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There was a kid dead in the river, and no one had seen him in years.
Amsterdam was beautiful at night. There was something cosy in the ground and the bricks and bridges that held hands between the roads. The Amstel spindled through the streets, and lights from the old buildings twinkled along its depths like glitter on rippling silk. The history of Amsterdam was dead interesting enough, but Jamie suspected that even if he’d never done any of the tours, if he'd never come back here with his mum when he was sixteen, he’d still be able to appreciate the city’s bones for what they were. For how their familiarity ached and echoed inside him like a deep tissue bruise; unseen but spoiled under the surface.
Nestled on the floor of the hotel lobby with his best mates crowded around on all sides, he felt as cradled in the heart of Amsterdam as he ever had been — but he couldn't rest.
Sleep slipped between his fingers, even as his heart thudded restlessly in his ears. Ever since they landed at the airport, there was a ghost standing at his shoulder. It followed him. The phantom sensation of its damp breath tickled his neck, sending a cool chill down his spine. Black spots bubbled up around him as his vision tunnelled into a narrow shaft of light. He felt floaty and untethered — his feet too heavy and his head too light; the kind of dizziness that made it tempting to try doing a handstand to see if that would balance him out.
He really could've done with a regular night out with the lads. For a moment on the bus, just the teasing suggestion of one had been like glimpsing a hint of light through a net curtain. Then Roy had shouted his name like he'd caught Jamie with his hand in the cookie jar, and the weight had smothered him again. He couldn't have helped the way his shoulders drooped at the thought that his most irate coach might drag him off the coach-coach for more one-on-coach coach-training.
Jamie didn't know how, but he'd managed to escape unscathed and unridiculed for once. The hairy arsehole had faltered, his glare shifting into something less focused as his caterpillar eyebrows did a complicated tango. Then he'd shoved off the bus without so much as an arthritic growl to let them know where he was going. For a moment, Jamie had considered following after him. It was sort of turning into his job, now, to follow after the grouchy git whenever he looked like he had a stick shoved up his arse about something. Someone on the team ought to do it, and since Jamie was the one who always annoyed him the most anyways, poking him a little more never hurt anyone but himself.
But Jamie hadn't been able to make himself move in time. It was like a wire had been cut between his brain and the rest of his body. During the match, he'd been able to ignore it — football first — but getting spanked with a blistering five-nil would have anyone feeling not their best and goldfish-est.
Maybe if he had followed after Roy, he could've distracted himself. It was always easier when he had something, someone, in front of him to focus on instead: an interested partner, a gruelling press conference, an excited fan. An old hairy prick who was suspiciously alright with it when Jamie filled the space between them with whatever words he had buzzing at the top of his mind.
Talking, that had always been the easiest way to keep the waters dammed up. Even when his brain became fuzzy and his heart started to flutter like a bird trapped in a too-small cage, letting the thoughts run through his mind and out his mouth had always been the best remedy to keep his own thoughts from choking him to death.
Problem was that then the team had spent hours trying to figure out what to do, which meant sitting around doing nothing, and so the restless storm in the back of his head had no choice but to grow and grow without any outlet.
Jamie had tried to ignore it for as long as he could. He'd tried his best.
At first it was just a trickle. A tingling on the back of his neck while everyone argued about where they should go. The tumbling pebble sound of his own voice clattering down the stream as he made suggestions. Elbowing Colin a little too hard in the side and calling his bluff when the Welshman made some lame excuse and tried to ditch the team for the evening. The ugly crash of shifting rocks as he spoke too loud, interrupted at the wrong parts.
Trent Crimm taking notes in the corner.
At one point Jamie 'accidentally' knocked over the hat holding the votes, sending the scraps of fluttering through the air. After a monologue from Isaac, they started the count over — although this time with one less vote, the scrap of which he hid tucked into his shoe where no one could see it.
