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It’s official: Roy Kent is avoiding him.
It started at training just a bit over a week ago. Jamie sashayed across the pitch, arms and legs crossing and uncrossing, quick and elegant. He cast around for Roy, looking for an approving nod or the little pinch in Roy’s forehead that meant he needed to do better, but didn’t find him.
He kept not-finding Roy. One afternoon of training, then another, then another - Roy was nowhere to be found. Normally, Jamie can’t get rid of the bastard, not that he minds it. But lately Roy is always helping another player or talking to Will the Kitman or Nate or conveniently busy with paperwork (who the fuck does paperwork?) or in a meeting.
When Jamie stops by the office after training, Roy doesn’t meet his eyes. When Jamie opens his front door at four in the morning, Roy’s off to the side, fiddling with his watch or his phone, giving little grunts of acknowledgement if Jamie’s lucky or doing fuck-all if he’s not - just blatantly ignoring him. He isn’t responding to the little texts Jamie sends him every day, either, and - and! Just this weekend, he’d refused to let Jamie join him and Phoebe for movie night!
Now, though - now Roy’s crossed the line. Jamie re-reads the text.
need to cancel training in the mornings for now. busy.
Busy? Roy cancels their extra training and “busy” is all the explanation Jamie gets? He scowls, then immediately stops because it’s bad for his wrinkles.
Roy isn’t in the office the next day before training, so Jamie sidles in through the open door.
Nate and Beard are playing a bizarre game with a folded up triangle of paper. They freeze when Jamie enters. In the locker room, the lads are loud and rowdy, so Jamie steps further in and closes the door.
“Everything okay?” Beard says cautiously.
“Yeah, it’s fine,” Jamie says automatically. The three of them stare at each other.
“Okay,” Jamie says, “it’s not fine. Everything’s shit, and I think Roy fucking hates me again, but I don’t know what I fucking did, do I?”
“Why do you think he hates you?” Nate asks.
“Because he stopped answering my fucking texts, didn’t he? And he’s not doing the thing he does during training anymore. And this morning - this morning he fucking canceled all our morning trainings for the forceful future or some bullshit.”
“Foreseeable,” Beard says.
“Yeah, that.” Jamie runs a hand through his loose hair. He’s a little surprised to feel a very real sting of tears, an ache in his chest that’s clawing its way uncomfortably up into his throat. He forces it away, clears his throat. “Anyway, I dunno, I was just wondering if you could tell me what I did so I can fucking fix it. ‘Cause I can’t fix it if I don’t know.”
Beard studies him. Nate looks at Beard, nervous and a little twitchy.
“You didn’t do anything,” Beard says, uncharacteristically soft. “And you definitely can’t fix it.”
Despair creeps up his spine at the words. Can’t fix it? Roy’s his fucking best friend and he can’t fucking it?
“Roy’s fixing it,” Beard clarifies quickly, and Jamie’s sure he’s seen the panic in his eyes. “You can’t fix it because it’s something Roy has to fix.”
“So… you know what it is?” Jamie says.
“I do.”
“And you won’t tell me?”
“I won’t.”
Jamie turns slowly to Nate. Nate blinks at him.
“Oh!” Nate says. “Oh, no, I don’t - Roy hasn’t told me anything. I don’t know… the thing that Beard knows. If it is a thing! I don’t even know if it’s a thing. Could be a person - or a place!”
Beard noticeably kicks him under the desk.
“Whatever,” Jamie says and makes to open the door.
“Jamie,” Beard says.
Jamie doesn’t look at him but freezes in place.
“Just give him a little time. He’ll tell you when he’s ready.”
“Is it, like, fucking cancer or some bullshit?” Jamie says, voice high and thin. Oh, fuck, what if it’s fucking cancer?
“No,” Beard says. He and Nate resume their game, and Jamie leaves.
He watches Roy carefully for the next couple of weeks, tries to give him space. Well, he watches Roy and he shows the fuck off is what he does. He scores a stunning total of six goals over their next two matches. Six . And he gets a single nod from Roy with each but nothing more.
With every day, with every snub from Roy, Jamie grows angrier. He feels like the Roy Kent of old - the one who ran like he was angry at the grass - and he uses it. He gets up at four in the morning and trains by himself. Runs and stretches and exercises and plays and even fucking eats with a fury he’s never felt before. It’s motivating as shit.
It’s also depressing as shit.
He’s lonely , God help him. Even after Roy became Richmond’s manager, he and Jamie have been spending nearly every free moment together. If they aren’t training, they’re eating together. If they aren’t eating, they’re watching telly or Roy’s regaling him with the plot of his latest book or teaching him how to cook or playing footie with him and Phoebe in the garden at Roy’s.
He gives Roy space even though it makes him itch. Even though he grows more and more desperate by the day for time with the man. For a beer with Roy’s leather jacket brushing his arm. For a single word that isn’t one of the stupid, empty fucking phrases Roy’s started saying to him in passing.
