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Alex would love to say that he had no clue where his obsession with Greg’s hands had come from, but that would be a lie.
It started in 2010, in Edinburgh, the same month when so many far more important things had gone on that Alex had no excuse or explanation for why, years later, he still remembered stepping outside of a party at that time where it was too late to be late at night and too early to be early in the morning, his face flushed with beer and laughter, and pausing when he saw the hulking silhouette of Greg lit by the nearby streetlight.
They weren’t great friends at that point by any stretch, but Alex felt it’d be rude for him to linger awkwardly by the door, especially since Greg had glanced over as soon as he stepped outside, so he jammed his hands in his pockets and instead awkwardly sidled over to Greg, nodding a greeting once he’d wandered close enough.
“Alex,” Greg said, nodding in return, and there was a brief flare of orange as he raised the cigarette in his hand to his mouth.
“Greg,” Alex returned.
Greg exhaled a plume of smoke, and Alex tried hard not to wrinkle his nose as the smell. “Sorry,” Greg said, “should’ve asked, would you, er—?”
He held the cigarette out toward Alex, who shook his head. “Oh, no thank you,” he said, before hurrying to add, as if he was explaining himself to the cool boys in sixth form rather than an adult quasi-friend, “My dad’s a GP, I think he’d kill me before the, er, smoking ever could.”
Greg barked a laugh. “Think he could scare me into quitting?” he asked.
“I’m sure he’d be willing to try.”
Greg laughed again and brought the cigarette back to his mouth to inhale deeply. “So,” he started before launching into some anecdote, and whatever it was they spoke about for the following five or ten minutes was lost to time, because from that moment, the only thing Alex could remember focusing on was Greg’s hands.
The way he rolled the cigarette between his fingers, the way he brushed absently at his lip with the pad of his thumb, the way he’d punctuate his jokes with a casual flick of his wrist, the way his laughter seemed to travel all the way to the tips of his fingers…
Alex was fairly certain he must’ve been staring like an idiot the entire time, but Greg was either nice enough to not mention it or drunk enough to not notice it (Alex’s money, having gotten to know Greg quite well in the ensuing years, was on the latter), but one thing was certain: ever since that night, he had a deep appreciation for Greg’s hands.
It was occasionally inconvenient, considering that most of their time spent together was sat next to each other, where Alex was within easy reach of Greg’s many casual touches, and Alex had to spend more effort than he cared to admit concentrating on the show and now how Greg’s fingers pressed lightly against his forearm as he laughed loudly at something.
He also wouldn’t trade it for the world. The heavy weight of Greg’s hand on top of his was something he’d recognise even with his eyes closed, and something he’d come to treasure more than he thought was possible.
And if he occasionally found himself idly daydreaming about what it would be like to slip his hand into Greg’s, well, that was something no one else, least of all Greg, ever needed to know.
“You all right?” Greg asked, pushing a pint glass across the table to Alex, who shook his head.
“Sorry,” he said, tucking his phone back into his pocket. “That was Avalon—”
Greg gave him a look. “Emailing you something that can doubtless wait til morning,” he said impatiently, lifting his own glass and taking a gulp. “We’re meant to be having fun, remember?”
Alex shook his head even as he took a sip of his own lager. “Technically, we’re meant to be working,” he reminded Greg. “That is the whole point of this trip to New York.”
“We’re meant to be working tomorrow,” Greg corrected. “And I've seen the itinerary, we’ve a full fucking day ahead of us, so we’d best make the most of tonight.”
Alex hummed in what he hoped conveyed both his disapproval and agreement. “Yes, Greg.”
Greg’s eyes narrowed and Alex watched his fingers inch over to the basket of chips they’d been sharing, realising a second too late what Greg was planning. “Catch!”
Alex made a valiant effort to catch the chip in his mouth but it hit his cheek and slid down to somehow escape under the neck of his shirt. Greg clapped a hand over his mouth, giggling delightedly, and Alex just sighed, even though he couldn’t quite stop his own smile. “Is this your definition of fun?” he asked, amused despite himself, fishing the chip out of his shirt and popping it into his mouth.
Greg shrugged and trailed a finger through the condensation on the side of his beer glass. “More fun than checking work emails,” he pointed out.