Sometimes, this was just what fun looked like for him: raw and fast, the life gushing out of him faster than it could fill back up. There was a leak in him, his skin too stretched and split and torn from being roughed around too often, and one day he'd look down and at his shoes he'd find enough blood to fill the belly of a lake.
Too much adrenaline, that's what his mum always said.
As if to prove her wrong, during the pillow fight, it finally found him:
Peace.
Feathers danced over his sharpened cheeks and clung to his skin.
He shouted war cries until his throat rang hoarse.
His skin tingled, bared as it were under the neon vests.
He smiled until his face felt numb, too numb to notice the slap of linen, the whoosh of the pillows as it rushed past his face.
It was perfect.
The world was glowing.
He swung and moved and tackled and screamed with a rawness he could mistake for delight.
Nothing could hold him down.
This was exactly what he needed.
Then it ended, and the river rushed in.
It happened after, when most of the team was asleep. A flock of light snores pitted through with a few pockets full of lads telling tall tales in the dark. Bit like a slumber party, wasn't it?
"Oi, you ought to be grateful I'm paying for this as it is. It's not often that a lad your age gets treated to this sort a slumber party. Come on, now, get moving! Show her what the Tartt men are made of."
With everyone camped out in the lobby amongst the pillows and fallen feathers, with the muted whispering like tree branches scratching along glass, none of it felt real. He didn't feel real.
He was warmed from the outside in, surrounded and cocooned by his teammates. He was an outer shell with nothing underneath. He was choking. He was lightheaded.
No, he was laughing.
In the shadowed quiet, no one seemed to hear the sound of water rushing into his lungs as he snickered, digging his knee into Dani's thigh while Sam elbowed him in the the stomach. Down was up, and some invisible weight was trying to drown him, pulling him under until his body felt thick with cement and his skin as cold as a drowned, slimy pebble.
Careless and unreserved and unaware of the whirlpool tucked between their bodies, Dani and Sam broke into another fit of giggles. They were teasing him — but like, nicely — about how strange he'd been acting earlier—
Dani tugged again at his sleeve, his smile wide even in the dark. “I cannot believe you would rather go to a museum with Trent Crimm than go with me to see the tulips. Really?”
Jamie hummed happily. The rushing noise filled his ears like an angry storm, but he was, he was, happy. Happy as a giant clam to have spent a good night with the team. The happiest he'd let himself feel in a long time.
So he tugged at whichever part of Dani was closest to him — a sleeve maybe — and grinned back. “When it’s the middle of the night, yeah. Besides, you ever see a Van Gogh in person? It’s like looking at a tulip through 3-D glasses. If you like tulips, you’re gonna love this museum.”
“It is pronounced ‘Van-Goff,’” Jan corrected sleepily. “Please do not trust Ted to correct any language outside of his own.”
Sam chuckled. Jamie started as the warmth of his breath brushed against his ear as gentle as a feather. He hadn't heard him move. “I am surprised, though. I didn’t know that you had been to Amsterdam before.”
He didn't have to say it. Really, there was barely anything to say. It was water under the skinny bridge, locked behind a skinny frame whose echo lay somewhere deep under his skin. Impossible to reach; impossible to ignore it lying still.
It was the phantom smell of beer on his dad’s breath as he made him swear not to tell Mummy what they got up to. Just between us men, alright, boy?
And it was the soft whisper as Sam breathed out his name — “Jamie?” — curious and easy and so very gentle that it wouldn’t disturb a feather that does him in. That pulls the past, jerking and screaming, into the wide field of the open present.
It's the feather that tips the scale.
For a second the world hangs still, suspended at the apex of a jump with the glistening surface of virgin water stretched achingly bare and unblemished below him.
He splashes through the surface; the dead thing raises its fingers up to greet him.
He tells them.
He tells them.
