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He doesn’t know
what to do with his hands. He likes the feel
of the coffeepot. More than the hacksaw?
Yes, and he likes flipping the chairs,
watching them fill with people. He likes
the orange juice and toast of it, and waxed
floors in any light. He wants to be tender
and merciful. That sounds overly valorous.
Sounds like penance. And his hands?
His hands keep turning into birds and
flying away from him. Him being you.
Yes. Do you love yourself? I don’t have to
answer that. It should matter.Unfinished Duet, Richard Siken
It would figure, really, the grand scheme of things taken into account, that the first breakup Roy experienced that mattered in more than a fleeting and surface-level way would also be the one that the entire universe seemed intent on making their direct personal business. This is the sort of thing he’d been pondering mutinously while staring at the coffee pot he’d brewed out of habit with too much coffee in it, still. Everyone he knows seems to have gotten together behind his back and come up with some kind of- of coordinated plan for how to make this as difficult to get through as possible.
Even his sister’s gotten in on it. It’s not that she’s said anything, it’s that she hasn’t, but she’s not said it in a way that is honestly louder than if she’d been yelling. Roy went over to have dinner with her and Phoebe the night before, and he’d been expecting to catch an earful as soon as the girl was sent off to bed. That hadn’t happened. She didn’t even bring it up, which was unbelievably transparent.
On the way into Nelson Road for a video review session going over the Chelsea match, Roy tries to convince himself that it won’t be as bad this time. Everyone knows now, which means that it should cool down a bit. Small mercies, but he’ll take what he can get. And then Roy actually gets to work and from the moment he sets foot in the building it picks back up again.
Richmond, it seems, has hired about a thousand people when he wasn’t paying attention, because it’s like everyone he’s already run into and done the awkward ‘I just heard - I’m so sorry - how are you - Jesus man I was just asking’ song and dance with has been replaced with someone new, prompting him to need to do the whole thing all over again. By the time he makes it through the minefield of well-intentioned busybodies hellbent on picking Roy apart with fucking tweezers, he is down to just about his last nerve, and it’s fraying.
The meeting does not help. It feels like every pair of eyes in the room is on him when he arrives - and sure, Roy is one of their coaches, and maybe that comes with the territory, but that’s beside the point right now. He can feel the weight of Ted watching him, of Trent fucking Crimm watching him from across the room where he’s standing with his stupid little notepad. Those two in particular are an unwelcome sight, and he looks sharply away from each man as soon as eye contact is returned.
Roy can’t shake the memory of what he’d told them, the things he’d confessed about his return to Chelsea, about his original departure that still aches as much as his fucked knee does. It had felt like the right thing to do at the time, the sort of thing it might be okay to disclose, and Ted and Trent hadn’t been pricks about it, but once he’d gotten home, Roy felt the memory of telling them all that crawl down his throat and settle heavy into his lungs. The sense that he’s done something he shouldn’t have, exposed something ugly and embarrassing that he was supposed to have kept wholly to himself, locked up tight where it couldn’t bother anyone or betray any weakness, is inescapable. He doesn’t quite regret saying it, but at the same time he hates that he did, and he resents the both of them just a bit for asking questions and hearing him out. For… giving a fuck. And that’s probably a screwed up way to think about things, but of all the accolades Roy could claim, being a shining beacon of a healthy psychological outlook was never among them.
Whatever. The point is, it had been bad enough to feel everyone looking at him when it was just the breakup thing, and now it’s the breakup thing and the Chelsea thing, and Roy has had it. The meeting gets underway and it still feels like he’s being shot glances way too often to be excusable as the usual restless fidgeting of twenty athletes made to look at a video screen for an extended period of time. The review itself passes in a blur - he knows he had things to say but he can’t remember for the life of him what they were as soon as he’s done saying them. There’s no way around it - Roy is a shit coach, today. He’s a shit coach, and nobody’s even going to have anything to say about it, because they’re all just gonna chalk it up to been a rough couple of days, poor bastard, did you hear about-
It probably would have been fine if it hadn’t been for- Well, okay, no, fine is not the right word for what it would have been. It hadn’t even started out fine. Still, that last shred of Roy’s strained composure, the bit that hasn’t been bashed to pieces by the inescapable cloying press of feeling watched, and judged, and cornered, and entirely too seen, doesn’t snap until Jamie gets involved. Which. Fucking of course it’s Jamie.
