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“Uncle Roy, can I date a boy and a girl?”
Roy looks over to where Phoebe is sitting at his kitchen table, sketching some kind of uncomfortably realistic monster. He wonders, vaguely, if it’s the kind of thing you're supposed to worry about kids doing. He hopes not.
He’s not sure what’s prompting Phoebe to ask what she’s asking, but the answer, he thinks, is very straightforward.
She’s fucking nine.
“You’re too young to date.”
Phoebe looks up to where he’s chopping vegetables at the counter, and tries again, “What if I weren’t?”
“Then you can date a boy or a girl, whoever you want,” Roy says. Because, yeah, if his niece thinks she might want a girlfriend in the future, she should know it’s fine. But, again. She’s fucking nine.
She frowns over her picture, chewing on the end of her pencil for a good minute, and Roy is thankful, momentarily, that he’s avoided a conversation he seriously wasn’t prepared to have.
But, unfortunately, he very much hasn’t.
“Emma and Xavier both asked me to be their girlfriend,” Phoebe says, “and Xavier is already Emma’s girlfriend, so I told Xavier I can’t be because Emma’s already his, but Emma said she wants me to be her girlfriend too. So, is that alright?”
What in the name of God is going on at this school? No one should be fucking dating anybody.
Nine year olds. They’re fucking nine.
“Emma said we could all hold hands on the playground, and we’d take turns on who’s in the middle and who gets to hold two hands, and, if our mums will let us, we can all go out for ice cream and ride our bikes together.”
Well, okay. Roy guesses he can live with nine year olds doing that.
But so much for not talking about dating until Phoebe is fucking thirty.
He winces before asking, “Do you like Emma?”
Phoebe nods. “She always splits her cookies with me at lunch and tells me my hair looks pretty. She wants to braid it. And she likes football like me. Jamie’s her favorite player.”
Of course, he fucking is. Roy rolls his eyes.
“Okay. What about Xavier?”
“Yeah, he really likes talking with me about pagan and Germanic holidays, and he likes The Owl House, which is my favorite cartoon.”
Roy nods. He’s not really sure what the ethics are, here, actually, since what they’re doing seems to just be hanging out while holding hands. He doesn’t see the problem.
“You really like both of them? And they both really like you?” Roy asks.
“Yeah,” Phoebe says.
Roy shrugs. “Sounds fine.”
Phoebe grins and goes back to her drawing. She’s quiet long enough that Roy thinks that, thank God, the subject’s closed.
But, of course, he’s still wrong.
He’s just getting started on an onion when Phoebe turns far too hopeful eyes on him and asks, “Does that mean you could date Keeley and Jamie?”
“What?!”
Roy completely misses the onion he’s slicing, and the knife goes clean through his index finger instead.
“FUCK!”
“Uncle Roy!” Phoebe is immediately over by him staring in fascination and horror at the blood trickling onto the cutting board and the counter. “Should I call 999?”
“No, it’s, fine, just, hand me that towel,” Roy says, “and we’ll wrap it around my hand. Need to go to A & E though.”
Phoebe starts wrapping the towel around his hand like a bandage, and he tries to come up with a plan.
He needs to go to A & E, and he needs someone to watch Phoebe while he does, and the two people that he knows would do it, and that he knows Phoebe would want to do it, are the two people he absolutely does not want to tell about what just happened.
So he guesses it’s a good thing that his niece is a complete menace.
She’s already calling Jamie.
Jamie answers on the third ring, “Coach? I thought you said no training today?”
“Jamie!” Phoebe shrieks, and it’s a wailing shriek that clearly sets off alarm bells.
“Pheebs? Are you okay?”
"Uncle Roy hurt his hand really bad. There’s a lot of blood, but he says not to call 999. Can you come?”
"What? Yeah, Phoebe, of course. Can Uncle Roy talk to me?”
Roy could already hear Jamie, but Phoebe puts the call on speakerphone anyway and sets it on the counter.
"I’m fine, Tartt,” Roy slurs. “Just cut my hand while dicing vegetables.”
"You don’t sound fine,” Jamie says.
"Just haven’t seen so much of my own fucking blood in a long time, I think. I dunno. This towel’s done for anyway,” Roy says.
“Phoebe, don’t hang up unless I tell you to, okay?” Jamie says.
“Okay,” Phoebe agrees.
"Tell me if Uncle Roy passes out or something, yeah?”
Phoebe agrees as Roy grunts,“I’m not gonna fucking pass out.”
