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Colin Hughes is in love.
How does Sam know this? Well, he’s watched enough movies with Meg Ryan pining after a man, who quite honestly does not deserve her, to know the signs.
Exhibit A: every morning, Colin walks into the clubhouse with his eyes glued to his phone, tapping away happily and giggling quietly to himself. Whenever anyone asks what has him laughing so much, Colin glances up, his doe eyes wide with shock that other people in the world still exist, before he quickly, and completely unconvincingly, brushes it off with, “Nothing!”
Exhibit B: Colin has been dressing better. The day Colin came into the locker room in a cashmere sweater, the color a rich emerald that brought out the green of his eyes, with—the big kicker—no collared shirt buttoned to his throat underneath it, Richard fell off the bench. When Bumbercatch asked who he was trying to impress, Colin did a bad job pretending he always dressed like that.
Exhibit C:
“I don’t get it.” Jan comes up beside Sam, Zoreaux not far behind. A sprinkling of snow dances in the air around them and Jan adjusts his gloves as he says, “Does Colin not always smile like that?”
Across the pitch, Colin and Isaac are talking, Colin gesticulating wildly, beaming about whatever story he’s spinning, while Isaac listens intently, just shy of smiling. And sure, Colin does always look like that while talking to Isaac, but training usually subdues Colin, making his smiles more tired and his gestures less swinging. This recent burst of energy has to have a source and Sam knows it’s love.
“Who’d you think it is?” Zoreaux asks. “The girl from the club last week? The one he bought a margarita?”
Jan’s nose wrinkles in disgust, the same way it did that night at the club before he announced, in the company of half the team and the girl in question, margaritas anywhere in London and people who drank them could not be trusted. The margarita girl did not stick around long after that.
“Maybe not,” Sam says. “Maybe…”
He trails off, stumped. There had been the brunette at the vegan cafe down the street from the club—except no, she gave her number to Richard. Then maybe the raven-haired waitress who gave them free jello shots at—wait, also Richard. The blonde representative from Bantr who came to collect feedback had technically gotten all their numbers and Bantr handles, which she had used to message Richard.
“There’s someone,” Sam insists to Jan of little faith. “And as his teammates, I believe we should help him declare his intentions.”
Zoreaux thumps Sam against the chest. “Bro, you finally watch Bridgerton?”
“Yes,” Sam answers with an exuberant nod. “The duke is just as handsome as everyone says and the costumes, though perhaps not entirely historically accurate, are beautiful.”
At some point, Bumbercatch had wandered over and Sam catches him elbowing Jan. “What’re we talking about?”
“Bridgerton. But we had been talking about Colin.”
Bumbercatch nods in perfect understanding. “About how he’s in love?”
“Yes, yes, exactly!” Sam holds his hand up for a high-five as Bumbercatch goes in for an elaborate handshake before they settle for a strange, flapping combination of the two.
“And we will help him, si?”
Sam has to do a double take, Dani suddenly materializing at his shoulder, apparently having heard most of the conversation. Jamie catches up with him, Richard jogging after, and suddenly they have most of the starting line gathered around, all but abandoning the drill Beard set out for them.
“Help who with what?” Jamie asks, bouncing anxiously on his toes like a kid desperate to get in on the schoolyard secret. There’s nothing he hates more than being left out; not that the rest of them are any better, the proof in Richard eagerly raising both eyebrows at Sam to spill.
“Help Colin get the girl.”
“Personne,” Richard corrects, but before anyone can ask what he means, he continues, “J’ai un plan.”
Bumbercatch snaps his fingers, points at Richard, and shouts, “He’s got a plan!” He smirks up at a grumbling Zoreaux, delighted to have gotten the translation in before him.
By now, O’Brien, Reynolds, Goodman, and Dixon have all joined the loose congregation, getting what has to be a biased rundown from Jan, but Sam can’t help grinning at so many of his teammates gathering together to aid in the pursuit of love.
Sam turns back to Richard, asking, “Alright, what is the…” only to find Richard dashing across the pitch, almost slamming into Isaac on his way to intercept Colin.
“Oh yeah, mate, he’s already gone,” Jamie says just a tad too late.
“But he didn’t…” Sam tries not to pout. It’s just this had been his idea and now he won’t even know the plan until it’s already in motion.
“Oi! Are we trainin’ or are we doin’ a scene from Ocean’s Eleven?” Isaac asks as he storms over, captain face on full blast.
“I call Clooney!” Jamie and Bumbercatch shout in unison.
“Get outta here, bruv. You’re Damon,” Isaac says to Jamie, before remembering why he had marched over here in the first place. “C’mon, back on the pitch!”
The group splinters, but Sam sticks close to Isaac, waiting until everyone else has run a good distance away to ask, “Isaac?”
“Yeah, mate?”
“Do you know what Richard was asking Colin about just now?” Sam tries to keep the question casual, but Isaac must see something in his face that makes him tilt his head, curious why he cares so much. Curse his mother’s expressive genes.
“I dunno, something about a double date. Richard told him to ask someone special,” Isaac says, before immediately pivoting and clapping Sam on the shoulder. “Let’s go, man.”
