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Jamie’s Nigerian meatball was taunting him, rolling off his fork like a stolen goal on jollof rice.
Roy never knew what to do when someone was stewing in self-pity, besides yelling at them. He didn’t have it in him right now. There was distant background music, an Igbo bloke playing “Creep” with a xylophone. Roy lingered on Jamie’s lost expression that had drawn him here, that was drawing him in still.
Jamie looked small, swallowed up by too much stupid denim. How did you tell someone in such a bad outfit that you wanted to help them with something other than that? Roy wilted into his seat, knowing he was going to say it. It couldn’t be anyone else.
“…I could train you. But only if you fucking mean it.”
The meatball smothered with pepper sauce in Jamie’s mouth was inhaled with a hlgggk, his eyes wide and face turning redder than a West Ham kit.
“Oh fuck—“ There was no need for international choking signs when uncle mode activated. His black leather sleeves whisked around Jamie so calmly, they didn’t even attract any commotion, yet. For now it was just them in this little corner of Ola’s where two fates dangled for Richmond.
With each thrust to his waist, Roy muttered gentle things close to his ear. “C’mon, Tartt—c’mon, out with it—“ He could feel Jamie trembling with deprivation. This couldn’t be happening to someone who never stopped, who never ever stopped.
Apparently it was easier to pop something out of a hyper little girl than a man coated in solid muscle. He squeezed his fist hard enough to leave bruises, and nothing.
In the corner of her eye, Keeley thought they were brawling, but quickly caught on to what was happening. “Fucking hell—“
Shandy shrugged and looked back to her phone as Keeley sprinted away. “He’s not getting out of showing some love on his socials for this.”
Everyone helplessly rushed over as Jamie teetered on the edge of blacking out. Roy felt even more useless with a frightened audience, who didn’t know whether to root for the dislodger or dislodgee.
Jamie’s hand limply covered Roy’s white knuckles.
“Jamie,” Roy strained. His knee was going to give out at any minute. Here he was, questioning his faith again, for a whole other Tartt-related reason. Jamie’s dangly cross earring pinged against his face. This was how it was—people died out of nowhere, their toothbrush still wet beside the sink. “For God’s fucking sake!”
One last thrust chip shot the meatball across the room and into Zava’s ogbono soup.
Jamie was sputtering like a fish as everyone cheered. Roy’s knee finally folded them both down to the floor, his arms still locked around him. Jamie hacking and gasping for air were the only language he understood in the chaos.
Keeley knelt down and squeezed them both, her hair going up their noses. “How about we never, ever do that again, yeah?”
“Are you alright, enyi?” Sam asked, a shaky hand to heart. “Was it your meal?”
“M’fine,” Jamie croaked. “Food was perfect, I was just hasty and…Roy’s a fuckin’ angel, he is.”
Roy spoke quickly. “Let’s not go overboard—“
Ted chimed in. “It was like that scene in Mrs. Doubtfire , only Roy didn’t fall and wreck his face. Y’know, or try to poison you, Jame. Least I think.” The boys looked at each other, then their eyes darted to opposite sides of the restaurant. “What’s the sitch, Heimlich? Should we call triple-nine?”
He grasped at his throat. “No, I…I’m alright…..whole thing was prolly…thirty seconds all said and done.”
Jamie wasn’t wrong, but it had still been the longest thirty seconds of Roy’s life.
He just wanted to go home. Roy drove him in his own car, and Jamie usually would’ve had a litany of complaints about how he was driving it, but was silent.
Jamie considered his weird aside with Zava before they left Ola’s. “ Jamie. Come,” he’d said with two curling hands.
(Something strangely magnetic about him. Not much you could do about that)
“When your meat was freeballing in Zava’s soup—“
(Jamie’s two-thirds of an eyebrow sank)
“It was fully engorged with bad energy. Grief is stored in the lungs,” he said, with two fingers pressed in Jamie’s chest. “Consider it cleansed, and keep the negativity off the pitch, yes?”
Maybe he had a point. He still carried so much of that around, even though it was a little lighter after Wembley.
The dressing room embrace hadn’t been much different than tonight. He couldn’t breathe then, either, until he thawed in Roy’s arms.
“Are you sure you don’t want to go to A & E?” Roy asked.
“No. Just want bed. That elusive cool side of the pillow.”
“Innit. And you need ice for your stomach, and green tea. Anti-inflammatory. Probably good for a throat fuck by hot peppers.”
“That’s one way to put it,” Jamie scoffed.
The silence was light and thick all at once.
“Roy. Thank you. That was dead scary.”
“Of course it was.”
“Maybe in another time, you would’ve thought i just staged it for attention.”
“Nah. You never stop talking that long. Even Captain Roy would’ve known it was legit. He sure as fuck wouldn’t train you, though…”
Jamie sunk down in the seat. “Roy, about that…”
“You never had a chance to give me an answer.”
“I think we both know my answer? But…I can’t take you up on it.”
Jamie swore he heard that dramatic waterphone sting they edited into Lust Conquers All when they panned in on his guilty face.
“Why the fuck not?”
“That meatball was probably the universe tellin’ me I don’t deserve it.”
“The universe? Sounds like Zava’s sound bath meditation shit. Did the universe say you were a bellend when you were convinced your watch was a Decepticon? It definitely would have said something then.”
“I just don’t want to chase after something that isn’t mine,” he said, and quickly added “Bein’ the best and that.” He couldn’t be alone with Roy that much. He’d be a parasite. He’d fixate on their training more than the actual pitch. He wouldn’t be able to breathe without it.
Roy swallowed hard. “Oi. We don’t have to discuss it anymore today, but we’re not done.”