The team is picking up their things from their lockers, donning jackets and milling around chatting before taking off to the rest of whatever their days will hold, and Roy has been nearly-approached or stared at or muttered about enough that he’s counting down the seconds until he can get the hell out of this building. It’ll be better once it has more of a chance to settle. This will pass soon, and things will go back to normal, and in the meantime he just needs to remember that they’re trying to be nice, they’re doing this shit because they care, and get the fuck out of here.
Except that there’s Jamie, and he’s trying to… to help, or whatever it is he thinks he’s doing, because he keeps interrupting and running interference. He’s stopped several people from coming over and bringing something up to Roy, catching them and muttering to leave it be, maybe chill a bit, which is having the paradoxical effect of driving Roy’s frustration levels up and up and up. Jamie’s voice carries, and it doesn’t have to carry far - he’s nearby, and he’s gotten closer - which forces Roy to hear every moment of the jaw-gritting, infuriating exchanges happening about him quite literally right behind his back.
It’s clear Jamie thinks he’s making things better, thinks he’s helping, but he’s not. He’s adding to the noise, and he’s forcing Roy to deal with the reality that Jamie fucking Tartt thinks he needs to run interference for Roy, because his fucking breakup, which already fucking sucked, is now something that needs a fucking PR team.
Finally, enough is enough.
“Can you keep your opinions to your fucking self for one minute?” Roy snaps, shooting a glare over his shoulder at Jamie to make it clear just who he’s addressing. “I don’t need your input on how to manage my life.” The expression he gets in return is nonplussed.
“Uh, I wasn’t offering my input,” Jamie says, echoing the word back in a way that implies the accusation is completely ridiculous. “I was helping. You don’t want to talk about it, fine, I’m helping.”
“You are not fucking helping.” The room around them has quieted and stilled, half the casual conversations dying out. Roy’s not done though. Now that he’s going, actually, he’s got a lot more to say, and he’s losing his will to hold it back. “And I still don’t know it wasn’t you that decided to make this everyone’s business-”
“It wasn’t! I said it wasn’t, and now you’re just being a dick for no fucking reason-”
“No reason? That’s what you think, is it?” Roy can hear his own voice rising, the pressurized feeling in his chest growing. He can hear his heartbeat in his ears, thudding inside his skull in a way that’s grown familiar over the years. Taking a step closer to the current central focus of his shitty, shitty day, he opens his mouth to say something else, only to be interrupted by a throat clearing on his other side.
“Roy,” Ted says, looking between him and Jamie, voice measured and cautious like he’s still trying to get a read on whether this is an argument or just a momentary loud disagreement that will blow over on its own, “I get that you’re under a lot of stress right now, but I don’t think you’re hearing what Jamie’s saying to you, and I think that’s maybe making things feel worse.”
Before Roy has the opportunity to respond, Jamie steps in instead. He waves a hand, and says, “No, it’s fine.” His voice is firm and insistent, the tone of someone putting his foot down. “I can handle this.”
Which, for fuck’s sake. This idiot is acting like Roy is some kind of situation that needs to be managed, which he isn’t. He does not need to be handled by anyone and certainly not by Jamie of all fucking people.
“You don’t need to handle shit, you just need to mind your fucking business,” Roy tells him, jabbing a finger at him to emphasize the point.
“Oh fuck off,” Jamie returns, getting loud right back. He swats the accusatory gesture away from where it hovers aimed at his chest and his lip curls in a sneer. “Like I said I was trying to help, it’s not my fault you keep turning into the Incredible fucking Hulk every time someone tries to-”
“Tartt!” There’s no one between them this time, nothing to stop Roy’s hands from seizing the fabric of the front of Jamie’s shirt. The material bunches and stretches in his grip, and he barely has time to register the wide-eyed look in front of him before Ted is speaking again, sharper and harder than before.
“Roy! Roy, you need to reel it in, you’re gonna-”
“No.” It’s clearly the last voice anyone would’ve expected to interrupt Ted before he could finish. Jamie’s voice. His tone is strange and intense, leagues away from how he’d sounded just moments ago, but it’s clear and strong. “He’s not gonna hurt me.” Looking away from Ted, Jamie turns his head to face Roy straight-on and says, “You’re not gonna hurt me.”
The statement is ice water dumped down Roy’s neck because to him, that would never have occurred to register as a question. He’s pissed off, he’s externalizing, he got wound up and wound up until he snapped, but it’s not like that’s never happened before. It’s not like it hadn’t happened just the other day - I’ll fucking kill you - but Jamie hadn’t even really reacted then. The suggestion now that he might’ve hurt Jamie, that’s just- What the fuck? The idea that anyone could have thought that was remotely a possibility has stopped Roy completely in his tracks. The anger that had been so loud, so claustrophobic in his mind and his body mere moments before has been shunted into the background so abruptly it’s dizzying. Its sudden absence allows Roy to process new information again, details filtering back in around the edges.