It spills. First like a faucet, then like a river. An unending ceaseless flow that plunders forth from his mouth. Glaciers melting and thawing; cold ice turning into puddles with only the thinnest veneer of glass floating on the top, just waiting for a heavy footstep to crack them in half. The wheel spins in his chest, offloading water by the bucketful, but no matter how much he talks, how hurriedly he tries to push out the words, the buckets keep refilling. The wheel spins, paddles dipping deep under the surface, each bucket is just as heavy as the last.
When he reaches the finale, the wheel creaks to a halt. He waits balanced at the teetering top, uncertain of how much longer he can bear the weight before the wheel gives out and sends him plunging down into dark waters again.
The room is so quiet he can hear the ice threatening to crack.
Colin, who Jamie could’ve sworn was asleep five minutes ago, is the first voice to drag a heavy bootstep over the silence. He laughs hoarsely, “You’re joking, right?”
Dani hasn’t pulled away, but suddenly Jamie feels every inch separating them as if it were a mile. To Jamie, the other man feels warm – runs hot, Rojas does – but it's out of his grasp to imagine what Dani feels touching him. Not when his skin feels clammy, all the hairs on his arms prickling up towards the ceiling while bumps mound his skin like dead soldiers. He must feel like cold wet earth, like a thin film of water scummed across a pond just waiting for a rock to break the skin.
He must feel like a dead fucking tulip, petals scattered across the ground. Still soft to touch, but no hope there, none at all.
"It's not a nice joke, is it?" Jamie answered, unsure how long he'd lost laying there, limp as a log.
They don't like it when you don't at least try to participate. Come on, lad. Stiffen up.
"It was just the one time," he adds quickly. He doesn't know why; doesn't know if it makes it any better that he hadn't lasted more than once. "She was— it was—"
He doesn't know how to fill in the blanks. He knows he's telling the truth, but the truth feels too large and leaking, like he's trying to hold an entire lake between his palms — the river Amstel cupped in his hands.
He remembers getting a pat on the head when he left; a scratch of nails combing through his hair in a way that tickled; his shoulder jerking up to his ear and a shiver running down his spine but getting lost and winding up in his stomach until it felt like he was gonna hurl all €5 of bitters back up.
He feels a bit like that now. It's so distracting he can't tell if he's shaking. His skin doesn't answer either way, doesn't feel like his own at the moment.
Just outside his reach, in a bubble made out of feathers and linens, silence cups over his shadowy bedfellows like a pudding, moulded around them to the point of suffocation. They're waiting. They want to know how it ends.
But he doesn't know how it ends either.
"The rest of the night sort of passed in a blur," he tells them, bracing himself for disappointment. "Sorry, lads. That's the whole sordid affair."
As far as anyone in the room knows, that is.
The dark plays tricks on him. It wasn't dark that night, Jamie remembers that much. There was mood lighting, wasn't there? Glowing red with a blush of pink and gold around the edges. His memory of the act itself might nothing more but shadows crumpled into a ball, but he remembers the glimmer of gold, the way it flashed for attention like coins at the bottom of a stream. In the handle of a hairbrush on the dresser, in the grainy wood of the headboard where it loomed above him. In the mirror across the room that hithered his eyes to draw towards it. In the flashes of car light that peaked in from the crack of the curtain.
Can't remember his first fuck, but he remembers how the sconce on the wall contorted in on itself, a puzzle of black shadows and sunflower light while his eyes blurred.
He's not in that cramped room anymore, having something tugged out of him that he didn't know he had to begin with.
He's in the widened dark of a hotel lobby with his friends encircling him — but he still can't see what the people around him are doing.
He can't tell who's snoring, which is them he's bored back to sleep. Can't tell who it is who's wide awake with eyes boring into the void where he lies. Light tickles in through the curtains of the window — flat empty windows, with dark on one side and light on the other and no one standing in doorway ushering for him to hurry up and put his clothes back on.
