Chapter Text
🚨 BREAKING : Manchester City have completed the signing of Erling Haaland from Borussia Dortmund in a deal worth £51m. The Norway international has signed a five-year deal with the Premier League champions.
Jamie was reclined on a sun lounger, eyes half-lidded, when the notification from the Sky Sports app came through. His phone was lying face down on his bare belly and he shivered as the vibration buzzed through his abs like a tens machine on the lowest setting. After using the edge of his towel to wipe the screen free of the combination of sweat and sun cream that had made it go all smeary and turning the brightness right up so that he could actually see it through the Spanish sunshine, he squinted at the message that had popped up.
His stomach tensed again, in a way that had nothing to do with the iPhone’s vibration.
From beside him, he could hear Keeley trying to convince Roy to get into the pool with her, while Roy insisted that no amount of naked splash tig was going to drag him away from The Time Traveler's Wife and his glass of Zinfandel.
Jamie unlocked his phone with a greasy thumb print and loaded up the app and scanned through the article, the tip of his tongue sticking out of the corner of his mouth.
Proud day for me and my family, blah blah blah, Pep’s great, I want to win trophies, who fucking doesn’t, the striker will wear the number 9 shirt.
The striker will wear the number 9 shirt.
Jamie frowned and tossed his phone to the side. He felt a little dizzy, and wondered whether Roy’s insistence that he’d get sunstroke if he stayed out of the shade all day might be right.
“Oi, Tartt!” Roy’s voice startled him out of his thoughts, and Jamie blinked slowly before he turned his head to look over at him “Do me a favour and let Keeley drown you for once. You’ll shrivel up if you stay out in the sun much longer anyway.”
When Jamie didn’t respond instantly, Roy peered at him, brow wrinkling at whatever he saw in Jamie’s expression.
“Why’ve you got a face like a slapped arse? You fucked up today’s Wordle again?” he inquired, with all of his usual tact.
“City’ve signed Haaland,” Jamie said flatly.
“Yeah, and? Was only a matter of time,” Roy said, setting his glass of wine down as Keeley swam over to the edge of the pool to listen in.
“Dunno, I just-” Jamie swallowed, words stuck and throat thick. He took a long swig of his Smirnoff Ice.
“He the big blond one that looks like the Terminator?” Keeley asked, elbows propped up on the cerulean tiles that edged the infinity pool.
Roy snorted. “Yeah, that’s the one. Well-” He paused, and finally there was a flicker of gloom on his face too. “That’s the league wrapped up then. City pissed it last season without a decent striker. They’ll have won by February with that fucking robot up top.”
The tightness in Jamie’s stomach curdled into a cramp and he sucked in a sharp breath.
Keeley’s hand curled around his ankle and for a second, Jamie thought she’d done that thing where she knew what he was feeling better than he did, but instead she just tugged him towards the water.
“C’mon, JJ. Let’s show this old man how much fun naked splash tig can be, eh?” she said with a wicked grin, flashing all her lovely white teeth.
And well, how could you say no to that? Jamie shimmied out of his speedos and tossed them over at Roy, hearing only the echo of his growl and Keeley’s laughter as he dove below the surface and water rushed in his ears.
—-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
“I played with his dad, you know?” Roy said, nudging Jamie with his shoulder to get him to budge up along the bench.
They were sitting in the away changing room at Loftus Road, after Richmond’s last pre-season friendly against Queens Park Rangers. Roy was happy enough with the result - they’d conceded early but a goal from Jamie just on the brink of half time and a brace from Sam in the second half had given them a respectable 3-1 win.
He knew that these pre-season games were mostly just about fitness, but it didn’t mean that a win didn’t always just feel that little bit better.
But now the changing room had mostly emptied, with just Will packing up the dirty kits.
And Jamie, staring morosely up at the TV screen high on the wall, watching a replay of Erling Haaland scoring the winner for City against Bayern.
“You what?” Jamie couldn’t have been quicker to tear his eyes away and pretend that he wasn’t watching, raising one of his annoyingly manicured eyebrows at Roy, even as he obligingly moved over so Roy could sit beside him.
“Him. Haaland. Your new man crush or whatever this is. Played against his dad Alfie, didn’t I?” Roy answered, nodding up towards the screen. “I was just starting out at Chelsea when he was at City.”