Ted is close. He’s closer than he’d been when Roy last looked at him, expression alarmed and serious, watching intently. In front of Roy, Jamie is standing his ground. He’s not moving, not shying away or trying to get Roy off him, making no movement to break the grip on the front of his shirt, but he’s shaking. There’s a determined frown on his face, his hands are held with a tense deliberation at his sides, but Jamie is shaking.
Jamie is shaking, pretty fucking hard, as he repeats himself, saying, “I know you’re not gonna hurt me.”
Which is the moment that Roy has the sudden and horrifying thought that, fuck, he doesn’t believe that, does he, and he lets go like he’s been burnt. Reeling, he steps back and away, nearly tripping in his hurry to get some space between them. Honestly, all Roy wants right now is for the ground to open up and swallow him whole, but no such mercy is forthcoming. The world stays right where it is, and Roy stays right there in it, unable to tear his eyes away from where Jamie has taken a step back of his own. He’s still standing but he’s collapsed back against the wall, looking like he’s trying to pretend he isn’t breathing hard, trying to keep the relieved expression off his face.
After a few horrible, silent moments, Ted speaks up again. He’s quiet and subdued as he says, “Okay, guys, let’s just give them a minute, maybe.”
They'd all been getting ready to go anyway, people already filtering out, and nobody puts up much of a fuss as Ted ushers them much more quickly from the room. Whatever conversations they’d been caught up in that were keeping them in place have been soundly crushed. Heads stay down and people hurry for the doors until it’s just the three of them left there. Ted steps over and touches Jamie’s shoulder, leaning close and speaking in a hush. The question isn’t totally distinct but the intention is perfectly clear.
“I’m good, yeah,” Jamie says, waving him off. The strength is gone from his voice, leaving it unsteady and throwing a lot of doubt over what he’s said.
While Jamie’s answer sounds dubious and he’s plainly still trembling, after a pause, Ted still takes him at his word and leaves. On his way out, he shoots a look at Roy. It’s not an upset look, or an accusatory one, but it’s not entirely positive either. It’s a tight, sympathetic smile, but there’s an edge of a warning in it, too.
Watching the door swing shut behind Ted, his absence is both bad news and good news to Roy. Bad news because it means that Ted has believed Jamie when he said I’m good, and that means Ted might be an idiot, because, well, fuck, come on. It’s good news, too, though, because it means that he still trusts Roy enough right now to leave Jamie alone with him. Which is not a question that Roy would ever have thought to entertain any other possible answer to, except here he is. Here they are.
For a minute, Roy stands there in the locker room and tries to breathe through all of this. The unsteadiness left behind when the anger suddenly went away combined with the sick shock of everything else has him a little worried that he might pass out.
Apparently, he isn’t the only one concerned. Jamie, still leaning against the wall, is eyeing Roy a little strangely. Eventually, he’s the one who breaks the heavy silence that’s taken over the locker room to ask, “Y’alright there, mate?”
Roy can barely scrape together the wherewithal to respond, because, “Are- Are you seriously asking me that?”
“Yeah?” The look on Jamie’s face and the baffled tone of his answer indicates that he does in fact genuinely not understand why that would be an odd thing to ask given their present circumstances.
“Fucking hell,” Roy mutters under his breath. He rakes his hands over his head, just to try to get the buzzing, static feeling off of his palms. It doesn’t work, and he breathes in and out, a heavy rush of air.
Still not feeling entirely steady, Roy takes a few steps. He turns when he reaches the wall, leaning heavily back into it and sliding to the floor. Once he’s settled on the ground, he leans back against the wall outside of Ted and Beard’s office, and then there’s quiet again, settling across the locker room. Roy’s chest feels tight and heavy and he tries to breathe through the feeling, in and out, in and out. He doesn’t have the first idea what he’s supposed to do now - what he can do now.
If he’s honest, Roy is expecting that Jamie’s going to leave. He’s anticipating, somewhere in the back of his mind, that any moment now he’s going to hear footsteps, Jamie is going to disappear out the same door Ted left through, and Roy will be left here alone. And, really, he should leave. He should go somewhere else - anywhere else, just so long as it’s far the fuck away from Roy.
