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Jamie stops for coffee and successfully kisses every person there, which doesn't happen often. He's not one of those nerds who track their numbers, but usually in a public space there are a few who aren't up for it. Today the place is packed with customers, and he lands every single one plus the baristas. Legend.
It's a sign, he decides. Today is the day he finds his bond.
"Morning, mate," he says to a courier carrying a parcel through the car park at Nelson Road. "Check?"
The guy smoothly plants one on Jamie's mouth on his way past without slowing down. Jamie is impressed. He must have loads of practice doing that. Jamie prefers to linger a bit when he can, enjoy the moment for more than just the check, but he understands not everyone is like that.
A few of the guys are already in the dressing room, including Roy, who narrows his eyes when Jamie walks in. "No," he growls, before Jamie even asks.
"Imagine how much less annoyed you'll be every day after you give in," Jamie cajoles. "Imagine how much nicer life will be. Double-check?" he adds to Richard, who rolls his eyes.
"I'll double-check!" Dani volunteers, and bounces over to make out with Jamie.
"Right," says Roy dryly. "Clearly you're the picture of restraint once you've got your way."
Jamie nudges Dani down to suck on his neck instead so he can say, "I'll leave you alone, swear to god. One check and I'm out of your hair for good."
Roy glowers. Jamie gives up (for now) and makes his way back to Dani's lips. He can't imagine he'd actually bond with Roy, it just bothers him to be missing one tick-mark on his list. Everyone else on the team and staff has checked with him, except that one lady in HR who's bonded, but she doesn't count. Even Rebecca, who doesn't like to check unless she's on a date, made an exception for him. He's just that fit, you'd have to be a total idiot not to want to bond with all this. A point he's repeatedly made to Roy.
There's a new reporter in the stands during training, but she's wearing fuck-off black and yellow head to toe, so Jamie leaves her alone. He doesn't understand why some people do that—just a normal scarf or hat is enough to send the message, there's no need to make a whole fashion statement out of it. Really, he doesn't understand why anyone would want to send the message at all. Jamie wants a bond so badly it fucking hurts sometimes, that excruciating longing for someone to belong to, someone he can rely on not to decide he isn't worth it and give up on him.
Most people never find a bond, but Jamie isn't most people. He's been checking with everyone who will let him since the day he turned sixteen, and a fair few surreptitiously before he was legal as well. He goes out into the stands to check with fans after every match, signs up for speed-checking events in every city he visits, even tried paying for a couple of matching services even though he knows they're bullshit. There's no way to narrow down the field, no shortcut. The only way to bond is to keep checking until it happens. And it will happen. Jamie will make it happen.
He goes out with a few of the lads that night, just for dinner since they've got an early training day tomorrow, or at least that's the plan. But then halfway through the meal a woman comes up to them asking for checks, and works her way around the table, and when she kisses Colin they both freeze.
"Holy shit," Jamie breathes. "Holy fucking shit, did you just—"
Colin nods, dazed. The table bursts into wild applause, and so does the rest of the restaurant once they've worked out what's happening. Colin gets mobbed by congratulations, along with his new soulmate, whose name Jamie doesn't even know. He gets up and stands back from the chaos, trying to be happy for them, drowning in jealousy instead.
It's the first time he's actually watched a bonding happen before his own eyes. He's been present for two others—one at a speed-checking event and one in the fruit and veg section at the supermarket—but he wasn't looking at either couple when they happened, just heard the commotion after.
"Come on, mate, we're hitting the clubs to celebrate!" Isaac yells, and the swarm of well-wishers around the table starts gravitating towards the door. Jamie asks a waiter about the bill just as an excuse to lag behind, already knowing it'll be on the house. Then he follows, and relentlessly checks with every single person in the three different clubs they visit.
No one turns him down, not with a newly-bonded couple right there radiating ecstasy like that. No one is turning anyone down tonight.
*
Jamie gets four hours of sleep and turns up for training in a beastly mood. At least he hasn't got to fake a smile for Colin—he's unsurprisingly out for the day, probably shagging his dick raw. Not all bonded couples fuck right away, but from the way the two of them were all over each other last night, Jamie's money is on all-day sex marathon.