That’s Richard’s entire plan? Getting Colin to invite the love of his life on a double date? Knowing Colin’s patterns, he’ll only leave asking the date to the last minute and have Richard set someone up for him instead.
Sam glances Colin’s way, sees how he smiles, all teeth, as Dani passes him the ball and doesn’t let his smile fade even as Jan gets in the way of his own pass to Jamie. Then again, Sam thinks, patterns are meant to be broken.
“Décroche, décroche, décroche,” Richard hisses into his phone as he paces the length of the bar. The bartender—a genuine red-head with her hair twisted up, cheekbones sharp enough to make his supermodel date envious—shoots him an inviting smile, but he hasn’t the time or semblance of mind to even smile back. This is what trying to jump-start Colin’s love life has done to him.
“Hello, you have reached my—Sam Obisanya’s—voicemail box…”
“Bastard.” Richard immediately hangs up and calls again. The bartender now looks less interested and more concerned for his emotional state and he knows he only has another minute or two before someone comes looking for him. He pulls the phone from his ear, fingers ready to send off an emergency text into the newly-minted “Emma Woodhouse Society” group message (Bumbercatch had been allowed to choose the name), when finally the call connects.
“Hello?” Sam’s greeting is almost drowned out by the familiar sounds of a FIFA tournament winding up in the background. “Richard?”
“C’est terrible,” Richard whisper-shouts, while making further accidental eye contact with the bartender. She officially thinks he has lost all his marbles, to borrow a ridiculous English phrase, but he catches sight of himself in the mirror behind her and at least he makes a freak out look good.
“What is terrible?” Sam asks over Bumbercatch screaming at a referee. “Oh! Is this about the date? Why? What has happened?”
“It is not a date at all!” Richard throws up his free hand, almost knocking a martini glass from a drunken man’s mouth. “Colin did not bring a date. He brought—”
“Oi! Bruv, what the hell are you doin’?”
Richard spins around on his toes to find Isaac, suit impeccable but face stony, standing with his arms folded in front of him. At least thanks to his booming voice, Richard does not have to finish his sentence for Sam.
“Is that Isaac?” Putting the very easy pieces together, Sam groans down the line. “He brought Isaac? Did you not tell him it was a double date?”
“I did,” Richard insists, even as he’s staring down the barrel of a hard Isaac glare. “I told him to bring a very special person.”
“So you did not specify it would be a date,” comes a very Dutch, very not-Sam voice. Richard should have assumed Sam put the phone on speaker as soon as he realized it was Operation: Cupids for Colin related.
“C'était sous-entendu!” Richard snaps and he catches Zoreaux translating, “He says, it was implied.”
“Bruv, seriously,” Isaac says, all the while inching closer to get in on the conversation. “It’s getting desperate in there. Colin’s started up with the Welsh independence stuff.”
And though it wouldn’t be the first time Colin converted one of his date’s to the cause, Richard has doubts Alix from Los Angeles is a very receptive audience. He just cannot believe he’ll have to admit defeat and hand the matchmaking reins over to the likes of Dixon and Goodman, who think of Zizzi’s as a respectable first date spot.
“I am sorry this has started poorly,” Sam says with a great deal of sympathy. “But this is not the end, alright? And tell our captain I say hello.”
“Hello,” Isaac grunts and Richard all but jumps out of his skin at how close Isaac managed to get without him realizing it.
A round of shouted hello’s are followed by an immediate round of hollered goodbye’s as Richard ends the call, sighing as he does.
“Not the end of what?” Isaac asks, eyebrows furrowing, offended to have been kept out of the loop.
“We—most of the team,” Richard clarifies, “believe Colin is in love. We want to help him tell the person, whoever it is.”
“Huh,” Isaac says, rubbing his chin in consideration. “You sure he’s in love?”
Richard lays out Sam’s evidence, each piece getting a nod from Isaac.
“You know, he has been dressing better and I told him he looks best in green…” Isaac trails off, clearing his throat. “Alright, I want in. Anything to help my best mate.”
Richard grins, feeling perhaps the night hasn’t been a total wash. With Isaac in on the operation, he surely just unlocked a wealth of new information about Colin and how best to set him up with his mystery person. Quickly, Richard adds him to the group message before sticking out his hand, welcoming him aboard.
As they shake, Isaac says, “But we really gotta get back in there, or he’s gonna offer her a ride home.”
“Are you sure your ma’s okay with me being here tonight?” Colin asks, motioning up to the Bumbercatch seniors’ front door with his plate of Welsh cakes.
“Of course, mate, she says the more sons the merrier,” Moe answers as he ushers Colin through the door, the musical stylings of Mr. Sinatra bowling into them instantly. Frank’s only rival is the chattering of a dozen mums in the living room, debriefing about the month’s gardening club activities and the well-being of their other children.
Other, because gathered in the kitchen for much more subdued conversation, a dozen sons, many with books open, rushing to finish the last few pages of Pride and Prejudice.
“And see,” Moe says. “It’s also okay you haven’t read the book either. Art over there never has.”
Art glares at him from the breakfast table, Jane Austen opened to chapter two.
