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Series One
Alex doesn’t even notice it at first. The Grand is hideously awkward to film in, both inside and out, and he’s fully distracted dealing with the absolutely millions of unanticipated problems. So he’s technically in the green room backstage, yes, but he’s busy making notes about where they’ll shoot for the next series, because they are absolutely never coming back here again.
He only looks up when Roisin says, “Oh, fuck” and ducks behind Romesh’s chair. She’s staring in terror at an unusually fluffy white goose with an orange beak, orange feet, and black banding on its tailfeathers. It’s a very large goose. Even for the kind of goose it is, and Alex knows exactly what kind of goose this is.
“You don’t want a goose?” Josh says to Roisin, or at least in the general direction of where she’s hiding. He sounds bewildered, which makes sense. Having a goose fix you up with the right person is lovely, as Alex can testify. Josh, he knows, can vouch for it as well; he’s not so sure about anyone else here.
“Of course I don’t want a fucking goose, mate,” Roisin says. “Who wants their entire romantic future decided for them by some evil-tempered feather duster? What goose is going to understand my needs?”
“What are your needs?” Frank asks, looking up from his book with polite interest.
“I want a man who doesn’t expect me to cook or clean,” Roisin says, her eyes just barely visible as she peers around Romesh’s chair. “And he should have a lot of money and a big dick and be invisible and silent when I don’t want to be bothered. I can’t expect a goose to understand that.”
“I’m not your shield,” Romesh says, getting out of his chair and moving pointedly across the room. “I’m not taking your biting for you. Been there, done that, got the scar on my shin already.” So that’s three of them with goosemates, then -- quite a lot, given the averages.
Roisin pokes her head out a bit further. “Don’t think it’s here for me, actually. Look, it’s not even looking at me. Must be Tim’s. I’ll go drag him out of his dressing room.”
“Oh, so for Tim a goose is fine?”
“He might as well face up to it, either way,” Roisin says, shrugging. Alex doesn’t worry about it, though; he knows Tim would be thrilled with a goose.
But when she returns towing a reluctant Key behind her, the goose doesn’t seem interested in him, either. “It’s not mine,” Tim says dismissively. “Look, I’ll show you.” He walks right up to the goose, which is just sitting in the corner of the green room.
“Don’t --” Alex says, and he hears Josh and Romesh joining in, but there’s no heading him off. Tim leans over to pick up the goose, and it unreels its neck, flares its wings, and pecks him repeatedly on the shoulder. The “fuck off” couldn’t be clearer if the goose had said it out loud.
“Ow, fuck, ow,” Tim yells, backing off, and the goose stalks angrily off.
“Don’t bother it,” Romesh says. “You usually get some time before they really start acting up, but not if you’re an arsehole to them.”
“Well how was I to know?” Tim says defensively.
“Oh, definitely,” Roisin says. “Absolutely no way you could possibly know a thing about matchmaker geese. Not like there’s a million books and movies and shows about goosemates or anything.” She’s watching the goose, they all are, as it finds a new place to settle.
It settles next to Alex, and he feels a bit nostalgic. His goose was horribly embarrassing, but he didn’t mind it, of course. After he and Rachel finally got together, he even missed it.
Then Andy C. comes in with an urgent question, and Alex gets distracted again.
The goose follows them all on stage but stays off camera, and Alex thinks that’s a good thing, overall. Would I Lie To You? had a spontaneous goose appearance on camera during an episode years ago, and everyone absolutely loved it, but Taskmaster is too new. It needs to be its own thing so it doesn’t become a one-gimmick Goose Show.
Greg takes the goose in stride, which shows how right Alex was to push for him as the Taskmaster. “Whose goose is it?” he asks, looking at Alex with interest.
“No idea,” Alex says, and goes off to see if something can be done to make the sound people a little bit happier.
It’s not until they’re done filming the second episode that Josh pulls Alex aside. He looks awkward. “It’s yours, isn’t it?”
Alex blinks at him. “No.” It can’t be -- he’s happily married, and geese don’t come for people in good relationships.
Josh shifts from foot to foot. “Alex. Mate.” He gestures helplessly at the goose, which is about five feet away, watching them. Alex gets the feeling it doesn’t like what’s going on very much. “It hasn’t stopped watching you all afternoon.”
“But --” Alex says helplessly.
“Things okay?” Josh asks, looking like he hates every word coming out of his mouth. “I mean. You know. At home.”
“Yes,” Alex says, bewildered. “Everything’s fine.” And then, as it sometimes does, a concern washes over him that he’s lying and just hasn’t realised it yet. But he goes over the evidence in his mind, and he’s really not. Things are lovely at home. This can’t be his goose.
The goose honks at Josh in a warning sort of way, and Josh, obviously an old hand at this, disappears instantly, like a conjuring trick.
Alex shakes off the whole conversation and goes off to gather his things. But when he goes to his car, the goose tries to get in with him. He only just manages to keep it out of his lap, and only because all of his old goose-handling reflexes come back like they never left.
He thinks he’s left it behind to do its goosely duty, but a mile down the road, he looks into the rearview mirror and two blue eyes rimmed in red and white stare back at him.
“You’re not supposed to be here,” Alex says, and the goose honks at him so loudly he almost swerves into another lane.
Alex pulls over to text Rachel.
When he gets home, she comes running out -- not to see him, because they have in fact been married for a while, but to see the goose. “It is!” she says, peering into the backseat. “It’s a proper matchmaker! I think it’s bigger than our one, actually. Gosh, it’s enormous.”
Alex gets out of the car and stands next to the door, trying to think how to put it. “Are we?” he finally begins, but he can’t quite think how to end the sentence.
Rachel rolls her eyes at him. “Of course we are,” she says, and then, when she realises he’s genuinely worried, she goes up on her tiptoes and kisses him, one hand behind his neck, nudging his lips apart so she can slide her tongue into his mouth. He loses himself in it a bit, the pleasure and the shiver of discomfort that makes the pleasure more intense, but after a minute she pulls back. She’s smiling. “See?” she says, and gestures at the goose, who is watching them from the backseat of the car, but not in an angry way. Geese tend not to repress their rage. If it was angry, they’d know.
Rachel sees from Alex’s expression that he still doesn’t quite get it. “Remember when I kissed, oh gosh, what was his name? Kent. Something Kent?”
Alex does. Their goose had pecked her savagely, the only time it had ever been angry at Rachel. (Mostly it blamed Alex for everything, which he knew then and knows now was entirely fair.)
“So,” Rachel says, rubbing her hands together. “Seems like you’ve got a second soulmate out there.”
“I haven’t got time,” Alex says promptly, and she laughs.
“Geese being famous for their concern for people’s schedules,” she says. “Come on, out with it. It’s Greg, right?”
Alex feels himself go red.
