Chapter Text
“I’m so sorry,” Lucien huffed as he reached the table. “I…I…I’m late.”
So he hadn’t been stuck on the tube. Probably, he’d just been dragging his feet, regretting having agreed to this in the first place. “These thing happen,” Oliver said, aiming for gracious but not quite managing it.
They stared at each other for a beat. “Should I sit down?” Lucien asked.
“Unless you have another engagement,” Oliver tried, which earned him a slightly bewildered look.
“No. No. I’m, er, all yours.”
They both slid back into the banquette, Lucien with more flailing of long limbs than Oliver would have thought possible for such a simple movement.
His heart was thudding insistently in his chest. He hadn’t quite realised how nervous he was until Lucien was there in front of him. He was as striking as ever, beautiful in an ethereal yet nonetheless slightly challenging way that put Oliver in mind of Robert Mapplethorpe. His mouth was full and pouty, his blue-green eyes fixed on Oliver in a way that strongly suggested he was thinking what am I doing here with this dickhead?
Oliver couldn’t think of a single normal thing to say. He was normally good at this bit – the small talk, the social niceties, making polite conversation over food. It was everything else that tripped him up.
But Lucien was just…staring at him, all sultry disdain, and Oliver’s brain had completely short-circuited. “Are you wearing eyeliner?” he blurted out.
Lucien looked startled – as well he might. “What? No.”
“Really?”
“Well, it’s the kind of thing I think I’d remember. I’m pretty sure this is just what my eyes look like.”
God. So he just looked like that all the time. Oliver fought off a hundred images of Lucien, sleep-tousled and soft; Lucien beneath him, long arms and legs wrapped tight around Oliver’s body, those dark lashes fanning across his cheeks—
“That’s ridiculous,” he said, hoping to somehow convey he’d intended all this as a compliment.
Lucien did not look particularly complimented, if Oliver was being honest with himself – but thankfully at this moment a waiter arrived to give them both menus, allowing Oliver to vanish behind one to collect himself.
“You should start,” he suggested after a few moments of silence, “with the smoked eel sandwich. It’s a speciality.”
Oliver still dreamed about Quo Vadis’s smoked eel sandwich. He thought about it more than any of his ex-boyfriends.
“It damn well ought to be for a tenner,” Lucien scoffed.
“Since I will be paying, that need not concern you,” Oliver assured him.
Lucien visibly squirmed. “I’d be more comfortable if we went halfsies.”
“I wouldn’t, given I chose the restaurant, and I believe Bridget said you work with dung-beetles.”
“I work for dung-beetles,” Lucien snapped, then shook his head. “I mean, I work for their preservation.”
Oliver raised an eyebrow. “I wasn’t aware they needed preserving.”
“Yeah, neither are most people. That’s the problem. Science isn’t exactly my strong point but the short version is, they’re good for the soil and if they go extinct, we’ll all starve to death.”
“Then you’re doing good work, but I know for a fact that even the big-name charities pay less than the private sector.” Oliver held his gaze, and his thudding heart calmed just a little. He could do this. Everything was under control. “This is on me. I insist.”
“Umm…”
“If it will make you feel better,” Oliver said, perhaps a little too quickly, “you could allow me to order for you. This is one of my favourite restaurants, and”—he went to cross his legs, but somehow accidentally kicked Lucien under the table—“my apologies… I enjoy introducing people to it.”
“Are you going to expect me to trim your cigar later?”
“Is that a euphemism?” Oliver asked, half genuinely uncertain, and half attempting – admittedly gracelessly – to invite an element of flirtation into the conversation.
Lucien declined the invitation. “Only in Gigi. But fine. I guess you can order for me. If you really want to.”
Pleasure bloomed in Oliver’s chest, warm and bright. “I can?”
“Yes. And—sorry. Thank you.”
“Do you have any dietary restrictions?”
“Nope. I’ll eat anything. Um. Foodwise, that is.”
“And…” Oliver hesitated for half a second, thinking of the last time they’d seen each other. But he didn’t want Lucien to think he was judgemental. Lots of people got drunk, sometimes. That didn’t mean they had a drinking problem. “Are we drinking?”
Lucien’s expression tightened. “I know you’ve got no reason to believe this, but I’m not an alcoholic. Or a sexaholic. Or a drug addict.”
Oliver cursed himself. He’d clearly come across rude without meaning to. “Well,” he managed after a moment. “I’ve one reason to believe it.”