“I’ve seen the movie,” Colin offers. He places his dessert alongside a kitchen island’s worth of others and manages to avoid eye contact with the six men on the other side of the island staring at him. Moe’s old news by now, but one of Richmond’s left wings is a novelty worth ogling.
“Oh, I wouldn’t bring up the movie,” Moe says. “This is a Colin Firth Darcy household.”
Colin wisely does not bring up Mr. MacFadyen or Kiera as discussions of the book get under way. The boys had been skeptical when Moe put forth the idea of bringing him along to one of Janet’s mother / son book club meetings, not in the least because no one’s ever seen Colin read more than a Twitter thread before. But then Moe told the story of the legendary Wuthering Heights meeting. Ellen’s son, Jackson, broke down into tears over his mum’s trifle, blubbering that he’s watched his Cathy date an Edgar for over two years and felt like he missed his chance. All the mums encouraged him to confess his love, without any ultimatums, so at least he’ll never regret not telling her.
They’re getting married this year, with all the mums and sons invited to the reception. And sure, any couple that refers to themselves as Heathcliff and Cathy will probably end up getting divorced, but the point is, Janet and her army of Jane Austen mums know how to get a good love story started. Moe’s already staking his dignity on it. Jamie, Zoreaux, and Isaac hosted what amounted to a mini roast upon learning about the book club.
Moe clears his throat, earning the attention of the room. “Mum, just curious, do you think Darcy was right to confess to Elizabeth, even though he didn’t know how she’d react?”
“Oh, definitely!” God bless Janet and all the women humming in agreement. “Only a mind reader will ever know for sure what someone’s going to say next. It doesn’t mean all the rest of us shouldn’t be honest about our feelings. And if even Darcy’s first confession failed, it’s the beginning of Lizzie’s changing perception of him.”
Moe chances a look at Colin, hoping for some tears collecting in the lower lashes or minimum a considering head nod. What he gets are wrinkled eyebrows and slightly parted lips. That’s something. Maybe calling it “big progress” in a text to the group is a bit of an exaggeration, but Moe’s confident two big green eyes have seen Cupid’s light tonight.
“Hey, Colin, any date plans this weekend?” Moe overhears Sam asking the next week as they’re lacing up their boots.
“No, why?”
Big confessions take awhile to work up to, Moe reassures himself and Sam. It took Mr. Darcy months to confess to Elizabeth and look how badly it went. Colin just needs some time to find exactly the right words. Though, since it’s Colin, exactly right might be a stretch. Semi-coherent, he can do.
Valentine’s Day, the week after that: “Colin, plans with anyone special tonight?”
“Uh, just with my couch and Selling Sunset.”
As Colin jogs ahead into the tunnel, Moe and Sam let out twin sighs.
“You know it is starting to sound like—”
“I want to ask out Colin myself,” Sam finishes. “Yes, I know. Thank you, Jan Maas.”
“Just want to make sure you are aware.”
It’s looking increasingly likely Colin is working his way up to nothing.
Moe’s one consolation comes at the next away match movie night, where Ted announces a special selection: the first episode of the 1995 Pride and Prejudice miniseries, starring the irresistible Colin Firth. The only weird thing is Ted tells him Isaac’s the one who requested it.
If Shakespeare is the god of love, and Jane Austen the almighty daughter, than the Holy Spirit, O’Brien’s humble opinion, had to be Mr. John Hughes. And as the gospel according to John Hughes goes, a well-timed song—the kind you triumphantly raise your fist to—can put anyone in the mood for love.
Given timing isn’t O’Brien’s strong suit—the butt injury midseason still stings—he’ll try to make a modern mixtape work.
“You know, I don’t know how I feel about my wife adding the entire Olivia Rodrigo album to our shared playlist,” O’Brien says on his way out to the carpark, Colin walking at his side, laughing at his plight. “It’s great though, adding new songs that remind me of her. I feel like I’m constantly making her a burnt CD. You ever done that?”
“Done what?”
“Made a playlist for someone, someone you like.” O’Brien internally winces at how year nine he sounds, but John Hughes did make teen movies after all.
“Huh,” Colin pauses, looking quietly astounded. “I don’t think I have.”
“Might be something worth trying.”
They part ways at their cars, O’Brien making sure to peel out well before Colin can get his Lamborghini into reverse. He doubts he’ll be seeing any romantic fruits of his admittedly very small labor, but he likes to think he gave Colin a new idea to try, one day. If anything, it might get Colin to vary his musical selections.
Especially since his taste has gotten infectious. Two days later, O’Brien pulls in beside Isaac, his speakers blasting a deep-cut Drake song.
“What’s got you smiling?” Arlo pitches his voice loud enough for a passing Colin to overhear while aggressively leaning into Jeff’s space, pretending to read what’s on the letter in his hands.
“It’s nothing,” Jeff answers, taking his sweet time folding the note back up again, long enough that Colin definitely got a peak at the loopy handwriting and sickening address of dearest love. “My girlfriend has just started writing me letters before matches. Like good luck, saying she’s proud of me, all that.”
