Roy was being serious, and slowly gulped at the tension.
“Having me around full time’ll cause his heart to give out,” Jamie huffed. Roy’s hand was already migrating slowly over to undo the restraint but Ted was a fast draw on the nurse button.
“Mr Kent, Mr Tartt. Good to see you both awake,” the doctor smiled walking in with one of the nurses.
“What the fuck is this about physical contact?” Roy coughed out.
“Ah yes,” the doctor sighed. “The drug you have both been dosed with has a lifetime of about two weeks and the only way to alleviate the symptoms is with close physical contact. If you do not then the symptoms you experienced this morning will return,” Roy’s hand stopped over the restraints as the doctor spoke. “I wish there was something else I could offer to you but there isn’t,” the doctor added as Roy started to rumble a growl.
“Fuck no.”
“Your sister unfortunately said that might be the response and so told me to say the following,” the doctor unfolded a piece of notepaper from his pocket and cleared his throat, “Roy Jerome Kent, whatever this is between you and Tartt is not worth fucking dying over. Get your priorities right idiot or I’ll come and kill you myself.” The doctor folded the bit of paper back up and tucked it in his pocket with a hum.
“Well that certainly ain’t how I would have phrased it but in the sentiment is true,” Ted commented.
“Shut the fuck up Lasso,” the bed laden footballers both yelled.
Ted rocked back on his chair and did what was asked. He was able to tell when his help was not needed.
“Fine we’ll do it,” Roy sighed, closing his eyes tiredly.
“Like fuck?” Jamie shouted, brow furrowing in disbelief. “You don’t make the calls here grandad!”
“Yes I do. If you want to kill yourself then do it on your own time. I’ll watch, I’ll even help,” Roy snarled, “but you ain’t taking me with you.”
“Living with you might just kill me,” Jamie muttered under his breath.
“Wouldn’t we be so lucky but we’re listening to the doctors. Two fucking weeks then I can go back to dreaming of drowning you in the ice bath,” Roy shook his head, words harsh and biting. Ted probably should stop this. He could hear all the reasonable things to say in his head but none of them made it past his lips.
“Looking forward to it,” Jamie stuck his tongue out to a growl from Roy.
“Excellent. We want to observe you both for a few more waking hours but then you can head home to recuperate,” the doctor smiled and bid them farewell for now leaving Ted with Roy and Jamie alone again. This time the oppressive weight in the room was hostility not worry. Roy and Jamie continued glaring at each other even though their audience was reduced. Maybe this was the opportunity for the two of them to bond … who was Ted kidding? He gave Roy one day before he headbutted Jamie. It was going to be a long two weeks for everyone.