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Part 1: Jamie - From Ashes
The first time Jamie remembered the ashes was at 1 AM at Roy’s place.
Roy was fast asleep on top of him, his heavy head pillowed on Jamie’s chest and rubbing his prickly beard into Jamie’s skin every time he shifted in his sleep. Jamie was meant to be asleep too, he knew Roy would drag him out of this lovely bed and into the windy autumn air in just a few precious hours, but his mind wouldn’t let him rest. It was playing him a highlight reel of bad memories, and his first few months at Richmond featured heavily as they always did, even though he knew he had made peace with everyone he could about that time.
The thought came with a familiar surge of guilt and mortification, much like most memories of his first season at AFC Richmond did. He had been a nightmare during his loan and he knew that, had known it at the time and backed himself into a spiral he couldn’t get out of, a never-ending loop of interactions he regretted and couldn’t take back.
That night at the curse fire though, when they had all banded together to banish the treatment room ghosts, that night had been different. For the first time in months, he had felt like he belonged, like this was his team, and not just a team that needed him, a group of guys who barely tolerated him, and for good reason.
Something had shifted that night, and when everyone was heading out, he had volunteered to help Nate to carry the barrel off the pitch to be dealt with in the morning. He wasn’t sure what had possessed him to stay back after everyone had filed out, to look into the barrel at the remnants of their offerings. Something had called him, made him tilt the barrel on its side so he could shine the light of his phone into it. It smelled, it really did, plasticky, half melted, half burned. Some of the offerings were still somewhat recognisable, his shoes hadn’t burned up fully, and neither had the now-splintered glass that had protected Sam’s picture of the Nigerian National Team. At the bottom though, all the things that had burned had formed a pile of ash, grey and black, white-ish in places, the kind of remnants he would have expected from a fire.
If his mum hadn’t talked about it at their last Christmas dinner together, the idea would have never occurred to him, but he had been thinking about her lots those past days, missing her, and so her voice was vivid in his mind.
‘They can make diamonds out of any ashes,’ she had said mesmerised by the website she was showing him. ‘I think I’d quite like that, big fancy shiny diamonds for everyone who wants one to keep and think of me, that’s lovely, innit?’ As much as Jamie didn’t like the idea of ever losing his mum, he had been hard pressed to disagree, it really was a lovely idea.
And so he had stolen one of Nate’s fancy cardboard boxes, pulled the rubble out of the barrel first and then tilted it to make the ashes slide out into it. That would be nice, wouldn’t it? A memory for the team, little talismans to remind them of that night and protect them from any other ghosts that might pop up. The ashes spilled out of the barrel and into the box, leaving a bit of a dusting on the surrounding floor. And then something else dropped out, right into the box of ashes, sending up a cloud of ash.
For a moment, Jamie couldn’t make out what it was, filthy with ash and singed. He reached for it carefully, with just his thumb and pointer finger, lifted it out to toss it back into the barrel along with all the other unusable junk, but as he pulled it upwards, it unfolded.
Roy’s blankie.
He couldn't make out details through the dirt, but only parts of it seemed singed, but otherwise the bulk of it looked like it hadn’t wanted to burn.
At the time, Jamie had thought it had to be magic. Now that he’d had some time to think about it, he was pretty sure that children’s blankets were probably produced to not catch fire and probably had something flame-resistant about them. The blanket had gone into the barrel first, odds were that the ash and dust from the things higher up in the barrel had just encased it before the flames could touch it, kept it from burning.
Jamie had closed the box with the blankie inside of it, half torn on whether or not to give it back to Roy.
The decision had been made for him by the time he got home later that night. There was an email waiting for him in his inbox, a notification that his loan was being terminated early and that he was expected back at training with Manchester City on Monday.