Lucien cast a wary glance up from the table to meet his eyes. “Which is?”
“You told me otherwise. So, are we drinking?”
Lucien’s expression hardly changed, but there was something new in it all the same – a warmth in his eyes, something soft around his mouth. “Can we not, if you don’t mind? While I don’t have medical problems with alcohol, I do tend to make a bit of a tit of myself when plastered.”
Perhaps this was a good juncture to acknowledge their last meeting in a way that wasn’t completely awkward. “I’m aware.”
The joke didn’t land. Lucien scowled, his body language closing off completely as he sat back and folded his arms. Oliver’s heart sank.
Thankfully the waiter reappeared, which gave Oliver the opportunity to order while Lucien looked on sulkily. The problem was, Lucien somehow managed to make sulkiness quite appealing. Oliver needed his head examined.
“I can’t help but notice,” Luc said as the waiter left, “that if this fish sarnie is all that and a bag of chips, you aren’t having one.”
“Yes. Well.” Oliver couldn’t have explained why, but he could feel his face starting to go red. “I’m a vegetarian.”
“Then how do you know about the magic eel?”
“I’ve eaten meat before, and I like it. It’s just I’ve reached the point that I can’t justify it ethically.”
“But you’re cheerfully going to sit there and watch me chow down on bits of dead animal like some kind of creepy carni-voyeur?”
Oliver blinked. He did get some vicarious enjoyment from watching people eat food he knew they’d enjoy, especially if he’d played a part in delivering it to them, but he hadn’t intended it like that. “I hadn’t thought of it that way. I just wanted you to enjoy the food, and I’d never impose my principles on people who don’t necessarily share them.”
Lucien looked, if anything, more annoyed. “Thanks. I always like my dinner served with a sprinkling of sanctimony.”
“That’s rather unfair,” Oliver retorted, stung. He shifted back a little, accidentally kicking Lucien once more in the process. “Especially given you’d have been equally, if not more offended if I’d ordered vegetarian without asking you. Also, I’m sorry I keep catching you with my feet. Yours are never where I’m expecting them to be.”
Lucien narrowed his eyes. “These things happen.”
A nasty silence fell between them. Oh god. Had that sounded like victim-blaming? Not that accidentally kicking someone under the table was victimising them, really, but Oliver should have taken responsibility for his own clumsiness. He’d hoped he was diverting the conversation to safer waters, but apparently he’d made things worse.
This was going terribly. This was going so much more terribly than Oliver could ever have predicted – and he’d predicted a lot of ways it could go terribly – yet somehow, he found he wanted Lucien to like him even more than he had before they’d sat down.
The silence endured for a while, until their first course arrived. Oliver picked miserably at a loose thread on the tablecloth, trying to think of something to say and coming up blank.
He was saved when Luc took his first bite of the eel sandwich. His expression melted into one of complete bliss, and he let out a moan that Oliver was going to have a very hard time not thinking about later. “Okay,” he admitted once he was done. “I was too hasty. That was so good I could pretty much marry you now.”
Oliver was so relieved he could have kissed the eel-sandwich chef there and then. “I’m happy you liked it.”
“I could eat one every day for the rest of my life. How could you know these exist and give them up?”
“I…thought it was the right thing to do.”
“I can’t tell if that’s really commendable or really tragic.”
Oliver gave a half-shrug, feeling a little self-conscious, as he always did when he had to try and explain his personal choices. But Lucien was still smiling at him, light dancing in his eyes once again, and…well. Oliver would have done a lot to be on the receiving end of that look.
“So…uh…I seem to remember you being a lawyer or something?” Luc said.
“I’m a barrister, yes.”
“And what do you…barrist?”
“I—” Oliver went to cross his legs and somehow kicked Lucien in the knee yet again. “God. I’m sorry. I’ve done it again.”
“I’ve got to say, you play one hell of a hard-core game of footsie.”
Oh Christ, did Lucien think this was Oliver’s sub-competent attempt at sexual harassment? “I assure you, it’s been accidental every time.”
Lucien’s answering smile was reassuring. “It’s me. I’m all legs.”
They both took a look beneath the tablecloth. Lucien’s legs were indeed very long.
“How about if I…” Luc swung his feet to the right.