“That’s awesome, mate,” Colin says, clapping Jeff on the shoulder.
“You know, I asked out my year ten girlfriend with a love letter on her desk,” Arlo says, directly to Colin.
“Does this girlfriend have a name?” Jeff, the bastard, asks. “Was she from Canada?”
Zoreaux, who has a sixth sense for people talking about his homeland, calls from across the locker room, “What are you saying about Canada?”
“Nothing!” both Jeff and Arlo say quickly.
Arlo turns his attention back to Colin. “Really, love letter, man. You can’t go wrong.”
“Okay…” Colin elongates the second syllable and slowly walks away.
Jeff doesn’t seem all that bummed that Colin now thinks they’re lunatics. “Well, we tried.”
Arlo snorts. “So, how much did you have to pay your girlfriend to write that?”
“Our relationship is not transactional,” Jeff says as he unfolds the letter once more and makes a show of pinning it in his locker. But at Arlo’s raised eyebrow, he relents. “Well, she won’t be doing any dishes this month. Or laundry.”
Sounds about right. And maybe it’s worth it, for the envious looks some of the guys shoot the pinned letter every now and then. Even the post-it note of encouragement that shows up in Isaac’s locker a few days later doesn’t get so much jealous ribbing.
“Which one do you like best?” As soon as they arrived at the shop, Maisy had dragged Colin over to the shelves of misshapen mugs splattered rose and lilac and periwinkle, muddling into a soupy brown. She’s eyeing Colin expectantly, bouncing on her toes, desperate for him to pick hers out of the lineup.
Paul decides to take pity on Colin and juts his chin toward the vibrant pink polka dotted mug with a very lopsided lip, above Maisy’s head so her eyes still widen in shock and awe when Colin points right at it.
“That’s mine!”
“No way,” Colin says with a comically big gasp. He takes the mug from the shelf for an appraisal, pretending to sip from it with his pinky up. “Can I have it?”
Maisy wrinkles her nose. “No, it’s for mummy.”
“Don’t you think mummy has enough cups at home?” Paul asks, knowing Maisy will never, ever agree. She doesn’t even deign the question with an answer, because the instructor for the evening is calling the rowdy room of children and their various relatives to order. She dashes away, leaving Paul, Colin, and the impractical mug Paul’s wife will use once for show before hiding it in the back of a cupboard.
Colin doesn’t have to know that, though.
“She really does love everything we make for her, even my shite,” Paul says. “Nothing like a homemade gift, ya know?”
“But isn’t there, like, a potter’s curse?” Colin asks, carefully returning Maisy’s mug to the shelf. “You’re not supposed to give the person you fancy anything you potted or you’ll be broken up in six months?”
“I think that’s for knitting, yeah?” And not real, is what Paul does not add.
Maisy ends up sculpting a lumpy vase while Paul and Colin both take the safer route of painting an already set piece. Colin’s has a fairly passable dragon, all done in the Welsh colors, and Paul has to stop his daughter from stealing it for her own.
“It’s for his true love,” he whispers to her, and she gets the hiccups from how sharply she inhales.
Only, at a team dinner soon after, Paul spots Bumbercatch drinking coffee from the Welsh dragon mug. Leave it to Colin to forget the bloody thing at Isaac’s place.
Amatuers, all amateurs.
Jamie knows the real secret to getting the person you want into bed: make yourself so irresistible, they come tripping, half in love already, over to you.
And the easiest way to show your future lover (and the world) you’re irresistible? Thirst trap.
Colin definitely needs some help in that department.
“Why’re you standing like yer posing for yer first communion?” Jamie lowers Colin’s phone, his artistic vision utterly ruined by Colin’s folded choir boy hands. And the shirt buttoned to his chin. And the very unalluring frown plastered on his face. “Fer Christ sake.”
Jamie pockets the phone and crosses over to Colin—one of the many benefits of being a premier league footballer, private lounges at the clubs, the sweaty masses of people far below—flexing his hands in preparation to perform a miracle.
Lose three, no four, buttons on the shirt. “You might as well take it off,” Colin mutters, but doesn’t bother stopping Jamie.
“Now—” Jamie grabs Colin’s hand and pushes it towards his own hair. “Your hair looks sexier pushed back.”
“Did you just quote Mean Girls?” Colin asks, swatting at Jamie’s arms with his free hand, the ungrateful prick.
“I quoted meself,” Jamie dismisses, not letting go of Colin. “What I’m tryin’ do, you twat, is get you to push your own hair back. It’s a pose, right? You’ve heard of ‘em?”
Colin’s glower, colored pink and lavender by the club lights, answers that. Still, as Jamie steps away, he does tentatively run his fingers through his hair.
“Save it fer the camera, mate.”
As the music on the floor below rolls over to an EDM remix of a Drake song—thank you, Bumbercatch, for the assist via a well-timed music request—Colin finally starts getting into the photo shoot. Jamie snaps a few of him pushing his hair back, then a few more of him lounging on a high-back couch, shirt pulling tastefully open.
Around the time Jamie has Colin leaning back against the private bar, Isaac shows up and crashes the shot, hands flying to Colin’s mused hair. “What’ve you done to it, bruv?”
