Work Text:
It started like this.
Keeley Jones had been enjoying a normal Saturday afternoon at home, watching telly and scrolling through social media and not thinking about much in particular. Then, her doorbell had rung, despite the fact that nobody was set to visit her, but she figured it was a package that needed a signature or something along those lines.
When she had answered the door, however, she found Roy Kent and Jamie Tartt on her doorstep, looking awfully sheepish. She was hit with the strongest sense of deja vu, remembering the last time they’d shown up on her doorstep over a year prior, beaten to high hell and each trying to get back together with her. This time around, they didn’t look like they had gotten into another fight, but they certainly looked embarrassed, like two schoolboys in trouble with the headmistress. Jamie was clutching a bottle of wine, and Roy was holding onto a tupperware container of homemade cookies, and it looked an awful lot like they were both trying to win her over again.
“Please don’t do this to me,” she had said, because she really did not want a repeat of the year prior. Things had been good between the three of them; she got brunch regularly with Jamie, where the two of them would gossip about drama at Nelson Road and at KBPR, and Roy was always there to listen to her complain about work and help her wrangle up the Richmond lads for sponsorship responsibilities. She had been happy with things that way,
Luckily for her, they had quickly denied the implication that it was an attempt to woo her. Reassured, she had let them inside, where they sat her down at her own dining room table in order to tell her that they were dating, and had been for eight months, living together for more than half that time. They had departed not long after, leaving her with wine, and cookies, and space to process their confession.
Ever since that afternoon, Keeley had been reeling, head spinning with the knowledge that Roy and Jamie— her ex-boyfriends who had been trying to win her back only a year and a few months prior— were suddenly in love, dating for over half a year without ever telling her, or without her ever noticing. It was the type of confession that she would’ve heard in a strange, melatonin-induced dream, the type she would’ve woken up from and thought ‘huh, that was so weird’ before moving on with her day. But she didn’t wake up; her ex-boyfriends were really dating, as proven by the texts she was receiving from Jamie, full of apologies for dropping the news on her so suddenly.
As world-rocking as the news was, however, Keeley was determined not to let it throw her off balance. She was a rock, a steady force that would not be shaken, even by her ex-boyfriends’ strange relationship. There was no need for her to be put-off or taken aback by it anyways; after all, they’d apparently been dating for eight months and everything had been completely normal, not a single thing out of place to her knowledge. She would be able to continue on without interruption, because everything was exactly as it had been.
Yeah, Keeley could be totally normal about this.
+++
Okay, maybe Keeley couldn’t be normal about this.
She had been determined to continue on as if nothing had changed— because nothing had changed, she repeated as a mantra— and so she went to her regularly scheduled brunch with Jamie, ready to gossip and take the piss out of their respective coworkers like always. She sat down in her and Jamie’s normal booth, tucked away in the corner of the cafe, and waited for him to show up late (as was typical for him).
Jamie had walked in about seven minutes late, no surprise there, but then Roy had followed in behind him. Jamie beamed when he looked over and spotted Keeley, quickly making his way over to her. He walked like Roy wasn’t even there, letting the man trail behind him more slowly as he approached the table.
“Hi, Keeley!” Jamie greeted cheerily, sliding further into the booth than he usually would in order to make room for his plus one.
Roy took a seat as well, only a few inches away from Jamie, and he gave Keeley a nod. “Hey.”
“Hi,” she greeted more cautiously, eyes flitting between the two of them. She couldn’t quite figure out what was going on or why Roy had randomly tagged along to their weekly brunch. Admittedly, it wasn’t that weird; the three of them had been friends for the better part of a year and the third would frequently tag along if the other two were hanging out, but it just felt weird now that Roy and Jamie were dating. Surely he wasn’t there just to hear them gossip, right?
“How’s it going?” Jamie asked her, continuing on as if nothing was strange (‘because nothing was strange,’ Keeley reminded herself. ‘Just Roy coming to hang out with us, because we’re all friends.’) Beside him, Roy had already tuned out the conversation, pulling a book out of his bag and opening it up. He even turned away from Jamie and Keeley as he began to read, like he was trying to give them privacy.
