Chapter Text
A full night's sleep must've done Jamie a world of good, because the first thing hears when Taylor comes bumping down the stairs is, “Hah! I knew it!—slept with 'em both, did you?” And yeah, Jamie's head is stuffed and snotty, but not even his brother getting shitty with him over breakfast can touch this calm floaty feeling that is apparently the new normal.
Christ, he hasn't come down this hard since Keeley came back from a relationship skills workshop spouting nonsense about stoplights and traffic safety.
Green-yellow-red, Jamie thinks. Something like that, anyway.
“I should've guessed,” Taylor goes on—rather amiably, Jamie thinks. “Nobody volunteers to sleep in a room that pink unless they're not planning to sleep in it at all.”
Roy, who is rattling around the overlarge kitchen fixing like, rashers and toast and that, clears his throat.
“I'll have you know that pink can be an extremely masculine color, under the right circumstances,” Jamie retorts with great dignity. He's in negotiations with like, three separate lines of top-branded athletic trainers that operate on that exact premise, and he's in too deep now to back down without looking like a twat.
“Oh my God, I know,” Keeley sighs over her cup of coffee. She's perched on the kitchen counter, dressed to kill but still in her fluffy house-slippers. Stilettos and war paint can wait 'til she's ready to flounce out the door. “You get a load of Reynaud Lassiter's spring Tokyo collection, J.J.?”
And yeah, that old nickname like, doesn't hurt hardly at all. “Coral,” Jamie agrees fondly.
“Fucking coral,” she grins back, and takes another long swig from her mug.
“Fucking called it,” says Jamie.
“Jesus fucking Christ, there's two of you,” Roy grumbles, padding over with a cuppa and passing it over. “Cheers, Jamie.”
Which, yeah, Jamie takes that to mean his help last night did not exactly go unnoticed and unappreciated. Roy must've still been having problems sleepwalking, though, because when Jamie woke up he'd been the one tucked up in the middle with like, the hot water bottle and the weighted blankets and his two favorite people dozed off dead to the world on either side.
“All right,” Taylor scoffs, almost happily, “tell me you picked that bedroom because Lassiter's Tokyo collection changed your mind about pink—I mean, coral.”
“Spring collection, sweetheart,” Keeley says, because some distinctions are and ever shall be important.
And...yeah, Jamie had passed on the guest room last night even though Taylor continued to insist he was a pacifist and conscientious objector, ceding all fields of inter-siblingary battle and giving Jamie first dibs on sleeping arrangements. And yeah, Lassiter's spring collection had little if anything to do with it. Jamie just couldn't stomach the thought of sticking his own brother in a room that Keeley of all people decorated with a nine-year-old girl in mind—not knowing Taylor spent eight months in a group home where all the lads knew him as Evelyn.
He's not like, a complete arsehole.
“Taylor,” Roy says sharply, “go up, get dressed and ready for your day. We've got kind of a lot going on today, yeah?” At Taylor's hesitation, he adds, “Go on. Breakfast'll still be here when you get back down.”
Taylor glares at him a minute, then goes, “I am ready.”
“Sorry, mate, you can't go 'round in your brother's used practice kit two days running, people will think you're a fucking vagrant.”
“Or like, a weird stalker or something,” Jamie puts in, going in for a sip of his poncy coffee. At least, it smells like poncy coffee. It hits his tongue like a splash of hot liquid cardboard, and he fucking chokes.
“Roy can lend you a spare tee-shirt, sweetheart,” Keeley says. “He's got tee-shirts in like, every possible conceivable shade of black.”
Coach raises his eyebrows at her. “That's a bit harsh,” he says at length. “I have it on good authority that some of them are charcoal.”
Jamie suppresses a snort; he's supposed to be encouraging, yeah? He joshes Taylor on the shoulder, goes, “Hey, they'll a bit big on you, mate, but they're like, seriously good tee-shirts. Soft and that.”
“And I put your jeans through the wash last night,” Keeley adds, because she doesn't know a fucking thing sometimes, and probably fucking thinks she's being fucking nice. “Should be dry by now, so that's all right there.”
“No,” Roy and Jamie say in unison. And then Roy goes, “It's not a problem. We'll dig something up. You do need a shower, though.” He does eyebrow things at Taylor; Taylor rolls his eyes and does eyebrow things back. Roy clears his throat sternly. “There's extra toiletries in the cupboard over the sink.”
He doesn't quite emphasize the word toiletries; but even Keeley's face goes tense and shuttered like she knows exactly what he means, and Taylor has to roll his eyes to hang onto any real scrap of dignity in front of his arsehole big brother.
“You know, I don't think my landlord—sorry, building manager—really ought to involve himself in the details of a kid’s showers. It's like the kind of thing I could really actually call my social worker over, if I wanted.”
And Roy's eyes narrow like that's not just a low blow, but a low blow with a like name and a story and that. Like, a name that might even be Ada or whatever.
“Well, let's put it this way, kiddo,” Jamie says, “your building manager's kind of getting to be an old man who like, seriously doesn't see that good anymore, so like he can't recognize you just right off the bat and remember Oh yeah, that's Taylor, he's like one of my tenants' weird kid brother who's like supposed to be down for breakfast. You come down here smelling like a vagrant instead of someone who actually belongs here, he might just think you snuck in here for a free fucking handout and like, try to run you off instead of like, sharing his bacon and that.”
Taylor goes, “Really? You twats are like, already withholding food as punishment on Day fucking One? That's like, properly actionable, that is.”
