Chapter Text
Roy loads the stupid pink leopard thing into Keeley's car, carefully wrapping a stray hoodie around its head to keep its stupid little porcelain ears from getting chipped on its journey to her new life. He takes the plane tickets out of his jacket pocket and stares at them for a moment. Then he stomps back inside, plants his feet in the middle of the lobby, and bellows, "TARTT!"
Jamie's naked top half pops out of the doorway to the gym. "Yeah, Coach?"
Roy tucks the tickets back into his jacket and says, "Let's fucking go."
*
A middle-aged woman with a handbag the size of a corgi is glaring witheringly at Jamie's bare torso from across the aisle. Roy leans his elbows on his knees and glares back at her. It's a quality glare, he can tell. He always does his best glares when he's been having a fucking feeling.
"How come you've got my passport, anyway?" Jamie asks. He's reaching up to adjust the air vent above his seat, oblivious to the silent death match grazing his nipples.
Roy's got Jamie's passport because the twat dropped it on the team bus five weeks ago, and Roy has been waiting this entire time for him to notice it's gone missing. If he's honest, he's a bit annoyed that the reveal ended up being so anticlimactic—Jamie didn't even blink when he pulled it out.
"The fuck you doing?" Roy demands, instead of answering. Jamie has the air vent on full blast and his mouth open, head tilted back.
"Oxygen?" Jamie makes a show of sucking in air from the vent. "There's less of it up in the sky, you know, got to fill up before the plane takes off. It's dead refreshing."
The woman across the aisle, hearing this, gives Jamie a whole different kind of withering glare. Roy bares his teeth at her. Taking the piss out of this dickhead is his job, not hers.
Jamie falls asleep on Roy's shoulder not long after takeoff and doesn't wake up until they hit the runway in Spain. He sits up and stretches, bumping his elbow into Roy's face. Roy smacks it away, mildly irritated and then significantly more irritated by the mildness of the original irritation. Sometime during the last few hours, the pit of boiling lava his stomach turned into when Keeley said I'll see you in six weeks has receded to a nearly-tolerable simmer, and it doesn't feel right. When Roy gets in a mood, he does it properly. It's disorienting, getting all worked up like that and then calming down against his will. He doesn't fucking like it.
"So where are we?" Jamie asks, leaning across Roy to peer out the window.
Roy pulls down the shade. "None of your business. Oi, fuck off," he snaps at the judgy lady, who's judging again. "It's a fucking delightful surprise, I've not kidnapped him."
"You have, a bit," Jamie points out, not sounding too perturbed about it.
"You fuck off as well," Roy grumbles. Jamie starts to join the line of passengers shuffling down the aisle, and Roy grabs him by the shoulder—or tries, at any rate, because it's difficult to get any purchase on his smooth bare skin, but just the touch is enough to make him wait.
He doesn't push back in the slightest, doesn't question the gesture, doesn't even turn to look at Roy. He just waits, obedient not only to Roy's words but to his mere touch, wearing nothing but his uniform shorts and trainers because that's what he was wearing when Roy said let's fucking go; and this, here, half-crouched under the low-hanging overhead compartments on an uncomfortably warm plane, this is where Roy's brain decides to think for the first time:
I wonder what else he'd do.
*
"Take that left up there," Jamie says, tapping at his phone in the passenger seat of the rental car.
Roy raises an eyebrow. "You don't know where we're fucking going."
"I know it hasn't got my Peter Thomas Roth Potent-C Power Brightening Hydra Gel Eye Patches. Or any sun cream either, if you booked it. Left."
Roy considers ignoring him, but skin cancer is no fucking joke. He turns left.
He didn't intend to come here with no luggage. He intended to come here with Keeley's entire wardrobe stuffed into a mountain of matching pink bags, along with one scruffy black suitcase of his own, and he intended to do it tomorrow. There was no reason whatsoever for him to go a day early with nothing but his leather jacket, leaving poor Kathy scrambling to update the bookings in time. He was operating on autopilot the whole way. Pure instinct.
Apparently, Roy's pure instinct demands the presence of Jamie Tartt.
Jamie directs him to some posh shopping centre neither of them can pronounce and locates, in short order: shampoo, conditioner, body scrub, face wash, hair styler, moisturiser, concealer, eye cream, lip balm, Peter Broth Potiony Lightning Gel Whatevers, sun cream, sunglasses, and four absolutely minuscule pairs of swim trunks in equally retina-melting colours.
"Clothes?" Roy suggests dryly. He's collected a semi-random armful of black garments for himself, none of which he's bothered trying on. Jamie's bare chest has been on the receiving end of a few disparaging looks from the salespeople, but apparently the heap of gunk he's buying is expensive enough for him to get away with it.
"Nah," says Jamie. "What'll I need 'em for here?"
Roy weighs the merits of arguing the point against the merits of watching Jamie suffer the consequences of indefinite shirtlessness and opts to let it go. "How about a fucking toothbrush?"
"There'll be some," Jamie says confidently.
"Might not be," Roy grumbles, even though there probably are. "You don't know, maybe it's just some shit motel room. Maybe I've hired a yurt."
Jamie grins at him, infuriatingly self-assured. "Mate. I know you fancy yourself all mysterious and unpredictable and that, but you ain't hired no fucking yurt."
Roy spends the rest of the shopping trip mulishly looking up yurt rentals on his phone. The only one he can find nearby is a "glamping experience" including a horseback ride and Argentine barbecue made by a private chef, and it doesn't list prices, which means it costs more than the satisfaction would be worth. Probably has got fucking toothbrushes, as well.
*
The villa does have toothbrushes, tucked away on a shelf just off the main entrance along with toothpaste, disposable razors, plasters, paper napkins, earplugs, and other helpful bits and bobs. There's also sun cream, although Jamie tries to sneak it into the bin before Roy notices it's there. "It's horrible," he whines when Roy catches him in the act. "I've got the good stuff, we don't need this shit. Might as well slather your face in pizza grease."
"I love pizza," Roy growls, commandeering the tube. It smells a bit plasticky, but not like it's gone off or anything. It'll do fine.
The place is fucking beautiful. It's a predominantly Mediterranean Revival architectural style incorporating a traditional Andalusian patio, according to the welcome folder on the kitchen island. The Andalusian patio is a tiled courtyard in the centre of the house, open to the sky, with a central fountain and potted plants tumbling down the walls from the arched open-air hallways above. Roy immediately loves it; it's like being outdoors, but with zero risk of being seen or interacted with.
There's a back garden with a swimming pool and a paved area that's more what Roy thinks of as a patio, with a table and chairs out in the sun and a deep, comfortable outdoor sofa next to an array of quite nice gym equipment. Grass surrounds most of the pool—plenty of lawn for a decent workout—with a hedge along the back, interrupted by a wrought-iron gate leading to the beach. It's not a fully private beach just for them, which he would have preferred, but at least it's not open to the public, just shared with one adjacent property.
"The electric interior design leans modern, with sleek kitchen and bathroom fixtures, but the stucco arches and terror-cottage tiles carry the villa's rustic charm indoors," Jamie reads from the welcome folder. "What's terror-cottage?"
"Terracotta," Roy deduces. He taps his foot on the reddish-brown tile floor. "This shit. And it's eclectic, not electric."
"Come off it, I'm on holiday," Jamie complains.
Roy doesn't know a massive amount about interior design—he pays people for that shit—but he did answer a fuckload of "this one or that one?" questions for his own house, and after the designer said "right then, going with the modern one!" enough times he told her to just fucking go with the modern one next time and leave him out of it, so he supposes that means he's got a favourite style. He thinks he can see what the folder is saying (or trying to say, with Jamie's hindrance) about how the styles are combined—everything functional has angles like what he's got in his own kitchen, the taps and drawer pulls and such, but the colours are earthy to blend in with the useless background bits of the decor, which look more like the outside of the house. Roy likes how it comes together, how he can see that someone's thought it all through so it makes sense.
Jamie flips a page in the folder. "Where am I sleeping? Says there's four bedrooms, are there more people coming?"
Roy is about to fire back a sarcastic reply about how many of his girlfriends have just given him the brushoff when it dawns on him: Jamie has no clue what this trip was supposed to be. He might even think Roy actually did plan it as a nice surprise for him. It's tempting to disabuse him of that notion, but as that would require admitting what happened with Keeley, Roy leaves it alone. "Told my travel agent to find a spot with some fucking privacy," he says instead. "Most of the decent ones were even bigger than this. You can choose a room, I don't give a shit."
Jamie immediately dashes upstairs, abandoning the folder, while Roy investigates the kitchen. He's not eaten since breakfast, and Jamie was working out before they left, so he'll need food too. There are plenty of groceries in the fridge as well as a pitcher of sangria and a fully prepped charcuterie board chilling on the top shelf—likely meant to be set out before they arrived, as the folded welcome card perched on it mentions the folder being next to it. Roy's probably fucked someone's routine by changing the booking last-minute.
He relocates the charcuterie board to the kitchen island and digs in, idly examining the array of wines lined up along the back of the worktop. The Iberico cheese is fucking sublime.
"I picked my room," Jamie announces, bouncing back into the kitchen. "You can look out at the sea from the toilet. Ooh, can I have an olive?"