“Um, it’s going well,” Keeley answered, turning her gaze back to Jamie. She so desperately wanted to ask about Roy’s presence, and even more so about what had prompted his unplanned attendance, but Jamie wasn’t acknowledging it, and she didn’t want to be the one to do so. After all, she was trying to be normal about Roy and Jamie’s whole thing, and she wasn’t sure if asking would go against that. “Work’s been busy, but I closed out that deal with Celsius, so the team should get to do some sponsorship stuff with them soon."
Jamie nodded along to her words, grinning all the while. “That’s mint, that! I know the lads will be buzzing about it.”
“I hope so,” Keeley replied, and she prayed it didn’t sound as half-hearted to Jamie as it did to her. She spared a glance over to Roy, but his gaze remained firmly on his book. He flipped the page, not showing a single sign that he was paying attention to their conversation, and so Keeley turned back to Jamie. “How’ve you been?”
“Dead good! Enjoyed the off-season, and I’ve been seeing the lads as they get back for the pre-season. Speaking of that, I need to tell you what Bumbercatch apparently got up to in Ibiza…”
And so they were off, delving into their normal gossip about Beard’s new obsession with crochet and Isaac’s near death experience in Monaco and Barbara’s mysterious girlfriend. It almost felt like normal, the two of them sipping on bottomless mimosas and sharing little tidbits they had heard, but it was entirely off with the presence of Roy.
Jamie was unbothered, happy to just chat away with Keeley and let the man’s presence go unacknowledged, but she couldn’t help the way her gaze slipped over to him every few minutes, cautious and curious. She watched Roy thumb through his novel, quietly order his food, eat one-handed while he read, all the while not paying a smidgen of attention towards Jamie and Keeley’s gossip session. He was like a ghost, hovering in the edge of her vision, but somehow unnoticed by everyone else.
It was hard not to say anything. She very much wanted to ask Roy if he was planning to ignore them the entire time, or ask him why he was there at all. She restrained herself from asking in some attempt to maintain normalcy and keep the casual conversation going. When Roy stood up and quietly excused himself to the washroom, however, Keeley couldn’t hold herself back any longer.
“Can I ask…” she started, interrupting Jamie in the middle of a story about Dani getting back together with one of his ex-girlfriends. “Why is Roy here?”
Jamie didn’t seem put off by the question, though he grew a bit sheepish. “Was feelin’ clingy today, yeah?”
Keeley was immediately empathetic. She knew what it was like to have Roy hover nearby, never giving her a second to herself. Back when she was dating him, she had quickly grown sick of his constant presence at her side both at work and at home, and she had been guiltily grateful when he broke up with her and she finally regained the space she needed. Since those days, she had really hoped that Roy had outgrown his clingy tendencies, or had at least learned how to give his partners space, but it seemed he hadn’t. She was admittedly a bit surprised that Jamie hadn’t told him to fuck off for a bit— the two had never held back from telling each other to fuck off before— but maybe he felt he couldn’t now that they were dating. Maybe she could help him, just with a little bit of advice or some words of encouragement, since she had been in the same situation before.
“Does it bother you when he’s clingy like that?” Keeley asked him, trying to strike the right balance between sympathetic and non-condescending.
Jamie’s face scrunched up in confusion, and she worried for a moment that her questioning had finally pushed past the line of normality, but then it shifted into realization, as he seemed to have an epiphany. “No, Keeley, I was feeling clingy.”
“Oh,” she responded, caught off guard.
“Yeah,” Jamie responded, and he ducked his head down, embarrassed. “I asked him to come with ‘cause I was feeling clingy this morning. Sorry, I shoulda asked you before.”