Zoreaux arrives with a pretty woman he introduces as his sister Alice, visiting from Montreal. She smiles and says, "Nice to meet you all. Who wants to check?"
She takes her time with her checks, enjoying it like Jamie normally does, but today he's not in the mood. He gives her a quick peck and turns back to his stretches, ignoring her progress around the room until he catches sight of her kissing Roy.
"What the hell," Jamie says.
She turns around, confused. Roy shoots him a smirk.
"You won't check with people you've known for years," Jamie says, anger rising up inside him. "She lives in Canada, what the fuck would you even do if you bonded with someone who lives in Canada?"
"Double-check?" Roy asks Alice, and she gives Jamie a disdainful look and goes back for more.
Jamie doesn't even pretend not to watch. Roy is doing this on fucking purpose—he never checks with strangers, and he definitely doesn't fucking double-check. He's just trying to wind Jamie up, knowing he's a mess over Colin's bond, and it's working.
It's not fucking fair. It's not fair that Colin is the one who gets a soulmate, when he doesn't even try. He checks when people offer, but he's never the one going around a room asking. He doesn't do the events. He hasn't got this need Jamie feels, this drive, this yearning. He's never worked for it like Jamie has.
If putting in the work doesn't make the difference, then what's even the fucking point?
Jamie leans over to Dani and whispers, "Want to come over tonight and fuck?"
Dani blinks in surprise. They've spent plenty of time making out, but nothing beyond that. "Okay," he says amiably.
Jamie doesn't hook up often—he's more interested in spending his evenings out checking with everyone he can. But today, with Colin's absence impossible to ignore, he doesn't feel like desperately clawing for a tiny chance at perfect bliss. Just for one night, he'd rather have a sure thing.
*
They're already comfortable kissing, so they do that for a while first, lying cosily on Jamie's bed with Dani half on top. Jamie tries not to think about how much better it would be with a soulmate, or about the minuscule chance that he'd have bonded if he'd gone out instead; tries to just relax and enjoy it.
"I never see you take anyone home," Dani murmurs. "I thought maybe you were a virgin. Saving it for your soulmate."
Jamie huffs a laugh. "Nope. Just don't like wasting time."
"And now? Are we wasting time?" Dani shifts his hip, rubbing against Jamie's erection.
"No." Jamie slides a hand down Dani's back, encouraging the motion. "Right now this is what I want."
Dani smiles brightly and kisses him again, slipping a hand up under his shirt. "Top or bottom? Or I can blow you. I'm happy with anything."
"Blow me while you finger me, then fuck me?" Jamie suggests, trying to wriggle out of the shirt.
Dani helps him shuck it off. "Good plan. I will check if I am soulmates with your dick."
Jamie fumbles the button on his trousers as he bursts out laughing. After they're both naked and Dani is about to take him into his mouth, fingers lubed and exploring, Jamie says "Soulmates with my dick" and cracks up again.
Dani grins up at him, apparently not put off by being laughed at during sex. He gives the head of Jamie's dick a quick kiss. "Damn. Double-check!" he says, wrapping his lips around it, and Jamie can't even tell when he stops laughing and starts to moan.
*
Colin is back the next day, glowing with happiness. He's got a massive smile on his face throughout morning training, and when a rep from some sports drink company drops by the dressing room to offer them all checks along with product samples, he takes obvious delight in saying, "No thanks, I'm bonded."
"Just the other night," Isaac adds, slapping Colin on the back.
"Oh wow, congratulations!" says the rep, and he moves on. Jamie accepts a check and a sample, and looks away when Roy does as well.
"Roy, you're checking now?" Colin asks, surprised.
"Not with everyone," says Roy. "Just the fit ones."
"Oh, fuck you," Jamie snaps.
Colin looks back and forth between them. "What have I missed?"
"Just Jamie Tartt being the centre of the fucking universe, as always," Roy grumbles, and walks out.
Jamie yanks his boots off, scowling. Dani leans over to him and murmurs, "Double-check?"
"No," Jamie says shortly. Dani flinches, and Jamie sighs. "Not now. Later, all right?"
