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Jamie knows he’s…challenging to deal with.
He’s hard to handle.
Has been since he was a wee lad who couldn’t stay still unless he was watching footie on the telly and waiting to see if the players managed to pull off a Hail Mary in the final minute.
He exhausted his mother constantly.
His father never even bothered to try; just looking at Jamie was enough to tire him out.
His teachers were constantly telling him to sit down, sit still, be quiet, Jamie, for Christ’s sake.
Jamie tried for a long time not to be too much, but he could never quite manage it.
At first, the adults had tried to teach him, tried to be patient, but it hadn’t lasted long.
Only Mummy wanted to try over and over and over.
Jamie stopped trying when they did. Turned into a right little asshole who only loved one thing.
Football.
Football is life after all.
And Jamie loves football.
It’s the only thing he really loves, aside from Mummy.
The first flowers take root when he’s only twelve. He’s already been playing in the Under 12s for a few years, and he’s supposed to move up this year. He watches Roy Kent led Chelsea to the World Cup and then spends eight straight hours trying to perfect his game-winning kick.
He comes down with the flu the very next day, and his father hits him for the first time. Furious that he’s too ill to play in the final match of the year.
Mummy kicks James out that day, and Jamie doesn’t say a word about the strange feeling in his chest.
It has nothing to do with his Da. Jamie’s young, but he’s not so young that he doesn’t realize his father’s love is anything but healthy. Strangely enough, he struggles more with his feelings towards his father as an adult than he ever does as a wee lad.
No.
It’s football that sparks the first seed. Ragged robin. The adoration the players get from the world sparks the second. Daffodil.
That one’s not so bad, though. It’s respect. High regard. A desire to imitate. To earn even a fraction of the love Kent gets just for walking onto the bloody pitch.
Jamie’s chest is a testament to his one true love.
Football.
His mother is thrilled.
Well, first she’s terrified, and then she’s angry, and then she’s relieved once Jamie convinces her he wasn’t carrying on some epic secret romance in primary.
There’s a brief period where she wants him to stop trying to play professionally, worried his body won’t take the strain as the roots grow.
He’s too young for surgery at first, and by the time he’s not, the roots are so deep that surgery can’t guarantee anything.
Jamie doesn’t care either way. Even as they take root and dig deeper, Jamie never loses his breath during a match.
He hacks up chunks of plants and petals on days when they play badly and he gets yelled at by the coaches, but the moment he steps back out onto the field, it clears.
He’s never once coughed up anything or had any kind of attack on the pitch.
That doesn’t mean he’s stupid enough to tell anyone. Only Mummy knows, and the doctors who treated him initially have all retired or moved on.
Jamie works his ass off to play football. To make Mummy’s long hours worth it.
He gives her his first paycheck, even though she tries to refuse.
He tries to give her the second too, but she tells him he can’t live at home forever. His teammates will never let him live it down. She wants him to get out, get away, have fun because there’s still an off chance that one day the plants in his chest are going to grow so big that he won’t be able to cough them up and survive.
“You need to enjoy every damn day,” she tells him. “Live them to the fullest. Do whatever makes you happy, my sexy little baby.” There were a lot of unhappy days in Mummy’s life, and even though she won’t talk about it with him, he knows she’s determined that Jamie won’t be stuck with the same.
It’s proof of just how much she loves him, so Jamie does as he’s told.
He buys the clothes he likes, no matter how much they cost, eats the best food he can find, drinks whatever he fucking likes, and leaves everything he has on the pitch.
He sleeps with whoever interests him, and Keeley’s a fucking delight. She’d the first-person Jamie considers telling about the roots in his chest.
The only real disappointment of this period of his life is meeting Roy Kent, and the less said about that, the better.
But then, just like everything in Jamie’s life since the American Cowboy showed up, it goes to shit.
Ted Lasso doesn’t even know Jamie, and he’s ruining his life.
He wants to walk away, but every second he’s not on the pitch is painful.
No matter what Jamie does, it seems like it’s never right, and he starts losing everything one by one.
And to make things worse, Roy fucking Kent is there the entire time.
It’s just a crush, and honestly, it’s mostly gone after he spends ten bloody minutes with the prick.
But he was Jamie’s first hero, the one who made him recognize his true love, so it still stings.
