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~~~
“So what’re you doin’ for your birthday, Coach?”
The question’s so unexpected, asked so abruptly, that it almost sends Roy sprawling out of the rhythmic jog he’s fallen into at Jamie’s side and straight to the gravel below.
As it is, he skids to a quick stop and faces his star player, arms held stiffly at his sides. Waits for Jamie to notice he’s gone and hurriedly circle back to stand in front of him before replying. Quick feet and a quicker smile; the professional-menace doesn’t seem to care that he’s brought Roy to a dead-stop with just his words.
“The fuck did you just say?”
Despite the fact that they’ve been jogging for nearly an hour, Jamie isn’t even winded, breathing calm and even in contrast to Roy’s quick puffs. The extra training they’ve kept up even after Roy had been named Manager is keeping his striker-turned-conductor’s fitness levels well above Roy’s own former-professional-now-retired-athlete standards.
“Your birthday, Coach? What’re you doing for it?”
“Who says I’m doing anything?” And why the fuck is he asking?
“Aren’t you?” Jamie’s voice is earnest, his expression open. He’s asking because he actually wants to know. Little prick.
“No. I never do anything.”
“Oh.”
“What?”
“Well I just figured you’d been doing things but I never heard about it ‘cause you hated me.”
Fucks sake.
Sometimes Roy thinks about the first time he met Jamie. Properly met him. He’d encountered him before sure, as just another fresh-faced-little-fuck on an opposing line up, appearing out of the depths of the sport’s youth academies, come to make Roy feel like a decrepit fucking dinosaur. But the first time he’d met Jamie had been at Richmond.
The lad had introduced himself to Roy, made some crack about both of them being stuck together in the ass end of football-nowhere. With his hair gelled up in some ridiculous peacock style, smirk firmly in place and stupidly-tattooed arm propped on his hip, Roy had written him off as an arrogant man-child without hesitation.
He wonders what he would do differently now if given half the chance. Knowing what he knows now about that 23 year old Prince-Prick-Peacock. Because Roy never hated him. Wanted to take him down a peg him and make him learn some fucking humility, yes. But he never hated him. It makes something uncomfortable curdle in his gut knowing that Jamie still thinks he ever did.
“Fucking- it ain’t that. Look, I grew up in a shit part of South London in a tiny block of flats, then I was at Sunderland, then I was playing and it was all nightclubs and shit and then I stopped wanting to think about it and now we’re just fucking… here."
The truth is Roy stopped wanting to celebrate his birthday a while ago. When another year around the sun stopped feeling like something to celebrate. When his career started getting uncomfortably closer to its end than its start. ‘ Happy Birthday ’ and fucking kazoos feeling more and more like the toll of a bell. Inevitable; growing louder; getting uncomfortably close. Causing some fucking tinnitus that sounded like ding-dong-you’re-slowly-dying to echo in his ears.
He doesn’t want to say that to Jamie. Jamie’s still young. He’s so young, but in football years… well, Roy doesn’t want Jamie to start thinking about that same bell. But he also doesn’t want Jamie to think he’s keeping something from him because he fucking hates him of all things. He’s trying to reassure Jamie.
Apparently he misses the mark because the younger man goes quiet, his hands fall to bunch under his sweatshirt; a tell-tale indicator Roy’s learnt to recognise as a sign of Jamie’s rising anxiety.
“Sorry.”
Oh great now he’s saying sorry. Roy’s getting tired of fucking shit up with this kid, but he’d probably give the Muppet a heart attack if he started being gentle with him now.
“The fuck are you apologising for?”
“I dunno.” Jamie does the stupid head tilt thing that makes him look like a walnut-mist coloured fucking Labrador. "I’m just sorry, I guess.”
Roy watches as Jamie straightens his head back up; his brows crunch together, his eyes slide away and his mouth drops lax. All sure signs that he’s trying to string more than two consecutive thoughts together.
“I grew up in a council estate.”