“You may have a point.”
“Good,” Greg said, smirking at him, though Alex’s eyes still flickered down to where Greg’s blunt fingers were wrapped around the cold glass.
He heard Greg say something to him and hummed an acknowledgement without listening to any of it, and suddenly Greg’s fingers pulled away from the beer glass, his fingers swiping through the beads of wet on the side before he drew them back and—
And flicked the condensation directly into Alex’s face.
Alex blinked and Greg grinned at him. “Don’t you know better than to ignore me by this point?” he asked, and Alex shook his head slowly.
“Believe me, I wasn’t,” he murmured, wiping the condensation off of his forehead.
“What’s that?”
“Nothing, Greg,” Alex said brightly, and for the rest of their evening out together, he was able to keep himself from getting distracted by Greg’s hands.
Well, for the most part, anyway.
It was a miserably cold day in May, far too late in the season for the sort of near-freezing wind and spluttering rain that had Alex shoving his hands miserably under his armpits as he hurried across the lot at Pinewood, his eyes screwed up against the wind and wet.
“You about ready?” he asked as he approached Greg, who didn’t seem remotely affected by the weather as he exhaled a plume of vapour. “They’re asking for us inside.”
Greg arched an eyebrow at Alex and took another hit from his vape pen before looking down exaggeratedly at his watch. “Dunno,” he drawled the way he liked to do when he knew Alex and, by extension, the production team, was in a hurry. “Reckon they’ll start the show without the two hosts?”
Alex rolled his eyes, too chilled to laugh, but Greg wasn’t done. “It’s only been eighteen series, not too late to replace me, I suppose—”
He broke off when he caught sight of the look on Alex’s face, or maybe heard his teeth chattering, just slightly. “Jesus Christ, mate, where is your coat?” he asked impatiently.
“I don’t need—”
But Greg ignored him, tucking his vape back in his pocket before reaching out and taking Alex’s hands in both of his, gently rubbing Alex’s thin fingers between the solid meat of his palms. “Fucking hell, you’ll catch your death at this rate, and then production really will be fucking irate at us.”
“Me more than you, probably,” Alex said, a flush entirely unrelated to the wind warming his cheeks.
Greg just huffed a laugh. “I wouldn’t bet on it,” he said. “Now come on, I know I’ve got extra layers of fat to keep me warm, but you haven’t, so let’s get you inside.”
Alex didn’t protest as Greg tugged him towards the door.
Just like he didn’t protest when Greg forgot to let go of his hands until they finally reached the stage.
It wasn’t exactly an auspicious start to the series that the first attempt at small talk between Greg and a contestant felt so stifled, but Alex trusted Fatiha and Greg to rescue it.
He didn’t expect the conversation to turn immediately to Greg’s hands.
“You know what?” Fatiha said to the audience. “He’s got some massive fucking hands, you know. I’m scared of him.” The audience laughed, which was probably problematic, but Alex chose not to question it. “I know they’re not going to put that in, but I’m just letting you know, his hands are big.”
Greg glanced at the audience. “And can I say, I’ve only met Fatiha for ten minutes, this is her third mention of my hands.”
The audience laughed even harder and Jason interjected, “I agree, because you shook my hand and it was like– it enveloped my entire hand.”
“I was like, shit bro,” Fatiha said, really warming to it now. “You know when you put the Hulk things on? It was like that.”
Greg nodded, his lips twitching. “Yeah.”
“I was like, ‘Rah, what’s this?’”
“They’re big alright,” Greg agreed. “They are big.”
Alex couldn’t help but glance down at Greg’s hands. They were big, of course, but to Alex, that had always been a plus, never a negative. And he had a horrible feeling that this was going to be one of those things that got under Greg’s skin and tickled his vanity enough that he’d fret that his hands were too big.
Sure enough, as soon as Andy called the first break, Greg turned to Alex, a scowl darkening his expression. “They’re not that big, are they?” he asked, holding both his hands up and eyeing them critically.
Alex cleared his throat. “I suppose it depends what you consider big,” he hedged.
“Well, they can’t be much bigger than yours, can they?” Greg demanded, holding his hand out.