"Sure you aren’t, lad. Sure you aren’t. Hold your hand above your heart, for me, yeah?” Jamie says, and Roy gets the distinct impression that Jamie’s going to treat him like he did when he was teaching him how to ride a bike. Which bothers him less than he thinks it should. He does exactly what Jamie asked. “Okay, I’ll be there as soon as I can. Just going to ask Keeley to come with. Hold on.”
"What? Why?” Roy asks.
"Well, uh, I’m at hers. We’re not, uh, doing anything, like…just watching Sex in the City.”
Huh.
Normally Roy thinks he’d be pissed, because he’s incapable of being normal about them, but at the moment he’s too light headed to be anything other than confused. He didn't think she'd willingly just hang out with either of them, not one on one anyway, not after the whole making her choose between them nonsense they'd pulled.
“But, uh, one of us can take you to A & E, and one of us can stay with Pheebs.”
And, the thing is that makes perfect sense, and there is no logical argument against it. Not one that he can make out loud anyway.
Fucking hell.
XXX
By the time Jamie and Keeley get there, he’s been steered, by Phoebe’s arm and Jamie’s voice, to the kitchen table, and he’s starting to think he was wrong about not passing out.
It’s just, is there really that much blood in his hand? It just keeps soaking into the towel, and he can’t stop staring at it.
Maybe he should have let Phoebe call 999. But it seems like it’s a little too late for that now.
He hears Jamie hiss from the doorway. “Mate. That does not look good.”
“Roy! Oh my god!” Keeley says, and the next thing he knows she’s curling against his shoulder, touching her forehead to his. And God has he missed her being close to him like this. He leans into her, breathing in the scent of her perfume.
Then Jamie’s on his other side, looking down at his towel wrapped hand and frowning.
"Should we look at it?" Keeley asks, lightly pressing her fingers against the towel.
Roy's not sure if it'll help, and he's kind of reluctant to move the towel from his hand, but he peels it back anyway. Might as well assess the damage.
He immediately regrets it.
He winces at the sight of bone protruding from the cut skin as Keeley gasps.
But they both do better than Jamie.
Jamie goes pale before falling backwards, the back of his head colliding with the wall behind him.
"Shit!" Keeley catches him by the elbow, so at least he doesn't fall flat on the kitchen floor. "Jamie!?"
Jamie looks dazed for a minute before muttering, unconvincingly, that he's fine. Keeley grabs him a bag of frozen peas from the freezer then starts marching both of them to the door, with Phoebe trailing after them.
"Jamie, get in the back with Phoebe, yeah? Pheebs, keep an eye on him? Roy, keep your hand wrapped and definitely, whatever you do, don't show it to Jamie."
"I already saw it, Keels. Know the bone's there now. I'd be fine," Jamie slurs as he climbs in the back. It would be more convincing if he didn't look like he was still on the verge of keeling over a second time. Roy's honestly a little worried about him. But, well, his own hand has him a little preoccupied.
"Don't even think about his hand either, Jamie," Keeley says before flicking her hand between both of them. "There will be no fainting in this car, from either of you."
"Made it this long," Roy says as he climbs into the passenger seat, awkwardly trying to buckle himself in with just his right hand.
"It's me own car. Can't tell me what to do in me own car," Jamie says petulantly, for some fucking reason, like he wants to faint again. Or maybe like he feels like he might. Which Roy kind of gets with how light headed he currently feels.
Keeley turns from the driver's seat and fixes Jamie with a hard stare and says with commanding assurance, "You know I can tell you what to do, Babe. So you're going to be good and sit still for me and hold those peas against the bump on your head, yeah? And you aren't going to faint."
Roy watches in fascination as Jamie wordlessly puts the peas against the back of his head and sits as still as he thinks he's ever seen him, somehow not even fidgeting with the peas.
He spends the car ride alternating between gripping the towel tighter around his hand, wondering why Phoebe is being uncharacteristically quiet, and glancing back at Jamie, who stays still as a statue the whole way to the hospital.
Jamie doesn't move then, either, not until Keeley tells him to.
And Roy already knew how much he enjoys telling Jamie what to do and Jamie just doing it, no matter what. What he didn't know was that he'd enjoy watching Keeley do the same thing.
It's sexy enough that it temporarily distracts him from why they're at the hospital in the first place.
Very temporarily.
His hand fucking hurts.
XXX
Once they're inside, Roy's sister spots them almost immediately. She takes in the sight of his wrapped hand and Jamie still holding peas against his head and crosses her arms over her chest. "Keeley, please tell me these two didn't get into another fight over you. I don't want to have to kill my brother."