Roy removes the little pot of apricot preserves from the board and generously gestures permission to the rest, then heads upstairs, still savouring his cheese. There are two bedrooms overlooking the drive and two with views of the sea, and the bigger one on the sea side has an en suite bathroom that's fucking unreal: gorgeous tiles handpainted like sea foam, giant shells and polished driftwood displayed on a ledge built into the wall over the sink, a shower that could fit a full footie lineup, and a view that makes him forget absolutely fucking everything.
"This one's mine," Roy says, surveying it with deep satisfaction.
"You said you didn't give a shit!" Jamie protests from behind him.
"Changed my mind." Roy runs his fingers along the tile ledge, gazing out at the sea through the huge arched windows. The windowsills are high enough to block the crotch-level view from the beach, though someone with a boat and a good pair of binoculars could get themselves an eyeful, perhaps. Roy's willing to risk it.
"You said I could choose," Jamie insists through a mouthful of olives; the twat's brought the entire fucking charcuterie board into the bathroom. "Roy Kent doesn't go back on his word, does he?"
"Roy Kent," Roy murmurs, "is about to take the most tranquil shit of his life. Piss off."
*
Roy makes a simple pasta dinner and they eat it in the garden, then linger out there with glasses of red wine. The sky above them goes streaky with orange and pink, which is pretty, though the angle of the coastline doesn't offer a great view of the sunset from here. Roy does, however, have a great view of Jamie's fucking thighs. He's changed into his neon-green micro-trunks and he's got his legs propped up on a chair, crossed at the ankles, giving Roy a full-on eyeful of his ridiculous quads. Should have made him buy some trousers.
Roy checks his phone. Keeley hasn't called. Just because she doesn't know he came early, he tells himself. She'll call tomorrow to make sure he landed safely.
Jamie uncrosses his ankles and crosses them the other way, flashing a bit of arsecheek in the process. Roy's seen him in the buff about five hundred times, but the little postage stamp of fabric currently failing to cover him up somehow looks ten times filthier than total nudity. Fucking shameless.
"What do you do if you get a stiffie when you're wearing one of those in front of people?" Roy asks, sincerely curious. That hasn't been much of a problem for him this side of thirty-five, but if he'd worn that shit at Jamie's age it might have been.
Jamie shrugs. "Eye contact and a head jerk at the loo usually does the trick."
Roy snorts. "Fucking menace. Go get another bottle of wine, I want to try the Malaga."
"Please, Jamie, could you go get us some more wine? 'Course, Roy, and thank you so much for them sweet manners of yours, always a pleasure," Jamie converses with himself as he gets up.
Roy watches the crease of his arse against his thigh, one side then the other as he walks toward the villa. Those trunks are preposterous. Everything about Jamie is preposterous. Everything about both of them, really. There's a part of him that doesn't really believe any of today has actually happened.
"Is that what you want?" he asks.
Jamie spins around on his heel, accidentally spinning a bit too far and stumbling. "What?"
"Please," Roy says, pitching it like he's speaking to one of the yoga mums. "Would you please go fetch us the wine, Jamie, thank you ever so much." He drops the polite tone. "That what you fucking want from me? Is it?"
Jamie's face is mostly in shadow, but Roy can see a sliver of a grin.
"Get the fucking wine, you little shit," Roy commands, and Jamie practically skips inside.
*
Roy refuses to relinquish the bedroom with the magical en suite, and Jamie stubbornly insists that he was promised dibs, and that's how the two of them end up jabbing elbows at each other all night in a house containing no fewer than five untouched beds. Naked, because Jamie doesn't wear anything to sleep in the summer and Roy doesn't back down from a challenge.
"You're a fucking violent sleeper," Roy grumbles in the morning, rubbing the budding bruises on his side.
"Am not," says Jamie. "I'm a sympathetic sleeper. I sleep the same way the person next to me sleeps. If I'm violent, it's 'cause you were first."
Roy is pretty sure that's not a thing, but he can't help being intrigued. "How would you even know that?"
"Sex tapes," Jamie says flippantly. "Always forget to stop the camera, me."
Roy throws an arm over his face. It's far too early for this. "You're such a fucking knob. What if that shit leaks?"
"You worry too much," Jamie admonishes him. "You need to work on your radish exceptions."
Roy has been getting a bit better at translating from Jamie to English lately, but that one is beyond him, at least at this hour. "My fucking what?"
"Radish exceptions," Jamie repeats with confidence. "Loosen up, mate. Might never happen."
He hops out of bed and disappears into the contested bathroom, leaving Roy to doze off again. When he wakes up properly, he can hear the tap running. He checks the time in disbelief.
"Have you seriously been in there for an hour and twenty minutes?" he calls through the door. He sits up, stretching. Despite the bruises, he feels remarkably well-rested. His knee isn't even hurting.
"Fuck off, I'm on holiday," Jamie yells back.
"Well, I'm on holiday too and I need to fucking piss!"
"There's another toilet downstairs!"
"I don't want to use another toilet! I want to use this toilet!" Roy pads over to the door and starts pounding on it.
"All right, all right." The door swings open under his fist. "Calm down, you smelly old panther hairball."
"Go beat some eggs," Roy commands. "I'll be down in a minute." He steps around Jamie and closes the door behind him.
He hears the sound of footsteps tromping down the stairs, then they stop. "HOW MANY EGGS?" Jamie bellows.
"SIX," Roy bellows back. He takes his piss, gazing peacefully out at the gentle waves stretching to the horizon, then he retrieves the complimentary sun cream from the bin (where Jamie's tried to hide it under a wad of tissues) and brings it downstairs with him.
Jamie is busy attacking the eggs with a whisk. Roy gets some oil heating up in a pan and pokes through the spice cabinet, pulling out dried basil and oregano and pepper. He might see if there's some kind of local market where he can get fresh herbs later. He retrieves some veg from the fridge and starts cutting it up. Jamie reaches over to steal a piece of raw onion off the cutting board, pops it in his mouth, then makes a face and spits it into the sink.
"What the fuck did you think that was going to taste like?" Roy asks, fascinated.
"Didn't know, 's why I tried it. Can I chop something?"
Roy scrapes the onions and peppers into the hot oil and hands the cutting board and knife over to Jamie, along with a handful of spinach that probably won't suffer too much from being maimed before it goes in the pan. He stirs the veg with a spatula.
"Done," Jamie announces after only a moment, setting down the cutting board next to the stove. It looks decent, surprisingly. Roy wouldn't have expected much in the way of knife skills from Jamie Tartt. He dumps it into the pan, along with the eggs.
Jamie bounces a little at his elbow. "How'd I do? Did I chop it right? Did I beat the eggs enough?"
"You didn't fuck it up," Roy grumbles. "You're fucking high-maintenance, you know that? Go make some toast."
"High-maintenance," Jamie mutters, reaching for the bread. "Says the bloke pitching a tantrum instead of using the other fucking toilet."
They eat breakfast in the central patio, which has two spindly chairs that feel like they're about to collapse and a little table that's barely big enough for both plates. It's lovely and relaxing, with the fountain burbling away and cascades of vines and flowers everywhere, and by unspoken agreement they stop sniping at each other and enjoy it in silence.
Jamie volunteers to do the washing-up, to Roy's relief. The booking offered an option to have a housekeeper come every day, but Roy's distaste for chores is far surpassed by his distaste for human interaction, so he went for the weekly option. He'd sooner have gone for no housekeeping at all and washed the linens himself, but that wasn't one of the choices.
While Jamie is cleaning up, Roy applies his cheap greasy sun cream and checks his phone. Keeley hasn't called. Only because she thinks he'll be flying here this afternoon, he tells himself. She'll call later.
He hears the kitchen tap turn off and yells, "Lunges! Twice round the pool then four laps backstroke, repeat until I've finished my sangria including the fruit down the bottom. Whistle!"
*
When he was planning this trip, Roy carefully selected and stockpiled a supply of books he thought would make good beach reads. He was really looking forward to some of them, as well. Now, because he's an idiot with no impulse control, they're all at his house in London and he's got nothing to do.
After he's finished putting Jamie through a good workout and released him to cavort in the waves, it very quickly becomes apparent that Roy is going to need something to focus on besides the dark screen of his phone. Being alone with the thoughts in his head is not a relaxing experience, as he learned the first and last time he took a yoga class with a meditation bit at the end.
"I'm going to find a bookshop," he calls down the beach to Jamie, who appears to be attempting to befriend a seagull.
"I'm coming with you!" Jamie hollers back, kicking sand onto the startled seagull as he dashes madly over like he thinks Roy is going to try to outrun him. He's got his sunglasses propped up on his head, and his hot-pink swim trunks leave absolutely nothing to the imagination. He looks ridiculous.
"I don't believe you," Roy says as Jamie skids to a stop beside him. "When you said all you need is eye contact and a head tilt, or whatever. If you get a stiffie in that—" he gestures to the pink trunks "—and a woman sees it, she'll be laughing her arse off, not following you to the loo." He shakes sand off the towel he's been lying on before rolling it up.
