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“I still don’t know how to love someone without swallowing them.”
- Give Me a God I Can Relate To , Blythe Baird
“I think I’m going to fuck up one of the most important relationships of my life.”
Roy says it at the last minute, when there is no time to unpack the words that have been trying to claw their way out of his throat for the last hour. He’s spent this session with Dr. Fieldstone talking about everything but the thing on his mind, but he can’t help it. It would be easier to undress and stand in front of her naked.
Dr. Fieldstone presses her lips into a flat line. She doesn’t approve of last minute outbursts - doorknob confessions, she’d called them the first time he’d done it.
“Sorry,” he says gruffly.
“Let’s talk about it next week,” she says. “I’ll make a note - unless you need to schedule a session before then?”
“No.”
“Next week, then.”
True to her word, when Roy sits down across from her a week later, he catches a brief glimpse of her notepad and sees “ fuck up important relationship? ” scribbled at the top.
“Tell me more,” Dr. Fieldstone says.
So he does.
~
He tells Rebecca second.
They’d tried to keep up “Biscuits with the Boss”, the two of them. But Ted wouldn’t give up his recipe for love or money, and Roy didn’t fancy baking every single day anyway, thank you very much. Instead, they traded off bringing baked goods on alternate Mondays, and they had tea most mornings in Rebecca’s office, sitting in companionable silence or Roy silent and Rebecca musing aloud on any number of thoughts about the team or the field or the fans or Roy’s love life - a subject he was quick to shut down the very first time it came up.
“None of your fucking business,” he said. Then, at the slight raise of Rebecca’s brows, he added, stilted and unsure, “... Boss.”
She let it slide.
Three weeks after his last session with Dr. Fieldstone, Roy interrupts her mid-sip of tea.
“I think I need to speak to HR,” he says.
Rebecca’s eyes widen a bit and she swallows her tea with an audible gulp.
“If you don’t want to do ‘Tea with the Boss’, you can just say so,” she says. A funny look crosses her face. “Doesn’t quite have the same ring as ‘Biscuits with the Boss’, does it? ‘Tea with the Team?’ No, there’s only the two of us. ‘Brew with the Crew?’”
They both grimace at that.
“Not about you,” Roy says. He studies the cup of tea in his hands, speaking to it instead of her. “I have… feelings.”
“Feelings.”
“About… someone,” he says.
“I don’t understand,” Rebecca says. “You’ve dated Keeley before, surely we don’t need to fuss about it now?”
“Not Keeley.”
He’s growing frustrated with himself, his own emotional constipation. He’s behaving like a child.
Roy takes a steadying breath and tries to rein in his thoughts. “You’re your own worst enemy,” Dr. Fieldstone had said on more than one occasion. “Your own bully, too.” He reminds himself to practice self-compassion, quashing the negative, macho-bullshit thoughts that creep up in the back of his head that have a lot to say about that .
“Jamie and I…” he says. “We’re best friends. But I’d like…”
“More,” Rebecca finishes for him, voice gentle, wistful, even. She sets her tea cup down.
“Yes,” he agrees. “But it’s different now. More… complicated. I’m his boss.” He twists the cup in his hands. Looks at her. “I don’t want to fuck it up. I want to make sure he has an out. I want to make sure - I don’t want - it’s just different now.”
Rebecca seems to understand the thing he’s having trouble putting into words. He wants Jamie to be safe, to be cared for. He’s working on himself, he is, but he’s still got an ocean of rage simmering just under the surface, and he has power and privilege as Richmond’s manager and a hell of a lot less checks and balances than when Ted has been here, and he never wants anyone to question Jamie’s career or his own.
“Well, you know where they’re located,” she says. “And I don’t think you need it, but I want you to know that you have my approval.” She looks at him appraisingly. “Getting out of your own way, finally?”
“Working on it,” he says.
~
The conversation he has next, with Trent Crimm, of all people, goes more or less the same.
“I have… feelings,” Roy grits out. They’re side by side in the stands. Saturday, no match, no training, no players on the pitch, just Crimm next to him, holding a cup of coffee he won’t drink, and Roy, taking a poppyseed muffin apart seed by seed with his hands.
Crimm stammers uncharacteristically.
“I’m - I’m flattered, Coach Kent, really, but - “
“Not about you.”
“Oh, thank God.”
Roy lifts an eyebrow.