The box of ashes had stayed in London, shoved into the bottom of his closet, abandoned alongside any clothes and furniture he didn’t care to take back to Manchester with him. He’d only just bought the London house, he wasn’t about to sell it immediately. And so as the months passed and his memory of that night grew clouded with resentment, the presence of that box in his house increasingly slipped his mind.
Until that night, with Roy cuddled up and holding him like he was the world’s most comfortable body pillow. He would buy Roy the nicest ring he could ever want for their wedding, he knew that much, but that could wait until he knew that Roy actually wanted to marry him. To propose with though … well, no one said that curse fire ash diamonds weren’t a good option. Maybe it would keep Roy safe, remind him that even at their worst, his team had managed to band together when it really mattered.
Jamie pressed a kiss to Roy’s hair, smiling when he shifted just a little closer in his sleep, his grip on Jamie tightening in the dark.
The process was shockingly easy. He just had to send the ash out to that company and let them know what kind of diamond he wanted. Size, cut, colour, they could do anything. It was fucking great. Finding a goldsmith who would incorporate the diamond into a ring was easy too, and Jamie sat down with the goldsmith first to figure out what kind of diamond would go best with a man’s ring. The guy even lent him a measure-y thingy he could use to get Roy’s ring size right.
It made Jamie feel like a ninja, sneaking up on Roy, fast asleep on the sofa, a book on his chest and his hand resting unguarded on the book as he snored.
They settled on a platinum ring with a two carat emerald cut diamond. The mock-up looked so good it had Jamie feeling giddy all the way home.
The diamond arrived just a few weeks later, and the ring was done within days of the goldsmith receiving it.
Roy’s blankie was a whole different matter. When Jamie had unearthed it from its box, it had looked unsalvageable at first, absolutely filthy. Jamie plugged the sink and carefully washed every inch of it, and while he did he decided on a two part plan. He’d save blankie as best he could and give it back to Roy, and hopefully Roy would like that, and then, boom, proposal. Fuck, he hoped he wasn’t overestimating how much Roy loved him. This felt so serious, it felt like forever to Jamie and he wasn’t ready to find out that it didn’t for Roy.
After washing it by hand a couple of times, blankie felt soft and looked clean again, and Jamie let it air-dry, ironed it carefully and assessed the damage. The parts that had been touched by the fire had singed away cleanly, only leaving a slither of singed threads at the very edges. It had been folded up when it went into the barrel, and so a good two thirds of the blanket were completely untouched. Jamie agonised over whether or not to cut away the burned part, but in the end he thought it was better to do so.
The ghosts had taken their offering, claimed their part of it, and had left the rest for Roy to have. Jamie took a pair of sharp scissors to blankie with meticulous focus, and brought the part of blankie he would give back to Roy to a seamstress down the road from his house. He didn’t even have to leave it there, she sat down right there and then for him and matched the stitching on the rest of blankie perfectly, sealing the new seam up for him.
As he sat there, watching her work with all the worry of a child watching his favourite stuffed animal undergo surgery from mummy, he felt bad for the rest of blankie, the few sections that were still salvageable from the singed parts. He brought that part into the seamstress’s shop a day later, asked if she could make anything from the remaining fabric.
There must have been something desperate in his voice, something lovestruck and earnest, because she sat him down and listened as he told her all about the blanket, the curse fire, and Roy … fuck, he talked about Roy and how he wanted to marry him more than he’d ever wanted anything in his life. She took mercy on him, carefully gathered up the rags that remained of blankie, the part that had borne the sacrificed, burned to make things better. He could see it in her eyes, there was nothing to be done, there wasn’t enough left for anything to become of it. Then she smiled at him, asked if he had a ring already, and would he like for her to use these last pieces to encase the ring box and the cushion of the ring maybe.
And she did a lovely job, it turned out so nice, so soft, so cohesive even though he would have sworn there wasn’t enough good fabric left to do it with. He left the content of his wallet on her counter and insisted she keep what he put down.
Blankie and the ringbox remained hidden, but travelled with him more often than not for a few weeks.