“I knew it!” She makes an “applause, please” gesture at an imaginary audience. “Well. Good luck to Greg, then. Let me know when it’s time to give him the crib sheet.”
Alex can’t respond; his brain is spinning in a cycle of embarrassment and arousal and embarrassment because of arousal and arousal because of embarrassment.
It’s not an unfamiliar place, or an unwelcome one.
“Come on,” Rachel says. “Let’s go inside. It’s freezing out here.” She courteously opens the door for the goose, who honks, but not in an angry way, and hops to the ground, wings out to help it balance. Rachel looks at Alex thoughtfully, assessingly. “And maybe after the kids are in bed we can go to the shed,” she says, having accurately judged Alex’s mental and physical state.
“That would be -- yes,” Alex says, and then he takes a deep breath and pushes himself back into a configuration that will approximate normal from the outside.
Series Two
The goose mostly just follows Alex over the next months. It’s not even there the whole time, and when it does come back, it often looks around with an expression that says it’s not surprised, just disappointed. Of course, it seems to be thinking. I didn’t expect anything better from the likes of you. Every time, Alex burns a little bit, in shame and pleasure both.
But then they start filming the tasks for season two, and the goose doesn’t like that at all.
The park location is excellent, Alex feels; windy, which makes the sound a bit of a problem, but it’s visually appealing, lightly populated, and, in one spot at least, nicely steep. The goose has other opinions.
The day they take Richard over to the park for his tasks, the goose throws a bit of a strop. He reaches for the task and the goose honks, loudly and angrily, and Richard starts back and drops the task in the mud. Alex has a backup for just that reason, though. Things happen to tasks sometimes. Richard reaches for the task again, more cautiously, and the goose does nothing, but when he opens it, the goose honks. It honks again while he’s reading it. They film him reading it a few more times, and the goose honks more on than off the entire time.
“Damn goose,” Richard says, but he jogs off up the hill, and once he’s stopped messing with the task, the goose seems fine with it.
The goose bides its time after that. Until Joe’s turn.
The very first task, the goose honks so violently at Joe that he jerks backwards and falls over, and it’s like pouring blood in the water would be for a shark. After that, it seems to torment Joe mostly for pleasure. It’s a challenge to keep the goose off camera, and in the end they put up a bunch more fixed cameras around the Taskmaster house to give editing lots of angles to choose from.
But then they take Joe to the park, where there’s a limit to how many additional cameras they can set up. “We’ll just have to hope the goose behaves,” Andy D. says. No one in the crew actually manages to look like they’re hoping. Alex, for his part, has already accepted the inevitable.
Joe reaches for the task on the bench and the goose darts forward, making a terrifying hissing noise. Joe recoils, although this time he doesn’t fall over, and the next time he reaches for the task, he does so at a tenth of the speed and with ten times the wariness. Alex braces for the inevitable honks, but the goose is blissfully silent as Joe reads the task.
Joe reads “on the top of the hill” and turns to stare at it in horror. And the goose strikes, darting out from underneath the bench -- seriously, how did it even get there? -- and charging, wings out, straight at Joe. There’s no noise, nothing that might save him, and the first Joe knows of what’s happening is when he’s bitten high up on his thigh.
Joe screams. It’s the first scream of the day, but very much not the last. The goose chases Joe up the hill and down it again. When Joe gets two of the exercise balls on the mat, the goose honks especially loudly and darts at him, and Joe jerks away and knocks one of the balls back down the hill.
“Alex, I hate your fucking goose,” Joe says, intently but quietly.
“Sorry,” Alex says.
As soon as the task is over, Andy D. turns to Alex and says, “We’re keeping that in. We’ve got to. The look on Joe’s face!”
“We said we’d keep the goose off screen,” Alex says reflexively, but he’s already thinking about it. It would look good. And he -- he shivers a little, thinking of everyone seeing the goose, everyone realizing it’s his. “Let me text Rachel,” he says, and pulls out his phone. Goose got involved in the task, he sends.
She texts back, Of course it did. It’s a goose.
Andy wants to leave it in the edit.
Do you want to? she asks.
Alex types back, Yes. It’s all he needs to say; she will understand everything behind it.
She sends, Then do it.
They do.
The goose calms down after task filming; it honestly seems mostly pretty happy at home with Rachel and Alex, and the kids have taken to arguing endlessly about its name and feeding it snacks they dislike. A lot of times, the goose isn’t even around. There’s a period of about three weeks where it’s completely gone, and the kids cry so much that eventually Rachel explains it’s only a sometimes goose. Alex is comfortable with that. A sometimes goose seems a worthy addition to his life.
But then it’s time to film the studio shows. Alex wakes up that morning to the goose standing on the bed right where Rachel would be sleeping if their children didn’t wake up at the crack of dawn. It’s staring at him from a distance of about six inches, beak so close to his face that he can smell its breath.
Alex yelps, jerks backwards, and falls off the bed. He lies there for a bit, thinking that he knows now how Joe felt on the hill, and then the goose honks angrily.
Alex, still flat on the floor, flinches. An angry goose, he knows from experience, is an angry goose. It doesn’t get much worse than that.
The goose, still standing on the bed, looks down at him. If Alex had to guess, he would say it was judging him and finding him wanting. The goose honks, pauses, honks again, and then drops its sleek white head low and flares out its wings.
“Uh,” Alex says out loud, alarmed, and then the goose is on him, biting and pecking. He flees to the bathroom and manages to shut the door between him and the goose, but ten seconds later the goose appears in the bathtub, rendering a shower absolutely out of the question. It watches, alarmingly intent, as Alex uses the toilet, and he keeps a wary eye on it as he brushes his teeth and combs his hair. When Alex sidles back into the bedroom to get dressed, the goose follows menacingly, wings half extended.
The moment Alex pulls on his jumper, the goose decides it's had enough and lunges for him. Alex runs, and it chases him down the hall, into the kitchen, and, after a brief, bitey pause for shoes, out into the front garden, where it honks meaningfully at his car.
“I wasn’t going to drive today,” Alex tells the goose. “And I haven’t had my breakfast.”
The goose lowers its head again. Alex realises he is exactly the sort of person who takes orders from a goose and gets into the car.
Rachel, standing in the doorway, calls, “Wait, let me pack you something!”
Alex looks into the rearview mirror and sees the expected angry eyes. “Don’t think I can,” he calls back. The goose honks in agreement. “I love you,” he yells. “If I survive the day, I’ll see you for dinner.”
“Drive safely,” Rachel calls back, waving.
The goose tolerates the inevitable traffic delays surprisingly well, and somewhere around Junction 10 of the M40 it tucks its head under its wing and goes to sleep. Alex dares to put on some music, and when that goes okay, even sings along, very quietly. It’s like driving with an overtired toddler, a bit, but Alex is used to that, and the goose doesn’t seem to be in a bad mood anymore. He takes the motorway exit feeling like the day might go okay after all.