“I don’t mean to offend,” Crimm says quickly. “I’m sure you’re a wonderful partner. I only - I’m attached. To someone. To a person. It’s complicated.”
Roy’s sure that navigating an “attachment” with someone on another continent is complicated. He doesn’t comment on it.
“How bad would it be?” he asks. “If my feelings were reciprocated and if it got out?”
“You’ve already been seen with Ms. Jones. Even as head manager, there shouldn’t be an issue,” Crimm says. His brow furrows.
“Not Keeley,” Roy sighs. This is growing… tiresome. “Jamie.”
Crimm blinks at him, twice. Rapidly. Blinks again. “Jamie. Jamie Tartt?”
“Jamie Tartt.”
Crimm takes a long drink of his coffee.
It would be bad. That’s the short answer. Never mind the forms he’d filled out in triplicate, forms that were just waiting for another person’s signature before they could be filed. Never mind that Rebecca approved or that the team wouldn’t care - and there was no guarantee they wouldn’t. Roy’d considered this over the last few weeks - he was careful not to give Jamie special treatment on the pitch. Careful not to come down on him too heavy or too light, careful to treat him the exact same way he treated any other footballer under his care while they were at work.
None of it would matter. It would be bad.
“You understand that I wouldn’t ever, ever breathe a word about this,” Trent says. He’s intense about it, laser-focused. It’s important to him, Roy can see, that Roy believes this. “I wouldn’t ever out someone. And I’m not a journalist anymore, anyway.”
Roy grunts in acknowledgement, but Trent’s intensity remains, so he sighs and answers.
“I know.” And he does. He does know. He spent twenty-odd years thinking Trent Crimm was the scum of the earth, him and every other journalist out there. The season they’d spent in the same office had changed his mind, so much so that he’d decided to trust Trent - the only other man he knew in the world of football anywhere near his own age who had experience dating other men - with this.
“However,” Trent adds, “if, at some point in the future, you want someone who won’t twist the story. If you want to go public, at any point, with any of it, I’m here.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Roy says. He gathers up the napkin in his lap holding the remains of his muffin and deposits it in Crimm’s empty hand. “Good talk.”
~
Jamie will be the last to know. It’s ironic and a bit unfair, but Roy wants to do this right.
He also can’t find the words.
It had happened so slowly - the metaphor about boiling a frog came to mind. First was hate, then tolerance, admiration, the first fleeting moments of friendship, and suddenly, without his knowing how or his permission, Jamie Tartt was Roy’s best friend. It had hit him square in the chest when Phoebe said it, but he hadn’t been able to deny it then and he can’t deny it now.
He loves Keeley, and he thinks he always will, but not the way she needs to be loved. With Dr. Fieldstone’s help, he’s realized that she can’t love him the way he needs, either. He’s… needy. He knows that. It was partly why he and Keeley had broken up to begin with. They woke up together, went to work together, ate lunch together, went home together, and spent the night together, and that was how he wanted it, but it was too much for her. He doesn’t blame her for that. He knows it’s a lot. He knows he’s a lot.
Jamie is a lot, too.
He’s desperate for Roy’s attention - always had been. And once Roy’d seen that, it’d been easy to forgive him for being such a massive prick. If he’d just patted the kid on the shoulder once or twice, told him ‘good job’ a little, maybe they might’ve skipped the whole prick phase entirely (probably not, on second thought, Roy thinks).
Jamie thrives under the attention Roy gives him now. In return, it hits him in all the right places to see Jamie perk up when Roy tells him he’s done good work that day. Jamie thrives under anyone’s attention, of course, but Roy likes that it’s him that Jamie really shows out for.
He likes the electricity between them. The fucking lightning that courses through him when Jamie’s nearby, when Jamie does exactly as he asks and does it perfectly. He likes his fucking smile , for fuck’s sake, and even his stupid hair.
He almost tells Jamie a dozen times. Almost opens his fucking mouth and spills his guts during their one-on-one training sessions. Almost tells him with the taste of beer at the back of his mouth, hand on the back of Jamie’s chair, watching him watch the world around them, more content than he ever thought he’d be at a pub. Jamie catches on to Roy’s twice weekly yoga sessions during the off-season and happily invites himself (much to the delight of the women in the group), and Roy almost tells him halfway through a bottle of wine, the latest episode of Lust Conquers All on the telly.
But it’s never the right time, and Jamie deserves more . More than a half-hearted declaration of affection, more than Roy’s pathetic “I have… feelings.” So he coaches and he goes to therapy and he sees Jamie every morning, afternoon, and evening and he suffers .
