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There were a great many things that Greg knew, for as faulty as his memory was, he would never forget about filming that series of Taskmaster. Including, for better or for worse, the glint of laughter in Alex’s eyes as he brightly suggested renewing their vows as a banter section.
Just as Greg knew he would never forget that, for as much as the audience laughed with each additional envelope that Alex produced, his own voice never once shook as he read each new vow aloud.
“I, Greg Davies, do solemnly swear to express my respect and admiration for you as often as I breathe each breath.”
Never once wavered.
“From today onward, you and I will be one in heart, body and mind.”
Never once broke.
“You are my sunrise and sunset, and my day starts and ends with you. I’m the luckiest person alive to be standing with you today, and to be facing life with you every day.”
Never once doubted the words he read aloud.
“Let us build a home, a life, and a family from these bonds, and promise to stick together through all life’s challenges. You are my fire, my one desire…”
Never even once laughed, even at the bizarre inclusion of Backstreet Boys lyrics to apparently the whole thing.
At least, he didn’t laugh until he had finished, just as he laughed at the memory as he collapsed against the sofa in his dressing room while Alex bent to grab them both beers from the bar fridge. “Hell of an ending, mate,” Greg said, accepting the beer can that Alex passed him before plopping down next to him. “It was a great series.”
He held his can out to Alex, who smiled as he tapped his own can against it. “It was,” he agreed.
“We’re going to have a hard time topping it,” Greg said, taking a swig of beer before setting it down so he could pull his jacket off, tossing it aside.
“Mm.”
Greg took another sip of beer before resting his arm along the back of the sofa and glancing sideways at Alex. “I mean, where do you go with the banter once we’ve already renewed our vows?”
He meant for it to sound teasing but it somehow didn’t quite reach it, and there was something he couldn’t quite read in Alex’s expression as he nodded slowly. “I suppose we’ll think of something,” he said mildly before glancing up at Greg. “I’m surprised you went along with it,” he said. “Thought for sure you’d refuse after the first, maybe second envelope.”
There was an unspoken accusation, or at least question, there, but Greg sidestepped it. “And yet that didn’t stop you from making four of them.”
Alex just shrugged. “I am nothing if not committed,” he said, taking a sip of his own beer. “Hence the vows, after all.”
He scrunched his nose on the word ‘committed’, and the multiple applications of the word struck Greg, forcing him to look away even as he chuckled and said with a grin, “God, please don’t tell me those were also your vows with Rachel.”
He expected one of Alex’s stupid honking laughs in response, but instead Alex’s eyes just widened. “Well, I figured if I had already written them, I may as well get second use out of them,” he said, earnest in a way that assured Greg he was taking the piss, and Greg snorted a laugh. Alex grinned and told him truthfully, “No, of course not. I think even Rach might draw the line there.”
Greg nodded. “Smart woman.”
Alex pulled a face. “Not terribly smart, in the end,” he said dismissively. “Considering she married me.”
Again Greg snorted a laugh, leaning over to poke Alex in the side. “Stop making my jokes for me, you prick.”
“Sorry, Greg. Only—”
He broke off, and Greg glanced sideways at him. “What?”
Alex lifted his shoulders in a small shrug. “You didn’t seem inclined to make the joke.”
Greg’s smile faded, just slightly. “No, I suppose not.” Which wasn’t like him, really – if anything, he’d given up far better jokes just to take the piss out of Alex, or his marriage. But something about that moment just made it all seem terribly fraught in a way that Greg didn’t like, or at the very least, didn’t want to unwittingly make worse. So instead, he cleared his throat and steered the conversation back to safer ground. “I knew you didn’t write them, anyway.”
Alex raised both eyebrows, a smile twitching at the corners of his mouth. “Did you.”
He didn’t pitch it as a question but Greg still nodded. “Yeah, not a pun or a shit joke in sight,” he said, giving Alex his best attempt at a disapproving look, though he couldn’t quite stop his giggle. “And I knew you’d never be able to resist the opportunity."
And there was that honking laugh Greg so loved, Alex laughing into his fist before asking Greg, “Why do you think I didn’t actually write my vows? Rachel would never have forgiven me.”
“She’s a woman of good taste,” Greg said, pausing just long enough before adding, saccharine sweet, “Present company excluded.” Alex rolled his eyes but he seemed happy that their dynamic was restored, at least for a moment. Greg took a quick swig of beer before asking, “So then what were your vows with Rachel like?”