God help them both if that’s all the little idiot’s come up with.
Forget reassurance, it never fucking works anyway. Now he has to work to keep the irritation from his voice. He’s only mostly successful, “I know, you fucking Muppet, I was there remember?” Twice as it turns out; as paper, scowling out from a royal blue poster, football caught under his boot. Then as himself, good intentions and poor planning wrapped in black leather, frozen on a couch, staring dumbfounded at a puzzle of a person he realised he wasn’t even halfway to solving.
“Yeah, yeah I just mean I didn’t have much growing up either. But me Mum always did stuff for my birthday.”
Oh. Right.
“Like what?”
“She always got the day off work yeah, had to pull a double shift the week before to earn it, she’d take me to the park and let me chase her round in circles for hours. Then when I got tired we’d go back home and put on music. She’s the one who got me listening to Tina Turner and the like. She’d stick this little chef's hat on me head and we’d make a cake together. Well mainly her, but she let me lick the spoons. It were always a different cake too, and she’d always put food colouring in it. Didn’t work so well with the chocolate but I got a pink sponge cake when I turned ten.”
Roy imagines a tiny Jamie; miniature version of his blinding grin firmly fixed in place, face no doubt inexplicably covered in frosting, ever-restless legs kicking against the kitchen counter while Georgie gives him the same soft smile he’s seen her wear looking at her now adult son.
It’s not as hard to picture as he thinks it maybe should be.
“Sounds nice.”
Jamie's eyes finally flash to his own; any anxiety housed in them long gone. The contact lets Roy see that they’ve started sparking in the way he’s grown to rightfully fear. The sparks that promise bike theft and a mis-printed Three Lions kit, prick signals and joking cheers’ to his future death.
“It was.” Jamie smiles at him, those dangerous sparks grow briefly brighter before the menace takes off, bouncing away on quick feet.
~~~
Jamie doesn’t bring up Roy’s birthday again. It would be enough to let Roy embrace his tentative sense of hope that Jamie has let something go for once in his little-prick life, but the lad’s acting weird . He’s taken to sending blistering smiles Roy’s way every time he so much as looks at him, and the tone he’s been saying ‘Coach’ with can only be described as a chirp. He knows the Muppet is almost as much of a chipper little dickhead as Dani these days but it’s getting a bit ridiculous.
It all makes sense when Jamie shows up on his doorstep the day before Roy’s 41st birthday clutching two Waitrose bags at his sides, Muppet-grin stretching so far across his stupid face it’s reaching true puppet-proportions.
Roy has to forcibly remind himself he absolutely-under-no-circumstances-definitely-cannot head-butt his star player.
“What are you doing here?”
“Celebrating.” Roy’s not a smile-prone person, but even with his limited experience he’s sure Jamie’s face must be hurting by now. Roy’s not entirely sure what his own face is currently doing but it’s very, very far from anything that could be mistaken as a smile.
“Celebrating what?” He’s not stupid, he knows what Jamie’s doing. He just needs him to say it before the heat rising to his face succeeds in boiling his brain and sending steam out his ears like a demented, cartoon, kettle-train hybrid.
“Your birthday. You letting me in or not?”
He cannot head-butt his star player. He cannot head-butt his star player. He cannot head-butt his star player. He cannot head-butt his star player-
He wordlessly swings the door open, lets Jamie in.
“Cheers.”
Jamie practically skips through his house, bags clutched in his fists swinging against his knees, easily familiar with the layout of Roy’s home in a way that makes something gentle and tender rise in his chest. Something that while comfortingly warm also kind of makes him want to squirm and duck away. Like it’s an open flame and he’s freezing but he’s also been doused in paraffin; he wants the heat, needs it even, but one wrong move and he’ll burn. The risk is too great.
It’s something that makes him want to hide.
He follows Jamie through to his kitchen where he’s stationed himself at the counter, methodically unloading the bags. The Muppet’s humming something that sounds suspiciously like his own stupid baby-shark chant as he does, lining up boxes and bottles in neat little rows.