He feels guilty about it, and ends up giving Dani an apology blowjob in the showers after training is done for the day. He's got a speed-checking event planned for the evening, and he's not really looking forward to it, but he invites Dani along and it's not so bad. They go back to Jamie's house afterwards and fuck again, Jamie on top this time, and the next morning he wakes up to discover they've spent the whole night spooning.
"Hang on, are we dating?" he asks, slightly taken aback at the thought. He's never really bothered with dating—no time for it, and he'd just have to dump them if he bonded anyway.
Dani shrugs. "Do you want to?"
Jamie thinks it over. He's determined to beat the odds and find his bond, but it could take years. He might as well take a breath and enjoy himself in the meantime. "I'm definitely not going to stop checking. If you're good with that..." Dani nods. "Then sure, why not."
Dani beams. "If you take a shower, I'll find out whether I'm soulmates with your asshole," he offers, and the rest of the morning puts Jamie in a very good mood.
*
"You don't seriously believe that, do you?" Roy says. "You cannot actually be that thick."
"She's perfect," Colin insists. "No one else could be that perfect for me. She's got to be the only one. That's what 'soulmate' means."
Roy rolls his eyes. "It's simple fucking maths. If each person could only bond with one specific other person on the planet, bonds would never fucking happen. The chances of checking with the right person would be practically nothing."
Jamie stays out of it, because Roy is right and he doesn't want to acknowledge it.
"You're assuming random matches," says Beard.
"I'm not fucking assuming, it is random. They've done all sorts of studies, there's no way to predict a bond."
"Doesn't mean it's random. Could be something that can't be studied. Like fate."
Roy snorts.
"I wonder if there are studies about how often people check," muses Sam. "If people who check with everyone they meet are just as likely to bond as people who don't, that would suggest it is fate and nothing can be done."
That kills Jamie's resolve to stay out of it. "Of course people who check more bond more. Fucking hell, how do you not know that?"
Roy glowers, meaning Jamie is right and he doesn't want to acknowledge it.
It blows Jamie's fucking mind that anyone could just go about their lives not realising they can increase their chances of bonding by checking more often. If it was fate, why would anyone bother to check at all? Jamie knows not everyone inhales Grazia articles about the science of bonding like he does, but this shit is obvious when you just think about it.
"I don't really think about it," says Sam. "I prefer to check only when people ask, and if it happens it happens. The chances of a bond are so small anyway, I don't want to waste my whole life chasing after it."
"Well, the chances would be a lot fucking smaller if you could only bond with one fucking person," says Roy.
"If we can all bond with more than one person, then why aren't there people with two bonds?" asks Colin smugly, like he's won the argument.
"BECAUSE THEY STOP CHECKING!" Jamie yells at the exact same time as Roy yells, "BECAUSE BONDED PEOPLE DON'T CHECK!"
They glare at each other.
"Aren't you two... agreeing?" Sam asks cautiously.
"They are one hundred percent in agreement on all of this and they're both mad about it," says Beard. "I find it hilarious." His expression is completely neutral.
"Piss off," Roy mutters.
"I like checking," says Dani cheerfully. "I don't think about bonding, I just think about saying hello to new people. Sometimes I make friends!"
Jamie gives him a fond kiss and tries to let it go. He really tries. He knows, logically, that Colin's bond was pure dumb luck, that putting in the work does mean he's got a better chance at bonding. He's read about this, it's the only thing he fucking reads about. He doesn't need anyone else's opinion.
But Roy gets under his skin and stays there for hours, and when half the team has already left for the day, he can't keep it in any longer. "If you believe all that, why the fuck don't you check with just anyone?" he demands.
Roy shoots him a scathing look. "Because I don't want to be bonded with just anyone. I have standards."
"So you want to be bonded to someone who lives in fucking Canada? Or a bloke who shills some Lucozade knockoff for a living? Those are your standards?"
"Nah," says Roy. "Those were just to fuck with you."
Jamie punches him. Or starts to, but Roy is ready for it and catches his wrist, and a second later they're rolling about on the floor wrestling. People are yelling around them, but no one else gets physically involved, and soon Jamie is straddling Roy's torso and holding his arms down.
He could kiss Roy, right now. He's not going to, but he fucking could, and he makes damn sure Roy sees him considering it.
"Stop fucking with me," Jamie says, meaning it as a warning, but it comes out as more of a plea.