Keeley really hadn’t been expecting that explanation, and she felt even more sheepish than Jamie, embarrassed that she had pushed for the conversation while making all the wrong assumptions. So, she waved a hand, as if to brush away the discussion, in hopes that Jamie would drop it. “Don’t worry about it, babes. Now, finish telling me about Dani’s ex-girlfriend.”
Fortunately for Keeley, Jamie didn’t linger on the topic, instead enthusiastically jumping back into the story. By the time Roy returned to the table, all of the awkwardness of the discussion had dissipated, and he didn’t seem to notice anything wrong.
Keeley knew it was a stupid choice to break her rule about normality. Questioning them definitely crossed over the line into being weird about their relationship, and she really, really wanted to be, or at least seem, unbothered by it because it was normal, and there was absolutely nothing strange about her ex-boyfriends dating each other.
+++
Keeley mostly pushed Roy and Jamie out of her mind over the next week or so. It was easy to do, considering they were all busy, Roy and Jamie focused on pre-season training and making the most of the transfer window, and Keeley focused on finishing deals with the club’s sponsors. It was chaotic enough that even Keeley and Jamie’s weekly gossip sessions had been put on hold, so she wasn’t even seeing him regularly.
Keeley had made it almost an entire week without thinking about the couple, before she got a text from Ruth, inviting her to dinner. She had agreed without a second thought, since it had been ages since she had seen Phoebe and she really did miss the girl. It was only after Keeley had accepted the invitation that she realized she probably wasn’t the only one invited. It was almost certain that Roy would be there, and she had already gotten the sense that he and Jamie had become a package deal, so the younger man would probably be there as well.
However, as Keeley had mentally asserted to herself time and time again, everything was normal. There was nothing weird about her ex-boyfriends dating, and thus there was no reason for her to act differently. As such, she would happily go to visit Phoebe, as she had done before she knew about the relationship, and she wouldn’t feel weird at all about seeing Roy and Jamie.
All was typical as Keeley arrived at Ruth’s home. She knocked on the door and was greeted by a very enthusiastic Phoebe, who immediately hugged her and dragged her inside to update her on everything that had happened in her life since they last saw each other. Keeley had ended up in the kitchen, sitting around the table and sharing a bottle of wine with Ruth while happily listening to all of Phoebe’s stories.
Then, the doorbell had rung and Phoebe shot off towards the foyer, having seemingly forgotten all about Keeley. Ruth laughed, somewhere between exasperated and unsurprised, and it made Keeley turn to her. She opened her mouth to ask what she had found so humorous about it, but she didn’t get the chance to say anything before Phoebe’s voice rang out from down the hall.
“Uncle Jamie!” she cheered, and it made Keeley pause. She had logically known that Jamie must spend a good amount of time with Phoebe, since he spent so much time with Roy, but she had never thought about it much harder than that. She certainly hadn’t considered the possibility that Jamie had grown close with Phoebe, close enough for her to consider him an uncle. Even Keeley, in all the time she had been dating Roy and helping take care of Phoebe, had never gained the title of ‘aunt.’
Ruth stood up and began to walk towards the foyer, breaking Keeley out of her trance and prompting her to do the same. When she made it to the front hall, she found Jamie knelt down to chat with Phoebe, nodding along as she regaled all of the details of her week to him. Behind Jamie, Roy was closing the front door, holding a bottle of wine in one hand and balancing a dish of brownies and cookies in the other. Once he was fully inside, Phoebe rushed over him, giving him a hug which he returned as best he could with his hands full.
“Hey, Phoebs,” Roy greeted once she had pulled away. Then, he offered out the tray of baked goods to her. “Would you take this to the kitchen for me?”
Phoebe took the tray and nodded once at Roy, looking deeply serious about her mission, before turning around and marching down the hallway back to the kitchen. Once she had left, Jamie stood up from where he had been kneeling and he turned to Ruth, who brought him into a hug as they exchanged their hellos and how are yous. Jamie returned the embrace with ease, as if entirely used to the gesture. As they pulled back, he gave her a kiss on the cheek, which didn’t appear romantic in the slightest, but more like the type of affection one would give to a family member. Keeley wondered how often Jamie must see Ruth, and how close they must be, for that to be a typical greeting for them.