“Your landlord is not withholding fucking food,” Roy says flatly. “Your landlord is waiting to start breakfast until everybody at the table is fucking ready for fucking breakfast—and if there's one fucking life skill you and I both know fucking landlords are fucking brilliant at, it is the simple fucking act of fucking waiting.”
“But nobody's bothering fucking Jamie about fucking getting his shower,” Taylor complains.
“Taylor,” Jamie says, “are you being a twat to Roy and Keeley on purpose, or do you have like some kind of weird trauma thing with showers and that? 'Cos if the answer's Door Number Two, I've got like, LYNX Spray and that in me kit bag.”
Taylor makes a face like a dog's puckered arsehole and goes, “Fucking ew.” And he fucks off upstairs without another word of protest.
Jamie takes another mouth-destroying sip of hot cardboard-slurry or whatever and goes, “The fuck was that about?”
And Keeley hops off the counter, all business, and goes, “Jamie, sweetheart, we should get it straight what we're going to tell him about last night, 'cos he got a fucking reaction the first time he fucking asked and kid like that, that means he's going to ask again.”
And she's so fucking serious Jamie's honestly a little scared by it. “Look,” he says, “did the three of us do anything more complicated than pass the hell out fully-clothed on the same fucking mattress together?”
Roy stares pointedly into his own coffee, colour creeping up his neck. Keeley goes, “Well, I did play with your hair a bit.”
“Hey,” Jamie grins, holding up his hands in surrender, “I am not complaining.”
And Roy looks uncomfortable some more. “We shouldn't have put you in that position, Jamie. It's um...it's not your job to look after me like that.”
“Hold on a tick,” Jamie says, “are you seriously apologizing to me right now for having a sleepwalking episode?”
Roy does eyebrow things so at him that for a minute, Jamie's sure this isn't a serious apology at all, just a sort-of-fight staged for Taylor's benefit because Taylor's the kind of kid who won't believe a word out of a grownup's mouth unless he's fucking eavesdropping. “I'm apologizing for putting you in the middle instead of taking my medicine like a big boy,” Roy growls. “It was inappropriate and unacceptable, and I understand if you don't want me coaching you or if you and Keeley decide I should like, fuck off to a motel for the rest of the week.”
And fuck, even Keeley's looking at Roy like he's sprouted another head. Better cut this down right quick, before it turns even weirder, not that Jamie can imagine how that would even be possible. “Look, mate, if we didn't fuck and I didn't like, hump your leg in me sleep or anything—if the only thing that actually happened was you didn't fucking sleepwalk again and I got the best night's sleep I've fucking had since I was like, trapped off in an undisclosed tourist trap in like Borneo or whatever, then I'm willing to call it a win and like, sleep on the downstairs couch for the rest of the week. No need to go making it like...weird. Or whatever.”
“Look me in the eye and tell me you don't feel like, at least a little bit funny about it,” Roy says.
And if by funny, Roy means this easy, loosey-goosey floating-on-air thing Jamie's still got going on, then yeah, he does feel a bit funny. But fuck if his buzzkill of a fucking coach is going to drag his feet back down to earth, because Jamie kind of fucked them up yesterday and he's happy to go on skipping on air 'til the athletic trainer tapes them back together. So Jamie looks Roy in the eye and goes, “I don't feel the least little bit funny.”
Lines up his shot, plants his foot. Fucking sinks it. Fucking sells it.
Gold.
Fish.
“Jamie, mate,” Roy says quietly, sounding like it hurts him just to get the name out, “I am your coach.”
And yeah, Jamie's a little shit like that, he's got a smart retort all lined up on his tongue. But maybe Taylor wasn't listening after all, or maybe he heard everything he needed to hear once the word sleepwalking entered the conversation, because the shower in the guest washroom kicks on and that's a sound that can drive any and all smart remarks right clean out of Jamie's head. And he's quiet like that for a bit, sipping his garbage coffee and listening to Keeley work overtime talking herself and Roy out of their respective trees. And Keeley finishes prepping breakfast, and Roy fucks off upstairs to find something clean for Taylor to wear today.
Anyway, Jamie's on his second cuppa and like, wondering whether it would be weird to get up and pitch in with the washing up, or whether it's objectively weirder to sit there acting like a houseguest or like, the kind of wealthy wanker with live-in servants, when Taylor comes slinking downstairs and like, gives him a sneaky sort of wave from the hall. Roy's drying and putting away dishes, got his back to them both, but he must have eyes in the back of his head or like, that special X-ray vision coaches all seem to develop after too many years in too many changing rooms, because he clears his throat and goes, “Did you use the fucking arnica like I fucking told you to do?”
Taylor rolls his eyes so hard Jamie's pretty sure he hears something tear.
And Coach can't fucking see that, of course—but yeah, eyes in the back of his head and that. “Go back the fuck upstairs and use the fucking arnica like I fucking told you to,” Roy says. Flat facts. Doesn't even threaten to withhold like, breakfast or whatever.
“Is this just how it fucking is, then?” Taylor says. “Every morning I'll come down and be like, Please pass the fucking toast, and you'll be like, It puts the fucking lotion on its fucking skin.”
“You know that fucking thing above your fucking knee?” Roy says, sounding relaxed enough to do this all fucking day if he has to, because he probably is—and knowing Taylor, he probably might. “When it turns that weird green colour, I will stop fucking doing this.”