“And I go…” Oliver moved his own feet left, accidentally brushing Lucien’s ankle as he went and sending a spark of heat over his skin. God, it had clearly been too long since a man had touched him.
Lucien met his eyes again. Oliver couldn’t prevent the smile that crept over his face at the warmth he saw there. And, just for a moment, everything felt alright again.
“Your…your job?” Lucien asked after a moment, looking away.
“Ah. Yes. Well, I specialise in criminal defence.” A prickle of nerves went through Oliver, as it always did at this juncture. “And you might as well get it over with.”
“Get what over with?”
“The question that everyone asks when you tell them you work in criminal defence.”
Lucien blinked rapidly for a moment, then blurted out, “Do you have sex in the wig?”
Oliver stared, caught completely by surprise. A part of him wanted to laugh, but he wasn’t sure if Lucien would respond well. “No, because they’re very expensive, very uncomfortable, and I have to wear mine to work.”
“Oh.”
Oliver wasn’t sure whether to be pleased that Lucien had shown this mild awareness of him as a sexual person, or horrified that he apparently came across as so self-satisfied, he’d want his sex life to involve an ugly and outdated symbol of his profession. It was probably best just to try and put it behind them. “The question people usually ask is how do you live with yourself when you spend your whole life putting rapists and murders back on the street.”
“Actually, that is a good question.”
“Should I answer it?”
“Well, you seem to really want to.”
“It’s not about whether I want to.” Oliver could feel himself getting tense, but he couldn’t help it. In his experience, many people felt very strongly about this particular issue, and he’d had a few dates fall apart after discussing it. He really, really didn’t want this to fall apart – at least, not more than it already had. “It’s about whether you’re going to think I’m an amoral profiteer if I don’t.”
Lucien spread his hands in invitation. “I guess you’d better tell me then.”
Oliver took a deep, steadying breath. “The short version is: an adversarial justice system isn’t perfect, but it’s the best that we’ve got. Statistically, yes, most people I defend in court are guilty because the police can broadly do their jobs. But even people who probably did it are entitled to a zealous legal defence. And that’s a principle to which…to which I am ideologically committed.”
As he was finishing, their main course began to arrive. Lucien was visibly distracted by his pie. Oliver waited for him to return to the conversation, his heart thudding nervously. He folded his hands on the table, clenching them tight to ground himself. Eventually, Luc looked up again. “Wow, you seem really defensive about this.”
“I just find it helps to be honest. This is who I am, and what I do, and I believe in what I do.”
“Oliver,” Lucien said – and the sound of his name in Luc’s mouth sent a pleasant shiver over him, quite unlike anything he’d experienced before. “I don’t think you’re a bad person. Which you must know means next to nothing coming from me, because you only have to pick up a paper or Google my name to know what sort of person I am.”
Oliver didn’t like the way he said that – so casually self-devaluing, as if it were accepted fact. Oliver was vaguely aware via Bridget and a sort of cultural osmosis that Lucien had been in the papers for behaviour that, by some standards, might be considered unhealthy. Some people – and here, Oliver couldn’t help but think of his parents – might even think it was immoral. But Oliver didn’t share those perspectives, and he knew better than to believe everything that was printed in the press. “I – I am aware of your reputation. But if I’m to know you, Lucien, I’d rather it came from you.”
Lucien shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “Well, for starters, it’s Luc.”
“Luke? It seems a shame when Lucien is such a beautiful name.”
“Actually, that’s the English pronunciation.”
“Surely”—a shiver of snobbery that he couldn’t quite suppress—“it’s not Looshan as the Americans would have it?”
“No. God no. My mother’s French.”
“Ah. Lucien, then?” Oh, that was unhelpfully attractive. Oliver had always liked French. He enjoyed its lightness and its, well…sex appeal. Maybe he could turn this around after all. “Vraiment? Vous parlez français?”
Lucien answering smile was a little uncertain. “Oui oui, un peu.”
“C’est une langue très jolie. Je souhaite que j’aie l’opportunité de le parler plus souvent, mais je ne voyage que rarement. Je manque de la pratique, je suis désolé.”
Lucien’s eyes had gone slightly wide, and – to Oliver’s mind – panicked. Shit. Was this going to backfire? Perhaps his accent was worse than he’d realised. He really was out of practice. Lucien was going to think he was terribly gauche and unattractive, and—
“Um…um… Je voudrais aller au cinema avec mes amis? Où est la salle de bain?”
