Archive of Our Own

 The First Friday

Isaac wakes up to a car alarm going off.

Blindly, he swipes for his phone on the bedside table, already vowing to kill Jamie. Or Richard, or Colin, or maybe even Sam because the young man had quite a lot of mischief in him, secretly. The saintly front wasn’t pretend exactly, but changing the sound of Isaac’s alarm while he was in the showers was just Sam’s sort of prank.

Except the noise isn’t coming from Isaac’s phone. A few experimental taps reveal that the time is just fifteen minutes from his actual alarm going off. The awful noise is coming from a car parked on the street just beyond his window.

With a sigh, Isaac cancels the alarm and lets himself stare at the ceiling for a bit. As he does, the car alarm stops trying to wake up the whole block. He takes that as his cue to get up.

His morning routine is an easy one. Roll out of bed, pull on his robe and slippers to guard against the January cold that seeps into his house no matter what he sets the temperature to, brush his teeth. Isaac pops his contacts in then goes hunting for breakfast.

Yesterday he’d made a wonderful fried egg sandwich with bacon, fresh cheese, aioli sauce, and bread toasted to perfection. Isaac’s plans for a repeat performance of that are foiled by the fact that he forgot to pick up more eggs yesterday after training. He settles for some peanut butter and jelly toast with a fruit smoothie. And some tea, of course.

While the kettle boils, Isaac pokes around on his phone some more. Jamie had sent a selfie to the team group chat of his early morning training with Roy. Their assistant coach looks grumpy but Isaac is 93% sure that the scowl is just for show. The sun is rising in the background. Isaac’s sister had posted on Instagram just after midnight. He likes the picture of her studying at her university’s library with a full cup of iced coffee and leaves an upbeat comment praising her work ethic and begging her to get more sleep.

He eats while going through Snapchat. There’s another picture of the sunrise from Jamie, this time without Roy. Isaac snaps back a photo of his toast. Richard’s Snap contains an elegant photo of a glass of wine resting on the railing on his balcony overlooking the Thames. He also gets a photo of Isaac’s toast. 

When he opens Jan’s Snap he is greeted by the beautiful face of Jan’s cat, creatively named Kat. That deserves a video response of Isaac calling her a sweetheart. Dani’s photo of his neighbor's dog gets the same treatment. Colin had opened the snap Isaac sent him last night but had forgotten to respond. That was pretty normal for Colin. They’d never gotten a streak to last more than a week or so. In a few days Colin would remember that Snapchat exists and reply, but in the meantime they’d text up a storm and send each other TikToks and Instagram memes constantly.

There’s a short clip of some live action movie on Keeley’s story that Isaac watches, recorded in her living room, a woman with chin length dark hair appearing on the edges. That woman had been popping up occasionally for months but Isaac had no idea who she was. Only that she was fit. Keeley had the most attractive friends. He should really hang out with her more often.

When breakfast is over and he’s checked over his socials, Isaac does some quick cleaning and then goes to get dressed. 

He loves his house, had fallen in love with it the second the realtor emailed him the online listing. The warm hardwood flooring, the different bright colors that the halls and rooms were painted, the kitchen filled with expensive equipment he barely used.

While all of that is great, Isaac adores his closet the most. 

One of the guys, a bloke who’d played for Richmond Isaac’s first season then got traded before Ted came, had teased him about it being a girl's closet once. It was a walk-in with wonderful lighting and a full length mirror on the back wall, drawers and cubbies built in for his accessories and footwear.

Isaac had punched that guy in the stomach, not just for the remark but for the implication hiding in his tone. The one that said just because Isaac cared about his appearance and had killer fashion sense, he was somehow less of a man. 

From the varied collection, Isaac feels called to a vibrant set of sweats from A Bathing Ape this morning. It’s one of his favorites for more casual days. He grabs a few gold rings too. Altogether he’d probably spend less than five hours in this outfit today but that’s fine. Those five hours would up the total stylishness of Richmond by quite a bit.

He arrives at the stadium before most of the other players, windows rolled down and music blaring. Walking in he greets the normal assortment of people (HR, PR, IT, all the acronyms) with smiles, high fives, and fist bumps. He nods to Ginny from payroll solemnly and she returns the gesture as she finishes filling up her water bottle. 

“Morning Captain.” One of the physios calls.

Isaac waves at him. “Morning David.”

“You look to be in a good mood.”

“I have a feeling it’s going to be a good day.” He says. “Gaffer’s kid is in town, no match tomorrow, today’s light work.”

“The hell it is.” Roy says, appearing from nowhere to promise doom, as was his speciality. It makes Isaac jump, and David laughs. “Move it, McAdoo, or you’ll be running so much your puke will feel nauseous.”

Isaac moves. The changing room is as full as the player lot. Jamie is already in the practice kit and stretching on the floor. Babatunde wishes Isaac a good morning from where he’s apparently gotten distracted by something on his phone halfway through getting changed. Robbie looks to be cleaning out his locker, judging by the armful of wrappers and old water bottles he’s dumping in the rubbish bin. Isaac’s already marked him down on the fines sheet though so he’ll be contributing a hundred pounds to the end of season party anyway. 

Despite Roy’s promise, it isn’t actually a very intense day of training. Isaac is tasked with leading them through the normal morning warm up drills once everyone shows (Colin with only a minute to spare and obviously out of breath, Goodman at least five minutes late and holding an iced coffee) while the coaches hold a morning meeting and Will answers questions from Henry about kitman duties with a devious gleam in his eye.

Morning drills have become Isaac’s favorite part of the day since they got the hang of Total Football, because it’s football like Isaac had never played it before. He’d thought that he had left new experiences behind once he got his first few Premier League seasons under his belt. But before drills come the stretch circle and Isaac makes the executive decision that since Roy isn’t around to insist that warm ups are done by running, they can do one of the Zumba routines Beard taught them instead today.

Then the balls come out. Drills start up for real. One of Winchester’s passes doesn’t go as intended and nails McCracken in the back of the head. There’s no real damage, thankfully, and he gets sent to the sidelines with an ice pack where he’s consoled by one of the fans in Richmond colors who came to today’s open training. She isn’t allowed down onto the pitch of course but she can move to a lower seat and talk to him. McCracken doesn’t seem to mind.

When the meeting is over, Beard and Roy emerge having traded their normal Lasso for a smaller version. Henry excitedly tells them about all the games he and Will had played that sound more like child labor than anything. 

“We’ve got way better games than Will.” Isaac promises. “Have you ever played don’t let the balloon touch the floor, but with a football? A proper one, not the weird American kind.” 

Henry claims he hasn’t, but Isaac thinks he might be a liar because he’s very good at it. According to Sam, who was of course counting, he gets up to fifty something consecutive kicks before his dad comes down and dismisses them all to lunch.

The second half of the day is a bit more productive, partially because Roy is around the whole time, partially because they’re split up between the weight room and the treadmills to do individualized workouts. Some of them get shuttled off for the physical trainers to work with one on one. Isaac spends his weight lifting session listening to Barber Jabber with Garry Spencer. 

Up until the end of the workout session, Isaac’s words from the morning hold true. It is a good day. Until Isaac is lacing up his trainers and Jamie is tossing Colin some spare Lynx from his vast collection and Zorraux is asking them if they’ve seen the stories about some massive leak of celebrity nudes.

Which happens. Isaac knows it happens, but he also knows that it’s fucked up. That’s why he never saves photos or videos from girls that he dates. Sam and Jamie agree with him; several others don’t. Including Colin.

The brief debate that follows is…revealing. But every word of it—Jan’s knowledge of copyright laws, Will’s apparent possession of an erotic painting, Bumbercatch bringing up memory stealing, everyone’s love of Les Miserables —is in character. Everything except for Colin’s steadfast disagreement with Isaac. 

