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threewaywithdelusion · 1 year ago

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RoyJamieKeeley Fic

Still working on my RoyJamieKeeley post-S3 fic. I got stuck again for a while, but I got unstuck tonight, so he's a little snippet to celebrate.

A few days later, Keeley and Jamie left for Brazil for Jamie’s Nike shoot. Left alone for a week, Roy tried to keep busy so he wouldn’t think about them. He spent time with Phoebe, who was starting to get impatient for summer holiday but could be convinced to spend all her wayward energy on playing football with Roy. He saw the yoga mums twice, once for actual yoga and once for a night of drinking wine, watching rom coms, and gossiping. He told them he’d gotten back together with his ex-girlfriend and they all smiled and told him how happy they were for him and how much more of a grump he’d been without her. Roy didn’t mention that said girlfriend was dating another man at the same time and told himself it was just leaving out unimportant information and not actually lie, but he wasn’t sure he believed himself.

Roy also had a meeting with Rebecca, who told him she wanted to promote him to manager of Richmond. He called her mad to her face and she still seemed to think giving him the job was a good idea.

“I don’t want to do press conferences and shit,” Roy said.

Rebecca was unfazed. “Here are my options, Roy. I can make you manager, which is a job I think you’ll be good at. You know football, you know these boys, and they trust you, which makes you the best fit. I can make Nate manager, which I don’t particularly want to do after he defected to West Ham last year. He has experience and the boys seem to have forgiven him, but I don’t trust him enough yet to give him that much power. The other option is to bring in someone from outside the club. Higgins gave me a list of candidates and a lot of them are very qualified and are interested in working for Richmond now that we placed second in the Premier League, because they think they can get us a trophy next year. However, anyone I bring in is going to have their own style and they’re going to undo all the hard work Ted’s done over the past three years. And what Ted did, however unconventional, has been working for us. So, if you don’t take the job, any thoughts on how I should proceed?”

Roy grunted. It was a good argument and Rebecca knew it.

Roy liked coaching Richmond. He didn’t really want to work with some new shitbag coach who would come in acting like he knew anything. Who might tell the team to stop playing total football or take that shitty, ripped-up “believe” sign off the wall. Who might not flip Jamie off in the middle of a game or push him to go back out even with an injured ankle. Who might not support Sam’s protests when they cost the club their main sponsor or might not like the fact that Colin had a boyfriend. Who might not defend Isaac in a post-game interview after Isaac attacked a fan in the stands for his homophobic comments or who would hear that famous women got their private photos leaked and react with less horror than the rest of the Richmond boys.

Roy liked the culture Ted had created at Richmond. Sure, his methods had been downright insane at times, but they’d worked. This was a team that respected Keeley and Rebecca, that accepted Colin, and that tried to be good people as much as they tried to be good footballers.

Roy didn’t want to lose that.

“Fuuuuck,” he said, a curse of resignation and realization.

Rebecca knew him far too well at this point, because she just smiled victoriously. “I’ll have Higgins send you the paperwork this week. We’re also going to be looking at player transfers, so I’ll send you tapes for anyone we’re considering. Do you have any thoughts about which players we should take a look at?”

Roy grunted. He’d had this job for all of three seconds and Rebecca was already giving him work. He hadn’t even told Keeley yet.

“We need a centre back with more speed,” he said.

“Noted,” Rebecca said.

On the way home, Roy felt a strange kind of loneliness take over him.

He’d gotten a promotion and even though he’d resisted it, he kind of wanted to celebrate. Like when Keeley had been made a CEO of her own company and they’d popped champagne and Roy had spun her around and they’d fallen into bed together.

But Keeley was halfway around the world with Jamie. On vacation, even though she’d refused to go on vacation with Roy to Marbella last year. And Roy knew it was different — this was a work trip with some fun thrown in — but Keeley was just restarting her business with Rebecca as the main investor and she couldn’t possibly be less busy than she’d been last year.