He loses Keeley, and by that point, he’s not even surprised.
Everything Jamie worked for slowly slips away, no matter how hard he tries to hold on.
In fact, the harder he holds on, the faster they slip away.
Jamie doesn’t exactly take it well. The roots in his chest expand, slipping into his bones and making their way into every corner of him. Jamie can feel it when he’s not on the pitch, like a sliver of glass just under the skin that’s impossible to get at and just as impossible to ignore.
He goes back to Man City, faces his father for the first time in years, and spends the first few days in his hometown bent over a toilet trying to clear his throat enough to breathe. He has to pull a few stems out with his fingers when they get struck, and it’s the most uncomfortable feeling he’s ever had.
When he shows up for training, his throat is so raw he can barely speak, and Pep makes him see the docs before he’ll let him on the field.
Playing for Man City actually helps. Away from Lasso and whatever the hell was happening in Richmond.
He avoids his father as best he can, but he still walks away with a few bruises that are easy enough to write off.
Then Roy bloody Kent happens.
Richmond is a shit team compared to Man City.
No matter how you measure it, they don’t measure up. Jamie’s not being mean when he says it; he’s being honest.
Maybe they win in idealism, but that’s it, and Roy bloody Kent is an idiot for taking on Jamie on the pitch.
Jamie’s already got a chest full of roots. Blossoms resting just under his skin. Filled to bursting on the bad days.
Ragged-robin and daffodil enough to choke a lesser man.
On the bus home, Da’s voice ringing in his ears, Jamie feels a new seed take root.
Roy bloody Kent sparks the third with that stupid rundown.
Mezereon.
The fucker.
He ends his career and Jamie’s life in one go, because no amount of football and the adoration of fans will calm the growth of the damn weed.
It’s actually his mother’s favorite flower, which just adds insult to injury.
Jamie kind of loses his mind after that.
He gets rid of everything he loved before, trying to find something new to calm the clawing in his chest.
He finds nothing, and by the time he’s finished on the island, he can barely breathe.
Then there’s a new complication.
One Jamie honestly never, ever considered.
Some bird Jamie doesn’t remember shows up at his house one day, carrying an itty-bitty baby that she claims is Jamie’s.
The only reason Jamie doesn’t slam the door in her face is because he honestly can’t say it’s not at least remotely possible. He had a moment after Keeley dumped him, and he definitely had a long moment after fucking Roy ran him down on the pitch.
And she’s an outright bitch, so she’s definitely the type he’s been going for lately.
Jamie just…Jamie does not remember.
DNA proves she’s right, and she leaves after emptying Jamie’s bank account.
Thankfully, he’s not completely stupid.
He makes her sign a no-contact agreement and an NDA before he gives her the money.
And honestly, given how she never once looks at the babe the entire time they’re together, he doesn’t think he needs to worry about her coming back.
The nurses at the hospital want him to file a report on account of the fact that he still doesn’t remember anything that happened, but the baby is his.
Jamie…
Jamie does, but he also can’t…think about it too hard or the roots in his chest start to blossom and he starts spitting up blood and flowers.
He takes his son home. A little boy with a red, scrunched-up face and teary eyes. He screams his lungs out until Jamie’s crying too, and then he stops and stares at Jamie like he’s the weird one.
He’s only two weeks old, according to the nurses, small for his age but not unhealthy.
He’ll grow, they assure him.
Jamie cries the entire night, completely dehydrated and exhausted by dawn.
He has to call Mummy for money to buy baby supplies and in between giving him a list of things to do and buy, she gets the story out of him.
She’s just as upset as the nurses, but she listens when Jamie says he can’t talk about it.
She and Simon want to come down and visit, but Jamie’s too paranoid about the paps and everything getting out, so he asks them to wait.
Having nothing to do is a saving grace for a few weeks, though he knows he can’t depend on Mummy and Simon for money for long. It buys him enough time to kind of figure out what he’s doing.
…
He spends a lot of time on Google and eventually comes to the conclusion that just like Jamie is exceptional, so is his little boy, because none of the normal rules seem to apply to him.
He sleeps through the night. He eats on some schedule that Jamie can never figure out. He doesn’t try to put anything in his mouth that Jamie doesn’t give him and loves to lie out in the garden.