And then the world falls apart.
It’s a normal Tuesday afternoon training on the pitch. Beard’s running drills when Roy’s sister calls. He sends the call to voicemail, busy talking Nate through the holes in the new trick play he’d thought up. He feels a pang of guilt - he hasn’t been as present lately with Phoebe, now that he’s Head Manager. His sister had hired a nanny a few times a week.
Catherine rings again immediately and Roy answers this time, concern building in his chest. She’s frantic with worry, tears in her voice. Phoebe’s had a fever for three days, she says, and she thought it was just the flu, but it wasn’t . Phoebe’s collapsed. Surgery. Emergency.
Roy’s ears fill with static.
He can barely hear his sister. Can barely hear Nate ask if he’s alright. He feels like he’s fucking underwater. He feels like he can’t breathe .
Someone takes the phone out of his hands. He doesn’t care, doesn’t need his phone. He leaves the pitch at a run, stopping only to tear his car keys out of the drawer of his desk. He’s fumbling with them in the parking lot, hands shaking, and he can’t find the key fob - why can’t he find the fucking key fob?
“Roy,” Jamie gasps. He’s panting, clearly having followed Roy at a run. “Here, mate, take - take the phone, take the phone! I’ll drive.”
He pushes it into Roy’s hands, taking the keys in exchange and packs Roy neatly into the passenger seat of his own car. If it was anyone other than Jamie, if he wasn’t shaking so hard he could barely see straight - but it is Jamie, so it’s fine.
Jamie throws the car in reverse and physically moves the phone to Roy’s ear.
“Roy?” It’s his sister still. “Roy, it’s appendicitis. Her appendix burst - you didn’t let me finish.” She’s exasperated, still teary and exhausted but caught up in scolding him. “It’s not fatal - she should be okay.”
Roy doesn’t fucking care. Surgery is fucking surgery. Shit happens. And if anything happens to Phoebe -
He doesn’t let himself finish that thought.
Jamie drives like a madman to the hospital and practically throws his keys at the A&E valet. He follows Roy through the hospital at a run, hand at the small of Roy’s back. When they find Roy’s sister, she’s sitting in a chair, wringing her hands, and surrounded by no less than six nurses. It’s the same hospital she works at, so she knows these people. Roy reminds himself of this somewhere in the distant edges of his mind, reminds himself to be civil, to not grab the nurses by their arms and shake them until they tell him what’s going on.
Catherine crashes into his arms and he hugs her tightly.
“How is she?” he demands.
“She went down great for the anesthesiologist,” one of the nurses chirps. “Knocked right out.”
“Great numbers!” another assures them. “Heart beat’s great, blood pressure, all that.”
“She’s a tough kid,” a third chimes in. “She was awake and chatting with us for a bit before they took her back.”
“It’s a short procedure,” Catherine mumbles. “She’s already been in twenty minutes.”
“What fucking happened,” he says and can’t help the dark creeping into his voice.
“I thought - I thought it was just a fever,” Catherine says, the same thing she’d said on the phone. “Just the flu or something. And she was her normal self until this morning!”
She says it like she’s pleading with him, and he understands immediately that she’s mistaken his tone of fear for one of anger. Phoebe had a shit dad who had also been a shit husband. Before they’d gotten him out of their lives for good, his favorite refrain had been a series of insults regarding Catherine’s parenting choices. Everything that went wrong was her fault. Phoebe didn’t want to take a bottle as a baby, and Catherine hadn’t been able to produce breast milk for four days after she was born. It happened. But Phoebe had lost more weight than she should have, and the pediatrician had told them so. Phoebe’s dad hadn’t let Catherine forget it, even for a moment. And as she grew, every scraped knee or cold or upset tummy was somehow Catherine’s fault and an inconvenience to boot.
“It’s not your fault,” he says immediately, apologetically. “Catherine, it’s not your fault. You know how Phoebs is. She hates being sick, doesn’t fucking slow down for even a minute.”
“It’s true,” Jamie pipes up. “She took a football to the fucking face last month at Roy’s. Got right back up. I’ve seen footballers who can’t even do that.”
“She took a football to the face?” Catherine exclaims, pulling away from the hug to look at Roy.
He winces.
“She was fine. I checked her for a concussion.”
“Jesus Christ, Roy!”
“Fuck,” Jamie mutters under his breath. “Sorry, mate.”