He strains his eyes, keen on stealing what light he can. If he squints hard enough, he thinks he can make out Dani's face. Or maybe it's like infer-red – that's the one where the heat of the thing is what draws the picture, isn't it? His own numbed skin recoils at the thought, but Jamie fancies that he can see Dani's dark, warm eyes staring into his soul. There's pillow feathers scattered everywhere; he could grab a fistful of them, use them to draw his friends outline where they lay. Once Dani gets up and leaves, Jamie can stare at it after he's gone, admiring the trace, the proof, of another person laying next to him in case his brain went and forgot it all again.
He was so focused on Dani that he forgets to keep track of Sam on his other side until he sits up abruptly, the shared blanket of Jamie's jacket slipping off of him.
"Sam!" Dani whispers, sounding urgent. Jamie doesn't have long to wonder why.
"No," Sam spits out, sharp as a knife. Jamie's discarded, not-quite-there limbs suddenly jerk back into hyper-awareness at the imminent threat in his voice. "No. I can't– I cannot sit here and listen to this. I won't."
Shit. Shit.
Sam sounds furious.
Abruptly the safety of the present was ripped away from him. He was no longer floating along the glimmering bright surface of the here-me-now, listening to words trickle into existence only to be swept away in a river that would never repeat. He was Jamie Tartt. He was hidden from sight. He was pinned to the ground.
The truth of what he'd just admitted settled on top of him, straddling him against the riverbed and holding him still as his lungs slowly failed.
"I'm sorry," Jamie blurted, unsure of what else he could possibly add to- not excuse it, no, but to rescue some of the image of himself in Sam's eyes. The shadow of Sam hovering over him felt heavy with the potential of he didn't know what. He wished he could shrink, seep into the hotel carpet until he spilled out the other side, underground somewhere below the basement where only the bones and the rot would welcome him. He squeezed his eyes shut; forced himself to open them again. Blinked wetly at the shadows and the broken light spilled across the ceiling. "I know you don't— approve of that sort of stuff."
The angel that was Sam's shadow bristled, and Jamie swore he saw white feathers dance from his shoulders.
"Of course I do not approve—," hissed Sam, only for his words to come to a sharp stop. Jamie couldn't see what was happening on his face, but he could hear the air shift as something churned over in Sam's head, some great gears stirring through the muddied waters. With awful softness, he said, "Jamie. Are you under the impression that I am upset because you… visited a sex worker?"
His ears burned. Stupid reaction, that, but hearing Sam stumble over saying it like it was some sort of curse word made a fresh wave of shame curl in his chest.
He shouldn't have said anything. He should've left it in the dark, under the waters with that skinny kid and his naively stupid heart and the footprints that stopped at the edge of the bridge.
"I said I was sorry," he shrugged helplessly. His teeth ground together like stone, and if he twisted his fingers any tighter he might accidentally spark into flames. "I dunno, but you seemed pretty dead against it earlier when we were voting."
Sam shook his head, dislodging more feathers from the sky. "No, no, that's not—"
"That isn't a sex work problem," Jan interrupted. It was the first he'd spoken in a while, and Jamie had never heard him sound so angry before. "That's illegal."
Jamie's jaw tightened.
"Oh fuck off. I didn't know any better, did I? I was only fourteen."
He heard a sharp inhale of breath from Dani. For some reason, that only put more wind up his sail.
"Not like I'd ever been to Amsterdam before either. For all I knew, that's just how things worked over here."
Jan's voice, colder than the cracking ice. "It isn't."
"I do not think that's the point," said Sam gravely.
A shape shifted, catching a hint of light as it did, and even though the outline of it was nothing more than an indistinguishable mound, Jamie could still recognise it as Colin. Colin, who'd he'd roomed with more times than he had fingers and toes. Colin, who'd been the first to laugh at his jokes until he wasn't. After that initial hoarse croak, he wasn't laughing now, and his ongoing silence spoke volumes louder than either Sam or Jan's higher-than-mighty disapproval of what a dumb kid had done with half a pint on his breath when he was too young to know any better.