It’s not like they never disagree. They do sometimes. But Isaac can’t recall a time when Colin refused outright to see Isaac’s point of view on anything. 

The discussion comes to an abrupt halt when Sam announces that Keeley was one of the people whose nudes were leaked. Keeley isn’t just some celebrity. She’s one of them. Isaac has partied with her, mourned with her, lost at Uno to her. Even after her breakups with both Jamie and Roy, Keeley Jones is a part of AFC Richmond. The thought of her private stuff being stolen and put on the internet makes his blood boil.

“Right. Everybody take out your phones. Delete it all. Now.”

There’s a bit of pushback, but Isaac invokes the tone he’d learned from Roy, the one that says do as I say or I’ll end you right here right now. That does the trick. 

Sam and Jamie leave together. Isaac puts on his jacket and slips his bag over his head so he can do the same. He feels no need to sit here and hold the lad's hands through the process. There is no one here he doesn’t trust to do the right thing.

When he sees Colin walk off, he refuses to doubt that trust. 

His best mate just needs a little push. Colin is a good guy and surely if Isaac tells him again—

“I will man. Fuck off.”

The hostility in his voice makes Isaac frown. He reaches for the phone, ready to do it himself if Colin won’t. “I said delete it right now.” When Colin tries to take the device back, Isaac gently pushes him down onto the couch with a half chuckle. They’ve wrestled over many things during the course of their friendship—remotes, the last biscuit, car keys when Colin was way too drunk to drive but refused to admit it—and Isaac has never once lost. The idea of Colin getting the phone back is laughable.

Then Isaac looks down at the screen and everything in him freezes.

He’d expected photos. He gets photos.

His first thought, a desperate attempt at rationalizing this, is that this is Colin’s stash of pics to send to women. The first few are faceless. But Isaac has spent a lot of time in changing rooms and team showers with Colin. None of these pictures are Colin’s body. The proportions are wrong, Colin is too scared of needles to ever get a tattoo, his skin is physically incapable of getting that dark.

Isaac scrolls. There are videos saved too, not a woman in sight among the thumbnails. 

On the couch, Colin is staring at him. Isaac’s hopes for a gotcha boyo are dashed by the fear in his eyes. No jokes, just genuine terror. 

Isaac has only seen Colin look like this once before. When Roy had headbutted him at the club before he told them to stop picking on Nate, way back when Ted had first come to Richmond, they had gone to A&E to get Colin checked out. They’d had to wait for medical care, a new experience for two men used to having a trained team backing them up, and Colin had started to cry. 

“What if my career is over?” He’d asked, “What if I can never play again?”

Twice more, Isaac taps the screen. The photos just keep going. He nods. What else is he supposed to do? Isaac nods to himself and hands the phone full of dick pics back to his scared best friend and then he walks away.

The Second Friday

Isaac wakes up to a car alarm going off.

“Again?” He groans into his pillow.

Once was understandable. Twice in two days was annoying. It sounds like the exact same car in the exact same spot too. 

His head aches. Isaac rolls over and tries to pull his pillow over his ears to try and block the sound out because hangovers were bad enough without the lady next door being unable to use her new car. 

Normally he’s pretty good at drinking water when he’s done drinking, as a kindness to his future self. Isaac had not been feeling very enthusiastic about self-care last night. He doesn’t even remember making it to his bedroom. His last clear memory is of his couch, a dark telly screen, and the last of a bottle of whiskey.

At least he isn’t nauseous. 

The car alarm finally stops and Isaac relaxes back into his previous position, ready to fall back asleep. Maybe it would fix his headache. Unfortunately his alarm clock app hadn’t gotten the message that he has nowhere to be today. 

He’d had loose plans to go to the cinema, then a new laser tag place that had just opened up. Isaac thought it was safe to say that those plans were canceled. Meaning he can stay here in bed as long as he wants.

Except Isaac is starving, and he wants something to stop the pressure in his head.

Robe and glasses on, Isaac treks to the kitchen for some breakfast. He still has no eggs. Groceries had not been at the top of his priority list after—

Isaac slams a lid down on that memory before it can fully take form. He wasn’t going to think about it. Not right now. Later, maybe. Ignoring the whole thing wasn’t healthy but Isaac couldn’t unlearn the information (Colin had lied, to his face, a hundred times) and he’s still too angry to properly deal with it so…so ignoring it is. Focusing on breakfast it is. There were plenty of big breakfast spreads he could make without eggs. He had the time.

Besides, having something to do with his hands was good for him. Isaac can’t be turning over every conversation of a four year old friendship, every word said and not said, every look and touch, if he’s focused on the consistency of waffle batter. He snacks on handfuls of blueberries as he cooks, to keep the hunger at bay. 

Right as Isaac is sitting down to eat, his phone sounds down the hall. He’d left it laying in a nest of blankets as he often did when feeling anti-social. Isaac hadn’t thought to turn it to silent though. 

It’s Colin’s personal ringtone echoing in Isaac’s home. Colin had set it himself, ages ago, in a cab coming back from a club together on a night neither of them had gotten lucky. Not that Colin had been really trying. It seems so obvious now. 

He could go silence his phone now, but that would mean going in there. Seeing Colin’s name on the screen. Isaac might swipe up on reflex. Easier to ignore it. The call goes to voicemail as Isaac pours syrup all over his stack.

Colin tries again a few minutes later. Get the fucking memo, bruv. 

The third call comes as Isaac is washing up. Not a song, just the standard ringtone. Up to his elbows in soapy water, Isaac can’t do much about this call or the two that come after it. Finally when the dishes are drying in the rack he goes to answer it, more out of annoyance than a real desire to talk to anyone who might be on the other side.

“You better be sitting in a hospital somewhere.” Roy says when Isaac answers. 

“What?”

“Colin rang you twice and you didn’t pick up. Car trouble? Grievous injury? Give me one reason I shouldn’t make you and everyone else run so long your puke will feel nauseous.”

Isaac stares dumbly at his wall. “You used that one already, Coach. What are you on about being late?”

“Fucking training! It ring a bell?”

Roy hollers some more, anger born of worry for Isaac’s well being making him even louder than normal. Tuning it out, Isaac checks the date on his phone. Friday, 21 Jan.

What the actual fuck. 

Twenty minutes later, Isaac pulls up to the Dog Track and runs from the players entrance to the pitch in record breaking time. He arrives just in time to see a ball arch through the sky and slam into the back of McCracken’s head. 

He’s had deja vu before (kicking a ball down the street he grew up on, his niece’s laugh that sounded exactly like his grandfather’s, kissing a girl he met in a bar and finding out later that they’d grown up in the same neighborhood) but nothing like this. Below his feet, Isaac could swear the world is tilting.

“Are you alright?” Trent asks, standing just behind Isaac.

Fuck, that man is stealthy. Like a goddamn cat. Isaac shoots the man an attempt at a smile that probably doesn't reach his eyes.  “Yeah. Just…disoriented. Gonna,” he nods in the direction of the tunnel, since he couldn’t exactly hit the pitch in his wildly expensive designer sweats. The drycleaning would be a bitch. 

All three of the coaches are waiting in the changing room looking various degrees of concerned. They watch as Isaac heads straight for his locker and starts getting into his practice kit and even with his back turned, Isaac knows that they’re doing one of their head-and-hand gesture conversations. 

Ted, of course, is the one that speaks up. “You doing alright, oh captain my captain?”

Yanking down his trousers, Isaac grunts. “Fine. Thought it was Saturday, is all.”

They clearly want to question him more but they’d wasted their time with their silent talking. He’s lacing up his boots before Ted can pry any further, and requests that he get to training. 