At least the shock of it had stopped Catherine from crying.
“Here,” he says gruffly. He leads Catherine to a chair and sits next to her, waving away the half dozen nurses hovering nearby. Jamie sits on Catherine’s other side, striking up a conversation and plying them with stories about Phoebe’s many close calls and the misadventures she’d had on their watch. She’d fallen from a tree a few weeks prior, bounced on the ground and stood up laughing, but a stubbed toe had nearly taken her out later that day. She’s tough, Jamie says, and launches into another story. He has endless stories of Phoebe - some of which Roy doesn’t even know - and it makes him pause and take stock. He isn’t sure when it had happened, but he trusts Jamie with Phoebe as much as he had Keeley - maybe even more than Keeley.
Jamie’s still sweaty from training, still dressed in his kit, and he’s pulling faces and playing up his Mancunian accent to make even the smallest Phoebe story seem interesting and funny. It works. Catherine is distracted by the stories and Roy is distracted by Jamie, so much so that when a surgeon enters the waiting room, he’s surprised at how quickly the time has passed.
“She’s doing well,” she informs them. “Waking up now, and a bit groggy, but you should be able to see her soon.”
Phoebe’s still sleepy when they see her, but after a bit she wakes up enough to crow happily about the scar she’ll have from the surgery, small as it is. Roy wants to stay all night, but the hospital staff gently but firmly escorts Roy and Jamie from the room at nine o’clock sharp. It’s probably fine, Roy assures himself - Phoebe’d fallen asleep again hours ago, and Catherine has a steady stream of coworkers who know her (and even ones who don’t) checking in on them at regular intervals.
“I’ll be fine,” she assures them. “Go home, change, get some rest.”
“I’ll be back first thing in the morning,” Roy says.
Catherine smiles at him. “Bring breakfast, at least.”
“Change of clothes?” he asks.
“I’ve got some in my locker,” she says, shaking her head.
He nods, drops a kiss on Phoebe’s head, and follows Jamie through the halls of the hospital out into the night.
~
His entire fucking body aches like he’s played a dozen games back to back. It’s the worst adrenaline crash he’s ever felt multiplied by a hundred. He is distantly but deeply grateful for Jamie, who hunts the valet down, puts Roy again into the passenger seat and drives him home - much slower and more carefully than he’d driven on the way to the hospital.
He makes it into the house, Jamie at his heels, one hand hovering like he’s expecting to have to catch Roy.
Roy toes off his trainers and looks at Jamie. There’s buzzing in his ears again, and he’s aware his eyes are filling with tears despite how frantically and angrily he tells them not to in the privacy of his own head.
“Ah, shit,” Jamie breathes. “C’mere.”
It’s the best fucking hug of his life. He tucks his face into the crook of Jamie’s neck, hands tangling in the back of his shirt.
“Hey, c’mon,” Jamie says softly. He rubs a big hand across Roy’s back, from his shoulder blades to his lower back, slowly and steadily. “She’s alright, Roy. Everything’s okay.”
“Yeah,” Roy says into Jamie’s neck and doesn’t let go.
He’s fucking wired despite the exhaustion pulling at him. Jamie bullies him into the shower and then into a pair of shorts and a shirt. He stops short of literally tucking Roy into bed, but only because Roy glares at him.
“Right, fine, then,” Jamie says, holding his hands up. He hovers awkwardly in the middle of Roy’s room, shifting foot to foot. Roy’s about to ask if he has to piss or something when he understands suddenly why Jamie’s so shifty.
“Well?” Roy says. Jamie stares at him uncertainly. “Take a shower and get in here.”
Jamie grins at him briefly and disappears off to the shower.
“ Fuck ,” Roy says. He reminds himself sternly that Jamie deserves better than a late-night, distracted confession and resigns himself to keeping his mouth shut for the night. They’ll sleep side by side, get up in the morning, and go back to hospital to visit Phoebe and Catherine. Everything will be fine.
Everything will be fine.
He chants it to himself like a mantra while Jamie showers, only stopping when the water shuts off.
“Oi!” he shouts. “You’ve at least gotta wear pants to bed.”
There’s a suspicious pause in the bathroom.
“I don’t have any,” Jamie says. “Don’t have a shirt, either, come to think of it. Unless you want me back in me kit?”
“Borrow some of mine,” Roy says. He closes his eyes. “My eyes are closed.”