When he finally, finally cannot take one single moment more of Roy’s bullshit, when he’s finally ready to confront him, the man is, of course, nowhere to be found.
It’s like Roy’s developed a sixth fucking sense for where Jamie’s going to be and is using it specifically to avoid him. Jamie sees Roy enter the boot room and goes after him only to walk in and find -
Nothing. No one.
And the man must have learned how to teleport or some shit in the last week because fuck if Jamie can catch so much as a glimpse of him going to or from the pitch. He just appears and then disappears.
He almost, almost gets a chance to talk to him after a match, but Beard swoops in at the last minute, just as Jamie reaches Roy, and ushers him to the press room and fuck but this is starting to feel like a conspiracy.
It makes him feel like a royal prick, like the lowest of the low, but Jamie gets to a level of desperation he’s never felt before and pulls the ultimate prick move: he goes to Roy’s sister.
He still has her address from Uncle’s Day - has even picked Phoebe up for Roy a time or two since. And it’s a long shot given the hours she works, but he picks a Wednesday at seven at night - one of the days Roy doesn’t usually have Phoebe which must mean that Phoebe’s mum is home, right? - and knocks on her door.
Ruth answers dressed in a robe with her hair tied up, a face mask on, and with those weird little foam things they put on your toes to paint your nails.
“Ah, shit,” she says. They stare at each other for a moment and then she sighs and swings the door all the way open, waving him inside. “Better come in, then. Yes, yes, you! Let’s go.”
Jamie makes tea because Ruth’s nails are still drying and they sit across from each other at the table. Ruth’s face is still covered in light green mud.
“It’s a fucking expensive mask, alright? I’m not taking it off before it’s done,” she says and Jamie nods rapidly.
“No, yeah, of course.”
He sips his tea. Taps at the table.
“Well?” Ruth says.
“Well,” Jamie repeats slowly. “Eh, the thing is - I think Roy might actually hate me a bit?”
Ruth’s face does a funny, slow twist.
“Or a lot, actually,” Jamie corrects himself. “A lot, yeah. I think he hates me a lot. Can’t stand the sight of me.” He takes a sip of tea. “Are you going to sneeze or something?”
Because Ruth does, indeed, look like she’s trying very hard to hold in a sneeze. Or a swear word.
She doesn’t sneeze, though. Instead, she casts her eyes up to the ceiling, making Jamie instinctively look up, as well, and starts… praying?
“Lord, give me strength,” she mutters or something like that. She looks at him again. “Right. Jamie?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he says weakly.
“I am going to tell you something. But not all the way. Do you understand?”
“I don’t,” he says. “No, sorry, I don’t understand.”
She considers this.
“I have… a neighbor,” she says.
“Okay,” Jamie says slowly.
“Who has a -” Ruth thinks for a moment. “Ah! A flower bed!”
“A flower bed,” Jamie repeats.
“Yes! I have a neighbor who has a flower bed that he is especially fond of.”
“I see,” Jamie says.
He doesn’t.
“And, well, this neighbor told me recently that he’s worried that his other flower beds might feel jealous of his special flower bed that he is especially fond of,” Ruth says. “Because he spends a lot of time tending to it. And he spends a lot of time just sitting next to it and talking to it and all that. You know?”
“Yes,” Jamie says.
No.
“Right, and he’s also started feeling things about his flower bed. Feelings that he only used to have for his…” she casts around with her hands as if she could physically pull the word from the air. “For his… potted plants!”
Jamie thinks he may have made a mistake coming here.
“Yes!” Ruth says. “He’s feeling things for his special flower bed that he’s only ever felt for potted plants and now he has to think about that a bit. He has to consider the differences between a flower bed and a potted plant, and he’s never had to think about that before, so it’s scary.”
“Mate,” Jamie says. “Wot?”
Ruth sighs. “Jamie. Please. Focus.”
“I don’t understand - “
“I don’t have a neighbor with a flower bed,” Ruth says. She looks him in his eyes, and it’s a little daunting to sit across from a woman whose entire face is covered in a thick layer of green mud, but he’s made of stern stuff so he doesn’t look away. “It’s a… a fucking metaphor or some shit. Focus, Jamie!”
She literally just said she had a neighbor…
Wait.
Oh.
Oh.
“You have a neighbor with a flower bed,” Jamie says in slow realization. “And your… ‘neighbor’... thinks the other flower beds might be jealous?”
“Yes!”
“And your… ‘neighbor’... wants to… fuck? His flowerbed?”
“Yes!” Ruth exclaims.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” Jamie says. “Roy’s having a fucking proper gay crisis, isn’t he?”
Ruth does a little shimmy of victory in her chair. Jamie finishes his tea.
“Fuck,” he says with feeling.
