Friday, 14th October 2022

"Tartt, my office," Roy yelled from his desk.

He heard the team scatter and then one lone set of footsteps heading towards his office.

"Coach?" Jamie asked, hopping up on the corner of Roy's desk.

Roy bared his teeth at the younger man, but Jamie just smiled at him. "Did you spend £2,000 at some place called 'Hawkeye's Pixel'?"

"Yep."

"What is it?"

"Art."

Roy growled. "What type of art?"

"Mint art, gonna look fucking epic in the dining room, on the opposite wall to the window."

"You used my card."

"I can follow instructions, Coach."

"Good," Roy said with a bite of a smile.

"That's all you is asking me about? Did you see the charge for a bed for the spare room?"

"Yes, don't buy anything for the two bedrooms upstairs."

"Why?"

Roy grunted.

"That weren't an answer, Roy."

"I need a favour," Roy said, changing the subject, "can you leave training early and go and get Phoebe from school? Ruth was called into surgery, and I have a meeting with Beard, Nate, and a suit from the Champions League."

"Cool," Jamie said. "We can brainstorm what you're planning for the upstairs bedrooms."

Roy growled but nodded and watched Jamie bounce away. He picked up his phone and messaged Ruth back.

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Roy opened the front door to…fucking Platypus Green and stopped just inside the doorway.

"What the fuck is this?" Roy asked.

Phoebe and Jamie were sitting on the floor, surrounded by a large pile of…a small meow came from the bundle Phoebe was cradling.

"Fuck, no."

Jamie looked up at him. "Close the door, we don't want to let Cruyff out."

"What did you do?" Roy growled.

Phoebe handed the bundle to Jamie, who carefully cradled it to his chest, before she stood and rushed over to Roy. "We found him, Jamie came to collect me from school because Mum was called into work and he and I were walking back to the car and we heard this noise and there Cruyff was, so little and wet and dirty, just huddled against a fence and so Jamie took his shirt off…and Mr Kenwick walked into a car, but he was okay. Jamie collected the little kitten up and he took us to the vet and paid extra so we got seen first, he even paid all of the people waiting so they didn't mind us jumping the queue and I told the vet that I want to be a wild animal vet and then she checked Cruyff out and it's so little that it really shouldn't be away from its mother but we don't know where its mother is and the kitten isn't chipped and it was malnourished and so Jamie said he would adopt it and he said he was naming it after the man who invented Totally Football and then the vet told us what we needed to do to bring Cruyff straight home. But we left the kitten with the vet to do vet things while we went to the pet store and bought a bunch of stuff for the kitten and Jamie signed a bunch of autographs and took a bunch of photos with mums, and some dads, because he still wasn't wearing a shirt. Then we collected Cruyff, and we have to take him back soon for shots and for regular check-ups but Jamie said if it's okay with Mum I can come with him any time he needs to take Cruyff to the vet and we only got home about ten minutes ago and we've just been trying to get Cruyff used to his new home."

Roy looked at Jamie, who was looking up at him, the kitten just peaking out of what Roy now realised was Jamie's top from earlier in the day.

"Fuck."

Jamie beamed. "Mint, thanks, Roy."

"What?" Phoebe asked, looking between them.

"Uncle Roy is going to let me keep Cruyff here with me."

Roy growled and started for the back of the house. "I'm making dinner, have you eaten anything since school, Phoebe?"

Phoebe shook her head. "We've been so busy."

"What do you want for dinner?"

"Can we have bacon and egg and salad sandwiches?"

Roy nodded. "Jamie, what do you want from the freezer."

"Can't Jamie have dinner with us?" Phoebe asked. "I know it's not on his diet, but you make them so good."

"It's okay, Fifi, I'll ask Uncle Roy to make them for me again when I can eat them. I'll have the rice bake."

Roy nodded and continued towards the kitchen.

"The cat does not go in the bedroom, ever." Roy said, when he came back a few minutes later.

"'course not," Jamie said. "For now, she's going to have to stay in the laundry at night – until we can be sure she knows how to use to kitty litter."

"Cruyff is a girl cat?" Roy asked.

"Yeah," Jamie said.

"Then why did you name her Cruyff?"

"Because Cruyff is amazing and transcends gender."

Roy nodded and walked back to peer down at the cat. "Let me look at the little thing that's going to live in my house."

Jamie pulled the fabric away. "The vet cleaned her up."

"What colour is she?" Roy asked, he could see ginger, black, and white fur.

