"So what do you say about me?" Jamie is grinning like a lunatic. "Because you talk about me a lot."
Roy grunts, and prays for a swift death.
"Do you tell Phoebe about my mad footwork skills? And my headers? Did you tell her how I've gotten so good at all that team morale and tactical stuff?"
"She's eight. She's not that interesting in the finer details of training."
"Oh." Jamie's face falls for a moment, before brightening again. "So you must tell her other stuff about me. Is it about my good looks and iconic sense of style?"
Jamie is currently wearing an obnoxious baseball cap, a flowery polyester tracksuit, and a shiny red bumbag. Roy experiences a powerful urge to smack his own head into the nearest wall.
"Definitely not that."
"Then what? Come on, you know I'm not going to let this go so you might as well tell me. What does the great Roy Kent say about me?"
"Fuck, I don't know! I just told Phoebe that you're actually kind of funny sometimes and, fuck, I think I may have used the words 'impressively dedicated', and that you're not actually as much of a knob as you seem."
Oh no. Too many words. Jamie is staring at him intently, a wrinkle between his eyebrows that means he's deep in what passes for thought if you're Jamie Tartt.
"You like me," Jamie says, like he's tripped in the mud and discovered a block of solid gold. "You do!"
"Fuck off."
"You like me," Jamie repeats. He pauses. "For, like, my personality?" His nose crinkles in what appears to be genuine bafflement.
Roy considers making a run for it, but he's slower than he used to be. Jamie would catch up easily. He sighs. "It came as a shock to me too."
"You like me." Jamie says it quietly, with something like wonder in his voice.
"Not that much."
"You like me."
"Hardly at all."
"You like me."
"Increasingly less so."
"I like you too, you know."
Jamie's stupid face is scrunched up with merriment and his eyes are sparkling, and fuck, it is with absolute horror that Roy is forced to acknowledge that seeing Jamie so happy makes him feel, urgh, genuinely good.
That's been happening a lot recently - him looking at Jamie and feeling all tingly when he smiles. Like it matters to him how Jamie is doing. Like somehow Jamie's happiness has become the most important thing in the world. Like he does in fact like him, rather a lot actually, almost as if...
Ahh, fuck.
