Work Text:
Dad’s ill, the note says. Come home.
A PA delivers it as soon as Jamie’s finished his latest interview to the camera. He reads it twice before he starts taking off his mic.
“Sorry,” he says, passing her a bunch of wires and his mic pack. “It’s an emergency. My dad’s in hospital.”
“What about your things?”
“It’s fine.” The one suitcase he’d been allowed to bring with had been full of section-issued, production-approved clothing. The only thing he needs is his notebook with logs of pertinent information, the ones he’s kept in code, but that’s safely tucked in the pocket of his cargo shorts. He wishes he had time to ditch this outfit, honestly. “Post them to me? You have my address, yeah?”
She nods, panicked. Production knows where to find him. Or at least they think they do.
There’s a car waiting for him outside. Jamie gets in, shirt buttons still undone, and waits until they’re far enough away to ask, “Anything for me?”
“Yes, sir.” The driver passes back a manila envelope with another note and a phone.
It’s enough to make Jamie wish the man’d said no.
**
“Change of plans.” The car pulls over at a petrol station. “You stay here. The code word is ‘greyhound.’”
There’s not enough time to ask questions, and besides, Jamie hasn’t gotten this far in his career by asking questions. “Shut the fuck up and listen,” Roy used to say. “Everything you need to know is right there in the instructions.”
Of course, Roy Kent left the section less than two years after Jamie had joined, so who the fuck knows if he was right or wrong. He was a shit partner the entire time they’d been stuck together, always grinding his molars to dust and telling Jamie he was a fucking idiot and a showoff.
He’d been right about the questions bit, though. It was absolutely insufferable how often he’d been right about shit. It’s why Jamie doesn’t ask anything now. It’s easier to wait. People always show themselves in the silence.
He rereads the note from the envelope. Nelson Road has fallen. Get out. Get home. Look alive.
“Mr. Dawkins?” Jamie jumps when the door opens. On instinct, he slides out the opposite side. “We’ll leave for the harbor shortly. We just need to pick up your dog first, right? What kind was it again?”
When the new driver smiles, it’s with too many teeth. Jamie clocks the sweat on his temples, the way his cap’s too big and the jacket too small.
“Grey,” Jamie starts to say, but something stops him. It feels an awful lot like the ghost of Roy stomping on his foot, calling him a too-trusting child who can’t follow fucking directions. “Poodle. A gray poodle.”
The man grins and tugs at his cuffs. He looks strangely pleased. “It’s fantastic to see you, Leslie. Shall we?”
“Right.” Jamie doesn’t blink. He chucks the envelope back into the car, trying to look as casual and careless as possible. “I’m just going to pop inside first, use the toilet, yeah? Long trip ahead of us.”
The man looks wary. Jamie doesn’t blame him. He’s clearly about to protest and probably, like, knock Jamie out and dump his body near El Tiede. Jamie schools his face into something he’s been told most people find charming. Roy, of course, had always called it “disgusting” and “constipated,” but he stopped complaining when it got them into more than a few side doors. He shifts his weight, cocks his hip and slouches and tries to look like he’s just some idiot kicked off a dating show. “Five minutes, that’s all, then we’re off. Got to get back to me pup, don’t I?”
That settles the man. He nods, adjusts his cap, and waves Jamie towards the door.
It’s two minutes before he’s down the back alley, three minutes before he’s running at a dead sprint, trying to put as much space between him and whoever the fuck that was before they realize he’s in the wind.
**
It’s a long way back to the UK from Tenerife, flying indirect as Jamie is. He buys two tickets, one on his phone, one at the desk, and hopes he’s got enough luck that at least one of his passports isn’t flagged at customs. He doesn’t know how the fake driver got hold of his first alias; doesn’t really want to know. It doesn’t matter, anyway. Nelson Road has fallen.
He buys a bottle of scotch, a pack of Legos, and an eyebrow pencil with cash at duty-free. In the toilet on the plane, he changes his shirt and fills in his eyebrow, cursing the stupid slit he’d shaved into it all those weeks ago.
One of the TVs by the gate flashes a picture of Beard and Jamie nearly breaks his neck whipping around to read it. The chyron says MI5 Deputy in Jeopardy!. He snorts. Ted would get a kick out of that one, even if the story is about allegations of Ted’s right-hand man coming to work high. The closed captioning names “anonymous sources” who had contacted the BBC with credible information.
Credible information, Jamie knows, is the news’ way to say a leak. Beard was CIA in America; his picture’s not one people tend to blast on international news. He wonders how they got it; until right now, Jamie never even knew his full name.
Whatever’s going on, it’s clearly worse than Jamie realized.
He keeps his head down when he boards the next plane. No one notices when he filches a bag from the overhead bins. It earns him another change of clothes in the airport toilets.
At Gatwick, he holds his breath, the note burning a hole in his back pocket. Get out. Get home. It reverberates through his brain like a mantra, echoing with every breath, with every step.
“Sir, please.” An agent flags him down, makes him step to the side even though he has nothing to declare. Jamie hands over his passport. He doesn’t hold his breath, but only because his training is so deeply ingrained at this point he doesn’t know what real panic would feel like.
The agent takes a moment, then another. He’s very squinty, but also very young. If it comes down to it, Jamie thinks he could take him in a footrace.
It doesn’t. The lad hands him back his passport with a brief, “Safe travels.”
“Cheers,” Jamie says.
Before he hits fresh air he rips the pages out of his passport, dumps half in a bin by baggage claim, the rest right by the arrivals doors.
It feels safer.
**
Jamie doesn’t know who pulled him out of the field — Ted’s not capable of that kind of brevity so he suspects Keeley, even though she claimed to wash her hands of him the second she turned him over to Ted. She’d always had a soft spot for Jamie, even if she showed it by threatening to lock him and Roy in a room and let them kill each other once and for all. Theirs had been a unique agent-handler relationship.
It had been, at least, before Roy announced he was retiring and Jamie got promoted and everything got ten times harder. Fucking paperwork.
But now his last contact was the second note, and if Jamie knows one thing it’s that if Ted’s gone radio silent, everyone’s absolutely fucked.
He ducks into the nearest store and buys a burner phone. “I’m sorry, Mr. Cockburn, your card was declined.”
Jamie frowns. “Can I tap it again?” he asks, even though he knows it’ll be the same result. The machine beeps, just as he expected. That’s three identities gone, then. Four, actually, if he counts the shifty fake driver knowing about Leslie. Fuck. He ignores the pit of dread filling his stomach as he reaches for the cash left in his wallet.
He messages the squirrel emoji to the emergency number that’s hopefully still Keeley’s. He doesn’t expect a response.
A few streets away, he finds an ATM and uses the last debit card in his wallet to check Jeff Goodman’s balance; he withdraws all the money in the account. It’s not enough to last forever, but it should get Jamie far enough.
He tucks the bills into his pocket and flags down the next taxi he sees.
“Hi,” he says, climbing in. He gives the woman the last address he’d ever expected to give in this situation: his own.
**
It’s a miserable ride. Jamie keeps checking the burner phone, but nothing’s come through.
Which makes sense, he tells himself. If Nelson Road has truly fallen — which it seems like it has, based on all the identities Jamie’s had burned in the last twelve hours — then of course Keeley’s not answering texts from an unknown number, no matter how specific the code.
It doesn’t make him feel any less jittery. He’d never expected this, no matter how many drills they ran, how many scenarios they made him plan for. It’s fucking bullshit, being yanked from the field and chucked into an even higher stress situation.
He almost wishes they’d left him to rot on the set of Lust Conquers All. At least there no one knew who he was and he got three meals a day and all the sex he wanted.
“Sir?”
“Yeah, sorry.” Jamie shakes his head to clear it. “Here.” He shoves a few bills into the driver’s hand and slides out of the car before she can react. His building’s far enough away that he can leave if it’s been compromised, but close enough that it’s not a pain in the neck to walk to. He waits until the car’s gone to head in the right direction.
**
He can tell something’s off the second he gets to his floor. The welcome mat is askew and there’s a package by the door for Jack Dawkins. He leaves it alone.
He slides the safety off his gun — thank fuck he keeps one in his letterbox — and unlatches the door. Get out. Get home, he thinks. This is home. He followed instructions. It’s not his fucking fault if they were a lie.
Jamie eases the door open and holds his breath. The only thing that comes from inside is silence.
He takes one step inside, then two. The door swings shut behind him.
“Don’t shout,” someone says.
Jamie cocks his gun. “Put your hands up or I’ll fucking shoot you.”
