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Andy tries to be nice about it. She really does. This is not what she envisioned her late-stage career change into bodyguarding to contain, and she’s kind of uncertain about it under both moral and legal considerations, but she doesn’t get paid to have those sorts of thoughts, so she pushes them away forcefully.
“Hey, buddy,” she says gently to Nicky.
He’s sitting cross-legged in his ludicrous four-poster bed, rumpling the silk sheets.
“I’m not a dog,” he says evenly. “Don’t call me ‘buddy’.”
“Right,” Andy winces. “You are pissy, though.”
“I wasn’t aware being pro human rights would be such a scandalizing stance,” he says. He has twitter open on his phone, which is a bad thing. Nicky barely knows how to use his phone, how did he even find twitter?
Andy shrugs. “I guess some members of parliament disagree about public health care being a human right.”
“Some members of parliament have their heads so far up their own asses they could eat their own lungs.”
“Okay then.”
“What do they want me to do?” Nicky asks tiredly.
Andy sighs. Of course he knows. That’s why they sent her; Nicky’s her friend, sort of, and he’ll take it better from her.
“They want you to pretend to date an activist,” she says. “To, uh. Explain your sudden radicalization.”
Nicky blinks at her. His expression is stony solid otherwise. “Because I am not capable of forming my own opinions?”
She sits down next to him on the bed. It feels a bit like sitting down next to a cobra in its own nest and expecting it to play nice. “We all know royalty is so inbred there’s no room for thought up there,” she says, rapping at his head.
It shocks a weak smile out of him. “There is that,” he says. “Alright. What ridiculously weak-willed activist am I pretending to date?”
“His name is Yusuf al-Kaysani, he’s one of those save-the-earth, change-the-culture millennials with huge social media following. Rumor has it, he might be joining the greens and standing in for election someday.”
“But he hasn’t yet so I would still be technically allowed to date him,” Nicky surmises. “What on earth does he gain from it?”
Andy shrugs. “You’ll have to ask him. Quỳnh set this whole thing up, it’s her brainchild.”
“Wonderful,” Nicky says. “Remind me again how privileged I am?”
Spreading her arms wide, Andy luxuriates. “Look at this bed, Nicolò. Look at this room.” She gestures to the gilded corners of the ceiling, dating back to a very historic-sounding period that Andy is fucked if she can remember. “You’re an absolute travesty.”
“Thanks.”
“Well,” Joe says smugly from behind his coffee mug. “I don’t like to say I told you so.”
“Liar,” Nicky tells him without rancor. “You fucking love it.”
He’s wearing sunglasses, which he knows makes him look like a dick. An unfortunate side effect of having his face publicized regularly is that he knows what he looks like. Joe looks like a model in his, because Joe’s entire face is unfair.
“I do,” Joe agrees. “I really do. Getting paid to publicly date my own boyfriend feels like the comeuppance for six hundred years of di Genova hereditary monarchy.”
“That is a very impressive feat, dear,” Nicky says. “Move your lips less, the paparazzi have lip-readers.”
Joe lowers his glasses to peer over them. “And what should they be reading?”
“Oh, you know. How attractive you find me. How in love we are. Anything to justify my sudden interest in sustainable and affordable public health care.”
Gravely, Joe says, “I love you very much and I find your newfound devotion to the welfare state so enticing that, were we not in public, I would have you on this table in a manly fashion.”
Nicky chokes a little on his latte and that, unfortunately, is the part of the date the paparazzi end up publishing in the papers.
“How is this bullshit actually improving your numbers?” Booker asks, closing his laptop with an aggravated click.
Joe shrugs. “He’s handsome, I’m handsome, together we are very handsome.”
“It’s political suicide if people find out you’re being paid to go out with him.” Booker shakes his shaggy head for approximately the twelfth time in the last hour. It’s the internet. Joe seems to have no idea how quickly public opinion can turn these days. He doesn’t even film his own TikToks, because that’s what he hired Booker to do. “How on earth did this seem like a good idea, Joe?”
“Come on,” Joe cajoles him. “It’s hilarious. The youngest di Genova steps a toe out of line, expresses a single opinion of his own and the royals are already paying off their biggest critic to make it seem like he just had his head turned by a dumb dating choice.”
“You’re underestimating them.” Booker points his pen at Joe’s head. “They’re not just silencing Nicolò from within the ranks, they’re pulling your teeth. Making your criticism seem less valid. Just you wait, someday when you point out how much the taxpayer wastes on them, they’ll pull out the receipts and your ass will be canceled.”
Joe’s eyebrows crawl up his forehead. “I stand corrected.”
“So you’ll call off this insane scheme?”
“No, I just think you’re their biggest critic now, not me.”
“I thought you hated him, anyway!” Booker throws his pen at Joe.
Looking away, Joe hums. “I hate the institution. The man has been part of it his whole life. I can’t say that thrills me, but if he keeps going in front of a microphone and telling people to make hospitals affordable I could start liking him.”
Booker sags in his chair. “When I agreed to be your internet PR guy, I did not see this coming,” he groans.
“Relax,” Joe advises. “What’s the worst that could happen? Someone leaks it to the press, we just spin it as me taking the monarchy for all they’re worth. An inside job.”
“I guess that could work,” Booker admits to the ceiling. “But I still hate it. And you.”
Joe pats his back on the way out. It’s barely a comfort. There’s already a shitstorm brewing in some reddit bro’s twitter mentions.
“This is different,” Joe says. He pulls at the knot of the tie around his neck.
