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Jamie walks into the Richmond club Monday morning, with a smug expression on his face as he's thinking about his recent football success. Training with Roy has really paid off, and he's been killing it on the field lately. He knows it's not just because of him. That the whole team has worked hard, and they all are the reason why Richmond has been dominating the league. But being picked for the National Team has boosted his ego, and he can't help but feel satisfaction at his recent streak.
He's stopped dead in his track as he sees a scene in the hall he thought he might never come across again. Roy and Keeley all wrapped up around each other, talking and smiling at each other. Jamie's struck with many contrasting emotions all at once - happiness, anger, envy, hurt, love to name a few. The couple suddenly looks up, noticing the observant eyes of Jamie, and their faces fall, their expressions are unreadable.
He starts backing out.
"Oh i forgot my…i forgot my phone in the car" Jamie quickly finds an excuse and dips out of the door, taking the long way around to get to the locker room.
He is happy that Keeley and Roy are back together. He is. Keeley is amazing and deserves only the very best. And he's never seen Roy as happy as he is with Keeley. So what if it means he is likely to spend less time with Roy? That's what happens when people become couples. They start doing things together and spending all their time together. Jamie has no right to demand time with either of them. Keeley wasn't happy when she was dating him, he was a dick to her, and he's lucky she even talks to him. And Roy…okay he might have had a sex dream or two about Roy, and he does make sure to always look straight ahead in the team's showers, but that means nothing. Besides, he knows Roy is straight and would never swing his way anyway. He's happy with them just being friends. He just has to readjust. He knew it might happen one day. He just thought he will have more time before it does. Part of him wishes he didn't get so close with Roy. It would hurt less if Roy was just his high school celebrity crush and if he didn't get to know him in real life. Or if him and Keeley never dated in the first place.
He doesn't get to the locker room until the last possible moment so that he doesn't have to talk to Roy and then quickly changes for practice. He tries to avoid him as much as he can. He's not sure he could talk to him without showing his hurt. He doesn't want Roy to think he has a problem with their relationship. He doesn't. He wants them happy. It's just his feelings that are stuck in the middle. He can't avoid Roy forever, though, and he embraces himself for the afternoon private practice he's been having with Roy for few months now. He's trying to appear civil, trying to get through Roy's drills as fast as possible.
"Oh for fuck's sake, out with it!" Roy suddenly shouts as Jamie is in the middle of his crunches.
"What?"
"You've been fucking moping around all day ever since you've seen me and Keeley this morning. So out with it! You have a problem with me and Keeley dating. Just fucking say it!"
"No. No! I don't." Jamie is trying to find words that would give peace to Roy without exactly revealing the truth, "I don't have a problem with you two being together. I mean, I care about you two.” Oh that's dangerously close to saying something he shouldn't. “Listen man, you make Keeley very happy and that's what matters," he shrugs.
And she makes you happy, he thinks but knows not to say out loud.
"And not having to see your sad ugly old fart face is just a benefit." He pulls one of his charming smiles and hopes Roy will not see through his mockery.
Roy grunts but leaves it be.
After a particularly brutal workout, Jamie gets home, putting cooling packs on his hurting feet. He's about to doze off when his phone starts ringing on the other side of the room. He looks across the room at his phone. Why did he put it so far away? For a moment, he's considering whether he should just let it ring, but he doesn't want to be that dick anymore. So after a few gruelling moments of ache, he gets up and crosses the room.
“Yeah?”
“Jamie?” Keeley on the other side barely manages to say before breaking down into tears.
“Keeley? Keeley! What happened? Are you alright?”
Is Roy alright?
“Can…can…you come here, please?” She manages to say between tears.
“Yes of course. I'll be right there.” His physical pain from earlier practice all forgotten, and instead he's filled with a new kind of worry. He doesn't know what happened, but he's never heard Keeley cry like that and if someone has hurt Keeley he will destroy them. But what if it's Roy? What if Roy hurt her? Or what if something happened to Roy? Hee grabs his keys and runs out of the house. For a second he's considering taking the car but knowing London's traffic it'll be faster if he just runs to her house. Keeley needs him.