Oliver, in a state of utter confusion, pointed to the toilet. Lucien went, leaving Oliver perplexed in his wake.
He didn’t…sound like someone who spoke fluent French. Or – actually, any kind of French…
As soon as Lucien returned, Oliver said, “You don’t speak French at all, do you?”
“No.” Luc looked down at the table, face turning pink. “I mean, my mother used both when I was growing up, but I still turned out stubbornly monolingual.”
“Then why didn’t you just say that?” Oliver asked, equal parts bewildered and embarrassed.
“I…don’t know. I guess I assumed you didn’t speak French either?”
“Why on earth would I imply I spoke French, when I couldn’t?”
Lucien scooped up a frankly enormous forkful of pie, and stuffed it into his mouth. “You’re right,” he said around the mouthful. “That would be a deranged thing to do.”
Silence fell between them, prickly and uncomfortable. Oliver had no idea how to salvage the conversation. He hadn’t meant to embarrass or expose Lucien, but that was clearly what he’d done. God. He normally considered himself to have quite good social skills, an instinct for when to press and when to let something go, when a topic might be sensitive or unpleasant. But apparently all that went out of the window as soon as Lucien O’Donnell was part of the picture. Oliver ran over the conversation in his mind again, but he couldn’t see where the exit ramp would have been to avoid this outcome.
Perhaps don’t speak French should just be a general rule for his dates. Although, it had gone well for him in the past…
Don’t speak French with Lucien, then. That was fine. At least, if he stood any chance of getting another date, which Oliver was starting to strongly suspect he didn’t.
“How come you’re so fluent?” Lucien asked eventually.
“My, ah”—there was really no good way to say this; Oliver knew exactly how it sounded—“family have a holiday home in Provence.”
“Of course you do.”
Oliver bristled. “What do you mean by that?” he asked, although he had a horrible feeling he already knew. Pompous.
Lucien shrugged. “Just, I can imagine it. No wonder you grew up all nice and put together and perfect.”
That was slightly less terrible than Oliver had feared, although still profoundly inaccurate. “I’ve certainly never claimed to be perfect, Lucien.”
“Oh stop it with the Lucien, will you?” he snapped, with an unexpected vehemence that made Oliver flinch.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t realise you didn’t like it.”
“I told you before,” Luc snarled, looking at him with such a combination of impatience and dislike that Oliver shrivelled beneath it like a slug under salt. “It’s Luc. Just Luc.”
“Noted.”
There was a horrible silence, Luc staring determinedly out of the window. Oliver stared down at his hands, furious with himself, wishing he could just vanish into his seat. Luc had told him, but Oliver had gotten so carried away in the sound of Lucien, the pleasure of it rolling over his tongue, that he’d completely forgotten. It was a level of poor manners he wouldn’t usually fall into, but something about Luci – Luc seemed to make everything in his brain go haywire.
This was quite possibly the worst first date performance of his life. Lucien clearly loathed him. Oliver wanted to go home so that he could quietly die somewhere out of Luc’s sight, then spend the rest of his life trying to never think about this evening, or Luc’s pretty eyes, or his rare, sweet smile, ever again.
Finally, finally, dessert arrived. At the very least, Oliver hoped Luc could say he’d enjoyed the food, because this lemon posset was one of the best Oliver had ever tasted. He couldn’t have one himself – he’d already eaten rather a lot today – but his mouth watered at the memory of its tart, creamy sweetness, the zing of rhubarb…
“Nothing for you?” Luc asked, finally looking at Oliver again.
“I’m not a fan of desserts. But I hope you’ll like this one. It’s very good.”
“If you’re not a fan, how do you know it’s ‘very good’?” Luc asked, doing expressive air quotes as he spoke.
“I…That is…I…”
“Do you want to share it with me?” Luc interrupted, surprising Oliver with the offer and the openness of his expression.
Oliver looked at the posset again, remembering vividly how delicious it was. One little bite couldn’t hurt, could it…? And it would be churlish to say no…
“Maybe I could have a little? Let me ask for more cutlery.”
“No need.” Luc cracked the surface of the posset and scooped out a generous spoonful for Oliver, which he then presented to him with another world-stopping smile. Oliver’s heart was getting whiplash. Gingerly, he reached out and took the spoon, then popped the posset in his mouth. God, it was just as good as he remembered, zingy and sweet and luxurious.
