I would start a riot

A Royal Invitation ~ June 2015

"Please don't beat up some important old person if they say something insensitive," Dec found himself pleading, far too soon into the car ride to the castle. Ant had the gall to feign a confused expression, looking overly innocent.

"I'm hardly going to make a scene," he retorted eventually, smiling wryly. "You'd never forgive me."

"If it happens, I can handle it, okay?" Dec pushed, rather than giving into the urge his mouth had to follow suit and flicker upwards. Instantly, Ant sobered again.

"I know you can, Decs," he murmured reassuringly, flashing a more supportive smile. "It's just a new setting, isn't it?"

"Yeah," Dec replied, feeling his stomach flutter uncomfortably at the thought. He'd been delaying thinking about this part of the filming process. Dinner with Prince Charles and the sort of people who got invited to eat with royalty. Staying over in a palace with the prince himself – with Stephen. No part of it really made sense to him just yet.

The largely cynical part of him was aware of the opinions that could so easily be rooted in this sort of occasion. He worried about what the prince really thought about him, in light of everything that had happened in the last year. It was hard sometimes, not to think of himself being compared to Ant. There had always been some contrast, although that hadn't helped anyone with getting them the right way round, but nowadays the differences were stark. He still compared himself sometimes – one of them was married; one of them had been outed against his will to the entire country, entangled in a secret relationship with another closeted presenter.

"It'll be easier having Stevie though, won't it?" Ant coaxed gently, "Me and Lise can just stick with you two the entire time if it's awful. We don't have to talk to anyone else beyond the actual filming if they're all bigots."

"They might not all be bigots," Dec pointed out, smirking slightly, "We might find some decent people there."

It hadn't escaped his attention that all of them had assumed it would be bad. In his conversations with Stephen, they hadn't really contemplated the possibility that no one batted an eyelid. Ant was clearly gearing up for a glare-off with anyone who dared speak out of turn. Even Lisa had brought it up with a look of concern the last time Dec spoke to her.

Dec had quickly realised that what had happened in May had left everyone surrounding him on edge. He hadn't expected the anger from a lot of them, sensing the real helplessness that many people felt. Stephen had been exposed out in the open, on his own, facing all of that. No one had managed to protect him from it. Maybe now, they were just desperately trying to do better, even if that involved trying to control something completely unpredictable.

"He could have just invited me and you," Ant pointed out, making the effort to sound a little more positive. "If he didn't want to, he wouldn't have invited either Lisa or Stephen."

"Maybe I was meant to just turn down the invite," Dec replied, vocalising another one of the thoughts in the back of his head. If the invitation had just been for show, perhaps he was meant to have made an excuse on Stephen's behalf – blamed work or something.

"Well, if that's the case, it's their fault," Ant grumbled under his breath. Dec huffed out a laugh.

"You do know there's no point in speculating, right?" he asked in return, trying to stop Ant's own, rather transparent worrying. "Stephen is coming. We are both going to be there and I'm going to have to introduce him to Prince Charles as my actual partner because everyone knows that's what he is."

"And then I can yell at anyone who decides to make a comment?" Ant suggested, grinning hopefully.

"Don't even think about it," Dec replied instantly, letting out an exaggerated sigh and leaning against the cool glass of the window. "God, can you even imagine what would happen?"