Chapter Text
Greg is just trying to go about his day, berating Alex on television as per his job, but if he’s honest with himself, he’s the one who fucks up. Tempting as it may be to blame Alex, he knows a beat after the words are out of his mouth that they’re a mistake.
They’re running a particularly hectic studio task involving ping-pong balls and leaf blowers, Alex dashing back and forth across the stage in his hilarious little run to ensure the leaf blowers are on the right setting. Greg’s made fun of his penis on the show, his masculinity, talked about how improbable it is that he has a wife and children, and what he says this time seems in keeping with that. No different. Greg’s talked to Rachel about those sort of jokes, and she’s told him that she thinks they’re funny, even given him material about it once or twice. So why should it be different?
“Jesus Christ, Alex, get behind Susan too! She won’t bite you. It is sometimes so hard to believe you’re heterosexual,” Greg barks, to roars from the audience. On the next breath he takes he knows it was the wrong thing to say, the wrong note to hit; it tolls unpleasantly inside of him, though he doesn’t know why, and the feeling of having done something wrong worsens when Alex replies.
Alex is breathless, distracted, not looking at him, venturing hesitantly towards Susan, whose strategy involves her being bent over with her ass in the air.
“Bisexual, actually, just really bad at it!” he exclaims, over the roar of the leafblowers. Greg hears him, and the contestants hear him, and certainly the sound crew hear him, but Greg’s not convinced much of the audience hear him.
If they do, well, it’s Alex’s business to shout that at a roomful of people if he wants.
That’s his first thought, how far the declaration traveled, whether it’s going to be on twitter tomorrow; his second thought is that his hands feel strangely cold and his stomach is twisted in a sudden hard knot.
His third thought is that it might be a joke, in that weird vein of Alex jokes where he lies about hating the saxophone or about what his wedding song was. He dismisses that immediately, hating the taste of it; Alex knows, about him, knows that Greg is—he knows. Surely, he knows. And he wouldn’t joke like that. About that.
And if Alex wasn’t joking, then what Greg’s just done, the position Greg’s just forced him into, is pretty fucking shitty.
While Greg’s mind spins in circles, the show goes on without him; luckily it’s not a task where he’s called on to participate much. They finish up, with enough ridiculous business that Greg doubts his little exchange with Alex will even make it into the final cut of the show. He can feel it being snipped right out, no harm done.
He still feels like shit about it. He should know better. It distracts him through the whole wrap-up of the show, the bad taste it’s left in his mouth.
When the director calls it a wrap, he turns to say something to Alex, an apology or an explanation or something, but Alex has already bounced to his feet and is talking intently to the camera operator, Sean; from Alex’s gestures, Greg thinks they’re talking about the angles for an upcoming live task. He waits, awkwardly, but then Sean and Alex are walking up to the stage together, and everyone else is packing up and leaving, so Greg heads off to his dressing room, still stewing over it.
He doesn’t like the thought that he forced Alex into saying something he wouldn’t want to say. Something he’s never said in public before, in Greg’s hearing at least. And Alex can be surprisingly private, sometimes, and weird about sex; all in all, it’s a bad combination, and Greg braces himself for some kind of negative reaction from Alex, once he’s out of character.
Alex has never been the type of producer to yell, or the type of costar to make a fuss when he’s upset, so Greg doesn’t precisely know what kind of reaction he’s bracing for; biting sarcastic comments or the cold and silent treatment are his best guesses. He’s not looking forward to either.
All the same, he’s relieved when he runs into Alex later, when the studio lights are down and the people are mostly gone and they’re both on their way out. Alex is in his terrible normal clothes, a baggy jumper and a pair of jeans that would be suited to either a much younger or much older man.
“Hey, sorry for what I said,” Greg blurts out, immediately, not wanting the feeling to sit inside his head a moment longer. Alex doesn’t seem bitter or angry; he seems, at most, taken aback by Greg’s apology.
“Pardon?” he says, which infuriates Greg, because he knows it’s a bit Alex does.
“I said, I’m sorry,” Greg repeats, loud enough that Alex flinches back satisfyingly.
“Oh, okay,” Alex says, shrugging agreement. Greg wonders if he’s going to go on pretending he doesn’t know what Greg’s apologizing for, but then he adds, “It’s not as if you and I don’t talk about fancying men on the show all the time. Including each other. It’s not a problem.”
“All right,” Greg replies, not sure what else to say. In comedy, you talk about fancying anyone, don’t you. You talk about it, you make jokes about it, and no one assumes it has to do with your real self. But a label like that, bisexual, that’s something different. Greg once even said, in plain terms, on the show, that he fancies men and women both, but without a label, no one took it seriously, and Greg couldn’t be bothered to correct them. Especially since, as Paul Chowdhry was quick to point out, the men part of the equation hasn’t been relevant to his life very often.
Part of Greg feels like it shouldn’t matter, what he’s done with men and how often and how recently, but it does.
He tries again. “I didn’t mean to force you into saying anything you didn’t want to say.”
