Chapter Text
If anyone were to ask whether Roy has seen any episodes of the latest season of Lust Conquers All, he would say an emphatic fuck no.
But the truth is that he has been watching every single episode while leaning back against Helen’s frankly fucking uncomfortable settee—the one that she spent too much money on when she was going through a midlife crisis and thought that a country rustic aesthetic was the pinnacle of style.
The problem is that Janice is going through a messy divorce. A few weeks ago, she arrived at their biweekly yoga session with no makeup on, with her hair unstraightened and tied back in a ponytail. Helen had taken one look at her and somehow understood that Janice was not coping well. So the ladies gathered around to gently fuss over her until Janice burst into tears.
Her dickhead ex-husband refused to watch any of her shows. The bastard had even threatened to delete their Netflix account if he ever caught Janice watching Lust Conquers All. It sounds like he was a controlling piece of shit and Janice is much better off without him.
Roy had made the mistake of saying as much. Watch your shows then. Good fucking riddance.
And the ladies had thought that was a wonderful fucking idea.
Within the week, Roy was adjusting his diet and training routines to set aside every Wednesday evening.
The Bachelor, Natalie had suggested for their watch parties. This had been met with vehement disagreement, as nearly everyone present was tired of how scripted the series had become. The UK version had been middling at best and quite possibly ruined the romanticism of a single red rose.
Farmer Wants a Wife, Sharon had put forward. This had been met with mixed responses, until Janice stepped out of the room for a minute and Helen pointed out that a show about forging happy marriages was not likely to go over well.
So they had landed on Lust Conquers All.
Absolute fucking rubbish bullshit about twenty-somethings with thick makeup and scanty clothing slobbering all over each other. Just watching the introductions made Roy want to cover his head with the macramé throw that Helen draped artfully across the settee and scream until he lost his voice.
And then fucking Jamie Tartt walked into frame.
“Oh, I’ve been wanting to see more of him since the previews,” Natalie said with interest.
Jamie smirked at the camera while walking in slow motion. His thin shirt blew about in the breeze, hinting at the muscles that come from years of professional athleticism.
“Is he the divorce lawyer who wants to settle down?” Sharon asked.
“No one on this fucking show is looking to settle down,” Roy muttered.
For fuck’s sake. Jamie had a line shaved into his eyebrow. Who thought that was a good fucking idea?
“He does something related to sports,” Janice had spoken up.
There came a moment of silence as the ladies contemplated what that might mean.
Then Natalie had cracked open a bottle of sparkling Moscato with an audible pop! and remarked, “Just look at the muscles in those forearms. He could hold you up against a wall, no question.”
Roy, who had never once looked at Jamie Tartt’s arms with anything other than detached professionalism, and really only during the rare instances when he was on spotting duty at the weight bench, had downed an entire glass of wine and resigned himself to what amounted to psychological torture every Wednesday evening for the foreseeable future.
The men are ribbing Jamie about keeping his shirt on during the challenges.
“Take it off!” Helen shouts at the screen with a hand cupped around her mouth like a megaphone.
Natalie bursts into raucous laughter and collapses into a cushion. “The nation wants to see your pecs!”
“Got to keep them guessing, right? Keep them wondering about what’s underneath.”
Jamie smirks at the other contestants and takes a moment to blow a kiss across the pool where some of the women are sitting. They shriek and chatter amongst themselves.
Their attention is riveted on Jamie, especially when he feigns overheating and reaches for the uppermost buttons of his too-thin shirt.
“Take it off!” Helen shouts again, even more insistent.
Jamie undoes the first few buttons and winks at the guys, then waves towards the girls.
He has firmly cemented himself as a fan favourite, thanks in no small part to his habit of waking up before everyone else and exercising for at least an hour. It doesn’t mean that much, Roy thinks, because these other useless fucking contestants must sleep until mid-afternoon. Not to mention that Jamie is still a professional fucking footballer, no matter what absurd detours he takes in his career, and that means keeping his fitness to a certain standard so he can hold his own on the field.
But the ladies think that it shows remarkable self-discipline. Jesus fucking Christ.
They watch in silence as a conversation about fetishes in the outdoor lounge rapidly escalates. The strategy is obvious. Danthony wants to knock Jamie down in the rankings by getting him to admit on national television that he thinks foot fetishists are a bit fucking weird.
This leads to Jamie getting on both knees and winking at Samantha B before stroking both hands down her spray-tanned shin, his fingers coming to rest at the ankle bone.
Roy despairs as the camera does not cut away from them, not even for a reaction shot.
Jamie removes the strappy shoe with a ridiculous amount of ceremony. He kisses where the tiny buckle had pressed into her skin, then makes eye contact with her before his lips move further-
“Remarkable commitment,” Sharon says, breaking the increasingly uncomfortable silence.
