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Careful to not frighten the sobbing man in his arms, Roy slowly moved one hand to lightly brace Jamie’s back and the other to Jamie’s neck as he began to shuffle them towards the bench. Ted silently gestured for the rest of the team to file out, and only stayed long enough to dim the lights and shut the door behind him, giving the two remaining much needed privacy. Jamie continued to choke on his cries despite the tears soaking both his and Roy’s clothes, trying to deny the humiliation and shock he was experiencing. This outburst of emotion cracked the walls of his constructed mask of arrogance, and shame flooded his brain alongside the panic.
Roy said nothing, instead holding the other through his breakdown, his internal confrontation with his emotions. He was the anchor in the thunderstorm. Once all of Jamie’s senses numbed and the world was an intangible haze of exhaustion, Roy would be there to guide him home. Their home.
In the past few months, Roy and Jamie (and Keeley) developed an… arrangement to put it lightly. Neither of them admitted their reciprocal attraction to one another, although Keeley helpfully pointed it out numerous times, but never questioned the ritual that emerged once practice finished and their teammates went home for the day. The older man would wordlessly wait by his car for Tartt to get in his passenger seat before driving them home in a comfortable quiet, sometimes with the news station softly droning in the background. Sometimes Jamie would fall into a light doze, head resting against the window, and Roy would then have to gently shake him awake when they reached his and Keeley’s home or sometimes Jamie would simply stare out the window, knee bouncing up and down from unspoken anxiety, and Roy would coax him out of the car to face the day again.
Together, they would cook dinner--an easy meal, for they both only had knowledge of the pasta pot and the microwave--and banter and pause to greet Keeley when she came home. Then the three of them would enjoy the meal at the table, chatting idly yet amiably, before retiring to their separate rooms: Jamie to the guest room and Roy and Keeley to the master bedroom. It was normal, now, that Jamie would spend the night.
None of them could pinpoint when this ritual started. None of them could remember how the guest room got offered to Jamie. However, none of them protested this situation. It seemed to work better for everyone; Roy and Jamie carpooled--which saved the environment and saved Jamie from being reprimanded for being late--and Roy and Keeley got an extra set of hands around the house--and, surprisingly, Jamie was especially good at taking care of Phoebe.
This routine became natural and familiar, a source of calm when everything became a little more unsteady. And with that emerged a new relationship between Roy and Jamie, one that could not really be named. It was rarely even acknowledged that Roy went from rival to confidant and Jamie from pain-in-the-arse to someone similar to a friend.
Here, in the privacy of the dark locker room, with one falling apart and the other desperately trying to hold him together, this new dynamic appeared full force without any self-consciousness from either party. Roy held tightly onto Jamie as the latter haphazardly plopped onto the bench, still lost to the anguish of his mind. Tears violently rolled down his cheeks and he gasped breathlessly, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry-- ”
“Shut up,” Roy growled in an attempt to hush him. “You’ve got nothing to apologize for. That motherfucker deserved it.” The sound of the door opening and closing made Jamie stiffen, and Roy quickly swooped in. “You’re alright, Tartt. You’re alright.”
“Oh, babes.” Relief filled the boys when they recognized Keeley’s worried voice, followed by the patter of heels against the ground. Keeley pressed a kiss on Roy’s cheek before turning her attention to Jamie, going onto her knees to look him in the eyes and cupping his face. “Oh, sweetie, I’m so sorry.” Her thumb rubbed circles against his skin.
“I--” Jamie hiccupped violently and then squeezed his eyes shut so tight that it seemed to hurt. “Fuck--I’m fucking pathetic --”
“No, you’re not,” She interjected forcefully. “This is your body reacting, and this is normal. I… I can’t imagine what…” Swallowing hard, she decided to divert topics. Jamie wasn’t in the right headspace to address his… history with his father, quite yet. “This is just a traumatic response. And you don’t need to go through it alone, yeah? Me and Roy? We’re right here.”
Jamie trembled. “Not--worth--” He wheezed. He felt like he was dying, lights and colors closing into blackness and dizziness taking over his sense of balance.
“You have to breathe, idiot,” Roy’s voice was suddenly in his right ear, and Roy’s hands shifted from Jamie’s neck and back to his chest and his left shoulder. Warmth radiated from both Keeley’s and Roy’s hands, startling Jamie to sharply inhale. “Better,” Roy praised, and this time Jamie shivered from the compliment. “Finally listened to me for once.”