Colin looks to Jamie, betrayed. “Does it not look sexy pushed back?”
That marks the end of the thirst trap photo shoot, but Jamie does lightly threaten a promise out of Colin to post one or five by the end of the night.
So when morning breaks, Jamie starts his favorite Sunday ritual: perusing what his teammates have offered up from their nights on their various social media accounts. He pulls up Colin’s instagram first, ready to like his love trap and comment demanding photo credit whether Colin already gave it to him or not.
“You’ve got to be fucking kiddin’ me.”
One single photo, not even a carousel, and it’s the candid of him and Isaac, swooping in to fix his hair. Thanks for the after hours touch-up, boyo.
Jamie’s not asking for any credit for this and he says so in a message to Sam. “Guy’s never gonna get laid.”
You know what really has people falling in love and getting laid? Seeing other people falling deeply in love and getting it on. Not in a gross way, obviously. In an inspired by a 2001 Baz Luhrmann movie kind of way.
Thierry slides two middle orchestra seats—the choicest seats, American Express required, full price paid—for Moulin Rouge over to Colin, in the midst of tying up his boots.
“What are these?” he asks, probably in awe and hardly believing what he’s seeing.
“You know, it sucks. I’ve got these two tickets for tonight and the girl I was bringing canceled on me.” Thierry bites back a smirk; he could have been on the West End himself with the performance he’s giving.
Colin frowns and places a comforting hand on Thierry’s shoulder. “Sorry, mate, I know the feeling.”
“So I want you to have ‘em.” Thierry pushes the tickets even closer to Colin, until the corners are poking against his thigh. “But you’ve got to promise me you’ll take someone amazing. Like Nicole Kidman-level.”
“Pretty short notice for that,” Colin says, but he does take the tickets.
Thierry knocks his shoulder against Colin’s. “Nah, I’m sure you’ve already got someone in mind.”
Ten hours later, in the midst of kicking Richard’s ass at Mario Kart, dodging green shells like no one’s business, Thierry hears Dixon clear his throat. “Uh, anyone else seeing Isaac’s insta story?”
“No, no, no, no.”
A blue shell circles the sky above Thierry’s precious Baby Peach’s head, but he’s too busy scrambling for his phone. And on Isaac’s insta story, posted ten minutes ago, a shot of the red velvet curtains of the Moulin Rouge.
“Well, I’m out,” Thierry says, tossing his controller onto the coffee table, Baby Peach celebrating a pitiful third place finish. “Who’s turn is it to fail?”
“Thank you for letting me use your kitchen, amigo Colin.” Dani waits for Colin to lower his own sopapilla into the oil before adding his own. “It is so much bigger than my own.”
The kitchen—no, the whole first floor of Colin’s house—smells of dough frying, for Dani a sweet reminder of home.
“No problem, boyo,” Colin says with a grin, a smudge of flour dusted across his cheekbone. “Thanks for teaching me one of your ma’s recipes.”
As Dani carefully removes both sopapillas and sets them aside to cool, he says, “My mother always says food is the most important language of love.”
Colin’s smile, impossibly, widens. “Tell her I think so, too.”
Perfecto. Dani had told his teammates having Colin present something he had cooked himself to his love would do the trick. Football is life, but cooking is a close second.
“So we can both give these to someone special, si?
Colin ducks his head, but Dani takes his blush as a very enthusiastic yes.
Bright and early Monday morning, Dani arrives at the clubhouse and shoots Sam a big thumbs-up as soon as he walks through the door, Isaac trundling in after him, a sizable platter in his arms. It is then Dani notices Sam has not returned his thumbs-up. Instead, he is grimacing.
“What’ve you got for us, captain?” Goodman asks, crossing the room boots untied to get a look at the platter.
Isaac drops the platter on the center bench. “Colin gave me these, didn’t think I should finish ‘em all myself.”
At the suggestion of Colin’s cooking, every person in the room immediately swarms the bench. At the first sight of golden dough, Dani feels a little bit of his joy deflate, like a football with a tiny leak. Sam joins him on the outskirts of the feasting, looking equally disappointed.
“Is it hopeless?” Sam asks skyward, like a request for answers from the gods.
“No,” Dani insists, because he does not believe in hopeless. He just does not know what they have left to try next.
The problem, Jan decides as he finishes off the last of the sopapillas, is no one has asked Colin, point blank, if he is in love and, if he is, why he's dragging his feet about it. This country’s refusal to ever say what they mean must have been the death of many a love story.
He doesn’t bother submitting his plan for approval to the group message because it’s not a plan, it’s a conversation and they’d all say no anyway. Do first, ask forgiveness later is what his oma always says and Jan takes that sentiment all the way to the showers, where Colin is, as usual, the last man standing.
“Are you currently dating someone?”
Colin nearly slams his forehead against the wall. “What? Jan—” He stumbles to get his towel, the water still running. “No, no, I’m not—what?”
“Do you want to be dating someone?” Jan asks, going to turn off the water himself before it can soak Colin’s towel.