“Oh,” Jamie said, catching his tongue between the tip of his teeth and frowning. “Yeah, yeah. Shit, I forgot you’re like seven hundred years old and you were playing back then. Was that still when the ball was made of leather and that?”
“Brat,” Roy said, smacking him lightly around the back of the head, but the tension he didn’t know he’d been carrying in his shoulders eased as Jamie cackled.
Whatever this thing with Haaland was, Roy didn’t know, but it’d been going on for weeks now, since they’d gotten back from Ibiza. Luckily, even during the off-season, footballers didn’t really get much time to think, but every minute he wasn’t focused on training or friendlies or press appearances, Jamie had seemed to be hyper-focused on Erling fucking Haaland.
Roy didn’t understand it, but he knew for sure that he didn’t fucking like it.
They were just about ready to leave the changing room when Jamie paused and looked back at the TV, something strange and out of place coming over his face as the referee blew for full time and Pep Guardiola threw an arm around Haaland’s shoulders.
“What was he like then? Alfie?” Jamie asked, and his voice sounded just as unusual as his face had looked, uncommonly quiet and serious.
Roy looked at him and shrugged, feeling that tension coming streaming back into him with a vengeance and he wanted to ask what the hell was going on here, but what came out instead was;
“Got sent off for doing his ACL with a tackle. And then I told him I thought he was faking it.” Roy winced. “I feel like a bit of a cunt for it now, if I’m honest.”
Jamie was quiet for a second, and even if his eyes hadn’t wandered towards Roy’s knee, then Roy would have known they were both thinking about the same thing anyway.
“Shite,” Jamie said eventually, opening and closing his mouth a few times like he was going to add something else, but instead saying mute.
“Yeah,” Roy agreed. He clapped Jamie on the shoulder, and steered him out of the changing room. “C’mon. We’re gonna miss the team bus.”
—------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Keeley flicked the page of the magazine she wasn’t really reading with cautious fingers, trying not to smudge her drying tan.
It was hard to focus on the pretty faces and the pretty bodies on the page, when she had a far yummier sight in front of her:
Jamie stood on the little stool in the middle of the room, stripped down to nothing other than a pair of paper knickers and tiny black goggles, while the team of beauticians armed with sprayers ensured that his Ibiza tan remained in place despite the London summer’s best effort to erase it.
It was team photo day tomorrow in preparation for the new season, which meant that today had been a military operation: waxing first, fresh highlights, manicure and pedicure, and finally the fake bake.
It hadn’t taken much for Keeley to agree to join in solidarity. They’d of course asked Roy to join them too, but mostly to see the complicated motions that his face went through before he told them that he’d rather die, but that they should enjoy themselves.
“We’ve the pre-season gala for the shareholders on Saturday, don’t forget,” Keeley said, flicking her freshly blown out hair over her shoulder. “Do you want me to pull out your Versace Spring-Summer 2022 or the Tom Ford Winter 2020 suit to get dry cleaned?”
Jamie tilted his head to the side, only to straighten it fast enough that Keeley’s neck ached in sympathy when one of the beautician’s tutted at him. He blew out a considering breath between his teeth.
“Roy’s gonna be in-”
“-black.” They both answered at the same time.
“Go with the Versace. You can wear that Gucci Love Parade dress you got in the Net-a-Porter sale and we can match in pink,” Jamie said, and it was clear that he was trying desperately not to grin. “Give the Daily Mail something to gossip about.”
The beautician finished with his back, and Jamie waved them off for a moment to give him a break before they started on his front. He stepped down off the stool and walked over towards Keeley, pushing the goggles up into his hair, sitting down next to her and stealing a sip from her glass of champagne.
He made a face, and Keeley laughed thinking that it was from the taste of the drink, which he’d never been able to pretend he liked, but her heart sank as she realised that he was looking at the magazine sitting in the loose cradle of her hands.
Where, next to a profile on what Christine Lampard’s daily routine entailed, was splashed a full page ad for Bellagio watches.
Erling Haaland stared back at her, blank eyed and glossy, one leg folded over his knee, a hideous silver watch encrusted with blue Swarovski crystals prominent on his wrist.
Bollocks , Keeley thought to herself, here we fucking go again.
“Do you think-” Jamie said, his jaw set mulishly, and Keeley braced herself. “Do you think he’s better looking than me?”
“Jamie,” Keeley said as evenly as she could. “I know we joke about it babes, but I’m not actually psychic. What are you talking about?”
