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He doesn't realize it immediately, because the first time it happens, it happens by accident. Jamie rolls his ankle during their morning training and despite his protests, Roy walks him inside to make sure he stays still and doesn’t make it worse. Jamie retaliates by sitting in his kitchen and being as annoying as possible while he bosses Roy around to make them a cup of tea, directing him as if he needs to be told how to open a fucking tap.
He is fine by the time Roy leaves him to his shower.
The second time Roy finds himself at Jamie’s house it’s also by accident, because it starts pouring down rain out of nowhere.
Jamie complains about the cold and the wet and strips right there in the hallway, shakes off the rain from his hair and asks Roy if he wants to borrow some clothes (“No”), use the bathroom (“No”), take off his shoes (“Fuck no”), and it's Roy this time sitting in his kitchen, his shirt and shorts only slightly damp, because he had the foresight to put on a raincoat, which is currently draped over a chair and dripping all over Jamie's kitchen tiles.
It's Roy sitting down until the rain lets up, while Jamie raves about Zava and talks about the team and the league and then gets confused when it’s been thirty minutes and the water for tea isn’t hot yet, cusses and fusses with the kettle for a while only to realizes it was never plugged in in the first place. He almost makes Roy late for work.
And then there’s that disastrous morning, when they have a late start and they also have to cut their training short because his sister calls asking if he can take Phoebe to school because she’s got an emergency at work. And Jamie rides with him, slouched in the passenger seat, taking up all the space. Roy swats away his hand reaching for the radio controls (more than once).
And it’s a bad idea, but Roy realizes it too late, to have Phoebe and Jamie in the same car. He doesn’t know how but he ends up promising to buy them both hot chocolate, and no amount of growling and grunting and threatening makes either of them stop talking and sharing silly stories about him as if it’s not too early to even be alive.
And it's only natural, after – too late to go back to the training, too early to go straight to work – to stop at Roy's house to get his things. Roy goes back to his kitchen to find Jamie chewing on a biscuit from a half open package he left on the counter like some kind of animal that goes through people’s trash (“What? I was hungry.”) so Roy dumps his duffel bag on the floor and sighs and makes them breakfast.
And then he has to physically shepherd Jamie out to stop him from snooping around in his house and teasing him about everything he sees, especially the dvds he has in his collection and especially the fact that he even has a dvd collection. So he drives him to his place and waits for him to get ready and then drives them both to Nelson Road, because it’s only natural.
But then things get a little more complicated, because sometimes in the morning he is a little early or Jamie is a little late and he waits for a few quiet minutes on the door as he ties his shoes or finds his headband and Roy stands on the threshold with his arms crossed, between the darkness of the early morning and the warm glow of Jamie's hallway lights that seem to be inviting him in.
And then there are the evening training sessions, that time Roy thinks Jamie needs to be cheered up after a tough week and takes him to his old neighbourhood, and by the end of the night Jamie is sweaty and tired but he’s got his smile back.
And then that time Roy loses a stupid bet on how fast Jamie can go or how many push ups he can do or something, and has to buy him take out and they end up watching fucking Gilmore Girls on Roy’s couch. And then he loses another bet, and another, but it’s fine because if Jamie is winning it means that Jamie is getting better and that his training is working. And yes, that makes him annoying (more annoying, extremely annoying when he beats his record again in one session and sticks his tongue out at him) but it’s worth it. He thinks.
And then, and then, and then. And then one morning, Roy is in Jamie's kitchen once again, and he's taken down two cups from the cupboard and he’s pouring in the hot water and he realizes.
He just followed Jamie home. And it didn’t feel weird because it’s a thing that he now does.
On the door, Jamie has taken off his shoes and told him not to burn his toast again, and he’s disappeared upstairs to go shower. And Roy has gone straight to the kitchen and put the bread in the toaster, and switched on the kettle, and now he’s holding the teabag of the tea he likes that he himself has brought from his home last week, and on the fucking counter there are two plates that he himself put there, and how did this fucking happen?
How does he know the contents of Jamie’s kitchen drawers, the pattern on his bathroom towels, the sound of his fucking housekeys hitting the key tray in the hall, the colours of the plastic handles of his fucking spoons. This was not supposed to happen.
(“Fuck!”)
Roy takes his jacket and leaves.
He leaves, and he knows he’s fucked up the moment the front door closes behind him, but all he can think about is that he left the teabag in the cup and it’s gonna be all disgusting and shit when Jamie finds it, which is such a horrible thing to do on top of everything, to ruin what could have been a perfectly good cup of tea. Now he is even madder at himself.
He takes out his phone and types "i fucked up" and sends it to Jamie.
And then he types again "i fucked up" and he sends it to Keeley.
And then he types again "i fucked up" and he sends it to Ted.
