roy kent jokingly flirts with his former rival turned friend turned lover’s mum. jamie tartt’s mum. at first just to get under his skin, just to get a laugh, because the devil started it first with roy’s sister. but then… jamie keeps inviting roy home with him. whenever he visits in manchester… roy is there.
and roy is so grateful to be included, to be considered safe enough to be allowed in. but the thing is, roy still can’t stop staring, mouth agape and at a loss for words, at how consistently cuddly and openly affectionate georgie is with her son. roy is suddenly overcome with a longing long-buried in his fractured heart. for a loving maternal relationship in his life that wasn’t instead discarded for a 9 year old kid to be shipped off to sunderland. for him to ever know what it is to be nurtured. and one afternoon he’s just stuck there, paralyzed in a trance; seeing jamie get his hair softly pet again, head draped careless across his mum’s lap again. and georgie looks at roy. and roy looks at georgie. and she gives him a very unmistakable irrefutable nod of the chin.
and somehow roy kent, pushing 40, barely a stone’s throw away her junior, is leaning his own head gently by georgie’s offered knee. oppositely resting his skull against jamie’s, their fingers eventually finding each other’s. a lighter hand above alternating between untangling walnut mist strands and twirling midnight brown curls. he can listen to jamie ramble on, sometimes finds himself joining in with his own mundane complaints. both always met with the reliable “yeah, obviously” and “i know, luv.” the occasional pep talk of reassurance: that roy is also amazing, that being up on jamie’s wall is proof enough of his worth, that roy is never not gonna turn out alright either. and maybe jamie was right, in that sometimes roy can let himself be a sexy little baybeh too. the lovable prick chimes in when he can’t help it, and it all settles something deep in roy’s chest. like he’s really become a part of something sacred and special.
maybe here, bewilderedly staring up at the very same ceiling jamie tartt has vulnerably unraveled himself under countless times, roy kent is allowed. and these days, roy does get his goodbye mum hug for the road, and he still does part ways with an i love you. but now he can’t hold back the burning in his eyes when she adds on “son” to the end of hers, like an afterthought. who is he to deny a welcoming family, after all these years?
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having a lot of thoughts right now at 4am about chay being ruthless
there’s a specific animorphs quote i’m thinking of:
"People don't understand the word ruthless. They think it means 'mean.' It's not about being mean. It's about seeing the bright, clear line that leads from A to B. The line that goes from motive to means. Beginning to end. It's about seeing that bright, clear line and not caring about anything but the beautiful fact that you can see the solution. Not caring about anything else but the perfection of it." — Marco, The Reunion by K.A. Applegate
specifically the bit: It's about seeing the bright, clear line that leads from A to B.
now, i dont think chay from season 1 is ruthless. but i very much see him as having the makings of it. chay has a very simple and direct approach to things; he sees something he wants, so he pursues it (he asks his idol for lessons their first meeting, he doesn’t let kim skip out on tutor lessons, he confesses twice because he had a homework goal and then a personal goal, he wants the truth so he confronts kim that same day, etc). and we see this theme of ‘chay has a goal, chay pursues goal’ most often with kim because they specifically foil each other in this. kim has a grand speech about making sacrifices to achieve your goals, but he’s stagnant between the world he was borne into and cant fully leave because of his brothers, vs the soft bright world he wants to be in but cant because he comes bearing blood. this directly contrasts with chay, who pursues his goals fullheartedly and recklessly
now, chay's not ruthless. not...yet. but there’s also these little...hints of a ruthlessly practical mindset to him. the most standout point for me in this regard was episode 1 when porsche is worried about his uncle. he’s sent arthee away, but he’s still planning “how do i get uncle out of trouble, and how do i maximize it?”
but chay? chay’s straight up like “uncle’s problems aren’t ours, lets just runaway to go live your dream of owning a bar on the beach”
i love this scene between porsche and chay so much. not only is really heartwarming, but i think it rly solidifies who they are as characters right off the bat. porsche is a caretaker. he takes care of everyone around him, whether he has an obligation to or not. but chay is fully ready to just leave their uncle behind. uncle interferes with brother’s and mine’s future plans? then no uncle in future plans. chay doesn’t even seem to mourn nor care that his uncle, one of his two caretakers left, is just gone from his life after ep1. like...that’s a really cold assessment for a teenager to make about one of his two living family members (that he knows of)
for me, what holds chay back from tipping into any sort of ruthless so far is mostly his naivety. not innocence (chay is not innocent yes i am still fighting on this hill), but he has certain expectations of the world that don’t necessarily match what the world is. to me, this shows most clearly when he sees warning flags (”...how do you know i have a brother?”) but is fully willing to ignore them in favor of pursuing his original goal(s) instead of taking the warning flags into account. and since he doesn’t plan for them, when some of those flags grow into actual problems, they really trip him up in ways he’s not prepared to handle. but he doesn’t have that any more at the end of season 1
if we do get a second season, i would be v curious to see where chay’s character develops. im apparently the outlier lol, but i actually really love where kim and chay ended in s1. they were on a trajectory to crash in the middle and instead they missed and landed where the other started. kim, the kid running away from the things he’s always wanted, puts himself out there with zero expectation or surety that chay will reach back. chay lingers over the video, unsure if he wants to respond to it or block it, so he throws his phone away to deal with it another time. and it’d just be really interesting to see how these two characters would react following the same trajectory the other one originally did, but coming at it with a very different background/development. and for chay specifically, i would just rly love to see how his ep1 “lets just abandon uncle to the debtors and go live our dreams on a beach” hints might come back/come into play in a mafia world setting
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