And aside from that first day, he very rarely cries. He just stares up at Jamie with eyes that he recognizes from the mirror.
He’s at once the best and worst thing to happen to Jamie, and his chest expands and grows in a way he didn’t think was possible. It’s painful and wonderful at the same time, and when he calls Mummy crying, she laughs and says that’s how it always is when you love your children.
The roots in Jamie’s chest almost feel like they’re making space. Like something is making them make space. It’s not another flower, thank fuck, Jamie’s not sure how many more will even fit inside him at this point, but whatever it is, it buys Jamie some time.
But he still needs money because it turns out diapers are not cheap, and little Oliver, it takes Jamie a full week to settle on a name, is expensive as fuck.
There’s only one place he can go.
Which is infuriating.
Jamie’s only good at one thing, and thank fuck that he loves that one thing, it’s just annoying as fuck that Lasso’s the one that gives him what he needs to survive.
Stupid bloke still has no idea what’s happening, but he gets the final say as always, and the roots in Jamie’s chest constrict and squeeze through the whole conversation.
They nearly strangle him to death when Lasso says no and doesn’t release until he gets Lasso’s voicemail.
Jamie doesn’t tell him about Oliver. Outside of his mum and Simon, he doesn’t tell anyone except his elderly neighbor, who turns out to be his saving grace when he has questions and Mummy was at work. She has a daughter, Mary, who’s in the middle of a midlife crisis and has nothing to do but run herself in circles with worry, and who jumps at the chance to look after Oliver for whatever Jamie can afford to pay her.
She even thinks it’s fun to hide him from the paps that still occasionally swing by Jamie’s house to see if he’s done anything stupid lately.
He’d be utterly fucked without her, so he knows he needs to get his funds sorted as soon as possible.
His first days back at the club, he barely has the time to breathe, let alone think about telling anyone about Oliver.
He has to make this work, and every time one of the Richmond players ignores him, the roots get a bit tighter, dig in a little more.
He starts spending every free minute during the day on the pitch to counteract it.
Lasso makes a point to comment on his dedication and then seems perplexed when Jamie just stares at him blankly.
Slowly, terribly, annoyingly slowly, things get better with the team. Jamie tries, the longing to be back on the pitch in front of cheering crowds driving him forward, no matter how many times he stumbles.
He exhausts himself in practice every day and then goes home and finds out he somehow has something left the minute he sees Oliver.
Even as things get better, Jamie still struggles. Seems like he’s meant to struggle no matter what. He goes out of his way to avoid Roy; he doesn’t even call him on the not-coaching thing until the others start to notice and mention it to Jamie.
Jamie does, once, try to go to Keeley. After he spent all night with a colicky Oliver and showed up buzzed from far too much coffee to make up for it, he’d cried in the car all the way to the track, so exhausted he considered pulling off the road for a nap, but too terrified to risk losing his place on the team.
Mummy and Simon were working, and there was no one else Jamie could talk to.
She’s the one who said they were still friends.
That they could still talk to each other.
Except the moment he tries, she walks him to Doctor Sharon’s office.
Hint taken.
Jamie’s not that smart, but he’s not that stupid either. He learns.
Jamie doesn’t try again.
Keeley’s got her own life, her own relationships, her own worries, and none of them involve Jamie anymore.
That’s totally fine.
It’s probably the way things are supposed to go.
What kind of exes stay that close in real life?
Jamie should have known better.
But he learns.
He may be the prince prick of pricks, and too stupid to understand interpersonal relationship questions, but he does know how to learn.
He doesn’t try to tell anyone at Richmond again.
He doesn’t try to ask for help.
Mummy and Simon can finally get away for a couple of weeks to come stay with him, and they adore Oliver, and he adores them, and something loosens in Jamie’s chest.
He breathes easier.
Mummy makes him take advantage of their time in Richmond, and he jets off to London to cram in as many PR events as his old agent can arrange. He knows he’s supposed to go to Keeley; that’s what all the other players do, but none of the other players have Jamie’s presence.
Or his history with Keeley, and it just seems wiser to stay away.
It’ll take weeks before anything airs anyway, but the upside of having an agent with an established company and weight to throw around is that he walks away with initial paychecks immediately.
He pays Mary and Mummy and Simon first and then starts a trust fund for Oliver. He promised Ari that if these ad campaigns went well, he’d do more, and they could talk about getting back to where they were before Jamie blew everything up.
