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Roy hates therapy exactly as much as he always knew he would, but for none of the reasons he thought he would. He thought he would hate it because the therapist would make him talk about shit that didn't matter, draw a load of judgy conclusions about him based on how often his mother fucking hugged him as a child, and then try to make him take pills that would kill his sex drive. He actually hates it because it makes him feel like a complete fucking idiot every time he realises some shit about himself he should have worked out fucking decades ago. Which happens approximately every single fucking time he goes.
It usually starts when Dr. Sharon asks him to talk about something he doesn't think he's got anything to say about. If he had any fucking sense, he'd notice this first step happening and consider the possibility that she's on to something, given that she's been on to something every single fucking time so far. But he hasn't got any fucking sense, and every single fucking time he argues that there's no point in talking about it, they'd only be wasting time.
"I mean, I feel for the bloke, but it's nothing to do with me. We've only got an hour a week, shouldn't we focus on my shit?"
"It's up to you," she says, just like she does every time.
Roy nods with satisfaction. She's always been clear on that: he's in charge and they can talk about whatever he wants to talk about. So he moves on to the fight he had with his sister at the weekend over the present he gave Phoebe for her birthday (apparently she's "already morbid enough" and doesn't need to be reading books about serial killers, but he asked her what she wanted and she wanted to learn about serial killers and it's her fucking birthday, isn't it) and then, like always, it bothers him enough to circle back.
"Why did you think I should talk about the press nosing into Colin's private life?" he demands.
She always says the same thing then, too. That's the most infuriating bit—it's not like this is a difficult pattern to spot. It goes the same way every time, and every time he thinks this is the time she's full of shit.
"How would you respond if I told you what I think you're feeling?" she asks, like always.
"I'm not fucking feeling anything," Roy tells her. "They're horrible bastards and they should leave him alone, but it's not like it's a fucking surprise. This shit happens all the time."
Whenever he says he's not feeling anything, that's when Dr. Sharon pulls out the fucking cards.
Roy can't fucking stand the fucking cards. They're plain white with plain black text, each displaying the name of a different emotion, and he's supposed to go through them and decide whether he's feeling each thing or not. It's fucking stupid, it makes him feel like a fucking toddler, and worst of all, it fucking works.
"Sympathy," he says. "All right, yes, I feel sympathy for Colin. That's just being a human being, anyone would."
She flips to the next card.
"Empathy. What's the fucking difference again?"
"Sympathy is when you see someone experiencing something difficult and feel bad for them. Empathy is when you identify with them, when you feel the same things they're feeling. When you see the media prying into Colin's personal life and printing things he doesn't want public, do you just feel sorry for him, or do you feel almost as if you're experiencing that invasion of privacy yourself?"
Roy thinks about that for a minute. He did get a bit more worked up about it than he normally does when the press are being arseholes. They're always arseholes, but this time it felt somehow personal. It begins to dawn on him, as always, that there's a possibility she may not actually be full of shit.
"Yeah. Empathy, I guess."
She flips to the next one.
"Vulnerability. No." Roy doesn't do vulnerability.
She always goes through the cards in the same order, and Roy has never looked at the last one without yelling "FUCK" at the top of his lungs. And yet, every single time, he fails to see it coming.
"Fear," he reads. He stares at the card, processing. Then, like always: "FUCK!"
Dr. Sharon taps the cards on her desk to straighten them out and puts them back in their little box. She doesn't actually look smug—the woman's got the best fucking poker face Roy's ever seen—but he just fucking knows she's feeling it.
"Why am I such a fucking idiot?" he groans.
Dr. Sharon gives him the "don't talk shit about yourself" look, which she's given him so many times she doesn't need to say the words along with it anymore. "Everyone's a work in progress," she says.
Roy fucking hates therapy.
*
"Did you know I'm attracted to men?" he asks Keeley in the car on the way to her house that evening. They have an agreement on Wednesdays: she helps him with his post-therapy processing, and he makes her dinner and takes out her rubbish. He's definitely got the better end of the deal.
"Well," says Keeley, in that careful tone that means yes. "Of course no one but you can really know that without being told, but I did wonder."
"When? Why?"
"I think my first clue was when you said you thought Daniel Radcliffe was fucking hot," she says. "And my second clue was when you said you thought Keanu Reeves was fucking hot. And my most recent clue was when you were looking at pictures of Elliot Page after his transition and you said that before you'd never seen the appeal but now you thought he was fucking hot."
Roy is forced to acknowledge, in retrospect, that she has a point.
"I'm glad you're feeling comfortable enough to tell me now," she says, patting his arm.