Of course, that would require Jamie to have a functioning grasp of common sense, which is a lost cause on a good day. So he doesn’t leave. A long stretch of strained quiet passes, and then eventually Jamie does start walking, but not to the door. He pushes off from the end of the row of lockers he’s been leaning against and comes over to sit on the floor next to Roy instead of… Of literally any other choice he could have made.
When Jamie sits down, Roy doesn’t look over at him. He can’t, not just yet. For the moment he’s a little too caught up in trying to figure out just what the fuck is going on, which way is up, whether he’s about to pass out or throw up or maybe just change his name and flee the fucking country. They all seem like equally a good idea to Roy, whose palms still buzz with the static memory of the front of Jamie’s shirt, gripped in tight fists. He flexes his fingers out in his lap, forcing them straight and then curling them slowly back in. It doesn’t help.
Eventually, Jamie is - for the second time - the one to break the silence.
“Look, I’m just gonna say it again,” he says, “cause you’re clearly all freaked out about that, but you didn’t hurt me. I knew you wouldn’t.”
It’s slightly too loud against the backdrop of this room that suddenly feels too big and too empty, and it’s and a little stilted, like Jamie doesn’t quite know how to put what he’s saying, but the repetition seems important. It’s the same thing he’d said not minutes ago, first to Ted and then to Roy. Maybe mostly to himself.
Now, Roy scrapes up the nerve to look over at him. Jamie’s got his knees pulled up towards his chest, his arms set over the top of them. The cuffs of his shirt are pulled down to his knuckles, but it doesn’t hide what Roy was looking for. He turns away again, breath catching and gut lurching all over again.
“You didn’t believe that,” he says, somehow finding it in himself to push back. “You were fucking shaking.” Glancing over again, just the barest flick of his eyes, Roy grits his teeth and swallows hard. “You’re still fucking shaking.” It’s not quite constant anymore, but it’s still there, a blatantly obvious tremor running periodically through him.
“Yeah, maybe.” Despite the agreement, Jamie sounds uncomfortable. He pinches one sleeve in the opposite hand and pulls at it, twisting the end of the fabric. One shoulder shrugs. “But I knew it. Sometimes I know stuff and my body don’t believe it anyway. It’s… It’s whatever.”
It’s whatever. Roy does not… love that, as a way to describe that kind of a reaction. He is all too acutely aware of why Jamie’s body might not believe he wasn’t in danger, wasn’t facing a real and serious threat, even if he’s telling the truth when he says he knew he wasn’t. Muscle memory, or some shit.
“It’s not whatever,” Roy says. Pushes, again, because he can’t tolerate that, not in his presence. “Don’t say that shit. It is not whatever.”
For all that he’s twice now been the one to come up with something to say first, Jamie doesn’t seem to have anything to say to that. He goes quiet and his head dips down, looking at his hands. The edge of his sleeve is going to be permanently warped if he doesn’t stop fucking with it like that, but Roy doesn’t have the heart to needle him about it. Not… Not right now.
Roy doesn’t know how to follow that up either. There’s more that he needs to say, he knows there is, but he doesn’t know what or how to say it. He brings a hand up to his face, scrubbing at his eyes and trying to clear his head. The air feels thicker than it’s supposed to be. Behind him, the pressure of the wall at his back increases every time he drags in a breath. As the intensity of what the day had turned into eases away, Roy is left feeling a bit jittery, exhausted and spent.
This has always been the worst part - the part after the anger’s faded away where he’s left feeling strange and almost fragile, adrenaline and his pounding heart eased off until all that’s left behind is the recollection of ringing in Roy’s ears and tingling in his hands. Nobody’s ever bothered to teach him how to handle this part. It’s a trap you don’t realize you’ve fallen into until you’re stuck there.
It does shit to you, when you spend your whole life being told that the anger you’ve been dealing with for as long as you can remember is your biggest strength, encouraged to stoke it and applauded when it showed in explosions on the pitch. Everyone around Roy seemed to want to see it happen - coaches, teammates, pundits, everyone. All that cheering and jeering, all the encouragement, the sense that Roy was a prize worth being proud of because of the rage that lived somewhere inside him and could wake up at a moment’s notice. Football hadn’t just given him an outlet for that anger, it had fed it, encouraged it until it was bigger than he knew what to do with.
And then all that was over but Roy was still left with his anger, and nobody ever told him what to do about it. He’s just got to muddle through on his own with this life that suddenly felt like he’d wasted so much of it, and he doesn’t feel like he recognizes himself some days. Lately he’s been drifting, and pretending like he isn’t drifting, and trying not to let himself be drifting. His body doesn’t work like it used to and he doesn’t even know where to begin with his head - his heart, if that’s where he wants to call the place his feelings live. So he defaults into the thing he’s the most familiar with, and look where that’s got him.