“Tartt. Explain.”
Jamie doesn’t look toward him, but Roy can see his face crease and his eyebrows jump. Knows the little-idiot is aiming the most unimpressed look his face is capable of forming at the bag of flour in front of him. “It’s food you dinosaur. You can buy it in stores now instead of hunter-gaffering.”
Little fucking-
“It’s hunter-gather- nevermind. I can see it’s food you prick, why’s it in my kitchen?”
“It’s for a cake. Obviously.”
He cannot head-butt his star player. He cannot head-butt his star player. He cannot head-butt his star player-
“Cake isn’t part of your meal plan Tartt.”
Jamie looks up from where he’s spinning the boxes so the labels all face the front, rearranges his features until the unimpressed look becomes an exaggerated pout.
“Aww, c’mon Coach, you don’t gotta be like that.” The fuck he doesn’t, the little shit’s invading his house and he thinks- “I weren’t gonna eat it anyway, it’s for you.” He picks up one of the bottles and presents it to Roy. “Lactose-free milk, see?”
Fuck.
Fuck.
Sometimes Jamie does things. Achingly sincere, gentle things. Things that are just plain unfair because Roy can’t stay mad at him when he does. The irritation of ‘Haven’t had that from older men in me life’ offset by the honesty in Jamie’s stupid portal-to-the-soul eyes at ‘real talk man, thank you’. Irrepressible burning desire to strangle the prick abruptly doused to nothing in the face of ‘I respect ya and I respect Keeley’. Now the little fucker has gone out and bought lactose-free milk to bake Roy a stupid fucking cake for his stupid fucking birthday because the Muppet remembered he’s not so good with dairy and knew when his stupid fucking birthday was without being told and all the work Roy’s done to stay mad at him for this stupid little stunt goes right out the fucking window.
Life was simpler before he cared about Jamie Fucking Tartt.
“Put that lactose-free shit away, it’s a cake not a sundae bowl. Regular milk is fine.”
Simpler. But not as good.
~~~
Jamie’s good at following instructions.
Roy tells him to jump, he jumps. Roy tells him to run suicide sprints until he pukes, he runs (he pukes). Roy tells him to stay still so Roy can tie him to a bike and use him as a mush-dog for a morning, he does.
(Roy wasn’t expecting that last one to work if he’s being honest. It was only once he’d watched Jamie wrap the rope around his own waist, then blink at him in earnest expectation while he stood frozen in bemused perplexity, that he realised the depth of the hole he’d dug.)
So Roy had thought that following the simple instructions of, oh say, a recipe book, would be well within the little prick’s range of ability.
Jokes on him.
“You measure the chocolate chips with your heart man.”
Roy has his hand locked around Jamie’s forearm, forcefully preventing him from emptying the entire bag into the mixer. He knows that if Jamie actually wanted to break his grip he could do so with ease, so it says something about his higher-order thinking that he just pouts at Roy instead.
“No, Muppet, you measure them with a fucking measuring cup. It’s right there in the name and all.”
“But that’s not enough!”
“Any more and it turns into a fucking chocolate block.”
“Fine.” Jamie sighs and painstakingly rolls his eyes all the way into the back of his head, clucking his tongue against the roof of his mouth like some overburdened housewife as Roy releases his arm. Roy watches as Jamie twists his elbow up to his face, turning the limb around as if he’ll find some mark there when he gets the angle just right. But Roy would never hold him hard enough to hurt. Not anymore.
Sometimes Roy wonders how this happened. How did he become the person responsible for this Muppet? Somewhere after Wembley but before Amsterdam, he’d gone and made the Prince Prick of all Pricks his personal problem. Now the little idiot is in his kitchen, ready and willing to wrestle him for excessive fillings in a cake.
Satisfied that his arm remains bruise free, Jamie sets the chocolate chips down and tears open a bag of mini marshmallows.