“Of course.” Ted says, “I’m on my way up to Rebecca’s office, come get me if anything…if you need me.”

“Sure.” Isaac says, under no circumstances going to do that. He looks to Roy. “Laps?”

Roy examines him with an unidentifiable look that makes Isaac rock back on his heels like a child about to be dressed down for some mistake. “Nah. This one time, I’ll let it slide. Now get the fuck out there.”

Gladly. The no running part is good news, since Isaac’s breakfast hadn’t exactly been made and eaten with extensive running in mind. He’d definitely hurl sooner rather than later.  

The team reacts to Isaac’s appearance with riotous applause. Apparently there had been some very imaginative theories about his tardiness. Isaac brushes them all off, sticking close to Sam and Jamie under the guise of asking his alternate captains what he’d missed. The two of them had led the Greyhounds through the normal morning stuff and just started drills. 

“Winchester got McCracken pretty badly but he passed concussion protocol with flying colors.” 

Jamie snorts. “Seems pretty happy on the bench though.”

Following his gaze, Isaac sees a young woman leaning over the railing to talk to McCracken. There’s that feeling again. Sam ‘ aw’ s over the sight. 

When Henry comes out with Will from child labor games whatever they’d been doing inside, Isaac suggests a relay race where Henry is the baton passed between players. Since there’s only one Henry, it’s not really a race, but Beard keeps track of everyone’s times with his stopwatch (a real one, not just an app on his phone) so they know who wins. 

Jamie, of course.

When they break for lunch, Colin makes a beeline across the grass for Isaac. “Good to see you’re alright boyo. Had me worried when I didn’t see your car this morning, then you didn’t pick up…”

They’re walking together now, side by side, in step. Colin’s shoulder nearly bumps into Isaac’s, maybe on purpose or maybe not, but Isaac leans to the side.

“Are we good?” Colin asks, halting, looking at Isaac curiously. There’s a bit of anxiety in his tone, in his face, but nothing compared to—

I had a dream that this was all a lie, Isaac thinks. “Yeah, bruv. Everything is fine.”

They go to lunch, where Isaac picks at his food and passes most of it to Jan when asked if he’s going to finish it. Everyone wants to know why he’d missed half the morning. Sam blessedly keeps the subject firmly on anything but. 

Afternoon training is inside, personal stuff again. That’s normal. 

What’s not normal is Roy sending Isaac to the treatment room before he’s allowed to weightlift. 

Sitting on the table in a room that’s been ghost-free longer than it was haunted (rather,  longer than  Isaac’s known it was haunted) Isaac feels as if he has 400 sets of dead eyes on him. In reality it’s just David.

“Any disorientation or trouble with your memory? Unusual aggression?” He asks, shining a light in Isaac’s eye to check pupil dilation. Isaac bites back a nasty comment. He liked David, genuinely, it wasn’t the guy’s fault that Isaac hated exam tables and the feel of plastic gloves set him on edge. 

“ ‘m fine. Just mixed me days up. It happens.”

David shuts off the light. “Are you being honest with me? You’re not in any pain?”

“Uh, head’s been killing me since I woke up, but I figured that was from the whiskey.”

“What the fuck were you doing drinking last night?” Roy snaps from the corner he’d been (haunting) lurking in. He backs down under David’s sharp look but isn’t happy about it. 

The thing was, Isaac knew his persistent headache that hadn’t been cured by food, water, or low level painkillers wasn’t from a hangover. In his rush to get to Nelson Road he’d pulled on the first full outfit he’d seen (the same bright tracksuit he’d worn in the dream, because it was eye catching and right at the front of his closet) and put in his contacts quicker than ever before. But he’d stopped to check the bottle—it was still in his liquor cabinet, a good bit left.

Since David can’t find anything physically wrong with him and Roy has already decided that it’s all because of some bad alcohol, he’s sent back to the other lads after only a short dressing down. 

When training is done for the day, Isaac tries his best to hurry through the changing process. He briefly considers skipping the showers altogether but then everyone would question him even more. Plus his car would stink, and he’d just had it cleaned. So hurrying it is. 

He’s not fast enough.

“ The Sun is calling it ‘the Great Awank-ining’” Sam reports. “What’s the opposite of the clever?”

“ The Sun .” Isaac mutters in unison with the others, nearly to the door. So close.

It was just a dream, he reminds himself as Colin says, “Well, I guess I know what I’m doing this weekend.” Liar. 

Colin said stuff like that, sometimes. Things Isaac didn’t expect and didn’t believe he meant. Everyone did though. That was just how changing rooms worked. You went along with the flow of the conversation unless you had to. Unless you cared enough to say, “Oi, fuck that. We shouldn’t be looking at that shit.”

But Colin didn’t just go with the flow, sometimes. He initiated it. Amped it up. No one else had said anything about looking at the stuff, although Zoreaux had sounded more excited than he ought to when telling them about it. 

Isaac is maybe a bit harsher than yesterday he would be on a different, better day. The team folds to his clear cut demands without any dallying about what counted as unsafe and improper to keep on their easily hackable phones.

When Colin walks out, Isaac tells himself it’s just because Colin is deleting his photos in private. Like maybe they should all be. His feet follow without permission from his brain, against the pleading of his heart.

He’d read once that people who had experienced heart attacks often reported that shortly before, they’d felt a feeling of impending doom stronger than anything normal even among the clinically depressed or anxious. That’s how walking towards the couch feels.

“I’m deleting them Isaac, fuck off.” The hostility, born of fear, is just as shocking as it had been—

It’s just shocking. The weird dream was just that, a dream. Colin had removed himself from the group not because he had secrets from them all but because he didn’t want the other guys to see the stuff he had saved. Maybe it was really weird kink stuff that they’d tease him to hell and back for. Maybe he was embarrassed by his type in women, which was why he was so hard to fix up.

Isaac reaches for the phone, and nothing has changed from the last time he did so.

The Third Friday

Isaac wakes up to a car alarm going off.

This time, he checks the date right away. Friday, 21 January.

“What the fuck is happening?”

He texts in sick, because no way in hell is Isaac going to training again. Ted replies with a message of well wishes, Beard gives several suggestions for feeling better from the made up list of symptoms Isaac had sent. Isaac shuts his phone off before Roy’s dots can become a real message.

Maybe if he went back to sleep, it would be Saturday when he woke up again.

After an hour of tossing and turning, Isaac gives up on that hope. Even though his blackout curtains keep any hint of sunlight from getting in, his body knows that it’s day time and his mind is churning too much to embrace the exhaustion. 

The only consolation is that his headache is finally gone. 

Just because he can’t sleep though, doesn’t mean he has to leave his bed. His laptop is next to his lamp. Isaac grabs that and sitting cross legged on his bed with a blanket over his shoulders, starts searching for information.

Why is it Friday again

How to know if you’re stuck in a time loop

Are time loops real

Am I going crazy

How to know if your best mate is into blokes

Isaac doesn’t hit search on that last one. He knew the answer. Google wasn’t going to be much help there. Of course, Google isn’t much help for his other problem either. He goes down a rabbit hole of Reddit threads, reads the entire TV Tropes page for both kinds of time loops, and suffers through half a paragraph of an essay about quantum physics before clicking away because he could feel his eyes glazing over.

When he emerges from his cocoon a bit before noon, Isaac’s still got no answers to any of his questions. He’s got a craving for breakfast tacos though. Still lacking eggs, he throws some bacon in a skillet, beans in a pot, and potatoes in the air fryer. All together in a homemade tortilla left over from when Dani came over a few days ago, it’s a good meal.  

More importantly, it keeps his mind busy. 

Once he’s done though? 