Roy is feeling several things, according to the fucking cards, but comfortable is not among them. "I wasn't not telling you on purpose," he says. "I only just found out."
He pulls into her driveway and glances over. Her eyebrows are so high he thinks she must have painted them on at a new altitude this morning. "You only just found out," she repeats. "Have you never had a wank thinking about a man?"
"Yes, but I didn't think..." Roy scowls. This is why he fucking hates therapy. Everything is so fucking obvious, once he's already realised it. "I thought I was identifying with them. Wishing I looked like them."
"Wow." Keeley unbuckles her seatbelt and opens the door. "You're gonna have a hell of a time on Pornhub tonight, aren't you?"
"I don't use fucking Pornhub," he grumbles as he follows her inside. "I've got better taste than that."
She gets that gleam in her eye that means he won't be hearing the end of it for a good long while. "Oh, you have, have you? Only the classiest porn for Roy Kent, is it? Do you watch that artsy shit with all the food metaphors? Do you buy it hardcopy at some posh gentleman's club from a wanker with a monocle? Or is your version of porn just football matches? I bet you get off thinking of your own goals, don't you? Admit it!"
He tolerates this throughout dinner prep, as he does somewhat deserve it, but when they're sat down with their rice pilaf and broccoli and Keeley has poured them each a glass of wine, he turns serious again. "It fucking blindsided me, this. I hate the idea that there's always been this huge thing I've just never noticed about myself."
Keeley gives him a sympathetic look. Sympathy, not empathy—she'd never be this fucking dense about what's going on in her own head. "Do you think you're going to tell anyone else yet?" she asks.
"I'm not telling anyone else, full stop. Why would I?"
There go the eyebrows again. "Well, of course you don't have to."
Shit, this is one of the things he's meant to be working on—not committing to snap decisions in the heat of the moment. "I don't know if I'm going to tell anyone else," he amends. "Haven't had time to think about it."
She smiles at him. "You know, I'm really proud of you, Roy. I think a year or two ago it would have taken you weeks to be able to talk about this at all. It's only been, what, just over an hour? That's so impressive."
Roy is aware that this is a tactic to make him feel better by soothing his ego, which automatically makes him bristle, but he bites back the urge to be a dick about it. Another thing he's working on.
"Thanks, Keeley," he says.
"This is amazing," she tells him, brandishing a forkful of pilaf, and that's a tactic too, but it's one Roy doesn't mind so much. His pilaf is fucking amazing.
*
The next morning, after early training, Jamie opens Roy's laptop and says, "Whoa."
"What?" Roy asks, and then—"Fuck. Oh, fucking hell, Jamie, why can't you just check the fucking forecast on your phone?"
"I like the graphics better on desktop. You can see the shape of the temperature through the day, yeah? Cold, warm, hot, warm, cold." Jamie gestures with his hand, drawing a little hill in the air, then looks back down at the laptop screen. "So. Uh."
Roy slams the lid onto the blender. So much for not telling anyone else, full stop. "Don't fucking run your mouth about it. None of anyone's business. Especially not yours." He turns the blender on.
"Right," says Jamie, after the blending is done. "'Course. I wouldn't tell."
He looks like there's something else he wants to say. Roy sticks a protein shake in his face to keep it busy. "I don't want to fucking talk about it."
"Okay," Jamie agrees, in that voice he and Keeley both do when they're trying to reassure him that he's in charge. Roy has complicated feelings about that voice. He had a whole "FUCK" about it in therapy a month ago.
They drive to Nelson Road in silence. Right before they get out of the car, Jamie says, "Just one thing. Not about you," he adds quickly. "Just wanted to say, uh, me too. If you ever need someone to talk to, or..." He trails off awkwardly, shrugging.
At some point in the future, when he's been through a lot more of this therapy shit, Roy might become a person who could react to that by saying "thanks for telling me" or something like that. Currently, he's still the kind of arsehole who just gets out of the car and walks off without saying a word.
Everyone's a fucking work in progress.
*
"Someone came out to me last week," Roy tells Dr. Sharon. "Someone... important to me."
"Did you come out to them?" she asks.
Roy cringes. "They found out," he evades.
She waits. Sometimes she nudges him along with questions, and sometimes she just lets him stew in his own juices until he comes up with more words on his own. He hasn't decided which he hates more.
Roy knows where this is going to end up, so he decides to grab the bull by the fucking horns. "Just do the fucking cards," he growls.
He's dreading some kind of praise for initiating it, but she just calmly gets out the deck and holds up the first one. It's anger, which is an easy one because it's almost always yes. Roy wonders if she arranges the deck in a different order for different clients.