When he parks outside the studio, he takes a moment to have a discussion with the goose, something he hasn’t tried on this one before. (He had on his and Rachel’s goose, and it had never worked, but this is obviously a different goose.) “Uh, we’re at the studio show,” he explains awkwardly to the sleeping goose. “And, er. The thing is -- Greg doesn’t know you’re also for him, and, and it would be better if he continued not to know, so if you could stick to me, mostly, that would be very much appreciated.” He considers adding that the goose should perhaps limit its harassment of Joe, but he waits to see how the first request is received.
The goose pulls its head out from under its wing and follows that up with what looks to Alex like about fifteen foot of neck. It’s terrifying. “HONK,” the goose says, and Alex can tell it’s not pleased.
“Or do as you like!” Alex says, hastily collecting his things. “I can’t tell you what to do!”
The goose lowers its head, and Alex bolts from the car.
Turns out Joe is early, in even before Alex. “Trains,” he explains without explaining anything at all.
“We sent you a car,” Alex says, confused.
“Yeah,” Joe says, and then the goose lunges at him and drives him screaming into his dressing room. Jon comes in next, right at the end of the screaming, and gets attacked, too, and then Doc, who flees back out the door when he sees the goose barreling down the hallway towards him. Alex is briefly concerned, but Doc comes back a few minutes later with an open umbrella, apparently to use as an anti-goose shield, and makes it to his dressing room on his own terms.
The goose seems unwilling to leave the hallway, and Alex would feel awful letting it attack his coworkers without even an apology, so he idles in the entrance for a few minutes while the goose makes a low, menacing hiss in the general direction of the dressing rooms.
Then the goose pauses and seems to be listening. Seconds later, it stretches its head up thoughtfully and saunters up the hallway, and while Alex is wondering if he should text everyone in the cast a warning, the door opens.
“Still got the goose, I see,” Greg notes. He and the goose look nice standing together, Alex thinks incongruously, before he remembers that he needs to keep Greg as separate from the goose as possible.
“Yes,” Alex says. “Er. Yes.”
Greg walks up the hallway, trailed by a surprisingly tranquil goose, and stops in front of Alex. “Everything all right, then?” he asks, clasping Alex on the shoulder.
Alex feels a flush of warmth that spreads from his shoulder to his whole body. “Yes,” he says, and in that moment he means it more than almost anything.
Greg watches him for a few seconds more, pats Alex’s shoulder twice, and strolls off to his dressing room.
The goose looks at Alex. Alex can’t help but think it looks pleased, and can’t help but be pleased by it.
Then Andy D. comes up with a list of changes. The next time Alex looks up, the goose isn’t there.
Series Three
Rob walks into the Taskmaster house the first day of filming, says, “Ay, Goosey!” and makes to pet the goose on the head. The goose, it turns out, will absolutely bite the hand that attempts to pet it.
It is also, it turns out, the kind of goose that takes violent dislikes to people. Emphasis on the violent. While they’re filming Rob’s tasks, the goose spares no effort to make his life difficult. It comprehensively shits all over the track where they film the “few steps as possible” task, to the point where Alex is actively concerned about its health. (It forms some sort of association in its head and shits on the track every time they film there.) It steals Rob’s clothes from the dressing room at the Taskmaster house and spreads them all over the yard while it’s raining. When Rob comes to present his flagmeal, a beak appears over the side of the table like a shark fin sticking out of the water and Rob flinches back, leaving room for the whole goose to emerge, flapping and honking. (It’s a great visual.) At one point, Rob goes to use the toilet, and a minute later there’s a bloodcurdling scream and Rob sprints out of the room with his fly still undone.
Then come the studio shows. Alex knows the goose is probably going to be difficult at the start, but figures it will calm down once Alex and Greg are together, the way it did last time. He has another terrifying dash out of the house the first morning, but this time he’s planned better. There’s a packed breakfast and all his things on the passenger seat of the car, and Rachel has a thermos of tea ready to shove into his hand as he exits, pursued by a goose. He skids just a bit on the mud in the garden, but he still awards himself four points out of five.
The goose doesn’t sleep on the way in this time. Every time Alex glances in the rearview mirror, its eyes are staring straight ahead out the windscreen. It looks like it’s plotting something, and Alex is a bit worried.
When they arrive at the studio, the goose walks in before Alex, looking around expectantly. It gets only a few steps in, though, before it turns and lowers its head menacingly.
“What?” Alex says. “We just got here.”
The goose honks. Alex shifts to one side, prepared to dodge, and the door opens behind him. The goose charges, honking furiously, and strikes Alex a glancing blow with one wing as it runs past him.
Alex whirls around in time to hear Rob yell “FUCK ME” and see him spill his coffee on his trousers, and then shriek in a much shriller tone when the hot coffee starts to soak in. Rob stumbles past Alex, moving quickly, chanting under his breath something that sounds very much like, “Fuck fucking fucker goose.”
Alex says to the goose, “That was rude.”
The goose flutters its wings with obvious pleasure and preens dramatically. Alex feels guilty -- it’s his goose, after all -- and goes to fetch a rag to clean up the coffee before someone else comes in and slips in it. He’s still on his knees, wiping it up, already feeling a bit better, when the door opens again. “Careful --” Alex starts to say.
“Well, isn’t this a picture,” Greg says above his head.
“There was an accident,” Alex says. He’s finished wiping up, but he doesn’t want to get off his knees, so he doesn’t.
“Of course there was,” Greg says. He sounds amused, though Alex isn’t craning his neck up to see for sure. “I assume your fucking goose was involved. She looks pleased with herself.”
“Rob tried to pet her,” Alex explains. “At the house.”
“So you got down on your knees for him?”
“He spilled his coffee,” Alex explains. “I cleaned it up.” He pauses, considering. “My goose” -- he very carefully doesn’t say “our” -- “so my mess.”
Greg is silent for a minute while Alex stares at the floor. It’s cleaner in the area where he wiped up the coffee, and he imagines Greg telling him to make the whole floor that clean, being found here still cleaning when all the others come in, everyone seeing -- he feels his whole body come alive and sensitive and forces the thought away.
Finally, Greg says, in a soft, gentle tone, “I imagine this place employs people to clean the floor, and you are employed in a very different capacity. Come on, Alex, up you get.” He reaches down, his hand suddenly in Alex’s field of view as he prepares for the Herculean task of standing up, and Alex thinks it’s to help him up. Instead, Greg pats his head, rubs his fingers through Alex’s hair. “Come on, then,” he says.
Standing up still isn’t easy, but it’s easier. Greg gives him a bit of a smile, too, before he heads off to his dressing room, and that helps, too.