"Eh, you'd be surprised." Jamie leads the way to the iron gate separating the beach from the villa's garden. "Wasn't talking about women, though. Quickies in the loo don't work as well with them."
Roy stops short. "What?"
"Just spatial-like, it's harder to fuck standing up. What?" Jamie looks over his shoulder, finally noticing that Roy isn't following him.
"What do you mean, what? You just told me you fuck men in public loos on a regular fucking basis!"
Jamie shrugs. "Don't have to be public."
Roy can't fucking believe this prick. "There's no fucking way that stays out of the tabloids. It's a fucking miracle there's not already a cover photo of your dick up some bloke's arse over a toilet!" He's faintly aware that his current volume is counterproductive to his point, but there doesn't seem to be anything he can do about it. "What are you fucking thinking? Has it not crossed your mind that you could ruin your fucking career with this?"
Jamie looks far too fucking calm. "No. 'S crossed my mind that some arsehole might ruin my career with this, but I can't go living my whole life by his rules, can I? I don't even know him. Maybe he's lactose-intolerant, then I eat a yoghurt and I've fucked it. Might as well get off."
Before Roy has a chance to work out what to say to that avalanche of bullshit, Jamie's halfway to the villa.
*
"You've got five stages of emotional processing, did you know that?"
They're in the rental car, on the way to a place Roy is about 85% sure is a bookshop. Jamie is slouched down a bit in the passenger seat, knees splayed wide, sweat-damp thighs sticking to the seat every time he moves.
"I'm not fucking grieving," Roy says, keeping his eyes fixed firmly on the road.
"Not those stages. You've got your own stages. Roy Kent stages."
Roy doesn't react. There's no need to admit he's curious; Jamie is going to keep talking either way.
"First: yelling." Jamie straightens from his slouch and holds up one finger over the dashboard to make sure Roy derives the full benefit of this essential visual illustration of the number one. "Second: physical violence. Third: grumpiness because you don't understand your feelings. Fourth: yelling again, only this time it's just 'FUCK!' And fifth: grumpiness because you do understand your feelings and you don't like 'em."
Roy swats at Jamie's fingers, now fully outspread. "Don't fucking block my field of vision when I'm driving."
Jamie settles back into his seat comfortably. "You're in stage three right now. Think you skipped stage two this time because you didn't want to gay-bash me, cheers for that."
Roy finds a parking spot down the street from the bookshop, which does in fact appear to be a bookshop. "Why did you even want to come with me?" he asks as they're getting out of the car, ignoring Jamie's psychological theory or whatever. "You don't fucking read."
"I always want to come with you," Jamie says. "Can we get a crossword book? I love a crossword."
Roy's incredulity at this is interrupted by an old man bursting out of the door of the bookshop, yelling at them in Spanish. At Jamie, specifically, and after a minute Roy works out the gist of what's going on. "Think you're not allowed in the shop dressed like that," he says, grinning.
"All right, take a breath," Jamie says, stepping to the side of the pavement. "I'll wait out here."
The old man follows him, still shouting. Jamie looks at Roy, and Roy shrugs. When the shouting only increases in volume from there, Jamie produces his phone from some unimaginable crevice of his tiny trunks and calls up Dani on FaceTime.
"He says you have poor hygiene, your mother raised you badly, and your highlights are tacky," Dani helpfully reports.
Jamie touches his hair, wounded. "Tell him I'm staying out of his fucking shop! Why won't he leave me alone?"
Dani listens for a moment. "I think he doesn't want you in front of his shop either." He asks a question in Spanish, and the old man yells some more. "Yes, he says there is a local ordinance. You can't have your shirt off in public unless you're on the beach. Now he's saying tourists are stupider than... it wouldn't make sense in English, but he thinks tourists are very stupid."
Roy is enjoying this immensely, but he doesn't want to end up banned from the shop himself over it. "Here," he says, taking off his leather jacket and tossing it to Jamie. "Go wait in the car. And give me Dani." He plucks the phone from Jamie's hand and ducks into the shop before Jamie can kick up a fuss.
"Hello, Coach!" Dani greets him. "How is your holiday going?"
"Fine," Roy grunts, and then realises with surprise that it's true. He came here fully prepared to be miserable for six weeks, and all things considered, he actually is having a decent time. Must be the cheese.
The old man comes back inside, scowling. Roy approaches him gingerly with Dani at the ready. "Can you ask him if they have any books in English?"
"Maybe you should check under that big sign over there that says 'English'," Dani suggests.
Roy follows the direction the phone camera is pointing and discovers an absolutely massive sign on one of the walls. "Right. Yeah. Good call."
The old man says something to Dani that Roy suspects is uncomplimentary towards himself, and Dani replies with his usual chipper energy. The man says something else, sounding interested. Roy hands over the phone and leaves them to it.
Despite the bookseller's untranslatable opinions of tourists, there's a whole wall of books in English, largely paperback mysteries and romances. Roy would like to take a while to peruse them, but you're not supposed to leave animals in a hot car too long, and he can always come back later. He grabs a few paperbacks with interesting-looking covers, a recipe magazine with words like HEALTHY and FIBRE splashed all over the front, and (for no particular reason) a book of crossword puzzles, then pays for his armload and gingerly extricates Dani from his conversation. It's tempting to leave him chatting away with his new friend, but that would only end in Roy having to come back inside to retrieve the phone after he's had his fun, which sounds like too much effort.
Instead of wearing Roy's jacket, Jamie is slouching down just far enough in the car to hide his torso from the shop window, inspecting the maligned highlights in the side mirror. "I can't believe you took me phone," he says, snatching it back the second Roy gets in the car. "Dani, can you believe he took me fucking phone?"
"Guess what!" Dani enthuses. "Álvaro has a parakeet!"
*
Roy spots a little supermarket on the way back to the villa and stops in for some fresh herbs, along with the only protein powder they've got in stock and a carton of soy milk to accommodate his lactose sensitivity. He looks for Iberico cheese too, choosing to ignore the irony of the soy milk, but tragically they haven't got the one from the charcuterie board. He's going to be dreaming of that fucking cheese for the rest of his life.
"You should have bought more bread," Jamie says as they're making sandwiches for lunch. Between the toast with breakfast and the sandwiches, the little loaf is half gone.
"You should have bought clothes," Roy retorts. Jamie wasn't allowed into the supermarket in his trunks, although they didn't seem to mind him lurking on the pavement wildly gesturing demands through the windows for Roy to pointedly ignore.
The time of Roy's previously scheduled arrival comes and goes. Keeley doesn't call.
Roy grudgingly works through some physio exercises, because his knee is feeling a bit dodgy after the bookshop trip. He knows from bitter experience that if he ignores it when it's feeling a bit dodgy, all the other muscles around it will decide it's their job to protect it and instead make it exponentially worse. Muscle guarding, Gail calls it. Shit, he hasn't even got his Icy Hot here. Why the fuck didn't he stop at home to pack a bag?
He's slumped on the outdoor sofa with an unopened John Grisham murder mystery on his lap, glowering up at the picturesque clouds, when Jamie plops down next to him and announces out of absolutely nowhere, "It wouldn't be me with my dick up someone's arse over a toilet. Other way 'round, generally."
Roy frowns. "And you feel the need to tell me this because?"
"Trying to freak you out enough to let me have the good bedroom to meself." Jamie scoots closer to Roy, bumping into him. "Ooh, queer germs, better stay away!"
"I'm not fucking homophobic," Roy says, not moving. "Just concerned for your fucking wellbeing. They'd put you through hell if that came out."
"I know." Jamie isn't moving, either. He's just sitting there, pressed against Roy from shoulder to thigh. "You waste a lot of time worrying about things that haven't happened, don't you?"
In London, Roy would shove him away and tell him to fuck off. Here at the villa, where time is already beginning to lose meaning and even the shade feels like it's been soaked in sun, he slowly nods.
"Yeah," he says. "I do."
"Listen," says Jamie, more serious than Roy has ever heard him sound before. "If some prick takes a picture and the whole world finds out... if it happens, I'll spend my whole life dealing with it, yeah? I won't have a choice, they'll not give me a moment's peace."
"That's what I was trying—" Roy starts.
Jamie interrupts him. "So why waste time dealing with it now, when I have got a choice?" He waves a hand around them. "Look, mate. Peace."
Roy lets his gaze follow the arc of Jamie's hand, encompassing the villa and the sky and the sea and the quiet. He pauses for a moment, letting the words sink in. It's grossly naive, of course, but something at the core of it is resonating in a way that tells him to pay attention.
He closes his eyes, takes a long deep breath, and yells, "FUCK!"
*
Roy turns off his phone before dinner, vowing not to check it again until the morning. Then he turns it on again after dinner, and again just before bed—but it's progress, all right. At least he's not constantly listening for it. And for the short stretches of time he's able to put it away and let go, the relief is overwhelming.
First thing in the morning, he rolls over and turns it back on. Nothing from Keeley.
Jamie is still asleep next to him. Roy was actually considering being the better person and moving to a different room, but then Jamie threw down that challenge about homophobia and that was that: Roy is now one hundred percent committed to being the worse person.
He doesn't feel bruised. Must have slept less violently this time.
