Chapter Text
Fergus reads through the BBC News headlines on his iPad and absent-mindedly eats toast. There’s jam on it, good jam, far better jam than he buys. Across the table, Adam has three broadsheets lined up like game show prizes, trying to simultaneously read all three. He’s eating identical toast, but it’s his jam and his plates. Fergus bought the bread though; they’ve been taking turns for the past three months. Time spent with Fergus living mostly in Adam’s spare room: as he has explained in at least two interviews, they are not completely moving in together until ‘after their marriage’, but are cohabiting in a loose sense until then, or, in fact, until their fake break up from the fake engagement.
He thinks about this as he eats his toast, bored of the headlines telling him yesterday’s news. It’ll come as a shock. No more good jam, no more Adam yelling at him to stop leaving his stuff on the sofa, no more cackling at Channel 4’s programming over late night policy revision.
It’s not all been fun and games, though: there’s been plenty of arguing over ill-prepared interviews and whether Fergus should be allowed to choose his own ties for media appearances (the latter has been hard fought, for Fergus likes his ties and Adam wants to burn most of them). There’s early starts, late nights (Fergus likes the camaraderie of those though, the coffee brewing and joke slinging and the satellites of paper they construct around the living room), and the disaster known as the time Peter accidentally ran into Nicola Murray on the street and the papers decided they were forming their own splinter group. Peter had shouted so much he’d started to resemble the Comic Relief mascot and Emma had nearly embedded a pen in Phil’s eye for suggesting they actually form a cabal of some kind, but Adam and Fergus had giggled from Fergus’ office as the chaos ensued and enacted scenes from, as they termed the rumour, ‘two political fuckwits form a losers’ club’.
‘Look at this,’ says Adam, now further into his newspaper selection. He reads aloud, as he often does when he finds something that’ll interest Fergus, or they can mock. ‘Suggestions that Tucker’s former press officer Jamie Macdonald is vying for Reeder’s position have been denied by both a spokesperson for the Opposition and Macdonald himself. Photographs have been captured, however, of Macdonald meeting Tucker’s old PA, leading to rumours that they are both in contact with the disgraced former Director of Communications whilst he completes his prison sentence.’
‘And we thought we were fucked. This sounds like the end of fucking Tinker Tailer Solider Spy,’ replies Fergus. ‘Someone’s gotta put down Malcolm Tucker, he’s haunting their party like a fucking ghost.’
‘Him and Jamie Macdonald, do you think they ever-?’
Adam raises his eyebrows and smirks. Fergus laughs, about to make some joke about terrifying Scotsmen, then Adam continues talking.
‘Long evenings together plotting how to kill everyone in Westminster very gruesomely, something must’ve happened…’
Fergus thinks of the evenings in Adam’s flat he enjoys so much and nearly chokes on his toast.
‘People don’t that about us, do they?’ he blurts out. Adam raises his eyebrows.
‘Fucking hopefully, or this’d be for nothing, wouldn’t it?’
Reason returns to Fergus and he nods, taking a gulp from his orange juice to try and cover up the previous choking. Adam looks at him suspiciously, but says nothing. Fergus curses internally every time he slips up like this, every time he panics about how people see him and Adam before remembering once again that they’re doing it intentionally. Most of the show, the spending evenings together and chatting over breakfast (which they now justify as pre-work news catch up), the standing close together at policy launches and letting lone photographers with no better news to snap them in Tesco Metro looking intently at milk, has become normal over the past couple of months.
Before, they spent most of the working day together. Adam was always there offering an opinion or a suggestion, storing up things Fergus said for when Fergus forgot them. He liked it, like backing up your ideas without doing anything but saying them aloud. Once or twice, Adam had pointed out something Fergus had thought about but was certain he’d never actually put into words. They’d both exchange a look, a look which agreed they would not question it, and move on.