The goose is preening blissfully, and when Alex heads off to see what needs doing, she follows along, making a soft, contented sound that can’t even really be classified as a honk.
Series Four
Lolly arrives at the Taskmaster house, sees the goose, and exclaims, “Oh, lovely! Who’s got the goose, then?”
Everyone on the crew slides their eyes around to look at Alex without actually looking at Alex, and he says, “Mine, I think.”
“You’re so lucky!” she says enthusiastically, and she really seems to mean it. The goose gives Alex a very pointed look that seems to say, If only I had been assigned an intelligent and appreciative person like this one instead of you, and Alex feels warm with shame.
Lolly remains cheerful about the goose even during the legs on the circle task, when, frankly, the goose makes rather a mess of things. She really doesn’t like having other birds about, apparently; she seems offended that the ducks and chickens are there, and they seem terrified of her. After a few minutes, Alex strolls to the far end of the yard, keeping his distance from Lolly to encourage the goose to do the same, but it doesn’t help at all. The goose is determined to clear her territory, and every time the chickens head toward the circle, she honks furiously and they scatter. Lolly bears up well, but the task might as well be “evade Alex’s fucking goose long enough to dump grain on the red circle.”
When the bird flu announcement comes out, Alex isn’t entirely sorry to have to switch species.
(He also spends some time on the phone trying to determine if matchmaking geese can get or carry bird flu. The public health official he eventually gets through to says, in a voice of cheerful patience, “No, matchmaking geese can’t carry diseases. If you’re stopped, simply point out the black banding around the goose’s tail; that is unique to matchmaker geese. Anyway, it’s not a problem. They just leave if anyone tries to detain them.” Then she adds, as a sort of afterthought, “You do know you can make them go away whenever you like, right?”
“I don’t like,” Alex explains, making a note that they’ll have to explain about matchmaking geese and diseases in the studio sessions.
“Up to you, mate,” she says. “Good luck.”)
Beyond that, though, it’s a very peaceful task session in terms of goose activity. Halfway through Mel’s set, Andy D. takes Alex aside. “Does it do what you want?” he asks, gesturing at the goose.
Alex stares at him. “She’s a goose,” he explains carefully. “A matchmaker goose.”
“Can you get it to bite someone?” Andy asks hopefully.
“No, sorry,” Alex says.
“Only last season we had a really good thing going with Rob. It was fantastic, the goose taking against him like that. And so far this season, it’s just been nice. Bit of a let-down.”
“I thought we were going all in on authenticity?” Alex says, quoting from the write-up they did before the first season.
“Yeah, sure, but --” Andy stares wistfully at the goose, who honks like a car horn two streets away.
“She does what she does,” Alex says. “I think it’s going pretty well anyway, don’t you?” He’s so pleased with how this season is going. They have fantastic guests who have done fantastically on the tasks, and there have been some he absolutely cannot wait to see edited down. They don’t need stunts, with or without geese.
“Yeah, but imagine your goose biting Mel Giedroyc!” Andy says, his eyes shining like he’s seen a beautiful dream.
Alex can feel himself straightening up in horror. “Never,” he chokes out. It’s not even a good embarrassing thought, just an appalling one.
The goose waddles closer to Andy and half extends her wings, honking warningly, and Andy holds up his hands defensively. “No, no, ignore me, I didn’t mean it,” he says to the goose, and then heads off at a fast clip to see what’s up in some other part of the house.
He’s right. The goose seems to like every single contestant this time, and all the contestants like her. Noel even draws a portrait of her while he’s waiting for them to set up a task, and it’s so lovely that Alex rather shamefacedly takes it home with him at the end of the day.
The studio tasks, though. Alex prepares for the first day with a bullet-point list and his heart in his throat for several reasons. He’s spent the intervening months remembering Greg finding him on his knees, and his mouth goes dry every time. He knows he can’t just arrange for something like that to happen; it would be over every line, both personal and professional. But sometimes the yearning for it will hit him so hard and so suddenly that it feels like being stabbed with want.
Every time, he looks over and the goose is there, even if she wasn’t before. She always looks at him, her eyes intent and angry and just a little bit confused, like she’s thinking, I know you want it. You know you want it. Why won’t you take it?
Alex doesn’t try to explain. But he does suspect the goose is losing whatever patience she once had, so he girds his loins and braces for the first day of the studio tasks like he’s about to go to war.
The goose doesn’t wake him up at all that first morning, though. When his alarm goes off, he opens his eyes and looks around for her, panicked, but she’s there, still asleep, perched on the radiator the way she likes to in the winter. When he goes to get ready, she lifts her head a bit and then tucks it back under her wing. He gets to have breakfast with the family and everything, though he has to drink his tea from the thermos Rachel had ready. They have several conversations with their eyes while the boys yell excitedly at each other about Minecraft. Alex keeps wondering if the goose is maybe -- losing interest? Can being soulmates wear off? And Rachel keeps telling him, with sincere and loving looks, that he’s being an absolute idiot.
The goose waddles happily off after him as he heads off for the day. He’d told everyone he was driving in, so he does that. The goose decides to sit in the passenger seat for some reason, and every few minutes he finds himself glancing over, just to be sure she’s still there.
At the studio, she’s like an old hand, which Alex supposes she is at this point. She knows where their dressing room is and where the snacks are, and she scopes out the entire area like she’s checking to make sure no one moved anything without her permission. Her good cheer and peacefulness last for nearly twenty minutes.
Alex is sitting in his dressing room attempting to record birthday greetings when she honks once, like a warning. He sighs and starts again on his current greeting, and she honks in exactly the same place she did before.
“What?” he asks.
She honks for a good two minutes solid, increasing in volume like she’s training for goose opera. She doesn’t look like she wants him to do something. She just looks like she’s decided to honk until the end of time.
“Please be quiet,” Alex says.
She honks.
“I have to record. We have to record. We can’t do a show with you making this much noise.” His reasoned words have no effect at all. She stands on his dressing table and honks like she’s being paid for it. He decides it might be time to try honking it out. Maybe if he’s just quiet and does nothing she’ll eventually stop.
Ten minutes into his “I am more patient than any goose” stand, Alex’s dressing room door opens and Greg pokes his head in.
“Sorry, I knocked, but I don’t think you heard me,” he says, projecting his voice to be heard above all the honking.
“It’s a bit noisy in here,” Alex agrees.
Greg looks at the goose. “I suppose it will make a nice change for the audience,” he says. “Listening to her instead of me.”
“Oh, no,” Alex says. He’s not sure exactly what he means by it, and it probably doesn’t matter, as Greg likely couldn’t hear it.
“Look,” Greg says. “Can I come in?”