On the sofa, sitting in the dim light of one weak floor lamp, Roy’s got his own gun pointed lazily at Jamie. At Jamie’s gesture to hurry the fuck up — trust no one, no exceptions. That had been another one of Roy Kent’s Rules — he rolls his eyes. Setting the gun on the cushion next to him, Roy puts his hands up slowly, one finger at a time, starting with the middle.
**
“What are you doing here?” Jamie’s heart’s still going a hundred beats per minute. He looks at the window, closed but unlatched. What he wants to ask is “How did you get in?” but he knows Roy wouldn’t answer that. Roy’s never answered a non-yes-or-no question in his stupid, ancient life.
He checks the windowsill for damage, knowing there won’t be any. There aren’t even fucking marks. No sign of entry.
Except — “Roy?”
Jamie turns. From this angle, the moon’s casting a bright light across Roy’s ghostly pale face. He looks even worse than usual. Not that Jamie’s seen him in months. Not since they passed each other in the hallway, Roy limping by, resignation in hand.
Roy grunts. Once upon a time, Jamie knew what each of those sounds meant, could distinguish between “I’m fucking hungry” and “You’re a fucking idiot, Tartt,” and “Duck. Now.” Now it’s like nothing. Gibberish.
Jamie takes a step closer. His fingertips are wet where he’d swiped them across the frame.
Roy growls; Jamie’d bet his favorite silencer that one means “don’t come any closer,” but it’s his flat Roy’s broken into. He doesn’t get to make the rules, not here.
“Tartt,” Roy says, a warning, but he’s too fucking slow by half. Jamie can see the tea towel he’s got pressed up against his side, the way it’s stained red, same as Jamie’s fingertips.
“Jesus Christ.”
Roy closes his eyes. He looks rough, taking shallow, pathetic breaths like he’s actively refusing to hyperventilate in Jamie’s sitting room.
“What the fuck, Roy?” Jamie clenches his fists before he does something stupid, like take the towel away and see how badly he’s bleeding. On his white sofa, no less. It fucking figures.
“Can you just —” Roy sits up, or he tries to, at least, and then decides against it. The sound he makes is horrifying. And pathetic. Roy glares at the look on Jamie’s face. “Shut up.”
Jamie will not shut up. This is his flat. He’s the one being home-invaded.
“You shut up, you stupid twat.” Jamie stomps into the kitchen for a towel. He slams the cupboard behind him for good measure. “You’re the one who showed up here, breaking and entering and bleeding on my sofa.”
“This thing is hideous.” Roy tosses a pillow out of the way. Jamie ignores the way it makes a sheen of sweat appear on Roy’s forehead. “You should get rid of it anyway.”
“Is that why you came here? To insult my furniture before you die?”
Roy has the nerve to roll his eyes. “I’m not going to die. Fuck.” He sucks air in through his teeth as he changes his gross towel out for the one Jamie’s chucked at him. “It’s a graze.”
“Let me —”
“I’ve got it.”
Jamie bites the inside of his cheek; if Roy wants to bleed out so he can have the upper hand, then let him.
“Fuck.”
“Would you just —” Jamie doesn’t wait for him to process what’s happening, just nudges Roy’s arm up and then, in one quick motion, pulls the towel away and shoves Roy’s shirt up and, “Jesus Christ, Roy.”
“It’s fine.”
“Yeah, and I’m the Queen.” Jamie touches the edge of Roy’s wound, puts his fingers on either side, and considers the width of it; the light’s not good, but he can tell it’s deeper than the graze Roy was pretending. The bleeding’s sluggish, at least, though it begs the question of how long Roy’s been sat here.
“You’re looking better than usual, Ma’am.” Roy touches the ends of Jamie’s hair where it’s starting to fall out of its style.
Jamie looks up. “Was that a joke?”
Roy shrugs. This close, Jamie can see the tiny lines at the corners of his eyes, the weary set of his mouth, all the signs he feels like shit. He hasn’t moved his hand; Jamie could tip his head and it would be resting in Roy’s stupid giant palm.
“Why are you here?” The question’s out of his mouth before he can stop it. He can feel Roy’s sharp inhale, the way his stomach contracts under Jamie’s hand.
Roy looks away. “I didn’t know where else to go.”
Jamie blinks, like that might help him hear. He wants to say what, wants to make Roy repeat himself, but he knows that would never happen.
“Everything’s fucked,” Roy says, so quietly Jamie has to strain to hear him, even in the empty room. “HQ’s compromised, I can’t trust anyone there, not even fucking Ted, and I can’t go home, obviously, so…”
Right. Jamie presses the clean towel back against Roy’s side. He doesn’t know what to say. His brain feels like it’s taffy, being stretched into twelve different useless directions.
“You need stitches.”
From the silence, Jamie knows Roy agrees with him.
**
“Would you —” Jamie stops, collects himself. Closes his eyes for a four-count as he breathes in through his nose, out through his —
“I don’t think exhaling your disgusting germs directly into my abdominal cavity is going to help the healing process.”
Jamie glares at Roy. What he doesn’t do, although part of him wants to, very very badly, is squeeze the sides of Roy’s wound back together. It’s the fleshy part of Roy’s side, far enough below his ribs that Jamie doesn’t have to worry about seeing any bits of bone. “It’s not that deep, stop being a baby. And stop squirming.”
“Fuck off.” Roy’s voice goes wonky when Jamie pushes the needle through his skin. He had an emergency suture kit in his go bag but no lidocaine. Roy’s tolerating it about as well as Jamie expected. Every so often he gets distracted by the way Roy’s white-knuckling the marble of the vanity. He wants to cover them with his own to get him to relax, which is dumb and useless. Nothing on this planet has ever gotten Roy to relax, least of all Jamie.
“How’d you get here?” It’s an effort to keep Roy engaged. Jamie doesn’t think he’s about to pass out, but he’s seen agents go down for flimsier reasons. Dani went down like a sack of potatoes because of an incident with a dog a few months back.
“The window.”
Jamie rolls his eyes as he pulls the thread through Roy’s side. The wound’s closing nicely, actually. He’s going to gloat about this when it’s done. “I know that, idiot. I meant like, you know.” He pushes the needle through again and feels the way Roy’s abs contract under his forearm. “Who the fuck shot you?”
“Don’t know. Some guy. Tall, plain in an unrecognizable way. No ID.” Roy shrugs then winces. “He’s dead now, anyway.”
“Was it near here?”
“Yes, I regularly hang out in your neighborhood.” Jamie doesn’t tug sharply on the thread even though he could. The last time he got shot, he knows he was a dick, too, right up until the drugs kicked in. “It was near HQ. I heard a rumor things were going south, went to check for myself. Got fucked for my troubles.”
“A rumor?”
Through gritted teeth, Roy relays what he’s heard: that Ted’s unbalanced, compromised. That someone’s been leaking agents’ identities, first on the dark web and now in broader, more public forums. Everyone who hasn’t been made has been forced deep underground.
“It’s not Ted,” Jamie says.
Roy pulls a face, one that says could be.
Jamie shakes his head. Ted had started the same year Roy left. He’d been the one who orchestrated their final assignment, and yeah, it’d gotten all cocked up but it wasn’t really Ted’s fault.
“We got a new guy, Jan Maas. And there’s a kid, Will.”
“It’s not someone new,” Roy says. “There’s no way. Shit that’s coming out? Whoever it is has been embedded for a long time. Months. Years, maybe. It’s —” Roy stops, drags one hand over his face. “It’s bad.”
They sit there for a moment, staring at each other. How do you know it’s not me? Jamie thinks. And then, horrifyingly, how do I know it’s not you?. The thought alone makes his stomach churn. Roy’s been out of the game for a while now, it wouldn’t make sense for him to show up on Jamie’s doorstep like this, trying to lure him into a false sense of security or whatever. Roy Kent’s mad but he’s not like, evil.
Roy seems to snap out of his trance at the same time as Jamie. “Are you finished?”
Jamie blinks, looks down at the jagged line on Roy’s skin. It’s still weeping a little bit. Jamie cuts the thread right above where he’d knotted it and then reaches for the largest plaster he has. Once that’s secured, he grins.
“Good as new, mate.”
Roy reaches for the bottle of Nurofen on the counter and shakes three pills into his hand. “Cheers.” He raises his hand in a halfhearted toast and then swallows them dry.
**
Once Jamie’s cleaned up all the blood and Roy’s changed into one of Jamie’s older, blandest t-shirts and Roy’s groused enough that Jamie boiled up a pot of pasta that he’s dished up with some suspiciously old parmesan, it hits him how absolutely mental it is to have Roy in his flat. For the first time ever.
He tries not to think about it.
He lasts two minutes and seventeen seconds before he says, “It’s fucked up that you’re here.”
“I know.” Roy shovels some more food into his mouth, his movements jerky like his side hurts more than he wants to acknowledge. “Don’t get used to it.”
