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The grass was wet, dew leaking through his jacket, cool against the skin of his aching back. Roy’s whole body ached, but he couldn’t manage quite so spiteful a “Fuck!” as the situation ought to warrant. He closed his mouth, thunked his head back, and stared up at the spinning stars.
After a while Jamie’s face floated into view, big and bright as a UFO. “You dead?”
“No. No thanks to you. Fuck!” he tried again. Still too soft.
“Having a kip then?” Jamie’s face retreated from where it was hovering, and then all at once his body was flopping into the grass and wet leaves beside Roy’s. While Roy blinked and stared, he shifted, making himself cozy, like an animal settling into its burrow. “Oh, nice,” Jamie said brightly. “Can see a lot of stars all the way out here. See?” His hand brushed Roy’s side as he raised a finger to point. “There’s Perseus.”
“Who?” said Roy, half sitting. As far as he could tell, he and Jamie were the only people for miles—the only people left on earth, it half felt like.
“Perseus,” Jamie said, with the same confidence with which he’d reeled off his Amsterdam Facts. Roy settled back down. “Bloke who slayed that snake-head lady.”
Roy’s mind made a connection: it felt like seeing an opening, a clear place to pass. “Oh. Like Percy Jackson.” Phoebe’d read some of those.
But Jamie wasn’t lucky enough to have a Phoebe. His brow wrinkled a little in confusion.
“Books for kids,” Roy explained.
“About Greek mythology and all? Sick. Wish I’d had those when I were a kid.”
Roy opened his mouth to tell him he was too old, then realized with a lurch that he might not be.
He realized also that he’d been staring at Jamie beside him instead of up at the stars. He swiftly rolled his eyes heavenward.
“Wasn’t much of a reader myself,” he said for some reason.
“Nah, me neither. But me mum gave us a nice myth book. Lots of pictures and some maps of the stars.” He pointed again. “See, there, that’s our man Perseus. And that’s Cassiopeia…” His finger drew a little squiggle. “See that, the W? Bit like the Wonder Woman logo?” Roy saw. Jamie was licking his lip in concentration. “And that there is…shit, I dunno. Andromeda maybe.”
His gaze darted toward Roy, hopeful, eager. Roy was on his back, his legs a tapestry of bruises from a fucking bike falling on them. The grass was damp but soft, the night air warm and sweet. Jamie’s fringe was falling half over his eyes.
“When’d you get fucking…smart?”
Jamie shrugged, shoulders moving against the ground like he was trying to make a snow angel, but in the grass. A grass angel. “Not smart. Just know some things, is all.”
“Yeah, just all about Amsterdam and bicycles and windmills and the fucking stars.”
A cheeky grin cracked across Jamie’s face. “I did teach you a lot today, didn’t I?”
Roy let out a growl. Jamie only grinned wider. “My,” he said, relishing it, “how the windmill turns.”
“That’s not—”
Jamie cut him off with a click of his tongue. “Now, now, who did we just establish is the windmill expert? Not you. Not Roy Kent. Didn’t even believe they were real.”
He’d rolled to prop himself on one shoulder, looming over Roy; impossible, again, as an alien spacecraft.
“Thought they were a myth like—” He tapped his finger upward but Roy didn’t look.
“You done?”
Jamie shook his head. “Don’t think so. Think I’m just getting started, actually.”
He started to lower his hand and it, too, hovered for a moment, as if unsure where to land.
Jamie swallowed. Licked his lips again. Swallowed again. In nothing but the moonlight his eyes were dark. Roy’s shoulders felt stiff, pinned to the dirt.
“In fact I…” Jamie’s palm landed on Roy’s chest. Pressed lightly, settled in. “Roy, can I—”
Roy didn’t say yes. He didn’t say no. He didn’t say anything. He lay there, spread out between soft grass and starlight, and for a moment he let Jamie kiss him.
When he finally shoved him away, he was gentle. “Wait. Fuck! We can’t.”
Jamie blinked down at him, sad and startled and impossibly young. “Why can’t we?” he said, a hint of a whine creeping in. “If it’s ‘cos of, of—”
“Not because of Keeley,” said Roy plainly, and both of their breaths caught. Roy recovered. “I’m your fucking coach.”
Jamie let out a much more even exhale. “Oh, that?” His hand lifted from where it still lay, atop Roy’s breastbone. It cut through the air, dismissive, before returning to its perch like a little white bird. A homing pigeon.
“Yes,” Roy insisted anyway. “Fucking that!”
Jamie made a face, mouth twisting. “That hardly counts today, does it? I mean, who did most of the coaching? Anyone would say it were me.”
He looked entirely too satisfied with himself, and now Roy knew how skilled that smirking mouth was. Fuck him.
He forced himself to think, fingers digging into the sod. “But we don’t play professionally at bicycles or windmills, do we? You’re not getting paid to teach me fucking Amsterdam facts—”
“Can slip me a tenner later if you really want,” Jamie said, wicked tip of his tongue slipping out. Roy wanted to bite it.
“No fucking way, you little shit.”
“Hey! That’s Coach Little Shit to you—”
Roy couldn’t think what else to say to that, so he flipped Jamie onto his back. At which point it only seemed to make sense that he throw his leg over him, the way Jamie had shown him with the bike and he’d practiced all evening: seating himself so he was balanced somehow, impossibly on the edge of what was okay and what was not, so it felt like a single wrong move would send him tumbling.
But oh, if you were brave about it, if you let yourself get going, the ride was—
“Perfect,” Jamie said, wrapping his arms around Roy’s shoulders, the back of his neck. “There’s a good lad. Improving under my tutelage…”
Roy nipped at his lip. “Shut up,” he whispered, and lifted Jamie’s head up out of the damp grass and into the soft cradle of his hand.