Alex shrugs again, unbothered. It’s weird. “It’s not a big secret,” he says. Then he pauses, and smiles softly. “You’re very kind to think of that, though.”
Greg finds himself wanting to yell again, because if it’s not a big secret, why didn’t Greg, who’s been sat beside Alex for years at this point, already know? British comedy is a small community, everyone knows everyone’s business, and Greg didn’t know this. He’s kissed Alex, and he didn’t know this.
It makes him feel fucking stupid when he thinks of it that way.
Alex chats to him for a couple of minutes about the next show, transitioning seamlessly to another topic of conversation as if there’s nothing particularly interesting about the one they were on. Greg nods along as best he can, and then they say goodnight and head their separate ways.
Greg thinks about other things while he’s on his way home: the way Daliso kicks his feet when he laughs, Eshaan pointedly taking out his hearing aid when Greg tried to score him last, Andy’s latest hair experiment, that email from his agent that he really needs to answer, the comedy special that Roisin may or may not be doing for Netflix. It’s only when he’s back in his kitchen getting himself something to eat that he realises his mind is racing, and it’s only on the heels of that realisation that he realises he’s annoyed, and it’s only after poking at the feeling for a good minute or two that he realises why.
He’s irritated at Alex.
He’s irritated at Alex because he cheerfully shouted about his sexuality in front of a live audience and then seemed . . . in a completely out-of-character way, mind . . . cool with it. Alex isn’t cool, it’s his whole thing. Alex is not-cool as a form of performance art, at this point, and maybe sometimes he comes round to cool again from the other side, geek-cool or nerd-cool, cool in the way your friend’s dad who makes fucking awful puns can sort of be cool, but shrugging nonchalance about his sexual proclivities just isn’t like him. Greg’s always been able to get a rise out of him with sex, with sexual innuendo, with a dare for a kiss that Alex just barely managed to meet. This is . . . unusual. Seeing Alex comfortable with himself is unusual.
Greg has no idea how to deal with this version of Alex, how to factor him into the world as he knows it. He fixes himself a meal, and calls his mum, and pokes at a script he’s working on, and watches some American sitcom that none of his friends are on, and all through the evening his mind keeps returning to the idea, that Alex is bisexual, that Alex doesn’t mind who knows; that Alex, who feels anxious about everything, apparently doesn’t feel anxious about this.
*
On their next filming day, they do a bit about how he, Greg, gets massages and handjobs from Alex. They don’t say it like that, but it’s implied. It’s the intent of the banter Alex has written, and he delivers it in his usual prim way, as if it’s not sexual at all.
Normally it would be a joke, said and forgotten, but in this new context, the Alex-is-possibly-actually-and-not-joking-about-it-bisexual context, Greg dwells on it, clearly more than he should; he thinks about the reality of Alex having sex and—fuck, and intimacy with other men. Has Alex had those things with men? Or is it something he’s wanted, but never acted on? What did he mean, he’s bad at bisexuality? Does he mean, because he’s married and monogamous? Because he’s never . . . tried anything? With a man?
Greg starts thinking, against his will, about whether Alex and Rachel perhaps aren’t monogamous, and shuts that thought down as fast as he can, realising with sudden horror that he’s lost track of the thread of the show banter. He finds it again quick enough, and jumps back in, he hopes seamlessly.
He does the next throw to the commercial break, then interrupts when the director starts taking them to the next sequence.
“Can we have a break, Andy? Just need a minute.”
Andy calls time and Greg gets the hell out of there, relieved to find no one else in the men’s when he goes. He braces his hand against the wall while he takes a piss, braces his forehead against his arm, and tries to push down that feeling, that same feeling of uncontrollable irritation he can’t seem to shake.
Why does Alex write that rubbish into the show, anyway? It’s gotten more and more explicit as the series have progressed, and it’s not like Greg doesn’t enjoy it, doesn’t up the ante, but it’s never occurred to him to wonder why Alex, who on his own rarely does sexual comedy, would design their banter that way. He feels a fool, that he’s never asked about it, never even thought about it.
Well. Maybe not never. He has thought about it, sometimes, drunk and horny and in the privacy of his own mind and his own flat. He gets immunity for that, he thinks, for the weird and silly and occasionally offensive bullshit that comes to him while he’s wanking. Images of Alex on his knees, overwhelmed by Greg’s dick in his mouth, images of Alex begging to service him. It’s just fantasy, based on the ridiculous Taskmaster world of the show; Greg loves a power trip and the show dynamics are incredibly kinky, so it’s always made sense to him that those images come to mind now and then when he’s getting himself off. It’s not the first time he’s fantasized about a coworker without actually wanting to fuck them. It doesn’t mean anything, and it doesn’t have anything to do with how he actually feels about Alex as a person. Or, at least, it shouldn’t.
But he’s never thought about the show banter like this, in the light of day, like it’s something real.