Alex makes a gesture. “My goose-infested dressing room is yours if you want it,” he says, and he would swear that the goose shoots him a dirty look, although she doesn’t for a moment stop honking.
Greg comes in and settles as carefully as he can on the untrustworthy velvet loveseat that takes up a good chunk of space in this room. After a few moments, when it bears his weight without collapsing, he pats the seat next to him.
Alex stares at him, uncomprehending, and Greg says, “Come here.” The tone of voice is what gets Alex up and moving without conscious thought. Greg isn’t asking, he’s ordering.
Alex sits down just as gingerly, and Greg holds out an arm. Alex stares at him for a minute before carefully folding himself under it. It works because Greg doesn’t move at all; it’s not Alex being touched, it’s Alex touching Greg, putting his back against Greg’s arm, his side against Greg’s side. After a few seconds, the touch even starts to feel good, in a way that Alex recognises from the few other people in his life who he can rely on to touch him the right ways. Alex manages to relax into it, and as he does, the goose stops honking.
“Oh,” Alex says. “Is that what this is?”
“Well, yeah,” Greg says, and Alex’s heart sinks before he adds, “Nice, though, isn’t it?”
“You know, it is?” Alex says. He can hear the surprise in his own voice, much more than he intended to be there, so he adds hastily, “Because I don’t usually like being touched at all, but this isn’t at all bad.” He realises he’s damning with faint praise and goes on, “It’s good, is what I mean. I mean that I like it,” and then he’s gone too far in the other direction and tries, “because people like to be touched, don’t they? And --”
“Hush. Let’s just enjoy the silence for a minute,” Greg interrupts him, and Alex gratefully shuts up. The room is in fact very quiet now; the goose has tucked her head under wing, in much the same way, Alex thinks, that he’s tucked under Greg’s wing. He’s warm where Greg is touching him, along his shoulders and the back of his neck and down his side. Greg’s arm feels heavy, like it’s pushing him down, an unspoken order to stay in the same place, and Alex obeys. As he sits there, warmth spreads through his body and his mind slowly starts to wind down.
“So you genuinely don’t like touching?” Greg says after a few minutes. He’s speaking softly; Alex suspects that neither of them wants to disturb the goose. “Thought that might have been a bit.”
“It’s complicated,” Alex says. He’s too warm and mushy to go into detail, so he just says, “Mostly I don’t.” Greg makes a thoughtful noise, and Alex feels compelled to add, “This really is nice, though.”
A few minutes later, Greg says, “That’s probably about your limit, though.” He removes his arm, cautiously stands up, and says, “See you out there.” He nods to the goose and departs. Alex blinks after him for a few moments, a bit disoriented, and then goes back to recording. The goose is good as gold all through.
They find that the goose will be quiet and relatively well-mannered in exchange for ten minutes or so of loveseat sitting twice a day, and Alex genuinely wishes the studio shows could go on forever.
Series Five
“Maybe it’s the laugh,” Alex says as Luke the medic carefully wraps Nish’s forearm in gauze. “I think she doesn’t like the laugh.”
“No one likes the laugh!” Nish says. “But mostly they don’t -- ow! -- draw blood.”
“Yes. I’m so sorry,” Alex says.
“Is this what having a goose is like? Because if one ever comes for me, I will say no fucking thanks,” Nish says. The goose honks at him, and he flinches back.
“I think it’s mostly just what having a goose is like for me,” Alex says. “It’s always like this. Usually they just bite me.”
Luke tapes down the gauze. “‘Usually’? How many have you had?”
“Just the two,” Alex explains.
“Just two? And how long have you had this one, then?” He’s new to the crew, and apparently someone explained to him about the goose, but not enough.
“Only two years,” Alex says.
Luke swivels his head around to stare at Alex. “Only? We had ours for an afternoon! It honked and chased him until he tripped over me and fell into the river, and by the time I was done fishing him out and getting him into dry clothes, it was gone!”
Nish said, “That’s all you have to do? Just get the right person dressed? Seems like more in films.”
Luke tilts his hand from side to side. “Weeeeell, some other stuff happened between the river and the getting dressed. Only took a couple of hours all told, though.”
“And how much blood was drawn in the process?”
“None at all.”
“Alex,” Nish says, looking up at him as he takes his spare shirt from Helen, “I think this is a you problem.” The goose honks in agreement.
“Oh, definitely,” Alex says happily. “I’m very bad at geese.”
“And yet you’ve had two of them,” Luke points out. “Most people don’t even get one.”
“He has to, though, because there’s no other way he’s getting involved with anyone,” Nish says. “Have you even worked out who it is, Alex?”
“No idea.” Alex is normally quite a bad liar, but this one trips off his tongue so naturally the goose takes violent offense.
Ten minutes later, as Alex is putting back on his suit coat, Luke says, “I’m going to need more gauze if this keeps up.”
This all seems to have reminded the goose that this whole situation is Alex’s fault. Nish does try not to laugh around her at first, but he doesn’t even last the rest of the morning, and when he does, she just honks along, like she’s agreeing. She’s unusually stroppy with Alex all day, though, and settles pointedly between him and Rachel on the couch that evening.
“Poor lady,” Rachel says, stroking her along the back. Rachel, somehow, is allowed to touch the goose. Alex himself would never dare. “Struggling to get this through to him. I know it’s difficult. We all see how hard you’re trying.”
The goose rests her head briefly on Rachel’s lap. Alex takes stock of the moment: he’s here, on this couch, with Rachel and the goose that is his closest link to Greg, covered in bites and bruises of various origins, watching a mildly terrible show about an improbable number of murders in a small town, and he is, honestly, very happy.
It doesn’t last. The goose has always been here again, gone again when they’re not filming; in his head, Alex thinks of her as the Taskmaster goose. But before the studio shows, she disappears for more than a month, and Alex panics internally almost the whole time, wondering what it means that she’s gone. Wondering if she’s ever coming back.
“Maybe she needed a holiday. Flew off for a rest,” Rachel says.
“Maybe so,” Alex says, staring out the front window like she’ll just appear in the garden.
“She’ll be back for the studio shows,” Rachel says. And then, when that doesn’t comfort him, she kneels next to him on the couch, grabs his neck, and digs her fingernails in just a little. “Believe me, Alex. She will be back for the studio shows.” And he does.
She’s right, of course; the goose is a no-show right up to the morning of the first show, and then she’s on his head, standing there honking louder than his alarm clock. She is extremely heavy.
“I -- ow -- I can’t get up with a goose on my head,” Alex says. She reaches down and grabs a bit of his hair with the tip of her beak -- it’s a struggle because there’s not much to grab, but she’s too determined for the laws of physics to limit her. Then she yanks. He sits up in protest, and she flaps her wings to stay stable as she moves more to the top of his head, positioning herself like an avant-garde 25-pound hat. After a second’s pause, she yanks his hair again. “I’m up! I’m going, I’m going.” And he does.