Taylor mumbles something that Jamie doesn't quite catch and that he's pretty sure Keeley doesn't all the way either, but she must catch more of it than he does because her fingers tighten around her mug and she stares into her coffee like it's got the answers to the fucking universe in it.
“Keeley or I can help you with that,” Roy says in that same odd, flat tone.
And Taylor says something that sounds an awful lot like I want my brother to do it, which can't possibly be right, but then Taylor has Jamie by the sleeve and he's going, “Come on, you twat, you can bring your fucking coffee Jesus Christ.”
And they're halfway up the stairs, and Jamie's sort of put it together that he hasn't brought his coffee, and that the thing Taylor said to Roy and Keeley back in the kitchen was I can't um reach um can't quite reach...reach it all, when Taylor rounds on him and goes, “Thank fucking fuck, how fucking hard is it to get your fucking attention.”
“What?” Jamie says.
“Listen, mate, we can't fucking stay here,” Taylor informs him. “It's like...I know they're your friends, and you fucking like them, I get it, but we gotta go somewhere else tonight. Sorry.”
“The fuck is it this time?” Jamie sighs, because Jesus fucking Christ, there's only so many opportunities even someone like Taylor has to get on Roy fucking Kent's shit list, and with the exception of the past ten minutes the kid's been either unconscious or more-or-less supervised.
“Do you have any other friends on your team we can fucking stay with?” Taylor wants to know.
Maybe it's about something that happened before they even got here? Like, maybe it's something like the mobile—but like, worse or whatever—and Taylor's been a little shit with Roy and Keeley in hopes they'll get fed up and throw him out before they find out about whatever-the-fuck-it-was and he's in even worse trouble.
It's the kind of bullshit Jamie would pull, getting himself into exactly enough trouble to stay out of worse trouble. Has pulled, come to think of it. Lust Conquers All and that.
“—amie—”
“Look,” he says, “I don't know what kind of trouble you think you're in, but they're good for it, all right? And they really are our best choice if we want to stay off the paps' radar.”
“Oh, crashing with your ex-girlfriend is the best fucking way to keep the journos out of our proverbial hair—”
“Hey, no, it's a good plan,” Jamie says, “it is. 'Cos Keeley lives here, yeah, but you know who else lives here? Fucking Roy! And you know how sometimes—like, the Queen and that—there's famous people, and they go on telly, and they don't get on? Well Roy and I aren't like, the-Queen-famous, or even Keeley-famous, but we are kind of famous and we very famously do not get on. And if Roy is fucking somewhere, then that fucking somewhere is somewhere that the fucking press won't fucking think to look for me, and if they don't fucking find me then they won't fucking find you, and if they don't find you then Dad won't know where you are and he won't fucking know I fucking crossed him again.”
“Jesus Christ,” Taylor says, “would you give it a fucking rest about fucking Dad and like, listen to me for a minute?”
“I am listening,” Jamie says. “Look at my fucking face. This is my fucking face, fucking listening to you.”
“Good,” his brother says. “Pack your shit, thank them for their hospitality, and go nick your car keys back from Keeley's lingerie drawer. We're fucking leaving.”
“We are not fucking leaving, Jesus Christ.” Jamie runs a hand across his face. “Is this about last night? Because seriously, mate, all we fucking did was fucking sleep, all right? And we talked about it this morning, like adults, and we were just fucking tired and Roy was sleepwalking and someone had to sit on him a bit so he wouldn't hurt himself again so I did it and it was fucking fine, it wasn't weird or anything but we talked about it anyway and so now we are extra sure that it's not going to be fucking weird or like, make us act weird around each other.”
“Jesus Christ I don't fucking care what you twats get up to together,” Taylor says, “that's not the fucking problem.”
“Then what is the fucking problem?” Jamie wants to know.
“Just...fucking come fucking look at this a minute, yeah?” Taylor says, sounding a little sick. And the kid grabs him by the hand again and drags him the rest of the way to the guest room.
Jamie's standing there taking it all in: cream walls and navy curtains, an empty desk and a neatly-made bed, as tidy and morally neutral as a fucking hotel room. The only sign Taylor spent the night at all is a backpack parked by the door, all packed zipped up and ready to go. And Jamie keeps looking around, still baffled, not sure he sees the problem, and Taylor steers him over to the washroom.
Towels hung up, water mopped off the floor, washcloth wrung out to dry. Even the fan is going, so the place will dry out and like, not get problems with mold or peely wallpaper or whatever.
“Jamie,” Taylor says, “are you fucking looking or not?”
And yeah, Jamie's looking. Not really seeing the problem. Checks the cupboard, gives a low whistle. Toiletries is fucking right. Place is fucking stocked. Hotel Hilton could take a fucking lesson. Skin-care products, makeup you could apply with a fucking palette knife. And yeah, all right, there's the first aid kit, but it's nothing he wouldn't keep in his own space.
“Okay, mate,” Jamie says, “I'm looking. And like, the way you're going on I'm expecting either some Silence of the fucking Lambs shite or like, maybe some very weird sex stuff, but...all I'm seeing is that Keeley dated me for two years and like, it was osmotics or whatever and now she's got seriously solid taste in like hair and skin products, and she was raised sort of normal by like people who are sort of normal so she sort of has manners and that, and part of that is like not hoarding the nice stuff for yourself but like, sharing it out with the people you have stay over.”
Yeah, kind of learned that one the hard way, hadn't he. She'd thought he was being a prick on purpose, though, so she hadn't done anything worse than tell him off and like, make some weird fucking threats that involved like clothespins or whatever.