He just couldn’t get up the nerve to ask. Nowhere was ever perfect enough. The stars never felt aligned right, and then when he finally decided he’d make his move, Roy got miserably sick. As pressures on their last games of the season mounted, and the jump back up in the Champions League became a palpable option, Jamie couldn’t bring himself to ask.
If Roy turned him down, he knew it would crush him and he couldn’t risk his performance suffering because of a broken heart and at worst, a messy break-up. With the end of the season came contract negotiations though, and Jamie knew that this was his moment. If he asked and fucked it all up, they could go their separate ways. He had other offers on the table, offers AFC Richmond was willing to match, so there was a way out, a way to not trap the both of them together in eternal misery, forced to see each other every day if things went sideways.
And so he invited Roy over to his own place for dinner.
Part 2: Roy - The Proposal
Jamie was a lot of things, but subtle he was not.
It had Roy’s gut in knots, the way he fell over his own words asking Roy to come over for dinner at his place, Jamie’s place. They hadn’t been there in ages.
Jamie had told him he liked Roy’s place better, it hadn’t even been a discussion on where they ought to spend their time. It wasn’t like there had been some official moving-in day. Jamie’s stuff had just migrated into Roy’s place, and Roy had made space for it, had made sure Jamie had everything he needed there. The walk-in wardrobe that had always looked like someone had robbed him, because Roy neither had nor wanted enough clothes to fill it with was now overflowing with colour and soft fabrics. The products on the second sink of his bathroom were constantly trying to invade Roy’s section of the shared surface area and he was really only indulging the war about those few square inches because it made Jamie so happy to gain territory. They were good, they were settled, they were at home together in his place … and now Jamie wanted to meet him at his house? After postponing his meeting with Rebecca and Leslie about the contract renewal?
Roy felt sick when he walked up to Jamie’s front door, his mind at a loss on what he dreaded more, Jamie telling him he was leaving AFC Richmond, or Jamie breaking up with him. The idea that it might be both had Roy lingering outside the door, swallowing hard to work up the courage to ring.
He’d been at work all day going over team configurations for the next game and reviewing tapes, Jamie had been home. What if he’d spent his whole day moving his stuff out of Roy’s house? Roy hadn’t been home at all, what if it was empty now?
“Shit, sorry, I didn’t hear the doorbell!” Jamie opened the door, startling Roy out of his stormy thoughts.
Roy looked him over, blinking in surprise. Jamie was in black slacks and a dark blue dress shirt, one that fit him on the edge of too snuggly around the chest, to the point where he had to keep the top buttons open and gave Roy a lovely view of the crease of muscles between his pecs that damn near bordered on cleavage in this shirt. His hair was all done and tidy, looking like it would be soft to the touch.
“You said we were having dinner here,” was all Roy managed to get out.
“Yeah, yeah, we are, come in!” Jamie stepped aside.
Was Jamie going out without him later? His head was fucking reeling. Was this it? He’d met someone else he was about to go meet and had to get Roy sorted first.
He’d be good like that. Jamie would never cheat on Roy, he knew that, Jamie was a loyal soul … but Jamie was also young and pretty, and had a world of options opening up to him. Options Roy was standing in the way of.
“You alright?” Jamie asked, on of his big hands coming to rest on the centre of Roy’s back where he had frozen just inside the entry hall.
The place looked all tidy but also weirdly empty. All the most atrocious decorations seemed to be gone, the stuff that hadn’t ever looked like Jamie’s to begin with. Fucking hell, was he selling the place? Real Madrid had made a really good offer, one that was really going to hurt their budget if they had to match it, and Jamie would do so good there. He’d fucking love Spain, the food, the girls, the boys. Shit, Jamie was looking at him all worried.
“You got rid of those weird gold bird bath things …” Roy said, because he couldn’t give voice to everything else he was thinking.