The goose herds Alex like he’s a sheep and she’s a border collie. She’s at his heels until he’s in the car, and then she’s on the passenger seat watching out the windscreen, honking whenever she doesn’t feel he’s driving fast enough. No part of the M40 is, he’s sorry to say, fast enough for her, and his ears are ringing a bit when they get to the studio. She chivvies him inside and then to his dressing room, and then back out of his dressing room and to the door of Greg’s.
“I can’t,” Alex says, stopping at the door.
She pecks at his ankles.
“I really can’t. This is Greg’s.”
She pecks him in the back of the knee hard enough to make him jump.
“I can’t,” he repeats. “I can” -- he casts his mind around desperately for something that might appease her -- “I can wait right here? Surely there’s no difference between me being in there and me being right here.”
He only realises after he’s said it that he’s badly undermined his own point, and then it’s only a matter of time before he’s sitting in Greg’s dressing room, hands folded in his lap, accepting that he essentially lost an argument with himself. The goose paces impatiently around the small room, occasionally pecking violently at things Alex cannot see and deeply hopes are not insects.
Greg walks in a few minutes later and pauses on the threshold. “And what do we have here?”
“Me,” Alex says.
“And Brynhild, I see,” Greg says, nodding to the goose, who apparently now has a name. He walks in, automatically ducking his head as he goes through the door, and begins putting down his things.
“She thought it best if I waited for you here,” Alex explains, although surely Greg is well aware of that.
“Yes. Because she’s the one in charge of all this,” Greg says, and his tone sounds -- off, just a bit.
As a result, Alex sounds more like he’s asking a question when he says, “Yes.”
“And what does she want you to do next?” Greg asks. He sounds tired.
“Would you like a cup of tea?” Alex asks, completely forgetting that Greg asked a question.
Brynhild honks warningly.
Greg looks at her and says, “Yes. I would. Stronger than a slap in the face, splash of milk, no sugar, please.”
Alex goes to fetch it, and Brynhild doesn’t even get up to follow him. As he closes Greg’s door behind him, he hears him say something to her, but it’s too quiet to make out.
Alex makes the tea and makes a mental note of how Greg takes his, just in case he ever has him over for any reason.
Greg’s exhaustion, if that’s what it is, doesn’t come through in the filming, of course. He’s too much of a professional for that. What does come through in the filming is Brynhild. She stalks the set pretty much the entire time and seems to take great pleasure in getting on camera. Midway through the first episode, she wanders off, but Alex can see her circling around behind the contestants. He says nothing, of course, which means none of them is prepared when Brynhild sneaks under Nish’s chair -- she doesn’t really fit, but she manages -- and then honks violently and thrusts her head up at him.
Nish isn’t the only one who screams. Mark does, too, and they end up clinging to each other about four feet away from their chairs. Alex isn’t entirely sure how they got there; it’s like they teleported. Bob and Sally are laughing, Sally so hard that she seems about to fall from her chair, although surely she’ll do it gracefully. Aisling yells, “Control your fucking goose, Alex!”
After the laughter dies down, Greg turns to camera two and does an impromptu explanation. “Many people, when they are blessed with a goose, take it as life direction. They learn from it. Alex chooses a different course.” He turns to Alex. “I am very, very disappointed in you.”
“Sorry,” Alex says, looking down at his iPad.
“Am I the one you ought to be apologizing to? Look at Nish. He’s afraid to get back in his seat.”
Alex looks at Nish. “I’m very sorry,” he repeats.
Nish opens his mouth like he’s about to say something, but Greg doesn’t let him. “Now. Is that how you apologise?”
Alex’s heart starts beating harder, and he says, “Do -- do you mean how I apologise when we’re at home?”
“Yes, Alex. I want you to apologise to all our lovely contestants the way you apologise at home.”
That’s not quite enough direction for Alex. Well, really it is, but Greg is so focused on him right now, and Alex wants to prolong that just as much as he wants Greg to give him detailed instructions. He says, “So I should ...”
“Crawl on your knees over to each one and touch the ground with your head, yes. And tell them how sorry you are. How very, very sorry.”
The audience is laughing enough that the balcony isn’t telling Alex to move on, so Alex does it. (He’d have done it anyway, of course.) He crawls over to Nish and Mark, first, as they still haven’t sat down or even let go of each other, and touches his head to the ground twice in front of them. “I’m so sorry,” he murmurs. He can smell the carpet, feel it pressing into his forehead, and he knows he looks awkward and that his arse is sticking up in an embarrassing way. He’s hot all over with shame, every inch of his skin is tingling with pleasure, and he’s terrified that he’ll get hard here on the stage in front of everyone. It’s the happiest he’s been all day.
He apologises to Sally, then Bob, then Aisling, crawling the whole way, and crawls back to his chair. Once he gets there, getting up off his hands and knees seems like too much. He knows he needs to -- Andy is in his earpiece telling him to move on, and he’s got to get them out of this bit before the audience stops finding it funny -- but he somehow can’t.
“Good boy,” Greg says, and suddenly Alex can get up again.
Brynhild honks at him, which makes Nish flinch into Mark’s side and sets the audience off again. But when Alex looks over at her, she seems happier than she’s been in a while.
Series Six
As Liza is putting the finishing touches on her manly cardboard box scene, Brynhild takes notice. Liza picks up on that and starts narrating. “So it’s like I’m married to the box, you see? Honestly, with most men they might just as well be a box. And I’m taking care of him and giving him everything he needs, and he’s just sitting there staring at the telly and ignoring me.”
Brynhild honks, low and long.
“Exactly. You get it,” Liza says encouragingly. “I think it’s going to go over well, don’t you?”
Brynhild honks again. Alex tries very hard not to think that she’s having a conversation with Liza, or to imagine that Brynhild relates to this whole scene in any way. She’s a goose. Liza is a human, talking about human concerns. It’s all a bit unnerving, though, especially when Brynhild scrupulously stays off camera for the entire shoot of Liza’s scene. Alex starts to worry that Brynhild is on Liza’s side.
Later, during the team tasks, Liza, Asim, and Tim are trying to get to the ducks to turn them over and learning it’s very hard to coordinate three people hopping in a confined space. Brynhild takes in the situation, then strolls over to the ducks, honks violently, spreads her wings, and runs at them. She turns over absolutely every duck and spends the remainder of the team’s time picking them up and hurling them away from her, occasionally honking in triumph.
Andy D. and Alex exchange worried looks. After, Andy says, “I don’t know about your fucking goose deciding the outcome of a task, though. That seems over the line.”