He’d dragged every bit of information out of Google so there’s nothing to distract from the look in Colin’s eyes. The pinch of his mouth and the desperate little noise he’d made twice now when Isaac took his phone. The resignation. Isaac wonders what expression he’d worn after Isaac walked away. 

They’d danced in clubs together, attended team events together because neither of them felt like putting up with another person. Had Colin been lying about that too? Had he gone home to a bloke in his bed after each of those galas and get togethers, let someone Isaac had never met take his suit or stupid polo off?

All the times Colin had disappeared, too. Come back sweaty and sex-rumpled. Grinning. Pretend, or stupidity at its finest?

Sounds a bit gay, bruv.

Growling, Isaac tosses his still half full mug of coffee into the sink. Something breaks. Maybe the mug, maybe the plate it had landed on. Isaac doesn’t check.

Twice a week, a cleaning service came out to his house, meaning there was no scrubbing to be done. Isaac longs for his aunt’s farm, far from the city, where he’d spent endless hours chopping firewood to build muscle and work out his aggression in a way that didn’t hurt anyone or get him in trouble. 

Lacking anything useful to do, Isaac rearranges his furniture. 

He’s a professional athlete and it takes a lot to tire him out. Moving couches, armchairs, shelves, and beds does the trick. Laying on the floor of the upstairs guest bedroom and watching the fan spin, Isaac lets himself sink into that blissful, numb exhaustion.

Now, finally, he drifts off. 

It’s not exactly a restful nap. The floor is far from comfortable, he wakes up horribly thirsty and with a protesting neck, but there is no car alarm going off. That’s all he can ask.

For a moment he’s hopeful, looking out the window and seeing the sky only half-lit. 

Then Isaac wanders downstairs and turns his phone back on. Sunset of Friday, not sunrise Saturday. Damn. There are a lot of missed messages on his screen, two voicemails, and glancing at the news alerts reveals three different stories about the leak. Including the Sun’ s less than clever article. 

How had that conversation gone in the locker room without Isaac present? 

(Had Colin still made that joke in poor taste, without Isaac around to hear? Surely.)

Sam and Jamie would have encouraged the others to do the right thing for sure, but they didn’t have the authority that Isaac did. 

(Would their arguments make Colin think twice about all those pictures on his phone, make him realize how dangerous it was for him? Maybe.)

Isaac shuts his phone back down without replying to anyone and stuffs it back into the nightstand drawer. He still wants that sandwich.

There’s a flier pinned to his fridge for a night time farmer’s market that’ll be open by now. 

After a shower in his expensive, tricked out, rarely used master bathroom, Isaac sets out for some proper good chicken eggs. 

It’s too late in the evening to be wearing sunglasses but not wearing Richmond colors or in a group of other players, Isaac manages the two block walk from where he parks his car to the market without anyone singling him out for an autograph.  Normally he was fine with that, even enjoyed it, but tonight…

Tonight he just wants to enjoy the cool breeze that sneaks through his coat, wants to get his eggs and head home, wants to keep to himself. The thin crowd is easy enough to blend into. He walks the two blocks from the nearest car park along the river and tries to enjoy the peace of it. 

One he gets to the market itself, Isaac wishes that he’d brought his phone along after all. He’s rarely ever in this section of quaint little shops and it looks really nice. Cozy. Bits of snow from last week’s dusting cling to the edges of the street market, lights are strung from the buildings to crisscross over the customers to help them see, kids run around giggling, and the whole place smells of whatever that food trucks in the corner are selling. 

Isaac smiles. This was what he’d needed.  Not to numb his thoughts with physical activity, but to flush out the memories with something more cheerful.

He spots a stand selling eggs right away and buys two dozen from a man who squints at him in the way Isaac’s come to realize is the look people always get when they’re trying to figure out where they know him from. The guy doesn’t put it together before Isaac puts the egg cartons in his reusable bag. The lady at the vegetable stand next to him does though. 

Her eyes go wide. Isaac buys a couple ounces of squash and tomatoes off of her, pays double, and taps a finger to his lips in silent request that she not start yelling his name. It works.

For one wonderful, relaxing hour Isaac wanders the market, buying anything that looks good and overpaying for it because why the fuck not, munching on a greenhouse grown apple as he does. There’s a busker set up at the end of the street who Isaac stops to watch for a bit before making his way back to his car.

The good mood he’s managed to scrape together crashes and burns half a block from the car park. Isaac hears a noise, or maybe sees movement out of the corner of his eye. Something catches his attention anyway. 

When Isaac turns his head (without meaning to, again, as if some kind of magnet was just drawing him to this point) he finds Colin in the half-dark alleyway between buildings. And he’s not alone. Pressing him against a wall and snogging him passionately is a vaguely familiar man with short dark hair.

His eggs fall to the ground.

The Fourth Friday

Isaac wakes up to a car alarm going off.

He reaches for the pillow next to him and, without opening his eyes, places it over his face. Then he screams.

What was the saying? Once is an accident, twice is coincidence, three times is a pattern? That, or enemy action. Isaac kinda felt like there might be some enemy action happening here. Definitely a pattern though. That first time he’d managed to get himself home and properly drunk after grabbing Colin’s phone. Last thing he remembers from the second time is nodding, handing the phone back, and walking away. Then nothing.

Now he’s back in his bed (pushed up against the same wall it has been for a year) and the car alarm is going off and it felt like just a second ago that the straps of the bag were slipping from his fingers.

Colin’s attention had snapped to Isaac at the sound. He’d looked so alarmed at the thought of someone catching him at his…his gay canoodling. Then the fact that it was Isaac had registered and the alarm had flipped to panic. Isaac’d had just enough time to remember that he’d been given the flier for the night market by Colin. Then he’d woken up.

So the time loop was about Colin. 

Pulling the pillow away from his face before he suffocates, Isaac considers his options. According to the ‘research’ he’d done yesterday, sometimes loops could be escaped by doing everything perfectly. Meaning that if Isaac could get through a day without finding out that Colin…without finding out about Colin, then he could move on to Saturday. 

Then what? 

He ignores that question. It was a problem for Saturday-Isaac. 

It would probably be cheating to just not leave his house. To avoid Colin and his fear at all costs. Isaac’s tempted to try it anyway. He could burrow back into his bed, spend the day blowing his diet and getting caught up on all the shows he’d been meaning to watch. But he wants to move on and that means getting up, reheating a frozen meal that he’d prepped a month ago, and driving to Nelson Road.

Entering the stadium, he greets everyone as normal. Jamie, Babadune, and Robbie are waiting as he knew they would be. The rest of the team trickles in slowly. They all greet Henry with enthusiasm when Ted and Beard finally arrive. 

Colin comes crashing in, breathless and on the verge of late, shirt already half off to get changed out quicker. Goodman is actually late and a bit less anxious about it. Normal.

They do stretch block and Zumba together, much to the delight of the crowd. Winchester’s kick goes long and McCracken gets sent off to rest on the bench. A girl moves down to flirt with the reserve forward, much to his delight. 

After a while, Henry comes out and they play some games with him to kill time before lunch. For the first time, Isaac notices that Trent has given up on the illusion of writing anything down. The former reporter is instead nodding along with each kick Henry gives the ball, grinning and having as much fun as the rest of them.

Lunch passes in a blur. Isaac eats as much as he can stomach and talks to Colin as if every word doesn’t feel like a punch to the gut. It makes him feel sick, falling back on Keeley’s PR training to smile and nod at his best mate’s elaborate story about the crash he’d nearly been in this morning. But if he is acting off at all then the day isn’t perfect. Isaac can’t risk it. 

The unintentional side-effect of this is that Isaac, for the first time in a while, considers the other person whose life has been completely blown up by Friday, the 21st of January: Keeley Jones.