“Obviously,” Jamie’s about to say because he’s not expecting Roy to hang out, only Roy keeps talking, says, “We’ve got to leave soon. Really soon. It’s fucking stupid that we’re still here, honestly.”
Jamie forgot the way Roy could give him conversational whiplash. “What?” Roy’s still sort of bleeding from the side. They should sit tight and let him recover.
“You’ve already had what, three identities made? How safe do you think you are here?”
“Four,” Jamie corrects. Roy looks at him like he’s a fucking idiot.
“We finish this, you get a bag together, we go. Tonight. Within the hour.”
“We?”
Roy’s face does six different things in quick succession. “Fine, stay here.”
The pasta turns to lead in Jamie’s stomach. Half of him wants to say good, I will. He always hated being stuck with Roy when he was like this, angry and angular and refusing to say anything that made sense. Stubborn arsehole.
Jamie watches Roy struggle to his feet. “You can hardly walk, granddad.”
“And whose fault is that?”
He might as well have reached across the table and slapped Jamie. “Oh, fuck you. You’re the one who showed up here, bleeding everywhere and talking about trust and moles and all that. None of that is my fault.”
Jamie crosses his arms and sits back in his chair, glaring at Roy. He very carefully does not look at Roy’s fucked-up leg. He refuses to acknowledge it.
“And how am I —” Roy starts and then his mouth snaps shut so quickly Jamie hears his teeth clack. “Get down.”
“What?” Jamie asks, right before his brain catches up and he rolls out of his chair and onto the floor. Roy’s gone the other way, crossing over to the other side of the room. He nods to the window and then points at the wall behind Jamie’s chair. The red laser dot makes Jamie’s blood run cold.
“Go bag?” Roy mouths.
Jamie nods once, gesturing for Roy to stay where he is. He grabs the bag, still open at the foot of his bed from when he’d ransacked it for the sutures. They don’t have a lot of time. Don’t have any time, really. There’s a fucking sniper outside his window, or someone terrifyingly close to a sniper.
Jamie forces himself to think. It’s just like any other job. Get what you need and get the fuck out. He grabs a few extra things — his backup gun, ammo, the extra pills and shit from his nightstand — and crouches in the doorway.
Roy’s already by the front door, his gun in hand. He doesn’t startle when Jamie touches his shoulder.
Silently, Jamie maps their escape route: out the door, to the left, down the back stairs. They’ll cut across on the second floor, come out through the car park where there’s less of a chance of being seen.
Roy nods and twists the doorknob as quietly as possible. Jamie takes a steadying breath and steps into the hallway.
**
“Fucking hell.” Roy sounds borderline giddy. “I forgot how fast you could hotwire a car.”
Jamie sticks his tongue out; he’s inordinately pleased with himself.
Roy shakes his head but he doesn’t seem half as annoyed with Jamie as he had been twenty minutes ago.
Amazing what a quick getaway will do to a person.
Jamie checks his mirrors; there’s no one behind them, just loads of empty road. It’d be exhilarating if they hadn’t just fled his flat in under ninety seconds. They’ve got nowhere to go, no fucking plan, only a stolen car and whatever Jamie managed to grab on their way out.
He has so many questions for Roy his brain feels like a bag of marbles. They drive for a bit, listening to Roy’s strained breathing and some shit EDM playing low on the stereo. Jamie doesn’t have it in him to sort out the buttons.
**
They drive until Roy says stop, and then they have to get out and walk until they hit a rank-looking place with a busted neon sign.
“Shut it,” Roy says, even though Jamie hasn’t said anything.
The room is cheap and the girl at the desk doesn’t blink when Roy asks if they can pay in cash for two nights up front.
“Jesus.” Jamie stares at the world’s tiniest room in the world’s shittiest hostel. He can’t remember the last time he stayed in a place like this. It was probably with Roy, actually, all the way back at the start of his career.
Roy pushes past him. “You’ll get over it.”
“I’ll get head lice from the pillows, more like.” Jamie sets his bag — Christ, it’s their bag, isn’t it? The only things they’ve got left — down on the tiny bookshelf that must double as a wardrobe. “Don’t touch that.”
Roy ignores Jamie, yanks the duvet off and chucks it into the corner of the room.
“I’m going to wash off, you know,” Roy gestures to his torso, where Jamie imagines there must be a bunch of fresh blood or some shit. Christ, he left the suture kit at home. Is he going to have to sew Roy back together with dental floss at some point? “Try not to melt down while I’m gone.”
Jamie flips Roy off, but once he’s gone it feels like everything slows down, like Jamie’s sunk under water and everything’s happening to some other Jamie, far away. He moves about the room on autopilot, checking the locks, checking his gun, changing his clothes.
He uses the toilet when Roy’s finished, comes back out to find Roy on the bed checking his own gun. Jamie stops, blinks. Tilts his head.
Roy doesn’t look up. “What.”
Jamie looks around the room: tiny bookshelf, tinier window with the curtains drawn, latched door with a chair under the knob. “There’s only one bed?”
Roy narrows his eyes. “Did you hit your head on the way out of your flat?”
“No?” Jamie would remember that. He thinks back over the last thirty-six hours. They’d been filming at a nightclub yesterday — was it only yesterday? Jamie remembers doing shots, remembers neon glow sticks and a hot tub and a note card saying Get home. He doesn’t know when he last slept and now, with the adrenaline finally leaching out of his system, he wants to curl up and possibly die. “What do they want?”
It’s what he’d meant to ask in the flat but hadn’t got a chance. Why them? Why now?
“I don’t know. To embarrass Ted. To embarrass all of us.” Roy offers Jamie his phone and waits as Jamie scrolls through the latest breach, a story with unnamed sources saying Ted Lasso, MI5 Security Service, is a mentally unstable leader promoted to Director without merit.
One of the blue checks retweeting the story mentions how Ted’s decisions are killing people. Jamie shakes his head. That’s the job. No one in the history of the Security Service has walked away with a clean slate. At least Ted had fucking tried, unlike the bellend before him.
Jamie’s head hurts.
He passes Roy his phone back, sizing him up while pretending not to look. He still looks like shit, too pale by half. It’s like simply changing shirts has worn him out. Jamie knows the feeling. He yawns like his body is sympathizing with Roy’s.
“Sorry,” he says, belatedly covering his mouth. “I haven’t slept for like, two days.”
Roy looks at him askance. “Weren’t you in Tenerife?”
“Why do you know that?” He tries to picture Roy watching Lust Conquers All, imagines him on the sofa with a glass of rose and a hard-on for Ellie. It’s fucking absurd.
“I keep tabs on everyone, you donut.” Roy says it’s like it’s nothing. Like it should be obvious.
Jamie doesn’t keep tabs on anyone he’s not actively pursuing. He’s worried about people, sure — Dani, and Sam, and Keeley, and even Beard and Ted — but he’s not like, checking up on them. Hell, until he’d found Roy in his flat he hadn’t thought twice about him. He hasn’t got a clue who’s made it out of this situation alive, doesn’t know who’s already burned. Doesn’t know who’s got it worse than him and Roy.
He checks his phone again. Still nothing from Keeley. He hopes she’s somewhere far away from this mess.
He tips his head back against the wall. At some point, he and Roy shifted from sitting on opposite ends to sitting next to each other at the head of the bed. It would be weird if there were any other places to sit in the room, but their only chair is shoved up under the doorknob as a last-ditch security effort.
Jamie exhales heavily. “What do we do?”
It’s silent for a long time. He doesn’t see Roy shrug, but he feels the way the mattress shifts under both of them. “I don’t know.”
It’s the first time he’s ever heard Roy admit to not knowing something. He’d always thought it would be satisfying. Turns out he hates it.
They sit like that for a bit. Jamie checks his phone a second time, a third. Roy keeps twitching, these full-body jolts that give Jamie a heart attack every time.
“Go to sleep,” Jamie says eventually. It’s no use if both of them try to push through. And besides, Roy’s been shot. “I’ll take first watch.”
Roy grumbles but not nearly as much as Jamie’d expected. It’s two minutes of shifting about, trying to get comfortable with a shit mattress and scratchy blankets, and then dead silence, like Roy’s managed to will himself straight into unconsciousness.
Jamie stares at the back of his stupid head and thinks loads of uncharitable thoughts. And then he unlocks his phone and starts searching for Ted’s name on every social media site he can think of.
**
He comes awake all at once, like someone’s flipped a switch. The first thing he sees when he opens his eyes is Roy staring at him, a strange look on his face.
“Sorry.” Jamie pushes upright, even though he’s still mostly sitting up. “I didn’t mean —”
“It’s fine.” Roy looks at the notebook in his lap, the pages full of strange lines and his cramped, serial killer handwriting.