*
Dani loves stupid mushy romance films about people who bond from their first kiss or bond accidentally by falling on each other or fake like they've bonded when they haven't or some such rubbish. Jamie would never watch that shit on his own, but it turns out there's a lot he'll put up with when Dani wants to cuddle, and he discovers to his horror that he actually loves the mushy films as well. That's what he's always wanted: the love story, the fucking mush. That's the goal.
"What did it feel like?" he asks Colin on a pub night. "How did you know it was happening?"
Colin shrugs. "Can't describe it, mate. I just knew. No question. I've never felt that sure of anything in my life."
That's pretty much what everyone who's bonded says. Apparently it's not really a physical feeling, just a sudden certainty. Jamie wonders if it could have happened without him noticing. Maybe he bonded with the first person he ever kissed, back when he was fourteen years old, and he was too high on adrenaline to pick up on it.
"Not possible, mate," says Colin, when Jamie voices this concern a few beers later. "Trust me, you'd know. Even if you managed to miss it happening, which you wouldn't, there's also this..." He waves a hand. "Pull, like I've always got this awareness of her not being here, and when she is here it just feels right. It's hard to explain."
Maybe that's the drive Jamie's always felt, that need to find a bond. Maybe he bonded at fourteen and it's just the absence of his soulmate in his life making him feel unfulfilled.
He's been feeling it less lately, though. He and Dani have been staying in a lot, having sex, watching soppy films or football matches or both on different screens, sometimes working out together, one disastrous time trying to cook. They go out as well, snogging their way through restaurants and clubs, but it doesn't always end in frustration and disappointment like it used to, because now he's got Dani at the end of the night.
He's been thinking about what Dani said, about enjoying checking for its own sake. Jamie does like kissing, he's pretty much always up for a double-check. And he likes meeting people, and he really likes the ego boost when people start to say no and then take a second look at him and change their minds. Maybe Dani has a point.
He likes watching Dani kiss people, as well. He wonders how it would feel to watch Dani bond with someone else. He's not sure if he'd be gutted or thrilled for him. Gutted, probably, but somehow the idea of Dani getting the kind of happiness Colin has... Jamie wants that for him, he genuinely does. It's a strange feeling.
"Double-check," he says, and obviously he knows double-checking isn't a serious thing, if a bond is going to happen it'll happen the first time, but still a tiny ridiculous part of him hopes they've just not done it right yet, and someday he and Dani will kiss enough to find their bond.
*
A month after he stops asking Roy for a check, Roy offers him one.
Jamie stares. "You have got to be fucking kidding me," he says, and walks away.
The bastard. The fucking bastard. Years he's been saying no, and as soon as Jamie gives up on him, there he is ready to go. Jamie fumes about it all day, and rants about it to Dani all evening, and fumes all the next day, and the next.
A week later, Jamie stops running laps in the middle of training and says, "Why?"
"Oh, did Lasso say 'three laps around the pitch for everyone except the golden boy rules don't apply to'?" Roy sneers.
Jamie steps up and gets in his face. "Why?"
"Get your arse back out there," Roy says, standing his ground.
Jamie shoves him in the chest. "Why? Fucking why?"
"Because I want to, all right!" Roy shouts, an inch from Jamie's nose. "Because you pinned me down and you nearly fucking did it and I can't stop fucking thinking about it!"
"You're such a fucking dickhead!" Jamie screams back at him, and they both fall into the kiss at the same time, and of course.
Of fucking course.
Jamie gets it, all at once, everything Colin was trying to say about certainty and pull. There are no words to explain this bone-deep knowledge that this is it, Roy is his, they are each other's. Nothing has ever felt so right.
Roy pulls back and says, "Fuck."
"Yeah," says Jamie. He turns to look out at the pitch, where a lone long-haired figure is standing stock-still amid the jogging crowd, staring at them. "Fuck."
*
By silent mutual agreement, they don't say anything to the team. They can't read each other's minds or anything, that's more bullshit from the films, but Jamie does feel as if he's got a better handle on what Roy is thinking just because he's settled into this deeper general understanding of Roy. Like Colin said, it's impossible to describe. But it doesn't take telepathy to know that Roy has no interest in getting piled on and dragged out to celebrate like Colin. So they keep quiet, at least for now.
