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He’s staying with Roy and Keeley while he waits for paps to stop camping outside his apartment. His dad has talked to the press again, made a drunken fool of himself and gotten enough media buzz that Jamie had been dragged into it again, and as much as he wished to be in the comfort of his own flat, he wasn’t risking going home to the circus of cameras positioned in a semicircle outside his front door. He feels bit like Megan Markle, if he thinks about it.
It’s been 3 days and it’s actually really quite nice being around the couple. Keeley listens to Taylor Swift in the car when she drives them to work, as she has since he’d met her, and he’d been delighted to see that Roy was equally moved by the new version of ‘All Too Well’ as they had. Jamie thought perhaps he had been immune to the track at first, as Roy gave no outward indication of having been listening on the drive in, but an anguished “fuck that Gyllenhaal cunt,” proved Jamie delightfully wrong once the song petered out to silence. He just barely refrained from documenting about it on Instagram, in case it would tip off the press to his new temporary residence, but he still thinks the world deserves to know about it—if only to know he hadn’t imagined it. He doesn’t think either of his hosts would be amused by that, though, and besides, he’s enjoying the way Roy makes tea too much for it to be worth getting kicked out.
The only real downside is that it’s stormed for 3 night in a row and he can’t make his brain quiet enough to sleep. He’s always been wary of storms; since he was a kid and had to stay in the flat alone while his mum worked a night shift. Something about the sound—something in the power of it all, he thinks—makes him feel as small as he did then; when he was eight years old and pulling the blanket over his head to shield himself somehow. He can’t bear to tell Roy or Keeley any of that—if it rained when he was dating Keeley he would just make an excuse to drive home, or would put his headphones in and try to blast the music over the sound of the thunder. He always suspected she might catch on to his tactics, but if she did she played at being oblivious really well.
As it happens, Jamie is sleeping on the couch that night, as Phoebe is over for and has taken over the guest bedroom he’d been previously occupying. It’s only for a night, he doesn’t mind, and he’s told Roy as much. Their couch is mad comfy, anyways. If the dark clouds weren’t roiling overhead, he thinks it might be enjoyable, even, to sink into the cushions and burrow under one of the numerous fuzzy blankets they’ve got.
As it is, he can’t bring himself to close his eyes, as if not being able to see the storm makes it somehow louder. He has his methods of avoidance, sure, but the tempo of the rain on the glass has increased to sound like an incessant snare drum as it begins to pick up and his headphones cant cut out the sound entirely. Worse, they’ve got those fancy bay windows so he cant help but look out at the storm and watch the stupid cherry tree in the backyard fight the vicious wind to stay rooted. It’s always worse when he can see it; always goes a bit frozen, as if the storm can see him and if he moves it will lash out in double.
Maybe that’s why he doesn’t notice Phoebe bounce down the stairs at near three in the morning for a glass of milk, and when a flash of lightening illuminates her reflection in the window, standing behind him like one of those possessed children in the Shining or whatever the fuck film that was, he nearly hits the ceiling with the height of his jump—which is truly saying something, with how fucking high they are.
He can’t even feel his heart beating with how hard he’d sucked in a breath, and his hands shake in the blanket as he centers himself back in the room, trying to decide if the pit in his chest is from the relief she’s not some horrible ghost or from the residual bolt of terror lancing through him. Still, he gets up and makes her a Jamie Special, which is really just chocolate milk with more syrup than Roy thinks should be allowed in a single beverage.
He sits with her while she drinks it, partially because having the kitchen light on makes him feel better, and also because he doesn’t want her to think he’s scared, despite that his hands are still shaking on the kitchen table as they sit in silence. She still hasn’t said anything when he takes her empty glass and sends her back to bed, and being left in the empty kitchen with nothing but a sink of dishes for company drives home the point that he’s alone in the storm again. Ted would probably turn that into some some metamorph or whassit called.
Phoebe ends up coming back down shortly after Jamie settles back on the couch, but this time he hears her coming. She’s dragging a thick pink blanket and plops down beside him on the couch without preamble, turning her large eyes on him and announcing without a hint of fear in her little voice, “I think I’ll stay down here. I think I’m scared of the storm.”
She’s lying, and doing a bad job of it, and Jamie can feel the shame arching through his chest like a bottle rocket, but he can’t bring himself to call her on it through the relief that he isn’t going to be stuck in the big room with a huge windows and lurking shadows by himself. It doesn’t matter she’s a child, she makes him feel a tad more comfortable and Jamie lets her distract him by turning on a Nat Geo documentary about snakes that seems absolutely too morbid for a little girl, but that Phoebe is gaping at and chattering over with delight well into the early morning, past the final sputtering of the storm clouds. He turns to google for some of the words that neither of them understand, and he learns about reptilian anal plates, which is something he’s sure has an entirely different and very sexual meaning somewhere outside of herpetology (another word the pair of them had used Jamies phone to look up). By the time the morning sun has turned the room silver, he can safely admit to himself that he feels much better for having had her company, unable to keep from squeezing her into a tight hug when she says sweetly, “Thanks for staying up with me, Jamie.” As if he’s been the one to do her a favor, here.