When he was fifteen, Joe led his year at school on a strike for climate-friendly lunch options. Local press ran a piece on it, and since then, for some reason people have listened to him when he puts an opinion online, when he turns up at protests.
It’s not a life that has lent itself to a lot of black tie occasions.
“You look wonderful,” Nicky says. He leads Joe into the ballroom with a hand at the small of Joe’s back, and Joe’s trying his very best not to swoon here.
The room is…it’s glittering, women in fancy dress and shining silverware and a literal champagne fountain.
“You remember I like you in spite of all this, not because of it, right?” Joe says out of the corner of his mouth.
“How could I forget?” Nicky asks dryly. He snags two champagne flutes off a passing tray and offers one to Joe. “You made yourself very clear when we met.”
Joe tugs at his tie again.
“Would you like me to tell you terrible things about how much all this costs?” Nicky asks.
“Please.”
In a low tone, Nicky begins to enumerate the cost of champagne, the cost of the menswear on display, the estimated cost of the tiara his older sister is wearing and most shockingly, the wages the serving staff are paid by comparison.
“You could save the world with that kind of money,” Joe says when he’s done. He drains his champagne, and then wrinkles his nose. Ill-gotten gains. “Is blood champagne a thing?”
“I think that might be what those Ann Rice novels are about?” Nicky hazards. “Thank you for coming to this.”
“You forget, I am being paid far more than the waitstaff to be your arm candy,” Joe says.
Almost imperceptibly, Nicky shakes his head. “Of the two of us, you are the man of substance and I am the arm candy,” he says ruefully.
Joe bumps their shoulders together. “Your substance was just buried in years of repression and generations of structural and colonial violence.”
Nicky’s smile is more like a grimace.
“Hey,” Joe says. “I don’t mean—”
“No, no, you’re right. I just…I’m still working out how…”
“I understand. Hey, do we get to dance at this shindig?”
Nicky nods. “But I have to lead.”
“Prepare to have your toes squished.”
It’s nice, is the thing. To have Nicky’s big hand on his waist, to have a reason to stare into his eyes.
“Don’t tell anyone,” Joe says. “But I like that we get to do this now.”
“Me too,” Nicky tells him.
“Boys,” Quỳnh says, ushering the two of them into her office.
Neither of them protests the moniker. If it were Nicky’s older brother, she’d have said gentlemen or your highness or something else respectful. Nicky’s never been like that, though. That’s what got him into this mess.
“What’s up?” Joe asks. He’s wearing a baseball cap and pants made of some sort of stretchy material. They’re probably not sweatpants, or if they are, they’re ecologically sourced, fully recyclable sweatpants. It would be an optics nightmare if the whole point of Joe being here was not that he is an optics nightmare for the royal family.
Quỳnh steeples her fingers together. “We need to discuss an exit strategy?”
“Oh?” Nicky’s face is calm and placid. You couldn’t read a single thought crossing his mind. He learned that skill from Quỳnh.
She swivels her laptop around to face him, showing him the latest headlines. Nicky’s expression, smiling over at Joe as they dance at a charity ball last week, is splashed across all the gossip rags. He looks very young, and very in love.
“Well done on that, by the way,” she says. “Very believable. Everyone’s convinced Joe is seducing you to the side of righteousness. The conservatives are boiling with rage, the progressives like this look on you.”
“So why do we need an exit strategy?” Joe asks, picking at his nails. “Sounds like it’s going well.”
It was inevitable that the holier-than-thou activist would be so easily swayed by a few checks. Quỳnh should have seen it coming.
“The longer we let this go on, the more likely the truth of it will come out,” she says. “Anyway, Nicky’s duty is to return to neutrality sooner or later, issue an apology and so on.”
“Hm,” Nicky says.
Joe shifts on his seat.
A feeling of unease sneaks across the back of Quỳnh’s neck.
“We’ll take care of it,” Nicky decides.
He stands to leave.
“How?” she asks sharply. “Am I calling contacts in the news to be at a particular place at a particular time? What’s your exact plan?”
For a long moment, Nicky looks at her. Quỳnh has known him since he was eighteen and angry all the time. This is the first time she understands why some people find his thousand-yard stare uncanny.
“It’s a heavy word, duty,” he says at length. “Have you considered to whom yours is?”
They leave without answering her questions.
“Oh,” Joe gasps. He has never been one to wake up easily or well, but waking up with Nicky’s body warm against his, their legs tangled together, their hips aligned just so…he could get used to it.
He will get used to it.
“Awake, are you?” Nicky asks.
“Mm.” Joe stretches, luxuriating. The sheets are cotton, not silk, and they haven’t put in proper blinds yet so it’s much too light in the room. There are at least three boxes of flatpack furniture that need to be put up today, and then Nicky’s going to have to start looking for a real job. Joe categorically refuses to make a Netflix documentary, mostly on the grounds that the British did it first, so it will have to be something outside of the media.
These are problems for future Joe.
“Come here,” he says.
“Where?” Nicky grins. He’s already practically on top of Joe.
“Closer.”
It’s not a bad deal, living rent-free in the apartment across from Joe and Nicky, pretending to be qualified to work in a non-profit alongside him because he does still need a security detail no matter what he thinks.
Nile had hoped she would manage a life outside of combat someday; this is a lot sooner and a lot closer than she thought she’d get.
“Can I ask you when it became something real?” she asks him on the way to work one morning after he spent at least four minutes too long saying goodbye to Joe in the door.
Nicky smiles his little Joe smile, a private, barely perceptible thing. “I feel as if it always was.”