Keeley, who’d had private stuff leaked for the whole of the world to see. Keeley, who was Isaac’s friend. Keeley, who Isaac had ordered a mass ban on keeping pictures from but not reached out to himself. 

Isaac was still planning on talking to the team once Zoreaux brought it up then just not going after Colin but…he already knew about the leak. He could contact her now and pretend to be shocked later.  

When lunch is over, Isaac doesn’t have to go see David because he’s been perfectly normal all day. Which means he can get a group of guys started lifting then duck out to find a private place to call Keeley. Not the couch in the hallway. Some other corner of the stadium. He checks the boot room for Will 

He gets her voicemail, which makes sense. She’s probably at the office. Or she had shut her phone off. “Hey Keeley, it’s Isaac McAdoo. Just wanted to say that this is all shit and I wanted to remind you that we’re all here for you. If you need anything, ask. Bye.”

It’s short, but long speeches are not his strong suit. Hopefully it gets his feelings across. 

On his way back, instead of retracing his steps, Isaac decides to cut through one of the weird storage rooms just off the changing rooms. The one with the washer that was eternally chugging away at something and the ten cubbies that held…back up boots? Isaac wasn’t sure what those boots were actually used for. 

Honestly, Isaac loved the stadium like it was his second (third, counting his parent’s) home because it really was. But some parts of the layout made absolutely no sense.

He forgets that his shortcut will take him past the coach’s offices until he hears the soft, even, unmistakable voice of Trent Crimm. “How was it?”

“Amazing.” Replies a voice nowhere near as soft and even, but still unmistakable. At least to Isaac, who could probably pick it out among a hurricane. Who had picked it out among a hundred others on the pitch, in dark clubs where the music was too loud to hear yourself think, in the streets of cities all over the world. Isaac freezes.

Just out of sight, Colin continues, “I think he enjoyed it more than me, honestly, but that’s…I’m completely fine with that. Shakespear has never been my thing. And then I made the mistake of saying McB—well, the name of the play. His eyes went so wide and he kind of tried to put a hand over my mouth, was so shocked I had never heard about the supposed curse.”

“Ah, yes, maybe I should have warned you about that.” Trent says easily, a smile creeping into his voice. “My apologies. Other than that hiccup and nearly missing the seating window, a smooth date then?”

Isaac’s blood turns to ice as he finally realizes what’s happening. What he’s overhearing.

“Yeah, we’re going to meet up after training today and get the groceries we didn’t have time for yesterday at this night market thing he’s really excited for.”

Of course you are, Isaac thinks in despair as black starts to gather on the edges of his vision. What did I do wrong?

The Fifth Friday

Isaac wakes up to a car alarm going off.

He wakes up angry too. So much for a perfect loop. So much for not finding out. How the fuck had Colin gone four years of lying to Isaac when he couldn’t keep a bloody secret one godman day?

Trent motherfucking Crimm.

The man who’d outed Ted’s panic attacks to the whole world. The man Roy had told them not to say a word to, even if that demand had since been recalled. The man Isaac had grudgingly come to like but would never let meet his mum because some things didn’t need to go in a book. 

Trent Crimm knew Colin was bent and apparently gave him date ideas. Then talked about said dates with Colin afterwards.

Kicking his blankets off, Isaac throws himself out of bed. He needs to be moving. Maybe if he moved fast enough then his mind would stop working. Hit that perfect stride where the brain was too focused on getting oxygen to his muscles that it didn’t have the time to think.

He doesn’t manage that in the six and a half kilometers between Isaac’s neighborhood and Nelson Road. 

A few people say hello or good morning. Isaac barely glances at them, focused only on his goal of getting to the water fountain. The cold water is shocking against his lips. It feels amazing.

Pulling back, Isaac sucks in several big gasps of air, hands tight on the sides of the fountain.

When his body feels steady enough to stand upright he makes his way to the changing room. Jamie is already there but not yet to his stretching. He turns in surprise when he hears Isaac enter but it takes him a few more seconds before he can yank the practice kit down to where it belongs instead of over his eyes and see who’s come in. “Isaac! Early start to the day?”

Grunting, Isaac pulls his crossbody bag off and hangs it in his locker then puts his foot up so he can start unlacing the trainers he’d run here in. His t-shirt and shorts wind up shoved into a corner instead of carefully folded or hung like he normally would. 

Jamie says something else but Isaac is too focused on changing into his own practice kit to pay him any attention. He’s never tried this while already a sweaty mess. It’s a bit of a tight fit. 

Along with his phone and keys, Isaac had shoved two protein bars in his bag before leaving his house. He unwraps the first and starts gnawing on it while filling one of his water bottles at the cooler. The second he takes with him up into the stands and leaves with his water while he runs stairs. 

Isaac can see the player’s lot from the top row of the stadium. He knows that the orange Noble he’d helped pick out this summer won’t pull in until after everyone except Goodman. Even with his eyes fixed to the stairs in front of him he can tell when that is from the screech of tires and dull roar of an engine not suited for the streets of Richmond.

On the way back down to the field, Isaac’s first protein bar comes up alongside half the water he’d drank today. Isaac rinses the puke taste from his mouth and eats the second as he enters the changing room. 

People are laughing, joking around, whipping each other with towels and smiling. They’ve drawn the same conclusions that Isaac once had: today will be an easy day.

Too bad for them, Isaac doesn’t want easy.

“Pitch, now.” He barks, making everyone jump. Goodman breezes in with his iced coffee and Isaac grabs it from his hands, tossing it into the rubbish bin without looking. “Extra laps as a team for lateness.”

Through the window of the gaffer’s office, Roy is watching with raised eyebrows, impressed. The other two coaches don’t look anywhere near as amused by Isaac’s mood. Trent Crimm is wide-eyed in alarm, but Isaac doesn’t care what Trent thinks of him.

They speed through stretches  in silence because Isaac hadn’t bothered to grab the team speaker on his way out and run the promised laps as a warm up since the last thing on Isaac’s mind today is Zumba.

Drills go as they always do, maybe a bit more tense. Everyone is looking at him. Not even straight on, just out of the corner of their eyes. They’re concerned about Isaac, who clenches his jaw so hard he would need a dentist if today mattered at all. If anything he did today had any lasting impact. 

“—right after me.” Jamie is saying to Dani and Colin in a low voice, the three of them huddled around the water stand. “Then he ran stairs until he threw up. Colin, do you have any idea what’s up?”

Because of course Colin knew every little detail about Isaac. Just like Isaac knew everything about Colin’s life.

Winchester tries a pass around Bumbercatch and over compensates, sending the ball up and in an arc across the field, right for an unsuspecting McCracken. Several people shout warnings and the unsuspecting forward turns. Not in time to get out of the way though.

Thump.

“Thanks, captain.”McCracken says with no small amount of shock and awe.

Isaac drops the ball down to his waiting foot and kicks it back in the direction it had come from then shakes out his stinging hand. No wonder the keepers wore gloves. “No problem.”

There’s a smattering of applause that Isaac kills with a demand that they all get back to work. He uses language a bit more colorful than that though. Jamie, Dani, and Colin are still so close, still looking at him. Dissecting him with their eyes. 

Good luck with that , Isaac thinks bitterly. He goes to job away, to get as far from them as the limits of training will allow, but after only a few steps his hip screams in pain.

The next thing Isaac knows, he’s on the ground, looking up at the worried face of Sam Obisanya. 

“Captain, are you alright?” the Nigerian player asks, voice full of care. 

“I’m fine.”

“You’re not, boyo, really. It’s the flexor strain acting up, right? From two years ago?”  Of course Colin had come over too. He’s on Isaac’s other side, and offers a hand up, which Isaac ignores in favor of rolling over and standing on his own. “Let’s get you to the trainer.”

