Chapter Text
It was the part of their cycle Greg liked least - the weeks between studio recordings and filming at the house, when they were both sucked into the whirlwind of their non-Taskmaster lives. Alex had the band and seemingly endless production meetings. Greg had scripts in development and standup to write. They both had travel, interviews, and family obligations.
Often they managed to switch tracks from the intensity of their Taskmaster relationship to the steady hum of separate, busy lives quite easily. But even then, Greg often felt the physical absence of Alex in his life like a phantom limb. He awoke with some part of his brain expecting to find Alex beside him, came home irrationally devastated that Alex wasn’t somehow in his flat already.
They got by, as needs must, with text check-ins, video calls, and the occasional evening drinks. Rachel insisted that Greg made it to a Sunday family dinner at regular intervals. They scened together far less frequently than they all would have preferred, but such are the realities of being three very busy adults collectively responsible for the care of three children.
Something feels different this time. Greg has been telling himself it’s just his own brain, doubting he deserves such love at all, selfishly wanting Alex available at his every whim. He knows he’s been particularly needy lately, but Alex’s communication has noticeably changed. He’s taking longer to respond to things and his responses are increasingly and uncharacteristically flat. Looking back over their chat history, Greg realises it’s been weeks since Alex has sent anything except in response to Greg’s initiation. Honestly, the whole thing makes him feel like a pining child, hanging on a crush’s every word.
He should be communicating this - any of it - like an adult, or at least getting on with his days like a competent, non-lovesick professional. But once he’s seen it clearly, he can’t look away for a second. The storm cloud that’s been encroaching in the background for weeks is now parked directly over his head and all he can do is stand in the rain and panic about a boy.
Is Alex trying to break up with him? Does he want to, but isn’t for the sake of the show? Has the experiment run its course? Surely, Alex must have grown tired of handling this needy mess. The novelty of a fuckable giant has worn off and he’s seen at last that it’s nothing like his primary obligation to his wife. Greg thinks that if the conflict was between Alex and Rachel that Alex would have come to Greg with at least some of it, but he cannot trust his judgement on that anymore.
He lasts through a day of this. Of trying and failing to distract himself, and likewise failing to deduce how he should proceed. When his phone lights up with an incoming call from Rachel, he thinks first that she must be able to hear his thoughts from here. Then he immediately panics that the worst has happened. He doesn’t know which worst that is exactly, but his mind is an unwanted slide deck of broken, bruised, and bereaved.
“Hello?” he gets out, finally, when he’s managed to pick up the call. “What’s wrong?”
“Hi love,” Rachel starts, and just the sound of her voice is calming, though he still expects her next words will break him. “Why’d you - sorry, I mean… we’re okay. No one’s hurt.”
Her tone is not reassuring, but Greg wonders how much of that is his own fault. “Okay, sorry, what’s happening?” he tries again.
“I tried to get Alex to talk to you himself, and I don’t love going around him, but he needs help. We both do.”
Greg’s brain is still caught in the one-two punch of relief he’s maybe not fucked it and launching a new fleet of fears for Alex’s wellbeing, and the most he can get out is “I… sorry, what?”
“He’s been so busy - we all have - and the writing’s not going well just now. He’s just down in that shed winding himself tighter and tighter, and I’ve tried to pull him out of it gently but it won’t work. I’m guessing he’s not been talking to you about it either then?”
“No,” Greg admits with a sigh, “I thought it might be me. He’s been so quiet lately.” Then, quickly, “what can I do? What does he need?”
“Love, could you come by and see him? I don’t know that he’ll admit it to you on the phone, but he knows you love him. We both do.”
Without thinking, Greg is standing, looking for his keys by the time he says, “I’m on my way.”
The drive has never seemed longer, as he stews in his panic. He’s kicking himself for not realising sooner that Alex was struggling, for all the times he could have reached out, probed deeper, and hadn’t. How self-centred, to have thought only of his own trivial feelings at the expense of his dearly-held and clearly hurting love.
He checks in with Rachel at the house, giving her a tense but tight hug, before heading down the garden to Alex’s office. The whole time he’s breathing deeply, trying to remind his lungs how to hold air lest they too fall to pieces. Trying to squish his feelings down enough to hold Alex’s as well, as much as he can.