With her foot, Keeley nudged the older man. “Now’s not the time for teasing, babe. Look at him, he’s probably exhausted.”
Jamie blinked heavily. He was extremely tired. All of this emotional shit took its toll on his already dwindling energy reserves from the post-game crash. It was a miracle he had not passed out, but he felt dangerously close to falling over the edge into unconsciousness.
It seemed like this dawned on Roy as well, for he then pulled Jamie close to his body, allowing the younger man to lean on him. Jamie’s face was once again smooshed against Roy’s neck and his hands fell from his lap to dangle limply at his sides. God, he wasn’t sure if he could get up from the bench anymore, with the way invisible weights tugged at his limbs.
His hiccups devolved into sniffles as the three of them sat in the locker room. Things were still fuzzy, but also far away, drifting outside of Jamie’s capacity to care. He instinctively nuzzled closer to an amused Roy, and Keeley giggled at the sight. “Alright, loves,” she spoke tenderly, soothing Jamie’s mind. “Let’s go home.”
She and Roy shared a look, and between one moment and the next, Jamie found himself standing upright, supported on both sides by his partners. His vision flooded with green squiggles. “Oh, God,” he slurred. “Fucking hate this.”
As he tried to regain his bearings, Keeley whispered across him to Roy. “Is Ted still here?”
“Dunno. Why?”
“Think we should ask him to drive.” Jamie could feel her gaze weighing on him. “Think we should stick with him.”
He grumbled incoherently in protest, but he couldn’t deny that being surrounded by his two favorite people on the way home made him feel safer than he has felt in the past few weeks. Then again, it seemed oddly intrusive to ask Ted. They weren’t on bad terms, but… they weren’t on good terms either. Sure, things got better, but not by… a lot, if Jamie reanalyzed their recent interactions. To have his head coach see him like this… well, it was a huge risk. Especially after Ted saw him punch his father. Probably thought that justified his previous convictions about Jamie.
Keeley must have seen something on his face because she cooed, “Aw, don’t worry, babe. He won’t mind. I bet he’s also worried about you.”
“Course he’s going to fucking mind,” he managed to spit out past the lump in his throat. “He already hates me, and he just saw me have a fit. He pro’lly thinks I’m fucking mental.”
“Not at all, actually.”
Jamie tensed at the new voice that joined the conversation. He forgot about the doors leading to the locker room. Fucking Americans and their absolute lack of privacy; Lasso’s fucking puppy dog, sad brown eyes that Jamie can’t muster the confidence to stare back at.
Clearing his throat, Ted continued in the same fragile tone that Keeley used with him. “Kid, I’m not going to say that I know what’s happening between you and your father, but I do know that there’s nothing you could’ve done to deserve that from him.” Tentatively, he stepped into the locker room. “I heard my name from down the hall, and I just wanted to make sure y’all were … okay?”
“Could you possibly drive us home? We’ll leave our car here for the night.”
“If you’re sure.” With a crooked smile, he somberly said, “Let’s get outta here.”
“... there we go, love, just wake up a bit for us, yeah?”
Frowning, Jamie laboriously cracked open his eyes, blearily focusing on Keeley’s face above him. His head rested on her lap, but his legs fell over Roy’s and his arms dangled off the backseat and touched the floor of Ted’s car.
He didn’t remember falling asleep.
Roy’s arms ghosted over his stomach, a solid mass grounding Jamie to the plane of wakefulness. Rather eloquently, he mumbled, “Whazzhappen’n?”
“Back at home, babe. We gotta get up.” Maneuvering him slowly and gently, Roy and Keeley shifted Jamie into a sitting position, although he was mostly slumped bonelessly against Roy’s side. Keeley gracefully stepped out of the car--made easy thanks to Ted, who held the door open--and helped to steady Jamie when he unsteadily shuffled out of the vehicle some few minutes later. His brain was still booting up, running sluggishly.
One of Ted’s hands landed on his shoulder. “All you gotta do is call if y’need anymore help tonight, ‘kay, y’all?” He then squeezed Jamie and caught his tired eyes. “You take it easy, Jamie.”
Jamie pouted slightly. Just because he was knackered and emotionally torn down didn’t mean that he had to be treated like a fucking child. He forced a small smile on his face to cover his pang of annoyance. “Thanks.”