“Oh, yeah, they were kinda weird. The designer said they’d make the place look sophisticated, but I just knocked my legs on them a lot. Come on, get your shoes off, get you to the table. Dinner’s done in a minute.” Roy slipped out of his trainers, stepping on the cold marble floor in the entry hall with just his socks and letting Jamie lead him into the dining room, the marble giving way to hardwood. There were candles on everywhere, making the place look all warm and nice despite how empty it looked.
Jamie pulled a chair out for him like they were at a fancy restaurant, pushing it in for Roy and everything. It made something in him coil tight with affection and dread. He couldn’t fucking do this again, date anyone else again, do the whole courting and getting to know someone just to find out they didn’t fit. He couldn’t do this without Jamie, he didn’t want to do anything without Jamie. No relationship had ever felt like this, like it was meant to be, like they truly fit.
If someone had asked Roy how well he knew Jamie, he’d have confidently said he knew every meaningful thought in his precious head, though he had no illusion of being able to follow all the wild jumps Jamie’s brain made throughout the day. That was half the fun. They’d be out running and Jamie would throw something absolutely wild at him that he had apparently been thinking about for minutes, if not hours. But the stuff that mattered, everything Jamie really cared about, Roy had been sure he knew it all … except he had no idea what the fuck was happening right now.
Jamie was talking, his voice distant now because he had returned to the kitchen to plate up whatever he was cooking. Roy caught something about wine and Simon, gave a grunt of acknowledgement in response while his heart raced and his ears made that awful whooshing sound.
What the fuck was this?
When Jamie returned with two plates and a wine bottle tucked under his arm, Roy barely understood what he was saying. It looked like some kind of really fancy steak and fancy vegetable sides, and Jamie poured them wine. He'd even done that thing fancy places did, where the sauce was smeared decoratively across the plate.
“Roy?” Jamie asked, and Roy looked at him, now in his own seat as if time had jumped while Roy had stared at his plate. His eyes looked all dark in the candlelight, shining so prettily. All of him was glowing in this light, Roy couldn’t help but stare at him. Something was up. Jamie looked nervous, fidgety like he got when he was about to say something that mattered to him.
“You’re not hungry? Or, I have another steak, if you don’t want it medium rare, I can do it over. I just thought that was how you liked it.” Jamie's words came out rapidly, his pitch higher than it ever was when he was calm.
Roy looked at the steak, finding the cutlery by the sides of his plate. He picked them up and found that they felt oddly heavy in his hands, but he used them to cut into the meat. It was perfect, it should have been mouthwatering, but his heart was beating too fast and he couldn’t imagine chewing right now.
“I’m sorry, how do you want it? I’ll do it over!” Jamie stood, his chair scraping back loudly, reaching for Roy’s plate.
His hand shot out at its own accord, catching Jamie’s wrist.
“It’s fine, it’s perfect,” he croaked out. He looked up at Jamie, eyes all wide now, and Roy knew he was fucking something up here, but he couldn’t make sense of it.
“What is this?” Roy asked quietly, hand clinging to Jamie’s wrist even after he let go of the plate.
“Uh … right no, yeah, I … sorry.” Jamie stepped back and Roy let go of him as he pulled his chair back into position and sat down again. “I’m … uh.” Jamie looked down at his plate like he was doing complicated calculations before nodding to himself. “Yeah, okay.”
Roy watched as Jamie straightened himself up in his seat, squaring his shoulders and bracing himself. This was it, it was over. Roy found himself bracing himself too, swallowing hard as his mind burned the image of Jamie into his memories forever.
“I love you, Roy.”
But?
“I just, I really love you and … “ Jamie pulled the chair on the other side of the table out a bit, the one opposite of Roy, the table obstructing his view of it. He watched Jamie’s hand shake as it hovered. “Yeah, no …,” Jamie whispered to himself under his breath, like he was weighing options Roy couldn’t see.