“Hi Keeley.” he says as she opens the door. She's not crying anymore, but he sees the dried tear streaks on her face still.
“Oh Jamie” she throws herself at him, hugging him tight.
He still doesn't know what's going on. What the hell happened, and who made her cry like that?
“Hey, how about we go inside, I'll get you a cuppa tea and you tell me what's going on, yeah?”
Keeley nods and so he leads her inside.
He's been in her house hundreds of times, so he knows where the tea bags and the big mug Keeley likes is, and so he sets out to prepare the tea as Keeley watches him from the door.
“Here you go. My mom says tea makes everything better.” He gives her her mug of steaming tea and slowly leads her to the couch.
“Okay, so… you know me and Roy got back together, yeah?”
Jamie nods. Fearing where this conversation leads.
“Right. Okay so he apologized and everything, and we got back together and it was… is amazing and Roy's a super hot and amazing guy, right?”
Jamie slowly nods again.
“Well I thought we finally figure it all out. He's changed and grown a lot and…. I've grown too. I have my own business now and everything. And I thought now we could like… grow together, you know? Properly happy. But…”
And here it was. Keeley is gonna tell him they broke up again, and they're gonna be miserable again, and it's the last thing Jamie wants.
“ …but today we had a big fight again. And I don't even know why. Roy came home and was all angry -”
“He's always angry.”
“I know, but this was like proper proper angry. It wasn't the…” she scrunches her face and tries to imitate Roy's usual anger face. Jamie has to commend how accurate it is while at the same time utterly adorable.” It was more like this.” and she tries to scrunch her face again, this time in a more solemn way. “Like something was really bothering him and when I tried to talk to him about it, he just stormed off.”
Okay, so it's just a fight. Not an actual break-up. He can fix that. He knows he can fix that. If he can't have either of them, the least he can do is make sure the two most important people in his life are happy together.
“Keeley, I'm sure he didn't mean-”
“It's not even about the fight. It just feels like there's something that is still not clicking. Like there's something that is still missing, and I can't figure out what it is, Jamie. And I think Roy feels it too.”
Jamie doesn't know what to say to that. He knows Keeley and Roy clearly love each other. He's seen the way they look at each other. And Roy unlike him treated Keeley like the absolute amazing queen that she is. And Keeley always saw through Roy's angry persona and could unlock the secret soft side of him. The side that only a few closest people get to experience. Jamie needs to find a way how to fix it.
“Look Keeley. I don't know what's going on with Roy, but I'm sure it will sort itself out. He loves you. He loves you so much. You should have seen him when he found out you started dating Jack. He was so fucking jealous.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. And you can tell he wants to talk about you all the time, but doesn't want to admit it. But he just keeps slipping your name into a conversation.”
Jamie smiles as he's thinking of Roy desperately trying to avoid Keeley as a topic, but then always somehow finding his way back to it.
“You know he's been training me these last couple of months, right?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Well, I get to spend a lot of time with him, and I see the way his face softens when your name is mentioned. He thinks I don't notice, but I do. I'm not even sure if the rest of the team has noticed it. But it's like so clear to me. I'm an expert at kinesics. Trust me.” He's proud of himself for using the word he heard Isaac say once.
Jamie laughs a little to himself.
“He usually storms off right after to hide his feelings. Or he starts yelling at me about my poor performance. But I know it's an act. I see through him alright. He yells and he grunts but under all of that he's just a big old softy, right?”
“That's right.” Keeley smiles. “You just can't help but fall in love with the guy.”
“Yeah…”
Suddenly there's a creek behind them. They turn around to see Roy is there standing in the doorway. Listening in.
“Hi.” he says awkwardly.
“Uhm hey.” Jamie replies, now keenly aware of everything he just said.
“Hey Roy. How long have you been standing there?”
“A while.” Roy says his face a blank mask.
Jamie is about to excuse himself when Roy comes in and sit down in front of both of them.
“Keeley.” He waits until he sees her turn her face towards him and nod slightly before continuing. “I'm sorry I left. And I'm sorry I got so fucking angry.”
He pauses. Takes a deep breath.