Jamie knows he’s lying — why else would Roy have been glaring daggers into his head like that? He was probably silently cursing at Jamie for being such a shit spy — but there’s nothing he can do about it.
The clock on the nightstand says it’s mid-morning. Jamie feels drugged, doesn’t know when he tipped from reading about Ted’s alleged favoritism to dead asleep. His left side is sweaty, like he’d ended up slumped into Roy somehow. He tries not to think about it.
“We need a plan,” he says, lurching out of bed. He finds nutrition bars in his bag and chucks one at Roy before unwrapping his own and cramming half of it into his mouth.
“For fuck’s sake.” Roy has the gall to look grossed out. “Eat like a human being.”
Jamie ignores him. The bars taste like shit; it’s easier to choke them down in as few bites as possible. Roy learns the hard way: takes a small bite of his bar and makes a face.
“See?”
Roy looks at Jamie like he’s an idiot. “Take a fucking shower, then we’ll see what the hell we can find to get us out of this mess. I’ve got a few ideas.”
“Tell me.”
“Fucking shower first.”
“Tell me.”
“Show. Er.” Roy enunciates like it’s two separate words.
They glare at each other, Jamie with his hands on his hips. He doesn’t know how Roy gets under his skin like this when he barely says anything. He’s the most infuriating man Jamie’s ever met. He can’t believe he unretired just to fuck over Jamie’s whole life.
After far too long, Roy closes his eyes and sighs. “Please, just take a shower, let me collect my thoughts, and then we can go over everything, alright?” He sounds so tired, so done with Jamie, that it somehow makes Jamie feel the worst he has in days.
**
It’s all water under the bridge once he’s clean. Roy opens his notebook between them and walks him through a fucking mind map of what’s happened and why Roy thinks it’s happening.
“Did you say a mind map?”
“I don’t have to share this information.” The twin spots of pink on Roy’s cheeks betray how embarrassed he is.
Jamie decides to be magnanimous and lets it slide. “So you think all this is a targeted attack on Ted.”
He reads through Roy’s notes again, follows the line all the way from the start of everything online, the creation of the @inspyderaccount handles on Twitter and then Instagram and TikTok, everything dating back six months or so.
“You know,” he flips through pages of Roy’s notes, tracking the dates, key points, “some people could say this lines up pretty close to your retirement.”
Roy looks at him. “They could.”
Jamie hums. It’d be fucked up if Roy brought him all the way out here to kill him. Wouldn’t be surprising, really, but it’d be fucked up.
“You forgot something.” He realizes it all at once, reaching for his own notebook where it’d gotten knocked on the floor. He starts flipping through the pages, trying to find something.
“I’ve got bin bags for your corpse in the car.”
Jamie freezes. “What?”
“It was a joke. Because of how you said —” he points helplessly at his book. “I was kidding.”
After a second, Jamie bursts out laughing. “Don’t think I’ve ever heard you tell a joke in your life, mate.”
“Fuck you.” Roy’s face is bright red now, and there’s sweat along his hairline like he’d actually panicked thinking Jamie thought he was serious about murdering him. “I tell jokes.”
“Okay,” Jamie snorts. He puts his notebook in Roy’s face, pointing, “Look at this. I saw someone mentioning it in the replies last night, went digging.”
“You have notes, too?” Roy’s face looks weird, his voice soft all of a sudden.
Jamie presses his lips together. He’s not in the mood to be mocked, not for this. “Write it down,” Tartt,” he says, his voice so low it hurts his throat, “Phones can be hacked.”
“Is that supposed to be —”
“Oh my god.” Jamie shakes the book, points at the page he’s holding it open to, the timeline he’d put together last night. “Just read it, would you?”
He opens his phone, too, because while phones can be tracked they’re still fucking useful, Roy, and pulls up the corresponding evidence. Turns out there’s a bloke on Reddit who’s been complaining about his job for ages now, hates his job and his new boss and all his coworkers. He started posting long before any of the other accounts were created, but some of the details in the posts are nearly identical.
Roy finishes reading and looks up, stunned. “This is —”
“Personal.” Jamie nods and Roy nods back at him. “Someone’s got a vendetta against Nelson Road.”
“This isn’t about Nelson Road,” Roy says. “Someone’s got a vendetta against Ted.”
**
They make an enormous list of everyone they’ve worked with, separating them into those who’ve been on Ted’s team at one point or another or those who haven’t. They need the second group, Jamie’d argued, because it could be someone pissed that they weren’t picked by Ted.
Roy had thought about it, said, “Okay,” and started writing while Jamie wondered if doing a celebratory cartwheel would be an overreaction. It wasn’t every day Roy agreed with him.
The feeling hadn’t lasted. Now Roy’s using his sharpie to gesture emphatically at nothing, his voice loud enough that someone would surely complain if this weren’t the kind of place where drug deals probably happen in broad daylight.
“‘Brown hair, tall’ are you serious?”
Jamie puts his hands up. “I don’t know everyone in the section, sorry! I’m very busy!”
“Jesus Christ, you really are insufferable. I’m surprised no one’s trying to take you down.”
Jamie makes a face. Does Roy really not remember the fucking sniper? The primary reason they’re hunkered down in this dump?
“I meant publically.” Roy presses his fingers against his eyelids. “His name was Martin, you twat. His girlfriend was on television.”
“That’s right, Clarise!” Jamie’d met her exactly once, at a holiday party.
Roy shakes his head, feigning disappointment, but Jamie can tell he’s fighting a smile.
**
They stay up into the wee hours, arguing over agents, staff, cleaners, everyone. Roy invents a system to rank the likelihood that a person’s the leak and then gets annoyed when Jamie argues that one of the criteria should be “vibes.”
He gets even more annoyed when he realizes Jamie’s right. He still refuses to let them use the binary system of sick vs rancid.
“Here.” Jamie hands Roy back his phone. “That’s the HR list of everyone who’s interviewed for a job in the Section since a year before Ted started.”
“How did you get this?”
Jamie shrugs, mimes typing with his thumbs. “They made us go to a class a few months ago. On a Saturday. It was shit.”
“They made you go to a… hacking class?”
“Didn’t call it that, did they? It was like,” Jamie tries to remember, “Internet Security Evasion or something. Who knows. Waste of a day.”
Roy starts cross-referencing the new list to theirs. He gets about three names in before he stops, and says, “This is — this is really good work, Jamie.”
Jamie looks away. He hopes it’s too dim in the room for Roy to see the way he’s gone red. “It’s whatever. Figure if I leave MI5, at least I can have a second career.”
Roy snorts. “Your backup plan would be a life of crime.”
Jamie laughs and sticks his tongue out. He doesn't know what to do when Roy makes the same face back at him.
**
It’s light out when Jamie wakes up, the sunlight slanting in bright lines across the bed. Roy’s feet are tangled up with Jamie’s; he can feel the steady rise and fall of Roy’s breathing. He rolls over carefully, until they’re back-to-back again, and tries to fall back asleep.
He can’t, he’s too aware of everything: Roy’s infrequent snores, the sound of traffic outside, the way Roy’s rolled backwards a bit, so now his shoulder’s wedged against Jaime’s spine. It’s somehow sharp and soft at the same time. Kind of like the rest of Roy, he supposes. A fucking contradiction in human form.
Eventually, Jamie gives up and reaches for his phone. He rereads all the posts they’d dug up yesterday and then he gets out of bed and starts making notes in the margins of Roy’s mind map.
He expects Roy to get annoyed for ruining his vision with even shittier handwriting and potentially useless ideas, but when Roy wakes up he reads over everything Jamie’s written without saying a word.
He grunts, though. Jamie’s pretty sure it’s the one that means “I’ll tolerate it, but you’re on thin ice.”
**
“We should stay here another night,” Jamie says. Yesterday they’d stuck a version of Roy’s mind map to one wall, blown it up and made it easier to visualize. If they stay here, they won’t have to take it down immediately, and they haven’t got any leads. At least not yet.
“If we’re going to do that, we need money. I’ve only got my actual bank card. I’m not putting a room here on that.”
“I can cover tonight, but that’s all my cash.” Jamie’d spent most of it trying to get back to his flat. He’s only got enough left for like, half an emergency.
“Fuck.” Roy lays back on the bed, his hands over his face. His elbows are pointed straight at the ceiling; the shirt Jamie’d lent him is a touch too small, pulling at his arms. Jamie’s struck with the urge to touch the smooth skin of his biceps. He wants to stick his fingers in Roy’s armpits and see if he’s ticklish. He looks back at the wall instead.
“Alright, I have an idea.” Roy’s mouth is a determined line. “But you have to play along. You can’t ask questions and you have to follow my lead.”