“Thank you,” he said, returning the spoon to Luc, who was watching him with an odd expression. Luc took it and began to attack the rest of the posset, eating with furious intensity and at such speed that in only a few second, the rest was gone.
“Should I order another one?” Oliver asked, unsure whether he should be glad that Luc seemed to have enjoyed it, or unhappy that he was scowling again.
Why was he scowling again? What had Oliver done now?
“No, I’m good,” Luc snapped. “Let’s get out of here.”
Oliver deflated like a balloon with a puncture. Oh Christ. Luc despised him. Oliver couldn’t work out which part of the date had gone worst, but he knew he was confused about large parts of it. What had gone wrong with the lemon posset?
It’s you, a little voice whispered in his head. It’s you, he thinks you’re boring and pompous and you kept calling him by the wrong name, and he probably does think your job is immoral, he works for a charity for God’s sake, and you kept kicking him—
The list went on.
“I…I’ll get the bill,” Oliver murmured, defeated, and rose to hunt down a waiter. The sooner he could put them both out of their misery, the better.
***
They left the restaurant together without speaking, then hovered outside the door. Oliver couldn’t think what to say. Sorry this went so badly. Could we start over again? I really like you.
He felt foolish and tongue-tied and about as desirable as one of the dry pieces of chewing gum stuck to the street beneath his shoes. Why had he ever thought this was a good idea? He was going to go home and bury himself under a pile of blankets and never leave his house again.
Neither of them was saying anything. This was horrible. Oliver cleared his throat. “Well. Thank you for…for that.”
Luc looked at him, expression unreadable. He was still distractingly beautiful. Oliver’s heart stung with the realisation that this was it, definitively this time: the death of any chance he’d ever had with Luc O’Donnel. “Anyway, I should—”
Something panicked flashed across Luc’s face – and then, without warning, he was pulling Oliver close and pressing their mouths together. His lips were warm and soft, and tasted slightly lemony, and Oliver’s whole body lit up at the contact like Christmas lights. And just for a moment, he thought: oh. Maybe it didn’t go so badly, after all.
Except – no, wait, it definitely had gone that badly, and whatever was happening now – Oliver had no idea what was happening now.
He pulled away violently, accidentally tripping over one of the potted plants outside the restaurant. “What the hell was—” He caught the plant and righted it just before it spilled soil all over the pavement. “Christ.”
“It was a kiss,” Luc said casually, though Oliver thought he looked a little flushed. “Why? Haven’t you had one before? People sometimes exchange them on dates.”
Oliver glared, annoyed and embarrassed and confused. What the—? Wait. A picture began to swirl together in his head. Why had Luc agreed to go out with him after all this time, when he clearly couldn’t stand him?
Could it be that Bridget had told him Oliver was interested? That Oliver was lonely, that he hadn’t been with anyone in six months – and Luc had thought Oliver would be an easy lay. It made a terrible kind of sense. Much more sense than the idea that Luc had wanted to go on a date with him for the sake of getting to know him.
The thought was metallic in his mouth, mortifying and more hurtful than it had any right to be. He rounded furiously on Luc, who’d been inching away slowly. “Is this a game to you? What has Bridget told you?”
“What? N-no.”
“Tell me what’s going on.”
“Nothing’s going on!”
Oliver kept walking towards Luc, who kept stepping away, leading them in a ridiculous dance down the pavement. “Now,” Oliver demanded – just as Luc took a misjudged step over the curb and nearly fell over backwards. Oliver managed to grab his wrist, pulling him back upright and flush against his own body. Even after everything, the contact was a pleasurable shock. Oliver’s brain might have gotten the memo about Luc’s complete lack of interest, but his body certainly hadn’t, and that made it all so much worse.
“Please stop playing with me, Luc,” he implored, suddenly weary with the evening, with Luc and with his own inadequacy. “What’s this really about?”
Luc, who’d had his face tucked partly against Oliver’s shoulder, looked up at him. He didn’t look like he was playing games, in all honesty. He looked…stressed, and almost as tired as Oliver felt. “I…I’ve been in the papers again recently. So I need a respectable boyfriend or I’ll lose my job. Bridge suggested you.”
Oliver blinked, trying to process this. Bridget had…But she knew that Oliver liked…
“I’m sorry,” Luc went on, ducking his head. “I’ll pay you back for dinner.”
“Bridget thought I’d be good for you?”