“I just. No, not 'just'-“ Jamie cut himself off, taking a deep breath to centre himself, to stop himself from stumbling over his words, and it made Roy’s heart ache. At least this was hard for Jamie too.
It helped, somehow, that Roy wasn’t an easy write-off, that parting ways hurt Jamie too. Half of him wanted to jump in, to make it easy on him, to tell him it was fine, he understood and they were good, part with grace. Except his own teeth were clenched so tightly he couldn’t open his mouth if he wanted to.
“I love you, and I want to spend the rest of my life with you, and I had a whole list of stuff I wanted to say, but I forgot it all. I just really wanna marry you.” There was something in Jamie’s hand now, and he opened it to reveal a ring with a diamond that shone in the candle light, subtle, masculine, but beautiful, and somehow Jamie’s eyes were brighter than the stone when Roy looked up at him, incredulous.
“If you want to …” Jamie added as the silence lingered.
Roy’s heart soared for a moment, soared so high his head started spinning, and then the reality of it hit him like a tidal wave of ice cold water. Jamie looked so young in that moment, so beautiful, so hopeful, like he wasn’t offering to tie himself to Roy.
“Are you fucking mad?” It wasn’t at all what Roy’s heart wanted to say, but it was what came out of his mouth, and he regretted it before he even finished saying it, because Jamie’s face fell as if he had punched him.
“I … Jamie.”
“No, no that’s fine. That’s okay. Don’t worry about it.” Jamie snapped the ring box shut as his chest heaved in a deep breath and his eyes welled up with tears. He looked up at the ceiling and Roy fucking knew that move all too well. He was a fucking asshole.
“You can’t throw your life away for me, Jamie.” It came out soft in the silence. “You’re 27, you’ve got a whole life ahead of you, a whole amazing career! You can’t tie yourself down like that, not to me.” Images of Jamie flashed in front of his eyes like he was dying, like his mind was playing him a best-of for the best relationship of his life as he felt it end right in front of him. Images of Jamie on the pitch, singing in Roy’s car, in Roy’s bed, making noises better than any music in the world, in Roy’s bed, holding Roy as his whole body shivered with fever, refusing to leave him to suffer alone.
“Fuck off.” There was no heat to it, just bone deep heartache. “It’s fine, you don’t want to, you don’t have to, but don’t give me the age card. It’s alright, I just thought we were like really serious.”
“We are!” There was no denying that. He’d told Jamie how much he meant to him plenty of times, how much he loved him, wanted him, needed him.
“Then what the fuck, Roy?” Jamie lost his fight against the tears Roy had caused, and they spilled down his cheeks like an avalanche. Roy reached for his hand, and Jamie damn near flinched back, but he let Roy take it. “Why?” Jamie asked quietly, like Roy was ripping his heart and lungs out of him in one go.
“Forever is a really long time, Jamie. It doesn’t feel that long to you yet, because everything’s been happening so fast for you. I love you. And we’re happy.” Were, were happy, his mind supplied, Roy had fucked it now, and he realised in that moment that they were over, no matter what happened now. He’d broken Jamie’s heart.
“But I’m 15 years older than you,” he really emphasised that timeframe. “This might be what you want now, but it’s not gonna be the relationship that you deserve in 10 years, and it’ll only get worse from there, I can’t be what you need.” His own eyes were starting to burn and the reality of what had just happened was starting to sink in.
Roy made to stand, but this time it was Jamie who took a hold of him, gripping Roy’s hand tightly.
“But you are though!” Jamie looked at him, implored him with that heavy quality in his voice that wasn’t just a mix of grief and tears. “I’ve thought it through, all of it.” It came out as a whimper, because Jamie’s chest heaved even when he clearly tried to keep it from doing so, and Roy’s heart shattered as a new wave of tears spilled over Jamie’s cheeks.
Roy shook his head, but Jamie squeezed his fingers tighter. “No I really did though!”