Ruth then brought Roy into a hug before taking the bottle of wine from him, leading the group back down the hall towards the kitchen, where Phoebe was waiting for them, standing proudly by the counter where she had placed the dish of baked goods.
“I want to hear all about your spelling test,” Jamie told her as soon as they entered, while Roy gave her a pat on the shoulder, a sign of gratitude for her completion of the ever-important baked goods task.
Phoebe perked up even more at Jamie’s declaration, already rambling on about how well it went. She grabbed Jamie by the hand and began to pull him out of the kitchen, dragging him along to go grab the test from her backpack. Jamie went without complaint, shooting a somewhat self-satisfied grin back towards the adults in the room, before disappearing through the doorway completely.
“Unbelievable,” Ruth mused, heading over to grab a glass from the cabinet and pour Roy some wine. “You raise a girl for ten years and she still decides you aren’t her favorite.”
Roy huffed out a laugh, accepting the glass of wine gratefully. “How do you think I fucking feel? I got a ten year headstart on being the favorite uncle, and then I lose the fucking second I have competition.”
Ruth laughed at that, and then the two of them sat down at the table, Keeley shuffling over to join them. They didn’t linger on the topic— a clear sign to Keeley that they were used to how close Jamie and Phoebe were— and instead jumped into other topics, ranging from Ruth’s recent promotion to Keeley’s own busy worklife. Keeley relaxed easily into conversation, pushing away all of her thoughts about Roy and Jamie in favor of enjoying the evening.
Jamie returned sometime later, followed by Phoebe, who was now more interested in getting Roy’s opinions on the likelihood of her U11 football team winning the league. Jamie took her diverted attention in stride, used to how quickly she moved on from one topic to another, and he turned his own focus to the other end of the table.
“Hi, Ruthie,” Jamie greeted the woman once more as he sat down, and Keeley immediately felt weird again, unable to comprehend Jamie’s familiarity with Roy’s family. “Catch me up on the Beth drama.”
Ruth sighed. “It’s the same as always, it’s fine.”
“Right,” Jamie snorted. “Don’t mither you at all, yeah?”
Ruth shoved Jamie in the shoulder as retribution for the teasing, but she conceded nevertheless and launched into a story about her nightmarish coworker. Jamie made little comments here and there, like he knew all about the coworker’s past antics. It didn’t take long for Keeley to realize that Jamie wasn’t just close with Phoebe, but with Ruth as well, familiar with her life and able to take the piss out of her.
Keeley was admittedly surprised. She had never gotten to know Ruth very well back when she was dating Roy. Both of them had been so busy that they’d only really seen each other when picking up and dropping off Phoebe at each other’s homes. Jamie must’ve spent more time with her, definitely more time than it would’ve taken to hand Phoebe off, and it made Keeley wonder if Ruth invited him over for dinner often, or if Ruth frequently came to visit Roy and Jamie at their home, or if they had even all spent the holidays together, maybe even with Jamie’s mum and step-dad there as well. She wondered if Roy had encouraged Ruth and Jamie’s familiarity, or if it had just developed naturally the more they hung out. She wondered if Ruth would venture to call Jamie her brother, since he was dating her brother and treated her like she was his sister as well.
“You alright, Keeley?” Jamie asked, pulling the woman out from her own thoughts.
“Yeah,” Keeley answered quickly. “Just zoned out for a second.”
Jamie nodded, satisfied with the answer, and returned to telling Ruth some story about his and Roy’s recent visit to the Natural History Museum. Keeley tried her best to pay attention, but it was rather hard. Her eyes just kept running over Jamie and Ruth, flitting over to Roy and Phoebe every so often, and her mind just kept wandering back to how close they all were.
God, why couldn’t Keeley just be normal and stop thinking about Roy and Jamie from some weird outside perspective?
