Archive of Our Own ^beta

There are so many quiet people Roy could have fallen in love with. Michael, Colin's boyfriend, he seems like the sort of bloke who could appreciate a nice night in. Rebecca could have introduced him to one of her posh friends who go to wine tastings. He could have met someone at the fucking library. It seems like a cruel cosmic joke that he ended up dating not one but two people who receive scheduled recurring orders of edible body glitter.

"I'm not wearing the fucking cowboy hat," Roy says.

Jamie sighs dramatically, like the hat wasn't an obvious negotiation tactic all along. "Fine," he says, fiddling with the settings on his phone before lifting it to aim at Roy. "Whenever you're ready!"

Roy glares into the camera, steeling himself. For love, for charity, and for the blowjobs Jamie and Keeley have sworn up and down they'll each deliver daily throughout the entirety of Rainbow Sparkle Bullshit Month.

In retrospect, Roy should have held out on filming the video until Jamie and Keeley agreed to stop hounding him about going to the stupid fucking parade.

"I've decided I don't give a shit what the press say about me, I'm going slutty," Jamie announces, hopping up to sit on the counter next to Roy's cutting board. "Dani and Richard said they'll wear whatever I wear to make it harder for them to pick on me. So I'll be practically naked, don't you want to come and see that?"

"I see you entirely naked every day. Budge up, you're blocking the spice rack." Roy smacks Jamie's hip until he scoots aside.

"There might be homophobic protestors," Keeley says, like she's holding out a treat to a fucking dog. "You could rip apart their shitty signs and chase them away, wouldn't that be fun?"

Roy does not dignify this with a reaction.

She tries a different approach. "Phoebe's so excited, she's gonna have a blast. Shouldn't she have family with her at her first Pride?"

"She'll have fucking family with her, unless you two are planning on fucking off to a leather orgy." Roy is concentrating on slicing the courgettes thin enough for the carpaccio—he really needs to get a fucking mandoline, he keeps meaning to set aside some time to look into which one is best—and doesn't realise for a minute that Jamie and Keeley have both gone silent. He glances up. "What? You're not actually going to an orgy, are you?"

"No, of course not," Keeley says in a weird soft voice. "You're right, we'll be with her the whole time."

Without warning, Jamie dives in for a kiss. Roy drops his knife onto the cutting board in a panic. "Fucking hell, are you trying to commit fucking seppuku? Don't jump at me when I'm holding a fucking blade!"

"Sorry," Jamie says, but he still drags Roy into a long, lingering kiss. "I love you."

"I love you too, that's why I don't want you fucking disemboweled," Roy grumbles. "Get your arse off the counter and go get me the colander." He rolls his eyes at Keeley, then freezes when he sees her face. "Are you fucking crying? I didn't actually stab him!"

"I'm fine," she says, wiping the corner of her eye. "Thank you for making dinner. I love how you always make sure we're well fed and looked after."

That gets Jamie going, Roy can tell without even turning around. For fuck's sake. "You got a delivery earlier," he blurts out in desperation. "Says Balenciaga on it. I put it upstairs."

Keeley smiles at him fondly through her inexplicable tears. "Come on, Jamie," she says. "Roy needs a bit of time to commune with the veg in peace."

Jamie plants one more kiss on Roy's neck as he sets the colander down and the two of them wander off together, holding hands even though it makes walking through doorways incredibly awkward. Roy shakes his head at their retreating backs and reaches for the salt.

Jamie ambushes him after sex, which the little shit has learnt is the best time to get Roy to actually engage in a conversation. Keeley is out with friends for the evening, which means Roy gets to settle in and eat Jamie out for ages without worrying about her feeling neglected; by the time they're sprawled out next to each other all messy and sated, he's in a very good mood indeed. And that's when Jamie pounces.

"I want to ask you about something," he says, rolling onto his side to face Roy. "And I'm nervous that it's going to piss you off, so please try not to be a dick, yeah?"

Roy lifts their joined hands to kiss Jamie's fingers. "Then talk fast before the endorphins wear off."

"I know you don't like labels," Jamie says carefully. It sounds like he's planned what to say in advance, which isn't his usual style at all. "That's fine, there's nothing wrong with that. And there's nothing wrong with not wanting to party, if you really don't. But I've seen you party, yeah? I've seen you do other parades." He eyes Roy like he's expecting an explosion at any moment. "I'm just wondering what it is about a queer party that's so different. You don't have to identify with any labels to go to Pride, most of the lads are straight and they're all going just to be supportive. So why're you so against it?"

Roy sighs. He's talked about this with Dr. Sharon a bit, and he's still not sure he can find the right words to explain, but with Jamie's big eyes radiating anxiety, he's got to try.

"You know why I like The Holiday?" he asks.

Jamie's forehead creases. "Because Kate Winslet and Jude Law are fucking fit?"

Roy snorts. "No. Well... yeah, but also—I like it because it's about two couples falling in love quietly. They don't do any grand speeches in front of crowds, they don't go making a scene at the fucking airport. They meet, they get on, they get to know one another, they decide they want to be together, and they don't make it anyone else's fucking business. It's for themselves, it's not about being looked at."