Roy slipped out of the car next to him, discreetly wrapping an arm around Jamie’s waist. (Jamie tried convincing himself that he was simply doing it to make sure he didn’t collapse or something, ignoring the blush that wanted to crawl up his neck.) “Food, then bed,” Roy grumbled. “Don’t need you to get hypoglycemic too.” After waving goodbye to Lasso, both Roy and Keeley carefully guided Jamie into the dark house. Just putting one foot in front of the other took massive effort, and by the time that his lovers allowed him to have a seat on the couch, he felt as though he could fall asleep right there and not wake up for three whole days.
He must have drifted, for he found himself startling back into awareness when a delicate hand tilted his face and hand-fed him a bar of chocolate, piece by piece. “Relax, babe,” Keeley whispered to him from somewhere above him. “Let us take care of you for tonight.”
With Keeley’s permission, Jamie minutely became pliable and loose again, keeping his eyes shut. The chocolate left a bittersweet taste on his tongue—must’ve been the 70 percent dark shit that Roy insisted on buying the other day—and Jamie clung to it. It was in moments like these, where Keeley caressed his face and Roy stood protective over the two of them from behind the couch, that a surge of fondness and affection knocked the breath out of Jamie. Just a year ago, he thought it would’ve been impossible to even get Roy to say a kind word to him, that Keeley would never love him anymore. Then he learned that Roy’s language was of action, of acts of passion and loyalty often expressed through his anger. He learned in these past few months, actually, that it was Roy that made Jamie and Keeley work and Jamie for Roy and Keeley and Keeley for Jamie and Roy, the missing pieces to their beautiful mosaics. All of them were so different, yet fit together better than any of them could ever imagine.
God, he loved Keeley and Roy. Their love and care towards him was like a blanket of warmth that smelt of whatever-the-fuck those flowers that Roy liked so much and lavender. The sweetest honey couldn’t compare to his feelings for his partners. He wanted to give them the whole fucking universe. They both made him so much better as a person, how to appreciate being in a relationship, how to not be a complete arsehole; they silenced the biting voices in the back of his brain; and in returned, he tried to be as supportive and useful as he could. (Of course, they’ve had this conversation several time before during some weird kind of intervention, about Jamie’s self-worth being hinged on proving how useful he was, and, yes, he was working on it, but it was hard, especially with all of the protective layers he constructed around himself.)
The fingers touching his face brushed aside some stray curls. “Whatcha thinking ‘bout, love?” Keeley asked him gently. Her voice held concern, and Jaime could only smile, because for once he wasn’t hung up about his shit father.
“Love you guys,” he responded instead in a quiet sigh. His heart felt so full and heavy. There wasn’t enough words to even speak the emotions he had for the two. “Love you so much.”
Roy made a rough grunt that sounded off, and then Jamie realized that he never said those words out loud before. He never defined what the three of them had outside of his own head. Horror seeped into his soul, “Sorry, I didn’t mean to—I’m not thinking too clearly right now, and—”
He was cut off by a pair of calloused hands—Roy’s hands—tilting his head up and suddenly Roy’s mouth was on his. Jamie practically melted into the couch while chasing Roy’s lips, giggling a bit when the man’s beard tickled his chin. When they broke apart, Roy had a lustful look in his deep brown eyes. “Taste like fucking chocolate.”
Jamie hummed absently, still distracted by the fact that holy shit he just kissed Roy Kent . “Don’t know how long I’ve waited to do that.”
“Should’ve done it sooner, then.”
Keeley let out a hot breath. “I would love to see that again, cos that was fucking hot, but I think we should go to bed. It’s been a long day.”
A whining noise came from Jamie’s throat. “I don’ wanna even move.”
The room was quiet for a second. Jamie was already fading into sleep, there on the couch with his head still tilted toward the ceiling, when he felt two bodies press close from either side of him. Huh. Roy mustve moved from behind the couch to sit right next to him.
He felt Keeley’s arm snake around his to then lace her fingers with his. She place her ear softly on his collarbone, laying against his chest. While Keeley basically draped herself over Jamie, Roy sat almost stick straight on the couch, instead opting to bring Jamie to rest on his broad chest. They probably looked like some awkward dominoes, but Jamie never felt more… comfortable.
With the way that Keeley traced patterns on the back of his hand and the slow up and down of Roy’s chest with each breath, Jamie let everything go
And
Just
Sank.