It hadn't been a shower night, is what he's getting at.
Taylor makes a noise of deep and like, probably unbearable impatience and pulls open the cupboard under the sink, starts going through the drawers. “Jamie,” he says, “I know I'm not asking you to go kick footballs so like, yeah this is probably not in your fucking wheelhouse or whatever, I get that, but can you please pay a-fucking-ttention for a fucking minute?”
So Jamie starts picking up packs of this, bottles of that, turning them over in his hands. If the cupboard above the sink is an expression of like, Keeley's thoughtfulness and hospitality—God, she's even got his favorite liquid keratin thing he uses instead of hairspray—the cupboard under the sink just like, makes like a rabid fan of a certain generation and screams He's here, he's there, he's every-fucking-where at a volume typically reserved for Taylor at his shittiest and acts of fucking war.
There's splints and that. Athletic wrap. Painkillers, prescription-strength but also not the kind you can like, sell at a proper profit or like, overdose on and drown yourself in the tub. Chemical cold packs. Creams and salves and fucking lidocaine spray—and like, Jesus, is that even still fucking legal in this country? Lanolin and beeswax.
And yeah, a whole fucking bottle of arnica.
There's a second first aid kit, too. The one above the sink is like, the kind of Red Cross standard with little expiration date stickers on everything that leads him to believe that not only was it Keeley's, but that Keeley, like, spent her entire fucking life from like primary on being a fucking Girl Guide and still like, secretly keeps up with it on the side despite being the kind of woman who's spent the first decade of her career taking her clothes off for money. Keeley's kit is the sort that someone might put together if Be prepared was a tenant of their religious dog-stuff, and like if they'd heard emergencies were a fucking thing for other people somewhere off in the Third World or whatever, but like the whole concept of emergency was still sort of more theory than practice and if you were like, a responsible adult and that—had a Plan and a backup Plan and checklists for every last fucking thing—you could maybe sort of keep it that way.
The other first aid kit is not like that at all.
It's got a label on top that says Don't Panic in nice big friendly letters. Jamie opens it gingerly and it makes something go weirdly soft in like his throat and that, because it's the kind of kit he keeps for himself, tucked up safe under the passenger seat of the Iron Giant where no one will ever fucking find out about it but him. It's a repurposed fishing-tackle box stuffed with like, chocolate bars and butterfly sutures and fidget toys and emergency space blankets and like, a whole fucking stack of notecards with labels like How to stimulate your dive reflex. The inside of the lid has a list of emergency numbers, starting with Roy's beeper and going through a bunch of nonprofit support services that like, Jamie knows better to read through or even think about what they're for, because his little brother is right fucking here and specifically asked for his help so this is clearly no time to turn into a fucking goldfish.
There's a note tucked up in the top, folded in half. Jamie knows he shouldn't look it. Violation of trust, and privacy and that. Feels like peeping on his coach in like, the showers or whatever. Not that they didn't spend a full fucking year showering starkers side-by-side and having it like, not be weird at all, even when they fucking hated each other, even when it took the whole fucking team to stop them clobbering each other. Feels like peeping on Coach when Coach doesn't fucking know about it, is what Jamie's getting at.
But Jamie opens the note anyway, mouth dry. Has to read through it a couple times before the black-and-white chicken scratch resolves into shapes resolves into letters resolves into words, and words into meaning, settling slowly into his head like coal dust in a dark and empty room.
It goes, It's the children this world almost breaks who grow up to save it.
And things are like quiet and that for a bit.
And Taylor goes, “Yeah, that.”
Jamie nods at him, like he fucking gets it. He fucking doesn't, but whatever.
“You got other friends we can fucking stay with?” Taylor wants to know.
Fucking Jamie N. Tartt, Jr. doesn't have fucking friends. Fucking Jamie N. Tartt, Jr. never fucking needed them, did he. So he says, “Taylor, we're staying fucking here. That's the fucking plan. We're not fucking changing it just because Roy and Keeley are like, the only other people on the planet with a properly stocked washroom.”
“Look,” Taylor goes, “I know they're like, nice fucking people and that. I get it. I actually like...it's not the fucking worst, all right? Staying here. But tell me you're not seeing what I'm seeing.”
What Jamie's seeing right now is that Roy and Keeley clearly fucking compared fucking notes on him at some fucking point, fucking worked some fucking Things out because neither of them are fucking idiots, are they, and then they decorated a whole fucking guest bedroom in his favorite fucking colors and stocked the en-suite washroom with everything he might possibly fucking need once that fucking restraining order turns out not to fucking be so fucking useful after all.
What Jamie's seeing right now is that Keeley never really fucking got it, did she, but Coach had like, a very specific idea of how bad the damage would have to fucking be before Jamie broke down and accepted their offer of a fucking safe house.
And Jamie doesn't actually know how much of that he says to Taylor, but Taylor clearly isn't getting it that this washroom might as well have Dear Jamie, welcome the fuck home written on the mirror in fucking soap and like, Keeley's weird loopy cursive and that thing she does where she's older than thirteen fucking years old but still dots all her i's with sloppy little hearts.
Taylor clearly isn't fucking getting it, because he goes, “Look, whoever it is they fucking set this place up for, they clearly fucking need it. Or like, they might. Moment's notice, they might fucking need it, mate.”
And Jamie scrubs a hand over his face and goes, “Taylor, mate, we fucking need it. Okay? Right now, we are the fucking people who fucking need this.”