Jamie leaves the bathroom and rifles through Roy’s clothes for a quick minute. “Alright, I’m decent,” he says.
Roy turns over to face him, watching fondly as Jamie ruffles his hair in the mirror, grimacing and pulling this way and that.
“It’s only going to get messed up when you sleep,” he says.
“I know,” Jamie grumbles. He huffs at himself in the mirror and gives up, sidling up to the bed and pulling his side of the duvet down. “This alright?”
“Of course,” Roy says.
Jamie settles into the left side of the bed. Roy aches to touch him. Doesn’t.
“Thank you,” he says instead.
“What for?” Jamie asks.
“Today,” Roy says. He swallows hard. “Driving and talking to Cate and all of it. Thank you.”
“Course,” Jamie says. He’s shifty again, nervous, hands fluttering over the duvet. “Don’t need any thanks, mate. Anyone would’ve.”
“I don’t think so,” Roy says.
Jamie tries to wave him off, but Roy grabs his bicep and squeezes firmly.
“Thank you, Jamie,” he says.
“You’re welcome,” Jamie says.
~
“ Here is my hand , he said. Here is my hand that will not harm you .”
- Descending Figure; “Epithalamium” , Louise Glück
He’s going to fuck this up.
The words cycle though his head every minute he’s awake. It’s like a broken record, skipping back to the start and repeating and repeating and repeating.
He’s going to fuck this up.
He tries so hard to be good, to be perfect for Roy. He’s early to training, he makes his extra passes, meets with the nutritionist, follows his meal plan, does every stupid fucking exercise Roy throws at him. He takes pilates classes, for fuck’s sake. Does fucking yoga .
And he knows he’s being fucking obvious, okay? He knows he isn’t subtle. He’s practically got fucking heart eyes every time he looks at Roy, and he can’t seem to shut up about the man. Every conversation he pipes up with “Roy said” or “Roy did” or “Roy would”. The lads tease him about it, so much that he starts physically biting his lip to make himself stop talking. It’s too much. He knows that. He knows he’s too much.
At the beginning of the season - the first one where Roy’s properly Manager - there’s a solid week where he stops himself from even looking in Roy’s direction, trying to throw the lads off. But Roy stops him in the hall on Friday night, wounded, and asks what he’s done wrong, and Jamie has to lie like his life depends on it to reassure him that nothing’s wrong, Jamie’s just been off because Rebecca’s mum’s psychic had talked to his mum, yeah? And said something about fucking bees or some shit and Jamie hates bees, y’know?
Roy falls for it - or doesn’t and just doesn’t call Jamie out on it. But that puts an end to Jamie’s plan to avoid Roy.
He’s going to fuck this up.
It’s more than he’d ever thought to ask for. Somewhere, in the depths of his mind, 15-year-old Jamie Tartt is jumping for fucking joy. He’s best friends with Roy fucking Kent . But he’s too nervous to enjoy it fully, too certain of his own stupidity, his own certainty that it can’t last, that Roy’s going to see what a fuck-up he is and stop wasting his time with extra trainings and cooking him dinners and going out for a beer after a long week and all. Roy’s going to remember how much he fucking hates Jamie any day now.
“You should tell him,” Keeley says.
Keeley is the only one he’s told, and he swore her to secrecy on everything he knew Keeley held sacred. She pets his hair, makes sympathetic noises when he groans into the open air of her office.
It’d taken weeks of apologies to get back to normal with Keeley. He and Roy had fucked up, fighting over her like they had. She’d forgiven them, of course, but not without a fair amount of groveling and not until they’d really, truly understood what they did wrong. She loved them both, she said, but she needed to be on her own for a while.
“I can’t fucking tell him shit,” Jamie says. I’m going to fuck this up, he doesn’t say.
“Babe - “
“Don’t ‘babe’ me, Keeley. I’m not telling him, and neither are you.”
She sighs, strokes his hair again. “If you say so.”
~
It’s not just that Roy’s fucking fit, is the thing. If it were, he’d shag the man and move on.
No, it’s much more. It’s the weight of his approval that settles heavy on his shoulders. It’s the scrutiny, the exacting standards the man has, the way Jamie has to work for every approving nod, every clap on the back, every softening of Roy’s eyes that mean that Jamie has done a good job. It’s quiet moments in the kitchen, Roy humming along with the radio almost too quietly for Jamie to hear. It’s the yoga mums. The wine. The episodes of Lust Conquers All that Roy pretends he doesn’t have memorized, the contestants he pretends he doesn’t have opinions on.