Alex looked almost surprised by the question. “Traditional,” he said, giving another little shrug. “In sickness and in health, the whole thing.”
Greg nodded. “Til death do you part.”
“Mm. As long as we both shall live, actually.” For some reason, the simple words seemed to hang heavily in the space between them, the silence made thicker by their lingering, and Alex cleared his throat again before asking Greg, “Would you want to write your own vows?”
Greg didn’t hesitate. “Fuck no.”
Again Alex looked surprised, giving Greg a sharp, swift look. “Really?” he said sceptically. “I’d’ve thought you’d want the control of it.”
“No, you’d want the control, you little freak,” Greg said, poking him again, grinning as Alex squirmed away. “I wouldn’t want the fucking pressure. Can you imagine? Needing to make everyone laugh while also saying just the right thing…” He shook his head before arching an eyebrow at Alex. “Course, you just pulled it off, so…”
Something flitted across Alex’s face, too quickly for Greg to track it, and he shot a furtive look at the door before leaning in and telling Greg in an undertone, “I shouldn’t tell you this.”
Greg leaned in as well, moving his hand from the back of the sofa to splay it across Alex’s back, drawing him in.“Go on.”
Alex took a deep breath. “I plagiarised it.”
Greg blinked. “Sorry?”
Alex grinned, something mischievous in his expression as he told Greg, “I Googled, erm, ‘romantic wedding vows’ and just combined a bunch of them.”
He sounded far too proud of himself and Greg rolled his eyes fondly. “Fucking hell,” he sighed, shaking his head. “Well thank Christ you didn’t write your wedding vows with Rachel, imagine if she found out you nicked ‘em! You certainly wouldn’t be celebrating twenty years in a few months, mate.” Alex just honked another laugh, tilting his head back against the sofa and closing his eyes, and Greg hesitated before adding, a little too genuinely, “Besides, you needn’t plagiarise vows for me.”
Alex cracked one eye open to squint up at him. “Because you’d say anything I wrote for you?”
Greg shook his head. “No, not anything,” he said firmly, giving Alex a look far too fond to be as stern as he was aiming for. “I’m not you, you little freak.”
“Then why?”
Greg shrugged. “Because I could’ve made up my own.”
Alex opened both eyes, slowly sitting upright. “There on the spot?” he asked sceptically.
“Sure.”
Alex’s eyes narrowed. “Without laughing?”
Greg’s lips twitched. “Well…”
Alex laughed. “See,” he said in that smug way of his that usually drove Greg mad, “better that I did it.”
But Greg wasn’t quite prepared to concede the point, even if it wasn’t entirely the point that he’d been trying to make in the first place. “I think the bigger problem would’ve been you not making it through it without laughing,” he said, a challenge in the words. “Easier when you know what’s coming.”
“Mm,” Alex said, turning his head to meet Greg’s eyes with a challenge of his own. “Try me.”
Greg blinked, caught off guard. “Sorry?”
“Go on, try me,” Alex said. “Make up some vows and see if you can make me laugh.”
Ordinarily, it was Greg who ordered Alex to do stupid things to try to make him laugh, but for some reason, it didn’t even occur to Greg that he could say no, or tell Alex to go fuck himself. Instead, he took a deep breath before starting steadily, “I, Greg Davies, being of sound body and mind—”
Almost immediately, Alex broke. “Well, not so sure about sound—” he interjected, not even attempting to hide his giggles.
“You didn’t even make it through the first line!” Greg half-shouted, laughing as well as he threw his hands up in the air in mock-exasperation.
“Can you blame me?” Alex asked before he attempted to school his expression back into something more serious. “Try it again,” he said, giving Greg his biggest, saddest blue eyes as he added plaintively, “Please, Greg?”
Greg wasn’t falling for that a second time. “Fuck off, you prick,” he said instead, grinning when Alex burst into laughter.
When Alex had recovered slightly, he asked Greg, still grinning, “So if you did get married—”
“To borrow your joke, big if at this point, mate.”
Alex ignored him. “—what wedding vows would you use?”
Greg had honestly never thought about it, and he played with the tab of his beer can as he considered it. “Same as you, I suppose,” he said finally. “Traditional. Boring.”
Alex nodded. “For richer, for poorer.”
Greg pulled a face. “Dunno about poorer at this point,” he said, taking a swig of beer. “Not unless you really fuck it with Taskmaster and get us both fired.”