He washes his hands, occasionally looking up to scowl at the fifty year old man in the mirror, at his thick neck and at the places where his beard would be grey if he didn’t colour it. He wonders, just for a moment, what would’ve happened if he’d met Alex when they were both younger, when he was angrier and more impulsive, when Alex was . . . someone else. Someone even weirder, maybe. They probably would’ve hated each other.
But maybe not. There’s no way to know, now.
As it stands, Greg doesn’t hate Alex. He likes him, a lot. Except when he wants to strangle him.
When he comes back to the set, Alex is sitting in his chair just like always, legs crossed neatly, iPad on his lap, reading the football scores. He looks up at Greg and makes his little frowny-face. “Everything . . . alright?” he asks.
“Yes?” Greg says, as if it’s odd for Alex to be asking.
“You seemed distracted, before,” Alex insists. Of course, of course he noticed the one fucking minute Greg wasn’t on top of the show banter.
Greg rolls his eyes and flops down into his Taskmaster chair, flinging one leg over the arm. He feels too hot, like he’s sweating, and sure enough, Carol frowns at him and comes over to blot his forehead and touch up his makeup.
“I needed a piss break, Alex, because I am old enough to be your father and my prostate is now the size of a Christmas ham.”
Alex laughs at that, genuinely, and Greg feels relief, like he’s gotten away with something.
“You’re not old enough to be my father, and I don’t think much of all the people who say you look it,” Alex replies, drawing a laugh from Carol as she finishes up. Greg shakes his head, because Alex always does his insult-jokes like that, putting them in someone else’s mouth. Dodge and weave, Alex’s signature move.
“And yet you call me daddy,” Greg pushes. His own signature move, if he has one, is probably dealing with things head on, directly, candidly.
Alex raises his eyebrows. “Oh, well, that’s something else entirely. You’re certainly old enough for that sort of thing, aren’t you?”
“It’s the one sexual fetish I can still fulfill, I suppose,” Greg agrees, sighing. He bounces his leg against the arm of the chair. “My only remaining value.”
“You’ll always have being quite tall, as well,” Alex says, taking the piss in that devastating deadpan way of his, and Greg actually laughs, feeling some of his irritation melt away. It’s better, so much better, than Alex saying you’re very kind to think of that. Greg feels Alex’s insults for something he’s genuinely insecure about like a cool balm to his hot, irritated soul.
“Fuck you,” he says, chuckling.
Alex smiles at him, one of the open, genuine ones that show off his wonky little bottom tooth, and Greg reaches over to pat his hand.
“We about ready to get back into it?” Greg asks, reluctantly sliding his leg down off the armrest as Eddie and Gina both sit back down.
“Yes, and grateful to you for calling frequent loo breaks,” Eddie replies, shoving her hair back over her shoulder. “I didn’t want to call them myself, but I would have done, and it’s far nicer if the host provides the excuse.”
“We get to an age, don’t we,” Greg says.
“Do we?” Eddie asks, with her characteristic sharpness. “What age?”
“When there’s . . . no use bullshitting anymore,” Greg says, slowly, though it wasn’t what he meant to say. “And, you know, the bladder stops working.”
“Ah. I definitely agree on both counts,” Eddie replies.
Her sharp gaze drifts down, and Greg realizes he’s still got his hand on Alex’s, and that Alex has obediently left his hand under Greg’s. He’s not even looking at it, just using his iPad one-handed, left-handed, having abandoned the football scores to play that brightly coloured matching game he likes with swift little strokes of his fingers.
Greg taps his fingertips on Alex’s knuckles thoughtfully. Alex doesn’t seem to notice.
*
Later, on impulse, when Alex is on stage for the studio task, Greg calls up to him.
“Hi, baby.”
It’s nothing out of the ordinary, nothing he hasn’t called Alex a hundred times before. It pops out before he even thinks about it, and of course it’s a setup that Alex volleys right back at him, given their conversation earlier.
“Hello, daddy,” Alex replies cheerfully. No one even laughs, among the audience or the contestants; the cameraman smiles fondly; Alex bounces on his toes. It’s just expected, at this point, that they call each other little lovey-dovey kinky nicknames. Greg’s sure it used to be a joke, can vaguely remember it being a joke, and tries to think back to when their endearments actually got a laugh. As he watches Alex explain the task, he realises that he’s been thinking of the two of them increasingly as two actors who play an on-screen couple, as if they were in a sitcom. That it’s a role to slip into, rather than a one-off joke.
He should’ve known; he loves a character, loves the freedom of being a different version of himself. It’s just been a while since he’s done it with a partner, with someone like Alex who can come all the way down with him. Alex has never, ever, refused a challenge. Greg’s never met an improviser like him, willing to commit so deeply. And once he’s got a concept fixed in his mind, he sticks to it. It’s something Greg’s always both admired and absolutely loathed about the man.