“Are you this dense on-fucking-purpose?” Taylor says. “Jesus Christ, Jamie, there's a fucking kid involved.”
“Bleeding Christ, Tyler, you're the only fucking kid involved here—and even if you weren't, even if this was like, set up for like Colin and that, not that it fucking is, but even if it was the only fucking kid that it's my fucking responsibility to worry about them and like, put them in the best possible place for them—which is fucking here, by the way—that fucking kid is fucking you, all right? It's not me fucking job to fucking worry about any other fucking kids. They already have fucking people fucking worrying about them.”
And Taylor's getting that particular set to his jaw that says he's about to get nineteen kinds of fucking stubborn, so Jamie rolls his eyes and goes over to the stairwell, yells down, “Oi, you two expecting any unexpected houseguests in like, the next week and that?”
And Keeley yells back up, “What?” while Roy hollers, “Fuck no,” sounding actually like kind of hacked off about it, maybe? It's the kind of like validization of the theory Jamie's got kicking around in the back of his brain that maybe they've been plotting out this Year Four sleepover for like, a while now that both makes him feel like he's maybe not such a fucking crash-test dummy of a fucking idiot moron savant and that, and at the same time is so fucking humiliating he wants to crawl into the deepest darkest hole and fucking hide for-fucking-ever.
“What about like, kids and that?” Jamie calls down.
“We've been over this, sweetheart, Phoebs stays when her mum's working and like, there's a whole fucking schedule and that,” Keeley yells back up. “Check your fucking mobile, yeah?”
“Yeah okay,” Jamie goes, “but what about like, fucking Colin or whatever? You're not going to have to like, emergency put him up or anything?”
“Isaac's looking after him 'til his head's a bit better,” Keeley calls up. “We're not planning to put anyone else up.”
“Coach?” Jamie yells. Just to like, check and that.
“Oi,” Coach says, stumping over to the foot of the stairs to glare at him properly and like, do eyebrow things and that, “your twerp of a little brother trying to weasel out of things by like, running you in circles with weird fucking questions instead of like, letting you fucking help him like he fucking asked you to?”
Oh yeah. That.
And Taylor looks like a sheep in the fucking headlights, not that Jamie's ever like, gone and almost run down a sheep during a late-night coping-with-it drive in the Iron fucking Giant. So Jamie figures Roy's probably onto something there, what with Taylor asking for help and then pussying out about it ten seconds later.
Because it's what fucking Jamie would have done in his shoes, innit.
Would have done, has done.
(Has done.)
And yeah, Roy probably knows all the fuck about that, doesn't he. But Roy's no fucking crash-test dummy, is he, so he'll probably work it out if Taylor and Jamie both fucking pussy out and like, try to lie to him and say they did the thing when they fucking didn't.
So Jamie pretends he doesn't feel like a fucking ten-year-old trying to work out a good way to lie to his coach and get away with it, and he shrugs at his kid brother and goes, “See? Fucking told you.” Like it's normal fucking gloating, brothers one-upping each other, every point scored grounds for a war dance worthy of Roy fucking Kent circa 2013. And like, Jamie doesn't quite take Taylor by the shoulders or whatever—doesn't even touch him—but somehow manages to steer the kid back into the guest room and like, pick through bottles of lidocaine and that, line them up on the sink counter so he doesn't float off in his head somewhere and like, skip something important.
“I don't need your help,” Taylor's trying to tell him, “I was just fucking saying that to fucking get you up here.”
“Bullshit,” Jamie hears himself saying. “Come on, mate, shirt off. Stop fucking around.”
“Jamie,” Taylor says, “I am seriously fucking fine to like, do it myself. You can like, fuck off and let me get on that.”
And what Jamie wants to do is take the out and fuck off out that door fast as his feet can fucking carry him, and sprint out the front door on his usual fucking conditioning run like Keeley's still his fucking girlfriend and this is still his fucking home-away-from-home and the neighbors won't have any reason to like, talk or call in an anonymous tip to the fucking paps. Like he's not living in fucking hiding with a fucking kid who looks so much like himself at that fucking age it makes him want to fuck off and go live in the fucking countryside and like, get his license for badger-hunting and that so he can pretend to hunt badgers and like, be allowed to own a gun and that so he can put that fucking gun in his fucking mouth and pull the fucking trigger so that fucking image gets blotted the fuck out for fucking ever.
But a full night's sleep must have done him some fucking good, innit, because he doesn't say any of that out loud. He doesn't even like, float away or anything. He just goes, “Then get your fucking shirt off and show me you were just fucking saying that and you're not like, just saying that you were fucking saying that because you've decided to fucking pussy out on me.”
And yeah, that's probably sort of in the normal range for how real flesh-and-blood raised-together-under-one-roof brothers might fucking talk to each other, and it's like a Hallmark fucking greeting card compared to how men in the Tartt family apparently talk to each other. But he has the thought—distantly, but it feels like the kind of thought Doctor Sharon would praise as fucking lucid—that this maybe isn't the way a legal guardian's supposed to talk to a fucking twelve-year-old or whatever.
Not that he would fucking know. By the time Jamie was that age, he'd already been scouted and that so the adult communication in his life consisted of coaches who fucking talked to him like that, and teachers who sent him down to get told off by the fucking headmaster, and headmasters who called coaches back in to fucking talk to him like that because he clearly wasn't getting enough of it at fucking training, and fucking Dad, and like...the post-it notes Mum used to leave on the fridge that went, “Coach blew up my mobile at work and I got a formal warning from my shift manager—go make things right with Coach today and please do better in future like we both know you can, Love Mum.”