“Whatever.”
Roy looks up from putting on his shoes. “Follow my fucking lead, Tartt.”
“Okay.” He can’t keep the petulance out of his voice. Being with Roy makes Jamie feel twenty-two again, like he’s a green baby agent who doesn’t know anything or anyone and has never fired his weapon in the line of duty.
Roy sizes him up. After a minute he must decide Jamie’s serious because he nods and doesn’t wait for Jamie to follow him.
**
They end up at a fucking pub, of all places. Roy orders two pints and slings his arm around Jamie’s shoulders.
“Alright?” he whispers, so close his beard brushes against Jamie’s earlobe.
Jamie nods dumbly, his brain already berating him to get it together, act like he’s been on a job before, ignore the fact that Roy Kent’s just tucked his hand into the back pocket of Jamie’s trousers. He’s an MI5 agent, for fuck’s sake.
The place is crowded enough that no one’s paying them any mind. Roy takes his hand back when their drinks come but he shifts so they’re stood somehow even closer, one of his feet between both of Jamie’s, their knees bumping any time someone tries to get past. Jamie keeps an eye on the exits. All he has to do is follow Roy’s lead.
Roy looks so relaxed it’s mental. All Jamie can think about is the last time they were on a job together, how they’d been in a nightclub in a situation not unlike this one. Jamie’d never expected Roy could dance like that. He’s positive he’ll never be able to forget it.
He doubts Roy remembers it at all.
Jamie’d got sent up north alone the next week, and before he knew it, Roy was retiring.
“What’s the plan?” he asks because he can’t just stand here all night, close enough to count Roy’s every inhalation. He smells like the terrible soap that came with the room. Jamie’s convinced he’ll find out he’s allergic to it one of these hours; it’s bright pink and probably abrasive. He’s kicking himself for not upgrading the toiletries in his go bag when he had the chance.
Roy raises one eyebrow. “Bored already?”
Jamie leans in, curls his hand around Roy’s good side. Two can play this stupid game. “Of you? Never.”
Roy chuckles. He looks genuinely amused. Jamie’d forgotten how good at this he was. Everyone’d been shocked when Roy announced he was leaving rather than sticking it out through another round of physio.
Jamie hadn’t been surprised. He’d ridden in the ambulance with Roy, got to hear how he really felt: about Ted, and Jamie, and the whole mismanagement of MI5, and about life in general.
“Are you wearing makeup?”
“No.”
Roy touches Jamie’s eyebrow; his fingertip is unbearably gentle. “You are.”
“Fuck off.” Jamie tries to shake him away but there’s nowhere to go. “That doesn’t count.”
Roy laughs, his eyes crinkled up and all his teeth showing. It makes Jamie’s insides rearrange themselves, even though he’s the one being laughed at. Once upon a time, all he’d wanted was to make Roy look at him like this. He’d thought it was all behind him, but everything is resurfacing all at once, opening like a badly stitched wound.
“Tell me,” he loops his arm around Jamie’s waist, tugging him. To anyone else, it must look like he’s just hugging Jamie, “are you still a riot at snooker?”
Jamie shrugs. Their cheeks are pressed together. Roy’s beard is equally soft and scratchy. He hates that he notices it. “I guess.”
“Good.” Roy lets him go and tosses back the rest of his pint, holding up two fingers for another round. “Let’s go, then.”
When he winks, Jamie momentarily forgets which end is up.
**
Hustling a bunch of idiots at snooker is more fun than Jamie’s had in ages. He pretends to be Roy’s idiot boyfriend who doesn’t know a lick about the game, milking it to the degree that even Roy seems flustered by it. It’s like he’d forgotten that Jamie could be good at his job, too.
And Jamie’s damn good at it. He cocks his hips and pouts his lips and before anyone knows it, he and Roy are a few hundred pounds richer.
“Beginner’s luck,” Roy says, pressing a kiss to Jamie’s cheek. Their opponents glower. Lowly, Roy says, “Go.”
Outside, the air is brisk, a pleasant contrast to the excited flush that came with winning. And having Roy curved against him, pretending to show Jaime how to angle a shot.
It’s a long wait for a taxi. Jamie wishes he’d thought ahead and downloaded Uber onto this useless burner. The only car in the area is down by the corner, a white Volvo Jamie remembers from the way in. It’s dark, but he can make out two people sitting in the car.
Roy loops his arms around Jamie’s waist. “I see it,” he says, directly into Jamie’s neck, making him shiver. When Roy inclines his head, Jamie nods even though he’s unsure of the plan. Roy’s always assumed everyone could read his thoughts. They really only worked as partners because Jamie knew ninety percent of the time Roy was thinking I’m going to fucking murder Jamie Tartt.
He’s still laughing about that when Roy drags him into the alley and pins him against the brick and puts their faces close together.
“What is it?” he asks, so close Jamie can smell the lager on his breath.
“Nothing.” Jamie smiles, tries to sell it, the idea that he’s enamored with the person in front of him. It’s not as difficult as he’s pretending. He puts his hand on the small of Roy’s back, right where his gun is. “Just remembering the good old days, when you were always yelling about killing me.”
Roy frowns. “It wasn’t always.”
Jamie watches the shadows play across his face, the way he looks younger in the moonlight. He can hear footsteps in the distance, careful and purposefully measured. Not at all like drunk pub-goers.
“It was,” he says because Roy really did want to kill him all the time. It was fine. Jamie almost always wanted to kill Roy, too. The shadows are closer now. “It doesn't matter.”
The footsteps get louder. Jamie kisses Roy, hauls him close, and puts a hand on his cheek to hide his face. He ignores the startled sound Roy makes against his mouth, the way Roy grips the hem of Jamie’s shirt in his fist. He wishes he could forget about the people looking for them. Wishes he could have run into Roy at a pub for real, that they could have stumbled out into this alley on their own, like two normal blokes.
But some things aren’t meant to be, he knows. He made his peace with that ages ago.
“We have to go,” he says, once the alley’s quiet again.
Roy blinks, stunned. His cheeks are a glowy pink. Jamie wants desperately to kiss him some more, but he also doesn’t want to die so he says, “Fucking go,” and shoves. Roy grunts. “Right, sorry, bullet wound.”
“Graze,” Roy grits out, but he follows Jamie as they set off on the long way back to their hostel on foot.
**
They pack their shit quickly, quietly, without discussion. For once, Jamie knows exactly what Roy is thinking. It’s exhilarating. He’d forgotten what it was like to be this in sync with someone. He feels like he could fly if he and Roy tried hard enough.
“You know,” he says, as they climb into another stolen car — this one, some idiot’s left the fob in the cupholder, thank god, “if you really wanted to be undercover, you’d shave this off.” He touches Roy’s cheek; he can feel the shock of Roy’s inhale. It makes Jamie’s blood burn.
“In your dreams.” Roy glares and knocks Jamie’s hand away.
Quite the opposite, Jamie thinks, but he’ll never admit it out loud.
**
They go back the way they came and then some, until Jamie’s so sick of driving that he threatens to get out at the next light and leave Roy with the car and his gun and nothing else.
“Up there on the left. Happy?”
“Thrilled.” Jamie takes the next right so they can find a place to ditch the car.
Running is his least favorite part of the job; it’s stressful and exhausting and the adrenaline crash after always gives Jamie a headache. He’s been lucky of late, rarely had to flee, but it seems that luck’s run out over the last few days.
“We need a new phone,” Roy says, watching Jamie drop the bag onto one of the beds. There are two this time; Jamie refuses to be disappointed.
“I saw a store down the road.” Jamie checks his gun, grabs one of the key cards. “Don’t have too much fun without me.”
He comes back with a new phone and beers and crisps. Jamie tosses Roy the phone and cracks open a beer, necking it in the hopes that it might help him sleep later.
When he looks up, Roy is staring, his cheeks pink again. “I’ll set this up.” Roy’s voice is hoarse. “Figured you might want a shower.”
Jamie wants a lot of things. He’ll settle for a shower.
He turns the water as hot as he can stand and lets it beat down on him. He thinks about jerking off, palms his cock and remembers the hot press of Roy against his front and the rough of the brick against his back. Remembers Roy on the other side of the door, probably ready to make a hundred jokes at Jamie’s expense if he takes too long in here. It’s not worth it, he decides, and twists the faucet so the water runs cold.
“Sorry,” he says, venting a cloud of steam into the room proper. “Forgot a change of clothes.”
They don’t have much; Jamie hadn’t packed the bag thinking he’d be sharing with someone. At least he has a clean shirt, clean pants. If this goes on much longer they’ll have to stop somewhere to buy some new things. Jamie can’t imagine Roy would have the patience for a laundromat; he’d probably shoot a dryer for eating his sock.