It’s Roy’s niece, the little spitfire. Jamie doesn’t have any nieces or nephews - he’s never really been around little kids, didn’t know they could be cool. And Phoebe is - she’s cool. She’s a real fucking person with thoughts and opinions and ambitions and Jamie can’t fucking get enough of the two of them - Phoebe sassing Uncle Roy, Uncle Roy sassing back. It’s fucking precious is what it is.
Roy’s like the fucking sun, and Jamie would be content to orbit around him for as long as the man will let him. For as long as he can until Jamie says something or does something to ruin all of this, this little life they’re building. Because that’s what it is, yeah? It’s a life, it’s a routine. He depends on Roy, and it sometimes makes him fucking sick. Makes him fucking nauseated, like he’s on a roller coaster right before a big drop, like he’s on a boat at the top of wave about to fall. He doesn’t depend on fucking anybody because he knows the cost, and he knows how fucking bad it’s gonna hurt when the other shoe drops.
But he depends on Roy. Depends on their movie nights, doing the weekly shop together. “It’s easier, since you’re over all the time,” Roy had said. And Jamie thought it was a back-handed complaint, made himself scarce for a week until Roy showed up and dragged him bodily out of his house and into the Jeep.
Jamie depends on Roy, and it’s going to hurt like fuck when Jamie fucks it up.
~
It’s not nice that Phoebe’s sick and in hospital, not at all, but it feels nice to be able to do something in return for Roy. He drives him to and from that first day, a little shaken by how unmade Roy is by the situation. Roy gets angry - fucking furious, even - he doesn’t get scared. But in the passenger seat of his own car, while Jamie is running every red light and going way over the speed limits, Roy is obviously scared. He’s quiet and confused, and it freaks Jamie the fuck out.
Phoebe stays in hospital for three days. Roy takes the days off, but Jamie has to go back to training the day after Phoebe’s surgery. He texts Roy every hour the entire time he’s away and practically flies back to the hospital as soon as training ends. The staff kicks them out every day exactly at nine, and they go back to Roy’s house and do a little song and dance about dinner and shower and bed. He’d woken up before Roy the morning after Phoebe’s surgery, head tucked under Roy’s chin and hands balled into fists clutching the front of Roy’s shirt. He might’ve felt bad, but Roy’d had him in just as tight of a hold.
They wake up the same way the next morning and the next, and Jamie tries to think of something to say. Something that isn’t “ Oh, by the way, I’m fuckin’ in love with you ”. He comes up empty each time, says nothing, and they just untangle themselves and go about their mornings.
It’s torture.
Roy gets Phoebe and Catherine settled in their home four days after Phoebe’s surgery. Jamie tags along in the morning to get the house prepared. There’s no match, so he instead spends the morning making a handmade “Welcome Home” sign to hang on the front door.
“Unicorn stickers or the aliens?” Jamie says.
“What?” Roy is distracted in the kitchen, packing away a few days of frozen meals he made from scratch. He’d formulated each recipe for “maximum recovery potential” and Jamie hadn’t even had the urge to make fun of him for it, had only smiled fondly and quickly, hoping Roy didn’t see the sappy look across his face.
“For the sign? Unicorn stickers or aliens?”
Roy considers this more seriously than the occasion calls for. “Both,” he says finally.
Jamie nods. He’d suspected that might be the case.
He’s extra gentle with Phoebe when she comes home that afternoon despite the fact that the girl herself is close to actually bouncing off the walls. After days in a hospital bed, she’s clearly more than ready to be back to her normal self.
They pack Catherine off for a nap in her own bed, and Roy leaves for a mysterious appointment with a pinky promise for Phoebe that he’ll back in an hour. Jamie and Phoebe watch Lilo and Stitch, and Jamie lets her paint his nails a garish shade of orange and lime green.
Roy returns as promised, only three minutes later than he said he’d be, and dutifully admires Jamie’s painted nails.
“Very pretty,” he declares, which promptly fucks Jamie up for the rest of the day.
Roy is strange after his mystery appointment. Calmer and more on edge than before all at the same time. Each of his movements looks to be carefully calculated. Restrained. Like he’s trying to stop himself from doing something. Jamie decides to worry about it later.
Finally, only a few hours after arriving home and proclaiming that she was going to stay up “all night long”, Phoebe crashes. She falls asleep on the couch, head pillowed on Jamie’s leg, and Jamie stays as still as possible to avoid jostling her. She’s been slow to move, the incision healing but muscles still sore.