Isaac doesn’t want the trainer but it doesn’t look like he’s got much choice in the matter because instead of storming off, Isaac tries to put weight on his left leg and nearly eats dirt again. Only Sam’s quick reflexes saves him from a repeat performance.

When Colin tries to help, stepping forward to take some of Isaac’s weight, but Isaac waves out an arm to stop him. When Colin recoils…

Well. The confusion and hurt is absolutely nothing compared to panic and fear. Isaac looks away.

In the end it’s Jamie who comes over to help Sam, although Isaac refuses to lean on him. Sam either, since so long as he goes slow and careful, he can manage to walk. It hurts like a bitch though, the dull ache he’d started feeling between his house and the stadium flaring up into hellfire. 

Jamie insists on coming anyway.

The three of them head for the treatment room, which turns out to be empty. The trainers must have gone to an early lunch since everyone in the world expected Friday the 21st of January to be an easy day. Jamie sticks his head out the door and yells at Will to go find them one.

Isaac sits on the awful paper covered bed and stares at the wall. It’s so cold in here, although that could just be the weight of the ghosts. Maybe the Isaac who’d sat here while Roy worried he’d lost his mind is haunting this place. He hated doctor’s appointments. Any place resembling their offices wound Isaac up like a spring.

The pediatrician he’d gone to as a kid who looked so judgemental whenever Isaac’s little sister got on the scale and tisk ’d when Isaac threatened to throw him out the window for it, the old head trainer who had left when Manion lost the club because he refused to work under a woman, Colin looking at Isaac and wondering if his career was over.

“Isaac?” Jamie, who had somehow gotten close without Isaac realizing, waves a hand in front of Isaac’s eyes. “Did you hear me?”

“No.” No point in lying

The two lads exchange another worried look, which is about all the looks Isaac can deal with this Friday. Jamie turns back to Isaac and asks, “Did something happen? Ever since you got here, on foot , you’ve been acting…”

When he doesn’t finish, Isaac glares. “Acting what?”

“Acting less like Captain Isaac and more like Captain Roy.” Sam finishes. 

Not star Chelsea player Roy Kent, and not Coach Roy. Pre-Ted Roy who hated his life and took it out of the rest of them. “Like a shit captain, you mean. I got news for you Sam, I’ve always been a shit captain. And before I got the armband, I was a shit mate.”

Another look exchanged, filled with alarm. “Have you been on Twitter again, because that’s the definition of just poop-ay,” Jamie says, at the same time that Sam starts, “Just because you’re having one bad day doesn’t make you a shit—”

“One bad day? It’s not one bad day, it’s every day . For four years .” Isaac is aware that his voice is raising steadily, that he shouldn’t be saying any of this. But the floodgate is open now. He’s so tired and hurts so much in a way that only happens when you push your body too hard, too fast and aggravate old injuries. “Every joke I turned a blind eye to or laughed at. The ones I made. Everything I did wrong. Every action, big or small, that told Colin that I wasn’t trustworthy enough to tell me the truth that he’s ga—”

The Sixth Friday

Isaac wakes up to a car alarm going off.

There are tears streaming down his face before he even opens his eyes. His chest is still heaving, the words he hadn’t said burning in his throat. The physical pain might be gone but the rest remains.

A long time ago, Isaac had decided that he wouldn’t cry in front of others. He had pretty well held up on that. Football was an emotional sport, and Ted liked to pick sad movies during away games, but everyone was crying then. So it wasn’t a weakness. When Isaac did cry though, he did it quietly.

Laying in bed, body wracked with sobs, Isaac can’t hear his own noises over the car on the street.

Even once that stops, at the same time it always does, he continues to cry. There’s no one here to see it. To judge him, or to comfort him. Isaac is much more deserving of one than the other. 

It’s a proper cry, a massive fit of sometimes slamming his hands down onto the mattress and kicking his feet  like a child. The whole thing is utterly exhausting and lasts through his phone alarm going off then putting itself to snooze. Isaac thinks it might be the most exhausting thing he’s done yet this whole time. 

When all the tears in his body are seeping into his pillow, Isaac lays panting in his bed and thinks about going back to bed. He’s sure as hell not going into the stadium. Maybe if he just refuses to leave his house…

Then Colin would probably show up and insist that they hang out, then leave Grindr open on his phone.

A sudden memory grips him, from their relegated year. Keeley telling them about Bantr. Colin comparing it to the gay dating (hook up?) app which did have a similar name. Isaac hadn’t thought anything of it, except to tease Colin later on about that being his first association. 

If it happens, it happens, Isaac decides. He texts in sick again and throws his normal pillow onto the floor so it can dry out. Then he falls back asleep.

Same as his guest room floor nap, it’s not a restful sleep. Isaac wakes up maybe an hour later from a dream of drowning. A weird way for his brain to suggest that he should have drank some water after his cry, to replace the stuff he’d gotten rid of. 

That’s fixed by a short trip to the bathroom sink. Unfortunately once his body is no longer crying out for water, it starts begging for food. Isaac makes himself two and half packets of instant oatmeal to eat. 

Today, he’s decided, is the day of no fucks to give. Yesterday he’d treated his body with no care by punishing it but today will be the opposite end of the spectrum: gross neglect. So once the oatmeal is eaten he makes a thing of popcorn on the stovetop since he didn’t own any  of the microwave kind, adds an obscene amount of butter and salt, then returns to bed, 

It’s going to leave kernels and stains all over the sheets but only until the world resets again. 

Halfway through the bowl, it occurs to Isaac that he is a man living in the twenty-first century with more money than he knows what to do with. Before he’s finished the bowl, two pints of ice cream and a variety of crisps are on their way to his doorstep.

He doesn’t get any eggs because, again, no point in that. He didn’t feel like cooking anything today. Instead Isaac lays around in his pajamas and scrolls endlessly through TikTok or YouTube. Brain killing stuff. 

When he’s not doing that, focusing on videos of trivial things like stupid stunts or small animals, Isaac starts crying again. So he watches more videos in one day than he normally would in a week and blows up his diet with snacks, then two large pizzas.

Time slips away quickly. 

His stomach, unused to splurges of sugar and grease, objects to his decisions and Isaac spends half an hour in the loo paying for them. 

Well before lunch, Isaac had turned his phone to Do Not Disturb. The amount of well wishing from his teammates had been breaking his concentration on distracting himself. Because he didn’t want them to worry (and to come to his house in a panic) he’d texted the group chat before doing so to tell them he was going to live but was contagious so they should all stay away.

He’d muted his social medias too, for the same reasons.

Isaac had forgotten about the news alerts.

His phone was set to alert him when news articles mentioning AFC Richmond, their coaches, the players, or Rebecca Welton were published. Mostly he got notifications on game days, right after, or right before. Richard’s name popped up in trashy tabloids almost daily. Nate’s had gotten a lot of traction since he went over to West Ham but Isaac tended to ignore most of those. There were always a couple whenever one of the guys had a sponsorship or promo deal go live.

It’s not a sponsorship that has Colin’s name appearing over the skit he’s watching while finishing up his last bag of crisps. With a shaking hand, Isaac clicks on the news article, already knowing what he’ll find.

The thing is from the goddamn Sun because that piece of shit pretending to be a news organization had to have a finger in everything. The ‘article’ had been written by Ernie Lounds but the picture is credited to some stupid nineteen year old who hadn’t realized that he wasn’t just posting a picture of two guys kissing in an alleyway.

The post had been kicked around some gay positivity blogs before someone had recognized one half of the couple they were praising for being  “so cute, too good for this world, too pure” was actually a Premier League football player. And pointed it out in the comments. 

That had been a few hours ago. Since then, the post had started trending, as had Colin’s name, AFC Richmond, #ifyoucanplayyoucanplay, and several words bordering on slurs. 

