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Roy almost trips over his feet when Keeley screams. Jamie startles, but he doesn’t miss a beat as he turns to run across the middle of the pitch toward where she’s sitting on the sidelines.
Once he’s righted himself, Roy follows as closely behind Jamie as he can. When he gets to her, Keeley is still screeching and flapping her hands beside her head.
“Shit, shit, shit, shit, get it out, get it out!” She yells, when Jamie drops down next to her.
“What? Get what?” Jamie’s hands hover around Keeley, like he’s trying to figure out where he can touch her.
Suddenly, she jerks her head to the side, shoving one shoulder up to meet it as she makes an incoherent sound. Roy stumbles to a stop behind Jamie, who turns around and stares up at him with wide, terrified eyes.
“Think she’s having a seizure, Roy?”
“No, I don’t think it’s a fucking seizure,” Roy grumbles. Even as the words leave his mouth, though, he’s not sure how much he believes them. What the fuck does he know about seizures? He’s not a fucking doctor. Keeley has stopped convulsing, finally, but she’s half-sobbing now as Jamie reaches forward to wrap his hands around her wrists.
“Keels, c’mon, you gotta tell us what’s going o-”
Before he can even finish the sentence, Keeley screams again. Jamie lets go of her, startling so hard that he falls out of his crouch.
“The fuck was that!?” He shouts, flipping his hands back and forth like he’ll be able to find the answer there.
“Fuck was what?” Roy bends down as fast as his knee will let him, lowering himself carefully to sit on the edge of the track.
“The fucking … whatsit. You didn’t hear the buzzing?”
Keeley is good and rightly crying now, cradling her ear with one hand.
“Keeley, talk to me.” Roy tries to make his voice comforting, but he’s so worried that he honestly can’t tell if it works or not. “Are you hurt?”
She shakes her head, so Roy tries again. “Bleeding? Dying?”
Keeley yells again and yanks her hand back. Roy catches a flash of something black between the strands of her hair.
“Shit, hold on, I think I see it.”
“Get it, get it, get it!” Keeley screams. Jamie has scrambled away; he’s kneeling a few feet over from them, looking like he might get up and bolt at any second. Roy scoots closer to Keeley, looking between her and Jamie.
“I’ll get it, I’ve got it,” he murmurs. “Just hold still. Don’t move.”
He’s reaching toward her when it happens again. This time, he hears an unearthly buzzing noise coming from whatever the thing is, and the section of hair it’s tangled up in moves all on its own.
“Jesus shit!” Roy shouts. Keeley yells out again and flinches away. Jamie shifts further down the pitch. “Right. So I think you’ve got a fucking alien growing out your hair. Must be from all the ridiculous products you two use.”
“Leave me pomade out of this!” Jamie calls down to him. “Just get the thing outta her hair!”
“OK, alright, what the fuck do you think I’m trying to do?” He looks back at Keeley. “Now don’t fucking move. Sorry.” Roy winces when he hears how harsh the command sounded. “I can’t get it if you keep moving.”
Keeley tilts her face toward him, visibly trembling with the effort it takes not to move. She whimpers when Roy gets his fingers around it and it buzzes loudly. He damn near drops the thing when it rattles about in his fingers, but keeps hold of it long enough to untangle the strands of Keeley’s hair without just yanking it out.
Then he’s sitting there, between the pitch and the track, holding a giant bug between his thumb and forefinger, without the slightest idea what to do with it.
“What’re you doing, mate? Fucking kill it already!” Jamie shouts.
“No!” Keeley yells, almost at the same time. “It’s a living thing, Roy. You can’t kill it.”
Roy looks between the both of them again, then settles for tossing the bug several feet away from them. He watches it disappear into the grass, then pop up again a moment later and fly out of sight. Even from the distance, he can hear the way it buzzes as it moves.
“There. It’s gone.” As soon as the words are out of his mouth, Keeley is wrapping herself around him. He can feel her still shaking lightly as he rubs his hands up and down her back. “It’s gone. You’re good now, yeah?”
“Fuck, Roy, I thought it was going to kill me.” She’s crying; he can hear the tears in her voice and feel the wet spot soaking into his shirt. “You saved my life.”
“I got a fucking bug out of your hair.”
“You’re a hero!” Jamie’s arms come around them both and his face pushes into Roy’s shoulder. “God, that was horrifying.”
“Yeah, alright,” he concedes. “But it’s gone now. We’re all alright, life goes the fuck on.”
The three of them sit like that, a tangle of arms and legs and long blonde hair, until Keeley stops crying enough to pull her face back and look up at Roy. Mascara runs down her face, blurry grey streaks tracing lines across her skin. Even like this, she’s gorgeous, and Roy can’t help but think about how lucky he is to be settled between her and Jamie.
“Shit, you weren’t done training.”
“We are now,” Jamie says firmly, before Roy feels Jamie’s head turn toward him. “Right, Roy?”
“I suppose,” he begins with a put-upon sigh. “We can call it a day. If you promise to do extra laps tomorrow to make up for it.”
“Sure,” Jamie agrees easily. “Whatever gets us away from that demon creature and back indoors.”
They separate just long enough to stand up, but Keeley wraps an arm around each of theirs as they walk back toward the locker rooms.
“Roy?” Her whisper is timid, just enough to get his attention and earn a grunt in reply. “Can we still stop for coffees?”
“Fuck,” he grumbles, even though they all know it doesn’t actually bother him. “Yes, we’ll still stop for coffees.”