When You Need Me

Why?

A/N - Another 4AM update - yay! 😂🤦‍♀️ I'm telling you, it's hard to write Ant and Dec when they're like this, but hopefully this doesn't seem too out of character. Enjoy!

"Dec." Ant's rough but gentle voice reverberated through the line, serving as both a salve and a sharp scalpel on Dec's wounded psyche.

When more than 30 seconds had passed, a bewildered Ant repeated his friend's name. "Declan?"

The voice that answered was tiny, desolate, but strangely cool. "What's up?"

If Ant hadn't known Dec so well, he wouldn't have caught on to the peculiar tone in Dec's voice. But he knew as soon as those words left Dec's mouth that something was terribly wrong. He had been expecting sympathy from Dec, reassurance. Instead, he was presented with a rather worrying mystery that demanded answers. Was it possible his friend had discovered what the tabloids' "sources" were claiming? He'd sworn Georgia to secrecy on that, but she did have a tendency to blab things out when she was agitated....

"You okay, Dec? Ya sound a bit off...." Ant trailed off, unsure of what to say.

"What does it matter?" Dec sounded slightly bitter for a moment, before his voice softened again, tender now, "How are you, Ant, are you okay? We kept the press off your backs as long as we possibly could." 

"Yeah, I'm fine, Dec. Glad it won't be a secret anymore after tomorrow," Ant sounded happy, excited, before sobering again, "though I'm worried about Anne-Marie. You know how delicate she is." 

"No, I don't, actually. But I'll take your word for it," there was that sour tone to Dec's voice again. Ant was getting really confused now. "But as long as you're fine with it, it's all good. I mean, if I'd known, I wouldn't have had the office working so hard at keeping everything quiet. There've been rumours for a while now."

"No, no, Dec - I appreciate it," Ant hurriedly added, realizing his mistake. "We needed the time to get to know each other and figure out if it was going to work. Thank you."

"Yeah...no problem..." Dec didn't seem to know what to say now, although he supposed he really ought to say something along the lines of, "I'm happy for you." There, he'd said it. In reality, he was smarting, the pain of hearing firsthand Ant's joy with his replacement filling him with throbbing hurt.

Ant and Dec had always had a knack for reading each other like a book - spending nearly all day, every day together certainly helped - and Ant was busily reading Dec via his voice alone. He didn't like what he was hearing, but wasn't sure how to remedy the situation, unwilling to outright ask Dec why he was acting so strange. This was not the Dec he knew, but he just couldn't quite put his finger on what was wrong.

Quickly realizing this was not a conversation to have over the phone, Ant formulated a plan. He had heard through Anne-Marie - and via a few short texts exchanged with Dec - that Ali was really struggling right now with pregnancy-related high blood pressure. It would be nice to give Dec a break from the caregiver role he'd apparently taken on – something Ant still couldn't quite imagine, by the way – and give Ali a treat. Maybe he could arrange for the girls to have a spa day or something? Anne-Marie had been going on about wanting a spa day for several days now, so maybe that would be the perfect solution. Leave a whole day for him and Dec to spend together, just the two of them. He missed his friend desperately, and he knew they had to conquer the personal issues keeping them apart.

To be fair, the seeds for this particular idea had been planted in his mind a few days ago by his mam, Christine, who had apparently been talking with Anne. Both mothers were extremely concerned about their sons, both their own flesh and blood and their "adopted" son. Dec had apparently been an emotional wreck when he was up in Newcastle last weekend. He had sworn his mother to secrecy in regards to telling Ant....And technically, she'd kept that promise, only telling Christine....Who then passed it along to Ant because she felt the unnatural distance that had built up between the two men had gone on for long enough, and she told Ant as much, ordering him to fix things up between them. He'd have to live with his regret for the rest of his life if he lost his only true friend just because he couldn't face up to reality. Tough love was his mam's specialty.