Chapter Text
Colin loved his family. He truly did.
They were funny and kind and had sacrificed so much for him to play football since not long after he’d taken his first toddling steps. When his father had lost his battle to cancer four years ago, it had brought him, his two older sisters Rhiannon and Tegan with their husbands and young children, his mother and grandmother (who lived with his mother now) closer than ever. So although it was extremely difficult with his schedule nowadays, Colin made the effort to get back to Cardiff where the rest of them still lived as often as he feasibly could.
Colin loved going home. He truly did.
His Mam would make the most delicious lamb stew with homemade bread and local salty butter, with his dear old Nain singing in her sweet wobbly voice as she’d cut the carrots and shell the peas, and when his sisters’ children, his five little nephews and nieces, had been safely tucked into bed at night, they’d all get on the whisky and sit around giggling ‘til far too late.
Since Rhiannon and Tegan had gotten married and had their little ones, and especially since their father had passed away, the pressure had been steadily mounting on Colin though. The excitement about his career had long since settled and questions about how the team were doing had been almost entirely replaced by questions about his love life. Had he met any nice girls in London? Had he been on any dates lately? Had he met that pretty girl off that television show because they heard she went to the same charity gala he went to that one time? Did he want Tegan’s husband Dylan’s cousin’s accountant’s number because she lives not far from Richmond and she’s recently single and she’s very clever and she’s got the most beautiful red hair? When is he going to give his poor Mam another little grandbaby to cuddle because the others are getting so big already and Nain might not have too many more years left in her you know and doesn’t she deserve to be a great-grandmother at least one more time? And so on and so forth until Colin starts to feel physically sick and has to come up with some sorry excuse to leave the room for fresh air. He knows they mean well and want the best for him but it still hurts.
Because Colin is gay.
And since he loves his family so much and can’t bear the thought of disappointing them in any way, he’s never known how to tell them. He’s rehearsed it over and over in his head, and sometimes even out loud in the car as he drives across the border, but nothing’s ever sounded perfect, the timing has never been right, or a hundred other things have held him back.
But tonight, he’s being hounded worse than ever before.
It’s probably because it’s Rhiannon and Rhys’ tenth wedding anniversary and they’d had all their friends over for a big party and he had been the only single person there, aside from the children as someone had joked, and now all the guests had left and everyone’s even drunker than usual and letting rip, all talking at once. At the top of their lungs, at exactly the same time.
“Now which dating apps are you on, Colin? You’ve gotta be on…”
“Are your DMs open? What about a fan? I’m sure there’d be a fan page who…”
“There’s Tinder and Bumble and Hinge and OK Cupid and…”
“What ever happened to just going down the pub and going up to a girl sitting at the bar…”
“You’re a good looking lad, Col…”
“Have you ever tried blind dating? Or speed dating? Jenny from work said…”
“Girls like a man who…”
And his head is pounding and his pulse is racing and everyone’s getting more animated and more frantic and Rhys is trying to download some app on his phone and Nain is launching into some folk song about falling in love and one of his nephews wakes up and starts crying down the hall and Colin explodes.
“STOP!” he shouts. “Just stop it, all of you! I’m gay, for god’s sake!”
The room falls silent.
“I’m sorry,” Colin stutters, shocked at himself and how it suddenly came out, looking around at the stunned faces of his relatives. “I’m sorry, I know you all want to see me with a nice girl but I’m gay, I like men, so it’s never going to happen. I’m sorry.”
There’s a beat and then before he knows it, everyone is hugging him, clapping him on the back and patting his hair and holding his arm.
“Oh darling!” his mother says. “Why didn’t you tell us earlier! I’m so proud of you.”
“I should have known,” Tegan jokes. “You always let me dress you up in my princess costumes when you were little.”
Colin naively assumes after this that things will be different. That now his family knows, they’ll calm down and leave him alone, let him be.
How wrong he is! Things only get more intense. Instead of saving their questions and suggestions for his visits to Cardiff, his family are calling every night. Sending him feel-good news stories about gay couples adopting gaggles of children, pictures of cake toppers featuring two men, cufflinks that say Mr and Mr, rainbow patterned socks and ties, phone numbers of hairdressers and bartenders they’ve met who also happened to be gay, everything imaginable and then some. Again, Colin knows they mean well but it’s too goddamn much for anyone to handle and he starts dodging their calls, deleting their texts, and dreading going home.
Next week is his niece’s fourth birthday though and he’d promised to be there ages ago and there’s an obvious gap in the Richmond schedule he knows his family know about so he can’t weasel out of going. Plus he’d bought her this hilarious little kid-sized electric Lamborghini for her to ride around the yard on that he absolutely can’t miss seeing her face when she unwraps. So he goes home, praying for peace.