When he looks up, he’s startled to see Roy in the mirror over the desk. He’s so close, had moved so quietly. “Jesus, Roy,” he says, but Roy doesn’t seem to hear him. There’s a dark look in his eyes, something so hot and intense it makes Jamie shiver.
“What the fuck.” Roy touches the scar on Jamie’s back, the twin one on his front. They’d happened not long after Roy retired, a shoot-out in Nottingham.
“Graze,” Jamie says, unable to help himself.
Roy smacks him. But he doesn’t stop touching him. Jamie feels crowded by it, like the air’s been sucked out of the room. Like someone’s sitting on his chest and he can’t get a full breath.
“Roy.” Jamie means to tell him to stop. Means to tell him that they just need to sleep. But Roy’s cheeks are still pink and his thumb keeps drawing circles around the scar on Jamie’s abdomen and before he knows it, Jamie’s got his hand round the back of Roy’s neck and Roy’s tongue in his mouth.
“Bed,” Roy says. Jamie nods without breaking the kiss. He feels frantic with it, like at any moment this could all fall apart and Roy will stop touching him and they’ll pretend it never happened. That it was all part of their act at the pub, a mission gone too far.
That’s probably all it is, Jamie knows, but he doesn’t want to admit it just yet.
The backs of his legs hit the bed and then he’s falling, his heart lurching at the image of a red-mouthed Roy grinning down at him. He reaches up, up, holding his hands out for Roy, a plea he doesn’t want to put into words.
Roy gets it. He crawls overtop Jamie, straddling his hips and grinding down, smiling against Jamie’s mouth at the way it makes his hips jerk.
Jamie’s all too aware that he’s only in a threadbare towel. He doesn’t care. He could come from this, probably, Roy’s hand in his hair and his mouth on his mouth and the heavy weight of him pressing Jamie down into the bedding.
He’d done all he could to ignore it when they were working together, to quash it, the way he’d felt when he won a hard-earned smile from Roy, or a pleased nod, or once, memorably, a begrudging, “Well done.”
Jamie’d wanked to the memory of that well done for six straight months, imagining all sorts of ways to earn that kind of praise from Roy.
It wasn’t smart, feeling that way about your partner. It compounded things, made them tricky, and besides, Roy vacillated between hating Jamie and not caring about him at all. It’s what had made his praise all the sweeter, honestly, and what makes now, with Roy urging Jamie up the bed, all the more baffling.
“Alright?” Roy asks, waiting for Jamie’s jerky nod before he undoes the knot in the towel and tugs it away. He doesn’t ask before taking Jamie’s cock in hand, before licking around the head, and it’s a good thing because Jamie doesn’t know if he could form words anymore. Doesn’t know if he’ll ever have a coherent thought again.
He feels deranged, watching Roy work him over. He wonders if there’s a version of this where he comes on Roy’s face, and the thought alone is enough to make him shudder and clench his hand in Roy’s hair. “Roy,” he gets out, trying to warn him, “fuck,” but Roy doesn’t stop and Jamie’s like a freight train, a complete runaway.
When he can breathe again, Roy’s sat there, one finger tapping the scar on Jamie’s stomach. He’s still fully dressed. Jamie can’t believe it.
“Come on,” Jamie grabs at the neck of his shirt with one hand, at the waistband of his trousers with the other. He doesn’t know which he wants first, just knows that he wants to see all of Roy, every divot and scar and hairy stretch of skin he’s got. Wants to touch him and taste him and, most importantly, wipe the smug grin off his face.
For once in their fucking lives, Roy seems more than happy to let Jamie get exactly what he wants.
**
In the too-bright light of morning, Jamie expects Roy to pretend nothing’s happened. It’s what Jamie’s prepared to do.
Only when he wakes up, Roy’s sitting right there, reading something on his phone. He smiles when he notices Jamie’s awake, and it’s so simple and private it fills Jamie with regret all the way down to his toes.
He doesn’t know what he’s meant to do when all this is over and Roy never speaks to him again.
He rolls out of bed and pads to the toilet. He can feel the way Roy watches him go.
Grow up, he thinks at his reflection as he cleans his teeth. This isn’t the first time you’ve slept with someone on the job. It won’t be the last. If Roy never speaks to him again, well. Roy already stopped speaking to him once before. It’ll be exactly like that. And until then… whatever. They’re stuck together as it is. He’ll just — he’ll follow Roy’s lead. Just as he was instructed.
“When was the last time you were at HQ?” Roy asks when Jamie comes back into the room. He flips the blankets back so Jamie can crawl back into bed. If he notices that Jamie sits a careful distance away he doesn’t mention it.
“Dunno.” Jamie shrugs, tries to think. “A month? Six weeks?” Time’s gone all wonky on him, between Tenerife and all this. “I did — I was going to go there when I got back to the UK. I called to tell Ted I was coming back.”
“What?”
“When I got pulled from the show.” Jamie hadn’t thought about it until right now. “I called. I was supposed to check in anyway, and I wanted Ted to know I’d gotten the message to get out.”
“What’d he say?”
Jamie shakes his head. “Weren’t there. Nate was, but not Ted. I just left a message.” The new kid, Will, had been the one to answer the phone. Jamie’d left the message with him — “Hot brown water,” Will’d repeated, like he was literally writing it down. Too new for his own good — and rung off and not thought about it until he was back on British soil and realized if Nelson Road really had fallen, he probably shouldn’t go straight there like he’d intended.
He’d gone home instead, found Roy bleeding out on his sofa.
“For the last time, I wasn’t bleeding out.”
Jamie raises one eyebrow. “You weren’t looking great, mate.”
They’ve migrated closer together somehow. Jamie can feel the heat from Roy’s body, can see another scar on his ribs, a thin line, probably from a knife, half hidden in Roy’s insane chest hair. Jamie touches it with his fingertip and then stops, pulls his hand back.
Roy doesn’t react. He’s writing something down in his notebook again, like he’s fucking Hemingway. Jamie squints but from this angle, he can’t read what Roy’s shit handwriting says.
“How’re your stitches?” He’d meant to bully Roy into letting him check them — Jamie was careful last night, but probably not careful enough.
“Fine. Clean.” Roy stops writing to lift up the hem of his shirt. Jamie curls his hands into fists to keep himself from touching the edges of the fresh plaster Roy must’ve put on this morning. “You did a surprisingly good job.”
“Fuck you.” Jamie did an excellent job under the circumstances.
Roy makes a sound that’s almost like a laugh. His smile is like a sunrise, too bright for Jamie to look at, even indirectly. “Did you ever talk to Nate?”
Jamie thinks. “Yeah.”
“What’d he say?”
“Which time?” He can’t remember everything, Nate pre-dates Jamie in the section, but he’s risen through the ranks pretty quickly in recent years.
Roy puts his head in his hand. “When you called from Tenerife, Jamie. When whatshisname —”
“Will.”
“Will tried to put Nate on.”
“Oh.” Jame snorts. “No, I didn't, no way. Nate always asks a bunch of questions. I didn’t have time for that.” Or the patience, he doesn’t add.
“Hmm.” Roy writes something else down.
Jamie reaches for his phone, checks for updates since last night. “Shit. Julie Higgins’s been made.”
He shows Roy a post the Sypder has made, pictures of Julie at customs in different airports over the past year, side by side with all her passports. Fuck. Jamie feels a bit sick.
Roy gets up, pulls on the nearest pair of briefs — they’re Jamie’s, which is a sight to behold, something Jamie wants to goggle at but doesn’t — and then stops by the side of the bed, a shit-eating grin on his face. “Wasn’t Leslie Higgins your first —”
“Shut up.” Jamie doesn’t want to talk about it. He doesn’t get to pick his identities, they’re assigned to him.
“You never looked like a Leslie.” There is an unbearable fondness in Roy’s voice, nostalgia smoothing out all his edges.
Something niggles at Jamie’s brain. “The fake driver knew it; when he tried to pick me up at the switch, he called me Leslie.”
Roy doesn’t say anything for a long moment. “So it’s someone in deep, someone who’s been around for years. At least since you’ve started.”
“Or they have access to all the archives.”
Roy tilts his head, considering. “Or that. Good thinking.” He ducks his head towards Jamie and then twists at the last second, pulling back and dropping his hand on Jamie’s head and patting it twice. Like a fucking weirdo.
Jamie can’t keep his face from twisting up. Roy’s red as a tomato and looks like he wishes he could turn back time. He opens his mouth and then closes it and then, before either of them can make it worse, he heads into the toilet.
“What the fuck?” Jamie asks Julie Higgins’ Swiss passport, but she’s got bigger problems to solve than everything swirling inside Jamie.