Alex wrinkled his nose. “I think we’re probably safe at this point.”
“Still, I’ll sleep better when we’ve got the official renewal paperwork signed,” Greg muttered, scrubbing a hand across his face.
“No you won’t,” Alex said evenly, and Greg snorted a dry laugh.
“Probably not, yeah, fair.”
Alex’s eyes flickered to his and away again. “But all the rest,” he said, and it took Greg a moment to realise he was back on the vows. “To love and to cherish.”
Greg nodded. “To have and to hold.” He waved a dismissive hand as he finished, “And all the rest.”
Alex cocked his head, just slightly. “What else is there?”
Truthfully, Greg tended to tune out most of the weddings he’d been to, especially lately, so it took him a moment to scramble for something else that took place during the ceremony. “The whole business with the, er, the rings.”
“Ah, of course,” Alex said with a nod. “Traditional for that as well?”
“Yeah,” Greg said, the single word sticking in his throat, and almost without meaning to, he reached for Alex’s left hand, running his thumb across the left finger, empty as it usually was after Alex had injured it. “With this ring, I thee wed—”
Alex swallowed, though he didn’t try to pull his hand away. “Greg—” he started, but Greg didn’t let him interrupt.
“With my body,” he continued, his voice pitched low, “I thee worship—”
Alex shivered but made no additional attempt to interrupt, staring up at Greg with not a hint of laughter in those big blue eyes as he finished, “All my love, I thee give.”
He’d replay the moment in his head a hundred times later, but he’d never be able to decide if he imagined Alex’s eyes flickering down to his lips, or the barest hint of a nod as if giving Greg permission to—
Well, permission to cross the one line neither had dared to yet.
But then Alex swallowed and started, “That’s, erm—”
He broke off and Greg suddenly felt as if his shirt was two sizes too small. “And I’d manage it all without laughing,” he finished a little weakly, though he paused when something flashed across Alex’s expression. “What?”
Alex shook his head. “Nothing,” he said, a little too quickly. “Just. I, erm– I like the sound of that.” He said that last part like a confession, and the breath caught in Greg’s throat. “Not traditional, though.”
Greg exhaled in a sharp sound that was half wheeze, half laugh as Alex grinned up at him. “No?” he managed.
Alex shook his head. “No,” he said, almost apologetically, “it’s, er, ‘with all my worldly goods, I thee endow’.”
He overenunciated it the way he knew drove Greg mad, and Greg shook his head firmly, finally releasing Alex’s hand. “Oh, absolutely not.”
Alex raised both eyebrows. “The whole richer and worldly goods thing again?” he asked, amused.
“Well, that too,” Greg said, raising his hand to press his fingers to his mouth in a vain attempt to stifle his giggles before asking, “You expect me to say the word ‘endow’ and not laugh?”
Alex honked a laugh. “I guess not.”
“Exactly,” Greg said firmly, and with that, he drained his beer and stood, trying not to groan like the old man he was. “Anyway, like I said, it’s been a good series,” he said, leaning down to offer Alex his hand to help him up. “Can’t wait to do it again, for as long as you’ll have me.”
Alex took his hand but made no move to stand. “As long as we both shall live,” he said, and it almost could’ve been a joke, him correcting Greg’s statement or answering what Greg hadn’t pitched as a question, save for the fact that he didn’t sound like he was joking.
And Greg wasn’t sure that he wanted him to be.
But one of them had to be, lest either or both of them do or say something too serious, too real, too committed to this bit that hadn’t been a joke in longer than either would ever admit to each other, let alone to himself.
So he cleared his throat and he added, matching Alex’s tone, “Or at least as long as Avalon keeps paying us.”
Alex grinned and finally let Greg pull him to his feet. “Well, that too, I suppose.”
For one long moment they stayed like that, Greg still holding Alex’s hand, both men standing a little too close together, and Greg looked down at Alex, at his friend and partner and lips he wanted so desperately to kiss even if he knew that, for everyone’s sake, it had to stay a joke.
At least until they were both ready for it not to be.
So he settled for clearing his throat and finally letting go of Alex’s hand. “Come on,” he said, “let’s get to the wrap party and put this series to bed once and for all.”
“Yes, Greg.”
They weren’t ready yet. But Greg had long ago vowed to see this through until they were, and that hadn't changed.
In fact, he’d even be able to get through that vow without giggling.
Probably.