She knew, of course, even if he hadn’t been staring directly at that big square Norwegian head on the page, but she wasn’t going to work out what this was actually about if she couldn’t dig into it a bit more.
“Y’know. Him. Haaland,” he said, like it was being dragged out of him, nodding at the magazine. “Is he better looking than me?”
“Obviously not. I mean, even if I didn’t think you were fit as fuck, look at him,” she said brightly, forcing a laugh into her voice. “He looks like Ivan Drago’s long lost twin.”
Jamie’s brow furrowed. “Is that the one from House of the Dragon?”
Keeley forgot how young he was sometimes. She took a deep breath.
“No, but never mind that.” She set a hand on his knee and squeezed. “What’s this about love, eh? Do you fancy him? Is that it?”
Jamie sucked in a breath and looked like he was considering it. “I don’t…know?”
“Coz if it is, that’s fine yano?” Keeley said encouragingly, even though she was pretty sure that that wasn’t it. “We’ve all got our free passes, haven’t we? Me, you and Roy.”
(They did, and they took it very seriously. Jamie’s was Dominic Calvert-Lewin. Roy’s was Liz Hurley. Keeley had said that hers was Michelle Pfeiffer but that was mostly because she didn’t think it would have gone down quite as well if she’d told them it was really Rebecca.)
Jamie looked more confused than he had when they’d started, that little lost boy expression on his face, the one that made her feel sad and horny at the same time. Keeley sighed.
“Just think about it, alright babes?” she said kindly, and gestured for him to stand up before swatting him on the arse. “Now go on and make yourself pretty for me.”
—------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Roy could pinpoint the moment that he realised that there really was something wrong .
They were a day out from the first game of the season - a favourable home draw against newly promoted Burnley. Roy had got home from the last coaches meeting to the familiar sight of Jamie and Dani Rojas sitting on his couch, playing FIFA on the PS5.
And look, here was the thing. Jamie was an utterly self-obsessed narcissist.
Roy wasn’t sure what he was more irritated by - that itself, or the fact that he found it fucking endearing now they regularly saw (and enjoyed) each other naked.
Regardless, it was an immutable fact of life. And as an utterly self-obsessed narcissist, when it came down to playing FIFA, Jamie never played as anyone other than himself.
So when Roy walked into the living room to see Jamie slot his fourth unanswered goal as Erling fucking Haaland playing as Manchester fucking City against Dani’s Richmond, his face like someone had kicked him square in the plums, he knew that they were seriously off the fucking reservation here.
“What,” Roy said, “the fuck.”
“Roy Kent!” Dani said as he turned to face him, far too fucking cheerful for a man who was four - no wait, make that five, as Jamie used his distraction to plant a peach of a De Bruyne free kick right into the top right corner - nil down. “We’re doing research .”
Jamie wouldn’t look at him. They didn’t play Man City until New Year’s Eve.
“That’s what you’re doing, is it?” Roy said, trying not to grit his teeth. He already had to wear a mouthguard at night.
“Yeah.” Jamie nodded, voice rough and still refusing to meet his eyes. “That’s what we’re doing and it’s very fucking rude that you’re interrupting us, innit.”
Nevermind that this was his fucking house.
Three deep breaths. Just like Doctor Fieldstone had taught him.
“Dani,” Roy said, extremely fucking calmly. “Do you mind giving me a minute with this one? I think there’s some Jarritos in the fridge if you want to get us all a drink.”
Because apparently, that was Roy’s fucking life now, keeping horrible fucking Mexican fizzy drinks in his fridge for his fucking boyfriend’s fucking emotional support striker.
“Jamie.”
Jamie ignored him, and slotted another Haaland goal past Dani’s static defence.
“Jamie,” Roy said again, and it was a good job that Jamie got paid so fucking much that he could afford Roy’s extremely fucking expensive dental bills.
No response. A neat little one-two between Bernado Silva and Foden and it was seven-nil.
“Jamie!”
“What?!” Jamie finally threw the controller aside and looked at him, and whatever Roy was about to say stuck in his throat when he clocked the wild look in Jamie’s eyes and the faint tremor to his hands now they weren’t clenched around the pad.
What’s going on? He could have said
Are you alright? He could have said.
What’s this really about? He should have said.
“He’s probably not even that good,” he actually said, and he knew straight away that it was the wrong thing to say when Jamie’s eyes went flat and his mouth wobbled.