Then, it seemed to strike her all at once. She couldn’t be normal because she was watching the whole thing from an outside perspective, and she was only doing so because she didn’t fit into this whole equation. Back when she wasn’t dating Jamie or Roy, the three of them had just been friends, all on level ground. They all hung out as equals, no one closer to or further from another.
Now that Roy and Jamie were dating— and, more specifically, now that they had grown even closer and more familiar with one another— Keeley was the odd one out, an interloper invading upon their lives. It seemed so wrong to be taking up space within their lives, an extra body crammed into a domestic photograph. She hated to go where she wasn’t wanted, and she had somehow become an unwanted presence without even realizing it.
Keeley knew, logically, that Roy and Jamie probably didn’t see it the way she did. They hadn’t expressed any disdain for her presence, and they had continued to hang out with her, Jamie inviting her out to lunch and Roy always telling her when and where the team was having their post-match celebrations. Still, she felt deep down like she was intruding.
Fuck, there was no way to be normal about that.
+++
After her revelation, Keeley had tried her best to avoid Roy and Jamie, dodging their invites and throwing herself into her work. It had actually been pretty easy to do so, since Roy and Jamie were both busy with the pre-season. It seemed they barely had time to breathe between the friendlies and the way training was ramping up, unable to find a free moment to invite Keeley out for lunch, which she preferred for the moment.
Unfortunately, it was impossible to avoid Roy and Jamie when Richmond’s media day arrived, since she had to go to Nelson Road to supervise the photoshoot. When she got there, however, she was surprised to find that Jamie and Roy weren’t sticking very close together. Jamie was off with the lads, chatting with them between photos, while Roy mostly remained by Keeley and the assistant coaches’ sides, just watching the ongoing shoot.
Roy was noticeably quiet, even more so than usual. He wasn’t sulking or glaring at anyone, but he was definitely sticking to the sidelines, not engaging in much conversation and generally keeping his head down. It was honestly throwing Keeley off a bit and she was tempted to ask if something was wrong, but she already felt like she had been intruding upon Roy’s relationship, so she wasn’t keen on pushing him to talk about his issues as well.
Luckily, Keeley didn’t have to, since Jamie was already walking away from the lads, who were busy taking the piss out of Isaac for something, and approaching them. He came to a stop right in front of Roy, meeting the man’s gaze head-on, and gave him a considering look.
“You alright?” Jamie asked, but it was somewhat skeptical, like he already knew the answer to his question.
“I’m fine,” Roy muttered, though it didn’t even sound like he believed it.
Jamie hummed, unconvinced. “You’ve been weird all day.”
“I’m fine, Jay,” Roy insisted once more, but he looked away, a clear sign that he was lying. Keeley was a bit taken aback by the nickname— she had never expected to hear Roy refer to Jamie with such a fond sobriquet— but the thought was quickly banished from her mind as the discussion continued.
“I can’t know what’s wrong if you don’t tell me,” Jamie pointed out, a frown on his face. Then, he reached out and poked at Roy’s forehead. “I can’t read your mind, babe.”
For a second, Keeley thought Roy was going to insist he was fine again, brushing off Jamie’s worries and refusing to open up. Back when she was dating Roy, getting him to talk about how he was feeling, both emotionally and physically, was like pulling teeth, slow and painful. He never wanted to tell her what was wrong, even if it was clearly affecting his mood, and she had always figured that he was similarly uncommunicative with Jamie. Then again, back when she was dating Jamie, he never would’ve pushed her so hard to talk about something bothering her, so maybe things were different now.
Roy sighed, relenting to Jamie’s gentle prodding. “I didn’t sleep well last night. I woke up early with this fucking miserable headache and I slept in a weird position so my knee’s a bit fucked.”
Jamie’s frown grew even deeper at Roy’s admission, and he seemed ready to jump into action, but first he shoved at Roy’s shoulder, clearly unhappy. “Why didn’t you say anything this morning, you twat?”