A fucking moan comes from the speakers as Samantha B sinks boneless into the couch. Roy wonders, not for the first time, how many glasses of Riesling it would take to get blackout drunk.
“-top pick to win Lust Conquers All,” Colin is saying in hushed tones.
Roy hurtles a ball in his direction without any warning.
Colin breaks off mid-sentence and manages a decent header.
“Stop talking about useless shit and pay attention,” Roy orders with a fierce glare.
Even the pundits are getting distracted by Jamie’s unexpected popularity with viewers. During what should have been a match recap, a GIF comes up on screen of Jamie taking off his shirt and flexing. Someone has run the three-second loop through Blingee, so the GIF is covered with heart emojis.
Hidden among them is an emoji of a high-heeled shoe.
Roy narrows his eyes and resolves to deactivate his Twitter account at the first opportunity.
Four glasses into an episode, he reaches a breaking point.
Amy becomes so distracted by the mere sight of Jamie that she actually falls into the pool.
Roy pauses the episode and turns towards the ladies with an incredulous expression.
“He’s not even that hot,” he tells them.
“He fireman-carried a woman over each shoulder and ran laps around the dorm,” Sharon points out.
Roy scoffs at that. “These women probably weigh less than a bag of rice.”
“He keeps in shape,” Natalie says.
“That is a dismally low bar.”
“He has a distinct sense of style,” Janice counters.
Roy is so affronted by this statement that he nearly gets out of his chair. “Stop kidding yourself, Janice,” he growls. “He cut squares out of a t-shirt because someone told him it looked sexy. And it didn’t look sexy, it looked like my bloody niece ran wild with a pair of scissors.”
This opinion is met with collective outrage.
“That was sexy!”
“That was sexy, Roy, and I think you’re being deliberately obtuse by pretending otherwise.”
His nipple had kept showing through one of the squares. Rather than mocking the shit out of him for a DIY fashion hack, the other contestants had taken to poking his nipple like it was a fun new game.
“It was fucking bleak,” he insists.
Sharon straightens her posture and points at him, stern.
“Don’t pretend that it was not blisteringly sexy when he ripped that t-shirt off his own body.”
Helen nods with enthusiasm. “He ripped it into shreds,” she adds.
There had even been a close up shot of the shredded fabric, abandoned on the ground while Jamie was dragged into a nearby alcove.
Roy wrinkles his nose and says nothing for a long moment.
“That’s what I thought,” Sharon says knowingly and subsides back into the couch.
On screen, Amy breaks through the surface of the water, spluttering. Her mascara is doing an admirable job, but one false eyelash is crooked. She flounders around because Jax is laughing too hard to help her towards the pool ladder. Somehow Jamie realises that she has fallen in and not only helps her out, but nearly gets into a punch out with Jax about being a massive dickhead.
Roy can practically hear the ladies swooning.
Against all odds, Jamie has struck up a friendship with another contestant, Ryan. They’re passing a pleasant evening, sharing beers on the balcony while the stars are bright overhead.
Roy is pretty much certain that the stars were added in post-production. He’s still trying to figure out how there are no mosquitoes on this so-called island paradise.
“Do you miss your family much?”
Jamie falters and takes a swig from the beer bottle. His eyes become unfocused. It appears to take some effort to return his attention to the present moment. He rests the beer bottle on his thigh and takes a breath. “Don’t get on with me dad,” he admits. The confession seems to cost him.
Ryan reaches over to take the nearly-empty bottle and set it on the table. Then he slides his palm along Jamie’s thigh where the bottle had been. His expression is open and understanding. Slowly, he leans into Jamie’s space and kisses him.
Jamie kisses him back.
This isn’t the lustful making out that viewers of the show would expect. This is actual intimacy.
It seems impossible that Jamie could have forgotten about the hidden cameras. Never mind that Jamie fucked off mid-season to be on a trashy reality show. This could have a real impact on his career.
Fuck, Roy thinks.
Maybe Jamie isn’t planning on going back to Manchester City.
Ryan gets voted off the show and disappears into obscurity.
Tax accountants can do that. Footballers aren’t so lucky.
“Blonde tips,” Roy says while emphatically pointing at the screen, “are not sexy.”
“Having the confidence to try something out is sexy,” Natalie argues.
Roy stares at her. When it becomes apparent that she is not going to back down, Roy lets out an impassioned, “Fuck!” and settles back into his seat.
“I think they’re a good match,” Natalie declares.
Roy furrows his brow and turns towards her. “Are you fucking serious?”
“Jamie needs someone sweet.”
“Are you being fucking serious?” Roy asks, with emphasis on each word.
