Page 128 of Good Losers (Lochkelvin Academy)

“I’m sorry,” Finlay sighs as he fiddles with his jet-black tangle of hair. “It’s just… there’s only one Munro in my life that I care about, and it pains me that ye both share the same name. That same fuckin’ majestic surname.Munro.” I understand – Rory’s surname brings to mind peaks and mountaintops and pinnacles and beauty. Oscar Munro, on the other hand, is a perfectly cloistered, inward-looking being. “He doesnae deserve such a grand, magisterial name. No’ in a million fuckin’ years.”

Rory quiets at this, looking softly gratified. He positions his head onto my lap, gazing up at me with his storm-gray eyes, and I stroke the fair hair away from his forehead. He seems desperate to ignore the latest news. With a sleepy glance, he toys with the hem of my dark tee, which reads in a faded, stamped text,Girls Just Wanna Have Fun-Damental Human Rights. Rory’s mouth curves as though it humors him.

“Are you sure you don’t want to come with us?” I ask Rory, threading my fingers through his hair. It feels like silk, like spun gold.

“It was sold oot, sassenach,” Finlay demurs. “Though, of course, if ye’d rather Rory went instead o’ me…” I stare at his reflection in the mirror, at the rare lack of ego that must be required for Finlay to say this in such a reasonable, unbitter tone.

Finlay only puts his ego aside when deferring to Rory.

On some level, he thinks Rory’s better than him. That it’s understandable I should swap Finlay out for Rory at the first opportunity.

“Save it,” Rory says tiredly, placing a hand at the crown of his head and tilting his face into my lap. “I can’t stand comedy. All that forced, mechanical laughter. And American comedians are the worst by far – no offense,” he adds, catching my eye and not looking at all contrite about this statement.

“Okay,” I say dryly, and stand with the kind of abruptness that forces the weight of Rory’s head to collide with the plump sofa cushions.

Finlay, watching us from the mirror, snorts. “Some laugh-oot-loud material there fae a top American comedian,” he says with a sly smirk. Rory glowers at him, nursing the side of his head. As I make my way toward Finlay, my neck prickles with the weight of Rory’s attention. His eyes never leave us as we stand together, under the spotlight of his gaze, like there’s something about the two of us side by side that Rory can’t turn away from.

“Well,” I say, clearing my throat and trying not to reach out and touch Finlay, to grab his hand and draw it into mine. “Guess we’ll be back soon.”

For a while, Rory doesn’t seem willing to say anything. He lies horizontally on the sofa, his head propped by his hand, and watches us together, his sharp gray eyes a strange mixture of intensity and distraction.

“Right,” Rory drawls, blinking himself back into clarity. “Enjoy.” He doesn’t sound as though he cares either way if we do enjoy my Friday night treat. As he snaps open a heavy tome and pretends to read it, Finlay mutters a soft, low laugh and guides us out the door.

* * *

“Ye didnae come and see me last night,” Finlay says as he gathers his jacket around him like a defensive barrier. “I missed you.”

I try to ignore the pang in my heart and play it cool. He doesn’t know I spent all of last night watching Luke announcing his abdication from several different angles, zoomed in and zoomed out, with a variety of different speeches, unrehearsed and not, until finally, at midnight, one had been settled on.

He doesn’t know Danny, Luke and I had more or less tumbled into bed, reeling with exhaustion. That we’d slept like babies, gathered close to each other, a decent, dignified distance separating us all as we’d drifted into darkness. And then, as we’d woken to the tangle of limbs, the touch and brush of fingers and fabric, I’d been slumped and sloped halfway on top of Luke’s chest and halfway on Danny, my feet almost stroking his groin, connecting them both like the middle line on a reversed letter N.

“I knew we had tonight,” I lie, smiling at him to make up for it. His defensive stance softens somewhat, and he slides his hands into his beaten-up jacket instead. I pull his palm out and, finally, squeeze it inside mine. “We have all of tonight to be together, just us.”

Finlay doesn’t appear entirely satisfied, but he eventually shrugs it off as we continue our journey to the venue.

As we stroll into the heart of the city, sirens screech past us, ambulances and police vans flying by in thick white streaks. It doesn’t take long to spot the cluster of mask-wearing Antiro protesters, and I sigh. I’m so sick of their shit. I’m so fucking sick of Antiro dominating everything.

Finlay’s hand tenses in mine, though both of us watch the latest scene of devastation along with a silent, observant crowd of non-protesters, of normal everyday people just trying to get on with life. Paramedics guide a stumbling man with an open bloody head wound onto a stretcher, lifting him into the back of the ambulance. Police talk to the protesters, taking down a few notes, nodding at the protesters’ words and closing their notebooks with a bored snap, only to slide it into their pockets where it seems like it’ll never be opened again.

“Poor fucker,” Finlay mutters as the ambulance drives off. “Wonder whit his crime was. Daring tae wear the same style socks as Luke? Enjoying the favored croissant o’ the Queen?”

It seems like, ever since Oscar Munro’s speech, the membership of Antiro has doubled in size. With the official stamp of approval from the government, everyone who’d shied away from joining the destructive fun has now taken the chance to jump aboard. The number of protesters out on the streets is not insignificant: now they block entryways, picket stores that choose to exist, wave placards which, when linked together in the crowd, take up almost as much space as a commercial billboard. And the placards are no longer handwritten, quasi-witty scrawls, but the printed, glossy sheen of a professional, mass-produced sign.

They’re emboldened. And I guess it’s no coincidence that Antiro appears to have added a new weapon to their stash: a select few members, the loudest in the bunch, carry crowbars, each gussied up garishly in the colors of the Antiro flag, some with cutesy ribbons and smiling stickers, others with the frill of a silken garter, and yet more glued with scraps of old-fashioned lace and paper doilies.

It’s ironic, or something.

I imagine it wasn’t so ironic when it collided with a man’s skull.

“Come on,” Finlay says with a kind of disquiet as he watches the police, noting their total lack of action.

“What d’you think it means?” I ask, interested in the thoughts whirling behind Finlay’s downturned brow.

Finlay takes his hand in mine and says slowly, “It means ye’re no’ grassroots underdogs if ye have the entire British establishment backing you.” He pauses and then, almost optimistically, forecasts, “Normal people — no’ royalists, no’ anti-royalists, just normal fuckin’ people whose only interaction wi’ the Royal family extends tae the heid on their money and their stamps — surely they’ll get sick enough o’ all this shit and start their own protests. And I’ll hazard a guess that that group, the silent majority, will be significantly larger than both Antiro and the Royalists combined. We just huvnae reached the tippin’ point yet.”

“When’s the tipping point?” I ask. “Because if people are being bludgeoned in the streets for their political views…”

“It’ll come. No’ all at once, but wi’ every small, violent, entitled event… it’ll gradually erode a’ sympathy the silent majority currently shares wi’ either side. Never underestimate the silent majority, sassenach. They’re the necessary political barometer oot there, the canary in the coalmine. Policies are developed wi’ them in mind — always observant, quietly judgin’, waitin’ for their democratic say in the voting booths tae shake shit up. It’s how they rebel: by voting, no’ screaming. Upset the canary and you have a big fuckin’ problem. It’ll come. It has tae fall doon.”

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