Alex agrees, although he has no idea how to stop her from doing it. Fortunately, that’s the only task she interferes in, and even more fortunately, Russell flagrantly breaks the rules when it’s the team of two’s turn, so she doesn’t actually alter anything. And they use a lot of the duck-eye-level camera shots in the edit, which is fantastic; she looks like Godzilla destroying Tokyo, except the commuters are ducks. Alex loves it.
On the studio day, Alex and Brynhild have a silent negotiation, which is how Alex likes to think of her honking him into Greg’s dressing room a second time. She fluffs up all her feathers and settles on the dressing table like she’s done something clever, and Alex waits, wondering if Greg will be as odd this time as he was last time.
He’s not. It’s Alex who’s odd. Greg walks in and Alex opens his mouth to say hello, and then absolutely nothing comes out except a distant, dry squeak. Greg watches him for a moment, then says, “Thought I’d try a bit of a change in the look. Getting tired of squinting.”
Alex says, “Oh? Really?” and his voice feels like it’s coming from very far away. He’s always been attracted to Greg -- it’s the physical presence, the effortless air of authority, the way he knows Greg would be equally good at holding him down and holding him together. He is very comfortable with his attraction to Greg and knows how to manage it in a professional setting.
He wasn’t expecting Greg to get hotter, though. The beard, the glasses, it all looks so good that it seems unfair. He feels like these sorts of changes should come with advance notice. Two or three months would do it.
Brynhild makes a long, low, pleased noise, and Alex, as uncomfortable with physical attraction as he always is, seizes on her as a distraction. “She absolutely loves Liza,” he says. “I think you’ll like her, too. Liza, I mean.”
Greg says, “You all right, mate?”
“No, I’m not,” Alex says. “I’m -- I’m overwhelmed by your new appearance.”
Greg looks at him for a few seconds, apparently expecting something, but Alex’s brain has been flatlined by lust. He can’t find a single word to say, and the silence stretches out until Alex can’t stand it anymore.
“I have to -- uh. Andy,” he says, and darts out.
Brynhild bites him all the way down the hallway, and Alex accepts it as his just desserts.
Series Seven
It’s Andy C.’s idea to build a task around the goose. “If she’s going to get involved, let’s give her the chance to shine,” he says. Alex can’t bring himself to do anything too goose focused, but it doesn’t take him long to come up with “befriend a farm animal.” They hire in a cow, a donkey, the pony friend that the donkey apparently can’t live without, a pig that the man in charge of the animals swears is “like an angel, never hurt a soul,” and two goats that clearly have evil in their souls. Plus, for more route one choices, rabbits and dogs. It’s all set up at a nice location -- some fields with a picturesque farmhouse in the background, surprisingly close to London. On the day, the animal hire people set up stalls and cover the walkway between them with straw. The walkway leads past all the pens and down to the enclosure where the donkey and its pony soulmate graze. It’s very lovely, and Alex is extremely pleased with it.
James Acaster gets to the shooting location and immediately hates it. “This is terrible,” he says. “All these animals have probably got diseases, and I’m going to end up with mad donkey disease or something.”
“No, I don’t think so,” Alex tells him.
He walks down the row of pens. “Well I’m not doing the pig,” he says. “That thing’s enormous.”
“You’ve been going for three minutes so far,” Alex says. It’s not even a timed task -- it’s best animal friendship wins -- but he does enjoy the little huffy noise James makes in response.
“I want something small,” James says. “No ponies, no cows. I want something small and tame.” He walks past the rabbit hutch, completely ignoring them, and turns to do another lap. Then he sees Brynhild, who is sitting by herself, preening thoughtfully, and his eyes light up. “Matchmaking goose!”
“So what’s your idea?” Alex asks.
“Well,” James says. “Matchmaking geese only get aggressive with the people they’re trying to get together, right? And otherwise, they’re just birds. Birds who care about love. I care about love. And friendship is built on common interests.” He looks very pleased with himself. “And a goose is a farm animal, right?”
“All the information you need is in the task,” Alex says automatically, while wondering if he truly ought to let this play out. Andy D. catches his eye and makes a “roll with it” gesture.
James is looking around the farm area. “I’m thinking,” he says, “just get some bird food, feed the bird, bird loves me forever. Textbook!”
Out of the corner of his eye, Alex sees Helen cover her mouth with her hand. But James can’t see her, and the rest of the crew is valiantly remaining silent.
“Right,” James says. “Bird food is pretty much just grain, isn’t it?” They do have food available, hay and rabbit pellets and dog treats, plus a huge bucket of pig swill that looks absolutely disgusting. James, after four seconds’ thought, picks the dog treats. “Here, goose,” he calls hopefully. “I have food for you and I care about love!”
Brynhild watches him. She doesn’t seem to believe he could possibly be talking to her, and that may be what lures James in closer.
“Here, goosey,” James says, advancing on her. Alex, covering his mouth with his clipboard, remembers how well she liked it when Rob Beckett called her goosey.
Brynhild watches until James is about four feet away. Then she lowers her head. Everyone on the crew except Gary the camera guy flinches; they all know what that means.
James clearly does not. “I think it likes me,” he calls to Alex, and at that moment, Brynhild charges. James gives a choked-off cry of dismay, drops the treats, and flees headlong away from her, not looking where he’s going. Alex, worried, calls, “Careful of the fence, James.”
James doesn’t hit the fence. He doesn’t get that far. Instead, he slips on the straw, knocks into the pig food bucket, spills it everywhere, slides through it, and ends up bursting through the gate of the pig’s pen, which apparently wasn’t designed for this kind of mistreatment. Alex can already see quite a lot of paperwork in his future as he goes scurrying after him.
The pig grunts in mild surprise and gets up from where she was napping. James says, faintly, “Fuck.”
The pig licks some swill off James’s trouser seat and looks thoughtful. Brynhild, who has perched on the top rail of the pig’s pen and is watching the scene with pleasure, looks on, honking repeatedly.
“Your fucking goose is laughing at me, Alex,” James says. “I’m about to be eaten by a pig while I’m being mocked by a fucking goose. This is exactly how I always thought I would die.”
It plays tremendously well in the studio. The final shot, of James lying on his back in the pig pen, the pig and Brynhild both looking down at him from different angles, is absolutely gorgeous, and Alex is proud of it.
In the end, it’s Kerry five for her genuine love at first sight relationship with the pony, Jess four for her romping friendship with the dogs, Phil three for being pointedly ignored by a cow, James two because at least the pig tolerated him, and Rhod one after he also attempted to befriend the goose. “If I could take points away,” Greg says to Rhod, “I would. Your task was to befriend an animal, and instead you drove one into a biting rage. So, pretty much the same effect you have on humans.”
Then it’s the live task and they’re done for the day. Alex goes back to his dressing room and changes, and five minutes later, Greg walks in. Brynhild honks welcomingly.