“Yeah?” Jamie croaked, distantly.
“Yeah, he’s come from the fucking Bundesliga, hasn’t he?” Roy said, even though he knew that he was just making things worse, because he’d be damned if he didn’t finish something he’d started.
“Mhmm.”
“It’s a fucking farmers league.”
“Uh huh.”
“He’s a flat track bully. He’ll be another fucking Timo Werner, or a Havertz.”
“You reckon?” Jamie’s voice wavered alarmingly, and Roy kissed him just so that he didn’t have to hear that again.
“I know it.”
Erling fucking Haaland scored eighteen goals before Christmas and Roy wished he’d just kept his fucking mouth shut.
—-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The break for the World Cup had its pros and cons.
Pro: Jamie hadn’t been called up for the England squad, so it was a rare chance for them to spend some time together in the middle of the season, whereas usually they had to settle for stolen moments until the summer.
Con: Jamie hadn’t been called up for the England squad, which meant he’d been in a foul mood. He’d been an outside shout to begin with - the pundits had it between him, Ivan Toney and Callum Wilson, and Wilson had been in such good form while Jamie had missed a couple of weeks in the run up with a pulled hamstring. When the apologetic call from Southgate had come in, it hadn’t really been a surprise.
Unsurprising, but still disappointing.
If Keeley hadn’t been so concerned, she would have been made up that he’d decided to boycott the tournament ‘coz of all the dead people and how horrible they are over there to the gays and that. Six weeks without having to see football on her telly should have been a dream come true.
Instead, she had Jamie sulking around the house with a gob like a wet weekend in Southend because he wasn’t in Qatar, and Roy sulking around the house with a gob like he was being forced to attend an eighties festival at Pontins because he wasn’t allowed to watch the sodding World Cup.
Still, if Keeley was anything, she was a problem solver. She knew how to make the best of things.
“Mhmm, yeah that’s it. Nice and slow.”
She had one hand fisted in Jamie’s hair as he kissed his way down her belly, pulling just nastily enough to hurt like she knew he liked.
That was the thing about Jamie. It was easy enough to learn his cheat codes, so long as you just paid attention. He had to have some sour with the sweetness. If you were too gentle it felt patronising and he froze up. If you were too mean, he shut down. Jamie needed kind words and cruel hands.
Keeley shivered, back arching in anticipation of the main event, as that ridiculous tongue laved just below her navel.
On the bedside cabinet next to them, Jamie’s phone vibrated once, twice, three times.
She watched the muscles in his back contract at the sound.
“No,” Keeley said firmly.
She used the grip she had on his hair to pull him up from where he was about to settle between her spread thighs and make him look at her, scrutinising him down to his microexpressions; the tilt of his head, the quirk of his lips, the way his fucking nose wrinkled when he was pulled away from the task at hand.
The way his eyes wandered towards his phone that had buzzed a fourth time.
“No,” she said again, and she used her grip in his hair to give him head a shake.
Jamie blinked and his brow furrowed. He opened his mouth ready to complain, but Keeley had a finger to his lips before he could comment.
Cruel hands, kind words.
“Whatever’s on your phone will keep, Jay,” Keeley said, using the finger that she had resting in his lips to run gently over them, one eyebrow raised. “Finish what you started, hmm?”
She thought she’d pressed him too far for a moment, but Jamie just grinned, and when she pressed down on his bottom lip with her thumb, he opened his mouth obligingly and let her slip it inside.
“Slave driver.” Jamie sighed, words a little muffled around her thumb. “S’all work, work, work with you.”
He gave her a cocky, lazy salute as he slid the rest of the way down her body and got to work.
And God, he was good at this. They were good at this. Even when they’d first gotten together and they’d been a mess of sharp edges and insecurities, they’d always been good at this part, at least.
Keeley laid back against her fluffy pillows as Jamie buried his face between her spread thighs, keeping him exactly where she wanted him with the firm grasp of her fingers in the damp strands of his hair. She thrust her hips upwards as he kissed down her thighs, before his tongue teased her entrance and then licked a fat stripe up to her clit.
Her ankles crossed around his shoulders as he slipped two fingers inside of her and sucked her clit into his mouth.
“That’s it, there we are. There’s a good boy.” Keeley gasped. She bucked onto his fingers as she felt the vibration of his whimper at the praise.