“What kind of cake is this anyway? Why’s it got so much stuff in it?”
“It’s the best kind of cake-” Roy sighs deeply and fixes Jamie with his most imposing glare. The one that’s made teammates and opponents and coaches alike take a step away from him for decades. He only gets a quick smile of exaggerated innocence for his trouble, “-The kind made with love.”
The only warning Roy has for what’s about to happen is the flash of Jamie’s eyes as they light up with a giddy sort of ferocious glee. Roy futilely lunges, intent on restraining him again but Jamie’s whip-fast and fuelled by irrepressible mischief. He dances out of Roy’s reaching grasp, snatching the bag of chocolate chips back off the counter as he goes before crowing loudly and emptying both bags into the mixer.
Roy’s made grown men cry with that glare.
As he watches Jamie throw his head back in childish delight, crumpled plastic held aloft in victorious fists, he can’t help but be secretly happy that the lad’s grown immune.
~~~
An hour later they’re stood, shoulder to shoulder, hunched in front of Roy’s oven window. There’s a streak of melted chocolate dashed high across Jamie’s nose and flour caught in Roy’s hair.
In some vicious fuckery of the universe, the Muppet’s finally managed to turn him prematurely grey.
At his side, said Muppet is transfixed, and though Roy will deny it until the day he up and dies, he’s also caught in the magnet of the oven; the steady heat that sheds off the closed door, the gentle orange glow that lights the inside. He can smell the cake, it smells warm. It smells like birthdays, distant childhood memories of a cramped kitchen being flooded with that same fresh smell.
Roy’s knee has started to bother him, and he’s noticed Jamie lightly rocking from side to side. Still, they don’t move. Don’t do the simple adult thing of walking away from the damn cake.
They’re still stood frozen when the timer dings with a sharp tone, startling them out of their daze. Roy recoils sharply back from the window, oven-spell broken as at his side Jamie’s rocking finally sends him stepping backward and he lightly cracks his neck before turning to face Roy expectantly.
Roy pulls open the oven door, lets the trapped heat fall over him in a gentle wave before carefully grasping either side of the tin, cookie-printed mitts the only thing saving his hands from brutal burns, and pulling it from the oven while Jamie hovers at his elbow. He turns and pauses with it held between them, considers the visible lumps, the pools of sticky, melted mini-marshmallows sitting like puddles dappled across its surface, the slightly blackened edge where Jamie had splashed the batter up the side of the tin.
It’s a mess.
“Fucking mint, that!”
Roy can’t help but agree.
“This is fucking hot Muppet, you want to move any time soon?”
Obliging immediately, Jamie spins and pulls a wooden cutting board toward the counter’s edge, then resumes hovering as Roy carefully sets the tin against it. Roy watches as Jamie bends over the warm cake. His expression is lit with all the fondness of a new parent leaning over their child, and as Roy takes a step back to better study Jamie inspecting the results of their culinary misadventure, he can’t help but shake his head at what he sees.
Jamie’s hair is in complete disarray, a wild walnut halo around his head, his eyes are bright and unburdened, his smile wide and uninhibited. That streak of chocolate has dried, dashed flaky across his nose. His joy is simple and infectious, and Roy feels a gentle smile of his own rise in answer to it.
As if sensing Roy’s attention on him, Jamie glances over his shoulder back at Roy.
“Still need to decorate it yeah, gotta let it cool first though or it’ll just melt off.”
Jamie speaks as if he’s imparting profound wisdom, sourced from some ancient geezer living on a cliff face and wearing a diaper. Small smile still in place, Roy cocks his head and responds with all seriousness that advice clearly deserves.
“Decorate? How much fucking sugar do you want to put in this?”
Immediately indignant, Jamie straightens up.
“Mate, it's a birthday cake. You only get one once a year, who fucking cares about the sugar.”
He’s Jamie’s coach. He’s Jamie’s Premier League coach. He’s Jamie’s Premier League fucking Manager. He should care about the fucking sugar.