He can never predict which card is going to fuck him up—if he could, he wouldn't need the fucking cards, would he—but he's especially taken off-guard by this one, which has always made him roll his eyes every time he's seen it before: longing.
"What the fuck," he says, instead of a yes or a no.
Dr. Sharon sets the card down in the "shit we're gonna have to talk about" pile and moves on. She never asks him to get into the details of his reactions until they've been through the whole deck.
A few cards later, rejection comes up, and Roy says again, "What the fuck."
And then, when they get to the fear card at the end, he shakes his head in bewilderment and says, "What the FUCK."
*
"Did you know I want to fuck Jamie?" Roy asks Keeley in the car.
Her hand slips on the wheel and she almost crashes into a cyclist. "Fucking hell, Roy!"
"Sorry," says Roy, and waits for her to steer straight again. "But did you?"
"No!" she shouts, and then a moment later, "Fuck. Maybe. God, that makes sense."
Roy laughs sharply. "Does it?"
"Yeah," she breathes, like she's going back over their whole history in her head. "Yeah, it fucking does. Do you think he'd ever consider giving dick a go?"
Roy thinks he's already done more than consider it, but he can't very well say so after warning Jamie off telling anyone about him. "What do you think?"
"I don't know," she says, sounding enthralled by the idea. "But if he ever did, your dick would definitely be the first one he'd go for."
Well. There's something to lie in bed staring at the ceiling all night thinking about.
*
There are a lot of feelings happening all at once. Roy doesn't know what the fuck they are, because he hasn't got any cards of his own to swear at, but there are a lot of them and they're getting worse. He manages to tough it out for three more days before he breaks down and blurts out, "Have you actually fucked men?"
Jamie pauses for a beat mid-lunge, then keeps going. "Yeah."
Roy doesn't say anything else beyond training-related commands until they're back at Jamie's house. He pours them each a glass of water and says, "I haven't."
He's pretty sure Jamie is going to offer. Keeley said that if Jamie wanted dick he'd want Roy's, and she should know. Roy thinks that if he were going through the cards right now the one that would fuck him up is hope.
He doesn't remember until Jamie is already opening his mouth that no matter what else lands a punch on the way through the deck, he always gets laid flat at the end.
"I could," Jamie says. "If you want. No strings, I mean, just to try."
Roy feels like he's the one who just kept his heart rate at 80% of max for two hours. "Finish a fucking sentence, Tartt," he says, because it's easier than any of the other things he could say.
Jamie looks him dead in the eye and says, "You can fuck me. If you want."
The last card takes Roy out at the knees. He stares at Jamie, completely frozen, head full of static.
"Just offering," Jamie mutters, like Roy's turned him down. "It's fine. I'm gonna shower. Make sure the door locks behind you if you leave."
Roy doesn't move. He hears the shower start up and thinks: he could go in there. Touch Jamie. Fuck him. He could just do it, right fucking now. Jamie said he could.
He tries to picture it, fucking and sucking like the gay porn he's been mainlining for almost two weeks. All his brain will show him is Jamie's pretty fucking mouth coming in for a kiss.
The shower turns off.
Roy makes sure the door locks behind him.
*
Roy stares at Dr. Sharon. She stares back impassively. It's been at least three minutes. He's tempted to find out whether she'll tolerate him doing it for the entire hour, but he knows she will, and he does actually need some fucking therapy right now.
"I need to talk about something, and I don't know how," he says.
She holds up the cards, questioning. He waves at her to go on, then. It does fucking work, after all.
Longing, again.
Rejection, again.
Fear.
Roy puts his face in his palms and whispers, "Fuck."
*
"Did you know I'm in love with Jamie?" Roy asks Keeley in the car.
"Yeah, babe," she says. "I've known that for years."
"What the fuck," he says, startled. "You didn't know I wanted to fuck him, but you knew I was in love with him?"
"Yeah," she says, like that makes perfect sense, and when he really thinks about it, it kind of fucking does.
*
"No strings attached," Roy says in Jamie's kitchen. "Just sex?"
Jamie nods, lighting up.
"Then no," Roy says.
Jamie makes his stupid crinkled-up confused face, and Roy appreciates the very brief moment of not being attracted to him. "Wait, what? You mean, you'd say yes if there was strings attached?"
"Does she use the cards with you?" Roy asks. He's not sure where the question is coming from. Maybe he's just deflecting because he's fucking scared. He does want to know, though.
Jamie does the crinkled-up face even more. "Does who use what cards?"