If Roy had known how much this moment was going to hurt, he wasn’t sure he would have ever dared to kiss Jamie in the first place, it felt like his whole life was crumpling and he already missed Jamie even while Jamie was still holding his hand.
“I’m gonna play for like ten more seasons, and I’ll stay with Richmond til you retire. And if you don’t wanna retire in the next five years and I get a really good offer, I’ll try and stay close so we can live together. Or if you retire, we can go to … I don’t know, Spain? Italy? I don’t care if it’s London forever, so long as it’s with you. And then I’ll retire and maybe you take a sabbatical if you’re still coaching, and we can travel the world for a year, fuck in every country or something. And we’ll have so much money, we’ll never run out.”
Jamie was laying it all out as if he wasn’t proving Roy’s point. The high life would only last for a while. Roy was already feeling himself becoming reclusive and peculiar, and Jamie indulged him so far, stayed in with him instead of partying. But it was only a matter of time until he’d grow resentful, until he’d want more than Roy could give him.
“And I’ll keep busy. I can do charity work, go to school maybe? I dunno. I kind of fancy History, you know? I was never really good at anything except footie, but it’s not like I’ll need to make a career out of it, but it’ll be interesting! Something good to do, make me smarter, cultured, and all that. And we’ll just … we’ll enjoy it, right? Life together, not having to worry about shit like money. We can work on staying healthy, make you life forever, it won’t even matter that you’re older with how good we’ll take care of you. And when I’m 70, and you’re 85 and intercontinental, I’ll change your diapers and it’ll be all old-people intimate.”
“Incontinent, “ Roy said softly.
“Yeah, that.” Jamie nodded emphatically. “And maybe one of us gets cancer or something, and we’ll both shave our heads and play UNO at the hospital, and it’ll all turn out fine, because we’ll go to all our check-ups, so they’ll catch everything early and such. But all the bad stuff is just gonna be noise, ‘cause we’ll be together, you know? Take care of each other forever. And we’ll just do that thing where we live happily ever after, if you want to … I-Roy, fuck the age thing, forget about that shit. If that wasn’t a thing, would you want to?”
“Yes.” Roy closed his eyes. It felt like there was no air in the room. He couldn’t look at Jamie, because he didn’t know what to do now and he couldn’t stand to see the hurt, that earnest determination to do right by Roy when Roy had never managed to do the same for Jamie.
Jamie let go of his hand, leaving his fingers feeling ice cold and alone. It was like all his worst nightmares he had conjured up during the day since Jamie had invited him had formed into a storm cloud that was pouring down over his head now. This was worse than Jamie just breaking up with him, because now he was the one who made it happen. He buried his face in his hand, trying to keep from fucking crying, hoping he’d at least make it to his car.
“Roy?” Jamie’s voice sounded tentative this time, like any steam that had still carried him through painting out that beautiful life plan he had for them had left him now.
Roy breath hitched and he made his hands drop into his lap, made himself look at what he’d done, just to see Jamie on one knee with the ring box open in his hand, his heart offered up freely to be broken again in a last ditch effort to give them both what they really wanted at their core.
“Will-“ Jamie’s chest heaved and he swallowed hard as he held Roy’s gaze, pleading with him silently. “Will you marry me, please?”
Get out of your own way, man.
It rang through his head in Rebecca’s voice, and he realised what he was doing. The idea of losing Jamie down the line when he couldn’t live without him anymore had grown so terrifying that he was breaking Jamie’s heart now, as if he wouldn’t grief him for the rest of his life either way. As if all he was achieving wasn't just starting the grieving process sooner this way, robbing them both of years of potential happiness.
“Fuck … Jamie.” He faced him properly, took in all that sincerity and hurt on his face, the way his lip quivered just a little bit even as he tried to keep his expression composed. He could see it all there, all that love he had poured into Roy.
And Roy nodded. “Yes!”