He ends up telling the agent about Oliver, after a nightmare where his mother returned, and Ari proves to have some semblance of humanity when he makes Jamie file for a restraining order.
Then he starts looking up gigs that require a baby.
Jamie hangs up without agreeing to any of them, but when he looks at his bank accounts and how much primary school costs, he doesn’t immediately dismiss the idea.
Oliver deserves the best life where he doesn’t have to feel guilty asking for a pair of new shoes because the soles wore out of the old ones, where he doesn’t have to watch Mummy work her fingers to the bone trying to afford food. Where he can go on all the school trips and meet the lads at the arcade.
Do they still have arcades?
Olivier isn’t going to have to stay up late trying to get stains out of his clothes from the people who owned them first, because the kids at school made fun of him for them.
Jamie’s going to make sure of that.
He might have fucked up everything else in his life, but he’s not going to mess this up.
So he spends his days at the pitch, actually manages to make friends with Sam and the other lads, and the rest of his time he spends at home with Oliver.
He calls out Roy on his coaching once he realizes everyone else has already noticed, and to his shock, it works, and aside from the daffodils in his chest expanding painfully, it’s great.
He goes home and throws up flowers until the toilet clogs, and he has to Google how to fix it.
He walks out onto the pitch to cheers, “Jamie Tartt, doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo,” and each iteration clears a little more space in his chest, shrinks the roots a little bit more.
He knows Roy hates him. He’s never actually questioned that. Even when the daffodil started growing, there was never a moment he imagined Roy would ever feel anything towards him.
That was the whole point of the flowers, wasn’t it? A reminder that he’d never be loved back?
That’s fine.
He doesn’t need it.
All he needs is football.
He’s not sure why it’s different for the others. Football, as much as he loves it, can’t exactly love him back, and the fans are a fickle bunch.
He’s actually not sure how they haven’t killed him yet, but he also doesn’t really want to know the details. He’s probably not smart enough to understand it anyway.
He’ll just take what he can and enjoy it as long as it lasts.
He just wasn’t expecting it to go to shit overnight.
She goes to the tabloids.
Jamie wakes up to her face on the front page of all the big ones, talking about one-night stands and drunken escapades and broken condoms. She even gives a teary interview on one of the talk shows.
Jamie doesn’t even bother trying to leave the house. Mary and her mother stock up on supplies and groceries and sneak over through the back gate. Jamie spends the entire morning on the phone with the police, and Ari and Mummy, and by the end of the day, pictures of her being arrested are blowing up on social media.
The police issue a statement that mostly goes ignored until Ari signs off on Jamie’s, and he resigns himself to not leaving the house for a week.
The folks from Richmond call, and Jamie ignores them.
Sam, Dani, Colin, and Issac try to come by but can’t get through the army of paps camped out in front of his house. As much as he could use the company, Jamie texts them and tells them it’s not worth it to try again.
They do fill him in on what’s happening at the dog track.
The initial news went about the way that Jamie suspected it would. Keeley was hurt to learn Jamie had a child, especially one conceived so close to the end of their relationship.
And everyone else at Richmond had been furious because Keeley was hurt.
Jamie knows Keeley well enough to know she was probably furious, too. Though he doubts it was over the perceived betrayal, and more about Jamie being stupid enough to bring a child he couldn’t care for into the world.
No doubt Roy wants to beat him bloody.
And Rebecca probably won’t renew his contract if she doesn’t outright cancel it.
He doesn’t know or care what Lasso or Beard thinks.
And he’s already seen Nate’s thoughts on the matter on Twitter and Insta.
Ari apparently has a very frank conversation with Rebecca that prevents his contract from being canceled but has the unfortunate side effect of revealing to everyone at Richmond the police investigation and the embarrassing fact that Jamie was taken advantage of.
It horrible.
And it gets worse when the public catches on.
Men don’t get assaulted. They don’t get taken advantage of or abused.
Especially not football players.
Jamie’s never seen filth and hatred to that degree before. Even his old man isn’t as extreme as some of the people online.
There are even some league members who call for his expulsion.
It’s enough to make Jamie want to curl up in a hole and die.
Except who will take care of Oliver then?
Mummy and Simon shouldn’t have to do that, not when they’ve already done it once.