"Dr. Sharon. Does she use the cards with the feelings on them to help you work out what you're feeling?"
Jamie shakes his head. "She just asks me what I'm feeling and I tell her. Don't know what cards you mean."
Roy remembers she asked him that once, their first session. He doesn't remember what he said, but she's never tried to ask again, just breaks out the fucking deck every time. Apparently Jamie doesn't need the remedial feelings class.
"What are you feeling now?" Roy asks.
"Confused," Jamie says. "Hopeful. Turned on. Worried."
Roy can't fucking do that, just take stock and come up with a list of exactly the words he needs. He wonders if he'll ever be able to.
"What about you?" Jamie asks, his voice strained and small. "What... what are you feeling?"
Roy imagines the cards in his head. Anger is the first one, and for once he's not feeling that. What's next? Sadness, he thinks. Not that either. He can't remember all of them, but... longing, yes. Rejection, no, not anymore. Fear? There's always some fucking fear, but he's too keyed-up right now to sort out what it is.
"I don't know what I'm fucking doing," he admits. "My head is a fucking mess. I don't know if I'm ready for this."
"I can wait," says Jamie. "If you're not ready. I'll wait as long as you need." There's something on his face, something Roy doesn't see often, soft and open.
Vulnerability, Roy remembers. He's never said yes to that one. He stopped letting himself be vulnerable a long fucking time ago.
He pictures it in his head. Black text on a white card.
"Vulnerable," he says. "I'm feeling fucking vulnerable. Don't be a prick, all right?"
"I won't." Jamie teeters on the brink of stepping towards Roy, uncertain.
Roy thinks about kissing him like they do in the porn videos, messy and frantic, stumbling upstairs shedding clothes along the way. He wants it, his mouth is watering for it, but he can't. "No sex," he says. "Not... not yet."
Jamie doesn't even look disappointed. He looks like Roy's just given him a fucking present. "Okay," he says, nodding quickly.
"Do you want to," Roy says haltingly. The word vulnerability flashes in his mind again, black on white. "Even if we don't..."
He's sure Jamie is going to make some crack about finishing a fucking sentence, but he doesn't. "Yeah," he says. "I want to."
It's not messy, and it's not frantic. It's slow, tentative, both of them moving like they're trying not to spook each other, or maybe themselves. It doesn't last long, just a few soft warm dizzying seconds before Jamie is pulling back, giving Roy space, catching his eye to check in.
Roy pictures a white card, but there's no black text. If there's a name for what he's feeling right now, he can't bring it to mind.
*
"Where do you get those?" Roy asks, nodding to the deck of cards. "Can you just buy them?"
Dr. Sharon shakes her head. "I make them," she says. "Love a laminator."
Roy has no idea how to use a fucking laminator. He frowns.
She gets up and steps around her desk to open a drawer, pulling out another little box identical to the one she keeps the deck in. "I make extras," she says. "In case people need them between sessions."
She looks at him, waiting. Nothing can ever be fucking easy, can it.
"I need them," Roy admits. The words feel like they're scraping his throat raw.
*
"Inadequacy," Keeley reads out, and closes her eyes. "Fuuuck," she whines.
"What, really?" That makes no sense to Roy. "Why?"
She glares at him. "Does Dr. Fieldstone ask you why?"
There's a reason Roy isn't a fucking therapist. "Sorry. Just... surprised. You've got nothing to feel inadequate about, you're amazing at fucking everything."
"I don't think debating the feelings is the point of this, is it?" She draws up one knee onto the sofa and wraps her arms around it. "I think it's meant to be about acknowledging them. Accepting them."
"Oh," says Roy, and—after another moment's contemplation—"fuck."
*
"I'm fucking afraid," Roy announces. It feels like he's handing Jamie a cricket bat and spreading his legs to provide unfettered access to his bollocks.
Jamie doesn't seem to pick up on the gravity of the moment. "Afraid of what?"
Roy grits his teeth. "Of this. Us. I'm afraid of fucking this up."
"Oh." Jamie shrugs. "I'm not."
Roy scowls. "I know your fucking self-esteem is bulletproof, but do you really have to—"
"No, I mean I'm not afraid of you fucking it up." Jamie shoots him that grin, the baselessly confident one that normally makes Roy want to strangle him. "Don't worry. We're gonna be fine."
*
"What are you feeling?" Dr. Sharon asks Roy, for the second time ever.
The deck of laminated cards she lent him is in his pocket. He takes it out and opens the box, staring down at the first one: anger.
He turns the box upside down, scattering cards all over the floor.
"Optimistic," he says. "I am feeling cautiously fucking optimistic."