“Fuck,” Ruth agrees.
“That’s a lot of pounds for my swear jar!” Phoebe’s voice calls from down the hall.
“Fuuuuuuck,” Jamie breathes.
Suddenly, Jamie is the one avoiding Roy.
It isn’t some kind of homophobic shit or anything. (That’d be a little fucking hypocritical, wouldn’t it?) Jamie just… doesn’t know where to fucking look when he’s around Roy, now. He knows where he wants to look (Roy’s eyes or ass or thighs or arms or - you get the point), but his stomach is all tied in knots and his heart’s doing a weird wibbly wobbly thing every time he thinks about Roy and he knew he was in love with the man, okay? He’s known for fucking years, but it was a safe, stupid kind of love because in what fucking world would Roy fucking Kent love him back?
This world, apparently.
The knowledge has fucked him up something bad. It’s like the earth’s tilted on its axis and all the colors have changed and the air smells different - smells good . He’s having the best and worst time of his fucking life, and he doesn’t know how to be like this - how to be this fucked up and infatuated - around Roy.
So he stays away.
Two days later - two fucking days - Roy knocks on his door at 3:57 in the morning.
“Roy?” he asks. He’s dressed in workout clothes, a headlamp already on his head because it’s a Friday and Fridays are a running day. “Alright, mate?”
“No,” Roy growls.
Jamie waits. Raises his eyebrows.
“You’ve been avoiding me,” Roy elaborates, glowering.
Jamie blinks.
“Are you fucking joking?” he says. He yanks the headlamp off. Steps outside the door, so close to Roy that the man actually backs up, eyes going a little wild and surprised. “Are you actually taking the fucking piss?”
“Jamie,” Roy says.
“Shut the fuck up,” Jamie says. He pokes his finger in Roy’s chest. “I have been trying to get your fucking attention for weeks . Weeks! You won’t fucking answer me texts, you won’t talk to me at training, you won’t coach me anymore - don’t even want to go out for a fucking beer or some shit, but I maybe need a little fucking space for two days and you’re at my door with some shit about me avoiding you .”
And, fuck, but Jamie’s angrier than he thought he was about this. Angry enough that his eyes are misty and his throat is tight again.
“Shit,” Roy says. “Fuck, Jamie, don’t - “
“Don’t tell me what to do,” Jamie snaps. He wipes a hand across his face, backs up a step.
“Fuck,” Roy says. “I’ve fucked this up.”
“Yeah,” Jamie says.
Roy sighs. “I’m so fucking sorry, Jamie. I’ve been having… feelings.”
He chokes around the word, and it’s almost funny enough that Jamie smiles.
“I hate having fucking feelings,” Roy admits.
“I know,” Jamie says. “You don’t know what to do about your flower bed.”
Roy blinks. “The fuck does this have to do with my garden?”
Jamie shakes his head. “Never mind. Tell you later.”
“Right,” Roy says. “Anyway, I think I’m fucking in love with you, and it’s really fucking me up because I’ve only ever been with women but my heart doesn’t seem to care and my fucking dick doesn’t seem to care. Not to mention I’m your fucking boss and I have to treat all you little shits on the pitch the same except I don’t wanna because all I wanna do all the time is tell you fucking great you look and how fucking great you play. But I can’t. Because that’d be favoritism or harassment or some shit.”
“Oh,” Jamie says.
Roy nods. “Right, and you don’t feel the same anyway, so -”
“Wot?”
“You don’t feel the same anyway,” Roy repeats. “So I’m double fucked.”
“Says who, mate?”
Now Roy looks angry. “Don’t play fucking games -”
Jamie steps forward and kisses him.
It’s the best kiss of his life. Roy’s beard is softer than he’d expected and his mouth is warm.
Jamie grips Roy’s jacket tightly, keeping them as close together as possible but Roy manages to haul him closer still. It’s like the man is trying to devour him or something.
Jamie wants to kiss him forever, but his body eventually wants to breathe, so he breaks the kiss, gasping raggedly against Roy’s jaw.
“Fuck,” Roy breathes.
“Ideally, yeah,” Jamie says. “But I’m supposed to train.”
“Cardio, yeah?”
“Yeah,” Jamie says.
“We can do cardio inside,” Roy proposes. Jamie considers this.
“Yeah, alright, man,” he says. “I’m still fucking angry, though. You shouldn’t have ignored me.”
Roy pulls away, his face turning serious.
“I know,” he says. “And I am sorry. I was having a hard time and instead of dealing with it like a fucking adult, I ran away like a scared kid. I won’t do it again.”
Jamie nods and forgives him by hauling him in by the collar of his leather jacket to kiss him again.
“Alright, old man,” he teases, “let’s see what your idea of inside cardio looks like.”
It looks magnificent.
“What’s this about my flower beds, now?”
“Well, I might’ve gone over to your sister’s.”
“You what?”