Now though, Adam is around not only for the advising or the memorising Fergus’ occasional decent ideas, but also for judging his ability to cook and belittling his few npower stories with ridiculous Mail night desk anecdotes that mostly end up with Angela Heaney stopping Adam murdering people. They smile and eat fancy crisps at Number 10 events where Mary Drake lurks just out of earshot, occasionally introducing people to them as the junior minister and his fiancé. Once she turns her back, Adam always shoots Fergus a look, which Fergus assumes is his ‘why the fuck have I been relegated from advisor to fiancé?’, and later they inevitably go back to Adam’s flat because if they’re staying late, there’s no point going home separately.
There’s no point going home separately much these days. They have an illusion to keep up, after all.
Breakfast is over. It is time for another day at DoSAC, of Terri’s strangely supportive comments and of Phil’s confused jokes, as he still doesn’t know how he wants to mock their fake engagement. Of the ever ticking clock until Fergus has to go back to his own, messier home and less exciting condiments. He’s sure those are the things he’ll miss.
-
Lack of sex is Adam’s greatest qualm at the moment. He’s decided this over the period of a two hour meeting he had no desire to attend, but both Phil and Emma had sold him out to Mary as the least busy of the three when she’d asked who could go. Unusually united for them, but they were being truthful: despite his major role in Fergus’ current turn in the political spotlight, and his behind-the-scenes important that now extends to his own dining table and sofa, he is not meant to be too visible at other political events. Rather, Emma is usually sent to keep an eye on Fergus, whilst Adam stays behind in the office and keeps up to date via text and the TV. That way, people associate him with the apparent honesty of their relationship, not the everyday politics that they so mistrust. Adam can’t fault it, despite his annoyance at not being able to do his job properly. Nobody else knows how to yell at Fergus until he stops jerking around awkwardly quite so much.
The woman heading the meeting is droning on about interdepartmental unity and initiatives with fancy titles that mean nothing, so Adam moves on from his decision about the greatest downside of the current situation (it wasn’t too difficult to make, if he’s honest, more glaringly obvious) and starts to muse on whether said downside would be more bearable if he didn’t basically live in close quarters with Fergus now.
If Fergus was a different kind of guy, Adam would have opted for just shagging him and getting that done with, but it is very clear that, even if he was attracted enough to Adam, afterwards Fergus would panic and flap and expect it to mean far more than it would. Adam’s heard enough offhand comments and slightly tipsy confessions after a couple of pints to know that Fergus’ love life is populated by vast spaces and a lot of fucking indecision. He pictures this indecision stretching to Fergus responding to a direct proposition of sex with an embarrassed ‘maybe’, then realises he should stop picturing this in a meeting of bored advisors. He should probably stop picturing it all together, should stop picturing Fergus doing anything that isn’t being a successful politician in an entirely unattractive way.
It’s a resolution unlikely to be kept.
The meeting ends soon, so Adam doesn’t need to bore his own eyes out with a government logo pen today. Instead he returns to DoSAC, where he runs into Terri and Emma talking about something that makes them immediately shut up when they see him. He would’ve been suspicious regardless; Emma and Terri don’t talk.
‘Mary spoke to Fergus,’ Terri informs him with a significant look, then walks off. She clearly thinks it’s something bad, but Adam’s already had a text from Fergus telling him the details. Emma coughs loudly to stop him walking off.
‘Do you have the folder about the Electro Minds launch? I need to brief Peter.’
‘I thought I was doing the launch,’ he replies, wondering if he missed a memo giving everything in the fucking department to Mannion the same way everything else in his life has been handed to him.
Emma stares at him, furrowing her eyebrows.
‘Did you just use “I” for Fergus?’
He did, but he’s not admitting that.
‘Think you’re getting all fucking sentimental. I was talking about the briefing.’
She looks confused, considers it for a second, but shakes her head as if she can’t be bothered.
‘Whatever. I need the folder before you fuck off to shag your boyfriend.’
‘Calm your tits, I’m getting it,’ he retorts weakly, then leaves.
The ‘I’ thing was a mistake, a quirk he’s been doing sporadically for months and months, but it has grown worse recently. Too much time together: he hears too many of Fergus’ monologued thoughts, gets confused. Automatically goes to defend Fergus’ position, fight on his behalf. It’s just a natural part of being a loyal advisor. Entirely separate from the attraction, he tries to convince himself, but it’s not quite working, especially not when he walks into Fergus’ office to retrieve the folder.
