#I'd been wavering on how to put together a proper Rashomon Job style thing and this hit the right button

[jamiesfootball]

hey, it's leverage anon back at it again! do you think roy and keeley crossed paths previously in this au, maybe on opposite sides of a job where roy was hired to protect something keeley was trying to steal (and keeley wins obvi)? or do you think they've only heard of each other through word of mouth and when they actually meet, it's like the spiderman meme with them pointing at each other like "ROY KENT???" "KEELEY???"

Oooohhhhh

I do think that at first it's in the same vein as Ted Lasso, where they know of each other, they've moved in similar circles for years, their names are all over London but they've just never had occasion to meet.

I think the spiderman meme comes screeching into play when they have a Rashomon Job moment where they both realize they foiled each other's heist going after the same golden scepter on the same night and they're both like, "THAT WAS YOU?!!"

In Keeley's defense she was undercover as a waiter so of course she was rocking her Bjork wig with the purple stripe so people wouldn't take a closer look at her face. And there was this guy there, a real proper intellectual type, with the glasses and the sweater, and the look he kept giving her! Piercing eyes, like they could see deep into her soul. She was so rattled that once she went into the vents to make her move, she didn't want to come back out!

In Roy's defense he was at a low place, making the switch from hitting to retrieval specialist, and his hair was like. So long. So curly. Bushy beard. And he was wearing glasses he stole from a guy in the car park (and busy cursing himself because fuck he might actually need glasses), and he had a cozy nerd sweater on so like. Everyone was looking but it wasn't because they were looking for Roy Kent, they were looking for a different reason, you feel?

Meanwhile Rebecca's like "you BOTH were trying to steal my ex-husbands tacky golden scepter under my nose? While I was trying to steal it?" And that confuses Ted because, "If you were already married to him, why would you need to steal it? It's technically yours at that point," and Rebecca is like, "Exactly. I was married to him, Ted. Of course I wanted to steal it."

Meanwhile Beard is just side-eyeing Jamie who ain't said shit.

And the longer Keeley, Rebecca, and Roy go round and round the only thing they agree on is there was this skinny little teenage kid at the museum like on a fucking field trip and he was annoying like he was just constantly underfoot no matter where they went-

"Oh, I know who you mean! He was rather sweet. Kept asking for a glass of champagne- cheeky little thing."

"Was that the one who kept wandering off from the pack? Insufferable. Every time I thought I had an opening, security would interrupt to tell me they found a child wandering into the cordoned off areas. By the time I had a chance to intercept the stupid sceptor, someone had replaced it with a champagne bottle."

No, he was fucking annoying and he dogging Roy's heels and asking Roy questions about Rothko and Hockney ("It's not about the composition. The colors are richer because of the depth of the layers" and "Because he's a twat," respectively). Roy finally thought he got lucky when he nudged the kid towards a buffet table and he started scarfing down food but then the kid almost choked to death and Rebecca does remember that actually she had to take him in the back so they could make sure his parents wouldn't sue have some medical doctor guest take a look at him.

And now Beard and Ted are both just looking at Jamie, and Ted has a bit of a smile on his face, and he's just like, "Jamie? Do you have anything you want to share with the class?"

Jamie winces and admits it was his one and only cyber heist - drawing up a fake school record to get in with a field trip, writing a little program that would temporarily disable the security cameras and motion sensors- he'd done it as a dare to himself to see if he could do it. And- "I never technically stole it. Got as far as stashing it in my school bag, and then the bag went missing. Lost my homework and everything."

And now it's Ted's turn to look apologetic, "Well I am awfully sorry about your homework, but let me tell you- that essay you wrote on Napoleon? Really good stuff. If I was your teacher, I'd have given you an A."

And that's the record scratch moment because Ted? Turns out he was the """medical doctor""" who volunteered to go with Jamie, but was actually there to keep an eye on things for his old security company.

Also they shouldn't beat themselves up to bad about losing because the scepter was a fake. See, once he found it ("in a highschooler's backpack no less!" "no, Ted, we don't call them that here") he got to thinking that the whole thing was mighty suspicious so he did what any normal midwest man would do if he thought he was being taken for a fool -- he called up a friend he knew who'd been to prison and asked if there was a way to tell if gold was fake.

"Lick it."

"Pardon?"

"Lick the scepter. If it's real gold you'll be able to tell."

"...Okay, but for the record I just want it to be acknowledged how much trust exists in this relationship."

And that's how they all (failed) to steal Rupert Mannion's (fake) golden scepter (what a twat).