Chapter Text
Roy and Keeley have been dating for about a month when he hands her his mobile phone.
"Can you find Amanda's text and plug the address of the restaurant into GPS? I know it's in bloody Redhill but that's about it," Roy says, reversing the car smoothly out of the driveway.
Keeley stares at the unlocked phone in her hands and then glances back up at Roy, suddenly frozen.
"Keeley?" Roy asks when she doesn't move. He glances at her sideways as he directs the car onto the street and merges with traffic, his brows deepening into a deep V at her uncharacteristic silence. "You okay?"
"You- you gave me your mobile," Keeley blurts out, cradling the phone to her chest like it's one of Rebecca's more expensive pieces of jewelry, a priceless gem wrapped up in a black, slightly beaten up case.
"Yeah." Roy nods, still looking at her strangely. "'Cuz I need you to input the address."
"Oh yeah, right!" Keeley fumbles a bit before opening his text messages and going through them until she finds the right thread. She plugs the address into the car's GPS and then sits back in the seat staring at his phone, its unlocked screen blinking up at her. Phone numbers, text chains, email, social media posts, everything about Roy Kent is sitting there, in the palm of her hands. And he just gave it to her, like it was nothing.
"You 'kay?" Roy asks again, concern threading through his voice. She glances up and attempts to smile.
"Yeah it's just -" Keeley pauses, and then looks out the front window, a heavy weight pressing down on her chest. "Most of the boys I've dated are very particular about their mobiles. The only person who can use their phone is them. I couldn't even glance at it. Even accidentally."
"Well first off, I'm a man, not a fucking little boy. And secondly, the lads you used to date are a bunch of shitheads. Who the hell cares about a phone? It's nothing more than stupid little rectangle that makes too many goddamn people think they can reach you at all hours of the day!"
"Well, they cared," admits Keeley, trying not to dwell on the memory of being yelled at by a old boyfriend for answering a phone call (it was from his sister who was a friend of Keeley's which is why Keeley thought it wouldn't be a big deal when she saw her name flash over the screen) or the time she discovered Jamie had three phones, not just two ("It's for me advertising, babe. I gotta keep 'em separate").
But try as she might, Keeley can't stop those images from crowding around her head and she drops his phone in the console between them, clasping her hands together tightly as she tries not to look at it.
"It was probably for privacy reasons, yeah? Maybe even some work stuff I couldn't see?" Keeley really hates the way her voice cracks, and she bites her bottom lip. She's thirty years old, no need to cry over her new boyfriend casually handing over his phone with no agenda or motive behind it. She's a gorgeous, independent woman. This should not be such a big deal.
"Keeley."
The big knot instead her chest slowly loosens at the way Roy says her name, soft and gentle without a hint of his usual surliness. It's the one he uses when it's just the two of them, those moments when he looks at her like she's the fucking greatest thing he's ever seen. He reaches over and grabs her hands, squeezing them tightly. "I don't keep secrets," he says, with utter sincerity, his eyes darting from the road to her and back again. "I have nothing to hide from you. You want to know anything, just ask."
"Promise?" asks Keeley and she really, really hates that she's about to cry. It's pathetic and stupid and she's so glad that no one else is around to see it other than Roy. She knows, somehow she just knows, that he won't mention this to anyone. She knows with startling clarity she could cry in the front seat of his car and he wouldn't do anything but hold her tight. Her secrets and fears are safe with Roy but it's hard, she's beginning to realize, to let go of a dozen years of really shitty relationships and hookups. She's been cheated on more often than not.
"Yeah," Roy repeats, giving her hands another squeeze before returning to the wheel. "You can always look at my phone Keeley, whenever you want."
She smiles back at him, the urge to cry subsiding. She leaves the phone on the console between them, not needing to look at it, the fact that she can being enough for now. Later that night though, after the restaurant and then the wild after-party Keeley drags Roy to, after they get back to his house and have sex up against the front door because Roy looks so fucking fit in his tight black t-shirt that Keeley can't help herself, after they laugh and head upstairs to his bedroom to have sex again, more slowly and sensually this time, does Roy lean over to his nightstand and write something on a sheet of paper before handing it to her and crawling out of bed.
"What's this?" Keeley asks, sitting up, sheets pooling around her shoulders as she looks at the four numbers jotted down in Roy's scrawling handwriting.
"Password for my phone and for my laptop," explains Roy with a shrug as he walks over to the adjourning bathroom. "If I need to ever change them, you'll be the first person to know."
Keeley looks at the slip of paper and then back up to him and this time, she really does cry.
Roy Kent is something else.