And Oliver deserves one good parent. Or at least, one parent who’s somewhat better than the other one.
There’s no chance his mum will do jail time. The courts are too biased, and Jamie doesn’t remember enough to hold her to any serious accountability.
They do enforce the NDA and the restraining order.
They even terminate her parental rights based on something she says to the police that Jamie never gets to hear.
Jamie doesn’t want to hear them either.
Oliver’s the only good thing at the moment, and he doesn’t want to hear how much his mother doesn’t want him.
His old man leaves him a few messages, just as pleasant as always, and spurred on by the terrifying thought that Oliver will someday be able to understand him, Jamie gets a restraining order against him, too.
Mummy and Simon sent him a bottle of champagne. The cheap stuff that Mummy’s bought for every big event since he turned eighteen.
Jamie can finally afford better, again, but he drinks it anyway.
Oliver, bless him, has no idea what’s going on. He just lights up whenever he sees Jamie, which makes Jamie cry every time, and laughs, burps, and makes strange noises back at Jamie when he talks to him.
He keeps Jamie sane.
And he starts to crawl.
Jamie freaks out when he realizes what is happening, accidentally hanging up on Sam and frantically trying to bring up the camera to record before he stops.
Sam is nice enough to be understanding and hearts the video when Jamie sends it to him later.
Apparently, he shares it with Issac, who demands to know why he hasn’t seen it in the team’s group chat, which sets off everyone else, so Jamie starts posting everything, and they start filling him in on what’s happening behind the scenes at Richmond.
Jamie’s adverts dropped early, taking advantage of the attention, and Jamie finally gives in and does one with Oliver.
To say it goes viral is an understatement.
Even at his best on the pitch, Jamie never got this kind of attention.
It’s not even a scandalous or sexy shoot. It’s just Jamie and Oliver and a few puppies in an advert for Fruit of the Looms.
It’s nothing like Beckham’s.
And Jamie hadn’t let anyone else hold Oliver, so every shot is Jamie making silly faces and Oliver laughing.
And Jamie takes home one of the puppies.
It’s such a tiny, adorable thing, and Oliver seems to love it, and kids are supposed to have pets, right? Jamie begged his mum for one for years before she sat him down and explained she just didn’t have the money.
He names the little spaniel Pele to the outrage of the Richmond players, who all put themselves forward as namesakes instead.
Jamie does go back to practice the next week, and he only manages to avoid Lasso’s intervention because Sam and Dani catch him in the parking lot on Issac’s instruction, and they all sneak in through the side entrance.
It’s not that Jamie can’t appreciate the thought. They’re trying to be helpful, probably, but he just…really doesn’t care to hear it.
Not now.
The team runs interference, Jamie returns to the pitch with something to prove and manages to avoid talking to anyone about the actual issues.
Lasso tries. Credit where credit is due. But by the third time, he manages to actually talk to Jamie and only gets a blank look in return, he seems to get the point.
He looks like a kicked puppy, but Jamie has an actual puppy at home, and he’s much cuter, and Jamie’s never hated him, so….
Tough luck.
After a couple of weeks of regular practices and no drama, the paps finally give up and find someone else to harass.
Jamie gives in to Sam, Dani, Colin, and Issac begging to meet Oliver in person and invites them over.
It’s the most fun Jamie’s had since Lasso showed up, and the roots in his chest loosen a bit.
He goes out of his way to avoid Keeley and Roy, who, according to Colin, are getting back together. He ends up resigning with Ari, and the royalty checks from the ad campaign with Oliver come in, along with a lot of offers from big-name fashion houses.
Jamie doesn’t accept all of them, and he accepts even less that include Oliver, but as they approach the end of the season, he starts to feel less anxious about money and the future, but mostly the money.
He opens up a bit about how he found out about Oliver and pulls a Roy when he catches a pap spying on his baby and breaks his camera. He’s not as intimidating as Kent, obviously, and he feels kind of bad after, but they start leaving Oliver alone again.
Ari advises him to post a few baby pics, to make them less valuable, so once a week Jamie posts something cute of Oliver and Pele, and the fans take notice.
Jamie goes from the fashionable, wild child of football to a fashionable, devoted single dad of football and develops an entirely new fanbase.