At least according to the short paragraph right below the photo. There’d probably be more if Isaac scrolled, a bio on Colin, speculation on who the man he was kissing was, the normal disclaimer that they’d reached out for a comment from the relevant parties. 

Isaac doesn’t scroll. Looking at the picture, shot in the near dark but with what must be the best phone camera ever invented, he finally places Colin’s…boyfriend? Friend with benefits who he introduced as a wingman? Hell, maybe Colin was married to the guy. How was Isaac supposed to know?

I was so fucking close, Isaac mourns as he begins to blackout. The clock reads 11:23 p.m. The latest he’s seen all week.

But underneath the frustration, he is unspeakably grateful that this timeline is temporary. 

The Seventh Friday

Isaac wakes up to a car alarm going off.

While throwing breakfast together, he considers his options. Going in to training had yet to work out and every time he did the whole thing got worse. Finding out for the first and second times, learning that Trent was in on it, then outing Colin to Jamie and Sam. God only knew what would happen if he tried again.

But avoiding the world hadn’t worked either. Isaac had gotten a front row seat to Colin’s secret, which was actually better than it being plastered over the entire internet. 

Out of ideas, Isaac shoves a spoonful of yogurt, granola, and fruit into his mouth, wishing he had someone else to turn to. Not about the time loop problem—he didn’t expect anyone he knew to be able to advise him about that—but about Colin. 

His younger sisters and mum would see through him in a second. Isaac would end up confessing everything to them in minutes and end right back up in his bed. He couldn’t talk to any of his teammates because he was the captain. They brought him problems, not the other way around. 

The Diamond Dogs might be an option. Ignoring the fact that Isaac had already told the gaffers that he was deathly ill. And the fact that while Roy had been invited into the group of men while still a player, Isaac had not been. 

It occurs to him that there is one Diamond Dog in exile. A man removed from Nelson Road but still nearby. Isaac could go see him with no fear of running into Colin.  It’s an absolutely horrible idea, one he talks himself out of several times during the process of getting ready.

In the shower, he remembers the video of the Believe sign being ripped in half and tossed carelessly on a desk. Getting dressed, Isaac reminds himself of the cruel words that had nearly crushed Colin. Tying his trainers, the Everton locker room roasts play on repeat in his mind.

They’d won, up at Everton. For the first time in sixty years.

When Nate had left Richmond for West Ham, Isaac had found out from the news alert on his name. The last article Isaac had looked at, besides the one about him scoring a date with Anastasia, was a day-in-the-life interview on Nate where some journo had followed him around all day and published his schedule. Meaning Isaac knows the general time that Nate takes lunch.

It takes a bit of charm before the receptionist lets him up with the bag of Greek food he’d grabbed on the way over. Understandably, she doesn’t quite believe he’s a delivery boy. Luckily no West Ham players wander by and recognize him as a member of the team that had gone feral one them earlier in the season. Isaac is eventually allowed entrance to the training facility, a map of the place so he can find Nate’s office, and the receptionist’s digits. 

The guys leaving Nate’s office as he gets there definitely do recognize him. The skinny guy in a suit shoots Isaac a nervous look while Disco, the assistant coach, merely glares.

Neither of them make a move to prevent Isaac from entering the office.

Nathan Shelley is sitting on his desk, staring out the window. He looks…thoughtful. The sun coming in from outside catches on the silver that has now completely overtaken his hair.

When Nate doesn’t immediately notice him, Isaac raps on the doorframe. “Uh, hello?”

The other man startles, and it’s a real struggle not to laugh at the reaction. Nate’s whole body jumps, arms splaying out, legs kicking up. Isaac is reminded of several of the videos he’d watched yesterday that involved jump scaring cats. 

When he sees that it’s Isaac in his doorway, Nate puffs up in a way that is also distinctly cat-like. “What the fuck are you doing here?”

There’s no real anger in the words, just shock. Maybe a bit of fear. Despite the fact that this is Nate’s office in Nate’s training facility for Nate’s team. 

“Um, I’ve come to the realization that I’m a shitty person and need some advice?” Isaac holds up the plastic bag in his hands to sweeten the pot. “I brought kebabs?”

Maybe Nate sees how desperate he is, maybe the kebabs really seal the deal. Or maybe Nate just needs someone to talk to as well. Isaac is allowed to stay. They divy up the kebabs and eat quietly for several minutes, avoiding eye contact despite sitting right across from each other.

Isaac casts around for something else to look at. The office is very…tidy. Maroon is everywhere. There’s plays up on the whiteboard to his right that Isaac pointedly doesn’t look at. He doesn’t want Nate to think he’s here as a spy or something.

“So,” Nate says, breaking the awkward silence. “You said you needed…advice? From me?”

Moment of truth. He’d rehearsed this in his head, during the drive. A way to phrase this while making it anonymous and incriminating. Instead of that, what comes out is, “I didn’t ever apologize proper, for how I treated you. It was so shit of me and I’m sorry. I was an arse who only saw it as funny and let myself be blind to the suffering I caused you. Roy fucking headbutting Colin then yelling at us shouldn’t have been my wakeup call.”

“O-oh.”

When Nate doesn’t seem like he’s going to say anything more, Isaac continues. “I hurt someone else too, without knowing it. For years . And they hid it. Hid themselves from me. But now I know that I hurt them and I can’t even look at them anymore from the guilt.”

“I know a little something about guilt.” Nate admits. “I know how it can eat you alive. You can’t rewrite time—” 

Isaac snorts, because that wasn’t quite true, was it? 

“—but maybe you can make up for your mistakes. I also know that you are fiercely loyal, Isaac McAdoo. You pride yourself on looking out for your people and knowing when they’re hurt. So I think you should start with forgiving yourself for not being good enough, just like he has to forgive himself every day. The rest will follow. He could never hate you half as much as you hate yourself for this.”

That is…certainly something to think about. Isaac rolls a kebab stick in his hand while turning over Nate’s words. Could it be true that Colin would forgive him? “You can’t know that. I didn’t say who it was.”

“Isaac.” Nate says softly. He wishes they’d go back to not meeting each other’s eyes, because the pity in Nate’s is too much to bear. “It’s Colin, isn’t it?”

He refuses to confirm or deny. Just puts on his best poker face, teeth clenched. 

“About Colin being…gay?”

Kitmen. They really did know everything.

The Eighth Friday

Isaac wakes up to a car alarm going off, and he knows what he needs to do.

He rolls out of bed, puts on his robe and slippers, then places a delivery order. The groceries are on his doorstep before he’s even found the photo in his camera roll. Even with the quality of his phone camera the recipe is hard to read, the typed words and notes scribbled in the margins faded by use, sun exposure, and stains.

An hour and a half later, Isaac knocks on a great big glass door and watches a very confused Colin descend the stairs beyond it.

Colin pulls the door open and blinks at him. “Isaac, hey. What are you doing here? Is everything alright?”

“No.” Beating around the brush about it wouldn’t help, even if he currently wants nothing more than to run back to his car. “We need to talk.”

“Uh, let me just grab my trainers…”

“This isn’t a public convo, bruv.” Isaac says. “Can I come in?”

With obvious reluctance, Colin lets him in. Which isn’t how Isaac wanted this to start but he doesn’t have a ton of choice. They can’t just have this talk down at the Crown & Anchor. “I’ll put the kettle on.”

While Colin is fixing them tea, Isaac goes to the cupboards to get down dishes for them to eat off of then picks through Colin’s knife block. It’s a familiar routine that they know as well as any football drill. Normally it’s not done in silence though. 

“Is that crempog a bwyd mor ?”