Dani knows, though. He looks miserable while they all shower and change, and when the dressing room is mostly empty, he says to Jamie, "It's okay if I just go home tonight. I can come by and pick up my stuff this weekend."
Jamie doesn't want him to go home or pick up his stuff. He doesn't want to lose him. He kisses Dani, suddenly and intensely, and he can tell from the desperate way Dani kisses back that he thinks it's a goodbye kiss, and Jamie doesn't fucking want it to be.
Jamie turns to find that Roy is the only other one still there. "What if I don't want to break up with Dani?" Jamie asks him.
Roy shrugs. "There's no fucking rulebook," he says. "I just want you to be happy."
"But I want you to be happy too," Jamie says.
Dani makes a noise that might be a laugh or a sob. "Now I know for sure it's a bond," he says. "You two would never have said that to each other before."
Jamie sees a flash of the long stretch of days in front of him, the magnitude of the impact this is going to have on his life, and he realises something else. "I don't want to stop checking."
"Good," says Roy. "Find a second bond and prove my point to those dumbfucks."
"Can we just... do that?" Jamie looks back and forth between Roy and Dani. "Can I be with both of you, and go on kissing everyone after I'm bonded? Really?"
Dani's eyes are wide. "I hope so," he says uncertainly.
"There's no fucking rulebook," Roy says again. He steps closer. "Guess you and I should check, then," he says to Dani.
Dani looks slightly overwhelmed, but gamely leans in to kiss Roy. "Nope," he says, and glances at Jamie. "But I haven't checked with his dick yet."
The tension explodes out of Jamie in hysterical laughter. His knees give out and he collapses to the bench, laughing so hard he's nearly crying. Dani giggles too, a bit nervously.
"Jesus Christ," mutters Roy, and for the first time Jamie can hear fondness threaded through the exasperation.
*
Dani spreads himself open for Jamie with his hands and says, "Are you sure I should be here?"
"Sshh," Jamie says, gently easing in his cock.
"It's really fine if you want the first time after the bond to be just you two. I would not be offended."
"Is this your way of telling me you're into being gagged?" Jamie asks, and Dani reluctantly shuts up. "Right, Roy, do your worst."
"'Do your worst'?" Roy repeats disbelievingly. "How the fuck did you ever manage to pull without a bond?" He presses the head of his dick against Jamie's hole, already lubed and well-stretched.
Jamie grunts as it pops in. "Excuse you, I pull. I could walk out onto the street right now and pull in thirty seconds, easy."
"Do it," Roy says, pushing further in. "I dare you. I fucking dare you, you smarmy little prick."
"Bondsex is much more romantic in the films," Dani complains.
Jamie strokes Dani's hair tenderly. "I love you, sweetheart," he says, then grins. "Jury's still out on the pillock behind me."
"I'm divorcing your soul," Roy says as he starts to thrust. "We're soul-exes. My soul gets half your hideous trainers. Fucking hell, how is this so good?"
"Welcome to the Jamie Tartt Experience! Please keep your dick inside the ride at all—"
"Please," Dani begs. "A little romance? For me?"
"For you," Jamie concedes, and twists around to catch Roy in a searing kiss right as he bottoms out. Fuck, bondsex really is great. Or maybe it's that fucking and being fucked at the same time is great. He's surprised by how little he cares.
*
"Good morning!" Jamie hollers, swaggering into the dressing room like the football royalty he fucking is. "Double-check, anyone? Double-check? Double-check?"
Roy holds up both hands to fend him off. "You swore. You said one check and you're out of my hair for good."
Jamie claims kisses from everyone else in the room and shoots Roy a smirk. He'll hold out through morning training and then sometime during lunch he'll succumb to the power of the bond and track Jamie down for a snog. In the meantime, Jamie's got a reputation to uphold. "Dani, I heard there's a tour group coming through from Japan, let's go catch 'em by the trophy cases."
"Okay!" Dani chirps. He skips along to join Jamie, and Roy kisses him as he passes just to wind Jamie up.
It doesn't work. Jamie's untouchable. He's got a soulmate, a boyfriend, and this morning he kissed every single person at Starbucks. Fucking legend.