You used to run like you were angry at the grass.
Roy mostly tries not to think about Nate too much these days, for an assortment of reasons, but sometimes he can’t help it. That sentence haunts him. It rattles around and around in his head, just like it has done ever since he heard it in the visitor’s lockers at Everton. It’s in there with all the other haunting shit people have said to him in the past couple of years.
I’m as good as the best you. Had a poster of you on my wall growing up. It has to be me. It can’t be anyone else.
You used to run like you were angry at the grass. Yeah, Roy had used to run like he was angry at the grass, and half the time it’s because he had been. Or, he’d been angry at something else, or nothing in particular, or himself, and the grass was just there to take it. When Roy started to feel like it was going to take him over, like it had to go somewhere or he might lose himself to it, he ran. Even when he wasn’t at training or a match, he’d run and run until his lungs felt shredded and every ounce of feeling had been pounded out of his body through boots or trainers and into the ground. Into the grass.
A quiet but insistent throb in Roy’s knee reminds him that this option is obviously limited in its availability to him lately, and he’d be lying if he said having that outlet restricted hadn’t made things more difficult. He’s tried ignoring it, stifling it and shoving it down, but that clearly hasn’t worked out as well as he’d hoped. And it had just been so… easy, to let Jamie bring it out of him. When that had turned into picking fights and letting his former rival rile him up, Roy doesn’t know, and the realization is alarming. They aren’t rivals anymore, and it isn’t fair, not when Jamie’s been making such an obvious effort.
God, Roy has just fucked this one right up, hasn’t he? And he doesn’t have the first idea how to begin fixing it. Or, well. Maybe he does have the first idea. Just the first, but it’s something.
“I’m shit at apologies,” Roy says. “I know that.” His voice is a quiet rasp, grating out past a throat that aches fiercely for reasons he can’t totally identify.
“Oh, great, so we can skip this part, then?”
The anaemic whisper of a laugh pulls at Roy’s lungs. “Nope. We can’t.”
The irritated sound that Jamie makes is a halfhearted attempt that doesn’t manage to bring any levity to the room. He doesn’t say anything after that. The ensuing return to wordless quiet is stiff and awkward enough that Roy is almost tempted to walk it back and just let the whole thing drop there. Almost.
“I…” As soon as he tries, the attempt at starting dies in Roy’s mouth. He shakes his head and looks across the locker room. The twinge he’d felt in his knee, faintly and warningly, has grown into a steady ache. It lets him know that he’s going to be paying for the decision to sit on this floor sooner rather than later. “I’m sorry. That was… That was complete bullshit. The way I acted. It was fucked up and I’m sorry.”
“It’s fine, we’re cool,” Jamie says. It’s too quick of a response and there’s a strange, uncomfortable edge to it. “You’re not like- It’s really not that big a deal, we can just drop it. You’re not like- You’re not some big awful bastard, right, you’re not the boogeyman.” He says it like the concept is ridiculous, but the second attempt at humour doesn’t succeed any better than the first. “Most of the time you’re- you’re a grumpy old twat, and you’re a bit loud, but you’re fine. I overreacted just now, it’s fine.”
Not that big a deal. Just drop it. You’re fine. I overreacted. It’s fine. Roy just barely manages to catch himself, choking it back instead of allowing what the fuck, Jamie, to come out of his mouth.
“It is that big a deal,” is what he says instead. It goes against every instinct that Roy has to contradict what Jamie’s said. The offer of an easy out is so tempting, and he wants so badly to release them both from this conversation, but he can’t let himself give into that. If fixing your fuck ups were easy, he supposes, everyone would always do it, and he can’t just let that shite stand. “You didn’t- you didn’t overreact, I scared you, and it’s happened before.”
“Oh my god, Roy, I am not scared of you.” Where he’d been starting to relax before, losing the tension in his shoulders and the stiffness in his back, Jamie is all bunched up again now. He’s gripping his own wrist so hard that Roy wants to reach over and stop him. “Fuck off with that, I’m not some pathetic, helpless kid.”
“Did I fucking say you were?” The response is sharper, harsher than Roy had meant for it to be, and he sees Jamie cringe a bit. Not much, but enough to notice. “Sorry. Fuck.” He groans and rakes his hands through his hair again, covering his face. A second curse is muffled into his palms. Leaving his eyes obscured for a moment, darkness giving him an excuse not to look at Jamie, he says, “What I mean is maybe not all the time, or most of the time, but I scared you today. Definitely did when we talked about what you said to…” To Keeley. Better not go there just now. “Before we got promoted. Probably other times, too, I don’t know.”