“I wish I could give a better answer. I’m just glad to be havin’ this conversation at all.”
The silence on the rest of the drive was awkward but warm. Roy wanted to push, he wanted to prod. But for now, this was enough.
“Do you know the difference between an Aston Martin and a porcupine?” Jamie offered after Roy pulled into his garage.
“Porcupines have pricks on the outside ,” Roy finished. “I probably told you that one, twat.”
“The shit you say just stays with me, I guess.” Quite literally, he supplied, feeling a twinge where the his throat had been closed off by the words I could train you.
Jamie had a few cups of green tea at his counter barstool, as Roy tinkered around in his kitchen, being resourceful with the bits and bobs he found to make him something soft.
“I told ya, Roy, I’m not hungry.”
“You will be in the middle of the night. You didn’t eat. My grandad always said, you wake up from the best dreams if you’re peckish.”
“Hunh,” Jamie considered. “Yeah, seems about right. Five goal haul sorta dreams. Always cut short.”
“There’s no going back to those.” He took out some eggs. “Wait till you’ve tried my soft boiled. A bit of aioli on top, very jammy yolks.”
Jamie felt actual water pooling in the corner of his mouth at the thought of it. “That erm. That actually sounds real good.”
He watched Roy move around the kitchen with a lightness that really suited him.
“Shouldn’t I be doin’ nice things for you after what you did?”
“You don’t owe me anything,” Roy said softly, his head in the refrigerator. “That’s not how it works—as fun as it sounds to have an indebted servant.” He turned to him again, dark eyes bright. “Someone to tow me along while I yell ‘mush!’”
Jamie’s blinks were pronounced.
“I’m taking the piss, Tartt. All I want is to train you.”
“So much for ‘we don’t have to discuss it anymore today,” Jamie mimicked in a hoarse voice.
“That’s your impression of me, that…part Smaug, part Rolf shit?”
“I know. It was bad.”
“Actually quite good,” Roy sighed, his lips scrunching contemplatively as he tried to find his words. “Jamie, I….I feel like the two of us could accomplish something the world’s never seen. And since I almost killed you when I asked, I can’t just not train you now.“
“Roy, you didn’t almost kill me! I just—couldn’t chew or think or eat an’ breathe at the same time and I was proper overwhelmed and if that’s how I reacted to just you askin’ to train me I don’t think I could handle being with you all the time and when my life flashed in front of me ninety fuckin’ percent of it was you—“ he gasped, running out of air.
Roy put his accouterments down, his muscles in his neck working hard. They looked across the counter at each other like it was a deep crevasse. They were just breathing and looking weirdly disheveled like this had been badly edited together.
“.. oi . Maybe…I should go.”
“Maybe.” Jamie looked at him miserably, but a proud tilt of his chin broke through. “But when has that ever been the right move for you?”
“When one of my girlfriends had a knife.”
“Oh. Well I can see that.”
“This is worse I think.”
“This is??”
“Because you’re gonna kill me with this shit but I don’t want to leave.”
“Then just make my jammy soft-boiled and forget what I said.”
“I can’t just stand here whisking aioli and forget something like that!”
Jamie fumbled for a fun fact. “Y’know what they call it in the States? Donkey sauce.”
“Guy fucking Fieri calls it that, not all Americans! I bet you think every man in America has bleached hair and wears flame shirts.”
“I like his shirts, alright? You know what, maybe you should go. Zava said my meatball was full of grief and I don’t want you putting it back in me.”
“Oh, The Great Zava said? You don’t want to train with me, but you’re quoting him now? You know what, just for that, I’m not leaving.”
“Well, fine, I was gonna to ask you to stay anyhow cause the rain’s gettin’ very soupy out there.”
“And I have to watch you eat for at least the next three weeks because I'm frightened you’ll choke again and I can stop it if I don’t leave—I can stop it….” he trailed off with a sniff.
Jamie knew that Roy was lost in a completely different time then, Grandad memories bleeding into his voice. “Jesus, Roy…” He crossed to his side of the counter, slowly. “It’s gonna be okay.”
“You really fucking scared me.”
He reached out and cupped Roy’s cheek, afraid he would recoil or push him away, but when he leaned into the touch, Jamie came at him even faster.
Jamie’d had hundreds of kisses in his short existence—very sensual, very expressive—but he never poured himself into them quite like the one for the man who’d saved his life.
Jamie pulled back with swollen lips. “Hero Roy was so fucking hot, y’know that?”
“I’m good under pressure,” Roy muttered, trying to latch back onto his mouth as Jamie teased him. “Fuck. M’not just sleeping hungry and about to wake up from this, am I…?”
“Nah, darl. Not sleepin’, just hungry.”
Roy boosted him up on the counter without any protest from his knee, running his hands up his thighs, unbuttoning the DSquared shirt until he gave up and tore it open, buttons raining all over the kitchen.
“Fuck, I’ve always wanted someone to do that to me!” Jamie groaned.
“Maybe if you weren’t such a fussbudget about your clothes—“ Roy mumbled into his neck.
“Ohhnh. This is why I didn’t want to train with you, I knew I’d want thi—-“ A flick of Roy’s tongue and Jamie lost all language.
“And yet here you are,” Roy taunted into his ear. “So I guess we might as well train.”
“Yeah. Fuck yeah.”
“I don’t want you to think you have to repay me this way.”
“That would be very unethical,” Jamie shivered, wrapping his legs around him.
“Then I guess I’ll just have to keep taking care of you.”
“I can live with that.”
If grief was stored in the lungs, all of it had been exorcised now, and given Jamie more freedom than he found in the depths of Wembley. Welcome to the rest of your life, Jamie Tartt, he breathed in silence, and followed the path that Roy had made.