And Taylor's set his jaw and planted his feet. Fucking going fucking stubborn again. Swearing a bit, even—but like, under his breath. Not like, actual out-and-out, no-holds-barred, get-up-in-your-fucking-face-and-fucking-make-you-fucking-prove-it-you're-a-better-fucking-man-than-fucking-Dad spoiling-for-a-fight swearing.
But whatever, Jamie's got this. Responsible fucking adult, yeah? “Look, mate, I know I'm not supposed to be like, the brightest fucking bulb in the box of fucking crayons here, yeah? But like, even I'm not going to believe it if you try to tell me you fucking humiliated fucking Dad in front of like, hookers and his mates and a bunch of fucking coppers—which is like everybody in the world he fucking cares about who can make his life fucking shite if they want to, especially after somebody's fucking humiliated him—and then he was so hacked off he had to go storm off for a bit, get his fucking game face on, and fucking come back fucking sober—which is like, his least fucking favorite thing ever, so you know, worse even than getting fucking humiliated in front of everybody he fucking knows—and after all that, you went and fucking stood your fucking ground with him again and humiliated him a-fucking-gain like some emo fucking twat with like, drippy eyeliner and the kind of fucking death wish that like normal fucking people get fucking Sectioned over—and like, that whole fucking time Dad had enough self-control to like, only go for the weirdly-arbitrary-weirdly-specific chunk of skin that everyone's gone and decided makes his behavior fucking normal and not like, creepy and gross and weird for some fucking reason.”
And yeah, okay, that's not his most lucid-ever ramble. Not even sure it makes fucking sense. Not sure if Taylor's stopped clenching his jaw because the kid's actually fucking listening for once or if Jamie's just started to sound like, that jaw-droppingly out-of-his-head, out-of-his-face, pants-on-head completely fucking mental.
Jamie takes a deep breath. Holds it, goes in for another. Get it the fuck together, Tartt. Responsible adult, remember?
“My point is,” Jamie hears himself saying, “turns out you haven't actually out-and-out lied to any of us yet, and you came downstairs and said you couldn't fucking reach, and Cressida said the most important things were to like, keep reminding you I'm your fucking brother and to like, believe you when you tell me things, and this is me fucking doing fucking all of that, mate, and that means you got three fucking options. You can tell me you want Coach to help you instead, and I'll fuck off downstairs for another fucking cup of Keeley's fucking garbage coffee and he can come up here and like, actually know what the fuck he's fucking doing. You can tell me you want Keeley and like, samesies. Or you can take a deep fucking breath with me and get your fucking shirt off, get it the fuck over with, and we can be fucking goldfish together for five fucking minutes and then like, pretend this never fucking happened and you'll be fine and I'll be fine and it'll all be fucking fine.”
And fucking Taylor doesn't fucking say anything, does he, because not one of those three fucking options involves keeping that fucking shirt on.
“Look,” Jamie says, “I don't really care what you fucking pick but you've like, got to fucking pick because we've got like, breakfast and training and that.”
And Taylor kind of flies away inside himself, doesn't he, and mumbles, “Not Coach.”
“Right,” Jamie says. “Keeley?”
Headshake.
And Jamie hears himself go, “All right, Door Number Three. Shirt off, mate.”
And Taylor's mouth moves like he's going to say fucking No after fucking all of fucking that. But he doesn't say fucking anything, just presses his lips into a thin miserable line, relaxes his shoulders like he's given up the fight, and then the second he sees Jamie's heart rate like, even think about returning to fucking normal he makes a break for the fucking door.
It's not like, a pre-mediated thing that Jamie does next. It's not. It's like, he spent longer than his brother's even been alive forging himself into the biggest baddest bully on the fucking pitch, hasn't he, and certain reflexes kind of die fucking harder than others. And like, dragging a runty little pipsqueak's shirt over his head so he can't see anything or like, fucking move his arms to like, hit you back or even try to fucking defend himself and that, and then you can do any fucking thing you want to him and there's not a single fucking thing he can do about it, and even his mates are just going to stand around sort of laughing uncomfortably because no matter how bad they feel about it nobody's gonna fucking cross you when you're like this—well, mate, that's just like Year Four Changing Rooms 101, innit.
Fucking innit.
And Jamie, well, Jamie took that class once and fucking flunked it, again and worked his arse off and still fucking flunked it, and came back and fucking dominated so hard the next fucking time 'round he got to like, TA for it and then like, work that into a full-time ten-year track position after the original instructor lost his fucking spot as King of the Fucking Mountain and like, also maybe his position on the team and like, maybe also some fucking teeth, is what Jamie's saying.
And Jamie has the kid's shirt off so fucking fast he like, doesn't even fucking touch skin, does he. Taylor claps his arms over his fucking chest and shouts, “Jesus fuck, Jamie!” Glaring like the little twat might really like to fucking hit him right now, is what Jamie's getting at. Like the kid's seriously fucking thinking about it, or at least seriously fucking thinking about lunging for the shirt that Jamie is totally holding at his side like a normal fucking adult and not like, dangling just out-of-reach like every Year Four Changing Rooms 101 reflex he's got in his body is fucking screaming at him to do.
Like they might end up wrestling for it on the fucking shirt, and Jamie would have no choice but to soak it in and like, fucking lose, because there's no way in hell he's taking a swipe at a little fucking kid.