Watching distractedly as the task gets underway and the confetti starts flying, he thinks: of course it’s normal for actors who play lovers to become fond of one another. Plenty of stories like that, aren’t there, where two people played a couple and became fast friends, or got married, what have you. Grew to hate each other and never spoke again. Plenty of those stories, too, onscreen lovers who couldn’t stand the sight of one another in real life. People for whom the playacting went sour.
On stage, Alex is laughing and hiding behind his hand, as if embarrassed by the exact outcome he planned for. Greg feels himself grinding his back teeth on the left side, and stops with an effort.
He’s often fond of Alex, but right now he can’t find the indulgent smile and eyeroll he would normally have for him during their weird little flirtatious jokes; instead he feels turned around and backwards, fond but irritated at his own fondness, tired and bored watching this script they’ve played out a million times with the same results. He could call Alex baby and Alex could call him daddy a million times and it would be the same joke over and over. Stale. Boring. Meaningless.
Empty.
Luckily, Daliso’s tower of high heeled shoes comes crashing down, providing some entertainment, and Greg puts that tooth-grinding feeling to the back of his mind, pops a smile onto his face, and tries to stay present while they finish the show.
*
In the production meeting the next day, he and Alex are sat next to each other, just like on the show, and Alex is dressed in one of his odd loud jumpers that’s far too big for him, making him look even tinier than he usually does next to Greg. He picks at a loose thread on the sleeve, like a kid might, and Greg, for a hot, engulfing moment, can’t stand him.
“Will you stop playing with that,” Greg says, not a question, way too intense, but luckily Alex is the only one who hears him; the rest of the table are talking about having a horse in the studio, something that Greg assumes is a joke.
“Sorry,” Alex says, not sounding like he’s sorry; sounding like he’s surprised.
“You’re a grown man,” Greg says. “I’ve seen it.”
“Course you have,” Alex replies, like a canned reply, like his mouth is on autopilot.
“So act like it,” Greg says, and then rejoins the rest of the conversation before Alex can say anything more.
Alex doesn’t mention it, that day or any other. He lets it go. That restraint is annoying, too.
*
It’s not that he’s never held a grudge before, or doesn’t know how to handle it. It’s more that he’s never before held a grudge without quite knowing what the grudge was about. He gets flashes of hot-headed irritation mixed in with something softer, more tender, and the combination is exhausting.
His instinct, though, as always, is to push.
They’re down the pub, him and Alex and Eshaan and the Andys and whoever else, and Greg is peeling at the paper cover on his coaster and watching Alex laugh with Eshaan, easy, leaning into him, their shoulders brushing, Alex’s eyes bright. He looks like he hasn’t a care in the world.
Greg flicks a rolled-up piece of paper from his coaster towards Alex, and Alex smiles, surprised, and defends; from there, Alex crafts an entire goal system, with a net made of peanuts, and contrives to block Greg’s shots with a bit of napkin fashioned into a little stick-figure. Some get through, and some don’t, and they make jokes while they do it, neutral ones, uncomplicated ones that don’t mean anything. Greg makes up a narrative about Alex’s napkin-goaltender and Alex makes a football pun off of Greg’s narrative and it’s all right, between them, normal.
Eshaan gets up to go to the toilet. The Andys are distracted, arguing about beer opinions. The others are enmeshed in their own conversations, ignoring Greg and Alex and their silly game. Greg takes another shot on goal; Alex defends. Alex kicks the ball back out to him from the corner (the salt shaker). Greg thinks about asking, and the silence stretches between them.
“Are you really, though?” he hears himself ask, while he’s lining up his next shot, a bank shot off the side of the vinegar.
“Yes.” Alex answers immediately. “Am I really what?”
“Bisexual,” Greg pronounces, taking the shot. It bounces with some speed and rolls into the pocket. Goal.
It’s possible the Andys and the others weren’t as distracted as he thought, though, because as he says it he feels the table go a little quiet, feels a collective held breath around him. It occurs to Greg, belatedly, that this is the same sin he apologized for previously, making Alex talk about it in circumstances not of his own choosing. It occurs to him that this one is worse than the first one.
“If you say so,” Alex says, his usual passive dodge. That’s what gets to Greg, what infuriates him, Alex’s incessant dodging, his ability to move just so, to avoid the world for another second, another paltry moment, to delay the inevitable. Greg shuts down the part of his brain that wants to ask what shitty experiences instilled that instinct in Alex. He’s too busy being infuriated.
“It’s not really mine to say, is it,” Greg says, forcing a laugh, gesturing his exasperation, trying to demonstrate to the suddenly assembled audience that it’s Alex who’s being unreasonable.
Alex, for his part, furrows his brow, the frown overtaking his face. “Then, fine, yes,” he says, sounding, for once, actually annoyed. “I thought it was clear, actually.”
Greg purses his lips, anger roiling inside of him at the idea that Alex thought he’d been clear. Alex holds his gaze for a beat or two, then looks back down into his pint glass.
“Well, good for you, mate,” Eshaan says genially, clapping Alex on the shoulder. Greg didn’t even notice him coming back from the toilets.