A tiny, mean voice in Roy’s head said that the difference was Jamie. That Roy hadn’t been worth the time away from the office, but Jamie was.

Roy shoved the thought away.

He went home to his big empty house and stared at the bottle of champagne in the fridge. He couldn’t tell the yoga mums he’d been promoted because they still believed he was an accountant and he had no fucking clue what accountants did or what the fuck their position was when they got promoted. Plus, he didn’t want to spend all evening lying about the job he was celebrating.

The team was scattered around the world, visiting their home countries and families while they were on summer holiday. What other friends did Roy have? Keeley, who was his girlfriend again? Jamie, who was Keeley’s other boyfriend and was also not in the country? Rebecca, who was more his friend through the transitive property than anything and was also his boss?

Fuck this.

Roy took the bottle from the fridge. He was about to pop the cork and drink straight from the bottle when his phone dinged with an incoming message.

It was a series of photos from Keeley, showing her and Jamie shopping. One photo showed Keeley in a dressing room, trying on a dress that made her look fucking amazing. Another showed Jamie with about fifty bags dangling from his arms, posing like he was lifting weights. Keeley was standing beside him, holding one tiny bag, and grinning widely at having a fit footballer to play her pack mile. Then there was a picture of Keeley standing next to a suitcase with a price tag on it, presumably something she was buying to bring all her new clothes back to England, a cute guilty smile on her face. The last picture showed the two of them in a store, both wearing black leather jackets. The one on Keeley was ridiculously oversized and the comical frowns on both of their faces told Roy that they were dressing up as him.

Another text arrived from Keeley.

Miss you! Do you want either of these jackets?

Roy was very picky about his leather jackets, something that Keeley had learned early in their first go at a relationship when she’d tried to buy him a present. It may seem like Roy put no effort into his all-black look, but he was very particular about what clothes he thought was worth buying.

It was sweet of Keeley to ask.

Send a video, Roy texted back.

A minute later, his phone dinged. The video was of Keeley in a dressing room, wearing a shimmery grey dress with one of the Roy-sized leather jackets over it. Roy had clearly interrupted her in the middle of trying on half the store because there were clothes over every inch of the dressing room. Keeley did a little spin for the camera and Roy caught Jamie’s reflection in the dressing room mirror, smiling at Keeley like he was in love.

Fuck.

Would Roy have had that indulgent, lovestruck expression on his face if Keeley had dragged him shopping for stupid graffiti clothes for Jamie? This was Jamie’s holiday with Keeley and she was still taking the time to message Roy and Jamie didn’t seem to mind at all.

Roy’s phone dinged again, this time a message from Jamie. It was another video, showing Jamie walking along a wall of all-black clothes, including at least four different leather jackets.

“I think we found your store, mate,” Jamie said, panning the camera so Roy could see the words John John lit up in the back over the counter.

Fuck. Roy was being a sorry sad sack and a bit of a prick. And he absolutely refused to be the biggest prick in a relationship that included Jamie Tartt.

You look beautiful, he sent Keeley. I like the jacket Jamie was wearing.

Keeley sent back a series of smiley face emojis.

Roy called her and she picked up on the second ring. “Hi, babe? How’s London?”

“I miss you,” Roy said. It was probably the easiest thing he’d ever said. Usually, Roy had trouble expressing any emotion that wasn’t anger and he knew that. But missing Keeley was all-consuming. It was a physical ache inside him, just as real as the pain from his knee, and he didn’t know how not to say it.

“I miss you too,” Keeley said.

“How’s Brazil?” Roy asked.

“It’s good! I think the photoshoot with Nike went really well. They might offer Jamie a larger deal as a brand ambassador when we get back, but don’t tell Jamie that. I’m negotiating right now and I’m not sure it’ll go through.”

“I’m sure it well,” Roy said. “You’re a brilliant negotiator.”

“You’ve never seen me negotiate,” Keeley said.

“Sure I have,” Roy said. “What about that time you convinced me to try being a pundit.”