It’s strange, but in a good way, and Jamie’s chest hasn’t felt so good in a long time.
Zava’s still annoying. He keeps trying to give Jamie parenting advice, but he’s already decided he only takes that from four people: Mummy, Simon, Mary, and her mother, and he’s not going to take it from some pretentious wanker who’s not even that good at football.
The others get a very specific look on their faces whenever Jamie complains about that, but he’s gotten good at ignoring it.
He hasn’t talked to Keeley or Roy, outside of training, in months. The mezereons in his chest are still there, but they’ve stopped growing, trapped in place by the ragged robin and daffodils.
He still hasn’t told anyone at Richmond about them, and he probably never will, but he talks to Oliver, even though he’s too young to understand.
There’s a war in Jamie’s chest. He’s probably going to die from the tangled roots in his chest, blossoms bursting through his skin, and then the dirt they cover him with, leaving nothing but a son who hates Roy more than Jamie ever loved him.
And why is it Roy? He wonders on the worst days, which are thankfully not that often, why it’s Roy of all people. Since Oliver and the blossoming of the mezereon, he hasn’t really been interested in anyone else, so he can’t even get over Roy by getting under someone else.
But he knows why.
He sees it when he re-watches Roy’s old games and when he’s coaching them at Richmond.
Roy’s still an asshole, even more than Jamie’s prick, but he’s so fucking good that it makes sense that Jamie, whose love of football sparked the seeds in his chest, wouldn’t be able to love anyone else.
Every once in a while, Simon brings up telling Roy, but Jamie’s been beaten enough in his life and has no interest in one more.
He’s not expecting the day Roy shows up on his doorstep.
He’s even got Oliver in his arms and Pele attempting to chew on his toes when he answers.
It’s a toss-up as to which one of them is more surprised.
Jamie can’t imagine why Kent’s on his front step, unless he’s kicking him off the team, and they end up just staring at each other until Roy steps forward and Jamie instinctively guards his forehead and Oliver by extension, and Roy looks…
Crushed.
He storms off, and Jamie’s still fucking lost about what that was all supposed to be.
Oliver has no idea either, just coos at Jamie when he asks him.
The next morning, Jamie trips over a bag of Tupperware on the front step.
Thankfully, that doesn’t ruin any of the meals, and Jamie manages to catch himself before he face plants in the gravel.
Zava retires amid the crushing losing streak, and Jamie pushes himself even harder. He shows up earlier and stays longer on the pitch and then starts to go into Oliver-withdrawals and terrible amounts of guilt over missing any second with his son.
It’s a balance, he eventually realizes.
Made slightly easier by the food that keeps showing up on his doorstep.
Not that Jamie really cooked before, but he was a master at reheating and takeout.
And smoothies.
It had been pretty easy to pick up making Oliver’s food thanks to that, although he had to stick to the recipes he found online. His own…flavor experiments didn’t generally end up mixing well.
He gets some strange looks when he takes the meals to practice, but no one tells him to stop.
Not even the nutritionists who generally control Jamie’s diet like nuns at a catholic school.
Lasso does something weird with his face and his voice the first time he sees it, but Beard drags him away before he says anything Jamie can understand.
So, everything is status quo with them.
The rest of the team doesn’t say anything.
In fact, they don’t say anything so loudly that Jamie stops bringing the meals after a couple of weeks.
It doesn’t occur to him to wonder where they came from until Mary has one and asks who made it.
He’d thought it was her mother, since the lads on the team were sure as shit not capable of the level of adulting meal prep required.
And Mummy and Simon aren’t making midnight drives to deliver food.
So, who the fuck is it?
He tries staying up to catch them, but they appear on random days, and Jamie’s definitely still exhausted from playing a professional sport and having a baby.
Well, almost a toddler according to Google. He spends most of his time zooming around with Jamie, frantically chasing him from room to room.
Pele doesn’t help, especially because he’s so adorable that Jamie can’t stay mad at him for more than a few seconds.
Jamie posts clips of them zooming around and the dark circles under his eyes, and gains nearly thirty thousand more followers overnight, and the roots in his chest loosen a little more.
He almost feels like they’re not there at all anymore.
The only time he feels any pain these days is when he has to watch Roy pay more attention to someone else.
Jamie’s become a master at ignoring what Roy is doing.