“Yes?” Jamie repeated, almost like he didn’t believe he’d heard it right. “You-yes?”
Roy nodded, pushed his chair out and pulled Jamie off the floor, pulled them both to their feet so he could wrap his arms around Jamie.
Jamie clung to him, muffling a sob into Roy’s shoulder as he held on, clutching the ring behind Roy’s back as the held on for dear life.
“I’m sorry, Jamie. I’m so sorry. I didn’t-I love you, okay? I do. I’m sorry I said no first.” Roy had some proper making up to do for that, he could feel how much he had hurt Jamie, but the relief seemed to outweigh the pain for now, and Jamie pulled back to kiss him.
“You’re such an asshole,” he whispered against Roy’s lips before kissing him again and clinging to him tighter.
“Show me that ring?” Roy asked, and Jamie nodded, pulling back to show him. Jamie plucked it from its little pillow, handing Roy the box to hold as he pushed it onto his ring finger where it sat snug but comfortable. He had never been a guy for jewellery, but it felt … it felt really nice. The whole wedding ring thing had been a bit of a faff to him for most of his life, he hadn’t ever been able to make sense of it beyond the monetary value of a good ring, but this was something else.
It was like he was looking at a reminder that Jamie loved him, even though Roy felt like a cunt.
“Do you like it? It’s got a really cool story that stone,” Jamie’s smile was back, and that was almost better than the ring itself.
“I love it,” Roy nodded, watching the stone shine in the candlelight. Something else drew his focus though, his thumb stroking over the incredibly soft fabric of the ring box, and he looked at it.
“Oh, fuck I forgot …” Jamie let go of his hand where he’d been holding it. “I just … I really had a plan, swear down! We were gonna have a real nice dinner and then I was gonna give you this first and …” He had returned to that other chair where he must have picked up the ring from earlier, just to pick up-
“What … the hell?” Roy watched in disbelieve as Jamie brought over what looked like his blankie, but it couldn’t be.
“It’s uh- it’s yours,” Jamie said as if that explained anything. “The fire only burned through like a few parts of it and I had someone help me hem it, cut off the burned parts myself and all.” Roy unfolded the blanket to find that it was shorter than he remembered, but it was blankie, his blankie, no doubt about it.
“And there was bits from the burned parts that weren’t all wrecked, and that’s what’s on the ring box.” Jamie explained like he hadn’t just handed Roy’s dearest childhood possession back to him, something he regretted giving up to this very day.
“Oh … fuck, Roy, is that okay? I figured the ghosts took the parts they wanted, right? And they wanted you to have the rest back, I just … oh and the ashes are from the fire, the curse fire, remember? That’s what the diamond is. Like there’s a company that makes diamonds from ashes that you send them and that’s-“
Roy kissed him, pulled him in as tightly as he could and kissed him with all his soul. He had no idea how any of this had come to be, had no idea how he’d made Jamie love him so much that he’d go through this kind of trouble for him and choose him, and wanted to keep him, but he was done turning it all down.
“I did it all wrong, didn’t I? If I’d started with the blanket you wouldn’t have-“
Roy cut him off immediately. “I would have panicked either way. I thought you were gonna break up with me.
“What? Roy!” Jamie shook his head. “What the hell Roy?”
“I don’t know. Just … it all felt too good to be true for too long. It had to go sideways.” There was a grief setting in now, a grief that he had ruined this night, that he had wrecked what had been a beautiful proposal and robbed Jamie of the memory of being said yes to without reservations.
Jamie shook his head, kissing him again. “Just tell me you really want it? You're not just saying yes 'cause I'm crying.”
“I really want you. I do,” Roy could at least give him that without hesitation. He brought blankie up to wipe the tears off Jamie's face, drying them gently from his cheeks and chin.
“Forever?”
“Forever,” Roy nodded, sinking into the warmth of Jamie’s embrace and holding him, the ring glistening on his finger.