“That was in your best interest, and I’m pretty sure we were arguing.”

“Or that time you convinced me to go to that launch party for that watch company you were promoting.”

“You have to admit, that was great press,” Keeley said. “Everyone’d heard the story about your ex stealing your Rolex, so you replacing the Rolex with a John Hubert watch really connected the two brands in everyone’s minds.”

“Well what about the time you convinced me to both cook and do the dishes when I made you a fancy dinner?”

“I bribed you with blowjobs,” Keeley said. “I don’t think I can use the same strategy here.”

Roy laughed. He felt so much better after talking to Keeley for just five minutes. Suddenly, he didn’t care that she was a continent away. He still wanted to tell her the good news.

“Is Jamie there?” he asked.

“He’s in his own dressing room,” Keeley said.

Roy was surprised. He figured Keeley and Jamie would take shopping as a chance to watch each other strip in the same dressing room. But he knew fuck all about shopping, so maybe it wasn’t that weird that they were in two different stalls.

“Can you get him?”

There was a long pause that Roy knew was Keeley working through her surprise before she said, “Yeah, just a sec.” Her voice sounded slightly farther away as she called “Jamie!”

A moment later Keeley’s voice came out sounding a little more robotic. “You’re on speaker, babe.”

Roy cleared his throat. “I talked to Rebecca today. She made me manager.”

“What?” Keeley said, sounding stunned.

Yeah, maybe he should have worked up to that instead of announcing it right out the gate.

“She gave me Ted’s job,” Roy repeated.

A whoop went up from Jamie, so loud that Roy had to pull the phone away from his head so he wouldn’t blow out his eardrums.

“Congrats, mate! That’s fucking mint.”

Roy grunted. He didn’t say that he was bricking it over trying to fill Ted’s shoes, but Keeley must have released because she said, “You’re going to be amazing, babe. I’m so proud of you!”

“I don’t know,” Jamie said. “I mean, mostly Roy’s been coaching me so far. I’ve got more talent than all the boys on the team and I’m a pleasure to coach, so you can’t measure Roy’s success by how brilliant a player I am.”

“You’re a fucking nightmare to coach,” Roy said, even though it wasn’t actually true. Jamie did anything Roy said, even when it was embarrassing or he was pushing his body beyond what most coaches would demand of him. Roy liked telling Jamie what to do and seeing how hard he would work to achieve the impossible, even when the only reward was a little grunt from Roy.

“I guess we’ll see if you can bring the other lads up to my level,” Jamie said, cockiness and disbelief in Roy’s coaching skills rolling together in his voice.

Weirdly, Jamie’s pestering filled Roy with confidence that he could do this. He would be the best damn manager Richmond had ever seen, if only to prove to Jamie that he was wrong.

“Be careful what you wish for,” Keeley told Jamie sweetly and that buoyed Roy the rest of the way up. Keeley believed in him. She believed in him enough to tell Jamie to suck it, even if she did it in nicer terms.

Roy wanted to tell her he loved her, but the first time he told her after they got back together couldn’t be over the phone, with Jamie listening in, while Keeley was on another continent.

Instead, Roy just said, “At least I know what the fucking offside rule is.”

Jamie and Keeley both laughed, though Jamie laughed harder. Roy wasn’t sure Keeley knew the offside rule, which was a travesty given how many footballers she’d dated.

“Well celebrate when I get back,” Keeley said. “That’s wonderful news, babe. I’m so happy for you.”

They said their goodbyes and when Roy hung up the phone, he felt a lot more determined and a lot less alone.

He checked his inbox to find an email from Higgins with his new contract and and some player files with stats and videos. Several promising young players were listed, as well as some old-timers on their way to retirement from some of the better clubs.

He poured himself a glass of champagne and settled in to do his job.

#royjamiekeeley #ted lasso #roy kent #Keeley jones #jamie tartt #mia writes fanfic #ted lasso fanfiction

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