Jamie's eyelids flicker open a crack, and he sleepily brushes his hand across Roy's cheek. Roy goes still at the touch. Jamie smiles a little and opens his eyes wider, gazing at Roy's face. Trying to break him with the threat of queer germs again, probably. Roy gazes back, resolute.
"Told you," Jamie murmurs. His fingers brush Roy's cheek again, soft and warm. "I fucking told you, didn't I? Don't use the pizza grease, I said. I told you."
Roy claps a hand to his face and realises that Jamie is tenderly caressing a fucking zit.
"Fuck off," he snaps, slapping Jamie away and making a beeline for the bathroom—not to look at the zit in the mirror, just to get his business done before Jamie sets up camp in there for the morning. He can't help seeing it while he's washing his hands, though; it's fucking enormous, bright red and bulging. Jesus.
Jamie is singing a little song under his breath when Roy emerges from the bathroom. As he breezes past to launch into his six-trillion-step morning routine, Roy can hear that the tune is Hall of the Mountain King, with the words "Jamie fucking told you so, told you so, told you so, Jamie fucking told you so I fucking told you sooo."
"I'm eating breakfast without you," Roy yells after him, but he makes a feta fruit salad that will keep just fine.
*
Jamie still refuses to acquire any clothes.
"You're the one being weird, not even getting swim trunks for a beach holiday," he says. "Want to borrow one of my spares?" He offers Roy the hot-pink trunks.
Roy flatly ignores this. "It's fucking illegal to not wear a shirt here," he reminds Jamie, although he's not sure that's strictly true. It's frowned upon, definitely. More to the point, it's becoming inconvenient for Roy. "You won't be able to go anywhere."
"You can't be seen in public with that thing on your face anyway, mate," Jamie says, fastidiously rinsing out the remnants of the offending sun cream tube to prevent Roy fishing it out of the bin again. "You can't wear my concealer, we ain't got the same undertones, and even if you could it's sticking out like a toe. We're stuck here 'til it heals up. Which would happen a lot faster if you would just—"
"No," Roy growls. He's capitulated on the posh sun cream, but he's not letting Jamie smear any other overpriced glop on him. Roy has been washing his face with soap and water for his entire life, and he will continue to wash his face with soap and water until the day he dies. "Shut the fuck up."
"At least ice it," Jamie pleads. "Look at it, it's suffering."
"How is it you'll drop everything to come to Spain without batting a fucking eyelash, but when I tell you to shut the fuck up you never fucking listen?" Roy demands.
"Because you don't actually want me to shut up," Jamie says without a second's hesitation.
Roy blinks, stymied. "You think you know what I want when I'm telling you the exact opposite?"
"Yes," Jamie says matter-of-factly. "I always know what you want. Like the bookshop yesterday, I knew you wanted company because you said you were leaving. If you didn't want me to come along, you'd have just gone. And you hardly never want me to shut up, you like arguing with me. You love taking the piss out of all my skincare and that, you think it's funny. But I still came out when you yelled at me, even though I wasn't done yet, because you really wanted to piss in that one super-special toilet." He rolls his eyes. "It were fucking stupid, but you really did want it, so I listened. I can always tell."
Roy opens his mouth to protest, then closes it again. He's fucking right. Every single fucking thing he just said is true, and Roy has a sinking feeling that if he tries to dispute it Jamie might say something about the bed they've been sharing. And if Jamie declared with that same confidence that Roy doesn't mean it when he tells Jamie to go sleep in another room, that he can tell Roy actually wants him there... well. Roy's not got the faintest shadow of a clue what the fuck he would say to that.
*
Roy spends the afternoon on the outdoor sofa, plowing through an excellently terrible romance novel and aggressively ignoring his own thoughts. Jamie spends the afternoon alternating between splashing around in the pool and attempting to sneak up on Roy's zit with an ice cube.
The fourth time this happens, Roy smacks the ice out of Jamie's hand and says, "Go fuck around on the beach and leave me the fuck alone."
Jamie pouts. "Come with me?"
"No," says Roy. There are people out there, he can hear them shouting and laughing through the hedge.
Jamie reluctantly plods off through the gate, and within ten minutes he's back. "I don't want to fuck around on the beach," he complains.
His words from earlier keep rattling around in Roy's brain, bumping into everything else, recontextualising every interaction. Roy told Jamie to stop sneaking up on him with ice cubes, and Jamie didn't stop (because he could tell Roy was secretly having fun). He told Jamie to go out to the beach, and Jamie did even though he didn't want to (because he could tell Roy really did need a break from his shit). Roy absently rubs at his swollen cheek and winces.
"Will you please try icing it?" Jamie asks, and after all the goofing off, Roy can hear a difference in his tone. A sincerity.
Maybe, he thinks, this shit might just go both ways.
"Fine," he grumbles, and he lets Jamie hold an ice cube wrapped in a tissue to his cheek for five minutes even though he could easily have held it himself, and it does fucking make his face feel better in the end.
When they go to bed that night, he sees his phone still lying on the bedside table and realises he's not checked it all day.
*
Roy steadily hammers on the bathroom door until Jamie flings it open, nude and dripping. "I'm not done," he grumps, and he flounces back into the shower.
Roy takes a long piss, gazing out at the sparkling sea, then joins Jamie in the massive shower. There's three different showerheads in there, but Jamie's only got one turned on, and he squawks when Roy elbows him aside to hog the spray. Roy smirks, ready for some locker-room horseplay, but then he registers that the little shit actually looks genuinely upset.
"I'm supposed to leave this conditioner in for exactly thirty seconds," Jamie whines. "You're making me late."
"Jesus Christ," Roy scoffs, but he steps away and turns on another showerhead.
He's not sure if it's the villa itself or the beach or the absence of everyday stresses or something else, but his usual urge to fuck with Jamie's head is starting to feel less like a compulsion and more like an option. Back in London he's always felt like he needs to protect his reputation, like he's got to flex his power or he'll lose it; here, alone with Jamie, it feels like his power is a basic fact of life. They both know he could make Jamie wait to rinse out his conditioner if he wanted to, and that's why he doesn't have to.
Instead, he entertains himself by performing dramatic readings off the packaging of all the various overpriced goops, narrating each step of Jamie's intricate grooming rituals with over-the-top marketing bullshit. They end up with Jamie lying on the bed with a pair of gelatinous apostrophes on his face as Roy reads from the back of the box, both of them still naked.
"'Visibly help brighten the look of the eye area and improve signs of aging with the future of vitamin C.' Here's an idea, how about you give me the forty-seven quid and I squeeze a fucking orange into your eye?"
"There's people on the internet would pay a lot more than forty-seven quid to get an orange squeezed in their eye by Roy Kent," Jamie says. "I've seen the thirst posts."
"Caffeine helps firm skin's appearance and reduce the look of puffiness around the—there's fucking caffeine in this shit?" Roy peers closer at Jamie's face. "Are you meant to eat it?"
"Caffeine can get into you lots of ways," Jamie informs him. "They make soap with it and everything."
"Use enclosed spatula," Roy reads, and bursts out laughing. "Where's the spatula? I've got to see the fucking spatula."
"It's enclosed," Jamie says, the duh clear in his tone. "Have you never seen Keeley do these?"
Abruptly, Roy loses interest in the spatula. He tosses the box over Jamie onto the floor and picks up his phone instead. It's their third morning in the villa, and she still hasn't fucking called.
"What?" Jamie peeks at him with one eye. "What've I said? Have you two broken up or summat?"
"No," says Roy. She said they hadn't, and she sounded like she meant it. But she also sounded like she meant it when she giggled and kissed him and thanked him for the holiday like she was ready to pack her bags. Keeley is good at sounding like she means things.
And she hasn't called.
"How long is it normal to go without speaking to your girlfriend?" he asks.
"Haven't got a girlfriend."
Roy sighs, aggravated. "Not... I mean in general. When you're with someone, how often do you talk?"
Jamie shrugs. "Depends, I suppose. If I'm at a tournament or a big awards thing and there's press and all keeping me busy, could be twice a day? But if I'm on holiday not doing much of anything, like this, I'm on my phone all the time."
Roy drops the phone on the table and leans back against the headboard, defeated. "She hasn't even texted. Not once since we came here."
Jamie hisses like he's been burned. "That ain't good. How many times have you texted her?"
"None," Roy admits. "She's the one who likes space, though, I'm the fucking fridge magnet. Just trying to give her what she needs."
"Mate, if you were a fridge magnet, I think you'd have texted."
It's a fair point. He's not sure why he hasn't, really. Maybe because right now they're on even footing, neither of them reaching out, and if he texts and she ignores it...
He's fucking scared, is what it is. He's scared that she's going to break up with him, but he's even more scared that this is just... what a relationship looks like to her. That she'll always prioritise everything else in her life above him, that he's always going to have to be the one who texts first. He's been waiting to find out how long it will take her to miss him.
Christ, he's pathetic. He picks up his phone again and pulls up the camera, intending to snap a picture of Jamie's stupid caffeinated apostrophes, but Jamie's hand flies up to block him.
"Your fucking eyes are closed, how did you even—"
"Process photos are by request only," Jamie informs him sternly. "Keeley knows that, she'd be furious. Send the view from the bathroom with the toilet in frame, that's the best photo op here."