‘So, dinner party?’ says Fergus, words which make sense after his earlier text explaining Mary’s orders. Adam’s not even sure she should still be giving orders, but she is, and they involve some kind of hack dinner party to show their domestic life, but also some potential cracks. He wonders if Mary is overestimating their acting abilities, but then again, he doubts she’s overestimating anything about either of them.
‘Fuck-a-dee, what fun it’ll be.’ Adam puts on a fake voice. ‘Would you like some tripe to go with the news you print?’
‘You bitter ex hack.’
‘Fuck you. Anyway, Mannion’s nicked the Electro Minds thing, which is probably fucking lucky because it sounds like a shit 80s band rather than an actual policy.’
Fergus sniggers. ‘I’d be angry but the policy’s bollocks. Shall we go home?’
Adam smirks and nods. He does not register the word Fergus used.
-
Fergus is hyperventilating. He is putting out cutlery and he is hyperventilating. His hands shake as he puts down forks and knives, lining them up with the edges of Adam’s nice monochrome placemats. It takes several attempts to get each place setting right. This completed, he tries to slow his breathing down, but it isn’t working. Too much could go wrong. He smoothes down the tablecloth hiding the fact it is two tables pushed together, because Adam’s one wasn’t large enough for a selection of hacks, plus Emma who Mary had commissioned to keep an eye on them. Adam no longer adviser enough when he’s the one needing advice, apparently.
Holding a dinner party is not something he knows how to do. It’s a concept in the same category as ‘care for a pet’ and ‘take up woodworking’: stuff he doesn’t have the fucking time or competence for, but it doesn’t really matter. Until now, when suddenly he’s co-hosting a dinner party, one with place settings and a specific playlist of mundane background jazz and actual homemade food, because it transpired that Adam’s Gordon Ramsay cookbook and a couple of trial runs was enough to stop them having to sneakily order in food to pretend as their own. Fergus had loitered around Adam’s shiny, metallic kitchen for much of the early prep, handing him odd items and laughing as Adam swore viciously at things like courgettes and a spoon he dropped on the floor. Without much else to do, he fussed over stacks of plates and tried not to stare at Adam, shirt sleeves rolled up, attacking a slab of meat with relish. He didn’t want Adam to catch him staring; it might make things weird, when they’ve been going so well.
Now, out of the kitchen to sort out the table, he’s had time to panic, to realise that it’s one thing to convince a lot of people in public, with limited exposure, but in a more informal setting? So many more ways to slip up, so many little details to get right, and that’s not counting the fact Mary wants them to act under pressure, as if Fergus needs to act that.
He stands trying to work out where to put the wine glasses. Right hand side, he thinks, but exactly where, and does it even fucking matter? He goes to leave and ask Adam if they can give the same amount of a shit as normal people and stick the wine glasses on the side for people to put where they want, but he’s still shaking and there’s a glass in his hand. A tremor runs down his arm and Fergus holds his breath, waiting for the crash that doesn’t come. Instead, there’s someone behind him. Someone who appears out of nowhere, right at his shoulder, and whose fingers grasp the wine glass before Fergus can drop it.
‘C’mon, you stupid twat, don’t drop it. We don’t have any spares,’ Adam’s voice says near his ear.
‘Thought you were cooking, Mr Michelin Star?’ he retorts rather than admit his nerves.
Adam puts down the glass carelessly, clearly less bothered about exact placement.
‘There’s nothing I need to do right now, so I came to check up on you. Handy, as you’ve become the world’s shittest waiter.’
‘Fuck off.’
Fergus would say more, but Adam is still very close, right next to his shoulder, and this fact is impossible to ignore. Particularly as Adam then places a hand on his shoulder, casually, like it is nothing.
‘We need to add in the odd touch,’ Adam says, still close to his ear, and it takes Fergus a moment to realise he means at the dinner party. ‘Or we’ll seem too distant. Alright?’
