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I have no answer to that.
At least, not one that makes me sound like a good, decent, honorable, right-side-of-history person.
Pippa leans toward Rory, who’s still doing his best to ignore her. “We can go somewhere private, if you’d like… get away for a bit…” I narrow my eyes at her. I know Rory isn’t remotely interested but her doggedness is beginning to get on my nerves. She hasn’t even looked at me or Danny — just interrupted, believing herself to be far more important and more deserving of Rory’s time and attention. Next to me, Danny strokes my agitated thigh with a calming hand. “We could go out just now, if you want?” She rummages in her coat pocket. “D’you fancy a smoke?”
“No, I like having lungs,” Rory answers bluntly.
“I think you may have the wrong end of the stick,” Danny smoothly interjects. Pippa glances at Danny and me for the first time, her made-up eyes blinking owlishly as though surprised by our very existence. From across the table, Danny takes Rory’s hand in his, cupping it tenderly. “We’re gay. We’re very, very gay for one another.”
Rory instantly tries to jerk away from Danny, but Danny holds onto him tight.
“Right,darling?” Danny insists, copying Pippa’s plummy accent, and Rory ever so slowly nods as he begins to play along. Across the table, he lifts Danny’s hand and brushes his lips against the back of it. Danny’s eyes widen in a way that isn’t part of the pretense, his face rapidly turning scarlet. Rory stares down at the table as he tries to compose a neutral expression and keep himself from laughing.
I jump in to keep the attention off the pair of them. “And I’m, like, their…” Frantically, I try to think of a link between two men. “…surrogate?”
Rory shoots me a bizarre look, his lips quirking. “Yes,” he says slowly, the hint of a plan spreading across his face, “not to mention the fact wearestill in school, so you hitting on me isreallyquite creepy.”
Pippa pulls back from Rory — but only slightly.
“Anyway, when you see him, tell my father all of this,” Rory says, looking darkly pleased with the idea. “Tell him I’m gay. That I identify as an anarcho-communist nowadays, with a child on the way. And that I’ve seen the light in Jesus.” The more he speaks, the more gleeful Rory looks. “Tell him all of that, and also that I’m getting married next year. And that I’m going to do everything in my power to bring down his puppet king.”
“Puppet king?” Seb asks, horrified. “That’s grossly offensive.”
“To what?” Rory drawls. “Puppets?”
Pippa coughs politely. Her face has become increasingly guarded the more she engages with Rory. “I was unaware the PM’s son swung that way — there’s been no announcement…”
“It’s private.” These two words, clipped and clinical, fall from Rory’s lips like an oath.
“But representation is important—”
“My personal life is not gossip fodder.”
“But if the son of the PM came out, it could inspire—”
“My personal life ismine.”
Spurned, Pippa’s eyes flick to me. “And you are having a… baby?” She sounds puzzled.
“Imminently,” I inform her, helpfully patting my belly beneath the table. Really, though, I’m patting my belly because I’ve just realized how little exists inside it and that I am utterlystarving.
“I see.” She downs her glass of wine like a shot, and from the expression on her face, it’s clear she thinks we’re all mad. “Well, I for one think it’s high time we head home — agreed, Seb?”
Seb raises an eyebrow, seemingly sulky about this sudden change of direction, but he assents in the end, slipping his scarf around his neck with an elegant flourish.
They squeeze past their companions at the end of the table with a sense of urgency that makes the others glance over at them in concern.
In a dry, bored tone, Rory quietly drawls to their departing backs, “That’s right. Off you fuck.” He sighs, a long-suffering symptom of something deeper that calls to the innate pessimism of his soul. “Some people — I just can’t believe them.” When he moves to take another sip of wine, he suddenly seems to realize he’s still holding Danny’s hand. Carefully, he extracts his fingers from the demonstrative gesture and looks Danny in the eye.
“Thanks,” Rory says quietly.
Danny’s smile is a soft and wholesome thing. “Anytime.”
At that, Rory snorts with laughter as he sips his wine. “Mmm, I’ll bet,” he snarks, though there’s no bite to it. “I know what I do to you. Don’t tell me you haven’t sprung a boner just from holding my hand like a complete virgin, D-boy.”
With a roll of his eyes, Danny admits to no such thing — but there are two high spots of color on his cheeks that indicate a modicum of truth in Rory’s dry words.
“I think we could have told the truth and they’d have run away sooner,” I say, to take the heat off Danny.