Jamie balled his fists into the coat he was using as a blanket. The sick urge to defend that little prick wailed up from inside.
"Hey, I was a still gentleman. I was respectful of her the whole time," he hissed through his teeth, coiled up like a- like a- like a Roy.
He suddenly, bitterly wished Roy was here. Roy wouldn't be making a fuss like this. So long as it wasn't about the team, Roy probably wouldn't care.
But Roy wasn't there. Instead he was stuck with Jan Maas and the fucking Dutch Inquisition.
"Jamie," Jan chided like he was still that fucking kid. "That is so far from the point. That that was even allowed to happen is so—"
The words suddenly choked backwards into an aggrieved whine. He sounded like he wanted to hit something. Jamie's fists tightened, instinctively preparing for a response.
"Unethical," Jan finally spat out. Like Sam, he made it sound like a curse word, like there was another worse word hiding behind it that he was itching to say.
It was infuriating, being handled with kids gloves like this. Like Jamie hadn't grown up hearing much worse.
“I thought you said it was boring,” snapped Jamie. The feathers weren't any better than the water now. They were suffocating. He couldn't breathe—
"Everybody shut up."
Like a balloon popping in a crowd, everybody abruptly shut up, but only after jumping from having the wits scared out of them. Already too tense to move so much as a finger, Jamie flattered himself for being one of the ones who spooked the least.
"McAdoo, you awake?" Jamie croaked. He wasn't so out of it not to know that it was a stupid question, but he couldn't help himself.
Isaac was good enough not to call him on it. "Yeah, I'm awake. I've been up for a while, which is good because otherwise somebody would've woken me up."
Jan said dryly, "It feels like you are staring at me, but since I cannot see you it doesn't count."
"Fucking hell, Jan Maas," Jamie huffed under his breath. He knuckled his eyes, catching a stray bit of water.
Suddenly a pillow fell from the sky, plummeting through the glassy barrier between Jamie and the surface to land inches from his head. He couldn't completely stifle the sharp inhale he made as this time he definitely jumped.
But it was just a pillow. Just Isaac's pillow, come to land by his head, while the captain himself stood over him like an avenging windmill ready to strike.
"Jamie," he said in a tone that was neither solid nor soft, but still had some sort of stone-like, grounding quality to it, like he alone could anchor Jamie to the present. "You still with me?"
Jamie felt his eyebrows crinkle. "Course I am? Where else would I be?"
"Isaac, please," said Jan Maas urgently. "You're the captain. Please talk sense into him."
Sam muttered something under his breath that sounded like a prayer.
"We're all going to sleep," Isaac announced to the room at large, donning his Captain Voice like it was his favourite hoodie. "That's enough for tonight. We'll discuss it in the morning."
"Isaac." Fuck, Sam sounded like he was pleading.
Outside of Jamie's shadowed range of vision, something shifted — some quiet signal that had Sam giving a weak huff and his feathered shoulders dropping to the ground.
He turned onto his side. Away from Jamie and the edge of his jacket, still warm and discarded and reaching for him across the floor.
The curve of his back trembled, but he didn't turn around.
"In the morning," Isaac promised, still using his Captain Voice.
Some day someone would slip and tell Isaac that while his Captain Voice definitely sounded sterner than his normal voice, it was actually a bit gentler too. It was something closer to a teacher maybe, someone who'd instruct you to do something but then would hang it up for everyone to see, like it was his job to make you feel more important than you actually were.
Jamie drew in a deep breath, letting the weight of Isaac's certainty settle his nerves. If he said they'd talk tomorrow, then it would be tomorrow. No use in poking at it any further tonight.
Captainly duties done for the night, Isaac settled next to his pillow where it lie above the crown of Jamie's head. His knees creaked as he lowered himself on the floor.
Again, Jamie stupidly wished that Roy were there. Wondered what would've come of it if he'd just followed him off the coach. Probably could've avoided this whole damn night.