Fergus has no time to agree, as Adam is gone, probably to check on his precious food. He is slightly calmer, just for now, so finishes up with the table setting and changes his shirt, mostly because he’s seen people do that a lot on Come Dine With Me. It’s handy he’s not on Come Dine With Me, however, because one good nose around Adam’s flat would dispel any notion that they are actually engaged. Separate rooms, separate possessions, although the minimal amount of stuff Fergus originally brought over has accumulated to the point where he keeps being shouted at by Adam for leaving his DVDs on Adam’s shelf and making it seem like Adam enjoys watching ‘such shit that I can’t believe you’ve not been drowned in vomit just fucking watching one of them’.
Doorbell. First, thankfully, is Emma, holding a bottle of wine and wearing an evil grin.
‘This had better be worthwhile,’ she warns as she takes off her coat, ‘I’ve got Angela ready to call with an emergency if it gets too much. I’m making no sacrifices for you little boys playing house for some journalists who want be nosy and get free food.’
Fergus nods awkwardly. Emma makes her way into the living room, looking around with interest, whilst he waits in the hall, preparing himself. Media mode, he thinks, fucking media mode. He knows it all in theory, has worked doing press for companies without quite the stakes involved here. His entire career balancing on this one lie.
The hacks arrive, gazing around the place with more hunger than Emma, and not only because they haven’t eaten yet. They want a story, whereas Emma clearly wants to get this over with and go home. Fergus does drinks, hands just about steady enough to pour, and makes awkward jokes about not having Dave Lamb to narrate. Adam’s still in the kitchen, where Fergus really fucking hopes he’s not hiding out to avoid the pleasantries. Someone from the Mail, too new for Adam to know them, peers at the books and DVDs on the shelves, and Fergus is pleased that he can admit his embarrassing taste because it proves that yes, the romantic comedy is his, and suddenly they have a joint DVD collection.
Finally, Adam steps out of the kitchen, wearing an apron that Fergus is pretending vehemently not to find slightly adorable because he does not find any grown men adorable. Everyone is urged to the table with the promise of food. So far, Fergus thinks, it’s been relatively easy.
The starter goes fine, some pâté Adam talks casually about having ‘whipped up’, then turning to Fergus beside him and pretending to shoot himself from under the table. It’s a bad angle for his fake gun. Conversation stays in the realms of food, and the fabricated dates to nice restaurants that the pair had great fun making up go down a treat, almost as well as the wine everyone’s brought in a show of politeness. Adam leaves again for the main course, and Fergus collects up the dishes as an excuse to leave the room. He and Adam exchange a look in the kitchen, but no words in case they’re overheard.
‘Don’t mess it up like last time,’ Fergus calls out as he leaves the kitchen, putting on his best impression of domestic teasing. From beside the oven, Adam raises a middle finger in response.
Beef wellington, TV chef style: prosciutto and pastry and expensive beef. It looks impressive, but Fergus can barely taste it because he’s too busy focusing on everything else. Adam’s hand keeps brushing his, purposefully, as they eat. He shoots Emma a panicked glance as the conversation turns to politics and she starts deflecting it, building towards the smiling ‘but that’s not why we’re here’ as if they’re there for any more reason than to write about the friendly political gay couple that make the coalition look ever so slightly less like soulless robots. Unfortunately, this reminds them of their purpose, and the questions start to focus on Adam and Fergus. Particularly Fergus. He knows his answers, reeling them off over an abandoned plate because he has really lost his appetite. All mundane things, about the practicalities of their work and their relationship and who has annoying habits. Filler material for articles, shit for slow news days.
‘Isn’t it all a bit convenient for the PM, having someone who so openly and personally supports the policy?’
The journalist who asked the question, a guy with glasses and slicked back brown hair, looks at Fergus intently. He’s clearly been waiting for the moment to ask it. Fergus gulps, summons an answer. He knows the words, he knows what to say, but he’s not so sure that they’ll come out as intended. His hands grip the sides of his chair, trying to steady him. I am an open and honest politician, he repeats in his head, not a sleazy one lying through his teeth about something as important as a committed relationship. He must project it.