“Your mum’s recipe.” Isaac confirms as he places the Welsh pancakes with fish sauce on plates. He hasn’t had them since that summer he went up with Colin to visit his family in Cardiff. “It’s an apology.”

“For what, boyo? You’re starting to scare me a bit.” 

Isaac accepts his mug of tea and takes a sip of it before answering. He wishes it had a bit of gin in it. “For the homophobia and shit.”

The cup falls from Colin’s hands and spills all over the table. The two of them spring for the towel hanging from the oven in unison and end up both holding an end of it as they try and mop up the tea. 

“You’re not a homophobe , Isaac.” Colin says, half panicked. “Why would—what’s that even got to do with—oh jeez. You know?”

A nod. “You never told me. So I’m sorry.”

Colin laughs, a nervous thing. “What have you got to be sorry for? I’m the one who kept it from you.”

“Because I never made you feel safe enough to.”

“No. No, that’s not it at all. I feel safer with you, with this team, than I ever have.  Isaac, I’ve thought about telling you the truth that I’m…that I’m gay , about a thousand times.” Colin’s hands come up to rub at his face. “Oh, I’m so not awake enough for this. It was nothing to do with you, okay? It was about me. I was ninety-nine percent sure you’d support me. But that one percent chance that you wouldn’t…scared the hell out of me.”

“Oh.” 

Isaac stares down at the table. Neither of them move for a moment. Processing. 

“To be fair to your anxiety, it did take a second. It shouldn’t have though.”

Colin’t turn to nod. “Yeah well…” he trails off without ending that though. Just holds up the tea soaked towel. “I’m gonna go toss this in. I probably have enough to start a load by now.”

This house is so modern it’s got a washing room in the back, so Colin leaves the kitchen and disappears around a corner. No sooner has he gone than Isaac hears footsteps padding down the staircase. 

Michael. That’s the bloke’s name. Isaac had only been introduced to him in passing, months ago. He looks very different standing barefoot in Colin’s kitchen, wearing Colin’s bathrobe, than he had in a suit jacket at Sam’s restaurant. A world away from the man snogging Colin against a wall in the dark. “Erm, hi.”

“Good morning.” Michael says easily, not looking at all shocked to find Isaac at the table. He casually pours himself a cup of tea then sits down in the chair that Colin had been at. “Nice of you to finally come to your senses. What’s it been, six days? Seven?”

“It’s the eighth Friday.” Isaac says in shock. 

“Ah. Well thank you for finally wising up. Much longer and I’d have to spend a week in bed recuperating. This current headache is more than enough.”

“You did this?” Isaac reexamines the man in front of him. He looks harmless. So much skinnier than the men Isaac normally spent his time with, nails not painted but still well manicured, face completely serene. No one that Isaac would look twice at on the street.  “What are you?”

The half smile on Michael’s face turns mischievous. “As far as the government knows, a simple business man who manages a lucrative chain of laundromats across Europe and the UK.”

“And as far as Colin knows?”

“Oh he knows about the,” Michael lets go of his mug with one hand to wiggle his fingers at Isaac. Blue sparks fall from them and land harmlessly on the table. “ Witch thing. Not so much about the ‘tossing his best mate in a time loop’ thing though. I’d appreciate it if that tidbit could stay between us for now.”

A part of Isaac expects to wake up again in his bed. Maybe on Friday, maybe on Saturday. Surely this bit was a dream. Stealthily, Isaac pinches himself on the arm. Nothing happens. “Why’d you do it?”

“When Colin got home from training and told me what happened, I knew you’d come around eventually. But in the process you’d end up hurting him even more. So I just,” Michael makes a winding motion. “Set it up to give you time to deal, without that happening. And it worked. Again, no need to tell Colin about it.”

“I’m so shit at secrets.” An admission, and a warning. It wasn’t like Isaac had planned to jump on Twitter and tell everyone about the time he was trapped in a time loop. But he wanted to be honest with Colin about how many times he’d buggered it all up before getting his head on straight. Didn’t Colin deserve to know?

“Well you’d better get better at them, for a number of reasons.” The witch says. “Morning, love.”

Colin freezes in the doorway, eyes flicking between Isaac and Michael. “I didn’t realize you were up. Thought you’d slept through the knocking.”

“Mm, well I’m planning on going right back to bed, my head’s killing me. Just wanted to say hello to Isaac here before you two left for training.”

“Oh fuck, what time is it? I’m not even dressed yet.” 

“Now hold on.” Isaac says, before Colin can sprint up the stairs to get ready in a rush. “Gaffer’s kid is in town, we don’t have a match this weekend, training today’s gonna be light work. This meal, on the other hand, took me a lotta work. The stadium will still be there in a bit.”

“Isaac McAdoo, are you suggesting that we play hooky from training? That might be the most confusing thing to happen yet this morning.”

Laughing, Isaac bats away Colin’s prodding finger. “ ‘m not an alien who stole your best mate’s face, bruv, quit it. I’m just saying . Any food left over, I figured we could bring to Keeley.”

“Keeley? Why?”

“She could use a friend or two today, is all.”

Colin continues to look at him like he’s a shapeshifter or something but gives up his poking. “Whatever. If Roy gets mad, I’m throwing you under the bus.”

“That’s fine.” Isaac assures him. “Michael, have you ever had these before? They’re not as good as Mrs Hughes’ but I think they turned out all right.”

Saturday

Isaac wakes up on the floor. There’s no car alarm to be heard, just a blender going in another room.

He searches for his phone best he can without actually getting up. It’s a short distance away on the low table. Saturday, 22nd January , the home screen reads. Isaac breathes a sigh of relief.

“Why the fuck am I on the floor?” He mumbles, setting the phone aside and considering, for the first time, the odd position he’d fallen asleep in. Someone must have tossed a blanket over him because he didn’t remember getting it. “And who is running a blender?”

“That would be Bumbercatch. Claims his hangover cure is the best but apparently requires it to be thoroughly mixed.” Jamie says, from the couch. 

This was Isaac’s house. He should have gotten the couch. Or his own bloody bed.

“I don’t need it though. We didn’t drink that much last night.”

Emerging shirtless from Isaac’s room, Richard yawns. “I believe Will is rather hung over. You’d think after so long with us, the boy would have built up some kind of tolerance.”

Deciding to put the issue of sleeping positions aside for the moment, Isaac gets up and goes into the kitchen to make sure Bumbercatch doesn’t break his blender. On the way he passes several other players who had apparently spent the night.

Yesterday, after visiting Keeley and offering his services of beating the shit out of whoever was behind the leak and hugging the crap out of her, Isaac had remade his argument against keeping private photos on phones. But he’d done it smarter. Sent all the boys off to do it privately. Kept his hands away from Colin’s phone. Then everyone had shown up at his door a few hours later and invited themselves in for impromptu game night. 

Will appreciates Bumbercatch’s concoction, even if Isaac doesn’t appreciate the mess he’s made. 

Every Greyhound in the house currently awake had followed him into the kitchen is looking at him expectantly when Isaac turns around from trying to clean up the splatters all over his countertops. “What?”

“Captain, have I ever told you that you make the best sunny side up eggs I’ve ever had in my life?” Sam asks innocently.

Jan rolls his eyes. “Obviously poached is the best way to have eggs.”

Scrambled with salsa.” Dani suggests. “That’s how I like them.”

“I’m not a bloody line cook,” Isaac complains, catching on to their meaning.

He doesn’t really have much of a leg to stand on though. He’s already reaching for a pan and trying to remember how many eggs he’d had delivered yesterday for the Welsh pancakes. Not enough to last past today, for sure.

The night market would be open again tonight. Maybe he’d go with Colin, invite Michael along too.

Someone had to make sure they didn’t end up making out in an alleyway where anyone could walk by.