“Mmmph,” Jamie said, and Keeley squeezed her thighs closer together.
She was there. She was fucking almost there, and then she realised that Jamie wasn’t just moaning into her, he was trying to say something.
Keeley’s ankles unclasped and she swallowed her frustration as Jamie came up for air. Her hands stroked through his hair instead of pulling.
“Babe, what’s wrong?” she said, as soon as she’d caught her breath. “Too much?”
“Nah.” Jamie propped his head on her hip, the bottom of his face glistening with her arousal and his pupils blown.
“Then what, Jay? What’s up?”
Jamie’s mouth twisted “Do you reckon-” He clicked his tongue between his teeth. “Do you reckon he’s got a bigger cock than me?”
For a second, Keeley didn’t think she’d heard him right.
She surely couldn’t have heard him right.
“Jamie,” Keeley said, through gritted teeth. “I know you’re not talking about Roy. Are you seriously thinking about Whatshisname Haaland’s penis right fucking now?”
Jamie shrugged. “No. Yeah. I dunno.” He frowned. “Maybe.”
Jesus Christ.
“We’re going to talk about this later,” Keeley said, cupping his chin with her hand so she knew he was paying attention. “But what I’m telling you right now is that I’ve never, not once, thought about his sodding cock.”
“Right, yeah. Makes sense,” Jamie mumbled.
“What I am thinking about, is the fact you’ve stopped me in the middle of a fucking brilliant orgasm,” she said, hoisting herself up.
She pushed at him to get him to roll onto his back, and he went easily as usual.
“So what I’m going to do,” Keeley said, as she straddled his chest and shuffled forwards, “is sit on your face until I get my fucking brilliant orgasm. And then you can think about any fucking cock you want, but it’s not happening until I’ve come. Got it?”
He got it.
—----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
There were worse ways to spend Christmas Eve, Roy thought.
Obviously he would have preferred it if his fucking knee hadn’t frozen up again, but at least it’d given him a decent enough excuse to get out of going to Phoebe’s Nativity play.
Apparently, she was playing an alien, which Roy didn’t remember being in the Bible, but was supposedly a big fucking deal. Keeley, who had not had a convenient reason to avoid it, had sent him plenty of pictures of Phoebe in her costume, which seemed to involve a lot of green face paint, glitter, and a pair of deeley boppers.
(Jamie hadn’t even bothered to come up with an excuse as to why he couldn’t attend.
“Be weird if I was there in the first place, wouldn’t it?” he’d said, smug as anything. “Don’t wanna give the game away anyway.”
Keeley had jabbed one of her remarkably sharp elbows into his stomach. “It’s hardly like the Sun are gonna have photographers at Kew Riverside Christmas fete, arsehole.”)
She’d made them promise to hold off on Sexy Christmas until she got back.
However, Roy reasoned with himself, as he sat on the sofa, his swollen knee propped up on a pouffe, a bottle of beer in hand, and Jamie’s lips wrapped around his cock, she hadn’t said anything about Erotic Christmas Eve.
Roy groaned as Jamie swallowed him down to the root until his nose brushed Roy’s pelvis and he felt the staccato flutter muscle as he pushed past Jamie’s gag reflex, while the highlights of Man City’s 3-2 Carabao Cup win played on the TV.
Keeley would understand anyway, Roy knew. Because his choices had been either a) shove his dick down Jamie’s throat until he couldn’t talk anymore, or b) spend another evening hearing all about Erling fucking Haaland.
It hadn’t really been a choice at all.
—-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Dad": halaand ha ha haaland
"Dad": fuckin brilliant
"Dad": thats what a fucking striker looks like
"Dad": no wonder they didn’t need you
"Dad": this kid has fucking got it
"Dad": scored as many hattricks as you have goals this season
"Dad": haaland fucking unreal again today
"Dad": you sorting us tickets for the nye game our kid?
"Dad": jamie
"Dad": don’t ignore me
"Dad": pathetic
"Dad": stop ignoring me jamie
"Dad": i’ve told denbo and bug we’ll be the box, fucking SORT IT jamie
"Dad": fucking waste of spunk
[From: [email protected]
Manchester City v AFC Richmond, 3x Harvey Nichols Box admissions, for collection under name James Tartt]
"Dad": sound
"Dad": don’t embarrass me
"Dad": maybe he’ll give you some tips if you suck his dick you little poof