He goes to speak, and then he feels Adam’s hand round one of his, certain and reassuring. A reminder that they’ve planned all this, considered questions and answers until they were giggling at ridiculous ones. The answer he will give, short and sharp and the cheesiest thing ever, was inspired by the romcoms Adam mocks him for, the stupid fucking scenes when people can get away with saying cheesy shit that explains nothing. He’s a politician: it’s exactly what he needs. Fergus goes to put on a fake smile, something to befit the occasion, and realises he already has an idiotic grin on. It’ll do. He turns to look at Adam, both an act and for reassurance, and he’s certain he’ll be mocked for this whole moment for the rest of the time he knows the other man. Still, they’ve come so far now. Fergus turns his head back and addresses the table.
‘Love isn’t convenient.’
-
Adam is still laughing at Fergus a week later. He can’t help it: Fergus looked like a nervous teenager trying to do an impression of Hugh Grant. The success of the line, the general success of the dinner party (as in, nobody had subsequently published anything exposing their lie), is mysterious, but Adam has to pin at least some of it on how accidentally endearing Fergus ending up being. His clear nerves, his lines inspired by romantic comedies of the late nineties, his overly formal shirt. Everything made them laugh at him, but in a nice way, not a crowd baying for his blood way: look at the silly minister, just wants to marry his boyfriend and not drop his fork.
The problem is, they were meant to fuck it up. Mary wanted drama, snippy comments and underlying arguments and the suggestion that all was not well. Their vaguely inept dinner party hosting and Fergus’ puppy-like need for reassurance from Adam after half the things he said came across, according to Emma who was scrutinising the whole thing, like they were basically functioning like a normal couple, if a somewhat needy one on Fergus’ side (Fergus seems to be denying this alternatively by swearing and by pointedly not talking to Adam for an hour or two in a show of self-sufficiency).
A plan has to be made. Soon it’ll be four months since their fake engagement was announced, four months of governmental debate over the exact details of the equal marriage bill and decisions made and Fergus smiling in front of a camera after all of them, being asked the same mundane questions. The work’s been done, so now Fergus can escape the spotlight, still occasionally proclaim his support but mostly, hopefully, just be the junior minister with slightly more support from Mary Drake than before. She’s clearly going somewhere, if for no other reason than she’s quick at hiding the bodies. Adam wants to return to his proper advisor position, rather than giving up duties to Emma or, god forbid, Phil: there’ll have to be a statement or two by Fergus on how their working relationship will not be compromised, but probably they can sneak it through on a day with bigger news for the hounds to enjoy and get back to normal.
Stretched out on the sofa on a rare evening without Fergus, he looks over the list of suggestions they have so far. Nothing inspiring: mostly unconvincing stories Fergus could tell the press, or Phil’s useful suggestion that they avert it ‘Red Wedding style’ (he’d then proceeding to explain to them what that meant, in far more detail than they wanted, which was none). Adam is starting to wonder if they could stay fake engaged indefinitely and just stop mentioning it, and wait until everyone forgot, but he knows someone would remember. It would put a serious dampener on his love life (when he thinks this, he has to amend it from ‘the rest of his love life’, pointing out to himself that this is not his love life at all, but a political move).
He looks up at the TV, unable to remember which channel he left it on. Background chatter helps him work, trained on busy offices in a restless city. He’s too used to the sounds of Fergus now, despite the initial annoyance: him fiddling with things, dropping stuff, breathing loudly. On the screen, a woman throws clothes out of a window, presumably aimed at the man on the street below. They’re both yelling, not listening to one another. Probably the communication issues that caused what Adam has worked out is a break up in the first place, if the writing is consistent that is. And then, watching the man’s embarrassment as an ugly patterned shirt lands by his feet, Adam realises they can catch the press’ attention, indulge Mary’s strange wish for dramatics and end this sham of an engagement, all with a simple solution.
He’s got to kick Fergus out.
-
Standing in the street, clutching a pile of his shirts and with two suitcases by his feet, Fergus wishes they could’ve found another way to do it. He’s cold, he looks like an idiot, and Adam is shouting at him, telling Fergus to stop taking him for granted. They decided a little shouting would look good.