Greg shuts the door behind him and immediately says, “Listen. I just need to know the plan. Is the plan to ignore the goose forever? Just, oh, she’s a fun accessory for the show?”
Alex feels suddenly at sea. Greg didn’t even say hello. He’s not ready for this conversation. “No,” he says. Because that isn’t the plan.
Greg sits down on the unreliable loveseat. “Then tell me the plan, because I think I’m losing my mind.”
Alex thinks it through and then says the only thing he can. “I don’t think there is a plan.”
Greg stares at him for a long, long moment. “Alex,” he finally says. “We’ve had the goose for three years. When were you going to think about that?”
“I think about it constantly,” Alex says, instantly and truthfully. “I have no idea what you think. I wasn’t even entirely sure you knew she’s -- she’s yours as well.”
Greg runs his hands through his hair and leaves it mussed in a way Alex finds simultaneously attractive and endearing. “It’s one thing to assume I’m an idiot. It’s another to assume she is.” He gestures at Brynhild, and Alex -- recontextualises.
“She was with you. When she wasn’t with us.”
“Yes. We had some nice holidays. She loved the fucking yurt. She loved my nieces. And I loved having her around.” Greg gives Alex a look he recognises. It’s the look that says: go with it, work with me, yes and. Alex would happily say yes and -- or just yes. To anything. But he’s dropped the cue, has no idea where they’re going. After a minute, Greg sighs a little and continues. “And on those vacations, or when she was around my house, she never bit anyone, including me, or attacked colleagues of mine. She knew she didn’t need to.”
The penny drops, and Alex would quite honestly like to go back to ignorance. “I’m the problem,” he says. And he knew that, he’s known that all this time. But he thought he was only a problem for Brynhild. It’s starting to seem like he’s also been a problem for Greg, and that is truly the last thing he wanted.
“It was one thing when I thought this whole goose thing was a game we were both playing,” Greg says. “But it’s getting increasingly difficult to interpret the last three years as anything but extremely prolonged rejection.” He’s leaning forward, his arms folded and his elbows on his knees, and he is not quite looking at Alex, and Alex feels awful in the bad way, guilty, like he’s broken something terribly important. Like he’s hurt someone he loves. “If that’s what this is -- I’d rather you just say it so we can all move on with our lives.”
“I -- no. It’s not that. It was never that,” Alex says, stumbling over the words. “It was.” He thinks rapidly, wishing he’d articulated this to himself, and then decides to just start talking. “I wanted -- we don’t have much of a relationship outside work, and that didn’t change, and I didn’t want to make things strange between us.”
Greg stares at him. “And that is what you think you’ve accomplished over the past seven seasons?”
“Well, no, I -- clearly not. But I thought I did. And I also,” and Alex both hates and loves to admit this, because it’s terrible to say, but it’s so, so good at the same time, “I also liked it. Liked. Well, I liked everyone looking, and knowing, and I enjoyed waiting. I liked thinking of it as you -- turning me down. Telling me no. Without actually having you do those things.” He looks at Greg, hoping he understands.
Greg’s jaw actually drops. After a few seconds, he says, his tone completely changed, “If you think I need a goose to be cruel to you and humiliate you and make you wait for everything you want, you are very, very wrong.”
Alex’s whole heart expands. “Well. That is. That is. Good to know.” His mouth is going dry, making it hard to talk, and he can feel himself flushing slightly, but he pushes on.
“And that’s it? That’s why” -- Greg gestures at the entire world -- “all of this?”
“It’s most of why, yes.”
“And the rest?”
Alex looks at Brynhild. “I like her.”
Greg’s voice is soft when he says, “I like her, too.”
Alex looks back at Greg. “But I think she’s getting rather tired of -- well. Me, basically.”
Brynhild, who has been watching this whole exchange as intently as she’s ever watched anything, honks in agreement.
“What about Rachel?” Greg asks.
“Oh! She said for me to tell her when it was time to give you the crib sheet, and I forgot,” Alex yanks his phone out, distressed, and rapidly begins tapping out the message to her.
Rachel texts back: Finally. And then she adds, Give him my number.
Alex does, and Greg says, “Brynhild is still here, so I assume we’re still missing something.”
“Well. There are. Traditional ways of -- of making the goose go away,” Alex says.
Greg says, “Get over here.” Alex does, of course, and when he’s in front of him, Greg pulls him down, not gently, onto his lap. “Since you don’t seem capable of making a plan,” he says, and Alex shivers at his voice, low and deep and intent, “I will. We’re going to kiss, and I’m going to bite you where everyone can see, so everyone will know that you gave it up to me at last.”
“Yes,” Alex says, his voice breaking humiliatingly in the middle of it.
“Yes, what?”
“Yes, please,” Alex says automatically, and Greg kisses him. Greg has a hand behind his neck and another around his waist and Alex feels closed in, held, restrained, and in the good way, the very good way. Then Greg moves Alex’s head just a little, bites his lip sharply enough to make Alex gasp in surprise, and slides his tongue in, fucks Alex’s mouth. Alex hears himself making noises, he can never keep control in these situations, and he feels Greg shift his fingers slightly and dig his nails in. Alex gasps and his hips jerk, completely out of his control. The loveseat gives a horrifying creak and collapses.
It takes them several minutes to separate themselves from the wreckage, and once they have, it’s clear the loveseat’s days as a functional piece of furniture are over. Alex stares at them, imagining explaining this to Andy, to the theatre manager, to everyone -- “Greg kissed me until I lost control and I broke it,” he pictures himself saying, and he feels himself getting hard. He looks up to see if Greg is perhaps ready for vertical kissing.
Greg isn’t looking at him. Greg’s looking at -- Brynhild. She looks incandescent with joy, almost aglow, all her feathers fluffy and perfect. Greg holds out a hand to her, and she doesn’t so much fly to him as materialise in front of him. He holds her tight for just a second and says, “We got there in the end. Thank you.”
Greg hands her to Alex, who says. “I’m very sorry I was so difficult.” Brynhild bites him on the shoulder, so gently it might as well not be a bite at all.
And then she’s gone.
Alex’s eyes are a little damp, but so are Greg’s, so he doesn’t feel bad about it. Instead he says, “I hope her next people are a bit easier than we were.”
“As long as they are anyone else but you, they will be,” Greg says. “Come on. Let’s go find someone to tell about this disaster.” He gestures to the loveseat.
Alex hesitates, hesitates, and then he makes himself do it. “Would you like to come over for dinner? I could introduce you to Rachel. We could show you the shed.” He’s nervous. They’re on their own now, capable of fucking things up, no longer supervised by an angry, fateful entity.
Greg smiles. “Yes,” he says. He takes Alex’s hand and leads him out, and Alex relaxes.
Brynhild’s shift is over. Greg’s in charge now.