Perhaps she’d thought it was an opportunity to finally get them to spend time together. He could almost see how the romance would play out in Bridget’s mind. She’d just forgotten to factor in the fact that Oliver was pompous and dull and awkward, and Luc couldn’t stand him.
“Well—” Luc waved a hand around—“look at you. You’re…you’re perfect.”
That was not what Oliver had been expecting. “I beg your pardon?”
“Never mind.” Luc buried his face in Oliver’s shoulder again. Oliver really, really needed him to stop doing that. “You’ve always acted like you thought you were better than me.”
Oh no. It would have been terrible if Luc knew the truth, but this was almost worse. Oliver swallowed. “Is…is that what you believe?”
“Well it’s true. You are. Happy now?”
“Not remotely,” Oliver admitted. How had he managed to fuck this up so badly? He’d been so worried that his face was broadcasting every passing feeling he had about Luc that apparently, he’d managed to give him the opposite impression.
The silence between them was spooling out, longer and longer. Oliver’s mind was reeling. Finally, he said, “Explain to me again why you need a boyfriend?”
“Mainly for this big fundraiser we’ve got coming up at the end of April. Our donors all think I’m a bad gay.”
Oliver frowned. “What’s a good gay?”
“Someone like you.”
“I see,” Oliver said slowly. He could see that from a certain perspective – the you don’t look gay perspective, as it were – he might represent a less…confrontational embodiment of queerness than Luc did. But he wasn’t sure he felt flattered. It was a problematic perspective, a heteronormative perspective – the kind of thing his parents would think, even if they never quite put it into words.
The thought brought to mind a snide remark Christopher had once made about Oliver’s taste in men. “Do you pick them just for mum’s garden parties?”
Oliver had refused to speak to him for weeks after that – not least because the words contained just a grain of truth.
“Don’t worry about it.” Luc let go of Oliver’s coat and stepped away, leaving Oliver equal parts relieved and bereft. “It’s not your prob—”
“I’ll do it.” The words were out of his mouth before he even knew they were there. He couldn’t even begin to pick apart the complex muddle of motivations that had produced them – a genuine desire to help Luc in what sounded like a profoundly unethical workplace situation; a purely selfish wish not to appear single at his parents’ anniversary; some desperate, masochistic hope that if he could just spend a little more time with Luc, he could somehow…that maybe he could…
God, he was pathetic. But he couldn’t seem to stop himself.
Luc’s mouth fell open. “You what?”
“As it happens, I also have an event coming up that may go more smoothly with someone on my arm.” Oliver caught a brief flash of what a hypothetical interaction between Luc and his parents might look like – Luc sulking and eye-rolling, his parents growing increasingly and passive aggressively furious – then stamped it down again. “I’ll be your public boyfriend, if you’ll be mine.”
Luc was looking at him as if he’d grown a second head. “It’s not the same.”
“You mean, I’m to help you with your significant occasion, but you won’t help me with mine?”
“No. God no. It’s just you’re a fancy lawyer—”
“I’m a criminal barrister,” Oliver reminded him. “Most people think we’re the scum of the earth.”
“—and I’m the disgraced son of a disgraced rock star.” Luc was looking at him almost…pleadingly. “I…I can’t hold my drink. I’m unnecessarily mean. I make terrible decisions. You can’t possibly want me to accompany you to anything.”
The thing was – none of that was strictly untrue. And yet…and yet Oliver suddenly wanted this so badly, he wasn’t quite sure what he’d do if Luc said no. He wanted to be the kind of person Lucien O’Donnell would date, but – since Luc had made it quite clear he had no chance at all – Oliver was apparently willing to settle for pretending. Just for a little while.
“Nevertheless, those are my terms.”
“You know you’ll end up in the tabloids if you spend too long with me.”
“I don’t care what people say about me,” Oliver told him honestly. His parents only read The Telegraph, anyway.
Luc laughed bitterly. “You think that. And then they start saying things.”
Oliver was beginning to realise that the most confusing, difficult thing about Luc O’Donnell wasn’t that he was sarcastic, or rude, or cynical. It was that, just occasionally, he was heart-stoppingly vulnerable and sincere. It made Oliver want impossible things – to hold him, to tell him everything was going to be alright; that the rest of the world was as light and inconsequential as dust when Luc smiled at him.
God, he was really going to hurt himself doing this, wasn’t he?