“Wasn’t a big deal,” Roy told him, but he was growing more sheepish by the minute, both because of Jamie’s insistence that he should’ve spoken up and because of the way the conversation had drawn the attention of Beard and Nate.
“Go sit down!” Jamie ordered, pointing over towards some chairs along the edge of the room. “Hardly like you need to stand up to watch photos get taken, yeah? I got paracetamol in my bag, I’ll go grab it.”
Roy didn’t even have time to argue before Jamie was off, running out into the hallway and toward the locker room to grab his bag. Roy grumbled a bit, and Keeley knew it was because he hated both having to rest when under the weather and needing to be taken care of. Nevertheless, he shuffled over to the corner of the room to take a seat, and the relief on his face from just sitting down was obvious. Why he chose to torture himself instead of doing the barest minimum to relieve himself of pain, she would never know.
Keeley’s attention was drawn back to the photoshoot, as she had to intervene to stop Colin and Dani from trying to make Sam laugh while he was taking his third kit photos. However, in her peripheral vision, she could see Jamie returning and making his way along the edges of the room to join Roy. Jamie handed over the pain medication and a bottle of water, not moving an inch until Roy actually swallowed the pills. Then, Jamie sat down right beside Roy, and Keeley could see the two of them talking, though there was no way to make out their words through the clamoring of the lads and the photography staff around her. Their conversation seemed to end at some point, but Jamie didn’t leave Roy alone. No matter how many times Roy nodded towards the rest of the lads in the room, encouraging Jamie to go join them again, the striker remained by Roy’s side, seemingly content to sit and watch the action from their quiet corner.
It was shockingly domestic, their little personal bubble on the sidelines, and it left Keeley with that strange feeling in her chest again. She couldn’t help that they were in the room with her, in the edges of her sight line, but she still felt like she was intruding upon something private, watching a personal moment that she was never supposed to be privy to. She hoped nobody else could tell how out of place she felt.
+++
The moment the photoshoot ended, Keeley left the room and marched herself right up to Rebecca’s office. The woman had clearly been expecting her, waiting for her arrival so they could talk about the productivity of the media day. However, Rebecca immediately took notice of Keeley’s furrowed brows and downturned lips, and quickly abandoned the thought of discussing the pictures.
“Things are fucking weird,” Keeley declared, dragging herself across the room and plopping herself down on the couch. “I’m being fucking weird.”
Rebecca didn’t hesitate to walk over and join her, sitting right next to the younger woman and reaching out to put a hand on her shoulder, a steady and comforting point to focus on. “How so?”
“I can’t stop watching Roy and Jamie,” she confessed, leaning forwards to press her elbows into her thighs and bury her face into her hands. “I just keep looking at them and trying to figure out what their deal is.”
“And what is their deal?” Rebecca asked, a little amused. Of course, she knew about Roy and Jamie’s relationship, just as everyone at the club did, but she hardly devoted much thought to it. Roy and Jamie were intense, and devoted, and attached at the hip, and she had always found it much easier to ignore it entirely than to waste time trying to quantify or comprehend their weirdness.
“They’re, like, different,” Keeley remarked, words muffled by her palms.
Rebecca huffed out a little laugh. “Well, yeah.”
That made Keeley lift her head, looking over to Rebecca. “You’ve noticed as well?”
“Of course! They’re all love-y and couple-y and clingy now,” she chuckled, able to find the humor in how devoted the couple had become to each other despite their past. Then, she really looked at Keeley’s red-rimmed eyes and unhappy frown, and it made her sober up a bit. “Is that what’s upsetting you? Them being different?”
Keeley pursed her lips, a bit uncertain of how to really respond. “Kinda.”
Rebecca nodded, face twisting up into something like sympathy. “Are you upset they’ve changed so much? Do you wish they had acted like this back when you were dating them?”
“No!” Keeley was quick to deny, but then she thought about it for a second. “I mean, I guess, just because they’re a lot more open and friendly and all that now, but that’s not really the problem, ‘cause I really don’t want to date either of them now. Them being different just makes me feel weird, like I’m taking up room in a space where I’m not supposed to, if that makes sense.”