“Uh—” Colin’s face goes slack, a look Jan has grown accustomed to over the past year. Jan smiles in encouragement, knowing to be patient as he waits for Colin to answer his question. “...no?”
“Oh, I am not asking for myself,” Jan clarifies.
Colin tightens his towel, his gaze drifting somewhere over Jan’s shoulder. “Who are you asking for?”
“No one.”
“Right.” Colin seems to deflate, leaving Jan to wonder what exactly he said wrong.
“But if you do want to date someone,” Jan says, trailing after Colin as he exits the showers into the empty dressing room, "you should ask them to dinner, as that is the easiest way to begin a relationship.”
Colin laughs quietly and rather bitterly to himself. “What if it isn’t that easy?”
Now that makes about as much sense as Colin's choice of automobile to Jan. “Why would it not be?”
“Well, what if you’ve been mates for awhile now and you’ve never gotten anything to make it seem he—they love—like you the same way?” Colin sighs, tugging his sweater over his head, momentarily burying his lovelorn frown in a bundle of wool. When his eyes finally flicker over to Jan again, they’re defeated. “Do you understand?”
Jan understands perfectly.
“Colin is in love with Jamie.”
Jamie’s grin stretches the length of a pitch. “I knew it.”
“What? No, that is not possible,” Sam says, shaking his head ardently.
Jamie kicks up a clump of dirt and boots it at Sam's shin. “Fuck you, too, mate.”
“No, I only mean—”
“Nah, if he was in love with any of us, it’d be Sam,” Bumbercatch declares.
“What?”
“Think about it,” he insists, and it disturbs Sam a little that Bumbercatch clearly has thought about it a great deal. “He’s always offering to drive you home. He pats you on the back every time you score a goal, even in training—”
“He does that with everyone,” Thierry points out, “and he’s obviously in love with Dani.”
“Dani?” Jamie scoffs. “Why’d you say that?”
“Aren’t we all a little in love with Dani?” As Zoreaux searches the group for consensus, Sam tracks Dani sprinting across the pitch, running down a ball, his hair wind-tousled and his smile outshining the sun hanging above them. Sam has the sudden, desperate urge to abandon the conversation entirely and chase after the ball, after Dani, after his overflowing, infinite joy.
Okay, Zoreaux may be onto something and, by all the considering nods around him, everyone else agrees.
“But I still think it’s Sam,” Bumbercatch says, clapping Sam between the shoulder blades as if in proof, or congratulations, or something else Sam does not want to consider for too long.
“Jan Maas, what even made you think Colin is in love with one of us?” Sam asks.
“In love with me,” Jamie corrects.
“He told me he loves a friend, but he does not know if the friend would ever return his affections.”
“He only said friend?” Sam asks. At Jan's answering nod, he sighs. “That does not mean he is in love with a teammate. Colin has friends outside of the club.”
Jan tilts his head—a wordless does he though if Sam has ever seen one—which strikes Sam as rude, but also has him wondering if he should be messaging his friends back home more often.
The silence lasts another five ponderous seconds before Thierry cracks it with, “It’s Dani, gotta be Dani.”
“No, but remember on Sam’s birthday when—”
“You lot are just jealous because—”
A sharp whistle halts all the bickering and Sam has never been happier to see a slightly confused, verging on disappointed Ted jogging towards them.
“Fellas, you know I love a good gossip sesh as much as the next Tom, Dick, or Harry, but that’s why they also call it locker room talk—” Ted cuts himself off, scratching at his temple. “Except no, locker room talk is actually deeply rooted in misogyny, homophobia, and toxic masculinity and I would not want to suggest you boys participate in it. What I mean is you should save the talking for the locker room. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
“No,” Jan says cheerfully and without remorse.
“I am so sorry, Coach,” Sam says, stepping up to speak for the group. “We will get back to work.”
“Alright.” Ted claps his hands together, beaming. “Then let’s get to it, Jennifer Love Hewitt.”
The huddle breaks apart, with Jamie chasing after Bumbercatch, insistent Colin would be in love with him over anyone else on the team. Sam makes his way towards Dani, pondering the clue Colin had given Jan. In love with a friend, scared the friend will never return his feelings. Coach would say this fell into When Harry Met Sally territory.
As Sam jogs by Ted, rejoined with Beard and Roy, he swears he hears Colin’s name and the phrase “rom-communism.” They must just be bringing it up in passing, or so Sam assumes. Roy Kent certainly does not care about anyone else’s love life.
“Oi, Hughes!” Most of the locker room has cleared out for the night, but Colin always has been one for long, hot water-wasting showers. He drops the towel he was using to finish drying his hair at Roy’s bark, looking very much like the kid being called down to the head office. Which is technically exactly what’s happening. “Coach’s office. Now.”
Roy’s trying not to grind his teeth too hard, fucking honest to God he is, because his dentist has told him he’s at risk for cracking his molars. If only his dentist knew the shit he has to put up with in his place of work.
For example, being forced to participate in an emergency meeting about one of your player’s love life.