Nearby, the press lurk. They’ve been anonymously tipped off (by Angela, so that none of them had actually done it) that Fergus Williams, governmental bitch and the shining face of equal marriage, is having a relationship-breaking fight that’ll leave all other gossip and political news laying pathetically in the corner. A slight exaggeration, but they came. A few photos, a few stories, and then all Fergus has to do is mop it up with a speech in a few days (after the tension has built a bit), explaining the new situation and how it will not compromise his crusade for equality, or some other bullshit like that. Adam’s plan, all of it. Fergus got a phone call days ago, Adam talking quickly and excitedly about how he’d worked it out, and it’d be dramatic.
Fergus wasn’t sure about dramatic. He liked the idea of low key, followed by a good press statement. His acting ambitions left him aged seven when he tripped over his costume in the school play (a heavily cut and rewritten version of Julius Caesar for some reason) and fell into the audience, entangled in his bedsheet-toga. Still, Adam was insistent, and Mary had agreed. They had to end it well, convincingly, or it would’ve all been for nothing.
So now he’s having a fake break up that feels slightly like a real one: after the months of living mostly in Adam’s spare room, he’s being kicked out, standing outside like a fucking idiot whilst people watch. Beforehand, whilst they were waiting for the right moment for Fergus to leave, he had wanted to say something, to thank Adam perhaps, or tell him that it’d been nice to stay there. He didn’t, of course. He made sure his packing looked as hasty as possible and walked around aimlessly, wondering what Adam’s neighbours would think. Adam himself had been similarly restless, eventually stepping right up to Fergus (Fergus had thought for a few seconds that he was going to kiss him, and had panicked about what to do) and undoing the top two buttons of his shirt, plus loosening his tie, remarking that he must look harassed, like he’d been arguing. Fergus thought at the time that Adam’s fingers had lingered, but now he was sure he’d simply dragged time out due to nerves. They were about to fake break up, after all.
Fergus gets into a taxi, clutching his belongings. Not all of them, actually, just the ones that’d look best for him to be carrying. Adam’s bringing the rest over to his later, once their little drama is over.
‘Good fucking riddance,’ shouts Adam as Fergus closes the door, which he thinks is a bit over the top, but it was Adam’s plan.
Streets pass by, blurring in front of Fergus’ glazed over vision. He should be checking his phone, where he must have texts from everyone about how it went, and probably instructions from both Adam and Mary. Instead, he listens to the sound of the engine and thinks I’m not sure I wanted to leave.
-
Within half an hour, the story is starting to spread. Adam, laptop on the dining table and phone in hand, is not missing out on any of it. Using every last one of his journalism contacts, and a number of other governmental ones thanks to Emma who seems to know more and more what Mary is up to, he is going to control this story. It will be reported, reported as gossip, and then it will not turn into some scandal. Instead, it will make Fergus seem human, someone with break ups and the willpower to keep on going afterwards. Adam himself may seem like a bit of a bastard, but, well, he doesn’t give a fuck.
His text alert goes off. Expecting Fergus, he looks down at the screen. Angela.
Broken up alright? No lingering feelings?
Fuck off, he replies concisely. He knows what she’s getting at, and he doesn’t like it. Wanting to fuck Fergus is no big deal. Everyone is attracted to people at work, and now they no longer will live most of the time in close quarters, he can go back to letting out his frustration with other people. Speaking of which, he thinks, he should go out tonight, find some bar somewhere where he just looks like another professional guy letting his hair down, and find someone to make up for the past four months of playing a part. A part very inaccurate considering the lack of actual sex. It’s not like they were meant to be pretending to be waiting until fucking marriage.