Luckily, Rebecca seemed to understand perfectly. She gave Keeley’s shoulder a comforting squeeze before pulling back, shifting on the couch so she could face the younger woman more directly.
“You don’t know where you fit in anymore,” Rebecca stated, like her simple words weren’t the exact explanation for how Keeley was feeling.
“I don’t,” Keeley agreed, gaze trailing down to the floor. She was ashamed to admit it, since she was a woman who had spent the last few years making space for herself, not caring if there was room for her. Now, it seemed all of that strength and confidence had been washed away just because her ex-boyfriends were being a bit weird.
Rebecca, however, was not deterred nor defeated in the same way. “I think you fit in exactly where you did a year ago. You’re their friend, Keeley.”
“The thing is, it’s different now,” Keeley tried to explain, nose scrunching up as she thought about it. “They’re dating, so it’s… different.”
“But they’re still inviting you around, right?” Rebecca pointed out, unconvinced by Keeley’s insistence. “They still like hanging out with you. Clearly, it’s not so different.”
Keeley thought about that for a moment, because it was almost certainly true. Roy and Jamie had never stopped inviting her to hang out, they’d never neglected their friendship with her, even if the platonic connection might’ve been less strong than their romantic relationship. Despite how much Keeley felt like things were different, the reality was that nothing had truly changed, especially not in the way Roy and Jamie had talked to and acted towards her.
“I guess so,” Keeley conceded.
“Then don’t get caught up in your head about it,” Rebecca instructed Keeley, reaching out to hold the younger woman’s hands in her own, a comforting grasp. “Sure, Roy and Jamie being together is weird, but those two are always weird! It’s no different from their normal weirdness, which you’ve always been fine with. So, you shouldn’t let your own worries about it cloud your vision and mess with your friendship, right?”
Keeley was silent, but she hesitantly looked up to meet Rebecca’s eyes, holding onto her hands more firmly.
“I hope your silence means you know I’m right,” Rebecca joked with a grin, once Keeley had fully met her gaze.
Keeley groaned and rolled her eyes, but it was entirely fond. “Ugh, you’re always right, babes! It’s both so annoying and so fucking sexy of you!”
Rebecca just laughed.
+++
Despite being reassured by her conversation with Rebecca, Keeley didn’t reach out to Roy and Jamie. Instead, she took some time alone, really thinking about what Rebecca had said. She had been right, of course, that Keeley had been overthinking the entire situation. There had been no reason to conclude that Roy and Jamie didn’t want to hang out with her anymore, since they stuck around and continued meeting up with her both in the months before they had told her about their relationship and in the weeks after. Keeley had clearly just been letting her anxieties about the change get to her, rendering her temporarily blind to the fact that not much had changed at all.
However, Keeley still didn’t know how to talk to Jamie and Roy after all of that. She was a bit ashamed of how she had assumed they wouldn’t want her around anymore, despite no evidence pointing towards such a conclusion. More than that, she was worried that they had finally noticed how weird she was acting and realized they actually would like some space from her. They hadn’t reached out at all since the media day, and Keeley took that as proof that they wanted some distance. Although, she supposed that their radio silence could be due to the busy start of the season, especially since their first match was away at Nottingham.
Just as soon as she had become fully convinced that they wanted some space from her, Keeley received a text from Roy about a team get-together at Ola’s after a second week home match against the Spurs. It wasn’t unusual— Keeley always had an open invite to team gatherings and Roy was typically the one tasked with keeping her up to date on those— but it caught her off guard after believing for a couple of weeks that they didn’t want to see her. But she wasn’t about to reject an invite that proved her two closest friends wanted her around, so she told him she’d be there and put it on her calendar.