No response. Roy pulls his hands away from his face, dropping them into his lap and risking a look over. Jamie’s head is turned away from him, staring out at nothing in particular with his jaw tensed and his expression troubled. Now that Roy’s thinking about it, he’s looked like that a lot since the Zava rumours started, and pretty much constantly since the news was confirmed. Jamie was already on edge, already worked up, and then Roy went and yelled at him like that, grabbed him like that. Jesus.
“We’ve got a history,” Roy says. He grimaces, annoyed at himself. Stupid thing to say, stupid, vague, weird thing to say. There’s a reason his input in conversations with what’s left of the Diamond Dogs is usually restricted to wordless hums and nodding. “A bad one, or whatever, and things aren’t… What I’m trying to say is that I’m sorry for more than today. More than the other day when everyone found out what happened with Keeley and me and I lost it. I fucked up, and I should know better than to do shit like that. And I do know better than to do shit like that, especially not with you. I don’t want to be like-” Stopping suddenly, Roy cuts himself off before he can finish the sentence, going quiet and shaking his head.
Which is the crux of it. This is the part Roy’s been trying so hard not to think about, at the same time that it’s been hanging over his head. He didn’t say it, but the thought flies to the forefront of his mind, hitting him straight in the face now.
Roy’s hands, gripping the front of Jamie’s shirt. The pressure in his chest as he hollered past half a dozen Richmond players, I’ll fucking kill you.
Jamie’s father pushing into his space, refusing to back down. Laughter as he got up off the floor, you can have that one for free.
At no point has the nausea stopped, but it’s surged back with a vengeance from where it had faded a bit. Roy feels sick again, sick at the thought that’s branded into his brain, his own image in his minds eye, Jamie’s father superimposed over the top of him. What had Jamie seen, in that moment? Whose voice had he heard?
What it comes down to is that Roy can’t be that person. He can’t allow himself to even come close to being that person, and he doesn’t think he is, but how can he be so sure? How can a person accurately assess their own behaviour? And after what’s happened today, after looking back and at the rest of it and trying to figure out how many times he’s scared Jamie…
“You’re not.” Jamie doesn’t hesitate. He clearly knows exactly what it is that Roy hadn’t said, but his reaction couldn’t be any more different than Roy’s internal reckoning with the concept. There’s something incredulous in his tone. It’s like he finds the mere suggestion of there being any kind of link between Roy and his father - two angry older men who’ve come at him in locker rooms - completely ludicrous. “Don’t even start thinking like that. I’m a- Trust me, I am an expert on this shit, and you’re not… not like that.”
The response should’ve been reassuring, but it isn’t. Somehow, it’s almost the opposite. The fact that Jamie has jumped from trying to brush off the apology to now reassuring Roy feels like a mismatch of how this ought to be going. He shakes his head, not feeling any less nauseated.
“Stop that,” he says. “You don’t have to do that, that’s- Knock it off. This ain’t about me.”
But of course, Jamie won’t let it go. He’s choosing now to be stubborn, and he insists, “No, it’s important you know that. I need you to know that.”
The odd thing is, he really sounds like he means that. Fingers jab pointedly into Roy’s thigh, jostling him to get his attention while carefully avoiding his knee. He looks over and Jamie is staring at him intently. There’s an anxious edge to his demeanour but the overriding feeling is one of serious determination.
“I need you to listen to me. Did you fuck up? I dunno, maybe.”
There’s a short, jolting little shrug of one shoulder that Roy hates, and he wants to disagree with that ‘maybe’ immediately, but he keeps quiet instead. Jamie said to listen, the least Roy could do is actually… Well, actually listen to him, for once.
“But you need to know you can fuck up and still not be… be that.” Jamie waves a hand around in front of him, gesturing at the empty room, at something neither of them can see but both of them know. His voice drops out of that loud, fierce register and grows uncertain as he goes on, through he doesn’t stop. “Been scared my whole life of turning into- into that bastard. Fucking up so bad I’m just- just ruined. Kind of thought maybe I had done already, but…” Jamie shrugs again, tucking the hand he’d held extended out back back over his knees. “Had a lot of real good people telling me that ain’t happened, and I can still… Still be good. Do good. Not be him. And if that’s true for me it’s true for you, so. Just don’t.”