It feels like déjà vu.
The party had been a hit, a dozen adorable preschoolers zipping around with cake smeared on their faces and glitter in their hair, ecstatic. And the tiny ride-on Lambo had wrought a scream of delight so big Colin thought his niece would literally burst her lungs. Now it’s late and the adults are spread around the kitchen, drinking and laughing as they wash dishes and wipe counters, and of course the conversation turns back on Colin.
“Sooooo…” starts Rhiannon, gently whipping him with the tea towel she is using to dry up.
“Noooo!” Colin tries to cut her off but everyone soldiers on with increasingly raucous banter about men and dating and sex which Colin tries his damndest to block out but can still very much hear every word of and his brain is screaming until some utterly mad, stupid instinct flies across it in a furious flash, less than a millisecond, but before he can stop himself he blurts it out.
“I have a boyfriend!” he splutters.
Silence. Instant and enormous regret. But he can’t take it back now.
“I’ve got a boyfriend, okay, so you can leave me alone now, yeah?” he doubles down, faking defiance as they squeal.
“So who is he?!” Tegan asks excitedly.
And again Colin’s panicked mind totally betrays him and he bursts out something he knows he should never in a million years have said but he can’t prevent.
“Jamie.”
“Jamie who?” asks Tegan in the same tell-us-more tone.
“Jamie Jamie. Jamie Tartt. From Richmond.” Colin chokes out, cursing internally with every word. Why didn’t he just make something up?! Why Jamie of all people?! (He knew why, of course he did, his massive fucking crush is why, but he couldn’t admit that to himself right now.)
“No way!” Rhiannon shrieks.
“Is that why you could never tell us?” suggests Rhys. “Because you’re teammates and you’re not out?”
“Yeah, that’s right,” Colin nods. “The press and all that. Gotta be secret.”
“Well, I’m thrilled for you, darling. How wonderful to have found someone you can see every day and who really understands your life,” his Mam says with tears in her eyes.
“So you’ll bring him to my birthday, won’t you? Promise me you’ll bring him,” Nain says.
Oh god. It’s her 90th in a few weeks and they all know her health has been declining in a serious way lately and she has been saying, despite their protestations, that it may be her last birthday. Certainly it’s a milestone that everybody in the entire Hughes family tree will be at with bells on, and she’s looking up at Colin with those bloody doe eyes all grandmothers have and he can’t possibly say no, can he? But he absolutely has to.
Luckily Rhys steps in again, ever a practical man. “There’ll be too many people here, won’t there? All the second cousins and everybody, they’re teenagers, they’ll hound Jamie for selfies and autographs and it’ll end up on the internet for sure.”
“You’re right,” Colin says. “Sorry but we just can’t.”
“So come the weekend before instead?” Rhys chimes back in, the bastard, and Colin wants to slap him. “Yeah, bring him when it’s just the usual little group of us. That way Nain can meet him, and we can too, but nobody else who might be a risk.”
“Perfect!” everyone agrees and again Colin feels completely trapped so he just nods sheepishly, sick inside.
Fuck.
-
Colin’s been psyching himself up to talk to Jamie for days now.
He’s fairly confident they’re friends now. Yeah, they definitely get along. They’ve even hung out outside of work a few times. In fact, things have been very different between Jamie and the whole team since his return, but in a strange reverse way that almost makes this worse because it could really jeopardise the good thing they’ve got going. But Colin is stuck. His family will never let this go if he doesn’t bring Jamie home. He figures Jamie can just come for a few hours then fake an emergency of some not-too-major sort and leave. Then Colin will just have excuses why Jamie is unavailable any time he visits again, and after a few months perhaps he’ll tell his family they broke up, amicably, and hopefully by then they’ll have moved on from the whole thing, satisfied their little Col is able to find love whenever he wants to and doesn’t need their ‘help’ anymore.
So Colin dallies around the building after training until he sees Jamie set off for home then ambushed him in the carpark where blessedly nobody else is around.
“Jamie!” he calls, trying to sound casual.
“What’s up, mate?”
“I was wondering…” Fuck. Colin’s rehearsed this a thousand times in his head but it’s gone differently every time even in his pathetic practises and he considers backing out once and for all. But Jamie is still waiting, and he’s actually smiling at him, and he looks like he actually wants to talk to him.
“Is everything ok?” Jamie asks and Colin realises he still hasn’t said anything.
“Oh, yeah. I… I was wondering if you’ve ever been to Cardiff?”
“No, don’t think I ‘ave. That’s your home town, in’t it?”
“Yeah.” Colin goes blank again.
Jamie nods, “Is it nice? D’you go back a lot?”