The night of the gathering came faster than she had imagined. At Ola’s, Keeley didn’t see much of Roy or Jamie, though she tried not to assume they were actively avoiding her, since both of them appeared to be caught up in the team’s usual antics. Keeley herself didn’t even really have much time to make her way over to them, seeing as she had been busy catching up with Colin and hanging out with Rebecca.
It wasn’t until much later in the night, after they all had eaten and were just sticking around to drink and chat, that Keeley found herself sitting at the bar with Roy. He had clearly come over for a break from the action, more than ready to sit out and take a breather for a few minutes. Recognizing this, Keeley didn’t push him to engage in conversation, not indulging in much besides a quick hello, and they remained in silence, just sipping their drinks and watching the crowd of players and staff around them. It was almost a surprise to Keeley when Roy did speak up.
“I wanted to thank you,” Roy muttered. Keeley looked over to him, but his eyes were trained firmly across the room, watching as Declan, with the encouragement of Zoreaux and Winchester, downed three shots of tequila in quick succession.
Keeley furrowed her brows. “What for?”
Roy huffed out a breath, trying to gather his words, as if he hadn’t been expecting Keeley to not know what he was grateful for. “I… Fuck, I know it was probably fucking weird for you, the whole me and Jamie thing.”
‘Understatement of the fucking century,’ Keeley thought to herself, though she refrained from saying it aloud.
“But you’ve been so unbothered by it. Admittedly, we were pretty fucking nervous about tell you,” Roy confessed, and Keeley noted in the back of her mind how comfortable he referred to himself and Jamie as one being, an easy ‘we,’ a package deal, “but you took it in fucking stride or whatever. And we’re honestly pretty grateful for that.”
Keeley didn’t even know what to say. She kind of wanted to laugh, because she had been acting weird for fucking weeks, and yet Roy hadn’t seemed to notice. Or maybe she hadn’t really been acting weird at all, just caught up in her thoughts, as usual. Either way, Roy thought she had been completely chill about the situation, and she wasn’t about to correct him. She opened her mouth to respond, maybe to assure him that there was no need to thank her or that she was happy for him and Jamie— and, really, she was happy for them because, in the wake of the end of her relationships with each of them, she had truly hoped they would each find someone who would match them well when it came to their weird qualities and quirks, and they had clearly found that within each other. However, no words were coming to mind, no coherent sentence able to form as she basked in the relief at the reassurance that her friendships were unchanged.
Luckily, Keeley didn’t have to think of anything, because Isaac was suddenly running up to them, attention focused solely on Roy.
“Coach,” he greeted, but it was a bit frantic. “You should probably go get the missus.”
“Jesus Christ,” Roy muttered, entirely in response to the nickname. Then, he looked over to where Jamie was, and repeated more emphatically, “Jesus Christ,” before rushing off towards him.
Finally, Keeley allowed herself to laugh. It could’ve plausibly been written off as a reaction to Jamie, who was standing on a table and attempting to balance a wine glass on his head and two more on each of his shoulders, with the encouragement of many of his teammates. However, the laughter was really directed at the resolution to her own situation.
For weeks, Keeley had been fretting about acting normally, and even more so about whether Jamie and Roy were still her friends, or if she was an unwanted third in their little group. Then, Roy had shattered those worries with ten seconds of conversation, as if her anxieties had been entirely frivolous. In fact, they probably were, and she had just been holding onto them for no reason. How ridiculous she had been. She almost wanted to slap herself around the back of the head for being so stupid, but instead she just grinned, happy that her fears had amounted to nothing.
+++
The next morning, Keeley walked into her normal brunch spot and saw Jamie already sitting in the corner booth, mimosas already on the table for them. He was alone, but Keeley wasn’t sure she even would’ve been bothered if Roy had tagged along. She walked over and slid into the seat across from Jamie, being greeted with a large grin from the striker.
Jamie leaned across the table and into Keeley’s space, creating a conspiratorial huddle. “You’re never going to believe the conversation Roy and Beard had last night.”
Keeley smiled, and leaned in as well. “Tell me everything.”
Thank fuck, nothing had changed.