**
“I don’t think it’s him.”
After staying in the toilet just long enough to make things even weirder, Roy had run out to the shops and come back with more food: sandwiches and hummus and a Lion bar that he dropped in Jamie’s lap without comment.
“Thanks,” Jamie’d said, kindly ignoring the way even the tips of Roy’s ears went red.
While they ate, they started reassembling the mind map and then set about paring down the list of suspects. It’s exactly as cutthroat as Jamie expected it would be.
Roy swallows a bite of his sandwich. “You said he was mad Ted pulled him from the field.”
“Yeah, because Ted put on the paperwork that he was out with a ‘torn butt.’”
Roy laughs. “I mean, if he got shot in the arse, technically it’s true.”
“O’Brien isn’t the leak, don’t put him on the list.”
Roy settles for putting an M-for-Maybe next to O’Brien’s name. He doesn’t get moved to the Finalists list.
After another round of yes-or-no about Sharon, the new psychoanalyst that Ted was vehemently against hiring (they land on yes), and Gareth, a field agent who they’ve both known for years but never worked one-on-one with (no), Roy takes a step back and looks at their lists. The Rejecteds and Maybes are five times longer than the Finalists.
“Does this seem like a fucked up reality show to you?” Roy asks.
“There are four moles before you,” Jamie says, making Roy snicker, “but only one of them will get the final rose.”
“I don’t think it’s the doctor.”
Jamie squints at the wall. Dr. Sharon’s great. Even Ted likes her now. And he thinks she likes Ted, too. “Me neither.”
Roy sighs heavily and crosses her name off the Finalists list.
“There are three moles before you,” Jamie says, but the joke’s already lost its shine.
**
The text from Keeley comes in late evening, while Roy and Jamie are working their way through another bag of crisps and scrolling through various sites for more posts by the leak. Their list of Finalists still sits at three.
She’s sent an acorn emoji and then, immediately after, the eye roll emoji. She’s always hated their secret code.
Through a swell of relief so great he wants to get up and run around the room, Jamie sends back an arm shrug. She’s safe. He’s safe. They’ll stay where they are until someone sends instructions.
One check-in finally complete, Jamie sends a single red question mark to Isaac. He’s not expecting anything in return, but it’s protocol. Check in with your handler, then your team lead, and then, if necessary, the section head. Jamie’d gone backwards on that, tried for Ted first, but oh well. It’s clearly a clusterfuck.
When he looks up, Roy’s glaring at him, holding his own phone so tightly Jamie can see his knuckles are white.
“What? It was just —” he starts to defend himself.
“We need to leave. Now.” Roy snaps into motion, starts chucking things into Jamie’s bag.
He looks so ruthless, so efficient, Jamie doesn’t ask any questions, he just starts to help.
**
They’re out the door in under five minutes. It’s hardly a record, but Jamie’s heart is still racing.
“Roy,” he says, once they’ve commandeered yet another vehicle. Roy’s driving this time, had insisted. “Roy.”
“I got a message. The one we’ve been waiting for. It’s good news.”
“What’s it say?”
“Directions. Here, navigate.”
Jamie takes Roy’s phone, pulls the address from the message into the nav app, and gets them to the motorway. And then he swipes back to the message and scrolls through the texts with who must be Beard, based on the B as the contact info and Jamie’s vague recognition of the number as one he has saved in multiple phones.
The messages go way back, a record of the most insane, impersonal conversation two people can have:
2PM C&A
Ok.
repeated over and over, until the events of the past week turned them into something slightly less robotic.
“You’ve been talking to Beard this whole time?”
Roy looks away from the road to shoot Jamie a look that implies he thinks Jamie is one of the dumbest spies on the planet. “Yeah.”
“Not about this,” Jamie can’t keep the frustration out of his voice. He wants Roy to get it immediately. He gestures with the phone. “These go back to before things went to shit. This is like…” He tries to do the maths.
“Take the exit,” the phone says. Roy does and then sighs.
“Ted recruited me while you were away. He wanted me to come back to work with Isaac, get him trained up. He was having a — it’s none of your business, really, but Ted thought I could sort him out. Then he got me to stick around to work with the top secret agents.”
“So you’re a consultant, then?” With everything going on, he never thought to ask if Roy was back in the game. He’d just assumed someone was going after past agents.
Roy shrugs. It’s not a yes or a no. Jamie sniffs. He’s glad no one decided he needed extra training. It would’ve been insulting, having to go through that. He’s glad Roy was helping Isaac and not him.
“Clearly whoever’s the leak knew that I was back. Hence the —” Roy gestures to his side. “I wasn’t thinking it was an inside job when I sent you that message, I just knew you needed to get out. I figured you’d go to Nelson Road. And I was almost right!” He laughs hollowly. “Thank fuck you didn’t.”
Jamie’s brain feels like it’s stuck on something, like he’s glitching and possibly heading for an entire system shutdown. Everything he remembers about fleeing Tenerife changes like he’s fucking Dorothy and he’s pulled down the curtain to find Roy fucking Kent stood there.
“‘Get out. Get home,’” he recites. “That was you? I thought it was from Moe.”
“Who the fuck is Moe?”
“Bumbercatch. From the shooting range.” He’d been stationed at the show’s production offices, Jamie’s counterpart, their man on the inside. It had made sense to assume he knew things were collapsing, that he knew Jamie needed to get out. “He knits. You know.” Jamie mimes Moe’s face, his hair, the way he walks with his elbows out a bit, defensively.
“The one who made that tea cozy for Christmas one year?”
“Yes!”
Roy looks outraged. “Why the fuck would he send you a message?”
Jamie wants to bash his head against the wall. “Why did you?”
“Because I got a tip from Beard that things were headed south!” he shouts. And then seems to realize he’s being ridiculous because he takes a deep breath and then another. “And,” he rolls his eyes as he says, somewhat begrudgingly, “I was worried about you.”
Jamie points to himself even though there’s no one else in the car. This time when Roy rolls his eyes, he’s not directing it at himself. “You were my partner, Jamie.”
“You had loads of partners.”
Roy snorts. “Yeah, that I hated.”
“You hated me!”
Roy is quiet for a moment; waves of tension radiate off him. He grunts, that frustrated why can’t you read my fucking mind, Tartt? sound. Jamie recognizes it so immediately it nearly makes him laugh.
“You are,” Roy eventually says, his voice quiet and serious, “by far, one of the most infuriating people I have ever met.”
“Alright,” Jamie says, stung.
“But I don’t hate you, Jamie.” He puts his hand on Jamie’s knee. “I thought that was obvious by now.”
Jamie looks at Roy’s insane, angry eyebrows, at his hand on Jamie’s leg, at the soft slope of his mouth. For a moment he looks sad, not irate, and then it shifts and he’s almost smiling. It’s so strange to see. Jamie’s still struggling to align everything, to make sense of it all. “Not even after —”
The smile slides away when Roy sighs, tired, annoyed. He takes back his hand; Jamie’s leg feels irrationally cold. “It was a bloodbath, Jamie. You were doing your job. You didn’t know I was going to be there; I was in the cross-fire.”
The thing is, Jamie did know. No one had told him, what with Jamie undercover in Manchester and Roy apparently embedded with some locals from Richmond, but in the second between firing his weapon and the bullet making contact he’d recognized Roy in the dark. He’d know the shape of him anywhere, even in a shitty warehouse in the middle of the night.
Jamie doesn’t say that and Roy keeps talking. “I was headed for retirement anyway. That just… fast-tracked it.”
Jamie remembers kissing the scar over Roy’s knee last night, dragging his tongue over the raised ridges in a silent apology. He’d do it again if Roy would let him.
Roy puts his hand back on Jamie’s leg, squeezes. “I would’ve told you all that if you’d come to see me in hospital.”
Jamie looks at him sidelong. “No, you wouldn’t’ve.” Roy had railed up one side of the ambulance and down the other, cursing such a blue streak that even the grizzled driver had blushed.
Roy thinks about it. “Probably not,” he admits. It makes Jamie laugh.
“You’re such a twat,” he says, and means I like you so much it makes my heart hurt.
Roy laughs. “Fuck you.”
“In five hundred meters, turn left,” the phone says.
**
“I want it on the record, I think abandoned factories are creepy. This is a shit meeting place.”
Roy glares and says nothing, but he does give Jamie a reassuring pat on the back before motioning for him to follow along.
There’s a door along the back wall with a dog’s collar on it. “Oh for fuck’s sake,” Roy says, only loud enough for Jamie to hear. He starts to pull on the door and something inside barks. “No.” Roy shakes his head. “I’m not doing that.”
“Oh, come on.” Beard frowns. “Where’s the fun in that?”