He knocks but doesn’t wait for an answer - Rachel checked his calendar and told Greg he wasn’t in a meeting - and when he opens the door, Alex is stunned still, halfway out of his chair. He looks, in turn, confused, concerned, afraid he’s forgotten scheduled plans, and back to confused.
“Hi.” Greg gets out, finding himself short of breath for even such a sentence. Damn those lungs and their deep emotional vulnerability. He forces a breath in, taking an initial survey of the sight. Alex looks dishevelled, but honestly he always dresses like that. There’s an archipelago of mugs across the desk and tables. Paper on every surface, interspersed with sticky notes and chewed pens. Alex - back to Alex, he thinks, willing his heart to go on beating - looks like he hasn’t seen the sun in a month, which perhaps is true. His facial expression has settled somewhere offshore of resigned.
“Rachel called you?” Alex asks, apparently accepting that Greg won’t elaborate further himself.
“Yes,” Greg answers, relieved at least to be telling the truth. “She’s worried. We both are”
“I love you!” he blurts, just as Alex is opening his mouth to respond. Which is, yes, true, but perhaps not quite the matter in question at the moment.
Alex exhales, building up to his response. “I love you too. I’m sorry that I haven’t been around, that the two of you have worried. Things are busy, but I’m fine. Really.”
Greg is, he guesses, relieved to see with his own eyes that Alex is standing, but he does not agree with Alex’s assessment. He sees now what’s seemed off - Alex’s face appears calm, close enough to his well worn neutral. But it’s a placid mask on a body that’s gaunt and twitchy. The stress, the sleepless nights, and caffeine, are all visible evidence contradicting what Alex is saying.
He steps forward and breathes. “I’m sorry I haven’t checked in. It seems like you’ve got a lot on, like you could use a break? I just want to help, if I can?”
Alex can’t seem to meet Greg’s eyes as he repeats, “really Greg, it’s fine. I have deadlines, but it’s—“
He’s bringing a hand to his face, perhaps to run what looks to be a well-worn path through his hair, when Greg, without totally thinking about it, reaches out a hand to grab Alex’s wrist and hold his arm in place between them.
Suddenly, Alex is looking right at him for the first time, the mask slipping for flashes of anger, submission, surrender, despair.
Greg tries again, still holding Alex by the wrist - though not tight enough to hurt or immobilise, Alex is voluntarily keeping the arm there. “Love, you’re stressed and I care about you. I want to help, to take care of you. If I can.”
There are Alex’s eyes, again. Looking hard at him with a mix of emotions Greg can neither identify nor interpret, until Alex opens his mouth - his perfect, brilliant mouth - and says,
“Red.”
Greg is grateful, he supposes, if one can feel gratitude in this particular moment, that his physical response (to release his hand from Alex’s wrist, to step away, to leave Alex a path to the door) is hardwired, because his brain is not doing much in the way of functioning.
He stands there, stricken, searching Alex’s face for some measure of explanation or understanding, but there is none to be found.
“Greg, please. Go.” he says.
And Greg’s feet must be all that are working because they sure do carry him back out the door before his brain has stopped spinning.
He’s trudging back up the garden, a very lost man. He knows Rachel can spot him from the house before he arrives, and certainly his face is not advertising good news.
She pulls him into the house and onto a stool, charitably not remarking on how out of breath he is from the uphill walk.
“He called red,” he finally says, bringing Rachel into the universe of confusion alongside him.
“What? Why?” she starts, and pauses when she sees Greg’s face crumble.
He is trying, and failing, not to cry as he carries on. “He has that right, he’s set a boundary and I have to respect that. Just. I love him. I love him.”
It should seem physically improbable, but somehow she is wrapped around him now. Both of them awash in concern.
Eventually, when he can again speak, he pulls himself upright. “I - he - he told me to leave. I should go, should give him space” he says.
And then he does. They make plans to check in, the details of which he is not fully absorbing, and then he’s just numbly walking to his car.
He’s driving home, for the second time in an afternoon a fully grown man awash in self-doubt, pining after a love he is afraid might just be unrequited after all.