Jamie smiled up at Roy. "Moggy."

Roy rolled his eyes aggressively. He turned and took half a step, freezing when Jamie grabbed his ankle. Roy looked down at Jamie with furrowed eyebrows.

"Your house?" Jamie asked, looking up at him with wide eyes.

"What?"

"You said the cat was going to be in your house," Jamie said.

Roy looked down at Jamie's hand and then back up to his face. "I'm going to live in this house when it's done."

Jamie face did something complicated and his hand let go of Roy's ankle. He looked down at the cat and tucked it back up. "Good thing you got the underfloor heating, Cruyff is going to need it."

"Yes," Roy said, taking a slow step back.

"I'm going to unpack all of Cruyff's things," Phoebe said. "Can I put music on?"

"Yeah," Jamie told her. "Where's my phone?"

Phoebe dug through the things until she found Jamie's phone and handed it over, she bounced over to turn on the Bluetooth speaker and leaned over Jamie's shoulder to pick what she wanted to listen to. Phoebe wrapped her arms around Jamie.

"I knew Uncle Roy would fall in love with this house," Phoebe said. "I knew he was going to want to live here forever. It's going to be wonderful, and you get to live here too."

Jamie sighed. "I don't think Uncle Roy is going to want me to live with him."

Jamie wondered if he was going to have to start following Roy's routine; weekends and Wednesday nights together and then mornings after their training. Outside of that, just seeing one another at work and lonely nights three nights of the week wishing there was a hairy body next to him. Jamie wanted to cry; he'd lost the house he had started to feel of as a home and was reminded again that he wasn't Roy's and that Roy wasn't his. Phoebe must have sensed his sadness because she hugged him again, more tightly.

They ate dinner, music playing through the room breaking up the quiet from Jamie not talking much, Phoebe chattering about Dauphine and introducing the two cats since they were going to be cousins.

"Uncle Roy, can I have a room here?" Phoebe asked.

"Yes, you can pick one of the two rooms upstairs."

Jamie looked up sharply. "That's why you didn't want me to do anything for the upstairs rooms?"

Roy nodded. "Thought you'd want to design it yourself, Phoebe."

Jamie looked between Roy and Phoebe and stood up. "I'm just going to get things set up in the laundry."

"Jamie," Roy said, Jamie looked at him. "Are you…do you need a hand?"

Jamie shook his head. "I've got it."

Jamie went back into the other room and collected the box of matting and the kitty litter and tray. He set it all up in the laundry, turned the heating on to the temperature the vet had recommended and then sat down on the floor with Cruyff and fed the cat. Cruyff meowed at him and ate like the hungry little kitten she was before pouncing on his hand.

"Nope," Jamie said, scooping her up. "You haven't been eating properly so you just get little bits a few times more a day until you're all better and then you can eat more."

Cruyff meowed at him again and Jamie noticed that the tuffs of darker fur above the kitten's eyes made her look a little like Roy. Jamie sighed, letting Cruyff knead at his chest; the little claws catching in his clothes. Phoebe opened the door and came in, sitting next to Jamie.

"Did you get some ice cream?" Jamie asked.

Phoebe shook her head. "Fruit, Uncle Roy said maybe tomorrow. Mum's just called him so I think I'm sleeping over."

"Are you going to be okay in the room downstairs?" Jamie asked.

"Can I sleep in here with Cruyff?"

Jamie shook his head. "No, you have to sleep in a bed."

"What are you both doing in here?" Roy asked, peering around the door.

"Hanging with Cruyff and working out where I'm going to sleep," Phoebe told him.

"Your mum needs to stay overnight at the hospital," Roy told her.

Phoebe nodded. "That's what I thought."

"So, I'll take you back to your house," Roy said. He looked at Jamie. "I'll have to stay there and come back tomorrow."

Phoebe sighed and rolled her eyes. "Uncle Roy, I can stay here."

"You don't have any clothes or a place to sleep."

Phoebe looked at Roy and then towards Jamie before looking back at Roy. "Then we can go home and grab some things, and I can come back and spend the night at your new house and tomorrow we can start planning my room."

"We have a game," Roy told her.

"It's a nighttime game, at home, we can do a little planning, right?"

"No," Roy told her. "But when you're here next time we can start planning."

"So, I can stay here?"

Roy nodded. "Come on, we need to get to your house and back before it gets too late."

"I'll make up the bed in the spare room before going for a run," Jamie told them.