But there are things he cares about more. Things he knows he needs to care about more. Because he knows Jamie does actually care about the sugar. Know’s Jamie’s careful, almost too careful, about his macros and his proteins and his carbs and his fucking sugar. Too careful in a way that he’s seen go so wrong, so many times. He’s glad Jamie hadn’t listened to his earlier barb about meal plans, he didn’t mean it. He thinks Jamie knows that. He hopes.
He backtracks quickly before his thoughts take him somewhere he’d rather not linger. Before his words take Jamie somewhere he never wants him to go.
“Just leave it for now alright? You said it’s too hot anyway.”
“Oh yeah, yeah for sure."
Roy watches as something delicate shifts in Jamie, something small and tender. Watches as he shrinks, as if the reference to the cake and their associated kitchen escapades being done has changed something.
Jamie looks… expectant; his hands drift toward his shirt’s hem, his weight shifts restlessly back and forth between his steadily rocking legs, his eyes drop from Roy’s own to stare at the collar of his shirt.
Roy has never once kicked Jamie out of his house. Not after that first awful night when he’d bundled him up, whole body shaking and eyes glazed over, and dragged him back to his place in the aftermath of Wembley. Not any of the endless times where he’d slumped, blearily blinking and loose limbed, against Roy’s kitchen counter in a post morning workout comedown while Roy made him eggs. Not even the time the Muppet had commandeered his home gym for a week straight during the off season because ‘your rollers are fucking mint mate’. (Certainly not at the end of that ridiculous week, where he’d looked at Roy, voice small, shoulders hunched inward, and admitted he just missed spending time with him). So Roy can’t imagine why Jamie’s looking at him like this now. Like he’s waiting to be tossed out, thrown away and cast aside like so much trash. As if somewhere after buying lactose-free fucking milk, somewhere after skipping past him in his entry hall, somewhere after gleefully dumping flour over his head; he’s forgotten that he’s wanted.
He wishes he had the words to just talk to Jamie. Wishes he was the kind of person who somehow knew what to say, how to help. But he isn’t. He didn’t have words for Jamie after Wembley, after Amsterdam, before Manchester. He can only be there. Before him, beside him. He can only show Jamie with his actions.
“Come sit down. I’ll get us some drinks.”
He’ll never stop hoping it’s enough.
~~~
“What’ve you got against birthdays anyway?”
They’re lounging in Roy’s living room, stretched lazy over his worn leather sofa. As per usual, Jamie has proven himself incapable of sitting like a person, instead he’s propped sideways against the arm of the couch, his socked feet tapping out a rhythm only he can hear on the cushions next to Roy’s leg. Both hands are pulled in front of him, holding one of Phoebe's juice-boxes that Roy had so graciously given him after he’d declined a beer. Despite the initial protest of, ‘I’m not a fucking child!’ he’s been happily slurping away at it while Roy nurses his own more age appropriate beverage.
“Nothing. I just don’t see the point of noting the fucking day is all. Hooray, you made it through another trip round the fucking sun? Who fucking cares?” He gestures around at the world in general as he speaks, beer bottle clasped loosely between his fingers, pretending the absence of a party in his living room is enough to prove his point.
“That’s kinda bleak. It’s meant to be a day to be happy, ya know? Just a bit of fun that you don’t have to work for.”
“Well maybe I don’t believe in getting free shit you didn’t work for.”
“What, you don’t want to be happy?”
He slowly turns and fixes Jamie with a dead eyed stare. Doesn’t even blink until Jamie scoffs and rolls his head against the back of the couch, muttering to the ceiling as he does, “Fucking forgot who I was talking to didn’t I.”
Still limp-neck flopped over the back of the couch, Jamie shifts his head and fixes Roy with an inquisitive look, carefully studying him from the edges of his eyes.
“Well what if people want to celebrate you? Did ya think about that?”