Like any or all of that is exactly what would fucking happen if Taylor were willing to move his hands from his fucking chest.
And yeah, that fucking tracks. Guess Jamie's figured out, hasn't he, why Taylor had fucking ladies' razors stuffed in his fucking backpack right alongside like, the Mars bars and titty mags and paracetamols and fucking day-to-day dead-useful fucking shite like that. Guess Jamie gets it, doesn't he, even if he'd never been this fucking brazen about it.
Even if he never did a fucking thing to himself that he couldn't like, blame on Dad or another fucking kid or even like a coach or whatever, because it's fucking fine when fucking Dad does it but every time Jamie gets on that bus early and decides to warm himself up a bit, take the edge off while he's fucking waiting for it, everybody freaks the fuck out and he never hears the fucking end of it.
So, yeah, Jamie fucking gets it. So he sets his jaw and makes a very deliberate choice to like, be a fucking goldfish and not freak the fuck out on Taylor right now, because just going off of that mortal-fied sheep-in-the-fucking-headlights look on the kid's face—yeah, Jamie's pretty fucking sure that is exactly what his brother's fucking expecting out of him right fucking now.
And Jamie turns the kid around with like, the daftest possible touch on the shoulder. Shakes up the lidocaine and like, souses his back down good. Angles them both so that Taylor can see them fucking both in the mirror.
He's not a complete arsehole.
“Ever use fucking lidocaine, mate?” he hears himself saying. Sounds so fucking normal, doesn't he?
Slightest shake of the head. Checks his brother's face in the fucking mirror. Kid's fucking sallow as fucking milk, en't he. Going that weird yellow-white color around the lips, like the opposite of fucking blushing.
“'S like, fucking brilliant stuff, mate.” Swallowing hard, still sounding fucking normal. “Not that it's like, ever going to fucking matter for you ever the fuck again after like, Thursday or whatever. Not going to fucking matter, but at least you'll fucking know. Like, life experiences and that, yeah?”
“It's fucking cold is what it fucking is,” Taylor says softly. Not quite whining, but like, maybe sounding a little more like him-fucking-self.
Jamie sort of fucking chuckles, like it isn't sort of settling in that he maybe might have done something that's in the prickish-but-normal spectrum for brothers who grew up together but like, is kind of fucking weird and maybe a bit scary and that for brothers who like...didn't. He goes, “Keep it up, you whiny little twat. Keep going on about how fucking cold it is in fucking Richmond in fucking October and I will like, get seriously fed the fuck up and like, mail you to the fucking Bahamas like we're the kind of bougie twats who can fucking afford it even in the fucking shoulder season.”
Taylor goes, “You pulled down 21-fucking-mil last year, mate. We are like, exactly that sort of bougie twat.”
“Well, when we're through playoffs, and there's not an active fucking custody dispute, and we've settled up whatever fucking tab you've rung up with the fucking law, and it's like—probably not a felony and that?—to take you out the country, we can fuck off to the Bahamas or whatever and like, I'll disable the hotel resort air conditioning so you can't get a break from all that hot sunny weather and we'll like, just fucking do that for a bit until you're fucking melting and you fucking beg me to drag you back fucking here where it's fucking cold enough to hear yourself think once in a fucking while, Jesus Christ,” Jamie mutters. Then he taps Taylor like, two inches out from the nearest...thing...and goes, “Does it fucking hurt when I fucking do this?”
“Um, no,” Taylor says.
Tries it at one inch. Goes, “What about this?”
And Taylor says it's fucking fine, but he also makes a noise that says it is fucking not fucking fine, so Jamie takes a deep breath and decides okay, he's going to give the spray a minute to kick the fuck in a little harder.
Doesn't know what to say, though. How to cover the awkward fucking silence that says yeah, this is the thing they have in common but also they like, don't have anything else bridging them together as fucking brothers. So Jamie digs deep and says to himself, What would Will fucking Hartmann do? Comes up blank.
Well, what would Coach fucking Kent do, then?
“The rest of it,” he says. “You're like, keeping clean and that? Changing out your plasters.”
Taylor rolls his fucking eyes like, Yeah, mate, this en't my first ring-around-the-rosie-o.
“Right,” Jamie hears himself say thickly. And for a while there he thought he was busy studying the wood grain in the fucking cabinet, but he must have made a mistake or like, not been paying attention or something, because then he's looking at Taylor's back and it's like there's nothing else in this fucking room that could possibly draw his eyes.
And it's like, it's not actually so bad, is it. He's like...kind of fucking relieved, actually. Like, fall-to-your-fucking-knees-in-fucking-gratitude, probably-some-flavor-of-religious-experience fucking relieved. Like, the kind of relief that's also got some like, weird fucking jealousy and that thrown in for good measure because there's no hard-to-explain scars or anything like that, and the way Roy and Keeley have been going on he was like, maybe kind of expecting it to be fucking worse or something?
Roy going, It's like, worse-than-your-Dad-being-involved bad.
But this? This isn't fucking worse.
It's like...shitty, yeah. But it's...the kind of shitty that's mostly everything-back-to-normal-in-four-days, use-the-changing-rooms-without-fucking-worrying-about-it-in-ten-days kind of shitty?
The not-that-bad kind, is what Jamie's getting at.
“Fucking what,” Taylor says sharply.