Jamie ran for longer than he normally would, pushing himself until his brain grew quiet.

He'd promised himself that he was going to see this through, no matter that Roy was only in it for the sex because Jamie knew that Roy thought of him as his best friend now. When, inevitably, this all ended, at least Jamie would have the memories of it all and a best friend.

Jamie turned and headed for Roy's house. He was going to reach out to his real estate agent again and start looking for a place; something like this house. Jamie wanted to build something that made him feel the way Platypus Green had been feeling all this time. Jamie would need to think of it as Roy's now instead of just home. When he returned, Roy was sitting on the bed with Phoebe reading her a book.

"Jamie," Phoebe called out, when he poked his head in.

"All set, Pheobe?"

Phoebe nodded. "I'm really looking forward to staying here for my very first night. I gave Dauphine lots of hugs and told her she has a cousin."

Jamie smiled at her. "We need to plan an introduction."

Phoebe nodded emphatically.

"What are you reading?"

"'Keeper of Lost Cities', it's the first in a series."

"Does Roy do the voices?"

Roy growled at him.

Jamie laughed. "Goodnight, Fifi, see you in the morning. I'm going to have a shower."

He left them to it, showering, and crawling into bed, flicking through the book of Greek myths but none of them looked interesting.

Roy opened the door. "She's going to be in the laundry with that fucking cat at first light."

Jamie nodded. "Yeah."

"I can't go on your run with you tomorrow," Roy told him, stripping off and dropping his clothes in the basket before walking into the bathroom.

"I know," Jamie called.

"Which god are you reading about tonight?" Roy asked, ten minutes later, walking to the doorway of the bathroom as he dried his chest hair.

"None of them are interesting," Jamie told him, finally putting the book away.

"What are we doing with the bed down there now that you've bought a new one?" Roy asked.

"It could go in the other room up here that Phoebe isn't claiming," Jamie offered, surprised that Roy was still asking for his opinion.

"I thought you might need that for your clothes," Roy said.

"My clothes?"

"I've seen your fucking wardrobe and now that the house is almost finished you can move the rest of your shit in here."

"Here?"

"Unless…I don't want you to feel you have to move but if you don't want to keep living here…"

"I can keep living here?" Jamie asked, trying desperately to keep up.

"If you want to."

"Even when you move in?"

Roy nodded, he pulled on a pair of pyjama bottoms from his drawer and turned off the bathroom light. He came over to the bed, sliding under the covers. "These fucking sheets are amazing, are you buying more for downstairs?"

Jamie nodded. "To match the décor."

"I've called a guy about building Phoebe a treehouse in that big tree in the backyard."

"Mint."

"I've fallen in love with this house," Roy said slowly, like he'd been practising the words. "You've made it something more than my other properties."

Jamie wanted to cry; he remembered thinking that that's what he wanted to do once. He'd thought about trying to make this house something that Roy could call a home and now that he had, Jamie felt like there was a Platypus Green sized hole in his heart.

"You can stay as long as you want," Roy said. "And this is safer than your house, should your dad come around again. I would understand if you didn't want to spend that much time together or if you'd prefer me not to stay in here with you. I can always move in downstairs."

"Downstairs?"

"If you want time on your own."

"You don't need to move in downstairs."

"Offers always there," Roy told him.

"It's your house and this is-"

"Don't want you to feel like I'm just taking it over."

Jamie stared at Roy in confusion. Roy smiled at him and reached out, tugging Jamie closer, until the younger man was using his chest for a pillow and Jamie's fingers were making a home in his chest hair.

"Then I can stay here with you?" Jamie asked.

"If you're okay with me staying here with you."

Jamie nodded, breathing out the idea of having this every night and then one day losing it. He took a moment to wonder and then decided, it was worth it, even this little slice of what he wanted was worth it. He wriggled up and kissed Roy.

"We can't," Roy told him, pulling away from Jamie a long while later when Jamie's lips were tingling.

"What? Why not?"

"Phoebe's downstairs, she might come up."

"And she can't see us kissing?" Jamie asked, the euphoria of kissing Roy turning quickly into dread.

"Of course she can," Roy said, kissing Jamie again. "We just can't do anything else."

Jamie let out a breath. "Oh, yeah. Of course."

Roy pulled Jamie back into another kiss, hooking his knee over Jamie's to get more comfortable and settling down into long, slow kisses until they both grew sleepy and fell asleep curled together.

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