“Oh, thanks, yeah,” Alex says, easily, not taking his eyes off of Greg. He’s back to that coolness, again, that easiness that Greg can’t stand.
One Andy glances at the other, and perhaps by mutual silent accord, they move the conversation on. Not long after, Alex starts making Latin puns, probably because he knows it’s the quickest way to annoy the shit out of Greg, and Greg takes the hint and leaves.
*
I’m really sorry. I feel like I keep badgering you about this, and you don’t deserve it, Greg writes, later, when he’s drunk and full of regret in his kitchen.
Part of him doesn’t believe himself; part of him thinks Alex deserves it, though he can’t put his finger on why. He doesn’t want to apologise; he wants to poke Alex about it some more. He knows it’s an asshole impulse, but there it is.
You did surprise me somewhat, Alex sends back, immediately. Greg wonders if he was already on his phone, if he was thinking about texting Greg. He was probably checking the football scores again, or watching highlights with his earbuds in so as not to wake the children.
Greg supposes that you did surprise me somewhat is Alex for you pissed me right the fuck off, but it’s something, Greg can work with that. So he bites his lip and types another text, blinking to get his eyes to focus on the tiny screen.
I didn’t mean to put you on the spot in front of people, he writes. Then, grinding his teeth, he adds, Sorry
Alex is already typing back to him before Greg even gets the sorry out.
It’s really all right. I was short with you, and shouldn’t have been. I’m just not used to talking about it. Usually no one asks
Greg stares at that for a long while, no idea whatsoever what he ought to say. The text feels, strangely, like an invitation.
They neither of them say what it is, and Greg remembers advice from an older comedian he’d fucked once, something like twenty years ago now: don’t leave anything in writing, my boy. It’s bullshit, but Greg isn’t going to be the first one to write your bisexuality in place of a vague pronoun.
Then another message from Alex comes in:
Anyway, it’s rarely relevant to my life
Ed is always accusing Greg of over-analyzing everything; when they used to tour together it obviously got genuinely on his nerves, enough that it became a running joke. Greg would take something apart in ruthless detail for twenty minutes, and Ed would roll his eyes, and they’d go from there, playing their parts for an audience of each other. It’s not even beating a dead horse, Ed said once, waving his hands about, it’s beating the dead horse, chopping it into bits, putting the bits in a blender, then putting a saddle on the blender.
Greg, laughing and utterly fascinated, had analyzed that metaphor in quite a lot of detail, which made Ed scream and stomp about with rage, which made Greg laugh harder.
But Greg knows that his need to pick things apart, to analyze, to drill down into meaning is also at the heart of his comedy, his standup and his sitcom writing and his Taskmaster role alike. He’s good at it, able to find the one tiny thing in a situation or a story that doesn’t fit and examine it like a jewel to reveal the shine. And it’s a good job other people find that entertaining, because he’s pretty sure it’s a setting in his brain that can’t be turned off.
Take this moment, for instance: given who he is and how his mind works, Greg has essentially no choice, looking at Alex’s message, but to fall into the word rarely and live in it for a few long, terrifying seconds. Rarely relevant to Alex’s life. Not never, not not-anymore, not not-since-I-got-married-and-had-three-kids. Rarely. Which means, sometimes.
If Alex fucks men sometimes—if Alex—
Greg shakes himself away from that thought. He was trying to apologise, because he keeps losing his mind and being an ass and getting angry with Alex and he has no fucking idea why.
Anyway, it’s rarely relevant to my life. The text shines up at him, and when Greg can pull himself out of that one word, he sees the rest of it, the dismissive little anyway, the implication that it’s not worth talking about.
Greg thinks about that feeling, the one he knows from the inside, that feeling that a part of you doesn’t matter because nobody sees it, or cares to see it. He hates that feeling, and thinking about Alex having it makes him well with anger. He can’t tell anymore if the anger is at Alex or if it’s something else, something bigger.
It’s still important, he writes, letting just a trickle of that feeling escape his chest. Still part of you. Doesn’t matter how relevant
If it were Ed or Roisin, someone Greg can joke with confidently, he’d have written doesn’t matter how many men you fuck, but he holds himself back.
I suppose, comes Alex’s answer back.
Greg rubs his face, pushing his glasses up over his forehead and off his ears. He realises, as he does so, that they’ve been digging into his head, that he has a headache, that he wants to lie down.
He doesn’t text Alex again that night, and he doesn’t get another text from him.
*
The autocue at the next taping has a joke about him tying Alex up and spanking him, which Greg skips right past. He feels the little two-beat silence as Alex realises that he’s moved on to the and what were our contestants doing before the break, Alex? part, but then Alex jumps right in again. Well, Greg, just like a million times before, performing obsequiousness and adoration. Their roles are their roles, and it’s all just an act, it’s obviously just an act to Alex, but Greg doesn’t want to play today.
As they stumble through the next bit of dialogue, Greg realises that his heart is pounding, which is stupid. He thinks about Gina and Susan, who can see the autocue and might wonder what’s going on, and he thinks about Eddie, whose ability to analyze is a bit like Greg’s, who probably can’t see the autocue from her seat, but might not need it to figure out what’s going on.