After another hour, he wonders why the fuck Fergus hasn’t contacted him. Surely a ‘got home fine’ or something is common courtesy after you pretend to break off your fake engagement, he reasons. Regardless, he’s dropping off the rest of Fergus’ stuff later, so Fergus can’t avoid him, even if he’s angry at the embarrassment of Adam yelling at him. Maybe the stupid twat took it personally, Adam thinks, and believes Adam actually wanted to get rid of him. Maybe he should say something when he goes over, reassure Fergus that actually it was like an extension of their friendship, an extension where they could watch shit TV at midnight and bitch about the news together over breakfast. An extension Adam had done entirely for Fergus, because he didn’t give a shit how the government looked in their quest to seem like lovely, fluffy humans.
Without thinking much about it, he changes his outfit into something more casual than the suit he was wearing, putting on an open-collared shirt that he particularly likes. He might go out afterwards. Fergus had left his stuff in a box in the living room, but Adam scans round the other rooms checking for things he might have forgotten, as if he’ll never see Fergus again or be able to give him back things. Just being thorough. He doesn’t want to annoy Fergus over this as well as yell at him in one day. Not today.
Taxi with a stupid fucking massive box. Adam realises halfway there that he’s nervous, nervous about seeing the guy he’s been fake engaged to for months. He checks his phone, but still nothing from Fergus. Shit, he thinks, it’s starting to feel like they actually broke up. How fucking ironic.
Outside Fergus’ door, he puts down the box to fiddle with his shirt, then tries to stand like he hasn’t fussed at all and rings the doorbell. Fergus opens the door, looking exactly the same as he did when he left (Adam’s not sure what he expected, maybe some dramatic transformation, like Fergus wearing skinny jeans and a hat).
‘Delivery service,’ grins Adam, gesturing at the box on the floor. Fergus looks worried, like his possessions are here to get him. ‘They won’t bite.’
‘Come in,’ says Fergus finally. Adam bends down for the box, but Fergus does too and their heads bump into one another.
‘Sorry!’ they mutter identically, then look up and laugh. Adam gestures and picks up the box this time, following Fergus inside. Fergus’ flat looks like someone blind or utterly without taste decorated it, but Adam thinks this every time he’s been inside it so he’s prepared by now. Instead of moving into a room like any normal person, Fergus stands awkwardly in the hall like he’s not sure what to do when someone else enters his home. Adam automatically wants to usher him into a room, any room, if it stops him standing there, but then his brain has a better idea. He puts down the box, steps over it, and, barely keeping his balance, kisses Fergus.
Fergus kisses back, which afterwards Adam will realise he didn’t quite expect. There’s no time to consider it, though. He’s getting into it, maneuvering Fergus against the wall with the same confidence he uses when suggesting ideas and plans to the other guy, but suddenly Fergus breaks away, looking panicked.
Ah, Adam thinks, just as he fucking expected. The reason he had never tried initiating anything before. Fergus isn’t interested. He coughs and steps back, trying to appear casual.
‘Well, I should be going,’ he says with an air of nonchalance, mentally wondering which bar to visit, or at least visit first.
Fergus gapes, looking like he wants to speak, but when he does, he simply says ‘Thanks for my stuff’ and Adam walks out the door, ready for a bloody good meaningless shag. Fuck Fergus Williams, he thinks, and not like that.
-
Everyone in DoSAC stares at him as he enters, late. Fergus looks down at the ground and continues to his office. He knows they’re staring because of the news, the news that has spread as Adam planned it would and without suspicion of its honesty, but he feels like they’re staring because of what happened afterwards. Staring and thinking you fucked up, Fergus Williams. He knows that’s what he did now. It’s amazing what a sleepless night will let you know.
A sleepless night spent replaying the kiss, the stupid fucking kiss that should not have made Fergus panic as he did, worrying not at first that he liked it, but that Adam didn’t. That this was something Adam knew how to do and Fergus was fucking it up. Consigned to the bit of ‘people not worth kissing’. He had grumbled at that thought and turned over, as if to banish it away. Eventually, by the morning, he had decided slightly recklessly that he would not forget it. He couldn’t.
So used to turning up to work with Adam (or to turning up to find Adam sitting on his office sofa with his laptop and a smug ‘ha I beat you to work’ grin on the mornings Fergus didn’t stay at his), Fergus feels strangely alone as he steps into his office. He can hear Peter’s voice echoing from somewhere, and hopes the minister is not approaching him. He can’t be fucked with dealing with Peter Mannion right now. It’s time for lying low and doing some boring ministerial work until he has to make some closing speech in a few days. It is also, he decided during his third cup of coffee this morning to get him out of his front door, time for saying something to Adam.