And Ted writes back: Morning, Roy. Want to talk about it buddy?
And Keeley writes back: Are you okay?
And the door behind him opens, because, right, he is still on Jamie’s doorsteps. "This tea is disgusting,” he says with his heavy accent.
“I didn’t mean to leave the fucking teabag in,” he can’t help but protest.
“Yeah? Well, you did.”
“Well, I didn’t intend to.”
“Well, you did. And you locked yourself out. What are you even doing? You got lost on your way to the bathroom? Is this an old man thing?”
And Roy wants to roll his eyes so hard they actually detach from their sockets and go for a spin in his skull, but his phone buzzes again and it’s Keeley saying: Is this about Jamie?
And that fills him with terror so he turns away (“I gotta go") and storms down the street still not fast enough not to hear Jamie scoffing loudly (“Whatever”) and closing the door behind him.
He doesn’t answer Ted’s questions and gets away with it. He avoids Jamie during training and gets away with it. But he doesn’t reply to any of Keeley’s texts, and he finds her car in the parking lot when he gets off work.
He just sighs and climbs in the passenger seat and says: “Yeah, it’s about fucking Tartt.”
“Did you get into a fight?” she asks. “I thought you guys were getting along.”
He frowns at her, “Who told you that?”
“Jamie,” she says as if that’s normal. “And Rebecca. And Ted. And Lesl-.”
“Alright,” he interrupts, feeling betrayed.
“So? What’s wrong?”
He is still feeling betrayed, but he says, “I know stuff about him, Keeley. We have breakfast together every morning. I know the brand of his stupid soap. We talk and shit. We’re fucking mates.”
It sounds so bad to his own ears, but he looks over at Keeley and she’s stifling a laugh.
“What?” he barks.
“Sorry, but I actually think it’s great, Roy.”
“It’s not. It’s shit.”
“Okay,” she says, still amused.
“He’s a prick and I shouldn’t-”
“Like him?”
He growls at that. He thinks he would feel better if he could close his whole face into a fist.
“You know he’s not a prick anymore. You can like him, Roy.”
“It’s always been me and him, Keeley. Separate. Light years apart. That can’t change.”
“Don’t you think it’s a little too late for that?” she says, with the voice she uses when she is telling you something that is absolutely obvious to anyone but you, and she’s trying to be gentle about it.
Roy growls again. Keeley knows how to interpret it anyway.
Jamie looks surprised to see him at his door.
“Thought we didn’t have training tonight, Coach.”
“We don’t.”
“Ah,” he says, “You don’t wanna train me anymore?”
“No, it’s not that.”
“So? You came to apologize?”
“For what?” he shouts, indignant.
“For ruining my tea?” tries Jamie, with the annoying tone of someone who knows he’s being annoying. He sighs then, says, “Look, I get it, you had bisexual panic or whatever.”
How dare he. “It wasn’t bisexual panic.”
“It totally was, mate,” he almost doesn’t make him finish the sentence. How is he not scared of him? It must be evident by now that Roy feels like he’s about to turn into a fucking wolf.
Jamie is relaxed, he shrugs, “Seen it many times. When I walk into a room everyone starts questioning their sexuality. I’m a menace, like.”
He's so annoying. Roy has to roll his eyes at that with his whole head.
“Also, Keeley texted me.”
“Shut up,” he grunts, “It was not bisexual panic. It was Jamie panic.”
Jamie makes one of those dumb frog faces he makes when he can’t believe what he’s just heard, “I thought you had one of those when I joined Richmond, and you saw how attractive and much better than you I was at playing football.”
Roy has to bite his tongue to stop his face from looking amused. The fucking presumption of this guy.
“It was a different kind of panic.”
“So? You got over it or what?”
Roy shrugs, and he’s grateful when Jamie doesn’t wait for him to say something, “Tomorrow at four still on, then?” because apparently, he cares about their training a lot and Roy knew that, but now he knows knows and he likes that.
“Still on,” he reassures him.
And he is about to turn away and go home, but Jamie says, “You wanna come in?” still casual, like whatever Roy decides won’t make one bit of difference to him. “Was watching a movie,” he explains, “I’ve got pop corn and shit.”
Roy frowns a little at Jamie and a little at the inviting hallway lights behind Jamie.
“You could even stay a while, you know?” Jamie says, and his lips make a thing that Roy doesn’t like, “Or, like a lot, whatever? Make sure I wake up in time tomorrow?”
Roy meets his cocky expression, and this time he can’t control the grin that breaks on his face. He shakes his head to make it go away, but it’s not enough.
He says, “You little shit,” to give his mouth a different shape, but it’s not enough either, and it only makes Jamie run his tongue over his teeth, even more smug.
So he just turns his face to the side, to hide it when he passes him on his way in.