Greg doesn’t know what’s going on.
He sees a momentary frown on Andy Devonshire’s face, there and gone again, and Greg knows in that second that none of them are going to mention it. To spare his feelings. He hates the idea; he wishes he’d just done the joke.
Alex calls a break not long after that, and when Greg gets back from the men’s this time he can see him talking to the Andys, his hands moving over a script, pointing out specific lines. Greg feels embarrassment roll through his body, chest to toes to fingertips to forehead.
“All set,” Alex says, with a little nod, when he comes back to sit down. Greg feels like a child who’s made a fuss about something ridiculous, obscenely visible now he’s being catered to. Sure enough, when the autocue comes up, there’s no sexual banter of any kind between him and Alex; instead, it’s more the flavour of their interactions from the early seasons, talk about Alex polishing his shoes and fetching his drycleaning. Not that it’s any less kinky, especially in the context of everything they’ve done before, but Greg recognizes the olive branch and says his lines with as much good humour as he can muster.
It’s exhausting. He hates it. He doesn’t know how to fix it.
He has to talk to Alex.
*
After the taping that day, he finds Alex in the car park. It’s late, but it’s summer, so the sun is still bathing the buildings in a watery glow. Alex, in the distance, seems to be scuttling off to his car. Greg grimaces, then bypasses his natural urge to bellow Alex’s name and instead jogs to catch up with him.
“Oh, Jesus,” Alex startles, as Greg appears alongside him. “Where did you come from?”
Greg heaves for breath and gives Alex a look. “The question you should be asking is why a six foot eight, twenty-two stone man can run up beside you in an empty car park without you noticing.”
“Hmm. You alright there?” Alex offers a tentative smile, making fun of him for being out of breath. Greg waves him off, dipping to put his hands on his knees briefly before standing up again. Alex’s head swivels to look up at him.
“Fine. Listen. I wanted to ask why you were taking the, uh. The lines out of the show.”
Alex’s brow furrows. “The lines.”
Greg hates how Alex sometimes pronounces all the letters in a word, with emphasis on every single one of them. He scowls. “Yes, the lines. The—whatever, the kinky, sexy stuff.”
“Oh, that.” Alex nods, his gaze darting around the car park, like he’ll find the answer in some camera operator’s Kia. “Well, I didn’t—that is to say, you’ve never objected before, but I realised that I’ve never particularly asked—and you seemed, um.”
Greg knows what he seemed, but his instinct is to deny it. “I skipped one line on the autocue, Alex, it’s not the first time.”
“You never skip those lines on the autocue.” Alex is looking at him now. “You like them. You liked them. At least, I thought you did.” He coughs. “Something . . . changed, and you weren’t comfortable, and I thought, well, I’ve never really asked him, have I.”
“No, we just fell into a long-term gay bdsm roleplay session by inches and never really noticed it happening.” The joke has its intended effect; Alex ducks his head and laughs, softly, crossing his arms and gripping the sleeves of his jumper with his fingers.
“Well. I noticed it happening,” Alex admits. Greg is surprised by his sudden candour. “I noticed, and I, you know. Engineered it.” He makes a hand gesture Greg can’t interpret. “It always felt like fun. I thought you were in on the fun.”
“You thought—you were—” Greg takes a breath, feeling a confusing mix of emotions spread from his chest. He was in on it, of course he was. Except lately, he feels like he wasn’t. “I mean, yes, you engineered it, you wrote all those jokes, and you—you kissed me—”
“You kissed me,” Alex corrects, immediately, which turns anger into the dominant note in the emotional stew Greg’s swimming in, because he is not having that.
“You dared me, and you know how I feel about a dare, and you know how I feel about—” kissing men on camera, he wants to say, because he thinks he’s developed a reputation for doing that in some circles, but he cuts himself off.
“I know, I know,” Alex says, swiftly, holding his hands up in a placating gesture. “I did, I dared you. You know how I feel about a dare.”
Greg rubs his forehead with his hand, pushing the sweat back from his temples. “Yeah.” They might have very different senses of humour, but they’ve always had that in common, the tendency to push at boundaries, to go one step further than before and bring the other one along. Alex wrote the jokes, but Greg yes-anded them.
There’s a pause between them, the light fading from the ugly concrete below their feet, the shadows lengthening. He gropes for the thread of his thoughts; he thinks they’ve gotten distracted, tangled, and he can no longer remember what he wanted to say to Alex, how he wanted to say it.
“You didn’t ask today, either,” Greg says, after a moment. “What I wanted, why I skipped the line. You just made another decision without telling me.” He’s working up a head of steam, now, and adds, “Like how you made us an onscreen couple without telling me.”
“Okay,” Alex says, slowly, like he’s trying to hold on to his patience. “And this is a big deal for you after five years because . . . ?”