He glances at Jamie to make sure he's not hurt by that, but he seems all right. He knows by now that Roy doesn't really mind him peacocking about, likes it even. Roy is talking about himself here.

"If I was straight, if the parade wasn't about me, I'd be fine going. But it is about me, and I don't want anyone looking at that part of me. Not the part about being queer, exactly, but... love. Family. That shit doesn't belong to anyone but us." He catches the look on Jamie's face. "I'm not saying I don't want you to go, I just mean—"

"No, it's all right," Jamie interrupts. "I get it, I think. It's just... never heard you call yourself queer before. Never heard you call yourself anything."

Roy shrugs. "Never had to. No one's business but mine, and I don't need a word for it in my own head, do I? But now it's your business too, and we've got to talk about it, so. Might as well use your word."

Jamie's smile is like an oncoming headlight in the middle of the night. He rolls onto his stomach, lifts his arse in the air, and says, "If you put your tongue back to work right now, I'll make some fucking amazing noises."

Under three minutes, no tears, and sex before and after. Roy has finally achieved the perfect feelings conversation.

Roy gets out of the car at Nelson Road and watches in bemusement as all the Richmond players in the car park simultaneously make a mad dash for Jan Maas's Range Rover, like cockroaches skittering under the furniture.

"They think I've finally convinced you to come along to the parade and now you'll be biting heads off about it all day," Jamie explains.

Roy stares at the huddled faces through the back window. "Do they think I couldn't get in there if I wanted to?"

Jamie shrugs. "The salesman told Jan Maas it could withstand the force of a charging rhino. I guess they reckoned that means it can withstand you."

Roy dismisses the clown car in favour of ogling. Jamie is wearing pink hot pants with blue and purple handprints on the arse, pink trainers, his rainbow ICON hat, and nothing else. Keeley is wearing pink high-heeled boots and a dress for now, but underneath it she's got on the same hot pants and a matching bra with handprints on the tits. They both look fucking unbelievable.

"Come on, hurry, we've got to get ready before all the glitter's used up!" Phoebe, wearing a rainbow dress she tie-dyed herself, grabs Jamie and Keeley's hands and starts dragging them inside. Roy follows, stubbornly fending off a smile, and the Range Rover contingent brings up the rear at a wary distance.

They pass Higgins and Beard chatting about scouting logistics in the corridor, Higgins in his normal suit with a rainbow tie and Beard in stilettos and a red banana hammock. In the dressing room, everyone is wearing rainbow shoelaces and Richmond Pride shirts except Richard and Dani, who—as promised—are in shorts exactly as microscopic as Jamie's.

Keeley has already stripped off her dress and is slathering suncream and glitter onto herself and Phoebe, who thoughtfully muses, "Why does the glitter need to be edible? Who would ever want to lick themselves?"

"Listen up!" Isaac bellows, saving Keeley from having to field that one. He's wearing a rainbow captain's armband. "Today, we have a duty—nay, a privilege—nay, an honour! Our boy Colin doesn't want his secret identity public—"

"Sexual identity, Isaac, I'm not a superhero," Colin interjects.

"So our parade mission," Isaac barrels on, "is to be as gay as fucking possible, so he can mack on his boyfriend without worrying about the press. I want to see groping! I want to see snogging! I want to see passionate, lingering eye contact! If you haven't got hickeys, you're not trying hard enough! Do you hear me?"

"Yes, Captain!" comes the resounding chorus, along with a faint "What are hickeys?" from Phoebe.

"Let's fucking go!" Isaac hollers, and the players all start trooping out to the bus.

Roy leans down to look Phoebe in the eye. "All right, now remember what I told you. What do you do if any of these dumbshits try to get you to do something stupid?"

"Listen to the real grownups," she recites.

"And who are the real grownups?"

"Mr. Higgins, Sam, and Trent but only while he's still got his shirt on."

"Good girl." Roy claps her on the back to send her out with the last of the stampeding herd. "Oi, Sam!" he calls. Sam turns around and takes Phoebe's hand with a smile.

Jamie and Keeley are both looking perturbed. "We're not real grownups?" Keeley asks.

"What? Of course you are. She already knows she's got to listen to you two." Roy wrenches his knee back into place. Phoebe had better hit a growth spurt before this shit deteriorates too much for him to bend down like that anymore.

He straightens up and takes a good look at the two of them, both sparkling with glitter and excitement, ready to march through Piccadilly Circus in their skivvies. Ridiculous, head to toe. God, he fucking loves them.

"I could go," he offers, not really realising what he's saying until he's said it. "If it's really important to you to have me there."

Keeley reaches for his hand. He lets her take it, even though it's going to be a bitch to get the glitter off. He's already pretty much resigned to glitter infesting his entire life for the next week, minimum.

"Is this one of those things where you like to be grouchy but you secretly want to be talked into it, or do you genuinely not want to go?" she asks.

"I genuinely don't want to fucking go," Roy says sourly. "But I will, if it matters to you two."

Jamie leans in for a kiss. "Nah," he says. "You go on home and have a nice quiet day with no one getting underfoot in the kitchen."

