Work Text:
Jamie has a skincare routine.
This isn't particularly surprising; in fact, it would be weirder if he just took a shower and toweled off and was done. But Roy still rolls his eyes as he gets into bed and picks up his book from the nightstand, and Keeley and Jamie are still giggling in the ensuite. Probably found a new face mask to try out. Keeley never took this long in the bathroom before Jamie moved in.
Jamie did give him the book, which was nice enough of him.
However, now Roy has to actually read it.
Zero net gain.
What he's learned so far, although not from the book, is that you can make yourself like anything if you do it for long enough. Actually like it too, not just get used to it.
He has plenty of experience with the latter (pain, ice baths, therapy, Ted) and some with the former (yoga, Ted), and he will admit that going to bed with two people is something he likes now. It took him a while. It's a lot of added noise and movement in an environment that should encourage rest, but it's also--good. It's both messy and mundane, falling asleep with Jamie's arm around him and waking up with Keeley's hair in his mouth, and it grounds him in a way that he does not like sharing with Dr. Sharon, but has.
At this point she should pay him.
In any case, she says it's perfectly fine if he sometimes just goes and sleeps on his own. Many couples have separate bedrooms and perfectly healthy--
She didn't say the word sex lives, because he would have left and never come back, but the silence after that conversation was still too loud. They talked about his relegation fears, after that.
There hasn't been any further noise from the bathroom, so chances are good they'll stumble out moisturised and horny any minute now, Jamie's hair still half-wet and Keeley's towel slipping down her torso until it's not even clinging to her waist anymore. It'll end up on the floor, and whatever is going in behind that door right now will somehow continue in bed. She'll be radiant, anyway. Smiling at him. Smiling at Jamie. Flushed and naked for both of them, but mostly for herself.
Keeley's always made him feel-- big, he supposes, both in the purely physical sense but also like he's towering over everyone else because she's his. When he carries her upstairs and she's just this slip of a woman in his arms, her legs tight around his waist, he feels like he could crush all of fucking Wembley stadium under his feet.
But then she talks about her ideas and her clients and her dreams and plans and she's so excited and so fucking beautiful and he feels three inches tall in the face of her.
Sometimes he thinks maybe Jamie was the perfect size for her.
He's working through this with Dr. Sharon, as well.
It's unbearable.
Falling asleep with Jamie's arm around him was an adjustment, but he just needs to think of that godawful poster on Jamie's wall and suddenly everything feels a little less weird. Or rather, a different kind of weird that settles him down and warms him up from somewhere inside that he's definitely never going to share with anyone.
A giggle from the bathroom.
"You have to wash it off after five minutes."
"So it'll be twice as good if you leave it on for ten, right?"
"That's not how it works, Jamie."
"They just want you to buy more of it, so they make you use it up faster."
There's a pause.
"You don't use it up faster if--"
"Fine, fine, move."
Sometimes his thoughts wander to that sad little bedroom, trying to imagine a younger, smaller Jamie Tartt, still hoping to win his father's approval if he just tried hard enough. A teenage Jamie, who wasn't even going for approval anymore and just couldn't get his old man to go away.
Then he thinks, whatever, nobody forced him to grow up a wanker.
Usually that's when he scratches Jamie behind the ear, or runs a finger down his spine, or presses a grumbly kiss into his hair. His hair always smells amazing.
The door is thrown open and a cloud of fragrance billows into the bedroom, followed by a whole lot of skin.
"Roy, you have to feel Jamie's hands, they're so soft."
"Vanilla lime scrub," Jamie says, entirely too satisfied with himself. "You're reading the book!"
Roy grunts.
"Told you," Keeley says.
He's read the first page, so that probably counts. He puts it on the nightstand and leans back against the headboard, taking in the display in front of him. "Go on then," he says finally. "Show me those soft fucking hands."
So it's going to be one of those nights.
Maybe tomorrow he'll read another page in his book.
Keeley is gleaming at him as she crawls up the bed, and Jamie gets in next to him and holds out his hands, and yes, fair enough, they are really fucking soft.
Keeley kisses him.