Roy almost pities Colin, who doesn’t even wait for Roy to shut the door behind them before he bursts into a jumbled apology. “I’m sorry, Coach. I know I was slow on the sprints today. I shouldn’t have been out so late last night, but Winchester asked me to go to this art...exhibition? Gallery...thing, and I—”
“Colin, Colin, Colin,” Ted interrupts, thank fuck. “This doesn’t got anything to do with the sprints, or with anything in practice today.”
“Oh,” Colin says, but without much relief. “Is it about last Saturday’s match? I fucked up the—”
“Christ, let’s just get on with this,” Roy snaps. “You did fuck up that late second quarter cross, but this is about you and the fucking matchmaking service the other idiots are trying to run.”
Colin blinks. “The what?”
“I personally like to think of it more as the boys playing Cupid,” Ted says with a disgustingly dreamy look on his face. Hypocritical, given he’s the one concerned enough about the matchmaking interfering with training to call the damn meeting.
“I don’t…” Something in Colin’s brain is obviously overheating. “What?”
“Your teammates have invited you to a number of events and orchestrated various scenarios in the hopes they would inspire you to confess your feelings to the person they believe you are in love with,” Beard explains, and Christ, if it does not sound irredeemably stupid said aloud. Roy cannot believe it’s Sam, previously the only one who seemed to have a brain cell, ring leading this muppet circus.
“That’s why they’ve been inviting me to so many things?” Colin has the wide eyes of revelation. “I thought I might be dying.”
“Why would they know you were dying, but you didn’t?” Beard asks flatly.
Colin sputters. “I watched The Farewell with Isaac. I know it happens!”
“No one here is dying,” Ted says, though his eyes shoot to Beard and he waits until he shakes his head to continue. “We just have ourselves a case of your friends caring a little too much, but the good news is it’s 100% curable.”
“How?” Colin asks, and for the first and hopefully last time, Roy is on the same page with him. He hadn’t bothered asking Ted’s master plan for imploding the matchmaking game. Personally, he would have gone with an email threatening the bench to the next person who invites Colin to join a couple’s brunch, the email sent by Higgins, Roy himself not CC’d.
By the way Ted rubs his hands together in excitement, his plan will be gag-inducing.
“Well now, Colin, you’re in the final fifteen minutes of your romantic comedy.”
Roy does not hold back his groan.
“Which means you’ve got to decide how you’re going to confess your love,” Ted says, pretending Roy’s groan never happened. “Are you going to meet them at the top of a famous landmark in London? Are you going to show up on their doorstep with poster boards and tell ‘em to say it’s carol singers? You probably can’t chase them through an airport to stop ‘em from getting on a flight, you know, because of current airline security protocols, but there are still train stations.”
“Or the tube,” Beard adds.
Colin looks oddly hesitant. “Does it have to be so…”
“Dramatic,” Roy grunts, near shuddering as he once again finds himself in sync with him. Imagining Colin chasing someone through a tube station ends, for Roy, with a loop of him falling onto the disgusting platform Charlie Chaplin style. Funny, but probably not good for Colin’s limbs or the Richmond team.
“Nah, it doesn’t have to be,” Ted says. “It can just be somewhere you like being doin’ something you and the person love doing together, supposing you already have something you love doing together.”
By the knowing twinkle in Ted’s eyes, he has caught on to exactly what the rest of the team continually missed.
“I think I can do that, gaffer,” Colin says with a small, bashful smile and Roy turns his head away, not because he’s endeared, but because he thinks he’s got a sneeze coming on.
“Best of luck to you, Colin,” Ted says as Colin heads out the door, waiting until he’s left the locker room before sighing, grossly wistful. “Ah, young love. Roy, who was your first—”
“No.”
As he leaves the clubhouse for the night, Roy makes a vow he’ll never talk of Colin Hughes, his love life, or love in general again. Of course, he does see the irony of stepping into the safety of his car, immediately pulling out his phone, and calling a very impatient Keeley to tell her all the details.
Instead of slipping his phone into his pocket, Isaac crosses the short space to Colin’s coat rack to ditch the phone in his jacket. The constant vibrations—messages from the team group chat concerning matchmaking Colin—is irritating and strangely guilt-inducing, given the guy in question is ten feet away, finishing up a batch of macaroni and cheese for the two of them to share.
If he were to be even more honest, Isaac has been considering leaving the group, not that anyone would notice his absence. He rarely says anything unless the conversation veers into a pop culture tangent and he needs to assert his superior opinion (rolos are, forever and always, the greatest candy, not sour patch kids, Dixon). It just feels wrong talking about his best mate behind his back, even with the best of intentions.
And Isaac’s not sure his intentions are the best. Why else does his heart take a victory lap every time Sam declares one of their many best-laid plans a failure?
“Here we are, boyo.” Colin swoops in from the kitchen, two huge bowls of macaroni cupped within both elbows. “Cheddar and bacon, Isaac-style.”
“Thanks, bruv,” Isaac says, grabbing the bowl before Colin tilts too far right and drops it all. “Feels like it’s been awhile, since it’s been just the two of us?”
Colin’s eyebrows knit together as he sits beside Isaac on the couch, shoulder brushing shoulder, not great for eating. Isaac isn’t going to tell him to move. “We hung out just the two of us like a week ago. Sopapillas night, remember? And a few days before that, Moulin Rouge.”