Jamie says it like it’s simple. Like it doesn’t tilt something under Roy. People have been celebrating Roy Kent for decades now. But Roy? Just Roy? People don’t really get close enough, not people he isn’t fucking blood-related to. And he knows that’s his fault. He puts up walls, he lets people pass them eventually but then he grabs too tight and he has to run before they throw him off. Before they throw him away.
“Why’re you here Jamie?”
His face falls, cracked wide, young and open in the way that always makes something deep inside of Roy clench up.
“Did- did you want me to go?”
“No, no I just-” Fuck. “I meant why’d you do this? Come here with fucking groceries?”
“Just wanted to do something nice for you man,” the open expression slides quickly into an impish grin, “After all you ain’t got many birthdays left do ya, gotta make the most of ‘em before they take you to the old folks home.”
With rolled eyes and a small smirk, Roy lunges for Jamie, pretending he’s about to give chase. He’s fully intent on startling a reaction out of the Muppet, maybe a jump or a quick shriek, something he can poke fun at him for later.
He’s a little too successful.
(Something far in the distant back of his mind; something tucked up in a boxed off corner of his heart; something loud and knowing and cold, flinches away from what he knows that must mean.)
Jamie’s eyes blow saucer-wide as he pushes his feet firmly into the cushions of couch, clearly intent on getting away from whatever chase he’s convinced Roy is about to carry out, but he startles too quickly, pushes too hard and overbalances backward. With a quick yelp he tips beyond the edge of the couch, arms pinwheeling and juice box flying as he careens over its arm. His legs follow as he disappears completely, landing with a muffled thump on Roy’s hardwood floors.
Eyebrows creeping up his forehead, Roy stares at the space Jamie’s just vacated, waiting for some reaction out of him. After a slightly tense beat of silence where Roy imagines having to explain to the club doctors just how their ‘team talisman’ cracked his skull open, Jamie’s blush bright face peeks over the arm of the couch and fixes him with a cautious look.
“Can we pretend that didn’t happen?”
All of Roy’s breath leaves him in one great whoosh before he collapses into hysterics. Loud laughter rips from him in uncontrollable near shouts, bending him in half and bringing tears to his ears. He hurriedly sets his beer bottle on the floor, as, squinting through a sheen of tears, he sees Jamie pick himself up, collect his fallen juice box and harrumph his way back onto the couch. He’s still laughing, sides heaving and cheeks aching as Jamie collapses close to him, face glowing red and arms tightly folded against his chest.
“It ain’t that funny, mate.”
Several carefully controlled breaths later, he’s still working to stifle the last of his chuckles as he ducks his head to catch Jamie’s downturned gaze, “You didn’t see it, mate.”
“Yeah, yeah alright. Don’t hurt your fuckin’ face. More than you’ve smiled in your fuckin’ life I reckon.”
He is smiling. He can’t help it. Next to him, Jamie’s arms are still crossed tight and his shoulders are sitting high near his red-tipped ears. Overwhelmed with a wave of fondness for the younger man, Roy leans into his side, gently uses his own shoulder to knock Jamie’s arms out of their defensive posturing.
Jamie relaxes at the contact, turns to Roy with a wry smile of his own. “Maybe it was a bit funny.”
That overwhelming feeling of fondness grows stronger, rises up inside of him like some warm balloon, set to make his heart grow three sizes or some equally excessive emotional shit. Still grinning, he reaches up to ruffle Jamie’s messy hair, making the lad squawk and swat at Roy’s dancing fingers as he asks him a question that’s been bothering him for hours. “Jamie, you know today isn’t my birthday, right? That it’s tomorrow?”
Hands patting at his hair, Jamie valiantly attempts to straighten it from the bird's nest it’s become. The tips of his ears are still red. He hasn’t noticed the chocolate on his nose. “Coach, I’ve got your fuckin’ career stats memorised, of course I know your birthday’s tomorrow.”