“I’m willing to take that risk.”
Luc stared, reaching dazedly for the front of Oliver’s coat. “Really?”
“Yes.” Even as he spoke, a thousand nightmare scenarios of awkwardness and humiliation began to trickle into his brain like freezing-cold water. “But if we’re to do this, we have to do it properly.”
Luc looked wary. “You should know I perform very badly in standardised tests.”
“I just need you to make an effort to be convincing. I don’t care about your past, or internet gossip, but I would rather not have to explain to my family that my boyfriend is only pretending.”
The thought alone made him shiver with their imagined disappointment.
“Wait. Your family?”
“Yes, it’s my parents’ ruby wedding anniversary in June. I don’t want to go alone.”
“Is it,” Luc’s voice had a hopeful note, “in Provence?”
“Milton Keynes,” Oliver told him flatly.
“And you seriously want to take me? To meet your folks?”
“Why not?”
Luc let out a funny little bark of laughter. “How long have you got?”
“If you don’t want to do it Luc, you can just tell me,” Oliver snapped.
Luc held up his hands in surrender. “No, no, I’ll do it. I just think you’re making a terrible mistake.”
In all likelihood, he was correct. “That’s for me to decide.”
Oliver thought for a second. If he was going to do this, he needed to make sure there was no risk of…confusion. He could probably just about cope with pretending to be Luc’s boyfriend in public, but if he started to get muddled in his own mind, it would be…painful, probably, and certainly embarrassing. Oliver had never been very good at separating the physical from the emotional, and this wasn’t the time to start trying. “Obviously, maintaining the fiction will require a certain degree of physical contact between us. But please don’t kiss me again. Not on the mouth, anyway.”
Luc smirked. “Why? Are you Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman?”
Humiliation rose in Oliver’s throat like bile, and his face burned fiercely. “No. I simply prefer to reserve that intimacy for people I actually like.”
He regretted the words immediately, not least because they were a lie – or implied a lie, at the very least. Luc’s expression froze, that odd vulnerability flitting through his eyes again. “Oh.”
Oliver wanted to take it back. I’m sorry, he should have said. But I like you so much more than is reasonable, and you don’t feel the same. So please don’t kiss me.
But he couldn’t say anything like that, because it was absurd, and Luc would laugh at him. And then they would never see each other again.
With visible effort, Luc forced what was probably supposed to be a grin onto his face. “Well, as you’ve seen, that’s not a problem for me.”
Oliver deserved that, undoubtedly. That didn’t make it hurt any less. “Apparently not.”
“But don’t worry. Despite recent evidence, I can keep my lips off you.”
“Good. Thank you.”
There was a moment of heavy silence, during which Oliver tried not to think about Luc’s mouth on his, soft and sweet and lemony. He would probably never be able to eat lemon posset again without thinking of Luc O’Donnell.
“So,” Luc said at length. “What now?”
“Brunch at mine?” Oliver suggested, slightly embarrassed by his own eagerness. He always liked to cook for someone on a second date – not that this was a date, of course. “This Sunday?”
Luc’s expression of horror spoke for him.
“If this is going to work,” Oliver said, a little more sternly than he meant to. “We need to get to know each other, Luc.”
“You can call me Lucien,” Luc interjected, taking him aback.
“I thought you said you didn’t—”
“It can be your special name for me. I mean,” Luc – Lucien? – sounded oddly breathless, “your fake special name for me. That’s a thing right? That couples do.”
“But I don’t want to have a fake special name for you that you genuinely don’t like. That would make me a terrible fake boyfriend.”
“It’s fine. I overreacted. I don’t care.”
Oliver had a feeling he knew where this was going. And it was strangely…sweet? But he wanted to make Lucien say it. Just to be sure. “That’s hardly an endorsement.”
“I mean I don’t mind.”
“Well, if that’s what you want.”
Lucien squirmed, which Oliver enjoyed more than he had any right to. “It’s what I want.”
In spite of himself – in spite of everything that had happened, the terrible date, the non-consensual kiss, the fact that this person who Oliver very much liked was clearly never going to want him – Oliver found he was smiling. It was as if the admission had lit a candle in his chest, small and uncertain, but warm, and wonderfully bright. “Then, I’ll see you Sunday, Lucien.”
Lucien smiled back at him, looking pleased, and almost…shy.
God. Oliver was in so far over his head.