Roy's not quite sure he should be taking advice from someone Keeley got so fed up with she dumped him at a formal gala, but he goes ahead and does it anyway. Not like he's been generating any brilliant ideas himself, and the view is incredible.
She texts back while they're eating breakfast in the central patio, a very nice mushroom frittata from Roy's new cookery magazine. The message says Ooh, lovely! Hope you're having a relaxing time I'm busy busy busy with the new job but having so much fun and then an emoji of some hearts.
Jamie shamelessly leans over to read it. "Whoof. Sorry, mate."
"Why are you sorry?" Roy demands. "What's wrong with that? There's hearts!"
"No queshtions," Jamie says, mouth full of frittata. He swallows and stabs the air twice with his fork in the general direction of Roy's phone. "That's a conversation-ender text, that is. She could've sent that to a great-aunt she speaks to once a year. After three days of nothing?" He shakes his head somberly as he goes in for another bite.
"Fuck," Roy murmurs, reading it again. He's fucking right, again. Roy can just picture Keeley saying "hang on, got to get rid of Mum" and firing this off. When the fuck did Jamie fucking Tartt start being so right about everything?
He checks the time. The housekeeper will be here in a few minutes, which means Roy is going to have to fucking meet a person. He wishes he'd waited to send the picture to Keeley until after that ordeal was over. Grumpily, he takes his plate to the sink and starts washing it.
"I can do that," Jamie says from behind him, sounding puzzled. He's been doing all the washing-up so far.
Roy just grunts. The more he can get done before this person turns up, the sooner they'll leave.
He's just finishing up when there's a perfunctory knock at the door before it swings open. "Hello!" a woman's voice calls. "Everybody decent?"
At least she speaks English. Roy walks stiffly into the front hall and nods. "Hi."
She's short and compact with medium-length dark hair just starting to get streaks of gray, wearing worn jeans and a faded yellow T-shirt, briskly unloading cleaning supplies from an alcove Roy hadn't even noticed. "Hi, I'm Emma," she says, friendly enough but not paying him much attention. "Any nasty spills I should know about?"
"No," Roy says. "We're fine looking after ourselves, actually, so you don't even need to be here."
"Oh?" She pauses briefly, fixing him with a cool stare. "And how are you at looking after my geraniums?"
Roy hadn't thought of that. "I could... if you tell me what to..."
"If you haven't left me any messes, I'll be done in about an hour," she says, going back to her work. "Stay out of my way and we'll be fine."
Roy might, possibly, be slightly in love.
"Er, hi there," Jamie says, stepping out from behind him. "Emma, did you say? I'm Jamie, this is Roy. Beautiful place, is it yours?"
"Hah," she says. "If I could afford this, you wouldn't be here."
"Fair enough," says Roy. "Sorry about—" He waves at Jamie's tiny trunks, which are neon orange today. "He refuses to wear a shirt. Can't take him anywhere."
Emma eyes Jamie up and down. "Not a problem."
Oh, she'll never get rid of him now. He's already shifting from his default semi-preen into full peacock mode. "She said to stay out of her way," Roy says, attempting to herd Jamie back into the kitchen.
"He can stay in my way." Emma holds out a bucket. "You're strong enough to go fill this up with water for me, aren't you, honey? Just up to this line here."
Roy leaves them to it. He takes a beer and a book to the outdoor sofa, which has become his second-favourite spot in the villa after the Toilet of Serenity, though the sun is a bit intense this time of day. He'd spend more time in the central patio if there were anywhere comfortable to sit, but there's only those spindly little chairs that creak ominously under any weight. This is a much better spot to relax and read.
Emma comes out briefly to check the pH in the pool and water the potted plants, but there's not too much that needs doing—Jamie has been diligently keeping the water skimmed, and the lawn has an automatic sprinkler system that turns on at night. She disappears back into the villa before long, and Roy stays absorbed in his book until Jamie trots out to announce that she's left.
"She asked if we wanted her to restock the fridge and I told her you're a picky bastard who likes to choose his own veg so no," Jamie reports. "But I asked her about the cheese you liked and she said she'll bring more next week."
Roy grunts, pleased despite himself. He's been pining for that Iberico.
"She thinks me and you are together," Jamie adds, sitting down cross-legged on the stone tiles despite the multiple seating options surrounding him.
Roy tenses up. "Why the fuck would she think that, when you've spent this whole time flirting with her?"
"'Cause she changed the sheets and there were only one set of sheets to change."
Fuck. That does make sense. "You didn't correct her?"
Jamie glances up at him, squinting one eye against the sun. "And say what? That we've been sleeping naked in the same bed because of a totally platonic pissing match over a loo?"
Roy cringes away from that conversation with his entire body. "Well. Sorry for the cockblock."
"I weren't actually trying to get off with her," Jamie says, like it's obvious.
"Why not?" Roy might have, if he were available. And if she didn't obviously prefer the alternative. "Have you got a problem with older women?"
"No. She's fit." Jamie draws his knees up to his chin. "Just... I've never been able to actually date a man, you know? It were nice, having her think that. I liked it. And she ain't selling it, you know she ain't the type."
Roy doesn't know that, but he's somewhat surprised to realise that he trusts Jamie's judgement. Not about everything, obviously, but for some reason Roy doesn't think he'd be wrong about this.
Or about Keeley's fucking text.
*
The next day Roy doesn't pay enough attention whilst applying sun cream to Jamie's back and Jamie gets a sunburn that, according to his whining, rivals the Iron Maiden in depths of pure agony.
"Will you stop being such a child?" Roy chides him, grumpy about how guilty he feels. "It's the size of a banana."
"It's the size of Portugal," Jamie howls, half-muffled by a cushion. "I need more aloe!"
They're in a sitting room area in the villa that they'd barely stepped into before today because there's no use staying indoors on a seaside holiday, but Jamie's affliction is too delicate for any amount of proximity to sunlight. He's made Roy drag the daybed over to a wall with no windows—because apparently a sunburn on his back prevents his fucking arms from functioning—and is now lying face-down on it creating as much drama as possible.
"I put more aloe on two minutes ago," Roy says. "You'll go through the tube in an hour at this rate."
"And then you'll go buy me more, because this is your fault."
Roy dabs on another layer of aloe gel. "There. Happy?"
"No," Jamie moans. "It hurts and I'm bored and I can't lean and all my sitting has got leaning in. Why did you have to put it there?"
"I didn't fucking put—" Roy sighs. "Look, do you want to borrow one of my books? I've just finished one you might like, it's about a Prem footballer and a hot lady reporter."
Jamie peeks out from the cushion. "Will you read it to me?"
Roy struggles with this for a moment, because he's just finished reading it himself, but he gives in. "Only because it's my fucking fault," he snarls, mostly at himself, and he goes to get the book.
When he comes back, Jamie has completely dropped the attitude. "It's not really that bad," he mumbles into the cushion. Roy spreads his hands at no one, bewildered by the about-face, and Jamie props himself up on his elbows with only a minor wince. "I mean, it hurts, but I'll be all right. Good opportunity to practise me radish exceptions, y'know?"
"No, I do not fucking know." Roy warily eases himself into a chair that looks like a satellite dish, which turns out to be surprisingly comfortable. "What the fuck do you mean, radish exceptions?"
"Like, when everything's shit," Jamie says, as if that's any explanation.
Roy spends a minute mouthing radish exceptions to himself, trying to work out what words Jamie could be mangling. He gets nowhere.
Jamie wiggles impatiently and then freezes with a pained gasp that actually sounds genuine. "Are you going to read that or not?" he demands.
Books, Roy quickly learns, are an interactive pastime for Jamie Tartt. He's constantly commenting on plot developments and making predictions and addressing the characters directly. Roy tries to get him to shut up and listen a few times, then gives up and just waits out the interruptions. It takes forever to get through a chapter that way, but efficiency isn't the goal here. They've got plenty of time.
At one point Jamie snaps a picture of the book's cover while Roy is reading, and a few minutes later Roy gets a text from Keeley saying Is Jamie with you?
"How the fuck did she know that?" Roy asks, showing Jamie the text.
"Must've recognised your furry paws on the 'gram. I cropped out your face."
"On the what?"
Jamie shows Roy the photo on his own phone, where it turns out he's been posting on Instagram. Roy taps back through the post, looking at them all: Roy's hands holding the book, the tip of a watering can being poured into a potted plant, a shell on the beach, spinach on a chopping board, a full wine glass with the sky streaked orange and pink in the background. One for each day they've been here.
"Don't post anything that gives away where we are," Roy warns, handing the phone back.
Jamie shoots him a contemptuous look. "Thanks, needed that tip since I just got famous yesterday."
Roy swats at him, but doesn't make contact because he doesn't want to aggravate the sunburn. "Why haven't you posted the view from the toilet? You said that's the best photo op here."
"Because it were yours. Oh, but you don't even have socials, do you?" Jamie's face lights up. "I get everything! Shit, I should always go on holiday with old people!"
This feels like that time Roy's dad asked him how much internet would fit on a DVD, only now Roy is the fucking dad. "What the fuck do you mean, it was mine?"