Roy doesn’t know what to say to that. He chews on it for a while, lets it sit in his mind, running over and over it, but he just can’t figure it out. What can you even say to that? Eventually, he takes the coward’s way out and accepts that he’s not going to say anything at all. At least that means he’s not going to be disagreeing with what Jamie said. It had obviously taken a lot to gather the nerve to say it, and Roy doesn’t want to discount that by shutting it down on instinct.
The clock on the wall ticks audibly in the silence. Roy’s knee throbs. He feels like he should be doing something, saying something, but he’s too… stuck. He has no idea where to go from here. What Jamie said continues to percolate, sinking in bit by bit, and it brings a bit of ease to the heartsick horror that’s been gripping Roy so tight it feels like he’s turning to stone. There’s guilt, too, guilt for letting the reassurance that he’s not like Jamie’s father, that at the very least Jamie didn’t see him that way, actually reassure him, but the promise of relief is too tempting to force away for long.
A quiet, tired sigh sounds from Roy’s left and then there’s a soft shuffling. He frowns, glancing over in time to see Jamie settle back down closer, then collapse to the side in a slow drift. Roy startles a little when their shoulders make contact, taken wholly by surprise, and Jamie pauses. His trajectory halts and he goes stiff, and Roy knows he has to tread carefully here. He keeps himself still in response, still and quiet, and eventually Jamie relaxes, leaning harder. When his head lands on Roy’s shoulder, they both let out careful exhales.
From the new vantage point, Roy studies Jamie’s face. He looks just as tired as Roy feels, maybe more. This has clearly all taken a lot out of him - the adrenaline, the fear, everything that followed. Roy understands that. He understands the way that emotionally honest conversations can sometimes feel more exhausting than the most brutal days of training ever did.
Somehow, though, Jamie’s not done. There’s still more he has to say and he still has the wherewithal to say it. When he starts, Roy’s heart lurches and skips a beat.
“I trust you.” It’s a quiet, somewhat embarrassed little mumble. “You… Jesus, Roy, I mean, you give more of a fuck about me than- than most anyone ever has. More than he ever did by a- by a fucking long shot.”
Doesn’t seem like a particularly great accomplishment, if you ask Roy. The bar that man set, his standard for giving a fuck about Jamie was so low it was under-fucking-ground. Shameful didn’t even come close to touching it. Surpassing that was not anything to be proud of.
“You, ah…” Jamie trails off. He turns his head, pressing it a bit harder into Roy’s shoulder, and Roy shifts fractionally, just enough to take the strain off his neck. “You might’ve, y’know, scared me a bit, yeah. But I trust you.”
It’s a painfully, frighteningly honest thing to say. Roy’s instincts want to recoil on hearing it, want to shove Jamie away, turn his back on the raw, wounded nerves that have been exposed to him on faith that he won’t take advantage of the clear weakness. There’s a part of him that wants to be pissed at Jamie for this, for giving Roy even further ability to hurt him, risk of doing so by accident or mistake. He never asked for this, and would never have posited himself as someone who deserved it. Letting Jamie just say this shit to him, sitting there and accepting it, is strange and unfamiliar, but maybe that’s part of the cost of admission. Growing pains, or some shit.
“I’m gonna see someone,” Roy says. He doesn’t really intend to say it, doesn’t have any idea he’s going to until it’s already out. A grimace twists his face involuntarily. He doesn’t like the idea, maybe totally hates the idea, but he does mean it. Growing pains. “Or- or something, I don’t know. I’ll figure something out. I’m gonna learn how to handle that shit without… I’m gonna work on it. I’m not ever gonna grab you like that again.”
Jamie tenses, just a little. His knuckles bump Roy’s arm, a little too harsh to be a tap and not hard enough to be a punch, even a light one. “You don’t have to do that. I don’t need you to do that. I told you, I knew you weren’t gonna- It’s fine.” He sounds vaguely uncomfortable, and honestly a little annoyed.
It’s like he finds the idea of Roy doing something, seeing someone or taking on any kind of active effort to change his behaviour because Jamie might need him to, ridiculous. Which, for one isn’t the whole point, and for another is, itself, ridiculous, even if that were the only driving reason. After his injury, that last time he blew out his knee for good, Roy had to get used to the idea that sometimes there were going to be things in life that needed to be adapted around.
If you have surgery, someone drives you around for a while after. If you completely fuck your knee, you use a cane on your bad days. It doesn’t seem like much of a stretch at all to extend that concept and say that if your da hurts you all your life, the people who give a fuck about not hurting you might decide to learn how to act a little different sometimes, because when you know someone has an injury you don’t go around jabbing your fingers into it.