Roy heats up dinner in the oven and Cate pours three glasses of wine, carrying one over to Jamie with a wink. She sits in Roy’s abandoned arm chair, watching him thoughtfully. They can just barely hear Roy rustling around in the kitchen in the other room.
“You’re good for him,” Cate says, sounding deeply satisfied. She says it too quietly to hear, but Jamie darts panicked eyes in the direction of the kitchen anyway, only calming when he’s assured that Roy Kent has magically gained the power to transport from one end of a house to another.
Jamie blinks, tries not to spit out the mouthful of wine he’d just taken in.
“I -” he stutters. Panics. Tries to think of what to say in response to the all-too-knowing look Cate’s giving him. She knows. Oh, god. She knows. “We’re not - I’m not -”
“Of course you are,” she says. “And so is he.”
Jamie flushes a deep red.
And so is he.
The words haunt him the rest of the night. He hears them while they eat dinner together, Jamie gently rousing Phoebe, bribing her into eating some of the rice and fish Roy prepared by promising to let her use some of her washable hair dye on him the following weekend. He hears them while Catherine and Roy tuck Phoebe into bed in Cate’s room so she can keep an eye on her during the night. Jamie tidies up, eager to burn some of the nervous energy coursing through him, though Roy is the kind of cook who cleans up behind himself and there’s not much left to do.
He hears the words on the drive to Roy’s, hears them all the way up the front path through the door, hears them in the kitchen when Roy hands him a beer already slick with condensation.
“Roy?” he asks, studying the bottle.
Roy grunts.
You’re going to fuck this up , a voice in his head says. It sounds eerily like his dad.
Shut the fuck up , he tells the voice.
“Are you in love with me or something?”
~
He sleeps next to Jamie for a week, wakes up in his arms every fucking morning, and can’t even enjoy it properly because he feels like a fucking failure.
What kind of useless shit person - he tries to cut himself off but can’t. Tries to reframe his thoughts like Dr. Fieldstone had taught him, but there isn’t another frame to put them in. He feels the worst, most stomach-curdling shame every time he thinks about getting that phone call and how he’d responded. His brain had just gone offline against his will. He remembers feeling at once like the world was moving too fast and like he was stuck in slow motion, and he plays it over and over again in his head - fumbling with his keys, breathing too fast, Nate in front of him, the phone and his sister’s voice, and he feels a rush of fear and despair thinking about Phoebe.
On Saturday, just an hour or so after Phoebe’s comes home, he calls Dr. Fieldstone (“Really, Roy, you can call me Sharon.”) and asks for an emergency session.
“Think I had one of those fucking panic attack things,” Roy admits stiffly to Dr. Fieldstone. “Like Ted.”
She raises an eyebrow but doesn’t say anything. It’s a thing she does to get him to talk more, and it doesn’t fool Roy. But it does work.
“My head felt all fuzzy, and my ears were ringing,” he says. “And I felt like shit. Like the whole world was shit and nothing was ever gonna be the same again. Felt like I was dying. Couldn’t fucking concentrate, couldn’t get my hands to move right.”
He still feels it sometimes, the overwhelming feeling of helplessness, and he feels afraid to leave Cate and Phoebe, to have them out of his sight. He very carefully doesn’t think too hard about the fact that he hadn’t felt afraid today, leaving them with Jamie.
Dr. Fieldstone nods serenely. “I’d say you’re right, Roy. That sounds like a panic attack. What brought it on, do you think?”
He tells her about Phoebe’s surgery, the events of the past week, how she’s fine now, but how it felt to be told that something was wrong with her.
“You feel strongly about her,” Dr. Fieldstone says, and Roy snorts derisively because of fucking course he does. But she shakes her head. “You’ve had a much bigger role in her upbringing than most uncles or aunts do in the lives of their siblings’ children.”
“Her dad was a piece of shit,” Roy says, “and Catherine couldn’t do it on her own. Actually, she could’ve, if she had to. But I was there, so she didn’t have to.”
“I think it’s perfectly normal to have that response in that situation. You panicked, but then, I think any parent would.”
Roy’s starts to protest the label - he isn’t Phoebe’s parent - but the look on Dr. Fieldstone’s face stops him. He swallows hard.
“It was a normal response,” he says and hates how small his voice comes out.