“Because it feels different now, Alex,” Greg explodes. “Because I don’t get the joke anymore!”
Alex shakes his head, closing his eyes, not hearing him, not hearing him. “I don’t see why it matters,” Alex says, and it’s one of the few times Greg’s heard him sound truly cross. It’s like he’s having a completely different conversation, one that Greg’s not currently a part of.
“You don’t see why it matters,” Greg returns, deadpan.
“No, I don’t see why it matters,” Alex is building towards a full-blown huff now, and Greg watches, half in detached fascination and half in angry disbelief. “I may have written it, but you clearly wanted to play, and we had this, this professional relationship, with boundaries, it was all fine, and then you find something out about me and all of a sudden you’re weird and angry with me and you don’t want to play anymore.”
“Jesus Christ, Alex, it’s not because you’re bisexual,” Greg spits back.
Alex blows out a breath and spreads his hands, looking honestly bewildered. “Then what? Honestly, what?”
“Because you’re bisexual and you never told me! Because I didn’t know—didn’t know what it all meant. What all that shit you wrote for us actually meant.” Greg’s finding the words as he speaks them, surprising himself with the reasons pouring out of him.
“It’s comedy! It doesn’t mean anything! It shouldn’t be any different if I’m one thing or another,” Alex protests.
“It is, and you know it is, don’t lie to me.”
“It shouldn’t be,” Alex insists, more weakly this time, and Greg takes pity on him.
“Maybe it shouldn’t make a difference,” he admits, “but it does. It matters to me. If I’m going to snog you on television, or, or talk about spanking you, for Christ’s sake, it matters. I wanted—I just wanted to know. It’s like . . .” Greg searches for something he can liken it to, something Alex will understand. “It’s like finding out years later that I’ve been the butt of a joke without knowing it. I wanted—I wanted to be in on the joke.”
Something shifts in Alex’s expression; he stops fidgeting with his jumper, and looks curious, rather than furtive. Greg feels it like a drop on a rollercoaster, or like the rare moment in a theatrical performance when the whole audience catch and hold their breath. Greg feels hot and discomfited, being suddenly the object of Alex’s complete attention.
When he speaks, Alex doesn’t sound angry at all, anymore. “Does it honestly make a difference to you? To flirt onscreen or, or kiss me knowing my, er. My sexuality? Even though it’s all just for show? Would a kiss be so different today than last week?”
Greg feels all the exasperation of the last few days trying to exit his body at once. “Yes! Of course it would! Don’t ask me to explain it! I don’t know how I’d feel about it now, but I—”
Alex leans in then, swift as can be, and kisses Greg’s mouth—steals a kiss, really, insouciant and smiling—then pulls back, dances back, far away from Greg and bouncing on his toes like a boxer trying to avoid a blow.
“There you are, then,” he says, grin still in place. “Now you know.”
Greg takes a deep breath, wildly disparate and equally powerful emotions warring inside him. He thinks he’d like to hit Alex, in the not-fun way, because this isn’t a fucking game and Greg wants him to stop acting like it is. There’s also a part of him that would like to play the game, maybe . . . maybe kiss him back, or maybe get to hit Alex in the fun way, hold him firmly by his shirt collar and wait for his breathless nod and then slap him a good one; he’d also quite like to opt out of this whole conversation and run away, just as lumbering and ungainly as he ran into it; and underneath those impulses, at the heart of those impulses, he thinks, he’d like to grab Alex up and force him into a cuddle for real, squeeze him tight and trap his arms at his side until he just stops fucking moving.
The conflicting desires manifest in a short, aborted motion towards Alex, his hands coming up towards him, and Alex flinches back. Greg purses his lips and breathes. He lowers his hands.
“Do you know,” he says, slowly, feeling his way through the words, “Do you know how many straight boys I’ve kissed just to . . .” he gestures, something halfway between ta-da and I don’t fucking know.
“Intimidate them?” Alex asks. It’s incisive; it’s incisive in precisely the way that Alex can be, where the conclusion isn’t what Greg might’ve said but is still devastatingly accurate.
Greg might’ve said something more like just to feel something. Both are true.
Greg sighs, tearing off his glasses and giving in to the urge to rub his eye with the heel of his hand. “Among other things.”
There’s a pause, and when Greg replaces his glasses and looks at Alex again he’s shifting his weight, biting his lip. “I couldn’t say an exact number,” he replies, slowly, as if Greg was asking an informational question rather than making a rhetorical point. “But I’ve seen a few that made it on camera. Whatever the total was, it’s one fewer than you thought.” He pauses again, then adds, “Which is not to say that I wasn’t intimidated when you kissed me, I was just, hmm. Bisexually intimidated.”
This forces a laugh out of Greg, and he sits down heavily on the curb, all the energy gone out of his body all of a sudden. It’s nearing full dark now, the summer light faded almost entirely. “I suppose I know that feeling well enough,” he says.
Alex sits gingerly beside him, but putting plenty of space between them, like Greg is a stray dog who might bite at any moment.