It’s self-preservation, really.
That’s why it takes him so long to put everything together.
Roy and Keeley break up again on a Monday, leaving everyone at Richmond walking on eggshells around them. Jamie accidentally walks in on Keeley in the boot room and flees before she can even get a word out.
She tries to corner him in the locker room, but Jamie is not getting in the middle of that. He’s already been called horrible things online because of what happened with Oliver’s mom; he’s not going to get called a homewrecker, too.
He can’t avoid her forever, unfortunately. The stadium is only so big, and he’s got a schedule that’s actually pretty strict, and Keeley does not.
So, she does manage to catch him, by the water fountain of all places. She doesn’t want to get back together, which Jamie feels oddly relieved by, but she does want to commiserate about Roy, which makes Jamie strangely uncomfortable.
None of the lads who pass by will save him, no matter how hard he glares, and even Rebecca shows up, but she joins in, and when Jamie tries to sneak away, he’s suddenly blocked by blond hair and muscles in all directions.
It takes him a second to realize that it’s exactly what he thought they’d be doing when she first said they could still be friends after they broke up.
It’s just…
Rebecca’s the one that finally asks about Oliver, after sharing a complicated look with Keeley that Jamie has no idea how to interpret.
Jamie shows them a few pictures on his phone, but suddenly the conversation is turning towards Jamie and Oliver instead of complaining about Roy, and he’s not entirely comfortable.
In a surreal moment, Roy’s his saving grace.
He comes around a corner, takes one look at the situation, and roars at Jamie to get back to training, and Jamie takes off down the hall before Keeley or Rebecca can say anything.
Keeley starts texting him after that, but Jamie’s not sure why?
Mummy and Simon warn him to be careful, Mary and her mum say the same, and Ari doesn’t like the idea of someone else managing Jamie’s career in any way and puts Jamie, Oliver, and Pele in a car back to London for another Fruit of the Looms campaign right before the final games of the season.
Richmond’s not going to take the championship this year, but they’re going to come close, and Ari wants to capitalize on it as much as they can to drive up Jamie’s price for the next contract renewal.
Keeley never brings up the campaign, but Rebecca does show her face in the locker room to remind everyone that Richmond has an in-house publicist and that they need to keep up with the Richmond-arranged deals as much as any they make outside the team.
It’s a surprisingly relaxed stance, given that most teams wouldn’t allow players to do both, but Jamie and the rest of the team are aware it’s about him.
Surprisingly, Lasso and Roy come out more on Jamie’s side, refusing to allow time to be taken away from training, but Jamie does make an effort to keep the peace and shows up to Keeley’s next few deals.
Things warm up with Roy as the season winds down. Jamie’s not sure why or how, but suddenly he’s around whenever Jamie and Keeley are in a room together.
Jamie, trying to be the good guy and set an example for Oliver, makes sure Roy knows he’s not after Keeley and runs away before Roy can headbutt him, but apparently loudly announcing he’s not interested in someone isn’t a good guy thing to do.
So now Jamie’s confused, Keeley is angry because assuming she was trying to get back together with him is insulting, and Roy is something weird that Jamie doesn’t understand, but it’s almost nice?
He pays more attention to Jamie on the pitch, pulling him aside to coach one-on-one while Lasso and Beard run drills with the others.
The mezereon in Jamie’s chest blooms viciously, trying to fight its way out to the point that he can feel the buds just under his skin.
He needs to stay away from Roy, he realizes.
Before they grow so much that even football can’t save him.
He tries avoiding him at practice, but now that he’s got Roy’s attention, it’s like he can’t shake it. He tries once to ask Dani for help, but when Dani asks why, he realizes he can’t explain without causing a whole bunch of new issues.
That doesn’t mean he doesn’t do that. That he doesn’t tell. It just means that, in typical Jamie fashion, he fucks it up.
He tells Roy to his face because the man won’t leave him alone, and Jamie’s only so strong.
Well, screams it actually, and then bursts into tears and cries all over him while Roy stands there, shell-shocked.
And Lasso, because he finally does something useful, makes everyone else leave.
Jamie runs away before Roy recovers.
And the next day, in an attempt to stave off any awkward conversations, he brings Oliver and Pele to training.
It means they don’t get any real training done, but Pele is big enough to run around for hours without getting tired, andOliver doesn’t get to meet new people very often and is just learning to stand.
