It had been a long time since he'd done an interview. Dec had been putting it off and, regardless, the mess with Martha and the rest of their PR team had slowed everything like that down for some time. There just hadn't been anyone around to book them on a chat show or get in touch with a newspaper.
And it wasn't as if the attention had been lacking anyway. There had never seemed much point adding to the scrutiny surrounding them. People speculated with or without an interview to over-analyse and that had kept them relevant which satisfied the people whose job it was to create strategies with that very goal in mind.
"It's only Jonathan Ross," Ant had said at some point, quite clearly trying to turn the focus of that particular conversation away from his upcoming knee operation. "He's alright, Decs. It won't be an interrogation."
Dec wasn't particularly afraid of an interrogation. He was more worried about falling to pieces the second anyone mentioned something related to Stephen and what had happened a few months earlier. It was going to come up, inevitably. It was still all a lot of people could talk about in relation to the two of them. How it was unacceptable. How badly ITV had handled it.
None of that took away the fact that it had happened though.
"They shouldn't be asking anything about the channel's response," Ali said, briefing them before the show, "So you shouldn't have to deal with brushing that off."
"But they are going to ask about the rest of it?" Dec tried not to sound weary, fiddling with his tie and avoiding his own reflection in their dressing room mirror, sure he would see far too many signs of stress if he caught a glimpse of himself. At least if he didn't see his own face, he could pretend the audience would believe his calm façade.
"Probably," Ali replied, blunt enough to almost be reassuring. "You haven't talked about it."
Probably turned quickly to definitely. They'd barely got through the formalities of the interview before the topic turned to BGT. And that was only ever going to steer them down one particular avenue.
"It's really unfortunate that it's so hard to talk about Britain's Got Talent this year without mentioning everything that happened beyond the competition," Jonathan said almost hesitantly.
Dec tried to imagine a world in which he wasn't with Stephen and this had somehow happened anyway. He wondered how the attention on however he responded to this particular line of thought would have been different if people weren't waiting for him to defend one of the most important people in his life.
"I think even people who don't watch the show would have been aware of the incident on Britain's Got More Talent, the ITV2 show," Jonathan continued, the mere mention of it swirling up a pit of dread in Dec's stomach. He didn't want to relive it in any way, desperate for them to just skip over the next few questions. But the best he could do was block the interviewer out for a moment and then tune back in. "And when I saw what happened, it was so shocking to me to hear anything like that – so openly homophobic. I can't imagine what it was like..."
"I think I speak for everyone involved in the production of the show when I say how horrible it was to know that something like that happened on our show," Ant picked up the thread of the conversation easily, his hand brushing Dec's elbow not quite surreptitiously enough for it not to be caught on camera. But suddenly Dec didn't find himself minding that it would be all over social media though. Sometimes it was a relief to be able to visibly hurt in front of people – sometimes he just wanted them to understand.
"It was really tough to keep up an image for the sake of the competition," Ant continued, "Knowing we had people throughout the team who would have been affected by what happened – after the year before, no one working there wanted Stephen or Dec to be targeted like that. I think we hoped it wasn't ever going to be a problem but it's become apparent in the last couple of years that even as a progressive country we still have a long way to go before LGBT people actually feel safe and supported. You know, it shouldn't be news that two people aren't straight and they certainly shouldn't get abuse for choosing to keep that part of their life quiet, given the attitudes of a lot of people."
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I would start a riot
FanfictionWhen he was younger, back when it had all been a secret, Dec had felt strangely brave. He knew Stephen had too, like that time he told him he'd felt invincible. With everything out in the open, the courage was coming back and they were starting to s...