“Er,” Alex says, looking like he doesn’t know what he wants to do with his hands.
“What I mean is, me too. Well. I suppose you’ll have worked that out. But I wasn’t kissing all those men just to intimidate them.”
Alex nods, keeping his knees primly together, his body language tight and contained. Greg hates it. Greg prefers when Alex reaches out from the chair next to him, when Alex grasps his hand or pats his arm or strokes his shoulder. Alex in real life isn’t physically demonstrative, though. He doesn’t touch people; he doesn’t touch Greg. It’s just part of the role, when he does it on stage. What had Alex called it? Play, he had said. You wanted to play. Greg had. Normally, Greg would love nothing better.
“Yes,” Alex says, definitively. “I suppose I knew. I mean. I thought so? It’s hard to know when people are joking about that sort of thing.”
“Oh, d’you think?”
Alex, wide-eyed, ducks right past Greg’s sarcasm. “I do, yes, absolutely.”
Greg huffs a single laugh. Alex smiles, and Greg is moved to say more. “Strange to think that we neither of us really knew about the other, after all these years. Despite—” he waves his hand. “All of it. The characters. Our roles.”
“I did think I was being fairly obvious, at least,” Alex sighs, and his body relaxes; he doesn’t touch Greg, but his legs move a little, his shoulders coming down from his ears.
“You always think you’re being obvious, Alex.” Greg means, with tasks and things, that Alex doesn’t do things the simple way, but Alex’s solemn nod makes him wonder if he’s hit closer to home than he intended.
“That is my fatal flaw,” Alex admits, looking over at Greg, tilting his chin up.
“And the source of your success.”
“Mmm. You don’t really talk about it either, you know.”
Greg sighs. “Well. There hasn’t been much to talk about.”
They sit in silence for a minute; Greg feels the atmosphere lighten between them, like the dust has settled.
“You don’t have to cut the flirty little kinky jokes,” he says, after a moment. “I don’t mind, really.”
“Are you sure? Because this has been quite a long and heated conversation about something you don’t mind really.”
“I was—maybe I just needed to have a good fit about it.”
“Nothing like a proper breakdown,” Alex agrees.
“Well, you could put it a little more nicely than that.”
“You needed to . . . recalibrate?” Alex says, voice rising.
“There you are. Recalibrate,” Greg says. He reaches over, breaches the careful space Alex is keeping between them, and grabs his hand. Alex has pretty big hands but Greg can still wrap one up in his, and Alex doesn’t fight it, lets Greg pull until he’s got Alex’s hand on his knee, his hand over Alex’s. “It’s different, knowing where it’s coming from. The joke, and how I play it, and what I might improvise off of it, will be different.”
“Hmm,” Alex says, the way he does when he’s deeply unsure, or pretending to be.
“You don’t think so?” Greg asks, smiling, cocking his head at Alex’s frown, his little headshake. This feels like familiar territory, again.
“Oh, I do think so. I just think—it might be different to write those, ah. Flirty kinky jokes. Knowing that you know that I know. If you see.”
“Is this a bisexual headache I’m feeling?” Greg asks, and it’s funny, but he’s pretty sure that’s the first time he’s ever used that word for himself, and he knows that he wouldn’t have done except for Alex using it. Something loosens in him, that tight knot of anger and confusion that he’s been carrying around beginning to ease at the thought of Alex knowing this, the two of them knowing about each other.
“We’ll work it out,” Alex promises. “Do you want—I could run the jokes by you. Make sure you’re comfortable.”
“Nah,” Greg says, waving his free hand in the air. He’s always liked how Alex and the others let him play the dialogue by ear, off the autocue. He likes the surprise and the spontaneity of it. “I don’t need to be comfortable. So long as I know I’m in good hands.”
He squeezes Alex’s hand where it still sits under his, and Alex looks up at him sharply.
“All right,” he says, slowly, like Greg’s just said something deeply significant.
Greg pats his hand and then stands up, cutting off the contact between them.
Alex pops to his feet beside him. “I’m very glad you said something. I know I joke about it all the time, but I really do admire you, and I love working with you. I don’t want that to change.”
“Same here,” Greg replies, surprised and touched. “Now I think about it, it’s quite sweet, in a way, that you wrote us into being a couple. I couldn’t think of a nicer person to have as my pretend servant slash lover.”
“Didn’t take you long to get back into those jokes,” Alex teases.
Greg smiles. “Well, if a bloke with a silver tongue is going to flatter my enormous ego, I’ll be putty in his hands, won’t I.”
“I like that,” Alex grins. Then his grin falls away for a moment. “Wait. I’m the bloke, right?”
“Yes, you’re the bloke,” Greg says, rolling his eyes. “We’re joking about how we’re both attracted to men.”
“Ah.” Alex nods seriously. “So—can we be friends about this, now? Is that what we’re doing?”
Greg laughs, genuinely surprised, the last of his anger and irritation evaporating away. “Sure, Alex. We can be friends about this.”