“No, it isn’t fine,” Roy says, because they need to get that out of the way before anything else. “Not even close to fine, and besides, it’s not… I need me to.” And he does. It’s about Jamie, sort of, but mostly it’s about Roy, at this point. This isn’t sustainable, and something has to give.
It’s still in there, and I’m afraid of what it’s gonna do to you if you just keep it all for yourself.
Yeah. It’s about Jamie, for Jamie, but more than anything it’s for Roy and whatever kind of life he wants to have. He doesn’t think it wants to be one that looks like that.
“Oh. Well… Okay. That’s… Okay.” It doesn’t sound like Jamie really knows what to make of that, but that’s alright. Roy doesn’t really know what to make of it either.
Eventually, after so long that Roy absently entertains the idea that he may have fallen asleep, Jamie sighs and pulls himself upright. The empty place on Roy’s shoulder where his head had been feels cold immediately, and he catches himself almost missing the pressure of it. Climbing to his feet, Jamie looks down at Roy and holds out a hand. For a long moment, neither of them make another move save for Roy’s raised eyebrow, and then Jamie shakes the hand impatiently.
“Oh, come on then,” Jamie says. “Don’t leave me hanging.”
“What?” It feels distinctly like there’s something going on here that Roy’s missing.
“I want a proper hug, come on.” There’s a bit of an exaggerated pout in the demand, and something stubbornly determined, too. Jamie doesn’t back down or take it back, though there’s a faint flush reddening his cheeks.
Roy feels a little bit thrown, not having expected that at all. He stays put, looking up and not sure what to do, until Jamie waves his hand again, making an irritated sound. Shaken out of the surprised static, Roy snorts and shakes his head, then claps his own hand into the offered palm. He has to lean heavily on the help in order to get up, and if he’s honest he’d have to admit he’s not sure how he’d have gotten off the floor if it weren’t for the assistance. Sitting on the ground for that long is something Roy really should know better than to do, and his completely locked-up knee is the cost of the oversight. Jamie doesn’t say a word about it, though. He just waits until he’s sure Roy isn’t going to fall before he lets go.
Once solidly standing on his own power, Roy regards Jamie for a moment with a critical squint before opening his arms and muttering, “Well, come here, then, if you insist.” There’s a small bloom of anxiety in him, a moment of hesitation in the admittedly very mild jab.
Jamie, though, doesn’t seem to have a shred of hesitation at all. He moves immediately, colliding with Roy’s chest hard enough to make them both sway a little. His arms go around Roy’s back and hang on tight, his head tucking into Roy’s shoulder, and he exhales in an audible rush, sinking into the hug. Roy is slower to close his own arms around Jamie, reluctant to commit to touching him for reasons he can’t quite identify, but he pushes through them.
He lets his hands settle, one at the middle of Jamie’s back and one up near the nape of his neck, and nothing breaks. No one shatters, and Roy doesn’t ruin anything. Jamie doesn’t flinch or cringe. If anything, he relaxes farther, pushing into the embrace like he’s trying to memorize the feeling, which is typical of him lately. He’s like this when he’s offered or allowed affection - Roy’s noticed it since he came on as a coach - and he’s getting more confident in asking for it.
The hug lasts for longer than Roy expected it might, and a thought occurs to him. He remembers what Jamie said, about how he’d known that Roy wouldn’t hurt him, but that his body just didn’t believe it sometimes. If there’s something that can be done about that, that might help change that, even a bit… Rather than doing what he might’ve been inclined to usually at this point - breaking away, shoving Jamie off him, however gently - Roy does the opposite instead. He matches Jamie’s strength, going so far as to risk raising a hand to cradle the back of his head. They’re so close that he feels it when Jamie takes a deep breath in and out, a tremor shivering through him.
Jamie is the one who ends up pulling back eventually, and Roy lets him go when he does. There’s an unsteadiness in the way Jamie looks away, swiping at his eyes with a quick, rough scrub of his sleeve, but it passes quickly. He’s solid again, and hitting Roy with a familiar smirk and a teasing glint in his eyes.
“See, that weren’t so hard, was it? Now you’ll know how to react next time, jumpy old bastard.”
Snorting and rolling his eyes, Roy doesn’t say anything. There inevitably will be a next time - it’s turned out that Jamie’s a hugger, after all. And Roy can’t honestly say the idea is one that bothers him. Who knows? Maybe it’ll be good for them both.