Natalie fumbles for the remote and rewinds the episode. “Just look at his expression,” she insists.
On screen, Jamie reaches out and brushes loose strands of hair back behind Denise’s ear.
“You look beautiful tonight,” he murmurs.
Denise giggles, a high-pitched sound that’s a little too imperfect not to be genuine.
“Not that you don’t look beautiful every night,” Jamie adds with a smile.
That’s his press smile. It looks real at a glance, only because Jamie used to spend countless hours practicing in the mirror. Every athlete has their own method of handling the after-match interviews. Roy has learned to end interviews when he starts losing patience with the reporter’s questions. Jamie smiles and tries to say something charming that can be used as a sound bite.
Jamie thinks that a fucking romance is going to keep him safe from eviction. In fairness, he doesn’t know that Denise has been going around telling everyone that she’s falling in love with him. By now, it’s too late for him to backtrack and start over with someone else who understands the strategy.
This is going to be a fucking disaster all around.
It’s a fucking disaster all around.
Sharon throws entire handfuls of popcorn at the screen. The kernels scatter across the sheepskin rug like a mockery of rose petals.
Natalie mashes the mute button with such force that it somehow turns on Spanish subtitles.
“That fucking prick,” Janice says, which is the most that they have ever heard her swear.
The show cuts to a wide shot of the jacuzzi where Jamie is now hooking up with not-Denise.
Roy grins and raises his wine glass in a toast. “That fucking prick,” he agrees.
The scandal goes viral in a matter of hours.
Roy reactivates his Twitter account.
On screen, Jamie is oblivious to the public’s outrage that he would ever break Denise’s heart.
He sits on a bar stool and closes his eyes when instructed by Ellie, who is wielding an eyeliner pencil with the mastery that comes with being the top makeup counter associate at Grimsby’s. She artfully wings out the eyeliner and adds a touch of eyeshadow at the corners. When she insists on mascara, Jamie’s mouth quirks into a smile and he continues to sit perfectly still. Emboldened, Ellie chooses a lippie and an outfit that she thinks will show the look to its best effect.
“My ex-girlfriend used to paint my nails during the off season,” Jamie tells her. “Always had to remove it before coming back to the club, though.”
“What do you think?” she asks while holding up a mirror.
A smile spreads across his face. “Looks good,” he tells her.
Ellie bounces on her feet with excitement. Soon, she has positioned him in front of a Lust Conquers All camera. She rearranges the light fixtures and calls out modelling prompts. The producers have taken frames from the footage and show them in succession with the sound of a camera shutter.
“That colour really brings out his eyes,” Janice sighs.
Helen pauses the episode and folds her arms.
“Any acerbic commentary from you, Roy?” she asks pointedly.
Roy opens his mouth, then reconsiders and closes it again. He contemplates the freeze-frame of Jamie grinning past the camera. The borrowed shirt is buttoned dangerously low, exposing his collarbone. The blonde tips have faded into a more natural shade. Overall, the look is striking.
“If you ever repeat this to anyone,” Roy begins, “ever, then I will delete your contact information from my phone. You will never see me at yoga again. That means no more rides home afterwards, Sharon.”
Sharon mimes zipping her mouth and throwing away the key.
“He looks fit,” Roy admits.
This prompts Janice to jump up from the settee and dig through her purse. She stands over Roy and pulls the string on a party popper. With a burst of sound and the faintest scent of smoke, tiny coloured streamers drift through the air and settle over his profoundly unimpressed face.
Janice laughs and holds the now-useless plastic for the others to see.
“My son brought it back from a birthday party weeks ago,” she tells them. “It’s been rolling around in my bag ever since. Thought this was an occasion worth celebrating.”
Helen is not so discreetly angling her iPhone towards the screen.
“Now what the fuck are you doing?” Roy asks.
The slight movement of his head is enough to shake loose a streamer, which settles in his lap.
Helen taps on the phone screen. “I’m snapping a pic so I can set it as my wallpaper.”
Roy closes his eyes to prevent his soul from escaping from his body.
Once the host announces that Jamie will be going home, there is a minute of stunned silence.
The cameras cut to the other contestants to show their reactions. Everyone is shocked.
Jamie has been a frontrunner throughout the season. Fans have consistently voted for him.
Roy narrows his eyes and stares at the screen, uncomprehending.
“Fucking Danthony?” he murmurs.
“He was robbed!” Natalie cries.
Before their watch party can devolve into conspiracy theories about why the producers might have wanted Jamie gone, or what personal connections Danthony might have at the network, Janice calmly exits out of the streaming service.
In another few clicks, she has cued up the first episode of Farmer Wants a Wife.
“Right,” Helen says while rising from the couch. “I’ll go make popcorn.”