Keeley actually laughs before putting a hand on Roy's shoulder, "Thank God, no. This one's got a nasty cut from a kitchen knife."
"Was slicing an onion," Roy says.
"And missed the onion," Jamie adds, helpfully.
Keeley puts her other hand on Jamie's shoulder, "And this one fainted when he saw how nasty the cut was."
"Hit me head on the wall. I'm fine, though," Jamie says. "Just here for Roy and watching Phoebe."
"The hell you are," Roy says. "I'm not starting as the team's manager with my star player having an undiagnosed concussion. They're fucking looking at you."
Jamie, of course, decides to focus on entirely the wrong part of what he said. "I'm your star player?"
"I'm not repeating something you already fucking know," Roy says, rolling his eyes.
His sister steers both of them towards the beds and has them each sit on ones across from each other.
In short order, they determine that Jamie is probably fine but someone should keep an eye on him for the next day or so, with a list of things Roy will definitely be watching out for, and that Roy needs stitches.
Jamie wordlessly offers Roy his hand when his sister starts doing the stitches, and Roy takes it.
He curses as she does it, and Keeley asks Phoebe if she's billing him for it.
"No," Phoebe says quietly, "it's my fault he cut his hand."
His sister, Keeley, and Jamie all stare at her, clearly wondering how she could have had anything to do with it.
"It's not your fault, Phoebe," Roy says immediately. Because even if she indirectly caused what happened, that didn't make it her fault.
"It is, though," Phoebe says. "If I hadn't said what I said, you wouldn't have cut your finger."
"It just took me by surprise. That's all. That doesn't make it your fault, Phoebe," Roy says.
"What the hell did you say, Pheebs?" Jamie asks as Keeley jabs her elbow into his side. Jamie glares at her. "Like you don't want to know."
"I don't think Uncle Roy wants me to say," Phoebe says.
And she's completely right, but Roy can't have that crestfallen look of guilt plastered on his niece's face.
He forces the words out, one at a time, through gritted teeth, "She asked me if I could date both of you, at the same time."
He thinks his sister almost misses a stitch. She doesn't though because she's a fucking professional.
Jamie drops his hand before immediately picking it back up.
Then Keeley and Jamie both start laughing a little hysterically.
"Can you imagine? You and Jamie dating?" Keeley says. "You'd probably kill each other. It'd be dead sexy though."
"He won't even admit he likes me, as like a friend, even though I'm obviously his best friend," Jamie says, "and he's not even bi."
Roy blinks at that. Because it's not true. "Says who?"
Jamie drops his hand again and stares at him. "You are?"
"It's not a secret," Roy says.
"It's not not a secret, mate," Jamie says. "I didn't know."
The way Jamie is looking at him shifts, and it's like the fond affection that just radiates from him sometimes is latching on to Roy. It's happened before, but it feels different this time. Like Jamie wants something different. Which, Roy supposes, he does.
Something he didn't know he could have.
XXX
Later, when Keeley is getting Phoebe settled in the guest bedroom that's basically her bedroom, he and Jamie are both settled on opposite ends of the couch.
Usually Jamie is weaseling his way further and further into Roy's personal space, so Roy's uncomfortably certain as to why he isn't now. The idiot.
"Get over here, you Muppet," Roy says, gesturing to the space next to him.
Jamie slides across the couch, a little reluctantly, until he's close enough to Roy that Roy pulls him against his side and lets Jamie's head fall into his lap. "Listen, because I'm not repeating it, I do like you, Jamie, as a friend and as more than a friend."
He presses a gentle kiss to Jamie's forehead, and Jamie makes some frankly bizarre noise before latching on to his neck and pulling himself into his lap.
He stops just short of kissing Roy before seeming to think better of it. Then he shouts in the direction of the guest room, "Keeley, I'm snogging, Roy. Come watch. Because you're right, it is going to be dead sexy."
"You know Phoebe can probably hear you?"
"So? It was her idea," Jamie says. "She should know how smart she is."
Keeley is practically giddy when she comes back and sits on the coffee table. "Well, go on then. Kiss him, Jamie."
It's a little awkward at first with Jamie in his lap, and Jamie pulling back to say his beard's not as scratchy as he thought it would be, and Keeley giggling as she offers them some guidance, but once they have the hang of it, it feels just right. And he wonders, if maybe this was what the three of them should have been doing all along. Supporting their relationships with each other instead of worrying about them pulling them apart.