“Greyhound,” Jamie says, a bit nonsensically. Beard looks at him and then at Roy and the two of them have a whole conversation without moving a muscle. Eventually, Beard looks back at Jamie.
“Jamie, glad to see you’re still alive.” He doesn’t sound like he means it, but he doesn’t sound sad about it either.
“Thanks,” Jamie says because he doesn’t know what else he’s supposed to say. Probably could’ve grunted, that’s what Roy would’ve done.
“So you’ve got it pinned down?” Roy asks, setting his gun on the table and getting his notebook out of his back pocket. He opens it to their list of names; a lot more people have been crossed off since Jamie last checked it.
Beard takes out a paper of his own, puts it on the table so Roy can see. “I have.”
“Obviously it’s Nate.” Keeley comes into the room without any warning. “Don’t point that gun at me, Roy Kent.”
Roy looks shocked to see her. Beard glares at him. “How many people did you tell?”
“One,” Roy says, glaring at Jamie.
“You didn’t tell anybody else?” Jamie asks. That’s so fucking weird. Roy is so fucking weird sometimes. “Hi,” he says to Keeley, accepting her hug.
“I didn’t know who I could trust!” Roy shouts. “How many people did you tell?”
Jamie doesn’t say anything.
“Jamie.”
“Three, alright? Keeley and Isaac and —”
He’s saved by Rebecca fucking Welton, of all people, coming through the door. At least no one trains their gun on her.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” Roy’s eyes are bugging out of his head now, “you called the Director General?”
“Fuck off, Jamie didn’t call her, I did,” Keeley says.
“So did I,” says Beard.
Rebecca smiles, so sharp it seems deadly. “Nice to know who finds me trustworthy.”
Roy is so red Jamie wants to laugh, but there are things at stake here. “Where’s Ted?” He was Jamie’s third contact. Respect the chain of command. Even if that means sending an army helmet emoji while you’re being rushed out of your hotel room like the place is on fire.
Beard grimaces. “He’s not ready for this conversation.”
At that, Ted pokes his head through the door. He’s got his hands in his pockets and a resigned look on his face. “Ready for what conversation?”
**
Rebecca has a better room already set up for them, one outfitted with a whiteboard and computers on a secure network. Turns out, Ted and Rebecca were able to pull a lot of people together — Sam’s waiting there, and Jan Maas; Thierry is zooming in from a secure location. Isaac and Dani walk in ahead of Moe.
Jamie nudges Roy at that one, bounces on the balls of his feet and hides a smile when Roy rolls his eyes.
“Please,” Rebecca says, “continue to lie low. Do not make contact with anyone, even if they are in this room.” She looks at Jamie when she says this and he feels himself flush bright red. “Thanks to intel from Beard and Jan Maas —”
“I reported it to my home office,” Jan Maas says, “since your government was so slow to react.”
Rebecca’s face does six things in quick succession before she decides to plow on. “Yes, right. Because of that, we have been able to identify the — excuse me.”
She steps out to answer her phone. While she’s gone, no one moves or breathes. They’re all clearly straining to hear what she’s saying, who she’s talking to. Whatever’s happening is probably so far above Jamie’s pay grade he can’t even compute it.
“Right.” Rebecca sweeps back into the room with a smile on her face. She looks years younger. “I’m happy to report that the threat has been neutralized. Those of you still employed will receive details on a need-to-know basis.”
With that, she leaves, Ted on her heels and Beard on his.
“Fuck me,” Keeley says, watching them go. “I’m going to marry that woman if it kills me.”
“I thought you were quitting,” Roy says. Jamie’s jaw drops.
“Mind your business, Kent.” Keeley kisses the top of Jamie’s head and jumps up. “Rebecca!” she calls out, and Rebecca, amazingly, stops and waits for her.
“She’s leaving?” Jamie asks, and Roy shrugs, making a sound like he’s said everything he knows, now Jamie should go bother someone else about it. Jamie supposes he’ll just have to wait for Keeley to say more herself. “That wedding’ll be a mindfuck.”
Roy snorts. They both watch as Rebecca and Keeley disappear through the heavy metal door of the warehouse. Probably to climb into a government-issued helo for a quick trip home. Lucky bastards.
Isaac slides up then, wraps Jamie in a huge hug, and then does the same to Roy. “Mental, yeah? You need a lift, bruv?”
Jamie thinks about it; when he looks over, Roy shrugs like Jamie should do whatever the hell he wants.
What Jamie wants and what’s reasonable are at opposite ends. He wants to steal another car and go somewhere with Roy, but Rebecca’s ordered them all radio silent and it doesn’t seem like Roy’s keen on breaking that rule.
“Yeah,” he says, “I guess.”
When he turns back, Roy’s already got his hand out. “Well. Thanks.” He sounds annoyed that they’re still here, doing this. His face is completely blank.
Jamie shakes his hand. “Yeah, you too. It was fun. Let’s try not to do this again.”
He means it as a joke, mostly — not that he wants to be stuck on the run again anytime soon — but Roy doesn’t react, only nods curtly and lets go of Jamie’s hand so he can walk away.
“Right,” Jamie says, and that’s that.
**
Isaac takes Jamie and Dani straight to Nelson Road so they can turn in their electronics and log their reports of the events. It’s mind-numbingly exhausting. He doesn’t want to think about the expense reports he’ll have to do one of these days.
Jamie keeps his eyes peeled for Roy, but he doesn’t see anyone higher than Isaac in the chain of command.
When he gets home, it’s equally horrible. He looks at his stained sofa and the moldy bowls of pasta on his table, the suture kit by the sink. Everything here feels like it happened years ago, in another lifetime.
The lock on his window’s busted, but Jamie doesn’t find any bullet holes in the walls. Doesn’t find any bugs either. It’s only remnants of Roy: his stained shirt in Jaime’s bag, the imprint of his teeth on Jamie’s collarbone.
He almost wishes Roy had never forced his way back into his life because now he’s gone and blown it all to smithereens and Jamie does not feel up to putting any of the bits back together.
**
Jamie spends the weekend doing fuck all. He feels he’s earned it.
At one point he opens his phone — his real one, the one he’d left in the safe in his closet — and realizes he doesn’t even have Roy’s number. He texts Colin instead. Fuck Rebecca’s stupid no-contact protocol; he’s going stir-crazy not talking to anyone.
Can’t believe you had to leave the show boy-o
They’ll never find out if Danthony’s laundering all that money now
:(
Fuck. Jamie’s going to have to write a report about that, too.
He covers his face with a pillow and yells into it.
Maybe he’ll just quit. That seems like a reasonable option.
**
Paved court bench #3, 9am. Handoff. Don’t be late. Keeley texts him at the crack of dawn on Monday, probably so she can tell him she’s quitting in person. Jamie skips going into the office, heads straight to their old rendezvous instead and waits for her to show.
He’s pretending to read an article about the effects of climate change on turtle birth rates when she sits down next to him.
“Got this for you.” He passes her coffee cup over without looking.
“Thanks,” Roy says, and Jamie very nearly drops the cup. Roy smirks. “With the new opening in the section, I was, uh, persuaded to stay on full time.”
Roy faces forward and takes a sip of his coffee, watching some kids playing football on the grass. Jamie doesn’t say anything. It’s the first confirmation he has that the leak was Nate. He’s not surprised, but he has a thousand questions.
“Thought you only worked with the top secret agents.” That’s what Roy’d said, isn’t it? That Ted brought him back to deal with the Isaacs and the Sams of the group.
Not that it matters. Two days ago he’d figured he’d never hear from Roy again unless something went horribly, horribly wrong. Now Roy’s here and soon Jamie’ll see him every day.
“Top secret,” Roy says, like it’s something different than what Jamie’s said. “Top secret, like confidential, you muppet. Not the best ones.” He clears his throat. “But for the record, you’re both.”
For a second, Jamie feels like he can’t breathe correctly. When he looks over, stunned, Roy’s watching him with that same small, private smile Jamie remembers from the morning after. It makes him dizzy.
“Anyway.” Roy looks back to the park, stares straight ahead as he says the next bit. “Thought I might give it a go. If that’s alright with you.”
Jamie feels like he’s been pistol-whipped. “Yeah.” He has to clear his throat a few times before actual sound will come out. “Yeah, I guess.”
“You guess.” Roy shakes his head. His smile’s so wide Jamie has to look away. He puts his hands on the edge of the seat and focuses on breathing instead of spiraling out into a whole world of possibilities for what this could mean.
Roy sets his hand down next to Jamie’s, close enough that their pinkies overlap. “Good?”
Jamie blinks. Roy’s still there. Roy’s still smiling.
“Yeah,” he says, and lets himself smile back. “All good.”