“It was,” Dr. Fieldstone agrees.
It’s unacceptable. He tells her so.
“How do I un-normal it,” he demands. “I can’t be that fucking useless the next time she fucking needs me.”
“You likely won’t be,” she says. “You’ll think this all over, and you’ll make a plan, and the next time something like this happens, I think you’ll find yourself able to respond differently.”
“But, Roy,” she says, sitting forward a bit in her chair, “you weren’t useless.”
“I didn’t fucking do anything!” he explodes. His eyes are wet. “I freaked out, even had to let Jamie drive me around.”
“Yes,” she agrees. “And you’ve chosen people to be part of your life - and, by extension, Phoebe’s life - who will help you and your family when you need it. You’ve built a support system that you can rely on. You aren’t handling this alone. Phoebe and your sister aren't alone because of the work you’ve done.”
He isn’t alone. For a moment, he feels like his throat is closing. Jamie’s been there every day. He’s kept Phoebe entertained with chatty little stories and imaginative games, he’s traded off with Roy and Cate so they can shower and change, brought food, handled the back and forth between Roy and the team - keeping them in line during training, bringing their well-wishes and bizarrely imaginative gift baskets back to Phoebe.
He’s never had that before. Cate is Phoebe’s mum - she’s responsible for Phoebe. But Cate is also Roy’s little sister, so he’s responsible for her and he’s responsible for Phoebe, and he wouldn’t trade them for the world or anything in it, but it’s a weight on his shoulders that he’s never getting rid of. Jamie has stood with him this past week, has shifted a little of that weight to his own shoulders, stood side by side with him.
He isn’t alone.
“ Fuuuuuuuuck ,” he says, but it’s somehow warm and fond and a little teary.
Dr. Fieldstone hums in agreement. “Our normal time next week, then?”
~
Roy’s drive home is quiet. There’s something building under his skin and something settling in his chest and even though they’re totally different, he can tell they’re coming from the same place.
It’s a struggle to be around Jamie, made only incrementally easier by Phoebe’s presence and Roy’s desire not to scar his niece for life. Head half in the clouds, he barely makes it through the rest of the day.
After tucking Phoebe in, he asks Cate if she’d like him to stay. He can send Jamie home, he thinks.
But Cate gives him a knowing smile and wink and says she thinks he’s got some unfinished business to take care of, doesn’t he?
He and Jamie leave, Cate practically pushing the two of them out the door as they shower her in last minute reminders about food and a few new games Jamie had procured for Phoebe to indulge in as she healed over the next couple of weeks.
“Nothin’ much,” Jamie says. “Just didn’t want her to get bored.”
It was a bit much, actually, but Roy wasn’t going to be the one to put an end to Jamie’s fun.
They drive to Roy’s house and Roy hands Jamie a beer and Jamie asks Roy, very seriously, and very much unprompted, if Roy is in love with him.
Roy’s mouth goes dry around the sip of beer he’d taken. He swallows unsteadily, looks the other man in the eye.
Jamie is serious and steady. He sets his beer down, and Roy follows suit.
Of course he is.
“Of course I am,” he tells Jamie.
Jamie’s eyes soften.
“Course you are,” he repeats in a whisper.
Roy kisses him.
There aren’t fireworks. No angels descend from on high. No dramatic music or any of the other cliches he’s seen in movies. Just a quiet kitchen and a slow kiss. Jamie’s hands come up. He cups Roy’s face in one hand, gathers a fistful of Roy’s shirt to pull him even closer with the other. It’s perfect.
They break the kiss at the same time and Roy tips his forehead against Jamie’s, happy just to be breathing the same air. Jamie rearranges them into a hug, settles happily into the warmth of Roy’s chest. Roy rubs a hand up and down Jamie’s back.
There will be more to say later. Roy will tell him that he’s agonized over this for weeks, will scold him teasingly for taking the words right out of Roy’s mouth as soon as he was actually ready to say them. There will be other words, serious, grateful words, about what it means to Roy to be able to trust Jamie with his family, and Jamie will respond with words about what an honor it is to be trusted, what an honor it is to be included . And Roy will say something sappy, something he’ll immediately groan and roll his eyes at himself for, something like “Of fucking course I’d include you, you’re part of it, aren’t you?” and Jamie will tear up but try to play if off like Roy hasn’t just changed the trajectory of Jamie’s entire life.
For now, Roy contents himself with saying all of those things to Jamie without any words at all.