"You don't want to post the same thing as your mates, so you split up the posts," Jamie explains. "Unless you're coordinating, but that's mostly for special announcements. Like if two people get engaged, they might post the same photo of their hands with the rings on at the same time. But for regular posting, you divvy up the good shit. Like if me and you both saw that sick shell on the beach and wanted to post it—" he sees Roy's eyebrows and hastily amends "—I mean, if I was on holiday with Isaac and we both wanted to post that shell, we'd talk to each other and decide who gets it. Maybe trade, like I let him have the shell if I get dibs on the next good food post that comes up."
Roy had no idea there was an entire fucking barter economy behind their incessant posting. "And you decided I had dibs on the toilet view?"
"Yeah, because you were so into it. Like, if I took a pic of the shell and I was about to post it and then Isaac saw it and went Whooooaaaa, bruv, look at that fucking shell, then we wouldn't need to talk about it, I'd just let him have it."
"But..." Roy is trying very hard to see the world through Jamie's strange little eyes. "If I got automatic dibs on the toilet view because I liked it so much more than you did, then why didn't you just let me have the bed?"
Jamie stares at him, and Roy immediately regrets asking the question. He doesn't actually want to discuss the bed-sharing. But Jamie's hesitation turns out to be nothing but confusion. "What the fuck are you on about? Why would you post the bed? That duvet is just beige."
Roy doesn't see the conversation going anywhere productive from there. He looks back down at Keeley's text: Is Jamie with you?
Yeah when you said no to the trip I had a fucking breakdown and abducted him, he types, then he slowly taps the delete key character by character until it only says Yeah and sends it.
She responds immediately. Wow! Incredible progress I'm proud of you both!
"Read, read, read, read," Jamie starts chanting, flicking Roy's good knee repeatedly, and Roy is about to tell him to fuck off when he realises with a shock that he actually would rather be reading to Jamie than texting Keeley right now.
Progress, he thinks. That's one way to put it.
*
Roy is halfway through the first sentence of chapter four when it hits him that he's not thought this through.
It's the chapter with the first sex scene of the book, which is by no means the last sex scene of the book. There's a whole load of guilty forbidden hookups, and then they stop fucking for a while because for some fucking reason everyone's always got to be miserable three-quarters of the way through every romance book, and then at the end when they officially get together there's one more big sex scene. That one's going to be unbearably long out loud, especially with Jamie interrupting to commentate. Roy can't imagine what kind of filth is going to come out of that mouth during a sex scene. But he's about to find out, unless he stops here.
He's got two options, and one of them is backing down. So.
"Natalie regretted the words the second they'd left her lips," he reads. "She kept her expression neutral, hoping he wouldn't realise the power he had over her, but she could practically hear the sound of cogs grinding through his thick skull as he worked it out."
"Told her so," Jamie interjects, pleased with himself. "Should've kept her mouth shut."
"'What happens if I won't do the interview, then?' Jack asked. 'You can't write this big story without any quotes from the person it's about, can you? So if you never finish writing the article, he'll never reassign you back to tennis. You'll have to stay here and cover football forever.'
'You called me a soggy blanket,' she reminded him, desperate to stop the savage smile spreading across his face. 'You said I was killing the party in the press room. You don't want me to cover football forever.'"
"Think maybe he does," Jamie puts in.
Roy braces himself. "'Maybe I do,' Jack—"
"Ohhhhhh!" Jamie rockets up from the daybed with his fists raised, sunburn entirely forgotten. "Did you hear that? I read his mind! I could fucking write this book! Jaaamieeee Tartt doo-doo-doo-doo-doo—"
Roy opens his mouth, fully intending to be an arsehole. He's going to tell Jamie to sit the fuck down, or ask him whether he wants to hear this or not, or possibly take the piss out of him singing his own fucking chant. The little shit fucking deserves it.
And then he remembers Jamie saying you don't actually want me to shut the fuck up, and he hesitates. Because... it's fucking true, isn't it? He likes that Jamie is so engaged. Keeley's never shown much interest in Roy's books, she just wants to do her own thing while he's doing his thing, and every time he tries to tell her about something he's reading and gets a brushoff—or, worse, a polite fake smile—it makes him feel like shit.
And it does go both ways. Because maybe Jamie can see through Roy telling him to shut up, but Roy can see right through Jamie as well.
"Well done," Roy says, just to find out what will happen.
Jamie freezes mid-self-applause. "What?"
"Well done," Roy repeats, without any sarcasm or irritation.
Jamie stares at him like a dog that's suddenly caught the car it was chasing and hasn't got the faintest clue what to do with it. Roy suppresses a grin with the ease of long practise. He's never considered the possibility that giving Jamie what he wants might be even more fun than denying him.
"Do you want me to keep reading?" Roy asks, pitching it as a genuine question rather than frustration.
"Uh... yeah. Yes, please." Jamie plops back down on the daybed and draws his knees up to his chest, looking dazed.
Roy picks up again where he left off, and Jamie stays absolutely silent as Natalie and Jack start arguing, and then start getting in each other's faces, and then start snogging at the back of the empty press room. Jack shoves his hand down Natalie's trousers and gets her off, and Jamie sits there spellbound, and Roy is fucking enjoying himself.
He finishes the chapter and closes the book, marking his place with a folded tissue. Jamie doesn't move.
"You having a problem there?" Roy teases, nodding at Jamie's drawn-up knees. "You'll find eye contact and a head jerk at the loo won't work on me."
"Not even your favourite super-special loo?" Jamie says, a beat too late to pull off casual. He glances over, smirking at first, then cautiously holding Roy's gaze as his mouth softens.
The whole time they've been here, nothing has felt quite real; and that must be why, in this moment, Roy loses all sense of perspective.
"Go on, then," he says softly. "Go take care of it."
He's expecting more wide eyes and discomfort, but instead Jamie disappears into the downstairs loo before Roy can fully register the size of the bulge in his tiny little trunks.
*
Roy nicks Jamie's sunglasses and, for the first time, goes out to the beach alone. There's no one else out here, thank fuck. He lies down on the sand, staring up at the sky and trying not to think about anything. It doesn't work.
Is it cheating to tell someone to go have a wank, he texts Keeley.
She doesn't answer right away. After a few minutes, Roy turns off the phone's volume and puts it in his pocket. Since Jamie's little lecture on worrying about things that haven't happened, he's found that it helps to keep the sound off—even when he can't stop checking compulsively, he's still got a bit of control over when he's opening himself up to disappointment, instead of just existing in an indefinite state of waiting to hear a notification.
The phone digs into his hip at an awkward angle. These jeans are too tight, and his shirt collar is scratchy as well. Probably should have tried this shit on before buying it.
Soft footsteps approach in the sand, and Jamie comes into view above him, wearing Roy's leather jacket over his green trunks. "There you are," he says. "Wondered if you'd scarpered."
Roy considers saying he was just trying to give Jamie some privacy, but he's not keen to find out what Jamie's magical truth-detection power would have to say about that. "Thought you weren't gracing the sun with your presence until the burn's healed," he says instead.
"I covered it up." Jamie drops down onto the sand next to Roy. "Don't like being all by myself."
"We've not been apart for almost a week," Roy points out. "You're not sick of me yet?"
"Sick of you?" Jamie sounds perplexed. "No."
Roy sits up and stares out at the shimmering surface of the sea, pondering the fact that Jamie just had an orgasm because Roy told him to. The most surprising thing about it, really, is that it doesn't actually feel like anything has changed between them. There's no awkwardness, no nervous tension. Roy read Jamie a story about fingering and then told him to go have a wank, and he did, and it felt completely fucking normal.
"Plank," Roy says. Jamie immediately plants his hands in the sand and settles into position.
Roy sits there, watching him, until his arms start to shake. It takes a while, but eventually Roy can see hints of a tremor. Jamie doesn't say anything, fully focused on holding out as long as he physically can.
He would suck Roy off. As soon as the thought crosses Roy's mind, he's almost certain of it. Right here in public, as well. If Roy told him to, he'd do it and he'd like it.
Roy checks his phone. There's a text from Keeley.
If you're giving sexy orders to hot Spanish girls in bikinis I'll not be thrilled, but if this is just you and Jamie doing your weird you and Jamie thing, I've long since made my peace with that
He slaps his phone facedown on his thigh, exasperated. He doesn't want vague permission to be weird with Jamie. He wants her to say no, he's not allowed to tell other people when to come, he belongs to her and she's not sharing. He wants her to be upset about it, to call him and yell at him, to stake a claim. Or to have some fucking mercy and cut him loose. Or to get into it and start playing three-way games with them both, if that's what she wants, just... some indication that she fucking gives a shit, is that so much to ask?
Jamie's arms look like they're about to give out, but he's stubbornly holding on as long as he can. He's twenty-four years old, a Premier League footballer well on his way to stardom, fit as fuck, his whole life ahead of him, and here he is pouring every molecule of his energy into meeting Roy's expectations. It wouldn't be humanly possible for him to give more of a shit.
"Enough," Roy says, and Jamie collapses.
He's got a half-chub again when he sits up, and he's not trying to hide it. He's smiling—not at Roy, just off into the distance, clearly proud of himself. Roy looks back out at the sea, avoiding any possibility of eye contact, avoiding how fucking right it all feels.