He exhaled bitterly; it tasted like dead water.
A shifting to his right. Dani's usually beaming presence faded into uncertainty as he whispered, likely to avoid drawing attention from their captain, "Jamie Tartt?"
Jamie gave a faint hum, barely enough to stir up bubbles under water.
"I am very sorry."
Jamie's stomach heaved. He considered snapping that Dani should've warned him to brace for impact before saying something like that.
With the sharp, saddened disapproval of Obisanya curled at his side, he thought twice.
Blinking back salt and stinging heat, he responded, "Don't worry about it. It was a long time ago."
Tentatively, a shape moved towards him.
Jamie braced himself, stiff as a board as something settled it over Jamie's chest. It was warm. A palm, familiar and usually careless. It rested above Jamie's ribs, just to the side of the sternum, its fingers brushing his collarbone but not exploring, not holding him still.
Nah, somehow it was keeping him afloat. A weightless buoy, warning people of the presence underneath but also somehow keeping him tethered to the surface.
Then Jan had to ruin it.
"I don't think the time of it matters—," he started to say.
Isaac cleared his throat.
"—but yes, we are very sorry. We were not trying to disturb you. That's on us. We should have been better friends. We should have tried to listen. We will do better next time."
Jamie's eyes threatened to water even more. Fucking Jan Maas.
The bundle of feathers to his left rolled tilted towards him and uttered a fragile 'sorry' and that was about as much as Jamie could take.
Which was when Isaac's pillow nudged against his. "Hey."
Jamie made a strangled noise. The water was already deep into his lungs.
“It’s just a sleepover, innit?” Isaac whispered. Jamie wondered sometimes if the other man was a psychic, the way he could pluck Jamie's thoughts out of his head sometimes as easy as plucking feathers. “Messes with your head, everyone sitting all quiet in the dark. Makes people jump at shadows, thinking they’ve seen a ghost. But there’s no ghosts here, alright? It’s just us, and we’ve got your back.”
Jamie felt like he was floating. "Right."
“We can talk about it more when the sun comes up.”
"Sure."
"Just get some rest."
Right.
Jamie did as he was told. He shut his eyes, and as he did a brackish drip of water escaped, circling down his cheek to puddle into his ear.
It was just a trickle.
Eventually most of the team was asleep. A flock of light snores and even louder silences as they waited for morning to arrive.
No more tall tales to tell in the dark; the feathers had fallen still.
Surrounded on all sides by his teammates, Jamie was chilled, down to the bone. He wasn't breathing.
He'd told them.
He couldn't take it back.
His throat rang hoarse, an echo like a bruise unseen but spoiled under the surface.
His skin tingled, unbared but exposed.
His face was numb, too numb to notice the brush of linen like knuckles on the back of his cheek.
It was terrifying.
The room spun around him, too dizzying for handstands. The world seeming to swing and move and tackle and scream with a rawness he could mistake for delight. It was moving too fast and nothing could stop it. It was out of his control.
He felt—
…free.
Weightless. Like a feather.
The world was growing, glowing lighter and lighter with the dawn —
— or perhaps that was just a passing car behind the curtains again.
In the dark, still waters:
Above, the light of dawn painted her fingers across the ripples of the water, grey smudges that smeared along the glassy surface like forgotten fingerprints. Beams of light flashed between the shadows, tracing a pattern of uncertain searchlights.
He’d forgotten about the sun. In the daylight, the water would be clearer. Shapes would appear like murky ghosts through the veil.
Sit close enough to the surface, and the light would spill through.
Life rushed into long-sleeping limbs.
The dead child under the water opened his eyes.
Deep in slumber, Jamie didn't know it yet, but still waters were beginning to ripple. Sediment shifted; decomposed layers began to crack; and the thick film draped over the surface began to droop under its own weight as feathers of light breached the surface.
The dead child under the water opened its mouth and prepared to scream.