And Jamie doesn't say any-fucking-thing at all for a minute, because he's not sure if he's said any of that out loud and it's like, only occurring to him now that if he did it might actually like, sound a bit mental. And then he's afraid he's fucking laughed or something equally inappropriate, because yeah, he gets it how that might feel really fucking shitty if you were like, twelve or whatever and someone was staring at the kinds of things fucking Dad lays down on you.
So Jamie pokes him right square in the middle of one of those things and goes, “Okay, does that hurt?”
“Fucking ow,” Taylor says, without heat. Which means the lidocaine's kicked in about as much as it's going to, because otherwise Taylor wouldn't have said anything at all, just let up the kind of yell that neighbors might hypothsensically call social services about.
“Yeah, okay,” Jamie says, and goes to fucking work. And it's got to be feeling better by now, it does, but Taylor's still looking like he hopes the earth will open up and swallow him fucking whole. So, feeling like an out-of-his-depth plonker, and also like a fucking arsehole for going all Year Four Changing Rooms 101 on a fucking flayed-open fucking kid, Jamie goes, “You know, it's not actually that fucking bad.”
And Taylor's quiet for a minute, and Jamie thinks he might have actually succeeded in saying something fucking nice that like, cheers him up and that. And then the kid goes, “...The fuck?”
“I mean it,” Jamie says, “it's not like, horrible or gross or anything. It's seriously like, probably about fucking normal for him. Don't know what Roy and Keeley are on about.”
“About fucking normal,” Taylor says in that weird flat tone of voice that Jamie's coming to understand is not exactly sarcasm, and is not exactly a kid being shitty the way kids can be shitty with grownups sometimes, but also like, means that the words don't exactly mean quite exactly what they sound like they fucking mean, exactly.
“Yeah,” Jamie says, “normal.” And like, his voice sounds normal and everything. This whole fucking conversation does, suddenly. “Come on, mate,” he says, “tell me he's never fucking done this before.”
“Um,” Taylor says, and for a brief stomach-clenching moment Jamie's scared the answer might be something awful like No, mate, are you fucking mental, and like...maybe mean that the problem's never been James, Sr. at all, Jamie's just been a fucking Behavior Case all the fuck along and who the fuck can blame Dad or his coaches or fucking any-fucking-body else.
“Mate,” Jamie says, and his voice just about oozes some disgusting facsimile of compassion, because part of him's apparently still eight fucking years old and like, really fucking needs to know.
“Okay,” Taylor goes, “not like this, yeah?” And he turns around and he's going, “Jamie, mate—”
But Jamie takes him by the fucking shoulder again, fucking turns him, goes back to work with like arnica and plasters and that. Two butterfly sutures, well done there. Should heal up just fucking fine though, nothing left to remember today by or like, have to eventually explain to fucking girlfriends someday. He finds his voice, determined not to sound like an arsehole or like, be a prick on accident, goes, “I'm not saying it's like, something he should've done or whatever. Like, not even with like coppers and that, telling him he could or he should or like, it was his job as your fucking Dad or whatever. I'm just saying it's like...middle of the road and that. You'll be like, actually better in a couple days.”
And yeah, Jamie still sounds pretty fucking normal. His voice. This whole conversation. This whole fucking thing. Don't think about the past, just...face front, focus on what's ahead of us, and what's ahead is Taylor's not so bad off that he won't be seriously fucking better in a couple days and like, kid just needs to know that. Gold. Fish.
And Taylor goes, “Okay, um, hang on a minute.” Steps away from Jamie's hands. Goes, “I need a fucking minute.”
Doesn't bother trying to cover his chest. Doesn't bother looking properly fucking scared, even. His eyes are doing some serious fucking eye-things, though. Pupils blown like he's been dicking around with serious pharms or like, ballet-fucking-Donna.
Taylor goes, “Okay, mate, I'm thinking about like, means and medians and modes, and like, the law of averages, law of small numbers. I'm thinking about how much people are like, biased and that to remember bad things over good ones, or bad things as worse than they fucking are and that. And I'm thinking, you just looked at me and went, okay, this whole thing is kind of in-the-fucking-middle. And I'm trying to wrap my head around what you could possibly fucking mean by that.”
And Jamie like, never paid attention in maths and that, doesn't really understand one word in three here—but he got a full night's sleep, didn't he, he's not so fucking helpless out-at-sea as he was yesterday. He like, gets some things.
He like, kind of gets what Taylor's saying.
And then...shite, he's like seriously not sure what fucking happened here, but his kid brother's dressed again in one of Coach fucking Kent's hand-me-downs, and speaking of middles the mouthy little twat's got his arms wrapped around Jamie's. Like, fucking hanging onto him like the world is fucking ending. Like Coach might, actually, if Jamie'd just been running his mouth about something ridiculously fucked up. And Jamie lets his hands kind of squeeze at the back of the kid's shoulders, because he's not really not sure what to do with his hands but he's also like, extra aware of where exactly he's putting them and like, what's going on on the other side of all that fucking fabric.
And yeah, this is like...awkward as fuck. Doesn't feel like hugging a brother, does it. Feels like when he signs a kid's jersey down at the fucking gates outside the stadium, and the kid goes in for a squeeze for like, selfie purposes—which is still like, getting touched by a miniature stranger and that, but it isn't fucking weird. But then, sometimes they go in for another one, even if it's just like, a second, and that's when it gets fucking weird, innit. Fucking this is fucking that fucking kind of fucking weird.
And he goes, “Taylor, mate.”
He goes, “Jesus fucking Christ, Taylor.”
He goes, “Jesus Christ kid, this is not your fucking job.”