"I like you underfoot. Just not under-knife." Roy gives Keeley a kiss too and squeezes both their arses, right over the handprints. "Have a good time, yeah?"

"We absofuckinglutely will," Keeley promises, and the two of them bounce out holding hands again. Roy holds back to give the glitter cloud a moment to settle before heading out to the car.

Roy's attitude toward social media is approximately equivalent to Richard's attitude toward boxed wine: contempt, distrust, and steadfast avoidance. He doesn't even really know the names of the websites, but he's absorbed enough subconsciously from the constant chatter surrounding him to recognise the relevant ones when he googles Jamie and Keeley's names. He remembers they're not using Twitter anymore—something about a billionaire muskrat from Mars?—so he opens up their Instagram and TikTok pages and keeps half an eye on the updates while he's pulling together his baking shit. He doesn't even fucking want to know where they're keeping their phones in those outfits.

Keeley has only posted twice so far, both carefully-composed pictures of strangers posing in elaborate clothes and makeup. Jamie, on the other hand, has posted about a dozen near-identical videos of people walking and making noise. They're marching with the Gayhounds, Richmond's queer fan club, who are all staring slack-jawed in the background every time any of the players comply with Isaac's snogging edict. Phoebe is visible from behind in one of the videos, perched on Dani's shoulders waving a little rainbow flag energetically at bystanders. The caption on that one says family with a load of soppy emojis.

Keeley explained it to Roy, the whole meltdown over the courgettes. After Jamie was asleep, because she knew Roy didn't want to get double-teamed by feelings again. Apparently, even though they were perfectly aware that he considered them family and they obviously knew Phoebe was also his family, it was still some kind of big hairy deal to draw the logical fucking conclusion and call them Phoebe's family. Go figure.

There's a lot of talk about family among the glitter-and-flags crowd, people proclaiming the whole queer community to be one big family and that sort of thing. Roy fucking hates that shit. He's always hated it when people talk about football teams as family, too. Family isn't a word he throws around lightly. But he doesn't think Jamie is throwing it around lightly, either. It just means something a bit different to him.

Roy scrolls back through Jamie's TikTok videos until he finds the one of him doing the film quotes. He hasn't actually seen it before, all edited together. Some of the quotes are fucking bizarre—one is just him turning his head different directions and saying a load of names, fucking why—but others... well. Some of them are all right, aren't they.

The three of them return that evening in the kind of fading manic state that means they're all going to be unconscious by nine. They've acquired several more layers of glitter in different colours, and Jamie's bare legs are covered in additional handprints made of god knows what. Roy sends Phoebe to wash her face and the other two to shower and change—the glitter may be inescapable, but he isn't going down without a fight—and then gets them all sat down to dinner before they collapse.

"So many kids, like totally out and proud queer kids telling me I inspired them to play football or to come out to their teams, it was mad," Jamie burbles away. "We had these little rainbow footballs to give away, like stress balls, and the looks on their faces when they caught one I tossed! You know, I see kids sometimes at Nelson Road or out in public I'm pretty sure are queer, feels like they want to say something to me about it but they're not sure it's safe or something? Do you think we could do anything about that? Rainbow patches on the kit, maybe? Ask the straight lads to speak up more, make sure everyone knows they won't be dicks about it? Well, I guess everyone knows now, don't they. Dani had a hickey on the inside of his thigh and we were walking the whole time, I don't know how that even—"

"Fucking breathe," Roy reminds him, and Jamie pauses to suck in oxygen for the first time in about two minutes. Roy takes the opportunity to clear everyone's plates and bring out the cake.

"Wow, Uncle Roy, that cake is really black," Phoebe observes. "It's like looking into a portal that's black and on the other side of the portal there's just even more black."

"Mirror glaze," Roy says. It turned out very nice, in his opinion, but it's not the reason he spent four fucking hours on this thing. He cuts into it and slides his knife underneath the first slice. "Happy fucking Rainbow Sparkle Bullshit Month," he says, and lifts up the slice.

Keeley and Phoebe squeal so loudly it actually hurts Roy's eardrums. Jamie just stares, speechless. The cake has six layers in the colours of that obnoxious fucking flag, and in between each layer is white frosting with edible glitter mixed in. It looks fucking fantastic. Roy is quite pleased with himself.

"I have never wanted anything in my entire life more than I want to post that on Insta right now," Jamie says. He meets Roy's eyes seriously. "But I get it."

He'd fucking better. Roy wouldn't have spent all that time baking his fucking feelings if he wanted to say them out loud.

Keeley gets it too, he can tell from her smile. "The film quotes TikTok went massively viral today," she says. "It was already doing numbers, but the team crawling all over each other at the parade put us in the international spotlight, and now people are seeing it who don't even know who you are."

Roy frowns as he distributes plates of cake. "It's not funny if you don't know who I am."

"Well, they're still donating. It's brought in over half a million pounds for underprivileged queer youth."

"Fucking hell," Roy says, startled. He glances at Jamie, who chose the charity, and his face could not be saying you're getting laid tonight any more clearly if he spoke the words aloud. Maybe they won't all be unconscious by nine after all.

"So this is why the glitter needs to be edible," Phoebe concludes with her mouth full.