Dec woke up far too early, considering the hour he'd finally got to bed. But it had been that sort of awake that there was no turning back from, his head racing with too many thoughts to calm back down again, leaving him to lie there and watch the curtains slowly grow lighter.
He wasn't surprised when his phone rang just after seven. He was pleased it was Stephen, relieved it wasn't anyone else with more unwanted news.
"So, there are people outside my house," Stephen's voice greeted him. He sounded like he was trying to pull off a joke, his tone wavering just a little too far towards fear for the effort to pay off.
Dec was instantly alert, sitting up in bed as his eyes darted to his window. He wanted to look, to check if he was going to have to deal with that as well. At the same time, he was enjoying not knowing and the possibility that there wasn't anyone there a little too much.
"How many?" he asked hesitantly.
"Four or five," Stephen replied, "Turned up about fifteen minutes ago. Very keen."
"You gonna talk to them?"
Stephen laughed nervously, taking his time to answer. "Honestly? I think if I tried, I'd be sick in front of them." Dec closed his eyes sympathetically, starting to regret that he hadn't insisted they stay together for the night. Even if they'd had to walk out to all that together, at least they wouldn't have been on their own.
"Just ignore them," he said eventually, "Get straight to the car when it turns up, keep your head down. We don't have to say anything until we make some sort of statement."
"My agent's already been talking to Ali about all that," Stephen said, sighing. "Why does everyone care so much? It's not their life, is it?"
"We've subverted expectations, Stevie," Dec intoned, deadpan, "The country won't be able to cope with that."
"I haven't even looked at twitter," Stephen groaned under his breath, "It might be on TV, other news places..."
"Hey, it's out there," Dec interjected, as calmly as he could, "People are going to talk about it. We'll say what we need to and then just let them speculate and be surprised or whatever they want to waste their time doing. Then, when they've moved on to other things, we can get back to just being us and try not to draw any attention to ourselves."
"Do you not think about it? How there could be any number of people right now saying something about us?"
Dec thought for a moment. His main source of worry lay with his family, the family his mum said she'd handle for the time being. That, at least, had taken a weight off his shoulders, even if he was paranoid about what they could be saying.
"Only people I know," he replied honestly, "I try not to care about other people's opinions. Unless they're making valid points, that is. And the people you're talking about probably aren't saying anything worth my time."
Stephen sighed and for a long time that seemed to be the extent of his response. But Dec waited knowingly, hearing the unspoken words in his silence.
"I wish I didn't care so much," Stephen admitted eventually and Dec could imagine his tense posture, the way his free hand would be itching to grasp the other tightly in his lap if only it wasn't busy white-knuckling his phone.
"Me too," Dec said tiredly, knowing that everything he was saying to Stephen was an ideal. Maybe he didn't care so much about what any old person off the street thought about the two of them but he was painfully aware of the fact that they would be talking. And it was hard not to listen.
"Should we have said?" Stephen asked suddenly, sounding anxious. "Why did we have to be so terrified of what people think? Why couldn't we just have been honest?"
YOU ARE READING
As we fall apart
Fanfiction"Maybe it would be best if..." "What's that supposed to mean?" "I don't think I can do this anymore." It felt like it came out of nowhere. They'd had a lot to contend with for a long time but still, after it all, they'd had each other. Until they di...