“Quite a bit, yeah. My family’s there… and that’s what I wanted to talk to you about actually, if you’re not too busy.”
“Sure. Never too busy for you, mate.” Jamie says obligingly, although he does look rather quizzical.
“Thanks. So, uh, my family are in Cardiff and they’re great. But basically they were always bothering me about not having a girlfriend, so I told them I was gay.”
“What did ya do that for?!” Jamie laughs.
“Because I am.” Colin says.
“Oh,” Jamie replies. “Oh-"
“Yeah,” Colin’s going for broke now, the words tumbling out faster and faster, “and I panicked and I promise I didn’t mean to but I lied and told them you’re my boyfriend.”
“What?!” Jamie sounds shocked. But he doesn’t seem angry or disgusted, more like confused and even amused.
“So d’you fancy a little holiday to Cardiff?”
“Wha- Are you serious, mate!”
“You’d only have to come for an hour or two, pretend a little for my family, then I could book you a lush hotel somewhere and you could have a little weekend there on your own if you like or you can come straight back to London, and you never have to talk to me again but I really need your help with this because my family are so-”
“Hold on, this is-”
“Please Jamie, I’ll do anything-”
“Colin, it’s-”
“I’ll give you my Lambo.” Colin can’t believe he’s just said that. Jamie looks even more surprised. Jamie already has a top range sports car, of course, and gets paid a hell of a lot more than Colin does so he could easily buy another car of any kind at any time, but the Lambo is Colin’s pride and joy, so he hopes this shows just how serious he is. “And you can tell all the team I lost a bet for it. Make me look like a right idiot, say whatever shit you like about me and I’ll go along with it.”
Jamie looks him up and down for a minute, like he’s really trying to figure out what he wants to say but then he just says, “Alright”.
“You’ll do it?!”
“Yeah,” Jamie nods. “Colin, I-"
“Fuck. Thank you. I’ll text you the details, ok?”
Then he runs away like an absolute madman, because maybe he is.
-
The drive is about three hours and Jamie insists on driving them both there in his car because he’s “too young and sexy to die” if Colin’s behind the wheel. Arriving together will also help make the dating ruse more convincing, and Colin will take the train back the day after Jamie leaves. So while Jamie drives, he does, however, let Colin pick all the music and appears suitably impressed by the fact that Colin can rap every word to so many songs, and if Jamie constantly smiling over at him and geeing him up for his ‘hidden talent’ makes Colin blush a little, well that’s nobody’s business. Between songs, they discuss the story they’re going to tell and how they’re going to act, and again Colin tries not to blush as he laughs at Jamie getting far too caught up in inventing the dumbest details. If Colin didn’t know any better, he could almost think Jamie was enjoying himself.
“Alright so we went cycling ‘round the city on our first date, and we ‘ad a picnic lunch-” Jamie is saying.
“Cycling works, but as if we’d have a picnic!” Colin retorts.
“Why not?! Don’t ya think I’m romantic like that?”
Colin just laughs.
“I’m very fucking romantic, thank y’very much! And I was the first one who said ‘I love you’ and-" Jamie continues weaving the story.
Colin scoffs humorously again, “As if! There’s no way in hell you’d say I love you before I would! You’re absolutely dreaming. They’ll never believe that.”
“Ok well then I was the first one to give a blowjob.”
“They’ll never ASK that!” Colin jumps in. “At least I bloody hope not. But I would believe that though.”
Jamie pretends to be scandalised now. “Why? D’ya think I’m some sort of slut?”
Colin waggles his eyebrows jokingly.
Jamie winks, “I could be. For you.”
Colin about melts. Again, he completely knows that Jamie is just carrying on because he’s trying to make the best of a bad situation, because he’s getting the Lambo, because he’s been backed into a corner with no other choice really, but Colin could almost believe he was flirting. It’s oddly enjoyable and makes Colin kind of desperately wish he had a real boyfriend he could banter with like that. And if the passing notion of Jamie giving him a blowjob makes him feel hot enough to wind down the car windows momentarily, he’d never admit it.
“What should I call you, by the way?” Jamie continues.
“Huh?” Colin asks. “Oh god, you do remember that my name’s Colin, don’t you?”
“Obviously, dickhead. I mean like pet names or whatever they’re called. Like sweetheart or honey or babe? I think I like babe.”
Colin tries to breathe deeply. That sounds... embarrassingly good coming out of Jamie's mouth. “Uh, babe’s fine, I guess. I mean, if you really have to say anything.” Colin’s suddenly worried for the first time that Jamie might actually embarrass him, might embarrass his family. “Please just… try to be good?”
“Don’t worry, babe, I’ll save being bad for the bedroom.”
He winks again.
Fuck.