He's not ready. He's not fucking ready to know this about himself.
*
It turns out that when Jamie said he loves crosswords, what he meant was that he loves doing them with his mum, and she's the one who actually provides the answers. They sit on stools at the kitchen island and work their way through more than half the clues for the first puzzle in the book, and they fill in six. Well, almost six.
"Eh, good enough," Jamie says, setting down the pencil.
"It is not fucking good enough," Roy objects. "There's seven boxes there, you've only filled in five. You must be spelling it wrong."
"You spell it, then!"
Roy erases the last two letters of COPLA and adds in an E. There's still an empty box left when he's finished. He scowls down at it.
"Why can't I just look it up?" Jamie whines. "We know the answer, there's no other Francis Ford who directed The Godfather."
"I've told you already, there's no point in doing the fucking thing if you're going to cheat." Roy erases the A and adds another L. That's filled in all the boxes, at least.
"It's not an exam," Jamie grumbles. "And that box can't be an L, it's got a J next to it in the down one."
"Who says an L can't go next to a J?" Roy demands. "Is there a law now? Has the letter J taken out a restraining order against the letter L?"
Jamie throws up his hands. "Fine, have it your way, the Americans have elected Jelly Biden as president."
"Fuck," Roy mutters, and starts erasing again. That's a seventh answer, at any rate, although at some point they'll have to sort out COPEOLA. He can't believe people do this shit for fun. "Macaroni, seven letters. Pasta, that's too short. Spaghetti?"
"It's not macaroni, it's 'Macaroni?'" Jamie points to the question mark on the page. "When they write it like a question, that means it's a trick one. Mummy skips those the first time through, they're easier when you've got some letters already."
Roy hasn't got a clue what Jamie's on about, and he's in no mood to admit it. "Fuck this," he says, attempting to slam the book closed and producing an unsatisfying little fwip since they're only on the first page.
Jamie reclaims the pencil and opens the book again, shaking his head. "How the fuck did you even make it to the Prem in the first place?"
Roy furrows his brow, certain that he ought to be angry but not fully clear on the details of why. "Not by doing fucking crossword puzzles. The fuck kind of academy did you go to?"
"Not the puzzle," Jamie says, like Roy is the one talking nonsense. "I mean giving up when you've not even properly tried." He starts filling in another answer.
"I'm good at football." Roy points at the puzzle. "I'm fucking terrible at this shit. And so are you. Look at that, you can't fucking put two letters in the same fucking box."
"Sometimes you can! There was one where some of the boxes were whole colours, like one of the answers was 'Blue Suede Shoes' but you had to put the word 'blue' all in one box, and the across one was 'true blue' with the 'blue' in the same box. That one took us like a whole week, we kept going back to it every night after dinner, and when Mummy finally worked it out we lost our bloody minds." Jamie puts his hand to his temple and makes an exploding gesture with accompanying sound effect. "Simon heard us screaming and ran in 'cause he thought we must've got hurt. Anyway, that's how I made it to the Prem."
Roy almost gets lost at that last bit, but he catches up. "You're a persistent little shit, all right."
Jamie flashes a bright smile, clearly taking this as praise. "So how'd you ever get to be any good at football if you weren't?"
For some reason, instead of blowing up, Roy actually stops to consider the question. Fuck, that was a long fucking time ago. "Guess I was just always better than everyone else I played with. Whenever I tried new skills I wasn't good at yet, I was still better than the kid next to me, so it didn't feel like failing."
Jamie writes down a letter outside the grid entirely, studies it for a moment, then erases it. "What about when you started in the Prem, then? You weren't the best there, not straight away."
Roy thinks about the folded-up Trent Crimm article in his wallet. "By then I had something to prove. Couldn't quit." He'd fucking thought about it, but what was he going to do, go to fucking university? Football has always been his entire life plan. There was never another option.
"Here, look at this one." Jamie pushes the puzzle over to him. "Twenty-eight down."
Reluctantly, Roy finds the clue. "Former Manchester United manager Roberto—you fucking know this, why the fuck are you asking me?"
"Because you do too, and I want to do it with you." Jamie offers him the pencil.
Roy doesn't respond to that, but he does write in the answer, and then one of those letters helps him get an across answer he knew he knew earlier but couldn't think of at the time, and it does actually feel rather nice.
*
In a way, this trip is Roy's first ever proper holiday. Growing up, his family never had enough money for more than the occasional weekend at the seaside, and as an adult his summers have all been a bit clouded by the ever-looming need to be in shape for the upcoming season. Last year he was injured, and too depressed about his retirement to even think about making any plans. That's why he was so excited about doing this with Keeley, and why he lost his shit when she turned it down. He's never known what it's like to set aside the mundanities of life and really, truly relax, and he wanted to experience it for the first time with her by his side.
Instead, he's experiencing it with Jamie by his side, pretty much literally. Jamie's stopped bothering to lock the bathroom door during his interminable showers, since Roy is only going to make him get out to unlock it anyway, and there's no point in waiting around for him to use up all the hot water when there's plenty of room in there for them both. Roy cooks their meals, and Jamie loiters around getting underfoot until he's given a task of his own. Roy puts Jamie through workouts twice a day, and they argue over the crossword puzzle, and they nap on the daybed. Roy stretches out on the outdoor sofa with a book while Jamie lurks at a nearby window to protect his healing sunburn as he tosses crumbs to the seagulls, several of which he's named. Every evening Roy reads a chapter or two of the romance novel aloud, with frequent pauses for Jamie's animated interruptions, and they go up to bed together. The only time they're apart is when one of them needs a shit.
That's what Roy is doing the next time Emma arrives, and when he comes downstairs, he finds her and Jamie huddled over the crossword book.
"Oi!" Roy protests, oddly hurt. "That's our puzzle!"
He's aware that Jamie would be well within his rights to take the piss out of him for this, but he's not about to acknowledge it outside his own head, so he's gearing up for a fight when Emma says without looking up, "I brought cheese."
Roy makes a beeline for the fridge, where he discovers three wedges of the Iberico. "Fuck yes," he breathes, snatching one even though he had breakfast less than an hour ago. "Have the fucking puzzle. Have the whole fucking book."
"He means thank you," Jamie interprets. "She's aces at spelling, Roy, she's fixed loads of our answers. You won't believe where they've put an O in Coppola."
Roy carefully cuts himself a piece of cheese, trying not to think about Emma judging his shit spelling. He's worried that he's built up this cheese too much in his mind and it won't be as good as he remembers, but one bite takes care of that concern. He closes his eyes as he savours it, lost in rapture. There may or may not be a moan.
"Well, I should get started," Emma says, a smile in her voice. "I'll leave you two alone."
Roy genuinely thinks she's referring to him and the cheese until Jamie says, "She thinks we're about to fuck in here."
"No, she doesn't," Roy says, without opening his eyes. "She thinks I'm about to inhale this entire thing and then pass out, and she is fucking correct." He takes a bite straight out of the wedge, now that he's not being observed by polite company. Fucking Christ, it's good.
"Can I try?" Jamie asks, startling him with how close he is. "I didn't get to taste it before."
That gets Roy to open his eyes. "You didn't?"
Jamie shakes his head. "You liked it so much I didn't want to take any away from you."
He pays so much attention. Roy's not sure anyone's ever paid this much attention to him, at least not anyone who actually knows him. He's had crazy stalker fans, yeah, but they always seem to have some imaginary version of him in their minds that doesn't really resemble him all that much. Jamie pays attention to him, the real him—more attention than Roy pays to himself, to be honest—and sometimes it's fucking unnerving.
"Go help Emma," Roy commands. "If she says you've made yourself useful, you can have some cheese later."
Jamie dashes off, never happier than when he's been given an opportunity to impress. Roy takes the cheese into the central patio to sit by the fountain, wincing when he hears a crunch from the wicker chair beneath him.
He doesn't actually eat the entire wedge of cheese, but he devours a good third of it before his stomach puts its foot down. He may not need to worry about staying in shape anymore, but a two-decade career as a professional athlete has left him with a deep awareness of his body's opinions of his food intake, and he knows better than to disregard them. He wraps up the remainder of the wedge for later.
He's still sitting there enjoying the bubbling of the fountain when Emma comes through to water the multitude of potted plants, Jamie eagerly nipping at her heels. Roy wonders for a moment if he should call him off to give the poor woman a break, but she seems perfectly capable of managing him herself, pointing out plants for him to water across the room one at a time and letting him scurry all the way back to her in between each one to keep him busy. Roy approves of her tactics.
"Oh, I missed the little Chinese money plant in the bathroom window upstairs," she says. "You remember how you saw me do it last time, in the sink? Make sure the water has stopped running from the bottom before you put it back in the saucer."
"Right, yeah, got it!" Jamie speeds away on his mission.
"Smart," Roy says when he's out of earshot.
She's not looking at him, but he can see a bit of her smile. "I raised three kids, I know what I'm doing."
"Thanks for the cheese," Roy says belatedly, realising he didn't actually say it earlier. "Can I pay you back, or will it just go on the bill?"