Right, the nights Isaac spent with a pipsqueak of a voice in the back of his head going, “he should be with someone else.”
“‘Course, you’re right,” Isaac says and swallows down the bitter taste in his mouth of a heavily loaded forkful of macaroni and cheese.
“Alright, what’s the double feature to—”
“You know you can tell me anything, right mate?” The question is out before Isaac can stop it.
Colin’s confusion at being cut off quickly gives way to a crooked smile, the one that pulls left and crinkles his eyes. “Yeah, same to you. Same for me with you. Same…”
“Is there someone?” Another rogue question lobbed between them, impossible to take back, so Isaac doubles down. “Because as your best mate, I’d be a little offended if you haven’t told me.”
For a long, unscored moment, Colin searches Isaac’s face, for something Isaac doesn’t know how to give him.
“Oh, what the hell.”
Colin pushes his dish onto the coffee table, fists one hand in Isaac’s collar, and kisses him square on the mouth. Isaac registers the brush of Colin’s nose against his, blunt nails skating against his collarbone, the bit of sweat in the bow of Colin’s lips, before the kiss is over and he’s got Colin staring at him, terrified.
“What—wait, how—when…” Isaac blinks. “Who?”
“I—I don’t know how to answer that last one,” Colin says, swallowing, throat constricting. “Uh, me?”
“Why didn’t you say anything before, bruv?” Isaac remains very aware of how Colin still has his hand pulling at his shirt, but neither of them move an inch. “The guys have been trying to get you to confess for, for…”
“You knew about that?” Colin asks, voice going up a full octave.
“You knew about it?”
“Well, not until the gaffer, and Beard, and Roy told me a few—”
“Roy.” The name suddenly feels foreign on Isaac’s tongue. “Roy Kent?”
“Yeah, they told me you wankers were trying to matchmake me,” Colin says, his neck looking red and hot. He’s embarrassed, Isaac realizes and the guilt that’s been simmering since this whole stupid plot began finally comes to a boil. “Least, the other wankers. I didn’t think you were actually a part of it.”
“I’m sorry, bruv.” At last, Isaac moves to put his bowl down, forcing Colin to let go of his shirt. “None of the ideas were mine, swear it. Not the cooking, or the mug, or…”
The cooking, sopapillas Colin delivered him not hours after Dani left his house. The mug, which Colin gave him so he always had something Welsh in his house, even when Colin wasn’t around. The West End tickets, Colin inviting him without a second thought. The thirst trap that wasn’t a thirst trap but a single photo of them, natural and together. The shared playlist, the magically appearing post-it of pride and encouragement, the damn double date.
“I’m such an idiot.”
Colin, though still looking uneasy, laughs his agreement.
“And you’re such a fucking idiot!”
The laughter abruptly stops. “Me? Why am I an idiot?”
“Ye couldn’t have just said something, instead of all this, this…being all…” Isaac has not a word, but a person in mind. “Sam.”
“I did say something!” Colin says, claiming the impossible. Isaac would have known if his best mate in the world, the person he’s most excited to see every morning and who’s the last he says goodnight to, told him he was in love with him.
“When?”
“After the book club thing! Bumbercatch’s mum, she inspired me to…”
Isaac presses the heels of his hands against his forehead, because he remembers the night after Colin's book club at the Bumbercatches. If that was the grand declaration Colin thought Isaac deserved, Isaac might need his heart to reconsider its choices. “Bruv, your exact words were ‘I like you, let’s watch six hours of Pride and Prejudice.”
Colin scoffs, “Those were not my exact words.”
Isaac offers him his best level stare. “You tell me you like me all the time.”
“Well, yeah!” Colin says, tossing up his arms. “Because I do. I…” His eyes grow softer, to match his voice. “I like you.”
“Really?” Isaac asks, just as softly, afraid it might all be a daydream or still a part of the grand matchmaking plan, this confession a dress rehearsal for when Colin confesses his real love to someone else.
Colin nods and whispers, like its his best kept secret, “Really.”
Isaac surges forward, unable to stop himself, knowing he doesn’t have to. The kiss is messy and tastes of cheese, but Isaac can’t care by how Colin smiles against his lips and let’s him thread his hands through his perfectly-cut hair.
“Took you long enough.”
Even though he’s a starting player on a newly-reminted Premier League team on a hot streak, Sam can’t help feeling like a failure. Three whole months he’s spent trying to help Colin get the person of his dreams and what has he to show for it?
A very happy but still very single—
Sam watches a beaming Colin chasing after Isaac on their way to the weight room, all but jumping on his back, his arms looping around his shoulders. Isaac does a terrible job shaking him off, almost as if he’d be fine carrying him the rest of the way there, his face oddly flushed. Colin catches sight the flush, too, his grin widening to something both teasing and endeared.
“Oh.”
“Yeah,” Roy huffs from the office door. “Gotta say, disappointed you didn’t catch on.”
Sam rests his head against his knees, an onslaught of clues, incredibly obvious clues, flooding his mind. He groans. “Not as disappointed as I am in myself.”