With only a slight hesitation, Alex reached out and rested his palm against Greg’s. While it was true that, due mainly to how long Alex’s fingers were, their hands weren’t that far off in length, Greg’s hand dwarfed Alex’s in width. “Fucking hell,” Greg said, pouting slightly as his fingers closed against Alex’s hand, turning it over as if he could somehow convince himself that the difference wasn’t as stark as it initially seemed. “Well, that is dire.”
Alex hummed. “For what it’s worth, though, I’m not scared of you,” he assured Greg.
Greg laughed. “You probably should be, given everything,” he said, giving Alex a genuine grin.
It was only then that Alex realised that Greg was still holding his hand, here in front of the contestants and crew and the entire audience, and Greg glanced down as well, something tightening in his face before he dropped Alex’s hand as if he’d been scalded. “Right,” he said, turning away. “Well, I’m gonna go, erm, for a piss.”
“Great, yeah,” Alex said, concentrating on his iPad as if that would get his furious blush to disappear.
Or for him to forget how much he wanted to reach for Greg’s hand again.
Alex pushed the door to the car park open that night and almost jumped out of his skin as Greg appeared. “Fuck,” Alex practically yelped, and Greg raised both eyebrows.
“Language,” he chided, almost certainly just to be a prick, and Alex frowned up at him.
“What are you doing lurking out here anyway?”
Greg rolled his eyes. “I’m 6 foot 8 and knocking on the door of 22 stone,” he said impatiently. “It’s physically impossible for me to lurk anywhere.”
“Then what—”
“Wanted a word.”
Alex’s frown deepened. “And we couldn’t do this inside because…?”
He trailed off pointedly and Greg huffed a sigh and scrubbed a hand across his face. Alex tried very hard not to track the gesture, largely so that he didn’t get preemptively distracted from whatever Greg wanted to discuss. “I just thought,” Greg started, lowering his hand from his face, “that maybe we should, erm, discuss what happened. If I, er, made your uncomfortable, or, er—”
Alex realised suddenly that Greg had a rather different, and entirely incorrect, interpretation of Alex’s reaction to their somewhat accidental handholding earlier. “Oh,” he said hurriedly, “no, that’s– I mean, erm—”
“Because I know I said you should be scared of me, but that was a joke, and—”
Alex did the only thing he could think of, darting forward to stretch up and press his lips against Greg’s. Greg let out a small oof at the impact, the noise mostly captured by Alex’s mouth, and then his hands, those big, beautiful, strong hands, were on Alex’s waist, pulling him closer as if he might never let him go.
Alex couldn’t see Greg’s hands from this angle, of course.
But he could feel them.
And it felt better than Alex had ever even imagined. Especially when Greg let go of him so he could raise his hands to cradle Alex’s jaw between them, his massive hands unbearably gentle and warm as he rested them against Alex’s neck, his thumbs smoothing through Alex’s beard.
Alex had never felt so small, in the best way possible.
And he couldn’t wait to feel Greg’s hands all over the rest of him.
Alex’s thigh was pressed against Greg’s in the backseat of the car as they waited to be dropped off at the BAFTAs, and Greg was tempted to make any number of jokes, preferably the more salacious kind that would have Alex blushing and grinning when they stepped onto the red carpet.
Just how he liked him.
But Alex’s leg was bouncing, just slightly, with something like nerves even after all this time and as many of these as they had attended, and Greg frowned before he reached over to rest his hand against Alex’s thigh, squeezing it gently. Almost immediately, the bouncing stopped, and Alex glanced up at him. “Sorry.”
Greg didn’t need an apology, though. He just needed to know Alex was okay.
To that end, he released Alex’s thigh and turned his hand over, a silent offer. Alex’s expression softened, and he gave Greg a small smile as he laced his fingers with Greg’s.
Greg stroked his thumb lightly across Alex’s, marvelling as he always did at how his hand could feel so secure and warm laced with Alex’s spindly, freakishly long fingers. Like so many things with Alex, he’d learned not to question it.
Instead, he raised their clasped hands to his lips and brushed a kiss against Alex’s knuckles, grinning when Alex finally blushed and smiled just like he’d wanted.
He didn’t question it.
But he did savour it.
And he knew he always would, for as long as Alex’s hand was his to hold.