Emma waves vaguely in the direction of Jamie's thundering footsteps. "He gave me cash for it last week. Enough for four wedges, but I had to try a few different places before I found it again, so I decided I deserved something for my time."
Roy really would go for it if he were single. He's always been easy for self-assured women. Plus, if he hooked up with her, he might be able to talk her into posting that cheese to London sometime. He considers asking where she ended up finding it, but then he would need to spend the rest of the trip exercising far more self-control than he wants to on holiday.
"Sorry about the puzzle," she adds. "I didn't know it was your thing. He asked me how to spell 'wanker' and I got curious. I love crosswords."
Roy wrinkles his forehead. "It's got 'wanker' as an answer?"
She laughs. "Of course not. The clue was 'Anchorman Cronkite' and he didn't know who that was, but he had the W and the ER, so he was guessing. Not a bad approach, in theory, but... well, I can see why you solve them together."
"I'm almost as shit at them as he is," Roy admits, because she's already seen as much.
She shrugs. "Well, being good at things isn't the point of doing them."
Roy is about to ask what the fuck that's supposed to mean when Jamie gallops back down the stairs and hurtles through the stucco archway like he's being timed. "Done!" he announces. "Shall I do the one in the kitchen as well?"
"Already a step ahead of me," she praises, and he beams as he races off.
Roy watches him go, thinking about how stupid his tiny fucking trunks are, and realises too late that she's seen him looking. He panics for half a second, then remembers: she thinks they're together, it's fine for her to catch him looking at Jamie's arse. The relief is unexpectedly intense.
"You don't have to worry, you know," she says. "He's mad about you. Never seen anyone more in love."
"Wasn't worried," Roy mumbles, disquieted, and she shoots him the same exact indulgent smile she's been giving Jamie all morning.
*
Both Jamie's sunburn and Roy's zit have finally healed up enough for the two of them to be seen in public again, so now of course Jamie wants to spend a day mingling at a "proper" (by which he seems to mean public) beach. Which would be fine if he weren't dead-set on dragging Roy along with him. It's important to set clear boundaries, so Roy articulates his words very carefully when he says, "Over my cold, dead, rotten, stinking, decomposing, maggot-encrusted body."
"Why?" Jamie whines. "It's fun to meet fans! Don't you like compliments?"
For a fraction of a second, Roy's mind flashes back to his own glory days partying on beaches amid crowds of people with high hopes for the years ahead. He sighs. "I don't get compliments anymore. What I get is half entitled demands for selfies, half bitching about some goal I should've scored in two thousand fucking nine. Go alone or shut the fuck up."
Apparently Jamie really does know when Roy means what he's saying, because he drops the subject, although not the sulky expression. They're out on the semi-private beach, a few metres away from a family of five that just arrived at the villa next door, and the fact that the family are fully ignoring Roy and Jamie—which Roy considers rather decent of them—is driving Jamie around the fucking bend.
"He's holding the paddle wrong way round," Jamie complains. The tallest of the three children is standing shakily on a paddleboard, trying to propel himself forward and not getting much of anywhere. "You're meant to hold it the other way, I took a class."
Paddleboarding is one of many things Roy has never tried because he suspects he'll be shit at them and humiliate himself. He watches the kid fall off the board and pop back up, already laughing hysterically as his head breaks the surface of the water. He looks like he's having the time of his fucking life.
"Do you think being good at things isn't the point of doing them?" Roy asks.
Jamie shrugs, never thrown off by non sequiturs. "It's one point of doing them. You've got to have backup feelings."
Roy watches the child fail to stand up on the paddleboard for a few more minutes, the usual internal debate raging, and eventually resigns himself to curiosity. "The fuck do you mean, backup feelings?"
"You know, just to make sure. Like, when some tosser from the tabs gets in my face, I know I shouldn't punch him because it's wrong and I've got indemnity."
That one's a challenge, but after a moment Roy gets it from the self-congratulatory tone. "Integrity?"
"Yeah. I'm a good person now, you know. So I shouldn't punch him because it's wrong, that's the main reason. But when I'm all worked up sometimes I forget about being a good person, so I've got to have other reasons as well. I shouldn't fight him because I could get hurt and miss matches. And because if it was in the papers, Mummy would worry. And maybe I'm wearing a nice shirt I don't want to get blood on." He lovingly caresses his bare chest, the knobhead. "Backup feelings, you know. Extra reasons to fall back on, just in case."
Roy thinks about how much less violent he's been since Phoebe was born, how many times he's forced himself to take a breath instead of starting a brawl because he didn't want her to google him someday and see that shit. "Makes sense."
Jamie glows, like he always does when Roy expresses the slightest hint of approval. "Right, I can't keep watching this, back in a tick." He hops up and starts to race toward the water.
Fuck's sake. "Get back here!" Roy barks.
Jamie skids to a stop like a cartoon character, spraying sand everywhere, and jogs back to Roy. "What?"
"Don't just run up to a fucking child who doesn't know you, you fuckwit." Roy gestures to the parents, who are now eyeing Jamie with some trepidation. "Talk to them first, ask if it's all right to offer some tips or whatever. And walk. Fucking sedately."
Jamie obeys, like he always does, and Roy scowls at the unwelcome rush of satisfaction coursing through his body. Christ, what is it about this twat? Roy's never been all that bossy in the bedroom—prefers it the other way round, even—but now that the idea of sex with Jamie has broken containment and entered his conscious awareness, it's becoming clear that his dick contains multitudes.
This situation is not fucking tenable. Without giving himself time to get caught up in another anxiety spiral, he picks up his phone and calls Keeley.
"Roy!" She sounds pleased to hear from him, which is something.
"Hello, Keeley," he says. "I think we ought to talk about..." He clenches his jaw and forces the word out through gritted teeth. "Feelings."
He doesn't notice the background noise on the call until it fades away, as if Keeley has closed a door. "I think you're right," she says quietly. "Only... if this ends with a breakup, can you please tell me now and not drag it out?"
Roy can't even speak for a moment, overwhelmed by the relief. Keeley makes a tiny whimpering noise into the silence, and he blurts out, "No, no, no breakup! Not if you don't—I mean, I hadn't heard from you, so I thought you—no. I don't want to break up."
She lets out a long breath. "All right. Phew, god, I've been a mess thinking it was coming any minute. I'm sorry I haven't been in touch, I thought you could use a bit of space but I think that just made it worse, and I'm really sorry I couldn't go with you, honestly if it was any other summer I'd have rearranged things but with the new—"
"No, I get it." Roy feels like the worst boyfriend in the universe. "It was stupid of me to think you'd just drop everything like that. Of course you should put your career first. How's it going so far?"
"Really well!" Her voice sounds light and perky again, and the sense of wrongness that's been haunting him every time he thinks of her finally begins to fade away. "There's so much to do, the days just aren't long enough, but I'm loving it so much. This is what I want, Roy. I never knew how much I wanted it until I got it."
"I'm really happy for you," he says, and he means it. He's been far too selfish, making everything about him.
"Thank you," she says, and he can hear the smile. "Right, so if you're not dumping me... what are the feelings we should talk about?"
Roy is sorely tempted to chicken out and say that's all it was, that he only wanted to make sure they weren't breaking up... but Jamie chooses that exact moment to rise up to a standing position on the paddleboard, glistening with dripping water, and Roy steels himself.
"I didn't understand," he says, keeping his voice low. "What you said, about making your peace with the weird me and Jamie thing. What does that mean? You'd be all right with it if I fucked him?"
"Um," she says, and pauses for a moment. "Is that... actually a possibility?"
Roy immediately regrets everything. "No. Of course not. Never mind."
"Roy."
He groans. "It's fucking stupid. Never even occurred to me until..." He shakes his head, glaring daggers at Jamie's pert wet arse. "Feels like whenever I'm scared of losing something, my brain goes 'haHA, can't take it away from me if I've already ruined it myself!' It's fucked and I'm sorry for making it your problem. I wouldn't cheat on you, I swear."
She's silent for a moment, then she says, "Right. I've got a meeting in five minutes, and I don't think this is a five-minute conversation."
"It's not even a one-minute conversation," Roy insists. "I'm having stupid feelings for stupid reasons and I'm going to ignore them until they go away. Ta-da, conversation over."
Keeley snorts. "Great, that's that sorted! But if by some chance the feelings don't magically disappear... we'll talk it over when I've got a bit more time, all right?"
"Fuck off," Roy grumbles, and she laughs, and by the time they've hung up, things feel almost normal.
That night, Roy finishes reading the romance novel aloud. Jamie's commentary on the extended final sex scene consists entirely of comparing it to his own escapades and pronouncing himself the superior lover, which Roy really should have seen coming. After they've finished, Jamie reminds Roy that he's earned a taste of the Iberico, and fetches it from the kitchen on command, and then—fully of his own fucking volition—fucking kneels by Roy's chair with that obscene fucking mouth open and waiting.
Roy feeds him one bite of cheese, sends him up to bed, eats the rest of the wedge himself, and spends about ten minutes staring at nothing before finally texting Keeley: If the feelings don't magically disappear, are we fucked?
The horrible little three-dot symbol appears and disappears a few times before her reply comes through: I hope not. Talk soon.