“I think I figured out the reason why I was angry. ” he says as he looks at Jamie, “This morning when Jamie saw us in the hall….it made me feel weird.” His voice rumbles and Jamie thinks he could listen to him talk for hours. No wonder Phoebe says she likes it when her uncle Roy reads her before bed. ”And I couldn't understand why. So I got angry because I couldn't figure it out.”
“Is it because you think that there's still something between me and him?”
“No! I'm not jealous. At all actually.”
Okay. Weird. Jamie should be offended, considering how jealous Roy was when Keeley was dating Jack. Does Roy not think of him even a little bit as a competition?
“I don't mind that you two are close. In fact I want you to be. I want…” Roy is forcing these words out almost against his will, but it's clear he's been meaning to tell them for a while. “I…want…Jamie….to be happy.” He looks up at Jamie. And Jamie could get lost in those eyes. Roy looks back at Keeley and continues. “ And I want you happy, Keeley. And I know he will be happy with you.”
“Wait, Roy, what are you saying?” Keeley starts to well up again.
“I want to be with you, Keeley, but…”
“So be with me. Me and Jamie we….There is obviously always gonna be feelings there, but I've chosen you, Roy. I want to be with you.”
“Yeah, man. Look, I love Keeley. But I care about you a lot too. I mean, I know you two have chosen each other. I'm not gonna get in between your happiness.”
“What about your happiness?” says Roy and Jamie is stumped.
“Well, I can't have what I really want anyway so..”
“What's that?” Keeley and Roy both say at the same time.
“Shit…I mean…it's like. It's like Roy said, right? I want you happy, Keeley. But like I don't want…no like I want Roy happy too, yeah? But then it's like…how can I...” Jamie is struggling to find the words. How to describe the mess that is in his brain. How to explain that they're both the most important people in his life. “I want you both happy. And I care for you. A lot. I care for both of you. And it's like…it's like I want both of you happy, but I want to be there somehow too? Does that make sense?”
“What? You mean like romantically?” Roy asks and there it is. The secret that's been at the centre of Jamie's mind for weeks now. Always just a little out of reach. The secret he himself didn't dare to say out loud. Secret he only thought of in the depth of a night. He pauses before replying.
“Yeah. Yeah I think so.”
“With both of us?”
Jamie looks up at Keeley and then Roy “Yeah.”
Roy and Keeley look at each other.
“Fuuuuuuck!”
“What?”
And before Jamie gets to say anything else, Roy grabs him by his shirt and kisses him. Jamie knows the power of a full stadium shouting his name. He knows the adrenaline that runs through you when you score a goal in the last few seconds of a game. He knows the happiness, when he sees his teammates piling on top of him in celebration. All of that is nothing compared to what he feels right now. He imagined what Roy's kiss would have been like a hundred times before, but nothing can comapre to the real deal. Roy kisses him as if he was the oasis in the dessert. As if he's been waiting for this for years. As if kissing Jamie could somehow release him from all his sins. In the back of Jamie's brain there is a part that is aware he never kissed anyone with a beard before and never really kissed a guy before except the few pecks on the cheeks of his teammates after a goal. He comes to the conclusion that it in the end not so different from kissing a girl. And holy shit Roy was a good kisser. No wonder Keeley wanted a piece of that.
Keeley!
Jamie breaks the kiss off and looks at Keeley. but she just smiles at the two of them before reaching out and bringing them both into a hug. She kisses the top of Jamie's head and then Roy's.
“I think we found the missing piece.” she says with tears in her eyes and smile on her face. She gives Jamie a slow kiss and oh he missed her so much and it feels so good. Roy's body still heating him from one side, Keeley's arms still around his neck. This is how it was meant to be. This is what it was all leading up to.
Later that evening, as Jamie is lying in Keeley's bed, with Roy hugging him from one side and Keeley's from the other, he is wondering how did he get so lucky. Having the two of them here. With him. He doesn't know how it will all work. He never really dated a man. He never really dated two people at once. Not while they knew about each other at least. Not like this. He doesn't even know what he should call this yet. He just knows he doesn't want to let go of either of them. And for whatever reason, they feel the same.