Everyone loves him, and that’s not just the proud dad talking. Even the lads who are decades away from settling down with little ones of their own coo at him and chase Pele around.
Aside from a very long ‘Fuck’ from Roy when he sees Jamie, Oliver, and Pele’s matching Gucci trackies in brightly colored camo print, all the grumpy fuck does is follow Jamie around like some weird guardian angel dressed in all black.
Naturally, Oliver loves him.
Probably because he’s the only not-smiling face on the pitch.
Although it is hilarious when he gets a handful of Lasso’s beloved mustache and yanks.
Jamie ends up on his ass from laughing so hard at that one.
There’s a moment that afternoon, when they’ve been playing for hours, that it dawns on Jamie that Oliver’s going to have a much bigger world than just Jamie going forward. Jamie’s not always going to be the most important person in his life; he probably won’t even be the coolest based on how much he keeps reaching for Roy.
Someday, Oliver’s going to prefer everyone but Jamie. When he was a teenager, Jesus Fuck Jamie was a shit when he was a teenager.
What if Oliver follows in his footsteps?
He doesn’t have any other adult role models.
It’s just Jamie.
And aside from that week where he kept trying to eat Pele’s food and following the pup around, Jamie’s the one he emulates.
The one he learns from.
Jamie’s responsible for everything, good and bad, that he’ll ever become.
Isn’t that something?
He probably should have realized that sooner.
Roy finds him crying in the parking lot after everyone else has already gone home, Oliver and Pele passed out in the back seat.
Roy bundles him into the passenger seat and drives him home, and just…
Doesn’t leave.
Jamie doesn’t notice at first, not until Sam congratulates him on fixing things with Roy.
Jamie didn’t realize there was anything broken.
Lasso calls them to the field before he can ask what Sam’s talking about, and then he gets the equivalent from a few of the others, and even Beard, and he still has no idea what they’re talking about.
Roy nests in an impressively short amount of time.
Roy pretty much moves into the guest room, takes over cooking and helps with the cleaning, but not the laundry because he doesn’t understand how to take care of clothes AT ALL and his eye starts doing some weird twitchy thing when Jamie explains the difference between hand wash and dry clean and tumble dry and Jamie runs before Roy can actually get his hands on him.
He plays with Oliver and Pele and gives them both baths when they somehow get muddy in the small garden Jamie’s got out back and stays up late reading Oliver bedtime stories.
And he bursts into tears right alongside Jamie when Oliver takes his first stumbling steps.
Roy sticks around for the break, even tagging along when Jamie, Oliver, and Pele take Simon and Mummy to Majorca to enjoy the sun and the sand.
Mummy asks him once on the trip what’s going on, but Jamie has no idea.
For some reason, that makes her laugh, and she actually seems pleased. Jamie never told her about the merezeon, but he thinks she guessed because Roy’s the one person at Richmond she’s never asked about.
She does warn him that he’ll have to be honest about the roots in his chest. Especially if Roy’s living with him.
And Jamie trusts his mother’s judgement, so he just tells Roy straight once they’re home and settled from the trip.
It doesn’t go the way he was hoping, but Jamie’s always been stupidly optimistic about some things and even worse about handling things when they don’t go that way.
Roy doesn’t believe him at first, but he cues in when Jamie doesn’t laugh or make a joke. Jamie even takes off his shirt and shows him where some of the roots are just visible under his skin.
He isn’t expecting Roy to just leave or for it to hurt the way it does.
He barely gets Oliver down before he starts coughing, and he stumbles to the toilet just in time for the blood and petals to start making their way up his throat.
Between the tears, the saliva, and the blood he’s a disgusting mess. There are broken petals stuck to his face from the blossoms and stems he has to pull out because they keep getting stuck in his throat, and he’s crying so hard that he can’t focus, can’t get a grip through the blood, and he starts to choke.
His vision’s just starting to go fuzzy at the edges when someone yanks the plant right out of his throat with enough force that there’s a clump of roots at the bottom and a pain in Jamie’s chest.
There’s another growing in the empty space, though, and Jamie’s gasping for air that’s not enough, and Roy’s fingers holding his jaw, and then his lips on Jamie’s, and it’s a bloody, glorious mess.
~ fin