Roy drops his hand back against his own leg, trying to ignore that first part. Shoves the sentiment down and down and away. Thinks of a tiny Jamie in front of that fucking poster. Thinks of Jamie in sky blue, blowing him a smug kiss while he sat glowering on the sidelines. He knows the tiny Jamie would’ve known his stats. The lad’s got an aptitude for football that he must have been fostering since he was a mini-terror. But the full-grown terror with his stupid hair and God-kissed right foot? Did that Jamie know his updated career stats? Or has the reformed Prince-Prick filled in the gaps between Chelsea-legend-Roy-Kent and that final bench-starting game sometime later?
“If you know my birthday’s tomorrow, why are you invading my kitchen to bake a cake today?”
Jamie abandons the attempt to fix his hair. Instead he lets his hands fall limp into his lap then carefully pushes them together, stares down at his tangled fingers as he slowly massages the knuckles of his right hand.
“Figured you might be spending the actual day with your family, ya know? With your sister and Pheebs. Even if you’re a grumpy old twat who hates fun, you’ve gotta be spending the day with the people you love, yeah?”
He is actually. Ruth and Phoebe are coming over for lunch, no doubt inflicting him with colourful hats and gifts somewhere between gleefully teasing and achingly sincere.
“Yeah, I am.” He pauses, continues to study Jamie. There’s a small smile lingering on his face, but it’s not the expression he’s come to expect from him. It’s wrong. It’s… sad. His hands clench tighter, wrapping around each other entirely before he rolls his linked fists under the hem of his shirt. That warm balloon of fondness in Roy’s chest morphs into a gentle ache as he wonders what Jamie could possibly be thinking about to elicit those reactions. He thinks of the times he’s seen Jamie look like that. Thinks of Jamie; unsure, nervous, hands hidden but chin high. There’s still so much about his friend that he doesn’t understand. But there’s also a lot he does.
Because he knows Jamie’s still not sure of his worth outside of football, knows that Jamie still struggles to accept that people care about him , not just what he can do. And because he thinks he knows what he means to Jamie, what he represents. But he’s not sure if Jamie knows what he means to him. Knows what Roy can’t even admit in the privacy of his own head.
He thinks of lactose-free-milk discarded on his counter and flour lingering in his hair. Thinks of ’cause you hated me’ and ‘do you want me to go?’. Thinks of Jamie, giving Roy the birthday cake-making memories that Georgie had given him. Thinks of the peacock he met and the Muppet he knows. The little idiot he lov-
“Do you want to come?”
Jamie’s eyes startle up, searching his face in a way that makes Roy wonder what he’s looking for. He’s clearly pleased with whatever he finds; his small sad smile grows happy, grows sun-bright and wide. Grows blinding.
He hopes Jamie knows.
~~~
24 hours later, and Roy’s wearing a shirt with Oscar the Grouch plastered across the front of it. He’s leaning, arms crossed, against his kitchen counter next to his sister who tosses her hair over her shoulder as she laughs. In front of him, Phoebe and Jamie have managed to get more frosting on each other than the misshapen cake. They’re both coated in a collage of red, orange and yellow that Roy’s just glad he’s not wearing this time. Even if he’s not sure how he’ll ever get the stains out of his countertops.
Later, as he grits his teeth while the three of them delight in making him wildly uncomfortable by singing Happy Birthday at him, an assortment of ‘Royo’, ‘Uncle Roy’ and fucking ‘Grandad’ in place of his actual name, he can’t stop that same warm feeling from yesterday rising in his chest.
He doesn’t want to squirm away from it anymore.
Doesn’t want to hide.
He’s standing with his sister, his niece and his best friend (who gleefully seems to have figured out he does indeed hold that title) and he isn’t sure when he stopped tolerating their celebrations and started enjoying them instead. But he is. And it’s nice.
Not because his feelings about his birthday have changed.
Because he’s spending it with them.
…Maybe the Muppet’s onto something.
~~~