Peter’s voice disappears, but then he hears Adam’s instead, getting louder as he approaches.
‘You’re late,’ he remarks pointlessly as Adam walks in, his brain not considering the words his mouth is speaking.
‘Had a meeting with Mary and Emma and some random other fucking advisors so we couldn’t discuss the actually useful-’
Adam does not get to complete his sentence, because by this point Fergus has crossed his office and resumed where they left off the evening before. He did not need to think for that. Fergus has no clue how much time passes. They don’t shut the door, don’t think of the transparent parts of the office walls, just kiss fervently with the kind of abandon Fergus is not used to.
‘Fuck, we should-’ murmurs Adam, waving a hand towards the door.
At that moment, as if she’d been summoned by the forces of bad fucking timing, Emma walks in, talking as she rounds the corner as a thankful warning.
‘-so Mary wants to know-’
She stops and stares at them: breathless, Fergus pressing Adam against the wall in a reversal of the night before that surprised even him.
‘Let me guess?’ Adam interjects. ‘You thought it was fake, thought we’d broken up, thought the sky was fucking blue, that kind of thing?’
‘No.’ Emma smirks. ‘I thought you’d never do this, just die of sexual frustration from spending too much time together.’
‘Could you fuck off?’ Fergus asks. Adam’s hand is running down his side purposefully and he feels like someone who’s just realised they really like chocolate ice cream and suddenly needs to eat chocolate ice cream forever. It’s a shit analogy, but he’s not all that coherent.
‘No, because you’re at fucking work,’ points out Emma. ‘But I will, only because if you two giggly little boys don’t work out what’s going on between you, you’ll fuck up this whole thing. Sort it out before I send Phil in and then you’ll have to watch him celebrate by comparing you to hobbits somehow.’
She glares in warning and walks out.
‘So,’ Adam says, and Fergus holds his breath, waiting for the excuses. ‘You can’t stay over mine tonight, considering our little soap opera yesterday, so you’d better invite me over yours or I might just turn up anyway.’
‘You’re invited if you make dinner too,’ Fergus smiles, his head light.
‘Just for you, you twat.’
-
Emma leaves for work on Friday morning to the tune of Angela’s parting ‘please laugh at Adam for me then invite him and Fergus over for dinner so we can mock them together’. She smiles to herself. It’s an amusing day.
In a surprise turn that shocked exactly nobody who knew the truth of the whole matter to begin with, the announcement Fergus was scheduled to give today has changed somewhat. Yesterday, a meeting was convened, a new speech decided upon. Fergus will announce a minor policy, as if that was what was the planned announcement, and then will tack on an explanation for the well-documented apparent break up as a minor argument that they will work through, as anybody else would. Just like that, they will stop talking about Fergus and Adam, and hope the press will do the same, bored now that they’re not in the political spotlight. They can always make a new announcement in the future that they quietly broke up, should it be needed (although Emma and Mary agreed upon this after the meeting, not wanting to set off the already jittery Fergus when he had to make a speech the next day).
She walks into Fergus’ office with a knowing smirk, greeted with the usual sight of Fergus sitting at his desk and Adam standing beside him, looking down as they talk. The only difference is that they look slightly less awkward to be staring at each other, Emma thinks.
‘Hello lovers,’ she says, ‘Sorry, I would’ve gotten a card, but there wasn’t one for “we pretended to be married and now we’re shagging” so I didn’t bother.’
‘There’s no card for “I’m a smug bitch who’s sucking up to Drake Dastardly because I can’t do my current job well enough” either, sorry,’ Adam responds, singing out the sorry.
‘Just don’t fuck up,’ she warns Fergus, ignoring Adam’s comment. ‘Oh, and Angela says to come to dinner so we can laugh at you.’
Emma smiles and walks out. She has to admit, the twats suit each other.